CHAPTER XIV
THE LIGHT OF DAWN
There was a light of dawn in the room and through the open window blew in the keen air of daybreak. Dickie was standing quite still in the middle of the floor. He was more neat and groomed than Sheila had ever seen him. He looked as though he had stepped from a bath; his hair was sleek and wet so that it was dark above the pure pallor of his face; his suit was carefully put on; his cuffs and collar were clean. He did not have the look of a man that has been awake all night, nor did he look as though he had ever been asleep. His face and eyes were alight, his lips firm and delicate with feeling.
Before him Sheila felt old and stained. The smoke and fumes of the bar hung about her. She was shamed by the fresh youthfulness of his slender, eager carriage and of his eyes.
"Dickie," she faltered, and stood against the door, drooping wearily, "what are you doing here at this hour?"
"What does the hour matter?" he asked impatiently. "Come over to the window. I want you to look at this big star. I've been watching it. It's almost gone. It's like a white bird flying straight into the sun."
He was imperative, laid his cool hand upon hers and drew her to the window. They stood facing the sunrise.
"Why did you come here?" again asked Sheila. The beauty of the sky only deepened her misery and shame.
"Because I couldn't wait any longer than one night. It's sure been an awful long night for me, Sheila … Sheila—" He drew the hand he still held close to him with a trembling touch and laid his other hand over it. Then she felt the terrible beating of his heart, felt that he was shaking. "Sheila, I love you." She had hidden her face against the curtain, had turned from him. She felt nothing but weariness and shame. She was like a leaden weight tied coldly to his throbbing youth. Her hand under his was hot and lifeless like a scorched rose. "I want you to come away with me from Millings. You can't keep on a-working in that saloon. You can't a-bear to have folks saying and thinking the fool things they do. And I can't a-bear it even if you can. I'd go loco, and kill. Sheila, I've been thinking all night, just sitting on the edge of my bed and thinking. Sheila, if you will marry me, I will promise you to take care of you. I won't let you suffer any. I will die"—his voice rocked on the word, spoken with an awful sincerity of young love—"before I let you suffer any. If you could love me a little bit"—he stopped as though that leaping heart had sprung up into his throat—"only a little bit, Sheila," he whispered, "maybe—?"
"I can't," she said. "I can't love you that way even a little bit. I can't marry you, Dickie. I wish I could. I am so tired."
She drew her hand away, or rather it fell from the slackening grasp of his, and hung at her side. She looked up from the curtain to his face. It was still alight and tender and pale.
"You're real sure, Sheila, that you never could?—that you'd rather go on with this—?"
She pressed all the curves and the color out of her lips, still looking at him, and nodded her head.
"I can't stay in Millings," Dickie said, "and work in Poppa's hotel and watch this, Sheila—unless, some way, I can help you."
"Then you'd better go," she said lifelessly, "because I can't see what else there is for me to do. Oh, I shan't go on with it for very long, of course—"
He came an eager half-step nearer. "Then, anyway, you'll let me go away and work, and when I've kind of got a start, you'll let me come back and—and see if—if you feel any sort of—different from what you do now? It wouldn't be so awful long. I'd work like—like Hell!" His thin hand shot into a fist.
Sheila's lassitude was startled by his word into a faint, unwilling smile.
"Don't laugh at me!" he cried out.
"Oh, Dickie, my dear, I'm not laughing. I'm so tired I can hardly stand. And truly you must go now. I'm horrid to you. I always am. And yet I do like you so much. And you are such a dear. And I feel there's something great about you. I should be glad for you to leave Millings. There is a much better chance for you away from Millings. I feel years old to-day. I think I've grown up too old all at once and missed lovely things that I ought to have had. Dickie"—she gave a dry sort of sob—"you are one of the lovely things."
His arms drew gently round her. "Let me kiss you, Sheila," he pleaded with tremulous lips. "I want just to kiss you once for good-bye. I'll be so careful. If you knowed how I feel, you'd let me."
She lifted up her mouth like an obedient child. Then, back of Dickie, she saw Sylvester's face.
It was more sallow than usual; its upper lip was drawn away from the teeth and deeply wrinkled; the eyes, half-closed, were very soft; they looked as though there was a veil across their pensiveness. He caught Dickie's elbow in his hand, twisted him about, thrusting a knee into his back, and with his other long, bony hand he struck him brutally across the face. The emerald on his finger caught the light of the rising sun and flashed like a little stream of green fire.
Dickie, caught unawares by superior strength, was utterly defenseless. He writhed and struggled vainly, gasping under the blows. Sylvester forced him across the room, still inflicting punishment. His hand made a great cracking sound at every slap.
Sheila hid her face from the dreadful sight. "Oh, don't, don't, don't!" she wailed again and again.
Then it was over. Dickie was flung out; the door was locked against him and Sylvester came back across the floor.
His collar stood up in a half-moon back of his ears, his hair fell across his forehead, his face was flushed, his lip bled. He had either bitten it himself or Dickie had struck it. But he seemed quite calm, only a little breathless. He was neither snarling nor smiling now. He took Sheila very gently by the wrists, drawing her hands down from her face, and he put her arms at their full length behind her, holding them there.
"You meet Dickie here when you're through work, dream-girl," he said gently. "You kiss Dickie when you leave my Aura, you little beacon light. I've kept my hands off you and my lips off you and my mind off you, because I thought you were too fine and good for anything but my ideal. And all this while you've been sneaking up here to Dickie and Jim and Lord knows who else besides. Now, I am agoin' to kiss you and then you gotta get out of Millings. Do you hear? After I've kissed you, you ain't good enough for my purpose—not for mine."
Gathering both her hands in one of his, he put the hard, long fingers of his free hand back of her head, holding it from wincing or turning and his mouth dropped upon hers and seemed to smother out her life. She tasted whiskey and the blood from his cut lips.
"You won't tell me, anyway, that lie again," he panted, keeping his face close, staring into her wide eyes of a horrified childishness—"that you've never been kissed."
Again his lips fastened on her mouth. He let her go, strode to the door, unlocked it, and went out.
She had fallen to the floor, her head against the chair. She beat the chair with her hands, calling softly for her father and for her God. She reproached them both. "You told me it was a good old world," she sobbed. "You told me it was a good old world."