IV
Johnathan was especially jovial and agreeable about the house that night. He came in whistling. He cracked a couple of ancient jokes and talked about “sparing the money” to get the hall papered. His family looked at one another in puzzled astonishment. Mrs. Forge asked for ten dollars to spend on clothes and got five, three of which were promptly appropriated by Edith for a waist to wear to a dance that she was going to attend unbeknown to her parents. All of them felt electrically that some extraordinary business was afoot.
The family retired about ten o’clock. The lights went out. Johnathan fell asleep almost at once. He said it was easy for him to fall asleep because he always had a clear conscience.
But Nathan, sitting in his room, heard a sudden familiar whistle on the walk outside, about midnight. He escaped by the usual method to find his sweetheart in tears. They had walked a considerable distance before Nathan learned the cause. Now her grandfather was “cruel” to her.
“Oh, Nathan! I’ve got to go back to A-higher. He—he—doesn’t want me around here any more.”
Nathan heard this with a clammy throttling of his heart. Then his mind leaped intuitively to his father’s unusual affability that night.
“Carrie—I’ll bet five dollars my father’s seen your gramp and they’ve clubbed together to bust us up!”
“I’m sick and disgusted with being treated like children by two old bigots!” the girl cried vehemently. “I’m almost ready to quit!”
“Quit?” cried Nathan in alarm.
“Yes—quit! We’re grown up, now! What difference does a couple of years make, anyhow?”
“Let’s risk the box-shop once more, Carrie. Let’s go down and talk it over and—I’ll hold you.”
“Holding her” was eminently to be desired by all witnesses to these presents. So toward the box-shop they headed.
It was a close, muggy night with the heat lightning playing off in the low northwest. Clouds hid the moon and stars. The dusty earth was thirsty for rain. Most of the lamps were already extinguished in the houses en route as boy and girl made their way down toward the “flats.”
They stole into the shadowed factory yard, keeping well out of sight close to the rushes. Nathan unlocked the door softly. On tiptoe they entered. The door was locked behind them. The office was very stuffy. It smelled of musty ledgers and wintergreen library paste. High on the wall a philosophical old clock ticked on through the night.
The boy removed hat and coat. He pulled out one of the cane-seated swivel chairs. Almost before he had seated himself the girl was in his arms and sobbing convulsively on his shoulder.
Nathan pulled out a low desk-drawer for his feet. He leaned back and smoothed the girl’s soft chestnut hair. The lone arc lamp far across the rushes shone weirdly into the room, making a rectangular splotch of light upon the western wall.
“Oh, Natie,” the girl sobbed softly, “I love you so! I don’t want to go back to A-higher! And they treat me so cruel—so cruel! My stepmother doesn’t like me and my gramp doesn’t want me. I wish I was dead!”
“You’ve got me, dear,” the boy reminded her. A thousand love-struck swains would have said the same.
“But I won’t have, Natie, if I go back to A-higher!”
“Oh, Carrie, I wish I was sure dad wouldn’t have our marriage annulled. I’d say let’s get married right off now and spite him. But I’m afraid he would. He’s just that crazy against me having a girl of any sort, you or anybody. Then again, here’s the shop. This’ll be mine some day, if I don’t run off. I’m making it into a whale of a business. Oh, Carrie, if dad would only be sensible like other boys’ fathers! If he only would!”
“Natie, tell me something.” The girl’s voice was soft. Her face was averted. She picked aimlessly at one of his shirt buttons. “Is that why you’ve dodged running away and getting married up to now? Because you’ve been afraid your dad would have our marriage annulled? Because you weren’t of age, maybe?”
“Yes, Carrie. That’s—the—reason.”
A long silence ensued. The girl’s weeping had ceased. The night and the world were very quiet, excepting for a light hot wind which was blowing over the rushes in the vanguard of a shower. Some of the rushes brushed eerily against the box-shop walls. The old building gave off queer creakings and night noises upstairs. A mouse nibbled at something which rattled in a far corner.
“Oh, Carrie!”
The boy drew a thick poignant sigh. The girl turned her pale face up to his for a kiss. She got it. Both sighed. She nestled close. The clock ticked—ticked—ticked——
Suddenly the boy sensed that the girl was trembling. She raised her free hand and smoothed his hair for a moment. Then gradually she dropped it—dropped it down to her own face—held it across her eyes.
“Nathan,” she whispered softly.
“Yes, Carrie!”
The girl drew a quick breath—with an effort. She placed her lips close to her lover’s ear and whispered.
Young Nat Forge, “incorrigible son,” sat with the girl he loved at nineteen,—sat and held her close. And his throbbing eyes stared across fields of romance, down into valleys of verboten Avalon where acacia trees grew too thickly at a moment for passage through.
It was a woman who came to the first man in the Garden. She carried fruit of the knowledge-tree of good and evil and bade him eat. Yet perchance she loved him no less on that account.