Damned: The Intimate Story of a Girl

by E. S. Dorrance

But chiefly she waited. Impatient of interruption from those who wished to be her friends, of the warm, indirect lighting shafted over her by the Cabot millions, of the comfort of reality, she merely endured the intermission. Her imagination strained toward what would be revealed when the curtain rose again.

The Airedale terrier, that now was not to know the joys of owning his own “boy,” she made her particular charge. Although she had resented him from first sight, she came to take a vicarious pride in his up-bringing and points. Through Jack’s eyes she watched his development out of puppyhood into promising young dogship; daily brushed the harsh tan coat over which the outlines of a black saddle already were forming; noted with interest that, although scarcely two months old, his eyes were turning black; attended his diet herself, lest his canine voracity weaken the bones of his front legs, now straight as two gun-barrels. In time she felt for him a comradeship even greater than Jack’s would have been. Was he not in the same, culpable position which had saddened her youth? Had not another died for him?

She did not realize how much his demonstrative preference for her company had gained upon her until one night when awakened from her early sleep by the ache of loneliness. She decided to join him in Jack’s living room where he was allowed to dream his puppy dreams curled up on the foot-stool that stood as of yore before the lame little autocrat’s arm-chair. Slipping a warm robe over her nightgown and loose long hair, she tip-toed in mules along the balcony and into the suite of so many memories. Scarcely had she closed the door when the puppy rose to receive her. Although he stood a picture of preparedness in the center of the room, instinctively posing after the traditions of his A. K. C. ancestry when on hunt or show-bench, the waggle of his short, flagstaff tail and certain quivers of his stiff chin whiskers assured her that he was delighted she had come.

And Dolores returned his greeting with more than usual cordiality. She rubbed the level of his back with her foot and stooped to scratch the section of forehead between the small, V-shaped ears when he kissed effusively her bare ankles.

She straightened; for a moment stood listening. The room was very quiet—so much quieter than usual. She glanced at the grandfather’s clock which had ticked through so many generations of Cabots. The living John had tinkered it to outlast the life of his heir and it had made good his boast. Reproachfully Dolores eyed the “calm” face which Jack had approved. Indeed, a clock needed to be “calm-faced,” when its office was ticking lives away.

The hour hand was close to eleven. But then, the hour didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except that Jack was gone. With the thought, she turned toward the closed bedroom door. Impossible—almost too impossible for belief it seemed that he was not sleeping within. Comparing to-night with other nights when she had crept in to assure herself that his sleep was sound, the past seemed real, the now the unreality. Surely he would be hunched up beneath his eider-down and satin just as usual.

Moved by her longings, the girl continued across the living-room; opened, then closed behind her the bedroom door and stopped beside the bed. Its absolute flatness, the neat roll of the comforter between its foot-posts, the prim set of the pillows at its head—all filled her with realization keen as actual disappointment. She bunched up the pillows, threw herself upon them and shook out the comforter over her. With a sob, she tried to clasp to her heart the delusion that a twisted little shape lay within her arms.

Before she fell asleep she realized that the puppy had followed her into the room. He had hidden under the bed, evidently, until eased of fear over his temerity. Her resistance of the whimpers with which he soon grew emboldened kept her awake for a time. What was he—stupid, brute atom—that he presumed to offer comfort for her human loss? And had not he himself deprived her? Quite roughly she pushed away his exaggeratedly shivering body and repulsed his suggestion that he, too, was lonely. Let him continue to hide from her sight—let him die of his loneliness!

And yet—— In those little-girl days of long ago, had she died, willing though she might have been to offer that apology for her existence? What would she have done if the father whom she had deprived had not been merciful to her?

A damp nose in her down-stretched palm emphasized the question. She should remember that the creature wasn’t hers to mistreat. Jack would want his dog given the benefit of every doubt. She picked up the recent bundle of canine pathos—now one of exuberant joy—and permitted him to wriggle down upon the coverlet.