CHAPTER XVIII
From the glory of the festivals of alliance Jim Dyckman and Charity Coe were absent. Both were so eager to be abroad in the battle that they did not miss the flag-waving. But they wanted to cross the sea together. The importance of this ambition tempted Charity to a desperate conclusion that the formalities of her union with Jim did not matter so long as they were together. Yet the risk of death was so inescapable and she was so imbued with churchliness that her dreams were filled with visions of herself dead and buried in unhallowed ground, of herself and Jim standing at heaven's gate and turned away for lack of a blessing on their union.
Her soul was about ready to break completely, but her body gave out first. It was in a small town in New Jersey that they found themselves weather-bound.
The sky seemed to rain ice-water and they took refuge in the village's one hotel, a dismal place near the freight-station. The entrance was up a narrow staircase, past a bar-room door.
The rooms were ill furnished and ill kept, and the noise of screaming locomotives and jangling freight-cars was incessant. But there was no other hospitality to be had in the town.
Jim left Charity at her door and begged her to sleep. Her dull eyes and doddering head promised for her.
He went to his own room and laughed at the cheap wretchedness of it: the cracked pitcher in the cracked bowl, the washstand whose lower door would not stay open, the two yellow towels in the rack, the bureau, the cane chairs, and the iron bed with its thin mattress and neglected drapery.
He lowered himself into a rickety rocker and looked out through the dirtier window at the dirty town. The only place to go was to sleep, and he tried to make the journey. But a ferocious resentment at the idiocy of things drove away repose.