“Ah, don’t you want to have any fun at all? Gee! He don’t want you to do a thing and you let him get away with it. Look at all the other girls and fellows around here. There’s not one that’s as scary as you are. Besides, what harm is there? Supposing we don’t get back on time? Couldn’t we say the car broke down? He couldn’t say anything to that. Besides, no one punches a time clock any more.” But Ida nervous and still resisting, and Hauptwanger, because of this very resistance, determined to win her to his mood and to outwit her father at the same time.
And then the lure of summer nights—Corybantic—dithyrambic—with kisses, kisses, kisses—under the shadow of the trees in King Lake Park, or in one of the little boats of its lake which nosed the roots of those same trees on the shore. And with the sensitive and sensual, and yet restricted and inexperienced Ida, growing more and more lost in the spell which youth, summer, love, had generated. The beauty of the face of this, her grand cavalier! His clothes, his brisk, athletic energy and daring! And with him perpetually twittering of this and that, here and there, that if she only truly loved him and had the nerve, what wouldn’t they do? All the pleasures of the world before them, really. And then at last, on this same lake—with her lying in his arms—himself attempting familiarities which scarcely seemed possible in her dreams before this, and which caused her to jump up and demand to be put ashore, the while he merely laughed.
“Oh, what had he done that was so terrible? Say, did she really care for him? Didn’t she? Then, why so uppish? Why cry? Oh, gee, this was a scream, this was. Oh, all right, if that was the way she was going to feel about it.” And once ashore, walking briskly off in the gayest and most self-sufficient manner while she, alone and tortured by her sudden ejection from paradise, slipped home and into her room, there to bury her face in her pillow and to whisper to it and herself of the danger—almost the horror—that had befallen her. Yet in her eyes and mind the while the perfect Hauptwanger. And in her heart his face, hands, hair. His daring. His kisses. And so brooding even here and now as to the wisdom of her course—her anger—and in a dreary and hopeless mood even, dragging herself to her father’s store the next day, merely to wait and dream that he was not as evil as he had seemed—that he could not have seriously contemplated the familiarities that he had attempted; that he had been merely obsessed, bewitched, as she herself had been.
Oh, love, love! Edward! Edward! Edward! Oh, he would not, could not remain away. She must see him—give him a chance to explain. She must make him understand that it was not want of love but fear of life—her father, everything, everybody—that kept her so sensitive, aloof, remote.
And Hauptwanger himself, for all of his bravado and craft, now nervous lest he had been too hasty. For, after all, what a beauty! The lure! He couldn’t let her go this way. It was a little too delicious and wonderful to have her so infatuated—and with a little more attention, who knew? And so conspicuously placing himself where she must pass on her way home in the evening, at the corner of Warren and High—yet with no sign on his part of seeing her. And Ida, with yearning and white-faced misery, seeing him as she passed. Monday night! Tuesday night! And worse, to see him pass the store early Wednesday evening without so much as turning his head. And then the next day a note handed the negro errand boy of her father’s store to be given to him later, about seven, at the corner where he would most surely be.
And then later, with the same Edward taking it most casually and grandly and reading it. So she had been compelled to write him, had she? Oh, these dames! Yet with a definite thrill from the contents for all of that, for it read: “Oh, Edward, darling, you can’t be so cruel to me. How can you? I love you so. You didn’t mean what you said. Tell me you didn’t. I didn’t. Oh, please come to the house at eight. I want to see you.”
And Edward Hauptwanger, quite triumphant now, saying to the messenger before four cronies who knew of his present pursuit of Ida: “Oh, that’s all right. Just tell her I’ll be over after a while.” And then as eight o’clock neared, ambling off in the direction of the Zobel home. And as he left one of his companions remarking: “Say, whaddya know? He’s got that Zobel girl on the run now. She’s writing him notes now. Didn’t ya see the coon bring it up? Don’t it beat hell?” And the others as enviously, amazedly and contemptuously inquiring: “Whaddya know?”
And so, under June trees in King Lake Park, once more another conference. “Oh, darling, how could you treat me so, how could you? Oh, my dear, dear darling.” And he replying—“Oh, sure, sure, it was all right, only what do you think I’m made of? Say, have a heart, I’m human, ain’t I? I’ve got some feelings same as anybody else. Ain’t I crazy about you and ain’t you crazy about me? Well, then—besides—well, say....” A long pharisaical and deluding argument as one might guess, with all the miseries and difficulties of restrained and evaded desire most artfully suggested—yet with no harm meant, of course. Oh, no.
But again, on her part, the old foolish, terrorized love plea. And the firm assurance on his part that if anything went wrong—why, of course. But why worry about that now? Gee, she was the only girl he knew who worried about anything like that. And finally a rendezvous at Little Shark River, with his father’s car as the conveyance. And later others and others. And she—because of her weak, fearsome yielding in the first instance—and then her terrorized contemplation of possible consequences in the second—clinging to him in all too eager and hence cloying fashion. She was his now—all his. Oh, he would never, never desert her, now, would he?
But he, once satisfied—his restless and overweening ego comforted by another victory—turning with a hectic and chronic, and for him uncontrollable sense of satiety, as well as fear of complications and burden—to other phases of beauty—other fields and relationships where there was no such danger. For after all—one more girl. One more experience. And not so greatly different from others that had gone before it. And this in the face of the magic of her meaning before capitulation. He did not understand it. He could not. He did not even trouble to think about it much. But so it was. And with no present consciousness or fear of being involved in any early and unsatisfactory complications which might require marriage—on the contrary a distinct and definite opposition to any such complication at any time, anywhere.