The Grain of Dust Part 40

Tetlow."

"I beg your pardon," said he humbly.

She straightway relented, saying: "Of course I'd not let one of the boys come up when I was dressed like this. But I didn't mind _you_." He winced at this amiable, unconscious reminder of her always exasperating and tantalizing and humiliating indifference to him--"And as I'm going to a grand dance to-night I simply had to wash my hair. Does that satisfy you, Mr. Primmey?"

He hid the torment of his reopened wound and seated himself at the center table. She returned to a chair in the window where the full force of the afternoon sun would concentrate upon her hair. And he gazed spell bound. He had always known that her hair was fine. He had never dreamed it was like this. It was thick, it was fine and soft. In color, as the sunbeams streamed upon it, it was all the shades of gold and all the other beautiful shades between brown and red. It fell about her face, about her neck, about her shoulders in a gorgeous veil. And her pure white skin--It was an even more wonderful white below the line of her collar--where he had never seen it before. Such exquisitely modeled ears--such a delicate nose--and the curve of her cheeks--and the glory of her eyes! He clinched his teeth and his hands, sat dumb with his gaze down.

"How do you like my room?" she chattered on. "It's not so bad--really quite comfortable--though I'm afraid I'll be cold when the weather changes. But it's the best I can do. As it is, I don't see how I'm going to make ends meet. I pay twelve of my fifteen for this room and two meals. The rest goes for lunch and car fare. As soon as I have to get clothes--" She broke off, laughing.

"Well," he said, "what then?"

"I'm sure I don't know," replied she carelessly. "Perhaps old Mr.

Brans...o...b..'ll give me a raise. Still, eighteen or twenty is the most I could hope for--and that wouldn't mean enough for clothes."

She shook her head vigorously and her hair stood out yet more vividly and the sunbeams seemed to go mad with joy as they danced over and under and through it. He had ventured to glance up; again he hastily looked down.

"You spoiled me," she went on. "Those few months over there in Jersey City. It made _such_ a change in me, though I didn't realize it at the time. You see, I hadn't known since I was a tiny little girl what it was to live really decently, and so I was able to get along quite contentedly. I didn't know any better." She made a wry face. "How I loathe the canned and cold storage stuff I have to eat nowadays. And how I do miss the beautiful room I had in that big house over there! and how I miss Molly and Pat--and the garden--and doing as I pleased--and the clothes I had: I thought I was being careful and not spoiling myself.

You may not believe it, but I was really conscientious about spending money." She laughed in a queer, absent way. "I had such a funny idea of what I had a right to do and what I hadn't. And I didn't spend so very much on out-and-out luxury. But--enough to spoil me for this life."

As Norman listened, as he noted--in her appearance, manner, way of talking--the many meaning signs of the girl hesitating at the fork of the roads--he felt within him the twinges of fear, of jealousy--and through fear and jealousy, the twinges of conscience. She was telling the truth. He had undermined her ability to live in purity the life to which her earning power a.s.signed her. . . . _Why_ had she been so friendly to him? Why had she received him in this informal, almost if not quite inviting fas.h.i.+on?

"So you think I've changed?" she was saying. "Well--I have. Gracious, what a little fool I was!"

His eyes lifted with an agonized question in them.

She flushed, glanced away, glanced at him again with the old, sweet expression of childlike innocence which had so often made him wonder whether it was merely a mannerism, or was a trick, or was indeed a beam from a pure soul. "I'm foolish still--in certain ways," she said significantly.

"And you always intend to be?" suggested he with a forced smile.

"Oh--yes," replied she--positively enough, yet it somehow had not the full force of her simple short statements in the former days.

He believed her. Perhaps because he wished to believe, must believe, would have been driven quite mad by disbelief. Still, he believed. As yet she was good. But it would not last much longer. With him--or with some other. If with him, then certainly afterward with another--with others. No matter how jealously he might guard her, she would go that road, if once she entered it. If he would have her for his very own he must strengthen her, not weaken her, must keep her "foolish still--in certain ways."

He said: "There's nothing in the other sort of life."

"That's what they say," replied she, with ominous irritation.

"Still--some girls--_lots_ of girls seem to get on mighty well without being so terribly particular."

"You ought to see them after a few years."

"I'm only twenty-one," laughed she. "I've got lots of time before I'm old. . . . You haven't--married?"

"No," said he.

"I thought I'd have heard, if you had." She laughed queerly--again shook out her hair, and it s.h.i.+mmered round her face and over her head and out from her shoulders like flames. "You've got a kind of a--Mr. Tetlow way of talking. It doesn't remind me of you as you were in Jersey City."

She said nothing, she suggested nothing that had the least impropriety in it, or faintest hint of impropriety. It was nothing positive, nothing aggressive, but a certain vague negative something that gave him the impression of innocence still innocent but looking or trying to look tolerantly where it should not. And he felt dizzy and sick, stricken with shame and remorse and jealous fear. Yes--she was sliding slowly, gently, unconsciously down to the depth in which he had been lying, sick and shuddering--no, to deeper depths--to the depths where there is no light, no trace of a return path. And he had started her down. He had done it when he, in his pride and selfishness, had ignored what the success of his project would mean for her. But he knew now; in bitterness and shame and degradation he had learned. "I was infamous!"

he said to himself.

She began to talk in a low, embarra.s.sed voice:

"Sometimes I think of getting married. There's a young man--a young lawyer--he makes twenty-five a week, but it'll be years and years before he has a good living. A man doesn't get on fast in New York unless he has pull."

Norman, roused from his remorse, blazed inside. "You are in love with him?"

She laughed, and he could not tell whether it was to tease him or to evade.

"You'd not care about him long," said Norman, "unless there were more money coming in than he'd be likely to get soon. Love without money doesn't go--at least, not in New York."

"Do you suppose I don't know that?" said she with the irritation of one faced by a hateful fact. "Still--I don't see what to do."

Norman, biting his lip and fuming and observing her with jealous eyes, said in the best voice he could command, "How long have you been in love with him?"

"Did I say I was in love?" mocked she.

"You didn't say you weren't. Who is he?"

"If you'll stay on about half an hour or so, you'll see him. No--you can't. I've got to get dressed before I let him up. He has very strict ideas--where I'm concerned."

"Then why did you let _me_ come up?" Norman said, with a penetrating glance.

She lowered her gaze and a faint flush stole into her cheeks. Was it confession of the purpose he suspected? Or, was it merely embarra.s.sment?

"I heard of a case once," continued Norman, his gaze significantly direct, "the case of a girl who was in love with a poor young fellow.

She wanted money--luxury. Also, she wanted the poor young fellow."

The color flamed into the girl's face, then left it pale. Her white fingers fluttered with nervous grace into her ma.s.ses of hair and back to her lap again, to rest there in timid quiet.

"She knew another man," pursued Norman, "one who was able to give her what she wanted in the way of comfort. So, she decided to make an arrangement with the man, and keep it hidden from her lover--and in that way get along pleasantly until her lover was in better circ.u.mstances ."

Her gaze was upon her hands, listless in her lap. He felt that he had spoken her unspoken, probably unformed thoughts. Yes, unformed. Men and women, especially women, habitually pursued these unacknowledged and--even unformed purposes, in their conflicts of the desire to get what they wanted and their desire to appear well to themselves.

"What would you think of an arrangement like that?" asked he, determined to draw her secret heart into the open where he could see, where she could see.

She lifted frank, guileless eyes to his. "I suppose the girl was trying to do the best she could."

"What do you think of a girl who'd do that?"

"I don't judge anybody--any more. I've found out that this world isn't at all as I thought--as I was taught."

"Would _you_ do it?"

She smiled faintly. "No," she replied uncertainly. Then she restored his wavering belief in her essential honesty and truthfulness by adding: "That is to say, I don't think I would."

She busied herself with her hair, feeling it to see whether it was not yet dry, spreading it out. He looked at her unseeingly. At last she said: "You must go. I've got to get dressed."

"Yes--I must be going," said he absently, rising and reaching for his hat on the center table.

She stood up, put out her hand. "I'm glad you came."