Tramping on Life Part 122

I dressed. I went down to the hotel writing-room and came back with pen and ink.

She sat up in bed and wrote the letter. She then read it aloud to me.

She was immensely pleased with her effort.

With a final gesticulation of vindictive, feminine joy, she succeeded in spilling the whole bottle of ink on the white bed-spread.

"Now you've done it."

"We'll have to clear out early before the chambermaid comes in ...

we're only staying here for one night and can't waste our money paying for the damage."

In the morning I bought the papers.

The _American_ had made a scoop. There it was, the story of the whole thing on the front page.

"PENTON BAXTER SUES FOR DIVORCE -------------------------- NAMES VAGABOND-POET AS CO-RESPONDENT"

There it stood, in big head-lines.

The actuality stared us in the face. We belonged to each other now. It was no longer a summer idyll, but a practical reality.

As we took the train for Long Branch we realised that we had plunged midmost into the action that would put all our theories to the test....

I looked at my woman with a sidelong glance, as she sat beside me on the train seat.... She was so pretty, so frail, so feminine that I pitied her, while at the same time my heart swelled with tenderness for her, and with pride of possession. For she was mine now without dispute. She, for her part, spoke but little, except illogically to upbraid Penton Baxter, as if he had perpetrated an ill on two people thoroughly innocent.

I was angry with him on other grounds ... he was not playing the radical game, but taking advantage of the rules of the conventional world.

With a fugitive sense of pursuit, we hired a cabby to drive us to a summer boarding house at Long Branch ... where Hildreth and I rented a single large room for both of us....

And there Hildreth immediately went into hysterics, and did nothing but weep. While I waited on her hand and foot, bringing up food to her because she was sensitive about the probability of people recognising her.

We stayed there a week. Each day the papers were full of our mysterious disappearance ... reporters were combing the country to find us. Reports of our being in various places were sent in by enterprising local correspondents....

Again we entrained ... for Sea Girt.

An old cabman who drove a dilapidated rig hailed us with uplifted whip.

"We are looking for a place to board."

"I'll take you to a nice, quiet place, just suited to two home-loving folks like you," he replied, thinking he had paid us a compliment, and whipping up his ancient nag.

Hildreth gave me a nudge and a merry look and it pleased me to see she still had her sense of humour left.

That night, as I held her in my arms, "Don't let these little, trivial inconveniences and incidents--the petty persecutions we are undergoing, have any effect on our great love," I pleaded.

"That's all very well, darling Johnnie, but where are we going to?"

"We'll find a cottage somewhere ... a pretty little cottage within our means," I replied, visioning a vine-trellised place such as poets and their brides must live in.

"Our money is giving out ... soon we'll have--to turn back to New York!"

"If we do, that need not part us.... I'll get a job on some newspaper or magazine and take care of you."

When I called for my mail at the Sea Girt post office, sure of hearing from Darrie, anyhow,--who promised us she would keep us posted, I found no letter. And the man at the window was certain he had handed over several letters addressed to me to someone else who had called for them, giving my name as his.

A wave of hot anger suffused my face. How stupid of me not to have noticed it before. Now I remembered the men who had followed us.

Our mail was being intercepted. How was Baxter to procure his divorce without gaining evidence in just such a way?

One night I started on a long walk alone. I walked along the beach. In the dark I took off my clothes and plunged for a swim into the chilly surf ... a high sea was thundering in. I was caught in the undertow, swept off my feet, and dragged beyond by depth ... for a moment I was of a heart to let go, to permit myself to be drowned ... I was even intrigued, for the moment, by the thought of what the newspapers would say about my pa.s.sing over in such a romantic way.

But the will to live rose up in me. And I fought my way,--and it was a bitter fight,--back to shallow water. I flung myself p.r.o.ne on the beach, exhausted.

When I reached our room again, I related my adventure to Hildreth.

It was she who took care of me now. I lay all night in a high fever ...

but I was so happy, for the woman of my heart sat close by me, holding my hand, speaking soft terms of endearment to me, tending to all my wants.

This tenderness, this solicitude and companions.h.i.+p seemed for the first time better to me than the maddest transports of pa.s.sion that swept us into one.

In the morning mail came a letter, general delivery, from Penton.... Now I was sure he was having our every step watched. A blind pa.s.sion against him rose in me ... the little bounder!

In the letter he asked me to meet him at the Sea Girt railway station at four o'clock. I made it by the time indicated, by a brisk walk.

There he was, dropping off the train as it came to a stop. Another scene flashed through my mind, a visual remembrance of the day he had dropped off to visit me at Laurel.

Then we had rushed toward each other, hands extended in warm, affectionate greeting ... now ... I slowly sauntered up to him.

"Yes, Penton, what do you want; how much longer are you going to torture your wife?"

"--yours now, Johnnie; mine no longer!" grimly.

"If she were wholly mine, I'd knock you flat ... but you still have a sort of right in her that protects you from what I otherwise might do to you."

"For heaven's sake, let's be calm."

"Calm--when you say in your letter, 'you need not be afraid, I meditate no harm?'--do you mean to imply that, under any circ.u.mstance, I would be afraid of you?"

"Johnnie, there is only one way to settle this ... I'm set on getting the complete evidence for a divorce ... exactly where is Hildreth now?"

"None of your d.a.m.ned business ... all I can say is that she is somewhere near here ... and she's sick and hysterical through your persecutions ... and if you don't call off your snooping detectives, by the Lord G.o.d, if I run into any of them, I'll try to kill them."