The Dwelling Place of Light Part 45

"Is that the end?" she asked, at length.

"Yes," he replied sensitively. "Can't you see it's a climax? Don't you think it's a good one?"

She looked at him, puzzled.

"Why, yes," she said, "I think it's fine. You see, I have to take it down so fast I can't always follow it as I'd like to."

"When you feel, you can do anything," he exclaimed. "It is necessary to feel."

"It is necessary to know," she told him.

"I do not understand you," he cried, leaning toward her. "Sometimes you are a flame--a wonderful, scarlet flame I can express it in no other way. Or again, you are like the Madonna of our new faith, and I wish I were a del Sarto to paint you. And then again you seem as cold as your New England snow, you have no feeling, you are an Anglo-Saxon--a Puritan."

She smiled, though she felt a pang of reminiscence at the word. Ditmar had called her so, too.

"I can't help what I am," she said.

"It is that which inhibits you," he declared. "That Puritanism. It must be eradicated before you can develop, and then--and then you will be completely wonderful. When this strike is over, when we have time, I will teach you many things--develop you. We will read Sorel together he is beautiful, like poetry--and the great poets, Dante and Petrarch and Ta.s.so--yes, and d'Annunzio. We shall live."

"We are living, now," she answered. The look with which she surveyed him he found enigmatic. And then, abruptly, she rose and went to her typewriter.

"You don't believe what I say!" he reproached her.

But she was cool. "I'm not sure that I believe all of it. I want to think it out for myself--to talk to others, too."

"What others?"

"n.o.body in particular--everybody," she replied, as she set her notebook on the rack.

"There is some one else!" he exclaimed, rising.

"There is every one else," she said.

As was his habit when agitated, he began to smoke feverishly, glancing at her from time to time as she fingered the keys. Experience had led him to believe that he who finds a woman in revolt and gives her a religion inevitably becomes her possessor. But more than a month had pa.s.sed, he had not become her possessor--and now for the first time there entered his mind a doubt as to having given her a religion! The obvious inference was that of another man, of another influence in opposition to his own; characteristically, however, he shrank from accepting this, since he was of those who believe what they wish to believe. The sudden fear of losing her--intruding itself immediately upon an ecstatic, creative mood--unnerved him, yet he strove to appear confident as he stood over her.

"When you've finished typewriting that, we'll go out to supper," he told her.

But she shook her head.

"Why not?"

"I don't want to," she replied--and then, to soften her refusal, she added, "I can't, to-night."

"But you never will come with me anymore. Why is it?"

"I'm very tired at night. I don't feel like going out." She sought to temporize.

"You've changed!" he accused her. "You're not the same as you were at first--you avoid me."

The swift gesture with which she flung over the carriage of her machine might have warned him.

"I don't like that Hampton Hotel," she flashed back. "I'm--I'm not a vagabond--yet."

"A vagabond!" he repeated.

She went on savagely with her work..

"You have two natures," he exclaimed. "You are still a bourgeoise, a Puritan. You will not be yourself, you will not be free until you get over that."

"I'm not sure I want to get over it."

He leaned nearer to her.

"But now that I have found you, Janet, I will not let you go."

"You've no rights over me," she cried, in sudden alarm and anger. "I'm not doing this work, I'm not wearing myself out here for you."

"Then--why are you doing it?" His suspicions rose again, and made him reckless.

"To help the strikers," she said.... He could get no more out of her, and presently, when Anna Mower entered the room, he left it....

More than once since her first visit to the soup kitchen in Dey Street Janet had returned to it. The universe rocked, but here was equilibrium.

The streets were filled with soldiers, with marching strikers, terrible things were constantly happening; the tension at Headquarters never seemed to relax. Out in the world and within her own soul were strife and suffering, and sometimes fear; the work in which she sought to lose herself no longer sufficed to keep her from thinking, and the spectacle--when she returned home--of her mother's increasing apathy grew more and more appalling. But in Dey Street she gained calmness, was able to renew something of that sense of proportion the lack of which, in the chaos in which she was engulfed, often brought her to the verge of madness. At first she had had a certain hesitation about going back, and on the occasion of her second visit had walked twice around the block before venturing to enter. She had no claim on this man. He was merely a chance acquaintance, a stranger--and yet he seemed nearer to her, to understand her better than any one else she knew in the world.

This was queer, because she had not explained herself; nor had he asked her for any confidences. She would have liked to confide in him--some things: he gave her the impression of comprehending life; of having, as his specialty, humanity itself; he should, she reflected, have been a minister, and smiled at the thought: ministers, at any rate, ought to be like him, and then one might embrace Christianity--the religion of her forefathers that Rolfe ridiculed. But there was about Insall nothing of religion as she had grown up to apprehend the term.

Now that she had taken her courage in her hands and renewed her visits, they seemed to be the most natural proceedings in the world. On that second occasion, when she had opened the door and palpitatingly climbed to the loft, the second batch of children were finis.h.i.+ng their midday meal,--rather more joyously, she thought, than before,--and Insall himself was stooping over a small boy whom he had taken away from the table. He did not notice her at once, and Janet watched them. The child had a cough, his extreme thinness was emphasized by the coat he wore, several sizes too large for him.

"You come along with me, Marcus, I guess I can fit you out," Insall was saying, when he looked up and saw Janet.

"Why, if it isn't Miss b.u.mpus! I thought you'd forgotten us."

"Oh no," she protested. "I wanted to come."

"Then why didn't you?"

"Well, I have come," she said, with a little sigh, and he did not press her further. And she refrained from offering any conventional excuse, such as that of being interested in the children. She had come to see him, and such was the faith with which he inspired her--now that she was once more in his presence--that she made no attempt to hide the fact.

"You've never seen my clothing store, have you?" he asked. And with the child's hand in his he led the way into a room at the rear of the loft.

A kit of carpenter's tools was on the floor, and one wall was lined with box-like compartments made of new wood, each with its label in neat lettering indicating the articles contained therein. "Shoes?"

he repeated, as he ran his eye down the labels and suddenly opened a drawer. "Here we are, Marcus. Sit down there on the bench, and take off the shoes you have on."

The boy had one of those long faces of the higher Jewish type, intelligent, wistful. He seemed dazed by Insall's kindness. The shoes he wore were those of an adult, but cracked and split, revealing the cotton stocking and here and there the skin. His little blue hands fumbled with the knotted strings that served for facings until Insall, producing a pocket knife, deftly cut the strings.

"Those are summer shoes, Marcus--well ventilated."

"They're by me since August," said the boy.

"And now the stockings," prompted Insall. The old ones, wet, discoloured, and torn, were stripped off, and thick, woollen ones subst.i.tuted. Insall, casting his eye over the open drawer, chose a pair of shoes that had been worn, but which were stout and serviceable, and taking one in his hand knelt down before the child. "Let's see how good a guesser I am," he said, loosening the strings and turning back the tongue, imitating good-humouredly the deferential manner of a salesman of footwear as he slipped on the shoe. "Why, it fits as if it were made for you! Now for the other one. Yes, your feet are mates--I know a man who wears a whole size larger on his left foot." The dazed expression remained on the boy's face. The experience was beyond him. "That's better," said Insall, as he finished the lacing. "Keep out of the snow, Marcus, all you can. Wet feet aren't good for a cough, you know. And when you come in to supper a nice doctor will be here, and we'll see if we can't get rid of the cough."