his first sensation on awaking next morning was of that stolen kiss. all night he had been dreaming of it. all night he had been conscious of the porcelain smoothness of her hand held closely in his own. he closed his eyes against the amber shaft of sunlight which streamed from the window across the counterpane. he strove to recall those dreams; but the harder he strove the dimmer grew the lamps in the haunted chamber of remembrance. he saw vague shapes, which receded from him and melted. since dreams failed him, he flung wide the windows of imagination.
he saw himself walking with his arm about her, between pollarded trees along a silver road. she clung against his breast like a blown spray of lilac. now he was stretched at her feet in the greenest of green meadows, while above the curve of her knees her brooding smile watched him. he pictured her, always in new landscapes of more than earthly beauty, enacting a hundred scenes of uninterrupted tenderness.
the burden of his longing made him weary. until he had kissed her, he had had no real understanding of what love meant; she had been to him an idea—an enchanting, disembodied spirit. now she was white and warm, exquisitely clothed with glowing flesh. it was not the magic cloak any longer, but desire herself, sweetly perverse and wilfully cold, that he worshiped.
how old he had become since last night, and yet how young! in kissing her he had tasted of the tree of knowledge; from now on his thirst would grow unquenchably till he knew her as himself. all that that knowledge might mean passed before his mind in slow procession. ominous as the rustle of god’s feet in eden, he could hear her humming her plaintive warning:
“so, honey, jest play in your own backyard.”
he threw back the clothes and jumped out. such imaginings were not allowed. but they returned. like a snow-capped mountain in the dawning, his manhood caught the rose-red glow of passion and trembled, a tower of flame and ivory, above the imperiled valleys of experience.
as he dressed he molded the future to any shape he chose, rolled it into a ball and molded it afresh. now that he had kissed her, all things were possible. his interest in all the world was quickened. his work and success again became important. he thought of her thin little high-heeled shoes, her dancing decorative way of walking, the costly frailty of her dress. he would need money—heaps of it—to marry her.
it was half-an-hour later, while he sat at breakfast, that a small cloud loomed on his horizon. it grew out of the sobering effect which comes of being among everyday people. a doubt arose in his mind as to the propriety of his last night’s actions. he’d whisked her away from the station without letting her see her mother, and had brought her home late after driving for hours through the darkness. would vashti consider him a safe person after such behavior? he knew that eden row wouldn’t. but in desire’s company he lost sight of conventions in the absolute rightness of their being together. besides, as he knew to his cost, she was well able to take care of herself. strangers might think—— it didn’t matter what they thought. nevertheless, it was with some trepidation that he approached the telephone and heard vashti answer; “you brought my baby-girl home rather late. i hope you had a good time.—oh, no, i didn’t mind; but i should have if it had been any one but teddy.”
he wondered whether desire had told her mother that he had kissed her. did girls tell their mothers things like that?
“may i speak with desire?”
“she’s not here. fluffy called with mr. overbridge just after you’d brought her back. they took her out to supper. desire slept with her last night. i don’t know what plans she’s made for to-day.—yes, i’ll ask her to call you up.”
fluffy again! he frowned. overbridge hadn’t wanted her—that was fluffy’s doing; she had taken her for protection. he didn’t like to think of desire’s being put to such uses. he didn’t like to think of her being made a foil to another woman’s ill-conducted love-affair. there was a lack of system about not knowing where you were going to sleep up to within five minutes of getting into bed. he felt chagrined that his imagination had been wasted in picturing her thinking of him. he criticized vashti for the leniency of her attitude; it was proper, if bonds of affection were worth anything, for a mother and daughter to be together after a three weeks’ separation. for his own lack of consideration in keeping desire from her mother, there was some excuse; but for fluffy’s—— the thing that hurt most was that desire should have been willing to telescope the most exalted moment of his life into the next trivial happening, allowing herself no time for reflection.
all that day he waited with trembling suspense to hear from her; it was not until the following morning that she called him and arranged to go to lunch. almost her first words on meeting were, “i’ve thought it over.”
“over! was there anything?”
“thieves must be punished. you mustn’t do it again.” then, with a quick uplifting of her eyes—so quick that the gray seas seemed to splash over: “come, meester deek, let’s forget and be happy.”
so he learnt that it was he who had done wrong—he who had to be forgiven. her forgiveness was offered so generously that it would have been churlish to dispute its necessity. besides, argument wasted time and might lead to fretfulness.
in the weeks that followed a dangerous comradeship sprang up between them; dangerous because of its quiet confidence, which seemed to deny the existence of passion. her total ignoring of the fact of sex made any reference to it seem vulgar; yet everything that she did, from the itinerant beauty-patch to the graceful frailty of her dress, was a silent and provocative acknowledgment that sex was omnipresent.
“i wouldn’t dare to trust myself so much with any other man,” she told him.
it was what vashti had said: “oh, no, i didn’t mind; but i should have if it had been any one but teddy.”
so he found himself isolated on a peak of chivalry, from which the old sweet ways of love looked satyrish. other men would have tried to hold her hands. given his opportunities, other men would have crushed their lips against her sweet red mouth. because she had proclaimed him nobler than other men he refrained from any of these brutalities—and all the while his mind was on fire with the vision of them. instead, he put the poetry of his passion into the parables of love that he told her. they were like children in a forest, hiding from each other, yet continually calling and making known their whereabouts out of fear of the forest’s solitariness.
they showed their need of each other in a thousand ways which were more eloquent than words. every morning at ten promptly—ten being her hour for rising—he phoned her. sometimes he found her at vashti’s apartment, sometimes at fluffy’s; at fluffy’s there were frequently sleepy sounds which told him that she was answering him from bed. this morning conversation grew to be a habit on which they both depended.
it was a rare day when they did not lunch together. she would meet him in the foyer of one of the fashionable hotels. they had special nooks where they found each other—nooks known only to themselves. in the waldorf it was against a pillar at the end of peacock alley, opposite to the thirty-fourth street entrance which is nearest to fifth avenue. in the vanderbilt it was a deep armchair, two windows uptown from the marble stairs. in the same way they had their special tables; they got to know the waiters, and often to please her he would order the table to be reserved. he learnt that lavish tips and the appearance of wealth were the open sesame to pleasures of which the frugality of eden row had never dreamt.
she was invariably late to their appointments—or almost invariably; if he counted on her lateness and arrived late himself, it would so happen that she had got there early. her instinct seemed to keep her informed, even when he was out of her sight, as to what he was thinking and doing, so that she was able to forestall him, thwart him, surprise him. he felt that this was as it should be if she were in love. the contradiction was that, though he loved her, his sixth sense never served him. when he had calculated that this would be her early day and had arrived with ten minutes in hand, he would watch for an hour the surf of faces washed in through the revolving doors. as time passed, he would begin to conjecture all kinds of dismal happenings; underlying all his conjectures was the suspicion of unexpected death. then, like a comforting strain of music, she would emerge from the discord of the crowd and take his hand. in the joy that she was still alive, he would hardly listen to her breathless apologies.
in all his dealings with her there was this constant harassment of uncertainty. she would never make an arrangement for a day ahead; he must call her up in the morning—she wasn’t sure of her plans. he knew what this meant: she wasn’t sure whether fluffy would command her attentions. fluffy came first. he determined at all costs to supplant fluffy’s premiership in her affections. he had to prove to her, not by talking, but by accumulated acts, how much his love for her meant. so he never complained of her irresponsibility. she could be as capricious as she chose; it never roused his temper. his reward was to have her pat his hand and murmur softly, “meester deek, you are good to me.”
through the blue-gold blur of autumn afternoons they would drift off to a matin茅e or he would accompany her shopping. there was a peculiar intimacy attaching to being made the witness of her girlish purchases. she would take him into a millinery shop and try on a dozen hats, referring always to his judgment. the assistant would delight him by mistaking him for her husband. desire would correct the wrong impression promptly by saying: “i don’t know which one i’ll choose; i guess i’ll have to bring my mother.” in the street she would confess to him that she’d done it for a lark and hadn’t intended to buy anything.
“but why do they all—waiters and everybody—think that we’re married?”
“perhaps because we were made for each other, and look it.”
she would twist her shoulders with a pretense of annoyance; her gray eyes would become cloudy as opals. “that’s stupid. i’m so young—only twenty.”
on one of these excursions she filled him with joy by accepting from him a dozen pairs of silk-stockings. he was perpetually begging her to let him spend his money on her and she was perpetually refusing.
“you tempt me, meester deek. what would people think?”
“i don’t know and don’t care. people be hanged. there aren’t any people—only you and i alone in the world. how’d you like a new set of furs?”
“now, do be good,” she would beg of him, eyeing the furs enviously.
“i don’t know,” he told her, “whether you really mean no or yes.”
“and perhaps i don’t know myself,” she mocked him.
later, when wild-flowers of the streets flamed in the hedges of the dusk, they would again postpone their parting. some new palace would magically spring up to lure them. then they would dine to music and she would insist on acting the hostess and serving him; sometimes by seeming inadvertence their hands would touch. they would dawdle over their coffee; like a mother humoring a child full of fancies, at his repeated request she would sweeten his cup with the lips that were forbidden him. they might sit on all evening; they might stroll languorously off to find a new stimulus to illusion in a theatre. their evenings were intolerably fugitive. before midnight they would ride uptown through the carnival of broadway, where light foamed on walls of blackness like champagne poured across ebony.
at first he was inclined to be dissatisfied that he gained so little ground: when he advanced, she retreated; when he retreated, she advanced. if, to woo him back to a proper demonstrativeness, she had to display some new familiarity, she was careful not to let it become a habit.
“the more stand-offish i am with you,” he said, “the more sweet you are to me. directly i start to fall in love with you again——”
“again?” she questioned, with a raising of her brows.
“again,” he repeated stubbornly. “directly i do that, you grow cold. the thing works automatically like a pair of scales—only we hardly ever balance. when you’re up, i’m down. when i’m up, you’re down.”
“what charming metaphors you use,” she exclaimed petulantly; and then, with swift tormenting compassion, “poor meester deek.”
but his protestations worked no difference. one night, in crossing times square, she said, “you may take my arm if you choose.” when an hour later he tried to do it, she drew away from him, with, “i cross heaps of streets without that.” sometimes, driving home, she would unglove a temptress hand and let it rest invitingly in her lap. at the first sign that he was going to take it, it would pop like a rabbit into the warren of her muff.
at the moment of parting she became most fascinating; then, for an instant, poignancy would touch her, making her humble. the dread foreknowledge would creep into her eyes that even such loyalty as his could be exhausted; the imminent fear would clutch her that one evening there would be a final parting and the hope of a new dawn would bring no hope of his returning. she would coax him to come up to the apartment; if he consented, she would divert him by chattering to the astonished elevator-boy in what she conceived to be french. she would slip her key into the latch, calling softly: “mother! mother!” sometimes vashti would come out from the front-room where she had been sitting in the half-light with a man—usually a mr. kingston dak. as often as not she would be in bed. like conspirators they would tiptoe across the passage. by the piano, with her back towards him, she would seat herself and play softly with one hand, “in the gloaming, oh my darling,” one of the few tunes which she could strum without error. he would stand with his face hanging over her shoulder, and they would both wonder silently whether he was going to crush her to him. just as he had made up his mind, she would swing round with eyes mysterious as moonstones: “meester deek, let’s take twinkles out.”
so, leaving the apartment with its heavy atmosphere of sleepers, they would seize for themselves this last respite.
loitering along pale streets with the immensity of night brooding over them, the world became wholly theirs and she again the haunting dream of his boyhood. there was only the blind white eye of the moon to watch them. reluctantly they would come back to the illumined cave which was fated to engulf her.
their hands would come together and linger. their lips would stumble over words and grow dumb.
“and to-morrow?” he would falter.
“to-morrow!—phone me.—it’s one of the nicest days we’ve ever had.”
in a flash she would stoop to twinkles, tuck the bundle of wriggling fur beneath her arm, wave her hand and run lightly up the steps.
if he stayed, he would see her turn before entering the elevator, wave her hand again and throw a last smile to him—a smile which seemed to reproach him, to plead with him and to extend a promise.
