Don-A-Dreams/Part 3/Chapter 13
XIII
"Well," Miss Morris said, "what is it?"
"What is—what?"
"Is it good news you've had? Has someone left you a fortune? You're very much less interested in us than you are in something that's going on inside you."
Don looked confused. "It's something I wanted to ask you about. I can't—not here." The lawn party was seated all around them. "It's something private."
She studied him with an appearance of apprehension. "Has Mr. Kidder"
"No, no. It's nothing like that. Let me walk home with you to-night. I can't tell you here."
She looked down at the handle of her parasol and began to finger the tassel. She said nervously: "How are the plays getting on? Have you started to write one yet? I was thinking, the other day, of a good plot about—I can't remember But you must have thought of hundreds by this time, haven't you?" Her smile seemed to tremble on her lips in a way he had never seen her smile flutter before.
"Why, yes! I thought of one to-day. What was it?" He laughed, for no reason, unless it was that she herself seemed on the point of laughter. "Let me see!"
"You're like me, I can't remember mine. It was something about"
"Oh, I know," he broke in. "It was like the thing I saw—'The Enchanted Castle.' It was about a Prince"
He began to tell her, and she made a good pretence of listening, though her eyes would have betrayed her if she had raised them to him. She nodded or said "Yes?" to encourage him whenever he paused. He broke down with "Oh, I can't tell you. I haven't it clear yet. I" She said: "Tell me on our way home to-night."
They rose together. "I may be kept," he explained in the dressing-room. "Sometimes the boys"
"I'll wait," she said. "Don't try to hurry them."
He had kept her waiting at least five minutes, standing inside the stage entrance in her waterproof, listening to the rain. She wore a little cap with a red feather in it; her cheeks were burning. "Have you no umbrella?" she cried. "Or rubbers?"
"Yours will cover us both. It wasn't raining very hard when I came. My shoes don't leak."
"But you must get rubbers," she scolded, letting him take her umbrella from her. "You'll catch your death of cold."
He opened the door for her. "I'll get them in the morning—first thing." He put up the umbrella and held it over her. She went up the street with him, lecturing him on the care of his health. At the corner, she took his arm and stopped him on the curb. "I've half a mind to take a car," she said.
"No, don't," he coaxed. "I want—I have something to ask you. Let us get off Broadway. Let us walk up Fifth Avenue. It will be quieter."
"Well, promise me you'll never do it again," she said, with a fond severity.
"Never again! Come on."
She tripped across the shining wet asphalt, on his arm, her skirts gathered above her ankles, as heedless of the rain as a Frenchwoman in a picture. When they came to the double file of electric globes that shone mistily, two by two, like a saluting guard, up the slope of Fifth Avenue, in the white obscurity of fog and rain, he said: "You remember—in the Park—the other day—you asked me about Miss Richardson?"
"Yes?"
"I've just had a letter from her. She's coming to New York."
"Oh?"
"She'll have to earn her living. They've lost whatever money they had. Her mother invested it—in stocks, I think. She wants me to tell her what to do—for work."
She had drawn back a little from him, at the first word of Miss Richardson, and a point of the umbrella had caught her cap. She felt her feather now—to see that it was not broken— and took his arm again. She asked: "What can she do?"
He explained the circumstances, as well as he could. She listened, rather coldly. "What do you think?" he asked, at last.
"I think you should advise her to go back to Canada. I don't see that she could do anything here."
"Unless she went on the stage," he suggested. "With her singing"
She cried out indignantly against such a proposal. He did not know what the stage was, for a girl! She would not want her worst enemy to take up that life. "It's all right," she said, "if you're born into it—if your parents are actors. But for an unprotected girl—like her—with no one to help her fight her battles"
"I thought perhaps you'd help her."
"Me? I can't fight my own! No. Tell her to stay at home. She'll regret it every day of her life, if she doesn't."
He gloomed at the pavement, in silence. She saw that he was disappointed. "Why should she bother you about it?" she demanded. "I thought she had quarrelled with you?"
"Quarrelled?"
"Yes. That day in the Park, you said"
He shook his head. "She never quarrelled with me."
"You're friends still—after what happened?"
"Nothing happened," he said. "I thought she—I misunderstood her, I suppose. It was my own fault."
"Then you want her to come here?"
Her tone did not warn him. "Ye-es," he confessed doubtfully, "if there's anything she can do."
She had released his arm. "Why?" she asked, restraining herself. "What is it? What is there between you?"
"Nothing—on her side—except friendship."
She broke out angrily: "I thought you had more sense! To go on making yourself miserable about a girl that never cared two straws about you. I don't see what you see in her—what men ever see in girls like her—silly little creatures. She's just using you—or wants to—because you're here in New York and she thinks you can help her. She ruined your college—your course at college for you, and now she'll—you'll let her do the same thing here. I thought you had more sense!"
"Don't . . . say such things," he replied gently.
"I will!" she cried. "It's the truth." She jerked the umbrella down in front of her against a slant of light from a street lamp. "It 'd be just like you to throw yourself away on a chit like that—who wouldn't half appreciate you."
"Please, don't!" he pleaded. "I—you don't understand. I—"
"I will, too!" Her voice broke. "I think too much of you to see you doing such a thing without trying to stop you. Let her stay away—or let her go back to Canada. You were just beginning to get along all right again when she must come upsetting all our plans and making you miserable." She threw away all her dignity, all her reserve. "Haven't I tried to—haven't I a right to Don't you even care enough for me to—to let me tell you—to let me help you?"
"You don't know," he said. "You don't understand. She's been—ever since I can remember—we've been . . . my whole life has—has grown up with her. All that's best"
"And haven't I? Ever since you were a little fellow—your first day at school—and ever since And now, when we were I won't let her! She has no more claim on you than anyone else. Friendship! She'd throw you over in a minute, wouldn't she? Has she ever said—has she ever promised"
"It isn't her. It's—myself." He glanced at her timidly, and saw only her mouth, in the white light of the electric globe before them, the rest of her face being in the shadow of the umbrella; but her lips were tragically drawn and twisted; and the sight of them silenced him. He understood that he was giving her pain—as he seemed to give everybody pain—his mother, his father, Margaret sobbing on the porch, his cousin Conroy, who hated him. He felt helplessly guilty, without knowing what it was in him that grieved and disappointed everyone who had any affection for him.
"Well, then," she said hoarsely, "I won't let you. You mustn't do it. It's some false idea of honour. I—your other friends have—have rights, too. You owe us something." She had regained some sort of control of herself with an effort that left her voice uncertain, unstrung. "You have been trying to wreck your own life on account of her. You failed in your examinations for the University—with her. You ran away from college—on account of her. And now you want to It's a shame!" She turned with him into the cross street on which she lived, and, taking his arm again, she said: "Don't you even think enough of me to take my advice? Aren't we even—even friends enough for that?"
"You're everything that's—you're the best friend I ever had."
"Well then, let me be that. Let me help you. I'm sure I care for you more than she does. And if you'll do things for her, why can't you do them for me?"
"I will. I"
"Then give her up. Let her go. If she has no more than friendship for you, let me give you that. What is there" He felt her trembling against his arm. "What do you—want her to be? Ask me—I'll" Her voice gave out in a whisper, ashamed.
"Oh, please" Her kindness, her affectionate kindness, almost brought tears to his eyes. "I'm always— I make everyone miserable. I disappoint everyone."
"No, you—you wouldn't now. Not after that." She spoke as if through blood in her throat. "You wouldn't make me ashamed. You're too"
They stood at the foot of her steps, the rain beating on the umbrella. He could see her face only as a white dimness. "T-take the umbrella," she said, her teeth chattering. "I'm so cold. The rain's so cold. I Don't" Her hand found his in the darkness, and he felt it shaking. . . . Good" . . . She turned with a little hysteric catch of breath that was half a sob, and she stumbled heavily upon the steps, bent forward as if the climb were a mile high.
He could not see her in the shadow of the doorway. He thought he heard her voice. Then the door shut with a sharp, nervous suddenness.
He began to walk home, wet and shivering, through the drenched streets. What was it, in him, that disappointed everybody? Why didn't they let him live his own life in his own way, and be satisfied with that? Why were they always interfering with him—trying to make him do what they wished, instead of what he knew was best for him? Here was Miss Morris, now. What did she know about Margaret that she should turn on him so?
He stepped out angrily, glaring at the pavement ahead of him, and splashing from the curbstones into the running gutters as he crossed the streets. The avenue was deserted, except for an occasional belated cab that dragged by, on its noiseless tires, behind a slow clatter of tired hoofs, the driver muffled to the ears in his rain cape, his fares shut in behind the misted panes of windows that were as dark as those of the closed houses which Don passed. He strode down the shining flagstones, alone with his indignation and driven by it, swinging his clenched hand.
It was the very violence of his pace that brought him relief at last; for the blood drove through his body with a brisk exhilaration that was irresistible. He threw back his shoulders to fill his lungs; he put his chin up; his frown began to change from a worried glower to an expression of defiance. . . . If they were all against him, why, let them be so! Let it rain! What did he care? The whole world had been against him. Fortune had done its worst. And in spite of it—in spite of everything—he had won Margaret back to join him; his life was working out in the way he had planned; and his happiness was already almost upon him, like the burst of sunshine in which this black downpour would come to an end in the morning.
He swung along with a confident step, spurning the wet stones underfoot. He felt the water in his shoes and smiled as if it were a part of the universal malevolence which he despised. He summed up his defiance of adversity (and Miss Morris) in an absurd resolve that he would never buy rubbers—never!