Chapter Thirty-one

Even at this stage Dave was a good two inches taller than Henry. It smote him, as he stood there, facing Dora, in an old office-coat of Henry’s, and trousers covered with the shine of long contact with Henry’s swivel chair, that he had never in his life worn a suit designed for his figure. That was why, in those rare moments when he had occasion to think about his appearance at all, he felt precisely as if he were dangling by the middle of the back of his coat from a nail. Short sleeves. Short trousers. Protruding knobs of ankles and wrists.

He confessed to Dora, countless of the reminiscent times in which they loved later to indulge, that it seemed to him for long moments after the loud crack of Bek closing the house-door, as if he had hung there in the clean, sweet-smelling barn, dangling from the middle of the back of his coat, like a cat when you hold it by the scruff of the neck.

“I’ll race you,” cried Dora suddenly, and on a flash of her unfailing ability to rise to the exigencies of the moment, sped, a flicker of white sweater and cap, down the path toward the open road.[52]

That dash along down the road released him, as it were, from that moment of hanging impaled in her presence. They caught up a quarter of a mile down, in flurry of quickened heartbeat, and impulsively she hooked her arm into his, without preliminaries.

“Davey,” she said, “why have you been so mean to me?” And, incredibly, there were bright and beautiful tears against her eyes, that dried even as he gazed, giving him a feeling of mirage. “You’re a meany, you are, David!” she said and a red pompon, on its string, dangled from her white and woolly cap.

The ground thus immediately cut from under his feet, down he went into the abyss she had opened for him.

“Gee, Dora,” he said, almost borrowing her tone, “I won’t be—mean—any more!” And then, overwhelmed by the realization of what her winding voice had done to him, stopped suddenly and burst out, red and redder of face, “You mean you’re the mean one!”

“Why, Davey Schuyler, I never was!”

“Weren’t, weren’t you?”

“You know I—weren’t.”

“Oh, all right. Won’t argue—with a lady.”

“Wouldn’t start something I couldn’t finish.”

“Start something I can’t finish! Honest, I don’t know what you mean.”

“Well, if—if a girl was as meany as you say I’m meany—funny you couldn’t tell her—how meany.”

“How meany? Huh, as if you didn’t know. Huh!”

(How beautiful she was, and he had just said “huh” to her.)

“Huh!” he said again.

“Well, if I felt that way about a girl, I wouldn’t walk home with her,” she said, and flopped like an adorable beautiful little minnow. A minnow on the end of some bait too delectable to even conjure. Bait would have to be ambrosia for Dora’s lips to nibble. Only one didn’t nibble ambrosia. The Greeks musta drunk it——

“Well, if I felt that way about a girl——”

“Oh, Dora,” he said, and reached out a long gawk of bare-wristed hand, “I—I guess I feel every way about you, I guess.”

“Well then—well then—well then, why the dickens don’t you say some of the good ways,” she cried, and stamped her foot, and let the clear bright tears pop out in her eyes again, and shook her head, and gritted her small white teeth.

“I never thought you’d listen, Dora. Honest!”

“Oh, you know well enough I’d listen, all right. You’ve always just kind of tried to make me feel little. I—I should worry!”

“Little?”

“Yes, little! My parties and all—your never coming and you in our barn every morning—you never looking anywheres near the house where I might be. That day—that day—soap—Kenneth—the way you walked off on me—something I couldn’t help. How do you think I felt that day—walking off on me—thataway——”

“Why—how do you think I felt?”

“As if I didn’t know, Davey,” she said and turned her eyes full upon him, as they stood face to face in the rutted road, a hard, windy, slate-colored twilight blustering about them. “I’ve cried and cried.”

“You’ve cried, Dora?”

“You know I have,” she said, and stamped her foot again, the bright, angry tears drying as soon as they formed. “You hate me—that’s what I believe.”

Hate Dora! Why, just as likely that he hate moon. Hate stars. Hate firmament encrusted in eternity. Hate Dora—why—why——. Where were his words, to tell her? And so there he stood helpless before her indictment. And yet again, strangely, so strangely, there was something sweet about the indictment. There was something about hating—that was fiercely akin to loving.

“I’ve always tried,” she said—“I’ve always tried——tried——”

“Tried what?”

The quivering would not let her get it said; and while he stood flaming with the same sense of exhilaration over her fumbling that the word “hate” had fired in him, he wanted to lie flat on his back before her, that she might walk over him with flaming heels. The trembling of her lips was cruelly pleasant to him, and yet he wanted to fling himself before her, because those lovely, trembling, pink ledges were trembling of his doings. Here was a hurt bird needing him. Here was a ewe with soft, sick eyes. Here were all the things in one that were tender and wounded.

“Well, well, tried what?”

“To—to—let you know I—how to let you know I—I wanted you not to—to hate me.”

He could have bitten and ground the next words back against his tongue when they came. But there they were, said!

“Kenneth Chipman!” he barked.

“Silly! You silly! You silly of sillies!” (How lovely she was, as she grew pinker and her teeth whiter.) “You silly!”

Silly—silly—silly—why, there was even the same ecstasy in being that. To her.

“Haven’t you eyes? Couldn’t you see?”

“See what? See what?”

“That was part of the trying. Everything was. I—don’t care now. I might as well tell. An idiot might as well tell on herself.”

(Idiot! Idiot! Blessed be idiots!)

“Why do you think I took all my lunches at Stevey’s and Claire’s? Huh? Huh? Huh?”

“Huh?”

“Didn’t I have my own cousins, Essie and Tad, going home to their house every day right out of my same class and my aunt feeling offended, and all, because I went to Claire’s and Stevey’s?”

Gump! Gump! He hadn’t thought of that.

“Don’t just stare. Say something. Didn’t I? Didn’t I? And why? Why?”

“Why?”

“Because I thought sometimes you might be around all your relations. Then Kenneth—I—I—let Kenneth walk with me noontimes—thinking—oh, I’m not ashamed now—now that I wouldn’t be friends with you for anything. Just not for anything. I let Kenneth walk with me noontimes, thinking—maybe you’d be there and see. Meany, Meany, you!” she cried, as the tears jetted and careened down to her lips. Then she broke from him and ran, down the rutted road, turning her ankle, lunging, and giving him run until he hurled himself around in front of the Tarkingtons’, and blocked her.

“Quit now, stopping me. Papa gets worried if I’m out after six.”

“Want to tell you something.”

“No!”

“Dora!”

“No!”

“Dora! I like you! Terrible!”

“Well then—why’ncha say so?”

“You—you got so big, Dora. You got so big and so—so pretty. Us having to move away. You got so pretty on me, Dora; and I stayed—just me. Not even a look-in at High School—me—didn’t dare. I wouldn’t any more dared come near you. I thought, you see—slick-looking college-fellow like—like Kenneth. Patent-leather-haired. Dora—I like you so. I just can’t seem to get my mind on anything. That’s my trouble, Dora. Liking you. I’m full of always wanting to do a million big things that will make you look at me; and then, for thinking about you, Dora, I can’t do a one of them. Crazy-like. Around in a circle. That’s what’s the trouble with me, Dora. I can’t seem to think my way out of anything for seeing you. Just can’t care about wanting anything unless it’s got you in. Dora!”

They kissed timidly, lightly, there in the dusk. Wonder was out over them. “If only I’da known all along.”

“If only I’da.”

“You’re so smart, Dave, and I’m just like everybody else.”

“Smart, nothing! I haven’t even finished County Grade.”

“Alma Dreyfous’s father says he walked a little way alongside of you on the road one morning, and you talked about airships and—and whatchamacallit—tariff, or whatever it is, and Woodrow Wilson, and where Ohio gets her water power from, like a Philadelphia lawyer; and Miss Weil, over at Tallahassee, told her class that the smartest boy in this county was a boy who’d never even finished county school, but put every single moment to cramming new ideas into his head.”

“That wasn’t me.”

“Was so, because Efram Juss asked right out if it was, and she said yes.”

“Shucks!”

“I like your being smart, Dave. So much smarter than me.”

“Dora—if you like me—any way—at all—that’s all I need.”

“I do, Dave—only—You won’t be mad?”

“No.”

“Sure? Davey—that isn’t all you need. Papa thinks it’s awful, Davey—that—that you—You won’t get mad, if I say it?”

“No.”

“——thinks it’s awful that you’re only a——”

“Only a——?”

“You won’t get mad, Davey?”

“Only a farm-hand, is that it?”

“Yes.”

“Huh, don’t I know that? Sure. He’s right, all right. Only I’m not going to be a farm-hand any more. Now. Fellow’s got a reason to make something out of himself—all a fellow’s got to do now is make sure of what he wants to be, and then—be it!”

“Davey, what do you want to be?”

“You know what, Dora? Know what I think I’d like to be?”

“What, Davey?”

“First of all, before we talk, we’re engaged, aren’t we?”

She turned him the fresh flower of her face.

“Yes, David!”

“Well then, Dora, how’d you like me to be something big for you?”

“I would!”

“I was thinking last night, as I was driving along a flock of black-face sheep from the Howey stock—funny thing about that species—they’re hornless, yet they belong to the hollow-horn family.”

“But, Davey——”

“The interesting part is that you can’t—exactly place where this species passes over into the goat family——”

“But, Davey—that’s all right—about—about goats. But what about us?”

“That’s just it, Dora. How’d you like for me to be a big-gun in the study of sheep-culture?”

“Pouf!” she said, and made a pink trumpet of her mouth. “Sheep! You’re too smart for that!”

“Too smart! Huh! If I was smart enough to know everything there is to know about a great industry like wool—know what I’d be?”

“Wool. Woolen underwear. Sure enough. I never thought of that. I was just thinking of sheep. Only I hate woolen underwear next to my skin——”

“And you know what interests me a lot, too, Dora? I was talking it over with Henry the other night. Now, you take this here wool-industry, and then you take this here tariff-situation, and then you——”

“But, Davey—all that far-away, highfalutin’ talk—what’s the use? We’re engaged. When a fellow’s engaged, he can’t stand around talking about whole industries. He’s got to talk about a—job.”

“Engaged! Oh, Dora!”

“Papa says the trouble with young people nowadays is that they have to have so much more to start on than they used to.”

“Of course! A job. I’ll tell you what, Dora, has always interested me a lot. I read a book on silk the other day. Dora, let me tell you something about this here little fellow, the silkworm.”

“But, Davey—there you go again. Silkworms aren’t—practical.”

“Oh, I mean a job all right! Now, if I could get a job with some silk-firm. You see, now that the little old silkworm isn’t the whole silk-show any more, this here artificial-silk industry is the coming thing in the whole industry.”

“There you go again. Whole industry.”

“But I’m talking about a job, Dora. If I could get a job, say in Chicago, with one of the big silk-firms, or in Springfield, where my brother Phil lives. There’s a future to a job with a big mercantile house, Dora. Some day—maybe when I’m a big-gun in a silk-firm—I’ll have to go to China!—you and me—China!”

“Oh, Davey!” she said and screwed her round little nose tighter into a button, and jammed down her cap more snugly over her eyes. “China! That would be heaven! Only—that would take so long, Davey—from now.”

“How would Civil Service be, Dora? I could pass Regents’ exams easy as anything. I like jobs that tie up the Government.”

“Not a postman, Davey. I hate postmen. They’re always being waited for.”

“Naw. Wouldn’t be a postman. Know what, Dora? I’d like to be a consul some day. That gives a fellow a chance to see the world.”

“A fellow and—and—his wife, Dave. All consuls have wives. Or should have. Or got to have. Or just have.”

“Wife! Gee, Dora! Wi-fe!”

On the magic of the word, they flashed face to face, their fingers feeling hungrily through the wool of mittens.

“I’d like that, Davey. You and me. Cleone Beal’s father was consul once to a place called Uruguay.”

“That’s a republic in South America.”

“They lived in a town called Mon—Mon—something.”

“Montevideo. Oh, Dora, wouldn’t I love to live in Montevideo with you!”

“And me with you, Davey! I’d entertain—them all—at balls in Montevideo.”

“How would you like to go off exploring with me, Dora—and add new territory to the maps? Ever hear of Seward’s Folly? Well, there’s a fellow, ’course he didn’t exactly go off and find it, but that fellow had an idea all right. He went to the Government one day, and said, ‘Looka here, Government, here’s a country called Alaska—that some day is going to——’”

“Now, Davey—there you go again—some day! What about now, getting a job right now? Just thisaway—talking and dreaming and if-ing and and-ing, we’ll never—get anywhere!”

Tears, that he wanted to snatch off with angry, frenzied hands, gleamed along her cheeks.

“Why—why—Dora—my brother Phil can get me a job in a wholesale grocery concern in Springfield right away! Twelve dollars a week——”

“Oh, Davey, now you’re talking!”

“You see, if I could send my father six out of that—we’re so poor, you see, Dora—but even with six left—my brother can’t afford to, but he’ll board me awfully cheap, anyway. Then, Dora, if I went to evening law-school—there’s something about law I like—suppose I was to do that?”

“How long?”

“I could do a four-years law-course in two. Nights. What do you bet? And then—a town like Springfield—Springfield’s a capital. I could practice law there some day.”

“Some day?”

“Law’s the thing, Dora. Look at a fellow like Kenneth. He could marry now, and he’s only been practicing a couple of years. I’m as smart as Kenneth—Dora.”

The answering tug of her arm, closer, tighter, warmer, made his long legs seem to gallop over the frozen ruts of the road.

“How many years, Davey, before you could be ready?”

“It would have to be four before I could be a practicing lawyer, earning enough to——”

“Four,” she said, her eyes flattening as if they were contemplating four eternities.

“Dora—what’s four years, when we’ll have a secret—just ours——”

“It’ll have to be secret, Dave. You see, Papa—he——”

“He thinks I’m a bum.”

“He—he says you’re not a go-getter.”

“I’ll go and get now, Dora.”

“Just as I get you—I begin to lose you.”

“Dora, the quicker I begin, the quicker——”

“I know. The quicker you’ll be ready.”

“Dora—isn’t it worth waiting for? Some day. You and me. A little old place of our own. One of those semi-bungalows. Springfield! Wholesale groceries—we could start together sooner—if we could count on getting our groceries wholesale. Maybe, if I get along in the wholesale grocery-business, I’ll stay there and get to be a big-gun in the mercantile world.”

“Oh, Davey—the sooner—the grander!”

The darkness was about them like a beatific cloak, except for two lights from the Tarkington place, which suddenly gleamed at them from the end of the elm-walk; and some one was sounding a family-whistle of three staccatos and a long, which Dora answered in fashion.

“That’s Papa.”

“We’re engaged, Dora.”

“Yes, Davey. Say it again.”

“We’re engaged, Dora.”

Parting, they kissed once more, in the light, startled, pecking away.

FOOTNOTES: