The Dwelling Place of Light, Volume 2

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THE DWELLING-PLACE OF LIGHT

By WINSTON CHURCHILL


Volume 2




CHAPTER IX

At certain moments during the days that followed the degree of tension
her relationship with Ditmar had achieved tested the limits of Janet's
ingenuity and powers of resistance. Yet the sense of mastery at being
able to hold such a man in leash was by no means unpleasurable to a young
woman of her vitality and spirit. There was always the excitement that
the leash might break--and then what? Here was a situation, she knew
instinctively, that could not last, one fraught with all sorts of
possibilities, intoxicating or abhorrent to contemplate; and for that
very reason fascinating. When she was away from Ditmar and tried to think
about it she fell into an abject perplexity, so full was it of anomalies
and contradictions, of conflicting impulses; so far beyond her knowledge
and experience. For Janet had been born in an age which is rapidly
discarding blanket morality and taboos, which has as yet to achieve the
morality of scientific knowledge, of the individual instance. Tradition,
convention, the awful examples portrayed for gain in the movies, even her
mother's pessimistic attitude in regard to the freedom with which the
sexes mingle to-day were powerless to influence her. The thought,
however, that she might fundamentally resemble her sister Lise, despite a
fancied superiority, did occasionally shake her and bring about a
revulsion against Ditmar. Janet's problem was in truth, though she failed
so to specialize it, the supreme problem of our time: what is the path to
self-realization? how achieve emancipation from the commonplace?

Was she in love with Ditmar? The question was distasteful, she avoided
it, for enough of the tatters of orthodox Christianity clung to her to
cause her to feel shame when she contemplated the feelings he aroused in
her. It was when she asked herself what his intentions were that her
resentment burned, pride and a sense of her own value convinced her that
he had deeply insulted her in not offering marriage. Plainly, he did not
intend to offer marriage; on the other hand, if he had done so, a
profound, self-respecting and moral instinct in her would, in her present
mood, have led her to refuse. She felt a fine scorn for the woman who,
under the circumstances, would insist upon a bond and all a man's worldly
goods in return for that which it was her privilege to give freely; while
the notion of servility, of economic dependence--though she did not so
phrase it--repelled her far more than the possibility of social ruin.

This she did not contemplate at all; her impulse to leave Hampton and
Ditmar had nothing to do with that....

Away from Ditmar, this war of inclinations possessed her waking mind,
invaded her dreams. When she likened herself to the other exploited
beings he drove to run his mills and fill his orders,--of whom Mr.
Siddons had spoken--her resolution to leave Hampton gained such definite
ascendancy that her departure seemed only a matter of hours.

In this perspective Ditmar appeared so ruthless, his purpose to use her
and fling her away so palpable, that she despised herself for having
hesitated. A longing for retaliation consumed her; she wished to hurt him
before she left. At such times, however, unforeseen events invariably
intruded to complicate her feelings and alter her plans. One evening at
supper, for instance, when she seemed at last to have achieved the
comparative peace of mind that follows a decision after struggle, she
gradually became aware of an outburst from Hannah concerning the stove,
the condition of which for many months had been a menace to the welfare
of the family. Edward, it appeared, had remarked mildly on the absence of
beans.

"Beans!" Hannah cried. "You're lucky to have any supper at all. I just
wish I could get you to take a look at that oven--there's a hole you can
put your hand through, if you've a mind to. I've done my best, I've made
out to patch it from time to time, and to-day I had Mr. Tiernan in. He
says it's a miracle I've been able to bake anything. A new one'll cost
thirty dollars, and I don't know where the money's coming from to buy it.
And the fire-box is most worn through."

"Well, mother, we'll see what we can do," said Edward.

"You're always seeing what you can do, but I notice you never do
anything," retorted Hannah; and Edward had the wisdom not to reply.
Beside his place lay a lengthy, close-written letter, and from time to
time, as he ate his canned pears, his hand turned over one of its many
sheets.

"It's from Eben Wheeler, says he's been considerably troubled with
asthma," he observed presently. "His mother was a Bumpus, a daughter of
Caleb-descended from Robert, who went from Dolton to Tewksbury in 1816,
and fought in the war of 1812. I've told you about him. This Caleb was
born in '53, and he's living now with his daughter's family in
Detroit.... Son-in-law's named Nott, doing well with a construction
company. Now I never could find out before what became of Robert's
descendants. He married Sarah Styles" (reading painfully) "`and they had
issue, John, Robert, Anne, Susan, Eliphalet. John went to Middlebury,
Vermont, and married '"

Hannah, gathering up the plates, clattered them together noisily.

"A lot of good it does us to have all that information about Eben
Wheeler's asthma!" she complained. "It'll buy us a new stove, I guess.
Him and his old Bumpus papers! If the house burned down over our heads
that's all he'd think of."

As she passed to and fro from the dining-room to the kitchen Hannah's
lamentations continued, grew more and more querulous. Accustomed as Janet
was to these frequent arraignments of her father's inefficiency, it was
gradually borne in upon her now--despite a preoccupation with her own
fate--that the affair thus plaintively voiced by her mother was in effect
a family crisis of the first magnitude. She was stirred anew to anger and
revolt against a life so precarious and sordid as to be threatened in its
continuity by the absurd failure of a stove, when, glancing at her
sister, she felt a sharp pang of self-conviction, of self-disgust. Was
she, also, like that, indifferent and self-absorbed? Lise, in her evening
finery, looking occasionally at the clock, was awaiting the hour set for
a rendezvous, whiling away the time with the Boston evening sheet whose
glaring red headlines stretched across the page. When the newspaper fell
to her lap a dreamy expression clouded Lise's eyes. She was thinking of
some man! Quickly Janet looked away, at her father, only to be repelled
anew by the expression, almost of fatuity, she discovered on his face as
he bent over the letter once more. Suddenly she experienced an
overwhelming realization of the desperation of Hannah's plight,--the
destiny of spending one's days, without sympathy, toiling in the
confinement of these rooms to supply their bodily needs. Never had a
destiny seemed so appalling. And yet Janet resented that pity. The effect
of it was to fetter and inhibit; from the moment of its intrusion she was
no longer a free agent, to leave Hampton and Ditmar when she chose.
Without her, this family was helpless. She rose, and picked up some of
the dishes. Hannah snatched them from her hands.

"Leave 'em alone, Janet!" she said with unaccustomed sharpness. "I guess
I ain't too feeble to handle 'em yet."

And a flash of new understanding came to Janet. The dishes were
vicarious, a substitute for that greater destiny out of which Hannah had
been cheated by fate. A substitute, yes, and perhaps become something of
a mania, like her father's Bumpus papers.... Janet left the room swiftly,
entered the bedroom, put on her coat and hat, and went out. Across the
street the light in Mr. Tiernan's shop was still burning, and through the
window she perceived Mr. Tiernan himself tilted back in his chair, his
feet on the table, the tip of his nose pointed straight at the ceiling.
When the bell betrayed the opening of the door he let down his chair on
the floor with a bang.

"Why, it's Miss Janet!" he exclaimed. "How are you this evening, now? I
was just hoping some one would pay me a call."

Twinkling at her, he managed, somewhat magically, to dispel her temper of
pessimism, and she was moved to reply:--"You know you were having a
beautiful time, all by yourself."

"A beautiful time, is it? Maybe it's because I was dreaming of some young
lady a-coming to pay me a visit."

"Well, dreams never come up to expectations, do they?"

"Then it's dreaming I am, still," retorted Mr. Tiernan, quickly.

Janet laughed. His tone, though bantering, was respectful. One of the
secrets of Mr. Tiernan's very human success was due to his ability to
estimate his fellow creatures. His manner of treating Janet, for
instance, was quite different from that he employed in dealing with Lise.
In the course of one interview he had conveyed to Lise, without arousing
her antagonism, the conviction that it was wiser to trust him than to
attempt to pull wool over his eyes. Janet had the intelligence to trust
him; and to-night, as she faced him, the fact was brought home to her
with peculiar force that this wiry-haired little man was the person above
all others of her immediate acquaintance to seek in time of trouble. It
was his great quality. Moreover, Mr. Tiernan, even in his morning
greetings as she passed, always contrived to convey to her, in some
unaccountable fashion, the admiration and regard in which he held her,
and the effect of her contact with him was invariably to give her a
certain objective image of herself, an increased self-confidence and
self-respect. For instance, by the light dancing in Mr. Tiernan's eyes as
he regarded her, she saw herself now as the mainstay of the helpless
family in the clay-yellow flat across the street. And there was nothing,
she was convinced, Mr. Tiernan did not know about that family. So she
said:--"I've come to see about the stove."

"Sure," he replied, as much as to say that the visit was not unexpected.
"Well, I've been thinking about it, Miss Janet. I've got a stove here I
know'll suit your mother. It's a Reading, it's almost new. Ye'd better be
having a look at it yourself."

He led her into a chaos of stoves, grates, and pipes at the back of the
store.

"It's in need of a little polish," he added, as he turned on a light,
"but it's sound, and a good baker, and economical with coal." He opened
the oven and took off the lids.

"I'm afraid I don't know much about stoves," she told him. "But I'll
trust your judgment. How much is it?" she inquired hesitatingly.

He ran his hand through his corkscrewed hair, his familiar gesture.

"Well, I'm willing to let ye have it for twenty-five dollars. If that's
too much--mebbe we can find another."

"Can you put it in to-morrow morning?" she asked.

"I can that," he said. She drew out her purse. "Ye needn't be paying for
it all at once," he protested, laying a hand on her arm. "You won't be
running away."

"Oh, I'd rather--I have the money," she declared hurriedly; and she
turned her back that he might not perceive, when she had extracted the
bills, how little was left in her purse.

"I'll wager ye won't be wanting another soon," he said, as he escorted
her to the door. And he held it open, politely, looking after her, until
she had crossed the street, calling out a cheerful "Goodnight" that had
in it something of a benediction. She avoided the dining-room and went
straight to bed, in a strange medley of feelings. The self-sacrifice had
brought a certain self-satisfaction not wholly unpleasant. She had been
equal to the situation, and a part of her being approved of this,--a part
which had been suppressed in another mood wherein she had become
convinced that self-realization lay elsewhere. Life was indeed a
bewildering thing....

The next morning, at breakfast, though her mother's complaints continued,
Janet was silent as to her purchase, and she lingered on her return home
in the evening because she now felt a reluctance to appear in the role of
protector and preserver of the family. She would have preferred, if
possible, to give the stove anonymously. Not that the expression of
Hannah's gratitude was maudlin; she glared at Janet when she entered the
dining-room and exclaimed: "You hadn't ought to have gone and done it!"

And Janet retorted, with almost equal vehemence:--"Somebody had to do
it--didn't they? Who else was there?"

"It's a shame for you to spend your money on such things. You'd ought to
save it you'll need it," Hannah continued illogically.

"It's lucky I had the money," said Janet.

Both Janet and Hannah knew that these recriminations, from the other,
were the explosive expressions of deep feeling. Janet knew that her
mother was profoundly moved by her sacrifice. She herself was moved by
Hannah's plight, but tenderness and pity were complicated by a renewed
sense of rebellion against an existence that exacted such a situation.

"I hope the stove's all right, mother," she said. "Mr. Tiernan seemed to
think it was a good one."

"It's a different thing," declared Hannah. "I was just wondering this
evening, before you came in, how I ever made out to cook anything on the
other. Come and see how nice it looks."

Janet followed her into the kitchen. As they stood close together gazing
at the new purchase Janet was uncomfortably aware of drops that ran a
little way in the furrows of Hannah's cheeks, stopped, and ran on again.
She seized her apron and clapped it to her face.

"You hadn't ought to be made to do it!" she sobbed.

And Janet was suddenly impelled to commit an act rare in their
intercourse. She kissed her, swiftly, on the cheek, and fled from the
room....

Supper was an ordeal. Janet did not relish her enthronement as a heroine,
she deplored and even resented her mother's attitude toward her father,
which puzzled her; for the studied cruelty of it seemed to belie her
affection for him. Every act and gesture and speech of Hannah's took on
the complexion of an invidious reference to her reliability as compared
with Edward's worthlessness as a provider; and she contrived in some sort
to make the meal a sacrament in commemoration of her elder daughter's
act.

"I guess you notice the difference in that pork," she would exclaim, and
when he praised it and attributed its excellence to Janet's gift Hannah
observed: "As long as you ain't got a son, you're lucky to have a
daughter like her!"

Janet squirmed. Her father's acceptance of his comparative worthlessness
was so abject that her pity was transferred to him, though she scorned
him, as on former occasions, for the self-depreciation that made him
powerless before her mother's reproaches. After the meal was over he sat
listlessly on the sofa, like a visitor whose presence is endured,
pathetically refraining from that occupation in which his soul found
refreshment and peace, the compilation of the Bumpus genealogy. That
evening the papers remained under the lid of the desk in the corner,
untouched.

What troubled Janet above all, however, was the attitude of Lise, who
also came in for her share of implied reproach. Of late Lise had become
an increased source of anxiety to Hannah, who was unwisely resolved to
make this occasion an object lesson. And though parental tenderness had
often moved her to excuse and defend Lise for an increasing remissness in
failing to contribute to the household expenses, she was now quite
relentless in her efforts to wring from Lise an acknowledgment of the
nobility of her sister's act, of qualities in Janet that she, Lise, might
do well to cultivate. Lise was equally determined to withhold any such
acknowledgment; in her face grew that familiar mutinous look that Hannah
invariably failed to recognize as a danger signal; and with it another
--the sophisticated expression of one who knows life and ridicules the
lack of such knowledge in others. Its implication was made certain when
the two girls were alone in their bedroom after supper. Lise, feverishly
occupied with her toilet, on her departure broke the silence there by
inquiring:--"Say, if I had your easy money, I might buy a stove, too.
How much does Ditmar give you, sweetheart?"

Janet, infuriated, flew at her sister. Lise struggled to escape.

"Leave me go" she whimpered in genuine alarm, and when at length she was
released she went to the mirror and began straightening her hat, which
had flopped to one side of her head. "I didn't mean nothin', I was only
kiddie' you--what's the use of gettin' nutty over a jest?"

"I'm not like-you," said Janet.

"I was only kiddin', I tell you," insisted Lise, with a hat pin in her
mouth. "Forget it."

When Lise had gone out Janet sat down in the rocking-chair and began to
rock agitatedly. What had really made her angry, she began to perceive,
was the realization of a certain amount of truth in her sister's
intimation concerning Ditmar. Why should she have, in Lise, continually
before her eyes a degraded caricature of her own aspirations and ideals?
or was Lise a mirror--somewhat tarnished, indeed--in which she read the
truth about herself? For some time Janet had more than suspected that her
sister possessed a new lover--a lover whom she refrained from discussing;
an ominous sign, since it had been her habit to dangle her conquests
before Janet's eyes, to discuss their merits and demerits with an
engaging though cynical freedom. Although the existence of this gentleman
was based on evidence purely circumstantial, Janet was inclined to
believe him of a type wholly different from his predecessors; and the
fact that his attentions were curiously intermittent and irregular
inclined her to the theory that he was not a resident of Hampton. What
was he like? It revolted her to reflect that he might in some ways
possibly resemble Ditmar. Thus he became the object of a morbid
speculation, especially at such times as this, when Lise attired herself
in her new winter finery and went forth to meet him. Janet, also, had
recently been self-convicted of sharing with Lise the same questionable
tendency toward self-adornment to please the eye of man. The very next
Saturday night after she had indulged in that mad extravagance of the
blue suit, Lise had brought home from the window of The Paris in Faber
Street a hat that had excited the cupidity and admiration of Miss Schuler
and herself, and in front of which they had stood languishing on three
successive evenings. In its acquisition Lise had expended almost the
whole of a week's salary. Its colour was purple, on three sides were
massed drooping lilac feathers, but over the left ear the wide brim was
caught up and held by a crescent of brilliant paste stones. Shortly after
this purchase--the next week, in fact,--The Paris had alluringly and
craftily displayed, for the tempting sum of $6.29, the very cloak
ordained by providence to "go" with the hat. Miss Schuler declared it
would be a crime to fail to take advantage of such an opportunity but the
trouble was that Lise had had to wait for two more pay-days and endure
the suspense arising from the possibility that some young lady of taste
and means might meanwhile become its happy proprietor. Had not the
saleslady been obdurate, Lise would have had it on credit; but she did
succeed, by an initial payment the ensuing Saturday, in having it
withdrawn from public gaze. The second Saturday Lise triumphantly brought
the cloak home; a velvet cloak,--if the eyes could be believed,--velvet
bordering on plush, with a dark purple ground delicately and artistically
spotted with a lilac to match the hat feathers, and edged with a material
which--if not too impudently examined and no questions asked--might be
mistaken, by the uninitiated male, for the fur of a white fox. Both
investments had been made, needless to say, on the strength of Janet's
increased salary; and Lise, when Janet had surprised her before the
bureau rapturously surveying the combination, justified herself with a
defiant apology.

"I just had to have something--what with winter coming on," she declared,
seizing the hand mirror in order to view the back. "You might as well get
your clothes chick, while you're about it--and I didn't have to dig up
twenty bones, neither--nor anything like it--" a reflection on Janet's
most blue suit and her abnormal extravagance. For it was Lise's habit to
carry the war into the enemy's country. "Sadie's dippy about it--says it
puts her in mind of one of the swells snapshotted in last Sunday's
supplement. Well, dearie, how does the effect get you?" and she wheeled
around for her sister's inspection.

"If you take my advice, you'll be careful not to be caught out in the
rain."

"What's chewin' you now?" demanded Lise. She was not lacking in
imagination of a certain sort, and Janet's remark did not fail in its
purpose of summoning up a somewhat abject image of herself in wet velvet
and bedraggled feathers--an image suggestive of a certain hunted type of
woman Lise and her kind held in peculiar horror. And she was the more
resentful because she felt, instinctively, that the memory of this
suggestion would never be completely eradicated: it would persist, like a
canker, to mar the completeness of her enjoyment of these clothes. She
swung on Janet furiously.

"I get you, all right!" she cried. "I guess I know what's eatin' you!
You've got money to burn and you're sore because I spend mine to buy what
I need. You don't know how to dress yourself any more than one of them
Polak girls in the mills, and you don't want anybody else to look nice."

And Janet was impelled to make a retort of almost equal crudity:--"If I
were a man and saw you in those clothes I wouldn't wait for an
introduction. You asked me what I thought. I don't care about the money!"
she exclaimed passionately. "I've often told you you were pretty enough
without having to wear that kind of thing--to make men stare at you."

"I want to know if I don't always look like a lady! And there's no man
living would try to pick me up more than once." The nasal note in Lise's
voice had grown higher and shriller, she was almost weeping with anger.
"You want me to go 'round lookin' like a floorwasher."

"I'd rather look like a floorwasher than--than another kind of woman,"
Janet declared.

"Well, you've got your wish, sweetheart," said Lise. "You needn't be
scared anybody will pick you up."

"I'm not," said Janet....

This quarrel had taken place a week or so before Janet's purchase of the
stove. Hannah, too, was outraged by Lise's costume, and had also been
moved to protest; futile protest. Its only effect on Lise was to convince
her of the existence of a prearranged plan of persecution, to make her
more secretive and sullen than ever before.

"Sometimes I just can't believe she's my daughter," Hannah said
dejectedly to Janet when they were alone together in the kitchen after
Lise had gone out. "I'm fond of her because she's my own flesh and
blood--I'm ashamed of it, but I can't help it. I guess it's what the
minister in Dolton used to call a visitation. I suppose I deserve it, but
sometimes I think maybe if your father had been different he might have
been able to put a stop to the way she's going on. She ain't like any of
the Wenches, nor any of the Bumpuses, so far's I'm able to find out. She
just don't seem to have any notion about right and wrong. Well, the world
has got all jumbled up--it beats me."

Hannah wrung out the mop viciously and hung it over the sink.

"I used to hope some respectable man would come along, but I've quit
hopin'. I don't know as any respectable man would want Lise, or that I
could honestly wish him to have her."

"Mother!" protested Janet. Sometimes, in those conversations, she was
somewhat paradoxically impelled to defend her sister.

"Well, I don't," insisted Hannah, "that's a fact. I'll tell you what she
looks like in that hat and cloak--a bad woman. I don't say she is--I
don't know what I'd do if I thought she was, but I never expected my
daughter to look like one."

"Oh, Lise can take care of herself," Janet said, in spite of certain
recent misgivings.

"This town's Sodom and Gomorrah rolled into one," declared Hannah who,
from early habit, was occasionally prone to use scriptural parallels. And
after a moment's silence she inquired: "Who's this man that's payin' her
attention now?"

"I don't know," replied Janet, "I don't know that there's anybody."

"I guess there is," said Hannah. "I used to think that that Wiley was low
enough, but I could see him. It was some satisfaction. I could know the
worst, anyhow.... I guess it's about time for another flood."

This talk had left Janet in one of these introspective states so frequent
in her recent experience. Her mother had used the words "right" and
"wrong." But what was "right," or "wrong?" There was no use asking
Hannah, who--she perceived--was as confused and bewildered as herself.
Did she refuse to encourage Mr. Ditmar because it was wrong? because, if
she acceded to his desires, and what were often her own, she would be
punished in an after life? She was not at all sure whether she believed
in an after life,--a lack of faith that had, of late, sorely troubled her
friend Eda Rawle, who had "got religion" from an itinerant evangelist and
was now working off, in a "live" church, some of the emotional idealism
which is the result of a balked sex instinct in young unmarried women of
a certain mentality and unendowed with good looks. This was not, of
course, Janet's explanation of the change in her friend, of whom she now
saw less and less. They had had arguments, in which neither gained any
ground. For the first time in their intercourse, ideas had come between
them, Eda having developed a surprising self-assertion when her new
convictions were attacked, a dogged loyalty to a scheme of salvation that
Janet found neither inspiring nor convincing. She resented being prayed
for, and an Eda fervent in good works bored her more than ever. Eda was
deeply pained by Janet's increasing avoidance of her company, yet her
heroine-worship persisted. Her continued regard for her friend might
possibly be compared to the attitude of an orthodox Baptist who has
developed a hobby, let us say, for Napoleon Bonaparte.