"Sure, Mr. Ditmar, we can always make room for you. Well, I haven't laid eyes on you for a dog's age. Only last Sunday Mr. Crane was here, and I was asking him where you'd been keeping yourself."
"Why, I've been busy, Eddie. I've landed the biggest order ever heard of in Hampton. Some of us have to work, you know; all you've got to do is to loaf around this place and smoke cigars and rake in the money."
The proprietor of the Kingsbury Tavern smiled indulgently at this persiflage.
"Let me present you to Miss Bumpus," said Ditmar. "This is my friend, Eddie Hale," he added, for Janet's benefit. "And when you've eaten his dinner you'll believe me when I say he's got all the other hotel men beaten a mile."
Janet smiled and flushed. She had been aware of Mr. Hale's discreet glance.
"Pleased to meet you, Miss Bumpus," he said, with a somewhat elaborate bow.
"Eddie," said Ditmar, "have you got a nice little table for us?"
"It's a pity I didn't know you was coming, but I'll do my best," declared Mr. Hale, opening the door in the counter.
"Oh, I guess you can fix us all right, if you want to, Eddie."
"Mr. Ditmar's a great josher," Mr. Hale told Janet confidentially as he escorted them into the dining-room. And Ditmar, gazing around over the heads of the diners, spied in an alcove by a window a little table with tilted chairs.
"That one'll do," he said.
"I'm sorry, but it's engaged," apologized Mr. Hale.
"Forget it, Eddie--tell 'em they're late," said Ditmar, making his way toward it.
The proprietor pulled out Janet's chair.
"Say," he remarked, "it's no wonder you get along in business."
"Well, this is cosy, isn't it?" - said Ditmar to Janet when they were alone. He handed her the menu, and snapped his fingers for a waitress.
"Why didn't you tell me you were coming to this place?" she asked.
"I wanted to surprise you. Don't you like it?"
"Yes," she replied. "Only--"
"Only, what?"
"I wish you wouldn't look at me like that--here."
"All right. I'll try to be good until we get into the car again. You watch me! I'll behave as if we'd been married ten years."
He snapped his fingers again, and the waitress hurried up to take their orders.
"Kingsbury's still dry, I guess," he said to the girl, who smiled sympathetically, somewhat ruefully. When she had gone he began to talk to Janet about the folly, in general, of prohibition, the fusel oil distributed on the sly. "I'll bet I could go out and find half a dozen rum shops within a mile of here!" he declared.
Janet did not doubt it. Ditmar's aplomb, his faculty of getting what he wanted, had amused and distracted her. She was growing calmer, able to scrutinize, at first covertly and then more boldly the people at the other tables, only to discover that she and Ditmar were not the objects of the universal curiosity she had feared. Once in a while, indeed, she encountered and then avoided the glance of some man, felt the admiration in it, was thrilled a little, and her sense of exhilaration returned as she regained her poise. She must be nice looking--more than that--in her new suit. On entering the tavern she had taken off the tweed coat, which Ditmar had carried and laid on a chair. This new and amazing adventure began to go to her head like wine....
When luncheon was over they sat in a sunny corner of the porch while Ditmar smoked his cigar. His digestion was good, his spirits high, his love-making--on account of the public nature of the place--surreptitious yet fervent. The glamour to which Janet had yielded herself was on occasions slightly troubled by some new and enigmatic element to be detected in his voice and glances suggestive of intentions vaguely disquieting. At last she said:
"Oughtn't we to be going home?"
"Home!" he ridiculed the notion. "I'm going to take you to the prettiest road you ever saw--around by French's Lower Falls. I only wish it was summer."
"I must be home before dark," she told him. "You see, the family don't know where I am. I haven't said anything to them about--about this."
"That's right," he said, after a moment's hesitation:
"I didn't think you would. There's plenty of time for that--after things get settled a little--isn't there?"
She thought his look a little odd, but the impression passed as they walked to the motor. He insisted now on her pinning the roses on the tweed coat, and she humoured him. The winter sun had already begun to drop, and with the levelling rays the bare hillsides, yellow and brown in the higher light, were suffused with pink; little by little, as the sun fell lower, imperceptible clouds whitened the blue cambric of the sky, distant copses were stained lilac. And Janet, as she gazed, wondered at a world that held at once so much beauty, so much joy and sorrow,--such strange sorrow as began to invade her now, not personal, but cosmic. At times it seemed almost to suffocate her; she drew in deep breaths of air: it was the essence of all things--of the man by her side, of herself, of the beauty so poignantly revealed to her.
Gradually Ditmar became conscious of this detachment, this new evidence of an extraordinary faculty of escaping him that seemed unimpaired.
Constantly he tried by leaning closer to her, by reaching out his hand, to reassure himself that she was at least physically present. And though she did not resent these tokens, submitting passively, he grew perplexed and troubled; his optimistic atheism concerning things unseen was actually shaken by the impression she conveyed of beholding realities hidden from him. Shadows had begun to gather in the forest, filmy mists to creep over the waters. He asked if she were cold, and she shook her head and sighed as one coming out of a trance, smiling at him.
"It's been a wonderful day!" she said.
"The greatest ever!" he agreed. And his ardour, mounting again, swept away the unwonted mood of tenderness and awe she had inspired in him, made him bold to suggest the plan which had been the subject of an ecstatic contemplation.
