The Register Part 8

SHE: "And why did you think--hope--perhaps--THAT, Mr. Ransom, may I ask?"

HE: "If I hadn't, how should I have dared to speak?"

SHE: "Dared? You were obliged to speak! Well, since it's all over, I don't mind saying that I DID have some slight apprehensions that something in the way of a declaration might be extorted from you."

HE: "Extorted? Oh!" He makes an impa.s.sioned rush toward her.

SHE, keeping the table between them: "No, no."

HE: "Oh, I merely wished to ask why you chose to make me suffer so, after I had come to the point."

SHE: "Ask it across the table, then." After a moment's reflection, "I made you suffer--I made you suffer--so that you might have a realizing sense of what you had made ME suffer."

HE, enraptured by this confession: "Oh, you angel!"

SHE, with tender magnanimity: "No; only a woman--a poor, trusting, foolish woman!" She permits him to surround the table, with imaginable results. Then, with her head on his shoulder: "You'll NEVER let me regret it, will you, darling? You'll never oblige me to punish you again, dearest, will you? Oh, it hurt ME far worse to SEE your pain than it did you to--to--feel it!" On the other side of the part.i.tion, Mr. Grinnidge's pipe falls from his lips, parted in slumber, and s.h.i.+vers to atoms on the register. "Oh!" She flies at the register with a shriek of dismay, and is about to close it.

"That wretch has been listening, and has heard every word!"

HE, preventing her: "What wretch? Where?"

SHE: "Don't you hear him, mumbling and grumbling there?"

GRINNIDGE: "Well, I swear! Cash value of twenty-five dollars, and untold toil in coloring it!"

RANSOM, listening with an air of mystification: "Who's that?"

SHE: "Gummidge, Grimmidge--whatever you called him. Oh!" She arrests herself in consternation. "Now I HAVE done it!"

HE: "Done what?"

SHE: "Oh--nothing!"

HE: "I don't understand. Do you mean to say that my friend Grinnidge's room is on the other aide of the wall, and that you can hear him talk through the register?"

SHE preserves the silence of abject terror. He stoops over the register, and calls down it. "Grinnidge! Hallo!"

GRINNIDGE: "Hallo, yourself!"

RANSOM, to Miss Reed: "Sounds like the ghostly squeak of the phonograph." To Grinnidge: "What's the trouble?"

GRINNIDGE: "Smashed my pipe. Dozed off and let it drop on this infernal register."

RANSOM, turning from the register with impressive deliberation: "Miss Reed, may I ask HOW you came to know that his name was Gummidge, or Grimmidge, or whatever I called him?"

SHE: Oh, dearest, I CAN'T tell you! Or--yes, I had better."

Impulsively: "I will judge you by myself. _I_ could forgive YOU anything!"

HE, doubtfully: "Oh, could you?"

SHE: "Everything! I had--I had better make a clean breast of it.

Yes, I had. Though I don't like to. I--I listened!"

HE: "Listened?"

SHE: "Through the register to--to--what--you--were saying before you--came in here." Her head droops.

HE: "Then you heard everything?"

SHE: "Kill me, but don't look SO at me! It was accidental at first- -indeed it was; and then I recognized your voice; and then I knew you were talking about me; and I had so much at stake; and I did love you so dearly! You WILL forgive me, darling? It wasn't as if I were listening with any bad motive."

HE, taking her in his arms: "Forgive you? Of course I do. But you must change this room at once, Ethel; you see you hear everything on the other side, too."

SHE: "Oh, not if you whisper on this. You couldn't hear US?" At a dubious expression of his: "You DIDN'T hear us? If you did, I can never forgive you!"

HE: "It was accidental at first--indeed it was; and then I recognized your voice; and then I knew you were talking about me; and I had so much at stake; and I did love you so dearly!"

SHE: "All that has nothing whatever to do with it. How much did you hear?"

HE, with exemplary meekness: "Only what you were saying before Grinnidge came in. You didn't whisper then. I had to wait there for him while" -

SHE: "While you were giving your good resolutions a rest?"

HE: "While I was giving my good resolutions a rest."

SHE: "And that accounts for your determination to humble yourself so?"

HE: "It seemed perfectly providential that I should have known just what conditions you were going to exact of me."

SHE: "Oh, don't make light of it! I can tell you it's a very serious matter."

HE: "It was very serious for me when you didn't meet my self- abas.e.m.e.nt as you had led me to expect you would."

SHE: "Don't make fun! I'm trying to think whether I can forgive you."

HE, with insinuation: "Don't you believe you could think better if you put your head on my shoulder?"

SHE: "Nonsense! Then I should forgive you without thinking." After a season of reflection: "No, I CAN'T forgive you. I never could forgive eavesdropping. It's TOO low."

HE, in astonishment: "Why, you did it yourself!"

SHE: "But you began it. Besides, it's very different for a man.

Women are weak, poor, helpless creatures. They have to use finesse.

But a man should be above it."

HE: "You said you could forgive me anything."

SHE: "Ah, but I didn't know what you'd been doing!"