"And yet he influenced your whole life?"
Rose mused a moment:
"Yes, I can see it now—I never realized it before—he has helped me all my life."
She told of her first sight of him, of her long ride home, of her thoughts of him, reserving something, of course, and her voice grew husky with remembered emotion. She uttered more than she knew. She showed the keen little woman at her side the more imaginative side of her nature. It became evident to Isabel that the beautiful poise of the head and supple swing of the girl's body was in part due to the suggestion of the man's perfect grace. His idealized face had made the commonplace apparent—had led her, lifted her.
"Why, it's all a poem!" she exclaimed at the end. "It's magnificent; and you thought I'd laugh!" She looked reproachful. "I think it's incredibly beautiful. What was his name? We may meet him some time—"
Rose drew back and grew hot with a blush.
"Oh, no—I don't want to see him now. I'm afraid he wouldn't seem the same to me now."
Isabel considered. "You're right! He never really existed. He was a product of your own clean, sweet imagination, but let me tell you—" she made a swift feminine turn to the trivial, "You'll marry a tall, lathy man, or a short, dumpy man. That's the way things go. Really, I'll need to keep Doctor and Mason out of the house."
In quiet wise her winter wore on. In a month or two the home feeling began to make itself felt, and the city grew less appalling, though hardly less oppressive. There were moments when it seemed the most splendid presence in the world—at sunset, when the river was crowded with shipping and the great buildings loomed up blue as wood-smoke, almost translucent; when the brick walls grew wine-colored; when the river was flooded with radiance from the western sun, and the great steamers lay like birds wearied and dreaming after a long journey.
Sometimes, too, at night, when she came out of the concert hall and saw the glittering twin tiaras of burning gold which the Great Northern towers held against the blue-black, starless sky, two hundred feet above the pavement; or when in the early evening she approached the mountainous Temple, luminous and sparkling with electric lights, lifting a lighted dome as airy as a bubble three hundred feet into the pale sapphire of the cloudless sky—the city grew lofty.
The gross, the confused in line, the prosy in color, disappeared at such moments, and the city, always vast, took on grace and charm and softened to magnificence; became epic, expressing in prophecy that which it must attain to; expressed the swift coming in of art and poetry in the lives of the western world-builders.
She grew with it all; it deepened her conception of life, but she could not write of it for the reason that it was too near and too multiple in its appeal upon her. She strove daily to arrange it in her mind, to put it into form, and this striving wore upon her severely. She lost some of her superb color and physical elasticity because of it, and became each week a little less distinctive exteriorly, which was a decided loss, Mason told Isabel.
"She isn't losing anything very real," Isabel said. "She's just as unaccountable as ever. She goes out much less than you imagine. I take her out, and send her, all I can to keep her from getting morbid. Why don't you come oftener and help me?"
"Self-protection," said Mason.
"Are you afraid of a country girl?"
"O, no—afraid of myself."
"How much do you mean of that, Warren?"
"All of it."
She wrinkled her brow in disgust of his concealing candor.
"O, you are impossible in that mood!"
As the winter deepened Rose narrowed the circle of conquest. She no longer thought of conquering the world; it came to be the question of winning the approbation of one human soul. That is, she wished to win the approbation of the world in order that Warren Mason might smile and say "Well done!"
She did not reach this state of mind smoothly and easily. On the contrary, she had moments when she rebelled at the thought of any man's opinion being the greatest good in the world to her. She rebelled at the implied inferiority of her position in relation to him and also at the physical bondage implied. In the morning when she was strong, in the midst of some social success, when people swarmed about her and men bent deferentially, then she held herself like a soldier on a tower defying capture.
But at night, when the lights were all out, when she felt her essential loneliness and weakness, and need—when the world seemed cold and cruel and selfish, then it seemed as if the sweetest thing in the universe would be to have him open his arms and say "Come!"
There would be rest there and repose. His judgment, his keen wit, his penetrating, powerful influence, made him seem a giant to her, a giant who disdained effort and gave out an appearance of indifference and lassitude. She had known physical giants in her neighborhood who spoke in soft drawl, and slouched lazily in action, but who were invincible when aroused.
She imagined she perceived in Mason a mental giant, who assumed irresolution and weakness for reasons of his own. He was always off duty when she saw him, and bent more upon rest than a display of power. Once or twice she saw him roused, and it thrilled her; that measured lazy roll of voice changed to a quick, stern snarl, the brows lowered and the big, plump face took on battle lines. It was like a seemingly shallow pool suddenly disclosed to be of soundless depths by a wind of passion.
The lake had been the refuge of the distracted and restless girl. She went to it often in the autumn days, for it rested her from the noise of grinding wheels, and screams and yells. Its smooth rise and fall, its sparkle of white-caps, its sailing gulls, filled her with delicious pleasure. It soothed her and it roused her also. It gave her time to think.
The street disturbed her, left her purposeless and powerless, but out there where the ships floated like shadows, and shadows shifted like flame, and the wind was keen and sweet—there she could get her mental breath again. She watched it change to wintry desolation, till it grew empty of vessels and was lonely as the Arctic sea, and always it was grand and thought-inspiring.
She went out one day in March when the home longing was upon her and when it seemed that the city would be her death. She was tired of her food, tired of Mary, tired of her room. Her forehead was knotted tensely with pain of life and love—
She cried out with sudden joy, for she had never seen the lake more beautiful. Near the shore a great mass of churned and heaving ice and snow lay like a robe of shaggy fur. Beyond this the deep water spread, a vivid pea-green broken by wide, irregular strips of dark purple. In the open water by the wall a spatter of steel-blue lay like the petals of some strange flower, scattered upon the green.
Great splendid clouds developed, marvelously like the clouds of June, making the girl's heart swell with memories of summer. They were white as wool, these mountainous clouds, and bottomed in violet, and as they passed the snow-fields they sent down pink-purple, misty shadows, which trailed away in splendor toward the green which flamed in bewildering beauty beyond. The girl sat like one in a dream while the wind blew the green and purple of the outer sea into fantastic, flitting forms which dazzled her eyes like the stream of mingled banners.
Each form seemed more beautiful than the preceding one; each combination had such unearthly radiance, her heart ached with exquisite sorrow to see it vanish. The girl felt that spring was coming on the wing of the southern wind, and the desire to utter her passion grew almost into pain.
It had other moods, this mighty spread of water. It could be angry, dangerous. Sometimes it rolled sullenly, and convoluted in oily surges beneath its coverlid of snow, like a bed of monstrous serpents. Sometimes the leaden sky shut down over it, and from the desolate north-east a snowstorm rushed, hissing and howling. Sometimes it slumbered for days, quiet as a sleeping boa, then awoke and was a presence and a voice in the night, fit to make the hardiest tremble.
Rose saw it when it was roused, but she had yet to see it in a frenzy. The knowledge of its worst came to her early in May, just before her return to the coulé.
The day broke with the wind in the north-east. Rose, lying in her bed, could hear the roar of the lake; never before had its voice penetrated so far. She sprang up and dressed, eager to see it in such a mood. Mary responded sleepily to her call, saying the lake would be there after breakfast.
Rose did not regret her eagerness, though it was piercingly cold and raw. The sea was already terrific. Its spread of tawny yellow showed how it had reached down and laid hold on the sand of its bed. There were oily splotches of plum-color scattered over it where the wind blew it smooth and it reached to the wild east sky, cold, desolate, destructive.
It had a fierce, breathing snarl like a monster at meat. It leaped against the sea-wall like a rabid tiger, its sleek and spotted hide rolling. Every surge sent a triangular sheet of foam twenty-five feet above the wall, yellow and white, and shadowed with dull blue; and the wind caught it as it rose, and its crest burst into great clouds of spray, which sailed across the streets and dashed along the walk like rain, making the roadway like a river; while the main body of each up-leaping wave, falling back astride the wall, crashed like the fall of glass, and the next wave met it with a growl of thunderous rage, striking it with concave palm, with a sound like a cannon's exploding roar.
Out of the appalling obscurity to the north frightened ships scudded at intervals with bare masts bending like fire-trimmed pines. They hastened like homing pigeons which do not look behind. The helmsmen stood grimly at their wheels, with eyes on the harbor ahead.
The girl felt it all as no one native to the sea can possibly do. It seemed as if the bounds of the flood had been overcome, and that it was about to hurl itself upon the land. The slender trees, standing deep in the swash of water, bowed like women in pain; the wall was half hidden, and the flood and the land seemed mingled in battle.
Rose walked along the shore, too much excited to go back to her breakfast. At noon she ate lunch hurriedly and returned to the shore. There were hundreds of people coming and going along the drive; young girls shrieking with glee, as the sailing clouds of spray fell upon them. Rose felt angry to think they could be so silly in face of such dreadful power.
She came upon Mason, dressed in a thick mackintosh coat, taking notes rapidly in a little book. He did not look up and she passed him, wishing to speak, yet afraid to speak. Near him a young man was sketching.
Mason stood like a rock in his long, close-fitting raincoat, while she was blown nearly off her feet by the blast. She came back against the wind, feeling her soul's internal storm rising. It seemed quite like a proposal of marriage to go up and speak to him—yet she could not forego the pleasure.
He did not see her until she came into his lee, then he smiled, extending his hand. She spoke first:
"May I take shelter here?"
His eyes lightened with a sudden tender humor.
"Free anchorage," he said, and drew her by the hand closer to his shoulder. It was a beautiful moment to her, and a dangerous one to him. He took refuge in outside matters.
"How does that strike your inland eyes?" He pointed to the north.
"It's awful. It's like the anger of God." She spoke into his bowed ear.
"Please don't think I'm reporting it," he explained. "I'm only making a few notes about it for an editorial on the need of harbors." Each moment the fury increased, the waves deepened. The commotion sank down amid the sands of the deeper inshore water, and it boiled like milk. Splendid colors grew into it near at hand; the winds tore at the tops of the waves, and wove them into tawny banners which blurred the air like blown sand. On the horizon the waves leaped in savage ranks, clutching at the sky like insane sea-monsters, frantic, futile.
"I've seen the Atlantic twice during a gale," shouted the artist to a companion, "but I never saw anything more awful than this. These waves are quicker and higher. I don't see how a vessel could live in it if caught broadside."
"It's the worst I ever saw here."
"I'm going down to the south side; would you like to go?" Mason asked of Rose.
"I would, indeed," she replied.
Back from the lake shore the wind was less powerful but more uncertain. It came in gusts which nearly upturned the street cars. Men and women scudded from shelter to shelter like beleaguered citizens avoiding cannon shots.
"What makes our lake so terrible," said Mason, in the car, "is the fact that it has a smooth shore—no indentations, no harbors. There is only one harbor here at Chicago, behind the breakwater, and every vessel in mid-lake must come here. Those flying ships are seeking safety here like birds. The harbor will be full of disabled vessels."
As they left the car a roaring gust swept around a twenty-story building with such power Rose would have been taken off her feet had not Mason put his arm about her shoulders.
"You're at a disadvantage," he said, "with skirts." He knew she prided herself on her strength, and he took no credit to himself for standing where she fell.
It was precisely as if they were alone together: the storm seemed to wall them in, and his manner was more intimate than ever before. It was in very truth the first time they had been out together, and also it was the only time he had assumed any physical care of her. He had never asserted his greater muscular power and mastery of material things, and she was amazed to see that his lethargy was only a mood. He could be alert and agile at need. It made his cynicism appear to be a mood also; at least, it made her heart wondrously light to think so.
They came upon the lake shore again, near the Auditorium. The refuge behind the breakwater was full of boats, straining at anchor, rolling, pitching, crashing together. Close about the edge of the breakwater ships were rounding hurriedly, and two broken vessels lay against the shore, threshing up and down in the awful grasp of the breakers. Far down toward the south the water dashed against the spiles, shooting fifty feet above the wall, sailing like smoke, deluging the street, and lashing against the row of buildings across the way.
Mason's keen eye took in the situation:
"Every vessel that breaks anchor is doomed! Nothing can keep them from going on shore. Doubtless those two schooners lost anchor—that one there is dragging anchor." He said suddenly, "She is shifting position, and see that hulk—"
Rose for a moment could not see it. She lay flat on her side, a two-master, her sails flapping and floating on the waves. Her anchor still held, but she had listed her cargo, careened, and so lay helpless.
"There are men on it!" cried some one. "Three men—don't you see them? The water goes over them every time!"
"Sure enough! I wonder if they are going to let them drown, here in the harbor!"
Rose grew numb with horror. On the rounded side of the floating hulk three men were clinging, looking like pegs of tops. They could only be seen at intervals, for the water broke clear over their heads. It was only when one of them began to move to and fro that the mighty crowd became certainly aware of life still clinging to the hull.
It was an awful thing to stand helplessly by, and see those brave men battle, but no life-boat or tug could live out there. In the station men wept and imprecated in their despair—twice they tried to go to the rescue of the beleaguered men, but could not reach them.
Suddenly a flare of yellow spread out on the wave. A cry arose:
"She's breaking up!"
Rose seized Mason's arm in a frenzy of horror.
"O God! can't somebody help them?"
"They're out of reach!" said Mason solemnly. And then the throng was silent.
"They are building a raft!" shouted a man with a glass, speaking at intervals for the information of all. "One man is tying a rope to planks ... he is helping the other men ... he has his little raft nearly ready ... they are crawling toward him—"
"O see them!" exclaimed Rose. "O the brave men! There! they are gone—the vessel has broken up."
On the wave nothing now lived but a yellow spread of lumber; the glass revealed no living thing.
Mason turned to Rose with a grave and tender look.
"You have seen human beings engulfed like flies—"
"No! no! There they are!" shouted a hundred voices, as if in answer to Mason's thought.
Thereafter the whole great city seemed to be watching those specks of human life, drifting toward almost certain death upon the breakwater of the south shore. For miles the beach was clustered black with people. They stood there, it seemed for hours, watching the slow approach of that tiny raft. Again and again the waves swept over it, and each time that indomitable man rose from the flood and was seen to pull his companions aboard.
Other vessels drifted upon the rocks. Other steamers rolled heavily around the long breakwater, but nothing now distracted the gaze of the multitude from this appalling and amazing struggle against death. Nothing? No, once and only once did the onlookers shift their intent gaze, and that was when a vessel passed the breakwater and went sailing toward the south through the fleet of anchored, straining, agonized ships. At first no one paid much attention to this late-comer till Mason lifted his voice.
"By Heaven, the man issailing!"
It was true; steady, swift, undeviating, the vessel headed through the fleet. She did not drift nor wander nor hesitate. She sailed as if the helmsman, with set teeth, were saying,
"By God! If I must die on the rocks, I'll go to my death the captain of my vessel!"
And so, with wheel in his hand and epic oaths in his mouth, he sailed directly into the long row of spiles, over which the waves ran like hell-hounds; where half a score of wrecks lay already churning into fragments in the awful tumult.
The sailing vessel seemed not to waver, nor seek nor dodge—seemed rather to choose the most deadly battle-place of waves and wall.
"God! but that's magnificent of him!" Mason said to himself.
Rose held her breath, her face white and set with horror.
"O must he die?"
"There is no hope for him. She will strike in a moment—she strikes!—she is gone!"
The vessel entered the grey confusion of the breakers and struck the piles like a battering ram; the waves buried her from sight; then the recoil flung her back; for the first time she swung broadside to the storm. The work of the helmsman was over. She reeled—resisted an instant, then submitted to her fate, crumbled against the pitiless wall like paper and thereafter was lost to sight.
This dramatic and terrible scene had held the attention of the onlookers—once more they searched for the tiny raft. It was nearing the lake wall at another furious point of contact. An innumerable crowd spread like a black robe over the shore waiting to see the tiny float strike.
A hush fell over every voice. Each soul was solemn as if facing the Maker of the world. Out on the point, just where the doomed sailors seemed like to strike, there was a little commotion. A tiny figure was seen perched on one of the spiles. Each wave, as it towered above him, seemed ready to sweep him away, but each time he bowed his head and seemed to sweep through the gray wall. He was a negro and he held a rope in his hands.
As they comprehended his danger the crowd cheered him, but in the thunder of the surf no human voice could avail. The bold negro could not cry out, he could only motion, but the brave man on the raft saw his purpose—he was alone with the shipwrecked ones.
In they came, lifted and hurled by a prodigious swell. They struck the wall just beneath the negro and disappeared beneath the waves.
All seemed over, and some of the spectators fell weeping; others turned away.
Suddenly the indomitable commander of the raft rose, then his companions, and then it was perceived that he had bound them all to the raft.
The negro flung his rope and one man caught at it, but it was swept out of reach on a backward leaping billow. Again they came in, their white, strained, set faces and wild eyes turned to the intrepid rescuer. Again they struck, and this time the negro caught and held one of the sailors, held him while the foam fell away, and the succeeding wave swept him over the spiles to safety. Again the resolute man flung his noose and caught the second sailor, whose rope was cut by the leader, the captain, who was last to be saved.
As the negro came back, dragging his third man over the wall, a mighty cry went up, a strange, faint, multitudinous cry, and the negro was swallowed up in the multitude.
Mason turned to Rose and spoke: "Sometimes men seem to be worth while!"
Rose was still clinging to his arm as they walked away. Mason did not speak again for some time.
"We have suffered in vain," he said at last, "and you are cold and stiffened with long standing. Let me put you in a cab and—"
"Oh, no, thank you! The walk will do me good."
"Perhaps you are right. I'll go with you to the car, and then I must go to my desk for six hours of hard work. Put this behind you," he said tenderly. "It does no good to suffer over the inevitable. Forget those men!"
"I can't! I shall never forget them while I live. It was awful!" She shuddered, but when she looked into his face she nearly cried out in astonishment at the light in his eyes.
"It had its grandeur. They went to their death like men. They have taught me a lesson. Hitherto I have drifted—henceforthI sail!" He bent to her with a mystical smile.
She drew away in a sort of awe as if she looked unworthily upon a sacred place. He misunderstood her action and said, "Don't be afraid. I have something to say to you, but not here; perhaps I'll write it. When do you go?"
"On Saturday."
"I will write you soon. Good bye."
She watched him as he moved away into the crowd, with powerful erect body—the deskman's droop almost gone out of his shoulders. What did he mean?
She was standing waiting for a chance to board a car when Elbert Harvey came pushing along against the wind, fresh and strong and glowing with color like a girl.
"O, I've been looking for you, Rose," he said. "I was at your house. They said you were over on the lake front and so—See here! You're all wet and cold. I'm going to get a carriage."
He would not be gainsaid, and she was really glad to escape the crowd in the car. He said: "I'm going to take you home to get warm."
She allowed herself to be driven to the door before she realized what it might be taken to mean, but it was then too late to insist on being driven home, it would do no harm to see Mrs. Harvey for a moment—and then she was so tired, too tired to resist.
Mrs. Harvey met her in the hall, smiling and scolding:
"Why, you reckless girl! Have you been down town? Elbert, where did you get her?"
"I found her on the street waiting for a State street car—shivering, too."
"Why, you're all wet! Come up to my room and change your shoes."
The warm air and the glow of the beautiful rooms seemed to narcotize her, and Rose allowed herself to be led away like a sleepy child. It was delicious to be so attended. Mrs. Harvey took her to her own room, a room as big and comfortable and homely as herself, and there she put Rose down before the grateful fire and rang for her maid.
"Annette, remove Mademoiselle's shoes and give her some slippers."
The deft girl removed Rose's wraps, then her shoes, while Mrs. Harvey knelt by her side and felt of her stocking soles.
"They're wet, just as I expected." She said joyfully, "Take them off!"
"O, no! They'll dry in a minute."
"Take them off, Annette," commanded Mrs. Harvey. "O, what lovely feet and ankles!" she said, and so betrayed her not too subtle design to Rose.
Rose was passive now, and yielded to the manipulations of the two women. They all had a gale of fun over the difference between Mrs. Harvey's stockings and her own, and then they brought out a fantastic pair of slippers and a beautiful wrap, which Mrs. Harvey insisted upon putting about her.
At about this time Elbert knocked on the door.
"Can't I come in and share the fun, Caroline?"
"In a moment!" she replied, and finished tucking the robe about Rose. "Now you may."
Elbert came in, radiant, unabashed, smiling, almost grinning his delight. He had changed his dress to a neat and exquisitely fitting dark suit, and he looked very handsome indeed. His cheeks were like peaches, with much the same sort of fuzz over them.
He took a place near the fire where he could see Rose, and he signaled to his mother at the earliest chance that she was stunning.
Rose lay back in the chair with the robe drawn about her, looking thegrande damefrom her crown of hair to the tasseled toes of her slippers. She might almost have been Colombe on the eve of her birthday.
It was delicious, and she had not heart or resolution at the moment to throw off this homage. She knew that Mrs. Harvey was misreading her acquiescence, and that every moment she submitted to her care and motherly direction, involved her, enmeshed her. But it was so delicious to be a princess and an heiress—for an hour.
The whole situation was intensified when Mr. Harvey's soft tenor voice called:
"Where is everybody?"
"Come up; here we are! There's somebody here you'll want to see."
Mr. Harvey came in smiling, looking as calm and contained as if he were just risen from sleep. He was almost as exquisitely dressed as his son.
"Well! well! This is a pleasure," he cordially exclaimed. "What's the meaning of the wrap; not sick?"
"Elbert picked her up on the street, wet and shivering, waiting for a car, and brought her home."
"Quite right. We're always glad to see you. Did you give her a little cordial, Caroline? In case of cold—"
Rose protested. "I'm not sick, Mr. Harvey, only tired. I've been out all the day watching the dreadful storm. I saw those ships go on the rocks. O, it was dreadful!"
"Did you see the three men on the raft?" asked Elbert.
Rose shuddered. How far away she was from that cold, gray tumult of water. Of what manner of men were they who could battle so for hours in the freezing sleet?
"Well, now, we won't talk about the storm any more," Mrs. Harvey interposed. "It does no good, and Rose has had too much of it already. Besides, it's almost dinner time, Mr. Harvey. Go dress!"
There was not a thread ruffled on Mr. Harvey's person, but he dutifully withdrew. He had had a busy day, and had transacted business which affected whole states by its influence, yet he was quiet, cordial, exquisite.
"What does this mean, my dear?" he asked of Mrs. Harvey, who followed him out.
"It may mean a great deal, Willis," she said. "All I know is Elbert brought her home, his eyes shining with delight."
"Not to be wondered at," Mr. Harvey replied. "I'm only afraid of actresses," he added a little incoherently, but his wife understood him.
Elbert was not lacking in adroitness. He did not presume on his position during his mother's absence. He remained standing in the same position.
"How do you like coddling? Now, you see what I get when I dare to sneeze. Caroline will coddle any one into regular sickness if you let her."
"I was chilled, but I am not sick in the least."
"You'd better straighten up and shout at her when she comes in, or she'll be for sending your dinner up to you, and I don't want that."
"O, I must go home, now."
"Not till after dinner."
"I'm not—dressed for dinner."
"There's nobody here but ourselves. Youmuststay."
Every one seemed determined to press her into a false position, and there was so little chance to throw the influence off.
She rose out of her cloak, and when Mrs. Harvey came back she was standing before the fire with Elbert—which seemed also to be significant.
"Caroline, don't coddle Rose any more; she's all right."
Mrs. Harvey accepted this command, because it argued a sense of proprietorship on her son's part.
They continued this intimate talk during the dinner. Elbert took her down and placed her near him. There were a couple of elderly ladies, sisters of Mr. Harvey, who sat also at table in a shadowy way, and Rose divined in a flash of imaginative intelligence how they subordinated themselves because they were dependent. "Would I grow like that as I grew old?" was her thought.
At the table she felt it her duty to rouse herself to talk, and she took part in the jolly patter between Elbert and his mother. Theircamaraderiewas very charming—so charming one almost forgot the irreverence expressed by his use of "Caroline."
After dinner Mrs. Emma Seymour Gallup, whom Rose had met two or three times but who always demanded a new introduction, came whisking in on her way to some party. She had everything in decidedly the latest crimp. Her sleeves did not fit; her hips seemed enormous; her bonnet seemed split on the middle of her head, and was symmetrically decked with bows of ribbon and glitter and glimmer. Her real proportions were only to be divined at the waist, all else was fibre-cloth and conjecture.
Her eyes were bright and her face cold and imperious. She had once before chilled Rose with a cold nod and insulting shift of shoulder. She was plainly surprised to see Rose in the bosom of this family, and she seized the only plausible explanation with instant readiness and smiled a beautiful smile, and Rose could not help seeing that she had a very charming face after all.
"Ah! How do you do, Miss Dutcher! I am very glad to see you again!"
"Thank you," Rose replied simply.
"You're quite well—but then I know you're well," Mrs. Gallup went on, assuming still greater knowledge of her.
"Did you see the storm? Wasn't it dreadful! I saw it all quite securely from Mrs. Frost's window. How cosy you all look. I wish I could stay, but I just dropped in to ask you to take a seat in my box on Saturday night. Bring Miss Dutcher—Mr. Gallup will be delighted to meet her."
All that she said, and more that she implied enmeshed Rose like folds of an invisible intangible net.
Mrs. Harvey calmly accepted, but Rose exclaimed: "O, you're very kind but I am going home on Saturday morning!"
"How sad! I should have liked to have you come."
After she was gone Rose sprang to her feet. "I must go now," she said and there was a note in her voice which Mrs. Harvey knew meant inflexible decision.
As they went upstairs Rose was filled with dread of some further complication, but Mrs. Harvey only said:
"I love you, my child. I wish you were going to stay here always."
She left the way open for confidences, but Rose was in a panic to get away and kept rigid silence.
In the carriage she contrived to convey to Elbert her desire to be left alone and so he kept back the words of love which were bubbling in his good frank soul. He was saddened by it but not made hopeless. It would have been a beautiful close to a dramatic day could he have kissed her lips and presented her to his mother as his promised wife—but it was impossible for even his volatile nature to break into her somber, almost sullen, silence; and when he said "Good night, Rose!" with tender sweetness she replied curtly, "Good night!" and fled.
She hurried past Mary to her own room and lay for hours on her bed, without undressing, listening to the howl of the wind, the grind of cars and the distant boom of the breakers. There was a storm in her heart also.
She thought of that lovely and gentle home, of the power wealth would give her, of the journeys into the world, of trips to Europe, to the ocean, to Boston and New York and London. It could give her a life of ease, of power, of grace and charm. O, how beautiful it all was, but——
To win it she had to cut off her old father. He never could fit in with these people. She thought of his meeting with the Harveys with a shudder. Then, too, she would need to give up her own striving toward independence, for it was plain these people would not hear to her continued effort. Even if they consented, she would be meshed in a thousand other duties.
And then she thought of Mason toiling at his desk down there in the heart of the terrible town, and the look on his face grew less and less imperious and more wistful and pleading. This day she had caught a new meaning from his eyes—it was as if he needed her; it seemed absurd, and she blushed to think it, but so it seemed. That last look on his face was the look of a lonely man.
His words came to her again and again: "Hitherto I have drifted—henceforth I will sail!"
And she pushed away the splendid picture of a life of ease and reached out for comradeship with a man of toil, of dreams and hidden powers.
As Mason walked away from the lake that terrible day it seemed as if he had ceased to drift. The spirit of that grim helmsman appeared to have entered into him. Life was short and pleasures few. For fifteen years he had planned important things to do, but had never done them—feeling all the time the power to write latent within him, yet lacking stimulus. From the very first this girl had roused him unaccountably. Her sympathy, her imaginative faculty as well as her beauty, had come to seem the qualities which he most needed.
Could he have gone to his own fireside at once, the determining letter would have been written that night, but the routine of the office, the chaff of his companions, took away his heroic mood, and when he entered a car at twelve o'clock he slouched in his seat like a tired man, and the muscles of his face fell slack and he looked like a hopeless man.
After Rose went home he seemed to Sanborn to be more impassible than ever. As for Mason himself, it seemed as if some saving incentive had gone out of his life—some redeeming grace. He had grown into the habit of dropping in at Isabel's once a week, and Isabel had taken care that Rose should be often there on the same evening; and so without giving much thought to it he had come to accept these evenings as the compensating pleasures of his sombre life.
It was such a delight to come up out of the vicious pitiless grind of his newspaper day and sit there before the fire, with the face of a radiant girl to smile upon him. Her voice, with its curiously penetrating yet musical quality, stirred him to new thoughts, and often he went home at ten or eleven and wrote with a feeling of exultant power upon his book. After she went home he wrote no more; he smoked and pondered. When he called upon Isabel and Sanborn he continued to smoke and to ponder.
He had not abandoned his allegory in talking with Sanborn, and Sanborn and Isabel together could not get at his real feeling for Rose.
Sanborn asked one day plumply:
"Mason, why don't you marry the coolly girl, and begin to live?"
"It would be taking a mean advantage of her. She's going to be famous one of these days, and then I should be in the way."
"Nonsense!"
"Besides, she probably would not marry me; and if she would, I don't think I could keep up the pose."
"What pose?"
"Of husband."
"Is that a pose?" Sanborn smiled.
"It would be for me," Mason said, rather shortly. He was thinking once more of the letter he had promised to write to Rose, but which he had never found himself capable of finishing.
He put it in his pocket when he went up in July to spend a week at the Herrick cottage at Oconomowoc. Isabel and Sanborn were married just before leaving the city.
Sanborn said he had the judge come in to give him legal power to compel Isabel to do his cooking for him, and Isabel replied that her main reason was to secure a legal claim on Sanborn's practice.
The wedding had been very quiet. Society reporters (who did not see it) called it "an unique affair." But Mason, who did see it, said it was a very simple process, so simple it seemed one ought to be able to go through it oneself. To which Sanborn replied: "Quite right. Try it!"
They had a little cottage on the bank of the lake, and Sanborn came up on Saturdays with the rest of the madly busy men who rest over Sunday and over-work the rest of the week. Mason had been with them a week, and, though he gave no sign, he was nearing a crisis in his life. He had gone to the point of finishing his letter to Rose—it was lying at that moment in his valise waiting to be posted—but it was a long way from being over with. It was a tremendous moment for him. As he approached the deciding moment the deed grew improbable, impossible. It was a very beautiful life there on the lake, with nothing to do but smoke and dream, but one evening he had the impulse to ask Isabel's advice, and after dinner he courteously invited her to sail with him.
There was some joking by Sanborn about the impropriety of such a thing on Isabel's part, and many offers to man the boat, which, Mason said, sprang from jealousy. "I consider I am doing you people a kindness in not letting you bore each other into black hatred." It ended in the two friends drifting away over the lake, while Sanborn called after them threats of war if they were not at the wharf at nine—sharp!
They talked commonplaces for a time, while the sky flushed and faded and the lake gradually cleared of its fisher boats. Slowly the colors grew tender and a subtle, impalpable mist rose from the water, through which the boat drifted before an imperceptible breeze.
The two sailors lay at ease, Mason at the rudder. The sail stood up light and airy and soundless as a butterfly's wing. It pointed at the sparse stars as if with warning finger.
The hour and the place were favorable to confidences. As the dusk deepened, a boat-load of young people put off into the lake, singing some wailing sweet song. They were far enough away to be unobtrusively impersonal. A plover was faintly calling from the sedgy shore on the other side.
"One should be forever young," said Mason broodingly.
Isabel said: "Once I heard a cow low, and a robin laugh, while a cricket chirped in the grass. Why should they have moved me so?"
Mason mused a moment. "The cow was maternity pleading for its suckling; the robin's laugh suggested a thousand springtimes, and the cricket prophesied the coming of frost and age. Love and loss are in the wail of yonder song, the loneliness of age in yonder piping bird, and the infinite and all-absorbing menstruum of death in the growing dusk."
"And the light of man's optimism in the piercing out of the stars."
"It may be so," he replied uncertainly.
They drifted on in silence. There was a faint ripple at the prow and that was all. At last Mason roused himself to say his word.
"All these intangible essences and powers are no apparent reason why I should do so foolish a thing—but they have influenced me. Today I wrote to our coolly girl—I hope to saymycoolly girl."
Isabel caught her breath:
"Warren, did you? I'm very glad. If I could reach you I'd shake your hand."
"I don't rejoice. This thing which boys and girls find easy I find each year more difficult, quite equal to the revolution of the earth—perhaps the girl will save me from myself."
"She'll save youforyourself, and you'll be happy."
"It is impossible to say," he said sombrely. "I have warned her fairly. Once I should not have warned the woman of my choice. Am I gaining in humanity or losing? Please lower your head, I am going to tack."
The boat swung about like a sleeping gull, and the sail slowly filled, and the ripple at the prow began again.
After a little Mason went on in a calm, even voice:
"The world to me is not well governed and I hesitate about marriage, for it has the effect, in most cases, of perpetuating the human species, which is not as yet a noble business. I am torn by two minds. I don't appear to be torn by even one mind, but I am. I am convinced that Rose has imagination, which is in my eyes the chief thing in a wife. It enables her to idealize me"—there was a touch of his usual humor in that—"and fills me with alleged desire to possess her, but it is sad business for her, Isabel. When I think of her I am of the stature of a thief, crouching for concealment."
The two in the boat were no longer young. They had never been lovers, but they seemed to understand each other like man and wife.
"I am old in knowledge of the world—my life has ground away any charm I might have once possessed. For her sake I hope she will refuse."
She perceived he was at the end of his confidence, and she began speaking. "I promised you a story once," she began, "and I'm going to tell it now, and then we'll return to Rose."
She spoke in a low voice, with a little catching of the breath peculiar to her when deeply moved. It made her voice pulse out like the flow of heavy wine. She faced him in the shadow, but he knew she was not looking at him at all. Just how she began he didn't quite hear—perhaps she was a little incoherent.
"O those days when I was seventeen!" she went on. "Everything was magical. Every moonlit night thrilled me with its possibilities. I remember how the boys used to serenade me, and then—I was a mediæval maiden at my barred window, and they were disguised knights seeking me in strange lands by their songs.
"You know what I mean. I tingled with the immense joy of it! They sang there in the moonlight, and I tip-toed to the window and peeped out and listened and listened with pictures and pictures tumbling in and out of my head.
"Of course it was only the inherited feminine rising up in me, as you would say—but it was beautiful. It just glorified that village street, making it the narrow way in a Spanish city."
There was silence again. Mason softly said: "Bend your head once more."
When the boat swung around and the faint moon and the lights of the town shifted, Isabel went on.
"One of the boys who came on those midnight serenadings became my hero—remember, I was only seventeen and he was twenty! We used to meet on the street—and oh! how it shook me. My heart fluttered so I could not speak, and at first I had to run past him. After a time I got composed enough to speak to him"—
Her voice choked with remembered passion, but after a little pause she went on:
"All this, I know as well as you, is absurd"—
"It is very beautiful," he said. "Go on!"
"He was tall and straight, I remember, with brown hair. He was a workman of some kind. I know he used to show me his powerful hands and say he had tried to get the grime from them. They were splendid, heroic hands to me. I would have kissed them if I dared. It was all incredible folly, but I thought I was loving beneath my station, for I was a little grandee in the town. It pleased me to think I was stooping—defying the laws of my house. He never tried to see me at home—he was good and clean—I can see that now, for I remember just how his frank, clear eyes looked at me. He didn't talk much, he seemed content to just look at me."
"Well, that went on for weeks. He used to follow me to church, as the boys do in country towns, but I used to go to different places just to see if he would find out and be there to meet me at the door. He never offered to speak to me or take my arm, but he stood to see me go by. Do you know, if I go into a country church today, that scent of wilted flowers and linen and mingled perfumes almost makes me weep?"
"I understand."
Her voice was lower when she resumed.
"Well, then the dreadful, the incredible happened. He did not meet me any more, and just when I was wild with rage and humiliation came the news of his illness—and then I suffered. O God! how I suffered! I couldn't inquire about him—I couldn't see him. I had kept my secret so well that no one dreamed of my loving him so. The girls thought that he followed me and that I despised him, and when they jested about him I had to reply while my heart was being torn out of me. I spent hours in my room writhing, walking up and down, cursing in a girl's way myself and God—I was insane with it all."
She drew a long breath but it did not relieve her. Her voice was as tense as before when she spoke again. The helmsman leaned to listen, for he could hardly hear.
"Then one day he died—O that awful day! I sat in my room with the curtains down. I couldn't endure the sunlight. I pretended to be sick. I was numb with agony and yet I could do nothing. I couldn't even send a rose to lay on his coffin. I couldn't even speak his name. I could only lie there like a prisoner gagged and on the rack—to suffer—suffer!"
The shadow of the sail covered the woman like a mantle. It was as if the man listening had turned away his face from her sacred passion. She was more composed when she spoke again:
"Well, it wore itself out after a time. I got hungry and ate once more, though I did not suppose I ever should. I came down to the family a week later, a puzzle to them. They never thought to connect my illness with the death of an obscure machinist, and then in the same way I crept gradually back into society—back into the busy life of a popular young girl. But there was one place where no one ever entered. I never told any one of this before. I tried to tell Dr. Sanborn about it once, but I felt he might not understand; I tell you because—because you can understand and because you may be influenced by it and understand your wife when she comes to you. These days come to many women at seventeen and, though we can't spare them out of our lives, it doesn't mean disloyalty to our present ideals. I think you understand?"
"Very well indeed," he said. "I have such memories myself."
"Then I resolved to be a physician. I felt that he would not have died if he had been treated properly; the connection was obscure but powerful enough to consecrate me to the healing profession. Then I met Dr. Sanborn. I love him and I couldn't live without him, but there is that figure back there—to have him and all that he means go out of my life would take part of my heart away." Her voice had appeal in it.
"You understand me? It was all clean and innocent, but it was my first passion and I can't spare it. Rose may have such a memory. It has nothing to do with today, with her present ideals. It is not disloyalty—it is—"
"The love of love," said Mason. "I thank you for your trust in me. Rose is what she is, not what she has been." And then in perfect stillness the boat swung around and drifted toward the shore, where a ruby lantern was swinging. Isabel turned and her voice was tremulous with earnestness.
"Warren, Rose loves you—not as she loved when a girl, but as a woman loves. I think I understand your hesitancy—and I say you are wrong. You need her and you will do her good. You will develop her."
"She will suffer through me."
"That is a part of development."
The boat was nearing the wharf and Sanborn's hearty voice came from the shore:
"See here! Isn't it pretty late for a pair of rheumatic old folks to be out sailing? It's 9:30 o'clock."
"The breeze failed us," Isabel answered, as Mason took her hand to help her ashore.
"And the night was so beautiful," said Mason. Before she loosed his hand Isabel shook it hard and now Mason understood. He mailed the letter that night, and Rose held his future in her hand.
Rose went directly from that storm to the repose and apparent peace of the country, and it helped her to make a great discovery. She found every familiar thing had taken on a peculiar value—a literary and artistic value. It was all so reposeful, so secure. A red barn set against a gray-green wooded hillside was no longer commonplace. "How pretty!" she thought; "I never noticed that before."
A little girl wrapped in a shawl was watching cattle in the field; a dog sat near, his back to the misty drizzle. Rose saw it and put herself in the place of that child, chilled and blue of hand, with unfallen tears upon her cheeks.
A crow flying by with ringing, rough cry made her blood leap. Some cattle streamed up a lane and over a hill; their legs moving invisibly gave them a gliding motion like a vast centipede. Some mysterious charm seemed imparted to everything she saw, and, as the familiar lines of the hills began to loom against the sky, she became intolerably eager to see her father and the farm. She hoped it would be a sunny day, but it was raining heavily when she got out at the station.
He was there, the dear, sweet, old face smiling, almost tearful. He had an umbrella and couldn't return her hug; but he put his arm about her and hurried her to the carriage, and in a few moments they were spattering up the familiar road.
Instantly it seemed as if she had never been away. She was a little girl again; the horses shook their heads, impatient at the rain; the pools in the road were green as liquid emerald, and were dimpled by the pelting drops. The wheels flung segments of mud into the air, but the horses drove ahead sullenly, almost desperately, unmindful of the splash and splatter of mud and water.
Rose took keen delight in it all. She had been shut away from nature so long, it seemed good to get back into even the stern mood of a May storm. The great, reeling masses of gray cloud delighted her, and the ringing cry of frogs seemed delicious orchestration. Everything was fresh, clean, almost harsh. How arid and artificial the city life seemed in the freshness of green fields!
It was a pleasure to return to the barnyard, to get back into the kitchen where her aunt was phlegmatically working away at supper-getting. She wiped her hands on her apron, and said "How-de-do!" as if Rose were a neighbor just dropping in for a call.
The life all seemed heroically dull, but the coolness, repose and sanity of nature was elemental, as if she had risen into the rainy sky or sunk into the waters of the ocean. It was deathly still at times. And dark, dark and illimitable and freshly sweet the night shut down over the valley.
She went to sleep with the soft roar of the falling rain near her window; and the faint puffing in of the breeze brought to her the delicious smell of the rain-washed leaves, the acrid, pungent odor of poplars, the sweet smell of maples, the fragrance of rich loam—she knew them all.
By force of contrast she thought of Mason and his life in the city. The roar of traffic; the thunder of great presses; the nights at the opera or the theater, all had enormous weight and value to her, but how remote it all was! In the country the city seemed unreal; in the city the country seemed impossible.
She awoke at the cry of a jay in the maples, and then as she listened she heard a mourning-dove sob from the distance. Robins were laughing merrily, an oriole whistled once and flew away, and hark! yes, a thrush was singing, sitting high in some tree-top, she knew.
The rain was over; the valley was flooded with sunshine. O, so beautiful!—flooded with light like the love of God. She sprang up with joyous energy. Life's problem was not without solution if she could live—both city and country, too.
She felt her joy of the country doubled by her winter in the city—this day was made marvelous by that storm on the lake.
Rhymes grew in her mind upon subjects hitherto untouched by her literary perception. Things she had known all her life, familiar plants, flowers, trees, etc., seemed touched all at once by supernatural radiance.
The clouds on the hills, the buzz of bees in the clover, the sabre swing of poplar trees against the sky, moved her to song, and she wrote daily with marvelous ease. She flung herself prone on the bank by the spring, and strove to mix and be one with the wind and the trees. She thought of her childish crooning over Carl that day his head lay in her lap, and its significance came to her and voiced itself in music.
She traced out every path where her feet had trod as a child, and the infinite significance and terror and high beauty of life and death came upon her. She seemed to summon up and analyze all her past, as if she were about to end one life and begin another. These wonderful moods and memories in some unaccountable way co-ordinated themselves in lines of verse, and the restless, vigorous heart of the girl felt the splendid peace which comes when the artist finds at last that art which is verily his.
The body of her verse grew, and she longed for Mason's opinion upon it, and yet she feared to send it, it seemed so different from other verse. At times she felt its passionate and imaginative quality, and made up selections to send him, but ended always by putting them away again.
She had his picture in her room, and sometimes she sat down to write with his sadly inscrutable face before her. She could see in it (as she studied it here in her home) the lines of varied and restless thought which make up the face of a man who largely comprehends American civilization in the light of experience.
That face represented to her the highest type of manhood, and something more. It was refined and infinitely subtle compared with the simple, almost ox-like faces of the men about her. It was sad, too, as her father's face in repose was sad, but the sadness was different. There was patient, resigned sadness in her father's eyes and lips; in Mason's, bitter, rebellious, perhaps despairing sadness, and something else, too—youth taking hold on the hopelessness of the whole world.
And yet she knew how sweetly those lips could smile, and she had felt the gentleness and purity hid in those eyes. He looked at her as no other man looked, without boldness, without uncertainty, clean, manly and just; and still there were those cynical lines about the lips; not deep, but still perceptible.
She thought less of his fine, erect bearing, and yet she liked to see him walking down the street. He had physical power and dignity, but his face and eyes were etched in minutest detail upon her brain. The life companionship of such a man came to seem more and more impossible for her to attain to. The common little details of her life seemed to lower her. She fell back into inelegant habits and careless speech, and every time she realized it, it put Mason far off and far above her. Her verse lost its brilliancy, its buoyancy, and became dark and bitter at times.
Every night she wondered if she might not hear from him. He had promised to write, and he had hinted at something very important. She knew that she had no definite claim upon him, and yet her last letter had contained one question, not of any importance only as it gave him a chance to reply if he felt like it.
Then the question came: "What of my winter in the city? What has it done for me? Is not life as insoluble as ever—success as far away as ever?"
Could she live here in the country any easier because of her stay there; did it not, in fact, make life harder?
It was in thinking about these things and Mason's letter, which did not come, that her new-found rapture in nature began to cool down. She began to spend more time in her room, thinking of him, and wondering what his attitude toward her really was.
She had moments at last when his face seemed cynically smiling at her. What did he care for an awkward country girl like her? He pitied her, that was all. He wanted to help her, and had tried, and finding her dull, had given her up and forgotten her. He knew scores of beautiful women, actresses, artists, millionaires' daughters; it was absurd to suppose that a girl from the coolly could be of any special interest to him; and to win his love, that was impossible.
She had not the personal vanity which makes so many pretty and brainless women think themselves irresistible to any man, and a fair return for any man's name and fame. Her flesh she made little of in the question.
She hoped each week for a reply, and in her letters to Isabel asked for news about "all friends," meaning one especially.
Isabel wrote, saying they had invited Mr. Mason up to stay a few days at their cottage, and that Elbert Harvey had asked after her, and couldn't she come down?
By the middle of July she had begun to pass days without writing at all.
When the letter from Mason came her father brought it to her with a smile: "Guess this is a love-letter; it's a big one!"
She took it in her hand, feeling a keen, swift premonition of its importance. It was indeed a heavy letter—almost a packet.
She went to her room with it and took a seat by the window, quite deliberately, but her hands shook as she opened the envelope. Her senses seemed some way to acquire unnatural keenness, like a scared animal's. She heard every voice about the barnyard, and she felt the wind on her cheek like a live thing beating its slow wings. The letter began simply:
"Dear Miss Dutcher:"I must begin by asking pardon for not writing before, but as a matter of fact I have not found this letter easy to compose. It represents a turning point in my life, and contains an important decision, and I have never been less sure of my judgment than now."This letter may be considered an offer of marriage. It is well to say that now, and then all the things which come after, will be given their proper weight. Let me state the debit side of the account first, and if you feel that it is too heavy you can put the letter down and write me a very short answer, and the matter will be ended."First, I say to you: whoso weds me weds sorrow. I do not promise to make you happy, though I hope my influence will not be always untoward. I cannot promise any of the things husbands are supposed to bring. I cannot promise a home. My own living is precarious, dependent upon my daily grind of newspaper work. For though I hope to achieve a success with my novel, great successes with novels do not mean much money. I do not feel either that I shall ever be free from money cares; luxury and I are to continue strangers."I cannot promise to conform to your ways, nor to bend to your wishes, though I will try to do so. I cannot promise to assume cordial relations with your relatives, nor accept your friendships as binding upon me."I cannot promise to be faithful to you until death, but I shall be faithful so long as I fill the relation of husband to you. I shall not lead a double life, or conceal from you any change in my regard toward you. If at any time I find a woman whom I feel I should live with, rather than with you, I shall tell you of her with perfect frankness. IthinkI shall find you all-sufficient, but I do not know. Men and women change, grow weary of things, of bonds, of duties. It may be that I shall become and continue the most devoted of husbands, but I cannot promise it. Long years of association develop intolerable traits in men and women very often."On the other hand, let me say I exact nothing from you. I do not require you to cook for me, nor keep house for me. You are mistress of yourself; to come and go as you please, without question and without accounting to me. You are at liberty to cease your association with me at any time, and consider yourself perfectly free to leave me whenever any other man comes with power to make you happier than I."I want you as comrade and lover, not as subject or servant, or unwilling wife. I do not claim any rights over you at all. You can bear me children or not, just as you please. You are a human soul like myself, and I shall expect you to be as free and as sovereign as I, to follow any profession or to do any work which pleases you. It is but just to say that I have never been a man of loose habits. No woman has any claim upon me for deed or word. I have thought at various times that I could marry this woman or that woman, but I have never before made a proposition of marriage to any woman."I have written you in good, set terms what you may expect of me. I am not a demonstrative man by nature, and my training from childhood has made me saving of words of endearment. My love for you must be taken largely for granted after it is once stated, for I regard the word 'love' as a jewel not to be carelessly tossed from hand to hand."Doubtlessly I shall make a dull companion—that I cannot judge for myself."
"Dear Miss Dutcher:
"I must begin by asking pardon for not writing before, but as a matter of fact I have not found this letter easy to compose. It represents a turning point in my life, and contains an important decision, and I have never been less sure of my judgment than now.
"This letter may be considered an offer of marriage. It is well to say that now, and then all the things which come after, will be given their proper weight. Let me state the debit side of the account first, and if you feel that it is too heavy you can put the letter down and write me a very short answer, and the matter will be ended.
"First, I say to you: whoso weds me weds sorrow. I do not promise to make you happy, though I hope my influence will not be always untoward. I cannot promise any of the things husbands are supposed to bring. I cannot promise a home. My own living is precarious, dependent upon my daily grind of newspaper work. For though I hope to achieve a success with my novel, great successes with novels do not mean much money. I do not feel either that I shall ever be free from money cares; luxury and I are to continue strangers.
"I cannot promise to conform to your ways, nor to bend to your wishes, though I will try to do so. I cannot promise to assume cordial relations with your relatives, nor accept your friendships as binding upon me.
"I cannot promise to be faithful to you until death, but I shall be faithful so long as I fill the relation of husband to you. I shall not lead a double life, or conceal from you any change in my regard toward you. If at any time I find a woman whom I feel I should live with, rather than with you, I shall tell you of her with perfect frankness. IthinkI shall find you all-sufficient, but I do not know. Men and women change, grow weary of things, of bonds, of duties. It may be that I shall become and continue the most devoted of husbands, but I cannot promise it. Long years of association develop intolerable traits in men and women very often.
"On the other hand, let me say I exact nothing from you. I do not require you to cook for me, nor keep house for me. You are mistress of yourself; to come and go as you please, without question and without accounting to me. You are at liberty to cease your association with me at any time, and consider yourself perfectly free to leave me whenever any other man comes with power to make you happier than I.
"I want you as comrade and lover, not as subject or servant, or unwilling wife. I do not claim any rights over you at all. You can bear me children or not, just as you please. You are a human soul like myself, and I shall expect you to be as free and as sovereign as I, to follow any profession or to do any work which pleases you. It is but just to say that I have never been a man of loose habits. No woman has any claim upon me for deed or word. I have thought at various times that I could marry this woman or that woman, but I have never before made a proposition of marriage to any woman.
"I have written you in good, set terms what you may expect of me. I am not a demonstrative man by nature, and my training from childhood has made me saving of words of endearment. My love for you must be taken largely for granted after it is once stated, for I regard the word 'love' as a jewel not to be carelessly tossed from hand to hand.
"Doubtlessly I shall make a dull companion—that I cannot judge for myself."
The letter concluded with this characteristic touch; she seemed to hear his voice as she read it:
"I have written frankly because I believed it would prejudice you in my favor. Had I believed otherwise, doubtless I should have written in terms of flattery and deceit, for of such is man when seeking woman in marriage."If you return the affirmative answer I shall be very happy to come up and spend the rest of my vacation at your father's home—provided it is agreeable to you."
"I have written frankly because I believed it would prejudice you in my favor. Had I believed otherwise, doubtless I should have written in terms of flattery and deceit, for of such is man when seeking woman in marriage.
"If you return the affirmative answer I shall be very happy to come up and spend the rest of my vacation at your father's home—provided it is agreeable to you."
Rose sat rigidly still in her chair, her hands in her lap, holding the letter.
It had come again, this question of marriage, and this time it appealed to her whole nature—to her intellectual part as well as to her material self; uttered this time by a voice which had no tremor in it.
How strange it all was! How different from the other proposals she had received; apparently cold and legal, yet under the lines she felt something deep and manly and passionate, because she was only a coulé girl, and he was a man of the great intellectual world; a man who "molded public opinion" by the power of his editorial pen. He was greater than that. In his presence you felt him to be a man of national reputation living quietly under an assumed name.
There rose a great pride in her heart. He had selected her from among the women of the world! He loved her so much he had written her this strange letter, which plead for her under its rigid order of words. She held the letter to her lips as if to get its secret meaning so and then she dropped it as if it were a husk. No matter what it said, she felt the spirit of the man.
She wrote a few lines and sealed them quickly. Then she fell into thought upon the terms of his letter. She hardly comprehended the significance of the minor statements, so filled was she with the one great fact, he wished her to be his wife! She was poor, unknown, and yet he had chosen her!
There was something sad in the letter, too—like his face it was inscrutable, intricate, but (she believed) noble in intention. The freedom of action which he claimed for himself did not trouble her, for she felt his love beneath it. His word "comrade" pleased her, too. It seemed to be wholesome and sweet, and promised intellectual companionship never before possible to her.
O, to be the wife of such a man! to have his daily help and presence; it was wonderful, it could not be true! Yet there lay the letter in her lap, and there the firm, calm, even signature. She rose to her feet and her heart dilated with pride, and her head was that of a newly crowned princess. Oh, the great splendid world out there!
She took up her letter suddenly and went downstairs and out into the yard in search of her father. He was sitting by the bees, with dreamy eyes. He spent a great deal of his time there.
"Father, I want you to hitch Kitty to the buggy for me."
"Why, of course. Where are you goin', Rose?"
"I'm going to the Siding to post a letter. O, pappa John!" she cried suddenly, putting her arms round him, "I'm going to be married."
John did not instantly comprehend her passion; he was slower to move, but he said:
"Why, Rosie! When? Who to?"
"To a man in Chicago, Mr. Warren Mason, a great editor. I'm just writing to him to come."
John began to feel the solemnity of the thought.
"Does he live in Chicago?"
"Yes." She understood his thought. "But we'll come and see you, summers, just the same, pappa John."
"Well, I'll take the letter down."
"No, I must take it myself," she said, smilingly, holding the letter behind her like a child.
There was something fine in carrying the letter to the office herself. It seemed to hasten it. The horse was spirited and carried her at a steady swift trot up hill and down, and the railway track was soon in sight.
Suddenly an idea seized her; why not telegraph her answer. They might suspect him to be her lover, but what did she care now? She penned this message:
"Come up tomorrow if you can, please. Rose."
But afterward, as she approached the office, she shrank from handing it in. It seemed to her too plainly a love message. She mailed her letter and fell to calculating when it would reach him. He could not possibly come till the second day, whereas if she telegraphed he might arrive in the morning. This thought strengthened her resolution; going over to the window she placed the message firmly before the operator, who knew her and admired her deeply.
"Please send that at once, Mr. Bingham."
The operator smiled and bowed, and when he read the message he looked up at her keenly, but did not smile.
"Any answer?" he asked.
"No, probably not," she replied. "Will it go right out?"
"Immediately."
As she turned away to ride home her soul took wing. A marvelous elevation and peace came upon her. It was done. Life held more than promise now, it contained certainties. Her chosen one of Israel was coming!