The Romance of a Plain Man

"Sally, how can you receive a man who was not born a gentleman?"

"Aunt Mitty, if you don't let me see him here, I'll – I'll meet him in the street."

The door shut sharply, there was a sound of rapid steps, and the voices ceased. Harry Mickleborough, in his daughter, I judged, had gained the victory; for an instant afterwards I heard her cross the hall, with a defiant and energetic rustle of skirts. When she entered the room, and held out her hand, I saw that she was dressed in her walking gown. There were soft brown furs about her throat, and on her head she wore a small fur hat, with a bunch of violets at one side, under a thin white veil.

"I was just going to walk," she said, breathing a little quickly, while her eyes, very wide and bright, held that puzzled and resolute look I remembered; "will you come with me?"

She turned at once to the door, as if eager to leave the house, and while I followed her through the hall, and down the short flight of steps to the pavement, I was conscious of a sharp presentiment that I should never again cross that threshold.

CHAPTER XV

A MEETING IN THE ENCHANTED GARDEN

I spoke no word of love in that brisk walk up Franklin Street, and when I remembered this a month afterwards, it seemed to me that I had let the opportunity of a lifetime slip by. Since that afternoon I had not seen Sally again – some fierce instinct held me back from entering the doors that would have closed against me – and as the days passed, crowded with work and cheered by the immediate success of the National Oil Company, I felt that Miss Mitty and Miss Matoaca, and even Sally, whom I loved, had faded out of the actual world into a vague cloud-like horizon. To women it is given, I suppose, to merge the ideal into everyday life, but with men it is different. I saw Sally still every minute that I lived, but I saw her as a star, set high above the common business world in which I had my place – above the strain and stress of the General's office, above the rise and fall of the stock market, above the brisk triumphant war with competitors for the National Oil Company, above even the hope of the future presidency of the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad. Between my love and its fulfilment, stretched, I knew, hard years of struggle, but bred in me, bone and structure, the instinct of democracy was still strong enough to support me in the hour of defeat. Never once – not even when I sat, condescendingly plied with coffee and partridges, face to face with the wonder expressed in Miss Mitty's eyes, had I admitted to myself that I was obliged to remain in the class from which I had sprung. Courage I had never lost for an instant; the present might embarrass me, but the future, I felt always, I held securely grasped in my own hands. The birthright of a Republic was mine as well as the General's, and I knew that among a free people it was the mettle of the man that would count in the struggle. In the fight between democratic ideals and Old World institutions I had no fear, even to-day, of what the future would bring. The right of a man to make his own standing was all that I asked.

And yet the long waiting! As I walked one Sunday afternoon over to Church Hill, after a visit to Jessy (who was living now with a friend of the doctor's), I asked myself again and again if Sally had read my heart that last afternoon and had seen in it the reason of my fierce reserve. Jessy had been affectionate and very pretty – she was a cold, small, blond woman, with a perfect face and the manner of an indifferent child – but she had been unable to wean me from the thought which returned to take royal possession as soon as the high pressure of my working day was relaxed. It controlled me utterly from the moment I put the question of the stock market aside; and it was driving me now, like the ghost of an unhappy lover, back for a passionate hour in the enchanted garden.

The house was half closed when I reached it, though the open shutters to the upper windows led me to believe that some of the rooms, at least, were tenanted. When I entered the gate and passed the stuccoed wing to the rear piazza, I saw that the terraces were blotted and ruined as if an invading army had tramped over them. The magnolias and laburnums, with the exception of a few lonely trees, had already fallen; the latticed arbours were slowly rotting away; and several hardy rose-bushes, blooming bravely in the overgrown squares, were the only survivals of the summer splendour that I remembered. Turning out of the path, I plucked one of these gallant roses, and found it pale and sickly, with a November blight at the heart. Only the great elms still arched their bared branches unchanged against a red sunset; and now as then the small yellow leaves fluttered slowly down, like wounded butterflies, to the narrow walks.

I had left the upper terrace and had descended the sunken green steps, when the dry rustle of leaves in the path fell on my ears, and turning a fallen summer house, I saw Sally approaching me through the broken maze of the box. A colour flamed in her face, and pausing in the leaf-strewn path, she looked up at me with shining and happy eyes.

"It has been so long since I saw you," she said, with her hand outstretched.

I took her hand, and turning we moved down the walk while I still held it in mine. Out of the blur of her figure, which swam in a mist, I saw only her shining and happy eyes.

"It has been a thousand years," I answered, "but I knew that they would pass."

"That they would pass?" she repeated.

"That they must pass. I have worked for that end every minute since I saw you. I have loved you, as you surely know," I blurted out, "every instant of my life, but I knew that I could offer you nothing until I could offer you something worthy of your acceptance."

Reaching out her hand, which she had withdrawn from mine, she caught several drifting elm leaves in her open palm.

"And what," she asked slowly, "do you consider to be worthy of my acceptance?"

"A name," I answered, "that you would be proud to bear. Not only the love of a man's soul and body, but the soul and body themselves after they have been tried and tested. Wealth, I know, would not count with you, and I believe, birth would not, even though you are a Bland – but I must have wealth, I must have honour, so that at least you will not appear to stoop. I must give you all that it lies in my power to achieve, or I must give you nothing."

"Wealth! honour!" she said, with a little laugh, "O Ben Starr! Ben Starr!"

"So that, at least, you will not appear to stoop," I repeated.

"I stoop to you?" she responded, and again she laughed.

"You know that I love you?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied, and lifted her eyes to mine, "I know that you love me."

"Beyond love I have nothing at the moment."

A light wind swept the leaves from her hand, and blew the ends of her white veil against my breast.

"And suppose," she demanded in a clear voice, "that love was all that I wanted?"

Her lashes did not tremble; but in her eyes, in her parted red lips, and in her whole swift and expectant figure, there was something noble and free, as if she were swept forward by the radiant purpose which shone in her look.

"Not my love – not yet – my darling," I said.

At the word her blush came.

"You say you have only yourself to give," she went on with an effort. "Is it possible that in the future – in any future – you could have more than yourself?"

"Not more love, Sally, not more love."

"Then more of what?"

"Of things that other men and women count worth the having!"

The sparkle returned to her eyes, and I watched the old childish archness play in her face.

"Do I understand that you are proposing to other men and women or to me, sir?" she enquired, above her muff, in the prim tone of Miss Mitty.

"To neither the one nor the other," I answered stubbornly, though I longed to kiss the mockery away from her curving lips. "When the time comes I shall return to you."

"And you are doing this for the sake of other people, not for me," she said. "I suppose, indeed, that it's Aunt Mitty and Aunt Matoaca you are putting before me. They would be flattered, I am sure, if they could only know of it – but they can't. As a matter of fact, they also put something before me, so I don't appear to come first with anybody. Aunt Mitty prefers her pride and Aunt Matoaca prefers her principles, and you prefer both – "

"I am only twenty-six," I returned. "In five years – in ten at most – I shall be far in the race – "

"And quite out of breath with the running," she observed, "by the time you turn and come back for me."

"I don't dare ask you to wait for me."

"As a matter of fact," she responded serenely, "I don't think I shall. I could never endure waiting."

Her calmness was like a dash of cold water into my face.

"Don't laugh at me whatever you do," I implored.

"I'm not laughing – it's far too serious," she retorted. "That scheme of yours," she flashed out suddenly, "is worthy of the great brain of the General."

"Now I'll stand anything but that!" I replied, and turned squarely on her; "Sally, do you love me?"

"Love a man who puts both his pride and his principles before me?"

"If you don't love me – and, of course you can't – why do you torment me?"

"It isn't torment, it's education. When next you start to propose to the lady of your choice, don't begin by telling her you are lovesick for the good opinion of her maiden aunts."

"Sally, Sally!" I cried joyfully. My hand went out to hers, and then as she turned away – my arm was about her, and the little fur hat with the bunch of violets was on my breast.