A Breath of Prairie and other stories Part 45

"Little of women!" was the surprised comment.

"You misunderstand," he quickly corrected. "I go out so seldom that the woman I see is not the real woman at all; not the woman of home." His hand made a little motion of forbearance. "In his consultation-room the patients of a physician are--s.e.xless."

"I think that a woman--that I--can still be natural, Dr. Carter," said Miss Willis, slowly, her eyes downcast. "What did you wish to ask?"

It was his turn to hesitate.

"I hardly know how to put it, now that I have permission," he apologized, with a deprecatory little laugh.

"We seldom do things in this world," he went on at once, "unless we want to, or unless the alternative of not doing them is more unpleasant." He merged generalities into a more specific a.s.sertion.

"There was no alternative in your requesting me to call. Candidly, why do I interest you?"

His voice was alive, and the woman, now thoroughly mistress of herself, gazed into the frankest of frank gray eyes.

"I scarcely know," she said, weighing her answer. "Perhaps it was the novel experience of being considered--s.e.xless; of being cla.s.sified by a number, like a beetle in a case. Let me answer with another question: Why did I interest you sufficiently to come?"

He sat in the big chair with his chin in his hand, looking now steadily past and beyond her, one foot restlessly tapping the rug.

"I can't answer without it seeming so hopelessly egotistical." The half-whimsical, half-serious smile returned to his eyes. "Don't let me impose upon your leniency, please; I may wish to make a request sometime again."

"I will accept the responsibility," she insisted.

"On your head, then, the consequences." He spoke lightly, but with a note of restlessness and rebellion.

"To me you are attractive, Miss Willis, because you are everything that I am not. With you there is no necessity higher than the present; no responsibility beyond the chance thought of the moment. You choose your surroundings, your thoughts. Your life is what you make it: it is life."

"You certainly would not charge me with being more independent than you?" protested the girl.

"Independent!" he flashed upon her, and she knew she had stirred something lying close to his soul. His voice grew soft, and he repeated the word, musingly, more to himself than to her: "Independent!"

"Yes," with abrupt feeling, "with the sort of independence that chooses its own manner of absolute dependence; with the independence that gives you only so much of my time, so that the remainder may go to another; with the independence of imperative impartiality; the sort of independence that is never through working and planning for others--that's the independence I know."

"But there are breathing-spells," interrupted Miss Willis, smilingly.

"To-night, for example, you are not working for somebody else."

"You compel me to incriminate myself," he rejoined, the whimsical, half-serious smile again lighting his gray eyes. "I should be working now, and I will have to make up the lost time when I go home." He bowed gallantly. "The pleasure is double with me, you observe; I do not think twice about paying a double price for it."

He spoke lightly, almost mockingly; but beneath the surface there was even the bitter ring of revolt, and constantly before the girl were the little gestures, intense, impatient, that conveyed a meaning he did not voice. She could feel in it all the insistent atmosphere of the town, where time is counted by seconds. She wondered that he felt as he did, ignorant that the disquiet had come into his life only during the past week. To her, the glimpse of activity was fascinating simply because it was in sharp contrast with her life of comparative, dull emptiness.

He caught the wistful look on her face.

"You wonder that I rebel," he said, with an odd little throaty laugh.

"I couldn't well appear any more unsophisticated: I might as well tell you. It's not the work itself, but the lack of anything else but work that makes the lives of such as I so bare. We are constantly holding a stop-watch on time itself, fearful of losing a second; the scratch of a pen sealing the life of a Nation, commuting a death-sentence, defining the difference between a man's success and ruin can all be accomplished in a second. If we let that second get away from us, we have been deaf to Opportunity's knock. We stop at times to think; and then the object for which we give our all appears so petty and inadequate, and what we are losing, so great. We laugh at our work at such times, and for the moment hate it." But he laughed lightly, and finished with a deprecating little minor.

"You see, I'm relaxing to-night--and thinking."

"But," Miss Willis protested, "I don't see why you should have only the one thing in your life. It is certainly unnecessary, unless you choose."

He smiled indulgently.

"You have no conception of what it means to shape your life to your income. I am poor, and I know. Years ago I had to choose between mediocrity and"--he looked at her peculiarly--"and love, or advancement alone. I had to choose, and fixing my choice upon the higher aim, I had to put everything else out of my life. The thought is intolerable that my name should always be under another's upon some office-door. You know what I chose: you know nothing of the constant struggle which alone keeps me, mind, soul, and body, centred upon my ideal, nor how readily I respond to a temptation to turn aside.

"This," he completed listlessly, "is one of the nights when the price seems too large; in spite of me, regret will creep in."

"But," persisted the girl, "when you succeed--it will not be--too late?" There was a plaintive inquiry in the words; the tragedy of the man's life had awakened pity.

He spoke with a sudden pa.s.sion that startled her.

"It is too late already; my work has refashioned my life. I am desperately restless except when doing something that counts; something visible; and doing it intensely. I'll never"--his voice was bitter with regret--"never conform--now."

The girl answered, almost unconsciously.

"I think you can," she hesitated, "and will."

For a long, long moment they searched each other's eyes.

"And this price you are paying," said the girl at last, "is it worth it?"

The man drew a long breath.

"Ah, I wonder! To-night doubt has undermined my resolution."

"If you question yourself so seriously," she said very softly, "then surely you can find but one answer."

"Again I wonder. I have wondered and--and hoped--G.o.d help me!--since the moment I looked into your eyes."

Suddenly he was out of his chair and coming toward her. Her heart leaped, her eyes shone; she extended her hands in welcome.

"Then you will come again," she whispered, as they drew together.

"If you will let me. I couldn't stay away now."

THE END