David Malcolm Part 12

"David!" The voice and tone were like my mother's. Gladys Todd stopped painting and, turning, looked at me strangely. I could not have faced that gaze of hers and said another word, but she quickly averted her eyes, abandoned brush and palette, and sat studying her clasped hands.

There was nothing now to hold back the flood of pa.s.sionate avowal.

Perhaps my voice was a little weak, but it grew stronger as I took heart at the sight of her listening so quietly. I told her that I had loved her that evening when we first met; that since then, in all my waking moments, she had been in my thoughts; I had never loved another woman; I never could love another woman. With my outstretched arm hovering so near to her I might have taken her unawares, taken her into my possession and throttled any rising protest; but to touch her with my little finger would have seemed to me a profanation. I expected her to sink into the embrace of that solitary arm.

But she did not. She looked up at me and said: "David, I am sorry--so sorry."

"Sorry?"

There was a ring of indignation in my voice. I was not prepared for such an enigmatic answer. Indeed, I had expected but one response, the one that was mine by right of four years of devotion, by right of those beacon-lights which I had seen so often in her eyes. Sorry? If she was sorry, why had she led me to spend so many hours in her company, why had she walked with me in "our lane," where the very air seemed to brood with sentimental thought? I doubted if I heard her rightly.

"Very, very sorry, David," she repeated. "I never dreamed that you cared for me in this way. I thought you were a good friend. I never could think of you as anything else than a good friend."

I was too much stunned to speak. For days I had been rehearsing in my mind what I should say to her when her hand was in mine, but I had not prepared for a contingency like this. I was helpless. I could only lean back in my chair and gaze at her reproachfully.

"You will forget me very soon," she said, looking up after a moment.

"You are going away in a few days. You must forget me, David. Promise me you will."

She took up her brush and palette and began to touch the plaque lightly. As I remember her now, Gladys Todd's face was loveliest in profile. "Promise me," she said, tossing her head and focussing her eyes on the tulips.

Poor David Malcolm! You were young then and little learned in the ways of women. You did not know that to a woman a proposal is a thing not to be ended lightly with consent. You did not know that when the gentlest woman angles she is as any fisher who plays the game with rod and reel and delights in the rushes of the victim. You made no mad rushes. You sat stupidly quiescent. You saw the fair profile dimly as though it were receding into the mists beyond your reach. Your pride was hurt. You were angry and would have flung yourself out of her presence, but you could not endure the shame of defeat.

The college clock struck three. It aroused me from my stupor, and I did make one mad rush, in my confusion acting with more ac.u.men than I knew.

"I never will forget you--I never can forget you," I said brokenly.

The door creaked and I arose, but it was not to face Boller. Knitting in hand, Mrs. Todd bustled out. She made no apology for her intrusion.

The veranda was the coolest place in the house, and as she sank into a chair I numbered her with Boller and Doctor Todd, with the enemies of my happiness. Her round, innocent face seemed to mask a grim purpose to sit there for the rest of the afternoon. Gladys Todd talked of the three Miss Minnicks again as she plied her brush, and Mrs. Todd of Mr.

Minnick and Mrs. Minnick as she worked her needles. They crushed the struggling hope I had for one moment more in which to make a last appeal. Boller did not come. The college clock struck four and still there was no sign of him. I was sure that he had some knowledge of my presence, and perhaps waited for a signal from the house announcing my departure. In that case it was useless for me to stay longer listening to idle chatter about the Minnicks, and so, utterly unhappy, smarting with the sense of defeat, humiliated, I made my departure, and fled across the campus to the college and my room.

I took no supper. The mere idea of food was nauseating. I paced the floor with my thoughts in chaos. Of consolation I had but one unsteady gleam--at least I should be burdened with no hara.s.sing financial problem. Sometimes the question of my meagre resources had been amazingly persistent, but I had fought it down as unworthy to have a place with n.o.bler thoughts. Now it rose again, and for a moment it seemed that I had escaped a heavy burden. Then I remembered Boller. I pictured Boller sitting in the vine-clad veranda while Gladys Todd painted; Boller in the Todd parlor, standing under a bower of clematis, while Gladys Todd moved toward him in step to the wedding-march played by the eldest Miss Minnick. In the sleepless hours that followed, one purpose fixed itself in my mind. I should leave McGraw next day at the sacrifice of a useless diploma. So I wrote to Gladys Todd. I wrote many notes before I was satisfied, and the one I despatched had, I thought, a manly, sensible tone. I did not wish to spend another week in sight of her home and yet banished from it, I said; I had cherished certain hopes, and now I could not stand idle in their wreckage; I had my work to do and was away to do it, but I could not leave without a friendly good-by to her and without expressing a wish for her happiness. This last was a subtle reference to Boller. Having made it, the words which followed were astonishing, but they were born of a faint hope that after all I might not have to go. I told her that she knew best and I would forget her, and now I was going for a last walk in the lane where we had spent so many happy hours, and then to take myself to new scenes, bearing with me the memory of her as just a friend.

The afternoon found me in the lane, on a knoll where the leaf.a.ge broke and gave a vista of rolling country. My eyes were turned to the hills, but my ears were quickened to catch the sound of foot-falls. In my heart I said that I should never hear them; my dismissal had been too peremptory for me to cozen myself with so absurd an idea. But the hope which had brought me there would not die. Sometimes the wind stirred the leaves and gra.s.s, and I would start and look up the lane. Time after time I was the victim of that teasing wind, and with recurring disappointments my spirits sank lower. Then when an hour remained before my train left, and I was standing undecided whether or not to keep to my vigil, I heard a sharp crackle of dry twigs behind me.

Gladys Todd had come. She was carrying her sketch-book, and dropped it in confusion when she saw me emerge from behind the trunk of a great oak. I seized it and held it as a bond against her retreat, affecting not to see the hand which she held out commanding its return. I had planned exactly what I should say did she appear in just this way, and now my well-turned phrases scattered and I stood before her, silent, regarding her. It was just as well. My solemn eyes must have said more than any wordy speech.

"I did not expect to find you here, Mr. Malcolm," she said, dropping her hand as a sign of momentary surrender.

Her tone was one of genuine surprise, and though the statement was astonishing I could not conceive a woman of her character deviating from the straight line of truth, and the hope which had soared high at her coming in answer to my subtle call now sank away. I held out the book mutely.

She did not see it. "I was on my way to the river to sketch," she said. "I had no idea--" She dropped down on the bank and began to pick vaguely at the clover. "Please go. Good-by."

The brim of her sailor hat guarded her face, so that she really did not see the book which I was holding toward her. I placed it on the gra.s.s beside her and turned to obey, intending to march away in military fashion, perhaps whistling my defiance.

"You'll promise to forget me," I heard her say.

I looked down at her, but the hat screened her face.

"Yes," I answered, with a steadiness that was surprising, for my throat was parched and my knees had become very weak, so weak that I gave up all thought of marching in military fashion and gathered strength to drag myself out of her sight. I went up the lane slowly. I looked back and saw her sitting very still, one hand on her big portfolio, the other listless on the clover. I reached the bend in the lane. Pa.s.sing it, I should march on to my conquests, unhappy, wofully unhappy, but going faster because alone.

"David," she called.

I stepped back, hardly believing my ears. She was sitting very still, looking over the lane and the hills. I went nearer. She was like stone. I sat down at her side and somehow my hand touched her hand on the big portfolio, and her hand did not move. And somehow my hand closed on hers.

"David," she said, looking up, "you won't forget me, will you?"

Forget you! I swore to Gladys Todd that I had been idly boasting. I would have carried her image to the grave, burned on my heart. The memory of her would have been the only light in all my life of darkness. But now there was no darkness. For us there was only glorious day. The astonishing thing, the incomprehensible thing, was that Gladys Todd could love me; that it was really true that she loved me that first night we met; that she loved me yesterday when she sat on the vine-clad porch painting tulips so carelessly.

"But I did, David," she protested.

"Then why didn't you say so?" I returned reproachfully.

"Because I wanted to make you say so," she answered.

"But, Gladys," I cried, "I was sure you were in love with Boller."

She stared at me with eyes full of wonder.

"With Boller," I exclaimed. "Boller of '89."

"Why, David Malcolm, you poor, dear child," she cried. "How could you have been so foolish. He left yesterday--yesterday at three."

A cloud suddenly hurled itself across the brightness of my day. It seemed that after all I had hurried unnecessarily, for the financial problem forces itself even into the seventh heaven of love, and now it came like a ghoul to devour my happiness. It a.s.sumed concrete form in a picture of Doctor Todd when I went to him empty-handed, and I could not help feeling that it would have been better had I not let suspicion and jealousy hurry me to the attainment of what could have been mine a year later under less embarra.s.sing circ.u.mstances.

My moment of abstraction was quickly noticed. Gladys Todd wanted to know my troubles. They were hers now, she said, for thenceforth we must share our burdens. I rose, for I was young. I laughed, and with my laugh the clouds were swept away, for no cloud could veil the sunshine from my heart when the big sketch-book was under my right arm and her small hand was under my left arm as we walked together down that clover-carpeted lane.

CHAPTER XII

I have travelled far in my life, travelled the seven seas by sail and steam, and on horse and camel crossed plain and desert. The Pacific, the Indies, the Arctic--I count over the coasts where my ships have cast anchor; I go back in my memory to the first foreign sh.o.r.es on which my eyes rested, and you perhaps will smile when I tell you that they were the Jersey meadows. I saw them from a car window on a June evening. The train had crossed the bridge at Newark, and below me in the river lay ships--tiny coasters, I know now, but then in the dusk magnified for me to the dignity of world-wanderers. In the salt vapors of the marshes I scented the sea and the far-borne aroma of the tropics, the lands of palm and spice, and I looked away to the encircling hills and their scattered lights with something of the exultation of Columbus when he spied the blazing torch which marked the New World. This was a new world to me. I had known only the inland, little valleys where life moved as placidly as the little rivers which threaded them. Now the sight of mast and spar, the salt vapors, the far-spread lights told me that I had come to a strange land, and I was eager to reach its heart and to see its mysteries. I was keyed high with the hope of conquest. With the salt marshes behind me, I left behind me, too, the Old World, the little valleys, the placid streams, and very straight I was, and very self-confident, when at last I looked across the dark river to the towering shadow of the city, pierced by its myriad stars. I felt neither fear nor loneliness. This city had been building for these hundreds of years for just this hour. It waited to receive me.

But the David Malcolm who stood bewildered in the streets was not the conqueror who had stepped ash.o.r.e from the ferry-boat. The life a moment ago so precious had suddenly lost its value in the eyes of the unknowing. Yesterday he had walked through Malcolmville, and every man, woman and child in its straggling length had come out to bid him farewell. His departure was an event. His arrival in these strange streets was an event, but to him alone. His very existence was not recognized save by those churlish souls with whom his awkwardness brought him into physical contact. A belt-line car charged at him as though it mattered little if he were ground beneath its wheels. A truck hurled at him as though it were a positive blessing could the world be rid of him. Plunging to safety, he bowled over a man who made it perfectly plain that he regarded himself as just as important as Malcolm of '91. Pausing on a corner with his shining suit-case at his feet, he looked about him. Then he became in his own mind but another ant in a giant hill.

I was lonely now, but I had no fear. I watched the unceasing flow of life around me, and I said that I could move in it as boldly as any man, and perhaps a little better than most men, and if the time came when I must at last be caught beneath a belt-line car my removal from these mad activities would at least be dignified by a notice in the papers. The shrinkage to my self-importance added fire to my ambition.

More carefully but resolutely I threaded my way up Cortlandt Street, and at every step my sense of my unimportance increased. Even my hotel seemed to be a hotel of no importance. Mr. Pound had stayed there in 1876, and his account of its magnitude and luxury had led me to believe that I could find it merely by asking. Three men met my simple inquiry with shakes of the head and hurried brusquely on, and yet they were respectable and intelligent-looking. The policeman at the Broadway corner had at least heard of my hostelry; he remembered having seen it when he first came on the force, but he was inclined to believe that it had long since been torn down. This was discouraging, but I did not abandon my search, for Mr. Pound had advised me to make myself known to Mr. Wemple, the head clerk, a friend of his, who would doubtless be of service to me. And now in my great loneliness I wanted to find not the hotel, but Mr. Wemple, for I knew that with him I could talk on terms of friendship, however frail. From the horse-car jogging up Broadway I watched for the corner where the policeman told me the hotel had been; I reached it and saw a tall building adorned by many golden signs, inviting me not to the comfort of bed and board but to the purchase of linens and hosiery. It was growing late. The part of the town through which I was pa.s.sing had put out its lights and gone home to bed, so I had to abandon hope of finding Mr. Wemple, and turned into the first hotel I saw, an imposing place with a broad window in which sat a solemn, silent row of men gazing vacantly into the street.

Here at last I ended my journey, weary and lonely, without even Mr.

Wemple to welcome me to the city where I had cast my fortunes. Before long I joined the solemn line and sat watching the street, and Broadway below Union Square at night, even in those times, was not an enlivening scene. My conquest was forgotten; my mind wandered back to the valley at home. Here I sat listlessly, in a hot, narrow canyon through which swept a thin, sluggish stream of life; above me was just a patch of sky; before me was a tall cliff of steel and stone, pierced by numberless dead windows. As I sat in the glare of electric lights, in smoke-charged air, my ears ringing with the harsh medley of the street, I fancied myself on the barn-bridge again. The moon would be rising over the ridges and the valley would lie at my feet with its checkered fields of brown and gray rolling away to the mountains, and the music of the valley would be no harsh clatter of bells and hoofs; I should hear the wind in the trees, the rustle of the ripening grain, the whippoorwill calling from the elm by the creek, and the restless bleating of sheep in the meadow. Thinking of these things, I asked myself if the life I had left was not far better than the one I had chosen; if the highest reward for my coming years of labor would not be the right to return to it. But for pride I could have abandoned all my mighty plans at that moment and gone back, even, as the Professor had said, to doze like the very dogs. I dared not. My parents' joy at my return might over-balance the loss of their high hopes for my fame, and had they alone been in my thoughts I should have taken the night train home. But I could not go back to Gladys Todd beaten before I had even come to blows with life.

The last picture I had of her was the heroic one of a woman speeding her knight to battle. Gladys had an embarra.s.sing way of calling me "her knight." She stood on the platform of the Harlansburg station, and I leaned from a window of the moving train. Beside her was Doctor Todd waving his hat, and behind her the three Miss Minnicks with handkerchiefs fluttering. She was very straight and very still, but I knew what was in her thoughts. She had faith in my strength; when she saw me again my feet would be firmly set on the ladder by which men climb above the heads of their herded fellows. In the hours of the long journey the picture of her was very clear to me; I seemed to be wearing her colors as I went to the conflict; with her spirit watching over me, I could strike no mean blow nor use my strength in any unworthy cause.

How glad I was that she could not see me now, as I sat in the hotel window on two legs of my chair, with my feet on the bra.s.s rail, a figure of dejection. The glamour of my great adventure was gone. I had come quickly to the waste places of which the Professor had spoken.

When I closed my eyes to the noisome street and the clamor, when I saw the pines on the ridge-top clear cut against the moonlit sky, when I heard the whippoorwill calling from the elm and the sheep bleating in the meadow, I believed that I was marching to barren conquests and fighting for worthless booty. But I dared not turn back.

In the morning, however, I looked at that same street with different eyes. The thin, sluggish stream of life had swollen to a mighty current. The raucous little medley of the night was lost in the thunders of the awakened city. The towering canyon was swept by the brightest of suns. I seemed to be standing idle in the midst of the conflict, and I was eager to plunge into it. So at noon that day I began my fight. I presented myself at the editorial rooms of _The Record_ and asked for Mr. Carmody. In my hand I held a letter to him from Boller, recommending me in such high terms that it seemed highly improbable that he could refuse me his good offices. To support Boller's a.s.sertions as to my acquirements I had also letters from Doctor Todd and Mr. Pound. According to Doctor Todd, the journal which secured the services of David Malcolm was to be congratulated; he recited my high achievements, my graduation with honors in the largest cla.s.s in the history of McGraw, my winning of the junior oratorical contest with a remarkable oration on "Sweetness and Light." Mr. Pound was less fulsome in his praises, for he was by nature a pessimistic man, but he could vouch for my honesty, though, to be frank, he had been disappointed by my abandoning my purpose to enter the ministry; yet he had known me from infancy, he had had a little part in the development of my mind, and he was confident that I needed but the opportunity to make my mark in any profession.

With such support, my air when I asked for Mr. Carmody was naturally one of a.s.surance. The office-boy, an ancient man in the anteroom, handed my card and Boller's letter to a very young a.s.sistant, and where my eyes followed him through a door I saw a number of men seated at battered desks. Some were writing; some were reading; some merely smoking; some had their heads together and talked in low tones. All were in their shirt-sleeves; and none presented the dignified appearance of my conception of a journalist, and especially of so successful a journalist as Mr. Bob Carmody. I was confident that the very young office-boy would pa.s.s them and go to the doors beyond, which must lead to the true sanctum. No; where he stopped I saw a wide-spread paper; over the top of it a mop of flaming red hair, and bulging from the sides of it the sleeves of a very pink shirt. The curtain was lowered, disclosing a round, red face heavily blotched with shaving-powder. There was nothing of dignity in Mr. Carmody's appearance; there was nothing in his rotund features to suggest any high purpose or distinguished ambition; indeed, it seemed that he would be content to sit forever on that small chair at that battered desk.