AN ENGAGEMENT
The gates of the delectable world, it seemed to Lena, opened very
slowly, and the mild fragrance and warmth that dribbled out to her
through their narrow crack intensified her outer dreariness. Once in a
while Mrs. Lenox or Miss Elton did her some little kindness.
Occasionally Mr. Percival came to see her, but her shame of her mother
and her home made these visits a doubtful pleasure. The sordid monotony
of her work oppressed her every morning and depressed her every night.
The little money that she earned fell like a snow-flake into the yawning
furnace of her desires. Bitter is the fate of her to whom the goods of
this world are the final good, and to whom those goods are denied.
There came a night when a certain great lady gave a dance, and Lena was
deputed by the feminine head of the staff of the _Star_ to report these
doings of society. At first the chance looked to her delightful. She was
to have a peep into the world of charm which was her dream and her
ambition. She walked through the wide empty rooms with their soft lights
and masses of flowers. She surveyed the dining-room, a wilderness of
candles, orchids and maiden-hairs. She felt her feet sink luxuriously
into the rugs, oh, so different from the threadbare ingrain carpet at
home! She peeped into the ball-room, smilax-draped and glowing as if
eager to welcome the guests to come. Through it all she carried a prim
air, making businesslike notes on her little pad; but beneath her very
demure exterior raged a storm of rebellion that these things should be
and not be for her. The world was one huge sour grape; and yet she must
smile as though it tasted sweet. There were blurs in her eyes as she
stumbled up the back stairs, whither her way was pointed, that she might
stand in a corner of the dressing-room where the now fast-arriving
ladies were laying off their wraps. She swallowed a lump in her throat
and winked hard in the attempt to forget or ignore the careless looks
thrown at her by these ladies, as the maids removed the long cloaks made
more for splendor than for warmth, or drew up the gloves on bare arms
less lovely than her own. Many of the women looked twice at her, and
she thought, and resented the fact, that they were surprised to see so
much beauty. She could not be impersonal like the other
reporters,--sensible girls, taking all this as a part of the day's work,
and whispering names to one another, which Lena, too, must catch and
treasure for her reportorial harvest. She must glance with swift
inclusiveness at the more striking gowns, that later she may serve them
up in the technical slapdash of the social column.
An hour of it left her faint and sick, not with cynical scorn of the
spectacle, but with longing and self-pity. The crowd in the
dressing-room was thinning now, but, whether she had finished her duty
or not, she must escape. She could endure it no longer. Again she made
her way down the narrow non-angelic stairs and out at a little side
door. The night air was sweet and cold. She paused for a moment under
the light of the porte-cochère to watch the string of carriages and the
swirl of silk and laces that passed through the opening door, to listen
to gusts of music that came to an abrupt end as the outside door shut on
her.
Suddenly a figure loomed beside her, and she look up to see Dick
Percival, straight and big, with the electric light gleaming on his
white shirt-front, where his overcoat fell back. There was an unpleasant
sternness in his deeply-shadowed eyes.
"Miss Quincy!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing here!"
"I was sent to report it," said Lena weakly. "I'm going home now."
"Going home alone? Nearly midnight?"
"What else can I do? It's what the other girls--reporters, I mean--have
to do."
"I shall walk home with you," said Dick sharply, and he drew her aside
into the shadow, as though ashamed of being seen, and piloted her in
silence to the sidewalk. Lena gave a little sob as he drew her arm
through his, and still they walked on until the lights of the great
house grew dim in the distance and only the quiet of the city streets by
night enveloped them.
"Ought you not to go back now? You'll lose all the pleasure," said Lena
timidly.
"Are you doing much of this kind of thing?" Dick demanded.
"This is the first time."
"I hope it will be the last," he answered glumly.
"So do I--I don't like it," whispered Lena.
"I--I can't endure it--Lena!" Lena started as she heard her name. "Lena,
come over here into the park for just a moment. I want to talk to you."
"I can't. It's awfully cold, and--" said Lena, but she followed his lead
as she remonstrated.
"And you have on a wretched little thin coat. Why aren't you decently
dressed?"
"I haven't anything." Lena spoke under her breath. Dick stamped his foot
as a substitute for a curse, whipped off his heavy great-coat, wrapped
her in it, and pushed her down on to a bench.
"Lena," he said, standing squarely in front of her, "I know I've no
right to hope for anything--no right to speak, even, when you know me so
little; but, by Heaven, I can't endure to see you grinding out your life
in this way, when there's even a chance that you will let me prevent it.
You flower of a girl, you! Oh, Lena, I love you--I love you!"
He caught a small white hand that held together the heavy coat, and
kissed it in a kind of frenzy, while Lena, rigid with desire to be quite
sure what this signified, peered stolidly at him from over the big
collar. She was too wise in her generation to leap to conclusions about
the ultimate meaning of Dick's passion. She would not unbottle any
emotion until she knew.
"Lena, if you could see how I love you, you'd trust me, I think, even
with yourself. If you will be my wife--"
Something in Lena seemed to break, and she gave a gasp of relief and
gratitude that was almost prayer and approached love. Then she buried
her face in her hands and sobbed aloud, as Dick put both arms around her
and drew her head to his shoulder.
"Lena, can you--do you love me a little?" he whispered, as if in awe.
"Oh, Mr. Percival," said Lena, "I do! How could I help it? But I could
not dream of your loving poor little insignificant me."
"And how could I help it?" he said, mocking her. "Little, you may be,
but this part is bigger than the whole world. You belong to me now, and
I won't have you depreciate yourself."
"Oh, Mr. Percival, is it true?"
"Suppose you say 'Dick', and thank God that it is."
"Dick, Dick, Dick--it is," said Lena very softly, and she frankly put
her arms around his neck, and her soft lips to his cold cheek, so that
he lost himself in an ecstasy of delight and wonder.
So they sat in the doubtful shadow of a leafless maple, on a hard park
bench, on a chilly November night, and though Dick was half frozen they
were both more than happy. And they talked, in lovers' fashion, over the
great fact, and how it all happened.
The mellow chimes of the city hall began to strike twelve--a most
persistent hour, and Lena started into consciousness.
"Dick, I must go home," she said. "None of those girls, the nice girls,
Miss Elton or any one like that, would do such an improper thing, would
they?"
"I should think not," said Dick. "I wouldn't ask them to."
"And I wouldn't allow them," laughed Lena. "Now come, like a dear boy,
and walk home with me."
"There are so many more things that I want to say," remonstrated Dick.
"Stop a moment under this light and let me see your eyes, Lena. You'll
have to look up. I want to talk plain business to you. First, you'll
give up this reporting folly, won't you?"
"To-morrow," said Lena joyously.
[Illustration: They talked in lovers' fashion--Page 216]
"What an admirably obedient wife you are going to make! But I'm glad you
hate it. If ever you feel a mad desire to take it up again, we'll go
into the library together and write up _Godey's Lady's Book_. I want
your life to be sweet and sheltered and filled with good things now."
"Oh, Dick, to think of that kind of a life coming to me!"
"It ought to have come to you long ago. It was bound to come, because it
belongs to you. But things being as they are, you must give yourself
into my keeping as soon as possible, sweetheart. There's no reason why
we shouldn't be married at once, or nearly so, is there, dear?"
Here Lena hesitated, a little in doubt whether she ought to show maiden
reluctance, and her lover went on with his argument.
"You are so alone, dear. Don't let any foolish hesitation prolong this
bad time of yours."
"What about my mother?" demanded Lena, with a sudden descent to the
region of hard facts.
"Do you want her to live with us?" Dick asked with a gulp.
"No, I don't!" Lena answered so sharply that Dick started in surprise,
and she gathered herself together.
"It would take a long time for me to explain things to you," she went on
in gentler accents. "But, Dick, mother and I are not very happy
together. I'll tell you all about it some time. Perhaps she would be
just as contented to live somewhere else."
"Very well," said Dick with a sense of relief. "We must make her
comfortable, of course." In reality nobody else's comfort made a rap's
difference just then. "I dare say we can find some jolly little
apartment and somebody to take care of her."
"Hire somebody for her to find fault with," said Lena, with a return of
acid. "What about your mother?"
"Oh, I couldn't let mother live anywhere but in the dear old home. It's
too big and lonely for her by herself, so we must share it with her. And
no other place would ever have the flavor of home, either to her or to
me."
Lena stopped short in her progress.
"Does the house belong to you or to her?"
"Technically to me, I believe--not that it makes the slightest
difference, dear."
"Then I should be mistress of it, not she?"
"I'm sure she'd be only too glad to turn the housekeeping cares over to
your pretty little hands," said Dick, smiling, but a little uneasily.
"She's a good deal of an invalid, you know. But there's plenty of time
to think of all these details. I suppose you've had to worry about the
little things until it's become a habit," he added in a kind of apology
to himself.
"I've been a bond-slave so long," said Lena, "that I'd like to feel
perfectly free and mistress of everything around me." She straightened
her back and squared her soft shoulders.
"So you shall be!" answered Dick happily. "Even of your husband."
"Oh, that, of course," said Lena with an enchanting pout. "Now here we
are, and it's very late. You must go. Good night."
"Good night," said Dick. "I suppose I must not keep you. To think I have
the unbelievable good fortune to kiss you good night, sweetheart."
Mrs. Quincy turned over in the lumpy bed which she and her daughter
shared and said, with a querulousness undiminished by her sleepiness,
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Lena Quincy, gallivanting around
at this hour of night. It ain't decent. But there!"
"I guess I know my business," Lena snapped.
She turned out the gas to undress in the dark rather than encourage her
mother's conversation. She needed to think. An awful problem had just
presented itself. How was she to get a trousseau?
It was in another mood that Dick Percival walked home. Whenever anything
very great and wonderful happens to us, we are apt to bow our heads and
cry, "What am I, that this should be given to me?" Doubtless he is the
noblest man who most often feels this exultant humility. This was Dick's
hour on the mountain. The depth of his own tenderness, the deliciousness
of his passion swept over him like a revelation, as he asked himself in
wonder how it could be that this love had sprung up at once, like
Aphrodite from the waves, where no one could have suspected such a
marvel. He himself had been without realization of how his passing
interest had deepened its roots until now they fed on every part of him.
Love had startled him like a stroke of lightning out of a clear sky, but
it was evident that it was no light that flashed out and then
disappeared. It had come to stay.
Then came self-reproach. He remembered with hot cheeks that he had
actually joked with Ellery about her in early days, and let himself be
bantered in return--cad that he was, incapable of appreciating at first
sight the woman he was to love. He had thought her an exquisite trifle,
almost too illusive to be taken seriously. Now that very illusiveness
was the thing that gripped him closest, like poetry and music and all
the finer elements of life, the most impossible to explain, the most
supreme in their dominion. Beauty meant all this. He found himself
repeating, "Beauty is truth. Truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth,
and all ye need to know." And Lena was beautiful. How beautiful! He
trembled in flesh and spirit at the vision of her face turned up to him
out of the black November darkness, at the memory of the fine texture of
her cheeks and lips.
He did not stop to ask himself whether he and Keats were agreed in their
definition of beauty. Moreover, poor Keats never had the delight of
anything so pink and golden and blue-eyed as Lena Quincy.