Spring came and with it the Todds. All that winter they had been so
far from me, often so far from my thoughts even, that the remembrance
of them would bring a shock like a sudden consciousness of sin or the
recollection of a duty left undone. My fiancée's communication with me
had dwindled to a weekly post-card. At first these had carried to me
some little hint of affection, but latterly Gladys had contented
herself with commonplace scrawls announcing that this was where they
were staying for a few days or that the window in the hotel marked with
a cross was hers. And my replies, so conscientiously written every
Saturday night, had become rather brief and formal statements of facts.
I had long since ceased to take Miss Minion's stairs two steps at a
time in my eagerness to secure the portly epistle from abroad; the
post-card which had filled its place I regarded with languid interest.
You can imagine, then, that it was with surprise that I found, one
evening in May, a fat letter directed to me in the tall, angular hand.
The reading of it was like a blow which restored me to my senses. I
had awakened to find myself not only engaged but on the verge of
marriage. The Todds were coming home!
If my fiancée had neglected me for many months, she now overwhelmed me
with sixty closely written pages of devotion. It was as though on
coming face to face with steamer tickets she, too, had awakened from a
dream and found herself engaged. It might well be true that the few
weeks in London before embarking on the homeward stage had been her
first opportunity to sit down with pen and paper to have what she
called "a talk" with me. A year before that talk would have been
highly gratifying and flattering, but now I read with a critical eye,
and while I could find no fault with the sentiments expressed, the form
of the expression irritated me. It was natural that the sentiment pent
up in those months of hurried sight-seeing should break forth in this
moment of leisure, but to me, grown practical, the form would have been
more effective if direct and simple. In those days Penelope was so
distant from me, so cold and implacable, that I might have turned to
Gladys Todd with a thought that here at last was peace, an end of
absurd and inordinate ambition, and perhaps content. Had she written
to me simply that she was coming home, I might have soothed myself with
the idea that I, too, was going home, back to the simple ways to which
I was born, back, after all, to my own people. But Gladys Todd, grown
more cultured than ever in the grand tour and revealing her mind in
poetical phrases, was as much a being of another world than mine as was
Penelope set in her frame of costly simplicity. I should go to the
pier to meet her, I said. I knew that it could not be gladly, but I
was bound by a sense of honor, by the remembrance of four years through
which she had waited for me so patiently, always cheerful and firm in
her faith in my power to win a home for us both. Because I was so
bound, I vowed that she should never know the change in me, and then if
I set myself to the task I might fan into flame the dead embers of my
boyish infatuation.
So I stood on the pier that May morning when the Todds came home. So
grim was my determination that I might have stood there with a smiling,
expectant face had I not in that very hour seen Penelope. I had held
to that cherished custom of mine to begin my day with a walk up-town,
for always there was a bare chance that I might have a glimpse of her.
There was poor consolation in her passing bow; but I could not let her
go altogether out of my existence, and even her distant greeting served
to keep me in the number of her acquaintances. This day I wanted to
take a formal farewell, as if in doffing my hat I renounced all my
claims, abandoned all my idle dreams, and set myself to the right path.
Of course, I met her, and for a time I had cause to regret that I had
not taken the direct way to the pier, for Penelope that morning, as she
drove by me rapidly down the avenue, was the embodiment of loveliness,
a loveliness beyond the reach of him whom fortune held to the sidewalk.
Her horses seemed to step with pride at being a part of such a perfect
turnout, and the men on the box to have turned to statues by the
congealing of their self-importance. Seeing her, erect, a slender,
quiet figure in filmy black, with a white-gloved hand on her parasol,
you forgave the horses for lifting their feet so mincingly and the men
for staring before them with such hauteur. She whirled by me in all
that costly simplicity. I doffed my hat. She saw me and, strangely
enough, smiled at me more kindly than in many days. I watched until
even the men's tall hats were lost in the maze at Twenty-third Street,
and as I watched I said my silent farewell to Penelope Blight.
On the pier, in the cheering, expectant throng that watched the steamer
turning into her dock, I leaned on my cane and fixed my eyes with
resolution on the ship which was bringing me a life of happiness. But
I was silent as I pondered over the radiant smile with which I had been
greeted as the carriage swept by. A week ago Penelope had given her
head just a tilt of recognition; this morning she had seemed genuinely
glad to see me, as though it were a pleasure to know that I lived in
the same world. This afternoon, I said forgetfully, I would call upon
her again--I had not called for so long. Then I heard my name. I came
back to the pier and the cheering crowd, and, looking up, saw Gladys
Todd.
Beside me there was a young man who brandished his cane to the peril of
his neighbors' heads while he shouted again and again to his inamorata.
My duty was to evince just such joy, but when I tried to call her name
my lips refused to form it, and I only raised my hat and smiled.
Gladys, standing by the ship's rail, waved her hand at me. Then she
seemed to forget me entirely, and turned to a youngish-looking, stout
man at her side.
The stout man began to interest me, because Gladys had written to me
that she would be on deck this day straining her eyes to the shore
where her knight would be waiting. Now it seemed as though a brief
glance at her knight was sufficient, and that she found more charm in
this portly fellow traveller.
Ex-Judge Bundy had small side-whiskers, and always wore a large derby
and a frock coat, sometimes black, sometimes pale gray. This
youngish-looking stout man was clean shaven, and he had the ruddy skin
of the out-of-doors. His hat was brown felt, with its crown wound
around with a white pugree--a rather affected hat, but it harmonized
with his rough gray tweeds. His appearance was English; he might be, I
thought, the governor of some island colony. But when he raised
himself from the rail on which he had been leaning, slipped one hand
into the breast of his coat, and turned to address Doctor Todd,
speaking as though he were Jupiter and the doctor Mercury disguised in
dingy clerical clothes, I recognized the patron of my alma mater.
They came down the gangway one by one, the ex-judge leading; then
Gladys Todd, rather mannish in a straight-cut English suit and a sailor
hat, slung from her shoulder a camera, and nestling in one arm a
Yorkshire terrier; then Doctor Todd, unchanged, in the same clothes in
which he had sailed, for he was one of those men who could go twice
around the world and collect nothing but statistics and postcards; then
Mrs. Todd with her two greatest acquisitions in bold evidence, a
lorgnette and a caged paroquet.
For a moment I felt that I had come solely to welcome ex-Judge Bundy
home. He was first to get my hand, and he held it while he told me how
kind it was of me to take so much trouble; it was good to be home; he
was always glad to get back to America--speaking as though these
expeditions were annual events. He might have gone on and presented me
to his friends the Todds had I not disengaged myself and turned to my
fiancée with a hand outstretched.
"Look out for Blossom," she warned me, hardly more than touching my
finger-tips. "Blossom always snaps at strangers."
Blossom justified the statement by barking viciously at me.
"I am so glad to have you back again, Gladys," I said, speaking in a
low voice, for I had an instinctive feeling that ex-Judge Bundy had
turned his head, though ostensibly he was busy with porters.
"And it's so nice to see you," she replied, and her gaze wandered
vaguely about the pier. She had written that it would be so good just
to let her eyes rest on me, but now their appetite was quickly
satisfied, and it nettled me.
I spoke to her again, louder, reiterating my delight, and she raised
her eyebrows and answered that she was glad that I was pleased. Doctor
Todd and Mrs. Todd, however, were not so casual in their greeting. The
doctor took both of my hands and declared that this was a happy family
reunion. Mrs. Todd kissed me on both cheeks and gave me the paroquet
to carry. As we made our way through the crowd, she asked me if I did
not think that Gladys had improved, but to myself, as I watched her
striding ahead of us in her mannish clothes, I said that she certainly
looked quite trim and smart, and I found myself wondering if she still
painted tulips on black plaques or would deign to sing "Douglas, tender
and true"? Perhaps, to her mind, broadened by a year of travel, I was
but a provincial fellow, whose musical education had not gone beyond
"The Minute Guns at Sea," who, never having seen the galleries of
Europe, could have no appreciation of art.
I was irritated. I wanted to set myself right in her mind, to show her
that I, too, had grown broader and wiser. But there was no
opportunity. She was busy either with the trunks or in keeping Blossom
quiet. During the drive to the hotel the situation was little better.
We were in an ancient barouche, piled high with luggage, Mrs. Todd,
Gladys, and I, ex-Judge Bundy having tactfully suggested that he take
the doctor with him in a hansom.
Mrs. Todd was voluble. She was artfully sentimental. She spoke of the
day when, as a young girl, she had left home for six weeks, and she
recalled her emotions as she came back to find the doctor waiting for
her at the station. They were married shortly afterward. How history
repeats itself! But Gladys was not impressed by the coincidence. She
merely said that she was glad to have Blossom ashore again, for at
times the dog had been fearfully sea-sick. I could have strangled
Blossom. Nothing is more humiliating to a man than to discover that a
woman's love for him is waning. Here is a reflection on his power of
fascination. But it is doubly humiliating to find himself supplanted
by a little woolly dog, to see the caresses which he would claim as his
showered with ostentation on a diminutive animal. At that moment it
seemed that Blossom had supplanted me. He nestled in her arm, and when
for the tenth time I expressed my delight in having her home, she
turned from me and stroked the creature's silky back. Time and again
I, striving to do my duty, charged against the steel points of her
indifference. Even Mrs. Todd noticed my plight. As we were leaving
the carriage at the Broadway hotel whither Judge Bundy had led the way
she whispered to me that evidently three was a crowd, and acting on
that belief, she contrived to leave the two of us alone in the great
parlor of the hotel while the doctor and the Judge held a colloquy with
the clerk.
This Gladys Todd, sitting amid the faded grandeur of the hotel parlor,
this handsome mannish woman in a tweed suit, with a snappy dog in her
arm, was not the same girl beside whom I had sat ages ago, watching her
paint tulips and sprays of wisteria, not the same whose voice had
joined with mine in the sentimental strains of "Annie Laurie." But I
felt that I had a duty, and I sat down on the sofa and held out my hand
and in a voice of pleading asked her again if she was not glad to see
me.
"No, David," she said, turning her eyes downward to Blossom.
I was quite unprepared for such a frank admission, and it came like a
blow. In all my thought of Gladys Todd I had quite accustomed myself
to the confession that I did not look with pleasure to her home-coming,
but that she might regard me in the same light never occurred to me.
This knowledge was humiliating. I had been holding myself to the
strict line of duty and honor, but I had never suspected that she might
be impelled by exactly the same motives. Now I was hurt. As I sat
staring at her I cast about for the reason of the change. In my case
it was another woman, but a superlatively wonderful woman. In hers it
might be another man, a superlatively wonderful man. The idea was not
pleasant. In my case there was at least the excuse of old
acquaintance. In hers the change must have come in a single week at
sea, where miles of walking on the deck and hours leaning on the rail
with elbows close together might have revealed some kindred spirit.
There flashed to me her action in turning from me, the watcher on the
pier, to ex-Judge Bundy, and in him losing all thought of me. But
ex-Judge Bundy was not a superlatively wonderful man. He was only a
rich widower with two married daughters, and was old enough to be her
father. My estimate of my own worth was not so modest that I could
conceive of my interests ever being seriously jeopardized by this
pompous maker of nails. It was pleasanter to think that the fault lay
rather in my own unworthiness than in another's worth, and my pride
urged me to combat her, to prove that while I might not be all that a
woman of her ideals could ask, yet my shortcomings were those of my
fellows in mass and not of the individual.
"I do not understand, Gladys," I said, and I held out my hand to take
hers and to reassert my old ascendancy, but I was foiled by Blossom,
who darted at me with such fierceness as to compel me to draw back.
"David, I'm so sorry," she said. She looked me in the eyes and spoke
with the even voice of one who had entire command of herself. "The
plain truth is that I have made a great mistake. I really thought I
cared for you."
"And now you think you don't," I said, brushing aside such an absurdity
with a wave of my hand. "Nonsense! After four years, you can not tell
me that you have suddenly discovered that you never cared for me. I
can not give you up for some absurd whim."
She shook her head. "It is not a whim. I see clearly now. We were
very young when we became engaged, and I didn't understand how serious
the step really was. In the last week at sea I have had time to think
it all over, and now I know it best that after this we be just
friends--nothing more. You will forget me. You will find another
woman worthier of you."
Little as I knew of women, I realized that while these last two
statements might be perfectly true, to accept them as true would sever
the last strand of the cord which bound us. At that moment I did not
want to lose Gladys Todd. She was very lovely as she sat there, with
her eyes downcast, caressing her dog. She was the promised reward of
my years of work. For her I had labored, scrimped and saved, cramped
myself in a narrow room in a boarding-house, and almost shunned my
fellows, to realize our dream of the little house on the bit of green.
At that moment the dream was very dear to me and I could not see it
wrecked for some whim. I grew belligerent. I reached out my hand
again, as though by mere physical power I would prove my unchanging
mind, but again Blossom was on guard.
"I shall not forget you," I said, and I folded my arms with grim
determination and fixed my eyes on her face to break her by mere
will-power. And then to what untruth did pride drive me? "I have not
changed. I shall never change, Gladys. I love you now more than ever,
and I will not give you up."
The light in her eyes was not quite so cold, nor was her voice so even
and at her command. "I am sorry, David, but you must."
"But I won't," I returned.
"Oh, why do you drive me to it?" she cried with a gesture of despair.
"Can't you see, David, that there is some one else to be considered?"
"Some one else?" I exclaimed.
"I didn't think you would be so ungenerous--so selfish," she said in a
low voice, while her hands played rapidly over Blossom's head. "I have
tried to be honorable and fair to you. But he was so kind, so good--he
is so lonely----"
"He--who is he?" I demanded, in my anger abandoning all effort to hold
to the honorable course to which I had set myself.
"You should not ask me," she replied, her voice growing hard. "After I
had come to know him, to know how fine he was, I really tried to keep
on caring for you, David, but I simply couldn't. I am fond of you, of
course, but not in the way I thought. You are too young. It is a
mistake for a woman to marry a man of her own age. She should marry
one whom she can look up to, honor and respect. Love in a cottage is
well enough to read of, I suppose, but enduring love must be built on
something more."
I wanted to laugh at myself for the fool I had been. I arose. It was
useless to sit longer with folded arms and determined eyes fixed on her
face, to break her will by hypnotic power. I knew that I was defeated,
and however better defeat might be than victory, judged in wisdom, it
was not pleasant to a man of spirit. I stood before her pulling on a
glove and she looked up at me with a suggestion of defiance. I was not
heart-broken. I felt that I should be, but I knew that I was suffering
only in my pride. I wanted to sit down again in friendly fashion and
tell her how hard I had tried to do my duty, that I too loved another,
and that now she had made the way easy for me, but I refrained from
such petty revenge.
I held out my hand. "I wish you all happiness, Gladys," I said. "You
must not trouble about me. No doubt you have chosen wisely."
"You are a dear, good boy, David," she said, rising and addressing me
in a motherly tone as though she had suddenly attained twice my years.
"You will find another woman more worthy of you--I know you will. And
when you come to Harlansburg you must bring her to see us. We shall be
such good friends."
To Harlansburg? The whole story was clear in my mind. I remembered
the Egyptian picture, the pyramids, the camels, and young Marshall's
warning. And I had been so blind that a moment since I was saying that
if another man had wrought this changed mind in Gladys Todd he must be
a superlatively wonderful man. After all, the superlatively wonderful
man was ex-Judge Bundy. Now the blow to my pride was fairly crushing.
It did seem that I had a few natural qualities which should have
weighed in the scales against such a rival. But if I had youth, he had
wealth; if I had promise, he had the same promise of youth fulfilled in
giant nail works; if I offered a vine-clad cottage on a bit of green,
he could give the big gray-stone house with many turrets, the lawn with
the marble lions and perfect terraces sloping down to the ornate fence.
The very absurdity of the situation saved me from regret.
Gladys Todd was looking at me with narrowed eyes. I think she expected
some outburst of emotion. Perhaps she felt sorry for the pain that she
had caused me. But as I looked at her and remembered the past, as I
thought of the judge, the house, and the marble lions, even my wounded
pride was forgotten. I checked the smile which was threading my lips.
I took my congé as a man should, gravely, with head bowed under the
crushing blow, with eyes downcast as though they would never again look
up into the joyous sunlight. I turned and left the room.
By the rule, I should have looked back, hesitated, and gone on. But my
mind was filled with the fear of meeting Doctor Todd or Mrs. Todd, or
worse, Judge Bundy. How to treat Judge Bundy, did I meet him, was not
clear--whether to pass him with a haughty stare, or to stop and
congratulate him, or even thank him. Discreetly I followed the dark
windings of the hall and left the hotel by a private entrance. In the
street I looked up into the sunshine. I was free. I could not
dissemble with myself any longer, and I turned to the avenue with a
quick and joyous step. A new life had opened to me and I was stepping
into it unburdened, and with a prize to fight for. In those few
moments Gladys Todd had gone into the past. She was hardly more than a
shadow to me now, hardly more real than Mr. Pound or Miss Spinner or
any other of the dim figures in my memory. Before me was Penelope--the
future and Penelope. Her world was not my world, but I vowed that I
would make it mine.
Perhaps, I said, I shall see her again this very morning and perhaps
she will greet me again with that same kindly, glorious smile. And
surely she would smile did she know that I was free from the yoke to
which I had bent myself in a moment of forgetfulness. My duty had been
to Penelope since that day when we rode from the clearing, and from
that day my heart had always been with her. Reading from the past, her
destiny and mine were written before me in clear, bold letters. How
good the world was! How bright the day! How quick my step as I turned
up-town!
And I saw Penelope. She bowed to me from a hansom, and I answered,
beaming. I halted. Herbert Talcott was sitting at her side. He
stared at me, tipped his hat brusquely, then turned to her and made
some laughing remark.
I stood looking after the receding hansom until it disappeared in the
maze of traffic. I took my congé as a man does sometimes, with my head
bowed under the crushing blow, and my eyes downcast, knowing in my
heart that for me the sunshine could nevermore be joyous.