"Oh, I know," smiled the prima donna, "you're the Great Lover and all
that. But you never could talk as John did that evening on the porch--in
Iowa. He stood there and said, 'Mugs, you're going to regret this moment
for the rest of your life. There'll be nights when you'll wake up
shivering and crying and you'll want to kill yourself. Why? Because you
didn't marry me. Because you had your chance to marry me and turned it
down. Remember. Remember how I'm standing here talking to you--unknown--a
country boy. Remember that when you hear of me again.'
"'What are you going to do?' I asked.
"I'm going to be president of the United States,' he said. And he said it
so that there was truth in it. As I looked at him standing on the steps I
felt frightened to death. There he was, going to be president of the
United States, and there was I, throwing the greatest chance in the world
away. He knew I believed him and that made it worse. He went on talking in
a sort of oracular singsong that drove me mad.
"'I'm not asking you again. You've had your chance, Mugs. And you've
thrown it away. All right. It'll not be said afterward that John Marcey
made a fool of himself. Good-bye.'"
* * * * *
The prima donna sighed. "Yes," she went on, looking into her empty teacup;
"it was good-bye. He walked away, erect, his shoulders high, his body
swinging. And I sat there shivering. I had turned down a president of the
United States! Me, a gawky little Iowa girl. And, what was worse, I was in
love with him, too. Well, I remember sitting on the porch till the folks
came home from prayer meeting and I remember going to bed and lying awake
all night, crying and shivering.
"I didn't see John Marcey again. I stayed only a week longer and then I
came to Chicago to study music. My folks were able to finance me for a
time. But I never forgot him. It was John who had started me for Chicago.
And it was John who kept me practicing eight hours a day, studying and
practicing until I thought I'd drop.
"I was going to make good. When he became president I was going to be
somebody. I wasn't going to do what he said I would, wake up cursing
myself and remembering my lost chance. So I went right on working my head
off and finally it was Paris and finally it was a job in London. And I
never stopped working.
"But the funny part was that I gradually forgot about John Marcey. When I
had arrived as an opera singer he was entirely dead for me. But last month
I visited my home town. I was passing through and couldn't resist getting
off and looking up people I knew as a girl. My folks are dead, you know.
"And when I walked down the street--the same old funny little Main
Street--I remembered John Marcey. And, would you believe it, that same
feeling of fear came back to me as I'd had that night on the porch when he
made his 'remember' speech. I got curious as the devil about John and felt
afraid to inquire. But finally I was talking to an old, old man who runs
the drug-store on the corner of Main and Sixth streets there. I'd
recognized him through the window and gone inside and shaken hands; and I
asked him:
"'Do you remember John Marcey?'
"'Marcey--Marcey?' he repeated. 'Oh, yes. Old Marse. Why, yes. Sure.' And
he kept nodding his head. Then I asked with my heart in my mouth, 'What's
become of him?' And the old druggist who was looking out of his store
window adjusted his glasses and pointed with his finger. 'There he is.
There he is. Wait a minute. I'll call him.'
"And there was John, my president of the United States, hunched over on
the seat of a garbage wagon driving a woebegone nag down the street. I
grabbed hold of the druggist and said, 'Don't, I'll see him later.'
"Well, I couldn't stay in that town another minute. I hurried to the
station and waited for the next train and kept thinking of John driving
his garbage wagon, and his battered felt hat and his hangdog face until I
thought I'd go mad.
"That's all," laughed the prima donna, "That's my love story." And she
stared pensively into the empty teacup as the barytone moved a bit closer
and began:
"I'll tell you about a Spanish girl I met in Prague that'll interest
you--"