I
The pianist had struck up a lively two-step, and soon the floor was
covered with couples, each turning on its own axis, and all revolving
around a common centre, in obedience perhaps to the same law of motion
that governs the planetary systems. The dancing-hall was a long room,
with a waxed floor that glistened with the reflection of the lights from
the chandeliers. The walls were hung in paper of blue and white, above a
varnished hard wood wainscoting; the monotony of surface being broken by
numerous windows draped with curtains of dotted muslin, and by
occasional engravings and colored pictures representing the dances of
various nations, judiciously selected. The rows of chairs along the two
sides of the room were left unoccupied by the time the music was well
under way, for the pianist, a tall colored woman with long fingers and a
muscular wrist, played with a verve and a swing that set the feet of the
listeners involuntarily in motion.
The dance was sure to occupy the class for a quarter of an hour at
least, and the little dancing-mistress took the opportunity to slip away
to her own sitting-room, which was on the same floor of the block, for a
few minutes of rest. Her day had been a hard one. There had been a
matinee at two o'clock, a children's class at four, and at eight o'clock
the class now on the floor had assembled.
When she reached the sitting-room she gave a start of pleasure. A young
man rose at her entrance, and advanced with both hands extended--a tall,
broad-shouldered, fair-haired young man, with a frank and kindly
countenance, now lit up with the animation of pleasure. He seemed about
twenty-six or twenty-seven years old. His face was of the type one
instinctively associates with intellect and character, and it gave the
impression, besides, of that intangible something which we call race. He
was neatly and carefully dressed, though his clothing was not without
indications that he found it necessary or expedient to practice economy.
"Good-evening, Clara," he said, taking her hands in his; "I 've been
waiting for you five minutes. I supposed you would be in, but if you had
been a moment later I was going to the hall to look you up. You seem
tired to-night," he added, drawing her nearer to him and scanning her
features at short range. "This work is too hard; you are not fitted for
it. When are you going to give it up?"
"The season is almost over," she answered, "and then I shall stop for
the summer."
He drew her closer still and kissed her lovingly. "Tell me, Clara," he
said, looking down into her face,--he was at least a foot taller than
she,--"when I am to have my answer."
"Will you take the answer you can get to-night?" she asked with a wan
smile.
"I will take but one answer, Clara. But do not make me wait too long for
that. Why, just think of it! I have known you for six months."
"That is an extremely long time," said Clara, as they sat down side by
side.
"It has been an age," he rejoined. "For a fortnight of it, too, which
seems longer than all the rest, I have been waiting for my answer. I am
turning gray under the suspense. Seriously, Clara dear, what shall it
be? or rather, when shall it be? for to the other question there is but
one answer possible."
He looked into her eyes, which slowly filled with tears. She repulsed
him gently as he bent over to kiss them away.
"You know I love you, John, and why I do not say what you wish. You must
give me a little more time to make up my mind before I can consent to
burden you with a nameless wife, one who does not know who her mother
was"----
"She was a good woman, and beautiful, if you are at all like her."
"Or her father"----
"He was a gentleman and a scholar, if you inherited from him your mind
or your manners."
"It is good of you to say that, and I try to believe it. But it is a
serious matter; it is a dreadful thing to have no name."
"You are known by a worthy one, which was freely given you, and is
legally yours."
"I know--and I am grateful for it. After all, though, it is not my real
name; and since I have learned that it was not, it seems like a
garment--something external, accessory, and not a part of myself. It
does not mean what one's own name would signify."
"Take mine, Clara, and make it yours; I lay it at your feet. Some
honored men have borne it."
"Ah yes, and that is what makes my position the harder. Your
great-grandfather was governor of Connecticut."
"I have heard my mother say so."
"And one of your ancestors came over in the Mayflower."
"In some capacity--I have never been quite clear whether as ship's cook
or before the mast."
"Now you are insincere, John; but you cannot deceive me. You never spoke
in that way about your ancestors until you learned that I had none. I
know you are proud of them, and that the memory of the governor and the
judge and the Harvard professor and the Mayflower pilgrim makes you
strive to excel, in order to prove yourself worthy of them."
"It did until I met you, Clara. Now the one inspiration of my life is
the hope to make you mine."
"And your profession?"
"It will furnish me the means to take you out of this; you are not fit
for toil."
"And your book--your treatise that is to make you famous?"
"I have worked twice as hard on it and accomplished twice as much since
I have hoped that you might share my success."
"Oh! if I but knew the truth!" she sighed, "or could find it out! I
realize that I am absurd, that I ought to be happy. I love my
parents--my foster-parents--dearly. I owe them everything. Mother--poor,
dear mother!--could not have loved me better or cared for me more
faithfully had I been her own child. Yet--I am ashamed to say it--I
always felt that I was not like them, that there was a subtle difference
between us. They were contented in prosperity, resigned in misfortune; I
was ever restless, and filled with vague ambitions. They were good, but
dull. They loved me, but they never said so. I feel that there is
warmer, richer blood coursing in my veins than the placid stream that
crept through theirs."
"There will never be any such people to me as they were," said her
lover, "for they took you and brought you up for me."
"Sometimes," she went on dreamily, "I feel sure that I am of good
family, and the blood of my ancestors seems to call to me in clear and
certain tones. Then again when my mood changes, I am all at sea--I feel
that even if I had but simply to turn my hand to learn who I am and
whence I came, I should shrink from taking the step, for fear that what
I might learn would leave me forever unhappy."
"Dearest," he said, taking her in his arms, while from the hall and down
the corridor came the softened strains of music, "put aside these
unwholesome fancies. Your past is shrouded in mystery. Take my name, as
you have taken my love, and I 'll make your future so happy that you
won't have time to think of the past. What are a lot of musty, mouldy
old grandfathers, compared with life and love and happiness? It 's hardly
good form to mention one's ancestors nowadays, and what 's the use of
them at all if one can't boast of them?"
"It 's all very well of you to talk that way," she rejoined. "But suppose
you should marry me, and when you become famous and rich, and patients
flock to your office, and fashionable people to your home, and every one
wants to know who you are and whence you came, you 'll be obliged to
bring out the governor, and the judge, and the rest of them. If you
should refrain, in order to forestall embarrassing inquiries about _my_
ancestry, I should have deprived you of something you are entitled to,
something which has a real social value. And when people found out all
about you, as they eventually would from some source, they would want to
know--we Americans are a curious people--who your wife was, and you
could only say"----
"The best and sweetest woman on earth, whom I love unspeakably."
"You know that is not what I mean. You could only say--a Miss Nobody,
from Nowhere."
"A Miss Hohlfelder, from Cincinnati, the only child of worthy German
parents, who fled from their own country in '49 to escape political
persecution--an ancestry that one surely need not be ashamed of."
"No; but the consciousness that it was not true would be always with
me, poisoning my mind, and darkening my life and yours."
"Your views of life are entirely too tragic, Clara," the young man
argued soothingly. "We are all worms of the dust, and if we go back far
enough, each of us has had millions of ancestors; peasants and serfs,
most of them; thieves, murderers, and vagabonds, many of them, no doubt;
and therefore the best of us have but little to boast of. Yet we are all
made after God's own image, and formed by his hand, for his ends; and
therefore not to be lightly despised, even the humblest of us, least of
all by ourselves. For the past we can claim no credit, for those who
made it died with it. Our destiny lies in the future."
"Yes," she sighed, "I know all that. But I am not like you. A woman is
not like a man; she cannot lose herself in theories and generalizations.
And there are tests that even all your philosophy could not endure.
Suppose you should marry me, and then some time, by the merest accident,
you should learn that my origin was the worst it could be--that I not
only had no name, but was not entitled to one."
"I cannot believe it," he said, "and from what we do know of your
history it is hardly possible. If I learned it, I should forget it,
unless, perchance, it should enhance your value in my eyes, by stamping
you as a rare work of nature, an exception to the law of heredity, a
triumph of pure beauty and goodness over the grosser limitations of
matter. I cannot imagine, now that I know you, anything that could make
me love you less. I would marry you just the same--even if you were one
of your dancing-class to-night."
"I must go back to them," said Clara, as the music ceased.
"My answer," he urged, "give me my answer!"
"Not to-night, John," she pleaded. "Grant me a little longer time to
make up my mind--for your sake."
"Not for my sake, Clara, no."
"Well--for mine." She let him take her in his arms and kiss her again.
"I have a patient yet to see to-night," he said as he went out. "If I am
not detained too long, I may come back this way--if I see the lights in
the hall still burning. Do not wonder if I ask you again for my answer,
for I shall be unhappy until I get it."