JORDAN IS A MAN
When King turned back again to face the front his heart was thumping
prodigiously. Almost he was certain it had been Anne Linton; yet the
explanation--if there were one--was not to be imagined. And if it had
been Anne Linton, why should she have refused to know him? There could
have been little difficulty for her in identifying him, even though she
had seen him last lying flat on his back on a hospital bed. And if there
had been a chance of her not knowing him--there was Red Pepper.
It was Anne. It could not be Anne. Between these two convictions King's
head was whirling. Whoever it was, she had dared to look straight into
his eyes in broad daylight at a distance of not more than four feet. He
had seen into the very depths of her own bewildering beauty, and the
encounter, always supposing her to be the person of whom he had thought
continuously for four months, was a thing to keep him thinking about her
whether he would or no.
"Anything wrong?" asked Burns's voice in its coolest tones. "I suspect
I was something of an idiot to give you such a big dose of this at the
first trial."
"I'm all right, thank you." And King sat up very straight in the car to
prove it. Nevertheless, when he was at home again he was not sorry to be
peremptorily ordered to lie supine on his back for at least three hours.
It was not long after this that King was able to bring about the thing
he most desired--a talk with Mrs. Burns. She came to see him one July
day, at his request, at an hour when he knew his mother must be away.
With her he went straight to his point; the moment the first greetings
were over and he had been congratulated on his ability to spend a few
hours each day at his desk, he began upon the subject uppermost in his
thoughts. He told her the story of his encounter with the girl in the
car, and asked her if she thought it could have been Miss Linton.
She looked at him musingly. "Do you prefer to think it was or was not?"
she asked.
"Are you going to answer accordingly?"
"Not at all. I was wondering which I wanted to think myself. I wish I
had been with you. I should have known."
"Would you?" King spoke eagerly. "Would you mind telling me how?"
"I can't tell you how. Of course I came to know her looks much better
than you; it really isn't strange that after seeing her only twice you
couldn't be sure. I don't think any change of dress or environment could
have hidden her from me. The question is, of course, why--if it was
she--she should have chosen not to seem to know you--unless--"
"Yes--"
She looked straight at him. "Unless--she is not the poor girl she seemed
to be. And that explanation doesn't appeal to me. I have known of poor
girls pretending to be rich, but I have never, outside of a sensational
novel, known a rich girl to pretend to be poor, unless for a visit to a
poor quarter for charitable purposes. What possible object could there
be in a girl's going about selling books unless she needed to do it? And
she allowed me--" She stopped, shaking her head. "No, Jordan, that was
not our little friend--or if it was, she was in that car by some curious
chance, not because she belonged there."
"So you're going on trusting her?" was King's abstract of these
reflections. He scanned her closely.
She nodded. "Until I have stronger proof to the contrary than your
looking into a pair of beautiful eyes. Have you never observed, my
friend, how many pairs of beautiful eyes there are in the world?"
He shook his head. "I haven't bothered much about them, except now and
then for a bit of nonsense making."
"But this pair you, too, are going to go on trusting?"
"I am. If that girl was Miss Linton she had a reason for not speaking.
If it wasn't"--he drew a deep breath--"well, I don't know exactly how to
explain that!"
"I do," said Ellen Burns, smiling. "She thought she would never see you
again, and she yielded to a girlish desire to look hard at--a real man."
It was this speech which, in spite of himself, lingered in King's mind
after she was gone, for the balm there was in it--a balm she had
perfectly understood and meant to put there. Well she guessed what his
disablement meant to him--in spite of the hope of complete recovery--how
little he seemed to himself like the man he was before.
Certainly it was nothing short of real manhood which prompted the talk
he had with his mother one day not long after this. She brought him a
letter, and she was scrutinizing it closely as she came toward him. He
was fathoms deep in his work and did not observe her until she spoke.
"Whom can you possibly have as a correspondent in this town, my son?"
she inquired, her eyes upon the postmark, which was that of a small city
a hundred miles away. It was one in which lived an old school friend of
whom she had never spoken, to her recollection, in King's hearing, for
the reason that the family had since suffered deep disgrace in the eyes
of the world, and she had been inexpressibly shocked thereby.
King looked up. He was always hoping for a word from Anne Linton, and
now, suddenly, it had come, just a week after the encounter with the
girl in the car--which had been going, as it happened, in the opposite
direction from the city of the postmark. He recognized instantly the
handwriting upon the plain, white business envelope--an interesting
handwriting, clear and black, without a single feminine flourish. He
took the letter in his hand and studied it.
"It is from Miss Linton," he said, "and I am very glad to hear from her.
It is the first time she has written since she went away--over two
months ago."
He spoke precisely as he would have spoken if it had been a letter from
any friend he had. It was like him to do this, and the surer another man
would have been to try to conceal his interest in the letter the surer
was Jordan King to proclaim it. The very fact that this announcement was
certain to rouse his mother's suspicion that the affair was of moment
to him was enough to make him tell her frankly that she was quite right.
He laid the letter on the desk before him unopened, and went on with his
work. Mrs. King stood still and looked at him a moment before moving
quietly away, and disturbance was written upon her face. She knew her
son's habit of finishing one thing before he took up another, but she
understood also that he wished to be alone when he should read this
letter. She left the room, but soon afterward she softly passed the open
door, and she saw that the letter lay open before him and that his head
was bent over it. The words before him were these:
DEAR MR. KING:
I had not meant to write to you for much longer than this, but
I find myself so anxious to know how you are that I am
yielding to the temptation. I may as well confess that I am
just a little lonely to-night, in spite of having had a pretty
good day with the little book--rather better than usual.
Sometimes I almost wish I hadn't spent that fortnight with
Mrs. Burns, I find myself missing her so. And yet, how can one
be sorry for any happy thing that comes to one? As I look back
on them now, though I am well and strong again, those days of
convalescence in the hospital stand out as among the happiest
in my life. The pleasant people, the flowers, the notes, all
the incidents of that time, not the least among them Franz's
music, stay in my memory like a series of pictures.
Do you care to tell me how you come on? If so you may write to
me, care of general delivery, in this town, at any time for
the next five days. I shall be so glad to hear.
ANNE LINTON.
King looked up as his mother approached. He folded the letter and put
it into his pocket.
"Mother," he said, "I may as well tell you something. You won't approve
of it, and that is why I must tell you. From the hour I first saw Miss
Linton I've been unable to forget her. I know, by every sign, that she
is all she seems to be. I can't let her go out of my life without an
effort to keep her. I'm going to keep her, if I can."
Two hours later R.P. Burns, M.D., was summoned to the bedside of Mrs.
Alexander King. He sat down beside the limp form, felt the pulse, laid
his hand upon the shaking shoulder of the prostrate lady, who had gone
down before her son's decision, gentle though his manner with her had
been. She had argued, prayed, entreated, wept, but she had not been able
to shake his purpose. Now she was reaping the consequences of her
agitation.
"My son, my only boy," she moaned as Burns asked her to tell him her
trouble, "after all these years of his being such a man, to change
suddenly into a willful boy again! It's inconceivable; it's not
possible! Doctor, you must tell him, you must argue with him. He can't
marry this girl, he can't! Why, he doesn't even know the place she comes
from, to say nothing of who she is--her family, her position in life.
She must be a common sort of creature to follow him up so; you know she
must. I can't have it; I will not have it! You must tell him so!"
Burns considered. There was a curious light in his eyes. "My dear lady,"
he said gently at length, "Jordan is a man; you can't control him. He is
a mighty manly man, too--as his frankly telling you his intention
proves. Most sons would have kept their plans to themselves, and simply
have brought the mother home her new daughter some day without any
warning. As for Miss Linton, I assure you she is a lady--as it seems to
me you must have seen for yourself."
"She is clever; she could act the part of a lady, no doubt," moaned the
one who possessed a clear title to that form of address. "But she might
be anything. Why didn't she tell you something of herself? Jordan could
not say that you knew the least thing about her. People with fine family
records are not so mysterious. There is something wrong about her--I
know it--I know it! Oh, I can't have it so; I can't! You must stop it,
Doctor; you must!"
"She spent two weeks in our home," Burns said. "During that time there
was no test she did not stand. Come, Mrs. King, you know that it doesn't
take long to discover the flaw in any metal. She rang true at every
touch. She's a girl of education, of refinement--why, Ellen came to feel
plenty of real affection for her before she left us, and you know that
means a good deal. As for the mystery about her, what's that? Most
people talk too much about their affairs. If, as we think, she has been
brought up in circumstances very different from these we find her in, it
isn't strange that she doesn't want to tell us all about the change."
But his patient continued to moan, and he could give her no consolation.
For a time he sat quietly beside the couch where lay the long and
slender form, and he was thinking things over. The room was veiled in a
half twilight, partly the effect of closing day and partly that of drawn
shades. The deep and sobbing breaths continued until suddenly Burns's
hand was laid firmly upon the hand which clutched a handkerchief wet
with many tears. He spoke now in a new tone, one she had never before
heard from him addressed to herself:
"This," he said, "isn't worthy of you, my friend."
It was as if her breath were temporarily suspended while she listened.
People were not accustomed to tell Mrs. Alexander King that her course
of action was unworthy of her.
"No man or woman has a right to dictate to another what he shall do,
provided the thing contemplated is not an offense against another. You
have no right to set your will against your son's when it is a matter
of his life's happiness."
She seized on this last phrase. "But that's why I do oppose him. I want
him to be happy--heaven knows I do! He can't be happy--this way."
"How do you know that? You don't know it. You are just as likely to make
him bitterly unhappy by opposing him as by letting him alone. And I can
tell you one thing surely, Mrs. King: Jordan will do as he wishes in
spite of you, and all you will gain by opposition will be not a gain,
but a sacrifice--of his love."
She shivered. "How can you think he will be so selfish?"
Burns had some ado to keep his rising temper down. "Selfish--to marry
the woman he wants instead of the woman you want? That's an old, old
argument of selfish mothers."
The figure on the couch stiffened. "Doctor Burns! How can you speak so,
when all I ask for is my son's best good?" The words ended in a wail.
"You think you do, dear lady. What you really want is--your own way."
Suddenly she sat up, staring at him. His clear gaze met her clouded one,
his sane glance confronted her wild one. She lifted her shaking hand
with a gesture of dismissal. But there was a new experience in store
for Jordan King's mother.
Burns leaned forward, and took the delicate hand of his hysterical
patient in his own.
"No, no," he said, smiling, "you don't mean that; you are not quite
yourself. I am Jordan's friend and yours. I have said harsh things to
you; it was the only way. I love your boy as I would a younger brother,
and I want you to keep him because I can understand what the loss of him
would mean to you. But you must know that you can't tie a man's heart to
you with angry commands, nor with tears and reproaches. You can tie
it--tight--by showing sympathy and understanding in this crisis of his
life. Believe me, I know."
His tone was very winning; his manner--now that he had said his
say--though firm, was gentle, and he held her hand in a way that did
much toward quieting her. Many patients in danger of losing self-control
had known the strengthening, soothing touch of that strong hand. Red
Pepper was not accustomed to misuse this power of his, which came very
near being hypnotic, but neither did he hesitate to use it when the
occasion called as loudly as did this one.
And presently Mrs. King was lying quietly on her couch again, her eyes
closed, the beating of her agitated pulses slowly quieting. And Burns,
bending close, was saying before he left her: "That's a brave woman.
Ladies are lovely things, but I respect women more. Only a mighty fine
one could be the mother of my friend Jord, and I knew she would meet
this issue like the Spartan she knows how to be."
If, as he stole away downstairs--leaving his patient in the hands of a
somewhat long-suffering maid--he was saying to himself things of a quite
different sort, let him not be blamed for insincerity. He had at the
last used the one stimulant against which most of us are powerless: the
call to be that which we believe another thinks us.