_In Which a Little Bronze Boy Grins in the Dark; and in Which Mary
Forgets That There is Any One Else in the House._
Up-stairs among his books Roger Poole heard Mary come in. With the
curtains drawn behind him to shut out the light, he looked down into
the streaming night, and saw Porter drive away alone.
Then Mary's footstep on the stairs; her raised voice as she greeted
Aunt Isabelle, who had waited up for her. A door was shut, and again
the house sank into silence.
Roger turned to his books, but not to read. The old depression was
upon him. In the glow of his arrival, he had been warmed by the hope
that things could be different; here in this hospitable house he had,
perchance, found a home. So he had gone down to find that he was an
outsider--an alien--old where they were young, separated from Barry and
Porter and Mary by years of dark experience.
To him, at this moment, Mary Ballard stood for a symbol of the things
which he had lost. Her youth and light-heartedness, her high courage,
and now, perhaps, her romance. He knew the look that was in Porter
Bigelow's eyes when they had rested upon her. The look of a man who
claims--his own. And behind Bigelow's pleasant and perfunctory
greeting Roger had felt a subtle antagonism. He smiled bitterly. No
man need fear him. He was out of the running. He was done with love,
with romance, with women, forever. A woman had spoiled his life.
Yet, if before the other, he had met Mary Ballard? The possibilities
swept over him. His life to-day would have been different. He would
be facing the world, not turning his back to it.
Brooding over the dying fire, his eyes were stern. If it had been his
fault, he would have taken his punishment without flinching. But to be
overthrown by an act of chivalry--to be denied the expression of that
which surged within him. Daily he bent over a desk, doing the work
that any man might do, he who had been carried on the shoulders of his
fellow students, he whose voice had rung with a clarion call!
In the lower hall, a door was again opened, and now there were
footsteps ascending. Then he heard a little laugh. "I've found
her--Aunt Isabelle, she insists upon going up."
He clicked off his light and very carefully opened his door. Mary was
in the lower hall, the heavy gray cat hugged up in her arms. She wore
a lace boudoir cap, and a pale blue dressing-gown trailed after her.
Seen thus, she was exquisitely feminine. Faintly through his
consciousness flitted Porter Bigelow's name for her--Contrary Mary.
Why Contrary? Was there another side which he had not seen? He had
heard her flaming words to Barry, "If I were a man--I'd make the world
move----" and he had been for the moment repelled. He had no sympathy
with modern feminine rebellions. Women were women. Men were men. The
things which they had in common were love, and that which followed, the
home, the family. Beyond these things their lives were divided,
necessarily, properly.
He groped his way back through the darkness to the tower window, opened
it and leaned out. The rain beat upon his face, the wind blew his hair
back, and fluttered the ends of his loose tie. Below him lay the
storm-swept city, its lights faint and flickering. He remembered a
test which he had chosen on a night like this.
"O Lord, Thou art my God. I will exalt Thee, I will praise Thy name,
for Thou hast done wonderful things; Thou hast been a strength to the
poor, a strength to the needy in distress . . . a refuge from the
storm----"
How the words came back to him, out of that vivid past. But
to-night--why, there was no--God! Was he the fool who had once seen
God--in a storm?
He shut the window, and finding a heavy coat and an old cap put them
on. Then he made his way, softly, down the tower steps to the side
door. Mary had pointed out to him that this entrance would make it
possible for him to go and come as he pleased. To-night it pleased him
to walk in the beating rain.
At the far end of the garden there was an old fountain, in which a
bronze boy rode on a bronze dolphin. The basin of the fountain was
filled with sodden leaves. A street lamp at the foot of the terrace
illumined the bronze boy's face so that it seemed to wear a twisted
grin. It was as if he laughed at the storm and at life, defying the
elements with his sardonic mirth.
Back and forth, restlessly, went the lonely man, hating to enter again
the rooms which only a few hours before had seemed a refuge. It would
have been better to have stayed in his last cheap boarding-house,
better to have kept away from this place which brought memories--better
never to have seen this group of young folk who were gay as he had once
been gay--better never to have seen--Mary Ballard!
He glanced up at the room beneath his own where her light still burned.
He wondered if she had stayed awake to think of the young Apollo of the
auburn head. Perhaps he was already her accepted lover. And why not?
Why should he care who loved Mary Ballard?
He had never believed in love at first sight. He didn't believe in it
now. He only knew that he had been thrilled by a look, warmed by a
friendliness, touched by a frankness and sincerity such as he had found
in no other woman. And because he had been thrilled and warmed and
touched by these things, he was feeling to-night the deadly mockery of
a fate which had brought her too late into his life.
* * * * * *
Coming in, shivering and excited after her ride with Porter, Mary had
found evidence of Aunt Isabelle's solicitous care for her. Her fire
was burning brightly, the covers of her bed were turned down, her blue
dressing-gown and the little blue slippers were warming in front of the
blaze.
"No one ever did such things for me before," Mary said with
appreciation, as the gentle lady came in to kiss her niece good-night.
"Mother wasn't that kind. We all waited on her. And Susan Jenks is
too busy; it isn't right to keep her up. And anyway I've always been
more like a boy, taking care of myself. Constance was the one we
petted, Con and mother."
"I love to do it," Aunt Isabelle said, eagerly. "When I am at Frances'
there are so many servants, and I feel pushed out. There's nothing
that I can do for any one. Grace and Frances each have a maid. So I
live my own life, and sometimes it has been--lonely."
"You darling." Mary laid her cool young lips against the soft cheek.
"I'm dead lonely, too. That's why I wanted you."
Aunt Isabelle stood for a moment looking into the fire. "It has been
years since anybody wanted me," she said, finally.
There was no bitterness in her tone; she simply stated a fact. Yet in
her youth she had been the beauty of the family, and the toast of a
county.
"Aunt Isabelle," Mary said, suddenly, "is marriage the only way out for
a woman?"
"The only way?"
"To freedom. It seems to me that a single woman always seems to belong
to her family. Why shouldn't you do as you please? Why shouldn't I?
And yet you've never lived your own life. And I sha'n't be able to
live mine except by fighting every inch of the way."
A flush stained Aunt Isabelle's cheeks. "I have always been poor,
Mary----"
"But that isn't it," fiercely. "There are poor girls who aren't
tied--I mean by conventions and family traditions. Why, Aunt Isabelle,
I rented the Tower Rooms not only in defiance of the living--but of the
dead. I can see mother's face if we had thought of such a thing while
she lived. Yet we needed the money then. We needed it to help Dad--to
save him----" The last words were spoken under her breath, and Aunt
Isabelle did not catch them.
"And now everybody wants me to get married. Oh, Aunt Isabelle, sit
down and let's talk it out. I'm not sleepy, are you?" She drew the
little lady beside her on the high-backed couch which faced the fire.
"Everybody wants me to get married, Aunt Isabelle. And to-night I had
it out with--Porter."
"You don't love him?"
"Not--that way. But sometimes--he makes me feel as if I couldn't
escape him--as if he would persist and persist, until he won. But I
don't want love to come to me that way. It seems to me that if one
loves, one knows. One doesn't have to be shown."
"My dear, sometimes it is a tragedy when a woman knows."
"But why?"
"Because men like to conquer. When they see love in a woman's eyes,
their own love--dies."
"I should hate a man like that," said Mary, frankly. "If a man only
loves you because of the conquest, what's going to happen when you are
married and the chase is over? No, Aunt Isabelle, when I fall in love,
it will be with a man who will know that I am the One Woman. He must
love me because I am Me--Myself. Not because some one else admires me,
or because I can keep him guessing. He will know me as I know him--as
his Predestined Mate!"
Thus spoke Sweet and Twenty, glowing. And Sweet and Forty, meeting
that flame with her banked fires, faltered. "But, my dear, how can you
know?"
"How did you know?"
The abrupt question drove every drop of blood from Aunt Isabelle's
face. "Who told you?"
"Mother. One night when I asked her why you had never married. You
don't mind, do you?"
Aunt Isabelle shook her head. "No. And, Mary, dear, I've faced all
the loneliness, all the dependence, rather than be untrue to that which
he gave me and I gave him. There was one night, in this old garden. I
was visiting your mother, and he was in Congress at the time, and the
garden was full of roses--and it was--moonlight. And we sat by the
fountain, and there was the soft splash of the water, and he said:
'Isabelle, the little bronze boy is throwing kisses at you--do you see
him--smiling?' And I said, 'I want no kisses but yours'--and that was
the last time. The next day he was killed--thrown from his horse while
he was riding out here to see--me.
"It was after that I was so ill. And something teemed to snap in my
head, and one day when I sat beside the fountain I found that I
couldn't hear the splash of the water, and things began to go; the
voices I loved seemed far away, and I could tell that the wind was
blowing only by the movement of the leaves, and the birds rounded out
their little throats--but I heard--no music----"
Her voice trailed away into silence.
"But before the stillness, there were others who--wanted me--for I
hadn't lost my prettiness, and Frances did her best for me. And she
didn't like it when I said I couldn't marry, Mary. But now I am glad.
For in the silence, my love and I live, in a world of our own."
"Aunt Isabelle--darling. How lovely and sweet, and sad----" Mary was
kneeling beside her aunt, her arm thrown around her, and Aunt Isabelle,
reading her lips, did not need to hear the words.
"If I had been strong, like you, Mary, I could have held my own against
Frances and have made something of myself. But I'm not strong, and
twenty-five years ago women did not ask for freedom. They asked
for--love."
"But I want to find freedom in my love. Not be bound as Porter wants
to bind me. He'd put me on a pedestal and worship me, and I'd rather
stand shoulder to shoulder with my husband and be his comrade. I don't
want him to look up too far, or to look down as Gordon looks down on
Constance."
"Looks down? Why, he adores her, Mary."
"Oh, he loves her. And he'll do everything for her, but he will do it
as if she were a child. He won't ask her opinion in any vital matter.
He won't share his big interests with her, and so he'll never discover
the big fine womanliness. And she'll shrivel to his measure of her."
Aunt Isabelle shook her head, smiling. "Don't analyze too much, Mary.
Men and women are human--and you may lose yourself in a search for the
Ideal."
"Do you know what Porter calls me, Aunt Isabelle? Contrary Mary. He
says I never do things the way the people expect. Yet I do them the
way that I must. It is as if some force were inside of me--driving
me--on."
She stood up as she said it, stretching out her arms in an eager
gesture. "Aunt Isabelle, if I were a man, there'd be something in the
world for me to do. Yet here I am, making ends meet, holding up my
part of the housekeeping with Susan Jenks, and taking from the hands of
my rich friends such pleasures as I dare accept without return."
Aunt Isabelle pulled her down beside her. "Rebellious Mary," she said,
"who is going to tame you?"
They laughed a little, clinging to each other, and than Mary said, "You
must go to bed, Aunt Isabelle. I'm keeping you up shamefully."
They kissed again and separated, and Mary made ready for bed. She took
off her cap, and all her lovely hair fell about her. That was another
of her contrary ways. She and Constance had been taught to braid it
neatly, but from little girlhood Mary had protested, and on going to
bed with two prim pigtails had been known to wake up in the middle of
the night and take them down, only to be discovered in the morning with
all her fair curls in a tangle. Scolding had not availed. Once, as
dire punishment, the curls had been cut off. But Mary had rejoiced.
"It makes me look like a boy," she had told her mother, calmly, "and I
like it."
Another of her little girl fancies had been to say her prayers aloud.
She said them that way to-night, kneeling by her bed with her fair head
on her folded hands.
Then she turned out the light, and drew her curtains back. As she
looked out at the driving rain, the flare of the street lamp showed a
motionless figure on the terrace. For a moment she peered,
palpitating, then flew into Aunt Isabelle's room.
"There's some one in the garden."
"Perhaps it's Barry."
"Didn't he come with you?"
"No. He went on with Leila and the General."
"But it is two o'clock, Aunt Isabelle."
"I didn't know; I thought perhaps he had come."
Going back into her room, Mary threw on her blue dressing-gown and
slippers and opened her door. The light was still burning in the hall.
Barry always turned it out when he came. She stood undecided, then
started down the back stairs, but halted as the door opened and a dark
figure appeared.
"Barry----"
Roger Poole looked up at her. "It isn't your brother," he said. "I--I
must beg your pardon for disturbing you. I could not sleep, and I went
out----" He stopped and stammered. Poised there above him with all
the wonder of her unbound hair about her, she was like some celestial
vision.
She smiled at him. "It doesn't matter," she said; "please don't
apologize. It was foolish of me to be--frightened. But I had
forgotten that there was any one else in the house."
She was unconscious of the effect of her words. But his soul shrank
within him. To her he was the lodger who paid the rent. To him she
was, well, just now she was, to him, the Blessed Damosel!
Faintly in the distance they heard the closing of a door. "It's
Barry," Mary said, and suddenly a wave of self-consciousness swept over
her. What would Barry think to find her at this hour talking to Roger
Poole? And what would he think of Roger Poole, who walked in the
garden on a rainy night?
Roger saw her confusion. "I'll turn out this light," he said, "and
wait----"
And she waited, too, in the darkness until Barry was safe in his own
room, then she spoke softly. "Thank you so much," she said, and was
gone.