She gave a great sigh as at the laying down of a heavy burden. “Thank you,”
was all she said, but she put a world of meaning into the words. She took
the first homeward turning. We were nearly at the house before I found
words that would pave the way toward expressing my thoughts--my longings
and hopes.
“You say you have forgiven me,” said I. “Then we can be--friends?”
She was silent, and I took her somber expression to mean that she feared I
was hiding some subtlety.
“I mean just what I say, Anita,” I hastened to explain. “Friends--simply
friends.” And my manner fitted my words.
She looked strangely at me. “You would be content with that?” she asked.
I answered what I thought would please her. “Let us make the best of our
bad bargain,” said I. “You can trust me now, don't you think you can?”
She nodded without speaking; we were at the door, and the servants were
hastening out to receive us. Always the servants between us. Servants
indoors, servants outdoors; morning, noon and night, from waking to
sleeping, these servants to whom we are slaves. As those interrupting
servants sent us each a separate way, her to her maid, me to my valet, I
was depressed with the chill that the opportunity that has not been seen
leaves behind it as it departs.
“Well,” said I to myself by way of consolation, as I was dressing for
dinner, “she is certainly softening toward you, and when she sees the new
house you will be still better friends.”
* * * * *
But, when the great day came, I was not so sure. Alva went for a “private
view” with young Thornley; out of her enthusiasm she telephoned me from the
very midst of the surroundings she found “_so_ wonderful and _so_
beautiful”--thus she assured me, and her voice made it impossible to doubt.
And, the evening before the great day, I, going for a final look round,
could find no flaw serious enough to justify the sinking feeling that came
over me every time I thought of what Anita would think when she saw my
efforts to realize her dream. I set out for “home” half a dozen times at
least, that afternoon, before I pulled myself together, called myself an
ass, and, with a pause at Delmonico's for a drink, which I ordered and then
rejected, finally pushed myself in at the door. What, a state my nerves
were in!
Alva had departed; Anita was waiting for me in her sitting-room. When she
heard me in the hall, just outside, she stood in the doorway. “Come in,”
she said to me, who did not dare so much as a glance at her.
I entered. I must have looked as I felt--like a boy, summoned before
the teacher to be whipped in presence of the entire school. Then I was
conscious that she had my hand--how she had got it, I don't know--and that
she was murmuring, with tears of happiness in her voice: “Oh, I can't
_say_ it!”
“Glad you like your own taste,” said I awkwardly. “You know, Alva told me.”
“But it's one thing to dream, and a very different thing to do,” she
answered. Then, with smiling reproach: “And I've been thinking all summer
that you were ruined! I've been expecting to hear every day that you had
had to give up the fight.”
“Oh--that passed long ago,” said I.
“But you never told me,” she reminded me. “And I'm glad you didn't,”
she added. “Not knowing saved me from doing something very foolish.”
She reddened a little, smiled a great deal, dazzlingly, was altogether
different from the ice-locked Anita of a short time before, different as
June from January. And her hand--so intensely alive--seemed extremely
comfortable in mine.
Even as my blood responded to that electric touch, I had a twinge of
cynical bitterness. Yes, apparently I was at last getting what I had so
long, so vainly, and, latterly, so hopelessly craved. But--_why_ was
she giving it? Why had she withheld herself until this moment of material
happiness? “I have to pay the rich man's price,” thought I, with a sigh.
It was in reaching out for some sweetness to take away this bitter taste in
my honey that I said to her, “When you gave me that money from your uncle,
you did it to help me out?”
She colored deeply. “How silly you must have thought me!” she answered.
I took her other hand. As I was drawing her toward me, the sudden pallor of
her face and chill of her hands halted me once more, brought sickeningly
before me the early days of my courtship when she had infuriated my pride
by trying to be “submissive.” I looked round the room--that room into which
I had put so much thought--and money. Money! “The rich man's price!” those
delicately brocaded walls shimmered mockingly at me.
“Anita,” said I, “do you _care_ for me?”
She murmured inaudibly. Evasion! thought I, and suspicion sprang on guard,
bristling.
“Anita,” I repeated sternly, “do you care for _me_?”
“I am your wife,” she replied, her head drooping still lower. And
hesitatingly she drew away from me. That seemed confirmation of my doubt
and I said to her satirically, “You are willing to be my wife out of
gratitude, to put it politely?”
She looked straight into my eyes and answered, “I can only say there is no
one I like so well, and--I will give you all I have to give.”
“Like!” I exclaimed contemptuously, my nerves giving way altogether. “And
you would be my _wife_! Do you want me to _despise_ you?” I
struck dead my poor, feeble hope that had been all but still-born. I rushed
from the room, closing the door violently between us.
Such was our housewarming.