A CHIP OF THE OLD BLOCK
"What, you were there! You heard!" he said, astounded.
She nodded her head, incapable of speech, her finger still on her lips,
drawing him by the hand into the little sitting-room where they were in
a measure free from other eyes.
"Now for a torrent of reproaches," he thought grimly.
But instead the next moment tears were on her cheeks, her arms about
him, and her head on his shoulder. Seeing her thus shaken, he thought
bitterly that all this grief was but for the material loss, the blow to
her ambitions. All at once she raised her head, took him firmly by the
shoulder, and said:
"Bojo, I've never loved you before--but I do now, oh, yes, now I know!"
He shook his head, unable to believe her capable of great emotions.
"Doris, you are carried away--this is not what you'll say to-morrow!"
"Yes, yes, it is!" she cried fervently. "I'll sacrifice anything
now--nothing will ever make me give you up!"
"Luckily for you," he said, his look darkening, "you'll have time enough
to come to your senses. If you heard all, you know what this
means--starting at the beginning."
"I heard-- I understand," she said, close to him, her eyes shining with
a light that blotted out the world in confused shadow. He looked at her,
thrilled by her feeling, by the thought that it belonged to him, that he
was the master of it, and yet unconvinced.
"It's just your imagination," he said quietly, "that's all. Doris, I
know you too well--what you've lived with and what you must have." He
added, with a doubting smile: "You remember what you said to me that day
on our ride, when we passed through that factory village--'ask me
anything but to be _poor_.'"
"Bojo," she said, desperately, "you don't understand what a woman is.
That was true--then. There's all that you say in me, but there's
something else which you've never called out before, which can come when
I love, when I really love." She clung to him, fighting for him, feeling
how close she had been to losing him. "Bojo, believe in me, give me one
more chance!"
"To-morrow you'll come to me with some new scheme for making money!"
"No, no."
"You'll try to persuade me that I should marry you on your money, take
the opportunities your father can shove in my way. Oh, Doris, I know you
too well!"
"No, no, I won't. I don't want--don't you see I don't want to make you
do anything? I want to follow you!"
"That has been the trouble," he said, abruptly.
He turned, walked away, and sat down, gazing out through the window,
feeling something dark and enveloping closing about him without his
being able to slip away. She came impulsively to his side, flinging
herself on the floor at his knees, carried away with the intensity of
her emotion.
[Illustration: "'What does all the rest amount to?' she said
breathlessly. 'I want you'"]
"What does all the rest amount to!" she said breathlessly. "I want you!
I want a man, not a dummy, in my life. I want some one to look up to,
bigger, stronger than I am, that can make me do things."
He put his hand on hers, thrilling as he bent quickly and kissed it.
"The trouble has been," he said slowly, "all this time I've been trying
to come to your ways of living, to reach you. Doris, I can't promise;
I'm not sure of myself, of what I think--"
"Oh, it would be such a dreadful thing if you were to let me go now,"
she said suddenly, covering her face. "Now, when I know what I could
do!"
"Yes," he assented, feeling too the power he had suddenly acquired to
make or mar a life, and with that power the responsibility.
"You can do anything with me," she said in a whisper.
He felt a lump in his throat, a sense of being blocked at every turn, a
horror of doing harm, and a wild pride in the thought that at the last
this girl, whom he had rebelled against so often for being without
emotion or passion, was at his feet, without reserve, a warm, adoring
woman.
"Doris, you have got to come to me on my footing," he said firmly at
last.
She accepted it as the answer she had longed for, raising her face
suffused with joy, pressing his hand to her heart, her eyes swimming
with tears, inarticulate.
"Try me--anything! I'm happy--so happy--so afraid-- I was so afraid--
Oh, Bojo, to think I might never have known you--lost you!"
When a little calm had been reestablished, she wished to marry him at
once, to live in one room in a boarding-house, if necessary, to prove
her sincerity. He answered her evasively, pretending to laugh at her,
feeling the while the leaden load of what by a trick of fate he had
assumed at the moment when he had expected the completest freedom. Yet
there was something so genuine, so uncalculated in her contrition,
something so helpless and appealing to his strength in her surrender to
his will and decision, that he felt stirred to a poignant pity, and
shrank before the brutality of inflicting pain.
When he left, quiet and brooding, turning the corner of the Avenue his
glance happened to go to a window on the second floor, and he saw Patsie
looking down. He stopped, stumbling in his progress, and then,
recovering himself, lifted his hat solemnly. She did not move nor make
an answering gesture. He saw her only immobile, looking down at him.
* * * * *
When he returned to the Court and stopped mechanically at the desk for
his mail, Della, with her welcoming smile, chided him.
"My, but you look awful serious, Mr. Crocker!"
"Am I?-- Yes, I suppose so," he said absent-mindedly.
He went through into the inner court that yesterday had seemed to him
such a constricted little spot in the great city which had responded to
his fortunate touch. Now, in the falling dusk, with the lights
blossoming out, the court seemed very big, crowded with human beings in
the battle of life, and he himself small and without significance.
"Well, I've gone and done it," he said to himself with a half laugh. "I
wonder--"
He wondered, now that it was all over, now that the curtain had dropped
on the drama of it, whether after all Drake had been right--whether he
was seeing life through his emotions, and what the point of view of
thirty-five and forty would be in retrospection.
"Well, I've chucked it all," he said, lingering in the quiet and the
suffused half lights. "I took the bit in my teeth. There's no turning
back now." He remembered his father and the old battling look of
defiance in his eyes as he had exhorted his son.
"Guess, after all," he said grimly, feeling all at once drawn closer to
his own, "I must be a chip of the old block."
Granning alone was in the study as he came in, spinning his hat on to
the sofa.
"Well, Granning, I've up and done it," he said shortly.
"Eh, what?" said Granning, looking up rather alarmed.
He told him.
"And so, Granning, I'm a horny-handed son of labor from this time
forth," he said in conclusion. "You'll have to find me a job!" The laugh
failed. It seemed out of place at that moment with Granning staring at
him. He added quietly: "Guess self-respect is worth more than I
thought!"
"God, I'm glad!" said Granning, bringing down his great fist.
He had never in all the long friendship seen Granning so stirred!