THEY were standing on the street corner before the hotel. Oakley had
just come up-town from the office. He was full of awkward excuses and
apologies, but Mr. Emory cut them short.
“I suppose I've a right to be angry at the way you've avoided us, but
I'm not. On the contrary, I'm going to take you home to dinner with me.”
If Dan find consulted his preferences in the matter, he would have
begged off, but he felt he couldn't, without giving offence; so he
allowed the doctor to lead him away, but he didn't appear as pleased or
as grateful as he should have been at this temporary release from the
low diet of the American House.
Miss Emory was waiting for her father on the porch. An errand of hers
had taken him downtown.
She seemed surprised to see Oakley, but graciously disposed towards him.
While he fell short of her standards, he was decidedly superior to the
local youth with whom she had at first been inclined to class him. Truth
to tell, the local youth fought rather shy of the doctor's beautiful
daughter. Mr. Burt Smith, the gentlemanly druggist and acknowledged
social leader, who was much sought after by the most exclusive circles
in such centres of fashion as Buckhorn and Harrison, had been so chilled
by her manner when, meeting her on the street, he had attempted to
revive an acquaintance which dated back to their childhood, that he was
a mental wreck for days afterwards, and had hardly dared trust himself
to fill even the simplest prescription.
When the Monday Club and the Social Science Club and the History Club
hinted that she might garner great sheaves of culture and enlightenment
at their meetings, Constance merely smiled condescendingly, but held
aloof, and the ladies of Antioch were intellectual without her abetment.
They silently agreed with the Emorys' free-born help, who had seen
better days, that she was “haughty proud” and “stuck up.”
Many was the informal indignation meeting they held, and many the
vituperate discussion handed down concerning Miss Emory, but Miss Emory
went her way with her head held high, apparently serenely unconscious of
her offence against the peace and quiet of the community.
It must not be supposed that she was intentionally unkind or arrogant.
It was unfortunate, perhaps, but she didn't like the townspeople. She
would have been perfectly willing to admit they were quite as good as
she. The whole trouble was that they were different, and the merits of
this difference had nothing to do with the case. Her stand in the matter
shocked her mother and amused her father.
Dr. Emory excused himself and went into the house. Dan made himself
comfortable on the steps at Miss Emory's side. In the very nearness
there was something luxurious and satisfying. He was silent because he
feared the antagonism of speech.
The rest of Antioch had eaten its supper, principally in its
shirt-sleeves, and was gossiping over front gates, or lounging on front
steps. When Antioch loafed it did so with great singleness of purpose.
Here and there through the town, back yards had been freshly ploughed
for gardens. In some of these men and boys were burning last year's
brush and litter. The smoke hung heavy and undispersed in the twilight.
Already the younger hands from the car-shops had “cleaned up,” and,
dressed in their best clothes, were hurrying back down-town to hang
about the square and street corners until it was time to return home and
go to bed.
Off in the distance an occasional shrill whistle told where the
ubiquitous small boy was calling a comrade out to play, and every now
and then, with a stealthy patter of bare feet, some coatless urchin
would scurry past the Emorys' gate.
It was calm and restful, but it gave one a feeling of loneliness, too;
Antioch seemed very remote from the great world where things happened,
or were done. In spite of his satisfaction, Dan vaguely realized this.
To the girl at his side, however, the situation was absolutely tragic.
The life she had known had been so different, but it had been purchased
at the expense of a good deal of inconvenience and denial on the part
of her father and mother. It was impossible to ask a continuance of the
sacrifice, and it was equally impossible to remain in Antioch. She
did not want to be selfish, but the day was not far off when it would
resolve itself into a question of simple self-preservation. She had not
yet reached the point where she could consider marriage as a possible
means of escape, and, even if she had, it would not have solved the
problem, for whom was she to marry?
There was a tired, fretful look in her eyes. She had lost something of
her brilliancy and freshness. In her despair she told herself she was
losing everything.
“I was with friends of yours this afternoon, Mr. Oakley,” she said, by
way of starting the conversation.
“Friends of mine, here?”
“Yes. The Joyces.”
“I must go around and see them. They have been very kind to my father,”
said Dan, with hearty good-will.
“How long is your father to remain in Antioch, Mr. Oakley?” inquired
Constance.
“As long as I remain, I suppose. There are only the two of us, you
know.”
“What does he find to do here?”
“Oh,” laughed Dan, “he finds plenty to do. His energy is something
dreadful. Then, too, he's employed at the shops; that keeps him pretty
busy, you see.”
But Miss Emory hadn't known this before. She elevated her eyebrows in
mild surprise. She was not sure she understood.
“I didn't know that he was one of the officers of the road,” with
deceptive indifference.
“He's not. He's a cabinet-maker,” explained the literal Oakley, to whom
a cabinet-maker was quite as respectable as any one else. There was a
brief pause, while Constance turned this over in her mind. It struck
her as very singular that Oakley's father should be one of the hands.
Perhaps she credited him with a sensitiveness of which he was entirely
innocent.
She rested her chin in her hands and gazed out into the dusty street.
“Isn't it infinitely pathetic to think of that poor little man and his
work?” going back to Joyce. “Do you know, I could have cried? And his
wife's faith, it is sublime, even if it is mistaken.” She laughed in a
dreary fashion. “What is to be done for people like that, whose lives
are quite uncompensated?”
To Oakley this opened up a field for future speculation, but he
approved of her interest in Joyce. It was kindly and sincere, and it was
unexpected. He had been inclined to view her as a proud young person,
unduly impressed with the idea of her own beauty and superiority. It
pleased him to think he had been mistaken.
They were joined by the doctor, who had caught a part of what Constance
said, and divined the rest.
“You see only the pathos. Joyce is just as well off here as he would
be anywhere else, and perhaps a little better. He makes a decent living
with his pictures.” As he spoke he crossed the porch and stood at her
side, with his hand resting affectionately on her shoulder.
“I guess there's a larger justice in the world than we conceive,” said
Oakley.
“But not to know, to go on blindly doing something that is really very
dreadful, and never to know!”
She turned to Oakley. “I am afraid I rather agree with your father. He
seems happy enough, and he is doing work for which there is a demand.”
“Would you be content to live here with no greater opportunity than he
has?”
Oakley laughed and shook his head.
“No. But that's not the same. I'll pull the Huckleberry up and make it
pay, and then go in for something bigger.”
“And if you can't make it pay?”
“I won't bother with it, then.”
“But if you had to remain?”
Oakley gave her an incredulous smile.
“That couldn't be possible. I have done all sorts of things but stick in
what I found to be undesirable berths; but, of course, business is not
at all the same.”
“But isn't it? Look at Mr. Ryder. He says that he is buried here in the
pine-woods, with no hope of ever getting back into the world, and I am
sure he is able, and journalism is certainly a business, like anything
else.”
Oakley made no response to this. He didn't propose to criticise Ryder,
but, all the same, he doubted his ability.
“Griff's frightfully lazy,” remarked the doctor. “He prefers to settle
down to an effortless sort of an existence rather than make a struggle.”
“Don't you think Mr. Ryder extremely clever, Mr. Oakley?”
“I know him so slightly, Miss Emory; but no doubt he is.”
Mrs. Emory appeared in the doorway, placid and smiling.
“Constance, you and Mr. Oakley come on in; dinner's ready.”
When Dan went home that night he told himself savagely that he
would never go to the Emorys' again. The experience had been most
unsatisfactory. In spite of Constance's evident disposition towards
tolerance where he was concerned, she exasperated him. Her unconscious
condescension was a bitter memory of which he could not rid himself.
Certainly women must be petty, small-souled creatures if she was at all
representative of her sex. Yet, in spite of his determination to avoid
Constance, even at the risk of seeming rude, he found it required
greater strength of will than he possessed to keep away from the Emorys.
He realized, in the course of the next few weeks, that a new stage in
his development had been reached. Inspired by what he felt was a false
but beautiful confidence in himself, he called often, and, as time wore
on, the frequency of these calls steadily increased. All this while he
thought about Miss Emory a great deal, and was sorry for her or admired
her, according to his mood.
In Constance's attitude towards him there was a certain fickleness that
he resented. Sometimes she was friendly and companionable, and then
again she seemed to revive all her lingering prejudices and was utterly
indifferent to him, and her indifference was the most complete thing of
its kind he had ever encountered.
Naturally Dan and Ryder met very frequently, and when they met they
clashed. It was not especially pleasant, of course, but Ryder was
persistent and Oakley was dogged. Once he started in pursuit of an
object, he never gave up or owned that he was beaten. In some form he
had accomplished everything he set out to do; and if the results had
not always been just what he had anticipated, he had at least had the
satisfaction of bringing circumstances under his control. He endured the
editor's sarcasms, and occasionally retaliated with a vengeance so heavy
as to leave Griff quivering with the smart of it.
Miss Emory found it difficult to maintain the peace between them, but
she admired Dan's mode of warfare. It was so conclusive, and he showed
such grim strength in his ability to look out for himself.
But Dan felt that he must suffer by any comparison with the editor.
He had no genius for trifles, but rather a ponderous capacity. He had
worked hard, with the single determination to win success. He had
the practical man's contempt, born of his satisfied ignorance for all
useless things, and to his mind the useless things were those whose
value it was impossible to reckon in dollars and cents.
He had been well content with himself, and now he felt that somehow he
had lost his bearings. Why was it he had not known before that the mere
strenuous climb, the mere earning of a salary, was not all of life? He
even felt a sneaking envy of Ryder of which he was heartily ashamed.
Men fall in love differently. Some resist and hang back from the
inevitable, not being sure of themselves, and some go headlong, never
having any doubts. With characteristic singleness of purpose, Dan went
headlong; but of course he did not know what the trouble was until long
after the facts in the case were patent to every one, and Antioch had
lost interest in its speculations as to whether the doctor's daughter
would take the editor or the general manager, for, as Mrs. Poppleton,
the Emorys' nearest neighbor, sagely observed, she was “having her
pick.”
To Oakley Miss Emory seemed to accumulate dignity and reserve in the
exact proportion that he lost them, but he was determined she should
like him if she never did more than that.
She was just the least bit afraid of him. She knew he was not deficient
in a proper pride, and that he possessed plenty of self-respect, but for
all that he was not very dexterous. It amused her to lead him on,
and then to draw back and leave him to flounder out of some untenable
position she had beguiled him into assuming.
She displayed undeniable skill in these manoeuvres, and Dan was by turns
savage and penitent. But she never gave him a chance to say what he
wanted to say.
Ryder made his appeal to her vanity. It was a strong appeal. He was
essentially presentable and companionable. She understood him, and they
had much in common, but for all that her heart approved of Oakley.
She felt his dominance; she realized that he was direct and simple and
strong. Yet in her judgment of him she was not very generous. She could
not understand, for instance, how it was that he had been willing to
allow his father to go to work in the shops like one of the common
hands. It seemed to her to argue such an awful poverty in the way of
ideals.
The old convict was another stumbling-block. She had met him at the
Joyces', and had been quick to recognize that he and Dan were very much
alike--the difference was merely that of age and youth. Indeed, the
similarity was little short of painful. There was the same simplicity,
the same dogged stubbornness, and the same devotion to what she
conceived to be an almost brutal sense of duty. In the case of the
father this idea of duty had crystallized in a strangely literal belief
in the Deity and expressed itself with rampant boastfulness at the very
discomforts of a faith which, like the worship of Juggernaut, demanded
untold sacrifices and apparently gave nothing in return.
She tried to stifle her growing liking for Oakley and her unwilling
admiration for his strength and honesty and a certain native refinement.
Unconsciously, perhaps, she had always associated qualities of this sort
with position and wealth. She divined his lack of early opportunity, and
was alive to his many crudities of speech and manner, and he suffered,
as he knew he must suffer, by comparison with the editor; but, in spite
of this, Constance Emory knew deep down in her heart that he possessed
solid and substantial merits of his own.