NOTHING REMARKABLE IN IT.
Mr. McElwin put aside his newspaper and paced slowly up and down the
room, his slippered feet falling with an emphatic pat on the carpet.
His wife sat near the window, watching the swallows cutting black
circles in the dusky air. Eva was seated at the piano, half turned
from it, while with one hand she felt about to touch the nerve of some
half-forgotten tune. McElwin dropped down in an arm chair.
"I wonder if this newspaper will ever stop talking about that fellow's
story," said he. "I read it over and I didn't see anything remarkable
in it. Of course it's all right to feel a local pride in a thing, but
gracious alive, we don't want to go into fits over it. Now, here's
nearly half a column about it."
"Let me see it," said Eva. He picked up the paper and held it out to
her. She got off the piano stool, took the paper and stood near her
father, under the hanging lamp.
"Can't you find it? On the editorial page."
"Yes, I have found it. But it is not written by the pen of local
pride."
"It is in the state paper."
"Yes, but if you had read to the bottom you would have seen that it
was from a New York paper."
"Ah, well, it doesn't interest me, no matter what paper it is from."
"What is it?" Mrs. McElwin asked, turning from the window.
"Something more about Mr. Lyman's story," the daughter answered.
"It appears to have stirred up quite a sensation," said Mrs. McElwin.
"One of those happy accidents."
"It was not an accident," the girl replied. "It was genius."
"Come, don't be absurd," said her father. "There is such a thing as a
man finding a gold watch in the road. I call it an accident. I had
quite a talk with him in my private office before our relations became
strained, and I found him to be rather below the average. He surely
has but a vague and confused idea regarding even the simplest forms
of business. But I admit that his story is all well enough, and so are
many little pieces of fancy work, but they don't amount to anything.
Educated man? Yes, that's all right, too, but the highways are full of
educated men, looking for something to do. Sawyer is worth a dozen of
him."
Mrs. McElwin glanced at her daughter, as if she had heard a footstep
on dangerous ground. She was not far wrong.
"Sawyer is a man, ready--"
"He has not shown it," the girl was bold enough to declare. She stood
under the lamp and the newspaper rattled as she held it now grasped
tightly.
"Eva," said her mother, in gentle reproof, "don't say that."
"But I want her to say it if she thinks it," the banker spoke up,
almost angrily. "I want her to say it and prove it."
"He proved it to me, but I may not be able to prove it to you. Mr.
Lyman called him a coward and he did not resent it."
"Lyman did? How do you know?"
"I heard him."
The banker blinked at her. "You heard him? When? And how came you to
be near him?"
"It was on the Sunday after the mar--the foolish ceremony. As Mr.
Sawyer walked off with me from the church door Mr. Lyman joined us."
"Joined you! The impudent scoundrel! What right had he to join you,
and why did you permit it?"
"He took the right and we couldn't help ourselves. At least I couldn't
and Mr. Sawyer didn't try to."
"I wish I had been there."
"You were just in front, but you didn't look around."
"Well, and then what happened?"
"Why, during the talk that followed, Mr. Lyman called him a coward."
"Mr. Sawyer is a gentleman and he couldn't resent it at the time in
the presence of a lady."
"He has had time enough since," she said with scorn.
Mrs. McElwin came from the window and sat down near her husband. The
banker looked hard at his daughter, and a sudden tangling of the
lines on his face showed that the first words that flew to the verge
of utterance had been suppressed, and that he was determined to be
calm.
"He has had time, but he has also had consideration," said McElwin.
"To resent an insult is sometimes more of a scandal than to let it
pass. He hesitated to involve your name."
He was now so quiet, so plausible in his gentleness that the young
woman felt ashamed of the quick spirit she had shown.
"Sit down," he said, and she obeyed, with her hands lying listlessly
together in her lap.
"Your mother and I know what is best for you," he said. A slight
shudder seemed to pass through the wife's dignified shoulders. "You
have always been the object of our most tender solicitude," he went
on. "And if I have been determined, it has been for your own ultimate
good. I admit that there is not much romance about Mr. Sawyer. He is a
keen, open-eyed, practical business man, with money out at interest,
and with money lying in my bank. His family is excellent. His father
was, for many years, the Clerk of the Court of Appeals, and his
grandfather was a judge. And I believe as firmly as I ever believed
anything, that he will be a very rich man. He is constantly widening
out and will not confine himself to the buying and selling of mules.
His judgment of the markets is fine, and I repeat that he will be a
very rich man. In looking over the field I don't know another man I
would rather have associated with me."
His wife, long since convinced by his practical logic, looked up with
a quiet smile of approval. The girl sat weaving her fingers together.
She met her father's questioning eye and did not waver.
"I don't presume to question what you say," she said. "But I am no
longer a spoiled child to be petted and persuaded. I am a woman and
have begun to think. This marriage, though brought about in so
ridiculous a way, has had a wonderful effect upon me. I have heard
that marriage merges a woman's identity with that of her husband, but
this marriage has made an individual of me. It has freed me from
frivolous company; it has given me something that I once thought I
could not endure--solitude--and I have found it delightful. The hard
and stubborn things that were beat into my head at school, and which
I despised at the time, are useful pieces of knowledge now, and,
viewing them, I wonder that I could ever have been so silly as to find
my greatest pleasure in flattery."
Never before had she spoken at such length, nor with an air so
serious. Her mother looked at her with a half wondering admiration,
and the banker's countenance showed a new-born pride in her--in
himself, indeed--for nothing in his household was important unless it
showed a light reflected from him; and now, in his daughter, he
discovered a part of himself, a disposition to think. This thought was
seditious, and there is virtue in even a rebellious strength, and it
convinced him that henceforth he must address her reason rather than a
feminine whim. He was proud of her, admitted it to himself and
conveyed it in a look which he gave his wife; but he was not the less
determined to carry his point. Sawyer was a man of affairs. His
judgment was sure, his spirit adventurous. Figures were his
playthings, and who could say that he was not to become one of the
country's great financiers? Once he had made a bid against many
competitors acquainted with the work, to build a bridge for the
county. Sawyer's bid was the lowest. His friends said that the
undertaking would ruin him; McElwin deplored the young man's rashness.
But he built the bridge, made money on the speculation; and the first
traffic across the new structure was a drove of Sawyer's mules, en
route to a profitable market.
"I am glad you have begun to think," he said, smiling at her. "I knew
the time would come, and, as it has come, let me ask you a question.
Did you request this Mr. Lyman to sign the petition?"
"I mentioned it to him."
"You did. That ought to have been sufficient. What did he say?"
"He said that he would--under certain conditions." McElwin winced in
memory of his and Sawyer's visit to Lyman.
"Conditions? How does he dare enforce conditions? What were they?"
"That I must avow my love for Zeb--Mr. Sawyer."
"Well, is that all?"
"All! Isn't it enough?"
"You can do that, my daughter," Mrs. McElwin said meekly.
"Yes, I could, if the time should ever come."
"What time?" the banker asked.
"The time when I can say that I love him."
McElwin crossed his legs with a sudden flounce. "You put too serious
an estimate upon love," he said. "You expect it to be the grand,
over-mastering passion we read about. That was all well enough for the
age of poetry, but this is the age of prose. You can go to that man
and tell him that--"
"That I have a Nineteenth century love for Mr. Sawyer," she
interrupted.
"Well, yes."
"And he would laugh at me."
"Laugh at you," he frowned. "No gentleman can laugh at a lady's
distress."
"But he might not regard it as distress. It might seem ridiculous to
him."
"Hump," he grunted. "Well, it's undignified, it is almost outrageous
to be forced to do such a thing, but you must go to him. Your mother
will go with you."
"No, James," his wife gently protested, looking at him in mild appeal.
"I don't really think I can muster the courage for so awkward an
undertaking. Please leave me out."
"Leave you out of so important an arrangement, an arrangement that
involves the future of your daughter!"
"Then, why should not all three of us go?" she asked.
"I have trampled my own pride under my feet by going once," he
replied. "Yes, and he treated me with cool impudence. And if I should
go again something might happen. That man has humiliated me more than
any man I ever met, and once is enough; I couldn't bear an insult in
the presence of my wife and daughter. Eva, do you know what that man
tried to do? He gained admission to my private office, and actually
strove to bunco me out of a hundred dollars."
"He may have tried to borrow it, father, but I don't think he tried to
get it dishonestly."
"Didn't I tell you that he tried to beat me out of the money? Why do
you set up a mere opinion against my experience? And why are you so
much inclined to take his part? Tell me that. You can't be interested
in him?"
"I don't want injustice done him."
"Oh, no; but you would submit to the injustice he does you. He has
robbed you of the society of your younger acquaintances--he compels
you to sit almost excluded in a town where you are an acknowledged
belle. Young gentlemen are afraid to call on you."
"Well, I don't know that it would be exactly proper," she replied.
"And," he went on, lifting his voice, "the strangest part of it is
that you quietly submit to this treatment when there is a way to free
yourself. And I request you to make use of it."
He got up, went to the mantel-piece, took up a sea-shell, put it down,
turned his back to the fire place, stood there a moment and strode
out.
"You must do as he commands," said the mother.
"I can't."
"Don't say that. You must. I have thought it over, and I know it's for
the best."
"You have permitted him to think it over, and you hope it is for the
best," the daughter replied.