Bobby McGinnis wondered sometimes that summer why he was not happier.
Viewed from the standpoint of an outsider, he surely had enough to make
any man happy. He was young, strong, and in a position of trust and
profit. He was, moreover, engaged to the girl he loved, and that girl
was everything that was good and beautiful, and he saw her almost every
day. All this Bobby knew--and still he wondered.
He saw a good deal of Margaret these days. Their engagement had come to
be an accepted fact, and the first flurry of surprise and comment had
passed. The Mill House, with Patty in charge, was steadily progressing.
Margaret had taken up her work again with fresh zest, but, true to her
promise to Mrs. Merideth, she spent many a day, and sometimes two or
three days at Hilcrest. All this, however, did not interfere with
Bobby's seeing her--for he, too, went to Hilcrest in accordance with
Margaret's express wishes.
"But, Bobby," Margaret had said in response to his troubled
remonstrances, "are you not going to be my husband? Of course you are!
Then you must come to meet my friends." And Bobby went.
Bobby McGinnis found himself in a new position then. He was Mr. Robert
McGinnis, the accepted suitor of Miss Margaret Kendall, and as such, he
was introduced to Margaret's friends.
It was just here, perhaps, that misery began for Bobby. He was not more
at ease in his new, well-fitting evening clothes than he would have been
in the garb of Sing Sing; nor did he feel less conspicuous among the gay
throng about Margaret's chair than he would if he had indeed worn the
prison stripes.
As Bobby saw it, he _was_ in prison, beyond the four walls of which lay
a world he had never seen--a world of beautiful music and fine pictures;
a world of great books and famous men; a world of travel, ease, and
pleasure. He could but dimly guess the meaning of half of what was said;
and the conversation might as well have been conducted in a foreign
language so far as there being any possibility of his participating in
it. Big, tall, and silent, he stood as if apart. And because he was
apart--he watched.
He began to understand then, why he was unhappy--yet he was not watching
himself, he was watching Margaret. She knew this world--this world that
was outside his prison walls; and she was at home in it. There was a
light in her eye that he had never brought there, though he had seen it
sometimes when she had been particularly interested in her work at the
Mill House. As he watched her now, he caught the quick play of color on
her cheeks, and heard the ring of enthusiasm in her voice. One subject
after another was introduced, and for each she had question, comment, or
jest. Not once did she appeal to him. But why should she, he asked
himself bitterly. They--those others near her, knew this world. He did
not know it.
Sometimes the mills were spoken of, and she was questioned about her
work. Then, indeed, she turned to him--but he was not the only one to
whom she turned: she turned quite as frequently to the man who was
seldom far away from the sound of her voice when she was at
Hilcrest--Frank Spencer.
McGinnis had a new object for his brooding eyes then; and it was not
long before he saw that it was to this same Frank Spencer that Margaret
turned when subjects other than the mills were under discussion. There
seemed to be times, indeed, when she apparently heard only his voice,
and recognized only his presence, so intimate was the sympathy between
them. McGinnis saw something else, too--he saw the look in Frank
Spencer's eyes; and after that he did not question again the cause of
his own misery.
Sometimes McGinnis would forget all this, or would call it the silly
fears of a jealous man who sees nothing but adoration in every eye
turned upon his love. Such times were always when Margaret was back at
the Mill House, and when it seemed as if she, too, were inside his
prison walls with him, leaving that hated, unknown world shut forever
out. Then would come Hilcrest--and the reaction.
"She does not love me," he would moan night after night as he tossed in
sleepless misery. "She does not love me, but she does not know it--yet.
She is everything that is good and beautiful and kind; but I never,
never can make her happy. I might have known--I might have known!"