THE MAN Of DREAMS
ELLEN’S first feeling of puzzled surprise and dimly awakened memories
were followed by a sense of resentment at the consciousness of her keen
interest in Manning.
She had scarcely had a moment to enjoy her triumph over the male animal
when a new specimen had entered to rob her of the spiritual fruits of
victory. Her victory had been complete--both over the man of muscle and
the man of money.
The man of money had profoundly surprised and interested her. She had
imagined him a shallow-brained nonentity. She had found his mind alert,
his sense of humor keen, his character altogether human and likeable.
Besides, she had distinctly felt the pull of his vigorous manhood. His
enemies were constantly telling the public that he had inherited his
fortune, that he was a weakling incapable of creating values of any
sort, and that such a man was merely a social parasite. Having met and
talked with him for half an hour she knew that these estimates were
false. Lucy Sheldon might be incapable of believing the stories about
his sensual habits, but her judgment of his mind and the force of his
character was nearer the truth. Her faith was profound that he was one
of the brainiest men in New York, that his genius had more than doubled
his inherited fortune, and that his ambitions in life were seriously to
be reckoned with.
And yet she had not for a moment felt the loosening of a single rivet
in the armor of her character under the assault he had so boldly and
skilfully made. The more she had thought of the offer of a settlement
of fifty thousand a year, a house on Fifth Avenue, and a country estate
with so slight an encumbrance as this tall, handsome, smiling young
sportsman, the more she congratulated herself on her own strength of
character.
“Never touched me!” she mused smilingly. Nor had his offer of marriage
which followed made any deeper impression, though its full import had
been instantly felt. The immense social prestige which the wife of such
a man would wield in the money-loving, money-worshipping atmosphere of
New York was beyond question.
To the ordinary woman it would have been a physical and psychological
impossibility to reject such an offer of marriage offhand. Ellen
congratulated herself on the distinct advance her character had made
over the average feminine mind.
All arguments against the economic independence of women were blown
to atoms by this one fact. It was no longer a question of theory or a
question open to argument. She knew. She felt the poise and the power
of personal achievement in her position. Her heart beat high with
pride--not mere pride in sex--but pride in the achievement of human
character. Her outlook on life had been broadened and her sympathies
deepened. Never had she felt the inspiration of her chosen career as a
feminist leader so full of meaning.
Her triumph over the man of muscle had been even more gratifying. Of
all the men she had met in New York, Field had really interested her
most. She had read his books with profound interest. They were of
the soil, rich in the deep intuitive knowledge of nature which only
genius can possess. He was one of the few popular writers of the day
who scorned to stoop to public taste. He wrote under the impulse of an
emotion which he expressed without fear or favor. In spite of his scorn
of commercial popularity his books were popular. Nor was this scorn
a mere pose to gain what he pretended to despise. He really despised
the man who prostitutes this power of expression in any art for the
purpose of earning fame or money. He was the artist born, and his books
were the genuine expression of a man who worships nature. He heartily
loathed the school of nature fakirs, and he attacked them tooth and
nail, not only in his books in lines of subtle irony, but in essays of
merciless ridicule, which the literary journals printed with chuckles
of joy.
His pursuit of women was notorious among the set in which he moved.
It often happened that a dinner given in celebration of the success
of one of his books was eaten without the chief figure at the head of
the table. It got to be such a joke that his best friend ceased to
apologize. The dinners were gradually discontinued, much to Field’s
relief.
For a long time his apparent interest in Ellen’s propaganda and his
studied indifference to her as a woman had hurt her pride. Not that she
expected or desired his attentions as a man--certainly not! And yet
it had been trying to feel that her beauty, of which she could not be
ignorant, had made not the slightest impression on this genuine artist
and devotee of nature.
For several months he had dropped into her apartment often to inquire
of the progress of her work. He was not a pronounced feminist. As an
author he claimed the right of free criticism of all cults and human
events. The woman movement to him was merely a world event. It could
not disturb the even tenor of his intellectual life. She hated him for
his pose and yet she respected him for it. In her heart of hearts she
knew it was not a pose. He had really attained the poise to which she
aspired.
It piqued her feminine mind to think that he wasted so much of his
valuable time in a senseless chase after first one woman and then
another and yet had shown no disposition to seriously pursue her.
Something had upset his poise to-night and he had revealed himself.
His hatred of Brown no doubt was the cause. The impetuous rush with
which he had made love had been a surprise. She had suspected of late
his growing personal interest in spite of the fact that he had used
more than usual pains to mask his feelings. He had formed the habit
of calling her from the iron balcony in the rear with increasing
frequency. Another trick he had developed was the use of the Morse
telegraph code in tapping out sentences on her wall late at night. Some
of the things he had said were unusually witty and of late his messages
had been coming at moments when he knew that she was just going to bed.
There was nothing in these messages to suggest the sensuous, yet the
fact that he was talking to her at this particular time had produced
the impression that his purpose was to suggest the most daring intimacy.
To-night in his love-making he had been charged with the highest
currents of magnetism. His compact muscular body had been on fire with
passion. It sparkled from his steel grey eyes. It burned in the touch
of his hand. It throbbed and pulsed in the tone of his insinuating
voice. For the first time in her life she had felt the fires of pent-up
sex within her own body. She had studied the problem in scientific text
books. She had studied it in modern physiology. She had studied it in
the modern problem novel. To-night temptation had whispered into her
inmost soul for the first time, and she had won. This man of genius was
hers. She had but to speak and he would do her bidding. Nor had she
much doubt about holding her own in the battle of sex that would follow
a love affair with such a man. She was a type of woman whom he had
never conquered. She knew instinctively that she could torture him with
a jealousy of which she herself was incapable. His fury over Brown’s
approach was proof positive of this.
She had won with scarcely an effort. She smiled at her own strength
and thought with a touch of pity of the weakness of man. She
congratulated herself on the progress which her new creed would make
in the development of the intellectual and physical life of woman. For
centuries woman had been the slave or toy of man. A new era would dawn
for humanity when she could stand by his side consciously his equal in
mind and body.
Her train of thought was broken at last by Manning leaning across the
little table at which they were seated and asking in the most serious
tones:
“I’m afraid I am boring you, Miss West?”
She looked at him a moment in, surprise, blushed in spite of her
triumphant musings, and hastened to reassure him.
“On the other hand, you don’t know how profoundly you have interested
me.”
Manning laughed a sound, good-humored boyish laugh.
“You’ve been in a sort of trance ever since we climbed on this balcony.”
“Nonsense!” Ellen protested.
And yet she was surprised to find that she had led Manning up the
stairway at the rear of the living room and out on the balcony which
overlooked it. The crowd below seemed the figures in a dream from which
she was just awakening.
“The fact is,” Ellen went on, “you started me to dreaming about my
girlhood in Maryland and a fair-haired boy just like you.”
“Your first sweetheart?”
“How did you guess?”
“I didn’t. I just hoped.”
“Why hoped?”
“You said I looked like him.”
Ellen smiled.
“You’re picking up city ways remarkably early for a country boy, I must
say.”
“Well, I was not exactly a farmer.”
He paused and showed his white, perfect teeth. For the first time she
became conscious of a dignity and strength she had not noticed before.
Again the curious memory of her childhood returned--the memory of
the fair-haired, domineering boy who had first stirred her girlish
imagination--the sleepy town with its great live oaks on the shores of
the Chesapeake--her unhappy father and mother, their endless bickering
and quarrelling--her mother’s never-ending nagging and her father’s
eternal martyrdom. She remembered distinctly how she had sworn never
to marry this boy no matter how desperately he might beg her. To her
child’s mind even then marriage was the one stupid blunder she would
never commit.
She had the sudden crazy idea that Manning was the reincarnation of
this boy.
“A penny for your thoughts!” he cried banteringly.
Again she was roused from reverie with a start and a blush.
“Was I off again?”
“Asleep this time,” he said, with a smile.
She ignored his banter and looked at him steadily.
“I could almost swear that you’re my playmate and that you’ve dyed your
hair to have some fun with me, if I did not know my poor boy had been
dead ten years and I saw them bury him.”
“All right, then. I don’t mind your memories of the dead. I was afraid
you were regretting the living from whom my indulgent Aunt had torn
you.”
Again she ignored his challenge to polite fencing and looked at him
seriously.
“Tell me about yourself, why you came here and what you expect to do?”
“A tale soon told,” he began briskly. “I was late finishing my college
course--had to help send the other kids to school and keep my mother’s
pantry full of bread. When I did get through I was in debt five hundred
dollars, which I had been lucky enough to borrow. It took me three
years’ hard work to pay this debt and get a hundred dollars ahead----”
“How did you make it?” she interrupted.
“Went on the road as a travelling salesman--not very romantic for a
dreamer of dreams, was it?”
“No,” she answered, watching him intently.
“Well,” he continued, “it was the first thing that came and I took it.
I had to pay my debts before I could play with my dreams. I’ve paid my
debts--I’ve a hundred dollars in my pocket, enough clothes to last me
through the season, I’m installed in a little room on Washington Square
and I’ve the dandiest aunt in the world, who brought me here to-night
and introduced me to you!”
“And what are you going to do?”
“Write editorials for a big newspaper bye and bye--made a beginning
here to-night--thanks to your genius in bringing these distinguished
men and women together.”
“Made a beginning here?” Ellen repeated.
“Sure, thanks to you and my aunt I’ve just met Brown. He’s a big man.
I liked, him right off and he liked me too--scribbled a note to the
managing editor of his paper and told him to give me a chance as a
space writer.”
“When will you begin?” Ellen inquired.
“I’ve begun. I’m going to write up this reception to-night from a
country boy’s point of view.”
Ellen’s eyes sparkled.
“It ought to make good reading.”
“It will.”
His enthusiasm and faith in himself were contagious. In spite of an
effort to dismiss the young man and return to her guests Ellen found
herself listening enraptured to the story of his ambitions and his
fresh views of men and things in New York. Her guests were leaving
and she was compelled at last to take her place at the door and say
good-night.
Without realizing what she was doing she asked Manning to stay until
the others had gone. Elated at the unexpected honor, he saw the last
guest save his aunt depart with joy.
Lucy Sheldon was not surprised at his enthusiasm over Ellen, and left
him with a friendly warning:
“See that your first effort does justice to Ellen West or never speak
to me again, sir!”
“Impossible, Auntie,” he whispered, “but I’ll do my best.”
For an hour after the crowd had gone Ellen listened to his endless talk
as if he were an oracle delivering the last words on human destiny.
Twice she caught herself in this worshipful attitude and laughed in
sheer disgust, only to return to the same position of rapt attention.
He asked if she played the piano. Forgetting that it was after
midnight, she sat down and played for half an hour while he bent over
her in tense silence. Through the soft tones of an old-fashioned melody
she caught a telegraphic message through Field’s wall:
“Say, old pal, have you gone crazy?”
She stopped with a sudden laugh.
“What’s the matter?” Manning asked innocently.
“Good gracious, boy, run along home!”
“Why?”
“It’s nearly one o’clock. I’ve got a day’s work before me to-morrow.”
“Can I come to-morrow night?”
Before she realized the absurdity of his request and the folly of her
answer she had said:
“Yes.”
He seized his hat and hurried out.
“All right, to-morrow night at eight. I’d ask you to dine with me at
the Waldorf, but I’m afraid I’d blow the whole hundred at a sitting.”
“Good-night!” she waved from the head of the stairs.
He answered softly:
“Good-night!”
It was not until his footfall died away on the last stairway that she
realized what had happened. She had all but uttered a foolish cry for
him to come back and stay a while longer.
[Illustration: “YOU’VE BEEN IN A SORT OF A TRANCE.”]
In a moment of humiliating revelation it came over her--the meaning
of her lapse into childhood memories--the old, old idea of having met
before--her rapt listening to his boyish enthusiasm--she had fallen
in love at first sight!
It was absurd. It was insane--but it was true. Instead of bemoaning her
lack of poise and of character, a foolish imp inside her heart kept
singing--singing all sorts of silly snatches of songs she had heard in
childhood. She laughed outright at her all but resistless impulse to
kiss him good-night instead of waving to him.
What an absurd ending to an evening devoted to celebrating the
emancipation of woman from the dominion of man! The one humiliating and
distressing thing about it was that she was not sure of the impression
she had made on him. Probably nothing serious had been intended on his
part by his request to call again the following evening. He was merely
bent on an accurate analysis of her character for his first article in
Brown’s paper. The thought gave her a moment of pain that was absurd.
In spite of her self-reproaches and warnings she undressed and went to
bed humming an old song.