A BROKEN WING
FIELD’S bold plea for the flesh roused Ellen’s deepest emotional
revolt. Her first impulse was to strangle the cool, smiling tempter.
On reflection, her philosophy of life forbade such violent attempts to
force another human being to think as she thought. Absolute freedom for
each individual human soul and body was the one principle on which she
was building the structure of life and thought.
The man of Field’s daring, promiscuous impulses must of course be
controlled in the new moral world in which the words husband, wife,
parent, and child would become legally obsolete. Just how this could be
done presented to her mind a problem. There must be a solution. There
could be but one. He must be controlled by love. The magic glow of her
passion for Manning warmed her heart with sudden tenderness. Such love
was the solution of every problem of human life.
She rose with renewed courage to fight for her ideal and live or die by
its standard.
She set herself resolutely to work. The first days of her separation
from Manning passed swiftly. She literally buried herself in work.
She was surprised at the strength and exhaustless vitality of her
imagination under the new inspiration of love. She worked as never
before--eight, ten, twelve and at last fourteen hours a day and stopped
at midnight with stores of energy still untouched.
Manning would call before the end of the week. Of that she was sure.
She felt no serious uneasiness until Saturday afternoon.
“A very wise young man!” she exclaimed.
She watched the hands of her clock slowly move to three. He had never
failed to call on Saturday afternoon before three.
A sudden panic seized her. Could he toss her aside so easily as a vain
and worthless experiment? It was preposterous. His love was the real
thing. She felt this with unerring certainty. Her intuitions were too
keen to make a mistake about a thing so vital to her happiness.
She seized the telephone to call the office and ask for him.
“I’ll not humiliate myself!” she groaned.
She slammed the telephone down with such violence the receiver fell off
the hook.
And then the ridiculous side of her rage suddenly dawned. Why should a
full-grown woman, who claimed equal rights with man, in all things on
the earth above or beneath it, attempt to play the coy maiden who sits
patiently at home and waits to be courted by her mate?
“Bah--such nonsense!” she cried.
She seized the telephone boldly and called Manning’s office.
“Mr. Manning is not in!” sighed the telephone girl.
“Not in?”
“Not in.”
“Where is he?”
“In Chicago, on business for the paper. He told me to tell any one who
might call that he would be gone a month.”
“Thank you.”
The conceited young ass had expected her to call and she had! Served
her right for being such a fool. Well, the lesson was needed and she
had gotten it--straight between the eyes.
Lucy Sheldon would know all about it, of course. But she wouldn’t ask
her. The little match-making minx of the old marriage régime had no
doubt planned the whole thing and sent her handsome nephew away on the
trip in order to bring her to her senses. She resented the assumption
that she had parted with her senses.
“Fools,” she muttered, “I’ll show them two can play the game.”
A low muffled tapping on the wall stopped her angry arraignment of
Manning and Lucy.
Field was calling again.
It was uncanny the way he would call at the moment when her mind could
least resist his wit and insolence.
“Come out on the balcony, Fair Ladie, I’ve somewhat to say to thee!”
She walked to the window and found him climbing out.
He waved a jovial salute.
“I’m lonely, Fair Ladie!” he called.
“So am I, rude man!”
“May I come over?”
“No.”
“Then you’ll come over here, perchance?”
“Perchance--I will not.”
“Walk with me, then, through the woods on the Jersey hills--my car is
in the shops.”
“All right; I’ll meet you downstairs.”
The stroll through the deep-wooded cliffs of the Palisades soothed her
anger. The lines of the city’s tall buildings were half smothered in
a haze that melted into clouds and made it seem unreal. There was no
hurrying, rushing, maddening New York. It was only a dream. The woods
and sky and water and rocks and birds were realities--all else myth.
Even the man beside her, who persisted in his idiotic determination to
carry her across the rough places, was a fiction.
Altogether Field seemed the most unreal thing in the universe to-day.
She had accepted his invitation to test the strength of his appeal to
her. Now that she was alone with him in the deep woods there was no
appeal. His chatter about love and comradeship and high achievement
fell on deaf ears. Her soul was a thousand miles away.
“That’s just it!” she breathed, “exactly a thousand miles away, in the
smoky city by the lake!”
She stopped suddenly.
“It’s no use, Randy,” she said forlornly. “You bore me dreadfully
to-day.”
“Bore you?” he repeated in surprise.
“Yes. Forgive my plain speech. But I’m in love.”
She sat down on a rock and looked up into his mocking eyes through a
mist in her own.
“In love with a doggoned, stubborn country boy who insists on his own
way and I won’t have it, that’s all--I won’t have it!”
Her hat had fallen from her hand, and her lips trembled. Field shook
his head and touched her hair gently.
“Better let him have his way, child.”
“Never!”
“It’s best for you.”
“I’ll die first!”
“You may die for it anyhow. As well first as last.”
“I’m no weakling and you know it.”
“No, but you’re the marrying kind and don’t know it.”
“I’m nothing of the sort!”
“The only difference is you’re trying to invent a marriage chain
warranted never to break.”
“Shut up!” she snapped.
Field threw up his hands in full surrender.
“We return then to the haunts of man where your grief may flow
unchecked to the sea?”
“Forgive me, Randy!” she cried suddenly.
She shook the spell of her emotion from her, sprang to her feet and
roamed the woods with a free careless joy that surprised her companion.
“By George, you amaze me!” he said at last.
“And why?”
“You’re a wonder,” he replied, shaking his head. “I’m more in love with
you than ever.”
“It’s no use--forget it.”
“It may be no use, but we’ll not forget it.”
They reached the paved road along which automobiles were whizzing in
both directions as a classy little roadster passed with a pretty girl
alone at the wheel.
“Sensible girl!” Field sighed. “She owns and drives her own car, fancy
free----”
“And roams the world seeking whom she may devour, no doubt.”
“Possibly.”
“She caught your eye, I noticed!” Ellen laughed.
“Never touched me!” he protested.
“You can’t help it, Randy, any more than you can stop your breathing by
a moral resolution.”
They walked to the ferry in silence the greater part of the way. It
wasn’t necessary for either to talk unless they wished.
Ellen had formed a sudden resolution that absorbed her. That car was
a good idea. She had always longed for the freedom which such wings
would give. With it she need not be incumbered with a love-making man.
The woods and fields and long, winding roads would be hers. She had
money enough now to own one. The fresh air would restore her poise and
self-respect.
Early Monday morning she bought it and devoted the afternoons of the
entire week to lessons in driving. She was an apt pupil. Her strength
and cool brain soon gave her quick mastery of its every mood. By the
end of the week she was sweeping over the hills and valleys of New
Jersey with the ease of a veteran.
She took Field for a spin on the following Sunday. He was fascinated
by her skill and sureness of touch.
“I’m glad I noticed that girl in the car,” he said musingly.
“Why?”
“Otherwise we wouldn’t own this one, would we?”
“We would. You flatter yourself unduly. I had made up my mind to buy
the car before your slow eye had even caught the swish of the girl’s
veil in the wind.”
“The times are out of joint!” Field sighed.
“What’s the matter with them?”
“The girls are getting too swift for my clumsy ways.”
Ellen laughed heartily.
Field touched her gloved hand.
“Keep your hand off my wheel!” she commanded sharply.
He dropped his hand like a naughty schoolboy who felt the teacher’s
rule.
“Yes, Ma’am!” he sighed.
She permitted him to go to the garage and watch her give orders to the
attendants. He walked home with her in an unusually thoughtful mood.
They paused at the doorway downstairs. He looked at her earnestly for a
moment.
“You’re not fooling me a little bit,” he began slowly, “with all this
rush of new experiences and excitement outdoors. You’re just trying to
hide the hurt inside. It’s not the way, my comrade. The way to forget
a lover who is unworthy of your love is to accept the one who is.
Come, be sensible. Keep your freedom and yet sweep the gamut of human
passion and human emotion. You and I can form a true alliance of free
comradeship. We have similar tastes and ideals. We work at the same
divine art--the big creative art of letters. We live side by side. The
secret of our love will be our own. Let’s marry to-night with the free
ceremony of the new thought and the new world.”
She shook her head.
“It’s a waste of breath, Randy.”
“Why--why?” he pleaded.
“I--don’t--love--you----”
“I’ll teach you how----”
“No, my man of mind and muscle; you learn to love through your
senses--woman only becomes sensuous when she loves. I want my own man
now and I’m going to have him.”
Her lips suddenly closed in grim resolution. She pressed Field’s hand,
nodded good-night and rapidly mounted to her apartment.
She was glad he had pressed his suit at that crucial moment. She had
reached the depths of despair to-day. Never had she felt so keenly her
loneliness and the humiliation of defeat as in the instant of parting
at the close of the day of excitement. Nothing could have so cleared
her mind of cobwebs as Field’s straight appeal to her senses.
Her course was clear as day. She would throw her silly pride to the
winds, court her lover and make him her own! Why not, in heaven’s name,
if she claimed equal rights with man, should she not choose her mate,
pursue him openly and win him in a fair fight?
“I can do it and I will!” she resolved fiercely.
She called Lucy Sheldon and asked her for Manning’s address.
Incidentally she learned much of deep interest about him.
“No, he didn’t run away at all, you silly goose,” her friend answered.
“Brown sent him to Chicago to report a sensational trial. It’s the
chance of his life. If he lands it, his salary will be doubled.”
“Hasn’t thought of me once?”
“I oughtn’t to tell you the truth, I suppose----”
“Please.”
“You don’t deserve to know it, but he’s been unutterably miserable. My
letters have been his only comfort and I’ve had to tell him the truth
about your scandalous flirtation with Field.”
“How dare you!”
“It’s the truth and you know it!”
“It’s false and you know it!”
Lucy laughed.
“I’m so glad to hear your indignant denial. Of course, I haven’t
written him about it. I’ve just been sick over it myself.”
“Thanks for your lofty opinion of me.”
“What else could I think with your crazy ideas of freedom and your
crazier ideas of marriage?”
“He has been unhappy?”
“Miserable.”
“I’m glad. I’ll write him now just what I think of him.”
“Do; he’ll be very happy if you tell him the truth.”
“You’re hopeless, Lucy.”
With a bang she hung up the receiver and hurried to her desk. Her
letter to Manning was brief, but it made him foolishly happy.
In a room at a cheap hotel, buried in papers, his hair dishevelled,
and his collar discarded, his shirt unbuttoned, he was working with
tireless energy when the bell-boy pushed open his door. Furious at the
interruption he glared at the intruder.
“What’ell, Bill!” he growled.
“Special delivery, sir,” was the drawling reply.
Manning leaped to his feet, his heart beating fiercely. He had felt it
coming for the past twenty-four hours--a foolish buoyancy had braced
him in his work. He had begun to think he had recovered from his
wound. He seized the letter and saw her smooth, fine handwriting. A
special delivery stamp on it, too! He read it at a glance.
DEAR LOVE-MAN:
Please hurry home. I can’t live without you.
Always yours,
ELLEN.
He kissed it, laughed and kissed it again.
“That’s what I call a real love letter!” he exclaimed rapturously.
He finished his work the following day and caught the Limited for
New York. With every click of the swift flying wheels over the steel
rails his heart beat a responsive love-note. She had surrendered her
foolish whims. They would be married now and the real life of serious
achievement begin.