THE REFUSAL
THREE desolate winter months passed and still Manning remained under
the doctor’s care. Not a line had been received from him. Ellen’s heart
sank at the bitter thought. Surely he might have dared a doctor’s
orders and sent a word to say that she had not been forgotten.
She kept in touch with him through Bates, the head of his publishing
house. She called his telephone and asked boldly and directly about his
health. She had ceased to care what he thought, although he was the
most conventional of New England churchmen.
An occasional letter from Lucy Sheldon barely mentioned Manning’s
illness and always with the certain assurance of his early recovery.
Ellen resolutely closed her eyes to the dumb misery of her niece. She
refused to recognize the possibility of the thing she feared. She would
know only the depth and despair of her own love and the resolution to
fight her way back into Manning’s heart and life. There was no such
word as fail. The strength of this resolution gave her the courage to
fight despair.
She stood at her window and watched the snow swirl in blinding sheets
against the big building opposite in the fiercest storm of the winter.
It had broken on the swelling buds of the trees late in March. For
twenty-four hours it had raged with unabated fury. The snow had piled
in huge drifts against the buildings on the east side of the avenue and
covered the square in white fantastic hills, ravines and valleys.
The tempest soothed the tumult of her heart. She watched the swaying
trees and the brave traveller here and there battling with the fierce
winds in a pensive and passive mood. What was the use of standing stiff
and straight to take the lash of the storm? It was better to bend as
the swaying branches of those elms and let it pass. It must pass. All
sorrows must pass. The sun must shine to-morrow or the next day.
Through the swirling clouds of snow she saw emerging the figure of a
tiny messenger boy battling against the storm. He was crossing the
square toward the avenue.
Instantly she leaped at the idea that he was bringing a message to her
through the blinding mists of the snow. The idea became a certainty
when he crossed the avenue and sought the shelter of the western side.
She sprang to her door, opened it, and leaned over the stair rail. Her
hands were trembling.
“Silly fool!” she muttered.
Not a sound came from below save the dull roar of the wind in the
vestibule at the entrance on the level of the street. He wouldn’t ring
the old-fashioned bell. The front door was never locked in the daytime.
Her heart sank. He had passed, of course. The front door suddenly
opened and a gust of freezing air rushed upward. She drank it as wine.
Her cheeks flushed and she laughed with nervous joy. She waited for
a moment and saw the little half-frozen blue figure trudging up the
stairs, pulling on the rail as if exhausted.
“Up here, boy!” she cried encouragingly.
“Miss Ellen West?” he called.
“Yes; hurry, please!”
He stopped to rest.
“My Gawd,” he wailed, “I’m a hurryin’ all I can. I’m froze ter death.
I’m plum dead.”
Ellen ran down the stairs to meet him, took the telegram and read it.
“Will arrive New York at eleven a.m. to-morrow morning and call
immediately.
MANNING.”
She felt herself sway uncertainly for an instant and caught the rail in
time to steady her nerves. The boy had seated himself on the stairs,
indifferent to passing events. He was so tired and cold nothing
mattered.
Ellen saw the crouching, shivering bundle at her feet, roused herself
and drew him after her into the warm room. His face was dirty and his
eyes bleared, but he was beautiful to her dreaming eyes. He had brought
glad tidings! She gave him a cup of hot coffee, stuffed him with
doughnuts, and sent him down the steps whistling.
She took time to compose herself before announcing to Rose the news.
To have permitted the girl to see her silly tears of joy, her flushed
cheeks and trembling hands would have been an abject confession. She
shivered at the thought. Fortunately, Rose was in her room and had not
heard the messenger boy enter.
She climbed the stairs to the balcony and placed her hand on the door
knob, paused suddenly and decided to call her message without entering.
She was ashamed to confess her cowardice, but in her heart of hearts
she was afraid her niece might betray the secret which she had sworn to
herself could not exist.
She gripped the knob firmly and called:
“Rose, dear!”
“Yes, honey.”
“I’ve just received a telegram from Mr. Manning.”
“He’s--not--dead?”
“Well, he couldn’t wire us if he were.”
“He’s coming?”
“Yes; to-morrow at eleven o’clock.”
There was no answer; only a faint little smothered cry.
“Don’t stop your work now, dear. Do more than usual so you can take
to-morrow morning off.”
“Yes’m,” came the low answer.
In spite of her resolve not to know what Rose really felt toward
Manning, Ellen caught herself listening eagerly to every accent of her
answers. In no way did she reveal anything. The excitement she had
shown would be perfectly natural under the circumstances. Her interest
in Manning as his typewriter would account for it, to say nothing of
the fact that he was her aunt’s collaborator and best friend.
Besides, the book which she had typed for him had made a sensation. The
first edition of a hundred thousand copies had been sold and a second
edition twice as large was on the press. His royalties from these two
editions would be ninety thousand dollars. His name was on every lip in
the world of letters. His fame was already nation-wide.
Whatever her personal attitude toward Manning, the child would feel the
deepest interest always in his career. Ellen not only refused to face
the possibility of her niece’s love; she had convinced herself that the
idea was absurd.
At eleven o’clock next morning she seized her telephone and called the
Pennsylvania station. The train from Lakewood was twenty minutes late
on account of the storm.
“Go back to your studies, dear,” she said gently to Rose. “I’ll call
you when he arrives. The train will be more than an hour late to-day.
The snow is drifting.”
“All right, honey,” was the cheerful reply.
The girl had a beautiful spirit. To know her was to love her. For just
an instant an ugly wish flashed through Ellen’s heart. Why couldn’t she
have been a little more selfish and mean? She dismissed it with scorn
for her own weakness.
She had sent Rose back to her studies, not because she really believed
the train would be an hour late, but because she must have a few
minutes alone with Manning. And it must be at once. It would be
unendurable to sit quietly before Rose and talk conventionally with the
storm raging within her soul.
At twenty minutes past eleven she heard his footfall on the stairs.
She leaped to her feet. The train had made up time. Could she control
herself? She must. To throw herself into his arms was her first
impulse. To have him release himself would be the last straw. It
wouldn’t do. She must give him the assurance first of her conversion
to his ideals--of her complete acceptance of his way in life. She
must take time to clear all differences from their pathway. She must
remember that he was still free by an act of her own will. Rose could
not hear their conversation in the living-room below.
With an effort she steadied herself for the meeting and opened the
door. The shock of his appearance unnerved her. He extended his hand
with an uncertain movement, as if dizzy, and his step was shuffling.
His eyes were widely distended and sunk deep in his projecting
forehead. They burned with a feverishly bright light.
She tried to speak and couldn’t. She held his hand tightly and assisted
him to a chair.
“I really shouldn’t have come to-day,” he apologized. “The doctor
refused permission. I told him to go to the devil and I came to New
York.”
“I’m afraid it was unwise,” she faltered.
“I had to come. I had to see you for a few minutes.”
Ellen’s lips quivered.
“They tell me,” he went on quickly, “that I must go further south for a
long stay----”
He paused in apparent embarrassment.
Ellen looked into his eyes with tender yearning.
There was an absent stare in them that saw nothing.
“Before you say anything,” she began in low tones, “I’ve something to
tell you. In the long hours of abject misery through which I’ve passed
since I lost you I’ve been born again--born of the spirit, I think. I
have ceased to desire self-development. My one wish has been and is to
help you. I have changed my views of life. I have returned to the old
creed of woman’s complete merging in the life of her mate. I’ll marry
you now, dear love-man, if you will ask me.”
Her voice had sunk to a whisper in her last words. He sat as if in a
trance, his eyes shining with a strange brilliance. She waited until it
was impossible to endure the silence longer.
“Did you hear me?” she inquired gently.
He smiled wanly.
“Yes, dear, I heard you with an unearthly distinctness. I can’t realize
that it is you who say this to me. I seem to be another man looking
down on the scene----”
He paused and drew a deep breath.
“You see, it’s too late for us now.”
A cry of anguish came in spite of her effort.
“I must be frank, mustn’t I?”
“Yes--yes--go on; it’s the only way,” she urged.
“In you and me, habit has become fixed. Habit is life--character is the
sum total of our habits. We began all wrong. We kept open shop from
the first. There was nothing fixed, nothing settled, except the one
thing that could always keep things unsettled--our freedom! Life was
one of continuous unrest. Impatience, turmoil, quarrelling, bickering,
and suspicion was the only air we could breathe because we were
free--and freedom is a challenge to progressive new relations. It would
be a fatal mistake for us now to attempt the old régime. It could only
end in disappointment and unhappiness for us both.”
She lifted her hand.
“Please. It is unnecessary for you to say more.”
The old imperious pride was slowly asserting itself. He knew that it
would if he were frank. He had made up his mind to be brutally frank.
He was glad she had rallied so quickly.
“You came, then, to tell me this before you left for the South?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
He rose with an effort.
“You will go so soon?” she asked coldly.
“I promised the doctor to take the first train back. I am to leave for
the South to-night.”
“I’ll call Rose.”
“Please don’t!” he said quickly.
“She will be dreadfully disappointed.”
“Yes, I know,” he answered thoughtfully, “but I’m not equal to the task
of meeting others to-day. I came only to see you.”
There was a tone of finality to his voice that angered her.
“I understand,” she responded indifferently.
She accompanied him to the door before she thought of the frozen
streets.
“You must let me call you a cab.”
“Mine is waiting,” he said.
Her cheeks flushed. He had planned the final break with her in cold
blood! She closed the door without extending her hand or uttering a
word. She heard him hesitate a moment as if shocked by her rudeness.
And then he slowly descended the stairs.
She turned into the room with firm step, her head erect.
The blow she had received was so brutal, so cruel, it was incredible.
Her mind had refused to grasp its full meaning at first. She only dimly
realized it yet. Soul and body rose in fierce rebellion.
“Deserted!” she laughed bitterly.
It was bitter, but it was good medicine. It was the tonic needed to
save her from collapse. She thanked him for saving her. She would lift
up her head now and go her way. If the world sneered, what matter? She
would live her own life in her own way.
She saw a copy of his novel on her desk. She threw it across the room,
struck a vase and shattered it.
The noise brought Rose to the balcony.
“What was that? Has he come, auntie?”
“Yes; come down!”
Rose approached with an expression of childlike bewilderment.
“He has come?”
“And gone.”
“Gone?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t let me know,” she gasped.
“I started to call you and he stopped me.” Her voice was hard and cold.
Its chill struck the girl’s heart.
“He stopped you?” she repeated in wonder.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Said he didn’t want to see anyone. He is a very distinguished man now,
honey.”
The girl’s lips moved as if to speak. She staggered and crumpled on the
floor at Ellen’s feet.