# Lippincott's Magazine/The Middle Distance

Extracted from Lippincott's Magazine, May 1906, pp. 625–640. Accompanying illustrations may be omitted.
THE MIDDLE DISTANCE
By Jennette Lee
I.
She walked rapidly along the Cliff path, her skirts gathered in one hand, her right arm swinging free. To the left lay the harbor, with the boats creeping, in the yellow twilight, home. To the east stretched the moors, with dun-colored shadows, to the open sea. She had walked to the Point, two miles, to the light-house, and was hurrying back for supper.
Her thin face in the clear twilight had a transparent look, and the dark eyes held little balls of fire that glinted mistily, like the harbor, when she glanced to the west.... She was late—ten minutes at least. Except for the eyes and the transparent face she was without distinction. It was only when the fires within were lighted that one caught a glimpse of beauty ebbing and shining below. She walked with the free step of one who is either married or does not intend to marry—the peculiar freedom that comes from marriage or indifference. The women that possess it are repellent to men, or very attractive.
Marian Walston, if she had thought about it at all, would have said that she was not attractive to men. She had ample chance to know. As the daughter of the president of a small eastern college, she had grown up among men. She had watched them, hundreds of them, pass from freshmen to sophomores and from juniors to silk-topped seniors, without a flutter of heart. The professors, who were either staid men with families or new material from Germany, were part of the familiar college life—nothing more. A year in Crete with the professor of Greek and his family, and another in Rome with the Latin professor, had given rise to interests that had lasted well. She had never known what it was to be bored. But to-day she had walked to the Point and back to escape from herself. This summer, for the first time, she had encountered a man. And the worst was, that she did not approve of him. In her girlhood, she remembered, she had dreamed, in a vague way, of falling in love—sometime—but always with a superior, godlike creature whom one could spend one's days admiring and worshipping and serving. As she had not encountered this being and as fate had dealt kindly with her, she had been free of soul these thirty-three years. Now there was Spencer Manning.
If she had approved of him, she would have suspected that she was in love. It would not have appalled her—the falling in love and marrying as one's ancestors had done. It was not necessarily a disgrace. She would have accepted the common lot with ease if she had approved of him. But she disapproved of him in every particular. Brought up in the strict academic atmosphere of activity, in which one must produce at least one monograph a year to place upon the college shelves, she demanded results. Manning had never produced anything, though he apparently knew enough, and his command of English made her uneasy. But he had done nothing. She defended him against herself. He was not a scholar, but an artist. Her year in Rome had taught her that the two are not weighed in the same scales. But tried by the more delicate beam, the result was even less assuring. What had he done—a man of middle age, rich and talented and in perfect health? She recalled Colvin, at the University, with bent shoulders and hacking cough, performing faithfully his stint of work each year. She remembered the look of patient faithfulness in his eyes when she met him on the campus. Manning's eyes danced before her vision, full of subtle light and a kind of humanness that caught at her breath. She walked a few steps with set lips. She tried to regain her disapproval. She had walked to the Point and back for no other purpose.... He was dilettante. The word had the weight of academic scorn. It covered him like a pall. She walked with freer step.
Then, at a turn of the path, she stopped.
The man sprang to his feet, lifting his hat. “I saw you coming—half a mile back—before you skirted the cove—I waited.” He stood before her with clear, smiling face and round chin, looking at her frankly. The light shining on his uncovered head revealed a tiny bald spot at the crown; but the face and the chin denied it. He had an air of prosperity.
She glanced away from him. Her glance stayed itself. “You have been sketching—in the afternoon?” There was a note of surprise in the tone.
He moved toward the easel in eager mood. “It's a discovery—a little discovery of my own. I will show you.”
She looked to the west uncertainly. “Have we time? I am late—and my father is coming to-night.”
He acquiesced by gathering up his materials and adjusting his step to her's. They struck into the Cliff path. A little color had come into her sallow face. It glowed softly like a flame imprisoned in crystal. Manning watched it as he talked. “It's the afternoon light that I'm trying for,” he said.
“Is that the discovery?” She did not look at him.
“For me—yes. It came to me, all of a sudden, that no one has done it, or tried to do it—that look of afternoon. We're all out in the morning—sunrise and early dew and light like lances—morning glamour—anything up to twelve o'clock. Then we drop it.”
She was looking at him with an amused smile. “And if every one has always done it?” 'The tone conveyed, “Every one must be right.”
He rejected it with a shake of the head. “All wrong—all of them. If I could paint it as I saw it to-day—” His tone was musing.
“How did you see it?” Her voice had a gentler note.
“Something still—unchanging—a kind of eternal quiet. It holds the breath—the country like a city of the soul—an everlasting—What is it Browning says of Rome?”
“'An everlasting wash of air, Rome's ghost since her decease.'” She had caught the mood. Her fires beneath glowed softly.
He nodded, watching the light. “That's it—an everlasting wash of air——” His mood changed lightly. “It's the only wash that will catch it, apparently. I've tried everything else.” His voice shook itself free from regret.
“Let me see it.” She stopped in the path.
He placed the canvas against a rock and they moved back by common consent.
A stretch of rocks in the foreground—a line of sky in the distance—and between, the harbor in the afternoon light. The composition was simple; the colors pale, almost featureless.
He waited for her without speaking.
“The foreground is unspeakable!”
“I know it.” His voice was meek.
“And the sky is mush!”
“It is.”
“But between—” She mused, dropping to silence.
“Yes?” His voice had caught the note of hers and laughed to her.
“Yes. It is good.”
“Clear afternoon,” he assented cheerfully.
“But that does not make a picture.” Her voice had regained its level poise.
“No?” He lifted the canvas. “But it was interesting to do. I shall try again—someday.”
She made no reply. The flame in her face had died out. Only her eyes glinted—but dully, as if something harsh had brushed them.
As they neared the hotel he looked at her. When he spoke his voice was gentle. She had heard him speak like that, the other day, to a child that was hurt. She resented it, even while it soothed her. “I wanted to please you,” he said.
She looked at him. Then her lips smiled. He was absurd. A man should assert himself. “You will never please me,” she said, “with a foreground of wooden blocks.”
He ignored the tone. “I wanted to please you,” he repeated; “I think I shall—sometime.”
She longed to retort, “You never will!” But something held her—the man's presence, his mood, a sense of fate. She shivered a little. “You would much better please yourself,” she said stiffly; “I should be sorry to influence your work in any way.”
He looked at her in the twilight. Something gentle and human in his face held her. “We cannot always do what we choose,” he said.
It came to her like a cry out of a far place.
She ignored it, hurrying up the steps. “It is sometimes better to choose less and do more,” she said clearly. It had come to her, in a flash, that she heard him use the same tone, the very inflection, to her mother when he had picked up a ball of yarn and handed it to her. There was something in him. He could no more help being gallant to women than the sea could help flooding the beach.
Her face relaxed a little. She turned it to him with a smile. “Won't you come to our table to-night and meet my father?” Her smile had a new serenity. Her father had never failed her. She could trust his judgment in a thousand. He would tell her the real nature of the man who attracted and repelled her in a breath.
II.
“Father, this is Mr. Manning—Mr. Spencer Manning,” she added, with a slow inflection.
“Ah!” The president swung his eye-glasses to his nose and looked down on the man standing before him. “Mr. Spencer Manning,” he repeated vaguely. His face lighted. “You planned my brother's house in Watertown?”
“Did I?”
“Didn't you?”
“I planned a house there for a Mr. Walston.”
“I thought so. I remember your name perfectly. I thought of getting you to do some work for the college.” The tone was approving. In a younger man it might have been patronizing. “I liked your work,” he added.
“You made a mistake,” said the other.
“In liking it?”
“In not having me for the college.”
The president laughed. “We shall see—we shall see. My daughter tells me you paint—”
“A little—for amusement.”
They moved toward the dining-room, the president walking beside his wife.
“You never told me you were an architect,” said the girl reproachfully, as they fell behind the others.
“Didn't I? I must have forgotten to mention it.”
“Forgotten!”
“It was long ago I did that house.”
“How long?”
“Five years, at least.”
She laughed out. “And since then, I suppose, you have been a minister and practised medicine and studied law——”
“Not quite,” he admitted. “But I have been busy.”
“No doubt. Though I don't know just what your business is.” Her tone was jesting. But her father, who was unfolding his napkin with deliberation, took it up.
“What is your business, if I may ask, sir? I did not think of connecting Mr. Manning, an artist whom my daughter had met this summer, with the Mr. Manning, the architect.”
His tone was polite and guarded. His comment, with his back turned, as they walked from the parlor to the dining-room, had been, “Good fibre, but relaxed.” He was accustomed to judging human nature in the bulk,—fifty at a time, or more. He seldom made a mistake. When he did he never forgot it.
The artist regarded him frankly. “I'm not, properly speaking, an artist.”
The president looked inquiringly at his daughter.
She shook her head with a smile. “I only said he painted pictures.”
The artist laughed out. “You were too kind. You should have said I tried to paint them.”
“It would have been more truthful,” she assented.
The president looked from one to the other with a puzzled smile.
His wife came to his aid. “He paints very nicely,” she said. “It is only Marian's way.”
“I shall be glad to see your work,” said the president politely.
The girl looked at the artist with dancing eyes. “And he knows good work when he sees it,” she said. “He buys the pictures for the gallery.”
“Marian!” said her mother reprovingly.
“I was only trying to help Mr. Manning,” said the girl. “Father would faint at one of his foregrounds.—You would much better play for him,” she said to the artist.
The president swung his glasses to his nose and stared at the man again. “You are a—a—musician—also?” he said.
“I play a little—sometimes,” grudgingly admitted the man.
“And compose,” supplemented the girl.
“Ah,” said the president, “an amateur!” His glasses dropped from his nose. He resumed his supper contentedly. He had named the object under discussion.
After supper he invited the man for a stroll on the beach. It was his first night at the shore that summer and he was hungry for a breath of sea air. For two hours they paced back and forth on the shining beach. The girl from her window looked out, now and then, with an amused smile. “What do you suppose they are doing to each other?” she demanded of her mother, who sat by the lamp, placidly knitting.
Her mother counted the stitches and drew out a needle. “Mr. Manning is a very talented man, Marian,” she said gently.
“And father is a talented man,” said the girl. “I suppose they are exchanging talents.”
Her mother smiled negatively. She was absorbed in rounding a corner.
When the president came in at last, he sat down with almost boyish enthusiasm. “A remarkable man!” he said, with emphasis.
“Father!” It had a little note of regret.
“You like him, James, don't you?” said his wife. She had dropped her work and was gazing at him approvingly. “I knew you would. You must hear him play.”
The president wrinkled his brow. “I don't know that I care much about hearing him play,” he said slowly. “It's the man that interests me. His ideas are remarkable—remarkable!” He twirled his glasses thoughtfully. “I haven't had so many good suggestions for the college in years. He seems to have a kind of genius in that direction.”
The girl groaned softly.
Her father looked up. “It is a pity he has never had academic training. He would be a most valuable man on a faculty——”
“You might make him professor of literature,” suggested the girl. “He knows a lot about poetry—writes it.”
The president started. “Does he, indeed!” He shook his head reluctantly. “It wouldn't do. But I should like to have a man like that at hand.” He sighed thoughtfully, a smile on his lips.
The girl watched him, half in impatience. He was the keenest man she knew in judging human nature, and he had failed her. Instinctively she knew what had happened. It was the human quality of the man. It had won her mother from the first. It was what she had constantly to resist in herself when she was with him—a sense of well-being and simple human pleasure. She had resented it in him a hundred times,—the fact that he could be so simply happy, and make others happy, without achieving. She would at least warn her father. “He is a very fascinating man,” she said guardedly.
Her father beamed upon her. “You have discovered it?” he said, with enthusiasm.
“Yes.” Without enthusiasm.
“I have seldom met a man that I liked so much on short acquaintance,” said the president; “I feel as if 1 had known him always.”
“He has never done anything,” said the girl.
The president stared at her. “He planned your Uncle Ansell's house.”
The girl blushed. “Anything of importance, I mean.”
“Oh—well—he is young yet.”
“Thirty-eight.”
“Ah.”
“And has never done anything,” she persisted. He must see it and help her.
“Ah,” said the president cheerfully. “Plenty of time—for a man like that—plenty of time.”
Her mother smiled at him contentedly.
The girl rose with a little sigh. The fire in her eyes had died out. A kind of fate seized hold upon her. And the worst was that the man would never care—he would not care more than he cared now. While she—she saw unfathomable gulfs opening in herself—springs of being—dark places. She might even—— She had seen girls like that—she drew back.... “Good-night, mother.” She bent and kissed her softly. “Good-night, father.”
III.
During the days following she avoided him. At the end of the week they had not exchanged a dozen words alone. Her father had gone back to town and she and her mother fell naturally into the company of the artist as they strolled on the beach or walked home from the downs. When they encountered him, her conversation was as frankly that of good comrades as ever. She was building a fortress, stone by stone. No one must suspect her. She laid the stones each day with careful hand, setting them line by line; and at night she placed anew those that had toppled over, cementing them with scorn and self-humiliation.
Her mother, who guessed nothing of the silent masonry, sang his praises night and day, thus innocently adding her handful of brick and mortar to the structure as it rose. She was not an ambitious mother. She only desired for her daughter's happiness. He was, surely, a man to make any woman happy—wife or mother-in-law. She sang his praises till the bonds of filial respect gave a little under the strain.
“After all, mother, he is only a man!”
“I know, my dear. But that is not his fault. His instincts are as fine as those of a woman.”
Alas—yes! She knew it only too well. No man had the right to be fine—and have done nothing! She laid the stone in place, fitting it with level brows. As fine as a woman! She would not forget.
They were walking home in the late light. The crowd had deserted the beach for the Casino, and the moon coming over the downs threw their shadows on the level beach that stretched ahead. They had turned back for the last time and were approaching the hotel.
“I feel like playing to-night,” said the man. “I wonder if you would care to stop.” He glanced toward the lighted windows of the empty parlor. “We should have it to ourselves. Everybody's at the Casino. I need an audience,” he said, half apologetically, turning to them.
“Fit, though few,” laughed the girl.
“Exactly.”
“Shall we come, mother?” She laid her hand on her mother's arm. She longed to compel her, by main force, along the hall to their room. But she only said laughingly, “Shall we come?”
“Of course, Marian. I would not miss it.” She entered the parlor, her clear face in its bands of white hair flushed with pleasure. She delighted in Manning's playing. He had not played for more than a week, she remembered. He wheeled forward a big chair for her, shading it from the light and placing a footstool. His attendance on her had in it something pleasing, a kind of sincere chivalry. The girl turned from it impatiently, finding a chair for herself and refusing brusquely his offer to place it more comfortably.
“It does very well. We cannot stay long,” she said.
He sat down at the piano without reply. His hands struck the keys in quick sound. She looked up in surprise. It was not like him—this sudden initiative. It grew, and laughed—and died away, restless at heart. It challenged her. She did not speak when it was done, and he glided into another—something gentle and quiet.
She resisted it subtly. She had dreaded to come in to-night. Her heart was tired. She glanced toward her mother. She had fallen asleep in the great chair. She looked very pretty, her hands lying loosely apart, her head drooping a little. She was a dear mother—with the pretty, feminine ways that men like. The girl stirred a little.
The music had stopped. “Tell me something to play,” said the man. He did not look up.
She waited a moment. The silence grew significant.
“Play anything you like. Play something from Sill,” she said at random.
His hands wandered, touching notes, waiting. “'The Fool'”? he asked.
“Yes. If you like.”
He wove music about the theme, groping slowly from note to note. The spirit of the poem held the sound and shaped it. A melody grew in it, sweet and haunting. Words fitted themselves to it, half-chanted, half-sung, breaking off, now and then, for the music, but emerging again with new power—a sense of fate that deepened to the climax, low-toned and full, the cry of the shame-smitten king, “Be merciful to me a Fool!”
Manning's hands waited on the keys. “What else?” he said.
“Play Sill,” she said quickly. He had often improvised for her—some character in life or art. She had a sudden curiosity to know what he would do with this.
“Edward Rowland Sill,” he said thoughtfully. “I am not sure that I can.”
He began to play—a little insignificant air—beginning and breaking off and starting again, as if the scent eluded him. Then, at last, he came upon it, almost unawares, a tentative, hesitating note that called for answer and waited and swept into the maze of sound. Struggle and rebellion and fierce fight for life, broken by strains of sweetness, clear high notes of import that broke and fell apart, a shower of sparks—restlessly blown in the wind.
As she listened she caught the clue. It was his own life he was playing,—the soul beneath the clear life, unseen, unguessed, that drove him always toward achievement, that he would never achieve. It opened to her reaches where the soul ran for life, desperate, breathless, till the next point be won. And the high, clear places where it drew breath—failure behind, achievement still to come, both forgotten in the quiet light.
She caught her breath as she listened. The subtle sense of a life that neither fails nor achieves—poised between rest and unrest on wings of strength—it was what his life meant. Who could have felt it but he? Who else would know! Her heart gave a throb of pride and waited while the music died away.
“Play something else.” She spoke quickly. She wanted to think. She seemed on the brink of discovery. “Go on.”
He waited a little. “Here is something I've wanted to try. I think I can do it—to-night!” He played a few bars and stopped. “The lines you quoted the other day.” He was speaking softly under the music. “Do you remember?—'The campaign with its endless fleece of feathery grasses everywhere. Silence and passion, joy and peace, an everlasting wash of air, Rome's ghost since her decease.'”
The voice ceased. The music opened full wings. It hovered in light—long, clear stretches of light, with the pulse of the past beating through it. She listened joyously, her eyes filling. She had not known that she cared—like this. What could he not be? Poised as life itself—he needed only a motive.... Love?... Life stretched before her. Some great service shone along its way. She strained her eyes to the end—hidden in the mists.... She drew back a little.... To give oneself unasked! The music lifted her and bore her.
When it ceased she looked up. “It is very beautiful.”
He turned to her, his eyes glowing out of the slumbering quiet of the music. “You never said that before.”
“No, I never said it—before. I never thought it.”
“I have played better.”
“I think not.”
He waited, looking at her intently.
“You have played, perhaps, with more feeling, but not”—she searched for the word—“not so perfectly. It is—yourself.” She smiled at the anticlimax.
He ignored the smile. He was looking at her thoughtfully. “You mean that is the kind of music I can do best?”
“Yes.”
“Not great music.”
“Not unless you happen to think so.”
He smiled. “I don't happen to think so. I wish I did.”
“I wish you did.” The tone was quiet.
“Would you mind telling me why?” He had turned away to the music in the rack and was fingering it, fitting it exactly into place.
“I don't want to tell you now. Some day I will—if you will write out something like that and dedicate it to me.” Her tone laughed, but it trembled a little.
He wheeled about. “I will dedicate everything I write to you——”
She held up a hand. “Oh, please——”
He turned back. “Very well—— I will compose an opera. I have had it in my head for years. It is in that tone. When it is done it shall be dedicated to you.”
“Thank you.”
“It is not great—I warn you.”
“I don't expect it to be.”
They waited in silence.
“It will be better than great,” she said at last.
He looked at her curiously.
“You know that——?”
“Yes.”
“I did not think any one would know.—When did you find it out?” He moved a step nearer.
“To-night, I think.”
“While I was playing?”
“Yes.”
He looked at her with slow glance.
She shook her head. But the fire in her eyes glowed softly. She did not look away. She wanted him to see—all that he might see. She had lost the sense of herself—of small, feminine fear. She was all woman—wooing him. She no longer cared what he might think. He might love her, or he might forget her and leave her. He should have love's chance that he would not take for himself. He should know that he was loved and believed in. Her eyes rested on him with radiance. She waited, without shyness and without wish.
Something dawned in him, and drew back. His lips parted—to shield her.
Then her lids fell. “You will do it,” she said quietly, “because I have asked you, and your reward will be the doing it.”
“And your reward—what shall that be?” His lips moved stiffly—almost against his will. His gaze was on her eyes.
She raised them again, with the soft glow unconcealed—frank and sweet. “My reward will be that you have done it,” she said. “You could not give me other reward if you would.”
Her hand touched her mother's lightly. The mother opened her eyes and smiled at them dreamily, without confusion. “I fell asleep.” she said. “It was beautiful music.”
“He knows that,” said the girl, with a smile; “I have just told him.”
“You have told me more,” said the man. He had moved toward her, holding out his hand.
She put her own in it frankly. “I have not told you anything I did not mean to.—It is my mother who must make her peace with you if she can.”
“I did fall asleep,” said the mother smiling. “But I liked the music. It rested me. I think I heard it in my dreams.”
“I think you did,” said the girl. “It will rest everyone that hears it.” She patted her mother's hand. “He is going to make an opera of it, for the hearing of the nations.”
“I am glad of that,” said her mother. “I shall want to hear it again when it is done.”
“And I,—” said the girl,—“I shall want to hear it too.”
“You shall both hear it,” said the man. His tone was light, but under it something vibrated, full and sweet, like a tiny bell of hope that caught a note from afar and held it ringing.
IV.
For a month Manning worked steadily on his opera. The mood of the night did not return to her, but she held fast to its vision and to the conviction that at last he would do something worth while. The belief seemed to have communicated itself to him. It held him to his task. Sometimes she caught him looking at her curiously, as if studying her, and once or twice she surprised a look of deep pity in his eyes.
If he had spoken in words, he could not have said more plainly “I cannot do without you. But I can never be more to you than I am now, and that will not satisfy you.” Sometimes the look was humble. It said, “I give all I can. Believe me, I would give more if I could.”
The girl could have laughed in her heart. She had forgotten herself, her need, her questionings. If she still cared what he should be to her, she did not know it; so deeply did she care that he should be himself. She gave without question—but always in one direction. If his interest in music lapsed and he turned to sketching or poetry, she withdrew into herself and waited. Poetry and painting did not exist for her. They should not exist for him—till he had proved himself. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he would return to his task. He had grown dependent on her. He must have her sympathy. If she would not give it except in one direction, he must follow that direction.
So for a month she held him. One morning she came down to find him gone. He had left a note for her. He was tired of the sea. He had gone to the mountains. He would return later—perhaps. He did not return. But he sent for the opera. He wrote asking her to send it. It was in the top of a trunk that he had left packed. He enclosed the key. He did not apologize for troubling her. She did up the sheets, with careful fingers, and sent them to him with the key. She heard no more.
It was late in the season and they were on the point of leaving when he reappeared. She had never seen him look so well. His content with himself and with her and with the whole world irritated her. She could not keep back the question.
“Yes. It is finished.”
She did not question further and they went for a walk on the Cliff. When they came back he said, “I want to play to you.”
“Did you bring it?”
He laughed. “I do not trust it out of my sight.”
She looked at him curiously. “You think it is good?”
“I know it.” It was not boasting or exultation—only the statement of fact.
She smiled. “You are satisfied.”
“I have reason to be. Wait till you hear it.” He had turned away to go for the music. “I did not do it myself, you know,” he said over his shoulder.
When he came back her face was flushed. “What did you mean by saying that?”
“What?” He was running over the keys. “I beg your pardon?” He looked up.
She repeated the question.
His eyes twinkled. “My dear lady, you ought to know who did it!” His fingers had taken up the notes. He was lost in sound. She listened, at first in perplexity, and then in delight. He had changed it all since she heard it,—broadened it, deepened it. It was the very mood of her vision. It came back to her as he played. He had done the thing she had seen for him and he had outdone the dream. Her heart glowed.
When he wheeled about he caught the look in her face. “You like it?”
“When will you publish it?”
He smiled a little. He got up and crossed the room, pacing back and forth once or twice. He came and stood before her. “Will you marry me?”
“No.”
He gathered up the music, crowding it together in his hand.
She moved forward with a quick gesture.
He held it a little from her, smiling. “I shall not hurt it. But it shall not be published till you promise.”
The next morning he was gone again. She had refused to listen to him. He had urged the power of the music, her influence over him, his need of her, her perfect understanding of him and his work. He had asked her almost grudgingly to marry him. He had pleaded with her generously to accept him. She put it from her with a little smile of wistfulness. “I don't think you quite understand,” she said.
As she packed the trunks the next day and made ready to go, her thoughts followed him. She did not reproach him. It was as if fate had come. He had been too honest to say that he loved her. She thanked him for that.... She might have yielded. She needed love—now. And she would never have it.
She folded the last garments and laid them neatly in place. A golf-cape lay on a chair, left out till the last. She took it up and threw it about her shoulders. “I am going for a little walk, mother.”
She hurried across the strip of beach and struck into the downs. They stretched away for miles, cold and brown. She drew a deep breath, walking rapidly. Life was still tonic. Earth and sky hung poised as before. She would come back to them.
V.
The fall and early winter fled rapidly. She joined a musical club and went into one of the classes in harmony. She read deeply in musical composition and became almost a local authority on musical biography. Where another woman would have cut herself off from the pain of association, she deliberately sought it, filling it with fresh interest and adding it to her life. Manning himself she did not mention. When her mother brought him into the conversation, she talked of him easily and quietly—enough to divert suspicion she thought.
The only drawback to her serenity was that after these conversations she sometimes found her hands trembling strangely and her heart beating. It was disturbing to a philosophic view of life.
One afternoon in December she came home early from a musical and went directly to her room. She was very tired. She would rest a little before dinner. When she had lain down, she became conscious of voices in the room below. Some one was calling on her mother. The voices rumbled a soothing accompaniment to her sleep.
Suddenly her attention grew alert. The voices had laughed—her mother's in quiet content, and the other—she sat up, pushing back the hair from her face. How foolish! She pressed her hot cheeks between her palms. She.rose and bathed her face, cooling the hot skin slowly. Then she combed her hair, piling it high, and put on her prettiest gown. She descended the stair with tranquil step, the fires within her eyes. Perhaps because she was thinner than a year ago, they blazed a little, lighting the transparent skin. She moved toward the library, whence the murmur of voices came pleasingly.
Her mother looked up with a gentle start. “Why, Marian, I did not know you had come home. Mr. Manning is here.”
He came forward with the old look in his eyes, gentle and human and a little quizzical. Her own fell before it as she withdrew her hand, but her head kept its quiet poise.
“He is going to stay to dinner,” said her mother. “I must tell Lena.” She moved from the room.
They stood facing each other across the fire blazing on the hearth.
He spoke first, choosing his words almost awkwardly. “I ought not to have said I would stay. You may not want me to.—There was something I wanted to say—to explain.”
“Won't you sit down?” She motioned to the chair near him and seated herself on the opposite side of the hearth, shading her eyes from the fire with her hand. Behind its shelter the fire in the depth smouldered.
He did not sit down. He took up the tongs instead and thrust a little at the fire. “I always expected her to be tall,” he said. He straightened himself. “Tall—and handsome,” he added. He rapped the tongs together and set them in place, looking at her almost aggressively.
She did not reply. A little smile had crept into her face.
“What are you laughing at?”
“Nothing,—only a man that I admired—once.”
“Who was he?” He had moved a step uneasily.
“He wasn't at all. I made him up. He was very tall—and handsome.”
He stared at her. A smile dawned in his eyes slowly. “I see.” He gazed at the vision. “Wouldn't they make a gallant pair!”
“Perfect prigs,” she admitted.
“Ah, you do know!” He moved toward her.
“How you feel? Perfectly.” Her voice was cool and impersonal. She had clasped her hands and was leaning forward gazing into the fire, the little smile still on her lips.
He looked at her without speaking. His eyes followed the lines of her figure—its quaint poise and the lighted face.
“You are very beautiful, dear lady,” he said. The words were quiet,—hardly a breath.
She did not stir. She might not have heard them.
He came nearer. “You are beautiful,” he repeated softly. His hand sought the clasped ones and covered them. “Listen.” His voice had a note of authority. “You will not send me away again. I must stay.” He was close to her, scanning her face. “I am not good enough. But I shall stay.”
She had turned her face away swiftly.
He drew it to him, covering it. “You made me come,” he whispered.
“Never!” The word was muffled, but vigorous.
“Ah, but you did,” contentedly. “I tried my best. I travelled thousands of miles to escape.”
She lifted her head proudly. “Then you may go. I do not approve of you. I have never approved of you.”
“No. But you love me?”
She threw out her hands with a little gesture. “Alas—yes!” The tears overran her smile.
He dried them slowly with his handkerchief in little dabs till the smile came out again.
He rose to his feet, stuffing the handkerchief into his pocket. “I'm going to stay,” he said. “I'll make you approve.”
She looked at him, half-fearfully. “How will you do it?”
“My opera will help.” He spoke cheerfully.
“It is good.”
“It's being rehearsed. It's to be given next month.”
“No?” She leaned forward, a little breathless. “Why didn't you tell me?”
“I wanted you to promise—first.”
“I promise. Tell me!” She was on her feet.
“You promise!”
“Yes. But wait. Tell me!” She was moving from him.
He followed close. “I will tell you,” he said, “by and by.”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1951, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 72 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse