XIX
DEEP-SEA SOUNDINGS
"_Oof_! I feel as if I had been dipped in a warm bath of conspiracy andhung up to dry in the cold storage of nihilism! If you take me to any moremeetings of your committee of safety, I shall be like the man withoutmusic in his soul--'fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils.'"
Thus Penelope, after the breaking up of the Van Brock dinner party. Elinorhad elected to walk the few blocks intervening between Alameda Square andTejon Avenue, and Ormsby had dismissed his chauffeur with the motor-car.
"I told you beforehand it was going to be a political confab," said theclub-man in self-defense. "And you mustn't treat it lightly, either. Tenprattling words of what you have heard to-night set afloat on the gossippool of this town might make it pretty difficult for our David."
"We are not very likely to babble," retorted Penelope. "We are not so richin intimates in this aboriginal desert." But Elinor spoke to the penalclause in his warning.
"Then Mr. Kent's danger is more real than he admitted?" she said.
"It's real enough, I fancy; more real for him than it might be for anotherman in his place. He is a curious combination, is David: keen andsharp-witted and as cold as an icicle in the planning part; but when itcomes to the in-fighting he hasn't sense enough to pound sand, as his NewHampshire neighbors would say."
"I like that side of him best," Penelope averred. "Deliver me from a manof the cold and calculating sort who sits on his impulses, sleeps on hisinjuries, and takes money-revenge for an insult. Mr. Loring tells a storyof a transplanted Vermonter in South America. A hot-headed Peruvian calledhim a liar, and he said: 'Oh, pshaw! you can't prove it.'"
"What a merciless generalizer you are!" said Ormsby, laughing. "The manwho marries you will have his work cut out for him if he proposes to fillthe requirements."
"Won't he?" said Penelope. "I can fancy him sitting up nights to figure itall out."
They had reached the Tejon Avenue apartment house, and to Elinor's "Won'tyou come in?" Ormsby said: "It's pretty late, but I'll smoke a cigar onthe porch, if you'll let me."
Penelope took the hammock, but she kept it only during the first inch ofOrmsby's cigar. After her sister had gone in, Elinor went back to thelapsed topic.
"I am rather concerned about Mr. Kent. You described him exactly;and--well, he is past the planning part and into the fighting part. Do youthink he will take ordinary precautions?"
"I hope so, I'm sure," rejoined the amateur chairman. "As his businessmanager I am responsible for him, after a fashion. I was glad to seeLoring to-night--glad he has come back. Kent defers to him more than hedoes to any one else; and Loring is a solid, sober-minded sort."
"Yes," she agreed; "I was glad, too."
After that the talk languished, and the silence was broken only by thedistant droning of an electric car, the fizz and click of the arc lightover the roadway, and the occasional _dap_ of one the great beetlesdarting hither and thither in the glare.
Ormsby was wondering if the time was come for the successful exploiting ofan idea which had been growing on him steadily for weeks, not to saymonths.
It was becoming more and more evident to him that he was not advancing inthe sentimental siege beyond the first parallel thrown up so skilfully onthe last night of the westward journey. It was not that Elinor was lackingin loyalty or in acquiescence; she scrupulously gave him both as anaccepted suitor. But though he could not put his finger upon the precisething said or done which marked the loosening of his hold, he knew he wasreceding rather than advancing.
Now to a man of expedients the interposition of an obstacle suggests onlyways and means for overcoming it. Ormsby had certain clear-cut convictionstouching the subjugation of women, and as his stout heart gave himresolution he lived up to them. When he spoke again it was of the matterwhich concerned him most deeply; and his plea was a gentle repetition ofmany others in the same strain.
"Elinor, I have waited patiently for a long time, and I'll go on doing it,if that is what will come the nearest to pleasing you. But it would be aprodigious comfort if I might be counting the days or the weeks. Are youstill finding it impossible to set the limit?"
She nodded slowly, and he took the next step like a man feeling his way inthe dark.
"That is as large an answer as you have ever given me, I think. Is thereany speakable reason?"
"You know the reason," she said, looking away from him.
"I am not sure that I do. Is it because the moneygods have beenunpropitious--because these robber barons have looted your railroad?"
"No; that is only part of it--the smallest part."
"I hoped so: if you have too little, I have a good bit too much. But thatcorners it in a way to make me sorry. I am not keeping my promise to winwhat you weren't able to give me at first."
"Please don't put it that way. If there be any fault, it is mine. You haveleft nothing undone."
The man of expedients ran over his cards reflectively and decided that themoment for playing his long suit was fully come.
"Your goodness of heart excuses me where I am to blame," he qualified. "Iam coming to believe that I have defeated my own cause."
"By being too good to me?" she suggested.
"No; by running where I should have been content to walk; by shackling youwith a promise, and so in a certain sense becoming your jailer. That isputting it rather clumsily, but isn't it true?"
"I had never thought of it in that light," she said unresponsively.
"You wouldn't, naturally. But the fact remains. It has wrenched your pointof view hopelessly aside, don't you think? I have seen it and felt it allalong, but I haven't had the courage of my convictions."
"In what way?" she asked.
"In the only way the thing can be stood squarely upon its feet. It'shard--desperately hard; and hardest of all for a man of my peculiar build.I am no longer what you would call a young man, Elinor, and I have neverlearned to turn back and begin all over again with any show of heartiness.They used to say of me in the Yacht Club that if I gained a half-length ina race, I'd hold it if it took the sticks out of my boat."
"I know," she assented absently.
"Well, it's the same way now. But for your sake--or rather for the sake ofmy love--I am going to turn back for once. You are free again, Elinor. AllI ask is that you will let me begin where I left off somewhere on the roadbetween here and Boston last fall."
She sat with clasped hands looking steadily at the darkened windows of theopposite house, and he let her take her own time. When she spoke there wasa thrill in her voice that he had never heard before.
"I don't deserve it--so much consideration, I mean," she said; and he madehaste to spare her.
"Yes, you do; you deserve anything the best man in the world could do foryou, and I'm a good bit short of that."
"But if I don't want you to go back?"
He had gained something--much more than he knew; and for a tremulousinstant he was near to losing it again by a passionate retraction of allhe had been saying. But the cool purpose came to his rescue in time.
"I should still insist on doing it. You gave me what you could, but I wantmore, and I am willing to do what is necessary to win it."
Again she said: "You are too good to me," and again he contradicted her.
"No; it is hardly a question of goodness; indeed, I am not sure that itescapes being selfish. But I am very much in earnest, and I am going toprove it. Three years ago you met a man whom you thought you couldlove--don't interrupt me, please. He was like some other men we know: hedidn't have the courage of his convictions, lacking the few dollars whichmight have made things more nearly equal. May I go on?"
"I suppose you have earned the right to say what you please," was theimpassive reply.
It was the old struggle in which they were so evenly matched--of the womanto preserve her poise; of the man to break it down. Another lover mighthave given up in despair, but Ormsby's strength lay in holding on in theface of all discouragements.
"I believe, as much as I believe anything in this world, that you weremistaken in regard to your feeling for the other man," he went on calmly."But I want you to be sure of that for yourself, and you can't be sureunless you are free to choose between us."
"Oh, don't!--you shouldn't say such things to me," she broke out; and thenhe knew he was gaining ground.
"Yes, I must. We have been stumbling around in the dark all these months,and I mean to be the lantern-bearer for once in a way. You know, and Iknow, and Kent is coming to know. That man is going to be a success,Elinor: he has it in him, and he sha'n't lack the money-backing he mayneed. When he arrives----"
She turned on him quickly, and the blue-gray eyes were suspiciouslybright.
"Please don't bury me alive," she begged.
He saw what he had done; that the nicely calculated purpose had carriedstraight and true to its mark; and for a moment the mixed motives, whichare at the bottom of most human sayings and doings, surged in him like thesea at the vexed tide-line of an iron-bound coast. But it was the betterBrookes Ormsby that struggled up out of the elemental conflict.
"Don't mistake me," he said. "I am neither better nor worse than othermen, I fancy. My motives, such as they are, would probably turn out to bepurely selfish in the last analysis. I am proceeding on the theory thatconstraint breeds the desire for the thing it forbids; therefore I removeit. Also, it is a part of that theory that the successful David Kent willnot appeal to you as the unspoiled country lawyer did. No, I'm not goingto spoil him; if I were, I shouldn't be telling you about it. But--may Ibe brutally frank?--the David Kent who will come successfully out of thispolitical prize-fight will not be the man you have idealized."
There was a muttering of thunder in the air, and the cool precursorybreeze of a shower was sweeping through the tree-tops.
"Shall we go into the house?" she asked; and he took it as his dismissal.
"You may; I have kept you up long enough." And then, taking her hand: "Arewe safely ashore on the new continent, Elinor? May I come and go asheretofore?"
"You were always welcome, Brookes; you will be twice welcome, now."
It was the first time she had ever called him by his Christian name and itwent near to toppling down the carefully reared structure ofself-restraint. But he made shift to shore the tottering walls with aplayful retort.
"If that is the case, I'll have to think up some more self-abnegations.Good night."
The Grafters Page 19