Ben Blair Part 34

Hough looked at the speaker impotently. "You misunderstood me, Chad, if you thought I was trying to keep you from your due, or from anything which would really make for your happiness. I was simply trying to prevent something I feel morally certain you'll regret. Because one isn't entirely happy is no adequate reason why he should make himself more unhappy. I can't say any more than I've already said; there's nothing more to say. My best reason for disapproving your contemplated action I gave you first, and you've not considered it at all. It's the injustice you do to a girl who doesn't realize what she is doing. With your disposition, Chad, you'd take away from her something which neither G.o.d nor man can ever give her back--her trust in life."

Sidwell's long fingers restlessly twirled the gla.s.s before him. The remainder of the untouched beer was now as so much stagnant water.

"If I don't undeceive her someone else will," he said. "It's inevitable.

She'll have to adjust herself to things as they are, as we all have to do."

Hough made a motion of deprecation.

"Miss Baker is no longer a child," continued Sidwell. "If you've studied her as you say you've done, you've discovered that she has very definite ideas of her own. It's true that I haven't known her long, but she has had an opportunity to know me well such as no one else has ever had, not even you. No one can say that she is leaping in the dark. Time and time again, at every opportunity, I have stripped my very soul bare for her observation. The thing has not been easy for me; indeed, I know of nothing I could have done that would have been more difficult. Though the present instance seems to give the statement the lie, I am not easily confidential, my friend. I have had a definite object in doing as I have done with Miss Baker. I am trying, as I never tried before in my life, to get in touch with her--as I'll never try again, no matter how the effort results, to get in touch with a person. She knows the good and bad of me from A to Z. She knows the life I lead, the kind of people who make up that life, their aims, their amus.e.m.e.nts, their standards, social and moral, as thoroughly as I can make her know them. I have taken her everywhere, shown her every phase of my surroundings. For once in my life at least, Hough, I have been absolutely what I am,--absolutely frank. Farther than that I cannot go. I am not my brothers keeper. She is an individual in a world of individuals; a free agent, mental, moral, and physical. The decision of her future actions, the choice she makes of her future life, must of necessity rest with her. For some reason I cannot point to a definite explanation and say this or that is why she is attractive to me. She seems to offer the solution of a want I feel. No system of logic can convince me that, after having been honest as I have been with her, if she of her own free will consents to be my wife, I have not a moral right to make her so."

Again Hough made a deprecatory motion. "It is useless to argue with you," he said helplessly, "and I won't attempt it. If I were to try, I couldn't make you realize that the very methods of frankness you have used to make Miss Baker know you intimately have defeated their own purpose, and have unconsciously made you an integral part of her life. I said before that when you wish you're irresistibly fascinating with women. All that you have said only exemplifies my statement. It does not, however, in the least change the homely fact that oil and water won't permanently mix. You can shake them together, and for a time it may seem that they are one; but eventually they'll separate, and stay separate. As I said before, though, I do not expect you to realize this, or to apply it. I can't make what I know by intuition sufficiently convincing. I wish I could. I feel that somehow this has been my opportunity and I have failed."

For the instant Sidwell was roused out of himself. He looked at his companion with appreciation. "At least you can have the consolation of knowing you have honestly tried," he said earnestly.

Hough returned the look with equal steadiness. "But nevertheless I have failed."

Sidwell put on his hat, its broad brim shading his eyes and concealing their expression.

"Providence willing," he said finally, "I shall ask Miss Baker to be my wife."

CHAPTER XXI

LOVE IN CONFLICT

The habits of a lifetime are not changed in a day. Ben Blair was accustomed to rising early, and he was astir next morning long before the city proper was thoroughly awake. In the hotel where he was stopping, the night clerk looked his surprise as he nodded a stereotyped "Good-morning." The lobby was in confusion, undergoing its early morning scrubbing, and the guest sought the street. The sun was just risen, but the air was already sultry, casting oppression and languor over every detail of the scene. The bare brick and stone fronts of the buildings, the brown cobblestones of the pavements, the dull gray of the sidewalks, all looked inhospitable and forbidding. Few vehicles were yet in motion--distributors of necessities, of ice, of milk, of vegetables--and they partook of the general indolence. The horses' ears swayed listlessly, or were set back in dogged endurance. The drivers lounged stolidly in their seats. Even the few pa.s.sengers on the monotonously droning cars but added to the impression of tacit conformity to the inevitable. Poorly dressed as a rule, tired looking, they gazed at their feet or glanced out upon the street with absent indifference. It was all depressing.

Ben, normal, vigorous, country bred, shook himself and walked on. He was as susceptible as a child to surrounding influences, and to those now about him he was distinctly antagonistic. Life, as a whole, particularly work, the thing that does most to fill life, he had found good. That others should so obviously find it different grated upon him. He wanted to get away from their presence; and making inquiry of the first policeman he met, he sought the nearest park.

All his life he had heard of the beauty of the New York parks. The few people he knew who had visited them emphasized this beauty above all other features. Perhaps in consequence he was expecting the impossible.

At least, he was disappointed. Here was nature, to be sure, but nature imprisoned under the thumb of man. The visitor had a healthy desire to roll on the gra.s.s, to turn himself loose, to stretch every joint and muscle; yet signs on each side gave warning to "keep off." The trees, it must be admitted, were beautiful and natural,--they could not live and be otherwise; but somehow they had the air of not being there of their own free-will.

Ben chose a bench and sat down. A listlessness was upon him that the ozone of the prairies had never let him feel. He felt cramped for room, as though, should he draw as full a breath as he wished, it would exhaust the supply. A big freshly-shaven policeman strolled by, eying him suspiciously. It gave the young man the impression of being a prisoner out on good behavior; and in an indefinite way it almost insulted his self-respect. For the lack of something better to do he watched the minion of the law as he pursued his beat. Not Ben Blair alone, but every person the officer pa.s.sed, went through this challenging inspection. The countryman had been too much preoccupied to notice that he had companions; but now that his interest was aroused, he began inspecting the occupants of the other benches. The person nearest him was a little old man in a crumpled linen suit. Most of the time his nose was close to his morning paper; but now and then he raised his face and looked away with an absent expression in his faded near-sighted eyes. Was he enjoying his present life? Ben would have taken his oath to the contrary. Again there flashed over him the impression of a prison with this fellow-being in confinement. There was indescribable pathos in that dull retrospective gaze, and Ben looked away. In the land from which he came there could not be found such an example of hopeless and useless age. There the aged had occupation,--the care of their children's children, a garden, an interest in crops and growing things, a fame as prophets of weather,--but such apathy as this, never.

A bit farther away was another type, also a man, badly dressed and unshaven. His battered felt hat was drawn low over the upper half of his face, and he was stretched flat upon the narrow bench. He was far too long for his bed, and to accommodate his superfluous length his knees were bent up like a jack-knife. Carrying with them the baggy trousers,--he wore no underclothes,--they left a hairy expanse between their ends and the yellow, rusty shoes. His chest rose and fell in the motion of sleep.

Ben Blair had seen many a human derelict on the frontier; the country was full of them,--adventurers, searchers after lost health--popularly denominated "one-lungers"--soldiers of fortune; but he had never known such a cla.s.s as this man represented,--useless c.u.mberers of the earth, wanderers by day, sleepers on the benches of public parks by night. Had he been a student of sociology he might have found a certain morbid interest in the spectacle; but it was merely depressing to him; it destroyed what pleasure he might otherwise have taken in the place. This man was but a step beneath those dull toilers he had seen on the cars.

They had not yet given up the struggle against the inevitable, or were too stolid to rebel; while he--

Ben sprang to his feet and began retracing his steps. People bred in the city might be callous to the miseries of their fellows; those provided with plenty might be content to live their lives side by side with such hopeless poverty, might even apply to their own profit the necessities of others; but his was the hospitality and consideration of the frontier, the democracy that shares its last loaf with its fellow no matter who he may be, and shares it without question. The heartless selfishness of the conditions he was observing almost made his blood boil. He felt that he was amid an alien people: their standards were not as his standards, their lives were not of his life, and he wanted to hurry through with his affairs and get away. He returned to the hotel.

Breakfast was ready by this time, and after some exploration he succeeded in finding the dining-room. The head-waiter showed him to a seat and held his chair obsequiously. Another, a negro of uncertain age, fairly exuding dignity and impa.s.sive as a sphinx, poured water over the ice in his gla.s.s with a practised hand, produced the menu, and waited for his order. Without intending it, the countryman had selected a rather fas.h.i.+onable place, and the bill of fare was unintelligible as Sanskrit to him. He looked at it helplessly. A man across the table, observing his predicament, smiled involuntarily. Ben caught the expression, looked at its bearer meaningly, looked until it vanished, and until a faint red, obviously a stranger to that face, took its place. By a sudden inspiration Blair's hand went to his pocket and returned with a silver coin.

"Bring me what a healthy man usually eats at this time of day, and plenty of it," he said. He glanced absently, blandly past his companion.

The gentleman of color looked at the speaker as though he were a strange animal in a "zoo."

"Yes, sah," he said.

While he was waiting, Ben looked around him with interest. The room was big, high, ma.s.sive of pillars and of beams. Every detail had been carefully arranged. The heavy oak tables, the spotless linen, the sparkling silver and gla.s.sware appealed to the sense of luxury. The coolness of the place, due to unseen ventilating fans which he heard faintly droning somewhere in the ceiling, and increased by the tile floor and the skilfully adjusted shades, was delightful. The few other people present were as immaculate as bath, laundry, tailor, and modiste could make them. From one group at which Ben looked came the suppressed sound of a woman's laugh; from another, a man's voice, well modulated, ill.u.s.trated a point with a story. At a small table in an alcove sat four young men, and notwithstanding the fact that for them it was yet very early in the day, the pop of a champagne cork was heard, and soon repeated. Blair, fresh from a glimpse of the outer and under world, observed it all, and drew comparisons. Again he saw the huddled figure of the tramp on the bench; and again he heard the careless music of the woman's laugh. He saw the dull animal stare of workers on their way to uncongenial toil; the hands still unsteady from yesterday's excesses lifting to dry lips the wine that would make them still more unsteady on the morrow. Could these contrasts be forever continued? he wondered.

Would they be permitted to exist indefinitely side by side? Again, problem more difficult, could it be possible that the condition in which they existed was life? He could not believe it. His nature rebelled at the thought. No; life was not an artificial formula like this. It was broad and free and natural, as the prairies, his prairies, were natural and free. This other condition was a delirium, a momentary oblivion, of which the four young men in the alcove were a symbol. Transient pleasure, the life might mean; but the reverse, the inevitable reaction as from all intoxication, that--

Finis.h.i.+ng his breakfast, Ben lit a cigar and sauntered out to the street. He had intended spending the morning seeing the town; but for the present he felt he had had enough--all he could mentally digest.

Without at first any definite destination, in mere excess of healthy animal activity, he began to walk; but his princ.i.p.al object in coming to the city, the object he made no effort to conceal, acted upon him like a lodestone, and almost ere he was aware he was well out in the residence portion of the city and headed directly for the Baker home. He was unaware that morning was not the fas.h.i.+onable time to call upon a lady. To him the fact of inclination and of presence in the vicinity was sufficient justification; and mounting the well-remembered steps he rang the doorbell stoutly. A prim maid in cap and diminutive ap.r.o.n, a recent addition to the household, answered his ring.

"I'd like to see Miss Baker, if you please," said Ben.

The girl inspected the visitor critically. Beneath her surface decorum he had a suspicion that she was inclined to smile.

"I hardly think Miss Baker is up yet," she announced at last. "Will you leave your card?"

Ben looked at the sun, now well elevated in the sky, with an eye trained in the estimate of time. He drew mental conclusions silently.

"No," he said. "I will call later."

He did call later,--two hours later,--to receive from Scotty himself the intelligence that Florence was out but would soon return. Evidently the Englishman had been instructed; for, though he added an invitation to wait, it was only half-hearted, and being declined the matter was not pressed.

Ben returned to the hotel, ate his lunch, and considered the situation.

A lesser man would have given up the fight and hidden his bruise; but Benjamin Blair was in no sense of the word a little man. He had come to town with definite intent of seeing a certain girl alone, and see her alone he would. At four o'clock in the afternoon he again pressed the b.u.t.ton on the Baker door-post, and again waited.

Again it was the maid who answered, and at the expected query she smiled outright. It seemed to her a capital joke that she was a.s.sisting in playing upon this man of unusual attire.

"Miss Baker is engaged," she announced, with the glibness of previous preparation.

To her surprise the visitor did not depart. Instead, he gave her a look which sent her mirth glimmering.

"Very well," he said. The door leading into the vestibule and from thence into the library was open, and without form of invitation he entered. "Tell her, please, that I will wait until she is not engaged."

The girl hesitated. This particular exigency had not been antic.i.p.ated.

"Shall I give her a name?" she suggested, with an attempt at formality.

Ben Blair did not turn. "Tell her what I said."

He chose a chair facing the entrance and sat down. Departing on her mission, he heard the maid open another door on the same floor. There was for a moment a murmur of feminine voices, one of which he recognized; then silence again, as the door closed.

A half-hour pa.s.sed, lengthened into an hour, all but repeated itself, and still apparently Florence was engaged; and still the visitor sat on.

No power short of fire or an earthquake could have moved him now. Every fragment of the indomitable perseverance of his nature was aroused, and instead of discouraging him each minute as it pa.s.sed only made his determination the stronger. He s.h.i.+fted his chair so that it faced the window and the street, crossed his legs comfortably, half closed his eyes, resting yet watchful, and meditatively observed the growing procession of homeward bound wage-earners in car and on foot.

Suddenly there was the rustle of a woman's skirts, and he was conscious that he was no longer alone. He turned as he saw who it was, sprang to his feet, and despite the intentional slight of the long wait, a smile flashed to his face. He started to advance, but stopped.

"You wished to see me, I understand," a voice said coldly, as the speaker halted just within the doorway.

Ben Blair straightened. The hot blood mounted to his brain, throbbing at his throat and temples. It was not easy for him to receive insult; but outwardly he gave no sign.