9058

LAN made his way along the wall, out of the track of the promenaders, into the office, anxious to escape being spoken to by any one. But here several jovial men from the mountains who knew him intimately gathered around him and began to make laughing remarks about his dress.

"You look fer the world like a dirt-dauber." This comparison to a kind of black wasp came from Pole Baker, a tall, heavily built farmer with an enormous head, thick eyebrows, and long, shaggy hair. He lived on Bishop's farm, and had been brought up with Alan. "I 'll be derned ef you ain't nimble on yore feet, though. I've seed you cut the pigeon-wing over on Mossy Creek with them big, strappin' gals 'fore you had yore sights as high as these town folks."

"It's that thar vest that gits me," said another. "I reckon it's cut low so you won't drap saft victuals on it; but I guess you don't do much eatin' with that collar on. It don't look like yore Adam's-apple could stir a peg under it."

With a good-natured reply and a laugh he did not feel, Alan hurried out of the office and up to his room, where he had left his lamp burning. Rayburn Miller's hat and light overcoat were on the bed. Alan sat down in one of the stiff-backed, split-bottom chairs and stared straight in front of him. Never in his life had he suffered as he was now suffering. He could see no hope ahead; the girl he loved was lost to him. Her father had heard of the foolhardiness of old man Bishop, and, like many another well-meaning parent, had determined to save his daughter from the folly of marrying a penniless man, who had doubtless inherited his father's lack of judgment and caution.

There was a rap on the closed door, and immediately afterwards Rayburn Miller turned the knob and came in. His kindly glance swept the face of his friend, and he said, with forced lightness:

"I was doing the cake-walk with that fat Howard girl from Rome when I saw you leave the room. She can' t hide the fact that she is from a city of ten thousand population. She kept calling my attention to what our girls had on and sniggering. She's been to school in Boston and looked across the ocean from there. You know I don't think we lead the world, but it makes me fighting mad to have our town sneered at. When she was making so much fun of the girls' dresses, I came in an inch of asking her if she was a dressmaker. By God, I did! You remember," Miller went on lightly, as if he had divined Alan' s misery and was trying to cheer him up—"you remember how Percy Lee, Hamilton's shoe-clerk, hit back at that Savannah girl. She was stopping in this house for a month one summer, and he called on her and took her driving several times; but one day she let herself out. 'Everything is so different up here, Mr. Lee,'she giggled. 'Down home, girls in good society never receive young men in your business.'It was a lick between the eyes; but old North Georgia was ready for it. 'Oh,'said Percy, whose mother's blood is as blue as indigo, 'the Darley girls draw the line, too; I only get to go with hotel girls.'"

Alan looked up and smiled, but his face seemed frozen. Miller sat down, and an awkward silence fell for several minutes. It was broken by the lawyer.

"I don't want to bore you, old man," he said, "but I just had to follow you. I saw from your looks as you left the ballroom that something was wrong, and I am afraid I know what it is."

"You think you do?" asked Alan, flashing a glance of surprise upward.

"Yes. You see, Colonel Barclay is a rough, outspoken man, and he made a remark the other day which reached me. I wasn't sure it was true, so I didn't mention it; but I reckon my informant knew what he was talking about."

Alan nodded despondently. "I asked her to go to church with me to-morrow night. She was awfully embarrassed, and finally told me of her father's objections."

"I think I know what fired the old devil up," said Miller.

"You do?"

"Yes, it was that mistake of your father's. As I told you, the Colonel is as mad as a wet hen about the whole thing. He's got a rope tied to every nickel he's got, and he intends to leave Dolly a good deal of money. He thinks Frank Hillhouse is just the thing; he shows that as plain as day. He noticed how frequently you came to see Dolly and scented danger ahead, and simply put his foot down on it, just as fathers have been doing ever since the Flood. My dear boy, you've got a bitter pill to take, but you've got to swallow it like a man. You've reached a point where two roads fork. It is for you to decide which one you 'll take."

Alan made no reply. Rayburn Miller lighted a cigar and began to smoke steadily. There was a sound of boisterous laughter in a room across the corridor. It had been set aside as the dressing-room for the male revellers, and some of them were there, ordering drinks up from the bar. Now and then from below came muffled strains of music and the monotonous shuffling of feet.

"It's none of my business," Miller burst out, suddenly; "but I'm friend enough of yours to feel this thing like the devil. However, I don't know what to say. I only wish I knew how far you've gone into it."

Alan smiled mechanically.

"If you can' t look at me and see how far I've gone you are blind," he said.

"I don't mean that," replied Miller. "I was wondering how far you had committed yourself—oh, damn it!—made love, and all that sort of thing."

"I've never spoken to her on the subject," Alan informed him, gloomily.

"Good, good! Splendid!"

Alan stared in surprise.

"I don't understand," he said. "She knows—that is, I think she knows how I feel, and I have hoped that—"

"Never mind about that," interrupted Miller, laconically. "There is a chance for both of you if you 'll turn square around like sensible human beings and look the facts in the face."

"You mean—"

"That it will be stupid, childish idiocy for either or both of you to let this thing spoil your lives."

"I don't understand you."

"Well, you will before I'm through with you, and I 'll do you up brown. There are simply two courses open to you, my boy. One is to treat Colonel Barclay's wishes with dignified respect, and bow and retire just as any European gentleman would do when told that his pile was too small to be considered."

"And the other?" asked Alan, sharply.

"The other is to follow in the footsteps of nearly every sentimental fool that ever was born, and go around looking like a last year's bird's-nest, looking good for nothing, and being good for nothing; or, worse yet, persuading the girl to elope, and thus angering her father so that he will cut her out of what's coming to her and what is her right, my boy. She may be willing to live on a bread-and-water diet for a while, but she 'll lose flesh and temper in the long run. If you don't make as much money for her as you cause her to lose she 'll tell you of it some day, or at least let you see it, an' that's as long as it's wide. You are now giving yourself a treatment in self-hypnotism, telling yourself that life has not and cannot produce a thing for you beyond that particular pink frock and yellow head. I know how you feel. I've been there six different times, beginning with a terrible long first attack and dwindling down, as I became inoculated with experience, till now the complaint amounts to hardly more than a momentary throe when I see a fresh one in a train for an hour's ride. I can do you a lot of good if you 'll listen to me. I 'll give you the benefit of my experience."

"What good would your devilish experience do me?" said Alan, impatiently.

"It would fit any man's case if he'd only believe it. I've made a study of love. I've observed hundreds of typical cases, and watched marriage from inception through protracted illness or boredom down to dumb resignation or sudden death. I don't mean that no lovers of the ideal, sentimental brand are ever happy after marriage, but I do believe that open-eyed courtship will beat the blind sort all hollow, and that, in nine cases out of ten, if people were mated by law according to the judgment of a sensible, open-eyed jury, they would be happier than they now are. Nothing ever spoken is truer than the commandment, 'Thou shalt have no other God but me.'Let a man put anything above the principle of living right and he will be miserable. The man who holds gold as the chief thing in life will starve to death in its cold glitter, while a pauper in rags will have a laugh that rings with the music of immortal joy. In the same way the man who declares that only one woman is suited to him is making a god of her—raising her to a seat that won't support her dead, material weight. I frankly believe that the glamour of love is simply a sort of insanity that has never been correctly named and treated because so many people have been the victims of it."

"Do you know," Alan burst in, almost angrily, "when you talk that way I think you are off. I know what's the matter with you; you have simply frittered away your heart, your ability to love and appreciate a good woman. Thank Heaven! your experience has not been mine. I don't see how you could ever be happy with a woman. I couldn't look a pure wife in the face and remember all the flirtations you've indulged in—that is, if they were mine."

"There you go," laughed Miller; "make it personal, that's the only way the average lover argues. I am speaking in general terms. Let me finish. Take two examples: first, the chap crazily in love, who faces life with the red rag of his infatuation—his girl. No parental objection, everything smooth, and a car-load of silverware—a clock for every room in the house. They start out on their honeymoon, doing the chief cities at the biggest hotels and the theatres in the three-dollar seats. They soon tire of themselves and lay it to the trip. Every day they rake away a handful of glamour from each other, till, when they reach home, they have come to the conclusion that they are only human, and not the highest order at that. For a while they have a siege of discontent, wondering where it's all gone. Finally, the man is forced to go about his work, and the woman gets to making things to go on the backs of chairs and trying to spread her trousseau over the next year, and they begin to court resignation. Now if they had not had the glamour attack they would have got down to business sooner, that's all, and they would have set a better example to other plungers. Now for the second illustration. Poverty on one side, boodle on the other; more glamour than in other case, because of the gulf between. They get married—they have to; they've inherited the stupid idea that the Lord is at the bottom of it and that the glamour is His smile. Like the other couple, their eyes are finally opened to the facts, and they begin to secretly wonder what it's all about; the one with the spondoolix wonders harder than the one who has none. If the man has the money, he will feel good at first over doing so much for his affinity; but if he has an eye for earthly values—and good business men have—there will be times when he will envy Jones, whose wife had as many rocks as Jones. Love and capital go together like rain and sunshine; they are productive of something. Then if the woman has the money and the man hasn't, there's tragedy—a slow cutting of throats. She is irresistibly drawn with the rest of the world into the thought that she has tied herself and her money to an automaton, for such men are invariably lifeless. They seem to lose the faculty of earning money—in any other way. And as for a proper title for the penniless young idiot that publicly advertises himself as worth enough, in himself, for a girl to sacrifice her money to live with him—well, the unabridged does not furnish it. Jack Ass in bill-board letters would come nearer to it than anything that occurs to me now. I'm not afraid to say it, for I know you'd never cause any girl to give up her fortune without knowing, at least, whether you could replace it or not."

Alan rose and paced the room. "That," he said, as he stood between the lace curtains at the window, against which the rain beat steadily—"that is why I feel so blue. I don't believe Colonel Barclay would ever forgive her, and I'd die before I'd make her lose a thing."

"You are right," returned Miller, relighting his cigar at the lamp, "and he'd cut her off without a cent. I know him. But what is troubling me is that you may not be benefited by my logic. Don't allow this to go any further. Let her alone from to-night on and you 'll find in a few months that you are resigned to it, just like the average widower who wants to get married six months after his loss. And when she is married and has a baby, she 'll meet you on the street and not care a rap whether her hat's on right or not. She 'll tell her husband all about it, and allude to you as her first, second, or third fancy, as the case may be. I have faith in your future, but you've got a long, rocky row to hoe, and a thing like this could spoil your usefulness and misdirect your talents. If I could see how you could profit by waiting I'd let your flame burn unmolested; but circumstances are agin us."

"I'd already seen my duty," said Alan, in a low tone, as he came away from the window. "I have an engagement with her later, and the subject shall be avoided."

"Good man!" Miller's cigar was so short that he stuck the blade of his penknife through it that he might enjoy it to the end without burning his fingers. "That's the talk! Now I must mosey on down-stairs and dance with that Miss Fewclothes from Rome—the one with the auburn tresses, that says 'delighted' whenever she is spoken to."

Alan went back to the window. The rain was still beating on it. For a long time he stood looking out into the blackness. The bad luck which had come to his father had been a blow to him; but its later offspring had the grim, cold countenance of death itself. He had never realized till now that Dolly Barclay was so much a part of his very life. For a moment he almost gave way to a sob that rose and struggled within him. He sat down again and clasped his hands before him in dumb self-pity. He told himself that Rayburn Miller was right, that only weak men would act contrary to such advice. No, it was over—all, all over.