CHAPTER XXI

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.