CHAPTER III

THE MAN Of DREAMS

ELLEN’S first feeling of puzzled surprise and dimly awakened memories were followed by a sense of resentment at the consciousness of her keen interest in Manning.

She had scarcely had a moment to enjoy her triumph over the male animal when a new specimen had entered to rob her of the spiritual fruits of victory. Her victory had been complete--both over the man of muscle and the man of money.

The man of money had profoundly surprised and interested her. She had imagined him a shallow-brained nonentity. She had found his mind alert, his sense of humor keen, his character altogether human and likeable. Besides, she had distinctly felt the pull of his vigorous manhood. His enemies were constantly telling the public that he had inherited his fortune, that he was a weakling incapable of creating values of any sort, and that such a man was merely a social parasite. Having met and talked with him for half an hour she knew that these estimates were false. Lucy Sheldon might be incapable of believing the stories about his sensual habits, but her judgment of his mind and the force of his character was nearer the truth. Her faith was profound that he was one of the brainiest men in New York, that his genius had more than doubled his inherited fortune, and that his ambitions in life were seriously to be reckoned with.

And yet she had not for a moment felt the loosening of a single rivet in the armor of her character under the assault he had so boldly and skilfully made. The more she had thought of the offer of a settlement of fifty thousand a year, a house on Fifth Avenue, and a country estate with so slight an encumbrance as this tall, handsome, smiling young sportsman, the more she congratulated herself on her own strength of character.

“Never touched me!” she mused smilingly. Nor had his offer of marriage which followed made any deeper impression, though its full import had been instantly felt. The immense social prestige which the wife of such a man would wield in the money-loving, money-worshipping atmosphere of New York was beyond question.

To the ordinary woman it would have been a physical and psychological impossibility to reject such an offer of marriage offhand. Ellen congratulated herself on the distinct advance her character had made over the average feminine mind.

All arguments against the economic independence of women were blown to atoms by this one fact. It was no longer a question of theory or a question open to argument. She knew. She felt the poise and the power of personal achievement in her position. Her heart beat high with pride--not mere pride in sex--but pride in the achievement of human character. Her outlook on life had been broadened and her sympathies deepened. Never had she felt the inspiration of her chosen career as a feminist leader so full of meaning.

Her triumph over the man of muscle had been even more gratifying. Of all the men she had met in New York, Field had really interested her most. She had read his books with profound interest. They were of the soil, rich in the deep intuitive knowledge of nature which only genius can possess. He was one of the few popular writers of the day who scorned to stoop to public taste. He wrote under the impulse of an emotion which he expressed without fear or favor. In spite of his scorn of commercial popularity his books were popular. Nor was this scorn a mere pose to gain what he pretended to despise. He really despised the man who prostitutes this power of expression in any art for the purpose of earning fame or money. He was the artist born, and his books were the genuine expression of a man who worships nature. He heartily loathed the school of nature fakirs, and he attacked them tooth and nail, not only in his books in lines of subtle irony, but in essays of merciless ridicule, which the literary journals printed with chuckles of joy.

His pursuit of women was notorious among the set in which he moved. It often happened that a dinner given in celebration of the success of one of his books was eaten without the chief figure at the head of the table. It got to be such a joke that his best friend ceased to apologize. The dinners were gradually discontinued, much to Field’s relief.

For a long time his apparent interest in Ellen’s propaganda and his studied indifference to her as a woman had hurt her pride. Not that she expected or desired his attentions as a man--certainly not! And yet it had been trying to feel that her beauty, of which she could not be ignorant, had made not the slightest impression on this genuine artist and devotee of nature.

For several months he had dropped into her apartment often to inquire of the progress of her work. He was not a pronounced feminist. As an author he claimed the right of free criticism of all cults and human events. The woman movement to him was merely a world event. It could not disturb the even tenor of his intellectual life. She hated him for his pose and yet she respected him for it. In her heart of hearts she knew it was not a pose. He had really attained the poise to which she aspired.

It piqued her feminine mind to think that he wasted so much of his valuable time in a senseless chase after first one woman and then another and yet had shown no disposition to seriously pursue her.

Something had upset his poise to-night and he had revealed himself. His hatred of Brown no doubt was the cause. The impetuous rush with which he had made love had been a surprise. She had suspected of late his growing personal interest in spite of the fact that he had used more than usual pains to mask his feelings. He had formed the habit of calling her from the iron balcony in the rear with increasing frequency. Another trick he had developed was the use of the Morse telegraph code in tapping out sentences on her wall late at night. Some of the things he had said were unusually witty and of late his messages had been coming at moments when he knew that she was just going to bed. There was nothing in these messages to suggest the sensuous, yet the fact that he was talking to her at this particular time had produced the impression that his purpose was to suggest the most daring intimacy.

To-night in his love-making he had been charged with the highest currents of magnetism. His compact muscular body had been on fire with passion. It sparkled from his steel grey eyes. It burned in the touch of his hand. It throbbed and pulsed in the tone of his insinuating voice. For the first time in her life she had felt the fires of pent-up sex within her own body. She had studied the problem in scientific text books. She had studied it in modern physiology. She had studied it in the modern problem novel. To-night temptation had whispered into her inmost soul for the first time, and she had won. This man of genius was hers. She had but to speak and he would do her bidding. Nor had she much doubt about holding her own in the battle of sex that would follow a love affair with such a man. She was a type of woman whom he had never conquered. She knew instinctively that she could torture him with a jealousy of which she herself was incapable. His fury over Brown’s approach was proof positive of this.

She had won with scarcely an effort. She smiled at her own strength and thought with a touch of pity of the weakness of man. She congratulated herself on the progress which her new creed would make in the development of the intellectual and physical life of woman. For centuries woman had been the slave or toy of man. A new era would dawn for humanity when she could stand by his side consciously his equal in mind and body.

Her train of thought was broken at last by Manning leaning across the little table at which they were seated and asking in the most serious tones:

“I’m afraid I am boring you, Miss West?”

She looked at him a moment in, surprise, blushed in spite of her triumphant musings, and hastened to reassure him.

“On the other hand, you don’t know how profoundly you have interested me.”

Manning laughed a sound, good-humored boyish laugh.

“You’ve been in a sort of trance ever since we climbed on this balcony.”

“Nonsense!” Ellen protested.

And yet she was surprised to find that she had led Manning up the stairway at the rear of the living room and out on the balcony which overlooked it. The crowd below seemed the figures in a dream from which she was just awakening.

“The fact is,” Ellen went on, “you started me to dreaming about my girlhood in Maryland and a fair-haired boy just like you.”

“Your first sweetheart?”

“How did you guess?”

“I didn’t. I just hoped.”

“Why hoped?”

“You said I looked like him.”

Ellen smiled.

“You’re picking up city ways remarkably early for a country boy, I must say.”

“Well, I was not exactly a farmer.”

He paused and showed his white, perfect teeth. For the first time she became conscious of a dignity and strength she had not noticed before. Again the curious memory of her childhood returned--the memory of the fair-haired, domineering boy who had first stirred her girlish imagination--the sleepy town with its great live oaks on the shores of the Chesapeake--her unhappy father and mother, their endless bickering and quarrelling--her mother’s never-ending nagging and her father’s eternal martyrdom. She remembered distinctly how she had sworn never to marry this boy no matter how desperately he might beg her. To her child’s mind even then marriage was the one stupid blunder she would never commit.

She had the sudden crazy idea that Manning was the reincarnation of this boy.

“A penny for your thoughts!” he cried banteringly.

Again she was roused from reverie with a start and a blush.

“Was I off again?”

“Asleep this time,” he said, with a smile.

She ignored his banter and looked at him steadily.

“I could almost swear that you’re my playmate and that you’ve dyed your hair to have some fun with me, if I did not know my poor boy had been dead ten years and I saw them bury him.”

“All right, then. I don’t mind your memories of the dead. I was afraid you were regretting the living from whom my indulgent Aunt had torn you.”

Again she ignored his challenge to polite fencing and looked at him seriously.

“Tell me about yourself, why you came here and what you expect to do?”

“A tale soon told,” he began briskly. “I was late finishing my college course--had to help send the other kids to school and keep my mother’s pantry full of bread. When I did get through I was in debt five hundred dollars, which I had been lucky enough to borrow. It took me three years’ hard work to pay this debt and get a hundred dollars ahead----”

“How did you make it?” she interrupted.

“Went on the road as a travelling salesman--not very romantic for a dreamer of dreams, was it?”

“No,” she answered, watching him intently.

“Well,” he continued, “it was the first thing that came and I took it. I had to pay my debts before I could play with my dreams. I’ve paid my debts--I’ve a hundred dollars in my pocket, enough clothes to last me through the season, I’m installed in a little room on Washington Square and I’ve the dandiest aunt in the world, who brought me here to-night and introduced me to you!”

“And what are you going to do?”

“Write editorials for a big newspaper bye and bye--made a beginning here to-night--thanks to your genius in bringing these distinguished men and women together.”

“Made a beginning here?” Ellen repeated.

“Sure, thanks to you and my aunt I’ve just met Brown. He’s a big man. I liked, him right off and he liked me too--scribbled a note to the managing editor of his paper and told him to give me a chance as a space writer.”

“When will you begin?” Ellen inquired.

“I’ve begun. I’m going to write up this reception to-night from a country boy’s point of view.”

Ellen’s eyes sparkled.

“It ought to make good reading.”

“It will.”

His enthusiasm and faith in himself were contagious. In spite of an effort to dismiss the young man and return to her guests Ellen found herself listening enraptured to the story of his ambitions and his fresh views of men and things in New York. Her guests were leaving and she was compelled at last to take her place at the door and say good-night.

Without realizing what she was doing she asked Manning to stay until the others had gone. Elated at the unexpected honor, he saw the last guest save his aunt depart with joy.

Lucy Sheldon was not surprised at his enthusiasm over Ellen, and left him with a friendly warning:

“See that your first effort does justice to Ellen West or never speak to me again, sir!”

“Impossible, Auntie,” he whispered, “but I’ll do my best.”

For an hour after the crowd had gone Ellen listened to his endless talk as if he were an oracle delivering the last words on human destiny. Twice she caught herself in this worshipful attitude and laughed in sheer disgust, only to return to the same position of rapt attention.

He asked if she played the piano. Forgetting that it was after midnight, she sat down and played for half an hour while he bent over her in tense silence. Through the soft tones of an old-fashioned melody she caught a telegraphic message through Field’s wall:

“Say, old pal, have you gone crazy?”

She stopped with a sudden laugh.

“What’s the matter?” Manning asked innocently.

“Good gracious, boy, run along home!”

“Why?”

“It’s nearly one o’clock. I’ve got a day’s work before me to-morrow.”

“Can I come to-morrow night?”

Before she realized the absurdity of his request and the folly of her answer she had said:

“Yes.”

He seized his hat and hurried out.

“All right, to-morrow night at eight. I’d ask you to dine with me at the Waldorf, but I’m afraid I’d blow the whole hundred at a sitting.”

“Good-night!” she waved from the head of the stairs.

He answered softly:

“Good-night!”

It was not until his footfall died away on the last stairway that she realized what had happened. She had all but uttered a foolish cry for him to come back and stay a while longer.

[Illustration: “YOU’VE BEEN IN A SORT OF A TRANCE.”]

In a moment of humiliating revelation it came over her--the meaning of her lapse into childhood memories--the old, old idea of having met before--her rapt listening to his boyish enthusiasm--she had fallen in love at first sight!

It was absurd. It was insane--but it was true. Instead of bemoaning her lack of poise and of character, a foolish imp inside her heart kept singing--singing all sorts of silly snatches of songs she had heard in childhood. She laughed outright at her all but resistless impulse to kiss him good-night instead of waving to him.

What an absurd ending to an evening devoted to celebrating the emancipation of woman from the dominion of man! The one humiliating and distressing thing about it was that she was not sure of the impression she had made on him. Probably nothing serious had been intended on his part by his request to call again the following evening. He was merely bent on an accurate analysis of her character for his first article in Brown’s paper. The thought gave her a moment of pain that was absurd.

In spite of her self-reproaches and warnings she undressed and went to bed humming an old song.