CHAPTER VI
THE PROPOSAL
THE hour for his coming approached. She had planned the scene of his declaration carefully and yet the fear of a tragic outcome steadily increased.
The more clearly she reasoned out her theories of marriage, the more dangerous they became in the present crisis. Why couldn’t she have fallen in love with one of the brilliant men in her circle of friends and admirers who had accepted as a matter of course her new creed of life? Why did nature persist in drawing together two people who are opposites? Another evidence of the blind stupidity of nature and the need of human genius to circumvent her clumsy methods.
Could she compromise her ideal of love and life to win a lover? To the old-fashioned girl the asking of the question was the answer. Such a problem could not exist. All things on earth, beneath or above, for her were merged into the one supreme purpose of winning a lover.
Could she, the new woman, yield to win this man? The answer did not come as quickly as she wished. She reproached herself for the hesitation. She faced the question of a break with Manning, and the world was a blank, her economic independence a mockery. Why have the means to live if the one thing that makes life worth the candle should be taken away?
It shouldn’t be taken away! On that point she set herself with determination. She would hold her ideals and hold her man, too. If it hadn’t been done yet by a woman it was time the example was set.
She sat down at her desk and made an outline of the old arguments he would advance to have his way. She carefully matched each argument with an invincible answer. He would see the logic of her position. He must see it. He had a brilliant and well-balanced mind.
She paused in her train of thought. That was just it! He did have a brilliant mind. At times it flashed a steel polish that defied the appeal of sentiment. She hated him for this masculine way of final assertion. And yet she loved him for it. What a fool contradiction!
Certainly he must listen to her. He had profound respect for her talents and achievements.
She threw fears to the winds and gave herself up to the joy of his coming. She began to listen for his firm footstep on the stairs. She could tell the sound of it on the first flight if she stood at her door. There was something electric in its touch--a spring to his tall, strong young body that seemed to give it wings.
She looked at her watch. He was five minutes late. Her brow clouded. If some accident had happened! It was preposterous. And yet it would be just like blind fool nature to make such a tragic blunder.
“Nonsense!” she laughed.
Of course, an accident was absurd. She laughed again at her school girl silliness. It was far more likely that he was giving an extra touch to his dress to-night with the assurance of a reputable income.
The real reason of his delay never occurred to her for a moment.
She opened her door and listened for the first sound of his footfall. Ten minutes passed and still she leaned over the top rail in vain. At last he came leaping with a swift spring, two steps at a time.
Her first impulse was to run inside, shut the door and pretend to be busy. She checked herself in time to save self-respect. She loathed these primitive instincts of her sex!
She braced herself for his coming with calm assurance. He cleared the last step with a bound and barely checked himself in time to prevent a collision.
There was no reproach in her deep eyes. Only the frank joy of his coming. He was profuse with apologies.
“I’m sorry to be late to-night of all nights. I meant to come earlier than usual. But it couldn’t be helped. I’ll tell you why directly----”
She smiled at his breathless earnestness.
“Come on the roof--it’s too close inside,” she said quietly.
He followed her in silence and took his seat beside her.
She displayed no curiosity to know the reason of his delay and let him finish his apologies without a word of acceptance or protest.
He caught her mood at last and looked at her tenderly.
“I’m glad you’re wearing that black dress to-night.”
“You like it?”
“You’re wonderful in it. I love its suggestion of tragic things. How beautiful you are!”
Her heart stopped for an instant, as his eyes held hers in a steady gaze.
It was the first time in all their hours together that he had said a thing so directly personal. It was sweet to hear it. She smiled an answer.
A silence followed. She felt intuitively the storm breaking within his heart and the answering whirlwind of her own soul. The roar of traffic died away on the avenue, the stars studded the arched roof above them, and the new moon hung a silver crescent on the edge of the tall tower of the Metropolitan building. The July air was softly langorous and suggestive to every sense. She caught the faint odor of the flowers in the circle of the tiny fountain and heard the dim music of its falling waters.
For the moment she was all spirit. Her soul seemed to slowly dissolve into space until she felt the joy of perfect union with all life. A cricket chirped in the privet bushes beside the chimney and waked her from the strange dream.
He was still gazing at her in silence. His eyes in the soft radiance of the stars had the look of ravenous hunger.
To her surprise he rose, suddenly drew her to her feet and without a word swept her to his heart and kissed her lips. The shock was too great for protest or response. She felt her muscles relax in his arms and caught herself. He drew her closer and kissed her again.
“You know that I love you, Ellen,” he whispered.
“Yes.”
“It’s wonderful, isn’t it, my beautiful love-woman?”
“Wonderful,” she breathed.
“I thought I’d lived before. I was only born the day I met you.”
His arm circled her waist and she wondered what mysterious power had suddenly struck her dumb. She had worked out beautiful speeches to make to him. They were forgotten in the storm of emotion sweeping her from the shores of time into eternity.
“My love-woman!” he murmured.
“My love-man!” she softly answered.
This time she drew him close, impulsively threw both arms around his neck and kissed him.
“Well, if that’s what your new creed teaches you,” he laughed, “go as far as you like!”
She looked at him with tender reproach.
“It took me a little while to get my breath,” she explained. “Your whirlwind methods swept me off my feet.”
“No apologies necessary, I assure you. Just make up for lost time. That’s the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me on this earth--do it again!”
Her bare arms flashed about his neck and her lips found his in another kiss.
He laughed in boyish glee.
“Well, they can all have their little fluffy ingenue girls, if they like. For me, the new woman, the queen of life--my radiant, tragically beautiful love-woman! I can’t believe my eyes when I look at you to-night and think that you’re mine--all mine, body and soul, mine for time and eternity.”
He stopped suddenly and led her back to the settee.
“Sit down a minute,” he said, “and I’ll tell you why I was late.”
He was fumbling in his vest pocket. Before she realized what he was doing, he drew from its depths a tiny purple box and touched the lid. On the white velvet cushion sat a wonderful ring with two diamonds. Their lustre was dazzling and from their size she knew they could not be worth less than two thousand dollars.
She gasped in astonishment.
“For a poor young man,” she cried, “you do pretty well for a first visit to the jeweller.”
“Do you like it?” he asked proudly.
“I adore it!”
The love of jewelry was a passion she had long regarded as her besetting sin. She had religiously suppressed her desire to indulge it. Her fingers touched the sparkling stones.
“How did you do it?”
“That’s why I was late,” he answered eagerly. “My mother left me her earrings in her will. It was all she had from the wreck of the Civil War. I kept them sacredly for the woman of my dreams. I had them set for you. The jeweller was a little late finishing the ring. I couldn’t come without it.”
He drew it from the box, slipped it on her finger, bent and kissed it.
She flashed it in the starlight.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she cried.
“Not half so beautiful as the light of your eyes,” he whispered. “How soon will you marry me?”
She continued to look at the ring as if enchanted.
“Let’s marry right away,” he pleaded.
She held the ring up in the reflected light from the windows of the big building opposite and studied it.
“To-morrow night would suit me,” he sighed.
Still no answer.
“All right,” he said softly, “you name the day.”
It was no use postponing the inevitable. It had to come. They must fight it out here and now. She faced it resolutely.
“I can’t marry you, my love-man,” she replied seriously.
He took her hand to draw her into his arms and hush her silly talk with kisses, but caught the look of tragedy in her drawn expression and stopped short.
“Can’t marry me?” he repeated slowly. “Is there another?”
She smiled.
“There is no other man, there never has been, there never will be----”
“And you love me?”
“It’s just because I love you.”
“You won’t marry me because you love me?”
“Exactly.”
“Don’t make me laugh,” he cried. “What sort of joke is this you’re trying to put up on me?”
“I was never more serious.”
“You can’t be!”
“You have read my book and my essays on marriage?”
“Sure.”
“Well?”
“What of it? What’s your book on the ‘Modern Woman Movement’ to do with your personal life?”
“My book is my life--the revelation of the best that’s in me.”
He threw up both hands in a gesture of impatience.
“Not at all. Your book is the propaganda of a new religion. You are its high priestess. You’re preaching the faith.”
“But I mean it.”
He laughed lightly.
“My father was a clergyman. Your writing on that subject gives me exactly the impression which his sermons used to make on me. I scandalized the entire family one day at a dinner. My father had just thrilled the assembled guests with a story of personal experience. I looked at him a moment in open-eyed wonder and quietly asked:
“‘Is that _so_, papa, or are you just preachin’?’ The people laughed and my mother sent me to bed. Your theories about marriage are all very well for the consumption of radical thinkers. But for you to apply such things to your life to-day--nonsense--it’s unthinkable--you, my love--my life--my beautiful goddess!”
“That’s it. I refuse to be a goddess. I’m going to be just a human being. Every human being should have an equal right to develop and exercise his or her capacities. My life is an end in itself. I have only this one to live. I must live it as completely as possible. A woman has the right to her own soul. I wish to see life with my own eyes, not through the eyes of a husband. I will not be a mere female. I insist on having a soul. I refuse to be the mere matter on which the will of man acts and reacts. Marriage reduces woman to this. Marriage is the death of personality for women. Marriage is the death of love for most women. I demand and I will have the poetry of love--or I will have nothing. I loathe the kept woman--wife or mistress. I refuse to use my sex for economic purposes. Marriage is a trade in which a woman practises the art of sex allurement to make a living off men. I don’t have to stoop to such a trade. I have one----”
Manning broke into another laugh and seized her hand with rough command.
“Stop this foolishness, my sweetheart. You’re talking from books----”
“I’m giving you my deepest soul conviction.”
“You’re quoting a lot of rubbish you’ve read. I’ve read some of it myself. Preach it if you wish for future generations to think and dream about. When we all go to heaven and sprout wings it may come. But down here in this sinful world you’re going to be _mine_--do you hear?”
He leaned close and caught the perfume of her breath as her bosom rose and fell with sudden emotion.
“I will not be your slave!”
“But I must protect you, my dear,” he pleaded.
“Protection means that a man buys love and a woman sells it. I will not depend on my sex for a living.”
“Who asked you? Go on and make as big a salary as you wish. We’ll keep it for the children,” he interrupted smiling.
“The economic use of sex,” she went on earnestly, “in wife, mistress and prostitute is the cancer eating at the heart of society to-day----”
“Please don’t, dear,” he begged, “you’re quoting from your new books, I tell you! What has all this to do with you and me? We love one another. We’ve got to get married----”
“That’s exactly why we won’t get married. We will preserve our love from its blight--its dull stupidity, its lack of reserve, its ugly hours of everlasting boredom. For example, you might snore or I might snore. There are a thousand and one petty annoyances which daily contact brings to two positive personalities. The moment I realize that you are _mine_, I am no longer yours; can’t you see this?”
“I can not!”
“Well, I do,” she insisted, “and I’m going to save you from the great curse. I assert the right of free thought against the stupid creed of authority. I preach and propose to practice the love of my dreams. I will have nothing less. I claim the right to serve society with my love according to my own choice and the right to use my love in my own way. This is best for society, because only thus can I attain the best that is in me.”
He lifted his hand impatiently.
“You reject my love, then.”
She flushed and was silent for a moment studying his sensitive, mobile face. Never had she seen him quite so handsome as in this crisis of deep emotion. Never had she seen him more completely master of himself. It was this poise under the stress of the storm that disconcerted her as she faced the full declaration of her principles and her plan of action.
If he had exploded in protests or lost his head in impetuous pleading she might have felt her ground more secure. But he had done nothing of the kind. His words had been dropped one by one as if he were summing up the facts rather than pleading:
“You--reject--my--love--then----”
There was not even an interrogation point at the end of the sentence. It was ominous. An iron will slumbered beneath the smiling quiet of his character. She felt its hard grip on her nerves.
The silence lengthened. A moment’s cowardice struck her heart. He was waiting her answer, his eyes searching her soul for the deep things of life.
“You know that I love you,” she faltered.
“Then how can you refuse love’s right to its own?”
“I do not refuse.”
“You have refused.”
“No----”
“You will not marry me.”
“But I shall love you forever!”
“And you ask me to cherish my love as an empty dream and never build the home that’s in my heart?”
“Your love shall not be an empty dream.”
“It will be without you.”
“I’m going to be with you,” she whispered softly.
“Then we must build our home.”
“Why?” she asked earnestly. “This old-fashioned home of which you dream is the mortal enemy of every woman who aspires to a conscious soul.”
“You can’t believe such rubbish!” he interrupted.
“I not only believe it, I know it,” she went on eagerly. “I was born and reared in one. My father and mother were human beings outside the ‘home.’ The moment they crossed the sacred threshold they each were possessed of at least seven devils. ‘Home’ was the cave removed from the interference of the police in which they could, at their leisure, tear each other to pieces. And they did it regardless of my feelings.”
“But such unhappy marriages are the exception.”
“They are the rule, if the truth were known! The reason we don’t hear the noise of battle is that the woman makes no cry. My mother was made of different stuff from the average. She could endure only so much and then she saw red, and when she did the male animal in her way had to pay. The one dream of your heart is a home?”
“God never made a real man in whose breast it wasn’t planted.”
“And you never dreamed there might be something nobler, something finer, something more beautiful?”
“Never,” he answered sharply.
“And yet, you think for a minute,” she argued tenderly. “The dull round of uninteresting work in the home to which the woman who marries is sentenced for life is more hopeless and nerve-wracking than the task to which a convict in prison is assigned. This joyless, stupid toil robs her of individuality, all power of original thought, and strips her of every chance of self-expression and development.”
“Self-development? Great Scott!” he broke in, “doesn’t every woman express herself in her children?”
“No more than every man. Is man content with such self-development as he finds in his children? No. Each human being must live his own life within or die the living death before the grave. I am a human being, dear man! Let me be human. I will love you with a love that is deathless, because humanity is immortal. Why must you condemn me to a life of penal servitude because we love each other? This ‘home’ in which you propose to confine me in shackles will steal the light from my eyes, put out the fires of intellect and rob me of every grace and beauty which I possess. It will unfit me to maintain myself an equal whom you can respect!”
He listened intently, his face a mask.
“I don’t regard you as my equal,” he answered slowly.
She stiffened the slightest bit.
“You couldn’t with your ideals----”
“You’re not my equal,” he went on evenly. “You are my superior. I know this by the deepest intuitive knowledge--the impulse to worship which steals into my heart with every thought of you. I refuse to degrade you with a cheap masculine equality. I refuse to love my equal. I must love and worship with the same heart-beat----”
“But I don’t want to be worshipped!” she cried.
He seized her hand with cruel force.
“I don’t care what you want! I’m going to have my way. I adore you and I’m going to keep on adoring you! The home is the temple in which I propose to build the high altar of this religion as old as the beat of the human heart--you can’t escape me--you are mine!”
“I’ll not try to escape you, love-man!” she whispered tensely. “But I shall not allow you to bind me with chains.”
“I’ll kiss the chains that bind me to you,” he interrupted.
“I can’t,” she persisted. “I can’t even wear this ring you have brought with so many beautiful thoughts and such sweet and utter sacrifice----”
“You can’t wear my ring--why?”
She drew it slowly from her finger and held it in the soft light.
“Because it is the symbol of ancient slavery”; she paused and kissed it.
“I kiss it not in submission, but in joyous freedom as I return it to my glorious lover. Love’s freedom for me means the freedom of enduring love. It neither asks nor expects sign or symbol.”
He leaned close.
“In heaven’s name, what do you propose to do with me, then?”
She flushed, silently slipped the ring back into his reluctant hand, gripped it in both hers, kissed it passionately and fixed her deep eyes on his.
“What am I going to do with you?” she slowly repeated: “Love you always. Even in all ages and climes women of beauty and genius have done what they pleased. I’m going to do what I please; not in wilful disobedience to law, but in obedience to the highest within me. Marriage is not the creation of law--the law is _its_ creation. Even historically free marriage is the real marriage. The public celebration of a wedding is already becoming a vulgar spectacle to the new conscience of the world----”
She paused and pressed his hand tenderly. She felt him growing cold. She felt him slipping away from her and gripped his fingers desperately.
“Well, go on,” he said gently.
She braced herself.
“When two intelligent human beings wish to be together,” she whispered gently, “no bond is needed; if they do not wish to be together, why chain them?”
His jaw snapped with firm decision.
“And you think me dog enough to consent to such a degradation of your life?”
“I hold such love the supreme glory of life!”
“And yet the man who dared offer such love to my sister--I--would--kill--him--as--I--would--a--rattlesnake!”
He stopped suddenly and drew her head to his breast.
“Dear sweetheart, forget your madness; I couldn’t let you do this insane thing--you know it! I take your offer as the supreme expression of a great and beautiful love. I’m not worthy of it. I would be still less worthy if I listened for a moment.”
“But you _must_ listen, dear love-man!”
“I will not.”
“I can’t be your slave.”
“I beg to be yours!”
“Then do as I command you.”
“No.”
“Then you’re not my slave?”
“In my own way.”
“But I don’t like your way. I dislike the domestic habits of man. They are intolerable to my self-respect.”
The nerve tension broke at last. He laughed, deliberately took her in his arms and kissed her passionately.
“You sweet, adorable bundle of contradictions!” he cried.
“I can have my own way?” she asked demurely.
“You can not!” he replied firmly.
“Then it will never be!”
He left her standing at the head of the stairs repeating her decision:
“Never!”
He waved a last good-night, blew her a kiss, and said:
“Will be back to-morrow to arrange for the ceremony!”
She turned into her room with a sickening sense of defeat.