"No," he said doggedly. "I'm afraid you don't want to see. She has always looked forward to studying in New York, and the only fair thing for you to do is to let her try it for a while." "What if she did n't come back?" "She will that is, if she really loves you; and if she does n't, it 's better to find it out in the beginning. You ought to wait. Any sensible person would tell you that." "Then I guess I'm not sensible." "Well, you must try to be. People must be sensible when planning the big things of their lives. That 's what father always says. Don't you think his opinion is worth while?" Luther allowed the heavy silken tassel that adorned the arm of the chair in which he sat to run through his fingers several times before he replied. "Of course his opinion is worth while," he admitted uneasily, "but I—” She did not let him finish. "Well, then, just to prove that I am right, suppose we ask him?" Again the tassel sifted through his fingers. His eyes went to the portrait. "No," he protested. "I don't-that is, I'd rather not bother your father." "He would n't mind. He likes you, you know, and he 'd be glad to advise you." "No! no!" cried Luther, vehemently. "He's tired, Stella. He 's been working hard all day. It won't do at all." In his agitation he let the tassel go, and rose from his chair; but Stella was already at the door. "I'll go and ask him," she said. She found her father in the library, dozing over his evening paper, the ashes of a good cigar dribbling down his purple smoking-jacket. "Father," she exclaimed, shaking the mayoral shoulders, "wake up! Wake up!" The mayor blinked his eyes. "Bless my soul, Stella! what's the matter?" "Luther Marsh is here." "Well, well, well, what of it?" "He says he wants to marry Glory." "Luther wants to marry Glory," she repeated. "Bless my soul!" said the mayor. "that you'd give him impartial advice, Father." "Eh? Advice?" "Yes, Father. He looks up to you so." The mayor gave a nod of approval. "Well," he said, "Luther 's a nice boy. I knew his father-yes, I—” "Never mind his father," put in Stella. "It 's Luther. I told him you would think it a great mistake for them to marry at their age. You do think so, don't you?" "Mistake? Mistake?" blinked the old gentleman. "Of course it's a mistake. God bless my soul! what can they be thinking of?" "Yes," approved Stella. "That 's just it. Luther needs some one like you to tell him to wait, to work up further in the world before he gets married. Glory ought to have a chance at her career first, too. Why, I was going to give her my piano for a birthday present. I want her to have every chance.' The mayor beamed at his daughter. How like himself she was! "My generous child!" he exclaimed with real feeling. Then, when his brief moment of emotion had passed, he added: "Very well, my dear. Bring Luther in. I'll talk to him." The library was of that style which is called "mission," a style of browns and greens and stencilings, at once a manifestation that some one in the house had recently "discovered art," and a proof of the paternal obedience of Paola's mayor to the dictates of that some one, whoever she might be. Luther, however, by this time had become oblivious to the beauties surrounding him; his whole being concentrated with respectful apprehension on the august being whom it was his unanticipated lot to face. The latter shook his hand kindly. "Well, Luther my boy," he said, beaming benevolently, "my daughter tells me you and Glory want to get married." "Yes, sir." The mayor adjusted his gold-rimmed eye-glasses midway down his nose, and gazed profoundly over them at his visitor. "You have n't forgotten the good old saying, I hope, 'Look before you leap'?" "I have looked, Mr. Arnold, and I 'm in love with Glory." "Very possibly, very possibly," said the mayor, with relentless benignity. "All the more reason to wait. Remember the old saying, 'True love need not shrink at delay.' "But why need we delay?" A pompous smile overspread the mayoral features. "Youth, youth, youth!" he murmured. "The thing to do, my boy, is to buckle down and earn her a home first. 'When poverty comes in at the door love flies out of the window,' you know. Besides, you 're entirely too young." "I'm twenty-four, sir." The mayor chuckled. Glory, who had no opportunity for sadness in the flurry of buying new clothes, undergoing fittings, attending farewell parties, and packing trunks; as quickly to Stella, who participated equally in every phase of the excitement; and most quickly of all to Luther, who had merely to count the hours-hours all the more mournful because in them Glory found so few free minutes for him alone. Even the day she went there was no opportunity to have her to himself. Her train was to leave at three o'clock, and he had difficulty in persuading the headbookkeeper to let him go for an hour, to "See a friend off." They were already at the station when he reached it, little Mrs. Lind, a sweet-faced promise of what Glory might become in twenty years, weeping unashamedly, and Glory and Stella and two or three other girls, all keeping up a meaningless chatter. "Why-y-y," he said, "when I was your age, I did n't dream of getting married for years to come. I devoted myself to my work, sir; and it paid. Look at this house, my boy! Look at the bank! If I had married then, do you think I'd be where I am to-day?" He gazed pompously at Luther. Then, as Luther did not answer, the mayor answered himself: "Not at all! Whoever achieves must proceed slowly and with care. That's what I did. That's the advice I should give to any bright young man who sought my opinion." Several times Luther tried to speak; ing the skins on the floor. Another group at last he managed to get out: "Thank you, sir, for your kind inter- slot weighing-machine, shoving one an est." "Don't mention it, my boy, don't mention it," replied the mayor, taking up his newspaper, with a "there, that 's settled" air. But, disconcerted as Luther was, he made one more effort. "But don't you think a year is too long to wait, sir?" he asked feverishly. The mayor peered over the top of his paper. "Do you know how many years Jacob served for Rachel, Luther?" he demanded with crushing geniality. "Go slow; remember that 'haste makes waste.' Again the mayor disappeared behind the newspaper. "Thank you, sir," gasped Luther, from the door. "Of course you know more about it than I do. I'll try to follow your advice." By way of answer, Mr. Arnold's head merely bobbed a little. THE three weeks before the day of Glory's departure sped quickly by; quickly to The dingy waiting-room was heavy with the heat of a humid September afternoon. A perspiring attendant kept chalking up Glory's train on the blackboard five or ten minutes later each time. Some sticky children were eating bananas and throw was wrangling around the penny-in-the other and screeching. A wedding party from the Dutch settlement, dressed in gala finery, permeated the place with their giggling. After checking Glory's trunks, Luther stood the waiting-room as long as he could; then he suggested that they move. out to the platform. His heart was boiling over with a thousand things he wished to say to her, yet he was acutely aware of the fact that he could only talk banalities. His head was filled with a strange buzzing; the clickety-click-click of the telegraph instruments inside the open window of the ticket-office seemed to dominate the world. Then the whistle of a locomotive sounded down by the mill crossing, and there was a scramble for Glory's bags; then came the train. A sudden silence had settled upon the party. They had to run back down the platform a little way to find Glory's car. A depressing sense of hurry was over everything. One thing, and one thing only, was definitely fixed in Luther's mind. He would kiss her! All Paola might be there to see, but he would kiss her! Alas! what little things can blast our prearrangements! As he handed Glory's bags to the parlor-car porter, and turned to carry out his project, a hurrying passenger bumped into him and knocked off his hat. When a hat is knocked off, the human mind works automatically. Luther regained his hat, but lost his chance; Glory was already in the vestibule. "All aboard!” The conductor waved his arm and swung up after her. The train moved. A minute later it was a black speck smoking off into the unknown, while Luther stood and brushed his hat upon his coat-sleeve. She was gone. That was all that he realized. The chatter of Stella and the other girls carried no meaning to his ears, only jarred cruelly on an aching sensitiveness. He scarcely realized how he took leave of Mrs. Lind; she was weeping, and he envied her her right to do so openly. Then somehow he was faced again toward the bank. He did not want to go back to the bank. There was no place he wanted to go. The world was a dreary and miserable place. "Luther!" He turned. Stella, in her motor, had drawn up behind him. "Where are you going?" she asked. "Can I drop you there?" "No, thanks, Stella," he said. "I guess I'll walk." He felt that her kind intention deserved more of a response than that, but even more strongly he felt that it was beyond his power to talk to any one just then. With a sickly effort at a smile he turned away. "Luther!" He stopped again. "Come here just a minute." He crossed to the car. "You must excuse me, Stella," he said desperately, "but I can't bear to talk to any one just now. I'm not fit to." Stella leaned out and took him by the lapel. "Luther," she said, "I know just how you feel. That 's why I want to talk to you. For you know we are both in the same boat now. I think I am going to miss her almost as much as you do. Won't you please get in?" He obeyed. They drove to the bank. Before he alighted she laid her hand with a sympathetic pressure on his arm. "I wish you would come to dinner tonight," she said. "We can talk about her. It will do us good." "Thanks," he said, "but-you'll understand, Stella-I 'd like to talk with you, but I-well, your father and mother-❞ "I understand," she nodded. "They 're going out. That's why I-" Luther gulped. "You 're awfully kind to me," he said. "I'll come." WHEN Glory had been at home, it had never seemed to her that her birthday came at a depressing time of year; but in New York, after eleven months alone in a boarding-house, away from family and friends, it seemed to her that on that day, at the end of August, the heat and fatigue of the entire year had mounted to an awful apex. It was her first birthday away from home. She would have liked to forget that it was her birthday, or to have pretended to forget, but the morning mail, with its birthday letters, prohibited that. For the rest, the day was like two hundred other days, except that it was hotter. From ten to twelve in the morning she had a lesson. Her German music-master did not know that it was Glory's birthday, but he knew that it was hot, and the heat made him even more impatient than usual. Though it depressed her, Glory did not wonder at his impatience. Looking back over her year's plodding, she, too, was impatient. She had attained so little; she had hoped to attain so much more. Despite the intensifying heat of the afternoon, she practised with nervous desperation until five o'clock. Then, utterly exhausted, she left the studio, dragged herself to the surface car, crowded her way into it, and, clinging to a strap, rode to the up-town street in which she lived. It was a street without individuality. Its dingy-windowed brownstone houses were without individuality, and so, for the most part, were the tenants of them, people who got up in the morning tired, and went away somewhere, and came home tired at night. Shrill-voiced children disputed the middle of the street with honking motors and clattering wagons as she passed along. She thought of the serenity of Maple Avenue, in Paola, and marveled that children could survive this kind of life. Could even she survive it? And how long would she want to? Midway down the block, she turned and climbed the steps of a house. Mingled and unappetizing odors, combined with basement clatterings, met her in the hall. Dinner was under way. Listlessly she ran her fingers through the litter of letters and papers scrambled together, boarding-house style, on the battered hall table. There was one letter for her, a specialdelivery letter. The first happiness of the day came to her when she recognized upon the envelop the long, angular handwriting of Stella Arnold. Stella! She had hoped that she might hear from Stella to-day; but she had hardly dared to hope it, for Stella had not written in a long time. Surely the letter would give her news of Luther, too. She carried it up-stairs with her, tearing. the envelop open as she went. She had told Luther not to write, but he might have disobeyed her, just this once, upon her birthday! She opened the door of her room. Her room! A room which now, after eleven months, she entered with almost the same feeling of strangeness she had felt on her first sight of it. Yet how well she knew that room,-how horribly well!-with its wall of feverish roses and its blatant flowered carpet, worn drab before the dresser and beside the bed. She entered and closed the door. Then suddenly she collapsed against it. There, polished and enormous, bulging out magnificently into the center of the room from the corner in which it had been placed, stood a grand piano! When she had recovered from her first amazement, she crossed the room, and opened the lid. There on the keys lay a card: To dearest Glory, with loving wishes for a happy birthday, from Stella. So it was n't a mistake; the piano was really for her, Stella's beautiful piano! Glory dropped to the bench, and ran her hands over the shiny surface of the top. Then suddenly she bent her head against it and wept. And she had thought that Stella was forgetting her! Beautiful, generous, loyal Stella! For a long time she sat there, motionless. When at last she raised her head, the light was fading. There in front of her, on the piano, was the special-delivery letter from Stella, still unread. She carried it to the window: My dearest Glory: Many happy returns of the day! I cannot tell you how I hope that the piano has already reached you. Dad made the express company promise faithfully to deliver it on the morning of your birthday so as to surprise you. And you must n't feel one bit backward about accepting it, because I have n't touched it in months. I've given up all hopes of ever getting anywhere with my music. And I can't tell you how proud I'll be if my piano is in any way connected with your glorious career, for in Paola we all feel that you are destined to be famous. And, Glory dear, I 've something very surprising to tell you! And you're the very first person I 've told, too! Luther and I both want you to know of our great happiness before anybody else. Because it was through our mutual fondness for you, Glory, that Luther and I first got interested in each other. We both feel that you belong to us, in a way, and you may be quite certain that nobody is going to watch your progress with more pride than we will. Glory stopped reading; but with a sort of curiosity, as though a letter were a foreign, unknown object, she continued to regard the sheets in her hand. After a time she moved slowly to the dresser. Pausing there, she bent the pages of the letter backward at the crease. Then, at the exact center of the dressertop, she placed them in a flat, neat-edged pile, an alien square between the familiar ovals of her hairbrush and her mirror. Turning, she regarded the piano with the same look of curiosity. She crossed to it, and once more let her fingers wander over its polished surfaces. Yes, it was a beautiful piano! |
