Chapter FIVE: I

Rosaleen’s great mistake lay in not telling him _then_. Because at this time he wouldn’t have cared. At this moment she was still a romantic and thrilling figure, not yet quite flesh and blood, still without flaw or fault. Her pitiful history would only have enslaved him more completely. And as he grew to know her better, he would have known her with this fact, this history in his mind. Whereas, on the contrary, he was beginning to love a girl who did not exist.

He saw her transcendent kindness, her absolute lack of egoism, her rare and lovely spirit, but he called it and he thought of it as ladylike delicacy. It was her soul; he thought it was her manners.

He walked all the way home, reflecting upon her, lost in a revery half troubled, half delightful. A sweet, a wonderful girl--but obstinate. And obstinacy he did not like. He was the most outrageous young tyrant who ever lived. He ruled everyone, he always had ruled everyone. His mother had never thwarted him, his sister had never rebelled; whatever friends he had selected in school and college had followed his lead with satisfactory submissiveness. He had the qualities of a leader; the immense self-assurance, the severe determination to get his own way, and he had that magic idea in his mind, which subtly communicates itself and changes the very atmosphere, which enthralls all minds more sensitive and therefore less positive--that idea of his own superiority. He came of an old Carolina family, and he believed himself to be better born than anyone about him; he had been successful in his studies, and he believed himself to be cleverer than anyone about him. Appearance didn’t trouble him; he didn’t think himself handsome, and he didn’t care. He knew very well that he was attractive, and that people liked him. Even the fact of being poor didn’t bother him. He wouldn’t stay so.

So, lordly and thoughtful, in his shabby overcoat and his worn shoes, he mounted the steps of the imposing house in which he was living--his aunt’s house. She had begged him to live there until he was “settled.” He had consented; he didn’t feel under obligations; he thought it was nice of her, but her duty. He would have been glad, in her place, to help a young Landry to get on his feet.

A respectful Negro butler opened the door, and he entered and went up to his own room--a handsome and well-furnished room, with bureaus and wardrobe and chest of drawers all lamentably empty. In the huge closet hung only a decent suit of evening clothes and some white flannel trousers, and in two of the bureau drawers lay piles of shirts and underwear which his aunt herself mended and mended. She wouldn’t have so much as suggested replenishing his stock; he would have felt himself grossly insulted.

He had left his beloved mother and sister in Charleston, where they were living with difficulty on a very small pension, and he took from them only an incredibly small sum, enough for carfares and that sort of thing, until he could be earning something. But though waiting was hard for them and hard for him, he would not be hurried. Until he could find a place which seemed to him advantageous, he would take nothing. He knew what he was about. Now was his chance, and perhaps his only chance, to look about him. He intended to make a good start, to go into a business in which he could stop. Let him only see an opportunity; he asked no more.

This evening his plan for the future was changed and enlarged. It contained, as always, lavish provision for his mother and sister, but it included Rosaleen. In the course of the next few years he was going to marry her.

He had, however, too much sense to mention anything of this, to hint at the existence of a Rosaleen, in that household. It wouldn’t be gallant. He was supposed to admire his cousin Caroline; not to the point of compromising himself; everyone knew he wasn’t in love with her. But while living there and seeing her every day, it wouldn’t, he felt, be polite to fall openly in love with someone else.

His aunt was a woman whom he thoroughly admired. Possessed of a gracious and charming worldliness, she had nevertheless the most severe morals, the most rigid code. She didn’t like New York or its people; she was shocked at almost everything; she said the women weren’t ladies and the men weren’t chivalrous; that the people altogether were vulgar and “fast.” But, she said, she was obliged to live there for the sake of Caroline’s studies. It wasn’t really quite that; however, her intention was natural and praiseworthy, and she did her best to accomplish her unspoken ambition for her child.

Nick Landry enjoyed living there. It was a well-appointed and well-managed home, with an air of perpetual festivity. There were always young men about, and theatre parties and dinner parties and little dances--all the charmed atmosphere of a home with a young girl in it. Mrs. Allanby had known how to make the place agreeable, even fascinating for young men. That was her part; to provide Caroline with a matchless setting. To see Caroline sitting at the piano, under a lamp with a shade of artfully selected tint, charmingly dressed, and singing in a voice a bit colourless but so well bred; to know that there would be punch--not too much of it, for Mrs. Allanby was vigilant,--sandwiches and cakes such as no one else ever had; and an air of flattering attention, an enveloping hospitality--wasn’t that a deadly snare? And Nick was the privileged guest, the man of the house. Of course he liked it!

So that evening while he sat there listening to Caroline sing, and thinking all the time of Rosaleen, he felt almost treacherous. And just a little proud of his well-concealed secret. He felt that his dark face was inscrutable....

Perhaps, he thought, at that very instant, Rosaleen too was sitting at the piano in her home.

II

It was one of Nick’s old-fashioned ideas--that a man must always be the first to appear at a tryst, must unfailingly be found waiting by the beloved woman when she arrived. He had made a point of being at least fifteen minutes in advance of the appointed time, so that Rosaleen should see him there, in chivalrous if somewhat irritable patience. He was always ready to wait for a woman, to defer to her, to serve her; he believed it to be his duty as a gentleman; and yet so fierce and haughty was his spirit that he was never without an inward resentment.

He was waiting for her now in the corridor of the Fifth Avenue library. It was a wet October afternoon; he sat on a stone bench with his coat collar still turned up, the brim of his hat still turned down, just as he had come in from the street. He hadn’t even taken off his tan gloves, soaked black by the rain; he didn’t care how he looked, and he knew Rosaleen wouldn’t care either. He had certainly not the look of an expectant lover, this lean and shabby young man with his haughty glance, his ready-made overcoat too large for him, his big rubber overshoes over old and shapeless boots. And yet more than one girl stole a glance at him.

Quarter of an hour late! He only wished that he could smoke. He was beginning to feel chilly, too, and terribly depressed. Wet people going past him and past him, some alone, some in couples, treading and talking quietly. He regarded them with morose interest. All of them after books!... Hadn’t he too tried to live that way, vicariously, through books? All very well as a substitute; but there came back to him now, very vividly, the bitter restlessness, the torment that would seize him when he read of some enchanting foreign land, of fierce and desperate adventures. Of course he knew that his life wouldn’t be, and couldn’t be, at all like any other life ever lived in this world; and yet, in spite of his faith in his own destiny, he fretted so, he chafed so at these slow years, these hours so wasted. What was the matter? Why didn’t life begin?

He was pleased enough with this romance with Rosaleen. This was quite as good as anything in books. Only, to be really perfect, love should have been mixed up with peril, with terror, with gallant rescues. It should have been a drama, and it was nothing but an emotion. He was still so young that he could not imagine death; it seemed to him inevitable that he should live and that Rosaleen should live, until they were old--granted, of course, the absurd premise that young people really _do_ become old. He saw no shadow over life, no fear of change or loss.

He stirred uneasily. Twenty minutes late! This was abusing her feminine privilege! Doubly unfortunate, too, because he had come prepared to remonstrate with Rosaleen, and the longer she kept him waiting, the chillier and damper he grew, the more severe would the remonstrance be.

At last he saw her coming, and her sweetness almost disarmed him. And then made him even more severe. A girl like that, to be meeting a man about in public places! A girl so pretty, so charming, that people stared at her.... The damp air and her haste had given her a lovely colour, and as she hurried toward him, he found for her a pitifully time-worn simile which nevertheless struck him as startlingly novel and true--she was like a wild rose.

She had very little “style”; her clothes were rather cheap, he observed. But she was superlatively ladylike, refined, modest. He wouldn’t have had anything changed, from her sturdy little boots to her plain dark hat.

He rose and came toward her, hat in hand, and for a moment they looked at each other, speechlessly.

“Suppose we have tea?” he said, at last. “There’s a nice place near here where they have very good waffles.”

“I’m not a bit hungry,” said Rosaleen.

Nick was. He had gone without lunch in order to have enough money for tea.

“You ought to be, at your age,” he said.

“It isn’t age that makes you hungry,” said Rosaleen. “It’s what you’ve had for lunch.”

Nick said no more, but took her by the arm. And was surprised and shocked to feel how fragile an arm it was. He determined that she should eat a great deal.

He stopped near the door to reclaim their umbrellas, and they went out together into the chilly and misty twilight. The crowds on Fifth Avenue jostled them, but Nick, tall and grim, held his umbrella high over Rosaleen’s head, and led her to the quiet little tea room he had selected.

“Now, then!” he said, when they were seated opposite each other at a small table, and tea and waffles and honey had been ordered. And he began.

He told her first of all what was expected of a young girl:

By the world in general.

By men.

By himself.

He told her how easy it was to be misjudged.

And how serious.

Then he told her how he particularly didn’t want _her_ to be misjudged.

“You _must_ let me come to see you in your own home!” he said. “You’re so young that you don’t realize how indiscreet and--how dangerous it is to be meeting a strange man this way. You don’t know anything about me. And you ought to. I want you to. There isn’t anything I want to--to conceal. I want you to know me and all about me. And I want to know all about you.”

Once more he was horribly disturbed at seeing her eyes fill with tears. He leaned across the table.

“Look here!” he assured her. “Please! Don’t _care_! Don’t imagine that--if there’s anything you think I might....”

He didn’t know how to proceed. He stopped a moment, frowning, to arrange his ideas.

“I don’t care _where_ you live, or _how_ you live, or _what_ your people are,” he said. “It can’t make any difference to me. It’s only for your sake. I wish you’d believe me. It’s only because it’s not fair to you to go on meeting you like this. Because I mean to go on. I’m _going_ to see you. And I want it to be in your home. Please let me, Rosaleen.”

It was the first time he had used her name.

“Please let me!” he entreated.

She gave up. She told him yes, to-morrow evening; for Miss Amy would not be home then.

III

It was a nice, respectable house in a quiet street below Morningside Park. He was agreeably surprised at its respectability, for he had scented a mystery in Rosaleen’s reluctance to have him come--great poverty, perhaps, or a disreputable relative. He went into the vestibule, and looked for the bell. There it was--Humbert--; he rang; the door clicked, and he entered. An old-fashioned house, the carpeted halls were dark and stuffy; he climbed up and up, and on the fourth landing there stood Rosaleen.

She was very pale, and the hand she held out to him was cold as ice. An altogether unfamiliar Rosaleen, silent, even, it struck him, a _desperate_ girl. She led him into the dining room.

“Excuse me just a moment!” she said. “I’ll tell--my uncle--you’re here.”

And vanished, leaving him alone. He looked about him with interest, because it was Rosaleen’s home. And he was sorry that it was such a stuffy and unlovely one. He was used to large rooms and fine old furniture, to a sort of dignity and fineness in living. This dining room, with its swarm of decorations, the crowded pictures, the scrawny plants, the flimsy and ugly varnished furniture, the sewing machine, the dark red paper on the walls, distressed him. He sat down on one of the straight chairs against the wall to wait, trying to imagine his fair Rosaleen in this setting.

In the meantime Rosaleen had hurried to knock at the door of Mr. Humbert’s room.

“Mr. Morton!” she murmured. “Here’s a young man--a--a friend of Miss Waters.... Would you like to come out and see him?”

“Presently,” the dignified voice replied, and Rosaleen hastened back.

“He’ll be in presently,” she repeated to Nick, as she returned. He had risen when she entered, and once more he took her hand. Her nervousness, her distress, filled him with pity.

“Isn’t there anyone else? Do you live all alone with your uncle?”

“Oh, no! There’s ... there’s--a--cousin.... But she’s out.... Won’t you sit down?”

When he had done so, she fetched him a book from a little table.

“Would you like to look at some views?” she asked.

“No,” said Nick, smiling. “I wouldn’t.”

“Would you like to play cards?”

“No! I’d rather talk to you!”

She sat down on the edge of the couch--that couch covered with green corduroy, with _nine_ sofa cushions of the most frightful sort.

Now Nick unconsciously expected a girl to do the talking, and the pleasing and the entertaining. Gallant responses were his part. So he waited, but quite in vain, for Rosaleen had no tradition of entertaining, and no experience. Never before had she sat in that room with a young man.

“Have you any of your work here?” he asked, at last, in despair.

“Just those!” she answered, pointing to the transparencies. “There isn’t any place for me to draw here.”

“Very pretty!” said Nick. “Are you going to be a professional artist?”

“I hope so. It takes years, though.”

She was silent for a moment; then she went on, dejectedly:

“Sometimes I think I never will succeed. I don’t seem to improve. And I love it so----”

“Don’t take it so seriously.”

“I have to. I’ve got to earn a living by it.”

“I don’t believe you’ll ever have to earn your living,” said Nick. “Not a girl as--lovely as you.”

She blushed painfully, even her neck grew scarlet. And he felt his own face grow hot.

“I...” he began. “There are sure to be plenty of men who’ll want to do that for you.”

There was a distressing silence. He found it very hard to keep from saying:

“_I_ will! _I’m_ going to work for you, and get you everything in the world you want, darling wild rose!”

And to divert his mind from this dangerous thought, he rose and picked up the book she had had in her hand.

“Are these the ‘views’?” he asked. “Looks very interesting.... Won’t you show them to me?”

And he sat down beside her on the couch. He really didn’t think it a particularly significant or daring thing to do; he had sat beside a great many other girls; he was neither impudent nor presumptuous, and no one ever had objected or seemed at all disturbed. So that he was surprised at Rosaleen’s agitation. He didn’t know how formidable he was to her; how mysterious, how irresistible. Her hands shook as she took the book of views and opened it.

But, before she had spoken a single word, the sound of a footstep in the hall made her jump up and seat herself in a nearby chair with her book, and none too soon, for the curtains parted and a venerable, grey-bearded old gentleman looked in.

“Won’t you come in?” said Rosaleen, while Nick got up.

The old gentleman advanced and held out his hand to Nick with a scholarly sort of smile.

“_Good_ evening, sir!” he said. “I was sorry not to have welcomed you with somewhat greater cordiality when you first came in, but I was hard at my work.”

“Not at all!” Nick murmured.

“And that sort of work makes its demands, I can tell you! They who know not speak lightly of ‘writing,’ as of a pleasant diversion; but we initiated ones...! The evening is the only time that I can confidently claim as my own, so you will understand that I dare not waste a moment of the Muse’s presence.”

Which, considering that the poor old chap had acquired all his scholarship alone and unaided, and after he was more or less mature, was a creditable speech. But young Landry, _not_ knowing the circumstances, was not impressed. He said, “Certainly!”

“I suppose Rosaleen has told you something of my literary labours?” he enquired, “A romance of the time of Nero. A poor thing, I dare say, but mine own. And, whether or not it takes the public fancy, it has at least served to beguile many weary hours for its creator.”

This was out of his preface; a bit he was very fond of.

“I don’t know whether you are a student of history, sir,” the old gentleman went on. “But if the subject interests you at all, I have some exceedingly interesting pictures--views of the Holy Land, which I should be very pleased to show you.”

“Thank you very much,” said Nick. “I should like to see them--some time. But I’m afraid I can’t wait now....”

The scholar shook his head.

“My dear sir,” he said, smiling. “I certainly did not propose to begin so extensive an undertaking at the present hour. It would take you half a day to assimilate the material I have on hand. I thought only to introduce you to the subject, to give you--as one might say--a glimpse of the glories to come.”

He crossed the room and picked up the very book Rosaleen had laid down.

“This is our starting point,” he said. “It is from this quaint little old world village that my very dear friend, the Reverend Nathan Peters, set out on his remarkable trip. The record of that trip may be found in his book ‘Following the Old Trail.’ The written record, that is. The pictorial record--which I think I may venture to call the most uniquely interesting and fascinating thing of its sort now in existence--he entrusted to me, and it forms the basis of this collection of photographs, original drawings, and paintings.”

Nick could not get away. He was obliged once more to seat himself on the sofa, this time beside a bearded old gentleman, and to look and listen for an interminable time. He had to watch desperately for a moment to escape, and he had to go without a word to Rosaleen, except a formal “good-evening.” The uncle accompanied him to the front door, even to the top of the stairs, to invite him cordially to come again.

IV

Outside in the street he stopped to light a cigarette. And to sigh with relief. What an evening!

And still was happy, very happy, because Rosaleen was so respectable.