Chapter 16

YES OR NO

"A man's homage may be delightful until he asks straight for love, by which a woman renders homage."

The Anstices' house stood on the sunny side of Stuyvesant Square. It belonged to the type common in the lower part of the city fifty years ago,--a type borrowed from Beacon Street, as Miss Standish was fond of pointing out, and never improved upon for comfort. Its red-brick front swelled outward, not in the awkward proportions of the modern bay-window, which suggests some uncomfortable protuberance; but with a gracious sweep from the front door to the limits of the next property. In front ran a balcony with a finely wrought iron balustrade, over which clambered a wistaria vine hung with purple clusters in the spring, and green with foliage throughout the summer.

The front door was framed by glass side-lights set in delicate oval mouldings, and above, the colonial fan-light lined with silk fluted in a rising-sun pattern, gave additional cheerfulness to the hall within.

This hall was of generous proportions, and suggestive of land sold by the foot rather than by the inch. At the back a white staircase railed with mahogany wound its way to the second story, and at the right a broad silver-knobbed mahogany door opened invitingly into the drawing-room.

The charm of the Anstice drawing-room lay in its being no drawing-room at all, but just a living-room, reflecting the taste and habits of the people who occupied it. Jim's parrot usurped the window, where he chattered in the sun all day, and flew about at his will, much to the injury of the curtains. Between the windows and the white casing of the mahogany door, stood an old desk strewn with papers in some confusion; for Professor Anstice was fond of bringing his writing from the study on the upper floor to Winifred's domain. The piano occupied the opposite side of the room, the coffin-like gloom of its polished rosewood enlivened by a tall vase brilliant now with the chrysanthemums which autumn had brought. A shaded lamp glowed on a table loaded with books and drawn cosily to the side of a deep couch, and on the other side of the fire, which shot out little hisses of heat on this chilly afternoon, stood the tea-table, with its delicate old-fashioned silver, its transparent china cups, and the plates of hot toasted muffins and ethereally thin bread-and-butter sandwiches which McGregor brought in punctually at five every day.

The old butler was the one extravagance of the Anstice ménage, and as Winifred said, she saved his wages out of the china that he didn't break,--which was one way of looking at it,--and then, McGregor was so much more than a butler! He was housekeeper and parent's assistant and family counsellor all in one. He advised Professor Anstice as to the weight of overcoat called for by the temperature outside. He reminded Jimmy of his mittens and rubbers, and his respectful but significant glances informed Winifred of the exact estimation in which he held her guests.

Flint was a special favorite, and the bow he accorded him was equivalent to a benediction.

"Yes, sir," he said this afternoon, "Miss Anstice is in the parlor. I am just taking in the tea." Having relieved the visitor of his hat and coat, he ushered him in with the air of a protector, and then, after drawing the curtains and lighting the alcohol lamp under the silver kettle, he withdrew noiselessly and deferentially.

"What a treasure that man is!" said Flint, looking after him as he disappeared. "He is better than forty coats of arms as a guarantee of respectability, and the welcome which he extends to callers is a perpetual testimonial to the hospitality of the household."

"Ah," Winifred answered, smiling, "you say that because you belong to the most favored nations. You might not think him so genial if you saw the frigidity with which he receives some of our guests."

"Then I suppose I have only to be thankful that McGregor has not yet caught a hint of my real character, as set forth last summer so vividly by his mistress, and I think I have one more friend in the household; what do you say to that, Paddy?"

The dog had risen from his comfortable doze in front of the fire, and stood stretching himself, with two shaggy paws thrust out in front. When he heard his name called he wagged his tail and came up to Flint's chair, by which he squatted, laying his tawny head cosily across the visitor's lap.

"Come here, Paddy; don't make yourself a nuisance!"

The dog listened calmly to his mistress's invitation, wagged his tail again, and winked his sleepy eyes, but made no motion to obey.

Flint patted the dog's head.

"This is too bad!" Winifred exclaimed, in assumed indignation. "Jimmy has already learned to oppose my opinions by quotations from what Mr. Flint thinks and says; but I will not have Paddy taught to defy my authority."

"Go, Paddy!" said Flint, moving his chair further back. "Your mistress regards me as a dangerous character, and considers it her solemn duty to remove every one in her charge from the risk of the injurious effects of my society."

In spite of Flint's jesting tone there was a hint of bitterness in his voice. The dog, in some surprise at the sudden withdrawal of his head-rest, stood up, looking from one to the other, apparently in doubt as to the rival claims. At length old habits of allegiance asserted themselves, and he seated himself in the angle between the tea-table and his mistress's chair.

Winifred's mood suddenly seemed to have changed from gay to grave. She sat for a moment or two in silence, her hand softly playing with Paddy's long ear, and her head bent ever so little to one side.

"Mr. Flint," she said at last, somewhat abruptly, "I want to tell you a little story; but first let me make your tea. Do you take lemon?"

"Yes, if you please."

"And sugar?"

"One lump--no, thanks--no more."

"Try this brown-bread sandwich. Now, lean back in your chair and listen. Once there was a girl--"

"No!"

"Yes, there was, and she was a very stupid girl, and all the stupider that she thought herself rather clever. She fancied that she was very acute in reading character, and she trusted a great deal to instinct, and first impressions, and all that sort of rubbish by which women excuse themselves from taking the trouble to use their reason. Well, once upon a time, this girl met a man whom she did not like. Her vanity was touched, in the first place, because he disapproved of her and showed his disapproval."

"What a cad he must have been!" Flint put in.

"Now you are no better than the girl I am telling you about--going off like that on insufficient evidence. The girl made up her mind at once that the man must be at fault, since he failed to appreciate her,--all our estimates are based on vanity, you see in the last analysis,--so she proceeded to fit him out with a character to match her ideal of him. He was to be selfish and cold, and regardless of everybody but himself, and supercilious and domineering, and endowed with all the other agreeable qualities which go with those engaging epithets. This answered very well for a while, and I am bound to admit that at first you--I mean he--seemed to play the part which she had assigned to him very satisfactorily; but presently little things began to come to her knowledge which refused to fit into the picture she had made of him. He had a friend who let slip stories of inconsistently kind things he had done for a man whom he had known in college, pooh-poohing them all the time as folly."

"Rubbish!"

"Exactly what the girl said. They didn't go with the character of the kind of man that she had made up her mind this was to be, so she would not believe them, and kept repeating every disagreeable thing she had ever heard him say as an antidote against any change of impression. But stupid as she was, she was not quite dishonest, even with herself, and when gradually her eyes were opened to the wrong which she had done him in her own mind, she longed for an opportunity to make him some amends; but all the opportunities came to him, and the coals of fire were heaped on her head till she began to feel them quite too hot for comfort. So at last she resolved, on the first occasion when she saw him alone, to ask his pardon very humbly for all her misdoings and misthinkings. Now, if she did, what do you think the man would say?"

Flint had set down his tea untasted, and sat staring steadily into the fire, yet no detail of Winifred's dress or attitude escaped him. He noted the glint of the firelight playing on the buckle of her little slipper; he watched it climb over the sheen of the gray-silk dress, higher, higher, till it reached the bare throat, and flushed the already flushed cheek to a deeper carnation. He felt the appeal in the girl's attitude as she leaned ever so little towards him. He caught the tremulous note in her voice. His own was less steady than its wont as he answered:--

"How do you know that the girl was not right in her first estimate? For my part, I think a man who presumed to show the disapproval you speak of, and to say disagreeable things on slight acquaintance, fully justified her opinion of him; and if he seemed to change later, I should think it probable that something in her had shamed him out of his coldness and his selfishness. As for the superciliousness, I should be inclined to set down the appearance of that to the charge of an unconquerable shyness masquerading in the guise of self-assertion,--I have known men like that,--but the other qualities I believe were there. I suspect it was a reversal of the old story of Pygmalion and Galatea, as if he were slowly turning from stone to flesh, yet still held back by the old chill of stony habit,--an imprisonment which could only be broken by a word from her. Is there any chance that you will ever speak it--Winifred?"

"Oh, no--no!" the girl answered brokenly. "Don't say anything more!"

"I love you," Flint continued, as if the statement were necessary to his vindication.

"Oh, but why do you tell me?"

"Because I choose to have you know,--because I must tell it. I love you. I love you." He repeated the words with a persistence not to be put aside. Winifred was inwardly furious with herself for her own stupidity in giving him such an opening; but then, as she told herself, who could have foreseen it, with this man of all men! The shock of the surprise took her breath away, and robbed her of her usual self-command. She still strove to take the situation lightly, to treat it picturesquely, like a love-scene on a Watteau fan.

"Here is another proof of your generosity," she said, with a half tremulous, wholly adorable little smile. "I asked for pardon and you offer love."

Flint would not be put off so. "Ah, but I ask for so much more than I offer," he said.

"And--if I cannot give it?"

"Why, then," he answered steadily, "I shall still carry with me through life something you cannot take away if you would,--the ideal which these weeks have held up before me. If it is not for your best happiness to marry me, loving you as I do, I would not have you do it. The matter is in your hands--a simple 'Yes' or 'No' is all I ask."

"But life is too complicated to be settled by a word like that. It could not be 'Yes'--but what if it is 'No'?"

She paused a moment, and then, hurried on by a tidal wave of feeling, she burst out: "Oh, I don't suppose you can understand it; but much as I like you,--and I do like you now,--I feel as though if I promised to marry you, I might absolutely hate you."

"Oh, yes," Flint answered quietly, "I can quite understand it; I think I should feel in the same way if I were not perfectly sure I loved a person."

Winifred felt herself touched by his quick response and perfect comprehension of her state of mind; but her feeling was too intense, too direct and too importunate, to be stayed in its utterance.

"I cannot marry you. I never could promise. I am sure of it. Forgive me!"

Flint rose and stood by the mantel, toying absently with a bronze model of the Praxiteles Faun which rested on its shelf.

"It is all right," he said, "and I shall always thank you for it all, and say God bless you, whatever happens; only for a while I must go away and make my life over a bit in the light of all this."

"Why must you go away?"

"Because--" Here Flint paused, and began to walk the floor impatiently. "Oh, if you can ask that, I could not make you understand. It is useless to go on talking."

"No," said Winifred, now with fuller command of herself, "it is not useless; it is necessary. We must make each other understand. If we cannot do it now, how much less afterward! It always seems to me as if it were selfish folly in men and women to act as if their love were the only reality in the world, so that they forget everything that they owe to other people. Yes," she added, gathering strength as she went on, "I think it would be selfish in you to consider only yourself, or even yourself and me, in this matter, and I think it would be foolish if--if you really care for me, as you say you do, to throw away all my interest and regard and sympathy just because I do not consent to marry you. If you would only put that idea out of your head, I think I could be of some service to you. I know you could be of great service to me."

As Winifred uttered these words she sat looking up at him with wide-open, childlike eyes, a hint of pathetic appeal in her voice.

Flint paused a moment, as one who counted the cost of his words. Then he said slowly: "It shall be as you wish; but on your own head lie the risks. When a man has once said, 'I love you,' the woman to whom he says it sees it in his eyes and hears it in his voice forever after. I tell you," he went on, setting down the faun hard on the mantel, "love is like the spirit which the Arabian fisherman let out of the shell. It can never be shut up again--never--never--never!"

Winifred stirred a little, but did not lift her eyes.

"You shall try this precious scheme of friendship," Flint continued hotly. "It is not a new experiment. It is well worn, and so far in the world's history it has not proved a great success; but try it if you will, only you shall make me one return. I shall never ask you again for your love. It is not a plaything to be teased for in such childish fashion. You tell me you will not give it to me. Well and good. But if ever--" here he paused and shut his eyes for an instant, as if upon some inward vision,--"if ever you should come to feel differently, I demand it as my right that you shall tell me so honestly. You know me too well to think I could ever change."

"I accept the risk," Winifred answered steadily. "You shall never regret this concession, and by-and-by, when we both grow old, you will look back and see that such a friendship is the best thing that could befall you and me."

The girl spoke with quick decision of manner. It was characteristic of her not to question for a moment the wisdom of her decision, the infallibility of her own judgment, or her power to regulate the life and destiny of those around her.

Flint smiled, as one smiles at the eager illusions of a child. He was going to speak further; but the ringing of the door-bell warned him that the interview was at an end.

"So be it!" he said, coming over to the side of the fireplace where Winifred stood,--for she too had risen. "Since it is not to be good-bye, then, I will bid you good-night."

He took the hand which she extended, and raised its slender finger-tips to his lips. "That is for friendship," he murmured; then turning it, he laid a swift kiss upon the delicate pink palm,--"and that is for love," he whispered, and was gone.

On his way out he passed Miss Standish, who had just come in from a concert. She gave a little nod of scant civility, suggestive of disapproval, and instead of turning in at the parlor door, made her way directly to her room.

As the hall door closed after Flint, Winifred Anstice felt as if some door had closed also in her life. She sat for some time in her low chair, leaning forward, with her hands clasped about her knees, and her pretty brows knit, gazing into the embers. At length, with a little vexed shake of the head, she rose, and paced the long room; but the whirl and rush of thought were too importunate for her present mood, and she paused in her walk at last, and betook herself to the table, with its litter of new books and magazines. She picked up the "Fortnightly Review," and opened mechanically where a silver book-mark pointed to an article on "Balzac and his Followers" marked with emphatic notes of assent or protest. It was another reminder. She impatiently shut the covers sharply together and returned to her vigils before the fire.

There is no woman living who is not somewhat shaken by a proposal of marriage. It is a peremptory challenge, which forces her, for the moment at least, to consider a certain man not as one of a class,--as a member of the conventional, calling, smiling, chaffing circle,--but as an individual, passing suddenly from all this surface trifling to a life and death reality--saying as Jonathan Flint had said this night: "Give me all or nothing. I will have no half loaves. Let us have an end of pretences and evasions. For once at least you shall listen, and be told the truth flowing at lava heat out of a man's heart." It was by no means a new experience to Winifred Anstice. As a younger girl, although no coquette, she had found a certain charm of romance in finding herself the heroine of a love-affair in real life; but as she grew older she felt more and more shrinking from such sentimental crises, and a more and more genuine regret as she saw the candid comradeship of one friendship after another sacrificed to the absorbing egotism of passion.

One by one she had let these lovers slip out of her life, and acknowledged to herself that it was better so; but when it came to Jonathan Flint, she had found herself impelled to the impetuous protest for which she already half blamed herself in her heart. But in self-exculpation she argued with the embers, which seemed to wink at her from the hearth, that there were more considerations than one in the matter; that as she had told Mr. Flint, modern life was too complex to be compressed into a "Yes" or "No."

As she was pondering, her eyes fell upon the portrait,--Ruth's portrait, hanging there over the mantel.

"I wish you were here, Grandmamma," Winifred exclaimed, looking up at it, "to help me clear up the muddle in my mind! I have a kind of feeling that _you_ would understand."

The girl's sentimental musings were rudely interrupted by a race between Jimmy and Paddy, who came rushing through the room, regardless of tea-tables or rugs.

"Jump for it, Paddy!" cried Jim, snatching a piece of cake from the tray, and holding it high in air.

"Don't, Jimmy! You will upset the table."

"Come on then, Paddy, we'll jump in the hall, where there is no girl to be nervous--I hate nervous people."

"Whose cane is that, McGregor?" he asked, as he saw an unfamiliar walking-stick on the hall table.

"It belongs to Mr. Flint--he must have forgot it," the butler answered.

"I say, Fred, has Mr. Flint been here?" Jimmy called out from the baluster, over which he was leaning at imminent risk to life and limb.

"He has," Winifred answered repressively.

"Did he say anything about seats for the football game on Thanksgiving Day?"

"He did not."

"Then I think I'd better sit right down and write to him, for he told me not to let him forget about it, and all the best seats will be taken if he does not attend to it soon."

"Papa," appealed Winifred to her father, who had come in and was taking off his coat in the hall, "you won't let Jimmy write to Mr. Flint, will you?"

"I _will_ write," said the voice from the stairs, "and I'll tell him how cross you are. I did once, and he only laughed."

"Jimmy!"

"Yes, I did. It was that day when you would not let me go fishing with him. I told him you were quite nice sometimes, but you could be horrid to people when they did things that didn't suit you, and he said that was just the way you struck him."

"Papa!" cried Winifred, now thoroughly out of temper, "will you forbid Jimmy to talk me over with strangers? It is really too much, the way that boy's tongue runs on."

"You understand him, don't you?" the Professor asked mildly, looking over his gold-bowed spectacles.

"Yes, but other people don't."

"Are they so much less clear-sighted than you?" With this gentle sarcasm her father slowly mounted the stairs, leaving Jimmy making faces of triumph through the open door.

It is often a curious experience in the contrasts of life for a girl to see herself from the family point of view, after catching the rose-colored reflections which the admiration of an outsider throws upon her character.