The Common Lot. Robert Herrick
divined that her mother was thinking of what had occurred to her many times, as these last days had gone by without their seeing the young architect. Possibly, now that he knew himself to be without fortune, he wished to show her plainly that there could be no question of marriage between them. She rejected the idea haughtily, and resented her mother's acceptance of it which was implied in her suggestion. And even if it were so, she was not the one to admit to herself the wound. It would be no pleasure for her to go away.
Could it be true that he was thinking of fighting the will? Her heart scorned the suggestion, for there was in her one immense capacity, one fiery power, and that was the instinct to transform all that she knew and felt into something finer than it actually was. Her eyes were blind to the sordid lines in the picture; her ears deaf to the discordant notes. In that long passage home through the Mediterranean and across the Atlantic her soul had given itself unknown to herself to this man, and she could not admit the slightest disloyalty to her conception of him!
She returned to her chair, resolutely picked up her book, and turned the pages with a methodical, unseeing regularity. As the clock tinkled off nine strokes, Mrs. Spellman rose, kissed the girl, silently pressing her fingers on the light folds of her hair, and went upstairs. Another half hour went by; then, as the clock neared ten, the doorbell rang. Helen, recollecting that the servants had probably left the kitchen, put down her book and stepped into the hall. She waited a moment there, but when the bell rang a second time she went resolutely to the door and opened it.
"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Jackson! I thought it might be a tramp."
"Well, perhaps you aren't so far wrong," the architect answered with a laugh. "I've been walking miles. Is it too late to come in?"
For answer she held the door wide open.
"I have been dining with Mrs. Phillips; she has asked me to draw some plans for her," Jackson explained. "As I came by the house, I thought I would tell you and your mother about it."
"Mother has gone upstairs, but come in. You know I always read late. And I am so glad to hear about the plans."
The strong night wind brushed boisterously through the open door, ruffling the girl's loosely coiled hair. She put her hands to her head to tighten the hairpins here and there. If the man could have read colors in the dark hall, he would have seen that Helen's face, usually too pale, had flushed. His ears were quick enough to detect the tremulous note in her voice, the touch of surprise and sudden feeling. It answered something electric in himself, something that had driven him to her across the city straightway from Mrs. Phillips's house!
He followed her into the circle of lamplight, and sat down heavily in the chair that she had been occupying.
"What's this thing you are reading?" he asked in his usual tone of authority, picking up the bulky volume beneath the lamp. "Hobson's 'Social Problem.' Where did you get hold of that? It's pretty heavy reading, isn't it?"
His tolerantly amused tone indicated the value he put on women's efforts to struggle with abstract ideas.
"Professor Sturges recommended it in his last lecture. It isn't hard—only it makes me feel so ignorant!"
"Um," he commented, turning over the leaves critically.
"But tell me about Mrs. Phillips and the house."
There was an awkward constraint between them, not that the hour or the circumstance of their being alone made them self-conscious. There was nothing unusual in his being there late like this, after Mrs. Spellman had gone upstairs. But to-night there was in the air the consciousness that many things had happened since they had been together alone: the old man's death, the funeral, the will—most of all the will!
He told her of the new house in Forest Park. It had been decided upon that evening, his preliminary sketches having been received enthusiastically. But he lacked all interest in it. He was thinking how the past week had changed everything in his life, and most of all his relation with this girl. Because of that he had not been to see her before, and he felt uncertain of himself in being here now.
"Mother and I have just been speaking of you. We haven't seen you since the funeral, you know," Helen remarked, saying simply what was in her mind.
Her words carried no reproach. Yet at once he felt that he was put on the defensive; it was not easy to explain why he had avoided the Maple Street house.
"A lot has happened lately," he replied vaguely. "Things have changed pretty completely for me!"
A tone of bitterness crept into his voice in spite of himself. He wanted sympathy; for that, in part, he had come to her to-night. At the same time he felt that it was a weak thing to do, that he should have gone almost anywhere but to her.
"It takes a man a few days to catch his breath," he continued, "when he finds he's been cut off with a shilling, as they say in the play."
Her eyes dropped from his face, and her hands began to move restlessly over the folds of her skirt.
"I've had a lot to think about—to look at the future in a new way. There's no hope now of my leaving this place, thanks to uncle!"
"Oh!" she exclaimed in a low voice. The coldness of her tone was not lost upon the man. He saw quickly that it would not do to admit to her that he even contemplated contesting his uncle's will. She was not sympathetic in the manner of Mrs. Phillips!
"Of course," he hastened to add magnanimously, "uncle had a perfect right to do as he liked. It was his money. But what could he have had against me?"
"Why, nothing, I am sure!" she answered quickly.
"It looks, though, as if he had!"
"Why?" she stammered, trying to adjust herself to his level of thought. "Perhaps he thought it was better so—better for you," she suggested gently. "He used to say that the men of his time had more in their lives than men have nowadays, because they had to rely on themselves to make all the fight from the beginning. Nowadays so many young men inherit capital and position. He thought there were two great gifts in life—health and education. When a man had those, he could go out to meet the future bravely without any other help."
"Yes, I have heard him say all that," he hastened to admit. "But the world isn't running on just the same lines it was when uncle Powers was working at the forge. It's a longer road up these days."
"Is it?" the girl asked vaguely. Then they were silent once more.
There was nothing of reproof in her words, yet he felt keenly the difference in the atmosphere of this faded little Maple Street house from the world he had been living in of late. He had told himself for the last week that now he could not marry this woman, that a great and perfectly obvious barrier had been raised between them by his disinheritance. It had all been so clear to him from the first that he had not questioned the idea. This sacrifice of his love seemed to him the greatest that his uncle had forced upon him, and as the days had gone by he had thought incessantly how he might avoid it, how he might obtain some part at least of that vanishing fortune.
This very evening he had had more talk about the will with the clever Mrs. Phillips, and he had come away from her almost resolved to contest the instrument. On the morrow he would notify his cousin, consult a lawyer, and take the preliminary steps. On the very heels of that decision there had come an irresistible desire to see this other woman—the longing for the antithesis which so often besets the uncertain human will. Nothing was more unlike Mrs. Phillips in his horizon than this direct, inexperienced girl, full of pure enthusiasms!
Now Helen had made him feel very surely that nothing would remove him farther from her than the act he was contemplating in order to obtain her. If she but knew his intention, she might scorn him forever! He had lost her somehow, either way, he kept saying to himself, as he sat there trying to think calmly, to feel less. And straightway he put another black mark against his uncle's memory!
He had never cared to be near her so much as now. Every soreness and weakness of his spirit seemed to call out for her strong, capable hand. Even the sensuous Mrs. Phillips, by some subtle crossing