第24章 BOOK II:AS SEEN BY DETECTIVE SWEETWATER(3)

A fact which the clerk now confided to me naturally deepened the impression.Miss Challoner had seen my name in the guest-book and asked to have me pointed out to her.Perhaps she had heard my name spoken in the same quarter where I had heard hers.We have never exchanged confidences on the subject,and I cannot say.I can only give you my reason for the interest I felt in Miss Challoner and why I forgot,in the glamour of this episode,the aims and purposes of a not unambitious life and the distance which the world and the so-called aristocratic class put between a woman of her wealth and standing and a simple worker like myself.

"I must be pardoned.She had smiled upon me once,and she smiled again.Days before we were formally presented,I caught her softened look turned my way,as we passed each other in hall or corridor.We were friends,or so it appeared to me,before ever a word passed between us,and when fortune favoured us and we were duly introduced,our minds met in a strange sympathy which made this one interview a memorable one to me.Unhappily,as I then considered it,this was my last day at the hotel,and our conversation,interrupted frequently by passing acquaintances,was never resumed.I exchanged a few words with her by way of good-bye but nothing more.I came to New York,and she remained in Lenox.

A month after and she too came to New York."

"This good-bye -do you remember it?The exact language,I mean?""I do;it made a great impression on me.'I shall hope for our further acquaintance,'she said.'We have one very strong interest in common.And if ever a human face spoke eloquently,it was hers at that moment.The interest,as I understood it,was our mutual sympathy for our toiling,half-starved,down-trodden brothers and sisters in the lower streets of this city;but the eloquence -that I probably mistook.I thought it sprang from personal interest,and it gave me courage to pursue the intention which had taken the place of every other feeling and ambition by which I had hitherto been moved.Here was a woman in a thousand;one who could make a man of me indeed.If she could ignore the social gulf between us,I felt free to take the leap.Cowardice had never been a fault of mine.

But I was no fool even then.I realised that I must first let her see the manner of man I was and what life meant to me and must mean to her if the union I contemplated should become an actual fact.Iwrote letters to her,but I did not give her my address or even request a reply.I was not ready for any word from her.I am not like other men and I could wait.And I did,for weeks,then Isuddenly appeared at her hotel."

The change of voice -the bitterness which he infused into this final sentence made every one look up.Hitherto he had spoken calmly,almost monotonously,as if no present heart-beat responded to this tale of vanished love;but with the words,"Then I suddenly appeared at her hotel,"he showed himself human again,and betrayed a passion which though curbed was of the fiery quality,befitting his extraordinary attributes of mind and person.

"This was when?"put in Dr.Heath,anxious to bridge the pause which must have been very painful to the listening father.

"The week after Thanksgiving.I did not see her the first day,and only casually the second.But she knew I was in the building,and when I came upon her one evening seated at the very desk in the mezzanine which we all have such bitter cause to remember,I could not forbear expressing myself in a way she could not misunderstand.

The result was of a kind to drive a man like myself to an extremity of self-condemnation and rage.She rose up as if insulted,and flung me one sentence and one sentence only before she hailed the elevator and left my presence.A cur could not have been dismissed with less ceremony.""That is not like my daughter.What was the sentence you allude to?

Let me hear the very words."Mr.Challoner had come forward and now stood awaiting his reply,a dignified but pathetic figure,which all must view with respect.

"I hate the memory of them,but since you demand it,I will repeat them just as they fell from her lips,"was Mr.Brotherson's bitter retort."She said,'You of all men should recognise the unseemliness of these proposals.Had your letters given me any hint of the feelings you have just expressed,you would never have had this opportunity of approaching me.'That was all;but her indignation was scathing.Ladies who have supped exclusively off silver,show a fine scorn for the common ware of the cottager."Mr.Challoner bowed."There is some mistake,"said he."My daughter might be averse to your addresses,but she would never show indignation to any aspirant for her hand,simply on account of extraneous conditions.She had wide sympathies -wider than I often approved.Something in your conduct or the confidence you showed shocked her nicer sense;not your lack of the luxuries she often misprised.This much I feel obliged to say,out of justice to her character,which was uniformly considerate.""You have seen her with men of her own world and yours,"was the harsh response."She had another side to her nature for the man of a different sphere.And it killed my love -that you can see -and led to my sending her the injudicious letter with which you have confronted me.The hurt bull utters one bellow before he dies.

I bellowed,and bellowed loudly,but I did not die.I'm my own man still and mean to remain so."The assertive boldness -some would call it bravado -with which he thus finished the story of his relations with the dead heiress,seemed to be more than Mr.Challoner could stand.With a look of extreme pain and perplexity he vanished from the doorway,and it fell to Dr.Heath to inquire: