The Leopard's Spots (1902)/Book 2/Chapter 7
HE was on the train at last homeward bound. Gazing out of the window of the car he was trying to find where he stood. He must be in love. He faced the remarkable fact that he had spent a whole week in Independence at an expensive hotel, and squandered every cent of the small fee he had received for his address in what would be otherwise a perfectly senseless manner.
Yet he felt rich. He was sure he had never spent money so wisely and economically in his life. Beyond the shadow of a doubt he was in love,—desperately and hopelessly committed to this one girl for life. He said it in his heart with a shout of triumph. Life was not a sterile desert of brute work. It was true. Love the magician of the ages, lived in this world of lost faiths and dead religions.
Now that he was leaving he felt a tingling impulse to leap off the train, cut across the fields and run back to her—and he laughed aloud, just as the train came to a sudden stop, and everybody looked at him and smiled.
A drummer looked up from a novel he was reading and said,
"It is a fine day, partner, isn't it?"
"Never saw a finer," answered Gaston with another laugh.
He dwelt long and greedily on the consciousness of this new vitalising secret he felt for the first time throbbing in his soul. He bathed his heart in its warmth until he could feel the red blood rush to the ends of his fingers with its new fever. He breathed its perfume until every nerve quivered. "I have never lived before. No matter now if I die, I have lived!" he said slowly and reverently.
He wondered long and wistfully what was in her heart while this wild tumult was going on in him. He wondered if it were possible she loved him. It seemed too good to be true. He was afraid to believe it. And yet his whole soul with every power of his being cried out that she did. He could not have been mistaken in the message he read in the liquid depths of her eyes, and the delicate tenderness of her voice. Words may say nothing, but these signs are the language of the universal. Still, others had been equally sure, and been deceived. Might not he too make the fatal mistake? It was possible. And there was the pain.
She had not uttered a single word in all the hours they spent together that might not be interpreted in a conventional meaningless way.
Yet he had given to every one of these words a soul meaning that spoke directly to his inner being and not his ear.
He had never spoken a word of shallow love-making to a woman in his life. To him love was too holy a mystery. It would have been the blasphemy of the Holy Ghost—a sin that would not be forgiven in this world or the world to come. His college mates had called him a crank on this subject. But he shut his lips in a way that always closed the argument, and they let him alone with his Idol.
"I am afraid yet to put it to the test!" he said at last. "I must have time to reveal my best self to her. I must see her again, live close to her day by day, and bring to bear on her every power of body and soul I possess."
Mrs. Durham met him with dancing eyes. "Oh, I've heard from you, sir!"
"Kiss me Auntie, and be kind. I'm in the last stages of delirium!"
He took her hands both in his and looked at her long. "How good you've been to me, Auntie, in all the past. You never looked so beautiful as to-day. I want to thank you for every word you've said to Miss Sallie for me. It may have helped just a little anyway."
"Well you are in the last stages!" she exclaimed gleefully.
"And you are glad of it?"
"Of course, I am, it will make a man of you."
"But suppose I lose?"
She was silent a moment and then slipped her arm gently about him, drew down his ear and whispered,
"You shall not lose—I've set my heart on it."
He pressed her hands and said,
"How like my sweet mother's voice was that!"
And then they fell to discussing plans for giving Miss Sallie and her friend a jolly time at the Springs.
"But Auntie, these plans don't seem to me exactly what I'd like. You see I want to be the whole thing. It may be hopelessly selfish, but I can't help it."
"Well that isn't best."
"Say Auntie, what do I look like anyway? How would you describe my make up? Let's get at the weak spots and splint them up a little. You know, I never seriously cared a rap before about my looks."
"Well"—she answered, slowly regarding him, "I'll be perfectly frank with you.
"You are tall—at least two inches taller than the average man, and your muscular body gives one the impression of power. You have black hair, dark-brown eyes that look out from your shaggy straight eye-brows with a piercing light."
"You think the brows too shaggy?"
"No, I like them. They suggest reserve power and brain capacity."
"Good, I never thought of that."
"You have a face that is massive, almost leonine, and a square-cut determined mouth, that always clean shaven, sometimes looks too grim."
"I'll remember that and look pleasant."
"You have a big hand and sometimes shake hands too strongly. You have a handsome aristocratic foot when you wear decent shoes. You often walk hump-shouldered, and sit so too."
"I'll brace up."
"You have deep vertical wrinkles between your eyes just where your straight eyebrows meet."
"Heavens, I didn't know I had wrinkles!"
"Yes, but they mean habits of thought like your stooping shoulders, I don't object to such wrinkles in a man's face. But the best feature of all your stock is your eye. Your big brown eyes are about the only perfect thing about you. There's infinite tenderness in them. Now and then they gleam with a hidden fire that tells of enthusiasm, thought, will, character, and dauntless courage."
She looked and they were misty with tears.
He pressed her hand. "Auntie, I didn't know how much you've loved me all these years. How love opens one's eyes!"
"You have a high temper, plenty of pride, and are given to looking on the dark side of things too quickly. You lack poise of character and sureness of touch yet, but with it all, yours is a masterful nature."
"One you think that a perfect woman could love?"
"There are no perfect women; but I'll match you against any woman I know. So there, now, take courage."
"I will," he gravely answered.
He hurried to his office and read his mail. There were two letters retaining his services for jury work in important cases. His heart leaped at the sign of coming success. What a new meaning love gave to every event in life.
He turned to his books, and began immediately a searching study of every question involved in these cases. He would carry the court by storm. He would lead the jury spellbound by his eloquence to a certain verdict. How clear his brain! He felt he was alive to his finger-tips, and argus-eyed.
He worked hour after hour without the slightest fatigue or knowledge of the flight of time. He looked up at last with surprise to find it was night, and was startled by the voice of the Preacher calling him from below.
"What's the matter with you? Mrs. Durham sent me to find you. She was afraid you had gone up on the roof and walked off."
"I'll be ready in a minute, Doctor," he called from the window.
"I haven't known you to take to law so violently in four years. What's up? Got a capital case?"
"Yes, I believe I have. It's a matter of life and death to one poor soul anyhow."
"Now, honour bright haven't you been working all this afternoon on a love-letter that you've just finished and addressed to Independence?"
"No sir. To tell you the fact, I didn't dare to ask her to write to me. I knew I couldn't control a pen."
"My boy, I wish you success with all my heart. It makes me young again to look into your face. I've had my supper, when you've finished your confab with your Auntie, come out here in the square to the seat under the old oak, I want to talk to you on some important business."
"What have you been doing," asked Mrs. Durham.
"Building a home for her!" he cried in a whisper. He went behind the chair where his foster mother sat pouring his tea, bent low and kissed her high white forehead. "My own Mother! I'll never call you Auntie again!"
Tears sprang to her eyes, and she kissed his hand, tenderly holding it to her lips.
"Ah! Love is a wonder worker, isn't he Charlie?"
"Yes, and I can't realise the joy that lifts and inspires me when I think that I am one of the elect. It's too good to be true. I have been initiated into the great secret. I have tasted the water of Life. I shall not see Death."
She looked at him with pride. "I knew you would make a matchless lover. I envy Sallie her young eyes and ears!"
"You need not envy her. You will never grow old."
"So much the worse if we miss the dreams that fill the souls of the young," she said with an accent of sorrowful pride.