By Sanction of Law/Chapter 12
Bennet was not long in reaching the school and was ushered into the office. This was a large, high-ceiled room with but little furniture save a rug in the center on which was a wide flat-topped desk of heavy oak, an office swivel chair behind it and a straight backed chair in front and facing the office chair. There were one or two other chairs at the sides. On the walls were reproductions of ruins of the Parthenon at Rome, a front view of the school from which several students looked, standing on the steps, a landscape, and a trophy of some hunting expedition. He stood hat in hand, hesitating before seating himself, when from an inner room opposite the entrance door, Miss Gregory appeared, extending a hand and smiling as she greeted him. Her nerves had been in such a condition as she waited that she was still aflutter and despite her efforts at self control she could feel her face alternately flush and pale.
"Mr. Bennet, I'm glad you came. I see you got my note." Before he could frame a reply she turned, took her seat and beckoned Bennet to the chair opposite the desk, with: "Won't you be seated, please."
As he turned to the seat indicated, Miss Gregory became self possessed enough to study Bennet. She noted the frank open countenance; the confident poise, the clear brown eyes, the firm chin, well chiseled lips, that indicated kindness, the brown wavy hair falling back from the high forehead and realized that he was just the sort of young man who would catch a girl's fancy. She could see, however, that he was unconscious of his attractiveness and power; that he was unassuming and modest by his bearing. She almost decided not to go through with what she planned. The lines of her face softened for an instant and her grey eyes became pitying. This feeling of pity recalled her to her task, however, and after hesitating, while Bennet waited, she sighed then began. The grey eyes became cold.
"Mr. Bennet," she said. "I have a very unpleasant duty to perform." She paused as if hoping Bennet would say something. He remained quiet, however. "You know, my school is very select. We cater to the most particular families. We take pride in the care we take of our students, the cultural training we give them and the standing of the families patronizing us.
"You must realize how careful we have to be that our girls are preserved from contact with others than those of the social set to which they are accustomed. There are those among my pupils whose ancestry dates back to families of the nobility of England; others who spring from Colonial stock and others along whose family tree may be traced generation after generation of distinguished citizens.
"I mention these things," she continued, when, after a pause, Bennet still chose to remain silent and to hear her out, "to show how utterly out of place and unsuccessful associations and marriages along the lines I have indicated would be.
"Take yourself, for instance. Popular and well bred though you are. For I have learned that you are one of the most popular young men at college, you could not hope to contract a marriage with one of my girls, however friendly you might become with one of them."
"Was it for this," Bennet asked, calmly, "that you asked me here?"
Miss Gregory's face turned pink as she bowed her head in acknowledgment. As he spoke, Bennet's mind flashed to a paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, which he had learned at school. "All men are endowed with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
At her acquiescence, Bennet sat back in his chair as he said:
"Miss Gregory, from a study of the Mayflower band's history, the history of other colonists, and early settlers, it would seem that there is much in the life of these that might be left buried in the coffins of the past. There are things in their lives of which present day descendants don't care to boast. To rattle the dry bones of ancestry may not be the wisest act for some of us. So far as heritage is concerned, I can boast of as much as they. Perhaps more. I have as good breeding behind me as the best, my family mey not be as wealthy but it certainly has as good training as any in America. I have been as carefully and as well reared. So I don't see how the things you mention concern me."
"Yes, my dear boy, but you don't understand."
"I understand enough to know that a lady has invited me here to insult me. If that is good breeding, please excuse me." With that he started to rise. Miss Gregory began to fear her mission would fail.
"Oh, be patient," she exclaimed. "Hear me. You don't understand.
"You are different, don't you know. All you say might be true of any other race and nationality but yours."
"Race? Nationality? Of what race and nationality am I?"
"You are colored, are you not?"
"What do you say?"
"I?—I can't say. I ask you." She parried.
"I am of mixed blood. There is a strain of colored blood in me. But I am much honored in the blood. There is a strain of white blood in me, and I am much honored in the blood, for both bloods are one. To have the blood of a former slave in one's veins is not of itself a disgrace. Many of our early settlers were slaves before coming here or the descendants of slaves. They are none the less men for that. Therefore I say it is of no matter so long as I prove a man whether there be one strain or many strains of blood coursing through my veins. It ill becomes a woman and a lady, who prides herself in ancestry and good breeding to make an invited guest the butt of insults. Besides, what does this interview mean? Why was I asked here?"
In a last final effort, Miss Gregory took in a deep breath, leaned across the desk and said: "You have assumed,—dared to fall in love with one of my girls. She in her innocence has taken a fancy to you. I asked you here to show you the folly of such an affair; to appeal to your judgment and reasoning, your regard for the girl; your gallantry, to break away from any such affair."
"Go back on my word, forsake my pledge and thereby prove myself a cad?" Bennet exclaimed, thinking of Lida. "You ask what will never be. I could never consider myself a man or square myself with my idea of manliness by such an act. Besides, what would become of the girl?"
"Oh, I'll look out for her. If you pass out of her life she will soon forget you. Her's is only a girlish infatuation. Besides, you know she could never marry you even though you had all the wealth and breeding in the world. Your race is against you. The girl doesn't love you. She doesn't know what love is."
At these words, and remembering the talk on the cinder path the night of the Promenade, Bennet began to feel that perhaps the words of Miss Gregory were true. His heart sank. He arose to end the interview. Miss Gregory believing she had scored, stood also and as a bit of parting advice, said:
"Miss Lauriston could never love you and is only carried away for the moment with the newness of her life. Forget her, my boy. Find some other girl and wed in your own race and be happy."
Bennet turned his eyes blazing with anger he could no longer restrain. He towered like a righteous young god before Miss Gregory who quailed.
"Miss Gregory, what you have said may be true. I don't believe it. Miss Lauriston is not a girl to love lightly; nor is she a girl to pledge her word and go back on it. Until she tells me of her own volition that she did not mean what she said I'll take her word for it. And whether she does or not, my love is hers. It will always be hers and all the powers of hell cannot prevent me from loving her."
With that he stalked from the room. Miss Gregory, feeling that her mission had failed, sank back into her chair, her head on her arm on the desk. Bennet, despite his passion was more than half convinced that Miss Gregory was right in saying that Lida did not love him, and was passing down the hallway to the door, in a pall of gloom when suddenly he heard the swish of a dress and felt someone grasp his hand, pressing into it a bit of paper, then closing it tightly again. He turned at the touch of the hand but the act was so quick that whoever it was had disappeared in a room at hand before he could catch more than a glimpse of her. He was still thoroughly angry when he reached the sidewalk.
He almost forgot the little slip of paper which he clutched. Suddenly he paused, opened the paper and read: "I love you, with all my heart. I love you. No matter what happens. I love you and always will.
Lida."
The effect was instantaneous. He lifted his head and laughed with joy. To Miss Gregory, who was watching his departure, the laughter was puzzling and mysterious. She felt that she had argued in vain and was beaten. There was another looking from a window, from behind heavy draperies. To this window Bennet turned, smiled and lifted his hat. He trod on air.
Lida, into whose soul had come the conviction that love was greater than any other feeling, after the fashion of her kind who when touched by the spirit of love, has awakened in them the feeling of mothering, was won over to the protection of her lover and forced to rally to his defense by the attitude of Miss Gregory, and her so positive opposition. Thus instead of discouraging the girl, Miss Gregory raised a wall of defense in Bennet's behalf.
As Lida went to her room she was more and more intense in her defense. Instead of feeling discouraged, she was more and more in love and resented, as she reviewd the conversation, the interference of her teacher. It was while debating the whole situation over in her mind as she stood at her window that she saw Bennet approaching the school. Her heart gave a throb of happiness at his sight that was like a sharp pain in its intensity. She stood with her hands clasped over her heart, fearing that he was merely passing the building. For a moment she felt resentful that he could seem so happy when she was so miserable over the situation and had been so wretched. She had believed that he too was suffering as she had, and the consciousness of compariion suffering had drawn her closer to him.
She watched him, from behind the draperies till he mounted the steps when she turned, expectantly, waiting to be summoned to the reception room. When no summons came, curiosity to know what had brought him to the school and where he had gone prompted her to go to the head of the stairs. She was just in time to see him being ushered into the office of Miss Gregory. At first she was surprised but suddenly with the wise intuition which her experiences were giving her she reasoned that Miss Gregory must have summoned the young man with the determination to break off their affair.
Indignation swelled her soul at the thought and she also feared that Miss Gregory, in her determination, would offer insult to Bennet. She was too well bred to do eavesdropping, though the temptation was strong. For a moment or so she was in a quandary what to do, then her mind hit upon the plan of waiting till the interview was over and assuring Bennet of her regard for him despite what had been disclosed. It was due to this that Truman found himself in possession of the note that so cheered him.
Nothing so fills a man with daring as the knowledge that love given is received and returned. It was this that made cave men battle; it was for this that kingdoms have been overturned; it was for this that histories have been changed and remade; and it is but as God intended. When we are filled with that divine spark, we humans, no obstacle is too great to be overcome. Cowards become heroes and criminals become saints.
With the words of the note burning themselves into Bennet's heart and brain he trod air and walked with the step of a Hercules capable of accomplishing any set number of tasks. He was still in this mood when he reached his room. In addition to the great love which possessed him there was a feeling of tender gratitude toward the girl who gave such evidence of being the real character he had pictured her.
Real love uplifts and deifies, and the love of these two was real. In his ecstacy, Truman sat at his desk and poured out his soul to Lida in a letter which, after recounting all his experiences, ended with the words:
"I want to do nothing that will bring harm to you. I will do nothing that will bring harm to you. And yet I want you with all the yearning of a true man's heart. I shall always want you in that way. Life would have been; life will be dark as the nights at sea without the beacon of your love. I shall reverence you the more for the circumstances of your love, and matters not what the future brings to us, no bitterness of experience will be able to blot out of mind the happy fact that I am loved by and do love the noblest woman that has lived."
When this letter was mailed, Bennet turned to reveries and dreams of future happiness, sitting at his desk and looking into the future with all the optimism of youth, building air castles and planning how to shape his life to be worthy of the love he had won, all his anguish gone.
Lida, also, after he had departed from the school, busied herself with plans for the future. Though in her woman's way and with her woman's instincts, she saw into the future with much more clearness than did Bennet. As she studied the future, while her heart was happy, she realized that there was much trouble in store for her.
"Yet," she decided, "his love is worth it all. We grow up to meet, make and face our own circumstances. I have my life to live and must live it. I'd rather live it with love than without."
With that conclusion, after sitting far into the night she prepared for bed and retired, a happy smile on her face, the reflection of happiness of heart.
Miss Gregory also was sitting up until late in the evening pondering over the events of the past few days and particularly the interview she had with Bennet. She felt she had made an impression on the young man as she talked with him and also that she had won him over so that it would be easy to break off any associations. When Bennet, however, tossed his head back and laughed, the act she had witnessed as he departed, she became puzzled and felt less sure of herself and the success of her plan. She was not to be outwitted, however, in her determination. Before she retired she had decided on her next course. She would appeal to the faculty of the college to impress upon Bennet the futility of his plan, the sad consequences and they would be able to bring pressure to bear that would have a sobering effect on the young man.
"I'll prevent him from graduating, if he persists," she determined as she shook her head to emphasize the determination. "I'll let him know a thing or two. That child must be saved. That's all there is to it. She must be saved. I'll see the President tomorrow."
With that action settled in her mind she retired.