Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/181

Rh I went then, for she was rather angry. She said something cutting about my Western ways and shooting a man on sight. But I kept my word, and at dances and dinners, wherever we met, in spite of her disdain, I always made my speech, "Will you marry me, dear?" After awhile, when she caught sight of me across a room the color would spring to her cheeks, and though I knew it was half embarrassment I could swear the other half was pleasure. She had an obstinate way of tilting her chin when she saw me approach that was very pretty and made me only the more determined. Besides, she did not absolutely cut me, as she might have done. She would not see me when I called, and if I asked for a dance it was always engaged. But when I said firmly, "This is my dance, Miss Morris," she would not contradict me.

Late one afternoon at the beginning of Lent, when I had not seen her for several days, I overtook her walking home from church, and joined her. She greeted me frigidly, held her prayer-book tight and her head high. I watched the red steal up her cheeks.

"Miss Morris," I said. She did not answer. Ahead of us, where the church spires pierced the cold northern sky, a small star glittered. The faces of the people we met reflected the light of the sunset behind us. I began again. "When you pray," said I, and I looked at her prayer-book, "do you never ask to be made more merciful?"

She turned her soft eyes to me. "Please don't, Mr. Standish," she pleaded. "I cannot bear to have you use words that seem to me sacred to carry on this farce."

"It is anything but a farce," said I. "Call it a tragedy."

"Did any man in earnest ever propose to a girl eleven times in six weeks?" She asked this question scornfully.

"Miss Morris," said I, "it is not my fault that it has been done so often. If you had accepted me at the first—but you refused me, and what else could I do? Am I a fool to try again and again to win what is the best and most beautiful thing I ever set eyes on? How can I stop asking you to marry me until you consent? You must marry me, dear. I am sure it is the only chance of happiness for either of us."

"There," she said, with an angry laugh, "twelve times! Don't you see, Mr. Standish, that by acting so you make every word you say seem a foolish joke?"

"It is you," I told her, "who can make them all a glad reality."

"Oh!" she cried, "and you pretend it is my fault! Well, it shall never happen again—never, never! You shall not humiliate yourself and me." Her color deepened, and she drew herself up, slender and proud. "Mr. Standish," she said, "I promise you that if ever again I give you an opportunity of speaking so to me, I shall answer whatever you wish."

We reached her home then, and she stopped. So great was my surprise that I merely bowed and let her ascend the steps in silence.

Life went sadly after that. Try as I would I could not speak to her. When we passed in the street she was never alone, and she had taken to looking on one side of me with a sweet, dark-eyed vacancy. There were few entertainments now, and though I haunted her favorite church at the afternoon services she did not come. She seemed to avoid going to the houses of those friends where she would be likely to meet me. Only once was I able to look at her for more than a passing second. I had taken a ticket for an afternoon concert in the hope of seeing her, and I chanced to sit where I could watch her profile whenever she turned to speak to her companion. She looked a trifle pale and sad. "Perhaps," thought I, "she regrets that her efforts are so successful." That thought, however, was knocked out of me when we reached the street, by the smiling unrecognition which greeted my eager bow.

Six weeks came and went, but never an opportunity to make her fulfil her promise, and then she went to Boston for a visit, and stayed away a month. I grew haggard. People told me I must take a run abroad in the summer. "Not till I'm married," said I, and gritted my teeth. I believe that at this time my love for Kitty Morris was almost forgotten in my set determination to have my own way.

There came a May morning, fresh and balmy. The horse-chestnuts spread out their green fans, the maples clapped their small palms to the breeze, and the tulips in the trim flower-beds looked primly gaudy. I was walking through Madison Square on my way to business, and hope was stirring in my heart. I suppose it was the general hilarity of nature that had taken hold of me. I did not feel much surprised when a hansom went by and I saw Kitty Morris inside. It was what the weather had led me to expect. I took joyfully to my heels and followed. Eastward we went through Twenty-fourth Street and down Second Avenue, and here, on this quiet, old fashioned thoroughfare, the hansom stopped