Without waiting for her to seat herself, William sat down in August’s favorite chair near the fire, lifted Oliver on his knee, and looked at his hostess. He appeared less unfriendly now; his smile was almost kind. “I understood your message, of course,” he said. “And the reason for it. It must be dreadful to be a lone woman at the mercy of gossips.”
She was freshly surprised at his subtlety. Something tight relaxed in her. She sat down, and laughed. The laugh was more than a trifle unsteady. “Well, I must preserve my reputation, if I am to teach the young ladies of ‘the best families’,” she admitted.
Though she knew him to be completely unpredictable, she was, nevertheless, startled when he said: “‘The best families’!” He regarded her so penetratingly that she felt herself impaled. “Do you really consider them ‘the best’? And, if so, on what evidence?”
Why was it not possible to conduct a conversation with him that had reality and pleasantness? Was he really so ignorant that he did not know how to carry on such a conversation?
That anger which always stirred her when he was near her filled Ursula again. She spoke slowly and clearly: “What is ‘the best’? I should say it is to be found in people who are kind, considerate, polite, well-intentioned, with a respect for civilized amenities, with a code of honor—”
He interrupted rudely: “I agree with you. But I have never met such in this town, or anywhere else, for that matter.”
She was silent, her lips pressed together.
Then he said awkwardly: “Except you, Miss Wende.”
She could hardly believe that he had said this. She stammered, all her anger foolishly draining away from her: “I beg your pardon?”
He flushed. He pretended to be engrossed for a moment with straightening Oliver’s frock. “I think you heard me,” he replied.
Then, abruptly, he set Oliver on his small feet. “That is Miss Wende, Oliver,” he said. “A very nice lady. Go to the lady, Oliver.”
Ursula wanted to respond hysterically to this overture. In the leap of her elation, she wanted to act the hypocrite. She wished that she might cry out softly to Oliver, woo the man through the child, pretend delight at the thought of the baby’s approach, and urge him to come to her. But she could not. The silence filled the room like a portentous presence, a waiting. The eyes of the man and the woman fixed themselves intently upon the child, who was dubiously swaying on his feet, and peeping shyly at Ursula.
A few moments ago, Oliver had smiled at her, wisely and gravely. He was not smiling now. If the child did not come to her, all was lost. It was ridiculous and nightmarish, but this man had arranged it so, this. capricious and dangerous man! Ursula felt a flash of rage and humiliation.
Oliver clung to his father’s knee, doubtfully studying Ursula. She saw his eyes so clearly now, intelligent and searching, as if he were indeed weighing and considering her. That was not possible; he was too young. Now that his fur cap had been removed, his hair, like a dark soft vapor, floated about his large round head and against his cheeks. Ursula could see the pulsing in the little throat. She had never before considered children vulnerable, or touching. All at once, without her volition, her heart opened painfully towards Oliver, with a kind of sad yearning and tenderness.
Oliver dropped his arm from his father’s knee. Ursula had forgotten William Prescott. Slowly, but firmly, the child moved towards her; his eyes had fastened eagerly on her face, and he had a look of listening, of hearing and understanding what she had soundlessly cried to him. Now his steps quickened, stumbled. With one last spurt he had reached her, had flung his small arms on her knees. She bent and caught him up swiftly, holding him so that he knelt on her lap. She pressed him against her, and kissed his forehead, his cheeks, his hair. He was warm and strong and small in her arms; she pressed him tighter against her breast as if to quiet the yearning and love and sorrow she felt for him, and the huge hunger. The child did not move as she caressed him and murmured to him, her lips against his cheek. Again, he appeared to be listening; his arms were about her neck, and she felt all his trust, all his surrender to her love.
Ursula actually started when William said, in his loud flat voice: “Oliver!” There was a jealous intonation in the one word, in the call. Ursula lifted her head and looked at him. He was smiling in gratification, but he was also apparently disturbed in his own egotism. The baby clung more strongly to her, and chuckled wisely.
Ursula gently loosened his arms. She was flattered at the baby’s affection, and deeply moved by it. But she also loved the man who was his adopted father. She understood his jealousy and, again, she was saddened by her compassion. Here was all he had, and it was in her arms. She set the baby down, and said: “Go to Papa, darling.” Oliver peeped up at her mischievously, and then it was as if he comprehended, for he shouted once, gleefully, and ran to his father, throwing himself lavishly into the man’s arms, and kissing him. A subtle child, thought Ursula, smiling; a darling, the dearest thing.
Mr. Prescott held the child to him tightly, his thin dark hand smoothing the baby’s hair tenderly. He said, smiling at Ursula with that peculiar blend of jealousy and pleasure: “It is plain to see that Oliver likes you, Miss Wende.”
Ursula wanted to reply tartly: “That is what you wanted to find out, isn’t it?” Being a sensible woman, she only smiled.
She said, with care: “Naturally, I am flattered. I have known many children, and I have never seen one as sweet and intelligent as Oliver. You are to be congratulated, Mr. Prescott.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he remarked, attempting to be judicious and appraising. “I imagine most children are like Oliver.” He added: “Or they would be if their parents, and other adults, did not corrupt them, and make them into images of their own cruelty and viciousness.”
Ursula suddenly remembered seeing a group of the neighbors’ children playing in the street that morning. Their parents were civilized and kindly people, and had certainly not taught their children any savagery. Yet the children were delightedly, and with an extreme absorbed pleasure, torturing an injured kitten they had found in the gutter, the victim of some wagon. Remembering, it was on the tip of her tongue to say with scorn: “Do not be ridiculous, Mr. Prescott!” But again, she caught it back. Her smile, however, was a little artificial.
Then she remembered another unpleasant thing. August had once indolently observed: “Avoid the man or woman whose tenderness pours out in an extravagant flood upon children and animals. These are dangerous people. For they can justify the atrocities of war, the burning of cities, by some vague and specious explanation; they can, in silence, or with vague dissent, look upon injustice, and feel only indifference or, worse, some perverted pleasure.”
As she thought this, she studied Mr. Prescott with sharp somberness. Her father was quite right. This man was not only dangerous; he was full of hatred. The doting passion and adoration with which he regarded the child in his arms confirmed her opinion. It was not Oliver he was embracing; it was his own image as a child.
He became aware that she was silent, and stiff, in her chair. He scrutinized her closely, with that uncompromising stare of his. He smiled, disagreeably, shifted Oliver to a sitting posture on his knee. He said, still stroking the child’s head: “I presume you have seen the newspapers, Miss Wende?”
“Yes,” she answered coldly.
Again, he scrutinized her. He could read nothing in her face. Her eyes did not avoid his. But he saw that there was no condemnation, no repulsion, in them. Curious, he leaned towards her.
“What did you think?” he asked.
This bald question affronted her. She did not know what to say.
“Would you prefer I denied the stories?” he asked.
“I should like you to deny them, if they are not true,” she said, vexed.
He was obviously amused. “And if they are true?” he suggested, tentatively.
Ursula, very weary again, shrugged. “What concern is it of mine? But I see you prefer a direct an
swer, Mr. Prescott. I will give it: Though I am a woman, and have led a quiet life, I am not ignorant of the world. The saga of entrepreneurs is the saga of a rising America. I am not saying that such entrepreneurs are either good or bad. I know only that they seem to be a natural phenomenon, and that civilization, and the building of a nation, appear to be dependent on their inventiveness, exploitation, violence and energy. So I suppose they serve a valuable purpose.”
He concentrated on her reply with extreme thoughtfulness, his head bent, his expression brooding. It might have been some abstract and novel concept which she had presented to him for his consideration. At length, to her great surprise, she saw that, in some oblique fashion, she had pleased him, for he began to smile.
“I don’t suppose you really mean to flatter me,” he said, in a quizzical tone. But he watched her closely. “At any rate, I can tell you this: On the surface, the newspaper tales are true.” He waited. “You are not shocked? After all, what I have done doubtless affects many of your friends.”
Ursula ought to have thought of half a dozen of her friends, agreeable and gentle and honest people, who had been injured by this man. She thought, instead, of Mr. Albert Jenkins.
She said, with constraint: “I think that you did not particularly have it in mind to injure so many people. It was unavoidable. They were merely in the way of what you wanted.” She paused. “But there was someone whom you not only needed to injure, but whom you wanted to injure, was there not?”
She had spoken as bluntly and crudely as he spoke; she saw his swift look of lowering surprise. After a long moment, he carefully set little Oliver down on the chair beside him. He took considerable time for this. Then he glanced at Ursula again, and there was an ugly exaltation in his eyes.
He said, very quietly: “Yes. You are quite right. I always knew you were an intelligent lady, Miss Wende.” He stopped. “I needed, and wanted, to injure Mr. Chauncey Arnold, of the American Lumber
Company. My employer. My ‘benefactor’.” He did not sneer, or descend to any other pettiness, as he quoted the newspaper.
“You know Mr. Arnold, Miss Wende? He is a friend of yours?”
“He tried to be a friend of my father’s,” she replied, faintly.
He nodded. “I see. Well, you must know him. A fool, a braggart, a blusterer, a conceited, damned idiot. Worse, he is a thief on a small scale, a little mean liar and rascal. Had he been a big thief, a prodigious liar, a great scoundrel, one might almost admire him. But, of course, you do not know what I mean.”
Ursula, recalling her own thoughts, on the day she had visited her land, could not answer.
Mr. Prescott became belligerently excited. His hands knotted on his knees. He regarded Ursula with inflexible attention, as if challenging her.
“When I went to work for him, over ten years ago, the American Lumber Company was about to become bankrupt. I saved it, Miss Wende. You are a lady, and it would be no use to tell you the details. I made it a flourishing concern; it flourished even during the Panic of ’73. I learned all about woods, and not from Mr. Arnold, who was grossly ignorant. I learned all this by experience, and because I had a plan in mind.” He stopped for a moment. “The newspapers made much of my having the ten thousand dollars with which I worked my ‘betrayal’ of Arnold. In ten years, he had not paid me that much. I made it by small investments, by surveying forests for other lumber companies; also, I had received a legacy of two thousand dollars from old Dr. Cowlesbury. It was all he had; he left it to me.” Now his face changed, became sternly gentle; saddened. He sighed. Then he continued: “I saved the American Lumber Company, and Arnold finally was paying me nine hundred dollars a year. Nine hundred dollars! For rescuing him from bankruptcy and enabling him to buy the handsomest house in the city, and to own three carriages, and to stuff his bank accounts! And, all the time, the fool thought that I was an idiot, meek, benighted, witless, without the intelligence to know that I was being exploited.”
You would never forgive that, thought Ursula.
“Yes,” she said, gently, and now her eyes were golden and soft and pitying in the lamplight.
“Eh?” He did not understand. He frowned, looked down at his knotted hands. Then he laughed, shortly.
“If it will help at all, Mr. Prescott,” said Ursula, “I think Mr. Arnold is a crass dolt. I have rarely been in his house, though his wife has repeatedly asked me. My father despised him, and knew what he was.”
All at once, her love for him was a huge and surging thing in her. It shone like a brilliance on her face, and in her smile. He looked at her, incredulously.
“You really think all that?” he asked, and there was a hard suspicion in his voice.
She became impatient.
“I should not have said it, if I did not think it,” she answered, a little hoarsely.
“Then you do not condemn me?”
His words were childish, yet to Ursula infinitely touching.
“No. But why should you care, Mr. Prescott, whether I condemn you or not?”
He stood up, very abruptly. He took a step towards her, then turned away, went to the hearth, and looked grimly at the fire. Little Oliver glanced from Ursula to his father. He sat very still on the sofa, his little legs stuck stiffly out before him. There was a foreboding silence in the room. Ursula leaned forward in her chair.
Say it! she cried to him, soundlessly. Say what I have waited all day for you to say, all the days I have known you, all the years of my life! You can say it with truth; I have seen the truth on your face. You love me; you have only to say it.
She did not know that she had stood up with swift exultation and yearning. She did not know that she had taken two steps towards him. She only knew this when he turned his dark and furious face towards her, so almost hating in his helplessness against her, that she retreated, aghast.
He said, with quiet and bitter wrath: “Why should I care? Because I came here tonight to ask you to marry me.”
Ursula could not move. His extraordinary expression, the tone of his voice, terrified her. You love me, she said feebly, to herself, you love me, and you hate me because you love me. You never intended to love any woman.
“Well?” he said. “Can’t you speak?”
Ursula felt for her chair, and sat down again. She turned her head towards the fire, and gazed at it blindly.
“You have a most singular way of proposing to me,” she said, her voice very low.
He ignored this. “You have not answered my question. I shall understand if you refuse. But I want you to consider what I am offering you. You are not a rich woman. I am a rich man, and I shall be richer. There is nothing you might want but that I can, and will, give it to you.”
Ursula turned her head to him, and regarded him steadfastly.
“Why do you want to marry me, Mr. Prescott?”
Now his expression became as she had seen it that day near her property: dull, coarse, brutal. “Because Oliver needs a mother. Because I think you will be a proper mother for my children. Because the house I am building needs a mistress.” He threw the words at her insultingly, but she realized he was defending himself against what he instinctively knew, and yet would not admit, because he had never wished to love her, and hated her for it. He continued furiously: “I intended to marry some time. I intended to marry a woman like you, a lady, of good family. I had hoped to marry a woman with money. It is unfortunate that you are poor. Yet I still wish you would marry me.”
Ursula turned scarlet with affront and indignation. “Mr. Prescott!” she exclaimed.
He stared at her implacably. “I am being honest with you. I am, I repeat, a rich man. I want money; a very great deal of money. I had hoped to marry it. I might have married it in New York, or Pittsburgh, or Philadelphia, eventually—”
Ursula rose, and she was astounded at her own rage.
“You still have time,” she said, in umbrage and scorn. “Why do you waste your time here, with me, in this city? Why are you in this c
ity at all?”
Suddenly he smiled. “A very intelligent question, your last. I really ought not to stay in Andersburg. My work will take me away very often, to Michigan and Illinois, and to other Western states. But I must live in Andersburg, for a very good personal reason of my own.” He would stay here to triumph, to reduce the city to humbleness, and admiration of him, and fear. It was petty, thought Ursula, with a sudden loss of her anger. But it was human.
He was speaking again: “You will not be annoyed too much by my presence. Oliver will be with you. You will still have your friends.”
“I don’t believe that—if I marry you,” said Ursula, helplessly, and wondering if she were not in some grotesque dream.
He nodded his head, and smiled his familiar, unpleasant smile. “Oh, yes you will.” He waited, then asked with renewed impatience: “Well? Will you marry me?”
She walked away from him. She went to her desk. She put her hand down upon it, and leaned against it. “Yes,” she whispered.
He could see her eyes from that distance, and they were wide and strained. For a long time, they looked at each other across the length of the room.
“Thank you,” he said.
Then, while she stood so far away, and silent, he dressed little Oliver again. He put on his own hat and coat. He did all this swiftly, without fumbling. He lifted Oliver in his arms. He hesitated. Now he went towards the vestibule. He stopped there, turned his head over his shoulder to see Ursula.
“Shall we make it almost immediately? Say, next Monday?” he asked.