With these vague philosophizings, these morbid self-queryings, there came into conflict the sterner and more practical side of Franklin's nature, itself imperious and positive in its demands. Thus he found himself, in his rude surroundings on the Plains, a man still unsettled and restless, ambitious for success, but most of all ambitious with that deadly inner ambition to stand for his own equation, to be himself, to reach his own standards; that ambition which sends so many broken hearts into graves whose headstones tell no history. Franklin wondered deliberately what it must be to succeed, what it must be to achieve. And he wondered deliberately what it must mean to love, to find by good fortune or by just deserts, voyaging somewhere in the weltering sea of life, in the weltering seas of all these unmoved stars, that other being which was to mean that he had found himself. To the searcher who seeks thus starkly, to the dreamer who has not yielded; but who has deserved his dream, there can be no mistaking when the image comes.
Therefore to Edward Franklin the tawdry hotel parlour on the morning after the ball at Ellisville was no mere four-square habitation, but a chamber of the stars. The dingy chairs and sofas were to him articles of joy and beauty. The curtains at the windows, cracked and seamed, made to him but a map of the many devious happinesses which life should thenceforth show. The noises of the street were but music, the voices from the rooms below were speech of another happy world. Before him, radiant, was that which he had vaguely sought. Not for him to marry merely the neighbour's daughter! This other half of himself, with feet running far to find the missing friend, had sought him out through all the years, through all the miles, through all the spheres! This was fate, and at this thought his heart glowed, his eyes shone, his very stature seemed to increase. He wist not of Nature and her ways of attraction. He only knew that here was that Other whose hand, pathetically sought, he had hitherto missed in the darkness of the foregone days. Now, thought he, it was all happily concluded. The quotient was no indefinite one; it had an end. It ended here, upon the edge of the infinite which he had sought; upon the pinnacle of that universe of which he had learned; here, in this brilliant chamber of delight, this irradiant abode, this noble hall bedecked with gems and silks and stars and all the warp and woof of his many, many days of dreams!
Mr. and Mrs. Buford had for the time excused themselves by reason of Mrs. Buford's weariness, and after the easy ways of that time and place the young people found themselves alone. Thus it was that Mary Ellen, with a temporary feeling of helplessness, found herself face to face with the very man whom she at that time cared least to see.
CHAPTER XVI
ANOTHER HOUR
"But it seems as though I had always known you," said Franklin, turning again toward the tall figure at the window. There was no reply to this, neither was there wavering in the attitude of the head whose glossy back was turned to him at that moment.
"It was like some forgotten strain of music!" he blundered on, feeling how hopeless, how distinctly absurd was all his speech. "I surely must always have known you, somewhere!" His voice took on a plaintive assertiveness which in another he would have derided and have recognised as an admission of defeat.
Mary Ellen still gazed out of the window. In her mind there was a scene strangely different from this which she beheld. She recalled the green forests and the yellow farms of Louisburg, the droning bees, the broken flowers and all the details of that sodden, stricken field. With a shudder there came over her a swift resentment at meeting here, near at hand, one who had had a share in that scene of desolation.
Franklin felt keenly enough that he was at disadvantage, but no man may know what there is in the heart of a girl. To Mary Ellen there seemed to be three ways open. She might address this man bitterly, or haughtily, or humorously. The latter course might have been most deadly of all, had it not been tempered with a certain chivalrousness which abode in Mary Ellen's heart. After all, thought she, here was a man who was one of their few acquaintances in this strange, wild country. It might be that he was not an ill sort of man at heart, and by all means he was less impossible of manner than any other she had seen here. She had heard that the men of a womanless country were sometimes suddenly disconcerted by the appearance of womankind upon their horizon. There was a certain quality about this man which, after all, left him distinctly within the classification of gentleman. Moreover, it would be an ill thing for her to leave a sore heart on the first day of her acquaintance in this town, with which her fortunes were now apparently to be so intimately connected.
Mary Ellen turned at length and seated herself near the window. The light of which many women are afraid, the cross-light of double windows on the morning after a night of dancing, had no terrors for her. Her eye was clear, her skin fresh, her shoulders undrooping. Franklin from his seat opposite gazed eagerly at this glorious young being. From his standpoint there were but few preliminaries to be carried on. This was the design, the scheme. This was what life had had in store for him, and why should he hesitate to enter into possession? Why should he delay to speak that which was foremost in his soul, which assuredly at that very moment must be the foremost concern in all the interlocking universe of worlds? After his fashion he had gone straight. He could not understand the sickening thought that he did not arrive, that his assertion did not convince, that his desire did not impinge.