Quill's Window

by George Barr McCutcheon

"It don't work when you're as fat as I am," said Charlie gloomily.

Conscious or unconscious of the varying opinions that were being voiced behind his back, Courtney went confidently ahead with his wooing. He congratulated himself that he was in Alix's good graces. If at times she was perplexingly cool,—or "upstage," as he called it,—he flattered himself that he knew women too well to be discouraged by these purely feminine manifestations.

This was a game he knew how to play. The time was not yet ripe for him to abandon his well-calculated air of indifference. That he was desperately in love with her goes without saying. If at the outset of his campaign he was inspired by the unworthy motive of greed, he was now consumed by an entirely different desire,—the desire to have her for his own, even though she were penniless.

Those whirlwind tactics that had swept many another girl off her feet were not to be thought of here. Alix was different. She was not an impressionable, hair-brained flapper, such as he had come in contact with in past experiences. Despite her sprightly, thoroughly up-to-the-moment ease of manner, and an air of complete sophistication, she was singularly old-fashioned in a great many respects. While she was bright, amusing, gay, there was back of it all a certain reserve that forbade familiarity,—sufficient, indeed, to inspire unexampled caution on his part. She invited friendship but not familiarity; she demanded respect rather than admiration.

He was not slow in arriving at the conclusion that she knew men. She knew how to fence with them. He was distinctly aware of this. Other men, of course, had been in love with her; other men no doubt had dashed their hopes upon the barrier in their haste to seize the treasure. It was inconceivable that one so lovely, so desirable, so utterly feminine should fail to inspire in all men that which she inspired in him. The obvious, therefore, was gratifying. Granted that she had had proposals, here was the proof that the poor fools who laid their hearts at her feet had gone about it clumsily. Such would not be the case with him. Oh no! He would bide his time, he would watch for the first break in her enchanted armour,—and then the conquest!

There were times, of course, when he came near to catastrophe,—times when he was almost powerless to resist the passion that possessed him. These were the times when he realized how easy it would have been to join that sad company of fools in the path behind her.

He had no real misgivings. He felt confident of winning. True, her moods puzzled him at times, but were they not, after all, omens of good fortune? Were they not indications of the mysterious changes that were taking place in her? And the way was clear. So far as he knew, there was no other man. Her heart was free. What more could he ask?

On her side, the situation was not so complex. He came from the great outside world, he brought the outside world to the lonely little village on the bank of the river. He was bright, amusing, cultivated,—at least he represented cultivation as it exists in open places and on the surface of a sea called civilization. He possessed that ineffable quality known as "manner." The spice of the Metropolis clung to him. He could talk of the things she loved,—not as she loved the farm and village and the home of her fathers, but of the things she loved because they stood for that which represented the beautiful in intellect, in genius, in accomplishment. The breath of far lands and wide seas came with him to the town of Windomville, grateful and soothing, and yet laden with the tang of turmoil, the spice of iniquity.

Alix was no Puritan. She had been out in the world, she had come up against the elemental in life, she had learned that God in His wisdom had peopled the earth with saints and sinners,—and she was tolerant of both! In a word, she was broad-minded. She had been an observer rather than a participant in the passing show. She had absorbed knowledge rather than experience.

The conventions remained unshaken so far as she was personally concerned. In others she excused much that she could not have excused in herself,—for the heritage of righteousness had come down to her through a long line of staunch upholders.