The expressman came about this time, but he didn't take her trunk. And when I left that chilly parlor we were engaged to be married. She said at the last, putting her hands on my coat: "You know I always liked you, even in the police station, Mr. Harrington—and—and I am so very, very happy, now, Van! It was terrible to think of going away. I had to, before you were due home. I was never so miserable before in my life!"
Something stirred from the bottom of my heart. I felt pitiful for all her trouble, her weakness, her struggle with a world she wasn't made for. Then she said trustingly, like a little child:—
"And you will always be good to me, as papa was with mamma, and patient, and love me a great deal, won't you? Yes, I know you will!"
I kissed her, feeling then that nothing in life could ever be like the privilege of loving and protecting this woman in her helplessness. I suppose that words like those she and I spoke then are common enough between men and women when they are in love. Yet those words have always been to me like some kind of sacred oath—the woman asking, out of her weakness, for love and protection from the one who holds all happiness and life for her, and the man, with his hasty passions, promising of the best there is in him.
Many a time in later years, when it hasn't always been easy to see things simply as it was then in our first joy, those words of hers have come back to me and given me that same soft tug at my heart. To hurt her would be to strike a child, to wring the neck of a bird that nestled in your hand. There are a good many kinds of love in this world, as there are of hate; perhaps about the best of all is this desire to protect and cherish a woman—the feeling that any man who is worth his salt has for the one he wants to marry....
Sarah walked part way back to the office with me that morning, then turned north, saying she must try to find Mrs. Dround and tell her. She was so happy she couldn't go home and sit down quietly until I got back from the office. Mrs. Dround, she knew, would be specially glad to hear the news.
"For she thinks you are a very smart young man," Sarah added shyly.
"The lady must be a mind reader, then; for in the ten years I have been with the firm I can't remember seeing her once."
"Oh, yes, she has seen you. She said so. Anyway, Jane knows all about you, you may be sure. There isn't much that goes on around her that Jane doesn't know about."
With that she gave me a happy little nod and was off to the great stone house of my boss up north on the lake. It was a windy, dirty December day, but I was very content with the world as it was and thought Chicago was the finest city in the world. As I sat down to my desk my mind began to dance in a whirl of thoughts—of old plans and new combinations. I wondered what Sarah would say to some of my schemes to make our fortune. Perhaps they would merely frighten her; for a woman is a natural conservative. I hurried up my business to get back to her and tell her that some day, not so very distant, she would be a tolerably rich woman. For now it seemed only a step into the greater things I had seen all these years afar off.