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The Stake And The Plumb-Line
by
“She will come back–and we will all take her back, be glad to have her back,” he said. “She has the grip of a lever which can lift the eternal hills with the right pressure. Leave her alone–leave her alone. This is a democratic country, and she’ll prove democracy a success before she’s done.”
The world knew that John Appleton had offered her marriage, and he had never hidden the fact. What they did not know was that she had told him what she meant to do before she did it. He had spoken to her plainly, bluntly, then with a voice that was blurred and a little broken, urging her against the course toward which she was set; but it had not availed; and, realizing that he had come upon a powerful will underneath the sunny and so human surface, he had ceased to protest, to bear down upon her mind with his own iron force. When he realized that all his reasoning was wasted, that all worldly argument was vain, he made one last attempt, a forlorn hope, as though to put upon record what he believed to be the truth.
“There is no position you cannot occupy,” he said. “You have the perfect gift in private life, and you have a public gift. You have a genius for ruling. Say, my dear, don’t wreck it all. I know you are not for me, but there are better men in the country than I am. Hartzman will be a great man one day–he wants you. Young Tilden wants you; he has millions, and he will never disgrace them or you, the power which they can command, and the power which you have. And there are others. Your people have told you they will turn you off; the world will say things–will rend you. There is nothing so popular for the moment as the fall of a favorite. But that’s nothing–it’s nothing at all compared with the danger to yourself. I didn’t sleep last night thinking of it. Yet I’m glad you wrote me; it gave me time to think, and I can tell you the truth as I see it. Haven’t you thought that he will drag you down, down, down, wear out your soul, break and sicken your life, destroy your beauty–you are beautiful, my dear, beyond what the world sees, even. Give it up–ah, give it up, and don’t break our hearts! There are too many people loving you for you to sacrifice them–and yourself, too…. You’ve had such a good time!”
“It’s been like a dream,” she interrupted, in a far-away voice–“like a dream, these two years.”
“And it’s been such a good dream,” he urged; “and you will only go to a bad one, from which you will never wake. The thing has fastened on him; he will never give it up. And penniless, too–his father has cast him off. My girl, it’s impossible. Listen to me. There’s no one on earth that would do more for you than I would–no one.”
“Dear, dear friend!” she cried, with a sudden impulse, and caught his hand in hers and kissed it before he could draw it back. “You are so true, and you think you are right. But, but”–her eyes took on a deep, steady, far-away look–“but I will save him; and we shall not be penniless in the end. Meanwhile I have seven hundred dollars a year of my own. No one can touch that. Nothing can change me now–and I have promised.”
When he saw her fixed determination, he made no further protest, but asked that he might help her, be with her the next day, when she was to take a step which the wise world would say must lead to sorrow and a miserable end.
The step she took was to marry Jim Templeton, the drunken, cast-off son of a millionaire senator from Kentucky, who controlled railways and owned a bank, and had so resented his son’s inebriate habits that for five years he had never permitted Jim’s name to be mentioned in his presence. Jim had had twenty thousand dollars left him by his mother, and a small income of three hundred dollars from an investment which had been made for him when a little boy. And this had carried him on; for, drunken as he was, he had sense enough to eke out the money, limiting himself to three thousand dollars a year. He had four thousand dollars left, and his tiny income of three hundred, when he went to Sally Seabrook, after having been sober for a month, and begged her to marry him.