Argosy, Vol. 112, No. 2 — page 16: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

~ him “The Rosary.” 182 _ He had seen Norma—and been taken to the Ballard home several more times. Once he had had to wait for Mr. Ballard. Miss Ballard had entertained him—had sung for Mrs. Ballard had suggested it. A second time he had had to wait. Mrs. Ballard had not been there that time. And he had proposed. Anyhow, he guessed he had. He had stood up before her and heard his voice uttering a torrent of pas- sionate words that rushed» unbidden from lips unable to stop them, hardly able to keep up with their pronunciation. God knew what he had said and how he had said it. Even now, in moments of extreme excitement, his lips would lapse to the rough, violent vocabulary of the big, hard men from whose ranks he had risen. He had stopped when she had shrunk back to the farthest corner of the divan on which she sat, her hands before her face as if to fend off blows rather than words. Then he had hastened to put himself in a different light. He had apologized. He had explained that he really was getting on toward better things and away from such things as had cropped out in his speech. He had told her his plans, his successes thus far in realizing those plans. And she, still white to the lips after his first verbal onslaught, had burst into un- controllable laughter. ‘““ Please — please,” she had _ gurgled, “ don’t ask me to finance you, too!” Then she had rushed from the room, up the stairs, rocking and choking with laughter until she had slammed an upper door. Two hours later he had got to the sig- nificance of her mocking words. What he had meant to extenuate the crudeness of his proposal had amounted to a demonstra- tion better adapted to prove his financial solvency than his fitness to talk love to such a girl. He might have said the same things to induce a bank president to take his note. But it had not been for seven years— not until last December—that.a jolt had come to awaken him to understand that the fundamental thing which made any proposal from him a grotesque jest to a girl like her —was not a thing he could overcome. The THE ARGOSY. 5 jolt had come just in time to save him from a second attempt at wooing. In those years he had overcome much. On seven continents his name was known to men who builded bridges or had them built. He was a member of renowned so- cieties of engineers. In addition to his hard- won American degree in engineering, and to its highest military orders, France had bestowed two honorary university degrees. He need no longer go out to work in distant wilds. America offered him opportunities to tempt a millionaire. He was one soldier back from the war with a world at his feet and its hands full of something better than loud clapping. He was in the office of a minor official of a vast corporation that dangled a flatter- ing offer before his eyes. The official- had been detailed to make the offer clearer and more tempting. Once already he had dined Grout at his home. He invited again; Grout had accepted. Mr. Oliver got his home on the telephone, his wife at its other end. ‘You'll be dining at home this evening?” — he had asked. Mrs. Oliver’s voice was one of those pe- culiarly carrying sorts that can be heard all around a telephone receiver. Grout caught the rather rasping ‘‘ Whye” distinctly. “Tm asking Mr. Grout again,’ the husband. And again Grout heard: ‘‘ Oh, Heaven! Have I got to stand for that trained iron b replied . gorilla again?” And so he had known the real why of Norma Ballard’s laughter! He had not realized before, he could not quite grasp now, wherein his manners differed from theirs. But they—men and women of Mrs. Oliver’s and Norma Ballard’s sort they knew. He was _ trained—so. well trained he could pick the right forks for six courses. He was still a gorilla—an uncouth laborer of whom no training could make a gentleman. So he had dropped the dazzling chances in America, and had come again to the wilds. So he had left Montclair unvisited. So his own home had quit being a hope and ~ become but a pleasurable dream from which, after a moment or two, he would - Eomicbooks com _