The Wife of his Youth | Page 9

love and happiness? It
's hardly good form to mention one's ancestors nowadays, and what 's
the use of them at all if one can't boast of them?"
"It 's all very well of you to talk that way," she rejoined. "But suppose
you should marry me, and when you become famous and rich, and
patients flock to your office, and fashionable people to your home, and
every one wants to know who you are and whence you came, you 'll be
obliged to bring out the governor, and the judge, and the rest of them. If
you should refrain, in order to forestall embarrassing inquiries about my
ancestry, I should have deprived you of something you are entitled to,
something which has a real social value. And when people found out
all about you, as they eventually would from some source, they would
want to know--we Americans are a curious people--who your wife was,
and you could only say"----
"The best and sweetest woman on earth, whom I love unspeakably."
"You know that is not what I mean. You could only say--a Miss
Nobody, from Nowhere."
"A Miss Hohlfelder, from Cincinnati, the only child of worthy German
parents, who fled from their own country in '49 to escape political
persecution--an ancestry that one surely need not be ashamed of."

"No; but the consciousness that it was not true would be always with
me, poisoning my mind, and darkening my life and yours."
"Your views of life are entirely too tragic, Clara," the young man
argued soothingly. "We are all worms of the dust, and if we go back far
enough, each of us has had millions of ancestors; peasants and serfs,
most of them; thieves, murderers, and vagabonds, many of them, no
doubt; and therefore the best of us have but little to boast of. Yet we are
all made after God's own image, and formed by his hand, for his ends;
and therefore not to be lightly despised, even the humblest of us, least
of all by ourselves. For the past we can claim no credit, for those who
made it died with it. Our destiny lies in the future."
"Yes," she sighed, "I know all that. But I am not like you. A woman is
not like a man; she cannot lose herself in theories and generalizations.
And there are tests that even all your philosophy could not endure.
Suppose you should marry me, and then some time, by the merest
accident, you should learn that my origin was the worst it could
be--that I not only had no name, but was not entitled to one."
"I cannot believe it," he said, "and from what we do know of your
history it is hardly possible. If I learned it, I should forget it, unless,
perchance, it should enhance your value in my eyes, by stamping you
as a rare work of nature, an exception to the law of heredity, a triumph
of pure beauty and goodness over the grosser limitations of matter. I
cannot imagine, now that I know you, anything that could make me
love you less. I would marry you just the same--even if you were one of
your dancing-class to-night."
"I must go back to them," said Clara, as the music ceased.
"My answer," he urged, "give me my answer!"
"Not to-night, John," she pleaded. "Grant me a little longer time to
make up my mind--for your sake."
"Not for my sake, Clara, no."

"Well--for mine." She let him take her in his arms and kiss her again.
"I have a patient yet to see to-night," he said as he went out. "If I am
not detained too long, I may come back this way--if I see the lights in
the hall still burning. Do not wonder if I ask you again for my answer,
for I shall be unhappy until I get it."

II
A stranger entering the hall with Miss Hohlfelder would have seen, at
first glance, only a company of well-dressed people, with nothing to
specially distinguish them from ordinary humanity in temperate
climates. After the eye had rested for a moment and begun to separate
the mass into its component parts, one or two dark faces would have
arrested its attention; and with the suggestion thus offered, a closer
inspection would have revealed that they were nearly all a little less
than white. With most of them this fact would not have been noticed,
while they were alone or in company with one another, though if a fair
white person had gone among them it would perhaps have been more
apparent. From the few who were undistinguishable from pure white,
the colors ran down the scale by minute gradations to the two or three
brown faces at the other extremity.
It