The Deluge Part 13

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"I see I've offended again, as usual," said I. "You attach so much importance to petty little dancing-master tricks and caperings. You live--always have lived--in an artificial atmosphere. Real things act on you like fresh air on a hothouse flower."

"You are--fresh air?" she inquired, with laughing sarcasm.

"I am that," retorted I. "And good for you--as you'll find when you get used to me."

I heard voices in the next room--her mother's and some man's. We waited until it was evident we were not to be disturbed. As I realized that fact and surmised its meaning, I looked triumphantly at her. She drew further back into her corner, and the almost stern firmness of her contour told me she had set her teeth.

"I see you are nerving yourself," said I with a laugh. "You are perfectly certain I am going to propose to you."

She flamed scarlet and half-started up.

"Your mother--in the next room--expects it, too," I went on, laughing even more disagreeably. "Your parents need money--they have decided to sell you, their only large income-producing a.s.set. And I am willing to buy. What do you say?"

I was blocking her way out of the room. She was standing, her breath coming fast, her eyes blazing. "You are--_frightful_!" she exclaimed in a low voice.

"Because I am frank, because I am honest? Because I want to put things on a sound basis? I suppose, if I came lying and pretending, and let you lie and pretend, and let your parents and Sam lie and pretend, you would find me--almost tolerable. Well, I'm not that kind. When there's no especial reason one way or the other, I'm willing to smirk and grimace and dodder and drivel, like the rest of your friends, those ladies and gentlemen. But when there's business to be transacted, I am business-like. Let's not begin with your thinking you are deceiving me, and so hating me and despising me and trying to keep up the deception. Let's begin right."

She was listening; she was no longer longing to fly from the room; she was curious. I knew I had scored.

"In any event," I continued, "you would have married for money. You've been brought up to it, like all these girls of your set. You'd be miserable without luxury. If you had your choice between love without luxury and luxury without love, it'd be as easy to foretell which you'd do as to foretell how a starving poet would choose between a loaf of bread and a volume of poems. You may love love; but you love life--your kind of life--better!"

She lowered her head. "It is true," she said. "It is low and vile, but it is true."

"Your parents need money--" I began.

She stopped me with a gesture. "Don't blame them," she pleaded. "I am more guilty than they."

I was proud of her as she made that confession. "You have the making of a real woman in you," said I. "I should have wanted you even if you hadn't.

But what I now see makes what I thought a folly of mine look more like wisdom."

"I must warn you," she said, and now she was looking directly at me, "I shall never love you."

"Never is a long time," replied I. "I'm old enough to be cynical about prophecy."

"I shall never love you," she repeated. "For many reasons you wouldn't understand. For one you will understand."

"I understand the 'many reasons' you say are beyond me," said I. "For, dear young lady, under this coa.r.s.e exterior I a.s.sure you there's hidden a rather sharp outlook on human nature--and--well, nerves that respond to the faintest changes in you as do mine can't be altogether without sensitiveness. What's the other reason--_the_ reason? That you think you love some one else?"

"Thank you for saying it for me," she replied.

You can't imagine how pleased I was at having earned her grat.i.tude, even in so little a matter. "I have thought of that," said I. "It is of no consequence."

"But you don't understand," she pleaded earnestly.

"On the contrary, I understand perfectly," I a.s.sured her. "And the reason I am not disturbed is--you are here, you are not with him."

She lowered her head so that I had no view of her face.

"You and he do not marry," I went on, "because you are both poor?"

"No," she replied.

"Because he does not care for you?"

"No--not that," she said.

"Because you thought he hadn't enough for two?"

A long pause, then--very faintly: "No--not that."

"Then it must be because he hasn't as much money as he'd like, and must find a girl who'll bring him--what he _most_ wants."

She was silent.

"That is, while he loves you dearly, he loves money more. And he's willing to see you go to another man, be the wife of another man, be--everything to another man." I laughed. "I'll take my chances against love of that sort."

"You don't understand," she murmured. "You don't realize--there are many things that mean nothing to you and that mean--oh, so much to people brought up as we are."

"Nonsense!" said I. "What do you mean by 'we'? Nature has been bringing us up for a thousand thousand years. A few years of silly false training doesn't undo her work. If you and he had cared for each other, you wouldn't be here, apologizing for his selfish vanity."

"No matter about him," she cried impatiently, lifting her head haughtily.

"The point is, I love him--and always shall. I warn you."

"And I take you at my own risk?"

Her look answered "Yes!"

"Well,"--and I took her hand--"then, we are engaged."

Her whole body grew tense, and her hand chilled as it lay in mine.

"Don't--please don't," I said gently. "I'm not so bad as all that. If you will be as generous with me as I shall be with you, neither of us will ever regret this."

There were tears on her cheeks as I slowly released her hand.

"I shall ask nothing of you that you are not ready freely to give," I said.

Impulsively she stood and put out her hand, and the eyes she lifted to mine were shining and friendly. I caught her in my arms and kissed her--not once but many times. And it was not until the chill of her ice-like face had cooled me that I released her, drew back red and ashamed and stammering apologies. But her impulse of friendliness had been killed; she once more, as I saw only too plainly, felt for me that sense of repulsion, felt for herself that sense of self-degradation.

"I _can not_ marry you!" she muttered.

"You can--and will--and must," I cried, infuriated by her look.

There was a long silence. I could easily guess what was being fought out in her mind. At last she slowly drew herself up. "I can not refuse," she said, and her eyes sparkled with defiance that had hate in it. "You have the power to compel me. Use it, like the brute you refuse to let me forget that you are." She looked so young, so beautiful, so angry--and so tempting.

"So I shall!" I answered. "Children have to be taught what is good for them. Call in your mother, and we'll tell her the news."

Instead, she went into the next room. I followed, saw Mrs. Ellersly seated at the tea-table in the corner farthest from the library where her daughter and I had been negotiating. She was reading a letter, holding her lorgnon up to her painted eyes.