The Love Affairs of an Old Maid Part 6

"I don't love either of them. I've had one love affair and I don't care for another until I make sure which man I'm going to marry."

"Can you fall in love to order?" I asked in dismay.

"Not exactly. 'To order!' Why, no. Anybody would think you were having boots made. But it's being with a man, and having him awfully good to you, and admiring everything you say, and having lots of good clothes, and not being in love with any other fellow, that makes you love a man. I'm sure from your manner that you like Jack Whitehouse the best, so I think I'll take him. You are awfully sweet, and not a bit like an old maid. I tell everybody so."

"Am I called an Old Maid?" I asked quickly. I could have bitten my tongue out for it afterwards.

"Oh, yes indeed, by all the younger set. You see you belonged to Grace's set and they are all married. It makes you seem like a back number to us, but you don't look like an old maid. I suppose you can look back ages and ages and remember when you had lovers, can't you? Or have you forgotten? I can't imagine you ever getting love-letters or flowers or any such things.

I hope I haven't offended you. I am horribly honest, you know. I say just what I think, and you mustn't mind it. Mamma says I am too truthful to be pleasant. But I like honesty myself, don't you?"

And with that, Tabby, she went away.

How terrible the child is! Now, Pet is one of those persons who go about lacerating people and clothing their ignorance, or their insolence, in the garb of honesty.

"I am honest," say they, "so you must not be offended, but is it true that your grandfather was hanged for being a pirate?" Or, "I believe in being perfectly honest with people. How cross-eyed you are!"

This is why honesty is so disreputable. When you say of a woman, "She is one of those honest, outspoken persons," it means that she will probably hurt your feelings, or insult you in your first interview with her.

I don't like to admit it even to you, Tabby, but I am horribly shaken up.

After all these years of talking about myself to you as an Old Maid, and knowing that I am one, to hear myself called such, and to catch a glimpse of the way I appear to the oncoming generation, shakes me to the foundation of my being. Soon _I_ shall be pushed to the wall, as something too worn out to be needed by bright young people. Soon _I_ shall be one of the old people whom I have so dreaded all my life. Dear Tabby-cat! You can remember when Missis received love-letters, can't you? They are not all in the j.a.panned box, are they? Do I seem old to you, kitty? Why, there is actually a tear on your gray fur. Dear me, what a silly Old Maid Missis is!

You see, after all, I have not been honest, even with myself. And, just between you and me, I will say that I abominate honesty in other people.

There!

VIII

A GAME OF HEARTS

"Man proposes, but Heaven disposes."

Tabby, did you ever hear me speak of Charlie Hardy? No, of course not.

Your mother must have been a kitten when I knew Charlie the best. He is a nice boy. Boy! What am I talking about? He is as old as I am. But he is the kind of man who always seems a boy, and everybody who has known him two days calls him Charlie.

Rachel Percival never thought much of him. She said he was weak, and weakness in a man is something Rachel never excuses. She says it is trespa.s.sing on one of the special privileges of our s.e.x. Thus she disposed of Charlie Hardy.

"Look at his chin," said Rachel; "could a man be strong with a chin like that?"

"But he is so kind-hearted and easy to get along with," I urged.

"Very likely. He hasn't strength of mind to quarrel. He is unwilling, like most easy-going men, to inflict that kind of pain. But he could be as cruel as the grave in other ways. Look at him. He always is in hot water about something, and never does as people expect him to do."

"But he doesn't do wrong on purpose, and he makes charming excuses and apologies."

"He ought to; he has had enough practice," answered Rachel, with her beautiful smile. "He has what I call a conscience for surface things. He regards life from the wrong point of view, and, as to his always intending to do right--you know the place said to be paved with good intentions. No, no, Ruth. Charlie Hardy is a dangerous man, because he is weak. Through such men as he comes very bitter sorrow in this world."

That conversation, Tabby, took place, if not before you were created, at least in your early infancy--the time when your own weight threw you down if you tried to walk, and when ears and tail were the least of your make-up.

All these years Charlie has never married, but was always with the girls.

He dropped with perfect composure from our set to Sallie c.o.x's--was her slave for two years, though Sallie declares that she never was engaged to him. "What's the use of being engaged to a man that you can keep on hand without?" quoth Sallie. But Charlie bore no malice. "I didn't stand the ghost of a show with a girl like Sallie, when she had such men as Winston Percival and those literary chaps around her. It was great sport to watch her with those men. You know what a little chatterbox she is. By Jove!

when that fellow Percival began to talk, Sallie never had a word to say for herself. It must have been awfully hard for her, but she certainly let him do all the talking, and just sat and listened, looking as sweet as a peach. Oh! I never had any chance with Sallie."

Nevertheless, he was usher at her wedding, then dropped peacefully to the next younger set, and now is going with girls of Pet Winterbotham's age.

I thoroughly like the boy, but I can't imagine myself falling in love with him. If I were married to another man--an indiscreet thing for an Old Maid to say, Tabby, but I only use it for ill.u.s.tration--I should not mind Charlie Hardy's dropping in for Sunday dinner every week, if he wanted to.

He never bothers. He never is in the way. He is as deft at b.u.t.toning a glove as he is amiable at playing cards. You always think of Charlie Hardy first if you are making up a theatre party. He serves equally well as groomsman or pall-bearer--although I do not speak from experience in either instance. He never is cross or sulky. He makes the best of everything, and I think men say that he is "an all-round good fellow."

I depend a great deal upon other men's opinion of a man. I never thoroughly trust a man who is not a favorite with his own s.e.x. I wish men were as generous to us in that respect, for a woman whom other women do not like is just as dangerous. And I never knew simple jealousy--the reason men urge against accepting our verdict--to be universal enough to condemn a woman. There always are a few fair-minded women in every community--just enough to be in the minority--to break continuous jealousy.

Be that as it may, the man I am talking about has kept up his acquaintance with Rachel and Alice Asbury and me in a desultory way, and occasionally he grows confidential. The last time I saw him he said:

"Sometimes I wish I were a woman, Ruth, when I get into so much trouble with the girls. Women never seem to have any worry over love affairs. All they have to do is to lean back and let men wait on them until they see one that suits them. It is like ordering from a _menu_ card for them to select husbands. You run over a list for a girl--oysters, clams, or terrapin--and she takes terrapin. In the other case she runs over her own list--Smith, Jones, or Robinson--and likewise takes the rarest. But she is not at all troubled about it. Marrying is so easy for a girl. It comes natural to her."

Tabby, I did wish that he knew as much of the internal mechanism of the engagements that you and I have partic.i.p.ated in, by proxy, as we do--if he would understand, profit by, and speedily forget the knowledge.

But, like the hypocrite I am, I only smiled indulgently at him, as if, for women, marrying was mere reposing on eider-down cushions, with the tiller ropes in their hands, while men did the rowing. I was not going to admit, Tabby, that the most of the girls we know never worked harder in their lives than during that indefinite and mysterious period known as "making up their minds." You see I uphold my own s.e.x at all hazards--to men.

He was standing up to go when he said that, but there was something about him which led me to suspect that he was in a condition when he needed some woman to straighten out his affairs. I made no reply, which threw the burden of continuing the conversation upon him. I was in that pa.s.sive state which made me perfectly willing to have him say good-night and go home or stay and confess to me, just as he chose. I knew he needed me; a good many men need their mothers once in a while as much as they ever did when boys. There was something whimsically boyish about Charlie as he leaned over the back of a tall chair and debated secretly whether or not he should confide in me.

"Why don't you ask me why I said that?" he said.

"Because I know without asking. You were induced to say it by what you have been thinking of all the evening. It sounded like a beginning, but really it was an ending."

He looked as though he thought me a mind-reader, but I fancy the knack of divining when people need a confidant is preternaturally developed in old maids.

"How good you are, Ruth."

"You men always think women are good when they understand you. But it isn't goodness."

"No, you're right. It's more comfortable than goodness. It's odd how you do it. May I tell you about it? You won't think half as well of me as you do now, but it needs just such women as you to keep men straight, and if you will give me your opinion I vow I'll do as you say, even if it kills me."

I was afraid from that desperate ending that it was something serious, and it was. He made several attempts before he could begin. Finally he burst out with,

"Although you are the easiest person in the world to talk to, and I've known you always, it is pretty hard to lay this case before you so that you won't think me a conceited prig. That is because you are a woman and can't help looking at it from a woman's standpoint. For a good many reasons it would be easier to tell it to some man, who would know how it was himself; but you see I want a woman's conscience and a woman's judgment, because you can put yourself in another woman's place."

He grew quite red as he talked, and I waited patiently for him to go on, but gave him no help.

"Well, here goes. If you hate me afterwards I can't help it. I had no idea it would be so hard to tell you or I shouldn't have attempted it. But since you have been sitting there looking at me I am beginning to think differently of it myself, and I'm sure that, with all your kindness, you will be very hard on me, and tell me to accept the hardest alternative.

Now, Ruth, you'd better shake hands with me and say good-by while you like me, because you will think of me as another Charlie Hardy when I've finished."

He actually held out his hand, but I folded mine together.

"No," I said, smiling, "I shall not bid you good-by until I really am through with you. Don't look so discouraged. Come; possibly I may be a better friend to you than you think."

"You are awfully good," he said again. I don't know when I have so impressed a man with my extraordinary goodness as I did by listening to Charlie while he did all the talking. If I could have held my tongue another hour, he would have called me an angel.