The Love Affairs of an Old Maid Part 7

"Well, although you may not know it, I am engaged to Louise King. I always have been very fond of her, and when I found I couldn't get Sallie, I was sure I cared as much for Louise as I ever could care for anybody, and I was perfectly satisfied with her--thought she would make me an awfully good wife, and all that. But while Miss Taliaferro was up here visiting Sallie, I was with her a good deal, and the first thing I knew we were dead in love with each other. You know we were both in Sallie's wedding-party, and I tell you, Ruth, to stand up at the altar with a girl he is already half in love with, plays the very deuce with a man. Kentucky girls are all pretty, I suppose--everybody says so, and you have to make believe you think so whether you do or not; but this one--you know her?

Isn't she the prettiest thing you ever saw? Well, of course she didn't know I was engaged, and I kept putting off telling her, until the first thing I knew I was letting her see how much I thought of her. I don't suppose it was at all difficult to see, but girls are keen on such subjects, and a man can't be in love with one more than a week before she knows more about it than he does. Then, after she told me that she loved me, how could I tell her that, in spite of what I had said, I was engaged to another girl? Wouldn't she have thought I was a rascal? No; I had to let her go home thinking that, if we were not already engaged, we should be some time, and I went part way with her, and--it was a mean trick to play, but the nonsensical things that unthinking people do precipitate affairs which perhaps without their means might never fully develop. Brian Beck heard that I was going a few miles with her, and he and Sallie and Payson came down to the train to see us off. Just as we pulled out of the station, Brian made the most frantic signs for me to open the window, and when I did so, he threw a tissue-paper package at me. Frankie and I both made an effort to catch it. Of course it burst when we touched it, and a good pound of rice was scattered all over us. You never saw such a sight.

It flew in every direction; her hat and my hair were full of it. Some went down my collar. Of course everybody in the car roared and--well, I'm not done blus.h.i.+ng at it yet. Frankie took it much better than I, and only laughed at it. But I--I felt more like crying. I saw instantly how it complicated things. It was a nail driven into my coffin.

"We had no more than settled down from that and were just having a good little talk, after the pa.s.sengers had stopped looking at us, when the porter appeared, bringing a basket of white flowers with two turtle-doves suspended from the handle, and Brian Beck's card on it. I wish you could have heard the people laugh. I declare to you, Ruth, when I saw that great white thing coming and knew what it meant, it looked as big as a billiard-table to me. I was going to pay the fellow to take it out again, but no--Frankie wanted it. She made me put it down on the opposite seat and there it stood. Those sickening birds were too much for me, so I jerked them off and threw them out of the window, conscious that my face was very red and that I was amusing more people than I had bargained for.

"When the time came for me to get off and take the train back, Frankie implored me to go on with her, urging how strange it would look to people, who all thought we were married, to see me disappear and have her go on alone. I railed at the idea, but she was in earnest, and when I told her positively that I couldn't--thinking more, I must admit, of the state of my affairs than of hers--she began to cry under her veil. That settled it. Of course I couldn't stand it to see the girl I loved cry, so I went home with her, fell deeper in love every minute I was there, and came away feeling like a cur because I had not spoken to her father. Her people met me in the cordial, honest manner of those who have faith in mankind, but I couldn't look them in the face without flinching.

"Since I came back, of course, I've been visiting Louise as usual. I told her all about the rice and flowers, thinking that if she quarrelled with me about the affair she would break off the engagement. But she only laughed and said it served me right for flirting with every girl that came along, and didn't even reproach me. She has absolute faith in me. She doesn't believe I could sink so low as I have, any more than she could.

She has idealized me until I don't dare to breathe for fear of destroying the illusion. She thinks that I love her in the way she loves me, but I couldn't. It isn't in me, Ruth. I don't even love Frankie that way. To tell the truth, Louise is too good for me. She is magnificent, but I am rather afraid of her. She has so many ideals and is so intense. Her faith in me makes me s.h.i.+ver. I am not a bit comfortable with her. I do not even understand how she can love me so much. I am nothing extraordinary, but if you knew the way she treats me, you would think I was Achilles or some of those Greek fellows. She has refused better and richer men than I. Norris Whitehouse has loved her all her life, and you know what a splendid man he is, but Louise ridicules the idea of ever caring for anybody but me. She is so perfect that there is absolutely no flaw in her for me to recognize and feel friendly with. She reads me like a book, but I am less acquainted with her than I was before we were engaged. She says such beautiful things to me sometimes, things that are far beyond my comprehension, and she can get so uplifted that I feel as if I never had met her. There's no use in talking; after a girl falls in love with a man she often ceases to be the girl he courted."

I recalled what I had said to Percival--"Often a woman denies herself the expression of the best part of her love, for fear that it will be either a puzzle or a terror to her lover." Such a saying belonged to Percival.

I shouldn't think of repeating it to Charlie, for he could not comprehend it. I should puzzle him as much as Louise did. It made me heartsick. How could even Charlie Hardy so persistently misunderstand the grandeur of Louise King? Yet how could such a glorious girl imagine herself in love with nice, weak, agreeable Charlie Hardy?

Louise is a younger, handsomer, more impetuous, less clever edition of Rachel Percival; but she is of that order. She is less concentrated and more emotional than Rachel. I did not quite know how a great sorrow would affect Louise. Rachel would use it as a stepping-stone towards heaven.

I have seen a young, untried race-horse with small, pointed, restless ears; with delicate nostrils where the red blood showed; with full, soft eyes where fire flashed; with a satin skin so thin and glossy that even the lightest hand would cause it to quiver to the touch; where pride and fire and royal blood seemed to urge a trial of their powers; and I have thought: "You are capable of pa.s.sing anything on the track and coming under the wire triumphant and victorious; or you might fulfil your prophecy equally well by falling dead in your first heat, with the red blood gus.h.i.+ng from those thin nostrils. We can be sure of nothing until you are tried, but it is a quivering delight to look at you and to share your impatience and to wonder what you will do."

Occasionally I see women who affect me in the same way--idealists, capable of being wounded through their sensitiveness by things which we ordinary mortals accept philosophically; capable also of greater heights of happiness and lower depths of misery, but of suffering most through being misunderstood. To this cla.s.s Rachel and Louise belong. Rachel, in Percival, has reached a haven where she rides at anchor, sheltered from such storms as had hitherto almost engulfed her, and growing more heroically beautiful in character day by day. Poor Louise is still at sea, with a great storm brewing. How hard, how terribly hard, to talk to Charlie Hardy about her, when, after the solemnity of an engagement tie between them, he was capable of misunderstanding, not only her, but the whole situation so blindly! But what a calamity it would be if Louise should marry him!

"Go on, Ruth. Say something, do. I imagine all sorts of things while you just sit there looking at me so solemnly. I realize that I am in a tight place. I did hope that you could see some way out of it for me; but I know, by the way you act, that you think I ought to give up Frankie--dear little girl!--and marry Louise, and by Jove! if you say it's the handsome thing to do, I'll do it."

This still more effectually closed my lips. He so evidently thought that he was being heroic. He added rather reluctantly, "I must say that I suppose Frankie Taliaferro would get over it much more easily than Louise could."

"Charlie," I said slowly, "you don't mean to be, but you are too conceited to live. I wonder that you haven't died of conceit before this."

Charlie's blond face flushed and he looked deeply offended.

"Conceited!" he burst out. "Why, Ruth, there isn't a fellow going who has a worse opinion of himself than I have. I don't see what either of those girls sees in me to love, I tell you. I am not proud of it. I wish to Heaven they didn't love me. _I_ haven't made them."

"'Haven't made them'! Yes, you have. You are just the kind of man who does. You say pretty things even to old women, and bring them shawls and put footstools under their feet with the air of a lover. And if you only hand a woman an ice you look unutterable things. You have a dozen girls at a time in that indefinite state when three words to any one of them would engage you to her, and she would think you had deliberately led up to it; whereas all the past had been idle admiration on your part, and it was a rose in her hair or a moment in the conservatory that upset you, and there you are. Oh, these girls, these girls, who believe every time a man at a ball says he loves them that he means it! Why can't you be satisfied to have some of them friends, and not all sweethearts?"

"It can't be done. I've tried and I know. Sallie tried it and it married her off--a thing not one of her flirtations could have accomplished. This is the way it goes. You arrange with a girl not to have any nonsense, but just to be good friends. You take her to the theatre, drive with her, dance with her. Soon her chaperon begins to eye you over. Fellows at the club drop a remark now and then. You explain that you are only friends, and they wink at you and you feel foolish. Next time they see you with her, they look knowing, and you see, to your horror, that the girl is blus.h.i.+ng. Evidently she is under fire too. Still, you keep it up. She makes a better comrade than any of the men. You feel that you are out of mischief when you are with her. She keeps you alert. You never are bored, but really you are not as fond of her as you were of your college chum even. She treats you a trifle, just a trifle, differently from all the other men. This goes to your head. You begin to make a little difference yourself. You take her hand when you say good-night, just as you would one of the men. But it is not the same. The girl has needles or electricity in her hand. You can't let go. You begin to feel that friends.h.i.+p, too, can be dangerous. Next day you send her flowers, with some lines about the delights of friends.h.i.+p. She accepts both beautifully, but you have a guilty feeling that you did it to remind her. She does not seem to understand that there had been any necessity. Still, you feel rather mean, and to make up for it you try to atone by your manner. She is looking perfectly lovely. She wears white. You particularly like white. She knows it. You think perhaps she wore it to please you. _How_ pretty she is! You lose your head a little and say something. She looks innocent and surprised. She 'thought we were just friends. Surely,' she says, 'you have said so often enough. Why change? Friends are so much more comfortable.' She wants to 'stay a friend.' You are miserable at the idea, although that morning it was just what you wanted. You were even afraid she would think differently. What an a.s.s a man can be! You fling discretion to the winds and tell her--you tell her--well, you go home engaged to her. That's how a friends.h.i.+p ends. Bah!"

"A realistic recital. From hearsay, of course! The next day the man wishes he were well out of it, I suppose?"

"Not quite so soon as that, but soon enough."

"Ah, I wish you knew, Charlie Hardy, how all this sounds even to such a good friend of yours as I am. It is such men as you who lower the standard of love and of men in general. Do you suppose a girl who has had an encounter with you, and seen how trifling you are, can have her first beautiful faith to give to the truly grand hero when he comes? No; it has been bruised and beaten down by what you call 'a little flirtation,' and possibly her unwillingness to trust a second time may force her true lover into withdrawing his suit. How dare men and women trifle with the Shekinah of their lives? And when it has been dulled by abuse, what a pitiful Shekinah it appears to the one who approaches it reverently, confidently expecting it to be the uncontaminated holy of holies! It is this sort of thing which makes infidels about love."

Charlie began to look sulky, feeling, I suppose, that I was piling the sins of the universe on to his already burdened shoulders.

"I dare say you are right, but what am I to do?"

"There is only one thing for you to do, but I know you won't do it."

"Yes, I will. Only try me," he said, brightening up.

"You must go and tell Louise that you are in love with Frankie Taliaferro."

"Tell Louise? Why, Ruth, it would kill her. You don't know her. She wouldn't let me off. You don't know how a girl in love feels. Ruth, were you ever in love?"

"That is not a pertinent question," I said. "It comes quite near being the other thing. But let me tell you, Charlie Hardy, I know Louise King, and it won't kill her. You know 'men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love.' That might be said of women." (I didn't know, Tabby, whether it might or might not. I couldn't afford to let him see my doubts, if I had any.) "We don't die as easily as you men seem to think."

"But is this your view of what is right?" he asked. "I was sure you would counsel the other. I've been fortifying myself to give Frankie up and marry Louise, and, with all due respect to you, I must say that I think you are wrong here. You must remember that my honor is involved."

"Bother your honor!" I cried explosively. Charlie seemed rather pleased than otherwise at my inelegance. "I am tired to death of hearing men fall back on nonsense about their honor. I notice they seldom feel called upon to refer to it unless they are involved in something disreputable."

Charlie straightened up at this and settled his coat with an indignant jerk.

"I hardly think," he began stiffly, "that I am involved in anything disreputable in being engaged to Miss King."

"What are a man's debts of honor?" I went on with growing excitement.

"Gaming debts and things he would scarcely care to explain to the public at large. Your honor is involved in this, is it? And you must save your honor at all hazards, no matter who goes to the wall in the process! I suppose if you made the rash vow that, if your horse won the race, you would cut your mother's head off, while you were still in the flush of victory, you would seize your bowie-knife and go to work! No? Oh, yes, Charlie. Your honor, as you call it, is involved. I insist upon it. You must do it. Oh, I am going too far, am I? Not one step further than men go in the mire whither their honor leads them. Debts of honor, indeed! Debts of dishonor I call them. So do most women."

"Yes, but, Ruth," interrupted Charlie uneasily, "an engagement is different. I don't dispute what you say in regard to gambling debts--"

"You can't," I murmured rebelliously.

"--but a man can't, with any decency, ask a girl to release him when he has sought her out and asked her to marry him."

"Perhaps not with decency. But it is a place where this precious honor of yours might come into play. It would at least be honorable."

"There isn't a man who would agree with you," he cried.

"Nor is there a woman who would agree with you," I retorted. But both of us stretched things a little at this point.

He thought over the situation for a few minutes, then said,

"You understand that, in my opinion, Louise loves me the best."

"The best--yes. For that very reason you must not marry her. O Charlie!

try to understand," I pleaded. "She must love the best when she loves at all. She has loved the best in you, until she has put it out of your reach ever to attain to it. It would not be fair to the girl, it would be robbing her, to accept all this beautiful love for you, and give her in return--your love for another girl. Do you suppose for an instant that you could continue to deceive her after you were married? Supposing she found out afterwards, then what? She might die of that. I cannot say. It would be enough to kill her. But not if you are honest and manly enough to tell her in time to save her self-respect. You are powerless to touch it now. You could kill it if you were married."

"Honest and manly enough to confess myself a rascal? I don't see where it would come in," he replied gloomily.

"It is the nearest approach to it which lies in your power."

"If the girls' places were only reversed now! I could tell Frankie that I had been false to our engagement and had fallen in love with Louise. She would know how it was herself. But Louise couldn't comprehend such things.

I believe she has been as true to me, even in thought, as if she had been my wife. How can I tell her?"

"The more you say, the plainer you make it your duty. I say, how can you not tell her?"

"I might go away for a year and not let her know and not write to her.

Then she would know without my having to tell her."

"You wouldn't stand it if a man called you a coward. Don't try my woman's friends.h.i.+p for you too far. You insult me by offering such a suggestion."

"Gently, gently, Ruth. I beg your pardon." (Rachel was right in saying he would not quarrel. I wished he would. I never wanted to quarrel so much in my life.)