"Oh, bother!" she retorted. "You are only a goose, with no sense at all.
To think you once thought of marrying that country booby yourself!"
I was too much hurt to reply, and probably my face showed my feeling,
for Cousin Mehitable burst into a laugh.
"You needn't look so grumpy about it," she cried. "All's well that ends
well. You're safely out of that, thank heaven!"
I felt that loyalty to George required that I should protest, but she
interrupted me.
"Don't be a humbug, Ruth," she said; "and for pity's sake don't be such
a fool as to try to humbug yourself. You're not a sentimental schoolgirl
to moon after a man, especially when he's shown what his taste is by
taking up with such a horror as Mrs. Weston."
"I am fond of him," I asserted, stubbornly enough.
She seized me by the shoulders, and looked with her quick black eyes
into mine so that I felt as if she could see down to my very toes.
"Can you look me in the face, Ruth Privet, and tell me you really care
for a man who could marry that ignorant, vulgar, dowdy woman just for
her pretty face? Can you fool yourself into thinking that you haven't
had a lucky escape from a man that's in every way your inferior? You
know you have! Why, can you honestly think now for a moment of marrying
him without feeling your backbone all gooseflesh?"
Fortunately she did not insist upon my answering her, but shook me and
let me go. I doubt if I could have borne to have her press her
questions. I was suddenly conscious that George has changed or that my
idea of him has altered; and that if he were still single, I could not
marry him under any circumstances.
Cousin Mehitable went home this morning, but her talk has been in my
mind all day.
It comes over me that I have lost more than George. His loving another
did not deprive me of the power or the right to love him, and his
marriage simply set him away from my life. In some other life, if there
be one, I might have always been sure he would come back to me. I cannot
help knowing I fed his higher nature, and I helped him to grow, while
his wife appeals to something lower, even if it is more natural and
human. I felt that in some other possible existence he would see more
clearly, and she would no longer satisfy him. Now I begin to feel that I
have lost more than I knew. I have lost not only him, but I have
lost--no, I cannot have lost my love for him. It is only that to-night I
am foolish. It is rainy, dreary, hopeless; and seeing Mrs. Weston
through Cousin Mehitable's eyes has put things all askew.
Yet why not put it down fearlessly, since I have begun? If I am to write
at all it should be the truth. I am beginning to see that the man I
loved was not George Weston so much as a creature I conjured up in his
image. I see him now in a colder, a more sane light, and I find that I
am not looking at the man who filled my heart and thought. He has
somehow changed. This would be a comfort to some, I suppose. I see now
how Mother felt about him. She never thought him what he seemed to me,
and she always believed that sooner or later I should be disappointed in
him. I should not have been disappointed if I had married him--I think!
Yet now I see how he is under the influence of his wife--But no, it is
not her influence only; I see him now, I fear, as he is when he is free
to act his true self, unmoved by the desire to be what I would have had
him. He was influenced by me. I knew it from the very first, and I see
with shame how proud of it I was. Yet it gave me a chance to help him,
to grow with him, to feel that we were together developing and
advancing. Oh, dear, how cold and superior, and conceited it sounds now
it is on paper! It truly was not that I thought I was above him; but it
is surely the part of a woman to inspire her lover and to grow into
something better with him. Now it seems as if whatever George did he did
for me, and not because of any inner love for growth. He appears now
less worthy by just so much as what he was seems to me higher than what
he is. I have lost what he was. It is cruel that I cannot find the
George I cared for. It is hard to believe he existed only in my mind.
July 9. I have been reading over what I wrote last night. It troubles
me, and it has a most self-righteous flavor; but I cannot see that it is
not true. It troubles me because it is true. I remember that I wondered
when George tired of me if the same would have come about if we had
married. Am I so changeable that if I had been his wife I should have
tried him by my severe standards, and then judged him unworthy? I begin
to think the Pharisees were modest and self-distrustful as compared to
self-righteous me. It is terribly puzzling. If I were his wife I should
surely feel that my highest duty was to help him, to bring out whatever
is best in him. I think I should have been too absorbed in this ever to
have discovered that I was idealizing him. Now I am far enough away from
him to see him clearly. The worse part of him has come out; and very
likely I am not above a weak feminine jealousy which makes me incapable
of doing him justice. I believe if I had been his wife I might have kept
him--Yet he was already tired of my influence!
Such speculations are pretty unprofitable work. The only thing to keep
in mind now is that he is my friend, and that it is for me to do still
whatever I can for him. I confess that Cousin Mehitable is right. I am
no longer sorry I did not marry George, but I still care for him
sincerely, and mean to serve him in every way possible.
July 12. Miss Charlotte came in this morning while I was playing with
Tomine, and hailed me as a mother in Israel. She is a great admirer of
baby, but she declines to touch her.
"I'm too big and too rough," she says. "I know I should drop her or
break her, or forget she isn't a plant, and go to snipping her with my
pruning-shears. You'd better keep her. You've the motherly way with
you."
It must please any woman to be told that she has the motherly way, and
just now I certainly need it. Miss Charlotte came to talk with me about
Kathie. The poor child has been growing more and more morbid all summer,
and I do not see what is to be done for her. I have tried to comfort and
help her, but as her troubles are religious I am all but helpless.
Miss Charlotte went over the Cove yesterday on one of her roving tramps
in the woods,--"bushwhacking," as she calls it,--and found Kathie
roaming about in Elder's Cut-down, wringing her hands and crying aloud
like a mad thing.
"You can't tell what a start it gave me, Ruth," she said. "I heard her,
and I thought of wild beasts and wild Indians, and all sorts of horrors.
Then when I saw her, I didn't know her at first. Her hair was all
tousled up, and she wrung her hands in the craziest way."
"Did you speak to her?" I asked.
"I couldn't. She ran away as soon as I called to her. She'll end in a
lunatic asylum if you don't get hold of her."