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 passive
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.
"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 blushing 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 passengers 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 shiver. 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 passing 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 gushing 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 class 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
blushing. 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 friendship, too, can be
dangerous. Next day you send her flowers, with some lines about the
delights of friendship. 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 ass 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 friendship 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
friendship 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.)
"I am a coward," he broke down at last. "I'll spare you the trouble of
saying so. But oh, Ruth, you don't know how I dread a scene! You go and
tell her. I can't. I couldn't even write it."
"How unselfish you are! Spare yourself at all hazards, Charlie, for of
course it was not your fault that things got into such a state."
"Oh, Ruth, don't!"
"Well, I won't. But do you realize how I should insult her if I went to
her? It's bad enough for you, the man she loves, to tell her. From any one
else it would be unforgivable. Do as you like. You promised to follow my
advice. Take it and do as you will with it. But I will guarantee the
result if you will do as I say. Come, Charlie. One hour, and it will all
be over, and you can marry Frankie."
It was like getting him into a dentist's chair. I felt a wholesome
self-contempt as I thus sugar-coated his pill, but he was so abject in his
misery.
Charlie brightened up perceptibly at the alluring prospect. He shut his
eyes to the dark path which led to happiness, and was revelling in its
glory.
"Ruth, you dear thing! I don't see how I ever can thank you enough," he
said, taking both my hands in his. "I ought to have stuck to you, that's
what I ought to have done. You would have kept me straight. Do you know, I
used to be awfully in love with you. You really were my first love. I was
about eighteen then. You don't look a day older, and you are just as sweet
as ever."
I laughed outright.
"What did I tell you?" I cried. "You can't help making love to save your
life. Your gratitude is getting you into deeper water every minute. Go
home, do. Run for your life, or you'll be engaged to me too. _Then_
who'll help you out?"
He acted upon my suggestion and went hastily.
Tabby, did you ever? He never was in love with me, never on this earth.
Whatever possessed him to say such a thing? He loses his head, that's what
he does. I hope he won't meet any woman younger than his grandmother
before he gets home, or he might propose to her.
* * * * *
My heart stands still when I think of Louise King.
IX
THE MADONNA OF THE QUIET MIND
"It is not true that love makes all things easy, but it makes us
choose what is difficult."
Across the street, in plain view from my window, has come to dwell a
little brown wren of a woman with her five babies. The house, hitherto
inconspicuous among its finer neighbors, at the advent of the Mayo family
suddenly bloomed into a home. The lawn blossomed with living flowers and
the windows framed faces which shamed, in their dimpling loveliness, the
painted cherubs on the wall.
It was a delight to see Nellie Mayo in the midst of her children. Hers
were all babies, such dear, amiable, kissable babies, each of whom seemed
personally anxious to prove to every one how much sweetness one small
morsel of humanity could hold. But with five of them, bless me! the house
was one glowing radiance of sunshine, in which the little mother lived and
loved, until they absorbed each other's personality, and it was difficult
to think of one without the others.