AS I hoped, there were no ill effects from this little diversion, but by
now I was so interested in Miss W—— that I felt a little unfair to her.
As I look back on it I can imagine no greater error of mind or
temperament than that which drew me to her, considering my own variable
tendencies and my naturally freedom-loving point of view. But since we
are all blind victims of chance and given to far better hind-sight than
fore-sight I have no complaint to make. It is quite possible that this
was all a part of my essential destiny or development, one of those
storm-breeding mistakes by which one grows. Life seems thus often
casually to thrust upon one an experience which is to prove illuminating
or disastrous.
To pick up the thread of my narrative, I saw Miss Ginity at breakfast,
but she showed no sign that we had been out together the previous
evening. Instead, she went on her way briskly as though nothing had
happened, and this made her rather alluring again in my eyes. When Miss
W—— came down I suffered a slight revulsion of feeling: she was so fresh
and innocent, so spiritually and mentally above any such quick and
compromising relationship as that which I and my new acquaintance had
established the night before. I planned to be more circumspect in my
relations with Miss Ginity and to pay more attention to Miss W——.
This plan was facilitated by the way in which the various members of the
party now grouped and adjusted themselves. Miss W—— and her sister
seemed to prefer to go about together, with me as an occasional third,
and Miss Ginity and several of her new acquaintances made a second
company, with whom I occasionally walked. Thus the distribution of my
attentions was in no danger of immediate detection and I went gayly on.
A peculiar characteristic at this time and later was that I never really
expected any of these relationships to endure. Marriage might be well
enough for the average man but it never seemed to me that I should
endure in it, that it would permanently affect my present free
relationship with the world. I might be greatly grieved at times in a
high emotional way because they could not last, but that was rising to
heights of sentiment which puzzled even myself. One of the things which
troubled and astonished me was that I could like two, three, and even
more women at the same time, like them very much indeed. It seemed
strange that I could yearn over them, now one and now another. A good
man, I told myself, would not do this. The thought would never occur to
him, or if it did he would repress it sternly. Obviously, if not
profoundly evil I was a freak and had best keep my peculiar thoughts and
desires to myself if I wanted to have anything to do with good people. I
should be entirely alone, perhaps even seized upon by the law.
During the next two weeks I saw much of both Miss W—— and Miss Ginity.
By day I usually accompanied Miss W—— and her sister from place to place
about the grounds and of an evening strolled with Miss Ginity, all the
while wondering if Miss W—— really liked me, whether her present feeling
was likely to turn to something deeper. I felt a very definite point of
view in her, very different from mine. In her was none of the
variability that troubled me: if ever a person was fixed in conventional
views it was she. One life, one love would have answered for her
exactly. She could have accepted any condition, however painful or even
degrading, providing she was bolstered up by what she considered the
moral law. “To have and to hold, in sickness and in health, in poverty
and in riches, until death do us part.” I think the full force of these
laws must have been imbibed with her mother’s milk.
As for Miss Ginity, although she was conventional enough, I did feel
that she might be persuaded to relax the moral rule in favor of one at
least, and so was congratulating myself upon having achieved an
affectional triumph. She may not have been deeply impressed by my
physical attraction but there was something about me nevertheless which
seemed to hold her. After a few days she left the hotel to visit some
friends or relatives, to whom she had to pay considerable attention, but
in my box nights or mornings, if by any chance I had not seen her, I
would find notes explaining where she could be found in the evening,
usually at a drugstore near the park or her new apartment, and we would
take a few minutes’ stroll in the park. Such a fever of emotion as she
displayed at times! “Oh dear!” she would exclaim in an intense hungry
way upon seeing me. “Oh, I could hardly wait!” And once in the park she
would throw her strong young arms about me and kiss me in a fiery,
hungry way. There was one last transport the night before she left for
Michigan for a visit, when if I had been half the Don Juan I longed to
be we might have passed the boundary line; but lack of courage on my
part and inexperience on hers kept us apart.
When I saw her again in St. Louis——
But that is still another story.
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