My Brilliant Career (33 page)

“Yes, Hal; but you'd better say it, as I don't know what conditions—”

“Conditions!”—catching me up eagerly at the word. “If it is only conditions that are stopping you, you can make your own conditions if you will marry me.”

“Marry you, Harold! What do you mean? Do you know what you are saying?” I exclaimed.

“There!” he replied. “I knew you would take it as an insult. I believe you are the proudest girl in the world. I know you are
too clever for me; but I love you, and could give you everything you fancied.”

“Hal, dear, let me explain. I'm not insulted, only surprised. I thought you were going to tell me that you loved Gertie, and would ask me not to make things unpleasant by telling her of the foolish little bit of flirtation there had been between us.”

“Marry Gertie! Why, she's only a child! A mere baby, in fact. Marry Gertie! I never thought of her in that light; and did you think I was that sort of a fellow, Syb?” he asked reproachfully.

“No, Hal,” I promptly made answer. “I did not think you were that sort of fellow; but I thought that was the only sort of fellow there was.”

“Good heavens, Syb! Did you really mean those queer little letters you wrote me last February? I never for an instant looked upon them as anything but a little bit of playful contrariness. And have you forgotten me? Did you not mean your promise of two years ago, that you speak of what passed between us as a paltry bit of flirtation? Is that all you thought it?”

“No, I did not consider it flirtation; but that is what I thought you would term it when announcing your affection for Gertie.”

“Gertie! Pretty little Gertie! I never looked upon the child as anything but your sister, consequently mine also. She's a child.”

“Child! She is eighteen. More than a year older than I was when you first introduced the subject of matrimony to me, and she is very beautiful, and twenty times as good and lovable as I could ever be, even in my best moments.”

“Yes, I know you are young in years, but there is nothing of the child in you. As for beauty, it is nothing. If beauty was all a man required, he could, if rich, have a harem full of it any day. I want someone to be true.”

“‘The world is filled with folly and sin, And love must cling where it can, I say; For beauty is easy enough to win, But one isn't loved every day,'” I quoted from Owen Meredith.

“Yes,” he said, “that is why I want you. Just think a moment; don't say no. You are not vexed with me—are you, Syb?”

“Vexed, Hal! I am scarcely inhuman enough to be angry on account of being loved.”

Ah, why did I not love him as I have it in me to love! Why did
he look so exasperatingly humble? I was weak, oh, so pitifully weak! I wanted a man who would be masterful and strong, who would help me over the rough spots of life—one who had done hard grinding in the mill of fate—one who had suffered, who had understood. No; I could never marry Harold Beecham.

“Well, Syb, little chum, what do you say?”

“Say!”—and the words fell from me bitterly—“I say, leave me; go and marry the sort of woman you ought to marry. The sort that all men like. A good, conventional woman, who will do the things she should at the proper time. Leave me alone.”

He was painfully agitated. A look of pain crossed his face. “Don't say that, Syb, because I was a beastly cad once: I've had all that knocked out of me.”

“I am the cad,” I replied. “What I said was nasty and unwomanly, and I wish I had left it unsaid. I am not good enough to be your wife, Hal, or that of any man. Oh, Hal, I have never deceived you! There are scores of good, noble women in the world who would wed you for the asking—marry one of them.”

“But, Syb, I want you. You are the best and truest girl in the world.”

“Och! Sure, the Blarney stone is getting a good rub now,” I said playfully.

Annoyance and amusement struggled for mastery in his expression as he replied, “You're the queerest girl in the world. One minute you snub a person, the next you are the jolliest girl going, and then you get as grave and earnest as a fellow's mother would be.”

“Yes, I am queer. If you had any sense, you'd have nothing to do with me. I'm more queer, too. I am given to something which a man never pardons in a woman. You will draw away as though I were a snake when you hear.”

“What is it?”

“I am given to writing stories, and literary people predict I will yet be an authoress.”

He laughed—his soft, rich laugh. “That's just into my hand. I'd rather work all day than write the shortest letter; so if you will give me a hand occasionally, you can write as many yarns as you like. I'll give you a study, and send for a truckload of
writing gear at once, if you like. Is that the only horror you had to tell me?”

I bowed my head.

“Well, I can have you now,” he said gently, folding me softly in his arms with such tender reverence that I cried out in pain, “Oh, Hal, don't, don't!” and struggled free. I was ashamed, knowing I was not worthy of this.

He flushed a dusky red. “Am I so hateful to you that you cannot bear my touch?” he asked half wistfully, half angrily.

“Oh no; it isn't that. I'm really very fond of you, if you'd only understand,” I said half to myself.

“Understand! If you care for me, that is all I want to understand. I love you, and have plenty of money. There is nothing to keep us apart. Now that I know you care for me, I
will
have you, in spite of the devil.”

“There will be a great tussle between you,” I said mischievously, laughing at him. “Old Nick has a great hold on me, and I'm sure he will dispute your right.”

At any time Harold's sense of humor was not at all in accordance with his size, and he failed to see how my remark applied now.

He gripped my hands in a passion of pleading, as two years previously he had seized me in jealous rage. He drew me to him. His eyes were dark and full of entreaty; his voice was husky. “Syb, poor little Syb, I will be good to you! You can have what you like. You don't know what you mean when you say no.”

No; I would not yield. He offered me everything—but control. He was a man who meant all he said. His were no idle promises on the spur of the moment. But no, no, no, no, he was not for me. My love must know, must have suffered, must understand.

“Syb, you do not answer. May I call you mine? You must, you must, you must!”

His hot breath was upon my cheek. The pleasant, open, manly countenance was very near—perilously near. The intoxication of his love was overpowering me. I had no hesitation about trusting him. He was not distasteful to me in any way. What was the good of waiting for that other—the man who had suffered, who
knew, who understood? I might never find him; and, if I did, ninety-nine chances to one he would not care for me.

“Syb, Syb, can't you love me just a little?”

There was a winning charm in his manner. Nature had endowed him liberally with virile fascination. My hard, uncongenial life had rendered me weak. He was drawing me to him; he was irresistible. Yes; I would be his wife. I grew dizzy, and turned my head sharply backward and took a long, gasping breath, another and another, of that fresh cool air suggestive of the grand old sea and creak of cordage and bustle and strife of life. My old spirit revived, and my momentary weakness fled. There was another to think of than myself, and that was Harold. Under a master hand I would be harmless; but to this man I would be as a two-edged sword in the hand of a novice—gashing his fingers at every turn, and eventually stabbing his honest heart.

It was impossible to make him see my refusal was for his good. He was as a favorite child pleading for a dangerous toy. I desired to gratify him, but the awful responsibility of the aftereffects loomed up and deterred me.

“Hal, it can never be.”

He dropped my hands and drew himself up.

“I will not take your no till the morning. Why do you refuse me? Is it my temper? You need not be afraid of that. I don't think I'd hurt you; and I don't drink, or smoke, or swear very much; and I've never destroyed a woman's name. I would not stoop to press you against your will if you were like the ordinary run of women; but you are such a queer little party, that I'm afraid you might be boggling at some funny little point that could easily be wiped out.”

“Yes; it is only a little point. But if you wipe it out you will knock the end out of the whole thing—for the point is myself. I would not suit you. It would not be wise for you to marry me.”

“But I'm the only person concerned. If you are not afraid for yourself, I am quite satisfied.”

We faced about and walked homeward in unbroken silence—too perturbed to fall into our usual custom of chewing bush leaves as we went.

I thought much that night when all the house was abed. It was tempting. Harold would be good to me, and would lift me from this life of poverty, which I hated, to one of ease. Should I elect to remain where I was, till the grave there was nothing before me but the life I was leading now: my only chance of getting above it was by marriage, and Harold Beecham's offer was the one chance of a lifetime. Perhaps he could manage me well enough. Yes; I had better marry him.

And I believe in marriage—that is, I think it the most sensible and respectable arrangement for the replenishing of a nation which has yet been suggested. But marriage is a solemn issue of life. I was as suited for matrimony as any of the sex, but only with an exceptional helpmeet—and Harold was not he. My latent womanliness arose and pointed this out so plainly that I seized my pen and wrote:

Then I crept into bed beside my little sister, and though the air inside had not cooled, and the room was warm, I shivered so that I clasped the chubby, golden-haired little sleeper in my arms that I might feel something living and real and warm.

“Oh, Rory, Rory!” I whispered, raining upon her lonely-hearted tears. “In all the world is there never a comrade strong and true to teach me the meaning of this hollow, grim little tragedy—life? Will it always be this ghastly aloneness? Why am I not good and pretty and simple like other girls? Oh, Rory, Rory, why was I ever born? I am of no use or pleasure to anyone in all the world!”

The morning came, breakfast, next Harold's departure. I shook my head and slipped the note into his hand as we parted. He rode slowly down the road. I sat on the step of the garden gate, buried my face in my hands, and reviewed the situation. I could see my life, stretching out ahead of me, barren and monotonous as the thirsty track along which Harold was disappearing. Today it was washing, ironing tomorrow, next day baking, after that scrubbing—thus on and on. We would occasionally see a neighbor or a tea agent, a tramp or an Assyrian hawker. By hard slogging against flood, fire, drought, pests, stock diseases, and the sweating occasioned by importation, we could manage to keep bread in our mouths. By training and education I was fitted for naught but what I was, or a general slavey, which was many degrees worse. I could take my choice. Life was too much for me. What was the end of it, what its meaning, aim, hope, or use?

In comparison to millions, I knew that I had received more than a fair share of the goods of life; but knowing another has leprosy makes our cancer none the easier to bear.

My mother's voice, sharp and cross, roused me. “Sybylla, you lazy, unprincipled girl, to sit scheming there while your poor old mother is at the wash tub. You sit idling there, and then by and by you'll be groaning about this terrible life in which there's time for nothing but work.”

How she fussed and bothered over the clothes was a marvel to me. My frame of mind was such that it seemed it would not
signify if all our clothes went to the dogs, and the clothes of our neighbors, and the clothes of the whole world, and the world itself for the matter of that.

“Sybylla, you are a dirty, careless washer. You've put Stanley's trousers in the boil and the color is coming out of them, and your father's best white handkerchief should have been with the first lot, and here it is now.”

Poor Mother got crosser as she grew weary with the fierce heat and arduous toil, and as I in my abstraction continued to make mistakes, but the last straw was the breaking of an old cup which I accidentally pushed off the table.