Mr. Incoul's Misadventure. Saltus Edgar

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СКАЧАТЬ “So you see,” she continued, “I shall have to go to San Francisco.”

      Mr. Incoul remained silent a moment. “If,” he said, at last, “if you will do me the honor to become my wife, in time you will care. It is painful for me to think of you accepting a position which at best is but a shade better than that of a servant, particularly so when I am able—nay, anxious,” he added, pensively—“to surround you with everything which can make life pleasant. I am not old,” he went on to say, “at least not so old that a marriage between us should seem incongruous. I find that I am sincerely attached to you—unselfishly, perhaps, would be the better word—and, if the privilege could be mine, the endeavor to make you happy would be to me more grateful than a second youth. Can you not accept me?”

      He had been speaking less to her than to the hat which he held in his hand. The phrases had come from him haltingly, one by one, as though he had sought to weigh each mentally before dowering it with the wings of utterance, but, as he addressed this question he looked up at her. “Can you not?” he repeated.

      Miss Barhyte raised a handkerchief to her lips and bit the shred of cambric with the disinvoltura of an heiress.

      “Why is it,” she queried, “why is it that marriage ever was invented? Why cannot a girl accept help from a man without becoming his wife?”

      Mr. Incoul was about to reply that many do, but he felt that such a reply would be misplaced, and he called a platitude to his rescue. “There are wives and wives,” he said.

      “That is it,” the girl returned, the color mounting to her cheeks; “if I could but be to you one of the latter.”

      He stared at her wonderingly, almost hopefully. “What do you mean?” he asked.

      “Did you ever read ‘Eugénie Grandet’?”

      “No,” he answered, “I never have.”

      “Well, I read it years ago. It is, I believe, the only one of Balzac’s novels that young girls are supposed to read. It is tiresome indeed; I had almost forgotten it, but yesterday I remembered enough of the story to help me to come to some decision. In thinking the matter over and over again as I have done ever since I last saw you it has seemed that I could not become your wife unless you were willing to make the same agreement with me that Eugénie Grandet’s husband made with her.”

      “What was the nature of that agreement?”

      “It was that, though married, they were to live as though they were not married—as might brother and sister.”

      “Always?”

      “Yes.”

      “No,” Mr. Incoul answered, “to such an agreement I could not consent. Did I do so, I would be untrue to myself, unmanly to you. But if you will give me the right to aid you and yours, I will—according to my lights—leave nothing undone to make you contented; and if I succeed in so doing, if you are happy, then the agreement which you have suggested would fall of itself. Would it not?” he continued. “Would it not be baseless? See—” he added, and he made a vague gesture, but before he could finish the phrase, the girl’s hands were before her face and he knew that she was weeping.

      Mr. Incoul was not tender-hearted. He felt toward Miss Barhyte as were she some poem in flesh that it would be pleasant to make his own. In her carriage as in her looks, he had seen that stamp of breeding which is coercive even to the dissolute. In her eyes he had discerned that promise of delight which it is said the lost goddesses could convey; and at whose conveyance, the legend says, the minds of men were enraptured. It was in this wise that he felt to her. Such exhilaration as she may have brought him was of the spirit, and being cold by nature and undemonstrative, her tears annoyed him. He would have had her impassive, as befitted her beauty. Beside, he was annoyed at his own attitude. Why should there be sorrow where he had sought to bring smiles? But he had barely time to formulate his annoyance into a thing even as volatile as thought—the girl had risen and was leaving the room.

      As she moved to the door Mr. Incoul hastened to open it for her, but she reached it before him and passed out unassisted.

      When she had gone he noticed that the sun was setting and that the room was even more hideous than before. He went again to the window wondering how to act. The entire scene was a surprise to him. He had come knowing nothing of the girl’s circumstances, and suddenly he learned that she was in indigence, unable perhaps to pay her board bills and worried by small tradesmen. He had come prepared to be refused and she had almost accepted him. But what an acceptance! In the nature of it his thoughts roamed curiously: he was to be a little more than kin, a little less than kind. She would accept him as a husband for out-of-door purposes, for the world’s sake she would bear his name—at arm’s length. According to the terms of her proposition were she ever really his wife it would be tantamount to a seduction. He was to be with her, and yet, until she so willed it, unable to call her his own. And did he refuse these terms, she was off, no one knew whither. But he had not refused, he told himself, he had indeed not refused, he had merely suggested an amendment which turned an impossibility into an allurement. What pleasanter thing could there be than the winning of one’s own wife? The idea was so novel it delighted him. For the moment he preferred it to any other; beside it his former experience seemed humdrum indeed. But why had she wept? Her reasons, however, he had then no chance to elucidate. Miss Barhyte returned as abruptly as she had departed.

      “Forgive me,” she said, advancing to where he stood, “it was stupid of me to act as I did. I am sorry—are we still friends?” Her eyes were clear as had she never wept, but there were circles about them, and her face was colorless.

      “Friends,” he answered, “yes, and more—” He hesitated a moment, and then hastily added, “It is agreed, then, is it not, you will be my wife?”

      “I will be your wife?”

      “As Balzac’s heroine was to her husband?”

      “You have said it.”

      “But not always. If there come a time when you care for me, then I may ask you to give me your heart as to-day I have asked for your hand?”

      “When that day comes, believe me,” she said, and her delicious face took on a richer hue, “when that day comes there will be neither asking nor giving, we shall have come into our own.”

      With this assurance Mr. Incoul was fain to be content, and, after another word or two, he took his leave.

      For some time after his departure, Miss Barhyte stood thinking. It had grown quite dark. Before the window a street lamp burned with a small, steady flame, but beyond, the azure of the electric light pervaded the adjacent square with a suggestion of absinthe and vice. One by one the opposite houses took on some form of interior illumination. A newsboy passed, hawking an extra with a noisy, aggressive ferocity as though he were angry with the neighborhood, and dared it come out and wrestle with him for his wares. There was a thin broken stream of shop-girls passing eastward; at intervals, men in evening dress sauntered leisurely to their dinners, to restaurants, or to clubland, and over the rough pavement there was a ceaseless rattle of traps and of wagons; the air was alive with the indefinable murmurs of a great city.

      Miss Barhyte noticed none of these things. She had taken her former seat on the sofa and sat, her elbow on her crossed knee, her chin resting in her hand, while the fingers touched and barely separated her lips. The light from without was just strong enough to reach her feet and make visible the gold clock on her silk stocking, but her face was in the shadow as were her thoughts.

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