Madcap. George Gibbs

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СКАЧАТЬ her handkerchief, wept into it, her emotions too deep for other expression, while Hermia, now really moved, sank at her feet upon the floor, her arms about her Aunt's shoulders, and tried to comfort her. "I'm not the slightest use in the world, Auntie, dear. I haven't a single homely virtue to recommend me. I'm only fit to ride and dance and motor and frivol. And whom should I marry? Surely not Reggie Armistead or Crosby Downs! Reggie and I have always fought like cats across a wire, and as for Crosby—I would as life marry the great Cham of Tartary. No, dear, I'm not ready for marriage yet. I simply couldn't. There, there, don't cry. You've done your duty. I'm not worth bothering about. I'm not going to do anything dreadful. And besides—you know if anything did happen to me, the money would go to Millicent and Theodore."

      "I—I don't want anything to happen to you," said Mrs. Westfield, weeping anew.

      "Nothing will—you know I'm not hankering to die—but I don't mind taking a sporting chance with a game like that."

      "But what good can it possibly do?"

      Hermia Challoner laughed a little bitterly. "My dear Auntie, my life has not been planned with reference to the ultimate possible good. I'm a renegade if you like, a hoyden with a shrewd sense of personal morality but with no other sense whatever. I was born under a mad moon with some wild humor in my blood from an earlier incarnation and I can't—I simply can't be conventional. I've tried doing as other—and nicer—girls do but it wearies me to the point of distraction. Their lives are so pale, so empty, so full of pretensions. They have always seemed so. When I used to romp like a boy my elders told me it was an unnatural way for little girls to play. But I kept on romping. If it hadn't been natural I shouldn't have romped. Perhaps Sybil Trenchard is natural—or Caroline Anstell. They're conventional girls—automatic parts of the social machinery, eating, sleeping, decking themselves for the daily round, mere things of sex, their whole life planned so that they may make a desirable marriage. Good Lord, Auntie! And whom will they marry? Fellows like Archie Westcott or Carol Gouverneur, fellows with notorious habits which marriage is not likely to mend. How could it? No one expects it to. The girls who marry men like that get what they bargain for—looks for money—money for looks—"

      "But Trevelyan Morehouse!"

      Hermia paused and examined the roses in the silver vase with a quizzical air.

      "If I were not so rich, I should probably love Trevvy madly. But, you see, then Trevvy wouldn't love me. He couldn't afford to. He's ruining himself with roses as it is. And, curiously enough, I have a notion when I marry, to love—and be loved for myself alone. I'm not in love with Trevvy or any one else—or likely to be. The man I marry, Auntie, isn't doing what Trevvy and Crosby and Reggie Armistead are doing. He's different somehow—different from any man I've ever met."

      "How, child?"

      "I don't know," she mused, with a smile. "Only he isn't like Trevvy

       Morehouse."

      "But Mr. Morehouse is a very promising young man—"

      "The person I marry won't be a promising young man. Promising young men continually remind me of my own deficiencies. Imagine domesticating a critic like that, marrying a mirror for one's foibles and being able to see nothing else. No, thanks."

      "Whom will you marry then?" sighed Mrs. Westfield resignedly.

      Hermia Challoner caught her by the arm. "Oh, I don't know—only he isn't the kind of man who'd send me roses. I think he's something between a pilgrim and a vagabond, a knight-errant from somewhere between Heaven and the true Bohemia, a despiser of shams and vanities, a man so much bigger than I am that he can make me what he is—in spite of himself."

      "Hermia! A Bohemian! Such a person will hardly be found—"

      "O Auntie, you don't understand. I'm not likely to find him. I'm not even looking for him, you know, and just now I don't want to marry anybody."

      "I only hope when you do, Hermia, that you will commit no imprudence," said Mrs. Westfield severely.

      Hermia turned quickly.

      "Auntie, Captain Lundt of the Kaiser Wilhelm used to tell me that there were two ways of going into a fog," she said. "One was to go slow and use the siren. The other was to crowd on steam and go like h—."

      "Hermia!"

      "I'm sorry, Auntie, but that describes the situation exactly. I'm too wealthy to risk marrying prudently. I'd have to find a man who was a prudent as I was, which means that he'd be marrying me for my money—"

      "That doesn't follow. You're pretty, attractive—"

      "Oh, thanks. I know what I am. I'm an animated dollar mark, a financial abnormity, with just about as much chance of being loved for myself alone as a fox in November. When men used to propose to me I halted them, pressed their hands, bade them be happy and wept a tear or two for the thing that could not be. Now I fix them with a cold appraising eye and let them stammer through to the end. I've learned something. The possession of money may have its disadvantages, but it sharpens one's wits amazingly."

      "I'm afraid it sharpens them too much, my dear," said Mrs. Westfield coldly. She looked around the room helplessly as if seeking in some mute object tangible evidence of her niece's sanity.

      "Oh, well," she finished. "I shall hope and pray for a miracle to bring you to your senses." And then, "What have you planned for the spring?"

      "I'm going to 'Wake-Robin; first. By next week my aerodrome will be finished. My machine is promised by the end of May. They're sending a perfectly reliable mechanician—"

      "Reliable—in the air! Imagine it!"

      "—and I'll be flying in a month."

      The good lady rose and Hermia watched her with an expression in which relief and guilt were strangely mingled. Her conscience always smote her after one of her declarations of independence to her Aunt, whose mildness and ineptitude in the unequal struggle always left the girl with an unpleasant sense of having taken a mean advantage of a helpless adversary. To Hermia Mrs. Westfield's greatest effectiveness was when she was most ineffectual.

      "There's nothing more for me to say, I suppose," said Mrs. Westfield.

      "Nothing except that you approve," pleaded her niece wistfully.

      "I'll never do that," icily. "I don't approve of you at all. Why should I mince matters? You're gradually alienating me, Hermia—cutting yourself off from the few blood relations you have on earth."

      "From Millicent and Theodore? I thought that Milly fairly doted on me—"

      Mrs. Westfield stammered helplessly.

      "It's I—I who object. I don't like your friends. I don't think I would be doing my duty to their sainted father if—"

      "Oh, I see," said Hermia thoughtfully. "You think I may pervert—contaminate them—"

      "Not you—your friends—"

      "I was hoping that you would all come to 'Wake-Robin' for June."

      "I—I've made other plans," said Mrs. Westfield.

      Hermia's jaw set and her face hardened. They were thoroughly antipathetic СКАЧАТЬ