"Do you know why I want to marry you?" I demanded of Rosalind, in such surroundings, apropos of a Mrs. Vokins who had taken a house in Lichfield for the winter, and had been at school somewhere in the backwoods with Aunt Marcia, and was "dying to meet me."
She answered, in some surprise: "Why, because you have the good taste to be heels over head in love with me, of course."
I took possession of her hands. "If there is anything certain in this world of uncertainties, it is that I am not the least bit in love with you. Yet, only yesterday--do you remember, dear?"
She answered, "I remember."
"But I cannot, for the life of me, define what happened yesterday. I merely recall that we were joking, as we always do when together, and that on a wager I loosened your hair. Then as it tumbled in great honey-coloured waves about you, you were silent, and there came into your eyes a look I had never seen before. And even now I cannot define what happened, Rosalind! I only know I caught your face between my hands, and for a moment held it so, with fingers that have not yet forgotten the feel of your soft, thick hair,--and that for a breathing space your eyes looked straight into mine. Something changed in me then, my lady. Something changed in you, too, I think."
Then Rosalind said, "Don't, Jaques--!" She was horribly embarrassed.
"For I knew you willed me to possess you, and that possession would seem as trivial as a fiddle in a temple.... Yet, too, there was a lustful beast, somewhere inside of me, which nudged me to--kiss you, say! But nothing happened. I did not even kiss you, my beautiful and wealthy Rosalind."
"Don't keep on talking about the money," she wailed. "Why, you can't believe I think you mercenary!"
"I would estimate your intellect far more cheaply, my charming Rosalind, if you thought anything else; for of course I am. I wanted to settle myself, you conceive, and as an accomplice you were very eligible. I now comprehend it is beyond the range of rationality, dear stranger, that we should ever marry each other; and so we must not. We must not, you comprehend, since though we lived together through ten patriarchal lifetimes we would die strangers to each other. For you, dear clean-souled girl that you are, were born that you might be the wife of a strong man and the mother of his sturdy children. The world was made for you and for your offspring; and in time your children will occupy this world and make the laws for us irrelevant folk that scribble and paint and design all useless and beautiful things, and thus muddle away our precious lives. No, you may not wisely mate with us, for you are a shade too terribly at ease in the universe, you sensible people."
"But I love Art," said Rosalind, bewildered.
"Yes,--but by the tiniest syllable a thought too volubly, my dear. You are the sort that quotes the Rubaiyat. Whereas I--was it yesterday or the day before you told me, with a wise pucker of your beautiful low, white brow, that I had absolutely no sense of the responsibilities of life? Well, I really haven't, dear stranger, as you appraise them; and, indeed, I fear we must postpone our agreement upon any possible subject, until the coming of the Coquecigrues. We see the world so differently, you and I,--and for that same reason I cannot but adore you, Rosalind. For with you I can always speak my true thought and know that you will never for a moment suspect it to be anything but irony. Ah, yes, we can laugh and joke together, and be thorough friends; but if there is anything certain in this world of uncertainties, it is that I am not, and cannot be, in love with you. And yet--I wonder now?" said I, and I rose and paced Aunt Marcia's parlour.
"You wonder? Don't you understand even now?" the girl said shyly. "I am not as clever as you, of course; I have known that for a long while, Jaques; and to-night in particular I don't quite follow you, my dear, but I love you, and--why, there is nothing I could deny you!"
"Then give me back my freedom," said I. "For, look you, Rosalind, marriage is proverbially a slippery business. Always there are a variety of excellent reasons for perpetrating matrimony; but the rub of it is that not any one of them insures you against to-morrow. Love, for example, we have all heard of; but I have known fine fellows to fling away their chances in life, after the most approved romantic fashion, on account of a pretty stenographer, and to beat her within the twelvemonth. And upon my word, you know, nobody has a right to blame the swindled lover for doing this--"
I paused to inspect the china pug-dog which squatted on the pink-tiled hearth and which glared inanely at the huge brass coal-box just opposite. Then I turned from these two abominations and faced Rosalind with a bantering flirt of my head.
"--For put it that I marry some entrancing slip of girlhood, what am I to say when, later, I discover myself irrevocably chained to a fat and dowdy matron? I married no such person, I have indeed sworn eternal fidelity to an entirely different person; and this unsolicited usurper of my hearth is nothing whatever to me, unless perhaps the object of my entire abhorrence. Yet am I none the less compelled to justify the ensuing action before an irrational audience, which faces common logic in very much the attitude of Augustine's famed adder! Decidedly I think that, on the whole, I would prefer my Freedom."
It was as though I had struck her. She sat as if frozen. "Jaques, is there another woman in this?"
"Why, in a fashion, yes. Yet it is mainly because I am really fond of you, Rosalind."
She handed me that exceedingly expensive ring the jeweler had charged to me. I thought her action damnably theatrical, but still, it was not as though I could afford to waste money on rings, so I took the trinket absent-mindedly.
"You are unflatteringly prompt in closing out the account," I said, with a grieved smile....
"Good-bye!" said Rosalind, and her voice broke. "Oh, and I had thought--! Well, as it is, I pay for the luxury of thinking, just as you forewarned me, don't I, Jaques? And you won't forget the hall-light? Aunt Marcia, you know--but how glad she will be! I feel rather near to Aunt Marcia to-night," said Rosalind.
