§ 16
He made the horses fast to the fence, carefully and deliberately; and meantime she was gathering golden-rod. She knew that she made a picture in the midst of flowers. She was very much occupied as he came to her side.
A moment later she heard his voice: “Miss Castleman.”
Panic seized her again, but she looked up, with her last flicker of courage. “Well?” she asked.
“There is something I want to tell you,” he began. “I can’t play this game with you—I am no match for you at all.”
“Why—what do you mean?” she managed to say.
As usual, she knew just what he meant. “I am not a man who can play with his emotions,” he said. “You must understand this at the very outset—the thing is real to me, and I’ve got to know quickly whether or not it is real to you.”
There he was! Like a storm of wind that threatened to sweep away her pretenses, the whole pitiful little structure of her coquetry. But she could not let the structure go; it was her only shelter, and she strove desperately to hold it in place. “Why should you assume that I play with my emotions?” she demanded.
“You play, not with your own, but with other peoples’ emotions,” he replied. “I know; I’ve heard about you—long ago.”
She drew herself up haughtily. “You do not approve of me, Mr. Shirley? I’m very sorry.”
“You must know—” he began.
But she went on, in a rush of defensive recklessness: “You think I’m hollow—a coquette—a trifler with hearts. Well, I am. It’s all I know.” She flung her head up, looking at him defiantly.
“No, Miss Castleman,” he said, “it’s not all you know!”
But her recklessness was driving her—that spirit of the gambler that was in the blood of all her race. “It is all I know.” She bent over and began strenuously to pluck sprays of golden-rod.
“To break men’s hearts?” he asked.
She laughed scornfully. “I had a great-aunt, Lady Dee—perhaps you’ve heard of her. She taught me—and I’ve found out through much experience that she was right.” She gazed at him boldly, over the armful of flowers. “‘Sylvia, never let yourself be sorry for men. Let them take care of themselves. They have all the advantage in the game. They are free to come and go, they pick us up and look us over and drop us when they feel like it. So we have to learn to manage them. And, believe me, my child, they like it—it’s what they’re made for!’”
“And you believe such things as that?”
She laughed, a superbly cynical laugh, and began to gather more flowers. “I used to think they were cruel—when I was young. But now I know that Aunt Lady was right. What else have men to do but to make love to us? Isn’t it better for them than getting drunk, or gambling, or breaking their necks hunting foxes? ‘It’s the thing that lifts them above the brute,’ she used to say. ‘Naturally, the more of them you lift, the better.’”
“Did she teach you to deceive men deliberately?”
“She told me that when she was ordering her wedding trousseau, she was engaged to a dozen; a cousin of hers was engaged to another dozen, and couldn’t make up her mind which to choose, so she sent notes to them all to say that she’d marry the man who got to her first.”
He smiled—his slow, quiet smile. Sylvia did not know how he was taking these things; nor did his next remark enlighten her. “Did it not surprise you to be taught that men were the centre of creation?”
“No. They taught me that God was a man.”
He laughed, then became grave. “Why do you need so many men? You can’t marry but one.”
“Not in the South. But when I am ready to marry that one, I want it to be the one I want; and the only way to be sure is to have a great many wanting you. When a man sees a girl so surrounded with suitors that he can’t get near her, he knows it’s the one girl in the world for him. Aunt Lady had a saying about it, full of wisdom.” And Sylvia looked very wise herself. “‘Men are sheep!’”
“I see,” he said, somewhat grimly. “I fear, Miss Castleman, I cannot enter such a competition.”
“Is it cowardice?”
“Perhaps. It has been said that discretion is the better part of valor. You see, to me love is not a game, but a reality. It could never be that to you, I fear.”
Poor Sylvia! She was trying desperately hard to remember and make use of her training. But the rules she had learned were, so to speak, for fresh-water sailing; no one had ever thought that her frail craft might be blown out upon a stormy ocean like this. Picture her as a terrified navigator, striving to steer with a broken rudder, and gazing up into a mountain-wave that comes roaring down upon her!
He was a man who meant what he said. She had tried her foolish arts upon him and had only disgusted him. He was going away; and once he had left her, she would be powerless to get hold of him again!
Love could never be a reality to her, he had said. With sudden tears in her voice she exclaimed, “It could! It could!”
His whole aspect changed in a moment. A fire seemed to leap into his eyes. “You mean that?” he asked. And that was enough for her. As he moved towards her, she backed away a step or two. She thrust out the great bunch of golden-rod, filling his arms with that, and retreated farther into the yellow field.
He stood for a moment, nonplussed, looking rather comical with his unexpected load. Then he turned away without a word, and went to where his horse was fastened, and began to tie the flowers to his saddle.
She joined him before he had finished and mounted her own horse, saying casually, “It is late. We must return.” He mounted and rode beside her in silence.
At last he remarked, “You are going away this afternoon?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Then where can I see you?”
“You will have to come to my home.”
There was a pause. “It will be a difficult experience,” he observed. “You will have to help me through it.”
She answered, promptly, “You must come as any other man would come. You must learn to do that—you must simply not know what other people are thinking.”
At which he smiled sadly. “There is nothing in that. When everybody in the world is thinking one thing about you, you find there’s no use pretending not to know what it is.”
There he was again—simple and direct. He had a vision of the hostility of her relatives, the horror of her friends; he went on to speak his thoughts quite baldly. Was she prepared to face these difficulties? She might have the courage, she might not; but at least she must be forewarned, and not encounter them blindly. She said, “My own people will be kind, I assure you.” And when he smiled dubiously, she added, “Leave it to me. I promise you I’ll manage them.”