“I thought she was. The golden woman said——.”
Harry interrupted. “Oh, so you’ve been seeing her!” He pronounced her with his old hostility. “I wouldn’t see too much of her.”
Peter smiled quietly. How unjust Harry had always been to his brother’s women friends! He was still the mouth-organ boy, only a little too old now to climb trees to display his jealousy. Did he think that he could protect the Faun Man forever from marrying? Didn’t it ever enter his head that he might fall in love himself? And yet Peter sympathized with Harry, for he had the same feelings with regard to Kay. He would hate any man who tried to win her. That was a long way off—she was only thirteen at present. His thoughts came back to Harry. “So, if you were me, you wouldn’t see too much of her! Why not? I’ve been feeling—well, rather sorry for her.”
“You have, have you?” Harry laughed tolerantly. “Sorry for her! Pooh! People who begin by feeling sorry for Eve end by being sorry for themselves. She always starts her affairs like that, by getting people sorry for her. Don’t you know what’s the matter with her? She’s selfish—a lap-dog kind of woman, born to be petted, but of no use whatever in the world. She wants everyone to love her, and gives nothing in return. She doesn’t play the game, Peter; she expects to have a man always toddling after her, but she won’t marry him because——. I don’t know; I suppose it would disturb her to have children.” Harry paused, waiting for Peter to argue with him. When his remarks were met without challenge, he continued, “She doesn’t mean any harm—her sort never does; but she’s a jolly sight more dangerous than if she were immoral. She gambles like an expert as long as luck’s with her; the moment she loses, she pretends to be a little child who doesn’t understand the rules. So she wins all the time and never pays back. She’s kept my brother feverish for years, loving him, and then, when it comes to the point, not knowing whether she really loves him. Gives her a nice comfortable sense, when anything goes wrong with her investments, to feel that he’s always in the background. I’m sick of it. She’s a ship that’s always setting sail for new lands and never coming to anchor. Lorie’s too fine a chap to be kept dawdling his life away by a vain woman. Some day she won’t be quite so pretty—she dreads that already; it’s part of her shallowness. Then she’ll run to cover, if any man’ll have her.—— You don’t believe me. Suppose you think every woman’s wild to be married?”
“I don’t think that.” In this particular Peter flattered himself that he had had more experience than Harry.
Harry took him up shrewdly. “If you don’t think it, you wish you did. You’ll see, if you live long enough. There are heaps of well-bred women like Eve, with the greed of chorus-girls and the morals of refrigerators. And here’s something else for your protection—Eve can’t bear to see any woman loved except herself. Lorie knows all this, and still he’s infatuated—plays Dante to her Beatrice. She isn’t worth it. She tells him she isn’t worth it; that makes him think she’s noble. She—she sucks men’s souls out for the fun of doing it when she isn’t thirsty, and flings them in the gutter like squeezed oranges.”
Peter’s case was so nearly similar to the Faun Man’s that he couldn’t bear this conversation. It was as though Harry was describing and accusing Cherry. She sucks men’s souls out and flings them in the gutter like squeezed oranges. And Cherry hadn’t been thirsty either; she had pretended that she hadn’t wanted to do it.
“But Cherry,” he said, “do you know where she is and anything about her?”
Harry looked at him squarely, a little pityingly. He sat down and crossed his legs. “Yes. We took her abroad with us and dropped her at the convent-school. She’s—— I don’t know. She’s got a queer streak in her—she’s an exotic.” And then, “I suppose you know that she thinks she’s in love with Lorie?”
Peter bit his lip; he drew his knee up with his hands clasped about it. “I know that. And the Faun Man, does he care for her?”