The Earth Trembled

by Edward Payson Roe

Clancy would be long in learning to understand Miss Ainsley. He might never reach the secret of her life, and certainly would not unless he bluntly asked her to marry him—asked her so bluntly and persistently that all the wiles of which woman is capable opened no avenue of escape. She was an epicure of the finest type. If she had been asked to a banquet on Mount Olympus, she would have preferred to dine from the one delicious dish of ambrosia most to her taste and to sip only the choicest brand of nectar. Profusion, even at a feast of the gods, would have no charms for her. She had begun to see the world so early and had seen so much of it that she had learned the art of elimination to perfection. Sensuous to the last degree, but not sensual, she had a cool self-control and a fineness of taste which led her to choose but a few refined pleasures at a time and then to enjoy them deliberately and until satiety pointed to a new choice. Keen of intellect, she had studied society and with almost the skill of a naturalist had recognized the various types of men and women. This cool observation had taught her much worldly wisdom. She saw all about her, mere girls jaded with life already, faded young women keeping up with the fashionable procession as fagged out soldiers drag themselves along in the rear of a column. She had seen fresh young debutantes rush into the giddy whirl to become pallid from the excess of one season. At one time, she and other friends of hers had been exultant, excited and distracted by their many admirers and suitors. She soon wearied, however, of this indiscriminate slaughter, and the devoted eager attentions, the manifest desires and hopes of commonplace men, so far from kindling a sense of triumph and power, almost made her ill. She became like a knight of the olden time who had hewn down inferiors until he was sick of gore.

And so she gradually withdrew from the fashionable rout, took time for reading and study and the perfection of her accomplishments. She accepted merely such invitations as were agreeable to her, smiling contemptuously at the idea that in order to maintain position in society one must wear herself out by rushing around to everything; and society respected her all the more. It became a triumph to secure her presence; but she only went where everything would accord with her taste and inclination. This was true of her life abroad as well as at home. Conscious of her father's wealth, and that, apart from an unexacting companionship to him, she could do as she pleased, she proposed to make the most of life as she estimated it. She would have all the variety she wished, but she would take it leisurely. She would not perpetrate the folly of gulping pleasures, still less would she permit herself to fall tumultuously in love with some ordinary man only to waken from a romantic dream to discover how ordinary he was.

She was also too shrewd, indeed one may almost say too wise, to think of an ambitious marriage. The man of millions or the man of rank or fame could never buy her unless personally agreeable to her. Yet she was rarely without a suitor, whom to a certain point she encouraged. Unless a man possessed some real or fancied superiority which pleased or interested her, she was practically inaccessible to him. She would be courtesy itself, yet by her strong will and tact would speedily make a gentleman understand, "You have no claim upon me; your wishes are nothing to me." If he interested her, however, if she admired him even slightly, she would give him what she might term a chance. Then to her mind their relations became much like a duel; she at least would conquer him; he might subdue her if he could; she would give him the opportunity, and if he could find a weak place in her polished armor and pierce her heart she would yield. The question was whether she had a heart, and she was not altogether sure of this herself. On one thing, however, she was resolved—she would not give up her liberty, ease and epicurean life for the duties, obligations and probable sorrows of wifehood, unless she met a man who had the power to make this course preferable.

During Clancy's visit to New York in the winter, Mr. Ainsley had spoken of him to his daughter in terms that interested her before she even saw the young man, and the moment the experienced woman of the world (for she was a woman of the world, though but little past her majority) looked upon him she was still more interested, recognizing at a glance the truth that whatever Clancy might be, he was not commonplace. This explains why he was perplexed by the intentness and soft fire of her eyes. If the way opened, she was inclined to give him "a chance." It might cost him dear, as it had others, but that was his affair. She felt that he was highly honored and distinguished in being given what she contemptuously denied to the great majority. The way had opened. She was in Charleston, and now, this particular and lovely June evening found her on a balcony overlooking the shining ripples of the bay, reclining in a cane chair with her head leaning against a pillar and her eyes fixed on him with all the dangerous fascination they possessed. Some soft, white clinging material draped her form that was rendered more graceful than usual by her well-chosen attitude. A spray from an ivy vine hung above her, and its slightly moving shadow flickered on her throat and bosom. She knew she was entrancingly beautiful; so did he. He felt that if he were an artist nothing was left to be desired. As a man he was flattered with her preference and charmed with her beauty. He did not and could not believe that he had more than a passing interest in her mind as yet, and he felt that she would never be more to him than a gifted lovely friend, who could at one and the same time gratify his taste and bestow fine intellectual companionship. They talked freely with lapses of silence between them. These she would occasionally break with little snatches of song from some opera. Her familiarity with life abroad enabled her to say much which supplemented his reading and which interested him. So he was not averse to these interviews and was conscious of no danger.

To her they had an increasing pleasure. She was delighted that Clancy thawed so deliberately, that instead of speedily verging toward sentiment he found more pleasure in her intellectuality than in her outward beauty. So many others to whom she had given a chance had quickly lost both their heads and hearts, and she was beginning to rejoice in the belief that it might require a summer's tactics to beguile him of either. His gray eyes, which appeared dark in the moonlight, were clearly regarding her with quiet admiration, but instead of paying a compliment he would broach some topic so interesting in itself that before she knew it she was talking well and even brilliantly.

This present evening he did pay her a compliment, however, which delighted her. She had stated her view of a subject, and he had replied, "I must differ with you most decidedly, Miss Amsley." Then he added with a little apologetic laugh, "I could have made such a remark to very few ladies. I would have said, 'I beg your pardon, do not think I am contradicting you, but possibly on further reflection—' In brief, I would have gone through the whole conventional circumlocution. You are a woman of mind, and you put your views so strongly and clearly that I forget everything except your thought. Good reason why, your thought is so interesting, all the more so because it is your view, not mine, and because I do not agree with you. Have I made sufficient apology?"

"You have done much more, Mr. Clancy, you have paid me the only kind of a compliment that I enjoy. I am sick of conventionalities, and as for ordinary compliments, I am as satiated as one would be if the entire contents of Huyler's candy-shop had been sent to him."

"Oh, I knew that much before I had seen you five minutes. The only question in my mind was whether you had not been made ill mentally by them as one would be physically by the candy."

"In other words, whether I was a fool or not."

"Precisely."