A marrying man

by G. B. Stern

She must think this out while yet stunned to all anguish ... presently would come tears, and groping misery; futile rebellion; futile attempts at alleviation.... And logic would be drenched and helpless.

Think it out.... "I've met the woman who means all life to me, and all death, and——" That did not need much thinking out, at least. It was kind of Dacres to be so lucid.

... Patricia found herself wondering if the blow would have fallen with yet more fatal effect on her if it had occurred after their wild stolen week? She had not had the remotest conception of the terms on which the adventure was undertaken; had left it to Dacres—or to the inspiration of the moment. There had been a tingle in this haphazard prospect which had woken her at dawn with flushed cheeks, and fast-beating heart, and a gladness in her own daring that was part tremulous, part triumphant. Neither was she in the least aware if the man had made up his mind to any settled course of virtue or villainy—or whether he too were letting the moment decide....

Well—now she would never know. Maybe it was as well that chance had not allowed her the full reaping of happiness for its fuller aftermath of grief. Or might grief have been more tranquil in grateful recognition of the harvest gathered in before the rain?

"It doesn't matter...."

Dacres' offer of "our week of winter-sport," as though indeed nothing had happened to mar its fulfilment, goaded her to a fine flare of anger; she tore the letter violently across and across.... Then paused, half amused that she should have been betrayed into any such act of commonplace melodrama.... But how dared he suggest so coolly the spoiling of all that the past had given them, by this dead travesty of their exultant scheme? A smile twisted her sweet mocking mouth, as from infallible perception of the workings of his brain she followed out his mental evolutions which had resulted in the proposal....

Thus Dacres: "The man of the first degree would not have invited her, under the circumstances, from sheer indifference. The man of the second degree would not have invited her, nor even mentioned the plan fallen through, from motives of delicacy, from the fear to hurt her. The man of the third degree would elaborately have invited her to come after all and in spite of all; throughout the week insulting her by an extra show of chivalry, gentleness and charming consideration. And the man of the fourth degree, which is myself, pay her the compliment of supposing she would prefer to play up, as though indeed nothing had happened, to the hard good-fellowship and careless exacting brutality which would have been her lot by divine right, a month ago...."

"And the man of the fifth degree, Dacres," whispered Patricia, to the torn fragments of his letter littering the floor, "would not have committed the blunder of asking me to believe in all that careful balderdash.... The superman of the fifth degree would have behaved exactly like the man of the first degree—and would have let well alone. You're not quite up to that, are you, Dacres?"...

Funny—to have been jilted! Like being unseated when in full gallop. When would she ride again?—They say one ought to mount at once after a throw, or the nerve is gone....

Some of the numbness was passing away now.... Hurriedly she envisioned the sort of things that were bound to beset her while she beat her way through her bad time ... sodden and bewildered with tears; storms of gusty feeling leading to nowhere; leaden indifference to the stir and pulse of life around her;—then blindly stupid contemptible moods, when she would not, could not face her loss ... it was all a mistake—the explanation might come at any moment—Dacres might come at any moment ... moods of attempted evasion, cramming out thought by some frenzied occupation, wilfully wrenching her mind from contemplation of the truth ... other people—other men—anything ... artificially stuffing her ears, her sight, her logic; deliberately avoiding certain places; stumbling painfully over certain dates; alternation of sentimental memories with bombastic "don't care!"... More tears....