“I’d day-dreamed for years about him before he came, but it was all romantic and impossible nonsense. I don’t think I ever realised that he was the author of his own letters, and I persisted in imagining him a mixture of Byron, Marmion, Robert Dudley, Eugene Wrayburn, Launcelot, and several of Ouida’s earlier heroes. Of course, my imagination wore down a good deal after I came out and saw more of the world; nevertheless, when Cecil did come, he was wholly unlike anything I had concocted. But, somehow, he seemed quite natural, even in the first moment, and I would not have had him otherwise for the world. He seemed made for me, and it didn’t take me a second to get used to him.”
“Well?” Lord Barnstaple was watching her closely; the slightest acting would not have escaped him. She spoke with some hesitation, her eyes turned aside.
“He only stayed a little while, and I didn’t see him again for three days. During those days, and during two weeks a little later when I was alone again—he left me for a bear!—I did harder thinking than I’d ever done before. I realised two things, especially the second time: I was frightfully in love with him, and the whole happiness of our future was in my hands. Cecil had told me, with his usual frankness, that I’d have to do the adapting—he couldn’t. I’m sure he had no idea of being egoistical; he always looks facts in the face, and he merely stated one. And there’s no doubt about it! He’s made for good and all—he’s centuries old. That threw the whole thing on me.”
“Considering that you look things in the face with something of the intellectuality of a man, you have undertaken no light responsibility.”
“It’s the less light because I am a Californian, and we have twice the individuality and originality of any people in the United States. We always get quite huffy when we are spoken of as merely Americans. Of course we take enormous pride in our Southern descent, but we are—those of us that were born there—Californians, first and last.”
“These fine distinctions are beyond me at present. Of course you will be good enough to initiate me further.”
“You need not laugh. Cecil did at first, but now he quite understands that it is the United States and California. What I was going to say was this: it’s the harder for us to adapt ourselves, in spite of the fact that we are malleable and made of a thousand particles. Compared with Englishwomen, who—who—are much more conservative and traditional, we are in a state of fusion. But the fact remains that we have tremendous individuality, and that we are—as Cecil says—self-conscious about it.”
“And you don’t fancy adapting yourself to anybody. Quite so.”
“It irritated and worried me at first, for I’d not only been on a pedestal, but I’d been a fearful little tyrant with men. You wouldn’t believe the way I used to treat them. Now”—she paused a moment, then blurted out: “I’m so much in love that I don’t care a rap about my individuality. I don’t care for a thing on earth but to be happy. Of course, before I married, I had made up my mind to make the best of many things I probably shouldn’t like, and not to attempt the impossible task of making Cecil over. But there is so much more in it than that. I am determined that my marriage shall be a success. I have had already enough happiness to want always more and more and more. I’ll live for that. I buried my private ambitions in the redwoods. It is a curious contradiction, that happiness is the one thing people really want, and that it is the one thing nearly everybody misses. I believe it is because people do not concentrate on it. They wish for it and make little grabs at it. I intend to concentrate on it, and live for nothing else. And of course that means that Cecil will be happy too. I’ll simply fling aside the thought of certain attributes I would wish Cecil had, and make the most of what he has. And, Heaven knows, Nature was not niggardly with him!”
Lord Barnstaple held his breath for half a moment. His interest had ceased to be speculative, and even, for the moment, paternal. He was in the presence of elemental passion and a shrewd modern brain, and the combination was a force from which he received a palpable shock. There was so profound a silence for several moments that Lee stirred uneasily, wondering if she had tried his interest too far. When he spoke, it was in his most matter-of-fact tone.