“Easy, my friend, to issue a ukase.” And the redoubtable Charlotte smiled grimly.
VI
Soon after four the same afternoon Jack returned to Broad Place in the garb of civilization. He was in great heart. Milly had some good-natured chaff to offer as to Mary’s need of sticking plaster. But the young man turned this persiflage aside with such a serious air that the quick-witted Milly knew it for an omen. Having learned the set of the wind she soon found a pretext for leaving them together.
Milly’s sense of a coming event, which her sudden flight from the room had seemed to make the more inevitable, was shared by Mary. Somehow she felt that the moment of moments had come. This thing had to be. But as a hand brown and virile quietly took hers in a strong grip, she began almost bitterly to deplore the whole business. And yet, when all was said, she was absolutely thrilled. He was so truly a man that a girl, no matter what her talent and quality, could hardly refrain from pride in his homage.
There was no beating about the bush.
“Will you marry me?” he said.
She grew crimson. How she had dreaded that long foreseen question! Days ago common sense and worldly prudence had coldly informed her that there could only be one possible answer. The case of Milly herself had furnished a sinister parallel. And the sensitive, perhaps over-sensitive pride of one who had begun at the bottom of the ladder, revolted from all the ensuing complications. Such a situation seemed now to involve her in mysteries far down within, at the very core of being—mysteries she had hardly been aware of until that moment.
Again the question. She looked away, quite unable just then to meet his eyes. Her will was strong, her determination clear, but in spite of herself a deadly feeling crept upon her that she was a bird in a snare. Certain imponderables were in the room. The life forces were calling to each other; there was a curious magnetism in the very air they breathed.
She had meant and intended “No,” but every instant made that little word more difficult to utter. A dominant nature had stolen the keys of her heart before she knew it. And as she fought against the inevitable, a subtle trick of the ape on the chain in the human breast, weighed the scales unfairly. Cousin Blanche and Cousin Marjorie were flung oddly, irrelevantly, fantastically, upon the curtain of her mind. The challenge of their ironical eyes was like a knife in the flesh. And then that private, particular devil, of whose existence, until that moment, she had been unaware, suddenly forced her to take up the gage those eyes had flung.
VII