CHAPTER VIII.
TWO THINGS SHE KNEW ABOUT LOVE
This time the blue and brown eyes met squarely. Marjorie’s expression was a mixture of tolerance, vexation and resignation.
“I said it.” Jerry read the glance aright. “I’ll say it for myself, too. Nothing would please me better. You know the rest. It’s the first, last and only appearance of Jeremiah as a buttinski. I knew that someday, somehow, somewhere I’d say something about you and Hal. ’Scuse me, Bean, ’scuse me.” Jerry’s apology was half joking, half earnest.
“Why—I—why—Jerry!” Marjorie stammered. She grew rosy from white throat to the roots of her curly hair. Concerning Hal’s avowal of love, her captain had been her only confidant. Even Constance did not know the circumstances of that bright summer afternoon which she had spent with Hal aboard the Oriole. “Why—Jurry-miar!” She used Danny Seabrooke’s nickname for Jerry, with a rather tremulous laugh. “Who—I never—”
“Nope; of course not.” Jerry’s reply was comfortingly positive. “Both you and Hal belong to the high inner order of the tight-shell clam. I can only guess how you stand with each other. I know he loves you. Never think he told me that. I knew it almost as soon as we first met you. It’s the same true love, broadened and deepened, that he’s giving you today. I wish you cared about him even one-half as much as he cares about you. You’d be loving him some. But I’m afraid you don’t. And that’s flat.”
“No, Jerry I don’t, and it is a relief to be able to say it frankly to you.” Marjorie’s recent confusion was clearing away. Her grave serenity of tone robbed her candid confession of all harshness.
“I’ve always hated to believe you didn’t for Hal’s sake. I was pretty sure of it last summer at the beach,” was Jerry’s sober answer.
“I’m never going to marry, Jeremiah,” Marjorie informed her room-mate with a kind of pessimistic solemnity. “If I couldn’t love Hal enough to be his wife, knowing how splendid he is, surely I couldn’t marry any other man. Don’t think me selfish because I put my work at Hamilton above love. It is life to me—my highest, most complete ideal.”
Jerry surveyed her chum’s lovely, but very dignified features for an instant. She was divided between a desire to admire Marjorie’s lofty purpose in life and shake her soundly for her deliberate repudiation of Hal and his warm true love.
“I—I’m not sorry you spoke to me of Hal. I’d like you to know that—that we’re not betrothed—nor never will be.” Marjorie’s voice dropped on the last four words. “Only Captain and General know. Not even Connie. I don’t think I have the right to tell her. If Hal tells Laurie, he may ask Laurie to tell Connie. I hope so.”