“I wish—” she whimpered, “I were—dead—”
And then I got her story.
This Benjamin Forbes had lived next door to the Parrishes in New York, and he did until Leslie was eighteen, which was the year before she “came out,” (whatever that is) anyway, he used to help Leslie with her lessons, and take her to the Zoo and riding in the park, and he bought her candy, (the hard, healthy variety that comes in jars and is no good, but the only sort she was permitted to eat, and she said she appreciated the fact that his intentions were kind) and he even used to go to the dentist’s with her while she was having her teeth straightened.
Well, she said that he never thought of her except as a little girl, but that she adored him, and that one night when she was at a fudge party at boarding school—and she was only sixteen at the time—when the other girls were discussing and planning their husbands, she, Leslie, suddenly knew what sort she wanted, and that the sort was Ben.
And she placed him on an altar then, (I quote; for Leslie’s style is not mine) and she never wavered once although she had much attention paid to her, and had had two and a half proposals—the half coming from the fact that her father plunked right in the center of the third one, and evicted the suitor, who left in such agitation that he went without his hat. (Leslie kept it for a souvenir) However, to get on, Mr. Forbes’ younger brother wasn’t strong, and so Mr. Forbes bought a ranch and went out there, and he liked it and they stayed.
He came back after four years, and offered to take Leslie to the Hippodrome, which showed he didn’t know she had grown up, but she suggested a Russian play instead, and he took her there, but she said she could see he didn’t enjoy it, and that he was not pleased with her having matured and that he rather resented it, and he didn’t seem to know how to talk to her, and he acted baffled, and she said that, as he groped, and unconsciously showed his disappointment, every dream and hope of hers was scattered in the dust. (I am quoting Leslie again) Well, he left after he had been in New York a week, but the night before he left Leslie asked him frankly why he didn’t like her, (she told him that she could see he didn’t) and then he admitted that he was a little disappointed.
“I like girls,” he said, “who can work, and who don’t make playing their only work. All you can do is go to teas and poppycock parties, now isn’t it?” (She said he was gentle, but that he told her all he felt)
“You can’t,” he went on, “even play the piano as well as you did at fourteen; you can’t keep house, can you?” (And Leslie couldn’t) “And it seems to me,” he ended, “that you are content to be a pretty little parasite, and that disappoints me.”
And his saying that sent her to Florence, and it started, she said, a ceaseless ache in her heart. And the ache grew too large to keep hidden, and Leslie confided in Viola; and Viola, in an effort to make Miss Meek realize that Leslie was away out of her natural placing, told Miss Meek that Leslie’s broken heart had led her to seek the solace of work in these humble surroundings. And Viola’s talking to Miss Meek was made by the fact that Viola hated sickness, couldn’t bear being with people who were sick, and—had to talk to some one.