“I like that girl,” said Charlotte. “What became of her? How did it happen that you didn’t make the best of your opportunities in her case?”
“I did. She had me mighty anxious. But she played just a little too bluff a game. She got hold of a long-legged sergeant of volunteers and she let on that she didn’t have a minute to give me after he came along. I used to walk home from church with her pretty regularly, but the first Sunday after she picked up with him, she turned me down. I had to come along behind with her best friend: she was one of those girls that always have neglected women friends and run ‘em in and make you be civil to ‘em. I hated this other girl, and I was the maddest man that ever tagged up the street after his girl and another man. All of a sudden, I saw that every time she took a step, she turned the hem of her skirt with her heel. You know I just came to myself. I got to wondering if I wanted to marry a girl with a jay-bird heel like that, and I decided I didn’t. I enlisted, came out here, served my country in China, and took back talk from a lot of West Point popinjays for two years—damn their souls—and that was all the patriotism I had. She married her volunteer and he served his three years and got a commission. I saw by a paper not very long ago that they are in Samar now. She was a good fellow, that girl. I should like to see her again. If the fool killer tried to kill her, the gun wouldn’t go off, sure.”
“That is quite so,” Charlotte replied gravely, and then, as Martin relapsed into laziness again, she remained studying him and pondering the somewhat irrelevant motives which had influenced his life.
“A jay-bird heel!” She looked with amused scrutiny at his somewhat emphasized masculine beauty. What magnificence, what unconscious arrogance of self-esteem lay unrebuked in this innocent youth; for in spite of the fact that he had known sin as she had never known it, that his unrestrained instincts had reached forth into experiments with life from which not only her sex, but the inheritance of tradition and of environment had eternally debarred her—in spite of these facts, Charlotte had always a sense of cynical and satiated age beside his debonair innocence. It had been her lot to be both player and onlooker in that melodrama where the possession of ample means and the development of critical and æsthetic faculties have frowned upon the expression of a direct and creative ambition; and yet, where all that is subtly ambitious, and all that is meanly jealous, and all that is secretly arrogant, deprived of a natural and healthy expression, underlie and taint the whole body of society. She had come to realize that, in that world in which money must not be mentioned, money is the most indispensable necessity; that every instinct tabooed as vulgar has been so tabooed, because, when it is no longer recognized in speech, it may be the more successfully pursued in action. She had discovered that the exquisite charm of manner which is called high-bred unconsciousness is the result of a self-consciousness so unflagging that its possessor is incapable of losing herself utterly in any emotion; and that the final result of the developing process is an individuality whose utter selfishness and nullity are not patent simply because all the arts of society and all the material advantages of wealth are bent to the concealment of the truth. Collingwood was, as he had said of his sweetheart, “no fool.” He had a keen interest in life, a rather broad knowledge of men and affairs as they are judged by concrete results; but of that sense of social values which amounts almost to a cult with our so-called aristocratic classes, Martin was as ignorant as his primeval parents were of sin. Suddenly, as she looked at him, a quotation flashed into Charlotte’s mind. She formed the words with her lips as her memory groped for them:
The ancients set no value on that half feminine delicacy, that nervous sensibility which we call distinction, and on which we pride ourselves. For the distingué man of the present day, a salon is necessary; he is a dilettante and entertaining with ladies; although capable of enthusiasms, he is inclined to scepticism; his politeness is exquisite; he dislikes foul hands and disagreeable odors, and shrinks from being confounded with the vulgar. Alcibiades had no apprehension of being confounded with the vulgar.
Martin opened his eyes as she was breathing the words to herself, but she did not stop. He stared at her, and when she paused, he asked:
“What kind of hoodoo was that?”
“That, O my Alcibiades, was a charm.” She leaned forward and kissed him—a half repentant, wholly tender little caress. It pleased him, for while she was ready enough to be petted, Charlotte was slow to offer endearments. Lifelong habit was stronger even than the impulses of a naturally demonstrative nature.
“Who are you hoodooing? Me?”
“No: myself. It was I that needed the charm.”