“I can’t conceive myself, Martin, playing on your jealousy. The whole idea is abhorrent to me. Jealousy implies distrust. Do you think me capable of a flirtation with Judge Barton? Do you think I should enjoy making you distrust me?”
Martin’s face was a study. “You might not mean anything but a little fun,” he said apologetically. “Most women begin that way. And then you might find that you liked him best. That happens. It happens often. And the Judge is a big somebody, and I am a pearl-fisher.”
His tone grew bitter as he pronounced the last words. It was almost the first time that Charlotte had heard him refer to the worldly distinctions that he affected to despise. But if he had expected his self-disparagement to bring him a reward in a counter disparagement of the Judge, he was disappointed. Charlotte sat on his knee, a very earnest figure, her teeth nipping her lower lip, her brows frowning with a very real perplexity. Her manner brought back to him his old fear of her unexpectedness in thought and action. But even as he sat wondering, she turned and smiled, and he drew a long breath of relief.
“We may as well have this out now,” she said. “Perhaps I am making a mistake in revealing myself to you frankly. I think men understand the other sort of woman better, the one who plays upon their jealousy. I believe they value her higher.” She closed his protesting lips with a gentle finger. “I am afraid that I do not belong wholly to the twentieth century, Martin. They call it the age of individualism. But I believe yet in those old tenets which were not individual opinions, but the joint consensus of generations seeking a livable basis for men and women. I believe in marriage and the family, and a lot of old-fashioned things. I believe that what chastity is to a woman, physical courage is to a man. I believe that women are born into this world to bear children and that men are born to fight for woman and child. The men of the present day seem to entertain a dream of universal peace, so perhaps the women are excusable for entertaining a dream of universal barrenness. However, that’s irrelevant. We can discuss that another time. But when I took you for my husband, Martin, believing in all these old-fashioned ideas, I did it in the consciousness that the choice was final, the determining factor of my life. So long as you live, there is between me and every other man in the world a barrier (I know not what it is) across which my mind will never step, and across which no man will ever try to address me twice. No, I won’t be kissed—it is the first time I have ever repelled a caress from you, but to me this moment is too serious for caresses. You have the man’s right to resent another man’s possessive thought of me; but you have no right to be jealous of me. I do not say that I will always love you. There are offences which you could commit against me which would turn my love to hatred. I do not pose as the angelic, forgiving woman. I give fidelity. I demand it in return. If you ever cease to love me, somehow, if it breaks my heart, I shall cease to love you. I would not submit to personal brutality from you or from any living being. But so long as you live there will be, in a sentimental sense, but one man in the world for me. I want you to know that, to understand it and feel it in every fibre of your being, even though I know you hold me cheaper for so understanding it.” Her bosom heaved, her cheeks were fiery, and she would have sprung from his knee only that he held her in a clasp that was iron. His own eyes flashed a reply to hers.
“You had no cause to say that last,” he said hotly.
“No cause, when ten minutes ago, you assured me of my unlikeness to other women! Look into your heart of hearts and ask yourself if I am a dearer possession now that you know that, come good or ill, with you or apart from you, in love or in anger, I hold myself yours and no other man’s. And I do so not out of any false loyalty to you, for there are conditions which might cancel your right to ask loyalty. No: it is loyalty to myself. And this much I know of the whole male sex; that while you are infinitely content to know that there are women who can entertain such ideals and hold to them at any sacrifice, you hold the individual woman cheaper for the knowledge.”
She stared at him accusingly, and at first, half confounded, half amused with her unusual intensity, he tried to stare back; but in the end, his eyes fell and a dull shame burned in his cheek. For he knew that what she said was true, and that in the very moment of her assurances, he felt the loss of something to guard, felt that easy-going surety which a man of his experiences with women knows only too well how to diagnose. However, another emotion of a very great pride in her capacity and in her frankness and a sense of guilt made him very abject. He held her when she tried again to slip from his arms; and when, to his consternation, she put her head down on his shoulder and her body was shaken with noiseless sobs, he was as comforting as she could have desired him to be, and she felt a repentant tear mingle with her own.
She allowed herself no luxury of grief, and after a few convulsive efforts got control of herself. But she lay with her head on his shoulder for a long time, and when she spoke it was with a mournful dignity.
“We have had our tragic moment,” she said, “and I with my wretched love of staring facts in the face have unearthed a family skeleton. Let’s put it back in the cupboard, Martin. Yours was a bogey skeleton, and I was so anxious to show it up for a fraud, that I dragged out the genuine one. That’s singularly in keeping with my lifelong habit. Don’t look so long-faced, Martin. Are you angry?” She put her face caressingly against his.
“Angry! Why should I be angry? I wish you didn’t analyze things so minutely, Lottie.”