The Gilded Chair: A Novel

by Melville Davisson Post

"I see that," she said. "I see the big purpose. But must one give up all one's little chance of happiness? Suppose one's feelings were against the judgment of one's family?"

"We must believe," he said, "that many persons are wiser than one."

"But does one's instinct, one's personal inclination never count?"

"It often counts," he said. "It often wrecks in a generation all that one's people have done."

"You make me afraid," said the girl. "Suppose in your big, sane island a woman felt that she ought not to do as her people told her. Suppose she felt it to be wrong. I do not mean that she loved some other man, because if she did, I think she could not be made to obey. But suppose she loved no one; suppose she only felt that this was not the thing to do. Ought she to give up that poor little instinct?"

The Duke of Dorset recited the stock answer to that query: Suppose a prince, called to rule for life a hereditary kingdom, were about to select a minister, would he go into the street and pick a man by instinct, or would he hear his parliament?

The girl made a helpless gesture.

"You convince me," she said, "and yet, one would like to believe that one's instinct can be trusted, that it is somehow above everything else, eternally right. One would like to believe that some little romance remained in the world; that some place, somewhere, the one, the real one, would find us if we only waited—if we only trusted to this feeling—if we only held fast to it in a sort of blind, persisting faith. But I suppose older people know."

The sun, slanting eastward, rippled on the sea. The boat lifted and fell. The Duke pulled back to the yacht. Swarms of boats were detaching themselves from the packed lines of the regattas. He took a sweep out in the bay to escape this moving hive. A furrow of shining water followed the boat. It widened and spread into a gilded track leading out into the sea.

The girl no longer spoke. The atmosphere, as of something vague, unreal, deepened around her. Again to the man there returned the impulse to know things intimate and personal about this woman whom he had found. Was she alone in the world with this curious old man? Had she no one nearer than this uncle? He remembered in one of the salons of the yacht, on the old man's table, a photograph in a big silver frame—the picture of a young man. He remembered the vivid impression that this picture had given him, an impression of a certain aggressive alertness that struck him as almost insolent—as though the person bearing this face were accustomed to thrust along toward what he wanted. He began to compare the face with the girl before him. There ought to be some feature, some mark of blood, some trick of expression common to the two of them, but he could not find it. His mind was laboring with it when they reached the yacht, and the old man came down the gangway to receive them.