We shook hands and went home, his arm over my shoulder, a rare demonstration of affection for him. Had I only been present to render him a like service when the rôles were reversed, years later!
* * * * *
There was no need of admonition and it was characteristic of him that he never once referred to the episode. All my anger turned on myself. I saw the fool I had played and I swore that I would never be caught again. From that time on vulgarity played no part in my life. Milestone Number 1.
Unquestionably the thing that saved me was the blow to my vanity. Even to this day I cannot recall the incident without resentment and, though it is quite illogical, I believe of all the episodes of my life this will always be the one I shall think on with keenest humiliation. Even between Ben and myself the memory has always remained a secret irritation. For despite all my efforts to fight down the feeling, I still retain a little resentment at the superiority he had shown,—a primitive instinct of the male, I suppose, particularly when a woman is involved.
V
A revulsion was imperative, and the revulsion sent me back to my own kind. There is, I suppose, in every man’s life the figure of some woman who represents what might have been; some turning point at which he looks back and perceives where the direct road abruptly diverged. My intimacy with Anne Brinsmade was not the usual boy and girl romance but was something quite genuine and loyal and, though in the end the inevitable complications brought their misunderstandings, I look back on this natural comradeship, which extended over two years, with real affection. For this, strangely enough, I had Jenny Barnett to thank. The anger in me against my credulity and weak sentimentality was so insistent that to recover some self-respect I felt the need of asserting my ascendancy over some worthier one of her sex, if but to prove to myself that I had the qualities of reticence, authority and self-control I admired in my brother. It was not premeditated or conscious, yet if it had been skillfully calculated, nothing could have served me better.
Stephen Brinsmade was a lawyer of large political and business activities, a man of considerable fortune, and Anne was surrounded with every luxury and attention which he could shower on her. They had a big place at Taunton, about fifteen miles from our home at Littledale, and the friendship of the families was traditional. In my case there was a deeper reason. At school I had roomed with young Stephen and when he had died as the result of an accident on the polo field, the memory of his friendship brought me close to the father and sister.
Anne, even as a young girl, was a problem. She was all impulse, and no one knew where impulse might lead her. I was approaching twenty and she was scarcely sixteen at this time, and my air of determined impersonality successfully piqued her curiosity, roused her resentment, and finally drew her to me in impulsive trust. Her brother had been my dearest chum. For his young sister I could have only the most exact loyalty. I became her confidant, assuming the rôle of mentor, and occasionally delivered moral precepts with a gravity that was so natural that it even eluded my sense of humor. Different beings, I suppose, appeal to different qualities in us, according to their needs, and there was something in the wayward, lovable, undirected charm of the young girl which aroused the chivalry in me. My attitude, so different from that of the men who surrounded her, naturally had two results. It brought a delightful companionship, utterly free from mawkishness, or the simulated coquetries and aped sentimentality which too often, in the freedom of our American intercourse, leave the regret in man and woman of having failed in reverence before the things that count. Unconsciously, however, as this intimacy continued, the feminine temptation was hard to resist. Once or twice she tried to provoke my jealousy. I do not think it was consciously done, but I recognized it and my studied indifference undoubtedly gave me an increasing value in her eyes.