The Attic Guest: A Novel

by Robert E. Knowles

X
THE RIVER LEADING TO THE SEA

If there is one thing a girl loves more than another, it's being a martyr. If there is any such thing as sweet sorrow, that's where it may be found. And of all kinds of martyrdom the love kind is the sweetest. Now in all this a woman is so different from a man. A man enjoys the suffering that comes with love—if some one else does the suffering; but a woman glories in it—if some one else does the loving. And that was pretty much my case.

For I was having lots of love—from Charlie. This was all very well so far as it went; nor can it be denied that it went a considerable way. For every girl prizes a strong man's love, though she return it never so faintly. Like some preachers, she highly esteems a call—even if she has little or no thought of accepting it. But there is nothing, nothing in all the world, so troublesome as love; unless it utterly swamps you—then is the solution simple. But to have just enough to marry on, with no surplus for the years—that's dreadful. That is like launching some mighty ship when the tide is out—and it must be awful to hear the keel grating on the sand.

Yes, that's where the martydom comes in, to recall the noble word with which I began the chapter. And when the Judgment Day shall dawn—concerning which I have no doubt, but much misgiving—the most oft-repeated charge against our poor weak womanhood will be that we sold ourselves for nought. Some of our loveliest will be the first to learn, in that great day, how deadly was the barter of their bodies—and of so much more. I have often heard uncle say that when a horse is sold its halter always goes along—but no one ever told me that when a girl sells her body, that sale includes the soul. Reluctant, protesting, even horrified, it yet must cleave to its tenement of clay and meet the tenant's doom. And what a doom! if it be fitting destiny for those who have bartered the sanctity of life, some for bread, some for home, some for gold, some for fame, some for earthly station; and some, nobler these, for very hungriness of heart, crying out for the nameless something that shall satisfy the soul.

I hardly know just how or when I resigned myself to such a martyrdom. But I did. I decided to marry Charlie, right soon too—despite the defiant vow I had registered in my diary that night. One thing I'm sure of—and that is, that Europe and the yacht had mighty little to do with it. But whether it was because I feared Charlie might throw himself from the deck of the aforesaid yacht if I didn't marry him; or whether I felt it was a matter of honour; or whether I knew it would throw mother's life into eclipse; or whether I agreed with that semi-intelligent philosopher who once said that all life was a gamble in probabilities, or something of that sort, I cannot say. But anyhow, one midnight hour, I drew my pen through the first half of that diary vow, the part which declared I could never marry Charlie, and I left uninjured the savage promise to myself that I would never, never marry the Reverend Gordon Laird.

Besides, he had been horrid. Not in any positive sense, of course, for Mr. Laird was such a perfect gentleman. And yet he was a gentleman after a fashion I had never seen before. He was not in the least like our Southern gallants; he couldn't bow like them, nor make pretty speeches—and he wouldn't jump across the floor to pick up my handkerchief, though I once saw him give Dinah a hand up the back steps with a heavy block of ice that had slipped from her grasp and fallen to the bottom. And he never brought me flowers, or candies, except some wild violets he might sometimes pluck—and once he did give me some molasses taffy, of which his reverence himself partook with almost juvenile enthusiasm.

But he was scrupulously polite, and that's so hard for a girl to stand if she's interested in a man at all. And he seemed so strong, and self-possessed, that he was distant without meaning to be—the distance of a sort of superiority, all the worse because you knew he wasn't trying to make you realize it at all; and I had the intolerable feeling that his world was an altogether different one from mine, and that he was interested in things I didn't know about, yet which I felt might be just as much mine as his if I only had a chance. As it was, however, I was a good deal like a child standing knee high to some man whose face was half hidden by the telescope to his eye; if he knew you were there at all, you felt the very most he'd do would be to pat your head and ask you if you'd lost your ball.

I don't know what finally decided me. But anyhow I wrote Charlie a letter, and told him Yes. "Yes, right away," was the burden of what I said, "as soon as I can get ready." I thought at the time what a cruel term that was, "getting ready"—as if the milliner and dressmaker had any part to play in that. All the world I would have given to have known how to really "get ready" in my inmost heart and life. But I wrote the letter, and sealed it, and kissed it on the outside—which I felt was the proper thing to do—and then I placed it in the Bible on my dressing-table, taking quite a pious satisfaction in the fancy. Then I sat down and cried till my eyes were sore and the Bible all stained with bitter tears. Later on, I told my mother; her joy was quite enough for two, quite too much for me.

And I told Mr. Laird too. Some will ask why, and perhaps make merry over that delicate reserve which Southern women pride themselves upon. But let them ask, and let them make merry as they will. Besides, I had already told Mr. Laird so much that it was surely natural enough for me to tell him this. Moreover, was he not a minister—and what are they for if not to be confided in?

So I told him I was going to post a letter. It was the gathering dusk, for such a letter should never sure be launched in the garish light of day. Then I told him what was in it, or, at least, told him enough to let him know; for he was remarkably "quick in the uptake," to adopt a phrase of his own countrymen; I think I referred, too, to his own counsel in the matter.