CHAPTER XV
The childish old fates played one of their cheapest jokes on Jim Dyckman when, after they had dangled Charity Coe just out of his reach for a lifetime, they flung her at his head. They do those things. They waken the Juliets just a moment too late to save the Romeos and themselves.
Jim had revered Charity as far too good for him, and now everybody wondered if he would do the right thing by her. Prissy Atterbury in a burst of chivalry said it when he said:
“Jim's no gentleman if he doesn't marry Charity.”
Pet put it in a more womanly way:
“Unless he's mighty spry she'll nab him. Trust her!”
Among the few people who had caught a glimpse of Charity, no one had been quite cruel enough to say those things to her face, but Charity imagined them. Housed with her sick and terrified imagination for companion, she had imagined nearly everything dismal.
And now, when, by the mere laws of gravitation, she had floated into Jim Dyckman's arms for a moment, she heard the popular doom of them both in the joke he attempted:
“Charity, I've got to marry you to make you an honest woman.”
She wrenched free of his embrace with a violence that staggered him. He saw that she was taking his effort at playfulness seriously, even tragically.