Part 28 (1/2)
”And what do you think of it by this time?”
Marian asked the question in the pause after a twenty minutes' canter over a straightaway stretch through the pines.
”Of what?” Howard inquired. ”I mean of what phase of it. Of you?”
”Well,--yes, of me--after a week.”
”As I expected, only more so--more than I could have imagined. And you, what do you think?”
”It's very different from what I expected. It seemed to me beforehand that you, even you, would 'get on my nerves' just a little at times. I didn't expect you to appreciate--to feel my moods and to avoid doing--or is it that you simply cannot do--anything jarring. You have amazing instincts or else--” Marian looked at him and smiled mischievously, ”or else you have been well educated. Oh, I don't mind--not in the least.
No matter what the cause, I'm glad--glad--glad that you have been taught how to treat a woman.”
”I see you are determined to destroy me,” Howard was in jest, yet in earnest. ”I am not used to being flattered. I have never had but one critic, and I have trained him to be severe and uncharitable. Now if you set me up on a high altar and wave the censers and cry 'glory, glory, glory,' I'll lose my head. You have a terrible responsibility. I trust you and I believe everything you say.”
”I'll begin my duties as critic as soon as we go back to--to earth. But at present I'm going to be selfish. You see it makes me happier to blind myself to your faults.”
They rode in silence for a few moments and then she said:
”I wish I had your feeling about--about democracy. I see your point of view but I can't take it. I know that you are right but I'm afraid my education is too strong for me. I don't believe in the people as you do.
It's beautiful when you say it. I like to hear you. And I would not wish you to feel as I do. I'd hate it if you did. It would be stooping, grovelling for you to make distinctions among people. But----”
”Oh, but I do make distinctions among people--so much so that I have never had a friend in my life until you came. I have been on intimate terms with many, but no one except you has been on intimate terms with me. Oh, yes, I'm one of the most exclusive persons in the world.”
”That sounds like autocracy, doesn't it?” laughed Marian. ”But you know I don't mean that. You think all the others are just as good as you are, only in different ways, whereas I feel that they're not. You don't mind vulgarity and underbreeding because you are perfectly indifferent to people so long as they don't try to jump the fence about your own little private enclosure.”
”Oh, I believe in letting other people alone, and I insist upon being let alone myself. You see you make the whole world revolve about social distinctions. The fact is, isn't it, that social distinctions are mere trifles--”
”You oughtn't to waste time arguing with a prejudice. I admit that what I believe and feel is unreasonable. But I can't change an instinct.
To me some people are better than others and are ent.i.tled to more, and ought to be looked up to and respected.”
Howard had an answer on the tip of his tongue. His pa.s.sion for high principle seemed to have been rekindled for the time by his love and in this tranquillising environment. He felt strongly tempted to reason with her unreasonableness, thus practically boasted as a virtue. It seemed so unworthy, this streak of sn.o.bbery, so senseless in an American at most three generations away from manual labour. But he had made up his mind long ago to trust to new surroundings, new interests to create in her a spirit more in sympathy with his career.
”She is too intelligent, too high-minded,” he often rea.s.sured himself, ”to cling to this stupidity of cla.s.s-feeling. She has heard nothing but cla.s.s-distinction all her life. Now that she is away from those people, with their petty routine of petty ideas, she will begin to see things as they are.”
So he suppressed the argument and, instead, said in a tone of mock-pity: ”Poor fallen queen--to marry beneath her. How she must have fought against the idea of such a plebeian partner.”
”Plebeian--you?” Marian looked at him proudly. ”Why, one has only to see you to know.”
”Yes, plebeian. I shall conceal it no longer. My ancestors were plain, ordinary, common, unt.i.tled Americans.”
”Why, so were mine,” she laughed.
”Don't! You distress me. I should never have married you had I known that.”
”I _am_ absurd, am I not?” Marian said gaily. ”But let me have my craze for well-mannered people and I'll leave you your craze for the--the ma.s.ses.”
They began to canter. Howard was smiling in spite of his irritation; for it always irritated him to have her refuse to see his point in this matter--his distinction between a person as a friend and a person as a sociological unit.