Part 18 (1/2)
”Look here,” I said; ”I want you, Marion. Don't you understand? I want you.”
”Now!” she cried warningly.
I do not know if the reader will understand how a pa.s.sionate lover, an immense admiration and desire, can be shot with a gleam of positive hatred. Such a gleam there was in me at the serene self-complacency of that ”NOW!” It vanished almost before I felt it. I found no warning in it of the antagonisms latent between us.
”Marion,” I said, ”this isn't a trifling matter to me. I love you; I would die to get you.... Don't you care?”
”But what is the good?”
”You don't care,” I cried. ”You don't care a rap!”
”You know I care,” she answered. ”If I didn't--If I didn't like you very much, should I let you come and meet me--go about with you?”
”Well then,” I said, ”promise to marry me!”
”If I do, what difference will it make?”
We were separated by two men carrying a ladder who drove between us unawares.
”Marion,” I asked when we got together again, ”I tell you I want you to marry me.”
”We can't.”
”Why not?”
”We can't marry--in the street.”
”We could take our chance!”
”I wish you wouldn't go on talking like this. What is the good?”
She suddenly gave way to gloom. ”It's no good marrying” she said. ”One's only miserable. I've seen other girls. When one's alone one has a little pocket-money anyhow, one can go about a little. But think of being married and no money, and perhaps children--you can't be sure....”
She poured out this concentrated philosophy of her cla.s.s and type in jerky uncompleted sentences, with knitted brows, with discontented eyes towards the westward glow--forgetful, it seemed, for a moment even of me.
”Look here, Marion,” I said abruptly, ”what would you marry on?”
”What IS the good?” she began.
”Would you marry on three hundred a year?”
She looked at me for a moment. ”That's six pounds a week,” she said.
”One could manage on that, easily. Smithie's brother--No, he only gets two hundred and fifty. He married a typewriting girl.”
”Will you marry me if I get three hundred a year?”
She looked at me again, with a curious gleam of hope.
”IF!” she said.