Part 3 (1/2)
”'Oh, I can't tell,' he replied 'but it will be soon.'
”'Well,' I said, 'remember I shall be here only a few days. Alice will be back within the week. Come Wednesday evening.'
”But he left with the remark that it might not be possible! I did not care for him deeply, of course, it was only an adventure, but this stung me deeply. The light way he took what he wanted and then seemed to want to have no tie remaining! I felt as he did, too, really, but I did not want him to feel so! I imagined in what a self-satisfied mood he must be, how he walked off, with his lighted cigar! He probably wondered what sort of a girl this was who had given herself so easily? Partly, too, no doubt, he laid it to his charm and masculine virtue: though he knew women were weak creatures, he also knew that men were strong! Ah! I could almost hear him muse aloud, in my imagination. His reveries, perhaps, would run about like this:
”'I was rather lucky to happen along this evening! She was certainly worth while, though pretty weak, I must say. She had fine eyes and, by jove, what a mouth! She said, ”Wednesday.” I think I will go, though it is never good policy to let girls be too sure of you. Besides, how do I know she isn't playing me some game?'
”I didn't know as much then as I do now about man's nature, but now I make no doubt that as the time pa.s.sed between then and Wednesday Charles's desire grew: it began with indifference, but ended, I am sure, with intensity: for men are like that! Their fancy works in the absence, not in the presence, of the girl. I am sure the girl with the red lips and the deep dark eyes haunted him more and more as time went on!
”At the time, I didn't know just why, but I did know that I wanted nothing more of Charley. He had never been anything but a man to me--he was a moment in my life, that was all. But I decided to meet him, for only in that way could I really finish the affair. Otherwise, if I merely broke the engagement, he could imagine whatever he wanted to account for it. No, he must be under no illusion. He must know that I did not want him!
”I waited for him in front of the house, and on the appointed hour he arrived, looking very happy and eager. He greeted me with much warmth, to which I responded coldly. He suggested going inside, but I said: 'No, I am going away. I have been waiting here to tell you so, in case you came to-night.'
”'But,' he exclaimed in an aggrieved tone, 'Did not you ask me to come, and now you say you are going away. Is that fair to me?'
”I shrugged my shoulders and said, 'I don't know, but I'm going.
Good-bye,' and I turned from him and started to walk away. His tone changed to anger, as he said: 'Now, see here, Marie, I won't stand for any nonsense of this kind. You can't treat me like this, you know. What right have you to act in this lying way?'
”I had been walking away and he following, and as he stopped talking, he took my arm, which I jerked away and impatiently said: 'Well, to be frank, I don't want you to-night. Whether I have a right to act so, I don't know or care. Why I asked you to come I don't know, unless it was because I felt different from what I do now.'
”Charles adopted a more conciliating tone and asked me when he might come. His interest in me seemed to grow with my resistance.
”'I guess you'd better not come at all,' I said, coolly.
”'But I want to,' he said. 'Do name the night, any night you say.'
”Then I turned to him with angry eyes, and cried out, 'Oh, how stupid you are! Don't you understand that I don't want you at all?'
”I again started to walk away, but he seized my arm and shouted angrily: 'You cannot leave me like this without explaining some things to me. In the first place, why did you pull me on last Sat.u.r.day night, and who are you to turn me down like this?' I answered, with flas.h.i.+ng eyes, 'I owe you no explanation, but I will answer your questions. As to who the girl is who can dare to turn you down, you know very well she is not what you think, or you wouldn't so much object to being turned down, as you call it. As to pulling you on, you were the first to speak or, at any rate, it was mutual, so you need not demand any explanation. What you really want to know is why I don't want you now. If I were a man like you, I suppose I should never even think of explaining to anyone why I happened to change in feeling toward some persons, but as I'm a woman, it's different. I must explain!'
”This speech I have no doubt made him angry, but his pride came to the rescue and he said with a show of indifference: 'I was angry, it is true, but only for a moment. It was irritating to me to have a girl like you show the nerve to throw me down; for I'm not accustomed to a.s.sociate with your sort.'
”At this insolence my face flushed hotly and I opened my mouth to make some indignant reply, but I thought better of it and only walked away, laughing softly to myself. As I went away, I heard him mutter, 'What a cat.'
”But, I imagine, he didn't forget me so easily. I have no doubt that the girl with the red lips and deep dark eyes haunted him for a long time.
Who was this girl who had given herself to him once and only once? It is this kind of a mystery that makes a man dream and dream and curse himself.
”Probably for some time, as he joined the crowd at State and Madison Streets, he hoped to see me as I pa.s.sed, but all things come to an end and his pa.s.sion for me did, no doubt, too. But, in the routine course of his club life, moments came, perhaps, when he thought of little Marie, her red lips, deep eyes, and pale, pale face. I doubt if he ever told this story to any of his boon companions.”
CHAPTER V
_Marie's Salvation_
On account of the irregularity of her life, Marie lost job after job.
Her relations with her mother, never good, grew worse and worse. Her profound need of experience, in which the demand of the senses and the curiosity of the mind were equally represented, impelled her to act after act of recklessness and abandon. But, as in almost all, perhaps all, human beings, there was in her soul a need of justification--of social justification, no matter how few persons const.i.tuted the approving group.
The feeling that everybody was against her, that she was on the road to being what the world calls an outcast, gave to her life an element of sullenness and of despair. Perhaps this added depth to her dissipation, but it took away from it all quality of joy as well as of peace. If her sensuality and her despair had been all there was in her, or if these had const.i.tuted her main characteristics, this story would never have been written. Perhaps another tale might have been told, but it would have been the story of a submerged cla.s.s, not prost.i.tutes, white slaves; and then it would have been the story of a submerged cla.s.s, not of an individual temperament.