Part 113 (1/2)
”Wait a minute. I said, strictly speaking. Unfortunately, everybody must be either a man or a woman.”
”I'm glad you allow that much.”
”In your case I don't. You aren't a woman. But ordinary people, Maisie, must behave and work as such. That's what makes me so savage.” He hurled a pebble towards the sea as he spoke. ”I know that it is outside my business to care what people say; I can see that it spoils my output if I listen to 'em; and yet, confound it all,”--another pebble flew seaward,--”I can't help purring when I'm rubbed the right way. Even when I can see on a man's forehead that he is lying his way through a clump of pretty speeches, those lies make me happy and play the mischief with my hand.”
”And when he doesn't say pretty things?”
”Then, belovedest,”--d.i.c.k grinned,--”I forget that I am the steward of these gifts, and I want to make that man love and appreciate my work with a thick stick. It's too humiliating altogether; but I suppose even if one were an angel and painted humans altogether from outside, one would lose in touch what one gained in grip.”
Maisie laughed at the idea of d.i.c.k as an angel.
”But you seem to think,” she said, ”that everything nice spoils your hand.”
”I don't think. It's the law,--just the same as it was at Mrs.
Jennett's. Everything that is nice does spoil your hand. I'm glad you see so clearly.”
”I don't like the view.”
”Nor I. But--have got orders: what can do? Are you strong enough to face it alone?”
”I suppose I must.”
”Let me help, darling. We can hold each other very tight and try to walk straight. We shall blunder horribly, but it will be better than stumbling apart. Maisie, can't you see reason?”
”I don't think we should get on together. We should be two of a trade, so we should never agree.”
”How I should like to meet the man who made that proverb! He lived in a cave and ate raw bear, I fancy. I'd make him chew his own arrow-heads.
Well?”
”I should be only half married to you. I should worry and fuss about my work, as I do now. Four days out of the seven I'm not fit to speak to.”
”You talk as if no one else in the world had ever used a brush.
D'you suppose that I don't know the feeling of worry and bother and can't-get-at-ness? You're lucky if you only have it four days out of the seven. What difference would that make?”
”A great deal--if you had it too.”
”Yes, but I could respect it. Another man might not. He might laugh at you. But there's no use talking about it. If you can think in that way you can't care for me--yet.”
The tide had nearly covered the mud-banks and twenty little ripples broke on the beach before Maisie chose to speak.
”d.i.c.k,” she said slowly, ”I believe very much that you are better than I am.”
”This doesn't seem to bear on the argument--but in what way?”
”I don't quite know, but in what you said about work and things; and then you're so patient. Yes, you're better than I am.”
d.i.c.k considered rapidly the murkiness of an average man's life. There was nothing in the review to fill him with a sense of virtue. He lifted the hem of the cloak to his lips.
”Why,” said Maisie, making as though she had not noticed, ”can you see things that I can't? I don't believe what you believe; but you're right, I believe.”