Part 39 (2/2)
”I thought so! Your sister-in-law told you, didn't she?”
”I--I heard her say--”
”I think I know what happened, now.” Mary's breath came fast and her voice shook, but she spoke rapidly. ”You 'heard her say' more than that.
You 'heard her say' that we were bitterly poor, and on that account I tried first to marry your brother--and then--” But now she faltered, and it was only after a convulsive effort that she was able to go on. ”And then--that I tried to marry--you! You 'heard her say' that--and you believe that I don't care for you and that 'no girl' could care for you--but you think I am in such an 'extremity,' as Sibyl was--that you-- And so, not wanting me, and believing that I could not want you--except for my 'extremity'--you took your father's offer and then came to ask me--to marry you! What had I shown you of myself that could make you--”
Suddenly she sank down, kneeling, with her face buried in her arms upon the lap of a chair, tears overwhelming her.
”Mary, Mary!” he cried, helplessly. ”Oh NO--you--you don't understand.”
”I do, though!” she sobbed. ”I do!”
He came and stood beside her. ”You kill me!” he said. ”I can't make it plain. From the first of your loveliness to me, I was all self. It was always you that gave and I that took. I was the dependent--I did nothing but lean on you. We always talked of me, not of you. It was all about my idiotic distresses and troubles. I thought of you as a kind of wonderful being that had no mortal or human suffering except by sympathy. You seemed to lean down--out of a rosy cloud--to be kind to me. I never dreamed I could do anything for YOU! I never dreamed you could need anything to be done for you by anybody. And to-day I heard that--that you--”
”You heard that I needed to marry--some one--anybody--with money,” she sobbed. ”And you thought we were so--so desperate--you believed that I had--”
”No!” he said, quickly. ”I didn't believe you'd done one kind thing for me--for that. No, no, no! I knew you'd NEVER thought of me except generously--to give. I said I couldn't make it plain!” he cried, despairingly.
”Wait!” She lifted her head and extended her hands to him unconsciously, like a child. ”Help me up, Bibbs.” Then, when she was once more upon her feet, she wiped her eyes and smiled upon him ruefully and faintly, but rea.s.suringly, as if to tell him, in that way, that she knew he had not meant to hurt her. And that smile of hers, so lamentable, but so faithfully friendly, misted his own eyes, for his shamefacedness lowered them no more.
”Let me tell you what you want to tell me,” she said. ”You can't, because you can't put it into words--they are too humiliating for me and you're too gentle to say them. Tell me, though, isn't it true? You didn't believe that I'd tried to make you fall in love with me--”
”Never! Never for an instant!”
”You didn't believe I'd tried to make you want to marry me--”
”No, no, no!”
”I believe it, Bibbs. You thought that I was fond of you; you knew I cared for you--but you didn't think I might be--in love with you.
But you thought that I might marry you without being in love with you because you did believe I had tried to marry your brother, and--”
”Mary, I only knew--for the first time--that you--that you were--”
”Were desperately poor,” she said. ”You can't even say that! Bibbs, it was true: I did try to make Jim want to marry me. I did!” And she sank down into the chair, weeping bitterly again. Bibbs was agonized.
”Mary,” he groaned, ”I didn't know you COULD cry!”
”Listen,” she said. ”Listen till I get through--I want you to understand. We were poor, and we weren't fitted to be. We never had been, and we didn't know what to do. We'd been almost rich; there was plenty, but my father wanted to take advantage of the growth of the town; he wanted to be richer, but instead--well, just about the time your father finished building next door we found we hadn't anything.
People say that, sometimes, meaning that they haven't anything in comparison with other people of their own kind, but we really hadn't anything--we hadn't anything at all, Bibbs! And we couldn't DO anything.
You might wonder why I didn't 'try to be a stenographer'--and I wonder myself why, when a family loses its money, people always say the daughters 'ought to go and be stenographers.' It's curious!--as if a wave of the hand made you into a stenographer. No, I'd been raised to be either married comfortably or a well-to-do old maid, if I chose not to marry. The poverty came on slowly, Bibbs, but at last it was all there--and I didn't know how to be a stenographer. I didn't know how to be anything except a well-to-do old maid or somebody's wife--and I couldn't be a well-to-do old maid. Then, Bibbs, I did what I'd been raised to know how to do. I went out to be fascinating and be married. I did it openly, at least, and with a kind of decent honesty. I told your brother I had meant to fascinate him and that I was not in love with him, but I let him think that perhaps I meant to marry him. I think I did mean to marry him. I had never cared for anybody, and I thought it might be there really WASN'T anything more than a kind of excited fondness. I can't be sure, but I think that though I did mean to marry him I never should have done it, because that sort of a marriage is--it's sacrilege--something would have stopped me. Something did stop me; it was your sister-in-law, Sibyl. She meant no harm--but she was horrible, and she put what I was doing into such horrible words--and they were the truth--oh! I SAW myself! She was proposing a miserable compact with me--and I couldn't breathe the air of the same room with her, though I'd so cheapened myself she had a right to a.s.sume that I WOULD. But I couldn't! I left her, and I wrote to your brother--just a quick scrawl. I told him just what I'd done; I asked his pardon, and I said I would not marry him. I posted the letter, but he never got it.
That was the afternoon he was killed. That's all, Bibbs. Now you know what I did--and you know--ME!” She pressed her clenched hands tightly against her eyes, leaning far forward, her head bowed before him.
Bibbs had forgotten himself long ago; his heart broke for her. ”Couldn't you--Isn't there--Won't you--” he stammered. ”Mary, I'm going with father. Isn't there some way you could use the money without--without--”
She gave a choked little laugh.
”You gave me something to live for,” he said. ”You kept me alive, I think--and I've hurt you like this!”
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