Part 35 (2/2)
”And for anything else?”
”What else should I come for?”
”You might have come for--two or three things.”
”One of which would be to interfere with your plans. Well, I haven't. If I had wanted to do that, I could have done it long ago. I'll tell you outright that Mr. Pruyn requested me more than once to put a stop to your acquaintance with Dorothea, and I refused. I refused at first because I didn't think it wise, and afterward because I liked you. I kept on refusing because I came to see in the end that you were born to marry Dorothea, and that no one else would ever suit her. I'm here this evening because I believe that still, and I want you to be happy.”
”Did you think your coming would make us happier?”
”In the long run--yes. You may not see it to-night, but you will to-morrow. You can't imagine that I would run the risk of forcing myself upon you unless I was sure there was something I could do.”
”Well, what is it?”
”It isn't much, and yet it's a great deal. When you and Dorothea are married I want to go with you. I want to be there. I don't want her to go friendless. When she goes back to town to-morrow, and everything has to be explained, I want her to be able to say that I was beside her. I know that mine is not a name to carry much authority, but I'm a woman--a woman who has head a position of responsibility, almost a mother's place, toward Dorothea herself--and there are moments in life when any kind of woman is better than none at all. You may not see it just now, but--”
”Oh yes, I do,” he said, slowly; ”only when you've gone in for an unconventional thing you might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.”
”I don't agree with you. Nothing more than the unconventional requires a nicely discriminating taste; and it's no use being more violent than you can help. You and Dorothea are making a match that sets the rules of your world at defiance, but you may as well avail yourselves of any little mitigation that comes to hand. Life is going to be hard enough for you as it is--”
”Oh, I don't know about that. They can't do anything to us--”
”Not to you, perhaps, because you're a man. But they can to Dorothea, and they will. This is just one of those queer situations in which you'll get the credit and she'll get the blame. You can always make a poem on Young Lochinvar, when it's less easy to approve of the damsel who springs to the pillion behind him. I don't pretend to account for this idiosyncrasy of human nature; I merely state it as a fact. Society will forget that you ran away with Dorothea, but it will never forget that she ran away with you.”
”H'm!”
”But I don't see that that need distress you. You wouldn't care; and as for Dorothea, she's got the pluck of a soldier. Depend upon it, she sees the whole situation already, and is prepared to face it. That's part of the difference between a woman and a man. _You_ can go into a thing like this without looking ahead, because you know that, whatever the opposition, you can keep it down. A woman is too weak for that. She must count every danger beforehand. Dorothea has done that. This isn't going to be a leap in the dark for her; it wouldn't be for any girl of her intelligence and social instincts. She knows what she's doing, and she's doing it for you. She has made her sacrifice, and made it willingly, before she consented to take this step at all. She crossed her Rubicon without saying anything to you about it, and you needn't consider her any more.”
”Well, I like that!” he said, in an injured tone, thrusting his hands into his overcoat pockets and beginning to move along the terrace.
”Yes; I thought you would,” she agreed, walking by his side. ”It shows what she's willing to give up for you. It shows even more than that. It shows how she loves you. Dorothea is not a girl who holds society lightly, and if she renounces it--”
”Oh, but, come now, Mrs. Eveleth! It isn't going to be as bad as that.”
”It isn't going to be as bad as anything. Bad is not the word. When I speak of renouncing society, of course I only mean renouncing--the best.
There will always be some people to--Well, you remember Dumas'
comparison of the sixpenny and the six-s.h.i.+lling peaches. If you can't have the latter, you will be able to afford the former.”
They walked on in silence to the end of the terrace, and it was not till after they had turned that the young man spoke again.
”I believe you're overdrawing it,” he said, with some decision.
”Isn't it you who are overdrawing what I mean? I'm simply trying to say that while things won't be very pleasant for you, they won't be worse than you can easily bear--especially when Dorothea has steeled herself to them in advance. I repeat, too, that, poor as I am, my presence will be taken as safeguarding some of the proprieties people expect one to observe. I speak of my presence, but, after all, you may have provided yourself with some one better. I didn't think of that.”
”No; there's no one.”
”Then Dorothea is coming all alone?”
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