"Ah," she said, "I believe you feel a sort of rebellion against the unfairness of the way things are dealt out.It does seem unfair, of course.It would be perfectly disgraceful--if she were different.I had moments of almost hating her until one day not long ago she did something so bewitchingly kind and understanding of other people's feelings that I gave up.It was clever, too," with a laugh, "clever and daring.If she were a young man she would make a dashing soldier."She did not give him the details of the story, but went on to say in effect what she had said to Betty herself of the inevitable incidentalness of her stay in the country.If she had not evidently come to Stornham this year with a purpose, she would have spent the season in London and done the usual thing.
Americans were generally presented promptly, if they had any position--sometimes when they had not.Lady Alanby had heard that the fact that she was with her sister had awakened curiosity and people were talking about her.
"Lady Alanby said in that dry way of hers that the arrival of an unmarried American fortune in England was becoming rather like the visit of an unmarried royalty.People ask each other what it means and begin to arrange for it.So far, only the women have come, but Lady Alanby says that is because the men have had no time to do anything but stay at home and make the fortunes.She believes that in another generation there will be a male leisure class, and then it will swoop down too, and marry people.She was very sharp and amusing about it.She said it would help them to rid themselves of a plethora of wealth and keep them from bursting."She was an amiable, if unsentimental person, Mary Lithcom --and was, quite without ill nature, expressing the consensus of public opinion.These young women came to the country with something practical to exchange in these days, and as there were men who had certain equivalents to offer, so also there were men who had none, and whom decency should cause to stand aside.Mount Dunstan knew that when she had said, "Who is there who is suitable?" any shadow of a thought of himself as being in the running had not crossed her mind.
And this was not only for the reasons she had had the ready composure to name, but for one less conquerable.
Later, having left Mary Lithcom, he decided to take a turn by himself.He had done his duty as a masculine guest.He had conversed with young women and old ones, had danced, visited gardens and greenhouses, and taken his part in all things.
Also he had, in fact, reached a point when a few minutes of solitude seemed a good thing.He found himself turning into the clipped laurel walk, where Tommy Alanby had stood with Jane Lithcom, and he went to the end of it and stood looking out on the view.
"Look at the turn of her head," Lady Mary had said.
"Look at her mouth and chin." And he had been looking at them the whole afternoon, not because he had intended to do so, but because it was not possible to prevent himself from doing it.
This was one of the ironies of fate.Orthodox doctrine might suggest that it was to teach him that his past rebellion had been undue.Orthodox doctrine was ever ready with these soothing little explanations.He had raged and sulked at Destiny, and now he had been given something to rage for.
"No one knows anything about it until it takes him by the throat," he was thinking, "and until it happens to a man he has no right to complain.I was not starving before.I was not hungering and thirsting--in sight of food and water.Isuppose one of the most awful things in the world is to feel this and know it is no use."He was not in the condition to reason calmly enough to see that there might be one chance in a thousand that it was of use.At such times the most intelligent of men and women lose balance and mental perspicacity.A certain degree of unreasoning madness possesses them.They see too much and too little.
There were, it was true, a thousand chances against him, but there was one for him--the chance that selection might be on his side.He had not that balance of thought left which might have suggested to him that he was a man young and powerful, and filled with an immense passion which might count for something.All he saw was that he was notably in the position of the men whom he had privately disdained when they helped themselves by marriage.Such marriages he had held were insults to the manhood of any man and the womanhood of any woman.In such unions neither party could respect himself or his companion.They must always in secret doubt each other, fret at themselves, feel distaste for the whole thing.Even if a man loved such a woman, and the feeling was mutual, to whom would it occur to believe it--to see that they were not gross and contemptible? To no one.Would it have occurred to himself that such an extenuating circumstance was possible?
Certainly it would not.Pig-headed pride and obstinacy it might be, but he could not yet face even the mere thought of it--even if his whole position had not been grotesque.Because, after all, it was grotesque that he should even argue with himself.She--before his eyes and the eyes of all others--the most desirable of women; people dinning it in one's ears that she was surrounded by besiegers who waited for her to hold out her sceptre, and he--well, what was he! Not that his mental attitude was that of a meek and humble lover who felt himself unworthy and prostrated himself before her shrine with prayers --he was, on the contrary, a stout and obstinate Briton finding his stubbornly-held beliefs made as naught by a certain obsession --an intolerable longing which wakened with him in the morning, which sank into troubled sleep with him at night--the longing to see her, to speak to her, to stand near her, to breathe the air of her.And possessed by this--full of the overpowering strength of it--was a man likely to go to a woman and say, "Give your life and desirableness to me; and incidentally support me, feed me, clothe me, keep the roof over my head, as if I were an impotent beggar"?
