Page 60 of My Brilliant Career

There was silence save for the whirr of the countless grasshoppers in the brier bushes. I knew he was expecting me to help him out, but I felt doggedly savage and wouldn’t. I looked up at him. He was a tall grand man, and honest and true and rich. He loved my sister; she would marry him, and they would be happy. I thought bitterly that God was good to one and cruel to another — not that I wanted this man, but why was I so different from other girls?

But then I thought of Gertie, so pretty, so girlish, so understandable, so full of innocent winning coquetry. I softened. Could anyone help preferring her to me, who was strange, weird, and perverse — too outspoken to be engaging, devoid of beauty and endearing little ways? It was my own misfortune and nobody’s fault that my singular individuality excluded me from the ordinary run of youthful joyousheartednesses, and why should I be nasty to these young people?

I was no heroine, only a common little bush-girl, so had to make the best of the situation without any fooling. I raised my eyes from the scanty baked wisps of grass at my feet, placed my hand on Hal’s arms, and tiptoeing so as to bring my five-foot stature more on a level with his, said:

‘Yes, Hal, I know what you want to say. Say it all. I won’t be nasty.’

‘Well, you see you are so jolly touchy, and have snubbed me so often, that I don’t know how to begin; and if you know what I’m going to say, won’t you give me an answer without hearing it?’

‘Yes, Hal; but you’d better say it, as I don’t know what conditions —’

‘Conditions!’ — catching me up eagerly at the word. ‘If it is only conditions that are stopping you, you can make your own conditions if you will marry me.’

‘Marry you, Harold! What do you mean? Do you know what you are saying?’ I exclaimed.

‘There!’ he replied: ‘I knew you would take it as an insult. I believe you are the proudest girl in the world. I know you are too clever for me; but I love you, and could give you everything you fancied.’

‘Hal, dear, let me explain. I’m not insulted, only surprised. I thought you were going to tell me that you loved Gertie, and would ask me not to make things unpleasant by telling her of the foolish little bit of flirtation there had been between us.’

‘Marry Gertie! Why, she’s only a child! A mere baby, in fact. Marry Gertie! I never thought of her in that light; and did you think I was that sort of a fellow, Syb?’ he asked reproachfully.

‘No, Hal,’ I promptly made answer. ‘I did not think you were that sort of fellow; but I thought that was the only sort of fellow there was.’

‘Good heavens, Syb! Did you really mean those queer little letters you wrote me last February? I never for an instant looked upon them as anything but a little bit of playful contrariness. And have you forgotten me? Did you not mean your promise of two years ago, that you speak of what passed between us as a paltry bit of flirtation? Is that all you thought of it?’

‘No, I did not consider it flirtation; but that is what I thought you would term it when announcing your affection for Gertie.’

‘Gertie! Pretty little Gertie! I never looked upon the child as anything but your sister, consequently mine also. She’s a child.’

‘Child! She is eighteen. More than a year older than I was when you first introduced the subject of matrimony to me, and she is very beautiful, and twenty times as good and lovable as I could ever be even in my best moments.’

‘Yes, I know you are young in years, but there is nothing of the child in you. As for beauty, it is nothing. If beauty was all a man required, he could, if rich, have a harem full of it any day. I want some one to be true.’

‘The world is filled with folly and sin,

And love must cling where it can, I say;

For beauty is easy enough to win,

But one isn’t loved every day,’

I quoted from Owen Meredith.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that is why I want you. Just think a moment; don’t say no. You are not vexed with me — are you, Syb?’

‘Vexed, Hal! I am scarcely inhuman enough to be angry on account of being loved.’

Ah, why did I not love him as I have it in me to love! Why did he look so exasperatingly humble? I was weak, oh, so pitifully weak! I wanted a man who would be masterful and strong, who would help me over the rough spots of life — one who had done hard grinding in the mill of fate — one who had suffered, who had understood. No; I could never marry Harold Beecham.

‘Well, Syb, little chum, what do you say?’

‘Say!’ — and the words fell from me bitterly — ‘I say, leave me; go and marry the sort of woman you ought to marry. The sort that all men like. A good conventional woman, who will do the things she should at the proper time. Leave me alone.’

He was painfully agitated. A look of pain crossed his face.

‘Don’t say that, Syb, because I was a beastly cad once: I’ve had all that knocked out of me.’

‘I am the cad,’ I replied. ‘What I said was nasty and unwomanly, and I wish I had left it unsaid. I am not good enough to be your wife, Hal, or that of any man. Oh, Hal, I have never deceived you! There are scores of good noble women in the world who would wed you for the asking — marry one of them.’