The Cords of Vanity. A Comedy of Shirking

for them, and put through my paces before them like any horse in the market! For we are poor, Mr. Townsend,—we are bleakly, hopelessly poor. We are only hangers-on, you see. And ever since I can remember, she has been telling me I must make a rich marriage—must make a rich marriage—'

And the girl's voice trailed off into silence, and her eyes closed for a moment, and she swayed a little on her feet, so that I caught her by both arms.

But, presently, she opened her eyes, with a wearied sigh, and presently the two fortune-hunters stared each other in the face.

'Ah, sweet! what is sweeter?' sang the birds. 'Can you see, can you see, can you see? It is sweet, sweet, sweet!' They were extremely gay over it, were the birds.

After a little, though, I opened my lips, and moistened them two or three times before I spoke. 'Yes,' said I, 'I think I understand. We have both been hangers-on. But that seems, somehow, a long while ago. Yes, it was a knave who scaled that wall the first time,—one who needed and had earned a kicking from here to Aldebaran. But I think that I loved you from the very moment I saw you. Will you marry me, Avis?'

And in her face there was a wonderful and tender change. 'You care for me—just me?' she breathed.

'Just you,' I answered, gravely.

And I saw the start, and the merest ghost of a shiver which shook her body, as she leaned toward me a little, almost in surrender; but, quickly, she laughed.

'That was very gentlemanly in you,' she said; 'but, of course, I understand. Let us part friends, then,— Robert. Even if—if you really cared, we couldn't marry. We are too poor.'

'Too poor!' I scoffed,—and my voice was joyous, for I knew now that it was I she loved and not just Peter Blagden's money; 'too poor, Avis! I am to the contrary, an inordinately rich man, I tell you, for I have your love. Oh you needn't try to deny it. You are heels over head in love with me. And we have made, no doubt, an unsavoury mess of the past; but the future remains to us. We are the earthen pots, you and I, who wanted to swim with the brazen ones. Well! they haven't quite smashed us, these big, stupid, brazen pots, but they have shown us that they have the power to do it. And so we are going back where we belong—to the poor man's country, Avis,—or, in any event, to the country of those God-fearing, sober and honest folk who earn their bread and, just occasionally, a pat of butter to season it.'

The world was very beautiful. I knew that I was excellent throughout and unconquerable. So I moved more near to her.

'For you will come with me, won't you, dear? Oh, you won't have quite so many gowns in this new country, Avis, and, may be, not even a horse and surrey of your own; but you will have love, and you will have happiness, and, best of all, Avis, you will give a certain very undeserving man his chance—his one sole chance—to lead a real man's life. Are you going to deny him that chance, Avis?'

Her gaze read me through and through; and I bore myself a bit proudly under it; and it seemed to me that my heart was filled with love of her, and that some sort of new-born manhood in Robert Etheridge Townsend was enabling me to meet her big brown eyes unflinchingly.

'It wouldn't be sensible,' she wavered.

I laughed at that. 'Sensible! If there is one thing more absurd than another in this very absurd world, it is common-sense. Be sensible and you will be miserable, Avis, not to mention being disliked. Sensible! Why, of course, it is not sensible. It is stark, rank, staring idiocy for us two not to make a profitable investment of, we will say, our natural endowments, when we come to marry. For what will Mrs. Grundy say if we don't? Ah, what will she say, indeed? Avis, just between you and me, I do not care a double-blank domino what Mrs. Grundy says. You will obligingly remember that the car for the Hesperides is in the rear, and that this is the third and last call. And in consequence—will you marry me, Avis?'

She gave me her hand frankly, as a man might have done. 'Yes, Robert,' said Miss Beechinor, 'and God helping us, we will make something better of the future than we have of the past.'

In the silence that fell, one might hear the birds. 'Sweet, sweet, sweet!' they twittered. 'Can you see, can you see, can you see? Their lips meet. It is sweet, sweet, sweet!' 

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But, by and by, she questioned me. 'Are you sure—quite sure,' she queried, wistfully, 'that you wouldn't rather have me Margaret Hugonin, the heiress?'

I raised a deprecatory hand. 'Avis!' I reproached her; 'Avis, Avis, how little you know me! That was the solitary fly in the amber,—that I thought I was to marry a woman named Margaret. For I am something of a connoisseur in nomenclature, and Margaret has always—always—been my pet detestation in the way of names.'

'Oh, what a child you are!' she said.

27. He Calls, and Counsels, and Considers

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'I am now' said I, in my soul, 'quite immeasurably, and insanely, and unreasonably, and unadulteratedly happy. Why, of course I am.'

This statement was advanced just two weeks later than the events previously recorded. And the origin of it was the fact that I was now engaged to Avis Beechinor though it was not as yet to be 'announced'; just this concession alone had Mrs. Beechinor wrested from an indignant and, latterly, a tearful interview…. For I had called at Selwoode, in due form; and after leaving Mrs. Beechinor had been pounced upon by an excited and comely little person in black.

'Don't you mind a word she said,' this lady had exhorted, 'because she is the Gadarene swine, and Avis has told me everything! Of course you are to be married at once, and I only wish I could find the only man in the world who can keep me interested for four hours on a stretch and send my pulse up to a hundred and make me feel those thrilly thrills I've always longed for.'

'But surely—' said I.

'No, I'm beginning to be afraid not, beautiful, though of course I used to be crazy about Billy Woods; and then once I was engaged to another man for a long time, and I was perfectly devoted to him, but he never made me feel a single thrilly thrill. And would you believe it, Mr. Townsend?—after a while he came back, precisely as though he had been a bad penny or a cat. He had been in the Boer War and came home just a night before I left, wounded and promoted several times and completely covered with glory and brass buttons. He came seven miles to see me, and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing him, for I had on my best dress and was feeling rather talkative. Well! at ten I was quite struck on him. At eleven perfectly willing to part friends, and at twelve crazy for him to go. He stayed till half-past, and I didn't want to think of him for days. And, by the way, I am Miss Hugonin, and I hope you and Avis will be very happy. Good- bye!'

'Good-bye!' said I.

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