Kildares of Storm Part 46

"Because if you're not,"--the girl cleared her voice--"don't you think it would be kinder to say so once and for all? You see, if he were sure you would not have him" (suddenly hot color surged over her face), "he might want to marry some one else."

"Old Jim marry! Jemima! What are you driving at? What can you mean?"

"I mean--me," gasped the girl, and suddenly turned and fled from the room.

It took Kate some moments to regain sufficient presence of of mind to follow her. She found her level-headed daughter face downward among the pillows of her bed, sobbing most humanly.

Kate sat down beside her and pulled the golden head over into her arms, where she smoothed and caressed it as she had rarely done since the girl's babyhood.

"Now tell mother all about it. What put such a strange idea into your wise little old pate? Not Jim himself--I'm sure of that."

"Oh, no!--But it isn't a strange idea," protested the m.u.f.fled voice from her lap. "I don't want to be an old maid--" (sniff, sniff). "He hasn't asked me yet, exactly--but he would if he were quite sure you didn't want him--" (sob). "And I'm twenty years old, now. I want to be married, like other women."

"Only twenty years old!" repeated her mother, gently.

"Oh, I know it sounds young, but it isn't always as young as it sounds"

said the girl with unconscious pathos. "Look at me, Mother--I'm older than you, right now! I don't believe I ever was very young."

"But you may be yet," said Kate. "With your first lover, your first baby--Ah, child, child, you _must_ not run the risk of marrying without love! You don't know what love can do to you."

"Yes, I do," whispered Jemima.

"What! You can't tell me you're in love with old Jim?"

The girl sat erect, and propounded certain decided views of hers on love and marriage as earnestly as if her little nose were not pink with embarra.s.sed tears, and her eyes swimming with them like a troubled baby's.

"Being in love doesn't seem as important to me as it does to some people. Of course it's necessary, or the world would not go on. There has to be some sort of glamour to--to make things possible.--But I'm sure it's not a comfortable feeling to live with, any more than hunger would be.--Being in love does quite as much harm as good, anyway. Half the crimes in the world are the result of it, and all the unnecessary children. I don't want love, Mother! It hurts, and it makes fools of otherwise intelligent persons. I shouldn't like, ever, to lose my self-control.--And the feeling doesn't last! Look at you, for instance.

I suppose once you were in love with my father?"

Kate nodded.

"And then in a very little while you were in love with--some one else.

Did it make you any happier, all that loving, or any better? I think not. Only unhappier, in the long run.--No, no, Mother! I don't want it.

I don't want _any_ emotions!"--She spoke with a queer distaste, the same fastidious shrinking with which she had often watched Jacqueline cuddling Mag's baby. "I only want to be safe."

"Marriage isn't always safe, my little girl."

"Mine will be. That's why I've chosen Professor Jim."

Kate made a helpless gesture with her hands. "Child, you don't know what you're giving up! You can't!"

Jemima swallowed hard. The confession she had to make was not easy.

"Yes, I do. Because I tried love first, to be sure."

"My dear! You--tried love?"

"There was a young man--You remember, Jacqueline called him 'the most beautiful man in the room'? He was very handsome, and--nice to me.

That's why I went to visit Mrs. Lawton, chiefly. I wanted to see more of him.--Whenever he touched my hand, or even my dress, little s.h.i.+vers ran up my back. I--I liked it. That's being in love, isn't it? Sometimes we went driving, in a buggy. Once it was moonlight, and I knew when we started that something was going to happen.--I meant it to. I flirted with him."

"Did you, dear!" murmured the mother, between tears and laughter. "I didn't suppose you knew how!"

"Oh, those things come, somehow. I've watched Jacky.--After a while, he kissed me. But do you know, Mother, that was the end of everything! I stopped having thrills the minute he did it. His mouth was so--so mushy, and his nose seemed to get in the way.--Still, I went on flirting. I wanted to give him every chance.--He didn't kiss me again, though. When we got home I asked him why that was. He said it was because he respected me too much."

She made a scornful gesture, "You see, it's just as I thought! Kisses and all that sort of thing have nothing to do with respect, with real liking. And if my own thrills couldn't outlast one moonlight buggy-ride, they would not do to marry on. It will be better for me to marry on respect."

"But poor Jim!" said Kate, unsteadily. "Must he, too, marry on respect?"

Jemima met her gaze candidly. "Why, no. Men are different, I think, even intellectual ones. He has thrills. I can feel him having them, when I dance with him. That's how I knew he wanted me. And I'm rather glad of it," she finished, her voice oddly kind.

Kate at the moment could think of nothing further to say. The thing was incomprehensible to her, appalling, yet strangely touching. This twenty-year-old girl, groping her way toward safety, that refuge of the middle-aged, as eagerly as other young things grasp at happiness, at romance!--She recalled phrases spoken by another startled mother to another girl quite as headstrong: "You are only a child! He is twice your age! You don't _know_!"

She did not give them utterance. What was the use? In this, if in nothing else, Jemima was her mother's daughter. She would always make her own decisions.

The girl went on presently to mention various advantages of the proposed marriage.

"Of course Professor Jim is quite rich--Oh, yes, didn't you know that? I asked him his income, and he told me. With that, and the money you have promised me, we can travel and see the world, and keep a good house to come back to. I could do a good deal for Jacqueline, of course. You will visit us, too, whenever you like. It may be my only chance of getting away from Storm, you see. I do not meet many young men, and I'm not the sort they are apt to marry, anyway."

"Are you so anxious to get away from Storm?" interrupted poor Kate. "You said you were homesick for us."

"And will be again, often. But that's a weakness one has to get over.

And then, though I have been happy here, I've been unhappy, too. Lonely and a little--ashamed, lately." She forgot for the moment to whom she was speaking. Kate had ceased to be a person, was only "mother" to her, a warm, enfolding comprehension, such as perhaps children are aware of before they come to the hour of birth.--"Oh, it _will_ be good to live among people who don't know, who aren't always staring and whispering behind their hands about us Kildares!" she sighed.

Kate forced herself to say, impartially, "Lexington is not far away. I am afraid there will always be people there who know about us Kildares, dear."

"Lexington?" The girl's lip curled. "You don't suppose I shall let my husband spend the rest of his life in a little place like that! He has been wasted there too long already, he is a brilliant scholar, Mother, far more brilliant than people realize, too modest and simple to make the most of himself. You wait! I'll see to that."

Kate gave up. She lifted her daughter in her arms, and held her close for a long moment.

"You must do whatever you think best, my girl."

"Yes, Mother. I always do," said Jemima.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

And so Mrs. Kildare had her second interview with a man who wanted, not herself, but one of her children. It made her feel very old, as if she were becoming a looker-on at life, almost an outsider.

Jemima had firmly led her choice to the door of the office and left him there, with rea.s.suring whispers that were quite audible to the mother within. It was evident that she was bestowing counsel, and straightening his tie, and otherwise preparing him for conquest.

"Well, old Jim?" Kate looked up as he entered with a tremulous smile that drove from his mind irrevocably the fine speech he had prepared.

The professor was attired in new and dapper tweeds; the eye-gla.s.ses upon his aristocratic nose had dependent from them a rather broad black ribbon; and the s.h.i.+rtfront across which it dangled was of peppermint-striped silk, its dominant color repeated in silk socks appearing above patent-leather shoes. But dazzling raiment did not seem to produce in the inner man that careless courage which, as a psychologist, he had been led to expect.

"To think of coming to this house, to this room, and asking your permission to--to marry some one else! Kate," he blurted out, "I never felt such a fool in all my life!"