Chapter 13

_Miss Ramsey_: "Oh, I don't know that I care about _her_--or not _pri_marily. Or do you say pri_mar_ily?"

_Miss Garnett_: "I never know. I only use it in writing."

_Miss Ramsey_: "It's a clumsy word; I don't know that I shall. But what I mean is that I must act from a general principle, and that principle is that when a man is engaged, it doesn't matter whether the girl has thrown herself at him, or not--"

_Miss Garnett_: "She certainly did, from what Conny says."

_Miss Ramsey_: "He must be shown that other girls won't tolerate his behaving as if he were _not_ engaged. It is wrong."

_Miss Garnett_: "We must stand together."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Yes. Though I don't infer that he has been attentive to other girls generally."

_Miss Garnett_: "No. I meant that if he has been coming here so much, you want to prevent his trifling with others."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Something like that. But it ought to be more definite. He ought to realize that if another girl cared for him, it would be cruel to her, paying her attentions, when he was engaged to some one else."

_Miss Garnett_: "And cruel to the girl he is engaged to."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Yes." She speaks coldly, vaguely. "But that is the personal ground, and I wish to avoid that. I wish to deal with him purely in the abstract."

_Miss Garnett_: "Yes, I understand that. And at the same time you wish to punish him. He ought to be made to feel it all the more because he is so severe himself."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Severe?"

_Miss Garnett_: "Not tolerating anything that's the least out of the way in other people. Taking you up about your ideas and showing where you're wrong, or even silly. Spiritually snubbing, Conny calls it."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Oh, I like that in him. It's so invigorating. It braces up all your good resolutions. It makes you ashamed; and shame is sanative."

_Miss Garnett_: "That's just what I told Conny, or the same thing. Do you think another one would hurt me? I will risk it, anyway." She takes another chocolate from the box. "Go on."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Oh, I was just wishing that I had been out longer, and had a little more experience of men. Then I should know how to act. How do you suppose people do, generally?"

_Miss Garnett_: "Why, you know, if they find a man in love with them, after he's engaged to another girl, they make him go back to her, it doesn't matter whether they're in love with him themselves or not."

_Miss Ramsey_: "I'm _not_ in love with Mr. Ashley, please."

_Miss Garnett_: "No; I'm supposing an extreme case."

_Miss Ramsey_, after a moment of silent thought: "Did you ever hear of anybody doing it?"

_Miss Garnett_: "Not just in our set. But I know it's done continually."

_Miss Ramsey_: "It seems to me as if I had read something of the kind."

_Miss Garnett_: "Oh yes, the books are full of it. Are those mallows? They might carry off the effects of the chocolates." Miss Ramsey passes her the box of marshmallows which she has bent over the table to look at.

_Miss Ramsey_: "And of course they couldn't get into the books if they hadn't really happened. I wish I could think of a case in point."

_Miss Garnett_: "Why, there was Peg Woffington--"

_Miss Ramsey_, with displeasure: "She was an actress of some sort, wasn't she?"

_Miss Garnett_, with meritorious candor: "Yes, she was. But she was a very _good_ actress."

_Miss Ramsey_: "What did _she_ do?"

_Miss Garnett_: "Well, it's a long time since I read it; and it's rather old-fashioned now. But there was a countryman of some sort, I remember, who came away from his wife, and fell in love with Peg Woffington, and then the wife follows him up to London, and begs her to give him back to her, and she does it. There's something about a portrait of Peg--I don't remember exactly; she puts her face through and cries when the wife talks to the picture. The wife thinks it is a real picture, and she is kind of soliloquizing, and asking Peg to give her husband back to her; and Peg does, in the end. That part is beautiful. They become the greatest friends."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Rather silly, I should say."

_Miss Garnett_: "Yes, it _is_ rather silly, but I suppose the author thought she had to do something."

_Miss Ramsey_: "And disgusting. A married man, that way! I don't see any comparison with Mr. Ashley."

_Miss Garnett_: "No, there really isn't any. Emily has never asked you to give him up. And besides, Peg Woffington really liked him a little--loved him, in fact."

_Miss Ramsey_: "And I _don't_ like Mr. Ashley at all. Of course I respect him--and I admire his intellect; there's no question about his being handsome; but I have never thought of him for a moment in any other way; and now I can't even respect him."

_Miss Garnett_: "Nobody could. I'm sure Emily would be welcome to him as far as _I_ was concerned. But he has never been about with me so much as he has with you, and I don't wonder you feel indignant."

_Miss Ramsey_, coldly: "I don't feel indignant. I wish to be just."

_Miss Garnett_: "Yes, that is what I mean. And poor Emily is so uninteresting! In the play that Kentucky Summers does, she is perfectly fascinating at first, and you can see why the poor girl's fiancé should be so taken with her. But I'm sure no one could say you had ever given Mr. Ashley the least encouragement. It would be pure justice on your part. I think you are grand! I shall always be proud of knowing what you were going to do."

_Miss Ramsey_, after some moments of snubbing intention: "I don't know what I am going to do myself, yet. Or how. What _was_ that play? I never heard of it."

_Miss Garnett_: "I don't remember distinctly, but it was about a young man who falls in love with her, when he's engaged to another girl, and she determines, as soon as she finds it out, to disgust him, so that he will go back to the other girl, don't you know."

_Miss Ramsey_: "That sounds rather more practical than the Peg Woffington plan. What does she do?"

_Miss Garnett_: "Nothing you'd like to do."

_Miss Ramsey_: "I'd like to do something in such a cause. What does she do?"

_Miss Garnett_: "Oh, when he is calling on her, Kentucky Summers pretends to fly into a rage with her sister, and she pulls her hair down, and slams everything round the room, and scolds, and drinks champagne, and wants him to drink with her, and I don't know what all. The upshot is that he is only too glad to get away."

_Miss Ramsey_: "It's rather loathsome, isn't it?"

_Miss Garnett_: "It _is_ rather loathsome. But it was in a good cause, and I suppose it was what an actress would think of."

_Miss Ramsey_: "An actress?"

_Miss Garnett_: "I forgot. The heroine is a distinguished actress, you know, and Kentucky could play that sort of part to perfection. But I don't think a lady would like to cut up, much, in the _best_ cause."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Cut up?"

_Miss Garnett_: "She certainly frisks about the room a good deal. How delicious these mallows are! Have you ever tried toasting them?"

_Miss Ramsey_: "At school. There seems an idea in it. And the hero isn't married. I don't like the notion of a married man."

_Miss Garnett_: "Oh, I'm quite sure he isn't married. He's merely engaged. That makes the whole difference from the Peg Woffington story. And there's no portrait, I'm confident, so that you wouldn't have to do that part."

_Miss Ramsey_, haughtily: "I don't propose to do _any_ part, if the affair can't be arranged without some such mountebank business!"

_Miss Garnett_: "You can manage it, if anybody can. You have so much dignity that you could awe him into doing his duty by a single glance. I wouldn't be in his place!"

_Miss Ramsey_: "I shall not give him a glance. I shall not see him when he comes. That will be simpler still." To Nora, at the door: "What is it, Nora?"

II

NORA, MISS RAMSEY, MISS GARNETT

_Nora_: "Mr. Ashley, Miss Ramsey."

_Miss Ramsey_, with a severity not meant for Nora: "Ask him to sit down in the reception-room a moment."

_Nora_: "Yes, Miss Ramsey."

III

MISS RAMSEY, MISS GARNETT

_Miss Garnett_, rising and seizing Miss Ramsey's hands: "Oh, Isobel! But you will be equal to it! Oh! Oh!"

_Miss Ramsey_, with state: "Why are you going, Esther? Sit down."

_Miss Garnett_: "If I only _could_ stay! If I could hide under the sofa, or behind the screen! Isn't it wonderful--providential--his coming at the very instant? Oh, Isobel!" She clasps her friend convulsively, and after a moment's resistance Miss Ramsey yields to her emotion, and they hide their faces in each other's neck, and strangle their hysteric laughter. They try to regain their composure, and then abandon the effort with a shuddering delight in the perfection of the incident. "What shall you do? Shall you trust to inspiration? Shall you make him show his hand first, and then act? Or shall you tell him at once that you know all, and-- Or no, of course you can't do that. He's not supposed to know that you know. Oh, I can imagine the freezing hauteur that you'll receive him with, and the icy indifference you'll let him understand that he isn't a _persona grata_ with! If I were only as tall as you! He isn't as tall himself, and you can tower over him. Don't sit down, or bend, or anything; just stand with your head up, and glance carelessly at him under your lashes as if nobody was there! Then it will gradually dawn upon him that you know everything, and he'll simply go through the floor." They take some ecstatic turns about the room, Miss Ramsey waltzing as gentleman. She abruptly frees herself.

_Miss Ramsey_: "No. It can't be as tacit as all that. There must be something explicit. As you say, I must _do_ something to cure him of his fancy--his perfidy--and make him glad to go back to her."

_Miss Garnett_: "Yes! Do you think he deserves it?"

_Miss Ramsey_: "I've no wish to punish him."

_Miss Garnett_: "How noble you are! I don't wonder he adores you. _I_ should. But you won't find it so easy. You must do something drastic. It _is_ drastic, isn't it? or do I mean static? One of those things when you simply crush a person. But now I must go. How I should like to listen at the door! We must kiss each other very quietly, and I must slip out-- Oh, you dear! How I long to know what you'll do! But it will be perfect, whatever it is. You always _did_ do perfect things." They knit their fingers together in parting. "On second thoughts I won't kiss you. It might unman you, and you need all your strength. Unman isn't the word, exactly, but you can't say ungirl, can you? It would be ridiculous. Though girls are as brave as men when it comes to duty. Good-by, dear!" She catches Miss Ramsey about the neck, and pressing her lips silently to her cheek, runs out. Miss Ramsey rings and the maid appears.

IV

NORA, MISS RAMSEY

_Miss Ramsey_, starting: "Oh! Is that you, Nora? Of course! Nora!"

_Nora_: "Yes, Miss Ramsey."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Do you know where my brother keeps his cigarettes?"

_Nora_: "Why, in his room, Miss Ramsey; you told him you didn't like the smell here."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Yes, yes. I forgot. And has he got any cocktails?"

_Nora_: "He's got the whole bottle full of them yet."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Full yet?"

_Nora_: "You wouldn't let him offer them to the gentlemen he had to lunch, last week, because you said--"

_Miss Ramsey_: "What did I say?"

_Nora_: "They were vulgar."

_Miss Ramsey_: "And so they are. And so much the better! Bring the cigarettes and the bottle and some glasses here, Nora, and then ask Mr. Ashley to come." She walks away to the window, and hurriedly hums a musical comedy waltz, not quite in tune, as from not remembering exactly, and after Nora has tinkled in with a tray of glasses she lights a cigarette and stands puffing it, gasping and coughing a little, as Walter Ashley enters. "Oh, Mr. Ashley! Sorry to make you wait."

V

MR. ASHLEY, MISS RAMSEY

_Mr. Ashley_: "The time _has_ seemed long, but I could have waited all day. I couldn't have gone without seeing you, and telling you--" He pauses, as if bewildered at the spectacle of Miss Ramsey's resolute practice with the cigarette, which she now takes from her lips and waves before her face with innocent recklessness.

_Miss Ramsey_, chokingly: "Do sit down." She drops into an easy-chair beside the tea-table, and stretches the tips of her feet out beyond the hem of her skirt in extremely lady-like abandon. "Have a cigarette." She reaches the box to him.

_Ashley_: "Thank you. I won't smoke, I believe." He stands frowning, while she throws her cigarette into a teacup and lights another.

_Miss Ramsey_: "I thought everybody smoked. Then have a cocktail."

_Ashley_: "A what?"

_Miss Ramsey_: "A cocktail. So many people like them with their tea, instead of rum, you know."

_Ashley_: "No, I didn't know." He regards her with amaze, rapidly hardening into condemnation.

_Miss Ramsey_: "I hope you don't _object_ to smoking. Englishwomen all smoke."

_Ashley_: "I think I've heard. I didn't know that American ladies did."

_Miss Ramsey_: "They don't, _all_. But they will when they find how nice it is."

_Ashley_: "And do Englishwomen all drink cocktails?"

_Miss Ramsey_: "They will when they find how nice it is. But why do you keep standing? Sit down, if it's only for a moment. There is something I would like to talk with you about. What were you saying when you came in? I didn't catch it quite."

_Ashley_: "Nothing--now--"

_Miss Ramsey_: "And I can't persuade you to have a cocktail? I believe I'll have another myself." She takes up the bottle, and tries several times to pour from it. "I do believe Nora's forgotten to open it! That is a good joke on me. But I mustn't let her know. Do you happen to have a pocket-corkscrew with you, Mr. Ashley?"

_Ashley_: "No--"

_Miss Ramsey_: "Well, never mind." She tosses her cigarette into the grate, and lights another. "I wonder why they always have cynical persons smoke, on the stage? I don't see that the two things necessarily go together, but it does give you a kind of thrill when they strike a match, and it lights up their faces when they put it to the cigarette. You know something good and wicked is going to happen." She puffs violently at her cigarette, and then suddenly flings it away and starts to her feet. "Will you--would you--open the window?" She collapses into her chair.

_Ashley_, springing toward her: "Miss Ramsey, are you--you are ill!"

_Miss Ramsey_: "No, no! The window! A little faint--it's so close-- There, it's all right now. Or it will be--when--I've had--another cigarette." She leans forward to take one; Ashley gravely watches her, but says nothing. She lights her cigarette, but, without smoking, throws it away. "Go on."

_Ashley_: "I wasn't saying anything!"

_Miss Ramsey_: "Oh, I forgot. And I don't know what we were talking about myself." She falls limply back into her chair and closes her eyes.

_Ashley_: "Sha'n't I ring for the maid? I'm afraid--"

_Miss Ramsey_, imperiously: "Not at all. Not on any account." Far less imperiously: "You may pour me a cup of tea if you like. That will make me well. The full strength, please." She motions away the hot-water jug with which he has proposed qualifying the cup of tea which he offers her.

_Ashley_: "One lump or two?"

_Miss Ramsey_: "Only one, thank you." She takes the cup.

_Ashley_, offering the milk: "Cream?"

_Miss Ramsey_: "A drop." He stands anxiously beside her while she takes a long draught and then gives back the cup. "That was perfect."

_Ashley_: "Another?"

_Miss Ramsey_: "No, that is just right. Now go on. Or, I forgot. You were not going on. Oh dear! How much better I feel. There must have been something poisonous in those cigarettes."

_Ashley_: "Yes, there was tobacco."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Oh, do you think it was the tobacco? Do throw the whole box into the fire! I shall tell Bob never to get cigarettes with tobacco in them after this. Won't you have one of the chocolates? Or a mallow? I feel as if I should never want to eat anything again. Where was I?" She rests her cheek against the side of her chair cushion, and speaks with closed eyes, in a weak murmur. Mr. Ashley watches her at first with anxiety, then with a gradual change of countenance until a gleam of intelligence steals into his look of compassion.

_Ashley_: "You asked me to throw the cigarettes into the fire. But I want you to let me keep them."

_Miss Ramsey_, with wide-flung eyes: "You? You said you wouldn't smoke."

_Ashley_, laughing: "May I change my mind? One talks better." He lights a cigarette. "And, Miss Ramsey, I believe I _will_ have a cocktail, after all."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Mr. Ashley!"

_Ashley_, without noting her protest: "I had forgotten that I had a corkscrew in my pocket-knife. Don't trouble yourself to ring for one." He produces the knife and opens the bottle; then, as Miss Ramsey rises and stands aghast, he pours out a glass and offers it to her, with mock devotion. As she shakes her head and recoils: "Oh! I thought you liked cocktails. They are very good after cigarettes--very reviving. But if you won't--" He tosses off the cocktail and sets down the glass, smacking his lips. "Tell your brother I commend his taste--in cocktails and"--puffing his cigarette--"tobacco. Poison for poison, let me offer you one of _my_ cigarettes. They're milder than these." He puts his hand to his breast pocket.

_Miss Ramsey_, with nervous shrinking: "No--"

_Ashley_: "It's just as well. I find that I hadn't brought mine with me." After a moment: "You are so unconventional, so fearless, that I should like your notion of the problem in a book I've just been reading. Why should the mere fact that a man is married to one woman prevent his being in love with another, or half a dozen others; or _vice versa_?"

_Miss Ramsey_: "Mr. Ashley, do you wish to insult me?"

_Ashley_: "Dear me, no! But put the case a little differently. Suppose a couple are merely engaged. Does that fact imply that neither has a right to a change of mind, or to be fancy free to make another choice?"

_Miss Ramsey_, indignantly: "Yes, it does. They are as sacredly bound to each other as if they were married, and if they are false to each other the girl is a wretch, and the man is a villain! And if you think anything I have said can excuse you for breaking your engagement, or that I don't consider you the wickedest person in the world, and the most barefaced hypocrite, and--and--I don't know what--you are very much mistaken."

_Ashley_: "What in the world are you talking about?"

_Miss Ramsey_: "I am talking about you and your shameless perfidy."

_Ashley_: "My shameless perf-- I don't understand! I came here to tell you that I love you--"

_Miss Ramsey_: "How dare you! To speak to me of that, when-- Or perhaps you _have_ broken with her, and think you are free to hoodwink some other poor creature. But you will find that you have chosen the wrong person. And it's no excuse for you her being a little--a little--not so bright as some girls, and not so good-looking. Oh, it's enough to make any girl loathe her own looks! You mustn't suppose you can come here red-handed--yes, it's the same as a murder, and any true girl would say so--and tell me you care for me. No, Walter Ashley, I haven't fallen so low as that, though I _have_ the disgrace of your acquaintance. And I hope--I hope--if you don't like my smoking, and offering you cocktails, and talking the way I have, it will be a lesson to you. And yes!--I _will_ say it! If it will add to your misery to know that I did respect you very much, and thought everything--very highly--of you, and might have answered you very differently before, when you were free to tell me _that_--now I have nothing but the utmost abhorrence--and--disapproval of you. And--and-- Oh, I don't see how you can be so hateful!" She hides her face in her hands and rushes from the room, overturning several chairs in her course toward the door. Ashley remains staring after her, while a succession of impetuous rings make themselves heard from the street door. There is a sound of opening it, and then a flutter of skirts and anxieties, and Miss Garnett comes running into the room.

VI

MISS GARNETT, MR. ASHLEY

_Miss Garnett_, to the maid hovering in the doorway: "Yes, I must have left it here, for I never missed it till I went to pay my fare in the motor-bus, and tried to think whether I had the exact dime, and if I hadn't whether the conductor would change a five-dollar bill or not, and then it rushed into my mind that I had left my purse somewhere, and I knew I hadn't been anywhere else." She runs from the mantel to the writing-desk in the corner, and then to the sofa, where, peering under the tea-table, she finds her purse on the shelf. "Oh, here it is, Nora, just where I put it when we began to talk, and I must have gone out and left it. I--" She starts with a little shriek, in encountering Ashley. "Oh, Mr. Ashley! What a fright you gave me! I was just looking for my purse that I missed when I went to pay my fare in the motor-bus, and was wondering whether I had the exact dime, or the conductor could change a five-dollar bill, and--" She discovers, or affects to discover, something strange in his manner. "What--what is the matter, Mr. Ashley?"

_Ashley_: "I shall be glad to have you tell me--or any one."

_Miss Garnett_: "I don't understand. Has Isobel--"

_Ashley_: "Miss Garnett, did you know I was engaged?"

_Miss Garnett_: "Why, yes; I was just going to congrat--"

_Ashley_: "Well, don't, unless you can tell me whom I am engaged to."

_Miss Garnett_: "Why, aren't you engaged to Emily Fray?"

_Ashley_: "Not the least in the world."

_Miss Garnett_, in despair: "Then _what_ have I done? Oh, what a fatal, fatal scrape!" With a ray of returning hope: "But she told me _herself_ that she was engaged! And you were together so much, last summer!" Desperately: "Then if she isn't engaged to you, whom is she engaged to?"

_Ashley_: "On general principles, I shouldn't know, but in this particular instance I happen to know that she is engaged to Owen Brooks. They were a great deal more together last summer."

_Miss Garnett_, with conviction: "So they were!" With returning doubt: "But why didn't she say so?"

_Ashley_: "I can't tell you; she may have had her reasons, or she may not. Can you possibly tell me, in return for my ignorance, why the fact of her engagement should involve me in the strange way it seems to have done with Miss Ramsey?"

_Miss Garnett_, with a burst of involuntary candor: "Why, _I_ did that. Or, no! What's she been doing?"

_Ashley_: "Really, Miss Garnett--"

_Miss Garnett_: "How can I tell you anything, if you don't tell me everything? You wouldn't wish me to betray confidence?"

_Ashley_: "No, certainly not. What was the confidence?"

_Miss Garnett_: "Well-- But I shall have to know first what she's been doing. You must see that yourself, Mr. Ashley." He is silent. "Has she--has Isobel--been behaving--well, out of character?"

_Ashley_: "Very much indeed."

_Miss Garnett_: "I expected she would." She fetches a thoughtful sigh, and for her greater emotional convenience she sinks into an easy-chair and leans forward. "Oh dear! It is a scrape." Suddenly and imperatively: "Tell me exactly what she did, if you hope for any help whatever."

_Ashley_: "Why, she offered me a cocktail--"

_Miss Garnett_: "Oh, how good! I didn't suppose she would dare! Well?"

_Ashley_: "And she smoked cigarettes--"

_Miss Garnett_: "How perfectly divine! And what else?"

_Ashley_, coldly: "May I ask why you admire Miss Ramsey's behaving out of character so much? I think the smoking made her rather faint, and--"

_Miss Garnett_: "She would have let it _kill_ her! Never tell me that girls have no moral courage!"

_Ashley_: "But what--what was the meaning of it all?"

_Miss Garnett_, thoughtfully: "I suppose if I got her in for it, I ought to get her out, even if I betray confidence."

_Ashley_: "It depends upon the confidence. What is it?"