Part 13 (1/2)
”You had no right to say anything of the kind.”
”I know I hadn't, but I took a chance. Won't you take a chance, too, Jennie? It would mean the beginning of the end of all your troubles. In the long run, if not in the short run, I could take them off your hands.”
That she should be dead to this argument was not in human nature. Her basic conception of a man was of one who would relieve her of her burdens. Helplessness was a large part of her appeal. That marriage meant being taken care of imparted, according to her thinking, its chief common sense to the inst.i.tution. She shrank from marrying _just_ to be taken care of; but if there was no other way, and if in this way she could bring to the family the stupendous Collingham connection in lieu of her six a week.... She made up her mind to temporize.
”What makes you in such an awful hurry? We could do it any other day-”
”Did you ever see a sick man who wasn't in an awful hurry to get well?”
”You're not as bad as all that.”
”Listen, Jennie,” he said, with an ardor enhanced by her hints at relenting; ”listen, and I'll tell you what I am. I'm like a chap that's been cut in two, who only lives because he knows the other half will be joined to him again.”
”That's all very well; but where's the other half?”
”Here.” He touched her lightly on the arm. ”You're the other half of me, Jennie; I'm the other half of you.”
She laughed ruefully.
”That's news to me.”
”I thought it might be. That's why I'm telling you. You don't suppose any other fellow could be to you what I'd be, do you?”
”I don't know what you'd be to me because I've so many other things to think of first.”
”What sort of things?”
”What your folks would say, for one.”
He replied, with a shade of embarra.s.sment: ”They'd say some pretty mean things, to begin with.”
”And to end with?”
”They'd give in. They'd have to. Families always do when you only leave them Hobson's choice.”
She dropped into the studio idiom.
”That wouldn't be all pie for me, would it?”
”Is anything ever all pie? You've got to work for your living in this old world if you want to eat. I'm ready to work for this, Jennie. I'm ready to move mountains for it, and, by G.o.d! I'm going to move them! But do you know why?”
She said, shyly, ”I suppose because you like me.”
”I don't know whether I do or not. That's not what I think about first.”
Though they had not yet reached the line of taxicabs, he paused to make an explanation. ”Suppose you were inventing a machine and had got it pretty well fitted together, only that you couldn't make it work. And suppose, one day, you found the very part that was missing-the thing that would make it run. You'd know you'd have to have that one thing, wouldn't you? You'd have to have it-or your life wouldn't be worth while.”
”I never heard any other man talk like that.”
”Listen, Jennie. There are men and men. They'll go into two big bunches.
To one kind women are like whisky-some better than others, but all good.