"I am glad you told me," she said. "I have been afraid it was coming. But until you told me I could not say anything. I tried to stop you. I was rude and unkind--""You certainly were," Hemingway agreed cheerfully. "And the more you would have nothing to do with me, the more I admired you. And then I learned to admire you more, and then to love you. It seems now as though I had always known and always loved you. And now this is what we are going to do."He wouldn't let her speak; he rushed on precipitately.
"We are first going up to the house to get your typewriting-machine, and we will bring it back here and hurl it as far as we can off this cliff.
I want to see the splash! I want to hear it smash when it hits that rock.
It has been my worst enemy, because it helped you to be independent of me, because it kept you from me. Time after time, on the veranda, when I was pretending to listen to Lady Firth, I was listening to that damned machine banging and complaining and tiring your pretty fingers and your dear eyes. So first it has got to go. You have been its slave, now I am going to be your slave. You have only to rub the lamp and things will happen. And because I've told you nothing about myself, you mustn't think that the money that helps to make them happen is 'tainted.' It isn't. Nor am I, nor my father, nor my father's father. I am asking you to marry a perfectly respectable young man. And, when you do--"Again he gave her no opportunity to interrupt, but rushed on impetuously: "We will sail away across that ocean to wherever you will take me. To Ceylon and Tokio and San Francisco, to Naples and New York, to Greece and Athens. They are all near. They are all yours. Will you accept them and me?" He smiled appealingly, but most miserably. For though he had spoken lightly and with confidence, it was to conceal the fact that he was not at all confident.
As he had read in her eyes her refusal of his pony, he had read, even as he spoke, her refusal of himself. When he ceased speaking the girl answered:
"If I say that what you tell me makes me proud, I am saying too little."She shook her head firmly, with an air of finality that frightened Hemingway. "But what you ask--what you suggest is impossible.""You don't like me?" said Hemingway.
"I like you very much," returned the girl, "and, if I don't seem unhappy that it can't be, it is because I always have known it can't be--""Why can't it be?" rebelled Hemingway. "I don't mean that I can't understand your not wanting to marry me, but if I knew your objection, maybe, I could beat it down."Again, with the same air of finality, the girl moved her head slowly, as though considering each word; she began cautiously.
"I cannot tell you the reason," she said, "because it does not concern only myself.""If you mean you care for some one else," pleaded Hemingway, "that does not frighten me at all." It did frighten him extremely, but, believing that a faint heart never won anything, he pretended to be brave.
"For you," he boasted, "I would go down into the grave as deep as any man. He that hath more let him give. I know what I offer. Iknow I love you as no other man--"
The girl backed away from him as though he had struck her. "You must not say that," she commanded.
For the first time he saw that she was moved, that the fingers she laced and unlaced were trembling. "It is final!" exclaimed the girl. "I cannot marry--you, or any one. I--I have promised.
I am not free."
"Nothing in the world is final," returned Hemingway sharply, "except death." He raised his hat and, as though to leave her, moved away. Not because he admitted defeat, but because he felt that for the present to continue might lose him the chance to fight again. But, to deliver an ultimatum, he turned back.
"As long as you are alive, and I am alive," he told her, "all things are possible. I don't give up hope. I don't give up you."The girl exclaimed with a gesture of despair. "He won't understand!"she cried.
Hemingway advanced eagerly.
"Help me to understand," he begged.
"You won't understand," explained the girl, "that I am speaking the truth. You are right that things can change in the future, but nothing can change the past. Can't you understand that?""What do I care for the past?" cried the young man scornfully. "Iknow you as well as though I had known you for a thousand years and I love you."The girl flushed crimson.
"Not my past," she gasped. "I meant--"
"I don't care what you meant," said Hemingway. "I'm not prying into your little secrets. I know only one thing--two things, that I love you and that, until you love me, I am going to make your life hell!"He caught at her hands, and for an instant she let him clasp them in both of his, while she looked at him.
Something in her face, other than distress and pity, caused his heart to leap. But he was too wise to speak, and, that she might not read the hope in his eyes, turned quickly and left her. He had not crossed the grounds of the agency before he had made up his mind as to the reason for her repelling him.
"She is engaged to Fearing!" he told himself. "She has promised to marry Fearing! She thinks that it is too late to consider another man!" The prospect of a fight for the woman he loved thrilled him greatly. His lower jaw set pugnaciously.
"I'll show her it's not too late," he promised himself. "I'll show her which of us is the man to make her happy. And, if I am not the man, I'll take the first outbound steamer and trouble them no more.
But before that happens," he also promised himself, "Fearing must show he is the better man."In spite of his brave words, in spite of his determination, within the day Hemingway had withdrawn in favor of his rival, and, on the Crown Prince Eitel, bound for Genoa and New York, had booked his passage home.