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Nobody

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Год написания книги
2017
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There was unquestionably a certain amount of comfort to be gained by viewing the case from this angle. Sally became calmer and brightened perceptibly.

"Perhaps," she murmured in an enigmatic manner becoming in the putative mistress of unutterable arts.

"It's just like that shrivelled old shrew. What you might expect. If I had thought of it in time, I'd've been willing to make a book on her laying it to you."

"But why?" Sally protested perplexedly.

"Sure, I don't have to tell you why," he said diplomatically. "You know as well as I do she's plumb corroded with jealousy of you for winning out with her dear Abigail just when she thought she had things fixed. I don't suppose you know the inside story of how your predecessor got the sack? The Pride person was responsible. Miss Matring was in her way, and a good deal of her own disposition to boot. It was a merry war, all right, while it lasted-scheming and squabbling and backbiting and tattling and corrupting servants to carry tales-all that sort of thing. To be honest about it, I don't just know which was the worse of the two; they didn't either of them stick at much of anything noticeable. But, of course, Miss Matring was handicapped, not being blood-kin, and the upshot was she had to go-and until you showed up the old maid was actually miserable for want of somebody to hate. I noticed the light of battle in those beady little eyes of hers the minute she laid 'em on you. I'd have warned you, only …"

He stumbled. She encouraged him: "Why didn't you?"

She didn't like Trego-that was understood-but sympathy was very sweet to her just then, whatever its source, and she had no real objection to disparagement of her slanderer, either.

"Well, it wasn't my fight. And I didn't know how you'd take interference. You looked pretty well able to take care of yourself-in fact, you are. And then-I don't reckon it's going to do me any good to say this; but I might as well make a clean breast of it-I was just selfish enough to have a sneaking sort of hope, deep down, that maybe you'd find it so unpleasant you'd quit."

"Mr. Trego!" No more than that; he had taken her breath away.

"I guess that does sound funny," he admitted, evading her indignant eye. "You can't trust me, ever. I always say things the wrong way; that's the best thing I do."

"If it's possible for you to explain."

"It's possible, all right, but it's anything but easy. What I meant was.. Well, any fool could see that as long as you were so strong for this society racket I didn't stand much show."

"Show?"

"Of making good with you. Oh, look here, what's the use of beating about the bush? I'm a rude, two-fisted animal, and that's all against me. I never could flummux up my meaning successfully with a lot of words like-well, name no names. All the same, it's pretty hard for a fellow who knows the girl he's sweet on isn't crazy about him to come out in plain talk and say he loves her."

She was dumb. She stared incredulously at his heavy, sincere, embarrassed face, as if it were something abnormal, almost supernatural, a hallucination.

"Meaning" he faltered, "I mean to say-of course-I love you, Sar-er-ah-Miss Manwaring-and I think I can make you happy-"

He was making heavy weather of his simple declaration, labouring like an old-fashioned square-rigger in a beam sea.

"If you'll marry me, that is," he concluded in a breath, with obvious relief if with a countenance oddly shadowed in the staring moonlight by the heat of his distress.

She tried, she meant to give him his answer without delay; it were kinder. But she found it impossible; the negative stuck stubbornly in her throat. She knew it would stab him deep. He wasn't the man to take love lightly; his emotions were anything but on the surface; their wounds would be slow to heal.

And in spite of the positive animus she had all along entertained toward him, she didn't want to hurt him now; perhaps not strangely, remembering that this proposal of marriage was a direct, down-right protestation of implicit faith in her, uttered squarely on top of a most damnable indictment-remembering, too, that it was barely two hours since Sally herself had been ready, almost eager, to believe him capable of committing the very crime of implication in which he exonerated her without an instant's hesitation.

True, she had been quick to exonerate him in her thoughts as soon as the suspicion was engendered in them, but she had done so almost reluctantly, ungenerously, not because she wanted to believe him innocent, but because the burden of the evidence, together with the counsel of instinct, had been too strong in his favour to permit more than a moment's doubt. And she had repented; but that, it appeared, was not enough; she must be punished in this unique way, have her own unworthiness demonstrated by this artless manifestation of his worth. And however much she might long to make amends to him, she couldn't.

The pain and the pity of it! He was a far better man than she a woman, and he honoured her with his love-and she couldn't requite him, she couldn't love him; he was still too far from the mirage of her ideal.

"Oh!" she sighed. "Why?"

He misconstrued. "I've told you heaps of times-because you're a woman, not a manikin. Marriage would mean something more to you than clothes, Europe, idleness, and flirting with other women's husbands, just as it would have to mean more to me than hiring a woman to live with me and entertain my friends."

"How do you know? How can you tell? What do you know about me?" she protested almost passionately, and answered herself. "You don't know; you can't tell; you know nothing about me. You assert things-I only wish they were true-"

"Oh, they're true enough," he interrupted unceremoniously. "It's no use trying to run yourself down to me. I couldn't feel the way I do about you if you were not at heart as sound as an apple, no matter what nonsense you may have been guilty of at one time or another, as every human being's got to be."

"Has nobody told you anything about me? Mrs. Gosnold-?"

"Mrs. Gosnold 'tends to her own knitting. And nobody has told me anything-except yourself. More than that, I don't go by other folks' opinions when I make up my mind about a matter as vital to me as marrying a wife."

"Then I must tell you-"

"Not until you give me some legitimate title to your confidence. You've got no right to confide in me unless you mean to marry me-and you haven't said you would yet."

"I can't-I couldn't without telling you-please let me speak!" She drew a long breath of desperation and grasped the nettle firmly. "I stole the clothes I came here in. My name isn't Manwaring-it's Sally Manvers. I was a shop-girl-"

"Half a minute. Mrs. Gosnold knows all this, doesn't she?"

"Yes-"

"You told her everything, and still she stood for you?"

"Yes, but-"

"That's enough for me. I don't want to hear anything more until you're my wife. After that you'll have to tell me-and if there's any trouble remaining to be straightened out then, why, it'll be my natural job as a husband to fix it up for you. Till then I won't listen to any more of your confidences that have nothing whatever to do with the fact that I love you and believe in you and want to make you happy."

"But don't you understand that a girl who would steal and lie in order to get into society-"

"Oh, everybody's got to be foolish about something or other. You'll get over this social craze. The more you see of it the more sure your cure. Now don't mistake me; I'm not for an instant implying that some of the finest people that ever walked God's green earth don't figure in what we call Society; and there are more of them on this little island, perhaps, than anywhere else in America; and I'd be the last to cry them down or pretend I'm not glad and proud of their acquaintance and friendship. The trouble is, they can't in the nature of things keep up their social order without attracting a cloud of parasites, snobs, and toadies-and that's what makes me sick of the whole social game as practised to-day."

"And you can't understand that I am precisely what you've described-a parasite!"

"You couldn't be if you wanted to. Maybe you think you could, but you're wrong; you haven't got it in you."

Against such infatuation candour was powerless. She retreated to the last ditch. "But you told me your father's heart was set on your marrying a society woman!"

"Well, what of that? You don't suppose I think any of them have got anything on you, do you? Besides, dad isn't altogether an old idiot, and if the kind of society woman he wants me to marry wouldn't look at me, and if my happiness is at stake.. Well, even if he did want to ruin my life by hitching me up in double harness to a clothes-horse, I wouldn't let him!"

"But if I want-"

"There isn't anything you want that I can't get you. If you like this sort of thing, you shall have it. And don't run away with the idea that I'm not strong for society myself-the right sort."

Her gesture was hopeless. "What can I say to you?"

He suggested quietly, not without humour: "If you don't mind, say yes."

"You don't know what you're doing, making me such an offer. Suppose I married you for your money."

"You won't do that. You can't."

"What do you mean?"

"You've got to love me first. And you're too fine and honest to pretend that for the sake of my money."
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