Anonymous - A Man With A Maid II

She swept in, glancing about with her lips pursed in evident contempt of my surroundings, though even Alice had complimented me on their decor and neatness for a bachelor. That was another black mark against Marion’s account which, I, promised myself, I meant to settle to the very fullest measure of my capacities-and hers!-before this afternoon wended its way to its exciting end. Finished with her inspection, she turned back to me and remarked almost insolently, “Mind you, I shan’t stay long. The only reason I came, if you must know, was that I had some shopping at the milliner’s and at a book store not far from your apartment. And since you made such an important point of communicating with me, I decided to grant you this meeting.”

“I’m happy that you did, Marion. Alice has always spoken so favorably of you, and even though you did oppose our knowing each other, I shall hope to persuade you that I am not so black as I have been painted.” I did not feel it necessary to add at that point that the painting had been done by Marion herself. Alice had inherently a warm and generous nature-which, to be sure, the sweet pursuit of her conquest had fully unleashed! But I could tell at once that Marion preferred this icy veneer as a kind of shield. Therefore the question was: Was she totally frigid and devoid of warmth and a capacity for passion, or was this veneer only assumed to hide her true outlook? Well, that was precisely the question I had posed myself to have answered for me in my snuggery. I also determined to learn from Marion just how thoroughly her former husband had indoctrinated her into the sweet mysteries of physical bliss. Perhaps he had left me two of her three virginities; the very thought of that nearly made me spill the cup of tea that I was bringing to her and setting beside her with the utmost deference and gentlemanly courtesy. For if you have never had in your apartment an arrogant and cool young woman who treats you as if you were beneath her notice while at the same time you are conjuring up visions of her rosy lips deferentially fixed about your manhood, then you cannot begin to understand the riotous images that filled my mind and the shuddering impulsions which titillated all my nerves and sinews! After having poured out my own tea and added cream and sugar to my preference, I seated myself opposite her and fixed upon her the most intent and gracious look it was in my power to muster. An uneasy silence fell over us, and then finally, after a ladylike sip or two from her cup, she set it down in the saucer almost with a clatter as, fixing her dark, widely spaced blue eyes upon me, she remarked, “What chiefly brought me to agreeing to visit you here, Jack, is the inexplicable part of your note to me. I cannot for the life of me understand how you could possess any kind of information about my future happiness, as you termed it, that would be of the least concern to me. Will you please explain your meaning?”

“Now that is a most intimate matter, and I will not be so brash as to give you a direct answer in a single sentence or two, my dear Marion,” I told her speciously.

Her supercilious eyebrows arched, and her blue eyes were extremely cold as she retorted, “If you continue the insolence of treating me like a child, Jack, I shall leave at once. I’m already beginning to regret my visit Now I insist that you be direct with me and explain precisely how you take upon yourself the audacity of telling me that you could possibly know anything about my person or my thoughts or my hopes for the future. You are well aware, I trust, that my husband and I have parted company. You never knew him, and this is the first time that you have really met me, and yet out of a clear sky you presume upon yourself to be some sort of judge. This is sheer temerity on your part, and I know now why I was so opposed to my sister’s infatuation with you. It appears to me, sir, that you have in you the traits of a scoundrel!”

Mentally I rubbed my hands with glee at this little tirade of hers. How beautifully she had added to her account She had started a brand-new page and it was already scored most heavily against her. Oh, Marion, Marion, how little you know me but how well you will before too many hours have passed, I told myself, and I confess that I was hard put to it to keep from smiling like a predatory beast of prey who finds that the elusive gazelle has unwarily entered his lair!

“You have made an accusation, Marion,” I said as coldly as she had done to me, “that is not seemly, for now you have taken upon yourself the temerity-to use your own picturesque term-of judging me without even knowing me, just as you did before when I first knew Alice. I had never met you when I first knew your lovely sister, and I’m now fully convinced that she jilted me precisely because you had already formed your own opinionated notion of what my character must be. I blamed her at the time, I no longer do so, for we are reconciled. But if your own marriage has come to such a drastic end, Marion, would it not be more reasonable to ask yourself if it is perhaps not you who are at fault and therefore, if that is so, that your opinions and your judgments of people may play you false?”

Color flamed in her cheeks and she imperiously rose. “I knew it was a mistake to come here. I should have known that you would regale me with such an ignoble accusation, sir,” she flung at me. “You are a bachelor and an adventurer, and even though Alice tells me that she is most happy in your company, I begin to think that you have had some evil influence upon her. Yes, it must be so. And it is a shocking thing for even a married woman to have to say to a supposed gentleman, that I believe this: I believe that you and my sister have entered upon an illicit liaison which is the more shameful because I had warned her of your selfish and cruel nature, and I am certain that you have no honorable intentions concerning marriage, no matter what favors she may already have granted you.”

“I will take you up on that at once, Marion,” I told her angrily, for I could not much longer contain my irascibility at these insulting charges. “If indeed there is anything which stands between Alice and myself towards the ultimate happiness of wedlock, it is your own perspicacious determination to set us apart and to make us at odds with each other as you did before. But I have effected this reconciliation and I think that Alice is now wise enough and mature enough in her own emotions as a woman to be no longer influenced by your shrewish whimsies and pronouncements. By what right, I now ask you, do you dare to come into my apartment and to insult me with the epithet of vile seducer and adventurer? What do you know of me except perhaps that which you may have heard by rumor only, since only this day do we first meet face to face?”

At this, Marion tossed her head in high dudgeon and then darting me a look of implacable distaste she haughtily responded: “I see that it is utterly useless, sir, to prolong this discussion further. It is a great mistake for me to have come at all, for I consider you unregenerate and determined to offend me with the tone and tenure of your remarks. I shall ask you, therefore, to show me to the door, and I will take my leave of you. I can only hope that my poor sister comes off better than I begin to believe she will, once having returned to you. But you may be sure that I shall counsel her to the utmost of my abilities to make a complete break with you, sir, and to find herself a gentleman of greater courtesy and proper demeanor when in the presence of the tender sex.”

Her formal and, indeed, sanctimonious speech almost made me burst out laughing. She was still a very young woman, for all her marital adventure, and yet she dared to set herself up as a kind of sermonizer, a veritable Mrs. Grundy, who characterized and labeled that which displeased her as necessarily being false and meretricious. Decidedly what Marion needed was being pulled down abruptly and rudely from the preening pedestal on which she had so vauntedly perched herself. And I knew precisely how to bring about that downfall in the Snuggery!