James Cabell - The Cords of Vanity. A Comedy of Shirking

This statement was advanced just two weeks later than the events previously recorded. And the origin of it was the fact that I was now engaged to Avis Beechinor though it was not as yet to be "announced"; just this concession alone had Mrs. Beechinor wrested from an indignant and, latterly, a tearful interview…. For I had called at Selwoode, in due form; and after leaving Mrs. Beechinor had been pounced upon by an excited and comely little person in black.

"Don't you mind a word she said," this lady had exhorted, "because she is the Gadarene swine, and Avis has told me everything! Of course you are to be married at once, and I only wish I could find the only man in the world who can keep me interested for four hours on a stretch and send my pulse up to a hundred and make me feel those thrilly thrills I've always longed for."

"But surely—" said I.

"No, I'm beginning to be afraid not, beautiful, though of course I used to be crazy about Billy Woods; and then once I was engaged to another man for a long time, and I was perfectly devoted to him, but he never made me feel a single thrilly thrill. And would you believe it, Mr. Townsend?—after a while he came back, precisely as though he had been a bad penny or a cat. He had been in the Boer War and came home just a night before I left, wounded and promoted several times and completely covered with glory and brass buttons. He came seven miles to see me, and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing him, for I had on my best dress and was feeling rather talkative. Well! at ten I was quite struck on him. At eleven perfectly willing to part friends, and at twelve crazy for him to go. He stayed till half-past, and I didn't want to think of him for days. And, by the way, I am Miss Hugonin, and I hope you and Avis will be very happy. Good-bye! "

"Good-bye!" said I.

And that, oddly enough, was the one private talk I ever had with the Margaret Hugonin whom, for some two weeks, I had believed myself to be upon the verge of marrying; for the next time I conversed with her alone she was Mrs. William Woods.

"Oh, go away, Billy!" she then said, impatiently "How often will I have to tell you it isn't decent to be always hanging around your wife? Oh, you dear little crooked-necktied darling!"—and she remedied the fault on tiptoe,—" please run away and make love to somebody else, and be sure to get her name right, so that I shan't assassinate the wrong person,—because I want to tell this very attractive child all about Avis, and not be bothered." And subsequently she did.

But I must not forestall her confidences, lest I get my cart even further in advance of my nominal Pegasus than the loosely-made conveyance is at present lumbering.

And meanwhile Peter Blagden and I had called at Selwoode once or twice in unison and due estate. And Peter considered "Miss Beechinor a damn fine girl, and Miss Hugonin too, only—"

"Only," I prompted, between puffs, "Miss Hugonin keeps everybody, as my old Mammy used to say, 'in a perpetual swivet.' I never understood what the phrase meant, precisely, but I somehow always knew that it was eloquent."

"Just so," said Peter. "You prefer—ah—a certain amount of tranquillity. I haven't been abroad for a long while," said Mr. Blagden; and then, after another meditative pause: "Now Stella—well, Stella was a damn sight too good for me, of course—"

"She was," I affably assented.

"—and I'd be the very last man in the world to deny it. But still you do prefer—" Then Peter broke off short and said: "My God, Bob! what's the matter?"

So I think I must have had the ill-taste to have laughed a little over Mr. Blagden's magnanimity in regard to Stella's foibles. But I only said: "Oh, nothing, Peter! I was just going to tell you that travelling does broaden the mind, and that you will find an overcoat indispensable in Switzerland, and that during the voyage you ought to keep in the open air as much as possible, and that you should give the steward who waits on you at table at least ten shillings,—I was just going to tell you, in fine, that you would be a fool to squander any money on a guide-book, when I am here to give you all the necessary pointers."

"But I didn't mean to go to Europe exactly," said Mr. Blagden; "—I just meant to go abroad in a general sense. Any place would be abroad, you know, where people weren't always remembering how rich you were, and weren't scrambling to marry you out of hand, but really cared, you know, like she does. Oh, may be it is bad form to mention it, but I couldn't help seeing how she looked at you, Bob. And it waked something—Oh, I don't know what I mean," said Peter—"it's just damn foolishness, I suppose."

"It's very far from that," I said; and I was honestly moved, just as I always am when pathos, preferably grotesque, has caught me unprepared. This millionaire was lonely, because of his millions, and Stella was dead; and somehow I understood, and laid one hand upon his shoulder.

"Oh, you can't help it, I suppose, if all women love by ordinary because he is so like another person, where as men love because she is so different. My poor caliph, I would sincerely advise you to play the fool just as you plan to do,—oh, anywhere,—and without even a Mesrour. In fine go Bunburying at once. For very frankly, First Cousin of the Moon, it is the one thing worth while in life."

"I half believe I will," said Peter…. So he was packing in the interim during which I pretended to be writing, and was in reality fretting to think that, whilst Avis was in England by this, I could not decently leave America until those last five chapters were finished. So, in part as an excuse for not scrawling the dullest of nonsense and subsequently tearing it up, I fell to considering the unquestionable fact that I was in love with Avis, and upon the verge of marrying her, and was in consequence, as a matter of plain logic, deliriously happy.

"For when you are in love with a woman you, of course, want to marry her more than you want anything else. In nature, it is a serious and—well, an almost irretrievable business. And I shall have to cultivate the domestic virtues and smoke cheaper cigarettes and all that, but I shall be glad to do every one of these things, for her sake—after a while. I shall probably enjoy doing them."

And I read Bettie Hamlyn's letter for the seventeenth time….

For Bettie had answered the wild rhapsody which I wrote to tell her how much in love I was with Elena Barry-Smith. And in the nature of things I had not written Bettie again to tell her I was, and by a deal the more, in love with Avis Beechinor. The task was delicate, the reasons for my not unnatural change were such as you must transmit in a personal interview during which you are particularly boyish and talk very fast.

Besides, I do not like writing letters; and moreover, there was no real need to write. I was going to Gridlington; what more natural than to ride over to Fairhaven some clear morning and tell Bettie everything? I pictured her surprise and her delight at seeing me, and reflected it would be unfair to her to render an inaccurate account of matters, such as any letter must necessarily give.

Only, first, there was the garden of Peter's aunt,—which sounds like an introductory French exercise,—and then Avis came. And, somehow, I had not, in consequence, traversed the scant nine miles that lay as yet between me and Bettie Hamlyn. I kept on meaning to do it the next day.

And the next day after this I really did.

"For I ought to tell Bettie about everything," I reflected. "No matter if the engagement is a secret, I ought to tell Bettie about it."