Captain Macklin | Page 9

anything else but her beauty was a waste of
time. It made all other topics trivial, and yet she seemed quite sincere in
what she said, and refused to allow me to bring our talk to the personal
basis of "what I am to you" and "what you are to me." It was in
discussing that question that I considered myself an artist and a master.
My classmates agreed with me in thinking as I did, and from the first
moment I came here called me "Masher" Macklin, a sobriquet of which
I fear for a time I was rather proud. Certainly, I strove to live up to it. I
believe I dignified my conduct to myself by calling it "flirtation."
Flirtation, as I understood it, was a sort of game in which I honestly
believed the entire world of men and women, of every class and age,
were eagerly engaged. Indeed, I would have thought it rather ungallant,
and conduct unworthy of an officer and a gentleman, had I not at once

pretended to hold an ardent interest in every girl I met. This seems
strange now, but from the age of fourteen up to the age of twenty that
was my way of regarding the girls I met, and even today I fear my
attitude toward them has altered but slightly, for now, although I no
longer tend to care when I do not, nor make love as a matter of course,
I find it is the easiest attitude to assume toward most women. It is the
simplest to slip into, just as I have certainly found it the one from
which it is most difficult to escape, But I never seem to remember that
until it is too late. A classmate of mine once said to me: "Royal, you
remind me of a man walking along a road with garden gates opening on
each side of it. Instead of keeping to the road, you stop at every gate,
and say: 'Oh! what a pretty garden! I'll just slip in there, and find out
where that path will take me.' And then--you're either thrown out, and
the gate slammed after you, or you lose yourself in a maze and you
can't get out--until you break out. But does that ever teach you a lesson?
No! Instead of going ahead along the straight and narrow way, and
keeping out of temptation, you halt at the very next gate you come to,
just as though you had never seen a gate before, and exclaim: 'Now,
this is a pretty garden, and what a neat white fence! I really must vault
in and take a look round.' And so the whole thing is gone over again."
I confess there may be some truth in what he said, but the trouble I find
with the straight and narrow way is that there's not room enough in it
for two. And, then, it is only fair to me to say that some of the gardens
were really most beautiful, and the shade very deep and sweet there,
and the memories of the minutes I passed in them were very refreshing
when I went back to the dust of the empty road. And no one, man or
woman, can say that Royal Macklin ever trampled on the flowers, or
broke the branches, or trespassed in another man's private grounds.
It was my cousin Beatrice who was responsible for the change of heart
in me toward womankind. For very soon after she came to live with us,
I noticed that in regard to all other young women I was growing daily
more exacting. I did not admit this to myself, and still less to Beatrice,
because she was most scornful of the girls I knew, and mocked at them.
This was quite unfair of her, because she had no real acquaintance with
them, and knew them only from photographs and tintypes, of which I
had a most remarkable collection, and of what I chose to tell her about
them. I was a good deal annoyed to find that the stories which appealed

to me as best illustrating the character of each of my friends, only
seemed to furnish Beatrice with fresh material for ridicule, and the girls
of whom I said the least were the ones of whom she approved. The only
girls of my acquaintance who also were friends of hers, were two
sisters who lived at Dobbs Ferry, and whose father owned the greater
part of it, and a yacht, in which he went down to his office every
morning. But Beatrice held that my manner even to them was much too
free and familiar, and that she could not understand why I did not see
that it was annoying to them as well. I