Not Pretty, but Precious | Page 7

going very suddenly to Europe. His rooms will of
course be vacant: he talks of renting them furnished. I have thought, if
you would not object to it, we might take them off his hands. I have
calculated that the part of your means you intend for me will meet all
our expenses of every sort if you permit me to have the arranging, of
our daily affairs. I will pay the rent and meet all the expenses of our
living out of this sum, leaving you your reserved funds to meet your
ordinary requirements and pleasures. By this arrangement, you see, I
shall get my living free, and I am sure shall have a surplus over and
above our expenses, as I am a good manager and used to making the
most of everything.
There is one sacrifice which, do we enter into this arrangement, I must
ask of you--that when we return to New York you give up your valet.
For more than one reason: I cannot have a spy upon the mode of life we
are to lead. I am foolishly sensitive of the position of a neglected wife,
and I feel assured your gentlemanly instincts will prevent your ever
offering any observable slight to the woman who bears your name.
Besides, in the apartments I propose our taking there will be no room
for a man-servant, and one of the maids connected with the house will
be all the assistant I shall require. When you are away on your frequent

excursions to all parts of the world it will be very easy to provide
yourself a servant. Will you try for a few weeks how well I can supply,
or have the place supplied, of this man, whom you intend in any case to
dismiss? This is all. Next week, the doctor thinks, you may be moved
to a lounge, and perhaps the week after be able to travel, or at farthest
the week following.
I acknowledge to the womanish feeling of being exultant at the idea of
the envy I shall awaken in the breasts of your adoring circle of lady
friends--my lady cousins among them--in having, spite of my
unattractiveness, secured the husband they have long striven by every
wile to win. Ah! they little know, and I trust never may, why I, without
seeking, have ensnared their rara avis to be my legal bondsman. Rather
a contradiction in terms!
The pretty fiction of our sudden marriage being a renewal of an old
love-affair is more of an untruth than I am used to letting pass, and yet
has enough truth in it to make it reality, since you were the hero of my
girlish dreams. So we will let the explanation thus worded, which you
have written to my uncles and stated verbally to Mrs. Keller, stand; also,
that the undue haste was caused by your pressing need of me during
your accident. I think, indeed, from my cousin Harry's letter yesterday,
and one from Shelton last week, they have taken the idea that we have
been spending the summer together, and that you were following me
home when you were stayed in your mad career by a broken leg.
I am done; are you not thankful? There have been some things in this
letter very hard to say, which, if I were braver or knew you better, I
should have liked to be more outspoken about. But enough has, I think,
been said to make you appreciate my earnest desires and my reasons
for them. I am most truly,
PERCY.
And he, prone upon his back this warm September day, read this long
epistle from his new wife, then laid it down and closing his eyes
murmured softly, "What a strange little puss it is!" Lying in the dim
light her hand had created for him, he thought of his own troubles and

hers, just as she had stated them. The blood would flush up to his brow
as her cool ignoring of his surpassing attractions, to which all other
women accorded their full meed of praise, rose up before him. He of
whom it had been said if he beckoned with his finger women left their
duties, gave up their very life to do his pleasure!--he to have the girl he
had honored by making his wife, a little brown woman, plain and
almost _passé_ (he was man enough not to care for her poverty), show
she cared no more for his love than he did for hers I--was as indifferent
to him as he to her! Indifference from a woman was a new experience
to him, and annoyed him.
Yet her quaint, frank letter touched him. What did she mean by dying
soon and letting him be free again? Poor little midge!