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Page 58
MISS DELAMAR'S UNDERSTUDY
A young man runs two chances of marrying the wrong woman. He marries
her because she is beautiful, and because he persuades himself that
every other lovable attribute must be associated with such beauty, or
because she is in love with him. If this latter is the case, she gives
certain values to what he thinks and to what he says which no other
woman gives, and so he observes to himself, "This is the woman who
best understands _me_."
You can reverse this and say that young women run the same risks, but
as men are seldom beautiful, the first danger is eliminated. Women
still marry men, however, because they are loved by them, and in time
the woman grows to depend upon this love and to need it, and is not
content without it, and so she consents to marry the man for no other
reason than because he cares for her. For if a dog, even, runs up to
you wagging his tail and acting as though he were glad to see you, you
pat him on the head and say, "What a nice dog." You like him because
he likes you, and not because he belongs to a fine breed of animal and
could take blue ribbons at bench shows.
This is the story of a young man who was in love with a beautiful
woman, and who allowed her beauty to compensate him for many other
things. When she failed to understand what he said to her he smiled
and looked at her and forgave her at once, and when she began to grow
uninteresting, he would take up his hat and go away, and so he never
knew how very uninteresting she might possibly be if she were given
time enough in which to demonstrate the fact. He never considered
that, were he married to her, he could not take up his hat and go away
when she became uninteresting, and that her remarks, which were not
brilliant, could not be smiled away either. They would rise up and
greet him every morning, and would be the last thing he would hear at
night.
Miss Delamar's beauty was so conspicuous that to pretend not to notice
it was more foolish than well-bred. You got along more easily and
simply by accepting it at once, and referring to it, and enjoying its
effect upon other people. To go out of one's way to talk of other
things when every one, even Miss Delamar herself, knew what must be
uppermost in your mind, always seemed as absurd as to strain a point
in politeness, and to pretend not to notice that a guest had upset his
claret, or any other embarrassing fact. For Miss Delamar's beauty was
so distinctly embarrassing that this was the only way to meet it--to
smile and pass it over and to try, if possible, to get on to something
else. It was on account of this extraordinary quality in her
appearance that every one considered her beauty as something which
transcended her private ownership, and which belonged by right to the
polite world at large, to any one who could appreciate it properly,
just as though it were a sunset or a great work of art or of nature.
And so, when she gave away her photographs no one thought it meant
anything more serious than a recognition on her part of the fact that
it would have been unkind and selfish in her not to have shared the
enjoyment of so much loveliness with others.
Consequently, when she sent one of her largest and most aggravatingly
beautiful photographs to young Stuart, it was no sign that she cared
especially for him.
How much young Stuart cared for Miss Delamar, however, was an open
question and a condition yet to be discovered. That he cared for some
one, and cared so much that his imagination had begun to picture the
awful joys and responsibilities of marriage, was only too well known
to himself, and was a state of mind already suspected by his friends.
Stuart was a member of the New York bar, and the distinguished law
firm to which he belonged was very proud of its junior member, and
treated him with indulgence and affection, which was not unmixed with
amusement. For Stuart's legal knowledge had been gathered in many odd
corners of the globe, and was various and peculiar. It had been his
pleasure to study the laws by which men ruled other men in every
condition of life, and under every sun. The regulations of a new
mining camp were fraught with as great interest to him as the
accumulated precedents of the English Constitution, and he had
investigated the rulings of the mixed courts of Egypt and of the
government of the little Dutch republic near the Cape with as keen an
effort to comprehend as he had shown in studying the laws of the
American colonies and of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
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