"I had been looking for a girl like Marie," he said, "for several years.
I had made one or two trials, and they always got me into trouble with
my family. But the other girls did not make good. They were too weak and
conventional and could not stand the pace of life with me. I had early
formed a contempt for the matrimonial relation. Five years I had nursed
my rebellion and waited for a chance to use it. As soon as I met Marie I
felt I had met one of my own kind. It was partly the fierce charm of a
social experiment, the love for the proletarian and the outcast; for I
felt Marie was essentially that. This element of my interest in her
Marie never understood--this unconscious propaganda, as it were. She
thought it was all sex and wanted it so."
Katie saw that Terry was making up to her beloved Marie, and tried to
prevent their meetings; but in vain; the attraction was too strong.
Katie blackguarded Terry on every occasion, until she finally saw it was
hopeless, and then invited him into her house to meet the girl. There he
began to go frequently and the intimacy grew. Nick warned Terry against
the girl on account of her loose character. "I have often found her," he
said, "misconducting herself with some fellow or other. Why, she does so
with everybody. Only this evening I found her on the front door-step
with young Bladen. She is not the kind for you to be serious about.
Everybody knows how common she is."
Nick did not understand that an argument of that kind tended only to
confirm Terry in his interest in Marie. Terry answered him laconically:
"That's all right, Nick. When you don't want her, just send her to me."
Nick, as we have seen, was jealous of Marie, because of Katie's love for
her; so he fomented trouble between the two women. Katie, too, was at
this time more exasperated with the girl's conduct than she had ever
been before; and they had frequent quarrels. As the result of one of
them, Marie went off with Terry to his family flat, where he was living
alone at the time--to "have a fish dinner," telling the relenting Katie
that she would return in the evening. But she stayed there with Terry
all that night, for the first time. In the morning Katie turned up
bright and early, burst into the flat, and reproached Terry so bitterly
that they almost came to blows. But when Marie took Terry's side, Katie,
terribly disappointed and hurt, yet made up her mind that it was
inevitable; and Terry and Marie began to live together.
How did Marie feel about all this? What was her condition at the time,
and her attitude toward this strange man, so different from every other
she had met? In a long letter to me she has given an account of it all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account