Attorney and client -- Fiction; Legal stories; Short stories; United States -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction
It is easy and natural for two young people vegetating at a summer
resort to become exceedingly intimate in three or four days,
especially when facility for intercourse is promoted and freedom from
interruption guaranteed by a self-sacrificing accessory. My complicity
at the outset had been pure off-hand pleasantry, but by the end of
thirty-six hours it was obvious to me that Morgan’s interest was that
of a man deeply infatuated. Seeing that the two young people were of
marriageable age and free, so far as I knew, from disqualifying
blemishes which would justify me in putting either on guard against
the other, I concluded that it behooved me as a loyal friend to keep
Mrs. Spinney occupied and out of the way. Consequently Morgan and Mrs.
Spaulding were constantly together during the ensuing ten days, and so
skilfully did I behave that the innocent pair regarded the flirtation
which I was carrying on as a superb joke--a case of a banterer caught
in the toils, and Mrs. Spinney’s manners suggested that she was
agreeably flattered.
Morgan’s statement that he had never contemplated marriage was true,
and yet in the background of his dream of the future lurked a female
vision whose sympathy and companionship were to be the spur of his
ambition and the mainstay of his courage. Had he found her? He did not
need to ask himself the question more than once. He knew that he had,
and, knowing that he was deeply in love, he turned to face the two
questions by which he was confronted. First, would she have him?
Second, in case she would, was he in a position to ask her to marry
him, or, more concretely, could he support her? The first could be
solved only by direct inquiry. The answer to the second depended on
whether the views which he had expressed to me as to the possibilities
of matrimonial content in circumstances like his were correct. Or was
I right, and did it all depend upon the woman? But what if it did? Was
not this just the woman to sympathize entirely with his ambition and
to keep him up to the mark in case the shoe pinched? There was no
doubt of her enthusiasm and interest when in the course of one of
their walks he had confided to her that he had dedicated his life to
close scientific investigation. Well, he would lay the situation
squarely before her and she could give him his answer. If she was the
kind of woman he believed her to be and she loved him and had faith in
him, would the prospect of limited means appall her? He felt sure that
it would not.
By the light of subsequent events, being something of a mind reader, I
know the rest of their story as well as though I had been present in
the flesh.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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