The Plastic Age Percy Marks (read full novel txt) 📖

I haven’t any sense left, but what I say from now on I am going to say straight out. I swore on the train that I wouldn’t kiss you. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to think if I did⁠—and I can’t; all I know is that I want to kiss you again.” He looked at her sitting across the little table from him, so slender and still⁠—a different Cynthia but damnably desirable. “Cynthia,” he added hoarsely, “if you took my hand, you could lead me to hell.”

She in turn looked at him. He was much older than he had been a year before. Then he had been a boy; now he seemed a man. He had not changed particularly; he was as blond and young and clean as ever, but there was something about his mouth and eyes, something more serious and more stern, that made him seem years older.

“I don’t want to lead you to hell, honey,” she replied softly. “I left Prom last year so that I wouldn’t do that. I told you then that I wasn’t good for you⁠—but I’m different now.”

“I can see that. I don’t know what it is, but you’re different, awfully different.” He leaned forward suddenly. “Cynthia, shall we go over to Jersey and get married? I understand that one can there right away. We’re both of age⁠—”

“Wait, Hugh; wait.” Cynthia’s hands were tightly clasped in her lap. “Are you sure that you want to? I’ve been thinking a lot since I got your telegram. Are you sure you love me?”

He slumped back into his chair. “I don’t know what love is,” he confessed miserably. “I can’t find out.” Cynthia’s hands tightened in her lap. “I’ve tried to think this business out, and I can’t. I haven’t any right to ask you to marry me. I haven’t any money, not a bit, and I’m not prepared to do anything, either. As I wrote you, my folks want me to go to Harvard next year.” The mention of his poverty and of his inability to support a wife brought him back to something approaching normal again. “I suppose I’m just a kid, Cynthia,” he added more quietly, “but sometimes I feel a thousand years old. I do right now.”

“What were your plans for next year and after that until you saw me?” Her eyes searched his.

“Oh, I thought I’d go to Harvard a year or two and then try to write or perhaps teach. Writing is slow business, I understand, and teaching doesn’t pay anything. I don’t want to ask my father to support us, and I won’t let your folks. I lost my head when I suggested that we get married. It would be foolish. I haven’t the right.”

“No,” she agreed slowly; “no, neither of us has the right. I thought before you came if you asked me to marry you⁠—I was sure somehow that you would⁠—I would run right off and do it, but now I know that I won’t.” She continued to gaze at him, her eyes troubled and confused. What made him seem so much older, so different?

“Do you think we can ever forget Prom?” She waited for his reply. So much depended on it.

“Of course,” he answered impatiently. “I’ve forgotten that already. We were crazy kids, that’s all⁠—youngsters trying to act smart and wild.”

“Oh!” The ejaculation was soft, but it vibrated with pain. “You mean that⁠—that you wouldn’t⁠—well, you wouldn’t get drunk like that again?”

“Of course not, especially at a dance. I’m not a child any longer, Cynthia. I have sense enough now not to forfeit my self-respect again. I hope so, anyway. I haven’t been drunk in the last year. A drunkard is a beastly sight, rotten. If I have learned anything in college, it is that a man has to respect himself, and I can’t respect anyone any longer who deliberately reduces himself to a beast. I was a beast with you a year ago. I treated you like a woman of the streets, and I abused Norry Parker’s hospitality shamefully. If I can help it, I’ll never act like a rotter again, I hate a prig, Cynthia, like the devil, but I hate a rotter even more. I hope I can learn to be neither.”

As he spoke, Cynthia clenched her hands so tightly that the fingernails were bruising her tender palms, but her eyes remained dry and her lips did not tremble. If he could have seen her on some parties this last year.⁠ ⁠…

“You have changed a lot.” Her words were barely audible. “You have changed an awful lot.”

He smiled. “I hope so. There are times now when I hate myself, but I never hate myself so much as when I think of Prom. I’ve learned a lot in the last year, and I hope I’ve learned enough to treat a decent girl decently. I have never apologized to you the way I think I ought to.”

“Don’t!” she cried, her voice vibrant with pain. “Don’t! I was more to blame than you were. Let’s not talk about that.”

“All right. I’m more than willing to forget it.” He paused and then continued very seriously, “I can’t ask you to marry me now, Cynthia⁠—but⁠—but are you willing to wait for me? It may take time, but I promise I’ll work hard.”

Cynthia’s hands clenched convulsively. “No, Hugh honey,” she whispered; “I’ll never marry you. I⁠—I don’t love you.”

“What?” he demanded, his senses swimming in hopeless confusion. “What?”

She did not say that she knew that he did not love her; she did not tell him how much his quixotic chivalry moved her. Nor did she tell him that she knew only too well that she could lead him to hell, as he said, but that that was the only place that she could lead him. These things she felt positive of, but to mention them meant an argument⁠—and an argument would have been unendurable.

“No,” she repeated, “I don’t love you. You see, you’re so different from what I