The Old Maid (The 'Fifties)
“I don’t understand, Chatty. Whatever Lanning’s faults are—and I don’t believe they’re grave—I share your liking for him. After all—” Mrs. Ralston paused—“what is it that people find so reprehensible in him? Chiefly, as far as I can hear, that he can’t decide on the choice of a profession. The New York view about that is rather narrow, as we know. Young men may have other tastes ... artistic ... literary ... they may even have difficulty in deciding....”

Both women coloured slightly, and Delia guessed that the same reminiscence{114} which shook her own bosom also throbbed under Charlotte’s strait bodice.

{114}

Charlotte spoke. “Yes: I understand that. But hesitancy about a profession may cause hesitancy about ... other decisions....”

“What do you mean? Surely not that Lanning—?”

“Lanning has not asked Tina to marry him.”

“And you think he’s hesitating?”

Charlotte paused. The steady click of her needles punctuated the silence as once, years before, it had been punctuated by the tick of the Parisian clock on Delia’s mantel. As Delia’s memory fled back to that scene she felt its mysterious tension in the air.

Charlotte spoke. “Lanning is not hesitating any longer: he has decided not to{115} marry Tina. But he has also decided—not to give up seeing her.”

{115}

Delia flushed abruptly; she was irritated and bewildered by Charlotte’s oracular phrases, doled out between parsimonious lips.

“You don’t mean that he has offered himself and then drawn back? I can’t think him capable of such an insult to Tina.”

“He has not insulted Tina. He has simply told her that he can’t afford to marry. Until he chooses a profession his father will allow him only a few hundred dollars a year; and that may be suppressed if—if he marries against his parents’ wishes.”

It was Delia’s turn to be silent. The past was too overwhelmingly resuscitated in Charlotte’s words. Clement Spender stood before her, irresolute, impecunious,{116} persuasive. Ah, if only she had let herself be persuaded!


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