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A Love Story Reversed
by
“I know it. Don’t I know it!” groaned Maud. “I always am shyer and stiffer with him than with any one else. O Lucy! you can’t guess what a dreadful thing it is to be shy. It is as if you were surrounded by a fog, which benumbs you, and chills all who approach you. I dare say he thinks that I actually dislike him. I could not blame him if he did. And I can’t help it. I could never make him understand anything else, unless I told him in so many words.”
The tears filled her eyes as she spoke, and hung heavy on the lashes. Lucy took one of her hands in both of hers, and pressed and stroked it caressingly.
“I know you could n’t, poor dear, I know you could n’t,” she said; “and you cannot tell him in so many words because, forsooth, you are a woman. I often think, Maud, what a heap of trouble would be saved if women, when they cannot make themselves understood in other ways, were allowed to speak out as men do, without fear or reproach. Some day they will, when the world gets wiser,–at least I think so. Why should a woman have to hide her love, as if it were a disgraceful secret? Why is it any more a disgrace to her than to a man?”
“I can’t quite see what good it would do me,” said Maud, “even if women could ‘speak out,’ as you say. If a man did n’t care for one already, I can’t see how it would make him know that one cared for him. I should think she would prefer to keep her secret.”
“That is n’t what men do,” replied Lucy. “If they have such a secret, they tell it right away, and that is why they succeed. The way half the women are induced to fall in love is by being told the men are in love with them; you know that.”
“But men are different,” suggested Maud.
“Not a bit of it: they ‘re more so, if anything,” was the oracular response of the young wife. “Possibly there are men,” she continued,– “the story-tellers say so, anyhow,–who are attracted by repulsion and warmed by coldness, who like resistance for the pleasure of overcoming it. There must be a spice of the tyrant in such men. I wouldn’t want to marry one of them. Fortunately, they’re not common. I’ve noticed that love, like lightning, generally takes the path of least resistance with men as well as women. Just suppose now, in your case, that Mr. Burton had followed us home, and had overheard this conversation from behind that door.”
“No, no,” she added laughing, as Maud looked around apprehensively; “he is n’t there. But if he had been there and had overheard you own that you were pining for him, what a lucky chance it would have been! If he, or any other man, once knew that a magnificent girl like you had done him the honor to fall in love with him, half the battle would be won, or I ‘m no judge of men. But such lucky eavesdropping only happens in stories and plays; and for lack of it this youth is in a fair way to marry a chit of a girl who does not think half so much of him as you do, and of whom he will never think a quarter what he would of you. He is not, probably, entirely stupid either. All he wants, very likely, is just a hint as to where his true happiness lies: but, being a woman, you can’t give it in words; and, being Maud Elliott, you can’t give it in any other way, if you died for it. Really, Maud, the canon which makes it a woman’s duty to be purely passive in love is exasperating, especially as it does not represent what anybody really believes, but only what they pretend to believe. Everybody knows that unrequited love comes as often to women as to men. Why, then, should n’t they have an equal chance to seek requital? Why have not they the same right to look out for the happiness of their lives by all honorable means that men have? Surely it is far more to them to marry the men they love than to a man to marry any particular woman. It seems to me that making suitable matches is not such an easy matter that society can afford to leave the chief part of it to the stupider sex, giving women merely the right of veto. To be sure, even now women who are artful enough manage to evade the prohibition laid on their lips and make their preference known. I am proud to say that I have a royal husband, who would never have looked my way if I had not set out to make him do so; and if I do say it, who should n’t, I flatter myself he has a better wife than he could have picked out without my help. There are plenty of women who can say the same thing; but, unluckily, it is the best sort of women, girls like you,–simple, sincere, noble, without arts of any sort,–who can’t do this. On them the etiquette that forbids women to reveal their hearts except by subterfuge operates as a total disability. They can only sit with folded hands, looking on, pretending not to mind, while their husbands are run away with by others.”