Little Women
“Now you must have a good long holiday!”
“I intend to.”
Something in his resolute tone made Jo look up quickly to find him
looking down at her with an expression that assured her the dreaded
moment had come, and made her put out her hand with an imploring, “No,
Teddy. Please don’t!”
“I will, and you must hear me. It’s no use, Jo, we’ve got to have it
out, and the sooner the better for both of us,” he answered, getting
flushed and excited all at once.
“Say what you like then. I’ll listen,” said Jo, with a desperate sort
of patience.
Laurie was a young lover, but he was in earnest, and meant to ‘have it
out’, if he died in the attempt, so he plunged into the subject with
characteristic impetuousity, saying in a voice that would get choky now
and then, in spite of manful efforts to keep it steady...
“I’ve loved you ever since I’ve known you, Jo, couldn’t help it, you’ve
been so good to me. I’ve tried to show it, but you wouldn’t let me. Now
I’m going to make you hear, and give me an answer, for I can’t go on so
any longer.”
“I wanted to save you this. I thought you’d understand...” began Jo,
finding it a great deal harder than she expected.
“I know you did, but the girls are so queer you never know what they
mean. They say no when they mean yes, and drive a man out of his wits
just for the fun of it,” returned Laurie, entrenching himself behind an
undeniable fact.
“I don’t. I never wanted to make you care for me so, and I went away to
keep you from it if I could.”
“I thought so. It was like you, but it was no use. I only loved you all
the more, and I worked hard to please you, and I gave up billiards and
everything you didn’t like, and waited and never complained, for I
hoped you’d love me, though I’m not half good enough...” Here there was
a choke that couldn’t be controlled, so he decapitated buttercups while
he cleared his ‘confounded throat’.
“You, you are, you’re a great deal too good for me, and I’m so grateful
to you, and so proud and fond of you, I don’t know why I can’t love you
as you want me to. I’ve tried, but I can’t change the feeling, and it
would be a lie to say I do when I don’t.”
“Really, truly, Jo?”
He stopped short, and caught both her hands as he put his question with
a look that she did not soon forget.
“Really, truly, dear.”
They were in the grove now, close by the stile, and when the last words
fell reluctantly from Jo’s lips, Laurie dropped her hands and turned as
if to go on, but for once in his life the fence was too much for him.
So he just laid his head down on the mossy post, and stood so still
that Jo was frightened.
“Oh, Teddy, I’m sorry, so desperately sorry, I could kill myself if it
would do any good! I wish you wouldn’t take it so hard, I can’t help
it. You know it’s impossible for people to make themselves love other
people if they don’t,” cried Jo inelegantly but remorsefully, as she
softly patted his shoulder, remembering the time when he had comforted
her so long ago.
“They do sometimes,” said a muffled voice from the post. “I don’t
believe it’s the right sort of love, and I’d rather not try it,” was
the decided answer.
There was a long pause, while a blackbird sung blithely on the willow
by the river, and the tall grass rustled in the wind. Presently Jo said
very soberly, as she sat down on the step of the stile, “Laurie, I want
to tell you something.”
He started as if he had been shot, threw up his head, and cried out in
a fierce tone, “Don’t tell me that, Jo, I can’t bear it now!”
“Tell what?” she asked, wondering at his violence.
“That you love that old man.”
“What old man?” demanded Jo, thinking he must mean his grandfather.
“That devilish Professor you were always writing about. If you say you
love him, I know I shall do something desperate;” and he looked as if
he would keep his word, as he clenched his hands with a wrathful spark
in his eyes.
Jo wanted to laugh, but restrained herself and said warmly, for she
too, was getting excited with all this, “Don’t swear, Teddy! He isn’t
old, nor anything bad, but good and kind, and the best friend I’ve got,
next to you. Pray, don’t fly into a passion. I want to be kind, but I
know I shall get angry if you abuse my Professor. I haven’t the least
idea of loving him or anybody else.”
“But you will after a while, and then what will become of me?”
“You’ll love someone else too, like a sensible boy, and forget all this
trouble.”
“I can’t love anyone else, and I’ll never forget you, Jo, Never!
Never!” with a stamp to emphasize his passionate words.
“What shall I do with him?” sighed Jo, finding that emotions were more
unmanagable than she expected. “You haven’t heard what I wanted to tell
you. Sit down and listen, for indeed I want to do right and make you
happy,” she said, hoping to soothe him with a little reason, which
proved that she knew nothing about love.
Seeing a ray of hope in that last speech, Laurie threw himself down on
the grass at her feet, leaned his arm on the lower step of the stile,
and looked up at her with an expectant face. Now that arrangement was
not conducive to calm speech or clear thought on Jo’s part, for how
could she say hard things to her boy while he watched her with eyes
full of love and longing, and lashes still wet with the bitter drop or
two her hardness of heart had wrung from him? She gently turned his
head away, saying, as she stroked the wavy hair which had been allowed
to grow for her sake—how touching that was, to be sure! “I agree with
Mother that you and I are not suited to each other, because our quick
tempers and strong wills would probably make us very miserable, if we
were so foolish as to...” Jo paused a little over the last word, but
Laurie uttered it with a rapturous expression.
“Marry—no we shouldn’t! If you loved me, Jo, I should be a perfect
saint, for you could make me anything you like.”
“No, I can’t. I’ve tried and failed, and I won’t risk our happiness by
such a serious experiment. We don’t agree and we never shall, so we’ll
be good friends all our lives, but we won’t go and do anything rash.”
“Yes, we will if we get the chance,” muttered Laurie rebelliously.
“Now do be reasonable, and take a sensible view of the case,” implored
Jo, almost at her wit’s end.
“I won’t be reasonable. I don’t want to take what you call ‘a sensible
view’. It won’t help me, and it only makes it harder. I don’t believe
you’ve got any heart.”
“I wish I hadn’t.”
There was a little quiver in Jo’s voice, and thinking it a good omen,
Laurie turned round, bringing all his persuasive powers to bear as he
said, in the wheedlesome tone that had never been so dangerously
wheedlesome before, “Don’t disappoint us, dear! Everyone expects it.
Grandpa has set his heart upon it, your people like it, and I can’t get
on without you. Say you will, and let’s be happy. Do, do!”
Not until months afterward did Jo understand how she had the strength
of mind to hold fast to the resolution she had made when she decided
that she did not love her boy, and never could. It was very hard to do,
but she did it, knowing that delay was both useless and cruel.
“I can’t say ‘yes’ truly, so I won’t say it at all. You’ll see that I’m
right, by-and-by, and thank me for it...” she began solemnly.
“I’ll be hanged if I do!” and Laurie bounced up off the grass, burning
with indignation at the very idea.
“Yes, you will!” persisted Jo. “You’ll get over this after a while, and
find some lovely accomplished girl, who will adore you, and make a fine
mistress for your fine house. I shouldn’t. I’m homely and awkward and
odd and old, and you’d be ashamed of me, and we should quarrel—we can’t
help it even now, you see—and I shouldn’t like elegant society and you
would, and you’d hate my scribbling, and I couldn’t get on without it,
and we should be unhappy, and wish we hadn’t done it, and everything
would be horrid!”
“Anything more?” asked Laurie, finding it hard to listen patiently to
this prophetic burst.
“Nothing more, except that I don’t believe I shall ever marry. I’m
happy as I am, and love my liberty too well to be in a hurry to give it
up for any mortal man.”
“I know better!” broke in Laurie. “You think so now, but there’ll come
a time when you will care for somebody, and you’ll love him
tremendously, and live and die for him. I know you will, it’s your way,
and I shall have to stand by and see it,” and the despairing lover cast
his hat upon the ground with a gesture that would have seemed comical,
if his face had not been so tragic.
“Yes, I will live and die for him, if he ever comes and makes me love
him in spite of myself, and you must do the best you can!” cried Jo,
losing patience with poor Teddy. “I’ve done my best, but you won’t be
reasonable, and it’s selfish of you to keep teasing for what I can’t
give. I shall always be fond of you, very fond indeed, as a friend, but
I’ll never marry you, and the sooner you believe it the better for both
of us—so now!”
That speech was like gunpowder. Laurie looked at her a minute as if he
did not quite know what to do with himself, then turned sharply away,
saying in a desperate sort of tone, “You’ll be sorry some day, Jo.”
“Oh, where are you going?” she cried, for his face frightened her.
“To the devil!” was the consoling answer.
For a minute Jo’s heart stood still, as he swung himself down the bank
toward the river, but it takes much folly, sin or misery to send a
young man to a violent death, and Laurie was not one of the weak sort
who are conquered by a single failure. He had no thought of a
melodramatic plunge, but some blind instinct led him to fling hat and
coat into his boat, and row away with all his might, making better time
up the river than he had done in any race. Jo drew a long breath and
unclasped her hands as she watched the poor fellow trying to outstrip
the trouble which he carried in his heart.
“That will do him good, and he’ll come home in such a tender, penitent
state of mind, that I shan’t dare to see him,” she said, adding, as she
went slowly home, feeling as if she had murdered some innocent thing,
and buried it under the leaves. “Now I must go and prepare Mr. Laurence
to be very kind to my poor boy. I wish he’d love Beth, perhaps he may
in time, but I begin to think I was mistaken about her. Oh dear! How
can girls like to have lovers and refuse them? I think it’s dreadful.”
Being sure that no one could do it so well as herself, she went
straight to Mr. Laurence, told the hard story bravely through, and then
broke down, crying so dismally over her own insensibility that the kind
old gentleman, though sorely disappointed, did not utter a reproach. He
found it difficult to understand how any girl could help loving Laurie,
and hoped she would change her mind, but he knew even better than Jo
that love cannot be forced, so he shook his head sadly and resolved to
carry his boy out of harm’s way, for Young Impetuosity’s parting words
to Jo disturbed him more than he would confess.
When Laurie came home, dead tired but quite composed, his grandfather
met him as if he knew nothing, and kept up the delusion very
successfully for an hour or two. But when they sat together in the
twilight, the time they used to enjoy so much, it was hard work for the
old man to ramble on as usual, and harder still for the young one to
listen to praises of the last year’s success, which to him now seemed
like love’s labor lost. He bore it as long as he could, then went to
his piano and began to play. The windows were open, and Jo, walking in
the garden with Beth, for once understood music better than her sister,
for he played the ‘_Sonata Pathetique_’, and played it as he never did
before.
“That’s very fine, I dare say, but it’s sad enough to make one cry.