The Last Gentleman

But do you know that even at the worst the officers would go to balls and cotillions? In the letter he thanks his mother for the buttermilk cookies and says: ‘Met Miss Sally Trumbull last night. She said I danced tolerably well. She gave me her handkerchief.’ He was killed later on in the Crater.”
    â€œWould you take me to a dance?” asked Kitty, her head turned away.
    â€œSure. But what is curious is that—”
    â€œI’ve been dancing five hours a day for years and I can’t remember the last dance I went to.”
    â€œâ€”he did not feel himself under the necessity, almost moral, of making love—”
    â€œI love to dance.”
    â€œâ€”in order that later things be easy and justified between him and Miss Trumbull, that—”
    â€œMy grandmother composed the official ATO waltz at Mercer,” said Kitty.
    â€œâ€”that even under the conditions of siege he did not feel himself under the necessity, or was it because it was under the conditions of siege that—”
    â€œYou’re so smart,” said Kitty, shivering and huddling against him. “Oh, I’m so cold.”
    â€œI must speak to your father,” said the engineer absently.
    The girl started nervously and stopped shivering. “What for?”
    â€œTo ask your hand in marriage,” said the engineer somewhat formally.
    â€œYou know everything,” said Kitty, commencing to shiver again. “You’re so smart.”
    â€œNo, but I know one thing.”
    â€œTell Kitty.”
    â€œI know what you fear most.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œPeople, and that is the trouble. The source of your happiness is also the source of your nightmares.”
    â€œThat’s true.”
    Even now he was at it again, scheming, establishing his credentials. Like all women, she was, he knew, forever attuned to fortunetelling, soothsaying, and such. If he told her something, she might tell him. For there was something he wanted to know.
    â€œI know who you like to be with.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œRita and me.”
    â€œThat’s right. Why is that?”
    â€œYou like Rita because she is among other things a woman and no threat to you. You like me and that would be enough to put you off ordinarily because I am a man but you know something is wrong with me and that neutralizes the threat.”
    â€œYes,” said the girl gloomily. “Oh, dear. I really don’t feel well.”
    â€œWhat about Rita?”
    â€œWhat about her?” He could scarcely hear her.
    â€œWhat about the notes, verses, and so on, she leaves in the park for you?” He had calculated correctly. Knowing as much as he did about her, he judged that in her eyes it must appear he might know everything. She would not think to ask how he knew about the notes. For all she knew, Rita could have told him.
    â€œThe notes in the bench, yes. It is not quite what you think.” Was she now smiling down at her crossed legs?
    12 .
    Kitty said:
    The notes. You know, I have a confession to make. I led her on. It’s my fault.
    Here it comes again, he thought, the sweet beast of catastrophe. Am I not like Rita after all and do I not also live by catastrophe? I can smell it out every time. Show me a strange house and I can walk straight to the door where the bad secrets are kept. The question is: is it always here that one seeks one’s health, here in the sweet, dread precincts of disaster? Strange: that her disaster now enables me, that now I could love her again and more easily from the pity of it.
    No, no, no, Kitty said, I don’t mean there was anything really wrong. Nothing has ever happened, not the least thing. But what I don’t know is whether from the very beginning I didn’t know in my heart of hearts what I was doing—the way a child knows nothing and yet knows everything. I’ve often wondered whether a person who found herself for the first tune in her life really and truly liked by another person and having the power for the first time to make another person like her, would she not use that power every time? Rita is a remarkable person and, wonder of wonders, she liked me. I had never dreamed that anybody would like me. And I knew exactly how to make her like me! This whole thing started last summer. The notes? They’re notes, that’s all. Poems.
    Everything happened last summer in one week. Do you think there are times like that