Regularhours being among the requirements of the head of the Tramlay household, Lucia appeared at the breakfast-table, the morning after the reception, as the clock struck eight. Her father, dressed for business, and her mother, innégligéeattire and expression, were discussing the unbidden guest of the evening before.
“But he was so country,—so dreadful common,” protested Mrs. Tramlay, with her customary helpless air.
“Nonsense!” said her husband. “There was nothing country or common about his face and manners. There hasn’t been so bright-eyed, manly-looking a fellow in our house before since I don’t know when. Eh, Lucia?”
“Agnes Dinon said he was real fine-looking,” the girl answered.
“Agnes Dinon is thirty-six, if she’s a day,” said Mrs. Tramlay, in a petulant tone.
“So much the better fitted to pass opinions on young men,” said Tramlay. “Shows more sense in one girl of her age than a hundred like—like——”
“Like me, papa,” said Lucia. “You may as well say it.”
“Like you, then. Bless your dear ignorant heart, I’d give my head if you could see as clearly as she without waiting so long to learn.”
“You may be very sure, though, that Miss Agnes will never invite him to her own receptions,” declared Mrs. Tramlay.
“Wrong again, mamma; she’s invited him for next Tuesday night, and I do believe she devised the reception just for the purpose. None of us had heard of it before.”
Mrs. Tramlay gathered all her strength, stimulated it with an entire cup of tea, and exclaimed,—
“Well, I should like to know what society is coming to, if a common farmer’s boy, of no family, can stumble into town and be invited about to good houses.”
“Coming to? Why, my dear wife, it is coming to its senses. I’m glad, in this particular case, the movement began at our house.”
“Nobody would have paid any attention to him, if you hadn’t talked so much about him,” said Mrs. Tramlay. “One would have thought him a dear old friend, to hear you go on about him as you did.”
“I said nothing but what was true. I merely said he was one of the finest young men I had ever known,—that he was of the highest character, and very intelligent besides.”
“Such qualities don’t make a man fit for society,” said the lady of the house.
“No, I suppose not; if they did we’d see more of them at our receptions and parties.”
“Edgar!”
“Well, well,” said Tramlay, leaving the table, kissing his wife, and preparing to hurry to his office, “it isn’t your fault; we can’t expect what can’t be had, I suppose.”
“Lucia,” said Mrs. Tramlay, after the children had been despatched to school, “I hope your father’s peculiar notions won’t affect you.”
“About Phil? Nonsense, you dear old worry! But, really, mother, he made quite an impression. A lot of the girls admired him ever so much. I began to apologize and explain, as soon as I could get rid of him; but I found it wasn’t at all necessary.”
“Girls will admire anything that’s new,—anything, from a Zulu to a monkey.”
“Mamma!”
“Young men like Hayn can’t ever marry out of their own circle: you should be able to see that. How can they buy houses for their wives, and furnish them properly, and set up horses and carriages, and keep in society?”
“Mamma, you’re too dreadfully funny; indeed you are. Suppose young men aren’t rich enough to marry; can’t girls like them? Aren’t young people good for anything but to get married?”
“I’m very sorry,” said the mother, abruptly leaving the room, “that you have such trifling views of life.”
When Philip Hayn left the family mansion, a little after midnight, he had but two distinct ideas: one was that he had better find his way back to Sol Mantring’s sloop to sleep, and the other was that he didn’t believe he could fall asleep again in less than aweek. All that he had seen, the people not excepted, was utterly unlike Haynton. The conversation, also, was new, although he could not remember much of it; and the ladies—well, he always had admired whatever was admirable in the young women in the village, but there certainly were no such handsome and brilliant girls at Haynton as some he had met that night. He could not explain to himself the difference, except that, compared with Lucia’s friends, his old acquaintances appeared—well, rather unfinished and ignorant. And as far as these new acquaintances appeared above his older ones, so far did Lucia appear above her friends. He had studied her face scores of times before, and told himself where it was faulty; now he mentally withdrew every criticism he had ever made, and declared her perfection itself. Would he ever forget how she looked as she offered to help him from that easy-chair in the library? He wished his mother might have seen her at that instant; then he was glad she did not. He remembered that his mother did not entirely approve of some of Lucia’s bathing-dresses; what would the good woman think of fashionable evening attire? And yet perhaps it was not as dreadful as it seemed: evidently Lucia’s mother approved of it, and was not she a member of a church,—not, he regretted, of the faith in which all Haynton worshipped, yet still a church? And did not many of Lucia’s guests dress in similar style?
He mentally laid the subject away for future consideration, and gave his mind to his own attire. Until that evening his faith in the perfection of hisSunday suit was as unquestioning as his faith in Haynton’s preacher, but now it was hopelessly shattered. He did not admire the attire of the gentlemen he had met, but the evidence was overwhelming that it was the correct thing, and that he must prepare himself to dress in like fashion if he went to Miss Dinon’s party. And, by the way, what a queenly woman that Miss Dinon was! He would like to meet her again: he certainly must attend that party. But if he bought evening dress, what should he do with it when he left the city? No young man felt more freedom than he to do as he liked in Haynton, but to appear in a “swallow-tail” at church or anywhere else in the village would be simply impossible: the mere thought of it made him tremble and then laugh. A suit of clothes merely to wear two or three evenings—perhaps only one—would be a shocking extravagance: they probably would cost half as much as a new horse, or two or three dozen of the books he had for years been longing to buy. He would give up Miss Dinon’s party: the thought of doing so made him doleful, but do it he must.
Almost immediately after forming this virtuous resolution he boarded a horse-car, on which were several couples, evidently returning from a party somewhere: so again Phil found himself studying attire. Gradually it occurred to him that his own appearance was attracting attention. This was not a new experience: he had encountered it several times at Haynton with calmness; indeed, although he was not vain, he had never feared comparison, in church, of his appearance with that of any summerboarder from the city; for, as his mother has already intimated in these pages, his Sunday coat had been cut from the same piece of cloth as the minister’s. But now he felt ill at ease while being eyed, not at all impertinently, by the young people who sat facing him. First he thought the mildly critical glances were directed to his hard-rubber watch-guard; then he was sure the cut of his vest was not being approved; he detected one very pretty young woman in the act of suppressing a smile as she looked at his shoes. Thirdly, he was obliged to believe that an admirably-dressed fellow opposite entirely disapproved of his Sunday coat,—the coat cut from minister’s cloth and made by Sarah Tweege, and with a real silk-velvet collar, too!
Little by little Phil lost his self-possession; he could scarcely look in any direction without encountering the eyes of some one who seemed to regard him as a curiosity. An attempt to ignore the attention by reading the advertising signs above the windows of the car was a dismal failure, for he somehow felt that several pairs of eyes were upon him, and this was rather more annoying than seeing them. The strain became unendurable; so he suddenly looked through a window, as if to see where he was, then hastily went to the rear platform and asked the conductor to let him off. As he stood there he heard a young man whisper,—
“Country!”
Then he heard a young woman softly ejaculate,—
“Te-he!”
The street was as dark as gas-lighted streets usuallyare; it was almost deserted, and the autumn evening was quite chilly, but Phil felt as if his blazing eyes were illuminating everything,—as if the walls had eyes to look disapprovingly at Haynton fashions, or as if his own blood were hot enough to warm the entire atmosphere of New York. He knew what he would do: when he reached Sol Mantring’s sloop he would remain aboard until she sailed; then he would go back to Haynton and remain there forever. He could exist without New York, if New York found him unsatisfactory. He didn’t care ever to see again anybody in New York, except, perhaps, Lucia. As for her, hadn’t even she——
Before the next car arrived, Phil had entirely changed his mind. Nevertheless, before continuing his journey he cautiously peered in to see if any of the passengers were likely to prove critical. There seemed to be no one to fear; at one end of the car was a shabby-looking peddler with his pack, evidently arrived by a late train from the suburbs; at the other an old man seemed inclined to doze, and directly opposite the newest passenger sat a plain, modest-looking person, whom a New Yorker would have rightly identified as a waiter at a restaurant or café. Apparently three persons less qualified or inclined to criticise personal appearance could not have been found by careful search; yet within five minutes Phil was sure that all of them had noticed him and studied him. As he was disinclined to squander another car-fare on his feelings, he sought the dusky seclusion of the rear platform and engaged the conductor in conversation, which on Phil’s part consisted solelyof questions; yet he was astonished, as well as indignant, when the conductor remarked, at a moment when the talk showed signs of lagging,—
“You’re from the rural district, I s’pose?”
“What makes you say that?” asked Phil, indicating a sense of injury.
“Oh, I didn’t mean nothin’ out of the way,” said the conductor. “I only kinder thought I was sure—why, I come from the country myself; yes sir, an’ I ain’t ashamed of it, neither.”
The explanation was not satisfactory; so Phil completed the trip in gloomy silence, and he felt a sense of great relief when he reached Sol Mantring’s sloop and made his way into the little cabin, where, of the three men lying at ease, no one took the pains to intimate that Phil was anything but city-born and city-bred.
Phildevoted part of the next day to studying well-dressed business-men in the streets. Thanks to well-trained perceptive faculties, and also to some large mirrors which he accidentally encountered, he soon learned why his attire had attracted attention. Then he compared clothing-stores for an hour, finally entered one and asked how long it would take to make a well-fitting every-day suit. The salesman looked him over, and replied,—
“Fit you at once, from our ready-made stock. Never any trouble to fit a good figure.”
Phil could have hugged that salesman. Here, at least, was some one who did not intimate that he was from the country; and yet, perhaps, a good figure was a country product. He would think about this, as soon as business was off his mind. The salesman certainly fitted him to perfection. Phil scarcely recognized himself when asked to look in the glass.
“Don’t think you could do better,” said the veteran salesman, surveying Phil from rapidly-changing points of view, “if you were to have yourself melted and poured into a suit. The tone of that goods is rather cold, but you’ve plenty of color. I think, though, to set it off to the best advantage you need tochange your black tie for a scarf with a touch of red or yellow in it: if you don’t happen to have one, you’ll find a fine assortment in our gents’ furnishing department. Needs a somewhat different style of shirt-collar, too: let some furnishing-goods man cast his eye over your neck. You always wear your hair pretty long, I suppose?—well, it’s a pity it don’t set off a man’s clothes as well as it sometimes does his face.”
Phil resolved at once to have his hair cut. Under the guidance of the salesman he had his neck-wear changed; then the old man said,—
“Those low-crowned straight-brimmed hats used to look exactly right with the clothes of that season, but somehow they don’t harmonize with the cut of this year. Hats are cheap, though, and there are two or three good dealers on the other side of the street, a little farther down. Keep this suit on, I suppose? All right, sir: I’ll do up the others. H’m!”—here the old man scrutinized the material of the coat made by Sarah Tweege,—“that’s splendid stuff. Great shame ’twas cut sack-fashion. There isn’t much stuff as good as that in swallow-tails nowadays.”
“Couldn’t it—I suppose it couldn’t be made over into a party coat?”
“H’m!—scarcely,—scarcely,” said the salesman, controlling his features as well as if the question were the most natural in the world. “Not enough stuff, you see; too short; sleeves not full enough; button-holes in wrong places; lapels too narrow. Besides, velvet collars have gone out. Any time you need a dress-suit, though, we’ve got a boss artist whocan cut it so as to do you justice. ’Tisn’t often he gets a good figure to spread himself on.”
Again Phil was profoundly grateful: he wanted to do something for that salesman, and after some thought he astonished the old fellow by thanking him for his attention and promising to send him a barrel of selected Newtown pippins. Then he placed himself in the hands of the boss artist, who studied him as if he were a model, measured him, and asked him if he needed his dress-suit at once.
“Yes; right away,” said Phil. “I can’t get it too soon. I want——” He had begun to tell that he meant to dress himself in that suit and practise before a mirror until fully satisfied that he did not look unlike other men. The boss artist told him to return in three days; then the old salesman, who had remained in attendance, remarked,—
“You have a thin fall overcoat, I suppose?”
“Oh, I won’t need an overcoat for a month yet. Why, there hasn’t been a bit of frost up our way.” Phil was already appalled by the extent of his order.
“True enough,” said the salesman, “but it doesn’t do to go out in a dress-suit without an overcoat, you know, unless you’re merely stepping from your door to a carriage; and it’s hardly the thing even then.”
“Why, Judge Dickman——”
“Oh, yes, those old judges, who wear swallow-tails day in and day out, can do it; nothing wrong about it, of course,—only a matter of taste; but a young fellow don’t like to make himself conspicuous, you know.”
Phil meekly purchased an overcoat, and hurriedaway with a heavy load on his conscience. More than three-quarters of the hundred dollars his father had given him was already gone or mortgaged; he had meant to spend none of it, except for some things which he knew his mother craved. Fortunately, he had brought some savings of his own; and, as he informed himself, hair-cutting was not an expensive operation, and the clothing-salesman had told him that new hats did not cost much. He had nothing else to spend money for, except a watch-chain; his father had told him to buy one. Indeed, had not his father told him to buy clothes?—“lots of them,” were the old gentleman’s exact words. But could his father have known about evening suits and fall overcoats?
Phil continued in this vein of thought after he had dropped into a barber’s chair, but was startled out of it by finding a lather-brush passing over his face. He struggled, and exclaimed,—
“I wanted my hair cut.”
“Yes, sir, so I heard you say; but when shaving has to be done too we like to have that out of the way first. But I beg your pardon, perhaps you were raising a beard?”
“No,” said Phil, settling himself again in the chair. At Haynton young men shaved only on Saturday nights; Phil himself had shaved only three days before, yet here was another unexpected expense imposed upon him by New York custom. Half an hour afterward he emerged from that shop with the not entirely satisfactory assurance that his oldest friend would not know him at sight: and when he had bought a new hat and surveyed himself in along mirror he was not certain that he would know himself if he were to encounter another mirror by accident. The replacement of his hard-rubber watch-guard by a thin chain plated with gold completed the metamorphosis, and a bootblack whose services he declined set his mind at rest by calling him a dude.
What next to do he scarcely knew. An inclination to go back to the sloop and see how Sol Mantring was getting along at discharging the cargo was suppressed by the thought of what Sol and the crew would say if they saw him in his new suit. The countryman has some grand qualities that denizens of cities would do well to imitate, but not all his moral courage can keep him from feeling uncomfortable when first he displays himself in new clothes to old associates. Country youths have sometimes run away from home,—gone to sea, the city, the devil—anywhere—rather than undergo this dreadful ordeal.
Suddenly it occurred to him that he was not far from Tramlay’s office: he might make a call, if only to show that he could, with proper facilities, look unlike a countryman. Besides, he wanted to know all about the iron business, about which he had seen so many contradictory assertions in the newspapers.
He entered the store and walked back toward the railed counting-room in which he saw the head of Haynton’s recent summer boarder. A clerk asked him his business; he replied that he had merely dropped in to see Mr. Tramlay. The head of the establishment looked at Phil without recognition when this information was imparted, and advancedwith a somewhat impatient air, which suddenly changed to cordiality as he exclaimed,—
“Why, my dear fellow! excuse me. I didn’t recognize you at first: we can’t all of us have young eyes, you know. Come in; sit down; make yourself at home. I’m glad you dropped in: I’m going out to lunch pretty soon, and I do hate to lunch alone.”
Phil soon found himself coaxed and assisted to a high office-stool at a desk by the window, and all the morning papers placed before him, while Tramlay said,—
“Look at the paper two or three minutes while I straighten out a muddle in a customer’s letter; then we’ll go out.”
Phil took up a paper; the advertising page—which happened to be the first—was very interesting, nevertheless Phil’s eyes wandered, for his mind was just then curious about the iron trade. He looked around him for indications of the business; but the only bit of iron in sight was a paper-weight on the desk before him. Closer scrutiny was rewarded by the discovery of a bit of angle-iron, a few inches long, lying on a window-sill. In the mean time the proprietor had scribbled a few lines, assorted some papers, and closed his desk by drawing down the top. Then he said,—
“Now let’s go in search of peace and comfort.”
“I shouldn’t think you’d have to leave your office for that,” said Phil, who had found the counting-room greatly unlike what he had expected.
“There’s no peace where business is going on,” Tramlay replied; “although I don’t know, aftercareful thought, of any noisier place than a New York restaurant. Here we are. Come in.”
Phil found himself in one of the very large and noisy places where New York business-men herd about noonday. Phil protested, in the usual rural manner, that he was not at all hungry, but Tramlay ordered so skilfully that both were duly occupied for an hour. Phil found his host attentive, yet occasionally absent-minded. He might have spared himself the trouble of making a mental memorandum to study out the why and wherefore of this apparently incongruous pair of qualities had he known that Tramlay was cudgelling his brain to know how to dispose of his rural visitor after dinner, without offending. While they were sipping the coffee,—a beverage which Phil had never before tasted in the middle of the day,—Mr. Marge lounged up to them, looking exactly as intelligent, listless, and unchangeable as the night before.
“How are you, Marge?” said Tramlay. Phil afterward wondered that his host could smile so genially on so cold a person.
“As usual,” replied Marge, with a slight inclination of the head. “Good-morning, Mr. Hayn. Don’t let me interrupt conversation. I merely meant to say I’ve nothing to do this afternoon, and would be glad to show Mr. Hayn about town a little, if he likes.”
“That’s ever so good of you,” said Tramlay; “for the truth is, I was wondering how I could find time to do it myself, and fearing I couldn’t.”
“Entirely at his service,” said Marge, as lifelessly as an automaton.
“And both come and dine with me this evening,” suggested Tramlay: “entirely informal, you know.”
“I should be delighted,” said Marge, in his unvarying manner.
Tramlay hurried to his office, after the briefest of leave-takings, and Marge began to conduct Phil about New York. Soon, however, there developed a marked difference of taste between visitor and guide. Marge wanted to show the young man the Stock Exchange, which to the many minds composing a very large class has no rival attraction except the various institutions on Blackwell’s Island; Phil exhibited abject ignorance and indifference regarding the Stock Exchange, but wanted to go through the Sub-Treasury and Assay Office,—two buildings in which Marge had never been. Marge made a special trip to show the young man the outside of Jay Gould’s office, but Phil identified Trinity Church from pictures he had seen, and wanted to make a patriotic tour of the tombs of distinguished men of the Revolutionary period. Marge offered to introduce Phil to Russell Sage, but was amazed to learn that the young man had never heard of that distinguished individual. When, however, General Hancock, passing by, was casually pointed out by Marge, Phil stopped short and stared respectfully. Marge showed the Field Building, but through the trees in front Phil correctly surmised he saw Castle Garden, and desired at once to go there and be made acquainted with the method of receiving and distributing immigrants. On the Produce Exchange they fairly agreed, Marge admitting that in importance it ranked next to theStock Exchange, while Phil was able to regard it as a great business necessity. Pretending to search, by Phil’s request, for the building in which Washington bade farewell to his generals, Marge succeeded in getting back through Broad Street to the vicinity of the Stock Exchange, where he tried to atone for his failure by pointing out through a window the head of Mr. Henry Clews; but Phil had no eyes except for the statue of Washington, standing, as he knew, on the site of the first President’s first inaugural. The two men exhibited equal interest, on half a dozen successive occasions, in “stock-tickers,” which Marge seemed to know how to find in all sorts of places; but, while Marge looked over the quotations on the tape, Phil studied the machinery of the indicator itself.
The strain upon Marge became almost too great for his self-control, and he breathed a sigh of relief when Trinity’s clock struck three. To have left the vicinity of the Stock Exchange earlier would never have occurred to him, but promptly on the stroke he hurried Phil to an elevated-railway station and uptown to a stable, where he had his horse and wagon brought out and took Phil for a drive in Central Park. Probably there he thought he could be entertained after his own manner, for he had the reins. Driving out Fifth Avenue, the two men really became congenial for a little while, for Phil understood horses, and Marge’s horse was a good one, and Phil admired him and knew of a good horse that would match him nicely, and Marge saw a prospect of making a team that he could sell at a large profit,and Phil promised to arrange that Marge should come out and see the horse. But even this conversation was broken when Marge pointed out the late residence of A. T. Stewart, for Phil insisted upon moralizing on riches. In the Park he asked questions about statues, and about trees and shrubs that were new to him and equally unknown to Marge, as well as utterly uninteresting; Phil also wanted a number of facts and figures about the Reservoir in the Park, and was with difficulty restrained from spoiling the drive by visiting the menagerie. Finally, when he demanded the exact sites of the various engagements on Manhattan Island between the British and Washington, after the latter had been forced to evacuate what then was New York, Marge abruptly turned and drove homeward, confessing without the faintest show of shame, but rather with defiance, that he knew absolutely nothing about those times. And when the drive ended and the couple separated, the elder man’s face broke from its customary calm as he muttered to himself,—
“What can Tramlay want of that fellow?”
Thearrangement of the guests at the dinner-table that evening suited all concerned. Phil sat at the right of the host, with Lucia directly opposite, where her face was before him all the while. Marge sat at the right of the hostess, where he could closely observe the young man from the country, and, not less important, Tramlay’s manner toward the younger guest. He could also note the effect of the young man and his ways upon Mrs. Tramlay; for did he not know how to translate every expression of her face? It was his own fault if he did not, for he had been one of her suitors nearly a quarter of a century before, and the lady had never ceased to be mildly grateful for this compliment, and to repose as much confidence in him as a loyal wife might without harm grant an acquaintance who never had been offensive.
That Mrs. Tramlay wanted Lucia to become Mrs. Marge was one of these confidences,—not spoken, but none the less distinctly understood,—and it had taken all of Marge’s adroitness to maintain his position with the family, since Lucia’s “coming out,” to avoid being brought to propose. Several years earlier he had fully intended to makeLucia his own when she should reach marriageable age, and many and acceptable had been the attentions by which he had endeavored to secure the first place in the girl’s regard. But somehow as his prospects gradually yet distinctly brightened, the profits of the iron trade as gradually and distinctly waned; Marge was not in the iron trade himself, but Lucia’s father was, and bachelors at forty-five generally expect something with a bride besides a father’s blessing. What the girl’s father thought of him Marge had never taken time to wonder; for if he was satisfactory to his fastidious self, how could he be otherwise to a plodding family man? His social position was good; his name had never been part of a scandal; he had no debts; he never borrowed money; and, although a club man, no one had ever seen him drunk, or heard of his being fond of actresses. If all this did not make a man not merely irreproachable, but highly desirable as a son-in-law, what did parents expect?
The arrangement of seats at the table suited Lucia also. She knew her mother’s matrimonial intentions regarding her. She was not in love with Marge, but girls in her set did not think it good form to be very fond of men whom they probably would have to marry. If, however, Marge meant business, she wished he would be more attentive to it. She felt that she was missing a great deal of pleasure for lack of proper escort. Twice in the course of the last season Marge had taken her and her mother to the opera; Lucia adored opera,—that is, she liked to look about the house, and see who was with who, and how theprima donnadressed, and to have gentlemencall at her box between acts,—but two operas were merely sips at a cup she longed to drain, and only once had she been able to persuade her father to mitigate the privation. If apparent interest in Phil at table could have any effect upon Marge’s languid purpose, the provoking fellow should not lack stimulus. To have to devote herself for a whole hour to one young man, in the long hair and country garb which regained their awkwardness in her mind’s eye when her father announced that Phil was coming to dinner, seemed a hard task; but when the young man made his appearance Lucia was so agreeably surprised that what had seemed a task at once became by anticipation a positive pleasure.
The evening soon opened promisingly for Marge, for Phil took soup a second time,—a proceeding which inflicted upon Mrs. Tramlay several moments of uncontrolled annoyance and caused profound silence around the table. But Lucia rapidly recovered; desperate cases required desperate remedies; so she said,—
“Phil, do you remember that dinner you once made us in the grove by the beach?”
“Indeed I do,” said Phil. “I never shall forget it.” And he told the truth; for Lucia’s look of horror when he brought from the fire a piece of board piled high with roasted clams had been one of the few great mental dampers of his life.
“You made us forks from dried twigs,” said Lucia. “I kept mine as a memento; it is hanging over my mantel now, with a bow of blue ribbon around it.”
Marge frowned perceptibly; Mrs. Tramlay looked horrified; but Phil’s face lightened so quickly that Lucia’s little heart gave a gay bound.
“Why didn’t you ever give a clam-bake on Sunday,—the only day I could be there?” asked Tramlay. “I’d give more for such a meal out of doors than for the best dinner that Delmonico could spread.”
“Edgar!” gasped Mrs. Tramlay. It did not reach him, though the look that accompanied it passed in its full force from the foot of the table to the head.
“Why, Sunday,” said Phil, with some hesitation,—“Sunday is—Sunday.”
“Quite true,” said the host. “It is in the country, at least; I wish ’twas so here.”
“Edgar,” said Mrs. Tramlay, “don’t make Mr. Hayn think we are heathens. You know we never fail to go to service on Sunday.”
“Yes,” said Tramlay; “we’re as good Pharisees as any other family in New York.”
“And after that dinner in the woods,” continued Lucia, “we went for pond-lilies: don’t you remember? I do believe I should have been drowned in that awful pond if you hadn’t caught me.”
Again Marge’s brows gathered perceptibly.
“He merely drew her aside from a muddy place,” whispered Mrs. Tramlay.
“Well, this is interesting,” said Tramlay, at the other end of the table. “Hayn, are there many places out your way where silly girls are likely to be drowned if they are allowed to roam about without a keeper?”
“Quite a number,” said Phil, as seriously as if hishost expected a list of the Haynton ponds and their relative depths. “For instance, Boddybanks Pond is about——”
“Oh, that was the pond where we went canoeing,—that pond with the funny name! My! I wish I was in that very canoe, on that very pond, this very minute.”
“Lucia!” exclaimed Mrs. Tramlay.
“I know ’twas dreadfully impolite to say before company,” said Lucia, with a pretty affectation of penitence, “but everybody knows I can’t be there, and that ’twould be too cold for comfort; so it doesn’t do any harm to wish it. And Ishouldlike that canoe-trip over again: shouldn’t you, Phil?”
“I certainly should,” said Phil. “That pond is very pretty in summer, when everything around it is green. There are a great many shades of green there, on account of there being a great variety of trees and bushes. But you wouldn’t know the place at this season; and I think it’s a great deal prettier. The ground—the water, too—is covered with leaves of bright colors; there are a lot of blazing red swamp maples around it, in spots, and three or four cedar-trees, with poison-ivy vines——”
“Ugh!” ejaculated Mrs. Tramlay.
“Poison-ivy leaves, you know, are the clearest crimson in the fall,” Phil continued, “and they’re so large and grow so close together that they make a bit of woods look like a splendid sunset.”
“Oh, papa!” exclaimed Lucia, clapping her hands, “let’s go out to Haynton to-morrow, just for two or three days.”
“Lucia,” said her mother, severely, “you forget all your engagements for the next few days.”
“Her father’s own child,” said Tramlay. “She forgets everything but the subject before her. She would make a good business-man—if she weren’t a girl.”
“I saw some couples out canoeing at Mount Desert, last season,” drawled Marge. “It seemed to me dreadfully dangerous, as well as very uncomfortable for the lady.”
“Oh, our canoe wasn’t one of those wretched little things; was it, Phil? ’Twas a great long pond-boat, made of beech bark——”
“Birch,” suggested Phil.
“Birch bark, and so heavy that I couldn’t upset it, though I tried my hardest.”
“Lucia!” The voice was Mrs. Tramlay’s, of course.
“Why, mamma, the water wasn’t knee-deep; I measured it with the paddle.”
Mrs. Tramlay sank back in her chair, and whispered that if the family ever went to the country again she would not dare leave that child out of her sight for a single instant, but she had hoped that a girl twenty years of age would have enough sense not to imperil her own life. As for that farmer fellow, she had supposed he was sensible enough to——
“You wouldn’t have tried that trick if I had been in the canoe, Miss Tramlay,” said Phil.
“Why not?” asked Lucia: she knew how to look defiant without ceasing to be pretty.
“Well, I would have been responsible for you, you know,—your instructor in navigation, so to speak;and it’s one of the first principles of that art not to take any risk unless something’s to be gained by it.”
“Good!” exclaimed Tramlay.
“Not bad,” assented Marge.
“But I’d have got something if I’d succeeded in upsetting the boat,” said Lucia: “I’d have got a ducking.”
Then everybody laughed,—everybody but Mrs. Tramlay, who intimated to Marge that Lucia was simply being ruined by her father’s indulgence.
The dinner ended, the host and Marge retired to the library to smoke. Phil was invited to accompany them, but Lucia exclaimed,—
“Phil has been too well brought up to have such bad habits. He is going to keep me from feeling stupid, as ladies always do while gentlemen smoke after dinner.”
She took Phil’s arm and led him to the drawing-room, where the young man soon showed signs of being more interested in the pictures on the wall than in the girl by his side.
“These are very different from the pictures you used to see in our little parlor in Haynton,” said Phil. “Different from any in our town, in fact.”
“Are they?” said Lucia. “But you might be loyal to home, and insist that yours were unlike any in New York; because they were, you know.”
“I didn’t suppose they were anything unusual,” said Phil, quite innocently.
“Oh, they were, though,” insisted Lucia, with much earnestness. “I’m sure you couldn’t find one of them in any parlor in New York. Let me see: Ido believe I could name them all, if I were to close my eyes a moment. There was ‘General Taylor at the Battle of Buena Vista,’ ‘The Destruction of Jerusalem,’ the ‘Declaration of Independence,’ ‘Napoleon’s Tomb at St. Helena,’ ‘Rock of Ages,’ ‘George Washington,’ Peale’s ‘Court of Death,’ ‘Abraham Lincoln and his Family,’ and ‘Rum’s Deadly Upas-Tree.’ There!”
“Your memory is remarkable,” said Phil. “I didn’t suppose any one had even noticed our pictures at all; for I’m sure they are old-fashioned.”
“Old-fashioned things,—why, they’re all the fashion now, don’t you know?” said Lucia, with a pretty laugh.
Phil did not reply, for he was quite overpowered by what seemed to him the elegance of the Tramlay pictures. He could easily see that the engravings were superior in quality to those to which he was accustomed; he was most profoundly impressed by the paintings,—real oil paintings, signed by artists some of whose names he had seen in art-reviews in New York papers. He studied them closely, one after another, with the earnestness of the person whose tastes are in advance of his opportunities: in his interest he was almost forgetful of Lucia’s presence. But the young woman did not intend to be forgotten, so she found something to say about each picture over which Phil lingered.
Among the paintings was one which had been seen, in the original or replicas, in almost all the picture-auctions which were frequently held in the New York business-district for the purpose of fleecing menwho have more money than taste. Sometimes the artist’s name is German, oftener French, and occasionally Italian; the figures and background also differ from time to time as to the nationality, and the picture is variably named “The Parting,” “Good-By,” “Auf Wiedersehen,” “Good-Night,” or “Adieu,” but the canvases all resemble one another in displaying a young man respectfully kissing the hand of a young woman. The Tramlays’ copy of this auctioneer’s stand-by was called “Adieu,” the name being lettered in black on the margin of the frame.
“Why,” exclaimed Phil, with the air of a man in the act of making a discovery, “I am sure I have seen a wood engraving of that painting in one of the illustrated papers.”
“I don’t see why they should do it,” said Lucia; “it’s dreadfully old-fashioned. People don’t say ‘adieu’ in that way nowadays, except on the stage.”
“I thought you said a moment ago that old-fashioned things were all the fashion.”
Lucia shrugged her shoulders, and said, “Kissing hands may come in again.” Then she raised one of her own little hands slightly and looked at it; Phil’s eyes followed hers, and then the young man became conscious of a wish that the old form of salutation might be revived, on special occasions, at least. The thought succeeded that such a wish was not entirely proper, and while he reasoned about it Lucia caught his eye and compelled him to blush,—an act which the young woman perhaps thought pretty, for she immediately imitated it, the imitation being much more graceful and effective than the original. Thesituation was awkward, and Phil instantly lost his self-possession; but not so Lucia.
“Here,” she said, turning so as to face the wall opposite that on which the mischief-making picture hung, “is papa’s favorite picture. He thinks everything of it; but I say it’s simply dreadful.”
It certainly was. The centre of the canvas, which was enormous, was filled with several columns and a portion of the entablature of a ruined Greek temple.
“It is as large as all the other pictures combined, you see; all the lines in it are straight, and there isn’t anywhere in it a dress, or a bit of furniture, or even bric-à-brac.”
Phil imagined his host must have seen other qualities than those named by Lucia, and he seated himself on a sofa to study the picture in detail. Lucia also sat down, and continued:
“There is color in it, to be sure; bits of the columns where the light is most subdued are as lovely as—as a real Turkish rug.”
Much though Phil had endeavored to keep himself in communication and sympathy with the stronger sentiments of the world outside of Haynton, he had never realized even the outer edge of the mysteries and ecstasies of adoration of old rugs. So Lucia’s comparison started him into laughter. The girl seemed surprised and offended, and Phil immediately tumbled into the extreme depths of contrition.
“I beg your pardon,” he murmured, quickly. “It was all because of my ignorance. We haven’t any Turkish rugs at Haynton, nor any other rugs, expect those we lay on floors and use very much as ifthey were carpets. I ought to have known better, though; for I remember that in Eastern stories, where the rare possessions of Oriental kings and chiefs are spoken of, rugs are always classed with jewels and silks and other beautiful things. Please forgive me.”
Half in earnest, half pretending, Lucia continued to appear offended. Phil repeated his confession, and enlarged his explanation. In his earnestness he leaned toward her; Lucia dropped her head a little. Marge, who had finished his cigar, entered the parlor at that instant, and raised his eyebrows,—a motion more significant in a man of his temperament than a tragic start would have been to ordinary flesh and blood. Lucia started and showed signs of embarrassment when she could no longer ignore his presence; Phil merely looked up, without seeming at all discomposed.
“I think, my dear,” said Tramlay to his wife, who had been turning the backs of a magazine, “that I’ll take our friend around to the club with me for half an hour, just to show him how city men squander their time and keep away from their families. I won’t be long gone.”
“Oh, papa! right after dinner? We’ve scarcely seen Phil yet, to ask him any questions.”
“Plenty of time for that,” the merchant replied. “We’ll see him often: eh, Hayn?”
“I shall be delighted,” said Phil.
“Suppose you drop him at my club, on your way home?” suggested Marge. “I shall be there.”
“Good! thanks: very kind of you. He’ll see somemen nearer his own age: all our members are middle-aged and stupid.”
“I think it’s real mean of you both,” said Lucia, with a pretty pout.
Phil looked as if he thought so too. At Haynton it was the custom, when one went out to dinner,—or supper, which was the evening meal,—to spend the evening with the entertainer. But objection seemed out of place: the merchant had gone for his hat and coat, and Marge made his adieus and was donning his overcoat at the mirror in the hall.
“I’m very sorry to go,” said Phil to Lucia. His eyes wandered about the room, as if to take a distinct picture of it with him: they finally rested on the picture of “The Adieu.”
“You shall take my forgiveness with you,” said the girl, “if you will solemnly promise never, never to laugh at me again.”
“I never will,” said Phil, solemnly; then Lucia laughed and offered him her hand. Perhaps it was because Phil had just removed his eyes from “The Adieu” and was himself about to say good-by, that he raised the little hand to his lip. Fortunately for her own peace of mind, Mrs. Tramlay did not see the act, for she had stepped into the library to speak to her husband; Marge, however, was amazed at what he saw in the mirror, and, a second or two later, at Phil’s entire composure. Lucia’s manner, however, puzzled him; for she seemed somewhat disconcerted, and her complexion had suddenly become more brilliant than usual.
Foryears Philip Hayn had been wondering about the great city only a hundred or two miles distant from his home,—wondering, reading, and questioning,—until he knew far more about it than thousands of men born and reared on Manhattan Island. He had dreamed of the day when he would visit the city, and had formed plans and itineraries for consuming such time as he hoped to have, changing them again and again to conform to longer or shorter periods. He was prepared to be an intelligent tourist, to see only what was well worth being looked at, and to study much that could not be seen in any other place which he was ever likely to visit.
At last he was in New York: his time would be limited only by the expense of remaining at hotel or boarding-house. Yet he found himself utterly without impulse to follow any of his carefully-perfected plans. He strolled about a great deal, but in an utterly aimless way. He passed public buildings which he knew by sight as among those he had intended to inspect, but he did not even enter their doors; the great libraries in which for years he had hoped to quench the literary thirst that had been little more than tantalized by the collective books inHaynton were regarded with impatience. Of all he saw while rambling about alone, nothing really fixed his attention but the contents of shop-windows. He could not pass a clothing-store without wondering if some of the goods he saw within would not become him better than what he was wearing; he spent hours in looking at displays of dress-goods and imagining how one or other pattern or fabric would look on Lucia; and he wasted many hours more in day-dreams of purchasing—only for her—the bits of jewelry and other ornaments with which some windows were filled.
Loneliness increased the weakening effect of his imaginings. He knew absolutely no one in the city but the Tramlays and Marge, and he had too much sense to impose himself upon them; besides, Marge was terribly uninteresting to him, except as material for a study of human nature,—material that was peculiarly unattractive when such a specimen as Lucia was always in his mind’s eye and insisting upon occupying his whole attention.
His loneliness soon became intolerable; after a single day of it he hurried to the river, regardless of probable criticism and teasing based on his new clothes, to chat with Sol Mantring and the crew of the sloop. The interview was not entirely satisfactory, and Phil cut his visit short, departing with a brow full of wrinkles and a heart full of wonder and indignation at the persistency with which Sol and both his men talked of Lucia Tramlay and the regard in which they assumed Phil held her. How should they imagine such a thing? He well knew—anddetested—the rural rage for prying into the affairs of people, particularly young men and women who seemed at all fond of one another; but what had he ever done or said to make these rough fellows think Lucia was to him anything but a boarder in his father’s house? As he wondered, there came to his mind a line which he had often painfully followed in his copy-book at school: “The face of youth is an open book.” It did not tend at all to restore composure to his own face.
Hour by hour he found himself worse company. He had never before made such a discovery. There had been hundreds and thousands of days in his life when from dawn to dark he had been alone on the farm, in the woods, or in his fishing-boat, several miles off shore on the ocean; yet the companionship of his thoughts had been satisfactory. He had sung and whistled by the hour, recited to himself favorite bits of poetry and prose, rehearsed old stories and jokes, and enjoyed himself so well that sometimes he was annoyed rather than pleased when an acquaintance would appear and insist on diverting his attention to some trivial personal or business affair. Why could he not cheer himself now?—he who always had been the life and cheer of whatever society he found himself in?
He tried to change the current of his thoughts by looking at other people; but the result was dismal in the extreme. He lounged about Broadway, strolled in Central Park, walked down Fifth Avenue, and from most that he saw he assumed that everybody who was having a pleasant time, driving fine horses,or living in a handsome house, was rich. He had been carefully trained in the belief that “a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth,” but his observations of New York were severely straining his faith. He was entirely orthodox in his belief as to the prime source of riches, but he suddenly became conscious of an unhappy, persistent questioning as to why he also had not been born rich, or had riches thrust upon him. He understood now the mad strife for wealth which he had often heard alluded to as the prevailing sin of large cities; he wished he knew how to strive for it himself,—anywhere, in any way, if only he might always be one of the thousands of people who seemed to wear new clothes all the time, and spend their evenings in elegant society, or in the gorgeous seclusion of palaces like that occupied by Marge’s club.
For instance, there was Marge. Phil had asked Tramlay what business Marge was in, and the reply was, “None in particular: lives on his income.” What, asked Phil of himself, was the reason that such a man, who did not seem much interested in anything, should have plenty of money and nothing to do, when a certain other person, who could keenly enjoy, and, he believed, honestly improve, all of Marge’s privileges, should have been doomed to spend his life in hard endeavor to wrest the plainest food from the jealous earth and threatening sea, and have but a chance glimpse of the Paradise that the rich were enjoying,—a glimpse which probably would make his entire after-life wretched. Could heever again be what he had so long been?—a cheerful, contented young farmer and fisherman? He actually shivered as he called up the picture of the long road, alternately dusty and muddy, that passed his father’s house, its sides of brown fence and straggling bushes and weeds converging in the distance, an uncouth human figure or a crawling horse and wagon its only sign of animation, and contrasted it with Fifth Avenue, its boundaries handsome houses and its roadway thronged with costly equipages bearing well-dressed men and beautiful women. Passing the house of a merchant prince, he saw in the window a fine bronze group on a stand; how different from the little plaster vase of wax flowers and fruits which had been visible through his mother’s “best room” window as long as he could remember!
Yes, money was the sole cause of the difference: money, or the lack of it, had cursed his father, as it now was cursing him. None of the elderly men he saw had faces more intelligent than his father, yet at that very moment the fine old man was probably clad in oft-patched trousers and cotton shirt, digging muck from a black slimy pit to enrich the thin soil of the wheat-lot. And his mother: it made his blood boil to think of her in faded calico preparing supper in the plain old kitchen at home, while scores of richly-clad women of her age, but without her alert, smiling face, were leaning back in carriages and seemingly unconscious of the blessing of being exempt from homely toil.
And, coming back to himself, money, or lack of it, would soon banish him from all that now his eyewas feasting upon. It would also banish him from Lucia. He had read stories of poor young men whom wondrous chances of fortune had helped to the hands and hearts of beautiful maidens clad in fine raiment and wearing rare gems, but he never had failed to remind himself that such tales were only romances; now the memory of them seemed only to emphasize the sarcasm of destiny. Money had made between him and Lucia a gulf as wide as the ocean,—as the distance between the poles,—as——
He might have compared it with eternity, had not his eye been arrested by somebody in a carriage in the long line that was passing up the avenue. It was Lucia herself, riding with her mother. Perhaps heaven had pity on the unhappy boy, for some obstruction brought the line to a halt, and Phil, stepping from the sidewalk, found that the gulf was not too wide to be spanned, for an instant at least, by two hands.
“Anyletters?”
“Not a letter.”
“Sho!”
Farmer Hayn and his wife would have made good actors, if tested by their ability to clothe a few words with pantomime of much variety and duration. From almost the time that her husband started to the post-office, Mrs. Hayn had been going out on the veranda to look for him returning. She had readjusted her afternoon cap several times, as she would have done had she expected a visitor; she had picked faded buds from some late roses, had examined the base of one of the piazza posts to be sure that the old wistaria vine was not dragging it from its place, and had picked some bits of paper from the little grass-plot in front of the house; but each time she went from one duty to another she shaded her eyes and looked down the road over which her husband would return. She had eyes for everything outside the house,—an indication of rot at an end of one of the window-sills, a daring cocoon between two slats of a window-blind, a missing screw of the door-knob,—all trifles that had been as they were for weeks, but had failed to attract her attention untilexpectation had sharpened her eyesight. As time wore on, she went into the house for her spectacles; generally she preferred to have letters read to her by her husband, but her absent son’s writing she must see with her own eyes. Then she polished the glasses again and again, trying them each time by gazing down the road for the bearer of the expected letter. Calmness, in its outward manifestation, was noticeable only after her hope had again been deferred.
As for the old man, who was quite as disappointed as his wife, he studied a partly-loosened vest-button as if it had been an object of extreme value; then he sat down on the steps of the veranda, studied all visible sections of the sky for a minute or two, and finally ventured the opinion that a middling lively shower might come due about midnight. Then he told his wife of having met the minister, who had not said anything in particular, and of a coming auction-sale of which he had heard, and how eggs for shipment to the city had “looked up” three cents per dozen. Then he sharpened his pocket-knife on his boot-leg, handling it as delicately and trying its edge as cautiously as if it were an instrument of which great things were expected. Then both joined in estimating the probable cost of raising the youngest calf on the farm to its full bovine estate.
Finally, both having thoroughly repressed and denied and repulsed themselves, merely because they had been taught in youth that uncomfortable restraint was a precious privilege and a sacred duty, Mrs. Hayn broke the silence by exclaiming,—
“It does beat all.”
“What does?” asked her husband, as solicitously as if he had not the slightest idea of what was absorbing his wife’s thoughts.
“Why, that Phil don’t write. Here’s everybody in town tormentin’ me to know when he’s comin’ back, an’ if he’s got the things they asked him to buy for ’em, an’ not a solitary word can I say; we don’t even know how to send a letter to him to stir him up an’ remind him that he’s got parents.”
“Well, ther’s sure to be a letter somewheres on the way, I don’t doubt, tellin’ us all we want to know,” said the old man, going through the motions of budding an althea-bush, in the angle of the step, from a scion of its own stock. “ ‘Watched pots never bile,’ you know, an’ ’tain’t often one gets a letter till he stops lookin’ for it.”
“But ’tain’t a bit like Phil,” said the old lady. “Why, he’s been away more’n a week. I thought he’d at least let us know which of the big preachers he heerd on Sunday, an’ what he thought of ’em. Hearin’ them big guns of the pulpit was always one of the things he wanted to go to the city for. Then there’s the bread-pan I’ve been wantin’ for ten years,—one that’s got tin enough to it not to rust through every time there comes a spell of damp weather: he might at least rest my mind for me by lettin’ me know he’d got it.”
“All in good time, old lady; let’s be patient, an’ we’ll hear all we’re waitin’ for. Worry’s more weary in’ than work. Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know.”
“For mercy’s sake, Reuben, what’s Rome got to dowith our Phil? I don’t see that Rome’s got anythin’ to do with the case, onless it’s somethin’ like New York, where our boy is.”
“Well, Rome was built an’ rebuilt a good many times, you see, ’fore it got to be all that was ’xpected of it: an’ our Phil’s goin’ through the same operation, mebbe. A man’s got to be either a stupid savage or a finished-off saint to be suddenly pitched from fields and woods into a great big town without bein’ dazed. WhenIfirst went down to York, my eyes was kept so wide open that I couldn’t scarcely open my mouth for a few days, much less take my pen in hand, as folks say in letters. I hardly knowed which foot I was standin’ on, an’ sometimes I felt as if the ground was gone from under me. Yet New York ground is harder than an onbeliever’s heart.”
Mrs. Hayn seemed to accept the simile of Rome’s building as applied to her son, for she made no further objection to it; she continued, however, to polish her glasses, in anticipation of what she still longed to do with them. Her husband continued to make tiny slits and cross-cuts in the althea’s bark, and to insert buds carefully cut from the boughs. Finally he remarked, as carelessly as if talking about the weather,—
“Sol Mantring’s sloop’s got back.”
“Gracious!” exclaimed Mrs. Hayn; “why ain’t you told me so before? Sol’s seen Phil, ain’t he? What does he say? Of course you didn’t come home without seein’ him?”
“Of course I didn’t. Yes, Sol’s seen Phil,—seen him the day before he caught the tide an’ came out.An’ Sol says he’s a stunner, too,—don’t look no more like his old self than if he’d been born an’ raised in York. I tell you, Lou Ann, it don’t take that boy much time to catch on to whatever’s got go to it. Why, Sol says he’s got store-clothes on, from head to foot. That ain’t all, either; he——” Here the old man burst into laughter, which he had great difficulty in suppressing; after long effort, however, he continued: “Sol says he carries a cane,—a cane not much thicker than a ramrod. Just imagine our Phil swingin’ a cane if you can!” And the old man resumed his laughter, and gave it free course.
“Mercy sakes!” said the old lady; “I hope he didn’t take it to church with him. An’ I hope he won’t bring it back here. What’ll the other members of the Young People’s Bible-Class say to see such goin’s-on by one that’s always been so proper?”
“Why, let him bring it: what’s a cane got to do with Bible-classes? I don’t doubt some of the ’postles carried canes; I think I’ve seed ’em in pictures in the Illustrated Family Bible. I s’pose down in Judee ther’ was snakes an’ dogs that a man had to take a clip at with a stick, once in a while, same as in other countries.”
“What else did Sol say?” asked the mother.
“Well, he didn’t bring no special news. He said Phil didn’t know he was leavin’ so soon, else like enough he’d have sent some word. He said Phil was lookin’ well, an’ had a walk on him like a sojer in a picture. I’m glad the boy’s got a chance to get the plough-handle stoop out of his shoulders for a few days. Sez you wouldn’t know his face, though,’cause his hair’s cut so short; got a new watch-chain, too; I’m glad to hear that, ’cause I was particular to tell him to do it.”
“Well, I half wish Sol Mantring’s sloop had stayed down to York, if that’s all the news it could bring,” said Mrs. Hayn, replacing her spectacles in their tin case, which she closed with a decided snap. “Such a little speck of news is only aggravatin’: that’s what ’tis.”
“Small favors thankfully received, old lady, as the advertisements sometimes say. Oh, there was one thing more Sol said: ’twas that he reckoned Phil was dead gone on that Tramlay gal.”
Mrs. Hayn received this information in silence; her husband began to throw his open knife at a leaf on one of the veranda steps.
“I don’t see how Sol Mantring was to know anything like that,” said Mrs. Hayn, after a short silence. “He isn’t the kind that our Phil would go an’ unbosom to, if he had any such thing to tell, which it ain’t certain he had.”
“Young men don’t always have to tell such things, to make ’em known,” suggested the farmer. “Pooty much everybody knowed whenIwas fust gone on you, though I didn’t say nothin’ to nobody, not even to the gal herself.”
“If it’s so,” said Mrs. Hayn, after another short pause, “mebbe it explains why he hain’t writ. He’d want to tell us ’fore anybody else, an’ he feels kind o’ bashful like.”
“You’ve got a good mem’ry, Lou Ann,” said the old farmer, rising, and pinching his wife’s ear.
“What do you mean, Reuben?”
“Oh, nothin’, ’xcept that you hain’t forgot the symptoms,—that’s all.”
“Sho!” exclaimed the old lady, giving her husband a push, though not so far but that she was leaning on his shoulder a moment later. “ ‘Twould be kind o’ funny if that thing was to work, though, wouldn’t it?” she continued; “that is, if Sol’s right.”
“Well,” replied her husband, with a sudden accession of earnestness in his voice, “if Sol’s right, ’twon’t be a bit funny if itdon’twork. I hope the blessed boy’s got as much good stuff in him as I’ve always counted on. The bigger the heart, the wuss it hurts when it gets hit; an’ there’s a mighty big heart in any child of you an’ me, though I say it as mebbe I shouldn’t.”
“Thatboy ain’t never goin’ to have no heart-aches,—not on account o’ gals,” said the mother, whose voice also showed a sudden increase of earnestness. “I don’t b’lieve the gal was ever made that could say no to a splendid young feller like that,—a young feller that’s han’some an’ good an’ bright an’ full o’ fun, an’ that can tell more with his eyes in a minute than a hull sittin’-room-full of ord’nary young men can say with their tongues in a week.”
“No,” said the old man, soberly, “not if the gal stayed true to the pattern she was made on,—like you did, for instance. But gals is only human,—ther’ wouldn’t be no way of keepin’ ’em on earth if they wasn’t, you know,—an’ sometimes they don’t do ’xactly what might be expected of ’em.”
“That Tramlay gal won’t givehimthe mitten, anyhow,” persisted Mrs. Hayn. “Mebbe she ain’t as smart as some, but that family, through an’ through, has got sense enough to know what’s worth havin’ when they see it. She needn’t ever expect to come back here to board for the summer, if she cuts up any such foolish dido as that.”
“Lou Ann,” said the farmer, solemnly, “do you reely think it over an’ above likely that she’dwantto come back, in such case made an’ pervided?”
Then both old people laughed, and went into the house, and talked of all sorts of things that bore no relation whatever to youth or love or New York. They retired early, after the manner of farm-people in general, after a prayer containing a formal and somewhat indefinite petition for the absent one. The old lady lay awake for hours, it seemed to her, her head as full of rosy dreams as if it were not covered with snow; yet when at last she was dropping asleep she was startled by hearing her husband whisper,—
“Father in heaven, have pity on my poor boy.”