HOW A TRUCE WAS TROUBLESOME
HOW A TRUCE WAS TROUBLESOME
In the days and nights that followed this interview I associated rather more than usual with Jim. It seemed well to do so. I needed to learn once more some of the magnificent belief that I had taught him in days when my own was stronger. Close companionship with a dog of the truly Greek spirit, under circumstances in which I now found myself, was bound to be of a tonic value. I had seen, almost at the moment of Miss Kate's disclosure, that a change was to come in our relations. Perhaps I was wild enough at the moment to hope that it might be a change for the better; but this was only in the first flush of it—of a moment ill adapted for close reasoning. It took no great while to convince me that the discovery in which we had cooperated was of a character necessarily to put me from her even farther than she had at first chosen to put me—and that was far enough, Heaven knows.
In effect I had given back her love to her, a love she had for ten years unjustly doubted. That was the cold truth of it for one who knew women. One who could doubt the tenth year as poignantly as she had doubted in the first—would she not in bitterness regret her doubt ten other years, and sweetly mourn her lost love still another ten? She who had let me be little enough to her while she felt her wound—how much less could I be when the hurt was healed? Before she might have been in want. At least that was conceivable. Now her want was met. Not only was there this to fill her heart, but remorse, the tenderest a woman may know, it seems to me—remorse for undeserved suspicion.
In a setting less prosaic than Little Arcady, where events might be of a story-fitness, that lover would have been alive by a happy chance, estranged by the misunderstanding but splendidly faithful, and I should have been helper and interested witness to an ideal reconciliation; thereafter to play out my game with a full heart, though with an exterior placidly unconcerned. But with us events halt always a little short of true romance. They are unexcitingly usual.
I would have to play out my game full heartedly, nursing my powers of belief back to their one-time vigor; nothing would occur to ease my lot—not even an occasion to pretend that I gave my blessing to a reunited and happy pair. Miss Kate could go on believing. Unwittingly I had given her the stuff for belief. I, too, must go on believing, and providing my own material, as had ever been my lot; all of which was why my dog seemed my most profitable companion at this time. His every bark at a threatening baby-carriage a block away, each fresh time he believed sincerely that a rubber shoe was engaging in deadly struggle with him, taxing all his forces to subdue it, each time he testified with sensitive, twitching nostrils that the earth is good with innumerable scents, each streaking of his glad-tongued white length over yellowing fields designed solely for his recreation held for me a certain soothing value. And when in quiet moments he assured me with melting gaze that I was a being to challenge the very heart of love—in some measure, at least, did my soul gain strength from his own.
To know as much as I have indicated had been unavoidable for one of any intuitive powers. The change at once to be detected in Miss Kate's manner toward me confirmed my divinations without enlarging them. Miss Katharine Lansdale was gone forever; in her place was a Miss Kate,—even a Little Miss to the eye,—who regarded me at first with an undisguised alarm, then with a curious interfusion of alarm and shyness, a little disguised with not a little effort. This was plain reading. She would at first have distrusted me, apprehending I know not what rashness of ill-timed and forever impossible declarations. As she perceived this alarm to be baseless, for I not only refrained from intruding but I ostentatiously let Miss Kate alone, shyness would creep into her apprehension to make amends for its first crude manifestations.
As the days went by and I displayed still the fine sense to keep myself aloof, to seek Miss Kate only in those ways that I sought her refreshing mother, she let me discern more clearly her faith in my firmness and good sense. To be plain, in reward for letting her alone, she did not let me alone. And this reward I accepted becomingly, with a resolve—the metal of which I hoped she would divine—never to show myself undeserving of its benisons.
When I say that the young woman did not let me alone, I mean that she seemed almost to put herself in my way; not obviously, true enough, but in a degree palpable enough to one who had observed her first almost shrinking alarm. And this behavior of hers went forward, at last, without the slightest leaven of apprehension on her part, but her shyness remained. It was so marked and so novel in her—with reference to myself—that I could not fail to be sensible to it. It was as if she divined that mad notions might still lurk within my untaught mind to be reasons why she should fear me; but that her confidence in my self-mastery could not, at the same time, be too openly shown.
Tacitly, it was as if we had treated together; a treaty that bound me to observe a perpetual truce. My arms were forever laid down, and she, who had once so feared me, was now free to wander when she would within the lines of an honorable enemy. That she should walk there with increasing frequency as the days passed was a tribute to my powers of restraint which I was too wise to undervalue. I ignored the shyness of which she seemed unable to divest herself in my presence. It would have been easy not to ignore it, for there were times when, so little careful was she to guard herself, that this shyness suggested, invited, appealed, signalled; times when, without my deeper knowledge of her sex, I could have sworn that the true woman-call rang in my ears. But a treaty is a treaty, on paper or on honor, and ours would never be broken by black treachery of mine, let her eyes fall under my own with never so fluttering an allurement.
They were not bad days, as days go in this earth-life of too much exact knowledge. Miss Kate rowed me over still waters and walked beside me in green pastures. At times like these she might even seem to forget. She would even become, I must affirm, more nearly Peavey than was strictly her right; for it was plain that our treaty, must involve certain stipulations of restraint on her part as well as on my own. The burden was not all to be mine. But these moments I learned to withstand, remembering that she was a woman. That was a circumstance not hard to remember when she was by. It is probable that my heart could not have forgotten it, even had my trained head learned blandly to ignore it.
Further to enliven those days, I permitted Jim to give her lessons in believing everything. When I told her of this, she said, "I need them, I'm so out of practice." That was the nearest we had come to touching upon the interview of a certain afternoon. I should not have considered this a forbidden topic, but her shyness became pitiful at any seeming approach to it. "Jim will put you right again," I assured her. And I believe he did, though it was not easy to persuade him that she could be morally recognized when I was by. The occasion on which he first remained crouching at her feet while I walked away was regarded by Miss Kate as a personal triumph. She was so childishly open of her pleasure at this that I did not tell her it was a mere trick of mine; that I had told him to charge when he sprang up. She knew his eyes so little as to think he displayed regard for rather than respect for my command. She could not see that he begged me piteously to knowwhyhe must crouch there at a couple of strange inconsequential feet and see the good world go suddenly wrong.
Still further, to make those days not bad days, Miss Kate would cross our little common ground of an early evening to where I played the game on my porch. Often I did this until dusk obscured the faces of the cards. I faintly suspected in the course of these bird-like visits a caprice in Miss Kate to know what it might be that I preferred to the society of her mother on her own porch. She appeared to be more curious than interested. She promptly made those observations which the unillumined have ever considered it witty to make concerning those who play at solitaire. But, finding that I had long ceased to be moved by these, she was friendly enough to judge the game upon its merits. That she judged it to be stupid was neither strange nor any reflection upon the fairness of her mind. The game—in those profounder, rarer aspects which alone dignify it—is not for women. I believe that the game of cards to teach them philosophy under defeat, respect for the inevitable and a cheerful manipulation of such trifling good fortune as may befall—instead of that wild, womanish demand for all or nothing—has yet to be invented. I predict of this game, moreover, if ever it be found, that it will be a game at which two, at least, must play. Rarely have I known a woman, however rigid her integrity otherwise, who would not brazenly amend or even repeal utterly those decrees of Fate which are symbolized by the game. She desires intensely to win, and she will not be above shifting a card or two in contravention of the known rules. Far am I from intimating that this puts upon her the stigma of moral delinquency. It is mere testimony, rather, to her astounding capacity for self-deception. And this I cannot believe to be other than gracious of influence upon the intricate muddle of human association.
Miss Kate was finely the woman at those times when she deigned for a ten minutes to overlook my playing of the game. Before I had half finished, on the first occasion, she had mastered its simple mechanism; and before I had quite finished she sought to practise upon it those methods of the world woman in games of solitaire. She would calmly have placed a black nine on a black ten.
"But the colors must alternate," I protested, thinking she had forgotten this important rule.
"Of course—I know that perfectly well—but look what a fine lot of cards that would give you. There's a deuce of hearts you could play up and a three of spades, and then you could go back to crossing the colors again, right away, you know, and you'd have that whole line running up to the king ready to put into that space."
I looked at her, as she would have glided brazenly over that false play to rejoice in the true plays it permitted. But I did not speak. There are times, indeed, when we most honor the tongue of Shakspere by silence; emergencies to which words are so inadequate that to attempt to use them were to degrade the whole language.
At the last I was brought face to face with a most intricately planned defeat; a defeat insured by one spot on a card. Had the obstructive card been a six-spot of clubs instead of a seven-spot, victory was mine. I pointed this out to Miss Kate, who had declined a chair at the table and had chosen to stand beside my own. I showed her the series of plays which, but for that seven-spot, would put the kings in their places at the top and let me win. And I was beaten for lack of a six.
That she had grasped my explanation was quickly made plain. Actually with some enthusiasm she showed me that the much-desired six of clubs lay directly under the fatal seven.
"Just lay the seven over here," she began eagerly, "and there's your black six ready for that horrid red five that's in the way—"
"But there isn't any 'over here,'" I exclaimed in some irritation. "There can only be eight cards in a row—that would make nine."
"Yes, but then you could play up all the others so beautifully—just see!"
"Is this a game," I asked, "or a child's crazy play?"
"Then it's an exceedingly stupid game if you can't do a little thing like that when it's absolutely necessary. What is thesenseof it?"
Her eyes actually flashed into mine as she leaned at my side pointing out this simple way to victory.
"What's the sense of any rules to any game on earth?" I retorted. "If I hadn't learned to respect rules—if I hadn't learned to be thankful for what the game allows me, however little it may be—" I paused, for the water was deeper than I had thought.
"Well?"
"Well—wellthen—I shouldn't be as thankful as I am this instant for—for many things that I can't have more of."
She straightened herself and favored me with a curious look that melted at last into a puzzling smile.
"I don't understand you," she said. With a shade more of encouragement in her voice I had been near to forgetting my honor as a truce-observing enemy. I was grateful, indeed, afterwards, that her wish to understand me was not sufficiently implied to bring me thus low.
"Neither do I understand the morbid psychology that finds satisfaction in cheating at solitaire," I succeeded in saying. "I never can see how they fix it up with themselves."
"I believe you think and talk a great deal of foolishness," said Miss Kate, in tones of reproof; and with this she was off the porch before I could rise.
She wore pink, with bits of blue spotting it in no systematic order that I could discern, and a pink rose lay abashed in her hair.
THE ABDICATION OF THE BOSS
THE ABDICATION OF THE BOSS
There is no need to conceal that I was by this time put to it for matters to think upon not clearly related to myself; in other words for matters extraneous to my neighbor's troublesome daughter. In sheer self-defence was I driven to look abroad for interests that would suffice without disquieting me. I was now compelled to admit that there was plainly to be observed in Miss Kate Lansdale something more than a mere winning faith in my powers of self-control. It was difficult at first to suspect that she actually meant to try me to the breaking point. The suspicion brought a false note to that harmony of chastened grief wherein, I had divined, she meant to live out her life. It seemed too Peavey and perverse a thing that she should, finding our truce honorably observed by myself, behave toward me as if with a cold design to bring me down in disgrace—as a proof of her superior powers and my own wretched weakness. Yet this very thing was I obliged regretfully to concede of her before many days. And it was behavior that I could palliate only by reminding myself constantly that she was not only a woman but the daughter of Miss Caroline, and by that token subject inevitably to certain infirmities of character. And still did she at times evince for me that shyness which only enhanced my peril.
I managed to refrain, though in so grievous a plight, from wishing for another war; though I did concede that if we must ever again be cursed with war, it might as well come now as later. Regrettable though I must consider it, I should there find, spite of my disability, some field of active endeavor to engage my mind.
Lacking war, I sought distraction in a matter close at hand—one which possessed quite all the vivacity of war without its violence.
Early in the summer Mrs. Aurelia Potts had resumed her activities in behalf of our broader culture, whereupon our people murmured promptly at Solon Denney; for him did Little Arcady still hold to account for the infliction of this relentless evangel.
It was known that something still remained to Mrs. Potts, even after a year, of the pittance secured from the railway company, so that it was not necessity which drove her. To a considerable element of the town it seemed to be mere innate perversity. "It'sinher," was an explanation which Westley Keyts thought all-sufficient, though he added by way, as it were, of putting this into raised letters for the blind, "she'd have to raise hell just the same if it had cost that there railroad eight million 'stead of eight hundred to exterminate Potts!"
For myself, I should have set this thing to different words. I regarded Mrs. Potts as a zealot whom no advantage of worldly resource could blind to our shortcomings, nor deter from ministering unto them. Had it been unnecessary to earn bread for herself and little Roscoe, I am persuaded that she would still have been unremitting in her efforts to uplift us. In that event she might, it is true, have read us more papers and sold us fewer books; but she would have allowed herself as little leisure.
That Little Arcady was unequal to this broader view, however, was to be inferred from comments made in the hearing of and often, in truth, meant for the ears of Solon Denney. The burden was shifted to his poor shoulders with as little concern as if our best citizens had not coöperated with him in the original move, with grateful applause for its ingenious and fanciful daring. In ways devoid of his own vaunted subtlety, it was conveyed to Solon that Little Arcady expected him to do something. This was after the town had been cleanly canvassed for two monthly magazines—one of which had a dress-pattern in each number, to be cut out on the dotted line—and after our heroine had gallantly returned to the charge with a rather heavy "Handbook of Science for the Home,"—a book costing two dollars and fifty cents and treating of many matters, such as, how to conduct electrical experiments in a drawing-room, how to cleanse linen of ink-stains, how the world was made, who invented gun-powder, and how to restore the drowned. I recite these from memory, not having at hand either of my own two copies of this valuable work. Upon myself Mrs. Potts was never to call in vain, for to me she was an important card miraculously shuffled into the right place in the game. It was the custom of Miss Caroline, also, to sign gladly for whatsoever Mrs. Potts signified would be to her advantage. She gave the "Handbook of Science" to Clem, who, being strongly moved by any group of figures over six, rejoiced passionately to read the weight of the earth in net tons, and to dwell upon those vastly extensive distances affected by astronomers.
But abroad in the town there was not enough of this complaisance nor of this passion for mere numerals to prevent worry from creasing the brow of Solon Denney.
"The good God helped him once, but it looks like he'd have to help himself now," said Uncle Billy McCormick, the day he refused to subscribe for an improving book on the ground that the clock-shelf wouldn't hold another one. And this view of the situation came also to be the desperate view of Solon himself. That he suffered a black hour each week when Mrs. Potts read theArgusto him with corrections to make it square with "One Hundred Common Errors" and with good taste, in no way lessened the feeling against him. If he sustained an injury peculiar to his calling, it seemed probable that he would the sooner be moved to action. Little Arcady did not know what he could do, but it had faith that he would do something if he were pushed hard enough. So the good people pushed and trusted and pushed.
To those brutal enough to seek direct speech about it with Solon, he professed to be awaiting only the right opportunity for a brilliant stroke, and he counselled patience.
To me alone, I think, did he confide his utter lack of inspiration. And yet, though he seemed to affect entire candor with me, I was, strangely enough, puzzled by some reserve that still lurked beneath his manner. I hoped this meant that he was slowly finding a way too good to be told as yet, even to his best friend.
"Something must be done, Cal," he said, on one occasion, "but you see, here's the trouble—she's a woman and I'm a man."
"That's a famous old trouble," I remarked.
"And she'sgotto live, though Wes' Keyts says he isn't so sure of that—he says I'm lucky enough to have an earthquake made up especially for this case—and if she lives, she must have ways and means. And then I have my own troubles. Say, I never knew I was so careless about my language until she came along. She says only an iron will can correct it. Did you ever notice how she says 'i—ron' the way people say it when they're reading poetry out loud? I'll bet, if he had her help, the author of 'One Hundred Common Errors' could take anArgusand run his list up to a hundred and fifty in no time. She keeps finding common errors there that I'll bet this fellow never heard of. You mustn't say 'by the sweat of the brow,' but 'by the perspiration'—perspiration is refined and sweat is coarse—and to-day I learned for the first time that it's wrong to say 'Mrs. Henry Peterby of Plum Creek,néeJennie McCormick, spent Sunday with her parents of this city.' It looks right on the face of it, but it seems you mustn't say 'née' for the first name—only the last; though it means in French that that was her name before she was married. I tell you, that woman is a stickler. But what can I do?"
"Well, whatcanyou do? Far be it from me to suggest that something must be done."
"Do you know, Cal, sometimes I've thought I'd adopt a tone with her?"
"Better be careful," I cautioned. Mrs. Potts was not a person that one should adopt a tone with except after long and prayerful deliberation.
"Oh, I've considered it long enough—in fact I've considered a lot of things. That woman has bothered me in more ways than one, I tell you frankly. She's such a fine woman, splendid-looking, capable, an intellectual giant—one, I may say, who makes no common errors—and yet—"
"Ah! and yet—?" There was then in Solon's eyes that curious reserve I had before noted—a reserve that hinted of some desperate but still secret design.
"Well, there you are."
"Where?"
"Well—she seems to me to be a born leader of men."
"I see, and you?"
"Oh, nothing—only I'm a man. But something has got to be done. We must use common sense in these matters."
It was early evening a week later when I again saw Solon; one of those still, serene evenings of later summer when the light would yet permit an hour's play at the game. I heard a step, but it was not she I longed, half-expected, and wholly dreaded to see. Instead came Solon, and by his restored confidence of bearing I knew at a glance that something had been done or—since he seemed to be hurried—that he was about to do it.
"It's all over, Cal—it's fixed!"
"Good—how did you fix it?"
"Well—uh—I adopted a tone."
"That was brave, Solon. No other man on God's earth would have dared—"
"A tone, I was about to say—" he broke in a little uncomfortably, I thought—"which I have long contemplated adopting. If I could tell you just how that woman has impressed herself upon me, you'd understand what I mean when I say that she haspowers. But I suppose you can't understand it, can you?" His tone, curiously enough, was almost pleading.
"It isn't necessary that I should. I can at least understand that you are the Boss of Little Arcady once more."
"Boss of nothing!—that's all over. Cal, I've abdicated—I'm not even Boss of myself."
"Why, Solon—you can't possibly mean—"
"I do, though! Mrs. Potts is going to marry me and—uh—put an end to everything!"
With this rather curious finish he held out his hand expectantly.
"Well, you certainlydidsomething, Solon."
"We have to use common sense in these matters," he said with an effort to control his excitement. But, looking into his eyes, I saw reason to shake him warmly by the hand. What was my own poor opinion at a crisis like this? Certainly nothing to be obtruded upon my friend. It was clear that he had done a thing which he earnestly wanted and had earnestly dreaded to do—and that the dread was past.
"I'm pretty happy, Cal—that's all. Of course you'll soon know how it is yourself." He referred here to the well-known fact that I was much in the company of Miss Lansdale. But this was a thing to be turned.
"Oh, the game is teaching me resignation to a solitary life," I said with an affectation of disinterest that must have irritated him, for he asked bluntly:—
"Say, Calvin, how long do you intend to keep up that damned nonsense when everybody knows—"
This interesting sentence was cut off by Miss Kate Lansdale, who appeared around the corner and paused politely before us, with a look of trained and admirable deafness.
"Ah, Miss Lansdale," said Solon, urbanely, "I was just about to speak of you."
"Dear me!" said the young woman, simply. I thought she was aghast.
"Yes—but it's not worth repeating—or finishing."
Miss Lansdale seemed to be relieved by this assurance.
"And now I must hurry off," added Solon.
"Good evening!" we both said.
It seemed to be of a stuff from which curtains are sometimes made, white, with little colored figures in it, but the design would have required at least a column of the most technical description in a magazine I had subscribed for that summer. There was lace at the throat, and I should say that the thing had been constructed with the needs of Miss Lansdale's slender but completed figure solely and clearly in mind.
IN WHICH ALL RULES ARE BROKEN
IN WHICH ALL RULES ARE BROKEN
Swiftly I appraised the cool perfection of her attire, scenting the spice of the pinks she had thrust at her belt. And I suffered one heart-quickening look from her eyes before she could lower them to me. In that instant I was stung with a presentiment that our treaty was in peril—that it might go fearfully to smash if I did not fortify myself. It came to me that the creature had regarded my past success in observing this treaty with a kind of provocative resentment. I cannot tell how I knew it—certainly through no recognized media of communication.
Most formally I offered her a chair by the card-table, and resumed my own chair with what I meant for an air of inhospitable abstraction. She declined the chair, preferring to stand by the table as was her custom.
"It was on this spot years ago," I said, laying down the second eight cards, "that Solon Denney first told me he was about to marry."
Discursive gossip seemed best, I thought.
"Two long yellow braids," she remarked. It would be too much to say that her words were snapped out.
"And now he has told me again—I mean that he's going to marry again."
"What did you do?" she asked more cordially, studying the cards.
"The first time I went to war," I answered absently, having to play up the ace and deuce of diamonds.
"I have never been able to care much for yellow hair," she observed, also studying the cards; "of course, it'seffective, in a way, but—may I ask what you're going to do this time?"
"This time I'm going to play the game."
Again she studied the cards.
"It's refining," I insisted. "It teaches. I'm learning to be a Sannyasin."
Eight other cards were down, and I engrossed myself with them.
"Is a Sannyasin rather dull?"
"In the Bhagavad-gita," I answered, "he is to be known as a Sannyasin who does not hate and does not love anything."
"How are you progressing?" I felt her troubling eyes full upon me, and I suspected there was mockery in their depths.
"Oh, well, fairishly—but of course I haven't studied as faithfully as I might."
"I should think you couldn't afford to be negligent."
I played up the four of spades and put a king of hearts in the space thus happily secured.
"I have read," I answered absently, "that a benevolent man should allow himself a few faults to keep his friends in countenance. I mustn't be everything perfect, you know."
"Don't restrain yourself in the least on my account."
"You are my sole trouble," I said, playing a black seven on a red eight. She looked off the table as I glanced up at her.
I am a patient enough man, I believe, and I hope meek and lowly, but I saw suddenly that not all the beatitudes should be taken without reservation.
"I repeat," I said, for she had not spoken, "your presence is the most troubling thing I know. It keeps me back in my studies."
"There's a red five for that black six," she observed.
"Thank you!" and I made the play.
"Then you're not a Sannyasin yet?"
"I've nearly taken the first degree. Sometimes after hard practice I can succeed in not hating anything for as much as an hour."
I dealt eight more cards and became, to outward seeming, I hope, absorbed in the new aspect of the game.
"Perseverance will be rewarded," she said kindly. "You can't expect to learn it all at once."
"You might try not to make it harder for me."
Again had I been a third person of fair discernment, I believe I should have sworn that I caught in her eyes a gleam of hardened, relentless determination; but she only pointed to a four of hearts which I was neglecting to play up.
"Why not play the game to win?" she asked, and there was that in her voice which was like to undo me—a tone and the merest fanning of my face by her loose sleeve as she pointed to the card.
Suddenly I knew that honor was not in me. She walked within my lines in imminent peril of the deadliest character. But there was no sign of fear in the look she held me with, and I knew she had not sensed her danger.
"You should play your stupid game to win," she repeated terribly. "You are too ingenious at finding balm in defeat." That little golden roughness in her voice seemed to grate on my bared heart. I left her eyes with a last desperate appeal to the game. My hand shook as it laid down the final eight cards.
"Have I ever had any reason to think I could win?" I found I could ask this if I kept my eyes upon the cards.
She laughed a curious, almost silent, confidential little laugh, through which a sigh of despair seemed to breathe.
I looked quickly up, but again there was that strange gleam in her eyes, a gleam of sternest resolve I should have called it under other circumstances.
"You see!" I exclaimed, pointing with a trembling but triumphant finger at the cards. "You see! I am beaten now, in this game that seemed easy up to the very last moment. What could I hope for in a game where the cards fell wretchedly from the very start? If I hoped now, I'd be a hopeless fool, indeed!"
'THAT WILL DO,' I SAID SEVERELY. 'REMEMBER THERE IS A GENTLEMAN PRESENT.'
"'THAT WILL DO,' I SAID SEVERELY. 'REMEMBER THERE IS A GENTLEMAN PRESENT.'"
"'THAT WILL DO,' I SAID SEVERELY. 'REMEMBER THERE IS A GENTLEMAN PRESENT.'"
"Are you sure you know how to play this game?"
There was a sort of finality in her words that sickened me.
"I have abided always by the rules," I answered doggedly, "and I do know the rules. Look—this game is neatly blocked by one little four-spot on that queen. If that queen were free, I could finish everything."
"Oh, oh—I've told you it's a stupid game with stupid rules—and it makes its players—" She did not complete that, but went about on another tack—with the danger note in her voice. "Just now I overheard your caller say a thing—"
"Ah, I feared you overheard."
The arrogance of the gesture with which she interrupted me was splendid.
"He said, 'How long are you going to keep up that—that—'"
"That will do," I said severely. "Remember there is a gentleman present." But my voice sounded queerly indeed to the ears most familiar with its quality. Also it trembled, for her gaze, almost stern in its questioning, had not released me.
"But how longareyou?" Her own voice had trembled, as mine did. She might as well have used the avoided word. Her tone carried it far too intelligibly. It was quite as bad as swearing. I tried twice before I succeeded in finding my voice.
"I'vetoldyou," I said desperately; "can't you see—that queen isn't free?"
Swiftly—I regret to say, almost with a show of temper—she snatched the four of diamonds from its lawful place and laid it brazenly far outside the game.
"The creatureisfree," she said crisply—but at once her arrogance was gone and she drooped visibly in weakness.
So quickly did I rise from the table that the cards of the game were hurled into a meaningless confusion. I stood at her side. I had lost myself.
"Little Miss,—oh, Little Miss! I've a thousand arms all crying for you."
Slowly she made her eyes come to mine—not without effort, for we were close.
"I am glad we left you,"—she had meant to say "that arm," I judge, but there was a break in her voice, a swift movement, and she suddenly said "thisarm," with a little shudder in which she could not meet my eyes; for, such as the arm was, she had finished her speech from within it. Close I held her, like a witless moonling, forgetting all resolves, all lessons, all treaties—all but that she was not a dream woman.
"Oh, Little Miss!" was all I could say; and she—"Calvin Blake!" as if it were a phrase of endearment.
"Little Miss, that loss has put me out, but never has it been the hardship it is now—one arm!"
I had not thought it possible for her to come nearer, but a successful nestling movement was her answer.
"I feel the need of a thousand arms, and yet their strength is—"
"Is in this one." She completed my sentence with her own nestling emphasis for "this one."
"Can you believe now, Little Miss?"
"Yes—you gave it to me again."
"Can you believe that I—I—"
"Thatwas never hard. I believed that the first evening I saw you."
"A womanish thing to say—I didn't know it myself."
But she laughed to me, laughed still as I brought her face nearer—so near. Only then did her parted lips close tensely in the woman fear of what she read in my eyes. I have reason to believe that she would have mastered this fear, but at that instant Miss Caroline coughed rather alarmingly.
"You should do something for that right away," I said, as we struck ourselves apart. "You let a cough like that run along and you don't know what it may end in." Whereupon, having kissed no one on this occasion, I now kissed Miss Caroline,—without difficulty, I may add.
"I've been meaning to do it for a year," I explained.
"I must remind you that they were far less deliberate inmyday," said she, with a delicate hint of reminiscence in her tone. Whereupon she looked searchingly at each of us in turn. Then, with a little gasp, she wept daintily upon my love's shoulder.
I had long suspected that tears were a mere aesthetic refreshment with Miss Caroline. I had never known her weaken to them when there seemed to be far better reasons for it than the present occasion furnished.
"I must take her home," said my love, without speaking.
"Do!" I urged, likewise in silence, but understandably.
"And I must be alone," she called, as they stepped out on to the lawn.
"So must I." It had not occurred to me; but I could see thoughts with which my mind needed at once to busy itself. I watched them go slowly into the dusk. I thought Miss Caroline seemed to be recovering.
When they had gone, I stepped out to look up at the strange new stars. The measure of my dream was full and running over. To stand there and breathe full and laugh aloud—that was my prayer of gratitude; nor did I lack the presence of mind to hope that, in ascending, it might in some way advantage the soul of J. Rodney Potts, that humble tool with which the gods had wrought such wonders.
It was no longer a dream, no vision brief as a summer's night, when the light fades late to come again too soon. Before, in that dreaming time, I saw that I had drawn water like the Danaides, in a pitcher full of holes. But now—I wondered how long she would find it good to be alone. I felt that I had been alone long enough, and that seven minutes, or possibly eight, might suffice even her.
She came almost with the thought, though I believe she did not hurry after she saw that I observed her.
"I had to be alone a long time, to think well about it—to think it all out," she said simply.
I thought it unnecessary to state the precise number of minutes this had required. Instead I showed her all those strange new stars above us, and together we surveyed the replenished heavens.
"How light it is—and so late!" she murmured absently.
"Come back to our porch."
There for the first time in its green life my vine came into its natural right of screening lovers. In its shade my love cast down her eyes, but intrepidly lifted her lips. Miss Caroline was still where she should have remained in the first place.
"I am very happy, Little Miss!"
"You shall be still happier, Calvin Blake. I haven't waited this long without knowing—"
"Nor I! I know, too."
"I hope Jim will be glad," she suggested.
"He'll be delighted, and vastly relieved. It has puzzled him fearfully of late to see you living away from me."
We sat down, for there seemed much to say.
"I believed more than you did, with all your game," she taunted me.
"But you broke the rules. Anybody can believe anything if he can break all the rules."
"I'd a dreadful time showing you that I meant to."
I shall not detail a conversation that could have but little interest to others. Indeed, I remember it but poorly. I only know that it seemed magically to feed upon itself, yet waxed to little substance for the memory.
One thing, however, I retain vividly enough. In a moment when we both were silent, renewing our amazement at the stars, there burst upon the night a volume of song that I instantly identified.
"She sleeps, my lady sleeps!" sang the clear tenor of Arthur Updyke. "My lady sleeps—she sleeps!" sang three other voices in well-blended corroboration; after which the four discoursed upon this interesting theme.
We were down from the stars at once, but I saw nothing to laugh at, and said as much.
"We might take them out some sandwiches and things to drink," persisted my Little Miss.
But the starlight had shown me a gleam in her eyes that was too outrageously Peavey.
"We willnot" I chanted firmly to the music's mellowed accompaniment. "I am free to say now that the thing must be stopped, but you shall do it less brutally—to-morrow or next day."
"Oh, well, if you—"
She nestled again. So soon had this habit seemed to fasten upon her adaptable nature.
"It's wonderful what one arm can do," she said; and in the darkness she felt for the closing hand of it to draw it yet more firmly about her.
"It has the spirit of all the arms in the world, Little Miss—oh, my Little Miss—my dream woman come true!"
She nestled again, with a sigh of old days ended.
"Youcan'tget any closer," I admonished.
"Here!" she whispered insistingly, so that I felt the breath of it.
BY ANOTHER HAND
BY ANOTHER HAND
A wanderer from Little Arcady in early days returned to its placid shades after many years, drawn thither by a little quick-born yearning to walk the old streets again. But he found such strangeness in these that his memory was put to prodigious feats of reconstruction ere it could make them seemly as of yore.
To the west, away from the river, the town has groped beyond a prairie frontier that had once been sacred to boyish games and the family cow. Now, so thickly was it built with neat white houses, that only with strenuous clairvoyance could famous old localities be identified: the ball-ground; the marshy stretch that made skating in winter, or, in spring, a fascinating place to catch cold by wading; the grassy common where "shinny" was played by day and "Yellow Horn" by night; the enchanted spot where the circus built airy castles of canvas, and where, on the day after, one might plant one's feet squarely in the magic ring, on the veritable spot, perchance, where the clown had superhumanly ridden the difficult trick-mule after local volunteers had failed so entertainingly.
Barns in this once wild country had failed amazingly. Only one of any character was left, and it had shrunk. Of old a structure of possibilities intensely romantic, it was now dingy, pitiable, insignificant. No reasonable person would consider holding a circus there—admission ten pins for boys and five pins for girls.
Orchards, too, had suffered. Acres of them, once known to their last tree, including the safest routes of approach by day or night, had been cut down to make space for substantial but unexciting houses, quite like the houses in anybody's town. Other orchards had shrunk to a few poor unproductive trees so little prized by their owners that they could no longer excite evil thoughts in the young.
Indeed, almost everything had shrunk. The church steeples, once of an inconceivable height, were now but a scant sixty feet; and the buildings beneath them, that once had vied with old-world cathedrals, were seen to be but toy churches.
Especially had gardens shrunk. One that boasted the widest area in days when it must be hoed for the advantage of potatoes insanely planted there, was now a plot so tiny that the returned wanderer, amazedly staring at it, abandoned all effort to make it occupy its old place in his memory.
North and south were dozens of strange, prim houses to puzzle up the streets. The street-signs, another innovation, were truly needed. Of old it had been enough to say "down toward the depot," "out by the McCormick place," "next to the Presbyterian church," "up around the schoolhouse," or "down by the lumber yard." But now it was plain that one had to know First, Second, and Third streets, Washington, Adams, and Jefferson streets.
Socially as well, the town had changed. Not only is the native stock more travelled, speaking—entirely without an air—of trips to the Yellowstone, to Europe, Chicago, or Santa Barbara, but a new element has invaded the little country. It goes in the fall, but it comes again each summer, drawn by the green beauty of the spot, and it has left its impress.
The revisiting wanderer observed, as in a dream, an immaculate coupé with a couple of men on the box who behaved quite as if they were about to enter the park in the full glare of Fifty-ninth Street and Fifth Avenue, though they were but on a street of the little country among farm wagons. The outfit was ascertained to belong to a summer resident who was said, by common report, to "have wine right on the table at every meal." No one born out of Little Arcady can appraise the revolutionary character of this circumstance at anything like its true value.
Further, in the line of vehicular sensationalism, a modish wicker-bodied phaeton and a minute pony-cart were seen on a pleasant afternoon to issue from a driveway far up a street that now has a name, but which used to be adequately identified by saying "up toward the Fair Grounds."
The phaeton was occupied by two ladies, one rather old, to whom a couple of half-grown children in the pony-cart kissed their hands and shouted. They were not permitted to follow the phaeton, however, as they seemed to have wished. Its shock-headed pony, driven by an aged negro who scolded both children with a worn and practised garrulity, was turned in another direction. One of the children, a little dark-faced girl of eight or nine, called "Little Miss" by the driver, was repeatedly threatened in the fiercest tone by him because of her perilous twistings to look back at the phaeton. The cart was followed by a liver-and-white setter; a young dog, it seemed, from his frenzied caperings and his manner of appearing to think of something else in the midst of every important moment.
There proved to be two papers in the town, as of old, but theArguswas now published twice a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays. The wanderer eagerly scanned its columns for familiar names and for something of the town's old tone; but with little success.
Said one item, "A string of electric lights, on a street leading up one of our hills, looks like a necklace of brilliants on the bosom of the night." Old Little Arcady had not electric lights; nor theArgusthis exuberance of simile.
Again: "This new game of golf that the summer folks play seems to have too much walking for a good game and just enough game to spoil a good walk." Golf in the Little Country!
The advent of musical culture was signified by this: "At least thirty girls in this town can play the first part of 'Narcissus' pretty well. But when they come to the second part they mangle the keys for a minute and then say, 'I don't care much for that second part—do you?' Why don't some of them learn it and give us a chance to judge?"
TheArgushad acquired a "Woman's Department," conducted by Mrs. Aurelia Potts Denney, wife of the editor,—a public-spirited woman, prominent in club circles, and said to be of great assistance to her husband in his editorial duties. The town was proud of her, and sent her as delegate to the Federation of Woman's Clubs; her name, indeed, has been printed in full more than once, even by Chicago newspapers. Some say that wisely she might give more attention to her twin sons, Hayes and Wheeler Denney; but this likely is ill-natured carping, for Hayes and Wheeler seem not more lawless than other twins of eight. And carpers, to a certainty, do exist in Little Arcady.
One Westley Keyts, for example, lounging in the doorway of his meat-shop, renewed acquaintance with the wanderer, who remembered him as a glum-faced but not bad-hearted chap. Names recalled and hands shaken, Mr. Keyts began to lament the simple ways of an elder day, glancing meanwhile with honest disapproval at a newly installed competitor across the street. The shop itself was something of an affront, its gilt name more—"The Bon Ton Market." Mr. Keyts pronounced "Bon Ton" in his own fashion, but his contempt was ably and amply expressed.
"Sounds like one of them fancy names for a corset or a patent lamp," he complained. "It's this here summer business that done it. They swarm in here with their private hacks and their hired help all togged out till you'd think they was generals in the army, and they play that game of sissy-shinny (drop-the-handkerchief for mine, ifIgot to play any such game), and they're such great hands to kite around nights when folks had ought to be in their beds. I tell you, my friend, it ain't doing this town one bit of good. The idea of a passel of strong, husky young men settin' around on porches in their white pants and calling it 'passing the summer.'Iain't never found time to pass any summers."
The wanderer expressed a proper regret for this decadence. Mr. Keyts reverted bitterly to the Bon Ton market:—
"Good name for a tooth powder, or a patent necktie, or an egg-beater. But a butcher-shop!—why, it's ahellof a name for a butcher-shop!"
The wanderer expressed perfect sympathy with this view of the shop legend, and remarked, "By the way, whose big house is that with the columns in front, up where the Prouse and old Blake houses used to be?"
The face of Mr. Keyts became pleasanter.
"Oh, that?—that's Cal Blake's—Major Blake's, you know. He married a girl that come in here from the South with her mother. I guess that was after you got out of here. They tore down the two houses and built that big one. They say it's like them Southern houses, but I don't know. It seems awful plain up the front of it. Cal's all right, though. I guess mebbe he built the house kind of bare that way to please his wife and his mother-in-law. I'll bet if he'd had his own way, there'd be some brackets and fret work on the front to liven it up some. But I'd a done just like him in his place, I would, by Gee! So would you if you seen his wife.Say!but never mind; you wait right here. She'll drive up to git Cal from his office at four-thirty—it's right across there over the bank where that young fellow is settin' in the window—that's young Cal Denney, studyin' law with Blake. You just wait and see—she'll drive up in about six minutes."
The wanderer waited, out of pure cordiality to Mr. Keyts. The prospect was not exciting, but the simple faith of the villagers that outsiders must share their interest in local concerns has always seemed too touching a thing to wreck.
Within the six minutes mentioned by Mr. Keyts the diurnal happening to which he attached such importance was observed. A woman (the younger of the two seen in the phaeton) drove up for Major Calvin Blake; a youngish rather than a young woman, slight, with an effect of stateliness, and not unattractive. Her husband, a tall and pleasant enough looking man, came down the stairs, and when he saw the woman his face lighted swiftly—and rather wonderfully, when one considers that she was not unexpected. They drove away.
The wanderer was not disposed to minimize the incident, however far he might fall short of Westley Keyts's appreciation. But he had been long absent from the Little Country, and the people of to-day were strange and unimportant. He preferred to revive, as best he might, the days of his own simple faith in the town's sufficiency; days when the world beyond the Little Country was but a place from which to order merchandise, or into which, at the most, adventurous Arcadians dared brief journeys for profit or a doubtful pleasure; the days of a boy's Little Arcady, that existed no more save as a wraith in remembering minds.