BECAUSEBy Catherine Carr
By Catherine Carr
They were preëminently suited to each other, The Bachelor and The Single Lady. All the other boarders saw that, and they marveled among themselves at the blindness of the two.
They were most excellent friends, The Bachelor and The Single Lady, their work forming community of interest. He was an instructor of mathematics at the college and she the teacher of a heterogeneous mass of foreign youth in the public school. They had the same tastes in books and pleasures—either preferred a botanizing excursion to the theater—and they were agreed on such homely but vital questions as grape fruit for breakfast, and the rareness of beef. It was an affinity of heaven’s own making, The Girl Who Sang declared.
The Girl Who Sang was particularly impatient with them. She considered that they had wasted quite enough time already. She had romantic ideals and was rather intense about things. It was this, perhaps, which gave her songs such charm.
The Bachelor and The Single Lady were indulgent toward the intensities of The Girl Who Sang, though they did not in the least understand them or her. They had no youthful memories to help them to such comprehension, for life had not been kind to the days of their youth. They had beendull and gray, and their present congenial tasks had been achieved through many struggles and much self-denial; but neither had been embittered by their trials, and The Single Lady’s brown eyes were still bright and The Bachelor was still a fine figure of a man.
Three years of placid companionship brought them to a night in May. A notable night in May. The air was soft and rich with sweet scents and the moon was at its full. The Bachelor and The Single Lady sat side by side on the gallery, talking of vacation plans with obvious matter-of-factness. The young boarders sat about also on the steps and the gallery railing, laughing and talking, and saying things with their eyes, for it was springtime and life and the world were very fair. And, by-and-by, The Girl Who Sang went into the house and seated herself at the piano.
And very soon the young people had strolled away in pairs to the summer-house and the shaded places of the yard, and only The Bachelor and The Single Lady remained on the gallery, talking still of commonplace affairs.
Then the arc-light swaying before the house flared up and flickered and went out, and the moonlight reigned supreme. On the flood of golden moonlight floated the flood of golden melody which was the singing of The Girl.
She sang of love, as was natural with one who was romantic and intense about things.
A gaychansonat first, with a waltz refrain which sent even sedate pulses to beating the time. Presently The Bachelor’s geological intentions were being presented to the accompaniment of its measure tapped out by The Single Lady’s unconscious shoe-toe. And then came a little thing all about kisses and bliss. Such a silly little trifle it was, yet gradually it overcame the commonplace designs in The Bachelor’s mind with subtle suggestion of the delights it celebrated. To kiss now—might it not indeed be a pleasing experience? It had never occurred so strongly to him before. He found his imagination quite touched by the idea. His recollections furnished only kisses bestowed upon sisters and an aunt or two, and they were suddenly inadequate.
It was a lilting lay, this, where lovers kissed and were glad, and it quite got into the blood and set pictures before the eye—vague, elusive and yet of singular vividness. And now the rhythm changed and The Girl sang of love that had lost and was sad. A tender cry of heart yearning—and this, too, was very sweet. Better, far better, the grave of love to hallow the past than the lean memory-spaces of one who had never loved. The Bachelor involuntarily cast about in his mind for scraps of verse which said this very well, but he had no storehouse of such things and he could only go on feeling the spirit of it all—intangibly, still with distinct longing and desire.
And The Girl sang on—a varied repertoire. A song of home—and life in a single room and with meals at a crowded table was no longer satisfying. Home surely meant the place apart which was one’s own—small, even humble, as the heart-song of the world tells it—but one’s own, and—“cozy.” It was an admirably descriptive word, “cozy.” The early death of The Bachelor’s mother had deprived his heart of this rhythm of remembrance, too—but he knew quite well now how it should be. And he knew, too, that the center of it all should be a well-loved woman. Was not indeed the very spelling of home, woman? The Bachelor taught “math” and was not bothered by phonetics. His conviction became entire while The Girl sang a lullaby. Certainly, in the last analysis, home was the woman who was also mother. The whole picture was easily encompassed—the hearthfire and the keeper of it—a woman of tender eyes crooning to the wee bundle of life whose head rested in the hollow of her arm. It was so clear—so clearly to be seen, however strange a vision for bachelor fancy,and The Bachelor saw it in alluring detail—and—all at once—with personal application.
He turned and looked long at The Single Lady, and the sight of her filled all these places—and more.
She, too, had been silent for some time, and her face was tender with thought. Could it be that her thoughts had been of like tenor to his own? The corners of her mouth were bent into a reflective smile that was very sweet, and the light in her eyes was soft—the light o’ dreams. If it could only be that her thoughts were as his thoughts—and of him! If only it could be! The Bachelor’s blood quickened and ran toward the hope, and he knew that the worth of the world lay in this balance.
And then the honey-sweet tones of The Girl rippled out the familiar strains of “Because I Love You.” Surely it was the cause of life’s mysteries and their solution, and the delving of scientists was altogether unnecessary. All of The Bachelor’s pulses proclaimed it—and were glad.
“My only one regret—Since then we never met,”
“My only one regret—Since then we never met,”
“My only one regret—Since then we never met,”
“My only one regret—
Since then we never met,”
sang The Girl, and fear struck him chill.
Not that—not that! The mere suggestion emptied his life. The Bachelor impulsively reached out and closed his hand over his companion’s, which was resting on the bench between them.
“Dear”—he breathed rather than spoke, and The Single Lady turned her eyes from their dreamy contemplation of something far away, to his, but they did not look startled. It was easily supposed that she, too, had listened to the music which was as the music of Isolde—“strangely-gentle, love-persuading”—and had also seen visions. Yet they remained silent, harkening to the melody, which was “saying all things” so immeasurably well. It ceased, but the spell still held them. The arc-light came on and disputed the reign of the moonlight with its cold white glare, but the illumination of their world was still rose.
The Girl Who Sang came out on the gallery, a frivolous whirlwind of frills and furbelows, humming the end of her song, “Because I love you, dear, because I love you.” It was adequate phrasing of the story of life.
The Girl halted before them and swept them with comprehensive eyes.
“Oh—” she said, her tone mischievous, daring, “o-h!”
The Single Lady looked down at their clasped hands with a sudden sensing of the conventions. She made a movement of withdrawal, but The Bachelor held her slender fingers fast. She looked up and met his eyes. She saw in them a compelling force strangely mingled with pleading and question.
“Yes—why—yes,” The Single Lady said, in happy confusion.
“Yes. Ofcourse!” said The Bachelor, in happy decision.