My Lady Valentine

CALEB WHITMAN was in a bad humor. The task of editing the Valentine Special with which Better Every Week was planning to celebrate its tenth anniversary, was far from his taste. The theme of this number was to be—as one might surmise—Love; and Whitman did not believe in love, at least not in the violent emotion which the story writers were so fond of describing.

“Do you suppose,” he said to his friend Radding, who had dropped in upon him one hot August afternoon, “that any man in his senses ever carried on over a girl as these story-book fellows do? Do you think any man ever felt like saying the sickly things the poets write? I can’t see why writers want to turn out such stuff. I can’t see why anybody reads the silly yarns when we print them.... How do you account for it, Rad? You’re a philosopher.”

Radding smiled and yawned. He moved out of the direct draft of the electric fan which blew his thin brown hair about his high, intelligent forehead:

“There are three classes of people,” he said. “Those who have been in love; those who are in love; and those who hope to be in love.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” asked Whitman.

“The first class read love stories to recall past happiness, the second to intensify present happiness, the third to anticipate future happiness.”

“I must be in a class all by myself, then,” stormed Whitman, “for the more time I put in on this bunch of stuff the more determined I am never to be a lover. Why, Rad, it takes a man’s reason—”

“Yes,” Radding admitted, “it does.”

“It warps his judgment.”

“It certainly does that.”

“It causes as much misery as joy, apparently.”

“The evidence is all with you.”

“Then what on earth does it give in return?”

“That,” said Radding, smiling at the younger man’s vehemence, “is what you will some day find out.”

“Not I,” boasted Whitman.

“You mean that you have set yourself against marriage?” his friend inquired.

“Not at all. I’ve merely set myself against the emotional state of the story-book lover. When I pick out a wife, I’ll do it with my head. I’ll look first of all for a rational human being, secondly for a healthy human being.”

“You might not like her, you know,” Radding reminded him.

Whitman looked up from the manuscript he was glancing over to say, “I don’t want to like her in the crazy way these lovers do. All I want to feel is a calm regard. I don’t want to have my heart thump every time she comes around the corner. I don’t want to be a prey to jealousy every time another man looks at her. Above all, I don’t want to sink into second childhood and call her silly names.”

“What names, for instance?” Radding asked.

“‘Darling.’ ‘Birdie.’ ‘Honey-Love,’” quoted Whitman scornfully from the ardent page before him.

“Oh, that kind of names!” said Radding, with a nod of understanding. “What shall you call her?”

“‘Mary,’ if that’s her name; ‘Susan’ if that’s what she was christened; and I shall expect her to call me ‘Caleb.’”

“You even let me turn it into ‘Caley,’” Radding reminded him.

“You’re different,” said Whitman, honest affection shining in his eyes. “You’re all the family I have, Rad; the best friend I have in the world. Don’t let me get started on you, or I’ll turn as sentimental as the novelists.... By the way, I’m going to try my own hand at a novel this vacation.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in them?”

“I believe in this one. It’s to be the story of a sane courtship, like the one I’ve been outlining to you. I’ve been planning it ever since I was assigned to this job of getting out the Valentine Special. I believe that there are thousands of people who will read my kind of love story with relief.”

“You can but try it,” Radding granted. And then he asked, “Where are you going on your vacation, anyway?”

“Up in the hills, to a camp I know of—a kind of writers’ colony.”

“When do you start?”

Whitman did not answer. He was lost in the contents of the last of the envelopes which he had taken up from the great pile before him.

“Got hold of something good?” asked Radding, noticing his preoccupation.

“I’ve come upon something odd,” Whitman explained, raising his eyes for only a fleeting moment from the letter he was reading.

“What is it?”

“A poem, a letter—and a signature.”

“Want to share them with me, or am I in your way?”

“Not in my way. I’m going to knock off in a minute and go home with you.”

“Is it a good poem?”

“Not very; but it may do with editing. We are going to have two pages of light verse. The idea of this is at least new. Something kind of winsome about it. But it’s the personality behind it that piques my curiosity. Take a look at it, Rad.” And Whitman held out a thin sheet of cross-barred country paper on which some one had written in a firm hand:

“TO MY UNKNOWN LOVER

“Rather forthputting,” said Radding, handing the paper back.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Whitman. “Now listen to the letter which accompanies it;” and he read:

“I suppose they all say that,” ejaculated Radding.

“They don’t say it in this way,” said Whitman, continuing to read:

“Been playing cards or following the ponies?” Radding joked.

Whitman didn’t smile. “Don’t, Rad,” he said. “The writer is in real trouble. Listen:”

At this point Whitman looked up with a smile, as if to invite Radding to share his amusement. With his red hair, keen gray eyes, straight shoulders, the young editor could not have been less like the writer’s vision.

Again he went on:

Whitman paused for dramatic effect before reading impressively:

“Well?” said Radding.

“Well,” said Whitman. “Of course no man wrote that note and no man wrote those verses.”

“Why not?” asked Radding. “Every village of over two hundred inhabitants has a poet. Deep Harbor has Henry. I can see him plainly. He’s pale, and watery blue eyed, with tow colored hair, which he wears long. He ties his cuffs with ribbons. He owes a soda water bill at the village drug store and hopes that you will pay him enough for the poem to square it.”

“Rad,” said Caleb, “you don’t believe that.”

“Why not?”

“Why not! Because every word of that letter and every line of that poem was written by a girl. Look here. This proves it—it isn’t dated.”

“Henry wouldn’t date it,” said Radding. “He’d think it was commercial.”

“I can just see that village,” Whitman continued, ignoring Radding’s chaffing. “A lonely little place, at the end of the earth, with a deserted harbor where no ships ever come; sagging old wharves, ruminating old fishermen, and somewhere in it—this girl, panting for a wider world. You see, I know, Rad, because I spent my boyhood in that kind of place.”

“What are you going to do about the poem?” asked Radding.

“I’m going to take it. We can edit it a bit, and stick it in somewhere. At space rates she won’t be much richer, but she may be happier.”

“Buy that poem, and you’ll have Henry on your hands for the rest of your life,” Radding warned him.

“I can’t take you seriously,” said Whitman stubbornly, “because I feel certain that Henry—isn’t Henry.”

“Do you want to back your judgment?” Radding demanded.

“I’ll stake a dinner on it.”

“All right, my boy. If I win, the toast will be to Henry Luffkin, village poet.”

“And if I win,” Whitman laughed, entering into the spirit of Radding’s fun, “the toast will be to—Lady Valentine.”