Jarley was in a blue mood the night before Thanksgiving. Things hadn't gone quite to suit him during the year. He had lost two of his most profitable clients—men upon whom for two years previously he had been able to count for a steady income. It is true that he had lost them by winning their respective suits, and had made two strong friends by so doing; but, as he once put it to Mrs. Jarley, the worst position a man could possibly get himself into was that of one who is long on friends and short on income. He did not underestimate the value of friends, but he didn't want too many of them; because beyond a certain number they became luxuries rather than necessities, and his financial condition was such that he could not afford luxuries.
"I love them all," he said, "but I haven't money enough to entertain a quarter of them. The last time Billie Hicks was up here he smoked sixteen Invincible cigars. Now, I am very fond of Billie Hicks, but with cigars at twenty cents apiece I can't afford him more than one Sunday in a year. He's getting a little cold because I haven't asked him up since."
"Why don't you buy cheaper cigars? At our grocery store they have some very nice looking ones at two for five cents," suggested Mrs. Jarley.
"I don't wish to have to move out of the house," said Jarley.
Mrs. Jarley failed to see the connection.
"Very likely you don't," said Jarley; "but if I smoked one of your two-and-a-half-cent grocery cigars in this house, you'd see the point in a minute. If you will get me a yard of cotton cloth, and let me put it in the furnace fire, you'll get a fair idea of the kind of atmosphere we'd be breathing if I allowed a cigar like that to be lit within fifty feet of the front door."
"But you can get a good cigar for ten cents, can't you?" Mrs. Jarley asked. "Yes—very good," assented Jarley; "but Billie would probably smoke thirty-two of those, and carry three or four away with him in his pockets. I'd lose even more that way. It's a singular thing about friends. They have some conscience about Invincible cigars, but they'll take others by the handful."
Jarley was also somewhat blue upon this occasion because none of his inventions—the little things he thought out in his leisure moments, and out of some of which he had hoped to gain a deal of profit—had been successful. The public had refused to place any confidence whatsoever in his patent reversible spats, which, when turned inside out, could be made useful as galoches; and the beaux of New York actually rejected with scorn the celluloid chrysanthemum, which he had hoped would become a popular boutonnière because of its durability and cheapness. An impecunious young man with care could make one fifteen-cent chrysanthemum of the Jarley order last through a whole season, and it could be colored to suit the wearer's taste with the ordinary paint-boxes that children so delight in; but in spite of this the celluloid chrysanthemum was a distinct failure, and Jarley had had his trouble for his pains, to say nothing of the cost of the model. But worst of all the failures, because of the prospective losses its failure entailed, was the Jarley safety lightning razor. Its failure was not due to any lack of merit, for it certainly possessed much that was ingenious and commendable. The affair was not different in principle from a lawn-mower. Six little sharp blades set on a cylinder would revolve rapidly as the pretty machine was pushed up and down the cheek of the person shaving, and leave the face of that person as smooth as a piece of velvet; but in announcing it to the world its inventor had made the unfortunate statement that a child could use it with impunity, and some would-be smart person on a comic paper took it up and wrote an undeniably clever article on the futility of inventing a razor for children. The consequence was that the safety razor was laughed out of existence, and the additions to his residence which Jarley was going to pay for out of the proceeds had to be abandoned.
"I don't like a blue funk," he said, "and generally I can find something to be thankful for at this season; but I'm blest if this year, beyond the fact that we're all alive, I can see any cause for celebrating my thankfulness. I haven't enough of it to last ten minutes, much less a day, what with the positive failure of my inventions, the loss of income from what I once considered safe investments that have gone to the wall, and the reduction of my professional earnings, not to mention the fact that almost at the beginning of my professional year I am as tired physically and mentally as I ought to be at the finish."
"Oh, well, say you are thankful, anyhow," suggested Mrs. Jarley. "You will convince others that you are, and maybe, if you say it often enough, you will convince yourself of the fact."
"Thanks," said Jarley. "It's possibly a good suggestion, but I don't believe in pretending to be what I'm not. It might convince me that I am thankful for something, but I don't want to be convinced when I know I'm not."
Which shows, I think, how very blue Jarley was.
"There's one thing," he added, with a sigh of relief at the thought—"I'll have a day of rest to-morrow anyhow. I've bought Jack a football, and he can take it out on the tennis-court and play with it all day, with intervals for meals."
"Why did you do that?" asked Mrs. Jarley, with a gesture not so much of indignation as of disapproval. "I think football is such a brutal game; and if Jack has a football at his present age, when he's in college he'll want to play. I don't want to have my boy wearing his hair like a Comanche Indian, and coming home with broken ribs and dislocated limbs."
"We'll let the broken ribs of 1904 and the wig of the same period suffice for the evils of that year," retorted Jarley. "It's the present I'm looking after, not the future ten or twelve years removed. If Jack hasn't that football to-morrow he'll have me, and I've no desire in the present condition of my physical well-being to be used by him as a plaything. Deprived of the leathern ball, he might use me as a football instead, and I must rest. That's all there is about it. Besides, if he becomes an aspirant for football honors now it will be a good thing for him. He'll take care of himself and try to improve his physique if he once gets the notion in his head that he wants to go on a university eleven. I want my boy to learn to be a man, and the football ambition is likely to be a very useful aid in that direction. He knits reins very well with a spool and a pin now, and I think it's time he graduated in that art, unless the woman of the future, of whom we hear so much, is to take man's place to such an extent that the man will have to take up woman's work. If I thought the masculine tendency of our present-day girls was likely to go much further, I might consent to the effemination of Jack simply to secure his comfort as a married man of the future; but I don't think that, and in consequence Jack is going to be brought up as a boy, and not as a girl. The football goes."
This remark was another indication of Jarley's depression. He rarely combated Mrs. Jarley's ideas, and when he did, and with a certain air of irritation, it was invariably a sign of his low mental state.
"When you say that the football goes, do you mean that it stays?" queried Mrs. Jarley, who was a little tired herself, and could not, therefore, resist the temptation to indulge in a bit of innocent repartee.
"I do," said Jarley, shortly. "Goes is sometimes a synonym for stays. When I feel stronger I may invent a new language, which will have fewer absurdities than English as she is spoke."
And with this Jarley went to bed, and slept the sleep of the just man who is truly weary.
If he had foreseen the result of his football investment it is doubtful if his sleep would have been so tranquil—unless, perchance, he were fashioned after that rare pattern of mankind, Louis XVI. of France, who called for his six or seven course dinner with a mob of howling, bloodthirsty Parisians in his antechamber, and who on the eve of his execution slept well, despite his knowledge that within fifteen hours his head would in all probability be lopped off by the guillotine to gratify the lust for blood which was the chief characteristic of the promoters of the first French Republic.
At six on the morning of Thanksgiving Day Jarley was sleeping peacefully, but the youthful Jack was not. Thanksgiving Day was not a holiday in his eyes, but a day set apart for work, thanks to his father's indulgence in providing him with a football. He had gone to bed the night before with the ball hugged tightly to his breast; and along about ten o'clock, when Jarley himself had gone into the nursery to put that treasured good-night kiss upon the forehead of his sleeping boy, tired as he was and blue as he was, he had difficulty in repressing the laughter that manifested itself within him, for Jack lay prone, face upward, with the football under the small of his back, and seemingly as comfortable as though he were resting upon eider-down.
"That is certainly a characteristic football attitude," Jarley said, when Mrs. Jarley had come to see what had caused her husband's chuckle.
"Yes—and so good for the spine!" returned Mrs. Jarley.
The attitude was changed, but the ball was left where Jack would see it the first thing on awaking in the morning. At six, as I have said, Jarley was sleeping peacefully, but Jack was not. He had opened his eyes some minutes before, and on catching sight of his treasured football he began to grin. The grin grew wider and wider, until apparently it got too wide for the bed, and the boy leaped out of his couch upon the floor. The first thing he did was to pat the ball gently but firmly, very much as a kitten manifests its interest in a ball of yarn. Then his attentions to his new plaything grew more pronounced and vigorous, and within fifteen minutes it had been chased out of the nursery into the parental bedchamber. Still Jarley slept. Mrs. Jarley was merely half asleep. She tried to tell Jack to be quiet; but she was not quite wide awake enough to do so as forcibly as was necessary, and the result was that instead of abating his ardor, Jack plunged into his sport more vigorously than ever.
And then Jarley was awakened—and what an awakening it was! Not one of those peaceful comings-to that betoken the tranquil mind after a good rest, but a return to consciousness with every warlike tendency in his being aroused to the highest pitch. Jack had passed the ball with considerable momentum on to the mantel-piece, which sent it backward on the rebound to no less a feature than the nose of the slumbering Jarley.
"What the deuce was that?" cried Jarley, sitting up straight in bed. He had forgotten all about the football, and to his suddenly restored consciousness it seemed as if the ceiling must have fallen. Then he rubbed his nose, which still ached from the force of the impact between itself and the ball.
"It was the ball did it, papa," said Jack, meekly. "'Twasn't me."
In an instant Jarley was on the floor; and Jack, scenting trouble, incontinently fled. The parent was angry from the top of his head to the soles of his feet, but as the soles of his feet touched the floor his anger abated. After all, Jack hadn't meant to hurt him, and having witnessed several games of football, he knew how innately perverse an oval-shaped affair like the ball itself could be. Furthermore, there was Mrs. Jarley, who had disapproved of his purchase from the outset. If he wreaked vengeance upon poor little Jack for his unwitting offence, Jarley knew that he would in a measure weaken his position in the argument of the night before. So, instead of chastising Jack, as he really felt inclined to do, he picked up the ball, and repairing to the nursery, summoned the boy to him in his sweetest tones.
"Never mind, old chap," he said, as Jack appeared before him. "I know you didn't mean it; but you must play in here until it is time for you to go out. Papa is very sleepy, and you disturb him."
"All right," said Jack. "I'll play in here. I forgot."
Then Jarley patted Jack on the head, rubbed his nose again dubiously, for it still smarted from the effects of the blow it had sustained, and retired to his bed once more. If he fondly hoped to sleep again, he soon found that his hope was based upon a most shifting foundation, for the whoops and cries and noises of all sorts, vocal and otherwise, that emanated from the next room destroyed all possibility of his doing anything of the sort. At first the very evident enjoyment of his son and heir, as Jarley listened to his goings-on in the nursery, amused him more or less; but his quiet smile soon turned to one of blank dismay when he heard a thunderous roar from Jack, followed by a crash of glass. Again springing from his bed, Jarley rushed into the nursery.
"Well, what's happened now?" he asked.
Jack's under lip curved in the manner which betokens tears ready to be shed.
"Nun-nothing," he sobbed. "I was just k-kicking a goal, and that picture got in the way."
Jarley looked for the picture that had got in the way, and at once perceived that it would never get in the way again, since it was irretrievably ruined. However, he was not overcome by wrath over this incident, because the picture was not of any particular value. It was only a highly colored print of three cats in a basket, which had come with a Sunday newspaper, and had been cheaply framed and hung up in the nursery because Jack had so willed. On principle Jarley had to show a certain amount of displeasure over the accident, and he did as well as he could under the circumstances, and retired.
For a while Jack played quietly enough, and Jarley was just about dozing off into that delicious forty winks prior to getting up when shrieks from the second Jarley boy came from the nursery. This time Mrs. Jarley, with one or two expressions of natural impatience, deemed it her duty to interfere. Jarley, she reasoned, had a perfect right to spoil Jack if he pleased, but he had no right to permit Jack to do bodily injury to Tommy; and as Tommy was making the house echo and re-echo with his wails, she deemed it her duty to take a hand. Jarley meanwhile pretended to sleep. He was as wide awake as he ever was; but the atmosphere was not full of warmth, and upon this occasion, as well as upon many others, his conscience permitted him to overlook the shortcomings of his elder son, and to assume a somnolence which, while it was not real, certainly did conduce to the maintenance of his personal comfort. Mrs. Jarley, therefore, rose up in her wrath. It was merely a motherly wrath, however, and those of us who have had mothers will at once realize what that wrath amounted to. She repaired immediately to the nursery, and without knowing anything of the technical terms of the noble game of football, instinctively realized that Jack and Tommy were having a "scrimmage." That is to say, she was confronted with a structure made up as follows: basement, the ball; first story, Tommy, with his small and tender stomach placed directly over the ball; second story and roof, Jack, lying stomach upward and wiggling, his back accurately registered on Tommy's back, to the detriment and pain of Tommy.
"Get up, Jack!" Mrs. Jarley cried. "What on earth are you trying to do to Tommy? Do you want to kill him?"
"Nome," Jack replied, innocently. "He wanted to play football, and I'm letting him. He's Harvard and I'm Yale."
A smothered laugh from the adjoining room showed that Jarley was not so soundly sleeping that he could not hear what was going on. Tommy meanwhile continued to wail.
"Well, get up,—right away!" cried Mrs. Jarley. "I sha'n't have you abusing Tommy this way."
"Ain't abusin' him," retorted Jack, rising. "I was 'commodatin' him. He wanted to play. When I don't let him play I get scolded, and when I do let him I'm scolded. 'Pears to me you don't want me to do anything."
Thus Thanksgiving Day began, not altogether well, but equanimity was soon restored all around, and everything might have run smoothly from that time on had not a cold drizzling rain set in about breakfast-time. It was clearly to be an in-door day. And what a day it was!
At ten o'clock the football came into play again.
At eleven the score stood: one clock knocked off the mantel-piece in the library; three chandelier globes broken to bits; one plaster Barye bear destroyed by a low kick from the parlor floor; Tommy with his nose very nearly out of joint, thanks to a flying wedge represented by Jack; Mrs. Jarley's amiability in peril, and Jarley's irritability well developed.
At twelve the ball was confiscated, but restored at twelve-five for the sake of peace and quiet.
At one, dinner was served and eaten in moody silence, Jack having inadvertently punted the ball through the pantry, grazing the chignon of the waitress, and landing in the mayonnaise. It was not a happy dinner, and Jarley began to wish either that he had never been born or that all footballs were in Ballyhack, wherever that might be.
"If it would only clear off!" he moaned. "That boy needs a playground as big as the State of Texas anyhow, and here we are cooped up in the house, with a football added."
"We'll have to take it away from him," said Mrs. Jarley, "or else you'll have to take Jack up into the attic and play with him. I can't have everything in the house smashed."
"We'll compromise on Jack's going to the attic. I have no desire to play football," returned Jarley; and this was the plan agreed upon. It would have been a good plan if Jarley had expended some of his inventive genius upon some such game as football solitaire, and instructed Jack therein beforehand; but this he had not done, and the result was that at three o'clock Jarley found himself in the attic involved in a furious game, in which he represented variously Harvard, the goal, the goal-posts, the referee, and acting with too great frequency as understudy for the ball. What he was not, Jack was, and the worst part of it was that there was no tiring Jack. The longer he played, the better he liked it. The oftener Jarley's shins received kicks intended for the football, the louder he laughed. When Jarley, serving as a goal-post, stood at one end of the attic, Jarley junior, standing several yards away, often appeared to mistake him for two goal-posts, and to make an honest effort to kick the ball through him. Slowly the hours passed, until finally six o'clock struck, and Master Jack's supper was announced.
The day was over at last. Wearily Jarley dragged himself down the stairs and reckoned up the day's losses. In glass and bric-à-brac destroyed he was some twenty or thirty dollars out. In mayonnaise dressing lost at dinner through the untoward act of the football he was out one pleasurable sensation to his palate, and Jarley was one of those, to whom, that is a loss of an irreparable nature. In bodily estate he was practically a bankrupt. Had he bicycled all morning and played golf all the afternoon he could not have been half so weary. Had he been thrown from a horse flat upon an asphalt pavement he could not have been half so bruised; all of which Mrs. Jarley considerately noted, and with an effort recovered her amiability for her husband's sake, so that after eight o'clock, at which hour Jack retired to bed, a little rest was obtainable, and Jarley's equanimity was slowly restored.
"Well," said Mrs. Jarley, as they went up-stairs at eleven, "it hasn't been a very peaceful day, has it, dear?"
"Oh, that all depends on how you spell peace. If you spell it p-i-e-c-e, it's been full of pieces," returned Jarley, with a smile; "but I say, my dear, I want to modify my statement last night that I had nothing to be thankful for. I have discovered one great blessing."
"What's that—a football?" queried Mrs. Jarley.
"Not by ten thousand long shots!" cried Jarley. "No, indeed. It's this: I'm more thankful than I can express that Jack is not twins. If he had been, you'd have been a widow this evening."
We both loved Maude deeply, and Maude loved us. We know that, because Maude told us so. She told Harry so one Sunday evening on the way home from church, and she told me so the following Saturday afternoon on the way to the matinée.
This was the cause of the dispute Harry and I had in the club corner that Saturday night. Harry and I are confidants, and neither of us has secrets that the other does not share, and so, of course, Maude's feeling towards each of us was fully revealed.
We did not quarrel over it, for Harry and I never quarrel. I want to quarrel, but it is a peculiar thing about me that I always want to quarrel with men named Harry, but never can quite do it. Harry is a name which, per se, arouses my ire, but which carries with it also the soothing qualities which dispel irritation.
This is a point for the philosopher, I think. Why is it that we cannot quarrel with some men bearing certain names, while with far better men bearing other names we are always at swords' points? Who ever quarrelled with a man who had so endeared himself to the world, for instance, that the world spoke of him as Jack, or Bob, or Willie? And who has not quarrelled with Georges and Ebenezers and Horaces ad lib., and been glad to have had the chance?
But this is a thing apart. This time we have set out to tell that other story which is always mentioned but never told.
Maude loved us. That was the point upon which Harry and I agreed. We had her authority for it; but where we differed was, which of the two did she love the better?
Harry, of course, took his own side in the matter. He is a man of prejudice, and argues from sentiment rather than from conviction.
He said that on her way home from church a girl's thoughts are of necessity solemn, and her utterances are therefore, the solemn truth. He added that, in a matter of such importance as love, the conclusion reached after an hour or two of spiritual reflection and instruction, such as church in the evening inspires, is the true conclusion.
On the other hand, I maintained that human nature has something to do with women. Very little, of course, but still enough to make my point a good one. It is human nature for a girl to prefer matinées to Sunday evening services. This is sad, no doubt, but so are some other great truths. Maude, as a true type of girlhood, would naturally think more of the man who was taking her to a matinée than of the fellow who was escorting her home from church, therefore she loved me better than she did Harry, and he ought to have the sense to see it and withdraw.
Unfortunately, Harry is near-sighted in respect to arguments evolved by the mind of another, though in the perception of refinements in his own reasoning he has the eye of the eagle. "Love on the way to a matinée," he said, "is one part affection and nine parts enthusiasm."
"And love on the return from church is in all ten parts temporary aberration," I returned. "It is what you might call Seventh Day affection. Quiet, and no doubt sincere, but it is dissipated by the rising of the Monday sun. It is like our good resolutions on New Year's Day, which barely last over a fortnight. Some little word spoken by the rector may have aroused in her breast a spark of love for you, but one spark does not make a conflagration. Properly fanned it may develop into one, but in itself it is nothing more than a spark. Who can say that it was not pity that led Maude to speak so to you? Your necktie may have been disarranged without your knowing it, and at a time when she could not tell you of it. That sort of thing inspires pity, and you know as well as I do that pity and love are cousins, but cousins who never marry. You are favored, but not to the extent that I am."
"You argue well," returned Harry, "but you ignore the moon. In the solemn presence of the great orb of night no woman would swear falsely."
"You prick your argument with your point," I answered. "There were no extraneous arguments brought to bear on Maude when she confessed to me that she loved me. It was done in the cold light of day. There was no moon around to egg her on when she confessed her affection for me. I know the moon pretty well myself, and I know just what effect it has on truth. I have told falsehoods in the moonlight that I knew were falsehoods, and yet while Luna was looking on, no creature in the universe could have convinced me of their untruthfulness. The moon's rays have kissed the Blarney-stone, Harry. A moonlight truth is a noonday lie."
"Doesn't the genial warmth of the sun ever lead one from the path of truth?" queried Harry, satirical of manner.
"Yes," I answered. "But not in a horse-car with people treading on your feet."
"What has that to do with it?" Harry asked.
"It was on a Broadway car that Maude confessed," I answered.
Harry looked blue. His eyes said:
"Gad! How she must love you!" But his lips said: "Ho! Nonsense!"
"It is the truth," said I, seeing that Harry was weakening. "As we were waiting for the car to come along I said to her: 'Maude, I am not the man I ought to be, but I have one redeeming quality: I love you to distraction.'
"She was about to reply when the car came. We were requested to step lively. We did so, and the car started. Then as we stood in the crowded aisle of the car we spoke in enigmas.
"'Did you hear what I said, Maude?' I asked.
"'Yes,' said she, gazing softly out of the window, and a slight touch of red coming into her cheeks. 'Yes, I heard.'
"'And what is your reply?' I whispered.
"'So do I,' she answered, with a sigh."
Harry laughed, and so irritatingly that had his name been Thomas I should have struck him.
"What is the joke?" I asked.
"You won't think it's funny," Harry answered.
"Then it must be a poor joke," I retorted, a little nettled.
"Well, it's on you," he said. "You have simply shown me that Maude never told you she loved you. That's the joke."
I was speechless with wrath, but my eyes spoke. "How have I shown that?" they asked in my behalf.
"You say that you told Maude that you loved her to distraction. To which declaration she replied, 'So do I.' Where there is in that any avowal that she loves you I fail to see. She simply stated that she too loved herself to distraction, and I breathe again."
"Hair-splitting!" said I, wrathfully.
"No—side-splitting!" returned Harry, with a roar of laughter. "Now my declaration was very different from yours. It was made when Maude and I were walking home from church. It was about nine o'clock, and the streets were bathed in mellow moonlight. I declared myself because I could not help myself. I had no intention of doing so when I started out earlier in the evening, but the uplifting effect of the service of song at church, combined with the most romantic kind of a moon, forced me into it. I told her I was a struggler; that I was not yet able to support a wife; and that while I did not wish to ask any pledge from her, I could not resist telling her that I loved her with all my heart and soul."
I began to feel blue. "And what did she say?" I asked, a little hoarsely.
"She said she returned my affection."
I braced up. "Ha, ha, ha!" I laughed. "This time the joke is on you."
"I fail to see it," he said.
"Of course," I retorted. "It is not one of your jokes. But say, Harry, when you send a poem to a magazine and the editor doesn't want it, what does he do with it?"
"Returns it. Ah!"
The "ah" was a gasp.
"You are the hair-splitter this time," said he, ruefully.
"I am," said I. "I could effectually destroy a whole wig of hairs like that. If you are right in your reasoning as to Maude's love for me, I am right as regards her love for you. We are both splitting hairs in most unprofitable fashion."
"We are," said Harry, with a sigh.
"There is only one way to settle the matter."
"And that?"
"Let's call around there now and ask her."
"I am agreeable," said I.
"Often," said Harry, ringing for our coats.
In a few moments we were ready to depart; and as we stepped out into the night, whom should we run up against but that detestable Jimmie Brown!
"Whither away, boys?" he asked; in his usual bubblesome manner.
"We are going to make a call."
"Ah! Well, wait a minute, won't you? I have some news. I'm in great luck, and I want you fellows to join me in a health to the future Mrs. B."
"Engaged at last, eh, Brown?" said Harry.
I did not speak, for I felt a sudden and most depressing sinking of the heart.
"Yes," said Brown; and then he told us to whom.
It is not necessary to mention the lady's name. Suffice it to say that Harry and I both returned to our corner in the club, discarded our overcoats, and talked about two subjects.
The first was the weather.
The second, the fickleness of women.
Incidentally we agreed that there was something irritating about certain names, and on this occasion James excited our ire somewhat more than was normal.
But we did not lick James. We had too much regard for some one else to split a hair of his head.
Mr. Augustus Richards was thirty years of age and unmarried. He could afford to marry, and he had admired many women, but none of them came up to his ideals. Miss Fotheringay, for instance, represented his notions as to what a woman should be physically, but intellectually he found her wofully below his required standard. She was tall and stately—Junoesque some people called her—but in her conversation she was decidedly flippant. She was interested in all the small things of life, but for the great ones she had no inclination. She preferred a dance with a callow youth to a chat with a man of learning. She worshipped artificial in-door life, but had no sympathy with nature. The country she abominated, and her ideas of rest consisted solely in a change of locality, which was why she went to Newport every summer, there to indulge in further routs and dances when she wearied of the routs and dances of New York.
Miss Patterson, on the other hand, represented to the fullest degree the intellectual standard Mr. Augustus Richards had set up for the winner of his affections. She was fond of poetry and of music. She was a student of letters, and a clever talker on almost all the arts and sciences in which Mr. Augustus Richards delighted. But, alas! physically she was not what he could admire. She was small and insignificant in appearance. She was pallid-faced, and, it must be confessed, extremely scant of locks; and the idea of marrying her was to Mr. Augustus Richards little short of preposterous. Others, there were, too, who attracted him in some measure, but who likewise repelled him in equal, if not greater measure.
What he wanted, Mrs. Augustus Richards to be was a composite of the best in the beautiful Miss Fotheringay, the intellectual Miss Patterson, the comfortably rich but extremely loud Miss Barrows, with a dash of the virtues of all the others thrown in.
For years he looked for such a one, but season after season passed away and the ideal failed to materialize, as unfortunately most ideals have a way of doing, and hither and yon Mr. Augustus Richards went unmarried, and, as society said, a hopelessly confirmed old bachelor—more's the pity.
Miss Flora Henderson was born and bred in Boston, and, like Mr. Augustus Richards, had reached the age of thirty without having yielded to the allurements of matrimony. This was not because she had not had the opportunity, for opportunity she had had in greatest measure. She made her first appearance in society at the age of seventeen, and for every year since that interesting occasion she had averaged four proposals of marriage; and how many proposals that involved, every person who can multiply thirteen by four can easily discover. Society said she was stuck up, but she knew she wasn't. She did not reject men for the mere love of it. It was not vanity that led her to say no to so many adoring swains; it was simply the fact that not one in all the great number of would-be protectors represented her notions as to the style of man with whom she could be so happy that she would undertake the task of making him so.
Miles Dawson, for instance, was the kind of man that any ordinary girl would have snapped up the moment he declared himself. He had three safe-deposit boxes in town, and there was evidence in sight that he did not rent them for the purpose of keeping cigars in them. He had several horses and carriages. He was a regular attendant upon all the social functions of the season, and at many of them he appeared to enjoy himself hugely. At the musicals and purely literary entertainments, however, Miles Dawson always looked,
as he was, extremely bored. Once Miss Henderson had seen him yawn at a Shelley reading. He was, in short, of the earth earthy, or perhaps, to be more accurate, of the horse horsey. Intellectual pleasures were naught to him but fountains of ennui, and being a very honest, frank sort of a person, he took no pains to conceal the fact, and it ruined his chances with Miss Henderson, at whose feet he had more than once laid the contents of the deposit-boxes—figuratively, of course—as well as the use of his stables and himself. The fact that he looked like a Greek god did not influence her in the least; she knew he was by nature a far cry from anything Greek or godlike, and she would have none of him.
Had he had the mental qualities of Henry Webster, the famous scholar of Cambridge, it might have been different, but he hadn't these any more than Henry Webster had Dawson's Greek godliness of person.
As for Webster, he too had laid bare a heart full of affection before the cold gaze of Miss Flora Henderson, and with no more pleasing results to himself than had attended the suit of his handsome rival, as he had considered Dawson.
"I think I can make you happy," he had said, modestly. "We have many traits in common. We are both extremely fond of reading of the better sort. You would prove of inestimable service to me in the advancement of my ambition in letters, as well as in the educational world, and I think you would find me by nature responsive to every wish you could have. I am a lover of music, and so are you. We both delight in the study of art, and there is in us both that inherent love of nature which would make of this earth a very paradise for me were you to become my life's companion."
Then Miss Flora Henderson had looked upon his stern and extremely homely face, and had unconsciously even to herself glanced rapidly at his uncouth figure, and could not bring herself to answer yes. Here was the intellectual man, but his physical shortcomings forbade the utterance of the word which should make Henry Webster the happiest of men. Had he written his proposal he would have stood a better chance, though I doubt that in any event he could have succeeded. Then he could have stood at least as an abstract mentality, but the intrusion of his physical self destroyed all. She refused him, and he went back to his books, oppressed by an overwhelming sense of loneliness, from which he did not recover for one or two hours.
So it went with all the others. No man of all those who sought Miss Henderson's favor had the godlike grace of Miles Dawson, combined with the strong intellectuality of Henry Webster, with the added virtues of wealth and amiability, steadfastness of purpose, and all that. It seemed sometimes to Miss Flora Henderson, as it had often seemed to Mr. Augustus Richards, that the standard set was too high, and that an all-wise Providence was no longer sending the perfect being of the ideal into the world, if, indeed, He had ever done so.
Both the man and the woman were yearning, they came finally to believe, after the unattainable, but each was strong enough of character to do with nothing less excellent.
But what sort of a woman was Miss Flora Henderson, it may be asked, that she should demand so much in the man with whom she should share the burdens of life? Surely one should be wellnigh perfect one's self to require so much of another—and I really think Miss Flora Henderson was so.
In the first place, she was tall and stately—Junoesque some people called her. She had an eye fit for all things. It was soft or hard, as one wished it. It was melting or fixed, according to the mood one would have her betray. She was never flippant, and while the small things of life interested her to an extent, much more absorbed was she in the great things which pertain to existence. Dance she could, and well, but she danced not to the exclusion of all other things. With dancing people she was a dancer full of the poetry of motion, and enjoying it openly and innocently. With a man of learning, however, she was equally at home as with the callow youth. With nature in her every mood was she in sympathy. She was fond of poetry and of music; indeed, to sum up her character in as few words as possible, she was everything that so critical a dreamer of the ideal as Mr. Augustus Richards could have wished for, nor was there one weak spot in the armor of her character at which he could cavil.
In short, Miss Flora Henderson, of Boston, was the ideal of whom Mr. Augustus Richards, of New York, dreamed.
And as Miss Flora Henderson represented in every way the ideal of Mr. Augustus Richards, so did he represent hers. He had the physical beauty of Miles Dawson, and was quite the equal of the latter in the matter of wealth. So many horses he had not, but he owned a sufficient number of them. He was not horse-mad, nor did he yawn over Shelley or despise aesthetic pleasures. In truth, in the pursuit of aesthetic delights he was as eager as Henry Webster. He was in all things the sort of man to whom our heroine of Boston would have been willing to intrust her hand and her heart.
But they never met.
And they lived happily ever after.
"For when two
Join in the same adventure, one perceives
Before the other how they ought to act."
—BRYANT.
Mrs. Upton had made up her mind that it must be, and that was the beginning of the end. The charming match-maker had not indulged her passion for making others happy, willy-nilly, for some time—not, in fact, since she had arranged the match between Marie Willoughby and Jack Hearst, which, as the world knows, resulted first in a marriage, and then, as the good lady had not foreseen, in a South Dakota divorce. This unfortunate termination to her well-meant efforts in behalf of the unhappy pair was a severe blow to Mrs. Upton. She had been for many years the busiest of match-makers, and seldom had she failed to bring about desirable results. In the homes of a large number of happy pairs her name was blessed for all that she had done, and until this no unhappy marriage had ever come from her efforts. One or two engagements of her designing had failed to eventuate, owing to complications over which she had no control, and with which she was in no way concerned; but that was merely one of the risks of the business in which she was engaged. The most expert artisan sometimes finds that he has made a failure of some cherished bit of work, but he does not cease to pursue his vocation because of that. So it was with Mrs. Upton, and when some of her plans went askew, and two young persons whom she had designed for each other chose to take two other young people into their hearts instead, she accepted the situation with a merely negative feeling of regret. But when she realized that it was she who had brought Marie Willoughby and Jack Hearst together, and had, beyond all question, made the match which resulted so unhappily, then was Mrs. Upton's regret and sorrow of so positive a nature that she practically renounced her chief occupation in life.
"I'll never, never, never, so long as I live, have anything more to do with bringing about marriages!" she cried, tearfully, to her husband, when that worthy gentleman showed her a despatch in the evening paper to the effect that Mr. and Mrs. Jack had invoked the Western courts to free them from a contract which had grown irksome to both. "I shall not even help the most despairing lover over a misunderstanding which may result in two broken hearts. I'm through. The very idea of Marie Willoughby and Johnny Hearst not being able to get along together is preposterous. Why, they were made for each other."
"I haven't a doubt of it," returned Upton, with whom it was a settled principle of life always to agree with his better half. "But sometimes there's a flaw in the workmanship, my dear, and while Marie may have been made for Jack, and Jack for Marie, it is just possible that the materials were not up to the specifications."
"Well, it's a burning shame, anyhow," said Mrs. Upton, "and I'll never make another match."
"That's good," said Upton. "I wouldn't—or, if I did, I'd see to it that it was a safety, instead of a fusee that burns fiercely for a minute and then goes out altogether. Stick to vestas."
"I don't know what you mean by vestas, but I'm through just the same," retorted Mrs. Upton; and she really was—for five years.
"Vestas are nice quiet matches that don't splurge and splutter. They give satisfaction to everybody. They burn evenly, and are altogether the swell thing in matches—and their heads don't fly off either," Upton explained.
"Well, I won't make even a vesta, you old goose," said Mrs. Upton, smiling faintly.
"You've made one, and it's a beauty," observed Upton, quietly, referring of course to their own case.
So, as I have said, Mrs. Upton forswore her match-making propensities for a period of five years, and people noting the fact marvelled greatly at her strength of character in keeping her hands out of matters in which they had once done such notable service. And it did indeed require much force of character in Mrs. Upton to hold herself aloof from the matrimonial ventures of others; for, although she was now a woman close upon forty, she had still the feelings of youth; she was fond of the society of young people, and had been for a long time the best-beloved chaperon in the community. It was hard for her to watch a growing romance and not help it along as she had done of yore; and many a time did her lips withhold the words that trembled upon them—words which would have furthered the fortunes of a worthy suitor to a waiting hand—but she had resolved, and there was the end of it.
It is history, however, that the strongest characters will at times falter and fall, and so it was with Mrs. Upton and her resolution finally. There came a time when the pressure was too strong to be resisted.
"I can't help it, Henry," she said, as she thought it all over, and saw wherein her duty lay. "We must bring Molly Meeker and Walter together. He is just the sort of a man for her; and if there is one thing he needs more than another to round out his character, it is a wife like Molly."
"Remember your oath, my dear," replied Upton.
"But this will be a vesta, Henry," smiled Mrs. Upton. "Walter and you are very much alike, and you said the other night that Molly reminded you of me—sometimes."
"That's true," said Upton. "She does—that's what I like about her—but, after all, she isn't you. A mill-pond might remind you at times of a great and beautiful lake, but it wouldn't be the lake, you know. I grant that Walter and I are alike as two peas, but I deny that Molly can hold a candle to you."
"Oh you!" snapped Mrs. Upton. "Haven't you got your eyes opened to my faults yet?"
"Yessum," said Upton. "They're great, and I couldn't get along without 'em, but I wouldn't stand them for five minutes if I'd married Molly Meeker instead of you. You'd better keep out of this.
Stick to your resolution. Let Molly choose her own husband, and Walter his wife. You never can tell how things are going to turn out. Why, I introduced Willie Timpkins to George Barker at the club one night last winter, feeling that there were two fellows who were designed by Providence for the old Damon and Pythias performance, and it wasn't ten minutes before they were quarrelling like a couple of cats, and every time they meet nowadays they have to be introduced all over again."
"I don't wonder at that at all," said Mrs. Upton. "Willie Timpkins is precisely the same kind of a person that George Barker is, and when they meet each other and realize that they are exactly alike, and see how sort of small and mean they really are, it destroys their self-love."
"I never saw it in that light before," said Upton, reflectively, "but I imagine you are right. There's lots in that. If a man really wrote down on paper his candid opinion of himself, he'd have a good case for slander against the publisher who printed it—I guess."
"I should think you'd have known better than to bring those two together, and under the circumstances I don't wonder they hate each other," said Mrs. Upton.
"Sympathy ought to count for something," pleaded Upton. "Don't you think?"
"Of course," replied Mrs. Upton; "but a man wants to sympathize with the other fellow, not with himself. If you were a woman you'd understand that a little better. But to return to Molly and Walter—don't you think they really were made for each other?"
"No, I don't," said Upton. "I don't believe that anybody ever was made for anybody else. On that principle every baby that is born ought to be labelled: Fragile. Please forward to Soandso. This 'made-for-each-other' business makes me tired. It's predestination all over again, which is good enough for an express package, but doesn't go where souls are involved. Suppose that through some circumstance over which he has no control a Michigan man was made for a Russian girl—how the deuce is she to get him?"
"That's all nonsense, Henry," said Mrs. Upton, impatiently.
"I don't know why," observed Upton. "I can quite understand how a Michigan man might make a first-rate husband for a Russian girl. Your idea involves the notion of affinity, and if I know anything about affinities, they have to go chasing each other through the universe for cycle after cycle, in the hope of some day meeting—and it's all beastly nonsense. My affinity might be Delilah, and Samson's your beautiful self; but I'll tell you, on my own responsibility, that if I had caught Samson hanging about your father's house during my palmy days I'd have thrashed the life out of him, whether his hair was short or long, and don't you forget it, Mrs. Upton."
Mrs. Upton laughed heartily. "I've no doubt you could have done it, my dear Henry," said she. "I'd have helped you, anyhow. But affinities or not, we are placed here for a certain purpose—"
"I presume so," said Upton. "I haven't found out what it is, but I'm satisfied."
"Yes—and so am I. Now," continued Mrs. Upton, "I think that we all ought to help each other along. Whether I am your affinity or not, or whether you are mine—"
"I am yours—for keeps, too," said Upton. "I shall be just as attentive in heaven, where marriage is not recognized, as I am here, if I hang for it."
"Well—however that may be, we have this life to live, and we should go about it in the best way possible. Now I believe that Walter will be more of a man, will accomplish more in the end, if he marries Molly than he will as a bachelor, or if he married—Jennie Perkins, for instance, who is so much of a manly woman that she has no sympathy with either sex."
"Right!" said Upton.
"You like Walter, don't you, and want him to succeed?"
"I do."
"You realize that an unmarried physician hasn't more than half a chance?"
"Unfortunately yes," said Upton. "Though I don't agree that a man can cut your leg off more expertly or carry you through the measles more successfully just because he has happened to get married. As a matter of fact, when I have my leg cut off I want it to be done by a man who hasn't been kept awake all night by the squalling of his lately arrived son."
"Nevertheless," said Mrs. Upton, "society decrees that a doctor needs a wife to round him out. There's no disputing that fact—and it is perfectly proper. Bachelors may know all about the science of medicine, and make a fair showing in surgery, but it isn't until a man is married that he becomes the wholly successful practitioner who inspires confidence."
"I suppose it's so," said Upton. "No doubt of it. A man who has suffered always does do better—"
"Henry!" ejaculated Mrs. Upton, severely. "Remember this: I didn't marry you because I thought you were a cynic. Now Walter as a young physician needs a wife—"
"I suppose he's got to have somebody to confide professional secrets to," said Upton.
"That may be the reason for it," observed Mrs. Upton; "but whatever the reason, it is a fact. He needs a wife, and I propose that he shall have one; and it is very important that he should get the right one."
"Are you going to propose to the girl in his behalf?" queried Henry.
"No; but I think he's a man of sense, and I know Molly is. Now I propose to bring them together, and to throw them at each other's heads in such a way that they won't either of them guess that I am doing it—"
"Now, my dear," interrupted Upton, "don't! Don't try any throwing. You know as well as I do that no woman can throw straight. If you throw Molly Meeker at Walter's head—"
"I may strike his heart. Precisely!" said Mrs. Upton, triumphantly. "And that's all I want. Then we shall have a beautiful wedding," she added, with enthusiasm. "We'll give a little dinner on the 18th—a nice informal dinner. We'll invite the Jacksons and the Peltons and Molly and Walter. They will meet, fall in love like sensible people, and there you are."
"I guess it's all right," said Upton, "though to fall in love sensibly isn't possible, my dear. What people who get married ought to do is to fall unreasonably, madly in love—"
But Mrs. Upton did not listen. She was already at her escritoire, writing the invitations for the little dinner.