The Boss of Little Arcady/Chapter 3
The perfect lover
To the crime of being Potts the wretched Colonel had now added malversation of a trust fund. But I crave surcease, while it may be mine, from the immediately troubling waters of Potts. Let me turn more broadly to our town and its good people for that needed recreation which they never fail to afford me.
"Arcady of the Little Country," we often say. On maps it is Little Arcady, county seat of Slocum County, an isle and haven in the dreary land sea that flattens away from it on every side,—north to the big woods, south to the swamp counties, and east and west, one might almost say, a thousand miles to the mountains. Our point is one from which to say either "back East" or "out West." It is neither, of itself, though it touches both.
We are so ancient that plenty of us remember the stone fireplace in the log-cabin, with its dusters for the hearth of buffalo tail and wild-turkey wing, with iron pot hung by a chain from the chimney hook, with pewter or wooden plates from which to eat with horn-handled knives and iron spoons. But yet are we so modern that we have fine new houses with bay windows, ornamental cupolas, and porches raving woodenly in that frettish fever which the infamous scroll-saw put upon fifty years of our land's domestic architecture. And these houses are furnished with splendid modern furniture, even with black walnut, gold touched and upholstered in blue plush and maroon, fresh from the best factories. Our fairly old people remember when they hunted deer and were hunted by the red Indian on our town site, while their grandchildren have only the memories of the town-born, of the cottage-organ, the novel railroad, and the two-story brick block with ornamental false front. In short, we round an epoch within ourselves, historically and socially.
The country, however, keeps its first purity of charm, a country of little hills and little valleys lined with little quick rivers. These beauties, indeed, have not gone unsung. Years ago a woman poet eased her heart of ecstasies about this Little Country.
"Here swells the river in its boldest course," she wrote, "interspersed by halcyon isles on which Nature has lavished all her prodigality in tree, vine, and flower, banked by noble bluffs three hundred feet high, their sharp ridges as exquisitely definite as the edge of a shell; their summits adorned with those same beautiful trees and with buttresses of rich rock, crested with old hemlocks that wear a touching and antique grace amid the softer and more luxuriant vegetation."
Not spectacular, this—not sensational—not even unusual. Common enough little hills, as the world goes, with the usual ragged-edged village between them and the river, peopled by human beings entirely usual both in their outer and inner lives. It seems to be, indeed, not a place in which events could occur with any romantic fitness.
Perhaps I have grown to love this Little Country because I am a usual man. Perhaps I would have felt as much for it even had I not been held to it by a memory that would bind me to any spot howsoever unlovely. But I rejoiced always in its beauty, and more than ever when it made easier for me the only life it once appeared that I should live. I quote again from our visiting poet: "The aspect of this country was to me enchanting beyond any I have ever seen, from its fulness of expression, its bold and impassioned sweetness. Here the flood has passed over and marked everywhere its course by a smile. The fragments of rock touch it with a mildness and liberality which give just the needed relief. I should never be tired here, though I have elsewhere seen country of more secret and alluring charms, better calculated to stimulate and suggest. Here the eye and heart are filled."
Here, too, my eye and heart were filled—emptied—and wondrously filled yet again, for which last I hold Potts to be curiously—but I wander.
Enough to say that I stored a harvest of memories in a secret place here years ago. And I went to this on days when I was downhearted.
Your boy of fifteen, I think, is the only perfect lover—giving all, demanding nothing, save, indeed, the right to his secret cherishings.
Tremors, born within me that day when old gray, bristling Leggett, our Principal, opened the schoolroom door upon Lucy Tait, are as poignant, as sweetly terrible, now as in that far time when the light of her wondrous presence first fell upon me.
An instant she hesitated timidly in the sombre frame of the doorway, looking far over our heads. Then old Leggett came in front of her. There was a word of presentation to Miss Berham, our teacher, the vision was escorted to a seat at my left front, and I was bade to continue the reading lesson if I ever expected to learn anything. As a matter of truth I did not expect to learn anything more. I thought I must suddenly have learned all there is to know. The page of the ancient reader over which I then mumbled is now before me. "A Good Investment" was the title of the day's lesson, and I had been called upon to render the first paragraph. With lightness, unrecking the great moment so perilously at hand, I had begun: "'Will you lend me two thousand dollars to establish myself in a small retail business?' inquired a young man, not yet out of his teens of a middle-aged gentleman who was poring over his ledger in the counting room of one of the largest establishments in Boston."
The iron latch rattled, the door swung fatefully back, our heads were raised, our eyes bored her through and through.
Then swung a new world for me out of primeval chaos, and for æons of centuries I dizzied myself gazing upon the pyrotechnic marvel.
"Continue, Calvin!—if you ever expect to learn anything."
The fabric of my vision crumbled. Awake, I glared upon a page where the words ran crazily about like a disrupted colony of ants. I stammered at the thing, feeling my cheeks blaze, but no two words would stay still long enough to be related. I glanced a piteous appeal to authority, while old Leggett, still standing by, crumpled his shaven upper lip into a professional sneer that I did not like.
"That will do, Calvin. Sit down! Solon Denney, you may go on."
With careless confidence, brushing the long brown lock from his fair brow, came Solon Denney to his feet. With flawless self-possession he read, and I, disgraced, cowering in my seat, heard words that burned little inconsequential brands forever into my memory. Well do I recall that the middle-aged gentleman regarded the young man with a look of surprise, and inquired, "What security can you give me?" to which the latter answered, "Nothing but my note."
"'Which I fear would be below par in the market,' replied the merchant, smiling.
"'Perhaps so, said the young man, but, Mr. Barton, remember that the boy is not the man; the time may come when Hiram Strosser's note will be as readily accepted as that of any other man.'
"'True, very true, replied Mr. Barton, thoughtfully, 'but you know business men seldom lend money without adequate security; otherwise they might soon be reduced to penury.'"
"Benny Jeliffe, you may go on!"
During this break I stole my second look at her. The small head was sweetly bent with an air of studious absorption—a head with two long plaits of braided gold, a scarlet satin bow at the end of each.
It seems to me now that these bows were like the touch of frosted woodbine in a yellowing elm, though at the moment I must have been unequal to this fancy. I saw, too, the tiny chain that clasped her fair throat, her dress of pale blue, and, most wonderful of all, two tassels that danced from the tops of her trim little boots. The air was indeed too heavy with beauty. But the reading lesson continued.
The years that stretch between that time and this have not bereaved me of the knowledge that Mr. Barton graciously accommodated Hiram Strosser, after vainly seeking to induce "Mr. Hawley, a wealthy merchant of Milk Street," to share half the risk.
At this point a row of stars on the page indicated a lapse of ten years. Mr. Barton, "pale and agitated," examines with deepening despair, "page after page of his ponderous ledger." At last he exclaims, "I am ruined, utterly ruined!" "How so?" inquires Hiram Strosser, who enters the room just in time to hear the cry. Mr. Barton explains,—the failure of Perleg, Jackson & Co. of London—news brought on last steamer—creditors pressing him.
"'What amount would tide you over this crisis?' asks Hiram Strosser, respectfully.
"'Seventy-five thousand dollars!'
"'Then, sir, you shall have it,' replied Hiram, and stepping to the desk he drew a check for the full amount."
Nor can I ever forget the stroke of poetic justice with which the anecdote concluded. Mr. Hawley of Milk Street was also embarrassed by the failure of Perleg, Jackson & Co., but, for want of a trustful friend in funds, was thrown into bankruptcy. Mr. Barton had the chastened pleasure of telling Mr. Hawley about Hiram's loan, and of reminding him that he had neglected a fair opportunity to become a co-benefactor of that upright and open-handed youth; whereupon the ruined Hawley—deservedly ruined, the tale implied—"moved on, dejected and sad, while Mr. Barton returned to his establishment cheered and animated."
The gross, the immoral romanticism of this tale was not then, of course, apparent to me. Children are so defenceless! Child that I was, I believed it would be entirely practicable for a lad in his teens to borrow two thousand dollars from a Boston merchant, by reminding him that the boy is not the man. So readily is the young mind poisoned. During the latter part of the lesson, between looks stolen fearfully at her profile, I was mentally engaged in borrowing two thousand dollars from a convenient Mr. Barton with which to establish myself in a small retail business—preferably a candy store with an ice-cream parlor in the rear. Then I took her to wife, not forgetting to reward Mr. Barton handsomely in the day of his ruin. Dimly, in the background of this hasty dramatization, the distrustful Mr. Hawley, who refused to share the loan with Mr. Barton, figured as a rival for my love's hand; and lived to hear her say that she hated, loathed, and despised him.
At recess the others crowded about her, girls at the centre, within a straggling circumference of young males, who dissembled their gallantry under a pretence of being mere brutal marauders.
But I, solitary, moped and gloomed in a far grassy corner of the school yard. I could not be of that crowd, and it was then I perceived for the first time that the world was too densely populated. I saw how much better it would be if every one but she and I were dead. Thereupon, in a breath, I dispeopled the earth of all but us two, and with the courage gained of this solitude, I saw myself approach her there at the corner of the old brick schoolhouse, greeting her with assurances that everything was all right,—and then, after she understood what I had done, and how fine it was, we came into our own. Alas, how bitter the crude truth! Instead of this, those wondrous tassels now danced from her boot tops as she gave chase to Solon Denney, who had pulled one of the scarlet bows from its yellow braid. Grimly I was aware that he should be the first to go out of the world, and I called upon a just heaven to slay him as he fled with his trophy. But nothing sweet and fitting happened. He went unblasted.
She came back to the group of girls, flushed and lovely beyond compare, holding up the ravished end of that golden braid with a comic dismay, while her despoiler laughed coarsely from a distance and pinned the trophy to his coat lapel. I now saw that blasting was too merciful. He should be removed by a slower process if the thing could as easily be arranged.
That was a bitter recess, even though I learned her wonderful name and the enchanted state "back East" from which she had come. A still more bitter experience awaited me when we were again in the schoolroom. Miss Berham, fastening a steely gaze upon Solon Denney, launched heaven upon him from tightly drawn lips, without in the least meaning to do so.
"Solon Denney, you may return that ribbon at once to its owner!"
With a conscious smirk, amid the titters of the room and the sharp raps of the ruler on Miss Berham's desk, Solon swaggered offensively to the seat that enshrined my idol, and flung down the scarlet treasure before her. She merely pushed the thing away, bending her head lower above her book—pushed it away with a blind little hand, and with undiminished bravado her despoiler returned, scathless of heaven's vengeance, to his seat.
"And you may remain half an hour after school. The A-class, ready for geography!"
Thus lightly did our ruler turn from tragedy to comedy. For tragedy, there was the look my queen lavished upon Solon when she heard his sentence; a look of blushing merriment, with a maddening dash of pity in it,—he was to suffer because of her. "'Twas your beauty made me do it," he might have quoted, with the old result. How I longed for the jaunty lightness that would have let me do a thing like that, tossing me fairly to the pinnacle of a public association with her! But I, instead, moped alone, knowing well that the gifts of graceful brigandage were not mine. Had I snatched that ribbon, there had been tears and a mad outcry at my brutal roughness.
Now came the lesson in geography. I had known it, had studied it faithfully that morning. It treated of the state from which she had so lately come. But now all knowledge of it fled me save that on the map it was a large, clumsy state, though yellow, the color of her hair. Was it to be bounded like any cheaper state? Did it have principal products, like Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and other ordinary states? Its color was rightly golden; had it not produced her? but other products,—iron, coal, wheat,—these were stuffs too base to fellow in the same mind with her. Had it principal industries, like any red or green or blue state on that pedantic map? I could no longer recall them. Formally confronted with this problem, I muttered shamefully again that day in the valley of Humiliation. There was, I knew, a picture at the top of the page in which strong, rugged men toiled at various tasks; but the natures of these had escaped me. Were they mining coal or building ships, catching fish or ploughing furrows in God's green earth? Out of my darkness I stammered, "Principal industries, agriculture and fish-building—"
"That will do, Calvin! You may remain after school to-night." I had never less liked the way she said this, as if it were a boon at which I would snatch, instead of a penalty imposed.
Solon Denney followed me, glibly enumerating the industries of a great and busy state. But I could not listen. Phantom-like in my poor mind floated a wordless conviction that, however it might once have been, the state would immediately abandon its industries now that she had come away from it. I beheld its considerable area desolated, the forges cold, the hammers stilled, the fields overgrown, the ships rotting at their docks, the stalwart mechanics drooping idly above their unfinished tasks. It was not possible to suppose that any one could feel, in a state which she had left, that interest which good work demands.
My disgrace brought me respite for fresh adventure. I was let alone. The world could still be peopled; even Solon Denney might survive a little time, for another picture in the same geography now reproduced itself in my inflamed mind—the picture of a South Sea island, a sandy beach with a few indolent natives lolling, negligent of tasks, in the shade of cocoanut palms. Here, on the outer reef, I wrecked an excellent steamship. Over the rail sprang a stalwart lad, not out of his teens, with a lovely golden-haired girl in his arms. With strong, swift strokes, he struck out for the beach, notwithstanding his burden. The other passengers, a hazy and quite uninteresting lot, quickly went down; all save one, a coarse, swaggering youth with too much self-possession whom I need not name. He, too, sprang over the rail, but, nearing the beach, a justly enraged providence intervened and he was bitten neatly in two by a famished and adroit shark.
With some interest I watched his blood stain the lucid green waters, but it was soon over. Then I bore my fainting burden to the dry sands and revived her with cocoanut milk and breadfruit, while the natives crowded respectfully about and made us their king and queen on the spot. We lived there forever. How flat of sound were it to say that we lived happily!
And yet I doubt if Solon Denney ever suspected me of aspiring to be his rival. She, I think, knew it full well, in the way her sex knows matters not communicated by act or word of mouth. And once, on the afternoon of that day, a Friday, when we spoke pieces, I feared that Solon had found me out. He was a fiery orator, and I felt on this occasion that he delivered himself straight at me, with a very poorly veiled malignance. Surely it must be I he meant, literally, when he thundered out, "Sir, you are much mistaken if you think your talents have been as great as your life has been reprehensible." Full upon me and upon me alone seemed to flash his gaze.
"After a rank and clamorous opposition you became—on a sudden—silent; you were silent for seven years; you were silent on the greatest questions—and you were silent for money!"
There could be no doubt, I thought, that he singled me from the multitude of his auditors. It was I who had supported the unparalleled profusion and jobbing of Lord Harcourt's scandalous ministry, I who had manufactured stage thunder against Mr. Eden for his anti-American principles—"You, sir, whom it pleases to chant a hymn to the immortal Hampden—you, sir, approved of the tyranny exercised against America, and you, sir, voted four thousand Irish troops to cut the throats of the Americans—"
Under the burden of this imputed ignominy, was it remarkable that I faltered in my own piece immediately following?
Not more foully was the blameless Don Sancho done to death than I upon this Friday murdered the ballad that recounts his fate. And she, who had hung breathless on Solon's denunciations of me, whispered chattily with Eva Mclntyre during my rendition of "Bernardo del Carpio."
Later events, however, convinced me that I swam never in Solon's ken as a rival for her smiles. His own triumph was too easy, too widely heralded. In the second week of her coming, was there not a rhyme shouted on the playground, full in the hearing of both?
"First the post and then the gate,
Solon Denney and Lucy Tait."
Was not this followed by one more subtle, more pointed, more ribald?
"Solon's mad and I'm glad,
And I know what will please him;
A bottle of wine to make him shine
And Lucy Tait to tease him!"
I thought there was an inhuman, a devilish deftness in the rhymes. The mighty mechanism of English verse had been employed to proclaim my remoteness from my love.
And yet the gods were once graciously good to me. One wondrous evening before hope died utterly I survived the ordeal of walking home with her from church.
She came with her uncle and aunt, and I, present by the gods permission, surmised that she might leave them and go to her own home alone when church was out. Through that service I worshipped her golden braids and the pink roses on her leghorn hat. And when they sang, "Praise God from whom all blessings flow!" my voice soared fervently in the words, for I had satisfied myself by much craning of the neck that Solon Denney was not present. Even now the Doxology revives within me that mixed emotion of relief at his absence and apprehension for the approaching encounter with her.
She passed me at the portals of that house of a double worship, said good night to aunt and uncle—and I was at her side.
"May I have the pleasure of seeing you home?"
She managed a timid "Certainly!" her hand fluttered within my arm, and my heart bounded forward like a freed race-horse. We walked!
Now it had been my occupation at quiet moments to devise conversation against the time of this precise miracle. I had dreamed that it might come to pass, even as it did, and I knew that talk for it should be stored safely away. This talk had been the coinage of my leisure. As we walked I would say, lightly,—"Do you like it here as well as you did back East?"—or, still better, as sounding more chatty,—"How do you like it here?"—an easy, masterful pause—"as well as you did back East?"—A thousand times had I rehearsed the inflections until they were perfect. And now the time was come.
Whether I spoke at all or not until we reached her gate I have never known. Dimly in my memory is a suggestion that when we passed Uncle Jerry Honeycutt, I confided to her that he sent to Chicago for his ear-trumpet and that it cost twelve dollars. If I did this, she must have made a suitable response, though I retain nothing of it.
I only know that the sky was full of flaming meteors, that golden star dust rained upon us from an applauding heaven, that the earth rocked gently as we trod upon it.
Down the wonderful street we went, a strange street shimmering in mystic light—and then I was opening her gate. I afterward decided that surely at this moment, with the gate between us, I would have remembered—superbly would I have said, "How do you like it here?—as well as you did back East?"
But two staring boys passed us, and one of them spoke thus:—
"There's Horsehead Blake—hello, Horsehead!"
"That ain't old Horsehead," said the other.
"'Tis, too—ain't that you, Horsehead?"
"How do you do, boys!" I answered loftily, and they passed on appeased.
"Do they call you Horsehead?" she asked.
"Oh, yes!" I replied brightly. "It's a funny name, isn't it?" and I laughed murderously.
"Yes, it's very funny."
"Well, I'll have to be going now. Good night!"
"Good night!"
And she left me staring after her, the whole big world and its starry heavens crying madly within me to be said to her.