"I shall never, never be able to feel anything like astonishment again!"
So said the Bride as the party took the road again after two days at
Mammoth Hot Springs. Bunsen Mountain had been circumnavigated. Cupid's
Cave had charmed. The Devil's Kitchen had stimulated a flagging faith in
a Personal Adversary, dealing with material utensils of vengeance. The
Stygian Cave, whose deadly vapors had strewed its floor with dead birds,
had been pronounced another of his devices and satanically "horrid." The
iridescent springs, each of which has built up its own basin, like
hanging fountains, were compared to the hanging gardens of Babylon, and
pronounced far more worthy of place among the wonders of the world. The
lovely Undine Falls had comforted them with prettiness after wildness;
and the ogreous Hoodoo Rocks had turned them back to the realm of
shivers. The Professor's note-books were overflowing with memoranda;
and Colonel Baggs alone went unastounded.
"If the place only had a history," said the Minor Poet, "like the
Venusberg, or almost any spot in Europe--"
"Well," said the Colonel, "it's got some history, anyhow. When I was
here before--"
"When was that?" asked the Artist, adding a line or two to a
surreptitious sketch of the Colonel.
"It was thirty-three years ago the latter part of this month," said the
Colonel. "I carried a knapsack in the chase after Chief Joseph and the
Nez Percès. There were pretty average lively times right in this
vicinity with the first tourists, so far as I know, that ever came into
the Park. Some fellows had been up in the Mount Everts country, and to
the lower falls. The Nez Percès rushed them. A fellow named Stewart
found himself looking into the muzzle of the rifle of a Nez Percè, and
made the sign of the cross. The red with the gun, being a pretty fair
Christian as Christians go--the tribe had been converted for thirty
years--as conversions go--refrained from shooting when he saw the sign.
Stewart had a horse that was wild and hard to catch--was wounded and had
no idea he could get within reach of the steed; but when he called, the
horse came to him and stood for him to climb on, for the first and last
time in the history of their relations. Stewart got off with his life."
"Very remarkable," said the Professor, jotting down a note. "Now, how do
you account for that on any known scientific law?"
"It simply wasn't Stewart's time," said the Colonel. "Or there's an
intelligence that operates on other intelligences--even those of
beasts--for our protection. Or we have guardian spirits that can tame
horses. Take your choice, Professor. And right here--maybe where we are
camped--another bit of history was enacted that in the childhood of the
race might ripen into one of those legends the artists deplore the lack
of. The campers here had a nigger cook named Stone--Ben Stone--I
arrested and confined for giving thanks to the Lord after we picked him
up. He was here at Mammoth Hot Springs when a fellow--I forget his
name--was shot. The Nez Percès went by one day and saw him here. Next
day they came back more peeved than before and shot the man. Ben, the
cook, ran, and they after him. He shinned up into one of these
trees--maybe that one there. The Indians lost sight of him, and stopped
under the tree for a conference. Stone nearly died of fright for fear
they would hear his heart beating. He said it sounded like a horse
galloping over rocks. They gave him up and went away. The coast being
clear, a bear--probably an ancestor of these half-tamed beasts that the
Bride photographed last evening--came along and began snuffing about the
trees. Ben's heart began galloping again. The bear reared up and
stretched as if he meant to climb the tree. Ben's heart stopped. After a
while the bear went away. After a day or so the cook came into our camp
and went about giving thanks to the Lord continually, and howling
hallelujahs until nobody could sleep. So we put him under guard, and I
watched him under orders to bust his head if he bothered the throne of
grace any more."
"The army is an irreverent organization," said the Professor.
"It isn't what you'd call devout," assented the Colonel.
"Confound this modern world, anyway!" complained the Poet. "Five hundred
years ago, we'd have evolved a cycle of legends out of those
occurrences!"
"The tales are just as astonishing without legends," insisted the Bride,
"as anything in the world, no matter how deep in fable."
Faring on southward, they passed toward Norris Basin in unastonished
quietude. A flock of pelicans on Swan Lake created no sensation. A trio
of elk in Willow Park crossed the road ahead of the surrey with no
further effect than to arouse the Artist to some remarks on their
anatomical perfection, and to bring to the surface the buried note-book
of Professor Boggs. They stopped at Apollinaris Spring for refreshment,
where the Groom held forth on the commercial possibilities of the
waters, if the government would get off the lid, and let the country be
developed.
"Nix on this conservation game," said he; and nobody argued with him.
At Obsidian Cliff, Mr. Driscoll whoaed up his cayuses to call the
attention of his fares to the fact that here is the only glass road in
the world.
"Glass?" queried the Professor, alighting, microscope in hand. "Really?"
"Shore," assured Aconite. "They cracked the road out of the cliff by
building fires to heat the glass and splashin' cold water to make the
chunks pop out--jelluk breakin' a tumbler washin' up the dishes."
"Oh, I see," said Professor Boggs. "Merely obsidian."
"Merely!" repeated Aconite. "Some folks always reminds me of the folks
that branded old Jim Bridger as a liar becuz o' what he told of this
here region eighty or ninety years ago. He built Fort Bridger, and
Bridger's Peak was named after him, and he discovered Great Salt Lake,
and I guess he wouldn't lie. He found this glass cliff and told about it
then--and everybody said he was a liar. An' he found lots o' things that
ain't on the map. We see a little thread o' country along this road, but
the reel wonders of this Park hain't been seen sence Jim Bridger's
time--an' not then. W'y, once back in this glass belt, he saw an elk
feedin' in plain sight. Blazed away an' missed him. Elk kep' on feedin'.
Blazed away ag'in. Elk unmoved. Bridger made a rush at the elk with his
knife, and run smack into a mountain of this glass so clear that he
couldn't see it, and shaped like a telescope glass that brought things
close. That elk was twenty-five miles off."
"Giddap!" said Colonel Baggs to the horses. "Time to be on our way."
"After all," said the Poet, "we may not have lost the power to create a
mythology."
"Bridger for my money," said the Artist, with conviction.
"Jim Bridger said that," asserted Aconite, "an' I believe him. They
found Great Salt Lake where he said it was, all right, an' Bridger's
Peak, an' the few things we've run across here. You wouldn't believe a
mountain would whistle like a steam engine, would yeh? Well, I'll show
you one--Roarin' Mountain--in less'n four miles ahead--in the actual act
of tootin'."
"I believe all you said, Mr. Driscoll," said the Bride as they sat about
the fire that night. "The glass mountain, the elk and all. After those
indescribable Twin Lakes, the Roaring Mountain, and the Devil's Frying
Pan, stewing, stewing, century after century--that's what makes it so
inconceivable--the thought of time and eternity. The mountains are here
for ever--that's plain; but these things in action--to think that they
were sizzling and spouting just the same when Mr. Bridger was here
ninety years ago, and a million years before that, maybe--it
flabbergasts me!"
"Yes'm," said Aconite. "It shore do."
"You're it, Bride!" said the Hired Man, handing her a slip with "Bride"
written upon it.
"I'm what?" asked the Bride.
"They've sawed the story off on you," returned the Hired Man. "I hope
you'll give a better one than that there Poet told. I couldn't make head
nor tail to that."
"It _was_ rotten," said the Poet, looking at the Bride, "wasn't it?"
"I'm still living in a glass house," said the Bride. "Don't you know
there's only one story a bride can tell?"
"Tell it, tell it!" was the cry--from all but the Poet and the Groom.
"I think I'll retire," said the Groom.
"Off with you into the shadows," said the Poet. "I'll contribute my last
cigar--and we'll smoke the calumet on the other side of the tree where
we can hear unseen."
About them the earth boiled and quivered and spouted. Little wisps of
steam floated through the treetops. There were rushings and spoutings in
the air--for they were in the Norris Geyser Basin. And here the Bride,
sitting in the circle of men, her feet curled under her on a cushion of
the surrey laid on the geyser-heated ground, fixed her eyes on the
climbing moon and told her story.
THE TRIUMPH OF BILLY HELL
THE STORY TOLD BY THE BRIDE
Now that so many of the girls are writing, the desire to express myself
in that way comes upon me awfully strongly, sometimes.
She looked at the Poet, who nodded encouragement and understanding.
And yet a novel seems so complex and poky in the writing, as compared
with a play, which brings one ever so much more exciting success. Louise
Amerland says that all literature is autobiographical. If this is so,
why can't I use my own romance in making a play? I think I could, if I
could once get the scenario to--to discharge, as Billy says. He calls me
a million M. F. condenser of dramatic electricity, but says that it's
all statical, when it ought to flow. But the scenario must be possible,
if I could only get the figures and events juggled about into place.
There's Billy for the hero, and Pa, and the Pruntys, and me for the
heroine, and comic figures like the butler and Miss Crowley and Atkins,
and the crowds in Lincoln Park. I want the statue of Lincoln in it for
one scene.
"That would be great," said the Artist.
After I was "finished" at St. Cecilia's I went into Pa's office as his
secretary. He wasn't very enthusiastic, but I insisted on account of the
sacredness of labor and its necessity in the plan of woman's life having
revealed themselves to me as I read one of Mrs. Stetson's books. Pa
fumed, and said I bothered him; but I insisted, and after a while I
became proficient as a stenographer, and spelled such terms as
"kilowatt," and "microfarad," and "electrolyte," in a way that forced
encomiums from even Pa. Upon this experience I based many deductions as
to the character of our captains of industry, one of which is that they
are the most illogical set in the world, and the more illogical they are
the more industry they are likely to captain.
Take Pa, for instance. He began with a pair of pliers, a pair of
climbers, a lineman's belt, and a vast store of obstinacy; and he has
built up the Mid-Continent Electric Company--for we are an electric
family, though Billy says magnetic is the term.
"Spare me!" prayed the Groom.
But how does Pa order his life? He sends me to St. Cecilia's, which has
no function but to prepare girls for the social swim, and is so
exclusive that he had to lobby shamefully to get me in: and all the time
he gloats--simply _gloats_--over the memory of the pliers, the climbers,
the lineman's belt, and the obstinacy--no, not over the obstinacy, of
course: that is merely what makes him gloat. And he hates Armour
Institute graduates and Tech men poisonously, and wants his force made
up of electricians who have come up, as he says, by hard knocks, and
know the practical side. As if Billy Helmerston--but let me begin at the
beginning.
I was in the office one day superintending Miss Crowley, the chief
stenographer, in getting together the correspondence about an electric
light and power installation in Oklahoma, when, just at the door of the
private office, I met a disreputable figure which towered above me so
far that I could barely make out that it had good anatomical lines and a
black patch over one eye.
I will here deceive no one: it was Billy. He explained afterward that he
possessed better clothes, but had mislaid them somehow, and that the cut
over his eye he got in quelling a pay-night insurrection in his
line-gang out in Iowa, one of whom struck him with a pair of four-hole
connectors. I am sorry to confess that I once felt pride in the fact
that Billy knocked the linemen's heads together--and yet Pa talks of
hard knocks!--until they subsided, the blood, meanwhile, running all
down over his face and clothing and theirs. It was very brutal, in
outward seeming, no matter what plea of necessity may be urged for it.
I almost fell back into the doorway, he was so near and so big. His way
of removing his abominable old hat, and his bow, gave me a queer little
mental jolt, it was so graceful and elegant, in spite of the overalls
and the faded shirt.
"I was referred to this place as Mr. Blunt's office," said he. "Can you
direct me to him?"
Now Pa is as hard to approach as any Oriental potentate; but I supposed
that Billy was one of the men from the factory, and had business, and I
was a little fluttered by the wonderful depth and sweetness of his
voice; so I just said: "This way, please"--and took him in to where Pa
was sawing the air and dictating a blood-curdling letter to a firm of
contractors in San Francisco, who had placed themselves outside the pale
of humanity by failing to get results from our new Polyphase Generator.
(Billy afterward told them what was the matter with it.) I saw that my
workman had picked out an exceedingly unpsychological moment, if he
expected to make a very powerful appeal to Pa's finer instincts.
"Well," roared Pa, turning on him with as much ferocity as if he had
been a San Francisco contractor of the deepest dye, "what can I do for
you, sir?"
"My name is Helmerston," started Billy.
"I'm not getting up any directory," shouted Pa. "What do you want?"
"I'm just through with a summer's line-work in the West," answered
Billy, "and I took the liberty of applying for employment in your
factory. I have--"
"The blazes you did!" ejaculated Pa, glaring at Billy from under his
eyebrows. "How did you get in here?"
I was over at the filing-cases, my face just burning, for I was
beginning to see what I had done. Billy looked in my direction, and as
our eyes met he smiled a little.
"I hardly know, Mr. Blunt," said he. "I just asked my way and followed
directions. Is it so very difficult to get in?"
I saw at once that he was a good deal decenter than he looked.
"Well, what can you do?" shouted Pa.
"Almost anything, I hope," answered Billy. "I've had no practical
experience with inside work; but I have--"
"Oh, yes, I know!" said Pa, in that unfeeling way which experience and
success seem to impart to the biggest-hearted men--and Pa is surely one
of these. "It's the old story. As soon as a dub gets so he can cut over
a rural telephone, or put in an extension-bell, or climb a twenty-five
without getting seasick, he can do 'almost anything.' What one,
definite, concrete thing can you do?"
"For one thing," said Billy icily, "I think I could help some by taking
a broom to this factory floor out here."
"All right," said Pa, after looking at him a moment. "The broom goes!
Give this man an order for a broom. Put him on the pay-roll at seven
dollars a week. Find out who let him in here, and caution whoever it was
against letting it occur again. Call up Mr. Sweet, and tell him I want a
word with him on those Winnipeg estimates. Make an engagement with Mr.
Bayley of the street-car company to lunch with me at the club at two."
And Pa was running in his groove again.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, as he passed me going out.
"Thank you," I answered. "It's of no consequence--"
And then I noticed that he was looking into my eyes in a wistful and
pathetic way, as if protesting against going out. I blushed as I showed
him to the door: and he wasn't the first whose eyes had protested,
either.
"You mustn't violate the rules, Dolly," said Pa, as we crossed the
bridge in the bubble, going home. "You know perfectly well that I can't
say 'no' to these tramps--"
"He wasn't a tramp," said I.
"A perfect hobo," answered Pa. "I know the type well. I have to let
Burns handle them."
"He was very graceful," said I.
"Any lineman is," replied Pa. "They have the best exercise in the world.
If he steals anything, you're responsible, my dear."
I supposed the incident to be closed with my statement that he had nice
eyes, and Pa's sniff; but, in a few days, Pa, who watches the men like a
cat, surprised me by saying that my graceful hobo was all right.
"He gathered up and saved three dollars' worth of beeswax the other men
were wasting, the first day," said Pa. "Melted and strained and put it
in the right place without asking any questions. And then he borrowed a
blow-torch and an iron, and began practising soldering connections. He
looks good to me."
"Me, too," said I.
"Blessed be the hobo," said the Colonel, "for he shall reach paradise!"
It seems strange, now, to think of my hearing these things unmoved. The
dreadful humiliation to which Billy was subjected, the noble fortitude
with which he bore it, and the splendid way in which he uplifted the
menial tasks to which he was assigned, have always reminded me of Sir
Gareth serving as a scullion in Arthur's kitchen. It is not alone in the
chronicles of chivalry--but I must hasten this narrative.
I must not delay even to inform you of the ways in which it was
discovered that Billy could do all sorts of things; that there was no
blue-print through which his keen eye could not see, and no engineering
error--like that in the Polyphase Generator--that he couldn't detect; or
how he was pushed up and up by force of sheer genius, no one knowing
who he was until he found himself, like an eagle among buzzards, at the
head of a department, and coming into the office to see Pa quite in a
legitimate way.
"Hooray! Hooray!" came from behind the tree.
"Shut up, Poet!" commanded the Artist, "or I'll come back there!"
I didn't know these things personally, because I had left the office. I
had found out that there seemed to be more soul-nurture in artistic
metal work than in typewriting, and had fitted up a shop in the Fine
Arts Building, where Louise Amerland and I were doing perfectly
enchanting stunts in hammered brass and copper--old Roman lamps and
Persian lanterns, after designs we made ourselves. Pa parted with his
secretary with a sigh, the nature of which may be a question better left
unsettled.
This romance really begins with my visit, after months and months of
absence, to the restaurant which I had dinged at Pa until he had
instituted for the help. I told him that the social side of labor was
neglected shamefully, and for the work people to eat at the same table
with their superintendents and employers would be just too dear and
democratic, and he finally yielded growlingly. He was awfully pleased
afterward when the papers began to write the thing up. He said it was
the cheapest advertising he ever got, and patted me on the shoulder and
asked me if I wasn't ashamed to be so neglectful of my great invention.
So one day I got tired of working out Rubáiyát motifs in brass, and I
went over to the café for luncheon, incog. And what do you think? Billy
came in and sat down very informally right across from me!
"Hello!" said he, putting out his hand. "I've been looking for you for
eons, to--to thank you, you know. Don't you remember me?"
Before I knew it I had blushingly given him my hand for a moment.
"Yes," I replied, taking it away, and assuming a more properly dignified
air. "I hope you have risen above seven a week and a broom; and I am
glad to see that your head has healed up."
"Thank you," he replied. "I am running the installation department of
the dynamo end of the business. And you? I'm no end glad to see you
back. Did you get canned for letting me in? I've had a good many bad
half-hours since I found you gone, thinking of you out hunting a job
on--on my account. You--pardon me--don't look like a girl who would
have the E. M. F. in the nerve-department to go out and compete, you
know."
I was amazed at the creature's effrontery, at first; and then the whole
situation cleared up in my mind. I saw that I had an admirer (_that_ was
plain) who didn't know me as Rollin Blunt's heiress at all, but only as
a shop-mate in the Mid-Continent Electric Company's factory--a
stenographer who had done him a favor. It was more fun than most girls
might think.
"How did you find out," said I, "that I had been--ah--canned?"
"I watched for you," he replied. "Began as soon as my promotion to the
switchboard work made it so I could. After a couple of months'
accumulation of data I ventured upon the generalization that the old
man--"
"The who?"
"Mr. Blunt, I mean, of course," he amended, "had fired you for letting
me in. Out of work long?"
"N-no," said I; "hardly a week."
"Where are you now?" he asked.
"I'm in a shop," I stammered, "in Michigan Avenue."
I looked about to see if any of the employees who knew me were present,
but could see none except Miss Crowley, who wouldn't meet a man in the
same office in a year, and a dynamo-man never, and who is near-sighted,
anyhow. So I felt safe in permitting him to deceive himself. It is thus
that the centuries of oppression which women have endured impress
themselves on our more involuntary actions in little bits of
disingenuousness against which we should ever struggle. At the time,
though, to sit chatting with him in the informal manner of co-laborers
at the noon intermission was great fun. It was then that I began to
notice more fully what a really fine figure he had, and how brown and
honest and respectful his eyes were, even when he said "Hello" to me; as
if I were a telephone, and how thrilling was his voice.
"I'd like," said he, "to call on you--if I might."
I was as fluttered as the veriest little chit from the country.
"I--I can't very well receive you," said I. "My--the people where I--I
stop wouldn't like it."
"I'm quite a respectable sort of chap," said he. "My name's Helmerston,
and my people have been pretty well known for two or three hundred years
up in Vermont, where we live--in a teaching, preaching, book-writing,
rural sort of way, you know. I'm a Tech man--class of '08--but I haven't
anything to boast of on any score, I'm merely telling you these things,
because--because there seems to be no one else to tell you, and--and I
want you to know that I'm not so bad as I looked that morning."
"Oh, this is quite absurd!" cried I. "I really--it doesn't make any
difference; but I'm quite ready to believe it! I must go, really!"
"May I see you to your car?" said he; and I started to tell him that I
was there in the victoria, but pulled up, and took the street-car, after
he had extracted from me the information that I lived close to Lincoln
Park. But when he asked if I ever walked in the park, I just refused to
say any more. One really must save one's dignity from the attacks of
such people. I had to telephone Roscoe where to come with the victoria.
Soon after, quite by accident, I saw him on two successive evenings in
Lincoln Park, both times near the Lincoln statue. I wondered if my
mentioning the south entrance had anything to do with this. He never
once looked at the motorists, and so failed to see me; but I could see
that he took a deep interest in the promenaders--especially slender
girls with dainty dresses and blond hair. It appeared almost as if he
were looking for some one in particular, and I smiled at the thought of
any one being so silly as to search those throngs on the strength of any
chance hint any person might have dropped. I was affected by the pathos
of it, though. It seemed so much like the Saracen lady going from port
to port hunting for Thomas à Becket's father--though, of course, he
wasn't any one's father then, but I can't think of his name.
The next evening I took Atkins, my maid, and walked down by the Lincoln
monument to look at some flowers. It seems to me that we Chicagoans owe
it to ourselves to become better acquainted with one another--I mean, of
course, better acquainted with our great parks and public places and
statues. They are really very beautiful, and something to be proud of,
provided as they are for rich and poor alike by a paternal government.
Strangely fortuitous chance: we met Billy!
"Well, _well_!" exclaimed Aconite.
He came striding down the path to meet me--Atkins had fallen behind--his
face perfectly radiant with real joy.
"At last!" he ejaculated. "I wondered if we were _ever_ to meet again,
Miss--Miss--"
"Blunt," said I, heroically truthful, and suppressing one of those
primordial impulses which urged me to say Wilkinson--now, as a
scientific problem, why Wilkinson? But I did not wish to lose Atkins'
respect by conversing with a man who did not know my name.
"Miss Blunt?" cried he interrogatively. "That's rather odd, you know.
It's not a very common name."
"Oh, I don't know," said I, uncandid again, as soon as I saw a chance to
get through with it--little cat. "It seems awfully common to me. Why do
you say that it's odd?"
"Because I happen to have a letter of introduction to Miss Blunt,
daughter of the old--of Mr. Blunt of the Mid-Continent--"
"You have?" I broke in. "From whom?"
"From my cousin, Amelia Wyckoff," said he, "who went to school with her
at St. Cecilia's."
"Well, of all things!" I began; and then, with a lot of presence of
mind, I think, I paused. "Why don't you present it?" I asked.
"Well, it's this way," said Billy. "You saw how Mr. Blunt sailed into
me and put me in the broom-brigade without a hearing? I didn't have the
letter then, and when I got it I didn't feel like pulling on the social
strings when I was coming on pretty well for a dub lineman and learning
the business from the solder on the floor to the cupola, by actual
physical contact. And then there's another thing, if you'll let me say
it: since that morning I've had no place in my thoughts for any girl's
face but one."
We were sitting on a bench. Atkins was looking at the baby leopards in
the zoo, ever so far away. Billy didn't seem to miss her. He was looking
right at me. My heart fluttered so that I knew my voice would quiver if
I spoke, and I didn't dare to move my hands for fear he might notice
their trembling. The idea of _my_ behaving in that way!
I was glad to find out that he was Amelia's cousin; for that insured his
social standing. That was what made me feel so sort of agitated. One
laborer ought not to feel so of another, for we are all equal; but it
_was_ a relief to know that he was Amelia's aunt's son, and not a tramp.
"I must be allowed to call on you!" he said with suppressed intensity.
"You don't dislike me very much, do you?"
"I--I don't like cuts over the eye," said I, evading the question.
"I don't have 'em any more," he urged.
And then he explained about the émeute in the line-gang, and the
four-hole connectors, and confessed to the violent and sanguinary manner
in which he had felt called upon to put down the uprising. I could feel
my face grow hot and cold by turns, like Desdemona's while Othello was
telling the same kind of things; and when I looked for the scar on his
forehead he bowed his head, and I put the curls aside and found it. I
would have given worlds to--it was so much like a baby coming up to you
and crying about thumping its head and asking you to kiss it well. Once
I had my lips all puckered up--but I had the self-control to refrain--I
was so afraid.
It was getting dusk now, and Billy seized my hand and kissed it. I was
quite indignant until he explained that his motives were perfectly
praise-worthy. Then I led him to talk of the rich Miss Blunt to whom he
had a letter of introduction, and advised him to present it, and argued
with appalling cogency that one ought to marry in such a way as to
better one's prospects, and Billy got perfectly furious at such a view
of love and marriage--explaining, when I pretended to think he was mad
at me, that he knew I was just teasing. And then he began again about
calling on me, and seeing my parents, or guardians, or assigns, or _any
one_ that he ought to see.
"Because," said he, "you're a perfect baby, with a baby's blue eyes and
hair of floss, and tender skin, and trustfulness; and I ought to be
horsewhipped for sitting here in the park with you in--in this way, with
no one paying any attention but Mr. Lincoln, up there."
Then I did feel deeply, darkly crime-stained; and I could have hugged
the dear fellow for his simplicity--_me_ helpless, with Atkins, and the
knowledge of Amelia Wyckoff's letter; not to mention Mr. Lincoln--bless
him!--or a park policeman who had been peeking at us from behind a bunch
of cannas! I could have given him the addresses of several gentlemen who
might have certified to the fact that I wasn't the only one whose peace
of mind might have been considered in danger.
I grew portentously serious just before I went home, and told Billy that
he must see me on my own terms or not at all, and that he mustn't follow
me, or try to find out where I lived, but must walk around the curve to
the path and let me mingle with the landscape.
"May I not hope," said he, "to see you again soon?"
"I may feed the elephant some peanuts," said I, "on Thursday
evening--no, I shall play in a mixed foursome, and then dine on Thursday
afternoon at the Onwentsia--"
"Where?" said he, in a sort of astonished way.
"I believe I could make you believe it," said I with more presence of
mind, "if I stuck to it. But I can't come on Thursday. Let us say on
Friday evening."
He insisted that Friday is unlucky, and we compromised on Wednesday.
This conversation was on Tuesday.
"May I turn for just one look at my little wood nymph," said he, "when I
get to the curve?"
Of course I said "Yes"--and he turned at the curve, and came striding
back with such a light in his eyes that I had to allow him to kiss my
hand again, under the pretense that I had got a sliver in my finger.
I went back Wednesday, and again and again, and sneaked off once with
him to an orchestra concert, and it wasn't long before Billy knew that
his little stenographer was willing to allow him to hope. But I refused
to let him call it an engagement until he promised me that he would
present the letter to the other Miss Blunt.
"Why, Dolly? Why, sweetheart?" he asked; for it had got to that stage
now. Oh, it progressed with dizzying rapidity!
"Because," I replied, "you may like her better than you do me."
"Impossible!" he cried with a gesture absolutely tragic in its
intensity. "I dislike her very name--'Miss Aurelia Blunt!'"
"That's unjust!" I cried, really angry, "Aurelia is a fine name; and she
may have a pet name, you know."
"Only one Miss Blunt with a pet name for little Willie!" said he. "My
little Dolly!"
But I tied him down with a promise that before he saw me again he'd call
on Aurelia. When I saw him next he looked guilty, and said he had found
her out when he called. I scolded him cruelly, and made him promise
again. The fact was that when he called I couldn't find it in my heart
to sink to the prosaic level of Miss Aurelia Blunt. I had had the
sweetest, most delicious courtship that any girl _ever_ had, up to this
time, and I was afraid of spoiling it all. I was afraid sort of on
general principles, you know, and so was "out." And after he went away I
stole down into the park in my electric runabout and talked to Mr.
Lincoln about it. He seemed to know. When I went away, I left a little
kiss on the monument.
Billy was perfectly cringing that next day when he had to confess that
he had failed on what he called "this Aurelia proposition." He begged to
be let off.
"You see," said he, "she may give me a frigid reception, and take
offense at my delay in presenting this letter. Amelia may have written
her, and she may be furious. There may be some sort of social statute of
limitations on letters of introduction, and the thing may have run out,
so that I'll be ejected by the servants, dearie. And, anyhow, it will
place me in an equivocal position with Mr. Blunt--my coming to him as a
tramp, and holding so very lightly the valuable social advantage of an
acquaintance with the family. He won't remember that he jumped on me
with both feet and gave me six months on bread and water. It--it may
queer me in the business."
I here drew myself up to my full height, and froze him as I have seldom
done.
"Mr. Helmerston," said I, "I have indicated to you a fact which I had
supposed might have some weight with you as against sordid and merely
prudential considerations--I mean my preferences in this matter. It
seems, however, that--that you don't care the least little bit what _I_
want, and I just know that you don't--care for me at all as you say you
do; and I'm going home at once!"
Well, he was so abject, and so sorry to have given me pain, that I
wanted to hug him, but I didn't.
Oh, I almost neglected to say that all our behavior had been of the most
proper and self-contained sort. I would almost be willing to have Miss
Featherstonehaugh at St. Cecilia's use a kinetoscope picture of all our
meetings in marking me in deportment. Of course, conversations in parks
and at concerts do not lend themselves to transports very well, and the
kinetoscopes do not reproduce what is said, do they? Or the way one
feels when one is grinding into the dust, in that manner, the most
splendid fellow in the whole terrestrial and stellar universe.
"I'll go, by George!" he vowed. "And I'll sit on Aurelia's doorstep
without eating or drinking until she comes home and kicks me down the
stairs!" I was wondering as I went home how soon he would come; but I
was astonished to learn that Mr. Helmerston was in my reception-room.
"Hi informed 'im," said the footman, "that you would 'ardly be 'ome
within a reasonable time of waiting; but 'e said 'e would remain until
you came, Miss, nevertheless."
I went down to him just as I was, in my simple piqué dress, wearing the
violets he had given me. "Mr. Helmerston," said I, "I must apologize for
the difficulty I have given you in obtaining the very slight boon of
meeting me, and say how good you are to come again--and wait. Any friend
of dearest Amelia's, not to mention her cousin, is--"
He had stood in a state of positive paralysis until now.
"Dolly! Dolly! Dearest, dearest Dolly!" he cried, coming up to me and
taking--and doing what he hadn't had a chance to do before. "Oh, my
darling, are _you_ here?"
After quite a while he started up as if he had forgotten something.
"What is it?" said I. "There isn't a promenader or a policeman this side
of the park, sweetheart!"
"No," he answered after another interval--for I hadn't called him
anything like that before--"but I was thinking that--that Aurelia--is a
long time in coming home."
"Why, don't you know _yet_, you goosey," said I. "_I'm_ Aurelia!"
* * * * *
And this brings me to the point where dalliance must cease--most of the
time--while the drama takes on the darker tinge given it by Pa's cruel
obstinacy, and the misdeeds of the Pruntys--whom I should have brought
on in the first act, somehow, on a darkened stage, conspiring across it
over a black bottle, and once in a while getting up to peek up and down
the flies, meanwhile uttering the villain's sibilant "Sh!" I don't
suppose it is artistic, from the Augustus Thomas viewpoint, but I wanted
the honeyed sweets of this courtship of mine without a tang of bitter;
and, honestly now, isn't it a lovely little plot for a love-drama?
* * * * *
"Gee!" exclaimed the Hired Man. "I was afraid you was through!"
"I am," said the Bride softly, "for to-night. If you'll excuse me now.
Maybe I'll tell the rest of it at the next camp--if you want me to."
"I assure you," said the Professor, "that your tale does credit to your
teachers in elocution."
"We all thank you," said the Artist, "for what we've had--and won't you
continue at the next session--Scheherazade?"
"I'll see," said she. "Billy! Where are you!"
"I have mysteriously disappeared," replied the Groom from behind the
tree. "Come hunt me!"