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 aeons 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 that 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 would have 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 that 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!" Fall upon me and upon me alone
seemed to flash his gaze.
"After a rank and clamorous opposition you became--all of 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?
"The Warrior bowed his crested head, and tamed his heart of fire,
And sued the haughty King to free his long imprisoned sire."
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 McIntyre 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, 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 aunt, uncle, and I present by the god's 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 the 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 dreamt 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.