BY ANOTHER HAND
A wanderer from Little Arcady in early days returned to its placid
shades after many years, drawn thither by a little quick-born yearning
to walk the old streets again. But he found such strangeness in these
that his memory was put to prodigious feats of reconstruction ere it
could make them seemly as of yore.
To the west, away from the river, the town has groped beyond a prairie
frontier that had once been sacred to boyish games and the family cow.
Now, so thickly was it built with neat white houses, that only with
strenuous clairvoyance could famous old localities be identified: the
ball-ground; the marshy stretch that made skating in winter, or, in
spring, a fascinating place to catch cold by wading; the grassy common
where "shinny" was played by day and "Yellow Horn" by night; the
enchanted spot where the circus built airy castles of canvas, and where,
on the day after, one might plant one's feet squarely in the magic ring,
on the veritable spot, perchance, where the clown had superhumanly
ridden the difficult trick-mule after local volunteers had failed so
entertainingly.
Barns in this once wild country had failed amazingly. Only one of any
character was left, and it had shrunk. Of old a structure of
possibilities intensely romantic, it was now dingy, pitiable,
insignificant. No reasonable person would consider holding a circus
there--admission ten pins for boys and five pins for girls.
Orchards, too, had suffered. Acres of them, once known to their last
tree, including the safest routes of approach by day or night, had been
cut down to make space for substantial but unexciting houses, quite like
the houses in anybody's town. Other orchards had shrunk to a few poor
unproductive trees so little prized by their owners that they could no
longer excite evil thoughts in the young.
Indeed, almost everything had shrunk. The church steeples, once of an
inconceivable height, were now but a scant sixty feet; and the buildings
beneath them, that once had vied with old-world cathedrals, were seen to
be but toy churches.
Especially had gardens shrunk. One that boasted the widest area in days
when it must be hoed for the advantage of potatoes insanely planted
there, was now a plot so tiny that the returned wanderer, amazedly
staring at it, abandoned all effort to make it occupy its old place in
his memory.
North and south were dozens of strange, prim houses to puzzle up the
streets. The street-signs, another innovation, were truly needed. Of old
it had been enough to say "down toward the depot," "out by the McCormick
place," "next to the Presbyterian church," "up around the schoolhouse,"
or "down by the lumber yard." But now it was plain that one had to know
First, Second, and Third streets, Washington, Adams, and Jefferson
streets.
Socially as well, the town had changed. Not only is the native stock
more travelled, speaking--entirely without an air--of trips to the
Yellowstone, to Europe, Chicago, or Santa Barbara, but a new element has
invaded the little country. It goes in the fall, but it comes again each
summer, drawn by the green beauty of the spot, and it has left its
impress.
The revisiting wanderer observed, as in a dream, an immaculate coupé
with a couple of men on the box who behaved quite as if they were about
to enter the park in the full glare of Fifty-ninth Street and Fifth
Avenue, though they were but on a street of the little country among
farm wagons. The outfit was ascertained to belong to a summer resident
who was said, by common report, to "have wine right on the table at
every meal." No one born out of Little Arcady can appraise the
revolutionary character of this circumstance at anything like its true
value.
Further, in the line of vehicular sensationalism, a modish wicker-bodied
phaeton and a minute pony-cart were seen on a pleasant afternoon to
issue from a driveway far up a street that now has a name, but which
used to be adequately identified by saying "up toward the Fair Grounds."
The phaeton was occupied by two ladies, one rather old, to whom a couple
of half-grown children in the pony-cart kissed their hands and shouted.
They were not permitted to follow the phaeton, however, as they seemed
to have wished. Its shock-headed pony, driven by an aged negro who
scolded both children with a worn and practised garrulity, was turned in
another direction. One of the children, a little dark-faced girl of
eight or nine, called "Little Miss" by the driver, was repeatedly
threatened in the fiercest tone by him because of her perilous twistings
to look back at the phaeton. The cart was followed by a liver-and-white
setter; a young dog, it seemed, from his frenzied caperings and his
manner of appearing to think of something else in the midst of every
important moment.
There proved to be two papers in the town, as of old, but the _Argus_
was now published twice a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays. The wanderer
eagerly scanned its columns for familiar names and for something of the
town's old tone; but with little success.
Said one item, "A string of electric lights, on a street leading up one
of our hills, looks like a necklace of brilliants on the bosom of the
night." Old Little Arcady had not electric lights; nor the _Argus_ this
exuberance of simile.
Again: "This new game of golf that the summer folks play seems to have
too much walking for a good game and just enough game to spoil a good
walk." Golf in the Little Country!
The advent of musical culture was signified by this: "At least thirty
girls in this town can play the first part of 'Narcissus' pretty well.
But when they come to the second part they mangle the keys for a minute
and then say, 'I don't care much for that second part--do you?' Why
don't some of them learn it and give us a chance to judge?"
The _Argus_ had acquired a "Woman's Department," conducted by Mrs.
Aurelia Potts Denney, wife of the editor,--a public-spirited woman,
prominent in club circles, and said to be of great assistance to her
husband in his editorial duties. The town was proud of her, and sent her
as delegate to the Federation of Woman's Clubs; her name, indeed, has
been printed in full more than once, even by Chicago newspapers. Some
say that wisely she might give more attention to her twin sons, Hayes
and Wheeler Denney; but this likely is ill-natured carping, for Hayes
and Wheeler seem not more lawless than other twins of eight. And
carpers, to a certainty, do exist in Little Arcady.
One Westley Keyts, for example, lounging in the doorway of his
meat-shop, renewed acquaintance with the wanderer, who remembered him as
a glum-faced but not bad-hearted chap. Names recalled and hands shaken,
Mr. Keyts began to lament the simple ways of an elder day, glancing
meanwhile with honest disapproval at a newly installed competitor across
the street. The shop itself was something of an affront, its gilt name
more--"The Bon Ton Market." Mr. Keyts pronounced "Bon Ton" in his own
fashion, but his contempt was ably and amply expressed.
"Sounds like one of them fancy names for a corset or a patent lamp," he
complained. "It's this here summer business that done it. They swarm in
here with their private hacks and their hired help all togged out till
you'd think they was generals in the army, and they play that game of
sissy-shinny (drop-the-handkerchief for mine, if _I_ got to play any
such game), and they're such great hands to kite around nights when
folks had ought to be in their beds. I tell you, my friend, it ain't
doing this town one bit of good. The idea of a passel of strong, husky
young men settin' around on porches in their white pants and calling it
'passing the summer.' _I_ ain't never found time to pass any summers."
The wanderer expressed a proper regret for this decadence. Mr. Keyts
reverted bitterly to the Bon Ton market:--
"Good name for a tooth powder, or a patent necktie, or an egg-beater.
But a butcher-shop!--why, it's a _hell_ of a name for a
butcher-shop!"
The wanderer expressed perfect sympathy with this view of the shop
legend, and remarked, "By the way, whose big house is that with the
columns in front, up where the Prouse and old Blake houses used to be?"
The face of Mr. Keyts became pleasanter.
"Oh, that?--that's Cal Blake's--Major Blake's, you know. He married a
girl that come in here from the South with her mother. I guess that was
after you got out of here. They tore down the two houses and built that
big one. They say it's like them Southern houses, but I don't know. It
seems awful plain up the front of it. Cal's all right, though. I guess
mebbe he built the house kind of bare that way to please his wife and
his mother-in-law. I'll bet if he'd had his own way, there'd be some
brackets and fret work on the front to liven it up some. But I'd a done
just like him in his place, I would, by Gee! So would you if you seen
his wife. _Say!_ but never mind; you wait right here. She'll drive up to
git Cal from his office at four-thirty--it's right across there over the
bank where that young fellow is settin' in the window--that's young Cal
Denney, studyin' law with Blake. You just wait and see--she'll drive up
in about six minutes."
The wanderer waited, out of pure cordiality to Mr. Keyts. The prospect
was not exciting, but the simple faith of the villagers that outsiders
must share their interest in local concerns has always seemed too
touching a thing to wreck.
Within the six minutes mentioned by Mr. Keyts the diurnal happening to
which he attached such importance was observed. A woman (the younger of
the two seen in the phaeton) drove up for Major Calvin Blake; a youngish
rather than a young woman, slight, with an effect of stateliness, and
not unattractive. Her husband, a tall and pleasant enough looking man,
came down the stairs, and when he saw the woman his face lighted
swiftly--and rather wonderfully, when one considers that she was not
unexpected. They drove away.
The wanderer was not disposed to minimize the incident, however far he
might fall short of Westley Keyts's appreciation. But he had been long
absent from the Little Country, and the people of to-day were strange
and unimportant. He preferred to revive, as best he might, the days of
his own simple faith in the town's sufficiency; days when the world
beyond the Little Country was but a place from which to order
merchandise, or into which, at the most, adventurous Arcadians dared
brief journeys for profit or a doubtful pleasure; the days of a boy's
Little Arcady, that existed no more save as a wraith in remembering
minds.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Boss of Little Arcady, by Harry Leon Wilson