The fact of Arthur's sudden blossoming into a full-fledged and emphatic
figure of romance had an unsettling effect upon many of the peacefully
disposed minds in The Camp. It is always so when friends, especially in
youth, come to partings of ways. Clement, who takes the Low road, cannot
but be disturbed at the thought of those possible adventures which lie
in wait for Covington, who has fared forth by the High. There was the
feeling among many of the young people in the camp that, if they didn't
hurry, they might be left behind. Nobody expressed this feeling or
acknowledged it or recognized in it anything more than a feeling of
unrest; but it existed, nevertheless, and had its effect upon actions
and affections.
Renier had been leading a life of almost perfect happiness. For the
things that made him happy were the same sort of things that make boys
happy. No school; no parental obstructions or admonitions;
green-and-blue days filled from end to end with fishing, sailing,
making fires, shooting at marks, and perfecting himself in physical
attainments. Add to these things the digestion and the faculties of a
healthy boy interested neither in drink, tobacco, nor in any book which
failed to contain exciting and chivalrous adventures, and, above all, a
companion whose tastes and sympathies were such that she might just as
well have been a boy as not.
They were chums rather than sweethearts. It needed a sense of old times
coming to an end and new times beginning to make them realize the full
depth and significance of their attachment for each other.
There were four of us once "in a kingdom by the sea," and I shall not
forget the awful sense of partings and finality, and calamity, for that
matter, furnished by a sudden sight of the first flaming maple of
autumn.
"I think your mother's a perfect brick," said Renier. "She makes you
feel as if she'd known you all your life, and was kind of grateful to
you for living."
"I'm rather crazy about the prince," said Lee. "Of course, I oughtn't to
be. But I can't help it, and after all he's been awfully good to mamma.
Do you believe in divorce?"
"I never did until I saw your mother. She wouldn't ask for anything that
she didn't really deserve."
"But it's funny, isn't it," said Lee, "that so many people get on
famously together until they are actually married, and then they begin
to fight like cats? I knew a girl who was engaged to a man for five
years. You'd think they'd get to know each other pretty well in that
time, wouldn't you? But they didn't. They hadn't been married six months
before they hated each other."
"And that proves," said Renier, "that long engagements are a mistake."
"Smarty!" exclaimed Lee.
"I suppose your brother'll be getting married right away, won't he?
Haven't they liked each other for ever so long?"
"M'm!" Lee nodded. "But Arthur never does anything right away. He does
too much mooning and wool-gathering. If a united family can get him to
the altar in less than a year they'll have accomplished wonders. There's
one thing, though--when we do get him married good and proper, he'll
stay married. He's like that at all games. It comes natural to him to
keep his eyes in the boat. He's got the finest and sweetest nature of
any man in this world, _I_ think."
"Of course, you except present company?"
"Heavens, yes!" cried Lee, and they both laughed.
Then, suddenly, Lee looked him in the eyes quite solemnly.
"I wasn't fooling," she said, "not entirely. I _do_ think you're fine
and sweet. I didn't always, but I do now."
There was levity in Renier's words but not in his voice.
"This," he said, "so far has been a perfectly good Tuesday."
"Whatever we do together," said Lee, "you always give me the best of it.
It's been a good summer."
"Do you feel as if summer was over, too?"
She nodded.
"That's funny, isn't it? Because it's nowhere near over, is it? Maybe
it's the excitement of the Oducalchis' arrival and your brother's
engagement. It makes you sort of feel as if there wasn't time to settle
back into the regular life and get things going again before the leaves
fall."
He spoke. And from the fine striped maple under which they sat there
fell, and fluttered slowly into Lee's lap, a great yellowing leaf ribbed
with incipient scarlet.
"That only means," said Renier--but there was a kind of awe in his
voice--"that this particular tree has indigestion."
And they sat for a time in silence and looked at the leaf. And lo!
Arthur came upon them, smiling.
"I was looking for you two," he said. "I thought maybe you'd do me a
great favor. I've got to play host, and----"
"Nobody would miss us!" exclaimed Lee.
"They wouldn't?" said Arthur. "I'll bet you anything you like that,
during your absence, you will both be mentioned among the missing, by
name, at least five times."
"What'll you bet?" asked Lee eagerly. "Nobody ever thinks of _us_.
Nobody ever mentions _us_. Nobody even loves _us_. What'll you bet?"
"Anything you like," said Arthur, "and if necessary I will take charge
of the five personal mentionings and make them myself!"
Lee shook her head sadly, and said: "Once an accepted lover, always a
sure thing, man. Oh, Arthur, how low you have fallen! You used to
engineer bets with me for the sheer joy of seeing me win them. But now
you are on the make, and it looks as if there was no justice under
heaven-- Where do you want us to go and what do you want us to do when
we get there? Of course, we'll go; we always do. Everybody sends us on
errands, and we always go. The longer the errands the oftener we go. But
nobody seems to realize that we might enjoy spending one single solitary
afternoon sitting under a striped maple and watching the green leaves
turn yellow. Nobody even loves us! But when we are dead there will be
the most frightful remorse and sorrow."
Arthur leaned heavily against the stem of the striped maple.
"Your sad case," he said, "certainly cries aloud for justice and
redress----"
"'Kid us along, Bo,'" said Lee; "we love it!"
"I want two people," said Arthur, "for whom I have affection and in whom
I have confidence, to go at once to Carrytown in the _Streak_ and
consult a lawyer upon a matter of paramount importance and delicacy--"
He hesitated, and Lee said:
"I pray you, without further ado, continue your piquant narrative."
Then Arthur, in a tone of solemn, confidential eagerness:
"Look here, you two, go to Carrytown, will you, and find out how quickly
two people can get married in the State of New York, and what they have
to do about licenses and things? Will you? I'll be eternally obliged."
"Of course, we will," exclaimed Lee in sudden excitement. "Are you
game?"
"You bet your sweet life I'm game!" cried the vulgar Renier. And a few
minutes later the two inseparable school-boyesque chums, whom nobody
mentioned, whom everybody sent on errands, and whom nobody even loved,
were streaking across the lake in the _Streak_.
There was but the one lawyer in Carrytown and the one stenographer.
Their shingles hang one above the other on the face of the one brick
building.
At the door of this building Lee suddenly drew back.
"Look here!" she said. "Won't it look rather funny if we march in hand
in hand and say: 'Beg pardon, sir, but how do you get married in the
State of New York?'"
"It _would_ look funny," said Renier, "and I shouldn't wonder if it made
us feel funny. But the joke would really be on the lawyer. We could say
'_Honi soit qui mal y pense_' to him. Of course, if it would really
embarrass you----"
"It wouldn't," said Lee, "_really_."
So they went up a narrow flight of stairs and knocked on the door of
room Number Five. There was no answer. So they pushed open the door and
entered a square room bound in sheepskin with red-and-black labels.
There was nobody in the room, and Lee exclaimed:
"Nobody even loves us."
"He'll be in the back room," said Renier. "I know. Once I swiped a
muskmelon from a lawyer's melon-patch, and had to see him about it. _He_
was in the back room----"
"'Counting out his money'?"
"No; he was drinking whiskey with a judge and a livery-stable keeper,
and they were all spitting on a red-hot stove."
"What did he do about the melon?"
"He told me to can the melon and have a drink. I had already canned the
melon as well as I could (I wasn't educated along scientific lines) and
my grandmother had promised me any watch I wanted if I didn't drink till
I was twenty-one."
"Did you?"
"I did not."
"Did you get the watch?"
"I did not."
"Why not?"
"Grandma reneged. She said she didn't remember making any such promise."
They pushed open a swinging door and entered the back room.
Here, in a revolving chair, sat a stout young man with a red face. Upon
his knees sat a stout young woman with a red face. And with something of
the consistency with which a stamp adheres to an envelope so the one red
face appeared glued to the other red face.
The red face of the stout young man had one free eye which detected the
presence of intruders. And the stout young man said:
"Caught with the goods! Jump up, Minnie, and behave yourself!"
Minnie's upspring was almost a record-breaker.
Renier began to stammer:
"I b-b-beg your pardon," he said, "but I thought you might b-b-be able
to tell me how to g-g-get married in New York State."
The stout young man rose from his revolving chair; he was embarrassed
almost to the point of paralysis, but his mind and mouth continued to
work.
"You've come to just the right man," he said, "at just the right time,
for information of that sort. First, you hire a stenographer; then you
get a mash on her. Then she sits in your lap--she _will_ do it--and then
you kiss her. And then you get a license, and then you curse laws and
red tape for a while, and then you wed. Now, what you want is a
license?"
"Exactly," said Renier. "It--it's for another fellow."
"Friend of yours?" queried the stout young man.
"Yes."
"And you want a license for him, not for yourself?"
Renier nodded.
"At this moment," said the stout young man, "there are assembled on the
long wharf, chewin' tobacco and cursin', some twenty-five or thirty
marines. Would you mind just stepping down and telling that to them?"
"I am quite serious," said Renier. "It is my friend who wants to get
married."
"And _you_ don't?"
Renier stammered ineffectually.
"Then," said the stout young man, with a glance at Lee (of the highest
admiration), "you're a gol-darn fool."
And forthwith he was so vulgar as to burst into a sudden snatch of
song:
"Old man Rule was a gol-darn fool,
For he couldn't see the water in the gol-darn pool!"
At the finish of this improvisation the dreadfully confused Minnie went,
"Tee-hee!"
And, horror of horrors, that charming boylike companion, Lee Darling,
behind whom were well-bred generations, also went suddenly, "Tee-hee."
"Licenses," said the stout young man, "are applied for in room Five.
After you, sir; after you, miss."
And, with a waggish expression, he turned to Minnie.
"Be back in five minutes," he said; "try not to forget me, my flighty
one."
When they were in the front room, he said:
"Before a license is issued, the licensor must be satisfied as to the
preliminaries. Now, then, what can you tell me as to lap sitting and
kissings?"
"You," cried Lee, in a sudden blaze of indignation, "are the freshest,
most objectionable American I ever set eyes on."
The stout young man turned appealingly to Renier.
"You wouldn't say that," he said; "you'd say I was just typical,
wouldn't you, now? And I wish you would tell her that, though in these
backwoods I have been obliged to eschew my Chesterfield, I've got a
great big heart in me and mean well."
During the last words of this speech he became appealingly wistful.
"Why," said he to Lee, "just because Minnie and me is stout, don't you
think we know heaven when we see it--the empyrean! Yesterday she threw
me down, and I says to her: 'Since all my life seems meant for
"fails"--since this was written and needs must be--my whole soul rises
up to bless your name in pride and thankfulness. Who knows but the world
may end to-night?' To-day she sits in my lap and we see which can hug
the hardest. Ever try that?"
And suddenly the creature's voice melted and shook. He was a genuine
orator, as we Americans understand it, having that within his powers of
voice that defies logic and melts the heart.
"Wouldn't you," he said, "even _like_ to sit in his lap? Wouldn't you
_love_ to sit in his lap and be hugged?"
Lee looked to Renier for help, as he to her. And they took a step apiece
directly toward each other, and another step. It was as if they had been
hypnotized. Suddenly Renier caught Lee's hand in his, and after a
moment of looking into his eyes she turned to the stout man, and sang in
miraculous imitation of him:
"Young Miss Mule is a gol-darn fool,
But you made her see the water in the gol-darn pool."
"I'll just get a license blank," said the stout young man. "They're in
the back room."
"Thank you," said Renier--"if you will, Mr.----"
"Heartbeat!" flashed the stout young man, and left them. And he wasn't
lying or making fun that time. For that was his really truly name. And
in northern New York people are beginning to think that he is by way of
being up to it.
Suddenly Lee quoted from a joke that she and Renier had in common. She
said, as if surprised:
"'Why, there's a table over there!'"
And Renier, his voice suddenly breaking and melting, answered:
"'Why, so there is--and here's a chair!'"
And Mr. Heartbeat, making a supreme effort to live up to his name, did
not return with the license blank for nearly eight minutes. During
those minutes, Renier resolved that in every room in his home there
should be at least one revolving chair. And they came out of Mr.
Heartbeat's office no longer boyish companions but lovers, a little
startled, engaged, and licensed to be married.