CHAPTER I._A Man and a Woman

Produced by Al Haines

A MAN AND A WOMAN

By STANLEY WATERLOO

[A NEW EDITION]

Published by

Way & Williams

Chicago

MDCCCXCVII

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I PROLOGUE

II CLOSE TO NATURE

III BOY, BIRD, AND SNAKE

IV GROWING UP WITH THE COUNTRY

V GRIM-VISAGED WAR

VI THE SPEARING OF ALFRED

VII HOW FICTION MADE FACT

VIII NEW FORCES AT WORK

IX MRS. POTIPHAR

X THE BUILDING OF THE FENCE

XI SETTLING WITH WOODELL

XII INCLINATION AGAINST CONSCIENCE

XIII FAREWELL TO THE FENCE

XIV A RUGGED LOST SHEEP

XV A STRANGE WORLD

XVI THE REALLY UGLY DUCKLING

XVII "EH, BUT SHE'S WINSOME"

XVIII THE WOMAN

XIX PURGATORY

XX TWO FOOLS

XXI "MY LITTLE RHINOCEROS-BIRD"

XXII TWO FOOLS STILL

XXIII JUST A PANG

XXIV "AS TO THOSE OTHERS"

XXV NATURE AGAIN

XXVI ADVENTURES MANIFOLD

XXVII THE HOUSE WONDERFUL

XXVIII THE APE

XXIX THE FIRST DISTRICT

XXX THE NINTH WARD

XXXI THEIR FOOLISH WAYS

XXXII THE LAW OF NATURE

XXXIII WHITEST ASHES

A MAN AND A WOMAN.

CHAPTER I.

PROLOGUE.

But for a recent occurrence I should certainly not be telling the story

of a friend, or, rather, I should say, of two friends of mine. What

that occurrence was I will not here indicate--it is unnecessary; but it

has not been without its effect upon my life and plans. If it be asked

by those who may read these pages under what circumstances it became

possible for me to acquire such familiarity with certain scenes and

incidents in the lives of one man and one woman,--scenes and incidents

which, from their very nature, were such that no third person could

figure in them,--I have only to explain that Grant Harlson and I were

friends from boyhood, practically from babyhood, and that never, during

all our lives together, did a change occur in our relationship. He has

told me many things of a nature imparted by one man to another very

rarely, and only when each of the two feels that they are very close

together in that which sometimes makes two men as one. He was proud

and glad when he told me these things--they were but episodes, and

often trivial ones--and I was interested deeply. They added the

details of a history much of which I knew and part of which I had

guessed at.

He was not quite the ordinary man, this Grant Harlson, close friend of

mine. He had an individuality, and his name is familiar to many people

in the world. He has been looked upon by the tactful as but one of a

type in a new nationality--a type with traits not yet clearly defined,

a type not large, nor yet, thank God, uncommon--one of the best of the

type; to me, the best. A close friend perhaps is blind. No; he is not

that: he but sees so clearly that the world, with poorer view, may not

always agree with him.

I hardly know how to describe this same Grant Harlson. At this stage

of my story it is scarcely requisite that I should, but the account is

loose and vagrant and with no chronology. Physically, he was more than

most men, six feet in height, deep of chest, broad-shouldered,

strong-legged and strong-featured, and ever in good health, so far as

all goes, save the temporary tax on recklessness nature so often

levies, and the other irregular tax she levies by some swoop of the

bacilli of which the doctors talk so much and know so little. I mean

only that he might catch a fever with a chill addition if he lay

carelessly in some miasmatic swamp on some hunting expedition, or that,

in time of cholera, he might have, like other men, to struggle with the

enemy. But he tossed off most things lightly, and had that vitality

which is of heredity, not built up with a single generation, though

sometimes lost in one. Forest and farm-bred, college-bred,

city-fostered and broadened and hardened. A man of the world, with

experiences, and in his quality, no doubt, the logical, inevitable

result of such experiences--one with a conscience flexile and seeking,

but hard as rock when once satisfied. One who never, intentionally,

injured a human being, save for equity's sake. One who, of course,

wandered in looking for what was, to him, the right, but who, having

once determined, was ever steadfast. A man who had seen and known and

fed and felt and risked, but who seemed to me always as if his religion

were: "What shall I do? Nature says so-and-so, and the Power beyond

rules nature." Laws of organization for political purposes, begun

before Romulus and Remus, and varied by the dale-grouped Angles or the

Northmen's Thing, did not seem to much impress him. He recognized

their utility, wanted to improve them, made that his work, and

eventually observed most of them. This, it seemed to me, was his

honest make-up--a Berseker, a bare-sark descendant of the Vikings, in a

dress-coat. He had passions, and gratified them sometimes. He had

ambitions, and worked for them. He had a conscience, and was guided by

it.

It was always interesting to me to look at him in youthful fray, more

so, years afterward, in club or in convention, or anywhere, and try to

imagine him the country small boy. Keen, hard, alert in all the ways

of a great city, it was difficult to conceive him in his early youth,

well as I knew it; difficult to reflect that his dreams at night were

not of the varying results of some late scheme, nor of white shoulders

at the opera, nor the mood of the Ninth Ward, nor of the drift of

business, but of some farm-house's front yard in mid-summer with a boy

aiming a long shot-gun at a red-winged poacher in a cherry tree, or

that he saw, in sleep, the worn jambs beside the old-fashioned

fireplace where, winter mornings, he kicked on his frozen boots, and

the living-room where, later in the morning, he ate so largely of

buckwheat cakes. He was a figure, wicked some said, a schemer many

said, a rock of refuge for his friends said more. This was the man, no

uncommon type in the great cities of the great republic.

As for the woman, I write with greater hesitation. I can tell of her

in this place but in vague outline. She was slender, not tall,

brown-haired and with eyes like those of the deer or Jersey heifer,

save that they had the accompanying expression of thought or mood or

fancy which mobile human features with them give. She was a woman of

the city, with all that gentle craft which is a woman's heritage. She

was good. She was unlike all others in the world to one man--no, to

two.

I have but tried to tell what these two people appeared to me. I can

see them as they were, but cannot tell it as I should. I have not

succeeded well in expressing myself in words. Even were I cleverer, I

should fail. We can picture characters but approximately.