This was the beginning of that affair. Helen remembered the day well. A
woman never forgets the sky and the weather of the day upon which love
called her forth to the vicissitudes of love. But as things turned out,
I doubt if she would mention that day now, as other women do when the
bloom of their years has past. But at the best a courtship is strangely
ephemeral, if you consider the consequences. It is like fugitive verses
published to-day, gone to-morrow, like the fragrance of flowers blown
upon a wind that passes and never returns. So much of it cannot be made
into words; a glance of the eye, quick as light, revealing all; but
who can translate the look or the long silences between lovers? Nature
knows her business. The whole world, the heavens and the earth and
the fullness thereof is an incantation made to ensnare lovers to her
purpose. And not a word grows anywhere to betray this charm. You may be
strong or weak, wise or simple, cynical, disillusioned, protected with
all the knowledge of men, but there is no escape. Nature gets you at
last; on honor or dishonor you must pay your debt to her in love. When
you are done, nothing remains but your dust, a handful of something
with which to fertilize love again--a little retail economy Nature
makes in her procreating plans.
The next day after this first day was a Sabbath. I do not believe in
predestination, doctrinally speaking. The meaning of that term, I
should say, was strictly human, and is derived from our short-winded
conception of time, which does not exist either, except in the mortal
sense. But by some prearranged prudence of Providence, by which all
things come to pass whether we will or no, including the most intimate
and personal things, the Cutters attended the same church that the
remaining mother and daughter of the Adams family attended. It was
a very good little church, glistening white within, shining white
without, like an enameled bathtub with a roof and a steeple. I will not
be sure, but my impression is that the denomination was Baptist. In any
case, Helen Adams belonged to the choir.
On this Sunday morning she sang a solo, Jerusalem the Golden. She had a
fresh young voice, roomy and soft at the bottom, triumphantly high and
keen at the top. She wore white as usual and little fluttering skylines
of blue tied in a bow as usual. When she stood up to sing she lifted
her eyes as if these eyes and this face were the words of a young
morning prayer; she let go her beautifully crimped upper lip, opened
her mouth as if this mouth were a rose bursting into bloom--and sang.
I do not know if she sang well, having no skill in these matters; but
it is certain that she looked like an angel. What I mean is that if you
had no visual acquaintance with angels, you would have known at once
that this was the very image of the way an angel should look.
The congregation listened with the peaceful apathy peculiar to every
small town congregation, when it is being mulled in the music of a hymn
or the Word. This made the one exception the more noticeable.
George William Cutter, Junior, looked and listened with a fervor which
far surpassed anything that mere piety could do for a young man’s
praying countenance. Fortunately he was seated far back in the publican
and sinner section of the church. Thus he escaped the sophisticated
attention of the elder saints toward the front. Never had he seen
anything so lovely as this girl, the high look she had with the notes
of this hymn, trembling as they came from her round, white throat or
flaring into a perfect ecstasy of joy.
When she had finally caroled out and sat down, he whispered under his
breath, “Lord! Lord!” although he was not a religious man and meant
nothing of the sort by this exclamation.
The moment the benediction was pronounced, he stepped briskly from his
place in that sparsely settled part of the church, met the slow-moving
tattling tide of the congregation coming out as he hurried down the
aisle like a good swimmer in sluggish waters until he reached Helen
standing in the rear ranks with her mother.
He bowed to Mrs. Adams. He hoped she remembered him--George Cutter,
extending his hand.
Oh, yes; she remembered him, she said mildly. No excitement in her
mind over the recollection either! Did he think he had improved that
much? She let him know that so far as she was concerned he was the same
little George Cutter who used to live across the street and sometimes
threw stones at her chickens.
No matter if you are a very handsome young man, with athletic
laurels hanging to your college coat tails, you cannot make a deep
or flattering impression on a middle-aged woman who has a practical,
computing mind and knows the romantic value of her beautiful daughter.
If Helen had been homely, a little, starched mouse of a girl, who
could not sing Jerusalem the Golden or anything else, she would have
received George’s salutations more cordially. As it was, she did not
have to be more than invincibly polite. All this she let him know with
a flat look of her calm blue eye.
It was a waste of excellent maternal diplomacy so far as he was
concerned. He had already turned to Helen. He was almost speechless
from having so much to say. She was entirely so for a moment. Then she
gave him her hand and managed to say, “Howdy do, George,” in a tone a
girl uses when the man owes her an apology.
This accusative welcome dashed him. No smile! When he was himself
the very pedestal of a smile. Good heavens, what had he done? He was
conscious of being innocent; yet he felt guilty.
Mrs. Adams paid no more attention to them. She had gone on, caught
up with the Flitches and passed out. This was the only permission he
received that he might, if he could, walk with Helen.
The girl’s inclemency stirred him as frosty weather stimulates
energy. So they followed. I doubt if they were aware themselves
that the distance lengthened between them and other groups of this
congregation, which divided and dwindled at every street corner.
Lovers are recognized on sight, long before they know themselves to
be lovers. People make room for their privacy in public places. These
two had a whole block to themselves by the time they entered Wiggs
Street. Mrs. Adams had already disappeared in her house. The broad back
of Mr. Cutter and the slim back of little Mrs. Cutter were visible
for a moment before they also faded through the doorway of the Cutter
residence.
Only the Flitches stood _en masse_ on their spider-legged veranda,
their eyes glued upon these two stragglers, coming slowly down the
sunlit street. The Flitches were good people, of the round-eyed breed.
They had a candid, perpetually interrogative curiosity which nothing
could satisfy. You know the kind. It is never you, but the family
that lives across the street from you, or in the next house with thin
eyelid curtains over their windows through which they are perpetually
regarding you, striving after omniscience about you and your affairs.
Helen had admitted that it was a “nice day” when he said it was, as
they came out of the church and faced the fair brow of this June
sabbath.
He had told her how much he enjoyed her solo. It was wonderful.
She merely replied that she “liked to sing.”
He was still conscious of being in the arctic region of her regard and
cast about, with a lover’s distracted compass, to discover the way out.
“Weren’t you in the bank yesterday afternoon?” he asked suddenly.
“Yes,” she answered coldly after a slight pause; “I was about to speak
to you, but you did not recognize me,” she added.
“It is the truth. I did not,” he admitted quickly and waited. He could
not be sure she got it, the compliment implied. He remembered her as
merely sensible, not smart. “You have changed, grown or something,”
he resumed. “I couldn’t be expected to know you. All the other girls
here look just as they did when I left here two years ago. But you
don’t; you are amazingly different. How did you do it?” he exclaimed,
regarding her with charmed amazement.
He saw her take it, caught the glance she gave him one instant before
she dropped it. The faintest smile sweetened the comers of her mouth.
He got that too.
If only he had known of the tears she had shed after the visit to
the bank, what a triumph! Fortunately, men do not know what maidens
confess with tears to their pillows. If they did it would change many a
courtship to one kind or another of ruthless tyranny.
We who study love as if it were a medicine or a disease sometimes speak
of “love at first sight,” as if this were an unusual seizure. But love
is always love at first sight. You may know this man or he may know
you for years without getting that angle of vision; but if you ever
do, it is as if you had never really seen him before. In a moment you
have endowed him with attributes his Maker would never have squandered
on a man of that quality. This is what love is, the conferring of
virtues and qualities upon the object of your awakened emotion like so
many degrees. He may be a drug clerk, or a chicken-breasted, fat man,
or a swank young rascal, but from that moment when love gets sight of
him he is a fellow of the royal society of heroes, and you may be so
bemused you live a lifetime with him, always conferring more degrees to
keep him tenderly concealed from your clearer vision. Or it may happen
in a year or twenty years the scales fall from your eyes. Then love
becomes a servant, and life a tragedy. But there is nothing in the
Scriptures against such a servant or such a life. Rather, I should say
the Scriptures make wide and permanent provisions for this deflation in
the marital relation.