_Dear Father_:
I realize that you mean well by me and I accept your advice on
courtship, love and marriage, and all that rot, in the spirit in which
it is given. But really, my dear pater, you are hopelessly in arrears in
your information on those subjects. Of course you know a lot about
marriage. I cannot dispute that; it is too obvious; but in matters of
courtship detail you are back in the stagecoach age, hopelessly old
style.
Nowadays, if a fellow is "spoons" on a girl he makes it public in quite
different fashion than when you "sparked Ma"--as you rather vulgarly, as
it seems to me, express it. Methods have changed since your salad days,
when courtship consisted of escorting the same girl home from singing
school three weeks running and then going in the cherished "best suit"
to "keep company" with her one or two evenings a week. The modern swain
has an entirely different system, although I grant you that he makes an
ass of himself quite as much as his predecessors. There is no more
sitting in the back parlor with the gas low. All reputable back parlors
are electrically illuminated and the situation is therefore changed. I
do not say, however, that lamps are not sometimes provided by thoughtful
parents of large families of daughters of marriageable age. The average
young man, however, would regard the presence of a lamp in such
circumstances as a danger signal, and run on to the first siding. No
eligible young man likes to feel that he is walking into a specially set
matrimonial trap.
As you may judge from the florist's bill brought to your attention,
Cupid, nowadays, is very partial to flowers. In your day a straw ride
once or twice a winter, a few glasses of lemonade or plates of
ice-cream, and church sociables and picnics were about the only
obligations attendant upon making a girl think herself your particular
one. To-day hot-house roses and violets, boxes of chocolate, appreciated
only when expensively trade-marked, matinee tickets, auto rides, dainty
luncheons with chaperons on the side--but I could fill two pages in
enumeration of the little, but expensive attentions which the up-to-date
city girl demands. And all these things may mean much or little. Because
a fellow runs up a florist's bill is no sign that his next purchase will
be an engagement ring. Lots of fellows with lots of money buy lots of
things for lots of nice girls and no questions asked. You certainly
don't want your only son and heir to be a rank outsider.
As a matter of fact, the joke is on you in regard to that bill of $52
for roses sent to Mabel Dashkam and charged up to me. To be sure, I
don't quite see how the thing reached you at the Springs. Pollen & Stalk
ought to be called down good and plenty for chasing you around the
country with a thing they should have known you took no interest in. It
reflects on me, and I'll see that such a gross insult isn't repeated.
But about the joke. I didn't send the roses to Mabel Dashkam at all.
Since dallying with hogs I seem to have acquired an improved taste in
girls, and her face doesn't warm me in the least. The fact is that
little Bud Hoover, who is just at present in town, living a life of
mysterious ease, has conceived the idea that he could stand being Job
Dashkam's son-in-law. He thinks there is a gold mine in the old man's
backyard, evidently; he isn't at all afraid that Job will ever borrow
money of him--and he's right there.
Well, it came around to Mabel's birthday, and Bud, who'd been doing the
grand social at the house for some time, saw that it was up to him to
celebrate the occasion with a "trifling nosegay," as he put it. He
nailed me for the wherewithal, urging that I was in duty bound to help a
struggling young man to a position. When I couldn't quite focus my
approval on that proposition, he declared that I owed the service to him
because his grandfather had saved my father's soul. That was a clincher,
and I let him get the roses and charge 'em to me. As you say, most young
fellows who explode fifty-two for flowers at one blast will wish they
had the money for provisions some time or other. Not so with Bud,
however; he never can be poorer than he is now, and he calculates to eat
on Job for the rest of his natural life. There's a good deal of his
grandfather in Bud.
You needn't worry about my acquaintance with Mabel. She's bully good
sort and always ready for a good time in good company. But just because
a fellow is civil to her doesn't jump her to the conclusion that he sits
up nights trying to fit her name into metre. That's what I like about
her. A fellow can invite her to go golfing without any danger of her
knocking the ball into the first grove she sights that looks suitable
for a proposal. The girls are not as dead crazy to marry as they were
when you were young; I have proof positive of this. Even mother admits
that it is true.
Your matrimonial adages and observations please me quite considerably,
dear father. It's a long time since you had your little fling with
Cupid, and the world has moved a bit since then, but at the same time
you strike twelve pretty often. You warn me against marrying a poor girl
who's been raised like a rich one; I can think of but one thing worse,
and that's marrying a rich girl who's been raised like a poor one. And
what you say about picking out a good-looking wife is eminently sane, if
not always practicable. I'm bound to observe, however, that if you'd put
your theory into practice when you married, I'd probably be a good bit
handsomer than I am. As for Mabel, she wouldn't marry me if I could move
the whole Graham plant into her father's backyard on the wedding
morning. Her father's curbstone brokerage in wheat may not be as
high-class or as remunerative as trying out hog fat, but it's certainly
less malodorous.
Besides, Mabel has aspirations. Although I am not in her confidence, she
is known as committed to the theory that love in a cottage--or its
municipal equivalent, a flat--is an obsolete form of existence. The
legitimate inference is that the eligible men who are several times
millionaires in their own right had better wear smoked glasses when they
get up against Mabel. Marriage, to date, does not appeal to me strongly.
I hope to trot quite a number of speedy miles alone before I have to
slow down under a double hitch. Naturally, considering the fact that I
am your son and in view of your business, I have not escaped a few
attacks of "calf love." I suppose it is as inevitable as the measles.
The worse case I ever had was when, in my first year at Cambridge, I
made desperate love to the accompanist who banged the piano for the Glee
Club rehearsals. She was a widow with a small child who always
accompanied her, and her desolateness appeared to touch a hidden,
sympathetic chord in my nature. Whatever the cause, I was dippy for
fair. I fairly bombarded her with music, and the kid must have thought
me an edition _de luxe_ of Santa Claus. It's only fair to say that she
seemed to try to avoid me, but I was not to be turned aside. I insisted
on seeing her to her door after rehearsals, and then stood under her
window for hours, like a cross between a hitching post and a jackass.
She was courteous, almost maternal, in her attitude towards me. The boys
said she was thirty-five, but I scorned them. What was age to love,
which is eternity.
Sometimes she smiled at me and I bounded up into the seventh heaven,
although I often wondered if she was only too well-bred not to laugh
outright. (Her father and husband had both been connected with Harvard.)
She was pretty; I have no doubt of that, even now; but her hair was
flaming red. I called it Titian then, but love is color-blind with all
the rest. The "fatal day" came in about six weeks. I proposed in the
front hall of her boarding-house and she took me into the parlor and
closed the door. That would have been the overture to a
breach-of-promise suit or a Dakota divorce purchased by my loving papa,
if she had been some women, but she wasn't. She thanked me for the
honor--I have since realized that she was not afraid of a white lie--and
then she began to try to argue me out of it. She referred to the
disparity in our ages, to her widowhood and my youth, to the difference
in our stations, etc. Of course I pooh-poohed it all and vowed
everlasting devotion. I dimly recollect that I made some mention of the
Charles River. After I had delivered a passionate oration that would
have given a long-time discount to Demosthenes and Romeo rolled into
one, she looked at me searchingly a moment and then rose and said:
"Very well, I will marry you--on one condition."
What were conditions to me? I--you know, just the usual. I wanted to
name the day then and there, and the next day at that, but she insisted
upon the condition.
"I will go to my room," she said, "and put the condition in writing,
that there may never be any doubt in the future."
When she returned she placed in my hand a sealed envelope and exacted a
pledge that I would not open it until I reached my room.
"If, when you know the condition," she said at parting, "you are still
determined on marriage, you will find me in till noon to-morrow."
I ran all the way to the dormitory, and when I reached my rooms I was so
nervous that it took me five minutes to unlock the door and five more to
light a match. Then I sat down at my study table,--for the first time in
some weeks--tore open the envelope, spread out the single sheet of paper
it contained, and read:
"The condition upon which I will entertain an offer of marriage from you
is this: I am, unfortunately, unduly sensitive about the color of my
hair. Will you dye yours the same red to keep me in countenance?"
I scarcely imagine she waited till noon the next day,--that is, if she
had anything to do. She probably explained to the kid that Santa Claus
had died suddenly. I didn't recover my self-respect nor my common sense
for a week. When I did I sent her a box of flowers and enclosed a note
in which I said that ever afterwards I should regard red hair as the
accompaniment of strong common sense.
As for now, there is scarcely any danger, as you suggest, of a girl
marrying me for your money--that is, if she has seen you. You look as if
you were a goodly representative of a line of ancestors dating back to
the original Methusalah. Natural demise is evidently afar off, and
really there is nothing about you to suggest that you are likely to blow
out the gas in the next hotel you stop at.
As for love, I've none of the symptoms. There isn't a girl in Chicago
who can boast that I've let her beat me at golf. Almost all girls are
all right to meet occasionally, but when you're picking one to sit
opposite you at breakfast every morning you want to be sure you will get
one who will not take away your appetite. It's safer, I believe, to
select a wife for what she is not rather than for what she is. Al
Packard--you know him--with his father on the Board of Trade--married
his wife, Sophie Trent, because she was a brilliant conversationalist.
Now he has applied for a divorce for the same reason. A man and his wife
should be one, of course, but the question often is, which one? It is
rather trying to the male disposition to have the wife the one and the
husband the cipher on the other side of the plus sign.
That you may feel more confidence in me, I will make a confession. I
_was_ a bit smitten last fall. I won't tell the girl's name. She had
really done nothing to encourage me. I called one afternoon and her
little sister received me and said, "Sister's out."
"Tell her I called, Susie, will you?"
"I did," she smiled back.
That ended my pool-selling on that race.
You don't say anything about your condition at the Vattery, nor when you
are coming home. You needn't hurry, necessarily, for Ma's disquiet
about your whereabouts has quite disappeared. It seems that old
Wheatleigh, who bobbed up at the house the other night, must have
divined her suspicions, for he remarked casually that he'd just seen you
at the Hot Springs and that you were looking out of sight. The odd part
of it was that he hadn't been anywhere near Arkansas. It's curious how a
woman will believe all men but her own husband.
I think I must be making a hit at this billing business, for I hear a
rumor about the place that I'm to be sent out collecting. I sincerely
hope you'll use what influence you've got to prevent this, for I can't
even collect my thoughts in this porkery, much less gather in accounts
due it outside. I'm afraid I've got too much conscience to face debtors
to Graham & Co.
Your heartwhole son,
P.
P.S.--Talking about women suggests that I tell you that old Mrs. De
Lancey Cartwright is evidently heartbroken over her husband's loss,
although he's been dead six months. Her mourning is so deep that her
hair has turned black again.
LETTER No. X.
_First experiences "on the road" inspire little confidence on the part
of Pierrepont either in himself, the Graham goods, or country hotels._