LOVELL "POPS THE QUESTION."
One morning, ere we had breakfasted at the Ark, Lovell Barlow, like some
new-fangled orb of day, was seen to surmount the ruddy verge of the
horizon. He bore a gun upon his shoulders, and advanced with a singularly
martial and self-confident tread. As he entered the Ark, he placed the
gun against the wall, and sat down and folded his arms, and looked as
though he could be brave without it.
"Well, Madeline," said he, with a determined gaze fixed straight before
him on vacuity, and with a desperate affectation of spontaneity in his
tone--"Well, Madeline, mother and father have gone to Aunt Marcia's, _I_
suppose to spend a week, _I_ suppose--ahem!--ahem!--_I_ suppose so."
"You don't say so, Lovell!" exclaimed Madeline. "And what'll poor Robin
do now, Lovell? Oh, what'll poor Robin do now?"
"Yes," said he gravely; "that's what _they_ thought, ahem! _They_ thought
they should stay a week, _they_ thought so, certainly."
"Wall, I declar' for't, Lovell," said Grandma; "now's the time you'd
ought to have a wife. Jest to think how comf'table 'twould be fu ye, now,
instead of stayin' there all alone, if ye only had a nice little wife to
home, to cook for ye, and watch for ye, and keep ye company, and----"
"_I_ think so," exclaimed Lovell, giving a quick glance backward in the
direction of his gun. "Certainly, ahem! _I_ think so. _I_ do."
"Lookin' for game? Eh, Lovell?" inquired Grandpa.
"Pa," said Grandma, solemnly: "I wish you'd put another stick of wood in
the stove."
Grandpa was awake now, and a youthful and satanic gleam shone from under
his shaggy eyebrows; he glanced at me, too, as was his habit on such
occasions, as though I had a sort of sympathy for and fellowship with him
in his bold iniquities of speech.
But the guileless Lovell interpreted not the deeper meaning of Grandpa's
words.
"I think some of it, Cap'n," he answered unsmilingly, and then continued:
"It's been--ahem!--it's been a very mild winter on the--ahem!--I should
say on the Cape. It's been a very mild winter on the Cape, Miss
Hungerford."
Lovell's nervous glance falling again on his gun, took me in wildly on
the way.
I had been directing some letters that I expected to have an opportunity
to send that morning.
"I beg your pardon," I said, looking up. "Yes, you don't often have such
mild winters on the Cape, Mr. Barlow!"
"No'm, we don't," said Lovell, "not very often, ahem!" He moved his chair
a peg nearer the gun. "Quite a--ahem!--quite a little fall of snow we had
last night, Miss Hungerford."
"Any deer tracks? Eh, Lovell?" inquired Grandpa.
"Pa," said Grandma; "I wish you'd fill Abigail--seems to me she smells
sorter dry."
"She ain't, for sartin', ma," replied Grandpa, giving the tea-kettle a
shake to verify his assertions; "and Rachel's chock full!"
Grandma then gave Grandpa a meaning look, and put her fingers on her
lips.
"Well, Cap'n, I saw more rabbit tracks," replied Lovell, innocently
amused at the ludicrousness of the old Captain's speech. "I did,
rather--ahem!--yes, I saw more rabbit tracks--ahem!--ahem!" He gave his
chair a desperate hitch gunward. "I don't suppose they ever do such a
thing, where you live, Miss Hungerford, as to go--ahem!--to go
sleigh-riding, now, do they, Miss Hungerford?"
"Why, yes," I said; "they always do in the winter. I haven't been home
through the winter for a year or two past, but I remember what splendid
times we used to have."
I was thinking particularly of a certain snow-fall, that came when I was
seventeen years old, and John Cable had just returned from College, with
a moustache and patriarchal airs.
Some grinning recollections of the past were also floating through
Grandpa's mind. The look of reprehensible mirth was still in his eyes,
and he showed his teeth, which gleamed oddly white and strong in contrast
with his grizzled countenance.
"I remember"--he began.
"Pa," said Grandma, with an expressive wink of one eye, and only part of
her face visible around the corner of the doorway, through which Madeline
had already disappeared; "pa--I wish you'd come out here a minute, now--I
want to see ye."
"Wall, wall, can't ye see me here, ma? What makes ye so dreadful anxious
to see me all of a sudden?" inquired Grandpa. But his face did not lose
its thoughtful illumination. "Wall, as I was a tellin' ye, teacher," he
went on; "I was only a little shaver then--a little shaver--and my father
had one of those 'ere pungs, as we used to call 'em, that he used to ride
around in--and he was a dreadful man to swear, my father was,
teacher--Lordy, how he would swear!----"
"Pa!" said the great calm voice at the door; "I'm a waitin' for you to
come out, so't I can shet the door."
"Wall, wall, ma, shet the door if ye want to, I've no objections to
havin' the door shet----and we had an old hoss, teacher. Lordy, how lean
he was, lean as a skate, and----"
"Bijonah Keeler!"
"Yis, yis, I'm a comin', ma, I'm a comin'." And wonderful indeed, I
thought must have been the tale, which, even under these exasperating
circumstances, kept Grandpa's face a-grin as he ran and shuffled towards
the door.
The door was quickly closed behind him by other hands than his own, and
then I observed that Lovell's chair had been drawn into frightfully close
proximity to his gun.
"I--I think it's pleasanter, that is--I--I sometimes think it's warmer
for t-t-two in a sleigh, than--a--'tis--for one, don't you, Miss
Hungerford?" said Lovell, and gasped for breath and continued; "Now, I
think of it, you--you wouldn't think of such a thing as going to ride
with me to-night, would you, Miss Hungerford? You--you wouldn't think of
such a thing, would you now?"
"Why--if you are kind enough to invite me to go sleigh-riding with you,
Mr. Barlow?"
"_I_ think so;" said Lovell, grasping his gun, and becoming immediately
pale, though composed. "Yes'm, _I_ think so, certainly, _I_ do."
"Thank you, I will go with pleasure," I said.
"Thank you, Miss Hungerford," said Lovell, rising hurriedly. "I wish you
a pleasant day--_I_ do, with pleasure, and I hope that nothing will happen
to prevent!"
And Lovell marched back across the fields as valiantly as a man may, who,
on occasions of doubt and peril, takes the precaution to go suitably
armed.
During the day the Wallencampers indulged in a mode of recreation,
suggestive of that unique sort of inspiration to which they not
unfrequently fell victims.
They attached a horse to a boat, a demoralized old boat, which had
hitherto occupied a modest place amid the _débris_ surrounding the Ark,
and thus equipped, they rode or sailed up and down the lane. It proved a
stormy sea, and often, as the boat capsized, the air was rent with
screams of mock terror and yells of unaffected delight.
Thus the youth of Wallencamp, yes, and those who heeded not the swift
decline of years, by reason of the immortal freshness of their spirits,
disported themselves. And I was not amazed, catching a glimpse through
the school-house windows of this joyous boat on one of her return voyages
up the lane, to see Grandma Keeler swaying wildly in the stern.
Meanwhile, I managed to keep my flock indoors. But when, at four o'clock,
I took my ruler in hand to give the usual signal of dismissal, the
Phenomenon's heels had already vanished through the window, and the
repressed animal spirits of a whole barbaric epoch sounded in the whoop
with which the Modoc shot through the door.
Finally, I, myself, rode up the lane in the boat. The path was well worn
by this time, and there was no danger of a catastrophe. It seemed to me a
novel performance enough, but I had not yet been to ride in Lovell's
sleigh.
Lovell came very early, and preferred to wait outside until I had
finished eating my supper. Then, with that deep self-satisfaction which
predominated in my soul, even over its appreciation of the novel and
amusing, I donned my seal-brown cloak, and stepping out of the door,
gathered up my skirts, and smiled at Mr. Lovell with a pair of seal-brown
eyes, and was not surprised to hear him ejaculate, coughing slightly;
"Ahem! _I_ think so, certainly, yes'm, _I_ think so; _I_ do."
Lovell's was the only sleigh in Wallencamp, and, as he informed me, it
was one that he had himself constructed. It had, indeed, already
suggested to my mind the workings of no ordinary intellect. Perhaps its
most impressive features were its lowness and its height--the general
lowness and length of its body, into which one could step easily, the
floor being covered with a carpet of straw, suggesting field-mice; and
the unusual height to which it rose in the back, being surmounted by two
glittering knobs, like those on the head-board of an old-fashioned
bedstead. Half-way down the back of this imposing structure the arms or
wings sprouted out, giving to the whole the appearance of an immense
Pterodactyl, or some other fossil bird of fabulous proportions, and
Effectually shutting in the occupants of the sleigh from any
Contemplation of the possible charms of the scenery. The seat was made
very low, and it was, perhaps, on this account that the horse seemed so
abnormally high. It was a white horse, and from our lowly position, there
seemed to be something awful and shadowy in the motions of its legs. The
red of sunset had not gone out of the sky when we started, and a pale
young moon was already getting up in the heavens, but we could see
neither fading sky nor rising moon, nor rock, nor tree, nor snowy
expanse, naught but the gigantic hoof-falls of our phantom steed.
Being thus hopelessly debarred from any communication with external
nature, and fearing to give myself up to my own thoughts, which were of a
somewhat dangerous character, I endeavored to engage my companion in
lively and cheerful converse by the way; but he was in a position of
actual physical suffering, for the reins were short--too short, that is,
to form a happy connecting link between him and the horse, and poor
Lovell was obliged to lean forward at an acute angle in order to grasp
them at all. Whenever the ghostly quadruped made a plunge forward, as he
not unfrequently did, Lovell was thrust violently down into the straw,
and throughout all this he comported himself with such firm and hopeless
dignity that, with the respect due to suffering, I was moved to witness
the struggle, at length, with silent commiseration. Once, having kept his
seat for a longer time than usual, Lovell said:--
"I'll give you a riddle, Miss Hungerford, _I_ will. Ahem! 'Why--why does
a hen go around the road,' Miss Hungerford?"
I posed my head in an attitude of deep thought.
"Because," Lovell hastened to say; "because she can't go across--no, that
wasn't right--why--ahem! why does a hen go _across_ the road, Miss
Hungerford?" and the next instant he was wallowing in the straw at my
feet.
My soul was filled with unutterable compassion for him.
"Because," I ventured, when Lovell reappeared again, affecting a tone of
lively inspiration: "because she can't go around it?"
"You--you've heard of it before!" gravely protested Lovell.
"I confess," said I, "that I have. It used to be my favorite riddle."
"It--it used to be mine, too," said Lovell. "It _used_ to be, Miss
Hungerford--ahem! It _used_ to be--You--you couldn't tell what I was
thinking of when I--ahem--when I started from home to-night, now, could
you, Miss Hungerford?" said Lovell, at length.
"I'm sure I couldn't, Mr. Barlow," said I: "but I hope it was something
very agreeable."
"But it wasn't," said Lovell; "that is, not very, Miss Hungerford; ahem!
not very. I was--I was--ahem! I was thinking of it, you know, of--of such
a thing as getting married, you know."
"I hope," said I, cheerfully, after a pause; "that as you consider the
subject longer, it will be a less painful one to you."
"I hope so, Miss Hungerford," said Lovell. "Ahem! I hope so, certainly;"
but there was little of that sanguine quality expressed in his tones.
The great white horse made another plunge forward, and Lovell recovered
himself with a desperate effort.
"What should you think now, Miss Hungerford," he continued, moistening
his parched lips; "if I should do such a thing as to--ahem!--as to speak
of such a thing as--ahem!--as something of that sort to you, now, Miss
Hungerford? Now, what should you think of such a thing? now, really?"
"I should think you were very inconsiderate," I said, "and would probably
regret your rashness afterwards."
"_I_ think so," said Lovell; "ahem! _I_ think so, Miss Hungerford; _I_
do, certainly."
After this it seemed as though a weight had been lifted from Lovell's
mind. He kept his seat better. His was not a buoyant spirit, but there
was, on this occasion, an air of repressed cheerfulness about him such as
I had never before seen him exhibit. I tried to think that it was a
joyous mental rebound from the contemplation of those dark riddles which
trouble humanity, "Why does the hen go across the road," etc.
After a brief pause, Lovell said; "You--you wouldn't mind if I should
sing a little now, now would you, Miss Hungerford?"
I assured him that I should be very glad to have him do so, and he sang,
I remember, all the rest of the way home. At the gate, I thanked him for
the ride and its cheerful vocal accompaniment, and Lovell said; "Do you
like to hear me sing, now? Do you--do you, really, now, Miss Hungerford?"
and turned away with a smile on his face to seek his home by the sea.
But Lovell was not long lonely, for, in less than a week, his father and
mother returned from their visit at Aunt Marcia's and brought to Lovell a
wife.
Mrs. Barlow herself informed me that "it was an awful shock to him, at
first, oh, dreadful! but he'd made up his mind to get married, and he'd
never a' done it in the world, if we hadn't took it into our own hands.
She was a good girl, and we knew it, and Lovell wasn't no more fit to
pick out a wife, anyway, than a chicken, not a bit more fit than a
chicken!"
This girl lived in the same town with Aunt Marcia, and was confidently
recommended by her to Lovell's parents as one who would be likely to make
him a wise and suitable helpmeet, and was, indeed, an uncommonly fair and
wholesome looking individual. She had a mind, too, whose clear, practical
common sense had never been obscured by the idle theories of romance. She
was pure and hearty and substantial. She was neither diffident, nor slow
of speech, nor vacillating. She came, at the invitation of Lovell's
parents, to marry Lovell, and if he had refused, she would have boxed his
ears as a wholesome means of correction, and married him on the spot.
So Lovell's destined wife was brought home to him in the morning, and in
the afternoon of that same day the connubial knot was tied.
Half an hour after the arrival of the bride, it was known throughout the
length and breadth of Wallencamp, to every one, I believe, save Lovell
himself, who was gathering driftwood a mile or two down the beach, that
Lovell was going to be married!
At three o'clock P.M., Brother Mark Barlow was despatched to West Wallen
for a minister.
Small scouts had been sent out to watch, where the road from the beach
winds into the main road, and when word was brought back that "Mark had
gone by," the Wallencampers proceeded to make all due preparations; and
soon might have been seen winding in a body towards the scene of
interest.
The small paraphernalia of invitations and wedding cards were unknown in
Wallencamp. The Wallencampers would have considered that there was little
virtue in a ceremony of any sort, performed without the sanction and
approval of their united presence.
In regard to the particular nature of this entertainment, there was some
snickering in the corners of the room, but the general aspect was
funereal.
The season during which, with Lovell at one end of the room, and the
bride at the other, we sat waiting the arrival of the minister, was as
solemn as anything I had ever known.
I made a congratulatory remark, in a low tone, to Mrs. Barlow, who sat at
my side with her hands clasped gazing first at Lovell and then at the
bride; but I was forced to experience the uncomfortable sensation of one
who has inadvertently spoken out loud in meeting. No one said anything.
The helpless snicker which started occasionally from Harvey Dole's
corner, and was echoed faintly from other quarters of the room, only
heightened, by, contrast, the effect of the succeeding gloom.
The bride was perfectly composed, with a high, natural color in her
cheeks, and an air of being duly impressed with the importance of the
occasion.
She had assumed a large white bonnet, though I do not think that she and
Lovell took so much as a stroll to the beach after the ceremony--and her
plump and shapely hands were encased in a pair of green kid gloves. She
gazed thoughtfully, at each occupant of the room in turn, not omitting
Lovell, who never once stirred or lifted his eyes.
Mr. William Barlow was silently passing the water, when Brother Mark
arrived with the minister.
That grave dignitary advanced with measured tread to a small stand,
draped with a long white sheet, that had been prepared for him in the
centre of the room.
He took off his gloves, and folded them; he took off his overcoat, and
laid it on the back of a chair; and if he had then reached down into his
pockets and taken out a rope, and proceeded to adjust a hanging-noose,
his audience could not have shown a more ghastly and breathless interest
in his performance.
"Will the parties"--his sonorous voice resounded through the awful
stillness--"Will the parties--about--to be joined--in holy
wedlock--now--come forward?"
As Lovell then arose and walked, with an automatic hitch in his legs,
across the room to his bride, there was about him all the stiffness and
pallor of the grave without its smile of peace.
"Lovell and Nancy"--arose the deep intonation--will you--now--join hands?
It was a warm strong hand in the green kid glove. Its grasp might have
sent a thrill of life through Lovell's rigid frame, for when the minister
inquired:
"And do you, Lovell, take this woman?" etc., etc.
Lovell bent his body, moved his lips, and replied in a strange, far-away
tone, "Yes'm, _I_ think so. _I_ do, certainly."
But when the question was put to the bride, she, Nancy, promised to take
Lovell to be her wedded husband, to love and cherish, yes, and to cleave
to, with a round, full "I do," that left no possible room for doubt in
the mind of any one present, and seemed to send back the flood of frozen
terror to Lovell's veins.
Lovell and Nancy were pronounced man and wife, and Nancy then divested
herself of her bonnet and gloves, and joined in the festivities which
followed with a hearty good-will, that proved her to be quite at home
among the Wallencampers, and won at once their affection and esteem. The
manner, particularly, in which she carried beans from her plate to her
mouth, gracefully balanced on the extreme verge of her knife, as an
adroit and finished work of art, provoked the wonder and admiration of
all those whose beans sometimes wandered and fell off by the way.
And all the while, Mrs. Barlow's adjectives flowed in a full and copious
stream.
"Oh, Lovell had been so wild," she said to me. "Oh, dreadful! But didn't
I think he looked like a husband now? So quick, too! Oh, yes, wasn't it
beautiful! Abbie Ann said he looked as though he'd been a husband fifteen
years!"
After the ceremony, Lovell had taken his pipe and retired a little from
the active scenes which were being enacted around him.
I saw him, as I was going away, standing in the door and looking out upon
the bay. I held out my hand to him, in passing. "I congratulate you, Mr.
Barlow," I said. Lovell put his hand to his mouth and coughed slightly
several times, as though he were striving to think of the polite thing to
say. Then he replied: "I--I--ahem! I wish you the same, Miss Hungerford,
_I_ do, certainly."
Lovell was not so pale as he had been, but looked very serious and
pensive with his eyes fixed on the mysterious depths of the ocean. Lovell
had propounded riddles to me, but never before had I caught such a
glimpse of the deeply philosophical workings of his mind.
"When you come to think of it, life--ahem--life is very uncertain, Miss
Hungerford."
I replied that it was very uncertain.
"And short, too, when you come to think of it. It's very short, too, Miss
Hungerford."
"Oh, yes," I answered, "very."
"Ahem! It was--it was dreadful sudden, somehow," said Lovell.
"I suppose so, Mr. Barlow," I replied gravely; "great and unexpected joys
are sometimes said to be as benumbing in their first effects as griefs
coming in the same way."
"_I_ think so," said Lovell. "Ahem! _I_ think so, Miss Hungerford, _I_
do, certainly."
Madeline joined me at the door, and I bade Lovell good-night.
We clambered down the cliffs, walking a little while along on the beach
on our way homeward.
It was growing dark, and the voice of the ocean was infinitely mournful
and sublime. No wonder, I thought, that life had seemed very short and
uncertain to Lovell as he stood in the door listening to the waves.
What a little thing it seemed indeed, comparatively--this life with its
fears and hopes, its poor idle jests and fleeting shows.
"And there shall be no more sea"--but this poor human soul that looks out
so blindly, and utters itself so feebly through the senses, shall live
for ever and ever.
"Lovell's folks have picked out a good wife for him, anyhow," said
Madeline, briskly. "She's got a sight more sense than anybody _he'd_ ever
a' picked out."
I crept back into my shell again. "I think so, certainly, Madeline," said
I, smiling at having unconsciously repeated Lovell's favorite phrase.
"She'll make Lovell all over, and get some new ideas into him, I can tell
you," said Madeline.
And though I did not stay in Wallencamp long enough to witness with my
own eyes the fulfillment of this prophecy, I know that it was abundantly
fulfilled--that Lovell soon recovered from the shock incident to his
wedding; that under the influence of his wholesome, active wife, and with
the weight of greater responsibilities, he grew more manly and admirable
in character, as well as happier, with each succeeding year; and that
Lovell's children--a joyful and robust group, adored of Mrs. Barlow,
senior--play on the "broad window seat" that looks off towards the sea.