|Not quite two centuries of human life have gone quietly in Wimberton,
and for the most part it has been on Main and Chester Streets. Main
Street is a quarter of a mile long and three hundred feet wide, with
double roads, and between them a clean lawn shaded by old elms. Chester
Street is narrow and crowded with shops, and runs from the middle of
Main down-hill to the railway and the river. It is the business street
for Wimberton and the countryside of fifteen miles about. Main Street
is surrounded by old houses of honorable frontage, two churches, and the
Solley Institute, which used to be called “Solley's Folly” by frivolous
aliens.
Mr. Solley, who owned the mines up the river and the foundries that have
been empty and silent these many years, founded it in 1840. At the time
I remember best the Institute had twenty-one trustees, lady patronesses,
matrons, and nurses; and three beneficiaries, or representatives of the
“aged, but not destitute, of Hamilton County.” That seemed odd to the
alien.
Mr. Solley need not have been so rigid about the equipment and
requirements of admission, except that he had in mind an institution of
dignity. It stood at the head of Main Street, with wide piazzas like a
hotel. The aristocracy of old Wimberton used to meet there and pass the
summer afternoons. The young people gave balls in the great parlors, and
the three beneficiaries looked on, and found nothing to complain of in
the management. What matter if it were odd? True Wimberton folk never
called the Institute a folly, but only newcomers, before years of
residence made them endurable and able to understand Wimberton. Failure
is a lady of better manners than Success, who is forward, complacent,
taking herself with unpleasant seriousness. Imagine the Institute
swarming with people from all parts of the county, a staring success in
beneficence!
Mr. Solley's idea was touched with delicacy. It was not a home for
Hamilton County poor, but for those who, merely lingering somewhat on
the slow descent, found it a lonely road. For there is a period in
life, of varying length, when, one's purposes having failed or been
unfulfilled, the world seems quite occupied by other people who are busy
with themselves. Life belongs at any one time to the generation which
is making the most of it. A beneficiary was in a certain position of
respectable humility. But I suppose it was not so much Mr. Solley's
discrimination as that in 1840 his own house was empty of all but a
few servants; and so out of his sense of loneliness grew his idea of a
society of the superannuated. That was the Solley Institute.
It is not so difficult to recreate old Wimberton of seventy years back,
for the same houses stood on Main Street, and the familiar names were
then heard--Solley, Gore, Cutting, Gilbert, Cass, Savage. The elms were
smaller, with fewer lights under them at night, and gravel paths instead
of asphalt.
One may even call up those who peopled the street, whom time has
disguised or hidden away completely. Lucia Gore has dimples,--instead of
those faded cheeks one remembers at the Institute,--and quick movements,
and a bewildering prettiness, in spite of the skirts that made women
look like decanters or tea-bells in 1830. She is coming down the gravel
sidewalk with a swift step, a singular fire and eagerness of manner,
more than one would suppose Miss Lucia to have once possessed.
And there is the elder Solley, already with that worn, wintry old face
we know from his portrait at the Institute, and John Solley, the son,
both with high-rolled collars, tall hats, and stiff cravats. Women said
that John Solley was reckless, but one only notices that he is very
tall.
“I'm glad to see you are in a hurry, too, my dear. We might hurry up the
wedding among us all,” says the elder Solley, with a grim smile and a
bow. “Ha! Glad to see you in a hurry;” and he passes on, leaving the two
together. Lucia flushes and seems to object.
Is not that Mrs. Andrew Cutting in the front window of the gabled house
directly behind them? Then she is thinking how considerate it is, how
respectful to Main Street, that John and Lucia are to marry.
The past springs up quickly, even to little details. Mrs. Cutting wears
a morning cap, has one finger on her cheek, and is wondering why John
looks amused and Lucia in a temper. “He will have to behave himself,”
thinks Mrs. Cutting. “Lucia is--dear me, Lucia is very decided. I don't
really know that John likes to behave himself.” And all these people of
1830 are clearly interested in their own affairs, and care little for
those who will look back at them, seventy years away.
Love climbs trees in the Hesperides, day in and out, very busy with
their remarkable fruit, the dragon lying beneath with indifferent jaws.
Do we observe how recklessly the young man reaches out, and how slightly
he knows the nature of his footing? The branches of such apple trees as
bear golden fruit are notoriously brittle. He might drop into the lazy
throat of Fate by as easy an accident as the observer into figures of
speech, and the dragon care little about the matter. That indifference
of Fate is hard, for it seems an expense for no value received by any
one. We are advised to be as little melancholy as possible, and charge
it to profit and loss.
It is well known that John Solley left Wimberton late one night in
October, 1830. In the morning the two big stuccoed houses of Gore and
Solley looked at each other across the street under the yellow arch of
leaves with that mysterious expression which they ever after seemed to
possess to the dwellers on Main Street. And the Gores' housemaid picked
up a glittering something from the fell of the bearskin rug on the
parlor floor.
“Land! It's Miss Lucia's engagement ring. She's a careless girl!”
Plannah was a single woman of fifty, and spoke with strong moral
indignation.
Some mornings later Mr. Solley came stiffly down his front steps,
crossed the street under the yellow elms, and went in between the white
pillars of the Gore house. Mr. Gore was a middle-aged man, chubby,
benevolent, gray-haired, deliberate. He sank back in his easy-chair in
fat astonishment.
“Oh, dear me! I don't know.”
Lucia was called.
“Mr. Solley wishes to ask you--a--something.”
“I wish to ask if my son has treated you badly,” said Mr. Solley, most
absurdly.
“Not at all, Mr. Solley.”
Lucia's eyes were suddenly hot and shining.
“I beg your pardon, but if John is a scoundrel, you will do me a favor
by telling me so.”
“Where is he? I shall do nothing of the kind.”
“I am about to write to my son.”
“And that's nothing to me,” she cried, and went swiftly out of the room.
“Oh, I suppose he's only a fool,” said Mr. Solley, grimly. “I knew that.
Spirited girl, Gore, very. Good morning.”
“Dear me!” said Mr. Gore, mildly, rubbing his glasses. “How quickly they
do things!”
Elderly gentlemen whose wives are dead and children adventuring in the
Hesperides should take advice. Mrs. Cutting might have advised against
this paragraph in Mr. Solley's letter:
“I have taken the trouble to inquire whether you have been acting as a
gentleman should. Inasmuch as Miss Lucia seemed to imply that the matter
no longer interests her, I presume she has followed her own will, which
is certainly a woman's right. With respect to the Michigan lands, I
inclose surveys. You will do well,” etc.
But Mr. Solley had not for many years thought of the Hesperides as a
more difficult piece of property to survey than another. Men and women
followed their own wills there as elsewhere, and were quite right, so
long as they did business honorably. And Mr. Gore had been a managed and
advised man all his wedded life, and had not found, that it increased
his happiness. That advice had always tended to embark him on some
enterprise that was fatiguing.
“A good woman, Letitia,” often ran Mr. Gore's reflections; and then,
with a sense of furtiveness, as if Letitia somewhere in the spiritual
universe might overhear his thought, “a little masterful--a--spirited,
very.”
But it was hard for Wimberton people to have a secret shut up among
them. It was not respectful to Main Street, with John Solley fleeing
mysteriously in the night and coming no more to Wimberton, and Lucia
going about with her nose in the air, impossible to sympathize with.
Some months passed, and Lucia seemed more subdued, then very quiet
indeed, with a liking to sit by her father's side, to Mr. Gore's slight
uneasiness. She might wish him to do something.
He knew no more than Wimberton what had happened to send John westward
and Lucia to sitting beside him in unused silence; but he differed from
Wimberton in thinking it perhaps not desirable to know. He would pat
her hand furtively, and polish his glasses, without seeming to alter the
situation. Once he asked timidly if it were not dull for her.
“No, father.”
“I've thought sometimes--sometimes--a--I don't remember what I was going
to say.”
Lucia's head went down till it almost rested on his knee.
“Father--do you know--where John is?”
“Why--a--of course, Mr. Solley--”
“No, no, father! No!”
“Well, I might inquire around--a--somewhere.”
“No! Oh, promise me you won't ask any one! Promise!”
“Certainly, my dear,” said Mr. Gore, very much confused.
“It is no matter,” said Lucia, eagerly.
Mr. Gore thought for several minutes, but no idea seemed to occur to
him, and it relieved him to give it up.
Months have a way of making years by a rapid arithmetic, and years that
greet us with such little variety of expression are the more apt to
step behind with faint reproach and very swiftly. Mr. Solley founded
the Institute in 1840, and died. The Solley house stood empty, and Miss
Lucia Gore by that time was living alone, except for the elderly maiden,
Hannah. Looking at the old elms of Wimberton, grave and orderly, there
is much to be said for a vegetable life. There is no right dignity but
in the slow growths of time.
The elms increased their girth; the railway crept up the river; the
young men went to Southern battle-fields, and some of them returned;
children of a second generation walked in the Hesperides; the Institute
was reduced to three beneficiaries; Main Street smelled of tar from the
asphalt sidewalks; Chester Street was prosperous. Banks failed in '73,
and “Miss Lucia has lost everything,” said Wimberton gossip.
The Solley house was alternately rented and empty, the Gore house was
sold, Miss Lucia went up to the Institute, and gossip in Wimberton woke
again.
“Of course the Institute is not like other places, but then--”
“Miss Lucia was such a lady.”
“But it's a charity, after all.”
“Very sensible of Miss Lucia, I'm sure.”
“She was engaged to old Institute Solley's son once, but it ended with a
bump.”
“Then Miss Lucia goes to the Institute who might have gone to the Solley
house.”
“Oh, that is what one doesn't know.”
“Miss Lucia a beneficiary! But isn't that rather embarrassing?”
“I wonder if she--”
“My dear, it was centuries ago. One does n't think of love-affairs fifty
years old. They dry up.”
“Respectable, and you pay a little.”
“But a charity really.”
That year the public library was built on Main and Gilbert Streets, the
great elm fell down in the Institute yard, Mrs. Andrew Cutting died
at ninety-eight, with good sense and composure, and here is a letter
written by Miss Lucia to Babbie Cutting. Babbie Cutting, I remember, had
eyes like a last-century romance, never fancy-free, and her dolls loved
and were melancholy, when we were children together under the elms in
Wimberton. The letter is written in thin, flowing lines on lavender
paper.
_My dear Child_: I am afraid you thought that your question offended me,
but it did not, indeed. I was engaged to Mr. John Solley many years ago.
I think I had a very hasty temper then, which I think has quite wasted
away now, for I have been so much alone. But then I sometimes fell into
dreadful rages. Mr. Solley was a very bold man, not easily influenced or
troubled, who laughed at my little faults and whims more than I thought
he should.
You seemed to ask what sudden and mysterious thing happened to us, but,
my dear, one's life is chiefly moved by trifles and little accidents and
whims. Mr. Solley came one night, and I fancied he had been neglecting
me, for I was very proud, more so than ordinary life permits women to
be. I remember that he stood with his hands behind him, smiling. He
looked so easy and strong, so impossible to disturb, and said, “You're
such a little spitfire, Lucia,” and I was so angry, it was like hot
flames all through my head.