“I don't know,” he said, and laughed. “It seems perilous.”
I tore his ring from my finger and threw it in his face. It struck his
forehead and fell to the floor without any sound. There was a tiny red
cut on his forehead.
“That is your engagement ring,” he said.
“Take it away. I want nothing more to do with you,” I cried--very
foolishly, for I did, and my anger was going off in fright. He turned
around and went from the house. The maid found the ring in the morning.
Mr. Solley had left Wimberton that night. Well, my dear, that is all. I
thought he would have come back. It seemed as if he might. I am so old
now that I do not mind talking, but I was proud then, and women are not
permitted to be very proud. Do your romances tell you that women are
foolish and men are sometimes hard on them?
That is not good romance at all, but if you will come to see me again
I will tell you much better romances than mine that I have heard, for
other people's lives are interesting, even if mine has been quite dull.
Will you put this letter away to remember me by? But do not think of me
as a complaining old woman, for I have had a long life of leisure and
many friends. I do not think any one who really cares for me will do so
the less for my living at the Institute, and only those we love are of
real importance to us. It is kind of you to visit me.
_Your Affectionate Friend._
So half a century is put lightly aside; Miss Lucia has found it quite
dull; and here is the year 1885, when, as every one knows, John Solley
came back to Wimberton, a tall old man with a white mustache, heavy
brows, and deep eyes. Men thought it an honor to the town that the great
and rich Mr. Solley, so dignified a man, should return to spend his last
days in Wimberton. He would be its ornamental citizen, the proper leader
of its aristocracy. But Babbie Cutting thought of another function. What
matter for the melancholy waste of years, fifty leagues across? Love
should walk over it triumphant, unwearied, and find a fairer romance
at the end. Were there not written in the books words to that effect?
Babbie moved in a world of dreams, where knights were ever coming home
from distant places, or, at least, where every one found happiness after
great trouble. She looked up into Mr. Solley's eyes and thought them
romantic to a degree. When she heard he had never married the thing
seemed as good as proved. And the little old lady at the Institute with
the old-fashioned rolled curls above her ears--what a sequel!
It was a white winter day. The elms looked so cold against the sky that
it was difficult to remember they had ever been green, or believe it was
in them to put forth leaves once more. The wind drove the sharp-edged
particles of snow directly in Babbie's face, and she put her head down,
covering her mouth with her furs. She turned in at the Solley house,
and found herself in the drawing-room, facing that tall, thin,
military-looking old man, and feeling out of breath and troubled what to
do first. But Mr. Solley was not a man to let any girl whatever be ill
at ease, and surely not one with cheeks and eyes and soft hair like
Babbie Cutting. Presently they were experienced friends. Babbie sat in
Mr. Solley's great chair and stretched her hands toward the fire. Mr.
Solley was persuaded to take up his cigar again.
“I had not dared to hope,” he said, “that my native place would welcome
me so charmingly. I have made so many new friends, or rather they seemed
to be friends already, though unknown to me, that I seem to begin life
again. I seem to start it all over. I should have returned sooner.”
“Oh, I'm sure you should have,” said Babbie, eagerly. “And do you know
who is living at the Institute now?”
“The Institute? I had almost forgotten the Institute, and I am a
trustee, which is very neglectful of duty. Who is living at the
Institute now?”
“Miss Lucia Gore.”
Mr. Solley was silent, and looked at Babbie oddly under his white
eyebrows, so that her cheeks began to burn, and she was not a little
frightened, though quite determined and eager.
“Miss Lucia lost all her money when the banks failed, and she sold the
Gore house, and got enough interest to pay her dues and a little more;
but it seems so sad for Miss Lucia, because people will patronize her,
not meaning to. But they 're so stupid--or, at least, it doesn't seem
like Miss Lucia.”
“I did not know she was living,” said Mr. Solley, quietly.
“Oh, how could you--be that way!”
Mr. Solley looked steadily at Babbie, and it seemed to him as if her
face gave him a clue to something that he had groped for in the darkness
of late, as if some white mist were lifted from the river and he could
see up its vistas and smoky cataracts. How could he be that way? It is
every man's most personal and most unsolved enigma--how he came to be
that way, to be possible as he is. Up the river he saw a face somewhat
like Babbie's, somewhat more imperious, but with the same pathetic
eagerness and desire for abundance of life. How could young John Solley
become old John Solley? Looking into Babbie's eyes, he seemed able to
put the two men side by side.
“At one time, Miss Barbara,” he said, “--you will forgive my saying
so,--I should have resented your reference. Now I am only thinking how
kind it is of you to forget that I am old.”
Babbie did not quite understand, and felt troubled, and not sure of her
position.
“Mr. Solley,” she said, “I--I have a letter from Miss Lucia. Do you
think I might show it to you?”
“It concerns me?”
“Y-yes.”
He walked down the room and back again.
“I don't know that you ought, but you have tempted me to wish that you
would. Thank you.” He put on his glasses and read it slowly. Babbie
thought he read it like a business letter.
“He ought to turn pale or red,” she thought. “Oh, he oughtn't to wear
his spectacles on the end of his nose!”
Mr. Solley handed back the letter.
“Thank you, Miss Barbara,” he said, and began to talk of her
great-grandmother Cutting.
Babbie blinked back her sudden tears. It was very different from
a romance, where the pages will always turn and tell you the story
willingly, where the hero always shows you exactly how he feels. She
thought she would like to cry somewhere else. She stood up to go.
“I'm sorry I'm so silly,” she said, with a little gulp and trying to be
dignified.
Mr. Solley looked amused, so far as that the wrinkles deepened about his
eyes.
“Will you be a friend of mine?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Babbie, plaintively, but she did not think she would. How
could she, and he so cold, so prosaic! She went out into the snow, which
was driving down Main Street from the Institute. It was four by the town
clock.
They said in Wimberton that Mr. Solley left his house at seven o'clock
in the evening, and that Stephen, the gardener, held an umbrella in
front of him to keep off the storm all the way up the hill to the
Institute. And they said, too, that the lights were left burning in
the Solley house, and the fire on the hearth, and that the book he
was reading when Babbie went in lay open on the table. The fire burned
itself out. Stephen came in late, closed the book, and put out the
lights, and in the morning went about town saying that Mr. Solley was to
enter the Institute as a beneficiary.
But it is a secret that on that snowy evening Mr. Solley and Miss Lucia
sat in the great east parlor of the Institute, with a lamp near by,
but darkness in all the distances about them. His hands were on his
gold-headed cane; Miss Lucia's rolls of white curls were very tidy over
her ears, and her fingers were knitting something placidly. She was
saying it was “quite impossible. One doesn't want to be absurd at
seventy-five.”
“I suppose not,” said Mr. Solley. “I shouldn't mind it. What do you
think of the other plan?”
“If you want my permission to be a beneficiary,” said Miss Lucia, with
her eyes twinkling, “I think it would be a proper humiliation for you. I
think you deserve it.”
“It would be no humiliation.”
“It was for me--some.”
“It shall be so no more. I'll make them wish they were all old enough to
do the same--hem--confound them!”
“Did you think of it that way, John?”
Mr. Solley was silent for some moments.
“Do you know, I have been a busy man,” he said at last, “but there was
nothing in it all that I care to think over now. And to-day, for the
first time, that seemed to me strange. It was shown to me--that is, I
saw it was strange. We have only a few years left, and you will let
me be somewhat near you while they pass. Isn't that enough? It seems a
little vague. Well, then, yes. I thought of it that way, as you say. Do
you mind my thinking of it that way?”
Miss Lucia's eyes grew a little tearful, but she managed to hide it
by settling her glasses. Seventy-five years in a small town make the
opinions of one's neighbors part of the structure of existence. It was
bitter, the thought that Main Street tacitly patronized her.
“Why, no, I don't mind.”
She dropped her knitting and laughed suddenly.
“I think, John,” she said, “that I missed marrying a very nice man.”
Mr. Solley's glasses fell off with surprise. He put them on again and
chuckled to himself.
“My father used to call me a--hem--a fool. He used to state things more
accurately than you did.”
After all, there was no other institute like Wimberton's. The standards
of other places were no measure for our conduct, and the fact that such
things were not seen elsewhere was a flattering reason why they should
be seen in Wimberton; namely, only five beneficiaries, and one of them
a rich man and a trustee. It was singular, but it suited Wimberton to
be singular. One thing was plain to all, that if Mr. Solley was a
beneficiary, then to be a beneficiary was a dignified, well-bred, and
suitable thing. But one thing was not plain to all, why he chose to be
a beneficiary. Babbie Cutting went up to the Institute, and coming back,
wept for pure sentiment in her white-curtained room, with the picture on
the wall of Sir Lancelot riding down by the whirling river, the island,
and the gray-walled castle of Shalott.
I remember well the great ball and reception that Mr. Solley gave at the
Institute to celebrate his entry, and how we all paid our respects
to the five beneficiaries, four old men, who were gracious, but
patronizing,--one with gold eye-glasses and gold-headed cane,--and Miss
Lucia, with the rolled curls over her ears. The Institute, from that
time on, looked down on Main Street with a different air, and never lost
its advantage. It seemed to many that the second Solley had refounded it
for one of those whims that are ornamental in the rich. Babbie Cutting
said to her heart, “He refounded it for Miss Lucia.”
There was nowhere in Wimberton such dignified society as at the
Institute. Even so that the last visitor of all seemed only to come
by invitation, and to pay his respects with proper ceremony: “Sir, or
madam, I hope it is not an inconvenient time,” or similar phrase.
“Oh, not at all. It seems very dark around.”
“Will you take my arm? The path is steep and worn, and here is a small
matter of a river, as you see. I regret that the water is perhaps a
trifle cold. Yes, one hears so much talk about the other side that one
hardly knows what to think. There is no hurry. But at this point I say
good night and leave you. When you were young you often heard good night
said when the morning was at hand. May it be so. Good night.”