“Alma was asleep!”
I read it aloud to myself in the safe solitude of my shaded library. I
had not heard then that Thackeray slapped his thigh exultantly after
describing the touch of pride Becky felt in her husband’s athletic
pummelling of her lover. I could have understood it fully at that
instant.
“Thackeray, my boy, that is a stroke of genius!” cried the great
author, aloud, in honest pride.
The small woman writer sat wearily back in her chair, and said—not
murmured: “I flatter myself _that_ is a neat touch!”
Then I found that my head ached. Moreover, it had a strange, empty
feeling. I compared it to a squeezed sponge. I likewise reminded myself
that I had not been out of the house for two days; that my father had
shaken his head when I told him it was “too hot for walking,” warning
me that I “must not throw away the good the country had done for me.”
He would ask me, at supper-time, if I had taken the admonition to heart.
I went off to my room, bathed, and dressed for a round of calls. This
I proceeded to make, keeping on the shady side of the street. I called
at three houses, and found everybody out. The sun was setting when I
stood in front of my mirror on my return, and laid aside bonnet and
mantle (we called it a “visite”). The red light from the west shot
across me while I was brushing up the hair the hot dampness had laid
flat. It struck me suddenly that I was looking rather well. I wore what
we knew as a “spencer” of thin, dotted white muslin. It would be a
“shirt-waist” to-day. It was belted at what was then a slim waist above
a skirt of “changeable” silk. Herbert had said it “reminded him of a
pale sunrise,” but there were faint green reflections among shimmering
pinks. There must be somebody in the immediate neighborhood upon whom
I might call while I was dressed to go out. A dart of self-reproach
followed swiftly upon the thought.
My old and favorite tutor, Mr. Howison, had broken down in health
two years after accepting a call to his first parish. An obstinate
affection of the throat made preaching impracticable. At the end of
a year of compulsory inaction, he resumed the practice of law in
Richmond, and within another twelve months married the woman he had
sought and won before his illness. They lived in a pleasant house upon
the next street, so near that we often “ran around” to see each other.
“Mary’s” younger sister had died during my absence from home, and as I
reminded myself, now, I ought to have called before this.
Half a square from her door, I recalled that the young clergyman who
was supplying Doctor Hoge’s pulpit while he was abroad, and whom I
had heard preach last Sunday, was staying at the Howison’s. It was
not right, in the eyes of the church, that he should go to a hotel,
and since he would go nowhere except as a boarder, the Howisons had
opened door and hearts to make him at home in his temporary charge.
He had given us an interesting sermon on Sunday, and made a pleasing
impression generally. I had not thought of him since, until almost at
the gate of my friends’ house. Then I said, inly:
“Should the youthful divine be hanging about the porch or yard, I’ll
walk on unconcernedly and postpone the call.”
Being familiar with the ways of young sprigs of divinity, and having
over twenty blood-relatives who had the right to prefix their baptismal
names by “The Reverend,” I had no especial fondness for the brand.
Furthermore, three callow clerics and one full-fledged had already
invited me to share parsonage and poverty with them. For all I had
one and the same reply. It might be my predestined lot, as certain
anxious friends began to hint, to live out my earthly days in single
blessedness; and, if the ancient anti-race-suicide apostles were to be
credited, then to lead apes in Hades for an indefinite period. I would
risk the terrors of both states sooner than take upon me the duties and
liabilities of a minister’s wife. Upon that I was determined.
The youthful divine was nowhere in sight. Nor did he show up during the
half-hour I passed with the Howisons. They proposed walking home with
me when I arose to go. Just outside the gate we espied a tall figure
striding up the street, swinging his cane in very unclerical style. Mr.
Howison stopped.
“Ah, Mr. Terhune! I was hoping you might join us.”
Then he introduced him to me. Of course, he asked permission to
accompany us, and we four strolled abreast through the twilight of the
embowered street. I had known the sister of Mr. Terhune, who, as the
widow of Doctor Hoge’s most intimate friend, was a frequent visitor to
Richmond. I asked civilly after her, and was answered as civilly. We
remarked upon the heat of the day and the fine sunset; then we were at
our gate, where my father and brother were looking out for me.
My escorts declined the invitation to enter garden and house; Mr.
Howison passed over to me a big bunch of roses he had gathered from his
garden and brought with him, and, having exchanged “Good-evenings,”
we three lingered at the gate to admire the flowers. There was no
finer collection of roses in any private garden in town than those
which were the lawyer’s pets and pride. My face was buried in the cool
deliciousness of my bouquet when, through the perfect stillness of the
evening, we heard our new acquaintance say:
“Your friend, Miss Hawes, walks well.”
He had, as we had noticed on Sunday, a voice of marvellous compass,
with peculiar “carrying” qualities. He had not spoken more loudly
than his companions, and, having reached the corner of the street, he
fancied himself beyond earshot. Every word floated back to us.
We laughed—all three of us. Then I said, deliberately:
“If that man ever asks me to marry him, I shall have to do it! I vowed
solemnly, long ago, to marry the first man who thinks me handsome, if
he should give me the chance. Let us hope this one won’t!”
“Amen!” responded my hearers, my father adding, “His cloth rules him
out.”
It may have been a week later in the season that I was strolling down
Broad Street in company with “Tom” Baxter, Mr. Rhodes’s chummiest
crony. He had overtaken me a few squares farther up-town, and was
begging me, in the naïve way most girls found bewitching, to take a
turning that would lead us by an office where he was to leave a paper
he had promised to deliver at that hour.
“Then,” he pursued, with the same refreshing simplicity of tone and
look, “there will be nothing to hinder me from going all the way home
with you.”
I refused point-blank, and he detained me for a minute at the parting
of the ways, entreating and arguing, until I cut the nonsense short by
saying that _I_ had an engagement which I must keep without regard
to _his_ convenience, and walked on. Tom was an amusing fellow, and
handsome enough to win forgiveness for his absurdities. I was smiling
to myself in the recollection of the little farce, when I met, face to
face, but not eye to eye—for we were both looking at the pavement—the
man who had said that I walked well. He stepped aside hurriedly; the
hand that swung the cane went up to his hat, and we went our separate
ways.
That evening I was surprised to receive a call from our pastor _pro
tempore_. He told me, months afterward, that he was homesick and lonely
on that particular afternoon. At least two-thirds of the best people
in the parish were out of town, and he found little to interest him in
those he met socially.
“You smiled in such a genial fashion when we met on that blesséd corner
that I felt better at once. The recollection of that friendly look gave
me courage to call, out of hand.”
Whereupon, I brought sentimentality down on the run by asking if he had
ever heard the negro proverb, “Fired at the blackbird and hit the crow”?
“That was Tom Baxter’s smile—not yours!”