This morning at breakfast I noticed Mumsie look puzzled as she read a
letter she had just received. Then my eye caught that of Uncle’s and he,
too, read his wife’s face.
“What have you got?” asked he.
Mumsie sighed.
“Anything serious, your death warrant?”
“Just a letter from Mary.”
“Good Lord!” exclaimed Mr. Bang. “What does she want now?”
“She does not say she wishes for anything,” replied Mumsie.
“She never does,” retorted Mr. Bang.
“Let us have it,” suggested Uncle.
“My dear Aunt Bell: It was so sweet of you to remember me at Christmas:
(I sent her a card only) it is so satisfactory to know one is not
forgotten. (I send her a card every Christmas, but this is the only time
she has ever acknowledged one.) The children had a splendid time,
especially Jessie. Lawrence is yet too young to anticipate his joys or
measure their fulness. Everybody was so good to them. Jessie was
enraptured with the doll Jack sent her, and Lawrence makes no end of a
row with his horn. James put up with it over Christmas day, but since
then, insists we hide it when he is at home.
“How is dear Jack? I should like so much to see the dear boy. It is so
nice too, that Uncle takes such an interest in him. I wonder when I
shall see him again.
“With love to all, I remain,
“Affectionately yours,
“Mary.”
“That is plain as day,” commented Mr. Bang. “She wishes to pay you a
visit or come to town for some reason or other, possibly to do some
shopping.”
“Who is Mary,” I enquired, full of wonder at such open criticism, even
from Mr. Bang. I cannot help asking questions.
“My sister,” coldly replied Mr. Bang, “has a husband, a civil servant,
named James Strickland. Sister Mary is respectable, and the
personification of propriety.”
There seemed to me bitterness in Mr. Bang’s tone.
“I fancy Jack is right. Mary wishes to pay us a visit,” declared Uncle
in a matter of fact tone.
“What shall I do?” asked Mumsie absentmindedly.
“Ask her to come,” replied he with decision.
“Where can I put her?” Mumsie then asked, wrinkling her forehead.
“Give her my room, put me anywhere, or I can go to an hotel,” said Mr.
Bang.
“You’ll stay right here,” said Uncle. “She’ll only want one room, even
if she brings the children. Hope she does, I’d like to see ’em.”
“I’ll give up my room if you have any other place to put me,” I said,
with a forced cheerfulness, for the idea of giving up my room was really
unpleasant.
“I’ll write and ask her and the children, perhaps she does not really
wish to come.”
“Auntie, I wager you a box of candy she comes,” declared Mr. Bang.
To-morrow evening is Skating Club night. Mr. Bang’s friend Mr. Timkins
has put him up there, and for some time at least I shall have entree. So
it would be well for me to practise waltzing. But Badger Lake would be
covered with the snow of last night’s storm. Somehow or other I blurted
out my desires and fears at breakfast.
Mr. Bang knew of a rink we could go to. No, it was not the hockey rink,
nor the Skating Club rink, but another. I wonder why Mr. Bang is so
attentive to Me. I surely am not overly polite to him. Why is he so
patient—so unnaturally so, it almost seems? I wonder if he will marry.
Our personalities—his and mine—are far from being parallel, so that I
am safe. What keeps him east? He says business, and, indeed, he leaves
for Toronto on New Year’s Eve. If he wants a wife, I should suggest his
addressing his attention to Ethel Bassett. She is the type of womanhood
of which he approves. I cannot admire dowdiness myself.
Again, Mr. Bang’s bitterness puzzles me. Fancy anyone disliking a sister
enough to speak of her as he spoke. I determined upon asking him why it
should be so, and as we walked to the rink I did so.
“Do I?” he cried. “I’m sorry if I appear bitter, bitter is an ugly word
but no doubt I have earned it, if you, who are my friend, find
bitterness in my words. Sister Mary is a type—one of those scheming
women, scheming in harmless little ways, who fancies herself clever,
when she is really most transparent. I think you may accept it as an
axiom, that the average of us are more adept at seeing through the
schemes of others than covering up one’s own designs. Sister Mary had a
great deal to do with bringing me up; perhaps my bitterness arises from
her having made so complete a failure of the job.”
“Are you a failure?” I asked with genuine surprise. A man who can give
away furs!
But my interruption did not alter the trend of his ideas.
“I fancy though, I may justly charge her with the hatred I have for the
respectable. The inherent pugnacity of the human animal made me
irresponsible early in life, partly as an affectation, but later from
habit and inclination.
“How strange!” I exclaimed.
“Not strange, but a frequent circumstance: the parson’s son is
proverbially a madcap.”
We skated about, hand in hand: my thoughts dwelling upon the strange
being who was my companion. My mental attitude towards him had undergone
a change. My interest, my sympathy were aroused. He was in the full glow
of manhood, full of ambition, fighting his way in the world; and
evidently doing so successfully. His abilities were constructive; his
past had been hard. The story he told at the Christmas dinner while
showing what he had seen and experienced also showed much of himself.
Yet he could be egotistical. He is one of those who can talk of
themselves without paining or boring the hearer; after all, a rare and
delightful accomplishment. But his peculiar animosity to his sister I
could not understand. I prompted him.
“I often think,” he said, his voice soft, his speech slow and
thoughtful, his utterance suggesting his desire to speak true, “that I
perhaps wrong my sister; that the lack of balance, which I had so much
trouble in combating in my earlier youth was due really to heredity. I
believe that many of the tendencies which experience has told me are to
my hurt were as strongly developed in and as detrimental to my
grandfather. It is wrong, I believe, to look upon a child’s character as
something which may be moulded as a piece of clay. One might as well try
and mould his features.”
“But that may be done,” I exclaimed, remembering the maternal squeezing
of some infant snub-noses.
“But an Apollo could not be made out of Richard the Third. No,” he went
on thoughtfully, as is his wont, “we are in appearance as nature
intended us to be, and temperamentally also. We may use artifice to
change our appearance or we may study mannerisms—some do—but they are
all more or less subterfuge. As a child my failing was unwittingly to
antagonize people, and the same attribute was the bane of my
grandfather.”
“Tell me of him,” I suggested, and I think my curiosity pleased him.
“He was educated in law; and, when the California gold excitement
developed, walked across the continent to San Francisco. There he wished
to practise his profession, but the Yankees would not let him do so,
unless he became naturalized. This he refused to do—a right Canadian
he!—so he worked in the mines and then walked home again and died in
penury. The probabilities are that he would have accumulated great
wealth had he become a citizen of California, the opportunity there was
so great.”
“He was at least a patriot,” I suggested. “Bravo for Canada!”
“Assuredly he was so. His son, my Uncle, told my mother that his lack of
success in life was due neither to lack of ability, nor of industry, but
to his unfortunate manner, which alienated the sympathy of those he
met.”
“Dear! Dear! I have heard of such people,” I said.
“Yes,” replied my companion, “such failings are sometimes, even, the
attributes of genius, but in the case of my grandfather and Uncle I have
never heard that either developed brilliancy in any direction.”
“And yourself?” I asked. “Perhaps you ———”
He laughed. “If I have any genius, it has yet to be proved, and I’m old
enough to have doubts of it. I’ve inherited the wrong traits that’s
certain. Perhaps it is that those of us who believe in heredity find its
evidence in our faults.”
For the first time Mr. Bang spoke to me without shrouded facetiousness
but in earnest, and I felt pleased. I forgot he was a young man; and I
am ready to believe he forgot I was a girl. We were just friends. It was
a new experience to me and I welcomed it.
Suddenly I came to realize there were others about, that I was skating
round and round the rink with my companion openly holding my hand. I
brought myself up with a round turn, and suggested we practise our
figures, threes and eights.
Mr. Bang came out of his reverie. He corrected my skating in a kindly
way, though he was exact enough, and showed no tendency to gloss over my
mistakes. After an hour’s skating, we decided to walk home. I was glad
of this, for it gave opportunity for further conversation and I asked
him several questions, to which generally he said—as well as I can
remember it:
“I don’t think I was a bad boy; I never had any vices except indolence;
yet I alienated my people at such an early date that I cannot remember
the time when they did not think it necessary to apologize to others for
me. Pleasant, wasn’t it? Ours was a large family, yet no member of it
dreamed of planting in my mind those seeds of worldly wisdom so useful
to youth. On the other hand, I was shunted, given up for hopeless,
before I was well on the threshold of life. My mother, while she taught
me the Bible, sighed: ‘What will become of the boy?’ That sort of
apology did not improve me. One brother was in the habit of telling me I
would be a perpetual expense to the family, though he did not help me to
learn to do otherwise, or give me any money encouragement. I was
certainly kept in the back ground. The result was that I early got so
mean an opinion of myself that I was ready to apologize for my very
existence. Whether this was an inherited trait and itself explains the
attitude of my people towards me, or whether it developed under the
contempt of my own people, I have no opinion. I had to be a sort of
crab. Couldn’t help it!”
Mr. Bang could not have offered me a greater token of friendship than so
to lay bare before me his thoughts and confidence like this. Why he
should do so is the greater puzzle the more I think of it. Had I been as
frank with him what a mean girl I should seem.
“I suppose,” he continued with a smile, “you will see me as the small
boy, who ever laments that he is not understood—like so many martyrs in
novels and dramas?”
I could only answer with a smile, also. Then we trudged along not
speaking. The night was falling, the air was clear and refreshing: but
the jingle of the bells on the passing sleighs, and hootings of the
motor horns spoiled the peace. The bells brought to me visions of the
old Canadian world, of a homely social life, such as Uncle talks of and
looks back upon with sighs. The hootings seemed the message of a new
order, the power of wealth—discordant and a pollution. And then I
started inwardly; was I a traitor to my own ambitions? I had recently
become a convert to the new order; why was I forsaking my allegiance?
As we were nearly home Mr. Bang added: “Being what I was, I followed the
lines of least resistance and went west. Settled industry and
competition with normal personalities offered me no field; and by a
natural process I evaded the issue. I threw myself into the mill. I
fought while I starved, and starved while I fought. It was a stern
conflict, a bitter struggle.”
My companion paused ere he continued:
“There is no personality so out of tune with mankind but he will be
attractive to some one; no nature so unlovely but will find a responding
chord; no murderer but may gain an advocate; so there is no money-making
scheme so unbalanced but will draw support from some foolish purse.”
“There never was a Jack, without a Jill,” I said. I don’t know why I
said it; it just came out.
“There never was a Jack who could not find his Jill—though sometimes,
alas! too late.”
“I once found a friend,” he ventured. “We won.”
We found Mumsie in the hall; I kissed her and ran to my room; I was
unsettled. In my ears sounded the sleigh bells. My conscience was
troubling me; perhaps it was my self-respect, the spirit of my
forefathers. Like a ghost of the past my grandfather’s presence was with
me, reproving me, admonishing me, cherishing me.
I dressed for dinner and gained mastery of myself. I was happy, laughed
to myself, was singing softly a bit of a song, and perfumed my hair and
neck. I was grasping for a new foothold, struggling to find myself. My
spirits were so unsettled, so boisterous. Mr. Bang looked puzzled and
watched me intently. Evidently he had expected other things. He, poor
fool, claims to read women like a book; and yet, while I am false to his
friendship, in its every phase, he this afternoon bared his heart to me,
as one could only do to a trusted and valued friend.