1898
“Must you go up to that tiresome old college again to-night?”
Pouting lips and delicate brows fretted in pretty importunity over the
troubled eyes enforced the pleading tones, and yet the young man to whom
they were addressed found strength to reply:--
“I 'm afraid I can't get rid of it. I particularly promised Sturgis I
would look in on him, and it won't do for me to cut my acquaintance
with the class entirely just because I 'm having such a jolly time down
here.”
“Oh, no, you don't think it jolly at all, or you would n't be so eager
to go away. I 'm sure I must be very dull company.”
The hurt tone and pretended pique with which she said this were
assuredly all that was needed to make the _petite_ teaser irresistible.
But the young man replied, regarding her the while with an admiration in
which there was a singular expression of uneasiness:--
“Can't, Annie, 'pon honor. I 'm engaged, and you know--
“'I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more!'”
And transferring her hand to his lips he loosed its soft, lingering
clasp and was gone, stopping at the gate to throw back a kiss to her as
she stood in the porch, by way of amends for his hasty parting.
“George Hunt, you 're an infernal scamp!”
These were the opprobrious words he muttered to himself as he passed out
of earshot. The beneficent common law does not condemn a man merely on
his own confession unless circumstances in evidence lend probability
to his self-accusation. Before we coincide in Mr. Hunt's opinion of
himself, let us therefore inquire into the circumstances.
He was in the last term of senior year at ------ college. For the past
year he had been boarding at the Giffords', and Annie and he had fallen
in love. The fall on his part had been quite voluntary and deliberate.
He had fallen in love because it was the correct thing for a young
collegian, engaged in the study of the humanities, to be in love, and
made him feel more like a man than smoking, drinking, or even sporting a
stove-pipe hat and cane. Vanity aside, it was very jolly to have a fine,
nice girl who thought no end of a fellow, to walk, talk, and sing with,
and to have in mind when one sang the college songs about love and wine
with the fellows. And it gave him also a very agreeable sense of
superior experience as he mingled in their discussions of women and the
tender passion.
But withal he was a conscientious, kind-hearted young fellow enough,
and had suffered occasional qualms of conscience when little words or
incidents had impressed him with the knowledge that Annie's love for him
was a more serious matter than his for her. He felt that by insisting on
exchanging the pure gold of her earnest affection for the pinchbeck of
his passing fancy, she was making a rogue of him. He should be in no
position to marry for years, nor did he want to; and if he had wanted
to, though he felt terribly hard-hearted when he owned it to himself,
his feeling toward Annie was not quite so deep as to be a real wish
to marry her. As his last year in college approached its end, he had
thought more and more of these things, and had returned from his last
vacation determined to begin to draw gradually away from her, and
without any shock to bring their relations back to the footing of
friendship. The idea seemed a very plausible one, but it is scarcely
necessary to state that, living in the same house, and frequently alone
with her, it took about a week and a few dozen reproachful glances from
grieving eyes to melt this artificial ice with a freshet of affection,
and when, a couple of months later, he calmly reviewed the situation, he
found himself involved perceptibly deeper than ever, on account of the
attempt at extrication.
Only two or three weeks of the term remained, and it was too late to
repeat the unsuccessful experiment. He had tried his best and failed,
and nothing remained but to be as happy as possible with her in the
short time left. Then she must get over her disappointment as other
girls did in like cases. No doubt some woman would hurt his feelings
some day, and so make it square. He took much satisfaction in this
reflection. But such cynical philosophy did not lull his conscience,
which alternately inspired his manner with an unwonted demonstrativeness
and tenderness, and again made him so uncomfortable in her presence
that he was fain to tear himself away and escape from her sight on any
pretext. Her tender glances and confiding manner made him feel like a
brute, and when he kissed her he felt that it was the kiss of a Judas.
Such had been his feelings this evening, and such were the reflections
tersely summed up in that ejaculation,--“George Hunt, you 're an
infernal scamp!” On arriving at Sturgis's room, he found it full of
tobacco smoke, and the usual crowd there, who hailed him vociferously.
For he was one of the most popular men in college, although for a year
or so he had been living outside the buildings. Several bottles stood on
the tables, but the fellows had as yet arrived only at the argumentative
stage of exhilaration, and it so happened that the subject under
discussion at once took Hunt's close attention. Mathewson had been
reading the first volume of Goethe's autobiography, and was indulging in
some strictures on his course in jilting Frederica and leaving the poor
girl heartbroken.
“But, man,” said Sturgis, “he didn't want to marry her, and seeing
he didn't, nothing could have been crueler to her, to say nothing of
himself, than to have done so.”
“Well, then,” said Mathewson, “why did he go and get her in love with
him?”
“Why, he took his risk and she hers, for the fun of the game. She
happened to be the one who paid for it, but it might just as well have
been he. Why, Mat, you must see yourself that for Goethe to have married
then would have knocked his art-life into a cocked hat. Your artist
has just two great foes,--laziness and matrimony. Each has slain
its thousands. Hitch Pegasus to a family cart and he can't go off the
thoroughfare. He must stick to the ruts. I admit that a bad husband
may be a great artist; but for a good husband, an uxorious, contented
husband, there's no chance at all.”
“You are neither of you right, as usual,” said little Potts, in his
oracular way.
When Potts first came to college, the fellows used to make no end of fun
of the air of superior and conclusive wisdom with which he assumed
to lay down the law on every question, this being the more laughable
because he was such a little chap. Potts did not pay the least attention
to the jeers, and finally the jeerers were constrained to admit that
if he did have an absurdly pretentious way of talking, his talk was
unusually well worth listening to, and the result was that they took him
at his own valuation, and, for the sake of hearing what he had to say,
quietly submitted to his assumption of authority as court of appeal.
So when he coolly declared both disputants wrong, they manifested no
resentment, but only an interest as to what he was going to say, while
the other fellows also looked up curiously.
“It would have been a big mistake for Goethe to have married her,”
pursued Potts, in his deliberate monotone, “but he was n't justified on
that account in breaking her heart. It was his business, having got her
in love with him, to get her out again and leave her where she was.”
“Get her out again?” demanded Mathewson. “How was he to do that?”
“Humph!” grunted Potts. “If you have n't found it much easier to lose a
friend than to win one, you 're luckier than most. If you asked me how
he was to get her in love with him, I should have to scratch my head,
but the other thing is as easy as unraveling a stocking.”
“Well, but, Potts,” inquired Sturgis, with interest, “how could Goethe
have gone to work, for instance, to disgust Frederica with him?”
“Depends on the kind of girl. If she is one of your high-steppers as to
dignity and sense of honor, let him play mean and seem to do a few dirty
tricks. If she's a stickler for manners and good taste, let him betray a
few traits of boorishness or Philistinism; or if she has a keen sense
of the ridiculous, let him make an ass of himself. I should say the
last would be the surest cure and leave least of a sore place in her
feelings, but it would be hardest on his vanity. Everybody knows that a
man would 'rather seem a scamp than a fool.'”
“I don't believe there's a man in the world who would play the voluntary
fool to save any woman's heart from breaking, though he might manage the
scamp,” remarked Mathewson. “And anyhow, Potts, I believe there 's no
girl who would n't choose to be jilted outright, rather than be juggled
out of her affections that way.”
“No doubt she would say so, if you asked her,” replied the imperturbable
Potts. “A woman always prefers a nice sentimental sorrow to a fancy-free
state. But it isn't best for her, and looking out for her good, you
must deprive her of it. Women are like children, you know, our natural
wards.”
This last sentiment impressed these beardless youths as a clincher,
and there was a pause. But Mathewson, who was rather strong on the
moralities, rallied with the objection that Potts's plan would be
deceit.
“Well, now, that's what I call cheeky,” replied its author, with a drawl
of astonishment. “I suppose it wasn't deceit when you were prancing
around in your best clothes both literally and figuratively, trying to
bring your good points into such absurd prominence as to delude her into
the idea that you had no bad ones. Oh, no, it's only deceit when you
appear worse than you are, not when you try to appear better. Strikes me
that when you 'ye got a girl into a fix, it won't do at that time of
day to plead your conscience as a reason for not getting her out of
it. Seeing that a man is generally ready to sacrifice his character in
reality to his own interests, he ought to be willing to sacrifice it in
appearance to another's.”
Mathewson was squelched, but Sturgis came to his relief with the
suggestion:--
“Would n't a little genuine heartache, which I take it is healthy
enough, if it is n't pleasant, be better for her than the cynical
feeling, the disgust with human nature, which she would experience from
finding her ideal of excellence a scamp or a fool?”