“Bosh!” Allowing a brief pause for this ejaculation to do its work
in demoralizing the opposition he proceeded. “Sturgis, you remember
'Midsummer Night's Dream,' and how Titania, on the application of Puck's
clarifying lotion to her eyes, perceives that in Bottom she has loved an
ass. Don't you suppose Titania suffered a good deal from the loss of her
ideal?”
There was a general snicker at Sturgis's expense.
“Well, now,” continued Potts gravely, “a woman who should fall in love
with one of us fellows and deem him a hero would be substantially in
Titania's plight when she adored Bottom, and about as much an object
of pity when her hero disclosed an asininity which would be at least as
near to being his real character as the heroism she ascribed to him.”
“That 's all very well,” said Merril dryly, “but it strikes me that it's
middling cheeky for you fellows to be discussing how you 'll jilt your
sweethearts with least expense to their feelings, when the chances are
that if you should ever get one, you 'll need all your wits to keep her
from jilting you.”
“You are, as usual, trivial and inconsequential this evening, Merril,”
replied Potts, when the laughter had subsided. “Supposing, as you
suggest, that we shall be the jilted and not the jilters, it will be
certainly for our interest that the ladies should spare our feelings by
disenchanting us,--saying, as it were, the charm backward that first
charmed us. He who would teach the ladies the method and enlist their
tender hearts in its behalf would be, perhaps, the greatest benefactor
his much-jilted and heart-sore sex ever had. Then, indeed, with the
heart-breakers of both sexes pledged to so humane a practice, there
would be no more any such thing as sorrow over unrequited affections,
and the poets and novelists would beg their bread.”
“That is a millennial dream, Potts,” responded Merril. “You may possibly
persuade the men to make themselves disagreeable for pity's sake, but it
is quite too much to expect that a woman would deliberately put herself
in an unbecoming light, if it were to save a world from its sins.”
“Perhaps it is,” said Potts pensively; “but considering what perfectly
inexhaustible resources of disagreeableness there are in the best of us
and the fairest of women, it seems a most gratuitous cruelty that any
heart should suffer when a very slight revelation would heal its hurt.
We can't help people suffering because we are so faulty and imperfect,
but we might at least see that nobody ever had a pang from thinking us
better than we are.”
“Look at Hunt!” said Sturgis. “He does n't open his mouth, but drinks in
Potts's wisdom as eagerly as if he did n't know it was a pump that never
stops.”
There was a general laugh among those who glanced up in time to catch
the expression of close attention on Hunt's face.
“Probably he 's deliberating on the application of the Potts patent
painless cure to some recent victim of that yellow mustache and goatee,”
suggested Merril, with the envy of a smooth-faced youth for one more
favored.
Hunt, whose face had sprung back like a steel-trap to its usual
indifferent expression, smiled nonchalantly at Merril's remark. One
whose reticent habit makes his secrets so absolutely secure as Hunt's
private affairs always were is stirred to amusement rather than
trepidation by random guesses which come near the truth.
“If I were situated as Merril flatteringly suggests, I should enjoy
nothing better than such an experiment,” he replied deliberately. “It
would be quite a novel sensation to revolutionize one's ordinary rule of
conduct so as to make a point of seeming bad or stupid. There would be
as much psychology in it as in an extra term, at least. A man would find
out, for instance, how much there was in him besides personal vanity and
love of approbation. It would be a devilish small residue with most of
us, I fancy.”
The talk took a new turn, and the fun grew fast and furious around Hunt,
who sat puffing his pipe, absorbed in contemplation. At about half-past
nine, when things were getting hilarious, he beat a retreat, followed by
the reproaches of the fellows. He was determined to administer the first
dose of Potts's painless cure to his interesting patient that very
evening, if she had not already retired. He was in high good humor.
Potts was a brick; Potts was a genius. How lucky that he had happened to
go up to college that night! He felt as if an incubus were lifted off
his mind. No more pangs of conscience and uncomfortable sense of being a
mean and cruel fellow, for him. Annie should be glad to be rid of him
before he had ended with her. She should experience a heartfelt relief,
instead of a broken heart, on his departure. He could n't help
chuckling. He had such confidence in his nerve and his reticent habit
that his confidence and ability to carry out the scheme were undoubting,
and at its first suggestion he had felt almost as much relief as if he
had already executed it.
On arriving home, he found Annie sewing alone in the parlor, and a
little offish in manner by way of indicating her sense of his offense in
leaving her to spend the evening alone.
“Really, Annie,” he said, as he sat down and unfolded the evening paper,
“I try to give you all the time I can spare. If, instead of sulking,
you had taken a piece of paper and calculated how many hours this week
I have managed to give you my company, you would scarcely have felt like
repining because you could n't see me for an hour or two this evening.”
That was the first gun of the campaign. She looked up in blank surprise,
too much astonished, for the moment, to be indignant at such a vulgarly
conceited remark from him. Without giving her time to speak, he proposed
to read the newspaper aloud, and at once began, making a point of
selecting the dullest editorials and the flattest items and witticisms,
enlivening them with occasional comments of studied insipidity, and
one or two stories, of which he carefully left out the “nubs.” He was
apparently making an unusual effort all the while to be entertaining,
and Annie, finding no opening for expressing her vexation, finally
excused herself and went upstairs, with no very angelic expression of
countenance.
“Pretty well for a beginning,” was Hunt's muttered comment as he laid
down the paper.