“Well, that’s just where it is. Sometimes I wish the whole dumb town
would burn up.” I laughed and laughed; and my friend, having begun to
unpack his heart, went on to ease it of the rest of its load. I had not
waited for this before making some reflections concerning him, but I now
formulated them to myself. He really had none of that reserve I had
attributed to him the night before; it was merely caution and this is the
case with most country people. They are cautious, but not reserved; if
they think they can trust you, they keep back none of their affairs; and
this is the American character, for we are nearly all country people. I
understood him perfectly when he said, “I ruther break stone than go
through what I have been through the last week! You understand how it
is. ’Tain’t as if she said anything; I wish she would; but you feel all
the while that it ain’t what she expected it to be, and you feel as if it
was you that was to blame for the failure. By George! if any man was to
come along and make an offer for my contract I would sell out cheap.
It’s worse because my wife asked her to come, and thought she was doin’
her all kinds of a favour to let her. They’ve always been together, and
when we talked of coming to Saratoga this summer, nothing would do my
wife but Julia must come with us. Her and her father usually take a trip
off somewhere in the hot weather, but this time he couldn’t leave;
president of our National Bank, and president of the village, too.” He
threw in the fact of these dignities explanatorily, but with a
willingness, I could see, that it should affect me. He went on: “They’re
kind of connections of my first wife’s. Well, she’s a nice girl; too
nice, I guess, to get along very fast. I see girls all the way along
down gettin’ acquainted on the cars and boats—we come east on the
Ogdensburg road to Rouse’s Point, and then took the boat down Lake
Champlain and Lake George—but she always seemed to hold back. I don’t
know’s she’s proud either; I can’t make it out. It balls my wife all up,
too. I tell her she’s fretted off all the good her trip’s goin’ to do
her before she got it.”
He laughed ruefully, and just then the band began to play the “Washington
Post.”
“What tune’s that?” he demanded.
“‘Washington Post,’” I said, proud of knowing it.
“By George! that tune goes right to a fellow’s legs, don’t it?”
“It’s the new march,” I said.
He listened with a simple joy in it, and his pleasure strengthened the
mystic bond which had formed itself between us through the confidences he
had made me, so flatteringly corroborative of all my guesses concerning
him and his party.