LOVERS AND LOVERS.
Albert Charlton had little money, and he was not a man to remain idle.
He was good in mathematics, and did a little surveying now and then; in
fact, with true democratic courage, he turned his hand to any useful
employment. He did not regard these things as having any bearing on his
career. He was only waiting for the time to come when he could found
his Great Educational Institution on the virgin soil of Minnesota. Then
he would give his life to training boys to live without meat or
practical jokes, to love truth, honesty, and hard lessons; he would
teach girls to forego jewelry and cucumber-pickles, to study
physiology, and to abhor flirtations. Visionary, was he? You can not
help smiling at a man who has a "vocation," and who wants to give the
world a good send-off toward its "goal." But there is something noble
about it after all. Something to make you and me ashamed of our
selfishness. Let us not judge Charlton by his green flavor. When these
discordant acids shall have ripened in the sunshine and the rain, who
shall tell how good the fruit may be? We may laugh, however, at Albert,
and his school that was to be. I do not doubt that even that visionary
street-loafer known to the Athenians as Sokrates, was funny to those
who looked at him from a great distance below.
During the time in which Charlton waited, and meditated his plans for the
world's advancement by means of a school that should be so admirable as
to modify the whole system of education by the sheer force of its
example, he found it of very great advantage to unfold his plans to Miss
Helen Minorkey. Miss Helen loved to hear him talk. His enthusiasm was the
finest thing she had found, out of books. It was like a heroic poem, as
she often remarked, this fine philanthropy of his, and he seemed to her
like King Arthur preparing his Table Round to regenerate the earth. This
compliment, uttered with the coolness of a literary criticism--and
nothing _could_ be cooler than a certain sort of literary criticism--this
deliberate and oft-repeated compliment of Miss Minorkey always set
Charlton's enthusiastic blood afire with love and admiration for the one
Being, as he declared, born to appreciate his great purposes. And the
Being was pleased to be made the partner of such dreams and hopes. In an
intellectual and ideal fashion she did appreciate them. If Albert had
carried out his great plans, she, as a disinterested spectator, would
have written a critical analysis of them much as she would have described
a new plant.
But whenever Charlton tried to excite in her an enthusiasm similar to his
own, he was completely foiled. She shrunk from everything like
self-denial or labor of any sort. She was not adapted to it, she assured
him. And he who made fierce war on the uselessness of woman in general
came to reconcile himself to the uselessness of woman in particular, to
apologize for it, to justify it, to admire it. Love is the mother of
invention, and Charlton persuaded himself that it was quite becoming in
such a woman as the most remarkably cultivated, refined, and intellectual
Helen Minorkey, to shrink from the drudgery of life. She was not intended
for it. Her susceptibilities were too keen, according to him, though
Helen Minorkey's susceptibilities were indeed of a very quiet sort. I
believe that Charlton, the sweeping radical, who thought, when thinking
on general principles, that every human-creature should live wholly for
every other human creature, actually addressed some "Lines to H.M.,"
through the columns of the _St. Paul Advertiser_ of that day, in which he
promulgated the startling doctrine that a Being such as was the aforesaid
H.M., could not be expected to come into contact with the hard realities
of life. She must content herself with being the Inspiration of the life
of Another, who would work out plans that should inure to the good of man
and the honor of the Being, who would inspire and sustain the Toiler. The
poem was considered very fine by H.M., though the thoughts were a little
too obscure for the general public and the meter was not very smooth. You
have doubtless had occasion to notice that poems which deal with Beings
and Inspirations are usually of very imperfect fluidity.
Charlton worked at surveying and such other employments as offered
themselves, wrote poems to Helen Minorkey, and plotted and planned how he
might break up little Katy's engagement. He plotted and planned sometimes
with a breaking heart, for the more he saw of Smith Westcott, the more
entirely detestable he seemed. But he did not get much co-operation from
Isabel Marlay. If he resented any effort to make a match between him and
"Cousin Isa," she resented it ten times more vehemently, and all the
more that she, in her unselfishness of spirit, admired sincerely the
unselfishness of Charlton, and in her practical and unimaginative life
felt drawn toward the idealist young man who planned and dreamed in a way
quite wonderful to her. All her woman's pride made her resent the effort
to marry her to a man in love with another, a man who had not sought her.
[Illustration: MRS. PLAUSABY.]
"Albert is smart," said Mrs. Plausaby to her significantly one day; "he
would be just the man for you, Isa."
"Why, Mrs. Plausaby, I heard you say yourself that his wife would have to
do without silk dresses and new bonnets. For my part, I don't think much
of that kind of smartness that can't get a living. I wouldn't have a man
like Mr. Charlton on any, terms."
And she believed that she spoke the truth; having never learned to
analyze her own feelings, she did not know that all her dislike for
Charlton had its root in a secret liking for him, and that having
practical ability herself, the kind of ability that did not make a living
was just the sort that she admired most.
It was, therefore, without any co-operation between them, that Isabel and
young Charlton were both of them putting forth their best endeavor to
defeat the plans of Smith Westcott, and avert the sad eclipse which
threatened the life of little Katy. And their efforts in that direction
were about equally fruitful in producing the result they sought to avoid.
For whenever Isa talked to little Katy about Westcott, Katy in the
goodness of her heart and the vehemence of her love was set upon finding
out, putting in order, and enumerating all of his good qualities. And
when Albert attacked him vehemently and called him a coxcomb, and a rake,
and a heartless villain, she cried, and cried, out of sheer pity for
"poor Mr. Westcott;" she thought him the most persecuted man in the
world, and she determined that she would love him more fervently and
devotedly than ever, _that_ she would! Her love should atone for all the
poor fellow suffered. And "poor Mr. Westcott" was not slow in finding out
that "feelin' sorry for a feller was Katy's soft side, by George! he!
he!" and having made this discovery he affected to be greatly afflicted
at the treatment he received from Albert and from Miss Marlay; nor did he
hesitate to impress Katy with the fact that he endured all these things
out of pure devotion to her, and he told her that he could die for her,
"by George! he! he!" any day, and that she mustn't ever desert him if she
didn't want him to kill himself; he didn't care two cents for life except
for her, and he'd just as soon go to sleep in the lake as not, "by
George! he! he!" any day. And then he rattled his keys, and sang in a
quite affecting way, to the simple-minded Kate, how for "bonnie Annie
Laurie," with a look at Katy, he could "lay him down and dee," and added
touchingly and recitatively the words "by George! he! he!" which made his
emotion seem very real and true to Katy; she even saw a vision of "poor
Mr. Westcott" dragged out of the lake dead on her account, and with that
pathetic vision in her mind she vowed she'd rather die than desert him.
And as for all the ills which her brother foreboded for her in case she
should marry Smith Westcott, they did not startle her at all. Such
simple, loving natures as Katy Charlton's can not feel for self. It is
such a pleasure to them to throw themselves away in loving.
Besides, Mrs. Plausaby put all her weight into the scale, and with the
loving Katy the mother's word weighed more even than Albert's. Mrs.
Plausaby didn't see why in the world Katy couldn't marry as she pleased
without being tormented to death. Marrying was a thing everybody must
attend to personally for themselves. Besides, Mr. Westcott was a
nice-spoken man, and dressed very well, his shirt-bosom was the finest in
Metropolisville, and he had a nice hat and wore lavender gloves on
Sundays. And he was a store-keeper, and he would give Katy all the nice
things she wanted. It was a nice thing to be a store-keeper's wife. She
wished Plausaby would keep a store. And she went to the glass and fixed
her ribbons, and reflected that if Plausaby kept a store she could get
plenty of them.
And so all that Cousin Isa and Brother Albert said came to naught, except
that it drove the pitiful Katy into a greater devotion to her lover, and
made the tender-hearted Katy cry. And when she cried, the sentimental
Westcott comforted her by rattling his keys in an affectionate way, and
reminding her that the course of true love never did run smooth, "by
George! he! he! he!"