Turning up masterpieces of unintentional humour is a pleasant diversion
of most writers. Everyone has his own favourites--on this side Atlantic
many students vouch for _The Balsam Groves of Grandfather Mountain_ (by
Shepherd M. Dugger) as the most amusing book written in America; in
Britain a few diligent explorers beat the drum for _Irene Iddesleigh_,
a novel written by Mrs. Amanda McKittrick Ros (of Belfast). Neither of
these books, unhappily, is easy to lay hand upon. But as a possible
competitor, how do you like _The Spanish Sultry_, by Ambrose Dargason
(Harrisburg, 1905)? We have no copy, but once we took down some
extracts.
Mr. Dargason’s hero was a window-glass merchant “whose nature was as
transparent and reflective as the goods he throve in.” This merchant’s
name was Wilbert Vocks; after his retirement from merchandise he spent
his time in travelling about looking for a suitable wife to inherit his
fortune. Unhappily, his inherent caution always caused him to sheer off
just when the reader was expecting the happy nuptials. The scene on the
park bench in Harrisburg, one moony evening, is a favourite of ours:
In the anæmic brightness of the crescendo moon Frederica’s eyes
were gilded with the splendor of her sex’s softest charms. They
were frosted bulbs of allure, and Wilbert trenched delicately
upon her French-shod toes as a symbol of hardy waxing
tenderness.
“Oh, Mr. Vocks,” said she, the beautiful coamings of her orbs
brimming over with cheer, “how many equinoxes will hereafter
wax and wane, search through this garden, but for one in vain.”
“You are quoting the Rubaiyat,” said he, “but with indifferent
adhesion to the text.”
“Adhesion,” she replied, “was never one of my frailties,” and a
trifle peaked [sic] withdrew to the distant angle of the iron
settee.
Wilbert’s momentary harshness had already dissipated and he
regretted this intrusion of pedantic nicety upon the moonlit
promise of their double entente. “I bespeak a rapproachment,”
he gallantly murmured and, sliding deftly along the parallel
rods of metal subforming the trysting bench, found himself
chilled by coming en rapport with a section of the seat not
warmed by humane contact.
“But you must not reproach me,” she taunted shyly. “It is too
plain that you were not brought up in Harrisburg, where men
speak chivalrously to women and good breeding is a native
filament of the tender air.”
“Probably you are cold on that hitherto unfrequented segment
of iron slatting,” he said, shrivelling his inward tremolo by
an affection of stern brusque. “Why not slide over this way a
little, and chivalry commends my sheltering you from the sharp
fidgetings of frost which, however commendable to coal dealers,
betray the softer passions to gooseflesh and eventual snivel.”
Womanly, without further quibble, she responded, and the beauty
of that unsophisticated face was shielded soon from external
examination by the protective polygon of his arm and elbow. It
was a generous moment, and in harmony with all the higher laws
of human sentiment.
The delighted reader might be pardoned for thinking that in this
idyllic scene the restless affections of Mr. Vocks had found
satisfaction. But Frederica, after several evenings of intellectual
interchange, proved too shallow for his deep-laden mind. As Mr.
Dargason put it (his taste for oddly mixed nautical metaphors was
rather extreme):
He grounded upon the shoals of her mentality and, after
striving vainly to warp off into deeper areas of thought and
sentiment, was forced to broach his cargo of affection upon
the outgoing tides. Only thus, by careening and jettisoning
his rich hatches of emotional freight, and scudding forth
under bare poles and jury rigging, was he able to win clear
to the open sea of freedom, escaping the lee shores of an
uncongenial union. The bright occulting lamps of her eyes shone
like desperate beacons, but he remembered that lighthouses
are intended not to allure the cautious mariner, but to warn
him away. He reefed his binnacle gravely, and with only an
aching heart throbbing in the empty hatches of his personality
determined henceforward to steer by the unquestionable stars of
intuition. Her soundings were too easily fathomed. In a word,
she was not deep enough.
To quiet his melancholy, Mr. Vocks returns into the busy world of
trade. We have not space for very full quotation, but his discussion
with his business associates is worth a brief extract:
As surely as my name is Wilbert Vocks (he said), I intend that
this business shall be conducted in accord with all principles
of integrity and without demurrage to trickery. I have been
allowed by fortune to make a frugal and circumstantial
inspection of the general laws and accidents of life, and it
is my conviction that by exploring the estuaries of remorse no
bill of lading was ever brought to consummation. My rudder is
uncompromisingly turned to the favoring gales of expedience,
and we will sail a vigorous course into the latitudes of
magnetism.
In this admirable resolution Mr. Vocks was strengthened by his partner
(Mr. Henry Shingle), who is described as “a thrifty man the colour of a
glass of light beer, bleached brown by an open-air youth in Monongahela
County, but surmounted spiritually by the bright bubbles of aspiration
and elasticity. His clothes were neat and his habits orderly; of his
meditative components it is not necessary to surmise. He had not made
a habit of thinking profoundly, for he knew that any thought he might
have could easily be rebutted by more carefully trained men; therefore
he spared himself the embarrassment of argument. His management of the
Sales Department, however, was not to be criticized.”
We wish we had taken the trouble to copy out more of _The Spanish
Sultry_ while we were about it. The Sultry herself was the lady to
whom Mr. Vocks finally succumbed: she caused the fracture of the
window-glass business. As the author put it: “Hers was not the clear
transparence of Mr. Vocks’s glassy nature; she was stained with violent
and ominous colours, and through the panes of her vehement character
there burst downpours of scarlet and lavender trouble.”
[Illustration]