THE PURPLE STOCKING
There was unaccustomed silence for a time after the Porter finished
speaking. He left the car at once, perturbed, it may be, by his own
disclosure of his condition and emotions. Those who had listened to him,
whatever may have been their views concerning one of the great problems
of the age, could not but feel a certain sympathy for the man condemned
to be thus isolated--the man without a race. That his case might be
somewhat exceptional detracted in no way from its curious pathos. It was
recognized as one of the tragedies of human life as it is, and the
recital had induced a thoughtful mood among the Porter's audience. What
should be the attitude of the ordinary man or woman in a case like this?
And, seeking honestly in their own minds, those pondering could not
answer the question satisfactorily, either to judgment or to conscience.
By what law should they be guided?
The Colonel was among the thinkers, but he rose superior, as usual.
That gilded optimist wanted not even reflection among the snowbound. Had
his company been of males exclusively he might even have been tempted to
introduce the flowing bowl, but for his knowledge of the inevitable
depressing aftermath. He wanted but carelessness and distraction and
forgetfulness until the time of pale monotony should end. Now he was
tempted to an act most ruthless and unconjugal.
His glance was toward his wife, whom he adored openly, and toward whom
he, at all times, showed the greatest consideration, but who, through
some prescience, was fidgeting a little.
"Madam," he began pompously, slapping his hand upon his chest, "the
husband is the head of the family--he really isn't," he added in an
audible aside, "but we'll assume it for the present. Madam, he is the
head of the family and must be obeyed. I order, command and direct you
to tell a story; if need be I will even abdicate for the moment and so
far humiliate myself as to implore you to tell a story. Tell about that
affair which took place at the Grand Cattaraugus, when we were stopping
there last summer."
The pleasant-faced lady appeared hesitant: "But it's almost a naughty
story," she protested; "it's about a stocking, and, oh dear! there's
something about a"--and she blushed prettily, as is always the case when
a middle-aged woman thus demeans herself, "there's an ankle in it, too."
"Nonsense," retorted the Colonel. "Do you mean in the story or in the
stocking? In either case an ankle is all right. Go ahead, my dear."
Mrs. Livingston yielded: "After all," she said, "it's not so very wicked
and the story is chiefly about matching colors, which is a subject not
unlikely to interest ladies. Anyhow, it interested me in this instance.
I know all the shocking circumstances, and, since I've gone so far I may
as well be reckless. I suppose the story might be called
THE PURPLE STOCKING
Maxwell, a gentleman stopping at the hotel, was bored. There existed no
particular excuse for his frame of mind, but the fact remained. He had
fairly earned a vacation, but when the time came for escape from the
midsummer heat of his offices he had found himself with no well-defined
idea of where his outing should be spent. Circumstances rendered it
necessary that it should be a brief one this time, else he would have
known what to do with himself, for the man knew the Rocky Mountains. As
it was, he had but taken train for one of the nearby summer resorts,
where the Grand Cattaraugus caravansary, consisting, as those places do,
of an enormous piazza with a hotel attached to its rear, loomed up
beside and overlooked the pretty hill-surrounded lake with its blue
waters, narrow beach and many pleasure boats. It was not a bad place and
Maxwell had decided that it would be endurable for a week or two,
especially after the arrival of his friend, Jim Farrington, who had
promised to follow and loaf genially with him.
But first impressions are not always final. Maxwell found the hotel full
of people, mostly women. It was a fashionable place, and the women were
fair to look upon, but there were not men enough to go round. There were
two or three dowagers who knew Maxwell and, seek to avoid it as he
might, he was soon generally introduced and his eligibility made widely
known. Then came monotonous attention and, for his own peace, the man,
who hadn't come after women, was driven to daily exile either to his
room or to the lake or hills. The elder ladies with daughters hunted him
as hounds might hunt a rabbit. He resolved promptly upon escape and,
within a week, an afternoon found him engaged in packing for that
purpose.
His laundry had just come in and among the articles he picked up first
were a lot of blazing silken handkerchiefs. Colored silk handkerchiefs
were a fad of his in summer. He tossed them idly into his valise when
the color of one of them attracted his attention.
"I never owned a handkerchief like that," he muttered.
He raised the article to examine it more closely, and to his amazement
it unfolded and lengthened out. It was not a handkerchief at all. It was
a lady's stocking--a brilliant purple stocking!
Maxwell wondered. "Washing's been mixed," he said, and then devoted
closer and more earnest attention to his prize. It was a charming
affair, small of foot but not too small otherwise, and possessed,
somehow, an especial symmetry, even in its present state.
"It's number eight--number three shoe," thought Maxwell, "and it's the
prettiest stocking I ever saw."
His comment was fully justified. The stocking was a dream in its
department of lingerie. The purple was relieved, from the ankle upward a
little way, by a clocking of snow-white sprays of lilies-of-the-valley,
and the purple itself was of such a hue as to send one dreaming of the
glories of the ancients. It was a wonderful stocking, a fascinating
stocking. It lured like a will-o'-the wisp.
Maxwell abandoned his packing and sat stroking and admiring the
hypnotizing object. He became vastly interested. "I wonder whom it
belongs to?" he mused. Then--there's no explaining it with authority,
and discreetly--a sudden fancy seized upon him. "I'll not leave
to-night!" he said, "I'll find the owner of that stocking! It will give
me something to do and add a little zest to things. Might as well be
stocking-hunting as anything else. By Jove, what a neat little foot she
must have!"
The packing was left undone. The man had an object now, one which might
have seemed trivial to the bloodless and unimaginative, but which to him
became a serious matter. Talk about the Round Table fellows after the
Holy Grail or Diogenes after an honest man, they were not in it with
Maxwell! He dawdled and mooned over that stocking and made and unmade
plans. He bribed a gentleman, youthful and dirty, connected with the
laundry department of the hotel, and it came to naught. His gaze was
ever downward. He appeared more frequently on the piazza among the
scores of "porchers" engaged in idle converse there. He strolled along
the little beach, ever with furtive eyes on twinkling feet, and neat
ones he saw galore and stockings rainbow-hued galore, but never a purple
one among them.
It was the quality of the purple, he decided, which must have so
enthralled him in the first place. He had never seen a purple like it.
He read up on purples. He learned that royal purple is made up of
fifty-five parts red, twelve parts blue and thirty-three parts black,
and concluded that the stocking must be almost a royal purple, so
wonderfully did the white lilies show out against its richness. Tyrian
purple he rejected as being too dull for the comparison. Then he
considered the purple of Amorgos, the wonderfully brilliant color
obtained from the seaweed of the Grecian island, and this met with
greater favor in his eyes. He decided, finally, that the hue of the
stocking was between the royal and the purple of Amorgos, and this
relieved his mind. But this didn't help him to find the girl--and how
vain a thing is even the most beautiful stocking in the world without a
girl attached!
Then the unexpected happened as usual. There came a lapse in the search.
The cure for Maxwell's dream was homeopathic. Like cures like. One girl
blighted most of interest in the vague search for another. Maxwell was
caught by the concrete. Miss Ward, a guest of the hotel, in company with
her aunt, was not, Maxwell decided, like any of the other women. She was
dignified, but piquant, pretty, certainly, and well educated. Likewise,
she had self-possession and much wit. Maxwell enjoyed her society and
they became close friends. He began to feel as if the world, if hollow,
had at least a substantial crust. He was no longer bored and the
stocking fancy was put aside.
Then came Farrington. Farrington had spirits. He lightened up the hotel
piazza and flirted with every one, from dowagers down to the little
girls to whom he told liver-colored stories as evening and the gloom
came. He was deeply interested when Maxwell told him of the stocking
and the marvel. He became full of ardor.
"Don't give up the search!" he expostulated. "Such a stocking as that
must belong to the one woman in four hundred and eighty-three thousand.
Why, it's like finding a nugget in a valley! There's bound to be gold in
the mountains!"
So the interest of Maxwell became largely revived and his mind was on
stockings when he was not in the company of Miss Ward. One day an
inspiration came to him with the gentle suddenness of a love pat. He
took Farrington into his confidence. That evening on the piazza that
gifted friend adroitly turned the conversation to the subject of
matching goods and colors.
The debate became most animated. The ladies, one and all, declared that
in the matter of matching things men were scarcely above the beasts that
perish, while as for themselves, there was not a woman, young or old,
among them who was not an adept. Maxwell, who had seemed at first
uninterested, broke into the conversation.
"I'm not ungallant," he asserted as a preliminary. "When it comes to
gallantry I'll venture to say I'd outdo any medieval troubadour, if I
could only sing and twang a harp, but, though angels can do almost
anything, to tell the truth I'm a shade doubtful concerning their
absolute infallibility in matching hues and fabrics. I've a piece of
silk I'd like matched for my sister, and I hereby, in the presence of
all witnesses, offer a prize of one box of gloves to any lady who will
match it for me within a week," and he produced about six inches
square--thirty-six square inches--of splendid purple silk.
As the war horse snuffeth the battle and says "Ha! ha!" to the trumpets;
as the sea mew rises from the waves to riot in the spindrift; as the
needle to the pole; as the river to the sea or the cat to the catnip in
wild enthusiasm--so rose the ladies to the silken lure. Match the silk?
Why, the gloves must be distributed among the score!
And then ensued a busy week. The sample, divided into thirty-six pieces
an inch square, was surrendered. There were trips to the nearest city
and, as excitement grew, even to the metropolis. The afternoon for the
test arrived and Maxwell, seated judicially beside a table on the piazza
and provided with another sample of his silk, awaited with manly
dignity the onslaught of the gathered contestants.
One by one they came and laid down their little pieces of purple silk;
one by one the samples were compared by the judge with the piece held in
his hand, and, one by one, he passed them back with a regretful and
unnecessarily audible sigh. Last of all came Miss Ward, who had not been
to town and who had, apparently, taken slight interest in the
competition. It was too trivial for her, had been Maxwell's firm
conclusion. Now she approached the table and laid down, as had the
others, a piece of purple silk. Maxwell's heart thumped. There was no
mistaking that wondrous hue!
"Miss Ward has won the gloves," he said.
There were congratulations and any amount of fun and curious
speculation.
That evening Maxwell caught Miss Ward upon the piazza and induced her to
sit with him awhile, to improve his mind, he said. They chatted
indifferently until he took occasion to compliment her upon her success
in matching the purple silk. "You have a wonderful sense of color," he
declared.
She answered that she had always enjoyed matching things, and then he
ventured to expatiate a little on the particular silk which had been
matched: "What pretty trimming for a hat, or what pretty stockings it
would make," he said.
She asked him why the nighthawks circling overhead and about gave
utterance to their shrill cries so frequently, and he said he didn't
know. Then they talked about the coming boat race.
For a week Maxwell's chief occupation was what Farrington described as
"concentrated musing." He walked much. One afternoon he was strolling
along the narrow beach, which lay, a sandy stretch, between the water
and a tree-grown grassy ledge, about fifteen feet in height, which was a
favorite place of rest and outlook for the hotel guests. He was looking
downward, but there came a moment when the heavens fell. Chancing to
look upward to determine if any of the usual idlers there were of a
companionable sort for him, he saw that which turned aside the current
of his life as easily as an avalanche may turn a rivulet.
There, projecting a little beyond the crest-crowning grass and greenery
of the ledge above, was something trim and gloriously purple and
gloriously perfect. The tan of the neatest of number three shoes blended
upward into the purple paradise, and from the tan seemed growing a snowy
spray of lilies-of-the-valley. Delicate is the subject, but it must be
treated. Delicate is the making of a watch, but we must have watches;
eggs are delicate, but we must eat them; goldfish are delicate, but we
must lift them by hand occasionally. Duty first!
Perfect the exterior of that wondrous stocking, perfect, absolutely so,
but its contour and its contents! Ah, me! The flat, thin ankle--let
Arabian fillies hide their heads! The even upward swell--just full
enough, just trim enough, revealed, but not in view, as one sees things
by starlight. Ah, me!
Maxwell's eyes dimmed and he reeled. What is known as locomotor ataxia
smote him there suddenly in his prime and pride of life. Then after a
moment or two a degree of health came back and he turned and retraced
his steps, feebly at first, then more rapidly, and then as hies the
antlered stag. He gained the ledge and followed it and found Miss Ward
seated demurely at its very crest and surrounded by a group of friends.
Within three months he owned, after the wedding, not merely what was
left of one, but two similar purple stockings, and their contents,
together with, all and singular, the hereditaments and appurtenances
thereunto belonging or in anywise appertaining.