A LITERARY LOVE AFFAIR
There was laughter, naturally, over the Showman's absurd, yet not
altogether unsentimental story and, after its recital he stood,
undoubtedly, more nearly on a social footing with the others. There were
his clothes, of course, and another excrudescence or two, but these were
incidentals. The wayfarers did not even yawn, but looked inquiringly at
the beaming and bestowed-by-Providence Colonel.
After all, it is doubtful if there be anything better in the world than
a spinster--if she be of the right sort. Of course all spinsters are not
of the right sort; few of us are. When this one especially fine spinster
was called upon by the Colonel she did not know exactly what to do. She
should have been as perfectly at ease and as possessed of aplomb as any
voluptuously beautiful poser in a ball-room, yet she was somewhat
embarrassed. She should not have been. She was an exquisitely beautiful
woman, in the view of those who know things. With her thin nose and
thin lips and general expression of cultivation and eyes in which showed
loving regard and thinking, she was adorable to those upon whose eyes
had been rubbed the great ointment of perception. Her one hundred and
twenty-five pounds of existing womanhood, neat and good, was worth far
more than its weight in gold or any other metal. When called upon this
is what the spinster said most bravely:
"Colonel Livingstone, there is but one untold story of which I know and
I wish I were capable of explaining to all of you how full of real life
it was. Yet it seems so simple and silly that it is commonplace, though
it isn't. Do you remember, Colonel, about the great tower of the
Campanile, in Venice and the square down upon the pavements of which the
pigeons flutter to be fed? Well this is a story--a true one--of
something like those same pigeons and the Doge who first instituted the
feeding of them, five hundred years ago, or something like that, only
the scene and time are different. As you know, Colonel, I live in
Chicago, and this is but the story of the pigeons of St. Mark's
transferred to the corner of Clark and Madison streets in a city in
another hemisphere. And, as I said, it is all true. This is what
actually happened."
A LITERARY LOVE AFFAIR
This is a love story of two of the class who know things. Margaret
Selwyn was a graduate of one of the bluest women's colleges between the
two seas, and, more than that, she had a background of home culture and
refinement, having parents of brains. She came from college with those
acquirements, which shine exteriorly, and had an incurved back, and was
"tailor made" from head to heel, yet having within her all that
gentleness and greatness of heart which make a woman better than
anything else, not even excluding the strawberry upon which the Right
Reverend Bishop pronounced such a sincere eulogy.
As to the man, Henry Bryant, he belonged socially and in all other ways
to the same class as the woman, even in brains and goodness,
considering, of course, the limitations of sex. Each of these two
occupied a social position--if such a thing as recognized social
position be defined enough in the United States--distinctly understood
by the people who knew them. Each was arrogant and self-sustained, and
each thoroughly and admiringly in love with the other. It was wonderful
how these two, each accustomed to be obeyed, and each, in a gentle way,
unconsciously dominant with those about, grew close and yielding
together. Each recognized the masterfulness, feminine or masculine, of
the other, and there came a great sweetness to the understanding. Yet to
these two, well-poised and mentally well-equipped, came gusts and
showers of difference of opinion. The man tried to be dignified and
self-contained upon these occasions, but, as a rule, failed miserably.
The woman didn't even try.
But these differences throughout the months of their engagement resulted
in no tragedy of importance. They both had so much of the salt of humor
in their composition that they recognized the folly of even a momentary
antagonism, and each laughed and begged the other's pardon or rendered
the equivalent of that performance. They smiled together over their
mutual short lapses of realization of what it is that makes the world go
round.
At such times as they quarreled the man would tell her the foolish but
probably true story of the Irishman who came annually whooping into town
at fair time in some old Irish village, whirling his shillalah above
his head and announcing to all the world that he was "blue-mouldy for
want of a batin'." And, after this comparison, Bryant would announce, in
strictest confidence, to his sweetheart, that this blessed Irishman
never failed to get his "batin'," and that there were "others" even unto
this day.
And so it came, in time, that this man, in love with a woman, called her
his "blue-mouldy" girl, and this came to be the sweetest title in the
heart of each.
With all the saving grace of the sense of proportion, which is a good
part of the sense of humor, and with all their love and understanding of
each other, with such characters it was inevitable that something must
happen. There are laws of Nature. Vesuvius gets dyspeptic. Certain Javan
islands spill up into the sky and the world has red sunsets for a while.
One day, this woman, good product of a good race, sat in her parlor
awaiting her lover. She was reading a book as she waited.
Now as to certain facts: Miss Selwyn was in her literary tastes an
Ibsenite, Hardyite, Jamesite, or something of that sort. Bryant was a
Kiplingite or Conan Doyleite. She trimmed close to something sere, and
where nerves were. He was chiefly in his literary tendencies "Let her
go, Gallagher!"
Margaret, having become absorbed in her book, looked up with saddened
eyes from her literary draft of wormwood and tea, with the beginning of
beautifully creased brows, to note the entrance of some lusty flesh and
blood. Less in accord in mood and thought than were these, for the
instant, never existed two people on the face of the earth, earnest
lovers though they were and of about the same quality of thought and
being. Something had to happen.
"Why weep ye by the tide, Ladye?" began Bryant, glancing at the face of
his sweetheart, and from that to the book she had laid aside. As she did
not reply immediately, he continued, taking up the volume:
"Is it The Han't that Walks or The Browning of the Overdone Biscuit that
has lowered your spirits?"
"I don't know what you are talking about," she said.
"Neither do I," said he.
There they were, he, overcoat still on and hat in hand, and she sitting
there and looking up at him but still enwrapped in a more or less
emotional feverishness contracted from the volume in his hand. Any
purely objective onlooker would have required no announcement of the
approaching "circus."
The girl made an effort to recover command of herself. "Leave your hat
and overcoat with the maid," she said, "and come and sit here in the
window and look at the lake, while I read to you the beautiful ending of
the story I have just finished."
"I will stay," Bryant declared; "I was going to ask you to go with me to
the park and idle among the chrysanthemums, but this will be better."
And he seated himself near the window. "May I be allowed to look at you,
instead of following your advice to the letter and keeping my eyes upon
the cold, gray lake water outside?" he continued. "No matter what I
hear, I shall be content if I can see you."
Miss Selwyn flushed a little, but laughed good-humoredly.
Here the purely objective looker-on afore-mentioned might murmur over
the foolhardiness of man when he meets, unawares and all
uncomprehendingly, one of the bewildering moods of an impressionable
sweetheart. The contented male creature rushed blindly to his fate.
"Before you begin, dear, tell me; tell me it is not Tolstoi or Ibsen you
are going to read, nor yet George Meredith or Sarah Grand!"
At the last reference Miss Selwyn's eyes began to flash dangerously.
"You know I detest her!" she exclaimed.
"Do you refer to all four of the writers I mentioned as of the feminine
gender?" inquired Bryant with an appearance of fervid interest. The fool
was actually enjoying it all.
Seeing that her lover was only chaffing, Margaret made a brave effort,
settled herself in her chair and found the place in her book.
"Before you begin--I beg your pardon," said Bryant deferentially, "but
let me say that I was up late last night, and if I can't keep awake
under the spell of your voice, don't blame me. Wake me up at the
catastrophe, when the distant door slams or somebody breaks a teacup."
Miss Selwyn laid the volume down again, and, still smiling, answered
quietly but a shade frostily:
"It would take something written with a mixture of raw brandy, blood and
vermilion paint to arrest your attention, I believe! Your authors write
with--with--an ax in place of a pen. But I can't harrow up my own
imagination with their horrors, much less read them aloud!"
"An exclusive regime of problem novels, plays and moralizings on
pessimistic lines is bad for the mental digestion," admitted Bryant in
judicial tones. "Poor girl! I must teach you to live in and love this
beautiful, violent, sweet and good old world of ours--the world of real
nature, real men and women, and real literature!"
"I thank you for your indulgent, patronizing intentions," she flashed
back at him. "You would feed butterflies on brawn, teach the bluebird to
scream like a macaw, make the trembling, silver-leaved white birches all
over into oaks."
"My dear Margaret--" stammered Bryant, starting up, but he could not lay
the spirit he had raised.
"There are questions in life that cannot be settled by the stroke of a
sword or ax," she went on. "Your favorite writer has smirched the fair
figure of childhood in his brutal pictures of boys' life. He has made an
unwholesome, disgusting thing out of what should be and is healthful and
fine. How can you, who read him with patience, carp at my taste for what
seems to me well thought and well expressed?"
"The effect of your favorites upon you to-day has not been particularly
reassuring," said Bryant, more stirred by Margaret's tone and manner
than by her words. Seeing that he had angered her, and trying to stem
the tide of her indignation, he still blundered most flagrantly, and
within a half hour the quarrel had culminated in an avowed separation
for the rest of their lives, Bryant leaving the house in a state of
indignant misery such as fond and over-confident lovers alone may know.
Not a word had been said, this time, about the "blue-mouldy" girl. The
atmosphere had been too electric, the mood too tense for a laughing
word.
Then followed silence between these two. Stubborn pride on the part of
the woman, proud stubbornness on the part of the man. They were
earnestly and faithfully in love, but each waited to hear the first word
of forgiveness.
Bryant did write, but in his preoccupation left his letter upon the desk
unposted, and in a day it was snowed under by his unopened or carelessly
glanced at mail. Of course he misunderstood Miss Selwyn's silence and
she resented his.
One Sunday morning Margaret, with an innate grasping and running back to
the faith in which she had been bred, sought help at the source which
best suited her--the relief which comes from religion.
It so chances that there is a shrine upon the bank of the Ganges. It so
chances that there is what we call a Mecca. It so chances that we all
occasionally seek our shrines.
Margaret Selwyn sat in her shrine, the outgrown old Episcopal Cathedral
on Washington Boulevard, and listened to her pastor, one of the great
old men who have grown up with a creed, but with thought and lovingness;
one who has learned how to heal wounds, the wounds of which no tongue
can tell, and how to advise genially and generally as to the affairs of
life. Somehow, the old gentleman, with his white hair and robes, his
simple, clean, old-fashioned honesty, had imparted to her a strength and
faith in God which calmed and helped her. It may be there could not have
been imparted to her by any one else in the world, politics and power
and inherited splendor all considered, as much as could this plain old
man.
The white-robed boys sang their recessional, and she became perhaps
clearer and more comprehensive of mind than before she entered the
church--certainly more equipoised than she had been for days.
Meditatively alive to the quiet of this Sunday noon, Miss Margaret
Selwyn, as she neared the centre of the city, stopped short and looked
about her. Where was she?
The pavement of the street was gray-blue, spotted with white, and
gleaming here and there with the iridescent living tints of bird
plumage. The air was winged by soft forms, and a crowd of idlers were
scattering grains of corn upon the ground to lure and keep in sight the
most graceful creatures that live between the sky and earth.
Against a sky as blue as that of Venice two snow-white pigeons were
flying straight down the street toward their companions. A swarthy
Italian stood with the birds almost under his feet, but, save the dark
face of the street-vender, the pigeons and the perfect sky, the picture
involuntarily imaged in Miss Selwyn's mind was all away and awry.
Here was no stately tower, remote and solitary as a recluse in a worldly
throng; no Byzantine temple delighted her eye with its warm and gracious
humanity of suggestion. The vast sunny space of the Venetian square,
with its columned coffee-houses and shops, was in spirit and in truth
far removed from here. St. Mark's, and the place where the dream of a
moment had arisen in an impressionable mind, might have been on two
different planets, so opposed were they in every outline, spirit and
detail--save one: the fluttering, flying, eager, unafraid pigeons.
The sun shot side glances down through the thoroughfare and really did
some good on this day, because this was the day of the Nazarene, and
even the money-seekers on this day had abandoned in their affairs the
consumption of bituminous coal. That is why on Sunday, in one of the
greatest cities in the world, the air is clear and the breath better.
That is one reason why, on Sunday, the American cousins of the "pigeons
of St. Mark's" come fluttering from somewhere about the city, from only
the Maker of them knows where, and dip downward out of the ether
trustingly to the feet of the passer-by, be he thug or preacher.
Miss Selwyn had never heard of the vast flock of doves which dwell in
security among the towering buildings of the city. Their wings flash
across wide darkling streets all day, welcome to every careworn man who
watches, for a moment, their graceful flight. They were here before her
now--there, parading strutting, looking up hopefully toward the men
about them, each eagerly seeking the next flip of the corn. They
were--and are to-day--because of some gracious instinct in humanity, the
best casual street exemplification of what is best in human nature.
They dripped and dropped from somewhere almost simultaneously. There was
one who strutted the most struttingly and whose only really justifiable
claim was that from crown to midway of his body he had such iridescent
purple as all the shell-opening fishermen of Tyre and Sidon never
devised half-way. There was another one, a quaint little maiden, who
will probably marry some English nobleman of the birds, snow-white, with
strange geometrical lines crisscross about her back, and who was almost
duplicated by a dozen or two others of her breed. There were two rufous
things, the red of whose top and back lapsed into a white beneath,
almost as exquisitely as blends the splendid red hair of a woman into
the ever accompanying white of the skin beneath. There were little
drizzled things, pert, like bantams, off-breeds which had introduced
themselves into the community. And there was nothing but just a tossing
about among those beautiful creatures upon the pavement there, nothing
but an Oliver Twistish clamor for "more" from those who stood above
them, to whom they were doing more good than they could know.
On week days the pigeons fly out in foraging parties to the railway
yards and the neighborhood of the huge grain elevators. They can be seen
glancing above the tall buildings, far flying, specks of gleaming light,
along the hollow spaces above the streets as they go and come from their
feeding places. The crowded masses of wagons, street cars, carriages,
horses and hurrying people keep the pigeons from the street where they
are most at home together for six days. But on the seventh, when the
burden of labor is lifted or a brief space from the shoulders of toiling
mankind, the pigeons rally in force upon one of the most busy, prosaic,
care-breeding corners in the great spreading city by the lake. And every
Sunday come, as surely, men and boys to feed the air-travelers and look
at them with the worship all men feel for natural beauty and grace.
[Illustration: "HE WAS UNCONSCIOUS AS A CHILD"]
Miss Selwyn had chanced upon this unique function, the pigeons' Sunday
banquet. Here were no appealing graces of architecture and Venetian balm
of atmosphere. The rough pavement on which the yellow corn was scattered
was a contrast to the smooth and perfect floor of the great Piazza. On
one side was the inevitable American drug store, plain, matter-of-fact,
yet giving, by its crimson and purple window globes, the only touch of
pure color in that part of the street. Across the way was a hotel. A
clothing store, with its paraphernalia of advertisement, occupied
another corner. It was Clark and Madison Streets.
Miss Selwyn saw every detail of this scene at a glance, and then her
eyes were fastened upon one figure.
Standing among the others was Henry Bryant. His straight, powerful
figure, commanding in presence and pose, seemed to separate him, in a
way, from the men around him. But, like all the onlookers, he bought
corn and scattered the grain on the ground, watching the pigeons as they
clustered around his largess. He was as unconscious as a child, and as
gentle, about his simple pleasure. His face was a little worn and
changed by the suffering of the days of separation from her--Margaret's
eyes were quick to see that.
That was the man from whom she had separated after a wordy war over
wordy books. That was her lover over there. His whole look, attitude and
occupation appealed to her tenderness. Love rushed tumultuously onward,
a tide of irresistible strength, sweeping away every carefully-built
structure of repulse and every barrier of opinion. Their quarrel was
forgotten. Yet the reserve of a proud nature and of custom kept Miss
Selwyn from crossing over to speak to Bryant.
She walked home with a springing step. Once the thought came into her
mind that Bryant might go away somewhere at once; that the message she
was hurrying to send him might not reach him, and at the idea she felt
faint and disheartened. She stopped and, for an instant, almost turned
back, but, checking herself with a smile at her own impatience and
trivial forebodings, she held on her homeward way again.
She could see her lover, and see him as plainly as when he was in
reality before her, all unconscious of her presence, half
absent-mindedly and all tenderly scattering grain for the cooing,
fluttering pigeons at his feet.
The next morning, Bryant, looking over his mail with little relish--for
much of the interest in living was out of him just then--found a letter
which aroused him most effectually from his mood of listlessness. It
said:
DEAR: I am "blue-mouldy for want of a batin'." Come to me.
MARGARET.