Potts"s Painless Cure.
by Edward Bellamy.
1898
"Must you go up to that tiresome old college again to-night?"
Pouting lips and delicate brows fretted in pretty importunity over the troubled eyes enforced the pleading tones, and yet the young man to whom they were addressed found strength to reply:--
"I "m afraid I can"t get rid of it. I particularly promised Sturgis I would look in on him, and it won"t do for me to cut my acquaintance with the cla.s.s entirely just because I "m having such a jolly time down here."
"Oh, no, you don"t think it jolly at all, or you would n"t be so eager to go away. I "m sure I must be very dull company."
The hurt tone and pretended pique with which she said this were a.s.suredly all that was needed to make the _pet.i.te_ teaser irresistible.
But the young man replied, regarding her the while with an admiration in which there was a singular expression of uneasiness:--
"Can"t, Annie, "pon honor. I "m engaged, and you know--
""I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honor more!""
And transferring her hand to his lips he loosed its soft, lingering clasp and was gone, stopping at the gate to throw back a kiss to her as she stood in the porch, by way of amends for his hasty parting.
"George Hunt, you "re an infernal scamp!"
These were the opprobrious words he muttered to himself as he pa.s.sed out of earshot. The beneficent common law does not condemn a man merely on his own confession unless circ.u.mstances in evidence lend probability to his self-accusation. Before we coincide in Mr. Hunt"s opinion of himself, let us therefore inquire into the circ.u.mstances.
He was in the last term of senior year at ------ college. For the past year he had been boarding at the Giffords", and Annie and he had fallen in love. The fall on his part had been quite voluntary and deliberate.
He had fallen in love because it was the correct thing for a young collegian, engaged in the study of the humanities, to be in love, and made him feel more like a man than smoking, drinking, or even sporting a stove-pipe hat and cane. Vanity aside, it was very jolly to have a fine, nice girl who thought no end of a fellow, to walk, talk, and sing with, and to have in mind when one sang the college songs about love and wine with the fellows. And it gave him also a very agreeable sense of superior experience as he mingled in their discussions of women and the tender pa.s.sion.
But withal he was a conscientious, kind-hearted young fellow enough, and had suffered occasional qualms of conscience when little words or incidents had impressed him with the knowledge that Annie"s love for him was a more serious matter than his for her. He felt that by insisting on exchanging the pure gold of her earnest affection for the pinchbeck of his pa.s.sing fancy, she was making a rogue of him. He should be in no position to marry for years, nor did he want to; and if he had wanted to, though he felt terribly hard-hearted when he owned it to himself, his feeling toward Annie was not quite so deep as to be a real wish to marry her. As his last year in college approached its end, he had thought more and more of these things, and had returned from his last vacation determined to begin to draw gradually away from her, and without any shock to bring their relations back to the footing of friendship. The idea seemed a very plausible one, but it is scarcely necessary to state that, living in the same house, and frequently alone with her, it took about a week and a few dozen reproachful glances from grieving eyes to melt this artificial ice with a freshet of affection, and when, a couple of months later, he calmly reviewed the situation, he found himself involved perceptibly deeper than ever, on account of the attempt at extrication.
Only two or three weeks of the term remained, and it was too late to repeat the unsuccessful experiment. He had tried his best and failed, and nothing remained but to be as happy as possible with her in the short time left. Then she must get over her disappointment as other girls did in like cases. No doubt some woman would hurt his feelings some day, and so make it square. He took much satisfaction in this reflection. But such cynical philosophy did not lull his conscience, which alternately inspired his manner with an unwonted demonstrativeness and tenderness, and again made him so uncomfortable in her presence that he was fain to tear himself away and escape from her sight on any pretext. Her tender glances and confiding manner made him feel like a brute, and when he kissed her he felt that it was the kiss of a Judas.
Such had been his feelings this evening, and such were the reflections tersely summed up in that e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n,--"George Hunt, you "re an infernal scamp!" On arriving at Sturgis"s room, he found it full of tobacco smoke, and the usual crowd there, who hailed him vociferously.
For he was one of the most popular men in college, although for a year or so he had been living outside the buildings. Several bottles stood on the tables, but the fellows had as yet arrived only at the argumentative stage of exhilaration, and it so happened that the subject under discussion at once took Hunt"s close attention. Mathewson had been reading the first volume of Goethe"s autobiography, and was indulging in some strictures on his course in jilting Frederica and leaving the poor girl heartbroken.
"But, man," said Sturgis, "he didn"t want to marry her, and seeing he didn"t, nothing could have been crueler to her, to say nothing of himself, than to have done so."
"Well, then," said Mathewson, "why did he go and get her in love with him?"
"Why, he took his risk and she hers, for the fun of the game. She happened to be the one who paid for it, but it might just as well have been he. Why, Mat, you must see yourself that for Goethe to have married then would have knocked his art-life into a c.o.c.ked hat. Your artist has just two great foes,--laziness and matrimony. Each has slain its thousands. Hitch Pegasus to a family cart and he can"t go off the thoroughfare. He must stick to the ruts. I admit that a bad husband may be a great artist; but for a good husband, an uxorious, contented husband, there"s no chance at all."
"You are neither of you right, as usual," said little Potts, in his oracular way.
When Potts first came to college, the fellows used to make no end of fun of the air of superior and conclusive wisdom with which he a.s.sumed to lay down the law on every question, this being the more laughable because he was such a little chap. Potts did not pay the least attention to the jeers, and finally the jeerers were constrained to admit that if he did have an absurdly pretentious way of talking, his talk was unusually well worth listening to, and the result was that they took him at his own valuation, and, for the sake of hearing what he had to say, quietly submitted to his a.s.sumption of authority as court of appeal.
So when he coolly declared both disputants wrong, they manifested no resentment, but only an interest as to what he was going to say, while the other fellows also looked up curiously.
"It would have been a big mistake for Goethe to have married her,"
pursued Potts, in his deliberate monotone, "but he was n"t justified on that account in breaking her heart. It was his business, having got her in love with him, to get her out again and leave her where she was."
"Get her out again?" demanded Mathewson. "How was he to do that?"
"Humph!" grunted Potts. "If you have n"t found it much easier to lose a friend than to win one, you "re luckier than most. If you asked me how he was to get her in love with him, I should have to scratch my head, but the other thing is as easy as unraveling a stocking."
"Well, but, Potts," inquired Sturgis, with interest, "how could Goethe have gone to work, for instance, to disgust Frederica with him?"
"Depends on the kind of girl. If she is one of your high-steppers as to dignity and sense of honor, let him play mean and seem to do a few dirty tricks. If she"s a stickler for manners and good taste, let him betray a few traits of boorishness or Philistinism; or if she has a keen sense of the ridiculous, let him make an a.s.s of himself. I should say the last would be the surest cure and leave least of a sore place in her feelings, but it would be hardest on his vanity. Everybody knows that a man would "rather seem a scamp than a fool.""
"I don"t believe there"s a man in the world who would play the voluntary fool to save any woman"s heart from breaking, though he might manage the scamp," remarked Mathewson. "And anyhow, Potts, I believe there "s no girl who would n"t choose to be jilted outright, rather than be juggled out of her affections that way."
"No doubt she would say so, if you asked her," replied the imperturbable Potts. "A woman always prefers a nice sentimental sorrow to a fancy-free state. But it isn"t best for her, and looking out for her good, you must deprive her of it. Women are like children, you know, our natural wards."
This last sentiment impressed these beardless youths as a clincher, and there was a pause. But Mathewson, who was rather strong on the moralities, rallied with the objection that Potts"s plan would be deceit.
"Well, now, that"s what I call cheeky," replied its author, with a drawl of astonishment. "I suppose it wasn"t deceit when you were prancing around in your best clothes both literally and figuratively, trying to bring your good points into such absurd prominence as to delude her into the idea that you had no bad ones. Oh, no, it"s only deceit when you appear worse than you are, not when you try to appear better. Strikes me that when you "ye got a girl into a fix, it won"t do at that time of day to plead your conscience as a reason for not getting her out of it. Seeing that a man is generally ready to sacrifice his character in reality to his own interests, he ought to be willing to sacrifice it in appearance to another"s."
Mathewson was squelched, but Sturgis came to his relief with the suggestion:--
"Would n"t a little genuine heartache, which I take it is healthy enough, if it is n"t pleasant, be better for her than the cynical feeling, the disgust with human nature, which she would experience from finding her ideal of excellence a scamp or a fool?"
The others seemed somewhat impressed, but Potts merely e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed,--
"Bosh!" Allowing a brief pause for this e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n to do its work in demoralizing the opposition he proceeded. "Sturgis, you remember "Midsummer Night"s Dream," and how t.i.tania, on the application of Puck"s clarifying lotion to her eyes, perceives that in Bottom she has loved an a.s.s. Don"t you suppose t.i.tania suffered a good deal from the loss of her ideal?"
There was a general snicker at Sturgis"s expense.
"Well, now," continued Potts gravely, "a woman who should fall in love with one of us fellows and deem him a hero would be substantially in t.i.tania"s plight when she adored Bottom, and about as much an object of pity when her hero disclosed an asininity which would be at least as near to being his real character as the heroism she ascribed to him."
"That "s all very well," said Merril dryly, "but it strikes me that it"s middling cheeky for you fellows to be discussing how you "ll jilt your sweethearts with least expense to their feelings, when the chances are that if you should ever get one, you "ll need all your wits to keep her from jilting you."
"You are, as usual, trivial and inconsequential this evening, Merril,"
replied Potts, when the laughter had subsided. "Supposing, as you suggest, that we shall be the jilted and not the jilters, it will be certainly for our interest that the ladies should spare our feelings by disenchanting us,--saying, as it were, the charm backward that first charmed us. He who would teach the ladies the method and enlist their tender hearts in its behalf would be, perhaps, the greatest benefactor his much-jilted and heart-sore s.e.x ever had. Then, indeed, with the heart-breakers of both s.e.xes pledged to so humane a practice, there would be no more any such thing as sorrow over unrequited affections, and the poets and novelists would beg their bread."
"That is a millennial dream, Potts," responded Merril. "You may possibly persuade the men to make themselves disagreeable for pity"s sake, but it is quite too much to expect that a woman would deliberately put herself in an unbecoming light, if it were to save a world from its sins."
"Perhaps it is," said Potts pensively; "but considering what perfectly inexhaustible resources of disagreeableness there are in the best of us and the fairest of women, it seems a most gratuitous cruelty that any heart should suffer when a very slight revelation would heal its hurt.
We can"t help people suffering because we are so faulty and imperfect, but we might at least see that n.o.body ever had a pang from thinking us better than we are."
"Look at Hunt!" said Sturgis. "He does n"t open his mouth, but drinks in Potts"s wisdom as eagerly as if he did n"t know it was a pump that never stops."
There was a general laugh among those who glanced up in time to catch the expression of close attention on Hunt"s face.
"Probably he "s deliberating on the application of the Potts patent painless cure to some recent victim of that yellow mustache and goatee,"
suggested Merril, with the envy of a smooth-faced youth for one more favored.
Hunt, whose face had sprung back like a steel-trap to its usual indifferent expression, smiled nonchalantly at Merril"s remark. One whose reticent habit makes his secrets so absolutely secure as Hunt"s private affairs always were is stirred to amus.e.m.e.nt rather than trepidation by random guesses which come near the truth.
"If I were situated as Merril flatteringly suggests, I should enjoy nothing better than such an experiment," he replied deliberately. "It would be quite a novel sensation to revolutionize one"s ordinary rule of conduct so as to make a point of seeming bad or stupid. There would be as much psychology in it as in an extra term, at least. A man would find out, for instance, how much there was in him besides personal vanity and love of approbation. It would be a devilish small residue with most of us, I fancy."