There for the first time in its green life my vine came into its natural right of screening lovers. In its shade my love cast down her eyes, but intrepidly lifted her lips. Miss Caroline was still where she should have remained in the first place.
"I am very happy, Little Miss!"
"You shall be still happier, Calvin Blake. I haven"t waited this long without knowing--"
"Nor I! I know, too."
"I hope Jim will be glad," she suggested.
"He"ll be delighted, and vastly relieved. It has puzzled him fearfully of late to see you living away from me."
We sat down, for there seemed much to say.
"I believed more than you did, with all your game," she taunted me.
"But you broke the rules. Anybody can believe anything if he can break all the rules."
"I"d a dreadful time showing you that I meant to."
I shall not detail a conversation that could have but little interest to others. Indeed, I remember it but poorly. I only know that it seemed magically to feed upon itself, yet waxed to little substance for the memory.
One thing, however, I retain vividly enough. In a moment when we both were silent, renewing our amazement at the stars, there burst upon the night a volume of song that I instantly identified.
"She sleeps, my lady sleeps!" sang the clear tenor of Arthur Upd.y.k.e. "My lady sleeps--she sleeps!" sang three other voices in well-blended corroboration; after which the four discoursed upon this interesting theme.
We were down from the stars at once, but I saw nothing to laugh at, and said as much.
"We might take them out some sandwiches and things to drink," persisted my Little Miss.
But the starlight had shown me a gleam in her eyes that was too outrageously Peavey.
"We will _not_" I chanted firmly to the music"s mellowed accompaniment.
"I am free to say now that the thing must be stopped, but you shall do it less brutally--to-morrow or next day."
"Oh, well, if you--"
She nestled again. So soon had this habit seemed to fasten upon her adaptable nature.
"It"s wonderful what one arm can do," she said; and in the darkness she felt for the closing hand of it to draw it yet more firmly about her.
"It has the spirit of all the arms in the world, Little Miss--oh, my Little Miss--my dream woman come true!"
She nestled again, with a sigh of old days ended.
"You _can"t_ get any closer," I admonished.
"_Here!_" she whispered insistingly, so that I felt the breath of it.
CHAPTER x.x.x
BY ANOTHER HAND
A wanderer from Little Arcady in early days returned to its placid shades after many years, drawn thither by a little quick-born yearning to walk the old streets again. But he found such strangeness in these that his memory was put to prodigious feats of reconstruction ere it could make them seemly as of yore.
To the west, away from the river, the town has groped beyond a prairie frontier that had once been sacred to boyish games and the family cow.
Now, so thickly was it built with neat white houses, that only with strenuous clairvoyance could famous old localities be identified: the ball-ground; the marshy stretch that made skating in winter, or, in spring, a fascinating place to catch cold by wading; the gra.s.sy common where "shinny" was played by day and "Yellow Horn" by night; the enchanted spot where the circus built airy castles of canvas, and where, on the day after, one might plant one"s feet squarely in the magic ring, on the veritable spot, perchance, where the clown had superhumanly ridden the difficult trick-mule after local volunteers had failed so entertainingly.
Barns in this once wild country had failed amazingly. Only one of any character was left, and it had shrunk. Of old a structure of possibilities intensely romantic, it was now dingy, pitiable, insignificant. No reasonable person would consider holding a circus there--admission ten pins for boys and five pins for girls.
Orchards, too, had suffered. Acres of them, once known to their last tree, including the safest routes of approach by day or night, had been cut down to make s.p.a.ce for substantial but unexciting houses, quite like the houses in anybody"s town. Other orchards had shrunk to a few poor unproductive trees so little prized by their owners that they could no longer excite evil thoughts in the young.
Indeed, almost everything had shrunk. The church steeples, once of an inconceivable height, were now but a scant sixty feet; and the buildings beneath them, that once had vied with old-world cathedrals, were seen to be but toy churches.
Especially had gardens shrunk. One that boasted the widest area in days when it must be hoed for the advantage of potatoes insanely planted there, was now a plot so tiny that the returned wanderer, amazedly staring at it, abandoned all effort to make it occupy its old place in his memory.
North and south were dozens of strange, prim houses to puzzle up the streets. The street-signs, another innovation, were truly needed. Of old it had been enough to say "down toward the depot," "out by the McCormick place," "next to the Presbyterian church," "up around the schoolhouse,"
or "down by the lumber yard." But now it was plain that one had to know First, Second, and Third streets, Washington, Adams, and Jefferson streets.
Socially as well, the town had changed. Not only is the native stock more travelled, speaking--entirely without an air--of trips to the Yellowstone, to Europe, Chicago, or Santa Barbara, but a new element has invaded the little country. It goes in the fall, but it comes again each summer, drawn by the green beauty of the spot, and it has left its impress.
The revisiting wanderer observed, as in a dream, an immaculate coupe with a couple of men on the box who behaved quite as if they were about to enter the park in the full glare of Fifty-ninth Street and Fifth Avenue, though they were but on a street of the little country among farm wagons. The outfit was ascertained to belong to a summer resident who was said, by common report, to "have wine right on the table at every meal." No one born out of Little Arcady can appraise the revolutionary character of this circ.u.mstance at anything like its true value.
Further, in the line of vehicular sensationalism, a modish wicker-bodied phaeton and a minute pony-cart were seen on a pleasant afternoon to issue from a driveway far up a street that now has a name, but which used to be adequately identified by saying "up toward the Fair Grounds."
The phaeton was occupied by two ladies, one rather old, to whom a couple of half-grown children in the pony-cart kissed their hands and shouted.
They were not permitted to follow the phaeton, however, as they seemed to have wished. Its shock-headed pony, driven by an aged negro who scolded both children with a worn and practised garrulity, was turned in another direction. One of the children, a little dark-faced girl of eight or nine, called "Little Miss" by the driver, was repeatedly threatened in the fiercest tone by him because of her perilous twistings to look back at the phaeton. The cart was followed by a liver-and-white setter; a young dog, it seemed, from his frenzied caperings and his manner of appearing to think of something else in the midst of every important moment.
There proved to be two papers in the town, as of old, but the _Argus_ was now published twice a week, Wednesdays and Sat.u.r.days. The wanderer eagerly scanned its columns for familiar names and for something of the town"s old tone; but with little success.
Said one item, "A string of electric lights, on a street leading up one of our hills, looks like a necklace of brilliants on the bosom of the night." Old Little Arcady had not electric lights; nor the _Argus_ this exuberance of simile.
Again: "This new game of golf that the summer folks play seems to have too much walking for a good game and just enough game to spoil a good walk." Golf in the Little Country!
The advent of musical culture was signified by this: "At least thirty girls in this town can play the first part of "Narcissus" pretty well.
But when they come to the second part they mangle the keys for a minute and then say, "I don"t care much for that second part--do you?" Why don"t some of them learn it and give us a chance to judge?"
The _Argus_ had acquired a "Woman"s Department," conducted by Mrs.
Aurelia Potts Denney, wife of the editor,--a public-spirited woman, prominent in club circles, and said to be of great a.s.sistance to her husband in his editorial duties. The town was proud of her, and sent her as delegate to the Federation of Woman"s Clubs; her name, indeed, has been printed in full more than once, even by Chicago newspapers. Some say that wisely she might give more attention to her twin sons, Hayes and Wheeler Denney; but this likely is ill-natured carping, for Hayes and Wheeler seem not more lawless than other twins of eight. And carpers, to a certainty, do exist in Little Arcady.
One Westley Keyts, for example, lounging in the doorway of his meat-shop, renewed acquaintance with the wanderer, who remembered him as a glum-faced but not bad-hearted chap. Names recalled and hands shaken, Mr. Keyts began to lament the simple ways of an elder day, glancing meanwhile with honest disapproval at a newly installed compet.i.tor across the street. The shop itself was something of an affront, its gilt name more--"The Bon Ton Market." Mr. Keyts p.r.o.nounced "Bon Ton" in his own fashion, but his contempt was ably and amply expressed.
"Sounds like one of them fancy names for a corset or a patent lamp," he complained. "It"s this here summer business that done it. They swarm in here with their private hacks and their hired help all togged out till you"d think they was generals in the army, and they play that game of sissy-shinny (drop-the-handkerchief for mine, if _I_ got to play any such game), and they"re such great hands to kite around nights when folks had ought to be in their beds. I tell you, my friend, it ain"t doing this town one bit of good. The idea of a pa.s.sel of strong, husky young men settin" around on porches in their white pants and calling it "pa.s.sing the summer." _I_ ain"t never found time to pa.s.s any summers."
The wanderer expressed a proper regret for this decadence. Mr. Keyts reverted bitterly to the Bon Ton market:--