Many girls might have overlooked his solid attractions and gone in for a Jim dandy of a chap who wasn"t worth his salt."
My wife looked a little blank over this philosophic statement, then she glanced up at me with a roguish smile and said: "You seem to forget, dear, that I accepted you."
"True enough," I answered, merrily. "I dare say I wasn"t a trifle less commonplace-looking than son-in-law. Besides we both have spiritual faces."
"You should give me and Josie credit for being able to see below the surface," said my darling, fondly. "A soldier or a sailor, or a splendid-looking creature such as you describe, is delightful at a party; but gold b.u.t.tons, or even a very handsome mustache, don"t go far nowadays toward blinding a sensible girl to the fact that she will have to pa.s.s all her days with the man she chooses. You know, dear, that you and I have never believed that marriage is a lottery. We were sure of each other beforehand. So are Josie and Jim."
"Thank G.o.d that it is so; and may he, darling, grant them such happiness as he has given us."
"Amen! And, Fred, he--James" (Josephine prefers to call him James; she thinks Jim undignified) "is not really homely. He isn"t an Adonis, of course, and doesn"t impress one especially at first glance, but anyone who looks at him twice can see that he is very intelligent, and that he has the appearance of a gentleman."
"Right you are, my dear. Perhaps I was unconsciously comparing him with the young man whom I met strolling with your other daughter not many days ago."
"With Winona? When?" she asked with a start.
"About dusk."
"No, no, on what day?"
"Let me see. It must have been a week ago yesterday."
"Who was he? Why didn"t you tell me before?"
"He was tall, handsome, and impressive-looking," I replied, with quiet deliberation.
"What _do_ you mean, Fred? How slow you are. Do go on."
"As to telling you before, I thought it best to wait until you had one of your girls off your mind. As to being slow, I have told you all there is to tell already. I met Winona about dusk a week ago yesterday in the company of a tall, handsome, impressive-looking young man whom I had never seen in my life. I don"t know where they were going or where they came from or what it meant. I hope to see him again so as to say to him, "Young man, beware; I have lost one daughter, and I am in no mood to be trifled with." I dare say," I continued, nonchalantly, "that if you were to keep your eyes open you would be able to see what is evidently going on under your very nose, my dear."
Josephine did not heed this taunt; she was thinking hard.
"I wonder who it could have been," she murmured, presently. "I have noticed lately that Winona has acted as though she had something on her mind; but I had a.s.sumed it might be because her patients were falling off, owing to the death of that woman with consumption who could not be persuaded that she had nothing the matter with her. It would be a great relief to my mind to see the dear girl happily married. What did he look like, Fred? Are you certain you have never seen him before?
just think: you"re sure it wasn"t Mr. Dyer or Mr. Benson? One might call either of them tall, handsome, and impressive-looking."
"I have told you everything I know, Josephine," I retorted, fiercely.
"I don"t know the man from Adam. I should think," I added, with a sepulchral outburst, "that after what happened yesterday, Josephine, you wouldn"t be in so much haste to many the only girl we have left."
"Excuse me, Fred," she said, gently. "It was cruel of me to suggest such a thing so soon. And yet I suppose we must be prepared for something of the kind sooner or later. You know you have constantly expressed the hope that neither of them would hang fire like dear Julia."
"Oh, I know it. I"m a selfish brute, Josephine," I answered, beginning to hone my razor with the desperate air of one who would fain cut his own throat as the simplest solution of the problem of living.
And only six months ago the horizon of my domestic happiness looked so clear and comforting. Not even a cloud of the traditional smallness of a man"s hand marred its serenity. Little Fred was pegging away at Leggatt & Paine"s with commendable steadiness all day, and, though he was apt to dance all night by way of making up for it, I was comforted in my solicitude regarding his health by the recollection that I used to do the same when I was his age, my spiritual countenance to the contrary notwithstanding. Besides, Leggatt has always a good word to say for him, and evidently still keeps an eye on him, notwithstanding that Fred has ceased to kick foot-ball and limps no longer. To be sure, I have been beguiled once or twice by the dear boy"s a.s.surance that I would make my fortune, if I would follow his advice, into buying investment securities the market price of which at present is far less than I paid for them. However, the financial misinformation imparted by one"s own flesh and blood is more easily forgiven than that which emanates from one"s regular broker. Besides, there is the chance that the stocks will come up again some day or other. Fred says they are sure to. Everything considered he was, and indeed he still is, doing remarkably well, and he is such an honest-looking, manly fellow that Josephine says she wonders all the girls do not fall in love with him.
His present safety seems to lie in the fact that he is in love with all the girls and not with any particular one, a condition of affairs which I trust will last until he is properly able to support a wife. I remember that before I fell in love with Josephine--well, no matter. I have almost forgotten their names and should have to ask my darling to tell me who they were, and all about it. I have never really loved anybody but her. G.o.d bless her.
Then there was David--again I must admit there still _is_ David--whose rapid success in his adopted profession and whose general steadiness of character have been a source of perpetual gladness to us. He still causes his mother some concern by his utter disinclination for the society of young women, but I know of no other fault with which to reproach him. His bacillic pets no longer have a domicile under the paternal roof. He has a laboratory of his own downtown where, doubtless, they thrive and multiply. But his special interest at present is electricity. This has already brought him reputation and money by virtue of an appliance in the storage battery line, the details of which I do not precisely understand. Although Little Fred shook his head gravely at the mention of the word "patent," I was imprudent enough to follow my scientific son"s lead to the tune of several thousand dollars, the happy consequence of which seemed to be that Josephine and I would be able to have our jaunt to j.a.pan whenever the spirit moved us. That was before I counted the cost of marrying a daughter.
Thirdly, there was that daughter, a dear, sweet girl, who seemed to me perfectly content in her enjoyment of the social pleasures in which she was so well adapted to shine. I regarded her as still a mere child, and though youths came and went, never for one moment did I suspect that she was meditating the blow which she has since inflicted upon me, until Josephine told me one evening, with a mysterious, agitated air, that Mr. James Perkins wished to see me in the library. He saw me, and all the consolation I derived from our interview was the impression that he considered that he was acting generously in asking my consent to the match, and that custom would have justified him in letting me hear the news of my daughter"s engagement elsewhere and in seeing me further, as the phrase is, before he saw me at all. Remembering as I did that I regarded the views of Josephine"s father concerning our little matter twenty-five years ago as a matter of mere detail, only think how far I fell short of the temper of a real philosopher in allowing myself to become violently angry, and to pace the library until one o"clock in the morning after my would-be son-in-law had left it! An especially futile proceeding, as Josephine subsequently remarked, inasmuch as, by my own admission, I had behaved like a veritable lamb in his presence and had told him blandly that if he and my daughter were agreed upon the subject I had not a word to say against it.
This was the first break in our peaceful, happy domestic circle. Do you know what the period of an idolized daughter"s engagement seems to the disdained and discarded husband and father? He is too shy and dignified to peep at the billing and cooing through the crack of the drawing-room door like the younger members of the family; consequently, the six months which intervene between the making of the match and its consummation, impress him as a Sahara of tedious confabulation between the pair of turtle doves as to whether they have too many salt-cellars for their marital needs, and whether the exchange of a third set of oyster-forks without the knowledge of the donor would be a violation of the highest code of ethics. Presents, presents, nothing but presents, of every kind and degree, from the solid silver tea-set of exquisitely fluted pattern to the excruciatingly ugly bit of _bric-a-brac_ which has captivated the undiscerning eye of some dear friend. After every ring at the door-bell appears the maid with a fresh parcel wrapped in snow-white paper fastened with a dainty ribbon, and on each occasion my dear Josie"s eyes sparkle more excitedly as she clutches it and frees it from its caparisons. And ever and anon I am struck by the fact that she is growing thin and pale. I mention it to Josephine, but she tells me that girls always get peaked before their weddings, and that she herself was thin as a rail at the time she married me. I get no sympathy anywhere. My sole connection with the matter is that I am to give the bride away.
I did so yesterday in the presence of our entire social acquaintance and their dressmakers, most of whom I subsequently entertained at a mid-day collation, where I shook hands with a vast array of young people whom I did not know, and tried to keep up my spirits by asking my old friends to take wine with me. It was after the third gla.s.s that the spirit moved me to address my new son-in-law as "Jim." An hour later I saw the young rascal carry off my Josie in a carriage with an air as though he owned her, and I could have strangled him. At the same moment I was unpleasantly conscious that a quant.i.ty of rice hurled by an enthusiastic miss of nineteen was going down my back. I made a mad rush forward like a bull; I don"t know exactly what I had in mind to do, but I was bunted aside by a youth who, I am sure, could never have had a father and mother. He held an old shoe in his hand, which he proceeded to cast with such unerring aim that it landed on the top of the bridal coach, to the infinite delight of everybody except myself. I could see no especial humor in it, but Josephine tells me that we underwent precisely the same experience at our own wedding and thought it amusing. I perceive that it makes considerable difference in this world whose ox is gored, or, to put it more accurately, whether one is carrying off some other man"s daughter or is being robbed of his own.
And now to crown all, I am haunted by the vision of Winona and that tall, handsome, impressive-looking young man in whose company I met her the other day about dusk. In saying to Josephine that I had told her all, I did not speak the truth in a certain sense. I did tell her all I knew, but I did not confide to her all that I suspected. I did not reveal to her that at the moment my eye fell upon them my only remaining daughter was gazing up into the face of her male companion with that peculiar look of absorbed attention which has so often wrought the ruin of Platonic friendship. It entered like iron into my parental soul, already quivering with its recent wound, and I murmured to myself, "Oh, my prophetic soul, my second son-in-law!"
Winona too! Two years have pa.s.sed since I granted her permission to practise Christian Science, and from that time to this she has gone regularly every day to her office to minister to the patients who have applied to her for treatment. I am unable to state whether these have been many or few; to be frank, I have been amazed that she has had any at all. But I am sure that she has had some, and that she claims to have cured several sufferers from chronic disorders whom the regular pract.i.tioners had declared incurable. Or, more accurately, I should say that she has demonstrated that there was nothing the matter with them save a superabundance of error in their souls. I have learned, too, that she has experienced some dismal failures, notably in the case of the woman with consumption, referred to by Josephine, who, as Winona explained to us, would have got well had she only been able to realize that she was getting better. There was also a patient suffering from mental derangement who grew crazier and crazier, until she was finally carried off by her friends, whereas, as Winona sweetly explained to us, if they had only allowed her to remain a little longer she would have been completely cured, because in Christian Science, as in nature, darkness is apt to be most signal just before the dawn. This diagnosis of the case struck me as highly reasonable. Indeed, I have constantly said to myself that, provided the dear child managed to escape indictment, I had every reason to be contented that she was living up to her lights to the top of her bent. So altogether you can see that my home was a happy one, and that I desired no change.
My two sons-in-law! I see them in my mind"s eye walking on either side of me, the one short and slim with a spiritual countenance; the other tall, handsome, and impressive-looking. Their main object in life seems to be to help me on with my overcoat, and to guide my senile steps over street-crossings, though Dr. Meredith tells me that I am good for twenty years yet, and that I haven"t an unsound organ in my body. They disagree with me in politics so politely that I am fool enough to open my best wine when they come to dinner. They dog my footsteps; they silently pa.s.s judgment upon me, and I shall never be able to shake them off until I am dead. Why did they come to worry us?
We were so happy before we knew of their existence. Out upon them both!
Alas, poor philosopher! Shall I begrudge to my darlings the happiness that I have known in the too swiftly fleeting years of our married life? Love has come to claim my flesh and blood even as it claimed me and Josephine a quarter of a century ago never to loose us from his silken chains. Love the immortal, the transfigurer of souls, the unsealer of eyes which in vain have sought the light which streams from eternity, thou hast come to work anew the old, old story, even though thy coming rends my heart-strings. Down, selfish, stubborn fumes of senile cynicism! I bow to the law of life. Come to my embrace, O sons-in-law; I love you, I bid you welcome to my hearth, even though you regard me as one for whom the grave is yawning! Listen how bravely I call Jim--Jim--Jim, a thousand times Jim. And you, the other one, whose name I do not know, but whose fell purpose I have detected, when your name is divulged to me I will call that too.
X
Said Josephine to me some three months ago: "Fred, we shall have been married twenty-five years on the twenty-first of next November. We ought to celebrate it in some way."
"How better than by having a silver wedding?"
"Because so many people would feel obliged to give us silver," she replied. "I am perfectly willing, Fred, that people, should send me flowers when I"m dead, but I will not have them send silver to my silver wedding."
"The simplest way then would be to tell them not to. Put in the corner of the invitation the letters A. S. W. B. S. B. "All silver will be sent back.""
"This is a serious subject, Fred. I should like very much to have our best friends with us on the anniversary, if I could feel sure that they wouldn"t regard it as a tax. We all give willingly when people are married, but it does seem rather a grind, as the children used to say, to have to go out and buy something else a quarter of a century later, when you know that the senile old couple will be able to use whatever you get only a few years at the farthest, and that then it will be snapped up or melted up by their children or grandchildren. Mind you, dear, I should often be glad to give silver myself, if I could afford it; but I am looking at the matter from the point of view of the world at large. Do you know," she added, "that isn"t at all a bad idea of yours. We could put on the cards "No silver," just as they put "No flowers." It was quite a brilliant suggestion, Fred."
"There are always fools, though, who will disregard such a notice just from sheer contrariness."
"Oh, if we once gave them warning, and they chose to send notwithstanding, it would be their own fault," exclaimed Josephine, buoyantly. "I should hope there would be a few such people, for I should be very glad to have more silver. It"s not that I object to the silver, but because I wish to give a loophole of escape to the people who wouldn"t send it unless they felt obliged to. I should expect surely to receive quite a lot in one way or another. And it would be convenient, love, for Winona did not get any too much when she was married. Everything ran to furniture and books, and out of the little silver she received their were seven large salad forks, all of which had her initials on them, so that she couldn"t change them."
There are people who refrain from having their wills drawn on the score that they would be likely to die if they did. While I have no sympathy with this superst.i.tion, I must confess that a formal celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of your wedding-day has always seemed to me to savor of willingness to have your account with life audited, with a view to being able to sink quietly and becomingly into your grave whenever you were called. In view of the fact that, though each of us has trifling ailments, neither of us is seriously disabled, it seemed a little soon to be taking account of stock and talking of putting up the shutters forever. Yet time"s figures are not to be gainsaid, and especially in the Land of Liberty people are not allowed to forget that they are growing old even if they have no tall sons and daughters to attest the fact. What boots it to protest that we feel as young as we ever did? We might be allowed to say so unchallenged, provided we did not try to act on the a.s.sumption, but the youths without parents and the newly created species would soon bring us to our senses if we were to a.s.sert ourselves in society so as to cause them the slightest inconvenience. The middle-aged are allowed to drive and go to the theatre, and are tolerated at weddings on the ground that they may have given a wedding present, and at garden parties where there is no lack of s.p.a.ce, but their room is considered better than their company everywhere else, in spite of the pretty speeches one sometimes hears as to the charm of entertainments where all ages are gathered together, and the glory of growing old gracefully as they do in England. I am not complaining, for between you and me we wouldn"t be hired to go to one-tenth of the places to which we ought to be invited, so far as our physical state is concerned; but it would be soothing to be asked occasionally and not to be treated as though we were moribund, and bidden only to Cla.s.s Day spreads and to church weddings without a card for the reception. Once in a while lately Josephine and I have taken it into our heads to put in an appearance at the a.s.semblies, where, though we had been respectfully and cordially received, it has been evident to us that we were regarded as social Rip Van Winkles, and that at least half the company were inquiring who in thunder we were, and the remainder, who did know us, were wondering why in time we came.
A remark of Josephine"s served to crystallize these reflections. "Do you know, Fred, that I think on the whole we shall have a happier day if we pa.s.s it quietly together, and simply have the children to dine.
So many of the people of whom we were fond at the time we were married have pa.s.sed away, that I am sure we should be appalled by the thinness of the ranks when we began to reckon who are left. Besides, I don"t think that a notice not to bring silver would really protect the poor wretches who didn"t wish to bring any. It would seem too evidently to mean that they needn"t bring any unless they chose to, but that it would be acceptable all the same, which would worry dreadfully those who like to do whatever others do. Don"t you think so? You see everybody understands that n.o.body really objects to receiving silver.
Besides, it would involve no end of fuss, and we should be so occupied with the arrangements that we should forget to pay any attention to each other, so that it would be a dreary day to look back upon."
"Indeed, Josephine, I agree with you entirely," said I. "Unless such affairs go off just right they are stiff and ghastly. People who are bent on paying us a compliment will have an opportunity to come to our funerals before very long."
"Not together, though. Oh, Fred, wouldn"t it be the crowning thing of all, after so much happiness, if we _could_ die at the same time and never know what it was to miss each other!"
Although we are jointly and severally aware that the years have been slipping away, and that our turns to bid farewell to this dear earth may come any day now despite the fact that we feel young as ever, we choose still to regard death as a shy visitor which is likely to prefer others to us. I say to myself that people rarely die of rheumatism, which is Josephine"s only cross, and though pneumonia is a fell destroyer, I know that Josephine is firmly convinced that the colds to which I am subject never attack my lungs. Some day one of us will wake up and miss the other, unless my darling"s prayer that we be taken away together be granted; but until we do, are we not happier for cherishing the delusion that we are to be overlooked indefinitely?
Was it a delusion, too, which made my darling, as I helped her into our top-buggy on the morning of our twenty-fifth anniversary, seem to me no less beautiful than on the day when we plighted our troth at the altar?
Did she not wear the same sweet, trusting smile, the same n.o.ble look in her dear eyes? I told her so, and she informed me that I was demented, but I know she knew that I thought she had not changed, which I am sure was enough for her even if Providence has dimmed my eyes. Yet I maintain that I am right. She is a little stouter, of course; I can see a wrinkle and a crow"s foot here and there; and her hair is grizzled. But to all intents and purposes she does not look a day older.
It was a glorious morning; one of those mild, mellow days of the late autumn, when unscientific people wag their heads and proclaim that the climate is changing. There was scarcely a breath of wind, and the landscape toward which our steady nag trotted st.u.r.dily wore a faint atmosphere of saffron haze, as though the sunlight had been steeped in the lees of the yellow foliage. And the day we were married there was a driving snowstorm! Josephine had predicted so confidently that history would repeat itself on our anniversary, that I think she was rather disappointed when she awoke to find the sun shining and all the elements at rest.
Our Pegasus scarcely needed the guidance of the reins. He knew where we were going, and sped along with our comfortable if old-fashioned top-buggy at a stylish yet self-respecting gait in keeping with the dignity of the occasion. Our first destination was the attractive home of our daughter Winona, who lives eight miles out of town, on a hundred lordly acres. She has an adoring husband--the tall, handsome, impressive-looking youth of my prophetic soul--and an adored infant six months old. Her husband is a scion of one of the oldest and wealthiest families in the city, and he has already made his mark in the political field. He has been a Congressman, and his admirers are talking of giving him the next party nomination--not my party (so you see that my partiality does not proceed from political affiliation)--for Governor.
He is altogether a delightful young man; and as for the baby--.