The Romance of an Old Fool.
by Roswell Field.
If it had not been for Bunsey, the novelist, I might have attained the heights. As a critic Bunsey has never commanded my highest admiration, and yet I have had my tender moments for him.
From a really exacting standpoint he was not much of a novelist, and to his failure to win the wealth which is supposed to accompany fame I may have owed much of the debt of his sustained presence and his fondness for my tobacco. Bunsey had started out in life with high ideals, a resolution to lead the purely literary existence and to supply the market with a variety of choice, didactic essays along the line of high thinking; but the demand did not come up to the supply, and presently he abandoned his original lofty intention in favor of a sort of dubious romance. The financial returns, however, while a trifle more regular and encouraging, were not of sufficient importance to justify him in giving up his friendly claims on my house, my library, my time, my favorite lounge, and my best brand of cigars, in return for which he contributed philosophic opinions and much strenuous advice on topics in general and literature in particular.
From my childhood I have been in the habit of keeping a diary, a running comment on the daily incidents of my pleasant but uneventful life, and occasionally, when Bunsey"s society seemed too a.s.sertive and familiar, I sought to punish him by reading long and numerous excerpts. To do him justice he took the chastis.e.m.e.nt meekly, and even insisted that I was burying a remarkable talent, sometimes going to the magnanimous extreme of offering to introduce me to his publisher, and to speak a good word for me to the editors of certain magazines with whom he maintained a brisk correspondence, not infrequently of a querulous nature. All these friendly offices I gently put aside, in recalling the degradation of Bunsey"s ideals, though I went on tolerating Bunsey, who had a good heart and an insistent manner.
In this way I possibly deprived myself of a glorious career.
My ability to befriend Bunsey was due to a felicitous chain of circ.u.mstances. When the late Mrs. Stanhope pa.s.sed to her reward, she considerately left behind a doc.u.ment making me the recipient of her entire and not inconsiderable fortune. This proved a most unexpected blow to the church, which had enjoyed the honor and pleasure of Mrs. Stanhope"s a.s.sociation, and which, quite naturally, had hoped to profit by her decease. The late Mrs.
Stanhope, who I neglected to say was, in the eyes of Heaven, the world, and the law, my wife, had not lived with me in that utter abandonment to conjugal affection so much to be desired.
We married to please our families, and we lived apart as much as possible to please ourselves. Though not without certain physical charms, Mrs. Stanhope was a woman of great moral rigidity and religious austerity, who saw life through the diminishing end of a sectarian telescope, and who cared far more for the distant heathen than for the local convivial pagans who composed my _entourage_. She had brought to me a considerable sum of money, which I had increased by judicious investments, and I dare say that it was in recognition of my business ability, as well as possibly in a moment of becoming wifely remorse, that she bequeathed to me her property intact. I gave her final testimonial services wholly in keeping with her standing as a church-woman, and I must say for my friends, whom she had severely ignored during her life, that they behaved very handsomely on that mournful occasion. They turned out in large numbers, and testified in other ways to their regard for her unblemished character. I recall, not without emotion after all these years, that Bunsey"s memorial tribute to the church paper--for which he never received a dollar--was a model of appreciation as well as of Christian forgiveness and self-forgetfulness.
The pa.s.sing of Mrs. Stanhope made it possible for me to put into operation the long-desired plan of retiring a little way into the country, not too far from the seductions of the club and the city, but far enough to conform to the tastes of a country gentleman who likes to whistle to his dogs, putter over his roses, and meditate in a comfortable library with the poets and philosophers of his fancy. Here, with my good house-keeper, Prudence--a name I chose in preference to her mother"s selection, Elizabeth--and my gardener and man of affairs, Malachy, I lived for a number of years at peace with the world and perfectly satisfied with myself. Although I was dangerously over forty, and my hair, which had been impressively dark, was conspicuously gray in spots, my figure was good, my dress correct, and my mirror told me that I was still in a position to be in the matrimonial running if I tried. I mention these trifling physical details merely to save my modesty the humiliation and annoyance of referring to them in future, and to prepossess the gentle reader wherever the s.e.x makes it highly important.
I do not deny that in certain moments of loneliness which come to us, widowers and bachelors alike, I had the impulse to tempt again the matrimonial fortune, and counting on my financial standing, together with other attractions, I ran over the eligible ladies of my acquaintance. But one was a little too old, and another was a good deal too flighty. One was too fond of society, and another did not like dogs. A fifth spoiled her chances by an unwomanly ignorance of horticulture, and a sixth perished miserably after returning to me one of my most cherished books with the leaves dog-eared and the binding cracked. For I hold with the greatest philosophers that she who maltreats a book will never make a good wife. And so the years slipped cosily and cheerily by, while I grew more contented with my environment and less envious of my married friends, and whenever temporary melancholy overtook me I moved into the club for a month, or slipped across the water, finding in the change of scene immediate relief from the monotony of widowerhood.
In thus fortifying myself against the wiles of woman I was much abetted by my good Prudence, who never ceased her exhortations as to the sinister designs of her s.e.x, and who had a ready word of discouragement for any possible candidate who might be in the line of succession. "I see that Rogers woman walkin" by the house to-day, Mr. John," she would begin, "and I see her turnin" her nose up at the new paint on the arbor." (I selected that color myself.) "It"s queer how that woman does give herself airs, considerin" everybody knows she"s been ready for ten years to take the fust man that asks her." Prudence knew that I had escorted the elderly Miss Rogers to the theatre only the week before, and had commented pleasantly on the elegance of her figure. But the slight put upon my eye for color was too much.
Wily Prudence!
Or a day or two after I had rendered an act of neighborly kindness to the bereaved Mrs. Stebbins she would say quite casually:
"I don"t want to utter one word agin the poor and afflicted, Mr.
John, but when the Widder Stebbins. .h.i.t Cleo with a broom to-day I own I b"iled over. I shouldn"t tell you if it warn"t my duty."
Cleopatra was my favorite c.o.c.ker spaniel, and any faint impression my fair neighbor may have made on my unguarded heart was immediately dispelled. Thus subtly and vigilantly my house-keeper kept the outer gates of the citadel, and shooed away a possible mistress as effectually as she dispersed the predatory hens from the garden patch.
But with the younger generation of women, good Prudence was less cautious. Any maiden under the very early twenties she regarded fair material for my friendly offices, and frequently she visited me with expressions commendatory of good conduct.
"I likes to see you with the children, Mr. John, bless "em, sir.
And they do all seem to be so fond of you. There"s nothin" that keeps the heart so young and fresh as goin" with young people, just as nothin" ages a man so much as havin" a lot of widders and designin" old maids about. Of course," she added, with a return of her natural suspicion, "you are old enough to be father to the whole bunch, which keeps people from talkin"."
Whether it was Prudence"s approbation or my own inclination I cannot say, but it soon came about that I was on paternally familiar terms with the entire neighborhood of maidens of reasonably tender years, and a very important factor in young feminine councils. These artful creatures knew exactly when their favorite roses were in bloom, exactly when the cherries back of the house were ripe, exactly when it was time to go to town for another theatre party, to give a picnic up the river, or a small and informal dance in the parlors. I was expected to remember and observe all birthdays, to be a well-spring of benevolence at Christmas, and a free and never-failing florist at Easter. I was the recipient of all young griefs and troubles, and no girl ever committed herself unconditionally to the arms of her lover until she had talked the matter over with Uncle John. All this, to a good-looking man of--well, considerably over forty, was flattering, but no sinecure.
One morning, in the late spring, it came over me unhappily that in a moment of fatal forgetfulness I had promised to be present that evening at a card-party--a promise exacted by the "Rogers woman," _persona non grata_ to Prudence. A card-party was to me in the category with battle and murder and sudden death, from which we all pet.i.tion to be delivered in the book of common prayer--but how to be delivered? I could not be called suddenly to town, for I had already run that excuse to its full limit. I could not conveniently start for Europe on an hour"s notice. The plea of sickness I dismissed as feminine and unworthy. And while I sat debating to what extreme I could tax my over-burdened conscience, Malachy appeared with the information that he had discovered unmistakable signs of cutworms in the rose-bushes, and that the local custodians of the trees were thundering against an impending epidemic of brown-tailed moth. Surely my path of duty led to the garden. But that card-party? No, let the cutworm work his will, and let the brown-tailed moth corrupt; I must take refuge in flight, however inglorious. It was then that the good angel, who never forsakes a well-meaning man, whispered to me that far back in a quiet corner of New England was the little village where I had pa.s.sed my boyhood, which I had deserted for five and twenty years, but which still remembered me as "Johnny"
Stanhope, thanks to the officious longevity of the editor of the county paper.
The situation I explained briefly to Prudence and Malachy, and swore them into the conspiracy. I threw a few clothes into a small trunk, despatched a hypocritical note of regret to Miss Rogers, caught the noon train, and was soon beyond the danger line. Mrs. Lot, casting an apprehensive glance behind her, could not have dreaded more fearful consequences than I, looking back on the calamity I was evading. But as we went on and on into the cool, quiet country, and felt the soft air stealing down from the nearing mountains, I began to experience a lively sense of relief and pleasure, and to wonder why I had so long delayed a visit to my boyhood home.
I am sorry for the man whose childhood knew only the roar and bustle and swiftly shifting scenes of the city. For him there is no return in after years, no illusion to be renewed, no joy of youth to be substantiated. His habitation has pa.s.sed away or yielded to the inroads of commerce, his landmarks have vanished, and he is bewildered by the strange sights that time and trade have put upon his memories. But time has no terrors for the country-bred boy. The Almighty does not change the mountains and the rivers and the great rocks that fortify the scenery, and man is slow to push back into the far meadowlands and the hillsides, and destroy the simple, primitive life of the fathers.
All of the joy that such a returning pilgrim might have I felt when I left the train at the junction, and, scorning the pony engine and combination car supplied in later years by the railway company as a tribute to progress, set out to walk the two miles to the village. Every foot of the country I had played over as a boy. Here was the field where Deacon Skinner did his "hayin""; just beyond the deacon raised his tobacco crop. That roof over there, which I once detected as the top of Jim Pomeroy"s barn, reminded me of the day of the raisin", when I sprained my ankle and thereby saved myself a thrashing for running away. Here was Pickerel Pond, the scene of many miraculous draughts, and now I crossed Peach brook which babbled along under the road just as saucily and untiringly as if it had slept all these years and was just awaking to fresh life. A hundred rods up the brook was the Widow Parsons"s farm, and I knew that if I went through the side gate, cut across the barnyard, and kept down to the left, I should find that same old stump on which Bill Howland sat the day he caught the biggest dace ever pulled out of the quiet pool.
The sun was going down behind Si Thompson"s planing mill as I stopped at the little red covered bridge that marked the boundary of the village. Silas had been dead for twenty years, but it seemed to me that it was only yesterday that I heard his nasal tw.a.n.g above the roar of the machinery: "Sa-ay, you fellers want to git out o" that!" The little bridge had lost much of its color and most of its impressiveness, for I remembered when to my boyish fancy it seemed a greater triumph of engineering than the Victoria bridge at Montreal. And the same old thrill went through me as I started to run--just as I did when a boy--and felt the planks loosen and creak under my feet. Here was a home-coming worth the while.
Hank Pettigrew kept the village tavern. The memory of man, so far as I knew, ran not back to the time when Hank did not keep the tavern. So I was not in the least surprised, as I entered, to see the old man, with his chair tilted back against the wall, his knees on a level with his chin, and his eyes fixed on a chromo of "Muster Day," which had descended to him through successive generations. He did not move as I advanced, or manifest the slightest emotion of surprise, merely saying, "Hullo, Johnny,"
as if he expected me to remark that mother had sent me over to see if he had any ice cream left over from dinner. It probably did not occur to Hank that I had been absent twenty-five years.
If it had occurred to him, he would have considered such a trifling flight of time not worth mentioning.
With the question of lodging and supper disposed of, and with the modest bribe of a cigar, which Hank furtively exchanged for a more accustomed brand of valley leaf, it was not difficult to loosen the old landlord"s tongue and secure information of my playmates. What had become of Teddy Grover, the pride of our school on exhibition day? Could we ever forget the afternoon he stood up before the minister and the a.s.sembled population and roared "Marco Bozzaris" until we were sure the sultan was quaking in his seraglio? And how he thundered "Blaze with your serried columns, I will not bend the knee!" To our excited imaginations what dazzling triumphs the future held out for Teddy.
"Yep; Ted"s still a-beout. Three days in the week he drives stage coach over to Spicerville, and the rest o" the time he does odd jobs--sort o" tendin" round."
And Sallie Cotton--black-eyed, curly-haired, mischievous little sprite, the agony of the teacher and the love and admiration of the boys! Who climbed trees, rattled to school in the butcher wagon, never knew a lesson, but was always leading lady in the school colloquies, and was surely destined to rise to eminence on the American stage if she did not break her neck tumbling out of old Skinner"s walnut tree?
"Oh, Sal; she married the Congregational minister down to Peterfield, and was "lected president of the Temperance Union and secretary of the Endeavorers. Read a piece down at Fust Church last week on "Breakin" Away from Old Standards," ill.u.s.tratin" the alarmin" degen"racy of children nowadays."
And George Hawley, our Achilles, our Samson, our ideal of everything manly and courageous! Strong as an ox and brave as a lion! Our champion in every form of athletic sports! Who looked with contempt on girls and disdained their maidenly advances! Who thought only of deeds of muscular prowess, and who seemed to carry the a.s.surance of a force that would lead armies and subdue nations! What of George?
"Wa-al, George was a-beout not long ago. Had your room for his samples. Travellin" for a house down in Boston, and comes here reg"lar. Women folks say his last line o" shirt waists war the best they ever see."
Oh, the times that change, and change us! Alas, the fleeting years, good Posthumus, that work such havoc with our childhood dreams and hopes and aspirations!
It was a relief, after the shattering of these idols, to leave the society of the communicative Mr. Pettigrew and wander into the moonlight. Save as adding beauty to the scenery, the moon was comparatively of no a.s.sistance, for so well was the little village stamped on my memory, and so little had it changed in the quarter of a century, that I could have walked blindfolded to any suggested point. Naturally I turned my steps toward the home of my youth, and as I drew near the old-fashioned, many-gabled house, with its settled, substantial air, austere yet inviting, its large yard with the huge elms, and the big lamp burning in the library or "sittin"-room," where I first dolefully studied the geography that told me of a world outside, it seemed to bend toward me rather frigidly as if to say reproachfully: "You sold me! you sold me!" True, dear old home; in my less prosperous days I was guilty of the crime of selling the house that faithfully sheltered my family for a hundred years. But have I not repented?
And have I not returned to buy you back, and to make such further reparation as present conditions and true repentance demand? Is this less the pleasure than the duty of wealth?
With what sensations of delight I walked softly about the grounds, taking note of every familiar tree and bush and stump. I could have sworn that not a twig, not a blade of gra.s.s, had been despoiled or had disappeared in the years that marked my absence.
I paused reverently under the old willow tree and affectionately rubbed my legs, for from this tree my parents had cut the instruments of torture for purposes of castigation, and its name, the weeping willow, was always a.s.sociated in my infant mind with the direct results of contact with my unwilling person. On a level with the top of the willow was the little attic room where I slept, and the more sweetly when the crickets chirped, or the summer rain beat upon the roof, and where the song of the birds in the morning is the happiest music G.o.d has given to the country. Back of the woodshed I found the remains of an old grindstone, perhaps the same heavy crank I had so often perspiringly and reluctantly turned. Indeed my reviving memories were rather too generously connected with the strenuousness and not the pleasures of youth, but I thought of the well-filled lot in the old burying-ground on the hillside, and of those lying there who had said: "My boy, I am doing this for your good." I doubted it at the time, but perhaps they were right. At all events the memories were growing pleasanter, for a stretch of thirty-five years has many healing qualities, and our childhood griefs are such little things in the afterglow.
In the early morning I renewed my rambles, going first to the little frame school-house, the old church with its tall spire, the saw-mill, the deacon"s cider press, the swimming pool, and a dozen other places of boyish adventure and misadventure. Your true sentimentalist invariably gives the preference to scenes over persons, and is so often rewarded by the fidelity with which they respond to his eager expectations. It was not until I had exhausted every incident of the place that I sought out the companions of my school-days. What strange irony of fate is that which sends some of us out into the restless world to grow away from our old ideals and make others, and restrains some in the monotonous rut of village life, to drone peacefully their little span! But happy he, who, knowing nothing, misses nothing. If there were any village Hampdens, or mute, inglorious Miltons among my playmates, they gave no present indications. I found the girls considerably older than I expected, the boys less interesting than I hoped; but they all welcomed me with that grave, unemotional hospitality of the village, and we talked, far into the shadows, of our schooltime, the day that is never dead while memory endures.
And so it came about that at the close of day I found myself standing at the garden gate of the Eastmann cottage. Peleg Eastmann had been our village postmaster, a grave, shy man, who had received the federal office because the thrifty neighbors agreed, irrespective of political feeling, that it was much less expensive to give him the office than to support him and his two daughters, the prettiest girls in our school. For they further agreed that Peleg was a "shif"less sort o" critter" and never could make a living, though he was a model postmaster and an excellent citizen and neighbor. Hence, when it came Peleg"s turn to make the journey to the burying-ground in the village hea.r.s.e, the whole community of Meadowvale was scandalized by the discovery that he had left his girls a comfortable little fortune, enough to keep them in modest wealth. Meadowvale never recovered from this shock. It felt that it had been victimized, and that its tenderest sensibility had been violated, and when his disconsolate daughters put up the granite shaft to their father"s memory, relating that he had been faithful and just, the indignant political leader of the village remarked that it was "profanation of Scriptur"."
Thirty years ago I had stood at this little gate with one of the Eastmann girls, escorting her home from Stella Perkins"s party. I had attempted to kiss her good-night, and she had boxed my ears, thus contributing a disagreeable finale to an otherwise pleasant evening. Time is a great healer and I cherished no resentment at this late day toward the repudiator of my caresses. In fact I smiled in recollection of the incident as I walked up the gravelled path and knocked at the door. I wondered if the same vivacious, rosy-cheeked girl would come to meet me, and if I should feel in duty bound to make honorable amends. The door was opened by a tall, spare woman, who carried a lamp. The light reflected directly on her features, showed a face that in any other part of the world would be called hard; in New England it is merely resolute. It was the face of a woman fifty years of age, with ma.s.sive chin, slightly sunken cheeks, a prominent nose, heavy eyebrows, and a high forehead rather scantily streaked by gray hair. There was no trace of the girlish bloom I had known, of the beauty that once had been hers, but the imperious manner of the woman was unmistakable.
"Mary," I began jocularly, "I have come to apologize."
She thrust the lamp forward, peered into my face, and said, with not the faintest trace of a smile or the slightest evidence of embarra.s.sment:
"Why, that"s all right, Johnny Stanhope. I accept your apology.
Come right in."
I went in. We sat in the sitting-room and talked of our school-days and our fortunes. I told her how I had gone down to the city, how I had prospered, of my adventures in the world, of my marriage--dealing very gently with my relations with the late Mrs. Stanhope--of my bereavement and present idyllic existence.
And she told me of herself, how she had lived on and on in the little cottage, caring only for the support and education of her niece, Phyllis Kinglake, an orphan for nearly twenty years. "You remember Sylvia?" she said, with the first touch of emotion.
Did I remember Sylvia? My little fair-haired playmate with the large eyes and the blue veins showing through the delicate beauty of her face? Little Sylvia, who first won my boyish affection, and with whom I made a solemn contract of marriage when we were only seven years old? Did I not remember how I would pa.s.s her house on my way to school, and stand at the gate and whistle until she came shyly out, with her face as red as her little hood and tippet, and give me her books to carry, and protest with the ever present coquetry of girlhood that she thought I had gone long ago? Could I ever forget how I saved my coppers, one by one, until I had acc.u.mulated a sum large enough to buy a whole cocoanut, which I presented to her in the proudest moment of my life, and how the other girls tossed their heads with the affectation of a sneer, and with pretended indifference to this astonishing stroke of fortune? And that fatal evening when I provoked my little beauty"s wrath, and in all the receding opportunities of "Post-Office" and "Copenhagen" she had turned her face and rosy lips away from me, until the world was black with a hopeless despair? And the singing-school where she was our shining ornament, and that blissful night when I stood up with her in the village church, while we sang our duet descriptive of the special virtues of some particular flower nominated in the cantata? And how, growing older and shyer, we still preserved our youthful fancy even to the day I struck out into the world, both believing in the endurance of the tie that would draw me back?
What caprice of fate is it that dispels the illusions of youth and restores them tenfold in the reflection of after years and over the gulf of the grave? Did I remember Sylvia?
Then Mary went on to tell me of Sylvia"s happy marriage to George Kinglake, how, when little Phyllis had come, and the world was at its brightest, the parents had been stricken down in the same week by a virulent disease, and how, with her dying breath, the mother had asked her sister to look after her little one and protect her from sorrow and harm. Very simply this stern-featured woman told the story of her efforts to do her duty to her sister"s child, and it seemed to me that her face grew softer and her voice gentler as she went over the years they had grown older together, while the beauty of this woman"s life was glorified by the willing sacrifices of imposed motherhood. I could not see Phyllis, for she was spending the night with friends in another part of the village. Next time, she hoped, I might be more successful.
Walking slowly to the tavern my mind still went back to my little playmate and the golden days of youth, and if my heart grew a little tenderer, and my eyes were moistened by the recall, what need to be ashamed of the emotion? And if in the night I dreamed that I was a boy again, and that a fair-haired child played with me in the changing glow of dreamland in the best and purest scenes of the human comedy, was it a delusion to be dispelled, a memory to be put aside? Did I remember Sylvia?
The thought that my train was to leave at ten o"clock did not depress me as I awoke, with the sunlight streaming through the window, for, after all, I was obliged to admit that the monotony of Meadowvale and the sluggishness of my village friends were beginning to have an appreciable effect. Then the memory of little Sylvia came to me again, and nothing seemed pleasanter, as a benediction to the old days, than a visit to the burying-ground where she was sleeping. The previous day I had paid the obligations of remembrance and respect to the graves of my kindred, and it gave me at first an uncomfortable feeling to realize that the thought of them was less potent than the recollection of this young girl. But was it strange or inexcusable? Had they not lived out their lives of honored usefulness, and grown old and weary of the battle? And had not she pa.s.sed away just as the greater joys of living were unfolding, and the a.s.surance of happiness was the stronger?
Poor Sylvia!