Kitabı oku: «The Booming of Acre Hill, and Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life», sayfa 10
II
A SUCCESSFUL CASE
"The pleasantest angling is to see the fish
…greedily devour the treacherous bait."
—Much Ado about Nothing.
The invitations to Mrs. Upton's little dinner were speedily despatched by the strategic maker of matches, and, to her great delight, were one and all accepted with commendable promptness, as dinner invitations are apt to be. The night came, and with it came also the unsuspecting young doctor and the equally unsuspicious Miss Meeker. Everything was charming. The Jacksons were pleased with the Peltons, and the Peltons were pleased with the Jacksons, and, best of all, Walter was pleased with Miss Meeker, while she was not wholly oblivious to his existence. She even quoted something he happened to say at the table, after the ladies had retired, leaving the men to their cigars, and had added that "that was the way she liked to hear a man talk"—all of which was very encouraging to the well-disposed spider who was weaving the web for these two particular flies. As for Bliss—Walter Bliss, M.D.—he was very much impressed; so much so, indeed, that as the men left their cigars to return to the ladies he managed to whisper into Upton's ear,
"Rather bright girl that, Henry."
"Very," said Upton. "Sensible, too. One of those bachelor girls who've got too much sense to think much about men. Pity, rather, in a way, too. She'd make a good wife, but, Lord save us! it would require an Alexander or a Napoleon to make love to her."
"Oh, I don't know," said Bliss, confidently. "If the right man came along—"
"Of course; but there aren't many right men," said Upton. "I've no doubt there's somebody equal to the occasion somewhere, but with the population of the world at the present figures there's a billion chances to one she'll never meet him. What do you think of the financial situation, Walter? Pretty bad, eh?"
Thus did the astute Mr. Upton play the cards dealt out to him by his fairer half in this little game of hearts of her devising, and it is a certain fact that he played them well, for the interjection of a more or less political phase into their discussion rather whetted than otherwise the desire of Dr. Bliss to talk about Miss Meeker.
"Oh, hang the financial situation! Where does she live, Henry?" was Bliss's answer, from which Upton deduced that all was going well.
That his deductions were correct was speedily shown, for it was not many days before Mrs. Upton, with a radiant face, handed Upton a note from Walter asking her if she would not act as chaperon for a little sail on the Sound upon his sloop. He thought a small party of four, consisting of herself and Henry, Miss Meeker and himself, could have a jolly afternoon and evening of it, dining on board in true picnic fashion, and returning to earth in the moonlight.
"How do you like that, my lord?" she inquired, her eyes beaming with delight.
"Dreadful!" said Henry. "Got to the moonlight stage already—poor Bliss!"
"Poor Bliss indeed," retorted Mrs. Upton. "Blissful Bliss, you ought to call him. Shall we go?"
"Shall we go?" echoed Upton. "If I fell off the middle of Brooklyn Bridge, would I land in the water?"
"I don't know," laughed Mrs. Upton. "You might drop into the smoke-stack of a ferry-boat."
"Of course we'll go," said Upton. "I'd go yachting with my worst enemy."
"Very well. I'll accept," said Mrs. Upton, and she did. The sail was a great success, and everything went exactly as the skilful match-maker had wished. Bliss looked well in his yachting suit. The appointments of the yacht were perfect. The afternoon was fine, the supper entrancing, and the moonlight irresistible. Miss Meeker was duly impressed, and as for the doctor, as Upton put it, he was "going down for the third time."
"If you aren't serious in this match, my dear, throw him a rope," he pleaded, in his friend's behalf.
"He wouldn't avail himself of it if I did," said Mrs. Upton. "He wants to drown—and I fancy Molly wants him to, too, because I can't get her to mention his name any more."
"Is that a sign?" asked Upton.
"Indeed yes; if she talked about him all the time I should be afraid she wasn't quite as deeply in love as I want her to be. She's only a woman, you know, Henry. If she were a man, it would be different."
The indications were verified by the results. August came, and Mrs. Upton invited Miss Meeker to spend the month at the Uptons' summer cottage at Skirton, and Bliss was asked up for "a day or two" while she was there.
"Isn't it a little dangerous, my dear?" Upton asked, when his wife asked him to extend the hospitality of the cottage to Bliss. "I should think twice before asking Walter to come."
"How absurd you are!" retorted the match-maker. "What earthly objection can there be?"
"No objection at all," returned Upton, "but it may destroy all your good work. It will be a terrible test for Walter, I am afraid—breakfast, for instance, is a fearful ordeal for most men. They are so apt to be at their very worst at breakfast, and it might happen that Walter could not stand the strain upon him through a series of them. Then Molly may not look well in the mornings. How is that? Is she like you—always at her best?"
Mrs. Upton replied with a smile. It was evident that she did not consider the danger very great.
"They might as well get used to seeing each other at breakfast," she said. "If they find they don't admire each other at that time, it is just as well they should know it in advance."
Hence it was, as I have said, that Bliss was invited to Skirton for a day or two. And the day or two, in the most natural way in the world, lengthened out into a week or two. There were walks and talks; there were drives and long horseback rides along shaded mountain roads, and when it rained there were mornings in the music-room together. Bliss was good-natured at breakfast, and Molly developed a capacity for appearing to advantage at that trying meal that aroused Upton's highest regard; and finally—well, finally Miss Molly Meeker whispered something into Mrs. Upton's ear, at which the latter was so overjoyed that she nearly hugged her young friend to death.
"Here, my dear, look out," remonstrated Upton, who happened to be present. "Don't take it all. Perhaps she wants to live long enough to whisper something to me."
"I do," said Molly, and then she announced her engagement to Walter Bliss; and she did it so sweetly that Upton had all he could do to keep from manifesting his approval after the fashion adopted by his wife.
"I wish I was a literary man," said Upton to his wife the next day, when they were talking over the situation. "If I knew how to write I'd make a fortune, I believe, just following up the little romances that you plan."
"Oh, nonsense, Henry," replied Mrs. Upton. "I don't plan any romances—I select certain people for each other and bring them together, that is all."
"And push 'em along—prod 'em slightly when they don't seem to get started, eh?" insinuated Upton.
"Well, yes—sometimes."
"And what else does a novelist do? He picks out two people, brings them together, and pushes them along through as many chapters as he needs for his book," said Henry. "That's all. Now if I could follow your couples I'd have a tremendous advantage in basing my studies on living models instead of having to imagine my realism. I repeat I wish I could write. This little romance of Mollie and Walter that has just ended—"
"Just what?" asked Mrs. Upton.
"Just ended," repeated Upton. "What's the matter with that?"
"You mean just begun," said Mrs. Upton, with a sigh. "The hardest work a match-maker has is in conducting the campaign after the nominations are made. When two people love each other madly, they are apt to do a great deal of quarrelling over absolutely nothing, and I'm not at all sure that an engagement means marriage until the ceremony has taken place."
"And even then," suggested Henry, "there are the divorce courts, eh?"
"We won't refer to them," said Mrs.
Upton, severely; "they are relics of barbarism. But as for the ending of my romance, my real work now begins. I must watch those two young people carefully and see that their little quarrels are smoothed over, their irritations allayed, and that every possible difference between them is adjusted."
"But you and I didn't quarrel when we were engaged," persisted Upton.
"No, we didn't, Henry," replied Mrs. Upton. "But that was only because it takes two to make a quarrel, and I loved you so much that I was really blind to all your possibilities as an irritant."
"Oh!" said Henry, reflectively.
III
A SET-BACK
"All is confounded, all!
Reproach and everlasting shame
Sits mocking in our plumes."
—Henry V.
Time demonstrated with great effectiveness the unhappy fact that Mrs. Upton knew whereof she spoke when she likened an engagement to a political campaign, in that the real battle begins after the nominations are made. Walter Bliss had decided views as to life, and Miss Meeker was hardly less settled in her convictions. Long before she had met Bliss, in default of a real she had builded up in her mind an ideal man, which at first, second, and even third sight Walter had seemed to her to represent. But unfortunately there is a fourth sight, and the lover or the fiancée who can get beyond this is safe—comparatively safe, that is, for everything in this world has its merits or its demerits, comparatively speaking, and the comparison is more often than not made from the point of view of what ought to be rather than of what really is. Mrs. Upton was a realist—that is, she thought she was; and so was Miss Meeker. Everybody looks at life from his or her own point of view, and there must always be, consequently, two points of view, for there will always be a male way and a female way of looking at things. Walter was in love with his profession. Molly was in love with him as an abstract thing. She knew nothing of him as a Washington fighting measles; she was not aware whether he could combat tonsillitis as successfully as Napoleon fought the Austrians or not, and it may be added that she didn't care. He was merely a man in her estimation; a thing in the abstract, and a most charming thing on the whole. He, on the other hand, looked upon her not as a woman, but as a soul, and a purified soul at that: an angel, indeed, without the incumbrance of wings, was she, and with a rather more comprehensive knowledge of dress than is attributed to most of angels. But two people cannot go on forming an ideal of each other continuously without at some time reaching a point of divergence, and Walter and Molly reached that point within ten weeks. It happened that while calling upon her one evening Walter received a professional summons which he admitted was all nonsense—why should people call in doctors when it is "all nonsense"?
The call came while Walter was turning over the leaves at the piano as Molly played.
"What is this?" he said, as he opened the note that was addressed to him. "Humph! Mrs. Hubbard's boy is sick—"
"Must you go?" Molly asked.
"I suppose so," said Walter. "I saw him this afternoon, and there is not the slightest thing the matter with him, but I must go."
"Why?" asked Molly. "Are you the kind of doctor they call in when there's nothing the matter?"
She did not mean to be sarcastic, but she seemed to be, and Walter, of course, like a properly sensitive soul, was hurt.
"I must go," he said, positively, ignoring the thrust.
"But you say there is nothing the matter with the boy," suggested Molly.
"I'm going just the same," said Walter, and he went.
Molly played on at the piano until she heard the front door slam, and then she rose up and went to the window. Walter had gone and was out of sight. Then, sad to say, she became philosophical. It doesn't really pay for girls to become philosophical, but Molly did not know that, and she began a course of reasoning.
"He knows he isn't needed, but he goes," she said to herself, as she gazed dejectedly out of the window at the gaslamps on the other side of the street. "And he will of course charge the Hubbards for his services, admitting, however, that his services are nothing. That is not conscientious—it is not professional. He is not practising for the love of his profession, but for the love of money. I am disappointed in him—and we were having such a pleasant time, too!"
So she ran on as she sat there in the window-seat looking out upon the dreary street; and you may be sure that the commingling of her ideals and her disappointments and her sense of loneliness did not help Walter's case in the least, and that when they met the next time her manner towards him was what some persons term "sniffy," which was a manner Walter could not and would not abide. Hence a marked coolness arose between the two, which by degrees became so intensified that at about the time when Mrs. Upton was expected to be called in to assist at a wedding, she was stunned by the information that "all was over between them."
"Just think of that, Henry," the good match-maker cried, wrathfully. "All is over between them, and Molly pretends she is glad of it."
"Made for each other too!" ejaculated Upton, with a mock air of sorrow. "What was the matter?"
"I can't make out exactly," observed Mrs. Upton. "Molly told me all about it, and it struck me as a merely silly lovers' quarrel, but she won't hear of a reconciliation. She says she finds she was mistaken in him. I wish you'd find out Walter's version of it."
"I respectfully refuse, my dear Mrs. Upton," returned Henry. "I'm not a partner in your enterprise, and if you get a misfit couple returned on your hands it is your lookout, not mine. Pity, isn't it, that you can't manage matters like a tailor? Suit of clothes is made for me, I try it on, don't like it, send it back and have it changed to fit. If you could make a few alterations now in Molly—"
"Henry, you are flippant," asserted Mrs. Upton. "There's nothing the matter with Molly—not the least little thing; and Walter ought to be ashamed of himself to give her up, and I'm going to see that he doesn't. I believe a law ought to be made, anyhow, requiring engaged persons who want to break off to go into court and show cause why they shouldn't be enjoined from so doing."
"A sort of antenuptial divorce law, eh?" suggested Upton. "That's not a bad idea; you ought to write to the papers and suggest it—using your maiden name, of course, not mine."
"If you would only find out from Walter what he's mad at, and tell him he's an idiot and a heartless thing, maybe we could smooth it out, because I know that 'way down in her soul Molly loves him."
"Very well, I'll do it," said Upton, good-naturedly; "but mind you it's only to oblige you, and if Bliss throws me out of the club window for meddling in his affairs, it will be your fault."
The doctor did not quite throw Upton out of the window that afternoon when the subject came up, but he did the next thing to it. He turned upon him, and with much gravity remarked: "Upton, I'll talk politics, finance, medicine, surgery, literature, or neck-ties with you, but under no circumstances will I talk about woman with anybody. I prefer a topic concerning which it is possible occasionally to make an intelligent surmise at least. Woman is as comprehensible to a finite mind as chaos. Who's your tailor?"
"You ought to have seen us when he said that," observed Upton to his wife, as he told her about the interview at dinner that evening. "He was as solemn as an Alp, and apparently as immovable as the Sphinx; and as for me, I simply withered on my stalk and crumbled away into dust. Wherefore, my love, I am through; and hereafter if you are going to make matches for my friends and need outside help, get a hired man to help you. I'm did. If I were you I'd let 'em go their own way, and if their lives are spoiled, why, your conscience is clear either way."
But Mrs. Upton had no sympathy with any such view as that. She had been so near to victory that she was not going to surrender now without one more charge. She tried a little sounding of Bliss herself, and finally asked him point-blank if he would take dinner with herself and Upton and Molly and make it up, and he declined absolutely; and it was just as well, for when Molly heard of it she asserted that she had no doubt it would have been a pleasant dinner, but that nothing could have induced her to go. She never wished to see Dr. Bliss again—not even professionally. Mrs. Upton was gradually becoming utterly discouraged. The only hopeful feature of the situation was that there were no "alternates" involved. Bliss was done forever with woman; Miss Meeker had never cared for any man but Walter. Time passed, and the lovers were adamant in their determination never to see each other again. Repeated efforts to bring them together failed, until Mrs. Upton was in despair. It is always darkest, however, just before dawn, and it finally happened that just as hopelessness was beginning to take hold of Mrs. Upton's heart her great device came to her.
IV
THE DEVICE
"Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
And all went merry as a marriage bell."
—Childe Harold.
"Henry," said Mrs. Upton, one cold January morning, a great light of possibilities dawning upon her troubled soul, "don't you want to take me to the opera next Saturday? Calvé is to sing in 'Cavalleria,' and I am very anxious to hear her again."
"I am sorry, but I can't," Upton answered. "I have an engagement with Bliss at the club on Saturday. We're going to take lunch and finish up our billiard tournament. I've got a lead of forty points."
"Oh! Well, then, get me two seats, and I'll take Molly," said the astute match-maker. "And never mind about their being aisle seats. I prefer them in the middle of the row, so that everybody won't be climbing over us when they go out and in."
"All right; I will," said Henry, and the seats were duly procured.
Saturday came, and Upton went to the club, according to his appointment with Walter; but Bliss was not there, nor had he sent any message of explanation. Upton waited until three o'clock, and still the doctor came not; and finally he left the club and sauntered up the Avenue to his house, calling down the while imprecations upon the absent Walter.
"Hang these doctors!" he said, viciously. "They seem to think professional engagements are the only ones worth keeping. Off in his game, I fancy. That's the milk in the cocoanut."
Five minutes later he entered his library, and was astonished to see Mrs. Upton there reading.
"Why, hullo! You here?" he said. "I thought you were at the opera."
"No, I didn't go," Mrs. Upton replied, with a smile.
"There seems to be something in the air that prevents people from keeping their engagements to-day. Bliss didn't turn up," said Henry. "What did you do with the tickets?"
"I sent Molly hers by messenger, and told her I'd join her at the opera-house," said Mrs. Upton, her face beaming. "Did you say Walter didn't go to the club?" she added, anxiously.
"Yes. He's a great fellow, he is! Got no more idea about sticking to an engagement than a cat," said Upton. "Afraid of my forty points, I imagine."
"Possibly; but maybe this will account for it," said Mrs. Upton, with a sigh of relief, which hardly seemed necessary under the circumstances, handing her husband a note.
"What's this?" asked Upton, scanning the address upon the envelope.
"A note—from Walter," Mrs. Upton replied. "Read it."
And Upton read as follows:
"SATURDAY MORNING, January —, 189-.
"MY DEAR MRS. UPTON,—
I am sorry to hear that Henry is called away, but there are compensations. If I cannot take luncheon with him, it will give me the greatest pleasure to listen to Calvé in your company. I may be a trifle late, but I shall most certainly avail myself of your kind thought of me.
"Yours faithfully,"WALTER BLISS."
"What the deuce is this?" asked Upton. "I called away? Who said I was called away?"
"I did," said Mrs. Upton, pursing her lips to keep from indulging in a smile. "As soon as you left this morning I wrote Walter a note, telling him that you had been hurriedly called to Philadelphia on business, and that you'd asked me to let him know, not having time to do it yourself. And I closed by saying that we had two seats for 'Cavalleria,' and that, as my expected guest had disappointed me, I hoped he might come in if he felt like it during the afternoon and hear Calvé. That's his answer. I enclosed him the ticket."
"So that—" said Upton, beginning to comprehend.
"So that Molly and Walter are at the opera together. Hemmed in on both sides, so that they can't escape, with the Intermezzo before them!" said Mrs. Upton, with an air of triumph which was beautiful to look upon.
"Well, you are a genius!" cried Upton, finding his wife's enthusiasm contagious. "I'm almost afraid of you!"
"And you don't think I did wrong to fib?" asked Mrs. Upton.
"Oh, as for that," said Upton, "all geniuses lie! An abnormal development in one direction always indicates an abnormal lack of development in another. Your bump of ingenuity has for the moment absorbed your bump of veracity; but I say, my dear, I wonder if they'll speak?"
"Speak?" echoed Mrs. Upton. "Speak? Why, of course they will! Everybody talks at the opera," she added, joyously.
An hour later the door-bell rang, and the maid announced Miss Meeker and Dr. Bliss. They entered radiant, and not in the least embarrassed.
"Why, how do you do?" said Upton, as calmly as though nothing had happened. "Didn't see you at the club," he added, with a sly wink at his wife.
"Thought you were out of town," said Bliss; and then he turned and glanced inquiringly at the lovely deceiver. But Mrs. Upton said nothing. She was otherwise engaged; for Molly, upon entering the room, had walked directly to her side, and throwing her arms about her neck, kissed her several times most affectionately.
"You dear old thing!" she whispered.
"Mrs.—Upton—I'm very much obliged to you for a very pleasant afternoon," stammered Bliss, recovering from his surprise, the true inwardness of the situation dawning upon him, "as well as for—a good many pleasant afternoons to come. I– ah—I didn't see—ah—Molly until I got seated."
"No," said Molly; "and if he could have gotten away without disturbing a lot of people, I think he'd have gone when he realized where he was. And he wouldn't speak until the Intermezzo was half through."
"Well, I tried hard not to even then," said Walter; "but somehow or other, when the Intermezzo got going, I couldn't help it, and—well, it's to be next month."
And so it was. The wedding took place six weeks later; and all through the service the organist played the Intermezzo in subdued tones, which some people thought rather peculiar—but then they were not aware of all the circumstances.
