“Why, Mis’ Dobson, it isn’t safe!”
“Safe or not, I’m goin’ to do it. I’m goin’ to set up a spell. I never stop for consequences to myself when I set out to do a thing.”
The perilous feat was accomplished without tragedy. After she had had a nap, propped up in the bed, Mrs. Dobson’s soul rose to greater heights of daring, when Abilonia remarked that Mrs. Dobson’s plum-colored silk was the very thing for a lining to her own silk quilt, and as it would not be worn again she might as well take it over and make it up. She was adding that she would like to have a crayon portrait made of Mr. Dobson to hang beside that of his wife which adorned the parlor in antemortem state, when Marthy interrupted: “Abilonia, go you and git me a dress. There ought to be a brown poplin hangin’ in the little room closet, unless somebody moved it last spring in housecleanin’ time. You bring that down. I want to git my feet onto the floor.”
When Andrew came home to get dinner he stopped in the kitchen door, dumb with amazement. Marthy sat by the table in the big wooden chair peeling apples, while Abilonia rolled out the pie crust and told about the church quilting bee.
The next Sunday Andrew did not change his best suit, as usual, after church, and his wife remarked the fact as she sat in a blanketed chair by the living room fire in the evening, with her “Christian Register” in her hand.
“Well, you know—I’ve ben thinkin’—Abby’s settin’ over there by herself, and it must be lonesome for the girl. And—if I’m—sort of—engaged to her—don’t you see, Marthy? I don’t want to leave you—but it’s my duty to keep company with her. I want to carry out your wishes exact—every one. You can’t ask a thing too hard for me to do.”
“Yes, I know that, Andrew. If ever a man done his duty, it’s you. And you’ve had little reward for it, too. I’m tryin’ to git you a second wife that’ll have her health and—and—yes, I presume to say that Abilonia’ll ruther look for you to set a while, now that she is bespoke to you.”
“Yes, that’s what I guess I ought to do,” and he rose briskly.
“Say, Andrew! Don’t be in such a hurry. Come back a minute. You gear up ole Jule to the buggy and git down a comforter for me. I c’n walk some, today, and if you help me I c’n git into the buggy. I feel like the air would do me good.—Yes, I presume to say it’ll be the death of me, but you never knew me to stop for that, did you? Git my circular cloak and the white cloud for my head. Yes, I’m goin’, Andrew. When I git my mind made up, you know what it means.”
There was a light in Abilonia’s parlor when they drove up, and a man’s figure showed through the glass panel of the door as he opened it.
“Willy Parks!” cried Mrs. Dobson in a queer voice.
“Yes, walk right in, Mr. Dobson. That isn’t Mrs. Dobson with you—is it possible!—after so many years. Let me help you steady her. Well, this is a surprise! Just walk into the parlor and sit down. Abby’s down cellar putting away the milk, but she’ll be up in a minute.”
“It’s consid’able of a surprise to see you here, Willy; it’s consid’able of a disapp’intment—to Mis’ Dobson. She had set her mind on—on—” ventured Andrew mildly.
“Yes, so I heard—and I thought I’d come home. Abby tells me that she is engaged to you—that she has given her solemn promise.”
“That’s what she has,” said Andrew firmly. “That’s what she has, and Mis’ Dobson has set her mind on it—and I never refuse her nothin’. I don’t want nothin’ to reproach myself for. You went off and left that girl—the finest girl in town—and near about broke her heart.You ought to be ashamed to show yourself now.”
“I am, Mr. Dobson,” said the young man gravely, “and I deserve to lose her. But when I heard that she was engaged to you—as it were—it brought me to my senses, and, since you are my rival, I am going to ask you to be magnanimous. She is so good and true that I believe she will forgive me and take me back if you will release her—you and Mrs. Dobson. You wouldn’t hold her while Mrs. Dobson looks so smart as she does tonight—”
“No, Andrew, we won’t hold her. It wouldn’t be right. She’s young—and—and real good lookin’, and it would be a pity to spile a good match for her. We oughtn’t to hold her—here she is. We will release you from your engagement to—to us, Abilonia—and may you be happy! I’m feelin’ a sight better lately; that last bitters you got for me is a wonderful medicine, Andrew. I presume to say I’ll be round on my feet yet, before long, and be able to take as good care of you as you have took of me all these years. It’s a power ful medicine, that root bitters. We better be goin’, Andrew. They’ve got things to talk about. Good night, Abilonia. Good night, Willy.”
SOURCE: The Reader: An Illustrated Monthly Magazine. Indianapolis: Bobbs- Merrill Company, August 1905.
THE TALE OF THE TANGLED TELEGRAM (1905)
Wilbur D. Nesbit
Nesbit (1871–1927), who is best known today for his poetry, was a columnist for the Chicago Evening Post, and occasionally wrote as “Josh Wink.”
I.
JAMES TROTTINGHAM MINTON had a cousin who lived in St. Louis. “Cousin Mary,” Lucy Putnam discovered by a process of elimination, was the one topic on which the reticent Mr. Minton could become talkative. Mary was his ideal, almost. Let a girl broach the weather, he grew halt of speech; should she bring up literature, his replies were almost inane; let her seek to show that she kept abreast of the times, and talk of politics—then Jimmy seemed to harbor a great fear in his own soul. But give him the chance to make a few remarks about his cousin Mary and he approached eloquence. For this reason Lucy Putnam was wise enough to ask him something about Mary every so often.
Now, the question arises: Why should Lucy Putnam, or any other girl, take any interest in a man who was so thoroughly bashful that his trembling efforts to converse made the light quivering aspen look like a ten-ton obelisk for calmness? The reason was, and is, that woman has the same eye for babies and men. The more helpless these objects, the more interested are the women. The man who makes the highest appeal to a woman is he whose tongue cleaves to the roof of his mouth and who does not know what to do with his hands in her presence. She must be a princess, he a slave. Each knows this premise is unsupported by facts, yet it is a joyous fiction while it lasts. James Trottingham Mipton was not a whit bashful when with men. No. He called on Mr. Putnam at his office, and with the calmness of an agent collecting rent, asked him for the hand of his daughter.
“Why, Jimmy,” Mr. Putnam said good-naturedly, “of course I haven’t any objections to make. Seems to me that’s a matter to be settled between you and Lucy.”
Jimmy smiled confidentially.
“I suppose you’re right, Mr. Putnam. But, you see, I’ve never had the nerve to say anything about it to her.”
“Tut, tut. Nothing to be scared of. Nothing at all. What’s the matter with you, young man? In my day, if a fellow wanted to marry a girl he wouldn’t go and tell her father. He’d marry her first and then ask the old man where they should live.”
Mr. Putnam chuckled heavily. Mr. Putnam was possessed of a striking fund of reminiscences of how young men used to do.
“Of course, Mr. Putnam,” Jimmy said. “But the girls nowadays are different, and a fel—”
“Not a bit of it. No, sir. Women haven’t changed since Eve’s time. You mustn’t get woman mixed up with dry goods stores, Jimmy. Don’t you know there’s lots of fellows nowadays that fall in love with the fall styles? Ha, ha!”
It was not all clear to Minton, but he laughed dutifully. His was a diplomatic errand, and the half of diplomacy is making the victim think you are in agreement with him.
“Yes, sir,” Putnam chuckled on, “I’ll bet that silk and ruffles and pink shades over the lamp have caused more proposals than all the dimples and bright eyes in the world. Eh, Jimmy? But you haven’t proposed yet?”
“I did. You gave your consent.”
“But you’re not going to marry me. You want Lucy. You’ll have to speak to her abou
t it.”
“Now look, Mr. Putnam, I can come to you and ask you for her, and it’s the same thing.”
“Not by a hundred miles, my boy. If I told Lucy you had said that, she wouldn’t be at home next time you called. The trouble with you is that you don’t understand women. You’ve got to talk direct to them.”
Jimmy looked hopelessly out of the window.
“No; what you say to me and what I say to you hasn’t any more to do with you and Lucy than if you were selling me a bill of goods. I like you, Jimmy, and I’ve watched your career so far with interest, and I look for great things from you in the future, and that’s why I say to you to go ahead and get Lucy, and good luck to you both.”
Mr. Putnam took up some papers from his desk and pretended to be studying them, but from the tail of his eye he gathered the gloom that was settling over Jimmy’s face. The elder man enjoyed the situation.
“Well, Mr. Putnam,” Jimmy asked, “why can’t you just tell Lucy for me that I have asked you, and that you say it’s all right? Then when I go to see her next time, it’ll all be arranged and understood.”
“Let me see. Didn’t I read a poem or something at school about someone who hadn’t sand enough to propose to a girl and who got another man to ask her? But it wasn’t her own father. Why, Jimmy, if you haven’t courage enough to propose to a girl, what do you suppose will be your finish if she marries you? A married man has to have spunk.”
“I’ve got the spunk all right, but you understand how I feel.”
“Sure! Let me give you some advice. When you propose to a girl, you don’t have to come right out and ask her to marry you.”
Jimmy caught at the straw.
“You don’t?” he asked.
“Certainly not. There’s half a dozen ways of letting her know that you want her. Usually—always, I may say—she knows it anyway, and unless she wants you she’ll not let you tell her so. But if I wanted a short, sharp ‘No’ from a girl, I’d get her father to ask her to marry me.”
“Then you mean that I’ve got to ask her myself ?”
“To be sure.”
“I can’t do it, Mr. Putnam; I can’t.”
“Write it.”
“Why, I’d feel as if the postman and everybody else knew it.”
“Telephone.”
“Worse yet.”
“Jim Minton, I’m disgusted with you. I thought you were a young man with some enterprise, but if you lose your courage over such an everyday affair as proposing to a girl—”
“But men don’t propose every day.”
“Somebody is proposing to somebody every day. It goes on all the time. No, sir; I wash my hands of it. I’ll not withdraw my consent, and you have my moral support and encouragement, but getting married is the same as getting into trouble—you have to handle your own case.”
“But, Mr. Putnam—”
“You’ll only go over the same ground again. Good morning. I don’t want to hear any more of this until it is settled one way or the other. I’ll not help and I’ll not hinder it—It’s up to you.”
With this colloquial farewell Mr. Putnam waved his hand and turned to his papers. Jimmy accumulated his hat and stick, and left, barren of hope.
That night he took Lucy to see Romeo and Juliet. The confidence and enthusiasm of Romeo merely threw him into a deeper despair of his own ability as a suitor, and made him even more taciturn and stumbling of speech than ever. His silence grew heavier and heavier, until at last Lucy threw out her never-failing life-line. She asked him about his cousin Mary.
“By the way,” he said, brightening up, “Cousin Mary is going through here one day next week.”
“Is she? How I should like to know her. If she is anything like you she must be very agreeable.”
“She isn’t like me, but she is agreeable. Won’t you let me try to bring you two together—at lunch downtown, or something like that?”
“It would be fine.”
“I’ll do it. I’ll arrange it just as soon as I see her.”
Then silence, pall-like, fell again upon them. Jimmy thought of Romeo, and Lucy thought of—Romeo, let us say. When a young man and a young woman, who are the least bit inclined one to another, witness Shakespeare’s great educative effort, the young woman cannot help imagining herself leaning over the balcony watching the attempts of the young man to clamber up the rope ladder.
After he had gone that night, Lucy sat down for a soul communion with herself. Pity the woman who does not have soul communions. She who can sit side by side with herself and make herself believe that she is perfectly right and proper in thinking and believing as she does, is happy. The first question Lucy Putnam put to her subliminal self was: “Do I love Jimmy?” Subliminal self, true to sex, equivocated. It said: “I am not sure.” Whereupon Lucy asked: “Why do I love him?” Then ensued the debate. Subliminal self said it was because he was a clean, good-hearted, manly fellow. Lucy responded that he was too bashful. “He is handsome,” retorted subliminal self. “But there are times when he grows so abashed that he is awkward.” Subliminal self said he would outgrow that. “But there are other men who are just as nice, just as handsome, and just as clever, who are not so overwhelmingly shy,” argued Lucy. Whereat subliminal self drew itself up proudly and demanded: “Name one!” And Lucy was like the person who can remember faces, but has no memory at all for names.
II.
Cousin Mary came to town as she had promised, and she made Cousin Jimmy drop his work and follow her through the shops half the morning. Cousin Mary was all that Cousin Jimmy had ever said of her. She was pretty and she was genial. When these attributes are combined in a cousin they invite confidences.
The two were standing on a corner, waiting for a swirl of foot passengers, carriages and street-cars, to be untangled, when Mary heard Jimmy making some remark about “Miss Putnam.”
“So, she’s the one, is she, Jimmy?”
“Well—er—I—I don’t know. You see—”
“Certainly I see. Who wouldn’t? Is she pretty, Jimmy?”
Jimmy saw a pathway through the crowd and led his cousin to the farther curb before answering: “Yes, she is very pretty.”
“Tell me all about her. How long have you known her? How did you meet her? Is she tall or short? Is she dark or fair? Is she musical? Oh, I am just dying to know all about her!”
All the way down State Street Jimmy talked. All the way down State Street he was urged or aided and abetted by the questions and comments of Cousin Mary, and when they had buffeted their way over Jackson to Michigan Avenue and found breathing room, she turned to him and asked pointedly:
“When is it to be?”
“When is what to be?”
“The wedding.”
“Whose wedding?” Jimmy’s tone was utterly innocent.
“Whose? Yours and Lucy’s, to be sure.”
“Mine and Lucy’s? Why? Mary, I’ve never asked her yet.”
“You’ve never asked her! Do you mean to tell me that when you can talk about her for seven or eight blocks, as you have, you have not even asked her to marry you? Why, James Trottingham Minton, you ought to be ashamed of yourself! Where does this paragon of woman live? Take me to see her. I want to apologize for you.”
“Won’t it be better to get her to come in and lunch with us? She lives so far out you’d miss your train east this afternoon.”
“The very thing. Would she come?”
“Why, yes. I asked her the other night and she said she would.”
“Then, why have you waited so long to tell me. Where are we to meet her?”
“Well, I didn’t know for sure what day you would be here, so I didn’t make any definite arrangement. I’m to let her know.”
“Oh, Jimmy! Jimmy! You need a guardian, and not a guardian angel, either. You need the other sort. You deserve hours of punishment for your thoughtlessness. Now go right away and send her word that I am here and dying to meet her.”
“All right. We
’ll have lunch here at the Annex. You’ll excuse me just a moment, and I’ll send her a telegram and ask her to come in.”
“Yes, but hurry. You should have told her yesterday. When will you ever learn how to be nice to a girl?”
Jimmy, feeling somehow that he had been guilty of a breach of courtesy that should fill him with remorse, hastened to the telegraph desk and scribbled a message to Lucy. It read:
“Please meet me and Mary at Annex at 2 o’clock.”
“Rush that,” he said to the operator.
The operator glanced over the message and grinned.
“Certainly, sir,” he said. “This sort of a message always goes rush. Wish you luck, sir.”
The operator has not yet completely gathered the reason for the reproving stare Jimmy gave him. In part it has been explained to him. But, as Jimmy has said since, the man deserved censure for drawing an erroneous conclusion from another’s mistake.
It was then noon, so Jimmy and Mary, at Mary’s suggestion, got an appetite by making another tour of the shops. In the meantime a snail-paced messenger boy was climbing the Putnam steps with the telegram in his hand.
III.
Lucy took the telegram from the boy and told him to wait until she saw if there should be an answer. She tore off the envelope, unfolded the yellow slip of paper, read the message, gasped, blushed and turned and left the patient boy on the steps.
Into the house she rushed, calling to her mother. She thrust the telegram into her hands, exclaiming: “Read that! Isn’t it what we might have expected?”
“Mercy! What is it? Who’s dead?”
“Nobody! It’s better than that,” was Lucy’s astonishing reply.
Mrs. Putnam read the telegram, and then beamingly drew her daughter to her and kissed her. The two then wrote a message, after much counting of words, to be sent to Jimmy. It read: “Of course. Mama will come with me. Telephone to papa.”
Humorous American Short Stories Page 17