“Mine is Harry Stenhouse — the deuce! they’re at the gate!”
They were.
Scarcely had I slipped around the building before I heard the chatter and laughter of girls and the patter of feet on the gravel walk. I had heard it before under similar circumstances. But there was a back gate; and I went. Now see how virtue is its own reward! I had resisted the devil and — he gave me another chance.
II.
“YES,” said I to myself, remembering how I had piously ascribed my reward to Heaven,—” yes, I was mistaken. I should have said: ‘ The devil, Madame, never does things by halves. ‘“
I looked back at the dormitory door. One of the Misses Timmins was snipping roses from the porch trellis.
“To eke out the meagre evening meal,” I thought; “ poor little maid — poor little May! Only nanny-goats eat roses, and an empty stomach rejoiceth not in perfumes.”
This sounded to me like an Eastern proverb. It smacked well, and I repeated it to myself luxuriously.
“Some day, “ thought I, “ when I am famous, and people begin to write books to prove that I’m not, I’ll marry May, — if I like her as well as I do now — and she likes me, — ahem!” I’d forgotten that part.
“There is something about this little maid,” I mused, “ that touches my better nature; something too subtle to analyze, and anyway, I’m not good at that sort of analysis. She is fond of eating trout, I’m fond of catching them. Clearly we were designed for each other, — if only for an hour or so.”
By this time I had reached my own gate, and stood pensively regarding a pair of tiny chipping birds that were absorbed in the excitement of a violent Spring courtship.
“Certainly,” said I to myself, “I am infatuated, and I’m proud of it. Any man would be — any man whose mind was not all mouse-coloured and neutral.”
In the mellow evening light the pools of rain water glimmered like sheets of gold. Two swallows sat on a telegraph wire twittering to each other of the coming summer, two migrating blue-jays stopped in the apple tree by the porch to chatter scandal. A pair of belated white butterflies fluttered sleepily about the lower branches of the lilac bushes.
“They’re probably married also,” thought I, “and now they’re going home to bed. Everything that runs or flies or hops seems to be mated — except me. True, I don’t fly — unless from the Misses Timmins.”
I opened my creel and looked moodily into it. Fishing, after all, was cold comfort compared to stealing an interview with a winsome maid who ate bon-bons to guitar accompaniment.
“May,” said I to myself, softly, “May, — might, — May makes might and might makes right — pshaw! I’ll not go bothering my conscience with every little incident that comes up.” I had some consideration for my conscience; I knew how tired it was.
The rain water in the long road ruts glimmered with a deeper orange light. A bat fluttered around the darkening foliage of the maples; a cricket creaked from door-sill.
“The bat,” thought I, “is looking for a little lady-bat; the cricket is serenading; I think that I’ll follow their example. I wish I could play on my harmonica and sing at the same time.”
About ten o’clock that night, the moon being well up, I went out onto the porch and looked at it until I felt sufficiently sentimental to sit on the damp grass under May’s window and make music as I understood it. So I took my banjo under my arm, dropped my harmonica into my coat pocket, and tip-toed off down the road as many a better man had done before me, and would continue to do as long as that boarding-school existed.
O delicious night in early Spring! Lured by the balm in the soft night winds, all the little field creatures had come out of their holes in meadow and pasture, in orchard and thicket, and were scraping away on monotonous shrill melodies, accentuated by the treble of hundreds of tree toads.
In every shadowy orchard Katydids performed countless encores to the bass “bravos!” of the great bull-frogs along the mill-brook’s reedy banks. All living things did their part to celebrate the coming Summer, even a distant skunk added his mite to the spicy night. Personally I preferred the roadside lilacs, but it’s all a matter of taste, and George the Fourth liked his oysters over-ripe.
“If these bull-frogs,” thought I, “keep up their sonorous tom-toms, it will ruin my serenade — I know it, from experience.”
By this time I had reached the dormitory hedge.
“A brassy cornet would be lost in this hubbub,” I mused bitterly, looking up at the third window on the second floor.
I thumbed the bass string of my banjo doubtfully, paused, cleared my throat, included frogs, toads, katydids, and crickets in one general and comprehensive anathema, and sang this rehashed song:
“Ye little loves that round her wait
To bring me tidings of my fate,
As May upon her pillow lies,
Ah! gently whisper — Harry dies.”
“If this will not her pity move,
And the proud fair disdains to love,
Smile and say ‘t is all a lie,
And haughty Henry scorns to die!”
“Bother take it,” I muttered, “I shouldn’t have sung that last verse — it may offend her. That’s the trouble about those old songs; you never can tell what you’re singing until you’ve put your foot in it.”
This mixed metaphor was probably due to the confusion in my mind, for what with the frogs and a lurking fear of the Misses Timmins, I was not as cool as I might have been.
While I was singing, two or three windows were softly raised, and now more were being raised, and I caught glimpses of shadowy white-draped figures leaning from sills or dodging behind curtains.
And now her window opened softly; I saw a shape between the curtains and the sweet notes of a guitar came throbbing out into the night.
“Miss Thorne,” I whispered, “ask those young ladies to go in, please. They always come and bother.”
Some of them took the hint. I did not care for the rest, for time was precious, and I feared the Timmins! So I told Miss Thorne in a hollow, passionate whisper that it was out of the question for me to try to live without her, — and a few other facts calculated to melt solid rocks into tears. But when I desired to be informed concerning her constancy, she interrupted me.
“What was that last verse you sang?” she asked.
“Oh, that was only one of those old songs, you know; I didn’t intend—”
“One of those old songs? Very well. Listen to this one then, and be assured of my constancy.”
“The time that is to come, is not; How then can it be mine?
The present moment’s all my lot,
And that, as fast as it is got,
Harry, is only thine!
“Then talk not of inconstancy,
False hearts and broken vows; If I, by miracle, can be
This live-long minute true to thee,
‘T is all that Heaven allows.”
It was a pretty revenge for my parrot-like repetition of a verse that was out of place, but when, from a neighbouring window, another voice cried “Brava May! serves him right!” I was annoyed and protested in hoarse whispers.
Then all those little maids began to make fun of me. I thought I could distinguish May’s silvery mocking laughter, and, hurt and angry, I shook the dew of the lawn from my shoes, and went away, nursing my wrath and my hurt pride.
“That’s what one gets,” I mused, “that’s what a man gets by meddling with things that don’t concern him! I was an ass to make eyes at her. I was doubly an ass to think that she would care for good music — I was a triple ass to sing that idiotic old song. It was a too-cock-sure-independent — well don’t-if-you-don’t-want-to! sort of song, and women don’t like that. Women are all alike — it is only circumstances that change them. I wish I had sense enough to let ’em alone! The confounded song hurt her vanity — that’s what’s the matter!”
I sat down on a flat rock by the roadside and blew a dismal s
train from my harmonica. It comforted me a little, so I played “Sir Daniel O’Donnel” and “Casey’s Lament.”
The weird strains of the latter wrung howls from a dog in a stable near by, so I changed to a pleasanter air to save his feelings. But my heart was heavy; I eyed the moon furtively and moped.
“Those feather-headed girls always come and listen every time a fellow tries to do a little wooing on his own account,” I muttered; “Barclay had the same experience, so did Kendall and Gordon. I’ll be hanged if I repeat this fiasco — it’s cursedly silly, anyway, and I don’t care whether it’s customary and traditional. I’ll not play circus for any woman on earth!”
I wiped my harmonica on my handkerchief and played “Bannigan’s Barracks” in a minor key. The dog in the stable howled intermittently.
I could see the dark mass of the dormitory out of the corner of my eye. A candle flickered behind one of the windows, I could not tell which, from where I was sitting.
And, as I eyed it askance, tooting resignedly the while, I saw somebody appear at the great gate, open it, and move swiftly out and up the moonlit road toward me.
“Some of those girls have told a Timmins, and she’s coming to do me!” I thought. “I don’t care. Miss Thome made me ridiculous, and I’ll not see her again, and I’m on the public highway! Let the Misses Timmins advance!”
So I struck up a lively quickstep on my harmonica, and blinked innocently at the moon. The figure was close to me now, I saw it, but I tootled away, regardless.
“Mr. Stenhouse!”
I turned slowly.
“Oh, I know it is terribly imprudent, and if I’m caught I’ll be sent home, but I heard your harmonica — oh, such dismal strains! — and I thought if only I could see you for a second to tell you that it was not I that laughed, for I think your serenade was — was perfectly charming — there!”
We were standing face to face in the moonlight. At last I said: “I was a fool to sing that song; I’m sorry, Miss Thorne.”
“Oh, it was not the song as much as it was that you said — you gave me to understand quite frankly that you had — had been to the school before. You said ‘the girls always bothered—’”
“Did I say that?”
“Yes, — it was most humiliating for — for me.”
“Oh, I’m a perfect idiot,” I admitted.
She looked down at her slippers — they had been hurriedly and carelessly tied — and I noticed it and knelt to repair the oversight.
“I was in such haste,” she said. “Is it true that you have serenaded the dormitory before?”
“Not the dormitory—”
“You know what I mean; have you?”
“All the fellows do,” I said, vaguely.
She tapped her foot on the gravel.
“Those strings are sufficiently tied,” she said, “tell me whom you serenaded?”
“I can’t do that, Miss Thorne.”
“Why? Then tell me when it was.”
“When? Oh, last year, before I ever imagined such a girl as you existed. It’s a silly custom, anyway—”
“It isn’t, — it’s charming — when the man has any tact. It’s the tradition of the school that no girl shall spoon with a man who hasn’t serenaded her, and I do not expect to break the traditions of my school—”
“Only the rules, Miss Thorne?”
“Only the rules — and a heart or two!”
“Or two!”
“Faith, sir,” she said maliciously, “did you think you were the only one?”
“Yes,” said I, “I did.”
“And you tell me deliberately that you had serenaded other girls there before I came — I don’t know how many, perhaps a dozen, twenty, fifty, the whole school!”
“What!” I cried, bewildered.
“Oh, I don’t care,” she said, “I only wished to show you what men are and what their selfishness requires of women, — to sacrifice everything while they sacrifice nothing.”
“And you don’t care?” I asked.
“No, Mr. Stenhouse.”
“Then why did you risk everything to come and tell me?”
“W — what?” she stammered.
“Miss Thorne,” said I, very gravely, “your school is noted for its escapades. It is known in the village, not as the ‘Misses Timmins’s Select Boarding-School for Young Ladies,’ but as ‘The Devil’s Own.’ We engineer students are a reckless lot, also. We are, to put it plainly, a godless crew, but this — this is somehow different. I am beginning to believe that our thoughtless folly — yours and mine, may leave one of us miserable for life.”
“Me?”
“Who knows? I can only speak for myself, — I — I have changed already, — yes, in these few moments that we stood here face to face—”
“What do you mean?” she said mockingly.
“I mean that in another minute I shall love you — in another second!”
“Are you serious?” she demanded incredulously. Then, “Oh, I thought you jolly and clever, and you prove to be soft and silly! Master Harry, you bore me!”
“Do I?” I answered angrily. “Well, I’ll never do it again, and I was a fool to believe you would understand anything but chocolate-creams and dormitory flirting!”
“Not only soft and silly, but a boor,” she said. “Good-night. No, you need not walk to the gate with me — I never wish to set eyes on you again.”
III.
ON the first day of June I passed my final examinations at the great Engineering School at Clovermead, and was then ready to let myself loose on the mining regions of a deluded world.
The commencement exercises bored me; I went fishing most of the time, or else stayed in my rooms writing “ Dry Fly Casting as a Fine Art “ for the Trigger. In the long fragrant evenings I took lonely walks by the river or sat under the oak playing minor airs on my harmonica.
At the end of the first week in June the commencement exercises were over, the visiting hordes from New York and Boston had flitted away to Newport or Bar Harbor, the Government officers went back to Washington and West Point, and the little village of Clovermead lay in the sunshine, white, sweet-scented, deserted.
The Misses Timmins’s “Select Boarding-School for Young Ladies” had its commencement — a rainbow affair — and dissolved, leaving, as residue, an empty school-house and a dormitory dedicated to silence.
I didn’t go to their commencement, not because I was not invited, for most of the fellows went anyway. No, since my last serenade, I had shunned the school and all it works.
It was true that I lingered in the village of Clovermead after my fellow-students had departed, not, as I frequently explained to myself, to catch a last glimpse of Miss Thorne, but to catch that veteran trout in the Clovermead River. “I shall never see Miss Thorne again,” I said to myself, “and I’m glad of it.”
So on the day of her commencement I went fishing, very far off and I passed a miserable day. It rained, among other things.
The next morning the sun shone in at my window and I looked out into the village with a strange weight at my heart. I did not feel hungry, but went to breakfast, determined to let nothing disturb me or my appetite. As I touched the sugar-tongs to the sugar, a faint whistle came on the June wind from the distant railroad station.
“There go the young ladies from the boarding-school, “ said my landlady; “do take one of these shirred eggs, Mr. Stenhouse.”
“Thank you,” said I, with a queer sensation in my throat.
“May has gone,” I was thinking. After a while I said aloud: “what of it!”
“I beg your pardon,” said my landlady, smiling.
“I beg yours — it was nothing; I was only thinking that I was alone in the village.”
“I hope you will stay,” she said, fingering the black-edged handkerchief in her lap.
“You are very good,” I replied; “I shall stay until I catch that big trout in the river.”
“Then poor luck to yo
u!” smiled the kindly old lady, “what time will you have your dinner, Mr. Stenhouse?”
I went back to my room and sat down by the window. A flowering branch of late apple blossoms scraped across the sash as I threw it open and leaned out.
For a long while I listened to the droning of bees among the half-opened buds, thinking that the warmth had fled from the sunshine and the scent was gone from mead and sedge.
And “why?” I repeated to myself again and again, until a sullen anger seized me and I tramped up and down my room, my hands buried in the canvas pockets of my shooting coat.
“Now,” said I to myself, “this is d — d foolishness. I’ll just go and try for that trout, and I’ll catch him too,” I added, gritting my teeth to dull the pain in my heart,— “I’ll catch him by fair means or foul, — yes, by jingo! I’ll use a worm!” No, I felt no horror for the deed I was about to commit. All that was base and depraved in my nature had risen with my better feelings to combat a depression, a sorrow, that was so sudden, so deep, that I hardly understood it.
Under such circumstances the truly good come out strong, — in novels; others do something wrong to occupy their minds. Wallowing dulls the capability of suffering, — for a time. It is much practised by weak and strong, contemporary fiction to the contrary.
So it happened one day in early June, when the sky was china blue and filmy clouds trailed like lace across the disk of a pale sun, that I, Henry Stenhouse, well and sound in mind and body, decided to commit a crime.
I started down the road, swinging my creel over my shoulder and whistling, buoyed up by that false exhilaration which always took possession of me when I felt myself on good terms with the devil. In my pocket nestled my luncheon, a small flask of Bordeaux, fly-book, harmonica, reel, and a tin bait box.
Imagine what it costs me to write this!
Well it’s written, — and on I went, whistling “Sir Daniel O’Donnel,” as though I had not a care in the world and love was but an old wive’s tale.
Yet, whistle as I would, I could not close my eyes to the caustic criticism of the sunny world on my solitary condition. Robins hopped about the pastures in pairs, blue-birds flew from sapling to fence, in pairs, yellow butterflies whirled over the clover in dozens and dozens of pairs, and the very trees, the silver birches, the maples and elms, all seemed to grow in pairs. Two by two I counted oak and beach, nestling in each others shadows, two by two the twinkling silver aspens seemed to wink at me with every leaf.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 1071