The Booming of Acre Hill And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life, John Kendrick Bangs [bill gates books to read TXT] 📗

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.

(MRS UPTON'S DEVICE A TALE OF MATCH-MAKING) II (A SUCCESSFUL CASE) Pg 10

 

"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.

(MRS UPTON'S DEVICE A TALE OF MATCH-MAKING) II (A SUCCESSFUL CASE) Pg 11

 

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.

(MRS UPTON'S DEVICE A TALE OF MATCH-MAKING) III (A SET-BACK) Pg 12

 

"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,