The Romance of an Old Fool
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Roswell Field >> The Romance of an Old Fool
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_The_ ROMANCE OF
AN OLD FOOL
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THE ROMANCE
OF
AN OLD FOOL
BY
ROSWELL FIELD
EVANSTON
WILLIAM S. LORD
1902
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_Copyright, 1902, by_
ROSWELL FIELD
UNIVERSITY PRESS . JOHN WILSON
AND SON . CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
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_To_
MY GODCHILDREN
_With the somewhat unnecessary assurance that
it is not an autobiography, this little
tale of misconceived attachment
is affectionately
inscribed_
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THE ROMANCE _of_ AN OLD FOOL
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 assertive and familiar, I sought to punish him by reading
long and numerous excerpts. To do him justice he took the
chastisement 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
circumstances. When the late Mrs. Stanhope passed to her reward,
she considerately left behind a document 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 association, 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 passing 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 sex 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 sex, 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 hit 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 cocker 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 petition 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 passed 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 passed 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
twang 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 assembled 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,' illustratin' 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 assurance 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 assistance, 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 grass, 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 associated 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 God 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 hearse,
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 massive 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
embarrassment:
"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 pass 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 accumulated 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?
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