The Booming of Acre Hill, and Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life Part 8

"Exactly," said Brinley. "That was a point I had not considered at all.

After all, she was right. What can you expect for sixteen dollars?"

"Well, what next?" asked Mrs. Brinley, her eyes a-twinkle.

"I asked her if she thought she could do better on twenty dollars," he answered. "She thought she could, and that's the way it stands now."

"I see," said Mrs. Brinley, and then she burst into a perfect explosion of laughter, which she soon curbed, however, as she noticed the expression on poor Brinley's face. "I've no doubt you have acted with perfect justice in this matter, my dear George," she said. "But I think hereafter I'll do my own discharging. Your way is rather extravagant--er--don't you really think so?"

"Perhaps," said Brinley, and departed for town.

"The madam is right about that," he said to himself later in the day, as he thought over the incident. "But extravagant or not, I couldn't have discharged that woman if somebody had offered me a clear hundred. Mrs.

B. doesn't know it, but I was in a blue funk from start to finish."

In which surmise Brinley was wrong. Mrs. B. did know it, and when two weeks later Ellen became absolutely impossible, and demanded a kitchen-maid as the perquisite of a twenty-dollar cook, Mrs. Brinley didn't think of calling upon her husband to perform the function of the executioner, but like a brave woman actually summoned the cook into her presence and did it herself. A less courageous woman would have gone downstairs into the kitchen to do it.

WILKINS

It was a rather remarkable affair, taken altogether. Wilkins was not what one would call an attractive man, and none of the young women of Dumfries Corners who had met him had ever manifested anything but a p.r.o.nounced aversion to his society.

"I'd rather be a wall-flower than dance with Sam Wilkins," one of these young women had said. "He not only can't dance, but, what is infinitely worse, he doesn't know that he can't dance, and as for his conversation--well, give me silence."

"You are perfectly right about that," said another. "Whenever I see him about to waltz or two-step, I immediately remove myself from the scene, and pray for the girl he's dancing with. He is a train-wrecker, and the favorite resting-place for his heels is on some one else's foot. I've heard that he steps on his own feet, too, he's so awkward, and I hope he does if it hurts him as much as he hurts me when he steps on mine."

For Wilkins's sake I am very sorry to say that this feeling towards him was invariable. I never cared much for him myself, but I felt rather sorry for him when I perceived the persistent snubbing with which he was everywhere received. He never seemed aware of it himself, happily, however, and accepted my merely sympathetic attentions with that superciliousness which always goes with conscious rect.i.tude.

Conscious rect.i.tude, I think, was Wilkins's trouble. He was good, and he was aware of it, but he was not content with that. He wanted everybody else to be good. I really believe that Wilkins could have carried on a Platonic love affair with an auburn-haired girl for ten weeks without an effort, he was so terribly good, which did not at all contribute to his popularity. A fellow who talks about ritualism while walking in the moonlight with a sentimental woman, doesn't count for much, and Wilkins was always doing things like that. It was even whispered last winter when he went sleigh-riding with that fascinating little widow, Mrs.

Broughton, that he let her do the driving, clasped his own hands in front of him, and talked of nothing but the privations of the missionaries in China, and never mentioned oysters or cold birds and a bottle.

"And worst of all," snapped Mrs. Broughton, "he really seemed to enjoy it. I never saw such a man!"

I have mentioned all these details for the purpose of indicating how unpopular Wilkins was and how it was that he had become so, for with this knowledge the reader will share the surprise which we all felt when Wilkins suddenly blossomed forth as the most popular man of Dumfries Corners. It was really a knockdown blow to the most of us, for while we may have been jealous on occasions of each other, it never occurred to any of us to be jealous of the train-wrecker.

I didn't like it when Araminta smiled upon Harry Burnham, but it was not injurious to my self-respect that she should do it, because Harry Burnham averages up as good a fellow as I am, and then Harry and I could drown our differences in the flowing bowl later on. On the other hand, if Harry's Fiametta cast side glances at me, of course Harry would be wroth, but he could understand why Fiametta should be so affected by the twinkle in my eye--an affection by the way which has often got me unconsciously into trouble--that she should for the moment forget herself and respond to it.

But when Araminta and Fiametta on a sudden, just after the leap-year dance, wholly, and, as we thought, basely, deserted us for that emblem of conscious rect.i.tude, Sam Wilkins, a man whose eye couldn't learn to twinkle in a thousand years, a mere human iceberg, then it was that we were astounded. Nor was this secession limited to Araminta and Fiametta.

The conversion of the girls of Dumfries Corners to Wilkins was as complete, as comprehensive, as it was startling to the men. Jack Lester, as Bob Jenks expressed it, was "trun down" by Daisy Hawkins, who appeared to have eyes for none but Wilkins, while Bob, in turn, when going to make his usual Thursday evening call upon Miss Betsy Wilson, discovered that Miss Betsy had gone to the University extension lecture with the train-wrecker, an act unprecedented, for it had long been the custom for Bob to spend his Thursday evenings at the Wilson mansion, and, while nothing had as yet been announced, everybody in town was getting his congratulations ready for Bob as soon as that which was understood became a matter of common knowledge.

For a week or two we none of us let on that we had observed the remarkable change that had come o'er the spirit of our dreams. Harry has always been remarkable for his ability to conceal his feelings, and in that respect I am a good second, and except for the fact that we spent more time at the club playing pool n.o.body would have suspected that we cared whether Araminta or Fiametta still loved us or not. Besides, we each had a feeling that two could play at this Wilkins game, and I had made up my mind that if Araminta could so easily find a subst.i.tute for me I, with my twinkle, could as speedily replace her. That is to say, I felt that I could create that impression in Araminta's mind, and that was all I was after. I didn't really intend, however easy it would be to do so, to create a flutter of a permanent nature in any other woman's heart--that is, not until I was sure that Araminta was lost to me forever. After a decent period of mourning I might have used my twinkle for permanent effect, but at that moment my only idea was to show Araminta that if one could be fickle, two could be twice as fickle.

Harry had the same course of treatment in store for Fiametta, and we both made a strong bid for the company of Mary Brown, who, it must be confessed, was a charming girl, and stood second in the affections of every man in Dumfries Corners.

It was the opportunity of Mary Brown's life, for even as Harry and I had decided, so had all the other jilted swains, but that curious girl either could not or would not grasp it. She, too, had become a Wilkinsite, and would have nothing to do with any of us. She declined to attend the Beldens's musicale with me, and went bicycling with the iceberg. She told Robinson she hated lectures, and went to a stereopticon show with the train-wrecker. All the other men met with a similar rebuff, and at the last meeting of the Chafing Dish Club she capped the climax by refusing my lobster a la Newburg and Harry's oysters poulet, to have a second helping to the sole-leather welsh rarebit which Wilkins had constructed; Wilkins, a rank outsider, who had been asked to come to the meeting by every blessed girl in the club, although heretofore he had not been considered as a possible member, and in fact had been black-balled by the girls themselves! And when it came time for the girls to go home, instead of each one being escorted by a single male member, Wilkins corralled the whole lot of them in a huge omnibus which he had hired, and drove off with them, leaving us disconsolate. He smiled so broadly you could see his teeth in the dark.

This, as I have said, capped the climax.

"That settles it," said Burnham. "I'm going to New York for a rest.

These Dumfries Corners girls needn't think they're the only women in the world. There are others."

"I'm going to stay and stick it out," said I. "I've got my sister left.

She'll never succ.u.mb to the Wilkins influence." But alas! I leaned upon a broken reed. My sister is a sensible girl, but she is "literary." She had a joke in _Life_ once, and since that time she has neglected almost everything but writing and her brother. She doesn't neglect me, and altogether I'm glad she writes, since it fills her with enthusiasm until the articles come back, and up to now she had not written poetry. But, as I say, I leaned upon a broken reed, for when, the next day, I asked her what she was writing, she laughed and showed me a sonnet.

"Poetry, eh?" I said, disapprovingly, as I looked over her ma.n.u.script.

"Yes," she answered, modestly. "A sonnet."

And I read, "To S.W."

"Who's 'S.W.?'" I asked, with a frown, although I little suspected what her answer would be.

"Sam Wilkins," she replied.

I then realized the full force of Caesar's "Et tu, Brute?" and fled.

Meanwhile Wilkins was becoming insufferable. If Bunthorne was an a.s.s, he was at least clever, but this Wilkins--he was a whole drove of a.s.ses, and not a redeeming feature to the lot. He could no more account for his sudden popularity than we could, but he could not help realizing it after a week or two, and then, for the first time in his life, he began to take notice. We men all wanted to thrash him, and I think Burnham would have done it if the rest of us hadn't prevented him.

"He needed a licking before this," said Harry, "but now he's worse than ever. It isn't conscious rect.i.tude now, it's triumphant virtue. He makes me tired. He was telling me the other day that while girls might be captivated by flippant, superficial, prancing dudes for a while, in the end solid worth would win, and then he went on to say that the youth of modern times cultivated his feet to the exclusion of his head, and that while he had, of course, learned to dance, he had not devoted all his time to it, and regarded it, after all, as a very minor sort of an attraction as far as women are concerned. 'I don't rely on my dancing, Burnham,' he said. 'It's the head, and the heart, my boy, that triumphs.' And when I asked him where he learned all this he answered, 'from personal experience.'"

I immediately let go of Burnham. "Go and half-lick him, Harry," said I.

"And when you've done with him pa.s.s him over to me, and I'll finish him.

The supercilious a.s.s."

That was the way Wilkins affected us.

The other men took their dose in different ways. Jenks began to drink a little more; Lester drank a little less. Hicks didn't care much about it one way or the other, and Wilson swore that if Wilkins came to call on his sister again he'd kick him out of the house.

Six weeks rolled by thus, and finally Easter Sunday came. No mitigation of the Wilkins visitation had entered into our lives. As the days wore on the girls became more devoted to him than ever, and he became correspondingly unbearable. The condescension with which he would treat his fellow-men was something hardly to be tolerated, and the worst of it was there didn't seem to be any way of bringing the girls to terms.

There wasn't anybody left for us to flirt with now that Mary Brown had gone over to the enemy, she who had always been willing to flirt with anybody.

"There's only one hope," said Jenks. "If he'll only marry one of 'em, the others will come back. He can't marry 'em all, thank Heaven."

"Suppose it was Fiametta he married?" said I.

"Or Araminta!" was his preposterous retort.

"He'll never do that," said Lester. "He's in clover now, and for the first time in his life, and the more of an a.s.s he is the more he'll like clover. He's paying attention to the lot. He'll never settle down to one. It's all up with us--unless he bankrupts himself."

"He won't," observed Harry Burnham. "Conscious rect.i.tude won't do anything like that. I'm going to New York to call on an old flame, and I advise the rest of you to do the same."

"Well, I don't know but what you are right," said I, "but Araminta shall have one more chance. I'm going to church to-morrow. It's Easter Sunday, and I'll offer to escort her home. If she says 'yes,' all right. If she doesn't, I'm lost to her forever."

"Good scheme," quoth the others. "We're with you."

And that is what we all did. The girls were all there, resplendent in new bonnets and toggery of other sorts, and the smirking Wilkins was there too. He pa.s.sed the plate after the sermon, and his rect.i.tude shone out oleaginously on every line of his face. It was as much as I could do to keep from tripping him up in the aisle, and sending him and the contribution-plate sprawling. I almost did it when I imagined his feelings as the nickels rattled down through the register into the furnace below, but I restrained myself--and the killing glances he threw into those gla.s.s eyes of his, whenever he happened to hold the plate before one of those Dumfries girls! It was sickening, and I came near to flying before the close of the service. The others had the same sensations and temptations, and it is a wonder that Wilkins did not meet with some dreadful humiliation before he got the collection back into the chancel. It was a terrible strain on us, and his horrid unconsciousness that he was anything but perfect, and that the rest of us were anything more than so many paving stones to be walked on, was aggravating to a degree. Nothing unusual happened, however, and the service came to an end, and with it came to us all another surprise, but this time the surprise gave Wilkins a pain, and I had a front seat when the blow was dealt.

It had occurred to the immaculate rival of all the manhood of Dumfries Corners that he would honor Araminta with his society on the way home from church, and he and I reached her side after service at one and the same moment.