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.