The Booming of Acre Hill And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life

A SET-BACK

  “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, and that when they met the next time her manner towards him was what some persons term “sniffy,” which was a manner Walter could not and would not abide.  Hence a marked coolness arose between the two, which by degrees became so intensified that at about the time when Mrs. Upton was expected to be called in to assist at a wedding, she was stunned by the information that “all was over between them.”  “Just think of that, Henry,” the good match-maker cried, wrathfully.  “All is over between them, and Molly pretends she is glad of it.”

“Made for each other too!” ejaculated Upton, with a mock air of sorrow.  “What was the matter?”

“I can’t make out exactly,” observed Mrs. Upton.  “Molly told me all about it, and it struck me as a merely silly lovers’ quarrel, but she won’t hear of a reconciliation.  She says she finds she was mistaken in him.  I wish you’d find out Walter’s version of it.”

“I respectfully refuse, my dear Mrs. Upton,” returned Henry.  “I’m not a partner in your enterprise, and if you get a misfit couple returned on your hands it is your lookout, not mine.  Pity, isn’t it, that you can’t manage matters like a tailor?  Suit of clothes is made for me, I try it on, don’t like it, send it back and have it changed to fit.  If you could make a few alterations now in Molly—­”

“Henry, you are flippant,” asserted Mrs. Upton.  “There’s nothing the matter with Molly—­not the least little thing; and Walter ought to be ashamed of himself to give her up, and I’m going to see that he doesn’t.  I believe a law ought to be made, anyhow, requiring engaged persons who want to break off to go into court and show cause why they shouldn’t be enjoined from so doing.”

“A sort of antenuptial divorce law, eh?” suggested Upton.  “That’s not a bad idea; you ought to write to the papers and suggest it—­using your maiden name, of course, not mine.”

“If you would only find out from Walter what he’s mad at, and tell him he’s an idiot and a heartless thing, maybe we could smooth it out, because I know that ’way down in her soul Molly loves him.”

“Very well, I’ll do it,” said Upton, good-naturedly; “but mind you it’s only to oblige you, and if Bliss throws me out of the club window for meddling in his affairs, it will be your fault.”

The doctor did not quite throw Upton out of the window that afternoon when the subject came up, but he did the next thing to it.  He turned upon him, and with much gravity remarked:  “Upton, I’ll talk politics, finance, medicine, surgery, literature, or neck-ties with you, but under no circumstances will I talk about woman with anybody.  I prefer a topic concerning which it is possible occasionally to make an intelligent surmise at least.  Woman is as comprehensible to a finite mind as chaos.  Who’s your tailor?”

“You ought to have seen us when he said that,” observed Upton to his wife, as he told her about the interview at dinner that evening.  “He was as solemn as an Alp, and apparently as immovable as the Sphinx; and as for me, I simply withered on my stalk and crumbled away into dust.  Wherefore, my love, I am through; and hereafter if you are going to make matches for my friends and need outside help, get a hired man to help you.  I’m did.  If I were you I’d let ’em go their own way, and if their lives are spoiled, why, your conscience is clear either way.”

But Mrs. Upton had no sympathy with any such view as that.  She had been so near to victory that she was not going to surrender now without one more charge.  She tried a little sounding of Bliss herself, and finally asked him point-blank if he would take dinner with herself and Upton and Molly and make it up, and he declined absolutely; and it was just as well, for when Molly heard of it she asserted that she had no doubt it would have been a pleasant dinner, but that nothing could have induced her to go.  She never wished to see Dr. Bliss again—­not even professionally.  Mrs. Upton was gradually becoming utterly discouraged.  The only hopeful feature of the situation was that there were no “alternates” involved.  Bliss was done forever with woman; Miss Meeker had never cared for any man but Walter.  Time passed, and the lovers were adamant in their determination never to see each other again.  Repeated efforts to bring them together failed, until Mrs. Upton was in despair.  It is always darkest, however, just before dawn, and it finally happened that just as hopelessness was beginning to take hold of Mrs. Upton’s heart her great device came to her.