CHAPTER XXIII ELIGIBLE.

WE were sitting at dinner Monday night, all of us wondering why Ellery Sibthorp had not come. We had heard the whistle of the train on which he was to have come, and we had allowed more than time for the livery team to come up, but it was now seven, and we had given him up.

“I’m afraid he missed the train in New York. I wish I’d walked down to the station.”

“Will you please tell me,” said Ethel, “how your going down to Egerton would have prevented his missing the train in New York?”

“Well, I was thinking that perhaps he missed the hackman at Egerton.”

“It’s too perfectly awful of him,” said Cherry, “seeing that I stayed over just to meet him.”

“The disappointment will be his when he sees you,” said I, and at this both of them asked me what was the matter with my wits.

“Have you had an infusion of Irish blood?” asked Ethel.

“I’m thinking of how inhospitable I was not to go down to the train.”

There was a knock at the kitchen door, and Minerva, who had been removing the soup plates, went out to open it.

A light-keyed, pleasant voice said to her,

“Can you tell me where the Vernons live?”

“Right here, sir. Come in won’t yer?”

In through the kitchen came a light step, following Minerva’s heavy one, and as she opened the door into the dining room she said to us informally,

“I guess this is the man you was lookin’ for.”

“Oh, I didn’t know you had company,” said Sibthorp, setting down his grip and removing, or trying to remove his hat. His hand hit it and it fell to the floor, and when he stooped to pick it up he felt flustered, and put it on again, his face turning the colour of a peony.

Ethel rose from her seat and said,

“Mr. Sibthorp, you surely haven’t walked up? May I present you to Miss Paxton?”

“Certainly,” said the poor fellow. “That is, I did, and I’m happy to meet everybody.”

He had taken off his hat again, and I now found his hand and gave it a hearty shake.

“This is your house for the time being, Ellery, old man,” said I, “and Miss Paxton is one of the family, also. We call her Cherry, but it isn’t obligatory. Now hang your hat up in the hall, and I’ll show you where you can find a pitcher and basin, and nobody’s the least bit stiff in this house, so you can feel as happy as if you were by yourself.”

I led him out of the room, and by the time he had explained how he had not seen any hack, and had come up by a short-cut that a farmer told him about, he was feeling more in command of himself. It is really a tax on a man’s self possession to be shown through the kitchen and brought face to face with a strange and exceedingly pretty young woman, and I would not care to have anyone think that Sibthorp was one of those hopelessly diffident fellows, whose every contact with their fellow beings is agony.

When he came back to the table he went over and shook hands with Ethel, and sat down in his seat quite himself.

He was a good-looking fellow, reminding one a little of the pictures of Robert Schumann. His eyes were deep-set and his lips full, and if he had been born twenty years earlier his hair would have been long. The spirit of the times is against excessive hair.

The cow boy had it and stuck to it and—the cow boy is going. Whether artists and literary men pondered on the fate of the cow boy, and in order to save themselves, cut their hair, or not, I am not prepared to say, but it is a fact that if all the hair that is not in these United States were to be placed end to end it would encircle the earth time and time again—which beautiful thought I dedicate to the statisticians.

“What bracing air you have up here,” said Sibthorp. “Why, I came up the hills like a streak, and I was getting so that a short walk in the city tired me. Isn’t it a great place?”

“You’re inoculated soon,” said Cherry. “There’s something in the spirit of this place that makes people stay on and on. I was only invited for a week, and now they can’t get me to go. It’ll be the same with you.”

“Ellery,” said I, “the motto of this place is going to be ‘All hope (of getting away) abandon ye who enter here.’ You see, Ethel and I were getting mortally tired of our honeymoon, which had lasted four years, and so we began to invite people up here to relieve our ennui.”

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, to say that?” said Cherry; but Ethel only laughed.

“It’s a fact. At first Minerva (she’s the lady that ushered you in) contributed daily to our amusement and excitement, but now she’s getting to be semi-occasional, and so we’re thinking of our friends who don’t hate the country, and you may be in quite a congested community before you have a chance to go. You play tennis, don’t you?”

“I used to when I was a boy.”

“Oh, don’t say that. We’re all boys and girls up here. We expect to set up a court to-morrow and there’ll be four of us to play.”

“Have you written much lately?” asked Ethel.

It was curious to see the extra animation that came into Sibthorp’s face at her question. Tennis had left him cold, but the mention of the works of Sibthorp roused him.

It is the fashion to laugh at this tendency in writers, but I have a dim suspicion that the engineer is roused to greater interest at mention of some engineering problem he has solved, than he is at the ordinary topics of the day, and so it is with all.

“Had something accepted last week,” said he. “It had been everywhere, and if it had come back again, I would have burned it up, but the Atlantic took it, and the only reason I didn’t send there at first was because I thought it wasn’t good enough.”

“How proud we must be.”

“Well, it’s funny, but as soon as the Atlantic took it, I went and got my carbon copy and read it, and I thought it was pretty good, and when it had come back time before, I had read it, and thought it was rotten.”

“And when it’s printed, there’ll be as many opinions of it as it has readers. But you’re progressing if the Atlantic takes you up. Doesn’t it make you feel sorry to see the goal?”

“No, sir. Now I won’t be happy until I’ve written a serial for the Atlantic, or some one of the big magazines.”

“Is that the way it works?” laughed Cherry. “The more one gets, the more one wants?”

“That’s the way ambition is built up,” said I, “acceptance by acceptance.”

“What a place to work in this must be,” said Sibthorp, as he allowed Ethel to replenish his plate.

Cherry laughed. “Yes, you ought to see the way Mr. Vernon works. A poem in the morning, a short story in the afternoon, and an essay in the evening.”

Sibthorp turned his glowing eyes on me. “Good boy. Are you really working?”

“Miss Paxton sees fit to jest,” said I. “I’m afraid I haven’t done as much as I might.”

“You couldn’t do less, Philip, seeing you haven’t done a thing since you came up,” said Ethel.

“All the better for winter. But don’t let my example influence you, Sibthorp. I’ll turn you loose with pens and paper, or my typewriter, and you can enrich the literature of this country every minute, if you want to. Only, if you take my advice, you’ll give literachure the go by, and stay out doors for a week or so.”

“I’ll work out doors, but I must work,” said he, his eyes shining.

Ethel laughed. “A night up here will cure that. You’ll be content to loll by to-morrow.”

“Why, I wrote on the way up,” said he.

“Really!” said Cherry. “What did you do with it? Hand it to the conductor by mistake, for your ticket?” she added saucily.

“No, but do you know, whenever I ride any distance, I feel that I must write something because money spent on tickets seems money thrown away.”

“Dear me, is it a poet speaking or a thrifty Yankee.”

Cherry spoke to him as if she had known him all her life. I did not know but he would take offence, but he was looking at her when she spoke, and that made all the difference in the world. Ethel said one day that Cherry’s eyes apologised for whatever daring might be in her words.

“I’m very thrifty. I have need to be,” said Sibthorp earnestly, and as I knew that his income for the preceding year had been something in the neighbourhood of four hundred dollars, I flashed a warning signal to Cherry, and asked him to do the thing that would make him the happiest.

“After dinner suppose you read us the stuff you’ve been writing.”

“How disrespectful,” said Cherry. “Stuff!”

“Why, if it wouldn’t bore you?” said he, smiling at Cherry.

“Lovely! Perfectly delicious!” said Cherry, and Ethel said,

“It’ll make me think I’m living in a literary atmosphere once more. Since Philip won that prize, he’s simply vegetated. I don’t like it a bit. What’s your story about?”

“It’s a sort of fable. I call it the ‘Two Altruists.’”

We had coffee served out under the maple, and while we were drinking it Sibthorp, after apologising for not being a better reader, began it.

“Once upon a time—”

“Wait a minute,” said I, “Here comes Minerva. She doesn’t want to listen, but it’ll go better if we wait until she has gone.”

She had come for the cups and saucers, and she took Ellery’s coffee before he had had a chance to touch it, but no one noticed, he least of all, intent as he was upon disburdening his mind of his fable.

I make no bones of producing it, because we all liked it so well that it seems as if a larger audience might be pleased at its whimsical tone.

“‘Once upon a time,’” he began again, “‘there was a man whose chief happiness came from seeing others happy. He was indeed an absolute altruist.

“‘Now it so fell about that this altruist was a professional writer, and wove tales for the magazines, and one day, being in a happy mood, caused by his having given his last crust and his last shirt to a professional beggar, he wove a story for a competition and was so fortunate as to receive the capital prize of $1,000.00.’”

(“I was thinking of you, Philip, when I wrote that,” said he.)

“‘For a time his joy was unbounded, but after a while the thought came to him of those in this world to whom the money would mean so much more than it did to him, and he essayed to put the thousand dollar bill into his side pocket and walked along the highway, pondering upon the best disposition to make of it.

“‘And in his abstraction he missed his side pocket altogether and the thousand dollar bill fluttered through the air and fell to earth, where it lay in plain sight, if the man had but looked behind him.

“‘Now after the altruist had gone the space of a mile he put his hand into his pocket that he might pull out the bill, and feeling its tangibility, plan its disposition with more concreteness.

“‘And the bill was gone!

“‘Then the altruist fell to skipping and jumping in great joy. “For,” said he to himself, “no matter who finds that bill it must perforce make him happy; therefore I have added a happiness to some fellow mortal, a happiness that is scarce ever vouchsafed to one on this world of ours where money is not to be had for the mere picking up.” And he ran along the highway full of the joy of others’ lives and stirred to seraphic emotions by his altruistic temperament.

“‘Now in that same town there lived another altruist, whom Howells or Tolstoi would have loved with exceeding ardour. His form of altruism was not so much sharing his joys with others as taking from them their sorrows. As the former added to the joys of life, so he subtracted from the sorrows of existence or converted them into his personal joys, and he always went about looking for those with long faces that he might foreshorten them.

“‘And it happened that he, walking along the highway, came upon the thousand dollar bill.

“‘Now, it was a time of roominess in his pocket, which had scarce felt the weight of a minor coin for many days. And a thousand dollars would have brought luxuries to his house for a twelve month, he being unwedded.

“‘But when he picked up the bill and saw its denomination he fell into loud lamentation and raised his voice to its highest pitch, saying,

“‘“Woe is me, for in this town some poor fellow is mourning this night at the loss of what may have been his all.”

“‘And this second altruist had a voice of penetrating quality, for in his younger days he had been an auctioneer, and his words went through the stillness of the night and came to the ears of the other altruist, walking his happy way to his home.

“‘And at once the first altruist turned about and hastened to where the voice came out of the night, saying,

“‘“Weep no more, brother, for I am coming to comfort thee. It matters not what has happened to thee, I have words at my tongue’s end that cannot fail to give thee good cheer.”

“‘And after a time he came upon the second altruist swaying and moaning and waving the bill in the air, and he said to him,

“‘“Brother, what calamity has descended upon thee? Hast lost thine all?”

“‘And the second altruist said,

“?∑‘“No, but one of my brothers in this world has lost this great piece of money, and I cannot sleep this night for grief a?∑t the thought of his sorrow.”

“‘And the first altruist stared at him in wonder, and said,

“‘“What condition of affairs is this and what is the constitution of man? For I had attained to perfect joy at the thought that you (or another) had found my money, while you have been rendered miserable at the thought that I (or another) had lost it. In what way can we be happy together?”

“‘And even as they held converse a robber came along, and snatching the thousand dollar bill made off with it.

“‘“Ah,” cried both together, raising their voices in joy, “now we can be happy again, for beyond peradventure this robber who took the money needed it, else he would not have taken it, and while we do not condone his dishonesty, we rejoice at his prosperity.”’”

He finished and looked around for an approbation that was freely given him.

“How did you ever think of such an idea?” said Cherry, and I could see that he had impressed her.

He looked at her and began to explain very seriously how the idea had come to him, and she listened just as seriously.

“It’s another edition of you,” said Ethel to me with a smile, and I recalled certain conversations that we had had in years gone by, when she was deeply interested in the “how” of “literary endeavour.”

She flashed a signal to me that I could not mistake. I looked at the handsome pair seated under the maple, he full of the animation of self interest, she animated by a sympathy that might well become something greater, and instantly I began to look ahead and foretell what propinquity would do quite as if they were characters in a story of mine, and I intended that they should fall in love with each other.

He had four hundred a year or less, and ambition, but she had beauty and—enough to support two comfortably while ambition was becoming fruition.

A new interest had been added to life at Clover Lodge.