Belford's Magazine, Volume II, No. 8, January, 1889

Miss Rutland drew her brother aside.

“Rube, you cannot mean it! You surely have some sense! A little, if not much! You can’t crown that obscure girl with the cream of the county, your own personal friends, all around you.”

“Can’t I?” said Rube. “I can and will! The cream of the county may go to – anywhere.” Rube closed up blandly: “I will not limit them in their choice of locations. That would be not only ungenerous but ungentlemanly.”

“Rube,” persisted Miss Rutland, “do listen to reason. What will mother say? What will everybody say?”

“Say what they darned please!”

Rube was first of all a freeborn American – secondly, an aristocrat.

“What’s the use of being somebody if you’ve got to knuckle down to what people say?”

“But you are not obliged to crown anybody,” insinuated Clara. “Rather than crown this low-born girl, make some one your proxy. Jerome would – ”

“Oh, I have no doubt, with pleasure! You are a deep one, Clara, but you’ll wear no crown this day. Might as well give it up.”

So she perceived, and turned off in a rage, first informing him that he always had been, and always would be an unconscionable ass.

“You have fully decided, then?” questioned the master of ceremonies. “I have,” Rube told him, beginning to get put out. Pretty Mell might well have been a scare-crow, such consternation had she created amongst them all. “I decided some time ago. Will it be necessary for me to mount a tree-top and blow a clarion blast before I can make you all understand that I am going to crown Mellville Creecy, and nobody else?”

“Certainly not, certainly not,” hastily replied the master of ceremonies. He too was disappointed; he had a sister. Was there ever a man in power who didn’t have a sister? – who didn’t have a good many, all wanting crowns?

“Will you make a speech?”

“Nary speech,” declared Rube, laughing. “I’m not so swift in my tongue as my legs! See here, Cap’n, there’s no occasion for an unnecessary amount of tomfoolery about this thing. Some gentleman bring Miss Creecy forward. I’ll put this gewgaw on her in a jiffy, and that’ll be the end of it!”

Rube smiled softly to himself. That was very far from being the end of it.

“Mell! Mell!” screamed Miss Josie, running up to her protegé, the bearer of astonishing news, “you don’t know what’s going to happen! You’d never guess it! Rube is going to crown you, my pretty darling! You are to be queen of Love and Beauty.”

“But, I’d rather not,” said Mell, drawing back.

“Rather not?” screamed Miss Josey. “Did anybody ever before hear of a woman who would rather not be a queen – a queen in the hearts of men?”

“I don’t see how you can help it,” continued Miss Josey. Mell did not, either, alas! “But I don’t wonder you feel a little frightened about it. It is such a wonderful thing for Rube to do: but Rube has two eyes in his head, Rube has, and knows the prettiest girl in the county when he sees her! This thing is going to be the making of you, Mell (rather say the undoing, Miss Josey) so don’t be so frightened, but hold your head high, and bear your honors bravely, and remember all eyes are upon you. The rest of the girls are fairly dying with envy, don’t forget that!”

This last remark brought Mell to her senses. Not one of them but would gladly stand where she stood – gladly put themselves in her shoes if they could. Rube was not a mate, as mating goes, to be met with every day in the year. The sugared point of this timely suggestion served Miss Josey’s purpose effectually. It stilled the wild throbbing in the girl’s heart, brought the blood back to her face, and turned the purple of such wondrous hue in her eyes, to the softest black; with intensity of gratification, Jerome himself was forgotten for the nonce.

Miss Josey, still in a flutter of delight, now proceeded to put on her sash, to replace the knot of ribbons at her throat, to pass her hands assuagingly across Mell’s wilderness of frolicsome hair, and to put an extra touch or two to her simple toilette generally; whispering words of stimulation and encouragement all the while.

Thoroughly put to rights, Miss Josey placed the girl’s hand into that of a very grand personage – the president of the Grange, in fact – who led her gallantly to the spot selected for the coronation ceremonies. There stood the hero of the day. He advanced a step or two as she drew near, he bowed low, and then in a distinct voice with a somewhat heightened color, but in his usual simple, straightforward manner, said: “Miss Creecy, I beg you will do me the honor to accept this trophy of my victory.”

Miss Creecy silently bowed her head; he placed the wreath upon it, and lo! what has become of our rustic maiden? She is a Queen!

Nevertheless, she immediately fell back again into Miss Josey’s hands, who hastened to push the crown this way and then that, – forward a little, and then backward a little – just one barley-corn this side and just one the other; until the magical spot of perfect-becomingness having been reached, she wisely let it be. As soon as the crowd caught sight of this bright splendor of yellow hair, surmounted by a wreath of flowers, the shouting and yelling re-commenced; and when it was passed with electric swiftness from mouth to mouth, that the head of the Rutland family, the owner of an honored name and a big estate, had chosen for his queen, not the daughter of a rich planter or a great statesman, but a child of the yeomanry, a ripple of intense excitement flashed through the multitude, and enthusiasm knew no bounds.

“Rutland for the people, and the people for Rutland!” was the joyous outpouring of the common heart. A sentiment which only subsided occasionally, to be renewed with increased vigor and manifold cheers.

“I see your game,” said the secretary of the Grange to Rube, with a sly wink. “You are going to run for the Legislature?”

“Your penetration surprises me,” returned Rube with a laugh. “What a pity the voting couldn’t be done now; I’d be willing to risk a couple of thousand on my own election, if it could!”

“It’s awfully becoming to her, isn’t it?” inquired Jerome, speaking to Clara, and referring to the crown which sat upon the queen’s head.

“I don’t think so,” returned Clara, “not in the least becoming. It doesn’t suit the color of her hair.”

“Sure enough! I had forgotten that. We bought it to suit yours, didn’t we? It is too bad! but never mind; we’ll come in for the second prize, certain.”

“Not I!” exclaimed Clara, with a toss of her head. “It is first or none with me. There is something mean, little, contemptible, about a second prize, just like all second-rate things! Having failed in securing the first, were I in your place, I would not try for the second.”

And she left him, much angered.

“Whew!” softly whistled Jerome. “It strikes me that what pleases one woman, doesn’t please another. Why is that? It also strikes me that it’s no use trying to please any of ’em. A man can’t; not unless he converts himself into a sort of synchronous multiplex machine, and tries seventy-five different ways all at once.”

The stream of people now poured in one direction, – towards royalty. Queens differ; but there is a something about every one of them which fetches the crowd. While this one stood hemmed in on all sides, an object of curiosity to all classes and conditions, all eager for a sight of her, some eager to be made known to her, others wanting to catch a look, a word, a smile, Mell heard some one at her elbow say, softly:

“Mellville.”

Turning, she confronted Jerome. In a flash, her whole appearance changed. The moment before she had been a gracious sovereign, accepting with queenly grace the homage of her loyal subjects. Now, she was an outraged monarch jealous of her rank, standing on her dignity.

“How dare you, sir!” asked Mell, eyeing him haughtily and drawing herself up to her fullest height. “How dare you to speak to me! How dare you touch me! I have not the honor of your acquaintance, sir!”

Jerome was undeniably astonished; but this was not the time, not the place to indulge in a feeling of astonishment, or to make an exhibition of himself or her.

“Your Majesty,” said Jerome, with his characteristic coolness, “will graciously pardon me. The crowd is great, it pressed heavily upon all sides and I have not been able to resist it.”

He fell back at once, and Mell bowed, just as if nothing had happened, to the gentleman, whom the master of ceremonies was in the act of introducing to her.

In the crush, Jerome encountered Rube. He had been called off on some matter under discussion among those running the shebang – Rube’s way of putting it – and was now endeavoring to push his way back to Mell.

“How-do, old fellow?” said Jerome, by way of congratulation.

“Tip-top!” said Rube, by way of thanks, and seizing his friend’s hand he wrung it as if his intention was to wring it clean off. “You’re a trump!”

“Don’t mention it!” begged Jerome. He began to laugh again. For some reason the whole thing was excessively amusing to Jerome.

“But I will mention it,” persisted Rube. “I’ll thank you for it to my dying day. It was so self-sacrificing on your part, considering everything.”

“Oh, was it?” exclaimed his companion, choking down his risibles. “Well – ah – I don’t exactly feel it that way. A mere trifle.”

“Not to me,” declared Rube.

“Perhaps not to me, either,” conceded Jerome, looking on the subject more seriously. “For Clara – ”

“You can patch up Clara,” Rube suggested, soothingly.

“Do you think so? It’s a rankling casus belli at present, I can tell you! But how about your rustic beauty, eh, Rube? Is she pleased? Does she like it?”

“Pleased? Like it? You bet she does! She’s delighted!”

“No one has introduced me yet,” Jerome next remarked, quite incidentally. “And I am sure if her Gracious Majesty smiles upon any of her loyal subjects it ought to be me.”

“That’s so! So come right along now.” They reached her side.

“Mell, here’s the very best fellow in the world,” said Rube, out of the fullness of his heart, forgetting the prescribed forms of etiquette in the absorption of warm feeling.

Mell had noted their approach. She was not taken unawares. She bent her head slightly to the newcomer, she looked him over for a whole minute, it seemed, before she opened her lips and said:

“How do you do, Mr. Very-Best-Fellow-in-the-World?”

Those near enough to hear roared with laughter, for the young queen’s manner made the whole thing so absurdly funny; and perhaps there is nothing a crowd so much enjoys as the taking down of a person whom they regard in the light of one much needing to be taken down.

“His name is Devonhough,” Rube hastened to explain, not relishing the laugh against his friend at this particular time by his particular fault. “Mr. Devonhough, Miss Creecy. He is my very best friend, Mell. Shake hands with him.”

Mell did so; but without the faintest glimmering of a smile, and with such glacial dignity as fairly charged the atmosphere with iciness. Not content with this, she met all his subsequent efforts to cultivate her acquaintance with the briefest and chilliest repulses.

Rube was much concerned. He saw dimly that his best friend had not, somehow, made a favorable impression upon his future wife; but he could not tell the why or wherefore. While he wondered within him what he could do to put things on a pleasanter footing between them, someone else demanded his attention.

“See here,” said Jerome, as soon as Rube’s back was turned. “I hope you now consider me sufficiently punished. I hope you feel even. I hope you won’t treat me to any more state airs. I am tired of them. Your Majesty, let me tell you something. Mark well my words. It is to me, not Rube, you owe your present exaltation.”

“To you!”

The unsmiling countenance now broke into a ripple of scorn.

“What a ridiculous thing for you to say!”

“The whole thing has been ridiculous,” said Jerome. “I never in my whole life ever enjoyed anything so much. ’Tis the one grain of truth which gives point to the ridiculous. Think of Rube, dear fellow, so anxious to crown you, knowing nothing, suspecting nothing, begging me not to run fast, and I, so ten thousand times more anxious than he could possibly be, to have you crowned.”

“You?”

“Yes. Me! Don’t you know, in your heart, Mellville, that I wanted you crowned?”

“No, I know nothing of the kind! When a man wants a thing done, he does it with his own hand; when he does not want it done, or cares not much about it, he does it with another man’s hand. Had you been anxious you would not have left it to Rube.”

“But with that wreath in my own hand, Mell, I was morally bound to put it upon another head.”

“Ah, indeed! Why?”

Jerome did not answer immediately. When he did, it was with averted eyes, and with some impatience, and not in reply to her first question at all, but her quick repetition of his own words, “Morally bound, eh?”

“Yes, Mellville. You forget I am a guest in her mother’s house.”

“I do not forget it! I remember it every hour in the whole twenty-four; but does that make it incumbent upon you to ignore me? Jerome, look me in the face. What is Clara Rutland to you?”

“Nothing!” exclaimed he, savagely, between compressed lips. “Less than nothing! A hundred times to-day I have wished her at the bottom of – ”

“There! No use to send her there now. It’s too late!”

The knowledge of what she had done, the wretchedness she saw it was destined to entail upon her, all this while couchant like a wild beast within her, now uprose into her expressive features. Jerome was struck with it.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“You will know soon enough,” she responded.

He stooped to pick up the handkerchief she had dropped, and in restoring it, his hand, so cool and steady, came in contact with hers, so hot and tremulous; it touched and lingered, lingered long, and clung in a tender pressure; while a voice so low and firm, a voice, oh! so faint and sweet, stole its way into her ear, murmuring but one word, one little, fond word, which moved her in the strangest way, which thrilled, yet soothed her. Cooler than snow it fell upon her burning cheeks, warmer than a sunbeam into her freezing heart. That little game with Rube passed out of her memory.

But looking up all too soon, she saw him. He smiled upon her. He was glad to see that she and Devonhough were getting along quite pleasantly.

“I wish you would go away!” she suddenly exclaimed, turning upon her companion rudely. “Go back to Clara Rutland! You have no business here! I do not believe a word you have said to me! I yet fail to comprehend why a man may not be the master of his own actions.”

“Heigh-ho!” sighed Jerome. “Just so it is in life. Just as a man begins to think he has put everything in order, and settled the question, here comes chaos again. You do not understand that, Mell? Well, I will tell you. Every man has a master – circumstance. On my side, I am surprised that you, with all your quickness of apprehension, have not been able to see clearer and deeper into this subject. You ought to have known, you must have felt that I had some good reason for acting towards you as I have to-day. Have you been true to your promise to trust me – and trust me blindly? I fear not. You have been cruelly angry with me ever since this morning, when I dared not speak.”

“And why was it that you dared not speak?” demanded Mell, her lip curling contemptuously, but with a tremolo movement in her voice. “Does it then require some courage for a man, in your position to speak to a poor girl like me? Rube does not think so.”

“With Rube it is different.”

“It is, very different. There is no false pride about Rube.”

“And I hope there is none about me. But, Mell, you do not in the least understand my position.”

“I know as much about it as I care to know. Henceforth, Mr. Devonhough, let us be strangers.”

“We can never be strangers,” said Jerome. He was growing earnest; he spoke very low and with that rapidity of utterance which accompanies excited feelings. “This no time nor place, Mell, for such an explanation; but here, and now, I will make it. I cannot longer exist under the ban of your displeasure. Know then, dear, that I would not speak to you this morning for your own sweet sake – not mine. I was driven to it to protect your good name, and keep you out of the mouths of those shallow-pated creatures, who have nothing else to talk about but other people’s failings. Had Clara Rutland once seen me speak to you – had she for one moment suspected the least acquaintance between us, that hydra-headed monster, Curiosity, would have lifted its unpitying voice in a hundred awkward questions: ‘How did you come to know Mell Creecy? Where did you meet her? Who introduced you to her?’ And so on to the end of a long chapter. I did not wish to say, for your sake, that I had never met you anywhere but in a cornfield. I did not wish to say, for your sake, that we had became acquainted in a very delightful, but by no means conventional, manner. I have thought it best, all along, to keep the fact of our acquaintance in the background, until we were brought together in some way perfectly legitimate and customary. Always for your sake, dear, not mine. Now you know in part; to-morrow I will make a clean breast of all my difficulties; so disperse these clouds, and give me one sweet look ere I go.”

Instead of that, Mell swallowed a lump in her throat which felt as big as her head. She studiously avoided, for the rest of the day, any further speech with Jerome. His explanation was plausible enough on its face; but Mell was in no condition of mind to draw conclusions which might stand the test of reason, or be satisfactorily demonstrated on geometrical principles; and nothing that Jerome could say was now calculated to act as a sedative on Mell’s nerves. She kept whispering to herself, “He feels it, yes, he feels it;” and thus nourished the firmness and the bravado necessary to her in the further requirements of her high position. She needed it all, and more, when it came to bestowing upon Jerome a handsome pair of spurs, as the second prize of the day. Certainly he cared for her, or why this glow on his clear-cut face, or why this light in his speaking eyes now bent upon her. Mell turned her head quickly.

“I can’t understand why you don’t like Devonhough,” Rube remarked, noticing the movement. “I think it odd. He carries things with a high hand among the girls, I can tell you. Most all of ’em are dead in love with him.”

“And do you wish me added to the list?” interrogated Mell, finding herself in a tight place, and hardly knowing how to get out of it.

“Well, no; I don’t!” laughed Rube, much appreciating the sly humor of the question.

By seven o’clock the day’s festivities were concluded; and then ensued a melting of all hostile elements into a homogeneous mass, all ravenous after iced-lemonade and home-made cake, and a heterogeneous devouring of the same; after which, the crowd, well pleased, but pretty well fagged out, turned their faces homeward, under a sun still shining, but shorn of its hottest beams.

No one will gainsay the statement that our heroine has made great social strides in one summer’s day. In the morning a simple country girl, poor in pocket, humble in rank, unknown in society, seated beside Miss Josey in the little pony phaeton, full of fair hopes and inspirations; in the evening the affianced wife of the best-born and most eligible young man in the county; returning to the old farm-house in grand style, leaning back on soft cushions, beside her future lord, in a flashy open carriage drawn by a ravishing pair of high mettled roans.

Ambitious, indeed, must be that girl not satisfied with this wonderful result of one single operation in matrimonial stocks. And yet Mell is not happy. She forgets to give heed to what Rube is saying; she forgets almost to answer him back; so full of regret is she for her own lost self. She had had a thousand longings to get out of her old self, and out of her old life, and now, on the threshold of a new existence, Mell finds herself with only one desire – just to get back where she came from. If only she could – oh! if only she could, most gladly would this lately crowned queen have relinquished the glories of empire, the spoils of captive hearts, the trophies of social triumphs, the high emprise of a brilliant future, only to be simple Mell once more.

Ah, poor Mell! Not for sale now. Sold!

CHAPTER VPLAYERS ON A STAGE

Now, then, here is Thursday. Jerome had said: “You will be on hand without fail, Mell; and so will I, and so will something else.”

“But that something else,” moaned the hapless Mell, bowed down and heart-stricken, “will never be on hand again in the meadow for me, nor anywhere else.”

Saddest of all, she had herself laid the axe to the root of her own happiness; she had baited her own hook and caught a big fish; she had provoked her own doom, and herself sealed it.

Rube was not to blame.

And Jerome – he had made out a good case. Had he loved her less he would, perhaps, have acted differently.

She had digged a pitfall for her own occupation; and of all comfortless and stony places, such pitfalls as this make the hardest lying.

Out in the narrow hall, on its own particular peg, hung Mell’s white sun-bonnet. She took it down and put it on her head, and walked slowly to the top of the hill. With no intention of going to the meadow herself, her feelings demanded that she should find out if Jerome was there.

He was, strolling moodily to and fro, in deep thought.

He knows now. Rube has told him. He despises her to-day, and yesterday he had loved her. Look at him down there in the meadow! a beam from the sun, a breath from the hills, a part of the morning, the most glorious expression of nature in all nature’s glory! Observe how he walks! Note how he stands still! Most men know how to walk, and most men know how to stand still, after a fashion; but not after Jerome’s fashion. In motion, Jerome is a poem set a-going; standing still, he is grace doing nothing. He can lift one hand, and in that ordinary act sow the seed of a dozen beautiful fancies; he can wield such mastery over the physical forces of expression as has wondrous potency to sway the emotions of others.

So she thought; so she stood, hidden herself from sight, but with the meadow in full view; and while so thinking, and so standing, drinking him in with every breath, feeding upon him with her eyes, devouring him with her soul, she, the affianced wife of another!

Oh, wicked Mell!

Jerome grows impatient; he looks at his watch, and turns inquiringly towards the hill; and Mell flies back to the house as if pursued by fiery dragons. For if he but caught sight of her, if he but crooked his finger at her, she would go down there, and then – what then?

Mell was not blind to her own weakness. The afternoon brought Rube, overwhelmingly happy, overwhelmingly devoted. She must take an airing with him in his brand new buggy; and while they scoured the country round about, Rube was making diligent inquiry as to how soon they might get married. Mell caught her breath, and, in the same breath, at a possible reprieve.

“Won’t you give me a little time to think?” she pleaded. “It has come so sudden!”

“Hasn’t it, though!” cried happy Rube. “Do you half realize the romance of the thing, Mellville? ’Tis like a page out of Knight-Errantry, the days of lances and standards, and blood-thrilling adventures, when warriors in steel swore by the Holy-rood, and won fair women’s smiles by deeds of valor – something very unlike the prosaic happenings of this practical modern life. But yesterday a wandering pilgrim, to-day I have found a shrine. ‘’Tis a dream!’ I thought, when I opened my eyes this morning, ‘a dream, too sweet to be true! Rube, old fellow,’ I said to myself, ‘you’ve got something to live for now. You must look to your ways and improve upon the old ones. There’s a dear little hand that belongs to you; there’s a pair of blue eyes to watch for your coming; there’s a sweet little woman who believes in you, God bless her! For her sake I will run the race of life like a man; for her sweet sake I will win it!’”

This was the time for Mell to speak. She wanted to speak, but – she did not. There were just exactly six reasons why she did not.