The Eddy: A Novel of To-day

by Clarence Louis Cullen

"Ah said, Is yo' tuk sick, suh?" repeated Sarah. "Dis heah crazy, triflin', no-'count N'Yawk weathuh is 'nough tuh mek anybody tuhn ovuh an' die, an' Ah got de misuhy in mah haid mahse'f. Is yo' got any fevuh, suh? Yo' face looks raid on de tips o' de cheeks."

Blythe, only half-hearing, felt tentatively of the "raid" spots on his cheeks, which, as a matter of fact, were decidedly flushed. Then he thrust his hands into his pockets and resumed his up-and-down pacing, saying:

"Oh, I'm all right, Sarah. Not a bit under the weather. Just—er—fixing up a case, that's all."

Sarah, polishing away at the glass, gazed intently at his back as he walked away. Then she slowly turned and re-entered the kitchen, muttering to herself:

"Can't tell me no sich conjingulatin' stuff—'fixin' up a case.' De case dat boy is fixin' up weahs petticoats an' puffs an' maybe one o' dese heah D'rectory dresses—Ah reckon Ah can tell de symptoms!"

Wherein, as to the main point of her suspicion, the sagacious Sarah was exactly right.

John Blythe was indubitably, whole-heartedly, whole-mindedly in love with Louise Treharne. He knew that. He had known it for some time. That, however, in accordance with a by no means uncommon rule in such cases, was, he considered, an exceedingly unimportant factor in the problem. The problem, briefly stated, was this: What did Louise Treharne think of him? He remembered now, with impatience, his words to Louise in the Park, when he had hoped that she might accept his "devotion as a man," and her reply. His "devotion as a man?" That, Blythe reflected, might mean anything, especially to a girl placed in a difficult position and, as a natural consequence, in need of all the devotion of any sort that might be offered her. Had Louise understood his words as he had meant them? Blythe, with the customary self-depreciating pessimism of the lover, was afraid she had not. He reproached himself for not having made his meaning more plain—another grisly pastime in which love-possessed males indulge for the purpose of making themselves even more acutely miserable. Immediately atop of this regret that he had not been more explicit, he flared at himself and decided that he would have been an inexcusable scoundrel had he done anything of the sort. It would have been taking a mean and an unworthy advantage of her in her distress.

Then he pondered the few words of hers that had so thrilled him. What, after all, had they amounted to? She had said that she was ready to accept his devotion. What of that? Devotion, how? Devotion, from whom? Why, her guardian-to-be, of course! How else could her words possibly be viewed by a sane man? What right had he to seek to torture her simple utterance into anything more meaningful, more solacing to his wretched self-esteem? At this point of his cogitations Blythe became quite indignant with himself.

Here he was (he reflected, figuratively hiding his head), a man of thirty-two who had been brushing elbows with the world's people nearly all his life, and wearing a few more than the average number of scars to show for it—here he was, actually thinking of pouncing upon a girl of nineteen, who had scarcely forgotten the discipline of school; actually contemplating the imbecility (why, worse than that—the crime!) of hurling himself and his love at her, before she had so much as had a chance to meet any other man or men, before, in fact, she had had even a chance to turn around—for hadn't he (accidentally or not) begun to vaguely form these idiotic notions on the very day she was leaving school? And what would be her natural implication? That he was seeking to take advantage of her inexperience and her helplessness, solely on the strength of his being her legal guardian!

He had been all wrong (he mentally maundered on) the other day at Laura's when he had attributed Louise's perfectly proper restraint with him to her keener realization of her mother's ostracized status in its bearing upon her own position. What had Louise's mother's status to do with Louise? And hadn't he been a complaisantly self-satisfied numbskull to suppose that this was the reason for Louise's obvious aloofness on that day! The truth was (still he drivelled on, never sparing himself) that she had come to a perfectly proper realization of how presumptuous he, Blythe, had been in his attitude toward her, and she had distinctly meant to indicate to him in an unmistakable manner that any aspirations of that kind on his part might as well be immediately suppressed, inasmuch as they were foredoomed to fail. True (taking again for the moment his own case as plaintiff), the love of any reasonably honest and fairly successful man for a woman ought to be at least worth considering, and Louise Treharne was the first woman he had wholly loved; other little affairs, scattered through the flown years, had been mere inconsequentialities, the mutual amusements (and so mutually understood) of an hour, a day, a week, perhaps, at most, a month. Three months before Blythe would have smiled, if he had not laughed outright, if any smirking imp had whispered to him that the time was quite close at hand when he would be shamefully neglecting his decidedly important practice because of his work-disqualifying absorption in thoughts, not to say dreams, of a woman. And yet here he was, supposedly a self-contained, level-headed man of the law, a man rigorously trained in the austere school of experience—here he was, sighing like a furnace, drawing meaningless pictures on blotting pads when he should have been preparing briefs, forgetting his meals, to Sarah's profound worriment and scandalization, and walking the world in a veritable schoolboy trance! Blythe, in lucid moments, caught himself smiling inwardly at the thought of it. Was he sorry that such a thing had come to be? He quickly beat down that trivial question, tentatively submitted by his subconsciousness. Schoolboy, furnace-sigher, sentimentalist, imbecile, what not—he was glad!