CHAPTER VIII
Mr. Albert Andrews was a young man, according to Roseborough time, being now in his forty-second year; and he was a widower. Although he was not rich he was fairly “comfortable.” He was not brilliant, but his character was exemplary. If he was somewhat deliberate—one need not say pompous—of utterance, this was altogether becoming in a gentleman who had twice been elected tax collector, and, once, president of the Orphans’ Fund Board. He was not handsome, but Roseborough ladies considered him “personable”—just as they had considered Hibbert Mearely distingué and as they did consider Judge Giffen imposing, Wilton Howard magnetic, and Dr. Frei “so foreign and so elegant.” In height, width, weight, colouring, and expression, he was medium; on the top of his head he was less than that, because his hair there was thin, but he devoted careful attention to it and, as yet, the shining, pinky surface, lurking amid the tan-coloured strands, was screened. His eyes were prominently set, pale and placid. He had been “alone” for six years; but, during the last two, he had been slowly coming to a momentous decision. In fact, he had already arrived at it. He had decided to propose to Hibbert Mearely’s widow.
With this canny and romantic aim in view, he had recently visited a millinery and tub frocks shop in Trenton, kept by a woman who owed his mother for favours bestowed on her in poorer days, and had allowed her to settle the score, so to speak, by informing him as to the etiquette involved.
“It’s all but four years sence the departed did so,” Mrs. Bunny had said, after ponderous consideration, “and you say her perferred raiment seems to be of a palish hue with black ribbons? That’s lavender, an’ no question ’tall about it. I’d say, Mr. Albert, after a’most a lifetime of expeer’ence in dressin’ the genteel sets, that—so long as the black ribbons indures—silence must be your potion. (It is conceivable that she meant “portion.”) Even if she was to put on white or lavender streamers, you couldn’t pop the question, but only hint, an’ trim your subtile speech with looks an’ gestures. If she was to step out afore you in colours, it would be good ettikay to fall on your knees an’ offer your name an’ pertection. (Of course,” she amended parenthetically, “your name ain’t nothing to the Mearely name; an’ I don’t know how much pertection you’d be ekal to in a pinch—you never havin’ played no basketball, nor nothing but whist—but there’s no requiremints to tell her so.) So long as she’s got a speck of mournin’ onto her, do it rev’rence an’ utter no ardint word. Bestow on her sighs an’ looks of yearnin’; an’ you can converse, offhand, concernin’ wedded love an’ flowers that never fadeth, an’ the moon, an’ all such sent’mints—an’”—she wound up, impressively—“hover, Mr. Albert, hover.”
This last bit of advice he had obeyed as consistently as was possible to a man by nature meek and unobtrusive—he had hovered. He had, also, in a measure, overcome his temperamental reserve through the private practice of amorous facial expression in the mirror after shaving.
Mr. Albert Andrews, like the majority of his sex, was practically colour-blind. He knew black and white, red, yellow, blue, and green in their violent tints. A cobalt blue, for instance, a mustard yellow or a bright bottle-green, he could immediately identify. Other shades, such as tan, champagne, lilac-bud, lavender, mauve, cadet and alice blues, pale pinks, straw-yellows, and delicate grass-stain and reseda greens, he called gray. He knew gray also to be a colour; because he himself—as well as other Roseborough gentlemen of quality, who were nicely apparelled—favoured it in summer.
“Gray,” he had answered unhesitatingly in response to Mrs. Bunny’s question as to what Mrs. Mearely was wearing; “Gray with a dark pattern in it, and black ribbons.”
Her expert knowledge immediately translated this correctly. “Not gray, Mr. Albert; lavender.”
“Ah!” with heavy facetiousness, “when ladies wear it they call it lavender? The sentimental dears! So that is lavender. Well. Well.”
Mrs. Bunny had thereupon led him to the ribbon counter and endeavoured to teach him to distinguish between pastels.