Was not this followed by one more subtle, more pointed, more ribald?
"Solon's mad and I'm glad,
and I know what will please him;
a bottle of wine to make him shine
and Lucy Tait to tease him!"
I thought there was an inhuman, devilish deftness in the rhymes. The mighty mechanism of English verse had been employed to proclaim my remoteness from my love.
And yet the gods were once graciously good to me. One wondrous evening before hope died utterly I survived the ordeal of walking home with her from church.
She came with her aunt, uncle, and I present by the god's permission, surmised that she might leave them and go to her own home alone when church was out. Through that service I worshipped her golden braids and the pink roses on her leghorn hat. And when they sang, "Praise God from whom all blessings flow!" my voice soared fervently in the words, for I had satisfied myself by much craning of the neck that Solon Denney was not present. Even now the Doxology revives within me that mixed emotion of relief at his absence and apprehension for the approaching encounter with her.
She passed me at the portals of the house of a double worship, said good night to aunt and uncle—and I was at her side.
"May I have the pleasure of seeing you home?"
She managed a timid "Certainly." her hand fluttered within my arm, and my heart bounded forward like a freed race-horse. We walked!
Now it had been my occupation at quiet moments to devise conversation against the time of this precise miracle. I had dreamt that it might come to pass, even as it did, and I knew that talk for it should be stored safely away. This talk had been the coinage of my leisure. As we walked I would say, lightly,—"Do you like it here as well as you did back East?"—or, still better, as sounding more chatty,—"How do you like it here?"—an easy, masterful pause—"as well as you did back East?" A thousand times had I rehearsed the inflections until they were perfect. And now the time was come.
Whether I spoke at all or not until we reached her gate I have never known. Dimly in my memory is a suggestion that when we passed Uncle Jerry Honeycutt, I confided to her that he sent to Chicago for his ear-trumpet and that it cost twelve dollars. If I did this, she must have made a suitable response, though I retain nothing of it.