And now as to Richard Yates himself. One would imagine that here, at least, a conscientious relater of events would have an easy task. Alas! such is far from being the fact. The case of Yates was by all odds the most complex and bewildering of the four. He was deeply and truly in love with both of the girls. Instances of this kind are not so rare as a young man newly engaged to an innocent girl tries to make her believe. Cases have been known where a chance meeting with one girl, and not with another, has settled who was to be a young man’s companion during a long life. Yates felt that in multitude of counsel there is wisdom, and made no secret of his perplexity to his friend. He complained sometimes that he got little help toward the solution of the problem, but generally he was quite content to sit under the trees with Renmark and weigh the different advantages of each of the girls. He sometimes appealed to his friend, as a man with a mathematical turn of mind, possessing an education that extended far into conic sections and algebraic formulae, to balance up the lists, and give him a candid and statistical opinion as to which of the two he should favor with serious proposals. When these appeals for help were coldly received, he accused his friend of lack of sympathy with his dilemma, said that he was a soulless man, and that if he had a heart it had become incrusted with the useless debris of a higher education, and swore to confide in him no more. He would search for a friend, he said, who had something human about him. The search for the sympathetic friend, however, seemed to be unsuccessful; for Yates always returned to Renmark, to have, as he remarked, ice water dashed upon his duplex-burning passion.
It was a lovely afternoon in the latter part of May, 1866, and Yates was swinging idly in the hammock, with his hands clasped under his head, gazing dreamily up at the patches of blue sky seen through the green branches of the trees overhead, while his industrious friend was unromantically peeling potatoes near the door of the tent.
“The human heart, Renny,” said the man in the hammock reflectively, “is a remarkable organ, when you come to think of it. I presume, from your lack of interest, that you haven’t given the subject much study, except, perhaps, in a physiological way. At the present moment it is to me the only theme worthy of a man’s entire attention. Perhaps that is the result of spring, as the poet says; but, anyhow, it presents new aspects to me each hour. Now, I have made this important discovery: that the girl I am with last seems to me the most desirable. That is contrary to the observation of philosophers of bygone days. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, they say. I don’t find it so. Presence is what plays the very deuce with me. Now, how do you account for it, Stilly?”
The professor did not attempt to account for it, but silently attended to the business in hand. Yates withdrew his eyes from the sky, and fixed them on the professor, waiting for the answer that did not come.
“Mr. Renmark,” he drawled at last, “I am convinced that your treatment of the potato is a mistake. I think potatoes should not be peeled the day before, and left to soak in cold water until to-morrow’s dinner. Of course I admire the industry that gets work well over before its results are called for. Nothing is more annoying than work left untouched until the last moment, and then hurriedly done. Still, virtue may be carried to excess, and a man may be too previous.”
“Well, I am quite willing to relinquish the work into your hands. You may perhaps remember that for two days I have been doing your share as well as my own.”
“Oh, I am not complaining about that, at all,” said the hammock magnanimously. “You are acquiring practical knowledge, Renny, that will be of more use to you than all the learning taught at the schools. My only desire is that your education should be as complete as possible, and to this end I am willing to subordinate my own yearning desire for scullery work. I should suggest that, instead of going to the trouble of entirely removing the covering of the potato in that laborious way, you should merely peel a belt around its greatest circumference. Then, rather than cook the potatoes in the slow and soggy manner that seems to delight you, you should boil them quickly, with some salt placed in the water. The remaining coat would then curl outward, and the resulting potato would be white and dry and mealy, instead of being in the condition of a wet sponge.”
“The beauty of a precept, Yates, is the illustrating of it. If you are not satisfied with my way of boiling potatoes, give me a practical object lesson.”
The man in the hammock sighed reproachfully.
“Of course an unimaginative person like you, Renmark, cannot realize the cruelty of suggesting that a man as deeply in love as I am should demean himself by attending to the prosaic details of household affairs. I am doubly in love, and much more, therefore, as that old bore Euclid used to say, is your suggestion unkind and uncalled for.”