The Attic Guest: A Novel

by Robert E. Knowles

VIII
"DEALINGS WITH THE SAMARITANS"

There's something lovely about having a lovely time. Now I know that looks like a very foolish sentence when one reads it over after having written it down. So many sentences are like that; you think they're strong, beautiful, full of meaning and bright with fancy, while you're getting them out—then they appear so pale and thin when you look them over. They're like the fish that you're playing in the water: "What a whopper," you say, "I've got this time!"—but how thin and small when it lies panting on the grass.

Yet I venture to repeat, as Mr. Furvell says in his sermons, I venture to repeat: there's something lovely about having a lovely time. In this, I mean, that it can never be taken away from you. There will, you know, be cold, dark days, and bitter disappointments, and burning tears, and emptiness of heart, till you quite forget that ever you were glad. But, even so, all these can never rob you of that one hour, or day, or month of pleasure unalloyed.

Mr. Laird used to say something like this in the long happy days that followed his arrival. It had not been hard to persuade him to prolong his visit. Fortunately for us, his friend Dr. Paine was engaged to go, the very next week, to the meeting of the General Assembly at Dallas; so it was arranged Mr. Laird should tarry with us till he returned, perhaps longer—for I think it was about decided that he was to take up mission work in Canada.

When I say those days were happy, I mean in a perfectly sane and unfeverish kind of way, of course, with no thought of—of what every woman looks for in every book she reads. That is, no calm and courageous thought of it; although I shouldn't wonder if something of that, more or less diluted, lies back of all real joy. Anyhow, Mr. Laird said that very thing, and more than once, about the unloseableness of one hour or day of real happiness. Whatever has been before of pain, or whatever may be ahead of sorrow, he said, neither the one nor the other can ever make pure gladness as if it had never been. It belongs to you forever, said the Reverend Gordon Laird.

I should have known that I had no right to be so happy. For one thing, Charlie had gone back to Savannah, and I should have been miserable over that, if conscience had been half as faithful as it should have been. Then, besides, he was waiting for my decision about Europe and the yacht—and I had no claim to happiness till that was settled. And, most of all, I wasn't sure about my love for him—very far from it—and so I should have been quite wretched.

But I wasn't. I was shamefully happy. We were all happy, I think, to see our visitor so thoroughly delighted with everything about him. After all is said and done, American people take it as a compliment when old-country folks seem to like them. I don't think we ever forget, even the most democratic of us, that they have dukes and lords across the sea. And Mr. Laird did seem so perfectly happy. For one thing, the weather was delightful, and morning after morning found him and me—there was no one else to act as cicerone—walking or driving about the lovely haunts that surrounded our quiet little city. Everything was in the glory of bud and blossom; fragrance was wafted on every breeze; the wistaria and the yellow jasmine were gathered from a thousand trees. Sometimes we had picnics too, making our way on our asthmatic little launch up the winding river; sometimes we went together to the oyster market at the wharf, where he seemed to be quite enchanted with the negroes' singing. "On the other side of Jordan," I remember, was a great favourite of his, and he used to get them to sing it again and again.

Indeed, everything connected with negroes seemed to have a strange fascination for Mr. Laird. This perplexed me considerably, and mortified me not a little too. Of course, having spent all my life among them, they were a commonplace lot to me, and I regarded them with the kindly disdain which marks every Southern girl's attitude to the negro race. But Mr. Laird seemed to find a new vein in them—and, besides, he was so intensely human and so tremendously interested in all human things. But he didn't know how volcanic was the ground he walked on when he came into contact with the darkies; and I may as well go aside here to tell how this provided the only jarring note in all that memorable visit.

One day we were all on the piazza, engaged in that most delightful occupation of waiting for dinner to be announced, catching savoury whiffs the while that betokened its near approach. All of a sudden a coal-black negress came through the back gate and stood at the foot of the porch steps. Beside her stood a little curly-headed boy, about three years of age, clinging to his mother's hand. She had been asking for something at the kitchen door, I think—they were always asking for something, those darkies. Of course we simply looked at her; I don't believe uncle quite did that—I think he pretended to be reading a newspaper. But Mr. Laird, in his impulsive way, went right down the steps and began talking to the woman. It was really aggravating to see how flattered she seemed to be by his attention. And then, to our horror—clergyman as he was and in full ministerial dress—Mr. Laird actually took that pickaninny up, and flung him onto his shoulder, pretending to be a horse or something of that sort. And the little negro dug his hands into Mr. Laird's ruddy locks, while his Anglo-Saxon steed made an exhibition of himself, galloping once or twice around the flower bed. The mother grinned with delight in a way that I knew fairly maddened uncle.

When Mr. Laird finally returned, panting, to his chair, uncle had quite a time controlling himself to speak.