From my childhood I have been in the habit of keeping a diary, a running comment on the daily incidents of my pleasant but uneventful life, and occasionally, when Bunsey's society seemed too assertive and familiar, I sought to punish him by reading long and numerous excerpts. To do him justice he took the chastisement meekly, and even insisted that I was burying a remarkable talent, sometimes going to the magnanimous extreme of offering to introduce me to his publisher, and to speak a good word for me to the editors of certain magazines with whom he maintained a brisk correspondence, not infrequently of a querulous nature. All these friendly offices I gently put aside, in recalling the degradation of Bunsey's ideals, though I went on tolerating Bunsey, who had a good heart and an insistent manner. In this way I possibly deprived myself of a glorious career.
My ability to befriend Bunsey was due to a felicitous chain of circumstances. When the late Mrs. Stanhope passed to her reward, she considerately left behind a document making me the recipient of her entire and not inconsiderable fortune. This proved a most unexpected blow to the church, which had enjoyed the honor and pleasure of Mrs. Stanhope's association, and which, quite naturally, had hoped to profit by her decease. The late Mrs. Stanhope, who I neglected to say was, in the eyes of Heaven, the world, and the law, my wife, had not lived with me in that utter abandonment to conjugal affection so much to be desired. We married to please our families, and we lived apart as much as possible to please ourselves. Though not without certain physical charms, Mrs. Stanhope was a woman of great moral rigidity and religious austerity, who saw life through the diminishing end of a sectarian telescope, and who cared far more for the distant heathen than for the local convivial pagans who composed my entourage. She had brought to me a considerable sum of money, which I had increased by judicious investments, and I dare say that it was in recognition of my business ability, as well as possibly in a moment of becoming wifely remorse, that she bequeathed to me her property intact. I gave her final testimonial services wholly in keeping with her standing as a church-woman, and I must say for my friends, whom she had severely ignored during her life, that they behaved very handsomely on that mournful occasion. They turned out in large numbers, and testified in other ways to their regard for her unblemished character. I recall, not without emotion after all these years, that Bunsey's memorial tribute to the church paper—for which he never received a dollar—was a model of appreciation as well as of Christian forgiveness and self-forgetfulness.
The passing of Mrs. Stanhope made it possible for me to put into operation the long-desired plan of retiring a little way into the country, not too far from the seductions of the club and the city, but far enough to conform to the tastes of a country gentleman who likes to whistle to his dogs, putter over his roses, and meditate in a comfortable library with the poets and philosophers of his fancy. Here, with my good house-keeper, Prudence—a name I chose in preference to her mother's selection, Elizabeth—and my gardener and man of affairs, Malachy, I lived for a number of years at peace with the world and perfectly satisfied with myself. Although I was dangerously over forty, and my hair, which had been impressively dark, was conspicuously gray in spots, my figure was good, my dress correct, and my mirror told me that I was still in a position to be in the matrimonial running if I tried. I mention these trifling physical details merely to save my modesty the humiliation and annoyance of referring to them in future, and to prepossess the gentle reader wherever the sex makes it highly important.
I do not deny that in certain moments of loneliness which come to us, widowers and bachelors alike, I had the impulse to tempt again the matrimonial fortune, and counting on my financial standing, together with other attractions, I ran over the eligible ladies of my acquaintance. But one was a little too old, and another was a good deal too flighty. One was too fond of society, and another did not like dogs. A fifth spoiled her chances by an unwomanly ignorance of horticulture, and a sixth perished miserably after returning to me one of my most cherished books with the leaves dog-eared and the binding cracked. For I hold with the greatest philosophers that she who maltreats a book will never make a good wife. And so the years slipped cosily and cheerily by, while I grew more contented with my environment and less envious of my married friends, and whenever temporary melancholy overtook me I moved into the club for a month, or slipped across the water, finding in the change of scene immediate relief from the monotony of widowerhood.
In thus fortifying myself against the wiles of woman I was much abetted by my good Prudence, who never ceased her exhortations as to the sinister designs of her sex, and who had a ready word of discouragement for any possible candidate who might be in the line of succession. "I see that Rogers woman walkin' by the house to-day, Mr. John," she would begin, "and I see her turnin' her nose up at the new paint on the arbor." (I selected that color myself.) "It's queer how that woman does give herself airs, considerin' everybody knows she's been ready for ten years to take the fust man that asks her." Prudence knew that I had escorted the elderly Miss Rogers to the theatre only the week before, and had commented pleasantly on the elegance of her figure. But the slight put upon my eye for color was too much. Wily Prudence!
Or a day or two after I had rendered an act of neighborly kindness to the bereaved Mrs. Stebbins she would say quite casually:
"I don't want to utter one word agin the poor and afflicted, Mr. John, but when the Widder Stebbins hit Cleo with a broom to-day I own I b'iled over. I shouldn't tell you if it warn't my duty."
Cleopatra was my favorite cocker spaniel, and any faint impression my fair neighbor may have made on my unguarded heart was immediately dispelled. Thus subtly and vigilantly my house-keeper kept the outer gates of the citadel, and shooed away a possible mistress as effectually as she dispersed the predatory hens from the garden patch.
But with the younger generation of women, good Prudence was less cautious. Any maiden under the very early twenties she regarded fair material for my friendly offices, and frequently she visited me with expressions commendatory of good conduct.
"I likes to see you with the children, Mr. John, bless 'em, sir. And they do all seem to be so fond of you. There's nothin' that keeps the heart so young and fresh as goin' with young people, just as nothin' ages a man so much as havin' a lot of widders and designin' old maids about. Of course," she added, with a return of her natural suspicion, "you are old enough to be father to the whole bunch, which keeps people from talkin'."