A LITERARY LOVE AFFAIR
This is a love story of two of the class who know things. Margaret Selwyn was a graduate of one of the bluest women's colleges between the two seas, and, more than that, she had a background of home culture and refinement, having parents of brains. She came from college with those acquirements, which shine exteriorly, and had an incurved back, and was "tailor made" from head to heel, yet having within her all that gentleness and greatness of heart which make a woman better than anything else, not even excluding the strawberry upon which the Right Reverend Bishop pronounced such a sincere eulogy.
As to the man, Henry Bryant, he belonged socially and in all other ways to the same class as the woman, even in brains and goodness, considering, of course, the limitations of sex. Each of these two occupied a social position—if such a thing as recognized social position be defined enough in the United States—distinctly understood by the people who knew them. Each was arrogant and self-sustained, and each thoroughly and admiringly in love with the other. It was wonderful how these two, each accustomed to be obeyed, and each, in a gentle way, unconsciously dominant with those about, grew close and yielding together. Each recognized the masterfulness, feminine or masculine, of the other, and there came a great sweetness to the understanding. Yet to these two, well-poised and mentally well-equipped, came gusts and showers of difference of opinion. The man tried to be dignified and self-contained upon these occasions, but, as a rule, failed miserably. The woman didn't even try.
But these differences throughout the months of their engagement resulted in no tragedy of importance. They both had so much of the salt of humor in their composition that they recognized the folly of even a momentary antagonism, and each laughed and begged the other's pardon or rendered the equivalent of that performance. They smiled together over their mutual short lapses of realization of what it is that makes the world go round.
At such times as they quarreled the man would tell her the foolish but probably true story of the Irishman who came annually whooping into town at fair time in some old Irish village, whirling his shillalah above his head and announcing to all the world that he was "blue-mouldy for want of a batin'." And, after this comparison, Bryant would announce, in strictest confidence, to his sweetheart, that this blessed Irishman never failed to get his "batin'," and that there were "others" even unto this day.
And so it came, in time, that this man, in love with a woman, called her his "blue-mouldy" girl, and this came to be the sweetest title in the heart of each.
With all the saving grace of the sense of proportion, which is a good part of the sense of humor, and with all their love and understanding of each other, with such characters it was inevitable that something must happen. There are laws of Nature. Vesuvius gets dyspeptic. Certain Javan islands spill up into the sky and the world has red sunsets for a while. One day, this woman, good product of a good race, sat in her parlor awaiting her lover. She was reading a book as she waited.
Now as to certain facts: Miss Selwyn was in her literary tastes an Ibsenite, Hardyite, Jamesite, or something of that sort. Bryant was a Kiplingite or Conan Doyleite. She trimmed close to something sere, and where nerves were. He was chiefly in his literary tendencies "Let her go, Gallagher!"
Margaret, having become absorbed in her book, looked up with saddened eyes from her literary draft of wormwood and tea, with the beginning of beautifully creased brows, to note the entrance of some lusty flesh and blood. Less in accord in mood and thought than were these, for the instant, never existed two people on the face of the earth, earnest lovers though they were and of about the same quality of thought and being. Something had to happen.
"Why weep ye by the tide, Ladye?" began Bryant, glancing at the face of his sweetheart, and from that to the book she had laid aside. As she did not reply immediately, he continued, taking up the volume: