And so it happened that Neal Dow Ward made his first call on Jeanette Barclay with his sister, and they all sat on the porch together that fine spring evening, with the perfume of the lilacs in the air; and it happened naturally enough that the curious human law of attraction which unites youth should draw the chairs of the two young people together as they talked of the things that interest youth—the parties and the ball-games and the fraternities and sororities, and the freshman picnic and the senior grind; while the chairs of the two others drew together as they talked of the things which interest women in middle life—the affairs of the town, the troubles of Watts McHurdie, the bereavement of the Culpeppers, the scarcity of good help in the kitchen, the popularity of Max Nordau's "Social Evolution," and the fun in "David Harum." Nor is it strange that after the girl had shown the boy her Pi Phi pin, and he had shown her his Phi Delta shield, they should fall to talking of the new songs, and that they should slip into the big living room of the Barclay home, lighted by the electric lamps in the hall, and that she should sit down to the piano to show him how the new song went. And if the moonlight fell across the piano, and upon her face as she sang the little Irish folk-song, all in minors, with her high, trembling, half-formed notes in the upper register, and if she flushed and looked up abashed and had to be teased to go on,—not teased a great deal, but a little,—will you blame the young man if he forgot for a moment that her father was worth such a lot of money, and thought only that she was a beautiful girl, and said so with his eyes and face and hands in the pretty little pause that followed when she ceased singing? And if to hide her confusion when her heart knew what he thought, she put one foot on the loud pedal of the piano and began singing "O Margery, O Margery," and he sang with her, and if they thrilled just a little as their voices blended in the rollicking song—what of it? What of it? Was it not natural that lilacs should grow in April? Was it not natural that Watts McHurdie should dread the white light that beats upon the throne of the sheriff's office? Was it not natural that he should turn to women for protection against one of their sex, and that the women plotting for him should have a boy around and having a boy around where there is a girl around, and spring around and lilacs around and a moon and music and joy around,—what is more natural in all this world than that in the fire struck by the simple joy of youth there should be the flutter of unseen wings around, and when the two had finished singing, with something passing between their hearts not in the words, what is more natural than that the girl, half frightened at the thrill in her soul, should say timidly:—
"I think they will miss us out there—don't you?" as she rose from the piano.
And if you were a boy again, only twenty-one, to whom millions of money meant nothing, would you not catch the blue eyes of the girl as she looked up at you, in the twilight of the big room, and answer, "All right, Jeanette"? Certainly if you had known a girl all your life, you would call her by her first name, if her father were worth a billion, and would you not continue, emboldened some way by not being frowned upon for calling her Jeanette, though she would have been astonished if you had said Miss Barclay—astonished and maybe a little fearful of your sincerity—would you not continue, after a little pause, repeating your words, "All right, Jeanette—I suppose so—but I don't care—do you?" as you followed her through the door back to the moon-lit porch?
And as you walked home, listening to your elder sister, would you not have time and inclination to wonder from what remote part of this beautiful universe, from what star or what fairy realm, that creature came, whose hair you pulled yesterday, whose legs seem to have been covered with long skirts in the twinkling of an eye, and whose unrelated features by some magic had sloughed off, leaving a beautiful face? Would you not think these things, good kind sir, when you were twenty-one—even though to-day they seem highly improbable thoughts for any one to have who was not stark mad? But if we were not all stark mad sometimes, how would the world go round? If we were not all mad sometimes, who would make our dreams come true? How would visions in thin air congeal into facts, how would the aspirations of the race make history? And if we were all sane all the time, how would the angels ever get babies into the world at all, at all?
CHAPTER XXII
"Speaking of lunatics," said Mr. Dolan to Mr. Hendricks one June night, a few weeks after the women had persuaded Mrs. McHurdie not to drag the poet into politics,—"speaking of lunatics, you may remember that I was born in Boston, and 'twas my duty as a lad to drive the Cambridge car, and many a time I have heard Mr. Holmes the poet and Mr. Emerson the philosopher discussing how the world was made; whether it was objective or subjective,—which I take it to mean whether the world is in the universe or only in your eye. One fine winter night we were waiting on a switch for the Boston car, when Mr. Holmes said to Mr. Emerson: 'What,' says he, 'would you think if Jake Dolan driving this car should come in and say, "Excuse me, gentlemen, but the moon I see this moment is not some millions of miles away, but entirely in my own noddle?"' 'I'd think,' says the great philosopher, never blinking, 'that Mr. Dolan was drunk,' says he. And there the discussion ended, but it has been going on in my head ever since. Here I am a man climbing up my sixties, and when have I seen the moon? Once walking by this very creek here trying to get me courage up to put me arm around her that is now Mary Carnine; once with me head poked up close to the heads of Watts McHurdie, Gabe Carnine, and Philemon Ward, serenading the girls under the Thayer House window the night before we left for the army. And again to-night, sitting here on the dam, listening to the music coming down the mill-pond. Did you notice them, Robert—the young people—Phil Ward's boy, and John Barclay's girl, and Mary Carnine's oldest, and Oscar Fernald's youngest, with their guitars and mandolins, piling into the boats and rowing up stream? And now they're singing the songs we sang—to their mothers, God bless 'em—the other day before these children were born or thought of, and now I sit here an old man looking at the moon."
"But is it the moon?" he went on after a long silence, puffing at his pipe. "If the moon is off there, three or thirty or three hundred million miles away in the sky, where has it been these forty years? I've not seen it. And yet here she pops out of my memory into my eye, and if I say the moon has always been in my eye, and is still in my eye, Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson says I'm drunk. But does that settle the question of who's got the moon—me or the cosmos—as the poets call it?" After that the two men smoked in silence, and as Hendricks threw away the butt of his cigar, Dolan said, "'Tis a queer, queer world, Robert—a queer, queer world."
Now do not smile at Mr. Dolan, gentle reader, for Adam must have thought the same thing, and philosophy has been able to say nothing more to the point.