This was the beginning of that affair. Helen remembered the day well. A woman never forgets the sky and the weather of the day upon which love called her forth to the vicissitudes of love. But as things turned out, I doubt if she would mention that day now, as other women do when the bloom of their years has past. But at the best a courtship is strangely ephemeral, if you consider the consequences. It is like fugitive verses published to-day, gone to-morrow, like the fragrance of flowers blown upon a wind that passes and never returns. So much of it cannot be made into words; a glance of the eye, quick as light, revealing all; but who can translate the look or the long silences between lovers? Nature knows her business. The whole world, the heavens and the earth and the fullness thereof is an incantation made to ensnare lovers to her purpose. And not a word grows anywhere to betray this charm. You may be strong or weak, wise or simple, cynical, disillusioned, protected with all the knowledge of men, but there is no escape. Nature gets you at last; on honor or dishonor you[42] must pay your debt to her in love. When you are done, nothing remains but your dust, a handful of something with which to fertilize love again—a little retail economy Nature makes in her procreating plans. The next day after this first day was a Sabbath. I do not believe in predestination, doctrinally speaking. The meaning of that term, I should say, was strictly human, and is derived from our short-winded conception of time, which does not exist either, except in the mortal sense. But by some prearranged prudence of Providence, by which all things come to pass whether we will or no, including the most intimate and personal things, the Cutters attended the same church that the remaining mother and daughter of the Adams family attended. It was a very good little church, glistening white within, shining white without, like an enameled bathtub with a roof and a steeple. I will not be sure, but my impression is that the denomination was Baptist. In any case, Helen Adams belonged to the choir.
On this Sunday morning she sang a solo, Jerusalem the Golden. She had a fresh young voice, roomy and soft at the bottom, triumphantly high and keen at the top. She wore white as usual and little fluttering skylines of blue tied in a bow[43] as usual. When she stood up to sing she lifted her eyes as if these eyes and this face were the words of a young morning prayer; she let go her beautifully crimped upper lip, opened her mouth as if this mouth were a rose bursting into bloom—and sang. I do not know if she sang well, having no skill in these matters; but it is certain that she looked like an angel. What I mean is that if you had no visual acquaintance with angels, you would have known at once that this was the very image of the way an angel should look.
The congregation listened with the peaceful apathy peculiar to every small town congregation, when it is being mulled in the music of a hymn or the Word. This made the one exception the more noticeable.
George William Cutter, Junior, looked and listened with a fervor which far surpassed anything that mere piety could do for a young man’s praying countenance. Fortunately he was seated far back in the publican and sinner section of the church. Thus he escaped the sophisticated attention of the elder saints toward the front. Never had he seen anything so lovely as this girl, the high look she had with the notes of this hymn, trembling as they came from her round, white throat or flaring into a perfect ecstasy of joy.
[44]When she had finally caroled out and sat down, he whispered under his breath, “Lord! Lord!” although he was not a religious man and meant nothing of the sort by this exclamation.
The moment the benediction was pronounced, he stepped briskly from his place in that sparsely settled part of the church, met the slow-moving tattling tide of the congregation coming out as he hurried down the aisle like a good swimmer in sluggish waters until he reached Helen standing in the rear ranks with her mother.
He bowed to Mrs. Adams. He hoped she remembered him—George Cutter, extending his hand.
Oh, yes; she remembered him, she said mildly. No excitement in her mind over the recollection either! Did he think he had improved that much? She let him know that so far as she was concerned he was the same little George Cutter who used to live across the street and sometimes threw stones at her chickens.
No matter if you are a very handsome young man, with athletic laurels hanging to your college coat tails, you cannot make a deep or flattering impression on a middle-aged woman who has a practical, computing mind and knows the romantic value of her beautiful daughter. If Helen[45] had been homely, a little, starched mouse of a girl, who could not sing Jerusalem the Golden or anything else, she would have received George’s salutations more cordially. As it was, she did not have to be more than invincibly polite. All this she let him know with a flat look of her calm blue eye.
It was a waste of excellent maternal diplomacy so far as he was concerned. He had already turned to Helen. He was almost speechless from having so much to say. She was entirely so for a moment. Then she gave him her hand and managed to say, “Howdy do, George,” in a tone a girl uses when the man owes her an apology.
This accusative welcome dashed him. No smile! When he was himself the very pedestal of a smile. Good heavens, what had he done? He was conscious of being innocent; yet he felt guilty.
Mrs. Adams paid no more attention to them. She had gone on, caught up with the Flitches and passed out. This was the only permission he received that he might, if he could, walk with Helen.
The girl’s inclemency stirred him as frosty weather stimulates energy. So they followed. I[46] doubt if they were aware themselves that the distance lengthened between them and other groups of this congregation, which divided and dwindled at every street corner. Lovers are recognized on sight, long before they know themselves to be lovers. People make room for their privacy in public places. These two had a whole block to themselves by the time they entered Wiggs Street. Mrs. Adams had already disappeared in her house. The broad back of Mr. Cutter and the slim back of little Mrs. Cutter were visible for a moment before they also faded through the doorway of the Cutter residence.
Only the Flitches stood en masse on their spider-legged veranda, their eyes glued upon these two stragglers, coming slowly down the sunlit street. The Flitches were good people, of the round-eyed breed. They had a candid, perpetually interrogative curiosity which nothing could satisfy. You know the kind. It is never you, but the family that lives across the street from you, or in the next house with thin eyelid curtains over their windows through which they are perpetually regarding you, striving after omniscience about you and your affairs.
Helen had admitted that it was a “nice day” when he said it was, as they came out of the[47] church and faced the fair brow of this June sabbath.
He had told her how much he enjoyed her solo. It was wonderful.
She merely replied that she “liked to sing.”
He was still conscious of being in the arctic region of her regard and cast about, with a lover’s distracted compass, to discover the way out. “Weren’t you in the bank yesterday afternoon?” he asked suddenly.
“Yes,” she answered coldly after a slight pause; “I was about to speak to you, but you did not recognize me,” she added.
“It is the truth. I did not,” he admitted quickly and waited. He could not be sure she got it, the compliment implied. He remembered her as merely sensible, not smart. “You have changed, grown or something,” he resumed. “I couldn’t be expected to know you. All the other girls here look just as they did when I left here two years ago. But you don’t; you are amazingly different. How did you do it?” he exclaimed, regarding her with charmed amazement.
He saw her take it, caught the glance she gave him one instant before she dropped it. The faintest smile sweetened the comers of her mouth. He got that too.
[48]If only he had known of the tears she had shed after the visit to the bank, what a triumph! Fortunately, men do not know what maidens confess with tears to their pillows. If they did it would change many a courtship to one kind or another of ruthless tyranny.
We who study love as if it were a medicine or a disease sometimes speak of “love at first sight,” as if this were an unusual seizure. But love is always love at first sight. You may know this man or he may know you for years without getting that angle of vision; but if you ever do, it is as if you had never really seen him before. In a moment you have endowed him with attributes his Maker would never have squandered on a man of that quality. This is what love is, the conferring of virtues and qualities upon the object of your awakened emotion like so many degrees. He may be a drug clerk, or a chicken-breasted, fat man, or a swank young rascal, but from that moment when love gets sight of him he is a fellow of the royal society of heroes, and you may be so bemused you live a lifetime with him, always conferring more degrees to keep him tenderly concealed from your clearer vision. Or it may happen in a year or twenty years the scales fall from your eyes. Then love becomes a servant,[49] and life a tragedy. But there is nothing in the Scriptures against such a servant or such a life. Rather, I should say the Scriptures make wide and permanent provisions for this deflation in the marital relation.