Chapter IX: An Embarrassment of Riches

No human being expects to die and all expect to marry. Observation continually proves the groundlessness of one or both of these anticipations, without altering the attitude of the survivors. In the background of the consciousness of the most confirmed bachelor or spinster, stands the shadowy form of the possible wife or the possible husband.

Mr. James Doolittle, at fifty-five, had no idea of escaping the matrimonial yoke. He thought of himself always as an eligible young fellow, waiting for the right girl to come along. On two or three occasions earlier in life he had temporarily congratulated himself on finding the right girl, but as the ladies in question had disagreed with him, there had been no escape from the conclusion that he was mistaken. These disappointments he had accepted with an edifying equanimity, reminding himself that there were still as good fish in the sea as had ever graced a frying pan.

Just why, on a certain summer afternoon, Jim's vague and groping expectations should suddenly have focused upon Zaida Finch, and why her familiar, faded features and diminutive, gnome-like body should have taken on the quality of allurement, is one of the mysteries which will remain a mystery when the riddle of perpetual motion has been solved. As the memory of Miss Finch hurrying across the grass continually recurred to him, Jim said to himself that though a trifle more flesh would not hurt her, she was a cute little thing. And forthwith he was conscious of a feeling of youthful irresponsibility, flatly contradicting the testimony of the family Bible.

Yet it was with no very definite purpose in his mind that on the Wednesday following his brief call at Oak Knoll, Mr. Doolittle resolved on a second visit. Even incipient love is fertile in excuses. He argued that the most elementary sense of courtesy demanded his ascertaining the nature of the telegram of which he had been the bearer, and extending his sympathy in case it had brought bad news. With the lack of candor with himself, frequently manifested by wiser men in his condition, Mr. Doolittle failed to explain the fact that he assumed for the call the necktie which for thirty years he had worn on dress occasions, hand-painted daisies on a pink background. The silk was faded now and the daisies had lost much of their original perky luster, but with the hand-painted necktie tied under his chin, Mr. Doolittle felt himself a figure to appeal to the exacting feminine taste.

His state of mind pleasantly indeterminate, Mr. Doolittle jogged through the dust in the direction of Oak Knoll. As yet his ardor had not reached the point where the leisurely pace of the gray nag got on his nerves. The droning peace of the mid-summer world was reflected in the serenity of his spirit. But as he neared Oak Knoll, the sound of wheels halted him at the foot of the long driveway, and waiting there, some intuition ruffled the placidity of his mood, and left him alert and uneasy.

Jim knew his suspicion justified when suddenly upon his startled and hostile vision emerged another buggy, smarter than his own, and newly washed. The driver, Deacon Wiggins, looked up from the contemplation of his sorrel mare to bark a gruff greeting, "Afternoon, Jim."

Deacon Wiggins was eminently a marrying man. He had married early, and as often as a complacent Providence, assisted by pneumonia, heart disease and typhoid, had permitted. A rather rusty band of crêpe around his hat, preserved with commendable thrift from one bereavement to another, bore witness to his latest loss some three months earlier. And with a lover's quick suspicion, Mr. Doolittle leaped to the conclusion that the deacon's errand to Oak Knoll was the same as his own, that in his eyes, too, Zaida Finch had found favor. His voice rasping as he realized the insatiable greed of some of his sex, Jim Doolittle returned the deacon's greeting with a sneering, "Wasn't looking to see you here."

Deacon Wiggins at once drew rein. His errand had not been a sentimental one. He had called to collect from Miss Finch the amount of her very modest subscription to the cause of foreign missions, and had been met by Phemie with the news that the blind boarder and Howard had gone to the city on the early train, and that the ladies of the family were celebrating by spending the day with friends. Whereupon the deacon had replied that he would call again, and had gone his way unruffled, till halted by Doolittle's challenge. Though Deacon Wiggins was well past fifty and had been thrice married, he had not outgrown that instinct which impels two young cockerels to assault each other with murderous intent.

"You wasn't looking to see me, eh?" repeated Deacon Wiggins, ponderously sarcastic. "Well, I don't know as that matters, Jim, as long as I didn't come for the sake of seeing you."

Doolittle reddened violently. "No, it's plain enough what you've come for."

The note of unreasonable jealousy was unmistakable. And while the deacon was quite in the dark as to the other's meaning, all his masculine dignity was in arms over the realization that another man was attempting interference with his doing as he pleased. "Whether I came for one thing or another," he retorted, "I don't have to ask your leave."

"Must make Zaida Finch feel terrible proud to know you are thinking of her for Number Four."

The introduction of Miss Finch's name into the conversation took the deacon by surprise, but he made no attempt to allay the groundless suspicion. Instead he replied, "A good many women would rather be Number Four with some men than Number One with others I could mention." The magnanimity which kept him from giving names was clearly a pretense, for his significant smile pointed his meaning unmistakably.

"There's no accounting for tastes," acknowledged Mr. Doolittle, transformed by his fury to an unbecoming turkey red. "But sometimes folks have better taste than we give 'em credit for."

The deacon's smile was as belligerent as a blow.

"You're right there, Jim. You're right. I've always said that the sort of men who die old bachelors show the women ain't such fools as some folks take 'em to be."

He clucked to his horse and drove on. Doolittle, breathing hard and unable to think of a sufficiently crushing rejoinder to this final insult, waited till the deacon was out of sight before turning up the drive. To him Phemie repeated her story of the blind boarder's departure for the city, escorted by Howard, and the consequent gadding of the ladies of the family.

Mr. Doolittle drew a long breath as he realized that the fell designs of Deacon Wiggins had been temporarily foiled. He was not the man, however, to underestimate the gravity of the situation. His rival was notable for prompt action, as his previous marriages had abundantly proved. Left to himself, Doolittle might have meandered through several years of more or less ardent courtship, before reaching the point of asking Miss Finch to change her name, if indeed, he ever reached it. But the certainty that Deacon Wiggins would waste no time in such preliminaries forced him to realize that he, too, must act with promptness, or resign himself to loss. Jim's vague intention became definite in view of the purposes with which he credited the deacon. With mingled sorrow and indignation he wondered at the man's grasping nature.

Meanwhile Deacon Wiggins, jogging homeward, was undergoing a very similar psychological experience. The most pronounced trait in the deacon's character was his obstinacy. He was an ardent Democrat, for the reason, it was generally believed, that he lived in a community of devout Republicans. He had been drawn irresistibly to the Congregationalist body because, as his acquaintances were certain, he sprang from Methodist stock. In all his dealings Deacon Wiggins could be safely counted on to take the off-side. But it had been long, indeed, since anything had so whetted his native stubbornness as his brief interview with James Doolittle.

In a general sense it might be said that Deacon Wiggins was looking for a wife. He was always looking for a wife in those interruptions to his marital bliss, whose brevity shocked the finer sensibilities of Mr. Doolittle. But at present his attitude was one of critical observance rather than active search. Mentally he had inventoried the attractions of several unattached females of the community, though the thought of Zaida Finch, as designed by Providence to solace his loneliness, had never crossed his mind. But now that Doolittle's indiscreet opposition had turned his thoughts in her direction, Deacon Wiggins said to himself that he might go further and fare worse. Miss Finch was a fine woman, a little undersized and scrawny for his taste, but a woman of good temper and good principles, eminently qualified to make a satisfactory wife. Seemingly the newly-awakened ardor of Jim Doolittle was like a searchlight, illuminating virtues hitherto unnoticed. The deacon reached for his whip and surprised the sorrel mare by a cut across the flank. Mentally he had crossed his Rubicon.

Miss Finch, placidly ignorant of the designs of Destiny, had passed a pleasant day. She had found it an immense relief to have Mr. Forbes away, even for twenty-four hours, for she never lost the sense of walking amid pitfalls while he was in the house. Agatha, in the rebound from the necessity of acting the rôle of an elderly maiden lady, had been more whimsically childish than usual, and had imparted to her faded little friend something of her own irresponsibility. Accordingly Miss Finch passed a pleasant day, and a peaceful night, and woke in the morning quite unprepared for what fate had in store.

In Forbes' absence, the arrival of the Free Delivery was only an ordinary incident in the day's routine. Miss Finch went down the drive to get the mail a half-hour or so after the wagon had passed. And when in another half-hour it occurred to Agatha to inquire as to the results of that expedition, it took her a good five minutes to locate Miss Finch. At length her search brought her to a weather-beaten bench under the trees, where Miss Finch had seated herself as if to rest from the fatigue of the walk up the drive. At her feet were scattered various items of mail, which had slid off her lap in the stress of her emotions and lay on the grass unnoticed.

"Well, Fritz, you must have found some absorbing reading," Agatha began. "I've screamed myself hoarse calling you." She paused, regarding her old friend with sudden concern. Miss Finch's face was singularly flushed and her pupils dilated like those of a sleep-walker. In either hand she clutched a letter.

"Fritz, what it is?" Agatha exclaimed in real alarm. "Aren't you feeling well?"

Much to her relief, Miss Finch's head turned in her direction. Up to this time she had seemed oblivious to her presence.

"Yes, I feel all right, Agatha," she replied, her voice dreamy and unnatural. "I--I'm going to be married."

The violence of Agatha's start indicated an almost uncomplimentary incredulity.

"You are--what did you say, Fritz?"

"I'm--I'm going to be married."

"For heaven's sake! Who is it?"

Miss Finch's manner lost something of its assurance.

"I haven't quite--made up my mind."

Agatha's expression of astonishment changed quickly to consternation. She came close to the little lady, slipping a hand through her arm.

"Fritz, dear, hadn't you better come to the house and lie down? The sun is awfully hot, and you shouldn't have gone out without a hat." She studied Miss Finch's unnatural color with a sinking heart. Was it a touch of the sun or something worse?

Miss Finch, though perfectly aware of the nature of Agatha's apprehensions, showed no resentment. Indeed the difficulty she had experienced in combating her own incredulity enabled her to sympathize with her young friend's perplexity.

"When I say I haven't made up my mind, I mean I haven't decided which one to marry."

"Yes, I see, Fritz. Now let's go to the house. Just lean on me." Phemie would have to go for the doctor, Agatha decided. She herself would not dare to leave.

"If you don't believe me," exclaimed Miss Finch, a sense of injury at last making itself manifest in her voice, "you can read the letters for yourself."

Agatha snatched the extended missive, thankful for anything that would throw light on Miss Finch's singular hallucination. Her stubborn incredulity received its first shock when she saw Miss Finch's name written across the yellow envelope in an unmistakably masculine hand. The contents of the letter completed her undoing.

"Miss Zaida Finch:

"Dear Friend--I have always believed the truth of those words of Scripture that it is not good for man to be alone. (Gen. 2:18.) Three dear companions have I taken to myself only to yield them to the cold and silent tomb. Have you ever thought of changing your state? You are so much in my thoughts that it seems a leading to show that it is you who should fill the place of my three lost companions, till you, too, shall be called from battle to reward.

"I hope you will make this matter a subject of prayer, and will see your way clear to accept me as your husband. Write me how you feel about it. I enclose stamp.

"Yours truly,

"Hiram L. Wiggins."

Agatha read the unusual document breathlessly, too relieved by the discovery that Miss Finch's mind was not seriously affected to appreciate to the full the unique literary quality of the composition. Deacon Wiggins actually was proffering Miss Finch his hand and so much of his heart as had not been consigned to the tomb along with the three deceased ladies who had borne his name. Agatha's impressions of the deacon were vaguely hostile, yet she realized that from Miss Finch's standpoint, the occasion called for congratulations. Agatha was not unaware of the little spinster's attitude of wistful anticipation where matrimony was concerned. And though it was difficult to think of Deacon Wiggins as the realization of a romantic dream, she warned herself that she must not be a kill-joy.

"I'm sure, Fritz," Agatha said, with no trace of her usual mischief, "that the deacon will be very fortunate if you decide--" She checked herself, for Miss Finch was extending a second letter.

"For the love of Mike," Agatha gasped, borrowing from Howard's vocabulary as her own seemed inadequate. "You don't mean there's another?"

"Yes, there are two, Agatha," said Miss Finch, and under the circumstances her flitting expression of complacency was quite excusable.

The dreadful suspicion flashing through Agatha's mind, that the guileless Miss Finch had been made the butt of a peculiarly obnoxious practical joke, vanished as she read Jim Doolittle's letter. It was too characteristic for her to doubt its authorship.

"Dear Zaida:

"Please excuse me calling you Zaida, for as Zaida you are enshrined in my thoughts, and I think of you very often when I am sad and lonely and I wish I had a wife like you to cheer me, and to be a help-meet to me like the Bible says, and while I have not married again and again like some people I could name it has not been because I do not have a high opinion of women. And if I should be left alone I should not go looking for some one to take your place right away, for with me to love once is to love always, and, dear Zaida, my heart beats for you alone.

Yours truly,

"James Doolittle."

Agatha was seized with a paroxysm of coughing, the businesslike conclusion of the letter seeming decidedly inconsistent with its impassioned prelude. Then, recovering herself, she went over to Miss Finch and kissed her.

"Well, Fritz, you're a lot too good for either one, but women are, as a rule. Which is it to be?"

Miss Finch looked down at her first love-letters with an anxious expression, hardly befitting the occasion.

"Well, Agatha, I'm not sure. There is a great deal of sentiment in Mr. Doolittle's letter. It's almost poetical in spots. I wouldn't have thought he had so much poetry in him?"

"Nor I," admitted Agatha.

"But the deacon's letter shows a beautiful religious spirit, and when you are choosing a husband you have to think of the things that are really important."

"The deacon is better off than Mr. Doolittle," suggested Agatha. "Though I've always heard he was inclined to be close."

"I wouldn't let such things weigh with me, Agatha. I can't imagine marrying a man because he had more money than somebody else. It's what a man is himself that counts with me."

"Then I suppose it's the deacon," said Agatha, with youth's characteristic readiness to jump at conclusions.

"I don't know, I'm sure. Don't hurry a body so, Agatha." Miss Finch spoke more sharply than was her wont. "If you were picking out a husband at my time of life, you wouldn't want to be rushed so that, like enough, you'd pick the wrong man."

Agatha shook her head. "No, Fritz, if I ever became such a heart-breaker that I had a batch of proposals in a single mail, I'd take as long as I could to make up my mind. I'd make the sweetness last like an all-day sucker."

Miss Finch's brief irritation vanished as she heard herself referred to as a heart-breaker. She blushed not unbecomingly.

"The names might help you in making up your mind," continued Agatha, bent on giving all the assistance in her power. "Which is the more--what is that word--mellifluous in your ears, Mrs. Wiggins, Mrs. Deacon Wiggins, or Mrs. James Doolittle?"

"I'm afraid you're not as serious-minded as you ought to be, Agatha," chided Miss Finch. "Marriage is 'most anything you like except a joke, and you can't make a joke of it, no matter how hard you try." As she moved toward the house with her two letters, leaving Agatha to collect the widely scattered mail, her face wore a troubled, anxious look, as if the fateful solemnity of the married state already had reached out from the future and enveloped her.