A Summer Evening's Dream - Edward Bellamy (romantic books to read txt) 📗

It is a village street, with great elms on either side, while along the middle stands another row set in a narrow strip of grassy common, so that the street and roadway are in reality double. The dwellings on either side are not only widely parted by the broad street, but are still further isolated, each in its large garden of ancient fruit trees. It is four o'clock of a sunny August afternoon, and a quiet, Sabbath-like but for its lazy voluptuousness, broods over the scene. No carriage, or even pedestrian, has passed for an hour. The occasional voices of children at play in some garden, the latching of a gate far down the street, the dying fall of a drowsy chanticleer, are but the punctuation of the poem of summer silence that has been flowing on all the afternoon. Upon the tree-tops the sun blazes brightly, and between their stems are glimpses of outlying meadows, which simmer in the heat as if about to come to a boil. But the shadowed street offers a cool and refreshing vista to the eye, and a veritable valley of refuge to the parched and dusty traveler along the highway.

On the broad piazza of one of the quaint old-fashioned houses, behind a needless screen of climbing woodbine, two girls are whiling away the afternoon. One of them is lounging in a lassy rocking-chair, while the other sits more primly and is industriously sewing.

"I suppose you 'll be glad enough to see George when he comes to-night to take you back to the city? I'm afraid you find it pretty dull here," said the latter, with an intonation of uneasy responsibility sufficiently attesting that the brilliant-looking girl opposite was a guest.

That young lady, when addressed, was indulging in a luxurious country yawn, an operation by no means to be hurried, but to be fully and lazily enjoyed in all its several and long-drawn stages, and as thus practiced a wonderfully calming and soporific relaxation wholly unknown to the fretted denizens of cities, whose yawn is one of irritation and not of rest. "I do so enjoy your Plainfield yawns, Lucy," she said when she had quite finished. "Were you saying that it was a little dull? Well, perhaps it is, but then the trees and things seem to be' enjoying themselves so hugely that it would be selfish to make a fuss, even if it is n't exactly my kind of fun."

"Your kind of fun is due by the six-o'clock stage, I believe."

The other laughed and said, "I wish you would n't make another allusion to George. I think of him so much that I 'm ashamed, as it is. I 'm sure this is a very aggravating place for an engaged girl to be at. One gets so dreadfully sentimental with nothing to take up the mind, especially with such monstrous moons as you have. I got fairly frightened of the one last night. It drew me out through my eyes like a big plaster."

"Mabel French!"

"I don't care; it did. That was just the feeling."

There was no hurry about talking, for the rich, mellow summer silence had a body to it that prevented pauses from seeming empty, and it might have been half an hour afterward that Mabel suddenly leaned forward, putting her face close to the vine-trellis, and cried in a low voice, "Who's that? Po tell me! They're the very first persons who have gone by this afternoon, I do believe."

A pretty phaeton was slowly passing, containing an elderly gentleman and lady.

"Oh, that is only Lawyer Morgan and old Miss Rood," replied Lucy, just glancing up, and then down again. "They go out driving once a week regularly, and always at about this time in the afternoon."

"They look like afternoon sort of people," said Mabel. "But why does n't Lawyer Morgan take out his wife?"

"He has n't got any. Miss Rood comes nearest to that. Oh, no, you needn't open your eyes; there's not a properer old maid in town, or old bachelor either, for that matter."

"Are they relatives?"

"No, indeed."

"How long has this Platonic romance been going on, pray?"

"Oh, ever since they were young,--forty years, perhaps. I only know by tradition, you see. It began ages before my day. They say she was very pretty once. Old Aunty Perkins remembers that she was quite the belle of the village as a girl. It seems strange, does n't it?"

"Tell me the whole story," said Mabel, turning round so as to face Lucy as the phaeton passed out of sight.

"There's not much to tell. Mr. Morgan has always lived here, and so has Miss Rood. He lives alone with a housekeeper in that fine house at the end of the street, and she entirely alone in that little white house over there among the apple-trees. All the people who knew them when they were young are dead, gone away, or moved off. They are relics of a past generation, and are really about as much shut up to each other for sympathy as an old married couple."

"Well, why on earth are n't they married?"

"People hereabouts got tired of asking that full thirty years ago," replied Lucy, with a little shrug. "Even the gossips long since wore out the subject, and I believe we have all of us forgotten that there is anything peculiar about their relations. He calls on her two or three times a week, and takes her out driving on pleasant days; escorts her to places of amusement or social gatherings when either of them cares to go, which is n't often; and wherever they are, people take it for granted they will pair off together. He is never seen with any other lady."

"It's very strange," said Mabel thoughtfully, "and I'm sure it's very romantic. Queer old couple! I wonder how they really feel toward each other, and whether they would n't like to be married?"

Awhile after she suddenly demanded, "Don't you think Miss Rood looks like me?"

Lucy laughed at first, but upon closer inspection of the fair questioner admitted that there might be some such resemblance as the shriveled apples brought up from the cellar in spring bear to the plump, rosy-cheeked beauties that went down in October.

If Mr. Morgan and Miss Rood, as they rode past, had chanced to overhear Mabel's question why they had not married, it would have affected them very differently. He would have been startled by the novelty of an idea that had not occurred to him in twenty years, but the blush on her cheek would have been one of painful consciousness.

As boy and girl they had been each other's chosen companion, and as young man and maiden their childish preference had bloomed into a reciprocal love. Thanks to the freedom and simplicity of village life, they enjoyed as lovers a constant and easy familiarity and daily association almost as complete in sympathy of mind and heart as anything marriage could offer. There were none of the usual obstacles to incite them to matrimony. They were never even formally engaged, so wholly did they take it for granted that they should marry. It was so much a matter of course that there was no hurry at all about it; and besides, so long as they had it to look forward to, the foreground of life was illuminated for them: it was still morning. Mr. Morgan was constitutionally of a dreamy and unpractical turn, a creature of habits and a victim of ruts; and as years rolled on he became more and more satisfied with these half-friendly, half-loverlike relations. He never found the time when it seemed an object to marry, and now, for very many years, the idea had not even occurred to him as possible; and so far was he from the least suspicion that Miss Rood's experience had not been precisely similar to his own, that he often congratulated himself on the fortunate coincidence.

Time cures much, and many years ago Miss Hood had recovered from the first bitterness of discovering that his love had become insensibly transformed into a very tender but perfectly peaceful friendship. No one but him had ever touched her heart, and she had no interest in life besides him. Since she was not to be his wife, she was glad to be his lifelong, tender, self-sacrificing friend. So she raked the ashes over the fire in her heart, and left him to suppose that it had gone out as in his. Nor was she without compensation in their friendship. It was with a delightful thrill that she felt how fully in mind and heart he leaned and depended upon her, and the unusual and romantic character of their relations in some degree consoled her for the disappointment of womanly aspirations by a feeling of distinction. She was not like other women: her lot was set apart and peculiar. She looked down upon her sex. The conventionality of women's lives renders their vanity peculiarly susceptible to a suggestion that their destiny is in any respect unique, --a fact that has served the turn of many a seducer before now. To-day, after returning from his drive with Miss Rood, Mr. Morgan had walked in his garden, and as the evening breeze arose, it bore to his nostrils that first indescribable flavor of autumn which warns us that the soul of Summer has departed from her yet glowing body. He was very sensitive to these changes of the year, and, obeying an impulse that had been familiar to him in all unusual moods his life long, he left the house after tea and turned his steps down the street. As he stopped at Miss Rood's gate, Lucy, Mabel, and George Hammond were under the apple-trees in the garden opposite.

"Look, Mabel! There's Mr. Morgan going to call on Miss Rood," said Lucy softly.

"Oh, do look, George!" said Mabel eagerly. "That old gentleman has been paying court to an old maid over in that little house for forty years. And to think," she added in a lower tone, intended for his private ear, "what a fuss you make about waiting six months!"

"Humph! You please to forget that it's easier to wait for some things than for others. Six months of my kind of waiting, I take it, require more patience than forty years of his--or any other man's," he added, with increased emphasis.

"Be quiet, sir!" replied Mabel, answering his look of unruly admiration with one of half pique. "I 'm not a sugar-plum, that's not enjoyed till it's in the mouth. If you have n't got me now, you 'll never have me. If being engaged isn't enough, you don't deserve to be married." And then, seeing the blank expression with which he looked down at her, she added with a prescient resigned-ness, "I 'm afraid, dear, you 'll be so disappointed when we 're married, if you find this so tedious."

Lucy had discreetly wandered away, and of how they made it up there were no witnesses. But it seems likely that they did so, for shortly after they wandered away together down the darkening street.

Like most of the Plainfield houses, that at which Mr. Morgan turned in stood well back from the street. At a side window, still further sheltered from view by a gyringa-bush at the house corner, sat a little woman with a small, pale face, the still attractive features perceptibly sharpened by years,