Part 19 (1/2)
”Being a rigid Baptist and an elder, Amos scouted my Presbyterian christening as totally inadequate to neutralize what he considered my unusually large share of original sin, and as his wife, Susan, was my nurse, they began to grieve over my reprobateness as soon as I was old enough to lay claim to moral responsibility. When I was about sixteen I was out yonder on the lake fis.h.i.+ng. Two friends were with me, and we all swam well, or thought we did. A sudden squall capsized the boat, and I was caught and held under it in such a way that I could not extricate myself. The boys hovered around, trying unsuccessfully to help me, but just then Amos kicked off his boots, plunged in, and swam to the rescue.
He was strong as a whale, raised the end of the boat with his shoulder and dragged me out. I was slightly stunned, and he swam with me into shallow water, where he could stand up. Then he lifted me horizontally, as if I had been a baby in long clothes, and repeating with triumphant fervor the baptismal formula of his Church, he immersed me so thoroughly that I regained consciousness, and he turned me over to Susan and hot blankets, as a 'brand s.n.a.t.c.hed from the burning,' and properly baptized.”
Removing the ice from the yellow heart of his melon, Judge Kent glanced around the table.
”Owning such a paradise as this home, do you not all share my amazement that Herriott can prefer to shut it up and wander contentedly over the continent, searching its rough crannies--Labna, Mitla, Casa Grande, and where not--for what he pedantically calls the 'primeval anthropological nidus'?”
”Oh, bless you, Senator Kent, it is just in his blood, and he can no more keep still than a flea can stop hopping. His father was a surveyor--civil engineer--always roving, and Noel is exactly like him; which none of you will doubt when I a.s.sure you his mother really was an absolutely beautiful woman. He is a hopeless tramp. He gravitates to the wildest places of creation, as you and Mr. Hull to the cultivation of votes, and Dana to Wall Street kites, and this insecticide professor to picking the lock of G.o.d's workshop when He has closed the door and gone to His seventh day rest.”
”Aunt Trina refuses to believe that my ambition to become acquainted with our prehistoric family relatives is a laudable method of climbing the genealogical tree. She is not enthusiastic on ancestry.”
”That depends, my dear boy, on the 'strain' you are hunting. If the first hatching of brown skins in that 'primeval nidus' of your dreams had only been as wise and prudent as modern cattle and horse raisers, and fixed rules of pure-blooded pedigree, we might not fear to grope backward lest we find only 'grades' in our family group. Now, climbing a genuine, decent, civilized ancestral tree is much better sport than twisting up slippery totem poles with a coyote, or a c.o.o.n, or a vulture perched on top, as head of the family.”
”And, pray, what of the sacred menagerie of heraldry? The quadrupeds, birds, flowers of armorial blazonry--all that makes heraldic pomp picturesque--are but survivals of primeval totem symbols throughout the world. Auntie Dove, your book-plate and your family seal bear a leopard couchant, very dear to your orthodox, patrician heart, and some day your hereditary pet beast may have glared down upon a Tlinkit teepee.”
”Marriage is the only cure for Herriott, and it would effectually tether him,” said Mr. Hull, keeping his eyes on Eglah.
”It appears that you have carefully avoided taking your own prescription,” answered his host.
”It is by no means my fault. Though futile, my efforts have been heroic.”
Professor Cleveden leaned forward.
”You good people do not understand how deeply Herriott is imbued with the conviction that contemporary 'differentiation' is not a synonym for desirable advancement. The complex, hybridized, neurotic creature he meets in society does not always impress him as vastly superior to the primeval female type, and you may all expect that whenever matrimonial shackles restrict his pasturage, which will not be _in Wyandot lines_, he will be hobbled by 'some savage woman' whose accomplishments are limited to the slim schedule set down by that jilted cynic of 'Locksley Hall.' The 'new woman' incites us to pray fervently for swift reversion to type. Now, Miss Manning, I am sure you are preparing to tell me that----”
”That of course in such matters tastes differ, and not one of us feels disposed to deprive Professor Cleveden of his coveted female simian companion; but, as Noel never has had a flirtatious 'Cousin Amy' to rub him the wrong way, he has no provocation to present to me a squaw as my great niece.”
”It is very evident the professor viciously remembers his own 'Amy,'”
said Miss Roberts, who was watching keenly for some manifestation of consciousness in Noel and Eglah.
”Miss Beatrix, no scapegoat 'Amy' bears away my sins of temper, because, as a naturalist, I am unalterably opposed to the marriage of cousins. I never owned but one sweetheart. She took my unfeathered young affections into her tender hands when she was only ten years old, and so carefully has she preserved them that after twenty years of married life she remains my charming sweetheart--my pearl of womanhood--the supreme joy of my existence. She is the one priceless fossil in my collection, guarded with jealous watchfulness, because she no more resembles the new feminine type than a snowy dove a blind, broken-winged, snapping hawk.”
”When I marry, my ambition will soar beyond being bottled in alcohol or boxed in sawdust or cotton wool, like a centipede or a cracked egg of the great auk. I should imagine that men who spend their work days among musty, stuffy fossils would rather enjoy the variety of an up-to-date, cultivated wife who kept in touch with social tides and currents. Now, Mr. Herriott, you who prowl about laboratories and museums until you understand their dreary jargon as fully as you do leading a german or playing polo, ought to be a wiser umpire than this one-sided shut-in scientist, who prefers dry bones to living pink flesh.”
”In the first place, Miss Beatrix, I must, in the absence of Mrs.
Cleveden, protest against her husband's cla.s.sification of her as a fossil. She is alive to her finger tips with enthusiasm for his work, in which she is his ablest a.s.sistant, and knowing something of his charming home life, I consider him the most enviable man of my acquaintance. We who are not so fortunate in the matter of sweethearts, must content ourselves with the best available subst.i.tute; and you know, 'if one cannot have what one loves, one must love what one has.'”
”A defence of fickleness quite unworthy of you; and moreover, Noel, utterly untrue, for of all people in the world you are the very last to surrender anything you really want.”
”Aunt Katrina, would you have me spend my life wailing for the moon?”
”Pooh! You are not so fatuous as to want to drag a surveyor's chain across its cold chasms and jagged heights; and after a brief study of your frozen charmer you would turn your telescope on something accessible and more valuable. Miss Kent, do you consider Noel a fickle person?”
Eglah looked up, and, meeting the eyes of her host, they both laughed.
”Certainly not. His life-long devotion to you ought to s.h.i.+eld him from all suspicion of inconstancy.”
”Aunt Trina, she is not an impartial umpire. The first time I saw her, a little girl wearing a snowy muslin with blue ribbon bows on her shoulders, we entered into a compact, adopted each other as half-brother and stepsister, and now in supreme trust we form a sort of mutual aid, mutual defence--on my part, admiration--a.s.sociation. If she saw fifty fatal flaws in me she would loyally conceal them from you, who are such a terribly severe censor.”
”Herriott ought to go into politics; don't you think so, Miss Manning?”
asked Mr. Hull.