The Wit and Humor of America Volume IX Part 12

Now, the question arises: Why should Lucy Putnam, or any other girl, take any interest in a man who was so thoroughly bashful that his trembling efforts to converse made the light quivering aspen look like a ten-ton obelisk for calmness? The reason was, and is, that woman has the same eye for babies and men. The more helpless these objects, the more interested are the women. The man who makes the highest appeal to a woman is he whose tongue cleaves to the roof of his mouth and who does not know what to do with his hands in her presence. She must be a princess, he a slave. Each knows this premise is unsupported by facts, yet it is a joyous fiction while it lasts. James Trottingham Minton was not a whit bashful when with men. No. He called on Mr. Putnam at his office, and with the calmness of an agent collecting rent, asked him for the hand of his daughter.

"Why, Jimmy," Mr. Putnam said good-naturedly, "of course I haven't any objections to make. Seems to me that's a matter to be settled between you and Lucy."

Jimmy smiled confidentially.

"I suppose you're right, Mr. Putnam. But, you see, I've never had the nerve to say anything about it to her."

"Tut, tut. Nothing to be scared of. Nothing at all. What's the matter with you, young man? In my day, if a fellow wanted to marry a girl he wouldn't go and tell her father. He'd marry her first and then ask the old man where they should live."

Mr. Putnam chuckled heavily. Mr. Putnam was possessed of a striking fund of reminiscences of how young men used to do.

"Of course, Mr. Putnam," Jimmy said. "But the girls nowadays are different, and a fel--"

"Not a bit of it. No, sir. Women haven't changed since Eve's time. You mustn't get woman mixed up with dry goods stores, Jimmy. Don't you know there's lots of fellows nowadays that fall in love with the fall styles?

Ha, ha!"

It was not all clear to Minton, but he laughed dutifully. His was a diplomatic errand, and the half of diplomacy is making the victim think you are in agreement with him.

"Yes, sir," Putnam chuckled on, "I'll bet that silk and ruffles and pink shades over the lamp have caused more proposals than all the dimples and bright eyes in the world. Eh, Jimmy? But you haven't proposed yet?"

"I did. You gave your consent."

"But you're not going to marry me. You want Lucy. You'll have to speak to her about it."

"Now look, Mr. Putnam, I can come to you and ask you for her, and it's the same thing."

"Not by a hundred miles, my boy. If I told Lucy you had said that, she wouldn't be at home next time you called. The trouble with you is that you don't understand women. You've got to talk direct to them."

Jimmy looked hopelessly out of the window.

"No; what you say to me and what I say to you hasn't any more to do with you and Lucy than if you were selling me a bill of goods. I like you, Jimmy, and I've watched your career so far with interest, and I look for great things from you in the future, and that's why I say to you to go ahead and get Lucy, and good luck to you both."

Mr. Putnam took up some papers from his desk and pretended to be studying them, but from the tail of his eye he gathered the gloom that was settling over Jimmy's face. The elder man enjoyed the situation.

"Well, Mr. Putnam," Jimmy asked, "why can't you just tell Lucy for me that I have asked you, and that you say it's all right? Then when I go to see her next time, it'll all be arranged and understood."

"Le' me see. Didn't I read a poem or something at school about some one who hadn't sand enough to propose to a girl and who got another man to ask her? But it wasn't her own father. Why, Jimmy, if you haven't courage enough to propose to a girl, what do you suppose will be your finish if she marries you? A married man has to have s.p.u.n.k."

"I've got the s.p.u.n.k all right, but you understand how I feel."

"Sure! Let me give you some advice. When you propose to a girl, you don't have to come right out and ask her to marry you."

Jimmy caught at the straw.

"You don't?" he asked.

"Certainly not. There's half a dozen ways of letting her know that you want her. Usually--always, I may say--she knows it anyway, and unless she wants you she'll not let you tell her so. But if I wanted a short, sharp 'No' from a girl, I'd get her father to ask her to marry me."

"Then you mean that I've got to ask her myself?"

"To be sure."

"I can't do it, Mr. Putnam; I can't."

"Write it."

"Why, I'd feel as if the postman and everybody else knew it."

"Telephone."

"Worse yet."

"Jim Minton, I'm disgusted with you. I thought you were a young man with some enterprise, but if you lose your courage over such an every-day affair as proposing to a girl--"

"But men don't propose every day."

"Somebody is proposing to somebody every day. It goes on all the time.

No, sir; I wash my hands of it. I'll not withdraw my consent, and you have my moral support and encouragement, but getting married is the same as getting into trouble--you have to handle your own case."

"But, Mr. Putnam--"

"You'll only go over the same ground again. Good morning. I don't want to hear any more of this until it is settled one way or the other. I'll not help and I'll not hinder. It--It's up to you."

With this colloquial farewell Mr. Putnam waved his hand and turned to his papers. Jimmy acc.u.mulated his hat and stick, and left, barren of hope.

That night he took Lucy to see "Romeo and Juliet." The confidence and enthusiasm of _Romeo_ merely threw him into a deeper despair of his own ability as a suitor, and made him even more taciturn and stumbling of speech than ever. His silence grew heavier and heavier, until at last Lucy threw out her never-failing life-line. She asked him about his cousin Mary.

"By the way," he said, brightening up, "Cousin Mary is going through here one day next week."

"Is she? How I should like to know her. If she is anything like you she must be very agreeable."

"She isn't like me, but she is agreeable. Won't you let me try to bring you two together--at lunch down-town, or something like that?"

"It would be fine."

"I'll do it. I'll arrange it just as soon as I see her."

Then silence, pall-like, fell again upon them. Jimmy thought of _Romeo_, and Lucy thought of--_Romeo_, let us say. When a young man and a young woman, who are the least bit inclined one to another, witness Shakespeare's great educative effort, the young woman can not help imagining herself leaning over the balcony watching the attempts of the young man to clamber up the rope ladder.

After he had gone that night, Lucy sat down for a soul communion with herself. Pity the woman who does not have soul communions. She who can sit side by side with herself and make herself believe that she is perfectly right and proper in thinking and believing as she does, is happy. The first question Lucy Putnam put to her subliminal self was: "Do I love Jimmy?" Subliminal self, true to s.e.x, equivocated. It said: "I am not sure." Whereupon Lucy asked: "Why do I love him?" Then ensued the debate. Subliminal self said it was because he was a clean, good-hearted, manly fellow. Lucy responded that he was too bashful. "He is handsome," retorted subliminal self. "But there are times when he grows so abashed that he is awkward." Subliminal self said he would outgrow that. "But there are other men who are just as nice, just as handsome, and just as clever, who are not so overwhelmingly shy," argued Lucy. Whereat subliminal self drew itself up proudly and demanded: "Name one!" And Lucy was like the person who can remember faces, but has no memory at all for names.

II

Cousin Mary came to town as she had promised, and she made Cousin Jimmy drop his work and follow her through the shops half the morning. Cousin Mary was all that Cousin Jimmy had ever said of her. She was pretty and she was genial. When these attributes are combined in a cousin they invite confidences.

The two were standing on a corner, waiting for a swirl of foot pa.s.sengers, carriages and street-cars, to be untangled, when Mary heard Jimmy making some remark about "Miss Putnam."