Love and Skates/Chapter IX

Peter Skerrett came sailing round the purple rocks of his Point, skating like a man who has been in the South of Europe for two winters.
 * Chapter IX. Love in the First Degree.

He was decidedly Anglicized in his whiskers, coat, and shoes. Otherwise he in all respects repeated his well-known ancestor, Skerrett of the Revolution; whose two portraits — 1. A ruddy hero in regimentals, in Gilbert Stuart’s early brandy-and-water manner; 2. A rosy sage in senatorials, in Stuart’s later claret-and-water manner — hang in his descendant’s dining-room.

Peter’s first look was a provokingly significant one at the confused and blushing young lady. Secondly he inspected the Dying Gladiator on the ice.

“Have you been tilting at this gentleman, Mary?” he asked, in the voice of a cheerful, friendly fellow. “Why! Hullo. Hooray! It’s Wade, Richard Wade, Dick Wade! Don’t look, Miss Mary, while I give him the grips of all the secret societies we belonged to in College.”

Mary, however, did look on, pleased and amused, while Peter plumped down on the ice, shook his friend’s hand, and examined him as if he were fine crockery, spilt and perhaps shattered.

“It’s not a case of trepanning, Dick, my boy?” said he.

“No” said the other. “I tumbled in trying to dodge this lady. The ice thought my face ought to be scratched, because I had been scratching its face without mercy. My wits were knocked out of me; but they are tired of secession, and pleading to be let in again.”

“Keep some of them out for our sake! We must have you at our commonplace level. Well, Miss Mary, I suppose this is the first time you have had the sensation of breaking a man’s head. You generally hit lower.” Peter tapped his heart.

“I’m all right now, thanks to my surgeon,” says Wade. “Give me a lift, Peter.” He pulled up and clung to his friend.

“You’re the vine and I’m the lamp-post,” Skerrett said. “Mary, do you know what a pocket-pistol is?”

“I have seen such weapons concealed about the persons of modern warriors.”

“There’s one in my overcoat-pocket, with a cup at the but and a cork at the muzzle. Skate off now, like an angel, and get it. Bring Fanny, too. She is restorative.”

“Are you alive enough to admire that, Dick?” he continued, as she skimmed away.

“It would put a soul under the ribs of Death.”

“I venerate that young woman,” says Peter. “You see what a beauty she is, and just as unspoiled as this ice. Unspoiled beauties are rarer than rocs’ eggs.”

“She has a singularly true face,” Wade replied, “and that is the main thing, — the most excellent thing in man or woman.”

“Yes, truth makes that nuisance, beauty, tolerable.”

“You did not do me the honor to present me.”

“I saw you had gone a great way beyond that, my boy. Have you not her initials in cambric on your brow? Not M. T., which wouldn’t apply; but M. D.”

“Mary ——?”

“Damer.”

“I like the name,” says Wade, repeating it. “It sounds simple and thorough-bred.”

“Just what she is. One of the nine simple-hearted and thorough-bred girls on this continent.”

“Nine?”

“Is that too many? Three, then. That’s one in ten millions. The exact proportion of Poets, Painters, Orators, Statesmen, and all other Great Artists. Well, — three or nine, — Mary Damer is one of them. She never saw fear or jealousy, or knowingly allowed an ignoble thought or an ungentle word or an ungraceful act in herself. Her atmosphere does not tolerate flirtation. You must find out for yourself how much genius she has and has not. But I will say this, — that I think of puns two a minute faster when I’m with her. Therefore she must be magnetic, and that is the first charm in a woman.”

Wade laughed. “You have not lost your powers of analysis, Peter. But talking of this heroine, you have not told me anything about yourself, except apropos of punning.”

“Come up and dine, and we’ll fire away personal histories, broadside for broadside! I’ve been looking in vain for a worthy hero to set vis-à-vis to my fair kinswoman. But stop! perhaps you have a Christmas turkey at home, with a wife opposite, and a brace of boys waiting for drumsticks.”

“No, — my boys, like cherubs, await their own drumsticks. They’re not born, and I’m not married.”

“I thought you looked incomplete and abnormal. Well, I will show you a model wife, — and here she comes!”

Here they came, the two ladies, gliding round the Point, with draperies floating as artlessly artful as the robes of Raphael’s Hours, or a Pompeian Bacchante. For want of classic vase or patera, Miss Damer brandished Peter Skerrett’s pocket-pistol.

Fanny Skerrett gave her hand cordially to Wade, and looked a little anxiously at his pale face.

“Now, M. D.,” says Peter, “you have been surgeon, you shall be doctor and dose our patient.

Now, then, — ‘Hebe, pour free! Quicken his eyes with mountain-dew, That Styx, the detested, No more he may view.’”

“Thanks, Hebe!” Wade said, continuing the quotation, — “I quaff it! Io Pæan, I cry! The whiskey of the Immortals Forbids me to die.” “We effeminate women of the nineteenth century are afraid of broken heads,” said Fanny. “But Mary Damer seems quite to enjoy your accident, Mr. Wade, as an adventure.”

Miss Damer certainly did seem gay, and exhilarated.

“I enjoy it,” said Wade. “I perceive that I fell on my feet, when I fell on my crown. I tumbled among old friends, and I hope among new ones.”

“I have been waiting to claim my place among your old friends,” Mrs. Skerrett said, “ever since Peter told me you were one of his models.”

She delivered this little speech with a caressing manner which totally fascinated Wade.

Nothing was ever so absolutely pretty as Mrs. Peter Skerrett. Her complete prettiness left nothing to be desired.

“Never,” thought Wade, “did I see such a compact little casket of perfections. Every feature is thoroughly well done and none intrusively superior. Her little nose is a combination of all the amiabilities. Her black eyes sparkle with fun and mischief and wit, all playing over deep tenderness below. Her hair ripples itself full of gleams and shadows. The same coquetry of Nature that rippled her hair has dinted her cheeks with shifting dimples. Every time she smiles — and she smiles as if sixty an hour were not half-allowance — a dimple slides into view and vanishes like a dot in a flow of sunny water. And, O Peter Skerrett! if you were not the best fellow in the world, I should envy you that latent kiss of a mouth.”

“You need not say it, Wade, — your broken head exempts you from the business of compliments,” said Peter; “but I see you think my wife perfection. You’ll think so the more, the more you know her.”

“Stop, Peter,” said she, “or I shall have to hide behind the superior charms of Mary Damer.”

Miss Damer certainly was a woman of a grander order. You might pull at the bells or knock at the knockers and be introduced into the boudoirs of all the houses, villas, seats, chateaus, and palaces in Christendom without seeing such another. She belonged distinctly to the Northern races, — the “brave and true and tender” women. There was, indeed, a trace of hauteur and imperiousness in her look and manner; but it did not ill become her distinguished figure and face. Wade, however, remembered her sweet earnestness when she was playing leech to his wound, and chose to take that mood as her dominant one.

“She must have been desperately annoyed with bores and boobies,” he thought. “I do not wonder she protects herself by distance. I am afraid I shall never get within her lines again, — not even if I should try slow and regular approaches, and bombard her with bouquets for a twelve-month.”

“But, Wade,” says Peter, “all this time you have not told us what good luck sends you here to be wrecked on the hospitable shores of my Point.”

“I live here. I am chief cook and confectioner where you see the smoking top of that tall chimney up-stream.”

“Why, of course! What a dolt I was, not to think of you, when Churm told us an Athlete, a Brave, a Sage, and a Gentleman was the Superintendent of Dunderbunk; but said we must find his name out for ourselves. You remember, Mary. Miss Damer is Mr. Churm’s ward.”

She acknowledged with a cool bow that she did remember her guardian’s character of Wade.

“You do not say, Peter,” says Mrs. Skerrett, with a bright little look at the other lady, “why Mr. Churm was so mysterious about Mr. Wade.”

“Miss Damer shall tell us,” Peter rejoined, repeating his wife’s look of merry significance.

She looked somewhat teased. Wade could divine easily the meaning of this little mischievous talk. His friend Churm had no doubt puffed him furiously.

“All this time,” said Miss Damer, evading a reply, “we are neglecting our skating privileges.”

“Peter and I have a few grains of humanity in our souls,” Fanny said. “We should blush to sail away from Mr. Wade, while he carries the quarantine flag at his pale cheeks.”

“I am almost ruddy again,” says Wade. “Your potion, Miss Damer, has completed the work of your surgery. I can afford to dismiss my lamp-post.”

“Whereupon the post changes to a teetotum,” Peter said, and spun off in an eccentric, ending in a tumbles.

“I must have a share in your restoration, Mr. Wade,” Fanny claimed. “I see you need a second dose of medicine. Hand me the flask, Mary. What shall I pour from this magic bottle? juice of Rhine, blood of Burgundy, fire of Spain, bubble of Rheims, beeswing of Oporto, honey of Cyprus, nectar, or whiskey? Whiskey is vulgar, but the proper thing, on the whole, for these occasions. I prescribe it.” And she gave him another little draught to imbibe.

He took it kindly, for her sake, — and not alone for that, but for its own respectable sake. His recovery was complete. His head, to be sure, sang a little still, and ached not a little. Some fellows would have gone on the sick list with such a wound. Perhaps he would, if he had had a trouble to dodge. But here instead was a pleasure to follow. So he began to move about slowly, watching the ladies.

Fanny was a novice in the Art, and this was her first day this winter. She skated timidly, holding Peter very tightly. She went into the dearest little panics for fear of tumbles, and uttered the most musical screams and laughs. And if she succeeded in taking a few brave strokes and finished with a neat slide, she pleaded for a verdict of “Well done!” with such an appealing smile and such a fine show of dimples that every one was fascinated and applauded heartily.

Miss Damer skated as became her free and vigorous character. She had passed her Little Go as a scholar, and was now steadily winning her way through the list of achievements, before given, toward the Great Go. To-day she was at work at small circles backward. Presently she wound off a series of perfectly neat ones, and, looking up, pleased with her prowess, caught Wade’s admiring eye. At this she smiled and gave an arch little womanly nod of self-approval, which also demanded masculine sympathy before it was quite a perfect emotion.

With this charming gesture, the alert feather in her Amazonian hat nodded, too, as if it admired its lovely mistress.

Wade was thrilled. “Brava!” he cried, in answer to the part of her look which asked sympathy; and then, in reply to the implied challenge, he forgot his hurt and his shock, and struck into the same figure.

He tried not to surpass his fair exemplar too cruelly. But he did his peripheries well enough to get a repetition of the captivating nod and a Bravo! from the lady.

“Bravo!” said she. “But do not tax your strength too soon.”

She began to feel that she was expressing too much interest in the stranger. It was a new sensation for her to care whether men fell or got up. A new sensation. She rather liked it. She was a trifle ashamed of it. In either case, she did not wish to show that it was in her heart. The consciousness of concealment flushed her damask cheek.

It was a damask cheek. All her hues were cool and pearly; while Wade, Saxon too, had hot golden tints in his hair and moustache, and his color, now returning, was good strong red with plenty of bronze in it.

“Thank you,” he replied. “My force has all come back. You have electrified me.”

A civil nothing; but meaning managed to get into his tone and look, whether he would or not.

Which he perceiving, on his part began to feel guilty.

Of what crime?

Of the very same crime as hers, — the most ancient and most pardonable crime of youth and maiden, — that sweet and guiltless crime of love in the first degree.

So, without troubling themselves to analyze their feelings, they found a piquant pleasure in skating together, — she in admiring his tours de force, and he in instructing her.

“Look, Peter!” said Mrs. Skerrett, pointing to the other pair skating, he on the backward roll, she on the forward, with hands crossed and locked; — such contacts are permitted in skating, as in dancing. “Your hero and my heroine have dropped into an intimacy.”

“None but the Plucky deserve the Pretty,” says Peter.

“But he seems to be such a fine fellow, — suppose she shouldn’t —”

The pretty face looked anxious.

“Suppose he shouldn’t,” Peter on the masculine behalf returned.

“He cannot help it: Mary is so noble, — and so charming, when she does not disdain to be.”

“I do not believe she can help it. She cannot disdain Wade. He carries too many guns for that. He is just as fine as she is. He was a hero when I first knew him. His face does not show an atom of change; and you know what Mr. Churm told us of his chivalric deeds elsewhere, and how he tamed and reformed Dunderbunk. He is crystal grit, as crystalline and gritty as he can be.”

“Grit seems to be your symbol of the highest qualities. It certainly is a better thing in man than in ice-cream. But, Peter, suppose this should be a true love and should not run smooth?”

“What consequence is the smooth running, so long as there is strong running and a final getting in neck and neck at the winning-post?”

“But,” still pleaded the anxious soul, — having no anxieties of her own, she was always suffering for others, — “he seems to be such a fine fellow! and she is so hard to win!”

“Am I a fine fellow?”

“No, — horrid!”

“The truth, — or I let you tumble.”

“Well, upon compulsion, I admit that you are.”

“Then being a fine fellow does not diminish the said fellow’s chances of being blessed with a wife quite superfine.”

“If I thought you were personal, Peter, I should object to the mercantile adjective. ‘Superfine,’ indeed!”

“I am personal. I withdraw the obnoxious phrase, and substitute transcendent. No, Fanny dear, I read Wade’s experience in my own. I do not feel very much concerned about him. He is big enough to take care of himself. A man who is sincere, self-possessed, and steady does not get into miseries with beautiful Amazons like our friend. He knows too much to try to make his love run up hill; but let it once get started, rough running, gives it vim. Wade will love like a deluge, when he sees that he may, and I’d advise obstacles to stand off.”

“It was pretty, Peter, to see cold Mary Damer so gentle and almost tender.”

“I always have loved to see the first beginnings of what looks like love, since I saw ours.”

“Ours,” she said, — “it seems like yesterday.”

And then together they recalled that fair picture against its dark ground of sorrow, and so went on refreshing the emotions of that time until Fanny smiling said, —

“There must be something magical in skates, for here we are talking sentimentally like a pair of young lovers.”

“Health and love are cause and effect,” says Peter, sententiously.

Meanwhile Wade had been fast skating into the good graces of his companion. Perhaps the rap on his head had deranged him. He certainly tossed himself about in a reckless and insane way. Still he justified his conduct by never tumbling again, and by inventing new devices with bewildering rapidity.

This pair were not at all sentimental. Indeed, their talk was quite technical: all about rings and edges, and heel and toe, — what skates are best, and who best use them. There is an immense amount of sympathy to be exchanged on such topics, and it was somewhat significant that they avoided other themes where they might not sympathize so thoroughly. The negative part of a conversation is often as important as its positive.

So the four entertained themselves finely, sometimes as a quartette, sometimes as two duos with proper changes of partners, until the clear west began to grow golden and the clear east pink with sunset.

“It is a pity to go,” said Peter Skerrett. “Everything here is perfection and Fine Art; but we must not be unfaithful to dinner. Dinner would have a right to punish us, if we did not encourage its efforts to be Fine Art also.”

“Now, Mr. Wade,” Fanny commanded, “your most heroic series of exploits, to close this heroic day.”

He nimbly dashed through his list. The ice was traced with a labyrinth of involuted convolutions.

Wade’s last turn brought him to the very spot of his tumble.

“Ah!” said he. “Here is the oar that tripped me, with ‘Wade, his mark,’ gashed into it. If I had not this” — he touched Miss Damer’s handkerchief — “for a souvenir, I think I would dig up the oar and carry it home.”

“Let it melt out and float away in the spring,” Mary said. “It may be a perch for a sea-gull or a buoy for a drowning man.”

Here, if this were a long story instead of a short one, might be given a description of Peter Skerrett’s house and the menu of Mrs. Skerrett’s dinner. Peter and his wife had both been to great pillory dinners, ad nauseam, and learnt what to avoid. How not to be bored is the object of all civilization, and the Skerretts had discovered the methods.

I must dismiss the dinner and the evening, stamped with the general epithet, Perfection.

“You will join us again to-morrow on the river,” said Mrs. Skerrett, as Wade rose to go.

“To-morrow I go to town to report to my Directors.”

“Then next day.”

“Next day, with pleasure.”

Wade departed and marked this halcyon day with white chalk, as the whitest, brightest, sweetest of his life.