114
IN PURSUIT OF A PARSON.
effect a meeting and reconciliation between the
lovers
Of course, you know what happened, being familiar with romances and love matters, Pretty Marian and her old-maid aunt (who looked like an umbrella with a frizzed wig set on it, and always moved with a creak, as if her machinery was out of order) stationed themselves by Alf's bed and watched over him as only women can. I am always willing to speak a good word for the sex whenever I can do it conscientiously— heaven knows they need it sorely enough!
The fever did set in, and Alf had a terrible bout, and death made a fierce old struggle for his prey; but the surgeon, and the nursing, and Alf’s constitution, were too much for him, and they beat him off at last.
Finally, the day came when handsome Alf woke up out of his delirium as pale as a ghost and weak as a baby, and the first sight that met his eyes was Marian’s dear face bending over him, and Marian’s sweet voice assuring him that it was not a dream.
So everybody was glad, and Damon relented enough to let me write to Cain, as he had christ- ened the Boston unfortunate, and put him out of his misery; for the poor fellow had been forced to go back to Boston, (what a fate!) and was daily sending us imploring and penitent letters to inquire about the wounded man—his ‘victim, as Damon insisted on calling Alf.
Alf got so he could be dressed and sit up in ‘the sun; and one day Damon beckoned me mys- teriously, and I crept toward the veranda, and I saw a very pretty picture. Alf sitting back in his easy-chair, and Marian half on her knees by his side, and his arms were about her, and they were looking in each other’s faces— heigho!
“What a pair of fools!” whispered Damon; but I knew he was pleased for all that.
I was so softened by what had happened, that ‘when we got back to town, and Alf sent us word in a few weeks to be ready for his wedding, I forgave him and her, and was quite satisfied about them; but though that wretched Damon had done his best to bring them together again, he was terribly severe on, both, ,When I at- tempted to say that for once I approved of what was going on, and that I really believed the pair would be happy, Damon flew out at me in the most violent way, and abused me worse than he had ever done in his whole life, which is saying a good deal, for he was very unreserved in the expression of his sentiments even on ordinary occasions,
«Pleased!” quoth he, knocking the ashes out of his pipe fiercely, ‘A good thing! you great maundering ass! I know how it will end, I’ve seen one good fellow after another go over the bay; here’s Alf—it’ll be you next! You'll let some woman make a blind bat of you; and first you know, you'll be tied, hand and foot, scratched, fondled, teazed, deceived, made to quarrel with your relatives, to hate your mother, to stop smoking, to be humdrum, bewitched, bekissed, befooled, bedeviled—married! Ugh! Shut up, you great cormorant, you!”
I declare, he fairly alarmed me, and I could not speak to a woman for a month after. From the date of Alf’s marriage, Damon went on worse than ever about marriage, and was set down as a more hopeless case than before, by everybody that knew him. His heretical opinions abso- lutely were too much for me sometimes, and the mothers of families regarded him as a species of ogre, who would probably devour the youngest and tenderest of their offspring, without remorse, if only he found an opportunity.
Well, I am coming to the finale. Damon had been out of town; he was gone a good while, and though he wrote to me occasionally, his letters. were so vague and unsatisfactory, that I felt confident he was deep in some sort of mis- chief, though what the mature of it might be I never dreamed.
He came back in the autumn, and, would you believe it? I discovered a change in him,, so marked, that, for the life of me, I could not tell what was up. I scarcely ever saw him, yet, when we met, he was as friendly as ever; so I could not think that he was angry. He had always vague excuses, which threw no light on the matter, to offer for his inability to visit the studio. As for the old-time bachelor-parties, he stoutly refused to go to any of them, and one day had the impudence to take me to task for an abandoned Bohemian, which came with very poor grace from him, though he was s0 brazen about it that he quite took my breath away; and it was not until he was gone that I remembered how I might have turned the tables on him by recalling a little of his own past, if I had only kept my wits about me during his tirade.
Time went on; vague whispers reached me, grew, spread, took shape and form. I heard of Damon at all sorts of proper places, and never alone; and, most suspicious sign of all, it was invariably the same female that hung on his arm.
I looked about, the old studio, and felt disconsolate. I remembered Dick, and Jo, and Alf, and the troop of jolly, good fellows who
