Part 11

"I don't know what you mean by vestas, but I'm through just the same," retorted Mrs. Upton; and she really was--for five years.

"Vestas are nice quiet matches that don't splurge and splutter. They give satisfaction to everybody. They burn evenly, and are altogether the swell thing in matches--and their heads don't fly off either," Upton explained.

"Well, I won't make even a vesta, you old goose," said Mrs. Upton, smiling faintly.

"You've made one, and it's a beauty," observed Upton, quietly, referring of course to their own case.

So, as I have said, Mrs. Upton forswore her match-making propensities for a period of five years, and people noting the fact marvelled greatly at her strength of character in keeping her hands out of matters in which they had once done such notable service. And it did indeed require much force of character in Mrs. Upton to hold herself aloof from the matrimonial ventures of others; for, although she was now a woman close upon forty, she had still the feelings of youth; she was fond of the society of young people, and had been for a long time the best-beloved chaperon in the community. It was hard for her to watch a growing romance and not help it along as she had done of yore; and many a time did her lips withhold the words that trembled upon them--words which would have furthered the fortunes of a worthy suitor to a waiting hand--but she had resolved, and there was the end of it.

It is history, however, that the strongest characters will at times falter and fall, and so it was with Mrs. Upton and her resolution finally. There came a time when the pressure was too strong to be resisted.

"I can't help it, Henry," she said, as she thought it all over, and saw wherein her duty lay. "We must bring Molly Meeker and Walter together. He is just the sort of a man for her; and if there is one thing he needs more than another to round out his character, it is a wife like Molly."

"Remember your oath, my dear," replied Upton.

"But this will be a vesta, Henry," smiled Mrs. Upton. "Walter and you are very much alike, and you said the other night that Molly reminded you of me--sometimes."

"That's true," said Upton. "She does--that's what I like about her--but, after all, she isn't you. A mill-pond might remind you at times of a great and beautiful lake, but it wouldn't be the lake, you know. I grant that Walter and I are alike as two peas, but I deny that Molly can hold a candle to you."

"Oh you!" snapped Mrs. Upton. "Haven't you got your eyes opened to my faults yet?"

"Yessum," said Upton. "They're great, and I couldn't get along without 'em, but I wouldn't stand them for five minutes if I'd married Molly Meeker instead of you. You'd better keep out of this. Stick to your resolution. Let Molly choose her own husband, and Walter his wife. You never can tell how things are going to turn out. Why, I introduced Willie Timpkins to George Barker at the club one night last winter, feeling that there were two fellows who were designed by Providence for the old Damon and Pythias performance, and it wasn't ten minutes before they were quarrelling like a couple of cats, and every time they meet nowadays they have to be introduced all over again."

"I don't wonder at that at all," said Mrs. Upton. "Willie Timpkins is precisely the same kind of a person that George Barker is, and when they meet each other and realize that they are exactly alike, and see how sort of small and mean they really are, it destroys their self-love."

"I never saw it in that light before," said Upton, reflectively, "but I imagine you are right. There's lots in that. If a man really wrote down on paper his candid opinion of himself, he'd have a good case for slander against the publisher who printed it--I guess."

"I should think you'd have known better than to bring those two together, and under the circumstances I don't wonder they hate each other," said Mrs. Upton.

"Sympathy ought to count for something," pleaded Upton. "Don't you think?"

"Of course," replied Mrs. Upton; "but a man wants to sympathize with the other fellow, not with himself. If you were a woman you'd understand that a little better. But to return to Molly and Walter--don't you think they really were made for each other?"

"No, I don't," said Upton. "I don't believe that anybody ever was made for anybody else. On that principle every baby that is born ought to be labelled: _Fragile. Please forward to Soandso_. This 'made-for-each-other' business makes me tired. It's predestination all over again, which is good enough for an express package, but doesn't go where souls are involved. Suppose that through some circumstance over which he has no control a Michigan man was made for a Russian girl--how the deuce is she to get him?"

"That's all nonsense, Henry," said Mrs. Upton, impatiently. "I don't know why," observed Upton. "I can quite understand how a Michigan man might make a first-rate husband for a Russian girl. Your idea involves the notion of affinity, and if I know anything about affinities, they have to go chasing each other through the universe for cycle after cycle, in the hope of some day meeting--and it's all beastly nonsense. My affinity might be Delilah, and Samson's your beautiful self; but I'll tell you, on my own responsibility, that if I had caught Samson hanging about your father's house during my palmy days I'd have thrashed the life out of him, whether his hair was short or long, and don't you forget it, Mrs. Upton."

Mrs. Upton laughed heartily. "I've no doubt you could have done it, my dear Henry," said she. "I'd have helped you, anyhow. But affinities or not, we are placed here for a certain purpose--"

"I presume so," said Upton. "I haven't found out what it is, but I'm satisfied."

"Yes--and so am I. Now," continued Mrs. Upton, "I think that we all ought to help each other along. Whether I am your affinity or not, or whether you are mine--"

"I _am_ yours--for keeps, too," said Upton. "I shall be just as attentive in heaven, where marriage is not recognized, as I am here, if I hang for it."

"Well--however that may be, we have this life to live, and we should go about it in the best way possible. Now I believe that Walter will be more of a man, will accomplish more in the end, if he marries Molly than he will as a bachelor, or if he married--Jennie Perkins, for instance, who is so much of a manly woman that she has no sympathy with either sex."

"Right!" said Upton.

"You like Walter, don't you, and want him to succeed?"

"I do."

"You realize that an unmarried physician hasn't more than half a chance?"

"Unfortunately yes," said Upton. "Though I don't agree that a man can cut your leg off more expertly or carry you through the measles more successfully just because he has happened to get married. As a matter of fact, when I have my leg cut off I want it to be done by a man who hasn't been kept awake all night by the squalling of his lately arrived son."

"Nevertheless," said Mrs. Upton, "society decrees that a doctor needs a wife to round him out. There's no disputing that fact--and it is perfectly proper. Bachelors may know all about the science of medicine, and make a fair showing in surgery, but it isn't until a man is married that he becomes the wholly successful practitioner who inspires confidence."

"I suppose it's so," said Upton. "No doubt of it. A man who has suffered always does do better--"

"Henry!" ejaculated Mrs. Upton, severely. "Remember this: I didn't marry you because I thought you were a cynic. Now Walter as a young physician needs a wife--"

"I suppose he's got to have somebody to confide professional secrets to," said Upton.

"That may be the reason for it," observed Mrs. Upton; "but whatever the reason, it is a fact. He needs a wife, and I propose that he shall have one; and it is very important that he should get the right one."

"Are you going to propose to the girl in his behalf?" queried Henry.

"No; but I think he's a man of sense, and I know Molly is. Now I propose to bring them together, and to throw them at each other's heads in such a way that they won't either of them guess that I am doing it--"

"Now, my dear," interrupted Upton, "don't! Don't try any throwing. You know as well as I do that no woman can throw straight. If you throw Molly Meeker at Walter's head--"

"I may strike his heart. Precisely!" said Mrs. Upton, triumphantly. "And that's all I want. Then we shall have a beautiful wedding," she added, with enthusiasm. "We'll give a little dinner on the 18th--a nice informal dinner. We'll invite the Jacksons and the Peltons and Molly and Walter. They will meet, fall in love like sensible people, and there you are."

"I guess it's all right," said Upton, "though to fall in love sensibly isn't possible, my dear. What people who get married ought to do is to fall unreasonably, madly in love--"

But Mrs. Upton did not listen. She was already at her escritoire, writing the invitations for the little dinner.

II

A SUCCESSFUL CASE

"The pleasantest angling is to see the fish ... greedily devour the treacherous bait." --_Much Ado about Nothing_.

The invitations to Mrs. Upton's little dinner were speedily despatched by the strategic maker of matches, and, to her great delight, were one and all accepted with commendable promptness, as dinner invitations are apt to be. The night came, and with it came also the unsuspecting young doctor and the equally unsuspicious Miss Meeker. Everything was charming. The Jacksons were pleased with the Peltons, and the Peltons were pleased with the Jacksons, and, best of all, Walter was pleased with Miss Meeker, while she was not wholly oblivious to his existence. She even quoted something he happened to say at the table, after the ladies had retired, leaving the men to their cigars, and had added that "_that_ was the way she liked to hear a man talk"--all of which was very encouraging to the well-disposed spider who was weaving the web for these two particular flies. As for Bliss--Walter Bliss, M.D.--he was very much impressed; so much so, indeed, that as the men left their cigars to return to the ladies he managed to whisper into Upton's ear,

"Rather bright girl that, Henry."

"Very," said Upton. "Sensible, too. One of those bachelor girls who've got too much sense to think much about men. Pity, rather, in a way, too. She'd make a good wife, but, Lord save us! it would require an Alexander or a Napoleon to make love to her."

"Oh, I don't know," said Bliss, confidently. "If the right man came along--"

"Of course; but there aren't many right men," said Upton. "I've no doubt there's somebody equal to the occasion somewhere, but with the population of the world at the present figures there's a billion chances to one she'll never meet him. What do you think of the financial situation, Walter? Pretty bad, eh?"

Thus did the astute Mr. Upton play the cards dealt out to him by his fairer half in this little game of hearts of her devising, and it is a certain fact that he played them well, for the interjection of a more or less political phase into their discussion rather whetted than otherwise the desire of Dr. Bliss to talk about Miss Meeker.

"Oh, hang the financial situation! Where does she live, Henry?" was Bliss's answer, from which Upton deduced that all was going well.

That his deductions were correct was speedily shown, for it was not many days before Mrs. Upton, with a radiant face, handed Upton a note from Walter asking her if she would not act as chaperon for a little sail on the Sound upon his sloop. He thought a small party of four, consisting of herself and Henry, Miss Meeker and himself, could have a jolly afternoon and evening of it, dining on board in true picnic fashion, and returning to earth in the moonlight.

"How do you like that, my lord?" she inquired, her eyes beaming with delight.

"Dreadful!" said Henry. "Got to the moonlight stage already--poor Bliss!"

"Poor Bliss indeed," retorted Mrs. Upton. "Blissful Bliss, you ought to call him. Shall we go?"

"Shall we go?" echoed Upton. "If I fell off the middle of Brooklyn Bridge, would I land in the water?"

"I don't know," laughed Mrs. Upton. "You might drop into the smoke-stack of a ferry-boat."

"Of course we'll go," said Upton. "I'd go yachting with my worst enemy."

"Very well. I'll accept," said Mrs. Upton, and she did. The sail was a great success, and everything went exactly as the skilful match-maker had wished. Bliss looked well in his yachting suit. The appointments of the yacht were perfect. The afternoon was fine, the supper entrancing, and the moonlight irresistible. Miss Meeker was duly impressed, and as for the doctor, as Upton put it, he was "going down for the third time."

"If you aren't serious in this match, my dear, throw him a rope," he pleaded, in his friend's behalf.

"He wouldn't avail himself of it if I did," said Mrs. Upton. "He wants to drown--and I fancy Molly wants him to, too, because I can't get her to mention his name any more."

"Is that a sign?" asked Upton.

"Indeed yes; if she talked about him all the time I should be afraid she wasn't quite as deeply in love as I want her to be. She's only a woman, you know, Henry. If she were a man, it would be different."

The indications were verified by the results. August came, and Mrs. Upton invited Miss Meeker to spend the month at the Uptons' summer cottage at Skirton, and Bliss was asked up for "a day or two" while she was there.

"Isn't it a little dangerous, my dear?" Upton asked, when his wife asked him to extend the hospitality of the cottage to Bliss. "I should think twice before asking Walter to come."

"How absurd you are!" retorted the match-maker. "What earthly objection can there be?"

"No objection at all," returned Upton, "but it may destroy all your good work. It will be a terrible test for Walter, I am afraid--breakfast, for instance, is a fearful ordeal for most men. They are so apt to be at their very worst at breakfast, and it might happen that Walter could not stand the strain upon him through a series of them. Then Molly may not look well in the mornings. How is that? Is she like you--always at her best?"

Mrs. Upton replied with a smile. It was evident that she did not consider the danger very great.

"They might as well get used to seeing each other at breakfast," she said. "If they find they don't admire each other at that time, it is just as well they should know it in advance."

Hence it was, as I have said, that Bliss was invited to Skirton for a day or two. And the day or two, in the most natural way in the world, lengthened out into a week or two. There were walks and talks; there were drives and long horseback rides along shaded mountain roads, and when it rained there were mornings in the music-room together. Bliss was good-natured at breakfast, and Molly developed a capacity for appearing to advantage at that trying meal that aroused Upton's highest regard; and finally--well, finally Miss Molly Meeker whispered something into Mrs. Upton's ear, at which the latter was so overjoyed that she nearly hugged her young friend to death.

"Here, my dear, look out," remonstrated Upton, who happened to be present. "Don't take it all. Perhaps she wants to live long enough to whisper something to me."

"I do," said Molly, and then she announced her engagement to Walter Bliss; and she did it so sweetly that Upton had all he could do to keep from manifesting his approval after the fashion adopted by his wife.

"I wish I was a literary man," said Upton to his wife the next day, when they were talking over the situation. "If I knew how to write I'd make a fortune, I believe, just following up the little romances that you plan."

"Oh, nonsense, Henry," replied Mrs. Upton. "I don't plan any romances--I select certain people for each other and bring them together, that is all."

"And push 'em along--prod 'em slightly when they don't seem to get started, eh?" insinuated Upton. "Well, yes--sometimes."

"And what else does a novelist do? He picks out two people, brings them together, and pushes them along through as many chapters as he needs for his book," said Henry. "That's all. Now if I could follow your couples I'd have a tremendous advantage in basing my studies on living models instead of having to imagine my realism. I repeat I wish I could write. This little romance of Mollie and Walter that has just ended--"

"Just what?" asked Mrs. Upton.

"Just ended," repeated Upton. "What's the matter with that?"

"You mean just begun," said Mrs. Upton, with a sigh. "The hardest work a match-maker has is in conducting the campaign after the nominations are made. When two people love each other madly, they are apt to do a great deal of quarrelling over absolutely nothing, and I'm not at all sure that an engagement means marriage until the ceremony has taken place."

"And even then," suggested Henry, "there are the divorce courts, eh?"

"We won't refer to them," said Mrs. Upton, severely; "they are relics of barbarism. But as for the ending of my romance, my real work now begins. I must watch those two young people carefully and see that their little quarrels are smoothed over, their irritations allayed, and that every possible difference between them is adjusted."

"But you and I didn't quarrel when we were engaged," persisted Upton.

"No, we didn't, Henry," replied Mrs. Upton. "But that was only because it takes two to make a quarrel, and I loved you so much that I was really blind to all your possibilities as an irritant."

"Oh!" said Henry, reflectively.

III

A SET-BACK

"All is confounded, all! Reproach and everlasting shame Sits mocking in our plumes."

--_Henry V_.

Time demonstrated with great effectiveness the unhappy fact that Mrs. Upton knew whereof she spoke when she likened an engagement to a political campaign, in that the real battle begins after the nominations are made. Walter Bliss had decided views as to life, and Miss Meeker was hardly less settled in her convictions. Long before she had met Bliss, in default of a real she had builded up in her mind an ideal man, which at first, second, and even third sight Walter had seemed to her to represent. But unfortunately there is a fourth sight, and the lover or the _fiancée_ who can get beyond this is safe--comparatively safe, that is, for everything in this world has its merits or its demerits, comparatively speaking, and the comparison is more often than not made from the point of view of what ought to be rather than of what really is. Mrs. Upton was a realist--that is, she thought she was; and so was Miss Meeker. Everybody looks at life from his or her own point of view, and there must always be, consequently, two points of view, for there will always be a male way and a female way of looking at things. Walter was in love with his profession. Molly was in love with him as an abstract thing. She knew nothing of him as a Washington fighting measles; she was not aware whether he could combat tonsillitis as successfully as Napoleon fought the Austrians or not, and it may be added that she didn't care. He was merely a man in her estimation; a thing in the abstract, and a most charming thing on the whole. He, on the other hand, looked upon her not as a woman, but as a soul, and a purified soul at that: an angel, indeed, without the incumbrance of wings, was she, and with a rather more comprehensive knowledge of dress than is attributed to most of angels. But two people cannot go on forming an ideal of each other continuously without at some time reaching a point of divergence, and Walter and Molly reached that point within ten weeks. It happened that while calling upon her one evening Walter received a professional summons which he admitted was all nonsense--why should people call in doctors when it is "all nonsense"?

The call came while Walter was turning over the leaves at the piano as Molly played.

"What is this?" he said, as he opened the note that was addressed to him. "Humph! Mrs. Hubbard's boy is sick--"

"Must you go?" Molly asked.

"I suppose so," said Walter. "I saw him this afternoon, and there is not the slightest thing the matter with him, but I must go."

"Why?" asked Molly. "Are you the kind of doctor they call in when there's nothing the matter?"

She did not mean to be sarcastic, but she seemed to be, and Walter, of course, like a properly sensitive soul, was hurt.

"I must go," he said, positively, ignoring the thrust.

"But you say there is nothing the matter with the boy," suggested Molly.

"I'm going just the same," said Walter, and he went.

Molly played on at the piano until she heard the front door slam, and then she rose up and went to the window. Walter had gone and was out of sight. Then, sad to say, she became philosophical. It doesn't really pay for girls to become philosophical, but Molly did not know that, and she began a course of reasoning.

"He knows he isn't needed, but he goes," she said to herself, as she gazed dejectedly out of the window at the gaslamps on the other side of the street. "And he will of course charge the Hubbards for his services, admitting, however, that his services are nothing. That is not conscientious--it is not professional. He is not practising for the love of his profession, but for the love of money. I am disappointed in him--and we were having such a pleasant time, too!"

So she ran on as she sat there in the window-seat looking out upon the dreary street; and you may be sure that the commingling of her ideals and her disappointments and her sense of loneliness did not help Walter's case in the least, and that when they met the next time her manner towards him was what some persons term "sniffy," which was a manner Walter could not and would not abide. Hence a marked coolness arose between the two, which by degrees became so intensified that at about the time when Mrs. Upton was expected to be called in to assist at a wedding, she was stunned by the information that "all was over between them." "Just think of that, Henry," the good match-maker cried, wrathfully. "All is over between them, and Molly pretends she is glad of it."

"Made for each other too!" ejaculated Upton, with a mock air of sorrow. "What was the matter?"

"I can't make out exactly," observed Mrs. Upton. "Molly told me all about it, and it struck me as a merely silly lovers' quarrel, but she won't hear of a reconciliation. She says she finds she was mistaken in him. I wish you'd find out Walter's version of it."

"I respectfully refuse, my dear Mrs. Upton," returned Henry. "I'm not a partner in your enterprise, and if you get a misfit couple returned on your hands it is your lookout, not mine. Pity, isn't it, that you can't manage matters like a tailor? Suit of clothes is made for me, I try it on, don't like it, send it back and have it changed to fit. If you could make a few alterations now in Molly--"

"Henry, you are flippant," asserted Mrs. Upton. "There's nothing the matter with Molly--not the least little thing; and Walter ought to be ashamed of himself to give her up, and I'm going to see that he doesn't. I believe a law ought to be made, anyhow, requiring engaged persons who want to break off to go into court and show cause why they shouldn't be enjoined from so doing."

"A sort of antenuptial divorce law, eh?" suggested Upton. "That's not a bad idea; you ought to write to the papers and suggest it--using your maiden name, of course, not mine."

"If you would only find out from Walter what he's mad at, and tell him he's an idiot and a heartless thing, maybe we could smooth it out, because I know that 'way down in her soul Molly loves him."

"Very well, I'll do it," said Upton, good-naturedly; "but mind you it's only to oblige you, and if Bliss throws me out of the club window for meddling in his affairs, it will be your fault."