Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1910-06-21
Copyright 1909
CHAPTER /.
At Least Meant Well.

When the dreadful thing occurred
that night, every one turned on me.
The injustice of it hurt me most.
They said l got up the dinner. that
asked them to give up other engage
ments and. come, that l promised I'll
kinds of jollifcation, if they would
come; and then when they did come
and got in the papers, and every ONE
but ourselves-laughed himself black
in the face. they turned on me! 1,
who suffered ten times to their one!
shall never forget what Dallas Brown
said to me, standing with coal shovel
in one hand ard a-well, perhaps it
would be better to tell it all in the or
der it happened.
1t began with Jimmy Wilson and a
conspiracy, was helped on by foot
square piece of yellow paper and ia
panese butler, and it enmeshed and
mixed up generally ten respectable
members of society and a policeman.
\ incidentally, it involved pearl collar
and a box of soap, which sounds in
congruous, doesn't it?
1t is a great misfortune to be stout.
especially for a man. Jim was rotund
and looked shorter than he really was,
and as all the lines Of his face, or what
should have been lines, were really
dimples. his face was about as flexible
and full of expression as pillow in
tight cover. The angrier he got the
funnier he looked. and when he was
raging, and his neck swelled up over
his collar and got red, he was entranc-
ing. And everybody liked him, and
borrowed money from him, and laugh
ed at his pictures Che has one in the
Hargrave gallery in London now, so
people buy them instead), and smoked
his cigarettes, and tried to steal his
jap. The whole story hinges on the
Jap.
The trouble was l think, that no one
took Jim seriously. His ambition In
life was to be taken seriously, but peo-
pie steadily refused to. His art was
huge joke-except to himself. If he
asked people to dinner, every one eX-
pected a frolic. When he married Bella
Knowles, people chuckled at the we'd
ding and considered 1t the widest
prank of Jimmy's career, although
Jim himself seemed to take it awfully
hard.
We had all known them both for
years. l went to Pennington with
Bella, and Anne Brown was her matron
of honor when she married Jim. My
first winter out, Jimmy had paid me a
lot of attention. He painted my por-
trait in oils and had a studio tea to
exhibit it. 1t was very nice picture,
but it did not look like me, so stayed
away from the exhibition. Jim asked
me to. He said he was not photog-
rapher, and that anyhow the rest of
my features called for the nose he had
given me, and that all the Greuze wo-
men have long necks. have not.
After l had refused Jim twice he
met Bella at camp in the Adirondacks
and when he came back he came at
once to see me. He seemed to think
I would be sorry to lose him, and he
blundered over the telling for twenty
minutes. OF course, no woman likes to
lose a lover no matter what she may
say about it, but Jim had been getting
on my nerves for some time, and l was
much calmer than he expected me to
be.
IF you mean," said finally in des-
peration, that you and Bella are-are
in love- why don't you say so, Jim? l
think you will find that l stand it
wonderfully.
He frightened perceptibly.
'I didn't know how you would take
it, Kit" he said, and l hope we will
always be bully friends. You are alb
solutely sure you don't care a whoop
for me?"
Absolutely" replied. and we shook
hands on it. Then he began about
Bella; it was very tiresOme.
Bella is a nice girl, but had roomed
with her at school, and was under no
illusions. When Jim raved about Bella
and her banjo. and Bella and her gui-
tar. 1 had painful moments when l re-
called Bella learning her two songs on
each instrument. and the old English
ballad she had learned to play on the
harp. When he said she was too good
for him, | never batted an eye. And
shook hands solemnly across the tea
table again, and wished him happiness
which was sincere enough, but hope
less-and said we had only been play
ing a game, but that it was time TO
stop playing. Jim kissed my hand, and
it was really very touching.
We had been the best of friends ever
since. Two days before the wedding
he came around from his tailor's, and
we burned all his letters to me. He
would read one and say: Here's
crackerjack, Kit" and pass it to me.
And after l had read it we would lay
it on the firelog, and Jim would say,
Il am not worthy Of her, Kit. | won
der if | can make her happy?" Or
Did YOU know that the Duke of Bel
ford proposed to her in London last
winter?"
OF course. one has to take the wom-
ans word about a thing like that, but
the Duke of Belford had been mad
about Maude Richard all that winter
You can see that the burning of the
letters. which was meant to be remin-
iscently sentimental, sort of how-sil-
ly-we- were butt is -all-over-n oc-
casion. became actually two hours
eulogy of Bella. And just when | was
bored to death, the Mercer girls drop
ped in and heard Jim begin To read one
commencing dearest Kit" And the
next day after the rehearsal dinner
they told Bella.
There was very nearly no wedding
at all. Bella came to see me in fren-
zy the next morning and threw Jim
and his two hundred odd pounds in my
face, and although l explained it all
over and over, she never quite forgaVe
me. That was what made it so hard
later-the situation would have been