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'Charge It': Keeping Up With Harry, a fiction by Irving Bacheller |
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Chapter 7. In Which Socrates Attacks The Worst Doers And Best Sellers |
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_ CHAPTER VII. IN WHICH SOCRATES ATTACKS THE WORST DOERS AND BEST SELLERS "One evening, soon after that, Betsey and I went to a party at Deacon Benson's. The Deacon is Marie's grandfather--a strict, old-line Congregationalist. The old gentleman owned some two hundred acres in the very heart of Pointview and about a mile of shore-front. In all the buying and selling, he had refused to part with an acre of his land, now worth at least a million dollars. He had willed it all to Marie. "Deacon Joe was a relic of Puritan days, with shrewd eyes under heavy gray tufts, and a mouth bent like a sickle, and whiskers under a strong chin, and lines in his face that suggested the heart of a lion. In his walks he was always accompanied by a hickory cane and a bulldog whose countenance and philosophy were like unto those of the Deacon. "He was a perfectly honest man who had joined the church with mental reservations. He had reserved the right to employ certain adjectives and nouns which had been useful in Pointview since the days of the pioneer, and which had grown more and more indispensable to the opinions of an honest man. The verb 'to damn' in all its parts and relations had been one of them. The word 'hell' was another. It represented a thing of great conversational value, and he recommended it with perfect frankness to certain people. He loved hell and hard cider, and hated Episcopalians. He loved to tell how one Episcopalian had cheated him in a horse trade, and how another had never paid for a bushel of onions. That was enough for him. He had always thought them a loose, unprincipled lot with no adequate respect for fire and brimstone. But Deacon Joe was honest, and his word was worth a hundred cents on the dollar. "Now the Delances were Episcopalians from away back--High-Church Episcopalians, at that. The old man had sniffed a good deal when Harry began to pay attention to Marie, and had come to see me about it. "I eased his fears and appealed to his avarice. Harry had too much money and some follies, I confessed, but he was sound at heart, and I had hope of making a strong man of him, and of course his money might be a great lever in his hands. "'Very well--we'll keep an eye on him,' he snapped, and left me without another word. "After that Marie was allowed to go out with the young man in his drag and tandem. "Harry and his sister came to the party at Deacon Joe's, and brought with them a late volume of D'Annunzio for Marie to read. Harry wished to know if I had read it, and gave us a talk on the realism of this modern Italian author. "Again I drew on the memoirs of Dr. Godfrey Vogeldam Guph, and this time I explained that the learned doctor had all the talents but one. He never told a lie--never but once, and that was on his death-bed. Yes, it was a little late, but still it was in time to save his reputation, and, possibly, even his soul. To a man of his parts the truth had always been good enough, and lying unnecessary. If he had told a lie it wouldn't have amounted to anything--everybody would have believed it. He wouldn't have got any credit--poor man! He had no more use for a lie than a fish has for a mackintosh--until he came to his last touching words, which were delivered to a minister and his sister Sophia, who had been reading to him from a book of D'Annunzio. "'My chance has arrived at last,' he said to Sophia, 'and in order that I may make the most of it, you will please send for a minister.' "The latter came, and, seeing the book, asked the good man if he had read it. "'Alas! my friend, that it should be necessary for me to tell a lie on my death-bed,' said the Doctor. 'But now, at last, I tell it proudly and promptly. I have not read that book.' "'And therein I do clearly see the truth,' said the wise old minister. "'Which is this,' the learned Doctor confessed. 'I have come to an hour when a lie, and nothing but a lie, can show my sense of shame. I solemnly swear that I have not read it!' "'Well, at least you're a noble liar,' said the man of God. 'I absolve you.' "'I claim no credit--I am only doing my duty,' said the good Doctor, with a sign of ineffable peace. "As soon as I could get his attention, I called Harry aside and whispered: 'In Heaven's name, boy, get hold of that book and hang on to it.' "'Why?' he asked. "'You don't know the old man as I do--that's why,' I said. 'If he should happen to read it, he'd go after you with his grandfather's sword the next time you showed up here.' "Marie stood near us, and I beckoned to her, and she came to my side. "'The book,' said Harry--'would you let me take it?' "'I took it to my grandfather, and he is reading it in his room,' she answered. 'Shall I go and get it?' "Harry hesitated. "'He won't mind,' said Marie; 'I'll go and get it.' "And away she went. "She came back to us soon, a bit embarrassed. "'He seems to be very much interested and--and a little cross,' said she. 'I think he will bring it out to you soon.' "Harry turned pale. "'You look sick, old man,' I said. "'I'm not feeling very well,' said he, 'and I think I shall excuse myself and go home.' "There was danger of a scene, but he got away unharmed. By and by the lionhearted deacon came out of his room, asked severely for 'young Delance,' wandered through the crowd, answered indignantly a few inquiries about his health, and returned to his lair. "I saw that the Deacon was mad. New New England had imprudently bumped into old New England, and it was too soon to estimate the damage." The Honorable Socrates Potter laughed as he filled his pipe, and resumed with an attitude of ease and comfort; "I'm a bit of a Puritan myself, although I understood Harry better than did the Deacon. The young people have been captured by the frankness of the Latin races. They call it emancipation. Travel and the higher education have opened the storage vats of foreign degeneracy and piped them into our land. Certain young men who have been 'finished' abroad, where they filled their souls with Latin lewdness, have turned it into fiction and a source of profit. Women buy their books and rush through them, and only touch the low places. There they lie entranced, thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in Vallombrosa. Like the women in the sack of Ismail, they sit them down and watch for the adultery to begin. "The imagination of the old world seems to have gone wild--Oscar Wilde! How the Oscars have thriven there since the first of them went to jail!--a degenerate dynasty!--hiding the stench of spiritual rot with the perfume of faultless rhetoric, speaking the unspeakable with the tongues of angels and of prophets! And mostly, my boy, they have thriven on the dollars of American women under the leadership of modern culture. And, you know, the maiden follows mama. She is an apologist of sublime lewdness, of emancipated human caninity. Now I am no prude. I can stand a fairly strong touch of human nature. I can even put up with a good deal of the frankness of the cat and dog. But the frankness of some modern authors makes me sorry that Adam was a common ancestor of theirs and mine. It's a disgrace to Adam and the whole human brotherhood. We sons of the Puritans ought to get busy in the old cause. Noah had the good sense to keep the animals and the people apart, and that's what we've always stood for." _ |
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