Cupid's Middleman Part 1

Cupid's Middleman.

by Edward B. Lent.

PREFACE

John Alden was a celebrated Cupid's middleman. In presenting the cause of Miles Standish to Priscilla, however, he did not attend strictly to business as a jobber. He was not able to resist the lady when she asked: "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" That famous question has practically made it impossible for the middleman to make much headway in the a.s.sumed part. Benjamin Hopkins, of Oswegatchie County, was not a traitor--perhaps because he never met the fair Priscillas face to face.

This story can teach no new lesson; it can only recall the ancient wisdom which filled Miles Standish when it was too late. In the poem by Longfellow, the Plymouth Captain says:

"* * * I should have remembered the adage-- If you would be well served, you must serve yourself; and moreover, No man can gather cherries in Kent at the season of Christmas!"

E. B. L.

Cupid's Middleman

CHAPTER I

"Jim, it's years since you asked me to help you out in a love affair," I said. "Has your old heart grown cold, shriveled up, or what's the matter?"

"You're right, Ben; it must be a long time back. But why don't you put out a few letters for yourself?"

"I wish I could get a dollar a ton for all I have written for you," said I; "then I'd have a fortune and all the girls would be chasing me for my money."

"Say, was it as bad as that, do you think?"

"Well, cut the price in two and I'd be satisfied."

"What a fool I was, Ben, to let you trifle with my fair friends in that way! You came near putting me in a terrible hole several times."

"Is that so? You never said anything about it. Tell me now."

"Not for a mansion and forty servants would I tell you. Well, I should say not. Nay! Nay!"

"I'll bet you profited by my efforts and you're not willing to let on.

Do you think that is a friendly att.i.tude to take toward an agent who has increased the range of your powers of fascination?"

"You came near increasing the length of my neck by several inches. Why, the fathers and big brothers of some of those girls you wrote to came near lynching me."

"Well, I wasn't to blame for that, was I?"

"You certainly were. You laid it on too thick."

"Not too thick to please the girls, did I?"

"Suited some of the girls first rate, but it's bad to write so much.

It's apt to come back at you when you least expect it."

"What do you care so long as the girls were pleased? You were not courting the father. If you had intended to have the old gentleman read them I could easily have changed the style from a Grade A love to a nice a.s.sortment of short business phrases. But, say, Jim, you ought to tell me what happened. Come, now! Any bull's-eyes?"

"Do you know that you wrote enough letters to my girls to have married me off a dozen times or more? There are some streets I dare not pa.s.s through now--there's that foolish creature in West Thirty-eighth Street, for example."

I knew that Jim would leak a little if persistently tapped with interrogations.

"What about her? Did we send her many or was she easily won?" I asked.

"Hard or soft?" As the middleman it was purely business with me.

"That girl was a queer case," said Jim, and he reflected for a moment.

"Why, do you know, you had her running to clairvoyants for advice. She didn't think anything of putting up five dollars to learn how it was going to turn out. As soon as I heard that I quit calling and shut you off, for it was either that or get shot, I believed."

"That's quite a case, Jim. Let me into all of that, won't you?"

"I'm not going to tell you. It's past now, so let it go. You got me into enough trouble to fill a book. The book won't be written, though, for the inside story dies with me."

"Come, come, Jim; it's not fair to shut me out from all the excitement and fun after I did all the drudgery. Think how I used to struggle here to keep up my end."

"You struggle! Where do you suppose I came in? Still, I'll say no more about it, for I see you are trying to pump me. Let it pa.s.s. How do you find the state of the country to-night?"

Jim swung from the interesting subject to my hobby, political economy and measures for saving the nation from its impending doom. A man who can't make much headway toward home-building before or after marriage usually becomes a reformer. Men with families take things as they are, if they live at home instead of a club, and find plenty to do. I could not be moved without a protest.

"Never mind, Jim," said I. "You may want me to help you out some day and I shall not undertake to handle the case unless it is clearly stated in the contract that I am to be in at the finish."

"Agreed; Ben, you are to be there."

"Even though you're going to be lynched, don't hesitate to send for me."

"That'll probably be the finish, if I give my secrets away to you again.

Still, I am past that now." He seemed to doubt his words, however.

"Hanging or wedding, I'm to be there--is that agreed?"

"You'll be the best man in any event and you may stand just as close as the minister or the mob will allow."

I could see that he was in a good humor and had noticed its increasing hold upon him for several weeks. Such a fine specimen of farm-bred manhood as Jim Hosley could not escape, although he had kept from the net and in the free waters of bachelorhood until he was thirty. Six feet two inches, broad-shouldered, fair-haired, and as rosy as a schoolboy, he seemed born to remain young and handsome always. Well do I remember this conversation now, and how little we then realized the nature of the fruitage of our folly which we discussed so airily that evening in our bachelor apartments where we kept house together.

I regret that I am not a literary man. I never corresponded with magazine editors without paying the return postage and therefore I am not in shape to put in the soft touches where they belong, and I am also aware that the field is too big for me, for it includes the heart of a woman, a domain in which I am easily lost, although I did set up to be a pilot for my friend.

As for my own matrimonial prospects, they were dim. I really cared nothing about them, for I understood I was such a small potato I wouldn't be noticed for seed, and there seemed poor prospects for me to ever sprout into anything that would attract attention enough to draw a handful of paris green and plaster. I had a better opinion of my ideas on saving the country, however. I found a lot of people who agreed with me that the country was going to the bad; that there wasn't much use trying to get money enough ahead to go into business, because if you did you would only net fresh air and exercise and an appet.i.te that would cut whale oil and consume the margin.

Jim found it an easy matter to turn me from prying into his private affairs. I had just been reading my paper. "Shall Autocrats Rule Us?"

was the subject of the editor's heavy work for the evening and it stirred me up. That fellow used "strong and powerful" language, as our dominie used to say when he was preaching and got two feet away from his notes on the pulpit and doubled on his tracks.