An American Idyll | Page 7

expert a mine near Johannesburg. Although he cabled five times, said firm sent no money. The bitter disgust and anguish of those weeks--neither of us ever had much patience under such circumstances. But he experted his mine, and found it absolutely worthless; explored the veldt on a second-hand bicycle, cooked little meals of bacon and mush wherever he found himself, and wrote to me. Meanwhile he learned much, studied the coolie question, investigated mine-workings, was entertained by his old college mates--mining experts themselves--in Johannesburg. There was the letter telling of the bull fight at Zanzibar, or Delagoa Bay, or some seafaring port thereabouts, that broke his heart, it was such a disappointment--"it made a Kappa tea look gory by comparison." And the letter that regretfully admitted that perhaps, after all, Persia would not just do to settle down in. About that time he wanted California with a fearful want, and was all done with foreign parts, and declared that any place just big enough for two suited him--it did not need to be as far away as Persia after all. At last he borrowed money to get back to Europe, claiming that "he had learned his lesson and learned it hard." And finally he came home as fast as ever he could reach Berkeley--did not stop even to telegraph.
I had planned for months a dress I knew he would love to have me greet him in. It was hanging ready in the closet. As it was, I had started to retire--in the same room with a Freshman whom I was supposed to be "rushing" hard--when I heard a soft whistle--our whistle--under my window. My heart stopped beating. I just grabbed a raincoat and threw it over me, my hair down in a braid, and in the middle of a sentence to the astounded Freshman I dashed out.
My father had said, "If neither of you changes your mind while Carl is away, I have no objection to your becoming engaged." In about ten minutes after his return we were formally engaged, on a bench up in the Deaf and Dumb Asylum grounds--our favorite trysting-place. It would have been foolish to waste a new dress on that night. I was clad in cloth of gold for all Carl knew or cared, or could see in the dark, for that matter. The deserted Freshman was sound asleep when I got back--and joined another sorority.
Thereafter, for a time, Carl went into University Extension, lecturing on Trade-Unionism and South Africa. It did not please him altogether, and finally my father, a lawyer himself, persuaded him to go into law. Carl Parker in law! How we used to shudder at it afterwards; but it was just one more broadening experience that he got out of life.
Then came the San Francisco earthquake. That was the end of my Junior year, and we felt we had to be married when I finished college--nothing else mattered quite as much as that. So when an offer came out of a clear sky from Halsey and Company, for Carl to be a bond-salesman on a salary that assured matrimony within a year, though in no affluence, and the bottom all out of the law business and no enthusiasm for it anyway, we held a consultation and decided for bonds and marriage. What a bond-salesman Carl made! Those who knew him knew what has been referred to as "the magic of his personality," and could understand how he was having the whole of a small country town asking him to dinner on his second visit.
I somehow got through my Senior year; but how the days dragged! For all I could think of was Carl, Carl, Carl, and getting married. Yet no one--no one on this earth--ever had the fun out of their engaged days that we did, when we were together. Carl used to say that the accumulated expenses of courting me for almost four years came to $10.25. He just guessed at $10.25, though any cheap figure would have done. We just did not care about doing things that happened to cost money. We never did care in our lives, and never would have cared, no matter what our income might be. Undoubtedly that was the main reason we were so blissful on such a small salary in University work--we could never think, at the time, of anything much we were doing without. I remember that the happiest Christmas we almost ever had was over in the country, when we spent under two dollars for all of us. We were absolutely down to bed-rock that year anyway. (It was just after we paid off our European debt.) Carl gave me a book, "The Pastor's Wife," and we gloated over it together all Christmas afternoon! We gave each of the boys a