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Page 91
But I refrained. I feared the fate of a flatterer. I had witnessed
her delight at the crafty and discreet words of Bud and Jacks. No!
Miss Hinkle was not one to be beguiled by the plated-silver tongue of
a flatterer. So I joined the ranks of the candid and honest. At once
I became mendacious and didactic.
"In all ages, Miss Hinkle," said I, "in spite of the poetry and
romance of each, intellect in woman has been admired more than beauty.
Even in Cleopatra, herself, men found more charm in her queenly mind
than in her looks."
"Well, I should think so!" said Ileen. "I've seen pictures of her
that weren't so much. she had an awfully long nose."
"If I may say so," I went on, "you remind me of Cleopatra, Miss
Ileen."
"Why, my nose isn't so long!" said she, opening her eyes wide and
touching that comely feature with a dimpled forefinger.
"Why--er--I mean," said I--" I mean as to mental endowments."
"Oh!" said she; and then I got my smile just as Bud and Jacks had got
theirs.
"Thank every one of you," she said, very, very sweetly, "for being so
frank and honest with me. That's the way I want you to be always.
Just tell me plainly and truthfully what you think, and we'll all be
the best friends in the world. And now, because you've been so good
to me, and understand so well how I dislike people who do nothing but
pay me exaggerated compliments, I'll sing and play a little for you."
Of course, we expressed our thanks and joy; but we would have been
better pleased if Ileen had remained in her low rocking-chair face to
face with us and let us gaze upon her. For she was no Adelina Patti--
not even on the fare-wellest of the diva's farewell tours. She had a
cooing little voice like that of a turtle-dove that could almost fill
the parlor when the windows and doors were closed, and Betty was not
rattling the lids of the stove in the kitchen. She had a gamut that I
estimate at about eight inches on the piano; and her runs and trills
sounded like the clothes bubbling in your grandmother's iron wash-pot.
Believe that she must have been beautiful when I tell you that it
sounded like music to us.
"She Must Have Been Beautiful When I Tell You That It Sounded Like
Music To Us"
Ileen's musical taste was catholic. She would sing through a pile of
sheet music on the left-hand top of the piano, laying each slaughtered
composition on the right-hand top. The next evening she would sing
from right to left. Her favorites were Mendelssohn, and Moody and
Sankey. By request she always wound up with Sweet Violets and When
the Leaves Begin to Turn.
When we left at ten o'clock the three of us would go down to Jacks'
little wooden station and sit on the platform, swinging our feet and
trying to pump one another for dews as to which way Miss Ileen's
inclinations seemed to lean. That is the way of rivals--they do not
avoid and glower at one another; they convene and converse and
construe--striving by the art politic to estimate the strength of the
enemy.
One day there came a dark horse to Paloma, a young lawyer who at once
flaunted his shingle and himself spectacularly upon the town. His
name was C. Vincent Vesey. You could see at a glance that he was a
recent graduate of a southwestern law school. His Prince Albert coat,
light striped trousers, broad-brimmed soft black hat, and narrow white
muslin bow tie proclaimed that more loudly than any diploma could.
Vesey was a compound of Daniel Webster, Lord Chesterfield, Beau
Brummell, and Little Jack Horner. His coming boomed Paloma. The next
day after he arrived an addition to the town was surveyed and laid off
in lots.
Of course, Vesey, to further his professional fortunes, must mingle
with the citizenry and outliers of Paloma. And, as well as with the
soldier men, he was bound to seek popularity with the gay dogs of the
place. So Jacks and Bud Cunningham and I came to be honored by his
acquaintance.
The doctrine of predestination would have been discredited had not
Vesey seen Ileen Hinkle and become fourth in the tourney.
Magnificently, he boarded at the yellow pine hotel instead of at the
Parisian Restaurant; but he came to be a formidable visitor in the
Hinkle parlor. His competition reduced Bud to an inspired increase of
profanity, drove Jacks to an outburst of slang so weird that it
sounded more horrible than the most trenchant of Bud's imprecations,
and made me dumb with gloom.
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