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from McCall's
Mourning for Yonks
by Ellis Parker ButlerContinued from McCall's July 1907.
---
One afternoon Garrick met Van Dolsen in the post office. He drew him to one side.
"Van," he said, "you knew that my sister Emily was in Florida, didn't you?"
"Why, yes," said Van Dolsen, "so I did. How's she? Climate helping her health any? Hope you hear good news."
Garrick nodded.
"Fine," he said, "she's picking up wonderfully."
He paused and felt in his pocket, drawing out a letter.
"I wrote her about your loss, Van," he said, carelessly. "She sends her sympathy."
Van Dolsen sighed ponderously.
"Poor old Yonks --" he began.
"By the way," said Garrick, hastily, "she writes that there is a Miss Van Dolsen stopping at the same hotel."
Van Dolsen dropped his woeful expression and glanced at Garrick's face questionably.
"The dickens you say!" he exclaimed.
He seemed to find something he did not like in the statement.
"My sister has not met her yet," said Garrick.
"Oh!" said Van Dolsen, with evident relief.
"But she wrote that this Miss Van Dolsen evidently has not heard of Yonks Van Dolsen's death yet," continued Garrick. "She says she isn't in mourning at all. On the contrary, she --"
"Stop!" said Van Dolsen. "Stop, Tom! Not another word. I know who she is, now. No wonder she doesn't go in mourning for him. She doesn't care whether poor old Yonks is dead or not. She -- but I can't tell you why, Tom. There are some things a man can't tell. You know that. Especially when it concerns one's own family."
Garrick looked at him with a puzzled expression, and folded the letter he had just opened.
"I understand," he said, slowly.
Van Dolsen turned away, but at the door he paused, and returned to Garrick.
"Tom," he said, seriously, "if your sister should write anything more on -- the subject of Yonks, just keep it to yourself until the first of the month, will you?"
He winked and grinned.
"Until the first of the month," he repeated; Garrick nodded.
On the 20th the town temporarily forgot Yonks, for Miss Hetty Arsdale was that day married, and left, in a shower of rice and sincere tears, for Scotland; but on the 21st Yonks was again the one great topic. Miss Garrick had written a long letter to her friend, Miss Mowry. Miss Garrick had met the Miss Van Dolsen who was wintering in Florida, and before the day was over everyone in Wighamton, except Van Dolsen, knew what she had written.
As Van Dolsen solemnly walked the main street his friends looked at him and grinned. At first he felt at the back of his collar to see if his tie had slipped up in the back. Later he glanced curiously into the mirrors made by the store windows to see if his face was smutted. Finally he went into the Continental Hotel barbershop and examined himself carefully in the long mirror there. He did not notice Tom Garrick lying in one of the barber chairs until the barber tilted the chair upright, and Garrick grinned at him from a collar of towel.
"Hello, Dick!" he exclaimed, "you look disturbed."
Van Dolsen frowned.
"Tom," he said, "I can't help thinking of poor Yonks --"
Garrick smiled. The barber was rubbing his hair vigorously in white suds.
"Yes," he said, "poor old Yonks! We all feel for you, Van. It's hard to die. Cut down in one's youth, leaving a loving relative like you!"
He spoke jerkily, for the barber was doing his full duty.
"Such a shock, too," he continued.
"These sudden deaths jar a fellow so. They come so unexpectedly. You never know who you are going to mourn for next. Whether --"
Van Dolsen came and stood beside him.
"Whether," said Garrick, "it will be crepe for Marc Antony. Or Moses. Or Noah. Or Adam."
"Tom," said Van Dolsen, "what do you mean?"
Garrick, released by the barber, laughed and felt his chin and cheeks.
"Poor Yonks!" he said. "Poor Yonks."
Van Dolsen laughed too.
"How is your sister?" he asked, and then they both laughed.
"Fine as silk," said Garrick. "She's well acquainted with Miss Van Dolsen now. She wrote full particulars to Miss Mowry. Says Miss Van Dolsen was surprised at first to hear of Yonks' death. Couldn't place Yonks, somehow. Then she got out that genealogy your wife compiled and she says the only Yonks she could find in it was certainly dead enough, because he had been dead since 1679."
Van Dolsen began to whistle. He took his pocketknife from his right vest pocket and opened the small blade. He carefully ripped the crepe band from his hat and dropped it gently into the open barrel stove, where a coal fire glowed.
"Tom," he said, "it was a strain on me to mourn for that dear departed ancestor. I couldn't seem to get into the proper spirit. He was dead all right and he was a Van Dolsen all right, but I couldn't feel a pang. I guess it was because he was so extremely dead. When an ancestor has been dead over two centuries a man has to be a first-class professional mourner to do him justice, and I'm a rank amateur!"
"Dick," he said, "what did you do it for?"
"Well, now, Tom," replied Van Dolsen, "I am an amateur, and I know it, and I thought it would do me good to practice up a little. Yonks didn't mind it."
He would say no more, and for two days Wighamton was obliged to endanger its brain in making wild conjectures. It finally decided that either Mrs. Van Dolsen had been suffering, from mental unbalance or that she had raised her ancestor worship to unimagined heights; in which case she would probably go right down the list of dead Van Dolsens, giving to each a year of mourning. The spiteful merely said that she knew mourning was becoming to her and that she made an opportunity for it by resurrecting Yonks and burying him again.
On the second day Van Dolsen dropped into Garrick's office.
"Tom," he said, when he had shut the door, "I've been thinking this thing over, and I guess it will be annoying to Mrs. Van if she comes back and has to do all the explaining. In fact, I don't see how she can explain, and she wouldn't come back unless she could, and I certainly want her to come back."
"Certainly," said Garrick, "we all do. Can't get along without her."
"So I guess I'll explain," said Van Dolsen.
He thought awhile to get his explanation in the proper order.
"Elizabeth is a very good woman," he said presently. "She's the best woman I know. No one knows all the good she does quietly."
"We know some of it," said Garrick.
"You know how proud Hetty Arsdale is," Van Dolsen continued. "Proud as tacks. Funny girl, too; she'd take things no one had any use for, but nothing she thought anyone could use. Elizabeth was so sorry for her when she heard of the engagement. The poor girl hadn't proper clothes, and no way to get them, and no one would have dared suggest an outfit as a gift."
"I know," Garrick agreed.
"Elizabeth is a wonder!" said Van Dolsen. "That's what I call her, a wonder! What did she do? She figured it out that if someone went into mourning, and if that someone had a lot of unmournful clothes, then that someone wouldn't have any use for them, and Hetty would be willing to take them. But no one was likely to go into mourning. So Elizabeth went to work and laid in a stock of clothes, over and under, and all sorts. And then she killed off old Yonks again."
He paused, and Garrick sat slowly nodding his head to express his approval and understanding.
"Van," he said, "that wife of yours is a brick!"
Van Dolsen winked and grinned.
"Well," he laughed, "she's a Van Dolsen, isn't she?"
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Saturday, October 07 at 5:35:07am USA Central
