TURNING up masterpieces of unintentional humour is a pleasant diversion of most writers. Everyone has his own favourites—on this side Atlantic many students vouch for The Balsam Groves of Grandfather Mountain (by Shepherd M. Dugger) as the most amusing book written in America; in Britain a few diligent explorers beat the drum for Irene Iddesleigh, a novel written by Mrs. Amanda McKittrick Ros (of Belfast). Neither of these books, unhappily, is easy to lay hand upon. But as a possible competitor, how do you like The Spanish Sultry, by Ambrose Dargason (Harrisburg, 1905)? We have no copy, but once we took down some extracts.
Mr. Dargason’s hero was a window-glass merchant “whose nature was as transparent and reflective as the goods he throve in.” This merchant’s name was Wilbert Vocks; after his retirement from merchandise he spent his time in travelling about looking for a suitable wife to inherit his fortune. Unhappily, his inherent caution always caused him to sheer off just when the reader was expecting the happy nuptials. The scene on the park bench in Harrisburg, one moony evening, is a favourite of ours:
In the anæmic brightness of the crescendo moon Frederica’s eyes were gilded with the splendor of her sex’s softest charms. They were frosted bulbs of allure, and Wilbert trenched delicately upon her French-shod toes as a symbol of hardy waxing tenderness.
“Oh, Mr. Vocks,” said she, the beautiful coamings of her orbs brimming over with cheer, “how many equinoxes will hereafter wax and wane, search through this garden, but for one in vain.”
“You are quoting the Rubaiyat,” said he, “but with indifferent adhesion to the text.”
“Adhesion,” she replied, “was never one of my frailties,” and a trifle peaked [sic] withdrew to the distant angle of the iron settee.
Wilbert’s momentary harshness had already dissipated and he regretted this intrusion of pedantic nicety upon the moonlit promise of their double entente. “I bespeak a rapproachment,” he gallantly murmured and, sliding deftly along the parallel rods of metal subforming the trysting bench, found himself chilled by coming en rapport with a section of the seat not warmed by humane contact.
“But you must not reproach me,” she taunted shyly. “It is too plain that you were not brought up in Harrisburg, where men speak chivalrously to women and good breeding is a native filament of the tender air.”
“Probably you are cold on that hitherto unfrequented segment of iron slatting,” he said, shrivelling his inward tremolo by an affection of stern brusque. “Why not slide over this way a little, and chivalry commends my sheltering you from the sharp fidgetings of frost which, however commendable to coal dealers, betray the softer passions to gooseflesh and eventual snivel.”
Womanly, without further quibble, she responded, and the beauty of that unsophisticated face was shielded soon from external examination by the protective polygon of his arm and elbow. It was a generous moment, and in harmony with all the higher laws of human sentiment.
The delighted reader might be pardoned for thinking that in this idyllic scene the restless affections of Mr. Vocks had found satisfaction. But Frederica, after several evenings of intellectual interchange, proved too shallow for his deep-laden mind. As Mr. Dargason put it (his taste for oddly mixed nautical metaphors was rather extreme):
He grounded upon the shoals of her mentality and, after striving vainly to warp off into deeper areas of thought and sentiment, was forced to broach his cargo of affection upon the outgoing tides. Only thus, by careening and jettisoning his rich hatches of emotional freight, and scudding forth under bare poles and jury rigging, was he able to win clear to the open sea of freedom, escaping the lee shores of an uncongenial union. The bright occulting lamps of her eyes shone like desperate beacons, but he remembered that lighthouses are intended not to allure the cautious mariner, but to warn him away. He reefed his binnacle gravely, and with only an aching heart throbbing in the empty hatches of his personality determined henceforward to steer by the unquestionable stars of intuition. Her soundings were too easily fathomed. In a word, she was not deep enough.
To quiet his melancholy, Mr. Vocks returns into the busy world of trade. We have not space for very full quotation, but his discussion with his business associates is worth a brief extract:
As surely as my name is Wilbert Vocks (he said), I intend that this business shall be conducted in accord with all principles of integrity and without demurrage to trickery. I have been allowed by fortune to make a frugal and circumstantial inspection of the general laws and accidents of life, and it is my conviction that by exploring the estuaries of remorse no bill of lading was ever brought to consummation. My rudder is uncompromisingly turned to the favoring gales of expedience, and we will sail a vigorous course into the latitudes of magnetism.
In this admirable resolution Mr. Vocks was strengthened by his partner (Mr. Henry Shingle), who is described as “a thrifty man the colour of a glass of light beer, bleached brown by an open-air youth in Monongahela County, but surmounted spiritually by the bright bubbles of aspiration and elasticity. His clothes were neat and his habits orderly; of his meditative components it is not necessary to surmise. He had not made a habit of thinking profoundly, for he knew that any thought he might have could easily be rebutted by more carefully trained men; therefore he spared himself the embarrassment of argument. His management of the Sales Department, however, was not to be criticized.”
We wish we had taken the trouble to copy out more of The Spanish Sultry while we were about it. The Sultry herself was the lady to whom Mr. Vocks finally succumbed: she caused the fracture of the window-glass business. As the author put it: “Hers was not the clear transparence of Mr. Vocks’s glassy nature; she was stained with violent and ominous colours, and through the panes of her vehement character there burst downpours of scarlet and lavender trouble.”
