“Well, you see, I don’t know him very well,” Anderson replied.
He went home somewhat comforted. Not only had Mrs. Granger been unusually sympathetic and charming, but her words had inspired him with a new idea.
On Friday evening he arrived with a very large package, which he left in the hall. He then entered the sitting room, and found Mrs. Granger sweetly admiring the captain’s latest gift—seven handsome black silk blouses, all exactly alike.
He let her go on admiring, and even generously said himself that they were “very nice.” Then, after a decent interval—“By the way,” he remarked, and went out into the hall and fetched in his package.
It was pretty imposing. He had spoken to the foreman of the paper mill, and the foreman had shown a friendly interest, so that he was now able to present to Mrs. Granger:
1 ream of the finest cream vellum writing paper, with envelopes.
2 reams of gray note paper, with blue envelopes.
1 ream of thin white writing paper, the envelopes lined with dark purple.
And a vast number of small memorandum pads; pink, blue, and yellow.
“Those are for Leroy,” he said, with a modest air which failed to conceal his triumph. This time he had won; there was no doubt about it.
On Saturday night Miss Selby did not appear at the little table.
“Gone out to dinner,” he thought.
Why shouldn’t she go out to dinner? He simply hoped that she was enjoying herself. And, as he ate his solitary dinner, he thought about this; he imagined Miss Selby enjoying herself somewhere, sitting at some other table, and probably with some other young man sitting opposite her.[Pg 378]
He knew how she would look if she were enjoying herself, with that lovely color in her cheeks, and that wonderful smile of hers. Well, it was none of his business—absolutely none of his business.
And yet, after dinner, he found occasion to stop the landlady in the hall, and to say, with an air of courteous indifference:
“That young lady who sits at my table—didn’t see her to-night. Has she gone away?”
“No, Mr. Anderson!” answered Mrs. Brown, with stern solemnity. “She has not. She’s lying upstairs, sick, at this very moment that I’m speaking to you. AndIthink it’s pneumonia, that’s whatIthink.”
“Pneumonia!” he cried. “But only last night—”
“It takes you sudden,” Mrs. Brown asserted. “And Miss Selby—well, people have often said to me how blooming she looked, but well I knew it was nerve, and nerve alone, that kept her going. Nerve strength!” she sighed. “It’s a treacherous thing, Mr. Anderson. You live on your nerves, and then, all of a sudden, they snap—like that!”
And her bony fingers snapped loudly, a startling sound in the dimly lit hall. The young man was in no condition to judge of the value of Mrs. Brown’s medical opinion; he was simply panic-stricken.
He went out of the house in a sort of blind haste, and began to walk along roads strange to him, under a cloudy and somber sky. He heard the voice of the wind in the trees, and to his unaccustomed ears it held no solace, but was a voice infinitely mournful.
Pneumonia! That little, little pretty thing—so far from home—ill and alone in a boarding house. Such a young, little thing.
He remembered that morning in the woods—her face when she had looked up at him from the violets she was picking—that radiant face, clear-eyed as a child’s.
“It’s my fault!” he cried aloud. “I ought to have known she couldn’t take care of herself properly. It’s my fault! The poor little thing! She’s done some fool trick—got her feet wet—probably makes her lunch of an ice cream soda—perhaps she can’t afford any lunch. And now—pneumonia! She had norightto get pneumonia! It’s—”
He stopped short, in a still, dark little lane, clenched his hands, stood there shaken by pain, by anger, by all the unreason of grief and anxiety.
“She ought to have known better!” he shouted.
When he came downstairs the next morning, Mrs. Brown regarded his strained and haggard face with profound interest, and she observed to one of the old ladies that she believed Mr. Anderson was “coming down with something.”
He made inquiries about Miss Selby’s health, and obtained very vague and confused replies, which he interpreted as people jaded and despondent from a bad night are apt to interpret things. He went into the dining room, but he could eat no breakfast. Who could, sitting alone at a little table, opposite an empty chair? Then he went out again.
It was a rainy day, but that was so fitting that he scarcely noticed it. He remembered having seen a greenhouse not far away, and he went there. It was not open on Sunday, but he made it be open. He banged so loud and so long on the door that at last an old man came out of a near-by cottage.
“It’s a case of pneumonia!” said the young man, fiercely. “I’ve got to have some flowers.”
So he was admitted to the greenhouse, and he bought everything there was, and then sat down at a little desk to write a card. He never forgot the writing of that card, the rain drumming down on the glass roof, the palms and rubber trees standing about him, and the hot, moist, steamy smell like a jungle. He never forgot what he wrote, or how he felt while he wrote it.
But there would be no use in repeating what he wrote, for nobody ever read that card.
He put it with the flowers, and set off home. When he got there he gave the bouquet, very sodden now, to Mrs. Brown’s servant, and said to her:
“Please give this to Miss Selby. Give it to her yourself; don’t send it.”
Then he went up to his own room and locked the door. And the room was all filled with the gray light of a rainy day.
The clang of the dinner bell startled him; he jumped up, scowling, and muttered: “Oh, shut up!” But, just the same, he had to obey it. He had to go downstairs, and had to sit at the little table.[Pg 379]
Scarcely had he sat down when he saw Miss Selby enter the room—Miss Selby in a new dark green linen dress, looking unusually pretty, and not even pale.
He arose; he was pale enough. He couldn’t speak. She must have received that card; she must have read it. As she glanced at him, he saw the color deepen in her cheeks, and her smile was uncertain. She was so lovely.
“I thought—” he began.
She sat down, and he did, too. Again their eyes met.
“It’s a miserable day,” she observed.
He didn’t think so. He thought it was the most beautiful day that had ever dawned; and he might have said something of the sort if he had not just at that moment seen an awful thing. He stared, appalled, almost unbelieving.
The waitress was coming across the room, carrying his immense bouquet.
“No!” he cried, half rising.
But it was too late; she had come; she presented the bouquet to Miss Selby with a pleased and kindly smile.
“For you!” she announced.
Every one in the room was watching with deep interest.
“See here!” said the young man, in a low and unsteady voice. “I—I only got them because I thought—they—she told me—you had pneumonia. I thought—Give them back to her. Throw them away! I—I’m sorry—”
“Sorry I haven’t got pneumonia?” asked Miss Selby. “It’s too bad, but perhaps I can manage it some other time.”
Her tone and her smile hurt him terribly. He wished that he could snatch the flowers away from her. She was laughing at him again; every one in the room was laughing at him.
And it didn’t occur to him that Miss Selby couldn’t possibly know how he felt, but was a very young and inexperienced creature who was also hurt by his strange manner of giving bouquets. She thought he wanted her to know that, unless she were very ill, he wouldn’t dream of giving her flowers. She was even more hurt than he was.
“Will you bring a vase, please, Kate?” she asked.
Katie did bring a vase, and the hateful and offensive flowers were set up between them, like a hedge. He leaned over, and with his penknife deliberately cut off the card tied to the stems and put it into his pocket.
And not one more word did they speak all through that dreadful meal.
In his pain and anger and humiliation he turned blindly to Mrs. Granger, the charming little lady who never laughed at any one. He couldn’t get to her fast enough; he strode on through the mud in the steady downpour of rain, simply longing to see her, and to hear her soft, gracious voice, and to be within the shelter of her friendly home.
That card was still in his pocket; he took it out, and as he walked along, tore it into bits and strewed them behind him. They fell into puddles, where they would lie to be trampled on, those words he had written—a suitable end for them.
He pushed open the gate of Mrs. Granger’s garden, and was very much comforted by Sandy’s ecstatic welcome. Dogsdidknow. They appreciated it when you meant well; they were not suspicious, not mocking. When you gave them something they accepted it in good faith.
He went on toward the house, walking rapidly, impatient to get in there to the gentle serenity of Mrs. Granger’s presence. He rang the bell, and directly the parlor-maid opened the door he knew he was not going to have peace and solace.
Something had gone wrong. He could hear Leroy’s voice raised in a loud, forlorn bellow, and Mrs. Granger’s voice, tearful and trembling, and Captain MacGregor’s voice, with a slightly exasperated note in it. He entered the sitting room, and there was Mrs. Granger, weeping, and Leroy sobbing. Sandy began to bark.
“Oh, Mr. Anderson!” cried Mrs. Granger. “How can you let him do that? Oh, please keep him quiet!”
Anderson put the dog outside, and then returned.
“But what’s the matter?” he asked.
“Leroy’s been bitten by a m-mad d-dog!” cried Mrs. Granger.
“Wasnota mad dog!” Leroy asserted.
“See! Here on his leg!” she went on. “And he never told me! It happened late yesterday!”
“There’s no reason to assume that the dog was mad,” interrupted the captain.
“It was! Animals adore Leroy! Only a rabid dog would dream of biting him![Pg 380]”
“Wasnota rabid dog,” Leroy insisted sullenly.
“Well, see here!” said Anderson. “If you think—if you’re worried—why not have his leg cauterized?”
“Oh, I can’t!” she cried. “My child burned with red-hot irons!”
Leroy began to bellow at this inhuman suggestion, and Mrs. Granger clasped him in her arms.
“Don’t cry, darling!” she sobbed. “Mother won’t let them hurt you!” And she looked at Captain MacGregor and Mr. Anderson with unutterable reproach.
They were silent for a time.
“Well, see here!” Anderson suggested. “If you could find the dog, and—keep it under observation for a few days—”
This idea appealed to the child.
“Sure!” he said. “I’ll find him, mom. You just let me alone, and I’ll find him for you, all right!”
“You said you couldn’t remember what the dog was like.”
“Yes, I know. But I remember the street where it was, an’ I’ll go back there to-morrow,” Leroy declared. “I could stay out o’ school jist in the mornin’ and jist—ferret it out. I got lots of clews. An’ I bet you—”
“I’ll go with you now,” said Anderson.
The agitated mother didn’t even thank him.
“Perhaps that would be a good idea,” she admitted. “You might try it, anyhow, and see.”
So Leroy was fortified against the rain in oilskins and rubbers, and he and Mr. Anderson set forth together in quest of the dog. The small boy was highly pleased with the adventure; he did not often have an opportunity to frolic in the rain, and he made the most of it, caracoling before Anderson like a sportive colt. Sandy, too, would have enjoyed it, but he was tied up.
“One dog at a time,” said Anderson. “Now, young feller, let’s hear about it.”
“Aw, it was nothin’,” Leroy replied with admirable nonchalance. “Jist a dog ran up an’ bit me. I mean, I was runnin’, an’ I guess I stepped on his paw an’ he bit me.”
“Did you tell your mother you stepped on the dog?”
“I dunno what all I told her,” Leroy admitted. “Anyway, what’s it matter? Had to do somethin’ to keep her quiet.”
Anderson considered that it was not his place to rebuke this child, and he let the disrespect pass.
“Where did it happen?”
“Long ways from here, all right!” said the boy, triumphantly.
He spoke no more than the truth. It was a very long way. They went on and on, down long, quiet suburban streets, lined with dripping trees and houses with no signs of life. They went on and on.
At first Leroy was talkative and cheerful, and found great satisfaction in splashing in puddles, but as time went on he grew silent, and tramped through the puddles more as a matter of principle than through enjoyment.
“What was the name of the street?” asked Anderson.
“Well, I don’t know,” the boy answered, “but I guess I’d know it if I saw it. Somewheres around here, it was. Might be around the next corner.”
They went round the corner, and there was a candy store.
“That’s it!” Leroy announced. “It’s open, too.”
Mr. Anderson said nothing, but walked steadily forward, and Leroy trotted by his side.
“They sure did have good lollypops in there,” observed Leroy. “Best I ever tasted.”
Still no response from the adult, possessor of all power and wealth. Leroy sighed. And Anderson turned to look at him, and discovered a wet and not very clean face upturned to his, with brown eyes very like Sandy’s. Poor little kid, tramping along so bravely in his oilskins! He looked tired, too.
“All right!” said Anderson. “We’d better go back and get a few lollypops.”
After that Leroy went on, much encouraged in spirit.
“Here’s the street!” he cried at last. “The lil dog ran out o’ one of those houses—I don’t know which one.”
Mr. Anderson rang the bell of the first house. The occupants owned no dog, never had, and never intended so to do. In the second house he was confronted by a very disagreeable old lady. She admitted that she had a dog, and she said, with unction, that her dog could and would bite any persons unlawfully trespassing on her property, as was any dog’s right.
“I dare say Rover did bite the boy,” she suggested, “if he came in here trampling[Pg 381]and stampling all over my flower beds. And serve him right, I say!”
“I did not!” said Leroy, indignantly. “And that’s not the dog, Mr. Anderson. I can see him out the window. He’s a police dog, and my dog was a little one.”
They proceeded to the next house. Nobody came to the door at all. There was only one more house left on the street.
“Well, I hope the right dog’s in there,” said Leroy, “but—” He paused, then he laid his hand on Anderson’s sleeve. “Most any lil dog woulddo,” he said, very low, “forher.”
Mr. Anderson was about to protest sternly against such a dishonest and immoral suggestion, but somehow he didn’t. The child’s hand looked so very small, and his manner was so trusting. He said nothing at all, simply walked up the path to this last house.
He rang the bell, and the door was opened with startling suddenness by a little man with spectacles and a neatly pointed white beard. He looked like a professor, and he was a professor—of Romance Languages—and because of his scholarly unworldliness, he had been cheated and swindled so many times that he had become fiercely suspicious. He glared.
“This boy has been bitten by a dog,” Mr. Anderson explained. “And we want to find the dog, to see—”
“Ha!” said the little man. “And what has this to do with me, pray?”
“I thought perhaps you had a dog here—”
The professor folded his arms.
“Very well!” said he. “I have. And what of it?”
“If you’ll let us see the dog—”
“Aha!” said the professor. “I see! A blackmailing scheme! You wish to see my dog. You will then cause this child to identify the dog as the one which bit him, in order that you may collect damages. A ve-ry pret-ty little scheme, I must admit!”
Anderson had had a singularly trying day, and he was very weary of this quest, anyhow.
“Nothing of the sort!” he said curtly. “If you’ll be good enough to let us see your dog—or if you’ll give me your assurance that the animal is perfectly healthy—”
“Don’t you give him a penny, Joseph!” cried a quavering female voice from the dark depths of the hall.
The professor laughed ironically.
“Ve-ry pret-ty!” he repeated. “But you may as well understand, once and for all, that I absolutely refuse to allow you to see my dog, or to give you any assurance of any kind whatsoever.”
And nothing could move him. Mr. Anderson argued with him with as much tact and politeness as he could manage just at that time, but in vain.
“See here!” he said at last. “Let me see the dog, and if it’s the right one, I’llbuyit. Now will you believe—”
But the professor would not believe until Anderson had signed a document which he drew up, solemnly promising that, if the dog were identified by Leroy as the dog which had bitten him, he, Winchell Anderson, would purchase the said dog for the sum of twenty-five dollars.
Then, and then only, was the dog brought into the room. And Leroy instantly, loudly and fervently asserted that it wasthedog. By this time Mr. Anderson was perfectly willing to believe him. He paid the money and stooped to pick up the dog, a small animal, of what might be called the spaniel type.
It snapped at him. He could not pick it up, because on the next attempt his hand was bitten. At last, upon his paying in advance for the telephone call, the professor summoned a taxi. Mr. Anderson could not get the dog into the taxi, but Leroy had no trouble at all with it. It seemed to like Leroy.
They rode home in silence, because every time Anderson uttered a word the animal growled and struggled in the boy’s arms.
They reached Mrs. Granger’s house, and while Leroy ran ahead with the dog in his arms, Anderson delayed a minute to pay the taxi with the last bill remaining in his pockets. Then he followed. It had been a costly and a wearisome quest, but Mrs. Granger’s relief and gratitude would be sufficient reward.
In the doorway of the sitting room he paused a moment, smiling to himself at the scene before him. Leroy was down on his knees, playing with this quite unexpected and delightful new dog, and Mrs. Granger knelt beside him, one arm about her son’s neck.
Captain MacGregor was there, but in a corner, so that one need not consider him in the picture—the peaceful lamp-lit room, the gentle mother and her child.
“I’m very glad—” he began, when, at[Pg 382]the sound of his voice, the dog sprang up and rushed at him, and was caught by Leroy just in the nick of time. He growled threateningly.
“I guess I’d better tie him up,” said Leroy. “He doesn’t like Mr. Anderson.”
“Why, how very strange!” Mrs. Granger exclaimed.
Leroy did tie him up to the leg of a table.
“But why doesn’t the poor little doggie like Mr. Anderson?” pursued Mrs. Granger, and there was something in her voice that dismayed the young man.
“I don’t know,” he replied, briefly.
“It’s very strange,” she remarked. “Very! But sit down, Mr. Anderson. Perhaps you were just a little bit rough in handling him—without meaning to be.”
“No, he wasn’t!” Leroy asserted, indignantly. “He—”
At this point the dog broke loose, flew at Anderson, and would have bitten him if Anderson had not prevented him—with his foot.
“Oh!” cried Mrs. Granger. “Oh, Mr. Anderson, how could you! You kicked the poor little doggie!”
“I—I simply pushed him—with my foot,” said Anderson. “He’s a bad-tempered little brute.”
“Dogs are never bad-tempered unless they’re badly treated,” Mrs. Granger declared, with severity. “They always know a friend from a foe.”
“All right!” the young man agreed. “Then I’m afraid I’m a foe.” He turned toward the door. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said, “I’ll be getting along. I’m—I’m tired. Good evening!”
“Good evening!” said Mrs. Granger and Captain MacGregor in unison.
She let him go! He opened the front door and stepped out into the rain again, and never in his life had he felt so bitter, so disappointed, so cruelly, intolerably depressed. After all he had done, she let him go like this! Not even a word of thanks. Poor little doggie, eh?
Halfway down the path he heard a shout; it was Leroy, rushing after him bareheaded through the rain.
“Say!” he shouted. “You’re—”
Words failed him, and he stretched out his hand, a rough, warm little hand, wet from the rain, sticky from lollypops. Yet Anderson was very glad to clasp it tight.
“Good-by, old fellow!” he said.
“Good-by, old fellow, yourself!” answered Leroy.
And he sat on the gatepost, watching, and waving his hand as Anderson went down the road in the rainy dusk.
Mr. Anderson had finished with women forever. And this resolve gave to his face a new and not unbecoming sternness; the old ladies noticed it directly he entered the dining room that evening. Miss Selby noticed it, too, but pretended not to; she smiled that same chilly, polite smile, and said never a word—neither did he.
Supper was set before them, and they began to eat, still silent. And then she spoke suddenly.
“What’s the matter with your hand, Mr. Anderson?” she asked.
“Oh, nothing; thanks!” he answered.
Again a silence. But she could not keep her eyes off that clumsily-tied bandage on his hand.
“I wish you’d tell me!” she said.
It was an entirely different tone, but he was no longer to be trifled with like that. He smiled, coldly.
“No doubt you’ll be very much amused,” he remarked, “to learn that I’ve been bitten by a dog!”
He waited.
“Why don’t you laugh, Miss Selby?” he inquired. “It’s funny enough, isn’t it? After I said that dogs always know. It’s what you might call ‘biting irony,’ isn’t it?”
“I—don’t want to laugh,” said she. “I’m—just sorry.”
He looked at her.
“Miss Selby!” he cried.
“I took your flowers upstairs,” she said. “I think—they’re the prettiest—the prettiest flowers—I—ever saw.”
“Miss Selby!” he exclaimed again. “See here! Please! When I thought you were ill—”
“I only had a little cold.”
“I wrote a note,” he said. “I tore it up. I—I wish I hadn’t.”
Miss Selby was looking down at her plate.
“I wish you hadn’t, too,” she agreed.
The old ladies had all finished their suppers, but not one of them left the room. They were watching Miss Selby and Mr. Anderson. Surely not a remarkable spectacle, simply a nice looking young man and[Pg 383]a pretty young girl, sitting, quite speechless, now, at a little table.
Yet one old lady actually wiped tears from her eyes, and every one of them felt an odd and tender little stir at the heart, as if the perfume of very old memories had blown in at the opened window.
“Let’s go out on the veranda,” said Mr. Anderson to Miss Selby, and they did.
The rain was coming down steadily, and the wind sighed in the pines. But it was a June night, a summer night, a young night.
Not an old lady set foot on the veranda that evening, not another human being heard what Miss Selby from Boston, and Mr. Anderson from New York had to say to each other.
Only Mrs. Brown, opening the door for a breath of fresh air, did happen to hear him saying something about the “best sort of paper for wedding announcements.[Pg 384]”
MUNSEY’SMAGAZINE
APRIL, 1926Vol. LXXXVIINUMBER 3
TO OUR READERS—Since Mr. Munsey’s death we have received so many inquiries for the books of which he was the author, all of which have been out of print for many years, that in the present number of the magazine we reprint, complete, this short novel, which was written in the early part of 1892. We feel sure that our readers will be greatly interested in the story, not only on account of its authorship, but because it is a convincing picture of a phase of American society thirty-five years ago.
TO OUR READERS—Since Mr. Munsey’s death we have received so many inquiries for the books of which he was the author, all of which have been out of print for many years, that in the present number of the magazine we reprint, complete, this short novel, which was written in the early part of 1892. We feel sure that our readers will be greatly interested in the story, not only on account of its authorship, but because it is a convincing picture of a phase of American society thirty-five years ago.
[Pg 385]
By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
“WE must simply look on it as a—a lark!” said Mrs. De Haaven, resolutely. But her voice was not very steady, and her smile was somewhat strained, for in her heart she saw this, not as a lark, but as something very close to a tragedy.
“It’s wonderfully light and airy,” her sister Rose began.
This was true; a fresh sea breeze went blowing through the rooms, fluttering the curtains and stirring the dark hair on Rose’s temples. The tiny house was sweet with sun and salt wind. Both Mrs. De Haaven and her sister could appreciate this, and they were sternly determined to appreciate every possible good point about their new home.
But—it was so tiny, so bare, so terribly strange; a sitting room, a bedroom, and a kitchen, divided by partitions which did not reach to the unstained rafters; painted floors, badly scuffed, the queerest collection of scarred, weather-beaten furniture.
“It will be like—camping out!” Mrs. De Haaven decided.
The trouble was, that neither of them had had any sort of experience in camping out, and, what is more, had never desired any such experience. They had led the most casual, pleasant existence; when they had wanted to be in the city, they had occupied Mrs. De Haaven’s charming little flat; when it occurred to them that they would enjoy the country, they had gone out to the old De Haaven farm on Long Island; if the impulse seized them to travel, travel they did, in a comfortable and leisurely fashion.
Wherever they had been, in town or in the country, in Paris, in Cairo, in Nice, there always had been plenty of people about to do all the disagreeable and difficult things for them, and to do them willingly, because not only had the two ladies paid well for all services rendered them, but they were polite, kind and appreciative.
And now, with a jolt and a jar, that smooth-moving existence had stopped. Their lawyer, who had had complete charge of their nice little fortune inherited from their father, had either done something terrible, or something terrible had happened to him. They preferred, in charity, to believe the latter, and anyhow, it did not matter.
The money had dwindled down to almost nothing, the flat was sublet, the farm rented, and the poor ladies had taken this beach bungalow on Staten Island for the summer. They took it because it was cheap, and because it was their tradition that one had to leave the city in the summer, and because they hoped in this obscure little place to be let alone, to get accustomed to their new life in peace.
So here they were in their new home, all paid for, all furnished, all ready for them to begin living in. It was certainly quiet enough, yet somehow it did not impress Mrs. De Haaven as being peaceful; on the contrary, there was something alarming, almost terrible, in the quietness.
Nobody was doing anything or preparing anything for them; nothing would be done until she and Rose did it; the house simply stood there, waiting for them to begin. How did one begin?
She was a little shocked with Rose for turning her back on the house and sitting down on the veranda railing.
“Oh, Rose!” she said. “Shouldn’t we set to work—get things in order?[Pg 386]”
But Rose only reached out and caught her sister by the arm and pulled her down beside her.
“Look, darling!” she remarked. “That issomething, isn’t it?”
“That” was the sea before them—the North Atlantic, which rolled into the bay and broke upon the sands. They had looked upon the Pacific, upon the blue Mediterranean; they had seen many harbors, many beaches, beyond comparison lovelier than this flat shore.
But this, after all, was the great salt sea, the very source of life, and the sun made it glitter, and the wind blew off it, fresh and invigorating. Itwassomething.
There they sat, with their arms about each other, such forlorn and lovely creatures! Nina De Haaven, dark and delicate; Rose taller, stronger, with a beautiful eagerness in her face, as if she waited in trust and delight for whatever her destiny might bring. She was twenty-four, and she had never really feared anything in her life.
Rose was not afraid, now, of this new existence, only a little puzzled, because she would have to be the one to start it. Nina was five years older, but she was too gentle, too easily rebuffed; she had never quite trusted life again after her beloved husband died.
“There’s dinner,” thought Rose. “I’m sure they don’t supply food with furnished bungalows. I’ll have to buy it and cook it. Mercy!”
She had to do it, though, and she would.
“Bread and butter,” she also thought, “and eggs and milk, and tea and coffee, and sugar and spice. Everything goes in pairs! Coal and wood—”
Nina, less abstracted, started up.
“Somebody’s knocking somewhere!” she said. “I believe it’s our own back door. I’ll go.” And she vanished into the house. Rose followed promptly, and found her in the little kitchen, stooping over a basket on the table.
“It must be the dinner!” Nina declared, very much pleased. “There are all sorts of things here.”
“How can it be the dinner?” Rose asked. She, too, bent over the basket and was enchanted by the varied assortment therein.
“Perhaps the tradespeople do that when some one new moves in,” Mrs. De Haaven suggested. “As a sort of sample. A boy just left it without a word.”
Rose shook her head.
“I don’t think that’s likely,” she said. “I’m afraid it must be a mistake. But—” She was busy cataloguing these household things in her mind. Salt—she hadn’t thought of that; and a box of bacon, and matches.
“I wish I’d kept house when Julian was alive,” said Mrs. De Haaven, “and not lived in hotels. Then I shouldn’t be so—useless.”
Rose gave her a little shake.
“Encumberer of the earth!” she said, smilingly. “The thing is—whether I dare to pretend to be as artless as you really are.”
“What do you mean, Rose?”
“I want to keep that basket!”
“Oh, Rose! When you think it’s a mistake!”
“Yes!” said Rose, firmly. “I’ll pay for it, of course, when I find out who it belongs to. But it’s such a wonderful collection. I want it! Here’s a package of pancake flour, and it tells you exactly how to make them. And the tin of coffee has directions on it, too. We could get on indefinitely, with pancakes and coffee.”
“It would be terrible for our complexions,” Nina objected.
“We can’t afford complexions, any more,” said Rose. And she began unpacking the basket, setting the tins and packages in neat rows on the dresser. The effect delighted them both; they were beginning to feel really at home now.
The sun was going down behind the house, and the sea before them reflected in its darkening waters the faint purples and pinks streaking the sky. Mrs. De Haaven and her sister were on the veranda, facing the spectacle, but it aroused no enthusiasm in them; they were silent. They were tired, dejected and—hungry.
It was early in the season, and most of the bungalows were still unoccupied; there was not a soul in sight, not a human sound to be heard, nothing but the quiet breaking of the waves on the beach. A vast and inhospitable world.
“There comes some one!” said Mrs. De Haaven.
Round the corner of the shore two figures came into sight, a girl and a man. They came on very slowly, so close to each other that now and then their shoulders[Pg 387]touched. The strange sunset light touched their young heads with a sort of glory.
“We can ask her,” Mrs. De Haaven began doubtfully.
“I suppose I’ll have to,” said Rose. “There’s no one else alive on the surface of the earth. But—somehow I hate to bother them about oil stoves at such a moment. Still, I can’t let her go!”
She sighed, and got up, but just then the couple turned and began walking up the sands directly toward them. They were so absorbed in each other, not talking very much, but looking at each other from time to time, long, long glances.
The man was a passably good-looking young fellow of a somewhat scholarly type, lean and tall, and wearing spectacles, but the girl was a marvel, a miracle of soft, rich colors and vigorous health. Her eyes were blue, her hair the shade of ripe wheat, her sunburned face beautifully flushed. She was strong, lithe, straight-limbed, and such a joy to see that Rose forgot all about oil stoves.
“Well, good-by, Margie!” said the young man in spectacles, in the most casual sort of tone.
“Good-by, Paul!” the girl rejoined, equally casual.
Their eyes met, and they both glanced hastily away. The girl essayed a smile.
“Well,” she said. “Good-by, Paul!”
“Good-by, Margie!” he repeated. “I—”
There was a long silence.
“I’ll have to go in,” said she. “It’s late. Good-by, Paul!”
She held out her hand, and he took it. They stood hand in hand, looking at each other. Suddenly she snatched away her hand.
“Good-by, Paul,” she cried, and ran off.
“Good-by, Margie—dear!” he called after her.
She had gone into the bungalow next to them, slamming the screen door behind her.
“How—sweet!” Mrs. De Haaven declared. “How dear andyoung, Rose!”
“I’ll give her a chance to get settled first, before I go and ask her,” said Rose. “It’s too sordid to ask her how to light a stove when she’s just said good-by to Paul.”
So they waited a little. Their neighbor was extraordinarily noisy in there; doors banged, all sorts of things rattled and slammed, and while they waited for this alarming racket to subside, a small open car came down the road behind the houses, stopped, and presently the back door slammed and a voice sounded in there—a man’s voice, and a young one, too.
“Look alive with that dinner, Margie! I’m in a hurry!”
“The things haven’t come down from the store yet,” said Margie. “I ordered them—”
“Don’t make excuses,” the man interrupted. “I told you I’d be home at six, and that I’d be in a hurry.”
“Oh, I’m not making excuses!” answered Margie, scornfully. “I wouldn’t bother to do that to you. I was just explaining. It’s not my fault if the man doesn’t bring the things.”
“We’ve gottheirthings!” Rose whispered to her sister. “I know it!”
“If you’d stay at home and look after your job, instead of running about with that measly little lawyer,” the man began.
“Shut up!” cried Margie.
And somehow that furious exclamation hurt both the listeners. For both those quarreling voices, in spite of their bad temper and unrestraint, were good voices, the voices of people who ought to know better.
“All right!” said the man. “You wait till Bill comes home, young woman!”
“I don’t give a darn about Bill!” she retorted. “If you’re in such a hurry, take the car and go up to the store and get the stuff.”
“Not much!” he said. “It’s your job to get the meals, and I won’t help you. I’ve got enough work of my own to do.”
“I’ll have to take them their things,” murmured Rose, and she and her sister went into the kitchen and, by the feeble light of an ill-trimmed lamp, began to repack the basket in haste.
And while they were so engaged, there came the most tremendous slam of all, next door, and a new voice sounded, another man’s voice, not loud and angry, like the others, but cool, deliberate, and masterful.
“What’s up?” he demanded.
“No dinner ready,” the other man replied petulantly.
“Because the things haven’t come from the store,” explained Margie, sullenly. “I ordered them in plenty of time.”
“Take your car and go and get ’em, Gilbert,” said the masterful voice.
“But, look here, Bill! I’m in a hurry—”
“Step!” said Bill.
And Gilbert was “stepping” out of the[Pg 388]back door just as Rose was coming in with the basket. He backed into the kitchen again, and she followed him.
“I think these are yours,” she said. “They were left at our house—by mistake, I’m sure.”
Some one took the basket from her, and looking up, she had her first sight of Bill.
He was, she thought, the most impressive human being she had ever set eyes on, and one of the handsomest. A tremendous fellow, blue-eyed and fair-haired, like Margie, but without a trace of her sullenness; there was a sort of grim good-humor in his face.
He was not smiling, though; none of them were, and Rose was seized with a sudden uneasiness in the presence of these three silent, blue-eyed creatures. With a deprecating smile, she opened the back door, to flee—when she remembered Nina.
“I—I wish—” she said, addressing Margie. “After you’ve quite finished here, of course. If you could just spare a moment to show me how to light that oil stove.”
“I’ll show you now,” said Bill. He followed her out the door, and his fingers closed like steel on her arm as he helped her down the steps in the dark and across the little strip of grass behind the houses. He did not release her until she was safely in her own bare, dimly-lit kitchen.
“Good evening!” he remarked to Nina, and swept off his white-covered uniform cap with a magnificent gesture. Then, without words, he dropped on one knee beside the stove, and he turned up the wick and struck a match, just as Rose had done.
“No oil in it,” he announced, rising. “I’ll get you some.”
“Mercy!” said Nina, after he had gone. “What a-an overwhelming creature!”
“Isn’t he?” Rose agreed. “He made me forget that, even if the stove ever does get lighted, there’s nothing to cook on it. I’ll have to ask him where the store is.”
“It’s dark now, Rose. You can’t go wandering about in this strange place.”
“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do now for the sake of food!” said Rose.
There was a knock at the back door; they both called “Come in!” and Bill reëntered, letting the screen door crash behind him. He was carrying a tin of kerosene, and at once he set to work filling the stove.
“I’m very sorry to put you to all this trouble!” Nina asserted, earnestly.
He didn’t answer at all; he lit all the burners, and then:
“What next?” he asked.
“If you’ll please tell me where the store is—the store that basket came from—and how to get there—”
“Now? It’s closed,” said he. His keen glance traveled round the bare little kitchen.
“I’ll see that you get your dinner,” he declared, and went off again, before they could say a word.
It was Gilbert who brought the dinner in on a tray, and no one could have performed a neighborly service more ungraciously. He was a remarkably good-looking boy of nineteen or so, but so surly, ill-tempered—
“He’s a young beast!” said Rose, indignantly.
Nina was silent a moment.
“Isn’t it queer—” she remarked. “How contagious that is!”
“Beastliness?You’dnever catch it!” Rose declared.
“My dear, when he banged that tray down, and never even took off his hat, I wanted to throw a plate at him,” said Nina, seriously. “I’d have enjoyed it!”
It was a good dinner, served on the coarsest of china, but well cooked. And after they had eaten it and washed the dishes, they were ready to go to bed and to sleep, not quite so forlorn in their new home.
They were awakened the next morning by a persistent and none too gentle knocking at the back door, and Nina, slipping on a dressing gown, hurried to respond. She opened the door upon a riotous, glittering June morning, and Margie, clear-eyed and glowing as the dawn—but far from amiable.
“Here’s your breakfast!” she said, thrusting a wooden box into Nina’s hands.
“Oh, but how awfully good and kind!” cried Nina. “I never—”
“Bill said you didn’t have a thing in the house,” Margie remarked, scornfully, “and couldn’t even light the stove. So he told me to bring this.”
Her brusque contempt was a little too much even for the gentle Nina.
“It’s very kind of you,” she said, with a polite smile. “But we’d have managed somehow—”
Margie shrugged her shoulders.[Pg 389]
“Well, Bill told me to bring your breakfast,” she said. “And to ask what you wanted from the store.”
“Thank you, but I couldn’t think—” Nina began, but with another disdainful shrug Margie had turned away.
“We’ll have to swallow our pride,” Rose suggested from the doorway. “Let’s be quick, too, before it gets cold.”
“I’m going to dress first,” said Nina. “Because when that scornful Margie goes out, I’m going to follow. I’ll follow her all day long till she goes to the store.”
And she meant that. She dressed herself with all her usual unobtrusive art, and she kept an eye on the house next door. In the very act of lifting her second cup of coffee to her lips, she heard the front door slam. She sprang up, pulled on a delightful little hat, and ran out of her own front door.
Margie was walking quickly up the road, a strong, lithe young figure in a jersey and a short skirt, bareheaded in the sun. And after her went the slender and elegant Mrs. De Haaven, going to market for the first time in her life.
In a happy mood Rose set to work; she washed the dishes, made the bed, set the little place in order, and then began unpacking the two big trunks. Most of the clothes could stay in them, but there were all sorts of other things—silver toilet articles, photographs, books, writing materials, all the dear, friendly things that had often made even hotel rooms look homelike. They worked wonders here. The only trouble was, that there was no shelf for the books, and no flowers.
“I’ll make a shelf!” Rose told herself.
So she went out on the beach and found a suitable small board; then she screwed two coat hooks into the wall beneath the sitting room window, laid the board across them, and stood the favorite books on this in a row.
“Crude, but well-meaning!” she observed, surveying her first piece of carpentering with a smile, and she went out to see if there were any flowers about to delight Nina with when she came home.
The first thing she saw was Bill coming down the road. Her impulse was to step back into the house, but she was ashamed of such weakness; Bill ought to be spoken to and thanked. So she sat down on the steps, and Bill, catching sight of her, swung off his hat with that same fine gesture.
“Comment ça va?” he inquired, standing bareheaded before her.
Certainly she had not expected French from Bill, but she politely suppressed her surprise and answered cheerfully:
“Tres bien, merci, monsieur!I was just wondering if there were any wild flowers growing about here?”
She looked up at him, but hastily glanced aside, for Bill was looking down at her with a smile which disconcerted her.
“Flowers, eh?” he said.
They were both silent for a time. Then Rose began, in a somewhat formal tone:
“My sister and I are both very grateful for—”
A crash interrupted her.
“What’s that?” asked Bill.
“It sounds like my shelf,” she replied, ruefully.
“Didyoutry to put up a shelf?” Bill demanded. “Let’s have a look at it.”
Somehow she did not want Bill to come into their house. Not that she distrusted or disliked him, but he made her uneasy. Still, she could not very well refuse to let him come, so, with a good grace, she opened the door and they entered.
His blond head almost reached the ceiling; his great shoulders blocked all the sunshine from the window; he seemed completely to fill the little room. And she did not like him to be there.
The pretty little things she had set out on the table seemed like a child’s toys, the house was like a doll’s house, and she herself, with her ineffectual shelf, felt altogether too diminished. He had been staring at the fallen shelf and the coat hooks for some time with an odd expression—as if he felt sorry for her.
“Look here!” he said. “When you want anything of that sort done, tell me.”
“There’s no reason on earth why I should trouble you, Mr.—”
“Morgan,” said he. “It wouldn’t be a trouble. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. Nothing!”
The earnestness with which he spoke confused her.
“Thank you, Mr. Morgan,” she began, hastily. “But—”
“Look here!” he interrupted. “I’ve got to go away—and I don’t like to leave you like this. You can’t look after yourself any better than a baby.”
Rose turned scarlet.
“You’re mistaken, Mr. Morgan!” she[Pg 390]declared, with a cold little smile. “You’re very much mistaken!”
“No,” he said. “No, I’m not. I knew, the first moment I saw you—”
“We won’t discuss the matter, if you please.”
“I’m not discussing anything,” said he, with a sort of gentleness. “I’m only telling you that you’ve got me to count on whenever you need me.”
Her hands clenched, but she answered quietly enough:
“I can’t imagine any possibility of ‘needing’ you, Mr. Morgan.”
He turned toward the door.
“I don’t mean to make a nuisance of myself,” he declared, gravely. And then he smiled. “I’m going away,” he added. “But I’m coming back!”
The screen door banged after him, and Rose sat down on the couch and began to cry.
“Beast!” she cried. “I’d like to shake him!”
But the idea of her shaking Mr. Morgan made her laugh. She dried her tears, ashamed of her temper, and when Nina got back, she was her usual good-natured, delightful self again. She did not mention the episode to Nina; it would only distress her.
“And I think I’m capable of managing Mr. Morgan!” she told herself, grimly.
Nina was surprised by her sister’s censorious attitude.
“But they do try to be neighborly!” she protested.
“I don’t care!” said Rose, with unwonted heat. “I don’t like them, and I don’t want anything to do with them. They’re a family of—savages!”
“Oh, Rose! When that poor little Margie brings us flowers from her own garden every day!”
“Yes, because that Bill told her to!” thought Rose. But aloud she said: “Brings them! She pretty nearly throws them at us.”
“That’s just her way.”
“Well, I don’t like her way, and I don’t want her flowers, and I don’t like any of those Morgans, or anything they do. I never imagined such an ill-tempered, quarrelsome family.”
“I know,” said Nina, seriously. “And I think it’s pitiful.”
“Pitiful! To snarl and snap at one another—”
“Yes,” said Nina. “Because there’s something so splendid about them, in spite of all that—something so honest and fine.”
“Fine!” cried Rose, with a snort.
“You must have noticed. They’re rough and unmannerly, but they’re never vulgar. And they speak well. I think they’ve come down in the world, Rose.”
“They certainly have!” Rose agreed. “Down to the bottom. Nina, you’re sentimental about your Morgans. You’ve seen how they live. A coarse, ugly life, without one gracious touch. They eat in the kitchen, on a table covered with oilcloth.”
“Yes, and it’s a spotless kitchen, and everything about them is wholesome.”
“It’s no use,” Rose objected. “I don’t like them, and I won’t like them. Now, you sit here on the veranda and read. I’m going to buy the Sunday dinner.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Nina, but she was glad Rose would not let her. It was a long walk, and she felt tired, very tired and languid. She did not want Rose to know how tired she was, or how worried.
It seemed that their financial affairs were not definitely settled, as they had believed. Mr. Doyle, the lawyer, kept writing to her letters she could not quite understand, anxious, almost desperate letters, accusing himself of “criminal folly”; begging her forgiveness, and making all sorts of promises. He wrote always to her, never to Rose, and she was glad of that, for she did not want Rose to know.
But she was so tired. She tried valiantly to do her share, to be a good comrade to her beloved sister; but she was not strong, either in body or in spirit; she was a gentle soul; she could endure, but she could not fight. She wanted only to live in peace and good will, harmless and lovely as a flower.
It was a Saturday afternoon; Gilbert had come home early in his little car, and he and Margie had at once begun to quarrel fiercely.
“Bill told you to take me to the village in the car, if I wanted!” she declared.
“Do you good to walk!” said her brother.
“I won’t walk!”
“All right! Then stay home!”
Presently the back door slammed, in the Morgan fashion, and Nina hoped he was going away. It hurt her to hear these two[Pg 391]young creatures quarrel so; she always wished that she had some magic word to stop them, to bring quiet to their stormy spirits. She was waiting for the sound of his engine starting up, when, to her surprise, she saw him standing on the path before her.
“Mrs. De Haaven,” he said, “can you spare me a few minutes?”
“With pleasure!” she answered, as if this amazing request were quite a matter of course. “Come up on the veranda, won’t you?”
He did come up, and when she asked him, sat down opposite her. He was silent for a few moments, and Nina studied him with frank and kindly curiosity. For the first time she saw what a remarkably handsome boy he was, a little haggard, a little too thin, perhaps, but tall and sinewy, and notably distinguished.
Yes, that was the word; he was distinguished looking, with his thin, rather arrogant face, his slender, well-kept hands, his neat dark suit. He was not surly to-day, and not shy or awkward; he looked at her candidly as he spoke.
“I hope you won’t mind,” he said. “But I knewyoucould tell me. If you’d give me your advice. I’ve got an invitation—but perhaps I’d better show it to you.”
He took a letter out of his pocket and handed it to her. It read: