by Bret Harte
Miss Brooks, I was not making-believe. I am reallyvery careless, and everything is so proper--I mean so neat andpretty--here, that I"--he stopped, and, observing the same backwardwandering of her eye as of a filly about to shy, quickly changed thesubject. "You have, or are about to have, neighbors?" he said,glancing towards the windows as he recalled the incident of a momentbefore.
"Yes; and they're not at all nice people. They are from Pike County,and very queer. They came across the plains in '50. They say'Stranger'; the men are vulgar, and the girls very forward. Tap forbidsmy ever going to the window and looking at them. They're quite what youwould call 'off color.'"
Herbert, who did not dare to say that he never would have dreamed ofusing such an expression in any young girl's presence, was plunged insilent consternation.
"Then your brother doesn't approve of them?" he said, at last,awkwardly.
"Oh, not at all. He even talked of having ground-glass put in allthese windows, only it would make the light bad."
Herbert felt very embarrassed. If the mysterious missile came fromthese objectionable young persons, it was evidently because theythought they had detected a more accessible and sympathizing individualin the stranger who now occupied the room. He concluded he had betternot say anything about it.
Miss Brooks's golden eyelashes were bent towards the floor. "Do youplay sacred music, Mr. Bly?" she said, without raising them.
"I am afraid not."
"Perhaps you know only negro-minstrel songs?"
"I am afraid--yes."
"I know one." The dimples faintly came back again. "It's called 'TheHam-fat Man.' Some day when mother isn't in I'll play it for you."
Then the dimples fled again, and she immediately looked so distressedthat Herbert came to her assistance.
"I suppose your brother taught you that too?"
"Oh dear, no!" she returned, with her frightened glance; "I only heardhim say some people preferred that kind of thing to sacred music, andone day I saw a copy of it in a music-store window in Clay Street, andbought it. Oh no! Tappington didn't teach it to me."
In the pleasant discovery that she was at times independent of herbrother's perfections, Herbert smiled, and sympathetically drew a stepnearer to her. She rose at once, somewhat primly holding back thesides of her skirt, school-girl fashion, with thumb and finger, and hereyes cast down.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Bly."
"Must you go? Good afternoon."
She walked directly to the open door, looking very tall and stately asshe did so, but without turning towards him. When she reached it shelifted her eyes; there was the slightest suggestion of a return of herdimples in the relaxation of her grave little mouth. Then she said,"good-bye, Mr. Bly," and departed.
The skirt of her dress rustled for an instant in the passage. Herbertlooked after her. "I wonder if she skipped then--she looks like a girlthat might skip at such a time," he said to himself. "How very odd sheis--and how simple! But I must pull her up in that slang when I knowher better. Fancy her brother telling her THAT! What a pair they mustbe!" Nevertheless, when he turned back into the room again he forboregoing to the window to indulge further curiosity in regard to hiswicked neighbors. A certain new feeling of respect to his latecompanion--and possibly to himself--held him in check. Much as heresented Tappington's perfections, he resented quite as warmly thepresumption that he was not quite as perfect, which was implied in thatmysterious overture. He glanced at the stool on which she had beensitting with a half-brotherly smile, and put it reverently on one sidewith a very vivid recollection of her shy maidenly figure. In somemysterious way too the room seemed to have lost its formal strangeness;perhaps it was the touch of individuality--HERS--that had been wanting?He began thoughtfully to dress himself for his regular dinner at thePoodle Dog Restaurant, and when he left the room he turned back to lookonce more at the stool where she had sat. Even on his way to that fastand famous cafe of the period he felt, for the first time in histhoughtless but lonely life, the gentle security of the home he hadleft behind him.
II.
It was three or four days before he became firmly adjusted to his newquarters. During this time he had met Cherry casually on thestaircase, in going or coming, and received her shy greetings; but shehad not repeated her visit, nor again alluded to it. He had spent partof a formal evening in the parlor in company with a calling deacon,who, unappalled by the Indian shawl for which the widow had exchangedher household cerements on such occasions, appeared to Herbert to haveremote matrimonial designs, as far at least as a sympatheticdeprecation of the vanities of the present, an echoing of her sighslike a modest encore, a preternatural gentility of manner, a vagueallusion to the necessity of bearing "one another's burdens," and aneverlasting promise in store, would seem to imply. To Herbert's vividimagination, a discussion on the doctrinal points of last Sabbath'ssermon was fraught with delicate suggestion and an acceptance by thewidow of an appointment to attend the Wednesday evening "Lectures" hadall the shy reluctant yielding of a granted rendezvous. Oddly enough,the more formal attitude seemed to be reserved for the young people,who, in the suggestive atmosphere of this spiritual flirtation, aloneappeared to preserve the proprieties and, to some extent, decorouslychaperon their elders. Herbert gravely turned the leaves of Cherry'smusic while she played and sang one or two discreet but depressingsongs expressive of her unalterable but proper devotion to her mother'sclock, her father's arm-chair, and her aunt's Bible; and Herbert joinedsomewhat boyishly in the soul-subduing refrain. Only once he venturedto suggest in a whisper that he would like to add HER music-stool tothe adorable inventory; but he was met by such a disturbed andterrified look that he desisted. "Another night of this wild andreckless dissipation will finish me," he said lugubriously to himselfwhen he reached the solitude of his room. "I wonder how many times aweek I'd have to help the girl play the spiritual gooseberry downstairsbefore we could have any fun ourselves?"
Here the sound of distant laughter, interspersed with vivaciousfeminine shrieks, came through the open window. He glanced between thecurtains. His neighbor's house was brilliantly lit, and the shadows ofa few romping figures were chasing each other across the muslin shadesof the windows. The objectionable young women were evidently enjoyingthemselves. In some conditions of the mind there is a certainexasperation in the spectacle of unmeaning enjoyment, and he shut thewindow sharply. At the same moment some one knocked at his door.
It was Miss Brooks, who had just come upstairs.
"Will you please let me have my music-stool?"
He stared at her a moment in surprise, then recovering himself, said,"Yes, certainly," and brought the stool. For an instant he was temptedto ask why she wanted it, but his pride forbade him.
"Thank you. Good-night."
"Good-night!"
"I hope it wasn't in your way?"
"Not at all."
"Good-night!"
"Good-night."
She vanished. Herbert was perplexed. Between young ladies whose naiveexuberance impelled them to throw handkerchiefs at his window and youngladies whose equally naive modesty demanded the withdrawal from hisbedroom of a chair on which they had once sat, his lot seemed to havefallen in a troubled locality. Yet a day or two later he heard Cherrypractising on the harmonium as he was ascending the stairs on hisreturn from business; she had departed before he entered the room, buthad left the music-stool behind her. It was not again removed.
One Sunday, the second or third of his tenancy, when Cherry and hermother were at church, and he had finished some work that he hadbrought from the bank, his former restlessness and sense of strangenessreturned. The regular afternoon fog had thickened early, and, drivinghim back from a cheerless, chilly ramble on the hill, had left himstill more depressed and solitary. In sheer desperation he moved someof the furniture, and changed the disposition of several smallerornaments. Growing bolder, he even attacked the sacred shelf devotedto Tappington's serious literature and moral studies. At first g
lancethe book of sermons looked suspiciously fresh and new for a volume ofhabitual reference, but its leaves were carefully cut, and containedone or two book-marks. It was only another evidence of that perfectyouth's care and neatness. As he was replacing it he noticed a smallobject folded in white paper at the back of the shelf. To put the bookback into its former position it was necessary to take this out. Hedid so, but its contents slid from his fingers and the paper to thefloor. To his utter consternation, looking down he saw a pack ofplaying-cards strewn at his feet!
He hurriedly picked them up. They were worn and slippery from use, andexhaled a faint odor of tobacco. Had they been left there by