The sound of a car coming along the road made Bess draw to one side.
Very few cars came here, and she was a little curious about it. She
glanced up as it passed, and then stared after it, amazed.
It was what looked like the wreck of a fine touring car, battered and
scarred, but with an engine that took the steep hill superbly. It was
piled high with household goods. A man was driving it, on the running
board crouched another man, and, perilously balanced upon a table wedged
into the tonneau, there sat a woman. She was laughing, and the
brightness of her face lingered in the girl’s mind.
As they disappeared over the crest of the hill, a lamp shade fell out of
the car. Bess was hastening forward to retrieve it, but, before she got
there, one of the men appeared. He picked it up, and then something
arrested his attention.
“Hi! Just come here!” he called, and the two others joined him.
They all stood there, as if entranced with the view; and Bess, as she
passed them, heard the woman say something about “the austere charm of
all this.” She was somewhat surprised, and very much impressed, to learn
that any one could find charm of any sort in these barren fields, where
great billboards stood, declaring them to be highly desirable building
lots. She felt that she herself should have discovered this charm in the
six weeks she had been here.
But now she observed something which the others had not seen. They had
their backs turned to the car, which stood halfway down the slope, and
they did not know that it had begun to slip. Bess called an anxious
warning, but they were talking, and did not hear; and the top-heavy car
was slowly gathering momentum.
“Oh, do look out!” she cried. “It’s running away!”
It was. Oblivious of brakes, it went careering down the hill, faster and
faster, bumping over the ruts, and flinging out all sorts of things as
it went. The others had heard her, now, and turned, and they all began
rushing after it.
Too late! Going at great speed, the car smashed squarely into the stump
of a tree, stood up on its hind feet, and threw a great part of its load
over its head. Then it stood still and waited.
Bess was the first to reach the scene of disaster, and she was dismayed.
There was a little red lacquer cabinet in splinters; there were books
with the pages fluttering away; a china clock was shattered to pieces;
the ground was strewn with wreckage.
“Oh, what a pity!” she cried. “I’m so sorry! Such pretty things!”
“Never mind!” said the woman, cheerfully. “Some of them were broken,
anyhow; and I don’t believe in caring too much about _things_, do you?”
Struck by this philosophic point of view, Bess turned toward the
speaker, and found her still smiling. She was not a pretty woman. She
was small and pale and freckled, and her reddish hair was growing gray;
but that smile offers was a thing rarer than youth or beauty.
“I _like_ her!” thought Bess.
The two men had begun to stow the débris into the car in a way that
caused anguish to the girl’s orderly spirit.
“Have you much farther to go?” she asked anxiously. “Because, if the
things are packed like that, I’m afraid they’ll fall out.”
“My dear,” said the woman, “I don’t know how far it is. I took the
place, in blind faith, from an agent. It’s No. 9 Edgely Road.”
“Oh, but that’s right there!” cried Bess, pointing. “That house, where I
live!”
“A two-family house, isn’t it? Well, my dear, we’re the second family,
then!” said the woman, very much pleased, and she called out joyously:
“Tom Tench! Alan! I’ve found the place!”
The two men approached. They also seemed surprised and pleased.
“As if she’d done something very clever,” thought Bess. “Didn’t they
ever expect to find their house?”
“My dear,” said the woman, “I’m Angelina Smith. This is my brother Alan,
and my cousin, Tom Tench. Boys, imagine! This is the young lady who
lives in the house!”
Both the men took off their hats and smiled at her.
“Shall we move the things in now?” asked the cousin, a somewhat portly
young man, in horn-rimmed spectacles.
“Or will it bother you?” asked Miss Smith.
Bess was disconcerted to see that they regarded her as a sort of
hostess.
“Just as you like, of course,” she said. “I--can’t I help you?”
“No!” replied the brother, promptly. “We can get along all right.”
Bess glanced at him, but looked away again, hastily. There was something
in his steady, smiling gaze that confused her. He did not look much like
his sister. She was little, and he was tall. Her hair was reddish, and
his was black. He had the same wide, good-humored smile, but somehow it
was different.
“It’s getting dark,” he said, “and it’s cold. You’d better run home.”
Bess might have felt a little annoyed by his rather masterful manner, if
she had not noticed, as he moved to pick up a book, that he walked with
a limp; but that disarmed her. She liked him; she liked all of them;
there was something charming and a little pathetic about them.
“Won’t you all come in and have a cup of tea with us first?” she asked,
strictly upon impulse.
“My dear!” cried Miss Smith. “How kind of you! We will!”
And they all followed her to the house, leaving the hapless car just
where it was.
Bess knocked upon the door, to warn her father. He opened it with the
distressed air of a disturbed hermit.
“Father,” said Bess, “these are our new neighbors. Miss Smith, my
father, Professor Gayle.”
Miss Smith held out her hand, and the professor took it. She presented
her cousin and her brother, and they all shook hands gravely.
“But how cozy!” she exclaimed, looking about her.
“Ah! Yes! Yes! Yes!” said Professor Gayle.
“Cozy” seemed a tactful word for that sitting room. When Bess and her
father left their old home, they had brought with them what they had
regarded, at the time, as just a few pieces of their old furniture; but
in this room the things had become too many and too large.
Bess knew that the crowded room hurt her father not only æsthetically,
but physically. He was a big, gaunt man, very near-sighted, and almost
every time he moved his shins struck some sharp angle, or something
bumped him under the knees. When he made one of his fine, sweeping
gestures--sweeping, it truly was--it carried to the floor all sorts of
things from near-by tables.
But Miss Smith was entranced.
“Really a home!” said she. “You know, we all suddenly felt the need of a
home, ourselves, last week. It was at breakfast in the studio. Alan
said, ‘Christmas will soon be here.’ ‘What does Christmas mean to us,
who have no home?’ Tom Tench inquired. ‘Boys,’ I said, ‘you shall have a
home!’ So, you see!”
“Ah, yes!” said the professor, vaguely. Bess had gone off to make tea,
and he was obliged to entertain the party alone. He scarcely felt equal
to it. “You said ‘studio’?” he continued. “Am I to understand that you
are--er--an artist, Miss Smith?”
“All of us! I paint, and Tom Tench writes, and Alan designs. We’re very
quiet people,” she assured him. “We shan’t disturb you in the least.”
“I’m sure,” said the professor, gallantly.
And he really did feel that, if he must have neighbors, these were
remarkably unobjectionable ones--no children, no dogs, and he fancied
that they were not the sort to possess a loud speaker.
He was still further encouraged when Tom Tench pulled a book from one of
the shelves, and gave a stern and loud opinion upon it. That was the
kind of thing the professor was accustomed to, and he immediately
pronounced a loud and scholarly contradiction. Then he and Miss Smith
and Tom Tench all began to talk about books. No one of them had any use
for the books praised by the others, but that made it all the more
interesting.
They did not miss the brother. He had followed Bess into the kitchen,
and he said he wished to help her. She told him that there was really
nothing that he could do, but still he stayed there. He sat on the end
of the table, and talked to her.
His conversation was not scholarly. He did not talk about books. He
talked about plays, and Bess had never seen anything except a few
Shakespearean dramas. He talked about dancing, and Bess had never
danced, except at school. Her particular friends had been very serious
girls, and her father was invariably serious; she was not accustomed to
frivolous conversation, and she could not answer Mr. Smith. After awhile
he gave up and fell silent.
That night, after she had gone to bed, Bess lay awake for a time in the
dark. She endeavored to think of the future, and to decide whether she
could study shorthand by mail; but her thinking was unaccountably
disturbed by the memory of that young man, with his steady, smiling
glance and his very insignificant conversation. Somehow, it made her
unhappy.