SOMETHING REALLY HAPPENS
It might have been any of the village people, as Georgiana expected it
would be when she closed the kitchen door with a bang and went
reluctantly to answer the knock. Since it was almost suppertime it was
probably Mrs. Shear, who seldom made a call at any other hour, knowing
she would as surely be asked to stay as it was sure that David Warne's
heart would respond to the wanness and unhappiness always written on
Mrs. Shear's homely middle-aged face. As she went to the door, Georgiana
felt an intensely wicked desire to hit Mrs. Shear a blow with her own
capable fist, which should send her backward into the snow. Georgiana
did not believe that the lady was as unhappy as she looked. It seemed to
be a day for expression by the use of fists!
But when the door was opened and the light from the bracket lamp in the
manse hall shone out on the figure standing upon the porch, all desire
to hit anything more with her fist vanished from the girl's heart. For
with the first look into the face of the man outside her instant wish
was to have him come in--and stay. Somebody so evidently from the great
world which seemed so far away from the old village manse--somebody who
looked as if he could bring with him into this dull life of theirs all
manner of interest--it was small wonder that in her present mood the
girl should feel like this. And it must by no means be supposed that
Georgiana was in the habit of experiencing this sort of wish every time
she set eyes upon a personable man. Personable men had been many in her
acquaintance during the four years of her college life, and more than
one of them had followed her back to the old manse to urge his claim
upon her attention.
"Is the Reverend Mr. Warne at home?" asked the stranger in a low and
pleasant voice. "I have a letter of introduction to him."
"Please come in," answered Georgiana, and led him straight into the
living-room and her father's presence. Then, though consumed with
curiosity, she retired--as far as the door of the dining-room, where she
remained, ready to listen in a most reprehensible manner to the
conversation which should follow.
There was an exchange of greetings, then evidently Mr. Warne was reading
the letter of introduction. Presently he spoke:
"This is quite sufficient," he said, "to make you welcome under this
roof. My old friend Davidson has my affection and confidence always.
Please tell me what I can do for you, Mr. Jefferson."
"I should like," replied the stranger's voice, "to have a room with you,
and possibly board, if that might be. If not, perhaps I could find that
elsewhere; but if I might at least have the room I should be very glad.
I am hard at work upon a book, and I have come away from my home and
other work to find a place where I can live quietly, write steadily, and
be outdoors every day for long walks in the country. Doctor Davidson
suggested this place, and thought you might take me in--for an
indefinite period of time, possibly some months."
"That sounds very pleasant to me," Georgiana heard her father reply. "We
have never had a boarder, my daughter and I, but, if she has no
objection, I should enjoy having such a man as you look to be, in the
house. Your letter, you see, is not your only introduction. You carry
with you in your face a passport to other men's favour."
"That is good of you," answered Mr. Jefferson--and Georgiana liked the
frank tone of his voice. It was an educated voice, it spoke for itself
of the personality behind it.
"I will go and talk with my daughter," she heard her father say, after
the two men had had some little conversation concerning a book or two
lying on the table by Mr. Warne's couch.
Georgiana fled into the kitchen, where her father found her. When he
appeared, closing the door behind him, she was ready for him before he
spoke.
"If he were the angel Gabriel or old Pluto himself I'd welcome him," she
said under her breath, her eyes dancing. "To have somebody in the house
for you to talk with besides your everlasting old parishioners--why, it
would be worth a world of trouble! And it won't be any trouble at all.
Go tell him your daughter reluctantly consents."
"You heard, then?" queried Mr. Warne, a quizzical smile on his gentle
lips.
"Of course I heard! I was listening hard! I was all ears--regular donkey
ears. He's a godsend. His board will pay for sirloin instead of round.
We'll have roast duck on Sunday--twice a winter. He can have the big
front room; I'll have it ready by to-morrow night."
"Come in and arrange details," urged Mr. Warne.
Georgiana stayed behind a minute to compose her face and manner, then
went in, the demurest of young housewives. Not for nothing had been her
years of college life, which had made, when occasion demanded, a quietly
poised woman out of a girl who had been, according to village standards,
a somewhat hoydenish young person.
As she faced the stranger in the full light of the fire-and-lamp-lit
room, she saw in detail that of which she had had a swift earlier
impression. Mr. Jefferson was a man in, she thought, the early thirties,
with a strongly modelled, shaven face, keen brown eyes behind
eyeglasses, a mouth which could be grave one moment and humorous the
next, and the air of a man who was accustomed to think for himself and
expect others to do so. He was well built though not tall, well dressed
though not dapper, and he looked less like a writer of books than a
participant in action of some kind or other. His dark hair showed a
thread or two of gray at the temples, but this suggestion of age did not
seem at all to age him.
The stranger, on his part, saw a rather more than commonly charming
Georgiana, on account of the Indian-red silk frock.
"It's not fair to him," thought Georgiana, "to show him a landlady who
looks so festive and fine. I can't afford to wear this often, even for
his benefit." But to him she said: "I know it will give my father much
pleasure to have some one in the house besides his daughter. And I am
quite willing to have you at our table. I must warn you that we live
very simply, as you must guess."
"I live very simply myself," Mr. Jefferson assured her. "There are few
things I do not like. My one serious antipathy is Brussels sprouts," he
added, smiling. "With that confession the coast is clear. And--you
would not mind my smoking in my room?"
Georgiana glanced at her father with a suddenly mischievous expression.
He was studying the prospective boarder with interested eyes.
"I think," confessed Mr. Warne, "that merely to catch a whiff now and
then of a fragrance which is singularly pleasant to me, but which I am
denied producing for myself, would add to the things that give me
comfort. If you wouldn't mind smoking in the hall now and then, or,
better yet, by my fireside, I should be grateful."
Mr. Jefferson nodded. "Thank you, sir. And now--when may I come? I have
a room at the hotel, so don't let me in until you are quite ready."
"You may come to-morrow night for supper," promised Georgiana. "But you
haven't seen the room." She rose.
"It will be in the upper right front?" hazarded Mr. Jefferson. "And it
will have the customary furnishings and some means of heating?"
"I should prefer to have you see it," she insisted, and lighted a candle
in an ancient pewter candlestick with an extinguisher at the side.
So the stranger, following her upstairs, surveyed his room and professed
himself entirely satisfied. It looked bare enough to Georgiana as she
showed it to him, but she told herself that there were possibilities in
the matter of certain belongings of her own room which could be
transferred to give an air of homelikeness to this.
"It is large, and I can have plenty of light and air," commented the
prospective boarder. "If I might have some sort of good-sized table by
that south window, for my work, I should consider myself provided for."
"You will find one when you come," promised the girl.
"Thank you. Now, I will take myself off at once. Then you may have a
chance to discuss with your father the probabilities in favour of your
not regretting your quick decision," he said as he descended the stairs.
"Father and I always make quick decisions," Georgiana remarked.
"Good! So do I. Do you hold to them as well?"
"Always. That's part of father's creed."
"That's very good; that speaks for itself. Well, I promise you I shall
be busy enough not to bother this household overmuch. By the way"--he
turned suddenly--"that table you spoke of putting in my room--if it is
large, it must be heavy. Your father cannot help you lift it, and you
should not lift it alone. Don't put it in place until I come--please?"
She smiled. "That's very thoughtful of you. But I am quite equal to
moving it alone."
"Then let me help you now, won't you?" he offered.
She shook her head. "It's really not ready to be moved. Don't think of
it again, please."
He bade them good-night and went away, with no lingering speeches on the
road to the door. He had the air of a man accustomed to measure his time
and to waste none of it. When he had gone Georgiana went back to her
father. He looked up at her with a twinkle in his still boyish eyes.
"Well, daughter, it looks to me as if this had happened just in time to
prevent a bad explosion from too high pressure of accumulated energy.
You can now lower the position of the indicator on the steam gauge to
the safety point by spending the whole day to-morrow in sweeping and
dusting and baking. If there are any spare moments you can employ them
in making over your clothes."
"Father Davy! Where did you get such a perfectly uncanny understanding?"
"From observation--purely from observation. And I myself confess to
feeling considerably excited and elated. It is not every day that a
gentleman of this sort knocks at the door of a village manse and asks to
come in and write a book. If it had not been that my old friend Davidson
is always bringing people together who need each other, I should think
it the strangest thing in the world that this should happen. Davidson
is the minister of a great New York church where this Mr. Jefferson
attends; and Davidson has never forgotten me, though he took the high
road and I the low so soon after he left the seminary. Well, it will
give us a fresh interest, my dear, for as long as it lasts."
Georgiana thought it would. She was up betimes next morning, to begin
the sweeping and dusting and general turning upside down of the
long-unused upper front room. In the course of her window washing, her
shoulders enveloped in an old red shawl, she was vigorously hailed from
below.
"Ship ahoy! Your name, cargo, and destination?"
Without turning she called merrily back: "The Jefferson, with a cargo of
books, bound for the public!"
"What's that? I don't get you."
"Never mind. I'm too busy to be spoken by every passing ship."
"I'll be up," called the voice, and footsteps sounded upon the porch.
The front door banged, the same ringing male voice was heard shouting a
"Good-morning, sir!" and the owner of the voice came leaping up the
stairs and burst into the room without ceremony. He advanced till he was
close to the open window, and nodded through the glass at the
window-washer, who sat on the sill with her upper body outside.
He was a fine specimen of youth and brawn and energy, the young man whom
Georgiana had pointed out to her friends as one of her resources when it
came to the good times they were so anxious to know of. His name was
James Stuart, and he was a near neighbour of the manse. He was a college
graduate of three years' longer standing than Georgiana, and he, like
her, had returned to the country home and his father's farm because his
aging parents could not spare him, and he was the only son whose lack of
other ties left him free to care for them. He and this girl had been
schoolmates and long-time friends--with interesting intervals of enmity
during the earlier years--and were now sworn comrades, though they still
quarrelled at times. It looked, after a minute, as if this would be one
of those times.
"I didn't just get you," complained James Stuart through the window.
"Wait till I come in. I can't tell all the neighbours."
Georgiana polished off her last pane, pushed up the window and slipped
into the room, quite unnecessarily assisted by Stuart.
"I can't understand," began the young man, eying with approval her
blooming face, frost-stung and smooth in texture as the petals of a
rose, "why you're washing the windows of a room that's always shut up."
"Jimps, if you were Mrs. Perkins next door I'd understand your consuming
curiosity. As it is----"
"Going to have company?"
She shook her head.
"Then--what in thunder----"
"We're going to have a boarder, if you must know." Georgiana began to
attack the inside of the window.
"A boarder! What sort?"
"A very good sort. He's a literary person with a book to write."
"Suffering cats! Not the man at the hotel?"
"I believe he was to exist at the hotel--if he could--for twenty-four
hours," admitted Georgiana.
"But that man," objected Mr. James Stuart, "is a--why, he's--he doesn't
look like that sort at all."
"What sort, if you please?"
"The literary. He looks like a--well, I took him for a professional man
of some kind."
Georgiana laughed derisively. "Jimps! Isn't authorship a profession?"
"Well, I mean, you know, he doesn't look like an ink-slinger; he looks
like some sort of a doer. He hasn't that dreamy expression. He sees with
both eyes at once. In other words, he seems to be all there."
"Your idea of literary men is a disgrace to your education, Jimps. Think
of the author-soldiers and author-engineers--and author-Presidents of
the United States," she ended triumphantly.
"It doesn't matter," admitted Stuart. "The thing that does is that he's
coming here. I can't say that appeals to me. How in time did he come to
apply?" Georgiana told him briefly. Stuart looked gloomy. "That's all
right," he said, "as long as he confines himself to being company for
your father. But if he takes to being company for you--lookout!"
"Absurd! He's years older than I, and he said he would be working very
hard. I shall see nothing of him except at the table. Heavens! don't
grudge us anything that promises to relieve the monotony of our lives
even a little bit."
Stuart whistled. "Monotony, eh? In spite of all my visits? All right.
But I'd be just as well pleased if he wore skirts. And mind you--your
Uncle Jimps is coming over evenings just as often as and a little
oftener than if you didn't have this literary light burning on your
hearthstone. See?"
He went away, his thick fair hair, uncapped, shining in the morning
sunlight, his arm waving a friendly farewell back at the window, where a
white cloth flapped in reply.
"Dear old boy!" thought the young woman affectionately; "what should I
do without him?"
That afternoon, just before the supper hour, the boarder's trunk
arrived. It was borne upstairs by the village baggageman, complaining
bitterly of its weight. It was an aristocratic-looking trunk, and it
bore labels which indicated that it was a traveled trunk. Shortly
afterward the boarder himself appeared and was allowed to betake himself
at once to his room, from which he emerged at the call of the bell, and
came promptly down. Meeting Mr. Warne limping slowly through the hall,
he offered his arm, and in the dining-room placed his host in his chair
with the gentle deference so welcome from a younger man to an older.
Georgiana, as she served one of the undeniably simple but toothsome
meals for the cooking of which she was equipped by many years'
apprenticeship, noted how bright grew Father Davy's face as the supper
progressed, and how delightfully the newcomer talked--and listened--for
if he was an interesting talker he proved to be a still more
accomplished listener. When the supper was over Mr. Jefferson lingered a
few minutes by the fire, then went up to his room, explaining that he
must unpack his books and make ready for an early attack in the morning
upon his work.
In her own room, that night, Georgiana lay awake for a long time. Just
before she went to sleep she addressed herself sternly:
"My child, I shouldn't wonder if you've jumped out of the frying pan of
monotony into the fire of unrest. It certainly means trouble for you
when you can't get a perfect stranger's face out of your mind for an
hour. Now, there's just one thing about it: you've always despised girls
who let themselves leap into liking any man and are so upset by it that
everybody sees it. This one is undoubtedly either married or engaged to
be, and even if he's the freest old bachelor alive you are to behave as
if he were the tightest tied. You are to go straight ahead with your
work and to remember every minute that you are a poor minister's
daughter with only a college training for an asset. He's very clearly a
man of importance somewhere; he couldn't look like that and be anything
else. He will never think twice of you. Whatever attention he gives you
will be purely because he is a gentleman and he can't ignore his host's
daughter--nonsense, his landlady--I might as well face it. He's a
boarder and I'm his landlady. Gentlemen don't take much interest in
landladies. So now, Georgiana Warne, landlady--keeper of a
boarding-house, be sensible and go to sleep."
But before she went to sleep her mind, in spite of her, had imaged for
her again the interesting, clever-looking face of the stranger under the
roof, with his clear, straightforward glance that seemed to see so much,
his smile which disclosed splendid teeth, his strongly moulded chin. And
she had owned, frankly, driven to the confession just to see if it
wouldn't relieve her:
"It's just such a face as I've seen and liked--in crowds sometimes--but
I never knew the owner of one. It's such a face as a woman would
remember to her grave, if its owner had just belonged to her one--hour!
Oh, dear God, I've prayed you to let something happen--anything! And now
I'm--afraid!"
But, in the morning, when pulses beat strongly and courage is bright,
Georgiana had another tone to take with herself. She faced her image in
the glass, which looked straight back at her with unflinching dark eyes.
"I'm ashamed of you! To moon and croon like that! Now, brace up, Miss
Warne, and be yourself. You've never lacked spirit; you're not going to
lack it now. You're going to be strong and sane about this thing. You're
going to be the sort of girl whose mind no man can guess at. You're
going to weave rugs for your life, and enjoy Jimps Stuart as you always
have, and there's not going to be a whimper out of you from this hour,
no matter what happens--or doesn't happen. Do you hear? Well,
then--attention! Head up, shoulders back, heart steady; forward,
_march_!"
Two hours later, when, in the absence of the new inmate, Georgiana went
into his room to put it in order for the day, she found it impossible
not to note the character of his belongings. They were few and simple
enough, but in every detail they betrayed a fastidious taste. And among
the articles in ebony and leather which lay upon the linen cover of the
old bureau stood one which held her fascinated attention. It was a
framed photograph of a young and very lovely woman in evening dress, and
the face which smiled over the perfect shoulder was looking straight out
at her.
Georgiana stared back. "Who are you?" she whispered. "I might have known
you would be here!"
"And who, please, are you?" the picture seemed to query lightly, smiling
in return for the other's frown. "As for me, don't you see plainly? I
belong to him. Else why should he have me here? You see I'm the only one
he cared to bring. Doesn't that speak for itself?"
"Of course it does," agreed Georgiana; then stoutly: "And why should I
care? Of course I don't care. To care would be--absurd!"