The lovely little Miss Selby came from Boston, and the large and not
unhandsome Mr. Anderson came from New York, and they did not like each
other.
Indeed, Miss Selby was not very fond, just then, of any one who did
not come from Boston. Sometimes she even went so far as to declare to
herself that she did not like any one at all except the members of one
certain household in Boston.
It was at night, after she had gone to bed, that she usually made this
somewhat narrow-minded declaration, because it was at that time, when
she was lying in the dark, that she would most vividly imagine that
especial household. Her mother, her grandmother, and her two aunts;
they were the kindest, wittiest, most delightful, lovable people who
ever breathed, and she compared all other persons with them. And, so
compared, Mr. Anderson came out very badly.
As for Mr. Anderson, the reason he did not like Miss Selby was because
she obviously did not like him. He was a little sensitive about being
liked.
He almost always had been, in the past, and when he saw Miss Selby’s
eyes resting on him, with that look which meant that she was mentally
comparing him with her mother, her grandmother, and her two aunts, he
felt chilled to the bone. Not that he looked chilled; on the contrary,
his face grew red, and he fancied that his neck, his ears, and his
hands did also.
He justly resented this. It was not his fault that he was sitting at
her table. It wasn’t her table, anyhow; purely by luck had she sat
alone at it so long. It was the only place left in the dining room,
and the landlady told him to sit there.
As he pulled out his chair he said, “Good evening,” with a friendly
and unsuspicious smile, and Miss Selby glanced up at him as if she
were surprised to hear a human voice issuing from this creature, and
bent her head in something probably intended to be a nod.
Naturally, he did not speak again. But, as he sat facing her, and with
his back to the room, he could not help his eyes resting upon her from
time to time, and it was then that he had encountered that chilly
look.
It was very pitiful, he thought, to see one as young as she behaving
in such a way—really pitiful. Because she was not unattractive; even a
casual glance had informed him of that.
Dark-browed, she was, and dark-eyed; but with hair that was bright and
soft and almost blond, and a lovely rose color in her cheeks; the sort
of girl a man would admire, if there had been the true womanly
gentleness in her aspect. But after that look, it was impossible to
admire; he could only pity.
Strange as it may seem, Miss Selby pitied him, and for a somewhat
illogical reason. She saw pathos in the man because he was so large—so
much too large. His great shoulders towered above the table; knives
and forks looked like toys in his lean, brown hands, and his face was
invisible, unless she raised her eyes, which she did not intend to do
again.
She had seen him, though, as he crossed the room, and she might have
thought him not bad looking, if he had not come to sit at her table.
It was an honest and alert young face, healthily tanned, with warm,
gray eyes, and a crest of wheat-colored hair above his forehead. But
when he did sit down at her table, she immediately began her usual
comparisons.
She imagined this young man in that sitting room in Boston, and she
saw clearly how much too large he was. It was a small room, and her
mother and her grandmother and her two aunts were all of a nice, neat,
polite size.
“Like a bull in a china shop,” she thought, imagining him among them.
This was unjust. It is never fair to judge bulls by their possible
behavior in china shops, anyhow; they seldom go into them, and when
seen in the fields, or in bullfights, and so on, they are really noble
animals.
But that is what she did think, and as soon as she could finish her
dinner, she arose, with another of those almost imperceptible nods,
and went away. She went up to her own room, and began to study
shorthand.
She did this every evening, with great earnestness, for she was very
anxious to get a better position than the one she now had, and she was
so far advanced in her study that she could write absolutely anything
in shorthand—if you gave her time enough. She could often read what
she had written, too.
As for Mr. Anderson, he also went up to his room, but not to study. He
had had all he wanted of that at college. Nor did he need to worry
about a better position.
The one he had was good, and he was confident that he would have a
better one next year, and a still better one the year after that, and
so on and on, until he was one of the leading paper manufacturers in
the country—if not the leading one. He had just been made assistant
superintendent of a paper mill in this little town, and he had come
out in the most hopeful and cheerful humor.
The hope and cheer had fled, now. He felt profoundly dejected. He had
no friends here, and if other people were like that girl, he never
would have any. For all he knew, there might be something repellent in
his manner, which his old friends had kindly overlooked.
He began to think sorrowfully of those old friends, of the little flat
he had had in New York with two other fellows—such nice fellows—such a
nice flat. When you looked out of the window there you saw a facade of
other windows, with shaded lamps in them, and the shadows of people
passing back and forth, and down below in the street more people, and
taxis, and big, quiet, smooth-running private cars, and all the
familiar city sounds. And here, outside this window, there were
trees—nothing but trees.
He had heard, often enough, about the loneliness of country dwellers
when in a great city, but he felt that it was not to be compared with
the loneliness of a city dweller among trees. He got up and went to
the window, and he couldn’t even see a human creature, only those
sentinel trees, moving a little against the pale and cloudy sky.
It was a May night, and the air that blew on his face was May air, a
wonderful thing, filled with tender and exquisite perfumes, so cool
and sweet that he grew suddenly sick of his tobacco-scented room, and
decided to go out on the veranda.
What happened was a coincidence, but it would surely have happened,
sooner or later. He met Miss Selby. As soon as he had stepped outside,
she opened the door and came out, too.
There was an electric light in the ceiling of this veranda, which gave
it a singularly cheerless appearance, rather like the deck of a
deserted ship, with the chairs all drawn up along the wall. There was
nobody else there, and Mr. Anderson stood directly under the light, so
that she could see him very plainly.
She said: “Oh!” and drew back hastily, putting her hand on the
doorknob.
This was a little too much!
“Look here!” said Mr. Anderson crisply. “Don’t go in on _my_ account.
I’ll go, myself.”
Now, Miss Selby was not really haughty or disagreeable. Simply, she
had been brought up on all sorts of Red Riding-hood tales, in which
all the trouble was caused by giving encouragement to strangers.
She had been taught that it was a mad, reckless thing to acknowledge
the existence of persons whose grandparents had not been known, and
favorably known, to her grandparents. But certainly she had no desire
to offend any one, and this stranger did seem to be offended. So she
said:
“Oh, no! You mustn’t think of such a thing!”
She meant it kindly, but unfortunately she was utterly unable to speak
in a natural way to a stranger. In reality she was a poor, homesick,
affectionate, kind-hearted young girl of twenty, who, not fifteen
minutes before, had been weeping from sheer loneliness.
But she spoke in what seemed to him an obnoxiously condescending and
superior tone. He was a young man of many excellent qualities, but
meekness was not one of them, and he resented this tone.
So he spoke with an air of amused indulgence, as if he thought her
such a funny little thing:
“I don’t want to drive you away, you know.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Why, of course not!” she said, just as much amused as he was, and sat
down in one of the chairs against the wall.
She sat there, and he stood opposite her, leaning against the railing,
both of them silently not liking each other. Presently the silence
became unbearable.
“The spring has come early this year,” observed Miss Selby.
Mr. Anderson, the city dweller, knew precious little about what was
expected of spring, but he was determined to say something, anything.
“Yes,” he agreed. “They were selling violets in the streets
yesterday.”
Miss Selby looked at him with a sort of horror. Was _that_ his idea of
spring—violets being sold on street corners?
“But that doesn’t mean anything!” she cried. “They were probably
hothouse violets, anyway. You can’t possibly see the real spring
unless you go in the woods.”
She needn’t think she owned the spring. Every year of his life he had
spent several weeks in the country at various hotels. He had seen any
number of woods, had walked in them, and admired them, too, with
moderation, however.
“Yes, I know,” he admitted. “Last June I motored up through
Connecticut—”
“Oh, but that’s different!” she explained. “Motoring—that’s not the
same thing at all! There’s a little wood near here—I go there almost
every Sunday—I wish you could see it!”
“I’d like to,” he replied, without realizing the step implied.
They were both dismayed by what had happened. Miss Selby arose
hastily.
“Well—good night!” she said, and fled upstairs to her room in a panic.
“Heavens!” she thought. “Did he think I wanted him to come with me
tomorrow? Oh, dear! How—how awfully awkward! Oh, I do hope it will
rain!”
Mr. Anderson, left by himself, lit his pipe.
“After that,” he mused, “of course I’ll have to ask her to let me go
with her tomorrow. That’s only common courtesy.”
Very well, he was willing to make the sacrifice.