I
He was seated near the top end of Miss Buffum's table when I first saw
his good-natured face with its twinkling eyes, high cheekbones and
broad, white forehead in strong contrast to the wizened, almost sour,
visage of our landlady. Up to the time of his coming every one had
avoided that end, or had gradually shifted his seat, gravitating slowly
toward the bottom, where the bank clerk, the college professor and I
hobnobbed over our soup and boiled mutton.
It was his laugh that attracted my attention--the first that had come
from the upper end of the table in the memory of the oldest boarder.
Men talk of the first kiss, the first baby, the first bluebird in the
spring, but to me, who have suffered and know, the first, sincere,
hearty laugh, untrammelled and unlimited, that rings down the
hide-bound table of a dismal boarding-house, carries with it a surprise
and charm that outclasses them all. The effect on this occasion was
like the opening of a window letting in a gust of pure air. Some of the
more sensitive shivered at its freshness, and one woman raised her
eyeglasses in astonishment, but all the rest craned their heads in the
new boarder's direction, their faces expressing their enjoyment. As for
Miss Buffum and the schoolmistress, they so far forgot themselves as to
join audibly in the merriment.
What the secret of the man's power, or why the schoolteacher--who sat
on Miss Buffum's right--should have become suddenly hilarious, or how
Miss Buffum herself could be prodded or beguiled into smiles, no one at
my end of the table could understand; and yet, as the days went by, it
became more and more evident that not only were these two cold, brittle
exteriors being slowly thawed out, but that every one else within the
sound of his seductive voice was yielding to his influence. Stories
that had lain quiet in our minds for months for lack of a willing or
appreciative ear, or had been told behind our hands,--small pipings
most of them of club and social gossip, now became public property,
some being bowled along the table straight at the new boarder, who sent
his own rolling back in exchange, his big, sonorous voice filling the
room as he replied with accounts of his life in Poland among the
peasants; of his experiences in the desert; of a shipwreck off the
coast of Ceylon in which he was given up for lost; of a trip he made
across the Russian steppes in a sleigh--each adventure ending in some
strangely humorous situation which put the table in a roar.
None of these narratives, however, solved the mystery of his identity
or of his occupation. All our good landlady knew was that he had driven
up in a hack one afternoon, bearing a short letter of introduction from
a former lodger--a man who had lived abroad for the previous ten
years--introducing Mr. Norvic Bing; that after its perusal she had
given him the second-story front room, at that moment empty--a fact
that had greatly influenced her--and that he had at once moved in. His
trunks--there were two of them--had, she remembered, been covered with
foreign labels (and still were)--all of which could be verified by any
one who had a right to know and who would take the trouble to inspect
his room when he was out, which occurred every day between ten in the
morning and six in the afternoon, and more often between six in the
afternoon and ten the next morning. The slight additional information
she possessed came from the former lodger's letter, which stated that
the bearer, Mr. Norvic Bing, was a native of Denmark, that he was
visiting America for the first time, and that, desiring a place where
he could live in complete retirement, the writer had recommended Miss
Buffum's house.
As to who he was in his own country--and he certainly must have been
some one of importance, judging from his appearance--and what the
nature of his business, these things did not concern the dear lady in
the least. He was courteous, treated her with marked respect, was
exceedingly agreeable, and had insisted--and this she stated was the
one particular thing that endeared him to her--had insisted on paying
his board a MONTH IN ADVANCE, instead of waiting until the thirty days
had elapsed. His excuse for this unheard-of idiosyncrasy was that he
might some day be suddenly called away, too suddenly even to notify her
of his departure, and that he did not want either his belongings or his
landlady's mind disturbed during his absence.
Miss Buffum's summing up of Bing's courtesy and affability was shared
by every one at my end of the table, although some of them differed as
regarded his origin and occupation.
"Looks more like an Englishman than a Dane," said the bank clerk;
"although I don't know any Danes. But he's a daisy, anyhow, and ought
to have his salary raised for being so jolly."
"I don't agree with you," rejoined the professor. "He is unquestionably
a Scandinavian--you can see that in the high cheekbones and flat nose.
He is evidently studying our people with a view of writing a book.
Nothing else would persuade a man of his parts to live here. I lived in
just such a place the winter I spent in Dresden. You want to get close
to the people when you study their peculiarities. But whoever he is, or
wherever he comes from, he is a most delightful gentleman--perfectly
simple, and so sincere that it is a pleasure to hear him talk."
As for myself, I am ashamed to say that I did not agree with either the
bank clerk or the professor. Although I admitted Mr. Bing's wide
experience of men and affairs, and his marvellous powers of
conversation, I could not divest myself of the conviction that
underneath it all there lay something more than a mere desire to be
either kindly or entertaining; in fact, that his geniality, though
outwardly spontaneous, was really a cloak to hide another side of his
nature--a fog into which he retreated--and that some day the real man
would be revealed.
I made no mention of my misgivings to any of my fellow-boarders. My
knowledge of men of his class--brilliant conversationalists with a
world-wide experience to draw upon--was slight, and my grounds for
doubting his sincerity were so devoid of proof that few persons would
have considered them anything but the product of a disordered mind.
And yet I still held to my opinion.
I had caught something, I fancied, that the others had missed. It
occurred one night after he had told a story and was waiting for the
laugh to subside. Soon a strange, weary expression crept over his
face--the same look that comes into the face of a clown who has been
hurt in a tumble and who, while wrestling with the pain, still keeps
his face a-grin. Suddenly, from out of his merry, smooth-shaven face,
there came a flash from his eyes so searching, so keen, so suspicious,
so entirely unlike the man we knew, so foreign to his mood at the
moment, that I instantly thought of the burglar peering through the
painted spectacles of the family portrait while he watched his
unconscious victim counting his gold.
This conviction so possessed me that I found myself for days after
peering into Bing's face, watching for its repetition--so much so that
the professor asked me with a laugh:
"Has Mr. Bing hypnotized you as badly as he has the ladies? They hang
on his every word. Curious study of the effect of mind on matter, isn't
it?"
The second time I caught the strange flash was BEFORE he had told his
story--when his admonitory glance--his polite way of compelling
attention--was sweeping the table. In its course his eyes rested for an
instant on mine, kindled with suspicion, and then there flashed from
their depths a light that seemed to illuminate every corner of my
brain. When I looked again his face was wreathed in smiles, his eyes
sparkling with merriment. Instantly my doubts returned with redoubled
force. What had he found in that instantaneous flash, I wondered? Had
he read my thoughts, or had he, from his place behind the painted
canvas, caught some expression on some victim's face which had roused
his fears?
Then a delightful thing happened to me. I was but a young fellow trying
to get a foothold in literature, who had never been out of his own
country, and who spoke no tongue but his own; he was a man of the
world, a traveller over the globe and speaking five languages.
"If you're not going out," he said, that same night, "come and have a
smoke with me." This in his heartiest manner, laying his hand on my
shoulder as he spoke. "You'll find me in my room. I've some books that
may interest you, and we can continue our talk by my coal-fire. Come
with me now."
We had had no special talk--none that I could remember. I recalled that
I had asked him an irrelevant question after the flash had vanished,
and that he had answered me in return--but no talk followed.
"I never invite any one up here," he began when we reached his room;
"the place is so small" Here he closed the door, drew up the only
armchair in the room and placed me in it--"but it is large enough for a
place to crawl into and sleep--much larger, I can tell you, than I have
had in many other parts of the world. I can write here, too, without
interruption. What else do we want, really?--To be warm, to be fed and
then to have some congenial spirits about us! I am quite happy, I
assure you, with all those dear, good people downstairs. They are so
kind, and they are so human, and they are all honest, each in his way,
which is always refreshing to me. Most people, you know, are not
honest." And he looked me over curiously.
I made no answer except to nod my assent. My eyes were wandering over
the room in the endeavor to find something to confirm my
suspicions--over the two trunks with their labels; over a desk
littered, piled, crammed with papers; over the mantel, on which was
spread a row of photographs, among them the portrait of a
distinguished-looking woman with a child resting in her lap, and next
to it that of a man in uniform.
"Yes--some of my friends across the sea." I had not asked him--he had
read my mind. "This one you did not see--I keep it behind the
others--three of them, like a little pair of steps--all I have left.
The oldest is named Olga, and that little one in the middle, with the
cap on her head--that is Pauline."
"Your children?"
"Yes."
"Where are they?"
"Oh, many thousand miles from here! But we won't talk about it. They
are well and happy. And this one"--here he took down the photograph of
the man in full uniform--"is the Grand Duke Vladimir. Yes, a
soldierly-looking man--none of the others are like him. But come now,
tell me of yourself--you have some one at home, too?"