Nor I.
We were both silent for a few minutes.
--Did you ever see the young girl's drawing-books,--I said, presently.
All but one,--he answered;--she keeps a lock on that, and won't show it.
Ma'am Allen, (the young rogue sticks to that name, in speaking of the
gentleman with the diamond,) Ma'am Allen tried to peek into it one day
when she left it on the sideboard. “If you please,” says she,--'n'
took it from him, 'n' gave him a look that made him curl up like a
caterpillar on a hot shovel. I only wished he had n't, and had jest
given her a little sass, for I've been takin' boxin'-lessons, 'n' I 've
got a new way of counterin' I want to try on to somebody.
--The end of all this was, that I came away from the young fellow's
room, feeling that there were two principal things that I had to live
for, for the next six weeks or six months, if it should take so long.
These were, to get a sight of the young girl's drawing-book, which I
suspected had her heart shut up in it, and to get a look into the Little
Gentleman's room.
I don't doubt you think it rather absurd that I should trouble myself
about these matters. You tell me, with some show of reason, that all
I shall find in the young girl's--book will be some outlines of
angels with immense eyes, traceries of flowers, rural sketches, and
caricatures, among which I shall probably have the pleasure of seeing
my own features figuring. Very likely. But I'll tell you what I think
I shall find. If this child has idealized the strange little bit of
humanity over which she seems to have spread her wings like a brooding
dove,--if, in one of those wild vagaries that passionate natures are so
liable to, she has fairly sprung upon him with her clasping nature, as
the sea-flowers fold about the first stray shell-fish that brushes their
outspread tentacles, depend upon it, I shall find the marks of it in
this drawing-book of hers,--if I can ever get a look at it,--fairly, of
course, for I would not play tricks to satisfy my curiosity.
Then, if I can get into this Little Gentleman's room under any fair
pretext, I shall, no doubt, satisfy myself in five minutes that he is
just like other people, and that there is no particular mystery about
him.
The night after my visit to the young man John, I made all these and
many more reflections. It was about two o'clock in the morning,--bright
starlight,--so light that I could make out the time on my
alarm-clock,--when I woke up trembling and very moist. It was the heavy
dragging sound, as I had often heard it before that waked me. Presently
a window was softly closed. I had just begun to get over the agitation
with which we always awake from nightmare dreams, when I heard the sound
which seemed to me as of a woman's voice,--the clearest, purest soprano
which one could well conceive of. It was not loud, and I could not
distinguish a word, if it was a woman's voice; but there were recurring
phrases of sound and snatches of rhythm that reached me, which suggested
the idea of complaint, and sometimes, I thought, of passionate grief and
despair. It died away at last,--and then I heard the opening of a door,
followed by a low, monotonous sound, as of one talking,--and then
the closing of a door,--and presently the light on the opposite wall
disappeared and all was still for the night.
By George! this gets interesting,--I said, as I got out of bed for a
change of night-clothes.
I had this in my pocket the other day, but thought I would n't read it
at our celebration. So I read it to the boarders instead, and print it
to finish off this record with.