It was three or four days before he became firmly adjusted to his new
quarters. During this time he had met Cherry casually on the
staircase, in going or coming, and received her shy greetings; but she
had not repeated her visit, nor again alluded to it. He had spent part
of a formal evening in the parlor in company with a calling deacon,
who, unappalled by the Indian shawl for which the widow had exchanged
her household cerements on such occasions, appeared to Herbert to have
remote matrimonial designs, as far at least as a sympathetic
deprecation of the vanities of the present, an echoing of her sighs
like a modest encore, a preternatural gentility of manner, a vague
allusion to the necessity of bearing "one another's burdens," and an
everlasting promise in store, would seem to imply. To Herbert's vivid
imagination, a discussion on the doctrinal points of last Sabbath's
sermon was fraught with delicate suggestion and an acceptance by the
widow of an appointment to attend the Wednesday evening "Lectures" had
all the shy reluctant yielding of a granted rendezvous. Oddly enough,
the more formal attitude seemed to be reserved for the young people,
who, in the suggestive atmosphere of this spiritual flirtation, alone
appeared to preserve the proprieties and, to some extent, decorously
chaperon their elders. Herbert gravely turned the leaves of Cherry's
music while she played and sang one or two discreet but depressing
songs expressive of her unalterable but proper devotion to her mother's
clock, her father's arm-chair, and her aunt's Bible; and Herbert joined
somewhat boyishly in the soul-subduing refrain. Only once he ventured
to suggest in a whisper that he would like to add HER music-stool to
the adorable inventory; but he was met by such a disturbed and
terrified look that he desisted. "Another night of this wild and
reckless dissipation will finish me," he said lugubriously to himself
when he reached the solitude of his room. "I wonder how many times a
week I'd have to help the girl play the spiritual gooseberry downstairs
before we could have any fun ourselves?"
Here the sound of distant laughter, interspersed with vivacious
feminine shrieks, came through the open window. He glanced between the
curtains. His neighbor's house was brilliantly lit, and the shadows of
a few romping figures were chasing each other across the muslin shades
of the windows. The objectionable young women were evidently enjoying
themselves. In some conditions of the mind there is a certain
exasperation in the spectacle of unmeaning enjoyment, and he shut the
window sharply. At the same moment some one knocked at his door.
It was Miss Brooks, who had just come upstairs.
"Will you please let me have my music-stool?"
He stared at her a moment in surprise, then recovering himself, said,
"Yes, certainly," and brought the stool. For an instant he was tempted
to ask why she wanted it, but his pride forbade him.
"Thank you. Good-night."
"Good-night!"
"I hope it wasn't in your way?"
"Not at all."
"Good-night!"
"Good-night."
She vanished. Herbert was perplexed. Between young ladies whose naive
exuberance impelled them to throw handkerchiefs at his window and young
ladies whose equally naive modesty demanded the withdrawal from his
bedroom of a chair on which they had once sat, his lot seemed to have
fallen in a troubled locality. Yet a day or two later he heard Cherry
practising on the harmonium as he was ascending the stairs on his
return from business; she had departed before he entered the room, but
had left the music-stool behind her. It was not again removed.
One Sunday, the second or third of his tenancy, when Cherry and her
mother were at church, and he had finished some work that he had
brought from the bank, his former restlessness and sense of strangeness
returned. The regular afternoon fog had thickened early, and, driving
him back from a cheerless, chilly ramble on the hill, had left him
still more depressed and solitary. In sheer desperation he moved some
of the furniture, and changed the disposition of several smaller
ornaments. Growing bolder, he even attacked the sacred shelf devoted
to Tappington's serious literature and moral studies. At first glance
the book of sermons looked suspiciously fresh and new for a volume of
habitual reference, but its leaves were carefully cut, and contained
one or two book-marks. It was only another evidence of that perfect
youth's care and neatness. As he was replacing it he noticed a small
object folded in white paper at the back of the shelf. To put the book
back into its former position it was necessary to take this out. He
did so, but its contents slid from his fingers and the paper to the
floor. To his utter consternation, looking down he saw a pack of
playing-cards strewn at his feet!
He hurriedly picked them up. They were worn and slippery from use, and
exhaled a faint odor of tobacco. Had they been left there by some
temporary visitor unknown to Tappington and his family, or had they
been hastily hidden by a servant? Yet they were of a make and texture
superior to those that a servant would possess; looking at them
carefully, he recognized them to be of a quality used by the
better-class gamblers. Restoring them carefully to their former
position, he was tempted to take out the other volumes, and was
rewarded with the further discovery of a small box of ivory counters,
known as "poker-chips." It was really very extraordinary! It was
quite the cache of some habitual gambler. Herbert smiled grimly at the
irreverent incongruity of the hiding-place selected by its unknown and
mysterious owner, and amused himself by fancying the horror of his
sainted predecessor had he made the discovery. He determined to
replace them, and to put some mark upon the volumes before them in
order to detect any future disturbance of them in his absence.
Ought he not to take Miss Brooks in his confidence? Or should he say
nothing about it at present, and trust to chance to discover the
sacrilegious hider? Could it possibly be Cherry herself, guilty of the
same innocent curiosity that had impelled her to buy the "Ham-fat Man"?
Preposterous! Besides, the cards had been used, and she could not play
poker alone!
He watched the rolling fog extinguish the line of Russian Hill, the
last bit of far perspective from his window. He glanced at his
neighbor's veranda, already dripping with moisture; the windows were
blank; he remembered to have heard the girls giggling in passing down
the side street on their way to church, and had noticed from behind his
own curtains that one was rather pretty. This led him to think of
Cherry again, and to recall the quaint yet melancholy grace of her
figure as she sat on the stool opposite. Why had she withdrawn it so
abruptly; did she consider his jesting allusion to it indecorous and
presuming? Had he really meant it seriously; and was he beginning to
think too much about her? Would she ever come again? How nice it
would be if she returned from church alone early, and they could have a
comfortable chat together here! Would she sing the "Ham-fat Man" for
him? Would the dimples come back if she did? Should he ever know more
of this quaint repressed side of her nature? After all, what a dear,
graceful, tantalizing, lovable creature she was! Ought he not at all
hazards try to know her better? Might it not be here that he would
find a perfect realization of his boyish dreams, and in HER all
that--what nonsense he was thinking!
Suddenly Herbert was startled by the sound of a light but hurried foot
upon the wooden outer step of his second door, and the quick but
ineffective turning of the door-handle. He started to his feet, his
mind still filled with a vision of Cherry. Then he as suddenly
remembered that he had locked the door on going out, putting the key in
his overcoat pocket. He had returned by the front door, and his
overcoat was now hanging in the lower hall.
The door again rattled impetuously. Then it was supplemented by a
female voice in a hurried whisper: "Open quick, can't you? do hurry!"
He was confounded. The voice was authoritative, not unmusical; but it
was NOT Cherry's. Nevertheless he called out quickly, "One moment,
please, and I'll get the key!" dashed downstairs and up again,
breathlessly unlocked the door and threw it open.
Nobody was there!
He ran out into the street. On one side it terminated abruptly on the
cliff on which his dwelling was perched; on the other, it descended
more gradually into the next thoroughfare; but up and down the street,
on either hand, no one was to be seen. A slightly superstitious
feeling for an instant crept over him. Then he reflected that the
mysterious visitor could in the interval of his getting the key have
easily slipped down the steps of the cliff or entered the shrubbery of
one of the adjacent houses. But why had she not waited? And what did
she want? As he reentered his door he mechanically raised his eyes to
the windows of his neighbor's. This time he certainly was not mistaken.
The two amused, mischievous faces that suddenly disappeared behind the
curtain as he looked up showed that the incident had not been
unwitnessed. Yet it was impossible that it could have been either of
THEM. Their house was only accessible by a long detour. It might have
been the trick of a confederate; but the tone of half familiarity and
half entreaty in the unseen visitor's voice dispelled the idea of any
collusion. He entered the room and closed the door angrily. A grim
smile stole over his face as he glanced around at the dainty saint-like
appointments of the absent Tappington, and thought what that
irreproachable young man would have said to the indecorous intrusion,
even though it had been a mistake. Would those shameless Pike County
girls have dared to laugh at HIM?
But he was again puzzled to know why he himself should have been
selected for this singular experience. Why was HE considered fair game
for these girls? And, for the matter of that, now that he reflected
upon it, why had even this gentle, refined, and melancholy Cherry
thought it necessary to talk slang to HIM on their first acquaintance,
and offer to sing him the "Ham-fat Man"? It was true he had been a
little gay, but never dissipated. Of course he was not a saint, like
Tappington--oh, THAT was it! He believed he understood it now. He was
suffering from that extravagant conception of what worldliness consists
of, so common to very good people with no knowledge of the world.
Compared to Tappington he was in their eyes, of course, a rake and a
roue. The explanation pleased him. He would not keep it to himself.
He would gain Cherry's confidence and enlist her sympathies. Her
gentle nature would revolt at this injustice to their lonely lodger.
She would see that there were degrees of goodness besides her
brother's. She would perhaps sit on that stool again and NOT sing the
"Ham-fat Man."
A day or two afterwards the opportunity seemed offered to him. As he
was coming home and ascending the long hilly street, his eye was taken
by a tall graceful figure just preceding him. It was she. He had never
before seen her in the street, and was now struck with her ladylike
bearing and the grave superiority of her perfectly simple attire. In a
thoroughfare haunted by handsome women and striking toilettes, the
refined grace of her mourning costume, and a certain stateliness that
gave her the look of a young widow, was a contrast that evidently
attracted others than himself. It was with an odd mingling of pride
and jealousy that he watched the admiring yet respectful glances of the
passers-by, some of whom turned to look again, and one or two to
retrace their steps and follow her at a decorous distance. This caused
him to quicken his own pace, with a new anxiety and a remorseful sense
of wasted opportunity. What a booby he had been, not to have made more
of his contiguity to this charming girl--to have been frightened at the
naive decorum of her maidenly instincts! He reached her side, and
raised his hat with a trepidation at her new-found graces--with a
boldness that was defiant of her other admirers. She blushed slightly.
"I thought you'd overtake me before," she said naively. "I saw YOU
ever so long ago."
He stammered, with an equal simplicity, that he had not dared to.
She looked a little frightened again, and then said hurriedly: "I only
thought that I would meet you on Montgomery Street, and we would walk
home together. I don't like to go out alone, and mother cannot always
go with me. Tappington never cared to take me out--I don't know why.
I think he didn't like the people staring and stop ping us. But they
stare more--don't you think?--when one is alone. So I thought if you
were coming straight home we might come together--unless you have
something else to do?"
Herbert impulsively reiterated his joy at meeting her, and averred that
no other engagement, either of business or pleasure, could or would
stand in his way. Looking up, however, it was with some consternation
that he saw they were already within a block of the house.
"Suppose we take a turn around the hill and come back by the old street
down the steps?" he suggested earnestly.
The next moment he regretted it. The frightened look returned to her
eyes; her face became melancholy and formal again.
"No!" she said quickly. "That would be taking a walk with you like
these young girls and their young men on Saturdays. That's what Ellen
does with the butcher's boy on Sundays. Tappington often used to meet
them. Doing the 'Come, Philanders,' as he says you call it."
It struck Herbert that the didactic Tappington's method of inculcating
a horror of slang in his sister's breast was open to some objection;
but they were already on the steps of their house, and he was too much
mortified at the reception of his last unhappy suggestion to make the
confidential disclosure he had intended, even if there had still been
time.
"There's mother waiting for me," she said, after an awkward pause,
pointing to the figure of Mrs. Brooks dimly outlined on the veranda.
"I suppose she was beginning to be worried about my being out alone.
She'll be so glad I met you." It didn't appear to Herbert, however,
that Mrs. Brooks exhibited any extravagant joy over the occurrence, and
she almost instantly retired with her daughter into the sitting-room,
linking her arm in Cherry's, and, as it were, empanoplying her with her
own invulnerable shawl. Herbert went to his room more dissatisfied with
himself than ever.
Two or three days elapsed without his seeing Cherry; even the
well-known rustle of her skirt in the passage was missing. On the
third evening he resolved to bear the formal terrors of the
drawing-room again, and stumbled upon a decorous party consisting of
Mrs. Brooks, the deacon, and the pastor's wife--but not Cherry. It
struck him on entering that the momentary awkwardness of the company
and the formal beginning of a new topic indicated that HE had been the
subject of their previous conversation. In this idea he continued,
through that vague spirit of opposition which attacks impulsive people
in such circumstances, to generally disagree with them on all subjects,
and to exaggerate what he chose to believe they thought objectionable
in him. He did not remain long; but learned in that brief interval
that Cherry had gone to visit a friend in Contra Costa, and would be
absent a fortnight; and he was conscious that the information was
conveyed to him with a peculiar significance.
The result of which was only to intensify his interest in the absent
Cherry, and for a week to plunge him in a sea of conflicting doubts and
resolutions. At one time he thought seriously of demanding an
explanation from Mrs. Brooks, and of confiding to her--as he had
intended to do to Cherry--his fears that his character had been
misinterpreted, and his reasons for believing so. But here he was met
by the difficulty of formulating what he wished to have explained, and
some doubts as to whether his confidences were prudent. At another
time he contemplated a serious imitation of Tappington's perfections, a
renunciation of the world, and an entire change in his habits. He
would go regularly to church--HER church, and take up Tappington's
desolate Bible-class. But here the torturing doubt arose whether a
young lady who betrayed a certain secular curiosity, and who had
evidently depended upon her brother for a knowledge of the world, would
entirely like it. At times he thought of giving up the room and
abandoning for ever this doubly dangerous proximity; but here again he
was deterred by the difficulty of giving a satisfactory reason to his
employer, who had procured it as a favor. His passion--for such he
began to fear it to be--led him once to the extravagance of asking a
day's holiday from the bank, which he vaguely spent in the streets of
Oakland in the hope of accidentally meeting the exiled Cherry.