Part 85

“Oh, but that’s right there!” cried Bess, pointing. “That house, where I live!”

“A two-family house, isn’t it? Well, my dear, we’re the second family, then!” said the woman, very much pleased, and she called out joyously: “Tom Tench! Alan! I’ve found the place!”

The two men approached. They also seemed surprised and pleased.

“As if she’d done something very clever,” thought Bess. “Didn’t they ever expect to find their house?”

“My dear,” said the woman, “I’m Angelina Smith. This is my brother Alan, and my cousin, Tom Tench. Boys, imagine! This is the young lady who lives in the house!”

Both the men took off their hats and smiled at her.

“Shall we move the things in now?” asked the cousin, a somewhat portly young man, in horn-rimmed spectacles.

“Or will it bother you?” asked Miss Smith.

Bess was disconcerted to see that they regarded her as a sort of hostess.

“Just as you like, of course,” she said. “I--can’t I help you?”

“No!” replied the brother, promptly. “We can get along all right.”

Bess glanced at him, but looked away again, hastily. There was something in his steady, smiling gaze that confused her. He did not look much like his sister. She was little, and he was tall. Her hair was reddish, and his was black. He had the same wide, good-humored smile, but somehow it was different.

“It’s getting dark,” he said, “and it’s cold. You’d better run home.”

Bess might have felt a little annoyed by his rather masterful manner, if she had not noticed, as he moved to pick up a book, that he walked with a limp; but that disarmed her. She liked him; she liked all of them; there was something charming and a little pathetic about them.

“Won’t you all come in and have a cup of tea with us first?” she asked, strictly upon impulse.

“My dear!” cried Miss Smith. “How kind of you! We will!”

And they all followed her to the house, leaving the hapless car just where it was.

Bess knocked upon the door, to warn her father. He opened it with the distressed air of a disturbed hermit.

“Father,” said Bess, “these are our new neighbors. Miss Smith, my father, Professor Gayle.”

Miss Smith held out her hand, and the professor took it. She presented her cousin and her brother, and they all shook hands gravely.

“But how cozy!” she exclaimed, looking about her.

“Ah! Yes! Yes! Yes!” said Professor Gayle.

“Cozy” seemed a tactful word for that sitting room. When Bess and her father left their old home, they had brought with them what they had regarded, at the time, as just a few pieces of their old furniture; but in this room the things had become too many and too large.

Bess knew that the crowded room hurt her father not only æsthetically, but physically. He was a big, gaunt man, very near-sighted, and almost every time he moved his shins struck some sharp angle, or something bumped him under the knees. When he made one of his fine, sweeping gestures--sweeping, it truly was--it carried to the floor all sorts of things from near-by tables.

But Miss Smith was entranced.

“Really a home!” said she. “You know, we all suddenly felt the need of a home, ourselves, last week. It was at breakfast in the studio. Alan said, ‘Christmas will soon be here.’ ‘What does Christmas mean to us, who have no home?’ Tom Tench inquired. ‘Boys,’ I said, ‘you shall have a home!’ So, you see!”

“Ah, yes!” said the professor, vaguely. Bess had gone off to make tea, and he was obliged to entertain the party alone. He scarcely felt equal to it. “You said ‘studio’?” he continued. “Am I to understand that you are--er--an artist, Miss Smith?”

“All of us! I paint, and Tom Tench writes, and Alan designs. We’re very quiet people,” she assured him. “We shan’t disturb you in the least.”

“I’m sure,” said the professor, gallantly.

And he really did feel that, if he must have neighbors, these were remarkably unobjectionable ones--no children, no dogs, and he fancied that they were not the sort to possess a loud speaker.

He was still further encouraged when Tom Tench pulled a book from one of the shelves, and gave a stern and loud opinion upon it. That was the kind of thing the professor was accustomed to, and he immediately pronounced a loud and scholarly contradiction. Then he and Miss Smith and Tom Tench all began to talk about books. No one of them had any use for the books praised by the others, but that made it all the more interesting.

They did not miss the brother. He had followed Bess into the kitchen, and he said he wished to help her. She told him that there was really nothing that he could do, but still he stayed there. He sat on the end of the table, and talked to her.

His conversation was not scholarly. He did not talk about books. He talked about plays, and Bess had never seen anything except a few Shakespearean dramas. He talked about dancing, and Bess had never danced, except at school. Her particular friends had been very serious girls, and her father was invariably serious; she was not accustomed to frivolous conversation, and she could not answer Mr. Smith. After awhile he gave up and fell silent.

That night, after she had gone to bed, Bess lay awake for a time in the dark. She endeavored to think of the future, and to decide whether she could study shorthand by mail; but her thinking was unaccountably disturbed by the memory of that young man, with his steady, smiling glance and his very insignificant conversation. Somehow, it made her unhappy.

III

The new neighbors worked late into the night, with a great deal of noise, and in the morning a van came with more furniture. Bess went upstairs, to ask if she could help, but Miss Smith thanked her warmly, said that moving meant nothing at all to her, and invited Bess and her father to come up and dine with them that evening notwithstanding the unplaced furniture.

The professor, to his daughter’s surprise, seemed pleased by the invitation.

“It is something of an experience to meet genuine artists,” he said. “It will do us good. Miss Smith is, I consider, a remarkable woman. I had a talk with her yesterday, and the extent of her information is great.”

“She forgot to tell me what time to come,” said Bess; “but if we go up early--a little before six--perhaps I can help her.”

When they went up, it might have been a little before six in the morning, for any sign of dinner to be seen. Miss Smith, in a smock, was busy drawing; Tom Tench was shut up in his room, writing, and all the other rooms were in darkness.

“You won’t mind waiting until I finish this?” she asked. “It’s a design for a book jacket. It’s not at all what they ordered, and probably they won’t take it; but it seems criminal to me to stifle a good idea. Tom Tench won’t be long now. He makes a point of writing at least twenty-five hundred words a day. He _will_ do that much, even if he’s not in the mood, and has to tear it all up.”

“I see!” said Bess, politely. “But, Miss Smith, you’re so busy--please let me go into the kitchen and get things started for you. I’d really love to.”

“My dear, I don’t use the kitchen,” Miss Smith replied, calmly.

“Don’t use the kitchen!” repeated the dinner guests in unison.

“Never!” said she. “For busy people like ourselves, housekeeping has to be reduced to the utmost simplicity. I’ve worked it all out. You’ll see! The dinner will be prepared here, in this room, before your very eyes. It won’t take me any time at all.”

She continued to work, and to entertain them with pleasant conversation until half past six. Then she rose, and, with a calm and efficient air, went to a cupboard and brought out a number of electric appliances--grill, percolator, toaster, and so on--which she placed upon her cleared work table, and began to attach to the chandelier outlets.

“Pray let me assist you,” said the professor, greatly distressed by what he saw, for the plugs were screwed in askew, the cords wildly tangled, and the chandelier rocking dangerously.

She smilingly declined assistance, but when her back was turned, he did what he could for the safety and welfare of the party.

“But why,” he whispered to his daughter, “does she keep the window open? It’s a cold night, and I find the draft is becoming most unpleasant.”

Bess crossed the room to Miss Smith, who was leaning out of the open window, and once more asked if she couldn’t help her.

“It’s a l-little imp-provised ice box,” said the hostess, with chattering teeth. “I nailed it up this morning.”

To Bess it seemed extraordinary to improvise an ice box outside the window when there was a genuine one in the kitchen; but she was beginning to understand Miss Smith, and could not help admiring her adventurous spirit, which wished to live like _Robinson Crusoe_, always improvising, if not improving.

“The meat!” whispered Miss Smith. “It’s frozen fast! I can’t get it off the plate, or the plate off the shelf!”

But, alas, she did get her ice box off the nails, and down it went into the garden below.

“Never mind, my dear!” she said. “Don’t say anything about it; I’m always prepared for emergencies.”

So she closed the window, retired into another room, and came back with a number of tins.

“Tom Tench!” she called. “Get ready! Dinner in ten minutes!”

It was, however, nearly nine o’clock before they dined. Miss Smith had trouble with her forest of electric cords, and never knew which things were turned on and which off, so that the concoctions which she believed to be cooling began to burn directly her back was turned, and the pots which she was anxiously expecting to boil would be found, after a long wait, to have been standing upon stoves absolutely cold.

Young Smith was a model of cheerful patience. He came in cold and hungry, and uncomplainingly remained cold and hungry for a long time. The professor was courteously serene through everything, and Bess and Angelina were unfailingly good-tempered; but Tom Tench was otherwise. He was silent all through the meal; and, after it had been eaten, and the ruins hidden behind a screen, he made himself felt. It was then that the bitter Tench-Gayle feud began.

“It’s darned cold!” he muttered, in a surly fashion.

“Bitter weather,” the professor agreed.

“I mean the _house_ is cold,” said Tench, with a frown. “There’s not enough heat. The furnace needs looking after. Doesn’t somebody stoke it up in the evening?”

Now that furnace was the professor’s _bête noire_. He had not been able to get a man to look after it, and he had said that he believed he could do it himself. He was not so sure about it now, though, and this humiliating knowledge, combined with just resentment at the other’s tone, caused him to reply with considerable asperity:

“It might be advisable to put on more coal. Perhaps we might so arrange that I should attend to it in the morning, and you should see to it--”

“I?” said Tom Tench. “Not much! I’m a writer. My business is to write, and I have no time for anything else.”

“Mr. Tench--” the professor began sternly, but young Smith rose.

“I’ll have a go at it,” he said, cheerfully, and off he went.

But it was too late. The harm was done; the feud had started. Tom Tench strode off and shut himself into his own room, and Miss Smith interested the professor in a discussion of Hindu myths. She was, Bess thought, the kindest, the jolliest, the most utterly honest, and unaffected soul who ever lived, but she could not dispel the sinister cloud that had come over them. There was tension in the air.

Mr. Smith did not come back. Bess watched the door and listened for a footstep, but none came. At last she slipped out, without disturbing the other two, and went downstairs--not exactly to look for Mr. Smith, of course; but something might have happened to him. He might have fallen down the cellar stairs, he might have been overcome by coal gas.

The lower floor was very quiet. She listened, hesitated for a moment, and then opened the cellar door. A light was burning down there, but there was not a sound to be heard. Cautiously she began to descend the steep stairs--and there she saw the young man, sitting on a box, smoking a pipe, and reading a very frivolous comic magazine.

“Oh!” said she.

He sprang to his feet and came toward her, quickly enough, in spite of his limp.

“I’m waiting to see what will happen,” he explained. “I’ve done things to that furnace!”

He stood there, smiling up at her, and she felt obliged to smile back at him, but it was not easy.

“If he’d rather stay in the cellar,” she thought, “there’s no reason why he shouldn’t--absolutely no reason. I’m sure--”

“Look here!” said Mr. Smith, suddenly. “Couldn’t we go into the city to dinner some evening?”

A great indignation came over Bess, and a sort of alarm. Young Smith was not smiling now; he seemed earnest enough--too earnest. Nobody had ever looked at her like that before. He had preferred to hide in the cellar, rather than talk to her upstairs; and now, when she had come, merely out of humanity, to see if he were dead or alive, he misunderstood her. He thought she was one of those girls who would jump at any invitation, however casual. He thought she was running after him.

“Thank you,” she said, frigidly; “but I don’t care for things like that.”

Then she turned and went up the stairs. She went into the kitchen and made a cup of cocoa for her father to drink before he went to bed.

“I hope I’ve made him see!” she thought.

Suddenly she was overwhelmed by a recollection of Mr. Smith’s face, after she had spoken. She remembered him standing there at the foot of the cellar stairs, with a smudge on his cheek, and such a contrite, miserable look in his blue eyes.

“Oh!” she cried. “I’m nothing but a n-nasty little prig!”

IV

The feud over the furnace developed with alarming rapidity.

“In a house of this sort,” the professor observed severely to his child, a week later, “which is not adapted to the complete independence of two families, if the arrangement is to be tolerable, there must be a ready and harmonious adjustment of the responsibilities. Now this Tench--the other young man is away most of the time, and it is the natural, just, and proper thing for this Tench to do his share in taking care of the furnace.”

But “this Tench” steadily refused to do anything but write. He never went near the furnace. Miss Smith pluckily attempted to do his part. Three or four times a day she descended into the cellar, crammed the grate with coal, turned on or off whatever little turnable things she saw, and opened and closed all the doors, with great good will. Not only was this repugnant to Professor Gayle’s innate chivalry, but it was dangerous, and he implored so earnestly that finally she desisted, and the professor did it all. Alone he carried up the ashes, alone he intrigued with coal dealers.

When Miss Smith’s reckless management of her electric devices caused a fuse to blow out--which happened often--Tench simply lighted a lamp. He didn’t care.

Then there was the daily battle about the mail. The postman left all letters for the house with whatever person opened the door, and the professor, being on the ground floor, was usually that person. Now Tom Tench had all an author’s morbid attitude about mail. Whenever he thought a letter should have come, and it had not, he made general accusations of criminal carelessness. At last he took to walking out to meet the postman, and then the professor accused him of willful delay in the transmission of highly important documents.

But it was in the matter of waste paper that Tom Tench was most insufferable. He was always bringing down heaps of paper, and stuffing it into the ash can. On windy days it blew out all over the garden; but there was a still more serious aspect to this offense.

“Mr. Tench, sir!” protested the professor. “As you have persistently shirked your duty in helping me to carry up those ashes, you may not be aware that sometimes they are hot, and liable to set fire to any inflammable material placed upon them. Tie your--_rubbish_--into bundles, if you please, ready for the collector.”

“No time for that sort of nonsense,” said Tench, and kept on.

No attempt was made to gloss over this hostility. The professor had not had a quarrel for years, and it seemed to Bess that he actually enjoyed this one. He would not make the least effort to avoid Tench. Almost every evening he went upstairs for a chat with Miss Smith, and his manner of ignoring Tench was not soothing.

“Oh, Lord!” Tom Tench would rudely ejaculate.

Then he would go into his room and bang the door; but he would not stay there. He would come in and out of the sitting room, with an obnoxious smile.

If the two men enjoyed this, however, Bess and Angelina Smith did not. They had grown very fond of each other, and they said that this distressing situation did not and should not make the least difference in their friendship. Angelina held that it was all the fault of her temperamental cousin, Tom Tench, and that poor Professor Gayle was an innocent victim: while Bess thought secretly that her father, being older and wiser, should have avoided such an antagonism.

“But it does seem a pity,” she said once, “that--your brother has to suffer for it. He seems to work so hard, and he comes home late, and half the time the house is freezing cold, or the lights are out, because they’re squabbling about whose place it is to do things.”

“Oh, Alan doesn’t mind,” Miss Smith assured her. “He’s the most good-natured, darling creature! He doesn’t need to work so hard, either. My dear, he stays late at his office simply because he doesn’t like to come home. He told me so.”

Bess decided then that it would be more sensible not to bother about Mr. Smith, especially if he stayed late in his office simply because he didn’t want to come home. That meant, of course, that there was no one in the two-family house he wished to talk to, no one he cared to see. She had scarcely exchanged a word with him since that brief conversation on the cellar stairs. Sometimes she saw him from her window, going off in that dreadful old car, early, before any one else was stirring upstairs, probably without having had a proper breakfast. At night she often heard him come in late, to be greeted brightly by his sister, who never seemed to go to bed.

To be sure, she had meant to discourage him, and apparently she had succeeded. Very well--what of it? She had made up her mind to be a little nicer the next time she talked to him, but evidently there wasn’t going to be any next time. Again very well--what of it?

He was Angelina’s brother, and a neighbor, and as such she was obliged, was she not, to take a human interest in him? She learned that he was a naval architect, and that he had hurt his foot by falling down a ship’s hold during a visit of inspection. She also learned that he was the best brother in the world. She was pleased to hear this, and pleased to think that that pathetic limp would soon be gone, so that it would no longer be necessary to feel sorry for him; but she was not going to bother about him.

V

The week before Christmas was one of terrific activity for Bess and Angelina, and of unusually bitter hostility between Professor Gayle and Tom Tench. They were shamefully immune from any sort of Christmas spirit.

Indeed, it seemed impossible to arrange any sort of neighborly celebration. Bess had made mince pies and a plum pudding; Angelina had painted place cards to be used on the dinner table. They had both planned all sorts of jolly little Christmas presents, and a Christmas tree; but where was the gathering to be? Tom Tench refused to set foot in Professor Gayle’s domain; and though the professor could probably be induced to go upstairs, who could foresee the consequences?

Nevertheless, the two dauntless women refused to despair.

“At the very last instant we’ll find some way to reconcile them,” said Angelina. “We’ll have a wonderful Christmas--I know it! Let’s walk into the village this afternoon, and get quantities of holly and mistletoe. Why, my dear, it’s Christmas Eve! They can’t quarrel to-day. Nobody could!”

“They can, though,” said Bess, sadly. “I hear them now, out on the stairs.”

“It’s a shame!” said Angelina. “Of course, Tom Tench is _very_ temperamental, but--my dear, I’m going to have one more talk with him this evening. Alan talked to him, but he only made it worse.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, my dear, that any one who could be boorish and ill tempered under the same roof as _you_ was a--well, all sorts of things.”

“Oh! Did he?” said Bess, after a long silence.

“And he wants us to move away,” Angelina continued. “He says he simply can’t stand this.”

“Oh!” said Bess again.

Something in her voice touched the warm-hearted Angelina. She crossed the room and put her arm about the younger girl.

“My dear,” she said, “I’m not going to leave you. I’m much too fond of you. And--if you don’t mind my saying so--I really do think you need somebody cheerful here. Alan said it was absolutely my duty to teach you to laugh. He thinks--”

“It’s getting late, Angelina,” said Bess. “Let’s start!”

It was getting late, because Angelina had been suddenly inspired to finish a drawing after lunch, and it was after three before they set off for the village. When they had bought all the holly they could carry, and turned toward home, it was beginning to grow dark.

It was a bleak and bitter day. The wind was against them now--a savage wind that brought tears to their eyes. With their heads down against it, they went along the desolate road, their numb hands clasping the prickly holly, their numb feet suffering cruelly from the ruts frozen as hard as iron.

They came to the foot of the long hill--and how long it looked, that treeless road, going steeply up to meet the wild, dark sky!

“It’ll be--better--going down!” Bess shouted against the gale.

“Much!” cried Angelina. “And--I _love_ Christmas!”

Bess could have kissed her for those gallant words. The good will she felt for her companion actually seemed to warm her, and she began the ascent doggedly. Shoulder to shoulder, on they went, nearer and nearer to home. They reached the top of the hill, where the wind was incredibly fierce, and--

Angelina dropped her load of holly and seized Bess’s arm.

“Look!” she cried. “Oh, look! Fire!”

And there was the two-family house in a horrible, reddish glare!