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[Pg 498] 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.[Pg 499]
“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!”