IX
Mr. Anderson had finished with women forever. And this resolve gave to his face a new and not unbecoming sternness; the old ladies noticed it directly he entered the dining room that evening. Miss Selby noticed it, too, but pretended not to; she smiled that same chilly, polite smile, and said never a word—neither did he.
Supper was set before them, and they began to eat, still silent. And then she spoke suddenly.
“What’s the matter with your hand, Mr. Anderson?” she asked.
“Oh, nothing; thanks!” he answered.
Again a silence. But she could not keep her eyes off that clumsily-tied bandage on his hand.
“I wish you’d tell me!” she said.
It was an entirely different tone, but he was no longer to be trifled with like that. He smiled, coldly.
“No doubt you’ll be very much amused,” he remarked, “to learn that I’ve been bitten by a dog!”
He waited.
“Why don’t you laugh, Miss Selby?” he inquired. “It’s funny enough, isn’t it? After I said that dogs always know. It’s what you might call ‘biting irony,’ isn’t it?”
“I—don’t want to laugh,” said she. “I’m—just sorry.”
He looked at her.
“Miss Selby!” he cried.
“I took your flowers upstairs,” she said. “I think—they’re the prettiest—the prettiest flowers—I—ever saw.”
“Miss Selby!” he exclaimed again. “See here! Please! When I thought you were ill—”
“I only had a little cold.”
“I wrote a note,” he said. “I tore it up. I—I wish I hadn’t.”
Miss Selby was looking down at her plate.
“I wish you hadn’t, too,” she agreed.
The old ladies had all finished their suppers, but not one of them left the room. They were watching Miss Selby and Mr. Anderson. Surely not a remarkable spectacle, simply a nice looking young man and[Pg 383] a pretty young girl, sitting, quite speechless, now, at a little table.
Yet one old lady actually wiped tears from her eyes, and every one of them felt an odd and tender little stir at the heart, as if the perfume of very old memories had blown in at the opened window.
“Let’s go out on the veranda,” said Mr. Anderson to Miss Selby, and they did.
The rain was coming down steadily, and the wind sighed in the pines. But it was a June night, a summer night, a young night.
Not an old lady set foot on the veranda that evening, not another human being heard what Miss Selby from Boston, and Mr. Anderson from New York had to say to each other.
Only Mrs. Brown, opening the door for a breath of fresh air, did happen to hear him saying something about the “best sort of paper for wedding announcements.[Pg 384]”
MUNSEY’S
MAGAZINE
APRIL, 1926
Vol. LXXXVII NUMBER 3
TO OUR READERS—Since Mr. Munsey’s death we have received so many inquiries for the books of which he was the author, all of which have been out of print for many years, that in the present number of the magazine we reprint, complete, this short novel, which was written in the early part of 1892. We feel sure that our readers will be greatly interested in the story, not only on account of its authorship, but because it is a convincing picture of a phase of American society thirty-five years ago.
Highfalutin’
THE BUNGALOW COLONY WAS A MAELSTROM OF MISUNDERSTANDING, BUT THE SHIP’S OFFICER ASHORE NEVER LOST HIS BEARINGS
By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
“WE must simply look on it as a—a lark!” said Mrs. De Haaven, resolutely. But her voice was not very steady, and her smile was somewhat strained, for in her heart she saw this, not as a lark, but as something very close to a tragedy.
“It’s wonderfully light and airy,” her sister Rose began.
This was true; a fresh sea breeze went blowing through the rooms, fluttering the curtains and stirring the dark hair on Rose’s temples. The tiny house was sweet with sun and salt wind. Both Mrs. De Haaven and her sister could appreciate this, and they were sternly determined to appreciate every possible good point about their new home.
But—it was so tiny, so bare, so terribly strange; a sitting room, a bedroom, and a kitchen, divided by partitions which did not reach to the unstained rafters; painted floors, badly scuffed, the queerest collection of scarred, weather-beaten furniture.
“It will be like—camping out!” Mrs. De Haaven decided.
The trouble was, that neither of them had had any sort of experience in camping out, and, what is more, had never desired any such experience. They had led the most casual, pleasant existence; when they had wanted to be in the city, they had occupied Mrs. De Haaven’s charming little flat; when it occurred to them that they would enjoy the country, they had gone out to the old De Haaven farm on Long Island; if the impulse seized them to travel, travel they did, in a comfortable and leisurely fashion.
Wherever they had been, in town or in the country, in Paris, in Cairo, in Nice, there always had been plenty of people about to do all the disagreeable and difficult things for them, and to do them willingly, because not only had the two ladies paid well for all services rendered them, but they were polite, kind and appreciative.
And now, with a jolt and a jar, that smooth-moving existence had stopped. Their lawyer, who had had complete charge of their nice little fortune inherited from their father, had either done something terrible, or something terrible had happened to him. They preferred, in charity, to believe the latter, and anyhow, it did not matter.
The money had dwindled down to almost nothing, the flat was sublet, the farm rented, and the poor ladies had taken this beach bungalow on Staten Island for the summer. They took it because it was cheap, and because it was their tradition that one had to leave the city in the summer, and because they hoped in this obscure little place to be let alone, to get accustomed to their new life in peace.
So here they were in their new home, all paid for, all furnished, all ready for them to begin living in. It was certainly quiet enough, yet somehow it did not impress Mrs. De Haaven as being peaceful; on the contrary, there was something alarming, almost terrible, in the quietness.
Nobody was doing anything or preparing anything for them; nothing would be done until she and Rose did it; the house simply stood there, waiting for them to begin. How did one begin?
She was a little shocked with Rose for turning her back on the house and sitting down on the veranda railing.
“Oh, Rose!” she said. “Shouldn’t we set to work—get things in order?[Pg 386]”
But Rose only reached out and caught her sister by the arm and pulled her down beside her.
“Look, darling!” she remarked. “That is something, isn’t it?”
“That” was the sea before them—the North Atlantic, which rolled into the bay and broke upon the sands. They had looked upon the Pacific, upon the blue Mediterranean; they had seen many harbors, many beaches, beyond comparison lovelier than this flat shore.
But this, after all, was the great salt sea, the very source of life, and the sun made it glitter, and the wind blew off it, fresh and invigorating. It was something.
There they sat, with their arms about each other, such forlorn and lovely creatures! Nina De Haaven, dark and delicate; Rose taller, stronger, with a beautiful eagerness in her face, as if she waited in trust and delight for whatever her destiny might bring. She was twenty-four, and she had never really feared anything in her life.
Rose was not afraid, now, of this new existence, only a little puzzled, because she would have to be the one to start it. Nina was five years older, but she was too gentle, too easily rebuffed; she had never quite trusted life again after her beloved husband died.
“There’s dinner,” thought Rose. “I’m sure they don’t supply food with furnished bungalows. I’ll have to buy it and cook it. Mercy!”
She had to do it, though, and she would.
“Bread and butter,” she also thought, “and eggs and milk, and tea and coffee, and sugar and spice. Everything goes in pairs! Coal and wood—”
Nina, less abstracted, started up.
“Somebody’s knocking somewhere!” she said. “I believe it’s our own back door. I’ll go.” And she vanished into the house. Rose followed promptly, and found her in the little kitchen, stooping over a basket on the table.
“It must be the dinner!” Nina declared, very much pleased. “There are all sorts of things here.”
“How can it be the dinner?” Rose asked. She, too, bent over the basket and was enchanted by the varied assortment therein.
“Perhaps the tradespeople do that when some one new moves in,” Mrs. De Haaven suggested. “As a sort of sample. A boy just left it without a word.”
Rose shook her head.
“I don’t think that’s likely,” she said. “I’m afraid it must be a mistake. But—” She was busy cataloguing these household things in her mind. Salt—she hadn’t thought of that; and a box of bacon, and matches.
“I wish I’d kept house when Julian was alive,” said Mrs. De Haaven, “and not lived in hotels. Then I shouldn’t be so—useless.”
Rose gave her a little shake.
“Encumberer of the earth!” she said, smilingly. “The thing is—whether I dare to pretend to be as artless as you really are.”
“What do you mean, Rose?”
“I want to keep that basket!”
“Oh, Rose! When you think it’s a mistake!”
“Yes!” said Rose, firmly. “I’ll pay for it, of course, when I find out who it belongs to. But it’s such a wonderful collection. I want it! Here’s a package of pancake flour, and it tells you exactly how to make them. And the tin of coffee has directions on it, too. We could get on indefinitely, with pancakes and coffee.”
“It would be terrible for our complexions,” Nina objected.
“We can’t afford complexions, any more,” said Rose. And she began unpacking the basket, setting the tins and packages in neat rows on the dresser. The effect delighted them both; they were beginning to feel really at home now.