Vignettes of Manhattan; Outlines in Local Color

by Brander Matthews

Filson Shelby had still delayed his departure; and as Edna Leisler brought bread and butter, and went back again to the kitchen, his friend's chatter had streamed along.

"Red-hot hair, hasn't she?" was the next remark. "If there was half a dozen more of her you'd think it was a torchlight procession, wouldn't you? But it suits her style, don't it? Fact is, she's the only red-haired girl I ever saw I didn't hate at sight."

It seemed as though he had expected Filson to respond to this, and so the young Southwesterner hesitated, and cleared his throat, and admitted that her hair was red.

"Well, it is just," the other returned. "I guess her barber has to wear asbestos gloves, eh? But she's a good girl, Edna is, if she is a brand from the burning. My sister used to be very fond of her, and I like her myself, though she isn't in our set exactly. I'll introduce you, if you like?"

The cable-car now came to a halt sharply to set down passengers for Brooklyn by way of the bridge, but Filson Shelby was wholly unconscious of this. He was busy with the recollection of that winter day when he had stood up with bashful awkwardness and had heard Edna Leisler say that she was pleased to meet him. He had the memory also of the next Saturday, when he had gone back to the little low eating-room under the roof in the hope of seeing her again, and of the unaffected frankness of her manner towards him when he met her on the stairway.

He remembered how simply she had accepted his invitation to go to Central Park to lunch on Washington's Birthday, the first holiday when they were both free, and he remembered, too, what a good time they had up there. It was on that Washington's Birthday that he had first found out that in the eyes of some people red hair was not a blemish, but a beauty. The omnibus in which they came down-town had been so crowded that they were separated, and he heard one well-dressed man say to his companion: "Did you ever see such stunning hair as that girl has? It is like burnished copper—except when the sun glints on it, and then it's like spun gold."

Hitherto he had been willing to overlook her aggressive locks in consideration of her good qualities, but thereafter he came rapidly to accept the view of the well-dressed man in the omnibus, and to look upon her red hair as a crown of glory. She did not seem any more attractive to him than she did at first meeting, but he knew now that other men might be attracted also. He wondered whether there were any other men whom she knew as well as she knew him. It seemed to him that they had taken to each other at the start, and they were now very good friends indeed. But there was no reason why she should not have other friends also.

The current of his retrospection was not so sweeping that he could not follow the course of the cable-car in which he was seated, and just then he saw the brown spire of Trinity Church and heard the clock strike three. He signalled to the conductor, and the car stopped before the church door and at the head of Wall Street.

As he stood looking down the crooked street, washed white by the rain and looking clean in the April sunshine, he asked himself why he was going to meet Edna Leisler—and especially why it was his heart had slowed up at the suggestion that perhaps other men were as attentive to her as he was. He was not in love with her, was he? That she had made New York tolerable to him he was ready to admit, and also that he liked her better than any girl he had ever met. But if he was jealous of her, did not that prove that he loved her?

These were the questions he propounded as he walked from Broadway to the old building on the top floor of which the Leislers lived. When Edna Leisler came down-stairs to meet him, with her new Easter hat, he knew the answers to these questions; he knew that he would be miserable if he were to lose the privilege of her society; he knew furthermore that he had loved her since the first day he had seen her, even though he had not hitherto suspected it. He knew also that he would never have a better chance to tell her that he loved her than he would have that afternoon; and while they were shaking hands he made up his mind that before he took her back to her mother's he would get her promise to marry him.