Chapter 2

“There is no question about it, Mr. Welles,” she interrupted gravely. “Tom was right and I was wrong. There is no use in my talking to him or anybody while I--while you--while things are as they are. You must make up your mind, Mr. Welles.”

“But, great heavens, dear Miss Gould, what do you mean? What am I to make up my mind about? Am I to provide myself with an occupation, perhaps, for the sake of Tom Waters's principles? Or am I--”

“Yes. That is just it. You know what I have always felt, Mr. Welles, about it. But I never seemed to be able to make you see. Now, as I say, things have come to a point. You must do something.”

“But this is absurd, Miss Gould! I am not a child, and surely nobody can dream of holding you in any way responsible--”

“_I_ hold myself responsible,” she replied simply, “and I have never approved of it--never!”

He shrugged his shoulders desperately. She was imperturbable; she was impossible; she was beyond argument or persuasion or ridicule.

“Suppose I say that I think the situation is absurd, and that I refuse to be placed at Mr. Waters's disposal?” he suggested with a furtive glance. She drew the ivory hook through the green meshes a little faster.

“I should be obliged to refuse to renew your lease in the fall,” she answered. He started from his wicker chair.

“You cannot mean it, Miss Gould! You would not be so--so unkind, so unjust!”

“I should feel obliged to, Mr. Welles, and I should not feel unjust.”

He sank back into the yielding chair with a sigh. After all, her fascination had always lain in her great decision. Was it not illogical to expect her to fail to display it at such a crisis? There was a long silence. The sun sank lower and lower, the birds twittered happily around them. Miss Gould's long white hook slipped in and out of the wool, and her lodger's eyes followed it absently. After a while he rose, settled his white jacket elaborately, and half turned as if to go back to the house.

“I need not tell you how I regret this unfortunate decision of yours,” he said politely, with a slight touch of the hauteur that sat so well on his graceful person. “I can only say that I am sorry you yourself should regret it so little, and that I hope it will not disturb our pleasant acquaintance during the weeks that remain to me.”

She bowed slightly with a dignified gesture that often served her as a reply, and he took a step toward her.

“Would we not better come in?” he suggested. “The sun is gone, and your dress is thin. Let me send Henry after the chairs,” and his eyes dropped to her hands again. They were nearly hidden by the green wool, but the long needle quivered like a leaf in the wind; she could not pass it between the thread and her white forefinger. He hesitated a moment, glanced at her face, smiled inscrutably, and deliberately reseated himself.

“What in the world could I do, you see?” he inquired meditatively, as if that had been the subject under discussion for some time. “I can't make cardboard boxes, you know. It's perfectly useless, my going into a factory. Wheels and belts and things always give me the maddest longing to jump into them--I couldn't resist it! And that would be so unpleasant--”

She dropped her wool and clasped her hands under it.

“Oh, Mr. Welles,” she cried eagerly, “how absurd! As if I meant that! As if I meant anything like it!”

“Had you thought of anything, then?” he asked interestedly.

She nodded gravely. “Why, yes,” she said. “It wouldn't be right for me to say you must do something, and then offer no suggestions whatever, knowing as I do how you feel about it. I thought of such a good plan, and one that would be the best possible answer to Tom--”

“Oh, good heavens!” murmured her lodger, but she went on quickly: “You know I was going to open the soup-kitchen in October. Well, I've just thought, Why not get the Rooms all ready, and the reading-room moved over there, and have lemonade and sandwiches and sarsaparilla, and Kitty Waters to begin to serve right away, as she's beginning to run the streets again, and Annabel Riley with her? Then the Civic Club can have its headquarters there, and people will begin to be used to it before cold weather.”

“And I am to serve sarsaparilla and sandwiches with Kitty and Annabel? Really, dear Miss Gould, if you knew how horribly ill sarsaparilla is certain to make me--I have loathed it from childhood--”

“Oh, no, no, no!” she interrupted, with her sweet, tolerant smile. She smiled at him as if he had been a child.

“You know I never meant that you should work all day, Mr. Welles. It isn't at all necessary. I have always felt that an hour or two a day of intelligent, cultivated work was fully equal to a much longer space of manual labor that is more mechanical, more tiresome.”

“Better fifty years of poker than a cycle of croquet!” her lodger murmured. “Yes, I have always felt that myself.”

“And somebody must be there from ten to twelve, say, in the mornings, in what we call the office; just to keep an eye on things, and answer questions about the kitchen, and watch the reading-room, and recommend the periodicals, and take the children's Civic League reports, and oversee the Rooms generally. Now I'd be there Wednesdays to meet the mothers, and Mrs. Underwood Saturdays for the Band of Hope and the kitchen-garden. It would be just Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from ten to twelve, say!”

“From ten to twelve, say,” he repeated absently, with his eyes on her handsome, eager face. He had never seen her so animated, so girlishly insistent. She urged with the vivid earnestness of twenty years.

“My dear lady,” he brought out finally, “you are like Greek architecture or Eastlake furniture or--or 'God Save the Queen'--perfectly absolute! And I am so hideously relative--But, after all, why should a sense of humor be an essential? One is really more complete--I suppose Mahomet had none--When shall I begin?”

The interested villagers were informed early and regularly of the progress of the latest scheme of their benefactress. Henry and Mr. Waters furnished most satisfactory and detailed bulletins to gatherings of leisurely and congenial spirits, who listened with incredulous amazement to the accounts of Mr. Welles's proceedings.

“Him an' that hired man o' his, they have took more stuff over to them Rooms than you c'd shake a stick at! I never see nothing like it--never! Waxed that floor, they have, and put more mats onto it--fur and colored. An' the stuff--oh, Lord! China--all that blue china he got fr'm ol' Mis' Simms, an' them ol' stoneware platters that Mis' Rivers was goin' to fire away, an' he give her two dollars for the lot--all that's scattered round on tables and shelves. An' that ol' black secr'tary he got fr'm Lord knows where, an' brakes growin' in colored pots standin' right up there, an' statyers o' men an' women--no heads onto 'em, some ain't got; it's all one to him--he'd buy any ol' thing so's 'twas broke, you might say. An' them ol' straight chairs--no upholsterin' on 'em, an' some o' them wicker kind that bends any way, with piliers in 'em. An' cups and sassers, with a tea-pot 'n' kittle; an' he makes tea himself an' drinks it--I swear it's so. An' a guitar, an', Lord, the pictures! You can't see no wall for 'em!

“'It's a mighty lucky thing, havin' this room, Thompson,' says he to that hired man, 'the things was spillin' over. We'll make it a bower o' beauty, Thompson,' says he. 'Yes, sir,' says the man. That's all he ever says, you might say. I never see nothin' like it, never, the way that hired man talks to him; you'd think he was the Queen o' Sheba.

“An' he goes squintin' about here an' there, changin' this an' that, an' singin' away an' laughin'--you'd think he'd have a fit. Seems's if he loved to putter about 'n' fool with things in a room, like women. I heard him say so myself. I was helpin' Miss Gould with the other rooms--she ain't seen his; she don't know no more'n the dead what he's got in there--an' I was by the door when he said it.

“'Thompson,' says he, 'if I don't keep my present situation,' says he, 'I c'n go out as a decorator an' furnisher. Don't you think I'd succeed, Thompson?' says he. 'Yes, sir,' says Thompson.

“'You see, we've got to do something Thompson,' says he. 'We've got ter justify our existence, Thompson,' an' he commenced to laugh. 'Yes, sir,' says Thompson. Beats all I ever see, the way that man answers back!”

An almost unprecedented headache, brought on by her unremitting labor in effecting the change in the Rooms, kept Miss Gould in the house for two days after the new headquarters had been satisfactorily arranged; and as Mr. Welles had refused to open his office for inspection till it was completely furnished, she did not enter that characteristic apartment till the third day of its official existence.

As she went through the narrow hallway connecting the four rooms on which the social regeneration of her village depended, she caught the sweet low thrum of a guitar and a too familiarly seductive voice burst forth into a chant, whose literal significance she was unable to grasp, owing to lack of familiarity with the language in which it was couched, but whose general tenor no one could mistake, so tender and arch was the rendering.

With a vague thrill of apprehension she threw open the door.

Sunk in cushions, a tea-cup on the arm of his chair, a guitar resting on his white flannel sleeve, reclined the director of the Rooms. Over his head hung a large and exquisite copy of the Botticelli Venus. Miss Gould's horrified gaze fled from this work of art to rest on a representation in bronze of the same reprehensible goddess, clothed, to be sure, a little more in accordance with the views of a retired New England community, yet leaving much to be desired in this direction. Kitty Waters attentively filled his empty cup, beaming the while, and the once errant Annabel, sitting on a low stool at his feet, with a red bow in her pretty hair, and her great brown eyes fixed adoringly on his face as he directed the fascinating incomprehensible little song straight at her charming self, was obviously in no present danger of running the streets.

“Good morning, Miss Gould!” he said cheerfully, rising and handing the guitar to the abashed Annabel. “And you are really quite recovered? _C'est bien!_ Business is dull, and we are amusing each other, you see. How do you like the rooms? I flatter myself--”

“If you flattered none but yourself, Mr. Welles, much harm would be avoided,” she interrupted with uncompromising directness. “Kitty and Annabel, I cannot see how you can possibly tell how many people may or may not be wanting lunch!”

“Billy Rider tells us when any one comes,” the director assured her. “They don't come till twelve, anyway, and then they want to see the room, mostly--which we show them, don't we, Annabel?”

Annabel blushed, cast down her eyes, lifted them, showed her dimples, and replied in the words, if not in the accents, of Thompson: “Yes, sir!”

“It's really going to be an education in itself, don't you think so?” he continued. “It's amazing how the people like it--it's really quite gratifying. Perhaps it may be my mission to abolish the chromo and the tidy from off the face of New England! We have had crowds here--just to look at the pictures.”

“I don't doubt it!” replied Miss Gould briefly.

“And I got the most attractive sugar-bowl from the little boy who brought in the reports about picking up papers and such things from the streets. He said he ought to have five cents, so I gave him a dime--I hadn't five--and I bought the bowl. Annabel, my child, bring me--”

But Annabel and her fellow-waitress had disappeared. Miss Gould sat in silence. At intervals her perplexed gaze rested unconsciously on the Botticelli Venus, from which she instantly with a slight frown lowered it and regarded the floor. When she at last met his eyes the expression of her own was so troubled, the droop of her firm mouth so pathetic and unusual, that he left his chair and dragged the little stool to her feet, assuming an attitude so boyish and graceful that in spite of herself she smiled at him.

“What is the matter?” he asked confidentially. “Is anything wrong? Don't you like the room? I enjoy it tremendously, myself. I've been here almost all the time since it was done. I think Tom Waters must be tremendously impressed--”

“That's the trouble; he is,” said Miss Gould simply.

“Trouble? trouble? Is his impression unfavorable? Heavens, how unfortunate!” exclaimed the director airily. “Surely, my application--Does the room fail to meet his approval, or--”

“Yes, it does,” she interrupted. “He says it's no place for a man to be in; and he says the pictures are--are--well, he says they are improper!” glancing at the Venus.

“Ah!” responded the director with a suspicious sweetness. “He does not care for the nude, then?”

She sighed deeply. “Oh, Mr. Welles!”

“It is indeed to be regretted that Mr. Waters's ideals are so high--and--shall we say--so elusive?” proceeded the director smoothly. “It is so difficult--so well-nigh impossible--to satisfy him. One devotes one's energies--I may say one slaves night and day--to win some slight mark of approval; and just as one is about to reap the well-earned reward--a smile, a word of appreciation--all is forfeited! It is hard indeed! Would you suggest the rearrangement of the Rooms under Mr. Waters's direction? Thompson is at his service--”

“Oh, Mr. Welles!” she sighed hopelessly. “It isn't only that! It's not alone the room, though Mrs. Underwood wonders that I should think she would be able to conduct the Band of Hope in here, and Mrs. Rider says that after what her husband told her she should no more think of sitting here for a mothers' meeting than anything in the world. It's the whole thing. Why did you treat them all to lemonade the first day? Surely you knew that our one aim is to prevent miscellaneous charity. And Tom says you smoked in here--he smelt it.”

“I smelt him, too,” remarked the director calmly. “That was one reason why I smoked.”

“And--and having Kitty and Annabel here all the time! The Girls' Club are so j---- Well, the Girls' Club like the old rooms better, they say, and it's so difficult to get them to work together at best. And now we shall have to work so hard--

“And the men think it's just a joke, the lemonade and everything, and the room gave them such a wrong impression, and they don't seem to want it, anyway. Tom Waters says he can't abide sarsaparilla--”

“Great heavens!” the director broke in, “is it possible? A point on which Mr. Waters's opinion coincides with mine? I have not lived in vain! But this is too much; I have not deserved--”

“Oh, don't!” she begged. “There is more. When I corrected Annabel for what I had heard about her--her impertinent behavior, she said that Mrs. Underwood had never approved of the whole thing, and that if I had consulted her she would never have given her consent to your being here, and that I was dictatorial--I!”

Her lodger coughed and ejaculated, “You, indeed!”

“And when I said that their ingratitude actually made me wonder why I worked so hard for them, she said--oh, dear! It is all dreadful! I don't know what to do!”

“I do!” returned her lodger promptly. “Go away and leave 'em! They aren't fit to trouble you any more. Besides, they're really not so bad, after all, you know. There has to be just about so much laziness and--and that sort of thing, don't you see. Look at me, for instance! Think of how much misdirected energy I balance! And it gives other people something to do.... Go away and leave it all for a while!” he repeated smilingly.

“Go away! But where? Why should I? What do you mean?” she stammered, confused at something in his eyes, which never left her face.

“To England--you said you'd like to see it. With me--for I certainly couldn't stay here alone. Why do you suppose I stay, dear lady? I used to wonder myself. No, sit still, don't get up! I am about to make you an offer of marriage; indeed, I am serious, Miss Gould!

“I don't see that it's ridiculous at all. I see every practical reason in favor of it. In the first place, if they are gossiping--oh, yes, Thompson told me, and I wonder that they hadn't before: these villages are dreadful places--I couldn't very well stay, you see; and then where should I put all my things? In the second place, I have so much stuff, and there's no house fit for it but--but ours; and if we were married I could have just twice as much room for it--and I'm getting far too much for my side. In the third place, I find that I can't look forward with any pleasure to travelling about alone, because, in the fourth place, I've grown so tremendously fond of you, dear Miss Gould! I think you don't dislike me?”

She plucked the guitar strings nervously with her white, strong fingers. The rich, vibrating tones of it filled the room and confused her still more.

“People will say that I--that we--” He caught her hand: it had never been kissed before. “Would you rather I went away and then there would be nothing left for them to say?” he asked softly.

She caught her breath.

“I'm too--”

“You are too charming not to have some one who appreciates the fact as thoroughly as I do,” he interrupted gallantly. “I think you do me so much good, you know,” he added, still holding her hand. She looked at him directly for the first time.

“Do I really? Is that true?” she demanded, with a return of her old manner so complete and sudden as to startle him. “If I thought that--”

“You would?” he asked with a smile. “I thought so! Here is a village that scorns your efforts and a respectful suitor who implores them. Can you hesitate?”

His smile was irresistible, and she returned it half reprovingly. “Will you never be serious?” she said. “I wonder that I can--” She stopped.

“That you can--” he repeated, watching her blush, but she would not finish.

“You must not think that I can give up my work--my real work--so easily,” she said, rising and looking down on him with a return of her simple impressive seriousness. “I shall have to consider. I have been very much disturbed by their conduct. I will see you after supper,” and with a gesture that told him to remain, she left the room, her head high as she caught Annabel's voice from outside. She turned in the door, however, and the stern curves of her mouth melted with a smile so sweet, a promise so gracious and so tender, that when her eyes, frank and direct as a boy's, left his, he looked long at the closed door, wondering at the quickening of his pulses.

A moment later he heard her voice, imperious and clear, and the mumble of Mr. Waters's unavailing if never-ending excuses. He laughed softly to himself, and touched the strings of the guitar that she had struck. “I shall save the worthy Thomas much,” he murmured to himself, “and of course I do it to reform her--I cannot pull down the village and die with the Philistines!”

She went up the long main street, Mr. Waters at her side and Annabel Riley behind her. Her lodger watched her out of sight, and prepared to lock up the Rooms.

“So firm, so positive, so wholesome!” he said, as he started after her.