Chapter VIII: An Old Friend

Mauney found a boarding-house on Church Street, directly opposite the collegiate institute, a plain unit, in a plain brick terrace set close to the sidewalk. He engaged the down-stairs front room, which looked directly upon the thoroughfare by a wide window. He liked the room chiefly because of this window, for it afforded a generous view of the street and promised an excellent point of vantage. The landlady was a gigantic Irish woman whose husband worked in a foundry. It seemed to Mauney that their occupations ought to have been interchanged, for the husband was a puny, sickly fellow, thoroughly subdued by his wife’s temper. He had a way of moving quietly and guiltily through the house, as if expecting her to pounce on his back at any moment.

The first morning of Mauney’s occupancy, Mrs. Hudson came into his room, gowned in her collarless, blue, print dress, broom in hand. As school would not open for a day or two, Mauney was engaged in arranging his books.

“Oh! and it’s a scholar ye are, is it?” she asked.

“Teacher, Mrs. Hudson,” he explained.

“Indade, an’ sure I t’ought, all the time, ye were a commarcial trovler,” she said, surveying the volumes he was taking from his trunk. “I knew ye were a sangle mon. But I t’ought ye were a commarcial trovler. An’ which schule, might I be asking, are ye goin’ to be teaching at?”

“That one,” he said, pointing through the window at the grey stone mass across the street.

“Poor mon,” she sighed, as books still continued to come forth from the trunk. “It must keep ye busy. I’m glad ye’re a quiet mon.”

“Do I look quiet?” laughed Mauney.

“Ay, ye do thot, an’ imogine me thinkin’ ye were a commarcial trovler, now. Well, the saints rest ye, when are ye ging to rade all thim books?”

“In the evenings, I suppose.”

“Imogine, now. Poor mon! Have ye no friends in town?”

“Oh, yes, a few.”

“That’s a good thing,” she said, starting towards the hall, “and ye’ll not be throubled with noise, onyway. ’Tis a very, very quiet house. An’ I’m afther thinking ye’ll need plenty o’ quietness for to read so mony books. Poor mon, an’ me thinkin’ ye were a commarcial trovler. Imagine, now!”

After she had gone, Mauney stood, idly watching an old man in a faded navy-blue suit, as he made his way slowly up the street. The senile curve of his figure was accentuated by a long, white beard, that flopped in front of his body as he jogged along. With each determined, but feeble, step he struck the pavement a sharp rap with his thick, metal-tipped cane. At regular intervals of about ten paces he invariably paused and turned slowly about to gaze backward, as though he were proudly calculating the extent of his efforts.

Mauney hardly saw the old fellow. His thoughts were running busily along with plans for his work soon to begin. Then he suddenly thought of Freda and his bosom burned, while the day seemed to expand and brighten. He had dreamed of her in the night, and she came upon his consciousness now with that unspeakable dearness, which dreams, though half-forgotten, lend to our waking thoughts. Her dark eyes were before him like infinite comfort; the sound of her voice formed a music in his mind. He wanted nothing more than Freda. He prayed that heaven would refuse him all other gifts, but her. When he opened his eyes slowly, there was the old man just in the act of turning to gaze back along the sultry street.

From the other edge of the window he espied the quicker figure of Henry Dover, the collegiate principal, on his way to his office. Although dressed in a grey, flannel suit, and a straw hat, his appearance was not lightsome. Of medium height, he walked with a pensive inclination of his head, but with an energetic and measured stride, while his arms, curved at the elbows, swung rhythmically beside him. Here was a careful, strong, man, thoroughly accustomed to the harness of office. Henry Dover, dressed in a Prussian general’s uniform, and following in the cortege of a field-marshal’s funeral, would perform the part with great credit.

Later in the morning, as Mauney sat idly by the window, he was conscious that the room was all at once illuminated by reflected sunlight. He looked up quickly at the figure who was passing and saw, under the shadow of her hat, and at a very near view, the face of Jean Byrne. With an instinctive turn of her head she at once recognized him, hesitated and then stopped.

“Mauney Bard! Where did you come from?”

“Wait till I get my hat,” replied Mauney.

“Well, Mrs. Poynton,” he said as he joined her on the street and shook hands with her. “It’s a great pleasure to see such an old friend, again.”

“The same to you,” she said, as they walked along, and favored him with the close scrutiny permitted to old friends on meeting. “You’ve changed some way or other, Mauney, but I’d know you anywhere. Your hair has lost its brilliance, and you look like a man of affairs. After reading your book I didn’t know what you’d be like. I heard a few days ago that you were going to teach here; so you see you’ve taken my advice after all.”

Her voice and manner were the same, although Mauney fancied she was more animated, an impression possibly due to her extravagant, but tasteful, costume.

“I’ve nearly lost track of you,” he admitted. “I’d like to talk over old times. Are you on your way down town?”

“Just to the post office. Will you come along?”

“Thank you,” he nodded. “Where do you live, may I ask?”

“Just a little way up Church Street, the second house past the Baptist Church. We used to live on Queen Street East, but when Charles went out West this spring—by the way, did you know that the doctor had left Lockwood?”

“No, I hadn’t heard that.”

“He found the town so conservative and stodgy that he thought he’d prefer things out there, and I felt that until he got settled I’d better stay here with mother. She’s getting old, you know, and is practically an invalid with rheumatism.”

As they were coming out of the post office, Mauney noticed one of the middle-aged women whom he had met the previous evening at the club, sitting in a motor car at the curb. She bowed affably, then glanced quickly at Mrs. Poynton.

“Do you know Mrs. Squires?” Jean asked as they walked along.

“Yes, met her only last night.”

Before leaving Jean at her home he accepted her invitation to come up for dinner that evening. Her mother was then discovered to be a woman prematurely aged by a morose and taciturn disposition, which seemed to account for her daughter’s surprising animation. Jean made good to Mauney what her mother’s manner lacked in friendliness. And, indeed, the home was all in distinct contrast with the impression of affluence which Jean’s street appearance had so unquestionably made.

Dinner finished, Mrs. Byrne at once settled herself in a chair by a western window, and, adjusting a second pair of glasses, reached a Bible from the window-sill. Mauney thought this might herald a session of family worship, and was relieved when his hostess led him to the parlor. With a Bohemian grace that was foreign to his conception of his former country-school teacher, Jean opened for him a silver box of cigarettes, and selecting one for herself pressed it neatly into a pearl holder.

“Times have changed, since Lantern Marsh days,” she said, smiling gently, “and I hope you have learned by this time to excuse women for their little follies.”

“I am free and easy,” laughed Mauney. “I’ve been living for the last few years in a house where cigarette-smoke was the prevailing perfume.”

“And about five years on Queen Street East,” Jean said, “have made these things almost essential to me. I started smoking at bridges in self-defence, and now my meals don’t digest without them. Charles always hated me to smoke. But I presume he realized the environment was to blame.”

For perhaps an hour they talked of Beulah and its inhabitants, of deaths and marriages, of careers which had justified their early promise, and of others which had not. Mauney briefly outlined his college experiences, but noticed that she said almost nothing about her own married life. All girlishness had departed from her face, and gone, too, was a certain carelessness of appearance which had formerly been quite refreshing. She was now, as nearly as he could judge, possessed of a dormant bitterness, never expressed, but as ugly as she was attractive. He found himself not a little curious to learn her philosophy, but even now he felt the same unexplainable distaste in her presence as he had felt during a certain evening drive, seven years ago. To be sure Jean had lost the directness which had then displeased him. She had become more subtle, more complex. But in this quiet parlor a mental hand was reaching towards him with the same emotional intent.

“Well,” she said at length, “you’re a sly fox. You’ve told me all about your life just as if there hadn’t been a single woman in it. Now, please confess, as I am desperately curious.”

For some reason Mauney preserved a guarded attitude. The last thing he could have discussed, or even mentioned, was his love for Freda MacDowell.

“I am not much of a ladies’ man,” he smiled. “I’ve been told that I was a woman-hater. I guess my early upbringing was against me that way.”

He soon left the house, feeling that old friendships did not necessarily improve with years, and that he himself, free and easy as he might be, was not attracted by a home where Bible-reading and cigarette-smoking were indulged by different members at the same time. It was not artistic. As for Jean, she was not an admirable person, nor even winning. He felt that he did not care if they should never meet again.