Chapter II

THE interior of the room of _Miss Spaulding_ and _Miss Reed_ remains in view, while the scene discloses, on the other side of the partition wall in the same house, the bachelor apartment of _Mr. Samuel Grinnidge_. _Mr. Grinnidge_ in his dressing-gown and slippers, with his pipe in his mouth, has the effect of having just come in; his friend _Mr. Oliver Ransom_ stands at the window, staring out into the November weather.

* * * * *

_Grinnidge_: “How long have you been waiting here?”

_Ransom_: “Ten minutes—ten years. How should I know?”

_Grinnidge_: “Well, I don’t know who else should. Get back to-day?”

_Ransom_: “Last night.”

_Grinnidge_: “Well, take off your coat, and pull up to the register, and warm your poor feet.” He puts his hand out over the register. “Confound it! somebody’s got the register open in the next room! You see, one pipe comes up from the furnace and branches into a V just under the floor, and professes to heat both rooms. But it don’t. There was a fellow in there last winter who used to get all my heat. Used to go out and leave his register open, and I’d come in here just before dinner and find this place as cold as a barn. We had a running fight of it all winter. The man who got his register open first in the morning got all the heat for the day, for it never turned the other way when it started in one direction. Used to almost suffocate—warm, muggy days—maintaining my rights. Some piano-pounder in there this winter, it seems. Hear? And she hasn’t lost any time in learning the trick of the register. What kept you so late in the country?”

_Ransom_, after an absent-minded pause: “Grinnidge, I wish you would give me some advice.”

_Grinnidge_: “You can have all you want of it at the market price.”

_Ransom_: “I don’t mean your legal advice.”

_Grinnidge_: “I’m sorry. What have you been doing?”

_Ransom_: “I’ve been making an ass of myself.”

_Grinnidge_: “Wasn’t that rather superfluous?”

_Ransom_: “If you please, yes. But now, it you’re capable of listening to me without any further display of your cross-examination wit, I should like to tell you how it happened.”

_Grinnidge_: “I will do my best to veil my brilliancy. Go on.”

_Ransom_: “I went up to Ponkwasset early in September for the foliage.”

_Grinnidge_: “And staid till late in October. There must have been a reason for that. What was her name? Foliage?”

_Ransom_, coming up to the corner of the chimney-piece, near which his friend sits, and talking to him directly over the register: “I think you’ll have to get along without the name for the present. I’ll tell you by and by.” As _Mr. Ransom_ pronounces these words, _Miss Reed_, on her side of the partition, lifts her head with a startled air, and, after a moment of vague circumspection, listens keenly. “But she was beautiful. She was a blonde, and she had the loveliest eyes—eyes, you know, that could be funny or tender, just as she chose—the kind of eyes I always liked.” _Miss Reed_ leads forward over the register. “She had one of those faces that always leave you in doubt whether they’re laughing at you, and so keep you in wholesome subjection; but you feel certain that they’re _good_, and that if they did hurt you by laughing at you, they’d look sorry for you afterward. When she walked you saw what an exquisite creature she was. It always made me mad to think I couldn’t _paint_ her walk.”

_Grinnidge_: “I suppose you saw a good deal of her walk.”

_Ransom_: “Yes; we were off in the woods and fields half the time together.” He takes a turn towards the window.

_Miss Reed_, suddenly shutting the register on her side: “Oh!”

_Miss Spaulding_, looking up from her music: “What is it, Ethel?”

_Miss Reed_: “Nothing, nothing; I—I—thought it was getting too warm. Go on, dear; don’t let me interrupt you.” After a moment of heroic self-denial she softly presses the register open with her foot.

_Ransom_, coming back to the register: “It all began in that way. I had the good fortune one day to rescue her from a—cow.”

_Miss Reed_: “Oh, for shame!”

_Miss Spaulding_, desisting from her piano: “What _is_ the matter?”

_Miss Reed_, clapping the register to: “This ridiculous book! But don’t—don’t mind me, Nettie.” Breathlessly: “Go—go—on!” _Miss Spaulding_ resumes, and again _Miss Reed_ softly presses the register open.

_Ransom_, after a pause: “The cow was grazing, and had no more thought of hooking Miss”—

_Miss Reed_: “Oh, I didn’t suppose he _would_!—Go on, Nettie, go on! The hero—_such_ a goose!”

_Ransom_: “I drove her away with my camp-stool, and Miss—the young lady—was as grateful as if I had rescued her from a menagerie of wild animals. I walked home with her to the farm house, and the trouble began at once.” Pantomime of indignant protest and burlesque menace on the part of _Miss Reed_. “There wasn’t another well woman in the house, except her friend Miss Spaulding, who was rather old and rather plain.” He takes another turn to the window.

_Miss Reed_: “Oh!” She shuts the register, but instantly opens it again. “Louder, Nettie.”

_Miss Spaulding_, in astonishment: “What?”

_Miss Reed_: “Did I speak? I didn’t know it. I”—

_Miss Spaulding_, desisting from practice: “What is that strange, hollow, rumbling, mumbling kind of noise?”

_Miss Reed_, softly closing the register with her foot: “I don’t hear any strange, hollow, rumbling, mumbling kind of noise. Do you hear it _now_?”

_Miss Spaulding_: “No. It was the Brighton whistle, probably.”

_Miss Reed_: “Oh, very likely.” As _Miss Spaulding_ turns again to her practice _Miss Reed_ re-opens the register and listens again. A little interval of silence ensues, while _Ransom_ lights a cigarette.

_Grinnidge_: “So you sought opportunities of rescuing her from other cows?”

_Ransom_, returning: “That wasn’t necessary. The young lady was so impressed by my behavior, that she asked if I would give her some lessons in the use of oil.”

_Grinnidge_: “She thought if she knew how to paint pictures like yours she wouldn’t need any one to drive the cows away.”

_Ransom_: “Don’t be farcical, Grinnidge. That sort of thing will do with some victim on the witness-stand who can’t help himself. Of course I said I would, and we were off half the time together, painting the loveliest and loneliest bits around Ponkwasset. It all went on very well, till one day I felt bound in conscience to tell her that I didn’t think she would ever learn to paint, and that—if she was serious about it she’d better drop it at once, for she was wasting her time.”

_Grinnidge_, getting up to fill his pipe: “That was a pleasant thing to do.”

_Ransom_: “I told her that if it amused her, to keep on; I would be only too glad to give her all—the hints I could, but that I oughtn’t to encourage her. She seemed a good deal hurt. I fancied at the time that she thought I was tired of having her with me so much.”

_Miss Reed_: “Oh, _did_ you, indeed!” To _Miss Spaulding_, who bends an astonished glance upon her from the piano: “The man in this book is the most _conceited_ creature, Nettie. Play chords—something very subdued—ah!”

_Miss Spaulding_: “What are you talking about, Ethel?”

_Ransom_: “That was at night; but the next day she came up smiling, and said that if I didn’t mind she would keep on—for amusement; she wasn’t a bit discouraged.”

_Miss Reed_: “Oh!—Go on, Nettie; don’t let my outbursts interrupt you.”

_Ransom_: “I used to fancy sometimes that she was a little sweet on me.”

_Miss Reed_: “You wretch!—Oh, scales, Nettie! Play scales!”

_Miss Spaulding_: “Ethel Reed, are you crazy?”

_Ransom_, after a thoughtful moment: “Well, so it went on for the next seven or eight weeks. When we weren’t sketching in the meadows, or on the mountain-side, or in the old punt on the pond, we were walking up and down the farmhouse piazza together. She used to read to me when I was at work. She had a heavenly voice, Grinnidge.”

_Miss Reed_: “Oh, you silly, silly thing!—Really this book makes me sick, Nettie.”

_Ransom_: “Well, the long and the short of it was, I was hit—_hard_, and I lost all courage. You know how I am, Grinnidge.”

_Miss Reed_, softly: “Oh, poor fellow!”

_Ransom_: “So I let the time go by, and at the end I hadn’t said anything.”

_Miss Reed_: “No, sir! You _hadn’t_!” _Miss Spaulding_ gradually ceases to play, and fixes her attention wholly upon _Miss Reed_, who bends forward over the register with an intensely excited face.

_Ransom_: “Then something happened that made me glad, for twenty-four hours at least, that I hadn’t spoken. She sent me the money for twenty-five lessons. Imagine how I felt, Grinnidge! What could I suppose but that she had been quietly biding her time, and storing up her resentment for my having told her she couldn’t learn to paint, till she could pay me back with interest in one supreme insult?”

_Miss Reed_, in a low voice: “Oh, how could you think such a cruel, vulgar thing?” _Miss Spaulding_ leaves the piano, and softly approaches her, where she has sunk on her knees beside the register.

_Ransom_: “It was tantamount to telling me that she had been amusing herself with me instead of my lessons. It remanded our whole association, which I had got to thinking so romantic, to the relation of teacher and pupil. It was a snub—a heartless, killing snub; and I couldn’t see it in any other light.” _Ransom_ walks away to the window, and looks out.

_Miss Reed_, flinging herself backward from the register, and hiding her face in her hands: “Oh, it wasn’t! it wasn’t! it wasn’t! How could you think so?”

_Miss Spaulding_, rushing forward, and catching her friend in her arms: “What is the matter with you, Ethel Reed? What are you doing here, over the register? Are you trying to suffocate yourself? Have you taken leave of your senses?”

_Grinnidge_: “Our fair friend on the other side of the wall seems to be on the rampage.”

_Miss Spaulding_, shutting the register with a violent clash: “Ugh! how hot it is here!”

_Grinnidge_: “Doesn’t like your conversation, apparently.”

_Miss Reed_, frantically pressing forward to open the register: “Oh, don’t shut it, Nettie, dear! If you do I shall die! Do-o-n’t shut the register!”

_Miss Spaulding_: “Don’t shut it? Why, we’ve got all the heat of the furnace in the room now. Surely you don’t want any more?”

_Miss Reed_: “No, no; not any more. But—but— Oh, dear! what shall I do?” She still struggles in the embrace of her friend.

_Grinnidge_, remaining quietly at the register, while _Ransom_ walks away to the window: “Well, what did you do?”

_Miss Reed_: “There, there! They’re commencing again! _Do_ open it, Nettie. I _will_ have it open!” She wrenches herself free, and dashes the register open.

_Grinnidge_: “Ah, she’s opened it again.”

_Miss Reed_, in a stage-whisper: “That’s the other one!”

_Ransom_, from the window: “Do? I’ll tell you what I did.”

_Miss Reed_: “That’s Ol—Mr. Ransom. And, oh, I can’t make out what he’s saying! He must have gone away to the other side of the room—and it’s at the most important point!”

_Miss Spaulding_, in an awful undertone: “Was that the hollow rumbling I heard? And have you been listening at the register to what they’ve been saying? O _Ethel_!”

_Miss Reed_: “I haven’t been listening, exactly.”

_Miss Spaulding_: “You have! You have been eavesdropping!”

_Miss Reed_: “Eavesdropping is listening through a key-hole, or around a corner. This is very different. Besides, it’s Oliver, and he’s been talking about _me_. Hark!” She clutches her friend’s hand, where they have crouched upon the floor together, and pulls her forward to the register. “Oh, dear, how hot it is! I wish they would cut off the heat down below.”

_Grinnidge_, smoking peacefully through the silence which his friend has absent-mindedly let follow upon his last words: “Well, you seem disposed to take your time about it.”

_Ransom_: “About what? Oh, yes! Well”—

_Miss Reed_: “’Sh! Listen.”

_Miss Spaulding_: “I won’t listen! It’s shameful: it’s wicked! I don’t see how you can do it, Ethel!” She remains, however, kneeling near the register, and she involuntarily inclines a little more toward it.

_Ransom_: “—It isn’t a thing that I care to shout from the house-tops.” He returns from the window to the chimney-piece. “I wrote the rudest kind of note, and sent back her letter and her money in it. She had said that she hoped our acquaintance was not to end with the summer, but that we might sometimes meet in Boston; and I answered that our acquaintance had ended already, and that I should be sorry to meet her anywhere again.”

_Grinnidge_: “Well, if you wanted to make an ass of yourself, you did it pretty completely.”

_Miss Reed_, whispering: “How witty he is! Those men are always so humorous with each other.”

_Ransom_: “Yes; I didn’t do it by halves.”

_Miss Reed_, whispering: “Oh, _that’s_ funny, too!”

_Grinnidge_: “It didn’t occur to you that she might feel bound to pay you for the first half-dozen, and was embarrassed how to offer to pay for them alone?”

_Miss Reed_: “How he _does_ go to the heart of the matter!” She presses _Miss Spaulding’s_ hand in an ecstasy of approval.

_Ransom_: “Yes, it did—afterward.”

_Miss Reed_, in a tender murmur: “Oh, _poor_ Oliver!”

_Ransom_: “And it occurred to me that she was perfectly right in the whole affair.”

_Miss Reed_: “Oh, how generous! how noble!”

_Ransom_: “I had had a thousand opportunities, and I hadn’t been man enough to tell her that I was in love with her.”

_Miss Reed_: “How can he say it right out so bluntly? But if it’s true”—

_Ransom_: “I _couldn’t_ speak. I was afraid of putting an end to the affair—of frightening her—disgusting her.”

_Miss Reed_: “Oh, how little they know us, Nettie!”

_Ransom_: “She seemed so much above me in every way—so sensitive, so refined, so gentle, so good, so angelic!”

_Miss Reed_: “There! _Now_ do you call it eavesdropping? If listeners never hear any good of themselves, what do you say to that? It proves that I haven’t been listening.”

_Miss Spaulding_: “’Sh! They’re saying something else.”

_Ransom_: “But all that’s neither here nor there. I can see now that under the circumstances she couldn’t as a lady have acted otherwise than she did. She was forced to treat our whole acquaintance as a business matter, and I had forced her to do it.”

_Miss Reed_: “You _had_, you poor thing!”

_Grinnidge_: “Well, what do you intend to do about it?”

_Ransom_: “Well”—

_Miss Reed_: “’Sh!”

_Miss Spaulding_: “’Sh!”

_Ransom_: “—that’s what I want to submit to you, Grinnidge. I must see her.”

_Grinnidge_: “Yes. I’m glad _I_ mustn’t.”

_Miss Reed_, stifling a laugh on _Miss Spaulding’s_ shoulder: “They’re actually _afraid_ of us, Nettie!”

_Ransom_: “See her, and go down in the dust.”

_Miss Reed_: “My very words!”

_Ransom_: “I have been trying to think what was the very humblest pie I could eat, by way of penance; and it appears to me that I had better begin by saying that I have come to ask her for the money I refused.”

_Miss Reed_, enraptured: “Oh! doesn’t it seem just like—like—inspiration, Nettie?”

_Miss Spaulding_: “’Sh! Be quiet, do! You’ll frighten them away!”

_Grinnidge_: “And then what?”

_Ransom_: “What then? I don’t know what then. But it appears to me that, as a gentleman, I’ve got nothing to do with the result. All that I’ve got to do is to submit to my fate, whatever it is.”

_Miss Reed_, breathlessly: “What princely courage! What delicate magnanimity! Oh, he needn’t have the _least_ fear! If I could only tell him that!”

_Grinnidge_, after an interval of meditative smoking: “Yes, I guess that’s the best thing you can do. It will strike her fancy, if she’s an imaginative girl, and she’ll think you a fine fellow.”

_Miss Reed_: “Oh, the horrid thing!”

_Grinnidge_: “If you humble yourself to a woman at all, do it thoroughly. If you go halfway down she’ll be tempted to push you the rest of the way. If you flatten out at her feet to begin with, ten to one but she will pick you up.”

_Ransom_: “Yes, that was my idea.”

_Miss Reed_: “Oh, was it, indeed! Well!”

_Ransom_: “But I’ve nothing to do with her picking me up or pushing me down. All that I’ve got to do is to go and surrender myself.”

_Grinnidge_: “Yes. Well; I guess you can’t go too soon. I like your company; but I advise you as a friend not to lose time. Where does she live?”

_Ransom_: “That’s the remarkable part of it: she lives in this house.”

_Miss Reed_ and _Miss Spaulding_, in subdued chorus: “Oh!”

_Grinnidge_, taking his pipe out of his mouth in astonishment: “No!”

_Ransom_: “I just came in here to give my good resolutions a rest while I was screwing my courage up to ask for her.”

_Miss Reed_: “Don’t you think he’s _very_ humorous? Give his good resolutions a rest! That’s the way he _always_ talks.”

_Miss Spaulding_: “’Sh!”

_Grinnidge_: “You said you came for my advice.”

_Ransom_: “So I did. But I didn’t promise to act upon it. Well!” He goes toward the door.

_Grinnidge_, without troubling himself to rise: “Well, good luck to you!”

_Miss Reed_: “How droll they are with each other! Don’t you _like_ to hear them talk? Oh, I could listen all day.”

_Grinnidge_, calling after _Ransom_: “You haven’t told me your duck’s name.”

_Miss Reed_: “Is _that_ what they call us? Duck! Do you think it’s very respectful, Nettie? I don’t believe I like it. Or, yes, why not? It’s no harm—if I _am_ his duck!”

_Ransom_, coming back: “Well, I don’t propose to go shouting it round. Her name is Miss Reed—Ethel Reed.”

_Miss Reed_: “How _can_ he?”

_Grinnidge_: “Slender, willowy party, with a lot of blond hair that looks as if it might be indigenous? Rather pensive-looking?”

_Miss Reed_: “Indigenous! I should hope so!”

_Ransom_: “Yes. But she isn’t pensive. She’s awfully deep. It makes me shudder to think how deep that girl is. And when I think of my courage in daring to be in love with her—a stupid, straightforward idiot like me—I begin to respect myself in spite of being such an ass. Well, I’m off. If I stay any longer I shall never go.” He closes the door after him, and _Miss Reed_ instantly springs to her feet.

_Miss Reed_: “Now he’ll have to go down to the parlor and send up his name, and that just gives me time to do the necessary prinking. You stay here and receive him, Nettie.”

_Miss Spaulding_: “Never! After what’s happened I can never look him in the face again. Oh, how low, and mean, and guilty I feel!”

_Miss Reed_, with surprise: “Why, how droll! Now _I_ don’t feel the least so.”

_Miss Spaulding_: “Oh, it’s very different with _you_. _You’re_ in love with him.”

_Miss Reed_: “For shame, Nettie! I’m _not_ in love with him.”

_Miss Spaulding_: “And you can explain and justify it. But I never can justify it to myself, much less to him. Let me go, Ethel! I shall tell Mrs. McKnight that we must change this room instantly. And just after I’d got it so nearly in order! Go down and receive him in the parlor, Ethel. I _can’t_ see him.”

_Miss Reed_: “Receive him in the parlor! Why, Nettie, dear, you’re crazy! I’m going to _accept_ him: and how can I accept him—with all the consequences—in a public parlor? No, indeed! If you won’t meet him here for a moment, just to oblige me, you can go into the other room. Or, no—you’d be listening to every word through the key-hole, you’re so demoralized!”

_Miss Spaulding_: “Yes, yes, I deserve your contempt, Ethel.”

_Miss Reed_, laughing: “You will have to go out for a walk, you poor thing; and I’m not going to have you coming back in five or ten minutes. You have got to stay out a good hour.”

_Miss Spaulding_, running to get her things from the next room: “Oh, I’ll stay out till midnight!”

_Miss Reed_, responding to a tap at the door: “Ye-e-s! Come in!—You’re caught, Nettie.”

_A maid-servant_, appearing with a card: “This gentleman is asking for you in the parlor, Miss Reed.”

_Miss Reed_: “Oh! Ask him to come up here, please.—Nettie! Nettie!” She calls to her friend in the next room. “He’s coming right up, and if you don’t run you’re trapped.”

_Miss Spaulding_, re-appearing, cloaked and bonneted: “I don’t blame _you_, Ethel, comparatively speaking. You can say that everything is fair in love. He will like it, and laugh at it in you, because he’ll like everything you’ve done. Besides, you’ve no principles, and I _have_.”

_Miss Reed_: “Oh, I’ve lots of principles, Nettie, but I’ve no practice!”

_Miss Spaulding_: “No matter. There’s no excuse for me. I listened simply because I was a woman, and couldn’t help it; and, oh, what will he think of me?”

_Miss Reed_: “I won’t give you away; if you really feel so badly”—

_Miss Spaulding_: “Oh, _do_ you think you can keep from telling him, Ethel dear? Try! And I will be your slave forever!” Steps are heard on the stairs outside. “Oh, there he comes!” She dashes out of the door, and closes it after her, a moment before the maid-servant, followed by _Mr. Ransom_, taps at it.