Boston Neighbours In Town and Out Part 3

"I am afraid I am the only person who answers to that description."

There was a good-natured twinkle in his eye, and he had a pleasant smile, but his evident amus.e.m.e.nt abashed her. "I keep my own house," he went on.

"Oh, I beg your pardon! I thought there was a Mrs. Hayward!"

"I am sorry to say that there is none. But I am Mr. Hayward, and shall be very glad if I can be of any service to you."

"I don't want to disturb you," said Marian, blushing deeply, while Mr.

Hayward, with, "Will you allow me?" drew up a chair and sat down, as if to put her more at her ease. "It is only--only--" here she came to a dead stop. "I do not want to take up so much of your time," she confusedly stammered.

"Not at all; I shall be very happy--" he paused too, not knowing how to fill up the blank, and waited quietly, while Marian sought frantically in her little bag for a paper which was, of course, at the very bottom.

"It is only," she began again--"only to ask you about the character of a chambermaid named Drusilla--yes, Drusilla Elms. I think it must be you she refers to; at least I copied the address from the reference she showed me; here it is," handing him the slip of paper; and as he took out his eyegla.s.s to study it, "only I couldn't tell--I didn't know--whether it was Mr., or Mrs., or what it was before the name, I am very sorry."

"So am I. It has been the great misfortune of my life, I a.s.sure you, that I write such a confounded--such an execrable hand. Pray accept my apologies for it."

"Oh, it was not a bad hand!--not at all! It was my own stupidity! I suppose you really did give her the character, then?"

"In spite of your politeness, I am afraid I too plainly recognise the bewildering effect of my own scrawl. I think I must have given her the reference, though I don't remember doing so."

"The name is so peculiar----"

"Yes; but the fact is that our old Catherine, who has been cook here for a longer time than I can reckon, generally engages our other maid for us, and she dislikes to change the name, and calls them all Margaret. I think we had a very nice Margaret two years ago, but I will go and ask Catherine; she may recollect."

"Oh, don't trouble yourself! I have no doubt that you are quite right--none at all!"

"But I have so many doubts, I should like to be a little surer; and if you will excuse me for a moment--well! _What_, in the devil's name, are you up to now?"

It must be explained that by this time he had reached the further door, and that the sudden close of his speech was addressed, not to Marian, but to some invisible person, or rather persons; for the subdued laughter which responded, the very equivalent to a girlish giggle, surely came from more than one pair of boyish lungs. Some stifled speech, too, was heard, to which the master of the house replied, "Go to ----, then, and be quick about it!" as he closed the door behind him, leaving Marian trembling with apprehension lest he might be mad or drunk. And yet if this were swearing, and she feared it was, there was something gratifying in the sound of a good, round, mouth-filling oath, especially when contrasted with the extreme and punctilious deference of his speech to her. He came back in a moment, and, standing before her with head inclined, said, as if apologising for some misdeed of his own:

"I am very sorry, but Catherine is out, doing her marketing. She will probably return soon, if you do not mind waiting."

"Oh, no!" said Marian, shocked with the idea that her presence might be inconvenient; "I could not possibly wait! I am in a very great hurry."

"Then, if you will allow me to write what she says? I promise," he added, with another humorous twinkle in his eye, "to try and write my very best."

"Thank you, if it is not too much trouble," said Marian, rising, and edging toward the door as if she had some hopes of getting off unnoticed. It was confusing to have him follow her with an air of expectation, she could not imagine of what, though she had a consciousness, too, of having forgotten something, which made her linger, trying to recollect it. He slowly turned the handle of the outer door, and, opening it for her exit, seemed waiting for her to say something--what, she racked her brains in vain to discover. He looked amused again, and as if he would have spoken himself; but Marian, with a sudden start, exclaimed, "Oh, dear, it rains!" She had not noticed how dark the sky was growing, but to judge by the looks of the pavement, it had been quietly showering for some time.

"So it does!" said he. "That is a pity. I fear you are not very well protected against it."

"Oh, it doesn't matter!" cried Marian, recklessly; "it is only a step to the horse-cars."

"Enough for you to get very wet, I am afraid."

"It isn't of the least consequence. I have nothing on that will hurt--nothing at all!"

Mr. Hayward looked admiringly and incredulously at the lilacs on her bonnet. "I can hardly suppose your flowers are real ones, though certainly they look very much like them; if they are not, I fear a shower will scarcely prove of advantage to them. You must do me the honour of letting me see you to the car." As he spoke he extracted from the stand an enormous silk umbrella with a big handle, nearly as large as Marian herself.

"I could not think of it!" she cried, and hurried down the wet steps, sweeping them with the dainty plaiting round the edge of her silvery skirt.

"Oh, but you must!" he went on in a tone of lazy good humour, yet as one not accustomed to be refused. There was something paternal in his manner gratifying to her, for as he could not be much over fifty, he must think her much younger than she really was.

"Don't hurry; there is a car every ten minutes, and a very good place to wait in; there--take care of the wet box, please, with your dress, and take my arm, if you don't mind."

"Oh, no, thank you! Really, I am very well covered!" protested Marian, squeezing herself and her gown into the smallest possible s.p.a.ce. The big umbrella was up before she knew it, and he was hobbling along the brick path by her side, in an old pair of yellow leather slippers as ill fitted to keep out the wet as her own shining little shoes.

"I am very sorry you should have been caught in this way," he said apologetically.

"Don't mention it."

"I hope you have not far to go."

"Oh, no, indeed! That is--yes, rather far; but when I get into the car, I am all right, because it meets--I mean, I can take a cab. It is very easy to get about in town, you know." She turned while he opened the gate, and caught sight of the front windows, thronged, like the gates of Paradise Lost, with faces which might indeed have served as models for a very realistic study, in modern style, of cherubim, being those of healthy boys of all ages from twelve to twenty, each wearing a broad grin of delight.

"Confound 'em!" muttered her conductor in a low tone, but Marian caught the words, and the accompanying grimace which he flung back over his shoulder. Could his remarkable house be a boys' school? If so, he was the very oddest teacher, and his discipline the most extraordinary, she had ever heard of; it was too easy of egress, surely, to be a private lunatic asylum, a thought which had already excited her fears.

"Please lower your head a little, Miss--" he paused for the name, but she did not fill up the gap; "the creepers hang so low here," and he carefully held the umbrella so as best to protect her from the dripping sprays.

"How very pretty your garden is!" she said as he closed the gate.

"It is a sad straggling place; we all run pretty wild here, I am afraid."

"But it is so picturesque!"

"Picturesque it may be, and we get a good deal of fruit and vegetables out of it; it isn't a show garden, but it is a comfort to have any breathing-place in a city."

"This seems a very pleasant neighbourhood."

"Hum! well, yes; I think it pleasant enough. It is my old home; near the water, too, and the boys like the boating. It's out of the way of society, but then, we have no ladies to look after. It is easy enough, you know, for men to come and go anyhow."

"Coming and going anyhow" rang with a delicious thrill of freedom in Marian's ears, and in the midst of her alarm at possible consequences she revelled in her adventure, such a one as she had never had before, and probably never should again; and there was the car tinkling on its early way. Mr. Hayward signed to it to stop, and waded in his slippers through the wet dust, for it could not be called mud yet, to hand her deferentially in.

"You are sure you can get along now?" he asked, as the car came to a stop.

"Oh, yes, indeed! Thank you so much; I am very sorry----"

"No need of it, I a.s.sure you. I am sorry I cannot do more." He looked at the big umbrella doubtfully, and so did she; but the idea of offering it to her was too absurd, and they both laughed, which Marian feared was improperly free and easy for her. Then, as she turned on the step to bow her farewell, he added, "I beg your pardon; but you have forgotten to leave me your address. I should be very glad to write in case Catherine----"

"Mrs. W. Cracker, 40 Washington Street," stammered Marian, frightened out of her little sense, and rattling off the first words that came into her head, suggested in part by a baker's cart which pa.s.sed at the moment. She should never dare to give her real address! Anything better than to have those dreadful boys know who she was! He looked puzzled, then laughed; but it was of no use for him to say anything, for the car had started, and swept her safely beyond his reach at once. She could see him looking after it till it turned out of sight, and was thankful he had not followed her, as he might perhaps have done if he had not had on those old slippers.

Marian did not go directly home, but stopped at Mrs. William Treadwell's till the spring shower was over, that she might be able to tell her family that she had been there, and thus avoid over-curious questioning as to where she had been caught in it. She briefly informed them that she could obtain no satisfactory account of Drusilla Elms--the people to whom she referred seemed to have forgotten her--and wrote to the girl that she had made other arrangements. She waited in fear for a few days, lest something might happen to bring her little adventure to light; but nothing did, and her fears subsided, with a few faint wishes as well.

What a pleasant world, she wistfully thought, was the world of men--a world where conventionalities and duty calls gave way to a delicious, free, Bohemian existence of boating and running about; where even housekeeping was a thing lightly considered, and where dogs jumped on sofas, and people threw their things around at pleasure--nay, even smoked and swore, regardless of consequences temporal or eternal!

About a fortnight after her wild escapade, the household of Freeman-Robbins-Carter-Dale, to use the collective patronymic of the female dynasty which reigned there, was agitated by the unusual phenomenon of an evening visitor who called himself a man, though but in his freshman year at Harvard University. It was the son of their deceased cousin in New York, whose husband, though married again, retained sufficient sense of kinship to insist that the boy should call on his mother's relatives, which duty the unhappy youth had postponed from week to week, and from month to month, until the awkwardness of introducing himself was doubled. He had struggled through this ordeal, and now sat, the centre of an admiring female circle who were trying to hang upon his words. Winnie, whose presence might have given him some support, had been sent to bed; but his sister was privileged to remain up longer, and being a serious child, and wise beyond her years, she fixed him with her solemn gaze, while one great-aunt remarked over and over again on his resemblance to his grandfather, and the other as often inquired who he was, though his name and pedigree were carefully explained each time by the nurse. Mrs. Carter addressed him as "Freddy, dear!" and Miss Caroline asked what he was studying at college, and his cousin Isabel pressed sweet cake upon him. Only his cousin Marian sat silent in the background. He thought her very pretty, and not at all formidable, though so old--not that he had the least idea how old she really was.

"Did you bolt the front door, Marian, when you let Trippet out?" asked her mother. Trippet was the family cat, who had shown symptoms of alarm at the aspect of the unwonted guest.

"I--I think so."

"You had better go and look," said her sister. "It would be no joke if Freddy's nice overcoat and hat were to be taken by a sneak-thief. They are very troublesome just now in the suburbs," she continued; "but we never leave anything of value in our front hall, and we always make it a rule to bolt as well as lock the door as soon as it grows dusk. There is no harm in taking every precaution."