Part 27 (1/2)

”There's the funniest n.i.g.g.e.r minstrel show at the Hippodrome,” he went on, ”you ought to see it. Greatest thing out. There ain't anything much funnier, anyway, than to see a black buck dressed in a high hat and a pair of fancy shoes, opening his frog mouth and singing a c.o.o.n song.

Mighty funny songs they've got there, too. Wish you could hear one of them.”

He wanted to ask her to go to the show with him the next week, but she looked further removed from him than ever. Had he said anything to warrant it he would have thought that she was angry; but that could hardly be the case. She just wasn't his kind and he had better accept the fact and go home. But as he sat crossing and recrossing his knees, wis.h.i.+ng inexpressibly for the relief of a smoke, her face in the lamplight was so lovely that he shut his teeth and resolved to hang on.

Then a sneeze came to his relief, a big-throated sneeze, followed by a second and a third.

”Oh,” Hertha cried, rousing herself, ”aren't you warm enough? Perhaps it's warmer in the kitchen.”

”Don't bother.”

”It isn't any bother. I often sit there.”

He followed her into the bright little kitchen, hoping that in a new environment he might be able to break through her reticence; but Hertha herself helped him.

”I'm going to make you a cup of cocoa,” she said. ”You're cold and you need something to warm you up.”

Beyond allowing him to light the gas stove, she refused all a.s.sistance, and as he stood watching her go through her deft movements, measuring, stirring, and at last pouring a foaming liquid into their two cups--for to his delight she was to share the meal--he was more attracted and yet more puzzled than ever.

”You cook mighty well,” he said as she poured the hot cocoa.

”I'm used to doing little things about the house,” she answered. ”Before I came here I was a companion in a family.”

The statement was made on the spur of the moment, but as Hertha thought it over she was delighted that she had been able to say something that opened up a way to live in the past without embarra.s.sment, almost without falsehood. To conjure up the world of white people in her grandfather's home had been beyond her power; even in her thoughts she had stumbled in her endeavor to climb the ladder that led to their eminence. But as a companion in the Merryvale household she was in familiar surroundings.

Richard Brown on his part was a little disappointed. He had been dreaming of a princess in disguise and he found only a poor relation. In the large families of the South there were sometimes girls like this, though when they were so pretty they usually soon married, girls who had to do the odd tasks, give up the good times, go to live with some distant cousin or aunt as the case might be. That sort of thing made a girl shy and quiet. For the first time that evening he felt at ease.

”I bet there ain't anybody in New York can make cocoa to beat yours,”, he declared emphatically. ”I never liked the stuff before.”

”I should have made you coffee,” Hertha said regretfully. ”I forgot, because coffee keeps me awake.”

”Does me, too.” He was ready to agree with anything. ”Now, down home, tramping through the woods, I could drink a dozen cups a day. But it's different in the city.”

”Were your woods pines?” she asked, ”and were there streams with cypresses by the banks?”

Here at last they had found a meeting place, a common ground. If she would not play or laugh with him, they could wander through the woods together, tasting the tang of the evergreen or watching the buds burst on the wild plum. Drawing his chair a little forward, he hugged his knee and sang the song of the country of his birth.

Outside the rain splashed upon the street, making great puddles at the crossings, the wind blew fiercely down the narrow roadways and shook the windows in their frames; but within the little tenement the southern boy moved without a cloud to shadow him through the playtime of his years.

Sometimes it was winter and he was among the hills trapping birds and shooting rabbits. Again it was early spring and with rod in hand he trailed the brown stream until the trout rose and brought him all attention to the game they played that through his skill ended in death and victory. Or it was summer and too hot to walk, but glorious to gallop in the early morning over the rough road and down the hollow to where the brook broadened into a swimming-pool that called him to bathe in its reviving water. Again he moved among the woods in autumn, hunting, but not too intent upon his game to fail to find the nuts scattered upon his path or to stop and, putting his hand in a hole of a decaying tree, bring out a blinking, monkey-faced owl.

”Why, it's half past ten,” he cried, looking at the clock on the shelf above the stove. ”I must go, for we both have to work to-morrow.”

He ventured this at a hazard, but she did not contradict him.

”Your coat is quite dry,” she answered, feeling it as she came to take it from the hook where it hung.

They stood in the narrow hallway and as he swung the coat upon his high shoulders he was a little awkward and brushed against her arm. She laughed away his apology, but he felt this slight contact as something tender, exquisite. As he opened the door he could only mutter an embarra.s.sed good-evening.

”Thank you for coming out in the rain,” she said, ”and you mustn't take cold or I shall think you ought not to have risked it.”