storage society was almost wholly feminine; in rare instances there was a man who must have been sent in dearth of women or in an hour of their disability. then the man came hastily, with a porter, and either pulled all the things out of the rooms so that he could honestly say he had seen them, and that the thing wanted was not there; or else merely had the doors opened, and after a glance inside resolved to wait till his wife, or mother, or daughter could come. he agreed in guilty eagerness with the workmen that this was the only way.
the exception to the general rule was a young man who came one bright spring morning when all nature suggested getting one's stuff out and going into the country, and had the room next the forsyths' original five-dollar room opened. as it happened, charlotte was at the moment visiting this room upon her mother's charge to see whether certain old scrim sash-curtains, which [pg 20]they had not needed for ages but at last simply must have, were not lurking there in a chest of general curtainings. the forsyths now had rooms on other floors, but their main room was at the end of the corridor branching northward from that where the five-dollar room was. near this main room that nice new york family had their rooms, and charlotte had begun the morning in their friendly neighborhood, going through some chests that might perhaps have the general curtainings in them and the scrim curtains among the rest. it had not, and she had gone to what the forsyths called their old ancestral five-dollar room, where that new york family continued to project a sort of wireless chaperonage over her. but the young man had come with a porter, and, with her own porter, charlotte could not feel that even a wireless chaperonage was needed, though the young man approached with the most beaming face she thought she had ever seen, and said he hoped he should not be in her way. she answered with a sort of helpless reverberation of his glow, not at all; she should only be a moment. she wanted to say she hoped she would not be in his way, but she saved herself in time, while, with her own eyes intent upon the façade of her room and her mind trying to lose itself in the question which curtain-trunk [pg 21]the scrims might be in, she kept the sense of his sweet eyes, the merriest eyes she had ever seen, effulgent with good-will and apology and reverent admiration. she blushed to think it admiration, though she liked to think it so, and she did not snub him when the young man jumped about, neglecting his own storage, and divining the right moments for his offers of help. she saw that he was a little shorter than herself, that he was very light and quick on his feet, and had a round, brown face, clean-shaven, and a round, brown head, close shorn, from which in the zeal of his attentions to her he had shed his straw hat onto the window-sill. he formed a strong contrast to the contents of his store-room, which was full, mainly, of massive white furniture picked out in gold, and very blond. he said casually that it had been there, off and on, since long before he could remember, and at these words an impression, vague, inexplicable, deepened in charlotte's mind.
"mother," she said, for she had now disused the earlier "mamma" in deference to modern usage, "how old was i when we first took that five-dollar room?"
she asked this question after she had shown the scrim curtains she had found and brought home with her.
[pg 22]"why? i don't know. two or three; three or four. i should have to count up. what makes you ask?"
"can a person recollect what happened when they were three or four?"
"i should say not, decidedly."
"or recollect a face?"
"certainly not."
"then of course it wasn't. mother, do you remember ever telling me what the little boy was like who gave me all his playthings and i couldn't decide what to give him back?"
"what a question! of course not! he was very brown and funny, with the beamingest little face in the world. rather short for his age, i should say, though i haven't the least idea what his age was."
"then it was the very same little boy!" charlotte said.
"who was the very same little boy?" her mother demanded.
"the one that was there to-day; the young man, i mean," charlotte explained, and then she told what had happened with a want of fullness which her mother's imagination supplied.
"did he say who he was? is he coming back to-morrow or this afternoon? did you inquire who he was or where?"
[pg 23]"what an idea, mother!" charlotte said, grouping the several impossibilities under one head in her answer.
"you had a perfect right to know, if you thought he was the one."
"but i didn't think he was the one, and i don't know that he is now; and if he was, what could i do about it?"
"that is true," mrs. forsyth owned. "but it's very disappointing. i've always felt as if they ought to know it was your undecidedness and not ungenerousness."
charlotte laughed a little forlornly, but she only said, "really, mother!"
mrs. forsyth was still looking at the curtains. "well, these are not the scrims i wanted. you must go back. i believe i will go with you. the sooner we have it over the better," she added, and she left the undecided charlotte to decide whether she meant the scrim curtains or the young man's identity.
it was very well, for one reason, that she decided to go with charlotte that afternoon. the new-yorkers must have completed the inspection of their trunks, for they had not come back. their failure to do so was the more important because the young man had come back and was actively superintending the unpacking of his room. the [pg 24]palatial furniture had all been ranged up and down the corridor, and as fast as a trunk was got out and unlocked he went through it with the help of the storage-men, listed its contents in a note-book with a number, and then transferred the number and a synopsis of the record to a tag and fastened it to the trunk, which he had put back into the room.
when the forsyths arrived with the mistaken scrim curtains, he interrupted himself with apologies for possibly being in their way; and when mrs. forsyth said he was not at all in their way, he got white-and-gold arm-chairs for her and charlotte and put them so conveniently near the old ancestral room that mrs. forsyth scarcely needed to move hand or foot in letting charlotte restore the wrong curtains and search the chests for the right ones. his politeness made way for conversation and for the almost instant exchange of confidences between himself and mrs. forsyth, so that charlotte was free to enjoy the silence to which they left her in her labors.
"before i say a word," mrs. forsyth said, after saying some hundreds in their mutual inculpation and exculpation, "i want to ask something, and i hope you will excuse it to an old woman's curiosity and not think it rude."
at the words "old woman's" the young man [pg 25]gave a protesting "oh!" and at the word "rude" he said, "not at all."
"it is simply this: how long have your things been here? i ask because we've had this room thirteen or fourteen years, and i've never seen your room opened in that whole time."
the young man laughed joyously. "because it hasn't been opened in that whole time. i was a little chap of three or four bothering round here when my mother put the things in; i believe it was a great frolic for me, but i'm afraid it wasn't for her. i've been told that my activities contributed to the confusion of the things and the things in them that she's been in ever since, and i'm here now to make what reparation i can by listing them."
"she'll find it a great blessing," mrs. forsyth said. "i wish we had ours listed. i suppose you remember it all very vividly. it must have been a great occasion for you seeing the things stored at that age."
the young man beamed upon her. "not so great as now, i'm afraid. the fact is, i don't remember anything about it. but i've been told that i embarrassed with my personal riches a little girl who was looking over her doll's things."
"oh, indeed!" mrs. forsyth said, stiffly, and she turned rather snubbingly from him and said, [pg 26]coldly, to charlotte: "i think they are in that green trunk. have you the key?" and, stooping as her daughter stooped, she whispered, "really!" in condemnation and contempt.
charlotte showed no signs of sharing either, and mrs. forsyth could not very well manage them alone. so when charlotte said, "no, i haven't the key, mother," and the young man burst in with, "oh, do let me try my master-key; it will unlock anything that isn't a yale," mrs. forsyth sank back enthroned and the trunk was thrown open.
she then forgot what she had wanted it opened for. charlotte said, "they're not here, mother," and her mother said, "no, i didn't suppose they were," and began to ask the young man about his mother. it appeared that his father had died twelve years before, and since then his mother and he had been nearly everywhere except at home, though mostly in england; now they had come home to see where they should go next or whether they should stay.
"that would never suit my daughter," mrs. forsyth lugged in, partly because the talk had gone on away from her family as long as she could endure, and partly because charlotte's indecision always amused her. "she can't bear to choose."
[pg 27]"really?" the young man said. "i don't know whether i like it or not, but i have had to do a lot of it. you mustn't think, though, that i chose this magnificent furniture. my father bought an italian palace once, and as we couldn't live in it or move it we brought the furniture here."
"it is magnificent," mrs. forsyth said, looking down the long stretches of it and eying and fingering her specific throne. "i wish my husband could see it—i don't believe he remembers it from fourteen years ago. it looks—excuse me!—very studio."
"is he a painter? not mr. forsyth the painter?"
"yes," mrs. forsyth eagerly admitted, but wondering how he should know her name, without reflecting that a score of trunk-tags proclaimed it and that she had acquired his by like means.
"i like his things so much," he said. "i thought his three portraits were the best things in the salon last year."
"oh, you saw them?" mrs. forsyth laughed with pleasure and pride. "then," as if it necessarily followed, "you must come to us some sunday afternoon. you'll find a number of his new portraits and some of the subjects; they like to see themselves framed." she tried for a card in her hand-bag, but she had none, and she [pg 28]said, "have you one of my cards, my dear?" charlotte had, and rendered it up with a severity lost upon her for the moment. she held it toward him. "it's mr. peter bream?" she smiled upon him, and he beamed back.
"did you remember it from our first meeting?"
in their cab mrs. forsyth said, "i don't know whether he's what you call rather fresh or not, charlotte, and i'm not sure that i've been very wise. but he is so nice, and he looked so glad to be asked."
charlotte did not reply at once, and her silent severity came to the surface of her mother's consciousness so painfully that it was rather a relief to have her explode, "mother, i will thank you not to discuss my temperament with people."
she gave mrs. forsyth her chance, and her mother was so happy in being able to say, "i won't—your temper, my dear," that she could add with sincere apology: "i'm sorry i vexed you, and i won't do it again."
