in the crowded, unbeautiful part of the city were two streets forming as if the two long legs of the a we knew as children, the a with feet wide apart, that stood for ape. a third street went from one to the other, as the little bar does across the a, but crooked, as a child's hand would draw it. this street was narrow, gloomy, and relatively quiet. the tide of traffic kept to the larger streets; the small street knew, beyond the occupants of its own houses and visitors to these, few but hurried foot-travellers who used it as a short cut, and people of inferior pretensions coming there to trade. the ground-story of almost every house was a shop; a person might have spent a life without real necessity for leaving the street. here boots were made[60] and mended; in the next door, clothes were sold (the dim show-windows were full of decent dresses, very good still for what you paid; you could be fitted even with a ball-dress, all beads and satin bows), yonder you could get money on deposit of your watch, or your flute, or your ear-drops; farther you could have yourself shaved. there was a window full of tarts and loaves; another window in which a roast fowl set its gold note, as some would say, between the pink note of half a ham and the coral note of a lobster.
across a certain one of the windows in that street for a long time had hung from a line, as from the belt of a savage, tails of hair—black, brown, blond. below these, two featureless wax faces presented their sallow blankness to the passer, one wreathed with yellow curls, the other capped with brown waves of a regular pattern. ordered around the twin turned-ebony stands were hairpins, sticks of cosmetic wrapped in silver paper, slabs of chalk laid on pink cotton, china pots with pictures of flowers or beauties and pleasing inscriptions in french, fuzzy white balls[61] of down, combs, gilt-brass ornaments, kid-capped phials containing amber and ruby liquids. on the inside of the heavy shutter, caught back against the street-wall by day, was pasted a large print. this told you in what a prodigious way madame finibald's gold elixir would make your hair grow, and showed you the picture of a lady who doubtless had used it—her hair was extraordinary, it nearly reached to her feet.
perhaps it had been found that the neighborhood was become hardened to the sight of the luxuriant pictured hair; perhaps some who had provided themselves with the small copy of it, to be obtained inside on a bottle full of brown stuff, had grown inclined to treat of it lightly: "ah, madame finibald!" perhaps one irritated customer had said to the old proprietress, coming to have made clear to her why after three bottles of gold elixir her locks were still not thick, still not glossy and splendid as the announcement promised they should be, "it's easy to cork up herb tea. it's easy to make hair long in a picture, and it's easy to make it thick. i[62] don't believe there ever was any such person as that young woman on the label!" one morning saw a change in madame finibald's window. all the accustomed things were crowded to the sides to make room for a chair; on this sat a girl with brown-gold hair that reached in very truth to the floor.
on every morning and every afternoon, through a long winter, first one end and then the other of the little street was crossed by a youth who kept to the larger thoroughfares with the stream. he carried books; he went rapidly, granting small attention to the things he passed. it is not from that to be supposed that he was profoundly thinking. his face, agreeable in feature and color, was rather wanting in expression; no more interesting than it was interested. he passed at precisely the same hour every morning, and the time of his passing in the afternoon varied but little. this, from october unto april. but when april set its gold stamp on the weather, had there been any wise person observing this well—constructed blond machine, applauding its regularity, holding[63] it up perhaps as an example to other young frequenters of schools and lecture-rooms—that wise person would have been troubled, he would have had misgivings, he would have been at last full of grief.
a change had come over the young man's mood. his eye was acquiring a roving habit. if his step had before been bent on duty, it was now less directly bent; if before he had been on time at his appointments, he must now have been always more or less late. he walked leisurely, swinging his books by a strap. he loitered before shop-windows, he turned to look after a face. the sky smiled down between the rows of buildings on the occasion of the first balmy day; little clouds floated in it, shimmering like dissolving pearls. he returned the soft sky's compliment; he looked up at it, the winter sternness melting from his eyes. at every street corner he was seen to stop, foolishly smiling upward; and, yes, positively, he was seen there, forgetful of all the people, to sigh and stretch! on that very day he lost three books out of his strap, and did not for some[64] time notice it; when he did, he cared nothing! from a scrawl on the fly-leaf the finder of these books learned their rightful owner to be of the house of fraisier.
he had come hundreds of miles from an obscure town to study in this great city; he had been a serious, mechanical plodder for months, feeling that he owed it to himself and to his distant family to fill his head full, full with precious notions. he had formed no friendships with his fellow-students, fearing that they would divert him, or perhaps, fearing the young fellows themselves, among whom he felt singularly green. he lived alone in one little room at the end of the world, took no holidays, had no fun, went to bed early so as to be fresh for his book in the morning. and now, suddenly, he had completely lost the point of view from which it had seemed necessary that he should get dizzily high marks, that he should conquer field after field in the realm of learning, and return to his home exuding glory. he could not persuade himself any more but that it befitted him perfectly to spend many hours[65] strolling through the streets with his hands in his pockets, amusing his eyes with sights of every sort. he could find no argument that satisfied him why he should not lounge on a garden seat warm with sun, smoking cigarettes half the day, thinking nothing profitable. the wretched boy had lost all sober sense of the duty of man.
if he had limited himself to sitting idle in the garden, watching the year develop in that narrow, charming enclosure, one might have found an excuse for him, the same as for the scientist who studies a specimen under a glass; or, one might have said he had been overworking, his new circumstances on coming to the city had induced in him a false sort of fervor for work—a reaction was to be expected. but the mood whose first stage had been simple disinclination for study and a taste for pointless wanderings, by the time that in the march of the year the crocuses had gone, took on developments. it was not so often before a many-colored flower-bed he stopped, as before a window full of hats and bonnets.
[66]
if, again, he had limited himself to staring in at milliners' fronts! the wares there do somewhat resemble fantastic flowers, and might explain the interest of a botanist. but he halted in the same way before shops that offered no excuse for the same attention; windows in which were only idle feminine frocks displayed, flippant fans, frills of fluted lace, feathery things for the neck.
one might have imagined from his wonder and interest that all these things had just been invented, that they were a strange spring-crop; that new, too, was the race of smiling, chatting, shopping beings crowding the street on sunny days, new and in fashion only since this spring, such unaccustomed pleasure spoke in his eye that shyly followed them in their prettiest representatives. what exquisite sense shown, o ever-young creator, in making the lip red, and the neck white, and the temperate cheek between white and red!
the boy had moments of being drunk in a glorified way even as is the innocent bee, with nothing but wandering among flowers.[67] owing to a confusion in the ideas attendant on that mysterious soft travailing among the atoms of the heart warmed through by spring, all sorts of things to him were as flowers! his imagination was so increased in power, that with nothing but a pair of little shoes in a show-case to start from he could build up the most astonishing, dreamy stories: he could set feet in the shoes and rear a palatial flesh-and-blood structure over them, as easy as sigh; fit the whole with graces, laces, circumstances and adventures—contrive even to tangle its fate pleasingly with his own.
which may make supposed that he was a youth of some boldness. far from it. he scarcely knew what a woman's eyes were like, except in profile or fugitive three-quarters; on the other hand, he was well acquainted with her back hair. hair, in which he could pursue long studies unconfounded, seemed to him the most beautiful thing in all the world.
one day, with a view to lengthening the way by taking a road that though shorter must from novelty be richer in diversion than[68] his daily track, he turned into the little street that cut off the triangle of the a. he paused before the window of the worn watches and sleeve-links; he took his time over the faded finery of the second-hand clothes shop; he examined certain yellowed wood-cuts and stained books he found in a narrow open stall. as he seemed coming to the end of the street's resources, he looked over the way and thoughtfully felt his cheek: he could not find there what would have justified a refreshing station at the barber's. he continued his way slowly, to make it last. now, he stopped where several others were likewise stopping—he had come to madame finibald's.
the girl sat amid her hair, either unconscious or disdainful of the eyes watching her beyond the glass. she looked in a book open on her lap; now and then she turned over a leaf, sometimes revealing a picture on the page. her chair was low, perhaps so that her hair should amply trail; its lowness made an excuse for the listlessness of her posture; her feet were outstretched and[69] crossed, the passers might know that one of her shoes was laced with pink twine. if she moved her eyes from her book a moment, it was only to sweep them past the faces, unseeing, and lift them to the strip of sky between the houses—so blue this day, the little bit there was of it.
her face one scarcely noticed for the first moment more than any rosy apple; for oh! her hair!—her hair claimed all the attention a man had to give, did her shining hair falling stately along her cheeks, all over her shoulders, below her waist, beyond her garment—richer, of course, than any possible queen's cloak. the light rippled over it, changing on it all the time, when nothing else in the window appeared to live.
within the shadow of the shop was discerned a watchful, wrinkled old face, chiefly differing from a parrot's in the slyness of its eyes. fraisier catching sight of it thought of a witch on guard over a princess enchanted and imprisoned in a glass-case.
the little group in front of madame finibald's dispersed, formed anew with other[70] faces many times in the hour; fraisier remained, his eyes climbing up, sliding down the golden ropes of hair.
at last, though the girl gave no sign, he was made uncomfortable by the sense that she must, even without looking, have seen how long he stood. he inquired timidly of her face. it was informed with a gentle brazenness, fortified to be stared at all the day. yet there was a suggestion of childishness in its abstracted expression; she wore the sort of look one has seen on the face of a little girl playing at being somebody else far more splendid than herself. a close observer might have suspected that she really thought it rather grand to sit there in the gorgeousness of her hair, and was amused with pretending not to know that a soul looked on.
fraisier, because her eyes were lowered, found hardihood to stare his fill at her face. he surrendered without struggle before the round cheeks, the short little nose, the good-natured mouth and chin, which, in truth, took more than their just space in the face. but[71] most—oh, still most! delighted him the brown-gold hair that tumbled over her forehead and ears in little curls.
he was realizing from the mutterings of what was left him of a conscience how late it must be getting—he must be taking himself off; he was making long the one minute more he allowed himself, when her pupils slid between the lashes in his direction. he had lost all presence of mind, he could not withdraw his glance. after a second's pause upon his, her eyes slid back to her book and were hidden. then, without another thought towards duty, he crossed the street to the barber's, from whose window he could see madame finibald's; and, coming forth with a smoother face than the rose, entered the little eating-shop next door, from which likewise he could command madame finibald's.
he went through the little street every day. he took many atrocious meals in the shop, on the table nearest the window.
on such days as brought perfect weather, the girl in madame finibald's would turn very often to the sky a look easily inter[72]preted as longing. then would fraisier look up too and sigh. it seemed such a pity, this wasted blue weather.
it seemed such a pity, all this wasted sweetness, he thought in crossing a public garden on his occasional unwilling way to a lecture. the quince-tree blossomed in red; under the cherry were little drifts of scented snow; up out of the vigorous, rested earth were flowers springing in mad, gay multitudes. the air was silver made air in the morning; and in the afternoon it was gold made air. birds, busily building, busily twittered. these things did nothing to him, but the more they were lovely and penetrated the heart, the more to make him lonesome.
he took himself away from their radiance without one regret for them, to spend his time in preference in an ugly little street where one could scarcely have known what season it was, where there was nothing to see that was beautiful but certain long, long hair. in thought, though, let it be said in vindication of spring's power of enthralling, having done up the hair in braids, and extinguished[73] it with a hat, he was always, always guiding it to the contemned garden. when once it was in the garden, may there had become perfect.
he wondered whether it could be she had become aware of his persistent presence. he feared she had, and as often that she had not. he imagined sometimes that when he looked her face was quivering with a conquered desire to smile. that disconcerted him a shade. sometimes he thought she looked suspiciously rosy for a girl unconscious of all the world. sometimes he looked away, with the idea that if he turned suddenly he should find her stealing a glance at him. but he dared not look very quickly, lest the action should be too marked; and turning with discreet alacrity, he could never feel sure.
one day, at last, having settled in his mind that this tame conduct was unworthy of a man, refusing himself a second in which to think better of any matter, he crossed the street and charged the shop. a bell snapped sharply as he opened the door. it startled him to the point of gasping. he grew[74] crimson, finding himself opposed in truth, as many a night before in dream, by madame finibald's sly and lowly smile, breathing the same faintly drug-perfumed air as the princess breathed, no glass screen between himself and the hair. he could have touched it, had he been so bold.
he stammered a request for soap—scented soap. he wished himself tens of ten miles away, or time out of mind dead, when—wonderful! the maiden in the window looked frankly over her shoulder. was it that her eyes brimmed with friendly laughter, or did it seem so to him because his head had become incapable of a true notion? his heart, so to speak, found its feet; he made a muddle of every sentence he launched upon, but his words had a voice behind them. so much he contrived to convey: he was very hard to please in the matter of soap. he sniffed at a variety of proffered tablets, whose virtues madame finibald, in very truth like a witch with a philter to sell, assiduously set forth; each cake he examined seemed to hold in her estimation just a little higher[75] place than the foregoing. at the end of ten minutes, without positively losing her good-humor, she declared that he had seen all in the shop, she was sorry and surprised they could not suit him, they might have a fresh stock in on the morrow. he was leaving in clumsy embarrassment, empty handed, with a promise to return, when the princess lightly jumped from the window-place, and, sweeping the hair off her face, said: "there is one more sort, ma'am. i saw it up there, high, when i dusted. let me get it."
she fetched the steps, and in a moment had climbed and lifted down a box. she set it on the counter; she opened it herself and held towards him, with a direct glance, a packet with a red rose printed on the wrapper.
madame finibald, with an exclamation, snatched it from the girl's hand, and began, as if here had been a little grandchild recovered to her old age, to speak with tenderness of its merits. the girl stood near, twining and untwining a lock around her finger, while she unaffectedly looked at the cus[76]tomer. her hair came below her knees; every moment she had to toss it back out of her face.
"go back to your window, wicked child!" cried the old witch, suddenly, as if catching at a piece of gold as it was being taken out of her pocket. "go back!"
"i am tired of sitting!" said the little princess, twisting her shoulders in her frock with the prettiest peevishness. "i have sat and sat and sat! i have finished my story. let me go out and get a bun. you know you said i could when it was noon."
she caught at her hair, and, to the infinite wonder of one looking on, began twisting, twisting, twisting, coiling, coiling, coiling, driving in great skewers—while he filled his blissful pockets with rose-scented soap.
the bell snapped in fretful reprehension for her passing out. less than a minute after, it exclaimed in annoyed surprise for his.
now was he no longer made lonesome by every coquettish touch the more that the year put to her toilet. for the girl of the[77] regal hair smiled to him, surreptitiously with her lips, but unguardedly with her eyes, when he came by her glass-case; while he dawdled in the window opposite, she communicated with him by signs no other eye could have perceived. even before their acquaintance had become very old, she slipped out to walk in the garden, and they sat on the green seats and had long, foolish, youthful talks—delightful, foolish, youthful times.
her conversation took an amusing interest from the peculiarities of her education. she had seen and heard much in her short life in a hard world, where it was no one's affair to keep anything from her young ken—much of dark, and petty, and unpicturesque—preserving through all a sort of hardy innocence; and she had borrowed from a cheap circulating library a vast lot of fiction dealing with the supremely grand. her preference in literature, however, had remained for fairy tales, a taste formed when it had been one of her duties to read aloud to certain little children of the rich. she knew them by the score. it was to this, perhaps, some of her[78] remarks owed the fanciful touch that redeemed them from the commonness of her general conversation—a genial commonness, condoned to such young lips. she had a childish way of lending a personality to everything, that amused him more than epigram would have done. she ascribed intention to the wind that blew off her hat, and stopped to express her mind to it. she assumed consciousness in the bench they sat on; she wanted to take the same one, lest it should think they slighted it because it was rickety, for which it was not to blame. every flower was to her a person. "hush! they are listening!" she said, looking from the corner of her eye at a bank of knowing pansies. she scolded a button for coming off, as if the want of principle shown by it had been a thing to revolt her. she stood in a one-sided relation of good-fellowship with the brown birds hopping among the gravel, and the fishes in the pond; she spared them many crumbs. with homely good-heartedness she took into an amused regard all the family of spring—[79]buds, blades, insects—addressing speech to them as if she had been a giant and they a very little people.
never can spring return without fraisier's remembering that spring. it was bright; by it all the springs following have been cast in the shadow.
the long hair was woven through and through his thoughts; but not as a disturbing, upheaving element. the girl made him waste a great deal of time, but nothing else—not the life of his heart. because of her good-nature, her entire want of coquetry or perverseness, his feeling for her complicated itself in nowise; rather it grew simpler as it insensibly changed. his wonder and fine dread at feminine appurtenances had worn away a little with increased familiarity; he reposed on that fact as if it had been such an one as becoming accustomed to the noise of guns. he felt under delicate obligations to her for having routed his shyness, and not at all tormented him in any of the thousand ways he apprehended a feminine being would have at her command.
[80]
as he was less and less in awe of her and that suspected arsenal, though a charming, fearful element went out of his sentiment, his affection perhaps grew more. she made such a good little comrade! insidiously, she connected herself in his mind with future days—she who cared only for the day and the pleasure thereof. when he spoke of a thing it would be pleasant to do, a place pleasant to visit, he said, always unreflectingly, yet from a sincere heart: "some day we must go there. let us do such a thing some time." when he described the hills and ponds of home, he said what they might have done had she been there last summer or the years before, how they might have rowed and rambled. he painted the good time they might have together, in some not impossible, but not specified time, place, and circumstances.
so the green from tender grew brilliant—grew deep—became void of interest to the accustomed eye, and more or less dust settled over it. it was manifest to all that spring was past.
[81]
then began an anxious time. those lectures, those miserable lectures! those courses, those wretched courses, which he had neglected! that blessed information he had spared to cull when the time was for it! these things seemed likely to get their revenge. when he awoke to a sense of his danger—very late! only when the bloom was off the year, when lily and early rose had gone where they could divert no mortal more—he could not believe that he should not, by fitting exertion, catch up in time at the appointed goal. he worked rabidly, with a wet cloth around his head. he thought not of girls in those days, i promise you; he recked not of bronze-gold hair!
it was written that he should not be saved. he closed his school term pitiably conditioned.
when the worst was known, at least was time to breathe, however sore the lungs, then his mind reverted to her. he had been man enough to harbor no spite towards her, accuse her of nothing. he sent her a message and waited at the appointed place,[82] wondering a little, while he waited, at his follies of the spring. they seemed so unnecessary, looked back upon now. why, in a very real, practical world like this one, where a man's failure to pass his exams was sure to call forth from his progenitor letters such as his pocket at this moment contained, conduct one's self as if existing in a world of lambs and purling streams and shepherdesses? he was one with the actual world in looking with astonishment and condemnation upon his own works. the sky above was hard, barren blue; it seemed so easy, looking back, to have stuck to the approved road. what had possessed him?
then she appeared. at sight of her his heart dropped its armor. she brought back a whiff of the sweetness of a past atmosphere. was it possible he had ever been the happy boy he seemed to remember! he smiled up in her face with cheek-muscles stiffened by disuse, and eyes ringed with studious shadows. she had on a flimsy frock, printed all over with little flowers that seemed to him to smell good; her hair, where the great wad[83] projected beyond the straw brim, was touched with a warm, peculiar glory. he had meant to keep himself well hardened against her, tell her the various things necessary in a matter-of-fact way, and bid her good-bye indefinitely. he felt more like crying with his disgraced head in her lap.
he conquered his weakness.... a pretty man he made!
he got out with sufficient composure and dignity what he had to say. he told her all that had happened, the change it made in the coming months. he was not going home for the holidays; he could not endure to see the folks. he was going into the country to spend the summer in hard study, to make sure of "passing" next term. he was going to the particular place he mentioned because he had a friend there, a fellow he had taken up with in the last weeks, one that had had the same bad luck as himself. this man's family lived there; it would not be quite so dreary as being alone.
she chaffed and consoled him in turns. now that the world had gone all wrong with[84] him, her eyes seemed to him sweeter and softer than he had ever observed. what a good, kind little friend! lord! what a good, crazy, light-hearted time they had had, and how pretty she looked to-day! what wonderful, thrice wonderful hair it was, waving and ringletting about her glowing summer face, coiling massively on the back of her head! no woman on earth had such hair!
he did wish for a moment that green, his new friend, might see her—he was proud of her. one night, when they had sat grinding together for mutual assistance, the oil giving out, green had told him of a cousin of his. fraisier had said nothing of any girl. he only wished that green might see the hair of this girl whose name he had foreborne to speak.
good-bye, minnie! he should be working like a slave all through the burning golden days—let her think of him a little. he should be very lonesome. when he had studied until his eyes smarted and his head swam, there would be nothing pleasant to do, no one pleasant to talk with—she might[85] spare a moment to be sorry for him now and then. he should be back in the fall. bless the beautiful and beautiful and beautiful hair! good-bye, minnie!
she so little perished from his mind after their parting that whenever—as green and he lay under the trees, withdrawn from the world and devoted to arduous studies, keeping off the insects by smoke—green began talking about that cousin of his, fraisier became half sick with reminiscence. he could not resist replying by talking—with the finest, shyest reverence always—of minnie. there was a dreamy solace in talking of her to some one. she described so well, too; so unusually. he had a proud secret assurance that as an incident in a man's life she altogether eclipsed a cousin in interest.
"how long is your cousin's hair?" he asked, with assumed casualness, once. green stared a little, and confessed not having the slightest idea. fraisier opened his arms as wide as they could go, and said, vaguely blushing, "the young lady i spoke of has hair as long as this!"
[86]
"come! i should like to see it!" spoke green, in such a tone that fraisier turned a deep, vexed red.
he said nothing, but on the next day took his books to a different place, choosing to keep to himself so long as green did not seek him with a suitable apology.
the spot selected by the young men as a meeting ground lay at an equal distance between green's home and the cottage in which fraisier had taken up his summer quarters. it was on the skirts of a wood, and, by some accident of the land, often cool when other places were hot. the rolling pasture it commanded was dotted with scrubby evergreens, and crossed by a small brook the cow's hoofs had in some places trodden broad and shallow. it was colored in patches with the frequent pink of clover-heads, surprised here and there with the white of a long-necked, belated daisy.
fraisier took himself to a spot just not so far from the usual haunt but that green when he came might see him.
it was a fair, soft, simmering morning,[87] promising a scorching day. he stretched himself under the trees and lighted a pipe—he had taken to a pipe in place of cigarettes since coming into the wilderness. he composed himself for a serious forenoon's work, deciding that it was much more profitable, after all, to study alone—green was always digressing.
the spot he had chosen was not so good, it proved, as the one he had left clear for green. a path ran through the woods, just within the trees; there was a frequent patter of bare feet on the dust, children with pails passed looking for things. he waited to proceed with his theorem till their high piping, scattered voices had died away. it was not so cool, either; as a fact, it was hotter than most places. he did not crave the exertion of seeking a better; this was at least shady. he turned over on his back and closed his eyes, yielding gracefully to the force of circumstances.
a light blow in the face, from an acorn, perhaps, roused him. he thought of green, and, instantly broad awake, looked for the development of some practical joke.
[88]
it was not green—he saw it with a sort of disappointment. it was one of the berry-seeking children that had caught sight of him snoozing, and followed its natural instinct. a boy's grinning head was seen bobbing above one of the neighboring bushes. he turned from it in disgust and felt surlily about the grass for his pipe, about his person for a match—
gracious powers! what sort did the young one take him for, with this free persecution? another acorn had hit him smartly on the head.
"look out, there!" he called, making a feint of rising to give chase.
"come on!" shouted the boy, gayly, from behind the bush. there was a burst of laughter, a flash and flutter of pink, and the boy, who turned out to be a girl, came precipitately towards him. she stopped just short of a collision, and dropped in the grass panting with laughter. he stared at her blankly. every time she looked up and caught sight of his expression she doubled herself and fairly writhed.
[89]
"he doesn't know me!—he doesn't know me!" she brought forth amid her convulsive giggling.
"minnie! my god! what—what have you done to yourself?" he exclaimed, and had no breath left.
she moderated her laughter, and presented her smiling face a moment for him to see well what had happened. she ran her fingers over her cropped head, ruffling it absurdly, making the short locks stand on end.
"isn't it funny? doesn't a person look funny at first? the rest of it is hanging, like a fairy horse's tail, in the window, across the picture of the elixir lady. (bad old woman! cheat! she didn't give me much for it! but, natty fraisier, i would have taken even less, i did want to come so!) you poor, lonesome boy! i can stay a whole week—perhaps more. i have found a place in the village, just near you. the first child i met told me all i wanted to know. i thought it would have been harder. mercy! isn't it heavenly still and sweet here, with hills and cows? i was never in the true[90] country before. mercy! isn't it good? look out, you flower there—over there, you, miss! that is called a bee; he has a terrible stinger—oh, he is an old acquaintance? go ahead, then, and give him a nice swing, and honey for his tea. oh, natty, i am so glad! aren't you glad?"
he choked and cleared his throat. no, without that voice, never in the world would he have known her. before him seemed to be a common little street-boy who had run off in a girl's new pink dress and shiny shoes—an unknown boy whose features had something painfully familiar. strange! he remembered minnie's face as possessing a certain harmony in its lines, however childish and trivial they were; this terrible little impostor, though not ill favored, was broad of jaw and narrow of forehead; his eyes even were not the same, but smaller and nearer together, while the mouth was larger—its very proneness to laughter increased its commonness. and that ridiculous hair—literally chopped off by an unskilled hand and twisted here and there with unpractised tongs! it[91] was so thick, it had no more light or lustre than a hearth-brush.
her face sobered ever so little as she looked at him. "what is the matter? poor dear! you haven't got over those exams. but i won't bother, you know, and take up all your time; i have learned better. i won't interfere with any work, i promise, natty. see me swear? on this algebra! only, before you begin and when you have done each day, we will go for walks and rows. i saw a boat on the pond. we will have lunch on the grass, and make a fire with sticks we pick up. look! you put three long sticks like that and hang the kettle in the middle. we will do all those things we used to plan when we never much thought there would be a chance. you poor, lonesome boy, have you been having a horrid time? we will make up for it now. natty, you don't care about the hair, do you? you needn't. you know, i had got mortally sick of sitting in that window. i could not have stood it a day longer. when a fly buzzed on the pane i wanted to scream. again and again i have come near[92] putting my foot through the glass at one of the gaping faces, then jumping down and catching the old woman while she told lies about my having used her elixir faithfully—never touched a drop!—and dancing her up and down all around the room until she dropped. i shall go back to taking care of little children now, as i did before she found me. i do love children! and in that business, i don't mind telling you, i shall do better without all that hair. no matter how tight i did it up, some one was always grumbling that it made too much show. you mustn't care a bit about the hair, natty; i gave it up without a twinge. i cut it off with my own hands. you have no idea how much comfortabler this is in hot weather. my head feels so light! i can dip it in the water any minute. i do love it like this!"
she ran her hands through her hair again, ruffling it still more fantastically. fraisier winced. he was sick beyond calculating the degree. "oh, my poor girl!" he contrived at last to say.
[93]
she looked at him more closely than before in her overrunning joy, and her face fell a little. no doubt she had seen herself in mirrors since her alteration, but not in a real mirror until she saw herself reflected in his very pale face. she smiled still, but a little foolishly; then no more, and stopped chatting. it was as if a stone had been set to seal up a spring—a large stone laid upon her bubbling heart. there was a silence.
he saw that she must be seeing what he could not keep out of his face. he could not help it; he could get no control over his feelings, over his expression. he was not sure he cared to—he did not try. he was at sea: he did not know what he felt, what he did not feel. the bottom seemed to have dropped out of his heart, out of the world—out of something, everything. he knew not! he only knew he was sick—sick, and incapable of speech, of action, of reflection.
"you can't stay here, child," he heard some one saying, in a matter-of-fact, superficial voice. "don't you see, yourself, that[94] you can't? for your own sake, i mean. it would never do, minnie. you must understand that. you don't know what a thing a small country village like this is, for gossip and slanderous tongues. i couldn't let you injure yourself so, don't you see?"
"it wouldn't be proper?" she inquired, faintly.
"no, minnie; no, it wouldn't—at all. don't you see it?"
she got to her feet, full as pale as he now.
"all right," she said, and after a few mechanical steps, paused a moment, looking down, biting her finger—lost in thought, or waiting for something to happen, for him to say something further.
he could not speak—he could not make himself speak.
"all right," she said again, very distinctly, and turned to go without another word.
"minnie! minnie!" he faltered, and had instinctively cast himself after her. his outstretched hand almost touched her pink draperies. she turned on him fiercely, whisking herself out of reach. he was confront[95]ed for a second by a little angry street-boy face, but with the gathered experience and woe of half a race in the eyes. "let me alone! don't dare to touch me! nathaniel fraisier, i hate you!"
she began desperately to run. he saw her clutch her poor little ruined head, and heard her cry out, breaking into sobs: "oh, my hair! oh, my hair!"
he dropped in the grass, face downward, and pressed his hands over his ears, trembling. it all seemed so strange, so out of proportion.
in the late afternoon of that same hot day the crabbed little bell on madame finibald's door snapped to let in a tired, dusty youth, whose dejected face was so flushed, one's thought at sight of him turned at once on sunstroke. he leaned wearily over the counter and asked a few questions, at which madame's liver seemed so shaken she could not keep a hold on her good manners. at the height of her voice she began berating all the world, and one absent person. fraisier tried to calm her, with vague, soothing mo[96]tions of his hands patting down the air. when she subsided enough for him to be heard, he pointed to a long tail of shining hair in the window, and spoke again, growing redder, if possible, than before—so red that his eyes watered, and he had to shade them a moment, leaning his elbows on the counter. she unhitched the hair, shaking it brutally. he put out his hands in remonstrance. she flung it down before him with a forbidding proposition and a deep snort of malice. meekly he emptied his purse on the counter, unfolding the bills, spreading out the silver and lucky pieces to count, reserving only for himself a crumpled ticket.
she watched him with gleeful, avaricious eyes. after computation, he rose without breath of argument and went down the street to pawn his watch and studs and cigarette-case, returning solvent.
he left with a rather unsightly parcel in his hand; the cover was burst in more than one place. madame finibald had not been so particular as she sometimes was in the selection of her wrapping-paper. he had no[97] overcoat and no pocket large enough to put his prize in; he was forced to hold it, conscious how it was heavy and soft and its contents gleamed through the holes.
he got home at dark, reporting to his landlady with his back to the light. he wanted nothing to eat: there were lamps and voices in the dining-room. he could not go to bed, worn out as he was: on the porch below his window was singing and picking of strings.
he went forth into the fields. at last, beyond all sounds but the summer's own, he sank on the grass. he did not look up once at the stars, but lay sprawling with his forehead on his crossed arms, and let his heart torture itself at its own good leisure. he drank deeper and deeper of its dark bitterness, forcing himself recklessly to it, reaching a sort of desperate drunkenness. it seemed to his inexperience there could be nothing worse at any time in this life to taste.
he woke long hours afterwards, wondering a little at first, feeling somewhat stiff.[98] the air was warm and still, tremulous with crickets—thrilled through with the shaken baubles of the summer's myriad little jesters. in his sleep he had rolled over; his face was to heaven. the sky was faint with starlight; the milky way was a road of diamond sand; the great constellations had hung themselves with solemn jewels; down near the rim of the world watched far-spaced large earnest beacon-lights—but above, the tiniest irresponsible stars twinkled in and out, like shining ants in ant-hills. he looked, almost wondering why his eyes felt so queer—sore besides heavy; why his breast felt so heavy. he rose sitting; he was on a hillock. like an opaque reproduction of the transparent, lightsome sky looked the ground about him, which the scythe had this season respected; it was dark dotted with daisies. he rubbed his aching head a little, then lay back again, the grass shooting coolly up along his cheeks. after the sound, dreamless sleep of utter exhaustion from which he had waked, because he had drained it to satisfaction, his head was numbed, but,[99] the little it worked, clear in its working; his heart was sore, but quieted. something had changed; all wore another aspect; all seemed farther removed. hours had gone by already, a month would go—a year—fifteen years. this would be lived out of memory. if it is realized that a thing must cease, has it not begun to die already? at the first one must be patient, and take suffering as a matter of course. he stretched his limbs wearily, not entirely deceived by himself, nor unaware of depths of heartache under this film of philosophy that had scummed them over in sleep. he drew his hot palms over the grass; his hand came upon the parcel that he had not dared to leave behind nor to open, that he never would have the strength to open—and his philosophy was severely shaken. his heart was near bursting out afresh; he laid his face on the wretched, soft, dead little bundle, and agonized.
then he revolted against this suffering that seemed to him undeserved, disproportionate. he was not a bad fellow; looking[100] into his heart, he could declare truthfully that it was not in him to willingly harm anything—give any one pain. why should he feel so endlessly mean, so endlessly miserable? he appealed to minnie, his reasonable minnie of old, against this state of things. he defended himself to her; she defended him to himself. when all was said, he had at no time done anything to blame, had that day said nothing that was not wise and for the best, that he would not in like case be forced to say over again. he had been taken unawares; he had not expressed himself with tact—he had been fatally slow. the fact remained that the girl could not have stayed by him, setting the whole country-side agog. but if his heart still refused to be at peace about this matter, let it be assured he meant to seek till he found the girl; it must be easy enough to find her, though he had failed that day. alas! poor little forlorn head, shorn of its great gleaming beauty—poor little discrowned head, at this hour full of what thoughts, god knew! he would make all things right to her; he[101] was extravagantly ready to pay any price; he was lavish of his future, free of all the gods gave him to give. at the same time that he made these protestations to himself and to her, and he was sincere in making them, he knew that minnie would never look at him again—he knew that she had understood how he was changed with the change in her; it was beyond his governing, but she must be forgiven for not forgiving it. and looking into his man's heart, he wondered at the mystery of it.
in that hour of being honest, after revolting at it, reasoning about it, trying to sophisticate it away, he came back always to a hopeless contemplation of it as a simple fact, not to be done away with. in the face of it he might clear himself of all blame, perhaps, but he remained humiliated and full of a vague pity. as he lay in the grass so, plucking heedlessly in the dark at the little tufts, emptied of all pride under the lofty stars, a dreamy mood followed upon what degree of success he had in suppressing feelings he was determined not to en[102]dure, so did they hurt! his thoughts in search of soothing travelled back to days before last spring, when he could hardly have conceived what he had this night been suffering. peaceful period, but without great charm, he decided, loyal to his altered taste. he thought of the past spring, the soft awakening all without and within a man—the tender, vast burgeoning, fluttering, shimmering, outreaching! he judged it sadly from a midsummer night. not all were flowers that put forth in that mad amenity of nature; no, not all flowers.
and in connection with all that freshness and fragrance and beauty of spring, he thought unavoidably of what had seemed to his new-quickened heart its very expression, its chiefest adornment—the gentle order he loved in so general and devoted a way. his conjuring head filled with charming phantoms, pathetic to his sense at this juncture; they passed, exquisite pageant, leaving as if a perfume of themselves through the halls of his mind, not one little grace, one foolish trick, one dainty manner of be[103]ing, lost on his worshipping sensibility: silver laughter—odors of violets—sunny loose hairs and white hand tucking them behind the ear—pretty feet tiptoeing across the street in bad weather—pouted lips cooing to a baby, or quaintly attempting its own language to a bird—languid attitudes—belts of a span—caprices—teasing humors—tenderness—pity for small creatures—long lashes blinking a tear—queenly bearing—rods of lily held over bowing heads with such assurance of power as never a sceptre—aye, power greater than any emperor's, founded, dear god—upon what? at the mercy—of what? and he yearned and grieved over them, poor youth, as if he had been their maker.
