第37章

But he was again puzzled to know why he himself should have been selected for this singular experience.Why was HE considered fair game for these girls? And, for the matter of that, now that he reflected upon it, why had even this gentle, refined, and melancholy Cherry thought it necessary to talk slang to HIM on their first acquaintance, and offer to sing him the "Ham-fat Man"? It was true he had been a little gay, but never dissipated.Of course he was not a saint, like Tappington--oh, THAT was it! He believed he understood it now.He was suffering from that extravagant conception of what worldliness consists of, so common to very good people with no knowledge of the world.Compared to Tappington he was in their eyes, of course, a rake and a roue.The explanation pleased him.He would not keep it to himself.He would gain Cherry's confidence and enlist her sympathies.Her gentle nature would revolt at this injustice to their lonely lodger.She would see that there were degrees of goodness besides her brother's.She would perhaps sit on that stool again and NOT sing the "Ham-fat Man."A day or two afterwards the opportunity seemed offered to him.As he was coming home and ascending the long hilly street, his eye was taken by a tall graceful figure just preceding him.It was she.He had never before seen her in the street, and was now struck with her ladylike bearing and the grave superiority of her perfectly simple attire.In a thoroughfare haunted by handsome women and striking toilettes, the refined grace of her mourning costume, and a certain stateliness that gave her the look of a young widow, was a contrast that evidently attracted others than himself.It was with an odd mingling of pride and jealousy that he watched the admiring yet respectful glances of the passers-by, some of whom turned to look again, and one or two to retrace their steps and follow her at a decorous distance.This caused him to quicken his own pace, with a new anxiety and a remorseful sense of wasted opportunity.What a booby hehad been, not to have made more of his contiguity to this charming girl--to have been frightened at the naive decorum of her maidenly instincts! He reached her side, and raised his hat with a trepidation at her new-found graces--with a boldness that was defiant of her other admirers.She blushed slightly.

"I thought you'd overtake me before," she said naively."I saw YOU ever so long ago."He stammered, with an equal simplicity, that he had not dared to.

She looked a little frightened again, and then said hurriedly: "I only thought that I would meet you on Montgomery Street, and we would walk home together.I don't like to go out alone, and mother cannot always go with me.Tappington never cared to take me out--I don't know why.I think he didn't like the people staring and stop ping us.But they stare more--don't you think?--when one is alone.So I thought if you were coming straight home we might come together--unless you have something else to do?"Herbert impulsively reiterated his joy at meeting her, and averred that no other engagement, either of business or pleasure, could or would stand in his way.Looking up, however, it was with some consternation that he saw they were already within a block of the house.

"Suppose we take a turn around the hill and come back by the old street down the steps?" he suggested earnestly.

The next moment he regretted it.The frightened look returned to her eyes; her face became melancholy and formal again.

"No!" she said quickly."That would be taking a walk with you like these young girls and their young men on Saturdays.That's what Ellen does with the butcher's boy on Sundays.Tappington often used to meet them. Doing the 'Come, Philanders,' as he says you call it."It struck Herbert that the didactic Tappington's method of inculcating a horror of slang in his sister's breast was open to some objection; but they were already on the steps of their house, and he was too much mortified at the reception of his last unhappy suggestion to make the confidential disclosure he had intended, even if there had still been time.

"There's mother waiting for me," she said, after an awkward pause,pointing to the figure of Mrs.Brooks dimly outlined on the veranda."I suppose she was beginning to be worried about my being out alone.She'll be so glad I met you." It didn't appear to Herbert, however, that Mrs.Brooks exhibited any extravagant joy over the occurrence, and she almost instantly retired with her daughter into the sitting-room, linking her arm in Cherry's, and, as it were, empanoplying her with her own invulnerable shawl.Herbert went to his room more dissatisfied with himself than ever.

Two or three days elapsed without his seeing Cherry; even the well- known rustle of her skirt in the passage was missing.On the third evening he resolved to bear the formal terrors of the drawing-room again, and stumbled upon a decorous party consisting of Mrs.Brooks, the deacon, and the pastor's wife--but not Cherry.It struck him on entering that the momentary awkwardness of the company and the formal beginning of a new topic indicated that HE had been the subject of their previous conversation.In this idea he continued, through that vague spirit of opposition which attacks impulsive people in such circumstances, to generally disagree with them on all subjects, and to exaggerate what he chose to believe they thought objectionable in him.He did not remain long; but learned in that brief interval that Cherry had gone to visit a friend in Contra Costa, and would be absent a fortnight; and he was conscious that the information was conveyed to him with a peculiar significance.

The result of which was only to intensify his interest in the absent Cherry, and for a week to plunge him in a sea of conflicting doubts and resolutions.At one time he thought seriously of demanding an explanation from Mrs.Brooks, and of confiding to her-- as he had intended to do to Cherry--his fears that his character had been misinterpreted, and his reasons for believing so.But here he was met by the difficulty of formulating what he wished to have explained, and some doubts as to whether his confidences were prudent.At another time he contemplated a serious imitation of Tappington's perfections, a renunciation of the world, and an entire change in his habits.He would go regularly to church--HER church, and take up Tappington's desolate Bible-class. But here the torturing doubt arose whether a young ladywho betrayed a certain secular curiosity, and who had evidently depended upon her brother for a knowledge of the world, would entirely like it.At times he thought of giving up the room and abandoning for ever this doubly dangerous proximity; but here again he was deterred by the difficulty of giving a satisfactory reason to his employer, who had procured it as a favor.His passion--for such he began to fear it to be--led him once to the extravagance of asking a day's holiday from the bank, which he vaguely spent in the streets of Oakland in the hope of accidentally meeting the exiled Cherry.