The Second Christmas Megapack. Гарриет Бичер-Стоу
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lunch, not having to report at the office immediately, I took unto myself the solace of a cigar, which kept me company during a stroll about Mrs. Apperthwaite’s capacious yard. In the rear I found an old-fashioned rose-garden—the bushes long since bloomless and now brown with autumn—and I paced its gravelled paths up and down, at the same time favoring Mr. Beasley’s house with a covert study that would have done credit to a porch-climber, for the sting of my blunder at the table was quiescent, or at least neutralized, under the itch of a curiosity far from satisfied concerning the interesting premises next door. The gentleman in the dressing-gown, I was sure, could have been no other than the Honorable David Beasley himself. He came not in eyeshot now, neither he nor any other; there was no sign of life about the place. That portion of his yard which lay behind the house was not within my vision, it is true, his property being here separated from Mrs. Apperthwaite’s by a board fence higher than a tall man could reach; but there was no sound from the other side of this partition, save that caused by the quiet movement of rusty leaves in the breeze.
My cigar was at half-length when the green lattice door of Mrs. Apperthwaite’s back porch was opened and Miss Apperthwaite, bearing a saucer of milk, issued therefrom, followed, hastily, by a very white, fat cat, with a pink ribbon round its neck, a vibrant nose, and fixed, voracious eyes uplifted to the saucer. The lady and her cat offered to view a group as pretty as a popular painting; it was even improved when, stooping, Miss Apperthwaite set the saucer upon the ground, and, continuing in that posture, stroked the cat. To bend so far is a test of a woman’s grace, I have observed.
She turned her face toward me and smiled. “I’m almost at the age, you see.”
“What age?” I asked, stupidly enough.
“When we take to cats,” she said, rising. “Spinsterhood” we like to call it. ‘Single-blessedness!’”
“That is your kind heart. You decline to make one of us happy to the despair of all the rest.”
She laughed at this, though with no very genuine mirth, I marked, and let my 1830 attempt at gallantry pass without other retort.
“You seemed interested in the old place yonder.” She indicated Mr. Beasley’s house with a nod.
“Oh, I understood my blunder,” I said, quickly. “I wish I had known the subject was embarrassing or unpleasant to Mr. Dowden.”
“What made you think that?”
“Surely,” I said, “you saw how pointedly he cut me off.”
“Yes,” she returned, thoughtfully. “He rather did; it’s true. At least, I see how you got that impression.” She seemed to muse upon this, letting her eyes fall; then, raising them, allowed her far-away gaze to rest upon the house beyond the fence, and said, “It is an interesting old place.”
“And Mr. Beasley himself—” I began.
“Oh,” she said, “He isn’t interesting. That’s his trouble!”
“You mean his trouble not to—”
She interrupted me, speaking with sudden, surprising energy, “I mean he’s a man of no imagination.”
“No imagination!” I exclaimed.
“None in the world! Not one ounce of imagination! Not one grain!”
“Then who,” I cried, “or what—is Simpledoria?”
“Simple—what?” she said, plainly mystified.
“Simpledoria.”
“Simpledoria?” she repeated, and laughed. “What in the world is that?”
“You never heard of it before?”
“Never in my life.”
“You’ve lived next door to Mr. Beasley a long time, haven’t you?”
“All my life.”
“And I suppose you must know him pretty well.”
“What next?” she said, smiling.
“You said he lived there all alone,” I went on, tentatively.
“Except for an old colored couple, his servants.”
“Can you tell me—” I hesitated. “Has he ever been thought—well, ‘queer’?”
“Never!” she answered, emphatically. “Never anything so exciting! Merely deadly and hopelessly commonplace.” She picked up the saucer, now exceedingly empty, and set it upon a shelf by the lattice door. “What was it about—what was that name?—‘Simpledoria’?”
“I will tell you,” I said. And I related in detail the singular performance of which I had been a witness in the late moonlight before that morning’s dawn. As I talked, we half unconsciously moved across the lawn together, finally seating ourselves upon a bench beyond the rose-beds and near the high fence. The interest my companion exhibited in the narration might have surprised me had my nocturnal experience itself been less surprising. She interrupted me now and then with little, half-checked ejaculations of acute wonder, but sat for the most part with her elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand, her face turned eagerly to mine and her lips parted in half-breathless attention. There was nothing “far away” about her eyes now; they were widely and intently alert.
When I finished, she shook her head slowly, as if quite dumfounded, and altered her position, leaning against the back of the bench and gazing straight before her without speaking. It was plain that her neighbor’s extraordinary behavior had revealed a phase of his character novel enough to be startling.
“One explanation might be just barely possible,” I said. “If it is, it is the most remarkable case of somnambulism on record. Did you ever hear of Mr. Beasley’s walking in his—”
She touched me lightly but peremptorily on the arm in warning, and I stopped. On the other side of the board fence a door opened creakily, and there sounded a loud and cheerful voice—that of the gentleman in the dressing-gown.
“Here we come!” it said; “me and big Bill Hammersley. I want to show Bill I can jump anyways three times as far as he can! Come on, Bill.”
“Is that Mr. Beasley’s voice?” I asked, under my breath.
Miss Apperthwaite nodded in affirmation.
“Could he have heard me?”
“No,” she whispered. “He’s just come out of the house.” And then to herself, “Who under heaven is Bill Hammersley? I never heard of him!”
“Of course, Bill,” said the voice beyond the fence, “if you’re afraid I’ll beat you too badly, you’ve still got time to back out. I did understand you to kind of hint that you were considerable of a jumper, but if—What? What’d you say, Bill?” There ensued a moment’s complete silence. “Oh, all right,” the voice then continued. “You say you’re in this to win, do you? Well, so’m I, Bill Hammersley; so’m I. Who’ll go first? Me? All right—from the edge of the walk here. Now then! One—two—three! Ha!”
A sound came to our ears of some one landing heavily—and at full length, it seemed—on the turf, followed by a slight, rusty groan in the same voice. “Ugh! Don’t you laugh, Bill Hammersley! I haven’t jumped as much as I ought to, these last twenty years; I reckon I’ve kind of lost the hang of it. Aha!” There were indications that Mr. Beasley was picking himself up, and brushing his trousers with his hands. “Now, it’s your turn, Bill. What say?” Silence again, followed by, “Yes, I’ll make Simpledoria get out of the way. Come here, Simpledoria. Now, Bill, put your heels together on the edge of the walk. That’s right. All ready? Now then! One for the money—two for the show—three to make ready—and four for to go!” Another silence. “By jingo, Bill Hammersley, you’ve beat me! Ha, ha! That was a jump! What say?” Silence once more. “You say you can do even better than that? Now, Bill, don’t brag. Oh! you say you’ve often jumped farther?