with dry, straw-coloured hair that fuzzed up about his pointed crown. He had never done more than mutter at me as I passed him, and I was surprised when he now addressed me. `Miss Lingard,' he said haughtily, is a young woman for whom I have the utmost, the utmost respect.'
`So have I,' I said coldly.
He paid no heed to my remark, but began to do rapid finger-exercises on his shirt-sleeves, as he stood with tightly folded arms.
`Kindness of heart,' he went on, staring at the ceiling, `sentiment, are not understood in a place like this. The noblest qualities are ridiculed. Grinning college boys, ignorant and conceited, what do they know of delicacy!'
I controlled my features and tried to speak seriously.
If you mean me, Mr. Ordinsky, I have known Miss Lingard a long time, and I think I appreciate her kindness. We come from the same town, and we grew up together.'
His gaze travelled slowly down from the ceiling and rested on me. Am I to understand that you have this young woman's interests at heart? That you do not wish to compromise her?'
`That's a word we don't use much here, Mr. Ordinsky. A girl who makes her own living can ask a college boy to supper without being talked about. We take some things for granted.'
`Then I have misjudged you, and I ask your pardon'--he bowed gravely. `Miss Lingard,' he went on, is an absolutely trustful heart. She has not learned the hard lessons of life. As for you and me, noblesse oblige'--he watched me narrowly.
Lena returned with the vest. `Come in and let us look at you as you go out, Mr.
Ordinsky. I've never seen you in your dress suit,' she said as she opened the door for him.
A few moments later he reappeared with his violin-case a heavy muffler about his neck and thick woollen gloves on his bony hands. Lena spoke encouragingly to him, and he went off with such an important professional air that we fell to laughing as soon as we had shut the door. `Poor fellow,' Lena said indulgently,
`he takes everything so hard.'
After that Ordinsky was friendly to me, and behaved as if there were some deep understanding between us. He wrote a furious article, attacking the musical taste of the town, and asked me to do him a great service by taking it to the editor of the morning paper. If the editor refused to print it, I was to tell him that he would be answerable to Ordinsky in person.' He declared that he would never retract one word, and that he was quite prepared to lose all his pupils. In spite of the fact that nobody ever mentioned his article to him after it appeared--full of typographical errors which he thought intentional-- he got a certain satisfaction from believing that the citizens of Lincoln had meekly accepted the epithet
`coarse barbarians.' `You see how it is,' he said to me, `where there is no chivalry, there is no amour-propre.' When I met him on his rounds now, I thought he carried his head more disdainfully than ever, and strode up the steps of front porches and rang doorbells with more assurance. He told Lena he would never forget how I had stood by him when he was under fire.'
All this time, of course, I was drifting. Lena had broken up my serious mood. I wasn't interested in my classes. I played with Lena and Prince, I played with the Pole, I went buggy-riding with the old colonel, who had taken a fancy to me and used to talk to me about Lena and thegreat beauties' he had known in his youth. We were all three in love with Lena.
Before the first of June, Gaston Cleric was offered an instructorship at Harvard College, and accepted it. He suggested that I should follow him in the fall, and complete my course at Harvard. He had found out about Lena-- not from me--
and he talked to me seriously.
`You won't do anything here now. You should either quit school and go to work, or change your college and begin again in earnest. You won't recover yourself while you are playing about with this handsome Norwegian. Yes, I've seen her with you at the theatre. She's very pretty, and perfectly irresponsible, I should judge.'
Cleric wrote my grandfather that he would like to take me East with him. To my astonishment, grandfather replied that I might go if I wished. I was both glad and sorry on the day when the letter came. I stayed in my room all evening and thought things over. I even tried to persuade myself that I was standing in Lena's way-- it is so necessary to be a little noble!--and that if she had not me to play with, she would probably marry and secure her future.
The next evening I went to call on Lena. I found her propped up on the couch in her bay-window, with her foot in a big slipper. An awkward little Russian girl whom she had taken into her work-room had dropped a flat-iron on Lena's toe.
On the table beside her there was a basket of early summer flowers which the Pole had left after he heard of the accident. He always managed to know what went on in Lena's apartment.
Lena was telling me some amusing piece of gossip about one of her clients, when I interrupted her and picked up the flower basket.
`This old chap will be proposing to you some day, Lena.'
Oh, he has--often!' she murmured.
`What! After you've refused him?'
`He doesn't mind that. It seems to cheer him to mention the subject. Old men are like that, you know. It makes them feel important to think they're in love with somebody.'
`The colonel would marry you in a minute. I hope you won't marry some old fellow; not even a rich one.' Lena shifted her pillows and looked up at me in surprise.
`Why, I'm not going to marry anybody. Didn't you know that?'
`Nonsense, Lena. That's what girls say, but you know better. Every handsome girl like you marries, of course.'
She shook her head. `Not me.'
