On this special morning there was no guardian of the peace in evidence, but standing on the crossing was a bearded man of perhaps forty years. Rather handsome he was, and well though carelessly dressed, but he stood irresolutely with his hands in his pockets, as if quite undecided what to do next. Mary simply noted him as an altogether strange figure in the neighbourhood, but the unexpected appearance of a large dog on the scene scattered the babies, and they fell on her in a weeping phalanx.
'Will you kindly help a little?' she asked after a moment's waiting, in which any chivalrous gentleman, she thought, should have flung himself into the breach.
'I?' he asked vaguely. 'How do you mean? What shall I do?'
She longed to say, 'Wake up, and perhaps an idea will come to you'; but she did say, with some spirit, 'Almost anything, thank you.
Drive the dog away, and help some of the smallest children across the street, please. You can have these two' (indicating the twins smilingly), 'or the other ninety-eight--whichever you like.'
He obeyed orders, though not in a very alert fashion, but showed a sense of humour in choosing the ninety-eight rather than the two, and Mary left him on the corner with a pleasant word of thanks and a cheery remark.
The next morning he appeared at the garden gate, and asked if he might come in and sit a while. He was made welcome; but it was a busy morning, and he was so silent a visitor that everybody forgot his existence.
He made a curious impression, which can hardly be described, save that any student of human nature would say at once, 'He is out of relation with the world.' He had something of the expression one sees in a recluse or a hermit. If you have ever wandered up a mountain side, you may have come suddenly upon a hut, a rude bed within it, and in the door a man reading, or smoking, or gazing into vacancy. You remember the look you met in that man's eyes. He has tasted life and found it bitter; has sounded the world and found it hollow; has known man or woman and found them false. Friendship to him is without savour, and love without hope.
After watching the children for an hour, the stranger slipped out quietly. Mistress Mary followed him to the door, abashed at her unintentional discourtesy in allowing him to go without a good morning. She saw him stand at the foot of the steps, look first up, then down the street, then walk aimlessly to the corner. There, with hands in pockets, he paused again, glancing four ways; then, with a shrug and a gait that seemed to say, 'It makes no difference,' he slouched away.
'He is simply a stranger in a strange city, pining for his home,' thought Mary, 'or else he is a stranger in every city, and has nowhere a home.'
He came again a few days later, and then again, apologising for the frequency of his visits, but giving no special reason for them. The neophytes called him 'the Solitary,' but the children christened him after a fashion of their own, and began to ask small favours of him.
'Thread my needle, please, Mr. Man!' 'More beads,' or 'More paper, Mr. Man, please.'
It is impossible to keep out of relation with little children. One of these mites of humanity would make a man out of your mountain hermit, resist as he might. They set up a claim on one whether it exists or not, and one has to allow it, and respond to it at least in some perfunctory fashion. More than once, as Mr. Man sat silently near the circle, the chubby Baker baby would fall over his feet, and he would involuntarily stoop to pick her up, straighten her dress, and soothe her woe. There was no hearty pleasure in his service even now. Nobody was certain that he felt any pleasure at all. His helpfulness was not spontaneous; it seemed a kind of reflex action, a survival of some former state of mind or heart; for he did his favours in a dream, nor heard any thanks: yet the elixir was working in his veins.
'He is dreadfully in the way,' grumbled Edith; 'he is more ever-present than my ardent Russian.'
'So long as he insists on coming, let us make him supply the paternal element,' suggested Rhoda. 'It may be a degrading confession, but we could afford to part with several women here if we could only secure a really fatherly man. The Solitary cannot indulge in any day-dreams or trances, if we accept him as the patriarch of the institution.'
Whereupon they boldly asked him, on his subsequent visits, to go upon errands, and open barrels of apples, and order intoxicated gentlemen off the steps, and mend locks and window-fastenings, and sharpen lead-pencils, and put on coal, and tell the lady in the rear that her parrot interfered with their morning prayers by shrieking the hymns in impossible keys. He accepted these tasks without protest, and performed them conscientiously, save in the parrot difficulty, in which case he gave one look at the lady, and fled without opening the subject.
It could not be said that he appeared more cheerful, the sole sign of any increased exhilaration of spirits being the occasional straightening of his cravat and the smoothing of his hair--refinements of toilet that had heretofore been much neglected, though he always looked unmistakably the gentleman.