When I saw the little house building, an eighth of a mile beyond my own, on the Old Bay Road, I wondered who were to be the tenants. The modest structure was set well back from the road, among the trees, as if the inmates were to care nothing whatever for a view of the stylish equipages that sweep by during the summer season. For my part, I like to see them passing in town or country; but each has his own unaccountable taste. The proprietor, who seemed to be als0 the architect of the new house, superintended the various details of the work with an assiduity that gave me a high opinion of his intelligence and executive ability, and I congratulated myself on the prospect of having some very agreeable neighbours.
It was quite early in the spring, if I remember, when they moved into the cottage-a newly married couple, evidently: the wife very young, pretty, and with the air of a lady, the husband somewhat older, but still in the first flush of manhood. It was understood in the village that they came from Baltimore; but no one knew them personally, and they brought no letters of introduction. (For obvious reasons I refrain from mentioning names.) It was clear that, for the present at least, their own company was entirely sufficient for them. They made noadvances towards acquaintance of any of the families in the neighbourhood, and consequently were left to themselves. That apparently was what they desired, and why they came to Ponkapog. For, after its black bass and wild duck and teal, solitude is the chief staple of Ponkapog. Perhaps its perfect rural loveliness should be included. Lying high up under the wing of the Blue Hills, and in the odorous breath of pines and cedars, it happens to be the most enchanted bit of unlaced, dishevelled country within fifty miles of Boston, which, moreover, can be reached in half an hour"s ride by railway. But the rearest railway station (Heaven be praised!) is two miles distant, and the seclusion is without a flaw.
"Are you not going to call on them? "I asked my wife one morning.
"When they call on us, " she replied lightly.
"But it is our place to call first, they being strangers. " This was said as seriously as the circumstances demanded, but my wife turned it off with a laugh, and I said no more, always trusting to her intuition in these matters.
She was right. She would not have been received, and a cool "Not at home " would have been a bitter social pill to us if we had gone out of our way to be courteous.
I saw a great deal of our neighbours, nevertheless. Their cottage lay between us and the post office-where he was never to be met with by any chance-and I caught frequent glimpses of the two working in the garden. Horticulture did not appear so much an object as exercise.
The new-comers were evidently persons of refined musical taste : the lady had a contralto voice of remarkable sweetness, although of no great compass, and I used often to linger of a morning by the high gate and listen to her singing, probably at some window upstairs, for the house was not visible from the turnpike. The husband, somewhere about the grounds, would occasionally respond with two or three bars. It was all quite an ideal, Arcadian business. They seemed very happy together, these two persons, who asked no odds whatever of the community in which they had settled themselves.
Though my wife had declined to risk a formal call on our neighbours as a family, I saw no reason why I should not speak to the husband as an individual when I happened to encounter him by the wayside. I made several approaches to do so, when it occurred to my mind that my neighbour had the air of trying to avoid me. I resolved to put the suspicion to the test, and, one forenoon when he was sauntering along on the opposite side of the road, in the vicinity of Fisher"s sawmill, I deliberately crossed over to address him. The brusque manner in which he hurried away was not to be misunderstood. Of course, I was not going to force myself upon him. After a while I not only missed my occasional glimpses of the pretty, slim figure, always draped in some soft black stuff with a bit of scarlet at the throat, but I inferred that she did not go about the house singing in her light- hearted manner as formerly. What had happened? I fancied she was ill, and that I detected a certain anxiety in the husband, who spent the mornings digging alone in the garden.
As the days went by, it became certain that the lady was confined to the house, perhaps seriously ill, possibly a confirmed invalid. If a physician had charge of the case, he visited the patient only at night. All this moved my sympathy, and I reproached myself with having had hard thoughts of our neighbours. Trouble had come to them early. I would have liked to offer them such small, friendly services as lay in my power; but the memory of the repulse I had sustained still rankled in me. So I hesitated. One morning my two boys burst into the library with their eyes sparkling. "You know the old elm down the road, " cried one. "Yes. " "The elm with the hang-bird"s nest? " shrieked the other. " Yes, yes !" "Well, we both just climbed up, and there"s three young ones in it ! " Then I smiled to think that our new neighbours had got such a promising little family.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Author.-Thomas Bailey Aldbich (1836-1907), an American poet and novelist, born in U.S.A. He published some eight or nine volumes of poetry and produced several books of travel and reminiscences. His prose has deive power and humour, and his verse includes some of the daintiest work yet produced in America.
General.-When did you find out who the new neighbours were? Re-read the whole piece again, noticing how the writer has managed to mislead you. Explain the meaning of "executive ability, " "first flush of manhood, " "unlaced, dishevelled country, " "Arcadian business. "