The Star in the Window (Stokes)/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
NUMBER FOUR" was standing by himself, up against the wall, withdrawn from the group of eager partner-searchers. He was tall, and lank—a big-proportioned fellow. His long arms were hanging straight down by his sides in a kind of helpless fashion. His shoulders were stooped, and his chin thrust forward in the way overgrown boys have sometimes when they try to appear less conspicuous.
All Reba saw at first was the yellow four pinned on the lapel of his coat, but the discerning Lollie Terrence had taken in, in a single glance, every inch of the yellow-ticketed six feet of laughable ungainliness. The cheap suit of clothes, made out of loosely woven homespun material, shapeless as burlap and not unlike it in color, the long red wrists hanging out of sleeves ridiculously too short, and the side-splitting bit of wrinkled white sock, showing above a clumsy boot-top, had not escaped Lollie. Nor the shock of thick, sand-colored hair either, nor the crimson face beneath it. Reba missed all these details as she timidly approached her partner. Ought she to speak first, she wondered? She waited a second or two. It appeared she would have to, for "Number four" made no move to address her as she hovered close a minute.
"Excuse me," she began, turning toward him abruptly, and trying to keep her voice steady. (She had never spoken to an entire stranger in this manner before. Would it not have been better to have waited until Miss Bartholomew came and introduced them? Well, it was too late now.) "Excuse me," she went on, "but are you number four?"
He stared down at her a moment in silence, as if to make sure that he had been addressed. Then, "Did you speak to me, Miss?" he inquired.
"Yes," nodded Reba, "I did. Are you number four?"
"Yes, ma'am," he replied politely. "Yes, miss."
"Well, then," Reba simply had to take the initiative. He would not. "I guess we're partners."
"How's that?"
"Why, don't you see? I'm four, and you're four too. We match." And, flushing, Reba held up her number to him as proof.
He glanced at it, then down at his own yellow four, on the lapel of his coat, then back at Reba's again.
"That's so," he said, as if it were a phenomenon he couldn't quite fathom. "That's so." Then he looked at Reba, standing all white and ruffled before him—stared at her frankly a second or two in silence. "That's so. We're partners, I guess," he reiterated, and gave a nervous laugh.
"I guess so," said Reba, and gave a nervous laugh too.
There seemed to be nothing more for her to say, and she stood there, waiting for him to speak—it was his turn. But he didn't say a word! Reba stole a desperate glance at him, at last; and then she saw—she saw his torturing discomfort. His face was very red, and there were beads of perspiration on his forehead. He was embarrassed! The slow realization of his ill-at-easeness steadied Reba. She understood. She knew.
"Let's sit down the way some of the others are doing," she suggested.
"I'd like to," he replied.
"Here are two chairs," said Reba, and she led the way to two empty places.
As "Number four" folded up to sit down in the chair beside Reba, he was very careful not to allow his rough coat to as much as brush one of her snowy ruffles. Afterward he produced a brand new handkerchief—white, with a dark blue polka-dotted border—and wiped the perspiration that threatened to become running torrents in a moment, from his brow.
"There are a great many people here, aren't there?" said Reba brightly.
"There appear to be, miss," her partner murmured, clumsily groping for his coat pocket, and finally shoving his handkerchief out of sight in it. "There appear to be," he said again, and laid his two long arms horizontally along his long thighs, his big red hands pitifully apparent, as they rested upon each knee.
Reba, glancing down, saw now that the customary white cuff-line at the edge of the coat-sleeves was lacking. She saw, too, that something else was lacking—something more essential—half of the fingers, in fact, from her partner's left hand!
He seemed to be conscious of her glance, and her discovery too, for he shifted uneasily, and folded his arms, hiding completely both his red monstrosities.
"I don't believe I'm much of a partner for you," he apologized.
"Oh, yes, you are," Reba assured him, forgetting her own embarrassment in her sudden desire to lessen his. "Oh, yes. Really. I don't want any one else," she said. Then, shouldering the entire responsibility of the conversation, she went on, "We ought to know each other's names, oughn't we? Mine's Jerome—Miss Rebecca Jerome," and after a pause, "What's yours?" she asked.
"Nathaniel Cawthorne, on paper," he answered. "But at sea I was called Nat Crow."
"You've been to sea?" she inquired, inspired to conversation by the kindness in her heart.
"I've been little where's else for the last eight years. Up in the crow's nest—away from people and things, most of the time. That's where I got my name. It used to be Nat Caw. A crazy Chinaman cut off those two fingers you noticed, when I was trying to pull myself into a life-boat off the China coast once," he explained. "I'm a rough, sea-faring fellow. I ought not to have come here, I guess." He was still apologizing.
"Oh, yes, you ought! Yes, you ought!" Reba told him.
Suddenly somebody struck a chord on the piano, and Miss Park announced that the blues and yellows would dance first. There was a rush for the floor. Reba and her partner, however, sat quite still in their places. Then shyly, "Do you dance?" inquired Reba.
"Oh, no. No. I don't." He seemed alarmed. "I don't know how to do any of those things. You go on, and leave me. I don't mind," he urged.
"Oh, I don't care about dancing," Reba cheerfully denied. "We can watch instead." And they did—for half an hour or so, sitting dumbly side by side, hidden by swarms of standing couples in front of them—unobserved—unrescued.
Reba couldn't help but feel frequent little stabs of disappointment, now and again, as she sat idly on the side-lines with her feet on the rung of a chair in front of her, and her hands folded in her lap, silently looking on. Couple after couple went laughingly by her. It looked and sounded as if everybody was having a glorious time. The fun on the floor was like a wonderful, rollicking folk-dance to Reba—a folk-dance with young men! There was a grand "right-and-left" every little while, announced by a shrill whistle. Even the girls in the group in front of the platform, of which she would have been one if she hadn't fished the yellow four out from under the radiator, each got a gentleman partner in time. Her shoulders drooped, her expression was wistful.
"I guess I'm spoiling things for you," her partner commented at last, as if she had sighed aloud.
"Oh, no. Really," she said sweetly. Then, "Do you play parcheesi, or dominoes, or anything like that?" she inquired. For it had been explained by Miss Park beforehand that in the parlor adjoining the Assembly-hall tables with games were arranged especially for those who did not care to dance.
It seemed that "Number four" did sometimes try his hand at checkers. So Reba led the way into the almost empty parlor, and sat down before one of the checker-boards. "Number four" sat down opposite her. He was careful, as the game proceeded, to make all his moves with his right hand, and speedily conceal even that, as soon as possible, underneath the table. He beat Reba in the first game, and apologized for it, shamefacedly.
"I don't know much how to act with ladies, I guess."
"Why, I think you do."
"You see, you're the first what I call 'white girl' I've spoken to for nearly eight years now."
"Oh, am I?" gasped Reba. "Shan't we play another game?" she suggested hastily.
They played four other games in all—long, silent games, with Reba's eyes steadfastly on the board. If she was the first "white girl" this man had spoken to for eight years, he, as well, was something of a novelty to her. During the deep, prolonged silences of those four games, Reba was not unconscious of the fact that this was the first time in her whole life that she had sat so long, so close, to any man. Their knees, she estimated, were within six inches of touching. She mustn't let such thoughts possess her. She tried to stifle them. He, too—Reba's partner too, out of his reverence for anything so soft and white-handed, so wistful-eyed, so gentle-voiced, so crisply ruffled, pink-sashed, as this feminine creature before him—he, too, tried to keep his thoughts from desecrating so much as the tips of her fingers.
He stayed until the music played "Home, Sweet Home" in the Assembly-hall. They were the only ones left in the parlor when one of the Alliance's hostesses thrust a head in at the door and sang out cheerfully, "Time for everybody to say good-night."
Reba observed, as "Number four" stood up to go, that he was feeling extremely ill at ease again. She thought she knew why, and in an attempt to help him over the difficult ceremony of saying a proper good-night, she said:
"I've had a very pleasant evening."
He ignored the remark.
"There's something," he began, "I mean," he floundered, "I haven't quite made out yet how it came about—you and me being partners."
"Oh! Didn't you hear it explained?"
"Yes, I did, but you see, I saw pretty plain what happened first. I know when I'm made fun of. I've been trying to make out if it was you all the time. I'm rigged wrong, I know. I don't blame anybody for wishing to chuck me—but—but"
"No. It wasn't I!" Reba denied vehemently. "It wasn't I! I found your number on the floor. She must have dropped it. I wouldn't care, if I were you, what she did."
"I don't care," he smiled at Reba. "I thought it couldn't be you," he said. "Well," after a second, "I'll be going now, I guess."
"I guess you better," agreed Reba.
Still he hesitated. Then suddenly courageous, "You wouldn't shake hands with me good-night, would you?" he asked. "My right hand's all there."
"Why, of course I will."
He didn't really shake her hand. He just held it in a big damp clasp a moment, then dropped it.
"Say," he said afterward, not looking at her—he had dragged out a cloth cap from a pocket somewhere, and kept his eyes on that—"you wouldn't go out with me anywhere, would you? I mean—you wouldn't consider—it wouldn't be just the thing, I suppose, for such as you to go to a 'movie'—or anything like that, would it, with a rough diamond like me?"
"Why, I'd like to go," Reba told him from the fullness of her heart.
His eyes lighted.
"Would you meet me at the Garden Theater Monday night, at quarter to eight o'clock?" he asked.
Reba's sewing-class met Monday nights. Never mind! She knew from experience the kind of starvation his eyes expressed.
"I'll be very glad to meet you there," she told him.