Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 March 1918 — Hermine’s Neighbors [ARTICLE]

Hermine’s Neighbors

By EDITH WELLS

<Copyright, 1918, by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.) The good neighbor rocked back and forth slowly before the crackling bank of embers on Hermine Whipple’s hearth, and from time to time sipped the cup of steaming chocolate that Hermine had set beside her on the little teakwood stand.

“It really does seem a shame, Hermine,” she said, rocking back, “that yOu should have no one to share it with,” rocking forward and looking through spectacles into Hermine’s face. Then a sip of the chocolate. “My husband said only this morning, ‘What a shame that there are no nice bachelors about here’ —you mustn’t mind, Hermine, that is just his way—‘what a shame there isn’t-some one to share that nice warm house these cold djiys,’ and really, I must say, Hermine/this Is the warmest place I’ve been in for days. With coal so short and the wind so nipping, Tm sure I don’t see .how you do it Why, this fire here makes the room perfect, and it’s not a (bit close, either.” Hermine leaned over in her rocker and refilled the neighbor’s chocolate cup from the chocolate pot that she kept warm by the side of the hearth. •The cups are very small,” she urged, and then: “Oh, it’s just the way these grates are built Then, you know, my grandfather made quite a hobby of laying fires, and old Rachel and I learned from him. But I’m sorry,” she smiled, “that no one can share it. Do come often, if you find it comfortable, and Til try to get some of the factory girls to come up for supper. There are some who are really quite in distress this winter. They must be cold.” “Oh, it isn’t the poor only who suffer. Why,. no one can get coal, and most folk haven’t the knack you have with wood fires. Why, Mrs. Dalrymple has not had any coal for a week, and really she has to stay in bed to keep warm. She tells people she’s ill; but she told me in confidence that it was simply that she hated to get up in the cold. And the* is Mr. Denslow Gray, next door” —here the neighbor looked up from her chocolate cup and rocked forward at the same time, to study Hermine’s face. “Mr. Gray, you know, hasn’t any coal at all, and they say that he has all sorts of money, in spite of the way he lives —alone in that big house, with just his man Moses. I’m really afraid he’ll take pneumonia. Poor Mr. Gray! It seems so strange he never married. Still, he isn’t old — only forty, and I suppose there are a good many women would be glad to have him. Still, he must be very cold there.” And then, rising to go, the neighbor murmured on: “I am so glad that you are warm enough, Hermine. Yes, Til come again real soon, you are so comfortable”—then draining her cup—“such delicious chocolate!” Hermine saw her good neighbor to the door, and then calling through a door that led to the kitchen she summoned her woman of all work and sole companion, Rachel. The plump old colored woman hobbled in and, taking the chair the good neighbor had vacated, answered Hermine’s questions. Yes, old Moses had been begging a little wood from their plentiful pile every morning. He said the master had no coal, and Moses’ rheumatlz was so bad he could cut no wood till it got warmer. The cold weather always stiffened Moses’ arms just that way. “Please tell Moses tomorrow,” said Hermine, with a confidential tone to her good woman, “that he can’t have any mote wood. Tell him —but not as If I suggested it —that you think if theywant more wood Mr. Gray had better ask me fdr it- And, Rachel, you might order two nice chickens tomorrow — one for that soup you make with the gumbo and another to roast; and see that you have a good fire in the range; and you might make crullers tomorrow—and if Moses begs any crullers for Mr. Gray you tell him he can’t have them.”

The colored woman looked her surprise, but only rocked back and forth. “Yes, Miss Hermine,” she said, “I always did think you were too good —it’s a long time Fye had to hand crullers and things over the fence, on account of Mr. Gray. I certainly think you are showing good sense, Miss Hermine. I reckon Mr. Gray will be pretty cold without the wood, but it sure does serve him right.” The next day Moses begged for wood In vain, and at ten o’clock the morning after Mr. Gray himself called and asked to see Miss Hermine. It was a most unusual occurrence. There was not, as some of the neighbors supposed, any feud between the houses of Whipple and Gray, but for ten years the bachelor had never called on his spinster neighbor. Then Hermine, recently left alone in her rambling old house, was twenty-five and Denslow Gray was thirty. He had called often then, till gossiping tongues had cut his calls short. He had heard through Moses that neighbors were expecting an engagement between himself and 'his neighbor, and so annoyed was he at the interference that the calls had •ceased. He left the neighborhood and Jived In the city for several years, and it was only within the last few years, when apparently all gossip had ceased, that he returned. On this momentous morning he called very formally and requested his neighbor, with great formality, to sell him A little wood. He regretted having to

annoy her, but. he bad heard from Moses that she had plenty, and, owing to the coal shortage, he was actually suffering from the cold. As he spoke Hermine led him to the corner of the living room nearest to the crackling embers on the hearth. The only chair available for him was the comfortable one the good neighbor had found so inviting. The fire was unusually inviting, and the rows of Temple lilies that bloomed on a stand near a sunny window at one side of the room gave a suggestion of warmth and cheer that captivated the neighbor. He rose to go, and then resumed his seat when Hermine went to the kitchen door and called to Rachel to ask her whether she could spare a little wood. At the door she whispered: “Hurry in with a pot of chocolate and nice buttered toast. Look surprised when you see Mr. Gray, and make a move to take the chocolate away. Hurry, Rachel.” Hermine walked slowly back to the fireplace. “My woman is looking to see whether we have any wood chopped,” she was saying, and then the old woman entered with the tray. She started at the sight of the caller and pretended to return to the kitchen. “That’s all right, Rachel ; yoy may bring it in,” said Hermine. And then, turning to Mr. Gray, she went on: “You see, 1 usually have chocolate at this time on cold mornings. Rachel, another cup please. Oh! please, Mr. Gray, let me give you a little —it is so warming.” A half hour later, when the caller rose to go for the third time, he asked Hermine whether he might send Moses over at once with a basket for a little wood; they actually had no fuel to cook dinner. Hermine looked puzzled. She said the wood was in a shed at the end of the garden, and that the man who came to carry the wood had the key. She was sorry, and then: “Won’t you share my own very simple dinner? I believe Rachel is roasting a chicken. It is beefless day, you know, and Rachel is very patriotic. She has made crullers —I can’t offer you very much. Please stay, and Rachel will call to your man Moses to have him get a bite with her in the kitchen.” Mr. Gray accepted the invitation, though as he did so something that he mistook for his conscience pricked him. He felt that he was breaking down a barrier that it had taken him ten years to build up. At six that afternoon Mr. Gray still lingered. He was playing cribbage witlf his spinster neighbor before the fire, with the light of a skilfully arranged bracket-lamp that threw just the right shadows on the board and a mellow, becoming glow on Hermine’s face, in the kitchen Rachel was making savory coffee. A pan of johnny cake was browning beautifully in' the oven, and a broiler of bacon was spitting on the fire. Rachel was laughing to herself —or rather to old Moses, who sat watching in admiration, with a growing appetite, at one side of the stove.

Hermine did not even ask her neighbor to stay to tea —it seemed to be such a matter of course for him to remain there in the glow of her fire rather than to go home to his own barnlike abode to feed upon cold meat and damp, chilled bread. When Rachel had cleared away the things Mr. Gray drew his chair closer to that of Hermine. “You’re a wonderful woman, Hermine,” he said. “I made up my mind once that you were cold; but you’ve been thawing out my heart today—my heart and incidentally my fingers. I know it is only charity on your part. You are doing it in the same spirit that you had the factory girls here last night. The worst part of going home isn’t the fact that it is as cold as a barn—-it’s because I’ll have to leave you.” Hermine’s expression showed complete amazement. She told Mr. Gray that never in the world had she imagined that he might want to marry her —the fact was that Mr. Gray had not expressed his sentiment in just those words —but she did hate to have him go home in the cold. Her guest room was very warm; Rachel kept a fire there. She wondered whether it might not be arranged for him to stay. And that is how it happened that about eight o’clock that night Denslow Gray and Hermine Whipple roused the minister from where he huddled by his own meager grate fire. “We’ve been intending to be married for some years,” Denslow explained, “and now we want to spring a surprise on the neighbors. Yes, it is rather cold,” he answered, “but'an old bachelor doesn’t have time to think of the temperature on his wedding day.”