I was prepared to confront poverty in this bare and comfortless-looking abode of decayed gentility. But I did not expect quite so many evidences of it as met my eyes as the door swung slowly open some time after my persistent knock, and I beheld Miss Charity’s meager figure outlined against walls and a flight of uncarpeted stairs such as I had never seen before out of a tenement house. I may have dropped my eyes, but I recovered myself immediately. Marking the slow awakening of pleasure in the wan old face as she recognized me, I uttered some apology for my early call and then waited to see if she would welcome me in.
She not only did so, but did it with such a sudden breaking up of her rigidity into the pliancy of a naturally hospitable nature, that my heart was touched, and I followed her into the great bare apartment, which must have once answered the purposes of a drawing-room, with very different feelings from those with which I had been accustomed to look upon her face in the old attic window.
“I should like to see your sister, too,” I said, as she hastily, but with a certain sort of ceremony, too, pushed forward one of the ancient chairs which stood at long intervals about the room. “I have not been your neighbor very long, but I should like to pay my respects to both of you.”
I had purposely spoken with the formal precision she had been accustomed to in her earlier days, and I could see how perceptibly her self-respect returned at this echo of the past, giving her a sudden dignity which made me forget for the moment her neglected appearance.
“I will summon my sister,” she returned, disappearing quietly from the room.
I waited fifteen minutes, then Miss Thankful entered, dressed in her very best, followed by my first acquaintance in her same gown, but with a little cap on her head. The cap, despite its faded ribbons carefully pressed out but with too cold an iron, gave her an old-time fashionable air which for the moment created the impression that she might have been a beauty and a belle in her early days, which I afterward discovered to be true.
It was Miss Thankful, however, who had the personal presence, and it was she who now expressed their sense of the honor, pushing forward another chair than that from which I had risen, with the remark:
“Take this, I pray. Many an honored guest has occupied this seat. Let us see you in it.”
I could detect no difference between the one she offered and the one in which I had just sat, but I at once stepped forward and took the chair she proffered. She bowed and Miss Charity bowed, and then they seated themselves side by side on the hair-cloth sofa, which was the only other article of furniture in the room.
“We are—we are preparing to move,” stammered Miss Charity, a faint flush tingeing her faded cheeks, as she caught the involuntary glance I had cast about me.
Miss Thankful bridled and gave her sister a look of open rebuke. She had, as one could instantly see from her strong features and purposeful ways, been a woman of decided parts and of strict, upright character. Weakened as she was, the shadow of an untruth disturbed her. Her pride ran in a different groove from that of her once over-complimented, over-fostered sister. She was going to add a protest in words to that expressed by her gesture, but I hastily prevented this by coming at once to the point of my errand.
“My excuse for this early call,” I said, this time addressing Miss Thankful, “lies in an adventure which occurred to me yesterday in the adjoining house.” It was painful to see how they both started, and how they instinctively caught each at the other’s hand as they sat side by side on the sofa, as if only thus they could bear the shock of what might be coming next. I had to nerve myself to proceed. “You know, or rather I gather from your kind greetings that you know that I am at present staying with Mrs. Packard. She is very kind and we spend many pleasant hours together; but of course some of the time I have to be alone, and then I try to amuse myself by looking about at the various interesting things which are scattered through the house.”
A gasp from Miss Charity, a look still more expressive from Miss Thankful. I hastened to cut their suspense short.
“You know the little cabinet they have placed in the old entrance pointing this way? Well, I was looking at that when the whim seized me—I hardly know how—to press one of the knobs in the molding which runs about the doorway, when instantly everything gave way under me and I fell into a deep hole which had been scooped out of the alley-way—nobody knows for what.”
A cry and they were on their feet, still holding hands and endeavoring to show nothing but concern for my disaster.
“Oh, I wasn’t hurt,” I smiled. “I was frightened, of course, but not so much as to lose my curiosity. When I got to my feet again, I looked about in this surprising hole—”
“It was our uncle’s way of reaching his winecellar,” Miss Thankful explained with great dignity as she and her sister sank back into their seats. “He had some remarkable old wine, and, as he was covetous of it, he conceived this way of securing it from everybody’s knowledge but his own. It was a strange way, but he was a little touched,” she added, laying a slow impressive finger on her forehead, “just a little touched here.”
The short, significant glance she cast at Charity as she said this, and the little smile she gave were to give me to understand that this weakness had descended in the family. I felt my heart contract; my self-imposed task was a harder one than I had anticipated, but I could not shirk it now. “Did this wine-cellar you mention run all the way to this house?” I lightly inquired. “I stumbled on a passage leading here, which I thought you ought to know is now open to any one in Mayor Packard’s house. Of course, it will be closed soon,” I hastened to add as Miss Charity hurriedly rose at her sister’s quick look and anxiously left the room. “Mrs. Packard will see to that.”
“Yes, yes, I have no doubt; she’s a very good woman, a very fair woman, don’t you think so, Miss—”
“My name is Saunders.”
“A very good name. I knew a fine family of that name when I was younger. There was one of them—his name was Robert—” Here she rambled on for several minutes as if this topic and no other filled her whole mind; then, as if suddenly brought back to what started it, she uttered in sudden anxiety, “You think well of Mrs. Packard? You have confidence in her?”
I allowed myself to speak with all the enthusiasm she so greedily desired.
“Indeed I have,” I cried. “I think she can be absolutely depended on to do the right thing every time. You are fortunate in having such good neighbors at the time of this mishap.”
At this minute Miss Charity reentered. Her panting condition, as well as the unsettled position of the cap on her head, told very plainly where she had been. Reseating herself, she looked at Miss Thankful and Miss Thankful looked at her, but no word passed. They evidently understood each other.