A Collection of Stories, Reviews and EssaysCather, Willa
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A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays
Cather, Willa
Essays; Short stories; United States -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
Cavenaugh sniffed. "No more do I. I really feel that I've been put
upon. I haven't deserved it any more than any other fellow of my
kind. Doesn't it impress you disagreeably?"
"Well, rather so. Has anyone else seen your friend?"
"You saw him."
"We won't count that. As I said, there's no certainty that you and I
saw the same person in the court that night. Has anyone else had a
look in?"
"People sense him rather than see him. He usually crops up when I'm
alone or in a crowd on the street. He never approaches me when I'm
with people I know, though I've seen him hanging about the doors of
theatres when I come out with a party; loafing around the stage
exit, under a wall; or across the street, in a doorway. To be frank,
I'm not anxious to introduce him. The third time, it was I who came
upon him. In November my driver, Harry, had a sudden attack of
appendicitis. I took him to the Presbyterian Hospital in the car,
early in the evening. When I came home, I found the old villain in
my rooms. I offered him a drink, and he sat down. It was the first
time I had seen him in a steady light, with his hat off.
"His face is lined like a railway map, and as to color--Lord, what a
liver! His scalp grows tight to his skull, and his hair is dyed
until it's perfectly dead, like a piece of black cloth."
Cavenaugh ran his fingers through his own neatly trimmed thatch, and
seemed to forget where he was for a moment.
"I had a twin brother, Brian, who died when we were sixteen. I have
a photograph of him on my wall, an enlargement from a kodak of him,
doing a high jump, rather good thing, full of action. It seemed to
annoy the old gentleman. He kept looking at it and lifting his
eyebrows, and finally he got up, tip-toed across the room, and
turned the picture to the wall.
"'Poor Brian! Fine fellow, but died young,' says he.
"Next morning, there was the picture, still reversed."
"Did he stay long?" Eastman asked interestedly.
"Half an hour, by the clock."
"Did he talk?"
"Well, he rambled."
"What about?"
Cavenaugh rubbed his pale eyebrows before answering.
"About things that an old man ought to want to forget. His
conversation is highly objectionable. Of course he knows me like a
book; everything I've ever done or thought. But when he recalls
them, he throws a bad light on them, somehow. Things that weren't
much off color, look rotten. He doesn't leave one a shred of
self-respect, he really doesn't. That's the amount of it." The young
man whipped out his handkerchief and wiped his face.
"You mean he really talks about things that none of your friends
know?"
"Oh, dear, yes! Recalls things that happened in school. Anything
disagreeable. Funny thing, he always turns Brian's picture to the
wall."
"Does he come often?"
"Yes, oftener, now. Of course I don't know how he gets in
down-stairs. The hall boys never see him. But he has a key to my
door. I don't know how he got it, but I can hear him turn it in the
lock."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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