Domestic fiction; Short stories; Suburban life -- Fiction
The writer could only repeat that there was no Mr. Hapford living on
that street, and never had been, so far as he knew. Yet there might be
such a person in the neighborhood; and they would go out together, and
ask at some of the houses about. But the stranger must first take a
glass of wine; for he looked used up.
The sailor awkwardly but civilly enough protested that he did not want
to give so much trouble, but took the glass, and, as he put it to his
lips, said formally, as if it were a toast or a kind of grace, “I hope
I may have the opportunity of returning the compliment.” The contributor
thanked him; though, as he thought of all the circumstances of the case,
and considered the cost at which the stranger had come to enjoy his
politeness, he felt little eagerness to secure the return of the
compliment at the same price, and added, with the consequence of another
set phrase, “Not at all.” But the thought had made him the more anxious
to befriend the luckless soul fortune had cast in his way; and so the
two sallied out together, and rang door-bells wherever lights were
still seen burning in the windows, and asked the astonished people who
answered their summons whether any Mr. Hapford were known to live in the
neighborhood.
And although the search for this gentleman proved vain, the contributor
could not feel that an expedition which set familiar objects in such
novel light? was altogether a failure. He entered so intimately into the
cares and anxieties of his _protege,_ that at times he felt himself
in some inexplicable sort a shipmate of Jonathan Tinker, and almost
personally a partner of his calamities. The estrangement of all things
which takes place, within doors and without, about midnight may have
helped to cast this doubt upon his identity;--he seemed to be visiting
now for the first time the streets and neighborhoods nearest his own,
and his feet stumbled over the accustomed walks. In his quality
of houseless wanderer, and--so far as appeared to others--possibly
worthless vagabond, he also got a new and instructive effect upon the
faces which, in his real character, he knew so well by their looks of
neighborly greeting; and it is his belief that the first hospitable
prompting of the human heart is to shut the door in the eyes of homeless
strangers who present themselves after eleven o'clock. By that time the
servants are all abed, and the gentleman of the house answers the bell,
and looks out with a loath and bewildered face, which gradually changes
to one of suspicion, and of wonder as to what those fellows can possibly
want of _him,_ till at last the prevailing expression is one of contrite
desire to atone for the first reluctance by any sort of service. The
contributor professes to have observed these changing phases in the
visages of those whom he that night called from their dreams, or
arrested in the act of going to bed; and he drew the conclusion--very
proper for his imaginable connection with the garroting and other
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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