The Man in the Moon (Williamson)

by Alice Muriel Williamson

THE MAN IN THE MOON

BY Mrs. C. N. Williamson*

THE way they came to know about him was this.

Cissy ran into the room and exclaimed: “Oh, mother, oh, Gwen, there’s a Man in the Moon!”

Her mother only frowned, and said: “Don't be silly,” for she was reading an important letter, which might affect her whole future and that of her big girl and her little one. But Gwen—the big girl—laughed kindly, and held out her hand to the little girl.

“Have you only just found out that there’s a Man in the Moon?” she asked. “He’s always been there and always will be, I suppose—unless he eats up all the green cheese.”

“But I mean the real Moon—the Moon on the river,” explained Cissy. “You know, that poor old, shabby white house boat named the Moon, that has been ‘To Let or For Sale’ for so long. Somebody’s taken it. There’s a man there, and he was good to me. Flops went into the water after a stick three times, and the last time she got a cramp or something, and I was so worried about her when she couldn’t get out that I cried and howled, and the Man jumped out of the Moon and waded deep in and got her.”

“Oh, my dear child, what an adventure!” cried Gwen, and the word “adventure” in connection with one of her daughters caused Mrs. Greatorex to look up from the letter. Then the story had to be repeated, with elaborations, to her. How Miss Minns, the governess, had not screamed or howled, but had had a palpitation at sight of Flops’ danger, and considered the Man in the Moon a very brave and courteous gentleman.

“Nonsense, he can’t be a gentleman,” said Mrs. Greatorex, “or he couldn’t possibly think of living in that ramshackle old thing, and especially at this season of the year. Who ever heard of a sane human being taking even the best of house boats in November? He must be mad, or an escaped convict.”

“Rather a conspicuous abode for an escaped convict,” commented Gwen. “What is the Man in the Moon like, Cissy?”

“Oh, terribly handsome,” replied the child, “although old. He must be over thirty; and his clothes looked so poor. I did hope, when he got them wet, that he had others to change with, but Miss Minns wouldn’t let me ask him.”

By this time Mrs. Greatorex was lost in her letter again, and had forgotten the Man in the Moon. It really was an absorbing letter, as absorbing as any chapter of romance, Gwen might have thought, for she had an imaginative and picturesque mind—almost as picturesque as her lovely face and whole charming personality. But Mrs. Greatorex was different, and her point of view regarding the letter, and everything else in life, was entirely practical.

As for the letter, it concerned a will; and Mrs. Greatorex desperately hoped that the will concerned her, or might be made to do so in the end. A very rich old man had died lately in California. He was a cousin of Mrs. Greatorex’s, and that would have been hopeful, as he had no nearer living relations than she; but, unfortunately, he had others no more distant, living in the neighborhood of Rookham, where Mrs. Greatorex lived; and, still more unfortunately, the rich old man—whose name was also Greatorex—had made a will leaving every penny of his immense fortune to a man who was no relation to him at all.

This would naturally have settled matters forever, as far as the expectations of Samuel Greatorex’s cousins were concerned, if it had not been for the magnificent eccentricities of the person who had come into the money. He was a doctor whose skill had kept the old man alive for several years longer than he had dared hope to live, and when death had finally occurred, in California, the heir of the million or two had written to the relatives.

He had said that he did not wish to keep the fortune for himself. He would take only the sum left to him originally, the millions having been an afterthought, in a codicil. He was not a poor man, he explained, and the few thousand pounds which his old friend had in the first instance wished to bestow upon him would be entirely satisfactory as a remembrance.

His desire was to carry out an idea of old Mr. Greatorex’s, abandoned of late years, though once seriously discussed.

Mr. Greatorex had in those days planned to come home to England and pay visits among his relatives, whom he had never seen, decide which ones were best fitted to administer a fortune, and leave the bulk of it accordingly, each member of the family receiving at least some small legacy.

Now, Dr. John Hampton’s plan was to do what Samuel Greatorex had once intended. He would come to England, would acquaint himself with Mr. Greatorex’s relatives, and dispose of the money among them as seemed good to him after forming his impressions.

Such a letter had been sent to each of the three families who made up the little circle of the dead man’s relatives; and in each was inclosed a photograph of Dr. Hampton, showing him an elderly, gray-haired man, who looked like an intelligent provincial solicitor. It was this document which Mrs. Greatorex had been reading when Cissy came bursting into the room with her childish chatter.

The relations were asked to arrange between themselves at which house Dr. Hampton should visit first; for, said he, as Sir James and Lady Pelham, with their two sons, and Mr. and Mrs. Norwood, with their flock of children, as well as the widowed Mrs. Greatorex, all had houses within a few miles of each other, it could matter little in what order he made their acquaintance.

This was not, however, the opinion of the Pelhams, the Norwoods, or Mrs. Greatorex. Each family felt a prior claim to the good Dr. Hampton, and each family went to the expense of a cablegram, quite a long and intricate cablegram, explaining that claim and urging it. A day or two later an answer came back from New York by wire to each. Dr. Hampton had decided in favor of Sir James Pelham, socially the most important of the little band of relatives, and he was sailing at once. He named the ship, the date of his landing, and suggested that the Norwoods and the Greatorexes should be invited to meet him at dinner on the night of his arrival.

Neither of the disappointed families could refuse. To do so would have been like cutting off one of their best features to spite the face of which it had been a conspicuous ornament. It was galling to think that the arbiter of their destiny had been “nobbled” by the Pelhams, and that they must meet him at the obnoxious people’s house, but Dr. Hampton’s slightest wish must be law, and they were obliged to bend to it. The Norwoods accepted, and so did Mrs. Greatorex, for herself and her two daughters—since even the youngest cousins were to be present at the feast.

Then, just as everybody had been wrought up to the highest pitch of excitement, an inopportune and unwelcome thing happened. The vicar asked them all, as a personal favor to him, to be kind to the Man in the Moon.

The Man’s name, it seemed, was Jack Forestier. The vicar, who was a good-natured, unworldly, altogether insignificant sort of person, had met him when traveling in Canada or somewhere, and, in fact, was responsible for his taking the house boat. Jack Forestier, according to the vicar, was “by way of being an artist,” with a great deal of talent, though he had never made money by his painting. He could just afford to hire the Moon, with its few sticks of furniture which had stood rotting for years, and in the good weather, when he got stronger—he was said to be recovering after an illness—he would be able to do a little painting, for which the beauty of the surrounding neighborhood would be an inspiration.

“Oh, mother, we will be nice to him, won’t we?” exclaimed Gwen, after the vicar’s call. “You know he saved Flops from being drowned, and he might have taken his death of cold, as he’s an invalid. Poor fellow, he’s too likely to do that in any case, living in that poky, damp old Moon. He ought not to do it.”

“There is no reason why a house boat, even though old, should be damp, simply because it rests on the water,” said Mrs. Greatorex, coldly. This was an opinion formed hastily, though firmly, to suit the circumstances; for she did not intend to indulge the vicar by being “nice” to the Man in the Moon, and she did not wish to be made constantly uncomfortable through having him pitied by her daughter.

She considered the vicar a stupid, fussy little man, who preached dull sermons and did foolish deeds. He was old, and talked of retirement. And there was a rumor that when he went a delightful bachelor with a title would get the living. Thus there was nothing to be gained by pleasing the vicar.

“At least, you’ll invite Mr. Forestier to dinner soon, and again for Christmas, won’t you, mother?” persisted Gwen. “And if you should ask him to paint just a little, little picture of the river front of our house—you know you've often said you’d like to have it done—perhaps it would make a lot of difference to him, and he could move into better quarters, through the cold weather, at all events.”

“If you think I can afford twenty pounds or so for an unknown artist, who probably isn’t an artist,” said Mrs. Greatorex, “you are much mistaken. Have you seen this person, may I ask, my dear, that you take up his cause so warmly?”

“No,” replied Gwen, entirely unembarrassed. “It’s only because what dear old Mr. Denham told us about him interested me, and made me sorry for the poor man. And, besides, I’m grateful to him for Flops. Miss Minns said he was a gentleman.”

“Miss Minns is barely a lady, and no judge of the opposite sex, though she is good enough for a nursery governess,” returned Mrs. Greatorex, with the thin-lipped look which warned her children when it was most unsafe to contradict her. “We have plenty of acquaintances—too many, really, and I have no wish to make any more undesirable ones, to humor a fancy of Mr. Denham’s.”

Gwen said no more. She was nineteen and her mother fifty; so, of course, there could be no question as to which was right—at all events, no question which could be spoken aloud. But very soon after, Gwen did see the Man in the Moon, when she was walking with Cissy; and then she knew that, had the meeting occurred before instead of after, her answer the other day could not have been given so frankly and without embarrassment.

For there was something about the Man in the Moon which aroused in the girl a very keen and very personal interest, the moment she set eyes upon him.

She had imagined him old, or at least elderly, but he was neither. If he was not precisely handsome, he had one of the nicest faces which Gwen had ever seen; better than if he were a “beauty man,” she thought. He was dark, with a strong mouth and chin and wistful gray eyes. Though he had not the air of an invalid, he was certainly thin, and rather pale; lonely looking, too, as he walked slowly along the towing path, with his hands in the pockets of his shabby but well-cut coat.

“He is a gentleman,” she said to herself, as Cissy whispered excitedly: “There’s the Moon Man;” and she thought that he ought to be wearing an overcoat. But perhaps he couldn’t afford it; and a pang of sympathy shot through her warm heart. She did hope that Mr. Denham had not told him about asking her mother to be “nice,” or he would be thinking them a hateful, snobbish family, as they had made no sign.

By this time he had come near, and taken off his hat with a smile for Cissy—a nice smile, as it ought to have been for such a face as his.

“How do you do?” asked the child, cordially, and little Flops, the enterprising dachshund, recognized her rescuer with engaging gratitude. It would have needed a heart of stone to pass on without taking Cissy’s outstretched hand and stooping to pat one of Flops’ velvet ears; and men with eyes like the Moon Man’s do not have hearts of stone.

The pause made speech on the part of the grown-up sister a necessity, or Gwen thought so. She therefore, with a pretty shyness, thanked the Man for preserving the valuable life of Flops. He responded in a delightful voice, which had, the girl fancied, a slightly un-English accent, as if the speaker might be an Australian or a Canadian.

They talked a little, and Cissy talked a great deal. She announced that Miss Minns had a bad cold, and that her sister, Gwen, was taking her for a walk. “We hoped we’d see you,” she said.

This made Gwen blush violently, and Gwen was beautiful when she blushed. It was too difficult to explain that if anyone had been so indecorous as to hope such a thing it must have been Cissy, and that, as for her, she had had no thought of the Moon and its tenant when she consented to choose the towpath for a walk. But she looked at the Man from the Moon, and he looked at her, and she felt that he understood.

“Isn’t it most awfully cold in the Moon?” asked Cissy.

“No,” said the Man; “I manage to keep warm.”

“But aren’t you lonely?” persisted the child.

“Sometimes, a little,” the Man admitted. And perhaps Gwen only imagined that he looked wistful. But it gave her as guilty a pang as if she had been sure.

“I should be afraid of the water rats,” remarked Cissy, gazing at the Moon from a distance. “My sister says you keep green cheese, and rats like that, don’t they, even water ones?”

The Man laughed at this suggestion as to his housekeeping, but now Gwen was bound to explain; and this led to further conversation. The two girls had been walking toward the Moon, and the Man had evidently been coming home, so he was allowed, even encouraged, to stroll by their side as far as his own residence.

“Oh, how I should like to see what it looks like inside!” exclaimed Cissy.

The Man looked at Gwen. “If I dared, I should be delighted to——” he began; but very sweetly, if firmly, the elder girl thanked him and assured him that it was impossible—for that day. They must not be out too long; but perhaps another time, if he would ask them——

“You shouldn’t have said that, Cissy,” Gwen reproached the child, when they had bidden the Man good-by.

“Why not?” asked the little girl. “I’m sure he would have liked to have us.”

Gwen secretly thought it not improbable—unless he were ashamed of his forlorn surroundings. And she was certain that she would have liked to go.

One day, not long after, Dr. John Hammond arrived; and the band of relatives—mostly wearing decent mourning for the dead Samuel Greatorex—drove to Sir James Pelham’s place to dine and meet him. Gwendolen alone, among the grown members of the company, refused to wear even so much as a black sash with her simple white dinner dress. “I should feel a hypocrite,” she said; and even her mother’s irritable counsels did not prevail.

The Pelhams, the Norwoods and the Greatorexes, though united by ties of blood, were united in no other way; and lately they had been less fond of one another than before, for the element of jealousy and suspicion had entered into their relations. But, though they would doubtless have submitted to torture, if not too prolonged or too severe, rather than exchange sentiments on such a subject, they could not have helped agreeing on one point that night of the family dinner party. There could be no two opinions about Dr. Hammond. He was a singularly disagreeable little man.

In looks he was mild and inoffensive, with rather a good head, but his manner was insufferable—or would have been insufferable in anybody else. He was nervous, fussy, rude, obstinate, overbearing, monstrously conceited, boringly long-winded, and a dozen other detestable things besides. The assembly could not help finding all this out before dinner was half over, but they did not give way to depression. Far from it; they labored to conciliate and please the hateful little person, not only as if they had a Christian duty to perform, but as though they were reveling in his society. They hung upon his words; they smiled at his most unpleasant cynicisms as if they had been listening to the wit of Sydney Smith. They felt the most absorbing interest in his anecdotes, they cared to hear nothing so much as the story of his life, which appeared to have been an abysmally dull one.

Thus did the grown-ups; all but Gwen, who for her scornful indifference was scolded heartily in the carriage going home, and would have been slapped if she had been nine, like Cissy, instead of nineteen. As for the children, Cissy was the youngest. All the others had been drilled into beautiful behavior; and Cissy went to sleep, which was at least inoffensive.

The worst of it was, from Mrs. Greatorex’s point of view, that Dr. Hammond seemed at first inclined to notice Gwen; and she was looking wonderfully pretty in her white frock, perhaps all the prettier for being scornful. It would have been so easy for her to create a good impression. The elderly American could not have helped being pleased with her beauty, and there was another who noticed it, too—though not for the first time. Her cousin, Harry Pelham, said to himself that if the old brute handed over his ill-gotten gains to the Pelham family he could afford to propose to Gwen; while, if the bulk of the money should, by any unfortunate chance, fall to the Greatorexes, he should certainly do so at the earliest opportunity.

Entirely owing to Gwen’s contumacy—in her mother’s opinion, at least—Dr. Hammond apparently transferred his wavering fancy to the eldest Norwood girl, and announced that, after a week’s visit with the Pelhams, he would go next to the Norwoods, finishing the round at Mrs. Greatorex’s, and letting his final decision be known on Christmas Day—the “day for making gifts,” as he explained.

This gave the relatives three weeks to get in their best work at making good impressions, and all those who had reached years of discretion vied with one another in the effort; again excepting Gwen. That misguided young woman, in a scene with her mother, frankly pronounced Dr. Hammond a horrid man; said that as he must know he was hateful, he would only despise them for their hypocrisies, and she, for one, was not going to lay herself open to be despised. She refused to go with Mrs. Greatorex to make frequent calls on Lady Pelham and on Mrs. Norwood, and spent most of her time in the schoolroom with Cissy, as Miss Minns’ cold had increased and she had been sent home in advance of the Christmas holidays.

The sisters took several walks together before Gwen could be induced to pass the Moon again, but one day Flops pattered ahead, along the towing path, and the girls followed. The Man in the Moon was not visible, but they had not gone far past the house boat when long-threatened rain began to fall in torrents. They turned to run back, and the Man appeared at the door of the Moon, cordially inviting them to come in and wait until the storm should be over. It would have been silly and prim to refuse, Gwen thought, so she accepted.

The Moon was not pretty inside; indeed, it was even more dreary than she had fancied, and her heart ached for its lonely occupant; but there was a paraffin lamp-stove with a red glass front, and Gwen helped the Man in the Moon to make tea. The girls thought that they had stayed about twenty-five minutes when they said good-by, but really they had been in the Moon for more than an hour. Next day they were absolutely obliged to go back, as Gwen had promised to make the Man a cake, and Cissy had offered a kitten, which had been accepted eagerly. Then it appeared that the Man had taken a severe cold, and the big sister and the little one were very sympathetic. Gwen begged that he would send for the doctor, which he agreed to do, solely to please her, and instead of going directly home, the two stopped at the physician’s house, in the village. Stammering a little, Gwen told the story of the acquaintance, bringing in Mr. Denham’s name, explaining to the good old man that Mr. Forestier seemed to be poor, and she would like to pay the doctor’s fee.

“Mother won’t bother with him,” said the girl, ‘so Cissy and I are obliged to show a little gratitude on our own account, for the sake of decency and of Mr. Denham.”

Dr. Morley had known Mrs. Greatorex for many years, and quite understood the family difficulty. He said that he would not take any fee at all from the Man in the Moon. He went often to inquire for him, and so did Gwen and Cissy.

A few days before Christmas Dr. Hammond became the guest of the Greatorexes, and Gwen’s mother, in her anxiety that the girl should atone for past misdemeanors, tried first severity, then persuasion, in the hope of inducing her obstinate daughter to receive the important visitor with effusion.

“Horrid old man, I can hardly be civil to him!” exclaimed Gwen. “But”—with a sudden thought—“I will be as nice as ever I can if you'll do one thing for me. Write to Mr. Forestier and ask him to Christmas dinner. I can’t bear to think of—Mr. Denham’s friend being left to spend his Christmas alone in that dingy old house boat; and you know Mr. Denham can’t ask him, as he is away for Christmas at his brother’s.”

“How can we have a stranger then, even if I were willing for other reasons?” asked Mrs. Greatorex. “You know perfectly well that Dr. Hammond is to announce his decision on Christmas.”

“Surely not at dinner,” said Cissy.

“I suppose not. But before the Pelhams and Norwoods go.”

“Well, Mr. Forestier will go first. He would have so far to walk, he would be sure to leave early.”

Then followed a long and heated argument, but in the end Gwen triumphed. The situation appeared to Mrs. Greatorex well-nigh desperate, and as the fortune of the family might lie in the girl’s hands, those same small hands must be allowed to pull the strings of circumstance for once. Besides, it might be that the Man in the Moon would have grace enough to refuse.

But he did not. He accepted; and he was the first arrival on Christmas evening. So early was he, in fact, that Mrs. Greatorex was not yet dressed for dinner, and Gwen flew down to entertain him. He looked very handsome in evening clothes, though they were a little shabby and had the air of having been put away for a long time. “Hired for the occasion,” was what Dick Pelham whispered about them in Gwen’s ear, somewhat later; but instead of prejudicing her against the Man from the Moon, the whisper made her more than ever his champion. “What if they are?” she retorted. “It’s nothing against him if he’s poor. He’s the most interesting man I ever knew.”

Dr. Hammond happened to be standing near at the moment—he was always pottering aimlessly about. “Who’s that you’re talking of?” he chirped, curiously. “Who’s the most interesting man you know?”

Gwen told him, fearlessly. “H’m!” said he, in his disagreeable, growling way. “I thought well-brought-up young ladies never considered poor men interesting. This one’s an artist, I think you said, and lives in a house boat. Not a very eligible acquaintance.”

“I’d rather give up most others,” cried the girl, impulsively.

“I shall warn your mother, Miss Gwen. He'll be proposing next.”

“I wish he would!”

The words sprang from her lips in sheer defiance before she knew, and when they were irrevocably spoken she blushed till the tears stood in her eyes. She hoped that the two men who had heard would understand that she had not really meant what she said, but, then, the worst of it was, when she came to reflect, that she really did mean it; for she was in love with the Man from the Moon, and something in his eyes, when he had wished her “Many happy Christmases,” would have told her that he cared for her—even if she hadn’t guessed long before.

Just at this moment dinner was announced, and Gwen’s place was next to Dr. Hammond. The Man in the Moon was on her other side, simply because Mrs. Greatorex had not known how else to dispose of him, as all the cousins had been asked by Mr. Denham to be kind, and all had ignored the request, as she had.

Gwen had made a certain promise to her mother, and she had been paid to keep it; accordingly she forced herself to smile on the cantankerous old gentleman who was, for obvious reasons, the family idol. But whether it was the benign influence of Christmas, or whether something had happened to please Dr. Hammond, suddenly he had ceased to be cantankerous. From the moment of sitting down at the table, he was changed as if by a miracle. His face, no longer puckered, beamed benevolently upon all; he made little jokes; he showed himself interested in the ideas of others.

Nobody knew what to make of him, but the various members of each separate family hoped that the miracle augured something of good for them.

At last, when his health had been drunk, he rose and began to speak. “My friends,” he said, in a milder voice than any one of the circle had heard from him until to-night, “you have all been very kind to me. I thank you for the welcome you have given to a stranger. You know why I came among you. I felt that, before deciding in what way the bulk of Samuel Greatorex’s money should be bestowed, it was my duty to learn, if possible, who would be likely to make the best use of it. I wanted to find out for myself who was the kindest, most generous, most charitable and least spoiled by the world, among Samuel Greatorex’s relatives, and I have at last been able to pick out that person.”

“Dear Dr. Hammond, perhaps you forget that we have a stranger among us,” Mrs. Greatorex ventured to break in.

The old man looked surprised. “A stranger?” he repeated.

“Mr. Forestier,” she murmured, warningly.

Dr. Hammond smiled at her and then at the Man from the Moon. “That’s not a stranger,” said he. “Far from it. That’s my son, Jack—John Forestier Walker, you know. He’s a doctor, too. In fact, he was poor Greatorex’s doctor. It’s years since I retired on my laurels. You see, it was to him the money was left, and we’ve been, as one may say, working this job together. He depended on me to help him; I depended on him to help me.”

Everyone was struck dumb. Not even Dick Pelham, who was seldom at a loss of words, could have spoken to save his life. And old Dr. Hammond, looking very grave now, turned to Gwen.

“It’s Christmas,” he said, “and I don’t want to be harsh to anybody, so I won’t criticise the conduct of the others. I will only put it in this way. You, Miss Greatorex, seem to me the only one among Samuel Greatorex’s relations who will use his money as we think it ought to be used—in making those around you happier. You are neither a snob nor a hypocrite. You are a good and true girl, and my son and I wish you joy of the great future which will be yours; don’t we, Jack?”

The Man from the Moon did not answer, but he looked at the girl and smiled.

It seemed to Gwen that there was something of heaven in that smile; and it was the Man she thought of, not the money.

 

Afterward, when Gwen’s engagement to Jack Forestier Hammond was announced, the other relations, who had to be content with the dole of a few hundreds, said that they did not quite see where young Dr. Hammond’s wonderful chivalry came in, as he got the girl and the fortune with her. But Gwen knew that she had not entered into the first plan of the Man in the Moon. She believed in him and loved him, as she had from the first, only a great deal more. And perhaps it may be as well for those who waste time in wishing for the Moon, to know that Dr. and Mrs. Hammond have bought it.

• Alice Muriel Williamson