Miss Buffum's New Boarder by Francis Hopkinson Smith

I

He was seated near the top end of Miss Buffum's table when I first saw his good-natured face with its twinkling eyes, high cheekbones and broad, white forehead in strong contrast to the wizened, almost sour, visage of our landlady. Up to the time of his coming every one had avoided that end, or had gradually shifted his seat, gravitating slowly toward the bottom, where the bank clerk, the college professor and I hobnobbed over our soup and boiled mutton.

It was his laugh that attracted my attention -- the first that had come from the upper end of the table in the memory of the oldest boarder. Men talk of the first kiss, the first baby, the first bluebird in the spring, but to me, who have suffered and know, the first, sincere, hearty laugh, untrammelled and unlimited, that rings down the hide-bound table of a dismal boarding-house, carries with it a surprise and charm that outclasses them all. The effect on this occasion was like the opening of a window letting in a gust of pure air. Some of the more sensitive shivered at its freshness, and one woman raised her eyeglasses in astonishment, but all the rest craned their heads in the new boarder's direction, their faces expressing their enjoyment. As for Miss Buffum and the schoolmistress, they so far forgot themselves as to join audibly in the merriment.

What the secret of the man's power, or why the schoolteacher -- who sat on Miss Buffum's right -- should have become suddenly hilarious, or how Miss Buffum herself could be prodded or beguiled into smiles, no one at my end of the table could understand; and yet, as the days went by, it became more and more evident that not only were these two cold, brittle exteriors being slowly thawed out, but that every one else within the sound of his seductive voice was yielding to his influence.

Stories that had lain quiet in our minds for months for lack of a willing or appreciative ear, or had been told behind our hands, -- small pipings most of them of club and social gossip, now became public property, some being bowled along the table straight at the new boarder, who sent his own rolling back in exchange, his big, sonorous voice filling the room as he replied with accounts of his life in Poland among the peasants; of his experiences in the desert; of a shipwreck off the coast of Ceylon in which he was given up for lost; of a trip he made across the Russian steppes in a sleigh -- each adventure ending in some strangely humorous situation which put the table in a roar.

None of these narratives, however, solved the mystery of his identity or of his occupation. All our good landlady knew was that he had driven up in a hack one afternoon, bearing a short letter of introduction from a former lodger -- a man who had lived abroad for the previous ten years -- introducing Mr. Norvic Bing; that after its perusal she had given him the second-story front room, at that moment empty -- a fact that had greatly influenced her -- and that he had at once moved in. His trunks -- there were two of them -- had, she remembered, been covered with foreign labels (and still were) -- all of which could be verified by any one who had a right to know and who would take the trouble to inspect his room when he was out, which occurred every day between ten in the morning and six in the afternoon, and more often between six in the afternoon and ten the next morning.

The slight additional information she possessed came from the former lodger's letter, which stated that the bearer, Mr. Norvic Bing, was a native of Denmark, that he was visiting America for the first time, and that, desiring a place where he could live in complete retirement, the writer had recommended Miss Buffum's house.

As to who he was in his own country -- and he certainly must have been some one of importance, judging from his appearance -- and what the nature of his business, these things did not concern the dear lady in the least. He was courteous, treated her with marked respect, was exceedingly agreeable, and had insisted -- and this she stated was the one particular thing that endeared him to her -- had insisted on paying his board a MONTH IN ADVANCE, instead of waiting until the thirty days had elapsed. His excuse for this unheard-of idiosyncrasy was that he might some day be suddenly called away, too suddenly even to notify her of his departure, and that he did not want either his belongings or his landlady's mind disturbed during his absence.

Miss Buffum's summing up of Bing's courtesy and affability was shared by every one at my end of the table, although some of them differed as regarded his origin and occupation.

"Looks more like an Englishman than a Dane," said the bank clerk; "although I don't know any Danes. But he's a daisy, anyhow, and ought to have his salary raised for being so jolly."

"I don't agree with you," rejoined the professor. "He is unquestionably a Scandinavian -- you can see that in the high cheekbones and flat nose. He is evidently studying our people with a view of writing a book. Nothing else would persuade a man of his parts to live here. I lived in just such a place the winter I spent in Dresden. You want to get close to the people when you study their peculiarities. But whoever he is, or wherever he comes from, he is a most delightful gentleman -- perfectly simple, and so sincere that it is a pleasure to hear him talk."

As for myself, I am ashamed to say that I did not agree with either the bank clerk or the professor. Although I admitted Mr. Bing's wide experience of men and affairs, and his marvellous powers of conversation, I could not divest myself of the conviction that underneath it all there lay something more than a mere desire to be either kindly or entertaining; in fact, that his geniality, though outwardly spontaneous, was really a cloak to hide another side of his nature -- a fog into which he retreated -- and that some day the real man would be revealed.