Youth and the Bright Medusa | Page 4

it was too heavy for any but
Hedger's strong arm to lift. Hedger was not above medium height, but
he practised with weights and dumb-bells, and in the shoulders he was
as strong as a gorilla.
So Hedger had the roof to himself. He and Caesar often slept up there
on hot nights, rolled in blankets he had brought home from Arizona. He
mounted with Caesar under his left arm. The dog had never learned to
climb a perpendicular ladder, and never did he feel so much his
master's greatness and his own dependence upon him, as when he crept
under his arm for this perilous ascent. Up there was even gravel to
scratch in, and a dog could do whatever he liked, so long as he did not
bark. It was a kind of Heaven, which no one was strong enough to
reach but his great, paint-smelling master.
On this blue May night there was a slender, girlish looking young
moon in the west, playing with a whole company of silver stars. Now
and then one of them darted away from the group and shot off into the
gauzy blue with a soft little trail of light, like laughter. Hedger and his
dog were delighted when a star did this. They were quite lost in
watching the glittering game, when they were suddenly diverted by a

sound,--not from the stars, though it was music. It was not the Prologue
to Pagliacci, which rose ever and anon on hot evenings from an Italian
tenement on Thompson Street, with the gasps of the corpulent baritone
who got behind it; nor was it the hurdy-gurdy man, who often played at
the corner in the balmy twilight. No, this was a woman's voice, singing
the tempestuous, over-lapping phrases of Signor Puccini, then
comparatively new in the world, but already so popular that even
Hedger recognized his unmistakable gusts of breath. He looked about
over the roofs; all was blue and still, with the well-built chimneys that
were never used now standing up dark and mournful. He moved softly
toward the yellow quadrangle where the gas from the hall shone up
through the half-lifted trapdoor. Oh yes! It came up through the hole
like a strong draught, a big, beautiful voice, and it sounded rather like a
professional's. A piano had arrived in the morning, Hedger remembered.
This might be a very great nuisance. It would be pleasant enough to
listen to, if you could turn it on and off as you wished; but you couldn't.
Caesar, with the gas light shining on his collar and his ugly but
sensitive face, panted and looked up for information. Hedger put down
a reassuring hand.
"I don't know. We can't tell yet. It may not be so bad."
He stayed on the roof until all was still below, and finally descended,
with quite a new feeling about his neighbour. Her voice, like her figure,
inspired respect,--if one did not choose to call it admiration. Her door
was shut, the transom was dark; nothing remained of her but the
obtrusive trunk, unrightfully taking up room in the narrow hall.
II
For two days Hedger didn't see her. He was painting eight hours a day
just then, and only went out to hunt for food. He noticed that she
practised scales and exercises for about an hour in the morning; then
she locked her door, went humming down the hall, and left him in
peace. He heard her getting her coffee ready at about the same time he
got his. Earlier still, she passed his room on her way to her bath. In the
evening she sometimes sang, but on the whole she didn't bother him.
When he was working well he did not notice anything much. The

morning paper lay before his door until he reached out for his milk
bottle, then he kicked the sheet inside and it lay on the floor until
evening. Sometimes he read it and sometimes he did not. He forgot
there was anything of importance going on in the world outside of his
third floor studio. Nobody had ever taught him that he ought to be
interested in other people; in the Pittsburgh steel strike, in the Fresh Air
Fund, in the scandal about the Babies' Hospital. A grey wolf, living in a
Wyoming canyon, would hardly have been less concerned about these
things than was Don Hedger.
One morning he was coming out of the bathroom at the front end of the
hall, having just given Caesar his bath and rubbed him into a glow with
a heavy towel. Before the door, lying in wait for him, as it were, stood
a tall figure in a flowing blue silk dressing gown that fell away from
her marble arms. In her hands she