Bram Stoker - Bram Stoker - The Complete Novels

“Dick, you know you and I should help one another. You are big and strong, and mother says that the care you have taken of me, and the sense of security which your presence gives has made a new girl of me. I want to see you like other men — no, no! I don’t mean like them, with all their meanness and selfishness, but in not being ridiculous or not seeming at your best. Down in the cities men have rules among themselves as to how they should dress and what they should do; and I wouldn’t like any of them to misjudge you, if you should be there, or they here. You’re not offended with me, are you, Dick?”

He had been sitting with his knees apart and his face downcast, but there was something in her voice which made him look up. His great blue eyes looked into her great brown ones, and the whole quarrel was made up in one word as he held out his great brown hand and said:

“Shake!”

Esse took the pleasant punishment of his pump-handle shake without a wince, and when Dick had dropped her hand as suddenly as he had grasped it she felt in a less dictatorial mood towards him than she had ever experienced. With a certain new shyness she said:

“And I want you, Dick, to tell me of anything you notice that isn’t quite right in me — not quite as you’d have it in a girl that you respected. You know, Dick, we all want help to do the best that we are capable of!” she went on in a voice that somehow seemed to herself not to ring true, though Dick did not seem to notice it. He fidgeted his hands about awkwardly and blushed, actually blushed like a school-girl — that is, as a school-girl is supposed to blush according to the books.

Then he coughed prefatorily: this sent a pang through Esse’s heart, or whatever portion of her anatomy vanity resides in. Did a woman ever yet not feel a pang when a man whom she liked discovered the smallest fault? She could have beaten herself for the falsity of her tone as she said, with seeming impulsiveness:

“Go on, Dick! Don’t be afraid! I’ll tell you if you’re right.”

So Dick began:

“Wall, Little Missy, as you wish me to tell you, there is a matter — I don’t know as how I oughter mention it; or I don’t quite know how to say it right. But it hasn’t been my own noticin’ entirely. Them Shoshonies are mighty cute in noticin’, an’ they have a name for you which tells it; or rather they had, till I promised to knock the stuffin’ out of any of them that would use it again.”

“What was it?” asked Esse in curiosity, though her face was suffused with an indignant blush.

But Dick kept an artful silence on the point.

“Well, Little Missy, I think I’d better explain to you first. Why do you keep that nose-rag of yours always over your face the way you do? Guess, it looks mighty odd to folks!”

Esse’s blush turned a bright scarlet; she had a habit which had adhered to her from childhood up, just as some children maintain the habit of sucking the thumb, and concerning which she had often been spoken to and remonstrated with. She would twirl her handkerchief round her forefinger and thumb, and then place these fingers, parted widely, across her nose and mouth and sit reading hour after hour in this attitude. Even when she was not reading she would unconsciously assume the same position. She could not but be conscious that the habit was an odd one even if her mother and Miss Gimp had not kept her eternally informed of it, and it was simply gall and wormwood to her to have Dick notice the matter and join in the ranks of her tormentors. For a few moments she remained silent in sheer bewilderment as to what she should say, and then the only thing that was possible under the circumstances was spoken:

“Thank you! Dick, it is a bad habit I know, and mother and Gimp are always hammering me about it. I suppose I got into a habit as a child, and it has stuck to me. But I’ll try and get rid of it! indeed I will.”

There were tears of mortified vanity in her eyes, which recognising, Dick held out a red hand and gave his comfort in a homeopathic dose:

“Shake!”

Then Esse grew coy and said:

“Not till you tell me what the Indians call me.”

Dick looked for a moment embarrassed, and then his laugh rang out.

“Ha! ha! ha! Well, Little Missy, I’ll tell you — they call you Pahoo-mounon-he-ka.”

“And what does that mean?” As she spoke Esse tried to keep down her flaming indignation. The very fact of her not knowing what the word or phrase meant intensified her feeling. Omne ignotum pro magnifico.

Dick answered:

“It means, ‘Nose-ghost’; so you see that even the Shoshonies, that haven’t had a nose-rag among them since Adam, noticed that you don’t use yours correctly.”

“I presume that you mean a pocket-handkerchief by — by that — that vulgar phrase,” said Esse tartly.

“That’s so. But look here, Little Missy, since we’re on the trail, and we mean to run down the game this time — and since you kick — oh, yes, you do! Don’t I see it in every corner of your face! A man don’t learn woodcraft without gettin’ to notice little things like that! Let us wash up clean right here. Why do you always carry the nose-rag — excuse me little Missy, the pocket-handkerchief — rolled up in a ball when you’re not making a tent of it over your nose?”

“I don’t do anything of the kind!” said Esse indignantly, and again the tears of mortified vanity rose in her eyes.

Dick laughed in a way that seemed more insulting and aggressive than ever as he slapped his thigh in the way that aggravated Esse more than anything else.

“Wall, bust me if that doesn’t take the cake! Here is you denyin’ that; an’ all the time you’re a-holdin’ your nose-rag screwed up just the same as ever!”

Esse looked at her hand, and, seeing the handkerchief just as he had said, flung it on the ground as though it had been something noxious. Then, turning her back, she ran out of the glade, and went home.

An hour later she went back to the glade to get the handkerchief, but she could not find it; it had gone. From this little fact she felt that Miss Gimp could have woven a romance; and somehow it did not seem to her that it would have been quite ridiculous on the part of Miss Gimp.

Two days afterwards, Dick, in the midst of a conversation, suddenly stopped and handed her the handkerchief, neatly washed out and folded:

“This belongs to you, Little Missy. You dropped it in the wood the other night when you ran away.”

Esse took it with a simple ‘thank you,’ but when she got home, she put it in the locked drawer where she kept her valuables of all sorts.

The constant habit of trying to conquer her old trick when Dick was present seemed in some way to make a subtle kind of barrier between them. But it was in truth only a subtle barrier, and one that thought could overleap at will. The very existence of such a restraint raised the rough man in the girl’s eyes to a more important position, and blinded her to a thousand little roughnesses and coarsenesses which would have hourly offended her more cultured susceptibilities. This very lack of refinement on Dick’s part caused Esse many unhappy moments, for he seemed to fail to see that she was trying her best to rid herself of the ridiculous habit, and would often notice failures to which a more delicately minded person would have been wilfully blind. Thus, Esse soon grew to abandon the habit of covering her mouth and nose, but she still instinctively and unconsciously clung to the habit of rolling her handkerchief, and keeping it hidden in the hollow of her hand. But habits, be they never so trivial or ridiculous, have a hideous vitality of their own, and Esse soon found to her cost, that this unutterably trivial habit, which both the Indians and the trapper had noticed, had a tenacity denied to worthier things. She was often wounded to the quick when Dick, in his boisterous way would notice her resumption of her failing; but all the time this little trial was forming her character and developing that consciousness of effort which marks the border line between girl and woman. Once she was goaded into a retort — but such a retort as she had never dreamed of — when Dick had slapped his thigh, and with a Titanic peal of laughter remarked: