Читать книгу Lady Ann - Donald Henderson Clarke - Страница 3

When Ann was eight weeks old she said:

“Ah!”

When she was eight weeks and three days old she said:

“Ah Goo!”

She tipped the scales at nine pounds that same night.

Elihu hitched his bay mare Nellie to the buggy on a warm Sunday in mid-May and he and Naomi took Ann for her first ride.

The following Wednesday, Ann rode for the first time on an electric car, making the trip to Paradise Park with Naomi.

When she was a year old Ann walked a few steps, but her favorite exercise was sitting in a rocking chair with a cane seat and back which Elihu had made for her, and swaying to and fro. Naomi tied her in so that she couldn’t fall out.

When she was a year and one-half old, Ann pressed her cheek against her mother’s cheek, and said:

“Mama.”

She pressed her cheek against her father’s cheek, and said:

“Papa.”

And she pressed her cheek against the face of a painted cow which hung over her crib, and said:

“Tow.”

She always said goodnight to her father and mother and the cow, and went to sleep with a colored rag doll, which Aunt Emma Mabie had christened Eunice, but which Ann called Oontis. Ann sat in her rocking chair holding Oontis, and rocked, while her mother sat in an adult rocking chair, and sewed. Ann liked to sit and rock and listen to the phonograph.

Ann had diphtheria, chicken-pox, measles, scarlet fever and mumps. When she was suffering of gas pains one night, she said:

“Can’t you hear the pain running around inside of me?”

Naomi said to Ann one day:

“What was that I just heard you say?”

Ann replied:

“I said, ‘My God’.”

Naomi said:

“You must never use the name of God except when you are praying, or except when you are mentioning him in a respectful and loving way.”

Ann said:

“My God! Oh, fudge!”

She said to Vina one day:

“Go way back and sit down.”

She helped her mother arrange some fruit on the dining room table and said:

“How do you like that, my dear Gaston?”

Naomi said to Elihu:

“Ann is picking up slang phrases. I think it must be from Vina and from other children. I don’t know what to do about it.”

Elihu grinned and kissed her. He said:

“I guess she’ll get over it.”

Ann called after her father:

“Papa.”

He turned and asked:

“What is it?”

She laughed, and said:

“Rubber neck.”

Elihu growled and crouched over and ran toward Ann. She screamed and ran across the lawn. He caught her and tossed her shrieking to his wide, solid shoulder, which raised her a dizzy height from the grass. She threw off his hat, and dug her hands in his hair. He pulled her down and kissed her neck, his mustache tickling her so that she was on the verge of hysterics.

Ann had a fever, and Dr. Benham was looking at her when Elihu said:

“Doc, I wish you’d look at Naomi. She’s got a bad tooth, but she won’t say anything about it. I don’t think she’s slept more than a wink these last three nights.”

Naomi opened her mouth, and the doctor peered in, his head trembling ever so slightly. He said:

“That ought to come out.”

“I don’t feel as if I could stand it much longer,” Naomi confessed. “Can’t you take it out now.”

“It’ll hurt,” Dr. Benham said.

“I don’t mind, Doctor,” Naomi replied.

Elihu held a lamp so that its light fell favorably into Naomi’s mouth, and Dr. Benham squeezed the tooth in a pair of bone forceps. He moved it back and forth, and drew it. Drops of perspiration sparkled on his forehead. He held up the tooth with its great roots, incarnadined, and said:

“That was a bad one.”

Naomi said nothing but bent over a hand basin, which Elihu held, and spat blood in it. Her cheeks were pale. Dr. Benham poured aromatic spirits of ammonia into a glass, added a little water, and put it to her lips.

“Drink this,” he directed.

She drank.

“Now sit with your head down.”

Naomi sat with her head down. Dr. Benham pressed it down further. Naomi said weakly:

“I feel like a fool to give way like this.”

“Most men wouldn’t have stood that as well as you have,” Dr. Benham said. “You’re a regular old settler—the kind Indians could burn but couldn’t make say ‘Uncle.’ ”

Ann walked up and pressed her check against her mother’s. She asked:

“Does it hurt, Mama?”

Naomi put her arm around Ann’s waist and hugged her and said:

“No, darling. It only hurt a little. I just felt funny for a second. I’m all right now.”

Ann never forgot that scene, or the lesson that her mother was the kind who could be hurt and not utter a sound and who was ashamed of even feeling faint. Naomi was wearing a puff-sleeved white waist, with a blue figure in it, and a blue skirt that day, and Ann always remembered that, as well as the red stockings.

Ann came home from school when she was in the first grade of the Eastham Grammar School, an unattractive building of yellow brick. She said she had a headache, and lay down on the couch in the sitting room. Naomi got cold water and washcloths and kept fresh, cold compresses on Ann’s forehead. Ann moaned, and Naomi said:

“If you groan, I’m going away, but if you are a brave little girl I’ll stay right here and love you and make you comfortable and your headache will go away.”

Ann stopped moaning, and her mother massaged her head with gentle fingers, and Ann forgot the headache and went to sleep.

Naomi used to lie down with Ann every night, and they hugged each other close. Naomi gave Ann butterfly kisses, which were delicate flickerings of long eyelashes against Ann’s soft cheeks.

Naomi kept a Baby’s Record for Ann. In this record she filled in details under such headings as “First Outing,” “Weight,” “First Gifts,” “The First Tooth,” “The First Laugh,” “First Creeping,” “The First Step,” “First Short Clothes,” “First Shoes,” “The First Christmas,” “The First Word,” “The First Birthday,” and so on, and also in it she wrote long letters to her daughter to be read when Ann was older. These letters were addressed, “My Dear Little Ann,” “My Dear Little Lamb,” “My Dear Little Blessing,” “My Dear Little Lambkin,” “My Dearest Little Girl.” The tenor of them was that Ann was going to grow up to be a fine, splendid Christian woman, with remarkable strength of character, and be a source of help and love in the world. Of course, she always was going to continue to be a source of comfort and delight to her father and mother.

Naomi and Ann arose at six o’clock in the morning on August eighth, 1902, when Ann was eleven years old. They were going on an all-day picnic in the surrey, with Aunt Emma Mabie and Cousin Helen Mabie, two years older than Ann. Naomi said to Ann:

“Don’t you want to sleep a little longer?”

“No,” Ann replied. “I want to help make the sandwiches.”

Ann and Naomi were dressing in Naomi’s room when Naomi sat down suddenly on the side of the bed and pressed her hand to her side. She closed her eyes, and shut her lips tightly together. Ann asked:

“What’s the matter, Mama?”

Naomi made an attempt to smile and said:

“Nothing. I’ll be all right in a minute.”

Ann, frightened, put her cheek against her mother’s cheek, and said:

“Where does it hurt, Mama?”

Naomi petted her daughter’s hand, and said:

“Mama’s precious. I’ll be all right in a minute.”

Ten minutes later Naomi and Ann were making sandwiches in the big, bright kitchen.

“I like to make my own sandwiches because I like them dainty,” Naomi said to Ann as she spread deviled ham on a thin slice of white bread.

“I like chicken sandwiches,” Ann asserted.

“There’ll be plenty of all kinds,” Naomi said.

Aunt Emma Mabie was tall, slim and dark, with black hair, dark brown eyes, a wide humorous mouth and a firm chin on which grew a mole from which closely clipped hairs sprouted. Her daughter, Helen, was a blue-eyed blonde, inclined to be plump. Helen’s knees interfered when she walked, and she wore a contraption of gold wire intended to correct buck teeth in the front of her mouth.

Nellie dragged the four of them in the surrey over country roads to Hall’s Corner, a spot on the Back Road where an expanse of rolling, green grass ran down to Borden’s Brook, flowing through willows and white birches, through miniature pool and rapid, to the river.

Ann and Helen helped carry the lunch baskets and bottles of milk and ginger ale down to the brook. Then they took off shoes and stockings and went in wading. Aunt Emma said:

“I think I’ll wet my feet too. Come on, Naomi.”

Emma and Naomi held up their skirts and petticoats and moved white legs calf-deep in the clear water. Emma said:

“You really have beautiful legs, Naomi.”

That was the first time Ann ever had thought about the possibility of legs being ornamental as well as useful, and she looked with sharpened eyes at the four pair of legs. She decided hers and her mother’s were the prettiest, but that her mother’s were prettier than hers. This was a scene that remained stamped in her memory.

They had lunch in the shade of some white birches. A Darning Needle flew near them, and Helen screamed. Emma said:

“Don’t be silly, darling.”

“If they get in your hair they snarl it all up,” Helen said.

“Pouf!” Emma said, selecting another sandwich. “Don’t believe all the fairy tales you hear. Those bugs are perfectly harmless.”

Emma looked over at Naomi, and added:

“What’s the matter, Naomi? You aren’t eating.”

“I’m just not hungry,” Naomi said, smiling.

Ann piped up and said:

“Mama had a pain this morning but she wouldn’t admit it.”

Emma grunted, and said:

“It’s just like her, and the rest of her tribe. They’d die before they’d peep. What’s the matter, Naomi?”

Naomi shook her head:

“Really, I am all right. Just leave me alone.”

Emma looked at her keenly, and arose to her feet, stuffing the last of a chicken sandwich into her mouth.

“You aren’t all right, Naomi,” Emma asserted. “You look mighty peeked. Where does it hurt?”

“She was holding on to her stomach,” Ann said. “Weren’t you, Mama?”

Emma sniffed again, and said:

“Well, we’re going right home, and your mother is going to see the doctor as soon as we get there. The very idea!”

Naomi arose and shook out her skirts and said:

“I don’t see what you are making all this fuss about, Emma. There is no need to spoil your and the children’s day. I’m perfectly all right.”

Emma was packing. She said, without looking around:

“If I didn’t know you, I’d believe you, Naomi. But if you look pale and can’t eat it’s the same to me as if the ordinary human was throwing a fit and screaming for help.”

Ann stared at her mother with wide eyes, in which tears were not far from the surface. Naomi put her arm around Ann and petted her:

“Don’t worry, darling,” Naomi said. “I’m perfectly all right.”

Ann’s lips trembled and she said:

“I don’t want you to be sick.”

Naomi smiled and replied:

“I won’t be. Give me a kiss.”

Dr. Benham took a quick look at Naomi and said to Elihu:

“Appendicitis. She’ll have to be operated right away.”

He looked at Naomi and asked:

“How long have you had these pains?”

“For two or three weeks,” she confessed.

Dr. Benham shrugged and turned to Elihu.

“She’d never’ve said anything on her own hook,” he asserted.

Elihu looked dumbly at Dr. Benham, his eyes asking questions. The doctor petted his back, and said:

“Now, there’s nothing to worry about, Elihu. People are getting operated every day.”

“I’ll be perfectly all right, Elihu,” Naomi said.

Elihu stooped to lift her up to carry her to the carriage. She said:

“For goodness sake, I can walk.”

“Let him carry you, Naomi,” Dr. Benham said. “Humor him.”

He lifted her as easily as if she had been a baby, and she snuggled on his big chest for a moment. She whispered:

“You’re so strong, Elihu.”

He blinked his eyes rapidly once or twice and cleared his throat. He lifted her into the surrey and drove off with her to the Cooley Memorial Hospital. After the operation, Dr. Benham said to Elihu:

“The appendix was ruptured. It’s a bad case, but she has a good chance.”

Elihu went to see her, and she smiled up at him from the pillow no whiter than her cheeks. He took her hand, which was dry and hot, and said:

“How are you, little girl?”

“I’m perfectly all right,” she said, still smiling.

Miss Dolly, who was day nurse, dark hair growing to a widow’s peak over her broad white forehead, blue eyes shining from a rosy face which knew no beauty aid other than soap and water, followed Dr. Benham into the hall and said:

“I never saw anything like her, Doctor. She is suffering terribly, but she just smiles. When it gets especially bad she hums a hymn.”

Miss Dolly dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. She added:

“I don’t know when I’ve felt like this, Doctor. I thought I was pretty callous. I wouldn’t care if she screamed or cried.”

Dr. Benham nodded, and said:

“It’s the breed, Miss Dolly.”

On the second day Elihu went home from the hospital and changed into working clothes. He said to Ann:

“Your mother is better today.”

Ann walked out to the carpenter shop with her father. It smelled of clean wood in there. And there was sunshine streaming through the big doors to the south, and a south wind brought the scent of new-mown clover drying in the sun in the south field. A bumble bee was droning in the honeysuckle vine. Vina came out to the barn, looking white and scared. She was wiping red hands on a gingham kitchen apron. She said:

“They want you on the telephone, Mr. Steele.”

Elihu walked out into the sunshine again and through the yard, past the woodshed, into the side door, which opened into the dining room. He went through the dining room into the hall, and picked up the receiver from the telephone box on the wall. He said:

“Hello.”

He stood there listening, receiver held to his ear, big head slightly bent, broad shoulders bowed in the Steele stoop. Ann, a little breathless, a little frightened, stood looking at him from the doorway. After a long time he replaced the receiver on the wall and stood there motionless, staring right at her, but not seeing her. Ann choked a sob and said:

“Papa.”

Vina took her arm gently, and said:

“Come in here a moment, darling. I want to show you something.”

Ann, as in a dream, went with Vina. Tears were rolling down Vina’s face and she was sniffling. Suddenly Vina began to sob unashamedly. She sank down on her knees, and pressed Ann’s head to her wet face, and said:

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!”

Ann began to tremble. She said:

“Is mama sicker?”

Vina choked, snuffled, and said:

“Your mama has gone away.”

“Mama is dead.”

Vina wailed, and Ann remained dry-eyed, pressed against Vina, Vina’s tears wetting her and Vina’s sobs wrenching at her heart. She had a sense that the world suddenly had become stripped of all life except hers, and that she was alone in the world—a vast, empty place.