Читать книгу The Perennial Bachelor - Anne Parrish - Страница 6

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One of the cherry trees in the garden was dead, and over it grew a wistaria vine, lavendar-blue, a heaven-colored tent. The long sprays of flowers fell down like a curtain, the light that came through was stained a lovely color, and there was a lavender-blue carpet of fallen petals on the grass. The bees in the wistaria made a sound like the sound in a sea-shell, only louder, but they never bothered the little girls. Old Toot said they wouldn’t, and they didn’t.

“Dem bees ain’ gwine bodder you, ’outen you bodder dem.”

Black Susannah brought the baby out, lying on his pillows in the big wash-basket, and left him under the wistaria where his sisters were playing. Fat little Lily tried to give him some of her bread and butter and sugar, poking it at his mouth, and he lifted his feeble voice in a mewing cry.

“Lily!” cried Maggie, outraged and important. “Naughty! You mustn’t give Baby things to eat! Was he frightened, then? Did he want his Maggie?”

She knelt by the basket smiling at little Victor; and in her old brown dress, with her thin face gentle and bright with love, she looked like the youngest shepherd, kneeling to worship the Baby who lay in a manger.

May came and knelt on the other side, putting out a finger for the tiny groping fist to close around.

“Look! He’s holding on to me! He loves me best because he knows I love him best!”

“You do not love him best!”

May affected not to hear, but said to the baby in a high small voice, copying Mamma and Aunt Priscilla:

“Diddun he know I loved him besty, besty, best? Diddun he then? He says, ‘yes,’ he knew!”

“You do not love him best!”

“I do so!”

“I love him best because I’m oldest, so now, miss! And, if you ever say I don’t, I’ll knock you down!”

Lily didn’t understand about the baby.

“Did Papa bring him from New York?” she asked; for she remembered the big parcel in the hall the day Papa came home. She and May had picked a tiny hole in the wrapping paper, feeling dreadfully guilty and as nervous as two mice, until suddenly a large eye stared out at them and they had fled in terror. It might have been the baby.

“Yo’ ma find him in de ga’den undeh a cu’ant bush,” Chloe told them; but May and Lily had looked for babies among the currant bushes every day since, and hadn’t found one, so they were beginning to doubt it. Aunt Priscilla said Dr. Chase had brought him in his bag; and Cousin Jennie Blodgett, who stayed with them while Mamma was ill, and let them dress up in her bonnet and shawl, and made them cup-custards that they didn’t like very much but ate politely, told them the stork had brought him, and showed them the stork’s picture in “Hans Andersen.”

Mamma said God had sent an angel with the baby to comfort them because Papa had gone to heaven.

There seemed to be a difference of opinion among the authorities.

Maggie was inclined to believe the Dr. Chase theory, for she had seen him go into Mamma’s room with his black bag; and later, lying awake on a tear-soaked pillow, she had first heard that little mewing cry. But, since Mamma thought it was God and an angel, she wasn’t going to tell her it was only Dr. Chase.

They thought at first little Victor would slip away like Victoria, Anna Louisa, Sophia and Adelaide. He was so tiny, so weak. Wrinkled and red as a poppy-bud, he lay wrapped in warm blankets, slept, woke to weep, and slept.

“We will both go to Victor,” said Mamma pathetically, propped among her pillows, while her tears fell into her bowl of arrowroot.

“Try just a spoonful of the wine jelly, love!” begged Cousin Jennie, with tears on her own cheeks.

“How can you ask me, Jennie?” Mamma’s eyes reproached her.

“For little Victor’s sake!”

For little Victor’s sake, she tried; and presently, somehow, the saucer was empty.

For little Victor’s sake, they would all do anything. He was the center of the household, the center of the universe. In April, a great fleet sailed down the river; further south battles were fought; presently summer added its heat to the fever that burned in the prisons; the sun set in melting pink and gold; the stars shone in the sky; but these things were unnoticed. Victor sneezed his first tiny sneeze like a kitten’s; he smiled his first smile; he was carried to church in his high-waisted, puff-sleeved christening robe that Mamma had embroidered all over with incredibly tiny flowers and leaves, and was given his father’s name. He was the man of the house, and his women surrounded him, worshipping.

Uncle Willie tried to explain the state of Papa’s financial affairs to Mamma.

“Do you mean we’re paupers?”

“No, no!” Good heavens, was she going to cry again? “You’re very well-to-do, only Victor didn’t leave as much as I expected him to. The war’s hit us both; though nothing to compare to any number of others.”

“But I don’t see how the war concerns us—we haven’t any slaves.” For Victor’s grandfather had freed his slaves by manumission long before, though they had gone on living with the family, and were buried, when they died, at the feet of their masters and mistresses in the family burying-ground.

“Well—there are other considerations,” said Uncle Willie, prudently skipping on. “But the point is, you won’t be able to go on quite as you have been going. Have you any idea what you’ve been spending a year?”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand anything about figures,” Mamma replied complacently.

“No, ladies aren’t to be expected to. But, of course, you’ll want to be near your father and mother now, and a smaller house would make a great difference.”

“Oh, no, Willie! I could never leave The Maples.”

“But it’s a big place, and expensive to keep up.”

“Dearest Victor would wish us to stay,” said Mamma with placid finality. It was her answer to everything. “Dearest Victor would wish it,” or “Dearest Victor wouldn’t,” and simply meant “I will” or “I won’t.”

“God give me patience!” Uncle Willie cried within himself; and he thought quite kindly of Aunt Priscilla, who at least knew she didn’t know anything.

“We can economize in so many ways, now that darling Victor’s gone,” Mamma said through her pocket handkerchief, when Willie’s conscientious floods of figures ceased. “The meat bills will be nothing! Gentlemen have such hearty appetites. But I’m sure I don’t care if I never see a roast of beef again—just a little dish of creamed sweetbreads now and then, and we have our own chickens. And clothes! The price of a gentleman’s top hat alone! And, perhaps, I might possibly let Susannah go—she’s very lazy. I don’t know what girls are coming to nowadays,” she added, but absently, not receiving or expecting an answer. She had said it so often, and would say it so often again.

“But Victor wouldn’t want me to give up the conservatory, or the horses and carriages. And I suppose, after all, the children should have roast beef—and Susannah is very fond of the baby.”

“Well, you’ll still save on poor old Victor’s hats,” said Uncle Willie sardonically.

“Oh, yes! And coats as well, and waistcoats and—and other things.” She blushed brightly. She had nearly said “trousers” to a gentleman.

“The woman’s a fool,” he thought, though not with any shock of discovery. But the May day was warm and beautiful, the lilies of the valley growing beside the porch sent up their perfume, and Mamma looked pretty and appealing, though plump, in her black dress and little white crêpe “Marie Stuart” bonnet, so that presently, his nose buried in mint and the frost thick on his glass, he was thinking indulgently, “Poor little woman!”