Читать книгу Lantern Marsh - Beaumont Sandfield Cornell - Страница 6

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“A pretty woman is a welcome guest.”—Byron, “Beppo.”

When he reached home, Mauney found his father talking in the kitchen with William Henry McBratney while the hired girl lay on the sofa with the cat asleep on her bosom. His father, seated with his socked feet resting on the stove damper and his chair tilted back, looked up as he entered from the yard.

“Well,” he addressed him, “I hope to God you didn’t get it.”

“Get what?” asked Mauney, surprised at being noticed, and irked by his father’s abrupt manner.

“You wasn’t in a place where you’d be likely to get a bottle of whiskey, was you?” Bard quickly responded.

“Oh—you mean religion, Dad?”

Without further acknowledgment of Mauney’s presence than a sarcastic motion of his head, Bard addressed his neighbor.

“I guess that’s about all he’d get up to Beulah church, ain’t it, William Henry?”

“Yes, sir, that’s about the size of it, Seth!” admitted McBratney, smacking the arm of the chair with his bony palm, as if one would naturally expect to get a variety of commodities at Beulah church. He possessed an evil, circular face, with gray hair falling untidily over a low forehead. His long, thin legs seemed largest at the knee-joints as he sat with difficulty in the low rocking-chair, and his long, brown neck, with its prominent Adam’s apple, gave his small, ball-like head an unreal appearance of detachment. When he spoke, in his high-pitched, rasping voice, his Adam’s apple shifted up and down his throat as if it were a concealed bucket bringing the words up from his body.

“That’s about the size of it, I tell yuh!” he repeated. “And when they get religion, Seth, why there ain’t no good tryin’ to drill any reason into ’em!”

Mauney stood in the door leading to the former dining-room, watching McBratney’s small eyes shine with wicked animation.

“As I was tellin’ yuh,” he went on, “the woman wouldn’t let up on him, day ner night, pesterin’ the life out o’ the boy, goin’ into her room there off the kitchen an prayin’ like she was tryin’ to ward off a cyclone.”

He suddenly bent forward, so that his long hands nearly touched the floor, suggesting to Mauney an enraged orang-outang looking through the bars of his circus cage.

“An’ now that she’s got her way, what do you think?”

Bard knocked the bowl of his pipe against the edge of the stove.

“God only knows! What?” he said.

“Dave’s made up his mind to go preachin’!”

“I heard that,” admitted Bard with a sly smile. “I s’pose you’ll be proud to have a son o’ yours called of the Lord, eh?”

“Called o’ nothing!” declared McBratney, hammering the chair arm with his fist, then settling back, with much silent movement of his Adam’s apple. “I’ve tried to reason with him, but his mind is stopped workin’ or else it’s workin’ just a little bit too fast fer me. I think he’s just framin’ an excuse to leave the farm.”

“Give him a few weeks, William Henry,” suggested Bard. “He may get over this here frenzy o’ his. Dave always struck me as a purty sharp lad an’ I reckon it’s only temporary, like.”

The hired girl looked up from her idle occupation of stroking the cat’s fur.

“Many folks out to church, Maun?” she asked.

Bard, as though he resented her speaking to his son, made a gesture toward the table.

“Here, Annie,” he said authoritatively, “Go cut up a loaf o’ bread and set out a bowl of preserves. Me and William Henry is goin’ to have a bite to eat.”

Up in his own room, Mauney later tried to read a small book Miss Byrne had given him. It was a leather-bound copy of Thomas à Kempis. He wondered why she had chosen such a gift, for the subject matter was too cloistral. Tossing it aside, he picked up an Ancient History she had recently loaned him and became absorbed in it until he was able to forget some of the things that rankled in his breast, among others, Jean Byrne’s peculiar manner in the buggy. Lying with his head propped on a pillow he read until his eyes ached. In fancy he lived in ancient palaces among courtiers and councillors, saw the regalia of royal fêtes, through which came the sound of war trumpets. He read of ambitious sculptors whose names were written on the roster of deathless fame and saw steel engravings of their work—headless, armless torsos, nicked and cracked by the ravage of centuries. He saw conquerors leading stalwart armies, deciding the fate of nations. The story held him to the last page and he saw that the aspirations of a mighty nation were dead; the rising star of ambition was quenched in its ascent; and only a vast pile of melancholy tokens remained to interest scholars who delved with spades. And he went to sleep in great wonderment as to what it all signified.

A few days later he took the Ancient History to return it to Miss Byrne. As he approached Fitch’s gate on foot, he heard Jean’s low laughter, and on passing between the lilac hedges, saw her on the front verandah with Mrs. Fitch.

“Good evening,” he said, “you both seem to be enjoying yourselves.”

“Come and sit down, Mauney. Mrs. Fitch has just been convulsing me with a story from real life,” she invited, her eyes red from laughter. “What have you been doing to-day?”

“Oh, the same old stuff,” he replied, nodding slyly towards Mrs. Fitch, busy with long, white knitting-needles. “I thought I’d stroll over and hear the latest scandal.”

Mrs. Fitch was a woman of fifty, with scrupulously tidy grey hair, a square jaw, silver spectacles and thin lips suggesting latent deviltry.

“Wal, Maun,” she said, without looking up from her rapidly-interplying ivory-points, “we ain’t accurate scandal-mongers. Not the kind that talk about folks for the sake of harmin’ them. But things do strike us peculiar like, at times, and gives our livers a healthy shakin’ up. I’ve just been telling Miss Byrne about the young Hawkins brat.” She paused and cast a sharp glance over the tops of her glasses. “You know him?” she asked.

Mauney nodded and smiled, for it was common knowledge that the son of Miss Lizzy Hawkins could not claim, with any degree of accuracy, the paternal factor of respectability enjoyed by most children.

“Wal,” she resumed, her eyes returning to the line of her knitting, “young Hawkins was a-playin’ in the road out here after school. Along comes William Henry McBratney drivin’ the old, grey horse. He sees the Hawkins boy and he pulls up and he says, says ’e, ‘Where’s your father, you young brat!’ Young Hawkins, of course, didn’t know him—hasn’t brains enough to know anybody, but, after a minute of heavy thinkin’ he looks up at McBratney and he says, says ’e, ‘Maw told me, me father was down in South Americky workin’ on a steam roller, but I heard her tellin’ me grandmother as how me father’s name is William Henry McBratney!’”

Mauney laughed as Mrs. Fitch soberly glanced over her spectacles again.

“And then,” she resumed, “old William Henry leans half out of his buggy, waving his whip and shouting, without knowing as how he had an audience: ‘Tell yer mother to keep her damned mouth shut, you brat!’

“I guess it’s true enough,” she went on presently, pulling a string of yarn from the revolving ball in her lap. “And then people talk about Dave McBratney for getting converted. It was the best thing he ever done! If I was a son of William Henry’s I’d get converted before you could say Jack Robinson.”

Mauney had never so little enjoyed talking with Jean Byrne as to-night. The episode of Sunday evening had left a distasteful flavor in his mind, for, although he tried to forget it, the incident kept flashing back upon his memory. He was left alone on the verandah with her presently, and immediately felt an awkwardness, hard to overcome. Hitherto, she had always been just his teacher. But to-night, dressed in a yellow-flowered frock, with a pale yellow ribbon holding her dark hair down on her brow, she had lost a quality of dignity. He noticed also a hundred fine lights of tenderness in her eyes that he had never seen before.

He talked with her a few minutes and gave back the history.

“Let me get you another book,” she said, starting toward the door.

“Please don’t bother—just now, Miss Byrne,” he said.

“Why not, Mauney?”

“I’m so busy I haven’t time to read,” he lied.

He thought afterward that in that moment when he refused to accept her kindness she divined perfectly the underlying feeling. It was his last conversation with Jean Byrne. He went home quite sadly. There was no surfeit of comforts in that home of his, to be sure, which could render him careless of helpful friendships: but, although he felt the significance of refusing her offer, knowing it meant the end of things between them, his sadness was over the seeming weakness in her that had caused his dislike. He might not have been so astonished at other women. But of Jean Byrne he had expected differently.

His life in the Lantern Marsh thus robbed of one more brightness became the more uninteresting. He felt the need of companionship. Struggling through long days, of planting, sowing, and haying, he forced back the tug of expanding desires that urged him to different pursuits. In the evenings he would stand looking down the road that led to Lockwood, wishing that he were travelling it never to return. To Lockwood, to Merlton beyond, to the world. He dreamed of a different life from his own, where people were gentle, where they knew things and would be willing to teach him out of their knowledge. But these dreams were folded to rest each night in heavy sleep and the light of each morning found them dissipated. He wanted books, but there was no library in Beulah. He had no money of his own and knew the foolishness of asking his father for it.

At the end of June, Jean Byrne returned to her home in Lockwood, and Mrs. Fitch remarked to him one day that she was not coming back, but was going to be married in the autumn to a doctor in her own town. Mrs. Fitch was curious, no doubt, to discover a reason for Mauney’s never having come back to see her again.

“Miss Byrne was a good teacher, Maun,” she said, as they talked in the Beulah post-office, “and I think she was powerful fond o’ you, boy. She told me onct as how she expected you would some day make your mark in the world.”

Mauney felt tears welling into his eyes and turned away from her without further comment. He drove home blaming himself for having been rude to Jean Byrne. Her confidence in him, expressed through Mrs. Fitch, had come as sharp reward for his ingratitude. And yet, was it his fault?

On a sultry July evening an unexpected break in the monotony of his life occurred. He was sitting alone on the front steps of the farm-house, having just come in from the fields, when his attention was attracted by a cloud of dust on the Lockwood road. A motor car was travelling rapidly along and as it drew near, slackened its speed. When it stopped directly at the foot of the orchard he surmised the people in it had paused for directions. A woman in the back seat waved to him and he quickly responded.

They were all strangers, the man at the wheel and the two women in the rear seat, although he felt there was something quite familiar about the grey-haired woman sitting nearest him.

“Is this where the Bards live?” she asked a little nervously. She was a small-bodied woman of perhaps fifty with very fine features, and clear, blue eyes that smiled pleasantly through rimless spectacles and the fawn motor veil that covered her face.

“Yes,” Mauney replied, gazing curiously at her, and then at the others.

The man, chewing the end of an unlighted cigar, looked at the house with a frown and then glancing backward said in a low tone:

“Well, suit yourself, Mary. You might regret it if you didn’t.”

The woman, presumably his wife, looked with an undecided expression toward the house, as if she feared it.

“Is your name Bard, please?” she asked, raising her veil, and minutely inspecting Mauney’s face.

“Yes,” he said, glancing again at the others.

“He looks the dead image of her!” the other woman remarked prosaically to the man.

“And are you Mauney?” asked his interlocutor.

His brow was puckered with a dawning idea that soon caused his face to brighten up.

“Are you my Aunt Mary?” he asked, eagerly.

“How did you know?”

He came nearer and took her extended hand.

“Mauney, this is your Uncle Neville, and this is your Uncle’s sister, Jane Day. This must be quite an extraordinary surprise to you, isn’t it?”

Mauney nodded.

“Aren’t you going to stay?” he asked. “When did you come to this country?”

“We came about a week ago, Mauney. Your Uncle Neville is over on business, and our headquarters are in Merlton. We motored all the way from Merlton to-day just to see where—where you lived, you know.”

“You must be tired. What time did you leave?”

“About seven this morning, but the country has been simply beautiful, every inch of the way.”

“Come in. Put your car in the shed. I’ll go and tell my father.”

“Wait!” said his aunt. “Just let’s talk a moment. You’ve got a brother, but I’ve forgotten his name.”

“William.”

“Of course—how stupid of me to forget! Did you ever receive a letter I wrote you, Mauney, just after your mother died?”

“No, I don’t remember getting one,” he replied, with an expression of curiosity.

“That’s strange. Apparently it went astray. But I always wondered—but then I wrote you again, Mauney, about three years ago. Didn’t you get that?”

He shook his head.

“Funny!” she said, looking toward her husband.

“There’s nothing funny about trans-Atlantic mails, my dear,” said Mr. Neville Day, lighting his cigar. “It’s got well past the funny stage with me.”

“And then I sent you a postcard once, I remember. Didn’t you even get that, Mauney?”

“I don’t remember it.”

“Well, anyway, we’re here,” she said, with sudden decision. “And if I don’t see him, I’ll always wish I had.”

“All right, Mary,” said Neville Day. “Now stick to that, my dear. Would you mind telling your father there’s somebody here to see him, Mauney?”

“Certainly,” Mauney agreed, turning to leave.

“Oh, wait!” called his aunt. “Wait a minute. You know I—I don’t think I can see him, Neville. No, I can’t. I really cannot.”

The uncle smoked calmly, studying his finger-nails, while Mauney stood riddled with curiosity.

“Come here, dear,” said his aunt. “Promise me not to mention us to your father. We aren’t going in, and it’s—it’s so hard to explain why we aren’t.”

Neville Day and Miss Jane Day got out of the car and walked slowly along the edge of the road together. His aunt asked Mauney to get in the rear seat and sit beside her. As she turned toward him, he could see his mother’s likeness with startling vividness.

“Your mother used to write to me about you, Mauney,” she said. “You were her favorite, I’m glad you’re such a big fellow. How old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

“It’s terrible how the time goes. I suppose you’re happy and well all the time—”

He gauged the expression in her eyes. He felt completely at home with her. She looked so much like his mother that he wanted to remain with her endlessly.

“Well, Aunt Mary,” he said slowly, “I’m not very happy, I’m afraid.”

“What’s wrong?” she asked sympathetically.

“I don’t know.”

“Does your father treat you all right?”

“I think he tries to, Aunt Mary, but since my mother died, I’ve always been—dissatisfied. How long are you going to stay—I mean here?”

“We’ll have to return to Lockwood—is that the name?”

He nodded.

“We’ll go back there for the night and return to Merlton, to-morrow.”

“Why won’t you come in, and see my father?” he asked.

“Well you see, Mauney, it’s—it’s so late, you know.”

Her explanation was patently false, for he saw her face struggle to remain composed, and then noticed a queer hardness come upon it.

“Do you know where the old Conyngham place is?” she asked.

“Sure. Over there!” he pointed to a field not far away.

“You knew about that, didn’t you?”

He shook his head and glanced with a puzzled expression toward the old, dilapidated house that had always stood at the edge of his father’s big corn field. It was uninhabited and partly obscured by wild cucumber vines.

“I only knew it was called the old Conyngham place,” he said. “When mother was alive, she used to go over there and keep geraniums in boxes in the front windows, and our hired man—the one we had before—lived there with his wife for quite a long time.”

“Well, your mother used to live there, Mauney,” his aunt said, “She was looking after Uncle James. You see his wife had died and he was old and sick with asthma.” She glanced toward the opposite side of the road. “I suppose this bog-land here gave him the disease. He was all alone and when we got his letter, your mother made up her mind to come out and look after him. So she left Scotland when she was just seventeen. She remained right with him to the last, and certainly did not spare herself.”

“My mother never told me that,” Mauney interrupted.

“No. She wouldn’t tell you. But while she was looking after Uncle James our own mother died in Carstairs and it was too far for her to come home. Then I married Neville and, poor girl, she felt that all her relatives were gone. So, after Uncle James died, she—she stayed here, you see.”

“Married my father.”

“Yes, Mauney,” she said sadly. “Remember, dear boy, your mother was the sweetest girl that—”

She hesitated, as if her interest in the farm house and the orchard had suddenly usurped her attention.

“You’ve got quite a big farm, Mauney,” she said. “Are you going to stay here and be a farmer, too?”

“I guess I’ll have to, Aunt Mary,” he smiled.

“I see.”

“But I’d like to get some education, some time.”

Her pretty, blue eyes wandered from his face to the figures of Neville Day and his sister who were just turning about to come back toward the car. For a moment her face became dreamy as if she were mentally exploring the pleasant future. Then she took a card from her purse and handed it to him.

“My address is on that, Mauney,” she said. “Please write to me once in a while and let me know how you are getting along. We go back to Scotland in another week. Dear me, you ought to be glad you live in America.”

Soon her husband was beside the car.

“That land could all be reclaimed,” he said, wagging his thumb toward the marsh. “It wouldn’t cost over two thousand, either.”

“Dollars?” asked Mrs. Day.

“No, pounds.”

“They don’t need to do that sort of thing,” stated Miss Day. “As it is now, there’s plenty of tillable soil not under cultivation. I fancy that it will be a long time before these farmers will find it necessary to reclaim land.”

Day glanced at his watch.

“If you don’t mind, Mary,” he said, “it’s getting late and we’d better try to make Lockwood before dark. How far is it, Mauney?”

“It’s just over twenty miles.”

They entered the car while Mauney stood on the road waiting to say good-bye. Neville Day tossed away the stump of his cigar and settled down behind the wheel, adjusting his motor-cap more comfortably.

“Oh!” he said, turning to hand up a large parcel, done up in wrapping paper. “You forgot the books.”

Mrs. Day laughed.

“Mauney,” she said, “I brought you three books, but I’m not going to give them to you. They are just wild Indian stories of adventure.”

“Why did you buy that truck, my dear?” asked Day.

“Why, I really didn’t figure it out, Neville,” she laughed. “I imagined Mauney about fourteen. But I’ll change them and send them down.”

Mauney took the proffered hands of Day and his sister and then his Aunt Mary’s. When his aunt was kissing him on the cheek, Neville Day was clearing his throat and chewing at the end of a new cigar. Soon the motor-car backed into the lane; then, with a sudden lurch ahead, it snorted up the road, his aunt waving her hand in farewell. Mauney watched it until it was engulfed in a dense cloud of dust and the noise of its opened exhaust had quieted to a faint rumble. Then he walked slowly up the lane toward the house.

By the kitchen door he encountered his father pumping himself a tin ladleful of well water.

“Who was them people?” he demanded.

“Some tourists.”

“What’d they stop here for?”

“One of the women wanted to pick some blue weed by the side of the road.”

“H’m! I wish to God she’d pick some of the blue weed out the grain field,” he said. “Why did they turn around and go back?”

“They wanted to get to Lockwood before dark, I guess.”

Later in the evening, Mauney sat on the kitchen verandah lost in thought. He leaned back in his tilted chair and rested his head on the window-sill. Presently he fell asleep. He was awakened by a sharp sensation on his chin.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, opening his eyes to see the hired girl standing near him, smiling broadly.

“I just pulled one of them hairs out o’ your chin, Maun,” she laughed. “When are yuh goin’ to start to shave ’em?”