Читать книгу The Great Accident - Ben Ames Williams - Страница 11

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IN the meanwhile, a single incident. An incident concerning itself with Hetty Morfee, Mrs. Chase’s newly acquired handmaiden.

Hetty was a girl Wint’s own age. She had been born in Hardiston, had lived in Hardiston all her life. She and Wint had gone to school together; they had played together; they had been friends all their lives.

Such things happen in a small town. Wint was the son of Hardiston’s big man; Hetty was the daughter of a man whom nobody remembered. He had come to town, married Hetty’s mother, and gone away. Thereafter, Hetty had been born.

Hetty’s mother was the fifth daughter of a coal miner. She was an honest woman, a woman of sense and sensibility; and Hetty received from her a worthy heritage. But most of Hetty was not mother but father; and all Hardiston knew about Hetty’s father was that he had come and had gone. It was assumed, fairly enough, that he had a roving, rascally, and irresponsible disposition. Hetty, it had been predicted, would not turn out well.

This prediction had not wholly justified itself. Hetty, in the first place, was unnaturally acute of mind. In school, she had mastered the lessons given her with careless ease. The effect was to give her an unwholesome amount of leisure. She occupied this leisure in bedeviling her teachers and inciting to riot the hardier spirits in the school—among whom number Wint.

She was, in those days, a wiry little thing, as hard as nails, as active as a boy, and fully as daring. She had whipped one or two boys in fair, stand-up fight, for Hetty had a temper that went with her hair. Her hair, as has been said, was a pleasant and interesting red.

As a child, she had been freckled. When she approached womanhood, these freckles disappeared and left her with a skin creamy and delicious. Her eyes were large, and warm, and merry. They were probably brown; it was hard to be sure. All in all, she was—give her a chance—a beauty.

Some men of science assert that all healthy children start life with an equal heritage. They attribute to environment the developing differences between men and between women. Hetty might have served them as an illuminating example. In school, she had mastered her lessons quickly, had led her classes as of right; while her schoolmates—including Wint, who was not good at books—lagged woefully behind.

This ascendancy persisted through the first half dozen years of schooling; and then it began, gradually, to disappear. In high school, it was not so marked; and at graduation, she and Wint—for example—were fairly on a par.

Then Wint went to college while Hetty went to work. She worked first in a store and lost that place for swearing at her employer. Then she took up housework, and so gravitated to the Chase household. There Wint encountered her; and within a day or so he discovered that the years since high school had borne him far ahead of Hetty. She now was beginning to recede; her wave had reached its height and was subsiding. He still bore on.

These things may be observed more intimately in a small town; for there, social differences do not so strictly herd the sheep apart from the goats. Thus, while Hetty was his mother’s handmaid, neither Wint nor any one else outspokenly considered her his inferior. She called him Wint, he called her Hetty, and his mother likewise.

Wint found her presence vaguely disturbing. That first night at supper, she had winked at him behind his father’s back. The wink somewhat chilled him. It savored of hardness—And there were other incidents. Wint perceived that Hetty was no longer a schoolgirl; she was, vaguely, sophisticated. Her old recklessness and daring remained; but they were inspired now not by ebullient spirits but by indifference, by bravado.

He remembered ugly rumors....

Wint and Hetty had been, to some extent, comrades in their school days. Once or twice he had defended her against aggression; once he had fought a boy who had told tales on her to the teacher. Hetty had never thanked him; she had even scolded and abused him for this knight-errantry, declaring her ability to take care of herself. Nevertheless, there was gratitude in her. She brought him apples, hiding them secretly in his desk.

On the Friday evening before election, as has been said, Wint and Jack Routt played pool together at the hotel. Afterwards, in spite of Routt’s protests, they went together to the stairway in the alley; and when eventually Wint reached home, he was unsteady on his feet.

His father and mother were abed. The door was never locked, so that he entered the hall without difficulty; but the only light was an electric bulb in the rear of the hall, near the kitchen door, and when he went back to extinguish this, he tripped over a rug and barely saved a fall.

While he was still tottering, the kitchen door opened and Hetty looked out at him. She had on her hat, so that he saw she, too, had just come in. He smiled at her amiably, holding on to the wall for support; and she laughed softly and came and caught his arm.

“Oh, you Wint!” she chided.

He tried to be dignified. “Wha’s matter?” he asked. “I’m all right.”

She winked. “But if father could only see you now!”

He became amiable again. “Thass all right,” he declared, “I’m going to bed. He’s sleeping th’ sleep of th’ just. Thass dad. Sleep of the just!”

“Sure,” she agreed. “But you know what he’d do to you.”

A door opened, in the hall above. A step sounded. Hetty, quick as light, led Wint under the stair where he was invisible from above, and signed him to be quiet. The elder Chase called down the stairs: “Who’s that?”

“Me, Mr. Chase,” said Hetty. “I tripped. I’m sorry if I woke you up.”

She heard Chase say something under his breath; but when he answered, his tone was affable. “All right. Time you were abed, Hetty.”

“Uh-huh! I went to see my mother.”

“That’s all right. Good night!”

“Good night!”

They heard him go back to his room, heard the door close behind him. Hetty crossed to Wint. She was trembling a little, and she spoke very gently. “Come up the back stairs, Wint. He won’t hear you. I’ll help you....”

Wint took her arm. “You’re a good girl, Hetty,” he told her.

“You come along.”

They went through the kitchen to the back stairs, and up, Hetty steadying him and encouraging him in a whisper. Wint’s room was at the back of the house, on the second floor; his father’s at the front. Hetty’s was on the third floor. She helped him to the door of his room, and in, and turned on the light. He sat down and grinned amiably at her. She started to go, hesitated, came back and knelt before him. While he watched, not fully understanding, she loosened his shoes. Then she rose.

“Now you go to bed, Wint—and be quiet,” she warned him in a whisper. “Good night!”

He waved his hand. “Thass all right now. G’night!”

She closed the door behind her and went swiftly along the hall to the stair that led upward to her room. But there, with her foot on the lower step, her hand on the rail, she paused.

She paused, and looked back at Wint’s door, and pressed one hand against her mouth, thinking. And slowly her eyes misted with a wistful light. She turned a little, as though to go back....

Then, eyes still misty, she went up the stairs to her own room; and in her own room, with no one to see, Hetty lay down on her face on the bed and cried.