Читать книгу Mirthful Haven - Booth Tarkington - Страница 6

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The house upon the wooden platform had a steeply pitched roof with a gloomy loft just beneath, and the lower of the two stories under the loft could not well have been called the “ground floor”; it suggested, rather, the defining title of “water floor”, for the incoming tide, covering the mud flats, gurgled about the supporting piles below the feet of Edna Pelter and her father as they finished their supper of fried codfish, baked beans and coffee. This lower story, where they sat, had no partitions and served the Pelters as workshop, store-room, kitchen, dining-room and living-room, all beneath the one long expanse of unplastered ceiling, which was richly hung with a black lace of cobwebs between the rafters. The walls, too, were unplastered and their flimsiness, providing the building with airy draughts throughout the year, may have accounted for the healthy, high color that was upon the cheeks of both father and daughter in spite of the quantity of fried food they habitually ate.

The big, brown, wooden room held the accumulating litter of useless things acquired by people too poor to throw anything whatever away. In a corner near the kitchen-stove there was even a great coverless box filled with empty tin cans; elsewhere there were coils of dead rope, clutters of broken lanterns and empty bottles, torn sails, splintered oars, cracked spars, ancient anchors, rudders and tillers, and topless kegs of rusty and bent nails; fish-nets, rotted and torn, lay in black heaps against the wall and seemed to have caught within their meshes a jumble of extinct one-cylindered motor-boat engines made of caked rust. A great fish-like skeleton in wood loomed along one side of the room, the keel and ribs of a boat Long Harry had begun to build five years before and still talked of finishing some day; but, in ironic comment upon such talk of his, there stood near the pathetic stern a capacious packing-box completely filled with thumb-worn old magazines, autumnal leavings gathered from the summer cottages year after year. Moreover, against the wall, near by, there were some shelves of books from the same source of supply and equally shabby, equally thumbed; and, as if in final ironic suggestion in regard to this boat-building, there was the harlequin touch of a guitar hanging by a faded purple cord from a nail in the dingy wall.

Pelter used a pewter spoon to scoop the last of the beans out of the glazed brown earthen jar in which they had been baked, finished them in two gulping mouthfuls, and then, as his daughter began to carry the dishes to the sink, he walked over to the guitar, took it down from its nail and began to tune the strings. Edna was careful to make no clatter with the dishes and she washed them as noiselessly as she could. “Won’t you—won’t you sing Barb’ry Allen?” she asked, almost tremulously.

Long Harry had tinkled out a few chords and then apparently decided to hang up the guitar again; but when she made this timid request he laughed, threw one leg over the corner of a work-bench that stood against the wall, and, resting the guitar upon his thigh, began expertly to play an accompaniment for the doleful ballad of “Barbara Allen”. Edna stood with all her body rigid and motionless, except her hands; they moved silently, with infinite care, at their task in the sink while Long Harry sang the song that was her favorite in his repertoire. He sang it in a light, resonant tenor voice of a peculiar quality, a timbre both sweet and mocking that fascinated his daughter as everything about him always fascinated her. Her hands ceased to move and she stood spellbound, still all over, when he came to the final scene of the lovers’ tragedy:

“‘O mother, mother make my bed,

O make it saft and narrow:

My love has died for me to-day,

I’ll die for him to-morrow.’”

For a little time after he had finished the song, Edna still stood motionless; then slowly her hands began to move in the sink again and she said huskily, not turning, “Won’t you—won’t you sing some more? ‘Douglas, Douglas, Tender and True’, or ‘Robin Adair’, maybe?”

“No,” Pelter answered, and there was a whimsical glint in his blue eyes. “You’ll never git them dishes washed if I do. Guess I better help the job out with somethin’ to make you move faster.” With that, his dexterous fingers brought forth from the guitar a thumping and inspiriting jingle, and he began to sing an air livelier than those she asked for:

“‘As I walk along the Boy Boolong

With my independent air—

You can hear the girls declare

“He must be a Millionaire,”

You can hear them sigh,

And wish to die,

You can see them wink the other eye

At the man that broke the Bank at Monte Carlo!’”

Pelter’s idea seemed to be well-founded; his daughter’s hands moved vigorously in time to the beat of the jingle, and, observing this, he chuckled. “Don’t you never go complainin’ around the village how I don’t do my share o’ the housework,” he said. “We’ll git them dishes done slick ’s a whistle!” At this, she laughed to him caressingly over her shoulder; he began to play a jig in time to which her flying hands showed such energy that when the jig was finished so was the task, with the dishes stacked upon shelves over the sink and the knives, forks and spoons put away in a drawer of the deal table where the father and daughter had supped. “There!” Pelter said, hanging up the guitar. “I guess if ’t wun’t fer my vim and gimp this house wouldn’t hardly be fit to live in! But don’t ask me to do no more dish-washin’ to-night, Edna. Come night, a man’s got a right to take his leisure.”

He turned to the packing-box that contained the stacks of old magazines, delved within it until he found what he wanted, a tattered copy of Punch, brought it to a rocking-chair beside the deal table, and, seating himself there, began somewhat perplexedly to turn the pages by the light of the oil lamp. “Seems like some time, if a man studied enough, he ought to be able to make head or tail o’ this little magazine,” he said to Edna, as she came to sit at the other side of the table, with an old brown book in her hand. “I take a go at it every now and then; but every time I do, seems to me I know jest that much less what it’s all about. Odd, that is, too, because it’s from the Old Country where all us Pelters come from ’riginally; so it looks like a Pelter ought to be able to make some sense out of it.”

Edna had become thoughtful. She did not open her book; but, as it lay in her lap, there seemed to be some connection between it and her thoughts, for her lowered glance was fixed upon its worn cloth cover. “Yes,” she said. “I was thinkin’ about that some to-day. We got more old English blood in us than anybody else in Mirthful Haven, haven’t we? We’re the oldest family anywheres along this coast, aren’t we?”

He nodded. “Yes—less’n it might be Cap’n Francis Embury; and his family couldn’t be any older than what ours is, because Pelters and Emburys come at jest the same time and in the same vessel. Landed here together, they did, right mighty near where we’re settin’ now, and that was pretty near the same time as the ‘Mayflower’ they boast of so much, up Massachusetts way.”

“Yes, that’s what I thought,” Edna said. “Leastways, I mean I knew it was so that Pelters and Emburys were—” Suddenly she interrupted herself with a half-suppressed laugh; then, in answer to her father’s look of inquiry, explained, “Cap’n Francis Embury’s such a funny old man I can’t help laughin’ whenever I think of him.”

“Cap’n Embury funny? Your grandfather Pelter sailed under him as ship’s carpenter fourteen year’, and I guess he didn’t think Cap’n Francis Embury was very funny! Good friend to him, too, the Cap’n was, up t’ the time he died. Cap’n Embury’s the finest man in Mirthful Haven. What makes you think he’s so funny?”

“Well, one way he is,” Edna insisted. “Every afternoon when school lets out he makes some kind of excuse to be standin’ around in his front yard to watch me and kind o’ give me the eye and pretend all the time he’s doin’ somethin’ else. Had a geranium pot in his hands this afternoon, actin’ ’s if he didn’t know where to set it. I let on, like I always do, ’s if I didn’t take any notice of him; but his eye never budged an inch from me! He must be about a thousand years old!”

She laughed again, and now her father shared her merriment and laughed with her. “ ’Tain’t to Cap’n Embury’s discredit, though,” he said. “Guess he’d have to be quite a ways over a thousand before he’d lose his eye for handsomeness in women-folks!”

Edna’s color heightened with pleasure; she glanced at him shyly and gratefully, then became thoughtful again. “Well, what I was wonderin’—” She paused. “Munsons aren’t as old a family as Pelters, are they?”

“Munsons? Munsons ain’t old family ’t all, though you’d think they was—all the airs they give themselves and the high livin’ they do! Munsons come to Mirthful Haven in my father’s time and made some money ship-buildin’ jest before ship-buildin’ petered out. Put what they made in wood-lots and pasture-land on Great Point, and that’s where their money comes from, sellin’ the land off to summer people in buildin’-lots. Munsons sold the land fer all the cottages and the hotels, too, and got twenty thutty acres of it left yet on the Point, holdin’ on fer higher prices, and, the way the people keep comin’ here, thicker and thicker, it looks like they’d git ’em some day and put on more airs than ever, likely. What got it into your head Munsons might be old family, maybe?”

“Nothin’,” she answered. “I just wondered, because sometimes they act almost ’s if they could go with the summer people if they wanted to and were careful not to make any breaks, or anything. I knew they weren’t in the list, though.”

“What list?”

“The list o’ the first people that landed here, in the history,” she said, and lifted the book from her lap. “I mean the—”

“Give me that,” he interrupted, and took the book as she extended it to him across the table. “This ain’t a volume that ought to be left jest layin’ around; it’s got the paper with the Pelter family tree on it inside the cover, and anyhow it’s valuable. It was printed in ship-buildin’ times when everybody thought Mirthful Haven was goin’ to be a big place some day and its early history ought to be preserved. My grandfather su’scribed fer this copy of it and it’s been in the family ever since. You wun’t find no Munsons in it, I guess; no, nor no Wickses, nor names of a good many people that think they can hold their heads higher’n Pelters in Mirthful Haven to-day. Listen.” He opened the book and began to read aloud: “ ‘The names of the founders of Mirthful Haven should be held high in honor for all time because of the perils they successfully surmounted, the hardships they endured and the courage and ambition they displayed in crossing the tempestuous and uncharted sea, in the year sixteen twenty-two, to land upon a wild and mysterious coast where lurked the painted savage, the wolf and the bear. The names of those first forefathers of Mirthful Haven were as follows: Charles and Alfred Trainband, brothers. William Smith. Thomas Prentice. Alfred Embury and his wife, Frances. Joshua Butcher, his wife, Mary, and their child, Ruth. Richard Fisher and his sister, Dorcas. John Pelter and his wife, Prudence—’ ” Long Harry paused, then repeated these two names, for emphasis. “ ‘John Pelter and his wife, Prudence.’ ” He paused again, and added, “That’s where Pelters begin—sixteen twenty-two—and there ain’t a name of all that list left in Mirthful Haven to-day, ’cept Pelter and Embury.”

“Yes, I know,” Edna said, and, although her eyes had brightened with this reading, she smiled a little ruefully. “Nobody else acts ’s if they knew it much, I guess!”

“Well, we got the proof of it here in this volume—yes, and in the Pelter family tree, too!” her father returned, with some sharpness. “Pelters been here three hunderd year’ and more, while other families come and gone. Look at them fine big houses up around Cap’n Francis Embury’s, all empty now, come autumn. After the big ship-buildin’ times, some o’ them families died out; some went away, and one by one the houses got sold to summer people. So it’s dark after nightfall now in that whole part o’ the village where it used to be lighted up and cheerful, winter-time, and sleighbells jinglin’ up to bright doorways when I was a little boy, myself. Them people thought they was pretty important; but all of ’em, ’cept Emburys, come and gone, with Pelters here a hunderd year’ and more before they come and Pelters still here now long after they’ve gone!”

“Yes, I know,” she said, and inclined her head in agreement, yet frowned and looked perplexed, as if disturbed by some thought in objection to what he said. “I know—but—but—”

“But nothin’!” her father took up the word as she hesitated; and he frowned, too, though not with any perplexity. His look the rather bespoke an old and stubborn bitterness. “Don’t let anybody ever make you think they can come it over Pelters on the score of blood, or any other score fer that matter! I never let nobody come it over me on no score, and I ain’t never a-goin’ to, neither! Look here!” He took from the book a folded paper, soft and yellow with age; unfolded it and spread it open upon the table. “You s’pose there’s anybody in Mirthful Haven, ’cept Emburys, got a family tree anywheres equal to this ’n? You know better! As for the summer people, if there’s one among ’em got any family tree ’t all it’s certain’y yet to be learned of! They come here and king it over all o’ Mirthful Haven and live on our land—because Munson sells it to ’em! Call everybody in Mirthful Haven ‘natives’; order us around ’s if we was nobodys, tell us every which and what we ought to do, and all the time never do a mite o’ work, themselves, ’cept jest live on their money. Got so much money they live on the fat o’ the land and leave the lean of it fer us that belong here. Money’s what they got, not family, though you’d think they had, the way they talk! Here! You look at this dockament if you want to know what’s old family!”

“I know,” Edna said timidly. “I just thought—”

“Never mind what you thought,” he interrupted, bending over the paper and tapping upon it with a forefinger. “Here’s where we begin, at the top: John Pelter and his wife, Prudence. See how it spreads out from them? Pelters used to be all up and down the coast before them branches died out. Here’s the Pelter—Cap’n Elisha Pelter, his name was—wrecked a brig he was owner and master of on a rock up Wenmouth way, and now they call that rock Butler’s Snow and think it was named on account the way somebody named Butler thought the foam on it looked when the waves spilled down from it; but its real name is Pelter’s Woe, from the wreck o’ that brig. Here’s my great-grandfather, born eighteen-hunderd and one, the only branch left by that time; but it’s all down in black on white, traced straight back to sixteen-hunderd and twenty-two, and all the way through people that was born and lived and died in Mirthful Haven. Where does that put Pelters? Don’t it put Pelters first and foremost? Pelters don’t have to be always talkin’ about it, maybe; but in their hearts don’t it give ’em a right to feel pride and contempt, as you might say, when they hear other people talkin’ about ‘old family’?”

“Yes—but—” Edna said, and her timidity seemed to increase. “But all there is left of us is just you and me and—and Nettie—and Nettie’s gone, too, now, and it don’t look ’s if she’d ever come back, likely.”

Pelter’s face darkened a little at the mention of his older daughter; but he was not disconcerted by what appeared to be a feebly argumentative doubt of Pelter greatness. “Well, what if there is only me and you? Of all the Emburys, there’s only Cap’n Francis left—jest one old man. You don’t see him lowerin’ his head before nobody on that account, do you?”

“No; but everybody looks—looks up to Cap’n Embury, and nobody seems to—to—”

“Nobody seems to what?”

“Well—” Edna’s thick lashes shadowed her eyes, and her voice trembled a little. “Nothin’,” she murmured; then she added, more briskly, “That sweater he was talkin’ about, I didn’t know whose it was when I found it in the cloakroom after school; but there isn’t any trouble goin’ t to come of it, like he said. I burned it up yesterday.”

“What fer?”

“Well—there got to be so much talk about it around school—they’re always talkin’ about me, anyways.”

“Well, let ’em!” Long Harry said, and he laughed a little uncomfortably. “I guess us Pelters know how to look after ourselves, let talk be what it pleases.”