Читать книгу Clever Betsy - Clara Louise Burnham - Страница 6

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Half an hour afterward Mrs. Pogram, unconscious of Miss Foster’s yearning to administer to her portly person a vigorous movement cure, walked leisurely up the village street. From one hand depended a long slender package which she held away from her black shawl by a string loop around her forefinger.

A merry whistling attracted her, and she perceived coming along the walk, at a swinging gait, a bareheaded young man in a sweater. In a few days the streets of the village would be largely populated by girls and men, all with an aversion to hats and sleeves. Mrs. Pogram was familiar with the type, and noted that this care-free person was an advance guard proving that the summer was here.

She eyed him, however, with lack-lustre eyes until he stopped suddenly before her.

“You don’t know me,” he said, taking his hands out of his pockets.

The corners of Mrs. Pogram’s lips drew down and her chin drew in.

“Why, Irvin’ Bruce, it’s you!” she declared. “We haven’t seen you in these parts for so long I didn’t know but you’d given up Fairport.”

“Couldn’t do that, Mrs. Pogram. You know how a man always returns to the scene of his crimes.”

Mrs. Pogram again drew down the corners of her mouth and gave her gingerly-held package a shake.

“This pesky fish never will be done drippin’,” she remarked.

“Been fishing?” asked her companion.

“Yes. I go fishin’ on the wharf. It’s cheaper than to the market and the walk does me good.”

“You look well.”

“I ain’t well. It’s kind o’ hard for me to get around, and I miss Rosalie. She’s gone off.” Mrs. Pogram’s voice took a whining note, and she indulged in a sniff of self-pity. “I donno as you ever saw Rosalie?”

“Oh yes, I’ve seen her.”

“The way I come to take her, I was gettin’ along in years and she was left alone in the world. She wanted a home and I wanted young hands and feet, so we’d ’a’ got along real comfortable if it hadn’t been for Loomis; and I’ve been more like a mother than a sister to Loomis, bein’ so much older, and I do think he might have let me have a little comfort without naggin’ me all the time.”

“Has he left Portland and come here to live with you?”

“Oh no, he’s still in Chatham’s store, but he can run down over Sunday any time, you know, and ever since Rosalie came he’s done so a great deal.”

“What could you expect?” returned Irving. “I remember her.”

“Hey? Oh, yes, Loomis was awful pleased with her at first, but she didn’t seem to take much of a fancy to him. Kinder laughed at him. Loomis is sort o’ fussy. Anyway, she made him mad one day, and from that on he didn’t give me any peace.”

Mrs. Pogram sniffed again and gave her lachrymose package another shake so that its tears bedewed the walk as if she were weeping vicariously.

“He made you send the girl away?” asked Irving quickly, a line coming in his forehead at the remembrance of the mincing young clerk who had been the natural victim of many a prank of his own boyhood.

“Not made me, exactly,” returned Mrs. Pogram, “but Rosalie got so she wouldn’t stand it any longer. You see,” her complaining tone altering to one of some complacence, “though I ain’t any millionairess, my estate ain’t exactly to be sneezed at. The old Pogram mahogany and the silver that was my mother’s are worth considerable; and Loomis was on pins for fear I’d give some of ’em to Rosalie. I give her a spoon once—it was real thin, Irvin’, not worth much of anything in money, but it was a time when Rosalie’d taken care of me through a fever and I felt to give her somethin’; and law, from the way Loomis took on you’d ’a’ thought I’d made him a poor man for the rest of his life. Honestly I was ashamed of him; and I kep’ his actions away from Rosalie as much as I could; but she’s smart, and she saw she’d gained Loomis’s enmity by laughin’ at him, and saw that he was gettin’ kinder jealous of her about the things; and if she would only have been quiet, and spoken him fair, and we both kept our own counsel, I could have slipped many a little thing to her and he’d never ’a’ known the difference. Things weren’t ever the same after your mother gave her that winter at Lambeth. She never laughed at Loomis till after that, and then came my sickness and I gave her the spoon, and from that time there wa’n’t ever any peace.”

The line in Irving’s forehead came again. “Then you don’t think Mrs. Bruce’s gift to Rosalie was an advantage.”

“Well, I was willin’ to spare her for her own good, for I could see what her longings were, and felt I hadn’t ought to stand in her way. Loomis favored it because I think ’twas his idea then that he and Rosalie would both come into the Brown-Pogram estate one o’ these days.”

Irving lifted a hand to conceal some ebullition which escaped him at the thought of the ramshackle ancestral halls of the Pograms.

“As I say,” continued Mrs. Pogram, “if Rosalie could have worked with me we’d ha’ kep’ Loomis smoothed down; but after the spoon trouble that young one acted like all possessed. Every time Loomis came she’d throw out remarks to scare him. ‘Oh, Auntie Pogram,’ she’d say, ‘just look how exactly the right height this work-table is for me to set by. It’s the real stuff this wood is;’ and then she’d gaze at it kinder thoughtful. ‘If this was polished up, that grain would come out beautiful.’ Then there is a silver slop-bowl and creamer that was my mother’s. ‘Oh, Auntie Pogram,’ she’d say, and just clasp her hands and gaze at ’em like they was magnets and she a needle. ‘How easy it is, after all, to tell the real antiquities from the made-up ones,’ she’d say. ‘How I do love that colonial pattern!’ And all the time Loomis would fidget and run his fingers through his hair and get red in the face. After he’d go I’d talk to her, but she wouldn’t do a thing but laugh till the tears come in her eyes.” Mrs. Pogram nodded significantly. “But the day came when there was more tears and not so much laugh. Loomis got so he come down every Saturday night. He made a list of all the silver and he’d count ’em out, forks and spoons, every time he came. One Sunday night he said something real downright mean to Rosalie about beggars not bein’ choosers. I spoke up for the girl then and there. I said Rosalie had earned everything she’d had from me and earned it fully. I can see her now standin’ there, and the way her nostrils opened when she breathed. I don’t think I ever saw her as good-lookin’ as she was that minute. Her light hair was just fluffin’ out like a cloud, and her blue eyes turned nearly black, and her lips was bit in between her teeth till she scared me the way she looked at Loomis. Then she went out o’ the room without a word. The next mornin’ she didn’t get up at half-past four to get Loomis’s breakfast, the way she had to when he stayed Sunday nights. I hadn’t thought she would, and I got up in my double-gown and found him drinkin’ some cold milk, and growlin’. Loomis likes his coffee. I told him ’twas his own fault, and he told me to go to bed and stay there,—’twas all I was fit for.” Mrs. Pogram sniffed again and shook the fish mechanically.

“I didn’t hear any sound in Rosalie’s room when Loomis slammed the front door; so after a spell I went in to find her and try to make peace, but—” the speaker shook her head—“there wa’n’t any Rosalie. Her bed was made up neat and there was a note on her table. ‘I love you, dear Auntie Pogram, but I can’t stand it any longer. Don’t worry about me. If I’m in any trouble I promise to write to you.’”

Here, the fish not seeming equal to the occasion, Mrs. Pogram dabbed some tears from her own eyes.

“How long ago was this?” asked Irving.

“Only a few weeks, and I haven’t heard another word.”

“Your brother is satisfied, I suppose?”

“Well, he ain’t real comfortable, ’cause he knows I don’t mean to live and work all alone. I ain’t fit to; and he’s afraid now I’ll pay wages that’ll be a tax on the estate.”

Irving muttered something under his breath.

“Hey?” inquired his companion plaintively.

“I’m sorry for all this, Mrs. Pogram. You must tell Betsy about it. Her head is full of sensible ideas. Perhaps she can help you.”

“I’d like to see her,” returned the other mournfully. “How are you all?”

“All well.”

“You’ve been to Europe. Now I s’pose you’ll settle down a spell.”

“Alas, Mrs. Bruce decrees otherwise. We’re off for the Yellowstone as soon as we can unpack and pack again.”

“I hear it’s real sightly out there,” returned Mrs. Pogram, without enthusiasm. “I’ll have to tell Betsy to get some one else to look after the cottage, though; I ain’t fit to hist mattresses.” Another sniff. “Good-mornin’, Irvin’, I’m real glad I met you. Remember me to the folks.”