Читать книгу Impatient Virgin - Donald Henderson Clarke - Страница 3

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Ruth Robbins struggled into the world five months after the death of her father, the Rev. Josiah D. Robbins, and two hours before the death of her mother, Loretta Hughes Robbins.

While Henrietta Wells, wife of Crosby Wells, the undertaker, was upstairs in the south bedroom, Ruth was downstairs in the kitchen, making faces at her Uncle Ben and her Aunt Katherine Robbins.

She was lying in a wicker clothes-basket, which Ben had turned into a bassinet by lining it with a flannel blanket.

“Well, Kitty,” Ben said finally, “what are we going to do with it—drown it?”

Katherine turned and looked at her brother. Then she raised her eyes and her arms towards the white kitchen ceiling.

“God help me!” she exclaimed.

“You better be asking Him how we’re going to get out from under this load of trouble,” Ben said gravely, nodding at the twisting bit of humanity. “What’ll we do—leave it on somebody’s back stoop tonight, or wait and send it to an orphan asylum after the funeral?”

Katherine lowered her head, and dropped her arms, and stared at her brother.

“Benjamin Robbins,” she said finally in measured tones, pronouncing each syllable with peculiar distinctness, “I always knew you were a fool, but I never knew that you were such a godless and heartless fool.”

“As what, Kitty?”

Ben’s blue eyes, ordinarily twinkling kindly from rosy cheeks, were sober as they returned her gaze steadily.

“As to talk like you are talking with Loretta dead upstairs, and her little motherless and fatherless baby girl lying there helpless and alone in the world, in front of you.”

Suddenly she stamped her foot on the white scrubbed boards of the kitchen floor.

“Don’t keep calling me Kitty,” she said, and exploded in tears.

“There! There! There!”

With each word, uttered in a soothing tone, Benjamin thumped Katherine on her back.

“There! There!”

She fumbled futilely at the line between her white waist and black skirt.

“Give me a handkerchief,” she sniffed. “And don’t ‘there, there’ me.”

Ben gave her a big white handkerchief from his hip pocket. She dabbed at her eyes, and at her nose, making small snuffling noises; and for a moment the only other sound in the kitchen was the hissing of steam from an iron kettle on the coal stove.

“Oh, Benjamin,” she said in a teary voice. “I wish you were different.”

“Well, for Heaven’s sakes!” her brother exclaimed. “How’m I different from other folks, Kitty? All I want to know is what we’re going to do with this baby, and you go off into a tantrum.”

“Do with the baby! Do with Ruth? If you had any sense you’d know we are going to take her and bring her up just the best we can, and better than if one of us really was her mother.”

“Or both of us were her fathers,” Ben suggested. “Now, don’t jump on me any more,” he added quickly, putting an arm around his sister’s shoulders. “The best part of life is its responsibilities, and now I’m a father to all practical purpose, I’ll have a chance to work out some of my theories.”

“You’ll never work out any of your outlandish theories on this poor baby, Benjamin Robbins. That’s the only doubt I have about taking the poor little young one—that you’ll be in the same house.”

“I always thought girls were brought up all wrong,” Ben said, taking away his arm.

“Well, you’ll have nothing to do with bringing up Ruth,” Katherine asserted.

“We’ll send her to a good private school,” Ben said.

“She’ll go to the Elm Street Grammar School and the Appleton High School just like you and I did.”

“Wanh! Wannhh! Wannh!”

Ben wheeled to the bassinet.

“Her lungs work,” he observed.

A new sound came from the bassinet.

“Both ends of her work all right,” he amended judicially.

“Benjamin Robbins!”

“You better get a diaper—or may be two diapers,” Ben advised. “But in a day or two I’ll have her house-broken, just like I train my puppies.”

Katherine, who had snatched a soft roll of white cloth from the kitchen table, faced her brother.

“You dare try any of your fool notions on this baby, and you’ll answer to me,” she cried. “The very idea!”

“If I can train dogs I should be able to train a youngster,” Ben said. “And one of the first rules is if she howls for nothing, let her howl. Train her only to howl when it’s important—as when it’s meal time, or a time like this, for instance.”

“Benjamin Robbins,” Katherine Robbins said in solemn, passionate tones, “you get out of this room.”

“Aw, Kitty,” Ben said, easily, “aw, Kitty, there is some sense in what I’m saying. Of course I wasn’t thinking of rubbing a baby’s nose in it, or of smacking her with a folded up newspaper—although,” he brightened a bit, “that might not be such a bad idea at that.”

“Benjamin,” Katherine said coldly, “I’ve heard enough.”

“I’ll be back in a jiffy,” Ben said, opening the door, and letting into the kitchen a chill breath of late November air, and an odor of disinfectants from the hall.

“The further you keep away from this baby the better chance she’s got,” Katherine said, unfastening necessary safety pins.

Ben stopped on the other side of the threshold, and pushed the door open wide enough to allow him to stick his head back into the kitchen.

“That baby is going to be a Twentieth Century Girl,” he said, “if her Uncle Ben doesn’t do anything else in the world.”

The door closed abruptly on the words. Katherine gazed with swimming blue eyes at the unresponsive panels. Then she looked down at the tiny red, wrinkled caricature of humanity in the bassinet. A tear finally splashed from one of her cheeks onto a miniature foot.

“Oh, Ruth,” she whispered in a voice like a prayer, “we are going to have an awful time with your Uncle Benjamin.”