Читать книгу Impatient Virgin - Donald Henderson Clarke - Страница 6

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Katherine entered the woodshed, where Ben was splitting kindling. The grass was short and stubbly in the orchard, visible through the doorway, which never was closed because wood always was in the way of the door. Orderly pyramids of apples were under the trees, and bits of goldenrod glowed in the uncut hay among the beehives. The big oak tree in the front yard was turning red; and the smell of burning leaves already was in the air.

“Benjamin Robbins,” Katherine exclaimed.

“What’s the matter now, Kitty?” Ben asked, stabbing the ax into a fixed position in the chopping block and straightening his back.

“Matter!” his sister repeated. “I’ve told you from the beginning that you would be the ruination of Ruth, and now look at what you’ve done.”

Katherine held out a bit of ruled yellow pad paper, which showed by multiple creases that it had been folded into a small wad.

“Read that,” she said. “And then tell me, if you can, what we’re going to do. Oh, God help me!” she added piously, sitting with the effect of complete collapse on a sawhorse.

Ben took the paper and read aloud:

“Dear Myron, I love you. Do you love me? Ruth.” “Dear Ruth, yes. Myron.”

“Well?” Katherine cried, with rising inflection. “Well? Don’t stand there like a dummy! What are you going to do about it?”

“Do about what?”

“About what?” Katherine cried. “You’ll drive me mad. ‘About what?’ I suppose you think it is perfectly proper for a twelve-year-old girl to be making love to a boy. I suppose that is more of your ideas. Well, I’m telling you right here and now that it’s going to stop.”

“Been rummaging through Ruthy’s things, have you?” her brother asked.

Katherine bristled.

“Until she is of age it’s my duty to know everything that Ruth does. A young girl has no right to have any correspondence with boys without her family’s knowledge.”

“Rummaging in Ruthy’s things, eh?” Ben repeated. “I suppose you go through my pockets once in a while, just to keep your hand in.”

“I should think you’d be ashamed to talk to me that way, Benjamin Robbins. Or haven’t you any sense of shame?”

“You and I have very different ideas about what we should be ashamed of, Kitty,” Benjamin said.

“Don’t think you can squirm out of this, Benjamin. And,” she added with increased violence, “don’t call me Kitty, for Heaven’s sake.”

“Now, let’s see,” Ben said, rubbing an old-fashioned sulphur match over his right buttock, after having prepared a good striking surface by raising his right knee a trifle.

“I wish you could see,” Katherine cried. “I wish you could see what you are doing to a sweet little girl, and her chances to grow up to be a lady.”

“Wait a minute, Susie,” Ben said between puffs at his corncob, over the fresh-filled bowl of which he held the now flaming match.

The pipe lighted, he removed it from his mouth long enough to spit carefully on the match end. When the match end was moistened thoroughly he walked to the door and dropped it on the bare ground and pressed it in with his heel.

“I wish you were as careful with Ruth as you are with matches,” Katherine exclaimed.

“I don’t know just how to break the news to you, Kitty. But the truth is that Ruthy and Myron are engaged, and are going to get married when they grow up.”

“What?” Katherine almost screamed.

“Fact,” Ben said, nodding his head. “Ruth came to me about a month ago and told me that she loved Myron, and thought he’d make a good husband, according to some rules for picking husbands that I laid out for her some time ago.”

“Rules for picking husbands!” Katherine gasped. “Am I awake, or am I dreaming?”

“You’re awake all right, Kitty,” Ben assured her. “She said that Myron was healthy, that he was the best swimmer and the best football player in the school, and that he could run the fastest and the farthest, and that it seemed to her he would make a good father for her children.”

“Oh, God help me!” Katherine breathed. “Oh, God help me! Have you gone entirely crazy, Benjamin Robbins? Have you? Have you gone insane? Are you mad?”

Ben grinned.

“She said that she thought he was handsome, too,” he resumed calmly. “She said she thought his brown eyes and dark hair made a good contrast for her blue eyes and yellow hair. And she thought he wore awfully pretty neckties.”

“Everything is going around,” Katherine cried, clutching her hair with her hands. “You’re just telling a story to excite me. Tell me you’re fibbing, Ben.”

“I’m not fibbing,” Ben said, “I’m telling you what I know about this engagement.”

“Engagement! My stars and garters!”

“There you go swearing again, Susie,” Ben chided.

“I suppose it’s best for me to know all about it. Hurry and tell me everything you know about it.”

“There isn’t much more to tell,” Ben said. “I told her that when it came to picking a husband there was slightly more to it than picking a good bull for a cow.”

“A bull—you are crazy,” Katherine exclaimed. “You should be in an asylum!”

“Anyway,” Ben continued agreeably, “I told her that brains count as well as good health. Of course, it’s old stuff. The old Romans knew about it; and the Greeks before them, and the Egyptians before that. I guess a good many people have heard about it, but few of ’em pay much attention.”

“Stop rambling,” Katherine exclaimed.

“Well, I told Ruthy that Myron seemed to fill the bill so far as health was concerned, but that the question of brains had to be settled. I said something about money not being so important in a young husband: it was health and ability that counted most.”

“I don’t believe my ears,” Katherine said.

“Anyway,” Ben went on, “Ruthy told me that right at present she had a case on Myron, and that she got a thrill from kissing him.”

Katherine jumped as if she had been stuck with a pin, then sat down again heavily. She turned white, and clutched at her heart. And then she turned red.

“Kissing him,” she repeated. “Kissing a boy before she is married—or even engaged—when she is only twelve years old.”

“Yeah, it was your views on not kissing until after a girl gets married that was partly responsible for Ruthy coming to me with the story, I guess. You see, I told her that one of my pet ideas was for a girl not to marry any man until after she had lived with him a while—kind of tried him out.”

Katherine was speechless, her hand still clutching spasmodically at her heart.

“I wasn’t going to tell you about it,” her brother said frankly, “but you went snooping around and found that note she sent Myron in school, and I figured I’d better get in my licks first—before you got after Ruthy, that is, and put some bad ideas in her head.”

Katherine arose, trembling.

“This is the end, Benjamin,” she said. “I never could have believed it would come in our family. But before I will allow you or any one else to endanger the morals of a minor child, I will go to court.”

Ben started to pat his sister on the back.

“There! There!” he began.

“Don’t ‘there, there,’ me!” she exclaimed, with an accent of disgust. “And don’t touch me. May be the harm has been done already. Where is Ruth?”

Ben took hold of Katherine by both arms. There was no smile on his face.

“Wait a minute, Kitty.”

He shook her gently but firmly.

“Pull yourself together, and listen to me. There’s no harm done. There’s only good done. Ruth tells me everything she does, and everything she plans to do. She knows that no woman should have a baby until she is matured, and she is interested in having good, healthy babies.”

“Don’t talk to me. I won’t listen. Let me go.”

“I will talk to you; you’ve got to listen, and I won’t let you go. You were brought up with all that rot about not kissing or hugging a man until you were married, or engaged, although being engaged wasn’t really considered an excuse for such unnatural goings-on; and here you are an old maid.”

“I never thought I’d hear my brother talk to me like that,” Katherine half sobbed. “I could have been married.”

“Sure you could—to some old dodo who wanted his cooking, housework, darning, and diaper-washing done free of charge. Sure you could. But you didn’t have any independence, and you weren’t in an environment where men with brains and money were handy to be grabbed, and if there were any men of that kind handy you would have been so restrained that they wouldn’t have had any way of knowing whether you would have made a good wife or a substitute for ice in the refrigerator.”

“Oh, Benjamin, I’m suffering.”

“Sure you’re suffering, and Ruthy probably is going to suffer too. But, by gum, she’s going to suffer from tackling the problems and taking on the responsibilities of life, not from ducking ’em. Our job is to develop her brains, and her character, and her ideals, so that she can go out and buck life.”

“My head aches so, Benjamin. Poor little Ruth!”

“Poor little Ruth—rot! Our grandmother Burns was married before she was sixteen, and her mother was married when she was sixteen. And I never heard tell of two grander characters.”

“They didn’t go around kissing boys.”

“Ha! Ha! How would you know if they did or not? They wouldn’t tell you, any more than Ruthy would tell you.”

“Father didn’t go around kissing girls.”

“There’s no sense in going into that, Kitty.”

“Don’t call me Kitty,” his sister protested feebly.

“Great!” Ben said. “You’re coming back to normal. Now don’t say anything to upset Ruthy. She and Myron and these other young folks have paired off. There are twelve girls in her Sewing Club, which is what they call it, only I surmise it hasn’t much to do with sewing, and they each have got themselves a boy. And they hug and kiss each other, and have thrills.”

“A terrible tragedy may come of it.”

“Don’t you worry, Kitty. They’re only puppies having their first taste of life. And the only difference between you and me and some other folks is we know just what is going on.”

“But how will Ruthy explain that to her husband, if she ever gets married to some one else?”

“Oh, I’ve told Ruthy about that. Any woman that explains anything to her husband or to any one else is just wasting time and piling up misery. The only time for confessions to husbands is when you’re sure they’re going to learn the facts without the confession. Only kissing is nothing much to bother about, as I see it.”

“Oh, Benjamin!”

“It’s a fact,” Ben insisted. “And I’ll go further and say the best plan is never to confess but to keep right on denying anything that might get you in Dutch, even if the evidence is conclusive.”

“Oh, what am I going to do?” Katherine asked, raising her eyes towards the woodshed roof, where a fat spider was sitting in the middle of his web. “Oh, God, tell me what to do.”

“I’ll tell you what to do,” Ben said gently. “Do nothing. You keep right on teaching Ruthy to cook and keep house, and I’ll see to the rest of it.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Well, next year, I’m going to send her to the Sarah Langley School.”

“That’s a wonderful school,” Katherine said. “They’ll guard her there.”

“They’ll teach her manners, and how to handle complicated cutlery, and how to enter a drawing room, and how to carry on small talk, and a lot of other useful little wrinkles—such as a few words of French and what amounts to a smattering of music.”

“They build character at that school,” Katherine said. “I wish she was there now, although I never dreamed I could reach the point where I would want to be separated from her a moment.”

“And then, after a couple of years, I’ll have her take a business course somewhere,” Ben said.

“A business course—after all that stylish training?”

Ben nodded.

“Sure. It’s either as a secretary or an actress that she’ll have her best chance to get her hooks into a man.”

“Hooks into a man!” Katherine repeated faintly.

“What else does a woman live for?” Ben demanded. “Be honest about it.”