Читать книгу Impatient Virgin - Donald Henderson Clarke - Страница 9

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Katherine’s eyes were red and her nose was snuffly when she met Ben in the front hall.

“Dr. Prescott is here,” she said. “It’s about Ruth.”

“Oh, it is, is it?” Ben exclaimed.

“How do you do, Benjamin?” said Dr. Prescott, pastor of the First Church, rising from a rocking-chair as Ben entered the front parlor.

“How d’y’ do, Doctor?”

“I have just been discussing Ruth with Miss Robbins,” Dr. Prescott explained, putting two rather soiled white forefingers, with not recently manicured nails, softly together, and nodding gravely a head endowed with silvery white hair, and the face of one entirely satisfied with its possessor’s views on God, life, death, this world, the next world, the tariff, the weather, conditions in Hell, and three square meals a day.

“After discussing her with others, I presume?” Ben suggested briskly.

Dr. Prescott looked surprised a moment, and then smiled Smile No. 2 on his list of smiles. Smile No. 2 was useful in cases of death, serious accident or illness, or when the roast was too well done.

“If I had not been told of the—ah—somewhat advanced views held by your niece, I would still be in ignorance of them,” he said, using Voice Tone No. 3, good for use on atheists, bad children, or any one who doubted that the Doctor used anything except the undiluted word of God.

“Well what about it?” Ben asked. “What about it?”

“Er, Ah—Ah—Er—.”

“I beg your pardon, Doctor,” Ben interrupted. “I know the subject is a painful one to you. But it isn’t to me. I’m back of anything my niece does, says, or wants to do or say.”

“But this—ah—free love,” Dr. Prescott began.

“Ha! Ha! Ha!” Ben exclaimed. “So you’ve heard that too, have you? Well, all I told her was that she’d be silly to marry a man unless she lived with him first.”

Dr. Prescott elevated his arms.

“Well, call it anything you like,” Ben continued, “only it certainly isn’t the sort of doctrine that asks a woman to hitch up with a man, thinking he’s a sort of tailor’s dummy, and then may be waking up too late to find out he’s a twin-bed hound, while she’s a double-bed female, or vice versa.”

“I never thought I would hear any one in Southington talking this way,” Dr. Prescott declared.

“Wait a minute, Doctor,” Ben said. “Me, I’m for all religions—Christian, Mohammedan, Hindoo or Voodoo. The only feature I don’t like about any religion is when its followers try to force their interpretations of it on others—me, for instance.”

Dr. Prescott made a vocal sound, but Ben held up a large, tanned hand, restrainingly.

“There’s nothing more helpless born into this world than a little girl baby without any father or mother,” Ben said. “There’s nothing been invented by any religion or any science that can take the place of a father and a mother for a little girl.

“Well, when I saw my brother’s daughter lying there in her basket without a father or a mother, I made up my mind that minute that I would take all responsibility for arming her for the battle of life.”

So earnest was Ben that Dr. Prescott sat quiet for the moment, and Katherine stilled her sobs.

“I had a hot feeling in my head in that kitchen,” Ben said, “and a lot of pictures and printed words went sailing through my mind. In less than a second I knew what I was going to do with that baby.”

He paused a minute, and looked solemnly at the minister and at Katherine.

“She didn’t have a father or mother to protect her through life,” he continued. “I made up my mind I’d give her a chance to develop her character and her mind so that she could look after herself.

“My first job was to win her confidence—and I did. I always have known everything that child has thought, or done, and I’m standing right here to say there isn’t a sweeter, more natural little girl on earth than our Ruthy is.”

Dr. Prescott cleared his throat.

“But, Benjamin,” he began.

“Wait a minute,” Ben interrupted again. “I didn’t want that little girl to grow up to think she had to live in this God-forsaken town for the rest of her life, and either marry some mossback to raise children and bread for him, or not find any mossback to suit and spend her time drying up with old maid’s misery.”

“Oh, Benjamin!” Katherine exclaimed.

“I didn’t want her to think she had to get stuck for life with any misfit of a he-goat,” Ben said, raising his voice. “So, when the time came, I told her that before she signed a contract to sleep with a man, she’d better try him out first. And if that’s free love, I hope Ruthy’s a free lover.”

“This is terrible,” Dr. Prescott said. “My heart goes out to your dear sister, and the poor little girl. This is terrible. I will pray for you all.”

“Ben is crazy,” Katherine said, conviction in her voice.

“If the rest of you are sane,” Ben said, “I’m glad to be crazy. Ruthy has read the Bible, and she’s read Plato, Huxley, Tyndall, Spencer, Darwin, Ingersoll, Voltaire, Heine, the Elsie Books and Campfire Girls. She’s studied physiology. She knows what a mind is for, and what a body is for. She’s only seventeen, but she’s a woman.”

Dr. Prescott gazed sadly at Ben, shaking his head gently from side to side.

“I will pray with you,” he urged. “Let us wrestle with this Demon which possesses you.”

“I’m in no mood for either prayer or wrestling,” Ben said.

“I don’t think you realize what results this state of mind will have in Southington—so far as your niece is concerned,” Dr. Prescott said.

“I don’t think it would have much, except with a few old fogies,” Ben replied.

“Benjamin Robbins! How can you talk like that?” Katherine cried.

“Anyhow,” Ben said, “I don’t want Ruthy to settle down in Southington. I’ve brought her up from the beginning with the idea of bucking life, going out in the world. If she likes Southington after she’s seen other places, why let her come back.”

“You are an iconoclast,” Dr. Prescott said.

“All the guts of Southington followed the frontier years ago, or is dead,” Ben said. “The people around here inherited their fathers’ and grandfathers’ houses and money and names, but not their guts. Thank God the Polacks who are settling the farms are bringing in some new blood.”

“How could any one talk to a man like that?” Dr. Prescott inquired.

“Well,” Ben exclaimed, suddenly smiling, “you’ll find me ready to talk on about any subject under the sun, and listen to any as well—except the subject of Ruthy’s welfare. Suppose you stay for dinner, Dr. Prescott, and I’ll show you a page I have of the Gutenberg Bible—or I’ll get out my telescope and we’ll look at the stars, or we’ll discuss the Romantic movement in literature in the Nineteenth Century, or the New Humanism, or we’ll read a chapter or two in Papa Herodotus, or we’ll listen to Hetty read Horace, as you’ve never heard Horace read.”

Katherine looked wistfully at Dr. Prescott.

“Oh, Dr. Prescott, please stay.”

After he was in his Canton flannel nightshirt that night, Dr. Prescott kneeled beside his bed and spent an hour asking God to do the best He could for Ruth. Perhaps Katherine’s victuals had taken his mind off hell fire and brimstone for the moment, because he didn’t ask God to punish any one—even Ben.