Читать книгу The Sheltered Life - Ellen Glasgow - Страница 8

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Outside, in the slanting beams of the sun, Jenny Blair strapped on her roller-skates and started dangerously over the sunken bricks of the pavement. Her mother had told her to keep on the sunny side of the street and not to skate beyond the corner, where the bricks were uneven and loose at the edges; but experience had shown her that it was safe to interpret broadly her mother's directions. The other children at school had dared her to walk alone, just before sunset, down Canal Street as far as the edge of Penitentiary Bottom; and though she belonged to that gallant breed which has never, as she told herself proudly, "taken a dare," she decided to keep up appearances by going the longest way round, through the Birdsongs' garden at the end of the block. Three long blocks, divided by three dingy alleys, stretched between Washington Street and the mysterious quarter which began with Canal Street and ended in the crowded hollow known as Penitentiary Bottom; but in upper Canal Street, where white people still occupied some of the old houses, she might be able to look over the hill into the exciting place from which the bad smells sprang up on the wind. Always, until to-day, she had paused at the end of Hickory Street and gazed with the eager eye of adventure past the unpaved alleys, where no skates could roll, to the muddy sidewalks and crumbling fences over which the gleaming whitewashed wall of the penitentiary presided. Nobody, least of all her mother, could understand the fascinated horror that drew her, like a tightened cord, toward the unknown and the forbidden. Nobody who had not been born with a rebel heart could share her impulse to skip and dance and flap her arms like fledgling wings as soon as she had broken away from the house and was sure that none of them could run after her because none of them knew where she was going. None of them, not even Grandfather, who was more of a child than the others, would ever suspect that she meant to walk down Canal Street as soon as the sun dipped beyond the walls of the prison. She hadn't told them because it never did any good to tell grown-up people the truth. It simply couldn't be done.

"I'll go and peep in on Mrs. Birdsong," she thought, honourably postponing her excursion until the sun had declined. "It won't take but a minute if I go through her yard."

Something--it may have been the beauty of Mrs. Birdsong--enveloped the small wistaria-mantled house in a perpetual air of surprise. No matter how often she went there, everything was always fresh and dewy and delightful, as if she had never seen it before. The ragged garden at the back, with its untrimmed shrubs and overgrown pool, had seemed to her, even as a little child, far more exciting than the carefully pruned borders and flower-beds of the garden at home. Especially, she loved to be at the Birdsongs' when Uncle Abednego, an ancient negro who lived in the almshouse, was making ineffectual efforts to preserve the dwindling box-trees, the straggling perpetual roses, and the flowering shrubs that had not died in the winter. Sometimes Mrs. Birdsong would come out with a trowel and plant a few flowers in the borders; but she did not like to dig in the earth; even when she wore gloves, she complained, the soil ruined her hands, and there was so much work to do in the house that she preferred to leave the garden to the feeble exertions of Uncle Abednego. The truth was that she knew little of flowers, and loved most the orchids and gardenias that came from florists and were grown only in hothouses. She rarely went into the garden for pleasure, and never walked there except on summer evenings when she was in search of a breeze. John Welch, an orphan cousin, was the only member of the Birdsong family who liked planting, and he had raised a border of what he called "witches' herbs" near the back porch.

Now, as Jenny Blair was taking off her skates in the front yard, he opened the door and came, whistling rudely, down the steps. He was an overgrown, rather awkward boy of seventeen, with a crest of flaming red hair above attractive pointed features and a lively expression. His curiosity about life was insatiable, and in a few years he would begin the study of medicine. Ever since he had come, as a little boy, to live with the Birdsongs, he had insisted that he meant to be a doctor, not a lawyer like George Birdsong. That first spring, when he was only nine, he had planted, with Uncle Abednego's help, his border of "witches' herbs," and he was always interested in trying to cure animals or birds that were injured. More important still, he kept a pet bullfrog, named Old Mortality, in the sunken pool, which was once a lily-pond, at the far end of the garden. Jenny Blair had welcomed Old Mortality, one May afternoon, when he was brought as a tadpole from an old ice-pond. Several other Old Mortalitys had lived and died in the pool; but the child was sure that she could recognize the face of her acquaintance among them; and she never doubted that the present bearer of the title was the progenitor of the family.

"Where are you going?" she inquired of John Welch, while she stood swinging her skates from her hand.

"You'd like to know, wouldn't you?" he retorted teasingly; for he was at an age that she considered objectionable and he missed no opportunity of proving the fact.

"No, I wouldn't. I just asked."

"Yes, you would."

"No, I wouldn't."

After making an impertinent face at him, she darted away in search of the more agreeable company of Uncle Abednego. But Uncle Abednego had already put away his spade and gone home to the almshouse. The garden, untended and untrimmed, was alone with the delicate green light and the roving whispers of spring. Over the edge of the brick walk there was a froth of wild heartsease; the border of dying box was hollow within but wore a living veil overhead; farther away, beyond the twisted crêpe myrtle, weeds surged round the lily-pond, where Old Mortality, a green bullfrog with a Presbyterian face, sat on a moss-grown log in the midst of a few faded lily-pads, and croaked prophetically, at twilight, of the evil to come. "I know he is the very same," Jenny Blair thought now, looking down on him. "I remember his face perfectly well."

Before going out by the tall green gate in the alley wall, she ran back to the house and stole up the steps of the porch to the window that looked into the dining-room. Inside, Mrs. Birdsong was moving softly about, preparing supper before her husband's return. Jenny Blair knew that old Aunt Betsey, the cook, had gone to her sister's funeral in Manchester, and that Mrs. Birdsong was alone with the fascinating process of laying the table and stirring up batterbread in the big yellow bowl. Often Jenny Blair had dropped in to help on one of Aunt Betsey's afternoons "off," which occurred only when there was a funeral.

It was as good as a play, the child thought, and far better than improving the mind, to help Mrs. Birdsong at work. How they would laugh together while they arranged a few flowers in the silver loving-cup Mr. Birdsong had won at a shooting-match, or placed the thread-mats and knives and forks as carefully as if they were having a party. All the time Mrs. Birdsong's gay and lovely voice would ripple on in a silver stream, and as a final reward the child would be permitted to stir the batterbread and pour it out, very slowly and evenly, into the muffin-cups. "And this," Eva Birdsong would exclaim, as she closed the door of the oven, "is the true story of the Queen of the Ball!"

This afternoon, it seemed to Jenny Blair, peeping in from the back window, Mrs. Birdsong appeared less happy than usual. But she might look that way merely because she was alone and there was no one to laugh with her. Even in Queenborough, which contained as much laughter as any place of its size in the world, a celebrated belle and beauty could scarcely be expected to laugh by herself. Mirth required company, as Jenny Blair had learned long ago, since even her mother's cheerful twitter was as silent as a wren's in winter when she was left alone in a room.

"I wish I could stop," Jenny Blair thought, vaguely disturbed without knowing why, "but if I don't walk on Canal Street, Bena will make my life a burden to-morrow." Repeating her mother's favourite phrase in the hour of necessity, she slipped away from the porch window, and stole down the flight of steps into the garden. As soon as she had shut the alley gate behind her and reached the brick pavement of Hickory Street, she strapped on her skates and rolled to the end of the block. There, since the street was deserted, she picked her way over the cobblestones and wheeled in long reckless curves on the opposite side.

In the middle of the third block, when she could see the walls of the prison sharply cutting the golden blue of the horizon, she met Uncle Warner, the old negro rag-picker, and stopped to exchange greetings. His figure was bent beneath the weight of his pickings, which he carried in a hempen bag on his back, and he thumped the pavement, as he walked, with the hickory pole he used to poke out scraps from the trash-heaps. Long before she had known Old Mortality, Jenny Blair remembered the stooping figure, the swollen bag, and the thumping stick of Uncle Warner. Twice a week he came to the bag gate for slops, which he carried away in a borrowed cart with a white mule named Posey, and every Saturday night he was given all the cold meat and stale bread that were left over. Whenever the Archbalds had a ham cooked, the bone, with a little of the meat still left on it, was put aside for Uncle Warner. He had always been there, a familiar figure to two generations; yet nobody could recall whether he had been free or a slave in his youth.

"Uncle Warner," Jenny Blair asked now, "have you ever been down yonder where the bad smell comes from?"

Uncle Warner chuckled. "Go way, chile. Whut you wanter know 'bout dat ole stink fuh?"

"I want to see what it is like down there. I want just to look. If I go far out on top of the hill, can I look over and see?"

"Ef'n you does, I'se gwinter tell yo' Ma on you jes' ez sho' ez I live."

"Have you ever been down there?"

"I'se done slept down dar fuh mos' a hunnard year chile, fuh mos' a hunnard year, fuh mos' a hunnard year."

He passed on mumbling and thumping, as if he had forgotten her, while Jenny Blair balanced herself on her skates and lingered to decipher the hieroglyphics left in chalk on the board fence by horrid little boys. "I wonder if there is anything in it," she thought in disgust. "Boys think they know everything."

By the time she reached Canal Street, the sun was going down in a ball of fire, and the deep and thrilling shadows of the penitentiary slanted over the pavement. Suddenly, as if by magic, the spirit of adventure seized her, and she felt that life was thronging with perils. Warlike but ungallant boys were fighting in bands over the cobblestones; from the windows, where soiled lace curtains streamed out on the breeze, women of dubious colour made remarks in a language that Jenny Blair found exciting and unfamiliar. "I don't believe even Aunt Etta could tell what they are saying," she reflected; for it seemed to her that Aunt Etta's education had been the sort that included the misunderstood tongues.

So absorbed was she in watching the combat in the street that she was more astonished than hurt when her skate tripped over a loosened brick, and a sudden shower of stars sprinkled the pavement.