Читать книгу In Pawn - Ellis Parker Butler - Страница 6

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Riverbank in June is beautiful. Climbing the hills above the Mississippi the streets are arches of elms and maples, the grass richly green, and the shrubs are in blossom.

Up one of these rather steep hill streets, the last day of June, Harvey Redding climbed, with Lem now at his side and now falling behind to investigate something that caught his attention. Harvey was hot. He had put on a coat and the sun was warm and the climb stiff for a fat man. He stopped once in a while to take off his hat and wipe his face. When he did he called to Lem with unwonted gentleness.

“Lem, you come here! Don't be strayin' around all over the neighborhood!”

To these mild commands Lem paid no attention whatever.

Occasionally, but not often, some one passed them, going up or down the hill. To some of these Harvey spoke, stopping for long conversations about the weather or similar exciting subjects. Those he did not know went by without speaking. Now and then a boy went by and Lem straightened up and looked at him.

The peculiar thing was that although Harvey was on his way to see his creditor sister his fat, puffy face was strangely placid. Now and then, when he paused for breath he folded his plump hands across his plump belly; when he spoke to a foot passenger it was slowly, with carefully chosen words and in a gentle voice. He was almost meek.

There was something else peculiar about Harvey this day. He was not smoking his old black pipe. You might have said that he knew Susan would give him Hail Columbia, and that he had prepared for it by assuming in advance an attitude of perfect non-resistance, but this was not the secret of his strangely gentle demeanor.

It was rather late in the afternoon, the warmest time of day. Beyond the neatly painted fences and the trimmed lawns the porches of some of the houses were brightened by the white dresses of ladies. In some of the yards the ladies, and now and then a young fellow, were playing croquet, the balls clicking together with a pleasant sound of well-seasoned wood. Lem put his face to the fences and stared in at these games while Harvey puffed on ahead.

At Sue Redding's gate Harvey paused to wipe his face. The place was large, one hundred and twenty feet of white picket fence along the walk, with a terrace of six feet or more rising steeply inside the fence, so that only at the gate and beyond it could a man see those who sat on the wide porch. Harvey looked at the porch anxiously, but even at that distance—the big, white house was set far back—he could see that Sue was not on the porch, and he was relieved.

“Come here, Lem, dod—I mean, come here, Lem,” he ordered. “Lemme look at your face. Don't seem to do no good to wash your face at all. Well—”

He opened the gate and climbed the steps to the walk that led between two rows of pine trees to the porch.

Two young women, white-clad, were sitting on the step of the porch. One was one of Miss Redding's boarders; the other from a house across the way.

“Miss Redding?” said the boarder, whom

Harvey did not remember to have seen before. “She's in the kitchen, I think. I'll call her—”

“Nemmine,” said Harvey. “Me an' Lem'll go right through. I'm her brother,” he added in explanation. He opened the screen door and passed into the cool, deep hall. Lem followed him.

Sue Redding was making cookies, cutting them out of the flattened dough with a fluted dough-cutter. She was a large woman, almost as heavy as Harvey himself, but remarkably quick in every movement for one so heavy. She turned when Harvey entered, but she did not seem particularly pleased to see him.

“Hello, Lem,” she said, greeting the boy first. “What you want now, Harvey? I don't suppose you've come to pay that note, it ain't likely.”

Harvey seated himself ponderously on one of the kitchen chairs.

“I come to tell you, Sue, that I've given up business,” he said gently, as one not wishing to arouse anger.

The effect was magical. Miss Redding turned on him, her face flushing, her eyes gleaming.

“You come here and dare tell me that, in my own kitchen?” she burst forth. “You don't dare give up business! What did you tell me when I let you go out of the grocery business and into the junk business, Harvey Redding? Did n't you say, 'If you let that note stand, I 'll keep in business until I get it paid up if it takes all my born days!' All right! I suppose you're here to pay up that note, then?”

“Well, now, Susan—”

“A nice right you have to come and say you are going to quit business! Of all the good-for-nothing—”

“The hoss died on me,” said Harvey. “What's that to me?” asked Susan. “I never heard that Moses Shuder ever stopped junking because he did n't have a horse. I never heard that I gave up keeping boarding-house because my cooks packed off without a fare-you-well. Horse, indeed! Harvey Redding, you promised me, when I pushed you for payment when you gave up the grocery business—”

“I know, Susan, I know!”

“And I know!” she declared. “I know what likelihood I've got to get my money back if you give up the only chance you've got to earn money.”

“Of course, I'm mighty sorry,” Harvey began.

“What do I care for your sorry?” she snapped. “I don't want your sorry; I want my money.”

“Well, I ain't got it, Susan,” Harvey said. “I ain't got nothin'. I ain't no good at business. I ain't cut out for it, an' that's a fact. But I got somethin' else in mind.”

“I doubt it.”

“I got an idee,” said Harvey, refusing to be angered, “that if I don't have a business to pull me down all the time, I can save money out of what I get every month an' pay you back that way. I might save ten dollars a month to pay you back, or fifteen, maybe. It's so dod—it's so expensive runnin' a business I just can't save nothin'. With this here Moses Shuder into it, an' hosses dyin' on me, an' everything—”

Miss Redding turned back to her cookies to show that she considered them far more important than anything Harvey might say.

“I dare say!” she said sarcastically.

“So that's what I come up here to offer you, Susan,” Harvey said. “I 'll save an' pay. You can count on it.”

“Oh! I can, can I?”

“I can't do more than give you my word.”

“You gave me your note, I remember. I guess your word ain't no better. You gave me your word you'd stay in business, as near as I can recall. I don't take much stock in your word.”

Harvey was worried now.

“Susan,” he said, “I don't like you should take this here attitude. I'll say to you I've turned over a new leaf. I 'll say to you I've got my bear-in's at last. I know what I was born to be. Business is no good for me. I know what I was intended for now, but if you're goin' to harass me day by day about that money—”

“You bet I'm going to harass you!” said Susan unfeelingly. “If I don't I won't get back a cent, let alone interest. I'll harass! Make sure of that.”

“If there was any security I could give,” said Harvey.

“With your lot all mortgaged up? A nice lot of security you could give!” She turned to him again. “I know you, Harvey. There ain't a bit of anything in you but laziness. Not a mite. You'll promise whatever comes into your head and the next minute you 'll go right back on your word and oath and written note.”

“Susan, I'll pay you back regular, every month, out of my twenty-five dollars, every cent I can scrape off—”

“I don't believe it!”

Harvey looked around helplessly.

“If I had any security to give you,” he said; and then his eye fell on Lem, standing by the window, looking out at the chickens in the back yard. “I 'll tell you what I 'll do Susan,” he said. “I 'll leave Lem with you. I 'll leave him with you until I get that note paid up in full. He can do chores an' help you out one way an' another. I 'll leave Lem with you until I get you paid up.” The boy at the window turned and looked from his father to his Aunt Susan. Young though he was he felt as if the solid earth had fallen from beneath his feet. He had a sickening feeling that no one wanted him or cared for him.

“He's like to be mine forever, then,” said Susan grimly. “But I'll take him, although, goodness knows, he'll be more of a care than a help. It just shows how worthless you are, Harvey Redding, offering to pawn your only son like he was a piece of junk. You wait until I call Miss Percy. I want a witness, I do!”

“Now, wait!” said Harvey; but she was gone. When she returned she brought the boarder Harvey had seen on the porch.

“Now say it,” Miss Susan commanded.

“All I said was I would leave Lemuel—that's my boy yonder, Miss—to Susan here, to keep until I got a sort of note I owe her paid up.”

“Note and interest,” said Susan.

“Note an' interest,” agreed Harvey.

“That you would leave Lemuel with me, like he was my own, with no fussing or interfering from you, Harvey. That's the understanding. Like he was my own son. Until that note and interest is paid up.”

“Only you ain't to harass me,” stipulated Harvey. “I'm to be left alone. I ain't to be everlastin'ly nagged.”

“That's part of it,” agreed Miss Redding grimly, “if you pay on that note regularly.”

The smile that had beautified Lorna Percy's face when she entered the kitchen was gone now. She looked at the boy by the window. Harvey did not dare look at him, nor did Miss Susan. There was something monstrous in thus putting the child in pawn.

“Well, then?” said Harvey, rising heavily from his chair.

Lem looked at him, his eyes filling with tears. “Am I goin' to stay here?” he asked for-sakenly.

“Oh! you'll love it here,” cried Lorna, going to him suddenly and kneeling before him and putting an arm around him. “Such cookies! Such a yard to play in!”

“Yes, I guess you'll stay here awhile, Lem,” Harvey said slowly. “You'll be a good boy for your aunt, won't you? You won't cut up any ruckus? You be a good boy, Lem, an' I dare say I 'll get you again before long.”

Lorna looked up at Miss Susan. There were tears in the girl's eyes, too.

“May n't I take him out on the porch until the cookies are baked, Miss Susan?” she pleaded.

“Do so,” said Miss Redding grimly. “I want a couple of words with my brother.”

“Well, good-bye, Lem,” Harvey said hesitantly.

“Good-bye,” the boy answered, and Miss Percy took his hand and led him away.

Miss Susan finished cutting her cookies, placed them in the pan, pushed the pan in the oven, and slammed the oven door before she turned to Harvey.

“And I don't want any interference with the way I mean to raise him,” she said. “If so be you ever get me paid back you'll have him again. But not until then. And all I can say is I'll do by him as if he was my own child. So that settles that! And now, Harvey, what do you mean to do with yourself if you don't mean to do business?”

Harvey cleared his throat.

“I ain't come to this decision sudden, Susan,” he said defensively. “I've thought it over a lot. I've read a lot on it an' studied it over, an' I feel it is what I was meant for. There ain't any reason why there should n't be one now, any more than in old times if only somebody was inclined that way an' took to it serious enough. I've studied how all of them did, an' what they did—”

“For the land's sake!” exclaimed Miss Susan, “whatever is it you mean to be?”

“Well,” said Harvey, folding his fat hands across his stomach, “I've been studyin' up about saints in a 'Lives of the Saints' book, Susan, an' if I can have a fair show at it I'm goin' to be a saint, a regular saint, Susan, like them they had in the old times.”

“Great land of goodness!” Miss Susan cried, and she looked at Harvey with amazement, but it was evident he meant it.