Читать книгу The Heart of Arethusa - Frances Barton Fox - Страница 10

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One of the most agitating parts of this whole affair was the actual traveling that must be done by Arethusa in order to reach her father.

Miss Eliza's first idea was to find out if anyone in the County would be making a trip to the City this fall and to place her niece under that person's protection; provided that person was of the irreproachable character she deemed requisite before being entrusted with such a charge.

Miss Letitia then ventured to mention, most timidly, the State Fair, which was held in Lewisburg every September. Some one of the county's agricultural population would most surely be going there then.

Perhaps Timothy, answered Miss Eliza, graciously conceding Miss Letitia a stroke of real mentality in her suggestion. If he was planning to attend, it would be just the thing; the girl could go with him. She was sorry she had not broached the subject at supper.

But Arethusa vehemently opposed this idea. She would not go a single step with Timothy. And why could she not go alone, anyway? She was quite large enough, and she was all of eighteen this summer.

This very radical departure from the established order of things raised a storm of protest immediately from Miss Letitia and Miss Eliza; Miss Eliza especially. Such was not to be considered for a moment! An absolutely unprotected female traveling alone! And a young female at that!

"No," said Miss Eliza, firmly.

If the worst came to the worst, and it could not possibly be managed any other way, she would go with Arethusa herself, rather than have her make that four hour trip totally unattended; at which presented alternative Arethusa's mobile face clouded over most completely. This was a much worse prospect than Timothy.

Miss Eliza and Miss Letitia suggested and counter-suggested, and then rejected everything. No one idea seemed altogether to suit.

Now all this commotion over the trip and Arethusa's making it alone was really not so uncalled-for when one realized all the circumstances.

She had never been on a railroad train; never having spent longer than a portion of a day away from the Farm in all of her eighteen years, nor slept, even for one night, under any other roof.

The family did their shopping in "Blue Spring," five miles away down the Pike, only by courtesy a town. It was a "town" of six hundred inhabitants, including babes in arms and counting very carefully. On two most memorable occasions Arethusa had visited the county-seat, twelve miles farther on, on the same Pike (for Blue Spring had preempted a portion of the State road as its Main street); and these were occasions truly never to be forgotten. For there ran the railroad, through the heart of the town; there were electric lights and paved streets; the little place in its aping of a city gave her glimpses of a world of fascinating bustle and confusion. To Arethusa, the county-seat seemed bewilderingly active and alive.

But Miss Eliza was not much of a believer in going to town, and she considered it a waste of time to drive about merely to be driving. The old-fashioned surrey, with its dark green felt upholstery, and its flapping curtains, was rarely taken out of the barn without a distinct objective point in view. Church and prayer-meeting at the tiny frame house of worship on the Pike were the principal dissipations of this "household of women." Though Arethusa had often rebelled inwardly at these arbitrary decisions which so limited her excursions abroad, outward rebellion would have done her no good; Miss Eliza was firm and ruled her little kingdom with a rod of iron.

Under cover of the discussion between Miss Eliza and Miss Letitia, Miss Asenath was having a few ideas of her own on other subjects.

"Why," she asked Arethusa, in her soft voice, "why do you dislike Timothy so much, dear?"

"Dislike Timothy, Aunt 'Senath!" Arethusa's eyes opened wide in surprise, "Why, I don't, at all! I like him just lots!"

"Then why," continued Miss Asenath, smiling just a little, "do you quarrel with him so?"

"I don't quarrel with him, Aunt 'Senath, dear. … Not. … Not much. … " added for the sake of honesty, after thought.

"I thought you all had rather a bad time at supper."

"Oh, that," Arethusa tossed her head, "that was all Timothy's fault. He's. … He's just awful sometimes. He makes me so mad I could just. … " both hands clenched, "and he had on father's clothes!"

"I see. But he's worn them before, dear."

"I know he has, Aunt 'Senath, and every time he does, it makes me just as mad. He. … He doesn't belong in Father's clothes! They don't suit him at all!"

Miss Asenath was silent.

'Way deep down in her heart was a Wish; but it was a Wish she had never expressed to anyone because she was wise, and she knew that wishes expressed were often not granted.

Timothy and Arethusa were nearer and dearer to her than any two people in the world. Timothy was his grandfather over again, name and all, she sometimes thought.

Miss Asenath had not resented it when that first Timothy Jarvis had married. It had hurt her a little, naturally, when she had first heard of it; but her loving heart had very soon understood. An active man could not be expected to view those months before that terrible fall as did she, pinned always to the one spot. There were long hours of both day and night in which she had naught to do but to lie still and remember the joy of those months. And nothing could ever take that away from her, she told herself: it was hers for always, and it was a great deal. So she had clung to her miniature and her memories and sent for him to wish him happiness; and she had wished it with her whole soul from the bottom of her heart. She had loved his sons and daughters when they came, but even more than they, she loved this grandson and namesake, Timothy.

And to see Timothy and Arethusa pick up the threads of her love-story where she had laid them down would almost have compensated Miss Asenath for living all these years with only memories.

Miss Asenath laid her hand on the locket at her throat, and fell to dreaming.

"Timothy," said Arethusa, half to herself, "Timothy and I get along just beautifully sometimes … when he behaves. But he knows all the things I hate, and I think he does them just for spite to see me get mad. He says he likes to see me get mad, and I … just like a goose, go right straight ahead and get mad for him. But I'll fix Timothy Jarvis yet for to-night! Just let him wait! If he thinks I'm going to let him ride all over me like that, he's mightily mistaken! Timothy Jarvis!!" with a most scornful emphasis, her voice rising.

Miss Asenath was conscious, although her thoughts were so very far away, of the vindictiveness of this ending, and smiled; Miss Eliza, catching Timothy's name through the sound of her own conversation, asked sharply:—

"What did you say about Timothy, Arethusa?"

Miss Eliza had a Wish also, but her Wish was quite often expressed; she had other ideas than Miss Asenath. She kept Arethusa fully cognizant of what her heart most earnestly desired.

"Nothing very much, Aunt 'Liza."

"Yes, you did. I heard you. Arethusa," Miss Eliza straightened her glasses and attacked directly, "the way you treated Timothy at the supper-table … all through the meal. … It's beyond my comprehension how you can! But he was a gentleman through the whole thing, I must say, a perfect gentleman. Which ought to make you more than ever ashamed of yourself. Sometimes I'm forced to think that all the training your Aunt 'Titia and I and your Aunt 'Senath have given you has gone for naught. To treat a guest in your own home the way you did Timothy! I was scandalised!! Simply scandalized! But I must say that Timothy behaved like a gentleman."

It was what Timothy would have termed "dirt mean" of Miss Eliza to add this extra chapter to the thorough scolding for the afternoon which she had given Arethusa such a short while before. But Timothy was Miss Eliza's most vulnerable spot; one of her few weaknesses.

"He always does," muttered Arethusa, "according to you. But you don't hear anything he says, he's too smart!"

"What's that?" Miss Eliza looked quite ready for battle.

"Nothing, Aunt 'Liza."

"There was something. You said something about Timothy, Arethusa, for I heard you … again. That habit of yours of answering 'nothing,' when I ask you to repeat what you have said, is decidedly disrespectful."

Miss Eliza reached around for a copy of the Christian Observer which was lying on the sitting room table (the most secular reading she ever did were the stories and articles in its pages) and settled her shiny glasses firmly on the bridge of her nose. Then she drew the lamp nearer and turned it up just a trifle, preparing to enjoy a long discussion of the burning of Servetus which she had been saving for several weeks to read when she would have time to do so uninterrupted. It was signed "Calvinist," and Miss Eliza had the feeling that she was going to agree with every word of it.

Then as a parting shot, as she rattled the pages open:

"You must conduct yourself more like a lady with Timothy, Arethusa, or I'm very much afraid he won't want to marry you."

"Won't want to marry me!" Arethusa sprang hotly from her seat on the couch. "It's me that don't want to marry Timothy!"

"You do not know what you are saying," very coldly and decidedly from Miss Eliza. "Of course you want to. It is fitting in every way, most fitting. He is the right age, the families have known each other always, and the lands adjoin."

This with Miss Eliza was the clinching argument. The Jarvis Farm was on both sides of the Pike, but on one side it enclosed the Redfield Farm north and west and south, and went nearly to town. The "V" lot, especially, seemed to Miss Eliza to be in a position that made annexation desirable. The marriage of Timothy and Arethusa would make one Farm of the two, and straighten all those irregular boundaries. When so made, it would be by far the largest individual piece of property in the County. For to Arethusa, as the sole descendant of the Redfields, would go some day all the land of their owning, and to Timothy had already been left the home Farm of his grandfather, because of his name.

"I shall never marry Timothy," said Arethusa, "Never! If the land was plaited in and out, I never would!"

Miss Eliza put the Christian Observer down in her lap; her glasses slipped to the end of her nose.

"Why?"

"Oh, Sister, don't!"

Miss Letitia gazed distressfully from Miss Eliza to Arethusa, and then back to Miss Eliza again. Her round, good-natured little face was all drawn up and distorted with worry, just as it always was when war threatened, even remotely, between Miss Eliza and Arethusa. And these bouts concerning the girl's marriage to Timothy occurred so often without any advantage to either side.

"Because I shan't."

"That's no reason. You must have some sort of a reason. You can have no really valid objection to Timothy, Arethusa. He is quite handsome, and very likeable. I am devoted to him, myself."

Miss Asenath felt quite like answering for Arethusa that this last statement was most irrelevant, but she refrained. There was really no use in adding the slightest fuel to flames already sufficiently high.

"You speak of the land being plaited in and out," continued Miss Eliza, looking sternly over her glasses. "That was a most foolish remark. Such a thing could never be, and you know it. I do not want you to marry Timothy for his land, of course. I merely mention its situation as next to what will some day be your own as making the alliance just that much more desirable. For heaven knows what will happen to the Farm when you do get it, if you haven't some sensible man to take care of it for you! But there are other things about Timothy that would make him a husband any girl could be proud of. There are plenty of them in this very County would jump at the chance you've had."

"They're very welcome to him!"

Arethusa thought it best not to say this too loud, but unfortunately Miss Eliza heard.

"I'm ashamed of you, Arethusa, if you're not ashamed of yourself. It's throwing away the opportunity of a life-time. I wish I was young, and in your shoes. Have you refused him lately?"

No answer from Arethusa. She picked at the soft blue fleece of Miss Asenath's comfort until she had collected quite a little pile of down, which she made into a ball and put as carefully to one side as if she intended it for some future use. Miss Asenath watched her sympathetically. If it would have done the slightest good she would have entered the breach, but when Miss Eliza reached the stage of her argument of pointblank questions, it meant pursuit to the bitter end.

Miss Letitia was not so wise. She had made three attempts to catch the loop of the same stitch in her crocheting, and failed each time, in her excitement. This was a most unusual performance for her. Her crochet needle poised in mid-air.

"Sister," she pleaded, "please. I wouldn't ask the child such a personal question, if I were you. Please!"

"Please what, 'Titia?" Miss Eliza was distracted for the fraction of a moment to Miss Letitia. "Why do you sit there saying, 'Please,' in that silly way? I will ask my niece Arethusa anything I wish. When I was young we were supposed to answer all the questions of our elders, personal or not, as you call them. Arethusa!"

When Miss Eliza spoke of "my niece Arethusa," it meant business. The poor niece turned desperately, and just in time to receive the broadside of a still more emphatic, "Arethusa!"

"Yes, I have, Aunt 'Liza. Timothy has asked me to marry him every summer since I was five years old, and in between times too, and I've said, 'No,' every single time. And if he keeps on asking me until I'm five hundred years old, I'll still keep on saying, 'no!' I shall never, never, marry Timothy!"

She left her refuge of the couch and started toward the door.

"I did not hear you asking permission to leave the room, Arethusa, and I do wish you would not exaggerate so violently. It is simply telling falsehoods. You told two in that one sentence. You know perfectly well Timothy hasn't been asking you to marry him since he was nine—a child of that age doesn't think of marriage. And you also know just as well as I do that you'll not live to be five hundred, it's absurd to make such statements. Come back here, Arethusa? Now what is your real reason for acting this way whenever I speak to you of Timothy. I want to know? You know just how your Aunt 'Titia and I and your Aunt 'Senath feel about it. Why do you persist in going against our wishes?"

Arethusa gazed wildly around the room. She seemed to hunt on walls and floor an answer to the uncompromisingly plain question. Close to the door she was poised like some wild bird arrested in its flight. One glance that included Miss Asenath and Miss Letitia absolved them both from participation in the scheme so clear to Miss Eliza's heart.

"I don't love Timothy," she said, at last, desperately.

"Nonsense!"

"But I don't!"

"Bah! … Love!" Miss Eliza was thoroughly disgusted. "What do you want to be so mawkish and sentimental for? Just like your father! You like Timothy, don't you? Then that's quite enough."

"But I couldn't marry anybody I didn't love." The persecuted one edged a little bit of a way nearer to the door.

"You don't know any thing about it," declared Miss Eliza, flatly. "What you call love is just pure silly!"

"Well," Arethusa despairingly presented her final bit of reasoning, "I hate Timothy! I think it's the very ugliest name I ever heard. I could never be happy married to anybody called 'Timothy'."

Miss Eliza sniffed. The girl was getting more and more foolish! "That certainly means nothing!"

"I always thought 'Timothy' was a good name," came softly from Miss Asenath. "I always liked 'Timothy' very much myself."

Arethusa melted suddenly. She remembered.

How could she have been so cruel as to say such a thing and hurt dear Aunt 'Senath's feelings? With a rush she was across the room and both strong young arms had clasped the frail figure of the best-loved aunt closely to her.

"Oh, Aunt 'Senath, Aunt 'Senath!" she sobbed, wildly penitent. "I was a beast! I didn't think! Your Timothy was a lovely name!"

It sounded a trifle illogical and inconsistent, but Miss Asenath seemed to understand perfectly. She whispered her forgiveness to the weeping Arethusa, who could only squeeze her and murmur incoherent avowals of her lack of intent to be unkind. To be unkind to Aunt 'Titia was bad enough, but to be unkind to Aunt 'Senath! It was the last word in perfidy.

"It all depends on what we think of the person, what we may think of the name, Arethusa, dear," said Miss Asenath. "I know you didn't mean it."

And Arethusa wept some more, scalding tears of still another sort of penitence: Aunt 'Senath was such a darling! The back of Miss Asenath's woolly white wrapper was rapidly getting damper and damper.

Such scenes as the one just past generally ended in just this way, with Arethusa's tears; and the tears nearly always cleared the air. Miss Eliza took up the Christian Observer once more, and Miss Letitia resumed her rosy crocheting, after raveling out almost a whole row which she had put in as wrong as was possible.

"If I were you, Arethusa," remarked Miss Eliza drily, after awhile, looking up from her magazine to bend her sharp glance on the pair on the sofa, "I would not crush my aunt into jelly in order to show her your sorrow at being so thoughtless and unfeeling. And you will make her quite ill; very likely it will bring on one of her bad headaches, if you carry on much longer that way."

Miss Asenath's headaches were periods of much anxiety for all the family, with the great suffering they brought the gentle invalid. Arethusa drew away from the couch abruptly. She felt suddenly overwhelmed with her inability ever to do the right thing; a feeling which Miss Eliza was quite often successful in arousing in her niece.

Miss Asenath offered her own cobwebby handkerchief to dry Arethusa's reddened eyes. Then she asked Miss Eliza if she would not be good enough to read aloud to them for awhile. Miss Asenath had some of the makings of a diplomat.

None of the roomful of women would really listen, for Miss Letitia would be far too intent on counting stitches, and Miss Asenath would dream, and to Arethusa, Miss Eliza's choice of reading matter was anything but interesting; but Miss Eliza herself would be made beatific. She considered herself somewhat gifted as an elocutionist; during her course at the old Freeport Seminary, now so long ago, she had had the most lady-like of instruction. She prided herself on her ability to put "expression" into her reading. Thus would amiability be especially restored in her quarter, and poor, persecuted Arethusa might have a little while in which to attain some degree of calmness once more.

So Miss Asenath patted the place at her side invitingly. Arethusa cuddled up very close; Miss Eliza went back to the beginning of her article, having read a paragraph or two; and peace began to reign with the very first word of the reading aloud.

When Miss Eliza's voice, with all the proper inflections, had followed the various whys and wherefores of the death of Servetus to a triumphant conclusion, she was a different person. All the sharpness aroused by Arethusa's seeming scorn of Timothy had disappeared. She was even ready to say, when her niece stooped to kiss her good-night, that she was sorry if she had made her unhappy in her manner of discussing Timothy, and Timothy's matrimonial possibilities; and this was a very great concession for Miss Eliza.

"But you are making a great big mistake, Arethusa," she could not help adding, "every way, in not taking Timothy while you can."

Yet it was amiably said, and did not cause the slightest excitement.

Which goes but to prove more surely that Miss Asenath seemed to have missed her calling.