Читать книгу The Heart of Arethusa - Frances Barton Fox - Страница 5

Table of Contents

Miss Eliza paused to shut the front door carefully behind them, latching it against the storm; and Arethusa ran on ahead into the sitting-room at one end of the big, square hall, a "dog-trot" hall which went straight through the centre of the house from front porch to back porch.

This place known as the "sitting-room" was a nondescript apartment crowded with furniture of varied sorts, till every available space was occupied by something. It was too crowded to be really pleasing when one entered it for the first time and yet it possessed certain and unmistakable charm; which was a charm Miss Asenath may have given. Her couch dominated everything, drawn across between the two south windows. But whatever it was, one undoubtedly had a feeling of something about the sitting-room which made it lovable after being in it the shortest possible time.

The furniture which made it seem crowded ran from a new and shiny sewing-machine of very recent purchase, through some pieces belonging unmistakably to the period of temperamentally carved walnut of a generation or so ago, back to the plain wood and simple lines of Colonial days. Miss Eliza's high old secretary, placed to get the best possible light for her slightly near-sighted eyes which she obstinately refused to admit were anything but perfect in their vision, was of the last description. The secretary stood open always, and was of a consistently immaculate order. The neat little piles of papers and account-books in the various pigeon-holes were arranged so precisely they looked as if they had never been touched since first put in their places, and yet the owner spent many industrious moments, nearly every day, working with them. The piano, which sat almost directly opposite the secretary, was of a trifle later construction. It was large and square, of inlaid rosewood, with handsomely carved legs, and had mother-of-pearl keys faintly tinged with brown all around their edges. From end to end, lengthwise of its top, was a long narrow piece of dark red satin decorated with bunches of tall cat-tails heavily painted in oils. Scattered music lay all over the piano, on the music-rack, sliding down on the keys, and in small, untidy piles hastily placed on the red satin cover. Its scattered condition was conclusive evidence that Arethusa had been handling it, for she was the only person on the place who ever scattered anything about so untidily. There was a wicker sewing-basket in the room, Miss Letitia's property. And a large and pompous what-not of black walnut, elaborately and fantastically carved, guarded the corner nearest the door, bearing as its pièce de resistance a bunch of wax flowers under a glass case, flowers shaped by Miss Asenath's gentle fingers a great many years ago; one or two shells wearing landscapes in oils—of colors and tints never yet seen in an actual landscape—also reminiscent of Miss Asenath's artistic girlhood; and several other non-utilitarian objects of varying degrees of beauty, according to the personal taste of the beholder. A much larger shell than those on the what-not, with a landscape containing a cow and other objects no doubt intended as human, propped open the door into the hall. A white marble clock, with a large piece of white coral lying on its top and under a glass case like the wax flowers, ticked away on the high mantel in the dignified and quiet way which befitted a clock belonging to the Redfields. And there were many other pieces of furniture and bits of old-fashioned ornament in the room.

The various generations and the lives which each one had lived at the Farm might almost be known by observation of these things in the sitting-room. Each generation and its occupations had seemed to leave behind it an imprint in furniture and ornament.

But had the sitting-room not been a room of rather unusual dimensions, it could never have held all of the diversified objects gathered in it. And they were gathered in it of real necessity, for all the life of the house centered about Miss Asenath, and in this room she spent her whole waking time. Miss Asenath had not left the couch between the two south windows for over fifty years, except to be lifted from it to her bed at night and back to it again in the morning for another day.

She was as tiny as Miss Eliza, but even thinner, and her delicate features made her profile seem like a deliciously tinted cameo against the faded tan of the sitting-room wall. She had an abundance of soft white hair that waved like a fleecy cloud about her face. Her skin was white and waxen clear; her loose gown was of woolly material, white and spotless; the pillows piled all around her were all in immaculate white cases; and though her lips still held a faded rose and her eyes gleamed dark, the only real spot of color anywhere immediately about her was a fluffy wool afghan of a heaven-like shade of deep blue spread across the lower part of her helpless body.

Miss Asenath loved all that had color: the gold of sunlight across the sitting-room floor; the green of the grass and the waxen-leaved coral honeysuckle just outside the sitting-room windows; she even loved the wax flowers because they were so gay. But Miss Letitia loved just as dearly to dress her all in white to match her hair and skin (Miss Letitia was the seamstress for the whole family); so there was a compromise. Miss Asenath wore the soft white gowns of Miss Letitia's making and, with Miss Letitia's own connivance, indulged her fancy for colors in her afghans, which she had in every conceivable shade.

Long ago, Miss Asenath had had a Romance.

She had always been the acknowledged beauty of the family in her Dresden china loveliness, and she had been little more than a child when love had come to her in all the wonder and ecstacy of loving that belongs to youth. But a fall from her riding horse had left her pinned to this couch, never to walk again, so she had sent her boy-lover away.

And although she had known him grow old and had watched him live a full life apart from hers (a life actually ended only a very few years ago), she had seemed to see him always as the boy belonging to her girlhood, to those months she had claimed him as her own. She wore his picture in a locket at her throat hung on a piece of ribbon the color of the afghan for that day. It was a miniature of a smiling boy with waving blonde hair brushed high above his forehead in an unmistakable roll, with eyes of a very deep shade of blue, and dressed in a high stock and much be-ruffled shirt, and a blue coat adorned with brass buttons.

Arethusa dearly loved all of this, the Romance and the Locket. She made it her special bit in the dressing of Miss Asenath every morning to hang the locket on its bit of ribbon and tie the tiny bow around Miss Asenath's frail neck.

She often wondered just how it would seem when one was old to have been the Heroine of a Situation exactly like a story book. She pictured it as a dramatic scene of renunciation between the lovers, both satisfyingly well-favored—for Miss Asenath's beauty was a tradition and the boy in the locket was undeniably good to look upon—; and her natural inclination to romance was aided by the reading of many old-fashioned novels of unbridled sentimentality.

Arethusa loved Miss Asenath herself even more than the Romance, though everyone loved her; no one could help it. Even Miss Eliza's crisp tones softened when she spoke to her.

Arethusa plumped herself down on her special hassock right beside Miss Asenath's couch. It was a hassock with a wool-worked top of fearful reds and greens and yellows, which always stood just in that place so Arethusa could sit close to Miss Asenath. Miss Asenath smiled a welcome, and then with her slender fingers, so waxen white against the glowing color of the girl's hair, began plaiting up the loose red mass lest Miss Eliza should notice it and scold Arethusa for running about with her hair unbound.

The room was stifling.

Every window was closed tight, and the blinds drawn down, in addition, making a semi-darkness. For Miss Letitia was afraid of storms, thunder storms especially. At the very first distant rumble of thunder she always closed every opening in the house.

She sat bolt upright in the centre of the room, her plump little person enthroned upon a leather pillow—lightning never struck through feathers—and her never idle fingers were busy crocheting a rose-colored afghan for Miss Asenath. Miss Letitia decidedly preferred steel needles both for crocheting and knitting, but steel was dangerous to use during a storm—it attracted lightning—, so her steel needles were all safe in the very bottom of her bureau drawer underneath her plain assortment of chemises and petticoats. And she had wheeled the sewing machine into the very farthest and darkest corner of the room.

Miss Letitia was like nothing in the world so much as a ridiculously fat edition of Miss Eliza. But she lacked Miss Eliza's precision, and she could never, even with several conscientious trials, get her hair parted exactly in the middle. Arethusa sometimes on very special occasions parted it for her. Miss Eliza liked to see her sister as neat as herself. She liked Miss Letitia's apparel to have the same trim look as her own instead of the comfortably untidy appearance it did have.

But, as Miss Letitia plaintively expressed it, when taken to task because she was not just so, "It's a great deal easier, Sister, to pin things down on a thin person, because there isn't any strain."

Arethusa picked up the last copy of the Christian Observer, which was lying near Miss Asenath, and fanned herself vigorously. Her efforts to cool herself were so vigorous that in a very few moments she was wet with perspiration and much warmer than she had been before she started to fan. She felt as if she were about to suffocate in this close room after her glorious little run in the breath of the cold wind.

"May I open a window, Aunt 'Titia," she begged, "Please, mayn't I? It's not storming yet, and, and, I'm so hot!"

"Never open a window in a storm, 'Thusa. It's a very dangerous thing to do."

Miss Letitia iooked at her great-niece just as severely as she knew how, though the severe effect she intended was somewhat marred by that perennial twinkle in her eyes and the rosy cloud in her lap below her round, rosy face. Such a setting made her look more like a grown-up cherub than anything else at the moment.

The whole room, even with its closed blinds, was suddenly illuminated by a blinding glow, and a crashing roll of thunder followed immediately afterwards.

Miss Letitia screamed.

"Mercy on us! How awful! That was so near. Sister 'Liza, you'd better get a pillow! 'Thusa … !"

Always, in a storm, one of Miss Letitia's first duties was to bulwark Miss Asenath who could not get pillows for herself, and so the latter was almost buried in them. Miss Asenath passed one of her many over to Arethusa, who sat on it obediently. Then the gentle creature on the couch rewarded her with a pat; by this conveying her loving intelligence of just how much the sitting on the hot, stuffy protection Miss Letitia insisted upon was hated, and her recognition of the magnanimity of doing so with murmuring. But it was Miss Asenath's way to make anything but good behaviour in her immediate vicinity well-nigh impossible.

Next, she reached over and took the Christian Observer from Arethusa's hot grasp, and began herself to fan the overheated girl very slowly and quietly.

"If you sit quite still, dear," she said softly, "you'll cool off in just a moment."

Miss Eliza's sturdy uprightness disdained the "safety first" aid of pillows. She was a fatalist.

"If I'm struck, then I'm struck," she said, with the finality that admits of no argument.

Arethusa sat quietly on her hassock and under Miss Asenath's gentle regularity of fanning she cooled off gradually, but her impatience was in no wise abated. Father's letter was still undiscussed; and Arethusa wished that Miss Eliza would hurry and tell her about it, and what he had said. She seemed so very much longer than usual in getting started on what her niece considered the most burning question of the hour.

She told Miss Letitia about the fall of the bird's nest which she had noticed on her trip to get Arethusa, and Miss Letitia agreed with her sister that it was a blessing that the wind had blown it down before it rained, else the gutter would surely have flooded again. They discussed with zeal the advisability of putting wire netting over the gutter end to keep those birds from re-building, and the length of time the storm was in actually coming. Miss Letitia ventured the prediction that it was to be a hard rain and she certainly hoped that Blish had remembered to put the barrels under that broken place in the north-east water spout to catch all the rain-water that was possible: and Miss Eliza replied with asperity that if he had not remembered it, he would find himself sorry. But she really considered it decidedly remiss in Jere Conway not to have fixed that spout weeks ago; she herself had told him about it on her last visit to town. Jere Conway was getting lazier and lazier as he got older and less attentive to business. Although she hated very much to employ a strange man, still if he put off much longer fixing that spout, she was going to send for the new tin-smith at the Junction.

Finally, Arethusa felt that she could not stand all this irrelevancy another second; her impatient longing had to be expressed.

"Please, Aunt 'Liza, what did Father say?"

Miss Eliza dropped her glasses to the end of her nose.

"You must learn to wait, Arethusa. You are much too impatient. Like your father."

Miss Asenath's gentle voice interposed, "But why not tell her, Sister? Right now?"

So Miss Eliza proceeded.

"Your father," she announced, in a tone that plainly indicated her hearty disapproval of the whole affair, and plunging at once into the very middle of her subject, "has married again!"

"Married again!" echoed Arethusa, uncertainly.

The effect of her aunt's disclosure was as though some one had thrown a bulky object at her quite unexpectedly.

"That's what I said, I believe. It's what I intended to say. Shut your mouth, child—you look half-witted with it open that way. I always did think he would. And I must confess I never thought he'd wait near as long as he has. Though I'm no great believer in second marriages, myself."

"But, Aunt 'Liza. … "

Miss Eliza frowned at the interruption.

"Will you wait, Arethusa? Till I finish!"

Arethusa might have retorted, and very properly, that nothing had been really begun as yet, by jumping into a middle without preamble. But then, Miss Eliza had her own most individual way of doing everything, even to telling of the contents of important letters.

"When I have finished, you may read his letter for yourself. His new wife," she crowded a quantity of scorn into those two words, "wants you to come visit them. He says she does. They both do. She has sent. … "

Arethusa sprang, starry-eyed, from her hassock. Her hands flew, clasped, up to her heart to hold its beating down.

"To Europe? Oh, Aunt 'Liza!"

"Will you wait!! I must say! To Europe, indeed! He's in America!"

And then Arethusa gave such a shriek of joy that it echoed through and through the house. Mandy, in the kitchen, looked inquiringly at Blish as it penetrated there. Miss Asenath smiled; Miss Letitia's crochet needle slipped clear out of the stitch she was just taking: and Miss Eliza put her hands over her ears.

"Arethusa!! If you don't sit down! … "

So Arethusa subsided to the hassock, still quivering. Miss Asenath gave her a reassuring pat and her frail hand was grabbed and held tight. Such composure as could be managed came easier with something to squeeze.

Miss Eliza continued her tale.

"Yes, his new wife, thank heaven, is an American, and I reckon she wants to live at home." Then to herself, parenthetically, "I was always afraid he'd marry one of those frog-eating foreigners he's been trotting around with so long, and I must say I'm mightily surprised that he didn't."

She paused a moment and looked at Arethusa over her glasses as if Arethusa were the one to blame for this situation. Although the girl did not dare open her mouth in face of such an expression, she gave a little jump of impatience. It did seem as if Miss Eliza might finish telling It, and tell It straight, in some sort of order, if she were going to tell It at all.

"They want you to come visit them," repeated Miss Eliza, after her parenthesis and the little pause, "and your father's sent the money, as he says, for your 'immediate needs.' Over one hundred dollars it is. He says his wife gave it to him. She must be mighty well-off. 'Immediate needs,' indeed! I can buy your whole winter wardrobe with that money!"

Then once more did Arethusa rush recklessly in where angels would have feared to tread.

"Oh, Aunt 'Liza! … " A belated discretion came to her aid before she finished.

Miss Eliza frowned again. Her lips drew ominously down, and reprimand of some sort was plainly to be detected hovering there, but, for some obscure reason, she also changed her mind.

"Your Aunt 'Titia," she said, rather mildly, and thus apparently shifting all responsibility for any evil, which might ensue from this step to Miss Letitia's plumper shoulders, "your Aunt 'Titia has decided that so long as this is nearly August, there's no earthly use in your going to visit them until fall. So I'm going to write your father that. He may not like it, because he wants you right away, his letter says. But it would be downright foolishness to get you more summer clothes this late in the season; and you haven't near enough now, nor the right kind, to visit in a city. It's just like him, for all the world, this whole affair. Letting you alone for this long, and then all of a sudden wanting you to be bundled right off to him! You'll be needing winter clothes in a month or two," she finished decidedly, "so you're going in the fall." Then she added, much more to herself, however, than to Arethusa, "But I must say, I strongly doubt the wisdom of your going at all."

She settled back in her chair with the air of one having said her say, but leaving her niece with a feeling strongly resembling dissatisfaction.

Miss Eliza had simply flung these few facts at her without any elaboration; sketched in the bare outlines to what, viewed by Arethusa, a whole volume might be added without doing anywhere near full justice to the Subject. There was that matter of the "new wife," especially. One's only father does not get married every day, and to dismiss the lady of his choice by simply stating her existence does not gratify a thousandth part of natural curiosity. Her father, she knew, had written more than just the simple fact of his marriage. If he had done just that; then it was certainly not her father who had written the letter.

Miss Eliza had not told her when … or where … or. …

Arethusa gazed at her aunt, clasping and unclasping her hands helplessly; her lips parted for speech, but no words came, for so many words trembled there, they literally dammed one another up.

"I. … Did Father. … " she managed to gasp, finally.

But Miss Eliza seemed to read through this inadequacy of expression some of that chaos of thought which whirled round and round in Arethusa's brain. She reached down in the little leather pocket that always hung at her belt and drew out a large, square envelope.

"Here, child, I said you could read it," and although her tone was as sharp as always, it was not unkind. "That woman he married. You want to know, I reckon. Some more about her. It's perfectly natural. He's gone into all sorts of raptures over her, of course. He wouldn't be Ross Worthington if he hadn't. And she is very probably just an ordinary female woman."

Arethusa seized the outstretched envelope eagerly.

"May I … ?" she asked.

She spoke to Miss Asenath, who nodded a permission to the unfinished but evident request before either of the other aunts had a chance to refuse it.

So Arethusa was off like the wind, unheeding of the anxious call Miss Letitia sent after her.

Out through the back of the house this time, and on through the kitchen where she paused only long enough to squeeze Mandy, one of her staunchest allies and a certain sharer in all joys, to whirl her clear around from her table where she was working, and to wave the Letter at her excitedly and then plunge on, leaving Mandy absolutely breathless with the suddenness of this onslaught.

The rain was falling now, slowly but steadily, in big heavy drops, and the darkest clouds were lowering, apparently right above her head; but the flying girl paid no attention to these evidences of the imminence of her storm. She held the Letter pressed close against her as if to protect it and made straight for Miss Asenath's Woods, via the orchard.