Читать книгу The Romance of a Plain Man - Glasgow Ellen Anderson Gholson - Страница 4

For the next two years, when my mother sent me on errands to McKenney's grocery store, or for a pitcher of milk to old Mrs. Triffit's, who kept a fascinating green parrot hanging under an arbour of musk cluster roses, it was my habit to run five or six blocks out of my way, and measure my growing height against the wall of the enchanted garden. On the worn bricks, unless they have crumbled away, there may still be seen the scratches from my penknife, by which I tried to persuade myself that each rapidly passing week marked a visible increase in my stature. Though I was a big boy for my age, the top of my straw-coloured hair reached barely halfway up the spiked wall; and standing on my tiptoes my hands still came far below the grim iron teeth at the top. Yet I continued to measure myself, week by week, against the barrier, until at last the zigzag scratches from my knife began to cover the bricks.

It was on a warm morning in spring during my ninth year, that, while I stood vigorously scraping the wall over my head, I heard a voice speaking in indignant tones at my back.

"You bad boy, what are you doing?" it said.

Wheeling about, I stood again face to face with the little girl of the red shoes and the dancing feet. Except for her shoes she was dressed all in white just as I had last seen her, and this time, I saw with disgust, she held a whining and sickly kitten clasped to her breast.

"I know you are doing something you ought not to," she repeated, "what is it?"

"Nothink," I responded, and stared at her red shoes like one possessed.

"Then why were you crawling so close along the wall to keep me from seeing you?"

"I wa'nt."

"You wa'nt what?"

"I wa'nt crawlin' along the wall; I was just tryin' to look in," I answered defiantly.

An old negro "mammy," in a snowy kerchief and apron, appeared suddenly around the corner near which we stood, and made a grab at the child's shoulder.

"You jes let 'im alont, honey, en he ain' gwine hu't you," she said.

"He won't hurt me anyway," replied the little girl, as if I were a suspicious strange dog, "I'm not afraid of him."

Then she made a step forward and held the whining grey kitten toward me.

"Don't you want a cat, boy?" she asked, in a coaxing tone.

My hands flew to my back, and the only reason I did not retreat before her determined advance was that I could hardly retreat into a brick wall.

"I've just found it in the alley a minute ago," she explained. "It's very little. I'd like to keep it, only I've got six already."

"I don't like cats," I replied stubbornly, shaking my head. "I saw Peter Finn's dog kill one. He shook it by the neck till it was dead. I'm goin' to train my dog to kill 'em, too."

Raising herself on the toes of her red shoes, she bent upon me a look so scorching that it might have burned a passage straight through me into the bricks.

"I knew you were a horrid bad boy. You looked it!" she cried.

At this I saw in my imagination the closed gate of the enchanted garden, and my budding sportsman's proclivities withered in the white blaze of her wrath.

"I don't reckon I'll train him to catch 'em by the back of thar necks," I hastened to add.

At this she turned toward me again, her whole vivid little face with its red mouth and arched black eyebrows inspired by a solemn purpose.

"If you'll promise never, never to kill a cat, I'll let you come into the garden – for a minute," she said.

I hesitated for an instant, dazzled by the prospect and yet bargaining for better terms. "Will you let me walk under the arbours and down all the box-bordered paths?"

She nodded. "Just once," she responded gravely.

"An' may I play under the trees on the terrace where you built yo' houses of moss and stones?"

"For a little while. But I can't play with you because – because you don't look clean."

My heart sank like lead to my waist line, and I looked down ashamed at my dirty hands.

"I – I'd rather play with you," I faltered.

"Fur de Lawd's sake, honey, come in en let dat ar gutter limb alont," exclaimed the old negress, wagging her turbaned head.

"Well, I'll tell you what I'll do," said her charge, after a deep moment; "I'll let you play with me for a little while if you'll take the cat."

"But I ain't got any use for it," I stammered.

"Take it home for a pet. Grandmama won't let any more come on the place. She's very cruel is grandmama, isn't she, mammy?"

"Go way, chile, dar ain' nobody dat 'ould want all dem ar critters," rejoined the old negress.

"I do," said the little girl, and sighed softly.

"I'll take it home with me," I began desperately at last, "if you'll let me play with you the whole evening."

"And take you into the house?"

"An' take me into the house," I repeated doggedly.

Her glance brushed me from head to foot, while I writhed under it, "I wonder why you don't wash your face," she observed in her cool, impersonal manner.

I fell back a step and stared defiantly at the ground.

"I ain't got any water," I answered, driven to bay.

"I think if you'd wash it ever so hard and brush your hair flat on your head, you'd look very nice – for a boy," she remarked. "I like your eyes because they're blue, and I have a dog with blue eyes exactly like yours. Did you ever see a blue-eyed dog? He's a collie. But your hair stands always on end and it's the colour of straw."

"It growed that way," I returned. "You can't get it to be flat. Ma has tried."

"I bet I could," she rejoined, and caught at the old woman's hand. "This is my mammy an' her name is Euphronasia, an' she's got blue eyes an' golden hair," she cried, beginning to dance up and down in her red shoes.

"Gawd erlive, lamb, I'se ez black ez a crow's foot," protested the old woman, at which the dance of the red shoes changed into a stamp of anger.

"You aren't! – You aren't! You've got blue eyes an' golden hair!" screamed the child. "I won't let you say you haven't, – I won't let anybody say you haven't!"

It took a few minutes to pacify her, during which the old negress perjured herself to the extent of declaring on her word of honour that she had blue eyes and golden hair; and when the temper of her "lamb" was appeased, we turned the corner, approached the front of the house, and ascended the bright bow of steps. As we entered the wide hall, my heart thumped so violently that I hurriedly buttoned my coat lest the little girl should hear the sound and turn indignantly to accuse, me of disturbing the peace. Then as the front door closed softly behind us, I stood blinking nervously in the dim green light which entered through the row of columns at the rear, beyond which I saw the curving stairway and the two miniature yew trees at its foot. There was a strange musty smell about the house – a smell that brings to me now, when I find it in old and unlighted buildings, the memory of the high ceiling, the shining floor over which I moved so cautiously, and the long melancholy rows of moth-eaten stags' heads upon the wall.

A door at the far end was half open, and inside the room there were two ladies – one of them very little and old and shrivelled, and the other a pretty, brown-haired, pliant creature, whom I recognised instantly as our visitor of that stormy October evening more than two years ago. She was reading aloud when we entered, in a voice which sounded so soft and pious that I wondered if I ought to fold my hands and bow my head as I had been taught to do in the infant Sunday-school.

"Be careful not to mush your words, Sarah; the habit is growing upon you," remarked the elder lady in a sharp, imperative tone.

"Shall I read it over, mother? I will try to speak more distinctly," returned the other submissively, and she began again a long paragraph which, I gathered vaguely, related to that outward humility which is the becoming and appropriate garment for a race of miserable sinners.

"That is better," commented the old lady, in an utterly ungrateful manner, "though you have never succeeded in properly rolling your r's. There, that will do for to-day, we will continue the sermon upon Humility to-morrow."

She was so little and thin and wrinkled that it was a mystery to me, as I looked at her, how she managed to express so much authority through so small a medium. The chair in which she sat seemed almost to swallow her in its high arms of faded green leather; and out of her wide, gathered skirt of brocade, her body rose very erect, like one of my mother's black-headed bonnet pins out of her draped pincushion. On her head there was a cap of lace trimmed gayly with purple ribbons, and beneath this festive adornment, a fringe of false curls, still brown and lustrous, lent a ghastly coquetry to her mummied features. In the square of sunshine, between the gauze curtains at the window, a green parrot, in a wire cage, was scolding viciously while it pecked at a bit of sponge-cake from its mistress's hand. At the time I was too badly frightened to notice the wonderful space and richness of the room, with its carved rosewood bookcases, and its dim portraits of beruffled cavaliers and gravely smiling ladies.

"Sally," said the old lady, turning upon me a piercing glance which was like the flash of steel in the sunlight, "is that a boy?"

Going over to the armchair, the little girl stood holding the kitten behind her, while she kissed her grandmother's cheek.

"What is it, Sally, dear?" asked the younger woman, closing her book with a sigh.

"It's a boy, mamma," answered the child.

At this the old lady stiffened on her velvet cushions. "I thought I had told you, Sally," she remarked icily, "that there is nothing that I object to so much as a boy. Dogs and cats I have tolerated in silence, but since I have been in this house no boy has set foot inside the doors."

"I am sure, dear mamma, that Sally did not mean to disobey you," murmured the younger woman, almost in tears.

"Yes, I did, mamma," answered the child, gravely, "I meant to disobey her. But he has such nice blue eyes," she went on eagerly, her lips glowing as she talked until they matched the bright red of her dancing shoes; "an' he's goin' to take a kitten home for a pet, an' he says the reason he doesn't wash his face is because he hasn't any water."

"Is it possible," enquired the old lady in the manner of her pecking parrot, "that he does not wash his face?"

My pride could bear it no longer, and opening my mouth I spoke in a loud, high voice.

"If you please, ma'am, I wash my face every day," I said, "and all over every Saturday night."

She was still feeding the parrot with a bit of cake, and as I spoke, she turned toward me and waved one of her wiry little hands, which reminded me of a bird's claw, under its ruffle of yellowed lace.

"Bring him here, Sally, and let me see him," she directed, as if I had been some newly entrapped savage beast.

Catching me by the arm, Sally obediently led me to the armchair, where I stood awkward and trembling, with my hands clutching the flaps of my breeches' pockets, and my eyes on the ground.

For a long pause the old lady surveyed me critically with her merciless eyes. Then, "Give him a piece of cake, Sally," she remarked, when the examination was over.

Sally's mother had come up softly behind me while I writhed under the piercing gaze, and bending over she encircled my shoulders with her protecting arms.

"He's a dear little fellow, with such pretty blue eyes," she said.

As she spoke I looked up for the first time, and my glance met my reflection in a long, gold-framed mirror hanging between the windows. The "pretty blue eyes" I saw, but I saw also the straw-coloured hair, the broad nose sprinkled with freckles, and the sturdy legs disguised by the shapeless breeches, which my mother had cut out of a discarded dolman she had once worn to funerals. It was a figure which might have raised a laugh in the ill-disposed, but the women before me carried kind hearts in their bosoms, and even grandmama's chilling scrutiny ended in nothing worse than a present of cake.

"May I play with him just a little while, grandmama?" begged Sally, and when the old lady nodded permission, we joined hands and went through the open window out upon the sunny porch.

On that spring morning the colours of the garden were all clear white and purple, for at the foot of the curving stairway, and on the upper terrace, bunches of lilacs bloomed high above the small spring flowers that bordered the walk. Beneath the fluted columns a single great snowball bush appeared to float like a cloud in the warm wind. As we went together down the winding path to the box maze which was sprinkled with tender green, a squirrel, darting out of one of the latticed arbours, stopped motionless in the walk and sat looking up at us with a pair of bright, suspicious eyes.

"I reckon I could make him skeet, if I wanted to," I remarked, embarrassed rather than malevolent.

Her glance dwelt on me thoughtfully for a moment, while she stood there, kicking a pebble with the toe of a red shoe.

"An' I reckon I could make you skeet, if I wanted to," she replied with composure.

Since the parade of mere masculinity had failed to impress her, I resorted to subtler measures, and kneeling among the small spring flowers which powdered the lower terrace, I began laboriously erecting a palace of moss and stones.

"I make one every evening, but when the ghosts come out and walk up an' down, they scatter them," observed Sally, hanging attentively upon the work.

"Are there ghosts here really an' have you seen 'em?" I asked.

Stretching out her hand, she swept it in a circle over the growing palace. "They are all around here – everywhere," she answered. "I saw them one night when I was running away from my father. Mamma and I hid in that big box bush down there, an' the ghosts came and walked all about us. Do you have to run away from your father, too?"

For an instant I hesitated; then my pride triumphed magnificently over my truthfulness. "I ran clear out to the hill an' all the way down it," I rejoined.

"Is his face red and awful?"

"As red as – as an apple."

"An apple ain't awful."

"But he is. I wish you could see him."

"Would he kill you if he caught you?"

"He – he'd eat me," I panted.

She sighed gravely. "I wonder if all fathers are like that?" she said. "Anyway, I don't believe yours is as bad as mine."

"I'd like to know why he ain't?" I protested indignantly.

Her lips quivered and went upward at the corners with a trick of expression which I found irresistible even then.

"It's a pity that it's time for you to go home," she observed politely.

"I reckon I can stay a little while longer," I returned.

She shook her head, but I had already gone back to the unfinished palace, and as the work progressed, she forgot her hint of dismissal in watching the fairy towers. We were still absorbed in the building when her mother came down the curving stairway and into the maze of box.

"It's time for you to run home now, pretty blue eyes," she said in her soft girlish way. Then catching our hands in hers, she turned with a merry laugh, and ran with us up the terraced walk.

"Is your mamma as beautiful as mine?" asked Sally, when we came to a breathless stop.

"She's as beautiful as – as a wax doll," I replied stoutly.

"That's right," laughed the lady, stooping to kiss me. "You're a dear boy. Tell your mother I said so."

She went slowly up the steps as she spoke, and when I looked back a moment later, I saw her smiling down on me between two great columns, with the snowball bush floating in the warm wind beneath her and the swallows flying low in the sunshine over her head.

I had opened the side gate, when I felt a soft, furry touch on my hand, and Sally thrust the forgotten kitten into my arms.

"Be good to her," she said pleadingly. "Her name's Florabella."

Resisting a dastardly impulse to forswear my bargain, I tucked the mewing kitten under my coat, where it clawed me unobserved by any jeering boy in the street. Passing Mrs. Cudlip's house on my way home, I noticed at once that the window stood invitingly open, and yielding with a quaking heart to temptation, I leaned inside the vacant room, and dropped Florabella in the centre of the old lady's easy chair. Then, fearful of capture, I darted along the pavement and flung myself breathlessly across our doorstep.

A group of neighbours was gathered in the centre of our little sitting-room, and among them I recognised the flushed, perspiring face of Mrs. Cudlip herself. As I entered, the women fell slightly apart, and I saw that they regarded me with startled, compassionate glances. A queer, strong smell of drugs was in the air, and near the kitchen door my father was standing with a frightened and sheepish look on his face, as if he had been thrust suddenly into a prominence from which he shrank back abashed.

"Where's ma?" I asked, and my voice sounded loud and unnatural in my own ears.

One of the women – a large, motherly person, whom I remembered without recognising, crossed the room with a heavy step and took me into her arms. At this day I can feel the deep yielding expanse of her bosom, when pushing her from me, I looked round and repeated my question in a louder tone.

"Where's ma?"

"She was took of a sudden, dear," replied the woman, still straining me to her. "It came over her while she was standin' at the stove, an' befo' anybody could reach her, she dropped right down an' was gone."

She released me as she finished, and walking straight through the kitchen and the consoling neighbours, I opened the back door, and closing it after me, sat down on the single step. I can't remember that I shed a tear or that I suffered, but I can still see as plainly as if it were yesterday, the clothes-line stretching across the little yard and the fluttering, half-dried garments along it. There was a striped shirt of my father's, a faded blue one of mine, a pink slip of baby Jessy's, and a patched blue and white gingham apron I had seen only that morning tied at my mother's waist. Between the high board fence, above the sunken bricks of the yard, they danced as gayly as if she who had hung them there was not lying dead in the house. Samuel, trotting from a sunny corner, crept close to my side, with his warm tongue licking my hand, and so I sat for an hour watching the flutter of the blue, the pink, and the striped shirts on the clothes-line.

"There ain't nobody to iron 'em now," I said suddenly to Samuel, and then I wept.