Читать книгу We and Our Neighbors; or, The Records of an Unfashionable Street - Harriet Beecher Stowe - Страница 11

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"Now, Harry, I'll tell you what I'm going to do this morning," said Eva, with the air of a little general, as she poured his morning coffee.

"And what are you going to do?" replied he, in the proper tone of inquiry.

"Well, I'm going to take the old fortress over the way by storm, this very morning. I'm going to rush through the breach that Jack has opened into the very interior and see what there is there. I'm perfectly dying to get the run of that funny old house; why, Harry, it's just like a novel, and I shouldn't wonder if I could get enough out of it for you to make an article of."

"Thank you, dear; you enter into the spirit of article-hunting like one to the manner born."

"That I do; I'm always keeping my eyes open when I go about New York for bits and hints that you can work up, and I'm sure you ought to do something with this old Vanderheyden house. I know there must be ghosts in it; I'm perfectly certain."

"But you wouldn't meet them in a morning call," said Harry, "that's contrary to all ghostly etiquette."

"Never mind, I'll get track of them. I'll become intimate with old Miss Dorcas and get her to relate her history, and if there is a ghost-chamber I'll be into it."

"Well, success to you," said Harry; "but to me it looks like a formidable undertaking. Those old ladies are so padded and wadded in buckram."

"Oh, pshaw! there's just what Jack has done for me, he has made a breach in the padding and buckram. Only think of my seeing them at midnight in their night-caps! And such funny night-caps! Why, it's an occasion long to be remembered, and I would be willing to wager anything they are talking it over at this minute; and, of course, you see, it's extremely proper and quite a part of the play that I should come in this morning to inquire after the wanderer, and to hope they didn't catch cold, and to talk over the matter generally. Now, I like that old Miss Dorcas; there seems to me to be an immense amount of character behind all her starch and stiffness, and I think she's quite worth knowing. She'll be an acquisition if one can only get at her."

"Well, as I said, success and prosperity go with you!" said Harry, as he rose and gathered his papers to go to his morning work.

"I'll go right out with you," said Eva, and she snatched from the hat-tree a shawl and a little morsel of white, fleecy worsted, which the initiated surname "a cloud," and tied it over her head. "I'm going right in upon them now," she said.

It was a brisk, frosty morning, and she went out with Harry and darted across from the door. He saw her in the distance, as he went down the street, laughing and kissing her hand to him on the door-step of the Vanderheyden house.

Just then the sound of the door-bell—unheard of in that hour in the morning—caused an excitement in the back breakfast-parlor, where Miss Dorcas and Mrs. Betsey were at a late breakfast, with old Dinah standing behind Miss Dorcas' chair to get her morning orders, giggling and disputing them inch by inch, as was her ordinary wont.

The old door-bell had a rustling, harsh, rusty sound, as if cross with a chronic rheumatism of disuse.

"Who under the sun!" said Miss Dorcas. "Jack, be still!"

But Jack wouldn't be still, but ran and snuffed at the door, and barked as if he smelt a legion of burglars.

Eva heard, within the house, the dining-room door open, and then Jack's barking came like a fire of artillery at the crack of the front door, where she was standing. It was slowly opened, and old Dinah's giggling countenance appeared. "Laws bless your soul, Mis' Henderson," she said, flinging the door wide open, "is that you? Jack, be still, sir!"

But Eva had caught Jack up in her arms, and walked with him to the door of the breakfast room.

"Do pray excuse me," she said, "but I thought I'd just run over and see that you hadn't taken any cold."

The scene within was not uninviting. There was a cheerful wood fire burning on the hearth behind a pair of gigantic old-fashioned brass fire-irons. The little breakfast-table, with its bright old silver and India china, was drawn comfortably up in front. Miss Dorcas had her chair on one side, and Miss Betsey on the other, and between them there was a chair drawn up for Jack, where he had been sitting at the time the door-bell rang.

"We are ashamed of our late hours," said Miss Dorcas, when she had made Eva sit down in an old-fashioned claw-footed arm-chair in the warmest corner; "we don't usually breakfast so late, but, the fact is, Betsey was quite done up by the adventure last night."

"Perhaps," said Eva, "I had better have tried keeping Jack till morning."

"Oh no, indeed, Mrs. Henderson," said Mrs. Betsey, with energy; "I know it's silly, but I shouldn't have slept a wink all night if Jack hadn't come home. You know he sleeps with me," she added.

Eva did not know it before, but she said "Yes" all the same, and the good lady rushed on:

"Yes; Dorcas thinks it's rather silly, but I do let Jack sleep on the foot of my bed. I spread his blanket for him every night, and I always wash his feet and wipe them clean before he goes to bed, and when you brought him back you really ought to have seen him run right up stairs to where I keep his bowl and towel; and he stood there, just as sensible, waiting for me to come and wash him. I wish you could have seen how dirty he was! I can't think where ever that dog gets his paws so greasy."

"'Cause he will eat out o' swill-pails!" interposed Dinah, with a chuckle. "Greatest dog after swill-pails I ever see. That's what he's off after."

"Well, I don't know why. It's very bad of him when we always feed him and take such pains with him," said Mrs. Betsey, in accents of lamentation.

"Dogs is allers jest so," said Dinah; "they's arter nastiness and carron. You can't make a Christian out o' a dog, no matter what you do."

Old Dinah was the very impersonation of that coarse, hard literalness which forces actual unpalatable facts upon unwilling ears. There was no disputing that she spoke most melancholy truths, that even the most infatuated dog-lovers could not always shut their eyes to. But Mrs. Betsey chose wholly to ignore her facts and treat her communication as if it had no existence, so she turned her back to Dinah and went on.

"I don't know what makes Jack have these turns of running away. Sometimes I think it's our system of dieting him. Perhaps it may be because we don't allow him all the meat he wants; but then they say if you do give these pet dogs meat they become so gross that it is quite shocking."

Miss Dorcas rapped her snuff-box, sat back in her chair, and took snuff with an air of antique dignity that seemed to call heaven and earth to witness that she only tolerated such fooleries on account of her sister, and not at all in the way of personal approbation.

The nurture and admonition of Jack was the point where the two sisters had a chronic controversy, Miss Dorcas inclining to the side of strict discipline and vigorous repression.

In fact, Miss Dorcas soothed her violated notions of dignity and propriety by always speaking of Jack as "Betsey's dog"—he was one of the permitted toys and amusements of Betsey's more juvenile years; but she felt called upon to keep some limits of discipline to prevent Jack's paw from ruling too absolutely in the family councils.

"You see," said Mrs. Betsey, going on with her reminiscences of yesterday, "we had taken Jack down town with us because we wanted to get his photographs; we'd had him taken last week, and they were not ready till yesterday."

"Dear me, do show them to me," said Eva, entering cheerfully into the humor of the thing; and Mrs. Betsey trotted up stairs to get them.

"You see how very absurd we are," said Miss Dorcas; "but the fact is, Mrs. Henderson, Betsey has had her troubles, poor child, and I'm glad to have her have anything that can be any sort of a comfort to her."

Betsey came back with her photographs, which she exhibited with the most artless innocence.

"You see," said Miss Dorcas, "just how it is. If people set out to treat a dog as a child, they have to take the consequences. That dog rules this whole family, and of course he behaves like spoiled children generally. Here, now, this morning; Betsey and I both have bad colds because we were got out of bed last night with that creature."

Here Jack, seeming to understand that he was the subject-matter of some criticism, rose up suddenly on his haunches before Miss Dorcas and waved his paws in a supplicatory manner at her. Jack understood this to be his only strong point, and brought it out as a trump card on all occasions when he felt himself to be out of favor. Miss Dorcas laughed, as she generally did, and Jack seemed delighted, and sprang into her lap and offered to kiss her with the most brazen assurance.

"Oh, well, Mrs. Henderson, I suppose you see that we are two old fools about that dog," she said. "I don't know but I am almost as silly as Betsey is, but the fact is one must have something, and a dog is not so much risk as a boy, after all. Yes, Jack," she said, tapping his shaggy head patronizingly, "after all you're no more impudent than puppies in general."

"I never quarrel with anyone for loving dogs," said Eva. "For my part I think no family is complete without one. I tell Harry we must 'set up' our dog as soon as we get a little more settled. When we get one, we'll compare notes."

"Well," said Miss Dorcas, "I always comfort myself with thinking that dear Sir Walter, with all his genius, went as far in dog-petting as any of us. You remember Washington Irving's visit to Abbotsford?"

Eva did not remember it, and Miss Dorcas said she must get it for her at once; she ought to read it. And away she went to look it up in the book-case in the next room.

"The fact is," said Mrs. Betsey, mysteriously, "though Dorcas has so much strength of mind, she is to the full as silly about Jack as I am. When I was gone to Newburg, if you'll believe me, she let Jack sleep on her bed. Dinah knows it, doesn't she?"

Dinah confirmed this fact by a loud explosing, in which there was a singular mixture of snort and giggle; and to cover her paroxysm she seized violently on the remains of the breakfast and bore them out into the kitchen, and was heard giggling and gurgling in a rill of laughter all along the way.

Mrs. Betsey began gathering up and arranging the cups, and filling a lacquered bowl of Japanese fabric with hot water, she proceeded to wash the china and silver.

"What lovely china," said Eva, with the air of a connoisseur.

"Yes," said Mrs. Betsey, "this china has been in the family for three generations, and we never suffer a servant to touch it."

"Please let me help you," said Eva, taking up the napkin sociably, "I do so love old china."

And pretty soon one might have seen a gay morning party—Mrs. Betsey washing, Eva wiping, and Miss Dorcas the while reading scraps out of Abbotsford about Maida, and Finette, and Hamlet, and Camp, and Percy, and others of Walter Scott's four-footed friends. The ice of ceremony and stiffness was not only broken by this bit of morning domesticity, but floated gaily down-stream never to be formed again.

You may go further into the hearts of your neighbors by one-half hour of undressed rehearsal behind the scenes than a century of ceremonious posing before the foot-lights.

Real people, with anything like heart and tastes and emotions, do not enjoy being shut up behind barricades, and conversing with their neighbors only through loop-holes. If any warm-hearted adventurer gets in at the back door of the heart, the stiffest and most formal are often the most thankful for the deliverance.

The advent of this pretty young creature, with her air of joy and gaiety, into the shadowed and mossy precincts of the old Vanderheyden house was an event to be dated from, as the era of a new life. She was to them a flower, a picture, a poem; and a thousand dear remembrances and new capabilities stirred in the withered old hearts to meet her.

Her sincere artlessness and naïf curiosity, her genuine interest in the old time-worn furniture, relics and belongings of the house gave them a new sense of possession. We seem to acquire our things over again when stimulated by the admiration of a new spectator.

"Dear me," said Eva, as she put down a tea-cup she was wiping, "what a pity I haven't some nice old china to begin on! but all my things are spick and span new; I don't think it's a bit interesting. I do love to see things that look as if they had a history."

"Ah! my dear child, you are making history fast enough," said Miss Dorcas, with that kind of half sigh with which people at eighty look down on the aspirants of twenty; "don't try to hurry things."

"But I think old things are so nice," said Eva. "They get so many associations. Things just out of Tiffany's or Collamore's haven't associations—there's no poetry in them. Now, everything in your house has its story. It's just like the old villas I used to see in Italy where the fountains were all mossy."

"We are mossy enough, dear knows," said Miss Dorcas, laughing, "Betsey and I."

"I'm so glad I've got acquainted with you," said Eva, looking up with clear, honest eyes into Miss Dorcas's face; "it's so lonesome not to know one's neighbors, and I'm an inexperienced beginner, you know. There are a thousand questions I might ask, where your experience could help me."

"Well, don't hesitate, dear Mrs. Henderson," said Mrs. Betsey; "do use us if you can. Dorcas is really quite a doctor, and if you should be ill any time, don't fail to let us know. We never have a doctor. Dorcas always knows just what to do. You ought to see her herb closet—there's a little of everything in it; and she is wonderful for strengthening-mixtures."

And so Eva was taken to see the herbal, and thence, by natural progression, through the chambers, where she admired the old furniture. Then cabinets were unlocked, old curiosities brought out, snatches and bits of history followed, and, in fact, lunch time came in the old Vanderheyden house before any of them perceived whither the tide of social enthusiasm had carried them. Eva stayed to lunch. Such a thing had not happened for years to the desolate old couple, and it really seemed as if the roses of youth and joy, the flowers of years past, all bloomed and breathed around her, and it was late in the day before she returned to her own home to look back on the Vanderheyden fortress as taken. Two stiff, ceremonious strangers had become two warm-hearted, admiring friends—a fortress locked and barred by constraint had become an open door of friendship. Was it not a good morning's work?