Читать книгу Aunt Jimmy's Will - Mabel Osgood Wright - Страница 6

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For a few minutes Lammy sat looking after the vanishing train. Then he carefully wrapped the paint-box and portfolio in the blanket again, and, patting Twinkle, who was quivering with excitement and looking into his face with a pitiful, pleading glance, he put the dog down in the straw again, saying, “We can’t help it, old fellow; we’ve just got to stand it until we can fix up some way to get her back.”

As he turned the wagon about, with much backing and rasping of cramped wheels, the bright silver dollar that was lying in the dirt caught his eye. It seemed like a slap in the face when O’More threw it, though in his rough way he meant well enough, and Lammy’s first impulse was to drive home and leave it where it had fallen.

Still, after all, it was money, and to earn money vaguely seemed to him the only way by which he could get Bird back again, for though Lammy had a comfortable home, enough clothing, and plenty to eat, whole dollars were as rare in his pockets as white robins in the orchard.

So he picked up the shining bit of silver, wiped it carefully on his sleeve, and, wrapping it in a scrap of paper, opened the precious paint-box, and tucked the coin into one of the small compartments. It never occurred to him to spend the money for any of the little things a boy of fourteen always wants, and he quite forgot that his knife had only half of one blade left. The money was for Bird, and from that moment the paint-box, which was to spend some months in his lower bureau drawer in company with his best jacket and two prizes won at school, became a savings bank.

Lammy stopped at the “Centre” druggist’s for some medicine for Aunt Jimmy, and while he was waiting for the mixture, he had to undergo a running fire of questions concerning his aunt’s “spell” from the people who came in from all sections for their mail, as this store was also the post-office and there was as yet no rural free-delivery system to deprive the community of its daily trade in news.

Now Aunt Jimmy, otherwise Jemima Lane, occupied an unusual position in the neighbourhood and was a personage of more than common importance. In the first place she was a miser, which is always interesting, as a miser is thought to be a sort of magician whose money is supposed to lie hidden in the chimney and yet increase as by double cube root; then she owned ten acres of the best land for small fruits—strawberries, raspberries, currants, and peaches—in the state. The ground was on the southern slope of Laurel Ridge, and though it was shielded in such a way that the March sun did not tempt the peach blossoms out before their time, yet Aunt Jimmy’s strawberries were always in the Northboro market a full week ahead of the other native fruit.

Of course there was nothing particularly strange in this interest, as many people coveted the land. The odd part that concerned the gossips was that Aunt Jimmy had three able-bodied nephews, of which Joshua Lane was eldest, all farmers struggling along on poorish land, while she, though seventy-five years old, insisted upon running her fruit farm and house entirely alone, hiring Poles or Hungarians, who could speak no English, to till and gather the crops, instead of going shares with her own kin. In fact, until a few years back, no one, man, woman, or child, except little Janey Lane, had ever got beyond the kitchen door. Then when she died, Aunt Jimmy had opened her house and heart to Joshua Lane’s wife, and ever since, that dear, motherly soul had done all that she could for the queer, lonely old woman, in spite of the fact that the gossips said she did it from selfish motives.

Joshua Lane was very sensitive about this talk and would have held aloof like his two brothers, who lived beyond the Centre, one of whom had a sick wife and was too lazy to more than scratch half rations from his land, while the other had once given the old lady some unwise advice about pruning peach trees, and had been forbidden inside the gate under pain of being cut off with a “china button,” Aunt Jimmy’s pet simile for nothing.

Mrs. Joshua, however, was gossip proof, and, tossing her head, had publicly declared, “I’m a-going to keep the old lady from freezin’, burnin’, or starvin’ herself to death jest so far ’s I’m able, accordin’ to scripture and the feelings that’s in me, and if that’s ‘undue influence,’ so be it! I shan’t discuss the subject with anybody but the Lord,” and she never did.

Many a meal of hot cooked food she took to the old woman to replace the crackers and cheese of her own providing. It was not that Aunt Jimmy meant to be mean, but she had lived so long alone that she had gotten out of the habits of human beings. She certainly looked like a lunatic when she went about the place superintending her men, clad in a short skirt, a straw sunbonnet, and rubber boots, merely adding in the winter a man’s army overcoat and cape that she had picked up cheap; but the lawyer who had come down from Northboro a year before to make her will said he had never met a clearer mind outside of the profession, for she had Dr. Jedd testify that she was of sound mind, and a second physician from Northboro swear that Dr. Jedd’s wits were also in good order.

Shortly after this she had given it out quietly that, though Joshua Lane was the only one of her kin that was worth a box of matches, yet they would share and share alike, as she didn’t believe in stirring up strife among brothers by showing favour.

Then everybody expected Mrs. Lane would lessen her attentions, but as often happens everybody was mistaken.

Of course the good woman could not help thinking once in a while what a fine thing it would be if some day her elder boys could work the fruit farm (Lammy she never thought of as working at anything) instead of delving in a shop at Milltown, but she put the idea quickly from her. However, it would keep coming back all that night after Terence O’More’s funeral when she watched with the old lady, while poor Bird slept her grief-spent sleep before her journey.

If the fruit farm could ever be hers, she would adopt Bird without hesitation, for the little lady-child had crept into the empty spot that Janey had left in her big mother heart and filled it in a way that greatly astonished her.

******

Lammy finally secured the medicine and jogged homeward, thinking, all the time thinking about Bird. He knew that people said he was stupid, and yet he also felt that he could learn as well as any one if they would only let him pick his own way a little. His father wanted him to be a carpenter, his mother thought that too rough, and that he was still a baby and some day perhaps he might be a clerk.

But Lammy himself, as he looked into the future, saw only the whirling wheels of the machinery at Milltown, or the wonders of the locomotive works that he had once visited at Northboro. That was why he was always day-dreaming and looking in the air. Of course it was very stupid and dumb of him not to tell his parents, but Bird’s was the only ear that had ever heard his thoughts.

All that day he stayed about the place at home, keeping the fire in and doing the chores, for his mother’s time was divided between her aunt’s and straightening things at Bird’s old home, and his father was up in the back lots planting corn. Toward night, as he was sitting on the steps having brought back Twinkle who had run to his old home in search of his little mistress, Mrs. Lane bustled in, mystery and importance written on her face. Spying Lammy, she beckoned him to follow her into the kitchen, then, carefully closing the doors, putting Twinkle in the closet and the cat out of the window, as if they could carry tales, she unfastened her bonnet and collar and settled herself in the rocking-chair.

“Samuel Lane,” she began solemnly, shaking her forefinger and making the boy quake at the unused title, while his eyes opened wide in wonder, “No, ’tain’t that; Aunt Jimmy’s much more comfortable, and I suspect she’s going to pick up again after scaring us well, or I wouldn’t be home, but she said private words to me this afternoon that if I do keep quite to myself, I’ll burst, I know, and maybe get a headache spell that’ll lay me by a day and upset everything. Now, Samuel, I’ve found as far as givin’ messages you’re told to carry, you’re as good as nobody, so I reckon you’ll be tight sealed on something that you’re bid to keep close and forget maybe for some years.”

“Is it about Bird?” asked Lammy, suddenly jumping up and fixing his big, gray eyes on his mother’s face with a gaze that made her nervous, for she well knew that there was something in this pet son of hers that was a little beyond her comprehension.

“No, not about Bird,—that is, not straight, though another way it may have a lot to do with her; it all depends. Listen, Samuel!

“This afternoon Aunt Jimmy waked up, and, seeing me sitting by the window croshayin’,—true I was making a bungle of the tidy, not feelin’ like workin’ (but she hates, same ’s I do, for watchers to set idle looking ready to jump at a body like a cat does at a mouse hole),—she says, says she, her voice comin’ back steady, ‘Set nearer, Lauretta Ann Lane, I’m goin’ to tell you somethin’ no one else need ever know.’

“I drew up all of a flutter, of course. ‘You’re a good woman, Lauretta Ann,’ says she, ‘and you’ve never poked and pried, or shown desires for what’s another’s, an’ you’ve worked hard to keep me livin’, which I’ve done to my satisfaction beyond my expectations.’

“I burst out cryin’, I couldn’t help it; for I never thought she set any store by me, and I felt guilty about wishes I’d had last night and had fed with thoughts inwardly.

“‘Hush up, now, and don’t spoil all by pretendin’,’ she ran on; ‘I know you’d like to have my farm, though not a day before I’m done with it. I’ll credit you that. It’s natural and proper and I’m glad to have interest took in it, likewise I’ve said I’d share and share alike between my nephews, which I intend; but listen, Lauretta Ann, for there’s ways of circumventin’ that suits me, I’ve left you the farm for your own; moreover, I’ve fixed it so there’ll be no talk and no one’ll know it but you. You think I’m crazy, I guess, and that you couldn’t get the farm unbeknown, nohow. Just wait and see!’