Читать книгу The Left Lady - Margaret Turnbull - Страница 3

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For eighteen years Emmietta Weston had regarded her father as a clever, unscrupulous, not uninteresting combination of jailer and tyrant. Now, as she followed his body to the cemetery, she wondered vaguely how she would reconstruct her life without him.

The other members of the family with her in the limousine, her sister May and that sister's husband and grown son, were virtually strangers. Emmietta turned from them to the window and looked out on East Penniwell. After all, his village had been the only thing, except money, that Eli Weston had cared about.

Loungers stood thick on the post office side of Central Avenue. On week days they lined the corner next the barber shop. On Sundays, when the automobile rush through that town was at its height, they stood in front of the post office and played "motor poker."

Rob Butts had just scored with 333,033, three of a kind and a pair, when Ally Castner called out:

"Here comes old Eli's funeral."

They stopped their game and watched the automobiles cross the corners and go up the hill that led to the cemetery, two miles distant.

East Penniwell was that curious modern anomaly, a little village whose principal street had become part of the main artery of motor traffic between two large and distant cities. All day long East Penniwell's main street bore a constant stream of rapidly moving vehicles; but on either side of this stream the town lay placid and unstirred.

Its sons and daughters, catching glimpses of life as it is lived by the care-free and fashionable of the day, strove to emulate them in their clothes and general deportment, with more or less success. The radio in their homes, and the motion pictures at the county seat, seven miles away, aided and abetted them.

But the loungers on the corner lounged as their fathers had before them. Occasionally the even tenor of their leisurely lives was disturbed when some inconsiderate wife or daughter, whose patent washer, or job at the box factory kept things going, "turned sick," or "died on them." Odd jobs were then forced upon them, but they were only occasional.

The last of the funeral party disappeared over the crest of the hill.

"Well, Eli's left us," said Zebra Ballins. Zebra had grown old in this Quaker community, where his white neighbors treated him as an equal. "Half of them motors wasn't full."

"I guess all the friends Eli Weston ever had wouldn't crowd one motor none," asserted Ezra Schumacher, who was not a Quaker and showed his superiority and white blood by ignoring or contradicting Zebra's questions and observations, though he borrowed Zebra's plug tobacco.

"Speak kinda softly about the daid," advised Zebra.

"I always did speak my mind to and of Eli Weston, and he being dead ain't gonna laugh at me for a hypocrite. He wasn't loved none, though he was respected, on account of his money."

"Well, maybe Miss Emmietta was kinda fond of him."

"Emmietta did her duty all right by the old screw, but that ain't saying she enjoyed it none."

"Well," said Zebra, "you folks maybe knows more'n I do 'bout the feelings of white folks one to'd each other. I have wu'ked for Miss Emmietta all times off and on, when Asher Turkle was sick or somepin', and they wasn't so much love losted between her and the old man, though it was he that raised his voice—not she, never."

"Her looks went kinda early," observed Ira Austin. "Miss Emmietta was a far better looking girl than her sister May. Yet May, she got married to a regular New Yorker, more'n twenty years ago, and here's Miss Emmie, which was far more kinda attractive to the male sect, you might say, turning out one of these here left ladies."

Zebra, stared at him appreciatively and repeated the phrase. "'Left ladies'! Yeah, Ira Austin, that kinda explains her, don't it?"

"It do," Ira answered importantly. "The way I looks at it, you see, is that there's three kinds of 'em when singled. There's them there mannish women, as are more'n content to be so. In fact, them that's so damned busy and bossy that a husband would only clutter up their houses, and wear the pants they prefers to wear themselves. Then there's them there old maids, that never coulda been anything else, so kinda homely, or so kinda without any seeduction or pleasant female ways, that no man wants them around. Then, there's the 'left ladies,' as I names them. Whether its be death or be jilting, or because some other female helped herself, by way of matiremony, to their man, there they are. Pretty girls they have been, like Miss Emmietta. Made for matiremony, as more'n one man would agree, but whether it's the contrariness that's in women that they won't take but the one they want, and be damned to the rest, or not, I can't say. Anyway, there they are—they're left. 'Left ladies' is what I names them."

"And a good name too, for such as them," rumbled Old Man Gillingham approvingly, without removing his pipe, which always seemed an integral part of his face. "And a 'left lady' Miss Emmietta's been ever since the day Tom Hastings took his departure from East Penniwell."

One of the younger loungers who had been losing, and was not anxious to have the "motor poker" game renewed, moved nearer to Old Man Gillingham. "Who was Tom Hastings?" he asked.

"In course you would ask that question, Lafayette Hicks, seeing that you was a kinda bow-legged babby when he left. Yeah, I remember your mother left ye outside the grocery for a minute and you was bawling blue murder and getting black in the face that very day."

"Maybe," Lafayette retorted disrespectfully. "I ain't in me second childhood yit, and can't remember all the old bums that usta hold up this wall twenty years ago."

"Eighteen," corrected Zebra. "Eighteen year it is since Tom Hastings and old Eli had their run-in. I was working for Eli that day when Tom came. He had a turrible determined look on his face. I says to myself, 'My, my, there Tom Hastings goes to git his yes or no from Miss Emmie'. But I was mistook. Twasn't more'n ten minutes before old Eli himself, all red and angry, showed him out. Tom he shouted: 'I'm never coming back, damn you!' and went off down this here very street and to the deepo."

"And hide nor hair of him ain't been seen since," old Ira finished off, "and from that very day seems as if Miss Emmie took a change."

"Never looked the same, she didn't," agreed another old man, "but she kep' a tight lip and nobody knew, for certain, how she felt. She wasn't a w'ine cat, like Miss May. Miss May now used to cry and w'ine everything outta old Eli. Regular w'ine cat she was."

"Thasso," Zebra agreed. "Of course it's up to you folks—you know more'n I do. But now you have named it, I kin bring in the c'roborration of the fac's. Miss Emmie never asked for nothing, and the consequences is she got nothing. Miss May got it all."

But old Ira had had enough of Zebra for the present. He ignored him and turned to Lafayette Hicks.

"If Tom Hastings did come back, the question is, would he look at Miss Emmie again?"

"Would she look at him?" thundered her champion, Ezra Schumacher. "The years may have thinned her, but again they may have puffed him out like a balleroon. How do you know they ain't leff him with a corporation?" he added, with a satisfied glance at his own thin, wizened frame.

"Ain't we got kinda sidetracked off'n the real thing?" asked Zebra. "Ain't the real question how old Eli's lef his money?"

The others paused and looked at him thoughtfully.

"Know anything?" queried old Ira.

Zebra shook his head.

The group stared at the Weston house. It stood in a triangular patch of green at the end of Central Avenue, which was the main and indeed the only real street in East Penniwell. There were only about twenty houses in all, including the general store, the post office and the old inn which had been there since William Penn's time, and now was brilliant with white paint and signs to catch the motorist's eye and trade.

The Weston house was a typical Pennsylvania farm house, built of stone, planned on the simple lines adopted in those days of adding to the first tiny stone house a series of other stone houses, of the same shape but different sizes. If one had been a giant, with a giant cleaver in hand, the Weston house could have been divided into three small houses, each built on the beautifully simple plan of two rooms up and two rooms down. There were two stairways, one built in between the first and second house, and the other, in the living room, much more stately, with balusters and handrail of mahogany. There were no halls on the ground floor. The outer doors were all half, or "Dutch" doors, opening directly into the rooms.

It looked a farm house still, despite its village setting, and the triangle of ground about it represented only a tiny portion of the Weston land. The side road, once a cow path, cut it off from many level, cultivated fields, still Weston property. There was a look of meager neatness about the lovely old house and yard that spoke of toil and scanty expenditure.

Lib Candy, for many years the only female "hired help" permitted by Eli in his home, drew up the blinds.

"Cloud-a-Witnesses! Asher Turkle, get through redding up the foliage and get out before they come back."

"Well," answered Asher, "the heft of my work is done." He leisurely lifted his great frame, six feet two inches high, and about one hundred and ninety pounds in weight, from the floor, where he had been laboriously picking up one or two faded violets, tiny pieces of green vine, and a bit of black ribbon. His eyes twinkled as he put the scraps in the empty fireplace, but there was no answering twinkle in Lib Candy's keen green eyes. "There ain't much more an able-bodied man can do until mealtime."

He waited. Lib went about the room silently, pushing chairs back.

"Can't I help you none in the kitchen, Lib? They'll be back in no time. Cars make nuthin' of two miles and a half now. It's early days to stand out in a cold graveyard. Grief for Eli ain't apt to be so overpowering that people'll forget they have to preserve life, and are in need of some stummick comfort."

"They needn't hurry. They won't get anything here."

"What! Ain't Miss Emmie give any orders?"

"Not an order."

"Good gravy! Ain't Miss Emmietta taken any thought for the living? Sunday too, and the shops shut! You oughta reminded her, Lib."

"I dunno as she exactly forgot," Lib answered, arranging the cushions on an old horsehair sofa. The furniture was shabby and the cushions covered some of the rents in the seat. There was nothing in the room newer than 1890.

Asher leaned against the doorway and slowly chewed a carnation stem. "Well, God sends everything and it's best to take it as it comes, and make as little to-do about it as possible, but for twenty years never have I rose up from the table here feeling bloated with food. Never! I'm no man to lean toward females as you know."

Lib gave him a cold glance.

"I have always preferred the male sect, but by Gravy and Potatoes, this is a crusher! I thought, come Miss Emmie got the reins in her hands you and me, Lib, might see different times. Do you aim to stay?"

"If Miss Emmie wants me, I'm staying."

Asher looked at her oddly. "Whether I stay or not, I presoom?"

Lib nodded.

"Lib, hasn't Eli left nothing?"

"He has."

"Yeah, I thought he was a warm man, but I'm saying now that if he left anything to us—"

"He ain't. I was a witness to his will, and you can't witness a will if there's anything left you in it. That's the law, as Eli took good care to tell me."

"Well, maybe if he didn't leave anything to you, he left something to me—thinking—"

Lib shook her head.

Asher sat down suddenly. "For twenty years I've been—"

"A fool," snapped Lib.

Asher rose and took a step toward her. "Woman, do you remember why I came here?"

Lib nodded. "Very well, and Eli did too. He threw it up at me the day I signed the will. And why?" Lib looked up at Asher and considered; then made for her a momentous decision. "Eli knew you came here twenty years ago because you thought he being old you stood a chance to manage the farm, get the tenant house down along the wood road to live in, and marry me."

She made a gesture which stopped Asher from interrupting. It had a dignity of its own, that gesture, and so had Lib.

"Eli knew you'd never ask me without the house and farm, and you haven't—never. Wait," as Asher strove to speak. "I knew it as well as Eli. Things went on. You noticed nothing, just stayed on here, making a slave of yourself and never having the gumption to tell that hard old miser where he got off. And there was you, every Sunday passing the plate and smiling at all the pretty girls, a free and easy bachelor. And here was I—not but what there was two fellers, three if you count old Eli after his wife died, and he wanted to keep me slaving on, without wages."

"What!" roared Asher. "What! You mean to tell me that old Eli—"

"Don't yell. This is a house of mourning. I'm telling you that old Eli asked me to marry him. But I wouldn't."

"Why?"

The woman turned on him, ashen with rage.

"Why?" repeated Asher.

The doorbell rang.

"They're back." Asher moved toward the door. He turned as he reached it. "After they go, you and me has a telling, Lib Candy."

Lib, her head bent, went past him toward the kitchen.

Asher, a sardonic expression twisting a face that was meant by nature to be merely good-natured, opened the door and indicated, with a wave of the hand, the living room.

May Weston Kent, very handsome in her modish mourning, swept past him, followed by her husband and son. She sank down in the most comfortable chair in that uncomfortable room. Her husband and son went toward the closed window and stood looking out. The rest of the assemblage filed in, after the Misses Mink. They were all from the village or nearby farms. They grouped themselves about the room, staring at May Kent, who ignored them. Being country folk, they seemed able to maintain silence for a length of time that seemed interminable to the Kents.

The stillness was broken by the Misses Mink, who always found silence intolerable. It was unknown in the Mink household. When Miss Annie and Miss Susan were not talking together, they were talking to someone else, or telephoning. They were twins, who had never gotten beyond the pink and blue ribbon stage of girlhood. They still wore the ribbons; and still prattled sweetly of "Sister and I." Even to-day when they were in decorous black, as befitted the occasion, Miss Susan's ribbon was black grosgrain, while Miss Annie's was black moire, with a white edge.

"Where's Emmietta?" they asked each other, and then turned, like puppets on the same string, and asked the silent Asher at the doorway, "Asher Turkle, where's Miss Emmietta?"

"Search me," said Asher.

In the shocked silence that followed, the door opened and Emmietta Weston came in. She was a small woman. Her clothes were old and cheap. Her reddish brown hair, abundant enough, but dull and lifeless, was drawn from her brow, and her face set in lines that betokened resignation, achieved only after a hard struggle with naturally high spirits.

There was very little likeness between the faded Emmietta and the buxom, well groomed, and still blooming May. There was certainly no hint that Emmietta was the younger. Emmietta Weston was a drab woman, looking more than her thirty-seven years, whereas May Kent, had it not been for her tall son, might have claimed to be considerably under forty.

Behind Emmietta, like her shadow, appeared Lib. Emmietta turned to the waiting roomful.

"Friends," she said softly, "there will be no will reading here—and no dinner."

There was a swift interchange of astonished glances, and almost a murmur, which quickly subsided as Emmietta put up her hand to her hard black hat, and removed the antiquated silver hatpin that skewered it on.

"There is dinner for everyone at the Crossroads Inn. Asher Turkle will look after you, and the bill's paid."

She handed her hat to Lib, and drew a long breath. "As for the will—everything is left to me unconditionally, and those of you that are curious as to particulars can look it up at the county court house next week, or speak to Mr. Fair. He's attending to everything just now."

She looked at the wide eyes and open mouths of some of her guests. "I am too tired to talk—or to eat. Thank you all, and good-bye for the present."

She turned and went swiftly up the stairs. Lib went back to the kitchen.

Asher, his jaw dropped in astonishment, suddenly recollected that his was the honor of "bossing things" at the Crossroads Inn.

"Them that's set for eating, follow me," he said, "and they will git their meal hot."

"Hot victuals wait for no man," agreed the farmer nearest the door and rose to his feet. His wife, simpering a little, hung back, to show her neighbors that it was the rude male's hunger, not her own, that forced her to lead the procession. They were followed by the Misses Mink, who were whispering that since there was nothing at home, it was better to get their dinner at the Inn. They endeavored to conceal from everybody that a dinner at the Inn was an event in their lives.

"Even if she gets a reduction for numbers," said one mourner voicing the thoughts of the others, "it will set her back at least a dollar a head. What would old Eli have said to that?"

The room was clear of all but the Kents, when May, an angry flush showing beneath her delicately applied powder and rouge, rose to her feet and, disregarding the efforts of her husband and son to stop her, called up the stairway, "Emmie! Emmie! Come here! It's May."

There was silence for a moment and then Emmietta appeared at the top of the stairway.

"It's no use, May. I am worn out. I cook for nobody, not even you."

"But the will?"

"Mr. Fair will send you a copy, but you will find it's just as I said. Father left everything to me, stating that at the time of your marriage he gave you your portion. That's true, and you know that Father never forgave you for insisting on having it in cash. The rest is—mine."

"How much—is it ?"

"Ask Mr. Fair. Quite a large sum, I believe, but I've earned it. Eighteen years of slavery, insufficient food, scraping, quarrelling. No amount of money can pay me back—my youth."

"But Weston," May began. "Surely he left something to Weston?"

"Mother!" Weston Kent called.

"May!" her husband warned.

"Oh, don't mind," Emmietta said, looking down at brother-in-law and nephew without rancor.

May burst into loud sobs.

Emmie's face hardened. "Father was never harsh with you, May, and yet you didn't weep like that over his grave. His death meant freedom to me, but I would willingly have endured a little more drudgery, just to buy him a few years of the life he liked so well, and hated so to leave."

Her eyes filled. She turned slowly to go toward her room. "Mr. Fair will answer any questions you like to ask, and there's dinner in a private dining room for you. Lib and I are quite done. We have got to rest."

With a wave of her hand May turned to her husband and son. "Go over to the Inn and begin your dinner. I'll join you."

"Mother!" exclaimed Weston, then "Good-bye Aunt Emmie." He ran lightly up the steps and kissed her. "Take it easy, and have a good time for once in your life. Don't let Mother bulldoze you into doing anything you don't want to."

For the first time Emmie relaxed as she patted his shoulder. "Good boy, Weston, I'll remember that."

"Good-bye," said her brother-in-law. "You have had a damned hard time, old girl. Buck up and get some good out of the money, and, whatever May says, I can support my family."

He turned to his wife. She was frowning now. "If you take my advice, May, you will leave Emmie alone, but if you must talk make it snappy. She's in no mood to be bothered."

He paused a moment at the open door and then as May, her back toward him, stubbornly waited for him to close it, he looked up at Emmie quizzically, raised his eyebrows, and shut the door upon himself and his son.

Outside the two men looked at each other.

"Better let Mother get it off her chest," Weston advised. "Her return to normal will be all the quicker."

His father nodded, lighted a cigarette, and they went toward the Inn.

Emmietta sank on the step next the first landing, and leaned her head against the stair rail.

"Emmie do you think it's just that you should have everything?"

"Everything that you left? Why yes, May, I do."

"Emmie, don't you love my boy?"

"How can I? I'm prejudiced in his favor, but I don't really know him and neither did his grandfather. That's where you made a mistake, May. You had no use for the man who made the money you were so eager to have and spend. It would have made all the difference in the world if you had cared enough to come down here oftener; or, if you had asked me to your house, I think Father might have let me go. But you never did. Father spoke of it several times. We had a queer, crabbed stick for a father, but his blood was the blue blood you boast about. He had some of the instincts of a gentleman, though his love of money stunted most of them, otherwise I couldn't have borne—what I had to bear."

"It was your own fault. You might have managed him."

"I couldn't. You wouldn't understand, but I—I couldn't."

"Emmie, are you going to be Father all over again—about money?"

"I won't talk about the money."

"Emmie, we look prosperous, but it's been hard these last few years. I'm anxious for my boy's welfare. He's threatening to leave Princeton because of a girl he's in love with. There's an older man with more money."

"Well, if she's that sort of girl," and Emmie closed her eyes wearily, "isn't it the best thing that he finds it out now?"

"It isn't the girl, it's her mother. Emmie, I don't want you to give me anything, now, or ever, but if you would make a will making Weston your heir, I could tell the girl's mother—"

Emmietta rose and clutching the balusters looked at her sister.

"No, I'm through. I'm through being used. I'm going to live as I choose. Understand me once for all, I'm through—through being a doormat."

She sank down in a heap on the stair. May gave a loud cry and ran toward her. Emmie straightened up and, her hand on the rail, started toward her room. "I'm not even going to faint about it. It's no use your having hysterics. I mean to be left alone."

As May went down the steps and toward the Crossroads Inn, Lib came up the stairs with a cup of tea, and a soda cracker on a plate.

"Miss Emmie, it's Lib. Let me in."

"Come in." Emmie was sitting at the window. Her hands lay listlessly in her lap.

"Just a cup of tea, Miss Emmie. After awhile, you and me'll have something to eat."

Emmie took the cup mechanically, and began stirring the tea. Lib watched her. Just so, without appetite, had Miss Emmie accepted food during the weeks of her father's illness. Lib watched her apprehensively.

When she began to sip the hot tea, Lib's face cleared. She moved a little nearer, and spoke softly, as though she feared the four walls might hear.

"Miss Emmie. He's back."

Emmietta turned toward her amazed. "He's back! Lib, you aren't going off your head are you? We saw him buried."

"I wasn't speaking of Eli Weston. I was speaking of somebody else. Somebody that went away from here eighteen years ago."

"Eighteen years ago!" Emmietta repeated blankly. Then slowly there came into her face a look that approached terror. She put down her cup and grasped Lib's arm.

"Lib, do you mean him?"

Lib nodded.

Emmietta began to tremble. "It isn't possible. How do you know?"

Lib sniffed. "Well, I guess I'd know Tom Hastings' face anywhere. You can't fool me. He's back and he's here."

"Tom here?" Emmietta shook from head to foot. "Why does he come back now?"

Lib stared at her. "Don't you know, Miss Emmie? Didn't you send for him to come?"

"Me? Send for Tom Hastings! Ask Tom Hastings to come? Why, Lib, as God hears me, I hoped never to see his face again."