Читать книгу Mr. Wayt's Wife's Sister - Marion Harland - Страница 5
CHAPTER III.
Оглавление“Hetty! do you ever think what it would be like to be engaged?”
“Engaged to do what?” said Hetty lazily.
She lay as in a cradle, in a grassy hollow under an apple tree—the Anak of his tribe. The branches, freighted with pink and white blooms, dipped earthward until the extreme twigs almost brushed the grass, and shut in the two girls arbor-wise. The May sun warmed the flowers into fragrance that hinted subtly of continual fruitiness. Hester said she tasted, rather than smelled it. Bees hummed in the boughs; through the still blandness of the air a light shower of petals fell silently over Hetty’s blue gown, settled upon her hair, and drifted in the folds of the afghan covering Hester’s lower limbs.
Homer had discovered in the garden fence a gate opening into this orchard, and confidentially revealed the circumstance to Hetty who, in time, imparted it to Hester, and conspired with her to explore the paradise as soon as the boys and Fanny were safely off to Sunday School.
“Engaged to do what?” Hetty had said in such good faith that she opened dreamy eyes wide at the accent of the reply.
“To be married, of course, Miss Ingenuous! What else could I mean?”
“Oh-h-h!” still more indolently. “I don’t know that I ever thought far in that direction. Why should I?”
“Why shouldn’t you, or any other healthy and passably good-looking girl, expect to be engaged—and be married—and be happy? It is time you began to take the matter into consideration, if you never did before.”
“There is usually another party to such an arrangement.”
“And why not in your case?”
“Where should he come from? Is he to drop from the moon? Or out of the apple tree”—stirred to the simile by the flick of a tinted petal upon her nose. “Or am I to stamp him out of the earth, à la Pompey? And what could I do with him if he were to pop up like a fairy prince, at this or any other instant?”
“Fall in love with him, and marry him out-of-hand! I wish you would, Hetty, and take me to live with you! That is one of my dearest dreams. I have thought it all out when the backache keeps me awake at night, and when I get quiet dreamy hours by day, when he is off pastoraling, and the boys and Fan are at school, and baby Annie is asleep, and I can hear Tony crooning ‘Sweet Julia’ so far away I can’t distinguish the frightful words, and you are going about the house singing to yourself, and blessing every room you enter like a shifting sunbeam.”
“Why, my pet, you are talking poetry!”
Hetty raised her head from the arms crossed beneath it, and stared at the child. The light, filtered through the mass of scented color, freshened her complexion and rounded the outlines of her face; her solemn eyes looked upward; her hands lay together, like two lily petals, upon the coverlet. Unwittingly she was a living illustration of her father’s theory of the Reality of the Unseen.
“No!” she answered quietly. “Not poetry, for it may easily come to pass that you should have a husband and home of your own. I do dream poems sometimes, if poetry is clouds and sunsets and music nobody else hears, and voices—and love words—and bosh!”
Hetty could not help laughing.
“Tell me some of the glory and the bosh! This is a beautiful confessional, Hester; I wish we had nothing to do for a week but to lie on the grass, and look at the blue sky through apple blossoms.”
“Amen!” breathed her companion softly, and for a while they were so quiet that the robins, nesting upon the other side of the tree, began to whisper together.
“Bosh and my poetry dreams are synonyms,” resumed Hester, her voice curiously mellowed from its accustomed sharpness. “Other people may say as much of theirs. I know it of mine. There’s the difference. All the same they are as sweet as the poisoned honey we were reading about the other day, which the bees make from poppy fields. And while I suck it, I forget. My romance has no more foundation than the story of the Prince and the Little White Cat. Mine is a broken-backed cat, but she comes straight in my dreams after her head is cut off. You don’t suppose she minded that! She must have been so impatient when the Prince hesitated that she was tempted to grab his sword and saw through her own neck. You see she recollected what she had been. The woman’s soul was cooped up in the cat’s skin. And I was eight years old when the evil spell was laid upon me!”
The tears in Hetty’s throat hindered response. Never until this instant, with all her love for her dependent charge, her knowledge of her sufferings, and the infinite pity these engendered, had the deprivations Hester’s affliction involved seemed so horribly, so atrociously cruel. The listener’s nails dug furrows in her palms, she set her teeth, and looking up to the unfeeling smile of the deaf and dumb heavens, she said something in her heart that would have left faint hope of her eternal weal in the orthodox mind of her brother-in-law.
Hester was speaking again.
“Every painter has his models. I have had mine. I dress each one up and work the wires to make him or her go through the motions—my motions, mind you! not theirs, poor puppets! When the dress gets shabby, or the limbs rickety, I throw them upon the rubbish heap, and look out for another.
“I got a new one last Thursday. The man who jumped over me in the station, and afterward carried me into the restaurant (such strong, steady arms as he had!) is a real hero! Oh, I am building a noble castle to put him in! He lives near here, for he passes the house three times a day. His eyes have a smile in them, and his mustache droops just like Charles I.’s, and he walks with a spring as if he were so full of life he longed to leap or fly, and his voice has a ring and resonance like an organ. The pretty girl that called him ‘Mark’ to-day, is his sister.”
“Why not his wife?”
“Wife! Don’t you suppose I know the cut of a married man, even on the street? He hasn’t the first symptom of the craft. He doesn’t swagger, and he doesn’t slink. A husband does one or the other.”
Hetty laughed out merrily. There was a sense of relief in Hester’s return to the sarcastic raillery habitual to her, which made her mirth the heartier.
A man crossing the lower slope of the orchard heard the bubbling peal, and looked in the direction of the big tree. So did his attendant, a huge St. Bernard dog. He tore up the acclivity, bellowing ferociously. Before his master’s shout arose above his baying he was almost upon the girls. At the instant of alarm, Hetty had thrown herself before the wheeled chair and the helpless occupant, and faced the foe. Crouching slightly, as for a spring, her face blenched, eyes wide and steady, she stood in the rosy shadow of the branches, both hands outthrown to ward off the bounding assailant.
“What a pose!” was March’s first thought, professional instinct asserting itself, concerned though he was at the panic for which he was responsible. In the same lightning flash came—“I’ll paint that girl some day!”
“Don’t be frightened!” he was calling, as he ran. “He will not hurt you!”
Hester had shrieked feebly, and lay almost swooning among her cushions. Hetty had not uttered a sound, but, as the master laid his hand on the dog’s collar her knees gave way under her, and she sank down by the cripple’s chair, her head resting upon the edge of the wicker side. She was fighting desperately for composure, or the semblance of it, and did not look up when March began to apologize.
“I am awfully sorry,” he panted, ruefully penitent. “And so will Thor—my dog, you know—be when he understands how badly he has behaved. He is seldom so inhospitable.”
The words brought up Hetty’s head and wits.
“Are we trespassing?” she queried anxiously. “We thought that this orchard was a part of the parsonage grounds, or we would not have come. It is we who should beg your pardon.”
“By no means!” He had taken off his hat, and in his regretful sincerity looked handsomer than when his eyes had smiled, concluded Hester, whose senses were rapidly returning. “My name is Gilchrist, and my father’s grounds adjoin those of the parsonage. He had the gate cut between your garden and the orchard, that the clergyman’s family might be as much at home here as ourselves. I hope you will forgive my dog’s misdemeanor, and my heedlessness in not seeing you before he had a chance to frighten you.”
Summoning something of his father’s gracious stateliness, he continued, more formally:
“Have I the pleasure of addressing Miss Wayt?”
Bow and question were for Hetty. Hester’s voice, thin and dissonant, replied with old-fashioned decorum of manner, but in unconventional phrase:
“I have the misfortune to be Miss Wayt. This is Mr. Wayt’s wife’s sister, Miss Alling.”
It was a queer speech, made queerer by the prim articulation the author deemed proper in the situation. March tried not to see that the subject of the second clause of the introduction flushed deeply, while her mute return of his bow had a serious natural grace he thought charming. When he begged that she would resume her seat, the little roguish curl at the corner of her lips, which he recollected as archly demure, came into play.
“We have no chairs to offer, but if you do not object to the best we have to give”—finishing the half invitation by seating herself upon a grass-grown root, jutting out near the trunk of the tree.
“The nicest carpet and lounge in the world,” affirmed March, sitting down upon the sward. “Odd, isn’t it, that American men don’t know how to loll on the turf as English do? Our climate is ever so much drier and we have three times as many fair days in the year, and some of us seem to be as loosely put together. But we don’t understand how to fling ourselves down all in a heap that doesn’t look awkward either, and be altogether at ease in genuine Anglican fashion. Even if there are ladies present, an Englishman lies on the grass, and it is considered ‘quite the thing, don’t you know?’ They say the imported American never gets the hang of it, try as he will. A man must be born on the other side or he can’t learn it.”
“There may be something in your countryman’s born reverence for women that prevents him from mastering the accomplishment,” said Hetty, a little dryly.
March bowed gayly.
“Thank you for the implied compliment in the name of American men! I am glad you are getting the benefit of this perfect May day. There, at any rate, we have the advantage of the Mother Country, if she has given us the Maypole and ‘The Queen of the May.’ This is a sour and dubious month in Merry England.”
“You have been there, then?”
Hester said it abruptly, as she said most things, but the eagerness dashed with longing that gave plaintive cadence to the question, caught March’s ear.
“Several times. I sailed from Liverpool twelve days ago. I was just off the steamer, and may be a little unsteady on my feet, when I collided with your carriage last Thursday, and you generously forgave me.”
The girl was regarding him with frank admiration that would have annoyed an ultra-sensitive man, and amused, while it flattered, a vain one.
“It must be heavenly to travel in the country of Scott and Dickens!” she said, quaintly naïve. “How you must have enjoyed it!”
“I did, exceedingly, but less on account of ‘David Copperfield’ and ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ than because, as a boy, I reveled in English history, and that my mother’s father, for whom I was named, was English. You should hear my sister talk of her first journey across England. She would say every little while in an awed undertone: ‘This is just living Dickens!’ You have not met her yet, I think?” to Hetty.
“No.”
The tone was reserved, without being rude. He could have fancied that sadness underlay civil regret. Perhaps May had been mistaken in postponing her call until the parsonage was in perfect order.
“She means to call very soon. She thought it would be unneighborly to intrude before you had recovered from the fatigue of removal and travel. Mr. Wayt was my father’s guest for a day or two, you know, before your arrival, and I have since had the pleasure of meeting him several times and of hearing him preach this morning.”
In the pause that succeeded the speech the church bell began to ring for afternoon service. Under the impression that he had lost caste in not attending upon the second stated ordinance of the sanctuary he offered a lame explanation.
“I am afraid I am not an exemplary church-goer. But I find one sermon as much as I can digest and practice from Sunday to Sunday. My mother doesn’t like to hear me say it. She thinks such sentiments revolutionary and uncanonical, and no doubt she is right.”
“Anybody is excusable for preferring to worship ‘under green apple boughs’ to-day,” observed Hester, with uncharacteristic tact. “You see we have always lived in cities, great and small. We have been used to brick walls and narrow, high houses, with paved backyards, with cats on the fences”—disgustfully—“and wet clothes flapping in your eyes if you tried to pretend to ruralize. Everybody hasn’t as much imagination as Young John Chivery, who said the flapping of sheets and towels in his face ‘made him feel like he was in groves.’”
“Fairhill has preserved the rural element remarkably well, when one considers her tens of thousands of inhabitants, her water supply and electric lights,” said March; “and luckily one doesn’t need much imagination to help out his enjoyment of the world on this Sunday afternoon.”
His tone was so respectfully familiar, his bearing so easy, the girls forgot that he was a stranger.
“It wasn’t your Dickens who said it, but you can, perhaps, tell me who did write a verse that has been running in my unpoetical brain ever since I entered your fairy bower,” he said by and by.
“The orchard’s all a-flutter with pink;
Robins’ twitter, and wild bees’ humming
Break the song with a thrill to think
How sweet is life when summer is coming.
“That is the way it goes, I believe. It is a miracle for me to recollect so much rhyme. The robins and bees must have helped me out.”
“I wish I knew who did that!” sighed Hester. “Oh! what it must be to write poetry or paint pictures!”
March’s glance of mirthful suspicion changed at sight of the knotted brow and wistful eyes.
“One ought to be thankful for either gift,” he said quietly. “I was thinking just now how I should like to make a picture of what I saw as I ran up the hill. May I try some day?”
Hetty drew herself up and looked inquiry. Hester’s hands fluttered, painful scarlet throbbed into her cheeks.
“Can you draw? Do you paint? Are you an artist?” bringing out the last word in an excited whisper.
March was too much touched to trifle with her agitation. “I try to be,” he answered simply, almost reverently.
“And would you—may I—would it annoy you—Hetty! ask him. You know what I want!”
“My darling!” The cooing, comforting murmur was passing sweet. “Be quiet for one moment, and you can put what you want to say into words.” As the fragile form quivered under her hand, a light seemed to dawn upon her. “You see, Mr. Gilchrist, my niece loves pictures better than anything else and—she never has met a real, live artist before,” the corners of her mouth yielding a little. “She has had a great longing to know how the beautiful things that delight her are made—how they grow into being. Is that it, dear?”
Hester nodded, her eyes luminous with tears she strove to drive back.
March struck his hands together with boyish glee.
“I have it! I will make a study of ‘orchards all a-flutter with pink,’ and you shall see me put in every stroke. May I begin to-morrow? Blossom-time is short. How unspeakably jolly! May we, Miss Alling?”
The proposition was so ingenuous, and Hester’s imploring eyes were so eloquent, that the referee turned pale under the heart-wrench demur cost her.
“Dear!” she said soothingly, to the invalid, “it would not be right to promise until we have consulted your mother. Mr. Gilchrist is very kind. Indeed”—raising an earnest face whose pallor set him to wondering—“you must believe that we do appreciate your goodness in offering her this great happiness. But—Hester, love, we must ask mamma.”
March had seen Mrs. Wayt in church that forenoon, and been struck anew with her delicate loveliness. Could she, with that Madonna face, be a stern task-mistress? With the rise of difficulties, his desire to paint the picture increased. That this unfortunate child, with the artist soul shining piteous through her big eyes, should see the fair creation grow under his hand had become a matter of moment. As poor Hester’s effort to express acquiescence or dissent died in a hysterical gurgle, and a shamed attempt to hide her hot face with her hands, the tender-hearted fellow arose to take leave.
“I won’t urge my petition until you have had time to think it over. But I don’t withdraw it. May I bring my sister over to see you both? She is fond of pictures, too, and dabbles in watercolors on her own account. Excuse me—and Thor—for our unintentionally unceremonious introduction to your notice, and thank you for a delightful half-hour. Good-afternoon!”
Hetty looked after him, as his elastic stride measured off the orchard slope—a contradiction of strange mortification and strange delight warring within her. It was as if a young sun-god had paused in the entrance of a gruesome cave, and talked familiarly with the prisoners chained to the walls. With all her resolute purpose to oppose the intimacy which she foresaw must arise from the proposed scheme of picture-making, she could not ignore the straining of her spirit upon her bonds.
“Oh!” wailed Hester, lowering her hands, “I didn’t mean to be so foolish! I will be brave and sensible, but you know, Hetty, I have never had anything like this offered to me before. It is like dying with thirst with water before one’s eyes, to give it up. And when he said: ‘Blossom-time is short,’ it rushed over me that I never had any—I can never have any. I am just a withered, useless, ugly bud that will never be a flower.”
An agony of sobs followed.
“My precious one!” Hetty’s tears flowed with hers. “Do I ever forget your sorrows? Are you listening, dear? If possible, you shall have this one poor little pleasure. You must trust your mother’s love and mine, to deny you nothing we can safely give. If we must refuse, it is only bearing a little more!”
The going out of the May day was calm as with remembered happiness, but the chill that lurks in the imperfectly tempered air of the newborn season, awaiting the departure of the sun, was so pronounced by seven o’clock that Hetty called upon Homer to build a fire in the sitting room, where she and Hester were sitting. The children were sent to bed at eight o’clock. Mrs. Wayt was lying down in her chamber with one of her frequent headaches, rallying her forces against her husband’s return from the long walk he found necessary “to work off the cumulative electricity unexpended by the day’s services.”
“I belong to the peripatetic school of philosophy,” he said to a parishioner whom he met two miles from home.
“He was forging ahead like a trained prize-fighter,” reported the admiring pewholder to a friend. “Nothing of the sentimental weakling about him!”
March and May Gilchrist, pausing upon the parsonage porch, at sound of a voice singing softly and clearly within, saw, past a half-drawn sash curtain, Hetty rocking back and forth in the firelight, with Hester in her arms. The cripple’s head was thrown back slightly, bringing into relief the small, fine-featured face and lustrous eyes. Her wealth of hair waved and glittered with the motion of the chair like spun gold. It might have been a young mother crooning to her baby in a sort of chant, the words of which were distinctly audible to brother and sister, the nearest window being lowered a few inches from the top. Hester loved heat and light as well as a salamander, but could not breathe freely in a closed room. To-night was one of her “bad times,” and nothing but Hetty’s singing could win her a moderate degree of ease.
“Blow winds!” [sang Hetty]
“And waft through all the rooms
The snowflakes of the cherry blooms!
Blow winds! and bend within my reach
The fiery blossoms of the peach!
“O Life and Love! O happy throng
Of thoughts whose only speech is song!
O heart of man! canst thou not be
Blithe as the air is, and as free?”
March moved forward hastily to ring the bell. He felt like an eavesdropping spy upon the unconscious girls. Without any knowledge of the isolation and mutual dependence of the two, the visitors perceived pathos in the scene—in the clinging helplessness of one and the brooding tenderness expressed in the close clasp and bent head of the other.
The singing ceased instantly at the sound of the gong. “By George! what an alarm!” muttered March, discomfited by the clang succeeding his touch. “And I gave it such a genteel pull!”
His attitude was apologetic still, when Mr. Wayt’s wife’s sister opened the door.
“I seem fated to be heralded noisily!” he said regretfully. “I had as little idea of the tone of your doorbell as you had of the power of Thor’s lungs. Miss Alling, let me introduce my sister! She gave me no peace until I brought her to see you.”
May extended her hand with unmistakable intention of good fellowship.
“I scolded him for stealing a march upon me this afternoon while I, like a dutiful Christian, was in church,” she said. Her smile was her brother’s, her blithe, refined tones her own. “But I mean to improve my advantages the more diligently on that account.”
The genial persiflage had bridged over the always awkward transit from front door to drawing room when the host is the conductor. It was the more embarrassing in this case because the two meagerly furnished parlors were unlighted except as a glimmer from the hall gas added to the sense of space and emptiness.
“Allow me!” March took from Hetty’s fingers the match she had lighted, and reached up to the chandelier. The white illumination flashed upon a pleasing study of an up-looking manly face, with honest, hazel eyes, drooping mustache, and teeth that gleamed in the smile attending the question: “I hope your niece is none the worse for her fright?”
“Thank you! I think not. She is rather nervous than timid, and not usually afraid of dogs.”
“I hope we can see her to-night?” May took up the word. “My brother says she is such a dainty, bright little creature that I am impatient to meet her.”
Hetty’s eyes glowed with gratitude and surprise. No other visitor had ever named the afflicted daughter of the house in this tone. The frank, cordial praise kept back no implication of pitying patronage. Mr. Wayt’s wife’s sister had knocked about the world of churches and parishes long enough to know that the perfect breeding which ignores deformity without overlooking the deformed is the rarest of social gifts. In any other circumstances, she would have refused steadfastly to subject Hester to the scrutiny of a stranger. As it was, she hesitated visibly.
“She is seldom able to receive company in the evening. But I will see how she is feeling to-night.”
She had remarkable self-possession, as March had noted already. She got herself out of the room without mumble or halt. She walked well, and with a single eye to her destination, with no diffident conjectures as to how she moved or looked. March had keen perceptions and critical notions upon such points.
“What an interesting looking girl,” observed May, in an undertone.
And March, as cautiously—“I hope she will let us see the little one! She is the jolliest grig you can conceive of.”
Both tried not to look about them while waiting for the hostess’ return. The place was forlornly clean, and the new carpets gave forth the ungoodly smell of oily wool that nothing but time and use can dissipate. Plaintive efforts to abolish stiffness were evident in chairs grouped in conversational attitudes near the summer-fronted fireplace, and a table pulled well away from the wall, with books and photographs lying about on it. March could fancy Hetty doing these things, then standing disheartened, in the waste of moquette, under the consciousness that there was not one-fifth enough furniture for the vast rooms. At this point, he spoke again subduedly:
“What possessed the church to build these desolate barns and call them family parlors?”
May was a parish worker, and looked her surprise.
“A parsonage must have plenty of parlor room for church sociables.”
“Then those who use them ought to furnish them. Or, say! it wouldn’t be amiss to keep them up as show places are abroad—by charging a shilling admission fee.”
Hetty’s return saved him from deserved rebuke.
“My niece will be very happy to see you,” she reported, rather formally, her eyes darkling into vague trouble or doubt as she said it. On the way across the hall she added hurriedly to May: “We never overpersuade her to meet strangers. In this case there was no need.”
May’s gloved hand sought hers with a swift, involuntary gesture. It was the merest touch that emphasized the low “Thank you!” but both struck straight home to Hetty’s heart. The Gilchrist tact was inimitable.
Hester lay upon a lounge, propped into a sitting posture with pillows. Her hair and drapings were cunningly disposed. A casual eye would not have penetrated the secret of the withered limbs and curved spine. A red spot like a rose-leaf rested upon each cheek, her eyes shone, and her silent smile revealed small, perfect teeth like a two-year-old baby’s. She was so winsome that May stooped impulsively to kiss her as she would a pretty child.
“I came to tell you how angry we all are—my father, mother, and I—with my brother and his dog for scaring you to-day,” she said, seating herself on an ottoman by the lounge, and retaining hold of the wee hand until it ceased to twitch and burn in hers. “I did think Thor knew better! His tail committed innumerable apologies to me when I told him I hoped to see you this evening.”
March and Hetty, chatting together near the crackling wood fire, caught presently sentences relative to colors and pencils and portfolios, and slackened their talk to listen. May had elicited the confession that Hester’s brush was a solace and the only pastime she had “except reading and Hetty’s music.”
“But it’s only trying with me,” said the tuneless voice. “I have had no teacher except Hetty.”
“My dear Hester!” cried the person named. “Be candid, and say ‘worse than none!’”
Hester colored vividly at this evidence that her confidences to her new friend were shared by others, but rallied gallantly to support her assertion.
“She doesn’t think she has any talent for drawing, but she took lessons for three months that she might teach me how to shade and manage perspective, and use water colors. She and I amuse ourselves with caricatures and all that, and I make drawings—very poor ones—to illustrate poems and stories, while she reads to me, and I do a little—you can’t imagine how little and how badly!—in color. Just bits, you know—grass and mossy sticks, and brambles running over stones, and frost-bitten leaves—and such things. Hetty is always on the lookout for studies for me. I cannot sit up long enough to undertake anything more important if I had the skill. And I shouldn’t dare venture to copy anything really beautiful—such as apple blossoms,” with a short-lived smile at March that left a plait between her eyes.
Intercepting Hetty’s apprehensive glance, he smiled in return, but forbore to introduce the petition left with them that afternoon. May had been stringent on this point.
“Don’t allude to it this evening!” she enjoined upon him. “Nothing is in worse taste than to use a first call as a lever for selfish ends. I’ll run in to-morrow morning, and try my powers of persuasion. Meantime, get your canvas and palette ready.”
Hetty’s spirits rose when she perceived that the exciting topic was avoided. The four were in the swing of merry converse when the clock struck nine, and, as if he had waited for the signal, Mr. Wayt walked in. March, who sat by Hetty, saw her stiffen all over, and her eyes sink to the floor. Hester began to cough irrepressibly—a hard, dry hack, to quiet which Hetty went to get a glass of water. The pallor of the pastor’s face had a bilious tinge; his eyes were sunken, his whole appearance haggard and wild. Yet his greeting to the guests was effusive, his flow of language unabated. Neither daughter nor sister-in-law offered to second him. Hester’s roses faded, the ever present fold between her eyebrows was almost a scowl. Hetty was coldly imperturbable, and the Gilchrists soon made a movement to go.
Mr. Wayt stepped forward airily to accompany them to the door, Hetty falling into the rear and parting from them with a grave bow upon the threshold of the sitting room.
“My regards to your estimable parents,” said the host on the porch, his pulpit tone carrying far through the night. “A clerical friend of mine dubbed Judge Aaron Hollingshed of Chicago, an active elder in his church, and his wife, who was a true mother in Israel—‘Aaron and her!’ I already, in spirit, apply the like titles to Judge and Mrs. Gilchrist. It is such spirited support as theirs that upholds the hands of the modern Moses against the Amaleks of the day. Thank you for calling, and good-night to you both.”