Читать книгу Carried by Storm - May Agnes Fleming - Страница 11
ОглавлениеSLEAFORD'S JOANNA.
ut into the moonlight five hours before the child Joanna had fled, pale with passion, pain, defiance, ablaze with wrath against all the world. It is a customary mood enough with this elfish child, twelve only in years, a score, if hatred, envy, malice, and all ill-will can age a child. To be flogged like a hound, to be sent supperless to bed, to be starved in attic or cellar, to swelter in fierce August noontides, or shiver among the rats on bitter January nights, these are old and well-known experiences in Joanna's life. To be forced to labor from day-dawn until midnight, with every bone aching; to go barefoot through slush and snow; to sleep and live worse than the dogs—for they are cared for; to hear only brutal words, and still more brutal oaths, from her task-master's lips; to be jeered at, to go clad in rags—this has been the life of this girl of twelve, the only life she can ever remember. Lora and Liz are well, gayly clad indeed; they sing, they dance, they idle, they work or let it alone as they choose. Is not Joanna there, the household drudge, the homely, red-haired, rustic Cinderella, with never godmother or other mother, in fairyland or out of it, to come to the rescue with a pumpkin coach and a pair of glass slippers? She knows that lovely legend of happy childhood, this most unhappy little outcast, and sighs bitterly sometimes as she looks at the big golden globes she cuts up for the cows and pigs.
There are fairy godmothers in the world, no doubt, and handsome young princesses, but they never, oh, never come near Sleaford's Farm. And who ever conceived a Cinderella with fiery-red hair, freckles, and long mottled shins? A cinder-sifter she has been born, a cinder-sifter she must die.
She has these thoughts sometimes, formless and vague mostly, but bitter always. It would have been better if Giles Sleaford had left her in the gutter to starve ten years ago, instead of fishing her out of it, as he says he has done. He makes a great deal of that far-off city gutter in his grumbling way, for she is not his daughter, this bare-limbed unfortunate; she is nobody's daughter, so far as she can find.
He has taken her out of the slime where she was born, he tells her, and slaves early and late to give her a home, and this is her thanks, dash her! Her mother afore her was a good-for-nothin'—dash, dash her—what can be expected from the unlicked cub of such a dam—dash her! double-dash everything and everybody, his own eyes and limbs included. Giles Sleaford was an Englishman once, he is a cosmopolitan now; has tramped over the world in a vagabond sort of way, is a man under a cloud, banned and shunned by his neighbors. He has neither bought nor rented this farm, and yet he is in undisturbed possession. He does not work; he fishes, shoots, prowls, drinks, fights; is a worthless brute generally. Yet he has plenty of money, his daughters dress in expensive finery, and there is a rough sort of plenty always at their house. He is of horses horsey, and bets and loses heavily. He is a bit of a prize-fighter, a little of a gambler, a dark and dangerous fellow always. Some mystery shrouds him; he throws out vague hints now and then of the power he holds over a certain very rich man and magnate of the place. He is brutal to all, to his own sons and daughters, but most of all to the hapless creature known as Sleaford's Joanna. That he has not killed her outright in one of his fits of fury is not due to him, one of the Sleaford boys or girls generally interfering in bare nick of time. Their drudge is useful, they do not want her beaten to death, or the prying eyes of the land brought to bear on their rustic household. So Joanna is still alive to scour the woods, and terrify small, fair-haired heiresses into fits.
The moon is shining brilliantly as she leaves the house. She looks up at it, her hands locked together in a tense clench, her teeth set, her eyes aflame with the fires of rage and hatred, her shoulders red and welted with the stinging blows of the whip. It is a mute appeal to Heaven against the brutality and cruelty of earth—that Heaven of which she knows nothing, except that it is a word to swear by.
She wanders slowly on, not crying—she hardly ever cries. The silence, the coolness, the beauty of the night calms her; she does not mind spending it among the dewy clover, or under a tree; she sleeps there oftener in summer than anywhere else. She takes a path well known to her bare feet—it leads to her favorite sulking place, as the Sleaford girls call it, and is perhaps the ugliest spot within a radius of twenty miles. It is called Black's Dam. An old disused mill falling to pieces stands there, the water in the stagnant pond is muddy and foul. It is a desolate spot in broad day, it is utterly dismal and dark by night. Some fellow-feeling draws her to it—it, too, is lonely, is ugly, is shunned. Black's Dam is her one friend. The ruined mill is haunted, of course; corpse candles burn there, shrieks are heard there, it is peopled by a whole colony of bogies. But Joanna is not afraid of ghosts. Ghosts never horsewhip, never swear, never throws sticks of hickory at people's heads—do nothing, in fact, but go about in white sheets after nightfall, and squeal to scare people. The only corpse-lights she has ever seen are lightning-bugs, the only supernatural screams the whoo-whoo of a belated owl. The sheeted specters never appear to her; when she is exceptionally lonely sometimes she would rather be glad of the company of one or two. But ghosts are not sociable, they never seem to have much to say for themselves, so perhaps it is as well. On rainy nights she sleeps in the old mill; after unusually bad beatings she has stayed there for days, feeding on berries, and been found and forced back again at last, a gaunt skeleton. More than once she has sat and stared at the green, slimy water until the desire to spring in and end it all grows almost more than she can resist. "Only old Giles Sleaford will be glad of it," she thinks; "I'll keep alive just to spite him." And, sad to say, it is this motive that actually holds the creature back from self-destruction many a time.
The tempter is very strong within her to-night, but Giles Sleaford is not the object of her vindictive, suppressed wrath. It is Olga Ventnor. She has grown so used to his oaths and blows that she looks for nothing else; but a hundred demons seem aroused within her by the sight of the beautiful, golden-haired, richly-robed child. This is the sort to whom fairy godmothers come, for whom magic wands are struck, who go to balls, and dance with the handsome prince, and marry him, and live happy forever after. This is what she might have been, but never can be. All the beauty, and the riches, and the fairy gifts are for this little curled darling of the gods; for her—the lash, the feeding of the pigs, the rags, the rye bread, the ugly, ugly red hair!
She has reached the dam, and sits down on a flat stone on the brink. It is unspeakably lonely—the moon shines in a cloudless midnight sky; the water lies black, solemn, still; the old mill stands sinister, mysterious, casting long shadows. Hardly a breath stirs; some frogs croak dismally in the green depths—that is all.
She sits in her favorite attitude, her knees drawn up, her chin in her palms, and stares vacantly before her. One thought, one only, possesses her—her hatred of this delicate little beauty and heiress, with her pearl-fair face and long light hair. She would kill her if she could; she has all the will in the world at this moment to be a little murderess. Shocking—unreal? Well, no; think how she has been brought up—think of the records of juvenile depravity you read and shudder at in the newspaper every day. The demon of envy holds her—a passionate outcry against the injustice of her fate, that has given the golden apples of life to this one, the scourings of the pig-trough to her. "Unjust! unjust!" something within her cries, "why has she all—I nothing?" It is the spirit that has hurled kings from thrones, wrought revolutions, filled the world with communism—that will beat the air impotently to the end of time. No savage could be more untaught than this child. There was a Power up there who had created her, but who looked down on all this and made no sign. There was a Heaven for well-dressed, respectable ladies and gentlemen, and little heiresses. There was a Hell for such as she, wicked and poor, where they would go when they died, and burn in torment forever. This much she believes—it comprises her whole theory of religion.
She sits for a long time brooding, brooding. She meant to have done something to that girl that would mark her for life—spoil her beauty in some way—but she has been prevented. No doubt by this time Frank Livingston has come and fetched her home, and her chance is gone forever. Frank Livingston, too, is a lily of the field, a handsome dandy, but he awakens none of this slumbering gall and bitterness within her. He is simply something to be silently admired, revered, and wondered at, a being of brightness and beauty, of splendid raiment, lacquered boots, diamond studs, and a general odor of roses and Ess. Bouquet. He is the prince to be worshiped at a distance, and not to be lightly touched or spoken to. She wonders sometimes to behold him pulling Lora about in very unprincely fashion, and to see that buxom damsel slap his face, and frowsle his silky chestnut hair. For him, he takes no more notice of this uncanny-looking child, with the eldritch red locks, than of one of the half-dozen ill-conditioned dogs that yelp about the premises. That he is the object of her silent idolatry would have tickled Master Frank beyond everything.
She rises at last, shivering in the bleak night wind. She is as nearly nude as it is possible to be in a state of civilization, and the chill damp pierces through her tatters. Why she does not go into the mill until the morning she never knows; she turns, instead, and walks slowly back to the farm.
The house is all dark and silent. The dogs fly at her, but a word quiets them; they, too, know Joanna's witch-like ways. Jud Sleaford swears she spends half her nights riding the air on a broom-stick—she comes and goes, like the night-wind, where she listeth.
She goes to the parlor window, and flattens her nose against the pane. Her eyes are keen as any ferret's. Yes, there she is—she has not gone home—asleep—alone!—in her power! The girl's eyes light; they glitter in the dark. There she is, asleep, alone, in her power!
She goes round to a side window, opens it, and enters. Dogs, guns, and men are plentiful at Sleaford's—bolts are scarce; there is no fear of burglars. She enters, drops lightly to the ground, goes straight to a shelf in the kitchen, takes down something bright and steely, and steals into the parlor without a sound. Instead of going straight to the bed she crouches in her corner, to brood, perhaps, over the deed of darkness she is about to do, or it may be to count the cost. She will be blamed in the morning, no doubt—is she not blamed for everything that goes wrong? she will be beaten nearly to death—quite to death, perhaps, by Giles Sleaford. Well, she does not care. They will hang him for it. If she were quite sure about the hanging, she feels she would be whipped to death without a groan.
The clock striking three arouses her. It is time to be up and doing—in an hour or two the boys will be down. Indecision forms no part of her character; she gets up at once, and approaches the bed with her formidable weapon. It is the family shears, bright, large, keen as a razor, and her object is—not to cut off Olga Ventnor's head, but—her hair!
Olga is awake, is staring at her, frozen with fright. She has not counted on that, and with a snarl of baffled malice, she plunges her hand in the golden tresses, and uplifts the scissors. But in the twinkling of an eye the child springs from the bed, rushes from the room, shrieking like a mad thing. There is a heavy fall, the sound of startled voices up-stairs, and opening doors. In that moment the scissors are flung aside. Joanna is out of the window, and away like the wind to Black's Dam.
