Читать книгу Time Out Of Mind - Rachel Field - Страница 7

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Instead of the Major punishing Nat and Rissa for our day's junketing and the loss of the dory which must have been carried out to sea for no trace could be found of it along the tidewater, he seemed almost gratified by the expedition. It was the sort of healthy, youthful mischief he understood, and I think he felt encouraged by Nat's part in it.

"We'll make a sailor of you yet," he told him that evening after supper. "But you're to learn how to tie a boat fast and to take care of your sister. There's a skiff down at the yards just the size for you to handle, and I'll have one of the men show you how to manage the sail."

They reported this to me from the back hallway on their way to bed. I was already in mine and I had not fared so well in the matter of scolding. Mother had been pretty well put-out when she saw the state of my clothes. She wasn't pleased, either, at our having gone to the ruined mill. Annie Button and George had told her some shady tales about Old Lady Phibben and Crazy Tim and though I tried to explain how kindly they had treated us, she only shook her head and acted as if we had been in bad company. But the hornet stings were so painful that she let the matter drop, thinking, as well she might, that my misery was punishment enough.

"Well, it's a mercy it was you and not Rissa they stung," she comforted me as I lay in my darkened room, smeared with more remedies to take down the swelling. "You put me in mind of those dolls I'd make out of dough and fry in the fat kettle for you—all swole out in the wrong places."

I could picture myself only too plainly from her words, and even when I was able to be up and about I kept out of Major Fortune's way for several days. By the time I was presentable again, Fourth of July was over and the three of us putting our foolish heads together over a new plan. I think it had come to Rissa first, though it concerned Nat and the piano in the east parlor. They told me about it down in the boathouse after I had been sworn to keep the secret. They need not have bothered to make me cross my heart and hope to die if I told. I was always far too eager to share their schemes, even such a risky one as this.

"We're going to have a club," Rissa began, "and you can belong if you'll promise to help."

"It's got to be like a secret society," Nat put in, his eyes shining like blackberries as we crouched close in the dimness. "Well," I said, "what's it about?"

"Me." Nat was almost bursting to tell, but Rissa was better at explaining things.

"You see, Kate," she went on. "Nat's just got to have a chance to play the piano and you know how father is."

"I know," I nodded, "didn't he say if he ever caught him at it again he'd—"

"Yes, he did," Rissa broke in, "but I've thought of a way, and if you'll help us he'll never know."

"But supposing he found out?" I was born cautious and ten years of experience had taught me to be more so. "You know how they always do, Rissa."

"Oh, Kate, don't act so stupid!" She tossed back her hair from her face and drew her straight brows together in a frown. "We can get around him if we're careful. That's why it's going to be a secret society. I've thought of a name for it—the S.S. double P. Secret Society for piano playing."

"I've just got to," Nat urged me with the look I could never say no to. "I keep making up tunes in my head every night after I go to bed, and what's the good if I can't play them?"

I gave in as they knew I would. Their plan seemed safe enough in spite of the excited chills that ran through me. Now that the days were long and the weather good and the Fortune ship-yard so busy with work on the "Rainbow", Major Fortune had taken to driving there each day. He left immediately after breakfast and seldom returned before sundown. Once mother and Annie and Rose were through the dishes they sat out sewing in a little grape arbor by the driveway where they could keep an eye out for visitors and also be near the kitchen if baking or preserving were under way. We would be free to amuse ourselves as we pleased, indoors or out. Rissa's music lessons had stopped for the summer, but she was supposed to keep up her practicing. She would pretend to do so then and who would know if she or Nat were at the piano?

"It won't sound like the pieces Miss Ada Joy teaches you." I objected for I was always practical minded.

"Well, they won't know the difference," Rissa was confident. "Annie's getting deaf as a post and Rose Can't tell one tune from another. If your mother finds out she won't tell on us even if she does scold."

"The only trouble would be father coming in early or someone driving in without our hearing," Nat told me, "that's why you'll have to keep watch, Kate. You will, won't you?"

"If you sit in the window seat you can see anyone coming over the bridge before they turn into the drive and the trees shut them out. That would give us plenty of time to close the piano and get out of the way. I'd do it only I've got to help Nat, and you don't know how to play."

"Well," I never meant not to join in the plan, but I couldn't help feeling it wouldn't be so much fun for me. "I'll do it if we can have it a real society, like the Masons' Order down in the village, and give each other a secret handshake."

"We can," Rissa was very generous with me that afternoon. I was going to be important to them and they both knew it. "We'll hook our little fingers together, like this, when we shake and that'll be the sign."

"And we can rap, too," Nat suggested eagerly. "Three raps under the table or on the wall—rap-rap—rap-p-p." He struck his knuckles sharply on the boathouse floor as he spoke. "That'll mean—'He's going, almost time!' And if we make it like this—rap-rap! rap-rap! That'll mean watch out."

We were bewitched with the idea, and practiced rappings till our knuckles were almost raw. Nat's eyes would keep shining and we could hardly hold our faces straight as we sat in the parlor after supper. I remember we slipped out into the garden when the Major had buried himself in his paper, and that we sat close together on a stone bench talking of our plan in excited whispers. It was a warm July night and the fireflies in the shrubbery were thick as stars overhead. Nat caught one and made a cage of his hand about the winking glow.

"If you were a bug, Kate," he asked me, "would you rather be a firefly or a cricket?"

"I wouldn't be a bug for anything," I told him, and Rissa, for once agreed with me.

"But if you had to be?" He insisted.

"A firefly's prettier." I decided, as I looked across the dark water and saw Whale Back Light flashing beyond the Narrows, hardly bigger than the bright speck between his cupped fingers.

"Yes, but a cricket can sing." He said.

"Chirp, you mean." Rissa was scornful. "Bo says they feel the frost in their hind legs the way he does in his knees when it's going to rain. Hundreds and hundreds of them all rubbing their legs together, that's what he says it is when we hear them in the fall."

Our great enterprize began the very next afternoon. It prospered better than we had dared hope. I think Major Fortune must have been more worried that summer than even Henry Willis suspected not to have tracked down our guilty looks and flushed faces each time he set out with Bo in the dog cart. Why he did not inquire about the queer rappings that came from under tables and the back entry door I cannot to this day understand, but the S.S. double P. flourished and its three members grew bolder as each July day passed without mishap. He would have liked to take Nat with him on these drives to the shipyard, but such long rides turned him faint and giddy and usually ended by humiliating them both. So he never guessed with what secret satisfaction the three demure faced children watched him take the reins and turn the horses towards the turnpike, or that the dim parlor rang to forbidden music once I could report them safely clattering over the wooden bridge.

"Someday you young ones'll get caught at it." Mother protested a week or so later when she discovered what use we were making of his absences. "If the Major finds Nat over that piano again I wouldn't answer for what he might do."

Still she kept our secret, and if the others knew, they gave no sign. It came to be like a play that we acted each day, and I crouching at the window that overlooked the dip of road by the salt inlet, took my part with all seriousness. I felt the responsibility, for once Nat and Rissa opened the piano they forgot everything but the black and ivory keys and the little notes that climbed in and out of ink fence-rails. It seemed nothing short of miraculous to me, that those two could understand them, the same as I could printed words. I was an active child, and I must confess I grew pretty cramped and tired watching there on the window seat often for three and four hours at a stretch. Sometimes when they were going it together and the room full of beautiful sound I would strain my eyes till they ached to catch that one sight of the horses coming back over the bridge. I couldn't have heard the hoof-beats on the wooden boards above the music and the great spruces hid the rest of the road. Still, it was sweet to have a part in this game which could bring bright color to Nat's usually pale cheeks as he bent to the rows of keys. I marveled at the sure way his fingers sped over them, and that he could tell if Rissa, playing beside him, struck a single false note or dragged a beat behind. It was mostly a queer jargon to my unmusical ears, but I began to have feelings about some of the pieces. I remember one in particular they talked about.

"You see, Rissa," Nat explained. "It wasn't right the way Miss Ada Joy had you play it. Listen! It's like this." His fingers flew over the keys and his thick hair shook in time as if every lock were alive. He was panting with excitement when he stopped. "It's a polonaise. That's a dance. I looked it up in the dictionary."

"Well, but my goodness, Nat," she complained, "suppose it is. You needn't get so worked up over it. You're as red as a turkey cock."

"It sounds like a barn dance they played down to Trundy's Tavern once," I told them from my post. "They called it the 'Portland Fancy'."

Nat wanted to know more about it, but I couldn't even hum the tune.

"A man named Chopin wrote this one." He went on. "I like him and I wish Miss Joy had left more of his. It's better a lot than this 'Poet and Peasant' one. Now I'm going to play what I made up last night in bed."

My right foot had gone to sleep but I didn't dare move once he began his own piece. He'd played little snatches of tunes before, but this was different. I couldn't believe he had really done it, and yet I knew Nat could do anything. Listening to it made me feel somehow queer and cold though the sun was coming in hot on my shoulders. There were deep, thunderous parts in it, like the sea or wind in branches, but soft parts, too, that made me feel the way I did when I read about the "Little Sea-Maid" and "The Nightingale." Yes, it was a kind of magic, I told myself. I knew it must be. Rissa knew a little of the magic, and poor faded Miss Ada Joy with her spectacles and black silk basque did too. They could both make the little notes come clear and precise from their fingers. But Nat could make you forget they were notes at all. Even I knew the difference.

"Oh, Nat!" I cried at the last note. "How could you make it up all by yourself? Did you honest?"

I wanted to run to him, but I dared not risk leaving the window seat. He nodded modestly, but his eyes were very bright.

"It's splendid!" Rissa cried. "I like it lots better than that polonaise. Only it's a shame we don't know how to write it all down."

"I've got to learn how to." Nat's face clouded suddenly. "If there was just some way. But I'm getting so I can keep them in my head. Come on, Rissa, let's try that duet again. We didn't keep together last time."

"All right, Nat, move over on the bench."

I wasn't held to the music as well when Rissa played with him. The long, late July afternoon was very warm and I was growing tired. I leaned my head against the window frame and kept to my watch behind the green damask curtains. The sun slanted through the ranks of nearby spruces, and below me the garden, which was George Button's pride, showed yellow and blue and all shades of rose. I could watch bees going diligently from flower to flower, and tawny butterflies stayed so still sometimes they might have been anchored to the clumps of hollyhock and delphinium spikes. Through the gap, across the waters of the inlet, I could see men mowing in a far field. Their scythes sent out quick flashes in the sun, and they moved, sure and steady, as if like the little figures on the French clock, they too were part of Time's machinery. It made me drowsy to watch them, so far and small in that yellowing meadow. Every so often I would shift my eyes to the green of the spruces that hid the driveway, where chipmunks moved, fleeter than shadows. I could not hear their chattering above the storm of music, but their quick dartings helped me fight off the drooping of my eyelids.

"For I mustn't get sleepy," I told myself, whenever the road and distant meadow blurred before me.

I could never explain, not then or afterwards, how it happened. Suddenly the duet stopped short, the notes chopped off in mid-air as if one of those far scythes had borne down upon them. Behind the curtains at my back was silence, so heavy and yet somehow tingling that I knew even before I heard the Major's voice shatter it, that we were trapped there, all three of us together.

"Nathaniel! Clarissa!"

I was numb with panic as I peered round the curtain folds. I shall never forget how he looked standing there in the doorway, enormous in his linen duster. He had not stopped to put back the carriage whip. I could see its long lash twisted about his boots.

"So," he spoke in the level, quiet voice that we always dreaded most, "this is what happens when I'm away! How long has this been going on?"

Those two at the piano did not move, though Rissa managed to answer.

"Oh, Father," she began, "we didn't mean any harm—"

"Only disobedience, eh?" He dismissed her plea with a withering glance. "You know what I told you both the last time I caught you at it." Since there was no reply from the piano, he strode into the room, flicking the whip as he came. "Have you got anything to say for yourself?" His eyes were bent upon the boy before him.

"No, Sir," Nat had grown white as the sheets of music on the rack. His words were half a whisper, then his lips shut fast again. Clarissa tried once more.

"It wasn't Nat's fault, father, I—" She lied with all the cunning she could muster. "It's a duet and I couldn't play it alone, so I thought you wouldn't mind just this once."

"Be quiet, Clarissa." It infuriated him to have her take Nat's part. "We don't need any more from you." He was standing over them now. "Stand up!" He ordered his son sharply, "if you've got gumption enough to!"

I saw Nat get up and stand by the piano with his lower lip sucked under his teeth.

"You know I said you were not to touch that." Major Fortune gave a fierce jerk of his head towards the black and ivory keys. "You can't have forgotten."

"No, Sir, I didn't."

He spoke low, but when I heard him my heart felt like a cold pebble under my dress front. In the stillness I could hear the clock strike four deep notes. I knew how the little woodsmen were sawing away with their cross-saws, but I only saw those two Nathaniel Fortunes facing each other.

"Hold out your hands!"

Clarissa started up with a smothered cry. Her father stopped her with a frown. Nat's hands came out of his pockets, palms out, his fingers like twigs in the dimness.

"No, the other way—as if you were playing that damned thing!"

Nat turned them over. I saw the whip-lash rise and fall with a smart crack across his knuckles. That brought me to as sharply as if it had been laid upon me. I have no remembrance of leaving the window seat, but there I was beside them. I must have bobbed up before Major Fortune with the suddenness of a Jack-in-the-box.

"You leave him be!" I heard myself panting.

"Well, by Godfrey!" He stared down at me with the same queer look he had had on our first meeting.

"You've got no call to beat him!" I could feel the words spurting out of me. I had forgotten how it annoyed him to see me overtopping his own son. I had forgotten everything but the way Nat's hands looked still spread out and quivering.

"Well," he said, keeping his eyes on me so hard I could see the reflected squares of the window in the dark pupils, "you're a spunky little varmint. I'll say that for you."

He did not raise the lash again. After another moment of staring at us he turned on his heel. Rissa was crying by that time and Nat shook all over though he stood in the same spot.

"Clear out of here, the lot of you!" The Major spoke over his shoulder. "Go upstairs to your room, Nat, and stay there till I tell you to leave it."

I did not wait to speak to Rissa, and I remember nothing more till I found myself climbing the ladder to the hay-loft. Sobs were gathering in my throat and tears blinded me so I could only feel for the rungs as I mounted. It had been my refuge before and it was to be many times again, but never was I so in need of it as on that afternoon. Once I flung myself down in the dusty warmth of dried grass and clover I gave up to a flood of fright and fury and humiliation. I seldom cried and for this reason I was overwhelmed by the violence of my own tears. Between my gusts of sobbing I heard Rissa call my, name guardedly from garden and orchard but I was past answering her. So I burrowed deeper into the hay with no thought for my dress or the sharp spikes that scratched and half choked me. After awhile my weeping grew less wild. My tears were spent and only long spasms of sobs shook me. I lay there, face down, going over and over the whole scene, every look and word and motion of which was terrifyingly clear to me then and will be till the day I die.

My own part in the catastrophe was what I could not reconcile. I wasn't one to make allowances, at least, not for anyone but Nat. I tried to think how I could have missed seeing the carriage come over the bridge. It is still a mystery to me. But I knew that I had somehow managed to fail in my part of the secret game that would never again be played in the east parlor. I had stood up to Major Fortune. That was only right and fair. I knew, though, for certainty that no good would come of it.

"Things'll never be the same again." I said to myself there in the hot, sweet smelling hay-loft with my own despair. "He'll fix it some way to get back at Nat. I know he will."

I turned over on the hay and lay still at last after my wild crying. Through the criss-cross dried spikes I could look up at the enormous rafters where swallows swooped and fingers of light slanted through unseen gaps. The cows were back from pasture. I could hear George and Bo milking below me in the barn. Then they went off and I heard the supper bell ring from the kitchen. But I did not answer its summons. Faint stampings and munchings came from the stalls below, and an occasional squeak as families of field mice settled themselves somewhere in the hay. After awhile I sat up, sneezed, pushed my dusty, rumpled hair out of my eyes, and wiped my face with the hem of my skirt, before I started back to the house.

They were all at supper and it was easy to slip in through the open front door. As I passed the dining room windows I could see Rissa and the Major alone at the table under the steady canvas stares of two Fortune portraits. I reached my own room in safety and took out from its place a little pearl handled knife which I kept in my top dresser drawer. It was all I could think of to show Nat how sorry I felt for betraying him. He had lost his knife and I knew he would lose this, too, inside of a week. It seemed a pity because then we wouldn't have one between us. Still, I couldn't think of any other gift to make him. I guessed that it would be risky to go to his door, but there was another way of reaching him. One of his windows gave on the ell side, and by climbing out on the roof I could reach it. The window was open and I started across the hot tin that felt like an oven lid under my bare feet.

"Nat," I whispered, clutching the sill and bracing my feet on the boards below.

A chair scraped inside and then he came close.

"You better sit on the edge," he cautioned, "so's you can drop down quick."

I swung myself up to the sill, my legs dangling, and he crouched on the floor, his elbows resting beside me. I could see his eyes were red, and I knew he had been crying. For a moment I didn't know how to begin.

"Your hair's all full of hay," he said, pulling a wisp out and holding it between his fingers. The skin was blistered on one of his knuckles but not badly.

"Did it hurt?" I asked him.

"Not much. It just smarts, kind of."

"Here," I pulled the knife in its little chamois case out of my pocket and laid it on the sill between us. "You can have it."

"For tonight, or for keeps?"

"For keeps." I tried to think of words for what I wanted to say, but I wasn't very good at that sort of talk. "I'm real sorry, Nat," I began at last, "about this afternoon. I didn't see a sign of him, honest I didn't."

"He was pretty mad, wasn't he?" Nat asked.

"Madder'n hops. Nat, you know I wouldn't not have told you if I'd seen him in time?"

"I know." He told me. "But I wish you had."

"So do I. I don't see how I could have missed them on the bridge. I never did before. What's he going to do?"

"He's getting George to put a padlock on the piano, and Rissa's to take lessons at Miss Ada Joy's from now on."

"Then you won't ever get a chance at it again?"

"I guess not." He sighed heavily. "Anyway not till I'm grown up and go away from here."

"It's meaner than mean." I kicked at the clapboards till my toes tingled.

We were silent there together for a long time. The western sky seethed with fiery rose and made the sea bright beyond the dark points of the spruces. Gulls were letting the sunset take them home to the outer islands and the white washed tower of Whale Back Light stood out to sea like a far candle.

"Maybe," I said, "he wouldn't lock it up if we all went and said we were sorry and we wouldn't do it again?"

"But I would," he shook his dark head, "first chance I got."

"I'd give up going to the launching," I promised in sudden recklessness, "if 'twould do any good?"

"It wouldn't." He began to drum on the window sill. It was a way he had, making up tunes that only he knew and understood.

"I guess we have to wait till we grow up to do things we want to." I told him.

"I know." He agreed, "but it's a long way off."

"Well, you're bound to do what you want to someday, Nat. Remember what Old Lady Phibben said when she looked at your hands?" I reminded him. "She said you'd be spreading them out in glory someday."

"It was funny that part about the white horses, wasn't it?" He looked thoughtful. "Father's are all bays and sorrel."

"You watch out same's she said to." I cautioned. Just then a door banged somewhere below us and steps sounded on the brick walk. That meant supper was over and it would be better for me not to linger. Still, I hated to go, and I hadn't said what I had meant to. It was different talking to Nat like this, just the two of us by ourselves without Rissa to break in.

"Nat," I tried again, and the words came out in a sudden burst. It was easier now that I could hardly see his face for the fading light. "I'll make it up to you someway. You see if I don't."

Once I had got them out, I felt unaccountably shy and foolish, so I let myself down to the ell roof and made off without waiting for any answer.