Читать книгу Mixed Pickles - Raymond Evelyn - Страница 6

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“I have stirred up a hornet’s nest, mother.”

“Ruth! Where?”

“Only a mental one, dear. Thee must not take me too literally. But I unwisely asked Lydia’s children to help me in trying to improve Melville, and they responded only too briskly.”

Then the daughter related what she had overheard in the south room.

“And Fritz was the only one in the right of it,” was Grandmother Kinsolving’s brief comment.

“How can one love what is not lovable? I have been trying three years, and thee knows I have not succeeded over well,” answered Ruth, soberly.

“I think thee has tried less to love than to make, daughter. Just thee leave off the making part, and follow Fritz Pickel’s good advice. Then thee will be the example to the children that thee should be.”

“There is another way out of it, mother dear. Margaret Capers and Melville are always threatening to ‘leave,’ when things do not move just to their notion. Now we have a good reason for letting them keep their word. The peace which would follow their going would be balm to my soul, and marrow to your bones, Mother Amy.”

The old lady did not notice the remark, but went on putting away her gray silken gown as carefully as if it were not to be taken out and worn again on the morrow. Then she folded her snowy kerchief and placed it in its own appropriate drawer of the old-fashioned chiffonier, smoothing out every wrinkle with a lingering daintiness of touch that seemed a sort of ceremony to the less careful Ruth, who enjoyed nothing better than to watch her mother dressing and undressing.

“There would be a vanity in all that fussiness, if it were any one but thee who was guilty of it, Mother Amy,” said the younger, busier woman, fondly.

“If thee would spend more time over thy clothes and less over the household cares, thee would not get so weary, Ruth.”

“Why, mother! I never told thee I was weary!”

“The tone of thy voice tells it, dear. I know that this opening our doors to so many new cares will fall heaviest on thee, my child. Thee must watch thyself, betimes, and be beforehand with love. That will oil the wheels and make them move noiselessly. One thing I foresee gladly. Thee will find enough in little Fritz to make up to thee for all thy labor for him. Yet he is a child born to mischief. And I think thee will have less time to worry over Melville, now this other nephew has come.”

“Yes, I do love him already. Who could help it? He seems a typical boy,—healthy, hearty, and roguish, but warm-hearted and chivalrous as well. I’ll put up with Paula for the sake of Fritzy. Bless the little man! I should like to spank Paula. What a contrast to Content!”

“They will do each other good.”

“But, mother, what about the Capers? If they wish to go, had we not better let them? Thee knows it is not for the need of their board money we keep them; and now these other natural claims are made upon thee, thee can say we want the three extra rooms, as indeed we do. I was ashamed to put Fritz Pickel into such a pigeonhole as the little room under the stairs, and it was all there was left to offer him.”

“Fritz Pickel will do very well if he has always such a comfortable and cleanly bed to rest him on; and it is not he who is troubled, but thy own housewifely heart. Go now to sleep, my child. On thee will fall the burden of the day, and thee must rest. All that the past day has brought to our door, that will we keep; and because of the new bringing we will not discard the old.”

So dismissed, and understanding perfectly that her mother’s determination was final, Ruth Kinsolving went to her own chamber to lie awake and borrow anxiety, as was her nature.

Meanwhile, the victim of that evening’s discussion tossed fretfully on his own luxurious bed—by far the most comfortable one the everywhere comfortably furnished house afforded. He knew nothing, of course, of the eager plans for his reformation which his cousins, “the intruders,” had laid; but he was perfectly capable of forming plans on his own side, not indeed for the reformation of the enemy but for its utter extirpation.

“They are enemies, the whole posse of them. The little imp is but a sample of the lot. Of that I am positive. But if they think they are going to bully me, just because I am a sick boy, they’ll find themselves mightily mistaken. If I can’t fight with my fists I can with my brain, and I will make that whole batch of Pickels sorry they ever heard of The Snuggery. I will so!”

“What is it? What did you say, darling?” asked Grandmother Capers, who entered from her own apartment in swift anxiety. She boasted that she always slept with one eye open, and Melville, at least, believed her. Wake when and how he would, her quick ear caught the difference in his breathing, and she was at his side, attentive and submissive.

Grandmother Capers was considered a “worldly old woman,” by those who felt themselves competent to judge; and, indeed, she was a great contrast to Grandmother Kinsolving, as well in her speech and faith as in her personal appearance. But whatever might be her mental or moral weaknesses, in one thing she was strong; and that was in her supreme, untiring devotion to her grandson. It seemed to Amy Kinsolving as if Ellison’s mother was seeking, by the consecration of her every faculty to Ellison’s child, to make up to him for the terrible injury he had suffered at his parent’s hands. If the devotion wearied Melville, he was still so accustomed to it that he would scarcely have known how to exist without it.

But he resented it as if it had been an insult.

“I do wish that I could ever move without your eternal asking: ‘What is it, darling?’ I hate the sound of your voice!”

Mrs. Caper’s dark eyes filled with tears, and the pretty pink color on her round, old cheek deepened; but Melville could not see this, and, if he had been able, he would not have cared.

“I’m sorry I disturbed you, dear; but it is better that than that you should need me and I not be at hand.”

The old lady’s tone was apologetic and humble—a tone which, whenever Ruth Kinsolving heard it, made her blood boil. That anyone of her race should force such a tone into the voice of an aged woman was one of the many hard things she had to endure on account of her elder nephew.

“Well, see that you don’t do it again, then! And go to bed, can’t you? I wish you’d shut the door between. If I could walk a step, I’d soon find a way to keep you out!”

“There, there, sweetheart, don’t you worry! You know it is so bad for you. If you want me, don’t fail to call.”

There was little fear that this would ever happen, but it was a tender injunction which Grandmother Capers never failed to give.

She returned to her own bed, and fell into another “cat nap,” from which she was roused again, after a brief interval, by hearing Melville breathing deeply and in a manner to startle anybody even less doting than she. Quietly as a mouse, fearing further rebuff, the old lady crept forward until she could peer through the doorway.

Melville was not asleep. He was sitting as nearly upright in bed as he was able to do, and his eyes were fixed upon the open window, and the moonlight which he loved, and which, though against his faithful nurse’s judgment, he insisted should never be shut out by curtains.

The moonlight? Something far whiter and brighter than that. Something which moved up and down, up and down, slowly and monotonously.

Grandmother Capers’s eyes followed her grandson’s, and for the first time in her life she became oblivious to his existence.

Even in modern America there are some houses old enough to have ghostly traditions, and The Snuggery was one of these. On certain nights of the midsummer, when the moon was at its full, “spirits were seen to walk,” through the box-bordered garden-paths; and to sway rhythmically, like folks in “meeting,” above the shaven lawn. These old tales had always been recounted, but it was not until within the last five years, and since the ocean shipwreck which had brought such heart shipwreck to the old homestead, that some voices whispered knowingly how one of these wandering spirits was that of the drowned daughter of the house.

What more fitting, then, than that, on the very first night of their arrival here, the ghost of the children’s mother should revisit the home of her childhood and now of theirs?

Grandmother Capers did not for one instant question the evidence of her senses. She was credulous by nature, and somewhat ignorant, despite her many years, and she remained spellbound where she had paused.

Up and down, up and down, the tall slim creature of the upper air moved, as if blown about by the wind. Grandmother did not have on her spectacles, but she was moderately sharp of vision still; and she was sure that the ghost had long blonde hair and blue eyes. So had Lydia Kinsolving, in the days of her youth.

Then the watcher became conscious that it was not an aimless tossing of ethereal substance that made the light wind’s sport; there was motion, and method in the motion, which seemed strangely familiar to Margaret Capers. Oddly enough, the days of her own youth and belleship recurred to her; days in which she had danced in stately waltzes as unlike the modern ones as grace is unlike awkwardness.

She forgot to be afraid, remembering so distinctly. She forgot that it was said to presage evil if one unwittingly paused to watch a “spirit.” She forgot everything but the waltz movement which had once been dearer to her giddy soul than food to her healthy body. She leaned forward, entranced; but when, presently, the ghostly dancer began to sing, in time to her own motion, the very words of a love-song Margaret Capers had often sung, the fascinated observer aroused with a start.

It was her warning! She knew it, recognized it! She uttered a terrified shriek, so piercing that it silenced Melville from responding, and brought Aunt Ruth flying, like another ghost, in her long nightgown to the invalid’s room.

But when she beheld Grandmother Capers gazing distraught and horror-stricken through the open window, her glance followed swiftly after.

And with her own bodily eyes, in a sickening fear utterly new to her, Ruth Kinsolving looked upon what she actually believed to be her own sister’s wraith.