Читать книгу Master of the Vineyard - Reed Myrtle - Страница 5

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A Cheerless Room

At seven o'clock, precisely, Grandmother Starr limped into the dining-room. It was one of her "lame" days, though sometimes she forgot which was her lame side, and limped irregularly and impartially with either foot, as chanced to please her erratic fancy.

A small lamp cast a feeble, unshaded light from the middle of the table, for the morning was dark, and the room smelled abominably of oil. The flickering rays picked out here and there a bit of tarnished gold from the wall paper, and, as though purposely, made the worn spots in the carpet unusually distinct. Meaningless china ornaments crowded the mantel, but there was no saving grace of firelight in the small black cavern beneath. A little stove, in one corner of the room, smoked industriously and refused to give out any heat.

"Rosemary," said Grandmother Starr, fretfully, "I don't see why you can't never learn to build a fire. Get me my shoulder shawl."

Cold and Cross

The girl compressed her pale lips into a thin, tight line. She was tired and her head ached, but she said nothing. She found the shawl, of red-and-black plaid, and spread it over the old lady's shoulders.

"I didn't say for you to put it on," remarked Grandmother, sourly. "If I'd wanted you to put it on me, I'd have said so. Guess I ain't so old yet but what I can put on my own shawl. What I want it for is to wrap up my hands in."

"Where's my shawl?" demanded Aunt Matilda, entering the room at that moment.

Rosemary found the other shawl, of blue-and-brown plaid, and silently offered it to the owner.

Aunt Matilda inclined her grey head toward Rosemary. "You can put it on me if you like. I ain't ashamed to say I'm cold when I am, and if I wanted to wrap up my hands, I'd get my mittens—I wouldn't take a whole shawl."

"You ain't got no reason to be cold, as I see," remarked Grandmother, sharply. "Folks what lays abed till almost seven o'clock ought to be nice and warm unless they're lazy. P'r'aps if you moved around more, your blood would warm you."

"Better try it," Matilda suggested, pointedly.

An angry flush mounted to Grandmother's temples, where the thin white hair was drawn back so tightly that it must have hurt. "I've moved around some in my day," she responded, shrilly, "but I never got any thanks for it. What with sweepin' and dustin' and scrubbin' and washin' and ironin' and bringin' up children and feedin' pigs and cows and chickens and churnin' and waitin' on your father, it's no wonder I'm a helpless cripple with the misery in my back."

Head of the House

"Dried peaches again," Matilda observed, scornfully, as Rosemary put a small saucer of fruit before her. "Who told you to get dried peaches?"

"I did, if you want to know," Grandmother snorted. "This is my house, ain't it?"

"I've heard tell that it was," Matilda answered, "and I'm beginnin' to believe it."

Miss Matilda was forty-six, but, in the pitiless glare of the odorous lamp, she looked much older. Her hair was grey and of uneven length, so that short, straight hair continually hung about her face, without even the saving grace of fluffiness. Her eyes were steel-blue and cold, her nose large and her mouth large also. Her lips drooped at the corners and there was a wart upon her chin.

Grandmother also had a wart, but it was upon her nose. Being a friendly and capable sort of wart, it held her steel-bowed spectacles at the proper angle for reading or knitting. During conversation, she peered over her spectacles, and sometimes, to the discomfort of a sensitive observer, the steel frame appeared to divide her eyes horizontally.

All Wrong

They were very dark, beady eyes, set close together. At times they gleamed with the joy of conflict, but they always expressed a certain malicious cunning. With a single glance, she could make Rosemary feel mentally undressed. Had the girl's forehead been transparent, like the crystal of a watch, with the machinery of thought and emotion fully exposed to the eye of a master-mechanic, her sensation could not have differed from the helpless awe her grandmother so easily inspired.

Of course the breakfast was not right—it never was. The dried peaches were too sweet for one and not sweet enough for the other. Grandmother wanted her oatmeal cooked to a paste, but Aunt Matilda, whose teeth were better, desired something that must be chewed before it was swallowed, and unhesitatingly said so. The coffee was fated to please neither, though, as Rosemary found courage to say, you couldn't expect good coffee on Friday when the same grounds had been used ever since Sunday morning.

"I'd like to know what makes you so high and mighty all of a sudden," said Grandmother. "Coffee's just like tea—as long as colour comes into it when it's boiled, it's good. My mother always used the same grounds for a week for a family of eight, and she didn't hear no complaints, neither. You ain't boiled this long enough—that's what's the matter."

The Common Task

Aunt Matilda muttered something about "beggars being choosers," and Rosemary pushed her plate away wearily. She had not tasted her breakfast.

Grandmother arose and noisily blew out the lamp, regardless of the fact that Matilda had not finished eating. "Now, Rosemary," she said, briskly, "after you get the dishes done and the kitchen cleaned up, I want you should go to the post-office and get my paper. When you come back, you can do the sweepin' and dustin' down here and I can set in the kitchen while you're doin' it. Then you can make the beds and do the up-stairs work and then go to the store. By the time you're ready to go to the store, I'll have decided what you're to get."

"And," continued Aunt Matilda, pushing back her chair, "this afternoon you can help me cut out some underclothes and get 'em basted together." She never attempted any sort of housework, being pathetically vain of her one beauty—her small, white hands. Even the family sewing she did under protest.

"Is the alpaca all gone?" asked Grandmother.

"Yes," Matilda replied. "I used the last of it patchin' Rosemary's dress under the arms. It beats all how hard she is on her clothes."

A Question of Colour

"I'll have to order more," sighed the old lady. "I suppose the price has gone up again."

Rosemary's breath came and went quickly; her heart fluttered with a sudden wildness. "Grandmother," she pleaded, hesitatingly, "oh, Aunt Matilda—just for this once, couldn't I have grey alpaca instead of brown? I hate brown so!"

Both women stared at her as though she had all at once gone mad. The silence became intense, painful.

"I mean," faltered the girl, "if it's the same price. I wouldn't ask you to pay any more. Perhaps grey might be cheaper now—even cheaper than brown!"

"I was married in brown alpaca," said Grandmother. She used the tone in which royalty may possibly allude to coronation.

"I was wearing brown alpaca," observed Aunt Matilda, "the night the minister came to call."

"Made just like this," they said, together.

"If brown alpaca's good enough for weddin's and ministers, I reckon it'll do for orphans that don't half earn their keep," resumed Grandmother, with her keen eyes fixed upon Rosemary.

"What put the notion into your head?" queried Aunt Matilda, with the air of one athirst for knowledge.

A Surprise Party

"Why—nothing," the girl stammered, "except that—when I was looking at mother's things the other day, up in the attic, I found some pink ribbon, and I thought it would be pretty with grey, and if I had a grey dress——"

The other two exchanged glances. "Ain't it wonderful," asked Matilda of her mother, "how blood will tell?"

"It certainly is," responded Grandmother, polishing her spectacles vigorously with a corner of the plaid shawl. "Your ma," she went on, to Rosemary, "was wearin' grey when your pa brought her here to visit us. They was a surprise party—both of 'em. We didn't even know he was plannin' marriage and I don't believe he was, either. We've always thought your ma roped him into it, somehow."

Rosemary's eyes filled with mist and she bit her lips.

"She was wearin' grey," continued Aunt Matilda; "light grey that would show every spot. I told her it wasn't a very serviceable colour and she had the impudence to laugh at me. 'It'll clean, won't it?' she says, just like that, and Frank says, right after her, 'Yes, it'll clean.' He knew a lot about it, he did. She had psychologised him."

"You mean hypnotised," interrupted Grandmother. "There ain't no such word as 'psychologised.'"

Resentment

"Well, if there ain't, there ought to be."

"The pink has come out in the blood, too," Grandmother remarked, adjusting her spectacles firmly upon the ever-useful and unfailing wart. "She was wearin' pink roses on her bonnet and pink ribbon strings. It wouldn't surprise me if it was the very strings what Rosemary has found in the trunk and is layin' out to wear."

"Me neither," Matilda chimed in.

"She was wearin' lace on her petticoats and high-heeled shoes, and all her handkerchiefs was fine linen," Grandmother continued. "Maybe you'd like some lace ruffles under your grey alpaca, wouldn't you, Rosemary?"

The girl got to her feet blindly. She gathered up the dishes with cold hands that trembled, took them out into the kitchen, and noiselessly closed the door. Her heart was hot with resentment, even though she had heard the story, with variations, ever since she was old enough to understand it.

"Poor little mother," said Rosemary, to herself. "Dear little mother! Why couldn't you have taken me with you!"

As Grandmother had said, for the hundredth time and more, Frank Starr had brought home his young wife unexpectedly. The surprise, in itself, was a shock from which she and Matilda had never recovered. Even now, they were fond of alluding to the years of ill-health directly caused by it, and of subtly blaming Rosemary for it.

An Orphan

At the end of the third day, the young couple had departed hastily, the bride in tears. A year or so afterward, when Rosemary was born, the little mother died, having lived only long enough to ask that the baby be named "Rosemary"—Rose for her own mother and Mary for Grandmother Starr.

Stern, white-faced, and broken-hearted, Frank Starr brought his child to his mother and sister, and almost immediately went West. Intermittently he wrote briefly, sent money, gave insufficient addresses, or none at all, and, at length, disappeared. At the time his last letter was written, he had expected to take a certain steamer plying along the Western coast. As the ship was wrecked and he was never heard from again, it seemed that Rosemary was an orphan, dependent upon her grandmother and aunt.

In their way, they were kind to her. She was sent to school regularly, and had plenty to eat and wear, of a certain sort. Every Spring, Aunt Matilda made the year's supply of underclothing, using for the purpose coarse, unbleached muslin, thriftily purchased by the bolt. The brown alpaca and brown gingham, in which she and her grandmother and aunt had been dressed ever since she could remember, were also bought by the piece. The fashion of the garments had not changed, for one way of making a gown was held to be as good as another, and a great deal easier, if the maker were accustomed to doing it.

Year after Year

So, year after year, Rosemary wore full skirts of brown alpaca, gathered into a band, and tight-fitting waists, boned and lined, buttoning down the front with a row of small jet buttons. The sleeves were always long, plain, and tight, no matter what other people were wearing. A bit of cheap lace gathered at the top of the collar was the only attempt at adornment.

The brown ginghams were made in the same way, except that the waists were not boned. The cheap white muslin, which served as Rosemary's best Summer gown, was made like the ginghams. Her Winter hat was brown felt, trimmed with brown ribbon, her Summer hat was brown straw, trimmed with brown ribbon, and her Winter coat was also brown, of some heavy material which wore surpassingly well.

For years her beauty-loving soul had been in revolt, but never before had she dared to suggest a change. The lump in her throat choked her as she washed the dishes, heedless of the tears that fell into the dish-pan. But activity is a sovereign remedy for the blues, and by the time the kitchen was made spotless, she had recovered her composure. She washed her face in cold water, dusted her red eyes with a bit of corn-starch, and put the cups and plates in their proper places.

Toiling Cheerfully

She listened half-fearfully for a moment before she opened the door, dreading to hear the dear memory of her mother still under discussion, but Grandmother and Aunt Matilda were wrangling happily over the hair-wreath in the parlour. This was a fruitful source of argument when all other subjects had failed, for Grandmother insisted that the yellow rose in the centre was made from the golden curls of Uncle Henry Underwood's oldest boy, while Aunt Matilda was equally certain that it had come from Sarah Starr's second daughter by her first husband.

Throughout the day Rosemary toiled cheerfully. She swept, dusted, scrubbed, cooked, did errands, mailed the letter which made certain another bolt of brown alpaca, built fires, and, in the afternoon, brought down the heavy roll of unbleached muslin from the attic. Aunt Matilda cleared off the dining-room table, got out the worn newspaper patterns, and had sent Rosemary out for a paper of pins before she remembered that it was Friday, and that no new task begun on a Friday could ever be a success.

So, while Rosemary set the table for supper, the other two harked back to the fateful day when Frank Starr brought his wife home. They were in the next room, but their shrill voices carried well and Rosemary heard every word, though she earnestly wished that she need not.