As Mrs. Basil Sequin swept up the broad steps at Thornwood, she congratulated herself upon a duty about to be accomplished. She had not foregone a bridge luncheon to make this tiresome trip to the country for purely altruistic reasons. She had come to prove to herself, and to her circle, the bond of friendship that existed between her and her distinguished cousin. Experience had taught her that an occasional reference to “my favorite cousin, John Jay Queerington, the author, you know,” had its influence. “His is the only great intellect,” she was fond of telling her husband, “to which I am related either by blood or marriage.”
Doctor Queerington's reputation was one of those local assumptions that might be described as prenatal rather than posthumous. It was what he was going to be, that made his name an awe-inspiring word in the community, more than what he was already. It was the conviction of his friends and colleagues that a tardy world would too late recognize his genius.
After waiting impatiently for some one to respond to her vigorous use of the heavy knocker, Mrs. Sequin tucked Fanchonette under her arm and pushed open the door. The hall had doors to right and left, but before making further investigations she paused to examine minutely the tall mahogany clock, and the quaint silver candlesticks that stood on an old table at the foot of the steps.
While bending to inspect the latter, she heard a door open, and looking up saw a pretty, slender girl in a short white petticoat and a sleeveless black dress lining, which displayed a pair of remarkably shapely arms.
“Oh, I didn't know you had come!” exclaimed the young person, cordially extending a smiling welcome. “What a darling little dog! Is he a poodle?”
“She is a French poodle,” said Mrs. Sequin with a manner intended to impress this exceedingly casual person. “Where shall I find my cousin, Doctor Queerington?”
“The front room up-stairs, on that side. I'd go up with you, only Miss Ferney Foster, our neighbor, is fitting this lining and she has to get back to her pickles. I wish we were born feathered like birds, don't you?”
Mrs. Sequin, who had a masculine susceptibility to a pretty face, could not repress a smile.
“I know this lining looks queer,” went on the girl with an answering twinkle. “But it doesn't look any queerer than it feels. Miss Ferney doesn't know what's the matter, and neither do I. Would you mind taking a peep at it up there between the shoulders? I'll hold the doggie.”
To her surprise, Mrs. Sequin found herself removing her gloves, and adjusting a badly cut lining across a smooth white neck, while the girl before her, having shifted all responsibility, fell to making love to the poodle which she cuddled in her arms.
“It's too tight here,” said Mrs. Sequin, pinning and adjusting, “and too loose there. Have her take up the side seams to the place I have marked, and lengthen the shoulder seams at least an inch.”
“Thank you so much. It feels heavenly now. You go right up-stairs! You can take your things off in my room, if you like, just across the hall from the Doctor's.” And without further ceremony the young hostess went tripping down the hall, leaving Mrs. Sequin to ascend the stairs alone.
Ascending was one of Mrs. Sequin's chief accomplishments. Twenty-five years' experience on the social ladder had made her exceedingly surefooted. Her reward now was in sitting on the top rung and dictating arbitrarily to all those below. She had acquired a passion for dictating, for arranging, and setting in order. The crooked seams which she had just pinned straight gave her a satisfaction that almost counteracted her annoyance at the informality of her reception.
Once established at the Doctor's bedside, with the nurse detailed to exercise Fanchonette in the yard below, she gave herself up to the pleasure of recounting at length her troubles of the past few months. She enjoyed talking, as a prima donna enjoys singing: she loved to hear the cadences of her own voice, and to watch the gestures of her jeweled hands.
“It's an unspeakable relief,” she assured the Doctor, “to actually see with my own eyes that you aren't a mangled cripple from the terrible wreck! You can't imagine how frightfully anxious I've been, but then this whole spring has been a veritable nightmare. Donald and Lee Dillingham both involved in this unspeakable scrape, Margery on the verge of nervous prostration, you perhaps fatally injured, and Basil Sequin too engrossed in his own affairs to give mine a moment's consideration.”
“Basil has grave responsibilities as president of the People's Bank, Katherine,” said the Doctor, keeping his fingers between the leaves of the massive volume which he had regretfully closed at her entrance. “I, for one, owe him a debt of gratitude for relieving me of all financial anxiety. Besides you are always thoroughly capable of taking the reins in a family crisis.”
“Yes, but it's telling on me. I notice it in bridge. I am not the player I was a year ago. This trial of Lee Dillingham's has been a hideous strain. Of course, if he had been convicted, I should have compelled Margery to break her engagement, and that would have complicated things frightfully. You know his grandfather, the old general, is the largest stockholder in the People's Bank, and Basil insists that he must not be offended. That was one reason why I was so anxious to keep Don out of the way. Even if Lee was guilty, Don couldn't appear against him when he was engaged to Margery. The only possible course was to hush up the entire affair with as little publicity as possible. Thank heaven, General Dillingham has gotten Lee off, and I am beginning to breathe again.”
“And you have heard nothing from Donald?”
“No, indeed, and I hope I won't for the present. I wrote immediately after the shooting to every place I could possibly think of his going, and implored him, if he had a grain of gratitude for me, or affection for Margery, that he would keep away, and not even let his whereabouts be known until this wretched affair had blown over. I can nearly always appeal to Don on the score of gratitude. I must say for him that, like the rest of the Morley men, he sows his wild oats like a gentleman. You remember Uncle Curtis? They said at the club he was a frightful drinker, and yet not a woman of his family ever saw him intoxicated. Then look at Grandfather Morley!” Mrs. Sequin was mounted on a favorite hobby. She had a large and varied collection of family skeletons, some of rare antiquity, which she delighted in exhibiting. She could recount the details of the unfortunate matrimonial alliances on both sides of the family for generations back, and was even more infallible in the matter of birth dates than the family Bible. If a relative by any chance got a trifle confused, and acknowledged to thirty-nine next June instead of last June, Mrs. Sequin pounced upon the error like a cat on a mouse. She could prove to him immediately that he was born the spring that Uncle Lem Miller died, and that was the same year that Grandmother Weller married the second time, therefore hewasthirty-ninelastJune.
“Donald ought to return at once,” declared Doctor Queerington, when she paused for breath; “if he is guilty, he ought to take his punishment; if innocent, as I believe, he ought to be vindicated.”
“Well, we can't find him,” said Mrs. Sequin with resigned cheerfulness. “He is probably in the Orient with Cropsie Decker. What a magnificent bed this is! Do you suppose I could buy it? Country people nearly always prefer new furniture.”
The suggestion of a smile hovered over the Doctor's thin lips: “Thornwood's possessions, I imagine, are not for sale.”
“I suppose the extraordinary young person I met in the front hall was Miss Carsey? What sort of a girl is she, anyhow?”
“Miss Lady?” The Doctor shifted his pillow. “An extremely nice girl, I believe. Exceedingly sympathetic and attentive to all my wants, and receptive to a remarkable degree. She has been reading to me daily, and I find rather an unusual mind, undisciplined of course, but original and interesting.”
“But what amazing manners the child has! She greeted me in her bare arms, and asked me to fit a dress for her when she had never seen me before in her life. But she certainly is pretty! I haven't seen as pretty a creature for years.”
“Indeed!” said the Doctor, adjusting his eyeglasses. “I had not observed it, especially. A fine, frank countenance, with dark eyes—yes, I believe I did notice that she had chestnut eyes of unusual clearness; I remember I did notice that.”
“What is she going to do? Who is going to stay with her?” asked Mrs. Sequin. “Fancy a girl like that buried here in the country! Properly dressed, and toned down a bit, she'd make a sensation. I shouldn't at all mind asking her in to spend a few days with me sometime. You know I adore young people, and poor Margery, like all the other last year debutantes, is simply done for. Hasn't a spark of enthusiasm for anything. I hope you have not forgotten the fact that your Constance ought to come out this winter?”
“My dear Katherine,” said the Doctor with an air of enforced patience, “you do not seem to realize that my time and mind are engrossed in far greater things than society. I hope in the next year to complete the fifth and last volume of my 'History of the Norman Influence on English Literature and Language.' If I have been able to give my children very little of my time and attention, it is only because of my desire to leave them something of far greater worth—a name that I trust will stand among those of the foremost English scholars of my day.”
Mrs. Sequin soothed her irritation by studying her highly polished nails. “Of course, that will be an advantage to them. But what on earth's to become of them in the meanwhile? Heaven knows what Hattie will develop into if she isn't taken in hand. She refuses to have trimming on her underclothes now, and wears boy's shoes. As for Constance! I've quite despaired of getting hold of her. She's simply running wild, making no social connections whatever. What they really need, Cousin John, is a mother.”
“I must try to look after them more,” the Doctor said, somewhat helplessly. “Have you seen them recently?”
“I came by there this morning. They were all well, I suppose; Connie was at the Ivy's as usual, and Hattie at school. What a savage creature your new cook, Myrtella, is. I believe she is an anarchist! She opened the door only a crack, and when I asked her how the young ladies were, she said she was sure she didn't know, that she hadn't asked them.”
“And Bertie, did you see Bertie?”
“Yes, he was with her. Had a dirty piece of dough in his hands which he said was going to be a cake. I must say she seems good to Bertie, but I would not tolerate her impertinence for a moment.”
“Myrtella carries concealed virtues,” said the Doctor. “She is an excellent cook, and a good manager. Her only faults, apparently, are faults of the disposition.”
“From which Heaven defend me! What on earth is that noise? It sounds as if some one were kicking the door.”
“Please open!” called a voice from without, and as Mrs. Sequin complied, Miss Lady came in, carrying a large luncheon tray gaily decorated with flowers from the garden.
“'Blest be those feasts with simple plenty crowned,'” quoted the Doctor. “You see how they spoil me, Katherine?”
“I don't believe he could be spoiled, do you, Mrs. Sequin?” Miss Lady asked, as she fixed his eggs. “Is there anything else, Doctor?”
“Don't run away,” Mrs. Sequin said, following her movements with frank admiration. “Come here and sit down, I want to talk to you. I've discovered the ideal site for my new house, and I want to ask you about it. You know the western crest of this hill overlooking the river; did that belong to your father?”
“It all used to be ours, long before it was ever called Billy-goat Hill.”
“The nameisa handicap,” said the Doctor. “You might modify it, Katherine, by calling your prospective mansion 'Angora Heights.'”
“The very thing,” said Mrs. Sequin, eager to seize upon any suggestion that emanated from the Queerington intellect. “But who does the ground belong to?”
“It belongs to Mr. Wicker, now.”
“Wicker?” repeated Mrs. Sequin. “Where have I heard that name? Why, Cousin John, wasn't that the man Don stayed with, when he was looking for a farm? How we laughed over that absurd notion of his farming!”
“I did not laugh at it,” said the Doctor. “I encouraged him. It seemed to me the most excellent idea!”
“But you did not allow for Don's fickleness. Of course he's a darling fellow but he has had as many hobbies as he has had sweethearts.”
“I allowed for his character, which may yet strike root in the proper soil,” the Doctor said with dignity; then turning to Miss Lady, who had risen and was standing by the bed, her hands tightly clasped and her eyes fixed on his, he explained: “We are speaking of the young brother of Mrs. Sequin; I was telling you about him this morning. Why, child!” For Miss Lady had suddenly dropped her face in her hands and made a rush for the door.
“It's the shock of her father's death,” explained Mrs. Sequin, who prided herself on divining motives. “I was like that for weeks when my last dog was run over. The most casual thing would upset me. I lost two games of cards one afternoon because somebody merely mentioned an ice wagon.”
The Doctor's long, slender fingers drummed absently on the bedspread. Presently he broke in quite irrelevantly on Mrs. Sequin's steady flow of talk: “I said chestnut brown, Katherine, they are more of a hazel, I should say, a deep hazel with considerable fire.”
The long, summer months dragged their length for Miss Lady, months of heartache and rebellion, of loneliness and tears. Then came a day when, without apparent reason, the shadows lifted. She was tramping across the river flats, with Mike at her heels, when once again she heard the world singing, and before she knew it an answering song sprang to her lips.
Uncle Jimpson, plowing near by, looked up and smiled:
“Dat's right, Honey; sounds lak ole times to hear you singin' ag'in. I was jus' settin' here steddyin' how good I'd feel ef de Cunnel could come a stompin' 'long an' gimme one of his 'fore-de-war cussin's fer bein' lazy.”
“Oh, Uncle Jimpson, if he could! It seems so long since he left us. I have just been over to Miss Ferney's, but she wasn't there. I want to get her to come and stay with me until I know what I am going to do. They expect to take the Doctor home to-morrow.”
“Yas'm, Carline was tellin' me. Looks to me lak he's been well enough to go fer some time.” Uncle Jimpson scratched his head wisely.
“I don't know what's to become of us,” said Miss Lady ruefully twisting Mike's ears. “They say unless I sell the rest of Thornwood, we won't have money enough to live on. But I won't sell another acre. I'll teach school first.”
Uncle Jimpson was scandalized: “Now, Miss Lady, chile, don't you git dem notions in your head. Dem's ole maid notions, you ain't no ole maid yit! Why don't you git married, and git a kerridge, an' I'll dribe an' Carline'll cook an' tak' care de chillun.”
“I'mnevergoing to marry, Uncle Jimpson,” Miss Lady declared, with the passionate assurance of youth. “And I am never going to leave Thornwood. If you see Miss Ferney going down the road, ask her to stop by a minute. Come on, Mike, we are late now.”
And they were late, five minutes, by the open-faced watch that lay in the Doctor's hand as they entered the garden. He was sitting in his wheel-chair with his books and manuscripts on a table at his elbow, and he lifted an expectant face toward the gate as she entered.
It was strange what two months at Thornwood had done for the Doctor. He had been brought there unconscious, a serious, middle-aged professor, who had run in the same groove for twenty years. The same surroundings, the same people, the same monotonous, daily routine had rendered him as rusty and faded as the text-books he lived with. Nothing short of a collision could have jolted him out of his rut, and the collision had arrived.
The sudden change from the grim realism of a lecture platform, with its bleak blackboard and creaking chalk, to the romance of an old flower garden where blossoms flirted with each other across the borders, and birds made love in every bough, was enough to freshen the spirit of even a John Jay Queerington. His cosmic conscience, which usually worked overtime, striving to solve problems which Nature had given up, seemed to be asleep. His fine, serious face relaxed somewhat from its austerity, and as the days passed he read less and observed more.
His observations, before long, resulted in a discovery; he, who was so weary of the cultivated hothouse species of femininity, had chanced quite by accident upon a rare, unclassified wild-flower, that piqued his curiosity and enlisted his interest. For two months he had depended almost entirely upon his young hostess for companionship, and the fact that the large box of books he had ordered from the city remained unopened, gave evidence that the Doctor had not been bored.
During the hours when he was not engrossed in verifying statistics, and appending references to those voluminous and still accumulating notes for the fifth volume of his great work, he devoted himself to sorting and arranging the odds and ends of facts and fancies that he found stored away in Miss Lady's brain. Under ordinary circumstances he would have dismissed a pupil to whom clearness and accuracy were strangers, and whose attention wandered with every passing butterfly. In the classroom he not only demanded but practised order and system. He arrived at his conclusions by as methodical a series of mental actions as he arrived at his desk every morning at twenty-nine minutes to nine. But these were not ordinary circumstances.
The impetuous young person who listened to him with such rapt admiration and respect, when she listened at all, had no method or system whatever. She simply waited for the hint, the flash that revealed the vision, then she joyously and fearlessly leaped to her conclusion.
The fact that amazed him was not that she frequently landed before he did, but that she landed at all!
As for Miss Lady herself, she was finding the Doctor's interest and companionship a welcome solace in her loneliness. The well of his knowledge seemed to her fathomless, and she never tired of hanging over the brink and looking down, often seeing stars in the darkness that she never saw in the day.
When this last lesson was finished, the Doctor closed the book reluctantly:
“I have given you the merest outline for future work,” he said. “The rest remains with you. Have you decided yet what you are going to do?”
“No, I'll do whatever you tell me, Doctor. Only I do hope it won't be to teach school,—the very thought of teaching makes me shrivel.”
“It is not altogether beyond the range of possibility that you will marry,” said the Doctor, tracing parallelograms on the arm of the chair. “Such things do happen, you know.”
Miss Lady, sitting with her elbows on the table and her chin on her palms, flashed a strange, questioning glance at him.
“Do you believe in love, Doctor?”
“Why, of course, you foolish girl, in all its manifestations, filial, paternal, marital. Assuredly I do.”
“But I mean that other kind, the kind that makes a little heaven for a man and woman here on earth, that answers all their longings, so that nothing else matters, just so they have each other. I read about it in novels and in poetry, but I don't see it. The married people I know take each other as much for granted as they do their hands and feet. That's not what love means to me.”
The Doctor smiled indulgently. “Wait until you have passed the sentimental age before you give your verdict! Most young ladies imagine that because love does not arrive, full panoplied on a snow-white steed, that it is not love. You, probably, like the rest, have read too many romantic novels. When you come to know life better you will realize that moral equality and intellectual affinity promise a much safer union than a violent romantic attachment.”
She regarded him as earnestly as if he had been the fount of all wisdom.
“How long does it usually last?” she asked.
“Last?” he repeated.
“The sentimental age. I suppose a girl ought to get through it by the time she is twenty. But I never do things on time. I didn't even know I was sentimental until you told me. I have learned a great many things since you came.”
“There were some things you did not need to learn,” said the Doctor quietly. “Kindness and sympathy, and rare understanding. I shall always look back with pleasure to these quiet weeks spent under your father's roof. They have given me the only chance I have had in years for undisturbed writing on the History that will stand for my life work. I must confess that I dread my return home. The noise and confusion, the constant invasion of my privacy, the demands upon my time, appal me. Very few realize the magnitude of my work, and the necessity it lays upon me for isolating myself. You have been singularly sympathetic and helpful in that respect.”
“But think what your being here has meant to me! You came into my life just when everything else seemed to drop out. You explained things to me, and gave me something to do. You can't begin to know how you have helped me.”
“I have only tried to direct and suggest,” the Doctor said; “in short to take the place—”
“Of a father,” finished Miss Lady enthusiastically.
The Doctor tapped his foot impatiently. After all her father was a much older man than he: the distance, at that moment, between forty and sixty seemed infinitely greater than that between forty and twenty.
“You see,” Miss Lady went on, unconsciously, “you have taken Daddy's place in so many ways that I have been depending on you for everything. It makes me awfully lonesome when I think of your leaving. Down here you have just belonged to Miss Wuster and me, and once you get back to town you will be the famous Doctor Queerington again and belong to everybody. I shan't dare write to you for fear I spell a word wrong.”
“Indeed, I shall expect a weekly letter reporting the progress of your studies, and I shall come to see you from time to time and help you with your plans for the future.”
“Yes, but it won't be the same. We will sit in the parlor, and you'll be company, and I shall be afraid of you. I am always afraid of you the minute I get out of your sight.”
“What nonsense! I never criticize anything but your pronunciation, and an occasional exaggeration of statement. If I have seemed severe—”
“You haven't! You've been an angel! When I think of all the time you have taken from your writing to help me, I am ashamed for letting you do it.”
“You must not think,” said the Doctor slowly, “that I have been wholly disinterested. I have found you singularly helpful to me. I think I may say that you stimulate me and refresh me more than any one I know.”
“Ido? Oh! Doctor! That's about the nicest thing I ever had said to me.”
He was not prepared for the radiant face of gratitude that was lifted to his, nor for the proximity of her glowing eyes which gave him no further reason for doubting their exact hue.
“Yes,” he said with slight embarrassment, “your mind interests me exceedingly. It is not complex, nor subtle, but remarkably intuitive. You have imagination and humor, and great receptivity.”
Miss Lady wore the absorbed look people usually wear when their characteristics are undergoing vivisection; she could not have been more fascinated had she been viewing her face for the first time in a mirror.
“This little volume now,” the Doctor continued, picking up an elementary treatise on evolution; “I am particularly anxious to see what effect it will have on a fresh, unsophisticated mind. Make notes as you read, and we will discuss it when you have finished.”
“And you won't forget to send me the copy of Mrs. Browning?”
“No, I seldom forget. But I may not send it. Science is better for you just now than poetry. What is that blossom you are so carefully cherishing?”
Miss Lady's eyes fell, and the color leapt to her face.
“This? Just a wild rose I found over there by the wall. I thought they had stopped blooming weeks ago.”
The Doctor took it in his hand and examined it minutely: “It is theRosa Blanda,” he said, “five cleft sepals that terminate in a tube. Pliny tells us that in ancient days the warriors used the petals of this rose to garnish their choicest meats. Who is that quaint person coming over the stile?”
“It's Miss Ferney. What a nuisance, on our last day! But I forgot, I asked her to come. If she stays very long, just tell a little fib, won't you, and say you need me for something?”
“It will not be a fib,” said the Doctor quietly, “I do need you.”
Miss Lady met her caller at the front porch and relieved her of the jar she was carrying.
“It's pickles,” said Miss Ferney, a withered little woman whose small, nibbling face suggested a squirrel's. “I thought having company you might need 'em. Don't know though. City people may be too aristocratic to eat country pickles.”
“The idea, Miss Ferney! Don't you sell them in the city all the time?”
“Yes, under labels. City people lay stress on labels. When I was a child, I wasn't allowed to eat things that was labeled. I hear he's going?”
“Who?”
“Your Doctor. Don't see how you've ever stood him so long.”
“Oh! you don't know Doctor Queerington! It's been a great privilege to have him here, He is a very distinguished man, Miss Ferney, and so kind and good!”
“Good or bad, they are all the same to me. Just as soon have a fly under my mosquito bar as a man buzzing around in my house. When's he going?”
“To-morrow. Will that be too soon for you to come over?”
“No, I'm ready to come. Sis 'Lizzie will be sure to try some of those new-fangled receipts and spoil a bushel or two of cucumbers, but I said I'd come and I will. What is this Jimpson is telling me about your taking the examinations for the county school?”
Miss Lady sighed: “I may have to teach; I don't know.”
“Sell off some more land. You don't need a hundred acres.”
“We've sold too much already! It will be the house next. I am determined to hold on to Thornwood if the roof tumbles in on my head!”
“I know how you feel,” said Miss Ferney whose sentiments ran to real estate. “I've been saving every nickel I made for nearly twenty years to buy back our place. From all the talk we heard last spring, Sis Lizzie rather allowed you was going to get married.”
“Well, I am not.”
“I am glad of it. Folks are keen enough to believe in every beau a girl has 'til she's thirty. After that they don't believe in any of them. Sis was misled by what they told her over at the Wickers'.”
“What did they tell her?” asked Miss Lady, training a rebellious moon vine up the trellis.
“Oh, they told her about that young city fellow you was rampaging all over the country with last spring. Mrs. Wicker said he hadn't a thought in his head but you. That he wore her plumb out telling her about you, just as if she hadn't help raise you on a bottle!”
Miss Lady still found the vine absorbing, but she took time to say over her shoulder:
“Tell your sister and Mrs. Wicker that that young man has gone to China.”
“Well, nobody could wish him further! I hope he will stay. You are too nice a girl to get married. What do women want to marry for anyway? Look at me! Forty years single and not one minute of it spent in wishing I was married! I glory in my independence, I glory in my freedom.”
Miss Ferney was allowed to glory undisturbed, for Miss Lady, leaning against the railing of the porch, had apparently forgotten her existence.
“You just make up your mind to take that school job, and lead a useful, independent life. I know a teacher in Shelby County that's had the same school for fifteen years, ever since she was a plump, pretty girl, and she's thin as I am now, and gray as a rat. Kept that same position and done well all these years.”
Miss Lady wheeled suddenly and flung out her arms:
“If you don't hush this minute, Miss Ferney, I'll run off and join the circus! I'd lots rather stand on one toe in fluffy, spangled skirts, and jump through a hoop than teach school!”
Miss Ferney looked scandalized: “You don't seem right well,” she said as if in excuse for such flippancy. “I do believe you've got a fever. I'm going straight home and mix you up a tonic.”
Miss Lady sat for some time on the steps with her eyes on the distant river. Up the hillside the treetops rippled in the breeze, and down in the valley the winding stream danced in the shallows or loitered in brown pools to whisper secrets to the low-hanging boughs. The world seemed to her not only very beautiful, but very lonesome, and the vow of eternal celibacy, made to Uncle Jimpson, loomed large and terrible in the presence of Miss Ferney.
“Oh, here you are,” said the nurse, coming around the house; “the Doctor has been refusing to lie down until you come out to the garden. He says he needs you for something. Deliver me from convalescents!”
Miss Lady laughed and ran down the path to the garden, where the Doctor greeted her with his rarest smile. The rest of the morning they pored over manuscripts, sorting notes, and making corrections, she happy in having even a tiny share in his great work, and he finding her enthusiasm and interest a welcome condiment to stir his jaded appetite for his task. Meanwhile, a bedraggled little rose languished unnoticed beneath the manuscript of “The History of Norman Influence on English Language and Literature.”
For three hundred and sixty-five days Myrtella Flathers held undisputed sway in the house of Queerington. The Doctor's semi-invalidism, after his return from Thornwood, threw all responsibility upon her, and while she permitted him to wear the crown, it was she who wielded the scepter. Never had the house been in such immaculate order, nor the young Queeringtons appeared in such presentable garments, and never had the front door been slammed so persistently in the face of unwelcome guests.
For the Queerington family tree was afflicted with too many branches. There were little dry twigs of maidenly cousins, knotted and dwarfed stumps of half-gone uncles and aunts, vigorous, demanding shoots of nephews and niece's, all of whom had hitherto imposed upon the Doctor's slender income, and his too generous hospitality.
Myrtella objected to the inroads these invaders made on his time and strength, and she also objected to the extra work their presence entailed upon her. In short, she felt that the family tree needed pruning, and she set herself right heartily to the job. By persistent discourtesy she managed to lop off one relative after another, until she gained for the Doctor a privacy hitherto undreamed of.
“There ain't a hour in the day that I ain't headin' off somebody!” she triumphantly announced one day to the cook from next door. “When I come here you'd 'a' thought it was a railroad station, people comin' and goin' with satchels; and bells a-ringin', and trunks being dragged over the carpets. Dirt from the top of the house to the bottom; Miss Hattie with her petticoats hanging down below her dress; and all the neighbor children racing in and out, and actually takin' the mattress off Bertie's bed to coast down the stairs on!”
“In the name of St. Patrick!” sympathized Norah, the visitor; “and their pa not doin' nothin' with 'em at all?”
“Who said he wasn't?” blazed Myrtella instantly. “You'll be hintin' around next that I was talkin' about the Doctor behind his back. You're fixin' to lose me my place, that's what you are doin'.”
“Not me! It's braggin' on you I was not over a week ago, sayin' what a fine, nice cook you was, and how grand and clean it was over here.”
“Of course,” said Myrtella haughtily, “I may not be workin' fer a lady that's so smart she wouldn't even know her own kitchen if she met it walkin' up the street. I may not work in a house where they pull down the shades and burn red lamps in the day time to keep from showin' the dirt under the sofa. We don't keep two servants and not have enough to feed 'em, butI'msatisfied. At least fer the present. The day will come when I won't have to be in service to no one. I'm puttin' by each week, and the time ain't distant when I'll be settin' at the head of my own boardin'-house table, an' it will be 'Miss Flathers,' if you please! You, Bertie!” this to a frail-looking little boy in the back yard. “You git up off the grass this minute! Fixin' to catch the croup and have me up with you all night, like I was last week.”
“Sure 'n I might find a worse place than Mrs. Ivy's,” continued Norah. “A bit of blarney, and frish flowers every day in front of her photygraph, and things right for Mr. Gerald, is all she wants. The last place I worked,—Mrs. Sequin's, bad luck to her!... It was a party or a dinner between me and me rest ivery night of the week! Sorra a bit did I care for the whole kit of 'em, barring Mr. Don Morley, as fine a young gentleman as ever set foot in sole leather!”
“Him that shot Dick Sheeley and run away?”
“Him they laid it on,” said Norah with indignant emphasis. “It was that good-for-nothin' Mr. Lee Dillingham done it, and Mrs. Sequin a-movin' heaven to marry Miss Margery off to him. I seen how they was tryin' to keep Mr. Don from comin' home and hearin' the tales they was tellin'. He is worth the whole bunch of 'em tied in a knot; a gentleman inside and out, and his hand in his pocket ivery time you served him. Ain't that somebody a-callin' ye down the back stairs?”
“Let 'em call,” said Myrtella, to whom these comparisons of past places were replete with interest. “It's just Miss Hattie; if she's got anything worth sayin', she can come down and say it.”
It was evidently worth saying, for a moment later, a thin, sharp-featured girl of fourteen thrust her head in at the door.
“Myrtella, I told you I wanted that white dress fixed. I am going to wear it this afternoon.”
“It's too early to wear summer clothes,” Myrtella announced, continuing her ironing. “I never sewed the buttons on a purpose, so 's you couldn't wear it.”
“Well Iwillwear it! I am going right straight up stairs and pin it on.”
As the door slammed, Myrtella turned a beaming face on Norah:
“It ain't hemmed!” she said with satisfaction.
Norah shrugged her shoulders:
“It would be a cold day that'd see anybody makin' me do the cookin' and nursin', and sewin' for a family of four, for five dollars a week!”
Myrtella glared at her across the ironing board:
“Who said anybody was makin' me? I'm paid to do the cookin' and housework in this house, and if I see fit to light in and boss things 'round a bit, it's my own business. Thank the Lord, I got manners enough to attend to it! How much coffee did you come over here to borrow?”
“A cupful will do, 'til the morning. I'll bring it back before breakfast.”
“Put it in this jar when you do. I keep what you pay back separate from ours, so's I can lend it to you again. We ain't used to chicory.”
Norah coughed deprecatingly behind her hand:
“Sure you might make allowance fer a lady as busy as Mrs. Ivy. She can't get her mind down to ordn'ary things.”
“Stop her settin' on club boards, and meetin' on committees, and tryin' to regulate the nation, and she might remember to order the groceries. What's she workin' on now?”
“A begger man. It was readin' Scriptures to him she was when I come away, and him a-settin' there, right pitiful, a-tellin' her how he'd lost all he had in the flood. A religious talkin' man if I ever heard one.”
“Red-headed?” inquired Myrtella, arresting a hot iron in mid air.
“He was.”
“When she gits done with him, you send him over here,” Myrtella brought the iron down on the board with a thud. “If there is one person in the world I'm layin' for it's a red-headed flood-sufferer.”
Norah on her way out encountered another visitor and turned back to announce him:
“Git on to what Bertie has drawed out here! The craziest, dirtiest kid! Puts me in mind of a egg on a couple of toothpicks!”
Myrtella, peering over her shoulder, suddenly scrambled down the steps.
“It's Chick!” she cried, beaming upon him. “How long you been here, Chick?”
“And who's Chick?” asked Norah, instantly curious. “You seem to set a great store by him! What ails the child? What's he pointin' at our house for? Ain't he got a tongue in his head?”
“He has, though not so long as some folks. Chick! Bertie! Come in here!” and without ceremony Myrtella swept them into the kitchen and slammed the door in Norah's face.
Once within her stronghold, she first embraced Chick, then dragged him forcibly to the sink, and subjected him to a vigorous scrubbing. Both actions apparently bored him acutely, for he turned his soap-dimmed eyes enviously upon the smaller boy who pranced about in transports of joy.
“We'll skate on the pavement!” Bertie was crying excitedly. “You can have one skate, and I'll have the other and we'll see who can beat.”
“You won't do nothin' of the kind!” quoth Fate at the faucet. “I ain't goin' to have you racin' 'round and gettin' het up and takin' cold. Besides, you ain't big enough to keep up with Chick!” Then seeing the disappointment her ultimatum had caused, she added, “if it wasn't for you stickin' every thing up, I might make you some candy.”
“Oh, 'Tella! will you? 'Lasses candy? Ask him if he likes 'lasses candy.”
Violent nods of affirmation from the steam-enveloped victim.
Myrtella had started with the simple ambition to wash Chick's face, but the boundary line had proved troublesome. Whether she sharply defined it, or attempted artistic effects in chiaroscuro the result was equally unsatisfactory. Myrtella was nothing if not thorough; before she finished with Chick, he was standing with his feet in a bucket, as clean and wet and naked as a fish.
All this consumed time, and both boys were growing impatient, when a peculiar noise from outside attracted their attention. To Chick, only, the sound seemed to be familiar, for he laughed and wagged his head and pointed to the yard.
“It sounds like hiccoughs!” said Bertie, his head on one side.
Myrtella's mouth closed like a trap. “I'll hiccough him!” she breathed mysteriously, and leaving the children to watch the candy, she went out on the porch and closed the door behind her.
Bertie, in his short kilts, with his feet curled up in a chair, watched Chick with absorbed interest as he donned his ragged, dirty trousers. A pair of purple suspenders that had once belonged to Mr. Flathers, excited his special admiration.
“Say, Chick, have you got a partner?”
Chick nodded.
“You couldn't be partners with me, too, could you?”
A violent shake of the head.
“I didn't think you could with two fellows at once.” Bertie contemplated the boiling candy thoughtfully. “I could get lots of partners if I wasn't always sick. If you ever don't have the one you have got, could you take me, Chick?”
Chick looked him over critically, stood him up and measured heights and even felt his arm for muscle. Then he made a remark that while lacking lucidity was nevertheless conclusive.
“But I'm going to get bigger,” urged Bertie.
“And I've got a music box, and a water pistol, and some marbles—”
At this Chick promptly produced a handful of marbles from his own pocket, and signified, by many whispers and hisses, that he was engaged in a wholesale and retail trade along that line, and open to negotiations.
Bertie made a hurried trip to the nursery and returned with a neat blue bag from which he poured treasures of agate and crystal.
Chick lost all interest in the candy. His professional reputation was at stake. Never could he face the gang on Billy-goat Hill, if he failed to fleece this lamb that Providence had so clearly thrust in his way.
Meanwhile Myrtella was exercising an elder sister's prerogative on the back steps, and bestowing upon her brother what she modestly called a piece of her mind.
For Phineas, in one of his periodical backslidings, had slid too far. His ambition to excel as a regenerate had carried him out of the quiet pastures of the Immanuel flock, into the more exhilarating battle-field of the Salvation Army. Lured by the prospect of recounting his experiences on a street corner to the accompaniment of an accordion, he had forsaken the safe shelter of the Ladies' Aid, and sought new worlds to conquer.
The experiment had not been a success. He was now, at the end of a year, going from door to door, ragged and unkempt, playing the small and uninteresting role of flood-sufferer. But Phineas' spirit soared blithely above his circumstances. He even encouraged Myrtella in her tirade against him, spurring her on to fresh effort, as the monks of old! courted flagellation.
“That's right, Sis!” he urged, “you git it all out of your system. I says to the lady next door, I says, what I need is a dressing down from my good sister. She'll give me gussie, says I, then she'll light in an' help me. That's her way, I says, there ain't a more generous person on this terrestrial globe. I 'lowed maybe she'd be moved to follow your example, but she wasn't. She handed me out a line of Sunday school talk fer more 'n a hour, then she didn't give me nothin' but this here Bible, an' me a starvin' man! I've ate a little of everything in my day, but I'm skeered to risk my digestion on Deuteronomies and Psa'ms!”
“Well, you needn't come beggin' 'round here, and trackin' in the mud,” announced Myrtella firmly. “I'm done with you! You had just as good a chance to get on as me. I never ast favors of nobody; I went to work an' hustled. What's more, I ain't goin' to stop 'til I get to be a boardin'-house keeper. And what'll you be? A lazy, drunken, good-for-nothin' sponge.”
Phineas, toying with his hat, suddenly sniffed the air and smiled.
“Molasses candy!” he exclaimed joyfully. “I couldn't git on to what was making me feel so good. Say, Sis, you must 'a' knowed I was a-comin'.”
Myrtella stood in rigid disapproval on the top step and surveyed her next of kin with such chilling contempt that he decided to change his tactics.
“Honest, now, Sis, I never come to beg for nothin'. What I really come for was to tell you 'bout our good luck.”
This move was so adroit that it caught Myrtella unawares, and elicited a faint show of curiosity. “We never knowed it 'til last week,” Phineas proceeded mysteriously, “an' we ain't mentioned it to nobody 'til we git a parlor fitted up an' a sign painted.”
“What for?”
“Fer see-ances! There's been a Dago doctor, calls himself Professor King, hangin' 'round the Hill, an' the minute he lays eyes on Maria Flathers he seen she was a mejium. He give her four lessons fer a dollar, an' she begin to hear raps an' bells ringin' the fifth settin'. Last night she begin to move the furniture.”
“She must 'a' been in a trance!” exclaimed Myrtella. “I been knowin' Maria about fourteen years an' I never heard of her movin' the furniture. She can go to more pains to scrub around a table leg than any one I ever knowed.”
But in spite of her scoffing, Myrtella was impressed. For many years she had considered a visit to a spiritualist, or clairvoyant, one of her wildest and most extravagant dissipations. The possibility of having a medium in the family was a luxury not to be lightly dismissed.
“Where'd you git the money fer the lessons?” she demanded suddenly.
Phineas hesitated and was lost.
“You spent Chick's! He's as ragged as a scarecrow. Looks like he don't get enough food to push his ribs out. I ketch you spendin' the money I give him on sperrits, livin' or dead, an' I'll never give you another cent!”
“Now, Sis, hold on! You didn't lemme finish. I'm thinkin' some of running a undertaker's business, along in conjunction with the see-ances. We could keep tab on the customers then, and build up a good trade. All on earth we need is just a little capital, an' we'd be a self-supportin' couple inside a week.”
So convincing were Phineas' arguments, that in the end Myrtella consented to act asdeus ex machinafor the new psychical venture, on condition that Chick should be properly clothed, and fed, and made to go to school.
This agreement having been arrived at, Myrtella reached for her broom, and began such a vigorous attack on the steps, that Flathers was forced to conclude that his presence could be cheerfully dispensed with. He gathered himself up, slapped his hat on the side of his head, tucked his Bible under his arm, and made a sweeping bow.
“Fare thee well, my own true love. Bring the money Saturday night, an' Maria'll wind up the sperrits an' let 'em manifest fer you, free of charge. Sorry I can't wait fer that molasses candy to git done. You might send me some by Chick. Adiew!”
Myrtella stood, broom in hand, and watched the loose-jointed figure slouch down the pavement and out the back gate. He was cheerfully whistling the doxology, and his face wore the rapt expression of one whose thoughts are not on earthly things. She sighed and shook her head.
“Front door bell's ringing,” called Bertie, “so's the telephone, and Father's gone out and says you can clean his study. There's the bell again.”
“I expect it's Mr. Gooch inviting himself to supper. I ain't goin' to let him in. Give me that there plate to pour the candy in.”
“Look, 'Telia, what Chick traded me!”
Myrtella cast a side glance at Bertie's extended palm, and promptly rescinded the deal.
“Ain't you ashamed of yourself, Chick Flathers! Tradin' a little fellow's fine marbles fer them comman allies? It's cheatin', that's what it is, it's stealin'! Ain't you ashamed?”
Chickwasashamed and had the grace to show it. His contrition would probably not have developed except through exposure, but standing before Myrtella's accusing glance, and the surprised, hurt look in Bertie's eyes, his hardened conscience was pricked, and his lip began to tremble.
With a fierce gesture of protection Myrtella pulled him to her:
“Don't, Chick! Don't cry! I wasn't meanin' to scold you. You ain't had a chance like other boys. You never had no playthings, you never had nothin'. You was a poor little abandoned child ever since you was born. Oh! God, I'm a wicked woman! I ain't fit to live on the earth!”
This amazing outburst so stunned the two small boys, that they stood looking at her in open-eyed astonishment. For some moments she swayed to and fro with her apron over her head, then savagely dried her eyes, and, bidding them follow her, stalked up the back stairs with broom and dust pan.
Doctor Queerington's study was at the top of the house, where by means of closing the doors and windows, and stuffing his ears with cotton, he was able to shut out that material world to which he preferred to remain a stranger. The room was filled from floor to ceiling with books, and it was one of the crosses of Myrtella's life that behind the visible rows of volumes, stood other rows, forming a sort of submerged library beyond the reach of her cloth and duster.
In no room in the house did she feel her importance more fully than in this inner shrine. She had calculated with mathematical precision the exact position of each of the Doctor's desk utensils, she knew the divinity that hedged about a manuscript, and the inviolable nature of bookmarks.
When Bertie began fingering the inkstand, she pounced upon him.
“Don't you dare touch a thing, either one of you! When the Doctor told me to take charge of his things, I took it. There ain't ever been a word of complaint since I come here, and I ain't goin' to have one at this here late date. There's the Doctor now comin' up the steps; I'll finish up here later. Get away from there, Chick!”
But Chick had made a discovery. On the Doctor's desk, smiling out from a porcelain frame, he had found his divinity! It was the beautiful young lady who had once taken his part in a fight with Skeeter Sheeley over a whip handle; it was the young lady who always smiled at him when she rode by Billy-goat Hill; it was she who had changed his life ambition from grand larceny to plumbing! Heedless of warning he snatched at the picture, and as he did so it slipped from his fingers and the frame shattered on the floor.
Doctor Queerington, at the doorway, took in the situation at a glance. He looked quickly from Myrtella's horrified face to the cringing figure of the strange child, then he smiled reassuringly.
“There is no serious harm done,” he said in a quiet, pleasant voice; “the frame can be easily replaced, and as for the photograph—” he paused and smiled again, then he drew Bertie's hand into his; “Myrtella, I shall no longer have need of a photograph of that young lady. She has consented to come herself and take charge of us all.”
Myrtella stood as one petrified; her massive figure with its upraised duster was silhoueted against the light, like a statue of the goddess of war. At last she found voice:
“To take charge?” she gasped. “Do you mean she's comin' to be Mis' Squeerington?”
“I do.”
“Well, I give notice,” announced Myrtella with all the dignity of offended majesty, and shoving Chick before her, she slammed the door upon the astonished Doctor and stalked haughtily down the stairs.