CHAPTER X.ANOTHER LITTLE EPISODE.
“EVEN if they should be, we have lived long enough to know that ‘Humpty-Dumpty’ is all right. He has as many lives as a cat.”
“Beatrice!”
By the time they reached the outer kitchen, whence the terrible sounds proceeded, Robert had been collared by Mr. Dolloway and was being shaken violently to and fro, while Roland was pitifully caressing the cat which their guest had brought, and which cowered in its rescuer’s embrace, hiding its head beneath the friendly arm and shivering as if in an ague.
“Mr. Dolloway! What are you doing? Can you and my darling never meet but you must come to an open battle? It is perfectly scandalous!” cried Bonny, indignantly, and taking upon herself the reproof of the troublesome neighbor.
“Yes, miss! That is what I say! It is a burning shame and a scandalous outrage! I’ll teach him, the little whelp! They’s a society of Prevention folks up here, and I’ll handhisnamein afore I’m many days older, ormyname ain’t spelt John Dolloway!”
“Will—you—lemme—’lone? I’ll—I’ll—”
Hereupon Mrs. Beckwith laid her hand upon the old man’s arm, and he instantly released his hold of the unhappy “Humpty-Dumpty.”
“Robert, what did you do?”
“I—I jest—I—He said—Oh! oh!”
“Silence, my son. Wait till you can collect yourself, then answer me.”
For the space of a few seconds the little boy’s sobs and moans continued, then he looked up as brightly as if trouble were a thing unknown. “He said they was room to swing a cat, an’ I was a measurin’ to see how much that was; that’s all.”
“How did you attempt the measurement?”
“Why—why—I held her by the tail an’ swung her roun’; that’s all.”
“All! Why didn’t you stop when she yelled and you saw it hurt her?” demanded Roland, severely.
“Why—’cause.”
“Because what?”
“I—I liked ter hear it. It did sound so funny. I thought I should laugh myself sick—she was so mad!”
“Robert, go to your room. You know which it is.” Mrs. Beckwith’s voice was stern, and her small reprobate immediately prepared to obey it, but unfortunately cast one glance Beatrice-ward, and changed his mind.
“She said it was a ‘retreat’ when folks was in a scrape. I—I bet I’m in one now; so I—I’d rather go to the peace-room, Motherkin,” said the child, sweetly. “If you are willing, Mother dear.”
Mrs. Beckwith could not restrain a fleeting smile, and Roland laughed outright; but the mother’s “no” had always been “no,” with no sign of wavering about it, and she did not begin their new life with any lax discipline, much as she would have so preferred. “No, Robert. You have been cruel, and I cannot excuse you. Remain upstairs until I come to you. Now, Mr. Dolloway, please accept my sincerest apologies for this unkindness. I do not seek to lessen my little boy’s fault, but if you will trust us and leave the poor cat here, I am sure I can promise you that no such maltreatment will ever be given it again.”
“Well, ma’am, I must say you have spoke like a lady. An’ I hain’t no wish to be behind-hand in my neighborliness. But—though Ihain’t no right to mention it, so bein’ ’s you’re his mother—if that there shaver ain’t born ter be hung I’m mistook.”
“I trust you are mistaken. But come into the dining-room, again, please. I should like to have you tell me anything you happen to think of about our new home. I am so great a stranger to the locality that I am as eager as a child to hear its history. Will you not?”
“Thank you, ma’am. I guess not. I just stepped across to say if they was anything any of us could do for you we was to be notified. Them was Mr. Brook’s own words. An’ him an’ her both hopes you will rest well an’ find things comfortable. I left a basket of late-keepin’ apples in the pantry, an’ I make my good evenin’s to you, ma’am.”
The door had scarcely closed behind him before Bonny began to laugh. “You really must let me have it out, Motherkin, or I shall be sure to do it before Bob. That will make him think lightly of his sin. But now you can foresee how delightfully the monotony of our existence will be varied by the ‘little episodes’ between that ancient worthy and our small sinner.”
“Beatrice, it is really too miserable an occurrence to jest over.”
“But justsub rosathis way. And I warn you, you are deluded into the impression that you know your own mind and that you can manage your own house. But it will be left for Mr. Dolloway to convince you that you do not. He takes a lively interest in all his master’s schemes, and in us—his latest—particularly. He will be the thorn to this rose, the rod of correction to our careless lives. Fortunately in this case not like master is the man. Well, I’ll clear away the tea-things now;” and Beatrice departed kitchenward to put on a big apron.
Isabelle proffered her assistance, but it was laughingly declined as “not available.” “No, dear, not to-night. You’re company, and I am in an angelic mood. You’d better enjoy it while it lasts; so run out and take another walk with the ‘head of the family,’ whom I see strutting about over his garden patch as if he were king of the whole earth. My big brotherisa poet; but he is also a born farmer. He loves the smell of the soil, and I know it was the making of him to come up here. He’d have grown into a disappointed, narrow-minded tape-seller if he’d stayed in town always. Now—well, I hardly dare tell you all I foresee in my Roland’s future!”
“Oh, Bonny! hasn’t all this hard work youhave been doing taken the enthusiasm out of you yet? It seems lovely up here, and oh, so peaceful! But isn’t it just a bit too quiet and humdrum?”
“Trot along, miss! To-morrow when I hand over the housekeeping to you the humdrumness will disappear!”
“Why—what do you mean, Beatrice?”
“Coming events cast no shadows before in this case. When I have finished my dishes, Mother will be down again with her youngest in a beatific state of mind, looking as sweet and innocent as if he had been the sinned against instead of the sinner; then I’ll call you and Roland in, and we’ll talk over everything and arrange a fair division of labor.”
“Why, Bonny! One would think you had all the responsibility of this undertaking, to hear you talk! Isn’t my mother to have a word of influence, miss?”
“She is to have all the words she wants, but none of the work that I can help. Well, I don’t mean that exactly; but wait, and I’ll tell you what I do mean. Now, trot!”
Thus dismissed, Isabelle joined her brother in the garden. To her, at present, it seemed but a patch of muddy ground, though to the natural gardenerwho was to labor in it, it already presented a picture of thrift and greenness. “Think of it, Isabelle Beckwith! A week ago we had not a fraction of an acre over which to rule, now we have ten whole ones! I’m like Motherkin, as rich as Crœsus!”
“I’m afraid we shall get so sick of it. And we have cut loose now from so much that it would be hard to get back into even the old, modest places we held in the city. One never steps down for a moment but somebody else steps up into one’s place. As soon as I told the principal of our school that I would have to resign mine, she appointed somebody else at once. I could not get back the position if I would.”
“You must not look backward, Belle. We have done what seems the best for all, what certainly will be the best for our mother’s health, and that should cover all regrets. Besides, I am sure we shall succeed,—in making a living, at least. That is all we could have hoped to do if we had stayed in town.”
“I don’t know. Nobody can guess how I hated to give up my art class! The Professor said I would certainly make a name for myself if I kept on.”
“Why, Belle! I did not dream you felt so blueabout this change! And I should like to know what is to hinder your ‘making a name’ for yourself here as well as there? Don’t all the artists, the landscape ones anyway, go into the country to study? And as for portraits, where can you find more original models than along these country lanes? If you have enough rudimentary knowledge, and talent, to make your teacher express himself like that, you ought to be ashamed of yourself if you can’t conquer the rest!”
“H’m-m. Since when did you become philosopher?”
“No matter. You have always laughed at my ‘poetical talent;’ Bonny has not. But I tell you that if there is any real poetry in me, so real that it must find expression, it will find it here just as certainly as if I were to spend my days in study and all my evenings scribbling verses.”
“Then you disparage education?”
“I begin to think there are different sorts of education. One kind I am going to attempt is learning the land. I will have to begin at the A B C of it, just as I did in reading printed stuff. But the earth is printed, too, and by a Hand that does nothing in vain. Most boys runaway from the country because there is no money in it. I am going to hunt for something which will beat money.”
“Youth! my brother! Just youth. After a while I suppose you will find, as old Dolloway says, that ‘money beats sentiment.’”
“Yes—and malaria beats both! I’ve been warned against too much night-dew, if I want to keep my health.”
“Why, isn’t this a healthful place?” cried Isabelle, in quick alarm. “If it isn’t we should never have brought Mother here!”
“It is. Mr. Brook is eighty years old, and he has lived here almost all his life. But he spoke to me about our being careful, particularly at first. He said, and truly, that our health is our capital; and that if we use reasonable precaution we shall never suffer.”
“Well, I know now that you have grown wise! I cannot remember when I ever heard you mention health as a thing to be guarded,—our health, I mean. You have been solicitous enough about Mother’s, except—”
“Except in what? Don’t throw cold water on me now, after warming my vanity like that!”
“Except when you gave up your situations so readily, because your ‘boss’ ‘sassed’ you!”
“I think it’s time to go in, Isabelle.”
“So do I. I couldn’t have supported any more wise remarks! They sound so—so un-Roland like.”
“Hark! There’s Bonny calling. Mother and the ‘Hopeful’ have probably come down to the ‘peace-room.’ And, do you know I think that’s a mighty pretty fancy of hers? Let’s try to please her and remember it.”
“All right. I’ll try; but I’m not a bit perfect!”
Roland forbore the retort that rose to his lip. Just at present he was still in the first glow of his incipient manhood, when the idea of being the “head of the family” had a charm of pride and importance about it that made trifles of heavy burdens. Isabelle wondered how long his ease-loving temperament would endure the strain of actual labor and hardship which would inevitably be laid upon it; but still, like Beatrice, she saw a change in Roland, and she could but believe that he had “come unto his own” in coming to dwell in the wide, beautiful country.
“Well, you dreamers! Here have Motherkin and the bad ones been sitting for full five minutes, waiting for you to come in. We are to hold a conclave of forces and decide upon thetactics of this camp! Hi! there! brother Bob! Does that sound warlike enough for you? I motion Mother takes the Chair! All in favor— Aye!”
“My daughter, I decline all posts purely honorary! You may be Chairman of the occasion; for whether we will or no, you will be bound to have the most to say!”
“Now, Motherkin! But Roland knows, as well as I, what we have thought. Let him tell our plans, and if they agree with yours, all right; if not, we’ll hear whatever amendments the house has to offer.”
“What you talkin’ ’bout?” asked Robert, sleepily.
“Exactly. Roland, begin, please.”
“Where?”
“On the money question, of course.”
“Well, the first expense we shall have to meet is for garden tools and some sort of a wagon. Mr. Brook has an old horse for which he has little use, and he will be glad to have us use it for a while, and pay him nothing but its keep.”
“My son, we must try to stand upon our own feet. We are not to depend upon Mr. Brook as ifwehad no independence at all. There is a small sum of money, you know,—a few hundred dollars.We are to use all of it that is necessary in making this experiment a success. Go on, dear.”
“As much as is necessary, Motherkin, but no more. This is no especial benevolence on our patron’s part. He is as good and generous as he can be, but he is also wise. He wants us to keep our self-respect and his, at the same time. Well, this way of getting the use of a horse is quite common among country people. I have inquired and satisfied myself that it is so. He hasn’t a cow to work for its keep, so that we shall have to buy. But—”
“Oh, Roland, you are so slow! Listen to me, Motherkin! I, Beatrice Beckwith, who never earned a penny in her life—but once, a flower-girling!—am going to be one of the bread-winners! True, true, true!”
“Why, Bonny! what do you mean? And how happy you seem!”
“Well, I should think I am happy! Wasn’t I the very bottom and beginning of this whole country business? Didn’t I go a talking to my dear old gentleman, and didn’t he fall in with the country notion, hot foot? Then it rests on me to make the thing a ‘go;’ and I mean to do it.”
“It rests upon us all equally, Beatrice.”
“Well, I have a situation. I am a privatesecretary, if you please!—I mean, if you will please! That was why I was so anxious to shorten up the music practice and take the other lessons at the Y. W. C. A. rooms during the last three months. Mr. Brook divulged the scheme to me in one of his letters, which you didn’t ask to see and I didn’t offer to show you. And we have kept it a secret from you on purpose to be a delightful surprise to you now. I am to have a dollar a day for my services. Think of that! I, the harum-scarum, am going to settle down into a regular money-grubber.”
“Why does he need a private secretary?” demanded Isabelle, rather anxiously.
“To help him put his collection of bugs and things into shape. You must know that our Mr. Chidly Brook is a known naturalist,—the one whose papers we have liked so much, over the signature of ‘Windsor.’”
“Is it possible?”
“True. He is the most modest of men, though, and he never speaks of his work as anything but insignificant. However, he has been appealed to, on behalf of some museum in Boston, to allow them to buy his collection when he has done with it. Of course, he isn’t going to do that; he will give it to them, instead; but he is going to put itinto first-class order first, as if it weren’t now! and I am to make catalogues, take down notes, do anything and everything which will aid him. Now—don’t all speak at once!”
The mother opened her lips to express her praise, but her first words were drowned in a series of knockings as sudden as imperative.
“Rat-a-tat-tat! Tum-tum-tum!”
“For goodness’ sake! Who can be coming to visit us! At this hour, too!”
But when Roland reached the door and opened it, there was not a person to be seen. The moonlight fell in a broad sheet across the threshold and illuminated the sloping lawn before it.
“Rat-a-tat-tat!”
The sounds came from that side of the house. There was no doubting that, and Bonny joined her brother in the search.
But though they tried both front and rear doors, even the little side porch which led to the eastern rooms, there was no intruder visible, and they returned to the place they had left, only to hear the strange summons repeated almost continually for a full half-hour; after which, too disturbed to discuss their plans any further that night, the elder brother lifted the sleeping Robert from his corner of the hearth-rug, and followed the rest upstairs.
All night, at varying intervals, the uncanny rappings were repeated, till even the sensible mother began to feel that there was something supernatural about them, and to speculate if this were the reason that the former residents had found the house unsuitable and vacated it in such disgust.
But Roland sighed for a gun; and at midnight, arming himself with a fishing-rod and a broom, he determined to descend to the “peace-room” and stand guard till morning.
There, presently, the weary lad went sound asleep; to awake startled by the apparition of a white-clad figure before him, and to hear the sibilant whisper, “How—do—you—like—to—live—in—a—haunted—house?”