CHAPTER XII.BITS OF NATURAL HISTORY.
“ROBERT! where are you?”
“H-he-re, Moth-er!”
“Here” proved to be upon the sloping roof of the little poultry-house, where the child looked safe and rather ridiculous in his fright; and relieved of one anxiety, Mrs. Beckwith passed through the building toward the yard beyond in pursuit of Miss Brook.
“Why, what is the matter?”
“Snakes! That’s all. A nest of black snakes. I’m trying to kill them.” Miss Joanna was, indeed, laying about her lustily with a heavy stick she had seized, and her delicate face was flushed with excitement.
“But they’ll bite you! My dear madam, do come away!” Poor Mrs. Beckwith herself was thrilled with fear, as her eyes fell upon the tangle of writhing, sinuous creatures to whom her neighbor was dealing destruction so vigorously.
“Oh, no, indeed! Not until I have made an end of them! Robby was terribly frightened,though he had no cause to be. I’ve finished two, I’ll have done presently. There! don’t let that one get away, please!”
The reptile was crawling sluggishly toward the spot where Mrs. Beckwith stood, and, with a scream that closely resembled her son’s, she leaped aside and retreated through the doorway.
Miss Joanna looked up in unfeigned surprise, and for a moment relaxed her murderous labor. “Why, are you afraid of these creatures?”
“Af-ra-id! Of course—I am!”
“They are harmless. You need not be.”
“Harmless! Why, then—”
“Do I destroy them? My statement must be qualified. They can hurt no person and they are timid; but they infest poultry-houses, steal eggs, make trouble in the dairy, and altogether accomplish so much more injury than benefit to a household that I think them best dead. My brother would not agree with me. He says they pay for their depredations by ridding us of meaner creatures. He would be quite distressed at my present action; only—” And the lady laughed lightly. “He has already as large a collection of reptiles as he should have. The sight of them terrifies nearly everybody, as these have you.”
The city woman could scarce believe her ownears; that anybody occupied as Miss Brook was at that moment could go on complacently giving a dissertation on the merits and demerits of so obnoxious an animal was amazing. Finally she found voice to inquire, “Are they plentiful hereabout?”
“Oh! yes. But these are the first I have seen this spring,” answered Miss Joanna, cheerfully. “I am always glad for one reason to meet my first snake. I’m pretty sure of warm weather coming. These have just crawled out of their winter quarters, somewhere near, and have been sunning themselves in this shallow pool of water. If they had been in usual activity, I should have had a chase to capture them. Poor things! that’s the end.”
“Be they all dead, every single one?” demanded Robert from his slippery perch.
“I think so; you can come down now.”
He did so rather gingerly, lifting his feet very high when he stepped upon the moist earth of the poultry yard, and almost expecting to see a small head arise beneath his every footprint. “You’re a awful funny lady, Miss Brook.”
“Why so, dear?” asked that person, continuing her examination of the place and mentally determining the cost of the needed repairs.
“’Cause you’re sorry for things, yet you keep on a killin’ ’em, an’ ’cause you ain’t afraid of snakes. I never saw any before, ’cept up to the park, in the menagerie. I—I—” He paused, looked anxiously toward his mother, thrust his hands in his pockets, turned quite red in the face, and finally blurted out: “I ain’t a-goin’ to keep no hen things, I ain’t.”
“Why, Robert!” and “Why, Robert?” fell from both women’s lips at the same instant.
“Because, an’—’cause, I—I know it sounds awful cowardy, but I don’t like snakes, an’ there ain’t no use pertendin’ I do. I wouldn’t dast to come here alone.”
“Is it possible! The boy who boasts he is afraid of nothing!”
“Wull—wull—you see. Why, Mother, you’re afraid yourself! You must know how it seems. If one should bite your little boy, how dretful bad you’d feel! Wouldn’t you?”
“I suppose I should. But Miss Brook has just told us that these snakes are harmless. And I am not a boy. I’m only a woman, you know.”
“That’s so. Wull—I—I s’pose I will. I said I would, an’ I ain’t a goin’ to lie, nohow.”
“That is right! That is fine!” cried Miss Joanna, impulsively. “A little lad who has alove of the truth so strong that it will overcome personal fear is the sort of boy for me!” Then she went on to explain so clearly to the child all the habits of the hated reptiles now lying dead in the yard of Robert’s “own poultry-house” that he became intensely interested.
“Wull, if a snake, just a nasty black snake, has got such a lot of int’rusting things about it, I s’pose rabbits an’ such fellers must have a heap more. Don’t they?”
“I should say they did! And you must ask my brother all about any sort of living creature you wish to become acquainted with, and he will be delighted to tell you. He is a very wise man, for all he is so quiet about it.”
“Does he know ’bout hens?”
“Everything, I fancy, though he likes snakes better. Wild things are more to his notion than tame ones. Now I am ready to tell your big brother just what must be done here, and if he can manage to get the place fixed to-day you can begin your poultry business to-morrow. Now is just the time to make a pleasant and profitable commencement.”
“Why?”
“Because it is ‘sitting time.’ Every mother biddy in the flock, or nearly every one, is nowthinking about her coming family, and wanting to ‘sit.’”
“Does hens think?”
“My son, you must not tire Miss Brook with your questions. Ask some of us, who understand you better; and we will try to answer, as wisely as we know, though I begin to think our ignorance is mountainous, about country life at least.”
“No, no; I beg, dear Mrs. Beckwith! Don’t discourage inquisitiveness of this sort, not on my account. I am a lonely old woman who will be as glad to answer questions as a genuine boy is to ask them. I like it, please.”
The mother smiled gratefully. As for Robert, he slipped his hand again into his new friend’s, and looked up into her face encouragingly. “That’s a nice lady! And I’ll be good; I’ll ask you every single thing I can think of.”
Before that summer was over it seemed to poor Miss Joanna that he had fully redeemed his word; and yet the days on which this living interrogation point was out of her sight grew to be the loneliest days the gentle old lady knew.
Mr. Brook was as much at a loss to understand the mysterious rappings that had so disturbed his new tenants’ peace during their first night at TheLindens, as was anybody else; but he set himself to examine every part of the house and grounds, and, like his sister, declared his faith in a rational explanation of the occurrence.
It was left to Mr. Dolloway to solve the riddle. He had, to Mrs. Beckwith’s relief and Robert’s disgust, declared his intention of passing the following night in the old house, and, should the disturbing noises be repeated, searching for the cause till he found it. In his own words: “I’ll find the spirits or I’ll be a spirit myself!”
“That sounds large and reassuring, doesn’t it!” remarked Bonny to Belle. “I can imagine Mr. Dolloway in the condition of hunger necessary to make him ‘spiritual.’ For his sake and our own, I hope success will crown his efforts before he gets to the verge of starvation.”
The evening passed without any “manifestations.” Roland twanged his banjo for the amusement of their self-invited guest, Isabelle brought out her portfolio of drawings, Beatrice made character sketches of the different persons present, and so aptly that Robert remained in a hilarious condition that precluded his feeling any of the fear he had expected; and by nine o’clock, tired out with another day of “settling,” the whole family retired to their chambers.
Save and except Mr. Dolloway. “I will not lie down nor shut an eye, lad; there isn’t any use of urging me. I’ve come over here to ferret out this thing, an’ I’ll ferret it wide awake an’ dressed.” With that he settled himself in the most comfortable chair in the room, put his feet upon the fender, and in five minutes was sound asleep.
Bonny heard his snores as she lay awake in her bed, and laughed; then she heard something which did not add to her mirth. She had brought the kitchen poker with her, and, armed thus valiantly, she rose and summoned Roland. “Let’s be as still as mice, I think the rest are all asleep, and we’ll steal a march on them and Brother Dolloway as well. Listen to him, will you? he quite out-rackets the ‘spirits.’”
Mrs. Beckwith silently joined the company, and when the three met on the stairs, each expressed surprise that the other had not gone quietly to sleep as usual, and each was attired exactly as during the day. Mrs. Beckwith bore the traditional weapon of womankind, a broom; and when Belle added her presence to the others, she was likewise equipped.
At the door of the sitting-room somebody dropped her article of defence with such aclatter that Mr. Dolloway sprang from his chair, angrily demanding: “What in the world do you mean coming into a man’s room in this way, without warning?” Then recollecting himself, he laughed at his own blunder, and changed his question to, “Why did you get up when there has been no rapping?”
“But, excuse me, there has been rapping, even louder than last night,” responded Beatrice, shivering a little.
“What’s that? Haven’t I been here all the time? If the thumps had come don’t you s’pose I’d ’a’ heard ’em?”
“Possibly you fell asleep.”
“Fell asleep! H’m-m. When I set out to watch, I watch!”
“But—”
Rat-a-tat, a-tat! The unseen disturbers of the peace interfered to prevent any further misunderstanding between the volunteer protector and the protected.
Mr. Dolloway held up his hand for silence. Again the sounds were repeated, this time with redoubled force it seemed to the strained ears of the listeners.
The next they knew the old man was back in his arm-chair, laughing violently and swaying toand fro in his paroxysm of mirth. “Ha, ha, ha! That’s the best joke I ever heard, the very best. And to think Mr. Brook himself didn’t guess at it!”
“Well, but what is it?”
“Don’t you know? Hark!”
Even Mrs. Beckwith began to lose patience with what seemed to her ill-timed mirth, and replied with conviction, “Of course we do not know or we should have disturbed nobody to inform us.”
“Your pardon, ma’am. I really s’pose you don’t know, bein’ brought up in the city, so to speak. Well, ma’am, my opinion o’ them sounds is: what master would callmephitis, what common folks name—skunks.”
Nobody said anything for a moment; and seeing the look of astonishment upon the faces about him, as well as hearing the “thump, thump,” continued, Mr. Dolloway explained: “Themephitis—I learn my names from Mr. Brook, because he says the other ones are ‘local,’ an’ not spoke everywhere,—themephitisis a burrowin’ animal. They was a nest of snakes woke up in the hen-yard, Miss Brook told me this morning, and they’s a nest of the other fellows woke up under your door-sill, or, maybe, under that big flatstun used for a step. The noise is made by their tails a flap-flap-flapping against the hard ground or sunthin’. They won’t do any harm there till morning, and then I’ll get the men to have ’em rousted out. They’ll have to be shot; an’ now you all might as well go to bed again.”
“Will not you go upstairs, too, Mr. Dolloway? There is an extra room, you know; and I should feel proud to be able to entertain anybody over night, after having to economize space as I did in our ‘flat.’”
The guest consented, and everybody was soon asleep, satisfied that Mr. Dolloway’s explanation was probably the correct one, unromantic as it proved to be.
“To think my ‘haunt’ turned out to be so perfectly horrid! It’s cured me of superstition, anyway!” sighed Beatrice, as she kissed her mother good-night. “One by one my dreams forsake me; one by one—”
“You’d best get to bed as soon as possible.”
“Oh, Motherkin! not even poetry allowed?”
“Not at this hour of the night, for working girls.” And the candle was blown out.