CHAPTER XV.STREAKS OF HUMAN NATURE.
“IT must be something dreadful this time! Roland has left his ploughing, and the old horse is walking about as she pleases. The men are not working upon the cistern, and— Can it be he is drowned?”
These thoughts flashed through the sister’s mind as she hurried homeward, past the field of sweet-smelling, freshly turned sods where her brother’s plough stood idly in the furrow; and as she burst into the sitting-room her face was white and her breath well spent.
But nothing so very dreadful met her gaze. Robert was, indeed, lying upon the lounge well wrapped in blankets, but his dark eyes were the first to discover Bonny’s entrance, and his voice the one to demand: “What you home for, Bon?”
“Why—why—you precious darling! Aren’t you killed?”
“Wull—wull—I guess not! What’s the matter with you, anyway? What’s the matterwith everybody? Can’t a feller slide offen a roof ’ithout stirrin’ up the hull neighborhood, I’d like to know!”
Belle had been sitting, watching the patient, but at this outburst of remonstrance she laughed and left her post. “I’ll find Mother now, and tell her you’ve come in. I think Bob is all right, anyway.”
“Course I am. Who said I wasn’t?”
“Your ‘chum,’ Mr. Dolloway.”
“H’m-m! What’d he say?”
“I don’t remember exactly. Oh, yes, I do, too. He said ‘roofs,’ ‘cisterns,’ ‘bangs,’ ‘blacks and blues,’ etc. What did he mean?”
“Nothin’. Only I slid offen the roof into the cistern. Nen he an’ my mother come an’ made a dretful time. They said I was ’bout killed, but I wasn’t. An’ my mother she sent Roland off fer a doctor-man, ’cause she’s boun’ I’ve broke some o’ my insides. She says a feller couldn’t jest slide that little bit ’ithout hurtin’ hisself somehow. It wasn’t no use I tellin’ her. Roland went quick as lightnin’. Nen the carpenter an’ mortar man they went away to get some more stuff to fix the thing up so’s I can’t slide in no more; an’ that’s all.”
“All! Robert, you certainly will scare mymother to death with your behavior, even if you don’t get killed yourself. And if you’re not hurt, why are you lying here wrapped up this fashion?”
“’Cause my mother made me. What’s more, she took my clothes away, an’ says they’ve got to be washed an’ I’ll have ter lie still till they dry. I think it’s mean I can’t wear my Sunday ones; don’t you?”
“I think it is a wise precaution. But how in the world did you manage to slide off the roof? What were you doing up there? Tell me the whole story.”
“I wanted ter make the rooster turn round faster. He’s rusty on his hinges, Mr. Dolloway says, ’cause he, the rooster, is awful old, old as Mr. Brook maybe. An’ I got my mother’s oil-can, ’cause he said old things needs oilin’, an’ I clumb up. I was goin’ to s’prise you all, an’— It’s mean. I can climb like anything now, Bon.”
“How did you fall? On your head?”
“Pooh! What fools girls is! If I’d ’a’ fell on my head, I would ’a’ been hurt, you bet. But I just slid inter that pile o’ mortar the men had mixed ter fix the cistern with. My feet went in clear up to my waist! Nen, when my mothercaught hold o’ me, she had a nawful job to pull me out. She got all over dirt herself, too; so she’s got to have her clothes washed too!”
“But the bruises? Where are they?”
Robert struggled to unwind himself from the folds of blanket in which maternal anxiety had enswathed his plump little limbs and displayed those members with a look of triumph.
“Shades of Jacob’s coat—Joseph’s, I mean! There is not an inch of originally colored skin upon you! But see here, young man! Those are not allnewbruises; though, if Mr. Dolloway saw them, I don’t wonder he thought you were about killed. Those are the scars of many battles with misfortune, if I’m not much mistaken!”
“Wull, who said they wasn’t? That yeller an’ green patch, that come the time I fell out the cherry-tree, the first day I got here. That—”
“Never mind the enumeration. You are beautifully mottled, sort of like a tortoise-shell cat. And I’ve run away from my work, scared poor Miss Joanna into a fit, and behaved altogether badly, just because you slid off a roof! Now I must take my bit of lunch quickly and get back. And, by the way, Bob, if you’ll promise not to do anything more to plague Motherkin all thisday till I get home again, I’ll tell you a secret, a good one.”
The child’s face lighted eagerly, and a rash promise was on his tongue’s end, but he bethought himself of the chrysanthemum affair and paused in time. “Pooh! I s’pose it’s som’thin’ to get me inter another scrape. Nen—”
“Don’t be so wise, my dear. I am going to tell my mother the first. But I thought it would please you to know, too, and you could be making happy plans while you were obliged to lie here. Heigho! There comes Roland and somebody in a phaeton! The doctor, I suppose. Now, my sweet, you’re in for it! I hope it will be a lesson to you!”
“Oh, Bon, don’t go away! You wouldn’t leave a feller in a trouble, would you? An’ if he should, mebbe he will, find I was smashed up inside somewhere, how bad you’d feel about fersakin’ your poor little brother, wouldn’t you? I—I wish you’d stay, Bon!”
“I must let the professional gentleman in first, then find my mother. But if you behave like a little soldier he won’t hurt you very much, not soverymuch!”
Beatrice felt a little guilty in frightening the unlucky child as she was doing; still shebelieved that it might result in future relief to the rest of the family, and persisted. Robert had never been placed under a physician’s care before; for the innumerable bumps and bruises he had suffered at the mischance of fate or his own mischief had been cared for by maternal hands alone. Ditto all the childish diseases with which he, in common with the rest of the juvenile world, had been afflicted; and it was, perhaps, one of the reasons for the young Beckwiths’ good health that their mother had been too poor to dose them with drugs, but had relied as far as might be on Doctor Nature instead.
“She must have been terribly frightened this time, to have sent for a physician!” thought Beatrice, as she admitted the gentleman; and it was not until she had questioned Isabelle that she learned how serious the boy’s hurt had at first been supposed.
“He lay unconscious for more than an hour, Bonny; and I never saw Mother so distressed. She thought he had been injured internally, and could not rest until she had somebody examine him. Poor little chap! he’ll be felt of from head to foot now; and I, too, hope it will be a lesson to him. I actually fear he will be killed sometime in some of these ‘accidents.’”
“Not a bit of it! At least I don’t think so now, though Mr. Dolloway did frighten me. But what a pretty little luncheon you have set out! Did you make that batch of biscuits, or Motherkin?”
“I—I myself. And, Bonny, I’m sorry I was so hateful about the housework. Mother has been talking with me and showing me how I can manage. She thinks after I have learned I may be almost as quick as you; and if I plan my work systematically from day to day, that I will be able to get some hours each day for painting or sketching. If I do not have to give up all I dreamed, I shall not mind it so much.”
Bonny threw her arms about her sister’s neck, and gave her a loving kiss. “I think that’s splendid of you, Belle! I have wished I could do both your share and that for which Mr. Brook has offered me payment. But I cannot; and something I read the other night may be a help to all of us. It was about ‘traditions,’ binding ourselves to do just as everybody has settled is the best way for the majority to do. I am not a lucid explainer, but it is like this: I’ve heard you quote dear Miss Joanna for authority in housekeeping matters, country housekeeping; and her servants say she is a ‘model.’ Certainly thegreat mansion is always spick and span from top to bottom; but that is forher, not forus. There are so many things we can let go, or rather, never undertake, that are wholly unnecessary. The article said that, given a perfect cleanliness, many other ideas about ‘dirt’ were just ‘fussiness.’ In the first place, she who wishes to do something else with her time besides housekeeping should never burden her rooms with knick-knacks. ‘Trash,’ that writer called the lots of things one generally strews about on tables and shelves. Every extra article put into a room means so much extra dusting and cleaning, and so much time to do that in. And a lot more talk like that. It seemed to me, when I had finished reading, that housework might be made ever so much simpler and shorter if one studied how in the same way one studies to learn anything else. For instance, when I began my typewriting it seemed to me that I should never be able to write fast enough to earn my salt; but after a while it came easier, till, for a girl of my age, I really think I do quite well both at that and lecturing! Don’t you?”
“I think you have certainly talked faster than you have eaten; but the notion is a good one. It is ever so much like what Mother told me thismorning. Must you go? Won’t you wait to see her first?”
“I ought not. She is closeted with the doctor, and bent upon finding broken bones somewhere about Bob’s anatomy. With that end in view she will be unseeable for some time to come. And look! Roland is chasing that nag, the first time I ever saw her gallop in her life! Poor boy! Give him my kindest regards, accept the same for yourself, and believe me, yours truly, Bon! Really, Belle, I think you’re splendid, and your lunch was fine; and Roland is a pattern,—my mother says so,—and Robert is the dearest, roughest, most exciting little chap in the world. We are a brilliant family! And I have another fine scheme which I will divulge to the assembled multitude this evening. No; it’s not my scheme, either, it’s Mr. Brook’s; so, sure to be right. Good-bye.”
“Farewell! But, say, Bonny!”
“Well?” turning upon the doorstep, with a bit of impatience showing on her merry face.
“Do you talk all the time when you are at Mr. Brook’s, or—”
“Isabelle!” called Mrs. Beckwith’s voice from the sitting-room.
“Yes, Mother.”
“Please make a cup of tea and bring it to the doctor, with a plate of biscuit. He has a long drive before him, and must not be let to go without something.”
“Dear, dear me! My mother’s hospitality is something formidable! The very first biscuits I ever made! And this tea doesn’t taste like that we used to get in town! But if she had only a glass of cold water and a bit of hard-tack, she’d offer it to the Queen of England, with just that same easy grace. Well, one thing I foresee in the country is the frequency of ‘droppers in,’ as Mr. Dolloway calls them. But the next caller who comes shall have better biscuits than these, even if Bonny did praise them. And after all, it’s rather pleasant to think people are willing to be social with you, as country folks seem inclined, without knowing all about your past life. That’s one thing I like! And there’s something very pleasant in the word ‘neighbor.’ I love to hear Miss Joanna say it, in her low voice; and if I am to be a house-mistress I’m going to be a good ‘neighbor,’ too, with her for a pattern as well as my little Motherkin.”
Whether the reflections with which Isabelle prepared her tray of simple refreshments had anything to do with the grace of the serving maybe guessed; certainly, instead of the half-frown which Mrs. Beckwith feared to see, the girl’s manner was so genial and withal so modest that the plain fare acquired a keen relish for the hungry physician, who had still many miles to drive before he could find leisure for his own table; and he went away with the thought in mind: “That family is an addition to the town. I like them. I like them all, from the fragile-looking mother down to the rough little boy. But he’s a shaver! I took good care to punch hardest on the sorest places, for he needs a lesson! Well, that may be my first visit, but I think it will not be my last to The Lindens, under the new régime!”
“Dear, I am pleased with you!” said Mrs. Beckwith, warmly, giving her daughter a motherly caress. “I was afraid you would find it a trial to be hospitable.”
“It was, Motherkin! But I—conquered.”
A second kiss followed the first, and Isabelle resolved that the next tax put upon her “neighborliness” should not be matter of so much surprise to her little mother.
“Is Bob all right?”
“Yes, fortunately, though he is badly scared. And he is the strangest child. He will neverclimb upon that slippery roof again, but he is as certain to do something quite as bad and not to be anticipated, the moment he has his liberty. I wish there was a good school near; but that is the drawback to this place.”
“Bonny used to be almost as ingenious for mischief, didn’t she? I remember when some ‘flats’ were building on the block next our home you forbade her ‘ever playing on that pile of lumber again.’ She never did, but she played on another pile which you hadn’t mentioned and broke her arm. Still, she is a pretty good sort of a girl now, and very clever, everybody says. She was the youngest, you know, in our typewriting class, and I shouldn’t wonder if she were the very first to get a situation.”
“Oh, yes, I have faith, perfect faith, in all my dear ones, Isabelle. But now, if there are any more of those biscuits left, please call Roland in and we will have our lunch. This has been one of the days when housekeeping could not go by rule and measure.”
“I hope there won’t be many such!” exclaimed the daughter, earnestly, and went to summon her elder brother. But she presently returned with a disappointed face. “He says he cannot come, that he does not care for anything to eat. Hehas lost so much time already, and he had set out to accomplish just so much of that ploughing this morning.”
There was a moment’s hesitation; then Mrs. Beckwith herself went to the door and called pleasantly: “Roland! lunch is ready.”
“I’m not coming, Mother; I can’t.”
“You must. I cannot allow you to go without eating regularly, now that you are doing hard labor for the first time in your life. Please come at once, and do not hinder Isabelle any longer. She, too, has had a disappointing morning in some ways.”
Now Roland was but seventeen. If he had been ten years older, he would not have answered as he did. “Oh, Mother, I wish you’d let me alone! I’m not a baby to be ordered like Robert! And I am not—going—to eat—one mouthful till I—am ready.”
Isabelle could scarce believe that she heard the words, which were only too distinct through the open doorway. “Humph! That’s what comes of making a stripling the ‘head of the family.’ That sounds like one of those young roosters of Miss Joanna’s trying to crow. That’s what comes of sacrificing ‘womenkind to our young man.’ The horrid thing!”
“Isabelle!”
Startled by the sharpness of pain which the tone evinced, Belle looked swiftly into her mother’s eyes, and read there that the matter was not a theme for jest.
“Poor little woman!” thought the girl, as she cleared away the lunch things; “how it does hurt her when she discovers that wearecoarse barnyard fowls, after all! Poor little woman! She’d die for any of us, if it were necessary, but we just make her heart ache with ‘cussedness’! H’m-m! I begin to think the Beckwiths are not that brilliant collection of perfections Bonny claimed! Bob spoiled the morning, and now Roland has finished the afternoon! Though I must admitIbegan the list of sorrows by behaving like a selfish, silly thing, crying over the dishes!”
For somehow upon the bright spring landscape a shadow seemed to have fallen; and though Roland carried his point and finished the number of furrows he desired, the sods he turned no longer greeted his nostrils with that sweet odor which had given him such pleasure heretofore, and between himself and the ground appeared all through that afternoon the gentle reproachful face of a mother aggrieved.