CHAPTER III.
“Fritz!Fritzy Pickel! What is that you say?” demanded Uncle Fritz, who of all the astonished company was the first to recover his speech.
“He’s dead! Dead as Otto Skaats!” wailed the terrified child. “I fit him and beat him; but I didn’t—I didn’t mean to do it so hard!”
“Otto Skaats” had been the unlucky hero of Uncle Fritz’s doleful tale.
“Come to me, nephew!” ordered Uncle Fritz sternly, and the little boy sorrowfully obeyed.
“Now tell Fritzy Nunky every single thing.” Mr. Pickel sat down upon the sofa and took his favorite into the safe shelter of his arms. Sympathy, he knew, was the shortest road to confidence.
“I went to see the house, and I found a boy. He was big and crosser than anything. He couldn’t be my truly cousin, Fritzy Nunky, ’cause he wasn’t a gentleman. He ordered meout of his place like he owned the hull concern; and he dasted me to fight. I wanted to lick him, and I did; but I didn’t ’spect to kill him.”
At the recollection of Melville’s white face, the young pugilist hid his own on Uncle Fritz’s broad shoulder and began sobbing as if his heart were broken.
Fortunately, at that moment Aunt Ruth re-entered the room. She had waited to hear but the first words of the little lad’s self-accusation, and had then flown swiftly to Melville’s side. For an instant she had gazed upon the inert figure, horrified, and actually believing that the tale was true. Another instant, and she resisted the thought as something too terrible to have really come into such quiet lives as theirs. She found the death-like stupor only a faint after all; and her heart gave a great throb of thankfulness. She had never loved, and was far too honest to pretend affection for, her elder nephew; but in that moment she realized the truth of the old saying that “blood is thicker than water.” She had not loved him simply because he was notlovable; but a hope arose within her that he might yet become so.
“I’ve been too severe with him, no doubt,” said truthful Ruth to herself; “and I’ve had too great contempt for his supreme selfishness. But who knows? Maybe in his place I should have been a deal more disagreeable—if that were possible!”
This soliloquy had not hindered the work of her capable hands, and very speedily she had the satisfaction of seeing the invalid revive. When he recovered so far as to answer her question, he replied, that ‘he was all right, only his head felt queer.’ “I don’t remember what happened to me. Oh, yes, I do too! Where is that little imp?”
“Humph! thee’ll live!” replied Aunt Ruth.
“Live? Why shouldn’t I?” demanded Melville.
“Thee has just had a pretty serious thrashing, and, I fancy, the first one of thy experience. Little Fritz must have hit thy temple, for I see it is discolored. The blow in that particular place was what made thee faint, I suppose.”
“Now will you insist upon keeping him here?”
“Certainly.”
“A boy as dangerous as that?”
“Melville Capers, I am ashamed of thee! Even if thee is an invalid it is no reason why thee should be a coward! It does not seem as if there could be one drop of Kinsolving blood in thy veins.”
Melville was still weak, and he was too utterly astonished at his aunt’s indignation to reply. He lay staring at her until a well-known step was heard in the passage and Grandmother Capers came into the room. Then ensued the customary roar with which the cripple expressed his disapprobation of things in general and of this latest grievance in especial.
“Boohoo! Row row-wow-ow!” No written word can convey the sound; it made quick-tempered Ruth think of nothing but an angry calf, and the pity which had sprung up in her heart gave way to disgust.
So it was with a very contemptuous expression on her fair face that she re-entered thesupper-room, where Grandmother Kinsolving sat trembling, and herself on the verge of fainting, while the younger ones had grouped themselves about Uncle Fritz and his sobbing burden.
“Well?” asked that gentleman, eagerly, though already relieved by Ruth’s manner.
“Perfectly well! Or, rather, perfectly safe. Doubtless Melville does feel a bit the worst for being knocked senseless, but he is sufficiently himself again,Ithink!”
She said this with the funniest little emphasis on the “I,” and the young Pickels’ curiosity was whetted. The more, indeed, that this odd new aunt of theirs at that instant held up her hand to make them listen. The wailing and roaring penetrated even to that remote apartment, and caused Grandmother Kinsolving’s sweet face to flush.
“Ruth, thee should not! Remember the lad is thy own nephew. He is frail, and not to be judged by common rules.”
“And, because he is of our own blood,—which I find it hard to believe,—I want all these new children of ours to understand him at theoutset. Thee is always fond of having things ‘start right,’ and I have caught thy habit.” The tender look in the daughter’s eyes corrected any possible rudeness in her speech; and, seriously she was in earnest about having the new family “start right.”
For three years Melville had been a terrible trial to her; the worse because she saw only too plainly that his suffering, which was real enough at times, and his wretched disposition, were wearing her mother’s strength away. Ruth Kinsolving felt, and rightly, that one such life as Amy Kinsolving’s was worth more to the world than dozens like Melville’s; and she hoped from this inrush of young life that household matters might be straightened out.
When Content came to them, it had been after long objection on her aunt’s part; which, however, the girl herself did not know. But when Benjamin wrote about his “only, motherless child,” Ruth’sretroussénose had tilted itself a little higher, and her firm mouth had closed a little more firmly. For her part, she had had quite enough of “only children,” no matter howclose their kinship, nor how orphaned their state.
Grandmother Amy had said very little, and had said that little gently; but, meek as she was, she was also wise; and much as she leaned upon her capable daughter, she had never let go the reins of management from her own fragile hand.
“Thee will do thy duty, Ruth, as thee has been trained to do. Benjamin and Benjamin’s belongings have as much right in The Snuggery as thee has. If there were a dozen children and he wished me to receive them, I should bid him send them. Since there is only one, and that a girl, I look to thee to be her second mother.”
Ruth reserved her own opinion about the mothering part, but she obediently wrote the letter of welcome; and was glad to her heart’s core when its living answer looked up into her eyes with a gaze as fearless and honest as her own and with far more of sweetness.
Having been so agreeably disappointed in Content, she was prepared to welcome the little Pickels with greater cordiality; and she formeda project, then and there, that the family should make one united effort to reconstruct poor Melville, and make him a credit to them.
So, taking little Fritz from his uncle’s arms, she led the party into the south room, where through the open windows the moonlight fell as she fancied it could fall only on Deer Hill, and there she told them Melville’s short and painful history.
Ellison Capers had brought distress upon the family hearth from the first time his shadow rested there. She entered into few details, thinking it unwise that listeners so youthful should yet learn them; but she showed them that her sister Harriet had died none too soon to hide her broken heart, and that through the curse of his own father’s dissipation had come poor Melville’s ruined, crippled life. Whether he had fallen or been thrown from his father’s arms, when that father was intoxicated, they never knew; but they did know that from that fall dated all the son’s suffering. There was something wrong with the spine, but a trouble which as yet no physician had ever been able to set right.
Unconsciously to herself, as she talked, Aunt Ruth’s voice took on a tone of soft and womanly pity, and it did not seem to those who listened as if she could ever have spoken of her nephew so contemptuously as they had heard her speak a little while before.
“Well, this other ‘Grandmother Capers?’ Cannot she do anything to make him bear his trouble better?” asked Uncle Fritz.
“If she can, she does not. Ellison was her only son, and of course our invalid is her only grandchild. Her idea of love appears to be unlimited indulgence—”
Here poor “Fritzy Nunky” began to glance about uneasily, but Ruth’s next words showed him that nothing personal had been intended.
“Oh! I wasn’t thinking of thee, sir. I fancy that thee can say no—once in a way, if need be. But Mrs. Capers cannot. She is, unfortunately, very wealthy, and she has let Melville know that all she has will one day be his. That he may not live to inherit appears never to occur to either of them. The boy is utterly spoiled; and if he were any older I should give him up ashopeless. But he is only fourteen, and very clever-witted,—though it might not seem probable to those who hear him bray so!”
A renewed sound of woe or wrath warned them that Grandmother Capers was in for a tussle with her charge.
“Ruth! Ruth!”
“The noiseiscertainly like that Don makes, mother.”
“Who’s Don?” asked Fritzy, suddenly sitting up straight.
“He’s a donkey.”
“Does he live here, too?”
“Yes. He is very old. Thy dear mother and I used to ride him once upon a time.”
“I may ride him, mayn’t I?”
“If he is willing.”
“How can he tell? Does he talk?”
“He has a very expressive way of making people understand his likes and dislikes. Thee shall try him to-morrow. Thee can hardly keep thy eyes open now, and we will go up to see how fresh and sweet grandmother’s sheets do smell.”
Fritz, junior, immediately climbed down, andslipped his hand within his aunt’s. It was evident that they two would speedily understand each other. And Ruth’s quick feeling was deeply touched, when, as the sleepy little fellow knelt down to say his “good-night word to God,” he begged that trusted Father to ‘forgive him for killing the crippler’; “no, for not killing him”—he went on; “oh! I don’t know what I mean; but God does every time, Fritzy Nunky says.”
But the unwise if earnest woman had inaugurated a work the magnitude of which was doomed to make even her valiant spirit quake. She returned to the south room to find all its young occupants deep in the discussion of Melville’s reformation; and each with a different and distinct plan for its accomplishment.
Grandmother had gone to sit with her invalid, and Uncle Fritz was resting on the sofa. None of the earnest talkers heeded her entrance, or were conscious of it; but when she had quietly listened to the varying projects, and the unmistakable quality of the family “substance” with which each was advocated, her courage failed.
“I’ll fight him out on his own line!” declaredthe tomboy Octave; “I’ll teach him that he has got to be a man and not a baby!”
“No,” said Paula, with scorn; “Nothing can be done by being unladylike. I am going to treat him as if we were grown-up folks. A gentleman should be ashamed to cry like a child. I’ll teach him German.”
“I’ll—I don’t know what I can do,” said Christina; “but I’ll do something! He shall not worry my sweet, new grandmother!”
“Oh, there must be unity, my dears,” said Aunt Ruth, joining in the talk.
“And ‘Fritzy Nunky,’ as you call him, hasn’t said his word yet,” added Content. “Suppose we try and find out what he would suggest.”
“Going to bed!” retorted the guardian of many Pickels.
“Oh, but Nunky! How would you, if you were going to be here, how would you reform the horrid fellow?” demanded Octave, imperiously.
“I? Well, I should just try loving him.” And with that wisest project of all, the conclave broke up.