CHAPTER VIII.
“Whatis it, Paula?” demanded Octave. “You look as if you had been taking a dose of castor oil.”
“Hateful boy!” said Paula.
“Who?”
“That Melville Capers. He’s as horrid as—”
“As a boy. You can’t compare him to anything worse,” laughed the younger girl.
“All boys cannot be like him, or grown-up folks wouldn’t endure them. They’d imprison them somewhere till they learned decency. I shall have nothing more to do with him!”
“Why, Paula! Lose all the honor of reconstructing him? You, the head of the family? What did he do or say? What are you mad at?”
“I’m not mad. It is an unladylike word.”
“Pooh! You’re as mad as a March hare, or a hornet, or a bear with a so—”
“Octave Pickel! I should think you would be ashamed of yourself! A young lady fourteen years old using such coarse expressions!”
“A young lady sixteen years old giving occasion to me to use them! Paula Pickel, I should think you would be ashamed of yourself! You would if you knew how you were looking at this very minute.”
“Why? What?” asked the elder girl, anxiously, rising and crossing to the tiny mirror. “I do wish Aunt Ruth would let us have something bigger than this to use! It’s so small that I cannot see more than half of my head at one time!”
“Do as I do,” laughed Octave; “dress yourself before the wardrobe door.” And suiting the action to the word, the merry girl placed herself in front of the door in question and gravely began to brush and freshen her long, tangled hair.
She had finished and had put on a clean gown, ready for the supper table, for which her healthy appetite was also ready, long before Paula had ceased twisting and turning about before the little glass to see what was amiss with herself.
“I don’t see anything, Octave. What was it that was wrong?” she cried, as her sister went dancing and singing out of the room. “Stop, and do tell me!”
“I daren’t!”
“Why?”
“You’d say, ‘Octave, Octave!’ in that reproachful tone of yours; and how should I ever bear it?”
“Oh, you—”
“Darling,—I know it; I realize it. Seriously, sweetheart, there was nothing wrong with your appearance, only—”
“Only what? Do tell me. I don’t want to go down stairs looking like—”
“Like your careless sister Octave! It’s only what Fritzy says about Content: the ‘lovely mind showing through her face’; so it was with you, heart’s dearest!”
And laughing at the renewed disgust in her victim’s countenance, Octave ran away. She could no more forbear teasing somebody than she could doing the hundred and one other useless things which were the result of her overflowinglife. Paula was dear, really; but Paula was such fun! And poor Paula herself was just sufficiently conscious of her own shortcomings to make her doubly sensitive to others’ raillery.
Only those shortcomings did not lie in the direction she supposed; and they did lie just in the road Octave had suggested. Paula bewailed her occasional lack of dignity, her lapses from correctness of speech, her ignorance of style, and any other slight flaw in a character she was really accustomed to think a bit above par.
Full of herself, and full of plans, she had gone that afternoon to sit with her cousin Melville. The family project for improving that disagreeable invalid had been held in abeyance by the condition of poor Mrs. Capers, who, for a fortnight, had been drooping and under the doctor’s care, while her charge was almost wholly neglected by that good man.
The fright her ghastly face and fainting condition had given Mr. Pickel, after his nephew had “paid her” for her supposed resemblance to the “Witch of Endor,” had abated as the day wore on, and her injuries had appeared not to be serious.And, afterward, she had seemed not really ill, but simply not as usual.
In the secret of her own heart she believed that she had “got her warning”; and when, one day, the physician had ordered her to go to bed “for a bit,” she had felt that she was obeying him forever.
Oddly enough, yet perhaps not really so oddly after all, the old lady had taken a fancy that of all the household little Christina should attend her few wants. Paula she would not see on any pretext, and Octave she found too noisy. Content had taken her own place at Melville’s bed-side, and this was how she would have had it, since Content would bear in silence what the others would resent in anger.
Aunt Ruth was busy, always, with the needs of such a family, and gentle Amy Kinsolving’s strength would allow of her doing no more than go from room to room of the well-filled Snuggery, “carrying sunshine” and words of good-cheer.
But this day there seemed to be a lull in the rush of affairs, and Paula thought that she coulddo two benevolent things at once. Unfortunately, few, however skilful, do “kill two birds with one stone”; and Paula was most unskilled. Her missionary spirit was of the warlike kind; and, as she would have said to a tropical heathen, “You must read your Bible and wear these clothes,” so she started in to reform Melville by feeling that it rested with her tomakehim do what she considered fitting.
Now, nobody, big or little, on this earth likes to be what Fritz called “musted.” Even Content felt a disinclination to leave her post at the cripple’s side, since they had found that in their mutual love of Dickens and his magic they could meet on happy ground. The girl’s musical voice was just picturing, with a pathos her sympathy made real, the death-scene of little Paul Dombey, and both reader and listener were steeped in sorrow for the loss of one who was a real personage to them, when the door opened and Paula, crisp and rattling in her freshly starched skirts, entered.
To sensitive Melville, the effect was as if she had struck him; while Content felt as deep if a quieter disappointment.
“I’ve come to sit with you, Melville; and Content, you are to go right out and have a game of tennis. Aunt Ruth says this moping indoors isn’t good for you.”
“Tennis! Alone? And I’m not moping at all. We were having a real good time; weren’t we, Melville?”
“We were; but it’s over!”
“Oh, no, indeed; it isn’t over. If Aunt Ruth wished me to go out of doors, I am sure it was because she thought I must be tired. But I’m not tired; I’d rather read Dickens than play tennis.”
“Why, Content Kinsolving! Here you have been held up to us as a shining example, and you are, after all, what even little Fritz would disdain to be,—disobedient!”
“Paula! Did Aunt Ruth really say I was to go out?” asked Content, with her color rising.
Now, Ruth had said nothing of the kind. What she had remarked was that she wished Content cared more for such healthful games as this—to her—new one of lawn tennis, which had been introduced at The Snuggery along with the pony-cart,the archery outfit, the photographic camera, and the various other amusements which that most indulgent man, “Fritzy Nunky,” provided for his charges.
However, Paula felt herself warranted in interpreting the spirit of her aunt’s words in a fashion to suit herself. She was bent on missionizing; and she silenced any misgivings of her own conscience by the conclusion that the end justified the means. Though her face flushed with guilty shame at the lie she was acting, she did not distinctly answer; but the air of injured innocence with which she took her place by the foot of Melville’s lounge said more than speech;—she, Paula, was not accustomed to have her word doubted; if Content was suspicious enough to mistrust her, why she was above resentment; as for her, she always did her duty, whether other people did or not. All this was conveyed to quick-witted Content by the simple manner in which Paula spread out her dress, tossed her fair head, and quietly took her seat.
Poor Content was far from being an example, or even a “lovely-minded girl,” at that moment.She did not remember to have ever been so angry in her life. And yet, since there had been no word uttered, there could be nothing to contest. For once she felt that she would enjoy a good squabble—it would have been such a relief to her feelings. But one glance into Melville’s darkening eyes and frowning brow convinced her that she could safely leave the matter in his hands; and it was with a satisfaction which proved her to be most humanly erring that the girl laid down her book and went away.
“Deliver me from a saint!”
“What?” sweetly asked Paula. Having carried her point she was in a most complacent mood.
“I said,—Deliver me from a saint! That’s you! Do you hear? Understand?”
“Yes, I hear; but I do not mind it. You are so ill that you are scarcely responsible for what you say. I mean”—for she suddenly recollected that she was about to lecture her cousin on his wretched lack of self-control, and was contradicting herself beforehand—“I mean, that although you are hard to get along with, I at least have sympathy with you.”
“Hang your sympathy!” retorted its ungrateful recipient.
Paula paid no heed. “Shall I go on reading where Content left off?”
“No!” thundered this lad of the mighty voice. “It would be sacrilege.”
“What do you mean?” asked Paula, forgetting for an instant the rôle of angel she had intended to play.
“I mean that it isn’t such a prig as you who can understand Dickens!”
“Prig is a word to apply to boys, Cousin Melville.”
“To girls, also, when they make nuisances of themselves.”
Paula bit her lip; but she conquered her temper by holding up to mental view the wonderful good she was determined to accomplish even by means of the falsehood she had acted. It would be so delightful, when she had converted Melville from the error of his ways by sheer force of her own perfection, to hear her friends say, “That is all dear Paula’s work. Melville was a thoroughly disagreeable boy when Paula took him in hand.We owe so much to Paula.” And almost hearing these laudatory phrases, so keenly did she imagine them, she turned again toward her victim with the question, “If you are tired of Dickens, what would you have me read?”
“Nothing. If you read as you talk, it would be unendurable to me. Why do you clip off the ends of your words in such a fashion? This isn’t a ‘woom,’ and that isn’t a ‘wockin’-chai-ah!’”
Now, if there was anything about herself of which Paula was more proud than another, it was her sweet and well-trained voice. Her modulation was exquisite, and it really pleased Melville; but because he saw that it was a weak point with his cousin he selected it as an object of ridicule.
Paula waited till she had counted ten twice over, before she ventured to speak. Then she ignored Melville’s attack and asked, “What would you like me to do, then, if you do not wish me to read?”
“Clear out.”
“Melville Capers, you are no gentleman!”
“You are no saint, so you needn’t pose for one!”
“I do not pose.”
“You do. You came in here with that sanctimonious look on your face,—though a lie in your heart,—as if you thought yourself a little better than all the world, and were fully determined that all the world should know it.”
The sneer which cuts deepest is the sneer which has a bit of truth in it.
Poor Paula eyes filled. She did not find the work of missionizing so much to her taste as she had fancied, and it is certain that she could not have selected a more difficult subject to try her hand upon.
Melville was shrewd and clever. Paula was clever, but not at all shrewd. The boy did not know, of course, about the family project of his reconstruction, but he was quick to scent out Paula’s motive for preaching to him.
“See here,” he said testily; “we might as well make an end of this business before it is begun. I am shut in here, and cannot do much for myself; but what I can do I will—you bet! And one of these things is that I can say who shall and who shall not inflict their society upon me.These rooms belong to my grandmother and me as much as the rest of the house does to Grandmother Kinsolving. There is one class on which I shall always have the door shut,—the class of saints. It is unfortunate that you should belong to it; but, since you do, the deduction is obvious.”
If Paula had had any doubt as to his meaning, it was removed by the very significant glance her cousin cast upon the door. With burning cheeks, and feeling as if she would never again try any missionary work, she rose and walked away. As she reached the door, Melville called after her: “If you see Content, or even the little fighter, send them in. It’s horrid lonesome.”
There was no reply, and as her footsteps died away Melville judged, and rightly, that his message would not be delivered. Paula went straight to her room, and to her teasing sister Octave, to go through the familiar trial of the younger girl’s gibing tongue just when she was most ill-fitted to endure it.
It was an hour after Octave had left her, and after poor Paula had relieved her anger by a fit of weeping, that she smoothed her ruffled feathersonce more and went below stairs. She expected a word of reproof from her punctual Aunt Ruth for her late appearance at table, but to her surprise the supper-room was unoccupied. The meal had evidently been going on, and had been interrupted by some unusual occurrence; for the plates showed half-eaten food, napkins had fallen in uncommon places, and the disarranged chairs proved that the family had left the apartment in haste.
Paula walked to the door and looked out. There was not a person in sight; neither was there anything but the absence of human life to give her occasion for anxiety; yet a feeling of uneasiness stole over her, which, had she been as nervous as Mrs. Capers, she would have called a “presentiment” of some mischance.
After a moment of searching the lawn for any sign of the family, she fancied that she could detect the outlines of a group of people in a distant field, which was almost hidden from the house by a thick grove; she raised her clear voice and shouted, “Octave! Christina! Uncle Fritz!”
But only the echo of her own cries came back to her from the surrounding hill-tops.