Kitabı oku: «The Loves of Ambrose», sayfa 8

PART FOUR
HIS FOURTH WIFE

"There are diversities of gift, but the same spirit"

CHAPTER XIX
"'LIZABETH"

A very old man leaned over, touching a cane-bottomed rocking chair with his carpet slipper. "Seems sort er more sociable like to see a little female chair a-rockin'," he remarked to himself, for the room was otherwise unoccupied, and even the house itself.

It was a December night and snowing hard. By and by the old man got up, and crossing over to a side window where the blind had not yet been pulled down, stood there for a moment frowning and saying impatiently: "Ef that don't beat all!" for mingling with the noises outside there sounded a faint and monotonous crying.

He was an uncommonly tall old man with a head like a highly polished billiard ball rising above a fringe of thin white hair; he had a straggly beard, while over his dim blue eyes the eyebrows arched like cornices.

Finally he shuffled back toward his place by the kitchen fire, and there getting down the family Bible commenced to read, first stuffing both fingers in his ears, although every now and then partially removing one to make observations. He was reading the twenty-second chapter of St. Matthew:

"For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven." However, on the third reading he shut up his book, keeping three bunches of pressed flowers inside to mark the place, and half humorously and half with the irritability of old age, sighed: "I don't feel as ef I could stand it a inch longer. What mortal use is there in me tryin' to make myself at all comfortable this evenin' with that noise eternally pesterin' me? Seems like it has always been my experience a man has got to give in first an' last."

Then wrapped in the faded splendour of a once gorgeous silk dressing-gown the old man disappeared into his bedroom, returning with a shawl crossed over his shoulders and a knitted muffler tied about his head. On opening his door he listened again for a moment, but, as the crying had not ceased, waded across his yard through the snow in his carpet slippers until he knocked with his big blue-veined old hand hard against the locked back door of a cottage adjoining his.

At first there was no answer except a continuing of the sniffling, snuffling noises which only made the visitor rap more vehemently, when at length the door opened and there stood a woman holding a lantern above her head.

"Uncle Ambrose Thompson, what kin you want o' me this time o' night?" she asked; "it's goin' on nine o'clock! You ain't sick?"

Uncle Ambrose shook his head, surveying his neighbour sympathetically, but oh, so disparagingly! She was so plainly an old-time old maid, flat in the chest and angular, a hard and bony structure, with a face that was equally barren save that its desert waste had lately been swept by a storm.

"No, I ain't sick, child," Uncle Ambrose answered, "but you are – heartsick. And what's more it seems likely I can't stand that noise you keep on a-makin'. You come over and set by my kitchen fire a space and kind er talk things out with me. I reckon I ain't altogether lost my soothin' powers!"

Before his glowing fire the old host comfortably placed two rocking chairs side by side. For the past seven years Ambrose Thompson had been a widower for the third time and, since Peachy's death, having come back home from the Red Farm, had lived all alone in his once rose-coloured cottage, looked after only by his neighbours.

Picking up a crazy quilt cushion from his chair, the old man surveyed it tenderly. "This was my Em'ly's make," he explained; "seems, 'Lizabeth Horton, that you and me 're most like strangers, havin' lived side by side only a little piece like seven years. Em'ly she was the second of my three wives." And then thoughtfully passing his hand backward over his high bald crown, Uncle Ambrose smiled in a kind of slow and puzzled fashion.

"No, now I've done mixed things up a bit; I'm gittin' a little oncertain these days. Em'ly wasn't never the sewin' one," he continued, "besides, this crazy quiltin' business was most too new fashioned fer my Em'ly. I kin recollect now bringin' that sofy cushion in from the farm, so it must 'a' been Peachy's. Funny how I keep puttin' everything on to Em'ly these days!"

Then seeing that his caller's red-rimmed eyes had been yearning toward the coffee pot at the back of his stove, the old man put it down before her with a nicked but brightly flowered cup and saucer, and afterward, settling himself in his own place, peacefully began smoking, finding a kind of unholy joy in the old maid's horrified glances about his untidy but nobly littered kitchen.

"S'pose you go ahead now 'n tell me just what ails you?" Uncle Ambrose suggested after a reasonably sustaining pause.

And straightway Elizabeth returned to the slow and monotonous weeping that had so disturbed his nerves for the past few hours. However, he let her alone for a time, and except for moving restlessly about in his chair and biting hard on his pipe stem made no other signs until at last he placed a trembling hand on her bowed shoulder. "'Lizabeth Horton, there is some women that just nachurally runs away to tears, but I wouldn't waste myself entirely ef I was you. Seems like when a female has cried 's long as you have, she must need something to fill up the places that has gone dry on the inside; so you take another cup of coffee; it may be bitter but it's liquid. I ain't sayin' I ain't used to women's weepin', but I'm gittin' older an' – "

Elizabeth at this gulped down her second dose. "I hadn't ought to cry so much, Uncle Ambrose," she apologized, "but you must know I'm havin' to give up my little home and it most breaks my heart."

Uncle Ambrose looked meditatively about his ancient and patched fourteen-foot-square kitchen, and his dim eyes shone with the never failing pride of possession. "These cottages ain't so bad," he said defensively. "I been living in mine off'n on fer most seventy years, and I kin remember when yours and old Mrs. Barrows', now deceased, was built like it. Still I am obleeged to say there may be finer places; more'n likely now this nephew's house is stylisher where you're bein' took in to live. Seems like I've done heard it's in a su-burb and sets up on a hill. Kind er onnecessary Pennyrile's havin' a su-burb, but mebbe you're thinkin' the young folks won't be good to you when you go up there to dwell."

Now that her crying had ceased the old maid's face looked gray.

"It ain't that I ain't goin' to a good home, Uncle Ambrose," she explained, "and I suppose they'll be as good to me as they can to a piece of furniture that don't fit in and ain't nowheres needed in their house. I can't expect a man to understand, but when a woman don't never marry and hasn't a husband or children of her own, seems like all she has to set store by is just things, havin' a home of her own. I done my best to keep mine since mother died and her pension stopped, by picklin' and preservin', but somehow I can't manage it." And now the woman's voice held the quiet acceptance of defeat which is sadder than any protest of tears.

She was looking into her lap at her knotted, hardworking and yet unsuccessful hands as she spoke, or else she would have seen the light of the understanding she denied in the old face opposite hers, which had not, I think, failed any woman in nearly threescore years.

"I've done smelt your efforts, 'Lizabeth," Uncle Ambrose murmured kindly. "They've often come right through the boards of my side wall. I wisht I knowed some way to help you out, but I can't somehow see it."

Nevertheless when Elizabeth had made her old neighbour as comfortable for the night as she knew how by putting fresh coals on his fire and by fastening down his windows, and had said good night, still he continued sitting in the same place, wearing a look of uncomfortable gravity, until by and by hobbling once more into his bedroom he returned with a small daguerreotype in his hand and for a long while kept studying it, with his lips moving silently, and then suddenly said aloud: "Whatever on this earth am I goin' to do 'bout that old maid, Em'ly honey? She's poor and lonesome and she's scaired, and, moreover, she's powerful homely." And then just for an instant piercing the mists over his old eyes the immortal light of laughter flickered.

"I reckon you think I've done earned a trifle of repose from worryin' on females, don't you, honey?" he inquired as he made his solitary way toward bed.

CHAPTER XX
"GIVING IN MARRIAGE"

In a similar cottage on one side of old Ambrose Thompson, as has already been explained, there now dwelt the single departing spinster, Elizabeth Horton, whom Uncle Ambrose regarded as a newcomer, her occupancy lying somewhat within the period of twenty years, while on the other side there still remained his youthful enemy, Susan Barrows. Not Mrs. Susan Barrows, Sr., because of course some years before that old lady had been translated to that country where we hope all human curiosity may be satisfied, but her daughter, Susan Jr.; a little prying, spiteful girl she would always remain to Ambrose, although now a married woman past middle age, with grown-up children of her own.

And among her other inheritances she claimed an interfering interest in the old man's mode of life.

Now a set of signals having been arranged between them in case of urgent need on his part, at about six o'clock the next morning Susan was aroused by a violent knocking on his wall on the side of the house next hers, and hurrying over she found the old man lying half dressed on his bed and groaning with pain.

"Seems like I can't turn over or move or draw long breath, Susan Jr.," he gasped. "'Course I know I got my feet wet; 'tain't no use of you startin' in on that. I've got the lumbago, but bein's as I feel I mayn't be able to git up fer a right smart spell you'd better step next door and tell that old maid 'Lizabeth to come over here and look after me. She ain't no kith and kin to keep her busy like you."

Susan eyed her old neighbour narrowly; she never had and never would be able wholly to trust him, but now his fine old wrinkled face seemed to be twisting with pain and his nose and lips twitching.

"'Lizabeth can't come, you know it well as I do, Ambrose Thompson," she replied. "I've just got to do the best fer you I kin, though it ain't noways convenient to me. This comes from you tryin' to live alone 'cause Aunt Ca'line and the others who used to see to you is passed. 'Lizabeth Horton is movin' within a few hours, bein' turned out of her house, bag and baggage," and there was such richness of superiority in Susan Jr.'s voice, the kind of superiority which the prosperous always feel in the presence of the unprosperous, that the old man longed to shake her.

But instead he only remarked with suspicious meekness: "'Lizabeth's furniture is bein' moved, Susan Jr., but not necessar'ly 'Lizabeth; leastways I don't believe she is engaged to go off in the movin' van settin' on top her best dresser like a hen, though it's what a lot of women would like, they're so bound up in things mortal." And then Uncle Ambrose fixing his gaze on a far spot in the ceiling shivered and groaned until his audience hurried away, when he was able to relax into greater comfort.

Thus it was that 'Lizabeth took up the business of caring for Uncle Ambrose Thompson until such time as the lumbago should depart from his back.

From the first the old man could see that the spinster was enjoying herself thoroughly; true, his cottage was small, but then it was exactly like her own save that he had let his grow truly magnificent in its dirt and disorder, being not of the type of male with perverted feminine instincts, while Elizabeth never had had but one womanly passion gratified and that was her love of putting a house to rights.

So for some little time Uncle Ambrose rather found pleasure in staying in bed with the hateful burden of solitariness removed from him; he loved listening to the familiar homely sounds of sweeping and the moving about of furniture; it brought back – ah well, perhaps at seventy-six it is something to have many things to remember.

And then, lying alone, he used to talk very often to his picture of Emily, which still hung on its nail by the old pine bureau, for this habit, begun after her death and only practised in secret during his marriage to Peachy, had grown on him in these last seven years of failing body and mind.

"She's a real good woman, Em'ly," he said several times, "and you'll be glad to know she's makin' me more comfortable than I been in some time. I was gittin' pretty tired. Seems like I might as well let this old spinster stay on here and keep house fer me; she plumb likes it and I reckon it's just one little thing more I kin do fer the sex. I ain't much good at lonin' it, and 'tain't like I had old Miner now fer the in betweens." And then he would laugh silently until the wrinkles in his old face seemed little channels for merriment: "I been married so frequent and got broke in to so many different sets of housekeepin' ways, seems like I ain't troubled to form no ways of my own."

And in between dozing and talking to himself and the neighbours, who ran in to inquire for his health, Uncle Ambrose used to spend some time in reading his Bible. One afternoon when Elizabeth had been sitting by his bedside sewing and thinking him asleep, he suddenly rose up in bed as though completely ignoring the pain in his back and drawing his old Bible across the coverlid opened it again at the place of the pressed flowers.

"'Lizabeth," he asked after a moment of uncommon gravity in which his hand frequently glided over his bald crown, "are you a good Bible woman? I mean are you a good interpreter of the Scriptures? Seems like I didn't used to look to others fer the meanin' in things, but I'm gittin' a leetle mite older and folks is pretty apt to confuse wishes with facts – "

But Elizabeth's austere face, with its rigid regard for set duties, was reddening. "I read my chapter every night and I try to live accordin'," she answered.

Then into Uncle Ambrose's old voice there crept such an eagerness it might have held the warm desire of youth: "Mebbe you kin tell me then – the meanin' of this here Bible text. I ain't never regarded it for seventy years, but I been worryin' over it consider'ble of late, and now I'd like to get a woman's views on it." And with his trembling forefinger following the lines he had read to himself on the evening before Elizabeth's installation he said: "It is what Jesus remarked to the Sadducees: 'For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.'" And here Uncle Ambrose's eyes travelled wistfully toward the faded daguerreotype on his side wall.

Naturally his listener was puzzled, but afterward laughed a laugh with a touch of new humour in it. "Lord! Uncle Ambrose, I am sorry," she apologized, "but I ain't had cause to worry over that text same as you have; bein's as I'm turned fifty now and ain't had so much as one husband on this earth, I'm kind of expectin' to carry my same single blessedness along with me on the t'other side."

Uncle Ambrose's eyes twinkled appreciatively, but a moment later he looked uncomfortable again. "Well, I reckon that's reasonable of you, 'Lizabeth," he agreed. "Folks can't understand things fer other folks; there's plenty can't comprehend me marryin' so often and now worryin' over arrangements for the future. But it's like this, child: a man may git a lot of helpmates in this world, but he don't find his real mate but once. And I want to know which one of my three wives is goin' to claim me in heaven, 'cause it looks like that combination's got to be eternal. To tell you the truth, I was so worried lately I sent fer the latest Baptist preacher and put this question up to him, and all he did was to read this selfsame verse out of St. Matthew as though I hadn't read and studied over it more'n a hundred times. The new brother seemed to think we'd have to travel alone up in heaven 'thout playin' favrits, but I can't come to agree with him. To tell you the truth, 'Lizabeth" – and here Uncle Ambrose's words sunk to a hoarse whisper – "ef the facts be known I want my Em'ly. I done my best without her, but it wasn't whole livin' 'cept when I had her, and I ain't meanin' nothin' in disfavour of no one else. Of course ef it's true that the Lord don't believe in marriages in the next world, with me such a marrier in this, then that text 'll be a whole lot of assistance to me in gittin' things fixed. For when my three wives come a-floatin' up to me as the angels are, I'll be more'n pleased to see 'em all, but I got to speak up pretty positive: 'I want my Em'ly, and there ain't no marriages nor givin' in marriage in heaven.' For you see I marries little Sarah first and that might give her the first claim, and Peachy last, so it's likely she might think a last tie would bind. Seems like it wouldn't look regular to have the three of 'em to once." And at this the speaker smiled with a kind of appreciative vision of things to come, while at the same time wiping his brow, which was gleaming with perspiration.

A day or so after this, having suddenly found his confinement unendurable, Uncle Ambrose demanded to be taken outdoors, and so wrapping him carefully in blankets Elizabeth set him out on the back stoop to look over his little snow-covered yard, leaving the door open that she might hear if he called to her.

And the woman was so happy now that she sang as she went about her work, for in moving him out the old man had asked her to stay and keep house for him so long as he should live.

Uncle Ambrose did not observe Susan Jr.'s birdlike black eyes peer slantingly at him through her partially closed blind, for two lady sparrows who had chosen to perch on the same twig were keeping up such a violent discussion of their territorial rights that they held his amused attention, so that Susan was able quietly to slip out through her front door and into his by a surreptitious move that outflanked her enemy. But pretty soon the old man caught the notes of her ever meddlesome voice and then a little later the sound of monotonous weeping. He had heard Elizabeth Horton crying one evening for two mortal hours and so was not apt to mistake her particular sniff. At first he squirmed restlessly in his chair, attempting to rise, but both the blankets and his reputation as an invalid enveloped him so that finally he called sharply: "Susan Jr., Susan, don't pretend you don't hear me. Come right out here on my stoop, I got to speak to you alone."

And Susan crept stealthily out. She had grown up to be a thin, small woman with a meddlesome soul out of all proportion to her body, and now she wore a wheedling smile such as one might employ with a fretful baby.

"You are lookin' right smart better, Uncle Ambrose," she began, "and 'Lizabeth Horton tells me you'll soon be yourself again."

"Susan," the old man interrupted, "you are in that kitchen hatching up trouble fer me sure as sin. I heard you tellin' 'Lizabeth that she oughtn't to be stayin' much longer with me. What did you do that fer?" And Uncle Ambrose's eyes, which could be like points of steel in righteous anger, now emitted certain fiery sparks. "'Lizabeth is happy and is makin' me comfortable after seven more lonesome years, and you've always been preachin' I ought to git some one to take kire of me. Susan Jr., the Lord gives and the Lord taketh away, but don't you try comin' around here playin' the part of the Lord. You let this spinster be."

Again Susan Jr. smiled with an air of superior virtue. "It ain't me that's talkin', Uncle Ambrose; I ain't seein' anything so wrong in your present relations, but I must say folks in Pennyrile is beginnin' to speculate some, bein's as 'Lizabeth is just turned fifty and you with such a reckernized taste fer female folks, why, though things ain't to say scanderlous, there is some that thinks 'em a little pe-cul-iar."

"Go, Susan," and though Uncle Ambrose spoke with restraint his long finger pointed toward the intervening space which lay between his house and hers. "Go, afore I'm able to tell you what I think of you, 'cause I've known you from a child and you ain't changed none – fer the better. To think of you sneakin' over here fer the supreme pleasure of worryin' one poor homely old maid with your gossip and suggestin's." And Uncle Ambrose's face worked with the annoyance of frustrated old age. "Ef only 'Lizabeth had had one or two husbands she wouldn't be payin' no attention to this, but bein's as she's never had none, well, I kin see that I'm goin' to have my hands pretty nigh full. Seems like I'd rather turn a child out 'n the world than this poor unrequited female."

Late that evening Elizabeth gave Uncle Ambrose his supper as usual, although her eyes were so nearly closed from weeping that she was unable to catch the worried gleam in his. However, before going to bed she told him that she would have to leave him and go to her nephew's as soon as he was well enough to be about again.