The Casting Away of Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine Part 16

"Now, Mr. Dusante, it ain't in the power of mortal man, nor woman neither,--an' if put the other way it might be stronger,--to wait any longer before knowin' what relation Lucille is to Emily, an' you to them, an' all about that house of yours on the island. If I'd blown up into bits this day through holdin' in my wantin' to know, I shouldn't have wondered! An' if it hadn't been for hard sleep, I don't believe I could have held in, nohow!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "WE DREW UP ABOUT THE FIRE."]

"That's my mind exactly," said Mrs. Lecks; "and though I know there's a time for all things, and don't believe in crowdin' questions on played-out people, I do think, Mr. Dusante, that if I could have caught up with you when we was comin' over here, I'd have asked you to speak out on these p'ints. But you're a long-legged walker, which Mrs.

Ales.h.i.+ne is not, and it wouldn't have done to leave her behind."

"Which she wouldn't 'a' been," said Mrs. Ales.h.i.+ne, "long legs or short."

Ruth and I added our entreaties that Mr. Dusante should tell his story, and the good ranchman and his wife said that if there was anything to be done in the story-telling line they were in for it, strong; and quitting their work of clearing away supper things, they brought an old hair trunk from another room, and sat down just behind Mrs. Lecks.

The younger Dusante lady, who, having been divested of her wraps, her veil, and the woolen shawl that had been tied over her head, had proved to be a very pretty girl with black eyes, here declared that it had been her intention at the first opportunity to get us to tell our story, but as we had asked first, she supposed we ought to be satisfied first.

"I do not wish, my good friends," said Mr. Dusante, "to delay for a moment longer than necessary your very pardonable curiosity concerning me and my family; and I must say at the same time that, although your letter, sir, gave me a very clear account of your visit to my island, there are many things which naturally could not be contained within the limits of a letter, and about which I am most anxious to make inquiries.

But these I will reserve until my own narration is finished.

"My name is Albert Dusante. It may interest you to know that my father was a Frenchman and my mother an American lady from New England. I was born in France, but have lived very little in that country, and for a great part of my life have been a merchant in Honolulu. For the past few years, however, I have been enabled to free myself in a great degree from the trammels of business, and to devote myself to the pursuits of a man of leisure. I have never married, and this young lady is my sister."

"Then what relation," began Mrs. Ales.h.i.+ne, "is she to--?"

At this moment the hand of Mrs. Lecks, falling heavily into the lap of the speaker, stopped this question, and Mr. Dusante proceeded:

"Our parents died when Lucille was an infant, and we have no near blood relations."

At this the faces of both Mrs. Ales.h.i.+ne and Mrs. Lecks a.s.sumed expressions as if they had each just received a letter superscribed in an unknown hand, and were wondering who it could possibly be from.

"The lady who is now resting in the adjoining room," continued Mr.

Dusante, "is a dear friend who has been adopted by me as a mother."

"Upon my word!" burst from Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Ales.h.i.+ne, in as much unison of time and tone as if the words had been a response in a church service, while Miss Lucille leaned back against the wall near which she sat, and laughed gleefully. Mr. Dusante, however, continued his statements with the same quiet gravity with which he had begun.

"This lady was a dear friend of my mother, although younger than she. I adopted her as a mother to my little orphan sister, and, consequently, placed her in the same maternal relation to myself, doing this with much earnest satisfaction, for I hoped to be able to return, as a son, something of the tender care and affection which she would bestow on Lucille as a daughter."

"And she is Emily?" cried Mrs. Ales.h.i.+ne.

"She adopted our name," answered the speaker, "and she is Mrs. Emily Dusante."

"And she is your adopted _mother?_" said Mrs. Ales.h.i.+ne.

"Adopted mother!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mrs. Lecks.

"Yes," answered Mr. Dusante.

"And that is the only relation she is to you two?" said Mrs. Lecks.

"And you to her?" added Mrs. Ales.h.i.+ne.

"Most a.s.suredly," answered Mr. Dusante.

Here Mrs. Lecks leaned back in her chair, folded her hands in her lap, and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, "Well, well!" and then allowed her face to a.s.sume a rigid intention of having nothing more to say at the present moment.

"One thing is certain," remarked Mrs. Ales.h.i.+ne, in a tone which indicated that she did not care who heard her; "I always liked Lucille the best!"

At this Ruth and I exchanged smiles with Miss Lucille, and Mr. Dusante proceeded:

"I do not wish to occupy too much of your time with our personal affairs, and will therefore state that the island on which you found refuge, and where I wish most heartily I had been present to act as host, was bought by me as a retreat from the annoyances of business and the exactions of society. I built there a good house--"

"Which it truly was," said Mrs. Ales.h.i.+ne, "with fixtures in it for water, and letting it off, which I never saw in a house so far out of town."

"I furnished it suitably," said Mr. Dusante. "We had books and music, and for several years we pa.s.sed vacations there which were both enjoyable and profitable. But of late my sister has found the place lonely, and we have traveled a good deal, making intermittent and often short visits to the island.

"As I never cared to leave any one on that lonely spot during our absences from it, I arranged a gateway of bars across the only opening in the reef, with the intention of preventing marauding visits from fis.h.i.+ng-boats or other small craft which might be pa.s.sing that way. As the island was out of the ordinary track of vessels, I did not imagine that my bars would ever prove an obstacle to unfortunate castaways who might seek a refuge there."

"Which they didn't," remarked Mrs. Ales.h.i.+ne, "for under we bobbed."

"I never exactly understood," said Mr. Dusante, "and I hope to have it explained to me in due time, how you pa.s.sed my bars without removing them; and I have had a sore weight upon my conscience since I discovered that s.h.i.+pwrecked persons, fleeing to my house from the perils of the sea, should have found those inhospitable bars in their way--"

"Which is a weight you might as well cast off, and be done with it,"

said Mrs. Lecks, her deep-set notions on the rights of property obliging her to speak; "for if a man hasn't a right to lock up his house when he goes away and leaves it, I don't know what rights anybody has about anything. Me, or Mrs. Ales.h.i.+ne, or anybody else here who has a house, might just as well go off travelin', or to town visitin', and leave our front door unlocked, and the yard gate swingin' on its hinges, because we was afraid that some tramp or other body with no house or home might come along and not be able to get in and make himself comfortable. Your business, sir, when you left that house and all your belongin's on that island, was to leave everything tight and safe; and the business of people sailin' in s.h.i.+ps was to go on their proper way, and not be runnin' into each other. And if these last mentioned didn't see fit to do that, and so got into trouble, they should have gone to some island where there were people to attend to 'em, just as the tramps should go to the poorhouse. And this is what we would have done--not meanin' the poorhouse--if we hadn't been so over long-headed as to get into a leaky boat, which, I wish it understood, is sayin' nothin' against Mr. Craig."

"That's true," said Mrs. Ales.h.i.+ne, "for n.o.body has got a right to complain that a fellow-bein' locks his own door after him. But it does seem to me, sir, that in such scattered neighborhoods as your island is in, it might be a good thing to leave something to eat an'

drink--perhaps in a bottle or in a tin pail--at the outside of your bars for them as might come along s.h.i.+pwrecked, an' not be able to get inside on account of bein' obliged to come in a boat, an' not as we did; an'

so, when they found they'd have to go on, they might have somethin' to keep up their strength till they got to another house."

"Now, Barb'ry Ales.h.i.+ne," said Mrs. Lecks, "when you start off on a journey to j.a.pan or any other place, an' leave mince-pies and b.u.t.tered toast a-stickin' on the p'ints of your pickets for tramps that might come along and need 'em, you can do that kind of talkin'. But as that time hasn't come, let's hear the rest of Mr. Dusante's story."

"When I first visited my island this year," continued the narrator, "we made but a short stay, as we were all desirous of taking a somewhat extended sea-voyage in my steam-yacht. We visited several places of interest, and when we returned, just six weeks ago to-day--"

"Just one week, lackin' a day," exclaimed Mrs. Lecks, "after we left that spot!"

"If I'd 'a' knowed," said Mrs. Ales.h.i.+ne, rising to her feet, "that you'd be back so soon, I'd 'a' made them sailormen live on fish, I'd 'a' eat garden-truck myself, and I'd be bound I'd 'a' made the flour hold out for six days more for the rest of 'em, if I'd 'a' had to work my fingers to the skin and bone to do it!" Then she sat down solemnly.

"When we returned," continued Mr. Dusante, "I was pleased to find my bars intact; and when these were unlocked, and the boat from our yacht went through with ourselves and our servants, it was very agreeable to notice the good order which seemed to prevail everywhere. As we pa.s.sed from the wharf to the house, not even fallen boughs or weeds were seen to indicate that we had been away from the place for more than two months. When we entered the house, my mother and sister immediately ascended to their chambers, and when the windows had been opened I heard them from above calling to each other and remarking upon the freshness and cleanliness of the rooms. I went to my library, and when I had thrown open the window I was struck with the somewhat peculiar air of order which seemed to obtain in the room. The books stood upon their shelves with a remarkable regularity, and the chairs and other furniture were arranged with a precision which impressed me as unusual.

In a moment, sir, I saw your letter upon the table addressed to me.

Greatly astonished, I opened and read it.

"When I had finished it my amazement was great indeed; but obeying an instant impulse, I stepped into the dining-room, which a servant had opened, and took the ginger-jar from the mantelpiece. When I lifted from it the little brown-paper parcel, and beneath it saw the money which had been mentioned in the letter, you may imagine the condition of my mind.

I did not take out the money, nor count it; but covering it again with the paper parcel, which I believed contained fish-hooks, and with the jar in my hands, I returned to the library, where I sat down to ponder upon these most astounding revelations. While so doing my mother and sister hastily entered the room. Lucille declared in an excited manner that she believed that the brownies or some other fairies had been there while we were away and had kept the house in order. The whole place was actually cleaner, she said, than when we left it. She had taken down a thin dress from her closet, and it looked as if it had just come from the hand of a laundress, with the ruffles ironed smoother and more evenly than they had ever been since it was first st.i.tched together.

'Albert,' said my mother, her face pale, 'there has been somebody in this house!' Then she went on to say that the windows, which were left unwashed because we went away in somewhat of a hurry, were as bright and clean as if the maids had just been rubbing them; the floors and furniture were cleaner and freer from dust than they had ever been before; and the whole house looked as if we had just left it yesterday.

'In fact,' she said, 'it is unnaturally clean!'"

During this part of Mr. Dusante's story Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Ales.h.i.+ne sat very quiet, with an air of sedate humility upon their faces; but I could see by the proud light in their eyes that they felt their superiority to ordinary women, although they were properly resolved not to show such feeling.

"At that moment," continued Mr. Dusante, "a servant came hurrying into the room, and informed us that the flour was all gone, and that there was scarcely anything in the pantries to eat. At this my mother and my sister, who knew that an abundance of provisions had been left in the house, looked at each other aghast. But before they could express their consternation in words, I addressed them. 'My dear mother,' said I, 'and Lucille, there truly has been some one in this house. By this letter I am informed that for several weeks eight persons have lived here under this roof; a marriage has been solemnized, and the happy couple have gone forth from our doors. These persons have eaten our food, they have made use of our property, and this has been their temporary home. But they are good people, honest and true-hearted, for they have left the house in better order than they found it, and more than the price of all they have consumed is in that ginger-jar.' And thereupon I read them your letter, sir.

"I cannot undertake to describe the wonder and absorbing interest with which this letter filled our minds. All needful stores were brought ash.o.r.e from the yacht, which lay outside the reef, and we began our usual life on the island; but none of the occupations or recreations in which we formerly employed our time now possessed any attractions for us. Our minds were filled with thoughts of the persons who had been so strangely living in our house; and our conversation was mainly made up of surmises as to what sort of people they were, whether or not we should ever see them, and similar suppositions."

"Yes, indeed!" exclaimed Miss Lucille. "I thought of you by day and by night, and pictured you all in various ways, but never as you really are. Sometimes I used to think that the boat in which you went away had been sunk in a storm in which you were all drowned, and that perhaps your ghosts would come back and live in our house, and sleep in our beds, and clean our windows, and wash and iron our clothes, and do all sorts of things in the night."