The Bent Twig Part 5

The boy looked down. "Pauline just cried and cried," he said in a low tone. "I _liked_ Pauline! She was awful good to me. I--I heard her crying afterwards as she went away. Seemed to me I could hear her crying all the way out here."

"Did she go away?" asked Judith, trying to make something coherent out of the story. Arnold nodded.

"You bet she did. Madrina turned her right out--and old Rollins too."

"Was _he_ there? What was the matter anyhow?" Judith persisted.

Arnold twisted uncomfortably, loath to continue bringing up the scene.

"I d'n know what was the matter. Yes, old Rollins was there, all right. He's gone away too, the doggoned old thing--for good. That's _something_!" He added, "Aw, quit talkin' about it, can't you! Let's play!"

"It's my turn to help Mother with the tomatoes," said Judith. "She's doing the last of the canning this morning. Maybe she'd let you help."

Arnold brightened. "Maybe she would!" he said, adding eagerly, "Maybe she'd tell us another of the stories about her grandmother."

Judith s.n.a.t.c.hed at his hand and began racing down the path to the garden. "Maybe she would!" she cried. They both called as they ran, "Mother, _oh_, Mother!" and as they ran, they leaped and bounded into the bright autumn air like a couple of puppies.

Sylvia's mental resiliency was not of such st.u.r.dily elastic stuff. She stood still, thinking of Pauline crying, and crying--and started aside when her aunt came out again on the porch.

"I don't find any one in the house, Sylvia dear," said Mrs.

Marshall-Smith quietly. Sylvia looked up into the clear, blue eyes, so like her father's, and felt the usual magic spell lay hold on her. The horrid impression made by Arnold's story dimmed and faded. Arnold was always getting things twisted. She came up closer to her aunt's side and took the soft, smooth fingers between her two little hard, muscular hands. In her relief, she had forgotten to answer. Mrs.

Marshall-Smith said again, "Where are your parents, dear?"

"Oh," said Sylvia. "Oh yes--why, Father's at the University at a committee meeting and Mother's out by the garden putting up tomatoes.

Judy and Arnold are helping her."

Mrs. Marshall-Smith hesitated, looked about her restlessly, and finally raised her parasol, of a gold-colored silk, a lighter tone, but the same shade as her rich plain broadcloth costume of tan. "Shall we take a little walk, my dear?" she suggested. "I don't feel like sitting still just now--nor"--she looked down into Sylvia's eyes--"nor yet like canning tomatoes,"

That walk, the last one taken with Aunt Victoria, became one of Sylvia's memories, although she never had a vivid recollection of what they saw during their slow ramble. It was only Aunt Victoria whom the little girl remembered--Aunt Victoria moving like a G.o.ddess over their rough paths and under the changing glory of the autumn leaves. She herself was a brighter glory, with her s.h.i.+ning blond hair crowned by a halo of feathery, gold-colored plumes, the soft, fine, supple broadcloth of her garments gleaming in the suns.h.i.+ne with a sheen like that of a well-kept animal's coat. There breathed from all her person a faint odor of grace and violets and unhurried leisure.

Sylvia clung close to her side, taking in through all her pores this lovely emanation, not noticing whether they were talking or not, not heeding the direction of their steps. She was quite astonished to find herself on the University campus, in front of the Main Building. Aunt Victoria had never walked so far before. "Oh, did you want to see Father?" she asked, coming a little to herself.

Mrs. Marshall-Smith said, as if in answer, "Just sit down here and wait for me a minute, will you, Sylvia?" moving thereupon up the steps and disappearing through the wide front door. Sylvia relapsed into her day-dreams and, motionless in a pool of sunlight, waited, quite unconscious of the pa.s.sage of time.

This long reverie was at last broken by the return of Mrs.

Marshall-Smith. She was not alone, but the radiant young man who walked beside her was not her brother, and nothing could have differed more from the brilliantly hard gaze which Professor Marshall habitually bent on his sister, than the soft intentness with which young Mr. Saunders regarded the ripely beautiful woman. The dazzled expression of his eyes was one of the remembered factors of the day for Sylvia.

The two walked down the shaded steps, Sylvia watching them admiringly, the scene forever printed on her memory, and emerged into the pool of suns.h.i.+ne where she sat, swinging her legs from the bench. They stood there for some minutes, talking together in low tones. Sylvia, absorbed in watching the play of light on Aunt Victoria's smooth cheek, heard but a few words of what pa.s.sed between them. She had a vague impression that Professor Saunders continually began sentences starting firmly with "But" and ending somehow on quite another note.

She felt dimly that Aunt Victoria was less calmly pa.s.sive than usual in a conversation, that it was not only the enchanting rising and falling inflections of her voice which talked, but her eyes, her arms, her whole self. Once she laid her hand for an instant on Professor Saunders' arm.

More than that Sylvia could not remember, even when she was asked later to repeat as much as she could of what she had heard. She was resolving when she was grown-up to have a ruffle of creamy lace falling away from her neck and wrists as Aunt Victoria did. She had not only forgotten Arnold's story, she had forgotten that such a boy existed. She was living in a world all made up of radiance and bloom, lace and suns.h.i.+ne and velvet, and bright hair and gleaming cloth and smooth voices and the smell of violets.

After a time she was aware that Professor Saunders shook hands and turned back up the steps. Aunt Victoria began to move with her slow grace along the road towards home, and Sylvia to follow, soaking herself in an impression of supreme suavity.

When, after the walk through the beech-woods, they reached the edge of the Marshall field, they saw a stiff plume of blue smoke stand up over the shack by the garden and, as they approached, heard a murmur of voices. Mrs. Marshall-Smith stopped, furled her parasol, and surveyed the scene within. Her sister-in-law, enveloped in a large blue ap.r.o.n, by no means fresh, sat beside a roughly built table, peeling tomatoes, her brown stained fingers moving with the rapidity of a prestidigitator's. Judith stood beside her, also attacking the pile of crimson fruit, endeavoring in vain to emulate her mother's speed. Over the hot, rusty stove hung Arnold, red-faced and bright-eyed, armed with a long, wooden spatula which he continually dug into the steaming contents of an enormous white-lined kettle. As, at the arrival of the new-comers, Mrs. Marshall's voice stopped, he looked around and frowned impatiently at his stepmother. "She's just got to the excitin'

part," he said severely, and to the raconteur eagerly, "'N'_en_ what?"

Mrs. Marshall looked up at her husband's sister, smiled, and went on,--Sylvia recognized the story as one of her own old favorites.

"Well, it was very early dawn when she had to go over to the neighbor's to borrow some medicine for her father, who kept getting sicker all the time. As she hurried along across the meadow towards the stile, she kept wondering, in spite of herself, if there was any truth in what Nat had said about having seen bear tracks near the house the day before. When she got to the stile she ran up the steps--and on the top one she stood still, for there--" She made a dramatic pause and reached for another tray of tomatoes. Arnold stopped stirring the pot and stood motionless, his eyes fixed on the narrator, the spatula dripping tomato-juice all along his white trousers. "There on the other side, looking up at her, was a bear--a big black bear."

Arnold's mouth dropped open and his eyes widened.

"My grandmother was dreadfully frightened. She was only seventeen, and she hadn't any kind of a weapon, not so much as a little stick with her. Her first idea was to turn and run as fast as she could, back home. But she remembered how sick her father was, and how much he needed the medicine; and then besides, she used to say, all of a sudden it made her angry, all over, to have that great stupid animal get in her way. She always said that nothing 'got her mad up' like feeling afraid. So what do you suppose she did?"

Arnold could only shake his head silently in an ecstasy of impatience for the story to continue. Judith and Sylvia smiled at each other with the insufferable complacence of auditors who know the end by heart.

"She just pointed her finger at the bear, and she said in a loud, harsh voice: 'Shame! Shame! Shame on you! For sha-a-ame!' She'd taught district school, you know, and had had lots of practice saying that to children who had been bad. The bear looked up at her hard for a minute, then dropped his head and began to walk slowly away.

Grandmother always said, 'The great lummox lumbered off into the bushes like a gawk of a boy who's been caught in mischief,' She waited just a minute and then ran like lightning along the path through the woods to the neighbors and got the medicine."

The story was evidently over, the last tomato was peeled. Mrs.

Marshall rose, wiping her stained and dripping hands on her ap.r.o.n, and went to the stove. Arnold started as if coming out of a dream and looked about him with wondering eyes. "Well, what-d'you-think-o'-_that?_" he commented, all in one breath. "Say, Mother," he went on, looking up at her with trusting eyes, searching the quiet face, "what do you suppose _made_ the bear go away? You wouldn't think a little thing like that would scare a _bear_!"

Mrs. Marshall began dipping the hot, stewed tomatoes into the gla.s.s jars ready in a big pan of boiling water on the back of the stove. The steam rose up, like a cloud, into her face, which began to turn red and to glisten with perspiration. "Oh, I don't suppose it really frightened the bear," she said moderately, refraining from the dramatic note of completeness which her husband, in spite of himself, gave to everything he touched, and adding instead the pungent, homely savor of reality, which none relished more than Sylvia and her father, incapable themselves of achieving it. "'Most likely the bear would have gone away of his own accord anyhow. They don't attack people unless they're stirred up." Arnold bit deeply into the solidity of this unexaggerated presentation, and was silent for a moment, saying then: "Well, anyhow, she didn't _know_ he'd go away! She was a sport, all right!"

"Oh yes, indeed," said Mrs. Marshall, dipping and steaming, and wiping away the perspiration, which ran down in drops to the end of her large, shapely nose. "Yes, my grandmother was a sport, all right." The acrid smell of hot, cooking tomatoes filled the shed and spread to the edge where Sylvia and her aunt stood, still a little aloof. Although it bore no resemblance to the odor of violets, it could not be called a disgusting smell: it was the sort of smell which is quite agreeable when one is very hungry. But Sylvia was not hungry at all. She stepped back involuntarily. Mrs. Marshall-Smith, on the contrary, advanced a step or so, until she stood close to her sister-in-law. "Barbara, I'd like to see you a few minutes without the children," she remarked in the neutral tone she always had for her brother's wife. "A rather unpleasant occurrence--I'm in something of a quandary."

Mrs. Marshall nodded. "All right," she agreed. "Scatter out of here, you children! Go and let out the hens, and give them some water!"

Arnold needed no second bidding, reminded by his stepmother's words of his experiences of the morning. He and Judith scampered away in a suddenly improvised race to see who would reach the chicken-house first. Sylvia went more slowly, looking back once or twice at the picture made by the two women, so dramatically contrasted--her mother, active, very upright, wrapped in a crumpled and stained ap.r.o.n, her dark hair bound closely about her round head, her moist, red face and steady eyes turned attentively upon the radiant creature beside her, cool and detached, leaning willow-like on the slender wand of the gold-colored parasol.

Professor Marshall chanced to be late that day in coming home for luncheon, and Aunt Victoria and Arnold had returned to the hotel without seeing him. His wife remarked that Victoria had asked her to tell him something, but, acting on her inviolable principle that nothing must interfere with the cheerful peace of mealtime, said nothing more to him until after they had finished the big plate of purple grapes from her garden, with which the meal ended.

Then Judith vanished out to the shop, where she was constructing a rabbit-house for the latest family. Sylvia took Lawrence, yawning and rubbing his eyes, but fighting desperately against his sleepiness, upstairs for his nap. When this task fell to Judith's lot it was despatched with business-like promptness, but Lawrence had early discovered a temperamental difference between his two sisters, and Sylvia was seldom allowed to leave the small bed until she had paid tribute to her ever-present desire to please, in the shape of a story or a song. On that day Buddy was more exacting than usual. Sylvia told the story of Cinderella and sang, "A Frog He Would a-Wooing Go," twice through, before the little boy's eyes began to droop. Even then, the clutch of his warm, moist fingers about her hand did not relax. When she tried to slip her fingers out of his, his eyelids fluttered open and he tightened his grasp with a wilful frown. So she sat still on the edge of his bed, waiting till he should be really asleep.

From the dining-room below her rose the sound of voices, or rather of one voice--her father's. She wondered why it sounded so angry, and then, mixed with some unintelligible phrases--"turned out on the street, in trouble--in a foreign land--Good G.o.d!" she caught Pauline's name. Oh yes, that must be the trouble. Mother was telling Father about Pauline--whatever it was she had done--and he was as mad about it as Aunt Victoria had been. If Aunt Victoria's voice had sounded like that, she didn't wonder that Arnold had hidden under the bed. If she could have moved, she, too, would have run away, although the idea that she ought to do so did not occur to her. There had been no secrets in that house. The talk had always been for all to hear who would.

But when she tried again to slip her hand away from Buddy's the little boy pulled at it hard, and half opening his eyes, said sleepily, "Sylvie stay with Buddy--Sylvie stay--" Sylvia yielded weakly, said: "Yes--s.h.!.+ s.h.!.+ Sister'll stay. Go to sleep, Buddy."

From below came the angry voice, quite loud now, so that she caught every queer-sounding word--"righteous indignation indeed! What else did _she_ do, I'd like to know, when she wanted money. The only difference was that she was cold-blooded enough to extract a legal status from the old reprobate she accosted."

Sylvia heard her mother's voice saying coldly, "You ought to be ashamed to use such a word!" and her father retort, "It's the _only_ word that expresses it! You know as well as I do that she cared no more for Ephraim Smith than for the first man she might have solicited on the street--nor so much! G.o.d! It makes me sick to look at her and think of the price she paid for her present d.a.m.n Olympian serenity."

Sylvia heard her mother begin to clear off the table. There was a rattle of dishes through which her voice rose impatiently. "Oh, Elliott, why be so melodramatic always, and spoil so much good language! She did only what every girl brought up as she was, would have done. And, anyhow, are you so very sure that in your heart you're not so awfully hard on her because you're envious of that very prosperity?"

He admitted, with acrimony, the justice of this thrust. "Very likely.

Very likely!--everything base and mean in me, that you keep down, springs to life in me at her touch. I dare say I do envy her--I'm quite capable of that--am I not her brother, with the same--"

Mrs. Marshall said hastily: "Hus.h.!.+ Hus.h.!.+ Here's Judith. For Heaven's sake don't let the child hear you!"

For the first time the idea penetrated Sylvia's head that she ought not to have listened. Buddy was now soundly asleep: she detached her hand from his, and went soberly along the hall into her own room. She did not want to see her father just then.

A long time after, Mother called up to say that Aunt Victoria had come for her afternoon drive, and to leave Arnold. Sylvia opened the door a crack and asked, "Where's Father?"

"Oh, gone back to the University this long time," answered her mother in her usual tone. Sylvia came down the stairs slowly and took her seat in the carriage beside Aunt Victoria with none of her usual demonstrative show of pleasure.

"Don't you like my dress?" asked Aunt Victoria, as they drove away.

"You don't even notice it, and I put it on 'specially to please you--you're the one discriminating critic in this town!" As Sylvia made no answer to this sally, she went on: "It's hard to get into alone, too. I had to ask the hotel chambermaid to hook it up on the shoulders."

Thus reminded of Pauline, Sylvia could have but inattentive eyes for the creation of amber silk and lace, and brown fur, which seductively clad the handsome body beside her.