Ariel Custer (12 page)

“I’d like to bring Miss Emily Dillon here sometime,” she said, grasping the first idle thought that passed in her mind. “I think she would enjoy it.”

Granniss’s eyes came back to her face with a smile.

“That’s a pleasant thought; we will. She doesn’t have much fun in her life, though goodness knows why. She has money enough and no one to hinder her doing as she pleases, unless perhaps Mother is a kind of brake on her pleasant propensities. Mother has a way of doing that to those around her; not that she intends to, but she seems to somehow compel the people in her vicinity to walk as she walks and think as she thinks. I’ve often thought how hard it must be for Miss Emily to have to live with Mother, and why they had to be wished on each other for the rest of their natural lives. But Miss Emily is a patient little old sport, and you’d never guess it from her manner. She’s just as sweet to Mother and me as if she’d invited us there instead of having us put into the house that ought to be her own.”

“But I don’t understand,” said Ariel, opening her eyes wide. “Isn’t the house Miss Emily’s?”

“It is and it isn’t,” laughed Granniss. “You see, old Jake Dillon was an old reprobate, drank and gambled and got all his relatives down on him hard so that the cousins on both sides wouldn’t speak to him on the street. Then he finished matters up by dying and leaving a great deal more property than anyone dreamed he had, but he didn’t leave a cent to any of his relatives except his daughter, and he tied that up pretty well, too. But he left part of the house to my mother, on condition that she make it her home and make a home for his daughter, so that she need never be left alone. It was mighty hard on Miss Emily, for her ways and Mother’s are as unlike as winter and summer. I think it was old Jake’s idea of justice, evening things up for Mother after the way he’d made Father lose all his money. He knew Mother hadn’t enough to keep her, and I suppose his conscience troubled him; so he gave Mother a home for life and money enough to keep her comfortably. If Miss Emily dies first, the house goes entirely to Mother. It was a rank way to treat his daughter, for she had never laid eyes on Mother till the day of the funeral; but she took it sweetly and patiently, and she won’t go back on her father, even though all the cousins have done their level best to get her to break the will. She’s polite to her cousins when they come to see her, but she never visits them, and I’ve often thought she was a mighty lonely little person.”

“When we get a home of our own, we’ll invite her over a lot,” said Ariel, with a sweet glow in her eyes.

“That we will!” said Granniss thoughtfully. “She’s that way. She’s unselfish. And she certainly is a good sport and enjoys things. Once when I was a kid she took me to an international baseball game! She pretended she wanted to see it herself. It was great! The way she sat up with her eyes sparkling! Mother never did find that out! Poor Mother! She wouldn’t have understood. She thought I oughtn’t to
want
to go, and she would have blasted Miss Emily forever as a hopeless idiot. But I believe in my soul Miss Emily enjoyed that game as much as I did. She was just like a young girl that day, sat up laughing with her eyes shining, and clapping at the crisis of the game. She used to give me books and candy, too. That’s one reason why I hated to go away from the house altogether when Mother insisted on having that Boggs girl there so much. Miss Emily used to like to have me run into her sitting room with the evening papers and talk to her a few minutes at night, and I know now she’s lonesome without anybody.”

“I’ll run over and see her awhile tonight if we get home in time,” said Ariel. “I’d have gone before if I’d realized. She’s asked me, but I always hated to go on account of meeting your mother. I thought it might make things worse.”

“I wish you would,” said Granniss. “She would love to have you, I know. And now, I guess we’d better be turning back if we don’t want to get caught in the woods in the dark. There’s no moon tonight, and I mustn’t let you get too tired if you’ve got to go back to work tomorrow.”

T
hat same afternoon Emily Dillon had opened her bedroom door cautiously and looked out into the hall, listened for a second, and then tiptoed to the front window. Yes, it was as she had thought; Harriet Granniss was going out. Motionless in the shadow of the window curtain, she watched Harriet Granniss go down the front walk, between the flaring rows of portulacas that Harriet had planted without asking Emily if she liked them, to the ornate front gate painted white and swung between two ostentatious white pillars at the opening of the modest hedge that Harriet had caused to be erected also without consulting her housemate in the matter. One could see at a single glance of Emily Dillon’s refined cameo face that she never would have been the kind of woman to select portulacas for a border to the front walk, nor perpetrate an elaborate portal in the midst of the green simplicity of the old hedge.

That she allowed both to be, grew out of the quiet strength of her fortified life. Anyone seeing Emily Dillon seated in the dim end of the old Dillon pew under the gallery of the Methodist church, her eyes closed and her gentle head bent in prayer, would never have guessed that under the simple dark-blue taffeta blouse there often raged a tempest of rebellion and that portulacas and front gateways and many other things of like kind were causes for many prayers that went up from a much-tried heart.

Harriet Granniss, sitting heavily and importantly in the middle aisle seat of the new Congregational church, would have been most astonished could she have known that her beautiful borders and her noble front-gate architecture were the reason of so many prayers for patience. It seemed to her she had been a benefactor, and she nursed a continual grievance that her efforts were not appreciated.

It was not often that Emily Dillon took the trouble to demur at any of Harriet Granniss’s suggestions, because it was always long before she heard the last of it; for Harriet Granniss knew how to maintain a hunger strike better than the best suffragette who was ever arrested, and she could go around a house with a hurt look and a sigh or two and break the spirit of any human who dared to speak and call its soul its own against her. A few intensive treatments of this sort had finished any opposition Emily Dillon might have offered with regard to trivial details concerning her home and the way it should be ordered. She simply decided that it was not worthwhile to have trouble. About the matter of repainting the house pea-green with white trimming and an old-rose roof, she did hold her ground, maintaining that gray and white were the colors her father had always chosen, and gray and white were what it must be, until in a haughty wrath Harriet Granniss gave in for gray and ordered the paint. But such a gray! The kind that makes you think of blue and pink not quite well mixed, and fairly shouting in its deep contrast to the white trimmings. Emily Dillon looked at the completed work aghast when she viewed it for the first time on her return from a trip up in the country where she had gone to attend the funeral of an old school friend and to help the family get settled into life again. After that she seldom ventured to demur at anything Harriet Granniss suggested. She felt sure if she did that Harriet would make it turn out worse in the end. It was better to keep still and bear it.

Harriet Granniss walked firmly and heavily on her heavy feet that were shod with pointed, tapering shoes that bulged over the too-small soles. She settled down into the walk with every step she took as if she liked to leave an impression. Her large-figured voile dress swung massively about her ample form, and a round lace collar lay flatly around her shoulders and chest below a cushiony neck. Her features were heavy, and her chin and jaw were firm and set. She always wore a here-am-I air, and people seldom failed to notice it. Her hair had a natural wet crinkle under her rampant black toque, and her face was flushed with heat, but there was a bloom of talcum dusted over it and lying in little moist drifts in the creases of her neck. She was neatness itself and well groomed, and she knew it. She was proud of the big old cameo that fastened her collar, and she unfurled her dark-blue sun umbrella like a banner and set forth to a missionary porch meeting. She walked as one who has conquered all behind her and is sweeping on to triumphs new. She loved such functions, especially the tea and little cakes that were always served. She often told Emily that it was a shame
she
didn’t take more interest in her church and its organizations. It wasn’t right for a woman to stick at home as she did. But Emily only smiled.

Emily watched the portly figure of her housemate swing down the quiet street, a dominant person with the stiff little feathers on her smart new toque standing erect and defiant against the summer breeze. Emily’s expression was meek, almost sad, rather detached, without bitterness. There was a pink pucker about her pleasant lips as of one who has tolerated oppression long but without the usual resultant bitterness. A little tremulous smile was always hovering nearby, ready to slip out when no one was about.

When Harriet had passed out of sight, Emily turned with a quick, birdlike motion and hurried down the back stairs to the kitchen, a light of interest in her gentle blue eyes like one who climbs for a stolen pot of jam.

“You almost done, Becky?” she asked of the sad-faced, dreary-eyed woman who was ironing a blue-checked apron by the window.

“Yep. Just about. Only got two, three more pieces.” And she stooped to the basket underneath her board and shook out a towel, a napkin, and some handkerchiefs. “Yep, an’ I s’pose it’ll be about the last time, too, Emily,” she went on, sighing heavily as she straightened up and went back to her ironing. “It certainly does go hard to leave you, but a body can’t live on just one wash a week, and my heart’s gettin’ worse every day now. Sometimes it thumps all day long. I s’pose Tom’s right, an’ I gotta give up work an’ live with him, but it goes against the grain somethin’ terrible. You know I never did like that flibbertygib of a girl he married. I druther be independent. But then, that’s life!”

The other woman looked distressed. Soft pink puckers came round her sweet lips. “I’d like so much to just keep you here all the time, Becky,” she said sadly. “You know how I feel about it—but—
you know Harriet!
“

“Oh, land, yes! That could never be. Harriet an’ I could never get along—that goes ‘thout sayin’. But don’t you worry, I know what Harriet is! You’ve been just wonderful to me, stickin’ to me all these years, an’ givin’ me the wash in spite of her, an’ gettin’ me the schoolhouse to scrub an’ all. It ain’t your fault they thought I was slow. I was. I was mortal slow, but I couldn’t he’p it. Some mornin’s seems zif I jest couldn’t drag myself along to finish, and that janitor got impatient and wanted to lock up and go home to his lunch. I couldn’t blame him. I woulda done the same in his place. But there! It’s over, and what’s the use talkin’?

“Harriet’s gone, I s’pose, gone to her precious porch meetin’. Well, I’m glad she’s out of the house. You an’ I can have a bit of a word for good-bye without her stickin’ her nose in, can’t we? Seems zo I couldn’t uv gone away ‘thout that. I know it ain’t any sweet proposition fer you, eiter, you poor child. Strange your pa ever took such a notion to her, leavin’ the property that way, half to her. I never could make it out.”

Emily flushed in a troubled way.

“Father felt under obligation,” she said hesitatingly. “Her husband was an old boyhood friend, something like you and me, you know, Becky.”

The older woman flashed a look of adoration at Emily, whose warm blue eyes beamed back a deep, quiet love and trust.

“Then there was some money Father borrowed when he was in financial difficulty once, and lost it, and I believe he felt under obligation to look after the widow when he got in better circumstances.”

“Hmm! Seems zif he mighta found some way to do that that wouldn’t a been so hard on you!” she commented dryly.

A puzzled pucker came between Emily’s eyes: “Father said he was thinking of me when he did it,” she said slowly. “He put it in his will that he didn’t want me to be alone in the house. I think he meant it for the best. You know he was alienated from the rest of the family. They didn’t have much to do with him—”

“I know! They mighta had some reason, but excuse ’em all you can; they’re as mean ez pusley, an’ you never lost much by their bein’ alienated. Your father mighta been odd. He was odd as Dick’s hatband, none odder, but he wasn’t a hypocrite like most o’ them, an’ I guess he meant well.”

She shook out a towel and thumped the iron heavily over the hem.

Emily looked off with a troubled gaze.

“You see,” she said, as if trying to reconcile the matter to her own satisfaction, “he’s always taken care of me in every way, and he didn’t realize I could look out for myself. He wanted to make sure that I would not be alone, and he figured that if she had a half right in the house, she wouldn’t go away and leave me. I think he meant well.”

“Oh yes,” said the other woman, “I s’pose he did, an’ he was right so far as she was concerned.
She won’t never go away!
She’ll always freeze on to whatever’s hers and stay froze. But her son, he can’t get along with her neither.”

More distress in the sweet eyes. “No,” admitted Emily. “He couldn’t stand being ordered round so much. And he’s a good boy. He wanted to get married, but his mother wouldn’t have it, said she’d never let him bring the girl he’d picked out to her house. Jud is a good boy, and that little Ariel Custer is a good girl. I’d like to see them get married; they’d be so happy!” She sighed and looked off dreamily through the kitchen window with wistfulness in her eyes.

“Say, you look just like you did when you was a little girl!” exclaimed the older woman. “My! but you was a pretty little girl with them blue eyes—they ain’t changed a mite—and them yellow curls like gold! ‘Member how we useta go wading in the brook? Sometimes I think I’d like to go back and be a child again. We didn’t have a care ner a pain, just blue sky and sunshine. If your mother could see you now all alone, wouldn’t she take on? She never useta let you go alone anywheres, and that was my job, always to go with you. She’d pack up bread and butter, and gooseberry jam and cookies, and we’d go down to the brook and wade, and play house by the hemlock trees, with moss fer a carpet and acorns fer cups and saucers. ‘Member? I was thinkin’ of it the other day. My! but the lappin’ round yer ankles. ‘Member that day when the big boys come along, and you slipped on the stone and fell in, and Nate Barrett pulled you out? I remember how your ma looked when we took you home and how sweet she smiled at Nate and told him she never would forget it. That was just the year before she died, wasn’t it? Your pa never did like Nate, though. I remember the time Nate brought you an orange, and your pa wouldn’t let you have it and sent him home. It seemed real unjust after his savin’ your life that way. He was a nice boy, and real fond of you.”

Emily’s cheeks had bloomed out rosily, but she controlled her voice steadily. “I think Father had some sort of misunderstanding with Nate’s father,” she apologized bravely, “about some wood. I think it was. Father was rather quick, you know.”

Emily Dillon bent her head over the apron she was mending, and Rebecca Ford cast a keen glance at the brown hair that was beginning to soften with touches of silver about the edges.

“Ever hear from Nate after he went away?”

Rebecca cast the question out with a dry casualness that saved it from being embarrassing.

The pink stole higher in the softly faded cheeks, and the sweet eyes clouded for an instant as their owner turned to gaze wistfully out of the window.

“No, I never heard,” she answered slowly. “He went out west. That is all I know.”

“Yes, he did,” said Rebecca, moving Mrs. Granniss’s robe over to make room for the towel she had just ironed, “and the other day down to the ‘Merican store I heard Ike Bowman telling Dick Smith how he and his wife met up with him last winter on a trip they was taking out to Californy. You know Ike and Dick come from over Mercer way and musta known Nate. Ike said Nate was livin’ on a ranch of his own, I forget whether ‘twas sheep or cattle or oranges, but they said he was doin’ well; had money in the bank and was well thought of, an’ he kep’ house fer himself, but he hed everything nice, an’ ‘lectric lights an’ water and everything in the house. He said it was outside of someplace they called Boy City or something like that. I remembered it ’cause it seemed so natural fer him to be anywhere round where there was boys. He never was much fer the girls, only—you know—”

Emily Dillon arose suddenly and opened the door of the hall cautiously, putting her face into the opening. The breeze from the dining-room window blew on her hot cheeks and gave her steadiness as she stood apparently listening. When she turned around, her face was entirely serene.

“I didn’t know but Harriet had forgotten something and come back,” she explained, “but I guess it was just a dog scratching at the screen door.”

Rebecca eyed her intently with satisfaction.

“My, how pretty you do look! Your cheeks is as pink as clove pinks! Your figure’s as trim as when you was fourteen. Your skirt’s an awful good fit. I always did admire that skirt. I thought if I ever got ahead I’d get me one like it someday if you didn’t mind. When you get it wore out, Em’ly, give it to me fer a keepsake. I’d like to have it hangin’ round in the closet jest to remind me o’ you.”

“Why, you can have it now, Becky!” laughed Emily, laying down her sewing and beginning to fumble with the belt fastening. “I’m tired of it anyway, and I don’t need it. I’ve got two new ones. I’d love to have you wear it. There’s quite a lot of wear in it yet, and I believe it would fit you. We’re about of a size.”

Emily unhooked her skirt and stepped out of it smiling. Rebecca Ford, iron poised in air, stood protesting delightedly.

“Oh, now, Em’ly, I couldn’t take it right off your back that way. I really couldn’t. And you lookin’ so nice in it an’ all. Besides, what’ll Harriet say?”

“It’s not Harriet’s skirt,” said Emily with dignity. “She has no call to say anything.”