The Lock and Key Library: The most interesting stories of all nations: American. Коллектив авторов

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СКАЧАТЬ for nothing, when he had wasted all the money father left him."

      Rebecca nodded with a fearful glance at the door.

      When Emma spoke again her voice was still more hushed. "I know how he felt," said she. "He had always been so prudent himself, and worked hard at his profession, and there Edward had never done anything but spend, and it must have looked to him as if Edward was living at his expense, but he wasn't."

      "No, he wasn't."

      "It was the way father left the property – that all the children should have a home here – and he left money enough to buy the food and all if we had all come home."

      "Yes."

      "And Edward had a right here according to the terms of father's will, and Henry ought to have remembered it."

      "Yes, he ought."

      "Did he say hard things?"

      "Pretty hard from what I heard."

      "What?"

      "I heard him tell Edward that he had no business here at all, and he thought he had better go away."

      "What did Edward say?"

      "That he would stay here as long as he lived and afterward, too, if he was a mind to, and he would like to see Henry get him out; and then – "

      "What?"

      "Then he laughed."

      "What did Henry say."

      "I didn't hear him say anything, but – "

      "But what?"

      "I saw him when he came out of this room."

      "He looked mad?"

      "You've seen him when he looked so."

      Emma nodded; the expression of horror on her face had deepened.

      "Do you remember that time he killed the cat because she had scratched him?"

      "Yes. Don't!"

      Then Caroline reentered the room. She went up to the stove in which a wood fire was burning – it was a cold, gloomy day of fall – and she warmed her hands, which were reddened from recent washing in cold water.

      Mrs. Brigham looked at her and hesitated. She glanced at the door, which was still ajar, as it did not easily shut, being still swollen with the damp weather of the summer. She rose and pushed it together with a sharp thud which jarred the house. Rebecca started painfully with a half exclamation. Caroline looked at her disapprovingly.

      "It is time you controlled your nerves, Rebecca," said she.

      "I can't help it," replied Rebecca with almost a wail. "I am nervous. There's enough to make me so, the Lord knows."

      "What do you mean by that?" asked Caroline with her old air of sharp suspicion, and something between challenge and dread of its being met.

      Rebecca shrank.

      "Nothing," said she.

      "Then I wouldn't keep speaking in such a fashion."

      Emma, returning from the closed door, said imperiously that it ought to be fixed, it shut so hard.

      "It will shrink enough after we have had the fire a few days," replied Caroline. "If anything is done to it it will be too small; there will be a crack at the sill."

      "I think Henry ought to be ashamed of himself for talking as he did to Edward," said Mrs. Brigham abruptly, but in an almost inaudible voice.

      "Hush!" said Caroline, with a glance of actual fear at the closed door.

      "Nobody can hear with the door shut."

      "He must have heard it shut, and – "

      "Well, I can say what I want to before he comes down, and I am not afraid of him."

      "I don't know who is afraid of him! What reason is there for anybody to be afraid of Henry?" demanded Caroline.

      Mrs. Brigham trembled before her sister's look. Rebecca gasped again. "There isn't any reason, of course. Why should there be?"

      "I wouldn't speak so, then. Somebody might overhear you and think it was queer. Miranda Joy is in the south parlor sewing, you know."

      "I thought she went upstairs to stitch on the machine."

      "She did, but she has come down again."

      "Well, she can't hear."

      "I say again I think Henry ought to be ashamed of himself. I shouldn't think he'd ever get over it, having words with poor Edward the very night before he died. Edward was enough sight better disposition than Henry, with all his faults. I always thought a great deal of poor Edward, myself."

      Mrs. Brigham passed a large fluff of handkerchief across her eyes;

      Rebecca sobbed outright.

      "Rebecca," said Caroline admonishingly, keeping her mouth stiff and swallowing determinately.

      "I never heard him speak a cross word, unless he spoke cross to Henry that last night. I don't know, but he did from what Rebecca overheard," said Emma.

      "Not so much cross as sort of soft, and sweet, and aggravating," sniffled Rebecca.

      "He never raised his voice," said Caroline; "but he had his way."

      "He had a right to in this case."

      "Yes, he did."

      "He had as much of a right here as Henry," sobbed Rebecca, "and now he's gone, and he will never be in this home that poor father left him and the rest of us again."

      "What do you really think ailed Edward?" asked Emma in hardly more than a whisper. She did not look at her sister.

      Caroline sat down in a nearby armchair, and clutched the arms convulsively until her thin knuckles whitened.

      "I told you," said she.

      Rebecca held her handkerchief over her mouth, and looked at them above it with terrified, streaming eyes.

      "I know you said that he had terrible pains in his stomach, and had spasms, but what do you think made him have them?"

      "Henry called it gastric trouble. You know Edward has always had dyspepsia."

      Mrs. Brigham hesitated a moment. "Was there any talk of an – examination?" said she.

      Then Caroline turned on her fiercely.

      "No," said she in a terrible voice. "No."

      The three sisters' souls seemed to meet on one common ground of terrified understanding through their eyes. The old-fashioned latch of the door was heard to rattle, and a push from without made the door shake ineffectually. "It's Henry," Rebecca sighed rather than whispered. Mrs. Brigham settled herself after a noiseless rush across the floor into her rocking-chair again, and was swaying back and СКАЧАТЬ