The Actress' Daughter. May Agnes Fleming

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      "Who's there?"

      Another knock, but no reply.

      "Who's there?" repeated Miss Jerusha, sharply.

      "It's only me—please let me in," answered a faint voice.

      To Miss Jerusha it sounded like the voice of a child, but still suspicious of her visitor, she only called:

      "What do you want?"

      "Oh, please open the door—I'm so cold!" was the answer, in a faint, shivering voice that was drowned in another shriek of the storm.

      Miss Jerusha was no coward; so, first arming herself with a pair of tongs, having some vague idea she might find them useful, she pulled open the door, admitting a wild drift of wind, and snow, and sleet, and, blown in with it, the small, slight figure of a child—no one else.

      Miss Jerusha closed the door, folded her arms, and looked at her unexpected visitor. Little Fly, too, so far recovered from her terror as to lift her woolly head and favor the new-comer with an open mouth and eyes astare.

      It was a boy of some thirteen or fourteen years of age, wretchedly clad, but so white with the drifting snow that it was impossible to tell what he wore. His face was thin, pinched, and purple with the cold, his fingers red and benumbed, his teeth chattering either with fear or cold.

      As Miss Jerusha continued to stare at him in severest silence, he lifted a pair of large, dark, melancholy eyes wistfully, pleadingly, to her hard, grim face.

      "Well," said the spinster, at last, drawing a deep breath, and surveying him from head to foot—"well, young man, what do you want, if a body may ask?"

      "Please ma'am, I want you to come and see mother—she's sick," said the child, dropping his eyes under the stern gaze bent upon him.

      "Oh, you do? I hain't the least doubt of it!" said Miss Jerusha, sarcastically. "Should hev bin 'sprised if you hadn't. I was jest a sayin' I 'spected to see somebody comin' for me to see their mother or something. Nobody could die, of course, unless I trudged through the snow and storm to see 'em off. Of course, it wouldn't do to let a particerlerly stormy night come without bringing me out through it, giving me the rheumatiz in all my bones and a misery in the rest o' my limbs. Oh, no, in course it wouldn't. And who may your mother happen to be, young man?" concluded Miss Jerusha, changing with startling abruptness from the intensely ironical to the most searching severity.

      "Why, she's mother," said the boy, simply, lifting his dark, earnest eyes again to that set, rigid face; "she is in that old house over there, and she—is going to die."

      His lip quivered, his eyes filled and saddened, and he drew a long, shivering breath, and swallowed very fast to keep back his tears. Brave little heart! hiding his own grief lest it might offend that sour-looking gorgon and keep her from visiting "mother."

      Miss Jerusha's face did not relax a muscle as she kept her steely eyes fixed unwinkingly on that sad, downcast young face. It was a handsome face, too, in spite of its pinched, famished look; and Miss Jerusha, to use her own expression, "couldn't abide" handsome people.

      "And what brings your mother to that old house that ain't fit for a well-brought-up dog to die in, let alone, a 'sponsible member o' society?" asked Miss Jerusha, sharply.

      "Please, ma'am, we hadn't any place else to go."

      "Oh, you hadn't! I thought all along that was the sort of folks you was!" sneered the old lady; "there allers is tramps about, dropping down and dying in the most unheard-of places. There, be off with you now! I make a pint o' never encouraging beggars or shif'less char-ak-ters. I hain't got nothin' for your mother, and I ain't a public nuss, though people seems for to think I'm paid by the corporation for seein' sick folks out of the world. There! go!"

      "Oh! please come and see mother! indeed, indeed we ain't beggars, but mother was so tired and sick she could not go any farther, and now she is dying there all alone with only sis. Oh, please do come," and the childish voice grew sharp and wild in its pleading agony.

      The heart beating within Miss Jerusha's vestal corset was touched for a moment, and then arose thoughts of vagrants, impostors, and "shif'less" characters generally, and the heart was stilled again; the voice that answered his pleading cry was high and angry.

      "I won't, you little limb! Be off! It's my opinion your mother ain't no better than she ought to be, or she wouldn't come a dying round promiscuously in such a way. There! March!"

      With an angry jerk, the door was pulled open, and the long, lean finger of the spinster pointed out.

      Without a word he turned to go, but as he passed from the inhospitable threshold the large dark, solemn eyes were lifted to hers with a long look of unutterable reproach; then the door was closed after him with a sharp bang, and securely bolted.

      "Shif'less vagabones," muttered Miss Jerusha; "ought to be whipped as long as they can stand! Well, he's gone, and he didn't get much out of me anyway."

      Yes, Miss Jerusha, he has gone, but when will the haunting memory of that last look of unspeakable reproach go too? It rose like a remorseful ghost before her as she stood moodily gazing on the red spot that glowed like an eye of flame on the top of the hot little kitchen stove—that furnished sorrowful childish face—those dark, sad, pitiful eyes—that silent reproach, far keener than any words.

      Miss Jerusha strove to still the rebellious voice of conscience and persuade herself she had done exactly right, but never in all her life had she felt so dissatisfied with her own conduct before. As usual, when people are irritated with themselves, she felt doubly irritated with everybody else; so, by way of relieving her mind, she boxed Fly's ears, and kicked Betsey Periwinkle, who came purring affectionately around her, to the other end of the room. And then, with her temper no way sweetened by those little marks of endearment, she tramped back to the best room, and dropped sullenly into a comfortable seat by the fire.

      But owing to some cause or another, the seat was comfortable no longer. Miss Jerusha turned and twisted, and jerked herself round into every possible position, and "pooh'd" and "pshaw'd," and listened to Fly, who, out in the kitchen, had lifted up her voice and wept, and ordered her fiercely to bring in tea and hold her tongue. And poor little ill-used Fly brought it in, dropping tears into the sugar-bowl, and cream-jug, and "apple sass," and snuffling in great mental and bodily distress. And then Miss Jerusha sat down to supper, and great and mighty was the eating thereof; but still the canker within grew sorer and sorer, and would not be forgotten. Do what she would, turn which way she might, that sorrowful, childish face would rise before her like a waking nightmare. Conscience, that "still, small voice," would persist in making itself heard, until at last Miss Jerusha turned ferociously round and told conscience to mind his own business, that "she wasn't going to be fooled by no baby-faced little vagabones." And then, resuming her work, she sat down with grim determination, and knit and knit, and still the steam within got up to a high pressure, until Miss Jerusha got into a state of mind, between remorse and conscience and the heat of the fire, threatening spontaneous combustion.

      Woe to the man, woman, or child who would have presumed to cross Miss Jerusha in her present mood! Safer would it have been to

      "Beard the lion in his den,

       The Douglas in his hall,"

      than the young tornado pent up within the hermetically sealed СКАЧАТЬ