Mothers to Men. Zona Gale

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ nobody can look interesting in that row along the side of a subway car. And then I saw....'

      "She thought for a minute and shook her head.

      "'I can't tell you,' she says, 'it sounds so little and—no account. It was a little thing, just something that happened to a homely woman with a homely man, in a hat like a pirate's. But it almost—let me in. I can do it ever since—look into people, into, or through, or with ...' she tries to explain it. Then her eyes hurried up to his face, like she was afraid he might not be understanding. He just nodded, without looking at her, but she knew that he knew what she meant, and that he meant it, too.

      " ... I thought it was wonderful to hear them. I felt like an old mountain, or anything natural and real ancient, listening to the Song of Believing, sung by two that's young and just beginning. We all sing it sometime in our lives—or Lord grieve for them that never do—and I might as well own up that I catch myself humming that same song a good deal of the time, to keep myself a-going. But I love to hear it when it's just begun.

      "They was still talking when Mis' Emmons come downstairs with Christopher. Land, land but the little chap looked dear, dragging along, holding up a long-skirted lounging dress of Mis' Emmons's. I never had one of them lounging dresses. There's a lot of common things that it never seems to me I can buy for myself: a nice dressing-gown, a block of black pins, a fancy-headed hat pin, and a lemon-squeezer. I always use a loose print, and common pins, and penny black-headed hat pins, and go around squeezing my lemons by hand. I donno why it is, I'm sure.

      "'I'm—I'm—I'm—a little boy king!' Christopher stutters, all excited and satisfied, while Insley was a-packing him in the Morris chair.

      "'Rained on!' says Mis' Emmons, in that kind of dismay that's as pure feminine as if it had on skirts. 'Water isn't a circumstance to what that dear child was. He was saturated—bless him. He must have been out for perfect hours.'

      "Christopher, thinking back into the rain, mebbe, from the pleasantness of that minute, smiled and took a long breath.

      "'I walked from that other place,' he explains, important.

      "Mis' Emmons knew he was hungry, and she took Miss Sidney and Insley off to the kitchen to find something to eat, and left me with the little fellow, me spreading out his clothes in front of the fire to dry. He set real still, like being dry and being with somebody was all he wanted. And of course that is a good deal.

      "I don't always quite know how to start talking to a child. I'm always crazy to talk with them, but I'm so afraid of that shy, grave, criticizin' look they have. I feel right off like apologizing for the silly question I've just asked them. I felt that way now when Christopher looked at me, real dignified and wondering. 'What you going to be when you grow up to be a man?' was what I had just asked him. And yet I don't know what better question I could of asked him, either.

      "'I'm goin' to have a cream-puff store, an' make it all light in the window,' he answers ready.

      "'All light in the window?' I says puzzled.

      "'And I'm going to keep a church,' he goes on, 'and I'm going to make nice, black velvet for their coffings.'

      "I didn't know quite what to make of that, not being able to think back very far into his mind. So I kept still a few minutes.

      "'What was you doin' in the church?' he says to me, all at once.

      "'I don't really know. Waiting for you to come, I guess, Christopher,' I says.

      "'Was you?' he cried, delighted. 'Pretty soon I came!' He looked in the fire, sort of troubled. 'Is God outdoors nights?' he says.

      "I said a little something.

      "'Well,' he says, 'I thought he was in the house by the bed when you say your prayer. An' I thought he was in church. But I don't think he stays in the dark, much.'

      "'Mebbe you don't,' I says, 'but you wait for him in the dark, and mebbe all of a sudden some night you can tell that something is there. And just you wait for that night to come.'

      "'That's a nice game,' says Christopher, bright. 'What game is that?'

      "'I donno,' I says. 'Game of Life, I guess.'

      "He liked the sound; and he set there—little waif, full of no supper, saying it over like a chant:—

      "'Game o' life—game o' life—game o' l-i-f-e—'

      "Just at that minute I was turning his little pockets wrong side out to dry them, and in one of them I see a piece of paper, all crumpled up and wrinkled. I spread it out, and I see it had writing on. And I held it up to the light and read it, read it through twice.

      "'Christopher,' I says then, 'where did you get this piece of paper? It was in your pocket.'

      "He looked at it, blank, and then he remembered.

      "'My daddy,' he says. 'My daddy told me to give it to folks. I forgot.'

      "'To folks?' I says. 'To what folks?'

      "'To whoever ask' me anything,' he answers. 'Is it a letter?' he ask'.

      "'Yes,' I says, thoughtful, 'it's a letter.'

      "'To tell me what to do?' he ask' me.

      "'Yes,' I says, 'but more, I guess, to tell us what to do.'

      "I talked with him a little longer, so's to get his mind off the paper; and then I told him to set still a minute, and I slipped out to where the rest was.

      "The pantry had a close, spicey, foody smell of a pantry at night, when every tin chest and glass jar may be full up with nice things to eat that you'd forgot about—cocoanut and citron and cinnamon bark. In grown-up folks one of the things that is the last to grow up is the things a pantry in the evening promises. You may get over really liking raisins and sweet chocolate; you may get to wanting to eat in the evening things that you didn't use' to even know the names of and don't know them now, and yet it never gets over being nice and eventive to go out in somebody's pantry at night, especially a pantry that ain't your own.

      "'Put everything on a tray,' Mis' Emmons was directing them, 'and find the chafing-dish and let's make it in there by Christopher. Mr. Insley, can you make toast? Don't equivocate,' she says; 'can you make toast? People fib no end over what they can make. I'm always bragging about my omelettes, and yet one out of every three I make goes flat, and I know it. And yet I brag on. Beans, buckwheat, rice—what do you want to cream, Robin? Well, look in the store-room. There may be something there. We must tell Miss Sidney about Grandma Sellers' store-room, Mr. Insley,' she says, and then tells it herself, laughing like a girl, how Grandma Sellers, down at the other end of Daphne Street, has got a store-room she keeps full of staples and won't let her son's wife use a thing out. 'I've been hungry,' Grandma Sellers says, 'and I ain't ashamed of that. But if you knew how good it feels to have a still-room stocked full, you wouldn't ask me to disturb a can of nothing. I want them all there, so if I should want them.' 'She's like me,' Mis' Emmons ends, 'I always want to keep my living-room table tidy, to have a place in case I should want to lay anything down. And if I put anything on it, I snatch it up, so as to have a place in case I want to lay anything down.'

      "They was all laughing when I went out into the kitchen, and I went up to Mis' Emmons with the paper.

СКАЧАТЬ