Ramshackle House. Footner Hulbert

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      “Don’t act in haste, Dad,” Pen pleaded earnestly. “Something tells me you will regret it. At least sleep on it!”

      “He will be gone in the morning,” Pendleton said. A look of dismay appeared in his face. “Good Heavens! If he suspects anything he will push off at once!”

      “Would you be sorry?” Pen asked astonished.

      Pendleton was momentarily disconcerted. “Well no…of course not. But I must do my duty just the same… This is an important case. I must act with prudence. The eyes of the world will be upon us now.”

      “Oh, the newspapers!” cried Pen. “They poison our lives!”

      Pendleton was already at the door of the room. “Are you going to take him single-handed?” queried Pen.

      He hesitated, puffing a little bit to conceal his discomposure. “The negroes…” he hazarded.

      “Ellick and Theodo’!” said Pen with curling lip.

      Pendleton rubbed his bald crown. “You’re right,” he said. “Worse than useless. I’ll go to the lighthouse for Weems Locket and his assistant.”

      “You’ll have to pass the tent on the beach.”

      “I’ll row around in my skiff,” said Pendleton craftily.

      “With muffled oars?” she asked scornfully.

      “Why yes,” he said innocently. He was impervious to her scorn.

      “Dad, you must listen to me!” she cried.

      “This is man’s work,” he said, swelling up. “You must leave it to me.”

      A sick horror overcame her, that men were so insensible to the truth. What could one do with them? It was evident from the whole tone of the story she had read that men had already made up their minds as to Counsell’s guilt. Let one of them raise the cry and all were ready to give tongue as thoughtlessly as a pack of hounds. It was not the desire for justice that moved them but a sort of blood lust. They would try him with all their solemn farcical forms of justice, but none the less he would be railroaded to a shameful death!

      “Dad! You mustn’t. You don’t know what you’re doing!” she murmured, swaying.

      He stared his displeasure. “Pendleton, is it possible that you…that this young man…”

      She contrived some sort of a laugh. “What nonsense!”

      He turned out of the door saying: “I must act at once.”

      Pen gasped: “Dad!” and keeled over on a chair. The swoon was perfectly genuine, but she lost consciousness only for the space of a breath, and thereafter her wits worked with the swiftness of desperation. He was deaf to truth, to reason, to sense, very well then, she must use a woman’s weapons against him. It was Pendleton’s transports of distress that gave her her cue.

      “Penny, Penny, my child!” he was crying wildly.

      Pen’s mother had died a young woman of a heart attack, and the fear that Pen might have inherited her weakness was ever present in the good, absurd little man’s breast. It was Pen’s final weapon. Be it said to her credit she had never used it before. She put her hand to her breast without speaking.

      “Oh, my child! Look at me! Speak to me!” he implored.

      “Help me to my room!” she whispered.

      He made a manful attempt to pick her up in his arms, but she was as big as he. He could not lift her.

      “What shall I do!” he wailed, wringing his hands.

      “I can walk,” she said. “If you will help me.”

      “But the stairs!”

      “Let me lie down in the drawing-room until I feel better.”

      He helped her across the hall and Pen sank down on the old linen-covered sofa with the broken springs. She was still pressing her hand to her breast in that mute gesture that drove him to distraction. In truth she was pale enough, but it was not from heart disease.

      He made her as comfortable as he could; he brought her a glass of water. He scampered back into the hall to call up the doctor. After agitated appeals to other subscribers to get off the line he finally got Doctor Hance on Absolom’s Island. But evidently the doctor declined to make the long drive around the head of the creeks and down the impassable Neck road. Pendleton must come for him in his boat he said. In vain the distracted father pleaded that he could not leave his child; the doctor was firm.

      Finally Pendleton said: “Very well, I’ll come at once. Wait for me on the steamboat dock.”

      Pen’s breast became easier. This plan suited her very well.

      Crying that he was going to get Aunt Maria Garner, he ran out of the house. The negro cabin was some three hundred yards behind the big house.

      Pen used the interim to get her thoughts in some kind of order. She began to be conscious of a sort of exaltation. Her thoughts ran: “He’s in trouble! I shall not lose him now!… Every man’s hand is raised against him. He has no one but me to depend on. He’s mine!” There was a terrible joy in the thought of standing side by side with him against the whole world. Her breast burned with a fire of resolution. She even had a fleeting regret that he was not guilty; if he had been it would have required her to give so much more. “I love him! I love him!” she said to herself now without shame.

      Pendleton returned with Aunt Maria. Pen was aware of Ellick’s and Theodo’s black faces peering in at the windows. This interfered with her plans.

      “Send them away,” she murmured. “There is nothing they can do.”

      Aunt Maria went out on the porch and shooed her sons home.

      Coming back the big negress picked Pen up without more ado and carried her up the stairs. Aunt Maria had been the first person in the world to receive Pen into her arms, and appeared to be unconscious of any increase in her darling’s weight. Pendleton fluttered about her like a hen crying at every step:

      “Be careful! Oh, be careful!”

      Aunt Maria laid Pen down on her bed.

      In the midst of his passionate solicitude, a queer little suspicion flickered up in Pendleton’s eyes. “While I am gone for the doctor don’t let her exert herself in the slightest,” he commanded.

      Aunt Maria reassured him and he hastened out of the house.

      The instant the front door closed behind him Pen sat up in bed, and felt of her hair. Aunt Maria took it as a matter of course. Unlettered though she might be, she had a fully-developed set of instincts; she knew that all sorts of expedients were required to manage those unreasonable creatures, men, and she awaited the explanation with an air of being surprised at nothing and ready for anything.

      “I’ve got to go out,” said Pen, exchanging her evening slippers for a pair of СКАЧАТЬ