 | CHAPTER II.
A LITTLE BOY. A woman in armor |  |
2. CHAPTER II.
A LITTLE BOY.
HELEN DIMMOCK entered her house,
stamped, shed her wet wrappings, and
wondered while she hung them up why
clattering little feet didn't come to meet her. She
opened the door into a small, bright room—the
parlor of her house. A glowing grate, heavy
drawn curtains, pictures half revealed, bits of
living green were in the ascendant over worn
carpet and plain furniture, and gave the place a
look of home.
Nina, in the centre of it, had a taper lifted to
light the gas. She was a girlish woman, blonde,
tiny, with silky hair and large appealing eyes.
Her face broke into bunches of dimples at sight
of Helen, but was drawn back to sudden gravity.
“There!” she cried in a whisper, turning her
head over her shoulder, “run and surprise
Aunt Helen. Quick!”
At this a manikin rose, like Jack-in-the-box,
He was perhaps four; a curly, dimpled
sailor, with anchors on his broad collar, in trousers
a couple of spans long, and boots which
might have belonged to puss.
Helen lifted her hands and stood aghast.
“Why, bless the child! He has legs!”
“An' plant'loons, an' boots!” he sputtered,
strutting, “an'—an”'—laying hold of Hope's
emblem on his collar—“yankers, Toola, yankers!”
“This is what mamma has been doing slyly!”
“Doesn't he look too cunning?” murmured
Nina, putting away the gas taper and dimpling
with enjoyment.
“She's been taking the robes off my king!
Where's Georgie?” continued Helen solemnly,
as she sat down before the grate—“my baby in
plain petticoats? I left him here this morning,
and thought I should find him when I came
home. He is gone! I shall never see him any
more!” A long sigh.
George poised on one leg, then on the other,
trying not to be infected by the sigh.
“Suppose I shall have to take up with this
new boy. Stand there, sir, and let me examine
you?”
The youth complied, his countenance glistening
with oil of delight.
“So you want to take the place of my baby
in petticoats, do you?”
George looked at his boots, jumped, and ignored
allusions to the baby in petticoats.
“What's your name?”
“Deorge Dest.”
“George Guest, what do you know?”
“Noey's Ark, an' Cain an' Abel, an' Busy
Bee, an' Who was Firs' Man, an' Now me Lammer,
an' Fadder in Promis' Lan', an' lo's of
udder sings!”
“Very well. Granted that your education is
not deficient. Yet, Mister Guest, how are you
going to take the place of my baby?”
George stared into Helen's serious face.
“Me was a baby,” he pleaded, “but me's
drowed,” rubbing his head against her shoulder
and reaching up fond arms to crush her frills.
“Say, Toola, you fink me'll dit big rike Sank
Smif, nex' week?”
“Bigger than Frank Smith, maybe. But not
next week—though soon; oh, so soon! You'll
grow too tall to sit in my lap.” She drew him
up against her.
Nina, in the next room, moving between
closet and tea-table, at these words turned her
head and looked at the boy with passion in her
wide, sad eyes.
“And when that calamity befalls,” pursued
Miss Dimmock, “what am I going to do?
Georgie, you don't love Toola?”
“Do!” he cried, throttling her to prove it.
“Why do you?”
“'Tause—'tause she's mine—'tause—did you
dit some tandy?”
Helen probed her pocket and lifted a package
high over his head. George leaped for it
and shouted. They romped and teased each
other till Frederika rang the bell for tea, when
Master Guest came out on Miss Dimmock's
shoulder, spreading sweets over her hair, and
kalsomining his own jaws a taffy color. She
had some man-like ways; one was flinging
George to this perch. She was the nearest approach
to a father that he had.
“Say, Toola,” he remarked, dabbing her ear
with a stick to command attention, “Rikka jus'
laf-f-t when her saw my plant'loons!”
He had found the name Toola for her in
babyland. Why she was Toola to him, instead
of aunt or Helen, I know not. Child dialect
must be a fragment of some forgotten language.
Perhaps he had the same reason as had another
child who seriously substituted Lud for No and
Ti for Yes. They were the only striking symbols
of her meaning.
Rikka, who stood for commands, not only
laughed again at George, but beamed upon the
whole family. She had a chronic grin. Her
German face was broad and rosy, two furry
ropes of flaxen hair hung down behind it, and
her short calico gown revealed feet which, for
size and sound, were equal to chariots. Her
eyes were mild and comforting as blue china tea-saucers,
at low tide around her teeth, for, as I
have said, Rikka was always grinning. She
grinned while her soul was being torn from
Fatherland. Gottleib Shuster, his frau, and
seven younglings came to America to find room
and to accumulate. Did you ever see an unthrifty
German? They pushed inland from
New York, until Gottleib stuck his spade into
Little Boston, sent his frau out washing, the
younger children to school, and the elder to service.
Thus Frederika rose on Helen's household
and shone like a faithful moon.
She stood by the plain table and served
with elbows and ardor, lifting every dish with
awe, and gripping glasses in fear and trembling
and eye-service as a man-pleaser, for Rikka always
saw in the far perspective her father, Gottleib
Shuster, smoking his pipe and watching her
and admonishing her—for waste of property was
grievous to his soul—“dot efery dime she
preaks etwas he gifs it to her so as neffer
vos!”
The two women did not chatter at table.
Master Guest had the air to himself, and he
made it resound. He was partially listened to,
and always answered. But, excepting with
eyes or with touching hands, they had little to
say to each other. They gave each other short,
meaning glances, and rested in company. I
dare say the day had been full of happenings to
but not through much talk.
“Mister George Guest!” shrilled Rikka,
clasping his reeling goblet, “you covers dat
wasser all ober mit floor!”
In addressing an individual, Rikka ever accorded
him his full complement of names and
titles, and would, perhaps, have added his genealogy
if she had known it.
“How can you be so careless, Georgie?”
said Nina, turning his glance toward Helen, as
mothers are wont to remind their households of
a critical paternal eye. “Aunt Helen doesn't
like rude boys!”
Georgie's heart went into his boots, and
reached out to his Toola under the table. He
pressed her knee softly, beseechingly, and made
conciliatory grimaces till she lifted her preoccupied
eyes and answered him with a look which
restored him to full vigor and appetite, so that
he fell upon cookies and stowed away a full
cargo of them in the hold under the anchors.
He revered and admired his Toola. He
studied her between potations; yea, while a
glass was inverted upon his nose he pierced that
transparent substance with a glance still fixed
upon her face. He thought her cheeks beautiful,
and always wanted to follow her eyebrow-line
with his forefinger, to snuggle his fat white
pigeons of hands in her hair. Mamma was
mamma, of course, but Toola was one who
Her hands undressed him when he began to
nod before the grate, and on her bosom he
breathed his “Now me lammer down to sreep,”
and there slept according to his word.
Rikka's chariots rolled in the kitchen amid a
battle crash of crockery. Rain dripped outside,
or dashed in sudden gusts against the windows.
But these three hung together, ripening
their love in the glow of the hearth, for Nina, on
an ottoman, leaned against Helen's knee, and
Georgie clasped unconscious baby hands around
Helen's heart.
Mother and child were grouped that moment
in their true position. They had no refuge but
her, and no other home than the house she held
over them.
Look at the hand she divides between Nina's
cheek and Georgie's clustering locks. It is
slender but strong, with a wonderful cunning.
It is the hand of a musician. Music is the
flower of her life; and the deeper its roots are
buried, the brighter this bloom bursts out.
Rent, coal, gas, grocers' bills—the strain to
make ends meet—never put bits of compositions
out of her head. Her pencil stops on accounts
to draw bars for the imprisonment of sudden
songs.
From childhood Helen's life had been against
the tide of circumstance. She fought her way
sleep, from heavy tasks, from tormentors, to
live with it. No friends doated on her gift or
placed her choicely before masters. Her only
masters were men who spoke to her through
their works. Her skill came of love and patience.
She rose to womanhood, developing
every spiritual and mental muscle.
Gulls fly long and far; they get used to the
tossing of the sea. Meadow-larks do not so,
therefore these must be sheltered inland somewhere,
while the gulls do the seafaring. Helen
had a half-sister who was early separated from
her and adopted by distant kin, and bred up to
society. During years the girls saw little of
each other, but never broke off their child-love.
The smallness, daintiness, and trustfulness of
womanhood expressed themselves in Nina.
She was not wise, but she was true; and before
this child knew good from evil she loved a man,
and sacrificed self and prospects to him. The
man was not consoled by “self,” when he found
“prospects” melting in his grasp. He felt
himself a swindled individual. Her friends disinherited
her; the fat of the offering was gone.
So after he had made her the mother of his
child he grew tired of the little clinging thing—
bored by her incense. Why does a man want
a wife in this world, anyway? Confounded
drag, you know!
Therefore, one fine morning, he lit a cigar,
and started on a little journey from which he
forgot to return.
Nina waited with Moses' patience. She
grew ghostly with hope deferred, haunted the
post-office for letters, and staved off doubt till
strangers forced her position upon her. What
did she? Raved, I suppose, and stood with
streaming hair and maddened eyes before her
fate. But people survive their agonies, and she
had a little child hanging with warm hands to
her breast and teaching her that life must ever
be renewed.
She thought of one on the earth who had
loved her through everything, and to Helen she
cried. Helen came, bundled white-faced mother
and pink-faced babe in her arms, paid their
bills, and carried them to Little Boston, where
she made a home and kept them.
Helen was organist in Grace Church at a
modest salary. She had a large class of music-pupils,
to whose various homes she trod through
all weathers. And there was a certain publisher
of music in an Eastern city who bought her
manuscript, pleased the people with it, and made
money on it. Such were her sources of revenue.
Having assumed the burden belonging to a
man, she carried it with manlike devotion,
making the dependence of her dependent ones
peculiarly close and tender. They felt themselves
on her heart—not on her hands.
Between George's hair and Cornelia's cheek
Helen's hand kept wandering. Sometimes it
was pressed stealthily against the cheek by Cornelia's
thin hands; sometimes it followed the
curve of Georgie's face down his warm little
chin; but between the two it evenly divided
itself.
Thus Saturday night crept up the clock with
them.
| CHAPTER II.
A LITTLE BOY. A woman in armor | |