Reels and Spindles: A Story of Mill Life

CHAPTER III.

FAIRACRES

"How dreadful! Is he killed?" cried Amy, pale with fear.

For the indignant Pepita had planted her active hoof squarely in the mouth of the lad who was tormenting her, and had knocked him backward from the stair. During a brief time he lay, dazed by the blow, with a trickle of blood rapidly staining his features.

"Wait. Don't get frightened. There may not be much damage done. That boy has as many lives as a cat. I'll see to him," returned Mr. Metcalf, quietly.

With a strong, kindly touch, the gentleman helped the unfortunate "Bony" to his feet; whereupon, the lad flew into a fearful rage and started up the ladder, in pursuit of the burro.

His movement roused Amy also to action, and she followed him so swiftly that she reached the top, and the broad road there, almost as soon as he. Before then, however, he had caught up a barrel stave, which happened to be lying in a too convenient spot, and was belaboring Pepita with all his might.

The latter, after her ascent of the steps, had remained standing at their head, gazing dreamily downward in her own demure manner and evidently considering that she had quite properly adjusted matters.

Amy succeeded in reaching them just as the third blow was descending upon Pepita's flank and by a deft movement arrested the stroke. The stave flew out of the lad's grasp, and his astonishment at her strength cooled his anger.

"Don't you strike her again! You shall not. Aren't you ashamed of yourself to beat a helpless creature like that? If you are still able to act so – so brutally – you can't be much hurt. I was terribly frightened and sorry, but now I don't care. She served you just right."

Then the red Tam dropped on the burro's neck and a torrent of affectionate words was poured into the creature's indifferent ears.

"Sho! Huckleberries! She's drove my teeth clean down my throat!" slowly ejaculated the youth.

This was about half true. One tooth had been broken out by the blow upon the lad's jaw and another had been loosened. The copious bleeding of these wounds gave him a startling appearance, and when Amy looked up a shudder of repellent pity ran through her. Then she seemed to see her mother's gentle face and, conquering the aversion she felt, she pulled out her handkerchief and began to wipe the discolored, ill-shapen lips of the half-wit.

He submitted to the operation in amazed silence. Even Mr. Metcalf had nothing to say, though he watched with keen interest the outcome of this little transaction.

"There. If I had some water, I could do it nicely. I'm sorry you were hurt. But don't you ever strike my Pepita again! Next time she might kill you. It was her only way of defending herself, for she hasn't sense like you – "

Regarding the imbecile face before her, Amy's sentence ended in confusion. Nor did it add to her comfort that the unhappy fellow now began to weep in a whimpering sort of way, that might have suited a spoiled child of a few years.

"Why, what is it? Do you suffer so terribly! Oh! I am so sorry!"

"There, my dear Miss Amy, let it pass. This is only one of 'Bony's' charming habits," said Mr. Metcalf, smiling derisively. "He has rather outgrown his age. Haven't you, lad? Well, it's all right. I'm sorry for you. You're sorry for yourself; and our young lady here is sorry for us both. Come. Brace up. Be a man. What would the 'boys' think of you, in this uniform, crying? Eh!"

"Huh – huh – huh – huh-h-h!" responded the natural.

"I'm going home, Bonaparte. Good night. Thank you for the leaves. Mr. Metcalf, will you tell me the nearest way, please?"

Amy picked up the fallen bundle of boughs, which the superintendent had brought with him from the yard below, and laid them upon Pepita's back.

"These have given us some trouble, but they are still too beautiful to lose."

The gentleman directed her, courteously escorted her through the gateway, which bore another of those prohibitory "No Admittance" signs, and watched her walk briskly away, thinking what a bright feature of the landscape she made.

"Not a beautiful girl, by any means, yet one of the most wholesome, honest, and engaging ones who ever stepped foot within this old mill. Odd, too! A Kaye. I wonder if she will ever come again to what, if all had gone as was expected, might easily have been her own great property. Well, that was pretty to see: the way in which she wiped the face of poor 'Bony.' The lad grows sillier every day, it seems, and the 'boys' are making him worse by their nonsense. Where is he now? I'll have a talk with him and try to keep him out of the parades. They are not good for him," reflected Mr. Metcalf.

But the talk had to be postponed; for there was "Bony" already far along the road toward Fairacres, following doggedly in Amy's footsteps, though she repeatedly assured him that she could manage quite well without him and preferred to be alone.

"No, I'm going," he asserted; and when she could not dissuade him, she gave up trying to do so and led him to talk of himself – his most interesting subject. So that, by the time they had come to the front of the old mansion, she knew his simple history completely, and her pity had almost outgrown her aversion.

"See, Cleena! Cleena Keegan! See what I have brought!"

The shout summoned a large woman to the door, who threw up her arms with the answering cry: —

"Faith, an' I thought you was lost! Whatever has kept you such gait, Miss Amy?"

"Oh! adventures. Truly, Cleena. Real, regular adventures. See my leaves? See this lad! He got them for me. He is Bonaparte Jimpson."

"An' a curious spalpeen that same," casting a suspicious glance over the youth's strange attire.

"I'm Bonaparte Lafayette Jimpson," he explained gravely and, to Amy's surprise, timidly.

"The mischief, you be! An' what's Napoleon Bonyparty's gineral's pleasure at Fairacres, the night?"

"Cleena, wait. I'll tell you. Yes, you will have time enough. The train isn't due till after six, and they'll be a half-hour longer getting home from the station. Sit you down, Goodsoul, just for one little bit of minute. The scrubbing must surely be done by now. Isn't it?"

"Humph! The scrubbin's never done in this dirty world. Well, an' what is it? Be quick with you!"

Amy coaxed the old servant down upon the doorstep of the freshly cleaned kitchen, whither they had now gone, and speedily narrated her afternoon's experiences.

"So you see, dear old Scrubbub, that he must have a fine feast of the best there is in the house. Besides," and she pulled the other's ear down to her lips, "I'd just like to have father see him. He isn't pretty, of course, but he's new. I wonder, could he pose?"

"Pose, is it?" groaned Cleena, with a comical grimace. "Pose! Sure, it's I minds the time when the master caught me diggin' petaties an' kept me standin', with me foot on me spade, an' me spade in the ground, an' me body this shape," bending forward, "till I got such a crick in me back I couldn't walk upright, for better 'n a week. Posin', indeed! Well, he might. He looks fit for naught else."

"Pooh, Cleena! you know it's an honor. But, come now, I want to put all these leaves up in the dining room. Will you help me?"

"Will I what – such truck! No, me colleen, not a help helps Cleena the day."

"Oh, yes, you will. I'll bring the step ladder and hand them to you, while you put them over the doors and windows. We'll make the place a perfect bower of cheerfulness, and if our dears, when they come – Oh, Cleena! they may need the cheerfulness very much."

However, it was not Amy's habit to borrow trouble, and she ran lightly away, calling to the boy on the porch: —

"I'm going to put Pepita in the stable. If you'd like to see her brother, you can come with me."

"Sho! Ain't he black!" exclaimed "Bony," as they led Pepita into the great stables and he discovered Balaam.

Amid ample accommodations for a dozen horses, the two burros seemed almost lost; but they occupied adjoining box-stalls which, if rather time-worn and broken, were still most roomy and comfortable.

"Why, huckleberries! It's bigger 'n the mill sheds. And only them two. Will he swop?"

As he asked this question the lad pulled from his pocket a miscellaneous collection of objects, and invitingly displayed them upon the palm of his long hand.

"No, I think not. I fancy we are not a 'swopping' family. But I must choose some name for you besides that dreadful 'Bony.' Bonaparte is too long. So is Lafayette. Let me see. Suppose we make it just 'Fayette'? That is short and pleasant to speak, and I like my friends to have nice names. Would you like it?"

"Bully!"

"Why – why, Fayette! That doesn't sound well."

"Sho! Don't it? One all black an' t'other all white. Hum."

"Br-r-r-ray! Ah-umph – h-umph – umph – mph – ph – h-h-h!" observed Balaam to his sister.

Fayette laughed, so noisily and uproariously that the burros brayed again; and they kept up this amusing concert until Amy had brought each an armful of hay, and had directed her companion where to find a pail and water for their drink.

Then they returned to the house and beheld Cleena in the dining room, already mounted upon the step-ladder, trying to arrange the branches with more regard to the saving of time than to grace. But she made to the picture-seeing girl a very attractive "bit."

Indeed, Cleena Keegan was a person of sufficient importance to warrant a paragraph quite to herself. She was a woman of middle age, with a wealth of curling, iron-gray hair, which she tucked away under a plain white cap. Her figure was large and grandly developed. She wore a blue print gown, carefully pinned back about her hips, thus disclosing her scarlet flannel petticoat; both garments faded by time and frequent washings to a most "artistic" hue. Upon her shoulders was folded a kerchief of coarse white muslin, spotlessly clean; and as she stood, poised among the glowing branches, with the dying sunset light touching her honest face to unusual brightness, she was well worth Amy's eager wish: —

"Oh, Cleena! That father were only here to see and paint you just as you are this minute!"

"Humph! It's meself's glad he isn't."

"Why! That's not nice of you, Goodsoul. Yet it's a great pity that a body who is such a 'study' in herself can't fix those branches a bit more gracefully. You're jamming the leaves all into a little mess and showing the stems! Oh, Cleena, I wonder if I can't reach them."

"Truth, it's meself's willin' you should try. Belike I'd be handier at the pullin' them down nor the puttin' them up."

With head erect she descended from the ladder, and stood, arms akimbo, regarding the results of her labor. Even to her it suggested something not "artistic," and at Fairacres anything inartistic was duly frowned upon.

"Faith, it's not the way the master would do it, I see that, but – "

Before either she could finish her sentence or Amy mount the ladder, Fayette had run to its top and stood there rapidly pulling from the wall the branches Cleena had arranged. Thrusting all but one between his knees, he fastened that over the window-frame so deftly and charmingly that Amy clapped her hands in delight.

"Oh, that's lovely! Try another – and another!"

He obeyed. His vacant face flushed with a glow of enthusiasm equalling, if not exceeding her own, and even Cleena spent some moments of her rarely wasted time in watching him.

Her own face had again become a "study," yet of a sort to provoke a smile, as her gaze roved from his handiwork, over the length of his ungainly person, to rest upon his bare and not too cleanly feet; then travelled slowly upward again, trying to settle once for all his rightful position in the social scale. Her thought might have been thus expressed: —

"His foot's heathen. His head's the same. His clothes – they're the heathenest of all. I'd disdain 'em. But, arrah musha! The hand of him! The master himself couldn't better them fixin's."

Then she hastened to her kitchen, and soon the appetizing odor of a well-cooked meal was in their nostrils, and the two young decorators realized that they were very hungry.

"There, that will do. It is perfect. Thank you ever and ever so much, Fayette."

"Shucks!"

"Now I'll light the candles. I always do when the people are coming home from town. They go there quite often; at least father does, though mother hasn't been before in months. The candles are terrible extravagance, Cleena says, but they're so pretty."

Fayette carried away the step-ladder, then returned to watch Amy as she set the old-fashioned candelabra upon the already daintily spread table. She had bordered the white cloth with some of the most dazzling-hued leaves, and when the wax tapers threw their soft radiance over the whole charming interior, poor Fayette felt his weak head grow dizzy and confused by the beauty of it all.

He dimly realized that he was in a new world, which soothed and appealed to his clouded nature as did the birds and the flowers. That impulse, which he could neither express nor understand, which sent him so constantly into the woods and solitudes, was gratified now. This was as delightful as his favorite pastime of lying upon the grass and gazing upward into the sunlit sky.

"Sho! It's pretty. I like it. I'm glad I come. I'll stay."

Amy had almost forgotten him.

"Yes, of course you'll stay till after supper. I'll – "

But a shadow fell across the threshold of the still open door, and looking up she saw a stranger, – an old man of rather forbidding aspect, whose glance passed swiftly from herself to the youth near the big fireplace.

There followed an instant of mutual and frowning recognition between these two; then Fayette disappeared through an inner doorway, while the newcomer remained at the entrance, his hat in his hand, and an assumed suavity in his manner.

Yet there was still a note of anger in the tone with which he observed: —

"I have called upon business with Cuthbert Kaye. Your father, I presume. Is he at home?"

"Not yet. He went to the city, yesterday, with my mother and brother. I expect them back on the next train. Will you come in?"

"Yes, thank you. I'll wait."

He accepted the great chair Amy rolled toward him, and let his gaze slowly sweep the cheerful apartment. Yet he knew it by heart, already, and his face brightened as he saw how little it had been changed since these many years. Apparently not one of its quaint and rich old furnishings was missing, and the passage of time had but added to the remembered charm of the place. Even the chair into which he sank had a familiar feel, as if his back had long ago fitted to those simple, comfortable lines. The antique candelabra – how often had he watched his grandmother's fingers polishing them to brilliancy.

But the girl was new. The only modern thing, save the freshly gathered leaves, – which also seemed but a memory of his childhood, – to remind him of the present and the errand upon which he had come.

"She's Kaye, though, to the bone. Dark, crisp hair. Those short curls are like a boy's. Her eyes are the Kaye eyes; and that toss of her head, like her great-grandmother come to life again. All our women had it. Ah, well. If things – hmm."

The visitor became absorbed in his thoughts, and his wandering gaze came home to rest, seemingly, upon the tips of his own boots, for he did not notice when Amy disappeared and Cleena entered.

"Alanna! But this is a smart decent piece of work, now, isn't it?"

At this sudden and derisive remark the gentleman looked up.

"Oh, ho! You, is it?"

"Faith an' it is. An' likin' to know what brings you this gait."

"Keep a civil tongue in your head, woman. I'm not to be put off this time by any false stories. Here I am, and here I shall stay until I see your master."

Steadily and silently confronting one another for some seconds, they measured each other's wills. The unwelcome guest was not sure but that the woman would lift him bodily and fling him out of doors. She looked ably strong and quite minded so to do; but, after a further reflection, she appeared to change her mind as well as her tone.

"Hmm – yes. There's no irreverence meant. Come in by, to the library yon. There's pictures to see, an' books a plenty. Leave the master be, like a gentleman now, as you was born, till he eats his meal in peace. A body can bear trouble better on a full stummick nor an empty. Come by."

To his own amazement, the caller rose and followed her. He told himself he was a simpleton to have left the cheery supper room and the certain presence of the man he wished to see for an hour of solitary waiting in an unknown place.

"Library." There had been none in his grandmother's time. But he knew it well – from the outside. A detached, strong little building, of hewn stone like the mansion; one of Cuthbert Kaye's many "follies." Planned with a studio on the second floor above the spacious book room on the first. Well, it made the property so much the more valuable. Yes, after all, he would better visit it while the coast was clear.

"Sure, sir, an' it's here the master do be spending all his time. Here an' above. You was never in the paintin' study, now was you?" she asked suggestively.

"No."

"Alanna! An' you two of the same blood!"

"Hmm – yes, of course I'll go, since I'm here."

So he followed her up the graceful staircase, with its softly covered steps, and into a room which rumor said was worth travelling far to see; and though thus prepared, its half-revealed beauty astonished him.

"Well, it is a fine apartment. It must have cost a power of money. And – it explains many things."

"Money, says you? It did that," echoed Cleena, with a pious sigh.

"Yes, yes. I suppose so. It's rather dark, however, for me to see as I would like. Isn't there a lamp here?"

"Lamp, is it? Askin' pardon for forgettin' me manners, but it's never a lamp will the master have left in this place. If one comes, indeed, 'tis himself brings it. Forby, on occasion like this, I'll fetch it an' take all the blame for that same. It's below. I'll step down;" and she departed hastily, leaving him alone.

CHAPTER IV.

HALLAM

As the stage from the railway station rolled up to Fairacres, Amy was waiting upon the wide porch. She had put on her daintiest frock, white, of course, since her father liked her to wear no other sort of dress; and she had twisted sprays of scarlet woodbine through her dark hair and about her shoulders. Before the vehicle stopped, she called out eagerly: —

"Oh! how glad I am you're here! It's been such a long two days! Are you all well? Is everything right, mother dearest? Did you have a nice time?"

The father reached her first, remarking, with a fond smile: —

"You make a sweet picture, daughter, with that open doorway behind you, with the firelight and candlelight, and – Ah! did you speak, Salome?" turning toward his wife.

"The man is waiting, Cuthbert. Has thee the money for him?"

Mr. Kaye fumbled in one pocket, tried another, frowned, and appeared distressed.

"Never mind, dear. Hallam can attend to it."

But the crippled lad had already swung himself over the steps upon his crutches, and the artist remarked, with a fresh annoyance: —

"He must put it in the bill, Salome. Why always bother with such trifles? If one could only get away from the thought and sound of money. Its sordidness is the torment of one's life."

Mrs. Kaye sighed, as she paid the hackman from her own purse, then followed her husband into the house.

His face had already lost all its expression of annoyance, and now beamed with satisfaction as he regarded Amy's efforts to celebrate the home-coming.

"Good child. Good little girl. Truly, very beautiful. Why, my darling, you'll be an artist yourself some day, I believe."

"The saints forbid!" murmured a voice from the further side the room, where Cleena had appeared, bearing a tray of dishes.

Nobody heard the ejaculation, however, save Hallam, and he didn't count, being of one and the same opinion as the old serving-woman. All the lad's ambitions lay toward a ceaseless activity, and the coloring of canvases attracted him less than even the meanest kind of manual labor.

Nor did Amy share in her father's hope, though she loved art for his sake, and she answered, with conviction: —

"Never such an one as you are, father dear."

But all this while the daughter's eyes had been studying her mother's face, with the keen penetration of sympathy, and the whispered advice: —

"Be especially gentle with Hallam to-night, my child," but confirmed the answer she had already found in that careworn countenance.

Yet Hallam showed no need of consolation as he sturdily stumped across the room and exclaimed, cheerfully enough: —

"Fetch on the provender, Goodsoul. We're all as hungry as bears. What's for us?"

"What should be? save the best rasher of bacon ever blessed eyesight, with tea-biscuits galore. For second course – My! but that pullet was a tender bird, so she was. An' them east-lot petaties would fain melt in your mouth, they're so hot-foot to be ate."