The Star in the Window (Stokes)/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
AS she reëntered her mother's room, she observed at a glance that something important had happened since she left it an hour ago. Aunt Emma had removed all the pins from her mouth. Her mother's usually lusterless eyes were bright, and there was a little color in her pasty cheeks. Aunt Augusta was clearing up her work, putting away spools, and rolling up bits of silk and tape and binding with expressive jerks and jabs.
Reba asked what had happened and learned in one brief, inflamed announcement that some one was coming to supper!
No one ever came to supper!
"But who?" she gasped.
"It's nobody we invited. You may be sure of that," Aunt Augusta replied. "Patience Patterson never did have any manners—pushing herself into everybody's face and eyes! I told her we had an invalid up here, and couldn't have company to meals, the way we'd like, but to come and make us a call sometime. She said we mustn't make company of her; she'd come straight up and have supper with us, and stay till her train went back to Union at nine-fifty to-night. She's off to Tampico, or Porto Rico—some outlandish place—to-morrow, and this would be the only chance she'd get, she said," Aunt Augusta's voice assumed a scornful, mincing tone, "of seeing all us good people. Hypocrite! I started to explain that excitement was bad for Eunice, but she cut me right off and hung up, and said she'd be up about half-past six. I don't even know where she telephoned from."
"Shall I go and get Mrs. O'Brien?" asked Reba.
Mrs. O'Brien was a very old Irish woman who washed sheets, towels, and flannels at the Jerome house every other week, and on the two or three occasions when the minister and his wife had been invited for Sunday dinner she had cleared the table and brought on the dessert.
"No, you needn't," snapped Aunt Augusta. "We'll put on no lugs for Patience Patterson."
"Oh, do let me run down to Buffum's and get a quart of oysters for a stew," pleaded Reba. "It won't take me ten minutes."
"Certainly not," replied Aunt Augusta. "Cold lamb, and bread and butter's good enough for any one."
"Well, but I can put on the best china, can't I, and the silver teapot?"
"No, you can't. We'll put on nothing extra. Good lands, Reba, Patience Patterson's nobody."
"I know, but I thought—being company—we have so little chance to use the best china anyhow—I thought"
"Now, don't tease, Reba. You can light up the parlor, and that's all."
Patience Patterson was a second cousin to Reba's father. The kinship was not close, but relatives on her father's side were scarce, and the prospect of entertaining Cousin Pattie, as she was known in Ridgefield, was an event to Reba.
Reba was only thirteen years old when she saw Cousin Pattie last, but she could recall her perfectly—a large, shapeless woman—short-breathed and wheezy, and with a very red face. Reba had liked to hear her laugh. When anything particularly amused Cousin Pattie, she would snort like a young pig when she drew in her breath. She was well-known in Ridgefield. Although she hadn't been there for years now, she hadn't allowed her native town to forget her. Every half-year or so, during the long intervals between her flying visits, she was in the habit of sending letters to be read out-loud to the Ladies' Society at the Congregational Church, at their Friday afternoon meetings, describing the strange sights and customs in the foreign countries which she took such delight in exploring. Cousin Pattie's letters never failed to arouse in Aunt Augusta expressions of disapproval. "My lands," she'd scoff, "I can remember when Patience Patterson worked in the mills, her folks were so poor, and now she's writing letters to the Ladies' Society about the things she's done, and the things she's seen, and calling us 'dear old home friends!' Slush!"
The letters were written in an offhand, careless style, with many dashes and underlines and unfinished sentences. They bristled with superlatives and exclamation-points, from start to finish. Steeped in the New England tradition that restraint is a virtue, the letters perplexed Reba. She didn't think them quite nice; but just as she had found their author's laughter, with the grunt in it, captivating, as a child, so the letters fascinated her. She always wished she could hear them twice.
When Cousin Pattie arrived at her Cousin David's that night, she was panting so, that she couldn't say a word for ten minutes at least. She could simply smile and nod, and make motions with her hands on her chest, in the region of her windpipe. Finally she was able to gasp something about "the hill," "bless me," and "my breath."
It seemed to Reba that she was heavier than ever. She must weigh two hundred and fifty pounds, Reba thought. When she was able to take off her things, she exposed hands like the butcher's, with fat pink fingers, with rings on them that made the flesh bulge. Her arms were like great soft legs, and she called attention to her wrists, that looked like swollen ankles, by wearing a leather strap tightly around one with a watch on it. Her face was as red as Reba remembered it. There were dark purple veins in her cheeks which looked like rivers and tributaries in a geography book. Her hair was carelessly knotted—no wonder! Probably she couldn't reach it very well with those arms—and the waterfalls of lace down the front of her broad bosom were not very clean. She wheezed and laughed continually in the same old way. Before she had been in the house half an hour, Reba caught the ridiculous little grunt. But nobody else laughed with Cousin Pattie. Her abundant good-nature could not melt the frigid reception that had been prepared for her.
David was not in evidence at all when she first arrived. He had shut himself up in his room upon his arrival from the factory (he looked upon Cousin Pattie's advent as a personal injury) and he stayed there until Aunt Augusta's "David! David! Supper!" crescendoing from the newel-post had routed him out.
All through the evening meal it seemed to Reba as if she couldn't endure it if some one didn't say something besides "Yes," and "No," and "You don't say!" in response to Cousin Pattie's tireless attempts at friendliness. David didn't give voice to as much as that. At the head of the table, with his shoulders stooped over his plate, and his head bent, as if he were saying a continual grace, David simply glowered as he stared into his plate and shoveled food, snapping now and then, like an angry animal, at his knife. Whenever David felt out-of-sorts, he ate with his knife. It took the place of swearing with him. Also, as an expression of displeasure, he would frequently don a disreputable old smoking-jacket, which Aunt Augusta had long ago declared she'd never put needle to again. He wore it to-night. Reba had blushed scarlet when she saw him appear in the dining-room in the frayed old garment. It was a trying meal for Reba.
But Cousin Pattie didn't seem to mind it. She kept up a steady flow of cheerful talk, as she folded thin slice after thin slice of cold lamb on the end of her fork, depositing it all at once, safely into her large mouth, and washing it down with water, to which she helped herself frequently from the glass bottle at her left.
"I wasn't going to leave this corner of the world," she explained early in the meal, "till I'd dropped in on you folks, and broken bread with you. I said to Hattie Miles—I've been stopping with Hattie for two weeks down in Union—I'm going up to see my Auntie Bliss, and Cousin David and his folks, if it takes a leg. I'm off to San Domingo day after to-morrow," she tucked in. "Sudden," she went on. "Didn't know I was going till yesterday afternoon. Thought I had all sorts of time to get all caught-up and acquainted again with all my old Ridgefield friends. I told Hattie this morning I was bound to put in my last day 'Ridgefielding'! So I've been doing the town all day. Came up on an early train, made eleven calls in all, and had a real good time. Dinner this noon with Auntie Bliss, nearest relative on my mother's side, and now supper with Cousin David and you folks. It's just splendid to get back to these blessed old hills," she exclaimed. "No place like home, you know," she chuckled. "No place in this world like New England. That's what I say! Bless me, I wouldn't have missed this little chance to see you good people for anything in this world. No, I wouldn't, I declare! Seems to me Eunice is looking pretty well."
"Well, I'm not feeling so," objected the invalid.
"What a shame! My heart just goes out to anybody tied to a chair." It wasn't a topic that was ever discussed, and Aunt Augusta's eyes grew dark and angry. "Twenty-five years! Bless me! I couldn't be so patient. You're just a wonder, Eunice. Anyhow, Augusta, the years don't seem to have made much impression on you. You don't look a day older."
"Well, I am!" snapped Aunt Augusta.
"The only change I see," unscathed Cousin Pattie went on, "is in Reba here. She was just a child when I was here before, and now I expect she's old enough to get married. Perhaps she's going to be, for all I know. Perhaps the day's all set. Dear me! You know the girls over there in Japan get married—" and she launched forth on a long lively description of Japanese customs. David, at this juncture, with no excuse or word of explanation, shoved back his chair and went out of the room. Cousin Pattie at that only tucked in, "David hasn't changed a mite," and continued with her narrative.
It was when she had finished the carefully allotted two halves of stewed pears in her pressed-glass sauce-dish that she began gathering up all the soiled silver within reach and piling it on a plate nearby.
"Come on, you've got to let me help clear up," she said. "I haven't forgotten how. Not by a long shot. Glasses and silver first; china next; then pots and pans; dish-towels last. Let me wash. I like the feeling of dishwater trickling through my fingers. Brings back my girlhood. Come, Reba, pass over your silver."
"Reba," broke in Aunt Augusta sternly, "you take your Cousin Patience into the parlor. We'll attend to things here!" she announced.
"Wanted to get into the kitchen, and see what sort of a place that was, I suppose," contemptuously she went on, when Reba had obediently led Cousin Pattie out of the dining-room. "Wanted to get her eye into our refrigerator, no doubt, and tell that Hattie Miles what we got in it. Well, I guess not! I won't have Patience Patterson step foot in my kitchen." Then, "Reba!" she called abruptly. "Reba!"
"Yes," came from the front hall.
"Your mother's pills."
"Nobody ever thinks of me when there's anything else to think about," the invalid had been whining.
"I'll be back in a minute," said Reba to Cousin Pattie. "Will you wait in the parlor till I come?" she asked politely.