34. A Monitor In Mask
The next day after the passage of the " Duke of Orleans" being Sunday, Mother Tartrum contrived to keep rhe most conflicting rurnors a-going in regard to the condition of Colonel Bonamy. She stood at the gate all day, hailing the negro messenger, the doctor going, the doctor returning, and everybody else, in tarn, hearing where they had information, or thonght they had, and telling her latest, where they had none.
On Monday morning Whittaker rose, after a sleepless night, and thought it his duty to call at Colonel Bonamy's, and inquire after his health. If, perchance, he were dead of apoplexy, the minister could condole with the family, and if he were better, he might sympathize with the patient. Anyhow, he would have a chance to speak with Mark about his plans of life, and he might happen to meet say Amanda, or Janet, or or well, yes, but that was not to be desired at all ; though he might, by some strange accident, see Roxy herself. He did not admit to himself that the dull agony that had kept him awake the livelong night, promised to be quieted a little, if that he could but look into the face of Roxy, and hear her voice.
It was Roxy whom he met at the door, and who was startled at the wan look of his face. She asked him to sit on the line-covered front porch, and she told him, in answer to his inquiries, that Colonel Bonamy way lying quietly asleep in his room at the right ; that he had had a stroke of paralysis from apoplexy ; that his right side was quite powerless, but they hoped he would recover. She was dressed in a fresh calico, and her exertions for the sick man had brought back a little of the wonted look of peace, benevolence, and hopefulness to her face. When she could act in the direction natural to her, she was happy when her energetic spirit was thwarted, it became an energetic temper ; and the conflict between her irritability and her conscience produced the most morbid fitfulness of disposition. But now she could act with certainty and in straight lines again.
" You will not go to Texas yet ? " said Mr. Whittaker.
"We do not know anything about the future. Our duty is very plain for the present." And Roxy put an emphasis on the last words that expressed her content at present release from the complexities of her life since her marriage.
"Good morning, Mr. Whittaker," said Janet. "Papa is awake now, and we can't understand what he wants. Roxy, you'll have to come. He says he wants ' Holy,' or something of the sort."
With a hasty "excuse me," and a "good morning," Roxy disappeared through the hall into the room of the sick man.
" Poor pappy ! " said Janet, adhering to the older speech of the country in saying " pappy," " he is unable to speak plain, and he forgets the names of things. But Roxy guesses what he wants, and he wont have anybody about him but her. I suppose he meant her when he said ' Roly ' just now. He calls me 'Jim.' But the doctor thinks he'll get well. If he does, it will be from Roxy's nursing."
Mr. Whittaker rose to depart, but just then Mark came out, and the two walked down between the Lombardies together. They were a fair contrast Whittaker's straight, form, rather light complexion, studious and scrupulous look, with Mark's well-nourished figure, waving black hair, and face that betokened a dangerous love of ease audi pleasure. He told Whittaker that this stroke of his father's would perhaps do away entirely with the project of going to Texas. He would have to take charge of his father's business until his recovery.
" You will probably enter the ministry here in Indiana then ? " said Whittaker.
" I don't know what I shall do."
Whittaker thought he saw that Mark's plans were already turning to other things. For, indeed, Mark felt that now he was relieved from any committal to the public or to Roxy in the matter of ministerial work, he would rather enter upon the tempting field of activity opened up by the passing into his hands of his father's business.
The sight of Roxy had been a pleasure to Whittaker, but five minutes in the sunshine only makes a coal-pit the blacker. He went home, thinking that, after all, paralysis of the body was better than his own paralysis of heart and purpose. But to shake off his lethargy was a difficult thing. His congregation was small, and did not occupy his time. His efforts at study were vague and vaia. He had been fond of dabbling in language-study, but even his love of languages had died within him. and he turned the leaves of his dictionaries and thought of Roxy, and dreamed of might-have-beens without number.
On the afternoon of this same day, he sat with his head leaning out of the window. There was a copy of Bossuet'a " Oraisons Funebres" by his side, but even that funeste reading could not attract his attention. He had too real a sense of the fact that life was indeed ne'ant, neant, to care for Bossuet's pompous parade of its magnificent nothingness. For Bossuet manages to make nothingness seem to be something grand and substantial even royal. One would be willing to be a king, for the sake of feeling this sublime nothingness and vanity that he describes so picturesquely.
Whittaker was leaning thus out of the window, and dreamily gazing at the pale green sycamores that will grow nowhere but fast by the rivers of waters, when there lighted on his head, with a sudden blow, a paper ball. He started, looked upward. There was nothing to be seen but the garret window in the gable above. But he had hardly looked away before another ball descended upon him. He knew very well what sprite had thrown them. He looked away again, this time with a smile ; then turning his eyes upward, he caught the third paper missile full on his nose, and got sight of the mischieffull face of Twonnet, just as it was disappearing, with a sharp little cry of " Oh ! " at seeing where the ball had struck.
"You are caught," he said, and then the blushing face re-appeared, looking exceedingly sweet, draped as it was by long curls hanging forward as she leaned out of the window, like Dante Rossetti's " Blessed Demozel " looking out of heaven.
" I wouldn't have done it," she said, " but you look bo like a funeral today. I don't like to lee you that way."
" How can I help it, Twonnet ? "
Her face was serious for a moment. Then she laughed.
" To think that you would ask advice of such a giddy rattle-pate as me. Everybody knows that I'm only a mischievous little fool with a shallow head, and besides I'm only a child, as you know. " See here ! " She held a doll out of the window. "I've never quite given up dollbabies yet. I keep this old thing hid away in this end of the garret where nobody else ever comes, and I slip up here sometimes and play with it till I feel like a goose, and then I go down-stairs and try to be a woman. I wish I had sense enough and I would give you some advice.
" You've got more sense than you pretend to have. It might have been better for two or three people if I'd fol lowed your advice and not Highbury's, before. If you wont hit me with any more paper balls I'd listen to anything you say. Some things are revealed to little children."
" There, you call me a babe ! That's worse than all. Now the advice I have to give is serious and I'm not ready yet. Tou ought to hear it from some one older than I am." And she withdrew her head.
Whittaker wondered what she meant. Was she waiting to frame into words what she had to say? Or, was she trying to get courage to say what she thought ? Or, was she making game of him as she had of Highbury ?
In a minute there appeared at the garret window the face of an old woman in frilled white cap and spectacles and a red neckerchief. The face seemed wrinkled and the voice was quivering and cracked. The words were uttered slowly and solemnly and with a pronunciation a little broken with a French accent.
" You must not think about her now. It is very lad. It will do harm to everybody. Get to work and put far away these evil thoughts and wishes that can do no good. She is his and you must not think about her."
The head had disappeared before Whittaker could realize that it was but Twonnet in masquerade. He felt vexed that she had guessed the secret of his thoughts. Then he was lost in wonder at the keen penetration and deep seriousness hidden under this volatile exterior. And he was annoved that she had ventured to rebuke him, a minister, and to imply that he was likely to go wrong. Then he honestly tried to see the truth of what she said. At any rate he resolved to think no more of Roxy.
But when the human mind gets down hub-deep into a rut of thinking, it is hard to lift it out. He could not study, or walk, or talk, without this numb paialysis of wishing and thinking creeping over hi in. It was in vain that he studied the tables of Italian definitions hung about his room. He could not remember them. He preferred reading Petrarch's sonnets to Lady Laura, which he had forbidden himself. This struggle went on for two days. Twonnet did not take any notice of it. She laughed and sang French rondeaux and English songs, and gamboled with the children, and chatted in superficial fashion with Mr. Whittaker, and scolded at things about the house that went wrong, until he was more than ever puzzled by this doubleness. He could not explain it. and he contented himself with calling her in his thoughts " that witch of a girl." He would have been yet more perplexed had he known that after her merriest laughter and her wildest frolics with the children, and her most bubbling and provoking banter, she would now and then elude the little sister " Teet " in some dark corner and escape to the garret where she could have a good cry under the rafters. Then she would take jp the old doll and caress it, saying, as the tears slowly dropped upon it :
" Nobody cares for me. Everybody loves Roxy because she is good. But nobody loves Twoimet poor, wild, foolish, empty-headed Twonnet. Nobody loves me but you, old dolly."
And all this in the teeth and eyes of the fact that Dan Barlow, the newly arrived young lawyer, had walked home with her from church the Sunday evening before, that more than one other would have offered her company at any time if there had not been a sly twinkle in her eyes that made them afraid of Twonnet's ridicule. But she cried in this inconsistent fashion and declared that nobody loved her. And five minutes after she would be dashing about the house, broom in hand, singing in a wild, reckless, cat-bird-like cheerfulness :
" Every lassie has her laddie,
Ne'er a ane hae I."
But beneath all this mirth and banter of the girl, Whit taker knew now that there lay the deep seriousness of the woman. How deep and serious her nature might be he could not tell. Conscience, shrewdness, courage these he had seen. What else was there ? At any rate he knew that Twonnet was expecting something of him. The vivacious, incomprehensible Swiss prattler had become a monitor to the grave minister, all the more efficient that she said ro more than enough. So it came to pass that the soul of the man awoke and said to himself: "Whittaker, y)u are bad. You are thinking and dreaming about another man's wife and what might have been.
This is a good way to be worthless or wicked. You must get to work."
And after a good lecture to himself he said to Twonnet :
" I am going to start a school."
" That's good ; I will go. But I am a dull scholar. I hate arithmetic and all my teachers hate me."
That was all the response he got.