She sets down and folds her arms, like she was thinking of it, watching my hands closet all the time I was eating, like she"s looking fur scars where something slipped when I done that agnostic work. Purty soon she says:
"Me brother Michael was kilt at it in the old country. He was the most vinturesome lad of thim all!"
"Did it fly up and hit him?" I asts her. I was wondering w"ether she is making fun of me or am I making fun of her. Them Irish is like that, you can never tell which.
"No," says she, "he fell off of it. And I"m thinking you don"t know what it is yourself." And the next thing I know I"m eased out o" the back door and she"s grinning at me scornful through the crack of it.
So I was walking slow around toward the front of the house thinking how the Irish was a great nation, and what shall I do now, anyhow? And I says to myself: "Danny, you was a fool to let that circus walk off and leave you asleep in this here town with nothing over you but a barbed wire fence this morning. Fur what ARE you going to do next? First thing you know, you WILL be a reg"lar tramp, which some folks can"t be made to see you ain"t now." And jest when I was thinking that, a feller comes down the front steps of that house on the jump and nabs me by the coat collar.
"Did you come out of this house?" he asts.
"I did," I says, wondering what next.
"Back in you go, then," he says, marching me forward toward them front steps, "they"ve got smallpox in there."
I like to of jumped loose when he says that.
"Smallpox ain"t no inducement to me, mister," I tells him. But he twisted my coat collar tight and dug his thumbs into my neck, all the time helping me onward with his knee from behind, and I seen they wasn"t no use pulling back. I could probable of licked that man, but they"s no system in mixing up with them well-dressed men in towns where they think you are a tramp. The judge will give you the worst of it.
He rung the door bell and the girl that opened the door she looked kind o" surprised when she seen me, and in we went.
"Tell Professor Booth that Doctor Wilkins wants to see him again,"
says the man a-holt o" me, not letting loose none. And we says nothing further till the perfessor comes, which he does, slow and absent-minded.
When he seen me he took off his gla.s.ses so"s he could see me better, and he says:
"What is that you have there, Doctor Wilkins?"
"A guest for you," says Doctor Wilkins, grinning all over hisself. "I found him leaving your house. And you being under quarantine, and me being secretary to the board of health, and the city pest-house being crowded too full already, I"ll have to ask you to keep him here till we get Miss Margery onto her feet again," he says. Or they was words to that effect, as the lawyers asts you.
"Dear me," says Perfesser Booth, kind o" helpless like. And he comes over closet to me and looks me all over like I was one of them amphimissourian lizards in a free museum. And then he goes to the foot of the stairs and sings out in a voice that was so bleached-out and flat-chested it would of looked jest like him himself if you could of saw it--"Estelle," he sings out, "oh, Estelle!"
Estelle, she come down stairs looking like she was the perfessor"s big brother. I found out later she was his old maid sister. She wasn"t no spring chicken, Estelle wasn"t, and they was a continuous grin on her face. I figgered it must of froze there years and years ago. They was a kid about ten or eleven years old come along down with her, that had hair down to its shoulders and didn"t look like it knowed whether it was a girl or a boy. Miss Estelle, she looks me over in a way that makes me shiver, while the doctor and the perfessor jaws about whose fault it is the smallpox sign ain"t been hung out. And when she was done listening she says to the perfessor: "You had better go back to your laboratory."
And the perfessor he went along out, and the doctor with him.
"What are you going to do with him, Aunt Estelle?" the kid asts her.
"What would YOU suggest, William, Dear?" asts his aunt. I ain"t feeling very comfortable, and I was getting all ready jest to natcherally bolt out the front door now the doctor was gone. Then I thinks it mightn"t be no bad place to stay in fur a couple o" days, even risking the smallpox.
Fur I had riccolected I couldn"t ketch it nohow, having been vaccinated a few months before in Terry Hutt by compulsive medical advice, me being fur a while doing some work on the city pavements through a mistake about me in the police court.
William Dear looks at me like it was the day of judgment and his job was to keep the fatted calves separate from the goats and prodigals, and he says:
"If I were you, Aunt Estelle, the first thing would be to get his hair cut and his face washed and then get him some clothes."
"William Dear is my friend," thinks I.
She calls James, which was a butler. James, he b.u.t.tles me into a bathroom the like o" which I never seen afore, and then he b.u.t.tles me into a suit o" somebody"s clothes and into a room at the top o" the house next to his"n, and then he comes back and b.u.t.tles a comb and brush at me. James was the most mournful-looking fat man I ever seen, and he says that account of me not being respectable I will have my meals alone in the kitchen after the servants has eat.
The first thing I knowed I been in that house more"n a week. I eat and I slept and I smoked and I kind of enjoyed not worrying about things fur a while. The only oncomfortable thing about being the perfessor"s guest was Miss Estelle. Soon"s she found out I was a agnostic she took charge o" my intellectuals and what went into "em, and she makes me read things and asts me about "em, and she says she is going fur to reform me. And whatever brand o" disgrace them there agnostics really is I ain"t found out to this day, having come acrost the word accidental.
Biddy Malone, which was the kitchen mechanic, she says the perfessor"s wife"s been over to her mother"s while this smallpox has been going on, and they is a nurse in the house looking after Miss Margery, the little kid that"s sick. And Biddy, she says if she was Mrs. Booth she"d stay there, too. They"s been some talk, anyhow, about Mrs. Booth and a musician feller around that there town. But Biddy, she likes Mrs. Booth, and even if it was true, which it ain"t Biddy says, who could of blamed her? Fur things ain"t joyous around that house the last year, since Miss Estelle"s come there to live. The perfessor, he"s so full of scientifics he don"t know nothing with no sense to it, Biddy says. He"s got more money"n you can shake a stick at, and he don"t have to do no work, nor never has, and his scientifics gets worse and worse every year. But while scientifics is worrying to the nerves of a fambly, and while his labertory often makes the house smell like a sick drug store has crawled into it and died there, they wouldn"t of been no serious row on between the perfessor and his wife, not ALL the time, if it hadn"t of been fur Miss Estelle. She has jest natcherally made herself boss of that there house, Biddy says, and she"s a she-devil. Between all them scientifics and Miss Estelle things has got where Mrs. Booth can"t stand "em much longer.
I didn"t blame her none fur getting sore on her job, neither. You can"t expect a woman that"s purty, and knows it, and ain"t no more"n thirty-two or three, and don"t look it, to be serious intrusted in mummies and pickled snakes and chemical perfusions, not ALL the time.
Mebby when Mrs. Booth would ast him if he was going to take her to the opery that night the perfessor would look up in an absent-minded sort of way and ast her did she know them Germans had invented a new germ? It wouldn"t of been so bad if the perfessor had picked out jest one brand of scientifics and stuck to that reg"lar. Mrs. Booth could of got use to any ONE kind. But mebby this week the perfessor would be took hard with ornithography and he"d go chasing humming-birds all over the front yard, and the next he"d be putting gastronomy into William"s breakfast feed.
They was always a row on over them kids, which they hadn"t been till Miss Estelle come. Mrs. Booth, she said they could kill their own selves, if they wanted to, him and Miss Estelle, but she had more right than any one else to say what went into William"s and Margery"s digestive ornaments, and she didn"t want "em brung up scientific nohow, but jest human. But Miss Estelle"s got so she runs that hull house now, and the perfessor too, but he don"t know it, Biddy says, and her a-saying every now and then it was too bad Frederick couldn"t of married a n.o.ble woman who would of took a serious intrust in his work. The kids don"t hardly dare to kiss their ma in front of Miss Estelle no more, on account of germs and things. And with Miss Estelle taking care of their religious organs and their intellectuals and the things like that, and the perfessor filling them up on new invented feeds, I guess they never was two kids got more education to the square inch, outside and in. It hadn"t worked none on Miss Margery yet, her being younger, but William Dear he took it hard and serious, and it made b.u.mps all over his head, and he was kind o" pale and spindly. Every time that kid cut his finger he jest natcherally bled scientifics. One day I says to Miss Estelle, says I:
"It looks to me like William Dear is kind of peaked." She looks worried and she looks mad fur me lipping in, and then she says mebby it is true, but she don"t see why, because he is being brung up like he orter be in every way and no expense nor trouble spared.
"Well," says I, "what a kid about that size wants to do is to get out and roll around in the dirt some, and yell and holler."
She sniffs like I wasn"t worth taking no notice of. But it kind o"
soaked in, too. She and the perfessor must of talked it over. Fur the next day I seen her spreading a oilcloth on the hall floor. And then James comes a b.u.t.tling in with a lot of sand what the perfessor has baked and made all scientific down in his labertory. James, he pours all that nice, clean dirt onto the oilcloth and then Miss Estelle sends fur William Dear.
"William Dear," she says, "we have decided, your papa and I, that what you need is more romping around and playing along with your studies. You ought to get closer to the soil and to nature, as is more healthy for a youth of your age. So for an hour each day, between your studies, you will romp and play in this sand. You may begin to frolic now, William Dear, and then James will sweep up the dirt again for to-morrow"s frolic."
But William didn"t frolic none. He jest looked at that dirt in a sad kind o" way, and he says very serious but very decided:
"Aunt Estelle, I shall NOT frolic." And they had to let it go at that, fur he never would frolic none, neither. And all that nice clean dirt was throwed out in the back yard along with the unscientific dirt.
CHAPTER XI
One night when I"ve been there more"n a week, and am getting kind o"
tired staying in one place so long, I don"t want to go to bed after I eats, and I gets a-holt of some of the perfessor"s cigars and goes into the lib"ary to see if he"s got anything fit to read. Setting there thinking of the awful remarkable people they is in this world I must of went to sleep. Purty soon, in my sleep, I hearn two voices. Then I waked up sudden, and still hearn "em, low and quicklike, in the room that opens right off of the lib"ary with a couple of them sliding doors like is onto a box car. One voice was a woman"s voice, and it wasn"t Miss Estelle"s.
"But I MUST see them before we go, Henry," she says.
And the other was a man"s voice and it wasn"t no one around our house.
"But, my G.o.d," he says, "suppose you get it yourself, Jane!"
I set up straight then, fur Jane was the perfessor"s wife"s first name.
"You mean suppose YOU get it," she says. I like to of seen the look she must of give him to fit in with the way she says that YOU. He didn"t say nothing, the man didn"t; and then her voice softens down some, and she says, low and slow: "Henry, wouldn"t you love me if I DID get it?
Suppose it marked and pitted me all up?"
"Oh, of course," he says, "of course I would. Nothing can change the way I feel. YOU know that." He said it quick enough, all right, jest the way they does in a show, but it sounded TOO MUCH like it does on the stage to of suited me if _I_"D been her. I seen folks overdo them little talks before this.
I listens some more, and then I sees how it is. This is that musician feller Biddy Malone"s been talking about. Jane"s going to run off with him all right, but she"s got to kiss the kids first. Women is like that.
They may hate the kids" pa all right, but they"s dad-burned few of "em don"t like the kids. I thinks to myself: "It must be late. I bet they was already started, or ready to start, and she made him bring her here first so"s she could sneak in and see the kids. She jest simply couldn"t get by. But she"s taking a fool risk, too. Fur how"s she going to see Margery with that nurse coming and going and hanging around all night?
And even if she tries jest to see William Dear it"s a ten to one shot he"ll wake up and she"ll be ketched at it."
And then I thinks, suppose she IS ketched at it? What of it? Ain"t a woman got a right to come into her own house with her own door key, even if they is a quarantine onto it, and see her kids? And if she is ketched seeing them, how would any one know she was going to run off? And ain"t she got a right to have a friend of hern and her husband"s bring her over from her mother"s house, even if it is a little late?