第18章 THE INHERITANCE(18)
"Do you wish anything, mother?"
"Only to present Mr.Carraway, my child.He will be with us at dinner."Cynthia came forward smiling and held out her hand with the cordial hospitality which she had inherited with the family portraits and the good old name.She wore this morning a dress of cheap black calico, shrunken from many washings, and beneath the scant sleeves Carraway saw her thin red wrists, which looked as if they had been soaking in harsh soapsuds.Except for a certain ease of manner which she had not lost in the drudgery of her life, she might have been sister to the toilworn slattern he had noticed in one of the hovels across the country.
"We shall be very glad to have you," she said, with quiet dignity.
"It is ready now, I think."
"Be sure to make him try the port, Cynthia," called Mrs.Blake, as Carraway followed the daughter across the threshold.
In the kitchen they found Tucker and Lila and a strange young man in overalls, who was introduced as "one of the Weatherbys who live just up the road." He was evidently one of their plainer neighbours for Carraway detected a constraint in Cynthia's manner which Lila did not appear to share.The girl, dressed daintily in a faded muslin, with an organdy kerchief crossed over her swelling bosom, flashed upon Carraway's delighted vision like one of the maidens hanging, gilt-framed, in the old lady's parlour.
That she was the particular pride of the family--the one luxury they allowed themselves besides their costly mother--the lawyer realised upon the instant.Her small white hands were unsoiled by any work, and her beautiful, kindly face had none of the nervous dread which seemed always lying behind Cynthia's tired eyes.With the high devotion of a martyr, the elder sister must have offered herself a willing sacrifice, winning for the younger an existence which, despite its gray monotony, showed fairly rose-coloured in comparison with her own.She herself had sunk to the level of a servant, but through it all Lila had remained "the lady,"preserving an equable loveliness to which Jim Weatherby hardly dared lift his wistful gaze.
As for the young man himself, he had a blithe, open look which Carraway found singularly attractive, the kind of look it warms one's heart to meet in the long road on a winter's day.Leaning idly against the lintel of the door, and fingering a bright axe which he was apparently anxious that they should retain, he presented a pleasant enough picture to the attentive eyes within the kitchen.
"You'd as well keep this axe as long as you want it," he protested earnestly." It's an old one, anyway, that I sharpened when you asked for it, and we've another at home; that's all we need.""It's very kind of you, Jim, but ours is mended now," replied Cynthia, a trifle stiffly.
"If we need one again, we'll certainly borrow yours, "added Lila, smiling as she looked up from the glasses she was filling with fresh buttermilk.
"Sit down, Jim, and have dinner with us; there's no hurry," urged Tucker hospitably, with a genial wave toward the meagerly spread table."Jim's a great fellow, Mr.Carraway; you ought to know him.He can manage anything from a Sunday-school to the digging of a well.I've always said that if he'd had charge of the children of Israel's journey to the promised land he'd have had them there, flesh-pots and all, before the week was up.""I can see he is a useful neighbour," observed Carraway, glancing at the axe.
"Well, I'm glad I come handy, " replied Jim in his hearty way;"and are you sure you don't want me to split up that big oak log at the woodpile? I can do it in a twinkling."Cynthia declined his knightly offer, to be overruled again by Lila's smiling lips.
"Christopher will have to do it when he comes in, " she said;"poor Christopher, he never has a single moment of his own."Jim Weatherby looked at her eagerly, his blue eyes full of sparkle."Why, I can do it in no time," he declared, shouldering his axe, and a moment afterward they heard his merry strokes from the woodpile.
"Are you interested in tobacco, Mr.Carraway?" inquired Tucker, as they seated themselves at the pine table without so much as an apology for the coarseness of the fare or an allusion to their fallen fortunes."If so, you've struck us at the time when every man about here is setting out his next winter's chew.Sol Peterkin, by the way, has planted every square inch of his land in tobacco, and when I asked him what market he expected to send it to he answered that he only raised a little for his own use.""Is that the Peterkin who has the pretty daughter?" asked Cynthia, slicing a piece of bacon."May I help you to turnip salad, Mr.Carraway?" Uncle Boaz, hobbling with rheumatism, held out a quaint old tray of inlaid woods; and the lawyer, as he placed his plate upon it, heaved a sigh of gratitude for the utter absence of vulgarity.He could fancy dear old Miss Saidie puffing apologies over the fat bacon, and Fletcher profanely deploring the sloppy coffee.
"The half-grown girl with the bunch of flaxen curls tied with a blue ribbon?" returned Tucker, while Lila cut up his food as if he were a child."Yes, that's Molly Peterkin, though it's hard to believe she's any kin to Sol.I shouldn't wonder if she turned into a bouncing beauty a few years further on.""It was her father, then, that I walked over with from the cross-roads," said Carraway."He struck me as a shrewd man of his sort.""Oh, he's shrewd enough," rejoined Tucker, "and the proof of it is that he's outlived three wives and is likely to outlive a fourth.I met him in the road yesterday, and he told me that he had just been off again to get married.'Good luck to you this time, Sol', said I.'Wal, it ought to be, sir,' said he, 'seeing as marrying has got to be so costly in these days.Why, my first wife didn't come to more than ten dollars, counting the stovepipe hat and all, and this last one's mounted up to 'most a hundred.'