第3章 My Cousin Fanny(3)

Indeed, I have even seen Horace read to her as she sat in the old rocking-chair after one of her headaches, with her eyes bandaged, and her head swathed in veils and shawls, and she would turn it into not only proper English, but English with a glow and color and rhythm that gave the very life of the odes.This was an exercise we boys all liked and often engaged in -- Frank, and Joe, and Doug, and I, and even old Blinky -- for, as she used to admit herself, she was always worrying us to read to her (I believe I read all of Scott's novels to her).

Of course this translation helped us as well as gratified her.

I do not remember that she was ever too unwell to help us in this way except when she was actually in bed.She was very fond of us boys, and was always ready to take our side and to further our plans in any way whatever.We would get her to steal off with us, and translate our Latin for us by the fire.This, of course, made us rather fond of her.She was so much inclined to take our part and to help us that I remember it used to be said of her as a sort of reproach, "Cousin Fanny always sides with the boys." She used to say it was because she knew how worthless women were.She would say this sort of thing herself, but she was very touchy about women, and never would allow any one else to say anything about them.She had an old maid's temper.I remember that she took Doug up short once for talking about "old maids".She said that for her part she did not mind it the least bit; but she would not allow him to speak so of a large class of her sex which contained some of the best women in the world; that many of them performed work and made sacrifices that the rest of the world knew nothing about.She said the true word for them was the old Saxon term "spinster"; that it proved that they performed the work of the house, and that it was a term of honor of which she was proud.

She said that Christ had humbled himself to be born of a Virgin, and that every woman had this honor to sustain.Of course such lectures as that made us call her an old maid all the more.Still, I don't think that being mischievous or teasing her made any difference with her.

Frank used to worry her more than any one else, even than Joe, and I am sure she liked him best of all.That may perhaps have been because he was the best-looking of us.She said once that he reminded her of some one she used to know a long time before, when she was young.

That must have been a long time before, indeed.He used to tease the life out of her.

She was extraordinarily credulous -- would believe anything on earth anyone told her, because, although she had plenty of humor, she herself never would deviate from the absolute truth a moment, even in jest.I do not think she would have told an untruth to save her life.

Well, of course we used to play on her to tease her.Frank would tell her the most unbelievable and impossible lies: such as that he thought he saw a mouse yesterday on the back of the sofa she was lying on (this would make her bounce up like a ball), or that he believed he heard --he was not sure -- that Mr.Scroggs (the man who had rented her old home)had cut down all the old trees in the yard, and pulled down the house because he wanted the bricks to make brick ovens.This would worry her excessively (she loved every brick in the old house, and often said she would rather live in the kitchen there than in a palace anywhere else), and she would get into such a state of depression that Frank would finally have to tell her that he was just "fooling her".

She used to make him do a good deal of waiting on her in return, and he was the one she used to get to dress old Fashion's back when it was raw, and to put drops in her eyes.He got quite expert at it.

She said it was a penalty for his worrying her so.

She was the great musician of the connection.This is in itself no mean praise; for it was the fashion for every musical gift among the girls to be cultivated, and every girl played or sang more or less, some of them very well.But Cousin Fanny was not only this.She had a way of playing that used to make the old piano sound different from itself;and her voice was almost the sweetest I ever heard except one or two on the stage.It was particularly sweet in the evenings, when she sat down at the piano and played.She would not always do it;she either felt "not in the mood", or "not sympathetic", or some such thing.

None of the others were that way; the rest could play just as well in the glare of day as in the twilight, and before one person as another;it was, we all knew, just one of Cousin Fanny's old-maid crotchets.

When she sat down at the piano and played, her fussiness was all forgotten;her first notes used to be recognized through the house, and people used to stop what they were doing, and come in.Even the children would leave off playing, and come straggling in, tiptoeing as they crossed the floor.Some of the other performers used to play a great deal louder, but we never tiptoed when they played.Cousin Fanny would sit at the piano looking either up or right straight ahead of her, or often with her eyes closed (she never looked at the keys), and the sound used to rise from under her long, thin fingers, sometimes rushing and pouring forth like a deep roar, sometimes ringing out clear like a band of bugles, making the hair move on the head and giving strange tinglings down the back.