WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD
The morning following the heterogeneous accession to the Dale family,
Joel did not leave his bed. Whether his disability was in part or
altogether due to a desire to open his sister's eyes to the result of
her lack of consideration, Joel himself could not have told, the
correct interpretation of one's own motives being the most complex of
the sciences. It really seemed to him that he felt very ill and he
found a somber satisfaction in reflecting that in the event of his
death, Persis would realize her appalling selfishness. "'Twon't come
much short of murder," he thought with gloomy relish.
Joel's periods of invalidism had been too frequent and prolonged for
this sporadic attack to upset the peaceful order of the household.
Persis attended to his needs with her usual matter-of-fact kindness,
though he suspected that her thoughts were with the new claimants on
her interest and found therein fresh fuel for his grievance. Later
when he called his sister in the feeble voice of the moribund and
learned from Mary that she had gone out to enter the older children in
school, he felt himself a much injured man. But this melancholy
satisfaction was brief, for Persis was back in half an hour, looking in
at his door to ask cheerfully if there was anything he wanted.
"Nothing I'm likely to get," replied Joel and turned his face to the
wall.
Then, too, the house was quiet. Occasionally the baby's fretful voice
reached his ears or Celia's bubbling, irrepressible laughter; but the
tumult on which he had counted confidently as a factor in his
discomfort was lacking. At noon, indeed, the older children came in
with a shout, brimful of communications too important to wait, so that
the three all talked at once, each voice upraised in a laudable
endeavor to drown out the other two. But just as Joel was telling
himself that it was intolerable, enough to drive a man out of his seven
senses, the announcement of dinner produced an agreeable lull in the
uproar. And when the baby was taken upstairs for its nap and Celia
cautioned to discretion, the quiet became even more profound. Joel
found it necessary to prod his sense of grievance to keep it in action.
He had been awake much of the preceding night, brooding upon his
wrongs, and weariness at length asserted itself and he fell asleep. He
woke with a thrilled consciousness of a light touch on his forehead and
for a moment he thought himself a child again, with his mother bending
over him. Demonstrativeness had never been a Dale characteristic.
Indeed the traditions of the community discouraged manifestations of
affection as an indication of weakness, but few mothers as they stand
beside their sleeping children can resist the sweet temptation to kiss
the little unconscious faces. And Joel Dale, prematurely aged, selfish
and embittered, woke nearer his childish self, and nearer Heaven, than
he had been in many a year.
For a moment he lay bewildered, then opened an eye. An elfin voice
beside him commented on the fact. "Half of you's awake and half
asleep. Ain't that funny?"
Joel's two eyes came into action long enough to perceive Celia, sitting
in a chair drawn close to the bed. Her sturdy legs were crossed, her
hands folded. She looked dangerously demure.
"I gave you a kiss when you was asleep, a pink one. Do you like pink
kisses?"
"Pink?" he repeated, too startled by the choice of adjectives to
realize how long it had been since any one had kissed him.
"Aunt Persis let me have some jelly," Celia explained. "I like to lick
my lips off, but I didn't so I could give you a nice pink kiss."
He put one hand hastily to his forehead, thereby verifying his worst
suspicions. It was sticky. Joel groaned.
"Want me to 'poor' you?" the fairy voice inquired with an accent
indicating a sense of responsibility. A small hand moved over his
unshaven cheek. "Poor Uncle Joel! Poor Uncle Joel," cooed Celia. She
interrupted her efforts to ask with interest, "Do you like your skin
all prickles? Mine ain't that way," and proved her statement by laying
a cheek like a rose-leaf against his. Joel shrank away gasping.
"Want me to tell you a story?" Celia did not wait for Joel's assent.
The ministering hand nestled against his cheek; she drew a long breath
and began.
"Once when I was a little girl, there was a giant lived up by my house.
And he was an awful wicked giant, and he used to bite people's heads
off. And he wanted to fight everybody, and everybody was scared 'cept
just me." She paused, overcome by the contemplation of her own
heroism. "Wasn't that funny? Everybody was 'fraid 'cept a teenty,
weenty girl."
Joel lay staring at his entertainer, his expression suggestive of such
excitement, not to say horror, that the narrator apparently found it
inspiring.
"And the old giant kept a-talking and a-talking and a-biting and
a-biting. And one day I took my bow'n arrow-- No." She corrected
herself sternly, with the air of one who refuses to deviate ever so
slightly from the strict facts. "I took my sling and some stones I
found in the brook--"
Joel suddenly realized his responsibility as a mentor of youth. "Look
here! Look here! I can't have such talk. You're making that up out
of your own head. You never lived near a giant, and I don't believe
you ever had a sling."
"Oh, yes, I had a sling, Uncle Joel, and once I shooted a bear with
it--and a Indian."
"I guess you haven't been very well brought up," rebuked Joel, who like
most people of his type was quite unable to distinguish between the
gambols of the creative imagination and deliberate falsifying. "Don't
you know where little girls go when they tell lies?"
"I knew a little girl once who telled lies," admitted Celia, her
shocked accents indicating her full appreciation of the reprehensible
character of the practise. "And she went to the circus. Her uncle
took her."
From under the bed clothing came a peculiar rasping sound like the
grating of a rusty key in a lock long unused. It was no wonder that
Celia jumped, though she was considerably less startled than Joel
himself. He had laughed, and more appalling still, had laughed at
unmistakable evidences of natural depravity which by good rights should
have awakened in him emotions of abhorrence.
"It would be pretty serious for me to backslide now, considering the
state of my health," reflected Joel. He attempted to counteract the
effects of that indiscreet laugh by a blood-curdling groan, and this
demonstration caused Celia to repeat her calming ministrations,
smoothing his rough cheek with velvety hands, and inadvertently poking
one plump forefinger into his eye. Joel blinked. He could easily have
ordered her from the room, but he did not exercise this prerogative.
He was vaguely conscious of an unwarranted satisfaction in the nearness
of this pixy. Her preference for his society flattered his vanity. He
observed her guardedly from the corner of his eye. Undoubtedly she was
a very naughty little girl who told wrong stories and was painfully
lacking in reverence. But at the same time--Joel chuckled again, his
vocal chords responding uncertainly to the unfamiliar prompting--at the
same time she was cute.
At the supper table the evening before for all his gloomy abstraction,
Joel had noticed Betty's engaging prettiness and had thought _apropos_
of Celia, "Persis never picked that young one out for her looks." Now
through half closed eyes he studied the small piquant face and found
his opinion altered. Celia was not pretty. Her straight black hair,
just long enough to be continually in her eyes, was pushed back for the
moment so as to stand almost erect like a crest. Her small nose had an
engaging skyward tilt. She was dark and inclined to sallowness. But
the twinkling black eyes under the level brows would have redeemed a
far plainer face. Had Joel been of a poetic temperament he would have
compared Betty to a pink rose-bud, and Celia to a velvety pansy, saucy
and bewitching.
Mary, coming up the stairs with a bowl of broth, stood in the doorway
petrified. Under her spatter of freckles, her comely face was pale.
"Miss Dale thought--" She seemed unable to proceed and stood
swallowing. Celia straightened herself with a jerk.
"Oh, goody! We'll play tea-party, Uncle Joel. No, we'll play mother.
You're my little sick boy, Uncle Joel, and I'll feed you. Give that to
me, Mary."
Like a person hypnotized Mary advanced and delivered the steaming broth
into Celia's extended hands. Setting the bowl firmly on one knee,
Celia ladled out a generous spoonful.
"Open your mouth, darling, and swallow this nice broth. It'll make
mama's little boy a big strong man."
The soup-spoon journeying in Joel's direction tilted dangerously. Half
the contents splashed upon his cheek and ran in a greasy dribble down
his neck. The remainder distributed itself impartially in the vicinity
of his mouth, a few tantalizing drops finding their way between his
parted lips.
"Land alive!" Mary made a horrified forward rush. "You're a-drowning
Mr. Dale. And look at you, wasting that nice soup, too."
Joel frowned and Mary drew back abashed, quailing before his
disapproving glance.
"I guess if I was being drowned I'd have the sense to mention it. And
nobody's going to the poor-house because a little soup gets spilled.
Some of the professions are pretty crowded, Mary, but there's one where
there's room at the top and at the bottom, too, and that's the one of
minding your own business."
Poor Mary blushed till her proximity to things inflammable would have
awakened justifiable fears of a conflagration. Joel gave his attention
to his self-appointed nurse. "Steady now! Better take a little less
to start with. That's right. Now steer her straight."
The second spoonful reached its destination without serious accident.
Celia watched her patient as he swallowed and forgot the rôle she had
assigned herself.
"Is it good, Uncle Joel?"
"Uhuh! Pretty fair." Joel felt for his handkerchief and wiped the
moist corner of his mouth.
"I'm going to taste it." Celia tilted the spoon to her own lips and
sipped with appreciation. "Uncle Joel," she said thoughtfully, "if
you're afraid this'll spoil your appetite for supper, I'll eat it."
Again Joel chuckled. This made the third time in swift succession, and
practise was giving him surprising facility. But unwarned by past
experience, Mary put in her word. "Poor Mr. Dale hasn't eaten scarcely
a mouthful to-day, and here you've had bread and jelly since dinner."
Joel's unaccustomed smile was at once obscured. "Mary, a considerable
spell back a wise man said, 'Every fool will be meddling.' If you
aren't familiar with the author, Mary, it would pay you to read him."
Again he gave his attention to Celia. "We'll share this, turn and turn
about," he compromised. "First you have a spoonful and then me."
Mary withdrew unheeded. Though tremendously in awe of the impecunious
and futile Joel, Mary felt no sense of diffidence where the efficient
Persis was concerned, and at once went to find her. But Persis, who
sat in one of her new bay-windows, the baby on her knee, was
entertaining Mrs. West, while her benignantly maternal eyes watched
three children playing outside.
"I declare you could have knocked me down with a feather, Persis, when
I heard it," Mrs. West declared, her portliness rendering the figure of
speech extremely impressive. "I wouldn't have thought queer of one or
even two, but a whole family."
"A family's what I've always wanted," Persis returned with the
cheerfulness of a woman whose life-long dream has come true. "And if I
could have found enough of the sort I was after, I'm not sure I'd have
stopped short of a round dozen."
"It's a responsibility," sighed Mrs. West "They're kind of like
playthings to you now. You'll feel it later."
Persis looked at her with kind eyes. "I haven't added any new
responsibility in taking these children, Mis' West. It was there just
as soon as the money and leisure came to me, and I've made a start
toward meeting it, that's all. We don't make our responsibilities; we
just wake up to 'em."
"I must say you take to it like a duck to water," acknowledged Mrs.
West in conciliatory accents. "Some women are just as unhandy with a
baby as a man. Sophia Warren's one. Once or twice I've seen her
holding that Newell baby that lives next door, and she looked as stiff
and scared as if she was setting for her photograph."
She leaned forward to watch the frolicsome children from the window.
"They're real nice-looking, Persis, I will say that. One, two, three
and the baby's four. Somebody said five."
With a start Persis recalled the suspicious peace which for some time
past had pervaded the establishment. "There's another," she said, "too
little for school. Mary! Mary, do you know where Celia is?"
Mary approached. Her consciousness of being a bearer of important
tidings communicated itself in some indefinable fashion to the other
women. They looked up, alert on the instant.
"Celia's setting up in Mr. Joel's room." Mary gave her great news
deliberately as if to enjoy the full flavor.
Persis started to her feet. Mrs. West raised her hands with an
eloquent gesture.
"Has he got one of his bad spells?" she demanded. "And that child in
his room. Well, fools rush--"
"She's playing he's her little boy," explained Mary, making the most of
the sensation of being an actor in a real drama. "She fed him his soup
and slopped him, but he took me up sharp when I tried to stop her. He
acts as if she's got him clean bewitched."
"Well!" exclaimed Mrs. West, as Persis looked at her dumbly. "I never
expected to live to see that Scripture fulfilled. The wolf and lamb
lying down together and a weaned child in a cockatrice's den."
"Are you sure he wasn't angry?" asked Persis, still a little pale and
doubtful.
Mary bridled.
"Go and see for yourself, Miss Dale, if you don't believe me. When I
tried to stop her eating a good half of that broth, and chicken as high
as 'tis, he the same as called me a fool for meddling. But you'd
better go up-stairs. You won't be satisfied till you've heard for
yourself."
In that Mary spoke truly. Her story was too incredible to be accepted
without investigation. Persis' incredulity did not desert her till
half-way up the stairs she was met by a child's voice, fond and
confident.
"Uncle Joel, ain't God cruel to make some dogs without tails?"
And then as her brother's unfamiliar laugh reached her ears, Persis
turned and went softly down the stairs.