"THE TISHBITE"
COUSIN MEHITABLE was speaking to Mrs. Triplett, who seemed to be
searching through bureau drawers for something. Georgina could tell what
she was doing from the sounds which reached her. These drawers always
stuck, and had to be jerked violently until the mirror rattled.
"Oh, don't bother about it, Maria. I just made an excuse of wanting to
see it, because I knew you always kept it in here, and I wanted to get
you off by yourself for a minute's talk with you alone. Since I've been
in town I've heard so much about Justin and the way he is doing that I
wanted to ask somebody who knew and who could tell me the straight of
it. What's this about his leaving the service and going junketing off to
the interior of China on some mission of his own? Jane tells me he got a
year's leave of absence from the Navy just to study up some outlandish
disease that attacks the sailors in foreign ports. She says why should
he take a whole year out of the best part of his life to poke around the
huts of dirty heathen to find out the kind of microbe that's eating 'em?
He'd ought to think of Barbara and what's eating her heart out. I've
taken a great fancy to that girl, and I'd like to give Justin a piece of
my mind. It probably wouldn't do a bit of good though. He always was
peculiar."
Georgina could hear only a few words of the answer because Tippy had her
head in the closet now, reaching for the box on the top shelf. She
stopped her search as soon as Cousin Mehitable said that, and the two of
them went over to the fire and talked in low tones for a few minutes,
leaning against the mantel. Georgina heard a word now and then. Several
times it was her own name. Finally, in a louder tone Cousin Mehitable
said:
"Well, I wanted to know, and I was sure you could tell me if anyone
could."
They went back across the hall to the other guests. The instant they
were gone Georgina crawled out from under the bed with the big bonnet
cocked over one eye. Then she scudded down the hall and up the back
stairs. She knew the company would be going soon, and she would be
expected to bid them good-bye if she were there. She didn't want Cousin
Mehitable to kiss her again. She didn't like her any more since she had
called her father "peculiar."
She wandered aimlessly about for a few minutes, then pushed the door
open into Mrs. Triplett's room. It was warm and cozy in there for a
small fire still burned in the little drum stove. She opened the front
damper to make it burn faster, and the light shone out in four long
rays which made a flickering in the room. She sat down on the floor in
front of it and began to wonder.
"What did Cousin Mehitable mean by something eating Barby's heart out?"
Did people die of it? She had read of the Spartan youth who let the fox
gnaw his vitals under his cloak and never showed, even by the twitching
of a muscle, that he was in pain. Of course, she knew that no live thing
was tearing at her mother's heart, but what if something that she
couldn't understand was hurting her darling Barby night and day and she
was bravely hiding it from the world like the Spartan youth?
Did _all_ grown people have troubles? It had seemed such a happy world
until to-day, and now all at once she had heard about Dan Darcy and
Belle Triplett. Nearly everyone whom the guests talked about had borne
some unhappiness, and even her own father was "peculiar." She wished she
hadn't found out all these things. A great weight seemed to settle down
upon her.
Thinking of Barbara in the light of what she had just learned she
recalled that she often looked sorry and disappointed, especially after
the postman had come and gone without leaving a letter. Only this
morning Tippy had said--could it be she thought something was wrong and
was trying to comfort her?
"Justin always was a poor hand for writing letters. Many a time I've
heard the Judge scolding and stewing around because he hadn't heard
from him when he was away at school. Letter writing came so easy to the
Judge he couldn't understand why Justin shirked it so."
Then Georgina thought of Belle in the light of what she had just
learned. Belle had carried her around in her arms when she was first
brought to live in this old gray house by the sea. She had made a
companion of her whenever she came to visit her Aunt Maria, and Georgina
had admired her because she was so pretty and blonde and gentle, and
enjoyed her because she was always so willing to do whatever Georgina
wished. And now to think that instead of being the like-everybody-else
kind of a young lady she seemed, she was like a heroine in a book who
had lived through trouble which would "blight her whole life."
Sitting there on the floor with her knees drawn up and her chin resting
on them, Georgina looked into the fire through the slits of the damper
and thought and thought. Then she looked out through the little square
window-panes across the wind-swept dunes. It did not seem like summer
with the sky all overcast with clouds. It was more like the end of a day
in the early autumn. Life seemed overcast, too.
Presently through a rift in the sky an early star stole out, and she
made a wish on it. That was one of the things Belle had taught her. She
started to wish that Barby might be happy. But before the whispered
verse had entirely passed her lips she stopped to amend it, adding Uncle
Darcy's name and Belle's. Then she stopped again, overcome by the
knowledge of all the woe in the world, and gathering all the universe
into her generous little heart she exclaimed earnestly:
"I wish _everybody in the world could be happy_."
Having made the wish, fervently, almost fiercely, in her intense desire
to set things right, she scrambled to her feet. There was another thing
that Belle had told her which she must do.
"If you open the Bible and it chances to be at a chapter beginning with
the words, 'It came to pass,' the wish will come true without fail."
Taking Tippy's Bible from the stand beside the bed, she opened it at
random, then carried it over to the stove in order to scan the pages by
the firelight streaming through the damper. The book opened at First
Kings, seventeenth chapter. She held it directly in the broad rays
examining the pages anxiously. There was only that one chapter head on
either page, and alas, its opening words were not "it came to pass."
What she read with a sinking heart was:
"_And Elijah the Tishbite._"
Now Georgina hadn't the slightest idea what a Tishbite was, but it
sounded as if it were something dreadful. Somehow it is a thousand times
worse to be scared by a fear which is not understood than by one which
is familiar. Suddenly she felt as bewildered and frightened as she had
on that morning long ago, when Jeremy's teeth went flying into the fire.
The happiness of her whole little world seemed to be going to pieces.
Throwing herself across the foot of Tippy's bed she crawled under the
afghan thrown over it, even burrowing her head beneath it in order to
shut out the dreadful things closing down on her. It had puzzled and
frightened her to know that something was eating Barby's heart out, even
in a figurative way, and now the word "Tishbite" filled her with a vague
sense of helplessness and impending disaster.
Barbara, coming upstairs to hunt her after the guests were gone, found
her sound asleep with the afghan still over her head. She folded it
gently back from the flushed face, not intending to waken her, but
Georgina's eyes opened and after a bewildered stare around the room she
sat up, remembering. She had wakened to a world of trouble. Somehow it
did not seem quite so bad with Barbara standing over her, smiling. When
she went downstairs a little later, freshly washed and brushed, the
Tishbite rolled out of her thoughts as a fog lifts when the sun shines.
But it came back at bedtime, when having said her prayers, she joined
her voice with Barbara's in the hymn that had been her earliest lullaby.
It was a custom never omitted. It always closed the day for her:
"_Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm doth bind the restless wave,
Oh, hear us when we cry to thee
For those in peril on the sea._"
As they sang she stole an anxious glance at Barbara several times. Then
she made up her mind that Cousin Mehitable was mistaken. If her father
were "peculiar," Barby wouldn't have that sweet look on her face when
she sang that prayer for him. If he were making her unhappy she wouldn't
be singing it at all. She wouldn't care whether he was protected or not
"from rock and tempest, fire and foe."
And yet, after Barby had gone downstairs and the sound of the piano came
softly up from below--another bedtime custom, Georgina began thinking
again about those whispering voices which she had heard as she sat under
the bed, behind the bird-of-paradise valance. More than ever before the
music suggested someone waiting for a ship which never came home, or fog
bells on a lonely shore.
Nearly a week went by before Richard made his first visit to the old
gray house at the end of town. He came with the Towncrier, carrying his
bell, and keeping close to his side for the first few minutes. Then he
found the place far more interesting than the bungalow. Georgina took
him all over it, from the garret where she played on rainy days to the
seat up in the willow, where standing in its highest crotch one could
look clear across the Cape to the Atlantic. They made several plans for
their treasure-quest while up in the willow. They could see a place off
towards Wood End Lighthouse which looked like one of the pirate places
Uncle Darcy had described in one of his tales.
Barby had lemonade and cake waiting for them when they came down, and
when she talked to him it wasn't at all in the way the ladies did who
came to see his Aunt Letty, as if they were talking merely to be
gracious and kind to a strange little boy in whom they had no interest.
Barby gave his ear a tweak and said with a smile that made him feel as
if they had known each other always:
"Oh, the good times I've had with boys just your size. I always played
with my brother Eddy's friends. Boys make such good chums. I've often
thought how much Georgina misses that I had."
Presently Georgina took him out to the see-saw, where Captain Kidd
persisted in riding on Richard's end of the plank.
"That's exactly the way my Uncle Eddy's terrier used to do back in
Kentucky when I visited there one summer," she said, after the plank was
adjusted so as to balance them properly. "Only he barked all the time he
was riding. But he was fierce because Uncle Eddy fed him gunpowder."
"What did he do that for?"
"To keep him from being gun-shy. And Uncle Eddy ate some, too, one time
when he was little, because the colored stable boy told him it would
make him game."
"Did it?"
"I don't know whether that did or not. Something did though, for he's
the gamest man I know."
Richard considered this a moment and then said:
"I wonder what it would do to Captain Kidd if I fed him some."
"Let's try it!" exclaimed Georgina, delighted with the suggestion.
"There's some hanging up in the old powder-horn over the dining-room
mantel. You have to give it to 'em in milk. Wait a minute."
Jumping from the see-saw after giving fair warning, she ran to one of
the side windows.
"Barby," she called. "I'm going to give Captain Kidd some milk."
Barbara turned from her conversation with Uncle Darcy to say:
"Very well, if you can get it yourself. But be careful not to disturb
the pans that haven't been skimmed. Tippy wouldn't like it."
"I know what to get it out of," called Georgina, "out of the blue
pitcher."
Richard watched while she opened the refrigerator door and poured some
milk into a saucer.
"Carry it in and put it on the kitchen table," she bade him, "while I
get the powder."
When he followed her into the dining-room she was upon a chair,
reaching for the old powder horn, which hung on a hook under the firearm
that had done duty in the battle of Lexington. Richard wanted to get his
hands on it, and was glad when she could not pull out the wooden plug
which stopped the small end of the horn. She turned it over to him to
open. He peered into it, then shook it.
"There isn't more than a spoonful left in it," he said.
"Well, gunpowder is so strong you don't need much. You know just a
little will make a gun go off. It mightn't be safe to feed him much.
Pour some out in your hand and drop it in the milk."
Richard slowly poured a small mound out into the hollow of his hand, and
passed the horn back to her, then went to the kitchen whistling for
Captain Kidd. Not all of the powder went into the milk, however. The
last bit he swallowed himself, after looking at it long and
thoughtfully.
At the same moment, Georgina, before putting back the plug, paused,
looked all around, and poured out a few grains into her own hand. If the
Tishbite was going to do anybody any harm, it would be well to be
prepared. She had just hastily swallowed it and was hanging the horn
back in place, when Richard returned.
"He lapped up the last drop as if he liked it," he reported. "Now we'll
see what happens."