Kitobni o'qish: «Miss Mehetabel's Son», sahifa 3

His vivacity was gone, a sudden cloud had come over his bright face, his figure seemed to have collapsed, the light seemed to have faded out of his hair. With a shuffling step, the very antithesis of his brisk, elastic tread, he turned to the door and passed into the road.

“Well,” I said to myself, “if Greenton had forty thousand inhabitants, it could n’t turn out a more astonishing old party than that!”

II. THE CASE OF SILAS JAFFREY

A man with a passion for bric-à-brac is always stumbling over antique bronzes, intaglios, mosaics, and daggers of the time of Benvenuto Cellini; the bibliophile finds creamy vellum folios and rare Alduses and Elzevirs waiting for him at unsuspected bookstalls; the numismatist has but to stretch forth his palm to have priceless coins drop into it. My own weakness is odd people, and I am constantly encountering them. It was plain that I had unearthed a couple of very queer specimens at Bayley’s Four-Corners. I saw that a fortnight afforded me too brief an opportunity to develop the richness of both, and I resolved to devote my spare time to Mr. Jaffrey alone, instinctively recognizing in him an unfamiliar species. My professional work in the vicinity of Greenton left my evenings and occasionally an afternoon unoccupied; these intervals I purposed to employ in studying and classifying my fellow-boarder. It was necessary, as a preliminary step, to learn something of his previous history, and to this end I addressed myself to Mr. Sewell that same night.

“I do not want to seem inquisitive,” I said to the landlord, as he was fastening up the bar, which, by the way, was the salle à manger and general sitting-room—“I do not want to seem inquisitive, but your friend Mr. Jaffrey dropped a remark this morning at breakfast which—which was not altogether clear to me.”

“About Mehetabel?” asked Mr. Sewell, uneasily.

“Yes.”

“Well, I wish he would n’t!”

“He was friendly enough in the course of conversation to hint to me that he had not married the young woman, and seemed to regret it.”

“No, he did n’t marry Mehetabel.”

“May I inquire why he did n’t marry Mehetabel?”

“Never asked her. Might have married the girl forty times. Old Elkins’s daughter, over at K–. She ‘d have had him quick enough. Seven years, off and on, he kept company with Mehetabel, and then she died.”

“And he never asked her?”

“He shilly-shallied. Perhaps he did n’t think of it. When she was dead and gone, then Silas was struck all of a heap—and that’s all about it.”

Obviously Mr. Sewell did not intend to tell me anything more, and obviously there was more to tell. The topic was plainly disagreeable to him for some reason or other, and that unknown reason of course piqued my curiosity.

As I was absent from dinner and supper that day, I did not meet Mr. Jaffrey again until the following morning at breakfast. He had recovered his bird-like manner, and was full of a mysterious assassination that had just taken place in New York, all the thrilling details of which were at his fingers’ ends. It was at once comical and sad to see this harmless old gentleman with his naïve, benevolent countenance, and his thin hair flaming up in a semicircle, like the footlights at a theatre, revelling in the intricacies of the unmentionable deed.

“You come up to my room to-night,” he cried, with horrid glee, “and I ‘ll give you my theory of the murder. I ‘ll make it as clear as day to you that it was the detective himself who fired the three pistol-shots.”

It was not so much the desire to have this point elucidated as to make a closer study of Mr. Jaffrey that led me to accept his invitation. Mr. Jaffrey’s bedroom was in an L of the building, and was in no way noticeable except for the numerous files of newspapers neatly arranged against the blank spaces of the walls, and a huge pile of old magazines which stood in one corner, reaching nearly up to the ceiling, and threatening to topple over each instant, like the Leaning Tower at Pisa. There were green paper shades at the windows, some faded chintz valances about the bed, and two or three easy-chairs covered with chintz. On a black-walnut shelf between the windows lay a choice collection of meerschaum and brier-wood pipes.

Filling one of the chocolate-colored bowls for me and another for himself, Mr. Jaffrey began prattling; but not about the murder, which appeared to have flown out of his mind. In fact, I do not remember that the topic was even touched upon, either then or afterwards.

“Cosey nest this,” said Mr. Jaffrey, glancing complacently over the apartment. “What is more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than an open wood-fire? Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins and bluebirds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last spring. In summer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit-trees under the window: so I have singing birds all the year round. I take it very easy here, I can tell you, summer and winter. Not much society. Tobias is not, perhaps, what one would term a great intellectual force, but he means well. He ‘s a realist—believes in coming down to what he calls ‘the hard pan;’ but his heart is in the right place, and he ‘s very kind to me. The wisest thing I ever did in my life was to sell out my grain business over at K–, thirteen years ago, and settle down at the Corners. When a man has made a competency, what does he want more? Besides, at that time an event occurred which destroyed any ambition I may have had. Mehetabel died.” “The lady you were engaged to?” “N-o, not precisely engaged. I think it was quite understood between us, though nothing had been said on the subject. Typhoid,” added Mr. Jaffrey, in a low voice.

For several minutes he smoked in silence, a vague, troubled look playing over his countenance. Presently this passed away, and he fixed his gray eyes speculatively upon my face.

“If I had married Mehetabel,” said Mr. Jaffrey, slowly, and then he hesitated. I blew a ring of smoke into the air, and, resting my pipe on my knee, dropped into an attitude of attention. “If I had married Mehetabel, you know, we should have had—ahem!—a family.”

“Very likely,” I assented, vastly amused at this unexpected turn.

“A Boy!” exclaimed Mr. Jaffrey, explosively.

“By all means, certainly, a son.”

“Great trouble about naming the boy. Mehetabel’s family want him named Elkanah Elkins, after her grandfather; I want him named Andrew Jackson. We compromise by christening him Elkanah Elkins Andrew Jackson Jaffrey. Rather a long name for such a short little fellow,” said Mr. Jaffrey, musingly.

“Andy is n’t a bad nickname,” I suggested.

“Not at all. We call him Andy, in the family. Somewhat fractious at first—colic and things. I suppose it is right, or it would n’t be so; but the usefulness of measles, mumps, croup, whooping-cough, scarlatina, and fits is not clear to the parental eye. I wish Andy would be a model infant, and dodge the whole lot.”

This supposititious child, born within the last few minutes, was plainly assuming the proportions of a reality to Mr. Jaffrey. I began to feel a little uncomfortable. I am, as I have said, a civil engineer, and it is not strictly in my line to assist at the births of infants, imaginary or otherwise. I pulled away vigorously at the pipe, and said nothing.

“What large blue eyes he has,” resumed Mr. Jaffrey, after a pause; “just like Hetty’s; and the fair hair, too, like hers. How oddly certain distinctive features are handed down in families! Sometimes a mouth, sometimes a turn of the eyebrow. Wicked little boys over at K– have now and then derisively advised me to follow my nose. It would be an interesting thing to do. I should find my nose flying about the world, turning up unexpectedly here and there, dodging this branch of the family and re-appearing in that, now jumping over one greatgrandchild to fasten itself upon another, and never losing its individuality. Look at Andy. There ‘s Elkanah Elkins’s chin to the life. Andy’s chin is probably older than the Pyramids. Poor little thing,” he cried, with sudden indescribable tenderness, “to lose his mother so early!” And Mr. Jaf-frey’s head sunk upon his breast, and his shoulders slanted forward, as if he were actually bending over the cradle of the child. The whole gesture and attitude was so natural that it startled me. The pipe slipped from my fingers and fell to the floor.