Chapter 36

AS ARIADNE SAW IT

All that day, the tall, ruddy-haired man in working clothes sat in the hall, within sight, though not within hearing, of the sick room, playing with the rosy child, and exerting all his ingenuity to invent quiet games that they could play there "where Muvver tan see us"; Ariadne soon learned the reason for staying in one place so constantly. She was very happy that day. Never in her life had she had so enchanting a playfellow. He showed her a game to play with clothespins and tin plates from the kitchen--why, it was so much fun that 'Stashie herself had to join in as she went past. And he told one story after another without a sign of the usual grown-up fatigue. They had their lunch there at the end of the hall, on the little sewing-table with two dolls beside them and the new man made Ariadne laugh by making believe feed the dolls out of her doll's tea-set.

It was a little queer, of course, to stay right there all the time, and to have Muvver staring at them from the bedroom at the other end of the hall, and not to be allowed to do more than tiptoe in once or twice and kiss her without saying a word; but when Ariadne grew confused with trying to think this out, and the little eyes drooped heavily, the new man picked her up and tucked her away in his arms so comfortably that, though she meant to reach up and feel if his beard felt as red as it looked, she fell asleep before she could raise her hand.

When she woke up it was twilight, but she was still in his arms. She stirred sleepily, and he looked down and smiled at her. His face looked like an old friend's--as though she had always known it. He had a friendly smile. She was very happy. Uncle Marius came toward them, teetering on his toes, the way he always did. "I think it's safe to leave now, Rankin," he said. "She has fallen into a natural sleep."

The new man stood up, still holding Ariadne. How tall he was! She kept going up and up, and when she peered over his shoulder she found herself looking down on Uncle Marius' white head.

"How about to-morrow?" asked the new man.

"We'll see. We'll see," said Dr. Melton; and then they all went downstairs and had toast and boiled eggs for supper. Ariadne informed her companions, looking up from her egg with a yolky smile, "Daddy told Muvver the other day that 'Stashie had certainly learned to boil eggs something _fine_! And he laughed, but Muvver didn't. Was it a joke?"

"They are very good eggs indeed, and well boiled," the new man answered. She loved the way in which he conversed with her.

"Ought we to give her some idea?" asked the doctor in a low voice.

"I would wait until she asks," said the other.

But Paul's child never asked. Once or twice she remarked that Daddy was away longer than usual "_vis_ time," but he had never been a very steadily recurrent phenomenon in her life, and soon her little brain, filled with new impressions, had forgotten that he ever used to come back.

There were many new impressions. A great deal was happening nowadays. Every morning something different, every day new people going and coming. Aunt Marietta, Auntie Madeleine, Uncle George from Cleveland, whom she'd seen only once or twice before, and Great-Aunt Hollister, whom she knew very well and feared as well as she knew her. After a time even the husbands began to appear, the husbands she had seen so rarely; Aunt Marietta's husband, and Aunt Madeleine's--fat, bald Mr. Lowder, who smelled of tobacco and soap and took her up on his lap--as much as he had--and gave her a big round dollar and kissed her behind her ear and smiled at her very kindly and held her very close. He said he liked little girls, and he wished Auntie Madeleine would get him one some day for a Christmas present. She informed him, filled with admiration at the extent of her own knowledge, that he couldn't get a Christmas present some day, but only just Christmas Day.

Mostly, however, they paid no attention to her, these many aunts and uncles who came and went. And, oddly enough, Uncle Marius always shut the door to Muvver's room when they came, and wouldn't let them, no matter how much they wanted to, go in and see Muvver, who was, she gathered, very sick. Ariadne didn't see, really, why they came at all, since they couldn't see Muvver and they certainly never so much as looked at 'Stashie, dear darling 'Stashie--more of a comfort these queer days than ever before--and they never, never spoke to the new man, who came and went as though nobody knew he was there. They would look right at him and never see him. Everything was very hard for a little girl to understand, and she dared ask no questions.

Everybody seemed to be very angry, and yet not at her. Indeed, she took the most prodigious care to avoid doing anything naughty lest she concentrate on herself this now widely diffused disapprobation. Never in her life had she tried so hard to be good, but nobody paid the least attention to her--nobody but the new man and 'Stashie, and they weren't the angry ones. The others stood about in groups in corners, talking in voices that started in to be low and always got loud before they stopped. Ariadne added several new words to her vocabulary at this time, from hearing them so constantly repeated. When her dolls were bad now, she shook them and called them "Indecent! indecent!" and asked them, with as close an imitation as she could manage, of Great-Aunt Hollister's tone, "What _do_ you suppose people are thinking! What _do_ you suppose people are thinking!" Or she knocked them into a corner and said "Shocking! Shocking!"

One day she stopped Uncle Marius, hurrying past her up the stairs, and asked him: "What are you thinking of, Uncle Marius?"

"What am I thinking of? What do you mean?" he repeated, his face and eyes twitching the way they did when he couldn't understand something right off.

"Why, Auntie Madeleine keeps asking everybody all the time, 'What _can_ the doctor be thinking of?' I just wondered."

He bent to kiss her raspingly--there were stiff little stubby white hairs coming out all over his face--and he said, as he trotted on up the stairs, "I am thinking of making sure that you have a mother, my poor dear."

And then there was a bigger change one day. She went to bed in her own little crib, and when she woke up she wasn't there at all, but in a big bed in a room at Aunt Julia's; and Aunt Julia was smiling at her, and hugging her, and saying she was so glad she had come to live with her and Uncle Marius for a while. Ariadne found out that Uncle Marius had brought her and Muvver the night before in a carriage all the way from Bellevue. She regretted excessively that she had not been awake to enjoy the adventure.

At Aunt Julia's, things were quieter. All at once the other people, the other uncles and aunts, had disappeared. That, of course, was because she and Muvver were at Aunt Julia's. She conceived of the house in Bellevue as still filled with their angry faces and voices, still echoing to "Indecent! indecent!" and "What _do_ you suppose people are saying?"

There was a long, long time after this when nothing special happened. The new man continued to come here, and his visits were the only events in Ariadne's quiet days. Apparently he came to see Ariadne, for he never went to see Muvver at all, as he used to do in Bellevue. He took Ariadne out in the back yard as the weather began to get warmer, and showed her lots of outdoor plays. He was as nice as ever, only a good deal whiter; and that was odd, for they were now in May, and from playing outdoors all the time Ariadne herself was as brown as a berry. At least, that was what Aunt Julia said. Ariadne accepted it with her usual patient indulgence of grown-ups' mistakes. There was not, of course, a single berry that was anything but red or black, or at least a sort of blue, like huckleberries in milk. She and 'Stashie had gone over them, one by one; they knew.

Uncle Marius remembered to shave himself nowadays. In fact, everything was more normal. Ariadne began to forget about the exciting time in Bellevue. Muvver wasn't in bed all the time now, but sat up in a chair for part of the day and even, if one were ever so quiet, could listen to accounts of what happened in Ariadne's world and could be told how Aunt Julia said that 'Stashie was quite a help as second girl if you just remembered to put away the best china, and that they had had eight new cooks since Ariadne had been there, but the second _would_ have stayed, only her mother got sick. The others just left. But Aunt Julia didn't mind. When there wasn't any cook, if it happened to be 'Stashie's day off, they all had bread and milk for supper, just as she had, and they let her set the table, and she could do it ever so well only she forgot _some_ things, of course, and Uncle Marius never got mad. He just said he hoped eating bread and milk like her would make him as good as she was--and she _was_ good--oh, Muvver, she was trying ever so hard to be good--

"Come, dear," said Aunt Julia, "Mother's getting tired. We'd better go."

It was only after she went away, sometimes only when she lay awake in her strange big bed, that Ariadne remembered that Muvver never said a word, but only smoothed her hair and kissed her.

She and the new man used to play out in the old grape-arbor in the back yard, and it was there, one day in mid-May, that Uncle Marius came teetering out and called the new man to one side, only Ariadne could hear what they said. Uncle Marius said: "It's no use, Rankin. It's a fixed idea with her. She isn't violent any more, but she hasn't changed. She is certainly a little deranged, but not enough for legal restraint. She could take Ariadne and disappear any day. I'm in terror lest she do that. I've no authority to prevent her. She won't talk to me freely about what she is afraid of. She doesn't seem to trust me--_me_!"

Ariadne found the conversation as dull as all overheard grown-ups' talk, and tried to busy herself with a corn-cob house the new man had been showing her how to build. Two or three times lately he had taken her out to his little house in the woods and showed her a lot of tools, and told her what they were for, and said if she were older he would teach her how to use them. Ariadne's head was full of the happy excitement of those visits. Corn-cob houses were for babies, she thought now.

After a time, Uncle Marius went away, slamming the front gate after him and stamping away up the street as though he were angry, only he did all kinds of queer things without being angry. In fact, she had never seen him angry. Perhaps he and Muvver were different from other people and never were.

She looked up with a start. The new man had come back to the arbor, but he did not look like play. He looked queer, so queer that Ariadne's sensitive lower lip began to tremble and the corners of her mouth to draw down. She could _not_ remember having done anything naughty. She was frightened by the way he looked. And yet, he picked her up quite gently, and held her on his knee, and asked her if Muvver could walk about the house yet.

"Oh, yes," she told him, "and came down to dinner last night."

The new man put her down, and asked her with a "please" and "I'd be much obliged" as though she were a grown-up herself, if she would do something for him--go to Muvver and ask her if she felt strong enough to come down into the grape-arbor to see him. Tell her he had something very special to say to her.

Ariadne went, skipping and hopping in pleasurable excitement at her own importance, and returned triumphantly to say that Muvver said she would come. She wondered if he felt too grown-up for cob houses himself. He hadn't built it any higher when she was gone. He looked as if he hadn't even winked. While she stood wondering at his silence, his face got very white. He stood up looking toward the house. Muvver was coming out, very slowly, leaning on the railing to the steps--Muvver in the nightgowny dress Aunt Julia had made her, only it wasn't really nightgowny, because it was all over lace--Muvver with her hair in two braids over her shoulders and all mussed up where she'd been lying down. Ariadne wondered that she hadn't smoothed it a little. She knew what people would say to _her_ if she came around with her hair looking like that.

The man went forward to meet Muvver, and gave her his hand, and they neither of them smiled or said how do you do, but came back together toward the arbor. And when they got there Muvver sat down quick, as though she were tired, and laid her head back against the chair. The man lifted Ariadne up and kissed her--he had never done that before. Now she knew how his beard felt--very soft. She felt it against her face for a long time. And he told her to go into the house to 'Stashie.

So she went. Ariadne always did as she was told. 'Stashie was trying to make some ginger cookies, and the oven "jist would _not_ bake thim," she said. They were all doughy when they came out, very much as they were when they went in; but the dough was deliciously sweet and spicy. 'Stashie and Ariadne ate a great deal of it, because 'Stashie knew very well from experience that the grown-ups have an ineradicable prejudice against food that comes out of the oven "prezackly" the way it went in.

After that they had to wash their hands, all sticky with dough, and after that 'Stashie took Ariadne on her lap and told her Irish fairy stories, all about Cap O'Rushes and the Leprechaun, till they were startled by the boiling over of the milk 'Stashie had put on the stove to start a pudding. 'Stashie certainly did have bad luck with her cooking, as she herself frequently sadly admitted.

But, oh! wasn't she darling to Ariadne! It made the lonely little girl warm all over to be loved the way 'Stashie loved her. Sometimes when Ariadne woke up with a bad dream it was 'Stashie who came to quiet her, and she just hugged her up close, close, so that she could feel her heart go thump, thump, thump. And she always, always had time to explain things. It was wonderful how much time 'Stashie had for that--or anything else Ariadne needed.

She was putting more milk on the stove when in dashed Uncle Marius, his mouth wide open and his hands jumping around. "Where's your mother? Where's Mrs. Hollister?" he cried.

"Out in the arbor," said Ariadne.

"Alone?"

"Oh, no--" Ariadne began to explain, but the doctor had darted to the window. You could see the grape-arbor plainly from there--Muvver sitting with her hair all mussed up around her face, listening to the new man, who sat across the table from her and talked and talked and talked, and never moved a finger. Uncle Marius put his hand up quick to his side and said something Ariadne couldn't catch. She looked up, saw his face, and ran away, terrified, to hide her face in 'Stashie's dirty apron. Now she knew how Uncle Marius looked when he was angry. She heard him go out and down the steps, and went fearfully to watch him. He went across the grass to the arbor. The others looked toward him without moving, and when he came close and leaned against the table, Muvver looked up at him and said something, and then leaned back again, her head resting against the chair, her eyes closed, her hands dropped down. How tired Muvver always looked!

And just then 'Stashie spilled all the cocoa she was going to use to flavor the pudding with. She spilled it on the stove, and it smoked and stinked--there was nobody nowadays to forbid Ariadne to use 'Stashie's words--and 'Stashie said there wasn't any more and they'd have to go off to the grocery-store to get some, and if Ariadne knew where that nickel was Mis' Sandworth give her, they could get a soda-water on the way, and with two straws it would do for both.