The Copy-Cat and Other Stories Part 35

Benny often stood still, wiped his forehead, leaned on his rake, and inhaled the bouquet of sweet scents, but Annie raked with never-ceasing energy. Annie was small and slender and wiry, and moved with angular grace, her thin, peaked elbows showing beneath the sleeves of her pink gingham dress, her thin knees outlining beneath the scanty folds of the skirt. Her neck was long, her shoulder-blades troubled the back of her blouse at every movement. She was a creature full of ostentatious joints, but the joints were delicate and rhythmical and charming. Annie had a charming face, too. It was thin and sunburnt, but still charming, with a sweet, eager, intent-to-please outlook upon life. This last was the real att.i.tude of Annie's mind; it was, in fact, Annie. She was intent to please from her toes to the crown of her brown head. She radiated good will and loving-kindness as fervently as a lily in the border radiated perfume.

It was very warm, and the northwest sky had a threatening mountain of clouds. Occasionally Annie glanced at it and raked the faster, and thought complacently of the water-proof covers in the little barn. This hay was valuable for the Reverend Silas's horse.

Two of the front windows of the house were filled with girls' heads, and the regular swaying movement of white-clad arms sewing. The girls sat in the house because it was so sunny on the piazza in the afternoon. There were four girls in the sittingroom, all making finery for themselves.

On the other side of the front door one of the two windows was blank; in the other was visible a nodding gray head, that of Annie's father taking his afternoon nap.

Everything was still except the girls' tongues, an occasional burst of laughter, and the crackling shrill of locusts. Nothing had pa.s.sed on the dusty road since Benny and Annie had begun their work. Lynn Corners was nothing more than a hamlet. It was even seldom that an automobile got astray there, being diverted from the little city of Anderson, six miles away, by turning to the left instead of the right.

Benny stopped again and wiped his forehead, all pink and beaded with sweat. He was a pretty young man--as pretty as a girl, although large.

He glanced furtively at Annie, then he went with a soft, padding glide, like a big cat, to the piazza and settled down. He leaned his head against a post, closed his eyes, and inhaled the sweetness of flowers alive and dying, of new-mown hay. Annie glanced at him and an angelic look came over her face. At that moment the sweetness of her nature seemed actually visible.

"He is tired, poor boy!" she thought. She also thought that probably Benny felt the heat more because he was stout. Then she raked faster and faster. She fairly flew over the yard, raking the severed gra.s.s and flowers into heaps. The air grew more sultry. The sun was not yet clouded, but the northwest was darker and rumbled ominously.

The girls in the sitting-room continued to chatter and sew. One of them might have come out to help this little sister toiling alone, but Annie did not think of that. She raked with the uncomplaining sweetness of an angel until the storm burst. The rain came down in solid drops, and the sky was a sheet of clamoring flame. Annie made one motion toward the barn, but there was no use. The hay was not half c.o.c.ked. There was no sense in running for covers. Benny was up and lumbering into the house, and her sisters were shutting windows and crying out to her. Annie deserted her post and fled before the wind, her pink skirts las.h.i.+ng her heels, her hair dripping.

When she entered the sitting-room her sisters, Imogen, Eliza, Jane, and Susan, were all there; also her father, Silas, tall and gaunt and gray.

To the Hempsteads a thunder-storm partook of the nature of a religious ceremony. The family gathered together, and it was understood that they were all offering prayer and recognizing G.o.d as present on the wings of the tempest. In reality they were all very nervous in thunder-storms, with the exception of Annie. She always sent up a little silent pet.i.tion that her sisters and brother and father, and the horse and dog and cat, might escape danger, although she had never been quite sure that she was not wicked in including the dog and cat. She was surer about the horse because he was the means by which her father made pastoral calls upon his distant sheep. Then afterward she just sat with the others and waited until the storm was over and it was time to open windows and see if the roof had leaked. Today, however, she was intent upon the hay. In a lull of the tempest she spoke.

"It is a pity," she said, "that I was not able to get the hay c.o.c.ked and the covers on."

Then Imogen turned large, sarcastic blue eyes upon her. Imogen was considered a beauty, pink and white, golden-haired, and dimpled, with a curious calculating hardness of character and a sharp tongue, so at variance with her appearance that people doubted the evidence of their senses.

"If," said Imogen, "you had only made Benny work instead of encouraging him to dawdle and finally to stop altogether, and if you had gone out directly after dinner, the hay would have been all raked up and covered."

Nothing could have exceeded the calm and instructive superiority of Imogen's tone. A ma.s.s of soft white fabric lay upon her lap, although she had removed scissors and needle and thimble to a safe distance. She tilted her chin with a royal air. When the storm lulled she had stopped praying.

Imogen's sisters echoed her and joined in the attack upon Annie.

"Yes," said Jane, "if you had only started earlier, Annie. I told Eliza when you went out in the yard that it looked like a shower."

Eliza nodded energetically.

"It was foolish to start so late," said Susan, with a calm air of wisdom only a shade less exasperating than Imogen's.

"And you always encourage Benny so in being lazy," said Eliza.

Then the Reverend Silas joined in. "You should have more sense of responsibility toward your brother, your only brother, Annie," he said, in his deep pulpit voice.

"It was after two o'clock when you went out," said Imogen.

"And all you had to do was the dinner-dishes, and there were very few to-day," said Jane.

Then Annie turned with a quick, cat-like motion. Her eyes blazed under her brown toss of hair. She gesticulated with her little, nervous hands.

Her voice was as sweet and intense as a reed, and withal piercing with anger.

"It was not half past one when I went out," said she, "and there was a whole sinkful of dishes."

"It was after two. I looked at the clock," said Imogen.

"It was not."

"And there were very few dishes," said Jane.

"A whole sinkful," said Annie, tense with wrath.

"You always are rather late about starting," said Susan.

"I am not! I was not! I washed the dishes, and swept the kitchen, and blacked the stove, and cleaned the silver."

"I swept the kitchen," said Imogen, severely. "Annie, I am surprised at you."

"And you know I cleaned the silver yesterday," said Jane.

Annie gave a gasp and looked from one to the other.

"You know you did not sweep the kitchen," said Imogen.

Annie's father gazed at her severely. "My dear," he said, "how long must I try to correct you of this habit of making false statements?"

"Dear Annie does not realize that they are false statements, father,"

said Jane. Jane was not pretty, but she gave the effect of a long, sweet stanza of some fine poetess. She was very tall and slender and large-eyed, and wore always a serious smile. She was attired in a purple muslin gown, cut V-shaped at the throat, and, as always, a black velvet ribbon with a little gold locket attached. The locket contained a coil of hair. Jane had been engaged to a young minister, now dead three years, and he had given her the locket.

Jane no doubt had mourned for her lover, but she had a covert pleasure in the romance of her situation. She was a year younger than Annie, and she had loved and lost, and so had achieved a sentimental distinction.

Imogen always had admirers. Eliza had been courted at intervals half-heartedly by a widower, and Susan had had a few fleeting chances.

But Jane was the only one who had been really definite in her heart affairs. As for Annie, n.o.body ever thought of her in such a connection.

It was supposed that Annie had no thought of marriage, that she was foreordained to remain unwed and keep house for her father and Benny.

When Jane said that dear Annie did not realize that she made false statements, she voiced an opinion of the family before which Annie was always absolutely helpless. Defense meant counter-accusation. Annie could not accuse her family. She glanced from one to the other. In her blue eyes were still sparks of wrath, but she said nothing. She felt, as always, speechless, when affairs reached such a juncture. She began, in spite of her good sense, to feel guiltily responsible for everything--for the spoiling of the hay, even for the thunder-storm.

What was more, she even wished to feel guiltily responsible. Anything was better than to be sure her sisters were not speaking the truth, that her father was blaming her unjustly.

Benny, who sat hunched upon himself with the effect of one set of bones and muscles leaning upon others for support, was the only one who spoke for her, and even he spoke to little purpose.

"One of you other girls," said he, in a thick, sweet voice, "might have come out and helped Annie; then she could have got the hay in."

They all turned on him.

"It is all very well for you to talk," said Imogen. "I saw you myself quit raking hay and sit down on the piazza."

"Yes," a.s.sented Jane, nodding violently, "I saw you, too."

"You have no sense of your responsibility, Benjamin, and your sister Annie abets you in evading it," said Silas Hempstead with dignity.

"Benny feels the heat," said Annie.

"Father is entirely right," said Eliza. "Benjamin has no sense of responsibility, and it is mainly owing to Annie."

"But dear Annie does not realize it," said Jane.

Benny got up lumberingly and left the room. He loved his sister Annie, but he hated the mild simmer of feminine rancor to which even his father's presence failed to add a masculine flavor. Benny was always leaving the room and allowing his sisters "to fight it out."