Read Ebook: The Heart of Arethusa by Fox Frances Barton Read F W Frederick William Illustrator

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Ebook has 1748 lines and 78473 words, and 35 pages

e kept Arethusa fully cognizant of what her heart most earnestly desired.

"Nothing very much, Aunt 'Liza."

"Yes, you did. I heard you. Arethusa," Miss Eliza straightened her glasses and attacked directly, "the way you treated Timothy at the supper-table ... all through the meal.... It's beyond my comprehension how you can! But he was a gentleman through the whole thing, I must say, a perfect gentleman. Which ought to make you more than ever ashamed of yourself. Sometimes I'm forced to think that all the training your Aunt 'Titia and I and your Aunt 'Senath have given you has gone for naught. To treat a guest in your own home the way you did Timothy! I was scandalised!! Simply scandalized! But I must say that Timothy behaved like a gentleman."

It was what Timothy would have termed "dirt mean" of Miss Eliza to add this extra chapter to the thorough scolding for the afternoon which she had given Arethusa such a short while before. But Timothy was Miss Eliza's most vulnerable spot; one of her few weaknesses.

"He always does," muttered Arethusa, "according to you. But you don't hear anything he says, he's too smart!"

"What's that?" Miss Eliza looked quite ready for battle.

"Nothing, Aunt 'Liza."

"There was something. You said something about Timothy, Arethusa, for I heard you ... again. That habit of yours of answering 'nothing,' when I ask you to repeat what you have said, is decidedly disrespectful."

Then as a parting shot, as she rattled the pages open:

"You must conduct yourself more like a lady with Timothy, Arethusa, or I'm very much afraid he won't want to marry you."

"Won't want to marry me!" Arethusa sprang hotly from her seat on the couch. "It's me that don't want to marry Timothy!"

"You do not know what you are saying," very coldly and decidedly from Miss Eliza. "Of course you want to. It is fitting in every way, most fitting. He is the right age, the families have known each other always, and the lands adjoin."

This with Miss Eliza was the clinching argument. The Jarvis Farm was on both sides of the Pike, but on one side it enclosed the Redfield Farm north and west and south, and went nearly to town. The "V" lot, especially, seemed to Miss Eliza to be in a position that made annexation desirable. The marriage of Timothy and Arethusa would make one Farm of the two, and straighten all those irregular boundaries. When so made, it would be by far the largest individual piece of property in the County. For to Arethusa, as the sole descendant of the Redfields, would go some day all the land of their owning, and to Timothy had already been left the home Farm of his grandfather, because of his name.

"I shall never marry Timothy," said Arethusa, "Never! If the land was plaited in and out, I never would!"

"Why?"

"Oh, Sister, don't!"

Miss Letitia gazed distressfully from Miss Eliza to Arethusa, and then back to Miss Eliza again. Her round, good-natured little face was all drawn up and distorted with worry, just as it always was when war threatened, even remotely, between Miss Eliza and Arethusa. And these bouts concerning the girl's marriage to Timothy occurred so often without any advantage to either side.

"Because I shan't."

Miss Asenath felt quite like answering for Arethusa that this last statement was most irrelevant, but she refrained. There was really no use in adding the slightest fuel to flames already sufficiently high.

"You speak of the land being plaited in and out," continued Miss Eliza, looking sternly over her glasses. "That was a most foolish remark. Such a thing could never be, and you know it. I do not want you to marry Timothy for his land, of course. I merely mention its situation as next to what will some day be your own as making the alliance just that much more desirable. For heaven knows what will happen to the Farm when you do get it, if you haven't some sensible man to take care of it for you! But there are other things about Timothy that would make him a husband any girl could be proud of. There are plenty of them in this very County would jump at the chance you've had."

"They're very welcome to him!"

Arethusa thought it best not to say this too loud, but unfortunately Miss Eliza heard.

"I'm ashamed of you, Arethusa, if you're not ashamed of yourself. It's throwing away the opportunity of a life-time. I wish I was young, and in your shoes. Have you refused him lately?"

No answer from Arethusa. She picked at the soft blue fleece of Miss Asenath's comfort until she had collected quite a little pile of down, which she made into a ball and put as carefully to one side as if she intended it for some future use. Miss Asenath watched her sympathetically. If it would have done the slightest good she would have entered the breach, but when Miss Eliza reached the stage of her argument of pointblank questions, it meant pursuit to the bitter end.

Miss Letitia was not so wise. She had made three attempts to catch the loop of the same stitch in her crocheting, and failed each time, in her excitement. This was a most unusual performance for her. Her crochet needle poised in mid-air.

"Sister," she pleaded, "please. I wouldn't ask the child such a personal question, if I were you. Please!"

"Please what, 'Titia?" Miss Eliza was distracted for the fraction of a moment to Miss Letitia. "Why do you sit there saying, 'Please,' in that silly way? I will ask my niece Arethusa anything I wish. When I was young we were supposed to answer all the questions of our elders, personal or not, as you call them. Arethusa!"

When Miss Eliza spoke of "my niece Arethusa," it meant business. The poor niece turned desperately, and just in time to receive the broadside of a still more emphatic, "Arethusa!"

"Yes, I have, Aunt 'Liza. Timothy has asked me to marry him every summer since I was five years old, and in between times too, and I've said, 'No,' every single time. And if he keeps on asking me until I'm five hundred years old, I'll still keep on saying, 'no!' I shall never, never, marry Timothy!"

She left her refuge of the couch and started toward the door.

"I did not hear you asking permission to leave the room, Arethusa, and I do wish you would not exaggerate so violently. It is simply telling falsehoods. You told two in that one sentence. You know perfectly well Timothy hasn't been asking you to marry him since he was nine--a child of that age doesn't think of marriage. And you also know just as well as I do that you'll not live to be five hundred, it's absurd to make such statements. Come back here, Arethusa? Now what is your real reason for acting this way whenever I speak to you of Timothy. I want to know? You know just how your Aunt 'Titia and I and your Aunt 'Senath feel about it. Why do you persist in going against our wishes?"

Arethusa gazed wildly around the room. She seemed to hunt on walls and floor an answer to the uncompromisingly plain question. Close to the door she was poised like some wild bird arrested in its flight. One glance that included Miss Asenath and Miss Letitia absolved them both from participation in the scheme so clear to Miss Eliza's heart.

"I don't love Timothy," she said, at last, desperately.

"Nonsense!"

"But I don't!"

"Bah!... Love!" Miss Eliza was thoroughly disgusted. "What do you want to be so mawkish and sentimental for? Just like your father! You like Timothy, don't you? Then that's quite enough."

"But I couldn't marry anybody I didn't love." The persecuted one edged a little bit of a way nearer to the door.

"You don't know any thing about it," declared Miss Eliza, flatly. "What you call love is just pure silly!"

"Well," Arethusa despairingly presented her final bit of reasoning, "I hate Timothy! I think it's the very ugliest name I ever heard. I could never be happy married to anybody called 'Timothy'."

Miss Eliza sniffed. The girl was getting more and more foolish! "That certainly means nothing!"

"I always thought 'Timothy' was a good name," came softly from Miss Asenath. "I always liked 'Timothy' very much myself."

Arethusa melted suddenly. She remembered.

How could she have been so cruel as to say such a thing and hurt dear Aunt 'Senath's feelings? With a rush she was across the room and both strong young arms had clasped the frail figure of the best-loved aunt closely to her.

"Oh, Aunt 'Senath, Aunt 'Senath!" she sobbed, wildly penitent. "I was a beast! I didn't think! Your Timothy was a lovely name!"

It sounded a trifle illogical and inconsistent, but Miss Asenath seemed to understand perfectly. She whispered her forgiveness to the weeping Arethusa, who could only squeeze her and murmur incoherent avowals of her lack of intent to be unkind. To be unkind to Aunt 'Titia was bad enough, but to be unkind to Aunt 'Senath! It was the last word in perfidy.

"It all depends on what we think of the person, what we may think of the name, Arethusa, dear," said Miss Asenath. "I know you didn't mean it."

And Arethusa wept some more, scalding tears of still another sort of penitence: Aunt 'Senath was such a darling! The back of Miss Asenath's woolly white wrapper was rapidly getting damper and damper.

"If I were you, Arethusa," remarked Miss Eliza drily, after awhile, looking up from her magazine to bend her sharp glance on the pair on the sofa, "I would not crush my aunt into jelly in order to show her your sorrow at being so thoughtless and unfeeling. And you will make her quite ill; very likely it will bring on one of her bad headaches, if you carry on much longer that way."

Miss Asenath's headaches were periods of much anxiety for all the family, with the great suffering they brought the gentle invalid. Arethusa drew away from the couch abruptly. She felt suddenly overwhelmed with her inability ever to do the right thing; a feeling which Miss Eliza was quite often successful in arousing in her niece.

Miss Asenath offered her own cobwebby handkerchief to dry Arethusa's reddened eyes. Then she asked Miss Eliza if she would not be good enough to read aloud to them for awhile. Miss Asenath had some of the makings of a diplomat.

None of the roomful of women would really listen, for Miss Letitia would be far too intent on counting stitches, and Miss Asenath would dream, and to Arethusa, Miss Eliza's choice of reading matter was anything but interesting; but Miss Eliza herself would be made beatific. She considered herself somewhat gifted as an elocutionist; during her course at the old Freeport Seminary, now so long ago, she had had the most lady-like of instruction. She prided herself on her ability to put "expression" into her reading. Thus would amiability be especially restored in her quarter, and poor, persecuted Arethusa might have a little while in which to attain some degree of calmness once more.

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