The White Lady (4 page)

Constance looked at it idly and thought with a pang that here was another instance of the decline of fickle fortune. The old house and she were in the same situation. She looked at it again pityingly and thought how beautiful it must have been there once and how happy people with bright faces and dapper clothing once used to go in and out and walk those verandas and lawns. She wondered whether the young people on summer evenings used to saunter down the slope to the pond and push the boat off in the moonlight, rowing toward the little summerhouse and back again, or whether they ever skated there in the winter. Constance’s imagination was well developed. She would like to know the history of that house. It attracted her. Then she remembered that she had intended getting off somewhere, but she had not yet found the place that was more amusing than her own thoughts. Perhaps this would do as well as any, and it would be interesting to walk about on that old place and find out all about it by questioning someone.

She glimpsed a small village where three roads met before the old house. A tiny stone church in the first fork and in the other fork, a row of dingy stores. Not even a gaudy, up-to-date chain store among them. On the other side of the track were the station and a small fly-specked newsstand, with an alert little country trolley car waiting impatiently and contemptuously for the train to pass out of its way.

Finally, the passengers concluded it was time to investigate and stuck their heads out of the windows or sauntered down the aisle and stood on the platforms. Reference to the timetable gave Constance no clue to where she was. There seemed to be no such place on the schedule. Probably, this train did not stop here ordinarily. Something must have happened.

The man in the chair opposite presently came in scowling and cursing all railroads for careless inefficiency. Constance gathered from his answers to excited fellow passengers that there was a double wreck a mile or so ahead where another railroad’s tracks crossed. Two freight trains had collided, and the tracks were a mass of tangled wreckage.

The conductor came through just then announcing that it would be an hour at least before they could get under way again, for a derrick had to be sent from Chicago, nearly forty miles away, before they could hope to clear the tracks.

Constance, feeling rather blank, suddenly discovered she was hungry. She had been too absorbed in her thoughts at lunchtime to bother to eat anything. Now would be a good time to visit the diner. She started back through the train, car after car. On and on she went. She had not remembered the dining car had been so far away from her car that morning. Suddenly she came to the last car and looked out on the open tracks stretching away behind. Puzzled, astonished, startled, she stood in the doorway and stared.

An interested sauntering youth, another waiting passenger, took advantage of her bewilderment.

“ ’S mattah, girlie?” he said.

Without realizing his impudence for the moment, Constance gasped, “Why, where’s the diner?”

He laughed. “Dropped an hour ago, sistah. Had a hot box. Guess they figuahed we’d be in Chi by dinnah time. Sorry I haven’t a chicken dinnah about me,” he added smartly, feeling in his pockets. “How about a cigarette?”

But Constance had fled. She made her way back to her seat with flaming cheeks.

She began to realize that for the first time in her life she was hungry and had nothing with which to satisfy her hunger. She wondered vaguely whether this was an omen of the future. Was she to know actual want?

Yet the new experience was so great a novelty as to be almost interesting. It pleased her to try to get out of this situation. There must be a restaurant or a hotel in the village. Now would be a good time to explore that lovely estate, too. So she picked her way between the train and the low picket fence surrounding the stationhouse yard.

It was a most uninteresting village street upon which she presently emerged. Half a dozen loungers, black and white, stood about the station and the newsstand. As many more lounged on the steps of three uninviting stores: a cigar store and barber shop combined, a Chinese laundry, and a small general supply store. Finding no further promise in looking up the street in either direction, Constance timidly ventured into the general supply store.

A survey of the premises almost made her turn and flee. It was anything but clean, and the atmosphere was rank with tobacco smoke. But a man approached her indifferently and asked what she would have.

“Is there any hotel or restaurant near here where I can get something to eat?” she asked.

“Not ’t I know of,” he responded, leaning back against a sugar barrel wearily and pulling off a broom straw from a bundle of brooms that stood beside him. He looked his elegant visitor over carefully and critically. It was evident to the bystanders that he was in no way overawed by her. The storekeeper spoke as if the country round about were to him a vast, unexplored region that might hold many a vagrant hotel if one had but the time to look it up, but the man who half lay on the counter and the man who sat on another sugar barrel and the man behind the counter all grinned in openmouthed amusement at the idea of a restaurant or hotel thereabouts.

“Is there no place where I can get something to eat? Not even a boardinghouse where they serve meals?”

“Not ’t I know of,” responded the astute storekeeper again.

“Well, can’t I get something to eat here?” said Constance desperately, looking around in search of something promising. She was not one to be easily balked in a project.

“Well, I generally calc’late to keep a few things in that line. It’s what I’m here for,” he answered, biting off bits of the broom straw and keeping a sober face. “Just what was it you wanted?”

“Have you any—” Constance looked around wildly, appealing, as it were, to the cobwebby shelves and searching her mind for any lore concerning grocery shopping. It had not been in her line. The housekeeper generally did all the ordering since Grandmother gave it up.

“Have you any olives?” she said desperately.

The man settled back on the top of the sugar barrel again and folded his arms speculatively. “Olives!” he repeated meditatively. “Olives!”—a long pause. “No, we don’t have no call fer those. Got pickles.”

“Well, perhaps pickles would do,” said Constance, longing now only for an opportunity to get out of this dreadful store and feeling somewhat under obligation to make a purchase. “What else have you?”

“Potatoes,” said the resourceful storekeeper.

Constance looked puzzled. “Potatoes! Why, I couldn’t cook those in a parlor car. But perhaps you mean Saratoga chips. They would be good.” Her face brightened. She was getting hungrier every minute.

“No, we don’t keep chips of any kind, but we got plenty of kindling wood.”

Constance’s face flamed. She felt sure the man was trying to insult her, and expected a loud guffaw from the back of the store, but beyond a broad grin on the face of the young clerk, who ducked down to hunt for something behind the counter, there was no sign of mirth. The other listeners did not fully comprehend the nature of the commodity discussed.

The clerk presently emerged from under the counter with a red and sober face, and suggested respectfully that they had crackers and cheese.

Constance turned to the young man hopefully and gratefully, and won his heart with a smile.

“Thank you!” she said heartily. “That is a good suggestion.”

He came forward and assisted her further, until she had quite a collection of stale cakes, a glass of jelly, some baker’s buns, some chipped beef, and a large red-cheeked apple. At last, with her arms full to overflowing, she stepped forth once more.

The young man held the door open for her and watched her wistfully down the street. She was a part of the great world of better things for which he often had aspirations: the world of which his mother talked when she could take time from her hard work; the world to which she used to belong, long ago, before she was married. He recognized the indefinable stamp of culture and refinement. He watched her as she crossed the street, and noted the pretty curve of the high instep of her foot so daintily shod. Suddenly the skinny figure of a boy appeared as from nowhere. His wet sandy hair was slicked back from his freckled face.

“Kid, you run after that lady and carry her bundles to any place she wants ’em, and I’ll give you five cents and a stick of candy. Be quick, and don’t you dare tell any of the kids I sent you.”

The still-damp swimming trunks were flung into a corner, and the boy was off like a breeze. He was keen for a bargain; moreover, he scented another possible nickel from the stylish lady. He presented himself before the wondering Constance, who was already sorry that she had made so many purchases, and declared his intention of helping her.

She hesitated, not knowing whether to trust a strange boy or not, but he waited not for permission. His brother’s word was law. He helped himself to the bottle of pickles that was fast finding its way from under her arm to the sidewalk, and then, as other bundles struggled to follow, he caught at one or two. In the scramble, they grew quite familiar, and she felt, when she was once more righted and ready to move onward, that she had gained a friend.

“Which way you goin’?” asked the young burden-bearer, shifting the gum in his mouth to the other cheek.

“Why, to the train, I suppose,” said Constance, looking across wistfully to the old house. “There isn’t any other place I could eat my lunch, is there? I hate to go back with such a lot of things. I don’t know why I bought so many.”

“Train!” said the boy, on the alert at once for a sensation in the stupid little town. “Gosh! I did notice that train’s been settin’ there ever since I came up from the swimming hole! What’s the big idea? Did they let you off to buy groceries for ’em all?”

Constance laughed in a carefree way she had not laughed since her visit to the lawyer. She felt free as a bird out here in a strange village, with a strange little street child carrying her parcels and treating her with pleasant comradeship.

“I did buy enough for an army, didn’t I? I didn’t want any lunch, but I am ravenously hungry now. When I found the dining car had been dropped, I thought I had better stock up. I started out to find a hotel and get dinner.”

“There ain’t no hotel in this here town. I can tell ye that,” said the boy knowingly.

As they crossed the street, Constance pointed to the big stone house.

“Doesn’t anyone live in that old house over there?” she asked.

“Gosh, no!” he said.

“Why couldn’t we go up there and have a picnic supper?” suggested Constance, staring down the little path between the cedars. After a moment’s hesitation the boy followed slowly. Constance was rather apprehensive as she thought of the strange thing she was doing. She had yet to discover how very strange it was to the mind of her escort.

T
hey reached the porch of the house in silence.

“There!” said the boy with a flourish, depositing his bundles on a wooden bench and hastening forward to take the remainder she carried. “You sit there and eat yer grub.”

He stood with folded arms, leaning against a veranda post, and Constance, a little uncertain of the situation, sat cautiously down, after wiping off the seat with a piece of paper that had wrapped the pickle bottle. She looked furtively around and was relieved to find that her refuge was entirely hidden from the street. Then she gave herself up to a few minutes’ enjoyment of the unusual. She opened every package and spread out everything she had bought, to the immense enjoyment of her companion, who commented on each article.

“Say, them cakes is
dee
-lickety! Ever taste ’em before? I had a dime’s worth once, and gingersnaps wasn’t in it with ’em.”

“Have one, do, to begin with,” said Constance in childish delight, holding out the paper bag containing the delicacies. She wondered what the stately butler at home would say, could he see her now.

As they lunched together, Constance began to notice the boy stealing puzzled wondering glances at her. He seemed nervous, too, and would give a start at the slightest sound. She wondered at it but said nothing.

They grew quite friendly as the time went on. He confided that his name was James Abercrombie Watts but that she “needn’t mind to use it.” “Jest call me Kid—it’s what they all do,” he added with a confiding wink that took her into the inner sanctuary of his confidence. “My brother, he works in the grocery, an’ he don’t never call me nothin’ but Kid. If it wasn’t fer Mother—she calls me Jimmy yet—I’d forget I was anything but the Kid. ‘Crazy Kid,’ the fellers calls me. Say, was you ever here before?”

His mouth was full of good things, and Constance marveled at his capacity and the rapidity with which he was emptying the bench. For herself, a very little of each article sufficed. The quality was not what she was accustomed to finding on her home table. Nevertheless, she did quite well, considering the provisions. On the other hand, the boy was having the time of his life. Not even the pickles were too much for him, and he was rapidly lowering the bottle with no thought, apparently, of ceasing till he had completed his task. Constance wondered what kind of a stomach he possessed, but he seemed not in the least concerned about it.

Constance told him that she was on her way to Chicago and had never had the pleasure of stopping in that town before.

“Then you don’t know ’bout this here house.” He relaxed as if that explained everything. “I thought first you did; you looked at it as if you did. This is the hanted house of Rushville.”

He paused and waited to see what effect his words would have, but Constance looked at him in bewilderment.

“What kind of house did you say this was?” she asked.

“Hanted,” he replied, “hanted. Don’t you know what that means? It’s a hanted house, has ghosts in it, don’t you know? Didn’t you never hear of a house being hanted with ghosts?”

“Oh,” said Constance, trying not to laugh, “a haunted house. Yes, I know. Who haunts it?”

“Oh, a girl. And I guess she’s about your size, too. My uncle seen her once when he was comin’ home from work this way real late. She was down there by the pond a-rockin’ in that there flat boat, an’ her white lace dress an’ gold hair all floatin’ through the water round her an’ never gettin’ wet a bit. She was singin’ a pretty song, too, an’ Uncle said it made the tears come in his eyes, it was so sad. You see, her beau, he got killed, an’ she come here an’ lived with her folks to try an’ make her forget about it, but someway it didn’t work, an’ she made up her mind she’d die, too, ’cause he had, so she tried to drown herself in the pond, but that didn’t work, neither, ’cause the big dog they had pulled her out, an’ then after that she went upstairs to the attic an’ took poison. They say the dog felt so bad that he just lay round and whined till he died, too, so now she ’n’ the dog, they come back and walk here every so often, and once in every little while somebody sees ’em, and it’s got so that lots of folks won’t come down to the station for the late train if they can help it, since Miz Horner fainted away just hearin’ her sing the time she come back from her daughter’s funeral out west.”