Selected Stories of Bret Harte, Bret Harte [read aloud books .TXT] 📗

themselves. She was holding under her arm a rag doll, apparently of her own workmanship, and nearly as large as herself—a doll with a cylindrical head, and features roughly indicated with charcoal. A long shawl, evidently belonging to a grown person, dropped from her shoulders and swept the floor.

The spectacle did not excite Mrs. Tretherick's delight. Perhaps she had but a small sense of humor. Certainly, when the child, still standing in the doorway, again asked, “Is it Mamma?” she answered sharply, “No, it isn't,” and turned a severe look upon the intruder.

The child retreated a step, and then, gaining courage with the distance, said in deliciously imperfect speech:

“Dow 'way then! why don't you dow away?”

But Mrs. Tretherick was eying the shawl. Suddenly she whipped it off the child's shoulders, and said angrily:

“How dared you take my things, you bad child?”

“Is it yours? Then you are my mamma; ain't you? You are Mamma!” she continued gleefully; and before Mrs. Tretherick could avoid her, she had dropped her doll, and, catching the woman's skirts with both hands, was dancing up and down before her.

“What's your name, child?” said Mrs. Tretherick coldly, removing the small and not very white hands from her garments.

“Tarry.”

“Tarry?”

“Yeth. Tarry. Tarowline.”

“Caroline?”

“Yeth. Tarowline Tretherick.”

“Whose child ARE you?” demanded Mrs. Tretherick still more coldly, to keep down a rising fear.

“Why, yours,” said the little creature with a laugh. “I'm your little durl. You're my mamma, my new mamma. Don't you know my ol' mamma's dorn away, never to turn back any more? I don't live wid my ol' mamma now. I live wid you and Papa.”

“How long have you been here?” asked Mrs. Tretherick snappishly.

“I fink it's free days,” said Carry reflectively.

“You think! Don't you know?” sneered Mrs. Tretherick. “Then, where did you come from?”

Carry's lip began to work under this sharp cross-examination. With a great effort and a small gulp, she got the better of it, and answered:

“Papa, Papa fetched me—from Miss Simmons—from Sacramento, last week.”

“Last week! You said three days just now,” returned Mrs. Tretherick with severe deliberation.

“I mean a monf,” said Carry, now utterly adrift in sheer helplessness and confusion.

“Do you know what you are talking about?” demanded Mrs. Tretherick shrilly, restraining an impulse to shake the little figure before her and precipitate the truth by specific gravity.

But the flaming red head here suddenly disappeared in the folds of Mrs. Tretherick's dress, as if it were trying to extinguish itself forever.

“There now—stop that sniffling,” said Mrs. Tretherick, extricating her dress from the moist embraces of the child and feeling exceedingly uncomfortable. “Wipe your face now, and run away, and don't bother. Stop,” she continued, as Carry moved away. “Where's your papa?”

“He's dorn away too. He's sick. He's been dorn”—she hesitated—“two, free, days.”

“Who takes care of you, child?” said Mrs. Tretherick, eying her curiously.

“John, the Chinaman. I tresses myselth. John tooks and makes the beds.”

“Well, now, run away and behave yourself, and don't bother me any more,” said Mrs. Tretherick, remembering the object of her visit. “Stop—where are you going?” she added as the child began to ascend the stairs, dragging the long doll after her by one helpless leg.

“Doin' upstairs to play and be dood, and no bother Mamma.”

“I ain't your mamma,” shouted Mrs. Tretherick, and then she swiftly re-entered her bedroom and slammed the door.

Once inside, she drew forth a large trunk from the closet and set to work with querulous and fretful haste to pack her wardrobe. She tore her best dress in taking it from the hook on which it hung: she scratched her soft hands twice with an ambushed pin. All the while, she kept up an indignant commentary on the events of the past few moments. She said to herself she saw it all. Tretherick had sent for this child of his first wife—this child of whose existence he had never seemed to care—just to insult her, to fill her place. Doubtless the first wife herself would follow soon, or perhaps there would be a third. Red hair, not auburn, but RED—of course the child, this Caroline, looked like its mother, and, if so, she was anything but pretty. Or the whole thing had been prepared: this red-haired child, the image of its mother, had been kept at a convenient distance at Sacramento, ready to be sent for when needed. She remembered his occasional visits there on—business, as he said. Perhaps the mother already was there; but no, she had gone East. Nevertheless, Mrs. Tretherick, in her then state of mind, preferred to dwell upon the fact that she might be there. She was dimly conscious, also, of a certain satisfaction in exaggerating her feelings. Surely no woman had ever been so shamefully abused. In fancy, she sketched a picture of herself sitting alone and deserted, at sunset, among the fallen columns of a ruined temple, in a melancholy yet graceful attitude, while her husband drove rapidly away in a luxurious coach-and-four, with a red-haired woman at his side. Sitting upon the trunk she had just packed, she partly composed a lugubrious poem describing her sufferings as, wandering alone and poorly clad, she came upon her husband and “another” flaunting in silks and diamonds. She pictured herself dying of consumption, brought on by sorrow—a beautiful wreck, yet still fascinating, gazed upon adoringly by the editor of the AVALANCHE and Colonel Starbottle. And where was Colonel Starbottle all this while? Why didn't he come? He, at least, understood her. He—she laughed the reckless, light laugh of a few moments before; and then her face suddenly grew grave, as it had not a few moments before.

What was that little red-haired imp doing all this time? Why was she so quiet? She opened the door noiselessly, and listened. She fancied that she heard, above the multitudinous small noises and creakings and warpings of the vacant house, a smaller voice singing on the floor above. This, as she remembered, was only an open attic that had been used as a storeroom. With a half-guilty consciousness, she crept softly upstairs and, pushing the door partly open, looked within.

Athwart the long, low-studded attic, a slant sunbeam from a single small window lay, filled with dancing motes, and only half illuminating the barren, dreary apartment. In the ray of this sunbeam she saw the child's glowing hair, as if crowned by a red aureole, as she sat upon the floor with her exaggerated doll between her knees. She appeared to be talking to it; and it was not long before Mrs. Tretherick observed that she was rehearsing the interview of a half-hour before. She catechized the doll severely, cross-examining it in regard to the duration of its stay there, and generally on the measure of time. The imitation of Mrs. Tretherick's manner was exceedingly successful, and