CHAPTER IV—RUTHITA
It was my Uncle Obadiah who first opened my eyes to the mysteries of the animal world. In so doing he flung wide a door into happiness which many a wiser man has neglected. He derived nearly all his pleasures from the cheerful little things of life. A curious sympathy existed between him and the lower creation. All the cats and dogs in the district were his friends. He attributed to them almost human personalities, and gave them special names of his own choosing. It was a wonderful day for me when he first made me realize that all-surrounding was a kingdom of beasts and birds of which I, who had always been ruled, might be ruler.
In the paddock which lay between the garden and orchard, he had his own especial kingdom. His subjects were a cow, a goat, some very domestically inclined rabbits, about a hundred hens, and innumerable London sparrows. The latter he had trained to fly down from the trees and settle on his shoulders when he whistled.
Early in the morning we would go there together; the first duty of the day was to feed the menagerie. How distinctly I can recall those scenes—the dewy lawn, dappled golden by sunlight falling through leaves, the droning of bees setting forth from hives on their day’s excursion, the smoke slowly rising in the summer stillness from distant chimney-pots, and my uncle’s voice making excited guesses at how many eggs we should gather.
Eggs represented almost his sole contribution to the family income. Among his many Eldorados was the persistent belief that he could make his fortune at poultryraising. He would talk to me about it for hours as we worked in the garden, like a man inspired, making lightning calculations of the sums he would one day realize. He was continually experimenting and crossing breeds with a view to producing a more prolific strain of layers. He had a dream that one day he would produce the finest strain of fowl in the world. He would call it The Spreckles —his name would be immortalized. He would be justified in the eyes of Aunt Lavinia; and success would justify him in the eyes of all men.
Meanwhile my aunt declared that Obad spent more time and thought on that blest live-stock than he would ever see back in money. “Obad” was her contraction for his name; when she spoke to him sharply it sounded like her opinion of his character. But, in her own way, she was fond of him. Perhaps she had come to love his very failings as we do the faults of our friends. She was secretly proud of her own capacity; her thwarted mother-instinct found an outlet in the sense of his dependence. Nevertheless, the great fundamental cleavage lay between them: she lived in an anxious world where tradesmen’s bills required punctual payment; his world was a careless playground in which no defeat was ever final. She was stable in her moods, self-reliant and tenaciously courageous. He was forever changing: with adults he was like a house in mourning, shuttered, austere, grave; but should a youngster pass by, the blinds were jerked aside and a laughing face peered out.
His most important make-believe was that he was a benefactor of humanity. He held honorary positions of secretary to various philanthropic societies—The Society for the Housing of Gipsies; The Society for the Assisting of Decrepit Ladies, etc. The positions were honorary because he could find no one willing to pay him. He worked for nothing because he was ashamed of being forever out of employment. He got great credit for his services among charitable people; the annual votes of thanks which he received helped to bolster up his self-respect throughout the year.
As I grew older and more observant, I used to wonder what had induced my aunt to marry him. Again it was my Grandmother Cardover who told me, “He spuffled Lavinia into it, my dear.” It seems that he caught her by the vast commercial and humanitarian possibilities of one of his many plans. When she awoke to the fact that her husband was not a man, but the incarnation of perpetual boyhood, she may have been disappointed, but she did not show it. Like a sensible woman, instead of crying her eyes out, she set about earning a livelihood. Uncle Obad had one marketable asset—his religion and the friends he gained by it. She took a decayed mansion in Charity Grove and established a Christian Boarding House. All her lodgers were young men, and by that proud subterfuge of poverty they were known as paying-guests.
The only Christian feature that I can remember about her establishment was that my uncle said grace before all meals at which the lodgers were present. At the midday meal, from which they were absent, it was omitted. The Christian Boarding House idea caught on with provincial parents whose sons were moving up to the city for the first time; it seemed to guarantee home morals. The sons soon perceived how matters stood and buried their agnostic prejudices beneath good feeding.
A general atmosphere of obligation was created by my aunt in her husband’s favor; she always spoke as though it was very kind of so public a man as Mr. Spreckles to squander his scanty privacy by letting paying-guests share his roof. She made such a gallant show with what she earned that everyone thought her husband had a private fortune, which enabled him to live in such style and give so much time to charitable works. She would hint as much in conversing with her friends, and invariably feigned the greatest pride and contentment in his activities. Thanks to his spuffling and her courage, there were not five people outside the family who ever guessed the true circumstances.