But she, mistaking his intention, and fancying a terrible resemblance between his pain-contorted face and the anguished ones of the “Inferno” engravings, crouched back in her corner, and, throwing her arms up rigidly above her head, uttered shriek after shriek of terror. Beyond her mild dread of “seeing folks angry,” it was her first experience of fear, and it took absolute possession of her mind.
“Shet up! shet up! My-soul-I-declare, you’re the beatenest youngun I ever see! Why on airth couldn’t ye stay back thar in Californy stidder comin’ ter torment them ’at don’t want ye?” But as, in his eagerness to quiet this unprecedented disturbance of that orderly house, the deluded servant continued to advance menacingly, Steenie continued to scream; until, in the midst of the uproar, a white-haired figure appeared in the doorway, when she darted instantly forward and buried her face in her grandmother’s skirt.
As Resolved afterwards expressed it, he “was struck dumberfoun’ an’ couldn’t say nothin’;” and as Steenie was also speechless, the startled mistress of the house was left to draw her own conclusions from the scene.
“Steenie, look up!”
Steenie shivered and obeyed. “Is it true, Grandmother? Does he really, truly know?” Again that unwonted stirring in the hitherto cold heart of the Madam moved her to ask almost gently, “What true, child?”
“About men being twisted into trees—and swimming in flames—and—and—awful everythings! He says so.”
The lady’s eyes strayed more critically over the apartment, and, if any of that perfectly trained woman’s movements could ever be such, the start she gave was violent. Steenie felt herself pushed suddenly aside, and saw her grandmother cross hastily to the ill-used Dante, which she raised with a care far more loving than she had yet bestowed upon the motherless child of her blind, only son.
“Steenie! Steenie Calthorp! Listen to me. Understand me—fully. I forbid you ever touching a single volume in this room, in this house, which I do not, personally, place in your hands.”
The little girl was too surprised to speak. When, at last, she found her voice, she asked, innocently enough: “Aren’t they to read? The books!”
“By those who comprehend their value. But you are to obey me, implicitly. Will you?”