Nobody Part 37

"What keeps you so mum?" she said to Lois. "Why don't you talk, as other folks do?"

"I hardly see them, you know, except at meals."

"Why don't you talk at meal times? that's what I am askin' about. You can talk as well as anybody; and you sit as mum as a stick."

"Aunty, they all talk about things I do not understand."

"Then I'd talk of something _they_ don't understand. Two can play at that game."

"It wouldn't be amusing," said Lois, laughing.

"Do you call _their_ talk amusing? It's the stupidest stuff I ever did hear. I can't make head or tail of it; nor I don't believe they can.

Sounds to me as if they were tryin' amazin' hard to be witty, and couldn't make it out."

"It sounds a good deal like that," Lois a.s.sented.

"They go on just as if you wasn't there!"

"And why shouldn't they?"

"Because you are there."

"I am nothing to them," said Lois quietly.

"Nothing to them! You are worth the whole lot."

"They do not think so."

"And politeness is politeness."

"I sometimes think," said Lois, "that politeness is rudeness."

"Well, I wouldn't let myself be put in a corner so, if I was you."

"But I am in a corner, to them. All the world is where _they_ live; and I live in a little corner down by Shampuashuh."

"n.o.body's big enough to live in more than a corner--if you come to that; and one corner's as good as another. That's nonsense, Lois."

"Maybe, aunty. But there is a certain knowledge of the world, and habit of the world, which makes some people very different from other people; you can't help that."

"I don't want to help it?" said Mrs. Marx. "I wouldn't have you like them, for all the black sheep in my flock."

CHAPTER XVI.

MRS. MARX'S OPINION.

A few more days went by; and then Mrs. Wishart began to mend; so much that she insisted her friends must not shut themselves up with her. "Do go down-stairs and see the people!" she said; "or take your kind aunt, Lois, and show her the wonders of Appledore. Is all the world gone yet?"

"n.o.body's gone," said Mrs. Marx; "except one thick man and one thin one; and neither of 'em counts."

"Are the Caruthers here?"

"Every man of 'em."

"There is only one man of them; unless you count Mr. Lenox."

"I don't count him. I count that fair-haired chap. All the rest of 'em are stay in' for him."

"Staying for him!" repeated Mrs. Wishart.

"That's what they say. They seem to take it sort o' hard, that Tom's so fond of Appledore."

Mrs. Wishart was silent a minute, and then she smiled.

"He spends his time trollin' for blue fish," Mrs. Marx went on.

"Ah, I dare say. Do go down, Mrs. Marx, and take a walk, and see if he has caught anything."

Lois would not go along; she told her aunt what to look for, and which way to take, and said she would sit still with Mrs. Wishart and keep her amused.

At the very edge of the narrow valley in which the house stood, Mrs.

Marx came face to face with Tom Caruthers. Tom pulled off his hat with great civility, and asked if he could do anything for her.

"Well, you can set me straight, I guess," said the lady. "Lois told me which way to go, but I don't seem to be any wiser. Where's the old dead village? South, she said; but in such a little place south and north seems all alike. _I_ don' know which is south."

"You are not far out of the way," said Tom. "Let me have the pleasure of showing you. Why did you not bring Miss Lothrop out?"

"Best reason in the world; I couldn't. She would stay and see to Mrs.

Wishart."

"That's the sort of nurse I should like to have take care of me," said Tom, "if ever I was in trouble."

"Ah, wouldn't you!" returned Mrs. Marx. "That's a kind o' nurses that ain't in the market. Look here, young man--where are we going?"

"All right," said Tom. "Just round over these rocks. The village was at the south end of the island, as Miss Lois said. I believe she has studied up Appledore twice as much as any of the rest of us."

It was a fresh, sunny day in September; everything at Appledore was in a kind of glory, difficult to describe in words, and which no painter ever yet put on canvas. There was wind enough to toss the waves in lively style; and when the two companions came out upon the scene of the one-time settlement of Appledore, all brilliance of light and air and colour seemed to be sparkling together. Under this glory lay the ruins and remains of what had been once homes and dwelling-places of men. Gra.s.s-grown cellar excavations, moss-grown stones and bits of walls; little else; but a number of those lying soft and sunny in the September light. Soft, and sunny, and lonely; no trace of human habitation any longer, where once human activity had been in full play.

Silence, where the babble of voices had been; emptiness, where young feet and old feet had gone in and out; barrenness, where the fruits of human industry had been busily gathered and dispensed. Something in the quiet, sunny scene stilled for a moment the not very sensitive spirits of the two who had come to visit it; while the sea waves rose and broke in their old fashion, as they had done on those same rocks in old time, and would do for generation after generation yet to come. That was always the same. It made the contrast greater with what had pa.s.sed and was pa.s.sing away.

"There was a good many of 'em."--Mrs. Marx' voice broke the pause which had come upon the talk.

"Quite a village," her companion a.s.sented.