Part 42

“O Lionel Hezekiah, why will you do such things?” said Salome miserably.

“I--didn’t know it was wrong,” said Lionel Hezekiah, bursting into prompt tears. “I--I thought it would be bully fun. Seems’s if everything what’s fun ‘s wrong.”

Salome’s heart was not proof against tears, as Lionel Hezekiah very well knew. She put her arm about the sobbing culprit, and drew him to her side.

“He didn’t know it was wrong,” she said defiantly to Judith.

“He’s got to be taught, then,” was Judith’s retort. “No, you needn’t try to beg him off, Salome. He shall go right to bed without supper, and stay there till to-morrow morning.”

“Oh! not without his supper,” entreated Salome. “You--you won’t improve the child’s morals by injuring his stomach, Judith.”

“Without his supper, I say,” repeated Judith inexorably. “Lionel Hezekiah, go up-stairs to the south room, and go to bed at once.”

Lionel Hezekiah went up-stairs, and went to bed at once. He was never sulky or disobedient. Salome listened to him as he stumped patiently up-stairs with a sob at every step, and her own eyes filled with tears.

“Now don’t for pity’s sake go crying, Salome,” said Judith irritably. “I think I’ve let him off very easily. He is enough to try the patience of a saint, and I never was that,” she added with entire truth.

“But he isn’t bad,” pleaded Salome. “You know he never does anything the second time after he has been told it was wrong, never.”

“What good does that do when he is certain to do something new and twice as bad? I never saw anything like him for originating ideas of mischief. Just look at what he has done in the past fortnight--in one fortnight, Salome. He brought in a live snake, and nearly frightened you into fits; he drank up a bottle of liniment, and almost poisoned himself; he took three toads to bed with him; he climbed into the henhouse loft, and fell through on a hen and killed her; he painted his face all over with your water-colours; and now comes THIS exploit. And eggs at twenty-eight cents a dozen! I tell you, Salome, Lionel Hezekiah is an expensive luxury.”

“But we couldn’t do without him,” protested Salome.

“I could. But as you can’t, or think you can’t, we’ll have to keep him, I suppose. But the only way to secure any peace of mind for ourselves, as far as I can see, is to tether him in the yard, and hire somebody to watch him.”

“There must be some way of managing him,” said Salome desperately. She thought Judith was in earnest about the tethering. Judith was generally so terribly in earnest in all she said. “Perhaps it is because he has no other employment that he invents so many unheard-of things. If he had anything to occupy himself with--perhaps if we sent him to school--”

“He’s too young to go to school. Father always said that no child should go to school until it was seven, and I don’t mean Lionel Hezekiah shall. Well, I’m going to take a pail of hot water and a brush, and see what I can do to that henhouse door. I’ve got my afternoon’s work cut out for me.”

Judith stood Salome’s crutch up beside her, and departed to purify the henhouse door. As soon as she was safely out of the way, Salome took her crutch, and limped slowly and painfully to the foot of the stairs. She could not go up and comfort Lionel Hezekiah as she yearned to do, which was the reason Judith had sent him up-stairs. Salome had not been up-stairs for fifteen years. Neither did she dare to call him out on the landing, lest Judith return. Besides, of course he must be punished; he had been very naughty.

“But I wish I could smuggle a bit of supper up to him,” she mused, sitting down on the lowest step and listening. “I don’t hear a sound. I suppose he has cried himself to sleep, poor, dear baby. He certainly is dreadfully mischievous; but it seems to me that it shows an investigating turn of mind, and if it could only be directed into the proper channels--I wish Judith would let me have a talk with Mr. Leonard about Lionel Hezekiah. I wish Judith didn’t hate ministers so. I don’t mind so much her not letting me go to church, because I’m so lame that it would be painful anyhow; but I’d like to talk with Mr. Leonard now and then about some things. I can never believe that Judith and father were right; I am sure they were not. There is a God, and I’m afraid it’s terribly wicked not to go to church. But there, nothing short of a miracle would convince Judith; so there is no use in thinking about it. Yes, Lionel Hezekiah must have gone to sleep.”

Salome pictured him so, with his long, curling lashes brushing his rosy, tear-stained cheek and his chubby fists clasped tightly over his breast as was his habit; her heart grew warm and thrilling with the maternity the picture provoked.

A year previously Lionel Hezekiah’s parents, Abner and Martha Smith, had died, leaving a houseful of children and very little else. The children were adopted into various Carmody families, and Salome Marsh had amazed Judith by asking to be allowed to take the five-year-old “baby.” At first Judith had laughed at the idea; but, when she found that Salome was in earnest, she yielded. Judith always gave Salome her own way except on one point.

“If you want the child, I suppose you must have him,” she said finally. “I wish he had a civilized name, though. Hezekiah is bad, and Lionel is worse; but the two in combination, and tacked on to Smith at that, is something that only Martha Smith could have invented. Her judgment was the same clear through, from selecting husbands to names.”

So Lionel Hezekiah came into Judith’s home and Salome’s heart. The latter was permitted to love him all she pleased, but Judith overlooked his training with a critical eye. Possibly it was just as well, for Salome might otherwise have ruined him with indulgence. Salome, who always adopted Judith’s opinions, no matter how ill they fitted her, deferred to the former’s decrees meekly, and suffered far more than Lionel Hezekiah when he was punished.

She sat on the stairs until she fell asleep herself, her head pillowed on her arm. Judith found her there when she came in, severe and triumphant, from her bout with the henhouse door. Her face softened into marvelous tenderness as she looked at Salome.

“She’s nothing but a child herself in spite of her age,” she thought pityingly. “A child that’s had her whole life thwarted and spoiled through no fault of her own. And yet folks say there is a God who is kind and good! If there is a God, he is a cruel, jealous tyrant, and I hate Him!”

Judith’s eyes were bitter and vindictive. She thought she had many grievances against the great Power that rules the universe, but the most intense was Salome’s helplessness--Salome, who fifteen years before had been the brightest, happiest of maidens, light of heart and foot, bubbling over with harmless, sparkling mirth and life. If Salome could only walk like other women, Judith told herself that she would not hate the great tyrannical Power.

Lionel Hezekiah was subdued and angelic for four days after that affair of the henhouse door. Then he broke out in a new place. One afternoon he came in sobbing, with his golden curls full of burrs. Judith was not in, but Salome dropped her crochet-work and gazed at him in dismay.

“Oh, Lionel Hezekiah, what have you gone and done now?”

“I--I just stuck the burrs in ‘cause I was playing I was a heathen chief,” sobbed Lionel Hezekiah. “It was great fun while it lasted; but, when I tried to take them out, it hurt awful.”

Neither Salome nor Lionel Hezekiah ever forgot the harrowing hour that followed. With the aid of comb and scissors, Salome eventually got the burrs out of Lionel Hezekiah’s crop of curls. It would be impossible to decide which of them suffered more in the process. Salome cried as hard as Lionel Hezekiah did, and every snip of the scissors or tug at the silken floss cut into her heart. She was almost exhausted when the performance was over; but she took the tired Lionel Hezekiah on her knee, and laid her wet cheek against his shining head.