At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern. Reed Myrtle
plenty of side light. One wing on each side of the house had been carried up to the second story, and the arrangement of rooms was the same as below, outside stairways leading from the kitchens to the ground.
“I never saw so many beds in my life,” cried Dorothy.
“Seems to be a perfect Bedlam,” rejoined Harlan, making a poor attempt at a joke and laughing mirthlessly. In his heart he began to doubt the wisdom of marrying on six hundred dollars, an unexplored heirloom in Judson Centre, and an overweening desire to write books.
For the first time, his temerity appeared to him in its proper colours. He had been a space writer and Dorothy the private secretary of a Personage, when they met, in the dreary basement dining-room of a New York boarding-house, and speedily fell in love. Shortly afterward, when Harlan received a letter which contained a key, and announced that Mr. Judson’s house, fully furnished, had been bequeathed to his nephew, they had light-heartedly embarked upon matrimony with no fears for the future.
Two hundred dollars had been spent upon a very modest honeymoon, and the three hundred and ninety-seven dollars and twenty-three cents remaining, as Harlan had accurately calculated, seemed pitifully small. Perplexity, doubt, and foreboding were plainly written on his face, when Dorothy turned to him.
“Isn’t it perfectly lovely,” she asked, “for us to have this nice, quiet place all to ourselves, where you can write your book?”
Woman-like, she had instantly touched the right chord, and the clouds vanished.
“Yes,” he cried, eagerly. “Oh, Dorothy, do you think I can really write it?”
“Write it,” she repeated; “why, you dear, funny goose, you can write a better book than anybody has ever written yet, and I know you can! By next week we’ll be settled here and you can get down to work. I’ll help you, too,” she added, generously. “If you’ll buy me a typewriter, I can copy the whole book for you.”
“Of course I’ll buy you a typewriter. We’ll send for it to-morrow. How much does a nice one cost?”
“The kind I like,” she explained, “costs a hundred dollars without the stand. I don’t need the stand – we can find a table somewhere that will do.”
“Two hundred and ninety-seven dollars and twenty-three cents,” breathed Harlan, unconsciously.
“No, only a hundred dollars,” corrected Dorothy. “I don’t care to have it silver mounted.”
“I’d buy you a gold one if you wanted it,” stammered Harlan, in some confusion.
“Not now,” she returned, serenely. “Wait till the book is done.”
Visions of fame and fortune appeared before his troubled eyes and set his soul alight with high ambition. The candle in his hand burned unsteadily and dripped tallow, unheeded. “Come,” said Dorothy, gently, “let’s go downstairs again.”
An open door revealed a tortuous stairway at the back of the house, descending mysteriously into cavernous gloom. “Let’s go down here,” she continued. “I love curly stairs.”
“These are kinky enough to please even your refined fancy,” laughed Harlan. “It reminds me of travelling in the West, where you look out of the window and see your engine on the track beside you, going the other way.”
“This must be the kitchen,” said Dorothy, when the stairs finally ceased. “Uncle Ebeneezer appears to have had a pronounced fancy for kitchens.”
“Here’s another wing,” added Harlan, opening the back door. “Sitting-room, bedroom, and – my soul and body! It’s another kitchen!”
“Any more beds?” queried Dorothy, peering into the darkness. “We can’t keep house unless we can find more beds.”
“Only one more. I guess we’ve come down to bed rock at last.”
“In other words, the cradle,” she observed, pulling a little old-fashioned trundle bed out into the light.
“Oh, what a joke!” cried Harlan. “That’s worth three dollars in the office of any funny paper in New York!”
“Sell it,” commanded Dorothy, inspired by the prospect of wealth, “and I’ll give you fifty cents for your commission.”
Outside, the storm still raged and the old house shook and creaked in the blast. The rain swirled furiously against the windows, and a swift rush of hailstones beat a fierce tattoo on the roof. Built on the summit of a hill and with only a few trees near it, the Judson mansion was but poorly protected from the elements.
None the less, there was a sense of warmth and comfort inside. “Let’s build a fire in the kitchen,” suggested Dorothy, “and then we’ll try to find something to eat.”
“Which kitchen?” asked Harlan.
“Any old kitchen. The one the back stairs end in, I guess. It seems to be the principal one of the set.”
Harlan brought more wood and Dorothy watched him build the fire with a sense that a god-like being was here put to base uses. Hampered in his log-cabin design by the limitations of the fire box, he handled the kindlings awkwardly, got a splinter into his thumb, said something under his breath which was not meant for his wife to hear, and powdered his linen with soot from the stove pipe. At length, however, a respectable fire was started.
“Now,” he asked, “what shall I do next?”
“Wind all the clocks. I can’t endure a dead clock. While you’re doing it, I’ll get out the remnants of our lunch and see what there is in the pantry that is still edible.”
In the lunch basket which the erratic ramifications of the road leading to Judson Centre had obliged them to carry, there was still, fortunately, a supply of sandwiches and fruit. A hasty search through the nearest pantry revealed jelly, marmalade, and pickles, a box of musty crackers and a canister of tea. When Harlan came back, Dorothy had the kitchen table set for two, with a lighted candle dispensing odorous good cheer from the centre of it, and the tea kettle singing merrily over the fire.
“Seems like home, doesn’t it?” he asked, pleasantly imbued with the realisation of the home-making quality in Dorothy. Certain rare women with this gift take their atmosphere with them wherever they go.
“To-morrow,” he went on, “I’ll go into the village and buy more things to eat.”
“The ruling passion,” she smiled. “It’s – what’s that!”
Clear and high above the sound of the storm came an imperious “Me-ow!”
“It’s a cat,” said Harlan. “You don’t suppose the poor thing is shut up anywhere, do you?”
“If it had been, we’d have found it. We’ve opened every door in the house, I’m sure. It must be outside.”
“Me-ow! Me-ow! Me-ow!” The voice was not pleading; it was rather a command, a challenge.
“Kitty, kitty, kitty,” she called. “Where are you, kitty?”
Harlan opened the outside door, and in rushed a huge black cat, with the air of one returning home after a long absence.
“Poor kitty,” said Dorothy, kindly, stooping to stroke the sable visitor, who instinctively dodged the caress, and then scratched her hand.
“The ugly brute!” she exclaimed. “Don’t touch him, Harlan.”
Throughout the meal the cat sat at a respectful distance, with his greenish yellow eyes fixed unwaveringly upon them. He was entirely black, save for a white patch under his chin, which, in the half-light, carried with it an uncanny suggestion of a shirt front. Dorothy at length became restless under the calm scrutiny.
“I don’t like him,” she said. “Put him out.”
“Thought you liked cats,” remarked Harlan, reaching for another sandwich.
“I do, but I don’t like this one. Please put him out.”
“What,