Читать книгу By Dim and Flaring Lamps - Alan Le May - Страница 8

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Once past Boonville, the Tealwing was within a few hours of Ash Landing, Tyler Ashland’s seat of power. People who understood hemp planting assumed that Tyler’s prosperity overlaid a considerable foundation of debt, and they were right, but few realised that the plantation as well as the village had actually been built by not one family but two.

Tyler Ashland had married Jim Sam’s younger sister, Diligence Delorme, at about the time Jim Sam’s rise to fortune was becoming talked about. Ashland made a lot of money, in good years, and put much of it back into property development; but he seemingly spent more than was left over in a lavish hospitality seldom exceeded in Missouri. Jim Sam presently accepted a whole series of opportunities to pour steamboat money into the plantation.

When Jim Sam married, Tyler rose above his debts to build, as a wedding present, the Delorme dwelling now known as the Other Great House, and, as an afterthought, threw in several hundred yards of riverfront; which accounted for the rather peculiar location of what Delorme still called his head offices. Though his main interests had long since shifted to his Mississippi packets, he was by this time more or less tied to Ash Landing by equities, perhaps almost as great as Ashland’s own.

It was as Tyler Ashland’s business partner that Jim Sam gave the Danielses special rates, and even deadheaded them if he himself happened to be aboard; so that the Danielses stretched their schedules every way they could to ride the Delorme boats.

The village of Ash Landing itself was only a one-plantation river stop, somewhat augmented by some installations serving Delorme’s Missouri River Line. The little town that had accumulated here was mostly of silver-grey unpainted wood; it looked comfortably settled down and older, more time-mellowed, than it was. Close under the hills that rose swiftly from the Missouri’s shore slanted the cobbled levee that Jim Sam had put in, to compensate for the rise and fall of the river. The one-sided bit of road running along the top of the levee was the only business street, stacked high, in season, with mountains of rope and bales of hemp.

The most important building, before which the Tealwing made its landing, housed the Delorme offices. It was of two stories, wide and tall, with long galleries across the front, both above and below. From this, a snaggle-toothed row of false fronts and gable ends strung out in both directions along the waterfront, sometimes jogging to go around a big beech or a linden. There was a general store, a chandlery, a harness shop, a livery stable, a fleabag called the Bishop House, three taverns, a block of warehouses, and a church. Upriver, at the end of the street, stood the long, partly open structures of Tyler Ashland’s rope walk and at the downriver end lay the pens and sheds serving the plantation livestock, and supplying the village with clouds of flies.

Up the hill behind the waterfront climbed the weathered village, huddling here and straggling there at the whim of the steep land. Distantly, far back on the heights, Tyler Ashland’s long rambling dwelling, always called the Great House, could be no more than glimpsed through its maples and black oaks. Nearer the river the Other Great House handsomely crowned its own hill.

That was about all there was to Ash Landing. Whatever might be going on in the great plantation was inland and out of sight; the little town lived by and for the river traffic alone. When a packet tied up, a couple of hundred people might be drawn to the levee and the waterfront awoke to a brief liveliness. Then the boat moved on and the village went back to sleep under the hot Missouri sun.

On this occasion Julie and Jim Sam Delorme were going ashore for one of their irregular spells of residence at the Other Great House. There would be a series of duty dinners for the élite of the county, to catch up on obligations, while the Tealwing went on up the river for her turnaround at St. Joe. A more than common number of villagers turned out to see the great folk land, and Julie stood for a time at the rail of the boiler deck promenade surveying the crowd expectantly.

Hovering near her, available for whatever good-byes Julie might feel suitable, Shep Daniels saw her expectancy turn to disappointment, and the disappointment to exasperation. Caleese hurried below and hurried back again.

“Mr. Rodger is not here,” Caleese told Julie.

Rodger. Rodger Ashland. Of course. Naturally. Why shouldn’t something be going on, with the two of them virtually raised together? In so far as she’s been raised any place at all. I never expected nothing no different! Actually, the inevitable association between Julie Delorme and Rodger Ashland had never occurred to him before, and now hit him with a wicked shock. I forget why I used to think my luck was always so good over here in the Missouri country. I question now if I’m long for this river.

Julie was riddling Caleese with snappish questions.

“Yes, Miss Julie. No, Miss Julie,” Caleese answered with patience. “He hasn’t been home in a month. I haven’t found out yet when he is expected. Yes, mam, I’m trying to find out——”

“How dare he!” Julie exploded. “He knew I was going to be here!”

“I must ask you to lower your voice,” Caleese said with severity. “This is not a seemly exhibition.”

“ ‘Seemly exhibit’ be damned!” Julie said loud and clear, startling everybody within earshot. Her landau appeared, and she flounced down the main stair. For the time being, at least, the existence of anybody called Shep Daniels had apparently escaped her.

Even then he could not help thinking he had never seen her more interesting, or more attractive, than when she was mad at everything. She was a little bit like Missouri itself, hell beautiful always, as Shep saw her, but full of deadfalls. He began bracing himself for his first try at substituting for Pap in a deal with Tyler Ashland—the one man in the state his father wanted kept happy at all costs. He approached the encounter with considerable misgivings; his self-confidence hadn’t been helped any by Julie’s performance.

I sure don’t think much of the way things been going. Keep on like this, falling down on the job will be the least worst I can hope for. More likely I get hanged, or something, before I ever get out of Missouri.