Читать книгу Clever Betsy - Clara Louise Burnham - Страница 9

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Perched on the driver’s seat, with Irving beside her, Mrs. Bruce was as near the zenith of contentment as falls to the lot of mortal.

The driver himself, philosopher as he was, discovered in the first three miles that it would not be necessary for him to volunteer any information, as everything he knew would be extracted from him, down to the last dregs of supposition.

“Three thousand feet of ascent in a mile, Irving! Think of it!” exclaimed Mrs. Bruce, as they neared the Hoodoo Rocks.

“I’d rather think of an ascent of one thousand feet in three miles,” returned Irving. “It’s less strain on the brain.”

The driver gave him an appreciative glance across Mrs. Bruce’s smart traveling hat.

“Oh, is that it?” she rejoined. “Perhaps I did get it a little twisted.”

Here they came in full view of the desert of gaunt, pallid trees, amid the gigantic Hoodoo Rocks.

“Oh, what a dreadful scene!” exclaimed Mrs. Bruce. “Such a dreary stretch of death and desolation! Driver, why do they allow such a thing in the Park?”

A hunted expression came into the driver’s eyes. He had been gradually growing more and more mechanical in his replies. Now he maintained a stony silence.

“If I were here at night, alone,” continued Mrs. Bruce, “I should go straight out of my mind! I’m so temperamental I could not—I really could not bear it;” and she shuddered.

“Then I positively forbid your coming here alone at night,” declared Irving. “We must preserve your mind, Madama, at all costs.”

“But it’s a blot on the Park. It’s more suggestive than the worst Doré picture. Boo!” Mrs. Bruce shuddered again, and looked fearfully at the dead forest, sparse and wild, rearing its barkless trunks amid the giant rocks of wild and threatening form. “The government ought to do something about it.”

“You flatter Uncle Sam,” said Irving. “I don’t think any one else expects him to move mountains.”

“Well, they might train vines over it,” suggested Mrs. Bruce; and the driver burst into some sound which ended in a fit of coughing, while Irving laughed.

The sudden beauty of the scenery diverted Mrs. Bruce from her plans for reform. Her enthusiasm over the view led her to turn and look down to catch Betsy’s eye.

“Are you seeing?” she cried.

Betsy nodded several times to express appreciation.

“It’s just like life, isn’t it?” went on Mrs. Bruce pensively to her son. “Full of startling contrasts. Do you know, Irving, I think Mr. Nixon is talking to Betsy?”

“No doubt he remembers her,” returned Irving. “He has seen her as often as he has you.”

“That’s true; but it’s nice of him, just the same.”

Irving smiled. “Nixie’s got to talk,” he remarked.

“But you know,” said Mrs. Bruce, “there are snobs in the world.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“I like Mr. Nixon, anyway,” she went on argumentatively. “It isn’t necessary for a man to be handsome.”

Irving sighed. “What a blessed relief that you think so, Madama! Otherwise I’m sure you’d call upon the Creator, and make it a subject of prayer.”

“Irving, you’re making fun of me.”

“You know, Madama, that I never did such a thing.”

The stage drew to a standstill. Rosalie Vincent’s eyes were starry as she looked in worshipful silence, and she momentarily forgot her situation.

Miss Hickey gazed and chewed.

“I’ve got to have me a new apron,” she said. “A chump in the kitchen burned one o’ mine yesterday.”

The stage moved on and paused again in the picturesque pass that leads to the Golden Gate, while all eyes rested upon the Rustic Waterfall, whose tuneful grace as it leaps from ledge to ledge down the worn rock, speaks of life and beauty, striking after the desolation just passed.

Mrs. Bruce’s suspended accusation was repeated as the horses started. “You do make fun of me, Irving,” she said.

“No, no,” he returned. “I simply recognize your spirit of knight-errantry. Glorious business.” He smiled at her. “Journeying through the world and righting wrongs as you go.”

“I really do think the vines would be a lovely idea,” she declared; and the driver coughed again.

“See how the Hoodoos prepared you to revel in the present beauty,” said Irving. “You just said that it wasn’t necessary for all men to be handsome. Same thing applies to landscape, doesn’t it?”

“But his mother is very handsome, I think,” replied Mrs. Bruce, her butterfly habit of mind coming in play; “and that gentleman,—did he say—”

“Are you talking about Nixie? Oh yes, his mother is grande dame, and I’ve heard him speak of that uncle, Mr. Derwent, often. He’s the capitalist of the family, I believe.”

“The girl,” went on Mrs. Bruce, “seems to be a companion. I noticed Mrs. Nixon didn’t say much to her.”

“Is that the sign of companionship?” asked Irving. “Something for you to fix, Madama.”

“She’s a very ladylike looking girl,” replied Mrs. Bruce.

“Nixie’ll talk to her all right if she has ears,” remarked Irving.

“It’s very nice of him to be nice to Betsy. Who else is in the stage?”

“I didn’t notice.”

“Driver,” Mrs. Bruce turned to her bureau of information, “did you notice who is on the back seat of our stage?”

The driver’s imperturbable lips parted. “They put two heavers in there, I believe,” he replied.

“Who?” Mrs. Bruce spoke in italics.

“Waitresses from the hotel. They move them sometimes with the crowd.”

Mrs. Bruce kept silence a moment to recover the shock. The presence of the Nixon party still proved the respectability of the last stage, however.

“Heavers! Is that your slang out here?” she asked at last, and laughed. “I hope that isn’t descriptive of the way we’re going to be waited on, Irving.”

Rosalie’s heart fluttered again on leaving the stage at Norris Basin; but the celerity with which the experienced Miss Hickey hurried her into the hotel to take up their duties aided her wish to be unnoticed. The verandas were alive with passengers already arrived, all ravenous from hours of coaching in the mountain air.

At last Rosalie, in her white gown and apron, stood in her appointed place, and the crowds began to be let into the dining-room. Miss Hickey was at some distance from Rosalie, and the latter felt a little hysterical rise in her throat in the knowledge that the snapping black eyes were watching for Irving Bruce.

The Nixon party came before the Bruces, and Mr. Derwent spied Rosalie and hastened his dignified footsteps toward her table.

“The waitress we had this morning,” he said to Mrs. Nixon. “She has a head on her.”

“Sounds alluringly like champagne,” murmured Robert to Miss Maynard, who ignored him.

Rosalie involuntarily gave a shy smile as Mr. Derwent nodded at her. She could have embraced them all in her gladness to be delivered from waiting on the Bruces, who now entered, and, tragical to relate, fell short of Miss Hickey’s table. That damsel, however, being at once overwhelmed with orders from a famished group, had no time to mourn.

Mr. Derwent looked with pleasant eyes at Rosalie when he ordered his soup.

“You enjoyed the drive over,” he said. “There are roses in your cheeks.”

“Yes, sir. Consommé?” returned Rosalie faintly, the blush roses referred to deepening to Jacqueminot.

Robert glanced up and saw that this was the fair girl who had kept so still behind her veil on the back seat all the morning.

“I take my hat off to Uncle Henry,” he said, again addressing Helen Maynard, who was seated beside him. “He can see more out of the back of his head than I can with my eyes.”

“I will order for us both,” said Mrs. Nixon to Rosalie; and forthwith proceeded to do so with an air which forbade levity.

When Rosalie had received her orders and hastened from the room, Robert again unburdened himself.

“If I could get at that rubber ear of Uncle Henry’s,” he remarked to his demure neighbor, “I’d tell him he was a sad dog. A very good thing he brought me on this trip.”

“Mr. Derwent’s eyes mean more to him than ours do to us, naturally,” returned Helen.

“And I tell you,” returned Robert devoutly, “anybody endears himself to Uncle Henry who brings his coffee just right. That blonde must have done it this morning. How,” turning to his mother, “does my mother enjoy democratic traveling? This girl is a peach; but you should see the other one that was with her this morning in the coach. Did you?”

“No,” returned Mrs. Nixon coldly. “Why should I trouble myself about my neighbors? I came to see the scenery.”

“Well,” Robert shrugged his shoulders, “all is, you’ve missed a chance to see how a perfect lady should behave. Her gum-manners were a dream; but cheer up! You’ll have a chance this afternoon, doubtless.”

Here Rosalie brought the soup. Helen Maynard looked up at her and received a strange impression of familiarity.

“She looks like some one,” she said softly. “Who is it?”

“I know,” responded Robert promptly, “Hebe.”

“I haven’t met her yet,” returned Helen. “I’m climbing the mount of Olympus by slow and easy stages.”

“Now if you mean anything about me,” returned Robert briskly, “speak right out. I can’t cope with clever people. If you’re clever, I’m done for.”

“Oh!” ejaculated Helen softly. “Lambeth!”

“Is that any relative to shibboleth?” effervesced Robert. “Because I can say it. See? Better let me in.”

“Lambeth is a school,” returned Helen, and stole another look at their busy waitress; “a school where I went.”

Irving Bruce had Betsy on his right hand, but Mrs. Bruce absorbed him; and Betsy sat looking before her, idly waiting for her meal. Her roving glance fell suddenly on Rosalie’s blond head as the girl was leaving the dining-room.

“Why, that looked like Rosalie Vincent,” she reflected; then thought no more of it until later, when, her eyes again roving to that table, she obtained a full view of the fair-haired waitress as the girl refilled Mr. Derwent’s glass.

Betsy held her knife and fork poised, while her steady-going heart contracted for a second. “That is Rosalie Vincent!” She held the exclamation well inside, and looked at her neighbors. They had evidently noticed nothing, and Betsy devoutly hoped they would not. It was doubtful whether Mrs. Bruce would recognize her protégée in any case; but instinctively Betsy desired to prevent her from doing so; and contrary to her habit of speaking only when she was spoken to, she began commenting on the scenery; and Mrs. Bruce was impressed with the unusual docility and willingness to be enlightened displayed by her stiff-necked maid, whose thoughts were busy during the whole of her mistress’s patronizing information.

“And some time, Betsy,” finished Mrs. Bruce, “I will show you some pictures by a great artist named Doré, illustrating the Inferno, and you will be reminded of the Hoodoo Rocks.”

Betsy listened and replied so respectfully that her mistress remarked on it afterwards to Irving.

“All this travel is developing that hard, narrow New England mind of Betsy’s,” she said. “You can see it.”

And all the time Miss Foster was in a mild Inferno of her own, for her heart had always warmed to Rosalie Vincent, who used frequently to make her the confidante of her small hopes and fears, and whose sunny, confiding nature had endeared her to Betsy, and often aroused an unspoken sympathy in the sordid conditions of the girl’s lot.

Betsy’s one ambition now was to get the Bruces out of the dining-room before Mrs. Bruce should discover where the wings she had bestowed upon Rosalie had fluttered.

“I won’t try to see the child,” thought Betsy, “but I’ll write to her as soon as we get away from here.” She cast a furtive glance at the young girl. “She looks like one o’ these pretty actresses,” she thought, “rigged up to wait on table on the stage.”

She saw that Rosalie was keeping an eye on the Bruce party, and nervous in the fear of recognition; and this added to her relief when, Mrs. Bruce’s appetite satisfied, she begged Irving to hurry so that they might view the smoking wonders without.