Читать книгу Why Joan? - Eleanor Mercein Kelly - Страница 10

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"Get up, Jo! Time you was gettin' up. Come, come—it's ten o'clock!"

A familiar, relentless voice penetrated Joan's consciousness at last, and she screwed her swollen eyelids down tighter and even managed a reproving snore, wondering whether the halcyon days would ever come when she might be allowed to sleep her sleep out in the morning. Probably not, so long as Ellen Neal was within calling distance. The woman had a horror of what she called shiftless ways. Once in a moment of special exasperation she had been heard to mutter, "That's the chief thing that's the matter with your pa—he's never ready to get up in the morning!"—a remark which had remained in Joan's memory.

Now the sheets were suddenly jerked off her, and the relentless voice continued, "No use pretendin' you're asleep when you ain't. Here's your breakfast they've sent up to you, child, just as if you was sick a-bed. Humph!"

Suddenly reality came back upon her with full force—horrible reality; and she jumped up in bed and flung her arms around the old servant's neck, clinging tight, as she had done many a time before when something frightened her.

"Oh, Nellen, Nellen!" she moaned. "It's you! I thought you had deserted me, too!"

The woman stood immobile in this embrace, making no effort to return it. But her eyes blinked a little.

"Sho! What would I want to do that for? Don't be silly—Look out! There now, if you haven't gone and upset the coffee all over them fancy sheets! Coffee's hard to get out, too. That's what comes of havin' your vittles in bedrooms, where they don't belong."

The tears, which had threatened to take possession of Joan again, turned into a burst of wild laughter, "No matter! Plenty more where they come from, Nellen. What is a lace-trimmed sheet to my new mamma? I expect the very dishcloths are hand-embroidered. Behold the abode of cash, Ellen, cash! Isn't it grand? Oh," she cried, her voice breaking, "why didn't you come to me last night! Didn't you know how I'd need you?"

"I didn't know you was here, child, till I come this morning to see when him and her was expectin' you."

The girl's face fell. "Why, Ellen! Aren't you living here?"

"Me? In this house? I wouldn't so demean myself," said the other primly.

"Do you mean to say"—Joan's cheeks were hot—"that after all these years, and everything you've done for us, my father has let you go?"

Ellen tossed her head. "'Twan't none of his lettin', child. I told him that all things considered I'd ruther sew for my livin'. And so I would. Your time's your own that way, and you see more of folks. I like folks. I must say," she added conscientiously, "that woman—your pa's wife—was real kind about offerin' to get me work with a dressmaker. But Ellen Neal don't have to be beholden to nobody, thank you!"

"And where do you live?"

A mysterious smile twinkled in the woman's eyes. "Some day when you're good and sick of all this fancy flubdubbery" (she indicated with a disparaging hand the elegancies of the blue chamber) "you come and see where I live, Jo, and come often. I've got me two as nice rooms as ever you seen. And—I got my own furniture for 'em, too, real grand furniture I bought up cheap at an auction room. There's some carved chairs, and a walnut desk with a bookcase on top, and some blue velvet porteers, and a mahogany bed with the tester sawed off—"

Comprehension dawned on Joan. "Ellen! Our furniture!" she cried.

Ellen nodded. "Some of it. As much as I could git. I'm keepin' it for you till you git a home of your own to put it in, Joie. I sort of thought your ma would want me to."

Joan was weeping again, not the devastating flood of the past night, but sweet and healing tears, as good for strained nerves as a summer rain is good for flowers.

"You old wretch!" she gulped. "Where did you get the money?"

The other grinned. "Any time Ellen Neal gets caught without plenty in her stockin'-fut, you may be sure the Scots blood is failin' her! I'm a whole lot richer than I'm willin' to let some folks know. Why, I could set idle, if I'd a mind to, the rest of my life—only I don't hold with settin' idle just because you got a right." (Long afterwards it occurred to Joan that Ellen, who was not given to discoursing on her own affairs, must have had some reason for thus bragging of her unsuspected riches.) "There's nothing," she added rather irrelevantly, "that makes a person contented with the place she's in like knowin' she can go somewhere else if she's a mind to."

What barrier there had been between servant and mistress—a fluctuating barrier at best, dependent upon Joan's varying conceptions of her own dignity—had gone down forever under that rain of grateful tears, and Joan felt free to ask some of the questions of which her heart was full—how, for instance, the affair between her father and Mrs. Calloway had begun.

"How?" repeated Ellen grimly. "Well, when a lone female and a lone he-male ain't got nothin' to keep 'em apart but an alley-fence, and her with paint on her face till she looks like a fat sixteen, and food on her table every day as good as a two-dollar table d'hôte, what can you expect? I wa'n't surprised myself. Nor," she added quietly, "I don't believe your ma would be, Joan."

"Oh, but how it must have hurt her!"

Both spoke in low tones, as if the spirit of Mary Darcy might be lingering near enough to overhear.

"I ain't so sure about that," mused Ellen. "I ain't so sure! Your ma always set great store on havin' the Major comfortable—'Ellen,' she said to me that last day, when we knew what was comin'—'Ellen, be sure to keep him comfortable here at home, so he won't be lookin' for it somewheres else.' There's worse things can happen to a widow-man than gettin' married again."

"Oh, but if I'd been here to look after him myself!" wailed Joan. "If you had only told me what was happening! I might have come back and stopped it!"

"About as much chance as stopping a fire-hydrant that's blown the top off. You're a smart child, Joan, always was; but you don't stand a show against that woman your pa's married—nor I wouldn't want you to," she added cryptically. "You wasn't raised that way.—Anyhow it wasn't none of my business. And just remember this, child, it's none of yours. It's none of yours!"

After she had gone, a sense of something heartening and bracing remained with Joan; and as she brushed out her straight, heavy hair with new silver-backed brushes which bore her own initials, a typical Ellenism recurred to her: "There's nothing that makes a person contented with the place she's in like knowing she can go somewheres else if she's a mind to."

"At least," she thought suddenly, "I'm independent of father. Mother left her property to me—I can get it whenever I ask for it. … And now I understand why!"

Mary Darcy had been a very far-sighted woman.