Читать книгу Her Mother's Secret - Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth - Страница 12

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Glad voices broke in upon Anglesea’s brooding.

He looked up, and saw coming toward him the three young daughters of the house—Odalite, Wynnette and Elva, attended by their governess, Miss Meeke.

They were all equipped in their warm, brown cloth coats, buttoned up before, and their brown, beaver poke bonnets tied under their chins. They carried little baskets in their hands and dragged along sticks after them.

“Will you take a walk with us through the woods this morning, Col. Anglesea? Father has gone into town to attend court, you know; and mother has a little headache, and has locked herself up in her room to lie down and sleep. And we are going for a walk. Will you go?” inquired Odalite, as graciously as she could force herself to do; for the girl secretly detested the interloper, though her native good breeding prevented her from ever betraying her feelings to their object. She had not failed to perceive, through her own fine sympathies rather than through any expression from Mrs. Force, that the lady was very much annoyed and distressed by the presence of this intruder into the privacy of her domestic circle; and so Odalite often quietly relieved her mother by taking charge of the visitor’s entertainment, as she did on this occasion by inviting him to join their walking party.

Col. Anglesea looked at her with an amused smile, yet with more attention than he had ever regarded her before.

“Will you come with us?” she inquired again, seeing that he hesitated to reply.

“Thanks, very much! It is a temptation. Miss Force. In what direction do you propose to walk?”

“Down the hill to the shore—then along the shore for three miles to Greenbushes,” replied the young lady.

“And then through the house, which is to be Le’s and Odalite’s home after New Year, when they are married,” volunteered Wynnette, a pretty, saucy little brunette of fourteen years.

“Wynnette! Wynnette! Hush!” exclaimed Odalite, blushing vividly.

“Why must I hush? Everybody knows Le is coming home to marry you at Christmas!” retorted the second sister.

“And what do you think, Col. Anglesea?” whispered Elva, a gentle, little blonde of twelve.

“What, my elf?” playfully inquired the colonel.

“Why, when Le and Odalite get married and go to live at Greenbushes, Wynnette and I will live there just as much as we shall at home here.”

“Indeed! and what will Mr. Brother-in-law say to that?”

“Who, Le? Why, Le will say he is very glad. Le loves us all dearly. Le would give us anything we want, or do anything in the world for us. Especially now I should think he would, when we are going to let him have our sister and take her away.”

“Elva, my dear, you are talking too much,” whispered Miss Meeke, a small, demure young woman, with a pale face, gray eyes and smooth brown hair.

“Why? When he wants to pretend that our Le will not be glad to have us all three to live with him? I must take Le’s part, you know, Miss Meeke, especially in his absence,” pleaded Elva.

“Shall we walk on, Col. Anglesea?” suggested Odalite, to put an end to an embarrassing conversation.

“Certainly, if you please. What are these sticks for?” inquired the colonel, referring to the wands the girls dragged behind them.

“Oh! these are to thresh the chincapin bushes, when we get there! And we expect to fill our baskets!” answered Wynnette.

“Can I not carry them for you?” he inquired; and without waiting for an answer, collected the sticks from the children, who not unwillingly gave them up.

“And now I think of it,” suggested the colonel, “you will require but one stick, and that I will use and thresh the bushes while you gather the nuts. See, I will leave these three here, and take this thickest one. Now give me the four baskets; I will hang them on my stick and sling them over my shoulder, thus,” he said, suiting the action to the word.

The two children laughed at the figure he cut.

“Now! Right face! Forward! March!” he cried, stepping out in front.

They left the lawn by the east gate and passed through an orchard where a few late winter apples still clung to the nearly leafless branches of the trees; opened another gate and entered a narrow path leading down through the thick woods to the shore.

Then they turned southward and walked by the side of the bay, the children chattering as they went.

“What do you think, Col. Anglesea?” inquired Elva.

“I don’t know. What ought I to think?” laughingly inquired their escort.

“Well, I’ll tell you. Although Greenbushes is only three miles off, we have never seen it in our lives.”

“Really, now?”

“No, never! Miss Notley, Le’s great-aunt, who owned the place and who left it to Le in her will, never lived here at all. She left the place in the care of old Mr. Beever, her overseer, and he and the negroes worked the land and raised the crops, and Mr. Copp, her lawyer, attended to the sale and shipping of the tobacco and—and all that, you know.”

“I see.”

“And Miss Notley lived on her other place down in Florida. At least, she lived there all the year round except the summer months, when she always went to Europe. She died in Florida, and left Felicia—her estate there—to her Florida relations.”

“Ah!” said the colonel, trying to seem interested, while really brooding over his own schemes.

“And she left Greenbushes to Le, who is the only relative by her mother’s side.”

“Quite so.”

“And it is a great thing for Le and Odalite, for now they can marry and settle at once.”

“Precisely.”

“And as Wynnette and I shall spend half our time at Greenbushes, we mean to pick out our room and choose the paper and furniture for it.”

“In—deed!”

“Oh, yes! Mr. Copp sent to New York and got illustrated catalogues from the furniture dealers and books of patterns from the paper hangers, and samples from the—the—the—oh! what do you call them, Wynnette?—the people who color the walls that are not papered, you know?”

“The kalsominers?”

“Yes, that is what I mean! And all sorts of things! And we are going to choose our room and have it fixed!”

“Without consulting Mr. Brother-in-law?”

“Of course! Why, it is all to be done at once—at once! It is to be completed and quite ready by the time Le gets home! Won’t that be jolly? Le wrote to Odalite to do just as she pleased with the house, and wrote to Mr. Copp to advance all the money that was necessary and give her all the advice and assistance that he could. So father wrote to Mr. Copp to meet us here to-day, and he is to do it. Father would have been here, too, but he was subpœnaed this very morning to attend court. Oh! do look at that flock of wild geese, colonel! I’m glad you haven’t got your gun and dogs this time!”

So chattering and letting their tongues run before their wit, the children, with their companions, reached Greenbushes, and turning from the shore, began to ascend the hill going toward the house, which stood on the summit a few hundred yards back from the bay, and in the midst of a grove of pines, cedars, yews, firs and every description of evergreens that would grow on the soil; so that winter, as well as summer, the mansion was sheltered, and the lawn was heavily shaded by a canopy of green trees; hence its name of Greenbushes, given when these same trees were but saplings.

The house, in the midst of this evergreen grove, was a building of hard, dark red bricks, and so irregular in construction as to defy all description; it had so many gable ends, tall chimneys, little dormer windows and latticed windows, as to confuse the spectator; and so many great doors, each with its own portico, as to make a strange visitor utterly uncertain concerning the whereabouts of the main entrance.

Two old men, standing on a three-cornered portico in an angle of the wall, drew the steps of the visitors thither, where they were met by Mr. Copp, a tall, thin, fair-faced, gray-haired lawyer, and Mr. Beever, a short, round, red-faced and bald-headed farmer.

Both were plainly dressed in business suits of heavy, black cloth.

“Do you know those persons?” inquired the colonel of Odalite.

“No, but I know who they are, and I have come to see them.”

“Then let me speak to them first,” he suggested, going up to the two men.

He addressed them in a low tone, and then brought them to the spot where Odalite and her companions waited.

“Miss Force,” he said, “this is Mr. Copp, legal steward of the late Miss Laura Notley. This is Mr. Beever, manager of the plantation. They wish to speak to you on business, and will show you into the house,” he said.

The two men bowed very deferentially.

Odalite received them politely, and at Mr. Copp’s invitation, followed them into the building, accompanied by her sisters, their governess and Col. Anglesea, who regarded all these proceedings with a sarcastic smile.

The lawyer led the whole party into a small, old-fashioned, oak-paneled parlor, with a chimney in the angle of the wall, in which a large, wood fire had been kindled, and near which a table and a few chairs had been placed.

On this table lay various books of samples, and patterns, and catalogues of prices.

“Will you sit down and look over these, or will you go through the house first? I have had fires built in all the rooms, but still I think the place is not thoroughly aired and dried yet,” said Mr. Copp.

“We will look over these first, and then take them through the house for reference,” replied Odalite.

And the whole party sat down around the table, and began to examine patterns, samples and prices.

A great chattering as of many magpies ensued.

There was a difference of opinion. For kalsomine, and for the ground work of wall paper, as well as for window curtains, and chair and sofa colors, Odalite and Miss Meeke preferred olive, sage, lavender and other delicate, neutral tints, while Wynnette and Elva loudly advocated, pink, blue and yellow, or crimson, purple and orange.

At length, without arriving at any mutual understanding, but being rested from their long walk, they all arose to go through the house. Such a rambling house! with stairs going up and stairs going down in such out-of-the-way places; doors opening into rooms in such unexpected quarters; when they thought they were going to look into a small closet they found a large chamber; and when they walked through a side passage, which they thought led outdoors on a porch, behold! it led into some wing containing more rooms.

Wynnette and Elva chose at least half a dozen different rooms in succession—this, because it had such a lovely little fireplace and mantelpiece; that, because it had such funny little cupboards; the other, because it had such quaint little windows.

Finally they gave up in despair, saying that they must think it over at home before they could choose among so many.

Odalite, who thought that there was no time to lose if the house was to be ready for Leonidas on his return, selected the wall paper and the suits of furniture for all the rooms from the patterns before her, and having carefully marked them and written her directions, she requested Mr. Copp to set the mechanics to work at once, and to hurry on the repairs as fast as justice to the business would permit.

And Col. Anglesea, watching these proceedings, smiled sarcastically.

Having done their errand at Greenbushes, the little party left the house.

“Mr. Beever! Oh! please, where are the big chincapin thickets we have heard so much about?” inquired Elva, in whose ideas these nuts were, after all, the most immediately important item in their errand to the farm.

“Yes, honey, you’ll find ’em all along both sides of the footpath through the woods betwixt here and your place, but ’specially where you cross Chincapin Creek.”

“The woods! There! We’ll have to go back that way. Ah, Col. Anglesea, how lovely it will be when Odalite and Leonidas live here! There are so many lovely ways of going between the two places. Just listen now while I tell you. We may walk by the shore, as we did this morning, or we may walk through the woods, as we shall this afternoon. We may ride horseback along the shore or through the woods, or we may drive in a carriage along the shore or along the turnpike road through the woods; or, best of all, we may row in a boat from the landing at the foot of our hill to the landing at the foot of this hill. Oh, it will be perfectly delightful!”

Col. Anglesea looked at the child with his sinister smile, but she was too happy to notice anything evil in it.

They took leave of the lawyer and the farmer, and started to walk home through the woods, chattering all the way of the beauty of Greenbushes even now, and the delight of the prospect ahead.

“It is too late this season; but mind, Odalite, next spring you are to have a mansard roof, and bay windows, and—balconies, and—and—towers and things,” said Elva.

“Perhaps,” quietly replied Odalite.

“Why, there is no ‘perhaps’ about it! Le said you were to do just as you please with the house,” suggested Wynnette.

“But that did not mean I should burn it down,” said Odalite.

“Of course it did not. What do——”

“And he did not mean I should tear it down either, as I should have to do to make all the improvements our ambitious little Elva suggests. Why, darling, we might as well talk of putting a mansard on the top of that clump of Scotch firs as on that irregularly built farmhouse.”

“The top is about as uneven in height as a set of dinner casters, so we will give up the mansard roof. But do have a bay window and some balconies,” said Elva.

“Perhaps,” repeated Odalite.

So talking they reached the bridge crossing Chincapin Creek, with its fringe of richly laden bushes, and stopped to gather the nuts.

It took but a little while to fill all their baskets, after which they continued their homeward walk.

They reached Mondreer late in the afternoon.

Their father had returned from the courthouse. Their mother had recovered from her headache. And the delayed dinner was served.

During the meal, which at Mondreer was always a merry one, the talk still ran upon Greenbushes and its present and prospective attractions.

Col. Anglesea took little part in the conversation, but he listened and smiled.

After dinner, and during the long winter evening that followed, he vainly sought an opportunity of speaking alone with Mrs. Force.

He did not fail because she shunned him, but because the little party kept together in the most persistent way, and he certainly could not ask Mrs. Force in the presence of all her family, to give him a private interview. He must wait his opportunity.