Читать книгу Truthful Jane - Florence Morse Kingsley - Страница 3

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Miss Jane Evelyn Aubrey-Blythe stared steadily at the toes of her damp, shabby little boots which peeped out from beneath the hem of an equally damp and shabby gown, her youthful brows puckered thoughtfully over a pair of extraordinarily bright, long-lashed hazel eyes. Miss Blythe, was for the moment, feeling very much out of it, and consequently very unhappy.

The room in which she was sitting, drying her damp boots and petticoats by a smoldering fire of logs, was a sufficiently cheerful one, its two large windows commanding a wide view of red-tiled London roofs and glazed chimney-pots, all of which glistened wetly in the dull light of the late afternoon. For the rest, the red Turkey carpet was badly worn in spots; the chairs presented the appearance of veterans staunchly surviving a long and stormy career; while the two small desks piled with dog-eared school-books exhibited tokens of strenuous usage in the shape of ineradicable ink-stains, which served to diversify the cuttings and carvings of inexpert jackknives, stealthily applied.

At opposite sides of a table in the center of the room two small boys in knickerbockers were actively engaged in a competition in which large china mugs of milk and water, and thick slices of bread and butter and jam figured conspicuously.

"You'd better come to your tea, Jane, before we eat all the bread and butter," advised one of the boys thickly.

"I don't want any tea, Cecil; and you shouldn't talk with your mouth full; it's very rude," replied the girl tartly.

"You'll get no dinner, you know, because there's company," observed the other boy, slamming his mug on the table. "Old Gwendolen won't have you down because you're so much handsomer than she is."

Jane turned a distractingly pretty profile toward the speaker, a slight smile dimpling the corners of her mouth. "You oughtn't to say such things, Percy," murmured the girl "—though I dare say it's true enough," she added plaintively.

The two boys, having variously disposed of the thick slices of bread and butter, were now causing startling explosions to issue from the depths of their mugs.

"Put down your mugs this instant!" ordered Miss Blythe sternly. "Haven't I forbidden you to make those disgusting noises in your milk?"

"You have—yes," admitted Cecil coolly, as he sent his empty mug spinning across the table; "but who cares for you, anyway! You're only a poor relation!"

With a smothered howl of rage the smaller Percy arose from his place and fell upon his brother, who received the attack with practiced courage, while Miss Blythe resumed her moody contemplation of her steaming boots.

"You're a cad!"

"You lie!"

"You're another!"

"Ouch!"

"Leggo!—Leggo, I say!"

The tugging and panting of the small combatants, and the scuffling of their stout little shoes on the threadbare carpet, quite drowned the slight sound of the opening door.

"Cecil—Percy—my sons!" exclaimed a voice.

Jane Blythe shrugged her slim shoulders wearily in anticipation of what was to follow.

"I am surprised and displeased, Jane, that you should permit such a disgraceful scene to take place in the school-room without even attempting to quell it," went on the lady, advancing majestically into the center of the floor. "What do I see?—bread and butter on the floor, on the sofa, on the—yes, actually, on the mantle! and milk— Really, Jane, I fear you sadly forget your duties at times."

Miss Blythe had risen, apparently that she might bring her bright hazel eyes more nearly on a level with the frozen blue ones behind the double glasses which pinched the lady's aquiline nose.

"I don't forget my duties, Aunt Agatha," she said distinctly; "but I think you have forgotten to pay me for them."

"What do you mean, ungrateful girl?"

"I mean that if I am to perform the duties of a nursery governess in your house I should be paid regular wages the same as the rest of the servants. My shoes are worn through the soles, and I need—everything. Even Parks dresses better than I do. She can afford to."

A dead silence followed this clear statement of fact. The two small boys were sulkily regarding their mother from beneath their light lashes, who, in her turn, attempted to quell the militant light in the eyes of the girl.

"How—dare you say such a thing to me!" cried the lady at length. "And before the children, too! You may come to me in the library to-morrow morning, Jane, when I am examining the accounts. I will talk with you then. In the meantime"—Lady Agatha Aubrey-Blythe paused to draw her rustling gown more closely about her tall figure—"I would advise you to reflect on the fact that when you were entirely alone in the world, helpless and penniless, I took you into my house and cared for you like—like——"

Jane Blythe laughed aloud. It was a dreary little sound; somehow it caused Percy to clench his small fist and draw a little nearer to his cousin.

But it appeared to enrage the lady. Her patrician countenance assumed a peculiar, sickly, mottled pink colour. "To-morrow, at ten, in the library," she said coldly. "And, Jane, as Parks will be occupied with my toilet, I should like you to assist Gwendolen. You may go down now. Susan will put this disgracefully untidy room to rights. Cecil and Percy, you will go to bed at once—at once! do you hear?"

"Yes, mother," piped the two small scions of the house of Aubrey-Blythe in a respectfully subdued chorus. After which they proceeded to thrust their agile tongues into their red cheeks and bulge out their round, blue eyes behind their maternal relative's august back as she turned to leave the room.

"You'll catch it to-morrow, Miss Jane—at ten—in the library!" opined Master Cecil sagely. "I'll bet she'll smack you with the ruler."

"Hold your tongue, Cecil, and come on to bed!" bawled Percy, "or you'll be the one to get smacked with the ruler."

Miss Blythe had walked over to the window and was looking out with unseeing eyes into the gathering dusk.

"It is true," she told herself forlornly. "I am poorer than any of the maids in the house. I hate it! Oh, how I hate it all!" She wiped away two or three rebellious tears on a grimy little pocket-handkerchief.

A servant had entered and was somewhat noisily gathering the empty dishes onto a tray. "I see you've 'ad no tea, miss," she observed kindly. "Shan't I toast you a bit o' bread at the fire an' fetch some more jam?"

"No, Susan, thank you; I must go down now. But you're very kind to have thought of it."

Jane's smile was beautiful, and the warm-hearted Susan, for one, appreciated it. "They'd orto to be 'shamed o' theirsel's," she observed vaguely to the tea things, as the girl closed the door softly behind her. "An' she's pretty's a pink, an' that sweet-mannered! She'd orto marry a r'yal dook, that she 'ad; an' dress in di'mon's an' satings!"

Susan was in the habit of solacing herself with yellow-covered romances in the scant leisure stolen from her duties as housemaid, and of late Miss Jane Evelyn had figured as the heroine of everyone of these tales in the honest damsel's rather crude imaginings.

As Miss Blythe passed down the dimly lighted staircase on her way to her cousin's room, she was startled to the point of uttering a slight scream by a dark figure which darted out upon her from behind a tall suit of armor stationed on the landing.

"O Reginald!" she exclaimed, "why will you play such baby tricks, now that you are nearly grown?"

"'Nearly grown,' indeed!" echoed the tall youth in a displeased voice. "I am grown. Look at me—away over your head, Miss Jane! I say, give us a kiss, will you?"

"No, indeed, I'll not! Get out of my way directly. I'm in a hurry!"

"Oh, no, you've lots of time to talk to me," chuckled Reginald, planting his ungainly figure directly across the stair. "And you'll not go a step farther till you've paid toll. Do you know, Jane, you're growing deucedly pretty—upon my word!"

"Impudence!" cried Jane sharply. "If you don't let me go this instant I'll call your mother."

"If you do that," drawled the boy, wagging his head threateningly, "I'll tell the mater you were trying to kiss me. Then you'd catch it; she'd believe me every trip."

By way of reply to this taunt Miss Blythe reached up and dealt the tall youth a stinging slap on his beardless cheek.

"Tell her that a girl cuffed you, too, baby!" she retorted, and slipped past him like a shadow.

"I'll pay you out for that, miss! See if I don't!" threatened Reginald. But Jane was safely out of sight and hearing, too.

The tall girl seated before a dressing table, carefully inspecting a rather rough and muddy complexion by the light of two wax candles, turned frowning eyes upon Jane as she entered the room.

"Where have you been keeping yourself, slow-poke?" she inquired crossly. "Don't you know I'll be late if I don't make haste?"

"You'd better make haste then," advised Jane coolly, advancing with her hands behind her back. Her usually pale cheeks were flushed to a lovely pink by her triumphant escape from Reginald; her brown hair, ruffled into crisp waves, fell about her brilliant eyes. "What do you want me to do, Gwen—hook up your frock?" she added carelessly.

"I want you to dress my feet first, and be quick about it, too," replied Miss Gwendolen haughtily. "No; not those pink stockings!— I've decided to wear all white this evening. The open-work silk ones, stupid! What is the matter with you, anyway, Jane? You're as red as a lobster."

Jane's little hands trembled as she pulled the designated hose from a pile of party-colored ones in the tumbled drawer. "Here are your stockings," she said briefly. "Which shoes do you want?"

"The white suede with straps; they're the freshest—and do make haste!" replied Gwendolen impatiently.

Jane set the large, white, high-heeled shoes down on the floor beside her cousin's chair with a loud thump.

"Well, aren't you ever going to put them on?" demanded Miss Gwendolen, kicking her satin bedroom slippers half across the room.

"No; I'm not. You can put them on yourself," said Jane deliberately. "Why should I put on your shoes and stockings for you, Gwendolen? You never put on mine for me—do you?"

Gwendolen stared at Jane's rebellious face in silence. She was a dull girl, and it took her some time to understand what Jane had really said to her.

"Why, why—" she stammered, "you have always done as you were told before, and—I'll tell mother," she added, an ugly frown distorting her face. "She'll not allow you to be impertinent to me, you know."

"It is quite impossible for me to be impertinent to you, Gwendolen," said Jane, drawing up her little figure superbly. "One cannot be impertinent to one's equals. I'll hook up your frock for you, if you like, because you are my cousin, and I ought on that account to be willing to be civil to you. But I won't put on your stockings and shoes for you, so you may as well begin."

Gwendolen stooped and drew on her stockings in sullen silence; then she put on her shoes. "I'll tell mother," she repeated stupidly.

"You may tell her if you like," said Jane airily. "And you may tell Lady Maybury that you haven't sense enough to pull on your stockings straight, if you like. I don't care."

Gwendolen looked actually frightened; she peered into her cousin's face with her ugly, shortsighted eyes. "What has come over you, Jane?" she asked anxiously. "Oh, I do believe you've got a fever and are out of your head! Get away from me—do! Suppose it should be smallpox, and I should catch it—oh! Go away—quick! Ring the bell for Susan as you go out. She can hook my frock, and——"

Jane pirouetted out of the door like a sprite. "Thank you, Gwen!" she cried mockingly. "Yes, I fancy I have a fever. But you'll not catch it, you poor, dear, stupid thing, you!"

Then she darted up two flights of stairs to her own cold little room under the roof, where she flung herself face downward across the narrow bed and wept tempestuously.

"O God, please let me go away from this house!" she prayed between her sobs. "I've been good and patient just as long as I possibly can. Things will have to change!"

The girl was truthful—even with herself—even with her Creator.