Читать книгу Young Tom, or Very Mixed Company - Forrest Reid - Страница 4

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The Rectory hall door was open when Tom reached it, so he walked straight on in without ringing the bell. In the dining-room, where they did lessons, he found both Miss Sabine and Althea seated at the table, snipping off the tops and tails of gooseberries. Mother thought there must be foreign, probably Spanish, blood in the Sabines, which was what made them all so vivid-looking. At breakfast this morning she had said so, and also that there was something masculine about Miss Sabine’s whole style and appearance, due partly, perhaps, to the way she dressed. Tom, however, could see nothing masculine about her, unless it was that Miss Sabine looked big and strong and had a tiny black moustache. In every way she suggested strength—strength of character, strength of mind, strength of purpose. Her skin was almost swarthy, her hair jet black, and when she was really angry, as he had seen her on one memorable occasion with Max, her eyes literally flashed.

“Good morning, Tom,” she now greeted him, in her firm deep voice; while Althea said “Hello!” and giggled.

Tom returned Miss Sabine’s “good morning”, but took no notice of Althea, whose habit of giggling at nothing displeased him. Althea, at any rate, was vivid enough, with cheeks like apples, and her hair hanging down in sleek black pigtails. At the moment, however, he was much less interested either in her, or in Mother’s discoveries, than in a row of brand-new books, with brilliant bindings and gilt edges, spread out in the middle of the table. Having cast a rapid glance at these, he determinedly looked away, and coloured when he saw Althea watching him with a kind of sly amusement. It was very like her, he thought: she was always amused when you found yourself in some delicate situation and didn’t quite know what to do. Not that she was a bad kid on the whole. There was at least nothing mean or treacherous about her, as there was about Max....

“I expect you’ve been wondering, Tom, why I asked you to come back this morning,” Miss Sabine said. “It was simply because those books didn’t arrive till after you had gone yesterday, though the man in the shop promised faithfully to send them out in plenty of time. I want you to choose one as a small memento; or perhaps I should say a prize, for of course it is really that.”

Tom’s blush deepened, and Althea began to hum a little tune, so that he could have kicked her. Nevertheless he managed to jerk out: “Thanks awfully, Miss Sabine.”

“Well, you’d better have a look at them,” Miss Sabine observed, since his shyness seemed to have reduced him to immobility. “You mayn’t like any of them, for I could only guess; so if there’s some other book you’d prefer instead, I hope you’ll tell me.”

After this she tactfully resumed her gooseberry-snipping, nor did she once glance at him while he was making his choice.

The first book he took up was Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome, the only volume he had already rejected in his mind. But Althea, who had no tact, was still covertly watching him, and he turned his back upon her.

There were more than a dozen books to choose from, and Miss Sabine must have gone to some trouble in selecting them. Here were The Talisman and David Copperfield; Huckleberry Finn, and The Golden Treasury bound in leather; Tom Brown’s Schooldays, Westward Ho!, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, King Solomon’s Mines, and Treasure Island. Each attracted him; but he already possessed a tattered copy of Grimm, and the attraction of The Talisman and Westward Ho! was somewhat faint. The Golden Treasury, moreover, was poetry, though if it had been Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry he might have taken it. As it was, he lifted each book in turn, glanced through it, and looked at the pictures if there were any. But this was an act of politeness pure and simple, for very quickly he had made up his mind that the choice lay between two books only—Nat the Naturalist, by George Manville Fenn, and Curiosities of Natural History, by Frank Buckland. He would have decided on the latter at once had it not been in four volumes—First Series, Second Series, Third Series, and Fourth Series—therefore it might seem greedy to choose it when all the others were in one volume only. True, the Curiosities volumes were less sumptuously bound, and had neither gilt nor olivine edges. If you took them individually, they looked less expensive than the others, and it suddenly occurred to him that very likely they were to be regarded as separate books, so he lifted the first and said: “I’d like this, please.”

“Well, I think you’ve made an excellent choice,” Miss Sabine agreed, “though I haven’t read it myself, and picked it out just because I thought from the title it might interest you.”

“But—but——” Tom stammered, for Miss Sabine had drawn all four volumes towards her and was now preparing to write his name in them. Pen in hand she paused, glancing up at him.

“I meant—I thought—there’d be only one,” Tom mumbled in confusion.

Miss Sabine smiled: she understood perfectly. “Oh, that’s all right,” she assured him, looking at him very kindly, and dipping her pen. “They go together: they are only one.” And she began her inscription, quite a lengthy one, or so it seemed to Tom, for her writing was very large and black, and sprawled over the whole yellowish end-paper.

“And now,” she said, pressing down the blotting-paper, “there you are. You certainly deserve all four, and if you do as well at school as you have always done with me, I don’t think they’ll be the last prizes you’ll get.”

Tom thanked her once again, beaming all over with a pleasure that lit up like sunshine his plain, freckled, blunt-featured face, and greenish-grey eyes. At the same time he wondered what Althea had got, but did not like to ask since the others had not mentioned it.

Nor, though she accompanied him as far as the garden gate, did Althea mention it when they were alone. “Max is going to camp,” was all she told him. “He didn’t want to, but his form master or somebody wrote to Dad about it, so he won’t be coming home just yet.” Then, as Tom received this information in silence: “I suppose you’re not interested.... I forgot.... You don’t like him much, do you?”

“No,” Tom said.

The remarkable frankness of his agreement did not appear to trouble Althea. “Why?” she asked, without the slightest hint of resentment.

“Because I don’t,” Tom answered.

Althea was silent for a minute or two, as if mentally turning over this response. He could see, nevertheless, that what she was really searching for was an excuse for pursuing the subject. “I don’t think you ought to dislike him,” was the very feeble one she eventually found. “I mean—to keep it up in that way. It’s wicked.”

In spite of his annoyance, Tom laughed. “Do you think he likes me?” he said.

“I don’t know. I never asked him. But that shouldn’t prevent you from setting a good example.”

“Yes ...?” He looked at her closely. “Why are you sticking on all this? You don’t go in much yourself for setting good examples.”

“I can’t: I’ve nobody to set them to,” Althea sighed. But curiosity once more prevailed, and she said: “I suppose it has something to do with the Fallon boy—James-Arthur.”

Tom flushed hotly. “You can suppose what you like,” he retorted, and would have left her abruptly had she not caught him by his jacket.

“Don’t be so huffy! I only said I supposed it was that. And if you want to know why, it was because I heard Max talking to Dad about it, and telling him you oughtn’t to be allowed to be friends with a farm boy.... So you needn’t get in a temper as if it was my fault.... Aunt Rachel heard him too, and ticked him off for being such a snob.”

But Tom by this time had shaken himself free, and with a brief “Good-bye,” he made his escape, leaving Althea standing at the gate gazing after him.