Читать книгу My Lady Bountiful - Fred M. White - Страница 6

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The lantern clock was staggering decorously towards ten as the trio crossed the hall, Phillipa looked at the moon face regretfully.

"We shall have no time to do more than introduce Margaret," she said. "According to the laws of the Medes and Persians, we retire at ten, though we are nearly twenty. At a quarter to eleven you will be expected in the drawing-room to make your curtsey to Aunt Maria. If you stay here you will probably have to make certain changes in your dress."

"I don't think so," said Kathleen, with a glance at the dolly frocks.

"Which reminds me," Edna put in, "a discreet silence as to the evening blouses in Margaret's presence would be esteemed. It is an innocent deception that we have kept even from her. You would not have been let into the secret save in self-defence."

The silver-throated organ still filled the air with its melody. The twins passed before a cell-like door, iron studded, and let into the massive walls. It might have been the entrance to a dungeon, Kathleen thought. But as the door swung back on its long hammered hinges, the girl stood there with a shining delight in her eyes.

There was something here to appeal to her artistic fancy. A long, low room, with a carved and painted ceiling wrought by some cunning hand. Stone walls with the marks of ancient chisels still on them, walls draped for the most part with figured tapestry. There were a few good pictures of the old school, a table marvellously carved, oaken cabinets in exquisite relief, a fine place to dream in, and logs blazing on quaint dogs. A swinging bronze lamp illuminated the room, and fell upon a perfect pyramid of flowers, not the simple blooms of the fields, but blossoms of a grander growth.

Beyond the room was a smaller one given over entirely to banks of flowers, a room half cell, half conservatory, with high painted windows at the sides, and at the back of it the organ with the yellow keys, an instrument so wonderfully carved that Kathleen could not repress a cry of delight.

At the sound the player stopped and turned. She was dressed in unassuming black, with white collar and cuffs, her abundant dark hair was gathered at the base of her neck, in a Grecian knot. Her face had the same clear, pallid ivory hue as the keys of the organ, a lofty face full of sweetness and purity, a pair of dark, tender eyes, and a brilliant set of teeth. Behind the organ stool was a black ebony crutchstick with a silver handle.

"Margaret," Phillipa said, "we have brought Kathleen to see you. She wants to know what relation we are to one another, but I tell her the task is beyond my strength. We must go, because it is time good girls were in bed."

The organ player came down from the organ platform with the aid of a stick. So lame was she that she came across the room as a wounded swallow might have done. She looked so smiling and so sweet and so good, that Kathleen kissed her. Here was a girl that she was certain to love.

"I am going to like you," she said; "I am sure we shall be friends. But I'll not say another word till you sit down, Miss——"

"Margaret, if you please. And you are Kathleen. We will not go into the relationship. And I need not say you are in the least like what I expected."

"Don't say you are disappointed," Kathleen laughed.

Margaret declared with truth that she was not in the least disappointed. Only she was a great invalid, and did not go out much, so that she was a dreamer of dreams. She looked like some beautiful picture in her plain black and white, Kathleen thought. The chastened resignation on her noble features told of some great sorrow. It came into the mind of the young novelist that Margaret had either lost a lover or formed some hopeless attachment.

"Do you suffer any pain?" she asked.

"Not now," Margaret said, "I used to when I lived in London. I had a bad fall some years ago. Because I was poor I neglected myself. For years I managed to get my living by water-colour drawings and the like, Dr. Dennison's son attended me, and his father got to know. By chance Sir John Dennison, who was attending Aunt Maria for something, asked if I were any relation. She came to see me, and carried me down here, where I have been ever since. And, Kathleen, I want you to like Aunt Maria. She has her faults; her family pride and dignity almost amount to madness. But a kinder woman never breathed. You will find that out before you have been here long."

"I'll try," said Kathleen, encouragingly. "But who, oh why, are the twins dressed like funny little inhabitants of a doll's house?"

Margaret smilingly evaded the point, and Kathleen let it pass. She sincerely hoped that Margaret was getting better.

"I am improving," the latter said. "Strange to say, young Dr. Dennison is attending me here. Some two years or so ago a lunatic patient of his shot him in the head, and he had to leave London for a time at any rate. As he loved his profession and could not be idle, he came and took a share of a practice here. When he came first I could not leave my bed. Now I can walk a good long way. John—I mean Dr. Dennison—has, well—I have a deal to thank him for."

There was such a yearning expression in the dark eyes, such a wistful smile on the lips, that Kathleen gathered far more than the speaker intended. With the prophetic instinct of the novelist, she felt that she was on the verge of a love story.

"Is Dr. Dennison a friend of the family?" she asked.

"Bless me, no," Margaret said with the same yearning smile. "Mere doctors are not admitted to the friendship of Eldred-Wolframs. But she is a good woman, Kathleen, and you must never, never forget that."

There was a fierce loyalty in the last few words that startled the listener. Margaret's long, slender fingers had broken off a spray of azalea. And then Kathleen knew that Margaret and John Dennison were in love with one another, and that Mrs. Eldred-Wolfram would have died rather than consent to the marriage.

Kathleen looked round at the flowers and the wondrous carved oak thoughtfully. She was fond of constructing little romances, of getting people out of all kinds of imaginary difficulties. And, as a girl, the unspoken love story touched her. What if she were the god in the car appointed to set the thing right? She would treat it exactly as the plot of a novel. In that way it would go hard if she did not find some way out of the difficulty.

She came down from the clouds blushing and smiling at her own conceit.

"Tell me something about the house and its ways," she asked. "The twins spoke of you as if you were a kind of mistress here."

"Well, so I am. I do all the correspondence. It its the strangest household in the word. So well ordained, appointed, but so extravagant and reckless."

Kathleen listened eagerly. It seemed a few minutes more the decorous dock deigned to inform curious humanity that it was eleven o'clock.

"All lights out in ten minutes," Margaret broke off suddenly. "My child, you must fly."