Читать книгу Broken Barrier - Grace Helen Mowat - Страница 4

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Maggie knew that the night of a board-meeting dinner was not the best time for breaking an important and disturbing piece of news to the master. It might be better to wait until he came down to breakfast the following morning. Breakfast, on the other hand, was a somewhat unapproachable meal and also hurried, on account of the master having to catch the ferry. That, however, would shorten the interview. It would perhaps be better to wait until then.

Undoubtedly the news must be broken, for the day had been set and the plump and prosperous grocer, who was the man of her choice, would wait no longer.

The master returned earlier than she had expected. She heard his step on the veranda and the fumbling of his latchkey in the door. Maybe it would be better to get the worst over now so that it would not be hanging over her all night.

She waited for him at the dark end of the front hall, while he took off his hat and coat and hung them in the coat closet by the stairs. Then he came into the library, a tall, slim figure in evening dress, with a face that seemed too young for the iron-gray hair that crowned it.

He sat down by the fire, lighted his pipe, and picked up a book.

Maggie’s round, comely figure in black dress and expansive white apron remained in the doorway for some minutes before he looked and saw her there. She did not wish him to know that she was afraid. She intended that the news, when it was broken, should be definite and quite final. However, it was a very difficult break that she was about to make. She felt it keenly herself.

She had come to work in that house when but a slip of a girl. Stephen Trancher had then been in his first year at college. She had stayed on through the years when his mother had been mistress there, and after her death she had remained and carried on the domestic arrangements, taking entire charge of the house. Stephen never had to give these things a thought. Everything went like clockwork, just as it had in his mother’s day, and he never dreamed that it would not always be so. She knew this and it made the moment tense and terrible.

“Maggie,” he said when he finally noticed her presence, “you are a lucky woman. You never have to attend board meetings.”

He spoke in the whimsical way in which he often talked to her. Through the years they had learned to understand each other.

“No, sir, I don’t. But I’ve other worrisome things just as bad. When I tell you what I’m going to tell you, it’ll seem worse than any board meeting,” she said, nodding her head at him.

“Dear me!” he said. “You fill me with foreboding fear! You are not going to spoil the first peaceful hour I have had today, I hope. I like to leave my troubles behind me at the office.”

“You wouldn’t like this piece of news any better if I took it to the office to bother you in business hours.”

“Well, what is it? I am prepared for the worst.”

“I doubt if you are, sir,” retorted Maggie, piqued at his show of indifference.

“Then let us have it and end the nerve-racking suspense.”

“Well, sir, you know Jenkins,” Maggie began courageously, “Jenkins that keeps the grocery store.”

“Yes, I know Jenkins.”

“Well, his wife died about three years ago. His daughter is ’most grown up now, but she’s a scatter-brained thing, can’t keep house for him—wants to take dancing lessons. His son is not much good, neither. Got no right idea about work. Wants to go to college, and I say he might just as well, for he’ll never be fit for much else. So poor Jenkins feels he can’t stand things no longer.”

“Is Jenkins looking for a good housekeeper?”

“Yes, more or less, but his main idea is that him and me should get married.”

Silence, deep and appalling, followed. A silence that could be felt. Silence was Stephen Trancher’s most deadly weapon. Maggie knew this. It was the things he did not say that mattered.

“I understand,” he said, at last, very quietly.

A shadow crossed his delicate, refined features. He sat looking at the fire. When he did look up, he only said “Goodnight, Maggie.”

She turned and went slowly into the kitchen, sat down on the rocker beside the stove and threw her apron over her head. She knew he would take it like that. “I’d a sight rather he had swore at me,” she grumbled to herself. “Then I could have talked back at him.” But she was devoted to the master and her loyalty asserted itself. “I wouldn’t have liked it any better, I s’pose, if he hadn’t of cared about me leaving him,” she sniffed, wiping her eyes with her starched white apron.

She always called him the master. Her mother had once been a maid in the household of an English bishop and she had taught her that the head of the house should always be spoken of as “the master” by those who served him.

On the night that the old master died, Stephen Trancher had come into the kitchen and said to her, “Father has gone, Maggie,” and all she could think of to say was, “And you are the master now.”

Ever since that night he had been the master to her.

It was a terrible wrench. Was Jenkins worth it? she asked herself.

Next morning, in the bustle of preparing breakfast, she decided that he was, and boldly carried the coffee-pot into the dining-room.

The master was seated at the table. He unfolded his napkin and glanced at the morning paper. Maggie stepped back and forth, bringing in toast and bacon. When she finally arrived with the marmalade he put aside the paper, fixed his deep-set grey eyes upon her, and asked, “Who is going to look after me, Maggie?”

“I’ve been wondering about that myself, sir. It’s been worrying me considerable.”

“It has not worried you sufficiently to induce you to give up Jenkins?”

“No, sir. I thought last night it had, but I feel different about it this morning. Jenkins won’t take no for an answer.”

“In that case, Maggie, you must find some woman to take your place and teach her all the things she will have to do in the house, just as my mother taught you. If you don’t do that, Jenkins can’t have you.”

“I’ll do the best I can, sir.”

“Where did you come from in the first place, Maggie?”

“Me? Oh, I came from the Provinces.”

“Very well, then. Get me a girl from the Provinces, wherever they are.” And without further comment he rose and left the dining-room.

When Maggie heard the master go out, she felt rather baffled by the task he had set her. She took up the paper and scanned the advertisements for situations wanted, but saw nothing that seemed at all promising. So, piling the dishes in the sink, she put on her hat and coat and went over to the grocery store to consult Jenkins, for whose resource and business-like qualities she had a secret respect, but she was careful not to let him know it.

She found him laying out some newly arrived stock and singing in his melodious voice a fragment of the song Brightly Dawns Our Wedding-Day.

Maggie brusquely interrupted. “If you don’t attend to this right away,” she said, “there won’t be any wedding-day, bright or dull.”

“David!” he shouted to his son, who was idly gazing into the street from the shop doorway. “Take my place here. And Maggie, you come into the back office and speak what’s on your mind.”

In his crowded little office, seated at his desk with his shrewd dark eyes fixed on Maggie, he listened to her account of Trancher’s ultimatum.

“Said that, did he? It was no way to speak.”

“Don’t you say a word against the master, Jeremiah Jenkins!” Maggie interrupted. “Poor Mr. Trancher can’t be left to shift for himself.”

“And what about poor Mr. Jenkins? Is he to be left to shift for himself? However,” said the grocer, “there’s no occasion to put sand in the sugar. All you’ve got to do is to advertise. Put an ad in half a dozen of the leading newspapers in the city. It’ll cost something, but the gentleman should be willing to pay for it.”

“That part could be easily arranged,” Maggie assured him. The difficulty was she didn’t know how advertisements got into the papers.

“You’ll have to write it out for me, Jenkins. I don’t know nothing about such things. Cooking’s my specialty.”

He selected a clean piece of paper and a pencil.

“Now,” he asked, “what do you want to say? ‘Wanted, a maid?’ ”

“Better say ‘working housekeeper’. She’ll have to do a sight more than any maid—marketing and all that.”

“Then we’ll say, ‘Wanted, experienced working housekeeper’.”

“Cut out the ‘experienced’, Jenkins. I know the experienced kind. You can’t teach them nothing. If she’s neat and handy, and knows something about plain cooking, I can teach her the rest myself. I’ll be able to keep an eye on her for a while, even if I am married to you.”

“I suppose so,” agreed Jenkins. “How’s this, then? ‘Wanted—working housekeeper with some knowledge of cooking’. Shall I say ‘neat and handy’?”

“No! They all think they’re that. Say ‘Small family, good wages’, and—wait now! Say ‘must come from the Provinces’.”

“Why?” asked Jenkins.

“The master said so.”

“I think that’s a mistake,” said Jenkins, shaking his head. “Some mighty good girl might turn it down just for that.”

“You go on, now, put it in! There’s plenty of good country girls that come here from the Provinces looking for work, and they got no flippery nonsense about them, neither. I could handle one of them better than these foreigners you get nowadays.”

“If you aim to get a Canadian, like as not you’ll land a French girl from the Province of Quebec.”

“Jenkins! For a man of your intelligence, you know awful little sometimes. When I say ‘the Provinces’ I mean the Maritime Provinces. I’m not referring to the whole Dominion.”

“Oh! But who’s to know that, besides yourself?”

“There’s likely plenty of ignorant people in New York City that don’t know it, but the girls will know it themselves, and that’s what counts.”

This argument seemed convincing and Jenkins finished the composition, adding telephone number and address, and offered to see about getting it to the papers in time for next morning’s issue.

Maggie, much relieved, returned to the neglected breakfast dishes. Having disposed of them, she got out the ironing-board but was interrupted by a ring at the doorbell.

“Well, so it’s you, Tony,” she said, admitting Trancher’s confidential secretary. He was still hardly more than a lad. He had been the office boy, but after taking a business course he had been promoted to his present position. “And what has the master forgot now?”

“His briefcase. It’s got some important papers in it. He said to tell you he left it in his bedroom.”

When Maggie returned from upstairs with the case, Tony was sitting on the kitchen table with the cookie tin beside him.

“The nerve of you, Tony! Now don’t eat up all my cookies. I’d like to have some left for the master’s supper.”

“Plenty here for both of us, Maggie. That ocean voyage on the ferry always gives me an appetite.”

“You better get off now with the important papers.”

“No hurry, Maggie. I can’t possibly get this ferry, and it’s too soon to catch the next, so I might as well stay here and talk to you.”

Maggie went on ironing the master’s fine white handkerchiefs. She was used to Tony. He had been sent on similar errands ever since he had been the office boy.

“I had a notion he’d forget something this morning,” Maggie said. “He needs a wife to look after him. I told him so the other day.”

“You’re a brave woman to tell him that, Maggie! Don’t you know he’s down on matrimony?”

“Just don’t I know it? Tell me, Tony, is he in a pretty good humor this morning?”

“Well, I don’t know. He refused flat to see Mrs. Farquhar; said he was too busy. I don’t blame him for that, but just wasn’t she mad!”

“I despise that woman,” Maggie said, and spat on the iron viciously.

“So do I. How do you know her, Maggie, and who is she, anyway?”

“She’s a pest. Her husband was Mr. Donald Farquhar. He and the master were always great friends. They used to go to college together. Then they went abroad together. In fact, they were always together till Mr. Donald got struck on this little bunch o’ notions, and she kept the leading strings on him pretty tight after they were married.”

“She would!” said Tony, feelingly.

“She just wore him down to a frazzle trying to make money enough to pay for her whims. Then one winter he took pneumonia and died. The master was left executor of his estate.”

“I know that, all right. She comes round all the time bothering him for money. He hates the sight of her, but he’s awfully patient with her.”

“He thought a lot of Mr. Donald. And a fine, promising young fellow he was, too. It was her that makes the master so set against people getting married. She just straight turned him into a woman hater.”

“It’s funny,” Tony said, “how set he is against marriage. We all know that at the office. You remember Lindsay, Maggie. Bob Lindsay used to work in our office one time. Well, he got married and he didn’t dare tell Mr. Trancher and yet he thought he ought to. So he just cut the wedding notice out of the paper and left it on his desk. A swell wedding, too, bridesmaids and ushers and all that. Lindsay married money. In comes Mr. Trancher and picks up the notice and reads it, and me standing there waiting to take the letters. And all he said was, ‘Poor Lindsay, poor fellow!’ ”

“That’s how he looks at it all the time,” said Maggie. “He thinks Mr. Wilcox would have been saved a lot of trouble if he’d stayed single.”

“Poor old Wilcox, he’s had a run of tough luck. Either the children are always catching something, or his wife has to be operated on. But I must say he’s devoted to his family.” Tony sighed. “I don’t know how I’ll ever break the news to Mr. Trancher when I get married.”

“A youngster like you needn’t be bothering about that for a long while yet,” said Maggie with an indulgent smile.

“I’ll be twenty-two my next birthday, Maggie, and I got the girl all picked out. One more raise and we’re married.”

“It will be my turn before that day comes,” said Maggie, slapping the iron backwards and forwards with alarming energy.

“Oh, Maggie, you never could leave the master. That would be too awful.”

“No worse than the rest of you. But I couldn’t just leave a wedding notice on his desk and walk out. I’d have to go into details.”

She said it with such a superior air that it suddenly struck Tony that she might be serious. Boldly he put the question.

“Come now, Maggie, who’s the lucky man?”

Maggie glanced at the clock. “You’d better hustle off now or you’ll miss that ferry. Here! Don’t forget the briefcase.”