Читать книгу Miranda (Romance Classic) - Grace Livingston Hill - Страница 7

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It was a bitter cold night in November and Miranda had crept up close to the fireplace with her spelling-book—not that she cared in the least for her spelling lesson, though there was to be a spelling-down contest the next day in school, but her spelling-book was always a good excuse to Grandma Heath for not knitting or spinning of an evening.

Grandpa Heath came in presently, stamping away the snow, and shutting the outside door noisily. One could see he was excited. He strode across the room and hung up the big key that locked the old smoke-house door. Mr. Heath was constable and the old smoke-house was being used for a lock-up. It was plain that something had happened.

Miranda looked up alertly, but cast down her eyes at once to her book and was apparently a diligent scholar, even conning her words half aloud. She knew by experience that if she appeared to be listening, all the news would be saved till she was sent off to bed, and then she would have to lie on the floor in the cold with her ear to the pipe-hole that was supposed to warm her room in order to get necessary information. If she kept still and was absorbed in her work the chances were her grandfather would forget she was there.

He hung up his coat, muffler and cap, and sat down heavily in his chair across the table from his wife, who was diligently knitting a long gray stocking. The light of the one candle that was frugally burning high on the shelf over the fireplace, flickered fitfully over the whole room and made the old man's face look ashen gray with shadows as he began to talk, nervously fingering his scraggly gray beard:

"Well, I guess we've had a murder!" he spoke shakily, as if he could not himself quite comprehend the fact he was imparting.

"You guess!" said his wife sharply, "Don't you know? There ain't any half-way about a murder usually."

"Well, he ain't dead yet, but there ain't much chance fer his life. I guess he'll pass away 'fore the mornin'."

"Who? Why don't you ever tell the whole story?" snapped Grandmother Heath excitedly.

"Why, it's old Enoch Taylor. Didn't I say in the first place?"

"No, you didn't. Who done it?”

“Allan Whitney, leastways he was comin' away with a gun when we found him, an' we've got him arrested. He's down in the smoke-house now."

"H'm!" commented his wife. "Just what I expected he'd come to. Well, the town'll be well rid of him. Ain't he kinda young though to be hung?"

“Well, I guess he's about seventeen, but he's large fer his age. I don't know whether they ken hang him er not. He ain't ben tried yet of course, but it'll go against him, no question o' that. He's ben a pest to the neighborhood fer a long time—”

At this point Miranda's spelling-book fell clattering to the hearth, where it knocked off the cover from the bowl of yeast set to rise by the warmth, but when her startled grandparents turned to look at her she was apparently sound asleep, sitting on her little cushion on the hearth with her head against the fire jamb.

Her grandmother arose and gave her a vigorous shaking.

“M’randy, git right up off'n that hearth and go to bed. It beats all how a great girl like you can't keep awake to get her lessons. You might a fell in the fire. Wake up, I tell you, an' go to bed this minute!”

Miranda awoke with studied leisure, yawning and dazed, and admirably unconscious of her surroundings. Slowly she picked up her book, rubbing her drowsy eyes, lighted her candle and dragged herself yawning up the stairs to her room, but when she arrived there she did not prepare for bed. Instead she wrapped herself in a quilt and lay down with her ear to the stove-pipe hole, her whole body tense and quivering with agony.

The old couple waited until the stair door was latched and the girl's footsteps unmistakably toward the top of the stair, then the Grandmother spoke:

"I'm real glad he's got caught now 'fore he growed up any bigger. I always was afraid M'randy'd take a notion to him an' run off like her mother did. He's good lookin', the kind like her father was, and such things run in the blood. She was real fond of him a couple of years back—used to fly up like a scratch-cat every time any body mentioned his cuttin's up, but she ain't mentioned him lately."

"Aw—you didn't need to worry 'bout that I guess," said her husband meditatively, he wouldn't ever have took to her. Red hair and a little turned up nose like hers don't go down with these young fellers. Besides, she ain't nothin' but a child, an' he's most a grown man."

"She ain't so bad looking," bristled her grandmother with asperity, and it is a pity that poor, plain Miranda, who fancied herself a blot on the face of the earth for homeliness, could not have overheard her, for it would have softened her heart toward her hard, unloving grandmother to an astonishing degree. Miranda knew that she was a trial to her relatives, and never fancied that they cared for her in the least.

But though Miranda lay on the floor until her grandparents came upstairs for the night, she heard no more about the murder or Allan. Wrapped in her quilt she crept to the window and looked out through the snowy night. There was no wind, and the snow came down like fine powder, small and still, but invincible and steady. Out through the white veil she could dimly see the dark walls of the old smoke-house, white-capped and still.

Out there in the cold and dark and snow was Allan, —her fine, strong, merry Allan! It seemed incredible! He was there charged with murder! and awaiting the morrow ! As had happened before, she, Miranda, was the only one in the whole wide world who seemed to have a mind to save him.

When she had first heard her grandfather's words downstairs her heart had almost frozen within her, and for once her natural cunning had almost deserted her. When her book fell it was with difficulty that she kept herself from crying out; but she had sense enough left to put her head against the fireplace and pretend to be asleep. As she closed her eyes the vision of the great black key hanging on the wall beside the clock seemed burned into her brain. It was the symbol of Allan's imprisonment, and it seemed to mock her from its nail, and challenge her to save her hero now if she could.

She had known from the first instant that she would save him, or at least that she would do all in her power to do so. The key had flung her the challenge, and her plan had been forming even as she listened to the story. Now she went over it carefully in every detail.

Out there in the smoke-house Allan was stiff and cold. She knew the smooth, chilly floor of hard clay, the rough, unfriendly feel of the brick walls with the mortar hanging in great blotches over their surface. On the dim-raftered ceiling still hung a ham or two, because it was nearer to the house than the new smoke-house, where most of the winter stores were kept—for the lock-up was seldom used, in fact had only been called into requisition twice in the three years that Mr. Heath had been constable—and it was handy to run to the old smoke-house door when they needed a slice of ham. Ah, that was an idea. Allan would need food. He could take one of those hams. Her busy brain thought it all out as an older girl might have done, and as soon as she heard the distant rumble of her grandfather's comfortable snore, she crept softly about her preparations. It was too early to make any very decided moves, for her grandmother, though quite deaf, was not always a ready sleeper, and had a way of "sensing" things that she could not hear. It would not be well to arouse grandmother's suspicions and spoil the whole scheme, so she moved cautiously.

Under the eaves, opening through her tiny closet, there stood a trunk containing some of the clothes that used to be her mother's, and she remembered that among them was an old overcoat of her father's. It was not fine nor handsome but it was warm; and from all she knew of Allan's habits he had probably worn no overcoat when he was out that afternoon, for it had not been so very cold then, and the snow had not begun to fall. He would be needing something warm this very minute. How her heart yearned to make him a good, hot cup of coffee and take it out to him, but she dared not attempt it. If her grandmother's ears were growing dim, at least her nostrils were not failing, and she would scent the smell of coffee in the middle of her night's sleep. There was no use at all in attempting that, even if it were safe for Allan to delay to drink it, which it was not. But the overcoat he could wear away and no one be any the wiser. Grandmother would not overhaul that trunk for any vagrant moths until next Spring now, and what mattered it then what she thought about its absence? As like as not she would be glad to have it gone because it belonged to the hated man who had run away from their daughter, and left her and her little red-haired child to be a burden.

She hesitated about lighting a candle, finally deciding not to risk it, and crept softly into the eaves-closet on her hands and knees in the dark, going by her sense of feeling straight to the little hair trunk, and finding the overcoat at the very bottom. She put the other things carefully away, and got back quietly to her room again with the coat, hugging it like a treasure. She laid her cheek for an instant against the worn collar and had a fleeting thrill of affection for the wanderer who had deserted his family, just because the coat was his and was helping her to help Allan.

People were "early to bed and early to rise" in those days. Mr. and Mrs. Heath had retired to their slumber at nine o'clock that night. It was ten before Miranda left her window to stir about the room. The old clock in the kitchen had struck eleven before she found the overcoat and had put everything back in the trunk.

She waited until she had counted out the slow strokes of twelve from the clock before she dared steal down stairs and softly take the key from its nail by the clock. The cold iron of the key bit into her trembling fingers as if it had been alive, and she almost dropped it. She stood shaking with cold and fright, for it seemed as if every board in the floor that she stepped upon creaked. Once she fell over her grandmother's rocking chair and the rockers dug into her ankles as if they had a grudge against her. Her nerves were so keyed up that the hurt brought tears to her Spartan eyes, and she had to sit down for a minute to bear the pain.

She had carefully canvassed the idea of going out of the door downstairs and had given it up. There was too much risk. First the door opened noisily, and the bar that was put across it at night fitted tightly. It was liable to make a loud grating sound when it was moved. Also, the snow was deep enough that foot-prints by the door would be noticeable in the morning unless it snowed harder than it was doing now and the wind blew to cover them up. Besides, it would be terrible if any one should see her coming out the door and it should come to her Grandfather's ears that she had done this thing. He would never forgive her and she would have to run away. But worst of all, she dreaded being seen and stopped before she had accomplished her purpose, for the downstairs door was just under her grandmother's window. Therefore, the key secure, she slipped softly into the pantry, found half a loaf of bread, two turnovers and some cookies, and with her booty crept back upstairs again.

When she was at last safely back in her room she drew a long sigh of relief and sat down for a moment to listen and be sure that she had not disturbed the sleepers, then she tied the key on a strong string and hung it around her neck. Next, she wrapped the bread, turnovers and cookies in some clean pieces of white cloth that were given her for the quilt she was piecing, stuffed them carefully into the pockets of the old overcoat, and put on the coat.

It was entirely dark in her room, and she dared not light her candle lest some neighbor should see the light in the window and ask her grandmother next morning who was sick.

Cautiously, with one of her strange upliftings of soul that she called prayer, Miranda opened her window and crept out upon the sill. The roof below her was covered with snow, three or four inches deep, but the window and roof were at the back of the house and no one could see her from there. It was not going to be an easy job getting back with all that snow on the roof, but Miranda wasn't thinking about getting back.

Clinging close to the house she stepped slowly along the shed roof to the edge, trying not to disturb the snow any more than she could help. She had taken the precaution to slip on a pair of stockings over her shoes so that their dampness in the morning might not call forth any comments from her grandmother. At last she reached the cherry tree that grew close to the woodshed roof, and could take hold of its branches and swing herself into it Then she breathed more freely. The rest was comparatively easy.

Carefully she balanced in the tree, making her way nimbly down, her strong young body swinging lithely from limb to limb unmindful of the snow, and dropped to the snowy ground beneath. She took a few cautious steps as far apart as she could spring, but once out from under the tree she saw that if it continued to snow thick and fast and fine as it was doing now there would be little danger that her footsteps would be discovered in the morning. However, she took the precaution to reach the smoke-house by a detour through the corn-patch where tracks in the snow would not be so noticeable. Then, suddenly, she faced a new difficulty. The great old rusty padlock was reinforced by a heavy beam firmly fixed across the door, and it was all the girl could do, snow-covered as it was, to move it from the great iron clamp that held it in place. However, a big will and a loving heart can work miracles, and the great beam moved at last, with a creak that set Miranda's heart thumping wildly. But the still night was deadened with its blanket of snow, and the sound seemed shut in with her in a small area. She held her breath for a minute to listen, then thankfully fitted the key into the pad-lock, her trembling fingers stiff with cold and fright.

The lock was set high in the door and it was all the girl could do to reach it and turn the key, but at last the big door swung open, creaking noisily as it swung, and giving her another fright.

With her hand on her heart, and her eyes straining through the darkness, Miranda stepped inside, her pulses throbbing wildly now, and her breath coming short and quick. There was something awfully gruesome about this dark silent place; it was like a tomb.