Читать книгу The Mystery of the Sandalwood Boxes - Harriet Pyne Grove - Страница 3

Table of Contents

SIX SANDALWOOD BOXES.

Audrey Craig opened a drawer of the bureau and smiled to see how Moti had arranged it. There were the six sandalwood boxes in a row. Of course, Moti would put them together. It was significant, too, that she had left a space next to them. True enough, she would probably receive another before long, unless they stopped coming. This was April. It would be in a few weeks, then.

Audrey was glad that house-cleaning was over, so far as her room was concerned. She had told Moti that she did not care how she fixed the drawers. She could change them if she liked. Only her desk was to be left undisturbed. To that, after laying away her gloves and folding her silk scarf, Audrey went; but she felt lazy after a day at school. She would put off going through it and write a letter to Cam instead,—after she raised a window. My, how stuffy it was!

But when Audrey went to the window, opening it to the fresh April air, she noticed something of a commotion next door in the house that had been closed so long. Some one must be moving in. Shades were up; windows were open; a door banged, and Audrey heard gay voices from across the hedge. There stood a moving van by the curb.

“Say, Nance, the dear old piano got here without falling to pieces. Tell him where to put it, won’t you?”

The girl outside was calling to one within, while she and a dark-haired boy were gathering up some chairs that had been set upon the sidewalk. The men carried in the piano. A little girl of about ten came running out to help with the chairs. It was beginning to sprinkle a little.

Instead of being worried, they all seemed full of fun. Audrey could hear them laughing. “Give me that list, Retta,” called the boy, running up the steps of the porch and meeting the older girl on the porch. “Go upstairs and see if I got the rugs down in the right rooms. I want to hustle the furniture that goes up there before Mom comes. I told Dad to take her around somewhere for something to eat first. She was ready to drop.”

This was all quite interesting to Audrey, who did not realize that she was listening until the girl happened to glance in Audrey’s direction and gave Audrey a little gesture of “isn’t this a mess?” with a friendly grin. Then indeed Audrey blushed, bowed, and drew back, ashamed of having shown so much curiosity. What would Cousin Serena have thought? Cousin Serena could be curious and take means of gratifying that curiosity, but to show it was to descend to the depths of degradation.

That was a jolly family. Audrey took one more peep as she heard an especially merry shout from the boy. A respectable but obviously long used Ford sedan was drawing up beyond the truck, which was now almost empty. From the Ford there appeared “Mom” and “Dad,” attractive and energetic people, who hurried into the house surrounded by their family, all eager to show them, as Audrey could plainly observe, how much had been accomplished in their absence.

Audrey closed the window, except for about two inches, and went back to her desk. Wouldn’t it be fun if she could get acquainted with these young folks? But it was probably out of the question. Cousin Serena would have been shocked to hear so much loud conversation outside of the house. Besides, she would have to make the first call, and she never would have the courage to do it.

At the desk, Audrey drummed with her fingers instead of writing. Then she ran to throw open the other window, the one that opened on the back garden, instead of on the side of the interesting house. She was thinking of how shut in she had felt in this house after the wide-open Craig bungalow in India. The climate was different, yes; but Cousin Serena’s house would be shut up anywhere, Audrey thought. If it were not cold, it would remain shut to keep out the dust, or to keep the sun from the rugs, or something.

But the four years had gone some way. There were always the books and her lessons. She was grateful for that library, and she liked to do well in school. There she had a sort of companionship anyway. Once, soon after she had come to America, several little girls had come to see her. But Cousin Serena had remained in the room all the time, shy and not feeling at home herself, she had not known how to entertain them. Cousin Serena had given them some books, at which they looked, talking in subdued tones till time for the girls to go. Cousin Serena had not thought it “necessary” for Audrey to return the call and the girls had never returned. She was almost twelve then.

Restlessly Audrey walked around the room. She looked in the large, square mirror, above the marble and the linen of her bureau. Her hair needed braiding, but Moti would do that. She had a notion to run down into the garden to look at the white violets and see how they were coming on. But it was wet and Cousin Serena would make some objection. She might as well write that letter to Camilla. There were hard lessons to get that night.

Audrey Craig, sixteen, of suburban New York City, was as settled in the home of her cousins, Mr. George Avery and Miss Serena Avery, as four years could make her. But Audrey had scarcely taken root. She was more like one of those air plants upon a live oak tree. Appreciative she was, for she realized now more than she had at first how disturbing it must have been to both her cousins, and particularly to Miss Serena Avery, to have their quiet routine of life broken in upon by the coming of an orphaned child and her “maid,” as Cousin George called Moti.

Moti had been her ayah, both nurse and maid in the home of Dr. and Mrs. Craig in India. Audrey had always had Moti. To Moti Audrey was the most precious person in the world and in that sense Audrey had been mothered; but Moti was not demonstrative. Audrey felt her care, but she did not know the depth of Moti’s feeling, hence the lonely heart of the child. Anxious as Audrey had been to come to the land of her father and mother, its customs were so different and the atmosphere of the home which she had entered so cold, that she sometimes longed for India.

“Dear Cam,” wrote Audrey. “Here I am, home from school as usual, waiting for Moti to come in and tell me what to wear for dinner! Doesn’t that sound wonderful? I have two dresses, you know. But Cousin Serena insists on my being ‘properly dressed’ for dinner. O Cam, how I wish that you would walk in! It would give Cousin Serena nervous prostration though, so I’d better wish that I were walking in on you. I’m perfectly sure that your mother and father would be glad to see me, even if the Prince of Wales himself were there. It is great that your father has that furlough. I know that you all are having a great time of it. It has been hard on you, too, to be away at school in England with them in India. But then, Cam, it’s very different when your father and mother aren’t in the world at all and you know—forgive me for writing that. I get lonesome sometimes; you know how it is. But I get over it, and I have so much school work that I haven’t time to fret. It’s going to be fine weather here, too. I didn’t have much fun this winter, of course, because I don’t know anybody much of my age and Cousin Serena is afraid to have me do anything like skating, though Moti could go with me. But now we drive more in the car and the country is lovely.

“I’ll make a paragraph at last. This isn’t the way I write a theme. Some folks are moving into that house next door that has been so mysteriously shut up. At least I like to think that it is mysterious, and Cousin Serena acts as if it were. But then she does that. I surely like their looks and I’m going to smile at them if I don’t dare do anything else. If I ever meet them I will tell you about them. But I suppose you know just crowds of girls by this time.

“Yes, my birthday comes pretty soon. If another sandalwood box or anything else mysterious comes, I will let you know and tell you what is in it. No, I wrote to Uncle long ago, at the very first, to ask him if he knew of any one who might send them. Father and Mother just thought that some one who was grateful to Father was sending me gifts, but they have kept coming since I came here, as you well know. It does look as if the same person sent them all, doesn’t it?

“What do you think? Uncle will have a furlough next year and he says that he is coming for me,—for me! I don’t know where he intends to take me, and I don’t dare ask, for fear it is just some little trip. But it is something to think about. I hope, of course, that he will take me at least to England, and then I shall see you, Cammy!

“Don’t forget your old Audrey, Cam, no matter how many nicer girls you know. Didn’t we clasp hands over my little green monkey idol and swear eternal friendship? By the way. I keep that out of Moti’s sight, because she told me once that she did not like to think the thoughts which she used to have before the missionaries converted her to Christianity. Poor Moti! But she seems perfectly happy, so far as any one can ever tell. You know Moti. You wouldn’t believe how Americanized (Did I spell that right?) she is, and how well she speaks English. She still calls Cousin Serena the “mem-sahib” and, indeed, often calls me Sahiba, or Miss Sahiba, but I almost perished inside the other day when she was telling me about the grocery boy in a fight with a street gamin and how the grocery boy knocked the other one down and ‘beat it’. Perhaps you don’t know what that means, Cam. It’s American for hurrying away. I think that I heard it in India, though, possibly from Father! If Moti had ever heard him say anything, she would think it classical. How I wish that I could ever hear him speak again! But I shall some day.

“Speaking of ‘classical,’ I’m studying hard on my Latin, and my mathematics, too, to make Uncle proud. Cousin Serena sends all my reports to him!

“I meant to stop when I wrote you not to forget me, and here I go rambling on. Tell me just what you are doing and more about the fun you girls have.

“Ever your loving Audrey.”

Audrey closed her letter, put it in an envelope and directed it to the proper address in England. Then she hurried to dress. Moti had not come in. “I’m getting lazy anyhow,” said Audrey to her pretty image in the glass, “and imagine that I must have a maid like the uppities. Come in,” she continued, for there was a soft rap at her door. A short, dark, rather plump woman entered.

“Moti, I was just saying to myself that I am getting spoiled with all that you have been doing for me ever since we came to this country. You did enough for me before, but you had Mother, too, and everybody to do some things for. Cousin Serena has plenty to keep you busy here, too, and I must not let you wait on me the way you do. See, I have my hair braided nicely.”

Audrey turned around to show Moti her heavy, brown braids, worn in an old-fashioned style. “I wish that Cousin Serena would let me fix my hair the way the other girls at school do. It makes me feel funny. But I wouldn’t know how to do it, I suppose, anyhow.”

“I will learn,” said Moti. “Do you want to cut your hair?”

“No. Some of them have their hair long now.”

“You will soon be sixteen. You can wear your hair like the ladies, then.”

That was a new idea to Audrey. “I’ll think about it, Moti. Perhaps it would help me to get over being so awkward with the girls. I can’t get over feeling so different!”

“The house over there has been sold,” Moti volunteered, as she brought Audrey’s plain dark blue silk frock from the closet.

“I saw them moving in,” said Audrey. “I did not notice anything going on when I came home, though I suppose that they must have moved some things in earlier in the day; but afterwards I looked out from here. There are some girls about my age, I think. Perhaps Cousin Serena will let me get acquainted with them.”

Moti shook her head in the negative. “Not to come here. The mem-sahib’s nerves do not want them. But you may see them in other places. I will go with you.”

Audrey shook her head also in the negative. “I’ll not do anything underhanded, Moti. I have to obey Cousin Serena while I am still here. Still, I do carry it too far or I would know other girls at school; and if these girls at school are as good as they look, there is no real reason why I should not try to know them, at least. Perhaps Cousin Serena will be different with neighbors.” But as Audrey spoke, she knew the word “neighbor” meant little in a city, or even in this suburb of the city, which was rather closely built up.

“Everybody your neighbor to help,” said Moti, “but not safe to know everybody for friend.”

“Smart old Moti,” laughed Audrey. “Well, I hope that I find these girls my neighbors in both ways, though I don’t see how I could be of any help to them.”

“Daughter of doctor sahib the—a—very nice girl,” said Moti, looking with brown eyes full of affection into Audrey’s deep blue ones.

“Thanks, Moti. I’ll try to deserve that. Now for dinner. I’m starved. What has Nora got that’s good tonight?”

“Roast cow, potatoes,—other things.” Moti pressed her lips together. She kept out of Nora’s way as a rule, for Nora had no use for a “haythen,” and she could not be persuaded that Moti was as good a Christian as she was. Moti thought that she was a better one by keeping to the Hindu rule of not defiling oneself by eating of the “sacred cow.” But it was difficult to adjust matters of diet between the servants of this household. Nora was Catholic, Moti a converted Hindu, and no one knew what Durga was, except that he, too, was a Hindu.

Audrey left Moti putting away her school apparel, while she went downstairs to her cousin.