Читать книгу Highacres - Jane Abbott - Страница 9

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Jerry had led her new friend only a little way down the sharply-descending trail when suddenly the trees, which had crowded thickly on either side, opened on a clearing where roses and hollyhocks, phlox, sweet-william, petunias and great purple-hearted asters bloomed in riotous confusion along with gold-tasseled corn, squash, beets and beans. A vine-covered gateway led from this into the grassy stretch that surrounded the low-gabled house.

"Hey-o! Sweetheart!" called Jerry in a clear voice.

In answer came a chorus of joyful yelping. Around the corner dashed a Llewellyn setter and a wiry-haired terrier, tumbling over one another in their eagerness to reach their mistress; at the same moment a door leading from the house to the garden opened and a slender woman came out.

John Westley knew at a glance that she was Jerry's mother, for she had the same expression of sunniness on her lips; her hair, like Jerry's, looked as though it had been burnished by the sun though, unlike Jerry's clipped locks, it was softly coiled on the top of her finely-shaped head.

"This is my mother," announced Jerry in a tone that really said: "This is the wisest, kindest, most beautiful lady in the whole wide world!"

Though the dress that Mrs. Travis wore was faded and worn and of no particular style, John Westley felt instinctively that she was an unusual woman; in the graciousness of her greeting there was no embarrassment. Only once, when John Westley introduced himself, was there an almost imperceptible hesitation in her manner, then, just for an instant, a startled look darkened her eyes.

While Jerry, with affectionate admonishing, silenced her dogs, Mrs. Travis led their guest toward the little house. She was deeply concerned at his plight; he must not dream of attempting to return to Wayside until he had rested—he must spend the night at Sunnyside and then in the morning Toby Chubb could drive him over. Dr. Travis would soon be back and he would be delighted to find that she and Jerry had kept him.

"We do not meet many new people on this side of the mountain," she said, smilingly. "You will be giving us a treat!"

So deeply interested was John Westley in the Travis family and their unusual home, tucked away on the side of the mountain, to all appearances miles away from anyone or anything (though Jerry had pointed out to him the trail down the hillside that led to Miller's Notch and the school and the little church and was a mile shorter than going by the road), that he forgot completely the alarm that must be upsetting the entire management of the Wayside Hotel over the disappearance of a distinguished guest. Indeed, at the very moment that he stepped across the threshold into the sunlit living room of the Travis cottage, a worried hotel manager was summoning by telegraph some of the most expert guides of the state for a thorough search of the neighborhood, and, at the same time, a New York newspaperman, at the Wayside for a vacation, was clicking off to his city editor, from the town telegraph station, the most lurid details of the tragedy.

Sunnyside, John Westley knew at once, was a "hand-made" house; each foot of it had been planned lovingly. Windows had been cut by no rule of architecture but where the loveliest view could be had; doors seemed to open just where one would want to go. The beams of the low ceiling and the woodwork of the walls had been stained a mellow brown. There was a piney smell everywhere, as though the fragrant odors of the mountainside had crept into and clung to the little house. A great fireplace crowned the room. Before it now stretched a huge Maltese cat. And most surprising of all—there were books everywhere, on shelves built in every conceivable nook and corner, on the big table, on the arm of the great chair drawn close to the west window.

All of this John Westley took in, with increasing wonder, while Mrs. Travis brought to him a glass of home-made wine. He drank it gratefully, then settled back in his chair with a little contented laugh.

"I'm beginning to feel—like Jerry—that Kettle Mountain is inhabited by fairies and that I am in their stronghold!"

But there was little suggestive of the fairy in Jerry as she tumbled through the door at that moment, Pepperpot held high in her arms and Bigboy leaping at her side. They rudely disturbed the Maltese—Dormouse, Jerry called her—and then occupied in sprawling fashion the strip of rug before the hearth.

"Be still, Pepper! Shake hands with the gentleman, Bigboy. They're as offended as can be because I ran away without them," she explained to John Westley. "Do you feel better now?" she asked, a little proprietary note in her voice.

"I do, indeed, and I'm glad, too, very glad, that I got lost."

"And here comes Little-Dad up the trail! I'll tell him you're here. Anyway, he'll want me to put up Silverheels." She was off in a flash, the dogs leaping behind her.

After having met Jerry and Jerry's mother, John Westley was not at all surprised to find Dr. Travis a most unordinary man, also. He was small, his clothes, country-cut, hung loosely on his spare frame, his hair fringed over his collar in an untidy way, yet there was a kindliness, a gentleness in his face that was winning on the instant; one did not need to see his dusty, worn medicine case to know that his life was spent in caring for others.

Widely traveled as John Westley was, never in his whole life had he met with such an interesting experience as his night at Sunnyside. Most amazing was the hospitality of these people who seemed not to care at all who he might be—it was enough for them that chance had brought him, in a moment's need, to their door. Everything seemed to prove that Mrs. Travis, at least, was a woman educated beyond the ordinary, yet nothing in their simple, pleasant conversation could let anyone think that they had not both been born and brought up right there on Kettle. Everything about the house had the mark of a cultured taste, yet the cushioned chairs, the rugs, the soft-toned hangings were worn to shabbiness. And most mystifying of all was Miss Jerry herself, who had appeared at the supper table in a much faded but spotless gingham dress, black shoes and cotton stockings replacing the elkskins and woolen socks, very much a spirited little girl, with a fearlessness of expression that amused John Westley while at the same time he wondered if it could possibly be the training of the school at Miller's Notch.

He felt that Mrs. Travis must read in his face the curiosity that consumed him. He did not know that deep in her heart was a poignant regret that Jerry should have, in such friendly fashion, adopted this stranger—Jerry, who was usually a little shy! Of course she could not know that it was because he had admitted to Jerry that he, too, found something in Kettle that approached the magic—that he had stood on the Wishing-rock and had wished, very seriously, and if Mrs. Travis had known what that wish was her regret would, indeed, have been real alarm! After Jerry, with Pepper, had gone off to bed and Dr. Travis with Bigboy had slipped out to the little barn, John Westley said involuntarily, as though the words tumbled out in spite of anything he could do: "Of course, you know that I'm completely amazed to find a spot like this—off here on the mountain."

Mrs. Travis smiled, as though there were lots of things in her head that she was not going to say.

"Does Sunnyside seem attractive? We haven't any wealth—as the world reckons it, but the doctor and I love books and we've made our little corner in the world rich with them."

"And you have Jerry."

"Yes!" The mother's smile flashed, though there was a wistful look in her eyes. "But Jerry's growing into a big girl."

"You must have an unusually excellent school here." John Westley blushed under the embarrassment of—as he plainly put it—"pumping" Jerry's mother.

Her explanation was simple. "It's as good as mountain schools are. When the snow is so deep that she cannot go over the trail I have taught her at home. You see I have not always lived at Miller's Notch—I came here—just before Jerry was born."

"Has she many playmates?" He remembered Jerry chattering about some Rose and Clementina and a Jimmy Chubbs.

"A few—but there are only a few of her own age. And she is outgrowing her school." A little frown wrinkled Mrs. Travis' pretty brow. "That is the first real problem that has come to Sunnyside for—a very long time. Life has always been so simple here. We have all we can want to eat and the doctor's practice, though it isn't large, keeps us clothed, but—Jerry's beginning to want something more than the school down there—and these few chums and—even I—can give her!"

John Westley recalled Jerry's face when she told her wish: "I want to go along that shining road—down there—around and around—to the other side of the mountain." He nodded now as though he understood exactly what Mrs. Travis meant by "her problem." He understood, too, though he had no child of his own, just why her voice trembled ever so slightly.

"We can't keep little Jerry from growing into big Jerry nor from wanting to stretch her wings a bit and yet—oh, the world's such a big, hard place—there's so much cruelty and selfishness in it, so much unhappiness! If I could only keep her here always, contented——" she stopped abruptly, a little ashamed of her outburst.

John Westley knew, just as though she had told him in detail all about herself, that life, sometime and somewhere away from the quiet of Sunnyside, had hurt this little woman.

"Dr. Travis and I find company in our books," Mrs. Travis went on, "and our neighbors, though we're quite far apart, are pleasant, simple-hearted people. Jerry does all the things that young people like to do; she swims down in Miller's Lake, and skates and skis and she roams the year round all over the side of Kettle; she can call the birds and wild squirrels to her as though she was a little wild creature herself. She takes care of her own little garden. And I do everything with her. Yet she is always talking as though some day she'd run away! Of course I know she wouldn't do exactly that, but I sometimes wonder if I have the right to try to hold her back. I haven't forgotten my own dreams." She laughed. "I certainly never dreamed of this"—sweeping her hand toward the shadowy room—"and yet this is better, I've found, than the rosy picture my young fancy used to paint!"

John Westley wished that he had read more and worked less hard at making cement-mixers; so much had been printed in books about this reaching out of youth that he might repeat now, if he knew it all, to the little mother. Instead he found himself telling her of his own three nieces. Then quite casually Mrs. Travis remarked:

"Some very pleasant people have opened Cobble House over on Cobble Mountain—Mr. and Mrs. Will Allan. I met her at church. She's—well, I knew in an instant that I was going to like her and that she'd help me about Jerry. I——"

"Allan—Will Allan? Why, bless my soul, that's Penelope Everett, the finest woman I ever knew! They come from my town." He sprang to his feet in delight. "I never dreamed I was anywhere near them! I'll get Mr. Chubb to take me there to-morrow. Of course you'll like her. She's—well, she's just like you!"