Читать книгу Elsie Marley, Honey - Joslyn Gray - Страница 10

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"I hope, Elsie, your friend wasn't in pain?" Mr. Middleton inquired with concern shortly after they were established in the train for Enderby.

"Oh, no," the girl assured him, trying, but vainly, to add "Uncle John."

"I thought she might be suffering from toothache or neuralgia, wearing that scarf about her face on such a warm day—particularly as she frowned and screwed her mouth in a rather distressed way," he explained.

Elsie smiled. Indeed she almost laughed, partly because she was herself struck by the humor of it, partly because it would so amuse Elsie Moss when she wrote her about it.

"Oh, no," she repeated. "Oh, no, Uncle John"—resolutely—"she was just—well—she was acting, I suppose. She wants very much to go on the stage."

"And doesn't lose any opportunity for practice?" He smiled, but rather ruefully. "Poor child! Somehow, of all ambitions, there seems to be more tragedy, more pitifulness, underlying that than any other. Where one succeeds, so many fail—go down into darkness and obscurity. Your mother had the fever at one time as a very young girl, Elsie. As a matter of fact, she had some little talent in that direction, but fortunately we were able to persuade her to give up the idea entirely." He sighed. "She was so tender-hearted and affectionate that she could have been induced to give up far more precious things than an ambition of that sort."

Elsie was gazing out of the window. He pointed out a country club and several fine estates at a distance, then asked:

"What is your friend going in for, Elsie, comedy or tragedy?"

Elsie didn't know. She explained that while Miss M-Marley seemed like an old friend, she had only met her on the train as they had left Chicago.

"Ah, that's just like your mother!" he exclaimed. "She was just that way, quick to make friends, and yet as loyal and true as any slower and more cautious person could be."

Again he sighed; then added in a lighter tone: "She wanted to play tragic parts—youth is apt to—but of course with those dimples she would have been doomed to comedy, if not farce."

He gazed reminiscently at her.

"Your baby pictures had her dimples in small, but I see that as you have grown thin you have lost them. You scarcely resemble her at all, and yet already I see how very like her you are."

Elsie could think of no response, and fearing that he was awaking painful feelings, Mr. Middleton changed the subject by inquiring kindly after her stepmother. Elsie replied according to instructions that she was quite well and much gratified to have secured her former position in one of the San Francisco high schools for the coming year.

As he went on to ask about her journey and to exhibit points of interest along the way, he was so chivalrous and thoughtful that the girl realized that she would be considered and cared for as she never would have been with Cousin Julia, and was genuinely relieved. Then her thoughts flew back to those hours with Elsie Moss between Chicago and Boston, which seemed to her the happiest she had ever known. It came to her that if she could have the other girl's companionship, could see her every day, she didn't know that she would greatly care where she was. Perhaps she could even endure hardship. How serious Elsie Moss had been about her motto, "Per aspera ad astra." For all her gayety, she felt she could go through hardship bravely. Ah, she was a rare person! For the first time in her life Elsie Marley was homesick—and for a stranger!

Happily, there was that about Mr. Middleton which reminded her of his niece. She glanced at him from under her long, pale lashes. A man of fifty, he was tall and thin, with a fine florid face set off by a mass of thick, white hair. His eyes were brown and youthful, full of serenity and kindliness, with a shadow of the idealism that characterized his whole face. His voice was good, his speech elegant, appealing particularly to one accustomed to the tones and inflections of the West. Looking forward to meeting his wife, who would probably be equally pleasing, Elsie felt that in any event she should be as happy between visits as it would be possible to be anywhere without Elsie Moss.

A short drive through the quiet, shady streets of what seemed to be an old, historic town brought them to the parsonage, one of a group of handsome, rather stately buildings near and about a green common. Of colonial style, built of brick, it had a portico with great Corinthian pillars, window-frames and cornices of wood painted white, and stood far back from the street with a beautiful lawn studded by great elms and a glimpse of a garden in the rear.

The driveway led to a side entrance under a porte-cochère. As the carriage drew up, Mr. Middleton glanced eagerly toward the door. His face fell.

"Your Aunt Milly will be here directly," he said and ushered her in. As she entered the beautiful hall, Elsie couldn't help feeling how fortunate she was to escape the boarding-house.

There was no one in sight. Mr. Middleton looked about, then led her into one of the great front rooms on either side of the wide hall and asked her to make herself comfortable while he went to see if her aunt were ill.

"She is not very strong, as you know, Elsie, and the excitement may have been too much for her," he explained. "She has looked forward so eagerly to your arrival."

Fortunately he did not await any reply. Elsie felt suddenly stunned as by a blow. Left alone, she gazed about her in amazement that was almost horror. The large, square, corner room lighted by four great windows that reached from the floor to the heavy cornice was comfortably, even luxuriously, furnished, but—the girl could scarcely believe her eyes—it was the most untidy-looking place she had ever been in! The heavy crimson hangings, faded by the strong summer sunlight, lost further color by their layer of dust, quite visible even at this distance and at first sight. There were ashes on the hearth, though the heap of waste-paper, dust, and miscellaneous rubbish in the fireplace showed that it hadn't been used for some time. The piano, a baby-grand, stood open, with dust on its dingy keys and more dust on its shining case. The centre-table held a handsome reading-lamp and some books, but was littered with piles of old newspapers and magazines without covers. A kitchen-apron was flung across an armchair; a dirty, paper-covered book lay on a little table with a plate beside it covered with cake-crumbs, and there were crumbs on the richly colored Turkish rug and on the arm of the tapestry-covered chair on the edge of which Elsie perched.

Surely there was some mistake, some monstrous mistake! She had somehow been brought to the wrong house. It wasn't possible that a gentleman like Mr. Middleton could belong to a household such as this, she was saying incredulously to herself, when a shadow fell athwart the threshold and she looked up to see Mrs. Middleton entering on her husband's arm.

Mrs. Middleton was the key to the enigma, though Elsie's mind wasn't sufficiently alert to grasp the fact at the moment. She stood beside her tall, immaculate husband, a short, rather stout, flabby-looking woman with a sallow face wherein keener eyes than Elsie's might have detected traces of former prettiness, and frowsy, ginger-colored hair that had been curled on an iron. She wore a dingy pink tea-gown bordered with swan's-down, cut rather low and revealing a yellow, scrawny neck. A large cameo brooch took the place of a missing frog, and a pin in the hem disclosed missing stitches. Her hands were covered with rings, her feet thrust into shapeless knitted boots.

She smiled, cried, "Elsie!" in a weak, sentimental manner, and opened her arms wide as if expecting the girl to fly into them.

Elsie, who had risen, advanced stiffly and reached out her hand in gingerly fashion. But Mrs. Middleton gathered her, willy-nilly, into a warm embrace, holding her close against the dingy pink flannel.

Elsie could not struggle against it, as she was moved to do; she could not burst into tears at the indignity; she could not rush out of the house and back to the train, as she longed to do, with the sense of outrage goading her. She was forced to sit down weakly with the others.

Mrs. Middleton gazed at her fondly.

"Dear child! Little orphan stranger!" she cried. "How I have longed for this hour! Indeed, I so longed for it that at the last moment my strength failed me, and when the train whistled I had to drop on my bed in exhaustion. But enough of that. Welcome to our home and hearts!"

Murmuring some chill, indistinct monosyllable, Elsie glanced dumbly at Mr. Middleton, who was looking at his wife as tenderly as if she had been all that Elsie had expected her to be. Were they both mad?

"Jack, dear, you have never asked Elsie to take off her things—your own niece!" exclaimed Mrs. Middleton reproachfully. And she turned to Elsie with her sentimental smile.

"These men, my dear!" she said, and coming to her side begged the girl to let her have her wraps.

Elsie wanted to cry out that she wasn't going to stay, that she was no kin of theirs, and was going away on the next train. But she couldn't utter a word. She removed her hat and jacket dumbly, wondering which dusty surface they would occupy. As Mr. Middleton carried them into the hall, she could only guess.

On his return, he noticed the kitchen-apron, picked it up and held it a moment irresolutely. Then opening a door in the wainscot near the fireplace he flung it in. Before the door went to, Elsie had a glimpse of worse disorder—of the sort that is supposed to pertain to a junk-shop.

"That's Katy's apron," remarked Mrs. Middleton plaintively. "Do you know, Jack, I feel sure she sits in here when there's no one around. Now that book on the table by the window must be hers."

"It's no harm for her to sit here when the room is not in use," returned Mr. Middleton kindly, "but when she goes, I wish she would take her things along." And he picked up the novel and was about to consign it to the same dump when his wife held out her hand for it.

"What mush!" she cried as she fingered the greasy pages, while Elsie flinched inwardly. And unobservant as the girl naturally was, she could not help noticing that Mrs. Middleton retained the book.

"Don't think, dear Elsie, that we're unkind to our poor but worthy Kate," the latter remarked, sitting down next to Elsie and taking the girl's limp hand in hers. "As a matter of fact, she has a sitting-room of her own. This house, you know, is very old. It matches the other, newer buildings only because they were built to suit its style. The original owners, the Enderbys, for whom the town was renamed, had many servants and provided a parlor for them. Of course your uncle and I can afford to keep only one, but we gave her the parlor, hoping she would appreciate it. But it doesn't look out front, so she doesn't care for it and uses it as a sort of store-room."

"I wonder if Elsie wouldn't like to go to her chamber now," Mr. Middleton suggested, remarking suddenly how tired the girl looked. He had thought her surprisingly fresh after the long journey, but apparently only excitement had kept her up.

Elsie looked at him gratefully. She was longing to be by herself in order to determine what she was to do.

"Yes, Jack, that's exactly what the poor dear wants; I've been trying to get a word in to ask her," agreed Mrs. Middleton plaintively. Elsie rose.

"Where did you decide to put her, Milly? In the blue room?"

"Yes, dear, but I'm not perfectly sure whether Katy got it ready. Do you mind calling her?"

He fetched the handsome, slatternly maid servant, who drew up the lower corner of her apron crosswise to disguise its dirt, but openly and unashamed, and only to uncover a dress underneath that was quite as untidy.

"Katy, this is our niece, Miss Moss, who has come to live with us," Mrs. Middleton announced. "Have you got the blue room ready for her?"

Katy bowed low to Elsie before she replied.

"No'm, not yet," she said.

"Oh, Katy, when I told you to be sure?"

"No'm, you didn't," responded the woman pleasantly.

"Dear me! Well, I meant to; I suppose it slipped my mind."

She turned to Elsie. "I've been particularly wretched all day, scarcely able, with all my will-power at full strain, to hold up my head."

"It seems to me," she addressed Kate reproachfully, "you might have done it anyhow. You knew what Mr. Middleton was going in town for."

"I'll get a place ready for her right now in no time, ma'am," Katy assured her cheerfully. As she was leaving the room with an admiring look at Elsie, she glanced suspiciously at Mrs. Middleton, whose hand was hidden in a fold of her wrapper.

"Is that my story-book you've got, ma'am?" she inquired.

Mrs. Middleton drew forth the book, looked at it as if in great surprise, and gave it to Kate, who disappeared at once. Mr. Middleton followed with Elsie's luggage.

Elsie, who did not resume her seat, walked to the window and gazed out, without, however, seeing anything. Mrs. Middleton began to rhapsodize over the elms and oaks and some rooks in the distance that were really crows. But before she had gone far, Katy appeared to say that the room was ready. If she had not done it in no time, as she had proposed, she had certainly spent as little time as one could and accomplish anything. Mrs. Middleton led Elsie up-stairs, threw open the door of the room with a dramatic gesture, kissed and fondled her, and finally left her to get a good rest.

Elsie closed the door after her, dropped into a chair and, burying her face in her hands, sat motionless.