Читать книгу The Red Lady - Katharine Newlin Burt - Страница 5

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I FOUND Mary, with Robbie, in the garden. She got up from her rustic chair under a big magnolia tree, and came hurrying to meet me, more to keep me from her charge, I thought, than to shorten my walk.

She need not have distressed herself. I felt keenly enough Robbie's daytime fear of me, but that I should inspire horrible dreams of red-haired women bending over his bed at night, filled me with a real terror of the child. I would not, for anything, have come near to him.

I stopped and waited for Mary.

She looked as fresh and sturdy as some hardy blooming plant, nothing “peaky” about her that I could see: short and trim with round, loyal eyes, round, ruddy face, a pugnacious nose, and a bull-dog's jaw—not pretty, certainly, but as trusty and delightful to look at as health, and honesty, and cleanliness could make her. I rejoiced in her that morning, and I have rejoiced in her ever since, even during that worst time when her trust in me wavered a little, a very little.

“Mary,” I said, “can you give me five minutes or so? I have a good deal to say to you.”

She glanced back at Robbie. He was busy, playing with some sticks on the gravel path.

“Yes, miss. Certainly.” And I had her quiet, complete attention.

“You aren't frightened out of your senses, then, this morning?” I asked.

She did not smile back at me, but she shook her head. “No, Miss Gale,” she said sturdily, “though I did see thet thing come out of the nursery plain enough. But it might have been Mrs. Brane's Angora cat. Times like that when one is a bit upset, why, things can look twice as big as they really are, and, as for Robbie's nightmare, why, as I make it out, it means just nothing but that some time, when he was a mere infant maybe, some red-haired woman give him a great scare. He's a terrible nervous little fellow, anyways, and terrible secret in his ways. At first, I could n't take to him, somehow, he was so queer. But now—why,”—and here she did smile with an honest radiance,—“it would take more'n a ghost to scare me away from takin' care of him. And a scared ghost, at that.”

“Did you know that Delia and Annie and Jane are all leaving us to-day?”

Mary put up her hands and opened her blue eyes. “My Lor'! The poor, silly fools! Excuse me, Miss Gale, but I never did see such a place for cowards. Them housekeepers and their nerves!”

“Housekeepers, Mary?”

“Yes'm. We've had three this summer. They was as lonely and jumpy women as ever I saw. The first, she could n't sleep for hearin' footsteps above her head, and the second, she felt somebody pass her in the hallway, and the third, she would n't say what the matter was, but she was the most frightened of all. You promise to be a young lady with more grit. I'm glad of it, for I do think a delicate lady like Mrs. Brane had ought to have some peace and quiet in her house. Now, miss, I'll do anything to help you till you can find some one to take those women's places. I can cook pretty good, and I can do the laundry, too, and not neglect my Robbie, neither.”

I dismissed the thought of the three housekeepers.

“Oh, Mary, thank you! You are just splendid! Mrs. Brane says she is going to get a man and wife.”

“Now, that's good. That's what we need—a man,” said Mary. She was emphatically an old-fashioned woman, that is, a woman completely capable of any sort of heroism, but who never feels safe unless there is a man in the house. “Those black men, I think, are worse'n ghosts about a place. Not that they come in often, but one of the housekeepers was askin' that George be allowed to sleep inside. I was against it myself. Now, you depend upon me, miss.”

I was almost absurdly grateful, partly because her pluck steadied my nerves, which the morning's occurrences had flurried a little, and partly because I was glad that she did not share Robbie's peculiar prejudice. I went back to the house thoroughly braced, and watched the three old women depart without a pang.

Nevertheless, that description of the other housekeepers did linger uncomfortably in my memory.