Читать книгу Jan and Her Job - L. Allen Harker - Страница 6

I saw a ship a-sailing, a-sailing on the sea,

And it was full of pretty things for Tony, Fay and me.

There was sugar in the cabin and kisses in the hold——

"Whose kisses?" Tony asked suspiciously.

"Mummy's kisses, of course," said Jan.

"Why doesn't it say so, then?" Tony demanded.

"Mummy's kisses in the hold," Jan sang obediently—

The sails were made of silk and the masts were made of gold.

Gold, gold, the masts were made of gold.

"What nelse?" Fay asked before Jan could start the second verse.

There were four-and-twenty sailors a-skipping on the deck,

And they were little white mice with rings about their neck.

The captain was a duck, with a jacket on his back,

And when the ship began to sail, the captain cried, "Quack! Quack!

Quack! Quack!" The captain cried, "Quack! Quack!"

"What nelse?" Fay asked again.

"There isn't any nelse, that's all."

"Adain," said Fay.

"Praps," Tony said thoughtfully, "there was some auntie's kisses in that hold ... just a few...."

"I'm sure there were," said a new voice, and Peter appeared on the verandah.

The children greeted him with effusion, and when he sat down Tony sat on his knee. He was never assailed by fears lest Peter should want to kiss him. Peter was not that sort.

"Sing nunner song," little Fay commanded.

"Not now," Jan said; "we've got a visitor and must talk to him."

"Sing nunner song," little Fay repeated firmly, just as though she had not heard.

"Not now; some other time," Jan said with equal firmness.

"Mack!" said the baby, and suited the action to the word by dealing her aunt a good hard smack on the arm.

"You mustn't do that," said Jan; "it's not kind."

"Mack, mack, mack," in crescendo with accompanying blows.

Jan caught the little hand, while Peter and Tony, interested spectators, said nothing. She held it firmly. "Listen, little Fay," she said, very gently. "If you do that again I shall take you to Ayah in the nursery. Just once again, and you go."

Jan loosed the little hand, and instantly it dealt her a resounding slap on the cheek.

It is of no avail to kick and scream and wriggle in the arms of a strong, decided young aunt. For the second time that day, a vociferously struggling baby was borne back to the nursery.

As the yells died away in the distance, Tony turned right round on Peter's knee and faced him: "She does what she says," he remarked in an awestruck whisper.

"And a jolly good thing too," answered Peter.

When Jan came back she brought her sister with her. Lalkhan brought tea, and Tony went with him quite meekly to the nursery. They heard him chattering to Lalkhan in Hindustani as they went along the passage.

Fay looked a thought less haggard than in the morning. She had slept after tiffin; the fact that her sister was actually in the bungalow had a calming effect upon her. She was quite cheerful and full of plans for Jan's amusement; plans in which, of course, she proposed to take no part herself. Jan listened in considerable dismay to arrangements which appeared to her to make enormous inroads into Peter Ledgard's leisure hours. He and his motor seemed to be quite at Fay's disposal, and Jan found the situation both bewildering and embarrassing.

"What a nuisance for him," she reflected, "to have a young woman thrust upon him in this fashion. It won't do to upset Fay, but I must tell him at the first opportunity that none of these projects hold good."

Directly tea was over Fay almost hustled them out to go and buy a topee for Jan, and suggested that, having accomplished this, they should look in at the Yacht Club for an hour, "because it was band-night," and Jan would like the Yacht Club lawn, with the sea and the boats and all the cheerful people.

As the car slid into the crowded traffic of the Esplanade Road, Peter pointed to a large building on the left, saying, "There's the Army and Navy Stores, quite close to you, you see. You can always get anything you want there. I'll give you my number ... not that it matters."

"I've belonged for years to the one at home," said Jan, "and I understand the same number will do."

She felt she really could not be beholden to this strange young man for everything, even a Stores number; and that she had better make the situation clear at once that she had come to take care of Fay and not to be an additional anxiety to him. At that moment she felt almost jealous of Peter. Fay seemed to turn to him for everything.

When they reached the shop where topees were to be got, she heard a familiar, booming voice. Had she been alone she would certainly have turned and fled, deferring her purchase till Sir Langham Sykes had concluded his, but she could hardly explain her rather complicated reasons to Peter, who told the Eurasian assistant to bring topees for her inspection.

Jan tried vainly to efface herself behind a tailor's dummy, but her back was reflected in the very mirror which also reproduced Sir Langham in the act of trying on a khaki-coloured topee. He saw her and at once hurried in her direction, exclaiming:

"Ah, Miss Ross, run to earth! You slipped off this morning without bidding me good-bye, and I've been wonderin' all day where we should meet. Now let me advise you about your topee. I'll choose it for you, then you can't go wrong. Get a large one, mind, or the back of your nice little neck will be burnt the colour of the toast they gave us on the Carnduff—shockin' toast, wasn't it? No, not that shape, idiot ... unless you're goin' to ride, are you? If so, you must have one of each—a large one, I said—what the devil's the use of that? You must wear it well on your head, mind; you can't show much of that pretty grey hair that puzzled us all so—eh, w'at?"

Jan had been white enough as she entered the shop, for she was beginning to feel quite amazingly tired; but now the face under the overshadowing topee was crimson and she was hopelessly confused and helpless in the overpowering of Sir Langham, who, when he could for a moment detach his mind from Jan, looked with considerable curiosity at Peter.

Peter stood there silent, aloof, detached; and he appeared quite cool. Jan felt the atmosphere to be almost insufferably close, and heaved a sigh of gratitude when he suddenly turned on an electric fan above her head.

"I think this will do," she said, in a faint voice to the assistant, though the crinkly green lining round the crown seemed searing her very brain.

Peter intervened, asking: "Is it comfortable? No ..." as she took it off. "I can see it isn't. It has marked your forehead already. Don't be in a hurry. They'll probably need to alter the lining. Some women have it taken out altogether. Pins keep it on all right."

Thus encouraged, she tried on others, and all the time Sir Langham held forth at the top of his voice, interrupting his announcement that he was dining at Government House that very night to swear at the assistant when he brought topees that did not fit, and giving his opinion of her appearance with the utmost frankness, till Jan found one that seemed rather less uncomfortable than the rest. Then in desperation she introduced Sir Langham to Peter.

"Your sister-in-law looks a bit tucked up," he remarked affably. "We'd better take her to the Yacht Club and give her a peg—she seems to feel the heat."

Jan cast one despairing, imploring glance at Peter, who rose to the occasion nobly.

"You're quite right," he said. "This place is infernally stuffy. Come on. They know where to send it. Good afternoon sir," and before she realised what had happened Peter seized her by the arm and swept her out of the shop and into the front seat of the car, stepped over her and himself took the steering-wheel.

While Sir Langham's voice bayed forth a mixture of expostulation and assignation at the Yacht Club later on.

"Now where shall we go?" asked Peter.

"Not the Yacht Club," Jan besought him. "He's coming there; he said so. Isn't he dreadful? Did you mind very much being taken for my brother-in-law? He has no idea who he really is, or I wouldn't have let it pass ... but I felt I could never explain ... I'm so sorry...."

Her face was white enough now.

"It would have been absurd to explain, and it's I who should apologise for the free-and-easy way I carried you off, but it was clearly a case for strong measures, or he'd have insisted on coming with us. What an awful little man! Did you have him all the voyage? No wonder you look tired.... I hope he didn't sit at your table...."

Once out of doors, the delicious breeze from the sea that springs up every evening in Bombay revived her. She forgot Sir Langham, for a few minutes she even forgot Fay and her anxieties in sheer pleasure in the prospect, as the car fell into its place in the crowded traffic of the Queen's Road.

Jan never forgot that drive. He ran her out to Chowpatty, where the road lies along the shore and the carriages of Mohammedan, Hindu and Parsee gentlemen stand in serried rows while their picturesque occupants "eat the air" in passive and contented Eastern fashion; then up to Ridge Road on Malabar Hill, where he stopped that she might get out and walk to the edge of the wooded cliff and look down at the sea and the great city lying bathed in that clear golden light only to be found at sunset in the East.

Peter enjoyed her evident appreciation of it all. She said very little, but she looked fresh and rested again, and he was conscious of a quite unusual pleasure in her mere presence as they stood together in the green garden, got and kept by such infinite pains and care, that borders the road running along the top of Malabar Hill.

Suddenly she turned. "We mustn't wait another minute," she said. "You, doubtless, want to go to the club. It has been very good of you to spend so much time with me. What makes it all so beautiful is that everywhere one sees the sea. I will tell Fay how much I have enjoyed it."

Peter's eyes met hers and held them: "Try to think of me as a friend, Miss Ross. I can see you are thoroughly capable and independent; but, believe me, India is not like England, and a white woman needs a good many things done for her here if she's to be at all comfortable. I don't want to butt in and be a nuisance; but just remember I'm there when the bell rings——"

"I am not likely to forget," said Jan.

Lights began to twinkle in the city below. The soft monotonous throb of tom-toms came beating through the ambient air like a pulse of teeming life; and when he left her at her sister's door the purple darkness of an Eastern night had curtained off the sea.