Читать книгу The Young O'Briens: Being an Account of Their Sojourn in London - Margaret Westrup - Страница 6

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"I'm getting quite fond of our Stronghold," said Nell. "That's crooked, Denis!"

"What if it is, and you an artist! I'm not going to take the nail out,—no, not if it's standing on its head. Isn't my thumb pathetic pulp already?"

"Gerrls can't use a hammer! Gerrls always hit more thumb than anything else!" from the foot of the step-ladder came an impish voice.

"That you, Atom?" Denis flung himself down the steps. Sheila Pat fled, squealing, down the stairs and into the garden.

"What we would have done without this room to call our own, my brain refuses to imagine!" Nell observed.

"Wasn't it just like mother to think of it?" queried Molly, wistfully.

Nell nodded.

"And our teas! Thank goodness, Aunt Kezia desires us to have tea up here, in case some of her friends turn up. It's something to be looked upon as savages, after all, Mol!"

She was digging a drawing pin through a mounted photograph of a beautiful Irish wolf hound. She touched his head softly with her finger before she turned away. He was Denis's dog, and he had been left at Kilbrannan with friends. She picked up a photograph of her little chestnut mare. She stood with it in her hands, then turned suddenly and put it away in her drawer of the table. The hound was still Denis's, but Acushla was sold—sold to the same friends who were taking care of the dog. Nell clinched her teeth. The other horses had been sold, too. She gathered up a pile of photographs taken by herself and Denis, and laid them in her drawer. For a minute the sick longing for them all, for her home, her father and mother, gripped her and held her silent. Then she turned to Molly.

"Hark at Sheila Pat's accent! Whose benefit is it for?"

Molly looked out at the dingy scrap of garden.

"There's that little boy in the garden next door. Denis is chasing Sheila Pat."

They reappeared in the Stronghold, the Atom's wild little face emerging from beneath Denis's arm, her legs and arms kicking and struggling. Denis seized the tablecloth, hauled it off with a clatter of falling lesson books, drawing board, pencils, and paint-box. "Hang on, Nell! We'll toss her."

Miss Kezia, entering the room unnoticed, was surprised to find her youngest niece bouncing in the air.

"Aunt—Ke—" With a burst of terrified laughter Molly smothered the rest of the word.

Denis and Nell, holding the tablecloth, with Sheila Pat enthroned in its middle, turned innocently to their aunt.

"I came," said Miss Kezia, "to see if there had been any accident."

"Won't you sit down?" suggested Denis, with a wave of his disengaged hand toward a chair. "There's been no accident at all. What made you think there had?"

"The noise!" It was snapped out like the click of a box being shut.

"Noise?" He looked surprised. Sheila Pat, tailor-wise in her tablecloth, regarded Miss Kezia thoughtfully.

"May I ask," resumed her aunt, "if you are playing a game?"

"Jolly good game," Denis agreed smilingly.

"And it necessitates the smashing and throwing to the floor of—those?" pointing majestically. "And the ruining of the tablecloth?"

"Not necessarily, Aunt Kezia; Sheila Pat's only an Atom—I don't expect she'll tear the cloth."

"You will not have another, in any case," Miss Kezia said. A little flush rose to Denis's brow; his mouth shut into a thin line. Then he looked at Nell.

"Nell, amn't I right in understanding that this is our cloth?"

"Quite, Denis."

"Have—" exclaimed Miss Kezia, suddenly, "have you been knocking nails into my walls?"

"We'll pull them out," said Nell coldly, "since you object to them."

Miss Kezia actually smiled a grim little smile.

"How very Irish! What good would that do, when the holes would still be there? It is most tiresome! It ruins the walls! It really—good gracious! Call your dog off!—Go away!" Miss Kezia, red-faced, undignified, was striving wildly to extricate her skirt from K.K.'s teeth.

For a few moments Denis and Nell's attention was engaged elsewhere; each was rearranging assiduously the folds of the cloth. And in the middle of it Sheila Pat sat and chuckled softly.

Then Denis turned.

"K.K., drop it!" he said sternly, and K.K. obeyed with a sad little wriggle.

"It's a most objectionable dog," Miss Kezia said breathlessly. "I insist that you make no more holes in my paper!" And she marched from the room. Denis sank on to the lounge, stuffed the cushion into his mouth, and wildly waved his legs in the air.

The door reopened—Nell made a frantic dash at his legs. "Of course you understand that I will not have that guinea-pig brought into the house!" Miss Kezia said, her eyes on Denis, who at the sound of her voice dropped the cushion and sat up with a ludicrous face of dismay.

She retired once more, and for a minute there was dead silence in the room she had left. Then Nell fell into Denis's arms. "Oh—you gossoon!"

On the floor, where she had been ignominiously dumped, Sheila Pat sat in her tablecloth and hugged Kate Kearney.

Denis arose and seized her pig-tail.

"Let's attack the garden now, Atom."

Nell was looking out of the window.

"There's that pretty little lame boy next door. I'm going down to talk to him."

"I don't want to come, thank you," Sheila Pat said to Denis.

"Eh? Why not?"

"A person," quoted the Atom, "may have reasons."

"You're a lazy Atom," said Denis, and strolled out of the room.

"The little boy's gone in," Molly observed.

The Atom slipped out of the room and downstairs after Denis. Denis sat on an old up-turned wheelbarrow and studied a book on shorthand and the garden alternately.

"It's a problem that requires a good deal of thought," he observed lazily. "A back yard: Item—a patch of bare ground adorned with ten and a half blades of grass. Item—a narrow ridge of clay running parallel with the walls, in which flowers are presumably meant to grow. Item—a careless mosaic of china, etc. Item—a wheelbarrow. Item—a dustbin. Item—a diminutive Atom ready to turn it all into an elysium of sweet flowers."

"Go on with your readin'," said the Atom, refusing to smile, and valiantly beginning to pick up bits of china.

"The spirit is willing, but the brain is weak. I've come to a standstill. Hulloa, K.K.'s over the wall!"

"It was a cat makin' faces at her. If that little boy's there, he'll be very frightened."

"Why on earth should he be?"

"Oh, I know he will," with dire meaning.

Nell came dancing out into the garden with Molly.

"You're out of step, Mol! Kate Kearney, I saw you leap the wall after a poor pussy!"

She dug her toes into the wall and looked over.

"Can you give me that wicked little black bogy?" she called.

Sheila Pat turned and trotted towards the house.

Denis, on his wheelbarrow, eyed her inquiringly.

"Where are you off to? Going to exercise the Snowy-Panted Pearl?"

The Atom refused to acknowledge the question. She always did refuse when he miscalled her Pearl so rudely.

Over the wall Nell accepted a limp Kate Kearney from the little shy, fair-haired boy she had accosted, and held a conversation with him.

"Nell!" came a faint voice. "Nell! I'm caught! Oh, Nell!"

"Someone is calling," observed Denis, from his barrow.

Nell looked round.

"It's Molly. I thought she was here. Stewart, you hear that cry? It comes from the mouth of my sister Molly. She has a predilection for falling into slop-pails, jamming her fingers into doors— Coming!" she sang out in response to a louder cry. "Good-bye, Stewart. Another time you must see my littlest sister." She dropped to the ground.

Up in Molly's room she found wild confusion, and, in the midst of it, Molly hanging out of the wardrobe.

"I'm caught, Nell! Oh, it's killing me! You might have hurried—oh!"

"Hair this time," observed Nell, untwining and pulling, while the house echoed with Molly's screams. Her hair had caught in the hooks of a blouse hanging on one of the pegs. They were safety hooks, which were one of the trials of Molly's life.

When she was freed at last, Nell looked round the room littered with boots, hats, frocks, collars.

"Whence?" she said, with a wave of her hand.

"I was looking for my thimble."

"Oh!" said Nell, expressively.

"Nell," shouted Denis, from somewhere, "come up and look at these beastly grey collars!"

She ran up to his room. The laundress was a grievance of his.

She sat on his bed and sympathised; then she observed, "Denis, tell me what this Pennington is like."

"Haven't I told you? I'll look a fine guy this evening in a dirty collar!"

"'Not half a bad chap. See him mimic old Tellbridge, his uncle—simply ripping,'" mocked she, suggestively.

He laughed. "Is that all I told you? Well, it's his chief accomplishment. He's a little chap—very dark. I say, I told you old Tellbridge apologised that his wife hadn't called, because she's abroad, didn't I? He isn't a bad old chap, only he's got such a beastly pompous manner. Pennington calls him Uncle Pom-Pom. Well, he hasn't got much of a bargain with me!" He gave a quick sigh. "I do loathe figures, Nell!" Then he laughed again. "Aunt Kezia has been talking to me about the hours she expects me to keep! 'Pon my word, I believe she thinks I'm not a day over eleven!"

At ten o'clock he came meekly home.

"Please, Aunt Kezia, I hope I'm not late?"

"I told you ten o'clock. You are punctual."

He went up to the Stronghold. He found Nell huddled over the account-book.

"Well?" she said.

"Where's Molly?"

"Just gone to bed."

"What are you doing?"

She laughed.

"I'm trying to do accounts. I've been trying more or less all the evening."

"More foolish you! What's the use of accounts, anyway? If the money's gone, it's gone!"

"Yes, but still—why, you see, Denis, we—we've just got to be careful now, and I must see how our money dwindles when we never spend a farthing! And I can't get to-day right. I come threepence short."

"Put it down to stamps."

"I do my accounts honourably!"

"I'll help you. Read out items."

"Woman with baby—india rubber—watch for boy," she enumerated glibly.

"Eh? Woman with an india rubber baby and a watchful boy? How much that little lot?"

She was surreptitiously trying to tear a leaf from the account-book.

"Fivepence," she said, "and there was the hair ribbon for Molly—tenpence three farthings—that is one and threepence, three farthings, isn't it?"

He reached out a long arm and captured the book. On the leaf opposite the items for the day, dangling, half torn out, was a pencil sketch of Kate Kearney.

"I—I forgot," said Nell. "I really didn't know I was doing it!"

"You know it's forbidden in this book," sternly.

"Plase, your Honour, I'm sorry."

"You've got her expression splendidly. What had she been doing?"

"Eating Molly's hair-brush."

"Injured innocence. It's ripping, Nell! You'll be a second Rosa Bonheur yet!"

She sighed.

He glanced at her quickly.

"We'll manage it somehow, old girl!"

"So we will! I'll sit on the pavement and draw pictures in vivid chalks, as a beginning, and with my earnings—oh, up and up I'll go—"

"To the Royal Academy—a studio in South Kensington—private exhibitions—your photograph in all the papers—interviews—'The charming young genius who has taken the artist world by storm greeted me with a delightful amiability. She afforded me a glimpse of a dimple and a half. I understand that her intimate friends are treated to three whole ones—'"

"Oh, be quiet. Tell me if I've done the adding and subtracting right."

"You have! Nell, you're getting on. Meanwhile, we're threepence short. Three whole pennies!"

"Threepence is threepence."

He looked surprised.

"Are you sure?"

"I can't think what it is."

"Account-book?" he suggested blandly.

On the occasion of Nell's first essay at accounts, she had worried and fought and wrestled over a missing sixpence, till Sheila Pat brilliantly bethought her of the account-book, price sixpence. Thereafter the account-book was a family joke.

"Chestnuts!" said Denis, in solemn tone.

"Oh, you jewel! That's it. Now I'm beautifully right." She scribbled it down.

He picked up a piece of stick, smooth and round. Nell glanced at it and laughed.

"That's Molly's! She's been sitting with a bit of hair rolled round it all the evening!"

It was the ambition of Molly's life to have waving hair like Nell's. Secretly she tried many ways to make it curl. Pencils, pens, bits of stick, all were requisitioned in guilty secrecy.

"Now tell me about your evening, Denis. Who was there?"

"Uncle Pom-Pom and Pennington, of course. Chap named Lancaster, and a queer little man—Yovil, I think his name is—all grey and black bristles. He used to be the elocution master at Pennington's school. He writes, Nell!"

"Oh, what does he write?"

"There was an article of his in last month's Imperial on Coleridge. I'm going to get it. Pennington goes to his place every Tuesday—in the evening; some of the other boys who used to go to his school go too, and they talk and read and recite. No fee, you know; he just does it because he likes it—has an idea that when you've got to leave school to be a beastly clerk or something of that kind, you let your reading slip. Pennington says he's cranky on Billy S.!"

"Don't be so irreverent, Denis!"

There was a pause.

"And the other—Lancaster—what is he like?"

"Decent sort of chap, I should think. Don't know much about him—awfully quiet—hardly spoke to any one. Pennington seems to think a lot of him. He beat me at billiards, anyway. Father's got a pot of money. There, that's all I know."

Nell sat gazing into the fire. Suddenly her mouth dimpled.

"Denis, what do you think I've been doing this evening, beyond accounts?"

"Daubing."

"No. I've been looking at things from Aunt Kezia's point of view."

"Oh, lor'!" he said heavily.

"And I've come to the conclusion it's pretty hard on her to have four practically unknown relatives dumped down on her."

"We're not sacks of coals," he remonstrated, "and she offered for the post. And we efface ourselves as much as possible. And we're rather nice, you know."

"Sheila Pat went down to Herr Schmidt this evening, and requested him to take her for a walk, as she felt stifled. He did take her, and Aunt Kezia disapproved of that! Molly bet me I couldn't run up and down the stairs six times without a pause. I did it, and she disapproved of that. Poor Molly, trying to jump a hurdle,—two chairs arranged by me,—fell and hurt herself badly. She disapproved of that. Certainly she broke the chair," reflectively; "still, it seems to me Aunt Kezia disapproves of everything."

"And on top of all that you fall to pitying her! I can't rise to your heights at all, my dear." Nell, chin in hand, puckered her brow thoughtfully.

"Why, you see, from her point of view we're a horrid nuisance—"

"Oh, are we, indeed? I wish Sheila Pat could hear you! Nell, if I don't go to bed at once, you'll arrive at the point of considering our respected aunt a martyred saint, and us the bad little imps who got her her crown! Well, anyway, the imps are useful! For isn't it a grand thing to be a martyr, and aren't we helping her to be one? I'm going to bed."

"Lazy!"

"My dear, remember I am now a working man. Remember what my earnings are to go towards—" He broke off suddenly. "Nell, why can't I write a book or a play, and make my fortune?"

"You will soon."

He shook his head.

"I can see it's all rubbish almost as I write it. No, Nell, you'll have to give us back Kilbrannan, alone!"

"I won't, Denis! You know you're much too conceited to let me do it. Mustn't you have your finger in every pie? And don't speak as if it isn't ours still! It's only let—"

"So it is!" He seized her round her waist. "We'll do it together—you and I—turn 'em out—buy back all the horses—and meanwhile—meanwhile, we'll economise like a couple of German Jews!"

She looked at the jar of great golden chrysanthemums, at a large box of Fuller's chocolates he had brought them that day, and at her account-book where the money seemed to run away so mysteriously.

"Oh," quoth Denis, "it isn't the things like that that use up the money; it's the little things—copper here, copper there; 'Take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of themselves,' you know. That's sound commercial sense."

"Is it?" said Nell. "It sounds all right."

"It's as right as your hand which isn't your left. I'm going to put out the lamp."