Читать книгу Tommy Tregennis - Mary Elizabeth Phillips - Страница 5

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SO far Draeth is comparatively unknown, for it lies a little off the beaten track and hurrying tourists do not find it easily. The Limited Express does not pull up at Scard, the junction, but hurries on, through beautiful country, from Plymouth to Falmouth without a stop. Visitors to Draeth, therefore, travel by a slower train from Mill Bay and leave the main line at Scard. Here, seizing their own hand-luggage (for the porters, like the express, are limited, and unlike the express are slow), they cross the line by the bridge, and pass along a bit of dusty road, following the direction indicated by a painted hand under which is written “To the Draeth and Scard Branch Railway.”

The independence of the branch line is emphasized by the fact that the Draeth train remains just outside the station until all the passengers are in line upon the platform. It then steams up alongside with much unnecessary fuss. When at last it starts it runs very slowly and the line is single, but as a precaution against possible accidents an iron bar passes across the window of each compartment. Thus, if a traveller wishes to look out at the narrow East Draeth river, at the willows and alders on its banks, and at the clumps of Rose Bay and Willowherb that give rich colour to the line, he rubs his nose on the dusty bar while he knocks his forehead on the window-frame above.

So steep is the gradient from Scard to Draeth that half-way there the train stops, and the engine steams away alone. Returning it is coupled at the rear and now pulls the train backward at first doubling on its track. Those who cannot travel facing the engine change places with those who cannot sit with their backs in the direction in which they are going. By the time these changes are effected the narrow East Draeth river expands into a wide sheet of water if the tide is up, or into a series of mud flats when the tide is low. Five minutes later the train enters what is surely the prettiest of all Cornish stations, and the journey is at an end.

There was a man once who lived in Draeth who made many plans for beautifying and improving the town. He built the Frying Pan Pier, and it was he, too, who opened up the Pentafore Estate. The branch railway also owes its existence to him. He dreamed of a modern sea-front all asphalt and glittering lights, of a grand Hydro, too, which was to front the sea on a commanding bit of cliff-coast less than a mile eastward of the town. But he died and his plans came to naught, and Draeth is still just Draeth!

Beyond the station the East and West rivers join and together run out to sea, dividing East Draeth from West Draeth and forming a safe harbour for the fishing smacks that have safely weathered so many storms. Lately the fishing has been poor in Draeth because the steam-trawlers have driven away the fish, and in winter there is much poverty in the town.

It was dread of the winter that led the Tregennises to give up their three-roomed cottage and move into a house that had eight windows in the front and rose three stories high. The change was made in April so that all might be in readiness for the summer and the visitors the summer brought.

The new home was only a stone’s throw from the old one, and there was much running backwards and forwards between the two houses, much fetching and carrying, until the last moments in the old home came, and nothing remained but to lock the door and give up the key to the landlord. Then Mrs. Tregennis leaned up against the kitchen sink and cried, while Tommy, not in the least understanding why, cried, too.

“Mammy,” he wailed, “Oh, Mammy, what’ve I done to ee?” “Done, ma lamb, done?” Mrs. Tregennis spoke breathlessly between her sobs. “Why, nothin’, ma handsome; you’re just the best little boy as ever I had.”

Then, having wiped Tommy’s eyes and her own with a large red-bordered handkerchief, Mrs. Tregennis ran upstairs for the last time, took one more look at the empty rooms and, with set mouth and without a backward glance, came slowly down the stairs. She took Tommy’s hand in hers, and silently and tearfully mother and son passed through the open door, locked it behind them and crossed the cobble-stone alley to the imposing double-fronted house which was henceforth to be home.

Much more furniture was wanted in the three-storied house than in the forsaken cottage, and for some months past the Tregennis family, Daddy, Mammy and Tommy had attended all the neighbouring sales. They were almost too nervous to bid when the articles they wished to buy were put up for auction; when shame-facedly they had made their nod they were held upon the tenterhooks of despair while some one else, who could not possibly want the goods as much as they did, bid against them and so raised the price.

Now the furnishing was complete. The kitchen and one bedroom held the old things, but in the other four rooms Mrs. Tregennis arranged with pride the bargains collected at the sales, and the new things sent out from a Plymouth shop.

It was all so grand and wonderful that she could scarcely realize that the rooms were her very own. Morning after morning, for many weeks, as soon as she was dressed, she opened the door of the tiny sitting-room on the first floor and looked round almost with awe on its beauty and newness. On tiptoe she then advanced into the room, picked a piece of cotton off the gay Brussels carpet, dusted an imaginary fleck from the green art-serge tablecloth, and stroked out the fringe of the plush mantel-border. Then, having slightly altered the position of one of the velvet upholstered chairs, she passed out with a sigh of contentment, and gently closed the door behind her.

The final act of preparation in the new house was to hang up, in the lower sitting-room window, a long narrow card bearing in gold letters the word “Apartments.” After this the Tregennis family settled down and waited.

June was a blank month for Draeth that year. It was unusually wet and cold, and very few visitors came to the little fishing-town, and none at all to the double-fronted house. Whenever a stranger walked up the alley Mrs. Tregennis’s hopes rose high, but not until July did anyone knock at her door and ask about the price of rooms. Outwardly Mrs. Tregennis was very calm but her inward agitation was great. She displayed her rooms with pride, they were taken, and after that with one party and another she was busy until the end of August.

Early in September, towards the end of the afternoon, she was interrupted in her dressing by the rapping of knuckles on the door. She buttoned her bodice as she came downstairs, shook out her skirts and hurriedly put on an apron before she opened it. “We wondered if you could take us in just for the night,” said the taller of two ladies who stood on the step. “We are on a cycling tour and are going on further to-morrow.”

“Please come in,” said Mrs. Tregennis, and they passed into the downstairs sitting-room, which was just on the left-hand side of the door.

“We’ve tried so many places,” said the lady who had already spoken, “and no one can take us.”

Mrs. Tregennis pulled forward two Windsor chairs for the ladies and stood before them smoothing a non-existent crease from her white apron.

“Well, I might manage it, Miss,” she said, “if the young gentleman didn’t mind, for I have this room free.”

“Oh, I do wish you could, for it’s getting late to go on, and we’re so tired.”

“It would be no better to go on, Miss, the rooms at all the places is full, I know. It’s like this, you see, Miss.” Mrs. Tregennis again smoothed her apron. “Two young gentlemen really belongs to a party at my sister-in-law’s and only sleeps here, they have one bedroom. Another young gentleman has the other bedroom and the upstairs sitting-room. If it should be as how he would have a chair-bed in his sitting-room for the night, then you could have his room.”

“Well, I do hope he will, Mrs. ——?”

“Tregennis, Miss.”

“But Mrs. Tregennis, if the young gentleman doesn’t wish to sleep on a chair-bed what shall we do?”

“There’s the Royal Standard, Miss.”

“No, we had a very unsatisfactory lunch there, badly cooked and badly served; the waitress wore a dirty apron and her hair was in curling pins. We really couldn’t go there!”

“Well, Miss, will you call again in an hour’s time; the young gentleman will be in then, and I’ll let you know for certain.”

“Tom,” she said, when they had left, “there’s two young ladies asking for rooms for the night. They’re on a cycling tour, but they’d no bikes with them, and they hadn’t a scrap of luggage. I’ve said I’ll take them if the young gentleman doesn’t mind the chair-bed.”

Tregennis slowly uncrossed his legs as he sat in front of the kitchen fire, and with his forefinger re-arranged the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe. “Well, Ellen,” he said slowly, “and suppose they be just frauds?”

“All I can say is as they don’t look it, an’ after all we’m got to take our risks. A room for one night isn’t much, but all the littles add up, and the summer’s nearly gone.” After a pause she resumed. “The Royal Standard isn’t good enough for they, Thomas Tregennis, I’d have you know, when folks wants things done in real style they comes to the likes of we.”

Mrs. Tregennis cleared her throat and prepared her husband’s tea.

Two hours later the ladies had brought their bicycles and carry-alls from the hotel-stable, and were sitting down to supper in Mrs. Tregennis’s sitting-room, for the young gentleman had proved most accommodating in the matter of the chair-bed.

It was after supper that the meeting with Tommy took place. The arrival of unexpected visitors had put off his bedtime, and when these visitors passed the kitchen door on their way out, he had only just had his bath. He was standing on a chair while Mammy vigorously brushed up his stiff fair hair. Peeping out below the pink nightshirt were toes almost as pink as his flushed little face. All the time his hair was being rubbed and brushed, he went through a rhythmic motion of the body, slowly bending his knees, and rapidly straightening them again. The upright movement frequently brought his head into sharp contact with the hair-brush, but this in nowise disconcerted him.

When Mammy’s ladies appeared in the doorway, then in response to Mrs. Tregennis’s invitation actually walked into the kitchen, he was overcome with shyness and hid his eyes in his hands. To his great surprise, however, the ladies talked to Mammy, neglecting him utterly. He was accustomed to much consideration, and gradually his tight little fingers relaxed that he might peep through the gaps and see what manner of strangers these were who were so ignorant of his importance and of his claims upon them.

Still the ladies talked only to Mammy. He could bear it no longer, so, dropping his hands, he pursed up his mouth and whistled; at least he called it whistling, but it was very much the same noise that Daddy made each morning when the tea in his saucer was too hot. Its value as a whistle, however, mattered very little, as it had the desired effect. The taller lady, the one in the blue dress, looked at him in surprise; evidently until now she had had no idea that he was there.

“Hallo, Tommy,” she said, and made a dash for his toes.

“Hallo,” he half-screamed, half-gurgled. “Hallo, Blue Lady,” and flung two chubby, suffocating arms tightly around her neck. Then, peeping over her shoulder, “Hallo, Brown Lady,” he laughed. Thus their friendship began.

STILL THE LADIES TALKED ONLY TO MAMMY.