Читать книгу A Cry in the Wilderness - Mary Ella Waller - Страница 9

"I hope you will soon feel at home in the old manor." With these words I was made welcome. Mrs. Macleod led the way into the house.

"Jamie," she said to a young man, or youth, I could not tell which, "this is Miss Farrell. My son," she added, turning to me.

"Call me Marcia," I said to her. She smiled as if pleased.

"You will be feeling very tired after your long journey—and I 'm thinking jolly hungry after coming up in the old boat; that was mother's doings."

"Now, Jamie—!" she spoke in smiling protest.

O Jamie, Jamie Macleod! Your thin bright eager face was in itself a welcome to the old manor of Lamoral.

"I 'm not tired, but I confess to having a good appetite; this Canada air would make an angel long for manna," I said laughing.

"Wouldn't it though—oh, it's great!" he responded joyfully. "Angélique, here, will help you out in that direction—she's our cook; Angélique, come here." He gave his command in French.

The short thickset French Canadian of the black-eyed-Susan type, came forward, with outstretched hand, from the back of the passageway; there was good friendship in her hearty grip.

"And Marie will take charge of you till supper time," said Mrs. Macleod, smiling; "Jamie is apt to run the house at times because he can speak with the servants in their own tongue."

"Now, mother!" It was Jamie's turn to protest.

Mrs. Macleod spoke to the little maid, who was beaming on me, in halting French.

"Do you speak French?" she asked me.

"No, I can read it, that 's all."

"Oh, well, with that you can soon understand and speak it; my Scotch tongue is too old to be learning new tricks; fortunately I understand it a little. Marie will take you to your room."

Marie looked on me with an encouraging smile, and led the way up stairs through a wide passageway, down three steps into another long corridor, and opened a door at the end. She lighted two candles and, after some pantomime concerning water, left me, closing the door behind her.

And this was my room. I looked around; it took immediate possession of me in spirit—a new experience for me and a wholly pleasing one.

There were two windows in one end; the walls were sloping. I concluded it must be in the gable end of some addition to the main building. The walls were whitewashed; the floor was neatly laid with a woven rag carpet of peculiar design and delicate coloring; the cottage bedroom set was painted dark green. There was a plain deal writing table with writing pad and inkstand, and a dressing table on which stood two white china candlesticks. Counterpane, chair cushions, and window hangings were of beautiful old chintz still gay with faded paroquets and vines, trees, trellises, roses and numerous humming-birds, on a background of faded crocus yellow.

There was a knock at the door. On my using one of the few words in French at my command, "Entrez," Marie burst in with delighted exclamations and a flood of unintelligible French. But I gathered she was explaining to me Pierre who followed her, cap in one hand, and in the other, the handle of my trunk which he was dragging behind him. This was evidently Pierre, father, in distinction from Pierre, son.

"Big Pete and little Pete," I translated for their benefit; whereupon Marie clapped her hands and Peter the Great came forward man fashion to shake hands before he placed my trunk. As the two spoke together I heard the name "Cale".

"What a household!" I said to myself after they had gone, and while I was doing over my hair. "I wonder if there are any other members? And what is my place in it going to be?"

It kept me guessing until I had made myself ready for supper.

Soon there was another knock. Marie's voice was heard; her tongue loosed in voluble expression of her evident desire to conduct me down stairs to the dining-room.

"Here are more of us!" was Jamie Macleod's exclamation, as I entered the long low room. Four fine dogs—he told me afterwards they were Gordon setters—rose slowly from the rug before the fireplace. "But they 're Scotch and need no introduction. Come here, comrades!"

The four leaped towards me; snuffed at me with evident curiosity; licked my hands and were about to spring on me, but a word from their master sent them back to the rug.

He showed me my place at the long narrow table; drew out the chair for his mother and, when she was seated, spoke to the dogs who, with perfect decorum, sedately settled themselves on their haunches in twos, one on each side of Mrs. Macleod at the head of the table, one on each side of her son at her right. They looked for all the world like the Barye bronzes in the Metropolitan Museum! After all, I could not get rid of all the associations, nor did this one bring with it anything but pleasure, that the great city had yielded me this much of instruction.

I was looking at the dogs and about to speak, when I noticed that Mrs. Macleod had bent her head and folded her hands. I caught Jamie looking at me out of the corner of his eye. For the first time in my life I heard "grace" said at a table. I felt myself grow red; I was embarrassed. Jamie saw my confusion and began to chat in his own bright way.

"I asked mother if she had written definitely what we 'd asked you up here for into the wilds of Canada."

"Now, Jamie! You will be giving Miss—Marcia," she corrected herself, "to understand I asked her here under false pretence. To tell the truth, I did n't quite see how to explain myself at such a distance." She spoke with perfect sincerity. "Moreover, Doctor Rugvie told me that Mrs. Beaseley was absolutely trustworthy, and I relied on her—but you don't know Doctor Rugvie?"

"Of him, yes; I saw him once in the hospital."

"So you 've been in the hospital too?"

It was Jamie who put that question, and something of the eager light in his face faded as he asked it.

"Yes, last spring; I was there ten weeks."

"Then you know," he said quite simply, and looked at me with inquiring eyes.

Why or how I was enabled to read the significance of that simple statement, I cannot say; I know only in part. But I do know that my eyes must have answered his, for I saw in them a reflection of my own thought: We both, then, have known what it is, to draw near to the threshold of that door that opens only outward.

"You don't indeed look strong; I noticed that the first thing," said Mrs. Macleod.

"Oh, but I am," I assured her; "you will see when you have work for me. I can cook, and sew—and chop wood, and even saw a little, if necessary."

Mrs. Macleod looked at me in absolute amazement, and Jamie burst into a hearty laugh. It was good to hear, and, without in the slightest knowing why, I laughed too—at what I did not know, nor much care. It was good to laugh like that!

"And to think, mother, that you told me to come down heavy on the 'strong and country raised'! Oh, this is rich! I wrote that advertisement, Miss Far—"

"Please call me Marcia."

"May I?" He was again eager and boyish.

"Why not?" I said. He went on with his unfinished sentence.

"—And I pride myself that I rose to the occasion of mother's command to make it 'brief but explicit'."

"Poor girl, you 've had little chance to hear anything explicit from me as yet." Mrs. Macleod smiled, rather sadly I thought. "But you shall know before you go to bed. I could n't be so thoughtless as to keep you in suspense over night."

"Oh, I can wait," I said; "but what I want to know, Mr. Macleod—"

"Please call me Jamie," he said, imitating my voice and intonation.

"May I?" I replied, mimicking his own. Then we both fell to laughing like two children, and it seemed to me that I felt what it is to be young, for the first time in my life. The four dogs wagged their tails, threshing the floor with them like flails and keeping time to our hilarity; Mrs. Macleod smiled, almost happily, and Marie came in to see what it was all about.

"What do you want to know?" he said at last, mopping the tears from his eyes with his napkin.

"Why you advertised your mother as 'an elderly Scotchwoman'?"

"Because that sounded safe."

Again we laughed, it seemed at almost nothing. The dogs whined as if wanting to join in what fun there was; the fire snapped merrily on the hearth, and the large coal-oil lamp, at the farther end of the long table, sent forth a cheerful light from under its white porcelain shade, and showed me the old room in all its simple beauty.

Overhead, the great beams and the ceiling were a rich mahogany color with age. The sides were panelled to the ceiling with the same wood. Between the two doors opening into the passageway, was a huge but beautifully proportioned marble chimney-piece that reached to the beams of the ceiling. The marble was of the highest polish, white, pale yellow, and brown in tone. Above the mantel, it formed the frame of a large canvas that showed a time-darkened landscape with mounted hunters. The whole piece was exquisitely carved with the wild grape vine—its leaves and fruit.

On each side were old iron sconces. Above the two doors were the antlers of stags. The room was lighted by four windows; these were hung with some faded chintz, identical in pattern and color with that in my bedroom; they were drawn. I wondered, as I looked at this beauty of simplicity, what the other rooms in the house would show. I noticed there was no sideboard, no dresser; only the table, and heavy chairs with wooden seats, furnished the room.

The food was wholesome and abundant. I found myself wondering that I could eat each mouthful without counting the cost.

"I 'll stay here with the dogs and smoke," Jamie said, as we left the table.

We crossed the passageway, which I noticed was laid with flagging and unheated, to the room opposite the dining-room.

Here again, there were the wood ceilings and panelled walls, the latter painted white. The great chimney-piece was like its fellow in the dining-room; only the carvings were different: intricate scrollwork and fine groovings. There was a canvas, also, in the marble frame, but it was in a good state of preservation; it showed a walled city on a height and a river far below. I wondered if it could be Quebec.

The room was larger than the other, but much cosier in every way. There were a few modern easy chairs, an ample old sofa—swans carved on the back and arms—a large library table of black oak with bevelled edges, also beautifully carved; and around the walls of the room, in every available space, were plain low bookshelves of pine stained to match the table. On the floor were the same woven rugs of rag carpet, unique of design and beautiful in coloring—dark brown, pale yellow, and white, with large squares marked off in narrow lines of rose. The furniture, except for the sofa which was upholstered in faded yellow wool damask, was covered with flowery chintz like that in the dining-room, and at the windows were the same faded yellow hangings. A large black bear skin rug lay before the hearth. There were no ornaments or pictures anywhere. On the mantel were two pots of flourishing English ivy. A stand of geraniums stood before one of the four windows.

There were sconces on each side of the chimney-piece, but of gilt bronze. Each was seven-branched, and it was evident that Marie had just lighted all fourteen candles.

Mrs. Macleod drew her chair to the hearth, and I took one near her.