Читать книгу Delight - Mazo de la Roche - Страница 11
3.
Оглавление“Just chuck those sausages into the stock-pot,” said the cook to Delight. “Every bit helps. Then come and get your breakfast while you’ve time.”
“Yes, cook,” replied Delight meekly, sliding the two left-over sausages into the simmering beaded liquid.
Mrs. Bye was a tall, thin, unbelievably active woman of forty. She had a hatchet face, prominent bright blue eyes, a large nose, and a chin that receded slightly. She had long ago lost a front tooth, and its fellow, moving gradually forward to fill the space, now occupied the centre of her jaw, projecting slightly and giving her face the expression of a very eager squirrel. Her natural pallor was changed for the flush that always came to her cheeks at meal-time, for she was excitable, anxious and fearful of Mrs. Jessop whom she fancied was not friendly towards her.
The kitchen was terribly hot, the stove-lids pinkish from the coals that Charley had heaped beneath them. The girls were all talking at once, old Davy and Charley were dragging their chairs noisily across the bare floor, and Queenie, the Byes’ only child, was marching up and down the length of the kitchen singing her newest kindergarten song at the top of her lungs. She was nearly six years old and had inherited Charley’s classic regularity of feature, his fair, almost transparent skin, and his clumsy body. But nature had withheld from her the proper palate with which Charley was endowed, so that Queenie’s marching song, while spirited, for she never sang and marched so well as in the high tide of excitement in the kitchen, came haltingly as to words. She sang:
“We aw mar’h toge’her,
We aw mar’h toge’her,
We aw mar’h toge’her,
Nih’ly in a waow.”
With uplifted face, starry eyes, and flaxen hair flying, she swept past the minions that slaved about her, under trays, under kettles of boiling water, under scuttles of coal, she passed unscathed. If only she could have taken this splendid hauteur with her to school where, because of her affliction, she was the butt of the class, returning home in tears, day after day, chased to the very door by children who took her slate pencils, pulled her hair, and mimicked her unintelligible speech!
“Will you have some haddie?” asked Mrs. Bye, treating Delight as a guest. “And potatoes?”
“Yes, please.”
“I don’t s’pose you’d like any porridge?” This was said with a certain aggressiveness.
“Oh, Mrs. Bye, it wasn’t my fault about the porridge, truly. The men just fancied Forces this morning. They’ll be back to their porridge right enough tomorrow.”
“Well, for goodness sake try to get them back or we’ll have housekeeper after us.”
They sat down with dishes of hot food before them. Annie, her sleek dark head bent in a listening posture, kept one ear open for a step in the dining-room. Pearl, a fat girl, with sleepy hazel eyes, slowly consumed a large bowl of porridge and milk. Mrs. Bye rarely ate anything but bread and tea. She called coaxingly to Queenie:
“Come along, my poppet, and have a nice boiled egg.”
“Naow,” replied Queenie, shaking her head, “ah wanha mar’h.”
“She’s contankerous like all females,” observed Charley, withdrawing a long fish-bone from his mouth. “They’re all alike. As I was a-remarking to my woife a bit ago, women is all kittle-cattle, and you can’t get away from it. I’m the man as knows, for I had a first woife and foive daughters, a second woife and a daughter, her as you see paradin’ herself this minute, and I live in this kitchen surrounded by women, like a oasis in a desert, and I say they’re kittle-cattle, and the less a man has to do with any one on ’em the better for his natur’, human and otherwise.”
“Aw, Mr. Bye, you don’t really mean that,” said Pearl.
“I allers stick up for the women,” said old Davy. “What is a home without a wife? I say it’s a hotel without a bar.”
“Good, good!” said Pearl. “Davy’s got you there, Mr. Bye.”
“I grant that’s true,” said Charley, “but the bar’s where all the trouble begins, isn’t it? All the contankerousness and noise. I don’t ask for anything but peace. I’d like to be back in the Old Land in my truck garden, I would, and breedin’ rabbits. I had one old buck rabbit there, that had a natur’ so like my own that we was more like brothers than man and rabbit. He felt just the same as I did about the female of the species. And when I think of my lettuces and cabbages settin’ there, day arter day, in the same place, just where I’d put them, it brings the tears to my eyes.”
A red-headed boy looked in at the door. “Bill Bastien wants you, Charley,” he said. “And he says be sharp about it.”
Charley filled his mouth with the last of his fried potatoes, emptied his coffee-cup, and got heavily to his feet. He tripped over his own toes as he went out, leaving a smile on the faces of those behind him.
“One would think he was simple to hear him talk about his cabbages and all,” said Mrs. Bye apologetically, “but he’s got a grand head for business, I can tell you that.”
“He has,” agreed old Davy admiringly. “When him and me carry anything together, I always get the heavy end, and I never know how he manages it.”
The sound of footsteps came from the dining-room. Annie quickly wiped her lips and fingers and went in. Mrs. Bye stirred the porridge and put fresh tea to steep. Old Davy returned to his stable. Pearl continued placidly to eat greasy, hashed potatoes. Delight snatched up Queenie and carried her to the window.
“You’re a rum little kiddie,” she said, looking into her upturned face.
“Ah hi poo.”
“Do you? I like you too, if that’s what you’re saying. Can you count? Let’s hear you count.”
“Wa—poo—pee—paw—pi—pih—pebbin—”
“My word, you’re fond of p’s, ain’t you?”
“Ay. Ah hi poo.” And she clutched her neck and kissed her.
Annie rushed in with her tray. “Come along, Delight, you’re needed. The whole troupe’s there, and three of the second-floor boarders. Put the kid down and get a move on. Three ham and eggs, and two fish, cook. My goodness, you ought to see the troupe. Dr. De Silva and his College Girls. Funny-lookin’ college girls. You ought to see the fat one with a yellow wig and a dirty pink kimono. That coffee hot?”
