Читать книгу Delight - Mazo de la Roche - Страница 5

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The horses’ hoofs made a tremendous clatter on the pavement. The driver’s voice was raised in hoarse “whoas” and “backs.” The wheels crashed with a jar against the high kerb which always made one wonder how the ’bus (to say nothing of the passengers) withstood it. The front door was thrown open, and the jangle of harness, as the horses threw their heads about to ease their wrenched mouths, the depositing of luggage, and the clink of coin could be heard. Kirke put his pipe in his pocket and approached the door. Three commercial travellers entered, two of them young and alert, one elderly, with an expression of mild boredom. They turned into the office to register and choose sample-rooms. Kirke looked at them keenly. He had seen all three before. The elderly man nodded to him with a friendly air.

“It’s a fine nicht,” said Kirke.

Arthur Crosby, old Colonel Crosby’s youngest son, came in hurriedly. He pushed past Kirke and entered the bar. Kirke threw an indignant look after him. “Young upstairt,” he muttered. He took off the black bowler hat which he wore to one side, and passed a bony hand over his sleek blond head as the sound of women’s voices came from the porch. Old Country voices they were.

The women were in the hotel now, followed by old Davy, the ostler, carrying a tin box, bearing steamship labels. They were young, Kirke saw that at once; little more than a girl, the big one, and the short one, still fresh enough to be interesting. Fowler came heavily after them.

“Where’s the housekeeper?” he asked of Kirke. “I’ve got the new help here for her.”

“It’s a fine nicht,” said Kirke, his eyes, which had become two points of pale fire, concentrated on the faces of the girls before him.

“Damp enough,” replied the ’bus driver, shaking himself. “Go straight upstairs, girls, and ask for Mrs. Jessop. You’ll see to their boxes, Davy. See that they get hold of Mrs. Jessop. Speak right up to her, girls, don’t be afraid.... They only arrived in Montreal yesterday,” he said to Kirke. “Come along and have one on me.” He moved towards the bar.

“Thanks, I will,” said Kirke. “I’ll take the girls upstairs first, and find Mrs. Jessop. It’s an easy place to get lost in. You’d better carry their boxes through and take them up the backstairs, Davy. Mrs. Jessop’ll no like ye mounting the front with them, at this hour, with the commaircial gentlemen about.”

As they ascended the stairway, the shorter of the two girls said: “I’m sure we’re much obliged to you, sir, for your trouble. We’re a bit dazed after the long journey, and with the strange plice and all.”

“Ay, it’s a long way to come for two young geerls,” said Kirke. “I wonder sometimes how you get the pluck. But you will do it. I suppose there are motives to bring ye, eh?” He gave a short laugh like a bark and grinned down at her.

“Well, a girl ’as to live, ’asn’t she?” There was an exhilarating spice of impudence in her tone. The electric lamp at the head of the stairs cast its pale, searching light over her short, freshly-coloured face, surrounded by frizzed, sandy hair, under a drooping white hat that registered in its dents and smudges every day and night of the long journey. Her red lips parted over teeth that were not her own, but good ones nevertheless: probably much whiter and more even than the original set.

“Ay, and live on the fat of the land she will, though the rest of us stairve. Isn’t that so? What does your friend think? Has she no word to say?” He looked from the point he had reached at the top of the stairs down at the figure coming slowly up, weighted by a canvas-covered basket. Her hat shielded her face, but he saw the curve of a splendid young breast under a thin black blouse, and a rounded throat that gleamed like white satin.

“Make ’aste, my dear,” said the short one. She turned with a smile to Kirke. “Such a sleepy’ead as she is I never seen. Just like a ’ealthy kiddie. Eat, and sleep, and enjoy ’erself.”

“I’m tired, I am,” came a low, deep voice from under the hat.

Kirke went down a few steps and took the basket from her. “Weel,” he said, “it’s weighty enough. What have ye got in here, anyway? Gold sovereigns?”

“It’s a tea-set,” she explained. “It was my grandmother’s what brought me up. I’ve never been parted from it on any journey, and I shan’t be, if it was ever so.”

She was now in the clear light. Kirke all but let the basket drop in the fulness of his astonishment. He was used to pretty girls. There had been many a pretty face and form among the maids in The Duke of York. The girls in the glove factory and the jam factory were often much more than passable. His bright, questing eyes had not roved unappeased. But now he realized that he had never before seen real beauty. He was like a hunter who had sauntered forth in search of rabbit, and suddenly, without a sign, a footprint to warn him, come upon a milk-white doe that gazed at him out of liquid eyes of unconcern. He caught his breath with a sort of snarl of surprise. He bit his lip, and tugged at his small, straw-coloured moustache. For the first time since he was grown to manhood he could find nothing to say.

The three walked in silence through an empty hallway past rows of closed, numbered doors, along a narrow passage that branched off from it, down three deeply worn uncarpeted steps, stopped in a still narrower passage, pervaded by a smell of past meals from the kitchens below, and lighted by an oil lamp in a bracket.

“These are the help’s quarters,” muttered Kirke, setting down the basket. He knocked on a door, under which a line of light shone. “Mrs. Jessop!” he called. At the same instant Davy was seen at the top of the backstairs along the passage carrying the tin box on his shoulder. He set it down with a small crash. “Ha!” he exclaimed, “you young maids have to bring your finery with you!”

The door on which Kirke had knocked opened and Mrs. Jessop appeared against a background of wooden boxes, tin tea, coffee, and spice containers and sides of smoked meat suspended from the ceiling. She was the housekeeper, a short stout woman with coarse grey hair and a wide mouth which could change a broad smile into lines of grimness or ferocity with amazing quickness. She had private means, in fact, was the widow of a small hotel-keeper, and was always talking about retiring from her present situation and “living private,” but for some reason she remained. It was whispered in the scullery that her love for Bill Bastien, nearly twenty years her junior, was the reason.

“So,” she said, staring hard at the two young women, “you’re the girls sent out by the agency. Ever worked in a hotel before?”

“Yes,” answered the short one, “I’ve been five years a ’ousemaid in a public-’ouse in Camden Town. I can do laundry work too, and know how to clean silver and brasses, and put a cake together in a pinch.”

“What is your name?”

“May Phillips.”

“They told you what wages I’d give at the agency, did they?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And you,” she said, turning to the tall girl, beside whom Kirke still stood, not looking at her but feeling the subtle power of her presence in every nerve. “What have you been used to?”

“Waiting at table,” came in her low, husky voice, with a slight Somerset accent.

“That’s good. What’s your name?”

The girl hesitated, and her companion answered for her, “Miss Mainprize, ’er nime is.”

“H’m. We don’t do any ‘Miss-ing’ here. I want your first name.”

May Phillips giggled and looked at her friend teasingly. “She’s a bit shy about ’er first nime.”

Mrs. Jessop grinned. “Go ahead, girl. Don’t be shy of me. I guess I’ve heard all the funny names that ever got tacked on to anyone.”

“Out with it,” interposed Kirke. “It’ll no raise a laugh out o’ me, if it’s Hepzibah, or Keziah.”

“It’s not funny,” answered the girl, an angry tremor in her voice. “It’s beautiful. It’s too beautiful for here. I’d not have coom here if I’d thought you’d make game of me.”

Mrs. Jessop jingled the keys in her apron pocket and laughed loudly but good-humouredly. “Very well,” she said. “I’ll show you your room now, and you can whisper your name to me after the lights are out.” She flung open a door across the passage and turned the light in a small room, scantily furnished, but clean.

“I’ll give a hand with your boxes,” she said cheerfully. May Phillips and she began at once to drag the two tin boxes across the linoleum-covered floor into the bedroom. Kirke and the stately girl were left alone in the passage, beneath the oil lamp. She was almost as tall as he. With a sigh she pulled off her drooping hat, disarranging the hair about her ears. It was a shining, pale gold, springing from the roots with strong vitality, waving closely over her head, and clinging in little curls about her temples and nape. But her skin was not blond. Rather the exquisite, golden brown of some rare brunettes, with a warm glow on the cheeks, as when firelight touches the surface of a lovely brazen urn. Her eyes were an intense, dark brown, sleepy now, under thick lashes that seemed to cling together wilfully as though to veil the emotion reflected in their depths. Here was mystery, thought Kirke. And her mouth, he thought, was the very throne of sweetness, as it curved with parted lips, pink as a pigeon’s feet. His shrewd eyes observed the lovely line that swept from her round chin to her breast, her perfect shoulders, her strong neck, her hands coarsened by work. He moved closer to her.

“Come, my dear,” he said, “tell me your name.”

She shook her head. “You’d laugh.”

“I’m as likely to greet as to laugh. Out with it,” he persisted.

She was too tired to resist him. “I’ll whisper it,” she said.

He took off his bowler hat and bent his ear towards her mouth, a grin stretching his thin lips.

“It’s Delight,” she whispered. “Delight. That’s all. Delight Mainprize.”

“Delight,” he whispered back. “It’s a bonny name. It suits ye fine. Delight. Ha! I’ll no forget it.”

He did not raise his head but screwed his eyes around till they were looking into her face now so close to his. Her eyes were no longer sleepy. Laughing lights played in and out of them. She blinked as though trying to separate her lashes. Her face had broadened, dimples dented her cheeks, her wide mouth curved upward showing two rows of square white teeth. Little ripples of laughter seemed to quiver over her face. Expectancy, curiosity, simple animal joy in life were there. Delight indeed! She was well named.