Читать книгу Young Renny - Mazo de la Roche - Страница 6

Table of Contents

That evening Renny could not get the thought of Elvira out of his head. After he had taken Vera Lacey home and had left her puzzled by his abstractedness, he followed the road to the village and turned into the poor street where the girl and her aunt lived. He knew that the aunt was a dressmaker who had appeared, from nowhere it seemed, about five years ago. Elvira had been a thin-legged little girl then with hair that stuck out in a dark halo about her pale face. She had liked horses, he knew, for he remembered her hanging about the gates of the paddocks at Jalna watching the activities there. He faintly remembered showing off in front of her on the back of a wayward colt because he liked the way Elvira stood, with her head thrown back and her hands clasped against her breast as though her excitement were more than she could bear. He did not think he had had more than a glimpse of her in the past two years. It was strange, he reflected, that Maurice should have had this intercourse with her, Maurice who had never looked at any girl but Meggie, Maurice who had always been detached.

He looked speculatively at the one lighted window of the cottage. He could see into a kitchen where the two women were sitting by the table drinking tea. The oil lamp set between them revealed their features with dramatic intensity, hardening what was already hard, as the line of the older woman’s lips, making still brighter her coarse, yellow hair and restless eyes. At the same time it added a bloom to the smoothness of the younger’s cheeks, a more vivid redness to her lips. She sat, with elbows on table, staring across the saucer of tea she was cooling, at her aunt who peered into her cup evidently reading a fortune from the tea-leaves. A dressmaker’s dummy, wearing a red blouse, stood in a corner.

Renny gazed fascinated. He had never before witnessed a scene like this: the poverty of the little room, its warm seclusion—for a stove was glowing hotly—the two engrossed in feminine intimacy. He had expected a look of gloom about the place, depression, apprehension in the women’s faces. He had expected to see a heavy elderly woman in the aunt—not this haggard one with gypsy eyes and a small, red-lipped mouth. The two had the same sharp, delicately cut features, but Elvira’s hair was brown. She rose and went to the stove and Renny saw the fullness of her young body. It was true what Maurice had said, she was going to have a child.

He had a sudden feeling of shame at having spied upon her. He turned away and would have left as silently as he had come, but a cock in the outhouse heard his movements and gave a loud crow; the hens were disturbed and filled the air with alarmed cacklings. The older woman was on her feet in a swift, catlike movement. Before Renny could retreat she had glided through the door and had seen his figure against the hedge. He came toward her then, stepping into the shaft of lamplight. He spoke nervously.

“I hope I haven’t frightened you.”

“Oh, no,” she answered coolly. “That is—I was a bit scared when I thought someone was after my hens—but, as soon as I saw you just standing there——” She gave a little laugh. “You’re young Mr. Whiteoak, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he agreed, trying to see her face, trying to make her out.

“I don’t suppose you know who I am,” she went on, with a peculiar, teasing note in her voice. “Folks who live in big houses with a lot of land about them never even hear the names of poor people.”

“I know the names of everyone in the village,” he returned. “How could I help? I’ve lived here all my life.”

A frank warm tone came into her voice when she next spoke. “You’re a great friend of young Mr. Vaughan’s, aren’t you?”

He answered abruptly—“He and I have been talking over this affair to-day. That is why I have come to see you.”

A flicker passed over her face. She looked disappointed, he thought.

He asked tentatively—“Will you tell me when I can meet Elvira to give her the money?”

She answered rather sharply: “Elvira isn’t meeting folks now. You had better bring it here to me.”

“All right.”

“Come to-morrow night. About this time? You and I could have a little talk. I’ll make you a nice cup of tea and read your fortune from the leaves. I’m good at that. I was just reading Elvira’s when you came.”

“Oh.” He wondered why Elvira had shown no interest in what had brought her aunt hurrying to the door.

“What is Elvira’s fortune?”

“She’s going to have a daughter. A beautiful daughter who is to move in high society. But I’d like to tell your fortune. You’ve a face for a fortune out of the ordinary. I’ll bet I could tell you things that would surprise you.”

“Could you?”

“I can tell you one thing without ever looking in a teacup. You’re going to be fascinating to women. You can have love for the asking. I guess you’ve had some already, eh?”

He gave her a dark, wary glance.

“Me! Why, I’m not twenty yet.”

“Years don’t matter. You came of age in love many a month ago.”

Without answering he moved a little nearer to her and looked into her eyes. They were narrow, startling eyes that looked like jewels in this light.

“Strange where you got them,” he said. “They’re not quite human.”

“What?”

“Your eyes.”

“I’ll tell you all about myself to-morrow night. I’m young, you know. I’m only ten years older than Elvira. We’ll be alone. I’ll read your fortune and tell you how I got my eyes.” She gave a daring laugh and suddenly put her hand on his head. “My goodness but you are fascinating!”

At this instant the lamp in the kitchen was lowered. Now it sent out only a pale-bluish gleam. The cock, still restless, uttered a plaintive, protesting crow. He fell from his perch and could be heard scrambling back to it with troubled flapping of wings, and complaining from his hens.

There was something almost Biblical in the interruption—the dimmed light, the crowing cock. Renny cast an apprehensive glance at the woman, and, muttering that he would bring the money the next night, he leaped across the bit of garden where the spears of young green onions were pushing up and went out through the hedge.

On the walk home beside the dark stream that alternately revealed and hid itself like a woman longing for love, his mind was full of thoughts of Elvira and her aunt.

But the next night he did not go into the cottage. He knocked at the door and when the girl opened it, he thrust the envelope Maurice had given him into her hand, with a swift glance into her startled face, and disappeared.