Читать книгу Betty at Fort Blizzard - Molly Elliot Seawell - Страница 11

A look of annoyance came to Mrs. Fortescue's expressive eyes. The Colonel had imbued her with disapproval of the man of too many motors and horses and dogs and clothes and fighting chickens.

Mrs. Fortescue waved Kettle away and marched into the hall, where she met Colonel Fortescue coming out of his office.

"It's Broussard," she whispered to the Colonel.

Together they entered the long drawing-room. Broussard and Anita were leaning forward; Anita's face was still deeply flushed. Her beloved white dove fluttered, unnoticed, about her white-shod feet. When the glass door opened and Colonel and Mrs. Fortescue entered the little glass room, both Anita and Broussard started violently—a sign of captive love.

Mrs. Fortescue was gracious, merely because she could not help it, and the Colonel treated Broussard with the elaborate courtesy which a Colonel shows to a subaltern and which makes the subaltern look and feel the size of the head of a pin. Naturally, Broussard hastened his leave-taking and received no invitation to remain, except from Anita's eyes, shy and long-lashed.

When the Colonel and Mrs. Fortescue and Anita were sitting at the softly-shaded round table in the dining-room, Anita's chair was close to her father's—the two were never far apart when they could be close together. Mrs. Fortescue wore around her white throat a locket with a miniature in it of her boy soldier. He was to her what Anita was to the Colonel, but being a stout-hearted woman she had sent her son away to be a soldier and had worn a smile at parting. There was a strain of the Spartan mother in this smiling daughter, wife, and mother of soldiers.

"Did you have a pleasant visit from Mr. Broussard?" asked Colonel Fortescue.

"Very pleasant, daddy dear. He knows so much about birds."

"I think," replied the Colonel, darkly, "Mr. Broussard's knowledge comes chiefly from the study of fighting chickens."

"I hear he has cockfights on Sunday, in the cellar of his quarters," said Mrs. Fortescue, willing to give Broussard a slashing cut under the fifth rib.

"Cocking mains, my dear," corrected the Colonel, and then kept on, earnestly, to Anita.

"Yon can scarcely imagine the horrors of a cockpit. The poor gamecocks, with cruel spurs upon their feet, tearing each other to pieces, and blood and feathers all over the place."

"You seem wonderfully familiar with cockpits," remarked Mrs. Fortescue. "It seems to me, when we went to our first post after we were married, that you were sometimes missing on Sunday morning, and used to tell me afterward about the grand time you had, and the superior fighting qualities of the Savoys over the Bantams."

The Colonel scowled.

"I don't recall the circumstances, Elizabeth," he said.

"But I do, John," tartly responded Mrs. Fortescue.

Anita knew that when it was Jack and Betty the skies were serene, and when it became John and Elizabeth there were clouds upon the horizon.

At this point Kettle, who was serving dinner, felt that his duty as Broussard's ally was to speak.

"Miss Betty," said he with solemn emphasis, "Mr. Broussard doan' keep them chickens in his cellar fur to fight; he keeps 'em to lay aigs fur his breakfus'."

"That's queer," said the Colonel, "all of Mr. Broussard's chickens are cock chickens."

This would have abashed a less ardent partisan, but it only stimulated Kettle.

"Come to think of it, Miss Betty," Kettle continued stoutly, "them chickens is cock chickens, but Mr. Broussard, he keep 'em for fryin' chickens and bri'lers; he eats a cock chicken ev'ry mornin' fur his breakfus', day in and day out."

"Oh, Kettle!" said Anita, in a tone of soft reproach. She disliked the notion of a cockpit, but she was a lover of abstract truth, which Kettle was not.

"Well, Miss Anita," Kettle began argumentatively, "the truth is, Mr. Broussard, he jes' keep them chickens to' 'commodate the chaplain. The chaplain, he's a gre't cockfighter, an' he say, 'Mr. Broussard, the Kun'l is mighty strict, an' kinder queer in his head, an' he ain't no dead game sport like me an' you, so if you will oblige me, Mr. Broussard, jes' keep my fightin' chickens in your cellar, an' if the Kun'l say anything to you, tell him them chickens is yourn. You wouldn't mind a little thing like that, would you, Mr. Broussard?' That's what I hee'rd the chaplain say."

"Kettle!" shouted the Colonel, and Mrs. Fortescue remarked candidly:

"You are a big story-teller, Kettle, there isn't a word of truth in all you have been telling."

"That's so, Miss Betty," announced Kettle, brazenly. "Truth is, Mr. Broussard ain't got no chickens at all in his cellar, he keeps ducks, Miss Betty, 'cause the water rises in the cellar all the time."

Kettle's active help did not end with wholesale lying as a means of helping Broussard. Within a week every time the After-Clap caught sight of Broussard he would shout for "Bruvver." This, Kettle carefully explained, was the baby's way of saying Broussard, but it brought a good many quarters from Broussard's pocket into Kettle's palm.