Читать книгу Bud: A Novel - Munro Neil - Страница 6

I HEARD all about you and Auntie Bell and Uncle Dan from pop – from father,” said Bud, as they walked back to the house. She had learned already from example how sweeter sounded “father” than the term she had used in America. “He was mighty apt to sit up nights talking about you all. But I don’t quite place Kate: he never mentioned Kate.”

“Oh, she’s a new addition,” explained Ailie. “Kate is the maid, you know: she came to us long after your father left home, but she’s been with us five years now, and that’s long enough to make her one of the family.”

“My! Five years! She ain’t – she isn’t much of a quitter, is she? I guess you must have tacked her down,” said Bud. “You don’t get helps in Chicago to linger round the dear old spot like that; they get all hot running from base to base, same as if it was a game of ball. But she’s a pretty – pretty broad girl, isn’t she? She couldn’t run very fast; that’ll be the way she stays.”

Ailie smiled. “Ah! So that’s Chicago, too, is it? You must have been in the parlor a good many times at five-o’clock tea to have grasped the situation at your age. I suppose your Chicago ladies lower the temperature of their tea weeping into it the woes they have about their domestics? It’s another Anglo-Saxon link.”

“Mrs. Jim said sensible girls that would stay long enough to cool down after the last dash were getting that scarce you had to go out after them with a gun. You didn’t really, you know; that was just Mrs. Jim’s way of putting it.”

“I understand,” said Alison, unable to hide her amusement. “You seem to have picked up that way of putting it yourself.”

“Am I speaking slang?” asked the child, glancing up quickly and reddening. “Father pro – prosisted I wasn’t to speak slang nor chew gum; he said it was things no real lady would do in the old country, and that I was to be a well-off English undefied. You must be dreff’le shocked, Auntie Ailie?”

“Oh no,” said Ailie cheerfully; “I never was shocked in all my life, though they say I’m a shocker myself. I’m only surprised a little at the possibilities of the English language. I’ve hardly heard you use a word of slang yet, and still you scarcely speak a sentence in which there’s not some novelty. It’s like Kate’s first attempt at sheep’s-head broth: we were familiar with all the ingredients except the horns, and we knew them elsewhere.”

“That’s all right, then,” said Bud, relieved. “But Mrs. Jim had funny ways of putting things, and I s’pose I picked them up. I can’t help it – I pick up so fast. Why, I had scarlatina twice! and I picked up her way of zaggerating: often I zaggerate dreff’le, and say I wrote all the works of Shakespeare, when I really didn’t, you know. Mrs. Jim didn’t mean that she had to go out hunting for helps with a gun; all she meant was that they were getting harder and harder to get, and mighty hard to keep when you got them.”

“I know,” said Alison. “It’s an old British story, you’ll hear it often from our visitors, if you’re spared. But we’re lucky with our Kate; we seem to give her complete satisfaction, or, at all events, she puts up with us. When she feels she can’t put up with us any longer, she hurls herself on the morning newspaper to look at the advertisements for ladies’-maids and housekeepers with £50 a year, and makes up her mind to apply at once, but can never find a pen that suits her before we make her laugh. The servant in the house of Dyce who laughs is lost. You’ll like Kate, Bud. We like her; and I notice that if you like anybody they generally like you back.”

“I’m so glad,” said Bud, with enthusiasm. “If there’s one thing under the canopy I am, I’m a liker.” They had reached the door of the house without seeing the slightest sign that the burgh was interested in them, but they were no sooner in than a hundred tongues were discussing the appearance of the little American. Ailie took off Bud’s cloak and hood, and pushed her into the kitchen, with a whisper to her that she was to make Kate’s acquaintance, and be sure and praise her scones, then left her and flew upstairs, with a pleasant sense of personal good-luck. It was so sweet to know that brother William’s child was anything but a diffy.

Bud stood for a moment in the kitchen, bashful, for it must not be supposed she lacked a childish shyness. Kate, toasting bread at the fire, turned round and felt a little blate herself, but smiled at her, such a fine expansive smile, it was bound to put the child at ease. “Come away in, my dear, and take a bite,” said the maid. It is so they greet you – simple folk! – in the isle of Colonsay.

The night was coming on, once more with snowy feathers. Wanton Wully lit the town. He went from lamp to lamp with a ladder, children in his train chanting:

and he expostulating with: “I know you fine, the whole of you; at least I know the boys. Stop you till I see your mothers!” Miss Minto’s shop was open, and shamefaced lads went dubiously in to buy ladies’ white gloves, for with gloves they tryst their partners here at New Year balls, and to-night was Samson’s fiddle giggling at the inn. The long tenement lands, as flat and high as cliffs, and built for all eternity, at first dark gray in the dusk, began to glow in every window, and down the stairs and from the closes flowed exceeding cheerful sounds. Green fires of wood and coal sent up a cloud above these dwellings, tea-kettles jigged and sang. A thousand things were happening in the street, but for once the maid of Colonsay restrained her interest in the window. “Tell me this, what did you say your name was?” she asked.

“I’m Miss Lennox Brenton Dyce,” said Bud, primly, “but the miss don’t amount to much till I’m old enough to get my hair up.”

“You must be tired coming so far. All the way from that Chickagoo!”

“Chicago,” suggested Bud, politely.

“Just that! Chickagoo or Chicago, it depends on the way you spell it,” said Kate, readily. “I was brought up to call it Chickagoo. What a length to come on New Year’s Day! Were you not frightened? Try one of them brown biscuits. And how are all the people keeping in America?”

She asked the question with such tender solicitude that Bud saw no humor in it, and answered gravely:

“Pretty spry, thank you. Have you been there?”

“Me!” cried Kate, with her bosom heaving at the very thought. Then her Highland vanity came to her rescue. “No,” she said, “I have not been exactly what you might call altogether there, but I had a cousin that started for Australia and got the length of Paisley. It ‘ll be a big place, America? Put butter on it.”.

“The United States of America are bounded on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by the Pacific, on the south by Mexico and the Gulf, and on the north by an imaginary line called Canada. The State of New York alone is as large as England,” said Bud, glibly, repeating a familiar lesson.

“What a size!” cried Kate. “Take another of them brown biscuits. Scotland’s not slack neither for size; there’s Glasgow and Oban, and Colonsay and Stornoway. There’ll not be hills in America?”

“There’s no hills, just mountains,” said Bud. “The chief mountain ranges are the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies. They’re about the biggest mountains in the world.”

“Talking about big things, look at the big pennyworth of milk we get here,” said Kate, producing a can – it was almost the last ditch of her national pride.

The child looked gravely into the can, and then glanced shrewdly at the maid.

“It isn’t a pennyworth,” said she, sharply, “it’s twopence worth.”

“My stars! how did you know that?” said Kate, much taken aback.

“‘Cause you’re bragging. Think I don’t know when anybody’s bragging?” said Bud. “And when a body brags about a place or anything, they zaggerate, and just about double things.”

“You’re not canny,” said Kate, thrusting the milk-can back hastily on the kitchen dresser. “Don’t spare the butter on your biscuit. They tell me there’s plenty of money in America. I would not wonder, eh?”

“Why, everybody’s got money to throw at the birds there,” said Bud, with some of the accent as well as the favorite phrase of Jim Molyneux.

“They have little to do; forbye, it’s cruelty. Mind you, there’s plenty of money here, too; your uncle has a desperate lot of it. He was wanting to go away to America and bring you home whenever he heard – whenever he heard – Will you not try another of them biscuits? It will do you no harm.”

“I know,” said Bud, gravely – “whenever he heard about my father being dead.”

“I think we’re sometimes very stupid, us from Colonsay,” said the maid, regretfully. “I should have kept my mouth shut about your father. Take two biscuits, my dear; or maybe you would rather have short-cake. Yes, he was for going there and then – even if it cost a pound, I dare say – but changed his mind when he heard yon man Molyneux was bringing you.” Footles, snug in the child’s lap, shared the biscuits and barked for more.

said Bud, burying her head in his mane.

“Good Lord! did you make that yourself, or just keep mind of it?” asked the astounded Kate.

“I made it just right here,” said Bud, coolly. “Didn’t you know I could make poetry? Why, you poor, perishing soul, I’m just a regular wee – wee whitterick at poetry! It goes sloshing round in my head, and it’s simply pie for me to make it. Here’s another:

I just dash them off. I guess I’ll have to get up bright and early to-morrow and touch that one up some. Mostly you can’t make them good the first try, and then you’re bound to go all over them from the beginning and put the good in here and there. That’s art, Jim says. He knew an artist who’d finish a picture with everything quite plain about it, and then say, ‘Now for the art!’ and fuzz it all over with a hard brush.”

“My stars, what things you know!” exclaimed the maid. “You’re clever – tremendous clever! What’s your age?”

“I was bom mighty well near eleven years ago,” said Bud, as if she were a centenarian.

Now it is not wise to tell a child like Lennox Dyce that she is clever, though a maid from Colonsay could scarcely be expected to know that. Till Bud had landed on the British shore she had no reason to think herself anything out of the ordinary. Jim Molyneux and his wife, with no children of their own, and no knowledge of children except the elderly kind that play in theatres, had treated her like a person little younger than themselves, and saw no marvel in her quickness, that is common enough with Young America. But Bud, from Maryfield to her uncle’s door, had been a “caution” to the plainly admiring mail-driver; a kind of fairy princess to Wanton Wully Oliver and his wife; the surprise of her aunts had been only half concealed, and here was the maid in an undisguised enchantment! The vanity of the ten-year-old was stimulated; for the first time in her life she felt decidedly superior.

“It was very brave of me to come all this way in a ship at ten years old,” she proceeded.

“I once came to Oban along with a steamer my-self,” said Kate, “but och, that’s nothing, for I knew a lot of the drovers. Just fancy you coming from America! Were you not lonely?”

“I was dre’ffle lonely,” said Bud, who, in fact, had never known a moment’s dulness across the whole Atlantic. “There was I leaving my native land, perhaps never to set eyes on its shores evermore, and coming to a far country I didn’t know the least thing about. I was leaving all my dear young friends, and the beautiful Mrs. Molyneux, and her faithful dog Dodo, and – ” Here she squeezed a tear from her eyes, and stopped to think of circumstances even more touching.

“My poor wee hen!” cried Kate, distressed. “Don’t you greet, and I’ll buy you something.”

“And I didn’t know what sort of uncle and aunties they might be here – whether they’d be cruel and wicked or not, or whether they’d keep me or not. Little girls most always have cruel uncles and aunties – you can see that in the books.”

“You were awful stupid about that bit of it,” said the maid, emphatically. “I’m sure anybody could have told you about Mr. Dyce and his sisters.”

“And then it was so stormy,” proceeded Bud, quickly, in search of more moving considerations. “I made a poem about that, too – I just dashed it off; the first verse goes:

but I forget the rest, ‘cept that

“My goodness, you would get all wet!” said Kate, putting her hand on Bud’s shoulder to feel if she were dry yet. Honest tears were in her own eyes at the thought of such distressing affairs.

“The ship at last struck on a rock,” proceeded Bud, “so the captain lashed me – ”

“I would lash him, the villain!” cried the indignant maid.

“I don’t mean that; he tied me – that’s lash in books – to the mast, and then – and then – well, then we waited calmly for the end,” said Bud, at the last of her resources for ocean tragedy.

Kate’s tears were streaming down her cheeks at this conjured vision of youth in dire distress. “Oh, dear! oh, dear! my poor wee hen!” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry for you.”

“Bud! coo-ie! coo-ie!” came the voice of Aunt Ailie along the lobby, but Bud was so entranced with the effect of her imaginings that she paid no heed, and Kate’s head was wrapped in her apron.

“Don’t cry, Kate; I wouldn’t cry if I was you,” said the child at last, soothingly. “Maybe it’s not true.”

“I’ll greet if I like,” insisted the maid. “Fancy you in that awful shipwreck! It’s enough to scare anybody from going anywhere. Oh, dear! oh, dear!” and she wept more copiously than ever.

“Don’t cry,” said Bud again. “It’s silly to drizzle like that. Why, great Queen of Sheba! I was only joshing you: it was as calm on that ship as a milk sociable.”

Kate drew down the apron from her face and stared at her. Her meaning was only half plain, but it was a relief to know that things had not been quite so bad as she first depicted them. “A body’s the better of a bit greet, whiles,” she said, philosophically, drying her eyes.

“That’s what I say,” agreed Bud. “That’s why I told you all that. Do you know, child, I think you and I are going to be great friends.” She said this with the very tone and manner of Alison, whose words they were to herself, and turned round hastily and embarrassed at a laugh behind her to find her aunt had heard herself thus early imitated.