Читать книгу High Towers - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 12

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Because of the heat Old Kirkinhead had not started for work at his usual early hour. He was sitting at his breakfast, still in his cotton nightgown and with the cap of braided velvet still perching on the top of his head. Philippe had not gone to work either, having the household chores to attend to before starting on the serious duties of the day. He had brought water from the well and had carried in a day’s supply of kindling wood. His voice could now be heard through the rear window, admonishing Blanchefleur, the goat, to get under way for the pasture with her latest family. “Must I haul you with a rope, old Stubbornness?” he was demanding. “Must I lay a stick across your rump to make you behave?”

Old Kirkinhead rose from the table and rubbed the side of his hand across his mouth. “Never has there been such a stupid one!” he muttered. “That boy was nearly a year old. Has he no memories at all? No hints to help me find which family he belonged to? That boy, he’s the head of an ox!”

“No one remembers anything as young as that,” protested Cécile, whose hands were deep in dough.

“I do!” snapped her father, his hot brown eyes fairly swimming in anger. “I could tell you hundreds of things which happened to me before I was a year old. I could tell you about my first bath.”

His daughter said under her breath, “He could tell me about all his baths without taking up much time.”

The old builder scuffled over to the door of the inner room. He was still muttering. “Can’t he remember a single name? Can’t he as much as describe a face? That boy, he’s a silly badaud who doesn’t care if he comes into property or not!”

The inner room held the evidence of a curious folly in which he had indulged himself all his life. He was a collector, a human raven who picked up everything old and useless. He never went out of the house without bringing something home—a flint, a discarded piece of sailcloth, a rusty hinge, a handful of dog nails. Whenever there was an auction in Montreal he would be found on the front bench, snapping his fingers, arguing with the auctioneer, bidding a sol here and a sol there. He always returned with his mule cart piled up with frayed whips and forks lacking tines and bells without clappers. He was convinced that he would be able to sell everything he picked up at a big profit but, needless to state perhaps, he never did.

One side of the room, from corner to corner and right up to the black larch beams of the ceiling, was filled with the fruits of his scavengering. There was a rope strung from wall to wall on which hung a collection of old hats: mangy caps of coonskin and otter, three-cornered hats called claques which had once adorned proud heads but would have been scorned by a city beggar in their present state, tapabords and old slouches of felt with tawdry plumes. There were trunks with open tops from which leaked the most incongruous trash. Old Kirkinhead’s motive had always been to make a profit on his finds but it was curious how uneasy he became when anyone professed a desire to look over the stock with an eye to purchases. This reluctance of his had not gone unnoticed and it had fed the belief generally held that the builder was not above taking things which did not belong to him.

The old man was reaching for his clothes with the intention of dressing for the day’s labors when he heard a feminine voice at the front door, crying, “Cécile! Cécile!”

“That wife of Carré’s again!” he muttered in a tone of disgust. “Why doesn’t she stay home and do her work? If she was my wife I would give her a good beating every day of her life.”

The high-pitched voice of young Madame Carré reached him again. “Drop what you’re doing, Cécile! Get dressed at once. Pierre is coming to Longueuil this morning and everyone’s to be at the château to give him a welcome. Yes, yes, the Sieur d’Iberville! Our great hero himself, back from the fighting. Oh, I love him, he has such a wonderful laugh and those great blue eyes which look straight through you! You must put on your best things, Cécile. I’m going to wear——”

Old Kirkinhead appeared in the door of his room. “What’s this?” he demanded. “M’sieur Pierre is coming?”

Madame Carré, who was plump and pert, winked at the daughter. “What an old dog it is! Does he wear that cap to bed? How can he sleep in it without getting notions——” She winked at him with a lively black eye. “Hurry, neighbor. I’m counting on you as my escort because Jules will be busy for another hour.”

“And I,” cried Old Kirkinhead, “will be busy all day! I must get to the mill and see to it that none of my lazy fellows hear of this and go running off to gape at M’sieur Pierre. I won’t have it! I don’t pay them to go running off like this because someone comes to the château, even if it is M’sieur Pierre.”

He disappeared and for several minutes could be heard talking to himself as he dressed in frantic haste. When he returned to the outer room, which combined the functions of kitchen, dining room, and salon, the neighbor’s wife had gone.

“That hussy, that vixen, that silly piece!” he spluttered. “Gadding about and putting notions in people’s heads. ‘Get yourself dressed for the reception, Cécile! Put on your best things, Cécile!’ Her husband should take her over his knee and warm her cul with an ax handle!” He peered at his daughter, who was bending above the mixing bowl. “No running off, mind you. There’s plenty to keep you busy here.” He paused as a sudden horrified suspicion took possession of him. “Is that a cake you’re making? And with an egg?”

“Yes, it’s a cake, Father. My Prosper likes cake and I’m making one for his supper. And there are two eggs in it, if you want to know.”

“You fool!” cried the old man furiously. “Don’t you realize, brainless one, that everything I have will come to you in the end? When you put eggs in a cake they come right out of your own pocket, you great goose!”

His daughter indulged in a feeble giggle. “These eggs didn’t come out of my pocket, Father. They came right out of the nest.”

“I’ve nothing left to live for!” shouted the old man, throwing both arms above his head. “I have a daughter who throws my money away, who tosses it about like a spendthrift. My son-in-law will have my business after I’m gone and he doesn’t know enough to build a hog wallow! There’s that boy who forgets everything just to keep me from getting my hands on another bit of land!”

His eyes were passionately angry in his wrinkled, sallow face but for once his daughter did not cringe from him. He had put on a gilet of green ferrandine which had once been good but was now rumpled and split in places and stained yellow under the arms. That the chaussettes covering his skinny legs were of wool might have been owing to forgetfulness of the season (if anyone could forget it was midsummer!) or a disinclination to change; but certain it was that they hung loosely and fell into untidy folds at the ankles. Again, however, he proved by his hat that a sense of pride still persisted in him. It was of green felt and it was expensive and new, and its wide brim was turned up in the extreme of fashion on three sides. Altogether it looked as much out of place with the rest of his attire as an ostrich feather in the tail of a goose.

Cécile began to laugh and the old man’s eyes filled with tears of self-pity. “My own daughter makes fun of me!” he croaked. “I’ve become an object of derision—I, who once had genius in me! Tiens, there’s no trace of the genius left. Could I build a cathedral today after spending my life putting up mousetraps like this hovel? Could I design graceful columns after forty years of planing off the seats of secrets so ladies won’t get splinters in their fat white buttocks?”

There was a brass hook in one of the ceiling beams which was used for weighing and measuring. The builder, who was sinking deeper into despondency with each moment, looked up at it.

“They don’t want me around any more!” he whispered huskily. “They want to be rid of me. They want my business and my money, little though it is. Someday I’ll listen to the voices inside me and I’ll put an end to my life. I’ll hang myself—up there—like the criminal they think I am! Then,” nodding with the melancholy satisfaction to be found in this form of speculation, “then they’ll know how much they need me, how much they depend on me! They’ll be sorry. But—it will be too late.”

“Get along with you,” said Cécile briskly. “I’m tired of hearing you talk about hanging yourself.”

While all this went on there had been complete silence from the garden back of the little house where Philippe, supposedly, was still doing the morning chores. Old Kirkinhead became aware at this moment of the lack of sound and knew at once what it meant.

“He’s gone!” he shouted. “He heard what that woman said and he’s legging it for the château this very minute!”

He rushed out of the house, screaming at the top of his voice. “Come back, you good-for-nothing badaud! Come back or I’ll attend to you with a seaming mallet!”