Читать книгу Son of a Hundred Kings - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 15

Adelicia Craven was a fiery radical in her views, but when it came to anything concerning herself she was the stoutest of Tories. There was, for instance, the matter of the front steps on her house at the foot of Wilson Street. Serving the joint purpose of an approach to the main entrance and an arch over the kitchen door, the steps were undeniably ugly and should have been done away with long before. But the owner hated change. “They’re homely as all get out,” she would concede. “Still, I’m used to them and they give me plenty of training for that long and uncertain climb I’ll have to try sometime.” The undignified front was left as it had been when she acquired the property.

It was a tall and thin house, looking a little like a six-eyed Chinese giant, with the above-mentioned steps providing a drooping pretense of mustache. It was a completely unsuccessful house, a gangling, rawboned affair. For reasons quite apart from its outward guise, it had become known throughout town as The Waifery.

On returning from her two family visits, the owner walked first to the stables, which, by way of contrast, were in the very best tradition, with beautifully proportioned gables and an iron weather vane in the form of a truly classic eagle. Here she spent a pleasant quarter hour with what she called, quite accurately, her best friends, talking in her deep voice, slapping rumps, and smoothing manes. “Ha, Marcantonio!” (to the Dalmatian dog who was swishing a rawhide tail in the ecstasy of her presence). “Well, Boney, and how are you and the Iron Duke hitting it off these days?” (to the two old horses who went on munching but whose ears twitched at her approach). “Grouch,” (the long superannuated pony) “do you hate everyone as much as ever?” “I see, Burley,” (the goat, named after a former mayor of the town) “you haven’t grown a new tail yet. That old one is the mangiest thing I’ve ever laid eyes on.” The barn cats, many generations of them, poking their indifferent faces out from the yawning haymow or around the iron posts of the stalls, were affectionately greeted. “Ha, Bouncer!” “Well, the Yellow Kid himself!” “What have you done with that last batch of kittens, Virgin?” The chickens she shooed away indignantly, muttering that they were the least layingest hens in captivity and never had pulled their weight.

She might profess a need for the exercise provided by the front steps, but she had been careful to make progress easy inside the tall coffin of a house. Facing the kitchen door was an elevator, the only one in Balfour, a cranky, rickety affair which achieved its way slowly from floor to floor under the control of an undersized Englishman named Al Hanley. Al had been added to the household staff when Miss Craven’s protests failed to get him reinstated at the carriage factory, from which he had been discharged for protracted alcoholic absences. He had become expert with the cables which provided the motive power, and only at his touch would the elevator, with much groaning and grunting and rattling, condescend to move. Miss Craven had tried on several occasions to work it and had emerged with red-faced threats to rip the thing out of her house as she would a malignant growth.

Al was standing at the entrance to the unfriendly lift when she came in from the yard, and he grinned and bobbed his head with a laconic “Mum!”

“Shorty,” she said, using a nickname which she alone employed, “what’s going on upstairs?”

“Mrs. Wasson’s at it again,” said the elevator man. “A-entertaining at euchre in the drawing room.”

“The same gang?”

“ ’S, mum. They’ve been a-pounding down the cards with one ’and and eating sangwiches with the other, mum, for ’ours.”

“I don’t want to greet Mrs. Wasson’s guests today, Shorty. Would it be safe to stop on the next floor?”

“Lor’, no, mum! Cousin ’Ubert’s at the piano again. I tell you, mum, a boiler factory’s nothing to the third floor when Cousin ’Ubert goes to work. And the biby’s a howling fit to kill.”

“Then take me right up to my own rooms, and try to make no noise so we can get by without being seen.”

While the creaky hoist went up to the top floor, which Adelicia Craven kept for her own exclusive occupancy, it might be advisable to pause for a few words of explanation. The owner’s goodness of heart, which she tried to cloak with a brusque manner in imitation of her father, made it impossible for her to resist anyone in distress, and gradually the tall house had filled up and had begun to deserve its name, The Waifery. The first staying, but not paying, guest to be ensconced on the third floor had been a cousin on her mother’s side, one Hubert Mark, who taught music when he could get pupils, which was seldom, and was slowly starving to death. He had arrived without a cent in his pockets, but shortly afterward his grand piano had been delivered and had been hoisted up to his room by block and tackle, the whole operation costing Adelicia a pretty penny. The next to come was Cousin Mary Ann Wasson. Her husband, a plumber, had taken all his tools with him—for the first time, perhaps—when he died; at any rate, he had left nothing. There were others: Velva, a pouty girl of sixteen who had been in the orphanage, a once industrious little seamstress named Lizzie Bain whose trade had left her when she supplied the world with a puny potential seamstress, and a mysterious female whose story was known only to Miss Craven and who was called Mrs. Twain.

“Shorty,” said the mistress as the elevator rose through the waves of Wagnerian din which filled the house, “any chance of a poker game tonight?”

The diminutive elevator man nodded. “We’re starting off the new year right, mum. A little game of draw.”

Miss Craven drew some bills from her purse. “I’ll stake you to the usual, Shorty. Three dollars. And if you lose this time, I’ll never put up another cent.”

The operator nodded without enthusiasm. “Sometimes, mum, I think the cards is possessed,” he said. “I gets on the wrong end of every bumping bee. When I ’as two pair, they beat my brains out. When I catch a full, they won’t invest as much as a nickel.”

“Sometimes, Shorty,” said his mistress, “I wonder if you understand the game. Are you aware of rules like threes beating two pair? The game’s full of little things like that, you know. My father was the best poker player in town, and sometimes the two of us would have little games of stud between us. I tell you, Shorty, I could clean up these friends of yours if I had a chance to show them what my father taught me.”

“Mum, I never lost a shilling at poker in England.”

“That’s what is wrong. You play like an Englishman—— Blast! Cousin Hubert’s at that chorus again.... Shorty, if you win tonight, which seems to me highly improbable, don’t bring this noisy contraption up to my floor before I’m awake. I can wait for my cut until I’ve had a cup of coffee. Hold the news until I come down. If there are people around, just nod your head if you’ve taken a little tallow out of your friends. A nod for each dollar. If you’ve lost, don’t make the mistake of catching my eye, because what you see there will give you a start.”

“I’ll do my level best, mum.”

“Play ’em close to the chest, and don’t bet when you see the whites of their eyes. That means they’ve got something.”

As they reached the top the bell on the ground floor rang. It was a peremptory ring and made it clear that the ringee would stand for no delay whatever.

“That will be Miss Fitch,” said the mistress, stepping out of the cage.

“Yes, mum. Miss Fitch it is. I’d know her ring, mum, if all the bells in ’ell was buzzing at the same time. She can’t wait a second as soon as she ’ears you come in. She’ll be up ’ere laying of complaints about me.”

Miss Craven tried to look stern. “What have you been up to, Shorty?”

“It’s nothing as I’ve done, mum. It’s what I ’aven’t done. I didn’t get the ashes out and the slops emptied. ’Er Ladyship keeps an eye on things.”

“If it’s no worse than that, Shorty, I may be able to forgive you. This once only, of course.”

“Mum,” he acknowledged, “it may be as there’s a few other matters. But nothing you might call serious, mum, not ’ardly.”

The main room on the top floor combined the functions of bedroom, boudoir, and sitting room. It was enormous and had both north and west exposures, with the result that the rays of the setting sun were pouring through the windows and laying bright streamers across the gray carpet. There was a large fireplace, and over it a portrait of Joseph Norman Craven. The artist had pictured him as a rather beefy man with high color and stern eye. He looked, it must be confessed, the typical captain of industry and with considerably more than a hint of pomposity. To the affectionate daughter, however, he represented everything that was fine and worth while—Honesty, Integrity, Judgment, Generosity, Magnanimity.

Apart from the portrait, Miss Craven’s chief pride was in a bed which she had picked up herself in a little French town on a sly hint from an antique dealer that it had belonged to Napoleon and had been in Malmaison. This might easily have been true. The bed was Bonapartist in material and design, with an arched headboard of laminated wood, the edge elaborately carved in a gilded pattern with the three bees of Elba, and a low footboard from which projected a beautifully carved Napoleonic eagle with a wingspread of three feet. The cover was of blue velvet like the cloak of Marengo. Once a friend had remarked that it was impossible to look at the couch without seeing in it the form of the great conqueror.

She seated herself near one of the windows and began to reflect on what had happened during the first visit of the day. Having thrown down the gauntlet, she was committed to go on, but she was becoming a trifle apprehensive. “Tanner is as sharp as a bear trap,” she said to herself. “You don’t stand to get any good out of going to law with him.” Certainly Langley had come out badly in all the legal moves he had resorted to in efforts to recover the leadership of the Craven enterprises. Most of his inheritance had been swept away in the long legal battle. The rest had gone in the abortive efforts he had made to set himself up in opposition to the factories. “Poor Langley!” she thought. “He’s so fine and intelligent—and without any more business gumption than a louse!”

She believed that Tanner would take her warning to heart and desist from any further aggression. But if she had accomplished nothing more by her ultimatum than to stir him to renewed hostility, what was he likely to try? She puzzled over this for some time and finally had to acknowledge to herself that the direction of his next move was beyond her comprehension. She was certain of one thing only, that she would have to consult Ted Laird in the morning. Ted Laird was the dominant partner in the law firm of Thompson, Laird and Fine, and she spent a great deal of her time, and quite a bit of her money, in his office.

“If Tanner turns ugly,” was her final rejection, “he’ll find, at any rate, that he has a fight on his hands this time. He won’t be against a mere babe in the woods like Langley.”

The elevator came to a stop at the door of the shaft, and a brisk middle-aged woman stepped into the room. Miss Minnie Fitch had been secretary to the founder of the Craven fortunes and, on his death, had been given notice and a very small pension. Feeling sorry for her, Adelicia had taken her in as her own secretary and house manager, with the result that ever since the highly capable Miss Fitch had been ruling things with stern exactitude. She had acquired the name of Chief. She was seldom seen without a pencil in her hair and paper cuffs over her sleeves, and she was so addicted to accuracy and literal transcription that she kept notes on everything that occurred.

“Well, Chief, what’s on your mind?”

Miss Fitch drew some sheets of paper from under her belt, where she always carried letters and memoranda. “Many things,” she said. “First, a caller. A man looking for work. That Englishman who hangs about town. Vivien Prentice is the name. How can the English think of such names? He drinks. Heavily.”

“So I’ve heard.” Miss Craven had become thoughtful. “I always feel sorry for men like that.”

“Don’t feel sorry for this one,” said the secretary sharply. “The house is full to overflowing now. I can’t think of anything we need less in this house than a drunken Englishman—unless it might be another piano player. Have you ever stopped to think what He”—He was, of course, the late Joseph Norman Craven—“would say if he saw the state of affairs you’ve gone and got yourself into?”

“Of course I’ve thought of it,” declared the head of the household. “My father was a charitable man, and he would approve of what I’ve done.”

“He would not! I was his right hand for twenty-seven years and I knew the way his mind worked. Charitable, yes, but a well-ordered philanthropy. I’m sure He would turn in his grave if He saw the hit-and-miss way you have of taking in all these weaklings.”

The daughter made no response. In her silence lay the clue to the control which Miss Fitch had assumed. She claimed to know what Joseph Norman Craven would have said and done under any conceivable circumstance. Adelicia, believing her father perfect in all things, had not been able to find any way of substituting her own conception of him for the stern theories of Miss Fitch.

Miss Fitch was consulting her notes. “I put down everything he said, even if it didn’t seem to make sense. He asked if we had a piano to tune, and I said no at once. Then he asked—and I’m reading you his exact words, ‘Have you any Greek or Latin translating I can do for you? Anyone to be coached on Flemish primitives? That’s the sort of thing I seem best fitted to do.’ I was in no mood for joking. I said, ‘We’ll have no jokes, please.’ He said, ‘In that case, I’ll come straight to the point and ask if you have any menial work for me, such as shoveling snow or taking out ashes or splitting wood. I don’t seem able to make a living at anything else.’ I was suspicious of him by this time, but I said you had a fund for needy cases and that you might be willing to let him have some money. Now listen to this.” She studied her notes. “This is what he said. ‘I don’t know to what depths I’ll sink before I’m through, but I’m sure I’ll never sink low enough to accept charity.’ I asked him if he was hungry and he said, ‘Yes, I am always hungry, but that is a matter which concerns only my stomach and myself.’ Then he bowed and left. You would have thought I had insulted him.”

“You had, Chief.”

“How was I to know he had so much silly pride?”

Lish Craven shook her head slowly. “Not silly pride. It seems to me that he has the kind of pride you can admire.” She sighed. “Was he drunk?”

“I didn’t notice anything on his breath.”

The owner seated herself in a large Morris chair. It was clear that she had suddenly become depressed. “Chief,” she said, “I don’t like the looks of this. That poor man! He must have been in a desperate mood.”

“He’s just a tramp. Why bother your head about him?”

“Because I think it’s time some head was bothered about him. It’s quite clear that he’s a gentleman. Why must there be so much trouble and unhappiness in the world?” She got to her feet again with an air of sudden resolution. “I’m going to find him. Right away.”

“No,” said Miss Fitch sternly. “Not right away. We’re having dinner early tonight. Some people are coming in for the evening, and we’ve got to have everything out of the way. It was to be a kind of surprise for you. George Tapweed is bringing his banjo, and Sam Davids is coming and he has a lot of new songs and jokes. Miss Magna Readlong will be back from T’ronto and she wants to talk over plans for a big charity concert. For the Mission to Lepers, of course. It’s going to be a full evening, I can tell you.”

Adelicia sank back into the chair a second time. These were all old school friends, and so it would indeed be a full evening. She did not want a moment of it to be lost. She asked weakly, “What have you planned for dinner, Chief?”

“The perfect dinner,” was the answer. “A roast of beef. The first ribs, of course. Yorkshire pudding with the roast. Parsnips. Creamed carrots. Baked potatoes. Hot biscuits. Mince pie.”

It was the perfect dinner. The owner of The Waifery agreed so completely that she would have been content to sit down to it every evening of her life. When Miss Fitch said, “If you must see this Englishman, I guess it can wait for the morning,” she nodded and acquiesced. “It will be better to wait,” she said. “That will give me a chance to think it over and see what plans I can make to get him work. Father always believed in having something definite to go on, didn’t he? And make sure, Chief, that Cook doesn’t get the beef overdone again.”