The Essential W. Somerset Maugham Collection. W. Somerset Maugham

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ I declare you two girls are getting to be as bad as Reggie, here. Setting a table without bread!"

      "I was keeping it for a surprise," said Gertie, getting up slowly. "I want you to appreciate the fact that Nora helped me by doing the baking this morning." Nora's face flushed with pleasure as her brother patted her on the shoulder with evident approval. She looked at Gertie with eyes shining with gratitude. At that moment she came nearer liking her sister-in-law than she ever was to again.

      Gertie went slowly across the room--she usually moved with nervous quickness--and picking up the missing bread plate from where it was leaning against the wall behind the stove went into the little pantry that gave off the kitchen. Slowly she returned and stood beside her husband's chair. On the plate, burned almost to a cinder, was the loaf of bread that Nora had forgotten.

      "Here it is," said Gertie. Her smile was cruel.

      "Oh, I say, Gertie, that's too bad of you." It was Frank who spoke.

      "Too bad!" Nora sprung to her feet with flashing eyes. "Too bad. It's mean and despicable. There are no words to do it justice. But what could I expect from----"

      "Nora!" said her brother sharply.

      Nora rushed from the table to her room. And although Eddie knocked repeatedly at her door and begged her to let him speak with her if only for a moment that evening at supper-time, she made no sign nor did anyone see her again that night.

      She made a point of not coming down to breakfast the next morning until after the time when the men would be gone. She thought it best to meet Gertie alone. It was time that they came to some sort of understanding. To her surprise and annoyance Taylor was still at the table. Gertie was nowhere to be seen.

      "Come down to keep me company? That's real nice of you, I'm sure."

      "I supposed, naturally, that you had gone. You usually have at this hour."

      "You don't know how it flatters a fellow to have women folks study his habits like that," he said with a grin.

      "I knew that my brother had left the house, since I saw him go. I took it for granted that all his employees left when he did. Let me assure you, once and for all, that your habits are of no possible interest to me."

      Taylor put on his hat and went to the door. Just as he was about to open it, he changed his mind and came back to the table where Nora had seated herself and stood leaning on the back of his chair looking down at her.

      "It's all right for us to row," he said, "but if I were you I'd go a little easy with Gertie. She's all right and a good sort at bottom, you can take it from me. Yesterday, I admit she was downright nasty. I guess you rile her up more than she's used to. But I want to see you two get on."

      "It's my turn to feel flattered," said Nora sarcastically.

      "Well, so long," he said with undiminished good humor as he went out.

      Gertie appeared almost at once from the pantry.

      "I heard what he said. I couldn't help it. He was right--about us both. We don't hit it off. But I'm willing to give it another try."

      "I have little choice but to agree with you," said Nora bitterly.

      "Well, that's hardly the way to begin," retorted Gertie angrily.

      There was a certain air of restraint about them ail when they came in to dinner. Eddie looked both worried and anxious. But as he saw that the two women were going about their duties much the same as usual, he argued that the storm had blown over and brightened visibly.

      The men had pushed back their chairs and were preparing to light their after-dinner pipes.

      "We'll be able to start on the ironing this afternoon," said Gertie, addressing Nora for the first time since breakfast.

      "Very well."

      "I say," said Trotter, who rarely ventured on a remark while at the table, "it was a rare big wash you done this morning by the look of it on the line."

      "When she's been out in this country a bit longer, Nora'll learn not to wear more things than she can help," said Gertie.

      As a matter of fact, she had no intention of criticising Nora at the moment. She meant, merely, that she would be more economical with experience. But Nora was in the mood to take fire at once.

      "Was there more than my fair share?" she asked sharply.

      "You use double the number of stockings than what I do. And everything else is the same."

      "I see. Clean but incompetent."

      "There's many a true word spoken in jest," said Gertie with angry emphasis.

      "Say, Reg," Taylor broke in hastily, "is it true that when you first came out you asked Ed where the bath-room was?"

      "That's right," laughed Trotter. "Ed told 'im there was a river a mile and a 'alf from 'ere, an' that was the only bath-room 'e knowed."

      "One gets used to that sort of thing, eh, Reg?" said Marsh good-naturedly.

      "Ra-ther. If I saw a proper bath-room _now_, it would only make me feel nervous."

      "I knew a couple of Englishmen out in British Columbia," broke in Taylor, "who were bathing, and the only other people around were Indians. The first two years they were there, they wouldn't have anything to do with the Indians because they were so dirty. After that the Indians wouldn't have anything to do with them."

      He pointed this delectable anecdote by holding his nose.

      "What a disgusting story!" said Nora.

      "D'you think so? I rather like it."

      "_You_ would."

      "Now don't start quarreling, you two. And on Frank's last day."

      Nora gave her brother a quick glance. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask what he meant by Frank's last day, but seeing that Taylor was watching her with an amused smile, she held her tongue. Getting up, she began clearing away the table.

      Hornby, ramming the tobacco into his pipe, went over to the corner by the stove, where Gertie was scalding out her large dishpan, and tried to interest her in the number of logs he had split since breakfast, without conspicuous success.

      Trotter stood looking out of the window, while Marsh stretched himself lazily in one of the rocking chairs with a sigh of content. Things were beginning to shake down a little better. There had been a time yesterday when he feared that everything was off. He knew Nora's temper of old and he knew his wife's jealous fear of her criticism. It would take some rubbing to wear off the sharp corners. But things were coming out all right, after all. They'd soon be working together like a well-broken team. Gertie had been nasty about the bread. But apparently everything was patched up. And with Frank once gone, and the new chap--a man of the Trotter type, who would never obtrude himself--he СКАЧАТЬ