The Tapestry Room. Mrs. Molesworth

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ as was then the fashion for little girls of Jeanne's age and country, and bade her again not to delay going downstairs.

      Jeanne set off. In that great rambling old house it was really quite a journey from her room to her mother's salon. There was the long corridor to pass, at one end of which were Jeanne's quarters, at the other a room which had had for her since her babyhood a mingled fascination and awe. It was hung with tapestry, very old, and in some parts faded, but still distinct. As Jeanne passed by the door of this room, she noticed that it was open, and the gleam of the faint moonlight on the snow-covered garden outside attracted her.

      "I can see the terrace ever so much better from the tapestry room window," she said to herself. "I wonder what Dudu is doing, poor old fellow. Oh, how cold he must be! I suppose Grignan is asleep in a hole in the hedge, and the chickens will be all right any way. I have not seen Houpet all day."

      "Houpet" was Jeanne's favourite of the three chickens. He had come by his name on account of a wonderful tuft of feathers on the top of his head, which stuck straight up and then waved down again, something like a little umbrella. No doubt he was a very rare and wonderful chicken, and if I were clever about chickens I would be able to tell you all his remarkable points. But that I cannot do. I can only say he was the queerest-looking creature that ever pecked about a poultry-yard, and how it came to pass that Jeanne admired him so, I cannot tell you either.

      "Poor Houpet!" she repeated, as she ran across the tapestry room to the uncurtained window; "I am sure he must have been very sad without me all day. He has such a loving heart. The others are nice too, but not half so loving. And Grignan has no heart at all; I suppose tortoises never have; only he is very comical, which is nearly as nice. As for Dudu, I really cannot say, he is so stuck up, as if he knew better than any one else. Ah, there he is, the old fellow! Well, Dudu," she called out, as if the raven could have heard her so far off and through the closely shut window; "well, Dudu, how are you to-day, my dear sir? How do you like the snow and the cold?"

      Dudu calmly continued his promenade up and down the terrace. Jeanne could clearly distinguish his black shape against the white ground.

      "I am going downstairs to see mamma, Dudu," she went on. "I love mamma very much, but I wish she wasn't my mother at all, but my sister. I wish she was turned into a little girl to play with me, and that papa was turned into a little boy. How funny he would look with his white hair, wouldn't he, Dudu? Oh, you stupid Dudu, why won't you speak to me? I wish you would come up here; there's a beautiful castle and garden in the tapestry, where you would have two peacocks to play with;" for just at that moment the moon, passing from under a cloud, lighted up one side of the tapestry, which, as Jeanne said, represented a garden with various curious occupants. And as the wavering brightness caught the grotesque figures in turn, it really seemed to the little girl as if they moved. Half pleased, half startled at the fancy, she clapped her hands.

      "Dudu, Dudu," she cried, "the peacocks want you to come; they're beginning to jump about;" and almost as she said the words a loud croak from the raven sounded in her ears, and turning round, there, to her amazement, she saw Dudu standing on the ledge of the window outside, his bright eyes shining, his black wings flapping, just as if he would say,

      "Let me in, Mademoiselle, let me in. Why do you mock me by calling me if you won't let me in?"

      Completely startled by this time, Jeanne turned and fled.

      "He must be a fairy," she said by herself; "I'll never make fun of Dudu any more—never. He must be a fairy, or how else could he have got up from the terrace on to the window-sill all in a minute? And I don't think a raven fairy would be nice at all; he'd be a sort of an imp, I expect. I wouldn't mind now if Houpet was a fairy, he's so gentle and loving; but Dudu would be a sort of ogre fairy, he's so black and solemn. Oh dear, how he startled me! How did he get up there? I'm very glad I don't sleep in the tapestry room."

      But when she got down to the brightly-lighted salon her cheeks were so pale and her eyes so startled-looking that her mother was quite concerned, and eagerly asked what was the matter.

      "Nothing," said Jeanne at first, after the manner of little girls, and boys too, when they do not want to be cross-questioned; but after a while she confessed that she had run into the tapestry room on her way down, and that the moonlight made the figures look as if they were moving—and—and—that Dudu came and stood on the window-sill and croaked at her.

      "Dudu stood on the window-sill outside the tapestry room!" repeated her father; "impossible, my child! Why, Dudu could not by any conceivable means get up there; you might as well say you saw the tortoise there too."

      "If I had called him perhaps he would have come too; I believe Dudu and he are great friends," thought Jeanne to herself, for her mind was in a queer state of confusion, and she would not have felt very much astounded at anything. But aloud she only repeated, "I'm sure he was there, dear papa."

      And to satisfy her, her kind father, though he was not so young as he had been, and the bad weather made him very rheumatic, mounted upstairs to the tapestry room, and carefully examined the window inside and out.

      "Nothing of the kind to be seen, my little girl," was his report. "Master Dudu was hobbling about in the snow on his favourite terrace walk as usual. I hope the servants give him a little meat in this cold weather, by the by. I must speak to Eugène about it. What you fancied was Dudu, my little Jeanne," he continued, "must have been a branch of the ivy blown across the window. In the moonlight, and with the reflections of the snow, things take queer shapes."

      "But there is no wind, and the ivy doesn't grow so high up, and the ivy could not have croaked," thought Jeanne to herself again, though she was far too well brought up a little French girl to contradict her father by saying so.

      "Perhaps so, dear papa," was all she said.

      But her parents still looked a little uneasy.

      "She cannot be quite well," said her mother. "She must be feverish. I must tell Marcelline to make her a little tisane when she goes to bed."

      "Ah, bah!" said Jeanne's white-headed papa. "What we were speaking of will be a much better cure than tisane. She needs companionship of her own age."

      Jeanne pricked up her ears at this, and glanced at her mother inquiringly. Instantly there started into her mind Marcelline's prophecy about her wish.

      "The naughty little Marcelline!" she thought to herself. "She has been tricking me. I believe she knew something was going to happen. Mamma, my dear mamma!" she cried, eagerly but respectfully, "have you something to tell me? Have you had letters, mamma, from the country, where the little cousin lives?"

      Jeanne's mother softly stroked the cheeks, red enough now, of her excited little daughter.

      "Yes, my child," she replied. "I have had a letter. It was for that I sent for you—to tell you about it. I have a letter from the grandfather of Hugh, with whom he has lived since his parents died, and he accepts my invitation. Hugh is to come to live with us, as his mother would have wished. His grandfather can spare him, for he has other grandchildren, and we need him, do we not, my Jeanne? My little girl needs a little brother—and I loved his mother so much," she added in a lower voice.

      Jeanne could not speak. Her face was glowing with excitement, her breath came quick and short, almost, it seemed, as if she were going to cry. "O, mamma!" was all she could say—"O mamma!" but her mother understood her.

      "And when will he come?" asked Jeanne next.

      "Soon, I hope. In a few days; but it depends on the СКАЧАТЬ