Brownlows. Маргарет Олифант

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СКАЧАТЬ made it necessary. I should have gone back on Monday; but I thought you said—”

      “I am glad you didn’t come,” said Mr. Brownlow, quietly. “I should have told you had there been any occasion. No, it was not for that. You know he came in young Jones’s place.”

      “He’s not very much like young Jones,” said Jack—“as old as I am, I should think. How she pulls, to be sure! One would think, to see her go, she hadn’t been out for a week.”

      “Older than you are,” said Mr. Brownlow—“five-and-twenty;” and he gave an unconscious sigh—for it was dark, and the wind was sharp, and the mare very fresh; and under such circumstances a man may relieve his mind, at least to the extent of a sigh, without being obliged to render a reason. So, at least, Mr. Brownlow thought.

      But Jack heard it, somehow, notwithstanding the ring of the mare’s hoofs and the rush of the wind, and was confounded—as much confounded as he durst venture on being with such a slippery animal to deal with.

      “Beg your pardon, sir,” said the groom, “keep her steady, sir; this here is the gate she’s always a-shying at.”

      “Oh, confound her!” said Jack—or perhaps it was “confound you”—which would have been more natural; but the little waltz performed by Mrs. Bess at that moment, and the sharp crack of the whip, and the wind that whistled through all, made his adjuration less distinct than it might have been. When, however, the dangerous gate was past, and they were going on again with great speed and moderate steadiness, he resumed—

      “I thought you did not mean to have another in young Jones’s place. I should have said Brown could do all the work. When these fellows have too little to do they get into all sorts of mischief.”

      “Most fellows do,” said Mr. Brownlow, calmly. “I may as well tell you, Jack, that I wanted young Powys—I know his people; that is to say,” he added hastily, “I don’t know his people. Don’t take it into your head that I do—but still I’ve heard something about them—in a kind of a way; and it’s my special desire to have him there.”

      “I said nothing against it, sir,” said Jack, displeased. “You are the head, to do whatever you like. I only asked you know.”

      “Yes, I know you only asked,” said Mr. Brownlow, with quiet decision. “That is my business; but I’d rather you were civil to him, if it is the same to you.”

      “By Jove, I believe she’ll break our necks some day,” said Jack, in his irritation, though the mare was doing nothing particular. “Going as quiet as a lamb,” the groom said afterward in amazement, “when he let out at her enough to make a saint contrairy.” And “contrairy” she was up to the very door of the house, which perhaps, under the circumstances, was just as well.

      CHAPTER IX.

      NEW NEIGHBORS

      Perhaps one of the reasons why Jack was out of temper at this particular moment was that Mrs. Swayne had been impertinent to him. Not that he cared in the least for Mrs. Swayne; but naturally he took a little interest in the—child—he supposed she was only a child—a little light thing that felt like a feather when he carried her in out of the snow. He had carried her in, and he “took an interest” in her; and why he should be met with impertinence when he asked how the little creature was, was more than Jack could understand. The very morning of the day on which he saw young Powys first, he had been answered by Mrs. Swayne standing in front of her door, and pulling it close behind her, as if she was afraid of thieves or something. “She’s a-going on as nicely as could be, and there ain’t no cause for anxiety, sir,” Mrs. Swayne said, which was not a very impertinent speech after all.

      “Oh, I did not suppose there was,” said Jack. “It was only a sprain, I suppose; but she looked such a delicate little thing. That old woman with her was her mother, eh? What did she mean traveling with a fragile little creature like that in the carrier’s cart?”

      “I don’t know about no old woman,” said Mrs. Swayne; “the good lady as has my front parlor is the only female as is here, and they’ve come for quiet, Mr. John, not meaning no offense; and when you’re a bit nervish, as I knows myself by experience, it goes to your heart every time as there comes a knock at the door.”

      “You can’t have many knocks at the door here,” said Jack; “as for me, I only wanted to know how the little thing was.”

      “Miss is a-doing nicely, sir,” Mrs. Swayne answered, with solemnity; and this was what Jack considered a very impertinent reception of his kind inquiries. He was amused by it, and yet it put him a little out of temper too. “As if I could possibly mean the child any harm,” he said to himself, with a laugh; rather, indeed, insisting on the point that she was a child in all his thoughts on the subject; and then, as has been seen, the sudden introduction of young Powys and Mr. Brownlow’s calm adoption of the sentiment that it was his business to decide who was to be in the office, came a little hard upon Jack, who, after all, notwithstanding his philosophical indifference as to his sister’s heiress-ship, liked to be consulted about matters of business, and did not approve of being put back into a secondary place.

      Thus it was with a sense of having done her duty by her new lodgers, that Mrs. Swayne paid her periodical visit in the afternoon to the inmates of the parlor, where the object of Jack Brownlow’s inquiries lay very much covered up on the little horse-hair sofa. She was still suffering from her sprain, and was lying asleep on the narrow couch, wrapped in all the shawls her mother possessed, and with her own pretty red cloak thrown over the heap. It was rather a grim little apartment, with dark-green painted walls, and coarse white curtains drawn over the single window. But the inmates probably were used to no better, and certainly were quite content with their quarters. The girl lay asleep with a flush upon her cheeks, which the long eyelashes seemed to overshadow, and her soft rings of dark hair pushed back in pretty disorder off her soft, full, childlike forehead. She was sleeping that grateful sleep of convalescence, in which life itself seems to come back—a sleep deep and sound and dreamless, and quite undisturbed by the little murmur of voices which went on over the fire. Her mother was a tall, meagre woman, older than the mother of such a girl ought to have been. Save that subtle, indefinable resemblance which is called family likeness, the two did not resemble each other. The elder woman now sitting in the horsehair easy-chair over the fire, was very tall, with long features, and gray cheeks which had never known any roses. She had keen black passionate eyes, looking as young and full of life as if she had been sixteen instead of nearly sixty; and her hair was still as black as it had been in her youth. But somehow the dead darkness of the hair made the gray face underneath look older than if it had been softened by the silvery tones of white that belong to the aged. She was dressed as poor women, who have ceased to care about their appearance, and have no natural instinct that way, so often dress, in every thing most suited to increase her personal deficiencies. She had a little black lace cap over her black hair, and a black gown with a rim of grayish white round the neck, badly made, and which took away any shape that might ever have been in her tall figure. Her hands were hard, and red, and thin, with no sort of softening between them and the harsh black sleeve which clasped her wrists. She was not a lady, that was evident; and yet you would not have said she was a common woman after you had looked into her eyes.

      It was very cold, though the thaw had set in, and the snow was gone—raw and damp with a penetrating chill, which is as bad as frost—or worse, some people think. And the new-comer sat over the fire, leaning forward in the high-backed horse-hair chair, and spreading out her hands to the warmth. She had given Mrs. Swayne a general invitation to come in for a chat in the afternoon, not knowing as yet how serious a business that was; and was now making the best of it, interposing a few words now and then, and yet not altogether without comfort in the companionship, the very hum of human speech having something СКАЧАТЬ