Buch lesen: «The Corner House Girls Snowbound», Seite 6

CHAPTER XI – EMBERS IN THE GRATE

Mr. Durkin of the Coxford Hotel had furnished the party with a hearty lunch to eat while they were en route to Red Deer Lodge, and Ruth had brought two big thermos bottles of hot tea, likewise prepared at the hotel. The drivers had their own lunches, and at noon the party halted in the shelter of a windbreak to breathe the horses and allow them to eat their oats.

Mrs. MacCall and the older girls complained of stiffness from sitting so long in the sledges. Riding so far in the cold was not altogether pleasant; there was no sunshine at all now. The gathering storm had overcast the entire sky, and as they went on after lunch a rising wind began moaning through the forest.

“I don’t see why the trees have to make such a meachin’ noise,” sighed Dot, as they climbed a steep hill so slowly that the rueful sound of the rising gale was quite audible.

“Where did you get such a word, Dot?” demanded Ruth, smiling at her.

“It is a good word. Uncle Rufus uses it,” declared the smallest Corner House girl. “And Uncle Rufus never uses bad words.”

“Granted,” Ruth said. “But what does ‘meachin’ mean?”

“Why, just as though the wind felt bad and was whimpering about it,” said Dot, with assurance. “It makes you all shivery to listen to it. And after we heard that link, and know that there are bears and wolfs about – O-o-oh! what’s that, Ruthie?”

Something white had flashed right up in front of the noses of the first team of horses, and with great leaps broke away from the road. Tom Jonah was at the rear of the procession and did not at first see this bounding shape.

Neale stood up in the second sleigh and clapped his hands sharply together. The white ball stopped – halting right in a snow-patch; being so much like the snow itself in color that those in the sledges could scarcely see it. The sharp crack of Neale’s ungloved palms seemed to make the creature cower in the snow. It halted for a moment only, however.

“Oh! The bunny!” gasped Tess, standing up to see.

“A big white hare,” Mr. Howbridge said. “I had no idea there were such big ones around here.”

The hare burst into high speed again and disappeared, almost before Tom Jonah set out for him.

“Come back, Tom Jonah!” shouted Tess. “Why, you couldn’t catch that bunny if you had started ahead of him.”

“Wow! that’s a good one,” said Neale O’Neil. “Tell you what, Aggie, those small sisters of yours are right full of new ideas.”

“That is what teacher says is the matter with Robbie Foote,” remarked Sammy, thoughtfully.

“How is that?” asked Agnes, expecting some illuminating information from the standpoint of a lower grade pupil.

“Why,” Sammy explained, “teacher asked Rob what was the plural of man. Rob told her ‘men.’ Then, of course, she had to keep right on at it. If you do answer her right she goes right at you again,” scoffed Sammy. “That’s why I don’t often answer her right if I can help it. It only makes you trouble.”

“Oh! Oh!” chuckled Neale. “A Daniel come to judgment.”

“Wait. Let’s hear the rest of Sam’s story,” begged Agnes. “What was Robbie Foote’s idea?”

“That’s what teacher said – he was full of ideas, only they were silly,” went on Sammy. “When he’d told her ‘men’ was the plural of ‘man,’ she said: ‘What is the plural of child?’ He told her ‘twins.’ What d’you know about that? She said his ideas were silly.”

“I’m not so sure he was silly,” laughed Neale.

“I wonder what has become of those Birdsall twins,” Agnes said thoughtfully. “Up here in this wild country – ”

“Nonsense!” exclaimed Neale. “You don’t know anything of the kind. Those two girls that fisher-woman spoke about – ”

“One of them was a boy.”

“Well, that doesn’t prove anything. We don’t even know that the two at the fisher-village were twins.”

“But they were brother and sister roaming about – runaways and alone.”

“Oh, Aggie!” he cried, “don’t make up your mind a thing is so without getting some real evidence first. Mr. Howbridge asked, and he is not at all sure those stragglers were the twins.”

“Somehow I just feel that they were,” sighed the second Corner House girl, with a confidence that Neale saw it was useless to try to shake.

When Agnes Kenway made up her mind to a thing Neale wagged his head and gave it up.

The party was quite too jolly, however, to bother much about the lost Birdsall twins just then. Even Mr. Howbridge had said nothing about them since his cross-examination of the hotel-keeper back at Coxford.

If the twins had come this way, for instance, attempting to reach Red Deer Lodge, surely some of the people of Coxford or the woodsmen going back and forth on the tote-road would have met and recognized them. And if Ralph was dressed in some of his sister’s clothing, they would have been the more surely marked.

Two girls of twelve or so traveling into the woods? It seemed quite ridiculous.

For this was indeed a wild country through which the tote-road ran. The fact of its being a wilderness was marked even to the eyes of those so unfamiliar with such scenes.

Now and then a fox barked from the brakes in the lowland. Jays in droves winged across the clearings with raucous cries. More than one trampled place beside the thickets of edible brush showed where the deer herd had browsed within stone’s throw of the tote-road.

And then, as the party came closer to the ridge on which Red Deer Lodge was built, and the twilight began to gather, the big white owls of these northern forests went flapping through the tree-lanes, skimming the snowcrust for the rabbits and other small animals that might be afoot even this early in the evening.

The spread of the wings of the first of these monster owls that they saw was quite six feet from tip to tip, and it almost scared Dot Kenway. With an eerie “Hoo! Hoo! Hoo-oo!” and a swish of wings it crossed the road just ahead of the horses, and made even those plodding beasts toss their heads and prick up their ears.

“Oh, look at that ’normous great white chicken!” shouted Dot. “Did you ever?”

“It is an owl, child,” said Tess.

“An owl as big as that?” gasped the smaller girl. “Why – why – it could carry you right off like the eagle that Mr. Lycurgus Billet set his Sue for bait! Don’t you ’member?”

“I guess I do remember!” Tess declared. “But an owl isn’t like an eagle. It isn’t so savage.”

The party had come a long way, and the steaming horses were now weary. As evening approached the cold increased in intensity, while the mournfully sounding wind promised stern weather. The members of the party from Milton began to congratulate each other that they were arriving at the Lodge before a big storm should sweep over this northern country.

“And suppose we get snowed in and aren’t able to get out of the woods till spring?” suggested Cecile, not without some small fear that such might be a possibility.

“There goes little Miss Fidget!” cried her brother. “Always worrying over the worst that may happen.”

“But I suppose we could be snowbound up here?” suggested Ruth, although scarcely with anxiety.

“Yes!” agreed Luke, laughing. “And pigs might fly. But they tell me they are awful uncertain birds.”

“Don’t listen to him, Ruthie,” said Cecile. “We may have to stay here all winter long.”

“Then I only hope Mr. Howbridge sent up grub enough to see us through till spring,” put in the collegian gayly. “For I can foresee right now that this keen air is going to give me the appetite of an Eskimo.”

It was a long climb to the top of the ridge on which the Birdsalls had built their rustic home. When the party came in sight of it the lamps were already lighted and these beckoned cheerfully to the arrivals while they were still a long way off.

The private road which had branched off from the regular tote-road at the foot of the ridge was easy to ascend beside some of the hills they had climbed. The teams, however, were not to be urged out of a walk.

There was a sudden flare of sulphurous light over the wooded caps of the mountains to the west of the ridge; but this lasted only a few minutes. The sun was then smothered in the mists as it sank to rest. Dusk almost at once filled the aisles of the forest.

On the summit of the ridge about the big, sprawling, rustic house only shade trees had been allowed to stand. The land was cleared and tilled to some extent. At least, there was plenty of open space around the Lodge and the log barns and the outbuildings.

Somebody was on watch, for the big entrance door opened before the sleds reached the steps, and yellow lamplight shone out across the porch. Hedden stood in the doorway, while another man ran down to assist with the bags and bundles.

“Oh, what a homelike looking place!” Ruth cried, quite as amazed as the other visitors by the appearance of the Lodge.

Aside from the fact that the house was built of round logs with the bark peeled off, it did not seem to be at all rough or of crude construction. There were two floors and a garret. The entrance hall seemed as big as a barn.

It was cozy and warm, however, despite its size. There was a gallery all around this hall at the level of the second floor, and a stairway went up on either side. At the rear was a huge fireplace, and this was heaped with logs which gave off both light and heat. There was a chandelier dropped from the ceiling, however, and acetylene gas flared from the burners of this fixture.

The whole party crowded to the hearth where benches and chairs were drawn up in a wide circle before the flames. The maids relieved Mrs. MacCall and the girls of their outer wraps and overshoes. The boys had been shown where they were to leave their caps and coats.

Such a hilarious crowd as they were! Jokes and cheerful gossip were the order of this hour of rest. With all but one member of the party! There was one very serious face, and this was the countenance of the youngest of the four Kenway sisters.

“Dorothy Kenway! what is the matter with you?” demanded Tess, at last seeing the expression on the face of her little sister.

Dot had been gazing all about the room with amazed eyes until this question came. Then with gravity she asked:

“Tessie! didn’t Mr. Howbridge say this was a lodge?”

“Why, yes; this is Red Deer Lodge, child,” rejoined Tess.

“But – but, Tess! you know it isn’t a lodge, nor a room where they have lodges! Now, is it?!”

“Why – why – ”

“It can’t be!” went on the smaller girl with great insistence. “You know that was a lodge where we went night before last to have our Christmas tree on Meadow Street.”

“A lodge?” gasped Tess.

“Yes. You know it was. And there was a pulpit and chairs on a platform at both ends of the lodge. And lodges are held there. I know, ’cause Becky Goronofsky’s father belongs to one that meets there. She said so. And he wears a little white apron with a blue border and a sash over his shoulder.

“Now,” said the earnest Dot, “there’s nothing like that here, so it’s not a lodge at all. I don’t see why they call it a red lodge for deers.”

Tess would have been tempted to call on Mr. Howbridge himself for an explanation of this seeming mystery had the lawyer not been just then in conference with Hedden in a corner of the room. The butler had beckoned his employer away from the others.

“What is it, Hedden?” asked the lawyer. “Has something gone wrong?”

“Not with the arrangements for the comfort of your party, Mr. Howbridge,” the man assured him. “But when we came in here yesterday (and I unlocked the door myself with the key you gave me) I found that somebody had recently occupied the Lodge.”

“You don’t mean it! Somebody broken in! Some thief?”

“No, sir. I went around to all the windows and doors. Nobody had broken in. Whoever it was must have had a key, too.”

“But who was it? What did the intruder do?”

“I find nothing disturbed, sir. Nothing of importance. But one room, at least, had been used recently. It is a sitting-room upstairs – right near this main hall. There had been a fire in the grate up there. When we came in yesterday the embers were still glowing. But I could find no intruder anywhere about the Lodge, sir.”

CHAPTER XII – MYSTERY AND FUN

Mr. Howbridge was evidently somewhat impressed by Hedden’s report. He stared gravely for a minute at his grizzled butler. Then he nodded.

“Take me upstairs and show me which room you mean, Hedden,” he said.

“Yes, sir. This way, sir.”

He led the lawyer toward the nearest stairway. They mounted to the gallery. Then the man led his employer down a passage and turned short into a doorway. The room they entered was really on the other side of the chimney from the big entrance hall.

It was a small, cozy den. Mr. Howbridge looked the place over keenly, scrutinizing the furnishings before he glanced at the open coal grate to which Hedden sought to draw his attention first of all.

“Ah. Yes,” said the lawyer, thoughtfully. “A work-basket. Low rocker. A dressing table. Couch. This, Hedden, was Mrs. Birdsall’s private sitting-room when she was alive. I never saw the house before, but I have heard Birdsall describe it.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Mrs. Birdsall spent a good deal of her time indoors in this room, and the children with her. So he said. And you found live embers in the grate there?”

“Yes, sir,” said the butler, his own eyes big with wonder.

“No other signs of anybody having been here?”

“Not that I could see,” said Hedden.

“Strange – if anybody had been in here who had a key. Have you seen Ike M’Graw?”

“No, sir. The men who brought us up here said the man had gone away – had been away for a week, sir – but would return tonight.”

“Then he was not the person who built the fire the embers of which you found. The coals would not have burned for a week. He is the person who has a key to the Lodge, and nobody else.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Whoever got in here, of course, either departed when you came, Hedden, or before. Did you notice any tracks about the house?”

“Plenty, sir. But only of beasts and birds.”

“Ah-ha! Are the animals as tame as that up here?”

“There were footprints that the men from town assured me were those of a big cat of some kind, and there were dog footprints; only the men said they were those of wolves. They say the beasts are getting hungry early in the season, because of the deep and early snow, sir.”

“Humph! Better say nothing to the children about that,” said Mr. Howbridge. “Of course, this party’s being here will keep any marauding animals at a distance. We won’t care for that sort of visitor.”

“I think there is no danger, sir. I will tell the chef to throw out no table-scraps, and to feed that big dog we have brought in the back kitchen. Then there will be nothing to attract the wild creatures to the door.”

“Good idea,” Mr. Howbridge said. “And I will warn them all tomorrow not to leave the vicinity of the Lodge alone. When Ike M’Graw arrives we shall be all right. This vicinity is his natural habitat, and he will know all that’s right to do, and what not to do.”

Mr. Howbridge still looked about the room. The thing that interested him most was the mystery of the intruder who had built the fire in the grate. Mrs. Birdsall’s sitting-room! And the lawyer knew from hearing the story repeated again and again by the sorrowing widower, that the woman had been brought in here after her fall from the horse and had died upon the couch in the corner of the room.

He wondered.

Meanwhile the crowd of young people below were comforted with tea and crackers before they went to their bedrooms to change their clothes for dinner. Mr. Howbridge had brought the customs of his own formal household to Red Deer Lodge, and, knowing how particular the lawyer was, Ruth Kenway had warned the others to come prepared to dress for dinner.

Mrs. MacCall, after drinking her third cup of tea, went off with the chief maid to view the house and learn something about it. The Scotch woman was very capable and had governed Mr. Howbridge’s own home before she went to the old Corner House to keep straight the household lines there for the Kenways.

Her situation here at the Lodge was one between the serving people and the family; but the latter, especially the smaller girls, would have been woeful indeed had Mrs. MacCall not sat at the table with them and been one of the family as she was at home in Milton.

The girls were shown to their two big rooms on the second floor, and found them warm and cozy. They were heated by wood fires in drum-stoves. Ike M’Graw, general caretaker of the Lodge, had long since piled each wood box in the house full with billets of hard wood.

Neale and Luke and Sammy were given another room off the gallery above the main hall. There they washed, and freshened up their apparel, and otherwise made themselves more presentable. Even Sammy looked a little less grubby than usual when they came down to the big fire again.

It was black dark outside by this time. The wind was still moaning in the forest, and when they went to the door the fugitive snowflakes drifted against one’s cheek.

“Going to be a bad night, I guess,” Neale said, coming back from an observation, just as the girls came down the stairway. “Oh, look! see ’em all fussed up!”

The girls had shaken out their furbelows, and now came down smiling and preening not a little. Mr. Howbridge appeared in a Tuxedo coat.

“Wish I’d brought my ‘soup to nuts,’” admitted Luke Shepard. “This is going to be a dress-up affair. I thought we were coming into the wilderness to rough it.”

“All the roughing it will be done outside the house, young man,” said Cecile to her brother. “You must be on your very best behavior inside.”

Hedden’s assistant announced dinner, and Mr. Howbridge offered his arm to Mrs. MacCall, who had just descended the stairway in old-fashioned rustling black silk.

Immediately Luke joined the procession with Ruth on his arm, and Neale followed with Agnes, giggling of course. Cecile made Sammy walk beside her, and he was really proud to do this, only he would not admit it. At the end of the procession came the two little girls.

They had not seen the dining-room before. It was big enough for a banquet hall, and the table without being extended would have seated a dozen. There was an open fireplace on either side of this room. The acetylene lamps gave plenty of light. There were favors at each plate. There were even flowers on the table. Aside from the unplastered walls and raftered ceiling, one might have thought this dinner served in Mr. Howbridge’s own home.

They all (the older ones at least) began to realize how great a cross it would have been for the lawyer to take into his home in Milton two harum-scarum children like the Birdsall twins. If all tales about them were true, they were what Neale O’Neil called “terrors.”

Such children would surely break every rule of the lawyer’s well-ordered existence. And bachelors of Mr. Howbridge’s age do not take kindly to changes.

“Think of bringing the refinements of his own establishment away up here into the woods for a three weeks’ vacation!” gasped Cecile afterwards to Ruth.

To-night at dinner every rule of a well-furnished and well-governed household was followed. Hedden and his assistant served. The food was deliciously cooked and the sauce of a good appetite aided all to enjoy the meal.

And the fun and laughter! Mr. Howbridge and Mrs. MacCall enjoyed the jokes and chatter as much as the younger people themselves. Dot’s discovery that this was not at all like the lodge room on Meadow Street delighted everybody.

“If you think that red deer ever held lodge meetings in this house, you are much mistaken, honey,” Agnes told the smallest Corner House girl.

Tom Jonah was allowed to come in and “sit up” at table. The old dog was so well trained that his table manners (and this was Ruth’s declaration) were far superior to those of Sammy Pinkney. But Sammy was on his best behavior this evening. The grandeur of the table service quite overpowered him.

When they all filed back into the hall, which was really the living-room and reception hall combined, Tom Jonah went with them and curled down on a warm spot on the hearth. One of the men staggered in with a great armful of chunks for the evening fire. Hedden found a popper and popcorn. There was a basket of shiny apples, and even a jug of sweet cider appeared, to be set down near the fire to take the chill off it.

“Now, this,” said Mr. Howbridge, sitting in a great chair with his slippered feet outstretched toward the fire, “is what I call country comfort.”

“Whist, man!” exclaimed Mrs. MacCall. “’Tis plain to be seen you ken little about country comforts, or discomforts either. You were born in the city, Mr. Howbridge, and you have lived in the city most of your days. ’Tis little you know what it means to live away from towns and from luxuries.”

“Why,” laughed the lawyer, “I always go away for a vacation in the summer, and I usually choose some rustic neighborhood.”

“Aye. Where they have piped water in the house, and electricity, an’ hair mattresses. Aye. I know your kind of ‘country,’ too, Mr. Howbridge. But when I was a child at home we lived in the real country – only two farms in the vale and the shepherds’ cots. My feyther was a shepherd, you know.”

“You must be some relation of ours, then, Mrs. MacCall,” Luke said, smiling.

“Oh, aye. By Adam,” said the housekeeper coolly. “I’ve nae doot we sprang from the same stock the Bible speaks of.”

“Now will you be good?” cried Cecile, shaking a finger at her brother. “Go on, Mrs. MacCall. Tell us about your Highland home.”

“Hech! There’s very little to tell,” said the housekeeper, shaking her head, “save that ’twas a very lonely vale we lived in, and forbye in winter. Then we’d not see a strange body from end to end of the snows. And the snow came early and went late.

“If we had not a grand oat bin and a cow in the stable we bairns would oft go hungry. Why, our mother would sometimes keep us abed in stormy weather to save turf. A fire like yon,” she added, nodding toward the blazing pile in the chimney, “would have been counted a sin even in a laird’s house.”

“Ah, Mrs. MacCall,” said the lawyer, “we’re all lairds over here.”

“Aye, that can pay the price can have the luxuries. ’Tis so. But luxuries we knew naught about where I was born and bred.”

“I suppose the people right around us here – the residents of this neighborhood – have few luxuries,” Ruth said thoughtfully.

“There aren’t many neighbors, I guess,” said Neale, laughing.

“But those people living in that fishing village – and even at Coxford – never saw a tenth of the things which we consider necessary at home,” Ruth pursued.

“Suppose!” exclaimed Cecile eagerly. “Just suppose we were snowed in up here and could not get out for weeks, and nobody could get to us. I guess we would have to learn to go without luxuries! Maybe without food.”

“Oh, don’t suggest such a thing,” begged Agnes. “And this cold air gives one such an appetite!”

“Don’t mention a shortage of food,” put in Neale, chuckling, “or Aggie will be getting up in the night and coming down to rob the pantry.”

There might have been a squabble right then and there had not Hedden appeared, and, in his grave way, announced:

“Mr. M’Graw has arrived, sir. Shall I bring him in here?”

“Ah!” exclaimed the lawyer, waking up from a brown study. “Ike M’Graw? I understood from Birdsall that he is a character. Has he had supper, Hedden?”

“Yes, sir. I knew that you would wish him served. He has been eating in the servants’ dining-room, sir.”

“Send him in,” the lawyer said. “Now, young folks, here is the man who can tell us more about Red Deer Lodge and the country hereabout, and all that goes on in it, than anybody else. Here – ”

The door opened again. Hedden announced gravely:

“Mr. Ike M’Graw, sir.”

There strode over the threshold one of the tallest men the young people, at least, had ever seen. And he was so lean that his height seemed more than it really was.

“Why,” gasped Neale to Agnes, “he’s so thin he doesn’t cast a shadow, I bet!”

“Sh!” advised the girl warningly.

They were all vastly interested in the appearance of Mr. Ike M’Graw.