Love's Way by Joan Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

a troupe of foreigners home with him,” the higgler confided, his eyes round with interest. “Come in on the stage they did, wearing sheets and diapers. The women got strange marks on their foreheads, and the men folks, some of ‘em, got whiskers and beards like bishops.”
    As if this were not rumour enough to keep us lively, Tom Carrick, never tardy in finding an excuse to drop by, told us somewhat more grammatically that he could vouch for it personally that both a tiger and an elephant had been smuggled through the village under cover of darkness, the former in a cage made of tree branches, the latter on foot with a native sitting on his head. It was Mrs. Partridge who had seen the parade. One would have to go through the village invisible to evade her eyes. She never sleeps, and never misses a trick.
    As we were on the main read to the Hall, we could see for ourselves the train of wagons wending their way up the twisting path, stocked with intriguingly closed cartons as big as carriages. One could only imagine their contents. What on earth could be in them? There were enough to furnish the Hall from the bottom floor up.
    Edward was virtually useless as a spy. He went to see Emily, and returned home satisfied that the girl was not being abused in any way. He hadn’t but one detail of the cargo from India. “Gamble has given her a monkey, so she will be well amused till my return.”
    “It sounds as though he is setting up a menagerie,” Nora declared, “what with tigers and elephants and monkeys.”
    “The strangest creatures in it will be the human beings,” Edward then remembered to mention. “I cannot imagine why he brought home so many natives, I think they are servants. They are all washing and polishing the Hall, in any case.”
    “Aye, natives isit?”  Nora asked knowingly.   “Half native and half Gamble is more like it.”
    “They do look rather like Gamble,” Edward thought, with no trace of condemnation. “But then he is so dark that the likeness may be only one of complexion. In any case, Emily is happy as a dove. She has got her own woman now, a servant girl called Mulla, to take care of her. Oh, and Gamble has paid off the bailiff, Emily said.”
    “When is she coming to see us?” I asked, hoping for a more detailed account from her than I was apt to pry out of Edward. “She has not been here for some time now.”
    “She will come before I leave,” he said, rooting on the table for his copy of Wordsworth, which was not usually so far away from him.
    She didn’t, but as it happened, she finally rambled down the afternoon of the day Edward set out for his tour. He left at daybreak. Emily came in the afternoon. She had Hennie Crawford with her, a lady known to us from former visits during the better days at the Hall. Gamble did not accompany them. The change in Emily was quite simply remarkable. What was first noticed was her more elegant toilette—a new white shawl was around her shoulders, while her curls were brushed carefully into a pannier do, gathered up from her face to hang in a basket of curls at the back.
    Her more demure behaviour was in all likelihood due to the presence of Mrs. Crawford. The woman was not precisely a dragon, but she had been known to complain that a card of condolence had a spelling error in it, which gives you, I trust, some notion that she was what is commonly termed a high stickler. It was the dead heat of summer, which did not deter Mrs. Crawford from wearing black mittens to match her black scowl. She had been eating onions.
    We were given to understand in short order that a greater honour than we deserved had been bestowed on us in her coming. “Has Mr. Barwick left yet?” she asked eagerly. The closest thing to a smile that decorated her face during the whole visit broke out when the answer in the affirmative was given. Emily showed some traces of regret, but the Tartar was delighted.
    “Did he not tell you he was to leave early this morning?”