"Phyllis A. Whitney - Thunder Heights" - читать интересную книгу автора (Whitney Phyllis A)

He recovered himself to some extent, but she could see that her news had shaken him. He was studying her face now, clearly without liking.
"So you're still more of the family ?" he said, and the inflection was not flattering.
His rude rejection both cut and angered her. She drew herself up with the dignity she had learned to adopt in households where she might be treated with less than the respect she wished. But before she could manage a reply, the billowing thunderheads that rode the sky burst and flung a torrent of rain upon them. Her cornpanion would have taken her arm to help her across the deck, but she drew away and fled from him into the warmth and shelter of the main salon. He did not follow her there, but disappeared along the deck to another entrance.
She found an upholstered seat near a window where rain slashed the glass, obscuring all vision, and pretended to peer out into the storm. She felt somehow disappointed beyond reason. She had been ready to like this man and accept him as a
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new acquaintance who might well become a friend. But the name "Judd" had turned him abruptly from her, and the realization brought with it a vague uneasiness to stem her earlier feeling of joy. She wished now that she had answered him in some way, or at least challenged him to explain the scornful tone of his voice. When she saw him again, she would do just that. If the Judds were held in bad repute, that was unfortunate, but it had nothing to do with her.
She found the remaining time before Westcliff frustrating. Longing to view the river scenery, she could see nothing for the driving rain, and though she wandered about for a while below decks, she did not see again the man she had spoken to earlier.
Not until late afternoon did the storm roll away so that a glinting of pale sky showed through the veil of gray. The decks were drenched and wet, the wind still cold, but Camilla went outside eagerly to watch the steep shores of the Hudson glide by. The river had curved sharply and seemed now to be enclosed on all sides by rocky cliffs, as if the boat had turned into
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some great inland lake. This she knew, must be the gateway to the Highlands. She watched, entranced, as the boat glided around the jutting crags, always rinding one more opening to let it through.
Ahead on the west bank loomed a great hulking mass of mountain, its stony head cutting a profile into the sky. She could not see beyond its jutting, thickly wooded sides - still covered by the brown woods of winter - but WestclifT must not be too far ahead.
"This is Thunder Mountain," a quiet voice said in her ear.
She turned quickly to find her recent companion beside her. This time she did not wait, or give him a chance to escape again.
"May I ask why you spoke so scornfully of the Judds ?" she said.
He did not seem taken aback by her sudden question. A flicker of amusement lifted one corner of his mouth and vanished.
"I should have identified myself," he told her. "My name is Ross Granger. For the last ten years or so I have worked as a close associate of Orrin Judd. Your sudden news about his illness came as a shock.
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since he seemed no worse than usual when I left him last week."
Her eyes widened in surprise. "Then you must be the person Mr. Pompton wanted to see in New York. You must have missed him."
"That's possible," he said and turned back to watching the river. "You can see the house now/3 he added. "Up there below the mass of the mountain - there's your Thunder Heights."
The white boat, cutting through choppy gray water, was slipping past the mountain, and Camilla could see that its far slope gentled, opening into a wide, tree-grown level high above the river. She forgot that the rail was sopping wet and clung to it tightly with her gray gloves. Now she could look up and see the house for the first time.
The point of prominence on which it stood commanded an entire sweep of the river, and the structure was as fantastic and impressive as anything in her dreams. Orrin Judd had built to suit himself, as Camilla knew, and he had built with imagination, but little regard for restraint. The house was a conglomeration of wooden towers and gingerbread curlicues, with sloping roofs
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from which jutted gables and dormer windows. A wide veranda, arched and bracketed beneath its eaves, gave upon the river, and Camilla searched its length eagerly to see if any of the family stood there watching the boat steam past. But the veranda was empty, and so were the grounds. Shutters framed blank windows which stared at her without recognition. Plainly the house did not know her, and was not waiting for her.
The turrets were no longer bright as Althea King had described them. Storms had weathered the house to a dingy gray, left too long unpainted, and the trees crowding about gave it the look of a place uninhabited. It appeared enchanted, spellbound, there on its remote heights. Not a house, but the picture of a house, torn from the pages of fantasy.
"What a strange, wonderful place," Camilla said softly. "I think I'm going to love everything about Thunder Heights."
The man at her side made a faint, derisive sound. "If I were you, I wouldn't approach it with ready-made sentimentality. You're quite likely to be disappointed."
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She would not let his words dampen her feeling about the house. Even if the place didn't know her now, it would accept her later. How could it refuse, when she would offer it the love of a granddaughter coming home?
"It's strange to think that my mother grew up there," she murmured.
"How did she escape?" Ross Granger asked dryly.
What an annoying person he was, she thought - without sentiment, or kindly feelings. Why had her grandfather kept him on all these years, if he thought so little of the Judds ? Then, because she hated to condemn anyone in this moment of anticipation and eagerness, she relented. Perhaps he did not really know her mother's story.
"My father came to teach in Westcliff," she told him, "and my mother fell in love with him. But Grandfather Orrin had other plans for her. I suppose he didn't think much of a poor schoolteacher as a husband for his daughter. So one night they ran away to New York and were married there. My grandfather never forgave her and she only returned once - just before her death."
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"I've heard several versions of that story," he said. "I came to Thunder Heights four or five years after your mother's death, so I never met her. It was always Pompton who had the job of keeping track of her, and later of you. But she must have been a bit frivolous and reckless your mother.35
Once more she sensed disapproval in his tone, and resentment prickled through her.
"I remember her as being gay and happy," she said with dignity.
Ross Granger looked up at the house on the mountain. "Frivolity seems out of place at Thunder Heights. Its gay times are long past, I'd say. You're likely to be frowned upon if you so much as laugh out loud these days. For my taste, I prefer this second house coming up here below the Judd land. That's Blue Beeches, and I can assure you its architecture is more typically Hudson River that Orrin Judd's house."
Blue Beeches, though further upriver, was below the Judd heights and closer to the water. It shone in bright yellow contrast to its more somber neighbor above. Its green shutters looked freshly painted and it stood upon the bank with the four-
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square solidity of brick, as if it knew its own sound position as a family house well accepted by the community. Here there were signs of life. A woman sat rocking on the broad veranda, while three children of varying ages ran down to a small landing at the water's edge, waving eagerly as the boat went past. Ross raised an a-rm and returned their salute, and the children shouted and waved all the harder.
Apparently Ross Granger had friends here, among the children at least. She was puzzling over further questions to ask him, when he drew her hands from the wet rail and turned them over to reveal the gloves soaked and stained.
"Better go change your gloves before we dock. That's Westcliff coming up ahead of
us."
It was exasperating to be given directions, as she might have directed a child in her charge. Perhaps he regarded her in that light - as a foolish girl who soiled her gloves and had to be looked after, however reluctantly, because he worked for her grandfather. Her indignation with him increased as she hurried below to put on a fresh pair of gloves from her suitcase. When
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she carried the bag up on deck, Ross Granger was there ahead of her, his own large suitcase at his feet. The dock was clearly visible now, with the clustered houses and white steepled church of Westcliff behind. On the small dock townspeople had gathered to watch the boat come in. Her companion looked down at them with interest.
"I see you're to be met," he said. "There's your cousin, Booth Hendricks, looking for you."
"Cousin ?" she repeated. "Oh, you mean the one Mr. Pompton said was adopted as a child by Aunt Hortense ?"