Читать книгу The Fighter - Albert Payson Terhune - Страница 7

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“Why folks should drink tea when they’re not thirsty, an’ gobble sweet crackers when they’re not hungry,” observed Conover, impersonally, as he balanced his cup and saucer on one thick palm and stared at the tea as though it might turn and rend him, “is somethin’ I never could make out. As far as I can learn, s’ciety is made up of doin’ things you don’t want to at times you don’t need to.”

“There is nothing in afternoon tea,” quoted Desirée,

“To appeal to a person like me.

There’s too little to eat,

What there is is too sweet.

And I feel like a cow up a tree.”

“And,” improvised Caine,

“In Boston we threw away tea

Because of King George’s decree.

When England disputed,

We just revoluted.

Hurray for the Land of the Free!

“And now that we’ve all testified,” he added, “may I please have another cup? If not, I’m going to keep on repeating insipid verses till I get it.”

The two men had dropped in at the Shevlin house on their way from the Arareek Club. Desirée had listened delightedly to Caleb’s expurgated account of the Committee meeting, and at the story’s close had rung for tea. Caine was a prime favorite of hers. Caleb was wont to lean back and listen in unaffected admiration to their talk—about one-half of which he could understand. His hazarded remark about tea had been thus far the Fighter’s only contribution to the chatter. Emboldened by it he now ventured a second observation.

“I see by the ‘Star’,” said he, “that there’s goin’ to be a blowout up at the Standishes’, week after next. A dinner party and a musicle. Whatever a musicle may be. You’re goin’ of course, Caine?”

“Yes,” replied Caine, adding flippantly, “of course you are?”

“Yes,” said Caleb, slowly, “I think I am.”

“You’re not in earnest?” cried Desirée, surprised.

“I’m in earnest all right. It’ll be a big affair. I think I’ll go to the musicle an’ the dinner too.”

“But I didn’t know you knew any of the Standishes except—”

“I don’t yet. But I will by then. I’ll get asked. You’re goin’ to the musicle part of it with Mrs. Hawarden, ain’t you, Dey? You said somethin’ about it yesterday. Well, you’ll see me there. Say!” as a new idea struck him, “how’d you like to be asked to the dinner, too? That’s the excloosive part of the whole show. Only about a dozen guests. More’n a couple of hundred at the musicle. Want to go to the dinner?”

“Of course not,” she exclaimed. “What a crazy idea! As if you could get me an invitation, even if I did want to!”

“Oh, I could get it all right,” urged Caleb. “I’m goin’ myself.”

Caine, who had dropped wholly out of the talk, rose to go. There was a curious restraint about his manner as he bade Desirée goodbye.

“Well, Caleb Conover!” rebuked Desirée as soon as she and the Fighter were left alone. “Of all the historically idiotic plunges into other peoples’ greenhouses I ever saw!”

“What’ve I done now?” asked Caleb in due humility.

“What haven’t you done?” she retorted. “Don’t you know Mr. Caine is engaged to Letty Standish?”

“I’d forgotten for the minute. What of it?”

“There you sat and boasted you’d be invited to dinner at her house! When you don’t even know her. What am I to do with you? I’ve a great mind to make you drink two more cups of tea!”

“I don’t see yet what the row is,” he pleaded. “But I’ve riled you, Dey. I’m awful sorry. I oughtn’t to come here when there’s civilized folks callin’. I only make you ashamed, an’—”

“How often must I tell you,” she cried angrily, her big eyes suddenly growing moist, “never to say such things? You know they hurt me!”

“Why should it hurt anyone when I talk of goin’ to a—?”

“I’m not speaking about the dinner. It’s about your not coming to see me. If people don’t like to meet my chum, they needn’t call on me. As for being ‘ashamed’ of you—here! Take this cup of tea and drink it. Drink it, I say. And when you finish you must drink another. All of it. With sugar in it. Two lumps. I don’t care if you do hate sweet things. You’ve got to be punished! Drink it!”

Conover obediently gulped down the loathed liquid and held out his cup with an air of awkward contrition, for the second instalment of his penance.

“Now, do I get forgiven?” he begged. “It’s vile stuff. An’ I drank every drop, Dey. Please be friends again. Aw, please do!”

“You big overgrown baby!” she said looking laughingly down into his red, remorseful face. “You talk very, very loudly about being a ‘grown man’, and a financier. And some of the papers call you ‘Brute’ Conover—the wretched sheets! But you’re only about ten years old. No one knows you except me. To the others you may be able to talk as if you were grown up, but it never imposes on me for a minute.”

“That’s right,” he assented wonderingly. “I never thought of it that way before. I don’t know why it is except maybe because I never had any boyhood or had a chance to be young. I seem to have been born grown up an’ on the lookout to get the best of the next feller. Then, when I get with you, I lose about twenty years and feel like a kid. It’s great to be that way. Nobody else ever makes me feel so.”

“I suppose not,” mocked the girl. “Your other friends are fossly people all about a million years old. And you look on me as a child and try to talk and act down to my level. It is very humiliating. I’m nearly twenty and quite grown up and—”

“Your eyes are, anyhow,” commented Caleb. “They’re two sizes too large for your face.”

“Is that a compliment? If it is—”

“I don’t know,” pursued Conover. “I never noticed how big they was till one day when you were drinkin’ ice-tea. Then, all of a sudden, it struck me that if your eyes wasn’t so big you’d be li’ble to tumble into your glass. Now you’re mad again!” he sighed. “But it’s true. You’re awful little. You don’t much more’n come up to my elbow.”

“When you’re quite through saying woozzey things about my size and my eyes,” said Desirée, coldly, “perhaps you won’t mind talking of something sensible?”

“If you’d just as leave,” hesitated Caleb, “I’d like to talk a little ’bout what you said a few minutes ago. About my bein’ young. You don’t get it quite right. I’m not young an’ I never was or will be,—except with you. When you an’ me are together, some part of me that I don’t gener’lly know is there, seems to take charge. Maybe I don’t explain it very clear. I don’t seem quite to understand it myself. Here’s the idee: D’you remember that measly little green-covered French book I found you cryin’ over, once? The ‘Vee’ of something.”

“You mean Barriere’s ‘Vie de Bohéme?’”

“That’s it. The French play you said was wrote from a book by some other parly-voo chap. You told me the story of it, I remember. It didn’t make much of a hit with me at the time, an’ I couldn’t quite see where the cry come in. But I got to thinkin’ of it when you spoke just now. Remember the chap in there who told the girl she was his Youth an’ that if it wasn’t for her he’d be nothin’ but just a plain grown man? ’Twas her that kep’ him feelin’ like a boy. An’ then when she died—let’s see—what was it he hollered? Something ’bout—”

“‘O, ma Jeunesse, c’est vous qu’on enterre,’” quoted Desirée.

“Maybe so,” assented Caleb, doubtfully. “It sounds like a Chinee laundry ticket to me. That was the part you were cryin’ over, too. What is it in English?”

“‘Oh my Youth, it is you they are burying!’” translated the girl.

“That’s the answer,” said Conover, gravely. “Now let’s talk about something better worth while than me. I was chinnin’ with Caine this afternoon about you. He says if you marry the right sort of man, your place in society’s cinched. What do you think of that?”

“How utterly silly!” she laughed. “Caleb, this society idea of yours has become an obsession. What do I care for that sort of thing? It’s pleasant to be asked to houses where one has a good time. That’s all. It’s like eating ice-cream when one is used to bread pudding. I’m not anxious to eat, drink and breathe nothing but ice-cream three times a day all the rest of my life. Why should I want a ‘cinched place in society’ as you so elegantly put it?”

“You don’t understand,” he insisted. “It means a lot more’n that. With your looks and brains an’—an’ the big lot of cash your father left you,—you could make no end of a hit there. You’d run the whole works inside of five years. You’d have the same sort of position here in Granite that Mrs. Astor an’ those people have in New York. Think of that, Dey! It’s a thing you can’t afford to throw away. When anyone says he don’t care to shine in s’ciety,—well, you may not tell him so; but you think it, all the same. An’ it’d be a crime for you to miss it all. If you marry the right sort of man—”

“‘The right sort of man!’” mimicked Desirée, wrathfully, “Caleb, there are times when I’d like to box your ears. I wish you and Mr. Caine would mind your own grubby Steeloid business and not gabble like two old washerwomen about my affairs. ‘The right sort of a man—!’ Why,—”

“How’d you like to marry Amzi Nicholas Caine?” suggested Conover, tentatively. “Dandy fam’ly,—fairly rich—good looker—travels in the best crowd—”

“Warranted sound and kind—a child can drive him—a good hill climber—guaranteed rustless,” snapped Desirée in lofty contempt. “Caleb, do you want to be made to drink more tea?”

“Honest, girl, I’m in earnest. He’s—”

“He’s engaged to Letty Standish, for one thing. And if he wasn’t, I wouldn’t marry him if he and a tone-deaf piano tuner were the only two men left on earth.”

“His bein’ engaged to the Standish girl needn’t matter,” urged Caleb, too much engrossed in her first observation to note the second, “Because I can fix that all right.”

In spite of her indignation, Desirée laughed aloud.

“Oh, you great and wise man!” she cried. “How, may I ask?”

“I don’t know yet,” he said with perfect confidence, “Because I haven’t thought it over. But I can fix it. I can always fix things when I have to.”

“Well, in this case,” she retorted, “you can spare yourself the crime of parting two loving souls and fracturing two adoring hearts and shattering Granite’s social fabric just on my account. When I really want to marry and I find I can’t lure the shrinking Adonis to my feet I’ll let you know. Then you can try your luck at making him propose.”

“Sure, I will,” promised Conover, in all seriousness, “Just give me the word when the time comes an’ the feller’s yours for the askin’. But I’m kind of disappointed in the way you turn Caine down. It seemed such a grand idee. That’s one of the reasons I asked him in, this afternoon. I thought when you saw us together he’d kind of shine by contrast with me, you know. More’n when you meet him with folks of his own sort.”

“The contrast was there!” she blazed. “It fairly sizzled, it was so strong. For one thing Mr. Caine has manner. And you haven’t got even manners. And I ought to hate you for daring to talk so to me. And—and you’re the dearest, stupidest, splendidest boy I know. Now I’m going to dress for dinner. You can talk to Siegfried-Mickey if you want to while I’m gone. But if you want to win his fondness, don’t make silly, squiffy plans for his social future.”

She was out of the room before Conover could frame an answer. But on the instant she had turned back long enough to thrust her flushed face momentarily through the opening of the curtains and suggest demurely:

“Caleb, if Mr. Hawarden should ever die, don’t you think it would be nice for Mrs. Hawarden to marry Billy? It would make the dear little fellow’s position in society so nice and secure!”