Читать книгу Where's Emily - Carolyn Wells - Страница 6

Table of Contents

Pennington smiled at Rodney Sayre’s alarmed expression.

“Don’t worry,” he advised. “I don’t know Emily as you do, but I do know her in some ways that perhaps you don’t. You see, she and my wife are very intimate friends—oh, they have their little scraps, but they’re real chums. And the crazy schemes those two girls can cook up would knock you silly. Why, last year, they went down to Atlantic City for a week, and Emily pretended she was married, and Polly pretended she wasn’t. They just changed names. And the tangle it made!”

“Did Emily really do that?”

“Yes, but don’t take it too seriously. She’ll tell you all about it.”

“Of course she will. She’s wild and wilful, but she’s honest and truthful at heart.”

“You bet she is. So’s Polly, but somehow the two of them seem possessed to cut up when they’re together.”

Sayre, who lived in New York, had known Emily less than a year, and during that time he had been abroad on business for several months. Their courtship had been a whirlwind affair, but they were both sure of themselves and their love and confidence in one another was unbounded.

Sayre had been a guest at Knollwood, more or less, through the summer, but another business trip abroad was impending and he had urged Emily to be married in September and go over with him.

She had willingly agreed, and plans were made rapidly for the wedding.

Seeming obstacles were overcome, and Emily’s efficiency completed all arrangements, and now the house party had gathered for the wedding two days later.

Emily had frankly warned Sayre of her impulsive nature and her erratic proclivities, but he had only laughed and said he, too, had flaws in his character, but they would both take chances.

Congenial in most respects, of similar tastes and sympathetic in their views, they feared no disillusion, nor any disappointment that could not be overcome.

And they were very deeply in love.

Sayre, quiet and forceful by nature, adored the effervescent and excitable girl, and Emily, with innate common sense, rejoiced in the guardianship of a man who could tame her, if necessary.

Aunt Judy, though not consulted in the matter, was greatly pleased with Emily’s choice, and would stay on and take charge at Knollwood, while the young couple looked the world over and decided where to make their home.

For Emily had vague but elaborate visions of a villa on the Riviera or a country house on the Thames, and her ample fortune, with Sayre’s most satisfactory prospects, gave them free rein.

But all those plans were for the future. Just now the idea was to have the wedding a beautiful and memorable occasion, and Emily and her aids left no stone unturned to make it so.

Occasionally some detail was not quite as Rodney would have chosen it, but he deferred always to Emily’s taste and judgment, and made slight, if any, protest.

His parents, who were coming from Boston for the wedding, would doubtless have their conventional susceptibilities a little jarred by the lavish and elaborate alfresco fête that would follow the ceremony, but after all, Emily couldn’t be expected to consult a mother-in-law whom she had never yet seen.

And Emily’s crowd, a little more ultramodern than Sayre liked, demanded everything that was new and chic and exaggerated.

So the bridegroom wisely refrained from criticism or advice, and not even Burton Lamb, Sayre’s best man and best friend, knew that Rod was not heart and soul in sympathy with the gay doings.

Perhaps Jim Pennington, with his deeper understanding of character, appreciated more truly Sayre’s attitude than did the light-hearted Lamb.

The playwright was a conscientious student of human nature, and if his plays were not such as the Reverend Garner approved, at least, only one had, as yet, been censored off the stage.

He was not specially interested in Emily Duane, but as she was his wife’s crony, he saw more or less of the girl.

He had sized her up as a typical young woman of the day, though with rather more brains than most and with much more firmness of character.

But his conclusions were drawn largely from the tales his wife told him, and to her he gave the pronuciamento that the Duane girl was a “damned stubborn little piece.”

Polly had agreed, indifferently; but the consensus of social opinion was all in favor of Emily’s wilfulness and obstinacy.

Few, however, voiced this opinion to Rodney Sayre, and had they done so, he would have hesitated to believe it.

For to him, Emily was the very spirit of gentleness and submission. She deferred to his judgment, asked and followed his advice, and had never shown to him any of the pig-headedness which Abel Collins had ascribed to her.

Nor was this dissimulation on the girl’s part.

She had found in Sayre her lord and master, her idol, her paragon, and she was ready and willing to submit to him in all matters on which he chose to dictate.

Whether this idyllic state of things would last or not was a moot question among Emily’s friends, but it bothered her not a whit.

Nor did it trouble Sayre. He was satisfied with his lady and with her love, and the future was on the knees of the gods.

However, he was disturbed at Emily’s prolonged absence on this particular occasion.

Granting that she and Polly Pennington did love to cut up, this was no time for the cutting-up process to take place.

And it was unlike Emily to say she was going to the hospital and not go there. She had intended to go, he was certain, for her eager, happy smile as she told him about the Laurence baby was too real to be a blind.

“Where are they?” he demanded of Pennington.

“I haven’t the least idea, but they’ll turn up all right. Don’t worry.”

And then the crowd from the drawing-room came back to the lounge.

The latter room was the one liked best of the whole house. In the middle of the great house, it ran from front to back, with doors and windows at either end.

Like most of the homes in Hilldale Park, Knollwood was built on the side of a slope. From the front, one could see the scattered houses among the trees, and at the back rose the picturesque Ramapo Hills.

Near the house were formal gardens and carefully kept walks and drives. But outside those the place was allowed to run more wild and the woods, with their undergrowth, made a pleasing background.

Most of the places were even more wild than Emily’s, for her parents had not felt the urge of back-to-nature as strongly as it had affected the later settlers in the Park.

But they had built a large, commodious and comfortable home, and the lounge, with its French windows and verandas, its big fireplace and its cozy alcoves, its occasional tables and bookracks, made the ideal congregating place for parties.

“Where’s Emily?” said most of the voices as the two men were seen there alone.

“I don’t know,” Sayre returned, but his smile was a little forced.

“You don’t know, sir!” The Rehearser stepped up to him with a decided scowl on his face. “Allow me to inform you, mister, that though I have conducted many wedding rehearsals, never have I been so insulted as at this one! Called to take charge of a large and fashionable wedding and finding no bride and no bridegroom at hand! What sort of game is this? Why are the principals absent? I think there will be no wedding! But I have done my part, and I shall expect my pay. I will not come again; no, not though you beg me to, I will not step foot in the place. But I expect my pay——”

“Good Lord, man, you’ll get your pay,” exclaimed Lamb. “Now, run along home, for mercy’s sake. I give you my word your bill shall be paid. Clear out.”

Lamb paused to light a cigarette and then turned to Rodney.

“Where’s Emily?” he said.

“I don’t know, Burt,” and now Sayre spoke very soberly. “She told me she was going to the hospital——”

“To kiss the new baby,” broke in Betty Bailey. “Then she’s there yet. I’ll go and call her.”

“No, Betty,” Sayre deterred her, “we’ve called—Mr. Pennington called, and they haven’t been there——”

“Who’s they?” demanded Lamb. “Who’s with her?”

“We don’t know for certain,” Pennington volunteered, “but my wife isn’t at home, or wasn’t when I left, and we think the two may be together.”

“They haven’t been to the hospital!” exclaimed Betty, her eyes opening wide. “Then something has happened to them——”

“Don’t make a scene, Betty,” Nell Harding said scornfully. “They’re all right, of course. Emily went over to Mrs. Pennington’s house, and is waiting there for her to dress——”

“That may be,” Pennington said. “Polly wasn’t there when I left, but she may have come in since. I’ll telephone over and see.”

He went out to the booth, and Pete Gibby went and sat down by Rodney, who was still on the sofa.

“Emily said she was going to the hospital?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Sayre.

“And the hospital people say she didn’t come there?”

“That’s what they say.”

“Then we must go out and look for her. Good Heavens, man, we must do something! Suppose she fell and sprained her ankle—the roads round here are steep and stony enough. How can you sit still, not knowing where she is?”

“She told me to stay here till she came back,” Sayre said, and even as he spoke, he realized how silly he sounded! To be sure, Emily’s word was law to him, but to the crowd he must appear like a drivelling idiot to sit there, saying “She told me not to budge!”

Just then, Pennington returned.

“Polly isn’t at home,” he said, and now he looked concerned. “Rosa, that’s the maid, says she hasn’t been home at all.”

“Then,” said Betty, who was a quick thinker, “she met Emily, and Emily told her about the baby, and they went to the hospital together——”

“But they haven’t been to the hospital.”

“I mean, they started for there, and then——”

“And then?” Lamb prompted her.

“And then, either Emily had one of her wild, impulsive schemes to go somewhere else, or else—something has happened.”

“What could happen?” asked Nell, scornfully. “Emily is too used to these steep and stony roads to turn her ankle. She’s been racing over them all her life.”

“It might happen,” said Gibby.

“Oh, of course, it might,” Nell agreed. “And a bear might come out of the woods and eat her up! But I don’t believe either of those things. And, too, if Polly Pennington was with her, and Emily met with any accident, Polly would come and tell us. I can’t think they both sprained their ankles!”

“Speculation won’t get us anywhere,” said Lamb. “As I’m attending to all the wedding arrangements, it’s up to me to find the missing bride. So, I’ll set about it. Want to go along, Rod?”

“No,” said Sayre, after a moment’s pause. “I’ll stay here. Not only because Emily told me to stay here till she came back, but because Pete will go with you, and if there has been an accident, which I don’t for a minute believe, you two can bring her home.”

“I’m going along,” cried Betty, and flinging a cape round her she stood by Pete Gibby.

Pennington rose to go, as a matter of course, and Betty’s quick sympathy sensed that he was as anxious about his wife as Rod was about Emily.

“They’re all right, you know, Mr. Pennington,” she smiled at him. “They’re together, I’m sure, and that makes it safe for both. I suppose Emily took a notion to run down to New York——”

“Betty! How absurd!” cried Aunt Judy. “Why should the child go to New York at seven o’clock at night?”

But the three men and Betty had already started on their quest.

Mr. Garner, seeing an opportunity, took his cue.

“My dear Mrs. Bell,” he said with his most funereal intonation, “keep up your courage——”

“It hasn’t gone down yet,” she snapped back at him. “Anybody would think Emily was in danger of wild beasts or bandits or something! Did you ever hear of marauders of any sort at Hilldale Park?”

“No, I never did,” and the Reverend Garner seemed to begrudge his acquiescence.

Nell Harding had ensconced herself on the sofa beside Sayre, and proceeded to comfort him.

This was about as acceptable to Rodney as the minister’s sympathy had been to Aunt Judy, but he couldn’t retort as he would have liked.

“Oh, Emily’s all right, Nell, of course,” he said pleasantly. “I just don’t understand it, that’s all.”

“You don’t understand Emily,” Nell cooed, with a gentle smile.

“Well, she understands me, and that must do for the pair of us,” he returned, a little shortly.

Nell said nothing, but sat a little closer to him, and offered him a cigarette and then lighted it for him, until Rod said to himself if she didn’t let up on her coddling he’d pitch her head-first out of the window.

However, Nell couldn’t read his thoughts and she saw nothing of them in his face, so she kept on coddling.

“My dear sir,” the minister began on him next, and then Rod had to turn his attention to the prevention of laying hands on the sacred person of Mr. Garner.

“Excuse me, please,” he said, frowning; not rudely, but as one in deep absorption of thought. “Come in here, will you, Pearl.”

He had seen the black maid hovering about in the hall, and he wanted to talk to some one who understood Emily.

“Tell me all you know of Miss Emily’s talk on the telephone.”

“Oh, Mistah Sayre, suh, she was dat glad to hear about Miss Kitty’s li’l baby! She jes’ said, ‘Can I see dat chile?’ and dey said yes, and she jumped up from de tellyfome quicker’s scat, and presoomed to run right erlong. She jes’ stopped to hug me—she alwus does that when she’s tickled to deff—and then she flied in here to tell you, suh, dat she was agwine and den she went.”

“You saw her go? Think now, Pearl, did you?”

“Well,” the girl hesitated and her big eyes rolled about till the whites were prominently exposed, “now, I cyan’t jes’ say’s I did see her go. But you did, didn’t yo’ Mistah Sayre, suh?”

Pearl was a sympathetic listener, and she caught a note in Rodney’s voice that told her he was thinking deeply over the matter, though he was not saying much.

“Why, no, Pearl, I didn’t see her go. I saw her leave this room, but she disappeared round the palms in the hall. I thought you might have seen her go out of the door.”

“No, suh, I didn’t. I went back to de kitchen fer a minute, and when I come in again she was gone.”

“Why, Rodney, you don’t think she didn’t leave the house, do you?” and Nell grasped his hand in her earnestness.

“I don’t think anything, Nell,” he quietly drew his hand away, “but the fact remains we don’t know where Emily is. If she is safe and sound, anywhere, up to any mischief or foolishness, that’s all right. But if there’s anything wrong——”

“That’s what I want to say, dear Mr. Sayre,” Garner put in, “if there is anything wrong, any tragedy in our midst, count on me to help and comfort you.”

Rod wanted to say that he would gladly count him out on those two counts, but he couldn’t be rude to a clergyman, so he merely bowed his appreciation of the offer, and hoped the man would go.

Aunt Judy threw herself into the breach.

“All right, Mr. Garner,” she said, briskly. “We’ll most certainly send for you if you can be of help or service. Now you run along home, for your dinner will be waiting. Goodness knows when we’ll get ours!”

She struck the right note, for the man had not realized how late it was getting, and there was certainly no hope of dinner at Knollwood very soon.

With elaborate protestations of condolence and promises of future encouragement, he at last went away.

“Isn’t he awful!” whispered Nell, as his footsteps grew fainter in the distance. “If he hadn’t gone when he did, I’d have ushered him out myself. I could see how he annoyed you, Roddy, dear.”

“Oh, no, he didn’t. He meant well enough. Now, Nell, let me alone a minute, I want to think.”

“Yes, indeedy. I’ll do just that, and I’ll sit right near by, and I won’t let anybody speak to you——”

She fussed about, putting another pillow behind him and setting a fresh ash tray on the taboret at his side.

Aunt Judy’s black eyes winked at Rod over Nell’s solicitous head, and he gave the old lady an answering smile.

The three were there alone, save for Pearl, who sat in the hall waiting the return of her young mistress.

“Emily’s all right,” Aunt Judy said complacently. “If you’d been through this, Rod, as often as I have, you wouldn’t get stirred up.”

“She frequently disappears, then,” and Sayre tried to speak lightly.

“Oh, yes. And she has stayed away for days at a time, but always turned up safe and sound.”

“But this time it is a little different,” Nell suggested.

Rodney wanted to shake her, but she had voiced the thought in his own mind.

“Yes,” he had to agree, “this time it is different. Other times, she’d have gone off with some friends, I suppose.”

“Yes,” Aunt Judy said. “Why one night she went out at ten o’clock, and I didn’t see her for a week!”

“Where was she?”

“Oh, she met some people she knew, in a car, and they picked her up and took her along with them to Tuxedo. She sent back the next day for clothes and things and she had a beautiful visit.”

“How’d she come to go out alone as late as ten o’clock?” asked Nell.

“Oh, she only went for a little walk around the place. She happened to be alone that evening, so she was mooning about, and the crowd in the car picked her up. She loves a crazy performance like that. Oh, she was dressed well enough—had on a little flowered chiffon that——”

“What’s she got on to-night?” said Nell, suddenly. “Oh, a dark blue crêpe, I remember. She expected to dress for dinner, after the rehearsal.”

“Didn’t she have on her diamond necklace?” Aunt Judy said.

“Why, yes, I think so,” and Nell’s eyes opened wide. “Didn’t she, Roddy?”

“Yes,” he said, wishing she wouldn’t call him that.

“Well, then, I’m worried,” Nell declared. “If Emily went over to the hospital alone, with that glittering necklace on, anything might have happened!”

“Do hush, Nell!” said Sayre, goaded beyond endurance. “Don’t frighten Aunt Judy. Nothing ever happens up here.”

“Oh, doesn’t it?” and Nell grew excited. “I suppose Mrs. Grant didn’t have her car held up and her jewels taken, not so long ago! And I suppose there weren’t burglars in the Caldwell house last week! Rodney, did you see her start off alone with that diamond necklace on and never say a word?”

“I wanted her to let me go with her, but she wouldn’t,” groaned the wretched man, who hadn’t before thought of robbery or, indeed, of anything but some whimsical prank of Emily’s.

“How would she go to the hospital?” said Nell, who was thinking seriously now.

“She said she was going cross-lots,” Rodney informed her. “I don’t know just where the hospital is——”

“Well, I do,” and Nell shook her head. “And to go to it cross-lots is to go along the loneliest and darkest road in all Hilldale Park.”

“But it wasn’t dark, then,” Rodney said. “It was only just beginning to grow dusk.”

“Well, it’s dark enough now. And anyway, Rod, no matter what she said, you ought not to have let her go alone.”

“Now, look here,” and Sayre sat up straighter, “cut out that sort of talk. You know as well as I do that Emily is the apple of my eye, the core of my heart. When she said she was going to run over to the hospital, and for me to sit here until she came back, do you suppose I would have obeyed her if I’d had an inkling of any danger? She was bubbling over with joy about the new baby, she said she’d be back in ten minutes, and the whole matter seemed of no more importance than any other thing she has done since I’ve been here. If harm has come to her, I shall eternally regret that I let her go alone, but at the time and in the circumstances there was no reason for my doing anything else. Nor would she have let me go with her. But, pshaw, Nell, there’s no tragedy on, as you seem anxious to prove, and I’d go out this minute to search for her, if I thought she was anything but safe and sound. What way is cross-lots?”

“You go down to our back entrance,” Aunt Judy told him, “and then you go along across the bridge over the big ravine, by the Miller house, then over the little ravine near the Pennington house, and then, it’s just a short cut through the wood to the hospital.”

“Through the wood?” Rod echoed, the phrase bringing up dark and gloomy pictures.

“Yes, but just a little wood,” Aunt Judy averred. “It isn’t dark there, not in the daytime—I’ve never been there at night.”

“I wonder if the search party will go to that wood,” said Nell, going over to sit by Rod’s side again.

“Of course,” he returned, but he shuddered as one who was having a bad dream.