Читать книгу Prillilgirl - Carolyn Wells - Страница 4

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Thorndike felt perplexed as he gazed at the girl beside him. It didn’t occur to him that he was a bridegroom, he felt more like a man who had impulsively bought a piece of bric-a-brac that didn’t harmonize with his other furnishings.

Summoning his courage to the point of speaking aloud, he said:

“Now, Prillilgirl—I shall call you that, I think, because it suits you so well—though Sweet o’ the Year is pretty for you, too—you are now Mrs. Thorndike, and you must behave accordingly.”

“Yes, sir;” the lady addressed looked at the gold circlet on her finger and smiled pleasantly.

“First, you mustn’t say ‘sir’ to me.”

“No, sir.”

“Are you listening?”

“Oh, yes, sir. But you see I’m so busy being married that I’ve not much time for anything else.”

“Pshaw, you’re a baby and a simpleton.”

“Yes, sir.”

Thorndike sulked. But Prillilgirl paid no attention and it was quite evident that she was really oblivious of his presence. She sat up very straight and looked every inch a thoroughbred. Her white frock and pink lined hat were entirely correct and very becoming and her exquisite face beamed with radiant joy.

Though they spoke no word she was all unconscious of any awkwardness between them.

At last she said; “if I can’t call you sir, then what shall I call you? Mr. Thorndike?”

“No, not Mr. Thorndike! Heavens, what a little fool you are!”

“Yes, sir,” but a dimple flashed into sight and out again.

“Call me Guy,” he muttered, in a voice constrained by shyness.

“Guy! It doesn’t suit you a bit,” and the little head cocked on one side like a doubtful bird while the brown eyes regarded him seriously. “I think you’re a ‘Man of Wax’.”

“Meaning you so easily molded me to your wishes?”

“Oh, no, that isn’t what I mean at all! Don’t you know, in Romeo and Juliet, where they call Paris a Man of Wax?

‘A man of all the world, a Man of Wax.

Verona’s summer hath not such a flower.’

Fie, don’t you know your Shakespeare? You who want to play it!”

“How do you know I want to play Shakespeare?”

“I know everything about you.”

“Well, keep your knowledge to yourself!”

“Yes, sir. Oh, Guy, I’m so glad I have a home of my own! You can’t imagine how lonesome and friendless I felt when I rang your doorbell.”

“I should think you would!”

“Yes, I did. Oh, this is heaps better than going to China. Isn’t China an awful place?”

“So I’m told.”

“What do you like to do best? Recreation, I mean.”

“Golf and bridge. Do you play them?”

“No, but I can learn. However, there’s no occasion, as I’m not going to bother you with my presence. That’s understood.”

“See that you remember that.”

“Yes, sir. Oh, I’m so crazy to get home, I can’t seem to wait. Have you picked out my rooms for me?”

“The housekeeper, Mrs. Lamb, will look after that. You can have the most attractive suite, of course, and you can refurnish it to suit your own taste. You can take the summer for it, if you choose—I shall be away at various places until fall. Or, if you care to go away this summer, leave your redecorations until you return.”

“Oh, I don’t want to go away—I’ve just got here. I’ll see to it all.” She nodded her lovely head with evident satisfaction at the prospect. “Will the servants stay in town all summer?”

“If I tell them to.”

“Lovely! When do you go? Tomorrow?”

“Are you so anxious to be rid of me?”

“You know it isn’t that, my Man of Wax.” The flower face turned toward him and the eloquent brown eyes spoke mute reproach. “But I don’t want to bother you.”

“Very well, then keep to your own rooms.”

“Yes, sir—I mean yes, Guy.”

But her speech was perfunctory and unheeding and her gaze wandered as she hummed a little tune.

“Don’t hum! It annoys me.”

She stopped humming but she kept smiling and her eyes danced as they drove past attractive shop windows.

She turned to him like a happy child. “Tomorrow I’m going shopping—to buy frocks—ooh!—and negligees, crowded with lace—oo! oo!—and HATS! Oh, Guy, won’t it be heavenly!”

Thorndike looked at her coldly.

His natural kindness would have been glad to sympathize with her overflowing joy at the thought of buying finery, but the very idea embarrassed him and the sight of the raptured little face fairly paralyzed his mind. Moreover, he was thinking over a new scene for his play, and he preserved a self-absorbed silence.

Suddenly she turned toward him with a little puzzled look. “Guy, am I completely married?”

“Why not?”

“You didn’t kiss me.”

He flushed and dropped his eyes in an agony of shyness.

But the situation had to be met.

“Look here,” he said, sternly, “we’re not going to have any kissing or any of that foolishness.”

“No, sir—oh, no! But that’s a different sort of kiss. Guy, why do women want to be Suffragettes?”

“Most women don’t. Do you?”

“Mercy, no! I’m happily married! Guy, shall I have an allowance or bills?”

“Both, if you like.”

“Oh!” with a rapturous clasp of her hands. “But aren’t you afraid I’ll be extravagant?”

“You may, if you choose. You may as well understand, Prillilgirl—I don’t care what you do. I will give you an allowance, and you may charge things at certain shops, but don’t bother me with details. If you are too extravagant, I shall tell you so. Until I do, buy what you like. I’m not too much alarmed on that score.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You shall have a little motor of your own, electric, if you prefer, and you can have the big car whenever you want it. But you’re not to be eternally running to me for this or that. Your rooms are on the third floor. I’m on the fourth. Don’t ever come up there.”

The brown eyes opened wide at him. “What would I want to go up there for?”

“Well, I thought you might be one of those women who are all over the place.”

“Oh, no, I promised not to bother you, and I always keep my promise. This is our ‘Last Ride Together,’ as Mr. Browning has it. But you’ll be away all summer.”

“Yes, off and on. How do you come to know so much poetry?”

“Uncle read it to me a great deal. We were both fond of it.”

“And your aunt?”

“Oh, no, she didn’t like it a bit. That’s why I couldn’t go to China with her. May I buy lots of poetry books?”

“I told you to buy what you like and not refer such matters to me. I’m not interested.”

A pleasant smile greeted the speech and then Prillilgirl again became absorbed in her own thoughts.

Thorndike pondered. Clearly, she was not to be affronted or insulted by his indifference and even rudeness, but he could see plainly that this was not because of a determination not to be, but because of her own sublime indifference and demeanor.

He had plunged into this mad experiment, and he was neither glad nor sorry. She meant nothing to him, but as he had not wanted to marry any one else, it was little for him to do to give his name and protection to this lovely child.

When they reached the house, he handed her out of the car with punctilious courtesy, and as they entered, he said simply, to the valuable butler, “Webb, this is Mrs. Thorndike. Her word is law in the house. Inform the other servants and send Lamb to me.”

The smile that Prillilgirl gave the butler completed his bewilderment and almost jarred his conventional calm.

Appeared then Mrs. Lamb, housekeeper and general manager of the whole establishment.

Hers was one of those rarely found natures that follow literally the Scriptural injunction to be wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove.

Fair, fat and forty, Mrs. Lamb was a retired actress, having at one time played in Thorndike’s company, and even then marked out by him as a wonderful woman in her way.

For she was capable of running the actor’s home as he wanted it run; she attended to everything, in her own province or out of it; she settled all questions, quelled all insurrections, smoothed out any possible roughness that came in the path of her adored master, and was in every way the keystone of the whole edifice.

Moreover, she was comely to look upon, and was most pleasant spoken.

It was, then, with a feeling of relief that Thorndike shifted his newly acquired responsibility on to the shoulders of his First Goldstick-in-waiting.

“Lamb,” he said, quietly, “this is Mrs. Thorndike. Please look after her. She will have the pink and gray suite and you will cherish her as the apple of your eye.”

There was about as much sentiment in his tone as if he had been reciting the catechism, but the housekeeper took his words at their face value, and laying a motherly hand on Prillilgirl’s arm she said, “Come with me, my dear.”

Smiling into Mrs. Lamb’s pleasant face, the girl started to go, but Thorndike, struggling with something that he felt he must say, blurted out;

“Do you—do you care to dine with me?”

“Oh, no,” returned his happy bride. “I don’t want to bother you. And, beside, I’d ever so much rather have a tray brought to my room. I’ve always wanted to do that. Get into a kimono, you know, and sit around and just gloat over my beautiful, heavenly new home.”

“Very well, then, I think I’ll dine at the Club.”

“Yes, sir. Oh, everything is so lovely. Good bye, and thank you so much for marrying me.”

She went off with Mrs. Lamb, and Thorndike stood a moment alone, with a mental picture of that radiant, smiling face with its wonderful eyes and the golden curls clustering under the pink lined hat.

“Gee!” he remarked to himself; “Gee!”

Then he went to his Club for dinner and the story having spread like wildfire, he was greeted by his comrades with shouts and hails of varying tenor.

“Shut up!” said Thorndike, pleasantly, and they did.

“Bless me!” said Mrs. Lamb, fervently, as she led her charge up the broad stairway, “I’m free to confess I don’t often get such a come-at as this! It’s all right—Guy Thorndike never did anything that wasn’t all right, but I was as surprised as a shot partridge when he said you were his wife. His wife! and you a mere Kindergarten Kid!”

“Well, you see,” Prillilgirl smiled engagingly, “he doesn’t exactly want a wife—he says wives bother him—and I’m determined not to bother him. You may not think it, Lamb, but I’m a person of great determination. When I make up my mind to do a thing I never stop till it’s done. Why, when I am really determined, I’m terrible as an army with banners! Truly I am.”

“You don’t look it,” Lamb commented quietly. “But, now, Mrs. Thorndike, here’s your suite. And pretty enough for anybody, I’ll say.”

“It’s perfectly lovely! I’ll rearrange the furniture some, and maybe have another mirror door put in there—”

“Are you vain, then?”

“Yes, I think I am. But not always. Not when I have something better than myself to think about. And now, you see, I have! This beautiful new home and—oh, a whole new life to arrange and play with! And you, Lamb, dear—I’m so happy to have you.”

The words were sincere, for the attitude of the housekeeper was sympathetic and congenial.

Lora Lamb had been a good reliable actress in her insignificant rôles but she had been glad to give up her stage life to keep house for Thorndike, whom she adored in a motherly way.

Though only a few years older than the actor, she was possessed of the maternal instinct and she looked after his welfare and comfort as few paid servants could have done.

And now, that he had brought home a wife, and had put her in her care, Lamb willingly accepted the new responsibility, and prepared to look after two instead of one.

She didn’t understand it all, but Lamb was wise in her own conceit and she had long ago discovered that to keep her mouth shut and her eyes open was the straight and narrow path to knowledge of most sorts.

So she accepted Prillilgirl as she would have done a more inanimate innovation, and soon became a devoted slave as well as guardian.

The days went by and Mr. Guy Thorndike was in no way bothered by his recent acquisition. He never saw Prillilgirl. He learned that she had adapted for her dining room a small unused room on the first floor, but quite often had her meals served in her own boudoir.

Whether by accident or design, her goings and comings never coincided with his own, and so far as he was concerned, Thorndike’s home was in no way changed.

He scorned to question Mrs. Lamb, or Webb, the butler, but he learned a little from them unasked.

One day Webb appeared, and said, a little hesitatingly, “Beg pardon, sir, Mrs. Thorndike’s compliments, sir, and she would like to know when you are going away.”

“I don’t know when I shall go. Why?”

The butler coughed a little. “She didn’t bid me say, sir, but I think I may venture that she desires to paper the walls and such things.”

“Tell her to paper the walls and such things, then. It will not incommode me in any way.”

“Yes, sir. Very good, sir.”

Apparently Prillilgirl was satisfied with this permission, for within a few days an army of decorators camped in the house.

Thorndike looked on with a slight but pardonable curiosity, and one day passing through a hall, he chanced upon her. She flashed a smile at him and scurried away like a frightened rabbit.

Given a moment to think, he wouldn’t have touched her, but the emergency of the moment gave him nerve, and with two strides he overtook her and grasping her by the shoulders swung her suddenly round.

“What is it, Guy?” she asked, startled; “have I spent too much money?”

“No, you little idiot! I only want to ask you—if—you would care to—if you will—”

“Yes, sir!” she said, calmly.

“Confound you! Sweet o’ the Year, I want you to—to dine with me tonight.”

“Where?”

“Here—at home.”

Prillilgirl looked doubtful. “I’m awfully busy today,” she said, and her brown eyes looked up at him from under the tumbled gold curls. He had never before seen her without a hat.

“Yes, you’re flying round like a ten-horsepower hen!”

“Am I?” She was entirely untroubled by his presence, but seemed anxious he should go. He sensed this, and perversely stayed.

Thorndike was of the intellectual rather than the handsome type of Thespian. Tall, dark, lean, at thirty-five he was the best liked actor in New York city. But his irremediable shyness prevented him from being really popular.

His strong, fine face had an eager look as if longing for the happiness only achieved by the absence of self-consciousness.

He was sometimes bashful with men, more so with women, and in the presence of young girls he was most ill at ease of all.

But as he looked at Prillilgirl he vowed to himself that he would overcome his nervousness and speak to her calmly, naturally, even banteringly.

She met his gaze serenely and waited for his word.

None came. The more he tried to say something light and airy, the more he couldn’t think of a thing to say. What subject had he in common with this exquisite bit of youthfulness?

Prillilgirl herself broke the silence.

“When do you begin to act again?” she inquired.

Now as it happened she couldn’t have chosen a more unlucky subject. Devoted to his art, Thorndike shrank sensitively from speaking of it to anybody except his confreres, and the opening of the subject was quite enough to upset his tottering equilibrium. “Don’t discuss my work! You know nothing of it!” he said.

“Oh, yes, I do,” the flower face smiled. “I know you’re going to open in the fall with a new play by Zalinski.”

“How do you know that?”

“I read it in the paper, I think. Is it a secret?”

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen. Why?”

“You said twenty-one when we went for the license.”

“Had to, or we couldn’t get it at all. But really I’m nineteen.”

“I’m nearly twice that.”

“Are you?”

The cool, polite tone implied that if he had been four times or eight times it wouldn’t have mattered to her. Her calm indifference maddened Thorndike, though he certainly didn’t want her enthusiasm.

“You needn’t think I admire you,” he said, savagely.

“No, sir.”

“I’ve seen too many pretty women to be caught by the ingenue type.”

“Am I that?”

“What?”

“Ingenue type?”

“Yes, and a silly specimen of it.”

Prillilgirl laughed outright.

“Isn’t it fortunate you don’t care what I am?”

“No, not a bit; I wish I did.”

“Well, you don’t and you never will.” She shrugged her shoulders comfortably as if that subject was settled in the most satisfactory way.

Thorndike lapsed into silence. He honestly tried to think of something to say but the presence of that smiling young thing froze the words on his lips. It was foolish, he knew perfectly well just how foolish it was, but he couldn’t help it. If she had been embarrassed, he might have risen to the occasion, but her confounded ease and irritating happiness were an insurmountable barrier to conversation so far as he was concerned.

He resented the situation and he sulked, which was his final resource when absolutely exasperated at his own defects.

At last Prillilgirl sighed. It was an adorable soft little sigh, like that of a tired child.

“I’m afraid I bother you,” she said, “and I’m awfully sorry. Would you like me to go away?”

“Not necessary. I’m going away myself tomorrow, for a fortnight.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Will you stop saying ‘sir’?”

“Yes, sir, I forgot. Oh, there, I forgot again!” A little laugh rang out, of pure amusement, and Thorndike knew instinctively that there was no roguishness or teasing in her repeated use of the forbidden word.

“Do you care?” he said.

“Care for what?”

“Care that I’m going away?”

“No, indeed; why should I?”

“Are you glad?”

“Yes, sir—I mean, yes, Guy.”

“Why?”

“Because I can sing all I like, and I can go all over the house if I choose—except, of course, in your rooms—and I can dine in the big dining room if I want to—and, oh, I can do lots of things.”

Her voice was vibrant with joy and her big brown eyes danced and sparkled.

“Are you happy?” and Thorndike looked at her curiously.

“Oh, yes, indeed!”

“I’m glad of it,” he said, more gently than he had ever spoken to her. “Good-bye, Little One. Good-bye, Prillilgirl.”

If she felt any surprise at this sudden dismissal, she showed it not at all. Rather, a smile of relief flashed across her lovely face and dropping a quaint little curtsey, which he did not see, she ran back to her own apartments.