Читать книгу The Land of Content - Edith Barnard Delano - Страница 6

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"The Battlefield Hotel," Marshall Pendleton said, when the question of luncheon was brought up, "is a wonderful place, Benny; better take us there. Stopped there with the Willings last summer, and had eleven kinds of jam and about a hundred kinds of cake on the table at the same time. Great!"

"Heavens, Marshall!" Mrs. Maxwell exclaimed. "You know I can't eat sweets! I'd put on half a pound after such a meal as that!"

Pendleton grinned. "That was not all, Cecilia," he said. "I'd meant to keep it a secret, and surprise Benny with it. He's always out for gastronomic rarities. They give you cold cucumbers, cut thick, with warmish cream poured over them—real cream, lumpy, kind you used to have on grandfather's farm, and all that, you know! You feel green when you first see it. Then you wonder what it's like, but remember that your cousin somebody-or-other, the one you're not on speaking terms with, would inherit all you'd leave if you died. Then you begin to reason that other people must have dared and survived, and then you taste it and—consume! It's truly wonderful, Benny; better take us there!"

"Are you inviting us to a suicide pact, Marshall?" Flood asked.

The others laughed, and Flood and Mrs. Maxwell exchanged memories of queer dishes while Pendleton pointed out to the chauffeur the intricate way through the narrow streets. Only Rosamund was silent, leaning back in the cushioned corner, looking abstractedly at the quaint doorways and gardens they passed. During the preceding fortnight, with Oakleigh crowded with guests, it had been easy enough to avoid Flood's companionship, which was beginning to make her more and more uneasy, in spite of his earnest effort to keep it for the present on the level of the commonplace. But, now that they were alone there, a party of four, and with Cecilia and Marshall in one of their intervals of mutual absorption, there was nothing to do but submit to the situation. She had welcomed Flood's suggestion of the day before that they should motor up to Bluemont; with Eleanor at the Summit, and with the others in the motor car, Flood's company could be endured for the day. So they had left Oakleigh early, and in Flood's big shining car swung down through the mountains, out upon the plain, and into the quaint little town of Battlesburg. Rosamund's imagination peopled again the streets and fields with soldiers in blue and gray. She knew where her father had fought and lain wounded. As they passed swiftly between the innumerable monuments her heart throbbed. From the vast field of graves the spirit of the past arose and spoke to her—spoke of the men who had fought and died there, spoke of the greater man who had led and forgiven.

But during all the journey she had been intensely bored; more, she was deeply provoked, and in that state of mind where everything jars and trifles loom as mountains. Pendleton's silly chatter seemed unendurable; she resented his nonsense almost as if it were an insult thrown at the sacredness of the battlefield. She hated his story of the cucumbers and cream. When the landlord told them they would have half an hour to wait before luncheon, she walked to the farthest end of the veranda, and stood, looking down the little narrow street. Mrs. Maxwell threw herself into a large yellow rocking chair, and Flood leaned against the veranda railing, facing her. Pendleton was entering their names in the office, and wonderingly inspecting the landlord's showcase of battlefield relics. Flood lighted a cigarette, and as he blew out the smoke, turned towards the end of the veranda where Rosamund stood. Cecilia watched his face for a moment or two; then she said:

"You must not be offended with Rosamund's ways, you know! She is not like anybody else."

Flood turned his head and smiled into her eyes. He waited a full half-minute before he replied. "No," he said, slowly. "No, she is not like anyone else!" He took several deep breaths of his cigarette, then spoke with little pauses between each phrase, as if he were thinking out what he had to say. "She's—she's a dream-woman come true! She's the lady of one's imagination!"

"Dear me!" Mrs. Maxwell remarked, with sisterly lack of enthusiasm. Flood threw back his head with a little laugh.

"I wonder which surprises you most," he said, "to hear that said of your sister, or to find out that I have an imagination?"

Mrs. Maxwell had had time to become an adept at begging the question. "Well," she said, "one doesn't usually associate imagination and—dream-women, you know, with your type. I mean, with business men!"

"Oh, pray don't mind saying 'my type'! It's good for me to hear it, because it is just there that I lose. I am of a different type—or class—from you and your sister; even from our friend Pendleton. Miss Randall sees that, and she will not try to look beyond it. She will not let herself know me better, because she doesn't want to; and she doesn't want to because I am not—I suppose she'd call it her 'sort.'"

He spoke without a trace of bitterness, and smiled again at Mrs. Maxwell's well-executed manner of protest.

"Why, no one knows that better than I do," he went on. "She's five or six generations ahead of me in civilization, you know; her grandmother left off where my grand-daughter would have to begin. That's why I want her. I'm naturally impatient, and I want to see my wife doing and feeling and thinking a lot of things that are quite beyond my apprehension. She's just what I've always imagined a woman ought to be, and I want her."

"I don't think she'd credit you with any such imagination," Mrs. Maxwell said, adding, somewhat dryly, "with any imagination at all!"

"That is just my difficulty," Flood replied. "She will not give herself a chance to find me out." He smiled as he met her puzzled look. "You know—I am only stating the fact—I have—er—accumulated a great deal of money—a great deal, more than I know myself!"

Mrs. Maxwell's fingers curled a little more closely about the arms of her chair, and she nodded.

"Well, there are only two ways of doing that. There used to be three. There was a time when a man could accumulate a fortune by saving; but in this day and generation no accumulation of savings amounts to what we call a fortune. Nowadays a man can dig up a fortune; or he can so follow the daring of his imagination as to make a reality of what only existed, before, in his own ambitious dreams. I think it is safe to say that all but one per cent. of the great fortunes that are got together nowadays are done so by the exercising and ordering of a man's imagination. Well, I've made such use of mine that I'm a rich man, as far as money goes, at forty-three. Now my imagination is busy along new lines. Money is only the key: I want to enter the garden. I believe she'd realize every ideal I have! You are quite right. There's nobody like her!"

His face flushed deeply as he spoke, but Mrs. Maxwell was not looking at him. "Oh, dear," she sighed, "I do wish she were not quite so—odd!"

"Not odd," Flood contradicted, though pleasantly enough, "but supreme!"

Mrs. Maxwell's eyebrows went up. Ordinarily she was too conscious of what might be expected of her breeding to be disloyal to her sister; but Cecilia was not an angel.

"She is supremely full of notions," she remarked. "How any girl with her money can prefer—actually prefer—to dress as she does, and to live as she does, and to go about with one maid between us—I cannot understand it! She doesn't spend a thousand a year on her clothes, and she doesn't own so much as one motor car! You may call that sort of thing supreme; I call it odd!"

Pendleton had come out and joined Rosamund. They were obviously unaware of Flood's gaze, but Mrs. Maxwell rather disdainfully noticed that his look had softened as she spoke.

"Yes," he said, "that is unusual, as far as my experience goes; but I rather think she is quite capable of doing the unexpected. That's another part of her charm for me. I can only guess at what she would do or think, you know. And she's so far beyond me that while money is almost the whole show to me, it doesn't count at all, with her! Jove! I wish she might have the spending of mine!"

Mrs. Maxwell fairly shivered at the thought of Flood's millions going to waste, as she expressed it to herself; but fortunately for her peace of mind luncheon was announced, and they went into the little Dutch dining-room to investigate the cucumbers and cream.

At the table Rosamund lost some of her pensiveness; and when they came out again to the sight of the fields where the armies had fought and died, and were once more in the car, she bent towards Flood with eyes burning with excitement, lips parted and hands clasped.

"Oh," she cried, "I am glad, so glad I came, Mr. Flood! It is going to be a wonderful afternoon! I am thrilling even now! The suffering and the sacrifice and the glory! They have left their marks everywhere, haven't they?"

Flood looked at her with admiration so engrossing as to make him scarcely aware of what she said; Pendleton was discussing roads with the chauffeur, but Mrs. Maxwell turned in her seat.

"What on earth are you talking about, Rosamund?" she demanded.

"The battlefield!" the girl explained. "The field and the marking stones, the orchard where Father was wounded—all, all of it! I am going over it bit by bit, every inch of it, and I'm going to thrill, thrill, thrill! Probably cry, too!" she added. "I hope you brought your vanity-box along, Cecilia!"

"But, my dear child, we are going to the Summit! We are going to see Eleanor!"

For once Cecilia welcomed the thought of Eleanor, but Rosamund only laughed.

"Mr. Flood will bring us another day to see Eleanor," she said, "won't you, Mr. Flood? To-day, Cissy darling, I am going to see Battlesburg—just as if I were a tourist!"

Mrs. Maxwell looked at her in amazement. "Rosamund!" she cried. "Mr. Flood! Marshall! Marshall! Please! Mr. Flood, you certainly did not bring us on this trip to go sight-seeing, did you? Marshall, did you ever hear anything so absurd? Rosamund wants to go paddling about in this—this graveyard!"

Rosamund was unabashed. "Yes, of course I do!" she said. "So do you, don't you, Mr. Flood? And, Marshall, you know you've wanted to fight a battle over again ever since the last one we had at my ninth birthday party, when I pulled your hair and you were too polite to smack me!"

"I never wanted to fight in all my life, Rosamund," Pendleton drawled. "Certainly not on a day like this, and after a Dutch midday dinner."

Flood was embarrassed, and looked it; but Mrs. Maxwell gave him no chance to reply. "Rosamund, I hate to speak so plainly," she said, "but there are times when you go too far with your absurdities. Nobody goes sight-seeing; we are Mr. Flood's guests, and we have miles of steep road to get over this afternoon; you cannot upset his plans in this way. Besides, it's altogether too warm for exertion—and emotion. You'll have to get your thrills in some less strenuous way. I simply refuse to be dragged over any battlefield in existence."

Mrs. Maxwell sank back in her corner, and resolutely looked away; Rosamund, still smiling, turned towards Flood.

"We'll leave her in the car to amuse Marshall, and we'll take one of those funny little carriages, won't we, Mr. Flood?"

Her smile and little air of confidence brought color to Flood's face; he opened and closed his hands nervously. His boasted imagination failed him. The lady of his dreams was doing the unexpected. His voice showed his perplexity.

"My dear Miss Randall, I'd do anything in the world to please you! There are some miles of mountain roads to be gone over, if we are to get back to-night, but"—he leaned towards her—"when you ask me, you know I could not refuse you anything in the world, even at the risk of Mrs. Maxwell's displeasure!"

His words and manner instantly accomplished all that Cecilia's insistence had failed to do. Immediately Rosamund's face lost its bright eagerness for the same indifferent coldness that she usually showed him.

"Oh, by all means, let us remember the mountain roads, Mr. Flood," she said, leaning back upon the yielding cushion, turning her head to look listlessly out of the car.

"Oh, please!" poor Flood exclaimed.

Cecilia began to chatter gaily, and Marshall bent over his road maps. The car flew out of the town, noiselessly except for the faint humming of its swift onrush, the modern song of the road. But, to Rosamund, there was no melody in the song; she was out of tune with the day, with her companions, with the ride itself.