Читать книгу Fair Tomorrow - Emilie Loring - Страница 5

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With a growl like the distant rumble of thunder the Belgian police dog in his smart breast strap sprang at his double standing near the curb of the sidewalk before the post-office in the village. The challenged one laid back his ears, snarled, bared his teeth invitingly. Pamela Leigh's dark eyes dilated with concern even as she caught the challenger by the collar, tried to drag him back.

"Stop it, Babe!"

"Drop him! Good God, drop him!" shouted a man who was leaping down the steps of the brick building three at a time. The girl had a confused sense of brown hair, blazing eyes, brown skin, curiously blanched, a mustache like a third eyebrow, impeccable sports clothes, the faint, far drone of a plane beating like a rhythmic pulse in the air, before she tightened her hold. She twisted the leather collar, choked the aggressor back upon his haunches. The man snatched at the tail of the other Belgian, yanked him away. He deftly caught the dog's collar, face ashen, demanded:

"Don't you know better than to mix up in a scrap like this?" He turned at a shout behind him, glared at the man in an army coat belted with a rope who was running toward them. "This dog yours, Eddie Pike? Grab him. What the devil do you mean by letting a fighter like this loose?"

The breathless, unshaven man, with a mouth designed on codfish lines, caught his charge by an up-right ear, glanced apologetically at the girl who still clutched the collar of the challenger.

"Sorry, Miss Pamela." He scowled at his accuser. "Why shouldn't I let him loose? 'Twant him started the trouble. There ain't no law 'gainst exercising dogs here, are there? Come along, Bozo."

He snapped on a leash. With a rumble and a savage glare in the direction of his adversary Bozo obediently started off at his keeper's heels.

Now that the late unpleasantness was over Pamela's knees wobbled treacherously, her heart pounded deafeningly. Under pretense of adjusting the Babe's breast-strap she dropped to the steps. A vision of the picture the contending factions had presented set her a-quiver with nervous laughter. The man protested with a hint of arrogance:

"What's the joke? Can't see the comedy in taking a chance on getting chewed to pulp."

Pamela made a valiant effort at control, explained in a voice still shredded with mirth: "When you grabbed that horrid dog's tail—I thought—I thought even as I choked the Babe—sup-suppose it sh-should come off? After that your technique was su-superb." The sentence ended in a spasmodic gurgle.

"Pull yourself together. I don't wonder you were frightened. You'll have hysterics if you don't watch your step."

"I never had hysterics in my life." Indignation brought Pamela to her feet. She met his concerned eyes defiantly, even as she admitted to herself that she had been frightened, she never had been in the ring at a dog-fight before.

"Beg pardon for yelling at you when I butted in on the little party, but your recklessness frightened me stiff."

"But not dumb."

He laughed. She liked his laugh.

"I'm sorry. May I get your mail?"

She looked from him to the dog who had dropped to the sidewalk, whose throat rumbled as with a retreating thunder-shower.

"If you will. The Babe is as popular in the post-office as an ice-storm in an orange-grove. The R.F.D. man collects from the box at our gate in the early morning as he passes. Delivers at noon. We come for the afternoon mail. Box 52. I'm Pamela Leigh." Did he look startled as he turned away or was it merely her imagination?

She sank to the steps. The vicious line-up of the two dogs had left her limp as a de-sawdusted doll. Catch her bringing the Babe to the village again. Babe! Anything but. Soon after that memorable Thanksgiving dinner for two, Scott Mallory had asked them to board the dog. He had tried to keep him in his apartment, much to the detriment of the furniture which he had a playful habit of chewing, and the indignation of neighboring tenants. Who was the man who had come to her rescue? A native son home for the week-end? He was about twenty-eight. Nothing so young in males had crossed her path since she had come in June to live in Grandmother Leigh's house.

Perfect afternoon. Lavender-winged gulls soared and dove above the sand dunes which were patched with the shadows of drifting snowy clouds. The out-going tide pitilessly exposed their sea-weedy, tin-can strewn gums; trailed fringes of white foam as it ebbed in curling amber-green waves. Beyond stretched an indigo sea, amethystine where it met the horizon. The sun dropped behind the highest dune, splashed the sky above with lovely color. Pamela felt its beauty like a tangible thing. Crimson, lemon, green, orange, fluffs of mauve, scarfs of rose. Lavish splendor! The afterglow tinted the roofs of the sedate old houses which bordered the main street, gilded the black bands on their white chimneys, transformed windows into molten sheets of brass and copper. Columns of smoke from wood fires spiraled and spread. The air was soft, salty, with an indefinable hint of spring. Pamela filled her lungs with it. This wasn't much like a February afternoon in New York City. One couldn't go about coatless in a green jersey frock there, at this time of year.

She watched the villagers trickling out of the post-office. She knew them all. One couldn't live in an old house which one had inherited in a Cape Cod town without being the object of speculation, the cynosure of every eye when one appeared in public, especially when every living inhabitant above ground—and perhaps some under—knew of the creditors who had hovered like vultures to collect the bills which her father and his wife had lavishly contracted before the crash.

Had hovered! Since the day Scott Mallory had offered to help straighten out the mess, she had not heard from one. Had he in some miraculous way managed to quiet them? Whatever had happened it was a respite for her. She no longer suffered the nausea of apprehension and humiliation when she answered door or telephone bell.

The man who had barged into the dog fight approached with a handful of white envelopes and newspapers.

"Looks as if you would be submerged in a greeting-card blizzard."

She dropped the mail into a basket woven of gay colors. "Thanks lots. Tomorrow will be my birthday. Everyone I ever knew has sent a greeting this year. I suspect that as they posted them my friends sighed.

"'Poor Pam! Marooned on Cape Cod.' Come Babe."

The dog rose leisurely, stretched one hind leg after another, yawned, wagged his tail.

"Mind if I walk with you? Our house is at the foot of the hill. I am Philip Carr."

Philip Carr! Son of Grandmother Leigh's legal adviser with whom her father had quarreled furiously! Quarreled because the lawyer had urgently advised him to carry out his mother's expressed wish, that he settle a sum of money on each of his children. Had the senior Carr had a premonition of what was to happen, had he lacked faith in Harold Leigh's judgment? Whichever it was, it was a pity he hadn't won out.

Philip Carr, about whom the townspeople conjectured, romanced, gossiped and whispered not too kindly! Several years before, his father had restored the house of his paternal great-grandfather for use a few months of the year. "Spoiled, terrible spoiled and a born lady-killer," Hitty Betts had described the son. He seemed more like a grown-up boy out of tune with the world, whose brown eyes sparked defiance, whose full red lips below the slight mustache curved in a suggestion of contempt. In spite of what she had heard in disparagement, she liked him.

"Well? Does my request require so much wrinkled-brow consideration? Say no, if you don't care for what you've heard about me. Our neighbors here are a sturdy little band of knockers. They've told you probably that I spend most of my time about theatres. I do. Not because I'm crazy about actors as people, but because I want to design stage-settings. You may feel that we have not been properly introduced. Have I made a social blunder? Perhaps I should not have spoken to you until a third party had shouted above the growls and barks of the contending factions: 'Miss Leigh, allow me to present Mr. Carr.'"

She ignored the bitterness of his voice. "Introduced! Don't be silly! I have no aversion to theatres—I'm mad about them—or actors"—"except one actress," she added under her breath.

She saw the color steal to his hair, caught the instant's unsteadiness of his boyish mouth. Evidently he had been hurt. Nothing in the world was more cruel than small-town gossip. Often she had seen Mehitable Betts clamp her lips, before she opened them to preface a bit of scandal with:

"Folks is sayin'—"

Philip Carr shifted step to suit hers. "How long have you had that scrapper?"

"He isn't a scrapper. Usually he is beautifully mannered. He's just temperamental like some humans. You can't be expected to like every dog you meet, can you, Babe?" She patted the head of the Belgian who was walking sedately beside her. "He doubtless had an attack of indigestion and took it out on someone else—as do the majority of his sex."

"Not a high opinion of mortal man, have you?"

"You have guessed it. We are taking care of the Babe—we, means Terrence, my brother, and me—for our legal adviser." The last phrase induced a sense of financial solidity.

They approached a big Colonial house in a setting of spruce hedges. Pamela caught a glimpse of an old-fashioned garden in the rear tucked in for the winter. She approved enthusiastically:

"You have the loveliest home in the village. We are all so glad to have it open again."

"All right to have it open if you are not expected to live in it. Father and Mother hurried home from Europe to be sure the cold frames were started so that plants for the garden would go in early. So they say. I suspect that he is pawing the ground in his eagerness to get back into court. He says that he is through with legal battling, but he never will be so long as he finds a case which interests him. It's in his blood. Did you meet my people before they went across?"

"No. I haven't seen your father since he and my father clashed over the settlement of Grandmother Leigh's estate."

"Montague and Capulet stuff?" His smile was boyish. "That wouldn't make any difference to Mother if she liked you and she will. How did anything so vivid as you get caught in this Cape Cod tidepool? This is my third visit since the house was opened. I can't stand it more than twenty-four hours at a time."

Pamela remembered Hitty Betts' comment on the son and heir of the town's plutocrats. "Folks is sayin', that Phil Carr will bring the gray hair of his parents in sorrow to the grave. He goes with a fast lot of young folks, movie and theatre crowd mostly."

Of course, the natives would think him on the moral toboggan slide if his ideas of propriety differed from theirs. Their views on matters theatrical were strictly seventeenth century, Puritan. She met his friendliness with a swift explanation of her presence in the "tidepool." Added gayly:

"Seeing more immediate returns from cooking than from writing I turned Grandmother Leigh's old home into the Silver Moon Chowder House. Silver Moon because of the roses with mother-of-pearl petals and golden hearts which climb over the walls in June. Making money feeding people is stodgily pre-Lindbergh, isn't it? Since that epoch-making flight, girls are going in for all sorts of aviation angles, radio announcing, business management, banking, posing for commercial photographs, anything which isn't tarred with domesticity. I had to make money at home."

"It's sporting of you. I know your place. Used to go there with Father. While he conferred with your grandmother, the farmer's wife filled me up with milk and cookies in her cottage. Do you make the Silver Moon pay serving only chowders?"

"The point is well taken. As I'm not an Alice Foote McDougal yet, while I'm building up the business I give patrons what they ask for. Someone phoned for a reservation for six tomorrow and ordered young pig. Ever seen a young pig ready for roasting? Rear view it looks so like a plump fair-skinned baby that I salted it with my tears, figuratively speaking. I will sidestep and make Mehitable Betts put it into the oven." She was aware of his cynical regard.

"You don't impress me as being tender-hearted. There is a frozen quality in your voice which makes me a little afraid of you."

"Ever had your feet so cold at a football game that you wished they would hurry up and get numb so they would stop hurting? I am hoping that my heart will freeze so that it will stop feeling. Being a house-owner seems to be just one repair after another. Terry reported this morning that the roof of the farmer's cottage—which you remember—was leaking like a sieve. I wish the building would consume itself before the taxes consume it." She went on lightly: "Forget the sobbie. Don't think that I dislike my business venture—perhaps adventure; I love contact with people, even if I do hate having them wandering all over the house and patronizing, 'Nice little place!' Feeding them is just one problem after another."

"Are you the cook?"

"I am. At this stage of the enterprise I can't afford to have even one guest find anything wrong."

"You don't care a little bit about yourself, do you?"

"Crazy about Pamela Leigh," she attested gaily. "Oh, there's your mother! I met her once years ago but she probably does not remember me."

A woman in a smart gray gown was waiting at the gate. Her hair was surprisingly white in contrast to her youthful skin. Her eyes were as brown, as eager as her son's. She held out her hand.

"Miss Leigh, I am so glad to see you again. I have been wondering how soon I might run up to call. I wanted Phil to meet you but apparently he has accomplished that pleasure without my help. Won't you come in for tea?"

Had the son wirelessed that suggestion to his mother? "Thank you, but I must hurry home. We have a full day tomorrow. Has Terry brought the eggs you ordered? When I left he was in the poultry house mumbling incantations over the hens. With that utter disregard of the timely so characteristic of the species, they have gone on strike just as you have opened your house."

"You don't mean that you run a poultry farm as well as the Silver Moon?"

"The poultry is my brother's enterprise, Mr. Carr. I wouldn't go so far as to say that he runs it. At present it is running him—ragged. However, as we have adopted for our coat of arms two green frogs, a milkpail rampant, with Kick Frog! Kick! illumined on a silver field, we should worry."

The blaze of admiration in his eyes brought warm color to her face. The drone of a plane overhead almost drowned his boyish wheedle. "Mother, ask the little girl if your little boy may play with her."

Mrs. Carr regarded him with smiling adoration. "Phil's unprecedented shyness takes my breath. May he call? I should be happy to have you friends."

"I would love to have him come after business hours, but you are witness to my warning, I am dull company at the end of the day."

"I'll risk that. Do you good to go for an airing in my roadster. I'm a safe non-skid driver warranted steady at the wheel. Here comes the omnipresent Milly! Wouldn't you know it? The fairies who presided at that girl's advent into this old world scrimped on her chin and spread themselves on her bump of curiosity. How can you stand her snooping, Mother?"

"Because she is an excellent waitress, prefers to remain near her brother, and while she spends every cent she can get on clothes she hasn't the city urge. What is it, Milly?"

The girl in a pink linen frock with dainty white collar and cuffs and apron, who had run down the path, was slightly breathless. Her pale blue eyes were interrogation points as they shifted from face to face, her mouth was a trifle pinched, her light hair waved close to her head, her skin suggested the tint and texture of a magnolia blossom. If she had a trifle more chin and a suggestion of soul in her make-up, she would be beautiful, Pamela decided. She took an instant dislike to her. Untrustworthy. Philip Carr was right. She had prying eyes.

"Mr. Phil! Long distance call."

"Must be my client." He chuckled. "Why are our offices crowded?"

Mrs. Carr's eyes were starry. "Phil! Have you a client? Did you get the theatre contract?"

Her son reddened, laughed. "Mother! Why reveal the humiliating fact that this is my first?" He pointed his question by a glance at the maid who with jaw slightly dropped was staring at him. "See you tonight, Miss Leigh," he called back as he started for the house.

"M's Carr, please may I go down to the field to see the airplane? I've never seen one close," pleaded Milly Pike.

"Run along, but be here in ample time to serve dinner."

The girl raced away. The street, which had seemed under the spell of an afternoon siesta, suddenly came alive. Men and women boiled out of houses to hurry in the direction of the field.

Pamela's fingers tightened on the Babe's leash. "I'd better get back to the Silver Moon. There were no reservations for the afternoon so I left Hitty Betts in charge while I ran away for an hour. She won't be able to resist the lure of that plane."

Mrs. Carr's eyes were luminous. "My dear, you will never know until you have a son of your own how glad I am that Phil met you. It was tactless of me to betray the fact that he has not been overworked. He took up architecture against his father's wishes—my husband wanted him to be a lawyer—and studied abroad. Now he has opened an office in New York. Too much leisure is a menace to any man. I don't like the young people with whom he has associated since he came from Europe, their idea of twentieth century liberation seems to be to acquire habits which shackle them with steel. Not but what they are decent enough," she hastened to assure loyally, "but they don't bring out the best in Philip. You will." With which declaration of faith she turned away.