Читать книгу Swift Water - Emilie Loring - Страница 3

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A resplendent roadster, yellow with black trimmings, shot down the main street of Garston violating laws both human and divine. As it approached the crossroads in the crowded business section a man in uniform held up an authoritative, white-gloved hand. With a wicked, little smile of defiance the girl at the wheel kept on her impetuous course. The officer stepped into the path of the car. As it passed him with hair-raising nearness he jumped to the running-board. Commanded in a voice which did curious things to the girl’s pounding heart:

“Pull up to the curb.”

From thickly fringed, brilliantly dark eyes in a startlingly white face she appraised him. Admitted:

“You win, Tyrant.”

He was still on the running-board as she stopped the roadster in front of a building. He saluted in response to a hail from a gay party passing in a luxurious touring car before he demanded:

“Where’s your license.”

With tormenting deliberation she produced a slip of paper from her envelope purse.

“Here it is. Please don’t beat me,” she mocked penitently.

Triumphantly she watched the slow color rise under his bronze skin as he examined it. He wasn’t quite so hard-boiled as he wanted her to think him. Neither was his uniform of the regulation traffic brand. It was of A. E. F. vintage, one silver bar on the shoulder, a caduceus on the collar, a discharge stripe on the sleeve. His implacable voice belied his color as note-book in hand he tapped the license:

“This really is your name?”

“Of course. I’m Jean Randolph.”

Did it mean anything to him or was she imagining a slight tightening of his jaw?

“Your car has a New York registration. What are you doing here?”

Jean resented his tone, resented his direct gaze which stripped off her self-complacency, resented having wasted her most charming smile on a mere traffic officer, resented the surge of terror which had swept her as he had stepped in front of her car, even now there was an all-goneness in the place where her knees should be. She answered flippantly:

“Doing here? Nothing much. I’ve come to spend the winter with my father and—and—you may take it from me”—her voice waxed indignant—“I’m not any more pleased to be in your one-horse little city than you are to have me here.” She waved a contemptuous hand; “Is it dead or just sleeping?”

“Father’s name?”

She had the sensation of having inadvertently stepped under an icy shower.

“Hugh Randolph. I suppose you know who he is?”

He ignored the question as he made another entry in his book. She was conscious of eyes, millions of them, regarding her from the windows of the building. She felt the color rising to the brim of her soft white hat. Protested indignantly:

“Nice way you have of saying ‘Welcome to our city!’—Lieutenant.”

For the first time the man’s gray eyes met hers, steadily, disconcertingly.

“Quite as nice a welcome as this visitor deserves.” He returned the license, handed her a slip of paper. “Present this at court tomorrow morning at ten.” He stepped from the running-board. “Drive on!”

Jean regarded him levelly and settled back behind the wheel.

“And if I don’t care to drive on?”

“Parking limit at this curb five minutes. One of those summons is about all a visiting motorist can get away with in this town,” he suggested imperturbably, touched his cap and walked away.

The girl watched him, noted his springy step, the determined set of his shoulders. He was slim without suggesting thinness. Must be about thirty-five, she decided. Back at his post he saluted almost continuously in response to waves and smiling nods from passers-by. She sniffed indignantly. Started her car. Said to herself:

“Big Chief stuff. If he’s a regular policeman why that uniform? Perhaps the city’s out of traffic cops today and he’s filling in. No, he made out that paper as though it were all in the day’s work. He belongs in the movies with his lean face and poker calm. My heart turned turtle when he stepped in front of the car. For the first time in my life I was really frightened. The Terrible Twin suggested ‘Make it snappy,’ when he held up his hand. Father’ll be furious when he sees this summons. Why let him see it?”

A slight frown contracted her brow as she regarded her reflection in the small mirror above the windshield. Skin even yet curiously white under the rich sun tan which is popularly supposed to complement the satin blackness of hair which showed beneath the brim of her hat. Critically she regarded her white tweed suit, with its suggestion of soft yellow cardigan. Made a little face at the girl in the mirror.

“I don’t believe that officious traffic cop could tell this minute whether you were sixteen or sixty.”

The business section of the city behind her she drove slowly along a boulevard lined with tall trees blazing with color. Browns, yellows, crimsons, scarlets, the leaves ran the gamut of fall shades. Above swaying tops loomed a rosy cloud looking for all the world like a fluffy strawberry mousse. Low down behind the spacious houses glittered a river, rimmed with gorgeous foliage, sapphire as the heavens it reflected. Scarfs of mist, diaphanous as malines, pale as a mermaid’s hair in moonlight, floated above it. Dusk lingered in the distance awaiting the sunset signal before resuming its stealthy approach. The beauty caught at Jean’s breath. She had forgotten the frost-tinged splendor of a New England autumn.

The clear air rhymed and chimed. Bells? The music drifted down from the sky, like silvery rain from countless rockets. It fell softly, liquidly, swelled, swung into deepening sonorous chords.

A carillon! She remembered now. When the religious sects of Garston had united in one congregation, under one roof, her father had presented the church with bells in memory of his mother, who far ahead of her time had believed that different creeds should, to the advantage of their souls, spiritual influence—and incidentally finances, enroll under one banner. Also he had loaned for a parsonage Hollyhock House, the home to which his great-grandmother had come as a bride. She remembered her own mother’s caustic comments when she heard of his generosity. Quite unconsciously she sighed. Life in the Randolph family had its complications. She hated this chill sense of self-condemnation—as foreign to her experience as snow in the tropics—which had persisted since her encounter with the traffic man.

“Darn him!” she muttered under her breath. The road rose gradually, bordered by lovely, old houses staring down through sunset bright panes upon the city at their feet. As she passed the brick parsonage tucked into a pocket of the high ground like a red and white handkerchief, she wondered if the occupants appreciated the choice old finish of the rooms. She shot the roadster up the drive to Hill Top, her father’s home. The house spread as might a just alighted airplane. The ells were like wings resting on velvet lawns. The body seemed all glittering, fiery eyes as the windows reflected the slanting sun. Behind and below the hill glinted the river. As the car stopped a man lazily approached. His china teeth, like miniature tombstones fashioned to withstand the wear and tear of time, gleamed whitely in welcome. Ezry Barker! Doubtless he had been christened Ezra, but “Ezry” he had been since to all his world. A glow banished the still lingering chill in Jean’s consciousness. She was sure of one person in Garston who would approve of her. He had been head gardener on the place since long before she was born, and her devoted slave and ally against discipline ever since.

“Sure Jean, it’s mighty fine to get you back. Come to stay?”

He vigorously pumped her slender hand.

“For the winter. It’s wonderful to see you, Ezry. How come that you are doing this though?” she waved to the car.

“Heerd you was comin’. ‘Pointed myself a committee of one to welcome you. Guess these flyin’ women ain’t the only ones to git a glad hand when they come home. How’s yer Ma? She comin’?”

His green eyes were alight with affection, his voice gruff with tenderness. Jean’s throat tightened. She had hoped that her father would meet her. Silly! Nearly running down an idiotic traffic-cop had done things to her nerve. She smiled radiantly at the awkward man.

“Ezry, you’re a dear.” The smile left her lips. “No, Mother isn’t coming. She’s—she’s hard at work on a new story.”

“Been terrible successful, hasn’t she? Didn’t suppose when she left us ten years ago we’d be seein’ her pictures in all the papers. You goin’ to be one of them authoresses, Jean?”

“No, Ezry. Nature used up all the genius she intended for our family when she made Grandmother a great singer and Mother a writer. I have no talent, no parlor tricks. I play the organ creditably, that’s all. I want you to show me the garden tomorrow. I’ve heard of its beauty.”

“Sure thing. I’ve got another job, too. I’m sexton of the Community Church.”

His voice dripped with pride. Jean teased:

“You! A churchman. I can’t believe it, Ezry. Perhaps you’ll take me sometime.” As she ran up the steps, he answered good-naturedly:

“ ’Twouldn’t hurt you none. Say, Jean, been gittin’ into trouble so soon? Seems though I see th’ old symptoms. Didn’t fetch the Turrible Twin along with ye, did ye?”

“I’m afraid I did, Ezry.”

“She sure was a glutton fer trouble that child,” he chuckled and started the car.

Jean stood quite still on the threshold of the room which had been hers ten years before. She might have left it yesterday. Nothing had been changed. Gay cretonnes mauve and green and rose—softly gleaming mahogany—red coals behind the iron grills of the grate—books, juvenile books on the shelves—the closet! A surge of anger, rebellion, swept her. How many times had her naughty double, “The Terrible Twin” been incarcerated there, in “the Dungeon” till “good little Jean” should come out? She would hate to count up. As though to exorcise the unpleasant memory she pulled open the doors. Gazed in dazed unbelief. Transformation. Magic. “The dungeon” was a powder-room. As out of character in the old house as a Follies girl in the play of Hamlet, but oh, how charming.

The inside of the doors were mauve lacquer and silver. Above the dressing table hung in the same color, the walls were mirrored. A light glowed in pale pink shades as the door opened. A mauve bench with silver top was before the table laden with crystal appointments.

Her father had planned this. He did care—her mother had brought her up to think him a hang-over from the glacial age—she remembered now how troubled he had been as one governess after another had refused longer to combat the Terrible Twin—her mother had been annoyed merely because the constant change interfered with her work—she had determined to make a name for herself which would warrant breaking loose from the small city of Garston. He had warned Jean that her defiance of control would bring unhappiness to her and anyone who loved her, he had added seriously:

“Opposition sends you plunging ahead. You think defiance spells courage. It doesn’t. Nine times out of ten it spells lack of intelligence. Some day when you’re caught in swift water whirled and tossed and submerged you will remember this.” Today when that officious traffic cop—

There he was again, prying into her mind with his cool, steady eyes. She crossed hurriedly to a window. Not too dark to see the hillside which sloped from the house to the pink tinsel river. Half way down a chimney poked its head above the land behind it. That meant her log-cabin playhouse tucked into a shoulder of the hill still stood. A star pricked through the sky. The Left Wing of the old house where resided her maternal grandmother, Contessa Vittoria di Fanfani, “the glorious Fanfani,” was spangled with lighted windows.

Curious arrangement that his mother-in-law should have come to make her home in Hugh Randolph’s house. To be sure the Left Wing was an independent establishment, a little bit of Italy, from servants to furnishings, set down in a New England homestead.

What was her father’s reaction to the Contessa’s presence? What had been his reaction to the departure of his wife and only child ten years ago? Jean remembered her unbearable longing to run back as over her shoulder she had gazed unhappily at the home she was leaving, but, she had too much of her father in her to show emotion. Darn the Randolph reserve! Detestable thing! It was everlastingly edging in between her and the gay acquaintances with whom she played round. No one of them would have felt apologetic because of a divided household. Try as she would she couldn’t help the feeling that it was a disgrace. She and her mother had lived smoothly, merrily—in all the years no one had looked at her as impersonally, as distastefully, as had that traffic—

“Forget it,” she stormed aloud before she again picked up the trail of memory. She and her mother had kept eternally on the move for atmosphere. Education had been snatched here and there—culture had been supplied by travel, her eager interest in life and people. Suppose she had disregarded her mother’s protest and gone to college? What would her life have been? Sometimes the slightest contact swung one into another path, she had lived long enough to learn that. Not her mother’s argument, but the certainty that Madelaine Randolph needed her as a sort of anchor to windward had held her.

Her mother was popular, unbelievably successful in her work, always there had been devoted admirers in her train. For three years Hugh Randolph had spent the week-ends with them. Then intervals between lengthened until finally his visits ceased. Once Jean had heard him protest furiously:

“I refuse to stand about holding your mink coat—which you bought for yourself—while you allow men to implant a lingering kiss upon your hand, Madelaine.” After that he had insisted that his daughter’s expenses were his affair. She had seen him seldom. A month ago, suddenly, startlingly, he had announced that he wanted her with him in Garston.

Why? the girl demanded of herself again as she had asked him in a letter. She had told him of gay plans for the winter. He had answered:

“Never mind, ‘Why?’ Do as you like, of course, but I want you here.”

She had hated the thought of months in the small city, but good sportsmanship pricked through selfishness. She owed so much of the beauty of her life to her father. She would go. When she had told her mother of her decision, Madelaine Randolph threatened angrily:

“If you go to Garston, Jean, I shall start for Reno. It’s just like a domineering Randolph to crash into our winter plans. I need you as a—a chaperon,” she had added with a self-conscious glint in her dark eyes. The great emerald on her finger seemed to gleam sardonically.

In spite of her protest Jean had come and a nice mess she had made of it at the start, she reproached herself, as her eyes rested on the crumpled summons she had flung to the desk. What was the white package beside it? She answered a timid knock:

“Come in!”

A pink-cheeked maid in black satin frock with snowy collar and cuffs entered. Her dark eyes snapped with excitement, her rich voice was uneven as she explained:

“Madama la Contessa send me to do all things for you, all time you here. Signor Randolph have only Filipino men for servants. I try to please Signorina, ver’ much.”

“You mean that my grandmother loaned you to be my maid?”

“Si! Si! Signorina.”

“What is your name?”

“Rosa.”

“Very well, Rosa, unpack my bags in the other room. I will give you the keys to the trunks when they come.”

The girl curtsied.

“I make a vera hard try to please. Madama la Contessa send this.”

She held out a note. The pale pink envelope, the sickish fragrance which drifted out with the sheet of paper transported Jean back fifteen years. She remembered the advent of those rosy scented notes, remembered her mother’s face as she had opened them, remembered the scorn in her voice as she had tossed them across the table to her husband with the remark:

“La Contessa, the glorious Fanfani, is still the center of a group of celebrities—to hear her tell it.”

As invariably Hugh Randolph would answer:

“She has a marvellous voice and extraordinary beauty, Madelaine.”

“Am I not as beautiful? Am I not as talented in my way? Aren’t editors beginning to realize that I am in the world? She is out on the highways and I’m plodding along in a narrow, little country road because you insist upon carrying on the manufacturing plant you inherited.”

“Cheer up! You may be the world’s best seller and then you can chuck home and husband,” Hugh Randolph would console caustically.

She had heard that unfriendly duelling till she had sworn that if that was what a narrow country road did to a woman’s disposition life would never catch her and chain her to a circumscribed outlook. Jean shook off the past. What unpleasant memories parents could pile up for their children. Honesty compelled her to acknowledge from what she had observed of her companions that the children could do their bit at piling. She opened the note. Read:

Dear Child—

It is arranged that you and your father are to dine with me tonight. A small party. One of the rocks of the Community Church here—New England granite,—and his daughter, hard as nails—my old impressario Zambaldi, and a man with a divine voice. I am doing my best to pry him out of his present dull job. He belongs in opera. Make Rosa your own while you are here. She knows her business. Carlotta trained her.

Vittoria.

Three hours later Jean appraised herself in the gilt-framed pier glass in the long drawing room at Hill Top. The bodice of her billowy, orchid tulle frock fairly conservative in the front, was cut to show her smooth-skinned back to a jeweled slide at the waist. Her petunia satin slippers with their exaggerated spiked heels were brilliantly buckled; two diamond bracelets sparkled on her left arm. She had accepted the frock quite as a matter of course when the modiste sent it home, but, viewed against the Victorian setting of this old drawing room, she was uncannily aware of wraiths of nineteenth century ancestors raising transparent ghostly hands in shocked consternation and disapproval.

“Jean!”

She wheeled from puckered-brow contemplation of the looking-glass girl with her rouged lips. Hugh Randolph was in the doorway looking absurdly young for a father—he had been absurdly young when she was born, she remembered, only twenty-two. Straight. Tall. Almost as lean as that officious traffic cop—curious how the officer’s face flashed on the screen of her mind—his hair had whitened since last she had seen him. There were deep lines between his nose and chin. She ran to him with both hands extended. He caught them hard in his. His usually inscrutable eyes glowed as though small lamps had been flashed on. She gave his hands a little squeeze as she announced unnecessarily:

“I’m here, Hughie.”

The name she had called him when as a little girl they were the best of comrades. His face which had been curiously pale under its bronze flushed with slow color. He returned the squeeze before he laughed:

“So I perceive. Sorry not to have met you on your arrival with a band and fireworks—the return-of-the-heir, stuff—but as I was about to start, I was waited on, I think that’s the technical term, by a delegation from the plant.”

“Ezry Barker was on hand. Dear old thing. Moderate as ever. He never will be a ball of fire.”

“No, he’s in the slow-match class. He gets there though. I left my proxy on your desk. Like ’em?” he looked down at the glittering gems on her arm.

“Like them! Hughie, they’re gorgeous. And the powder-room is beyond words! How did you know that I was mad about bracelets?”

“I have a friend who doesn’t care for jewels, who has a sympathetic understanding of other women’s love for them. She suggested bracelets as my welcome-home gift. As to the powder-room, I thought we would exorcise the ghost of the Terrible Twin.” He released her hands and picked up the frail velvet wrap which matched her slippers in tint. “We’d better get a move on. Madama la Contessa keeps her dinner waiting for no one. We will go through the garden-court.”

Who was the woman who didn’t care for jewels who could bring that tone into her father’s voice, Jean wondered as she walked beside him through the fragrant dusk. Shrubs were but a faint blur. From a shell in the hand of a spectral nymph water dripped into a pool. The sleepy croon of the river stirred the scented air. In the east a copper disc peeked cautiously above the horizon as though to make sure that the world was safe for moonlight. She slipped an arm within her father’s.

“It is good to be here, Hughie.”

He pressed it tight against him.

“I felt like a brute tearing you away from the white lights and—the celebrities who flock about your—mother.”

“I’m glad now that you persisted. I haven’t seen La Contessa—I called her ‘Grandmother’ once the last time she was with us and she almost snapped my head off—how is she?”

“Lately for the first time I have thought her vitality waning. In years she is what most of the world would call old, especially the youngsters. In spirit she is the most youthful person I know, she has no age-consciousness—which fact has kept her brilliant, interesting, even fascinating. Several months ago the doctor warned her to go slow. Since then she has changed. Were she anyone else I would suspect that she is frightened. Not a word of this to her. She is all excited now over the conviction that she has discovered a marvellous voice. Zambaldi, her one-time impresario, is dining with her tonight to confirm or challenge her opinion. Here we are, and not more than a moment to spare,” he added as a servant in blue and cream livery swung open an elaborate iron grille and a majordomo bowed low in the tapestry hung foyer.

Hughie was right. Age had tapped her grandmother on the shoulder, Jean agreed, as she crossed the wide music room to where Contessa di Fanfani stood under an intricately carved balcony. A few choice paintings by old Italian masters, antique plaques, were set in walls paneled and pillared in mahogany. Embroideries, a rare tapestry were flung over the balcony rail. Photographs of celebrities, elaborately framed, costumes and sprawling autographs in the manner of a passing generation, crowded one another on small tables. A harp, a piano of gold inlay, put pulse and heart into the decorative rhythm of the room.

Never a large woman, Contessa Vittoria di Fanfani, in her sleeveless frock of emerald green velvet had a shrunken look, like a gorgeous flower whose petals have been lightly touched by frost. She was beautiful in spite of—perhaps because of—the perfection of her make-up. Her hair was ruddy with henna, and charmingly waved, her cheeks were delicately flushed, her skin was velvety, her mouth fashionably rouged, her dark eyes brilliant. Her throat, the spot where Time lays its most cruel touch on a woman, was collared in diamonds and pearls. With operatic abandon she caught Jean in her arms, pressed her lips to her hair:

“Dio mio! It seems ages since I have seen you. Mr. Calvin, I want you to meet our little girl. Mr. Luther Calvin and Miss Calvin, Jean.”

Jean, somewhat embarrassed by so evident a play to the audience, acknowledged the introduction with a smile which faded as she regarded the man and girl beside her grandmother. He was small with a narrow, high face, eyes curiously still, agate eyes, cold as glass marbles, a thin, cruel mouth, a Napoleonic nose, hair so black and glossy that it made her think of patent-leather pumps she owned which hurt her they were so unyielding. He would hurt too, she decided, if he had a chance. A fanatical old tyrant, if she was a judge of human nature. Salvation stuck out all over him. Having acquired it himself—his brand—he’d bend his energies to converting the world. Electric currents seemed to cross and spark as his eyes met hers. He bared his gold inlays in the travesty of a smile. He was faultlessly dressed in evening clothes. His daughter’s hair was as dark, as lacquered as his, her eyes as chillingly still. Her rose chiffon gown glittered with tiny crystals. Brittle. Jean had the feeling that if she touched either of them they might chip.

She turned to the white-haired, thick-set man beside the Contessa. She didn’t like him either, she decided in a flash. He was the antithesis of Luther Calvin. He looked as though his too abundant flesh were in imminent danger of boiling up over his collar. The Contessa presented him:

“Jean, this is Signor Zambaldi, the great impresario. Our child has not a voice, Luigi, but she has a way with the organ.”

The Contessa’s stilted use of English always amused Jean. She spoke as a foreigner might who was laboriously acquiring the language. She, who until she was sixteen, had lived in the State of Maine.

The girl’s inner self retreated and banged a door against Zambaldi. She hated his pasty touch, hated the feel of his thick lips on the back of her hand. His voice was as smooth as cream, his English perfect as he complimented:

“Signorina needs no attraction but her beautiful face. If she is not the marvel I have come long miles to hear, where is your rara avis, Vittoria mia?”

“It is a man, not a woman. It has amused me to keep you guessing. Here he is! You’ll thank me on your bended knees when you hear him sing, Luigi.” The Contessa’s voice shook with eagerness. Her long jeweled earrings glittered, swung, quivered, as might a seismographic needle recording a subterranean disturbance. Her excitement was contagious. A little shiver wriggled down Jean’s spine as her glance followed her grandmother’s. Her eyes widened in unbelief. Crossing the room beside a slender woman smartly gowned in a flowered frock—his wife, evidently, they seemed of an age—was the traffic officer who had held her up. For a fleet second his eyes met hers. Could he be the man with the voice who was to be pried from a dull job. She would call directing traffic anything but dull. Into her astonishment rasped the Contessa’s whisper:

“Dio mio, Jean, close your lips. Have you never seen a good-looking man before?”

Jean choked back an hysterical gurgle. Had she been staring open-mouthed? Small wonder. A policeman—a policeman in the last word in evening clothes—the dinner guest of the glorious Fanfani! Incredible. As the Contessa swept forward with the little impresario in tow, Jean caught her father’s arm. Mimicked her grandmother’s intonation:

“Dio mio, Hughie, what is that traffic cop doing here?”

Hugh Randolph looked about the room, frowned at her as though he suspected a sudden attack of aberration:

“Traffic cop! Where?”

“The man who just came in.”

“He! A traffic cop! Where did you get that crazy idea? That is Christopher Wynne. The minister of the Community Church of Garston.”