Читать книгу With Banners - Emilie Loring - Страница 4
II
ОглавлениеFrom the lighted stage Brooke Reyburn looked into the auditorium of the department store in which she had worked for four years. She had begun by modeling sports clothes, and because she had loved her work and had given it all the enthusiasm and drive there was in her she had been promoted steadily. The first of this last year she had been made head fashion adviser and had been sent to Paris. She had made frequent trips to New York, but never before had she been abroad. Now she was talking for the last time to a hall full of women, many of whom she had come to know by sight. She had given her last radio talk. It was the end of her business career. What would the new life bring her?
Even as she thought these things, she told her audience that the silver frock the lovely blonde on the stage was modeling was a copy of Chanel, called attention to its touch of theatre; that the smart black tailleur she herself was wearing was from the Misses Better Dress Shop at $29.50; that neither brown as a color nor gold jewelry should be worn by the grey-haired woman; that a questionnaire had brought out the amusing fact that the majority of married men liked to see their wives in blue; asked if the ravishing scent she was spraying from the atomizer was reaching them—one dollar a dram at the perfume bar—and said for the last time in closing:
"This concludes our fashion show. Thank you."
As she stepped from the stage, Madame Céleste, the autocratic head of the store's department of clothes for women, stopped her. Her figure was a restrained thirty-six; her black frock was as chic as only a Lanvin model could be; the pearls at her ears were the size of able-bodied marbles; her make-up would have done marvelous things for a younger woman, for her it achieved nothing short of a miracle. A hint of emotion warmed the hard blue of her eyes as she caught Brooke's hands.
"Cherie," her French was slightly denatured by a down-east twang, "I shall lose my right hand when you go. Why did that meddlesome old party want to butt in and leave you money? You were on the way to making it here."
"I shall miss you, Madame Céleste." Brooke's voice was none too steady.
"Perhaps you won't have to long. In this here-today-and-gone-tomorrow age, money doesn't stay in one pocket. Remember, cherie, whenever you want a job, come to me. You'll be needing one. Au revoir!"
"Cheering thought that I may lose the fortune," Brooke reflected, as she approached her office across the hall. Suddenly the black letters:
MISS REYBURN
on the ground-glass panel of the door jiggled fantastically.
She blinked moisture from her lashes—she hadn't supposed she would feel choky about leaving. She opened the door, closed it quickly behind her, and backed against it as a man slid to his feet from the corner of her desk. His black hair shone like the coat of a sleek well-brushed pony; his dark eyes were quizzically amused as they met hers; his teeth were beautifully white; he was correctly turned out in spic and span business clothes. He was likable, but there was something missing—rather curious that never before had she felt it. He lacked—he lacked salt, Brooke decided, and then reproached herself for being critical. He had been marvelously kind to her, and she was quite outside his social circle—now, she would not have been during her father's lifetime.
"How's tricks?" he inquired gaily.
"How did you get in here, Jerry Field?"
"Easy as rolling off a log. A taxi, an elevator, a few strides on shanks mare, and here I am."
"I've told you time and again not to come to my office."
"While you were on the job, you said, sweet thing. I've stayed away and all the time the old wolf jealousy gnawed at my heart. I've imagined you here entertaining the male heads of departments and letting them, or stopping them, make love to you."
"You've been seeing too many movies. I shall drop fathoms in your estimation when I tell you that no man in the organization has ever been otherwise than friendly and helpful. Perhaps I'm not a glamorous person, perhaps I haven't the divine spark which touches off the male imagination."
"Perhaps it's because they know that those corking eyes of yours look straight into their minds. We're wasting time. You are through, and here I am all in a dither to take you teaing and stepping and dining to celebrate your entrance into the land of the free."
"Nice of you but—I wonder how free I shall be."
Brooke crossed her arms on the back of a chair and looked about the office. She would miss it, miss even the display figure in the corner with its red polka dotted cheeks and staring eyes. There had been hectic moments when she had talked out her problems to its wax immobility. Her glance came back to the man watching her.
"How long is it since you and I first met, Jerry?"
He drew a memoranda book from his pocket and consulted its pages.
"Six months, one week, and six days."
"Foolish! Pretending you have it in black and white."
He tapped the closely lined page. "Believe it or not, there it is, the date when you and I spent an hour trapped in an elevator which wouldn't move. You were coming from a radio talk and I from a conference with my broker who had informed me that my account was figuring exclusively in the red. Fate, sweet thing, fate."
"Fate! The starter told me it was a balky cog. It was an experience I hope never to repeat, even if it brought you and me together. I was frightened."
"But you laughed. That's what got me, your sportsmanship, and when you clutched at my coat it was like fingers on my heart."
Brooke turned quickly to the closet. She must switch him from that track. As she took down her short lapin jacket and slipped into it, she said lightly:
"How you dramatize life. You have been miscast. Instead of being born a rich man's son and spending your days dabbling in paint and the stock market, you should be on the stage. With your flair for good theatre, you'd be packing them in. Perhaps Sam can get you a chance in his company. Have you seen the play in which he is acting?" she asked with a quick change from lightness to gravity.
"Yes. Your brother's good."
"But you don't like the play?"
"I can't hand it much."
"Neither can I. It's a dummy with not a breath of life, not a drop of red blood, just clever epigrams and stuffed-shirt characters. I wish Sam hadn't been cast in it."
"Don't worry. It won't last long. What's the next play on the stock list?"
"The Tempest. The apartment rings with, 'Bestir! Bestir! Heigh my hearts! Cheerily, cheerily my hearts!'"
"You're not bad yourself, Brooke. Why didn't you take to acting?"
"I ought to be good. We children were raised on dramatics and quotations. It was Father's habit to orate when he was shaving, and we could spout Shakespeare before we could spell. Besides being a publisher, he was a playwright for amateurs, but Sam is ambitious to write for the professional stage; he has one three-act comedy finished, that is, as finished as a play can be until it is put into rehearsal. That is why he is acting, that he may know all there is to know of stage technic. I've had theatre enough in my late job. Late! I can't believe that I'm through. Come on, Jerry, before I sob on the shoulder of that display figure."
"Lot you'll sob on that when I'm here." He patted his shoulder and grinned engagingly. "This one is warranted sound, kind, and a corking tear-absorber."
"I'll wager my next week's salary that it is damp from constant use. Let's go. I asked the girls not to come to say good-bye as if I were going away forever. They gave me a grand farewell party last night, and I have perfume, hosiery, and bags enough to last the rest of my natural life. Go ahead. I want to snap out the light myself."
As she stopped on the threshold, Jerry Field caught her arm.
"Hey, no looking back. Remember what happened to Lot's wife. I'd make a hit, wouldn't I, tugging a pillar of salt round the dance floor." He shut the door smartly behind them.
Brooke blinked and swallowed. "Okay, Jerry, from now on I go straight ahead like an army with banners, but straight ahead doesn't mean teaing and dancing with you tonight."
When they reached the already darkening street, Jerry Field demanded:
"Why won't you go stepping with me now?"
"Because I am going home to plan with the family about moving, and to plot the curve of our domestic future."
"Look here, Brooke, don't persist in that silly idea of living in the house Mrs. Dane left you. It's all right for spring and summer, but what will you do marooned on a rocky point of land almost entirely surrounded by water when the days get short, in a place where the residents dig in and nothing ever happens? The causeway which connects the peninsula with the mainland sometimes is submerged in a storm. Suppose we have one of our typical New England winters?"
Brooke had thought of that. She loved living in the city, loved this time of day and this time of year when the shops glittered with lights, when the smell of roasting chestnuts seeped from glowing braziers on corners, when the streets were jammed with traffic and every person in the crowd hurried as if he or she had somewhere to go and were on the way. She drew a long breath of the keen October air and let it go in a sigh.
"It is a charming old house, Jerry. I shall love it. I'm a business woman on the outside and a home-maker at heart. I hear that many of the residents who usually summer there are planning to keep their homes open and live in them this winter—it's a trend—so perhaps something will happen, something exciting, on that peninsula of land you scorn. These are the melodramatic thirties, remember. It will be rather thrilling to go into an absolutely new environment; an adventure in living. One never can tell what's waiting to pounce as one turns the corner. Twenty miles isn't far from town."
"It's twenty miles too far. If you were here in the city, I could pick you up in a minute and we could go places. To date you've handed out the excuse that you were too busy. People are planning to winter there, are they? That's an idea. You won't lose the fortune if you don't live in the old place, will you? It wasn't a condition?"
They were walking toward the crimson and jade sunset against which a huge electric clock seemed colorless.
"No. Mrs. Dane merely left a note with her lawyer, in which she wrote that she wished I would live there for two years, or at least until I had cleared the house of her belongings, that she knew that I would not laugh at her treasures, that I would understand, and that I would care for her parrot, Mr. Micawber. That parrot leaves me cold, Jerry. So you see, I must live in the house for a while—now that the lordly Mark Trent has given permission. I—"
"What has Mark Trent to say about it?"
Brooke looked up in surprise as they waited for the traffic light at the corner to change to red and yellow.
"Don't bite. Do you know him, Jerry?"
"Sure, I know him."
"Why haven't you told me?"
"Why should I? I'd forgotten that he was Mrs. Dane's nephew who had been cut off with a shilling or less."
She caught his arm. "Look out! Wait for the light! I had that lesson seared into my mind last week—and ground into my knee," she added to herself.
"Now we can go. You must have been excited to start to walk in front of a car. Why do you dislike Mark Trent?"
"Don't dislike him. Just don't want to think about the man, that's all. My sister Daphne went cockeyed about him and he turned her down hard. Like a perfect gentleman, of course, but it got my goat."
Brooke visualized Mark Trent as he had glared down at her on the street, and later as she had seen him in Jed Stewart's office. She couldn't imagine him changing his mind when once he had determined on a line of action. He looked like a man who knew exactly what he wanted and was out to get it. Even the memory of him sent little prickles along her veins.
"Are you sure he turned her down?"
"Sure. I'm not blaming him, I'm ashamed for her, that's all. He was probably fed up with her type. His ex-wife was never quite sober, I've heard. Daphne fell for him the minute she saw him, she had worried me by her crazy ideas of freedom for a girl, she'd picked up a post-war germ somewhere—all talk of course—and when Trent came along, she stopped drinking and staying out till morning at Night Clubs. I was relieved. Then he side-stepped. Forget it. I don't know why I told you. Nice street this, isn't it?"
Brooke nodded assent as they passed houses whose polished windows, violet-paned some of them, screened by laces of unbelievable fineness, regarded her with inscrutable calm. Thoroughbred dogs, proudly conscious of their gay collars and smart breast-straps, decorously escorted their young masters. Shining limousines waited before charming old doors. In the distance rose the faint, far sound of traffic, murmurous as a mighty flood which never rolled nearer.
"Here we are at your door. Sure you won't change your mind and go stepping?" The boyish quality was back in Field's voice. "Grand old house. Pity it was turned into apartments. Do you realize that you never have invited me to meet the family? What's wrong? Ashamed of your home—or me?"
"Neither. What a beastly suggestion, Jerry. If you must know, I haven't told them about our friendship. I have the finest family in the world, but their bump of humor is over-developed, it isn't a bump, it's a coconut."
"What is there about me that's a joke?"
"Nothing; don't be so touchy. I decided to be a little mysterious, that's all. Sam resents it if I ask him a question about his friends, thinks I am treating him like a boy when he is almost two years older than I; and since I got Lucette the chance to model and she is financially independent, she scorns my interest."
"Is your mother like that?"
"No, Mother's a dear, but she is so bound up in her children that she has no real life of her own. It's a pity because she is a comparatively young woman."
"She sounds old-fashioned and motherly to me. Grade A in mothers. I like that kind. Can't I come in and meet her? I had planned to celebrate with you. Now that you've turned me down, I haven't any place to go."
"You carry off that aggrieved, little-boy pose well, Jerry, but it leaves me cold. You, with your Crowd—capital C—, having nowhere to go! That's the funniest thing I ever heard. I intend to devote the next two hours to making plans with the family. It's hard to get hold of Sam, but he promised to stay at home until he had to go to the theatre."
"How soon do you take to the sticks?"
"I'm going down tomorrow to look over the house, my half of it, though it isn't a half, it's a whole twin. A week ago Mr. Stewart told me what I might spend to make it livable—it's a dangerous concession, he doesn't know my spending capacity. It has been on leash so long that I tremble to think what will happen when I loose it. I'll take one gorgeous crack at extravagance."
"Is that guy doling out money to you? Isn't it yours?"
"Not for a year. He could hold it up if he wanted to, but, as Mark the Magnificent—that's what we call him in the family councils—is the only legal heir and as he won't contest the will,—I wanted him to take half of the property or a third even, but he turned me down hard—it is safe to give me an allowance. When we are settled, I will invite you to Lookout House. Good-night, Jerry."
As she waited in the hall for the elevator to descend, Brooke thought of Jerry Field's question:
"Ashamed of your home—or of me?"
She certainly was not ashamed of her home. The apartment might be small and crowded, but there were many fine pieces of maple and mahogany and the family portraits were choice, but no choicer than the family itself. This change of fortune would change her outwardly. It would free her real self, the impetuous self whose impulse was to help, to be hospitable. She had had so little money since her father's death that the old bogey, FUTURE, had jogged her elbow whenever her fingers started toward her purse. She must remember always what it meant to have little. People were so apt to forget when they became prosperous, so apt to become slightly contemptuous of those who were struggling to make ends meet. She had seen it happen a number of times. She would be much happier if Mark Trent had a share of the money, but he must know how bitter his aunt had been about him. Probably that was the reason he wouldn't touch it.
The front door slammed with a force which shook the house. Sam, of course. The atmosphere tingled when he appeared. He was whistling as usual. Good-looking boy! His horn-rimmed spectacles added a touch of distinction. She patted his sleeve as he stopped beside her.
"Had a nice day, Sammy?"
"Not too good. They're taking off the play tomorrow. Our dear public wouldn't see it."
He pulled open the elevator door. "Hop in." As it clanged shut, he asked:
"All through being a working girl?"
Brooke swallowed a lump in her throat and nodded.
"It will seem queer being a lady of leisure."
"Leisure! You don't know the first letter of the word. I can see you wondering what you'll do next. Leisure isn't your line. You'll plunge into classes and sports. There won't be hours enough in a day for you."
The elevator stopped. A voice seeped through the cracks around the apartment door. Sam Reyburn grinned.
"Say, listen! Lucette's on the air—and how."
"Oh dear, what's her grievance now?" Brooke whispered, and put her key into the lock.
She tried to appraise with the eyes of a stranger the high-ceilinged, large living-room she entered. A connoisseur of portraits would know that Grandfather Reyburn over the mantel had been painted by a great artist; that the portrait of his daughter on the opposite wall was a choice bit of work; that the Duchess of Argyle in her sables, green satin, and emeralds was a masterpiece. Always she had wanted to decorate a room as a background for the picture. Now she could. The Duchess was hers. The mahogany and maple was sadly in need of rubbing up, but no amount of wear and tear could disguise its period and value.
Her eyes lingered on her mother perched on the arm of a couch. She did young things like that. Her hair was a sheeny platinum; her eyes were dark; her skin was clear and smooth; her figure in the amethyst crêpe frock was round without in the least suggesting fat. There was a quizzical twist to her lovely mouth as she looked at her younger daughter, who, with legs thrust straight out before her, was slumped in a chair. Her red beret, which matched the belt of her slim green plaid frock, was on the floor. Her hair was black and wavy; her eyes were brilliantly dark; her painted lips drooped at the corners. Brooke recognized the symptoms. Sam had been right, Lucette was on the air. She said as she slipped out of her lapin coat:
"In the Valley of Despond again, Lucette? Had a nice day, Mother?"
Mrs. Reyburn smiled and nodded. She would make her home-coming children think she had had a nice day, if the heavens had fallen. She was like that. Lucette answered her question.
"You'd be in the Valley of Despond, if you had had the day I've had, Brooke Reyburn. I'm dead to the world. A woman came into the sports shop with three daughters, and kept me showing clothes all the afternoon. Gosh! My feet ache like teeth gone nervy."
"Did she buy much?"
"Not that baby. She bought that little blue number only. For Pete's sake, why does Sam have to whistle when he's under the shower? The walls of this apartment are regular sounding boards."
"Bear up, Lucette, you will be out of it soon. If we can't sublet this apartment, we'll shut it up."
"Spoken like a lady and a multi, Brooke darling. And after that what?"
"You won't have to model for fussy women and you'll have a dressing room of your very own. Mr. Stewart has told me that I may take possession of Lookout House as soon as I like. Mark the Magnificent has given the Jovian nod. He won't contest the will. I'm going there tomorrow with a plumber. A bath for every bed will be my battle-cry."
Silence followed her words, a silence fraught with significance. Brooke caught her sister's look at her mother before she sat up straight and tense. She knew that posture, she was preparing for a skirmish. Lucette said defiantly:
"Glad you brought up that subject, Brooke. News flash! I'm not going to the sticks with you, not if you offer me a gold tub with diamond settings. I spent one night at the home of the late Mary Amanda Dane, and, so far as I am concerned, the name means look out and not go there again. That sealed door in her living-room gave me the creeps. I kept thinking, 'What's on the other side?' for all the world like Alice when she wonders what goes on in Looking-Glass house. There might be bodies concealed there or loot, it has been shut up so long. No thanks! I'm all for the city. 800,000 residents can't be wrong. Sam isn't—"
She dashed to the hall as the telephone rang.
"Lucette Reyburn speaking," she answered eagerly.
"Yes—yes—he is. I'll call him." Her voice was as flat as de-bubbled champagne. She pounded on the bath-room door.
"Phone for you, Sam.—How do I know? It's the girl who always calls just as you've stepped under the shower.—All right."
She returned to the phone. "Hold the line. He'll be here in a minute."
Back in the living-room she dropped into a chair. With elbows propped on her knees, chin in her palms, she stared at the floor.
What had Lucette meant by "Sam isn't—" Brooke wondered. She watched her brother as, knotting the cord of a striped bathrobe about his waist, he scuffed to the telephone in slippers several sizes too large for him. He leaned against the side of the doorway as he talked. Stunning boy. No wonder girls called him at all hours. His hair, with a tinge of red in it, stood out from his head like a curly wet mop. His shortsighted blue eyes were clear and forthright, wonderful eyes. He was a tease and a torment and dictatorial, but a rock of dependability, and she adored him. Who was the girl calling? He was frowning, and his voice was brittle as he refused:
"Can't make it—No. It's not another girl, it's a family confab. Sam Reyburn signing off. Good-bye!"
He slammed down the receiver. "And I know of no reason why I should explain to you what I'm doing," he growled under his breath.
"Hi! Sammy! What's the shower-dame's name?" Lucette called.
Her brother scowled at her. "There's about as much privacy in this apartment as there is in the bandstand on the Common."
"Cheerio, darling. You'll have privacy, and how, if you live with Brooke. She's going house-owner in a big way. If there's to be a bath for every bed, of course there will be a sound-proof telephone booth with every room. What did you say the girl friend's name was?"
"It's none of your business, kiddo, who calls me." Hands deep in the pockets of his hectic bathrobe, Sam paced the living-room floor.
"Darned ungrateful, I calls it," Lucette persisted impishly. "But it's a man's world. Don't I break my neck to answer the phone? Don't your fans ring you at all hours? Before you are up in the morning, while you're shaving—sometime you'll cut off an ear in your excitement—lucky television isn't attached to the phone yet, but I'm betting on the shower-dame. Usually your voice goes kind of mushy when you answer her. You'll be the proud possessor of a daughter-in-law before you know it, Mother."
Sam Reyburn frowned at his younger sister.
"Get this, Lucette. No girl is going to invade my life. I've seen too many of my friends dragging a ball and chain. No marriage in mine."
His mother laughed softly. As he glared at her, she patted the couch.
"Stop walking the floor like a hungry lion and sit down, Sam. Lucette started something just before the phone rang. She should have known better than to start anything in the Reyburn family before it has been fed, but now that she has, you'd better finish it."
"What d'you mean by started, Mother?"
Brooke perched on the arm of a chair at the desk. She faced them all. Most of the time she could tell quite well what they were thinking. She answered her brother's question before her mother could.
"She means that Lucette announced that she did not intend to live at Lookout House with me, and that you—"
"Were not going either, Sam," Lucette finished triumphantly.
"Aren't you, Sam?"
"Say listen, Brooke. Don't you see how it is? I have to be at the theatre early; I'm late when I get through; rehearsing all the morning. Twenty miles is a long way to commute."
"I had planned to buy you the snappiest convertible coupe on the market."
"Don't make me feel like a brute. Don't you see—"
"Of course I see, Sammy. You want to be on your own. I do understand."
"Don't worry about his being on his own, darling," Lucette cut in bitterly. "No one can be on his own in this family. The Great Adviser intends to stay right here to look after his little sister."
Brooke's eyes met her brother's; he nodded. Lucette flamed on:
"And Mother's going to stay to look after both of us."
"Mother!" Brooke echoed the word with shocked incredulity. "But I've planned the most wonderful things for Mother. Is it true?"
Celia Reyburn's eyes shone through a mist as they met her elder daughter's. Her lips curved in a lovely, trembly smile.
"When you say Mother, Brooke, I think it the most beautiful word in the world. But I will not make my home with you—at present. First, because Lookout House is yours and you should assume the responsibility and direction of it. You will do it more easily if I am not there. Second, I want to stay in the city, not so much because of the children, but because now that your financial future is assured, I shall feel that I may use a little of the money your father left me. I want—I want to be in the heart of things. I'll have an experienced maid, I'll have the right clothes, and—and I'll go places, I'm dying to go places."
Her impassioned voice broke. "Perhaps I'm selfish, perhaps you children think I'm a silly old woman."
Sam flung his arm about his mother. "Hooray for the Spirit of '56! Sorry; I shouldn't have mentioned your age, Celia Reyburn. Don't worry that you won't get enough of your family, Brooke. I'll have to drag these two giddy girls off to the country for rest occasionally. When Lucette quits work—"
"Who says I'm going to quit. I'm not. I'm going to work as Brooke worked till I get her job and hit the airlanes. Why the chuckle? What is there about that so funny?"
Brooke shook her head. "I wasn't laughing at what you said, Lucette."
She couldn't tell them that Jed Stewart's words had echoed in her mind:
"Now I suppose the brother and sister will chuck their jobs and settle down on her."
How little he knew them. How like Sam, much as he would love being on his own, to stand by Lucette. She wasn't old enough yet to live alone, and she was much too pretty and daring. And her mother—how cheerfully she had kept on the treadmill of housework while all the time she had ached for a certain amount of freedom. They were all looking at her. What did they expect her to say? She met Sam's anxious eyes.
"Aren't sore at us, are you, Brooke? Don't feel that we have let you down to go on alone?"
"Of course I don't, you old dear. Why shouldn't each one of us do as we like, now that there is some money back of us? Because I feel that I must carry out Mrs. Dane's wishes is no reason for dragging the rest of you into the country. It is like Through the Looking-glass though, isn't it?"
"What do you mean?" Lucette demanded. "Don't talk riddles."
"Nothing, except everything is reversed, not as one expected things would happen."
"What did you think would happen? That we'd all stop work and live on you?" Sam accused testily.
Brooke laughed. "I didn't think that. Let's get busy planning. If you are all sold on staying in the city, we'll have a bigger apartment. I may want to spend a week-end away from the sticks myself."
