Читать книгу The Fate of Felix Brand - Florence Finch Kelly - Страница 6

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Breakfast is a little late, Harry. Delia is in one of her introspective moods and it has made her slow. I hope you won’t miss your boat!”

She turned an anxious face toward her sister, who was entering the room, and Henrietta Marne smiled reassuringly, as she set down a suitcase, laid her hat and coat upon a chair, and replied in a hearty, cheerful tone:

“No, indeed! I’ve plenty of time. And I was glad to have an extra five minutes with mother. Do you think she’s better than she was yesterday? Bella, I’m afraid I ought not to go to Mr. Brand’s theatre party tonight!” And her countenance clouded with anxiety as they seated themselves at the breakfast table.

“Don’t think of missing it, Harry! Mother will be all right. She seems a lot better this morning.”

“Y-e-s, I thought so, but I’m afraid she’ll miss me tonight. It always seems to please her when I come home in the evening.”

“Of course, dear, we’ll both miss you! You’re the man of our household, you know, and you go out and battle with the world every day and bring us a fresh breath from it every night!”

“And you always ‘meet me with a smile,’” laughed Henrietta.

“Of course! And we’ll be twice as glad to see you tomorrow night, and we’ll smile twice as big a smile, because you’ll have such a lot of things to tell us.”

“Mr. Brand has a curious effect upon me that I don’t quite like.” Henrietta frowned thoughtfully into her coffee cup while she hesitated, as if choosing words for further speech. In shirtwaist, linen collar and cloth skirt she looked trim, well groomed, alert. Fair-haired and fresh-colored, her expression capable, composed and sweet-natured, she was what a Scotchman would call “a bonny lass.” Her sister, also fair, was smaller of mold and daintier of look and manner. She appeared a little older, but her features were finer and more regular and a twinkle of humor barely hid itself in the corner of her blue eye, as if ready to spring forth at the first encouragement.

“This begins to sound romantic!” chaffed Isabella. “Let’s hope he’s at least a pirate in disguise.”

“No, let’s not. Because then he’d sail away and I’d have to hunt a new job. And it is such a nice place, Bella! I don’t believe another girl in my whole class just fell into such good luck as I did. He seems pleased with my work, too.”

“I know he is, Harry, because Mrs. Annister told me last week that Mr. Brand thinks he has found a jewel of a secretary—the best he’s ever had. I was waiting”—and a gleam of mirth sparkled in her eyes as she smiled fondly upon her sister—“to tell you until some day when you’d be feeling blue. But I just couldn’t wait any longer.”

Henrietta flushed with pleasure. “I’m so glad to know that! If he’ll just keep on being satisfied a few months longer, we’ll have this place paid for!”

“Oh, we’re going to pull through all right!” Isabella exclaimed, hopeful conviction in her tones and smile. Then she puckered her brows and did her best to look doubtful and alarmed as she went on in a tragic half whisper, her blue eyes dancing: “If he doesn’t turn pirate and sail away in the meantime, or, maybe, make a villain out of you, with this wicked influence you’re getting alarmed about, so that you’ll maybe steal your own salary and run away with it and leave mother and me to star-r-ve! To think that a famous architect should be just oozing badness all around him like that—as Mark Twain said, ‘like ottar of roses out of an otter’—at the same time that he’s evolving such beautiful things out of his brain! Ugh! It’s awful!”

Henrietta laughed, a short, chuckling laugh that suggested deeper amusement than it expressed. “Is there anything you wouldn’t make fun of, Bella? Very likely it isn’t he, after all, but just my own innate wickedness coming to the surface. It’s only that I feel a great desire to amuse myself, and am more willing to be selfish about it than I used to be. Three months ago I wouldn’t have gone to this theatre party, with mother ill and you alone with her. I know I’m a beast to do it, but I do want to go dreadfully, and——”

“And you’re going, and you’re not to coddle your conscience any more about it. It’s all right, and we’re all right, and mother and I would feel we were two beasts if you stayed away on our account. What makes you think Mr. Brand responsible for this awful depravity? Because he invited you to his house-warming?”

“Oh, no! It was thoughtful and lovely of him to include poor little me among his guests, and I’m as grateful as—Cinderella. But he sometimes says some little thing, in connection with what we are doing, about the pleasure there is in beautiful things and how it and the joy one ought to get out of life enlarge and deepen one’s existence. And then I begin to feel, away down inside of me, a longing for pleasure, and as if I could reach out and grasp all sorts of—of things, just for my own enjoyment.”

“And that makes you feel dreadfully wicked!” Isabella’s laugh tinkled through the room, a lighter, merrier sound than her sister’s. “Dear me! As if we didn’t all feel that way once in a while!”

“You never do,” Henrietta interrupted.

“Don’t inquire too deeply into my feelings, unless you want to be shocked. Suppose we have some hot toast to cheer us up after this awful confession. Delia,” to the maid who entered in response to her ring, “have you some fresh toast ready?”

“The toast is awfully good this morning, Delia,” said Henrietta smiling at her. “It’s always nice, but it’s particularly good, exactly right, this morning.”

“Thank you, Harry!” said Isabella as the maid disappeared. “I’m so glad you said it. Maybe it will make her feel better. Did you see that determined, dare-and-die look on her face? I’m sure something’s going to happen!”

“And we’ve raised her wages twice already,” the other exclaimed, as her face took on the same anxious expression that had just clouded her sister’s.

“Yes, and we can’t pay her any more than we’re giving her now. She isn’t worth it and we couldn’t afford it if she were.”

“Just as we’ve begun to feel sure she was satisfied and would stay. Oh, Bella! It’s too bad! But maybe it’s no worse than it was the last time we got scared, when her cousin was married and she wanted a day off. You remember, she had two days of the introspective mood then.”

“Thank you, Delia! It’s done to a turn!” and Isabella smiled sweetly at the returning maid, who retreated a step and stood still, fumbling her tray, an embarrassed, determined look upon her face.

“It’s perfectly lovely,” chimed in Henrietta with enthusiasm.

The girl shuffled from one foot to the other but her expression did not relax. Isabella cast an “I-told-you-so” look at her sister and glanced expectantly at the maid.

“What is it, Delia?”

“I’m thinkin’, Miss Marne, you’d better be lookin’ for a new girl.”

“Why, what’s the matter? You don’t want to leave us, do you?”

“No, miss, I don’t want to, an’ that’s the truth. But I don’t think I’ll be stayin’ any longer than you can get another girl.”

“What’s the trouble, Delia?”

“It’s lonesomeness, Miss Marne. It’s that respectable out here that there’s niver a policeman comes along this street for days at a time. An’ the milkman comes around that early I niver see him, an’ anyway he’s elderly an’ the father of four. An’ it’s so high-toned, there ain’t a livery stable anywhere, an’ so there’s none of them boys to pass a word with once in a while. An’ there’s only the postman, an’ him small and married.”

There was silence for a moment while the maid shuffled her feet and turned her tray about and the sisters bit their lips. Then Isabella exclaimed, in a tone of brisk sympathy:

“Yes, Delia, I understand how you feel, and I don’t blame you at all, but——”

“Don’t make up your mind right away, Delia,” Henrietta broke in. “Think about it a little longer. Maybe something will happen.”

“And only think, Harry,” Isabella groaned, as Delia left the room, “what a wonderful bargain that real estate agent made us think we were getting, just because there were so many restrictions there could never be anything or anybody objectionable within a mile of us!”

“I had an inspiration just in the nick of time,” Henrietta replied. “Mrs. Fenlow told me, when she was in the office the other day, waiting for Mr. Brand, that she is going to move her garage to this end of her property, which you know is just a block away, with an entrance from this street—she hoped it wouldn’t annoy us—and she said she was going to have a new chauffeur. And we can hope, Bella, that he’ll be young and tall and handsome and inclined to be flirtatious with good-looking maids who sometimes work in front door-yards nearby. Why, here’s Billikins! You naughty doggie, where have you been?”

A white fox terrier had bounded into the room and was giving her exuberant greeting, having stopped first to drop at her feet a rag-doll that he carried in his mouth. “There, that will do,” she laughed as he sprang to her lap, and thence to her shoulder and testified his overflowing affection with voice and tongue. “Get down now and take care of your babykins!”

“I must go now,” she declared, and, rising, began putting on hat and coat. “I’ll just run upstairs and kiss mother good-bye again. If anything should happen, Bella, or should you want me to come home for any reason, you can ’phone me at the office until five o’clock, and after that at Dr. Annister’s. Mrs. Annister, you know, is going to chaperon Mildred and me. Wasn’t it sweet of her to ask me to stay all night with them!”

Five minutes later she came hurrying downstairs again, and Isabella, waiting for her at the front door, put the suitcase into her hand, pressed an arm about her waist, and gave her a farewell greeting.

“Have just as good a time as you can, Harry, dear,” she said gaily, “so you’ll have all the more to tell mother and me tomorrow night!”

The morning sun shone down through the golden autumn foliage of the maple trees that lined the street, and now irradiated Henrietta’s figure and then dyed it somberly as she passed with rapid step through open space and shadow. Isabella watched her progress down the quiet road toward the avenue, half a dozen blocks away, whence came the clang of street cars and the rattle of traffic. But the girl turned now and then and cast an eager glance in the other direction.

“I’m so glad she could go tonight,” Isabella was thinking. “She works so hard and she doesn’t have many pleasures—neither do I! But I don’t mind—very much!” She cast another glance up the street and caught sight of a smallish man’s figure bending one-sidedly under a burden of other people’s joys and sorrows as he passed in and out of the gateways in the next block. A pleased smile brightened her face and she turned back to watch her sister’s progress.

“There! She was just in time to catch that car! She’s just a brick, Harry is! What a funny notion about Felix Brand! If it was little Bella, now—” She threw up her head saucily and danced a step or two as she faced about to see how near the postman had come.

“‘An’ him small an’ married!’” she repeated to herself and laughed softly as she watched his slight, burdened figure on its slow progress. “Poor Delia! If I was in her place I’m afraid I’d flirt with him anyway!”

She ran down the walk to the gate and greeted him with a merrily smiling, “Good morning.”

“Only one this morning, Miss Marne,” he said, smiling back at her, and then added, as he saw her face brighten, “but it’s the one you want, I guess!”

“Yes,” she gaily replied, “you’re always very welcome when you bring me a letter like this!”

She was keenly conscious of the caress in her hand as she held the letter in close clasp. Once inside the door again, she pressed the missive softly to her cheek as she whispered, “Dear Warren! You dear boy! I just knew you were writing to me yesterday, and you didn’t disappoint me!”