Читать книгу Broken Barrier - Grace Helen Mowat - Страница 6

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The following morning Maggie informed the master that a new housekeeper had been engaged and would be on duty when he returned in the evening.

He accepted the information in silence, a silence Maggie found difficult to penetrate. But she would not permit the master to dismiss the achievement of finding such a capable and pleasant successor so easily.

“I was very lucky to get her so soon. She’s a nice, tidy, respectable-looking girl. No frills or nonsense about her. Quiet and sensible, and a good cook too.”

“Did she have good references?” he inquired with acid scepticism.

“She didn’t need references, I know where she comes from,” Maggie retorted with lofty confidence. And she departed to the kitchen.

Crossing on the ferry, through the mist of an Autumn morning, Stephen Trancher sat enshrouded in gloom. He loathed the thought of any change in his household. His mother had run the establishment with smooth efficiency and Maggie had followed in her steps. It was a nightmare to think of a stranger coming in, one unaccustomed to the daily routine. He could face the problems and worries of his business with patience and fortitude, but this unexpected upheaval in his peaceful home was a calamity.

If only people would not get married! Marriage was the cause of all domestic woe. And Maggie, linked up for life with the portly Jenkins, would soon find it out. The thought gave him grim satisfaction.

Marriage had robbed him of Donald, his closest friend. His mind went back to school and college days with Donald, to happy holidays spent camping in the Adirondacks and to one glorious summer when they had gone abroad together. Donald was studying architecture then, and to him a cathedral was a poem and a ruined castle a medieval fairy tale. He made the past live again for both of them. History and romance were glorified under the spell of his delightful imagining.

After that summer, Donald had married and things were never quite the same. Cora was very young and pretty and coquetish—and completely brainless. Her wide, childish eyes stared stupidly into space when Donald read to her or gently explained the beauty of some exquisite building or painting.

“It will take time,” he had told Stephen. “She is just a child still; she never had a chance. What can you expect? She has been brought up by a mother of the social-climber type in a home with no literature beyond a fashion magazine. Wait till she really understands. Then you will see.”

Stephen had waited, and all he ever saw was an empty-headed, rather ordinary, thoroughly selfish little woman, incapable of doing anything but spend the money that Donald worked so hard to earn, till eventually he broke down under the strain. Stephen and his mother had together urged him to take things more easily. They knew he was overworking, but he was in a treadmill and could not stop, until one tragic winter the ’flu developed into pneumonia and he was gone.

Sitting there in the ferry, Stephen Trancher thought savagely that it was marriage, and not death, that had robbed him of his friend.

Marriage, likewise, had wrecked the career of Wilcox, his faithful accountant, a lean, spare, sad-faced little man with thin, greying hair and threadbare coat. Wilcox had a good business head, was patient, painstaking and accurate. Unencumbered by an ailing wife and five children, he might have been, by now, a prosperous business man in comfortable circumstances.

Then there was the marriage of his cousin Oscar. That was too awful! Oscar lived in the West on some outlandish prairie, and had married a girl of Scandinavian ancestry whom he had once employed as a domestic on his ranch. This fair-haired stolid creature, a modern Bruennhilde, he had inconsiderately brought to New York for their honeymoon. Hulda, transplanted suddenly into the unaccustomed refinements of civilization, was passive and inarticulate. Her idea of seeing New York was to visit Coney Island. Stephen’s dear, frail, delicate mother, then in her seventieth year, had taken her there, and Stephen had never forgiven any one of them for allowing such an indignity. When he had remonstrated with his mother, she had said, “Stephen dear, it was the only thing the poor girl wanted to do.”

It had all been horrible. Oscar’s honeymoon had been a perfect nightmare.

As the ferry docked, he remembered that this was Wednesday and Cora Farquhar would be at the office. It was a dreary world indeed. Cora was worse than a new maid.

Cora arrived while he was going through the morning mail with Tony. He made her wait until they had finished, and she began by complaining bitterly of that when finally admitted to his private office.

“I do think, Stephen,” she grumbled, “you might consider my convenience a little sometimes. I came all the way from Southampton the other day, a terribly tiresome journey. I wanted to see you on very important business but I was turned away. They told me you refused to see me. Then I had to come again this morning and you have kept me waiting for an hour.”

“No. Only thirty-five minutes.”

“Well, it seemed more like an hour to me.”

“What are you doing at Southampton?”

“I have taken rooms there for a time.”

“Isn’t it a rather expensive place for you to live?”

“Yes, it is. But I can’t help that. All my friends are there, and it means so much to me to be with the right kind of people. Why is it, Stephen, you are always harping about expense? Donald never did. He always wanted me to enjoy myself and have the things I wanted.”

“Yes, and finally it killed him, trying to get them for you.”

“I think it is most unfair of you to say that. Donald died of pneumonia.”

“And overwork.”

“You always see the gloomy side of everything.”

Stephen studied her in silence. Her youthful prettiness had faded. She was now nearing forty and there were hard lines about her small petulent mouth. Her withered looks had been goaded to a second bloom with an exaggerated make-up and peroxide-tortured hair. He looked away from her and said:

“You came to see me on business?”

“Yes, I want to know how much money I have tied up in bonds.”

“Quite a bit. I don’t remember the exact amount. You are lucky to have them in times like these. They are listed above par now.”

“Well, I have been talking to a Mr. Cohen. He is a great friend of these people I know at Southampton. He says it is utter nonsense for me to keep money tied up in bonds when I could double or triple my income by investing it in something that would pay real dividends.”

“I do not know of anything that would pay any better and still be safe.”

“Mr. Cohen says that if I got stock in ‘Mining Consolidated’ it would be just as safe as any bonds and pay double the interest.”

“I fear your friend Mr. Cohen does not always tell the truth.”

“I don’t see why you should say that, Stephen. You don’t even know the man. He is very clever about money matters and has made a fortune on the stock market. He keeps right up to the minute on everything.”

“Do you mean to imply that this firm does not?”

“Oh, I suppose you do, in a way, but you are so afraid of taking chances, and I can tell you that you are losing business by it. I have heard people say that you could do a lot better for your clients if you were willing to risk something.”

“They may be right.”

“Then you will sell those bonds for me and buy Mining Consolidated?”

Trancher was silent. He was thinking. A vivid memory came back to him. He was sitting in the hospital by Donald’s bedside and heard him saying, “Don’t ever let Cora have control of the money. She is a child about such things. She would be the victim of any crook that came along selling worthless stock.” For Donald’s sake he must keep this trust.

“Will you do it, Stephen?” Cora demanded.

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t seem to realize how hard it is for me to manage on such a small income. I have so little compared with my friends. I feel absolutely destitute sometimes and it is very humiliating.”

“I would suggest that you cultivate less extravagant friends.”

“You can’t ask me to give up my friends,” she whined. “It means everything to me to be with pleasant people. I simply cannot understand you, Stephen. Donald always had so much faith in you, I’m sure I don’t know why. I wish he had left my affairs in the hands of someone who would try to do what I want.”

“I sincerely wish that he had.”

“You are always so indifferent and unsympathetic. Won’t you promise me now, before I go, that you will turn those bonds in for Mining Consolidated?”

“I will promise you nothing without looking into the matter.”

“Then I will have to keep coming back here till you do. Poor Donald little knew what I would have to put up with.”

She rose and pulled on her gloves over claw-like, red-tipped fingers.

Trancher opened the door for her, but she hesitated. “If you would feel better to talk with Mr. Cohen yourself, I could ask him to drop in to see you.”

“Please don’t. It would not make me feel any better. Good morning.”

“Goodbye. I will be back again next week.”

Stephen returned to his desk, vexed and disturbed, as Cora’s visits always left him. After all, perhaps it was better that Donald had not lived to really know this woman he had married. There were things in life far worse than death.

He settled down to work, thankful that the interview was over but remembering vaguely that there was another depressing item on the day’s program. Oh, yes, Maggie would have this new woman installed in the house when he returned home. Life was very trying, but he had at least avoided the complications of matrimony.

He heard Tony singing in the corridor. Tony always burst into song the moment the office door closed behind him, like a bird let loose from a cage. Fragments of the words floated through the transom.

“Oh, I loved her in the springtime

And I loved her in the fall,

But alone upon the back porch

I loved her best of all.”

Tony will likely be the next one ensnared, he thought dejectedly.

Tony continued on his way to the end of the corridor to buy some stamps from Chadwick. Poor old Chadwick had a stand where he sold stationery and other supplies for the convenience of the large office building. It was a cell-like room that he was pleased to call his shop. He was a pathetic figure with his worn black coat and courtly manners. He had seen better days and liked to talk of old New York, when horse-cars ran in the gas-lighted streets, before the invention of telephones or moving pictures.

Tony always enjoyed a talk with Chadwick, so he loitered over his purchases, a scribbler, a package of cigarettes, and stamps, and then returned to the office, still singing merrily.

Trancher waited until the song ceased and the office door closed. Then he rang the bell.

“Tony,” he said, “ask Wilcox to get me a report on Mining Consolidated.”