Читать книгу High Fences - Grace S. Richmond - Страница 13

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A guest coming to the country falls almost instantly asleep. She had always known that there was nothing in the country to keep one awake.

Dear Ross Collins:

I have an idea that your eyes have seen city life very thoroughly and country life not at all. Up here in Connecticut in December it's really pretty nice. I think you're tired. When you can leave the friend in the hospital will you let my sister invite you up here for a week-end? She and I keep house together, and she's the sort of sister who knows a good deal more than you might imagine about life and its problems.

My first plan was to ask you to let me see you every so often in New York, since my work takes me there for a day or two regularly every two or three weeks. I still want to do that, but it occurs to me that just now you might find a little visit up here rather refreshing, and that you may need being refreshed more than you recognize. You've been living under strain for a good while, haven't you? Well, there's no strain in the life up here. And I have such a lot of things to show you. Won't you come, please, whenever Hester asks you? She's ready, whenever you tell me you can get away.

To my mind the country, even in winter, has it all over a walk from the Fifth Avenue Hospital down to Twentieth Street as a place in which to get acquainted. Don't you want to try it? It's only three hours by train from the Grand Central. I'll meet you at the Lennington Station, a few miles from home.

Hopefully yours,

David MacRoss.

To this, after a week of waiting, he received an answer.

I hope you will forgive me for not writing earlier. I've been in such suspense over my friend Jimmy French, in the hospital. Now it seems to be certain that he's going to live, but the chances of his ever walking again are very slim. It's all used me up, rather, I'm so fearfully unhappy over it. I don't think I could bear to leave him just now, even for a week-end, he counts so on my visits. But perhaps when his life is surely safe, and he's going along on the road he's got to take from now on, I may be glad to accept that quite wonderful suggestion of an invitation. Perhaps when I come back I can work again--I can't now. I seem to hate the city, all at once, for doing what it's done to Jimmy.

He sent her a line of sympathy, along with a box of flowers and a book labeled:

If your friend can be read aloud to, perhaps he'd like this--just out. Unless he's a reviewer and had an advance copy, he may not have seen it.

After another week he wrote again, urging the visit. The correspondence, supplemented by some telegraphing, ended by Ross's taking the train on a January afternoon, nearly three weeks from the night of Jimmy French's accident. She had had time to recover a little from the first shock of the unnerving experience, but she had been capable of no real work. She had dropped off a pound or two of flesh, and she carried about with her a never-ceasing sense of exhaustion such as hitherto she had felt only when she had been heavily overworking.

Jimmy had been--and still was--such a dear boy! She hadn't known how much he meant to her until he had been hurt. She had taken him and his worship of her for granted, more or less; his thousand and one ways of being of use to her as something which had come to belong to her. He had had a flashing sense of humor, and an idea that you could get anything in the world you wanted if you worked hard enough. He had worked--how he had worked. Constantly she could see his snub-nosed face, with the twinkling blue eyes, and the smile which won everybody to his side--herself among them. Just a boy still--twenty-two--yet he had lived a lifetime of experience in hard knocks. And now--all over--an invalid's wheel chair his only prospect. She couldn't get over the pitifulness of it, nor the vision of the great truck which had crushed him. A second earlier--a second later--and Jimmy would have been well and smiling now.... Smiling? He was smiling! Which made it even harder to understand why it had had to be.

The train took her away from it for a little--there was that to be said for going up into Connecticut. Past snow-covered fields on which the winter sun was shining, on and on, through small towns, till at length the snow grew deeper, less disturbed, and in the late afternoon the train set her down at the station to which she had been told to buy her ticket. She had never heard of it until David had mentioned it. A little hide-bound New Yorker, that was what Ross supposed she was, knowing nothing outside of a few square miles. Certainly nothing of rural New England beyond its position on the map.

David was waiting on the platform--had been waiting long before the train whistled far down the valley. He received her and her mite of a black bag, scanning her closely as she came down the steps, and smiling down at her as she stood beside him on the platform.

"You poor little bit of humanity! You are worn out. I'm glad I've got you."

She pulled the small black hat still lower over her eyes. "Do I look as haggard as all that?"

"'Haggard' isn't exactly the word. You look as though a good stout Connecticut wind would blow you away. Come along and get inside the car. Do you consider yourself dressed for a seven-mile drive?"

"In as jolly a closed car as that, yes."

"Even so, Hester sent down an extra coat for you. You'll be lost in it, but it'll keep you warm."

She snuggled inside the coat. The wind was cold, and the tailored black suit wasn't exactly winter clothing. The coat was a dark mink, warm, luxurious, and costly, if she knew anything about furs. Heavens, was she going to one of those great country places of the rich? Was David a prosperous fraud, with his talk of work? Was Hester a real person, or was this young man playing a trick on her? Hester's letter had been very nice, but she supposed David could have written it. Well, anyhow, it was wonderful to be flying off over the snowy road, in a motor which made nothing of ruts or drifted places. She didn't much care what happened next, if she could be for a little far away from poor Jimmy, so that she might bring back to him fresh comfort with her own renewed vigor.

Her second glance at David's profile, as he sat beside her, told her, as before when she had been with him, that he was no fraud of any sort. She said to herself that she must have a tabloid mind, to be capable of having such a thought occur to her. He was talking away, pointing out landmarks to her, making himself friendly and genial, the capable host. And before she knew that seven miles had been covered he was turning in at a low stone gateway set between thick snow-covered hedges, and the car was drawing up at one of those big, square New England houses which may look as hospitable as they can look austere. This house was all hospitality to-night. Dusk was coming on, and there was hardly a window which did not glow with a mellow light.

"Home!" said David, in a tone of strong satisfaction. "My home. And you're going to spend two whole days in it--and outside it."

"And I've seen you just twice before," wondered Ross, upon the doorstep. "What a queer thing that I should be paying you a visit!"

"Not queer at all. Some people don't have to spend a lifetime finding out that other people belong where they themselves do."

He threw open the door. "Hester!" he called, and with a hand upon Ross's arm, and her bag in his other hand, gently propelled her in. A big dog came dashing out at them. "Down, Marco--down, sir! This lady's a friend, old man--don't knock her over!"

A figure came out of an inner door, a pleasant figure to see. David's sister Hester was what Ross might have expected, if she hadn't acquired an idea, whether from fiction or the stage, that all New England spinsters are tall, angular, sharp-eyed, and thin-lipped. Miss Hester MacRoss looked as though no Connecticut wind could blow her away because she was too used to tramping sturdily against them. She had a strong and pleasant face, looked about forty years old, and unquestionably had not spent all her days in the spot where she was standing.

"Welcome, my dear Miss Collins," she said, in a warmly cordial voice, "first as David's friend and then as, I hope, mine. Will you come in here and have something hot to drink, or would you like to go to your room first?"

"I'll answer," said David. "Something hot first, and then quite immediately her room. Eh, Ross?"

"Both, yes, please," said Ross. She was already glad beyond words that she had come.

So she had tea in front of a great New England fireplace, full of flaming logs. Miss Hester's maid brought in the tray, but Miss Hester served Ross herself, while David looked on, thinking that if he had brought a child from an orphan asylum she couldn't have looked any smaller and whiter than Ross, in the big chair he had pulled up for her. She was keeping on her hat, and he was wishing to pull it off and show his sister the beautiful curling red hair which was Ross's great hostage to beauty--after her strange eyes, which could hardly be seen now, under the hat brim.

Of course, to a young person of Ross's discernment, it was perfectly evident the moment she had come inside the house that a goodly amount of worldly prosperity backed it. It was far from being one of the great show houses of the rich, but it was full of comfort and charm. Books were everywhere, fine old pieces of furniture, gleams of copper and brass. The lighting was all by means of oil lamps, but such oil lamps as she had never seen, with colorful shades which delighted her color-loving eyes.

"Now," said Miss Hester, rising, "I'm going to take you to your room. I'm sure an hour's rest before dinner would be the best possible thing for you."

So she led her guest up to her room, and as Ross looked about it it seemed the most lovely and peaceful room in the world. When, after a little, she was left alone, she was thinking that David's sister was to her an absolutely new type. She hadn't known that women who lived in the country in winter instead of in a city apartment could possibly look as though they knew Fifth Avenue quite as well as she herself did. Such ignorance was colossal, Ross supposed, but how could you help it when your world from childhood had been bounded by the Battery on the south and the Bronx on the north, the Hudson River on the west and the East River on the east? Why, she could readily imagine Miss MacRoss presiding over some great gathering of club women and doing it with more real dignity, more than the average level-headedness, and decidedly more sense of humor than she had ever seen it done; and she had been present, as a special writer, at a good many such convocations. And she could equally well imagine her, as David had described her downstairs, taking the keenest interest in the transplanting of shrubs, the growing of strawberries, the acquiring of the purest bred Jersey cows for the great barn far back on the place; going about in a short skirt and leather jacket, not only ordering but actually doing parts of the work herself. Just to know Miss Hester MacRoss, it occurred to Ross Collins, was worth coming to the country.

Then she slipped out of her dress and into a little négligé, and carefully removing the cover from the big four-poster bed, dropped down upon it. Almost instantly she fell into an exhausted sleep.

Miss Hester, coming in softly at seven o'clock, after a light unanswered knock, found her guest still asleep. Whether to waken her? David had warned her that Ross was both tired and unhappy; she had seen that for herself as they sat downstairs by the fire. Neither of them knew, though it was easy to guess, how many nearly sleepless nights Ross had spent since Jimmy had virtually gone out of her busy, work-a-day world. It had meant not only a consuming heartache for Jimmy himself, not to mention the strain of the daily hospital visits, but it had meant also the loss of that for which he had stood--young and comprehending sympathy with her ambitions, readiness for adventure, a contagious hopefulness through thick and thin. She felt weak without him, though she had other and more powerful friends, both men and women, in the ranks of the magazine forces, than Jimmy French could ever have been. The experience had taken heavy toll of her none-too-great physical strength, as it had taken even heavier toll of her power of creation, for the present, at least.

So on Miss Hester's comfortable bed she had dropped off into the sleep of forgetfulness. She had come to a place where all the old life seemed temporarily left behind, and she could relax--let go--as she so much needed to do.

Miss Hester, looking down at her in the mellow light of the lamp, was reminded of a little red-haired dog with a broken leg David had once brought home and insisted on keeping and nursing back to health. Ross's curly red hair was a mop upon the pillow, her thin, white little face was like that of a child, for the knowing black-brown eyes were hidden, and only the dark line of the heavy lashes was left, a line curving above deep shadows of fatigue.

"Davy," said Miss Hester to herself, as she looked, "it's a case of vicarious paternity on your part. You can't see a child suffer. If this isn't a child, but really a woman, as you think, that makes you even more vulnerable.... Well, it seems a pity to wake her. Shall I let her sleep?... Yet she needs food almost as much as she does sleep. Another hour, perhaps."

She drew up a light silk quilt over the small unconscious form--Ross's attitude showed just how she had flung herself down upon the bed, stretching out her arms as one does who wants above everything else to be rid of tension. Then Miss Hester went quietly downstairs. David stood upon the hearth rug, waiting for her with an odd look of expectation in his eyes.

"Coming down?"

"I hated to disturb her. She's as sound asleep as a kitten under the stove. How about letting her lie an hour longer?"

"A good idea, but disappointing. You're the best judge, I suppose. Out of two evenings... And won't she sleep better later if she's wakened pretty soon?"

"Very likely," agreed his sister, with a discerning glance at him. "Though she looks to me as if a week's sleep wouldn't hurt her."

"We'll keep her a week, eh?" urged David. "When you see her awake and rested you'll see what interests me."

"I have a glimmering of that," admitted Miss Hester. "By the way, there's one of her unique scintillations in this magazine; I was reading it just before you came. It's unusually brilliant. One wouldn't say the writer of it could ever tire."

David took the magazine from her hand, read the lines; but though they were indubitably witty he didn't smile.

"Hess," he mused, "is there always a wound behind that sort of thing--if you happen to know about it?"

"Of course that was written long before this friend whom she's grieving over was hurt," she reminded him.

"Yes, but she has a face that shows she's acutely conscious of every touch of tragedy in life, even while she writes comedy for a living. Yet she actually thinks she's hard-boiled. Thinks she's a scoffer--thinks she's completely disillusioned. It's one of the greatest self-misconceptions I ever knew."

"Not an uncommon one, however, at her age."

"She told me frankly she was twenty-seven."

"Not possible, I should think."

"You haven't seen her yet. She's been knocking about New York for years, living alone a good deal of the time."

They talked in low voices. The last thing David said before Hester went up again to Ross's room was: "Sis, you're a brick of bricks to let me bring her here, like this, and take her into your own interest. I'll wager there isn't another sister in New England, of your age or any other, who would have done it for an eccentric younger brother, knowing how short the acquaintance has been."

"I'm eccentric myself," she admitted, "as you well know. Besides, Ross Collins is hardly a new acquaintance. Haven't we both been enjoying her ever since we first began to notice her?"

She went upstairs again. David waited rather anxiously for her return. She might easily decide to let her weary young guest sleep on till morning. For himself, he wanted to feed Ross, substantial, delicious food. Then presently he heard sounds of voices in the room above, and knew that his new friend was awake.

"Down in a few minutes," announced Hester, passing the door on her way to the dining room to give an order. Reassured, he continued to wait, more impatiently than ever, listening to the light footsteps overhead. How would she look when she appeared? Rested, he hoped. He wanted to give her one of those evenings by the fire which had to him, in the deep country in winter, a quality of which she knew nothing. What were evenings by the fire to a city dweller in an apartment like that of Ross's sister--if they had a fire? He didn't recall that that apartment did have any fire--or if there was a fireplace of the pint-pot city type, it wasn't used. Why should it be, with stifling heat filling the radiators? And what sort of talk went on before it, if it was used? He thought he knew, by the sort of talk which had prevailed at the table on the evening he had dined there. Lively, knowing in its way, yet commonplace mostly, and to him infinitely boring. He granted, willingly enough, that there were plenty of firesides in New York--or the substitutes for firesides--before which desirable and highly stimulating talk did go on. But he doubted whether Ross's home environment had ever been of that type. By her own light she had made her way thus far through life; he was sure she hadn't had any real home of the kind he knew so well. That was what he particularly wanted to show her.