Читать книгу High Fences - Grace S. Richmond - Страница 14

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More sleep. Merciful heavens!--is that what she came for? Precisely, though she didn't know it.

He didn't hear her come down the softly carpeted stairs; she was in the room before he knew it. He sprang to meet her. She had brought only one extra frock with her; a very simple dress of rough white silk, as suitable as anything she had, she had thought, for the country. It was exceedingly becoming, and it was a relief to David to see her in something besides her austerely tailored black. Her eyes were still heavy, but her smile was less forced than it had been two hours ago.

"It's good to see you looking a bit rested," David greeted her.

"I never knew," said Ross, spreading out both arms and moving them gently up and down, "such a bed. I sank upon it, meaning not to stay ten minutes. It received me--it was like lying upon a cloud with no bottom. Before I knew it I was gone. Even coming downstairs to you and your wonderfully kind sister, I was thinking that by and by I should be back on the incredibly luxurious cloud, and could stay till morning."

"We shouldn't have wakened you, except that we thought you needed food even more than sleep. Would you mind telling me what you had for lunch, before you took the train?"

She looked puzzled. "Did I have lunch?"

"If you can't remember it, probably not."

"But I can. I went to the counter in the station and had--yes, a cup of very strong coffee. I didn't seem to want anything else."

"I thought not. But you're going to want Hester's food to-night, and I hope you'll eat a good stiff dinner, one fit for a brakeman."

"Don't be disappointed if I can't. I--I'm really not hungry."

She didn't eat a meal fit for a brakeman, but she did as much justice to the well-chosen, perfectly served little dinner as her hosts could expect. One could hardly help it, at that table. It put life back into her, in spite of herself. She had been choking down her food ever since Jimmy had been hurt, keeping going on strong tea and coffee--poor props enough for steady support. Another great fire was burning in the dining room; she couldn't keep her eyes off it. It fascinated her so that it helped to keep her putting bits of food into her mouth.

"I believe I've never really seen a fire before," she confessed. "Certainly not one that was so recklessly gorgeous as that."

"We'll have one even more gorgeous when we go back to the other room," promised David. "And we'll sit in front of it, while Hester goes off to a session in her little Community House. She's absorbed in plans for opening it. We'll show it to you to-morrow night."

"I'm late for it this minute," observed Miss Hester, glancing at her wrist watch, "If you two will excuse me----"

"We'll excuse you"--David saw her to the door--"but we want you back."

She nodded. With a little electric lantern in her hand she smiled back at Ross, her pleasant face glowing ruddily under her hat brim. "Don't keep her up too late," she admonished David, and went out into the night. Ross, going to a window, watched the vigorous stride of the erect figure, clearly visible against the snow.

"How all alive she is," she said.

"From the top of her competent head to the tips of her energetic toes," he agreed. "Come--let's establish ourselves on this couch in front of the fire. I'm not going to ply you with photographs of the place in summer, or read poems or magazine articles to you. Not going to try to entertain you in any way. Little worn-out beggar that you are, you've been warmed and fed, and now you're going to curl up like a kitten, and even go to sleep again in your corner of the couch, if you'll just let me keep watch beside you."

"Sounds wonderful." She dropped into the indicated corner. The couch was like the bed upstairs--deep and soft and many-pillowed. "Oh, what absolute comfort! I didn't suppose I could be quite so ready or have such a chance to let everything go and just rest. I mean--I thought you'd expect me to try to be gay--witty--play up: the appreciative and amusing guest. May I really just sit here and look at the fire, and not talk--or even be talked to? It seems such an ungrateful way to spend an evening, especially when I'm such a stranger."

"I don't know any way of spending it," he assured her, "that could give me deeper satisfaction. There are times to be gay and witty--if one can, like you--and there are other times when being like that just doesn't fit the occasion. If you should try it to-night I should feel as though you were wasting yourself. And as to your being a stranger--you know you are not that. Sometime I'll prove it to you.... Now put your head back. See that little blue flame in the corner? Watch it--and so will I."

Obediently she laid her head against the soft couch back, sliding down a little on the seat and stretching her small feet forward, crossing them on the hearth rug. They were finely shod feet, and David's eyes rested on them with high approval. Ross's whole attitude was that of one who is completely at home and relaxed and comfortable. It was precisely what he wanted.

He produced a pipe. "Mind?" he inquired.

She shook her head. "Love to have you."

He filled and lighted it, and went around and turned out all the lamps except a small one in a corner. Then he sat down beside her, leaving a little space between them. He puffed away in silence for a few minutes, his head also tipped back, his long legs extended. Then he reached out one hand across the space and took hers into it.

"Mind?" he asked again.

She turned her head slowly toward him and smiled, and the firelight was reflected from the half-shut eyes between the falling lashes. Then she turned her head back again.

"It was the one thing lacking, only I didn't know it."

He clasped the hand tight for a minute, then let it lie in a quiet, though close, hold. It was such a little hand, so seemingly powerless in his. He knew those fingers could hit typewriter keys, hours on end; but to-night he thought it was a hand which needed to be held in just such a firm grasp as he was giving it, conveying, as he meant it to, the sense that here was a good friend, who wanted nothing of a weary woman except to try to let his quiet strength flow into her, if such contiguity could make it seem to do so.

So Ross lay back, looking into the fire, and let her hand rest, as she might if she had been a tired child and her father had been holding it. Presently she closed her eyes, and David could feel that all tension had gone out of her. He looked around at her cautiously and said to himself that in another ten minutes she would be asleep again, precisely as he had suggested. She must be even more worn out than he had realized, to take him and his handclasp so naïvely as that. He smiled to himself. He couldn't be very exciting, if she really could forget his presence. He sincerely didn't want to be exciting--not to-night.... Yet after all, he didn't quite like to think he wasn't--in the least.

For himself, even to touch her in this brotherly sort of way was exciting. It brought up all sorts of possibilities. He wasn't a holder of women's hands--or only in emergencies. He had discovered a very long time ago that all trouble for a bachelor begins that way, and up to now he had wanted to continue to be a bachelor. He knew perfectly that to hold any woman's hand meant that the next thing she would expect was a kiss. He knew also that it was equally true that holding a woman's hand, if she were really attractive, was likely to make him want to kiss her. And then the thing certainly was set going, with small chance for escape. So he had been wary--except for a few instances when he afterward had wished he had been so, and had extricated himself with difficulty from the consequence of not having held to his resolutions. On the whole, however, David MacRoss had been quite as discreet as his Scottish ancestry plus his New England bringing up could be expected to make him. It was no philanderer who sat there holding a tired girl's hand. It was a hard-headed, if now and then soft-hearted, young man of enough experience to know precisely what he was doing to himself, if not to Ross, by the process known in the electrical world as making contact. It was fairly sure, in this case, to cause sparks to fly, and to set something afire, if only his own heart. But evidently it was not going to set Ross's afire--not to-night--for she was, very soon, quite frankly asleep.

It was Miss Hester's return which roused her. She had not been heavily asleep, nor for more than a few minutes, and as the door opened David gently withdrew his hand. Ross sat up. The warmth had tinged her ivory white skin with a hint of color; the relaxation had done much to renew her. As her hostess, her own face aglow with the nipping of the January wind, came around to view her Ross got quickly to her feet. She and David stood together on the hearth rug.

"I am," said Ross, meeting Miss Hester's smile with a most disarming one of her own, "probably the rudest guest who ever sat before a fire and went to sleep. This is the second time I've been unconscious since five o'clock, when I arrived. I should be dubbed the Dormouse and given a dash of water in the face."

"If you really were asleep," replied Miss Hester, "I should call it a remarkable tribute to David's powers of persuasion. He wished nothing so much as that you should be refreshed by this visit."

"I did all but sing 'Rock-a-by, Baby' to accomplish that end," avowed David. "And I'm hoping a whole night of real rest will put Ross where she wants to stay awake. Anyhow, I'm going to take her outdoors to-morrow and see what fresh air will do."

"Why not to-night? I'd love a walk, right now. It seems to be only ten o'clock."

His face lighted. "Really?"

"Really--if you'd like it too."

"I'd like nothing better. But"--he looked down at her sheer stockings and slippers--"you couldn't walk in the snow in those shoes."

"Why not? I----"

"Nonsense. Such footwear may go on Fifth Avenue, but not in the country. I'll bundle you into the car instead, and we'll take a little run, just to show you what the moonlight is like on snow that hasn't been trampled on by thousands of feet. Come on."

But Ross delayed him for ten minutes, talking with Miss Hester. She was suddenly quite wide awake and realizing her duty to her hostess. It was a pleasant talk, and while it lasted each woman gained considerable insight into what the other might be capable of in the matter of congeniality. Then David came with his sister's fur coat, wrapped Ross in it, and took her off.