Читать книгу High Fences - Grace S. Richmond - Страница 5

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David goes reluctantly whither he would not. His entrance into the story is therefore not voluntary, and he may turn out hard to deal with. But once in, he's here to stay, because he's that sort.

When he came into town that night on the six-ten David MacRoss had had no idea of going to anybody's dinner party. It was the last thing he would have wanted to do if he had known of it beforehand, and had foreseen that there would be no decent and kindly way of getting out of it. But there wasn't, or he would have found it.

His cousin William was lying shivering on the couch, his face flushed, his head aching. William's wife, Lucille, was standing over him, herself dressed for the dinner. By contrast with William's disordered aspect Lucille seemed more than beautifully done for the coming evening. When David came in, his own face ruddy--not with fever but from December rain in the face--Lucille had her brilliant idea, the idea that promised to spoil David's evening. She turned upon him as though he were the only means of rescue from a desperate situation.

"Oh, Davy! Thank heaven! You can go in Billy's place!"

"No, I can't," replied David MacRoss firmly. "Wherever it is, I can't go."

"Don't blame you," muttered William, turning his head so that his nose burrowed still further into his hot pillow. "You can't make him go, Lu, right off the bat like that. Call up Ethel and say it's off."

"I simply can't. She's counting on us--somebody else has failed her at the last minute. I promised her absolutely. Oh, Davy! When you know Billy's clothes fit you like paper on the wall! Please!"

"My plans are made for the evening." David set down his bag and went over to his cousin. He and William had been great chums all through their country boyhood, and were still, though their interests were now far apart, the best of friends. "What is it? Influenza?" He laid a sympathetic hand upon a red-hot forehead. "You ought to be in bed. I'll stay half an hour and put you to bed. Run along, Lu."

"I can't run along alone to a dinner party, Davy. Oh, please!"

It really was of no use to resist. William wasn't as ill as that. There was nothing important to do for him--he could take his hot bath and put himself to bed. As for David's plans, he had made them, of course, but they didn't include anybody else; no tickets had been bought; nothing was going to be dislocated past help if he gave them up. And he liked Lucille--it was a pity to disappoint a pretty woman who had got herself up so artfully as that. In the end he gave in because, though he could be dogged enough when he chose, he also hated spoiling other people's fun when there was nothing special to be dogged about.

So he went into the tiny guest room which was always ready for him--it was really William's bit of a private workroom and had a couch-bed in it. He put on William's evening clothes, which did indeed fit him like the paper on the wall, for he was a good twenty pounds heavier than his slim cousin. William slaved in an office all day, whereas David lived in the country, a hundred miles out, took plenty of fresh air with his work, and only came into town every other week-end, to see what had been happening besides what was in the great dailies. New York was New York, and he liked it--a certain amount of it--but he liked the old home up in Connecticut much better, as a steady diet.

He came out of William's room, sleek and fine. In William's dinner coat he looked much better than William ever did, because he had a more attractive face and figure. His shoulders were straighter, his manner more quietly assured. William was nervous; David wasn't. These points do make a difference in a man's appearance.

Lucille, smiling at him over the flattering white fur collar of her evening coat, patted William's head.

"It's a shame to leave you, Billy," she said, "but you know----"

"Oh, run along," urged her husband, burrowing deeper yet into his pillow, as into his only refuge. "I'll be glad to be quiet."

So they went. David hailed a taxi and put Lucille into it, wondering why the sort of thing he was expecting should bore him so horribly in mere anticipation when people like his cousin's wife could be so thrilled at doing what they had done hundreds of times before. There was nothing in these efforts at a good time. Just a getting together of a dozen people, none of whom were particularly remarkable or interesting to him--they couldn't be, or they wouldn't have belonged in William's and Lucille's set. He knew that set inside out and back again--he had met them all at William's apartment times enough to know what they were like. Good enough fellows, sleekly dressed, making money and wanting to talk about methods of making more. Their wives, young women who took excellent care of their faces and hair and hands, dressed to surpass their husbands in lateness of mode, and wore a constant air of eagerness to have the best possible time that could be had by the means at their disposal. An evening with these people meant cocktails, joking, laughter; more cocktails, increasing laughter rapidly becoming boisterous, bridge with higher and higher stakes, cooking something in a chafing dish sometime after midnight; or, more likely, everybody having the same glorious inspiration to go out somewhere and dance, and then to go somewhere else and have scrambled eggs at three or four o'clock in the morning.

But to-night, he had to stick it pretty well through instead of getting away when he wanted to, like a free bachelor; because he was taking Lucille, and Lucille's idea was not to be the first to go home from anywhere if she could help it. David knew she thought she could help it to-night, because she hadn't William with her to say worriedly that he'd got to be in the office at nine next morning. She understood well enough that on these occasional visits of his, David hadn't unavoidably to be anywhere next morning. Just the same, he intended, along about two o'clock at the latest, to lay a firm cousinly hand on her arm and say: "Come along now, Lu. You know you've had enough. We're going home." And because she liked him very, very much, she'd go--complaining bitterly, but she'd go, because he was David and had a certain way of deciding things which was difficult to resist.

So, practically led upon a leash, David went to this dinner, and there he met Ross Collins.