Читать книгу High Fences - Grace S. Richmond - Страница 6

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Ross, with even greater reluctance than David, and with much more rebellion, presents herself at a dinner that is just a matter of duty to her--at first. She's had a hard day at her typewriter, and wanted to go to bed instead of making herself agreeable. Life often presents that complication.

STRANGE HAPPENING AT GRANGE CORNERS

The roadster emerged with extreme caution from the side road into the main highway. Therefore it did not smash into the great touring car coming at a furious pace from the west, but missed it by several feet. Therefore there was no accident, nobody was rushed to the nearest hospital, and the headline above seems the only one justified. It would be well if there could be more of these mysterious failures to connect headlights at the bad double crossing at Grange Corners.

Ross Collins pulled the sheet off her typewriter, glanced frowningly over the item from Grange Corners, tore the sheet in two, and crumpling it viciously dropped it into the immense wastebasket--nearly as large as a clothes hamper--which stood at her elbow inviting contributions.

"Anything less amusing than that paragraph it's not conceivable that one could put forth," she said to herself with uncompromising severity. She glanced with some relief at the small clock on the corner of a crowded table which was mutely announcing that it was now half after six, and she might call it a day. What a day!

It was at this moment precisely, when she was sure to be lowest in her spirits if her work had gone wrong, that her sister appeared to her in the doorway. Such a sister!

Now Rosamond Collins herself--the Ross was her own contraction, for use in the newspaper and other columns which she frequented when things had gone better than they had to-day--was a slip of a thing in size. When she hung upon a subway strap in the rush hours kindly disposed people instinctively held themselves a little away, to give the child air. Young men, not so kindly disposed, catching a glimpse of the face under the close little black hat brim, were liable not to bother to give its possessor air. Therefore Ross had developed a trick of keeping her head down, and thus escaping notice by continuing to play the child rôle.

At her typewriter desk, however, as she looked up at her married elder sister--Mrs. Kendall Cheney--Ross appeared to be no child. Her bright red hair was the only bright thing about her just now. Her black-brown eyes had dark shadows of fatigue beneath them, masses of wildly curling locks drooped over them, her cheeks were pallid; she looked her age, which was all of--never mind what, just now. Her black taffeta working dress had its sleeves rolled up; the apartment furnaces were running full blast in a cold December, and something had happened to the radiator cut-off in Ross's small room--she had to keep the window halfway down to offset it, though snow-flakes now and then whirled through and melted on her hair quite as though it set fire to them.

"My word, Ethel! You look like a French mannequin. How in the name of time and money do you do it?"

"And you look like a little guttersnipe, my dear, with that hair of yours in a tousle. Do you write with your head, Ross, dear?"

"When it has any ideas in it. When it hasn't I write with my spine and all my nerves--and get nowhere, like to-day. Glory!--I'm glad I don't have to go to your party. I'm going to get me a snack somewhere, and so to bed."

"But you do have to! That's what I'm here for. Oh, I'm sorry--I know I promised. But the Lowells telephoned they couldn't come--baby sick, or something--it may be the dog. Anyhow, they were final about it. So I put it up to the Drummonds, as a favor. Billy Drummond got sick too, at the last minute, but his cousin happens to be in town--Lucille will bring him. Then the Higsbys called up five minutes ago and asked if they might bring some man that had just blown in, and I had to say Yes. But that upsets the table--makes thirteen. And besides," Ethel hurried on at the light sound of a scornful whistle from the lips of her sister, "it makes two strange men, both bachelors, and our crowd's all married. So I've simply got to have at least one girl, and it's too late----"

"Sorry, Ethel, but it's out of the question. I'm too dog-tired." Ross's tone was obstinate. She was cramming a mass of papers into a drawer, closing her typewriter. She could bear no more of this impotent day. "I should either go to sleep or snap somebody's head off."

"Darling, you can't refuse. You won't have to play bridge--there'll be three tables without you and whichever one of these men you prefer. I can fix that. And you can slip off early. But--you can whistle at thirteen at table----"

"Oh, silly!"

"It may be, but Paula Buell always counts--always--and besides it's horrid to have unexpected guests. Take a chance. One of them may be the find of your life."

"Sillier!"

"We're having the tenderest little birds you ever ate, and you look absolutely starved."

"I am, but not for squab--or men. Sleep--rest----"

"Oh, Ross, dear--please! I won't ask you again for ages, but to-night I simply must. And you've often admitted you never know when you're going to get something out of people."

"Not the people who go to your sort of parties. You know what I think of those special cronies of yours. Not an idea among 'em, or rather, exactly the same ideas, eternally.... Oh, well--I won't be too disagreeable, of course. Only remember you don't tie me up. I'm to slip out after the coffee is brought round. I'll stay for that, because I need it. But I won't be cornered with any strange man. You're to make them both play whether they want to or not, and leave out two of the others."

"All right. You're insulting, as usual--but you're a dear to give in. Now I'll rush down to see if the table looks right. I've had to do most of it myself.... Oh, Ross--haven't you anything but that old black lace?"

"Not a thing--that I care to wear. I'm really fond of that."

"Why don't you get yourself something new? You make money enough now. Well, anyhow, the lace is becoming, if you'll only wear a big flower with it. You have a white and silver one, haven't you? And silver slippers?"

"You know I have."

"I am grateful to you, Ross. Now I must rush."

"Don't rush--glide! You might get a hair out of place!" Ross called after her sister with a slight revival of spirits. After all, she was frightfully hungry, and Ethel's dinners were marvels. How she achieved them--all in a tiny kitchenette! But Ross knew--it was by doing ever so much of them herself, and then hiring only what she must, including perfect service. The effect was always of great affluence, for Ethel's wedding china and silver and linen had been of the best, and were only four years old. The problem was, however, how Ethel herself could look, as she did to-night, after hours in a hot kitchen, like the French mannequin Ross had called her--than which there could hardly be higher praise, provided one cared for that exquisite sleekness, that perfection of detail, that manner which suggested to Ross not only poise but pose. And since Ethel and her husband, Kendall Cheney, seemed to be all for the sort of life they lived, Ross thought it not worth while to quarrel with them.

For this winter, because she liked their location, she had been glad to accept their offer of an unused room at the back of their apartment, in return for a handsome weekly sum. It helped, Ethel frankly confessed, to cover some of these details of the entertaining of which she was so fond; and with Ken away four days out of every week it was comforting to have her sister in the apartment, even though Ross's companionship was represented mostly by the furious click of her typewriter behind a closed door, and her goings and comings at all hours, as her assignments and commissions demanded.

Ross took time for a hot tub, though it might make her late. Several guests were heard arriving even as she turned on the water. She positively couldn't do without it, after such a day. It set her up a little, and she took pains with her hair. It needed taking pains with, for, tired of bobs, she was letting it grow; it had reached her shoulders and had to be turned under and pinned carefully close to her head if it were not to escape and show a loosened curl. A rascally thought came to her--why not let one curl hang below her left ear with an effect of quaintness? It was done at costume parties, and the black lace was very full of skirt.

She did it, and decided that the effect was jolly--and would probably annoy Ethel to distraction. What of that?--it would make the evening more amusing. Her head would look different from all the other women's heads. Theirs would be as though carved out of marble--or wood--and colored black or yellow or brown to give a look of life. She would enjoy their disapproving glances at her, for--there was no question of it--the curl was distinctly becoming and set her off amazingly, and she didn't care a straw that it didn't happen to be in fashion. Not that she didn't usually take pains to be properly dressed for any occasion. But she did dare, now and then, to be original, a little, just for fun.

She slipped out of her room, pausing a moment before starting down the narrow, candle-lit foyer which led to the long drawing room across the front of the apartment where the Cheneys gave their small dinners--for lack of a dining room. They were accustomed to have the table and its service discreetly whisked away at the close, turning the room back to its primary uses in the twinkling of an eye. The hum of voices was now loud--everybody must have come. Yes, there was Ethel's head. Her eyes were glancing down the foyer in search of her sister. In another moment Ken would be sent for her. Well, if they would make her come to their unwelcome party, at the last minute ...

They were just ready to sit down. Ethel gave Ross a nod toward her place, her look conveying deep dissatisfaction coupled with resignation. After all, Ethel thought, all these people knew Ross for an erratic little professional person; it didn't much matter how she looked. It didn't occur to Ethel that Ross really did look as though she possessed individuality, which was more than could be said of the other women, who might all have been poured into the same mold of fashion; flawless, conscious, afraid to differ from the set forms at the moment approved.