Читать книгу High Fences - Grace S. Richmond - Страница 7

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David begins to wonder why he hated so to come to this dinner. It seems to have redeeming features. The success of dinners really always depends upon whom one sits next, doesn't it?

David MacRoss had long been reading Ross Collins's pieces, here and there, because he couldn't seem to help it. They were little things--light as air, amusing with a humor which was different from other writers' humor. When he saw a column, or the weekly skit called A Lady of Leisure, or four lines of verse, or even a very short paragraph signed by Ross Collins, he knew he might as well read it, because he'd be missing something if he didn't. He'd often wondered about this Collins, because the fellow had an extraordinarily light touch, and never did a heavy-fisted thing. Not that he couldn't hit straight, too; but the hits were like wasps' stings--done delicately, by a featherweight. As a rule, however, Collins's stuff glinted and sparkled rather than stabbed. It was great stuff. Other young humorists tried to imitate it--David didn't think anybody could. Collins was Collins, indubitably young himself, and amazingly observant of life. High-priced, undoubtedly. He should be high-priced. If MacRoss himself had been a magazine editor instead of a writer, he'd have had Collins's stuff in at least every other issue, no matter what it cost. Coming upon a bit of it sandwiched between sterner lines was like coming upon the flash of a bright torch in dark caverns.

Of course he didn't recognize Collins at all, when he met him, because, though he was hurriedly presented to Mrs. Cheney's sister (and by her own name at that), and was placed next her at dinner, nobody told him, least of all Ross herself, who she was. He had always visualized Collins as one of these slender, dark youths, with a cutting eye, a tiny smudge on his upper lip, an insolent manner, and a way of getting copy out of you whether you would or no. A near genius, Collins, and decidedly masculine, in spite of the brittle quality of his satire. No sissy sort of chap could possibly do Collins's stuff.

So, placed beside this slightly quaint person with the little red curl over her left shoulder, hands like a child's, and a white cheek and whiter shoulder turned away from him at the start, he had no idea that at last he had met the author of the many lines which, smiling broadly or slapping his knee in appreciation, he had clipped and put away because he couldn't possibly bear not to be able to put his hand on them again. He had had the notion, when he had first looked down at this slip of a girl, that she was a very young sister of his hostess, brought in to fill in a gap for the evening, and would presently be sent away to bed. Like the young men in the subway, where she rode with her head down so that they shouldn't get a revealing look at her, he didn't see what was plainly to be seen after one thorough-going study of her black-brown eyes, that here was no child after all.

So he paid her no attention whatever for the first ten minutes, being engaged in attempting to respond to an extremely gay young woman on his other side, who liked his looks and found him a diversion from her other neighbor, whom she knew too well to care for. The time came at length, however, when the rules of the game demanded that dinner guests change partners, and since the gay young woman seemed to be his for life if he didn't get away, David made the motion. Ross made it too, for she had been exceedingly bored by the young man upon her right. It may be admitted that her observation had been characteristically quicker than David's--she did not take him for a small boy who would soon be sent away to bed, but knew that he was probably, by the look of him, somebody worth pulling herself out of her weariness to bother with. And by now she was pretty well reinforced by the excellent food which she had just consumed. Ethel and Ken certainly did know how to furnish delicious food and drink. As for the latter, though Ross had been brought up on cocktails, she had discovered at a rather early age that it was best not to go very far with them if she expected to keep up her work and her nerve.

So now she turned her camellia-white cheek and whiter shoulder toward David MacRoss, and lifted her eyes to his. He immediately perceived that, after all, small as she was, she was not a child. The black-brown eyes were not big and round, they were partly closed between heavy dark lashes--an unusual combination with hair so red, yet not unknown. Some quite famous beauties have possessed it and have made the most of it. But the thing that struck David MacRoss, as he regarded this Miss Collins whom he had just discovered not to be a child, was that, though knowledge of life looked attractively out of those eyes, she was not attempting to use them upon him as a famous beauty might. She was merely looking at him to discover what he was like. As that was the way he was looking at her, the two pairs of eyes immediately arrived at a certain mutual comprehension.

It was Ross who first expressed this.

"Anyhow, it's a change, isn't it?" she breathed. "I'd really come to the end--at least for the present. You're all before me--an unknown quantity. Perhaps I can keep awake for another ten minutes, if you help."

"I'll do my best to help," he agreed. "It's hard to have to go to dinner parties when one wants to sleep, isn't it?"

"Did you want to do that, too?"

"Well," he confessed, "not on this particular night, because I came in from the country to see what I could see. But I know the feeling."

"You came in from the country? Really," said Ross Collins, considering him thoughtfully, "you know you don't look it."

"If I don't, it's because my cousin's clothes are supposed to fit me sufficiently well so that I can go out in his place. You see, in a crisis we seem to have only one outfit between us."

"I see. It's a pity I can't wear my sister's clothes that way. She's so big and beautiful, and I'm such a little pint-pot." Ross glanced toward Ethel, sparkling nervously, hostess-wise, at her end of the table, the French mannequin come to life. "She made me come to her dinner, to fill in, because you and another man were last-minute guests. I had nothing I wanted to wear except"--the white shoulder shrugged--"this, a thousand and one nights worn."

"It seems to do very well," he assured her, with a glance at the shoulder. It was such a tiny shoulder, yet well rounded with exquisite flesh. And the red curl happened to droop on the side of the neck toward him. The astonishing contrast between her little head, slightly ruffled because she could never make the crisp hair lie down, and the heads all about her, so perfectly groomed that they seemed not quite real, pleased him. He was conscious for a moment of an extraordinary wish to touch the red curl. It must take courage, he thought, to wear one's hair like that, engaging as the unusual effect it gave her undeniably was.

"Anything does very well," agreed Ross, "when one seldom bothers with dressing up."

"How do you account for the thousand and one nights, then?"

"Ah, but it wasn't I who took the frock out so often. It was Ethel, in the days when Ken couldn't give her so many frocks as he can now. It was one of her trousseau things--which means four years ago. So, you see, it's a hand-me-down--a dress old and wise in experience, cut neatly to fit me.... So, now that we know all about each other's evening wear, let's try another subject, shall we?"

He laughed. "All right, though I thought we were getting on rather well with that one. There was a certain intimacy about those confessions that encouraged me to think we were likely to come to basic facts gratifyingly soon."

"Are you out for basic facts?"

"Of course. I like to know why things happen, and how. Don't you?"

She picked up a fork and laid it on another, and a third on the second, fitting them together. They made quite a nest. He watched her slim white fingers touching the shining silver, and knew she wasn't thinking of what she was doing. She couldn't be. One didn't pile up one's forks like that at a dinner. Though he came from the country he knew that very well. Suddenly she flicked the silver back into place, and put her hands demurely in her lap.

"One of my terrible habits," she murmured. "It's a mercy Ethel didn't see me."

"I fear several people opposite you did," he assured her gravely, under his breath.

"Oh, well.... They couldn't think any more disparagingly of me than they do. When I was a child I had a silver napkin ring which precisely fitted a fat salt cellar. It was amazing how precisely it fitted. I couldn't keep from putting the two together, and feeling of the bottom of the combination to prove to myself that once again it was an exact fit. How can one outgrow a thing like that?"

"I should say you hadn't had much time to outgrow it."

"Do you say you come from the country?" She fixed upon him a skeptical look from between those strangely narrowed eyes of hers which gave her face so unusual a quality. "I was hoping that being from the country you wouldn't be saying that sort of thing quite as though you were used to doing it. Tell me about the country, won't you?... Though first--let me assure you that I'm twenty-seven years old, if you care to know, and you may venture to talk to me as intelligently as you ... can. I'd prefer it, really."

This delighted him. "'As intelligently as I ... can,'" he repeated. "The slight hiatus was well interpolated. Very well. We'll make a fresh start. We had to have some sort of a start, hadn't we? How could I know, till I'd sounded you out, whether you wanted me to attempt to talk intelligently, or just to say as flattering things as I could venture to express to you. I--well, I rather hesitate to mention the very charming person on my other side, but I did gather that in her case, as in that of most women, probably I was expected to do something of that sort. But I'm so unversed in these matters----"

"Oh, are you indeed! I begin to see that the country you come from lies quite close to Manhattan."

"But it doesn't. It lies a hundred and more miles away, on a crossroads a good mile from even the smallest town. And if you want to know something about it, let me tell you why I very nearly didn't come into town to-night. Do you happen to remember that we've had a good deal of snow, lately?--then some rain and a stiff freeze?"

"I only know----" she considered it, groping in her memory, while he looked at her profile and wondered why he didn't seem to mind that it was an odd little irregular outline, with a nose which very slightly suggested an upward tilt. An audacious profile, not an imposing one. Its owner would be into things--yes, very decidedly she would be into things. You couldn't keep her out. Like a small dog on the scent, she would be poking that little nose into your affairs. Keen--quick--flashing at you--seeing through you.

"I only know," she managed to recall, "that day before yesterday afternoon, being late to a play I wanted to see, and the streets being frightfully slushy, I afforded a taxi--and then we couldn't get near the curb because of the water flowing. So the Irish driver had to carry me. He complained that I was heavy, so, being Irish myself, for his impudence I gave him an extra tip. Yes, I remember about the weather.... I didn't suppose we'd get around to the weather," she added sadly. "You don't look like a weather man."

"Honestly, I promise you I'm not. Though I like to be scientific about such things, I'll skip the conditions which led to the result.... Just before I left the country this afternoon I saw that a crust was forming on the deep snow--you see the snow is still deep up in Connecticut. It came unusually early this year. We have no army of ploughs to rush it out of sight. It's a clear night--I saw it would be. And it's exactly at the full of the moon. Do you happen to know what a long stretch of snow with an icy crust on it, sloping down a hill through an orchard to an expanse of open field, looks like, with the full moon shining on it?"

Her eyes met his musingly. "I'm afraid I don't. I've never been in the country in winter--only a few times in the summer. What does it look like--with the moon shining on an icy crust?... Crust?... You mean the snow gets hard on top?"

"Exactly. So hard that you can walk on it--slide on it. It's that way up in Connecticut to-night. It doesn't happen many times in a winter. When it does happen it seems a pity to come away to town and miss it. You see, it's uncannily beautiful. Not like anything in the world that they have in New York. Not even like glittering make-believe of a winter night in the theater."

"Then why did you come away and leave it?" she asked gravely. "An extraordinary phenomenon like that."

"You don't really need to use the word 'extraordinary,' if you say 'phenomenon,' do you?" His eyes were laughing, though his tone was of mock severity. "A phenomenon is extraordinary. Besides, an icy crust is no phenomenon whatever; it's an entirely natural event."

She turned upon him suspiciously. "Oh--you're a writer! Or worse yet--a college instructor. I might have known it. But no, you come from the country."

"So I couldn't be either." He threw back his head and laughed softly. "You are an ignorant little person, after all. Yet you invite me to try to talk intelligently--you command me to."

"Yes, and see where we are. We've been talking ten minutes and----"

Her eyes had met Ethel's. Her sister was signaling imperatively that she should turn back to the man on her other side, who was obviously trying to get back to her because the woman on his other side was absorbed in the man on hers. MacRoss saw the signal too, and also realized that talk of a different sort was eagerly awaiting him on his left.

"Good-bye," Ross murmured in his ear. "With luck, we may meet again--but you can't leave it all to luck."

"I won't," promised David MacRoss positively, and waited till she turned her white shoulder before he turned his black one, as even a man from the country may know should be done.