Читать книгу High Fences - Grace S. Richmond - Страница 9

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David would like to take up the argument for the defense, but wisely refrains. When women are on the warpath men are safer in the deep woods.

He saw her again exactly three hours later when, completely fed up with the evening, he had half persuaded, half bullied his cousin's wife, Lucille Drummond, to give up going on with the rest of the party, "somewhere to dance." He knew it would end with scrambled eggs--and he didn't want any scrambled eggs, anywhere.

"But Billy isn't sick!" argued Lucille.

"Isn't he, though? He had a hundred and two or three if he had anything, and his pulse was like a trip-hammer--a hundred and twenty at least. I'm going home to him, Lu--and so are you. You can't tell about these sudden attacks of influenza. They're as likely to end with a pneumonia as not."

So he had not only scared her into it but he had smiled her into it as well. One of David's smiles would make Lucille do nearly anything, and he had given her a particularly nice one with a hint of deep affection in it, which he considered highly justifiable. He really did feel a little worried about William, who didn't look as though he could stand an attack of pneumonia very successfully. These office-bred young men--they had no physical resistance; not from David's point of view.

It was as their elevator, crowded full with the first installment of the entire party, reached the ground floor that David caught sight of Ross, standing waiting for it to take her up. For an instant he didn't know her. She looked smaller than ever in a plain black tailored suit, black fox fur, and tiny black hat. The red curl was nowhere in sight, but the white face and the narrowed black-brown eyes couldn't be mistaken in that crowd of rouge and lipstick and hilarity. Besides, somebody said casually: "Hi, Ross--been out on a bat of your own? Hope it was a jolly one."

To which Ross replied, in a low voice, "Yes, thanks. And good-night."

Beside her stood a slim young man who had evidently brought her home. Dark and sallow, hollow-cheeked, somewhat cynical of expression as he regarded the group emerging from the car, he looked down at Ross and murmured something in her ear. She nodded. Apparently she didn't see David.

He made her see him. For a man from the country he was extraordinarily quick in his reactions. He said: "Wait for me, Lu." He gave one scrutinizing look at the young man who stood beside Ross. Was the fellow going up with her--at this hour? He came around by Ross's further side, and spoke in her ear.

"I've missed you."

Her face, as she looked up at him from under the tiny black hat, was very weary. It was more than weary. She looked as though she had been seeing something which had torn her to pieces. Well, things would tear that sort of girl to pieces, or how could she write what she did write? For Ross Collins's stuff wasn't always witty or waggish, though that was her chief line. Once in a while it was heartbreaking. He thought she must be about ready to do one of those heartbreaking things right now, though he hoped it was just plain fatigue of her diminutive body, rather than devastation of her sensitive spirit.

"Have you? I was--unexpectedly--sorry to go."

"We were just beginning to get somewhere, weren't we?"

"It seemed so," she admitted.

"Mayn't we go on from there--to-morrow, somewhere? I'm only in town for to-morrow. Will you have lunch with me at----" he hurriedly considered a possible place.

She interrupted. "No--not possibly anywhere, thank you. But I'm going to the Fifth Avenue Hospital at three, to see a sick friend for ten minutes. We could walk down a few squares from there. I have to get a breath of air sometime during the day, or perish."

"I'll see you going in."

He looked back as he left her, to observe whether the man with her got into the car for the upward trip. To his intense dissatisfaction the man did. David wondered whether these New Yorkers felt it necessary to go up to the very door of an apartment to say good-night to a girl they had taken out, or whether, having gone up, they were likely to go on in.

It was half after one in the morning. The question bothered him. He was absent-minded in the taxi in which he was taking Lucille home.

"Davy, now you've made me go at this ridiculously early hour you might at least be entertaining on the way. Did you really find Ross Collins so amusing?"

He was instantly on guard. Lucille had watched him all the evening, he very well knew.

"She wasn't particularly amusing," he said.

"I don't suppose these people who scintillate so in print can keep it up out of hours. Queer little thing, isn't she? Not a bit like Ethel, who's really stunning, isn't she?"

"Very."

"Ethel was so provoked at Ross for coming down looking freakish like that. That curl!"

Good heavens, he said to himself, couldn't the other women let that curl alone? What of it? Must they stamp their entire sex with the same die of fashion? Evidently they must. But he wouldn't be so unwise as to defend any particular style of hair-dressing.

"The dinner was a mighty good one, wasn't it?" he suggested.

"Ethel's dinners always are. How she does it, in that box of a kitchenette! She really does it all herself, you know. Don't you like that crowd of ours? They're the jolliest things. You had Eve Forester on one side of you--that must have made up for Ross."

"It did. She was everything Miss Collins wasn't."

He considered that he was being rather deep in saying that, but Lucille suspected him. Somehow they always did suspect a man when another woman was concerned.

"You didn't dash at Eve, though, to say good-night when you left her, the way you did Ross."

"Didn't I? It was an oversight. I'll say good-night the next time I meet Miss Forester."

She really didn't get this, because she was concentrated on finding out what he thought of Ross. She had noted every instant of the brief interchange at the lift door. David had looked to her as though he were saying something besides good-night to Ross. There was no reason why Lucille, being married to William Drummond, should care what his cousin David did or said to anybody, but somehow Lucille did care. She loved her Billy, but she also loved David--as a cousin. And she was sure David loved her--as a cousin. As a matter of fact, David did, in just that way. Lucille was a lovable young woman, even though she did have this feminine instinct of possessive curiosity. He supposed they all had it, and it must simply be dealt with as evasively as mere man could manage. Of course there was no reason in the world why he shouldn't have put an end to Lucille's curiosity by frankly telling her that he had an appointment to walk down Fifth Avenue for ten--or twenty--he hoped it would be thirty--blocks with Ross Collins to-morrow afternoon. This afternoon, it was, praise heaven! But he didn't want to tell Lucille. Only thirteen hours away, that appointment. What was the use of going to bed? Why not go now and sit on the steps of the Fifth Avenue Hospital, to be sure to be on time? He might somehow miss her, she was so small, if a number of people happened to be going in at the same time....

Lucille was going on. "I suppose, since you're both writers, you found something in common. But you don't write the same sort of thing--I should say not. Your deep articles wouldn't interest her--she's such a little featherweight. She has to be, to write her little absurd things."

"My deep articles," mused David, "don't even interest you and Bill."

"Oh, how silly, Davy! You know we buy every magazine you write for. I'm so proud--proud--of having you for a cousin!"

"Thank you, my dear." David patted the hand she laid on his arm. He knew she would be happier if he did. And anything to get her off the probe into his interest in Ross. He did get her off it. He began suddenly to talk about something he meant to do, and kept it up till they reached her apartment.

Then they went in and found William quietly asleep, his fever down, his pulse quieted.

"Just a cold," whispered Lucille as they tiptoed out. "And you made me come home for it! Oh, Davy! Now we know he's all right, let's dash off and meet the rest. I know where they were going. It isn't half a mile from here. They do have such gorgeous music there. Please! The best of the fun comes now. And there'll be scrambled eggs, later."

"That settles it." David laid his hand on the door of the small room where he was to sleep on the couch. "Scrambled eggs disagree with me--violently. Good-night, Lu. Sorry, but we can't go."

He had to kiss her good-night--not that he minded specially, for she had a very pretty mouth, and she hadn't made it redder to-night than it was conceivable a mouth should be. On his part, however, it was a cousinly kiss, distinctly--nobody could mistake it. Then he closed the door on the inside, pulled off William's too closely fitting coat and waistcoat, and sat on the edge of the couch.

"This afternoon, at three o'clock," he said to himself, "I shall visit a sick friend at the Fifth Avenue Hospital. I wonder if I should take flowers."