Читать книгу Parris Mitchell of Kings Row - Henry Bellamann - Страница 8

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The living room was hot, although the windows faced east and a light breeze had just sprung up to stir the curtains. Randy McHugh straightened up from the desk over which she had been working for the last hour on a pile of rent receipts. She ran one hand through the mass of her disordered, short, red curls.

Every time I do these sums, she thought, I remember the fun Drake and I had because neither of us was very good at figures. They had to be checked and rechecked—but it was fun.

She was assailed by a familiar pang of loneliness. Oh, she kept busy, there were a thousand things to do. She had the new playground down in Jinktown which Parris Mitchell had suggested last summer, and which she had provided almost singlehanded. But what a reward she had, just seeing those poor kids enjoying their vacations and their after-school hours!

Of course, she admitted, the responsibility was no longer all hers. She thought gratefully of the enthusiasm with which Hazel Green and Bethany Laneer and Caroline Thill had entered into the work down there. There were others too; it seemed everybody was willing to help in one way or another.

From upstairs came sounds of laughter, and she remembered that Dyanna Slater was helping old Tempy, the colored maid-of-all-work, with the hanging of fresh curtains.

Randy was glad to have pretty little Dyanna about the place. Father Donovan, always watchful of the needs of the members of his parish, had asked for the job of “helper” for the fifteen-year-old girl from Jinktown.

“She needs to help out. Her Aunt Carrie is not able to do as much as she used to do and Dyanna is a willing little worker. You will be good for the child, Randy,” he had said.

And Randy had found the child a shy, amiable little thing, pretty and appealing. She had been less lonely since Dyanna came every day and moved happily about the house. Randy would miss her when school opened again and Dyanna could come only on Saturdays.

She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. The long, curled lashes, leaf brown, brushing her flushed cheek gave her a look of childish sweetness, but the soft, sensuous line of her cheek, the full red lips, and the firm chin proclaimed the maturity of her womanly appeal.

Something in the bright quality of the day had made her think of Drake. A shadow of pain crossed her face. She was remembering how he had gone, how brief the period of their marriage.

Why, she thought, did it have to happen to Drake—the gay, generous-hearted boy—Drake, who never could bear seeing anything suffer? Randy knew beyond question that Drake’s legs had been amputated unnecessarily—deliberately—by an evil, conscienceless surgeon who held a personal grudge against him. Her hands clenched on the arms of her chair. When she heard footsteps on the brick walk, Randy opened her eyes and started up.

In spite of all she could do to calm it, her heart beat faster as she watched Parris Mitchell coming toward her door. Feeling as guilty as if she had been caught eavesdropping, she brought to bear all her powers of self-discipline to regain her calm. She gave a hurried glance into the mirror and wished that in spite of the heat she had worn a more becoming dress.

Even before he greeted her she saw the excitement in his face. As always she was caught up into his mood—lifted to the plane of his emotion without knowing its reason. It was only a moment, however, before she realized that his mind was focused beyond her on some excitement in which she played no part.

“Randy—”

“What is it this time, Parris? God didn’t give you a poker face, you know.”

“I warn you,” Parris said, “I’ve come to beg a favor. I’ve been out to the old place.”

“Your grandmother’s?”

“Yes. Randy, I’ll never be happy until I go back there to live. I want it. I want that place back, and I want you to get it for me.”

His desire reached out and touched her; the warmth of it surrounded her. She was drawn again into the midst of his wanting and felt her share in its fulfillment. But she said only:

“Of course. I’ve wondered when you’d get around to something like this—to making a real home, the sort you ought to have. The sort,” she added gravely, “that Elise, especially, needs.”

Parris realized with a quick sense of shame that his decision had been a selfish one, that he had thought mainly of his own happiness and very little of Elise’s.

“Randy,” he asked, “is Elise unhappy at the hospital? Has she ever said anything—”

“She’s said nothing, the darling—but I know institutional life can’t be good for her. I couldn’t bear it myself,” she said frankly. “Parris, haven’t you noticed that Elise doesn’t look well? She’s too much alone, too concentrated upon herself, and of course she must worry a lot about her father. Can’t you persuade her to go down to the Ozarks with me for a little vacation? It’s dreadfully hot.”

“Have you asked her?”

“I’ve insisted.”

“She won’t agree to go?”

Randy shook her head. “For one so—so quiet and gentle, Parris, your wife has a surprisingly strong will. She has an idea you need her and she doesn’t want to leave you. I wonder,” she said slowly, “if Elise is ever lonely.”

Parris looked bewildered—and Randy felt such a surge of unaccountable tenderness for him that it frightened her. “Parris,” she added impulsively, “I’ve no right to ask—but why don’t you and Elise have children?”

Parris answered soberly. “We want children, but Dr. Waring says it would be unsafe for Elise.”

“It was impertinent of me to ask, Parris, but I have so often hoped you would have children. What a fine heritage for them! And Elise—I know how much it would mean to her. With all my rushing about, never a day passes that I don’t wish that Drake and I had had children. Elise probably feels the same way. I think that’s why she pours out so much affection on little Kam Nolan.”

“Perhaps,” he said absently.

“Parris, Elise said something this morning that I’ve been wondering about. She said that you called her ‘Renée’ the first time you saw her. Why did you do that?”

Parris smiled. “It’s funny I should have been thinking of that this very afternoon. I suppose I never told you about a little sweetheart I had, Renée Gyllinson. You wouldn’t remember her. When I came back from Vienna and saw Elise for the first time, there at the old place where I had loved Renée—and lost her—I thought she was my childhood sweetheart grown up, and I called her name.”

“So that was the reason you fell so quickly in love with Elise and married her?”

“That—and other reasons.” Parris thought for a moment and then said slowly, “You know, Randy, I was very lonely after Drake died. He seemed my last tie to the old life and—I wanted to build for myself a home of some kind. It seemed to me Elise would create the same sort of half-European atmosphere that my grandmother had done. I suppose Dr. Freud would have said I was really marrying my grandmother.”

Randy laughed. “Oh, you and your Dr. Freud! I can’t imagine anyone less like a grandmother than Elise.”

“He’s a wise man. In a way he might be on the right track. Maybe I was just being selfish. I’m not sure it was as good for Elise as it was for me.”

“You haven’t given Elise a chance to make a real home, Parris, living out there at the hospital all this time. Let’s get down to business on the von Eln place.” She became determinedly brisk. “It’s state property, isn’t it? That means it can be sold only by direct act of the legislature.”

“How long will it take?”

“The next session will be in January. In the meantime we’ll need to do some groundwork. If any dealers find out you want it, they’ll try to get an option on it in order to hold you up for a stiff price. I’ll handle it myself, Parris. I’m not a bad lobbyist when I find it necessary.”

He leaned forward and covered her hand with his own. “Randy, what would I do without you? I often wonder how such a lovely—such a feminine person can at the same time be so downright competent. You amaze me more every day.”

Randy’s face colored. Then she realized that he had not spoken seriously—that he was no longer thinking about her. He was thinking of his old home.

After a moment’s silence he spoke again. “Sorry, I’m being distrait. Maybe I’m a little tired—but not too tired to know how much I owe you for all you do for me.”

“You exaggerate my competence. I was just going to ask your advice about something I don’t know how to handle.”

“Is there really such a thing?”

“Don’t joke. It’s about Donny Green.”

“What’s he been doing now?”

“He’s been annoying the girls at the playground.”

Parris’ look of surprise changed to one of concern, “Is it—serious?”

“I don’t really know. This morning I went down to watch a basketball match. Donny was leaning over the fence of the girls’ court. When he saw me drive up he hurried off down the creek path.”

“Did you speak to him?”

“He didn’t give me time. I asked little Clare Whittaker what he had said to her. She told me he called to her, ‘How about a walk down by the creek?’ Clare’s answer was to pick up a rock and throw it at him. Then, according to her story, he said something nasty. She asked if I couldn’t stop him from hanging around there. I promised to see what could be done.”

“Then what?”

“I went to see Hazel and asked her to speak to Donny—tell him we had made certain rules about the playgrounds, and that boys were not welcome at the girls’ field.”

“Maybe that will settle it.”

“I’m afraid not. Hazel’s awfully worried about Donny. She says Fulmer’s spoiled him so dreadfully that it’s hard to do anything with him.”

“People like that—like Donny, I mean—need to have preventive measures taken to forestall serious trouble later.”

“It’s my private opinion that it would take some doing to make an acceptable citizen out of Donny Green. That lad’s a menace.”

“Afraid I haven’t been much help, Randy. But keep me informed. If you need me, just call.”

“Thanks, Parris. I’ll write David Kettring tonight about the von Eln property. He knows about those things and he can engineer most anything over at the capital. Anyway, it’s Thursday—and I don’t like to start any project on Friday.”

“Superstitious?”

“Irish.”

“Sweet.”

Her heart contracted as he took his hat and rose to go, but try as she would she could not read into the word a meaning she knew it didn’t have.

She stood in the doorway and watched him until he had gone down the walk and through the gate, until he finally disappeared among the trees and tall hedges that lined the street.

She turned and started resolutely toward the desk. I’ll get the house for him, she thought. It won’t be easy, but I’ll handle those politicians—Randy stopped as her eyes caught her reflection in the mirror over the mantel. “Darn,” she said petulantly, “why did Parris have to find me in this ugly old dress?”

Parris’ steps lagged as he walked out Federal Street. His conscience was hurting him badly. Had he really been so concentrated upon his own problems, so absorbed in his work, as to have become indifferent to his wife’s needs and moods?

He knew how close she had been to her father and that she had grieved for him ever since he went back to Austria. While she seldom spoke of him, it was only natural that in these troubled times, separated as they were, Elise should have him much on her mind. I haven’t taken his place as completely as I should, Parris thought regretfully.

It simply had not occurred to him that Elise might be unhappy about her surroundings. All of the staff members had suites in the big central building of the asylum. She liked Laurel Nolan and the other physicians’ wives—even Mrs. Carruthers compared all the latest recipes with her. How could she be lonely, he asked himself. Possibly—just possibly the cries of the patients sometimes disturbed her. In any case, it would be a good thing for Elise to move out to the old place. He hoped Randy would expedite the deal.

Randy’s confidence had set his mind at rest on that score, but she had filled him with unease by the way she had spoken of Elise. He wondered what it was that had alarmed her. Surely, if anything were seriously wrong he would have known it, close as he and Elise were. Still, Randy seldom made mistakes. Parris felt that she lived with an amazing honesty. She was not afraid of anything in the world, and coupled with her fearlessness was a tenacity and strength seldom attained. At the thought his mind touched on Elise and her timidity—her withdrawn quality, and he wished—well, that she had some of the wide-open forthrightness Randy possessed.

He liked Randy’s way of making instant decisions for herself. Elise never decided anything. There was something sweet and appealing about her way of waiting for him to express his wishes on every small detail of their lives—but it could be exhausting at times. He resolutely brushed away the irritating thought and quickened his step as he neared the hospital.

Great columns marked the entrance to the hospital grounds. As Parris walked between them he looked up at the windows already alight, and on beyond to a spent strip of yellow in the west above a dove-gray horizon. He had not realized it was so late. He contrasted the glow from the setting sun with the inviting amber light of the steady window lamps. But—could he ever feel that this was home? Or could Elise?

No, he decided. Home was in the house where he had been born—the house that had sheltered his grandmother. After all, it was the same house where Elise had lived with her father during those few years when the state had run the Experimental Station there. It would bring back to Elise the warmth and security which was her birthright. The unease born of what Randy had suggested, however, still pervaded him. Maybe Elise needed more than just a change of residence. What was it?

This massive gray building looming before him seemed to him a thing of dignity, a refuge for tormented and unhappy minds, but appraising it through Elise’s eyes, he saw the barred windows, the sterile aspect of the place, the buildings seeming to crouch threateningly. Was this the way it looked to his sensitive little wife?

At that moment a high, terrified cry came from the East Wing and was echoed by several voices from another ward across an areaway.

He hurried toward the central building and his own apartment. As he opened the door of their suite he saw Elise busying herself with supper preparations. He could detect nothing unusual in her appearance. Her small, white-clad figure moved quickly from table to china closet and back again. Little loose silvery blond curls, escaping from the long braids wound about her head, framed her heart-shaped face, giving her a look of innocent youth. She was humming a theme from a piano suite he had heard her practicing this morning. He whistled the closing phrase of the melody and she looked up, startled.

“Oh, there you are! I’ve a surprise—Parris!” She ran quickly to him. “Is anything wrong? You look—troubled. What is it?” But when he grinned at her and tweaked her ear, she was instantly gay again.

“I’ve a surprise for you, Dr. Mitchell, my dear,” she said. “A chafing-dish supper. There’s peach cocktail, creamed chicken with peas, lettuce salad, Camembert and crackers—and coffee. How’s that?”

“Absolutely right and proper—and I hope it’s soon.”

“Better than that, it’s now.”

She was full of talk about the happenings of the day. She had visited with Laurel and Randy and she had done a little shopping. She had several stories to tell of Kam Nolan, who had spent a large part of the afternoon with her.

“Really, Parris, he’s the most adorable child in the world. He’s so original. He never says an obvious thing and never does what other children do. He’s wonderful.”

“I’m going to be jealous if this keeps up.”

“Oh, Parris, you simpleton! But I shouldn’t want you to be too fond of him. You belong to me.”

“Honey, when you are through with supper I have a surprise for you. I have something very important to talk about.”

“Wonderful! I love large, grave discourses, when you act as though I were really growing up.”

An hour later they were in the little living room, Parris with his pipe and Elise with her sewing cabinet beside her chair. There was a protected, shut-in quality about the room, and between them a sense of joyous conspiracy.

Sitting there near the open windows, they came closer together than they had been for a long time. Elise reached out through her strange, enveloping obscurity toward him. Perhaps, she thought wistfully, if they could stay like this long enough, they would have moved sufficiently in that rhythm of thought and feeling to make it permanent.

But the essential Parris, too, was elusive. His complexity—the complexity of a highly civilized man—presented so many facets she was unable to reconcile and harmonize.

“Elise,” Parris began almost formally, “are you happy living here at the hospital?”

“I can be happy anywhere you are, Parris. Have I seemed to you unhappy?” She did not raise her eyes as she spoke.

“No, sweet,” he said quickly, “you have not seemed to be unhappy but perhaps you would like better to live in a place of our own?”

“Oh, yes, yes, yes! Could we, Parris? This great cold place—and madness, Parris. So ver-ry much madness, and just here, in these walls. It is as strange and terrible as some old Gothic story to wake at night and to realize where I am.”

Parris was dismayed at her intensity. “Why haven’t you told me this before? Surely you aren’t afraid?”

“Some nights,” she said hesitantly, “when I hear them. Do you think, Parris, we could really live someplace away from these dreadful walls?”

Parris felt vaguely hurt by her words. “Elise, you mustn’t think the word ‘madness.’ It’s a violent old word with all sorts of storybook connotations—old wives’ stuff all mixed up with your notions. They are just people. Not many of them are violent. They are ill, that’s all—off balance.”

“They look to me—terrible. Even those who walk about the grounds.”

“Please, darling, try to correct that idea. They are childlike, so many. Sick, yes, and that isn’t pleasant. I remember that I once said that insanity actually appears a little silly more often than it appears tragic. I was blamed for that remark. I guess it wasn’t a fortunate remark, at that.” Parris smiled a bit ruefully.

“But I can’t like living here, no matter how hard I try.”

“Then, how would you like it if we buy my grandmother’s place and go there to live?”

Elise’s expression was one of astonishment and almost disbelief. “Parris, my ver-ry dear, do you mean it? Perhaps I could not bear that much happiness. Oh, Parris, you aren’t teasing?”

“Why didn’t you tell me, you poor baby, that you felt like this? Don’t you know that I would have managed anything that would make you happy?”

“I didn’t wish to complain.”

“But that’s what I’m here for. That’s my job, honey, to make you happy.”

Elise moved over into his lap. “Maybe you don’t know it, Parris, but you, too, would be different there. You were always so—so young there, and less the ver-ry serious doctor.”

Yes, he thought, he would feel younger there. Perhaps that was one reason he wanted to go back. He would recover a lost content. He did not admit to himself that he was retreating to something, but he knew that his thoughts dwelt frequently on the place, and with a passion and a yearning whose intensity he did not even try to analyze.

“But, Parris, can you afford to buy it? It would cost a great deal of money. Maybe it would be hard for you?”

“We can buy it—if the state will sell. Randy can get it for us and we can have it restored. Would that be fun?”

“Such fun!” Elise was radiant. “A big garden like that—and flowers and—”

“And my Elise making an Eden for her tiresome old husband.”

She stopped him with a kiss and looked up at him like a small child waiting to be told another, better fairy tale. She began suggesting small plans for the house, the terraces, the gardens. Her quick excitement troubled Parris, who cautioned her that it might be months before they could get possession of the property.

“Just the same, Parris, I want us to decide on a name for it right now—this minute! It can’t go on being the von Eln place. But—oh, Parris, why not call it just von Eln?” she asked, sitting up suddenly.

“Just von Eln? I’d like that—if it’s your choice.”

“After all, Parris, your grandmother created the place, and I think we should call it by her name.”

“Most of all, Elise, I want what will make you happy—from giving it a name all the way through.”

And then, to the astonishment of both of them, she burst into tears. Parris drew her close.

“Here, here, cry-baby, this will never do! At least wait until I’ve a chance to deliver all the messages I brought you. First, I promised Judge Holloway I’d bring you over to see them; second, Mr. Lenz will come at four Sunday to hear you play and, I hope, to give you some criticism; third, and most important of all, Herman Eger is going to give you a dachshund puppy.”

“So much good news all at once, Parris! People are ver-ry good to me. When shall I have the little dog?”

“Not until we get moved. You can’t keep it here. Regulations, you know.”

“That horrid word again! Regulations! Maybe Kam and I could keep it hidden away.”

“ ’Fraid not, darling. You’ll have to wait. Maybe it won’t be so long. Still crying? You’ve been doing too many things today—or maybe you don’t really want to live in the country? Is that it?”

Her wet eyes flashed at him and then she buried her face against his shoulder. He stroked the soft curls back from her brow. Why, he wondered, with all her appeal and beauty had his feeling for her none of the ecstasy that his boyhood love for Renée had possessed, none of the madness—the fury—he stopped and mentally stumbled at the word—of his affair with Cassandra?

Much of this Elise sensed. Perhaps, she mused, she was only a ghost of something which he sought and had not yet found. Perhaps, she thought with a curious weight at her heart, perhaps that was her role in his life, just to remain always a ghost of some sort of happiness that he had lost or had never found.

Sitting there with her head against his shoulder, listening to the steady beat of his heart, she felt a new hope springing up in her own mind. She knew that the old place was an escape for him. She, too, she realized, was an escape. But at von Eln, maybe she and the place together might supply something that would satisfy his restless search. And maybe, out there, she wouldn’t feel so tired all the time. She could meet his moods with more response and more understanding. Yes, things would be better at von Eln. He would seem close to her there.