Читать книгу Barberry Bush - Kathleen Thompson Norris - Страница 4

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They walked north through the plaster gates, with chains and tiles, at the entrance of Las Haciendas, and through the edges of the town’s aristocratic quarters, where the Poetts and the Wilsons and the Mackenzies lived, in old-fashioned wooden houses surrounded by enormous trees and deep gardens.

Then came a wooden bridge across a little river, and then, irregularly set, and with other streets crisscrossing it at all sorts of angles, came Washington Street, the principal thoroughfare of the town, faced on both sides with shop windows and dentists’ doorways and the big entrances of hotels. Cars were parked at angles between painted white lines, all along the curbs, and there was a crowd outside the Post Office; the mail was in.

Sunset light was streaming along Washington Street, and the brick spire of an old church, set squarely across it, half a mile away, finished the western vista with a note of Old World picturesqueness. All the left-hand streets led to the sea, and wore little signs: “To the Beach,” “To the Casino,” “To Skinner’s Auto Park,” for the benefit of visitors. On the northeast side of the town there were low cliffs, on which were perched cheap little summer hotels, not yet opened for the summer season. The town of Cottonwood doubled its population during the school vacation. But the natives, like the Atherton girls and the Poetts and the Roaches, rather despised this noisy and intrusive element, and liked the quiet, unpopular seasons the best, when their own town seemed to be restored to them.

At this hour, on any pleasant afternoon, groups of young persons always gathered at Bartell’s for sodas and gossip. Bartell’s candy store was like a club; there were other candy stores, and almost all the drug stores had soda counters. But the correct place to go was Bartell’s.

The large dark space back of the shop had been decorated with mirrors, lattices of green wood, large artificial grape leaves, and dangling electric lights. It was furnished with small tables and small tippy chairs with bronze wire legs. On its walls were signs regarding fresh fruit sundaes and banana specials. One sign represented a soda-fountain clerk, life-size, smiling and beckoning in so ingratiating a manner that strangers sometimes signalled to him, to the undying amusement of Bartell’s habitual customers.

Here Amy, Barbara, and Barry, nodding and calling greetings to friends as they came in, found a small table, whose damp top was immediately swept by a wet rag, in the same gesture with which the waitress put a card before them. They studied the card interestedly, although they knew it by heart. It was spattered with faint pink and yellow blots.

On one side of it was printed the list of regular sodas and drinks, hot and cold; on the other were Bartell’s Specials: “Bartell’s Ambassador,” “Bartell’s Sunkist,” “Bartell’s Best Girl.”

“ ‘Bartell’s El Dorado,’ ” read Amy. “ ‘Vanilla and mocha ice cream, apricots, marshmallows, orange ice, chopped nuts, meringue and maraschino cherries. Forty cents.’ ”

“What are you going to have, Amy?”

“Oh, plain vanilla—like always.”

“Orange ice,” said Barbara, a sudden cloud over her mood. She wondered if Barry would remember to pay for the ices.

If he had the money and thought of it, of course he would. But neither condition was probable. Loyalty to him and fear of his failing her began to make her nervous.

Suddenly a squarely built, grinning man joined them, slipping into the fourth chair.

“Hello, Barbara—Amy. ’Lo, Barry!”

“I didn’t see you, Link,” Amy said cordially.

Lincoln Mackenzie’s beaming smile included them all, but his special glance was for Barbara. He was just Barry’s age, she knew; the two had gone all through grammar and high schools together. But he looked older than Barry.

An ugly, nice red face, smooth tawny hair, and a hard jaw that suggested remote Scottish ancestry. Barry, who had all the faun’s fear of convention and formality, despised Link, because he was the richest boy in town and had gone into his father’s hardware business, after college, with the quite open intention of making even more money, on his own account. But everyone else in town liked Link.

He was not tall, but he was hard and athletic in build; he had done better in sports than Barry, though he was some thirty pounds lighter. A quite unaffected, simple, cheerful sort of person, vigorously and wholesomely interested in his car and his business, his father’s health, his sisters’ love affairs; he wore his social prominence modestly, and became embarrassed the minute he was made to feel different from all the others in the crowd.

“Inez Wilson’s cousin got in on the mail train,” he began without preamble. He put his thumb under “Ginger Ale,” and nodded to the waitress, before going on animatedly: “Say, she is one little Georgia peach—believe me! I was over at the express office, looking for some rolls of fence wire, when I heard Inez’s voice. She was meeting this girl—oh, boy! Eyes! Plenty of eyes.”

“Marianne Scott—that’s her name. Inez told me last week that her cousin was coming,” Babs answered interestedly. “Pretty, is she?”

“She’s a peach.”

“Inez is going to give her a party, I know.”

“She said something about it to-night. I’m going up there to dinner—at least, I will if Dad doesn’t mind.”

“What type is she, Link?”

“Oh, I don’t know—sort of sleepy eyes. She was all mussed up from the train, of course.”

“Well,” Barbara submitted, “I guess you’ll all come down to the Concert and Dance?”

“To-night? Oh, that’s right, I forgot. Oh, sure, we’ll all be there. Dad’s coming down, and the girls—Ellen Clapp’s beau is here from Santa Cruz—Ellen’s tickled stiff!”

“D’you s’pose she’s really going to marry him, Link? She’s come so close to it twice before this. Miss Reed, at the Library, told me that Ellen told her that she never was going to marry——”

She paused, glancing with compunction at Barry, who had quite audibly sighed. Barry loathed gossip.

Link put his big hand over the check. “Here, this is mine,” he said easily, spilling change on the table from the fingers he had thrust, check and all, into his pocket. “Seventy, is it? That’s all right, May,” he said to the waitress. “Who’s taking you to-night?” he added, to Barbara.

“Oh, Dad and Amy and I’ll come together—we hadn’t discussed it much.”

“Well, I’ll see you there, then.” They all stood up, began to drift toward the door. It was almost twilight now, and pink and yellow lights were beginning to war with the last daylight in Washington Street. There were gaps in the lines of cars along the curbs, and the Post Office was deserted.

The heat of the day had dropped with the sun; there was a delicious coolness in the air, and the heavy new leaves of the trees stirred pleasantly in the twilight. Pepper trees, eucalyptus trees, fruit trees. Here and there a branched, sturdy live oak, on some vacant corner lot, and in the old gardens beyond the bridge, magnolia and locust and poplar trees, and rose trees throwing their tentacles a dozen feet above the roofs of garages and barns.

Among the lower limbs of the trees, strips and lines of red light still lingered; the west was on fire. Even while the Atherton girls and Barry du Spain walked home, the day ended, and moony squares of pale light from dining rooms and kitchens shone in angles and bars among the little Spanish houses.

Here a grating showed a warm glow, there an iron lantern was lighted to show an arched doorway and a solid wooden door, or some unseen light caught the shining leaves of a palm.

Professor Atherton was in the kitchen when they arrived; he had put on the kettle and was placidly reading. His daughters kissed him enthusiastically, tumbling the fine snowy hair that was his one beauty. For the rest, his was an intellectual, plain face, disfigured by heavy spectacles and lighted by an expression always amiable and sympathetic.

“Pop, are you going to the Elks’ Concert to-night?”

“Pop, do you just want salad, or shall I do you a meat cake?”

“I object,” said Professor Atherton, “to Pop.”

“Dad, then.”

“Dad, too,” said the Professor, without resentment, “is a disrespectful term.”

“Babbo mio!” Barbara, draping her long person across him, in the rocker, her feet in the air, and half strangling him with a strong arm about his neck, substituted affectionately.

“What would you like them to call you? Father?” Barry asked, from a seat at the kitchen table.

His face was flushed with interest and pleasure now; he was a different being from the man who had so recently been bored and had yawned so impolitely at Bartell’s. Familiarly at ease, here in their hospitable kitchen, he was again his best self, radiant with friendliness and sympathy. Barbara, glancing at the beautiful face under the loosened satiny wing of raven black hair, thought that so might the young Byron have looked, in the flower of his splendid youth.

“Papa is nice,” timidly suggested the Professor. “We used to call my father ‘Papa.’ ”

“Papa!” they all scoffed in chorus. And Babs added, “ ‘Papa’ always reminds me of cheap picnickers, streaming along the beach, with the sand blowing into their eyes, and a lot of kids following, yelling, ‘Papa!’ ”

“No, dear,” Amy said maternally from the stove, before which she had knelt to light the oven, “we won’t call you ‘Papa.’ ”

“You are popped, as it were, for life, Arthur,” Barbara added, laying her forehead against his own, and kissing his hair lazily.

“Call him ‘Pater,’ ” Barry suggested, tipping his head to study the older man thoughtfully.

“I really think—and whenever we discuss this I always say—that ‘Dad’ is best,” said Amy.

“We are so bold we call you Father, God,” Barry began. “You to whose altars older worlds brought fear, to us are so familiar and so near we call you Father. Only——”

He stopped.

“Go on!” Babs directed him, listening, and scowling anxiously.

“Anon, sweet coz!” promised Barry. “I always hitch on that damn’ fourth line,” he complained mildly.

“At that,” said the old man, “there are those among us who couldn’t get that far.”

“Barry, we’re having hot rolls and what Babs calls ‘salad du garbage,’ ” Amy said. “Do you want more? There’s some chopped meat here.”

“Babs, you don’t care whose appetite you take away with your disgusting remarks, do you?”

“I devoutly hope that name will take your appetite away.” Barbara, now busy with the contents of a big china platter, said inhospitably. “For this is positively the most delicious salad even I ever made, and there’s none too much! I’ve thousand-islanded the dressing, as an experiment,” she went on. “It’s just the regular Women’s Exchange mayonnaise, with half as much chili sauce dashed in—but look, look at the asparagus and eggs and string beans and beets—our own beets!—and that alluring little suggestion of watercress. Professor, kindly move a few inches out of the main line of traffic. Amy, don’t forget your rolls. Sweet pilgrim, coming to us from strange, far lands, put this platter on the table, and kindly remember that, should’st thou fall upon thy paunch, thou’lt look further for thy faring!”

“Thousand-islanded is a fair verb, Babs,” said her father, wedging himself against the window in the little breakfast alcove where they had almost all their meals.

“I’ll bet I could get one thousand shorter words out of it,” Amy boasted.

“How many words do you suppose you could get out of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet, Barberry?” Barry asked.

“Birds’ brains—that’s his trouble!” Babs said to the wall. “Why, you poor simpleton, you could get all the words there are, out of the alphabet!” she scoffed, trapped.

“You couldn’t get the word ‘alphabet’ itself, for one,” he triumphed. “Nor noon, nor mood, nor pepper, nor butter, nor coffee, nor houses——”

Barbara’s incredulous and astonished look softened.

“Oh, well—oh, well—of course, I forgot the double letters!” she admitted, in some confusion.

“Birds’ brains,” Barry muttered. “What did you do to the nurse, Professor?” he asked.

“What nurse was that?” asked the Professor innocently, putting up a fine thin hand to ward off more salad from the spoon Amy was wielding.

“The nurse that dropped Barberry on her head when she was only a dear little innocent, unconscious baby.”

Amy laughed deliciously. They all laughed.

“Babs, what are you going to wear to-night?”

“Green.”

“I think I’ll just wear my pink and white. It’s so comfortable.”

“I’d certainly be comfortable. It’s going to be a mob, no one’ll notice.”

Amy put her elbows on the table, rested her chin on her hands, and sighed happily.

“I’m not terribly keen to go to-night,” she yawned.

“I’m terribly keen to stay here, by ourselves,” Barry added.

“Oh, come on!” Barbara, with her usual appalling energy, was already attacking the dishpan. The few plates, the bright glasses, flew through her fingers. In fifteen minutes the kitchen was in order, and the girls had disappeared into their own room, to dress.

They had spent a hundred evenings so; it was just an Elks’ Concert, with a dance to follow. But anything, in Cottonwood, was an event. The Athertons never paid for tickets to these affairs; there were always friends of their father or grandmother upon whose generosity they could rely. Sometimes they had six or eight tickets to a single affair and could be hospitable in turn.

To-night, Professor Atherton firmly declining to accompany them, they left the house escorted only by Barry. But before they had walked the five squares between their house and the Town Hall, a young Englishman, Fox Madison, had joined them, and as they went up the main aisle of the auditorium, between the rows of filling chairs, they were greeted by other swains, some of whom attached themselves at once to the Atherton party.

Conversation of a small-town type went on, between the chairs. Barbara and Amy knew everybody, even the crimped and staring smallest of the children; they settled themselves in a wave of greetings.

“Barbara—Father coming?”

“Not to-night, Judge. He became very fractious. I don’t know what we’re going to do with him.”

“Looks like a pretty good programme, don’t it?”

“Well, it does. They always have good shows.”

“What say?”

“That they always have good shows.”

“Someone ought to speak to those boys, down in front. It’s terrible.”

“Wait until Doc Roach gets here—we’ll see a change.”

“Hot, ain’t it?”

“Well, ’tis. Yet it was real cool outside.”

“That’s what Ma was saying.”

The rough walls of the hall, cut by high windows, had been trimmed with lengths of red-white-and-blue bunting, and there was a splendid flag hung on either side of the stage. The curtain was down, except where it looped itself awkwardly at the right, over a square piano.

The air was hot, and bright lights shone baldly down upon the squirming audience. Almost everybody was seated at least sidewise, if not entirely turned about in his chair, to see arrivals as they came up the aisle.

Barbara seated herself with a wriggle of pleasure.

“I love it!” she said.

“You’ve made yourself think you love it,” Barry amended. “You don’t really think of yourself as a part of it,” he went on. “You only think that these people are amusing and kind, and that you like them. You’re not one of them.”

She considered. “No, I really do love it.”

“You dramatize it,” Barry told her.

“Perhaps,” she admitted, dimpling.

“The Bunners,” said Amy, on her other side, “sent their little boy to say that the Wilsons and Link want us to hold seats for them, near us.”

She began to drape her evening coat, and Barbara’s, over some empty seats, just in front of them. Barbara’s spirits rose; a delicious feeling of being popular put sparkle into her manner and a soft light into her blue eyes. Barry sulked beside her.

“Gosh, I loathe those Wilsons!” he growled.

Babs slipped a slim cool hand into his, unobserved. Instantly his manner softened, and he gave her a sidewise smile.

“Shall we take our lunch and go down to Mission Creek to-morrow?” he asked.

She pondered, smiling. She taught a morning class in the town’s nicest private school. But to-morrow, Saturday, was free. Only—only Amy always put her nose in the air at the idea of her marvellous Babs wasting half a day with a moony poet like Barry.

“All right,” she consented. They had done this before, half a dozen times. While Barbara rested, dreamed, with her back against a fallen tree trunk and her eyes on the gray stream, Barry read poetry aloud: Keats, Shelley, and the modern Americans.

There was an expectant rustle and stir all through the hall, as the lights waned, and the curtain went creaking up. Barbara saw the Wilson party with Link, wedging itself into the row in front, with much whispering and stumbling and suppressed laughter. But she did not meet Inez’s pretty cousin until the intermission.