Читать книгу Barberry Bush - Kathleen Thompson Norris - Страница 9

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The disquieting thought returned more than once, during the long afternoon, when she and Amy and Barry and quiet young Dr. Ward Duffy were walking; it returned often in the days that followed. Spring came to all the ranches lying on the low hills all about Cottonwood in a flood of fruit blossoms, and even in the woods, where so many trees—oak, redwood, manzanita, eucalyptus—did not lose their leaves in autumn, there was a beautiful fresh thickening of foliage everywhere, and madrone trees and wild lilacs and willows put on fresh and delicate green. The redwoods wore tiny, furry tips of blue-green, spread like fingers at the ends of their wide, flat branches; the buck-eye trees, the western chestnuts, were plumed with fragrant spikes of creamy-white bloom. And all over the hillsides, against the darker woods, the wild lilac blossomed in rifts of pale, smoky blue.

Barbara Atherton, teaching in the soft, lazy mornings, watching the children as they shrieked and ran in the school yard at eleven, and walking slowly home through familiar, quiet streets at half-past one to the house that Mrs. Godley always had in perfect order long before that time, wondered, sometimes, what life had been like to her, without the disturbing element of Marianne Scott.

She saw Marianne frequently, and when she did not see her, she managed always to have an idea of what Marianne was doing. The other girl’s mere existence fretted her; everything she heard about Marianne seemed unduly important, seemed significant, almost menacing, in Barbara’s own scheme.

Fox Madison, for example, the florid, big, good-natured Englishman who had been a figure in the town for twenty years, had already nicknamed her, “Helen of Troy.” Helen of Troy! What was the quality in a girl, what peculiar charm must she have, when a man, after a few weeks’ acquaintance, could name her so?

Fatto Roach, a tall, thin young man who had hitherto paid small attention to girls, also seemed to be strangely attracted to Marianne. Inez Wilson’s house, an enormous, ugly wooden place, with mill-work decorating its turrets and bay windows, in a very jungle of garden shrubs and trees, and begonias blooming in a little conservatory off the dining room, became, for the first time in its forty years, now that Marianne was in it, quite a meeting place for the younger crowd.

There was tennis there on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, and there were boys and girls spending the evening there almost every night. Twice, in her first month in Cottonwood, Marianne and Inez and Link Mackenzie, with his married sister Lucy Barnard for chaperon, went off for the whole week-end to Del Monte, and to San Francisco. At Del Monte they played golf and watched the polo and dined at Pebble Beach; and in San Francisco they shopped and went to the theatre. On the first occasion, Barbara was asked.

“But I don’t see how you could possibly jam Lucy and Marianne and Inez and me into your roadster?” she had objected.

“Oh, we’re borrowing my father’s car. Seven passenger.”

“Well, I’ll ask Dad.” And Barbara, without feeling much heart in the project, had indeed asked her father.

“Driving to Del Monte Saturday, eh? And coming back Sunday night after dinner? Whose guest would you be, Babs?”

“Well—Lucy’s, I guess. Lucy and Otis Barnard are chaperoning.”

“Lucy—” the Professor had reminded her, looking over his glasses in a way that generally signified disapproval—“Lucy didn’t ask you?”

“No, Link asked me. It’s the way they do things, now, making plans all in a rush, without stopping to think much of the details. Marianne just suggests something, and in two seconds they’re all talking about it. Lucy would have asked me, I suppose, if she had been there.”

“Oh, Lucy wasn’t there?”

“No, but Link was going on to talk to her, when he brought me home.”

“Well,” the Professor had said finally, returning to his paper, “I’d rather you didn’t go. I don’t care much about these week-end parties of young persons in hotels. At the same time, if you very much want to go, I shan’t stop you. Only, there’s a big expense to it. When the National Entomological Society held its convention in San Francisco, rooms at the good hotels were five and seven dollars a day; everything’s expensive—you’d find precious little left out of twenty dollars, after such a week-end. However, you use your own judgment.”

Barbara had hesitated, undecided, in spite of Amy’s vigorous nod, from behind their father’s head, and Amy’s mouth rounded to form the word, “Go!”

“You’ll have piles of fun!” Amy had urged later. But Barbara had decided not to go, after all. She knew, by this time, that wherever Marianne Scott was, she would not have piles of fun.

Marianne, who seemed to men the jolliest and most original of companions, was instantly recognized by every woman with whom she came in contact as a person who did not play fair. Her game was always for herself against all comers, and to win a laugh from the company, or to impress a man with her own attractiveness, there was no friendship Marianne would not sacrifice and no sensitive heart she would not wound.

Her art in drawing the interest of the group to herself, her skill in making herself seem fascinating, were helped by a sense of absolute self-confidence, of native power. And power she really did have: the strange quality of always being able to make what happened to Marianne Scott seem the important and enviable thing.

One afternoon in early June, when she had been four or five weeks in Cottonwood, Barbara and Barry du Spain were in the group that gathered on the lawn at the Wilsons’ house, to watch the tennis. The ugly big house was behind them; before them was the lovely stretch of the grass, the court, with its protecting nets etched by the delicate fingers of banksia climbing roses, and the background of stable yard and trees.

Men’s doubles were being played; little red-headed Jim Bonner and Otis Barnard were partners against Link and Harry Poett. Inez and Fox Madison, who played well, had been beaten a few minutes earlier by Joe Dodge and Link’s little sister Margaret; Marianne, Barry, and Barbara were sitting with them now, watching the second contest, laughing, gossiping, and generally enjoying the bland decline of the perfect summer afternoon.

Inez had never had such a summer, had never dreamed that she could have such a glorious time. The advent of her fascinating cousin had brought into her life all the thrilling elements hitherto denied her; had made her a participant in joys upon which she had before this been only an onlooker.

To have men telephoning to the house at all hours, trying to make engagements, planning the most delightful parties—to have the choicest group of Cottonwood’s young persons saying carelessly, “Meet you at Wilsons’,” was intoxicating to Inez. She had never had a real admirer in her life, for all her wealth and position; and despite her carefully selected, expensive hats and beautiful little frocks, she had never seemed to possess any attractions for men.

But now all this was changed. Helen of Troy, lazy, audacious, confident of her power, had come to stay at “Pampas Park,” as Inez’s mid-Victorian grandfather and grandmother had seen fit to name their pretentious home; and where Marianne was, all the world flocked.

To be sure, the delicious cup was not without its bitterness. Mamma complained of the constant, demoralizing hospitality, the midnight suppers and unexpected guests, and the cook, Hatty White, who was afraid of nobody, had taken lately to the undesirable habit of expressing her opinion of the changed state of affairs, from the kitchen, in a voice quite loud enough to be heard in the dining room, as more than one guest’s heightened colour and sudden nervousness had recently testified.

But these were trifles. To-day, sunk in a basket chair, with her sallow face flushed from her tennis game, and her costume quite the prettiest in the crowd, Inez felt happy to the silly point, and babbled and chattered and giggled her worst.

Barbara was sitting on the ground, with her back braced against Inez’s chair. Pulled down over her soft coppery hair was a small white hat, her white dress, opened at the throat with a turned-back collar, was as plain, as short, as modern as a dress could be. Yet somehow the costume suggested the difference, the little-girl simpleness and straight-forwardness, that marked Barbara apart from the other girls of the group. Her eyes were thoughtful to-day, as she chewed on a long ribbon of young grass, her cheeks flushed, and the line of her young mouth unusually firm and serious.

Marianne, in a near-by wicker chair, was wrapped in a thin garment of bright scarlet silk, flowered with great orange and black and yellow poppies. Upon the sleek black cap of her hair a wide red hat was tipped at a daring angle, and drawn down almost to her strange dark eyes; her bare arms were ringed with bracelets, and heavy earrings drew down the lobes of her ears. Her mouth drooped with the weight of scarlet paint.

Half-smiling, she kept an eye on Inez. Now and then, turning her gaze full upon Fox Madison, she murmured a few syllables to him. Barbara, watching her without seeming to watch her, wondered what the words were that they should hold Fox silent and content, at her knee, all afternoon long.

Cottonwood had always seemed a rather dull little place before Marianne’s advent. The girls there had bemoaned the lack of interesting men; especially when Link Mackenzie and Joe Dodge were away at college, and Ward Duffy taking post-graduate medical work in Europe. Little Jim Bonner, who stuttered, and Fox Madison, who was almost middle-aged, and Barry du Spain, who was as queer as Dick’s hatband—well, these were all males to be sure. But the Cottonwood girls did not consider them exactly exciting material, and “hen parties,” despised by all healthy young womanhood, had been somewhat the order of the day at this time last year.

However, now Joe and Link were home, and when it was merely a question of balancing sexes, the other youths were well enough to fill in with—anyway, the effect of the Wilsons’ lawn this afternoon was gratifying. Four stalwart men playing tennis, and, with the girls on the grass, almost as many more unmarried attractive males as audience.

And Barbara loved it; she loved afternoon gatherings, and all the laughter and flirting and chatter that accompanied them.

Only there was always that sinister slim figure between her and the full light of living, nowadays. Marianne Scott, with her sophisticated ideals, and her reckless tongue, and her insolent, confident eyes. Helen of Troy!

Beyond the tennis court, and the Wilsons’ old stables and table orchard, she could see the upper windows and sloping roof of the Mackenzie house through the trees. If Marianne really married Link, she would be mistress there—she would be the first lady of Cottonwood.

“Well, if that’s what’s going to happen,” Barbara thought, “I wish it would happen and be done with!”

“Barbara,” said Marianne, out of a silence that was underscored rather than broken by Inez’s senseless babble.

Barbara looked up expectantly, and Barry, beside her, turned at the name and looked up, too.

“What have you done to the poet laureate to make him see nobody else in the world but you?” Marianne asked idly.

Barbara laughed.

“I feed him, for one thing. He likes my corn bread.”

“Ah, well,” Marianne said resignedly, “I can’t compete there. You domestic treasures, you have a woman like me, every time!”

“How do you like being discussed before your face this way, Barry?” Barbara asked him.

“I don’t mind it.” He spoke briefly, with distaste. He would not rise to the nonsense, to the easy levity of the hour. Barry, who could be as giddy as a happy child in the Atherton kitchen, was resentful and unresponsive and deliberately uncomprehending here. Barbara could gladly have slapped Marianne for the amused and indulgent glance the older girl sent toward him.

“Why don’t you clap our aces? You clap theirs!” Joe Dodge shouted from the courts. The girls began dutifully to applaud.

“Score, Link?” Marianne called. She already had everyone’s given name comfortably at command; Barbara did not know whether to resent or to laugh at her enthusiastic greetings when, after a few hours’, or at most a few days’, separation she met “dear old Fox,” or “adorable Fatto,” or “that fascinating Harry person,” at a dance or movie. Marianne always had the air of being among intimate old friends, always had something important for the ear of Link alone—something that had to be whispered to Harry or Joe.

“The games are three-two,” Link called back, making a ball run up his racket, between games, and crossing the court.

The sun shone down upon them placidly; the longest day of the year was close upon them now, and at four o’clock there was no sense of lessening light. Deep sweet shadows lay on the lawn, the shade was permeated strangely with brightness and glowed as if it might diffuse a radiance of its own.

“What a day!” Barbara said, to say something. The strangely troubling effect of this girl was to make Barbara afraid of silence. What did Marianne think they were all thinking, in silences?

“Divine,” Marianne agreed easily. “I hope the Hamiltons have such weather!”

“The Hamiltons?”

“Carter Hamilton, the novelist, and his wife. She and I are old friends. They’re motoring up to San Francisco from Los Angeles, and they’ll stop here with my aunt, overnight.”

“Well, what if they do?” that restless, unsatisfied inner tribunal of Barbara’s asked fiercely. But outwardly she made merely a commonplace comment. They must be interesting persons. Oh, Marianne said, they were. She wanted Barbara to meet them.

Later, when the game was over, and Link had thrown himself down beside Marianne, Barbara, apparently deep in cheerful conversation with Ward and Fox, could catch occasional phrases: “It made me proud ... I’m always proud when my friends do anything well, even if it’s only a game of tennis....”

And still later, when Barbara and almost all the others were going away, Marianne managed to walk with Barry down to the gate. They were behind the group, Marianne quite deliberately loitering, Barry detained, perhaps against his will, by her slow step, her upward glances, her full stops in the flower-framed old path.

When he and Barbara were alone, walking home between the quiet old homes, asleep behind their trees and shrubs and fences, Barry said viciously that he loathed that sort of girl.

“But she seemed to like you, Barry.”

“Like me! That was all for Link’s benefit,” Barry growled. Barbara, who had been oddly soothed by his irritation, did not like this point of view so well.

“Do you suppose she’s really after Link Mackenzie?”

“Of course she is. Isn’t he the richest man in town?”

“Is he so fearfully rich, Barry?”

“Well, he will be when the old man dies, I guess.”

They walked on slowly, around the Roaches’ corner, in a long slant across the Poetts’ side yard, through the Duffy place. It was the same old familiar scene: upper windows opened on this warm evening, gracious pear trees and sycamore branches moving gently in the sunset air. Judge Cobb’s chauffeur was cleaning the car, with a great swishing and spouting of water, and the Bonner children were having their supper on the side porch.

With a whole square block in the nicest neighbourhood of all for its own, with the biggest of trees and the handsomest of old brick fences, with awnings and a pergola, and trimmed shrubs throwing clean long shadows across the brick walls, and with the sinking sun setting the famous maples literally on fire, she came to “Major Mackenzie’s place.”

It had been called “The Laurels” once, years and years ago. But although the double line of tall, glossy-leaved trees grew bigger and handsomer every year, the name they had given it had fallen into disuse, and it was proudly pointed out to visitors as “Major Mackenzie’s place” now. Mackenzie owned the one big hardware store, and was interested besides in real estate; Mackenzie was on the School Board and the Board of Health, and he had been Mayor three times.

Across the side street, facing the south front of his property, was the pretty, modern home of his older daughter, Lucy, who was Mrs. Otis Barnard now. Lucy had a fat baby daughter of two, named Margaret for her sister and her mother, and every woman in town had known every amazing detail of Lucy Mackenzie’s wedding outfit, and of the marvellous layette she had prepared for the baby. Old Major Tom Mackenzie went across the road every evening at about five o’clock to see his granddaughter get her bath and her supper, and be laid, cool and sweet and powdered and tiny, in her white crib, with her big white bear.

And Cottonwood, knowing this, knew that old Major Tom would like to see his son married, too; like to see Link’s children running about the place, some day. If Link and Inez had fancied each other, he would have been well pleased, because Inez would have plenty of money some day, and he had known and liked her father. But if the boy preferred some other girl—that red-headed Atherton girl, for example, well—Major Mackenzie had known that family all his life, too, and her grandmother, old Mrs. Bush, had been a fine old lady.

Barbara, as she and Barry walked past the Mackenzie place to-night, found herself wondering what old Major Tom would think of Marianne, and felt a sudden pang of homesickness for the old days and the old ways that seemed to be so peculiarly threatened; that seemed already gone into the past. What simple, happy times they all had had, only a few weeks ago, without any particular consciousness of being grown-up men and women, with the great problem of life decisions to face!

If Link really were going to fall in love with Marianne, and if they were going to have all the fuss of announcing an engagement, and making plans for so important a wedding, then Barbara wished, with an angry sort of ache in her heart, that she might be miles away; that at least she need not hear all about it, be bored and satiated with it.

“All the way to San Juan, for a Spanish dinner, and then dancing practically all night—I’d like to know what they get out of it,” Barry said scornfully.

“Who’s going to do that?”

“They are, they say. Thursday night. It sounds perfectly crazy, to me.”

“Barry, do you think she’s pretty?”

“Marianne Scott?”

“Yes.” But she was sorry that he had known the pronoun could mean no one else.

“Sure she’s pretty. She’s more than pretty. She’s kind of fascinating, like a tiger.”

Barbara, all the way home, did not speak again.

But she thought a good deal. She told herself that Marianne wasn’t anything more than an unusually pretty and poised and self-confident girl. She found these adjectives slowly, conscious for the first time in her life that she herself was neither poised nor self-confident. Marianne was not Cleopatra, Marianne was not Helen of Troy, Barbara mused; this attitude of uneasiness and fear and curiosity was ridiculous.

“I’m not afraid of her!” she said. “There’s nothing superhuman about her!”

And yet there was something unnatural, something stronger than herself, in the uncomfortable attraction that drew Barbara over and over again, against her will, into Marianne’s neighbourhood; that invested everything the other girl said and did with a strange and troubling fascination. Almost every day Barbara found some excuse to drift in upon Inez and Marianne, for talk, for luncheon or tea, for tennis or bridge.

If it were morning, she was apt to find them still in bed, or at least wandering about in pajamas or Japanese coats, through the big ugly rooms of the upper floor. Marianne might be treating her satin black hair to a shampoo, or a vigorous brushing; she might be at the mirror, eyeing herself critically as she applied pastes and powders and tints; she might be stretched comfortably in bed, with her breakfast tray hardly disturbed, and set aside on a chair, and the sheets of the morning paper opened in her hands.

“Barbara, come in here!” she would call. And Barbara, feeling more than ordinarily respectable and middle-class and conventional and dull would obey, seating herself on the foot of Marianne’s bed, and giving the older girl the laughing yet guarded confidences that her innate fear of Marianne dictated.

“Don’t tell me that you’ve been up since six, and fed chickens, and frosted cakes, and had a bath and made your bed, already,” Marianne might protest, moving her feet, under the light covering, to accommodate her caller, and linking her fingers behind her head with the same gesture that sent the paper to the floor. Her tone would make the feeding of chickens and frosting of cakes and making of beds consummately absurd.

“But, Barbara,” Marianne would go on whimsically, “you’re young, you’re pretty—why do you do these things?”

“Well, I like to, for one thing.”

“Like to? Nonsense! No girl likes to. I never frosted a cake or fed a chicken in my life. I used to make my bed sometimes at boarding school, when I couldn’t get some other girl to do it for me. No, girls like to be out dancing all night, and to sleep until noon ...”

And Marianne would buff the flaming tips of her fingers lazily, and begin to discuss her plans for the day. To Barbara’s secret surprise, she had not only made herself a sort of special guest among the conservative old homes of Cottonwood, but her mere presence among them seemed to be a spur to all the first families, to the Bonners and Dodges and Mackenzies and Wilsons and Poetts, to entertain most unwontedly.

Barbara had known Link Mackenzie and Rita Roach and Fatto all her life, but she had never been asked to dine at their houses. The older group in Cottonwood had hitherto done little to entertain the younger crowd; boys dined in their own homes, and girls at their fathers’ elbows, and if the youngsters met later at a dance or movie they considered themselves quite fortunate enough.

But now the Wilsons’ girl guest was being made the object of a number of small but none the less important affairs. Inez was also asked, perforce, as Marianne’s hostess, but Barbara was not. Barbara had shared many a picnic lunch with Link and Margaret and Lucy Mackenzie; she had often had tea or ginger ale on their lawn, and sometimes, before Lucy’s marriage, she had come home for a Saturday luncheon with Lucy. But that was as far as it had gone with Barbara. Now it was for Marianne, a newcomer, to ask her innocently if she did not think old Major Mackenzie charming at the head of his own dinner table, and to comment upon the Bonners’ cook and the Poetts’ table service.

Of course, with Inez, there were two girls for whom hostesses must find dinner partners, in every case—not too easy a thing to do in Cottonwood. To ask Barbara Atherton meant that a third man must be invited, and that, with the family included, made a pretty big table.

So Barbara got her accounts of these affairs secondhand, and bore herself with what gallantry she could command. To buffet suppers and card parties and small dances she was of course bidden, and on these occasions she always made herself look as pretty as she could, and danced with all the boys impartially: with Fatto and Joe, Harry and Ward and Fox and Link.