Читать книгу Wild Wings - Margaret Piper Chalmers - Страница 8

In the lee of a huge gray bowlder on the summit of Mount Tom sat Philip Lambert and Carlotta Cressy. Below them stretched the wide sweep of the river valley, amethyst and topaz and emerald, rich with lush June verdure, soft shadowed, tranquil, in the late afternoon sunshine. They had been silent for a little time but suddenly Carlotta broke the silence.

"Phil, do you know why I brought you up here?" she asked. As she spoke she drew a little closer to him and her hand touched his as softly as a drifting feather or a blown cherry blossom might have touched it.

He turned to look at her. She was all in white like a lily, and otherwise carried out the lily tradition of belonging obviously to the non-toiling-and-spinning species, justifying the arrangement by looking seraphically lovely in the fruits of the loom and labor of the rest of the world. And after all, sheer loveliness is an end in itself. Nobody expects a flower to give account of itself and flower-like Carlotta was very, very lovely as she leaned against the granite rock with the valley at her feet. So Phil Lambert's eyes told her eloquently. The valley was not the only thing at Carlotta's feet.

"I labored under the impression that I did the bringing up myself," he remarked, his hand closing over hers. "However, the point is immaterial. You are here and I am here. Is there a cosmic reason?"

"There is." Carlotta's voice was dreamy. She watched a cloud shadow creep over the green-plumed mountain opposite. "I brought you up here so that you could propose to me suitably and without interruption."

"Huh!" ejaculated Phil inelegantly, utterly taken by surprise by Carlotta's announcement. "Do you mind repeating that? The altitude seems to have affected my hearing."

"You heard correctly. I said I brought you up here to propose to me."

Phil shrugged.

"Too much 'As You Like It,'" he observed. "These Shakespearean heroines are a bad lot. May I ask just why you want me to propose to you, my dear? Do you have to collect a certain number of scalps by this particular rare day in June? Or is it that you think you would enjoy the exquisite pleasure of seeing me writhe and wriggle when you refuse me?"

Phil's tone was carefully light, and he smiled as he asked the questions, but there was a tight drawn line about his mouth even as he smiled.

"Through bush, through briar,

Through flood, through fire"

he had followed the will o' the wisp, Carlotta, for two years now, against his better judgment and to the undoing of his peace of mind and heart. And play days were over for Phil Lambert. The work-a-day world awaited him, a world where there would be neither space nor time for chasing phantoms, however lovely and alluring.

"Don't be horrid, Phil. I'm not like that. You know I'm not," denied Carlotta reproachfully. "I have a surprise for you, Philip, my dear. I am going to accept you."

"No!" exclaimed Phil in unfeigned amazement.

"Yes," declared Carlotta firmly. "I decided it in church this morning when the man was telling us how fearfully real and earnest life is. Not that I believe in the real-earnestness. I don't. It's bosh. Life was made to be happy in and that is why I made up my mind to marry you. You might manage to look a little bit pleased. Anybody would think you were about to keep an appointment with a dentist, instead of having the inestimable privilege of proposing to me with the inside information that I am going to accept you."

Phil drew away his hand from hers. His blue eyes were grave.

"Don't, Carlotta! I am afraid the chap was right about the real-earnestness. It may be a fine jest to you. It isn't to me. You see I happen to be in love with you."

"Of course," murmured Carlotta. "That is quite understood. Did you think I would have bothered to drag you clear up on a mountain top to propose to me if I hadn't known you were in love with me and—I with you?" she added softly.

"Carlotta! Do you mean it?" Phil's whole heart was in his honest blue eyes.

"Of course, I mean it. Foolish! Didn't you know? Would I have tormented you so all these months if I hadn't cared?"

"But, Carlotta, sweetheart, I can't believe you are in earnest even now.

Would you marry me really?"

"Would I? Will I is the verb I brought you up here to use. Mind your grammar."

Phil clasped his hands behind him for safe keeping.

"But I can't ask you to marry me—at least not to-day."

Carlotta made a dainty little face at him.

"And why not? Have you any religious scruples about proposing on

Sunday?"

He grinned absent-mindedly and involuntarily at that. But he shook his head and his hands stayed behind his back.

"I can't propose to you because I haven't a red cent in the world—at least not more than three red cents. I couldn't support an everyday wife on 'em, not to mention a fairy princess."

"As if that mattered," dismissed Carlotta airily. "You are in love with me, aren't you?"

"Lord help me!" groaned Phil. "You know I am."

"And I am in love with you—for the present. You had better ask me while

the asking is good. The wind may veer by next week, or even by tomorrow.

There are other young men who do not require to be commanded to propose.

They spurt, automatically and often, like Old Faithful."

Phil's ingenuous face clouded over. The other young men were no fabrication, as he knew to his sorrow. He was forever stumbling over them at Carlotta's careless feet.

"Don't, Carlotta," he begged again. "You don't have to scare me into subjection, you know. If I had anything to justify me for asking you to marry me I'd do it this minute without prompting. You ought to know that. And you know I'm jealous enough already of the rest of 'em, without your rubbing it in now."

"Don't worry, old dear," smiled Carlotta. "I don't care a snap of my fingers for any of the poor worms, though I wouldn't needlessly set foot on 'em. As for justifications I have a whole bag of them up my sleeve ready to spill out like a pack of cards when the time comes. You don't have to concern yourself in the least about them. Your business is to propose. 'Come, woo me, woo, me, for now I am in a holiday humor and like enough to consent'"—she quoted Tony's lines and, leaning toward him, lifted her flower face close to his. "Shall I count ten?" she teased.

"Carlotta, have mercy. You are driving me crazy. Pretty thing it would be for me to propose to you before I even got my sheepskin. Jolly pleased your father would be, wouldn't he, to be presented with a jobless, penniless son-in-law?"

"Nonsense!" said Carlotta crisply. "It wouldn't matter if you didn't even have a fig leaf. You wouldn't be either jobless or penniless if you were his son-in-law. He has pennies enough for all of us and enough jobs for you, which is quite sufficient unto the day. Don't be stiff and silly, Phil. And don't set your jaw like that. I hate men who set their jaws. It isn't at all becoming. I don't say my dear misguided Daddy wouldn't raise a merry little row just at first. He often raises merry little rows over things I want to do, but in the end he always comes round to my way of thinking and wants precisely what I want. Everything will be smooth as silk, I promise you. I know what I am talking about. I've thought it out very carefully. I don't make up my mind in a hurry, but when I do decide what I want I take it."

"You can't take this," said Philip Lambert.

Carlotta drew back and stared, her violet eyes very wide open. Never in all her twenty two years had any man said "can't" to her in that tone. It was a totally new experience. For a moment she was too astounded even to be angry.

"What do you mean?" she asked a little limply.

"I mean I won't take your father's pennies nor hold down a pseudo-job I'm not fitted for, even for the sake of being his son-in-law. And I won't marry you until I am able to support you on the kind of job I am fitted for."

"And may I inquire what that is?" demanded Carlotta sharply, recovering sufficiently to let the thorns she usually kept gracefully concealed prick out from among the roses.

Phil laughed shortly.

"Don't faint, Carlotta. I am eminently fitted to be a village store-keeper. In fact that is what I shall be in less than two weeks. I am going into partnership with my father. The new sign Stuart Lambert and Son is being painted now."

Carlotta gasped.

"Phil! You wouldn't. You can't."

"Oh yes, Carlotta. I not only could and would but I am going to. It has been understood ever since I first went to college that when I was out I'd put my shoulder to the wheel beside Dad's. He has been pushing alone too long as it is. He needs me. You don't know how happy he and Mums are about it. It is what they have dreamed about and planned, for years. I'm the only son, you know. It's up to me."

"But, Phil! It is an awful sacrifice for you." For once Carlotta forgot herself completely.

"Not a bit of it. It is a flourishing concern—not just a two-by-four village shop—a real department store, doing real business and making real money. Dad built it all up himself, too. He has a right to be proud of it and I am lucky to be able to step in and enjoy the results of all his years of hard work. I'm not fooling myself about that. Don't get the impression I am being a martyr or anything of the sort. I most distinctly am not."

Carlotta made a little inarticulate exclamation. Mechanically she counted the cars of the train which was winding its black, snake-like trail far down below them in the valley. It hadn't occurred to her that the moon would be difficult to dislodge. Perhaps Carlotta didn't know much about moons, after all.

Phil went on talking earnestly, putting his case before her as best he might. He owed it to Carlotta to try to make her understand if he could. He thought that, under all the whimsicalities, it was rather fine of her to lay down her princess pride and let him see she cared, that she really wanted him. It made her dearer, harder to resist than ever. If only he could make her understand!

"You see I'm not fitted for city life," he explained. "I hate it. I like to live where everybody has a plot of green grass in front of his house to set his rocking chair in Sunday afternoons; where people can have trees that they know as well as they know their own family and don't have to go to a park to look at 'em; where they can grow tulips and green peas—and babies, too, if the lord is good to 'em. I want to plant my roots where people are neighborly and interested in each other as human beings, not shut away like cave dwellers in apartment houses, not knowing or caring who is on the other side of the wall. I should get to hating people if I had to be crowded into a subway with them, day after day, treading on their toes, and they on mine. Altogether I am afraid I have a small town mind, sweetheart."

He smiled at Carlotta as he made the confession, but she did not respond. Her face gave not the slightest indication as to what was going on in her mind as he talked.

"I wouldn't be any good at all in your father's establishment. I've never wanted to make money on the grand scale. I wouldn't be my father's son if I did. I couldn't be a banker or a broker if I tried, and I don't want to try."

"Not even for the sake of—having me?" Carlotta's voice was as expressionless as her face. She still watched the train, almost vanishing from sight now in the far distance, leaving a cloud of ugly black smoke behind it to mar the lustrous azure of the June sky.

Phil, too, looked out over the valley. He dared not look at Carlotta. He was young and very much in love. He wanted Carlotta exceedingly. For a minute everything blurred before his gaze. It seemed as if he would try anything, risk anything, give up anything, ride rough shod over anything, even his own ideals, to gain her. It was a tense moment. He came very near surrendering and thereby making himself, and Carlotta too, unhappy forever after. But something stronger held him back. Oddly enough he seemed to see that sign Stuart Lambert and Son written large all over the valley. His gaze came back to Carlotta. Their eyes met. The hardness was gone from the girl's, leaving a wistful tenderness, a sweet surrender, no man had ever seen there before. A weaker lad would have capitulated under that wonderful, new look of Carlotta's. It only strengthened Philip Lambert. It was for her as well as himself.

"I am sorry, Carlotta," he said. "I couldn't do it, though I'd give you my heart to cut up into pieces if it could make you happy. Maybe I would risk it for myself. But I can't go back on my father, even for you."

"Then you don't love me." Carlotta's rare and lovely tenderness was burned away on the instant in a quick blaze of anger.

"Yes I do, dear. It is because I love you that I can't do it. I have to give you the best of me, not the worst of me. And the best of me belongs in Dunbury. I wish I could make you understand. And I wish with all my heart that, since I can't come to you, you could care enough to come to me. But I am not going to ask it—not now anyway. I haven't the right. Perhaps in two years time, if you are still free, I shall; but not now. It wouldn't be fair."

"Two years from now, and long before, I shall be married," said Carlotta with a sharp little metallic note in her voice. She was trying to keep from crying but he did not know that and winced both at her words and tone.

"That must be as it will," he answered soberly. "I cannot do any differently. I would if I could. It—it isn't so easy to give you up. Oh, Carlotta! I love you."

And suddenly, unexpectedly to himself and Carlotta, he had her in his arms and was covering her face with kisses. Carlotta's cheeks flamed. She was no longer a lily, but a red, red rose. Never in her life had she been so frightened, so ecstatic. With all her dainty, capricious flirtations she had always deliberately fenced herself behind barriers. No man had ever held her or kissed her like this, the embrace and kisses of a lover to whom she belonged.

"Phil! Don't, dear—I mean, do, dear—I love you," she whispered.

But her words brought Phil back to his senses. His arms dropped and he drew away, ashamed, remorseful. He was no saint. According to his way of thinking a man might kiss a girl now and then, under impulsion of moonshine or mischief, but lightly always, like thistledown. A man didn't kiss a girl as he had just kissed Carlotta unless he had the right to marry her. It wasn't playing straight.

"I'm sorry, Carlotta. I didn't mean to," he said miserably.

"I'm not. I'm glad. I think way down in my heart I've always wanted you to kiss me, though I didn't know it would be like that. I knew your kisses would be different, because you are different."

"How am I different?" Phil's voice was humble. In his own eyes he seemed pitifully undifferent, precisely like all the other rash, intemperate, male fools in the world.

"You are different every way. It would take too long to tell you all of them, but maybe you are chiefly different because I love you and I don't love the rest. Except for Daddy. I've never loved anybody but myself before, and when you kissed me I just seemed to feel my meness going right out of me, as if I stopped belonging to myself and began to belong to you forever and ever. It scared me but—I liked it."

"You darling!" fatuously. "Carlotta, will you marry me?"

It was out at last—the words she claimed she had brought him up the mountain to say—the words he had willed not to speak.

"Of course. Kiss me again, Phil. We'll wire Daddy tomorrow."

"Wire him what?" The mention of Carlotta's father brought Phil back to earth with a jolt.

"That we are engaged and that he is to find a suitable job for you so we can be married right away," chanted Carlotta happily.

Phil's rainbow vanished almost as soon as it had appeared in the heavens.

He drew a long breath.

"Carlotta, I didn't mean that. I can't be engaged to you that way. I meant—will you marry me when I can afford to have a fairy princess in my home?"

Carlotta stared at him, her rainbow, too, fading.

"You did?" she asked vaguely. "I thought—"

"I know," groaned Phil. "It was stupid of me—worse than stupid. It can't be helped now I suppose. The damage is done. Shall we take the next car down? It is getting late."

He rose and put out both hands to help her to her feet. For a moment they stood silent in front of the gray bowlder. The end of the world seemed to have come for them both. It was like Humpty Dumpty. All the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't restore things to their old state nor bring back the lost happiness of that one perfect moment when they had belonged to each other without reservations. Carlotta put out her hand and touched Philip's.

"Don't feel too badly, Phil," she said. "As you say, it can't be helped—nothing can be helped. It just had to be this way. We can't either of us make ourselves over or change the way we look at things and want things. I wish I were different for both our sakes. I wish I were big enough and brave enough and fine enough to say I would marry you anyway, and stop being a princess. But I don't dare. I know myself too well. I might think I could do it up here where it is all still and purple and sweet and sacred. But when we got down to the valley again I am afraid I couldn't live up to it, nor to you, Philip, my king. Forgive me."

Phil bent and kissed her again—not passionately this time, but with a kind of reverent solemnity as if he were performing a rite.

"Never mind, sweetheart. I don't blame you any more than you blame me. We've got to take life as we find it, not try to make it over into something different to please ourselves. If some day you meet the man who can make you happy in your way, I'll not grudge him the right. I'm not sure I shall even envy him. I've had my moment."

"But Phil, you aren't going to be awfully unhappy about me?" sighed Carlotta. "Promise you won't. You know I never wanted to hurt the moon, dear."

Philip shook his head.

"Don't worry about the moon. It is a tough old orb. I shan't be too unhappy. A man has a whole lot of things beside love in his life. I am not going to let myself be such a fool as to be miserable because things started out a little differently from what I would like to have them." His smile was brave but his eyes belied the smile and Carlotta's heart smote her.

"You will forget me," she said. It was half a reproach, half a command.

Again he shook his head in denial.

"Do you remember the queen who claimed she had Calais stamped on her heart? Well, open mine a hundred years from now and you'll read Carlotta."

"But won't you ever marry?" pursued Carlotta with youth's insistence on probing wounds to the quick.

"I don't know. Probably," he added honestly. "A man is a poor stick in this world without a home and kiddies. If I do it will be a long time yet though. It will be many a year before I see anybody but you, no matter where I look."

"But I am horrid—selfish, cowardly, altogether horrid."

"Are you?" smiled Phil. "I wonder. Anyway I love you. Come on, dear.

We'll have to hurry. The car is nearly due."

And, as twilight settled down over the valley like a great bird brooding over its nest, Philip and Carlotta went down from the mountain.