Читать книгу Gardenias in her hair - Martha Ostenso - Страница 4

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Before the ironing was done and the house finally prepared for Kit’s homecoming, it was mid-afternoon.

Susan seated herself before the Sheraton desk in the living room, one of the few precious things that had been saved out of the treasures of the big house on the hill. From a drawer she took out a sheaf of clipped bills—the butcher’s, the baker’s, everybody’s but the candle-stick maker’s, she observed wearily, wishing that his were there instead of the one from the East Searle Electric Company. To cut down that monthly item, she would have to tag after Nuge and Edith every minute they were in the house.

Susan looked thoughtfully at the bills. She sincerely hoped Edith would “land” Forbes Updyke. Not that Susan herself might conceivably profit by the landing. She knew her sister too well to hope for anything like that. Edith was a little country bounded on the north, south, east, and west by Edith.

She glanced at the small balance in her bank book, added the bills, and observed the yawning discrepancy between. The rent, moreover, had not been paid for three months. Their landlord—Jonathan Gilfeather, in New York—had been very decent about the letter of apology she had sent him. Perhaps forty-five dollars a month didn’t mean much to Mr. Gilfeather.

No matter how Susan had juggled expenses over the past three years, the proceeds from the sale of the furniture, as well as one of the cars, the station wagon, and the horses, had failed somehow to cover the necessary time and space. Even the twenty dollars a week which Nugent had given her out of his fifty had not, latterly, seemed the handsome contribution he considered it. It usually disappeared into the maw of debts long before Susan received it from him.

For one thing, at least, she was thankful. She had managed to hold off old Archibald Noonan, the dealer in antiques, who had long been interested in certain valuable pieces that had been saved from the Prescott debacle. Of course, she thought with a lift of spirit, Kit would be ready now to take some sort of job. Anything would help. Vassar had been expensive, but Kit had been set on it—not particularly because of any love of learning, but because two or three of her best friends had gone. Susan herself had taken her diploma at Michigan State. She would never have gone to college at all had she known how things really were. She had been in her senior year when the big house had been sold to satisfy her father’s creditors after his death.

Would it have been better, she wondered, if she had gone to work in Chicago or New York three years ago, instead of struggling to keep the family together? She had spoken of it, but there had been loud, incredulous outcries from Edith, from Nugent and Katherine. What on earth would they do without Sue! Especially at a time when Nugent had taken that miserable job in the employment department of the Cruikshank Mills at twenty-five a week, immediately after his graduation from Ann Arbor? And when Kit was a sophomore at Vassar and in all decency ought to have some sort of home to come to for her vacations? And when Edith, who had declined college but had behind her the best of finishing schools—and neither aptitude nor training for making a living for herself—should have a home in which to entertain matrimonial prospects? The arguments had not been put to Susan so baldly, but shorn of their sentiment, there they were.

She rested her head in her hands. The three years had not been ungratifying. Nugent had been promoted until he was now assistant to the manager of the Raw Materials Purchasing Department, and his salary had been doubled. He was more cheerful, now that he had grown used to his work. Kit, aware in her flighty way that sacrifices were being made for her, had applied herself surprisingly and had actually got through college. In the meantime, poor, lovely Edith had not been set adrift. All in all, and in spite of everything, they had been happy—and they had been together.

There had been another compensation, and Susan was not disposed to minimize it. In the silence of this house, after her day’s work, she had been able to sit down to her typewriter and devote herself to what she passionately hoped might be her profession. In the past year and a half she had managed to finish a number of stories. A few of them she had submitted to magazines. They had been returned, but that was no more than she expected. She was, after all, a beginner.

Yes, Susan thought, she had much to be thankful for. The Prescotts were still respected in the town her grandfather had practically built. Somehow, these bills on the desk before her would be paid.

She turned to glance at the clock on the mantel over the cobblestone fireplace. The postman should have come by, an hour ago. She went out and found a letter.

“My dear Miss Prescott,” Jonathan Gilfeather had written, “I’m about to ask a favor of you. If it embarrasses you, please consider it unasked. There is, or used to be, an old, ramshackle log cabin on the property my uncle left me—a little distance back of the house you are living in. When I was a boy and visited Doctor Gilfeather, I used to play in the cabin, with imaginary Indians surrounding it. Later, in my teens, I slept in it when I went to spend a summer with my uncle. I recall that it had a good deal of charm, although it was very scantily furnished. Of course, the cabin may have disappeared since then, but if it is still there and if you are not using it, I should like very much to spend the summer in it. Its inviolable atmosphere of a time long gone would be ideal for my work. All I should need in the way of furniture is a cot, a table, and a chair. I should be able to pick up these things without any trouble in East Searle. I am in Chicago at present, staying at the Hotel Devonshire. Will you be good enough to wire me, collect, if you have no objection to my taking it over for the summer? I should like to come out at once, otherwise I shall have to change my plans. I promise to be no nuisance to you. There is a path, as I remember it, leading north from the cabin, out through the woods, so you need not see me coming or going. Thanking you in anticipation of a favorable reply, I am, Sincerely yours——”

Susan looked at the name scrawled at the bottom of the page and then stared distractedly into the glossy heart of a rhododendron bush. If he had only said, “in return for the back rent,” but no—this person Gilfeather was too well-mannered to write anything like that. He preferred to let her read between the lines and choose her own degree of humiliation.

She remembered a stringy, tow-headed boy, with a nose like a small potato, who used to ride a bicycle to and from Doctor Gilfeather’s place in the summers, when she and her sisters were out sedately riding in the dog cart. He had glanced with contempt at the dog cart. It was this scurrilous individual who had later become kindly Doctor Gilfeather’s sole heir. Susan had not set eyes on him since he was sixteen and she twelve, but her recollection of him, together with this letter and its patronizing tone, made her furious. “Its inviolable atmosphere of a time long gone,” indeed! He had gone to Yale, she had heard, and was probably doing some research work—she had a vague impression that he was attached to an obscure historical society and wanted to invest his activities with a mellow glow.

Suddenly, in dismay, Susan caught her smooth underlip between her teeth. What was wrong with her, anyhow? The letter had been courteous. There was certainly nothing unreasonable in his request. Besides, they had never used the old cabin for anything except storage.

She would wire Jonathan Gilfeather—what a name, she had always thought!—immediately, and assure him that the place would be ready for him at once. And she would pay for the wire herself.

It was after she had sent the wire, over the telephone, that the distressing thought struck Susan. For the past three years the cabin had been used not only as a storehouse for old furniture that would one day be disposed of, but also for coal and wood. The cabin was a mess. It would require a full day’s work to make it fit for anyone to live in.

Well, after dinner they would all pitch in and start cleaning it. It would be a kind of lark, on Kit’s first evening home. Then, if necessary, they could get up at dawn tomorrow and put in a couple of good hours before Nugent would have to go to work. By tomorrow night, with any kind of luck, they would have it ready. Jonathan Gilfeather could then move in whenever he chose. There was an old couch, a chair or two, and probably some kind of table in that litter out there that could be used to furnish the cabin for the pedantic Jonathan, to whom they were indebted to the tune of one hundred and thirty-five dollars. That ought to mollify him a little.

Susan was startled out of her reverie by Edith’s laughter and by the sound of a golf bag being deposited on the hall floor.

“Forbes, you’re a regular Shylock, darn you!” Edith was saying gayly. “I warned you I couldn’t afford to play for a quarter a hole.”

She was standing in the doorway, her lovely blond hair frothing about her head, Forbes Updyke, large and handsomely brown, behind her.

“Hello, Sue!” they greeted her together and came into the living room.

Edith was smiling as she sank with graceful fatigue into a chair, but the smile was a glaze beneath which there was vexed disapproval. Susan, however, did not see that. She had not yet quite emerged from her preoccupation.

“You should have come out with us, Sue!” Edith declared glibly. “It was a perfect day for golf—not a breath of wind—and the course was simply lovely too! But this wretch took a dollar and a half from me.”

“Yes,” Forbes agreed heartily. “Too bad you weren’t out with us, Sue.”

“I’ll be out one of these days,” Susan said. “I had a few things to do today.”

Forbes Updyke turned away. “Well, I’ll pick you up at nine, then, Edith. And wear that slick white thing I like so much. You’re a knockout in that dress!”

Edith laughed deprecatingly. “It’s a thousand years old, darling! I haven’t worn anything else since last New Year’s Eve—I’ll simply have to get some clothes.”

When he had gone, Susan said, “Where are you going tonight, Edie?”

“Oh—Marian Doak cooked up a party on the spur of the moment last night, after the bridge game. I think she felt guilty because she won so much.”

“How much did you lose?”

“Me? Why, I broke even, though I didn’t hold a card all night. Sue, why on earth did you have to have those horrible glasses on when we came in? They make you look five years older, at least!”

Susan took off her glasses. “But why shouldn’t I wear——”

“Forbes knows you are four years younger than I am,” Edith said, a little sharply. “Those glasses make you look thirty!”

Susan laughed. “I wouldn’t waste my time on a man if a pair of glasses——”

“I don’t consider it a waste of time. It’s the only chance I have at present to—to——”

“To get back into the money.”

“I think you’re simply horrid!” Edith pouted. “I’m really fond of Forbes, whatever the rest of you may think of him.”

“I don’t mean to be horrid,” Susan said. “And I have nothing against Forbes. I think he’s stingy, and he eats too much, and he’s a little thick above the collar, but——”

“I’d like to see the man you’ll pick, when the time comes,” Edith said.

“I’d like to see him now! By the way, I was rather counting on your staying home tonight. I’m going to need a little help.”

Edith looked at her with the helpless and reproachful expression she could turn on at will, like a light.

Susan told her then about Jonathan Gilfeather and the need of all hands for the clearing out of the cabin.

Edith’s impatience broke in a storm of protest. “I think it’s simply an outrage! Why does he have to come along now? People will think we’re keeping a boarder. Marian Doak will pounce on the idea at once. And Edwina Vale——”

“Let them pounce!” said Susan dryly. “Marian Doak means very little in my young life. And if Edwina Vale has an ounce of respect for me, it’s more than I have for her.”

Edith was angry. “I won’t have you talk like that about my friends!”

Susan’s smile was straight. “Look here, Edie,” she said calmly, “we owe Jonathan Gilfeather one hundred and thirty-five dollars—in back rent—and we owe Marian Doak and Edwina Vale precisely nothing. And while we’re on the subject, that dollar and a half was too much for you to lose this afternoon. Forbes Updyke didn’t need it, and the milkman does.”

Tears magnified Edith’s eyes, made them a more limpid blue. “Well, I’m hoping you won’t have me as a burden very much longer. I get so tired of pinching every penny.”

“Let’s not be silly,” Susan said. “No one thinks of you as a burden. And it isn’t our fault exactly if we have to pinch pennies.”

Edith brushed the tears from the corners of her eyes. “If Forbes would only make up his mind——”

Susan laughed. “Josie says a watched pot never boils. But for heaven’s sake, don’t cry about it. Kit’s coming home and we all want to be happy. I’ve got to get the chicken into the oven. It’s past four. I wish you’d scrape a few carrots for me. It would help.”

“Sue,” Edith said mournfully, “I’ll do anything but scrape carrots! I have the worst blister on my palms—my golf gloves don’t fit right.”

At five o’clock, Susan had everything ready for what was to be a gala dinner in celebration of Kit’s return. She had taken her typewriter down to the back porch, where she could step into the kitchen now and then and glance at the chicken and baste it.

The chief character in her current story, who had started out innocently enough as a bookkeeper, now seemed to want to take the shape of a mature and even more odious Jonathan Gilfeather. Susan was relieved when she heard Nugent plunging in through the front door. She went into the house to meet him.

He was jubilant, swept her up into his long arms and kissed her eyebrows. “Guess what?” he demanded.

“The raise?” Susan was breathless.

“Five bucks! And say—guess again!”

“I don’t dare!”

“Violet Cruikshank is going to the country club with me tonight to dance! The old man’s daughter! I’ve been trying to get her eye for four months, kid—and did I get it! Well, what in the heck’s the matter?”

“Oh, Nuge—I’m glad about the raise—and about Violet. You know I am. But I did so want to have you stay home tonight. We have to clean out the log cabin.”

Nugent looked blank. “The log cabin? Are you going nuts all of a sudden?”

Patiently Susan explained again about Jonathan Gilfeather.

“Well, of all the blasted nerve!” Nugent exploded. “He’s taking advantage of us, just because we owe him a couple of months’ rent.”

“Maybe, but——”

“Don’t worry about it, kid.” Nugent put his arms about her shoulders. “I can’t get out of this tonight, but we’ll get to work on it early in the morning. We can tear the inside out of that place in a couple of hours if we go after it.”

Susan knew better, but Nugent couldn’t discuss it just now. He thundered upstairs to take a shower. Susan could hear him alternately whistling and cursing with cheerful gusto. Nugent was twenty-five, over a year older than herself, but in most respects he was far from grown up.