Читать книгу The Stone Field - Martha Ostenso - Страница 13

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Mamma doesn’t have a rug down here in the hall,” said Dorothy apologetically, “because once we had a maid who slipped on it and broke her leg.”

As she spoke she smiled so winningly, with such dimpling roguishness, that Jo felt herself warming to her in an irresistible rush. And then, when for no reason whatever Dorothy linked her arm through Jo’s and gave it a cozy squeeze, Jo felt a lump of happiness come up in her throat. They paused in front of a doorway through which came sounds of talk and laughter, and under it all the subdued notes of a strummed instrument and the low hum of a voice singing.

“Ashbrooke is playing his ukulele,” Dorothy remarked. “He sings just everything—and he’s terribly handsome.”

She drew Jo with her into a room that was all raspberry-colored and plushy, with a soft, wet-gold light flooding it from the west windows. A burnished piano with yellow keys stood against the far wall. There were plump velvety chairs with doilies on their backs and arms, a table with feet that were crystal balls held in bronze claws, and a rack under it for books and magazines. Against an adjacent wall stood a bookcase with glass doors. There was a deep divan, too, but Ashbrooke sat on the floor in front of the cobblestone fireplace wholly oblivious, it seemed, to everything about him, his voice just audible above the talk and laughter in the room.

A tall meager woman in black taffeta stood within the circle of chairs occupied by Dorothy’s young guests. She was holding a pencil and a pad of paper in her hand, and Jo saw that the girls also each held a sheet of paper. By their flushed cheeks and bright eyes Jo could see that they had already overcome the awkwardness they must have felt when they had first arrived here. Phoebe Dibney, the two Vandermeyer girls, Doris and Edna, Evelyn Broatch, and Thelma and Hilda Toufang—they all saw her come in, but because she was one of themselves it was not necessary to acknowledge her presence by word or act.

“They’re playing games with Milledge,” Dorothy said in an aside, her voice low and amused. “Let’s sit down. I’d rather, wouldn’t you?”

Self-consciousness made Jo’s legs stiff as she followed Dorothy past young Ashbrooke, now sprawled on his back, to the couch behind him. As she stepped by him he shut one eye impudently and peered straight up with the other.

“She’s got pink pants on!” he murmured as if in awe.

Her face flaming, Jo seated herself primly on the edge of the couch. She was glad there was such a din in the room. It helped her somehow to resist the impulse to swing her foot out and kick young Ashbrooke Hilyard in the face as he lay there languidly looking up at her. After a moment he sat up and brushed back his dark wavy hair with a sweep of one hand.

“And what might your name be?” he demanded.

“My name is Jo Porte.” She made her neck long, clicked her jaws, and averted her face disdainfully.

Dorothy wound one of her fat cylinders of curls about her finger. “Don’t stretch your neck out like that, Jo,” she advised coolly. “You don’t look pretty when you do.”

Jo felt a horrible red spreading over her freckles. Her mouth was dry and her throat ached, but it was impossible to tear her staring eyes away from Dorothy’s calm scrutiny. She sensed herself growing stiff with resentment, while the ardent glow she had felt toward Dorothy a moment before vanished. But now, suddenly, from deep down came an excitement she could not deny. Dorothy had implied, at least, that she was pretty—when she didn’t stretch her neck.

The approach of Milledge was a gratifying interruption. The game had come to an end with a great shout of laughter—Jo had not believed her school friends capable of such abandonment in the Hilyard house. She wondered if it had anything to do with this mysterious Milledge. Milledge was square-edged as a board, from her shoulders down. Her iron-gray hair might have been painted on her head, so smooth it was. She looked severely down at Jo.

“You’re the little Porte girl, aren’t you?” Her tone was so astonishingly kind that Jo felt suddenly like crying and could only bob her head in reply. “Grandpa Hilyard has spoken of you. Dorothy took you to see him?”

“That’s why we were late for the games, Milledge,” Dorothy explained with elegant patience.

“Of course. Go and speak to your young guests, my dear, while I sit a moment.”

“Isn’t it time for the ice cream and cake?” Dorothy asked. She said it with no eagerness, but rather as if she were suffering these refreshments for the sake of those who rarely had them, and Jo knew definitely now that she hated her as she hated this Ashbrooke, lounging on the floor.

“In a moment. We’re waiting for your mother and father,” Milledge said with forbearance. “Besides, Royce and Teresa haven’t come in from riding yet. You might draw out the drop-leaf table and have it ready for Hedvig. The girls will help you, I’m sure.”

With a sigh Dorothy left the couch to discharge her duties as hostess. Milledge glanced down reprovingly at Ashbrooke, who was lying on his back now and with one pant leg pulled up was idly admiring his shapely calf.

“Your position is anything but dignified, Ashbrooke,” she suggested coolly.

He got to his feet with a yawn. “I suppose Royce and Tess are taking their afternoon nap under the trees,” he observed nonchalantly. “They’ve been gone an hour now despite the drizzle, as it were.”

Milledge looked at him for a moment. When she spoke her voice was stern but almost inaudible. “Ashbrooke, please!”

He sauntered out of the room, and Milledge relaxed with a relieved breath as she seated herself beside Jo.

“I’m afraid Ashbrooke is not on his best behavior,” she said, smiling. “He and Royce are inseparable when they’re at home. You see, there are only two years between them. But Royce went riding with Teresa Jaffey as soon as it looked as though it would clear up. Perhaps you know her? Her father is the banker in Carthia.”

“I don’t know her,” said Jo.

Milledge tried another approach. “You know all these girls, of course.”

“I’ve gone to school with some of them,” Jo told her. “Doris and Thelma are older than me.”

“I see. Grandpa Hilyard used to be a regular visitor at your school. He took such an interest in the kind of teacher they had and how the children were progressing. But when the war came, he seemed to lose interest in such things—and since the war, of course, he hasn’t been able to go about.” She sighed once more. “The years bring many changes. But there—we mustn’t be melancholy. Do you sing, my dear?”

Jo swallowed hard. “I sing when I’m alone sometimes. And I can make bird calls in the woods pretty well.”

“Really! I’d love to hear you sometime. When it grows a little warmer you must come over and take me walking in the woods. I know the most wonderful place—just a little way north of here—along the lake, where—”

“That’s the Owl Country,” Jo informed her with a return of courage.

“Why, of course! I’ve always wanted to leave the road there and go exploring. It’s quite a jungle, isn’t it?”

“People get lost there sometimes,” Jo said tersely.

Milledge clapped her hands and Jo stared. “Won-derful! Why, I remember now. Royce was lost there once. Some day, very soon, you and I shall go in together and get lost—oh, for hours! All my life I’ve wanted to get lost!”

Jo looked at her with a surprise that was very close to alarm, but just then the door opened to admit Mr. and Mrs. Hilyard. She glanced up and quickly through her mind passed all that she had heard her father and mother say of them, so that as they came forward a bright color of strangeness and difference seemed to wreathe them about.

Alda Hilyard had been the daughter of a doctor in Carthia, who had come originally from the East. She was short, round, built like a top, with a waistline that started from halfway down to her knees in front and fetched up at last behind her hips. The children, Dorothy and Ashbrooke especially, had inherited her beautiful, opulent, dusky-rose skin and her shining, dark curly hair, but not her unfortunate stature. Mr. Hilyard stood well over six feet, lean and dry and whitening as a poplar, and in his rugged face his eyes had a blue, lost abstraction. No one in the county had ever been able to learn what it was that ailed Leonard Hilyard, the gentleman farmer, that he should have a look of polite melancholy. Perhaps it was his wife, as Jo’s father had suggested, Alda having a nonsensical bent toward society when there wasn’t much of the sort around Carthia, and besides that running the poor man ragged with her ideas of how their children should be brought up. Perhaps, people said, it was because of her that Len Hilyard was so withdrawn from the life about him, devoted altogether to the practical problems of his stock farm. At any rate, there he was, between his wife and his father, old Ashbrooke, who despised everything Alda Hilyard revered.

Milledge was speaking her name now, and Jo got numbly to her feet and said, “Pleased-to-meet-you!” Mr. Hilyard smiled absently and proceeded to light a cigar. But Mrs. Hilyard’s glance went all over her, so quick and oblique that afterwards Jo could not have been sure that she had looked at her at all except that she felt as she always did when she saw heat lightning. It was a sense of being suffused and made small in darkness.

While Hedvig brought in ice cream and cake and a couple of the larger girls helped Dorothy set out delicate, flowered china dishes and silver spoons on embroidered doilies, Mrs. Hilyard sat down in a deep chair at the end of the couch and propped her feet up on a hassock. Then she asked Jo immediately about her school and her teacher, and whether the children in the school were clean and well behaved. It was hard to tell the truth, but Jo steeled herself and responded with painful conscientiousness. Yes, they were clean and well behaved, but twice her mother had found a louse in Jo’s hair and had had to soak her head with kerosene.

“Heavens!” Mrs. Hilyard murmured, and turned away. “Milledge, who is that tall child over there—isn’t that one of Mrs. Vandermeyer’s girls? Have her come and talk to me.”

But Mr. Hilyard looked at Jo through the haze of his cigar smoke and laughed so suddenly that Jo was startled. He sat down at once in the place Milledge had vacated.

“Grandfather Hilyard would have given ten dollars to hear that remark,” he said as if he were talking to himself, and Jo saw how tired his face was now that the laughter had left it. He turned to her quickly. “Did your father come over with you?”

Jo shook her head. “He had to stay home. We’re expecting Aggie to—”

“You didn’t walk over?”

“It isn’t far—only I’ve got to be back in time to make supper.”

He reached over and took her hand gently. “Don’t be in a hurry. I’ll have one of the men take you home. And now, let’s get in on some of this ice cream, eh?”

As he spoke there came the sound of ringing laughter from the hall, and immediately young Ashbrooke Hilyard came into the room, his arm about the shoulders of a daintily made girl in breeches and riding boots, her shock of auburn hair bound by a scarf of green silk. As she stepped into the room she plucked the scarf from her head and shook her hair free, then came toward the couch, her hands extended in greeting to Leonard Hilyard.

“Oh, we had the wildest ride, Daddy Hilyard!” she exclaimed, and stooped to kiss the upturned cheek of Mrs. Hilyard. “The rain was just right!”

Mr. Hilyard had risen. “Good! I’m glad you enjoyed it.” He turned with a gesture of his hand. “This is Jo Porte—one of Dorothy’s guests, Tessie.” He bowed slightly toward Jo. “Teresa Jaffey.”

Teresa looked down and said, “How do you do?” Jo’s tongue clove to the roof of her mouth. She gave an incoherent reply. “Oh, I’m so warm!” Teresa said, and switched out of her riding jacket. “And damp!”

“Where’s Royce?” Mr. Hilyard asked, seating himself again beside Jo.

“He’ll be in right away. Ashbrooke wouldn’t let me wait. He’s jealous!”

She turned and laughed throatily at Ashbrooke, who had come up behind her. He reached out and grasped her short mane of tawny hair in his long fingers and jerked her head roughly back and forth.

“Jealous of what? He’s my brother, isn’t he?”

Mr. Hilyard smiled up at them. “You’ll have a hard time breaking up that combination, Tess—unless you find a girl for Ash.”

Teresa stopped laughing. She threw herself on the couch beside Mr. Hilyard and crossed her long, slim legs. The length of her body seemed to melt and stretch. Jo stared. Teresa’s bosom rose into two little abrupt cones.

Mr. Hilyard got up. “We’re being neglected. I’ll have Hedvig bring some ice cream.”

“Not any for me, thanks,” Teresa called languidly after him as he made his way toward the table on the far side of the room.

Ashbrooke thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his trousers and looked down with a twisted smile at Teresa’s upturned face. She scowled at him, then made her lips into a provocative little rosebud.

“Royce certainly knows how to pick ’em!” he whispered in a voice that was just audible, and turned away.

“And how is your dear mother, Tessie?” Mrs. Hilyard asked, leaning from her chair at the end of the couch.

All at once, though she could not have told why, Jo did not want the ice cream and cake, even off pretty, thin dishes. There were chocolate eggs, too, and other Easter favors heaped in a cut-glass bowl, but even they did not seem tempting. She wanted to be home in the warm low kitchen playing rummy with Goldy Matthews on the scrubbed pine table while old Bounce stretched and groaned in comfort beside the stove.

It was then that Royce Hilyard came into the room. He paused for a moment near the door and let his eyes rove slowly and negligently from one side to the other. Though she had had glimpses of him before, Jo had never had a good look at the eldest of the Hilyard children. He was about his father’s height, taller than Ashbrooke. Under the dark spur of his hair his face was lean and high-flushed, his eyes widely irised in blue, carelessly direct. There was something of the same sulky sweetness about his face as there was about his younger brother’s and sister’s, but his mouth was firmer, though smoothly full and arrogant as theirs. All three of them had that lush, dewy look, as if they had been too well nourished. They looked like good, rich food, Jo decided. But about Royce there was something more, something thoughtful and almost frightening that was absent in Ashbrooke and Dorothy.

When his eyes came finally to the couch where she sat, Jo’s mind flashed to the old man who sat alone in the tower room upstairs. Royce’s eyes were the eyes of old Ashbrooke Hilyard. And for the brief moment while he stood and looked at her it was as if only two people were there in the living room, herself and Royce Hilyard.

Teresa Jaffey’s honeyed treble broke rudely across Jo’s thoughts. “Oh, Roycie, come here!”

But then Ashbrooke came hurtling from the other side of the room and tackled his brother about the knees. The two went down in an immense, sprawling heap, while the oak floor seemed to rock beneath their weight. Ashbrooke let out a whoop of triumph and sat on Royce’s head. Royce gasped and groaned with helpless laughter, then caught Ashbrooke about the waist and threw him head over heels. When they were both standing on their feet again, panting and grinning, their hair a mass of tousled curls, they threw their arms about each other’s shoulders and leaned against each other for mock support.

Throughout the scene Mrs. Hilyard had looked on with an indulgent smile, as if this performance was very familiar to her; Mr. Hilyard had ventured a not very serious protest, and Teresa and Dorothy had cheered. Jo had glanced about at the girls she knew, and had seen from their faces that they felt as she did—that they were for the moment completely forgotten by the Hilyards, that they were outside of that charmed circle.

She saw the shining affection between the two brothers as they gave each other a parting punch in the ribs, and a strange embarrassment came over her.

Royce walked over then and stood in front of Jo, looking down at her for all the world as if there were no Teresa Jaffeys anywhere.

“You’re Jo Porte, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Yes.”

From a fearful height above her his eyes twinkled down, blue and amused, but kind. “I remember you,” he said. “You’ve grown—tremendously!”

Teresa raised a slender arm toward him. “Royce, darling, sit down here—beside me.”

“I’d better run up and say hello to Grandfather first. He wasn’t feeling so well when we went out.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you, Royce,” Mrs. Hilyard sighed approvingly, and crossed her plump, slippered feet the other way.

But Dorothy was back from the refreshment table with another dish of ice cream. “Royce!” she cried. “Don’t you think Jo Porte is cute? She’s got the prettiest mouth I ever saw. It curls up at the corners all by itself, even when she isn’t smiling!”

She spoke so sincerely that Jo felt confused all over again, pulled this way and that in like and dislike of her.

Royce gave Jo an intent scrutiny. “She’ll be a very handsome woman some day,” he said critically, with the penetration of advanced years.

Teresa Jaffey’s face went blank, as if there were a stiff polish over it. “We ought to have more logs on the fire, Royce, dear,” she observed.

He reached down and pinched her milky, unfreckled cheek. “I’ll be back down in a jiff,” he promised, and stalked off.

Dorothy, sitting close to Jo now, was sweet and warm with small talk that was only for themselves, and Jo wondered how she could ever have believed that she hated her. But nevertheless it seemed hours before Hedvig came to take away the dishes. Mrs. Hilyard and Teresa had been chattering brightly about the work of the Drama League in Carthia.... “The paper on Ibsen for the final meeting ... This new playwright, Eugene O’Neill ...” Dorothy, leaning toward Jo, had been betraying in soft, confidential undertones intimate and inconsequential secrets of the Hilyard household. “I don’t like her much, but she’ll marry Royce, I’ll bet anything.... Spend the summer at Cape Cod, but Daddy says we can’t afford it this year.... May not be able to go back to school in September. ...” Mr. Hilyard, approaching slowly from the other side of the room, young Ashbrooke talking to him earnestly.... “Why not sell the timber?” And Mr. Hilyard’s low, pained voice in reply: “And break your grandfather’s heart—and mine, too, for that matter....”

It was all a strange, uncomfortable dream in which voices and faces mingled without order or pattern. But it was to take form with shocking suddenness. There came the hurried sound of footsteps on the hall stairs, and Royce burst into the room and stood before his father, his face white, his whole tall body showing the effort he was making to control his emotion.

“What’s the matter, son?” Mr. Hilyard asked.

Royce stared steadily into his father’s eyes. “Dad—he’s gone!” Jo could not see just then anybody else in the room because of the way Royce looked. “He was talking to me—about the land and—he just fell back—in his old chair!”

Now Jo saw that Mr. Hilyard was looking straight ahead of him, his eyes very blue and far away. She glanced about her quickly, clasping her trembling hands tightly together. Mrs. Hilyard gave a low moan, Dorothy had already begun to cry, Teresa was looking frightened, and young Ashbrooke was standing with his hand on his brother’s shoulder.

At last Leonard Hilyard spoke, and Jo saw that he looked now vividly like his father. “We’d better go up, Royce.”

But Royce remained for a moment where he was and looked down at Jo. “He was talking about you—just before he—before the end,” he said simply. “I thought maybe you’d like to know that.”

Jo could not speak. She pressed her nails into her palms, and through quickly misting eyes watched Royce Hilyard as he turned and walked away with his father.