Читать книгу The Proof of the Pudding - Meredith Nicholson - Страница 4

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In a quiet corner of the club veranda Fanny Copeland and John Cecil Eaton had been conscious of the noisy gayety of Mrs. Kinney’s party, and they observed Nan Farley’s hurried exit and disappearance.

“Nan doesn’t seem to be responding to encores,” Eaton remarked. “She’s gone off to sulk—bored, probably; prefers to be alone, poor kid! It’s outrageous the way those people use her.”

“They have to be amused,” replied Mrs. Copeland, “and I’ve heard that Nan can be very funny.”

“There are all kinds of fun,” Eaton assented dryly. “She’s been taking off Uncle Tim again. I don’t see that he’s getting anything for his money—that is, assuming that she gets his money.”

“If she doesn’t,” said Mrs. Copeland quickly, “she won’t be the only person that’s disappointed.”

Eaton lifted his eyes toward a stretch of woodland beyond the river and regarded it fixedly. Then his gaze reverted to her.

“You think Billy wants to get back the money he paid Farley for the drug business?” he asked, in a colorless, indifferent tone that was habitual.

John Cecil Eaton was nearing the end of his thirties—tall, lean, with a closely trimmed black beard. He was dressed for the links, and his waiting caddy was guarding his bag in the distance and incidentally experimenting at clock golf. Eaton’s long fingers were clasped round his head in such manner as to set his cap awry. One was conscious of the deliberate gaze of his eyes; his drawling voice and dry humor suggested a man of leisurely habits. He specialized in patent law—that is to say, having a small but certain income, he was able to discriminate in his choice of cases, and he accepted only those that particularly interested him. He had been educated as a mechanical engineer, and the law was an afterthought. His years at Exeter and the Tech, prolonged by his law course at Harvard, had quickened his speech and modified its Hoosier flavor. He passed for an Eastern man with strangers. He was the fourth of his name in the community, and it was a name, distinguished in war and peace, that was well sprinkled through the pages of Indiana history. Though the Eatons had rendered public service in conspicuous instances they had never been money-makers, and when John heard of the high prices attained by Washington Street property in the early years of the twentieth century he reflected that if his father and grandfather had been a little more sanguine as to the city’s future he might have been the richest man in town.

Eaton’s interests were not all confined to his profession. He read prodigiously in many fields; he observed politics closely and was president of a club that debated economic and social questions; he was the best fly-fisherman in the State. His occasional efforts to improve the tone of local politics greatly amused his friends, who could not see why a man who might have been pardoned for looking enviously upon a seat in the United States Senate should subject himself to the indignity of a defeat for the city council. To the men he lunched with daily at the University Club his interest in municipal affairs was only another of his eccentricities. He had never married, but was still carried hopefully on the list of eligibles. By general consent he was the best dinner man in town—a guest who could be relied upon to keep the talk going and make a favorable impression on pilgrims from abroad.

Mrs. Copeland’s ironic smile at his last remark had lingered. Their eyes met glancingly; then the gaze of both fell upon the distant treetops. Theirs was an old friendship that rendered unnecessary the filling in of gaps. Eaton was thinking less concretely of her reference to Billy Copeland’s designs upon the Farley money than of the abstract fact that a divorced woman might sit upon a club veranda and hear her former spouse’s voice raised in joyous exclamation within, and even revert without visible emotion to the possibility of his remarrying.

Times and standards had changed. This was no longer the sober capital it had been, where every one went to church, and particular merit might be acquired by attending prayer-meeting. It was a very different place from what it had been in days well within Eaton’s recollection, before the bobtail mule cars yielded to the trolley, or the automobile drove out the sober-going phaëtons and station-wagons that had satisfied the native longing for grandeur. The roster of the Country Club bore testimony of the passing of the old order. The membership committee no longer concerned itself with the ancestry or reputation for sobriety of applicants, or their place of worship, or whether their grandfathers had come to town before the burning of the Morrison Opera House, or even the later conflagration that consumed the Academy of Music. You might speak of late arrivals like the Kinneys with all the scorn you pleased, but they had been recognized by everybody but a few ultra-conservatives; and if Bob Kinney was something of a sport or his wife’s New York clothes were a trifle daring for the local taste, such criticisms did not weigh heavily as against the handsome villa in which these same Kinneys had established themselves in the new residential area on the river bluff. Curiosity is a stern foe of snobbishness; and when Mrs. Kinney seemed so “sweet” and had given a thousand dollars to the new Girls’ Club, besides endowing a children’s room in the Presbyterian Hospital, many very proper and dignified matrons felt fully justified in crossing the Rubicon (otherwise White River) for an inspection of Mrs. Kinney’s new house. Eaton had accepted such things in a philosophic spirit, just as he accepted Kinney’s retainer to safeguard the patents on the devices that made Kinney’s cement the best on the market and the only brand that would take the finish and tint of tile or marble.

“It seems to be understood that they’re waiting for Farley to die so they can be married comfortably,” Eaton remarked. “But Farley’s a tough old hickory knot. He’s capable of hanging on just to spite them.”

“He was always very kind to me. I saw a good deal of him and his wife after I came here. He was proud of the business and anxious that Billy should carry it on and keep developing it.”

“I always liked the steamboating period of Farley’s life,” said Eaton, ignoring this frank reference to her former husband, in which he thought he detected a trace of wistfulness; “and he’s told me a good deal about it at times. It was much more picturesque than his wholesale-drugging. He never quite got over his river days—he’s always been the second mate, bullying the roustabouts.”

“He never forgot how to swear,” Mrs. Copeland laughed. “He does it adorably.”

“There was never anything like him when he’s well heated,” Eaton continued. “He never means anything—it’s just his natural way of talking. His customers rather liked it on the whole—expected him to commit them to the fiery pit every time they came to town and dropped in to see him. When he got stung in a trade—which wasn’t often—he’d go into his room and lock the door and curse himself for an hour or two and then go out and raise somebody’s wages. A character—a real person, old Uncle Tim!”

The thought of the retired merchant seemed to give Eaton pleasure; a smile played furtively about his lips.

“Then it must have been his wife who used to lure him to church every Sunday morning.”

“Not a bit of it! It was the old man himself. He had a superstitious feeling that business would go badly if he cut church. He never swore on Sundays, but made up for it Monday mornings. He’s always been a generous backer of foreign missionaries on the theory that by Christianizing the heathen we’re widening the market for American commerce. We’ve had worse men than Farley. I suppose he never told a lie or did an underhanded thing through all the years he was in business. And all he has to leave behind him is his half million or more—and Nan.”

“And Nan,” Mrs. Copeland repeated with a shrug of her shoulders. “I suppose Mr. Farley knows what’s up. He’s too shrewd not to know. Clever as Nan is, she could hardly pull the wool over his eyes.”

“She’s much too clever not to know she can’t fool him; but he’s immensely fond of her, just as his wife was. And we’ve got to admit that Nan is a very charming person—a little devilish, but keen and amusing. She’s too good for that crowd she’s running with—no doubt of that! If Uncle Tim thought she meant to marry Billy, he would take pains to see that she didn’t.”

“You mean he wouldn’t leave her the money?” she asked in a lower tone. “I suppose he’d have to.”

Eaton shook his head.

“He’s under no obligation to give it all to Nan. If he thought there was any chance of her marrying Billy—”

“She’s been led to believe that it would all be hers. The Farleys educated her and brought her up in a way to encourage the belief. It would be cruel to disappoint her; he wouldn’t have any right to cut her off,” Mrs. Copeland concluded with feeling.

“It might be less cruel to cut her off than to let her have it all and go on the way she’s started. She came about ten years too late upon the scene. It’s only within a few years that a party like we’ve listened to in there would have been possible in this town. If Nan had reached her twentieth year a decade ago, she’d have been the demurest of little girls, and there would have been no question of her marrying a man who had divorced his wife merely to be free to appropriate her.”

“A VERY CHARMING PERSON—A LITTLE DEVILISH,

BUT KEEN AND AMUSING”

Mrs. Copeland opened and closed her eyes quickly several times. No other man of her acquaintance would have dared to speak of her personal affairs in this blunt fashion. Eaton had referred to the divorce that had severed her ties with Copeland quite as though she were not an interested party to that transaction. He now went a step further, and the color deepened in her face as he said:—

“I don’t understand why you didn’t resist his suit. I’ve never said this to you before, and it’s too late to be proffering advice, but you oughtn’t to have let it go as you did. Billy’s whole conduct was perfectly contemptible.”

“There was no sense in making a fight if he wanted to quit. The law couldn’t widen the breach; it was there anyhow, from the first moment I knew what was in his mind.”

“He acted like a scoundrel,” persisted Eaton in his cool, even tones; “it was base, rotten, damnable!”

“If you mean”—she hesitated and frowned—“if you mean that he let the impression get abroad that I was at fault—that it was I who had become interested elsewhere—it’s only just to say that I never thought Billy did that. I don’t believe now that he did it.”

He was aware that he had ventured far toward the red lamps of danger. This matter of her personal honor was too delicate for veranda discussion; in fact, it was not a matter that he had any right to refer to even remotely at any time or place.

“Of course, unpleasant things were said,” she added. “I suppose they’re always bound to be. Manning was his friend, not mine.”

Eaton received this impassively, which was his way of receiving most things.

“By keeping out of the way, that gentleman proved that he couldn’t have been any friend of yours. If he’d been a gentleman or even a man—”

She broke in upon him quietly, bending toward him with tense eagerness.

“He offered to: I have never told that to any one, but I don’t want you to be unfair even to him. My mistake was that I meekly followed Billy when he began running with the new crowd. I knew I was boring him, and I thought if I took up with the Kinneys and the people they were training with, he might get tired of them after a while and we could go on as we had begun. But I hadn’t reckoned with Nan. I allowed myself to be put in competition with a girl of twenty—which is a foolish thing for a woman of thirty-five to do.”

She carried lightly the thirty-five years to which she confessed, but sometimes, in unguarded moments, a startled, pained look stole into her brown eyes, as though at the remembrance of a blow that might repeat itself. There was a patch of white in her hair just at one side of her forehead. Its effect was to contribute to her natural air of distinction. She was of medium height and her trim figure retained its girlish lines. Her face and hands were tanned brown, and the color was becoming. She wore to-day a blue skirt and a plain blouse, with a soft collar opened at the throat. She had walked to the clubhouse from her home, a mile distant, and her meeting with Eaton had been purely incidental. After her divorce she had established herself as a dairy farmer on twenty acres of land that she had inherited from her father, a banker in one of the smaller county seats, who had been specially interested in dairying and had encouraged her interest in the diversion he made profitable. To please him she had taken a course in dairying at the State Agricultural School and knew the business in all its practical aspects. Copeland had first seen her at a winter resort in Florida where she had gone with her father in his last illness, and their common ties with Indiana had made it easily possible for him to cultivate her better acquaintance later at home. Billy Copeland was an attractive young fellow with good prospects; his social experience was much ampler than hers, and the marriage seemed to her friends an advantageous one. When after ten years she found herself free, she rose from the ruins of her domestic happiness determined to live her life in the way that pleased her best. She shrank from adjusting herself to a new groove in town; the plight of the divorced woman was still, in this community, not wholly comfortable. There was little consolation in the sympathy of friends—though she had many; and even the general attitude, that Copeland’s conduct was utterly indefensible, did not help greatly. She realized perfectly that in following Copeland’s lead unprotestingly when he caught step with the quicker social pace set by the Kinneys,—a name that stood as a synonym for noiser functions and heavier libations than the community had tolerated,—she had estranged many who were affronted by the violence with which the town was becoming kinneyized.

Two years had passed and her broken wings again beat the air with something of their early rhythm. The pathos of her isolation was more apparent to her old friends in town than to herself. Whether she had dropped out of the Kinney crowd, or whether it was more properly an ejectment, there was all the more reason why women who had regarded the intrusions of that set with horror should manifest their confidence in her. If she had been poor, a divorcée lodged in a boarding-house and in need of practical aid, she might have suffered from neglect; but having an assured small income which her investment in the dairy farm in no wise jeopardized, it was rather the thing to look in on her occasionally. Young girls in particular thought her handsome and interesting-looking, and risked their mothers’ displeasure by going to see her. And there were women who sought her out merely to emphasize their disapproval of Copeland and the scandal of his divorce, which they felt to be an affront to the community’s dignity in a man whose father had been of the old order of decent, law-abiding, home-keeping, church-going citizens. They admired the courage and dignity with which she met misfortune and addressed herself uncomplainingly to the business of fashioning a new life.

“I’ve been keeping you from your game,” she said, rising abruptly; “and I must be getting home.”

They walked down the veranda toward the entrance and reached the door at a moment when Copeland, who had been keeping company with a tall glass in the rathskeller below, waiting impatiently for Nan’s return, lounged out.

He stopped short with a slightly challenging air. Eaton bowed and tugged at the visor of his cap. Copeland lifted his straw hat and muttered a good-afternoon that was intended for one or both as they chose to take it. Mrs. Copeland glanced at him without making any sign; she did not speak to Eaton again, but as they parted near the first tee and she started across the links toward the highway, she nodded quickly and smiled a forlorn little smile that haunted him for some time afterward.

Half an hour later, standing erect after successfully negotiating a difficult putt, he said, under his breath:—

“By George! She’s still in love with him!”

He glanced around to make sure no one had overheard him, and crossed to the next tee with a look of deep perplexity on his face.

Nan, having returned to the clubhouse, sauntered down the veranda toward Copeland, wearing a demure air she had practiced for his benefit. Her indifference to his annoyance at her long absence added to his vexation.

“Well, what have you been up to?” he demanded irritably. “The others skipped long ago.”

“Oh, I was tired and went down to the river to rest. I’m going home now.”

“You can’t go home; Grace expects us to stop at her house; they’ll all be there in half an hour.”

“Sorry, but I must skip. You run along like a good boy, and I’ll hop on the trolley. I must be home by five, and I’ll just about make it.”

“That’s not treating Grace right, to say nothing of me!” he expostulated. “I’m getting sick of all this dodging and ducking. I’m coming up to the house to-morrow and have it out with Farley.”

“You’re a nice boy, Billy, but you’re not going to do anything foolish,” she replied.

He found the kindness of this—even its note of fondness—unsatisfying. He read into it a skepticism that was not flattering.

“We’ve been fooling long enough about this; we’ve got to announce our engagement and be done with it.”

“But, Billy, we’re not engaged! We’re just the best of friends. Why should we stir up a big fuss by getting engaged?”

“What’s got into you, anyhow!” he exclaimed, eyeing her angrily. “This talk about not being engaged doesn’t go! I’m getting tired of all this nonsense—being kicked about and held off when I’ve staked everything I’ve got on you.”

“You mean,” she said steadily, “that you divorced your wife, thinking I would marry you; and now you’re angry because I’m not in a hurry about it, and don’t want to trouble papa, who has been kinder to me than anybody else ever was—”

“For God’s sake, don’t cry here! We’ve been talked about enough; I don’t understand what’s got into you to-day.”

“I just mean to be sensible, that’s all. We’ve had some mighty fine times, and you’ve been nice to me; but there’s no hurry about getting married—”

“No hurry!” He stared at her, unable in his impotent rage to deal with the situation as he thought it deserved. “Look here, Nan, I can stand a lot of this Irish temperament of yours, but you’re playing it a little too far.”

“My Irish temperament!” she repeated poutingly. “Well, I guess the Irish is there all right; I don’t know about the temperamental part of it. A good many people call it something very different.”

“When am I going to see you again?” he demanded roughly.

“How should I know! You see me now and you don’t like me. You’d better go downtown and do some work, Billy; that’s what I should prescribe for you. And you’ve got to cut out the drink; it’s getting too big a hold on you. I’m going to quit, too.”

Standing near the entrance, they had been obliged to acknowledge the greetings of a number of new arrivals. It was manifestly no place for a prolonged serious discussion of their future. Mrs. Harrington, whose husband’s bank, the Phœnix National, was the soundest in the State, climbed the steps from her motor without seeing Nan and her companion. Until Farley retired, the Copeland-Farley account was carried by the Phœnix; when Billy Copeland took the helm he transferred it to the Western, as likely to grant a more generous credit.

Copeland flushed angrily at the slight; Nan bit her lip.

“I’m off!” she said. “Be a good boy. I’ll see you again in a day or two. And for Heaven’s sake, don’t call me on the telephone; papa has an extension in his room, you know, and hears everything. Tell Grace I’m sorry—”

“Let me run you into town; I can set you down somewhere near home. The trolleys are hot and dusty. Besides, I want to talk to you; I’ve got a lot to say to you.”

“Not to-day, Billy. Good-bye!”

Eaton found Nan waiting for him at the fourth green.

“I was praying for a mascot, and here you are,” he remarked affably. “I can’t fail to turn in a good card. Glad to see you’ve taken up walking; there’s nothing like it—particularly on a humid afternoon.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but I hope to catch the four-thirty for town. What are my chances?”

“Excellent, if you don’t waste more than ten minutes on me. You’ve never given me more than five up to date. How is Mr. Farley?”

“He’s been very comfortable for a week; really quite like himself. You’d better come and see him.”

“I meant to drop in often all winter, but was afraid of boring him.”

“You’re one of the few that couldn’t do that. He likes to talk to you. You don’t bother him with questions about his health—a sure way of pleasing him.”

“A rare man, Farley. Wiser than serpents, and stimulating. I’ve learned a good deal from him.”

They reached his ball, that had accommodatingly effected a good lie, and after viewing it with approval he glanced at Nan and remarked:—

“You’d better urge me to come to see you, too. It’s just occurred to me that it might be well for us to know each other better. I may flatter myself; but—”

“That’s the nicest thing I’ve heard to-day! Please come soon.”

“Thank you, Nan; I shall certainly do that.”

“I met a friend of yours a while ago,” she said, “who pronounced you the greatest living man.”

“Ah! A gentleman, of course; I identify him at once; he’s the only person alive I fool to that extent—Jeremiah A. Amidon! I can’t imagine why he hasn’t mentioned his acquaintance with you. I shall chide him for this.”

He viewed her in his quizzical fashion through the thick-lensed spectacles he used for golfing. In his ordinary occupations these gave place to eyeglasses that twinkled with a sharp, hard brightness, as though bent upon obscuring the kindness that lay behind them.

“I hadn’t seen him lately—not since I was a child. We used to be neighbors when we were children, and he was a very, very naughty boy.”

“I dare say he was,” Eaton remarked, with his air of thinking of something else. “I suppose you didn’t find him at all backward in bringing himself to your notice. Shyness isn’t his dominant trait.”

“On the other hand, he was rather diffident and wholly polite. I thought his manners did you credit—for he said you had been coaching him.”

“He must be chidden; his use of my name in that connection is utterly unwarranted. He was one of Mrs. Kinney’s party, I suppose,—very interesting. I’m glad they have taken him up!”

He was watching, with the quick eagerness that made him so disconcerting a companion, the passing of a motor toward the clubhouse, but she understood perfectly that this utterance had been with ironic intent. She laughed softly.

“How funny you are! I wish I weren’t afraid of you.”

“I’ve made a careful study of the phobias, and there is nothing in the best authorities to justify a fear of me. I’m as tame as buttered toast.”

“Well, it’s clear Mr. Amidon isn’t afraid of you!”

“I’m relieved—infinitely; I’m in mortal terror of him. He’s fixed standards of conduct for me that make me nervous. I’m afraid the young scoundrel will catch me with my visor down some day; then smash goes his poor idol. I’m glad you spoke of him; if he wasn’t at your luncheon—a guess you scorned to notice—I suppose you met by chance, the usual way.”

“It was just like that,” she laughed. “Very much so!”

“H’m! I warn you against accepting the attentions of just any young man who strolls up the river. A girl of your years must be discreet. Your early knowledge of Mr. Amidon in the loved spots your infancy knew won’t save you. You’d better refer all such matters to me. Pleasant as this is, you’re going to miss your car if you don’t rustle. And Harrington’s bawling his head off trying to fore me away. Good-bye!”

With a neat stroke he landed his ball on the green and ran after it to raise the blockade. When Nan had halted the car and climbed into the vestibule, she waved her hand, a salute which he returned gallantly with a sweep of his cap.