Читать книгу Jericho's Daughters - Paul Iselin Wellman - Страница 27

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❧ Richest in Peace, Safest in War, the chapbook of Jericho quite ecstatically described in many illustrated pages its sources of wealth, such as wheat, hogs, and oil; its industries, including the airplane factories, the flour mills, the evil-smelling oil refineries, and the still worse-smelling packing houses; and the larger commercial and financial enterprises, prominent among which were such principalities of power as the First National Bank, and Cox’s, Incorporated.

The latter, Jericho’s biggest department store, was an institution which dated from the days when the city was no more than a land shark’s townsite boom on the vacant prairie. It had survived drouths, blizzards, a county seat war, a major tornado, and several business depressions, local or national, to become an ornament and bulwark of the new progress and prosperity. But though old in history—it dated from 1889, and sixty-six years was very ancient for Jericho—there was nothing antiquated about Cox’s present establishment. Only four years before the big, modernistic structure that housed it was built, covering half of a city block, of steel and concrete faced with cut stone and mosaic tile, speaking of “levels” rather than “floors,” its décor and appointments elaborately tasteful.

You could buy almost anything at Cox’s; it was the first store in town to install escalators in addition to elevators; and its tearoom on the upper level was the smartest in Jericho, offering, in addition to its menu, living models who displayed the latest creations from Cox’s various apparel departments in stately parades about among the tables.

It was not to be expected, of course, that Richest in Peace, Safest in War should describe or even list minor businesses, such as the struggling little shops which huddled about Cox’s, as if hoping rather pathetically for a few crumbs of trade from the overflowing commercial table of that giant mecca of money-spending women shoppers.

When, shortly before noon, Wistart Wedge left the Clarion Building, he hesitated before going for his car. Almost nobody was on the street because of the cold. For the moment he decided against the car and instead walked a block to the intersection where the First National’s austere brick and Cox’s chaste tile-and-dressed-stone confronted each other across Main Street. Near the corner, diagonally across from the bank and directly facing the department store, was a small shop which—of all things in this weather—had a display of beachwear in its windows.

Wistart considered this display for a moment: two wax models on a simulated seashore with driftwood and sand, the one in a sun costume of shorts and jacket of bright print, the other in a most frankly revealing swimsuit and wide hat of palm straw. Inasmuch as most women’s apparel shops in Jericho were still displaying fur coats, it seemed to the male eye an incongruity. But there was no lack of planning in it. This shop catered not to the ordinary Jericho housewife, but to those fortunate creatures who could afford to go to Palm Beach, or Bermuda, or Laguna for the winter and required garments suitable for such hegiras.

Above the door, in slender gilt type, ran a legend:

GREY RUTLEDGE, SPORTSWEAR

As if arriving at a decision, Wistart entered. The little shop was smartly appointed, as any woman would instantly have seen: although a man might not be expected fully to appreciate the kind of taste displayed in it. Wistart had only a rather vague impression of showcases filled with various feminine articles of wear, racks with coats and sports dresses, and a counter covered with purses, jewelry, scarfs, and the fantastic belts women affect. In the place were no customers because of the weather, but at the rear of the store, talking together, two women stood.

One of these Wistart dismissed with barely a glance. She was Mrs. Hettie Hedcomb, a saleswoman, middle-aged, bosomy, with glasses secured from falling off her sharp nose by a cord running from the ends of the bows around the nape of her lean neck, and thin ankles which had the appearance of forming capital L’s with her long, flat-heeled shoes.

The other, however, was far more worthy of appraisal. She was not old, yet not quite young—in her late twenties, you would venture—with something about her suggesting the tempering of experience which deepens girlhood into womanhood. Severely simple and hardly ornamented, save for white collar and cuffs, her black wool dress gave an effect almost nunlike: except that no nun ever donned a garment which so clung to the lines of her body, fitting and flattering curves so symmetrical; nor did any nun ever reveal legs so graceful or feet so small and prettily arched in high-heeled slippers. The black dress dramatized the blondeness of her head, and you knew it was a natural blonde, and also that the way she carried her head was in itself something to admire.

She was Grey Rutledge, the proprietress of this shop.

Over her eyes quickly masked, passed a fleeting shadow of surprise or some other emotion when she saw Wistart enter. Everyone, of course, knew the publisher of the Clarion, if only by sight, and she had known him more than well for a number of years; but this was almost the first time he had ever entered her place. After just the slightest hesitation she spoke to Mrs. Hedcomb and herself went forward to greet him.

“Good morning, Mr. Wedge,” she said, formally cordial. “What a surprise having you come in on a cold day like this!”

In her eyes was a question. And he was conscious, as he always was, of her eyes, her magnificent eyes. He remembered the first time he saw her, years before, when she was working in Jed Rutledge’s real estate office. He thought her very young and lovely then, and asked her name.

“Grey,” she said simply.

“But I mean your first name.”

She smiled. “Grey is my first name.”

Odd name for a girl—family name, he learned later. But some women have the power of making the most unlikely names triumphantly and gracefully their own just by being the kind of persons who enhance everything that touches them. Grey, for example—how perfectly it suited her. It would be hard to imagine her with any other name. Grey Norcross it was then—Grey Rutledge now. No matter what her last name, there were those eyes of hers—wide, clean, beautifully gray, with wonderful curved black lashes. They glorified her face and invariably disturbed his tranquility.

“Can I help you?” she was asking him.

It brought him out of his abstraction, and at the question he gave her a sudden, unexpected look, as if she had surprised something in him. For a moment there seemed to be in his face a cold shadow, suggesting dreariness and an eloquent silent appeal. Then his eyes fell, and the expression fled as swiftly as a hallucination.

But she had seen it and felt there was a great trouble in him, exactly what she did not know. A rush of pity went over her, and an indefinable kindness, and a wish to help him, for this man was secretly dear to her.

She gave him a smile. Her face was clear and good to look at, with a trim little nose, arching brows, and lips delicately modeled. Sometimes in repose the face appeared a little tired. But with the smile the tired expression fled, and her face was bright, the magnificent gray eyes giving it a touch of real beauty.

He realized she was waiting for his answer. “I’m looking for something—I hardly know what—Mrs. Wedge came home last night. I want a little gift for her.” He looked up, half abashed. “I didn’t want to go to Cox’s. Her own store, you know.”

“Of course,” she said. “I understand what you mean. Buying something for her which she already owns, you might say. Did you think of something to wear, or perhaps jewelry?”

Jewelry. The word drew his eyes to her again. Her hair, gleaming honey gold, was thick and wavy, and she wore it swept back, her ears fully revealed. Only a woman with beautiful ears would dare wear her hair that way, and Grey Rutledge’s ears were small and perfect, and set off by earrings with large pearls.

People took it for granted that the pearls were artificial, because real pearls that size cost a small fortune. But people did not know. The pearls were real and they had cost a small fortune. They were a gift, with a special meaning, and Grey wore them often because she loved them, and because she knew nobody suspected their real value, and because it gave her a little sensation of amused daring to flaunt them, as it were, before the eyes of the gossips—such as her own saleslady, Hettie Hedcomb, for example—who would have made the most of scandalous speculation out of them had they known.

“What can you show me?” Wistart said, answering her question.

He spent a little time selecting his purchase, almost as if he were unwilling to leave. Once Grey asked, “How is Mrs. Wedge?”

“Fine. A little tired from her trip.”

“Isn’t she home earlier than you expected?”

Once more she caught that momentary fleeting look of dreariness in his face. He glanced toward the rear of the store. Mrs. Hedcomb was arranging some dresses on a rack.

“Grey,” he said in a desperate low voice, “if you only—just once——”

“You promised,” she said.

“I know—but things are so bad—I hoped——”

He broke off. Mrs. Hedcomb was coming slowly toward the front of the store.

For a barely perceptible instant Grey bit her lip, her eyes shadowed by some inward thought. Then her face cleared.

As if to cover the slight pause in their conversation, she said, “If you’d come in a little later in the month, Mr. Wedge, we’d have a much better selection for you. Our stock’s low just now because of the Christmas trade. But I’m going to Chicago on a buying trip and I hope when I return we’ll have a much better offering.”

He looked at her. “Oh? When?”

“Why—tonight, I think. As a matter of fact, I was just going to wire the Sherman Hotel for a reservation.”

For a moment he seemed to consider that unimportant bit of information. Then he purchased an expensive little handbag on her suggestion that no woman can ever have too many nice bags, and waited for it to be gift-wrapped.

When he paid for it, he said, “Thank you,” as if Grey had done him a very great favor.

She watched him go out. A woman customer entered the store and Grey left her to Hettie Hedcomb while she walked back to her small office and seated herself at the desk.

For a time she sat quite still, thinking. When Wistart first came into the shop, she had felt something very like a thrill of apprehension. It was not like him. They were lovers, it was true ... a strange, unwilling fidelity in which she had lived for three years now ... but it was not wise for him to come to her here. He had never done so before and she wondered what extraordinary thing moved him to do so now. Certainly he could have purchased the handbag in any of a dozen places.

But she knew him so well, and in that look of misery she sensed some cruel trouble in him. Three months before they had agreed solemnly that they would never meet again. She told him she could no longer go on with it, because of the fear, and the guilt, and her little daughter. And he agreed with her that she was perfectly right, it was selfish of him, and he loved her too much even to wish her to continue if it made her unhappy. They understood each other and the need for breaking off very well then, and they parted rather sadly, although it was with a sensation of relief, truly, on her part; and Wistart’s kindness, which she knew so well, had never seemed finer to her than it did then.

Yet with that decision firmly made, she had in the moment that she bit her lip reversed everything. She felt that he was suffering, and something ... duty, perhaps, or a pitying love ... made her change all her plans. For this one time. Just once, and this the last.

Already now she regretted that she had given him that information of her buying trip, which meant far more than that. She wished she could recall him and tell him it was a mistake, she had not meant that at all. And then she remembered his voice when he thanked her: for something infinitely greater than the gift wrapping of the package she placed in his hands. She could not be so cruel. Hate it, hate it, hate it, she would go through with it this one more time, for his sake.