Читать книгу Jericho's Daughters - Paul Iselin Wellman - Страница 29

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In her bedroom Mary Agnes was just preparing to go downstairs for luncheon. Although it was noon, she actually had risen earlier this day than she intended, because of a stupid telephone call from that man at the Clarion. For that reason, and others, her temper was not at its sunniest, and she had yelled at the maid and had difficulty with her hair when she combed it.

After those two successive long nights on planes she was sleeping in utter weariness when, shortly before ten o’clock, her bedroom telephone tinkled and awoke her. It was someone from the Clarion—Hudson, or Judson, or some such name—and it appeared that he wanted some sort of an elaborate article about her Honolulu trip, with a picture of her taken by a news cameraman.

She did not like news photographers. Invariably, she thought, they made her look hatchet-faced. Furthermore, she did not consider a routine pleasure trip worth being blazoned in the paper as if she had discovered a new continent. After all, she had been to Honolulu several times previously, and she felt it would make her appear slightly ridiculous since everyone knew her husband owned the Clarion—as if she had insisted, out of vanity, that the story be printed in this over-stressed form.

Mary Agnes had her vanities, and it was one of them that she considered herself above petty vanities of this kind.

So she did not take kindly to the suggestion. “A short paragraph in the society columns will be sufficient,” she told the man.

But he persisted. Mary Agnes was inclined to be impatient with insistence. Before she could get rid of Judson—or was it Hudson?—she had been forced to speak quite plainly and sharply to him. Nobody knew better than she how to be cutting when it was warranted. Probably she had wounded the feelings of the man Hudson—if that was his damned name—when at last she lost patience with him. He apologized hastily and got off the phone. Then, a while later, some young woman named Miss Sayre called back rather diffidently, and received from Mrs. Wedge the barest kind of an announcement, with instructions to place it inconspicuously on the society page.

The episode ruffled Mary Agnes, not only because it shortened her sleep, but because it offended her sense of good taste. Some women in Jericho might think it an achievement to have their names and doings in the Clarion, but she hardly considered herself in their category. After all, she spent more time away from Jericho than in it, and when one has been mentioned in the columns of great journals in New York, Los Angeles, London, even Paris, and has had her picture more than once in magazines like Vogue and Life, to be mentioned in a small hinterland newspaper is rather trivial.

By the time she settled the question of the article in the Clarion she was so thoroughly awake that she buzzed for the maid, ordered breakfast, scolded when the pillows were not fixed to suit her while she ate in bed, and called for the mail to be brought up.

The maid brought the letters and informed her that Mr. Wedge had gone to the office. There were no communications of importance, she saw as she shuffled the envelopes. Nothing personal, at least. How could there be? She was not expected home for at least another month.

It was after eleven when she rose, had her bath, and dressed. And all the time her mind was vexed by her paramount concern. She decided she would get hold of Mrs. Butford as soon as possible and find out just what was the status of Erskine de Lacey. Later she would have a talk with Erskine himself. She wanted to know the whereabouts of that painting, although she really did not anticipate too much trouble over it. Erskine still needed money, she was sure. A short private interview, an offer of a good check, and she supposed he would not find it difficult to part with the picture, especially since it was admittedly unfinished.