Читать книгу A Variety of Weapons - Rufus King - Страница 6

CHAPTER IV

The dinner was in keeping with Fanny Mistral’s forecast, and Ann was hungry. She did a good job on clear green turtle soup with sherry, followed by pompano served with broiled mushrooms, and cucumbers, all helped to their destination by a glass of Rauentaler.

The extensive charm of the dining room had stopped impressing her. A four-part Sheraton table had been reduced to conversational size, and (her appetite clipped of its edge) she was beginning to feel annoyed at the persistency with which Appleby, who faced her, was regarding her. She decided it was a speculative rather than a predatory look. It was irritatingly unpleasant.

Appleby said, while a saddle of mutton was being served, “Are you from New England, Miss Ledrick?”

“No, Mr. Appleby. Long Island.”

“Really? I would have said New England. Boston, perhaps. Do you know Boston?”

“Most sketchily. Almost from a football point of view.”

Appleby’s voice tightened, and the interest in his dark, vital eyes sharpened noticeably.

“Do you,” he asked, “know the Charings?”

It occurred to Ann that Justin and Estelle Marlow were suddenly not only silent but motionless as well. They had the waxwork look of effigies who were gripped in the drama of some situation which involved them strongly and which they were helpless to control. Marlow grew pale, and his anemic fingers were nervelessly quiescent on the stem of a glass which Washburn had just filled with champagne.

“No,” Ann said, “I do not.”

Ann heard Estelle Marlow sigh gently in the stillness with a breath that had been held and was, with relief, expelled.

Then Estelle took over with determination.

“Ludwig, there is no more reason why Miss Ledrick should know the Charings than that you should know the Osterbrooks of Paris. The Osterbrooks, Miss Ledrick, were a fanatic family from Indiana who enjoyed spending quantities of money in collecting worthless paintings that were so modern they had turned sour.”

“I fail to see any connection, Estelle,” Ludwig said. “After all, the Charings are Back Bay.”

“There is no connection. I simply wish to change the subject. We will discuss the Secretary of Labor, Miss Perkins. That woman—”

Miss Perkins was taken apart through a heavenly thing which Estelle Marlow informed Ann was a gooseberry charlotte. Its mechanics, Estelle said, consisted in lining a charlotte mold either with slices of génoise or sponge cake, then dumping in gooseberry cream and chilling until firm.

The dinner (and Miss Perkins) ended. They returned to the lounge for coffee and cognac, after which two rubbers of bridge were managed in a heavy atmosphere which seemed to Ann to have been stripped of all zest. The pleasant intimacy which had been set up before Appleby’s arrival was gone, and in its place was one which seemed to her as impending; just of what, she did not know.

All of their rooms were on the third floor, and Ann thought it kind when Estelle went with her into her living room and said that if Ann did not mind she would sit there for a moment and smoke a cigarette.

The coals were still glowing on the hearth and the room was so silent that the sound of an ember dropping was distinctly audible.

Estelle said, “Do you mind if I call you Ann?”

“Not at all, Miss Marlow. I’d like it.”

“And I should be pleased if you would call me Estelle.”

“Certainly.”

“May I ask whether you have been happy?”

“Here? Now? Most happy.”

“No, dear. I mean the years before. You’re twenty-two, aren’t you?”

“Yes, just. How could you tell so accurately? I mean, we’re all supposed to look either younger or older.”

“I asked during my telephone conversation with Fanny Mistral. I wanted to know the general sort of woman to expect, as you would be with us for a week or longer. Tell me, have your years been happy ones?”

“Very happy. Naturally there has been some lonesomeness since Father died last spring. There were only the two of us. Mother died quite a while ago.”

“Then there is no one? Now?”

“There is a pleasant idiot in Washington named Bill Forrest who has made up his mind to marry me next Friday.”

Whether it was a trick of the firelight or not, Ann could not tell, but Estelle seemed to withdraw in suddenly upon herself.

“And you, Ann?”

“I?”

“Do you intend to let Mr. Forrest marry you, as you put it?”

“I put it that way because the first news I had about it was when Bill announced his intention by telephone from Washington this afternoon.”

“Mr. Forrest sounds somewhat bewitching.”

“He is much too bewitching. He’s so utterly sure of himself. He wants to take me off to the wars with him in a watch.”

“A watch?”

“Bill has just joined the Marines, may heaven help them. Naturally he has to have a snapshot of a wife bravely smiling and keeping the home fires stoked. His mind works that way. It seems he has selected me. So far, Bill’s nearest approach to a romantic gesture has been to call me up at four in the morning to relieve his insomnia. He is definitely not of the doublets-and-knee-bending school.”

“Then it is nothing really serious?”

“I don’t know. Honestly I don’t.”

“You said—Friday?”

“Yes.”

Estelle sat for a while looking thoughtfully down into the glowing coals. Then she said, “Things happen so rapidly now in this world of ours. Nations have been conquered overnight while an empire falls in a matter of weeks.” She threw her cigarette into the grate and stood up. She said, “Good night, my dear. Between now and Friday are five days.”

“I’m certain I can do a good job on the ocelots before then.”

Estelle dragged herself back from some thought that was obsessing her. Her eyes were faintly bewildered.

“The ocelots?”

“The pictures I’m here to do of them.”

A flush started slowly at the base of Estelle’s throat and then rose until it colored the soft milk tones of her cheeks.

“So stupid of me,” she said quietly. “The pictures. Of course.”