Читать книгу Seven Miles to Arden - Ruth Sawyer - Страница 5

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Marjorie Schuyler sat in her own snug little den, her toy ruby spaniel on a cushion at her feet, her lap full of samples of white, shimmering crêpes and satins. She fingered them absent-mindedly, her mind caught in a maze of wedding intricacies and dates, and whirled between an ultimate choice between October and June of the following year.

The world knew all there was to know about Marjorie Schuyler. It could tell to a nicety who her paternal and maternal grandparents were, back to old Peter Schuyler’s time and the settling of the Virginian Berkeleys. It could figure her income down to a paltry hundred of the actual amount. It knew her age to the month and day. In fact, it had kept her calendar faithfully, from her coming-out party, through the periods of mourning for her parents and her subsequent returns to society, through the rumors of her engagements to half a dozen young leaders at home and abroad, down to her latest conquest.

The last date on her calendar was the authorized announcement of her engagement to young Burgeman. Hence the shimmering samples and the relative values of October and June for a wedding journey.

And the world knew more than these things concerning Marjorie Schuyler. It knew that she was beautiful, of regal bearing and distinguished manner. An aunt lived with her, to lend dignity and chaperonage to her position; but she managed her own affairs, social and financial, for herself. If the world had been asked to choose a modern prototype for the young, independent American girl of the leisure class, it is reasonably safe to assume it would have named Marjorie Schuyler.

As for young Burgeman, the world knew him as the Rich Man’s Son. That was the best and worst it could say of him.

“I think, Toto,” said Marjorie Schuyler to her toy ruby spaniel, “it will be June. There is only one thing you can do with October—a church wedding, chrysanthemums, and oak leaves. But June offers so many possible variations. Besides, that gives us both one last, untrammeled season in town. Yes, June it is; and we’ll not have to think about these yet awhile.” Whereupon she dropped the shimmering samples into the waste-basket.

A maid pushed aside the hangings that curtained her den from the great Schuyler library. “There’s a young person giving the name of O’Connell, asking to see you. Shall I say you are out?”

“O’Connell?” Marjorie Schuyler raised a pair of interrogatory eyebrows. “Why—it can’t be. The entire company went back weeks ago. What is she like—small and brown, with very pink cheeks and very blue eyes?”

The maid nodded ambiguously.

“Bring her up. I know it can’t be, but—”

But it was. The next moment Marjorie Schuyler was taking a firm grip of Patsy’s shoulders while she looked down with mock disapproval at the girl who reached barely to her shoulder.

“Patsy O’Connell! Why didn’t you go home with the others—and what have you done to your cheeks?”

Patsy attacked them with two merciless fists. “Sure, they’re after needing a pinch of north-of-Ireland wind, that’s all. How’s yourself?”

Marjorie Schuyler pushed her gently into a great chair, while she herself took a carved baronial seat opposite. The nearness of anything so exquisitely perfect as Marjorie Schuyler, and the comparison it was bound to suggest, would have been a conscious ordeal for almost any other girl. But Patsy was oblivious of the comparison—oblivious of the fact that she looked like a wood-thrush neighboring with a bird of paradise. Her brown Norfolk suit was a shabby affair—positively clamoring for a successor; the boyish brown beaver—lacking feather or flower—was pulled down rakishly over her mass of brown curls, and the vagabond gloves gave a consistent finish to the picture. And yet there was that about Patsy which defied comparison even with Marjorie Schuyler; moreover—a thrush sings.

“Now tell me,” said Marjorie Schuyler, “where have you been all these weeks?”

Patsy considered. “Well—I’ve been taking up hospital training.”

“Oh, how splendid! Are you going over with the new Red Cross supply?”

Patsy shook her head. “You see, they only kept me until they had demonstrated all they knew about lung disorders—and fresh-air treatment, and then they dismissed me. I’m fearsome they were after finding out I hadn’t the making of a nurse.”

“That’s too bad! What are you going to do now?”

An amused little smile twitched at the corners of Patsy’s mouth; it acted as if it wanted to run loose all over her face. “Sure, I haven’t my mind made—quite. And yourself?”

“Oh—I?” Marjorie Schuyler leaned forward a trifle. “Did you know I was engaged?”

“Betrothed? Holy Saint Bridget bless ye!” And the vagabond gloves clasped the slender hands of the American prototype and gave them a hard little squeeze. “Who’s himself?”

“It’s Billy Burgeman, son of the Burgeman.”

“Old King Midas?”

“That’s a new name for him.”

“It has fitted him years enough.” Patsy’s face sobered. “Oh, why does money always have to mate with money? Why couldn’t you have married a poor great man—a poet, a painter, a thinker, a dreamer—some one who ought not to be bound down by his heels to the earth for bread-gathering or shelter-building? You could have cut the thongs and sent him soaring—given the world another ‘Prometheus Unbound.’ As for Billy Burgeman—he could have married—me,” and Patsy spread her hands in mock petition.

Marjorie Schuyler laughed. “You! That is too beautifully delicious! Why, Patsy O’Connell, William Burgeman is the most conventional young gentleman I have ever met in my life. You would shock him into a semi-comatose condition in an afternoon—and, pray, what would you do with him?”

“Sure, I’d make a man of him, that’s what. His father’s son might need it, I’m thinking.”

Marjorie Schuyler’s face became perfectly blank for a second, then she leaned against the baronial arms on the back of her seat, tilted her head, and mused aloud: “I wonder just what Billy Burgeman does lack? Sometimes I’ve wondered if it was not having a mother, or growing up without brothers or sisters, or living all alone with his father in that great, gloomy, walled-in, half-closed house. It is not a lack of manhood—I’m sure of that; and it’s not lack of caring, for he can care a lot about some things. But what is it? I would give a great deal to know.”

“If the tales about old King Midas have a thruppence worth of truth in them, it might be his father’s meanness that’s ailing him.”

Marjorie Schuyler shook her head. “No; Billy’s almost a prodigal. His father says he hasn’t the slightest idea of the value of money; it’s just so much beans or shells or knives or trading pelf with him; something to exchange for what he calls the real things of life. Why, when he was a boy—in fact, until he was almost grown—his father couldn’t trust Billy with a cent.”

“Who said that—Billy or the king?”

“His father, of course. That’s why he has never taken Billy into business with him. He is making Billy win his spurs—on his own merits; and he’s not going to let him into the firm until he’s worth at least five thousand a year to some other firm. Oh, Mr. Burgeman has excellent ideas about bringing up a son! Billy ought to amount to a great deal.”

“Meaning money or character?” inquired Patsy.

Marjorie Schuyler looked at her sharply. “Are you laughing?”

“Faith, I’m closer to weeping; ’twould be a lonesome, hard rearing that would come to a son of King Midas, I’m thinking. I’d far rather be the son of his gooseherd, if I had the choosing.”

She leaned forward impulsively and gathered up the hands of the girl opposite in the warm, friendly compass of those vagabond gloves. “Do ye really love him, cailin a’sthore?” And this time it was her look that was sharp.

“Why, of course I love him! What a foolish question! Why should I be marrying him if I didn’t love him? Why do you ask?”

“Because—the son of King Midas with no mother, with no one at all but the king, growing up all alone in a gloomy old castle, with no one trusting him, would need a great deal of love—a great, great deal—”

“That’s all right, Ellen. I’ll find her for myself.” It was a man’s voice, pitched overhigh; it came from somewhere beyond and below the inclosing curtains and cut off the last of Patsy’s speech.

“That’s funny,” said Marjorie Schuyler, rising. “There’s Billy now. I’ll bring him in and let you see for yourself that he’s not at all an object of sympathy—or pity.”

She disappeared into the library, leaving Patsy speculating recklessly. They must have met just the other side of the closed hangings, for to Patsy their voices sounded very near and close together.

“Hello, Billy!”

“Listen, Marjorie; if a girl loves a man she ought to be willing to trust him over a dreadful bungle until he could straighten things out and make good again—that’s true, isn’t it?”

“Billy Burgeman! What do you mean?”

“Just answer my question. If a girl loves a man she’ll trust him, won’t she?”

“I suppose so.”

“You know she would, dear. What would the man do if she didn’t?”

The voice sounded strained and unnatural in its intensity and appeal. Patsy rose, troubled in mind, and tiptoed to the only other door in the den.

“ ’Tis a grand situation for a play,” she remarked, dryly, “but ’tis a mortial poor one in real life, and I’m best out of it.” She turned the knob with eager fingers and pulled the door toward her. It opened on a dumbwaiter shaft, empty and impressive. Patsy’s expression would have scored a hit in farce comedy. Unfortunately there was no audience present to appreciate it here, and the prompter forgot to ring down the curtain just then, so that Patsy stood helpless, forced to go on hearing all that Marjorie and her leading man wished to improvise in the way of lines.

“… I told you, forged—”

Patsy was tempted to put her fingers in her ears to shut out the sound of his voice and what he was saying, but she knew even then she would go on hearing; his voice was too vibrant, too insistent, to be shut out.

“… my father’s name for ten thousand. I took the check to the bank myself, and cashed it; father’s vice-president. … Of course the cashier knew me. … I tell you I can’t explain—not now. I’ve got to get away and stay away until I’ve squared the thing and paid father back.”

“Billy Burgeman, did you forge that check yourself?”

“What does that matter—whether I forged it or had it forged or saw it forged? I tell you I cashed it, knowing it was forged. Don’t you understand?”

“Yes; but if you didn’t forge it, you could easily prove it; people wouldn’t have to know the rest—they are hushing up things of that kind every day.”

A silence dropped on the three like a choking, blinding fog. The two outside the hangings must have been staring at each other, too bewildered or shocked to speak. The one inside clutched her throat, muttering, “If my heart keeps up this thumping, faith, he’ll think it’s the police and run.”

At last the voice of the man came, hushed but strained almost to breaking. To Patsy it sounded as if he were staking his very soul in the words, uncertain of the balance. “Marjorie, you don’t understand! I cashed that check because—because I want to take the responsibility of it and whatever penalty comes along with it. I don’t believe father will ever tell. He’s too proud; it would strike back at him too hard. But you would have to know; he’d tell you; and I wanted to tell you first myself. I want to go away knowing you believe and trust me, no matter what father says about me, no matter what every one thinks about me. I want to hear you say it—that you will be waiting—just like this—for me to come back to when I’ve squared it all off and can explain. … Why, Marjorie—Marjorie!”

Patsy waited in an agony of dread, hope, prayer—waited for the answer she, the girl he loved, would make. It came at last, slowly, deliberately, as if spoken, impersonally, by the foreman of a jury:

“I don’t believe in you, Billy. I’m sorry, but I don’t believe I could ever trust you again. Your father has always said you couldn’t take care of money; this simply means you have got yourself into some wretched hole, and forging your father’s name was the only way out of it. I suppose you think the circumstances, whatever they may be, have warranted the act; but that act puts a stigma on your name which makes it unfit for any woman to bear; and if you have any spark of manhood left, you’ll unwish the wish—you will unthink the thought—that I would wait—or even want you—ever—to come back.”

A cry—a startled, frightened cry—rang through the rooms. It did not come from either Marjorie or her leading man. Patsy stood with a vagabond glove pressed hard over her mouth—quite unconscious that the cry had escaped and that there was no longer need of muzzling—then plunged headlong through the hangings into the library. Marjorie Schuyler was standing alone.

“Where is he—your man?”

“He’s gone—and please don’t call him—that!”

“Go after him—hurry—don’t let him go! Don’t ye understand? He mustn’t go away with no one believing in him. Tell him it’s a mistake; tell him anything—only go!”

While Patsy’s tongue burred out its Irish brogue she pushed at the tall figure in front of her—pushed with all her might. “Are ye nailed to the floor? What’s happened to your feet? For Heaven’s sake, lift them and let them take ye after him. Don’t ye hear? There’s the front door slamming behind him. He’ll be gone past your calling in another minute. Dear heart alive, ye can’t be meaning to let him go—this way!”

But Marjorie Schuyler stood immovable and deaf to her pleading. Incredulity, bewilderment, pity, and despair swept over Patsy’s face like clouds scudding over the surface of a clear lake. Then scorn settled in her eyes.

“I’m sorry for ye, sorry for any woman that fails the man who loves her. I don’t know this son of old King Midas; I never saw him in my life, and all I know about him is what ye told me this day and scraps of what he had to say for himself; but I believe in him. I know he never forged that check—or used the money for any mean use of his own. I’d wager he’s shielding some one, some one weaker than he, too afeared to step up and say so. Why, I’d trust him across the world and back again; and, holy Saint Patrick! I’m going after him to tell him so.”

For the second time within a few seconds Marjorie Schuyler listened and heard the front door slam; then the goddess came to life. She walked slowly, regally, across the library and passed between the hangings which curtained her den. Her eyes, probably by pure chance, glanced over the shimmering contents of the waste-basket. A little cold smile crept to the corners of her mouth, while her chin stiffened.

“I think, Toto,” she said, addressing the toy ruby spaniel, “that it will not be even a June wedding,” and she laughed a crisp, dry little laugh.