Читать книгу Enchanted Ground - Temple Bailey - Страница 3

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Peter, sitting on the steps of his big house with his dog, Becky, beside him, looked out over a breadth of lawn to his office, where a flame vine was flung like a glowing shawl across the roof. Why should anyone, he asked himself, want more than this—that flaming vine; the wide expanse of Gulf, shadowed now by the clear, cool blue which comes with the twilight; one bright star above it; the burnished copper streak banding the horizon?

Still, a man can’t eat beauty, nor warm himself with it, nor pay his bills, nor achieve his ambitions.

“Yet why not,” Peter demanded, “if he measures his ambitions to the scale of things as they are?”

Having no answer, he moved restlessly and sighed. Becky laid her long head on his knee and slanted her eyes up at him. There was something world-wise about Becky. She loved Peter and shared his fortunes. She had her moods of affectionate demonstration. But she was at her best in times like this, when she waited on his word, giving close and flattering attention without fulsomeness.

Peter hadn’t measured his ambitions to—anything. He knew that. He knew, too, that he had flung away in a moment of mob madness the substantial fortune which had been handed down to him. He had, indeed, been caught in the whirl of that wheel of chance which had made and unmade men in those glamorous days when Florida had trailed glittering garments and had wooed men to disaster.

It had been in those days that Peter had built his big house on the edge of the Gulf. Of Spanish architecture, tile-roofed and cream-stuccoed, it melted into the surrounding green, its great wings stretching back towards the jungle, its upper windows half-hidden by towering palms. He had fitted his office with all modern appliances, had hung out a sign, and installed a nurse. His practice had been enormous—winter visitors who had brought their ailments with them, the native folk who wanted their children ushered expertly into the world, or who had need of operations, and who had found in the young physician a surgeon of no mean skill. For Peter had come of a long line of doctors—wise and distinguished gentlemen. He remembered his grandfather, a splendid giant of a man, whose praises were proclaimed on a bronze tablet set in the walls of a great hospital. He had lived to see his grandson get his diploma, and had thundered his advice: “Don’t get to believing you are God, Peter, or that a knife or a pill will take the place of Omnipotence. It won’t, but you’re not likely to learn it until life teaches you.”

Peter’s father had been less thundering and less certain. But he had gone into the World War at forty, and had died to save others. Which is, after all, something for a son to think of. Peter often thought about it. He had been fifteen when his father died. He was now twenty-eight, and high and dry on the shores of defeat.

He had, of course, only himself to blame. For he had danced to the tune of prosperity—spending recklessly, entertaining lavishly, filling his big house with guests and more guests—people for week-ends, for dinners and dances, tennis, golf, swimming, contract. He had not had a wife to be sure, but there had always been someone to chaperone the crowd and save it from excesses.

Then had come the awakening—when Florida had thrown off her glittering garments and had shown herself in rags! Peter was prince now of an empty palace. No servants left but little old black Nan who came and cooked for him and then flitted off through the shadows to a cabin set somewhere among the palmettos; no guests, for they had all fled like rats before the wave which engulfed them; no neighbors—on all sides were deserted homes, their windows blank, their gardens rioting.

Well, it served them right, he supposed. But it had been a gorgeous gamble. Even now Peter thrilled at the thought of it. “Jove, Becky, I spent my thousands as if they were millions.”

Still rigid at his knee, Becky lifted her lips in a sort of Mona Lisa smile. Peter laughed, then rose and stretched his arms above his head. “Come on, old lady, we’ll have our supper.”

Becky was, however, inattentive—ears up, her eyes looking towards the deeper shadows of the jungle. And presently a man appeared—a slim, boyish shape in white flannels. Becky leaped to meet him, and the two of them came on together.

Peter ejaculated, “Denis ... ! Where did you come from?”

“You didn’t expect me?”

“Not so soon.”

They sat on the steps. Denis hugged his knees. “Well, I’ve burned my bridges, Peter.”

“You saw Jinks?”

“Yes.”

A moment’s silence. “What happened?”

“She won’t listen. She hates—poverty.”

“So do we all ...”

“I know....” There was, apparently, no argument. Denis, pulling Becky’s ears, said, “She’s more faithful than Jinks, Peter.”

“Oh, well, dogs—one expects it, somehow.”

Another silence. “One should never expect anything of women ...” Peter gave a short laugh. Again there was silence. The twilight enfolded them. A star or two blinked above. At last Peter said, “Let’s eat. Old Nan has gone to church. But she’s left a lot of things in the refrigerator.”

“Church ...” said Denis. “If I were anything else but a preacher ... !” He let it go at that.

“Jinks won’t marry you?”

“No. She says she wouldn’t be a success as a parson’s wife.”

“Not getting an inferiority complex or anything?”

“No,” Denis said, slowly, “she means it.”

The house as they entered it was all echoes and gloom. The fire on the hearth was dead. A green-shaded reading lamp cast a pallid circle on the floor.

“Great guns,” Peter said, “it’s like a funeral. You build up the fire, while I start the sandwiches. We’ll eat in here and talk. I’m starved for talk. And there’s been nobody since you went away but the ghosts and old Nan.”

“Ghosts of people who have been here,” said Denis, looking about him. “Ghost of Jinks.”

“Ghosts of everybody,” Peter said, with an attempt at gaiety. “Ghost of Lou Gorman. Speaking of women, there’s constancy for you. She has given me up, and with no excuse except that Florida’s a hole and she hates it.”

“You think she cared for your money.”

“Think? I know. When we’ve eaten, I’ll show you her letter.”

Denis, having lighted the fire, came out to the kitchen and hung one leg over the arm of a chair while he watched Peter cut thin slices of baked ham.

“One of the farmers brought this,” Peter elucidated. “He owed a bill.”

“At least you won’t starve.”

“Not while some of my patients have gardens and a pig.”

They made coffee and set the things on trays, which they carried with them into the living-room. Peter ate with an appetite, but Denis was soon satisfied. He drank his coffee and stared at the flaming logs.

“But it isn’t the end, Peter,” he said, as if continuing a discussion. “It’s the beginning.”

“Of what? If you can see a way ahead, it’s more than I can.”

Denis, still staring into the fire, said, “There were five loaves and two fishes—and they fed a multitude. ...”

For a moment Peter did not speak. Light-hearted and at times light-headed, he was moved beyond words. Here was Denis, hugging his knees like an inconsequential lad, yet saying things that stirred the soul. He knelt to put a stick on the fire. “It’s been ghastly,” he said, “with everybody leaving—and the loneliness. I’ve felt like the Ancient Mariner....”

The flames, leaping up, lighted young Denis’ face—a skin less bronzed than Peter’s, yet showing the touch of the suns of beach and golf-course; dark hair in a tumbled lock on his forehead—eyes gray and black-irised under long lashes. Yet it was not so much his skin or his hair or his eyes which made Denis impressive. It was, rather, a quality of vividness which illumined him, a quality of voice which caught one up with him into the realm of his own winged thought.

He said now, “It’s you and I against the ghosts, Peter ...”

Peter, on the hearth-rug, looked up. “Sometimes I feel as if we were all dead together.”

Denis’ hand dropped to his friend’s shoulder: “There comes always—a resurrection. We’ve that to think of, Peter. Nothing dies but to live again....”

With a restless movement, he rose and went to the window, looking out. “Jinks blames me. She says I’m impractical—that poverty will break me.... Yet if she had faith in me—” He stopped there. “I can’t go back,” he said.

“Nor I,” said Peter. “If I go back, I’ll have to marry Lou. And I don’t want to marry anybody.”

He ran his fingers through his burned blond locks. “Becky’s good enough for me,” he said, and the watching dog got up and moved towards him. “She’s good enough. Aren’t you, old girl?”

Becky yawned and slithered her body close. Life was at its best with her—a warm fire, her master near at hand. She followed him to his desk. “I said I’d read you Lou’s letter, Denis. Here’s what she says....

‘Darling Peter:

‘I am having to put chains on myself to keep from running down to see you. I know how gorgeous things are in this mid-winter weather, and you are gorgeous, Peter. But if you insist on staying, I shall have to get over feeling this way about you. For you’ll petrify if you stay, and I couldn’t love a petrified man, could I? And you won’t live on my money, and if you can’t make money of your own, why, there we are! For no woman in her sane mind could live in that empty town, with all the windows staring, or in your house with the jungle creeping up on it like a wild beast. It was all very wonderful when everybody was rushing about and playing like mad. But now—oh, Peter, you must come back to Baltimore, and pick up your practice. Say you will, darling, and I’ll love you to death—say it....

‘And are your eyes as blue as ever, Peter? Perhaps I shall have to motor down and see....

‘Always and always—

Lou.’ ”

Peter laughed as he folded the letter. “Are my eyes as blue as ever, Denis?” he demanded.

“Do you care as little as that?”

“As what ... ?”

“That you can read her letter and laugh at it....”

The light died out of Peter’s eyes. “I care so little, Denis, that I am ashamed to think I ever cared at all.”

“That isn’t love, Peter. Love is what I feel for Jinks. Losing her is like tearing an arm from my body—”

“Thank God I’ve never felt that way about any woman ...”

“Some day you will—”

“If I do, she’ll never get away from me.”

“You say that, but suppose you were faced by what I am facing? Jinks is so right in what she says. No man should ask a woman to marry him and share such privations. Yet I can’t leave here and keep my self-respect.” He seemed to fling the subject from him as he jumped to his feet, “I must be getting on, Peter.”

“Why not spend the night with me? There are rooms enough in all conscience. And monogrammed linen for your bed. Jove, how I spent my money! Hemstitched sheets, and taffeta spreads. I can house you like a débutante, Denis.”

He stopped suddenly: “There’s someone coming.” He went toward the door, but before he could reach it, a voice asked, “Is Denis here?”

It was Denis who answered, his voice startled: “Jinks!”

The girl who stood in the door was a little thing, wrapped in a nurse’s cape of dark blue, her hair a bright flame under her cap. “A man drove me down,” she said. “I had to come. I’ve changed my mind, Denis.”

Denis had crossed the room, and she seemed suddenly to melt into his arms. And over her head Denis was saying, “Yet people say there are—no miracles, Peter.”

And over her shoulder Jinks was saying, “I’m such a fool.”

“You’re a lovely fool,” Peter told her, and then he went out and sat on the porch. “Of course he’ll marry her,” he remarked to Becky, “and may the Lord have mercy on their souls.”

Later Denis came out with Jinks, and they, too, sat on the steps. And Jinks said, “He thinks we’ll be happy, but he doesn’t know. He’s never been poor.”

“I’ve never been rich.”

“Not what you call rich. But you’ve never been really up against it. Poor. Getting your hands rough with dish-washing, and your face red over the cook-stove, and your temper on edge. You think of life as all new moons and early starlight, and orange groves in bloom. But the real things will be soup from Sunday’s roast, and onions in the stew ...”

Peter said, “Stop it. Can’t you see what you are doing to Denis?”

Denis, white as paper, raged: “Do you think love is like that? If you do, you can go back where you came from.”

And Jinks said, “I told you I was a fool,” and sobbed with her head against Peter’s shoulder.

And Peter said, “Don’t cry on me. Cry on Denis.” So Denis drew her to him, and her nurse’s cap fell off, and all her lovely hair lay soft against Denis’ cheek, and presently her sobbing ceased and they sat in silence.

And out of the silence, Peter said: “If a woman loved me like that—”

And Jinks said, “She’d tramp muddy roads with you and be happy, as I shall be with Denis—”

Her face was lifted, and the moon shone full upon it.

“Happy,” she said again.

And Peter rose and left them.