Читать книгу Enchanted Ground - Temple Bailey - Страница 4

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Later the three of them sat on the steps and talked about it. Jinks, her cap off and her hair blowing, said to Peter, “Tell us how to live on nothing a year.”

“Well, there were ravens and manna....”

“Honey and locusts ... ?” said Jinks.

Denis said, “I’ve a few bonds in a box up north.”

“Keep ’em,” Peter advised.

It seemed, however, that they had decided not to keep them. The church gave Denis a house to live in. By careful economy, the money he could get from the sale of the bonds would pay their way for a year. After that ... ?

A new heaven and a new earth! Denis said it, there on Peter’s front steps. “With Jinks I can conquer the world.”

“If you were wise,” Peter began, but Jinks stopped him. “We are not wise, are we, Denis?”

“Not tonight, or ever—”

Peter’s heart tightened. Babes in the Wood—both of them! He hid his emotion beneath a professional manner, “If you expect to get back to your patient tonight, Jinks, you’d better be going.”

“Hospitable ...” Jinks murmured, her cheek against Denis’ sleeve.

At last they tore themselves away. “Don’t wait up for me,” Denis told Peter.

But Peter was not ready for sleep. He got out a book and read it under the green-shaded lamp. It did not, however, hold his interest. His mind was on Jinks and Denis—young Denis whose church, half-built when the boom ended, had been packed in prosperous days to overflowing.

It was in those early days of prosperity that the two men had met. Lou Gorman had brought the young clergyman to tea. “You’ll like him, Peter,” she had said. “He’s different.”

At first Peter had not seen the difference. Denis had seemed to be just one of the many good-looking young men annexed by Lou. But there had been a stormy night when Denis had stayed at Peter’s invitation. And Denis had sat by the fire, and had said things never to be forgotten. Things that had made Peter’s breath catch in his throat, and the room fall away before the vision of a hillside and of a Young Man speaking.

Peter had learned then the Source of Denis’ strength, his simplicity. He had learned since the quality of his friendship. For the bond between them was not so much one of common ideals as of faith in each other. “You keep my feet on the ground,” Denis told Peter. And it was because of Denis that Peter lived at times among the stars!

Denis’ family had been comfortable, if not affluent, for generations. His grandfather had been a great preacher, and the family had hoped that some day his mantle might fall upon Denis. But Denis had had no thought of future honors. He had, indeed, said little to anyone about his aspirations, but the thing he had said to himself was this: “Men must live and die. I should like to show them the way to gallant living—and gallant dying—and not worry about the rest of it.” And he had not worried, even when stocks had gone down and had seriously affected the family fortunes. He had no close relatives. His father and mother had died while he was in college, and there were no brothers or sisters.

Lou Gorman might have fallen in love with Denis if she hadn’t wanted Peter. She had been perfectly frank about that from the beginning. Her pursuit of Peter had been picturesque and somewhat exciting. Peter had felt as if some bright bird followed him on tireless wings. In a way he liked it, and other men had envied him.

Denis had met Jinks in Peter’s office. She had bound up his hand one morning when Peter was out and Denis had been cut by some glass on the beach. That had been the end of Denis’ peace of mind. He had loved—as he did everything else—putting his whole mind to it, wooing Jinks with a poetic fervor which had back of it a passionate tenderness. And Jinks, suddenly awakened, had found her defenses going down before him.

In the midst of it all, the crash had come. No money in Denis’ church. No money anywhere. Peter, with few patients, had little work in his office for Jinks. But he had given her such cases as came his way. Until tonight she had refused absolutely to listen to any word of marriage—“It would not be fair to Denis.”

But now the thing was settled. Or was it?

For Denis’ congregation had been swept away on that receding tide which carried people up from the south of the great cities, the small towns, the countrysides from which they had come, as they had found money growing scarce and scarcer.

Peter’s practice had gone the way of Denis’ congregation. Many of his patients had left their bills unpaid. The natives, except in poignant emergencies, had returned to their former dependence on patent medicines. The town, two miles away, was practically deserted. In the main street, one was faced by closed shops—shops which only a few months before had been filled with a crowd eager to spend—a crowd which had bought gowns from Paris, hats and jewels, linen and lingerie, perfumes. A crowd, coiffured and manicured and massaged into a sort of pseudo-elegance, a crowd which had lived for pleasure, extravagance and luxury.

Now the public square basked desolate in the sunlight—that marvellous sunlight which turns everything to gold and warms the blood into an ecstasy. That, Peter told himself, was the real wealth of Florida. Oh, why couldn’t the world see it—that the rich treasure of this country was in its golden skies and seas, its fragrance, its flowering ... ?

But the world had not seen it, and had gone! Peter felt suddenly desperately alone. The house seemed haunted—by those ghosts of which Denis had spoken; Lou’s ghost dancing in the great dining-room, with head flung back to meet Peter’s eyes with her own, the folds of her turquoise taffeta swishing about him. Her gay voice, her gay gown, the laughter in her eyes! That was Lou’s “line”—gaiety. At times Peter had hated it. But now, with the thought of Jinks and Denis fresh upon him, he longed for all that Lou could give him of love and life and laughter.

Leaving the shadows of the house behind him, he went out on the wide porch. Before him the spacious grounds stretched to the water’s edge. To the right, rounding the curve of the Gulf, were the cleared spaces of the sub-division which had been Peter’s investment. Streets had been laid out through the cleared ground, with street lamps placed at the corners.

But now the lamps were dead. There had never been, indeed, any lights in them. Their white globes were ghostly in the faint shine of the moon. Peter reflected that, in due time, the jungle would swallow them up. Nothing could curb its wild growth when man ceased his fight against it. Some day, in the tangle of it all—its creeping vines, its matted palmettos—the lamps would be lost. Perhaps, too, if Peter left the house, the jungle would sweep over it in a great wash of green, hiding it forever, and holding it, with its futile elegancies, like a lost castle in the depths of a soundless sea.

“Perhaps,” Peter reflected with a sense of panic, “it will some day swallow me up.” That was the dreadfulness of Nature. Might there not be, after all, a germ of truth in the belief of primitive peoples that evil spirits inhabit the jungle and must be reckoned with? Or that other belief of our orthodox forbears in the Devil and his works? Moderns jeer at such seeming simplicity, and hide their fears beneath skepticism and laughter. But the fears are there. Every man knows it. Peter had not been long a doctor, but his dealing with patients had taught him this, that Fear stalks with the best of us.

The moon waned, and the world grew dark. The blank white globes of the street lamps were lost in the blackness. The sense of solitude was frightening. Peter couldn’t stand it. He went into the house and got a candle. Then, with Becky at his heels, he made his way to the nearest lamp post. He stuck the candle inside the globe and lighted it. The dead globe became at once alive. Peter went back and sat on the step. It was good to see the light shining. His feeling of panic subsided. In a few minutes Denis would come, and they would laugh it off together.

But Denis did not come. The candle burned down. When it went out, Peter decided, he would go in. Denis could find his way about, and the door was never locked.

The light flickered and flared, and suddenly Peter found himself leaning forward, listening. Had he seen a moving figure beyond the lamp, or was it one of the ghosts which Denis had imagined?

Becky essayed the slight noise which was her nearest approach to a growl. Peter laid his hand on her collar.

Then, as if materialized from empty space, a girl in white appeared under the lamp.

“Is anyone there?” she called.

“Yes,” Peter stood up. “I’m Dr. Ferry.”

She came swiftly forward, “Can you come with me at once? My father has shot himself....”

Peter ran down the steps. “I’ll be ready in a moment.”

As he led the way into his office, she gave him the hurried details. Her name was Mary Hamilton. She lived at White Feathers. She did not know how badly her father was hurt. She had left him with a colored maid. “There’s no telephone in the house, and Julia can’t drive, so I had to come. There was no other way—I had to ...”

She shivered suddenly with cold and excitement. The gown she wore was low-cut and sleeveless. Peter lifted a coat from its hook in the hall. “Put this on,” he said, “you’ll need it.”

As he held the coat for her, he noted the curl against her neck, a little curl, soft and shining. He noted, too, the way her head was set on her shoulders—nicely. Except for these slight details, his preoccupation was not so much with the girl herself as with the news she had brought.

He got his things together, scribbled a note to Denis, and left it under the light in the living-room, and then went on with Mary to her car. He took the wheel, and they raced through the night.

Peter knew the place they were bound for. A great old house on the bayou. No one could tell whence the name had come; possibly from the huge flock of white herons which, in the early days, had sought the end of the bay. It was a ramshackle edifice, set back from the water, in a grove of live oaks whose limbs were strung with ghastly streamers of gray moss—a desolate spot and a dreary one. For years it had had no occupants. And during those years, a sign hung on the gate had proclaimed that it was for sale or to let. But no one had wanted to live in it.

He asked the girl now, “When did you come?”

“Yesterday. Father bought the place....”

“Bought it?”

“Yes. Furnished. We were frightfully disappointed. ... It’s so old ... and dreadful.”

She stopped, unable to go on. Hitherto she had shown an extraordinary composure, but now Peter saw that the tears were streaming.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s been a rotten deal for you.”

“I don’t care for myself—. It’s—father.”

He was aware of her tenseness, and comforted her. “Don’t worry. I’ll fix him up for you.” But his words were more confident than his expectations. One never knew in such cases whether one would meet life or death at the end of the journey.

A curve in the road had brought them to a bridge that crossed the bayou. The water glimmered with a faint silver sheen. Black clumps of mangroves rose out of it, and between these clumps a boat suddenly appeared. A man was standing in it, using a pole to propel it. It was impossible to see his face, but the tall figure showed strength and grace, and a sort of dark splendor.

Peter said, “Did you see that man?”

“Yes. Who is he?”

“Well, he sold you your house.”

“Boone Musgrave?”

“Yes. Have you met him?”

“No. But I’ve read his letters. Such lying letters—and father believed them.”

“He isn’t alone in being misled by Boone. He’s the only rich man left in our community. He grabbed what the others lost. But he’s picturesque and popular. A sort of robber baron—”

“I hope I shall never meet him.”

“Why?”

“Because if father dies, I shall feel that Boone Musgrave—killed him.”

Her voice was tense. Peter told himself that she was undoubtedly overstressing her sense of grievance. Yet he could not blame her. The sale of White Feathers was a dastardly trick, played on unsuspecting strangers.

There was not time, however, to discuss it, for they had turned into the driveway of the house. When the car stopped, Peter helped Mary out, and followed her through the hall to a room at the back. He heard a man’s voice, and saw the girl bend down, “I’ve brought a doctor, darling....”

Her voice was charming. As he stepped over the threshold, Peter assured himself that the adventure with Mary Hamilton promised possibilities. Then, as he saw the man stretched on the couch, he forgot trivialities in his sense of the seriousness of the case before him.

The patient was raving incoherently. Something more in this, Peter decided, than a wound. Hysteria, or, more likely, a fixed mental disturbance. He would have to stay tonight, and in the morning he would get Jinks.

He said as much to Denis when the latter arrived with the car. “Jinks goes off her case tomorrow morning?”

“Yes.”

“I shall want her here. I’ll stay tonight.”

“I’ll stay with you—”

“You’d better get back and sleep at my house. Old Nan will get your breakfast.”

“Breakfast? Do you think I want to eat, Peter?”

“Why not?”

“I shall thank God—fasting....”

There were moments when Peter could be as understanding as a woman: “For Jinks?”

“Yes.”

Well, it was something to love a woman like that. But it took a man like Denis to do it. As for himself, Peter drew his hand across his forehead in a sudden tired gesture, “Let’s go out and get a breath of air. I’ve given my patient a bromide. He’ll sleep off his hysteria.”

The two men walked to the end of a narrow pier and sat on a rude bench which looked over the water. The water lip-lapped against the wooden piles. Somewhere among the gray mosses a night bird kept up a quavering complaint.

From where they sat, a light could be seen in an upper window of the house.

“Her name is Mary Hamilton,” Peter said.

“The daughter?”

“Yes.”

Denis did not pursue the subject further. Nothing was real to him at the moment but Jinks—Jinks, at the moment of parting, with her wet cheek against his: “It’s not fair to you, Denis. It’s not fair. But I love you....”

The water lip-lapped, the night bird continued its ululations. The two men, busy with their thoughts, sat in silence.

At last Peter spoke, “Her name is Mary Hamilton.”

“You said that before, Peter.”