Читать книгу Silver Slippers - Temple Bailey - Страница 13

CHAPTER SIX
SWEET AND TWENTY

Table of Contents

In the bookshop was a tall ladder with little wheels. By means of it books on the highest shelves could be reached.

Giles, sitting on the topmost step of the ladder on Tuesday morning, had a bird’s-eye view of the tables below him, of the square of sunlight framed by the open door, the moving feet of people on the boardwalk beyond, and a brief glimpse of water between the moving feet.

So absorbed was he in his task, however, that he did not notice when the sky darkened and the feet hurried fast and faster. Four of the feet took refuge in his shop, and a man’s voice said: “There’s no one here. Fancy leaving a shop like this.”

And a woman’s voice: “I’m drenched. Such a sudden shower!”

“You deserved to get wet, Nancy. You would come.”

“And you didn’t want me. But I had to talk to you about Joan.”

“You’ve done more than talk. You’ve nagged unmercifully.”

“Thank you. Yet all my nagging hasn’t done any good. Here you are, engaged to sweet and twenty, and you don’t know how to treat her.”

“You’re making a lot of it.”

“I can’t bear to see Joan hurt.”

“I have told you I didn’t intend to hurt her.”

“But you called her stingy, Drew. And there’s really no reason why the child should not have her slippers mended.”

“She should have bought new ones.”

Giles could see the pair of them plainly now. The woman was without a hat, and had opened that it might dry a gorgeous paper umbrella, on which white storks flew against a background of lettuce green. Her hair was copper-colored, and in the green sweater that she wore was a little line of copper thread which matched the hair. She stood with her hands back of her leaning against the table. “You simply didn’t want to call for the shoes, and you gave her a bit of your temper,” she declared.

“I hate petty economies. You know that, Nancy. You and I have always spent as we pleased.”

“Yes, and you and I know there isn’t much left to spend.”

The man blazed at that. “Well, and if there isn’t? I am going to marry Joan. And she’s worth millions.”

Giles, sitting up aloft, felt the world rock under him ... millions!

He was aware that he was eavesdropping and that he must end it. He made a strategic move, however. He descended the ladder noiselessly, and rounding a bookcase, seemed to have just come in. “Can I do anything for you?” he demanded.

Drew said: “Miss Dudley asked me to get her slippers.”

“Sorry. They are not quite ready.”

“She was to have them today.”

“I will bring them up to the hotel.”

“Tonight? She wants to wear them.”

“Tonight.”

Giles had known he was stretching the truth when he said Joan’s slippers were not ready. Scripps could have finished them in a moment. But was it simply to hand over to this pair those ineffable little shoes that he had waited for this day? Why the morning had seemed glorious, because it was Tuesday and she was coming. And he would see her yet, in spite of the unkind fate which had kept her from him.

Drew and his sister had started out of the shop when Nancy’s eye was caught by a flash of color among certain dingy volumes in a locked cabinet. “What a delectable binding.” She leaned down to look closer, “Thackeray—the Four Georges ... such a nice fat little book, and that red and gold.”

“It’s a first edition,” he said, and laid the book in her hands.

“How much?” she asked.

He named the price and she said, “Outrageous.”

He laughed, “You know it isn’t.”

He found she had a nice taste in leathers, knew a lot about collections, and had made some rare finds of her own. “Picked ’em up for a song. That’s the only kind I dare indulge in.”

She pounced on another, “The Amber Witch ... how adorable! May I see it?”

He got it out of the case for her, “It’s not for sale.”

Drew, who had been showing signs of impatience while they talked, broke in rather insolently, “You’d sell it if you got your price for it, wouldn’t you?”

“It hasn’t any price.”

“You mean that you won’t take any offer?”

“Yes.”

“Why not?”

His tone was insufferable, but Giles, leaning back against a table, surveyed him with calm eyes. “I won’t sell because I got the book from my grandfather’s collection. He lived in Salem and pleased himself by studying the history of witchcraft. He was a gentleman and a scholar.”

After he had said it, Giles hated himself. Why should he fling out the facts of his ancestry in that crude way, as if he had to prove it? He was glad when Nancy interposed, before her brother could speak. “Lucky for me The Amber Witch isn’t for sale. I might pawn my jewels to get it.”

She smiled at Giles, and he found himself rather liking her in spite of her storks and her lettuce-green and the too-high color in her cheeks. “My tastes run beyond the limits of my pocket-book,” she added.

After that, she held the conversation, while her brother stared moodily at the floor. Giles wished they would go. He wanted to be alone to consider this matter which had seemed to be so amazingly thrust upon him.

So this was the man the dryad was going to marry? For this man the light had been in her eyes as she had bent over the book, the rose in her cheeks. This was the man with whom she had danced in the moonlight. This man with his impeccable clothes, his air of owning the world, his abominable insolence, was, Heaven save the mark—Apollo!

When at last they left him, he swung his foot as he sat on a corner of the table and considered it. A schoolteacher with millions! And the man was marrying her for her money. Would take to himself all that lovely innocence, and give in exchange his egotism, his sophistication, his uneven tempers.

He found himself pacing the shop like a caged animal. He couldn’t get the thing off his mind. That exquisite youth and idealism linked to materialistic middle-age. The thought of it was preposterous!

There was, too, the somewhat confusing conflict between what the girl had told him and the things he had overheard. He had had it from her lips that she had earned her living, yet here was her lover crediting her with a fortune.

Her lover ...! Giles, sitting down to his desk, found it difficult to keep his mind on his accounts. There were few customers. Such as came in he waited on, then went back to his uncongenial task. He hated figures, but felt he could not afford a book-keeper.

On a sudden impulse, he dropped his pen, closed the ledger, and took from a drawer a journal in which it had become his habit in his somewhat lonely life to write of the things which happened in the day.

He began without preface: “She shall not marry him. That is as settled in my mind as if I had the right, like a guardian in an old melodrama, to forbid the banns. And why shouldn’t I forbid them? Why should not any man of chivalrous purpose set himself against such a catastrophe? If I saw a ship heading for the rocks, wouldn’t I have a right to save it? And this child must be saved. I have met her but once, but I am as sure of what she is as I would be if I had known her forever. Everything about her speaks of simplicity and sincerity, and grace of spirit. Married to such a man, in a month she would hate him. It would be his darkness against her light. His worldliness against her innocence. She would never have the power to draw him up to her. He might have the power to drag her down ...

“In finding a way to save her, I shall ask nothing for myself, except perhaps a little fire of friendship at which to warm my hands. I can ask no more than that. I would not if I could. Such an undertaking must be selfless ...

“Scripps would call me a fool. Perhaps I am a fool. But I see no other way. Her little ship of life is heading for the rocks. I cannot stand by and see it wrecked ...”

He put the book away and going downstairs later, Giles further relieved his mind by describing the precious pair to Scripps. “And people like that come and high-hat us ... you and me whose grandfathers were sailing ships when theirs were digging potatoes. Oh, you should have seen them, Scripps. The kind you and I have laughed about at Trouville and Nice and Paris—the type is unmistakable. Bizarre and self-satisfied.”

“I know. Amélie always hated them,” Scripps’ voice died away. He remembered a day at Trouville with Amélie. It had been cool and clear and she had worn a rose-colored wrap. The next night when he had gone back to the trenches he had thought of the coolness and clearness and of Amélie’s face like a pearl against the rose.

He put the memory from him. “If Miss Dudley’s friends had waited a moment the shoes would have been ready.”

“I didn’t want them to wait. I am going to take them to her. I want to see her again, Scripps.”

Scripps flashed a glance at him. So that was it. Giles was thinking about that girl. He would fall in love with her. And then what would happen?

For Giles had not told his friend what he had overheard. He had not told him that Joan was engaged, or that she had money. He had in fact said nothing except that her friends had come for the slippers, and that he wondered that they could be her friends.

While the two of them talked, the telephone rang. Giles answered it and came back. “It was Margarida. She says that Amélie wants me. She has grown very excited and insistent. Thinks that something has happened to me, and that she must see me.”

“You’ll go, of course?”

“If I do, it means that I must close the shop.”

“Well, why not?” Scripps argued, his voice shaken and almost hysterical, “why not? When you come to it, why are you selling books, Giles? Just to keep me company.”

“What better can I do than sell books?”

“Oh, there are a thousand things ... travel, adventure. If I didn’t tie you, and Amélie.”

They were silent for a moment, then Giles said, with gentleness, “Don’t mull over things, old man. Do you think I should be happy, leaving you to bear it?”

“Oh, God help us,” said Scripps, brokenly, and his head went down in his hands.

Giles a little later, driving the gray boat towards the bright waters felt that only God could help them. He had a rather simple faith, held close in his heart in spite of all the things which might have made him skeptical; Amélie, Scripps, the great war. And now here was this lovely child, whom he had met once, seen twice, drifting towards a life of inevitable disillusionment. God must help ... give strength and direction to the vague plans that were forming in his brain. As Giles reached the island and tied up his boat to the pier, the name painted on it came to him with new meaning—The Conqueror. One must fight if one meant to win ... we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.