Читать книгу Silver Slippers - Temple Bailey - Страница 15

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Joan had not gone for her slippers because her aunt that day had been in a demanding mood. Adelaide had insisted that her niece stay upstairs for breakfast and read the morning news, “I must save my eyes and Farley mumbles her words.”

Later, Mrs. Delafield had decided to go to Boston. She wanted to pick out bridge prizes. She and Joan would, she declared, have lunch in town, and return to Granitehead late in the afternoon.

Joan had hated the program. She had planned to swim with Drew, to sit on the sands and talk to him, to ride with him in the afternoon, or motor to some charming tea-house where they might be away from the prying eyes in the hotel—away from Rose Carter, who so often managed to make a trio of their duet, away from everything which had seemed of late to clutter up her life and keep her from her lover.

For no sooner had she arrived in Granitehead than she had known that the idyllic days in Maine were over. Drew was much in demand. Everybody knew him and he was popular. He went among the hotel guests, gay, laughing, a good fellow. While there had been no formal announcement of the engagement, people had begun to take it for granted. Drew’s attentions were unmistakable, and when her friends spoke of it Adelaide did not deny that an understanding existed. The thing which troubled Joan, however, was that she didn’t care for Drew’s friends. Most of the women were like Nancy and Rose Carter, good-looking, smartly gowned, and with a sort of hard brightness of manner. None of them were young, although with their short skirts and short hair they attained something of the effect of youth. As for the men they were absorbed in sports and spent their days on the links or the tennis courts, sailing their boats in the yacht club races, and at night giving themselves whole-heartedly to flirtation. They didn’t seem to care with whom they flirted; married or single they sought simply the thrill of the moment. It had apparently no more meaning than that. Joan couldn’t get on with the men in the least. She hated their light love-making. Now and then Drew laughed at her. “My dear, you shouldn’t take it so seriously. It’s just a game.”

“But do you want them to do it?”

“Oh, well, it’s nice to have you popular. And I’m not jealous.”

And now this day which she had hoped would be her own was to be spoiled by a trip to Boston. She had run downstairs after breakfast to have a word with Drew, and had found him sitting on the porch with Nancy and reading the stock reports. She could not know, of course, that it was the stock reports which had set his temper on edge.

When she had made her request, “Will you call for my slippers, Drew? I’ve got to go to Boston,” she had been startled to find herself precipitated into a situation which astounded her. Drew had been most unpleasant about it. He had been, in fact, unpardonably rude. She should not, it seemed, have had her slippers mended. People didn’t. It savoured, Drew emphasized, of miserliness. And he had said these things sharply as if she were a naughty child.

She had stood very still after that, the hot blood staining her cheeks, then she had turned and fled. Upstairs she had found Adelaide ready for the trip, and with trembling hands had donned her own hat and coat. The telephone rang just as she was leaving her room. Drew was at the other end of the wire. “I’m a darned idiot, darling. Come down and I’ll beg your pardon.”

But she had to go to Boston and there was no time for anything but a squeeze of her hand as he put her in the car. “Come back soon,” he had whispered, and her heart had leaped in her breast, and for a moment she had been happy.

The reaction had come, however, during the long ride. Oh, how could he have said such things to her if he loved her? She felt as if she never again wanted to see the slippers. She would buy a new pair, and fling the others into the sea. She wanted no reminder of that awful moment.

Yet, might there not be other moments? If Drew had done it once, why not again? Nothing in the wide world would have made her speak to him as he had spoken to her. Nothing. She was ready to excuse him, she knew he had faults, but there had been that in his manner which had deeply offended her. Joan was gentle, but she had a keen sense of her own dignity and what was due it. She had done nothing to call forth such invective. She knew that in all the intimate relations of life there will be, inevitably, friction, but she knew, too, that there are certain amenities which must be preserved if two people are to retain their mutual respect. Drew had not observed them, and she had been not only hurt but repelled.

As the day wore on she had helped Adelaide choose the prizes, had eaten her lunch, had bought another pair of slippers. Through all of it her mouth had been dry, her cheeks hot, there had been an almost physical ache at her heart. She did not know that the deadly thing which gripped her was fear of disillusionment. Her lover had been her god, she could not bear to think him less than that.

When she reached home there were flowers waiting for her, and written on a card, “For my lovely child ...”

She dressed for dinner and when she went down, she found Drew waiting for her. Without a word he put his hand on her arm and guided her to a deserted card room, still and dark with its curtains drawn against the sun outside ... There he took her in his arms. “I was a brute,” he said.

She clung to him. She was not crying, but her breath came in little shivering sighs. He smoothed her hair with a tenderness which soothed and comforted her. “My little child ... my dearest ...”

His penitence was complete. “I’ve a nasty temper. Ask Nancy, and she’ll tell you. But I never want to hurt you. You must believe that, Joan. I’ve been miserable.”

He meant it. Even while he had talked to Nancy in Armiger’s shop he had been suffering with the knowledge of what he must have made himself seem in Joan’s eyes. He could not bear to think that he had lessened in the least the adoration which she had accorded him.

And now when she said: “It was silly of me to care so much,” he answered ardently, “I love you for caring. You must never stop caring, my sweet.”

They spoke then about the slippers. The man would bring them up, Drew said. They had not been ready. Joan, with her lashes lowered over her eyes, whispered, “I wish I could never see them again.” And Drew had laughed at that and kissed her. And it had seemed to them then that the thing was ended.

It was during dinner that Rose Carter came over to the table which the Delafields and the Hallams shared. She wore a sheathlike gown of gold tissue, in her ears were gold coins, a wreath of them banded her sleek head. “I dressed for the costume ball,” she said, “because I knew I wouldn’t have time to do it after dinner.”

“How nice you look,” said Nancy.

“What do you think I am?”

Drew ventured: “The Yellow Peril?”

“Guess again.”

“Gold-digger.”

She laughed. “You’re getting warmer. But I’m not going to let you guess any more. There’s a contest, you know, and prizes. It wouldn’t be fair to give myself away.”

“You never give yourself away,” Drew said, lightly.

She flashed a provocative glance at him. “Perhaps I don’t. But I didn’t come over to let you analyse me. What I want to know is whether you’ll drive me down to Marion Stickley’s. I’d like to have her come over for the dance and there isn’t any one to bring her.”

There was a second’s hesitation before Drew said, “Of course.”

Joan felt a hot flame of indignation. Not against Drew. There was nothing else he could do, was there? But Rose shouldn’t have asked him. She had such a calm way of claiming him. Of setting Joan aside, though she knew of the engagement. Drew had said she did. “She’s an old friend, and interested.”

Joan had decided that Rose was more than interested. It was not that she, Joan, was jealous. But there were rights which belonged to a fiancée on which no other woman should encroach. And Rose did encroach. But there was nothing to be done about it. And Joan, on the surface, seemed serene and acquiescent.

After dinner she went at once upstairs, and it was nine o’clock when she came down. Drew had not arrived. Nancy and Adelaide were already playing bridge in the card-room. Adelaide wore the costume of a French marquise—much rose-color, and panniers, and diamond buckles, and her white transformation further supplemented by curls and puffs. Nancy, as Night, had managed to invest the costume with a touch of her own individuality—midnight blue chiffon with rhinestone stars twinkling amid its draperies, and a comet of them crowning her copper locks.

Joan was, very simply, a naiad—in a shimmer of pale green and silver, with crystal beads dripping. She wore the new slippers and a wrap of silver net. The old slippers had not come. Farley had asked for them at the office, and had been told that no parcel had been delivered.

Joan stopped for a moment by the bridge table, then made her way to the porch. A faint light still lingered over the harbor, and a little moon sailed high. Waiting for Drew, she sat down in a big chair not far from the steps, and it was as she sat there, wrapped in her web of silver, that Giles Armiger saw her.

She was leaning back in her chair, her cheek against the cushioned back, her eyes gazing unseeing into the night.

“Miss Dudley,” he said.

She looked up surprised, then recognized him. “You’ve brought my slippers?”

“Yes. Am I too late? I was unavoidably detained.”

She stuck out a foot. “I bought these today in Boston. So I didn’t need the others.”

He handed her the parcel, “Will you forgive me if I tell you I have put in with the shoes a little book which I thought you might like. It is an abridged history of Granitehead ... perhaps when you have read it you will understand why my friend Scripps mends shoes and why I am in a bookshop.”

He was standing before her with the ease of a man of the world. He wore white tennis trousers and a white turtle-necked sweater. His head was bare. She was aware that he was very good-looking.

She asked, “Why shouldn’t your friend Scripps mend shoes and why shouldn’t you sell books?”

“Well, people don’t so much in these days, do they? But it is a throwback with both of us to our ancestry.”

“Tell me about it. How is it a ‘throwback’?”

“You will find it in the book.”

“But I’d rather have you tell me.”

She had not asked him to sit down. She couldn’t, of course, Giles decided. If any one came up how could she present him? And some one might be coming up at any moment. He wanted her to himself. He resolved to put it to the touch.

“Will you walk with me a bit, while we talk about it?”

He felt her surprise, and added, “I know I am asking an unconventional thing. We haven’t been properly introduced. But all Granitehead will give you my credentials, if you want them.”

She laughed and rose at once. “I think Keats made us properly known to each other, don’t you? And if he didn’t, you are Giles Armiger and I am Joan Dudley. And that’s enough formality, and I’ll go as far with you as the pavilion.”

He swung along beside her as they followed a path which led to a small eminence from which the pavilion overlooked the harbor. It was a still night with a slight mist drifting in. Through it the lights on the boats shone like pale stars. “There was a time when there were no pleasure craft in the harbor,” Giles explained, “only fishing boats and great ships—loaded with teas and spices and silks. It was the masters of those ships who built some of the big houses which are still standing, and most of us have in our homes some reminders of their voyages—ivory, porcelain and lacquer. You’ll find them in the humblest cottages—for the big ships were manned by our men—upstanding sailors, fine fellows. It is said that the sailors of Granitehead rowed Washington across the Delaware.”

He stopped, “Am I boring you with this?”

Her voice came out of the dark, eager, interested. “Oh, no. Go on.”

“The Revolution took most of our men away, and other towns got the trade. Shipping declined, and smaller boats began to go to the Grand Banks. Those were the days of storm and stress for the women, of weary waiting. But there was money in it all, and our men defied the dangers, until the day came when they turned to making shoes.”

“Making shoes?”

“Yes, except for a few of the old aristocrats the whole town made shoes. Each house had its own little shop and the finished products were sent to the great factories which supplied the materials. And no one lost caste because he was a village cobbler,” he gave a short laugh, “Scripps’ little place is the last outpost of the old order. Granitehead works no more with its hands. When the yacht clubs were built and the hotels, new ideals came in of luxury and high living. The sea and the little shops satisfy our people no longer. They have turned their backs on shoes and ships—and keep summer boarders.”

She was not sure he was in earnest. “Oh, well, why shouldn’t they?” she demanded.

“There’s been a loss of sturdy independence,” he asserted, “perhaps it is the trend of the times. But who am I to set myself against it? Scripps and I were college classmates and went overseas together. When we came back, I had no ambition left, only my taste for books, and Scripps was broken, in body and soul ...” and his face was set in stern lines, “so we decided to do what our grandfathers did ... and are rather liking it.”

There was silence for a moment then Giles spoke in a lighter tone: “But the world moves, and we can’t look back. I might shout to the stars, but I couldn’t change things, could I?”

“Perhaps you wouldn’t if you could.”

“Perhaps not ...”

A change of wind cleared the harbor suddenly. It seemed to burst on them like a spectacle, its lights wavering against the dark sky and in the darker waters. Along the shore on both sides the illumined windows of the clubs and hotels and great houses formed an almost unbroken line of brilliance. At the far end of the peninsula the great globe of the lighthouse hung like a moon among the clouds.

“My cousin lives in the lighthouse,” Giles told Joan, “or rather, in the little house next to the light. It’s a bit lonely for her with that wide strip of sand between her house and the summer cottages, and in winter there’s not a soul for miles.”

“But what makes her live there?”

“Her husband is the keeper, and she has hens and a garden ... and a baby, and she is altogether a very happy little Dilly.”

“Oh, I’m sure I shouldn’t like it.”

“Why not?”

“There’s the loneliness.”

“But love lives there—with Dilly.”

In the silence which ensued the music drifted up to them from the hotel. “I am afraid I must be going down,” Joan said. “They’ll be expecting me, and I have promised some dances.”

She would dance of course with—Apollo! Giles grew a bit desperate with the thought of it. He dared not ask if he might come and see her. So he said: “Will you drop into the shop some day, and let me show you my treasures? And if Scripps is out, I’ll introduce you to old Peter.”

“Peter?”

“Our pet gull.”

“Why must I wait until Scripps is out to meet Peter?”

“Scripps shrinks from meeting strangers. He was in aviation during the war, and fell with his plane, he has been very slow in getting back ...”

They had come to the hotel steps. The porch was deserted, everybody was in the ballroom, for the costume dance was on.

Joan held out her hand, “Thank you for the little book. I will return it when I have read it.”

“I’d like to have you keep it.”

“Oh, may I? And may I come and thank you?”

Joan, making her way to the ballroom, wondered why Drew was not waiting for her. Surely he must be back by this time! She stopped at the card table to ask, “Have you seen Drew?”

Mrs. Carter who was playing with Adelaide said, “They telephoned. Marion wasn’t ready and they’ll be late.”

It was nearly ten. In the ballroom people were going about between dances with pencils and pads of paper. There was much hilarity as they listed titles. As Joan appeared in the door, a little group broke up and hurried to meet her.

One of the men whispered, “Undine?” and wrote that down, and one of the women guessed “Mermaid?” out loud and was chagrined when Joan shook her head.

And still Drew did not come. Joan had promised him every other dance. Hence at alternate intervals she was left high and dry. In one of these intervals a voice at her elbow said: “May I have this?”

She turned, and gave it to the man who asked. She danced beautifully, and as she made the rounds of the room with him, there came to her a sudden resolve. Since Drew was not there to claim his dances, she would not keep them but give them all to others. She would have a good time in spite of this deadly sense of desertion. Drew should not have stayed away. Everyone would see him when he came in with Rose. And it wasn’t fair that she would have to seem neglected. Drew should have telephoned direct to her, have made his excuses, not have left her with his name scratched against all those dances, to sit them out alone.

And why shouldn’t she play the game, since Drew was playing it? She looked up at her partner from under drooping lashes. “How well you dance,” she said. That was the way the game began. She had heard other women say that. And had always thought it silly!

It was nearly eleven when Drew arrived. She saw him in the door with Rose and Marion Stickley. Marion had on a most amazing costume. A futurist affair of purple and red, and over her own hair was a wig of red silk. She looked like one of the lanky dolls one sees in the gift shop windows. Everybody rushed towards her. Everybody but Joan, who stood talking with her partner.

She saw Drew leave the others and come towards her. “Sorry we were so late. But Marion couldn’t get into her costume when it came. We had a hilarious time fitting her wig on her, while her maid did things to the dress. Did you ever see anything so original? She’ll get the prize, of course.”

“It’s original,” Joan agreed, brightly, “but it’s a shuddery sort of thing. She’s like something out of a bad dream.”

The music began again. The partner drifted off, and Drew put his arm about Joan. “This is ours, isn’t it?”

She shook her head, “I didn’t know you were coming, I have promised it to someone else, Drew.”

He held out his hand, “Let me look at your card.”

She gave it to him. He read the names, “This isn’t the one I filled. What did you do, get another?”

“Yes. When you didn’t come—I tore the other up.”

He looked at her, then laughed, teasingly, triumphantly, “You did?” he shredded the card he held into tiny pieces and tossed them into the air. “That’s that, my darling, you are going to dance all the rest with me.”

She found herself dancing with him. He was saying things in her ear. Things that made her blush and tremble. She was his, and didn’t she know it? “Mine, mine ...” was his reiteration. It seemed to beat with the music.

And later, when the dance was over, he took her with him to a far end of the porch and had it out with her. “Don’t you know that Rose means nothing to me?”

“But she takes you away from me.”

“She can never take me so far that I won’t come back. And you can never go so far that I won’t follow you. You know that, Joan, don’t you?”

He put a hand under her chin and turned her face up to him. “You know it, don’t you?”

She whispered, “Yes,” and with a sudden movement his arms closed around her. “Say you love me, say it, say it ...”

When she went upstairs at last, she was, she told herself, happy. Drew loved her, why doubt him? And she must not expect to have him to herself as she had had him in Maine.

When she was undressed she sat for a long time by the window, looking out over the harbor. Darkness had taken the place of the almost fantastic illumination of the earlier hours, but at the end of the peninsula the great globe on the lighthouse glowed steadily.

It was this steadiness which stilled gradually Joan’s pulses. The words of the man who had talked with her in the pavilion came back to her. “Love lives there with Dilly.” She wondered about this Dilly who lived there, serene, content. If only her own life could be like that with Drew.

It was almost morning when she went to sleep. The dawning light showed tears on her cheeks. And she sighed a little as she slept.