Читать книгу Silver Slippers - Temple Bailey - Страница 8

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They were to motor down to Granitehead. Dixon, Mrs. Delafield’s chauffeur, was glad to get away.

“Beastly hole,” he said to Farley.

“Well, it is.”

“Not a movie or nuthin’.”

Farley’s hands went up, “I’m thanking Heaven Mrs. Delafield’s tired of it.”

On the morning of departure, Joan got up early and went out of doors. She walked to the edge of the cliff and saw the dawn sweep over the sea—the sharp, steel spread of it, across which were flung, presently, the golden banners of the rising sun.

Oh, the world was so beautiful! Life was so beautiful! Joan, high up on the cliff, stretched out her arms ...!

From a window in the log cabin, Penelope Sears saw the girl’s worshipping gesture. The older woman had often watched the sun rise and never without deep emotion. Of all those in the house, she was the only one who could understand what was in the child’s heart. Not one of the others, Drew or Adelaide would have known that the loveliness of the dawning was linked in Joan’s mind with the loveliness of the future which was before her. Because of her own happiness she saw God in his Heaven, glory in the universe, good in everything!

When Joan came back from the cliff, she found Penelope in the garden, “So you’re going today, my dear?”

“Yes, Mrs. Sears, and I don’t want to.”

“I wish you could stay. But you’ll be coming back? You must come back.”

“We’ll both come, Drew and I. We will make a pilgrimage on the anniversary of the day we found each other.”

Penelope had not meant that. She waited until she was ready to go in to say: “You’ll remember, dear child, that I am always your friend ... that my latchstring is always out ... and come if you need me.”

“I will.”

“Is that a promise?”

“Yes.”

She gave Joan an armful of flowers to arrange for the table—delphiniums and mignonette and rose-colored phlox, and, as the two of them walked towards the house, Drew Hallam emerging from it saw Joan in a bower of beauty, like a lady in a poem.

When he came up to her, he kissed her. Penelope had gone on and they were alone. “You were up with the birds.”

“I had to say ‘good-bye’ to everything.”

“You could have said it later.”

“I wanted to be alone.”

“Why not with me?”

“Oh, well, I thought you might think me—silly.”

“We’ll say it now, together,” he drew her towards the cliff. The fragrances of the flowers she carried mingled with the fresh fragrances from the sea.

“How shall I say it?” he asked.

“Like this,” she made a trumpet of her hands and spoke through it. “We’re coming again. We’re coming again.”

“But are we?”

“Of course. Every year—a pilgrimage.”

“My dear, what a romantic program.”

“Don’t you like it?”

“Yes. But place has nothing to do with my love for you.”

“But this place, Drew? It was the beginning.”

He made a trumpet of his hands. “We’re coming again ... We’re coming again!”

The echo which returned to him had a hollow sound. “We’re coming again ... we’re coming again ...” It was as if some old sea monster took up the cry and flung it back in a spasm of satiric laughter.

While they were all at breakfast the sky darkened. Penelope, weather-wise, remarked: “I’m afraid there’ll be rain.”

“If there is,” Adelaide complained, “I shall tell Joan what I think of her. It was her idea to motor.”

“You’ll love it, darling.”

“How do you know? I am beginning to hate it already. I had to get up early this morning, and my nerves are on edge.”

As the day wore on, Penelope’s prophecy proved true. The rain streamed and the sea was lashed into fury by the storm. “If the gods keep me until I get under shelter,” Adelaide said, vindictively, “I’ll stay there until it stops.”

They had had their lunch at a picturesque tea-room and had left before the rain began. “We’d better make Portsmouth, if we can,” Drew stated, and exerted himself after that to keep Mrs. Delafield amused. He talked well, and his worldly-mindedness met the worldly-mindedness of the old woman. Joan wondered a little as she listened, it was all so foreign to the things she knew. But she was too happy to be critical. She knew that never for a moment did Drew forget that she was near—there was the glance of his eye for her, the turn of his head and the flash of his smile, the clasp of his hand over her curled fingers.

Conversation flagged before the trip was ended. Adelaide napped. Nancy yawned, and Drew sank into a sort of bored apathy.

But Joan was not bored. Quite unabashed, she laid her head against her lover’s shoulder and smiled up at him, “I’d like to ride like this—forever.”

He touched her cheek with a caressing finger, “I’d give my kingdom for a cigarette,” was his only response, but she was satisfied.

When they reached the big hotel near Portsmouth, Adelaide announced, “I meant what I said, I shall stay here until the storm is over.”

“Our reservations are made at Granitehead,” Drew reminded her.

“What of it?”

“We’ll have to pay for them.”

“Of course,” Adelaide entered the elevator on Farley’s arm and went serenely to her room. Double bills had no terrors for her? She spent as she pleased, and her income was always equal to her extravagances.

But Drew, having dressed for dinner, rapped on his sister’s door. “Look here, Nance,” he said, when he was admitted, “how’s the bank account?”

“As bad as ever.”

“And there’ll be double bills because the old girl hates the rain. She really ought to pay our expenses.”

“Rather difficult to suggest, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he was moody and showed it, sticking his hands in his pockets and gazing at the floor.

Nancy, touching her lips with color, asked, presently, “Are you marrying Joan for her money?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Because if you are, you’d better find someone without a heart to break.”

“I’m not going to break her heart. And besides she may not have the money.”

Nancy turned and looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“Just what I said. She may not have the money. There are no legal adoption papers and no assurance that she is mentioned in the will.”

“Yet you are taking the chance?”

“Yes. I am taking the chance. I am fond of the child, although I suppose you won’t believe it.”

“You’ll never be able to stand poverty.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Why borrow trouble. We’ll be nice to the old girl, which should help, shouldn’t it?”

After dinner, Adelaide and the Hallams met some people they knew—a Mrs. Carter and her daughter, Rose. Adelaide at once proposed a game of bridge: “We four women. Drew and Joan can dance.”

Rose Carter was a slim, smooth creature, of perhaps thirty. She was just back from Paris and wore black with pearls. Her hair was shingled to show her well-shaped head, and she had thin, flexible red lips and a white skin.

When she was dummy, she danced with Drew.

“Who is the little girl?” she demanded.

“Joan Dudley. I am going to marry her.”

“Marry her? Good heavens!”

“What makes you say that, Rose?”

“Marriage and you! You aren’t made for it.”

He wanted to say: “You thought once that I was.” But of course he couldn’t. Rose had been the heroine of his war romance. Ten years ago when she was twenty. She had been in Red Cross work in France, and there had been the glamour of it. But neither of them had had money, and the thing had ended.

She was still attractive, however, and her cleverness amused him. When she went back to play her hand, he sat beside her, looking on. Joan on the other side of him, wished he would ask her to dance, and presently he did it. “You little featherweight,” he flattered, as they moved to the rhythm of the music.

The Carters were, it was discovered, on their way to Granitehead. It was decided that, if it was raining in the morning, Rose should take Adelaide’s place in the car, and Mrs. Delafield and Mrs. Carter would go on by train, with Farley, of course, in attendance.

The storm continued through the night, and the next day when the limousine left the hotel, Rose was in it, a striking figure in her orange coat and with a helmet of orange-colored felt molded to fit her head. She sat beside Nancy, but she talked to Drew. And he talked with her and laughed a lot, more, perhaps, Joan noticed, than on the day before. But she was not jealous. She was, indeed, filled with a great content. Now and then Drew’s eyes rested on her and the look in them made her heart beat faster. Once when the wind blew cool, he folded her wrap about her. “Lovely child,” he whispered, and again, “I like you in that white cape. It’s charming.”

It was after they entered the North Shore Drive below Gloucester that something happened to the car. Dixon got down and tinkered and tapped. After a while Drew climbed out, and came back to report: “We’ll have to telephone to a garage.”

The rain had stopped. On each side of them hemlock groves covered the low hills between the highway and the rocky shore. Rose suggested that they walk about a bit. “Come on, Drew. It’s deadly sitting here.”

He held out a hand to Joan. “You’ll come, too?”

But Nancy objected. “I’m afraid to stay alone.”

“Why should you stay?”

“I’m wearing thin shoes and it’s wet.”

“Dixon will be back in a moment.”

It ended, however, by Joan’s offer to remain with Nancy.

“Sure you don’t mind?” Drew asked.

“Not a bit,” she smiled at him. What did she care who walked beside him, when he left his heart with her?

When the others had gone, Nancy apologized, “You wanted to go. And I’m a selfish pig.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I am, and I know it. And I want you to like me.”

“I do like you.”

“Well, I’m not a really likeable person. But I’m honest in my friendships. And I kept you here to say something to you. You mustn’t think Drew perfect. He isn’t. And you’ll be happier if you just take him for what he is—with all his faults. And love him, as I do, in spite of them.”

There was a waver of emotion in Nancy’s voice. Joan said with earnestness, “I shall love him whatever happens.”

“I hope so. I want you to be happy. He ... hasn’t always known how to be happy, Joan. I wish you might show him ...”

Dixon came back just then with a man from a nearby garage. Together they did things to the engine. When they got it in working order, Dixon announced that in a few minutes it would be ready. “Shall I look for Mr. Hallam?”

“I’ll go,” Joan said, “I’ll be glad of the walk.”

She sped up the path which led through the hemlock grove. It was only a thread of path and when she reached the top of the hill she found it hard to follow. Under the dark trees with their wet nerveless branches was deep gloom. After a time she came out on the rocks and saw the sea beyond. Clouds were piled high on the horizon and thrown upon them was the red stain of the afterglow. Far to the right a lighthouse glimmered in the gathering dusk. It was very still, with the ominous stillness which comes before a storm. Not a soul was in sight. Joan was gripped by a feeling of panic. She was desperately afraid of storms.

Then, suddenly, the silence was broken by the rackety noise of a motor engine, and cutting across the darkening waters came a long gray boat with bright brasses. A man stood up in it, steering. He had a straight, boyish figure, and the wind blew his hair back. Joan had a sense of having seen him before. She leaned forward looking at him, a white and slender figure against the blackness behind her.

The man in the boat saw her and raised his hand in a gesture of warning. She turned and met the rush of a mighty wind. The tops of the trees were flattened by the weight of it ... the strength of it seemed to push her back as if it would topple her into the sea.

She began to run. As she came again into the grove, the branches of the hemlocks swept back and forth like gigantic brooms. The air was filled with a ghastly greenness. She stumbled over underbrush and caught her cape on the bushes. It was dreadful to be there alone in all that noise and chaos.

“Drew,” she called, “Drew, Drew, where are you?”

Her breath was almost gone when she at last reached the road and saw Nancy peering out from the car. Dixon hurried to meet her.

“I couldn’t find them,” she panted, as she came up.

“They are coming now,” Dixon told her.

She saw them then, running down a path to the left of the one she had followed. Rose had her hat off. Her cheeks were reddened by the wind and her eyes shone. Her blown-about hair gave her a charming air of disorder. Drew had hold of her hand, helping her. They were laughing like two children.

They romped up to the car. “We went farther than we thought,” Drew said, “we had a great time getting back.”

Joan was standing in the road. “I went to find you, and I ... couldn’t ...” her voice shook.

He gave her a sharp glance, “Frightened?”

She nodded, unable to speak.

With a sudden movement he held her close. “You poor little thing.”

The storm came booming down like great guns. There was thunder now and lightning, and the rain rushing in sheets. The car as they sought its shelter swayed and shook. But Joan was not afraid. Her lover was beside her. His strength was hers, and his tenderness.

It was not until that night when she was safe in her room at the Granitehead hotel that she thought of the man in the boat. How quick he had been to warn her, and where had she seen him? She lay for a long time wide-eyed in the darkness before she placed him. The boy of her dream had been like that ... with his hand up, and the wind blowing his hair, and the red light in the sky above him.