Читать книгу Wallflowers - Temple Bailey - Страница 10

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At noon on the day after Sandra read the advertisement, Rufus Fiske came into the great Library on Capitol Hill and made his way to an exhibit of etchings on the second floor. He would see them before he lunched, then settle down to a season of work in the alcove in the reading-room where a desk had been assigned to him.

He was to meet Williamson later and complete the purchase of a cheap little car, then ride out into the country to inspect such small houses as might promise shelter for himself and for his cat.

The etchings were worth seeing, and it was one o’clock before he left the gallery where they were displayed, walked to the top of the grand stairway, and stood looking down at the sightseers below who studied the signs of the Zodiac set in the floor, or stared up at the mural decorations and at the procession of enchanting marble children which decorate the balustrade.

Gradually there emerged from the midst of the indefinite individuals who composed the crowd, the very definite figure of a girl. She was standing on the lowest step of the right wing of the stairway. She had the air of waiting for some one. She kept looking this way and that and up and down.

It was during one of these ocular excursions that she glanced up and caught Rufus’ gaze. She gazed back for a startled moment, then a burning blush swept over the whiteness of her cheeks.

Rufus wondered why she blushed. His glance had been casual. Yet there had been that startled response to it. Oh, well, she was probably some self-conscious little thing waiting for her lover, all a-flutter with the thought that the world was watching.

Without seeming to observe her, he was aware that her small, close hat was green and that her tie was of the same clear hue. Shining locks of copper-colored hair came out from under the bright hat. As she had looked up at him he had noted the long-lashed eyes as unclouded as a child’s.

She began to ascend the stairway at the same moment that he began to descend. They met half-way, and astoundingly she spoke his name.

“Mr. Fiske!”

He stopped at once, “I beg your pardon?”

“Mr. Fiske ... ! May I talk to you for a few moments?”

How frightened she was! He could see her heart beat in her throat.

“Mr. Fiske, I live in the same apartment house that you do, on the other side of the court. My sister works for Mr. Maulsby. Last night, when she came home, she brought a magazine. I read it. And I found an advertisement I think you ought to see.”

He reflected, somewhat cynically, that her method of approach was at least original! He found himself murmuring bromidically, “An advertisement?”

“Yes. I have it in my bag.”

She opened her bag and began to search for it. He was aware of her embarrassment and aware, too, of a certain excitement which made her awkward in separating the paper she sought from the others in the bag.

Rufus, looking down at her, had a sense of something familiar in her aspect. Where had he seen her? Suddenly it came to him. She was the little girl who had waved to her mother! The one who looked like “The Boy in Red!” He hoped he was not going to be disappointed in her. She had seemed such a child, yet here she was, apparently making an opportunity to meet him.

She found the paper and handed it to him. He read a marked paragraph, and when he raised his head, his eyes were blazing.

“Has anyone seen this?”

“No.”

“Why did you bring it to me?”

“I thought you ought to know. Doady told me about the ivory figures. That you had sold them to Mr. Maulsby. I haven’t said a word to anybody. I was on the balcony and heard you tell your friend that you came up here in the afternoons. It seemed better to speak to you away from home.”

While she thought out her halting sentences, his blazing eyes seemed to challenge her motives.

“What do you think? That I am trying to hide something?”

“No,” steadily. “I shouldn’t have come if I had thought that. Mr. Fiske, I don’t know just why I came. I only felt that you would want to see it before other people did. So that you could explain.”

“There isn’t anything to explain to you or any one.”

“Oh,” breathlessly, “I’m sorry—I bothered you.”

“There isn’t anything to explain,” he repeated. “The whole thing is preposterous.”

He was being brutal, and he knew it. The child was an honest little thing, who for some unknown reason had interested herself in his affairs. He acquitted her now of forwardness in her approach. She was too much in earnest, too unconscious of any effect she might be making. Yet—why couldn’t she have let him alone? Why face him with a thing he wanted to forget? The chances were that Maulsby might not have seen the advertisement, or any one else who knew that he had sold the ivories ...

Of course, Sherry was at the bottom of it. She wanted to hold him up to the world’s scorn. She might even now be telling the story to the members of her set. Giving her own version of it.

Well, let her give it! If she wanted a fight on her hands, she could have it!

He came back to the child with the burning cheeks.

“It was good of you,” he forced himself to say, “and I am grateful. May I keep the paper, and may I ask you not to speak of it?”

The blush faded. A hot light came into her eyes. “Do you think,” she demanded, “that if I had intended to tell about it, I would have risked being misunderstood by coming here?”

She turned and started down the steps. He followed.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I am afraid I have been very rude. And please don’t think that I misunderstand.” He was finding himself unexpectedly on the defensive. “Won’t you wait a moment while I tell you that it was a brave and beautiful thing for you to do?”

They had reached the lower floor, and as she stopped and turned toward him, he saw that her eyes were wet.

“It was a silly thing for me to do,” she said. “I am always doing silly things and being sorry for them.”

“You mustn’t be sorry for this. You have really done me a great favor, although for the moment I was so disconcerted that I forgot my manners.”

If he had hoped to win immediate forgiveness, he was disappointed.

“That’s all,” she said stiffly, “I must be going.”

“No,” he stepped in front of her so that he barred the way out. “You are not going. I want you to stay. I feel that I owe you an explanation about this advertisement. Will you let me tell you all about it?”

She stood like a bird poised for flight. “I don’t expect you to tell me all about it.”

“Please. And won’t you forgive me? And, I’d appreciate it no end if you would have lunch with me. It’s a long story, and we can talk better upstairs.”

“Oh, I couldn’t!”—breathlessly.

“Why not?”

She came back honestly: “What would you think of me? What would I think of myself?”

He swept that aside. “The whole thing is unconventional. You know it, and I know it. But I have said what I think—that you have done a brave and beautiful thing. I couldn’t possibly misunderstand your motives. And I want you to know that while I have asked you to lunch with me, you need never speak to me afterward if you don’t wish it. If you will give me an hour. Just enter my world for sixty minutes? After that, I promise you, you can cut me dead, if you like, and I’ll—take my medicine—”

Sixty minutes! An hour of enchantment! It was like a gate swung back with gardens beyond. Or a door opened into a king’s palace. Sandra was not strong enough to resist.

“Oh, well,” she said. “Why not?”

“Why not, indeed?” he was smiling down at her. “And now we’ll go upstairs, and I’ll find a quiet table, and you shall tell me what you like to eat.”

Like one in a dream she let him lead the way. They went to the top floor, and Rufus ordered food which sounded to Sandra’s unsophisticated ears complicated, but delectable. And when the waiter had gone, he said:

“Do you know you are really not a stranger? That I’ve seen you before?”

“When?”

“The first time was years ago. I was sixteen. I saw a painting of you.”

“Oh, you couldn’t. No one has ever painted me.”

He enjoyed her mystification: “A great artist did it. Before you were born. I saw the original in an art gallery, and the artist was Vigée LeBrun. I went back again and again to look at it. And the other day at Maulsby’s I saw a print of the painting. And the other night, as I sat on my balcony, I saw two girls going to a party. And they stopped under a lamp, and one of them looked up and waved to her mother. And the one who waved looked like the picture in the famous gallery and like the print in Maulsby’s. And after that, when I thought of the girl who waved, I called her ‘The Boy in Red.’ ”

“Me?”

“You. Do you like it?”

“Love it.” The wide-lidded eyes were lighted.

“Have you ever seen the picture?”

“No.”

“Some day I’ll take you to Maulsby’s.”

She shook her head, “Everything ends in sixty minutes.”

“Do you really mean that?”

“It was you who set the time.”

“I may beg you to give me an extension. And by the way you haven’t told me your name. Your sister is Theodora Claybourne. You see, I remember. So you must be Miss Claybourne. But what’s the rest of it?”

“I’m Sandra.”

“Sandra Claybourne? It suits you. I should have hated it if you had been Susan or Sarah.”

The soup came. A delicious soup. Rufus took a taste or two, then forgot it while he talked. “There’s a lot back of that advertisement. More than I have time to tell. But I’d like you to know a little of it. Those words brand me as a thief. And I’m not a thief. The ivories are mine. But I haven’t a scratch of the pen to prove it. The whole thing sounds like a something out of a book. But it is real life as I have lived it since my mother died.”

Leaning forward, he spoke in his low and pleasant voice, clipping his words a little in the English way. As his story progressed Sandra hardly knew what she ate. It seemed incredible to her that she should be sitting opposite the man she had first seen from her balcony in the moonlight, while he poured out to her the tale of the tragedy which for years had thwarted his life. She felt that the confidence he was reposing in her bound him to her in some subtle fashion. That even if their acquaintance ended in sixty minutes, they would still be united by a sense of spiritual understanding. It was as if the little lad of whom he was speaking had suddenly thrust his hand in hers and had asked her to hold it tight.

When Rufus finished his story, the hour was almost up. In that time the despairing waiter had brought four courses of delectable food and had taken it away scarcely tasted. It was, he reflected, as he went back and forth with impassive face, a pity to waste gastronomic perfection on young lovers. He thought them that because of their preoccupation. He hoped for the solace of a generous tip. The girl was unsophisticated, but the man showed signs of the kind of cosmopolitanism which knows how to bestow largesse for expert service.

Dark and brooding, Rufus demanded finally, “You see?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Do you wonder that I have lost my faith in everything? In God? In man?”

She sat staring at him. Then, “Oh, don’t you believe in anything?”

A thousand people might have asked that of him, and he would have flung back a savage “No.” But something puzzled and appealing in her earnest face, made him say, “I wish I did.”

Not for worlds would he have admitted that to any one else. For years he had covered his hurt with a protective shell of hardness. No one knew how passionately he yearned for the thing he had lost, for the dreams of the boy he once had been.

He was not to know until he looked back upon it later that this was the supreme moment. It was to hold in his life something of the significance of the dove flying above the waste of waters, or Blondin singing under Richard’s window, or of the day when America first set her foot in France.

It was, in other words, rescue from the loneliness of his own unfaith. Neither of them knew as yet that Sandra had lighted at that moment the small taper of her belief in him that was to illumine increasingly his darkness as the days went on.

He asked her, hanging on his words: “What made you come to me? Most people would have let it pass. Wouldn’t have cared—what happened.”

How could she tell him? That for her he was Romeo on a balcony, Galahad, Apollo Belvedere, Ganymede, Booth, Barrymore, Ivanhoe—all the heroes of a romantic girlhood rolled into one. She had come to him that morning with an impassioned sense of adventure, such as had carried the happy princess beyond the purple rim, or Evangeline on her trackless pilgrimage. After that one dreadful moment on the stairway when Fiske had seemed to fail her, she had been swept on by his dominant demands. She felt at this moment that if he had asked her to set out with him on an endless quest, she would have followed him—forever—

Yet, thrilled and swept by the moment’s exaltation, this was what she said to him: “I saw you from my balcony. And I liked the way you treated your cat.”

“So you saved Griselda’s master because of Griselda?” He did not think her remark trivial, he saw her heart beating again in her throat, and having dealt much with women, knew something of the things that stirred her.

“Griselda’s a great comfort. And a great care. I am hunting a house to keep her in.”

He talked then of his plans. At last he said: “The hour is up. But it’s got to be more than sixty minutes.”

“I’m not sure it ought to be.”

“Please. Can’t you make it possible for me to meet you according to the mode? I might drop in at Maulsby’s some day when you are to be there with your sister. We’ll keep today to ourselves, and what I have told you. But if you’ll give me permission to meet you properly, I’ll ask you to lunch with me once a month.”

All her gaiety, and the sense of humor which had been submerged by the sentiment of the situation, came back to her in a rush at the thought that this was not the end.

“How can I promise a thing like that?” she demanded. “Without a time limit? Twelve lunches a year? Twenty-four in two years? Sixty in five years?”

He flung back with amusement, “It would be almost like being married.”

“And you’d only have to see a woman’s face once a month on the other side of the table.” She caught herself up, then confessed: “I have been eavesdropping. I was on my balcony, and I heard what you said to your friend.”

“Williamson? He believes in romance. Poor fellow!”

“Don’t you believe in it?”

“Only in books. It reads well. But one can’t live by it.”

“I am going to live by it. Mother does. Outside she’s just tired and middle-aged and up against things. But inside she calls them ‘other-world’ dreams. I am sure she sees my father always in a garden, and herself walking beside him.”

He admitted: “Sometimes I see my mother like that. But I know it is only because I want to think it, not because it is true.”

“How do you know it isn’t true?”

“It can’t be proved.”

“Nobody would believe the world was round before Columbus proved it. Skeptics never achieve anything. It is the dreamer who builds worlds.”

He shelved that to ask again: “But romance? Don’t you know that it is only in books that men are heroes and women angels.”

“Who wants them to be heroes or angels. Romance isn’t that. It isn’t thinking people perfect. It is the adventure. It is courage and laughter and beauty ...”

Surveying her with appreciation, he was aware that she typified the thing she spoke of. Gallant, vivid, impetuous, one felt that she would follow the road of life light-heartedly, singing a song.

“You ought to be a page with a feather in your cap, and a viola-d’amore.” He was leaning back, smiling at her, his darkness gone.

“Perhaps some day I shall start out and sing for my suppers. And I shall be Xander and not Sandra.”

Delicious fooling. She was like a child at fairy-tales.

He asked for his check, and while he waited for his change, he reminded her:

“You haven’t accepted my invitation. I have asked you to lunch with me every month—twelve times a year—one hundred and twenty times in a decade.”

“How can I accept an invitation like that? It’s too fantastic. Each time must be a new engagement.”

“Then you will?”

“Wait until we’ve been introduced. When our sixty minutes are ended, I am not supposed to know you.”

He laughed. “When are you going to Maulsby’s?”

“Oh, well—Saturday. We are to lunch with Mr. Markham. He and I will pick Theodora up at the shop.”

“Good.”

He gathered some bills from the little silver tray which the waiter was presenting, and rose. The waiter fluttered around them as they went. He reflected that he had not been mistaken in his man. His tip crackled in his pocket.

When they reached the first floor, Fiske took the longest way to the entrance. He was loath to let Sandra leave him. She was like some bright and lovely star which flamed across the darkness of his soul. He knew that when she was gone, all the past would surge upon him. There would be Sherry—as he had last seen her, in a red coat and white breeches and three-cornered hat. He hated the way she managed a horse, but she had made a picture of herself against the blue of the sea and the pale gold of the sands.

Passing through a dim corridor, Sandra stopped. “I love these paintings. Don’t you?”

There were the boys of the poets in the lunettes along the walls—Adonis, a white and lovely figure dead in the forest with a wound in his side. Ganymede on his eagle, Endymion asleep under the moon, Uriel, Comus, The Boy of Winander ...

“ ‘There was a Boy: ye knew him well, ye cliffs ... !’ ” Sandra, quoting the verse, stopped in the middle. “Doady hates to have me do it. Recite poetry, I mean. She says I sound as if I came out of the ark.” She was smiling up at him, her boy’s chin tip-tilted. “Doady’s adorable. But now and then mother and I find her trying. It’s our own fault, of course. We don’t want to move as fast as she wants us to.”

She held out her hand to him. “Please don’t go any farther. I have a feeling that I shall meet all my friends, and they’ll ask me if I’ve been introduced to you.”

He took that confiding hand in his. “Will you wave to me now and then from your balcony?”

“I’ll wave—to Griselda,” she showed him how she would do it, a charming gesture, then went away, leaving him among those lads of whom the poets dreamed, the dead Adonis, the scornful Uriel, and that Boy beside the lake of stars.