Читать книгу Wallflowers - Temple Bailey - Страница 8

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Theodora, reaching Room 41 of the Stocks Building, found five men ahead of her. They all sat in an anteroom and were ushered one at a time into an office beyond, by a uniformed boy who said, coming out and seeing Theodora,

“They advertised for a man.”

“I know. But I’m going to have a try at it.” She was tense and vivid.

The boy hesitated, but finally led the way. “Mr. Maulsby isn’t easy to get along with,” he warned, as he opened the door of the inner room.

It was not, however, the difficult Mr. Maulsby whom Theodora faced as she entered. A rather stout, pleasant-faced woman sat at the desk. She was well-dressed and had an air of authority.

“I am Miss Deakin,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

“I came about the advertisement,” Theodora told her, “for an art dealer’s assistant.”

“The advertisement expressly states that we want a man.”

“Well,” said Theodora, “I thought if I filled the other requirements you might consider me. I am young, and willing. And while I don’t know much about old china and glass, I can learn.”

Miss Deakin looked her over, “You’re nothing but a child.”

“I’m eighteen.”

“You don’t look it. It’s the short hair and short skirts. What makes you think you would suit Mr. Maulsby?”

Theodora, even more tense and vivid than when she had talked to the uniformed boy, said, “Because I want to work for him more than anybody else in the whole, wide world.”

Miss Deakin stared. “Do you know him?”

“No. And when I read the advertisement I didn’t know it was he who had advertised. But ever since I came to Washington the windows of his shop have been meat and drink to me.”

Miss Deakin tapped her pencil thoughtfully on her desk. “You speak his language,” she said. “That’s something. Windows have never been meat and drink to me, and that’s why I’m good at the business end of things. But Mr. Maulsby would rather look at Irish glass than eat an Irish stew.” She smiled and lifted her hands in a little gesture of amusement. “I’m the other way. I’m going to have Irish stew for my dinner.”

Theodora didn’t in the least care what Miss Deakin had for dinner. “Why not let me see Mr. Maulsby?” she suggested eagerly.

“I might,” Miss Deakin decided. “All the others I have interviewed this morning are hopeless. You are the only one who has a bit of appreciation of the kind of thing we want. Mr. Maulsby has to have some one to look after special customers when he is away. And they must be pleasantly and tactfully served. I look after the business end of things, and we find it better to have the office and shop in different buildings. And the shop force is short just now. Mr. Maulsby had to send one man over to England last week to have a try at a set of Wakelyn candlesticks that are on the market, and another one left last night for one of the New York sales. There’s a pair of Porcelain Marli horses that a customer wants. That’s why we advertised, to get some one at once.”

Theodora had never heard of Wakelyn candlesticks or Porcelain Marli horses, but they sounded delectable. “If you’ll only let me try!” she begged.

“I’ll write a note, and you can tell any one in the front of the shop that I sent you to Mr. Maulsby. And if he doesn’t want you, you’ll have his word for it and not mine. I’d be glad to have a girl with nice manners. That last man was impossible.”

Theodora, speeding away with the note, beamed on the pessimistic office boy.

“I’m going to see Mr. Maulsby.”

The office boy indulged himself in a bit of pleasantry. “Well, I hope you like him. I see him every day.”

On arriving at the shop, Theodora was shown at once into the garden. Two men were there, one in a great Chinese chair, the other seated on the stone bench. There was the fragrance of roses, patches of clear sunshine checkered with shadows, and a bird bath, with pigeons flying back and forth from its rim to the top of the brick wall.

As Theodora appeared, the two men got to their feet.

“Mr. Maulsby?” she asked.

The older man said, “You wish to see me?”

“I have a note from Miss Deakin.”

He read it. “Didn’t she tell you that I want a man?”

“Yes. But, Mr. Maulsby—I’m simply dying to ... work for you ...”

Tense and vivid! Both the men saw it, as the office boy had seen it and Miss Deakin. Mr. Maulsby’s keen eyes studied her.

“Why are you ‘dying’ to work for me?”

“Because every time I have looked in your window it has been—meat and drink.”

She used the phrase deliberately. Why not? Miss Deakin had said that she spoke his language.

He made her explain, however. “What do you mean—‘meat and drink’?”

“Well, it’s more satisfying than a—dinner at the Mayflower!”

She brought it out with a rush, laughing, and the men laughed with her. In the eyes of the younger one was a sardonic light. Was she really as naïve as all that?

Maulsby, too, weighed her. “If you mean what you say, you are what I am looking for.”

“I do mean it.”

“Good. As soon as I get through with Mr. Fiske, we’ll talk about it. You needn’t leave us. I’ll get a chair for you.”

It was young Fiske, however, who brought the chair. Theodora sat down in it and listened while the two talked. Mr. Maulsby was older than she had thought he would be. He was abrupt in manner. But she liked him. She felt it would be quite heavenly if she could get the place.

As for the young man in the Chinese chair, he was attractive enough, but had nothing to do with her future. He was not even a customer. He had come to sell some ivory figures which were set forth on the stone bench.

“I’ve bought them,” Maulsby explained to Theodora, “although it almost broke me to do it.”

“You can sell them for more than you paid,” the other man told him, “but you won’t. You’ll never want to let them go. I didn’t. But I had to have the money.”

“He’s buying a house for his cat,” Maulsby further elucidated. “I tell him he ought to get a wife.”

“Griselda is kind to my faults,” Rufus remarked, “and when I am tired of her I can have her chloroformed.”

Maulsby rose. “Come in with me, Fiske, and I’ll write the check.” Then, to Theodora, “I’ll be back in a minute.”

They went in, and Theodora settled herself in her chair with a sigh of ecstasy. Could anything have been easier? Here she was, in Paradise! The little ivory figures still stood on the bench; a light wind blew rose-petals over them. The spired cedars cast shadows on the grass; the doves flew back and forth from the wall to the rim of the bath. Here was beauty brimming over! Meat and drink? Oh, the thing was nectar and ambrosia, food for the gods!

When Felix Maulsby returned, Theodora said to him: “Your garden seems a thousand miles away from everything. It is like one of Alma Tadema’s paintings.”

“Alma Tadema is out of fashion,” Maulsby stated, “but a garden like this gives the lie to his critics. You’ve got an eye for things, and I’m glad of it. Most of the people I have about me might as well be in the shoe business, or soap. Now, you take Miss Deakin. She thinks I put her over into the other building because I wanted to get the office away from the shop, but that wasn’t my reason. I simply couldn’t stand her common-sense shoes and her marcel wave. As for Miss Carter out there in front, her horn spectacles almost drive me mad.”

He sat down on the bench and began to put the ivory figures into their case. “I’m going to take these home and show them to my wife,” he said. “I’m not keen about leaving them in the shop. Somebody may try to buy them, and Fiske was right when he said I’d probably keep them. That’s the trouble with this business. I never buy a lovely thing without wanting to hold on to it forever.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know just why things like that are so valuable,” Theodora confessed.

“I’ll teach you. I am sure we are going to get on. I’m not a hard taskmaster. And now perhaps we had better talk about what I am to pay you.”

He drove a rather sharp bargain. “You’ve a lot to learn, and you will grow toward what you’re worth.”

He asked a few questions about her family, and she told him of her mother and Sandra, of Windytop and the efficiency apartment.

“It’s like a cage. I can’t stay in it all the time, that’s why I want to work.”

“I see,” he stood up. “Come on in, and I’ll show you the shop.”

He showed it so thoroughly that it was after twelve when Theodora started home. She was aware, as she stood waiting for the street car, that the day had darkened. The air was filled with dust that blew up from the hot streets. Everybody looked moist and pink. The northwest sky was black.

“There’s going to be a storm,” Theodora told herself, and hopped on the car in a hurry.

Women were fanning themselves, and men were mopping their faces, but Theodora felt cool and crisp. With the news she was bearing home with her, the elements had no power to touch her. Tempests might rage, lightning flash, and thunders roar, but she was going to work tomorrow morning! Nothing less than an earthquake which swallowed up Mr. Maulsby’s shop could quench her raptures.

When she arrived home, she fell into the arms of her twin. “Sandra, I’ve got it.”

“Doady! Really?”

“Really.”

“Where?”

“Maulsby’s.”

“Not the one with the lovely windows!”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Doady!”

They were a sparkling pair, eyes bright, breath quick. “As soon as I change,” Theodora said, “I’ll tell you all about it. I didn’t have an umbrella, and I had to run for it.”

She laid a magazine on the table. “Mr. Maulsby loaned me that. It tells all about Wakelyn candlesticks and Porcelain Marli horses. Just the words sound fascinating, don’t they, Sandra?”

“I’ll say they do.” It seemed to Sandra as if the air in the little room was electric with the spark that Theodora had lighted. Wakelyn candlesticks! Porcelain Marli horses! Splendid! Sumptuous! Stimulating!

“I’ll have lunch ready by the time you get into dry things. There’s just the tea.”

The storm had brought with it a change of wind and coolness. Sandra had raised the awning, and the room was filled with silver light. With the tray between them on a little table, the two girls, shut in from the outside world by a curtain of streaming rain, were aware of the deliciousness and delightfulness of the moment.

Theodora, relating her adventures, began with the office boy and Miss Deakin. She progressed to the garden and her meeting with the two men. She told of the beauty of the spired cedars and the checkered sunlight on the sward, of the fragrance of the roses, the birds flying back and forth. She described Felix Maulsby:

“He’s delightful, Sandra. Magnetic. He makes me feel that there’s no end to what I can do for him.”

Her meeting with Fiske was not emphasized. He became important only as the owner of the ivory figurines. “The loveliest things, Sandra. The Five Senses. Mr. Maulsby paid two thousand dollars for them. He says they are worth more than that. But he wouldn’t tell Mr. Fiske of course.”

“Mr.—Fiske?”

“The man who sold them to him. Rufus Fiske. He’s rather young and good-looking.”

The thing came like a thunderclap! Rufus Fiske, Rufus Fiske, Rufus Fiske ... !

Sandra wondered why she did not say to Doady, “Oh, Rufus Fiske, he lives across the court.”

But she did not say it. She simply sat there listening to Theodora’s voice and to the rain which played a beating accompaniment. How queer life was! A few hours ago she had not heard of Rufus Fiske. And here he was running, as it were, along the road of life beside her. Perhaps he would run on ahead and she would never catch up. Yet she had a thrilled sense that this was the beginning!