Читать книгу Wallflowers - Temple Bailey - Страница 9

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When Mrs. Claybourne reached home that night, the news of Theodora’s good fortune was like wine to her weary soul. All through the hot day, as she had worked in her office, she had longed for Windytop. For the wide and comfortable spaces. The big room where one might be alone. The hill at the back of the house, with the exquisite stillness of the little grove that topped it. Oh, for an hour in that grove tonight, with the rising moon tangled in the branches of the trees, and with the plaint of the wood dove intensifying the stillness. Sanctuary. It had seemed to her, riding home in the crowded trolley, as if she could not face the narrow confines of the apartment, the lack of privacy, the girls’ problems.

And now here was Theodora making her incredible announcement. “Eighty dollars a month, mother, and more to come if I am what he wants.”

“My darling—how wonderful!” The reaction brought faintness. Mrs. Claybourne’s lips were white. She caught at a chair.

The twins were solicitous. “Lie down a bit, dearest,” Sandra said. “I won’t hurry things, and you’ll have time for a bath before dinner. I’m having an omelette and mushrooms, and Doady ordered ice-cream. We’re going to celebrate!”

Sandra sang under her breath as she beat up eggs, and broiled the mushrooms. Theodora had put on her hat and had gone for flowers for the center of the table. It was a big extravagance, but they had decided the occasion warranted it. “It will perk up mother, poor dear. She misses the garden.”

Roses and ice-cream and Rufus Fiske! That was the way Sandra’s thoughts ran. She hardly dared look out of the window. She would wait until dusk came. Until the moon rose.

While Theodora was gone, Gale Markham called up.

“I want the two of you to lunch with me on Saturday. Have you anything else on hand?”

Sandra told him frankly, “We never have anything on hand.”

“I’ll come at one, then. And we’ll have a ride afterwards.”

“I’ll have to ask Doady. She’s got a job.”

“A—what?”

“A place to work. At Maulsby’s. The art shop. She adores it. She says Mr. Maulsby is marvellous.”

“He is more than that. He’s a personality. Not always an agreeable one. But never a bore. He married his wife because she looked like Sir Peter Lely’s Duchess of Portsmouth. At least, that’s what he says. She doesn’t look like it now, but she thinks she does. She is as odd in her way as he is in his. People like to get invitations to her dinners. Stephanie’s quite mad about them. Goes there a lot. Once upon a time I went, but I’m too poor to keep the pace. Look here, suppose I come over tonight and congratulate your sister. And meet your mother. May I?”

“Of course.”

“I won’t keep you up late. You’ll need your beauty sleep after last night.”

Last night! As she hung up the receiver Sandra wondered if it had been only twenty-four hours since she had stood on the balcony like Juliet, under the moon!

Theodora, arriving with six pink roses in a white paper, heard the news. “Gale Markham is coming.”

“When?”

“Tonight.”

Theodora’s eyes swept the crowded room critically. “I wish he had given us a bit more time to fix up. But the roses will help.”

“Men aren’t critical, Doady. And he knows Mr. Maulsby.”

“Does he?”

“Yes. He says Mrs. Maulsby is as interesting as her husband. And that people fight for invitations to dine with them.”

“I knew they were like that. I can’t believe in my luck, Sandra.”

Mrs. Claybourne, appearing at that moment, remarked, “Down our way we don’t fight for invitations from shopkeepers.”

“Mother,” Theodora protested, “nobody pays any attention to things like that in these days.”

“Perhaps not.” Mrs. Claybourne felt that it wasn’t worth the argument. Why spoil their little feast with a discussion of worn-out social standards? But a Claybourne was a Claybourne. Subconsciously she had a feeling of resentment that Stephanie Moore and these Maulsbys, whoever they were, might think they could condescend to her daughters.

When Gale Markham arrived, he brought more roses.

“Mother cut them from our own bushes. She sent them to you, Mrs. Claybourne. She remembers having met you years ago. She was Betty Ballard.”

Mrs. Claybourne, too, remembered. “She was the prettiest thing.”

“She is still pretty,” said Betty Ballard’s son. “And she is more than that. She is the bravest woman I know.”

He did not explain why he called her brave, nor did they ask him. But Sandra, having heard him say it with a deepening of his young voice and an added brightness in his blue eyes, felt her heart warm toward him.

“Mother hopes you’ll have tea with her some afternoon,” Gale continued. “It is hard for her to make calls. She’s rather an invalid and rarely gets out.”

When Gale got around at last to talk of the Maulsbys, he said to Theodora: “You’ll love his house. It’s a charming place.”

“I may not be invited. You see, I’m just a girl in his shop.”

“Maulsby isn’t like that. All he asks of his guests is that they are interesting. He has no patience with banalities. You can’t cross his threshold just because you’ve got a lot of money or a string of ancestors. He gets together all sorts of freaks and celebrities. There’s always an amusing crowd.”

“I shall never be able to keep up with Doady,” Sandra stated, “She came home today talking about Wakelyn candlesticks and Porcelain Marli horses. It is all Greek to me.”

It was not, it seemed, Greek to Gale. He knew a lot about it. “We sold Maulsby loads of things after Dad died. Mother says our house looks like the Whistler room in the Freer Gallery—all shelves with nothing on them.”

He said it lightly, so that they were not aware of the tragedy that lay behind his words. At his Dad’s death had come the revelation of an estate mismanaged and utterly without value. All the beautiful things that had been sold were to have gone into the home which Gale had planned for Stephanie. There had been one chair in which he had dreamed of her by his fireside. It had been sent to Maulsby’s with the others. And that had not been the worst of it. Losing the furniture had been a little thing beside the fact of Gale’s loss of faith in the woman he loved.

Mrs. Claybourne, in her best dress of thin black, leaned back in one of the big chairs and listened to the chatter of the young folks. She decided that she liked Gale. Already she was linking him in her mind with romance. Which of her daughters would be crowned with his favor? Sandra with her dreams, or Doady with her driving ambitions? Either of them would make him a good wife. Of course, he was poor, the girls had told her that. But then his mother was a Ballard. One need go no further than that for distinction.

When Gale went away, all the plans had been made for Saturday. He was to call for Sandra and pick up Theodora at Maulsby’s.

Theodora confessed: “We’ve nothing to wear.”

“Nonsense!” Gale’s eyes went from one twin to the other. “I’ve told you, you’re a pair of pretty things. Why worry about accessories?”

“Wait till you see us with our new haircuts. And I’m going to wear rose-colored smocks in Mr. Maulsby’s garden—and learn to dance the Charleston.” There was laughter in Theodora’s eyes, but earnestness in her voice:

“You’ll see. At Stephanie’s next dance Sandra and I won’t be wallflowers.”

“Speak for yourself, Doady.” Sandra, too, was smiling.

Mrs. Claybourne asked, “Were they really wallflowers?”

“It was my good luck that they didn’t dance. Otherwise I shouldn’t have had a look-in.”

When Gale went away, he left them with a fine sense of his friendliness. They were all to have tea with his mother on Sunday.

“I shall feel safer if I have you tied up for two engagements,” he told the twins. “And I shall never be able to call either of you ‘Miss Claybourne.’ I’m old enough to be your—godfather. You won’t mind my calling them Sandra and Doady, will you, Mrs. Claybourne?”

“I think he’s an adorable person,” Sandra announced as she brushed her hair.

She said it frankly, because she wasn’t in the least self-conscious. She had no blushes or heart-beats when she thought of Gale. She left her tremors and thrills for Rufus Fiske. She could not have spoken Rufus’ name aloud if she had died for it.

It had grown warm again, and when a little later Sandra stepped out on the balcony, the world was flooded with silver. She stood by the rail and looked across the way. No one was there. The window was dark.

Oh, well, the night was heavenly ... She flung herself down in the long chair, and gazed up at the sky ... “that orbed maiden ... with white fire laden ... whom mortals call the moon ...”

There intruded presently on her consciousness the sound of voices, and she became aware that two men were standing in the court below.

“If I have a house, I must have a car. See what you can do for me, Williamson. Second-hand.”

Williamson’s voice had a youthful quality. “Sounds like matrimony to me. A house and a car.”

“Only fools marry.”

“Woman-hater?”

“No. But I have eyes to see. And there’s so much unhappiness.”

“And so much happiness. I’m going to make a try for it when I find the girl. If she’ll have me.”

“You can get any girl, if you really want her.”

“That’s easy enough for you to say. You’ve got the looks.”

“Do you think I want to be married for my looks?”

“Well, you might be.”

“Heaven forbid. I’m domestic enough with Griselda. I have money enough to support a cat, but not a wife. So why muddle things up.”

“Some day you’ll fall in love.”

“Which has nothing to do with the case. One may fall in and out again.”

“No,” said Williamson stoutly, “if love is worth anything, it is for one woman. Men who squander sentiment on a half-dozen don’t know love when they see it.”

Silence for a moment. “You are fortunate to think that.”

“I do think it. Constancy is the best gift of the gods. Men and women who haven’t it miss a lot.”

“One may have it and yet not find an object on which to bestow it.”

Silence for a moment, then Williamson said: “You’ll wake up some day and want a home. A wife. Children.”

“My dear fellow, I’m not romantic. And poverty dims the glamour. Do you think I’d want a wife getting red-faced and out of temper over the gas stove on a night like this? I ate broiled fish and a salad three miles out at a charming inn. I couldn’t have afforded it for two. And all Griselda asks for is a bit of salmon from a can.”

“Isn’t there something in having a face on the other side of the table?”

“I have a book to read. A cat to pet. That’s enough for me.”

“I don’t believe it. And I’ve got to be going, Fiske. It’s getting late.”

“Come on up to my apartment. I’ve some pale dry ginger ale on ice, and there’s a bit of cheese and some biscuits.”

“You say that like an Englishman.”

“I went to school in England. Two years there and two in Germany, worse luck. I learned to speak German so well that when the war came they got me into the secret service. The only good I’ll ever get out of that is a book I’m writing of my experiences. Some of them seem pretty rotten when I put them on paper. Things are expedient in time of war which don’t quite sway level in times of peace. I’m staying in Washington because I can get some of the stuff I want up at the Library of Congress. I go up there in the afternoons and write at night. I want to get out in the country, where I can have quiet. My nerves got touched up a bit by the war. But it was worth it.”

“Well,” Williamson’s voice was modified by distance as he walked beside the other across the court, “I was too young for it. But I’d give half I possess to have been in it.”

“That’s what a neurotic world can’t understand,” Rufus Fiske said, “that death and terror were balanced by bigger things. That the evils of peace at this moment are worse for young men than war. You know Noyes’ ‘Victory Dance.’ That’s what I mean—‘Back to the jungle the wild beasts prance!’ ”

Sandra strained her ears to hear more. But there was no more coming. The two men had entered the house.

After that it was quite like a pantomime, with the two men crossing and recrossing the space between the parted curtains. They ate and drank, and at last Williamson left. And Rufus Fiske sat at the table writing.

Sandra, watching him, thought of the things he had said. He was hard. A cynic. She hadn’t imagined him like that. Yet his hand had been kind when he stroked the cat.

Her mother came to the window. “Aren’t you ever going to bed?”

“I’m not sleepy.” She rose, however, and went in. “I feel as if I should never shut my eyes. I’ll take something to read to bed with me. Perhaps it will make me drowsy.”

She picked up one of the magazines that Theodora had brought, and carried it with her. Propped up on her pillows, with a low lamp flooding the pages with light, she found the book interesting. It had many colored illustrations and was packed with advertising of antiques and art objects.

Turning the pages idly, her eye was caught by a line of print:

“Wanted—To find a set of ivory figurines, Seventeenth Century, representing the Five Senses. Taken from private residence in Santa Barbara. Suitable reward for information or for return. Address L2. Care of this magazine.”

The blood all seemed drained from Sandra’s body. She spread her hands over the staring words to shut them from her sight.

After a while she grew a bit calmer. Snapped off the light and lay wide-eyed in the dark.

The thought which had frightened her was preposterous. A man like that couldn’t. Yet what did she know of him except that he was kind to a cat and had a head like a Ganymede? And there was that impossible person in the pink bungalow apron.

“My husband says, ‘Where does he get his money?’ ”