Читать книгу Masks Off at Midnight - Valentine Williams - Страница 6

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Looking backward later upon the events leading up to the Waverlys’ ball with its grim and terrible dénouement, Jenny Tallifer found herself marking as their point of departure her talk with Brent Hordern on the golf course. That tête-à-tête was none of her seeking: indeed, she had resolved not to let him see her alone again. But Fate decreed otherwise. If Hordern had not taken it into his head to stay away from his office that morning, if she had only seen the weather forecast...

But Miss Tallifer, only child of Henry Prescott and Margaret van Stuivel Tallifer, of Laurel, Long Island, was not the sort of person who ever looks ahead sufficiently to consult the weather forecast. The weather runs to a preordained plan, and there was nothing either preordained or planned about the somewhat hectic, haphazard existence which Jenny Tallifer led as one of the outstanding members of the younger set of Laurel. And anyway she never did more than glance at the pictures in the tabloid of her choice while waiting for old coloured Mamie to bring her her breakfast in bed.

The summer downpour caught her a good half-mile from the clubhouse as she was approaching the thirteenth green, going round alone, without even a caddy. Recovering her ball from where a nicely timed chip shot had landed it a yard from the hole, she grabbed her bag of clubs and dashed through the pelting rain for the thatched shelter flanking the green. There she whipped off her yellow beret, shaking back her shock of pale golden hair, and with a disgusted expression surveyed the rain spots on the arms of her crêpe-de-chine blouse exposed by the sleeveless golf jacket.

Seated on the wooden bench, she gloomily contemplated her slim legs thrust out in front of her. Darn it, how contrary life was! She had been taking in too many parties and not getting enough exercise, she had decided, and although she had arrived home in the small hours from that party at the Yacht Club, she was up early, determined to do eighteen holes of golf before lunch. And now the rain had defeated her good resolution!

It had been a good party, she mused, nursing her knee, one of those parties that start around tea-time and end—at what time had she got to bed? They had danced, and between dances Sonny Parton had taken some of them for a run down the Sound in his new power boat. Later the whole gang had gone in for a swim, and then, somehow, in beach pyjamas and sweater again, she had found herself alone with Paul Kentish in his little outboard motor, tuff-tuffing along the broad white wake of the moon. ‘Come on, Jen,’ he had invited her, ‘let’s go and call on Madam Moon. There she is, just at the end of the lane!’ Paul said cute things like that. He was rather a dear—what a pity he didn’t have any money! She was still thinking about Paul when she heard a step outside and Brent Hordern sauntered in out of the wet.

A driver, an iron, and a putter were tucked under his arm and his drab sweater and gray flannels were dark and soggy with the rain. He was hatless and his broad, rather ugly face was streaming, his straight, dark hair plastered down over his forehead. He was supremely unconcerned as, indeed, he always was. He had obviously not troubled to run for shelter—he was not even breathless.

‘Naturally it would rain just as I was hitting ’em,’ he remarked cheerfully. ‘I took a four at that long third and a three at the fifth. What do you know about that?’

‘I didn’t notice you,’ she said briefly.

‘I was a good way behind you—I’d only got as far as the fifth when the rain came down.’

‘But you’re sopping,’ she observed, staring at his clothes. ‘Why on earth didn’t you go back to the clubhouse?’

‘Because I spotted you making for this shelter—you can see that yellow coat of yours a mile away...’ He glanced at his wet things and laughed quietly. ‘“It’s an ill wind...”—you know the proverb...’

Her gray eyes were severe. ‘I told you, that night in New York, I didn’t want to see you any more.’

Impassive of mien he stood his clubs against the wall and sat down on the bench beside her. Through the open door they were aware of the rain descending in a solid curtain. ‘I guess I made you pretty mad,’ he said contritely, drawing a package of cigarettes from his pocket. ‘But honestly, Jenny, I like you tremendously and...’

She interrupted him composedly. ‘I didn’t mind your trying to kiss me in the taxi—most men seem to think it’s expected of them. Besides, I asked for it—I mean, letting you take me to that night club! I must have been crazy...’

‘What’s wrong with my taking you to a night club, I’d like to know?’ he demanded.

‘What do you suppose my father would say if he heard about it?’

He offered her a cigarette and sprang his lighter. ‘Your father’s prejudiced...’

Cigarette in mouth she stooped to the little flame. ‘Of course he is,’ she remarked, blowing a cloud of smoke. ‘You come busting in here at Laurel where he and his family have lived for generations and you challenge him at every turn...’

‘Your father doesn’t realize, or rather he declines to admit, that I’m a pretty big man in the community...’

‘You mean you’re rich enough to buy us all up!’

He grinned. ‘Well, I guess that’s right, too...’

‘The Tallifers have always run everything in Laurel...’

‘You mean they used to. But the world’s advanced since then. Unfortunately your father won’t see it...’

‘You talk as if he were an old fogy. Daddy’s every bit as modern-minded as you are. But he’s only human. Naturally, he resented having to transfer his bank account—after all, our family’s banked with the Laurel Bank ever since it was founded...’

‘I had to take over the bank,’ he remarked doggedly.

‘And you had to edge Daddy off the committee of this club, too, I suppose?’

‘Seeing that I saved it from insolvency I think I was entitled to serve on the committee. It was your father who decided there wasn’t room for the two of us...’

She made an unwilling movement. ‘Money again!’

He nodded cheerfully. ‘Absolutely. You don’t deny that your father told everybody that if I came up for election I’d be blackballed, just as he tried to queer me with the Yacht Club. Unfortunately for him, the fellows at the Yacht Club were more broad-minded...’

‘He was mad at you because you opposed him over the bank...’

He shook his head placidly. ‘That wasn’t the reason entirely. In Mr. Tallifer’s opinion I’m not good enough to associate with you and your friends. Nothing blue-blooded about Brent Hordern. My grandfather was a bum out of the Belfast slums who was frozen to death after a blind when he was working on a railroad gang and my old man fired a steamer on the Great Lakes and died of pneumonia before I was breeched. The difference between your father and me is that he’s proud of something he inherited and I’m proud of something I made for myself. The point about me, though, is that I’ve a darned bad habit—wherever I go and whatever I do, I just have to be the head man. It’s tough on the other guy, but there it is!’

She smiled serenely. ‘Dear me! And so you intend to be head man at Laurel?’

‘I’m not looking for trouble,’ he said grudgingly, ‘but if you put it that way, then yes!’ He paused. ‘Your father isn’t rich enough to beat me,’ he added. ‘I know what this depression has done to private incomes. You don’t suppose I haven’t heard that Mr. Tallifer’s selling land?’

Her laugh was cool. ‘You mustn’t believe all you hear, even at Laurel...’

‘Last week,’ he retorted, coldly businesslike, ‘Mr. Tallifer parted with two hundred acres to the Excelsior Syndicate of New York—the forty-acre lot that lines the Waverly place, Hazard Wood beyond it and...’

‘I don’t want to hear anything about it,’ she told him angrily. ‘As it happens, it’s a lie. And, anyway, I’m not interested in gossip...’

He shrugged. ‘Okay. But don’t let’s quarrel, shall we? What’s taking place right here in Laurel is going on all over the world. It’s war between the old order and the new. Such bunk, really. Your old man ought to realize that, if he and I got together, between us—he with his name and background and me with the dough—we could put this old burg back on the map. And he would realize it, too, if he wouldn’t always listen to that half-baked cousin of yours...’

‘Cousin Anthony’s a very cultured person. And highly intelligent...’

‘I guess he’s cultured all right, or so they tell me. But he’s never done a lick of honest work in his life and you know it...’

‘Cousin Anthony has private means. And he does work. He’s writing the history of the Tallifers. And he has one of the best collections of colonial antiques on Long Island...’

‘If you call it intelligence in a man to live in the past...’

‘America is far too material as it is. We could do with a few more Anthony Tallifers. Money isn’t everything, you know.’

‘Don’t you believe it, it is! Or perhaps you don’t ever think what a girl like you could do with a lot of money?’

Her laugh was hard. ‘Oh, don’t I, though!’

‘You could put the Tallifers right back where they belong. You’re the last of them, aren’t you? Well, you could give the old family a new lease of life...’

‘Swell! How do I set about it?’

‘Marry me!’

She stared at him. Then, in the burlesque manner of Beatrice Lillie, she exclaimed, ‘O-oh, Mr. Hordern, a proposal! Pray pardon my emotion, but this is so sudden!’

Slowly he reddened, his face unyielding to her mood. ‘I’m serious,’ he said.

Her eyes were aloof. ‘Are you really asking me to marry you?’

‘Sure I am...’

‘Forgive my curiosity,’ she observed ironically, ‘but haven’t you got a wife already?’

‘I’m divorced...’

‘Is that really true?’

‘Certainly. In Paris, too. Months ago...’

She gave him a quick glance from under her long lashes. ‘Then why don’t you marry Constance Barrington?’

His eyes suddenly smouldered. ‘Because I don’t happen to want to...’

‘I heard that the only reason you and she weren’t married ages ago was that your wife refused to divorce you...’

‘You mustn’t believe all you hear even in Laurel,’ he quoted mockingly. Then, growing serious, ‘Jenny,’ he said, rising as she stood up, ‘can’t you see I’m crazy about you? I’m not a bad sort of guy and I’ll make a settlement that’ll knock your eye out...’

She leaned back against the hut wall and shook her blonde head at him. ‘Honestly, you take my breath away...’

‘Don’t turn me down straightaway. Think it over!’

‘I don’t have to do that. I’m trying to decide exactly what Daddy would do if he could overhear this conversation...’

His hand made a deprecatory flourish. ‘We can fix him. Your mother’ll help us...’

She gazed at him in bewilderment. ‘Mother?’

He cleared his throat. ‘Sure. The few times I’ve met her I had the impression she rather took a shine to me...’ With a confidential air he leaned towards her. ‘How’d you fancy being Mrs. B. H., Jenny?’

She sighed and shook her head. ‘I suppose you know you haven’t asked me whether I’m in love with you. I don’t complain of that. What interests me is to find that a man as clever as you must be can be so dense...’

He fell back a pace. ‘Dense?’

‘Yes, dense. Don’t you realize there are some things in this town you can’t buy?’

He moved his head impatiently. ‘Hell, Jenny, I didn’t mean it that way, you know that. I put it awkwardly, I guess...’

‘Not at all. You were perfectly explicit. You think that with your money you can get everything you want, don’t you?’

‘It’s not my money,’ he said, with rather appealing simplicity. ‘It’s me. What I want, I go after, and what I go after, I get. I’ve never been beaten yet and I never will be beaten...’

‘Don’t say things like that,’ she warned him. ‘It’s unlucky!’

‘Luck? That’s boloney. A guy makes his own luck!’

She looked at him rather mischievously. ‘You didn’t get your invitation to the Waverlys’ ball tomorrow night, did you?’ she enquired with delicate irony.

He flushed an angry scarlet, thrusting out his lower lip. ‘Constance has been shooting her mouth off again, I suppose?’

‘There was no need for that. Barbara Waverly has never got over that run-in you had with her over the Relief Fund. Did you imagine she’d keep a thing like that secret? She’s told everybody that Mrs. Barrington asked for a card for you and that she turned her down flat. I’m not being catty, but I do think you might realize there are some things you can’t do...’

His composure had returned. ‘I suppose you’re going to the ball?’

‘Rather. I’m in the surprise procession Paul Kentish is organizing...’

He nodded. ‘I remember now, young Kentish did say something to me about it...’ He wagged his head, grinning. ‘Your friend Mrs. Waverly seems to be afraid, since everybody will be masked until midnight, that I might crash the gate. She actually told Constance she’s taking steps to prevent it. As though I give a hoot for her darned ball—it was Constance’s idea entirely to ask for an invitation for me. But now I think I will go...’

‘You can scarcely go to a private party to which you’ve been refused an invitation...’

‘Everything’s permitted at a show of this kind...’

‘Not at this one. You may as well know they’re determined to keep you out...’

His laugh was short, impish. ‘Let ’em try. I’ll be there!’ His eyes, bold and resolute, fixed hers. ‘What I want, I get. Whatever or whoever it is, Jenny!’

‘You’re crazy,’ she said nervously. ‘It’ll make a hideous scandal. You’re to forget it, do you hear?’

‘I’ll be beside you at midnight when they unmask,’ he told her. ‘But you’ll have to wear something so’s I’ll know you, because once the masks are off I guess I’ll have to be on my way...’

He chuckled. ‘A white rose, I think—I’ll send you one!’

‘You’re not to be absurd,’ she said severely and glanced at her wrist watch. The sun was shining along the last slivers of the rain. ‘Heavens!’ she exclaimed, cramming on her cap and snatching up her clubs, ‘I’m meeting the family for lunch at the Yacht Club at one and it’s a quarter to already. And I have to go home first and change!’

He took the bag from her and followed her out. A path that ran along the hedge separating from the fairway two or three bungalows built on the course was the nearest route to the clubhouse and they made for it. At the parking place he saw her into her roadster and watched her whirl off down the drive, a secretive smile illuminating his rugged face.