Romance Classics (52 page)

Ronnie Norris. Carey wondered what it would be like to share a place like this with Ronnie Norris. And knew that Ronnie would see to it that he was never in such a spot.

Joel Hunter, now. There was an entirely different sort of person. Joel — well, there wasn’t anybody quite like him, she told herself comfortably, and jerked herself painfully awake from the first drowsiness of the evening, startled at the way her heart had stirred at the thought of Joel. High time, she told herself severely, that she forgot about Joel Hunter before she had a brainstorm and believed herself in love with him, And found herself married to him and chained to Midvale for life.

IT WAS LATER than usual when Carey woke up. She lay still for a moment, looking at the sunlight that spilled into the room. And then, she swung herself out of bed, shivering, clutching for her clothes, her teeth chattering as she dressed hurriedly, her eyes on the clock. It was after seven — and poor Pops was hungrily awaiting his breakfast.

But she paused at the head of the stairs, sniffing. A strange but delicious odor crept up to her; coffee, of course; and the scent of crisping bacon. And then she heard her father laugh, a startled, light-hearted shout of laughter such as she had not heard him give in months.

She heard Margaret’s voice as she went along the hall and, as she pushed open the kitchen door, Margaret was just sliding a golden brown waffle from the smoking iron to her father’s plate. They both looked up, welcoming Carey with almost guilty glances.

“Hullo, kitten — did we wake you?” Her father sounded very gay. “Margaret insisted we let you sleep. You’ve had a pretty hard pull of it these last few weeks.”

Margaret said nothing but her smile, her manner, most of all that almost pleading look in her dark eyes, begged Carey to let her stay.

“You’ll have a waffle, Carey, won’t you?” she asked eagerly.

“A
waffle? She’ll have half a dozen of them, after she tastes the first one. Carey, you wouldn’t believe anything could be so good,” Silas said happily, and sloshed cane syrup over his plate.

Carey said something meant to be gay. But she was remembering the breakfasts she had cooked so awkwardly, but so lovingly, for her father. She watched while Margaret picked up the old, blackened coffee-pot and poured a cup that was golden brown, steaming hot, gloriously fragrant.

“Strange — that looks like coffee, doesn’t it, Pops?” Carey tried hard to sound cheery. “But if this is coffee — then what’s that stuff I’ve been making us drink all these weeks?”

“Making coffee in a pot like this, Carey, would stump the best of cooks,” Margaret said hurriedly. “I just happened to grow up on this sort of coffee. But you wait until I unpack. I brought along one of those glass bubble percolator things that can be used on a stove like this, and we’ll have some real coffee!”

She was so anxious to be conciliatory; there was nothing spiteful or malicious or triumphant about her now. And, Carey told herself, Margaret was almost pretty this morning. She almost spoke aloud. “Migosh — she’s dyed her hair!”

The gay, frivolous frock, the silly but vastly becoming print apron, the new hair color, the permanent wave, all hinted loudly of Margaret’s determination. She was going to make herself so necessary to Silas’s happiness and well-being that Carey, Silas’s adoring daughter, simply couldn’t send her away.

Carey was a little relieved when Joel arrived with his usual clamorous assault on the backsteps as he knocked the mud from his shoes.

There was sherry at noon, and dinner, served at two o’clock, was quite as marvellous as Margaret had threatened. It was a feast fit for a king to which the four sat down.

After dinner, Joel insisted on helping with the dishes and there was more laughter and good-natured banter. At four o’clock Joel reluctantly prepared to tear himself away. He had a couple of calls to make, for people were still sick, even though it was Christmas.

“I don’t suppose you’d care to drive with me?” he suggested to Carey. “I’ve a couple of calls, and after we’ve finished we’ll go for a walk to the top of the hill on the Pickens’ place — very well spoken of for the beauty of its winter sunsets.”

Carey caught the look in Margaret’s eyes. Margaret wanted her to go. Margaret wanted a quiet hour or so with Silas. And the force of the jealousy that shook her frightened Carey a little so that, ashamed of herself and of that unworthy emotion, she accepted Joel’s invitation.

It was cold but clear; a damp cold that made her shiver a little. But when they had finished the calls and had climbed the low hill on the Pickens’ place and were seated comfortably on the old split-rail fence, she breathed deeply with delight. There was a wonderful scent to the air; a fragrance of wood and earth.

She turned to say something to Joel and caught the look in his eyes. Instantly she was afraid and sought wildly for something to say. “What do you think of Margaret, now that you know her a little better?” she managed finally.

“You needn’t be afraid of me, Carey — nor of anything I may want to say,” Joel said gravely, ignoring the question she had asked. “I shall never say anything again, I promise you, that you don’t really want to hear. Is that quite clear?”

“I — why — I don’t know what you mean,” stammered Carey.

“Don’t lie,” Joel ordered sternly, though there was the ghost of a twinkle in his eye. “I’m not a very patient guy, Carey — but I can wait for what I want.”

He chuckled at the way her pretty chin tilted and then he said, “Oh, yes, we were speaking of Margaret, weren’t we? She seems completely subdued today. Did you two have a battle last night? She was rather uppity, it seemed to me, when she first got here.”

“That, I’ve always been led to believe,” Carey told him frankly, “is the genuine Margaret. The one you saw today is — well, it’s a sort of trick done with mirrors. She — she wants to stay on.”

Joel looked puzzled. “But why should she? I mean — well, after all, your father scarcely needs a secretary nowadays.”

“Margaret seems to feel he needs a wife. She’s in love with him, of course. Anybody with half an eye could see that.”

“And you’d rather your father didn’t marry her?”

“Oh, but — goodness, he wouldn’t think of such a thing — ” Carey stammered miserably.

“No? Then you haven’t happened to see the look in your father’s eyes when she’s around? See here, Carey, stop being an ostrich. Take your pretty head out of the sand and look facts squarely in the face. Why shouldn’t your father marry Margaret if he wants to?”

“But nobody has any proof he wants to. Just because Margaret happens to be in love with him, it doesn’t necessarily follow that he’s in love with her,” Carey retorted.

“And after all,” Joel went on gravely, as though she had not spoken, “you’ll be wanting to get married some day.”

For an instant Carey was still. She felt as though a trap had been slowly but surely closing in upon her. Here and now was her chance to rid herself of that trap once and for all.

“But I shan’t marry — oh, not for years and years. What chance would I have of finding the sort of man I’d want to marry in this benighted section of the country?”

The dusk was thickening now so that she could only guess at the expression on his face as they trudged back to the car.

EARLY IN January Carey discovered through a letter from a friend that Ronnie and Ann Paige were married. “Darling,” the friend wrote, “you simply wouldn’t know the Ann who is now Mrs. Ronnie Norris. She’s streamlined within an inch of her life and while I wouldn’t go so far as to say she is beautiful, I will have to admit that she’s the most sophisticated looking thing you ever saw. It’s an open secret that Ronnie stage-managed the whole transformation. If ever Ronnie gets tired of being Ann’s lap-dog he could make himself a fortune, opening a salon to show other too-plump, homely ladies the road to beauty — if not health. Ann’s cracking beneath the strain — the rigid diet, the exercise, and all the rest of it. You should see her at a luncheon or tea-fight, my dear. The look in her eyes is absolutely wolfish. And one night last week at the Marshalls’ buffet supper for the bridal party of Heather Gordon and her beau, I saw Ann gobble a chicken patty while looking fearfully around hoping to dodge Ronnie’s eagle eye. She didn’t, poor devil. He came up behind her and my ears burned at the things he said. Not many, not loud, but all the more bitterly stinging for all that. As for Ronnie — well, my dear, perhaps you can fancy what being the husband of a girl as rich as Ann is doing to him — he’s expanding in all directions!”

Carey read the letter twice and then very carefully fed it to the flames in the kitchen stove. Donning her hat and coat, she went for a long walk. Something deep within her hurt at the thought of Ronnie married to Ann; of Ann, plump and ruddy and domineering, supreme egotist that she was, superbly and arrogantly sure that her millions entitled her to the best of everything the world had to offer —

“But she didn’t get much when she got Ronnie,” Carey tried to tell herself. Only to stand stockstill beneath the chill January sun, her hands clenched tightly in her pockets, her eyes closed, sick with remembering a certain afternoon when Ronnie had held her close against him and she had felt the burning demand of his mouth on hers.

She stood at the old rail fence that separated the Winslow property from Ellen Hogan’s hard-worked acres and looked about her. She noted the dead-looking, blackened tree branches against a thin gray-white sky; the inevitable red mud; the rolling meadow, bare and brown and ugly; the thin line of leafless willows outlining the little brook at the foot of the hill. Yes, this Carey Winslow was the same as that other! Only a few months separated them — yet she felt as though she had lived half a lifetime in between!

When her father went to bed that night and she and Margaret were toasting their toes in front of the living room fire before making that cold dash through the big hall to their respective and very chilly bedrooms, Margaret said unexpectedly:

“Carey, I’ve been thinking. There’s really no reason why we should live in a place that looks and feels like a barn. It wouldn’t take much money to remodel this place, put in electric lights and a water system and some new draperies and things. I’ll bet it would make a terrific difference.”

“You mean we might as well admit that we have to spend the rest of our lives here?” Carey demanded shakily, and there was a look on her face that told Margaret something of her shock and desolation at the thought.

“We might as well face facts, Carey. Your father will never be able to go back to business — even if he had a business to go back to! He will live a great many years here in this quiet, peaceful spot. He can farm a little, have cows and chickens and pigs, and enjoy life. But it would be fatal for him to go back to New York — even if it weren’t impossible for a man of his age to find something to do after being wiped out as he was.”

Carey said nothing. So far as she could see there wasn’t anything to say. Margaret waited a moment and then she went on quietly, “Of course, there is an escape for you, Carey. You’re young and lovely and you’ll marry — ”

“Whom, for instance?” demanded Carey. “And if you say Joel Hunter, I’ll smack you.”

“You could do worse,” Margaret said sharply, and then forced herself to speak more calmly. “I’ve thought it all out, Carey. I believe that for a thousand dollars or so we could remodel the house into something very attractive and comfortable. It’s a well-built place and all it needs is a few repairs and alterations and electricity and water. And then a small farm could be stocked. We might get to where we could have dairy products to sell! Put the place on a paying basis — ”

“And what,” Carey suggested dryly, “would we use for money to start all this?” She thought Margaret colored a little, but of course it might have been the firelight.

“I’ve got almost five thousand dollars put away where it is doing me very little good. I’d like nothing better than to invest it in a paying business, such as I know I could make of this place.”

Carey had been prepared for something like this. And now she sat very still for a long moment, her hands locked tightly together.

“I haven’t said anything to your father about all this,” Margaret said uneasily, “and if you think it would be all right to do it I would want him to think, of course, that it was his own money we were using. And of course it
would
be, really — for anything that I might ever have would be his when he needed it.”

“I see,” said Carey. “And what am I supposed to do about all this?”

There was a little spark of anger in Margaret’s voice when she answered, “You could begin by forgetting that you were once Carey Winslow, the glamour girl, and try to remember that you’re just Silas Winslow’s daughter and supposedly a human being.”

Carey nodded. “I can’t see that I have the right to offer any objection to anything you want to do, Margaret. After all, the place is Dad’s — and of course you and Dad are going to be married eventually, so if you want to hurl your money into the place I don’t know that there’s anything I can do to stop you. Is that what you wanted me to say?”

Margaret stood up. “It’ll do for a start. The only thing I want is your promise that you will agree to the changes and that you won’t let your father know it is not his money that I shall be spending.”

“I couldn’t do much else but promise that, could I?” Carey said politely, and went up to her own room feeling like a spiteful little cat, and an unhappy one.

The work on the house soon progressed, not rapidly or smoothly but with the usual aggravating upsets that invariably accompany such work in a place like Midvale. Almost all of the available labor was composed of farmers, and they had their minds more on their crops than on the job at hand. But beneath Margaret’s unrelenting drive, her determination, the changes developed and the old house began to take on a surprising charm.

IT SEEMED to Carey that spring came overnight. She went to bed one night shivering beneath heavy covers and feeling that winter would never end. She awoke the next morning with the feeling that her feather-mattress, her heavy quilts, were too much covering. She flung the window up and leaned out, sniffing. To her unbounded amazement there was a scent of something exquisitely fresh and appealing in the wind; it was soft and mild.