He reached for his handkerchief. “Sorry, Felice. But there’s no point in making a scene. I’ll pay the cleaning bill.”
“I’ll say you will! And the next time you reach for a glass, watch what you’re doing. In fact,” she added, with warning in her tone, “whatever you’re reaching for—watch your step.”
“I said I was sorry.” There was no smooth charm in Oliver Harrison’s voice now. “Cut it out!” He was suddenly savage, menacing.
Leslie turned quickly back to the drawing room, her head whirling. Oliver. Felice. And a few moments before they had met as total strangers. There had been something odd about that furtive meeting in the hall. And Oliver had said, when they watched Felice Allen enter the Fox and Rabbit, that he had never seen her before. Why on earth had he lied about it? And she had stared at him coolly, looked at his car, at the girl with him, and turned away. What were they playing at?
Agatha consulted her evening watch, whose face was concealed by a jeweled case in the shape of a flower. She signaled to Leslie. “Have you counted? We asked twenty-four tonight, including your extra guests and Miss Allen. I make it only twenty-three. Someone is missing but I think we’d better go ahead.”
“It must be the new man, Shaw,” her husband said. “Oliver explained to me when he came in. He asked Shaw to take care of something for him at the laboratory tonight.” There was no expression in his voice.
“I don’t see why Oliver didn’t tell me himself,” Agatha said in annoyance. “It’s not at all like him. The most considerate man, as a rule! I’ve always thought that was one of his chief attractions. You know what I mean; he never forgets birthdays and things like that.”
“I’ll bet he’s got a list,” Paul muttered beside Leslie.
“Shsh,” she warned him, caught her stepmother’s eye and nodded. “We may as well lead the way,” she said, and Paul joined her with alacrity.
The buffet suppers at the Blake house were justly famous in Claytonville. Tonight, there was a mammoth bowl of shrimp on ice with pungent cocktail sauce. There were smoked turkey, baked ham, salads of chicken and potato and fruit, tiny hot rolls, celery stuffed with cheese. Later there would be the dessert tray with choices of strawberry shortcake, ice cream or fresh fruit.
By custom, the guests found places for themselves at tables set for four. Paul tenderly balanced the plate that he had piled high with everything in sight. Leslie laughed as he deposited it safely with a sigh of relief.
“I always sample everything,” he explained.
She looked at the size of the servings. “Sample?”
“This is nothing to what I could do if I really tried. The advantage of sampling everything is that there is no torment in choosing among those gourmet foods. When your stepmother loses ‘my money,’ she can always run a smorgasbord.”
Before Leslie could comment, they were joined by a sulky Jane with one of the young clerks from the Company, a recent employee, a sandy-haired, shy young man who had previously attended only one of the Sunday suppers and was obviously unsure of himself. Leslie groped for his name. Mason. Jim Mason.
He set down his plate awkwardly, his uneasiness intensified by Jane’s determination to ignore him.
“How nice to have you at my table, Mr. Mason,” Leslie said with her warm smile.
“Th—thank you.”
She introduced Paul Logan, whose good manners could always be depended upon. Jane deliberately tried to exclude young Mason from the coversation by devoting herself to Paul. She meant to make clear that her escort was not of her choosing and she found his presence intrusive. Paul, however, drew the newcomer into the talk deftly, deferred to his opinion, and probed to discover his chief enthusiasm, which turned out to be canoeing.
“Not that I get much chance to do it,” Mason admitted, “but every year I spend a couple of weeks on a canoe trip. Last year in Canada. The year before I was on Lake Erie.” Encouraged by Paul’s apparent interest, he added rather boastfully, “Pretty rugged, I can tell you.”
Jane’s soft mocking laugh was like a blow. “Canoeing. Rugged!”
“It’s easy to see, Jane,” Paul said quickly, “that you haven’t been on Lake Erie in a storm. They come without warning. It’s the most shallow and therefore the most dangerous of the Great Lakes. I’d hate to attempt it myself.”
The color that had flooded Mason’s face receded. “You have to be careful, of course,” he admitted. “You can’t get too far from shore. Lately, I’ve been canoeing here on the river.”
The big room had been filled with the buzz of conversation that indicates a successful party. Everyone seemed to be having a good time. Doris was the center of a gay quartet. Oliver Harrison, as usual, was paying assiduous court to Agatha. At another table Corliss Blake had been cornered by Felice Allen, who was questioning him about his work with deferential interest and a flattery to which he seemed to be impervious.
There fell one of those momentary lulls. The silence was broken by a deep, pleasant voice saying, “Mrs. Blake? I am your tardy and most repentant guest, Donald Shaw. I suppose Harrison explained that I might be late.”
Agatha gave him her large but shapely hand, her bovine eyes surveying him from the clipped dark hair with its premature patches of white to the polished shoes.
“We are delighted to have you with us, Mr. Shaw.” She turned to Harrison. “As this is Mr. Shaw’s first visit, Oliver, perhaps you’ll take him to the buffet and then find him a table.”
Oliver did not move. “I thought you would be working this evening, Shaw. The Company expects orders to be carried out.”
There was a startled silence. Oliver Harrison had broken the cardinal rules: he had mentioned business, he had made clear the chasm between his job and that of his subordinate, and he had ticked off an employee publicly.
Leslie started to get up, spots of color burning in her cheeks. Her father forestalled her. He had already risen from his place at a nearby table. He came forward, holding out his hand.
“Glad to see you, Shaw. Sorry you were delayed.”
“So am I,” Shaw assured him. “It looks like a good party. Too bad to miss any of it.”
Still too angry to realize that he was breaking the Blakes’ rules of hospitality, Harrison said sharply, “So you couldn’t find the data! I thought that I had made it clear that we must have it in the morning.”
“Oh, yes, I found it,” Shaw said cheerfully. “Darnedest thing, the way people can misplace papers, isn’t it?”
Harrison’s face stiffened. “Sure you got the right stuff?”
“According to the top page, it answered your description to a T. I didn’t look through it, of course. Your guard Swensen was good enough to go along on the search and I turned it over to him for safekeeping.”
Shaw returned Harrison’s look steadily. “My trick, I think.” Then he smiled, followed his host to the buffet, and joined the table that held only three people.
Oliver Harrison looked after him and his expression made Leslie’s heart miss a beat. Felice Allen, too, had missed nothing of the exchange. The narrow green eyes flickered over Oliver’s good-looking but stormy face in sardonic amusement and then she turned to watch Donald Shaw with alert speculation.
Aunt Agatha needn’t worry about his being presentable, Leslie thought proudly. Like the man Flammonde in one of her favorite poems by Edwin Arlington Robinson, he
… held his head
Like one by king’s accredited.
In any group he would be noticeable, with his height, his stern handsome face, his unselfconscious assurance. This was the quality for which Oliver strove in vain. His assurance was always marred by the arrogance that is a cover and a shield for insecurity and inferiority.
When the small tables had been cleared and the dessert tray passed, Doris went to preside over the coffee urn. Leslie excused herself.
“I’ll have to check on the dance records. There wasn’t time to sort them out this afternoon.” She turned to the sandy-haire
d clerk, because she did not want to force Paul’s hand. “Perhaps you’ll help Miss Brooke by serving the coffee as she pours.”
He looked wistfully at Jane, who ignored him. “Why I—I’m a clumsy guy—but I’d b-b-be glad—”
“I’ll do it,” Paul offered, and Leslie gave him a grateful smile.
She watched him go to the coffee table and saw Doris’s face light up. In a few minutes they were chattering together in a confidential whisper. From their outraged looks at Oliver Harrison, they were evidently discussing their mutual indignation over his discourtesy to the new chemist.
When records had been stacked on the turntable, the guests drifted from the dining room to the sun room beyond the library, where rugs had been removed and the floor waxed to a high glaze.
Leslie turned to find Oliver beside her. “My dance,” he said, and moved smoothly across the floor with her in his arms. He danced, as he did everything, competently and easily. At length he became aware of her silence. He held her a little away from him, looking down at her with a smile.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Tired?”
“Angry,” she told him honestly. “What on earth made you so rude, so—so domineering, so insolent, to Mr. Shaw?”
“You don’t understand business,” he said, as though he were addressing with patience a somewhat dull child. “He’s to be in my department, you know. I handle it my own way.”
“We don’t entertain employees,” she said hotly. “Only guests. Our guests. Please remember that another time.”
“You seem to take a great deal of interest in Shaw,” Harrison answered. He was still smiling but his expression disturbed her.
She did not reply, thinking that her silence might underline her reproof. They turned, swayed, moved to the rhythm of the dance band. She saw Doris dancing with Paul, her black eyes snapping, both of them laughing as they tried out some new steps. Donald Shaw stood against the wall, for a moment, running his fingers through his hair, his gray eyes searching. Then he made straight for Jane Williams, spoke to her, held out his hand. At first, she seemed to hesitate and then she nodded. She wasn’t a woman who could tolerate being a wallflower, even for a single dance, even if she had to accept a partner whom she disliked. They danced, her big blue eyes looking up at him with just that touch of appealing admiration so deadly to the male.
While Leslie was claimed by one partner after another, Donald Shaw and Jane Williams remained together, sometimes dancing, sometimes sitting in deep chairs in the library beyond. At length, Oliver cut in and danced away with Jane. Now, Leslie thought, now at last he’ll come to me. Instead, Shaw stopped beside Doris. They chatted for a moment and then they strolled out on the terrace. Leslie turned away rather blankly. If he couldn’t have Jane, at least he could talk to her young sister.
As Paul cut in on Oliver, Felice Allen stretched out a hand to the latter and spoke to him. Apparently not having heard her, he went on, and she spoke again, sharply. He turned back and led her out on the floor, his face like a thundercloud.
The record stopped, another dropped down, there was the languorous throbbing rhythm of a tango. Except for Corliss Blake and his daughter, everyone was dancing; even Agatha, who towered over Jim Mason as he strode around the room as though launched on a fifty-mile walk, using Agatha’s right arm like the handle of the town pump. After one dance with his wife, Blake always sat out the rest.
For the first time in her young and popular life, Leslie found herself at a dance without a partner. She told herself that the room was too hot, that she needed fresh air; and she stepped out on the terrace. If she had another reason, who was she, after all, to be so much wiser than other girls?
At the far end of the terrace, a man and a girl sat perched on the stone wall, the man’s face lighted now and then as he drew on a cigarette, the girl’s voice chattering eagerly.
“… and if she’s not in love,” Leslie heard the Babbling Brooke say, “at least she’s at the crossroads. Everyone in town expects …”
Leslie turned back to the overheated room. The record came to an end. It was a relief to hear the little bustle that indicated the guests were preparing to leave. She joined her father and stepmother at the door. Surely now—
Donald Shaw had almost reached her. “… at the pool,” Doris called him. “Web Rock. Don’t forget.”
Felice Allen laid her hand on Shaw’s arm. “You’re at the Fox and Rabbit, too, aren’t you? Perhaps you’ll be kind enough to take me back.”
He was gone, after thanking the Blakes for a delightful evening.
8
Nature loves to play tricks for the bewilderment and consternation of the weather forecasters. The next morning, with a forecast of cloudy and cooler, was hot and breathless. The sun came scorching out of a cloudless sky. Leaves drooped motionless on maple and elm and walnut trees. The river sparkled blindingly but there was not a ripple. It was the kind of day that heralds a storm.
Even in a sleeveless blouse and tailored shorts, Leslie found the big attic room that she had turned into a studio scorching. The large skylight could not be opened and it seemed to attract and hold the sun’s relentless heat. She opened the small casement windows under the eaves and sent Rosie in search of electric fans.
For an hour she puttered around, straightening the studio, which she had not entered for months except to renew the damp cloths that kept the clay moist.
Incorrigibly honest, she finally made herself confess that she was not really thinking about the task that she had set herself, that she was wholly absorbed in brooding about the man who had not asked her to dance the night before, the man who had seemed literally unable to tear himself away from Jane Williams.
“I’m ashamed of you, Leslie Blake,” she told herself firmly, “mooning like a lovesick schoolgirl. Haven’t you any pride at all? If he likes someone better than he does you, hold up your head and forget about him. Now you get to work, young woman.”
Her own crisp words, spoken aloud in the quiet studio, made her laugh at herself. She got out a sketchbook and set herself to planning the statue that was to memorialize Douglas Clayton’s heroic action.
At first, she made idle, meaningless marks with charcoal. There was one sure thing. She’d had only that brief glimpse of his face in the film. It was queer how distinctly she remembered it. But she needed more detail in order to create a real likeness. And even if Jane still had any photographs, she had made clear that she had no intention of going to the trouble of producing them.
What then? Almost of its own accord the charcoal began to move across the paper, as though independent of her fingers, of her will, sketching a man spread-eagled against a cliff, groping for a handhold as he pulled himself up.
At length, Leslie sat back to look at her sketch. She felt the lifting of the heart, the exhilaration that comes—so rarely!—with a sense of creative achievement, of having grasped and made tangible a private vision. The lines were spare and sure. There was something infinitely lonely in the figure of the man who pulled himself upward, a suggestion of shrinking of the body from the impact of possible gunfire, and yet an unshaken will that could carry him over the top to face whatever might await him there.
It’s good, Leslie thought in a kind of wonder. It’s really good. She had forgotten everything now but the work in hand. Rapidly she set up her armature, dragged the big keg of wet clay beside her, perched on a high stool, picked up a small piece of clay and worked it between her fingers.
There were running feet on the stairs and Doris came in. “Hi, Leslie! Whew! It’s hot in here! I had a wonderful time last night. You were a love to ask Paul especially for me.”
She threw herself on a rickety couch against the wall, fanning herself vigorously with a newspaper she had picked up, and went on without giving Leslie time to speak. The Babbling Brooke rippled gaily along.
“I’ve got my work cut out for me, I can see that, Paul’s more in love with you than I realized. But I managed to get in a few good
licks.”
Leslie, pressing clay onto the armature, began to laugh.
“Laugh all you like,” Doris said cheerfully, “but I’m not the girl to let grass grow under her feet or to gather any moss, I can tell you. In fact, I staked my claim.”
“How did you do that?” Leslie asked in a tone of affectionate amusement.
“Oh, not to his face, of course. Actually, the one I told was the stunning and mysterious stranger in our midst, Mr. Shaw.”
“Mr. Shaw!” For a moment Leslie’s hand was motionless, then she reached mechanically for more clay. “What on earth has he to do with it?”
“Well, it’s like this. He asked me to dance but I could see he was awfully tired so I suggested that we sit out on the terrace.”
I saw you. Leslie was relieved to discover that she had not spoken the words aloud.
“Well, we got talking. One thing and another. He mentioned you. Said he’d picked you up and taken you to the Country Club. Said Paul had thanked him for rescuing his girl. So,” Doris said firmly, “I told him Paul was mine. Only he doesn’t know it yet.”
“Why on earth,” Leslie asked, trying to sound unconcerned, “did he speak of me?”
“I don’t know. Just idle chatter. You know how it is. So that’s when I said Paul was mine and I thought you’d probably marry Oliver Harrison.”
“You—what!”
“Not exactly. I just said if you weren’t actually in love yet you were certainly at the crossroads, and everyone expected you to marry him, sooner or later.”
“Honestly, Doris, sometimes you say the most irresponsible things.”
“There’s nothing to get excited about. It was just one of those casual comments. You know how it is. And, anyhow, he probably won’t even remember it, if that’s what is bothering you. And it won’t get back to Oliver Harrison through him. I don’t think our Mr. Shaw is feeling friendly enough at this point to indulge in any personal gossip with him. That is, if he ever really says anything personal. He doesn’t give away a thing about himself. Courteous and pleasant, but he presents you with a blank wall in the nicest way in the world.”
A Candle in Her Heart Page 7