“I’m here!”
Mallory wheeled. Regarded her incredulously. “What have you done to yourself? You look taller.”
“High heels. Don’t you like me taller?” She threw just the right amount of wistfulness into voice and eyes. Truly the descent to Avernus was as swift as it purported to be — and more heady.
Scott Mallory laughed. “Changed your line with your clothes, haven’t you. Come.”
To the accompaniment of the quick, stimulating syncopation of an orchestra, the major domo conducted them through a table-bordered lane with the air of one leading a legion into battle. Mallory responded to the greetings of a gay group. A smartly clad girl removed a cigarette from her lips with jeweled fingers. Hilda Crane! Pamela held her head a little higher. No chance of developing an inferiority complex in her present costume. This moment paid for all it had cost in money, all it would cost in labor.
“Scott!” Miss Crane cooed. Her eyes deep violet pools of amazement as she glanced at his companion. “Well, of all people! The cook!”
Mallory’s eyes glowed like black coals as he took the seat opposite Pamela at a small table. A snowy Isle of the Blest. Not too wide for low voices to carry across nor hands to touch. Not too near the music. Not too deeply shaded by a synthetic palm. An old waiter, wise-eyed. Violets — a fragrant bunch with a gardenia heart. Candles, pink-shaded. Silver. Crystal. Roseate seclusion. A table in a thousand. A companion not inexperienced along the flowery paths of sentiment? Had he done all this for Hilda Crane, Pamela wondered as she lifted the lovely blossoms. She interrupted the order he was giving.
“Please! Not so much. Why spend our precious afternoon eating.”
He revised the order. The major domo handed the slip to a minion. The minion scuttled away. Scott Mallory leaned forward.
“I’m sorry. You seem always to be the victim of the rotten manners of my one-time friend. Let’s forget her.” A laugh cleared his eyes and voice of annoyance. “Did you travel up from the Cape with a wardrobe trunk concealed about your person?”
“‘The feel of Paris.’ Like them?”
“The clothes? Mad about them.”
She was conscious of a guilty accession of color. “These are not clothes. The frock and hat are a mammoth coffee tricolater. The electric ice-cream freezer — plus a few much needed kitchen utensils — completes the ensemble.” His laugh brought her eyes to his.
“And it was only a short time ago you were wondering if you would forget how to spend money!”
“Ladies must dress. Then you are not shocked?”
“Shocked! My dear girl, I am inexpressibly relieved to find you so human. I had begun to fear that you were all saint and sacrifice.”
“Me! There is something grammatically wrong with that exclamation, but we’ll let it pass. All saint! That’s funny. I was tempted and I fell. Crashed, is a better word. Besides what you see, I have a slinky frock the color of the gorgeous breast of an oriole for evening. I am sitting on the lid of my conscience at this very moment. Oh, I shall repent and pay and pay and pay — unfortunately Terry will too — when I struggle with inadequate equipment in the green and white kitchen. Let’s forget my brainstorm.”
“Just a minute. Breath-taking as you are now, you will never look lovelier than in the white apron and cap. You looked so young and troubled, yet your eyes were so valiant that Thanksgiving day that when I said good-bye, I felt as if I were heartlessly abandoning an adorable child who was struggling against fear.”
“I remember that you called me, ‘child.’”
“Not plain, ‘child.’”
She leaned toward him. “Honestly now, how could you call me ‘plain child’?”
His laugh was one of the nicest of the many nice things about him, Pamela decided, his teeth were so perfect.
“If a demure little Quaker had suddenly gone tap-dancer I couldn’t be more surprised. I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“Dual personality. I told you that I shed my work-day line with my linen frock. Hope you are not disappointed.”
“Disappointed? — Gorgeous!”
Her heart caught and plunged on. For a party which was to be kept gaily impersonal that “Gorgeous” had been too deep, his eyes too ardent. Did Cinderella suffer a warning ache at her heart, a, “You know this can’t keep on,” reminder through the gaiety and splendor of the royal ball and the Prince’s devotion? Silly to cloud the present when she had recklessly mortgaged the future for this one day. Did Scott suspect what she was thinking? His eyes were tenderly amused as they met hers.
“Don’t let a wraith from the past or the future flit across our party, Pam. You won’t be troubled by a word you don’t want to hear from this minute till I leave you at the Silver Moon. Think I don’t realize what I have to live down? That Thanksgiving dinner for one thing. Think I didn’t know when you looked at the violets that you wondered if I had given violets to Hilda — never, she preferred orchids. I’ve got to prove to you that I am naturally a one-woman worshiper — when I find the right woman. Get the idea? I know better than to crowd my luck. It is luck to have you to myself for a few hours. How are things going at the Silver Moon?”
His casual question restored the equilibrium his impassioned voice had undermined.
“Wonderfully. Each week sees an increase in revenue. I had my staff up at daybreak this morning to help me off. Hitty wished to be remembered to Mr. Mallory, Terry sent his best, and the Babe his love.”
“Thanks. Makes me feel as if I had a family which cared. I come of poor but honest parents — wonderful parents.” His voice had deepened, the muscles of his mouth twitched as if he were mastering emotion. “I worked for my education, you know. I am quite alone now.”
She hadn’t known. Not until this moment had she realized how little he had told her about himself. She was forever referring to her family. She grew uncomfortably hot as she remembered Cecile’s scathing:
“You and your family — I was bored to death by your talk of what your ancestors had done.”
Live and learn. Did one keep on blundering all through life? It seemed as if one ought to be wiser than she was at twenty-five. She watched the super-prosperous appearing men, the chic and sophisticated women who chatted and smoked and tasted at the flower bedecked tables to the accompaniment of violin and harp. They appeared care-free and gay. Were they preoccupied with problems, perplexities, perhaps tragedies, behind their smiling masks?
“Come back!” Scott Mallory’s laughing reminder interrupted her reflections.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry about anything today. Glad the Babe remembered to send me his love. He and I were great pals when we shared bachelor quarters.”
“You must miss him. Why did you send him to us?”
“With all sorts of patrons driving up to the Silver Moon, thought you needed a dog while Terrence was at school. Feel safer about you, with the Babe there. He wouldn’t stand for nonsense.”
He would not indeed if his attack on Cecile were a criterion. What would Scott say if he knew of it? He wasn’t to know of it; that was that. He was to know nothing of what had happened during the second Mrs. Leigh’s visitation. Pamela thrust the heckling memory of it into the background as Mallory continued:
“The city is no place for a dog. The Babe was born near the sea. I bought him of a fisherman who had raised him from a little pup. The man’s weather-bleached eyes were full of tears when he parted with him. He had to let him go because his son, who also was a fisherman, had abused the Babe until the dog showed his teeth whenever he came near. It wasn’t safe to have him around.”
From luncheon to a super-talkie, on to a portrait show. Conversation, real conversation about things which mattered. They two seemed never to lack interesting subjects for discussion. Long silences. Laughter. She told him of the plan for the cottage, touched lightly on Philip Carr’s interest. Dinner and dancing.
She never had danced with him before. She had a sense of secu
rity as his arm went about her with disturbing possessiveness. The music was throbby, muted. The leader sang softly:
“‘Should I reveal exactly how I feel
Should I confess I love you —’”
Scott Mallory’s arm tightened. Pamela fought an impulse to lay her cheek against his — other couples were doing it — and stiffened. Instantly he loosened his hold.
“Happy?” he whispered.
She lifted her face. “Top of the world!”
The musicians crooned, saxophones wailed, violins soared and sighed. The dancers swayed, making, breaking colorful patterns. Everyone caught the contagion of the music. Everyone hummed:
“‘Should I reveal exactly how I feel
Should I confess I love you.’”
In an intermission, above the babel of voices, a steeple clock ponderously told off the hour. Pamela smiled across the small candle-lighted table, sighed regretfully.
“We must go.”
“So early? Is your fairy godmother lying in wait to snitch those swanky clothes at the stroke of midnight?”
Even as Scott Mallory protested, he held her coat, settled her sable scarf across her shoulders. His lingering touch sent a thrill feathering through her veins. Curious that the Cinderella motif should be in his mind as well.
“The Silver Moon is my fairy godmother. It watches out that I punch the time-clock when there is a full day ahead.”
He signaled to the waiter. Pamela tried to appear sophisticatedly indifferent to the denomination of the greenback he laid on the tray and waved away. It seemed to her perturbed fancy that he had paid out a fortune since she had joined him for luncheon.
Money had Aladdin’s Lamp beaten at its own game of magic, she reflected, as Mallory’s shining roadster purred to the curb. Tucking in of rug. Touching of hat. Mumbled “Thank you, sir!” The slam of a door. They were off through streets twinkling with lights. A golden dome gleamed against an indigo sky for an instant and was gone. A beam from an air-beacon silvered roofs and leafless trees. In a pale tower a red eye flamed and faded. The river road. A line of lights hung like a glittering girdle where a bridge spanned water, kicked-up to white caps by a salty east wind. Buildings but vague outlines, their lighted windows — like the hundred eyes of Argus, fabled watch-dog of the gods — peered un-winkingly into the night. Moonlight glorified the unglorious, silvered factories and spires with lavish impartiality. The stars seemed nearer and brighter than the lights which gemmed the water-fronts and distant hills.
Glamorous night. Pamela drew a long sigh of content. Mallory bent to tuck the soft rug, which matched perfectly in color the morocco upholstery, more securely about her feet.
“Warm enough? Too much breeze?”
“It’s heavenly.”
“Happy?”
“Too contented to talk.”
“Don’t try. We have a long ride ahead. Better get a nap.”
“Sleep! That last coffee was so strong it curled my eyelashes up tight. I shall be little bright-eyes for the rest of the night.”
The road beckoned alluringly. A broad beautiful road, blanched by moonlight, jeweled with incandescence. Red lights warned. Green lights like cabochon emeralds beckoned. Spurts of conversation. Long, companion-conscious stretches of silence. Gay, amusing give and take of badinage. Far off the sound of a baying dog. Stars trembling on the obsidian surface of a lonely little pond. Houses with lighted windows. Scraps of gossamer mists in the hollows like fairy linen spread out to dry. A solitary horseman. Houses with no lights at all. Luminous shadows. Sooty shadows. A village like a toy town in the moonlight. Mallory slowed the roadster.
“See that white church and the dove-gray parsonage beside it: I helped put through a run-away marriage there before I went to South America, never have forgotten the place.”
“Why the elopement? Cruel parents?”
“No. No one objected. The couple had planned a smash of a wedding. Both got nervous about it so slipped away by themselves. Have often wondered since if the wife ever regretted giving up the splurge.”
“I doubt it. A large wedding is a terrific strain on a girl’s disposition. The last time I was maid of honor, the bride — who really was sweet and lovely — had been lunched and dined, fitted and showered, till she was on edge. The emotional strain of the wedding was the last straw. She went to nervous pieces after the ceremony and snapped at her new husband. He was hurt to the soul. In a moment she was sobbing in his arms. He was dear, but — I’ve often wondered if the rapture with which he had looked at her at the altar ever again reached the same high peak.”
“Would you be satisfied with a small wedding?”
Pamela remembered her father. “I shall be — satisfied not to have any — for some years — to come.”
Mallory laughed. “You are half dead with sleep, aren’t you. It is cruel to keep you talking.”
The roadster picked up, and like a racer demonstrating speed, shot forward.
Plans, thoughts keen as rapiers, thrust their way into Pamela’s content. Fluffs of haze dulled them as clouds scooting across the moon toned its brilliance to a dreamlike quality. A song hummed over and over, “Should I reveal exactly how I feel.” Fragments of stories she had written, characters she never had conceived, kept breaking in on her train of thought, just as when tired after a full day at the Silver Moon, she would lose her place in her prayers and begin over, lose it, and begin again. Perhaps if she closed her eyes — heavenly not to have to hold her head up. She was snuggled in the corner of the big couch at home. She could feel the copper-toned damask against her cheek. And she had thought that she was motoring. She hadn’t been to Boston. Spending the equipment money was a nightmare. Queer things, dreams. One could laugh and cry in them. Happy things sometimes. She could smell violets.
Light. Morning so soon. “Pam, dear!” Terry calling her? Not Terry. He would shout “Hi there!” She lifted heavy lids. Gazed straight up into a man’s eyes. Their expression shocked her wide awake. She looked about her. The roadster had stopped. The porch light of the Silver Moon had wakened her!
“Have I slept all the way from Boston?” she asked contritely.
There was a husky break in Mallory’s laugh. Was he surreptitiously flexing an arm as he stepped from the car? Had she slept against his shoulder?
“Not all the way. For the last fifty miles, that’s all. Come on. Watch your step!” He caught her as she stumbled. “Sleepy child. You are not awake yet.”
“I am, wide awake. My heart is as light as a balloon, a gay balloon. I feel as if the tide of fortune had turned. I know that there’s a grand and glorious bit of good luck about to round the corner. That’s what a day off has done for me.”
The door was flung open. Every red hair of Terrence’s head seemed on end as he waved a paper.
“Thought you’d never come! Boy! I’m glad you’re here, Mr. Scott!”
“What’s the matter, Terry?” Pamela caught his arm.
“Go slow, Terrence. You are frightening your sister. What has happened?”
“Father?” The word caught in Pamela’s throat.
Terrence shook off her clutching fingers.
“Father! Nothing so simple. It’s a summons! Cap’n Iry Crockett served it today! Cecile has attached this property for thirty thousand dollars!”
Chapter XI
Pamela raced to her room to answer the telephone. More privacy there. Scott had told her last night that he would call her as soon as he found out why Cecile had attached the property. The summons had merely stated the fact. That summons! Its content was burned into her brain forever. If she closed her eyes she saw in great letters:
COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS
To Pamela Leigh
WE Command you that you appear at our Superior Court —
She must put the thing out of her mind! Her heart pounded as she held the receiver to her ear.
“The Silver Moon. Pamela Leigh speaking … Scott! What was it? … For alienation of Father’
s affection! Good grief! What can she do? … She can? … Oh, no, I won’t worry. What’s a paltry thirty thousand dollar suit in my young life? … I’m not laughing, I’m not hysterical … No! No! Don’t leave your work again this week! … I know you will, but I won’t let you. Good-bye!”
She hung up the receiver on his eager, “Pam, listen!” Hands clasped hard on her knees she stared at the sand dunes steeping in the sunshine. Scott had called the New York lawyer, who had brought the suit, on long distance. He had explained that Mrs. Harold Leigh, known on the stage as Cecile Mortimer, was suing her stepdaughter for alienation of her husband’s affection. Of course Cecile had thought that up the day she had come to the Silver Moon. Hadn’t she departed on the threat:
“I will start proceedings for an allowance, but — before that, I will drag you into court, Miss Leigh!”
Scott had said, “Don’t worry. I will look after it for you.” And she had refused passionately, “I won’t let you.”
She wouldn’t. Even in the instant of his communication of the facts something within her had protested against his aid. He had done enough for them in attending to her father’s tangled affairs. It had troubled him last night to leave her with the summons unexplained, but he had been due in court this morning. She would not be a ball and chain hitched to him. To whom could she turn? Scott must have anticipated some such mix-up. When she had accused:
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