“You are afraid Cecile will try to get that money, aren’t you?” he had answered: “If it occurred to her as a lucrative possibility, she might.”
Cecile had tried it. Was she counting on an easy settlement? Settle! Pamela Leigh settle! She wouldn’t if she could. She would make Cecile prove that she had come between husband and wife. She shrugged. Bombast. Commendable but inane. How could she make her prove it without a lawyer and how could she retain a lawyer without money? Her father’s bell. He must be told. What would be his reaction?
Harold Leigh frowned as she entered his room. Sunshine patched his green lounging robe with gilt, lay warmly on the stamp-strewn table by the side of his chair. He demanded petulantly:
“What has happened? Something going on, I know. Terrence was jumpy when he brought up my breakfast. There isn’t a tinge of color in your face. I heard you at the telephone. What is it?” He rapped an irritating tattoo on the table. It set the tiny, colorful squares of paper a-twitter like autumn leaves doing a double-shuffle in a sudden breeze.
Pamela crossed to the window. Eyes on the placid sea and cloudless sky she flung over her shoulder:
“Cecile has attached this property for thirty thousand dollars.”
“Good God! What for?”
“She is suing me for alienating your affection.” She wheeled to face him. “It’s a joke, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean — ‘joke’?”
“This alienation suit. You don’t want her here, do you? You are mighty glad to get rid of her, aren’t you? You know that I never have said a word to influence you. You will have a chance to testify to that in court.”
“In court! I am not able to appear in a court room.”
“Not to help me? Thirty thousand dollars for Cecile if she wins the case. Perhaps, though, you don’t care. Perhaps you have a few more antiques you can turn into money with which to pay the verdict.”
“What do you mean?” His voice caught in his throat. He pulled at the collar of his soft shirt before he went on: “I have no money. Mallory will handle the matter for us, of course.”
“He will not! He won’t let us pay him for the time he has already given our affairs.”
“That is nothing. I’ve told you before that lawyers, like doctors, expect to do a certain amount of work for which they are not paid. Look at Phineas Carr! He is one of the biggest men in his profession. Think he never helped anyone out?”
Phineas Carr! It was the first time her father had mentioned his name since Grandmother Leigh’s estate had been settled. Would Mr. Carr help her? What effect would that daring thought-contact have on her life? Tangle it more or help unsnarl it? There she was again thinking in plot terms. Suppose he consented to appear for her? She couldn’t pay him. Yes, she could. The old maple. He was a lover of antiques. He had said there was nothing finer than the furniture her grandmother had left her. Forgetful of her father she started for the door. His fretful voice halted her at the threshold.
“You needn’t take it so hard asking Mallory to help. He butted in on my affairs. I didn’t ask him.”
Shame scorched Pamela like a flame. Why didn’t the hot tears behind her eyeballs come out and relieve the smart? She opened her lips to protest. Where did a voice go when it left one’s throat, she wondered frantically. With an inarticulate murmur she fled.
Her heart and mind were still stinging from her father’s caustic comment when she poked her head into the kitchen.
“I am going to the village, Hitty. I won’t be long. I will do the marketing.” She stopped in the living room to snatch the summons from her desk. She ran to the barn and backed out the sedan. Lucky Grandmother Leigh had left something besides the old flivver. She didn’t dare stop a moment for fear she would lose her courage.
“Don’t wobble!” she admonished herself sternly as she rapped on the front door of the Carr house. The sight of the rare brass knocker halted her stampeding courage. Phineas Carr was mad about antiques. Hadn’t he said there was nothing finer than her old maple? Wasn’t she giving him a chance to earn it?
She caught a glimpse of her slim, vivid self as she passed the gilt-framed mirror in the hall. She had forgotten a hat. The breeze had ruffled her hair, little dark curls twisted about her ears. She had caught up a yellow cardigan as she ran through the hall. Color instinct. It matched her linen frock.
She followed Milly Pike, whose eyes were round with surprise, to the open door of a room, the walls of which were covered with a curious old sporting paper, all dull browns and reds, with queer little bobtailed rabbits and beefy hunters with over-developed muscles and under-developed raiment and wicked guns. Was there a swift gleam of apprehension in Phineas Carr’s keen glance as he dropped the rod he had been examining and rose to greet her, or was it her hectic imagination? Without a preliminary word she laid the summons on the broad table littered with a sportsman’s paraphernalia.
“Please read that and tell me what I ought to do.”
He glanced through its contents. This time she was sure of the relief in voice and eyes.
“Sit down, Miss Pamela, and tell me what has happened. You needn’t wait, Milly,” he spoke sharply to the maid who lingered at the door.
Swiftly, breathlessly, Pamela told of finding the summons when she returned from Boston the evening before, of Cecile’s suit for alienation. Phineas Carr looked at the paper.
“You didn’t see this until midnight. It does not state what the attachment is for. How did you find out?”
“Mr. Mallory got in touch with Cecile’s New York lawyer — he said his name is Horace Hale — and phoned me this morning.”
“Mallory of Mallory and Carter? The young man who has had the vision to specialize in South American law?”
“I don’t know about the specialization but he is the Mallory of that firm.”
“I have been watching him. Fine old Cape family. His father died when he was a boy. His mother, brought up in luxury, took in sewing to keep the home going. The lad worked his way through high school, through college — majoring in languages. The war came. He went to Plattsburg. Was sent across as First Lieutenant, came home as Captain. Probably saved most of his pay for he pushed through law school.” Pamela remembered Scott’s, “poor but honest parents — wonderful parents.”
She said eagerly: “He must be brilliant to interest you in his career.”
Phineas Carr brought his hand down with a thump. “Interested! I’m envious as the devil. I have a son, younger to be sure, but with as good a mind if he would use it. He fooled through college, lost his crew letter because his marks were low, now he wants to plan houses. I admire the man, who, without foolishly sacrificing health, has ambition to push ahead of the herd and stay there.” He drew his hand across his eyes as if trying to brush away an annoying memory.
“You don’t trust your son enough.” Pamela caught her breath at her own daring. Phineas Carr’s brows almost obscured his eyes.
“I don’t? Perhaps you’re right, perhaps you’re right, Miss Pamela. I’ve been thinking over his plan for getting an income out of the farmer’s cottage. That is constructive. Wouldn’t believe he had it in him.”
“That’s the trouble. You don’t believe in him. He would do much better if you did. The knowledge that someone believes in one keeps one trying to make good.”
He smiled. “Philip has an earnest champion in you, Miss Pamela. That is to his credit. When you came in I thought you had come to report that he had let you down on the cottage.”
“You didn’t really think I would come to complain of your son, did you? I came for advice.”
“Forgive me, my dear.” He tapped the summons with a long finger. “If you already have a lawyer why come to me with this?”
Pamela denied breathlessly: “I haven’t retained him — isn’t that the legal term — on this case, really I haven’t. Scott Mallory has spent hours and hours on our affairs — of course you have heard of Father’s debts — he won’t let us pay him.
Now along comes this abominable accusation. I am aching with shame about it. He will think me a girl with a sheriff forever at her heels — The Girl and the Sheriff — there’s a title! I won’t let him do it! I can’t pay him. I know that Father was insulting to you, but — but Grandmother Leigh adored you and I thought that if you would take the case — you might accept the old maple in payment.” Her voice sounded humiliatingly beseeching in her own ears.
Phineas Carr drummed lightly on his desk. A ghost of a smile haunted his stern lips. “Mm. The old maple is a temptation. Were you and your father’s wife friends before she left him?”
“I rarely saw her. But even if we weren’t, what an absurd move for her to make. I would think that the case would be thrown out of court. There is no sense, no reason in it,” Pamela declared passionately.
“There is rarely sense or reason behind an alienation suit; it’s generally hysteria, or greed, or jealousy. You have only to follow the newspapers, my dear, to find that there are litigants — and lawyers — so sure that in that bright lexicon which Fate has reserved for the daring contestant there’s no such word as fail that they will try anything. From what you have told me I deduce that your stepmother has devised a plan by which she may possibly gain money — by which at least she may vent her jealousy and dislike of you.”
“Would a respectable lawyer take a case like that?”
“The man who is bringing the suit has little to lose if he is defeated, much to gain if he wins. Several times he has been spectacularly successful. Don’t underestimate the advertising value of this suit both to your stepmother — she’s an actress, isn’t she — and her counsel. It would cost them thousands of dollars to get the same amount of publicity in the usual way. The case has, at least, the element of beauty which comes from extreme simplicity. Jealousy is an old emotion. It goes back to the first domestic triangle, Adam and Eve and Lilith. I don’t like Hale, I’ve run up against him before, but I hand it to him for being keen. You realize, of course, that I cannot appear for you if Mr. Mallory has the slightest claim. You must explain this to him before I can file our answer in court.”
She was on her feet, her eyes starry.
“‘Our answer’! Then you will take it?”
“If it can be ethically arranged.”
Ethically arranged. The phrase rotated through Pamela’s mind as she did her errands in the village. Her exultation oozed. Had she been horribly unfair to Scott to turn to Mr. Carr? She glanced at her wrist watch. How had she dared take so much of a great man’s time? She frowned at the bulbous-eyed storekeeper who left the sugar he was weighing for her, to rush to the street to watch a plane which was circling.
“It’s coming down!” he called over his shoulder. The men who had been huddled round the stove shuffled out to see it. Pamela resisted the temptation to join them. She had not yet become accustomed to the marvel of the gigantic birds of the air. She might as well have gone, she told herself, as she watched the clock tell off the minutes. Five. Ten. Fifteen, before business was resumed and she could depart with her purchases.
Had Hitty deserted to see the plane, she wondered indignantly as she stopped the sedan at the back door and no gaunt figure made an immediate appearance. She lifted a heavy package.
“Let me take that!”
“Scott!”
She dropped the bag. Twenty pounds of sugar spread in a white drift on the ground between them. Surprise, an oppressive sense of guilt, the expression of Scott Mallory’s eyes, set fire to her temper which was not of the steadiest these days.
“Now see what you’ve done! Walking up behind me like that!”
Mallory caught her elbows, lifted her over the sugar, swung her to the threshold of the kitchen.
“Methinks the lady hath a guilty color. Did you suppose I would stay in Boston when you hung up on my half-finished sentence? You don’t know me. I chartered a plane and here I am to fight it out with you.”
“You flew!”
He followed closely as Pamela backed into the kitchen. “What did you mean, ‘I won’t let you’?”
She freed the hands he had caught tightly in his, clenched them behind her to steady their trembling.
“What I said, Scott. You have done enough for us. I — I — have just re — retained Phineas Carr to fight this case.”
She shut her eyes for a moment to shut out his, black, with little flames in them, in a white face. Had she made him furiously angry? She couldn’t help it. This suit of Cecile’s was only the last of a long series of humiliations. She couldn’t bear to have him mixed up in it. This would end their friendship. Wasn’t that what she wanted? Hadn’t she an invalid father to support? Would she drag him with his temperament into any man’s life? Just because her heart glowed whenever he smiled at her, was no reason why others would forgive his moods. Time she faced the fact that Scott Mallory had her heart-fast, that her whole being responded passionately to his touch, to his voice.
“Carnation Carr! I am your legal adviser. Carr won’t take the case if he knows that. It would be unprofessional.”
She hadn’t known that a human voice could be so cold, that gray eyes could be so black, so inscrutable, that a fine hand could be so like iron on her arm.
“I told him that I did not want you to appear for me.”
“What sent you to him? I thought he had given up practising.”
“He has, but Phil said —”
“Phil! Phil! So he’s at the bottom of this! His father is rotten with money. His mother has a chain of power plants working for her. I have only what I earn. He is young and care-free. Already I have lived an ordinary lifetime of work. I am too old for you, of course. You think if his father takes the case you will see more of him!”
He dropped her arm. “You won’t! I’ll tell Carnation Carr to keep his hands off my business! I’ll tell him now!”
Chapter XII
“Make the Babe stop wriggling, Terry, while I scrub his legs.”
The sun brought out curious red-gold glints in Pamela’s black hair, rouged the magnolia tints of her face and arms. A green rubber apron protected the front of her gay, sleeveless print frock as she vigorously applied a brush to the lavishly lathered dog who shivered violently in the galvanized iron tub set on a lawn, freshly, velvety, springily green. Terrence held the Babe’s hind legs down with one hand while with the other he grasped the leather strap about the black and tan neck. His red hair, ablaze in the sunlight, stood on end. His handsome face was crimson and moist from exertion.
“Easy enough to say. ‘Make him stop wriggling.’ Try it yourself.” His indignation worked off in a chuckle. “Looks’s if he’d bust right out crying, doesn’t he?”
A soft, salty breeze blew from the shore, picked up the scent of spring from the brown earth and danced on. Between house and barn a clump of white birches, with a vague misty aura of unborn leaves, murmured among themselves. Distant sand dunes gleamed like nuggets of gold in a lapis lazuli sea. Fluffs of feathery clouds, scattered haphazard over a radiant sky, added the last perfect touch, the dreamlike quality of a Daubigny pastoral. From somewhere in infinite space drifted the faint far drone of a plane. From the shore came the thud of hammers on wood, the voices of men. A tipsy bee lighted on the girl’s bare arm. She cautiously brushed it off before she tenderly removed the lather from around the dejected Belgian’s jaws.
“Cheer’o, Babe! The agony is almost over.”
The dog shook himself violently. A monster dab of suds landed in Terrence’s eye.
“Boy! That smarts.”
Stinging discomfort loosed his hold. The Babe leaped to freedom. He dashed madly across the lawn, shaking himself as he ran, showering suds like foam from a waterwheel. He raced toward gaunt, gray Mehitable Betts coming from the poultry house with a basket.
“Go ’way, you pesky fella!”
Repulsed by her shrill squeak he ran toward Harold Leigh in a wicker chair in a sunny corner of the porch. Pamela scrambled to her feet.
&n
bsp; “Why didn’t you hold him, Terry? Hitty, who boasts that she ‘ain’t afraid of any man livin’,’ is frightened to death of a dog. Lucky she didn’t drop those eggs when he charged at her. If he spatters Father there will be a riot.”
The green and red parrot, sunning on his gilded perch, mewed like a cat. Mocked stridently:
“Bad boy!”
The dog barked furiously at his tormentor. Harold Leigh put hands to ears. Called fretfully:
“Terrence, make him stop that infernal racket!”
“Come Babe! Come!”
The dog started toward Pamela in answer to her call, noted the galvanized tub. With soapy tail between his soapier legs he streaked for the long, white barn. The girl pulled off the green apron.
“That’s that. We won’t see him again for a while. His first fisherman master must have sent him into the sea for a swim. The Babe has been perfectly trained in every way except in the little matter of being tubbed.”
Terrence furiously blinked a smarting eye. “And giving the glad-paw to stepmothers.”
His sister dropped to the warm, fragrant lawn, clasped her hands about her knees. Her eyes were troubled. “And that day I stood as if turned to stone and let him fly at Cecile. When she appeared in Cap’n Iry Crockett’s flivver in a fisherman’s slicker and sou’wester, I thought for an instant that she was a villager come to sell tickets for something. Suppose — suppose he had bitten her!”
“What started him after her? He’s never showed his teeth before nor since.”
“Instinct. He knew what she had up her sleeve. Suing me for alienating her husband’s affection! Perhaps had I been politic the day she came here I might have staved this off. Father told her brutally that he did not want her. Why sue me? She claims that he wrote her that I had advised him that he was happier without her. I never talked with him on the subject of his wife, but when her lawyer produces in court that red-hot letter I wrote months ago, and Cecile is on the stand with her beautiful face and her moanin’-low voice, adorning her tale with all the trappings which seem to her good theatre, do you think those twelve men will believe anything I say?”
Fair Tomorrow Page 12