Chance of a Lifetime (21 page)

At last she heard doors opening upstairs. A man’s voice, which she thought she recognized as her uncle’s; her aunt’s cold, thin tones answering; and then another door hastily flung back, and a girl’s high, petulant tones. That must be her cousin!

Simultaneously Maida appeared in the doorway and peered into the elegant gloom of the room.

“Madam says you are to go right out to the car and get in, Miss Washburn,” she announced. “They are late already.” And turning, she disappeared.

S
herrill went into the hall and found her uncle just coming down the stairs.

“Uncle West!” she called joyously and hurried to meet him. Here at last she might be natural. Uncle West had always been nice—whenever he had had time.

He stopped, and a light came into his eyes.

“Ho, ho! Little girl, so you’ve come! They didn’t tell me! Well I’m glad to see you. I hope we’re going to have a beautiful winter together. It’s going to be nice to have two little girls instead of one.” And he took her in his arms and kissed her warmly.

“Now, come on right out to the car,” he added. “Your aunt will be down in a minute. She found a button off her shoe or something that had to be remedied I believe, but she said we were to get in. Carol? Where are you, child? Carol is always the last one. Well, come on, you and I will go out and get settled.”

He led her out to the car and seated her comfortably, and Sherrill suddenly felt warm around her heart again. It wasn’t going to be so bad perhaps, after all, if there was one friend in the family.

Mrs. Washburn came almost at once, stopping at the door to give directions to the butler, and making a great fuss about getting settled in the car. Carol came trailing behind, fretting at having to go to dinner.

“You know I can’t abide Amelia Van’s dinners, Eloise,” she drawled, without even glancing toward her newly arrived cousin. “Why you had to ring me in on this, I don’t see. If your Mrs. Pearly and her stupid daughter had to go to an old funeral, I don’t see why that should affect me. Amelia’s a pest anyway, and her dinners are never worth eating.”

“Carol, that’s no way to speak of your hostess,” chided her father mildly. “Mrs. Van Gordon is one of your mother’s friends, and that should be enough for you.”

“Well, it’s not enough!” retorted the girl impudently. “I don’t see being a slave to anybody, merely because Eloise is fool enough to accept her invitations. Here I have to go and be made a martyr when I might have been resting up a little for the dance this evening. I’ll be bored to extinction. She always seats me beside that doddering old Max Pyle, just because he likes to appear young. I can’t abide him, old cradle snatcher.”

“Carol, you haven’t spoken to your cousin yet,” reproved her mother coldly, as if the subject of the dinner was finally closed.

“Oh!” said Carol, turning an indifferent stare toward Sherrill and then pausing rudely to appraise her with a startled look of surprise.

“Oh, hello!” she said indifferently. “But say, Eloise, you’ve certainly done her up in a stunning coat. I like that! What’s the idea! You wouldn’t get
me
a new fur coat this winter. What’s the idea! I’m certainly not going to stand for that!”

“Fur coat?” said Mrs. Washburn, turning questioning eyes toward Sherrill’s corner, where the light from the top of the car shone full upon her. “What do you mean?” Then she stared. “Where on earth did you get that fur coat, Sherrill?” she demanded. “That’s not the wrap I gave you to wear.”

“No,” said Sherrill, smiling and trying to speak naturally. “I thought it would be better to wear my own things, they seemed more suited to me. You see, in the others I felt a little like David in Saul’s army.”

“David?” questioned Mrs. Washburn with raised eyebrows and a tone that implied something questionable in Sherrill’s acquaintances. “Who is David? And Saul? You seem to have a great many gentlemen friends. I hope they don’t live in New York.”

Sherrill, with difficulty, controlled a wild burst of mirth. She tried to answer pleasantly with just a casual smile. “Oh, I mean David of the Bible, you know,” she explained.

“The Bible!” exclaimed her aunt caustically. “I’ve always considered it irreverent to bring the Bible into daily conversation in such a trivial way. I’m surprised. I always heard your family was very religious. But who was this other man you mentioned, this Saul? You must excuse me, but all your acquaintances. I really couldn’t have ordinary persons coming to see you at the house, you know, on Carol’s account. And what could this person possibly have to do with your wearing my evening wrap?”

Sherrill’s eyes danced, and she longed to make a sharp reply, but she answered demurely,

“Oh, Saul was just a king,” she said, “and he offered to lend David his armor in which to fight the giant. David declined because he felt he wasn’t used to the armor, you know, and could do better without it.”

“Well, I’m sure I think this David person was very rude!” said Aunt Eloise haughtily. “I wonder why they persist in putting such ridiculous stories in the Bible and then expect people to read them. But I’d rather not hear any more about it. Suppose you tell me how you happen to be wearing that elegant coat? I hope you didn’t borrow it for the trip.”

Sherrill was suddenly so angry that she felt she would like to do something wild and primitive, like scratching out her aunt’s eyes or smacking her selfish little red mouth, but she drew a deep breath and caught her quick little tongue between her teeth till the impulse passed, and she managed to say steadily, although a trifle coldly, “The coat is my own, Aunt Eloise.”

“Then I suppose you got a job and spent an entire year’s wages on it!” snapped the aunt contemptuously. “It’s a pity someone couldn’t go around teaching poor working girls a sense of values and the fitness of things. What is your job? Something in a bank, I think your mother wrote. It certainly can’t pay much. I suppose you bought it on the installment plan.”

Here, Uncle Weston interfered. “Really, Eloise, don’t put the child through such a catechism on the first night she is here! Let’s talk of something pleasant. I’d like to know how the family are. We’ve scarcely had a chance to speak a word together yet. Perhaps she doesn’t care to tell all her family affairs.”

“Well, Weston, since she is here I feel it is my duty to know all about her,” said the aunt virtuously.

There was a dangerous sparkle in Sherrill’s eyes as she turned to her uncle and tried to speak pleasantly. “I have no objection to telling anything, Uncle Weston,” she said. “I don’t suppose it would be of interest.” Then, turning back to her aunt, she said steadily, “No, I have no job as yet. I am just out of school, you know, but I was to have gone into the bank this month if I had stayed at home. And no, I didn’t borrow the coat from a neighbor, and I didn’t buy it myself. My brother bought it for me and gave it to me as a present, just before I came away.”

“Your brother bought it for you? And where did he get the money?” This from the aunt in a tone as if she thought she had been deceived.

“Why, I don’t
think
he stole it.” Sherrill smiled, a wicked little twinkle of fun dancing in her eyes. One thing that helped her was that she could always see the funny side of everything, and often took refuge in a laugh when she felt far more like crying.

“Oh, does he steal?” asked Carol, with sudden languid interest and an impudent lift to the chin. “I never heard that he was dishonest.”

“Carol! Really—you—”

“There now, Daddy, don’t get tiresome. I’m sure she said she didn’t
think
he stole it. What else could I think but that he was in the habit of stealing!”

“Carol, you are exceeding all bounds!” said her father angrily.

But Sherrill suddenly broke into peals of laughter, which cleared the atmosphere in her own heart, at least. “Don’t scold her, Uncle Weston”—she laughed—”she’s only kidding. Of course she didn’t mean it. I’m not so touchy as all that!”

But the aunt did not join in the laughter, and the cousin only stared.

“I’m sure I’ve always been inclined to understand that your brother was very poor,” said the aunt rather indignantly. “Didn’t he at one time try to borrow something from you Weston, to pay a bill or something?”

“No,” said Mr. Washburn, looking down at his gloves uncomfortably. “Not a bill. He suggested that perhaps I would like to loan him some money for a year’s time, at a good rate of interest, to help him buy a small business that he had opportunity to get. I would have been glad to do it if it had been possible, but that was just at the time when you went to the hospital for an operation, Eloise, and then were ordered abroad for a year afterward, and I couldn’t see my way clear to do it. I took up the matter with him two years later, but he said he no longer needed it. By the way, Sherrill, who is he working for now? Is he getting along all right?”

“Very nicely,” said Sherrill quietly. “But he isn’t working for anybody. He has his own business. He bought it at the time when he wrote you. The bank gladly loaned him the money, and he has paid off the entire loan now, and is quite independent.”

“You don’t say!” said Uncle Weston with a light of satisfaction in his eyes. “He must be very enterprising.”

“Well, but I don’t understand,” began Aunt Eloise, fixing her husband with a glassy stare that implied she had been deceived in something. “I was quite inclined to understand that the family was in straitened circumstances. When you wanted me to invite—”

“Eloise!” said Uncle Weston with sternness in his voice. “We will talk of something else, if you please. Remember that Sherrill is our guest.”

“Oh, very well,” said Mrs. Washburn and relapsed into haughty silence.

“Well, that’s a peach of a coat!” said Carol grudgingly. “I’ll borrow it sometimes. It will just go with my new imported brown velvet.”

“You’ll do nothing of the kind, Carol,” said her father still sternly. “You have plenty of coats of your own, and if you haven’t, I’ll get you what you need. But you are not to impose upon your cousin. Understand! That’s a command! If I find you disobeying it, I shall take back my promise about getting you a new car in the spring.”

“I don’t see that you need to take it out on Carol,” said her mother disagreeably. “The fact is you don’t understand the whole thing anyway. I told Sherrill to wear certain things that I gave her, which I felt were suitable for her to wear as our guest, and she has ignored my request.”

“I’m sorry, Aunt Eloise,” said Sherrill in a pleasant little voice, which nevertheless had a note of firmness in it, “but I’d much rather wear my own things. Think how you would feel yourself, if you came to Rockland and had to wear Mother’s dresses. You wouldn’t like it a bit.”

“I should say not!” said the aunt with a curl of her unpleasant carmine lip. “That’s hardly a parallel case.”

“I want it thoroughly understood,” said Uncle Weston, “that Sherrill is to wear what she feels like while she is with us. She’s not to be badgered.”

“Don’t be silly,” said his wife disagreeably. “Do you want me to let her make herself a laughingstock among our friends?”

“It seems to me,” said the worried uncle, “that Sherrill can be trusted not to do that. She seems to have turned herself out very well, as far as I can see.”

“A lot you know about clothes, Westy!” put in his daughter impertinently. “If I were you, I’d keep out of this. You won’t get a rise out of Eloise no matter what you say.”

“You are impertinent, Carol!” said her father.

“I meant to be, Weston!” said his daughter imperturbably.

And then the car stopped and the chauffeur opened the door.

“There!” said Mrs. Washburn. “You’ve taken up all the time, and I meant to tell Sherrill what she would have to do and how to act!”

“I think she would do very well without instructions,” said her husband.

“You would!” said Carol, pushing rudely past Sherrill and running up the steps of the house.

Sherrill got out and walked beside her uncle up to the door.

“You mustn’t mind your aunt, Sherrill,” said her uncle in a low tone as he helped her up the steps. “She doesn’t really mean to sound unpleasant. She is just anxious to have everything go off all right. She is just plain spoken!”

“Of course!” said Sherrill briskly, trying to look cheerful, and feeling greatly comforted for the ordeal before her by this little word.

So they all progressed into the house, the ladies going upstairs to lay off their wraps.

Sherrill slipped out of her coat and scarf, gave a pat to her hair before the mirror, and forgetting about her dress, stepped aside for her aunt to take the place before the dressing table. She somehow felt she had finished with the subject of clothes for the present.

But Eloise Washburn, seating herself for a last touch of lipstick, got a full glance of her niece in her little blue French frock with its bunches of sweetheart roses, and her smile changed into an icy glare.

“Oh! And so you discarded the dress I bought for you also!” she said, as if Sherrill had broken all the laws in the Decalogue. “Well, I certainly think you have been the rudest girl that it ever was my misfortune to meet. Here I spent two days hunting for that frock, and you refused to wear it!”

“Oh,” said Sherrill, feeling suddenly very tired and wishing she could run away and never come back, “I’m sorry to have seemed rude and to have disappointed you, but indeed, Aunt Eloise, I couldn’t wear that dress without any back. I’m not used to such things, and I should have felt—ashamed. I’m sure my mother would have been horrified at my dressing that way.”

“I have told you before that your mother has nothing whatever to say about what you wear or what you do while you are with us. I am the one to judge. And you are scarcely respectable, nowadays in the evening, without a low-cut back. I have no desire to have my hostess think I have imported a little country child to force into society. Where did you get that dress anyway? It surely wasn’t bought in Rockland?”

Sherrill, by this time, was boiling, ready to say all the mean things she could think of, but just as she opened her lips to make a sharp retort, she remembered her mother’s last injunction.
“Remember, dear, ‘the tongue is a little member … Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth.”
She closed her eyes with a long break and opened them again, and spoke gravely, quietly, patiently.