The Seventh Hour Read online

  "Haven't had time. Haven't ever seen one I'd go around the corner after. And, of course, I'm not a good-looker like you, so they don't run after me."

  "Where do you get that, Bruce? You've always been my ideal of manly beauty. Big and vital. Lots of character in your face, strong features that mean business, you know, and all that red hair and brown eyes. You don't suppose I admire my own golden looks, do you?"

  "Girls do," said Bruce with conviction. "But your hair's not gold, it's deeper. There's something about it that makes it noticeable anywhere."

  "Don't I know it? Don't I hate it? As a kid I used to wish I could dye it to some common drab shade like other kids. It isn't pleasant to be singled out and commented upon. But honestly, Bruce, I don't know where I could find a finer-looking man than you are, and it's time you got rid of that obsession. Only I wouldn't want the wrong girl to get her eyes on you. You're too fine for that."

  "Well, so far as I'm concerned it wouldn't do any good if she did. I've got to get a few shekels put away before I ever start to think about girls. But when I do, if I do, I have an idea I'm going to have a hard time finding one I want. As far as I've seen they don't want to do anything but smoke and drink, and play around. I don't want a wife that doesn't take life in earnest. I'd rather go all my days alone than be tied to one of these painted-up creatures without any eyebrows. They may have brains, but they don't look it."

  "Here, too!" said Dana earnestly. "They tell me there used to be girls with earnest purpose, and womanly instincts, but so far life hasn't shown me any. In fact, I don't even know many older women I would care to have married if I were getting on in years. I don't like the way they dress nor act. I couldn't imagine a little child being mothered or grandmothered by many of them. They're all bridge and smoke and cocktails. However, I don't know many of them, and that's a fact, and those I do know I don't know intimately. I only know them from afar. This getting married seems to be taking a big chance, and I for one have had enough of that kind of chance in my life without taking any on my own account. I'd have to know a girl pretty well before I ever fell for her."

  "People don't usually plan for any kind of a fall," said Bruce dryly. "As far as I can judge in a matter that I haven't had much opportunity to observe at close range, when you fall you fall, and have to take the consequences. The best thing is to keep away from pitfalls. Personally, I shall be inclined to be very suspicious of any kind of a fall. However, there were some nice girls in college when we were there. There was Harriet Hanby. She was smart as a whip!"

  "Too dowdy!" objected Dana.

  "Oh, well, she probably didn't have the money to dress as well as some of the rest, but she was smart."

  "A girl can wash her face clean, and keep her hands trim and tidy, even if she hasn't much money. She can keep her hair from stringing all around her face, and she can put on her clothes straight. Why, that girl couldn't even put on a sweater right. She always wore one as if it were a dishrag."

  "Yes, maybe so," said Bruce. "But there was Allison Brewer. Whatever became of her?"

  "Married. She married that Herriot fellow. That insolent highflier who acted as if he was a millionaire, and owned every fellow in college. That's the way those pretty little girls go. Haven't an ounce of sense."

  "H'm! Yes, I know. And Carolyn Ostermoor went the same way. Married that Crayton gink who drinks like a fish. Well, life is strange. Anyway, I'm not taking chances at present. Whatever became of Olive Willing?"

  They talked far into the night, and then reminding themselves that they had all of the next day together and another night before they reached New York, they turned in, each glad that the other was resting just across the aisle. It seemed like old days at college, with their beds across the room from each other.

  They had been exceptional friends, these two, through the four college years, members of the same fraternity, both notable football players, both students and in earnest. More than most college fellows they had like tastes and aims. Their parting at the close of college had been a wrench.

  Dana felt a degree of comfort in his loneliness as he drifted off to sleep. Life wouldn't be altogether desolate for the next few days, even if they proved to be more difficult than he anticipated, if Bruce was nearby somewhere.

  The next day was one long, quiet rejoicing to them both.

  They reviewed the past two years more in detail than could be told in the first few minutes, and then they talked of life as they had found it since college, of their deepest convictions regarding principles and aims. Shyly they touched upon their own growth in the things of the spirit, but more definitely than they had ever done before. They were each greatly thankful that the other was what he was.

  They sat toward evening side by side, quiet for the moment, gazing out at the sunset sky lighted in rose and gold, fading so quickly into violet and green and purple, yet touched now and again with the vivid gold of the sun's last effort for the day. At last Bruce spoke.

  "Well this has been a great day. I shall never forget it. Our first whole day with absolutely nothing to do but enjoy each other. I hope our future will hold many more such times of leisure even in the midst of our life work. But at least we have this, and it is a fitting memory with which to crown our college days."

  "Yes!" said Dana fervently, a touch of sadness in his voice. "It's been great! And we'll always know we have each other even though the coming years may separate us by hundreds of miles. You can't ever know how much it has meant to me, especially just at this time. I was lonely, Bruce. Dead lonely! I don't seem to be able just yet to talk about what Dad's been to me these last two years. He was a wonderful man! I don't feel as if he was dead, either. Just gone on ahead! I wish you had known him better."

  "So do I!" said his friend earnestly. "But, you know, in a way I did know him better than you understood. I knew him through you. I began to see you were different from a good many of the fellows about us, and studying it I decided it was because you had a most unusual father. I found that you decided most questions in the light of what your father would do if he were in your place. And every time he came to see you I watched him, and wished I had a father like that living. Well, I'm glad I knew him. He left his mark on my young life, too, and I'm glad."

  A look of most unusual affection and understanding for two grown men to give one another was the only answer that passed between the two. Then after another silence Bruce said, in a brisk tone, as if the sadness in their thoughts were growing almost too tender for self-control:

  "Well, now, Dana, about tomorrow. I don't know what your plans are, but we're due to reach New York at eight o'clock. We can eat breakfast on the train of course, and then I thought we'd better take a taxi straight to my room. You see I have an appointment at ten o'clock, so I won't have much time to waste getting settled. But you can park your baggage there, and be free to come or go at your will. I probably won't be back until around five o'clock, and perhaps you'll know more about your plans when I get back, and of course I'll be able to tell you more about my own. If we both stay east for a time we can look around and see if there are more comfortable quarters than the place I got at random through writing to my friend. But in the meantime it will likely be comfortable enough for us till we know just what we are going to do. Will that suit you, or have you any other suggestion?"

  "Suits me perfectly," said Dana with a warm smile. "Only don't carry around the idea that I'm going to sponge on you! It might get such a hold on you that I would have to bat you over the head to get rid of it."

  The next morning, according to plan, the two parted at the pleasant downtown rooming house in a plain district, Bruce going to his prospective job, and Dana left alone again, with his big problem on his hands. Going to take a message to a mother and sister he did not know, from a father who had gone away from this world forever!

  Chapter 2

  Corinne Barron in flashy embroidered satin pajamas of gaudy colors lounged on an extremely modernesque couch of white velvet
in a bleak living room of her mother's ornate apartment, reading a movie magazine.

  Her full name was Corinne Coralie. And when her mother had married Dinsmore Collette some years after her divorce from Jerrold Barron, Corinne, still a little girl, took her stepfather's name, leaving out the Coralie, which she felt to be superfluous, and writing it Corinne Collette. But when that stepfather took himself away from them without the usual formalities, the girl was strongly tempted to discard his name and go back to her own father's name. If her mother had not objected so furiously she would have done so. But Lisa reasoned that there would be no other name for her to take except Barron, and Lisa did not care to bring the name of Barron into the picture again. So she was known as Corinne Collette.

  The room in which she was sitting was so modern that it was fairly uninviting. There were some things about it that were almost repulsive! There was no air of home or good cheer or comfort about it. The draperies were black velvet, the decorations were fauns and satyrs with a few black devils and dragons here and there. Above her head on a low broad set of squarely graduated shelves that passed for a bookcase, sported a heathen god, with a look on his evil face that boded no good to his followers. There were vast unoccupied spaces. There was one huge impressionistic picture on a wide wall. It looked like a violently angry patchwork quilt in a frame. Here and there were cupboardlike cocktail tables bearing oddly unornamental triangles of silver or bloodred that were intended for ashtrays.

  There was nothing attractive or lovely in the room except the girl. She was very lovely in form and feature, with a patrician loveliness that the expression of her face, however, did not bear out. It was as if the little soul that looked out from her wide beautiful eyes had been starved in its infancy until malnutrition had set in and warped her whole life. The selfish twist of her pettish little painted lips that were too red belied anything pleasant there might have been about her. The long curling lashes were too heavy with mascara, and her nice straight young brows had been plucked and falsely arched, till she might have been the daughter of one of the satyrs that posed about as an ornament.

  An odd, freakish clock bellowed forth an abrupt chime, and Corinne flung her magazine from her impatiently. It landed near a little black and orange satyr and together they toppled from the straight unpleasant shelf on which it had stood and crashed to the hearth below in front of a distorted grate where burned a sullen fire, the only attempt at homelikeness in the place. The idol's head broke off and lolled to one side; a missing eye presently discovered itself leering alone at the farther end of the hearth. But the girl gazed apathetically and didn't care. The satyr was not a favorite god anyway.

  Somewhere in the distance a bell gave forth a flutelike sound, and the girl sat up sharply, gazing fleetingly at the clock to make sure of the counts it had just uttered. Eleven o'clock? Now who could be calling at that unearthly hour? Nobody, of course, unless it might be a credit man from some shop. What a bore! Why didn't Lisa pay for things when she bought them? It was poisonous to have tradesmen constantly coming to beg for money. Tradesmen were so insistent. What business did tradesmen have bothering them in the morning before they had fairly begun the day! Well, he could just go away again, that was all. For Lisa wasn't up yet, of course, and she wasn't going to waken her. Not for any tradesman! If she had to be called, Bella could call her. She wouldn't.

  Then the maid entered with a card.

  "Miss Corinne, there's a gentleman to see your mamma! What shall I do about it?"

  "A gentleman! At this hour? Did he say he had an appointment?"

  "No, Miss Corinne."

  "Well, he's just a tradesman, of course, then."

  "No, Miss Corinne, I think not. He's a gentleman. No one I know, but I'm sure he's a gentleman. He sent his card."

  She held out the card, and Corinne rose impatiently and reached for it. From where she stood a scant city ray of brief sunshine touched her wonderful hair to red-gold and brought out its glory, lit up the delicacy of her vivid young face, and made it almost seem lovely in spite of its disfiguring embellishments. She was lithe and fragile-looking even in the costly ungainliness of the garments she was wearing. She stood there studying the card in astonishment, the sun lingering upon the riot of her hair, bringing out its natural waves.

  Barron! Could that possibly be--! No! It couldn't! He wouldn't dare! Lisa had fixed all that so he wouldn't dare to come! It must be someone of the same name. Curiously they had never met others of that name.

  But wait! That was not her father's name. He was Jerrold Barron. This was Dana. That was the name they had given her brother! Curiously enough, she had always thought of him as a child! Yet he would be a man by this time, of course. A gentleman! So that the maid would recognize the fact!

  With a curious feeling of resentment she flung her head back and gave the command: "Let him come in."

  And as Dana Barron entered the room the sun reached its zenith for that room and flung its full brightness upon the girl as she stood in her arrogant beauty, facing the brother whom she had never seen before.

  Dana entered and paused at the door, his gaze full upon her. He stopped, startled at her beauty, and at her resemblance to their father. He had not expected this.

  The maid lingered with curious glances cast at both of them, marveling at the likeness between them.

  Corinne had flung up her haughty young chin proudly and faced him as she might have faced a menace, and so they stood and surveyed each other a long startled moment before the girl spoke.

  "You wanted to see Lisa?" she asked scornfully. "Well, she isn't up yet, and I'm not going to waken her."

  "Oh, of course not," said Dana quickly, regaining his normal poise and courtesy instantly. "I'm sorry!"

  The girl eyed him disdainfully.

  "Who are you anyway, and why should you come here?"

  Dana smiled at her disarmingly.

  "I might ask that of you perhaps," he said, "although," he added with a sudden twinkle in his eyes, "with that hair and those eyes I haven't really much doubt but you are your father's daughter and----my father's daughter, too."

  Corinne gave a little gasp and a little quick closing and opening of her eyes as if the sight of the look of his face was almost too much for her.

  Then her face grew hard as if she were refusing to accept the conviction that was growing within her.

  "What are you here for?" she asked insolently. "What do you want of my mother?"

  "I have a message for--our mother!"

  She gave that little inarticulate gasp again.

  "A message? What kind of a message?"

  "The message is for her, first." His face had suddenly grown very grave and responsible-looking. He looked older than when he had first come in. She studied his face sharply, wonderingly.

  "And suppose I don't choose to let you see her? She won't come out to see you unless she knows what the message is about, and who it is from. I doubt if she will come if she knows who you seem to think you are. Why should you presume to claim her attention?"

  "The message is not from me," Dana said sternly. "It is from my father! Your father! It is important!"

  "How do I know that?"

  "I think you know it." Dana was looking straight into her great wide, wild eyes, and his steady glance seemed to have a power over her that she could not shake off.

  "I understood that he was not to communicate with my mother, ever, while he lived."

  "Yes. But death came in and set him free from that promise. My father died. It was his dying request that I should bring this message to her. Now, do you understand why you must tell her I am here?"

  There was a little stir behind Dana, a soft thick curtain flung aside, and someone stood there. There was a great silence in the room suddenly, a defiant silence upon the part of the girl. Then a voice, hard, cynical, severe, spoke behind the young man; and the girl, wide-eyed, was watching someone across his shoulder.

  "What is all this about, Corinne?" The voice
went sharply against Dana's consciousness. "Who is this presumptuous person you are daring to discuss me with?"

  Dana whirled about and faced her.

  She was tiny and fragile, with a face like a hard, tight little flower. There was an imperiousness about her that matched her daughter's expression, though there was an artificiality over it all that was not in the daughter's.

  Dana saw it at a glance, and something in his heart that had been growing all the years, and that he had tried to hold in abeyance of late, until this visit, suddenly congealed and asserted itself stronger than ever. Was this his mother? How had his wonderful father ever fallen for her?

  Oh, she was beautiful! There was no denying that, of course. But it was a beauty like a lovely painting that gave nothing but form and color, with no soul behind it. His father as he knew him would have seen that at once. But he remembered that his father had been very young, only nineteen, when he met and wooed and won his ruthless bride. It had taken the years of sorrow, perhaps, to give Jerrold Barron the discernment that would have saved him from making such a mistaken marriage.

  All this, his perception of the mother, and his excuse for his beloved father's mistake, flashed through Dana's mind, like facts that had been there always, only he had not understood them. It was the answer to the question that had been recurring to his mind through childhood. Why had God ever let such a man make a mistake like that? As if one should ask, "Why did God ever allow Eve and Adam to eat the fruit?" And in a flash he saw. It had been the means through which God had brought knowledge and beauty and fineness to his father's character. It was the answer to "Why is pain?" and a line from an old hymn that his father used to sing ran through him like a ray of sunshine.

  . . .I only design,

  Thy dross to consume

  And thy gold to refine!