Daphne Dean Read online

  As he found his way down the fragrant moonlit streets he wondered what Daphne Deane had been doing all the evening. Surely now that she was grown she had to attend affairs such as he had just left. Didn't she have a social world that did the same thing? He wondered where she had been tonight. Now if she had been there, he would have enjoyed taking her off into a corner somewhere and talking with her, finding out what was behind that young look in her sweet, wise eyes. Still, likely, if she had been there she would have been all dolled up with a hideous red mouth and smears under her eyes. Everybody did. If you went to such places you did as the rest did. Though it did seem rather incongruous to think of Daphne Deane smoking a cigarette or drinking champagne. He found the idea distasteful.

  Well, best put it all out of his mind. He would take the midnight train back to New York. If there was an earlier one he could catch, so much the better. He would make this brief call on Aunt Emily Lynd, and then he would go back to New York and telegraph the agent in the morning to go ahead and sell the estate. What was the use in being sentimental? And as for Daphne Deane, he probably would never see her again anyway. Why consider her? She probably wasn't real, either.

  Then he arrived at the little white cottage of antique build, whose lovely old lines always filled Keith's beauty-loving eyes with satisfaction. Now in the moonlight its quaint loveliness thrilled him anew, and he resolved that someday he would come here and make a drawing of it to use in some of his future work.

  But he found a welcome that was even more beautiful in the house itself. The moment he stepped inside the door he felt himself back in his boyhood. Soft perfume of rose geranium, sweet briar, suggestions of wild things like white violets--or was it wild grape blossoms?--and then, as he went down the hall and entered the sanctum of the dear invalid, came the clean tang from a bowl of glowing nasturtiums, poignant with crisp homey sweetness.

  How often he had come here with a basket of flowers from their own garden, flowers picked by his mother and sent to the beloved invalid, and those same pungent fragrances had clung to every breath he drew. Those old familiar fragrances assailed him now and gripped his spirit with something tender, like unexpected welcoming arms.

  And no less so the sweet face smiling from the pillows, framed in its lovely halo of white beautiful hair.

  Quick tears stung into his eyes, surprising him as he stooped to touch his lips to the frail hand she held out to him. It seemed as if other days had suddenly returned.

  "How dear of you to take the trouble to come and see me!" said the sweet old voice that yet had that vibrant quality of youth in its fringes.

  Keith's conscience gave a sharp twinge. She wouldn't be so gracious if she knew that he had only come as a refuge from something that bored him. And yet, wouldn't she? He remembered her as always having an understanding mind, and she would be grateful even for the little second thought that had sent him here. But why hadn't he thought of her before? Why hadn't he come here first of his own accord? He suddenly knew that this was something he might have missed that was greatly worth having, and perhaps he would never have realized that he had missed it, not even after it was too late.

  "It is good to be here!" He breathed the words with a veiled amazement, knew in his heart that they were true and that he was glad he was here. It was like getting home after a long, lonely journey. And then he wondered why he had not come before.

  "It is wonderful here," he said with a tinge of wonder in his voice as he looked around. "It looks just the same as when I was a kid. You have not changed, and your home is just the same cheery, cozy place it always was. Sunshine flaunting cheer in the face of pain and suffering! It used to fill me with comfort to see you and hear you talk. I always came away with the feeling that there was no pain nor trouble nor even death that need be feared."

  "Why, how lovely to have been permitted to make you feel that way," she said, her fine, sweet eyes kindling with a lovely light. "Now, I shall feel that it has been worthwhile to have lived, even such a useless life as mine, just to have that said to me. I feel like pausing right here to look up and say 'Thank You, Father!' "

  "Well, it's true!" he said fervently. "And it's so good to see it all just as it was. Why, even the smell is the same! Perfume on the air. Flowers everywhere."

  "Ah! Yes! Aren't my flowers lovely! I have to thank my friends for those. One, especially. I wonder if you knew her. Daphne Deane? She keeps me supplied almost from day to day with some new bits of loveliness. Your mother used to do that for me from your garden, you know, and when she left us, little Daphne took it up. I always thought her sweet, quiet mother had something to do with it at first, when she was a mere slip of a girl, but since, we have become very close friends. Did you know her?"

  A sudden light came to Keith's eyes.

  "We were classmates for a while in high school, you know," he said. "I met her this afternoon for a few minutes and walked along with her. I didn't know her so well in the old days, but I can see that she is all you say she is."

  "You must know her," said the sweet old invalid thoughtfully. "She's rare!"

  "I'd like to," he said with interest. "She impressed me that way, too. In fact, I think I remember feeling she was out of the ordinary when she was in school. She was a bright scholar!"

  "Brilliant!" said Emily Lynd. "Her father is a professor in the university, you know, and she has had an unusual upbringing. But there has been some adversity and serious illness, and her life had not been easy, nor carefree. Yes, you must know her. Are you staying with us long? Or are you perhaps coming home to remain?"

  "I'm going back to New York on the midnight train," he said wistfully, a sudden homesick pang striking him.

  "Oh, I'm sorry! But you'll come again? You'll perhaps come often. New York is not far away."

  "Not far," he said. "But I expect to be busy. I'm in an architect's office and must make good, you know."

  "Of course. But--I'd hoped--perhaps I ought not to say that, but your mother and I used to talk about it. She was anxious to have you located around here."

  "I know," he said sorrowfully. "But Mother is not here, and I have this fine opportunity. It seemed the only thing to do."

  "I suppose so!" Emily Lynd's face had that faraway look as if in spite of facts she saw a vision. "Still," she added brightly, "the way might open for you to come back, you can't tell, and this is a good place in which to make good your early promise." She smiled at him. "New York is big and there is much competition."

  "Yes," he said thoughtfully, with a sudden wish that her suggestion might come true. Then it came to him to wonder what Anne Casper would say to that, and instantly he knew she would not like it. Not at all. Anne Casper would never fit into the old life here, either. Had he come too far astray for the dreams he and his mother used to dream?

  When he left his old friend an hour later, making his way slowly down the pleasant, moonlit street, the thoughts of home and his boyhood life were pulling at his heartstrings, and though he put them aside as impractical, they gave him an odd startled feeling, like having his face and hands washed clean, and his eyes suddenly opened to things that he seemed to have forgotten for a long time.

  His way to the station led him past the back of his old home, and at first he hesitated and thought of taking a longer way about to avoid it, for somehow he shrank from passing the still empty dwelling in its quiet grouping of shrubbery and seeing it so lonely and unused. There was something about moonlight that got you sometimes. Then he realized that he had stayed with Miss Lynd longer than he had planned, and it was getting near train time. He must not miss this train. He ought to be back in New York early in the morning.

  So he resolutely held on his way. In a moment he would be passing the house where Daphne Deane lived. Across the street was the spot where he had stood that afternoon.

  And now as he came opposite the gate he saw that two people were standing there, Daphne, unmistakably, and a young man. Also, as nearly as one could tell by moonlight from a
cross the dim shadowed street, he seemed to be a well-set-up young man.

  Well, of course that was to be expected. As pretty a girl as that! There would be a young man, of course. But suddenly the idea annoyed him. Somehow he didn't want this interesting girl from his past to be tabulated and disposed of so quickly. Yet how ridiculous! Why should he care?

  Then he heard a little trill of laughter, and the memory of her tone and the way she had looked up frankly at him that afternoon made him wish he might linger and perhaps step over and join in the conversation. He couldn't intrude, of course, even if he had time, but his footsteps lagged. As he passed by on the other side in the shadow of the trees, he heard the young man say:

  "How about tomorrow night? Wouldn't it be possible then?"

  "No, I'm sorry," she said clearly. "I have two lessons to give. Perhaps toward the end of the week--"

  The young man spoke again in a low, cultured voice, but he couldn't hear the words, and his feet by now had carried him well past them. As Morrell turned the corner into the street that led to the station, he heard Daphne's voice calling a good night cheerily, and a strange fancy came to him that it was a good night for him, too. At least, he would take it that way anyway, and he said in a low murmur under his breath: "Good night!"

  Then came the distant whistle of his train and he had to sprint to catch it, and all else was, for the time being, forgotten.

  Chapter 4

  Keith Morrell arrived at the station half a minute ahead of the train, but as he came within sight of it he heard loud, hilarious voices, and suddenly became aware that some of them were familiar ones that he had been hearing not so long ago. And loudest of them all was Evelyn Avery's, shouting at the top of her lungs. He sensed that the voices of all were much worse for wear since he had left them. The whole crowd were silly drunk.

  "Well, if he doesn't get here within the next second he'll miss it," shouted his recent hostess, and then he knew that they had come down to the train to see him off.

  With a glance at the approaching train he made a dash in the darkness behind the station, vaulted the low fence, and reached the far end of the platform in line with the rear cars. As the train came to a halt he swung himself onto the last car. He had no taste for such a send-off, and he wished heartily that he had not gone with Evelyn to dinner. How far she and her crowd seemed to be from the wholesome tender thoughts that had been in his mind during the last two hours. Why hadn't he pleaded necessity and gone to Miss Lynd's at once?

  But when he was seated on the opposite side of the car, and the train was moving on its way past the noisy party on the platform, there came to him a sudden regret that he was leaving the place where he had spent so many happy years of his life. He was going back into his new modern world with alien associates and strange ways that were not according to the standards of his youth. Going back to his problems--and Anne Casper!

  The more he thought about it, the more he shrank from leaving Rosedale. It seemed to him that the work he had come to do was wholly unfinished, and there was an uneasiness in his mind about selling that home property without considering the matter further, without at least going through the house and looking things over. Just to let his mother's things go to strangers to sort out and throw away or resell was not acceptable. He ought to conquer his foolish sentimentality, go bravely into the house and look things over like a man.

  As the train took him farther and farther away from the old home he became more and more loath to go on. The words of his mother's friend came to him, little hints about the loveliness of the garden, the dear old house among the tall elms, how much she enjoyed looking at it from her window, and how she could sometimes fancy she saw his mother walking on the terrace or picking flowers in the garden. It seemed as desecration to have it made into an apartment house. To fling it all away without a thought--a look at least. He could not go on through life shielding himself from memories of the past. He had to be a man.

  As he looked back on the afternoon he began to see that the words of the girl, Daphne, had rather expected that of him, implied it, though she hadn't of course mentioned such a thing.

  He grew almost angry at himself, and told himself he had a case of nerves. Soon he would be on the New York express, flying back to his new world, his new life, and its perplexities. It was better not to go into the past again. He could not bring it back, and it could only open old wounds.

  But still the heaviness about selling the old home hung over him. He tried to convince himself that it would be wrong to refuse such an advantageous offer. He needed the money. If he had that money at once, free from hampering investments, he could buy himself a partnership in some good firm, and be able to tell Anne Casper he had a future before him that promised well. In the not-far-distant future he could easily support her in fair luxury without giving up his chosen profession nor going into a money racket with some of her rich and questionable relatives.

  Yet in spite of all these things the picture of the dear old house persisted, and when he closed his eyes and tried to forget, his mother's eyes seemed to be looking into his own and pleading.

  What was the matter with him anyway, that a thing was getting him this way?

  He picked up an evening paper that a man had left on the seat across the aisle, but he could not focus his mind on what was printed in it. Suddenly his eye caught a headline: "Old Home Left to Only Son." He flung the paper from him back to the opposite seat and turned his stare out the window into the darkness.

  All at once the lights of the city began to gleam in the distance and then flash by rapidly, and he suddenly knew that he was not going back to New York tonight. He could not go and leave this matter of the house unsettled. Somehow he must face the thing and decide it. He would go to a hotel, get a good night's sleep, and then he would go out to Rosedale in the morning and go through that house. Surely some conviction of what he ought to do would come to him as he went through it.

  So he finally took a taxi to a hotel and went to bed, but not to sleep. His active mind went over and over the matter, recalling all he had seen and heard of the old home life, recalling the gentle smile of Miss Emily, the warm touch of her frail little hand, like a flower, her tone as she spoke of Daphne. And Daphne's face seemed to cross his vision, as he had first seen her on the grandstand, her look as she glanced up with recognition in her eyes changing to withdrawal as she realized that he really did not know her. The mischief in her voice and smile later as she told him that he had never taken her personality into his consciousness enough to recognize her after the interval. Somehow her look had stung him then, and his face burned in the darkness at the memory. She thought him a cad, and somehow it seemed to matter a good deal what she thought of him. Just why, he did not know, but it did. She had shown him the lovely side of herself afterward, and he did not want a girl like that to think ill of him. Especially a girl to whom he had been a child-hero! He wanted very much, he found, to live up to her first ideal of him, the ideal that her mother had given her. Of course, she was only a stranger. Of course, she would likely never touch his life again, any more than she had in the past, but he certainly would like to set himself right in her eyes before he passed out of her sight forever. He recalled the question he had asked of her, which Evelyn Avery officiously answered for her, and his last word to her that he was coming back again to hear what she had to say. It hadn't meant much when he said it, but now suddenly he wanted very much to know what she would have replied. "Should you care?" he had asked with reference to his selling the old house, and that quick catch of her breath, the fleeting dismay in her face, came back now to his mind. Was her look perhaps what had made him feel vaguely that she thought him disloyal to all that the old home had meant? And all at once he wanted very much to get her answer.

  Would she possibly be willing to go with him over to the house and see it for herself? Perhaps her presence with him would dispel the uncertainty, exorcise the demon of dismay that came to him whenever he tried to decide
what he would do with the property.

  At last he slept, soothed by the possibility that he might not have to go through the ordeal alone.

  * * *

  Back in Rosedale, Daphne had not recognized him as he went by in the darkness on the other side of the street. The shadows were deep and the moon had snatched a cloud and pulled it over her face just then. Besides Daphne was engaged in a slight argument with the new minister, and wasn't noticing chance passers across the street. Certainly she would not have expected Keith Morrell to be there, for she thought of him as submerged in the questionable revelry of Evelyn Avery's party, and deep in her heart was disappointed in him accordingly. The Keith Morrell of her idealization would not have enjoyed a company of that sort.

  The new minister, Reverend Drew Addison, was young and attractive. He had fine eyes and was more than interested in Daphne Deane. He was trying her out, feeling his way with her, trying to impress her with the fact that he was most wise and careful and could choose a middle ground in the disputes of the church and the world and yet be entirely loyal to the faith of his fathers. He argued that there was no sin in compromise, that the Bible said one must be wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove.

  Daphne Deane closed her lips in a firm little line and gave a troubled gaze off into the shadows of the orchard in the dim moonlight. Was this minister going to be a disappointment when they had so hoped he was the right one? He had seemed to have so much about him that was attractive to the young people, so much enthusiasm, so much--well, was it really spirituality or only a holy way of saying things that made them seem spiritual? She didn't want to think this. She put the idea away and earnestly tried to feel that what he was saying was all right, that he just had an unfortunate way of expressing himself.

  But when he asked her to go into the city to a symphony concert on the night of a notable Bible conference where a young earnest conference leader was to be the feature of the evening, and to which he knew she had promised to take a large group of young people from their church, her eyes grew troubled again.