Daphne Deane Read online

  "I love it!" she evaded. "And that is a fine piano! But I am taking far too much of your time, and we ought to get to work and cover up these things again. We cannot leave them this way."

  "Not yet," he pleaded. "Play me just one more."

  So she played a few minutes longer. He sat back and closed his eyes and listened, old memories sweeping over him and doing things to his soul, searching it of strange ways he had been going of late, pointing out changes in himself that he had not noticed before.

  When she rose at last, decisively, he took her over the rest of the house, till they came at last to the nursery.

  "Here," he said huskily, "was where you must have seen me kneel to say my prayers. Mother always sat in that low chair before the fireplace. And over there in that cupboard are all my toys, the electric train and the stone blocks and picture puzzles." He turned quickly away, and she saw him brush his hand across his eyes.

  At last she turned away from the window that faced toward her own home, and her own voice was full of feeling.

  "Thank you for giving me this real glimpse of the thing I had dreamed about for so many years," she said gently. "It is even more satisfying than I had pictured it."

  He came and stood beside her, looking down and speaking with deep earnestness.

  "And I thank you for bringing back to me things that I thought were over forever. But now I see they were meant to be eternal things, a part of me that could never end. My mother and my home--yes--and my God! You see, I had forgotten how I used to say my prayers."

  Then suddenly he caught her hand and spoke brightly: "Come! We must go over to your house and finish washing those curtains! Do you put them on stretchers? I know how to do that!"

  "Oh, but you don't have to wash the curtains," she laughingly protested as he pulled her down the stairs.

  "I know I don't have to, but I want to," he declared as he hurried around closing windows, while Daphne tucked the covers over the furniture and closed the piano tenderly.

  "It's perfectly scandalous," said Mrs. Gassner a few minutes later to her sister-in-law whom she had bidden up to her watchtower at the second-story back window. "There come those two back across the garden now! Holding hands! Will you believe it? I wouldn't have thought it of that smug-faced Daphne Deane--and her as good as engaged to the new minister, if you can believe hearsay! And they've been over in that empty house alone for over three hours! I timed them when they went in, and I haven't stirred from this window since, watching for them to come back. Times certainly are changed. I heard the piano going, too. Isn't that a crime? The first time he's entered his mother's house in five years, and allowing the piano to be played! That's heartless, I say! An only son, too! But children have no feelings these days!"

  Mrs. Deane met them smiling as they entered the house.

  "I'm glad you've come, dear," she said. "I was just going to send Beverly over to tell you lunch is ready."

  "Mother!" exclaimed Daphne. "You don't mean it is lunchtime! Why, I didn't dream we'd been gone an hour."

  "Yes, but aren't you going to introduce me to your guest?"

  "Oh, of course. But Mother, don't you know him? It's our neighbor, Keith Morrell, and he's been showing me through the wonderful house."

  "Oh, yes, I know him, but I didn't think he would know me," said Mrs. Deane, smiling and holding out her hand to the young man.

  "I certainly am glad to know you now," said Morrell, earnestly. "You make me think of my mother. I feel I've missed a lot in not knowing you all before."

  "You had a wonderful mother, and we're glad to have you here now, anyway," answered Daphne's mother. "Suppose we sit right down while everything is nice and hot."

  "Oh, Mrs. Deane, I mustn't bother you for lunch. I didn't realize it was so late. I only came over to help wash those curtains after I had monopolized your daughter so long. I'm ashamed. I apologize."

  "Please don't. We're glad to have you. It seems as if we have known you all your life, you have lived so near. I admired your mother very much, and I'm glad to have an opportunity of meeting her son."

  "Then it will be a pleasure to me to stay. Isn't this great! I'm having a real holiday!"

  "Where's Ranse, Mother? I can't find him anywhere," said Beverly appearing on the scene out of breath.

  "Why, I told him he might play ball till lunchtime," said his mother.

  "He isn't out at the diamond. I looked for him everywhere," said the little girl.

  "This is my little sister Beverly, Mr. Morrell," said Daphne.

  "I'm glad to know you, Beverly. But since you have all known me so long, couldn't I rate being called Keith instead of Mister?" he said, smiling at Daphne as he took Beverly's shy hand and greeted her.

  "Well, if you'll call me Daphne," said the older sister.

  "Sure I will," said Morrell. "Weren't we schoolmates? Didn't you beat me in math once? I couldn't help it, could I, that you knew me better than I knew you? You took the advantage of me and kept rather in hiding, you know."

  Laughingly they sat down at the table. There was an instant's pause as the mother glanced at the guest: "Will you ask the blessing?" she said quietly.

  Keith Morrell gave a swift startled glance around the table then bowed his head, and after an instant's pause said: "Lord, we thank Thee for this food and for the pleasant companionship, Amen."

  "That's the first time I've been called upon to do that since my mother died," he said with heightened color. "I--haven't been living--in that kind of a world." His eyes were studying the opposite wall thoughtfully, reading a lovely motto hanging there.

  "Christ is the Head of this house," it read, "the unseen Host at every meal, the silent Listener to every conversation."

  He read it through, and Mrs. Deane watching him said quietly: "Then we're glad you have got back to your own environment. Will you have cream in your coffee?"

  "I think I must have needed to come," he said gravely. "Yes, thank you, cream, please. My, how good this coffee smells! Like home!"

  They were almost through the meal when they heard loud footsteps stamping up the front walk and storming in the door.

  "There comes Ranse," said Beverly.

  The boy came on to the dining room door, puffing and panting and utterly oblivious of the presence of a guest.

  "Why, Ransom, my son, where have you been? What have you been doing?" said his mother, rising in dismay and looking at her child.

  He was covered with mud and blood from his heels to his head, his nose was swelled to twice its normal size, and one eye was closed and quite black. There was something resembling tears running down his face and mingling with the blood, but he did not seem to be aware of it. His one good eye was flashing fire of what he plainly felt to be righteous wrath.

  "I been having an awful fight, that's what!" panted the boy.

  "A fight? But Ransom, you promised me--!"

  "Yes, I know, Mother. I promised you I wouldn't fight, not unless it was strictly necessary! But this was! Wait till I tell ya. That new kid, that Ted Gowney, that's just come ta our school, said his father had bought the Morrell place and was gonta make a race course out of it, an' a gambling joint of the house, an' sell liquor, and have a roadhouse, an' a lotta things worse, an' I tole him he was a liar! I tole him that we knew the man that owned it an' he wouldn't ever sell his place for a thing like that! And so he laughed at me an' said his dad had already bought it, or as good as bought it, an' there wasn't any man too good ta sell his place for anything if he got enough money out of it. And then I--I--I just licked the tar out of him!"

  Keith Morrell was on his feet, his eyes shining, his hand reached out to grasp the grubby fist that had been so valiant.

  "Good work, young feller! I'm proud of you! I'm glad I have such a brave defender. I'm the owner of that place, and you can just tell that young boaster that money wouldn't buy that place of mine now, not even if the buyer had perfectly good moral purposes in view. Because, you see, I'm not selling that place to anybody
, at present anyway. I'm keeping it for myself! And after you've mopped up a bit and had your lunch, we'll go out and hunt up that scum of the earth and make it very plain to him."

  Then the boy's one good eye shone joyously in the midst of his ruined young face, and he shouted: "Oh, boy! I knew you were the stuff! I knew I could bank on you! I knew you'd never sell that grand place to anybody! Not to a fella like that mutt's dad, anyhow!"

  And then Beverly joined in with her scornful young voice: "Of course not! He wouldn't do a thing like that! I wouldn't a bothered to tell the poor fish. I'd just a laughed at him and let him wait ta find out how wrong he was!"

  But Keith Morrell was watching Daphne's face. She was preparing a sumptuous plate for her young hero brother, but her eyes were shining like two stars, and Keith suddenly knew that Daphne really cared a lot whether he sold that house or not.

  Chapter 6

  Anne Casper lit a cigarette and dropped down on the chaise lounge in her own room.

  She was attired in white satin pajamas embroidered with peacocks. She always wore some shade of peacock when she was angry, preferably peacocks with their tails spread. The vain birds seemed to have something in common with her.

  For the past twenty-four hours she had been very angry, and so she wore peacocks.

  The room was a very lovely one, cool and delightful, as all of Anne's surroundings were likely to be. Two windows looked out to sea, and a sea breeze was blowing the filmy curtains now, billowing them in lovely dreamy folds.

  The curtains were pearl color, almost ethereal in their texture. The walls were white with a tinting of rose in the ceiling that well set off the furniture upholstered in imported white linen tapestry, with great sprays of pink roses flung here and there like painted things. There were white rugs and other white appointments. It made a lovely background for Anne Casper's dark beauty, and she knew it.

  But she was not thinking about her appearance just now. She sat staring at a large photograph of Keith Morrell framed in silver that stood on a little white table formed of a slab of white onyx curiously supported upon the backs of two modernistic animals, dogs perhaps, or something wilder. Beside the picture stood a small jeweled clock, and occasionally her eyes watched the hour, and she frowned petulantly.

  Then above the beating of the sea waves she heard a distant whistle; her brow relaxed and she gave an impatient sigh. The train was coming at last. Perhaps Keith would be on it. Anyway, her father would be coming and that would be a help. He had promised to come on that train.

  All the afternoon Anne had been engaged in the much discussed fashion show at the beach, modeling the skimpy bathing suits that Keith so much disliked. He had asked her for his sake to give up doing it, and she had lifted her stubborn young chin and flatly said, "I won't!" And then he had put that hard, steely look in his angry eyes and gone away. She had laughed as he went, and told herself he would come back soon enough. She had fully expected that he would be present at the fashion show. All day she had watched for him, searched the cheery throngs of onlookers, but had not been able to find his fine aristocratic face anywhere among them. And when it was all over and one of the handsomest prizes hers, and she had come to the house to rest, she had flung the expensive bauble on her dressing table more vexed than she cared to own even to herself, arrayed herself in embroidered peacocks, and sat down to sulk.

  But still, he might come even yet. Now that it was all over he probably would come quietly. It was his way; that was somehow intriguing and different from the ways of the other young men. Then things would go on as they had, and she would have won her point. At least she would have won half of it. The whole of her victory would have been won if he had come to see her in the much discussed attire. That would have been a real triumph, to have made him see and enjoy the exhibition and make him own afterward that she had been so lovely in the bathing suit that he forgot all about his objections. But at least it would be something if he came back as soon as the show was over.

  So she sat and waited, angrily, impatiently, yet more eagerly than it was her wont to await the approach of any young man. There were usually too many at her feet for her to miss a mere delinquent. Perhaps his very refusal to give in to her every whim intrigued her all the more to conquer him.

  At last she heard the car drive up and her father's voice below, speaking to the chauffeur. She sprang up and went to look through the window. No, there was no one with him! Her face took on its vexed look again. Still, Keith had only met her father once, just for a moment. He might not have made himself known at the station. It would be like his pride to take a cab, or perhaps walk, or----he might even be waiting till after dinner and calling more formally. But of course that would show that he was still holding some of his anger.

  She turned and went back to her place by the table where she could study again the face of the young man, her latest victim, who was rapidly becoming more to her than she had ever really intended.

  Sometime later there came a tap at her door and her father entered.

  Almost at once after he was seated his eyes wandered about the room and rested upon the picture.

  "Your young man didn't come to the office today. I thought you were going to send him."

  "I was, but, you see, I didn't get that far with him, Dad. He's horribly stubborn! I'm very angry at him!"

  She drew her beautiful brows into an angry scowl.

  A shade of something like amused satisfaction crossed her father's face as he watched her.

  "So!" he said grimly. "You've found somebody you can't bend at a word, have you? He must be a pretty good man if he can stand out against you."

  "Now, Dad!" reproached the daughter with a furious glance at her amused parent. "I thought you said you were a hundred percent for me!"

  "Oh, so I am! You're all right. Chip off the old block and all that. Only I can't help admiring when I see a better man than I am."

  "What do you mean, a better man than you are? I didn't say anything like that."

  "No, I know you didn't, but I know it must be so. Any man who can stand out against you and do something you don't want done is a winner."

  Anne lifted her proud head nonchalantly.

  "He's not a winner with me unless I choose to let him be!" she stated, with much more assurance than she felt. "I'm not sure I want to take the trouble to bother with him. I'm frightfully angry at him."

  "What's the cause?"

  "Oh, he undertook to tell me what to wear at the fashion show! Or rather what not to wear!"

  "He did? Well he has more courage than I'd have. What is he, anyway? A man-dressmaker? Or one of these long-haired artists that want to combine mud and garbage and call them artistic."

  "Oh, no, nothing like that!" said the girl. "He's just old-fashioned. Didn't want me to go out in public in a stylish bathing suit. He'd be perfectly satisfied, I suppose, if I'd staged a long-sleeved high-necked black dress with a skirt and stockings for swimming."

  Her father looked at her quizzically.

  "Ummm! I'm not so sure he isn't right after all. It makes me hot under the collar sometimes to see you cutting around with nothing on but a scrap like a skimpy pocket handkerchief. It wasn't the way your mother would have dressed you!"

  "Oh, Dad! You're hopeless! My mother would of course have dressed me as other girls are dressed."

  "I'm not so sure!" sighed the unscrupulous man of the world. "Your mother was an unusual woman."

  "Well, I wouldn't have stood for it if she had tried to put me into anything weird."

  "I've a notion you would, Babe! I think you would have grown up with a few different ideas, if she had lived. And I guess I'd have been different, too! I guess I've been a mighty poor hand to raise a girl-child! All I knew was to make money and hire other people to do the raising."

  "Heavens, Dad! Don't call me Babe! And why the sob stuff? You don't feel sick or anything, do you? I thought you came up here to help me in my difficulties, but instead you seem to have taken the
other side."

  "Oh, no!" said the man with a sigh and a settling of his heavy frame deeper into the big chair. "I was just talking. But go on with your tale. What's the story? Why didn't the young man turn up at the office today as you promised me last night he would do?"

  "I told you. We had a fight. He got angry, and I couldn't get anywhere with anything else after that."

  "You mean, you didn't tell him?"

  "Oh, I told him, all right! But I might as well have told it to a stone wall for all the impression it made."

  "You mean, he didn't answer you at all?"

  "Oh, he answered me. He answered me plenty!"

  "What did he say? Wasn't he grateful that I was willing to let him in on some deep stuff and put him on Easy Street?"

  "I should say not! Anything but! He as much as told me that such get-rich-quick schemes weren't honest!"

  "What?"

  "Well, not in so many words. But he gave the effect all right, and then he said he was an architect. I gathered that he considered himself foreordained from all eternity to be an architect and that he would be committing sacrilege to be anything else."

  The father's face was a study. He was divided between indignation and a kind of admiration for the young man who had the audacity to take such a stand.

  "Well, how did he think an architect was going to support you in the manner to which you are accustomed?"

  "I put that idea across to him," said Anne meditatively, "and he held his proud head high and went off!"

  "Perhaps he intended to allow me to continue to have that privilege." The father gave a brief derisive grin. "Like several others of your brilliant followers."

  "Oh, no!" said Anne sharply. "Nothing of that sort. In fact, he made it very plain to me that anybody who married him would live on what he could make or not live at all!"

  "I see!" said the father. "One of those proud-but-poor-and-intends-to-stay-so! Well, and so you didn't actually tell him at all that I was willing to meet him this morning, that it was in the nature of an appointment?"

  "No!" said Anne scornfully. "He was too mad! He was simply furious about that bathing suit! And when he gets furious he freezes up like an icicle. I didn't want to waste my ammunition on a coat of mail."