Astra Read online

  “You forget, Marietta, that Father and I went on here three years together, without any one of them suggesting such a thing! And besides, Marietta, it was father’s right to do what he pleased. And our stepmother is really a fine woman.”

  “Well, she’s got no right to take the old home from us. She ought to get out and give it to us if anything happens to Father, and I think it’s your place to suggest it to him or to her, if you prefer that. You have always been closer to her than any of the rest of us, and I think you should take it upon yourself to see that that is all arranged. Suppose you talk it over with Father when he seems to have a good day and make him see how we feel about it. It would be a great deal better, of course, if he would arrange it, not so awkward, you know, and I’m sure he could say something to his wife that would make her feel right about it. It isn’t as if she didn’t have property of her own and another house that belonged to her first husband. If she has any delicacy at all, she’ll think of it herself. Though I doubt it, unless Father arranges it, and the law can come in and make it easy for us all. Will you attend to that, Charlie?”

  “No, Marietta, I don’t think that would be right. That would be entirely a matter for Father and our stepmother to arrange for themselves, and I should certainly not like to even suggest such a thing. I don’t think it would be in the least fair to her. She has had enough to bear already with the disdain of my sisters, and the cold looks and sarcasm.”

  “Yes, that’s you all over, Charles, always taking the part of the down dog. You never think how much we have to suffer and what a sacrifice it will be to have our old home taken away from us.”

  Charles suddenly got up and looked at his elder sister almost sternly.

  “I wish you would stop, Marietta,” he said sadly. “Our father is still living and quite alert and able to attend to his own business at times, and I certainly shall not meddle with his affairs. It has been enough he has had to suffer with having his own children turn against the woman he married and treat her as if she were an interloper, without having us torment him in his last hours about a paltry house. I should be ashamed to mention the matter to him, and I certainly hope that none of the rest of you will. As far as I am concerned, I feel that it would be perfectly right for our stepmother to have the house, and I am sure that all right-minded people will feel so.”

  “That’s because you were so young when our mother died that you don’t remember her,” sobbed Marietta, suddenly wiping away hastily summoned tears. “Of course I should have remembered that. You wouldn’t remember the dear old dishes that were Mother’s. We girls can remember spending hours washing and drying them so tenderly and putting them away in Mother’s corner cupboard. I just know she’ll claim them all. I’ve heard her admire them many times.”

  “Oh, be still, Marietta. You’re disgusting. Do you think our mother would ever have such hateful thoughts? This woman has been wonderful to Dad. She helped him back to normal living after his heart had been broken by our mother’s death. Don’t talk any more about it. You must know that death is drawing nearer to our father each day, yet you can turn your thoughts to such selfish matters. Let me get out of here. I want to forget what you have said. I am sure when you think it over later, you will be ashamed of yourself to harbor such notions.”

  Charles arose and went quickly outside, down the wide steps and out into the open, his eyes full of sadness and disgust. Oh, why would his sisters keep up this contemptible little jealousy? Why would they not see what a distress it was to their father?

  He walked down the path to the front gate, looked down the road a moment, then skirted the fence around the side meadow and walked out across to a little slope that went gently down to the stream and wound with silver thread through the meadow, disappearing into the woodland. He walked slowly along by the stream, to the fishing hole where so often as a boy he had been sent down to get trout for supper. How he loved it all—the wide meadows, the rippling stream, and the quiet fishing place where he had spent many hours with his father when he was a little boy, just after his mother died. Before there was any thought of a stepmother. He had been used to sit for hours, quietly watching the speckled trout stealing toward the bait, casting shy glances at the stern face of his father. The father who seemed to pay so little attention to him, yet always wanted him to go along. It was how he had gotten to know how lonely his father was after the mother was gone. Sometimes his father would sigh deeply, and little more than a child though he was, Charles had seemed to sense the deep sorrow that was behind that sigh.

  Then the rest of the children who were still at home would troop noisily back from school and down to the quiet shadowed woodland where light and shade flickered among the leaves of the trees. They would come with their noisy outcries, and his father would sigh again, haul in the last fish, and gather up his things, preparing to go back to the house. And Charles, being the youngest, and always the butt of all their pranks because he was known to be a good sport and would not tell on them, trudged wisely behind his father, carrying his own string of fish. So, early he had learned to be a good fisherman, and incidentally to have patience and self-control and wisdom to hold his tongue. And his sisters were learning that they could not mold this young brother as they had hoped to do. For just when they were thinking that they had won him over to their wishes, he would suddenly walk firmly out in a new path, diametrically opposed to the one they had suggested. Often there was nothing for them to do but lay it all to the baleful influence of the “pestilence stepmother,” as they called her.

  But it was not only in the line of business that his family tried to control Charles. As the days went on and he became apparently well established in the bank, they produced a definite girl for him and demanded that he give her his exclusive attention. But Charles only smiled and went on his quiet way, doing as he pleased and letting the girl go her way.

  Mortified, the sisters tried other girls, each one doing her best to interest him in some girl of wealth and prominence. They planned ways to inveigle him to meet these girls under pleasant auspices, but almost always he slipped out of the meeting, especially if he found out beforehand that the girl was to be presented to his attention. It annoyed him beyond measure to have this going on. Whenever he went to see any of his sisters, some girl would be more or less flung in his face. If she wasn’t actually present, the conversation would immediately turn to her virtues, and likes and dislikes, until he dreaded to visit his sisters.

  Finally failing in getting any reaction other than definitely negative, the sisters formed a sort of directorate to concentrate on one girl with a pleasant insistence until they made some impression.

  After much discussion and bitter disagreement, they finally compromised on a girl who lived officially in Philadelphia, though she spent her winters in Florida or California, and her summers in the mountains or at the shore, when she was not traveling to some strange place around the world. She was the lady of the mink coat whom Astra had seen with Cameron in the station. Her name was Camilla Blair, her father president of the Blair and Blair Company, of national repute and fabulous wealth.

  There had been much maneuvering to effect the first meeting of Charles with this lady and great annoyance that he was not at once intrigued by her.

  But Charles, about that time, was planning other things for himself and was absorbed in arranging his life after a new pattern. He did not seem to take much notice of this undeniably attractive girl who was so constantly and obviously flung at him on all occasions.

  “It’s a strange thing,” said Marietta discontentedly to Rosamond whom she was visiting for the weekend, “but Charlie just doesn’t seem to see Camilla at all. He looks right at her with his most gracious smile, and he might as well be staring at a blank wall. His thoughts aren’t there. I wonder if it could be that he got interested in some girl while he was away at college. Surely there wouldn’t have been any worthwhile girl in that little hick town.”

  “You can’t tell,” sighed
Rosamond. “Charlie is definitely odd, and it might just be that he has involved himself with some little common country girl he was sorry for, and he thinks it would be disloyal to have anything to do with anybody else. He is so uncomfortably conscientious. It’s unfortunate he doesn’t understand that he has some duty toward his family, and the old family name, as well as toward some poor forsaken creature he feels sorry for.”

  “Yes,” sighed Marietta. “He’s very much like his father, don’t you think? So silent and grave, and frightfully virtuous.”

  “Yes, but it’s our duty to rouse him to his privileges. Somehow he’s got to be made to see that he must bring this Blair fortune into the family.” This from Rosamond, with a deeply troubled look. “I don’t understand why he doesn’t see it himself. Such a lovely girl, and so gorgeously dressed! Did you notice the material she was wearing last night? It was one of those exclusive weaves. I declare, I nearly died of envy. And the way she wears her clothes is something wonderful. They just seem a part of herself, so supple and graceful in their hang. I certainly envy her her figure. It is not always that a really wealthy girl has such looks. Charlie doesn’t know what he’s missing. And I just know she’s crazy about him. She said the other day that she thought my brother was rare. That was a good deal from her,” said Rosamond.

  “What a pity it is that Charlie never took up skiing. They could go up to those mountain places and have a wonderful time. I think it would be easy to persuade him to do that. We could say that she wanted awfully to go and there weren’t any of her friends free to take her this weekend, or something like that,” said Marietta.

  “Well, he never did take up skiing, so that’s that!” said Janet. “Besides, I see you trying to make him ask her! He would have forty thousand things he had to do instead.”

  “Well, if he really felt that she was troubled because she couldn’t go, he might,” Marietta put in. “He’s great on helping people out when they’re disappointed.”

  “Yes?” said Rosamond in a tone of discouragement. “Just try and do it, that’s all I’ve got to say. You can’t catch birds by putting salt on their tails, no matter how hard you try, and Charlie’s the worst kind of a bird when it comes to getting him to go off with a girl.”

  “The only way you can ever do it,” said Mary, who had just come in and was listening, “is to get some unpleasant duty that nobody else can do and ask him as a special favor to do it, and then rope your girl in on it unawares. Why can’t you go off to a funeral or something, Roz, and ask him to take care of the children? And then send Camilla over to the house while you’re absent. Couldn’t Junior be counted on to upset the honeypot on the stairs or something, so Charlie would have to ask her to come in and help him clean up? Give your maids the afternoon off, you know, and leave Charles helpless.”

  “Helpless!” sniffed Rosamond. “Not he! Sure, you could count on Junior to do his part nobly, but not Charles. He would rather clean honey off ten flights of stairs than ask that perfect piece of maidenhood to come in and help him. Besides, I doubt if Camilla could do it, and the result wouldn’t be so good. Charles still thinks that all good women ought to be just as sufficient housekeepers as our mother was. However, I’ll keep the idea in mind. There may be something in it. I’ll see if I can work it out. For certain, something has got to be done about Charles. We can’t let this wonderful opportunity be lost.”

  So they plotted, and Charles went quietly on his way.

  And then the father died, and Charles was sadder and graver. And while the sisters, and some of the brothers, congratulated themselves that they had Charles safely located in the town bank, where he was likely to rise and stay put and develop in spite of himself, Charles was quietly planning other things.

  Suddenly one day he sprung it on them that he had taken over a business in Philadelphia on his own and intended removing there at once. The poor, harassed sisters rose up in rebellion. After a hopeless clamor, they subsided, only to get into another huddle and plan where in Philadelphia he should live and how he should be placed in proper social relations. But they discovered too late that Charles had already located himself and was not open to suggestions.

  “You run your lives, and I’ll run mine,” he smilingly told his sisters. “And no, I didn’t ask Father anything about the house, nor have I said anything to our stepmother about it. I don’t intend to, and I sincerely hope you won’t. You don’t want the old house, anyway, you know you don’t! You wouldn’t one of you go there to live if you had it. You’d sell it and never go near it again, so why should you try to make it unpleasant? And all this fuss about furniture! You never cared for the old things when you lived here, so why should you complain now that those who bought it and loved it are gone? No, I tell you I can’t make trouble for our stepmother. She’s been good to me, and I honor and love her for it. Now, is there anything else?”

  “Charles, I’ll bet you’ve gone and invited the stepmother to come and live with you! I’ll bet you feel sorry for her and you’ve told her to make her headquarters with you the rest of her life!”

  Charles turned on the pleasant grin and looked from one sister to the another.

  “Well, and what if I did?” he asked.

  “Charles, you didn’t!”

  “But you just said I did!” He grinned, with a twinkle in his eyes that reminded them of the look in their father’s eyes on the rare intervals when he relaxed and grew a little merry with his children.

  “Charles, what have you done? I insist on knowing,” said Marietta, snapping her eyes and putting on the older-sister air.

  “Yes?” said Charles. “Well I did invite her to come to see me when I got settled. Told her my home was always hers if she needed it.”

  “Oh Charlie!” moaned Rosamond. “That’s just like you!”

  “And what did she say?” snapped Marietta.

  “Why, she thanked me very tenderly and said she thought she would stay right here in the house Father had left to her for the present.”

  The girls looked at one another with angry resentment.

  “Yes, I thought that would be it. That means the dishes, too, and all the lovely old furniture!”

  Then suddenly they saw Charles’s train coming round the curve, and he picked up his baggage, called a smiling good-bye, and was off, out of their clutches without warning. There was nothing for them but to go into another huddle to see what they would do next about Camilla Blair.

  Chapter 7

  When Astra got back to her room later that afternoon, she realized that she was very tired. After all, she had been steadily on the move since she started on her journey, in fact, for two days beforehand. And there had been no time to sit down and think things over. Already she felt as if she had been away from the Lester house for several weeks and had entered into a new world that was different from all her other experiences, rushing breathlessly from one environment to another.

  When she came out of the office building with Charles Cameron, they passed a great building that bore a modest brass sign at the central doorway on which she caught the name of FABER.

  Cameron saw her glance at it and nodded in assent.

  “Yes, that’s Mr. Faber’s building,” he said. “And now that he’s gone, what will become of that great successful business?”

  “Yes,” said Astra, with awe in her voice. “Where he has gone, it doesn’t make any difference how successful he was down here. Isn’t life strange, and wonderful—and awful? How little we think of it in that way. I mean, how little we think about the end of it all! And it sometimes comes so soon for some!”

  Cameron bowed.

  “That’s true,” he said thoughtfully. “I wonder what effect it would have upon business generally if all successful businessmen would spend a little time occasionally, thinking that over.”

  “I wonder!” said Astra. “But of course they don’t, not many of them anyway.”

  They went to the lawyer’s and found a message that they were to be ready fo
r a telephone call at three o’clock, when he hoped to have a definite word about their appearance at court.

  “Now,” said Cameron pleasantly, “I think we have earned a good meal, don’t you?”

  Astra smiled with reserve.

  “Yes, but please don’t feel that you have to be responsible for me. I can get something to eat and be waiting in my room for a telephone call.”

  Cameron looked at her meditatively.

  “Yes,” he said pleasantly, “I know you can, but I sort of fancy we stick together till we know just how this thing is going to turn out. Don’t you?”

  “Are you afraid I’ll run away?” laughed Astra. “After all, everything is copied now, and we have signed before the lawyer. It wouldn’t make so very much difference if I did disappear at this stage of the performance, would it? Of course I wouldn’t, but I don’t see that you need to worry. I’m not so important as all that.”

  He eyed her gravely.

  “Yes, I think you are quite important,” he said, “but I wouldn’t ever think of you as one who would desert a cause. That’s the reason I have perfect confidence in you. And I may as well tell you that I have reason to believe that we are up against a rather stiff proposition if that old lady finds out just what went on at her husband’s deathbed. She won’t leave any stone unturned to frustrate any of his plans that have to do with that stepson of hers. And I for one am sufficiently interested in carrying out Mr. Faber’s wishes to the extent that I mean to do all I possibly can to help this thing go through without a hitch anywhere.”

  “And so am I,” said Astra earnestly. “It seems, somehow, a heaven-sent duty.”

  “Yes, doesn’t it?” said Cameron, with a sudden lighting of his eyes as his glance met hers.

  He took her to a pleasant, quiet restaurant where they had a comfortable meal, and then they went out and called up the lawyer’s office again. Astra waited in a reception room, in a great easy chair, realizing that she was all keyed up. It was good to relax and rest for a few minutes.