The Seventh Hour

by Grace Livingston Hill

  And God had wrought through pain and disappointment the beauty of soul that had made his father so fine! All in that instant he saw it. Then he spoke, with a gentleness upon him that was not his own, but rather the look his father might have worn.

  "I am Dana Barron! And you are--? My mother? Is it so?"

  Lisa's baby complexion left no space for lines in her face. Only her eyes gave forth nature's unvarnished truth, and they were hard and glittering. Her delicately penciled vivid mouth was one thin straight line. No smile lurked there. No welcoming light in the whole lovely flowerlike face. Just an alien face that did not know him.

  "Indeed!" said Lisa, studying the face before her. "I might have thought you were Jerrold Barron if you hadn't told me. And what was the message you were discussing when I came in? What right did you have to come here, anyway?"

  Dana studied her face calmly, a stern look upon his own, regarding the unloveliness he saw as well as the loveliness. His voice was full of assurance and gravity when he answered.

  "The right that death gives!" he said solemnly, and Lisa paused and looked at him for a startled instant.

  "He is dead?" she said astonished. "Do you mean that Jerrold Barron is dead?"

  Dana bowed silently and stood respectfully awaiting her word. And as she looked at him he was so like his father, that courteous attitude of respect, that steady controlled expression, his glance withdrawn to leave her free to think her own thoughts without observation, the way his bright hair waved crisply away from his forehead, that she was taken back to the days when Jerrold Barron was courting her, when for a little while her butterfly nature was caught and carried away by his strength and beauty, till another, less strong but full of deviltry, enticed her.

  "You are very like him," she said with a sudden softening of her voice, a passing hunger in her eyes.

  "You could give me no praise that would please me better," said Dana, still aloof.

  "He was sweet!" said Lisa, with a touch of tenderness in her voice that may have misled her wonderful lover before he married her.

  "He was wonderful!" said the son.

  "Yes," said Lisa thoughtfully, "I suppose he was. But you see, I wasn't! I guess that was the trouble." Was there almost a wistfulness in her voice?

  Corinne stood by, astonished, seeing a new Lisa, and not understanding. She was familiar with her mother's paramours, and her reaction to them, but she had never seen this look in her mother's eyes before, this look of respect and honor, of something deeper than just amusement, bewitchment. Corinne stared at her mother, and gave a little gasp, and the look in her wide young eyes grew almost wistful. Was there yet another kind of Lisa?

  Then Dana's voice broke the solemn quiet.

  "Then why did you marry him?"

  Lisa looked at her son as if she had suddenly been called to stand before a court of justice. Was that fear that flitted across the pupils of her eyes?

  Then a light, careless laugh drifted to her lips, as if she would take refuge in mirth.

  "Just because he was wonderful and I wanted to try out everything!" she trilled.

  Dana was still for a moment, his eyes downcast, perplexed. Then he lifted that clear compelling gaze once more and looked his mother full in the face, speaking in a voice of desperate sorrow.

  "Then--why--did you then--leave us?"

  The woman dropped her errant gaze from his eyes with a kind of light shame upon her, and when she raised her eyes again a change had come upon her face, and a hardness had returned to her voice.

  "Because I was by nature a butterfly. I was born that way! I could not bear confinement to duties." She lifted her chin arrogantly, almost as if she gloried in her shame. "It was not my fault!" The last words were spoken almost merrily as if a sprite were dancing in her eyes and voice.

  "Would you have excused your mother if she had done to you what you have done to your son--and to--your daughter?"

  Dana's eyes went swiftly toward his sullen, wondering sister standing aloof by the window.

  "What have I done to my daughter?" spoke Lisa sharply. "I'm sure I took her with me. What more could I have done?"

  "Was that the best that you could have done?" accused Dana solemnly. "To take her from a father such as she had, a father you have just acknowledged to be wonderful, and put her in the way of becoming what you say you are--a butterfly?"

  "Oh, that!" laughed Lisa carelessly. "But why shouldn't she be a butterfly if she chose? Jerrold had you, and it is all too evident that he has made you like himself. I fancy Corinne has been happy enough. Ask her if she has missed anything."

  Lisa stood there mocking him, the smile upon her painted lips like a mask upon a ghastly face that was hiding its grief with a grin.

  Dana looked swiftly toward the unknown sister.

  She stood in the frame of the window looking with almost hostile eyes toward her mother. And then she met Dana's question, and her own eyes fell.

  "Oh!" she said. "Oh! I don't know. I'm not so keen on butterflies. I--never knew--a father!"

  And suddenly her voice broke into a half sob, and she dropped down on a low satin stool embroidered in dragons, burying her bright pretty face in her young hands, and a tear rolled down between her fingers and dropped with a splash upon the hardwood floor.

  Then angrily Lisa spoke!

  "Oh, for goodness' sake! Tears! Get out of my presence! You know I never let you cry, Corinne! And especially about a thing like this! Crying for something you've never known! How absurd! Go to your room, Corinne!"

  Corinne did not stir, but her mother turned to Dana.

  "Now, I hope you see what trouble you've made! Was that what Jerrold Barron sent you here for, to make trouble for me? Where is that message you were supposed to have brought? Are you going to tell it to me or not? I have no more time to waste."

  Dana's eyes came back to Lisa's face.

  "The message is in a letter my father sent," he said quietly, putting his hand in his pocket and taking out an envelope. "I did not seek to bring you trouble, though you never seem to have thought of the trouble you made for my father and me. All through the years I have been trying to reconcile my ideal of a lovely woman, a wife and mother, with one who could abandon as wonderful a husband as my father must have been, and a little trusting child. It has been hard for me to believe you could actually have done it intentionally. But now I see it has been so. Here is the letter!"

  He held the envelope out to her, and Lisa with a strange look in her face, clutched it and darted an angry flash of her eyes at him.

  "That is all I care to hear from you at present!" she said sharply, and turning left the room.

  Dana stood watching the door where she had vanished as if he thought she might return presently. And over on the low stool near the window Corinne sat weeping. The room was very still except for the quick little breath of a sob she gave now and then. And after a time Dana became aware of that sound and turned toward her. It was almost as if he were in a strange land and could not get used to the sights and sounds, could not take them all in at once.

  The girl was sitting bowed over with her face in her hands, a picture of utter dejection. Somehow her attitude did not fit those brilliant gaudy garments she was wearing. She would have been more fitting in the attire of an urchin of the street. She looked so little and pitiful with her bright hair in confusion catching the light from the window, that Dana's heart was suddenly stirred for her. A little sister! His own! And she was sorrowing! Yet while he took in the picture something warned him. Perhaps it was not real sorrow.

  He studied her an instant, then he spoke.

  "Why are you crying?" he asked, and there was both bewilderment and gentleness in his tone.

  She lifted her head and her face was streaked with tears. Her makeup was a wreck. Lipstick and mascara mingled curiously. He looked at her aghast, and then turned his eyes away as if it were a sight not decorous for him to see.

  But his glance went back as she spoke with a pitif
ul little wail in her voice, a kind of desperate anger.

  "Because it is so terrible!" she said, and shuddered. "One's mother! One's father! You here and we don't know each other! I hate it all. I never had a father! I needed one!" Her face dropped into her lifted hands again.

  Suddenly Dana went over and stood above her. He laid his hand on the bright head with a caressing touch.

  "Little sister--I'm sorry that I had to bring this pain to you!"

  The small shoulders that had been shaking with almost angry tears grew very still, and then she lifted her face and looked at him curiously. Next, in a hard little voice she asked as a child might have asked: "Why should you care?"

  A great gentleness came into his face, and then he suddenly smiled.

  "I don't know," he said. "But I do. Perhaps because you are my sister! Perhaps because I know my father would care!"

  A hungry look came into the girl's eyes.

  "Would he, do you think? For, after all, it wasn't my fault. I never knew him. Why do you think he would have cared?"

  "Because I knew my father. I'd like to tell you about him. But--we can't talk here!" He gave a quick look about the alien room then glanced down at her again. "But I've got to tell you about Father. Go and wash your face and take off those outlandish clothes. You look terrible! Get something plain and decent on and we'll go out and take a walk in the park somewhere. Then I can tell you what a father you had!"

  Corinne had never been told before that she looked terrible. She caught her breath and stifled a small cry of protest. For an instant anger struggled with her desire to hear what he had to say, and she got up slowly, rubbing the tears away from her eyes. She walked over to a grotesque mirror built in angles on the wall and studied herself for an instant. Then she turned back to Dana with a half-shamed smile.

  "It is pretty terrible, isn't it?" she admitted, and turning she caught up a pack of cigarettes from the table near the couch where she had been sitting, and held it out toward him.

  "Have one," she said with a show of boldness. "I'll be all right when I get a smoke!"

  Dana shook his head.

  "No, thank you, I don't smoke!"

  She gave him another astonished stare.

  "Not smoke?" Then she turned swiftly and left the room.

  He wondered as he stood tensely by the window staring out unseeingly, whether she meant to come back at all. She hadn't said she would. How long should he stay and wait for her? Would his mother return perhaps and order him away? Perhaps he should go at once and save her the trouble.

  But, no, he could not do that. He had offered to take his sister out. He must wait and see if she would come.

  He would have been surprised if he could have known how Corinne was hurrying. She, who was unaccustomed to doing the simplest things for herself, did not ring for her maid, but went at her own reconstruction with locked door. Her maid would have been surprised, too, if she could have seen how swiftly and skillfully she went about it, removing the makeup and finishing with a good washing in hot water and soap. She was clean at least, and looked strange indeed to her own eyes as she looked in the mirror. Maybe that ridiculous new brother would discover how silly she looked now, without makeup!

  She chose a little street suit, the plainest she had, bright deep blue with a hat to match and a scarf of white. To her own eyes she had a nunlike severity.

  Then with another dissatisfied look at herself in the mirror she went slowly back to the living room.

  Chapter 3

  Bruce Carbury was on his way to the interview that meant much to his future. He had expected to be nervous, and to spend the last few minutes in planning just what he would say when he arrived in the presence of the august personage who had consented to consider him for a job in the well-known organization of which he was the head. But as he made his way to the place of meeting he found his thoughts going in an entirely different direction. He could not keep his mind from straying toward Dana Barron's troubles. Poor Dana! He was such a wonderful fellow, and to think he had such ghastly sorrow in his life!

  True he had had a prince of a father, but his life had been blighted, too! It seemed as if it would have been kinder in the father not to have put such a burden upon the son as to require him to go and see a mother like that! And a sister like that! What a shame!

  Of course, there might be something about the whole thing he did not understand, but from what Dana had told him, he could not see that there was anything required of Dana toward a mother who had deserted him when he was a mere baby.

  And a sister, too! How complicated the whole thing was. It did seem as if it would be much better for Dana just to stay as far away from them both as he could, and forget them. What good could possibly come of any contact, however brief? Could it be that the father had planned this meeting with his mother so that he himself would be justified in Dana's eyes?

  Well, it was all a mystery. But he would try to get to the bottom of it all tonight. He wasn't sure that Dana meant to go to them today. He hadn't said so definitely. Very likely he would only scout around, see what kind of a place they lived in and get his bearings first. And then tonight, if he could get Dana to tell him more about it, he certainly would advise him to stay away from them altogether. Think what a drag they might be to him if they were the selfish type, and they must be, of course. Dana with a worldly sister! She would be a continual disgrace to him perhaps! It would be so much better for Dana to keep away from them.

  Of course, it might be difficult to persuade Dana, for he had such an overpowering admiration for his dead father, and such devotion to his slightest wish. But he would try to suggest to him that likely his father now, from his heavenly standpoint, would not want Dana burdened that way. It must have been a morbid wish from a sick heart that prompted him to ask Dana to do this unspeakably awful thing of going to hunt up a mother who had abandoned him without a word, and had never since seemed to regret her act!

  By the time Bruce Carbury had reached his destination, he had thoroughly settled it with himself that he was the one divinely appointed to look after Dana Barron's affairs and prevent him from getting into a mix-up with a thoroughly undesirable family.

  As he entered the great bronze door of the building upon which his own hopes had pinned themselves he gave a thought to that possible sister. She would be younger than Dana, and modern of course, a modern of the moderns. A shame and distress to Dana. No, a thousand times, no! Dana must be saved from such a family! The sister would have all the modern follies. She would drink and smoke. She would dance her nights away in nightclubs. She would suck the very life-blood from such a young man as Dana! Somehow he must save Dana from the hurts and dangers and sorrows that would come from such a contact. Dana was too fine to have his whole life spoiled. If need be he would go with Dana himself and find a way to protect him from any menace that might result from this contact! Even if it meant taking time from his own work and endangering the loss of his own position he must help Dana in any way he could.

  As he entered the elevator and shot upward to the fifteenth floor, he gave a thought to the possibility of getting Dana to go back to his Western job after a mere call on his family and let it go at that. Dana was his beloved friend. He must be protected.

  Then the elevator stopped at the fifteenth floor and Bruce Carbury had enough of his own affairs to think about without worrying about Dana's.

  About that time the long-distance wires were busy between the Western publishing house where Dana had been working for the past two years, and a certain publishing house in New York.

  "Is this Mr. Burney?" called the voice of Dana's chief. "Hello, Burney, this is Randolph. Yes, Randolph of the Universal. Say, I had a letter from Hatfield of Chicago today, saying he heard that Maynard was leaving you to go into business for himself. Is that right? You don't say so! Well, that's going to be a disappointment for you people, isn't it? Yes, I thought you depended upon him a good deal. I remember what you said about him. Well, Burney, h
ave you got his place filled? No? You don't say! Was it as sudden as that? Well, Burney, I've got a suggestion for you. What's that? Me? No, I'm fixed for life here, I guess. But we've got a young fellow who's been working with us for a couple of years, and he's a number one. He's suddenly had to go east on some family business that may keep him a little while. What's that? No, we don't want to get rid of him! We hate to see him go, and we've told him his place is here ready for him when he returns. But we think a lot of him and want to see him prosper while he is away. We want him to make good contacts in New York, and he's promised to go in and see you. I gave him a letter of introduction to you. I hope he'll present it soon. But when this letter of Hatfield's came today it occurred to me that you might just happen to want to put your finger on someone who is thoroughly dependable to help you out in a pinch till you fill Maynard's place. So I just thought I'd take a chance and call you up. You can't make a mistake taking our man temporarily. What's that? How long is he going to be there? Well, he wasn't just sure. It might turn out to be weeks, or even months, though he hoped he would be able to get back to us in a short time. But he'll likely know soon just what he's up against in settling this family affair. What? Oh, what's his name? Why, Barron, Dana Barron. B-a-r-r-o-n! That's right. No, I don't know his address yet myself, but he'll likely come in. He always keeps his promises, and he promised. How are you? And the wife? Yes, we're all fine. Well, best wishes. Good-bye."

  Mr. Burney hung up his receiver with satisfaction and leaned back in his chair, remarking to Valerie Shannon, his confidential secretary: "There! That sounds good. The first ray of light since Maynard left us. A friend of mine is suggesting a good man to help us out for a few days till we find the right substitute. Anything he suggests is always good."

  Valerie Shannon was small and slender. She had big blue eyes and blue-black hair that hadn't quite forgotten its childhood way of curling around her face, even though it was old-fashionedly long, and done in a classic knot at her neck. She was the daughter of a dear friend of Mr. Burney's. She was not quite through college when she entered the employ of Mr. Burney but had proved herself most efficient even in the brief year and a half she had been with him.