The Seventh Hour

by Grace Livingston Hill

  "Yes?" said Valerie, lifting pleasant eyes to her employer. "That sounds good."

  "We really need somebody very much, you know," added Mr. Burney. "It will make quite a difference in your work, too. You have been taking on more than you should do in a day, staying overtime night after night."

  "Oh, it's all right," said Valerie pleasantly.

  "Now, where were we? What was that last sentence I dictated, Miss Shannon?"

  "You were saying that you wished to bring out Mr. Tempest's new novel not later than next spring."

  "Oh, yes. 'I am enclosing the contract of terms as agreed upon in our last talk--' "

  Valerie Shannon's swift pencil flew along the paper, and the routine of the morning went on.

  But Dana Barron was standing by the front window of his mother's apartment on Park Avenue, looking with unseeing eyes at the people who passed, not thinking at all of the letter of introduction he was carrying in his pocket, though when he started out that morning he had quite expected that he would have been through his interview with his family, and ready to call on Mr. Burney before noon.

  Then his sister entered the room, and he gave a quick, startled look at her. She did not look the same. And yet she was still very lovely. She was startlingly like their father! That was what he noticed first.

  A look of relief came into his eyes as he studied her.

  "That's better!" he said. "Shall we go?"

  She walked haughtily ahead of him to the door, a stormy look in her eyes, and a petulance in the set of her lips. If she hadn't been so intrigued to see what would happen next she might have let them have their way. She usually did when stormy eyes and petulance came together.

  Out on the street her quick eyes noted his courteous way, his graceful walk as he fell into step with her, and she was surprised. She had somehow come to think that her relatives from whom she was separated were from the wild and woolly West and had not had advantages. Yet there was nothing about this brother of which she need be ashamed. She gave a quick review of all her mother had ever told her about him, and about her father, and suddenly realized that it was more from what she had not said than from what she had said about them that she had judged them.

  Dana meanwhile was looking down at her with a swift comprehensive glance, thinking how startlingly like her father she was now that her face was free from makeup.

  "Where shall we go?" he asked. "Have you some favorite place?"

  "You mean you want to get something to drink? I could have given you that before we came out."

  "Drink?" said Dana, looking at her in astonishment. "Why should I want something to drink? Isn't there a park somewhere near, where we could sit down for a few minutes and talk?"

  Corinne gave him another startled look in which there was a tinge of amusement.

  "Oh, yes, the park. It isn't far away. I used to be taken there when I was a child. I haven't been much since. Around the corner."

  They walked together almost in silence through the crowds on Fifth Avenue, and more than one in the throng turned to look at the two so much alike, and yet not alike, but neither were conscious of the interested glances.

  Corinne was studying her brother, with furtive side-long glances. Noting the quiet gravity of his expression, wondering what he was thinking about, half afraid of the coming interview. He would likely make her angry. She was pretty sure of that. The very set of his lips and chin showed that he felt himself so sure about everything. Yet wasn't that the set of her own chin? No, more pettish, more determined to have her own way perhaps. She had always felt that was the one thing to fight for in this world, one's own way. Let people see that they couldn't trifle with you.

  Yet here she was meekly walking to the park with an utterly unknown brother, allowing him to walk in silence!

  He was so very different from the young men with whom she companioned. He wasn't apparently paying the slightest attention to her. She felt affronted, and yet she couldn't do anything about it, not just now, anyway. Not if she wanted to hear what he had to say. And she very much did. She hadn't been so intrigued with anything since she was a child, as she was now to find out about this brother and her unknown father. Of course, if she didn't like her brother after she had satisfied her curiosity, she could cast him off, probably would. But there was no point in antagonizing him until she found out all she wanted to know.

  So they turned into the park, and the girl led the way down a path where she knew there were benches. Not that she had been in the habit of sitting in the park since her childhood days, but she remembered well the places that had charmed her when she was very young. There would be pleasant growing things about, hemlock, and perhaps a holly tree or two, things that didn't mind the brisk coolness of the autumn day, and there would not be many people walking that way, not at that hour of the day. That would be good. If she wanted to lose her temper and stamp her foot at this paragon of a brother she could do so without running the risk of being watched by the common herd of passersby.

  So they came at last to the bench the girl had in mind, sheltered across the back by a dense growth of hemlock, the grass sloping down in front to where two swans faced them judicially from the edge of the water.

  Chapter 4

  "This is perfect!" said Dana brushing away a little whirl of leaves that had fallen on the seat and motioning to his sister to sit down. He took the other end of the bench and sat silently in thought for a moment. Then he looked up and smiled.

  "There is so much that I want to tell you about our father that I scarcely know where to begin. But perhaps I'd better start at the beginning. I was only two and a half, you know, when it all happened, and naturally I don't remember everything."

  The sister lifted wondering eyes. This was all so different from anything that had ever happened to her before that she scarcely knew what to expect. She put on an almost sullen indifferent front and sat with her hands in two tiny pockets of her short coat, staring at her pretty shoes. He had smiled at her for a start, but she didn't mean to encourage him in the least. She was holding her attitude in abeyance.

  "It goes back to a day when Father came home with a desolated look on his face and found me howling. I had got beyond mere weeping and complaint. I had been left alone with an unsympathetic cook who was getting ready to depart also. I was frightened and forlorn and thought the world had come to an awful end. I was very young, of course, but I can remember that. I can remember Father's arms around me, drawing me close to his big woolly overcoat, and snuggling me up. He had just found out that he had lost his family and that he and I were left alone. Even my nurse was gone, though neither of us cared much for her. She wasn't very comforting. And I somehow knew, little as I was, that Father was feeling just the way I did. But he promptly put away his own grief and concentrated on mine. He put his face down to mine and kissed the tears away. He took his own soft white handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped my hot little face, and hugged me close. And sometimes his lips would come down to my ear and touch it tenderly, and whisper my name, 'Dear little Dana! Daddy's little boy! You needn't cry anymore. Daddy will take care of you!' He held me that way and patted me softly till I fell asleep. And a long time afterward when it was quite dark in the room and I woke up, I was still in his arms, hugged close, and he was sitting there with his head back on the chair and his eyes closed, but his arms were warm and close about me.

  "I don't remember ever having had such tenderness before. Or perhaps my need had made his comfort seem different. I had mostly been tended by a blithe young nurse who had no love to spare for me from her own loves.

  "Presently Father got up, but he kept me in his arms while he went about lighting the rooms. The cook was gone. There wasn't anybody left in the house but father and me. It wasn't a large house, but it sounded awfully empty. Strange. I haven't forgotten that! We went out to the kitchen, I walking with Father, holding his hand. We got milk and things from the refrigerator. I had a chicken drumstick to chew on. There was custard. I
t didn't matter, but it was good. We ate supper together, and then Father let me help with the dishes. I had a towel and dried them. Father got me to laughing. After all the tears, there was laughter! Tears in his heart and mine, too, but he could laugh for my sake!"

  Corinne had forgotten to look sullen. Her eyes were filled with sudden tears, and she brushed them fiercely away. The woman in her was thinking of that little hungry, lonesome boy who was being comforted. She had never before now thought of anybody but herself and what she wanted and needed.

  "He got a plain oldish Scotchwoman in after a few days' hunting. She cooked for us and kept the house clean, and she looked after me and saw that I came to no harm, but my father hurried home from the office to me every day as soon as he could get away from business. If there was a chance to run home at lunchtime, he did so. And every time I would be at the window, or the gate--we had a little white gate that I could swing on and take hold of the pickets--and always he would wave to me and call out 'Hello, fella! Been a good soldier today?'

  "Always he made a game out of the life we had to live. We were soldiers being brave. It meant a lot to me. Sometimes I think--I hope--it helped him to live out the lonely days, too.

  "The first day I went to school stands out. He took me there himself! He had made a story of it for days beforehand that I might get accustomed to it and be ready to meet the new life. He told me what I would have to meet. People who didn't love me the way he did, but with whom I must get along pleasantly even if I didn't like them all. But never must I compromise with what was wrong. I must remember that I was a soldier. I must remember that God was watching what kind of a soldier I was being. There might even be times when I would have to fight, but I must be sure I was always fighting for the right, not just to have my own way, for there would always be God.

  "It was when I was ten that he first told me I had a little sister. We had been watching out the window as some people went by, and they had a little girl with them. She had gold curls flying down her back, and she was a pretty little thing. She was laughing and calling out to her mother and father; and Dad--sort of caught his breath, as if it hurt him, and then he said, 'I never told you you had a little sister, son, did I?' I remember the look on his face as I looked up in wonder and began to ask questions. I could see--that he--loved you very much! I seemed to see down into his heart that day as I'd never seen before! I began to realize all at once that he was a man, with a life of his own, not just the father of me, made to comfort me and care for me. I began to see that he had a great big sorrow in his life, but he never let it get the better of him. And years later, just before he left me, something he said about God made me see that the secret of his strong, beautiful life was that he had an abiding consciousness that there was always God, just as he had taught me when I was a little child, only he spoke of Him now as 'the Lord Jesus.' "

  It was very still there behind the hemlocks, with only the stirrings of the swans to disturb them. The city's roar seemed far away, and they two were shut in a little quiet place, where suddenly the sister felt that God had arrived. God had never been in her life before, except as a name seldom mentioned, and meaning little. Now He stood there, an unknown One looking at her. She gripped her young hands together and gave a little shiver. Then Dana took up the story again.

  "We talked about you sometimes, Father and I, when we were all alone and quite quiet. Father let me imagine what we would do and say if you should come to stay with us. How happy we would be. Where we would take you. What we would get for you--that was a little joke we had together, because by that time we hadn't any money to get anything but the barest necessities. But we played we had for your sake. Father made a game of it, and I would come home some nights and say: 'Dad, I found such a pretty wristwatch I think my sister would like. Shall we get it for her?' And always he would enter into the game and be as eager over it as I was. Sometimes he would say, 'Let's save it for Christmas for her.' And then he would go on planning how we would trim the tree and hang up our stockings, and how the watch would be in the very toe of your little stocking!"

  Dana paused and turned his face away from his sister. Something in his memory overcame his own control, and he struggled with the mist in his own eyes. He did not look at his sister or he would have seen that her tears were pouring down her face and dripping from her chin. Unaccustomed tears. Not angry tears.

  "If he had had the money to get the kind he liked I believe that he would have sent it to you last Christmas. He talked a great deal then about what he would like to do for you if he were able."

  "Money?" said the girl suddenly. "But I thought that he was fabulously wealthy! Lisa always said so. She told me when I was very little that my father had slews of money."

  Dana suddenly turned and looked at his sister and saw that she was weeping. His own lashes were wet. He gave a sad little smile.

  "No," he said. "He used to have plenty, but when--our mother went away, he turned all his inheritance into a fund for her and you. Even then, he had barely enough to cover the sum she had asked. He had nothing left but the business, and when the Depression came on, that went down and down, and we had hard work to make both ends meet, till I got out of college and got a job that paid a small salary, which was a lucky thing, for Dad was down and out and needed a lot of things himself by then."

  Dana's voice was low and sad as he said this, as if his memories were very sorrowful.

  "But Dad was more wonderful than ever then. He never murmured once, and always had a smile."

  "Oh!" moaned the sister with a real sob in her breath. "I didn't know! How very mean we have been! Oh, we oughtn't to have had a thing!"

  "No! I'm sorry I told you that!" said Dana with quick contrition. "I didn't realize how that would sound to you! How should I make you understand? We were glad to do that for you and my mother! Glad it was possible!"

  "That doesn't sound reasonable," scorned Corinne, "to be glad to go without things for the sake of people who had run away from you! That isn't natural!"

  "It's love!" said Dana gently. "And that was my father! Love! He was the personification of love! But don't misunderstand me. He was a strong man, a real man, nothing sissy about him. But he was great enough to love even over great odds. He hated sin and wrong in every form, and he would fight it to the death, and did in many ways. But he could love. And how he loved you! And he had loved your mother, too. But he loved you most tenderly. He called you Coralie always. He liked that name best. He said the other name, Corinne, meant one of a group of hummingbirds, with long lancelike bills and very brilliant coloration, and he liked best the thought of the soft shell-pink of Coralie."

  "Oh!" said Corinne. "I wish I were like that! But I'm Corinne, I know I am!"

  Dana turned toward her earnestly.

  "Look here, little sister," he said, reaching out his hand and taking one of hers gently. "I've always called you Coralie, and I'm going to keep on doing so, may I?"

  Coralie choked and nodded, and her fingers curled themselves in a wild, quick grasp about her brother's hand. Then suddenly she flung his hand away and sprang to her feet.

  "Oh!" she said wringing her hands and flinging them out desperately. "I don't know how I'm ever going to forget all this!"

  Dana looked at her wistfully.

  "Do you have to forget it?" he asked sadly.

  "Why, of course!" she said angrily. "How could I go on living and remember what you went through for us? How could I ever go on going to the silly parties and flirting and dancing and getting drunk, and sleeping it off, and then doing it all over again? How could I, and know that all the time I had been growing up and doing that, you and my father had been going without things so we might have more party dresses and jewels and cars and servants and wine and flowers. Oh, it makes me sick! Certainly I must forget! Good-bye! I'm going home!"

  She flung away from him and darted out among the shrubbery and down the path toward the open where walked the throngs. Then suddenly she stopped, looking
back toward him where he still sat watching her sadly, and dashed back to him again.

  "Where do you stay?" she asked, breathless. "I can't let you go off like this into nowhere. Where do you live? Tell me quick!"

  With a strange half smile on his lips Dana wrote out the address for her. She took the card and read it.

  "Down there?" she exclaimed in horror. "Why, that's nowhere to live! I can give you a lot of addresses that would be a lot better than that. That's away downtown."

  "Thank you," he said. "I'm very well satisfied. And I have a friend, my old college roommate with me. We're quite pleasantly located, so don't worry. It's perfectly respectable."

  "Respectable? Oh! Well, I wasn't thinking about that. I was thinking of it socially."

  "Socially?" Dana grinned. "Well, I wasn't expecting to go out socially. That's out of my line."

  The girl looked at him with a puzzled pucker in her young brow.

  "You're so different!" she said at last. Then her brow cleared. "But you're rather nice in spite of it! Good-bye!" And she was gone.

  Dana sat there for some time, thinking over the interview, seeing once more the startling face of his young sister, remembering the strange remarks she had made. And yet, there had been a latent sweetness about her in spite of it all, now that the makeup was washed away and the bold look was gone. Oh, if she had been left behind also, as he had been, and had been brought up by their father, perhaps she would have been sweet and lovely. She certainly would have been lovely.

  He pondered carefully the question of whether there was anything he possibly could do for her now. That had been the real point of his mission he knew, as far as his father's wishes were concerned. The father had been obsessed during his last days lest he should have somehow managed to get control of his little girl when she was a baby and bring her up as he had known her mother would never do. He was filled with the realization of the eternity to which he was going, and the sense that maybe he had not done right by giving up the child without an attempt to get her, a feeling that he was responsible for her and should take some means even yet, to teach her the meaning of life and death, of sin and salvation.