The Seventh Hour

by Grace Livingston Hill

  "Miss Shannon, this is Mr. Barron who is going to take over Mr. Maynard's department, for a little while at least. Can you take him to Mr. Maynard's office and show him what we have on hand just now? Tell him anything he needs to know. We want to get that matter of the advertising for the Christmas catalogues off as soon as possible. I guess you understand all the details."

  Dana Barron stood up courteously to acknowledge the introduction, and there stood Valerie Shannon, as amazed as he was!

  A flash of recognition went between them, but Mr. Burney broke in upon anything further they might have said by a question.

  "Is Mr. Brownleigh out there in the office waiting for me, Miss Shannon?"

  "Yes, Mr. Burney."

  "Then ask the desk secretary to send him in, please."

  Thus dismissed, Dana followed Valerie into another office.

  "Why, Mr. Barron, I didn't know that you were coming here!" said Valerie in surprise.

  "Well, neither did I, until a few minutes ago," laughed Dana. "But neither did I know that you were here," he added, smiling down at her, and thinking how very blue her eyes were.

  Those blue eyes twinkled their pleasure in his courtesy, and then she drew a little cloak of distance about her. She was a businesswoman now, on business intent, and not on pleasure, and he was about to become somewhat of a superior in the business. There was a dignity and honor due him from her. She must not mingle friendship with work.

  When Dana Barron settled himself in the desk chair in the office in which Valerie led him, he was conscious of a glow of interest in the work to which he had just committed himself temporarily, that he had not felt before Valerie entered the situation.

  But if Valerie was equally pleased, she did not show it. With all the ease of a well-trained businesswoman she proceeded to explain the business in hand, making everything very clear.

  Dana listened intently, watching her speaking face, his eyes firing with understanding as she made the situation plain. Now and then he asked a keen question, which showed Valerie that he understood and had good sense about things in general. Good business heads they both had, quick of comprehension, capable, responsible. Each recognized this in the other, and did honor to such ability.

  "Now," said Valerie, "I think that is all, except that Mr. Burney is very anxious to get this matter of the Christmas advertising out of the way as soon as possible. Mrs. Trent has always been Mr. Maynard's secretary, and I think she is to be yours. I'll speak to Mr. Burney and send her in right away. I suppose you'll want to get at dictation at once."

  "Yes, thank you, I do," said Dana.

  She gave him a little formal smile and vanished, presently returning with a small brisk gray-haired woman whom she introduced as Mrs. Trent. She left them at once and Dana settled down to his work, glad to get back to something definite.

  ***

  About an hour after Dana sat down at his new desk Lisa entered her daughter's room.

  "Did you get in touch with Dana?" she said to Coralie, who was seated at her desk writing a few notes, trying to clear up a lot of odds and ends that she had lazily let go for too long. Her experience of the evening before had inspired her with a longing to do something really worthwhile, and the only thing she could find that might be called work was to get a clutter of invitations and bills out of the way.

  Coralie looked up, noted the jaded look on her mother's face that was not wholly covered by the lavish makeup, and answered carelessly: "I told him you wanted to see him."

  "Didn't you say when?" she asked sharply.

  "I told him around eleven was a good time," said the girl indifferently.

  "Well, it's after half-past now," said her mother suspiciously. "Are you sure he understood?"

  "He seems fairly intelligent," said the girl insolently.

  "Well, I don't understand it. I don't like to be kept waiting, and I'll make him understand that when he gets here."

  "I wouldn't advise you to be too particular. Not with him."

  "What do you mean? He's my son, isn't he?"

  "It looks that way, but that's for you to say. However if he is, he must have inherited a fair amount of your own imperiousness."

  "Why should he be imperious?"

  "I'm sure I don't know. Why should I? In fact, why should you be imperious yourself?"

  "You're being impudent!"

  "Am I? Well, I'm supposed to be your child! Why don't you call me imperious instead of impudent?"

  "That's enough!"

  "All right. I didn't begin this!"

  "Corinne, I forbid you to talk that way anymore. Go to the telephone and call Dana. Tell him I want him to come at once."

  "I don't think he has a phone!"

  "No phone? Why, how ridiculous! Well, then get the hotel and tell them to call him."

  "He isn't in a hotel."

  "Well, then, where is he?"

  "In a rooming house downtown."

  "Downtown? In a rooming house? How simply impossible! Surely you told him that was no place for him to stay?"

  "Oh, yes, I told him. But you know, Lisa, in some ways he's very like you. He said he was very well satisfied with the place where he was and he didn't care to move, or words to that effect."

  "Well, I'll see that he moves at once!" said Lisa with her lips in a think line and her chin in the air.

  "I wonder." said Coralie.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean that he won't move for anybody if he doesn't happen to want to, so I wouldn't advise you to tell him he must, or you may have to eat your words."

  "You're very offensive!"

  "Yes, so are you sometimes. There are times when I've been moved to wish that you hadn't been so beautiful, and had just been a plain woman who wanted to stay at home and take care of her children. You never did bring me up, you know, so you can't complain that I don't please you."

  "Corinne! Will you be still? You have said something you'll have to live down, now."

  "Well, what is there in my life that I haven't had to live down? Can you tell me?"

  "Corinne, go and get that rooming house on the phone at once and tell Dana to come here immediately!"

  "You'd better do it yourself, Lisa. There isn't any phone in that house at all, and I don't know how to get Dana."

  "You are just trying to be helpless now. If it was one of your friends you wanted, you would get him soon enough. Well, give me the address, and if I can't find a phone there I'll send a special messenger boy after him. I declare, it seems as if you might do a little something once in a while. What is that address?"

  The girl gave it to her silently and went on with her writing. Lisa took it impatiently and went out. After about an hour she returned.

  "You must have made a mistake in that address, Corinne, or else Dana was bluffing you. I sent a messenger there, and he couldn't get in. He said an old man who has a shop in the basement said that everybody was out and they didn't usually get back till night."

  "So why do you think I made a mistake, Lisa?" The girl lifted cool eyes at her.

  "Why, Dana would never room in a place like that, a place where no one is at home all day, and a shop in the basement!"

  "Why not?"

  "Why not! You absurd child! As if a Barron wouldn't go to a respectable place. I don't believe that's his address at all."

  "Oh, yes it is, Lisa. I went there myself and found him!" said the girl impatiently, sealing her letter and flinging it into the letter tray ready to go.

  "You went there and found him? When?"

  "Last night!" said Coralie wearily, yawning.

  "Last night! You mean you went to an unspeakable place like that, alone, to find Dana?"

  "It wasn't at all unspeakable, Lisa. It was a perfectly quiet house on a quiet street. Plenty of people going back and forth. Decent people! I went up to Dana's room. It's a big room with two windows, on the second floor, and there is furniture enough to make it comfortable. Sort of old-fashioned, maybe, but clean and res
pectable, and Dana seems to like it there. He had a college friend with him! They didn't appear to be very glad to see me, either. They were going somewhere!"

  "Of course! Men always do! I suppose Jerrold Barron would be surprised that his paragon of a son would go out places like other young men of his age. I don't suppose you stayed long enough to find out where he went, did you?"

  "Yes," said the girl. "You'd be surprised. He went to a prayer meeting."

  "To church, you mean?"

  "No, it wasn't in a church. It was some sort of a mission, I gathered."

  "Oh! How did you know where he went? He told you anything he pleased, I suppose."

  "No, he didn't tell me where he was going. I found out because I went with him."

  Coralie's voice was very quiet, almost as if she was taking some kind of stand that was impossible.

  "You went with him! Did he ask you to go?"

  "No, he wasn't keen on my going, but I told him I was going, so I went. And he sang. Lisa, he has the very most gorgeous voice I ever heard in my life. If he were on the opera stage the world would rave about him!"

  Lisa was still for an instant. Then she said: "Yes, Jerrold had a gorgeous voice!" And her face looked almost ashamed as she said it. Then she suddenly came back to the present.

  "So, that was where you were when you knew I had guests and expected you to be present! You went with a nobody to a mission, and left the man you are going to marry to wander around using up all my good liquor to console himself!"

  Her voice was very bitter, and she hurled the words at her daughter as if they had been actual missiles.

  "That was why I went out!" said Coralie calmly. "Because I knew those unspeakable people were going to be here, and because I am not going to marry Errol Hunt. I don't want to see him ever again!"

  "Corinne! You little fool you! A man rich enough to give you anything you want! And ready to lay it all at your feet! And you go off your own way and leave him to drink himself drunk all for love of you! Do you call that right?"

  "Oh! I know! Didn't I hear him? You let him come slobbering at my door, pounding away and calling to me, when he didn't have sense enough to call out my name. Coming in that condition to ask me to marry him. Yelling it out so everybody in the house could hear him! Do you suppose I want to marry a man who shows his love for me by getting drunk? Do! You may as well understand it now as any time, Lisa. I'm never going to marry Errol Hunt, and I wish you'd tell him so! I loathe him, and I never will willingly speak to him again! If there is no other way out of it, I'll appeal to my brother to help me!"

  Lisa stood and stared at her child aghast. She had seen her angry before, she had seen her insolent, but never had she seen this calm, assured woman who knew what she wanted and meant to have her way.

  Then Lisa's anger flashed up crimson.

  "You'll appeal to your brother! What right have you to call him brother, I ask you? Did I tell you you might? Just try it if you dare and I'll have every cent of your fortune taken away from you, and have you put in charge of the court and sent to a home for insane people! You unspeakable little outcast! Do you think I will stand for any such nonsense as that?" Suddenly Lisa came swiftly over to where Coralie stood, and lifting her white, exquisitely manicured hand with its polished crimson nails, she struck her daughter sharply across her face, gashing the delicate skin of her cheek and cutting a slash across the cupid lips. The blow was terrific, even though it was struck by a frail woman, but she was a very angry woman, and her eyes were flashing like sparks from blue steel.

  Coralie stood perfectly still, as if she had seen the blow coming in time to brace herself to bear it, and she stood without flinching and took it.

  Lisa drew back like an angry panther and stared at her child with hate, noting the broad rising welt where her blow had left its mark, the drops of crimson where her sharp gaudy nails had gashed, and fairly radiating hate.

  "I wish--" she said, drawing in a deep breath and flashing her great eyes again, "I wish--that I had never brought you with me when I ran away!"

  It was the height of her anger always when she uttered that wish, and it was not the first time she had said it. Usually those words brought the girl to terrible tears of rage and hate and recrimination.

  But there were no tears on her face now as she stood there white and still and looked at her mother with a look she had never worn before.

  As Lisa stood panting, her hands clenched, Coralie spoke, in a low terrible voice: "I certainly wish you never had!" she said, and her face was white and set.

  Lisa stared at her wildly, as if she could not believe her ears. Her eyes were large with something almost like wonder. Then she lifted her chin and threw back her head in that arrogant way she had as if she were a dictator, and said in low sibilant tones: "You'll take that back, young lady, or I'll make you suffer for it good and hard!"

  She whirled around and stalked out of the room.

  Coralie locked her door and threw herself down upon her bed with her face in the pillow, but she did not weep. She was trembling as if in a fit of shivering.

  Chapter 11

  At five o'clock Dana called up his mother's house. The office had just closed and he did not wait to get back to his room. All day he had thought occasionally of his sister's casual request that he come to see their mother, and that he make it around eleven o'clock in the morning. It had not occurred to him that the message necessitated haste. The swift arrival of a job, and the necessity for beginning work at once, had driven out any other ideas for a time. When he did remember it, it did not seem important. Probably she just wanted to invite him to stay with her, and that he had no intention of doing.

  But when he started away from the office it came to his mind again, and he went into the first telephone booth he could find. If she was at home he would go to her at once.

  But he found it was not so easy as he had expected to get in touch with his mother. He found that there was a butler to deal with, and then a maid, and when he finally persuaded her to carry his message to his mother, word came back that she had expected him that morning, and why hadn't he come?

  He told the maid to say that he was employed in an office in the morning and was not free until five o'clock. Then she sent back word that she was busy and could not see him until the next morning at eleven.

  "That is impossible," said Dana quietly. "For the present I can only come after five."

  After some delay Lisa's voice came sharply over the line. "Dana, this is ridiculous! I can't be upset this way. Give up your job then, and come when I say. It's absurd for you to be having a job anyway."

  Then Dana's voice had answered coldly: "That is quite out of the question."

  There followed a long pause, and Dana almost thought she had left the telephone. At last she answered impatiently.

  "Oh, well, I can't be bothered this way. Come over at once if you must, and be quick about it!" And she hung up the receiver sharply.

  Dana walked slowly out to the street considering. He was being made to appear as the one who desired the interview, and it was the last thing just at that moment that he wanted. But he reflected that there was a good deal of pride mingled with his wrath, and that his feelings were not to be considered. So he hailed a taxi and drove swiftly to Lisa's apartment. But even then he had to wait until a lengthy primping was completed before she came to meet him.

  In a long formal room where there was a commingling of complex simplicity and ornate complexity, she appeared in a dress of black velvet with a sweeping train and an open back showing the delicate curves of her flesh interrupted only be a jeweled clasp.

  She was startling in her beauty; the tints of her complexion were like a baby's, and her silver-gilt hair shone like a halo. For just an instant Dana was glad that he had seen her so. It seemed to justify his wonderful father for having fallen in love with her, a thing he had never been quite able to explain or excuse. But she was lovely, breathtaking in her beauty, if one did not remember the t
ones with which she had just spoken over the telephone.

  "Well?" she said at last, breaking the silence that he did not attempt to break.

  "Yes?" he said pleasantly. "You wanted to see me?"

  "Not at this hour," she complained. "I am always busy in the evening and cannot be troubled with business." She dropped down on the edge of a weird chair.

  "I beg your pardon," he said, turning to go. "I understood you to say you wanted me to come at once. I will not detain you."

  He picked up his hat and started toward the door.

  "There you go, flying off the handle just the way your father used to do at the slightest word! I want to know what you mean by a position. Why do you need to take a position? One as well off as you must be shouldn't be keeping the poor people out of jobs."

  "Well off?" asked Dana looking at her with an amused query.

  "Yes, well off. Wealthy, if you like that word better. But I can't waste time. I'm having guests tonight. I sent for you to ask where your father's will is, and why I was not notified about it at once?"

  "Will?" asked Dana.

  "Yes. I suppose you know what that is, don't you? Where is the will? Who has taken charge of it? When is it to be probated?"

  She flung the questions at him. But Dana only looked at her quietly.

  "There was no will," said Dana, and his voice was almost sad.

  "No will?" Lisa almost screamed, her eyes growing angry at once. "Do you mean he gave everything to you, and you had the insolence to accept it without consulting me?"

  "No," said Dana, still quietly, "there was nothing left to give. Barely enough to bury him."

  "Do you mean he gave you nothing?"

  Lisa had risen and was standing angrily facing him, her delicate nostrils spread as if for battle, her eyes flashing furiously.

  "Nothing but the little old house where you went as a bride," said Dana, facing her and holding her glance with his, steadily, condemningly, "and which you scorned and left! You did not want that, did you? He gave it to me several years ago because he loved it, and because he knew that I loved it, too. It was all the home I have ever known. I have lived there all my life with my father."