Daphne Deane
Page 22
But the days went by and no Anne made her appearance on the scene.
For as soon as Anne received that letter she went in a rage to her father down in his office.
"Dad," she said imperiously, "the time has come when you must fulfill your promise about putting Keith Morrell out of a job. He has utterly refused all overtures, and I want his blood to the last drop."
"All right, girlie," said her father, "it's your funeral, not mine. But don't make any mistakes. You can't undo a thing like this."
"I don't wish to undo it," she answered, her voice stiff with anger.
So he called the number and asked for Mr. Sawyer, senior.
"Mr. Sawyer," he said in his most commanding tone, "I am about to donate a handsome building to my alma mater and have been thinking of you with regard to the plans and contract. There is, however, one condition attached to this contract. I cannot go into details until I am assured that it will be fulfilled."
"Well, certainly, Mr. Casper, I am sure if it is anything within our power, we'll be glad to do what you want."
"I don't imagine it's a very difficult thing to do," said Casper in his haughtiest tone. "You have a young man, Morrell by name, working for you, I believe. I want him dismissed from your service at once. You are at liberty to let him know that it was done at my request."
There was a silence, and then Mr. Sawyer spoke. His tone had lost its genial softness and was hard and cold.
"I am sorry, Mr. Casper, we would like to take your contract, but your condition happens to be one that we cannot undertake to fulfill."
"What? You can't fulfill it? Man, this building will make you famous as a firm; that is, I should say will add to your honors in that line already achieved. It is to cost in the hundreds of thousands--"
"That would make no difference, Mr. Casper. It is quite impossible to do what you have asked, because the young man has already resigned from our employ, and though we have prized him highly and were intending to advance his position, he firmly refuses to reconsider. So as he is no longer with us, we couldn't possibly dismiss him, even if we were willing to do so, which we would not be!"
Mr. Casper hung up the telephone and stared at his daughter.
"Well, Anne, I guess you're a fool yourself this time. I shouldn't wonder if this young man is worth more than all your addlepated followers put together, even if they have the money. He's resigned and gone out of our world, and you might as well learn a lesson and then forget him."
Chapter 22
There came a day when Keith Morrell was to be allowed to take a walk. He had already been out on the front porch several times, swathed in blankets at first, and then as he grew more accustomed to the outside world, just wearing a light overcoat. Mrs. Gassner had looked her fill from her pantry window and watched his progress from day to day, counting exactly how many times it was Daphne and how many less times it was the nurse, who brought his midmorning orange juice or bowl of soup. She had remarked upon it as significant to a number of callers, too.
"I should think he ought to be getting back to his job; that is, if he still has one," she said. "If you ask me, I'd say that Daphne is hanging on to him, and I can't think what she's about. Doesn't she know that Evelyn Avery is getting thick with the minister? She'll lose him next, and then where'll she be when this Morrell goes back to New York? He's got a girl up there, I'm morally sure, and she's been down here twice, in spite of all they say to the contrary over at Deanes'. They're so awful closemouthed you can't get anything definite, but I'm not blind nor deaf, and if that girl didn't have something to do with that big white ambulance coming here for half an hour and then going away, I'm much mistaken."
The caller would be duly interested, and Mrs. Gassner would go on: "But say, had you heard that the minister has had a call to a big city church and that he's considering it? And did you know he's taken that Avery girl twice to those symphunnies up in the city? Odd, isn't it, that he thinks she'd do for a minister's wife, her with her cigarettes and her wild parties and drink. Pretty minister's wife she'd make."
"Yes," said one caller, "but I'm not so sure she wouldn't fit him better than Daphne Deane. I heard he went up to New York with Evelyn and took her to the theater!"
"Oh, you don't say! A minister! Ain't that turrible? Not that I mind going to a movie once in a while myself when Silas is away. But a minister! It's somehow different."
"Yes, I think so myself. It doesn't seem dignified, does it? But everything is changing today, and maybe in New York they wouldn't mind a minister's wife smoking and drinking."
"Oh, but I did hear that it wasn't a church he was called to, it was some strange kind of community center or maybe it was a new kind of school. They wouldn't be so bad."
"No, not quite," sighed the visitor.
And so Mrs. Gassner was on hand early and saw Keith Morrell start out on his walk, accompanied by Daphne.
"Of course, she would!" sniffed Mrs. Gassner contemptuously. "But where in the world are they going? Over to the Morrell place, as I live. You'd think he wouldn't ever want to see it again after his awful experience with those gangsters!"
But Keith and Daphne, utterly unconscious of her espionage, walked on into the pleasant fall sunshine, round the path to the back door, across the grass to the little back gate in the white picket fence that Don had made to get through with the lawn mower when he cut the grass, over the grass and down the garden path until a friendly lilac bush hid them from sharp eyes, and then they walked more and more slowly.
"You are sure you aren't getting too tired?" asked Daphne turning anxious eyes toward Keith. "I'm afraid you are trying to go too far the first time."
He turned beaming eyes on her face and caught her hand in a quick warm clasp. "I don't feel as if I should ever be tired again. I'm so thankful to God for all He's done for me, and to you. If it hadn't been for you, I might never have come back to God. You've been wonderful taking care of me and all, but bringing me back to Him was the best thing you ever did."
Daphne's face was flooded with quick, sweet color.
"No, don't say that," she protested. "God would never have let you get away from Him finally. He would have used somebody else to help. You were His, you know."
"I believe that now," he said, smiling down into her face and still holding her hand close in his, his very soul in his eyes, "but I'm mighty glad it was you God sent to help me."
"Why, I didn't do anything at all hardly, just prayed," she said earnestly.
"Ah, but how you prayed!" he said. "I didn't know what it meant to have prayers like that before. I felt those prayers even through my sickness and pain. I've been thinking I owe a great deal to that stupid agent of mine. If he hadn't gone off to the city when he knew I was coming and he ought to have stayed at home, I would never have gone to that grandstand to wait, and seen you. And if I had never seen you--!" He paused and looked down at her again and suddenly drew her arm within his, bringing her close to his side.
"But first," he said, holding her close as they walked along, "there is something I've got to tell you. I've got to make it all clear about Anne Casper!" Daphne had thrilled at his touch and walked in a daze of joy these few steps, and then the mention of that other girl's name suddenly brought her to her senses. With quick dignity she spoke, trying to make her fingers in that clasp recognize that she was only helping an invalid to take a walk, and he was trying to thank her for waiting on him while he was sick, reading to him and bringing him toast, and he hadn't meant anything personal at all by all this he had been saying. She even tried to draw her fingers away from his, casually, as if it were nothing, this thrilling handclasp, but he wouldn't let her.
"Oh," she said rather breathlessly, "don't feel you must explain anything to me. I understand, of course. Don't let's talk about anything exciting. Let's have this a peaceful pleasant walk for you."
"Yes, but you don't understand," he said earnestly. "And I can't possibly have a peaceful pleasant walk until I have told you eve
rything."
"Well, then let's go over and sit on the end of the porch in the sunshine where you can rest, and get it over with."
She tried to laugh as if it were nothing, but her voice was strained and she had to take a deep breath to keep from trembling.
"All right!" He dropped down on the porch, too excited to realize that it was a relief to sit down again. "Now, in the first place, that girl said she was my fiancée, and she never was and never will be. It is true that I asked her once to marry me, but she turned me down absolutely when I refused to enter into a crooked game of finance that her father was carrying on. It was then I began to see what she was. I had met her with some friends whom I knew in Europe, and there was a glamour about her. She can be awfully attractive at times when she chooses to be. Oh, I was a fool, of course, to think--well, I don't think I ever did really get convinced that I cared for her. She put on a line I wasn't used to and seemed--well----better than she was. But there never was much intimacy between us, she kept all her men friends at arm's length, and when I finally asked her to marry me, it was more to bring the matter to a climax and find out whether there was anything to it for me or not, or whether I was just a bit light-headed with her intermittent attentions. But when she answered by her ultimatum, I went away. It was then I came down here the first time and saw you--" His eyes were down. He was not looking at her. He had an almost shamed look.
"You see," he went on, "I was trying my best to think I was brokenhearted about her that day. It was the nearest I had ever come to falling in love, and I rather wanted to think it was real and that she would come around pretty soon and be the sweet ideal I had envisioned. Two days here with you were a sudden jolt in my life. I realized that I had been getting very far away from the things my mother had taught me. I realized that your home life here was sweet and sacred and the kind of thing I would want in my home, and that Anne Casper would probably never have any of those ideals. Seeing you had made a big difference. I couldn't get away from the look in your lovely face. I didn't understand my feeling. I thought it was because you looked like my mother. But then--"
He was still for a long minute, and Daphne was trying to school herself to be a good adviser and friend to a man whose idol had turned to clay. But suddenly he turned and looked straight in her face.
"Daphne, are you engaged to the minister?" he asked her point-blank.
And Daphne, her nerves already taut with the strain of the weeks, and the present situation, suddenly burst into laughter: "Engaged to the minister? Me? Engaged? No, I'm not engaged to anybody----but, thank heaven, not to the minister! What put that into your head?"
Keith looked a bit sheepish, and the lines on his face were relieved.
"Well, I heard that next-door neighbor of yours shouting it out to somebody who was deaf, that night I ran for the train. But I'm glad. It's troubled me a lot, and I couldn't go on till I knew that. You see--" suddenly he paused and then went ahead, his words fairly falling over one another: "Oh, Daphne, I love you. I think I've loved you ever since I first saw you there on the grandstand, and I can't stop loving you even if you hate and despise me for having ever thought I could look at a girl like Anne Casper!"
"Oh!" said Daphne, suddenly hiding her happy eyes on his shoulder. "Oh, as if I could ever hate and despise you----"
"But wait, you haven't heard it all."
"I don't need to. If you say it's all right and that you love me, that is enough for me."
He drew her in a close embrace, lifting her chin and looking into her eyes. "But I want you to know it all. I went back to the city and wasn't going to see her again, but she sent me a charming letter, ignoring all that was past and inviting me to dinner at her summer home at the shore. Thinking maybe she had changed, I felt perhaps I ought to go. I might be making a mistake. I was a fool, of course, but I went. And there I found she had got her father to offer to take me into a great financial hoax that would have pauperized thousands of poor ignorant victims and made me rich, and when she found I couldn't be coaxed by her father's schemes, she made me walk out on the beach and she put on the tenderness act. She strung herself around my neck like the clinging vine and begged me for her sake--well, I don't remember all she said----I don't want to--but suddenly I knew she wasn't the girl for me, and I took her hands down from my neck and told her so. Then she turned spitfire, slapped me in the face, and ran away into her father's house. There! That's all I know of her till she came here. I walked the beach that night as far as I could go and took the early morning bus home, and I hadn't laid eyes on her till she appeared by my bed that day I had the relapse. Now, you know it all. Could you love me after a thing like that?"
"Love you?" said Daphne, lifting a radiant face. "Love you? Why, I think I've loved you always."
Then his lips came down to hers, and he held her in that close, sweet embrace, and they sat there a long time in the sunshine together, heart to heart, tearing away the distance of the years, forgetting that there was anyone but their two selves in the world.
"Well," said Mrs. Gassner annoyedly when Silas came in earlier than usual, "I think it's about time somebody went after those two. They've been over to that old Morrell place all the afternoon, and it's getting chilly. A sick man, too, out so long. That Daphne Deane hasn't any sense at all. If they don't come in pretty soon, I think maybe you ought to run over there and see if any more gangsters have got in that cellar and shot them both."
And about that time William Knox came slipping into his own house from his office and sat down with the evening paper.
Martha bustled out from the kitchen.
"Well, you've come at last, William. I've been worrying myself sick all the afternoon about that money. I went to look in the safe, and I found it wasn't there. William, that money is gone! All that money! And now they say that young Morrell is getting well and you'll probably have to tell him all about it, and if it's gone what will you do? We never could pay it back."
William lifted his formerly quailing old eyes and looked at her with dignity over his spectacles.
"Martha," he said in a tone he had not dared use for years, "I have attended to that money, and I don't want to hear anything more about it."
"But, William," said Martha aghast, "what'll we do if it can't be found?"
"Martha, that money is perfectly safe, and I don't want to hear another word about it."
"But, William, suppose you were to die," she said tearfully. "What would I do about it? I wouldn't know where it was."
"You wouldn't need to know. That money is in better hands than ours."
She was still for a moment in horrible apprehension, then she began to reproach: "Oh, William, have you given that money up? You didn't need to tell anybody. We could have kept it, and nobody would have known. It would have made us comfortable in our old age, and--"
"Martha," said William giving her another severe look over his spectacles, "that money was counterfeit money. I knew it the minute I laid eyes on it, but I didn't want to tell you. Now, if you say a word about it we'll both be clapped into jail when it comes time for that trial! Now, you stop talking about it, and don't mention it to anyone in the world."
Martha was blank with amazement and fear for a moment, and then she turned and walked back to the kitchen, saying meekly over her shoulders as she went: "Yes, William."
She hadn't spoken as meekly as that to him since they'd been married forty years ago.
But the two young people who had found a great love walked slowly back across the dear old garden, arms about each other, never realizing that Mrs. Gassner was looking out her kitchen window scandalized.
They went into the house, and the nurse who had just come in from a trip to town, getting ready to leave the next day, said: "Well, I think you made a day of it. Aren't you tired to death, Mr. Morrell?"
And Daphne's mother, appearing from the dining room, said with a smile, "Why, you dear children, I was just coming after you. But how well you both look. I believe it has done yo
u good."
"Yes, Mother," said Keith, suddenly stooping down and astonishing her with a kiss on her forehead, "it has. I've a great appetite, and I'm coming to the table tonight myself. I feel wonderful!"
The mother looked from one to the other, noticed that Daphne's hand was still in Keith's clasp, and comprehension swept into her eyes. Then Daphne, laughing, came and kissed her also, and the mother said with a breathless happy look: "Why, you dear children! Where's Father? You must go and tell him right away. He'll be so glad!"
GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL (1865–1947) is known as the pioneer of Christian romance. Grace wrote over one hundred faith-inspired books during her lifetime. When her first husband died, leaving her with two daughters to raise, writing became a way to make a living, but she always recognized storytelling as a way to share her faith in God. She has touched countless lives through the years and continues to touch lives today. Her books feature moving stories, delightful characters, and love in its purest form.
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