Lynn Kane brought fresh coffee to the porch and refilled Spence Rankin’s cup as he stared seaward and tried to find an answer to John Kane’s inquiry about his future plans. Charlie Love was stretched out on the divan, his battered felt over his eyes, and with the servants still at Bilibid for questioning the house was quiet.
“I don’t know,” Rankin said, and found that he was thinking more about Lynn Kane than about what he intended to do.
Kane had asked his plans and Rankin remembered how simple they had been when he left the States with Ulio. The future had stretched glitteringly before him then, with all the promise of excitement and adventure and a new life. Now all that was changed and he did not greatly care because he did not know about Lynn.
He would not forget the day they had met and the warm pleasant ways he had so liked. He would not forget the kiss she had asked for but he understood the circumstances too well to believe it meant anything. She had been tense and upset then, and perhaps a little scared; she had needed comforting and new encouragement to sustain her and he was the only one she could turn to. Since they had taken Howard Austin away he had avoided her eyes lest he find in them some indication that she had loved the man he had trapped. He realized that John Kane was talking again and found it easier to listen than to think.
Kane was talking about the Philippines and the future. He told how he had come there thirty-odd years ago and why he intended to stay, and with each word his eyes took on new brightness. He spoke scornfully of those in the States who thought that all the islands could produce was copra and coconut oil and hemp and sugar. He said those things were fine but no more important than the gold and silver and copper and chromite and magnesium; that the Lord only knew how many other things they had around and hadn’t had time to discover. He mentioned the lumber. He said they made their own cement, that in natural resources alone the Philippines was one of the world’s richest countries. How, he asked, could you stop such a country? And where else could a young fellow of today find such limitless opportunities? He paused, a little out of breath, a little of his excitement dying when Rankin did not answer.
“Of course,” he said, “I’m being a little selfish about it too, Spence. I happen to like you and the things you did. I’ll always be grateful for that but this thing I have in mind is something else. I need somebody to help me. I’ve got an awful lot to do and not too much time. Men like me—and Charlie and the others I knew who are still alive—can’t expect to do more than get things rebuilt and start the wheels turning. After that it’s up to you young ones. You said once, and Charlie heard you, that you were going to take Ulio’s place. What about it, Spence?”
Rankin was watching him now, some inward stirring lifting his depression and making him see what John Kane meant. He liked the lean brown face and the way the eyes looked back at you. He remembered what this man had done with his life and what had happened to him in the past three or four years. It made him a little proud that John Kane should say such things to him and when he saw the man smile he found he had a grin to match it.
“Sure,” he said, a little ashamed of his silence and the confession it brought. “Whatever you say.”
“We’ll work it out,” John Kane said and his voice sounded relieved as he stood up. “Maybe,” he said, “with you to back me up, we might get Lynn to stay this time.”
He grinned over his shoulder at his daughter, but she did not reply. She was watching Rankin. She seemed older now and more mature, and she was tired and emotionally bruised, but just then, smiling a little, her head slightly tilted as though considering the matter seriously, she held his eyes with her own and they were wide open now and warmly lighted.
It seemed to him then that everything he wanted was there, not just the friendliness and the clean, uncompromising honesty with which she looked upon the world, but other things from deep inside her that he could not put a name to. He nodded, his smile reflecting what was in his heart, knowing somehow that the answer her eyes had given was all a guy could ask for, and that the rest was up to him.
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copyright © 1946 by George Harmon Coxe
978-1-4532-3339-9
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