Daphne Deane (28 page)

And so he was, to the great joy of the family and the utter satisfaction of his two doctors, who still came together to see him as often as they could manage to get away from their other patients.

The first caller Keith had after he was able to sit up was Mr. Sawyer of the New York firm.

"You've been mighty good and patient," said Keith, answering the kindly smile of his chief with one of gratitude. "I ought to have written you long ago to get somebody else in my place. I was thinking about it just last night, but I haven't felt able to write yet, and I didn't exactly want to dictate such a letter."

"That's all right, son, don't write. Just wait till you're fully able to return, and you'll find your desk and your work waiting for you. We fully realize that you're going to be a valuable asset to our firm someday, and we're willing to wait for you till you are quite well. You've done good work so far, even in the few months you've been with us, and I prophesy great things for your future."

Keith studied the kindly, but world-hardened face of the man before him awhile and then answered with a smile: "I thank you a lot for saying that. I'll think it over and write you." And the great man went away wondering what the boy had in mind, speaking in that indefinite way.

The next day came Mr. Dinsmore.

Daphne liked him at once. She felt that his visit would do the invalid a great deal of good.

"Well, well, son," said the genial elderly man, who seemed to Daphne much like the first visitor, only with something more vital in his eyes. "I certainly am glad to see you looking so well after your injury."

Half an hour later as Daphne was passing through the hall she heard a scrap of their conversation:

"Well, what are you going to do now, son? Going back to your job in New York? I was half hoping you might be lingering here, but I suppose since you are well fixed there I shouldn't be wishing to keep you here."

"I don't know," Keith answered. I've been thinking a lot about it the last few days. Mr. Sawyer was here yesterday. He was very kind. They are willing to wait for me, and I believe there is a future there, but I'm not sure I want it."

"Oh?"

"You see," went on Keith, "I have a longing for home. I don't belong up there in that atmosphere. I have a foolish feeling that I have left my house empty long enough to be the victim of gangsters and circumstances, and I'd like to get back. Perhaps I am foolish. Perhaps I am losing my nerve or something, but I've had a sneaking desire to come back and try to find a job around here. Do you think I am crazy?"

"No, I don't think you are crazy," said the older man with a deep note of satisfaction. "Perhaps I'm too prejudiced to advise you wisely in the matter, for I've been praying for months that God would send me the right one to take the place in our business of our junior partner who went abroad six months ago and got himself called to a very flattering position there. And boy, there's no one in the world I'd rather have than the son of my dearest friend George Morrell. If you'll stay here and take hold, I can offer you a junior partnership, with any prospect ahead you are willing to take."

Daphne's unwilling feet carried her out of hearing then, but her heart was in another tumult of joy and wonder. Keith wanted to stay here! With all those flattering words of that nice Mr. Sawyer in his ears he
wanted
to stay here! He was really considering it. Then he did love the old house after all. He wasn't willing to go away into the world!

But the happy light in her eyes didn't last long, for even before Mr. Dinsmore had gone out of the house the afternoon mail arrived, and there was one for Keith with a shore postmark. The high smart handwriting gave her instant dread. Was this from that insufferable girl, and would it upset Keith again? Ought she perhaps to show it to the doctor or consult the nurse before giving it to him? But she couldn't do that. He was sitting up and seeing people. He seemed to be calm and fully able to cope with his own problems. She had no right. It wasn't her business to withhold his mail.

So after Mr. Dinsmore had gone, she took it to him. She hated to do so, lest it might take away that happy look in his face that seemed to be left from his recent visit with Mr. Dinsmore.

He looked in surprise at the letter, scowled as he noted the handwriting, tore it open impatiently as she turned away, and read it with a frown.

 

Dear Keith,
he read,

I've seen by the paper that you are fully recovered now, and as there seems to be such a hostile group surrounding you I shall not venture to come to see you again.

This is just to say that I am glad you are better at last, and you will be welcome here to rest and recuperate as long as you please. If you will let me know where to come for you I'll be glad to meet you, and I am willing to give you one more chance.

Yours as ever,

Anne Casper

 

"Daphne!" he called almost impatiently, and then as she appeared in the doorway, "I wonder if you could get me some writing paper and a pen? I've got to write a letter at once."

"I'll be glad to," said Daphne, her heart sinking, "but----do you think you ought? You don't want to put yourself back now that you are doing so well."

Her voice had a frightened quake in it.

"I shan't be but a minute," he said quickly. "This must go at once!"

She brought the writing materials, and he wrote as if he did not have to pause to consider what he said.

 

Dear Anne:

The nurse tells me I was very rude to you, and I apologize. It is kind of you to offer a resting place, and I thank you for your invitation, though it is quite impossible for me to accept.

You and I are not of the same world, and I should have known it long ago. I am saying definitely and finally good-bye, and good wishes.

Keith Morrell

 

He called to Ranse who happened to be passing the door and asked him to post the letter at once, airmail and special delivery. After that he called to the nurse that he was hungry and ate a better supper than he had yet managed since his illness. He seemed to be almost festive as Daphne came in later with another piece of toast he had demanded. But Daphne only smiled halfheartedly. She had seen the address on that letter he wrote as it lay on the kitchen table while Ranse obeyed his mother's command to wash his face and hands and comb his hair before going to the post office, and her heart was full of foreboding. If he was making up with that girl again, he was only bringing more trouble to himself, for she never would live in the dear old house. She would pull it down and build a modern one, if he married her. She could not forget the look on Anne's face as she said it ought to have been pulled down long ago.

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."

 

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.