Daphne Deane (29 page)

"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 everything."

"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 you 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.