Daphne Deane (7 page)

She was back in almost the allotted minute with a fresh, crisp wisp of organdy rolling back from the neck of her blue dress, and her hair satin-smooth.

"Now," she said, her eyes starry, "I feel as if I were about to step into real fairyland!"

"I'm afraid you will be disappointed," he said, looking down at her admiringly. "The house has stood uncared for a long time and everything must be frightfully dusty, although I think Mother did have covers put over the furniture before she went away. It seems to me I remember talk about it."

"It won't make any difference to me," said the girl eagerly. "I shall be seeing it with eyes of younger days, and it will be all glorified."

Keith Morrell's eyes expressed his admiration, though he made no immediate reply.

They went out the back way together, through a little gate that dated back to gardener days in the Morrell family. The young man helped the girl over the garden wall, to the great edification of Mrs. Gassner, who never missed any unusual happening on their quiet street.

Daphne stopped for a moment at the top of the three steps that led down to the garden and looked across the tangle of color that had grown up according to its own sweet will, blue phlox and cowslips; candytuft and columbine, pink and white and blue; coral bells and violets, growing together in an arrangement all their own, peering out brightly through masses of clambering honeysuckle vines and old-fashioned yellow roses.

"I came so far once to get Ted's ball when he was a little fellow," she said. "Mother wouldn't allow him to come in after it himself, lest he might harm something. It was breathlessly beautiful I remember. And over there, there was a pansy bed, all purple and gold, and velvety brown and orange. And there was a fountain just beyond."

"That's right!" said the young man, leading her down an overgrown path. "It's right over here. Seems dreadful, doesn't it, having the garden all messed up like this? I didn't realize. You see there's never been a caretaker since Tim Maxon died. It didn't seem important to me then to have one. Mother was very sick, and I knew she wouldn't be with me long. And afterward--well, it just didn't occur to me again. I'm sorry."

It was almost as if he were apologizing to her.

"But it's all here! See, there's a yellow pansy, and a purple one peeking out from this cover of shrubs. Poor thing! You want some air and sunshine, don't you?" She stopped and pulled the branches back, scratching the dead leaves away, pulling out a weed or two, and lo, a brave little pansy plant stood forth.

Morrell knelt beside her and helped, putting back a briar out of her way, and pulling up some strong weeds that had taken possession.

"It wouldn't be hard to bring it back to order again," said the girl. "It would be fun! I'd like to do it!"

"So would I," said Morrell. "I wish I had time to stay. I must certainly get someone to look out for it--that is--if I keep it!"

"Oh!" said the girl, drawing in her breath as if his words had hurt her.

His hand lingered beside hers, just touched it among the warm earth and leaves, and something like a flame seemed to pass between them. All at once, he deliberately laid his hand over hers, gently.

"Would you care?" he asked softly. "Would it mean anything to you if I sold it?"

She lifted questioning eyes, suddenly clouded.

"Oh, yes, I couldn't help but care," she said honestly, looking into his eyes. "But of course--I've no right--" She dropped her gaze to the pansy bed again.

"I'm not so sure!" he said meditatively, clasping her hand more strongly and suddenly rising and bringing her up with him. "Last night Miss Lynd was telling me how she loved the old house and garden, loved looking at it and remembering; and it came to me that perhaps the old house owed something to its friends and neighbors, something intangible, just by being there--"

He looked down at her with that question in his eyes. He was still holding her hand warmly with the soft bits of earth clinging between their clasp, and his eyes searched hers as if he would read his answer in them. Daphne, who did not make a practice of letting young men hold her hand, never thought about this. It seemed a kind of holy clasp, a culmination of the beautiful relation that had always been in fancy between the old house and her little life and interests.

"Why--that is a beautiful thought," said Daphne slowly, and then her keen mind seeing clearly through she added: "But of course there's no obligation like that!"

"Isn't there?" He said it with a troubled smile, suddenly dropping his clasp of her hand and taking her arm quietly, to lead her forward. "I'm not sure. I'll have to think it through."

She walked quietly by his side, his hand holding her arm, and Mrs. Gassner, from the vantage point of a second-story back window, watched them carefully and murmured, "I wonder--!"

There were little flowers peeking out from old borders, nodding for recognition as they passed, but the two walked on silently, strange new thoughts going through their minds, and Daphne wondered at herself to be walking so familiarly with the son of this house, the young man who had always stood to her as some great personage whom she would never know but in fancy.

They came at last to stand on the wide veranda that ran across the front of the house and gave onto the terrace below. The tall white pillars rose nobly to support the roof far above, and they both instinctively looked up.

"It needs painting," said the young owner, looking troubled again. "Father would never have let it get to looking this way, I am sure." It was as if he were thinking aloud.

He fitted the key into the lock and threw the door wide open. The sunlight flung a path of brightness over the hall floor and part way up the wide old staircase.

"Oh, it is wonderful!" said Daphne, one hand up at her throat in her excitement. "It is just as I dreamed it would be!"

She lifted her face and followed the winding of the lovely old staircase, with its sweeping curve of mahogany rail and fine white spindles. She looked at the staircase, and the young man looked at her, seeing her beauty as he had not yet seen it, his heart warming to her appreciation of his old home.

They presently went on into the house.

The rugs were rolled up and wrapped in brown paper, lying along the walls, the furniture was shrouded in cotton coverings, the pictures veiled in white.

"It looks like the ghost of my past," said Keith Morrell in a sad tone. "I was afraid it would be like this."

He went to the front windows, snapped up the shades, unlocked the sash and flung them up. Then he unfastened the blinds, throwing them open, and the sunlight rushed in.

"There! That is better!" he said with a sigh, and impatiently reached out and pulled off the coverings from a couple of chairs.

"Sit down," he invited grimly. "It's not a very pleasant habitation."

"Oh, but the spaciousness! The vistas!" exclaimed Daphne, her eyes sparkling with pleasure. "I love it! Such beautiful rooms! How wonderful to have lived in a place like this!"

"I wish you could have seen it as it was!" said the boy sorrowfully. "My mother always had everything beautiful about her."

"I'm sure!" said the girl, reaching out her hand and touching delicately the upholstery of beautiful old tapestry. "I know there must be things here one could study and enjoy for many a day."

"I suppose so," sighed the son of the house. "I really never thought much about them. There are some fine paintings, I know."

He flung aside one of the coverings and then another, and revealed rich coloring, handsome settings of gold frames. A ship at sea. A street in the Orient with towers and mosques. A great cathedral.

"Oh," said Daphne. "Things I have read about and always wanted to see!"

"I always liked the Rheims cathedral," he said, watching the glow on her face. "I'm not sure but it gave me my taste for architecture."

They went about from picture to picture, his eyes watching hers, as he drank in their beauty.

"But you ought not to uncover all these things for me," she said. "They'll all have to be covered up again."

"I like to," he said. "It is good to see them again."

He strode over to the south window.

"This was Mother's desk," he said, flinging aside the cover. "Here she used to sit and write letters. But when I would come home from school she would always stop to greet me and hear my news, no matter how busy she was--"

His face was tender now with memories, and Daphne's heart swelled with sympathy for him.

"Your smile reminds me of hers," he said slowly, more as if he were just thinking aloud.

"Oh!" she said. "I'm glad! That's dear, to think I could remind you of her."

He turned quickly away to hide some emotion and went over to uncover the piano.

"That was her piano," he said, his voice husky with feeling. "How I loved her touch. She was a real musician. Do you play? I thought I saw a piano over at your house. Sit down and try it. It's probably out of tune."

He drew the piano stool out and placed it for her, and she sat down, her fingers running softly over the keys. He saw that she played well.

"It's not bad at all," she said, "after all these years of standing idle in an unused house! It's wonderful!"

Her fingers rippled into a Chopin nocturne, and he dropped into a chair and watched, his heart filled with inexpressible longings.

"You are a musician, too," he said, when she finally swung around to him and smiled.

"I love it!" she evaded. "And that is a fine piano! But I am taking far too much of your time, and we ought to get to work and cover up these things again. We cannot leave them this way."

"Not yet," he pleaded. "Play me just one more."

So she played a few minutes longer. He sat back and closed his eyes and listened, old memories sweeping over him and doing things to his soul, searching it of strange ways he had been going of late, pointing out changes in himself that he had not noticed before.

When she rose at last, decisively, he took her over the rest of the house, till they came at last to the nursery.

"Here," he said huskily, "was where you must have seen me kneel to say my prayers. Mother always sat in that low chair before the fireplace. And over there in that cupboard are all my toys, the electric train and the stone blocks and picture puzzles." He turned quickly away, and she saw him brush his hand across his eyes.

At last she turned away from the window that faced toward her own home, and her own voice was full of feeling.

"Thank you for giving me this real glimpse of the thing I had dreamed about for so many years," she said gently. "It is even more satisfying than I had pictured it."

He came and stood beside her, looking down and speaking with deep earnestness.

"And I thank you for bringing back to me things that I thought were over forever. But now I see they were meant to be eternal things, a part of me that could never end. My mother and my home--yes--and my God! You see, I had forgotten how I used to say my prayers."

Then suddenly he caught her hand and spoke brightly: "Come! We must go over to your house and finish washing those curtains! Do you put them on stretchers? I know how to do that!"

"Oh, but you don't have to wash the curtains," she laughingly protested as he pulled her down the stairs.

"I know I don't have to, but I want to," he declared as he hurried around closing windows, while Daphne tucked the covers over the furniture and closed the piano tenderly.

"It's perfectly scandalous," said Mrs. Gassner a few minutes later to her sister-in-law whom she had bidden up to her watchtower at the second-story back window. "There come those two back across the garden now! Holding hands! Will you believe it? I wouldn't have thought it of that smug-faced Daphne Deane--and her as good as engaged to the new minister, if you can believe hearsay! And they've been over in that empty house alone for over three hours! I timed them when they went in, and I haven't stirred from this window since, watching for them to come back. Times certainly are changed. I heard the piano going, too. Isn't that a crime? The first time he's entered his mother's house in five years, and allowing the piano to be played! That's heartless, I say! An only son, too! But children have no feelings these days!"

Mrs. Deane met them smiling as they entered the house.

"I'm glad you've come, dear," she said. "I was just going to send Beverly over to tell you lunch is ready."

"Mother!" exclaimed Daphne. "You don't mean it is lunchtime! Why, I didn't dream we'd been gone an hour."

"Yes, but aren't you going to introduce me to your guest?"

"Oh, of course. But Mother, don't you know him? It's our neighbor, Keith Morrell, and he's been showing me through the wonderful house."

"Oh, yes, I know him, but I didn't think he would know me," said Mrs. Deane, smiling and holding out her hand to the young man.

"I certainly am glad to know you now," said Morrell, earnestly. "You make me think of my mother. I feel I've missed a lot in not knowing you all before."

"You had a wonderful mother, and we're glad to have you here now, anyway," answered Daphne's mother. "Suppose we sit right down while everything is nice and hot."

"Oh, Mrs. Deane, I mustn't bother you for lunch. I didn't realize it was so late. I only came over to help wash those curtains after I had monopolized your daughter so long. I'm ashamed. I apologize."

"Please don't. We're glad to have you. It seems as if we have known you all your life, you have lived so near. I admired your mother very much, and I'm glad to have an opportunity of meeting her son."

"Then it will be a pleasure to me to stay. Isn't this great! I'm having a real holiday!"

"Where's Ranse, Mother? I can't find him anywhere," said Beverly appearing on the scene out of breath.

"Why, I told him he might play ball till lunchtime," said his mother.

"He isn't out at the diamond. I looked for him everywhere," said the little girl.

"This is my little sister Beverly, Mr. Morrell," said Daphne.

"I'm glad to know you, Beverly. But since you have all known me so long, couldn't I rate being called Keith instead of Mister?" he said, smiling at Daphne as he took Beverly's shy hand and greeted her.