All the old things in the closet she took down and abandoned; threw them on the bed in a heap. She would give them to the housemaid. Kerry would have objected and wanted to keep them. Kerry always liked that brown dress with the little buff daisies scattered over it. But Kerry wasn’t here, and Kerry would have far finer things now. She remembered the green suit with the ermine collar and the eggshell satin blouse that she had bought for Kerry yesterday and flung the whole armful of her formerly cherished garments onto the pile.
There was nothing left in the closet but a little orchid silk, cheap and thin and flimsy, trimmed with soiled and tattered lace, but that was a dress that Shannon used to love to see her in. He used to say sometimes when he had worked hard all day, and his head was aching and things were discouraging, “Put on your little orchid silk, Mother—pretty little Mother—and sit over there where I can look at you. It will rest me!”
And when she had dressed to please him, vain enough herself to enjoy the little byplay, he would say, “Now, turn your head and look over there and smile. Yes, that’s the way—beautiful little Mother—that’s the way I will have you painted by a great artist! Someday I’ll do it! Don’t throw away that dress, Isobel. I’ll have you painted in it yet! Someday when my book is done and I get money that’ll be the first thing I will do, while you still look young and lovely. Not that you’ll ever be anything but lovely to me, my love, but of course we must grow older someday, and I want your portrait painted while you look just as you do now!”
A wild thought seized Isobel as she fingered the flimsy silk and tattered lace. Shannon was gone, but she was now in a position to have the portrait done by any artist she chose. Why not save the dress and have it done? A freak of course, but Sam would gratify her in anything she asked for, and perhaps it would please Shannon to know that she was carrying out his wish, if dead people could see what was going on in the world they had left. It pleased Isobel’s vanity, too, and she folded the flimsy silk carefully and wrapped it in tissue paper, and locked it into the little lacquered box along with Sam Morgan’s three love letters, finding no incongruity in the assortment.
Then she turned her attention to her bureau drawers, and an old trunk that held her winter clothing. Short work she made of that, too, clearing the trunk, and laying in it such a few things as she felt she would like to keep. Pictures of herself and Shannon, dance programs from her girlhood days, an old fan a dead lover had given her.
The pile on the bed for the house maid was enormous, and the trunk was nearly full when Sam arrived blustering, and found Isobel seated on the floor beside the half-packed trunk with a baby’s shoe in her hand, crying gently. The shoe belonged to Kerry’s little three-month-old brother who had died of pneumonia before Kerry was born. Isobel was weeping lovely tears over the little shoe, and in her lap lay three photographs of Shannon Kavanaugh when he had been young and handsome and came courting her.
Sam Morgan, when he saw them, stamped his big expensive shoe and swore at his bride. He swept her off the floor, tossed the shoe into the trunk, the pictures across the room, and ordered her to put her hat on.
Isobel, a little frightened, and a good deal relieved to be thus summarily lifted out of her sentimental gloom, got herself ready.
“But what about Kerry?” she asked sweetly. “Have you heard anything more?”
“Kerry’s in New York somewhere,” replied the millionaire. “We’re getting over to our yacht as fast as we can get there. We’ll take a little skip out around the Mediterranean for a few weeks, and then if we feel like it we’ll trip over to the States. I want to run down to my plantation for a few days and see how the cotton crop is this season, and then we can step up to New York for a day or so and see if Kerry has come down off her high horse yet. How’s that? Alrighty, Missis?”
Isobel looked troubled.
“But I don’t like the idea of not knowing how Kerry is getting along all this time. I couldn’t really enjoy much with her on my mind, you know.”
The bridegroom scowled.
“There you are!” he said. “That’s just what I thought! Marry a widow with a child and you only have half her mind. She’s got no thought for you, just for her child! She comes and bawls over a baby’s shoe, and moons over her dead husband’s picture, when she knows he couldn’t give her butter on her bread half the time when he was living.”
“But Sam, dear, aren’t we going to hear from Kerry at all, all that time?”
“Oh, sure! We’ll have a radio on board the yacht. Talk to her every day if we like. Send out messages, you know, and all that sort of thing. Come on, old lady. All set? What are you going to do with all this junk on the bed? Stuff it in the trunk?”
“No, I’m going to give it to the maid. I was just going to send for her.”
“Well, I have a bellboy out in the hall. I’ll send him. Come, get that trunk closed up while I’m gone.”
Isobel cast a hasty glance around the room, located Shannon’s photographs and stuffed them hurriedly into the trunk underneath the other things, shut the lid with a click, and locked it. She straightened up with a guilty look as Sam came back.
“Here’s the maid. Come, now, get a hustle on!”
“Oh, I’m quite all ready, Sam,” said Isobel sweetly, beginning to put on her gloves. “You’re sure we can talk with Kerry over the radio all the way, aren’t you, Sam?”
“Sure!” said Sam heartily. “All set, baby? Well, get a hustle on then. I need a drink!”
Chapter 5
Kerry’s first dinner at sea was most reassuring. It almost made her forget for a few minutes that she was a fugitive on the earth, and that her future was most uncertain.
Graham McNair suggested that they go out and watch the end of the sunset, and Kerry, going to her stateroom for her coat, came face-to-face with Henry Dawson approaching from the other end of the corridor with his overcoat.
“How fortunate!” he said, smiling, “I was coming in search of you. I do so want to have a little talk with your father’s daughter. I knew him so well, years ago, when I was a mere cub in science. I wonder—would you like to take a little turn on the deck? And then we might find a sheltered corner somewhere and get really acquainted.”
Kerry thanked him, but told him she had just made other arrangements for the evening. “Sometime of course—!” She hesitated because somehow she had taken a dislike to the coal-black eyes, and the oily voice of the PhD. He did not look like a man whom her father would choose as a friend. And where had she heard his voice before?
“Oh, well, then, how about tomorrow morning? Shall I look you up on deck? All right, we’ll call that a date, please.” And he went away with a courteous bow. But just as he turned to pass on, it suddenly came to Kerry where she had seen him. The slump of his shoulder, a certain assurance, an arrogance of attitude reminded her. Wasn’t he the man who had been looking over the shipping list when she came back to say she would take Mrs. Winship’s reservation? Why should that make her uneasy? Or was it only that she shrank from talking over this man’s memories of her blessed father? Why did she take dislikes this way, unreasoning prejudices? He was perhaps one of the finest men that walked. A scientist also. One who evidently revered her father. She must put down all such silly reactions and be a woman. She must remember that she was no judge of men. She had always been sheltered from the world and taken her ideas from her father. She must try to shake herself free from prejudice, and take things as she found them. She must remember that she was now on her own, and must cultivate a sound judgment.
It was pleasant to be walking with Graham McNair. She had a sense that he had not noticed the shabbiness of her little brown coat, and her scuffed shoes. He walked beside her with the gracious deference he might have given to a queen. She felt that it was not for her sake of course, but in honor to her great father, and her heart rejoiced that she was given the joy of seeing how others honored her father. She had always resented and grieved over her mother’s low estimate of him.
There were many colors left over from the sunset, spread in soft radiance on the water, which was smooth as glass, for the evening was a quiet one, and the loveliness of the hour unsurpassed.
Kerry felt a joy rising in her troubled soul, a kind of ecstasy of enjoyment in the coloring of the evening, and the stretch of bright empty water. The vast space reaching away on every side seemed to shut her in and protect her. For the time being at least she was safe; and for this little hour she might enjoy the scene and forget that there were perplexities and loneliness, and perhaps fear, at the end of her journey.
Kerry was glad that her companion did not seem to think it was necessary to keep up a continual chatter. They could stand and look at the beauty around them, the peace and loveliness, and just enjoy it without an obligation to voice their delight in words. She seemed to know his pleasure in it without a word being spoken.
They had walked several times back and forth, and stood at various placed to look and look again, when suddenly, as they were watching a big star blaze out and burn, and signal like a new arrival, Graham McNair spoke.
“I have sometimes thought,” he said quietly, “that it might be something like this when the Lord Jesus comes back again. A quiet evening, hushed in twilight, as if wanting in expectancy, a great star burning, just as when He came before, only a more wonderful star than any we can see now! Have you ever felt that way?”
He spoke so quietly, in such a matter-of-fact tone, tenderly, as if he were speaking of mothers’ prayers, little children’s laughter, and beloved homes, that she was not quite sure if she had heard him right. She lifted startled eyes, and when she saw that he was looking at her as if he expected an answer, she spoke hesitatingly.
“I—am not sure—that I understand—just what you mean. Do people—do you—expect God—that is Christ, to come back again?”
“We certainly do!” The voice was very clear and low, with a kind of ring of triumph in it.
“With a star?” she asked wonderingly—
“With a silver trumpet!” said the triumphant voice quietly. “Possibly with a star, too, though there is nothing said about it. But certainly with a trumpet!”
“Nice night!” said Henry Dawson, PhD, suddenly coming up behind them.
They turned, let down with a jar to earthly things.
“Yes,” said McNair, taking up the burden of the conversation after a decided pause.
“But it can’t last,” said Dawson in his flat voice. “Not this time of year. We’re due for a storm before we get across.”
“How many times have you crossed?” asked McNair politely, studying the other man with narrowing gaze, and getting a very good view of Kerry’s delicate profile with the side of his eye.
Dawson launched easily into detailed accounts of the various ocean storms he had encountered on his trips.
Kerry watched the opal tints die away from the water, and McNair watched Kerry while Dawson talked. Hadn’t the man any sense of the fitness of things, or was he really as he seemed to imply, an old friend of the Kavanaugh family? McNair couldn’t be sure, but he stood his ground.
The orchid and rose and green died, the purple and gold blended into gray. The sea became a sheet of beaten metal lit with a full moon, and still McNair stood his ground. Kerry, her eyes far away to the bright horizon, was not listening. Perhaps she was wondering about that silver trumpet.
Suddenly she moved, and turning to McNair with a weary look said, “But I must go in. I really am very tired. It’s been a long day. Thank you for all this—!” Her hand fluttered a little motion toward the panoply of silver and gray. “And—” She hesitated. “For the star and the trumpet. It was interesting. I shall think about it!”
Dawson eyed them jealously, his last sentence about a simoon he had once experienced in the desert, suspended in midair. Then he spoke in a vexed, detaining tone which struggled to be playful.
“Don’t forget our little conference in the morning, Miss Kavanaugh. It’s really quite important, you know.”
“Conference?” asked Kerry, turning back with a surprised glance. “Oh!” And she laughed and went on her way.
McNair looked keenly at the other man but refrained from questioning him, though his tone seemed almost to invite it.
“You were speaking of the simoon I believe, Mr.—excuse me—Professor Dawson. It must have been an interesting experience.”
“Knew her father well, you know,” explained Dawson, his eyes following Kerry with a gleam in them that McNair did not like.
“Indeed!” said McNair with a lack of interest in his tone.
“It was most stimulating to come into contact with such a man in the world of science,” went on Dawson. “We did not always agree of course, but I found him a man quite open-minded and amenable to reason.”
“Ah?” responded McNair. “About how long ago was that?”
“Why, about nineteen-thirteen I think.”
McNair studied the other man again with that almost suspicious narrowing of the eyelids.
“H’m! In Russia, did you say?”
“Oh, no, in England, I—”
“Ah! I had understood he was in Russia during that period,” said McNair disinterestedly, “but I must have been misinformed. Did you say you studied with Dr. Kavanaugh?”
“Oh, no, I said I was associated with him. We, I—was doing some experimental work at that time on my own account—I—”
“If you will excuse me,” said McNair suddenly, “I think this friend may be looking for me.” And he vanished courteously after a man who had just strolled by.
“Now,” said McNair to himself an hour later as he stood alone on the forward deck looking off to sea, “what can that pup be about? Something mean I can pretty well wager. I wonder if I can do anything about it.”
Kerry kept pretty well to her own quarters the next morning. She had no mind to have a conference with that strange, black-eyed man who was so offensively close to her father.
She had not slept very well her first night out at sea. There were too many things to think about! Her mother far away by this time in the London she had left, hunting for her perhaps, and crying. Yes, she would cry! That hurt to think of and she could hear her father’s voice almost reproachfully, “The only little mother you have, Kerry! Your beautiful little mother!”
Then her young heart burned hotly, and her own tears flowed. “She’s all right only she hasn’t any judgment, Kerry!”
That was it. Mother had not used good judgment in marrying Sam Morgan, and there had been nothing Kerry could do about it but go away and leave her mother to her fate! Had she been wrong in leaving her? Oh, but it was impossible to stay!
Then Kerry’s mind turned breathlessly toward the book that was to be her salvation both mentally and financially. She must fill her mind with her work, and not think or she never could go through this hard, hard time. In the morning she would get up early and work, work, work. Three days hard work ought to put that manuscript in perfect order. Just a few pages to be recopied where her father had made some last corrections. Just a few more notes to be incorporated in the appendix, and she would be ready when she landed to go at once to the publishers. She must get it done! She must not let herself be beguiled into spending time idling on shipboard. She must work!
Then a great ache came into her heart and her tears flowed anew! Oh, why had life been so hard on her? Why had she had to live at all? When she came to think about it she had always been a little lonely child. Only the last two years when she had been her father’s close companion and helper had she had any joy in her life. And now that was all gone! What was it all for? She wished she had asked her father. He was wise. He had thought of things like that. He was patient. He must have had some idea of why life was, or he would never had those sweet, patient, intense lines around his mouth and eyes. Oh, Father! Dear Father! If you only had not gone away!
And then her mind came back to the evening and the silver sea, and her brief ta
lk with the gray-eyed man who talked about a trumpet and a coming Christ. What did he mean? Was he just talking poetry or was it something real in his life? If she ever had another opportunity she would ask him, for it seemed as if there must have been a meaning behind it, a meaning that might ease the awful hunger of her soul.
And then she fell asleep.
When Kerry awoke the next morning she could not tell where she was. At first she thought she had been dreaming, and that she lay in her little hard bed in the cheap hotel in London, with a fog outside, a burden on her heart, and a day of perplexity before her.
Then the monotonous lash of the waves, and the motion of the boat made themselves real to her dreamy senses, and she had the whole sad story of the last two days to go over again. She experienced once more the shock she had first felt.
So does sorrow undo the work of sleep by one sharp thrust with the first waking breath, when one is passing through the valley.
Kerry opened her eyes and saw a gull sweep by her porthole; saw the interminable passing of the sea outside lit with sunlight sharply gray and blue, yet felt its beauty was not for her. There could be no joy in sky or sea or journey, for she was all alone, and the world was full of sadness. Why did she have to live? Oh, Mother! Oh, Father! Why was such a heartbreaking thing as life ever brought about?
By and by she conquered the awful sorrow that kept swelling into her throat, stinging tears into her eyes, and crept from her berth.
A breath of sea air from her porthole brought a sudden longing to get outside and drink in the beauty and the brightness, and throw off this gloom that was upon her for a while. But she resisted it. For there was that unpleasant person with the bold black eyes and his insistence for a “conference,” whatever that might mean. And there was her work that she must do.