Job’s Niece E-Book

Grace Livingston Hill

• Herausgeber: Classica Libris
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

When Doris Dunbar’s loving father dies, her family is torn apart. Suddenly Doris is faced with financial ruin, a hateful stepmother, a disgruntled fiancé, a dying brother, and the care of younger siblings. Just as Doris’s world is crumbling around her she meets Scottish businessman Angus Macdonald; whose unusual business proposition seems to lead her closer to the peace and answers that have eluded her. What surprises await the Dunbar family—a family that so desperately wants to be together—in the midst of an impossible situation?

Leseprobe

Grace Livingston Hill

JOB’S NIECE

Copyright

First published in 1927

Copyright © 2019 Classica Libris

Chapter 1

1920s, Eastern United States

At half past midnight Doris Dunbar was still sitting at the desk in the library, her head bent over a paper on which were many columns of figures. She was surrounded by piles of bills in orderly rows, covering not only the top of the big old desk, but also several neighboring chairs; a regular blizzard of bills, long overdue, some of them many times duplicated, with little impertinent footnotes of reminders. The lamplight fell on the slender figure, touching to bronze the hair that was folded in wide burnished bands around the symmetrical young head. That was the first thing that one noticed about Doris, her glorious uncut hair, which, nevertheless, did not give her an air of being out-of-date. When she lifted her head to reach a fat pile of bills from one of the large department stores, the light glanced sharply on the white oval of her cheek and brought out the blue shadows under her tired eyes, giving to her face a look of delicacy that was almost startling.

Doris found the amount of another bill and set it down in round clear figures below her last column, catching her breath and drawing her delicate brows with a troubled frown as she sent the forceful pencil through its calculations and set down the appalling result. She paused a moment dejectedly and glanced up at the remaining piles of bills on her left, shook her head sorrowfully, and then went at her task once more, her pencil flying rapidly, until the sharp click of the latch in the door as it was released made her start and look up.

In the doorway in her nightgown, with a trifling pink robe flung about her shoulders, stood Doris’s sister Rose. Her arms were outspread from frame to frame of the doorway as if she were half afraid and were clutching for support. There was a mingling of defiance and fright in the attitude of her dark bobbed head, shingled close in the back with one heavy, wavy lock hanging over her left eye.

“Doris Dunbar, what on earth are you doing down here at this time of night?” she challenged excitedly. “And in this room! The very first night Daddy was taken away! I think you are terrible!”

Her voice broke in a sob and she tossed back the wavy lock of hair resentfully, showing big, frightened eyes. Doris half rose, started, and looked at her with troubled eyes.

“Why, Rose, dear! I thought you were asleep!”

“Asleep! How could I sleep, with Florence carrying on in her room across the hall, moaning like a sick baby? And you, not coming to bed hour after hour! I don’t believe I shall ever sleep again! I’m frightened! I don’t see what life has to be this way for, anyway. It’s awful! I wish we were all dead! I wish we’d never been alive!”

“Hush, dear! You’re all excited! Come, I’ll put these things away and turn out the light, and we’ll go upstairs.”

“I don’t want to go upstairs. I shall scream murder if I have to hear Florence moan once more! I know I shall. I can’t stand it!” And she suddenly slumped, sobbing, into a chair.

“I can’t stay in this terrible room. I see Daddy’s dead face all the time. Let’s go, quick! What are you waiting for?”

“I must put these papers away, dear. It won’t take but a minute. I can’t leave them out. Hannah is so curious.”

“What does it matter? What are they anyway?”

“They are bills, Rose, Daddy’s bills. Awful bills!” she said with a long-drawn sigh and a return of the trouble to her eyes. “But we don’t want Hannah to see them. She talks so. She would tell everything she knew.”

“Bills?” said Rose resentfully. “What are bills? What does anything matter now? Come, quick! I’m all trembling! This room is terrifying! Why should you care about bills? And tonight!” she said reproachfully. “It doesn’t seem respectful to Daddy.”

“They’ve got to be paid,” said Doris sorrowfully, “and Mr. Hamilton is coming tomorrow to go over everything with us.”

“Well, let him pay them, then, isn’t that a lawyer’s business? It certainly isn’t yours.”

“It’s got to be somebody’s business, Rose, and you know Florence isn’t in any condition to look after business.”

“Oh, Florence!” said Rose scornfully. “She isn’t in any condition to look after anything and never was. I wonder why Daddy ever married her.”

“Don’t!” said Doris sharply. “This is no time to criticize our father. I know he thought he was doing it for our good. I remember he told me so when I was a child. He said he wanted me to know that he never would have brought another woman to take our mother’s place if he had thought he could bring us up right without a mother.”

Rose curled a trembling lip:

“Pretty mother she’s been! She’s nothing but a baby!”

Doris wheeled upon her sister:

“Rose, you must stop. It is not our place to go back into the past and criticize. We must see to it that we don’t make any mistakes ourselves, and I guess we will have enough to do that way without trying to fix up mistakes of the past. We’re going to have to face some pretty big problems the next few days, and the less bitterness we have in our hearts, the better we can do it.”

“What do you mean, problems?” asked Rose blinking out from under her lock of hair. “Is there anything I don’t know about?”

“I am afraid there are a good many things we don’t any of us know yet,” sighed Doris, laying the neat piles of bills crosswise upon each other in the open desk drawer. “Here are all these first, and they’re bad enough. Rose, there are over three thousand dollars’ worth of just little bills here, and some of them have been running for months, and as many as five or six notices have been sent begging for money.”

“But I don’t understand! Why didn’t Daddy pay them?”

“I’m afraid he didn’t have the money, dear,” Doris answered in a sad little voice.

“How ridiculous!” flamed Rose. “Daddy was rich! Why, look at the mink coat he bought Florence at Christmas! Look at the rock crystals he bought me—and your little car.”

Doris spread out her hands pathetically:

“The bills for them are all here, Rosie, every one! And your silver shoes, and the hats we got last fall, and the new dining room set, and Ned’s radio—all! Everything that’s been bought lately! And there’s only one payment made on my car! It isn’t mine at all! They have threatened to take it away! Oh, Rose!”

“I can’t bear it!” screamed Rose. “Let’s get out of this room! I don’t believe it! Daddy wouldn’t do a thing like that!”

“Daddy didn’t mean to, I’m sure. Things got tangled up. He couldn’t help it, I’m positive. There was some investment that failed—I’ve gone far enough to find that out. Come, I’m ready now.”

“Well, why don’t we pay them right away, then?” asked Rose half angrily. “I’m sure I don’t think it’s nice toward Daddy not to get them paid up. Couldn’t Mr. Hamilton tell something? Didn’t Daddy have bonds and things?”

“I don’t know yet,” said Doris miserably. “I’ve only found debts.”

“Doesn’t Florence know?” asked Rose sharply. “It’s her place to. She was his wife. Have you asked her?”

“She goes into hysterics whenever I speak of it. I tried twice yesterday. And she would order the most expensive things for the funeral. I couldn’t seem to make her understand. You see, Mr. Hamilton had hinted to me that Daddy was in trouble financially, but that he would see us through till things were straightened out. It is awfully embarrassing.”

“But what did Florence say when you told her?”

“Oh, she just cried and said that I was dishonoring my father by not wanting to have everything just as it ought to be for his funeral. I had to stop.”

“Of course you did, Dorrie! She’s a selfish pig. She could understand if she wanted to. She doesn’t want to see things as they are. Daddy has kept things smooth and comfortable for her all these years, and now she thinks we ought to. But I’m not going—”

Doris stopped the words by laying a soft hand over her sister’s lips:

“Don’t, dear! I can’t bear any more tonight. Come, let’s go to bed. You come over into my room, and then you can’t hear Florence so clearly. I wonder why Ned doesn’t come. He might have stayed at home tonight!”

“I should think so!” said Rose indignantly. “He’s another! He wants his way almost smoothed before him. Have you told Ned?”

“Yes, I tried to tell him a little before dinner tonight while Florence was upstairs, but he just had time to whistle and say, ‘Hard luck, kid,’ and that was all. Then Florence came in and began to fuss about dinner not being ready on time, and after dinner he went out.”

“Yes, that’s the way Ned always does, just acts as if everything ought to go on right without his doing anything. Just shirks all responsibility no matter what comes. He makes me tired. I don’t see why we have to have all this trouble.” And Rose caught her breath in a sob again.

“Hush, dear! You’ll wake the children. They must be asleep.”

“Oh yes, I heard John talking in his sleep. He kept the radio going till I thought I would go wild, some man telling how to make an aeroplane or something. I went in and turned it off, and then I heard him calling out in his sleep something the man had said. He’s an awful kid. Florence just hates him. I heard her say he’d simply have to go away to school now Dad was gone—she couldn’t have him around.”

Doris’s round chin set firmly:

“Well, he won’t go off to school,” she said decidedly. “Not if Florence has to go herself.”

“How’ll you help it?” asked Rose, nestling down comfortably in her sister’s bed. “When Florence sets her mind on anything, she’s an awful bore till it’s accomplished. By the way, Jean has a sore throat,” Rose roused to say. “I made her gargle with salt and water when she went to bed, but I guess somebody ought to do something if we don’t want her to get tonsillitis again.”

“Of course!” said Doris in a weary voice. “I wonder what I did with that medicine. Oh, here it is. I’ll go in and give her some. You go to sleep, Rose. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Rose, comforted, nestled down once more among the pillows and was soon asleep, a tear still glistening on her round, smooth cheek. Only sixteen and so eager for life. Tears did not seem to belong on the velvet of her radiant skin. One longed to shelter and defend her. There was a sweet droop to her rosebud mouth as she slept, one rounded arm thrown back over her head on the pillow, the soft, rippling lock of hair straying over her white forehead boyishly, the breath coming gently between the parted lips. Rose was as beautiful to look at as a bud just opening. Beautiful, and like something made to be taken care of, not for use.

Doris sighed as she returned from caring for the little, ten-year-old sister, and stood for a moment looking at Rose, with a sudden sickening conviction that while she might sympathize more than Ned had done, there was little more to be expected of her than of her brother in the way of real help in this time of crisis.

Doris took her braids down and brushed them slowly, mechanically, trying not to hear the low, monotonous moaning from the front room, not realizing that a tear had stolen out and was making its slow course down her cheek. She was inexpressibly tired and downhearted. The future looked unbearably black. If only Ned were older, or would rouse to the necessity of doing something about things!

She was just turning out the light when she heard the front door latch, and throwing her robe around herself, she went to the hall to speak to her brother. Somehow she longed inexpressibly for a word, or even just a look of comfort and assurance.

But Ned came stumbling up the stairs without apparently having waited to lock the door or turn out the light, his overcoat still on, his hat on the back of his head.

She leaned over the railing and spoke to him in a low tone, but he came straight on, not seeming to notice her till he reached the landing and was face to face with her. Then he gave her a bleared vague stare with eyes that were bloodshot and wild, and pressed past her rudely.

“Get outta my way—” he grumbled thickly, “always some woman around in the way wherever a man steps.”

She stepped back sharply and watched him with startled eyes. There had been an unmistakable odor of liquor as he passed. Had Ned been drinking? Was there to be no end to the horrors of this day? He was not himself! She had never seen her brother like that before, nor thought it possible for him to get into that condition!

She stood for a moment looking down the dark hall toward his door, but no sound came except a dull thud as if he had fallen fully dressed upon his bed and lain as he had fallen.

It seemed as if each moment passed like a century while she stood and felt the foundations of her life quiver under her. She did not cry out as she longed to do.

She stood perfectly still till her strength began to come back, and then she went into her room and got into her bed. She felt heavy all over like lead. She thought she would never be able to sleep again. She could not even think. She was like one stunned.

But outraged Nature will have revenge, and sleep presently stole upon the poor burdened child and erased her troubles for a little while.

Sometime before the first dawning of the morning, she was brought sharply back to consciousness by a terrific scream piercing through her oblivion, shattering the darkness and peace, and precipitating her spirit into turmoil and terror once more.

She roused and sat up, staring around her, trying to remember what had happened and to identify the sound that had roused her.

And now she knew it was her stepmother sobbing aloud and calling out hysterical moans of self-pity; a self-centered woman giving way utterly to her nerves, unable or perhaps unwilling to take command of herself and behave in a womanly way.

There was something terrifying, almost repulsive, in the sound of that grown woman giving way to her feelings without thought or care of those who suffered with her. She who should have been their stay and comfort now in the loss of their beloved father had turned baby and forsaken them.

And now the remembrance came of the little sick sister sleeping alone in the room adjoining the stepmother’s. She would waken and be frightened. She must go to her! She must do something to stop those horrible sounds! The servant would hear! Her cheeks burned with shame. She would talk about it outside the house. Why, the neighbors would hear. They could hardly help it. It was like the cry of a lost soul, a voice from the tomb. It must be stopped.

Doris sprang from her bed and, catching up her robe, went with swift steps toward her stepmother’s door.

It was open, and Mrs. Dunbar lay with her arms spread out across her bed crying and sobbing in a most bloodcurdling tone:

“Oh! Oh! Ohhhhhhhhh! I’m all aloooooo–ooone! I’m all alone in the world! Oh, why did you leave me?”

“Florence! Stop that this minute!” Doris spoke in a calm, commanding voice. But the moaning and crying only grew louder.

Doris walked swiftly over to the bed, switched on the light, and bent over her stepmother, speaking quietly and pleadingly, but the voice went on louder and louder, although that had not seemed at first possible.

“What shall I doooo? Ohhh! Whhhhhhat shall I do?” she inquired in a frenzied scream. Doris saw that she was quite beside herself, and that pleadings and commands were alike useless.

With set lips she hurried across the room and shut the window. Then she went swiftly to the bathroom and returned with a pitcher of cold water.

She stood over her stepmother holding the pitcher and essayed once more to reach her reason.

“Mother!”

Her voice was husky.

It was the first time she had ever called her “Mother.” It had been Mrs. Dunbar’s wish when she was married that the children should call her Florence. She said they would feel more as if she were one of them if they did. Now it seemed to Doris that she was forcing the very stronghold of her own soul to speak that sacred word to this wild, weak child of a woman. But she forced herself to speak it again, more clearly this time:

“Mother—please—!”

She was interrupted by a piercing scream from the frenzied woman.

“No! No! I won’t be called that!” she sobbed and then screamed again in rising crescendo.

Doris in her panic remembered an article she had once read on hysteria, and catching up the ice pitcher, she flung its contents straight into her stepmother’s face, then drew back, frightened at what she had done.

Mrs. Dunbar, gasping and spluttering, came upright at once in her bed, her screams for the instant quenched, but her anger rising swiftly:

“You—wicked—girl!” she gasped, springing from her bed and shaking her long drenched hair out of her blinded eyes.

“You wicked, wicked—girl! What would your father say to your treating his wife this way? Ohhh! I’ve no one to protect me,” she wailed with an angry sob.

Doris stood against the wall, the pitcher still in her hand, the other hand pressed against her wildly beating heart, watching her angry stepmother, realizing that she had done an unpardonable act, and wondering if after all she had been justified. She was half ready to fall on her knees and beg her stepmother’s pardon, till the high, plaintive tone rose into a hysterical scream once more.

“I’m nobody, nothing in this house anymore! You, who ought to be my support and stay, your father’s eldest daughter—you are trying to drown me! You—”

But her eloquence was suddenly interrupted by a hysterical giggle, and looking up, startled, Doris saw John in his pajamas, his hair ruffled into a tousle, standing in the doorway, a broad grin on his impish young face.

The stepmother heard the giggle and looked at the doorway. While she looked, there came the others, Rose in her pink robe, eyes dewy with sleep, little Jean trailing a blanket around her, her eyes full of fright; and back of them all, his overcoat and hat still on, a strange dull look in his glassy eyes, tottered Ned uncertainly.

There was an instant of utter silence as they faced each other, and then Mrs. Dunbar, still gasping and spluttering, roused to a full sense of her predicament:

“Get out of my room this minute,” she shouted furiously, stamping her bare foot with as much dignity as was possible in her drenched condition. “Get out! Every one of you! I shall never forget this. Oh, you wicked, wicked girl! Get out!”

They melted precipitately before her violence and stood in a huddled group in the hall, a kind of hysterical misery upon them, while the echo of her slammed door reverberated through the house.

John recovered first.

“Gee, but she looked funny!” he burbled. “You caught her right in the middle of a scream, Dorrie!”

Doris shivered.

“Oh, I ought not to have done it,” she said pathetically, “but I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Good work, Doris!” muttered Ned thickly. “Time the old girl had a dowsing! Whisht I’d been here to he’p you.” And he stumbled back down the hall to his room. The others looked after him with startled, questioning eyes. They had never seen their brother like this before.

Doris suddenly roused to the fact that slim little Jean was shivering:

“Get back to bed quick, kiddie. You’ll get an awful cold. Your feet are bare. Here, pull that blanket around you, and hurry. I’ll bring you a hot-water bottle.”

It was a half hour before Jean was soothed, quieted, warm, and Doris crept back chilled and sorrowful to the bed where Rose had already fallen asleep again.

Doris buried her face in the pillow and felt that life was more than she could bear. She was borne down by a sense of shame over what she had dared to do. She felt degraded and humiliated, and the next day loomed grim and portentous. What further revelations and trials did it hold? What was to become of them all?

Chapter 2

Eighteen miles away on the other side of the city from the Dunbar house, and quite on the outer rim of the most charming suburb, is a beautiful estate. At night the house seems like a castle against the deep, starred blue of the midnight sky. Half hidden from view among the trees of the hillside, terraces lead down to velvet lawns, which stretch away to wildness and sweet woods again before emerging to the public road, as if the owner thought to make within, a retreat as near to heaven as this world may hope to come. The windows look away in one direction to a far river winding silverly along for many miles in daytime, and at night, a pathway for the boats with twinkling lights that ply back and forth to the shadowy purple distant hills, or to the glimmering city in the distance.

It is still in this great house, and very restful, and the air of the mountain is good to breathe. One wonders that so near the city there is still left all this vast loveliness belonging to one man.

There is a stately room of fine proportion, formally furnished with marvelous treasures from the four quarters of the earth, for formal occasions; a lordly dining hall where many of the great of the day have dined in their time, and where not a few of the questions of the day have been discussed, settled, and wires pulled that brought about nationwide crises.

But there is a living room, long and wide and homelike, with a great fireplace and deep chairs, where the flickering flames are reflected in ancestral fenders and tongs and andirons of heavy brass, and the deep rugs hush the footfalls of the well-trained servants, who see that everything is at hand when needed. There the deep, rich glow from shaded lamps brings out the gleam of rare books in hand-tooled bindings, books lining the walls halfway round. There a grand piano stands with lifted lid like a beloved friend, and the windows look out at night into the many stars.

In this room, that same night, long after midnight, sat Angus Macdonald, facing a problem that perplexed him as truly as if he had the weight of the whole Dunbar family on his shoulders.

Angus Macdonald’s paternal ancestors had made their money in gingham, and there were no piles of unpaid bills on the great Renaissance table just behind him, which held the costly lamp of carved jade. The price of some of the trifling ornaments in the cabinet across the room, or even the worth of a single one of some of those rare old volumes in the bookcase, would have cleared all Doris’s bills away and left her something over to live on. So his trouble was not financial.

But Angus Macdonald’s maternal ancestors had made their brains living on oatmeal porridge in attics while they carved their brilliant, sturdy way through the university; and they had left him a heritage of wisdom and common sense, and worst of all a conscience, which is a hard thing to have to carry around in these modern days. Angus could not go the way of all the earth and be satisfied. He had to measure and mark his going by the old rule of right and wrong, by the rule of love and the fear of God.

And there was a girl—there has always been a woman, since the days of Eve, who lends herself to the devil’s use—a girl, beautiful as the morning, who might have been a daughter of Lucifer himself so fair she was, so sparkling, so daring, so full of symmetry of both mind and body. She was like a wonderful magnet drawing all men to her side and holding them. She had drawn him.

Why did she want him? He was not her kind. There was not in her the fear of God nor the knowledge of right and wrong. They were to her but ancient traditions, lingering remnants of a time when the world was in its infancy. She laughed his traditions and sanctities to scorn with a voice like a silver ribbon and a smile like the light of a star and bade him race with her down a long green sward of joyous fancy. She said there was no such thing as right and wrong. Right was your own will. Wrong was to be subservient to anyone or anything. She had teeth like perfect pearls that caught the luster of the day when she smiled. Her lips were ruby red. The kind of red he knew was unnatural. Theoretically he hated it. Yet he found himself fascinated by the curl of those same vivid lips, so perfectly formed, so emphasizing the natural charm of the flesh as to call attention to their perfection. Her sinuous slim body, clothed in exquisite films of garments that revealed her grace of motion, was adorable. Her outfits did not seem reprehensible, as they would have if worn by some more awkward sister. They were a part of her, as if they were born with her, as if she were clothed in a garment of light. So subtly had she led him on that his very disapproval openly voiced toward the abbreviated garments of other fashionable women refused to come and stand as witness against her when his conscience fled. What was there about Tamar Engadine that always made him excuse whatever she did? He knew her ways were not his ways, her habits of life all wrong according to his standards. Yet more and more she was coming to seem the one altogether desirable in the whole world for him, and he was beginning already to plan how he might induct her into his ways of thinking, mold and fashion her into the strong, true woman he desired for his mate. It all seemed perfectly possible when he looked at her; and yet he had made little headway so far in molding her. In fact, when he was with her, she almost seemed to have molded him, sturdy Scotch stock though he came from. What did it mean? Would it always be so? Would she mold and lead him, not he her, if their ways led together?

It had been weeks since any such thoughts had come into his mind. He had been led hither and yon in her golden wake. She had said come, and he had gone. From one to another of her habitual frivolities he had been her attendant, well pleased to be doing her will; humoring her whim of the moment while he watched her and thought what it would be to have her for his very own, that loveliness made sacred for him, his to care for and cherish. She would not want to flit from one man’s arms to another when she was his and had a home of her own. Now she was like a sparkling iridescent bubble mirroring the rainbow, floating in the sunshine. Then she would be like a perfect flower blooming always in his garden, blooming especially for him, the complete fulfillment of which the rainbow bubble was but the promise. That was how he had explained it all in his mind as he went from place to place with her, waiting while she toyed with life, as one attends a lovely child in her games and smiles indulgently, knowing that she will presently grow up and be as eager about real things.

But tonight he had had a sudden jar that had brought him to consciousness, the immediate cause of this vigil by his own fireside. Tonight, for the first time in many weeks, he had not been her attendant. An important business visitor from abroad, passing through the city for a few hours, and to sail for home tomorrow morning, made it necessary for him to call off his engagement for at least part of the evening, with the promise that he would drop in later if the guest left in time. When the guest departed earlier than he had expected, and he sought Tamar’s home expecting to make more elaborate apologies than he had had time for over the telephone earlier in the day, and hoping he would find her alone for once that they might have a cozy talk together—hoping many things from this, his heart beating high—he had found only a cool little note.

Have gone with Bobbins to the Pine Tree Inn. Come if you get back in time.

Tam

He had frowned as he read it and felt almost vexed with her. Then she had not cared to wait for him, although he had suggested that he would get away as early as possible. There had been no vision of a quiet evening hour together in the firelight in her scheme of things. She had gone with another man as lightly as a butterfly. And such a man! Colonel Robertson. Why should she persist in calling him “Bobbins”? So ridiculous! And the Pine Tree Inn! Did she not remember what he had told her about the place being common? He had been almost vexed with her.

But he had followed; and before he reached the end of his long, chilly drive, he was hugging it to his heart that she had asked him to come. She had not been satisfied with the colonel. Child that she was, she had gone where any fun was offered, but she had wanted him to follow. He saw himself rescuing her from the commonness of the Pine Tree Inn and whirling her away to the cozy fireside of his dreams after all.

He had reached the place at last, secluded enough for the most unscrupulous, and found his way to a gallery where he might look down on the cheerful company and get his bearings.

He found her almost at once, the center of all eyes as usual. But she wore a more daring outfit than any he had ever seen her wear before. He rubbed his eyes in a daze and looked again before he would believe it. Her cheeks were brighter, and her lips, too, than he had ever seen them; and as he watched her dance with the obnoxious colonel, the scales, as it were, fell from his eyes. A hot wrath burned within him as he saw her yield herself to the intimacy of her companion, caught a look that passed between them, not the look of the innocent child with the rainbow bubble as he had imagined, and then they disappeared beneath the gallery.

He had heard them coming up the stairs and had withdrawn behind a heavy curtain as they passed. Almost he could have reached out and touched the lovely bare arm. The breath of perfume that she wore wafted subtly in his face. A careless sentence, unguarded as never before in his presence, dropped on the air beside him and entered his soul like a knife. Somehow he saw her in a new light, and his soul turned sick within him. The impulse that had seized him to reach out and draw her away from her companion, run with her to the ends of the earth and never stop until she was safe, rescue her from a situation that he had thought by this time would have become unbearable, passed. He knew now that she did not want to be rescued; that she had come here because she wanted to come; that she liked common things because she was common herself. At least he thought he knew that.

He thought so until he had come at racing speed several miles away from the place without having been seen by the lady at all, thought so till the fires of wrath and jealousy and hurt pride had burned themselves out and something within suggested that he should have stayed and seen it through, rescued her if need be, and that he had misjudged her. He tried to conjure up his former thought of her, but in spite of all, the vision of the jazzy little rag of a frock she wore, the look in her eyes, and the words on her lips remained, and here he was sitting the hours through and having it out with himself.

The question was, had he discovered his mistake in time, or was he bound by ties he could not break? And if so—he faced the question frankly for the first time—was he prepared to marry her and bring her here? Would she ever fit with his mother, his delicate, fragile, fine little mother, who would be wrecked for life if her son brought home a bride unfit for his traditions?

He tried to think that he could change her, even if she was not all that he had at first fancied her. He revisioned the gleam of her sparkling laughter, the flash of the pearly teeth between the red lips and tried to place her in the chair opposite him with his mother sitting where he was. He got up and paced back and forth through the length of the beautiful room and fancied them all three spending an evening together. Tamar would go to the piano and play and sing as she often did, in a wild sweet voice, some foolish little song. But what would his mother think of the songs that Tamar sang? She would call them “wicked” or “vulgar.” Tamar wasn’t vulgar, was she? Just modern. He had previously thought of it in that way, “modern”! Or wait. He remembered that he had been startled, almost shocked, the first time he heard her sing her daring songs, and turned away displeased—gone home without speaking to her again—that was the first night he had met her. Well, he had met her again, and the songs had become familiar, so that now he could even laugh with the others at the unholy ending. He had ceased to feel that she realized the import of the words she was using. He had excused her, called her “unmoral,” that new word behind which modern frankness hides and masquerades as harmless.

But here, tonight, in his home, with all its traditions and habits of thought, with his saintly lady mother asleep upstairs in her peaceful room, he looked the truth in the face and wondered that he had been deceived so long.

Sometime in the course of his perambulations, he paused beside the table long enough to notice a pile of mail that lay under the light of the carved jade lamp awaiting his notice. The postmark on the top letter began a digression in his mind, and he picked it up and opened it.

It was a most flattering invitation from an influential business connection offering to put into the hands of his firm a difficult and extensive piece of research and investigation abroad, and suggesting that if possible he undertake the supervision of the work personally. It was both an honor and an opportunity for him to make a name for himself not only in the business world, in which he moved, but in the wider field of science, and a line that interested him exceedingly. His ambition leaped to respond to the opportunity. He read the letter again and then began to pace back and forth in the room once more, coming to a halt at the bay window that overlooked the brow of the hill and afforded a wide view of sky and city in the distance. To the observer there was scarcely a dividing line where stars ceased and lights began. It was all starred alike, a wonderful world of dark, mysterious blue, jeweled from end to end.

He flung the casement window open and stood drawing in deep breaths of the cold night air, expanding his lungs to the full and finding a growing calm upon him. He felt as if he had stepped into another, wider world, a universe indeed, filled with opportunities and infinities. A place vastly different from the little giddy round in which he had been lately circling with Tamar.

Tamar! How far away she suddenly seemed. And if he should accept this offer of the letter, how kindly that would solve his problem. To go abroad for a number of weeks, or even months perhaps if it took so long to complete his mission, would tend to clarify the situation and also his mind. He would be among new surroundings and other people. He would get a wider viewpoint. And when he returned, if Tamar was the real Tamar, he would know. If she were what she had seemed tonight, it would be plain after an absence. Did he not owe this to himself, to his mother, to the traditions of his ancestors—yes, even to Tamar? There must be no delusions when he married. He came of fine, clean stock where integrity and true worth counted more than show. He had no right to ignore those things, even if he desired to do so. If Tamar really cared for him, if she were ready to be the woman who would be his true mate, the absence could not make any difference. True, she might be in danger of being led into foolishness without his steadying presence, but if he could not trust her before marriage, how could he hope for happiness afterward? And had he any right to save her from foolishness at the expense of wrecking life’s happiness for both of them?

These were the thoughts that came to him as he stood under the stars and let his well-trained conscience ask him questions as it had not had a chance to do for many a dazzling week.

The stars were beginning to pale when at last he turned and closed the window and went up to his room. He had fully decided now to accept the offer and go abroad at once if the matter worked out satisfactorily with his partners when he went to his office in the morning. There was just one point about it all that troubled him—and that was his mother. Since his father’s death some two years before, she had not been at all well, and it seemed to him that she grew frailer week by week. If she would go with him, the difficulty would be solved. It would probably do her good to have a sea voyage and visit some of their relatives in Scotland. But he lay down at last to snatch a few hours’ sleep with a dubious sense that he was basing his plans on an exceedingly frail possibility. He knew his mother, and he knew she hated to leave home. Particularly since his father’s death had she withdrawn within herself, refusing to go out among her acquaintances or to invite much company to the house. She was not hard nor morose, just sad and sweet and tired most of the time. He knew that her only remaining pleasure now was to have him come and chat with her. It made the only bright spot of her day. It would be next to impossible for him to go and leave her alone with servants. It seemed an impassable barrier unless she would consent to go. He must find a way to get her to accompany him.

But when the morning came and he went to her room for his regular morning call, he broached the matter and found her firm. She would not take a sea voyage. She could never go back to the old places where she had once gone with his father. She did not feel up to the journey.

But when she heard of the invitation, she brightened perceptibly over the honor and urged him quite eagerly to go, saying she would not mind staying alone a few months. He would write to her, and she would think up a way to make the time go rapidly. She seemed to be more interested in the proposition than in anything that had happened since his father’s death. There was a feverish eagerness in her eyes as if she really were anxious to hasten his departure. It perplexed him.

He arose at last to go, for it was getting late, but his mother put out a detaining hand and looked at him wistfully as if there were something more behind her words than just their casual question.

“Is there—does anyone else—I mean, are any of your—social—acquaintances going over at the same time?”

He looked at her intently, noted the wistful anxiety in her eyes, and it flashed upon him that perhaps someone had told her about Tamar. Poor little Mother, she would not understand Tamar—not as she was. With a sudden tenderness he stooped and kissed her soft, rose-leaf cheek.

“No, Mother,” he answered, “not that I know of. I haven’t time for society this trip. I want to work hard on the way over, if I go at all, to have the subject well in hand so that I shall not waste any time when I get to work.”

He stooped and kissed her tenderly and pressed her hand as if to reassure her, and her answer made him doubly certain that she must have had some such idea as he had thought, for she sighed happily, with a flash of her old-time smile, and answered:

“Then I’m glad to have you go. There are no people nowadays that belong with my son. Perhaps you will find some over in the old country. I sometimes feel lonesome for you, my dear. You are fine, and I want you to stay so.”

He thought of her words tenderly on his way into town. Dear little mother; she was fine! And she understood so many things about his soul. She always had. Strange he had expected to hide this matter of Tamar from her till he was sure what he meant to do.

But what about his mother? If he went, he must make some plan to fill her days with brightness while he was gone. He could not do good work and feel that she was lonely and sad without him. Over and over he reviewed the list of their acquaintances and kinfolks and rejected each one. There was not one who was free to come to his mother, whom he felt would be the right one to cheer her loneliness, or whom she would like to have.

When he reached the office, he had almost made up his mind to give up the whole matter and send someone else in his place, but when he laid the matter before his partners, they were most insistent that he was just the one for the work and went on making their plans so persistently that he began once more to think about what to do for his mother.

But when he admitted reluctantly that he would be glad to go if it were not for leaving his mother in loneliness, and put the situation to his partners, they swept his objections aside with a wave of their hands and uttered the cryptic words:

“Advertise, man, advertise! You can get anything in this world if you advertise in the right way for it.”

So Angus Macdonald sat down at his desk, while they busily plied him with suggestions about his journey, and wrote an advertisement. He sent it by his office boy to the newspaper and then whirled around with this remark and a set of his firm Scotch jaw that they knew meant business:

“Now, go ahead with your suggestions, but if I don’t get a satisfactory answer to that before tomorrow night, I don’t go! Just put that down for a fact. I mean it!”

Chapter 3

Mrs. Dunbar did not come down to breakfast the next morning after the excitement and haughtily declined the dainty tray that Doris brought up to her door.

Rose was still in bed, and Doris carried the tray to her.

“You were a fool to take all that trouble for her, Dorrie,” averred Rose, stretching her pretty arms above her head and yawning. “You just spoil her. That’s what makes her so babyish. If I were you, I’d just let her alone and let her come to her senses.”

But Rose ate the appetizing breakfast gratefully with never a thought that it might be spoiling her, and Doris went down for a few moments’ more wrestling with those awful bills in the desk before the lawyer should arrive.

Mrs. Dunbar did not make her appearance until they were all seated in the living room and Mr. Hamilton was unstrapping his briefcase and taking out formidable looking papers.

She came in like a small black wraith, in deep mourning, with a heavily black-bordered handkerchief pressed to her eyes, and dropped into the big upholstered chair that had been left vacant for her.

Doris was seated on the davenport with little Jean nestled close to her, her hand in hers; and John, his hair in unusual slickness, at the other end looking uncomfortable and unconcerned. It seemed wholly unnecessary to John that he should attend this function. What was law business to him?

Ned was sitting by the front window, his back to the room, a sulky, unhappy look

on his lean, young face. He had not breakfasted nor spoken to any of them. His greeting to the lawyer had been abrupt and embarrassed, almost as if he were ashamed of being there. Doris watched him sadly and wondered whether she would dare say anything about last night when she had a chance to speak to him alone. Then the lawyer rustled his paper, cleared his throat, and began to read the will, and she turned to listen. There was a tense stillness in the room while the stilted old phrases rolled on monotonously: “I, John Edward Dunbar, being of sound mind… do will and bequeath,” etc., on down to the details of a modest fortune: five shares in this railroad, then shares of stock in a prosperous manufacturing plant, a number of United States bonds, several real estate mortgages, a row of city houses well leased, twenty shares in a silver mine, as many more in an oil well, and interest in a heating and lighting plant—quite a proud array. Doris began to take new heart of hope. Perhaps, after all, her fears had been groundless. Perhaps their affairs would not be hopelessly involved after all. Perhaps she had misunderstood Mr. Hamilton yesterday when he had warned her that things were in bad shape. He might only have meant to prepare her for some of these bills that she had found, and possibly other creditors. But surely, surely all that long list of property could not be tied up so that they would be in difficult circumstances. Oh, it would be so much easier if they were going to have money enough to get along comfortably! Then she would have leisure to give to the consideration of her other problems, and her eyes wandered to Ned’s back again.

At the first casual reading, the property seemed to be pretty evenly divided between the widow and the children. Doris felt relieved, for now no one need feel hurt or jealous—Doris hated to have any of the family sulky about anything like that feeling that they had not been treated as well as the others. It always somehow fell to her to smooth out their ruffled feelings. But surely everything was adjusted perfectly fairly, and no one of them could complain, not even Florence.

The house was mentioned last in the list, and it appeared that Mr. Dunbar had only had a life interest in it, and that it belonged to the children, it having been built as a wedding present for their own mother by her father and left to their father in trust for them.

When that clause of the will was read, there was a perceptible stiffening of the little black figure in the big upholstered chair and a tightening of the white fingers that held the black-bordered handkerchief to her eyes. She held herself tense during the kindly clause in which the father requested that his children give their stepmother welcome in their house during her lifetime, and then she uncovered her angry eyes, drew herself up scornfully, and said in a haughty voice:

“Mr. Hamilton, I wish to give notice right here that I intend to contest that will.”

“Mrs. Dunbar,” the lawyer said gently, “just a minute—”

But the lady went on angrily:

“It is an outrageous will,” she declared, looking around with blazing eyes on them all, “and it is perfectly plain to me that there was pressure brought to bear on my husband while he was too ill to know what he was doing.” She fixed her furious gaze on Doris, who had been his faithful nurse during his last illness.

“Mrs. Dunbar, that is impossible!” broke in the lawyer. “Did you not hear me read the date? This will was made over five years ago when your husband was in perfect health.”

“That doesn’t make any difference!” said the angry lady. “You can’t argue me out of my intention. I shall contest this will. The property should all have been left to me. The children are too young to look after business. My husband always trusted me.”

“Mrs. Dunbar, I have not finished yet. Will you be good enough to let me explain the whole matter fully? I am sure you will see that what I have to say changes the whole matter.”

Mrs. Dunbar had half risen from her seat as if the matter were fully settled so far as she was concerned. Now she subsided reluctantly into her chair with a resigned look on her face:

“I will listen, of course,” she said with set lips, “but it will make no difference with me. I intend to contest the will.”

The lawyer looked around at the children with a perturbed expression, as if to apologize for what he was about to say. One could see that he did not care for his job.

“I am very sorry to have to tell you that things are in bad shape,” he said and hesitated with an appeal to each one mutely before he went on. “I, as Mr. Dunbar’s attorney, of course necessarily knew more or less of his moves. Mr. Dunbar had for the past two years been interested in a scheme, which if it had proved the financial success he believed that it would, would have more than doubled or perhaps tripled the property he had to leave. I must say, in justification of myself, and I did not have the strong belief that he had in the men whom he trusted, and I feared greatly and urged a more conservative move; but in his great anxiety to put his family in luxurious circumstances before he died, he went into the transaction with everything he had.”

He paused and looked around at them to see if they were prepared for the blow he was about to deal them. There was breathless silence in the room. The widow had her handkerchief to her eyes again but otherwise sat rigid. Ned had not turned around from his miserable gaze out of the window. Doris’s heart began to palpitate with a wild fear, and little Jean, feeling the impending catastrophe in the atmosphere, began to cry softly. Rose’s eyes were wide with consternation. Only John appeared indifferent, as he tied a cat’s cradle out of a handy piece of string from his pocket. John might be understanding, but he had no intention that anyone present should know it.

The lawyer resumed his unpleasant task:

“It distresses me beyond measure to have to tell you that your father’s scheme fell through and carried with it everything he owned.”

He paused again and looked to see if they understood or if he must be still more explicit, but no one answered him. They sat appalled—aghast.

“Even this house,” said the lawyer, gathering breath once more. “Even this house, which your father held in trust, had been mortgaged up to its full value.”

The silence in the room was like something tangible, as if one could reach out and touch it.

Then when no one was noticing her, Mrs. Dunbar suddenly arose with a grand air of severity, and holding her head high, loftily announced:

“Nevertheless, I intend to contest that will.” And so saying, she swept from the room, and he could hear her go down the hall and up the stairs to her own room.

They all sat and looked at the door where she had gone, except Ned, who had not turned around yet. The lawyer, a simple literal soul, stated the obvious fact, “She doesn’t understand,” in a tone of deep wonder, and suddenly Rose buried her face in her hands and broke forth in a clear, hysterical laugh.

“She never understands anything, ’nless she wantsta,” unexpectedly contributed John. “Don’t mind her.”

There was another pause while the little company gathered its senses and adjusted itself.

“Do you mean,” asked Doris in a small, anxious voice, “do you mean there won’t be anything? Not even enough to pay the bills? There are a lot of bills—” She made a helpless gesture toward the library where the old desk stood.

The lawyer cleared his throat with a relieved air:

“Oh, there may be enough to clear those off,” he said hopefully. “There are a few little odd matters, not more than five thousand—if there is that—I’m not sure yet till I see how much some of these little odds and ends are rated at.”

“Then nothing else matters,” said Doris in a dull, monotonous tone. “How soon will you know? There are at least three thousand dollars’ worth of bills, and the people are very insistent.”

“Suppose you let me have those bills, Miss Doris, and I’ll attend to them at once,” said the lawyer briskly, grateful at her practical way of taking things.

Doris rose and went across the hall to the desk, returning with a great sheaf of papers neatly separated into bundles and fastened with rubber bands. The others sat still, waiting for the end, as if it were some sort of a service. Rose had quieted her laughter and was looking white and drawn now.

“Won’t we have anything to buy food with?” she asked, her eyes wide with horror.

The lawyer flushed and put his hand to his pocket:

“Oh, Miss Rose, it isn’t so bad as that, not yet,” he said embarrassedly, drawing out a roll of bills. “Here is a little money, a matter of three hundred I’ll be glad to advance to help you out till you can look around.”

Rose felt tempted to laugh again as her quick perception saw them all going forth and looking around to locate more money. She was strained almost to the breaking point, poor, pretty, spoiled Rose, and it seemed to her that the bottom had fallen out of her world completely. Yet she would laugh with the pain in her heart. That was Rose. Laugh in an ecstasy of pain.

Doris took the money and thanked him.

“You are sure that there will be this much over the bills?” she asked anxiously.

“Oh yes, yes, surely, surely,” coughed the lawyer. “Of course it’s perfectly all right.”

“Because if it isn’t, I will pay you back when I get something to do.”

“Oh no, no! Don’t speak of it!” he said eagerly. “I’m sure there’ll be a little more perhaps. But,” and he looked after the roll of bills anxiously, “I wouldn’t speak of this to Mrs. Dunbar if I could help it. She might not—might not understand.”

Doris flushed.

“She would not!” she said. “I shall not tell her. She would want to buy a mourning ring with it.”

The lawyer looked at her a moment, and a shadow of a smile quivered around his conventional lips. He was not quite sure from Doris’s grave expression whether she knew or not that she had said something witty.

Doris went to the front door with the lawyer, and as he was about to leave, he put out a kindly hand.

“I think you are a brave girl, Miss Doris,” he said. “Your father would be proud of you.”

The kindly tone brought a sudden rush of emotion that Doris with difficulty conquered. She lifted her head and tried to smile as she thanked him. He hesitated an instant and then said:

“Don’t blame your father, Miss Doris; he really thought he was doing the best thing for you all. I was so nearly persuaded myself that I had decided to put in all my savings, too, but the crash came before I had fully completed the arrangements. I might have lost everything but for your father. He grew anxious and told me to keep out. It was too late for him to get out. It wouldn’t have been honorable, but I owe him a great deal. If there is anything I can do—”

Then Doris gave him one of her rare smiles:

“Thank you for that,” she said. “I’m so glad you don’t blame Father. He was a dear father!”

“He was that,” said the lawyer heartily, “and remember I’m at your service if you need any help.”

“Thank you so much!” she said. “It is good to know we have one friend. But I hope I shall not have to bother you. After we get these bills paid, the worst anxiety will be over. Do you know how soon we have to get out of the house?”

A shade of worry came over the lawyer’s face.

“The man wants to foreclose at once,” he said annoyedly. “I’ve tried to put him off, but he wants his money. He’s building a house himself, and he wants to sell this one. He says he has a purchaser. I’ll hold him off as long as possible. It really isn’t decent of him. But he had been hounding your father for several months, and we just held him off, hoping—”

“Poor Father!” said Doris wistfully. “I’m afraid this was what killed him, not the pneumonia.”

When the lawyer was gone, Doris turned back into the hall and looked at the familiar walls with a strange feeling. So they were no longer her home. Others would walk and talk and exist here. How strange and sad life was. How terrible!

She went back into the living room, but Rose and Jean and John were gone. Only Ned was left there still staring out of the window, his shoulders hunched over like an old man. Something in his attitude touched his sister. She came over and stood beside him, laying her hand on his shoulder.