Producing the Evidence
When Linda hurried home the next evening, her first word to Katy was to
ask if Eileen were there.
“No, she isn’t here,” said Katy, “and she’s not going to be.”
“Not going to be!” cried Linda, her face paling perceptibly.
“She went downtown this morning and she telephoned me about three
sayin’ she had an invoitation to go with a motor party to Pasadena this
afternoon, an’ she wasn’t knowin’ whether she could get home the night
or not.”
“I don’t like it,” said Linda. “I don’t like it at all.”
She liked it still less when Eileen came home for a change of clothing
the following day, and again went to spend the night with a friend,
without leaving any word whatever.
“I don’t understand this,” said Linda, white lipped and tense. “She
does not want to see me. She does not intend to talk business with
me if she can possibly help it. She is treating me as if I were a
four-year-old instead of a woman with as much brain as she has. If she
appears while I am gone to-morrow and starts away again, you tell her——
Come to think of it, you needn’t tell her anything; I’ll give you a
note for her.”
So Linda sat down and wrote:
Dear Eileen:
It won’t be necessary to remind you of our agreement night before
last to settle on an allowance from Father’s estate for me. Of
course I realize that you are purposely avoiding seeing me, for
what reason I can’t imagine; but I give you warning, that if you
have been in this house and have read this note, and are not here
with your figures ready to meet me when I get home to-morrow night,
I’ll take matters into my own hands, and do exactly what I think
best without the slightest reference to what you think about it. If
you don’t want something done that you will dislike, even more than
you dislike seeing me, you had better heed this warning.
Linda.
She read it over slowly: “My, that sounds melodramatic!” she commented.
“It’s even got a threat in it, and it’s a funny thing to threaten
my own sister. I don’t think that it’s a situation that occurs very
frequently, but for that matter I sincerely hope that Eileen isn’t the
kind of sister that occurs frequently.”
Linda went up to her room and tried to settle herself to work, but
found that it was impossible to fix her attention on what she was
doing. Her mind jumped from one thing to another in a way that totally
prohibited effective work of any kind. A sudden resolve came into her
heart. She would not wait any longer. She would know for herself just
how she was situated financially. She wrote a note to the editor of
_Everybody’s Home_, asking him if it would be convenient to let her
know what reception her work was having with his subscribers, whether
he desired her to continue the department in his magazines, and if
so, what was the best offer he could make her for the recipes, the
natural history comments accompanying them, and the sketches. Then
she went down to the telephone book and looked up the location of the
Consolidated Bank. She decided that she would stop there on her way
from school the next day and ask to be shown the Strong accounts.
While she was meditating these heroic measures the bell rang and Katy
admitted John Gilman. Strangely enough, he was asking for Linda, not
for Eileen. At the first glimpse of him Linda knew that something was
wrong; so without any prelude she said abruptly: “What’s the matter,
John? Don’t you know where Eileen is either?”
“Approximately,” he answered. “She has ’phoned me two or three times,
but I haven’t seen her for three days. Do you know where she is or
exactly why she is keeping away from home as she is?”
“Yes,” said Linda, “I do. I told you the other day the time had come
when I was going to demand a settlement of Father’s estate and a fixed
income. That time came three days ago and I have not seen Eileen since.”
They entered the living room. As Linda passed the table, propped
against a candlestick on it, she noticed a note addressed to herself.
“Oh, here will be an explanation,” she said. “Here is a note for me.
Sit down a minute till I read it.”
She seated herself on the arm of a chair, tore open the note, and
instantly began reading aloud.
“Dear little sister——”
“Pathetic,” interpolated Linda, “in consideration of the fact that I am
about twice as big as she is. However, we’ll let that go, and focus on
the enclosure.” She waved a slender slip of paper at Gilman. “I never
was possessed of an article like this before in all my tender young
life, but it seems to me that it’s a cheque, and I can’t tell you quite
how deeply it amuses me. But to return to business, at the present
instant I am:
Dear little Sister:
It seems that all the friends I have are particularly insistent
on seeing me all at once and all in a rush. I don’t think I ever
had quite so many invitations at one time in my life before, and
the next two or three days seem to be going to be equally as full.
But I took time to run into the bank and go over things carefully.
I find that after the payment of taxes and insurance and all the
household expenses, that by wearing old clothes I have and making
them over I can afford to turn over at least seventy-five dollars
a month to you for your clothing and personal expenses. As I don’t
know exactly when I can get home, I am enclosing a cheque which is
considerably larger than I had supposed I could make it, and I can
only do this by skimping myself; but of course you are getting such
a big girl and beginning to attract attention, so it is only right
that you should have the very best that I can afford to do for you.
I am not taking the bill from The Mode into consideration. I paid
that with last month’s expenses.
With love,
Eileen.
Linda held the letter in one hand, the cheque in the other, and stared
questioningly at John Gilman.
“What do you think of that?” she inquired tersely.
“It seems to me,” said Gilman, “that a more pertinent question would
be, what do you think of it?”
“Rot!” said Linda tersely. “If I were a stenographer in your office
I would think that I was making a fairly good start; but I happen to
be the daughter of Alexander Strong living in my own home with my
only sister who can afford to flit like the flittingest of social
butterflies from one party to another as well dressed as, and better
dressed than, the Great General Average. You have known us, John, ever
since Eileen sat in the sun to dry her handmade curls, while I was
leaving a piece of my dress on every busk in Multiflores Canyon. Right
here and now I am going to show you something!”
Linda started upstairs, so John Gilman followed her. She went to the
door of Eileen’s suite and opened it.
“Now then,” she said, “take a look at what Eileen feels she can
afford for herself. You will observe she has complete and exquisite
furnishings and all sorts of feminine accessories on her dressing
table. You will observe that she has fine rugs in her dressing room and
bathroom. Let me call your attention to the fact that all these drawers
are filled with expensive comforts and conveniences.”
Angrily Linda began to open drawers filled with fancy feminine apparel,
daintily and neatly folded, everything in perfect order: gloves,
hose, handkerchiefs, ribbons, laces, all in separate compartments She
pointed to the high chiffonier, the top decorated with candlesticks and
silver-framed pictures. Here the drawers revealed heaps of embroidered
underclothing and silken garments. Then she walked to the closet and
threw the door wide.
She pushed hangers on their rods, sliding before the perplexed and
bewildered man dress after dress of lace and georgette, walking suits
of cloth, street dresses of silk, and pretty afternoon gowns, heavy
coats, light coats, a beautiful evening coat. Linda took this down and
held it in front of John Gilman.
“I see things marked in store windows,” she said. “Eileen paid not a
penny less than three hundred for this one coat. Look at the rows of
shoes, and pumps, and slippers, and what that box is for I don’t know.”
Linda slid to the light a box screened by the hanging dresses, and
with the toe of her shoe lifted the lid, disclosing a complete smoking
outfit—case after case of cigarettes. Linda dropped the lid and shoved
the box back. She stood silent a second, then she looked at John Gilman.
“That is the way things go in this world,” she said quietly. “Whenever
you lose your temper, you always do something you didn’t intend to do
when you started. I didn’t know that, and I wouldn’t have shown it to
you purposely if I had known it; but it doesn’t alter the fact that you
should know it. If you did know it no harm’s done but if you didn’t
know it, you shouldn’t be allowed to marry Eileen without knowing as
much about her as you did about Marian, and there was nothing about
Marian that you didn’t know. I am sorry for that, but since I have
started this I am going through with it. Now give me just one minute
more.”
Then she went down the hall, threw open the door to her room, and
walking in said: “You have seen Eileen’s surroundings; now take a look
at mine. There’s my bed; there’s my dresser and toilet articles; and
this is my wardrobe.”
She opened the closet door and exhibited a pair of overalls in which
she watered her desert garden. Next ranged her khaki breeches and
felt hat. Then hung the old serge school dress, beside it the extra
skirt and orange blouse. The stack of underclothing on the shelves was
pitifully small, visibly dilapidated. Two or three outgrown gingham
dresses hung forlornly on the opposite wall. Linda stood tall and
straight before John Gilman.
“What I have on and one other waist constitute my wardrobe,” she said,
“and I told Eileen where to get this dress and suggested it before I
got it.”
Gilman looked at her in a dazed fashion.
“I don’t understand,” he said slowly. “If that isn’t the dress I saw
Eileen send up for herself, I’m badly mistaken. It was the Saturday we
went to Riverside. It surely is the very dress.”
Linda laughed bleakly.
“That may be,” she said. “The one time she ever has any respect for
me is in a question of taste. She will agree that I know when colours
are right and a thing is artistic. Now then, John, you are the
administrator of my father’s estate; you have seen what you have seen.
What are you going to do about it?”
“Linda,” he said quietly, “what my heart might prompt me to do in
consideration of the fact that I am engaged to marry Eileen, and what
my legal sense tells me I must do as executor of your father’s wishes,
are different propositions. I am going to do exactly what you tell
me to. What you have shown me, and what I’d have realized, if I had
stopped to think, is neither right nor just.”
Then Linda took her turn at deep thought.
“John,” she said at last, “I am feeling depressed over what I have just
done. I am not sure that in losing my temper and bringing you up here I
have played the game fairly. You don’t need to do anything. I’ll manage
my affairs with Eileen myself. But I’ll tell you before you go, that
you needn’t practice any subterfuges. When she reaches the point where
she is ready to come home, I’ll tell her that you were here, and what
you have seen. That is the best I can do toward squaring myself with my
own conscience.”
Slowly they walked down the hall together. At the head of the stairs
Linda took the cheque that she carried and tore it into bits. Stepping
across the hall, she let the little heap slowly flutter to the rug in
front of Eileen’s door. Then she went back to her room and left John
Gilman to his own reflections.