A Rock and a Flame
The first time Linda entered the kitchen after her interview with
Gilman, Katy asked in deep concern, “Now what ye been doing, lambie?”
“Doing the baby act, Katy,” confessed Linda. “Disgracing myself. Losing
my temper. I wish I could bring myself to the place where I would think
half a dozen times before I do a thing once.”
“Now look here,” said Katy, beginning to bristle, “ain’t it the truth
that ye have thought for four years before ye did this thing once?”
“Quite so,” said Linda. “But since I am the daughter of the finest
gentleman I ever knew, I should not do hasty, regrettable things.
On the living-room table I found a note sweeter than honey, and it
contained a cheque for me that wouldn’t pay Eileen’s bills for lunches,
candy, and theatres for a month; so in undue heat I reduced it to bits
and decorated the rug before her door. But before that, Katy, I led my
guardian into the room, and showed him everything. I meant to tell him
that, since he had neglected me for four years, he could see that I had
justice now, but when I’d personally conducted him from Eileen’s room
to mine, and when I took a good look at him there was something on his
face, Katy, that I couldn’t endure. So I told him to leave it to me;
that I would tell Eileen myself what I had done, and so I will. But I
am sorry I did it, Katy; I am awfully sorry. You always told me to keep
my temper and I lost it completely. From now on I certainly will try
to behave myself more like a woman than a spoiled child. Now give me a
dust cloth and brushes. I am almost through with my job in the library
and I want to finish, because I shall be forced to use the money from
the books to pay for my skylight and fireplace.”
Linda went to the library and began work, efficiently, carefully, yet
with a precise rapidity habitual to her. Down the long line of heavy
technical books, she came to the end of the shelf. Three books from
the end she noticed a difference in the wall behind the shelf. Hastily
removing the other two volumes, she disclosed a small locked door
having a scrap of paper protruding from the edge which she pulled out
and upon which she read:
In the event of my passing, should anyone move these books and
find this door, these lines are to inform him that it is to remain
untouched. The key to it is in my safety-deposit vault at the
Consolidated Bank. The Bank will open the door and attend to the
contents of the box at the proper time.
Linda fixed the paper back exactly as she had found it. She stood
looking at the door a long time, then she carefully wiped it, the wall
around it, and the shelf. Going to another shelf, she picked out the
books that had been written by her father and, beginning at the end
of the shelf, she ranged them in a row until they completely covered
the opening. Then she finished filling the shelf with other books that
she meant to keep, but her brain was working, milling over and over
the question of what that little compartment contained and when it was
to be opened and whether John Gilman knew about it, and whether the
Consolidated Bank would remember the day specified, and whether it
would mean anything important to her.
She carried the dusters back to Katy, and going to her room,
concentrated resolutely upon her work; but she Was unable to do
anything constructive. Her routine lessons she could prepare, but she
could not even sketch a wild rose accurately. Finally she laid down
her pencil, washed her brushes, put away her material, and locking
her door, slipped the key into her pocket. Going down to the garage
she climbed into the Bear-cat and headed straight for Peter Morrison.
She drove into his location and blew the horn. Peter stepped from the
garage, and seeing her, started in her direction. Linda sprang down and
hurried toward him. He looked at her intently as she approached and
formed his own conclusions.
“Sort of restless,” said Linda. “Couldn’t evolve a single new idea
with which to enliven the gay annals of English literature and Greek
history. A personal history seems infinitely more insistent and
unusual. I ran away from my lessons, and my work, and came to you,
Peter, because I had a feeling that there was something you could give
me, and I thought you would.”
Peter smiled a slow curious smile.
“I like your line of thought, Linda,” he said quietly. “It greatly
appeals to me. Any time an ancient and patriarchal literary man named
Peter Morrison can serve as a rock upon which a young thing can rest,
why he’ll be glad to be that rock.”
“What were you doing?” asked Linda abruptly.
“Come and see,” said Peter.
He led the way to the garage. His work table and the cement floor
around it were littered with sheets of closely typed paper.
“I’ll have to assemble them first,” said Peter, getting down on his
knees and beginning to pick them up.
Linda sat on a packing case and watched him. Already she felt
comforted. Of course Peter was a rock, of course anyone could trust
him, and of course if the tempest of life beat upon her too strongly
she could always fly to Peter.
“May I?” she inquired, stretching her hand in the direction of a sheet.
“Sure,” said Peter.
“What is it?” inquired Linda lightly. “The bridge or the road or the
playroom?”
“Gad!” he said slowly. “Don’t talk about me being a rock! Rocks are
stolid, stodgy unresponsive things. I thought I was struggling with
one of the biggest political problems of the day from an economic and
psychological standpoint. If I’d had sense enough to realize that it
was a bridge I was building, I might have done the thing with some
imagination and subtlety. If you want a rock and you say I am a rock, a
rock I’ll be, Linda. But I know what you are, and what you will be to
me when we really become the kind of friends we are destined to be.”
“I wonder now,” said Linda, “if you are going to say that I could be
any such lovely thing on the landscape as a bridge.”
“No,” said Peter slowly, “nothing so prosaic. Bridges are common in
this world. You are going to be something uncommon. History records
the experiences of but one man who has seen a flame in the open. I am
a second Moses and you are going to be my burning bush. I intended to
read this article to you.”
Peter massed the sheets, straightened them on the desk, and
deliberately ripped them across several times. Linda sprang to her feet
and stretched out her hands.
“Why, Peter!” she cried in a shocked voice. “That is perfectly
inexcusable. There are hours and hours of work on that, and I have not
a doubt but that it was good work.”
“Simple case of mechanism,” said Peter, reducing the bits to smaller
size and dropping them into the empty nail keg that served as his
wastebasket. “A lifeless thing without a soul, mere clock-work. I have
got the idea now. I am to build a bridge and make a road. Every way
I look I can see a golden-flame tongue of inspiration burning. I’ll
rewrite that thing and animate it. Take me for a ride, Linda.”
Linda rose and walked to the Bear-cat. Peter climbed in and sat beside
her. Linda laid her hands on the steering wheel and started the car.
She ran it down to the highway and chose a level road leading straight
down the valley through cultivated country. In all the world there
was nothing to equal the panorama that she spread before Peter that
evening. She drove the Bear-cat past orchards, hundreds of acres
of orchards of waxen green leaves and waxen white bloom of orange,
grapefruit, and lemon. She took him where seas of pink outlined peach
orchards, and other seas the more delicate tint of the apricots.
She glided down avenues lined with palm and eucalyptus, pepper and
olive, and through unbroken rows, extending for miles, of roses, long
stretches of white, again a stretch of pink, then salmon, yellow, and
red. Nowhere in all the world are there to be found so many acres of
orchard bloom and so many miles of tree-lined, rose-decorated roadway
as in southern California. She sent the little car through the evening
until she felt that it was time to go home, and when at last she
stopped where they had started, she realized that neither she nor Peter
had spoken one word. As he stepped from the car she leaned toward him
and reached out her hand.
“Thank you for the fireplace, Peter,” she said.
Peter took the hand she extended and held it one minute in both his
own. Then very gently he straightened it out in the palm of one of his
hands and with the other hand turned back the fingers and laid his lips
to the heart of it.
“Thank you, Linda, for the flame,” he said, and turning abruptly, he
went toward his workroom.
Stopping for a bite to eat in the kitchen, Linda went back to her room.
She sat down at the table and picking up her pencil, began to work,
and found that she could work. Every stroke came true and strong.
Every idea seemed original and unusual. Quite as late as a light ever
had shone in her window, it shone that night, the last thing she did
being to write another anonymous letter to Marian, and when she re-read
it Linda realized that it was an appealing letter. She thought it
certainly would comfort Marian and surely would make her feel that
someone worth while was interested in her and in her work. She loved
some of the whimsical little touches she had put into it, and she
wondered if she had made it so much like Peter Morrison that it would
be suggestive of him to Marian. She knew that she had no right to do
that and had no such intention. She merely wanted a model to copy from
and Peter seemed the most appealing model at hand.
After school the next day Linda reported that she had finished going
through the books and was ready to have them taken. Then, after a few
minutes of deep thought, she made her way to the Consolidated Bank. At
the window of the paying teller she explained that she wished to see
the person connected with the bank who had charge of the safety-deposit
boxes and who looked after the accounts pertaining to the estate of
Alexander Strong. The teller recognized the name. He immediately became
deferential.
“I’ll take you to the office of the president,” he said. “He and Doctor
Strong were very warm friends. You can explain to him what it is you
want to know.”
Before she realized what was happening, Linda found herself in an
office that was all mahogany and marble. At a huge desk stacked with
papers sat a man, considerably older than her father. Linda remembered
to have seen him frequently in their home, in her father’s car, and she
recalled one fishing expedition to the Tulare Lake region where he had
been a member of her father’s party.
“Of course you have forgotten me, Mr. Worthington,” she said as she
approached his desk. “I have grown such a tall person during the past
four years.”
The white-haired financier rose and stretched out his hand.
“You exact replica of Alexander Strong,” he said laughingly, “I
couldn’t forget you any more than I could forget your father. That fine
fishing trip where you proved such a grand little scout is bright in my
memory as one of my happiest vacations. Sit down and tell me what I can
do for you.”
Linda sat down and told him that she was dissatisfied with the manner
in which her father’s estate was being administered.
He listened very carefully to all she had to say, then he pressed a
button and gave a few words of instruction to the clerk who answered
it. When several ledgers and account books were laid before him, with
practiced hand he turned to what he wanted. The records were not
complicated. They covered a period of four years. They showed exactly
what monies had been paid into the bank for the estate. They showed
what royalties had been paid on the books. Linda sat beside him and
watched his pencil running up and down columns, setting down a list of
items, and making everything plain. Paid cheques for household expenses
I and drygoods bills were all recorded and deducted. With narrow,
alert eyes, Linda was watching, and her brain was keenly alive. As she
realized the discrepancy between the annual revenue from the estate
and the totalling of the expenses, she had an inspiration. Something
she never before had thought of occurred to her. She looked the banker
in the eye and said very quietly: “And now, since she is my sister
and I am going to be of age very shortly and these things must all be
gone into and opened up, would it be out of place for me to ask you
this afternoon to let me have a glimpse at the private account of Miss
Eileen Strong?”
The banker drew a deep breath and looked at Linda keenly.
“That would not be customary,” he said slowly.
“No?” said Linda. “But since Father and Mother went out at the same
time and there was no will and the property would be legally divided
equally between us upon my coming of age, would my sister be entitled
to a private account?”
“Had she any sources of obtaining money outside the estate?”
“No,” said Linda. “At least none that I know of. Mother had I some
relatives in San Francisco who were very wealthy people, but they never
came to see us and we never went there. I know nothing about them. I
never had any money from them and I am quite sure Eileen never had.”
Linda sat very quietly a minute and then she looked at the banker.
“Mr. Worthington,” she said, “the situation is slightly peculiar.
My guardian, John Gilman, is engaged to marry my sister Eileen. She
is a beautiful girl, as you no doubt recall, and he is very much in
love with her. Undoubtedly she has been able, at least recently, to
manage affairs very much in her own way. She is more than four years
my senior, and has always had charge of the household accounts and the
handling of the bank accounts. Since there is such a wide discrepancy
between the returns from the property and the expenses that these books
show, I am forced to the conclusion that there must be upon your books,
or the books of some other bank in the city, a private account in
Eileen’s name or in the name of the Strong estate.”
“That I can very easily ascertain,” said Mr. Worthington, reaching
again toward the button on his desk. A few minutes later the report
came that there was a private account in the name of Miss Eileen
Strong. Again Linda was deeply thoughtful.
“Is there anything I can do,” she inquired, “to prevent that account
from being changed or drawn out previous to my coming of age?”
Then Mr. Worthington grew thoughtful.
“Yes,” he said at last. “If you are dissatisfied, if you feel that
you have reason to believe that money rightfully belonging to you
is being diverted to other channels, you have the right to issue an
injunction against the bank, ordering it not to pay out any further
money on any account nor to honour any cheques drawn by Miss Strong
until the settlement of the estate. Ask your guardian to execute and
deliver such an injunction, or merely ask him, as your guardian and the
administrator of the estate, to give the bank a written order to that
effect.”
“But because he is engaged to Eileen, I told him I would not bring
him into this matter,” said Linda. “I told him that I would do what I
wanted done, myself.”
“Well, how long is it until this coming birthday of yours?” inquired
Mr. Worthington.
“Less than two weeks,” answered Linda.
For a time the financier sat in deep thought, then he looked at Linda.
It was a keen, searching look. It went to the depths of her eyes; it
included her face and hair; it included the folds of her dress, the cut
of her shoe, and rested attentively on the slender hands lying quietly
in her lap.
“I see the circumstances very clearly,” he said. “I sympathize with
your position. Having known your father and being well acquainted
with your guardian, would you be satisfied if I should take the
responsibility of issuing to the clerks an order not to allow anything
to be drawn from the private account until the settlement of the
estate?”
“Perfectly satisfied,” said Linda.
“It might be,” said Mr. Worthington, “managing matters in that way,
that no one outside of ourselves need ever know of it. Should your
sister not draw on the private account in the meantime, she would be
free to draw household cheques on the monthly income, and if in the
settlement of the estate she turns in this private account or accounts,
she need never know of the restriction concerning this fund.”
“Thank you very much,” said Linda. “That will fix everything finely.”
On her way to the street car, Linda’s brain whirled.
“It’s not conceivable,” she said, “that Eileen should be enriching
herself at my expense. I can’t imagine her being dishonest in money
affairs, and yet I can recall scarcely a circumstance in life in which
Eileen has ever hesitated to be dishonest when a lie served her purpose
better than the truth. Anyway, matters are safe now.”
The next day the books were taken and a cheque for their value was
waiting for Linda when she reached home. She cashed this cheque and
went straight to Peter Morrison for his estimate of the expenses for
the skylight and fireplace. When she asked for the bill Peter hesitated.
“You wouldn’t accept this little addition to your study as a gift from
Henry and me?” he asked lightly. “It would be a great pleasure to us if
you would.”
“I could accept stones that Henry Anderson had gathered from the
mountains and canyons, and I could accept a verse carved on stone, and
be delighted with the gift; but I couldn’t accept hours of day labour
at the present price of labour, so you will have to give me the bill,
Peter.”
Peter did not have the bill, but he had memoranda, and when Linda paid
him she reflected that the current talk concerning the inflated price
of labour was greatly exaggerated.
For two evenings as Linda returned from school and went to her room
she glanced down the hall and smiled at the decoration remaining
on Eileen’s rug. The third evening it was gone, so that she knew
Eileen was either in her room or had been there. She did not meet her
sister until dinner time. She was prepared to watch Eileen, to study
her closely. She was not prepared to admire her, but in her heart
she almost did that very thing. Eileen had practiced subterfuges so
long, she was so accomplished, that it would have taken an expert
to distinguish reality from subterfuge. She entered the dining
room humming a gay tune. She was carefully dressed and appealingly
beautiful. She blew a kiss to Linda and waved gaily to Katy.
“I was rather afraid,” she said lightly, “that I might find you two in
mourning when I got back. I never stayed so long before, did I? Seemed
as if every friend I had made special demand on my time all at once.
Hope you haven’t been dull without me.”
“Oh, no,” said Linda quietly. “Being away at school all day, of course
I wouldn’t know whether you were at home or not, and I have grown so
accustomed to spending my evenings alone that I don’t rely on you for
entertainment at any time.”
“In other words,” said Eileen, “it doesn’t make any difference to you
where I am.”
“Not so far as enjoying your company is concerned,” said Linda.
“Otherwise, of course it makes a difference. I hope you had a happy
time.”
“Oh, I always have a happy time,” answered Eileen lightly. “I certainly
have the best friends.”
“That’s your good fortune,” answered Linda.
At the close of the meal Linda sat waiting. Eileen gave Katy
instructions to have things ready for a midnight lunch for her and John
Gilman and then, humming her tune again, she left the dining room and
went upstairs. Linda stood looking after her.
“Now or never,” she said at last. “I have no business to let her meet
John until I have recovered my self-respect. But the Lord help me to do
the thing decently!”
So she followed Eileen up the stairway. She tapped at the door, and
without waiting to hear whether she was invited or not, opened it and
stepped inside. Eileen was sitting before the window, a big box of
candy beside her, a magazine in her fingers. Evidently she intended
to keep her temper in case the coming interview threatened to become
painful.
“I was half expecting you,” she said, “you silly hothead. I found the
cheque I wrote you when I got home this afternoon. That was a foolish
thing to do. Why did you tear it up? If it were too large or if it were
not enough why didn’t you use it and ask for another? Because I had to
be away that was merely to leave you something to go on until I got
back.”
Then Linda did the most disconcerting thing possible. In her effort
at self-control she went too far. She merely folded her hands in her
lap and sat looking straight at Eileen without saying one word. It
did not show much on the surface, but Eileen really had a conscience,
she really had a soul; Linda’s eyes, resting rather speculatively on
her, were honest eyes, and Eileen knew what she knew. She flushed and
fidgeted, and at last she broke out impatiently: “Oh, for goodness’
sake, Linda, don’t play ‘Patience-on-a-monument.’ Speak up and say
what it is that you want. If that cheque was not big enough, what will
satisfy you?”
“Come to think of it,” said Linda quietly, “I can get along with what I
have for the short time until the legal settlement of our interests is
due. You needn’t bother any more about a cheque.”
Eileen was surprised and her face showed it; and she was also relieved.
That too her face showed.
“I always knew,” she said lightly, “that I had a little sister with
a remarkably level head and good common sense. I am glad that you
recognize the awful inflation of prices during the war period, and how
I have had to skimp and scheme and save in order to make ends meet and
to keep us going on Papa’s meager income.”
All Linda’s good resolutions vanished. She was under strong nervous
tension. It irritated her to have Eileen constantly referring to their
monetary affairs as if they were practically paupers, as if their
father’s life had been a financial failure, as if he had not been able
to realize from achievements recognized around the world a comfortable
living for two women.
“Oh, good Lord!” she said shortly. “Bluff the rest of the world like
a professional, Eileen, but why try it with me? You’re right about
my having common sense. I’ll admit that I am using it now. I will be
of age in a few days, and then we’ll take John Gilman and go to the
Consolidated Bank, and if it suits your convenience to be absent for
four or five days at that period, I’ll take John Gilman and we’ll go
together.”
Eileen was amazed. The receding colour in her cheeks left the rouge on
them a ghastly, garish thing.
“Well, I won’t do anything of the sort,” she said hotly, “and neither
will John Gilman.”
“Unfortunately for you,” answered Linda, “John Gilman is my guardian,
not yours. He’ll be forced to do what the law says he must, and what
common decency tells him he must, no matter what his personal feelings
are; and I might as well tell you that your absence has done you no
good. You’d far better have come home, as you agreed to, and gone over
the books and made me a decent allowance, because in your absence John
came here to ask me where you were, and I know that he was anxious.”
“He came here!” cried Eileen.
“Why, yes,” said Linda. “Was it anything unusual? Hasn’t he been coming
here ever since I can remember? Evidently you didn’t keep him as well
posted this time as you usually do. He came here and asked for me.”
“And I suppose,” said Eileen, an ugly red beginning to rush into her
white cheeks, “that you took pains to make things uncomfortable for me.”
“I am very much afraid,” said Linda, “that you are right. You have made
things uncomfortable for me ever since I can remember, for I can’t
remember the time when you were not finding fault with me, putting me
in the wrong and getting me criticized and punished if you possibly
could. It was a fair understanding that you should be here, and you
were not, and I was seeing red about it; and just as John came in I
found your note in the living room and read it aloud.’
“Oh, well, there was nothing in that,” said Eileen in a relieved tone.
“Nothing in the wording of it, no,” said Linda, “but there was
everything in the intention back of it. Because you did not live up to
your tacit agreement, and because I had been on high tension for two or
three days, I lost my temper completely. I brought John Gilman up here
and showed him the suite of rooms in which you have done for yourself,
for four years. I gave him rather a thorough inventory of your dressing
table and drawers, and then I opened the closet door and called his
attention to the number and the quality of the garments hanging there.
The box underneath them I thought was a shoe box, but it didn’t prove
to be exactly that; and for that I want to tell you, as I have already
told John, I am sorry. I wouldn’t have done that if I had known what I
was doing.”
“Is that all?” inquired Eileen, making a desperate effort at
self-control.
“Not quite,” said Linda. “When I finished with your room, I took him
back and showed him mine in even greater detail than I showed him
yours. I thought the contrast would be more enlightening than anything
either one of us could say.”
“And I suppose you realize,” said Eileen bitterly, “that you lost me
John Gilman when you did it.”
“_I?_” said Linda. “_I_ lost you John Gilman when I did it? But I
didn’t do it. You did it. You have been busy for four years doing it.
If you hadn’t done it, it wouldn’t have been there for me to show
him. I can’t see that this is profitable. Certainly it’s the most
distressing thing that ever has occurred for me. But I didn’t feel that
I could let you meet John Gilman to-night without telling you what he
knows. If you have any way to square your conscience and cleanse your
soul before you meet him, you had better do it, for he’s a mighty fine
man and if you lose him you will have lost the best chance that is
likely ever to come to you.”
Linda sat studying Eileen. She saw the gallant effort she was making
to keep her self-possession, to think with her accustomed rapidity, to
strike upon some scheme whereby she could square herself. She rose and
started toward the door.
“What you’ll say to John I haven’t the faintest notion,” she said. “I
told him very little. I just showed him.”
Then she went out and closed the door after her. At the foot of the
stairs she met Katy admitting Gilman. Without any preliminaries she
said: “I repeat, John, that I’m sorry for what happened the other day.
I have just come from Eileen. She will be down as soon as Katy tells
her you’re here, no doubt. I have done what I told you I would. She
knows what I showed you so you needn’t employ any subterfuges. You can
be frank and honest with each other.”
“I wish to God we could,” said John Gilman.
Linda went to her work. She decided that she would gauge what happened
by the length of time John stayed. If he remained only a few minutes
it would indicate that there had been a rupture. If he stayed as long
as he usually did, the chances were that Eileen’s wit had triumphed as
usual.
At twelve o’clock Linda laid her pencils in the box, washed the
brushes, and went down the back stairs to the ice chest for a glass
of milk. The living room was still lighted and Linda thought Eileen’s
laugh quite as gay as she ever had heard it. Linda closed her lips very
tight and slowly climbed the stairs. When she entered her room she
walked up to the mirror and stared at herself in the glass for a long
time, and then of herself she asked this question:
“Well, how do you suppose she did it?”