Upon reaching his home, Mr. Daney telephoned to Mrs. McKaye.
"It is important," he informed her, "that you, Miss Jane and Miss
Elizabeth come down to my office to-morrow for a conference. I would
come up to The Dreamerie to see you, but Donald is home now, and his
father will be with him; so I would prefer to see you down-town. I
have some news of interest for you."
The hint of news of interest was sufficient to secure from Mrs. McKaye
a promise to call at his office with the girls at ten o'clock the
following morning.
"What is this interesting news, Andrew?" Mrs. Daney asked, with
well-simulated disinterestedness. She was knitting for the French
War-Relief Committee a pair of those prodigious socks with which
well-meaning souls all over these United States have inspired many a
poor little devil of a _poilu_ with the thought that the French must
be regarded by us as a Brobdingnagian race.
"We're arranging a big blowout, unknown to The Laird and Donald, to
celebrate the boy's return to health. I'm planning to shut down the
mill and the logging-camps for three days," he replied glibly. Of late
he was finding it much easier to lie to her than to tell the truth,
and he had observed with satisfaction that Mrs. Daney's bovine brain
assimilated either with equal avidity.
"How perfectly lovely!" she cooed, and dropped a stitch which later
would be heard from on the march, in the shape of a blister on a
Gallic heel. "You're so thoughtful and kind, Andrew! Sometimes I
wonder if the McKayes really appreciate your worth."
"Well, we'll see," he answered enigmatically and went off to bed.
It was with a feeling of alert interest that he awaited in his office,
the following morning, the arrival of the ladies from The Dreamerie.
They arrived half an hour late, very well content with themselves and
the world in general, and filling Mr. Daney's office with the perfume
of their presence. They appeared to be in such good fettle, indeed,
that Mr. Daney took a secret savage delight in dissipating their
nonchalance.
"Well, ladies," he began, "I decided yesterday that it was getting
along toward the season of the year when my thoughts stray as usual
toward the Sawdust Pile as a drying-yard. So I went down to see if Nan
Brent had abandoned it again--and sure enough, she hadn't." He paused
exasperatingly, after the fashion of an orator who realizes that he
has awakened in his audience an alert and respectful interest. "Fine
kettle of fish brewing down there," he resumed darkly, and paused
again, glanced at the ceiling critically as if searching for leaks,
smacked his lips and murmured confidentially a single word: "Snag!"
"'Snag!'" In chorus.
"Snag! In some unaccountable manner, it appears that you three ladies
have aroused in Nan Brent a spirit of antagonism--"
"Nonsense!"
"The idea!"
"Fiddlesticks!"
"I state the condition as I found it. I happen to know that the girl
possesses sufficient means to permit her to live at the Sawdust Pile
for a year at least."
"But isn't she going away?" Mrs. McKaye's voice rose sharply. "Is she
going to break her bargain?"
"Oh, I think not, Mrs. McKaye. She merely complained to me that
somebody begged her to come back to Port Agnew; so she's waiting for
somebody to come down to the Sawdust Pile and beg her to go away
again. She's inclined to be capricious about it, too. One person isn't
enough. She wants three people to call, and she insists that they
be--ah--ladies!"
"Good gracious, Andrew, you don't mean it?"
"I am delivering a message, Mrs. McKaye."
"She must be spoofing you," Jane declared.
"Well, she laughed a good deal about it, Miss Jane, and confided to me
that a bit of lurking devil in your sister's eyes the day you both met
her in the telegraph office gave her the inspiration for this joke.
She believes that she who laughs last laughs best."
Mrs. McKaye was consumed with virtuous indignation.
"The shameless hussy! Does she imagine for a moment that I will submit
to blackmail, that my daughters or myself could afford to be seen
calling upon her at the Sawdust Pile?"
"She wants to force us to recognize her, mother." Jane, recalling that
day in the telegraph-office, sat staring at Daney with flashing eyes.
She was biting the finger of her glove.
"Nothing doing," Elizabeth drawled smilingly.
Mr. Daney nodded his comprehension.
"In that event, ladies," he countered, with malignant joy in his
suppressed soul, "I am requested to remind you that The Laird will be
informed by Miss Brent that she considers him a very short sport,
indeed, if he insists upon regarding her as unworthy of his son, in
view of the fact that his son's mother considered her a person of such
importance that she used the transcontinental telephone in order to
induce--"
"Yes, yes; I know what you're going to say. Do you really think she
would go as far as that, Andrew?" Mrs. McKaye was very pale.
"Beware the anger of a woman scorned," he quoted.
"In the event that she should, Mr. Daney, we should have no other
alternative but to deny it." Elizabeth was speaking. She still wore
her impish glacial smile. "As a usual thing, we are opposed to fibbing
on the high moral ground that it is not a lady's pastime, but in view
of the perfectly appalling results that would follow our failure to
fib in this particular case, I'm afraid we'll have to join hands, Mr.
Daney, and prove Nan Brent a liar. Naturally, we count on your help.
As a result of his conversation with you, father believes you did the
telephoning."
"I told him half the truth, but no lie. I have never lied to him, Miss
Elizabeth, and I never shall. When Hector McKaye asks me for the
truth, he'll get it." In Mr. Daney's voice there was a growl that
spoke of slow, quiet fury at the realization that this cool young
woman should presume to dictate to him.
"I think you'll change your mind, Mr. Daney. You'll not refuse the
hurdle when you come to it. As for this wanton Brent girl, tell her
that we will think her proposition over and that she may look for a
call from us. We do not care how long she looks, do we mother?" And
she laughed her gay, impish laugh. "In the meantime, Mr. Daney, we
will do our best to spare ourselves and you the ignominy of that fib.
The doctors will order Donald away for a complete rest for six months,
and dad will go with him. When they're gone that Brent house on the
Sawdust Pile is going to catch fire--accidently, mysteriously. The man
who scuttled the Brent's motor-boat surely will not scruple at such a
simple matter as burning the Brent shanty. Come, mother. Jane, for
goodness' sake, do buck up! Good-by, dear Mr. Daney."
He stared at her admiringly. In Elizabeth, he discerned, for the first
time, more than a modicum of her father's resolute personality; he saw
clearly that she dominated her mother and Jane and, like The Laird,
would carry her objective, once she decided upon it, regardless of
consequences.
"Good-morning, ladies. I shall repeat your message--verbatim, Miss
Elizabeth," he assured the departing trio.
And that night he did so.
"They neglected to inform you how much time they would require to
think it over, did they not?" Nan interrogated mildly. "And they
didn't tell you approximately when I should look for their visit?"
"No," he admitted.
"Oh, I knew they wouldn't submit," Nan flung back at him. "They
despise me--impersonally, at first and before it seemed that I might
dim the family pride; personally, when it was apparent that I could
dim it if I desired. Well, I'm tired of being looked at and sneered
at, and I haven't money enough left to face New York again. I had
dreamed of the kind of living I might earn, and when the opportunity
to earn it was already in my grasp, I abandoned it to come back to
Port Agnew. I had intended to play fair with them, although I had to
lie to Donald to do that, but--they hurt something inside of
me--something deep that hadn't been hurt before--and--and now--"
[Illustration: "I'M A MAN WITHOUT A HOME AND YOU'VE _GOT_ TO TAKE ME
IN, NAN."]
"Now _what_!" Mr. Daney cried in anguished tones.
"If Donald McKaye comes down to the Sawdust Pile and asks me to marry
him, I'm going to do it. I have a right to happiness; I'm--I'm
tired--sacrificing--Nobody cares--no appreciation--Nan of the Sawdust
Pile will be--mistress of The Dreamerie--and when they--enter house of
mine--they shall be--humbler than I. They shall--"
As Mr. Daney fled from the house, he looked back through the little
hall and saw Nan Brent seated at her tiny living-room table, her
golden head pillowed in her arms outspread upon the table, her body
shaken with great, passionate sobs. Mr. Daney's heart was constricted.
He hadn't felt like that since the Aurora Stock Company had played
"East Lynne" in the Port Agnew Opera House.