Her Father's Daughter Part 27

"I am very glad you are so pleased, John," she said quietly, "and I hope that you will be as happy as you deserve to be."

"Now exactly what do you mean by that?" he asked.

"Oh, Linda prides herself on being deep and subtle and conveying hidden meanings," said Eileen. "She means what a thousand people will tell you in the coming months: merely that they hope you will be happy."

"Of course," Linda hastened to corroborate, wishing if possible to avoid any unpleasantness.

"You certainly have an attractive workroom here," said John, "much as I hate to see it spoiled for billiards."

"It's too bad," said Linda, "that I have spoiled it for you for billiards. I have also spoiled the outside appearance of the house for Eileen."

"Oh, I don't know," said John. "I looked at it carefully the other day as I came up, and I thought your changes enhanced the value of the property."

"I am surely glad to hear that," said Linda. "Take a look through my skylight and my new window. Imagine you see the rugs I am going to have and a few more pieces of furniture when I can afford them; and let me particularly point out the fireplace that Henry Anderson and your friend Peter designed and had built for me. Doesn't it add a soul and a heart to my study?"

John Gilman walked over and looked at the fireplace critically. He read the lines aloud, then he turned to Eileen.

"Why, that is perfectly beautiful," he said. "Let's duplicate it in our home."

"You bungler!" scoffed Eileen.

"I think you're right," said Gilman reflectively, "exactly right. Of course I would have no business copying Linda's special fireplace where the same people would see it frequently; and if I had stopped to think a second, I might have known that you would prefer tiling to field stone."

"Linda seems very busy tonight," said Eileen. "Perhaps we are bothering her."

"Yes," said John, "we'll go at once. I had to run up to tell our good news; and I wanted to tell you too, Linda dear, that I think both of us misjudged Eileen the other day. You know, Linda, you have always dressed according to your father's ideas, which were so much simpler and plainer than the manner in which your mother dressed Eileen, that she merely thought that you wished to continue in his way. She had no objection to your having any kind of clothes you chose, if only you had confided in her, and explained to her what you wanted."

Linda stood beside her table, one lean hand holding down the letter she had been writing. She stood very still, but she was powerless to raise her eyes to the face of either John or Eileen. Above everything she did not wish to go any further in revealing Eileen to John Gilman. If he knew what he knew and if he felt satisfied, after what he had seen, with any explanation that Eileen could trump up to offer, Linda had no desire to carry the matter further. She had been ashamed of what she already had done. She had felt angry and dissatisfied with herself, so she stood before them downcast and silent.

"And it certainly was a great joke on both of us," said John jovially, "what we thought about that box of cigarettes, you know. They were a prize given by a bridge club at an 'Amba.s.sador' benefit for the Good Samaritan Hospital. Eileen, the little card shark she is, won it, and she was keeping it hidden away there to use as a gift for my birthday.

Since we disclosed her plans prematurely, she gave it to me at once, and I'm having a great time treating all my friends."

At that instant Linda experienced a revulsion. Previously she had not been able to raise her eyes. Now it would have been quite impossible to avoid looking straight into Eileen's face. But Eileen had no intention of meeting anyone's gaze at that minute. She was fidgeting with a sheet of drawing paper.

"Careful you don't bend that," cautioned Linda. Then she looked at John Gilman. He BELIEVED what he was saying; he was happy again. Linda evolved the best smile she could.

"How stupid of us not to have guessed!" she said.

Closing the door behind them, Linda leaned against it and looked up through the skylight at the creep blue of the night, the low-hung stars.

How long she stood there she did not know. Presently she went to her chair, picked up her pencil, and slowly began to draw. At first she scarcely realized what she was doing, then she became absorbed in her work. Then she reached for her color box and brushes, and shortly afterward tacked against the wall an extremely clever drawing of a greatly enlarged wasp. Skillfully she had sketched a face that was recognizable round the big insect eyes. She had surmounted the face by a fluff of bejewelled yellow curls, encased the hind legs upon which the creature stood upright in pink velvet Turkish trousers and put tiny gold shoes on the feet. She greatly exaggerated the wings into long trails and made them of green gauze with ruffled edges. All the remainder of the legs she had transformed into so many braceleted arms, each holding a tiny fan, or a necklace, a jewel box, or a handkerchief of lace. She stood before this sketch, studying it for a few minutes, then she walked over to the table and came back with a big black pencil. Steadying her hand with a mahl stick rested against the wall, with one short sharp stroke she drew a needle-pointed stinger, so screened by the delicate wings that it could not be seen unless you scrutinized the picture minutely. After that, with careful, interested hands she brought out Peter Morrison's drawings and replaced them on the wall to dry.

CHAPTER XX. The Cap Sheaf

Toward the last of the week Linda began to clear the mental decks of her ship of life in order that she might have Sat.u.r.day free for her promised day with Donald. She had decided that they would devote that day to wave-beaten Laguna. It was a long drive but delightful. It ran over the old King's Highway between miles of orange and lemon orchards in full flower, bordered by other miles of roses in their prime.

Every minute when her mind was not actively occupied with her lessons or her recipes Linda was dreaming of the King's Highway. Almost unconsciously she began to chant:

"All in the golden weather, forth let us ride today, You and I together on the King's Highway, The blue skies above us, and below the shining sea; There's many a road to travel, but it's this road for me."

You must have ridden this road with an understanding heart and the arm of G.o.d around you to know the exact degree of disappointment that swelled in Linda's heart when she answered the telephone early Sat.u.r.day morning and heard Donald Whiting's strained voice speaking into it. He was talking breathlessly in eager, boyish fashion.

"Linda, I am in a garage halfway downtown," he was saying, "and it looks to me as if to save my soul I couldn't reach you before noon. I have had the darnedest luck. Our j.a.p got sick last week and he sent a new man to take his place. There wasn't a thing the matter with our car when I drove it in Friday night. This morning Father wanted to use it on important business, and it wouldn't run. He ordered me to tinker it up enough to get it to the shop. I went at it and when it would go, I started You can imagine the clip I was going, and the thing went to pieces. I don't know yet how it comes that I saved my skin. I'm pretty badly knocked out, but I'll get there by noon if it's a possible thing."

"Oh, that's all right," said Linda, fervently hoping that the ache in her throat would not tincture her voice.

It was half-past eleven when Donald came. Linda could not bring herself to give up the sea that day. She found it impossible to drive the King's Highway. It seemed equally impossible not to look on the face of the ocean, so she compromised by skirting Santa Monica Bay, and taking the foothill road she ran it to the north end of the beach drive. When they had spread their blankets on the sand, finished their lunch and were resting, Linda began to question Donald about what had happened. She wanted to know how long Whitings' gardener had been in their employ; if they knew where he lived and about his family; if they knew who his friends were, or anything concerning him. She inquired about the man who had taken his place, and wanted most particularly to know what the garage men had found the trouble with a car that ran perfectly on Friday night and broke down in half a dozen different places on Sat.u.r.day morning. Finally Donald looked at her, laughingly quizzical.

"Linda," he said, "you're no nerve specialist and no naturalist. You're the cross examiner for the plaintiff. What are you trying to get at?

Make out a case against Yogo Sani?"

"Of course it's all right," said Linda, watching a distant pelican turn head down and catapult into the sea. "It has to be all right, but you must admit that it looks peculiar. How have you been getting along this week?"

Donald waved his hand in the direction of a formation of stone the size of a small house.

"Been rolling that to the top of the mountain," he said lightly. Linda's eyes narrowed, her face grew speculative. She looked at Donald intently.

"Is it as difficult as that?" she asked in a lowered voice as if the surf and the sea chickens might hear.

"It is just as difficult as that," said Donald. "While you're talking about peculiar things, I'll tell you one. In cla.s.s I came right up against Oka Sayye on the solution of a theorem in trigonometry. We both had the answer, the correct answer, but we had arrived at it by widely different routes, and it was up to me to prove that my line of reasoning was more lucid, more natural, the inevitable one by which the solution should be reached. We got so in earnest that I am afraid both of us were rather tense. I stepped over to his demonstration to point out where I thought his reasoning was wrong. I got closer to the j.a.p than I had ever been before; and by gracious, Linda! scattered, but nevertheless still there, and visible, I saw a sprinkling of gray hairs just in front of and over his ears. It caught me unawares, and before I knew what I was doing, before the professor and the a.s.sembled cla.s.sroom I blurted it out: 'Say, Oka Sayye, how old are you?' If the j.a.p had had any way of killing me, I believe he would have done it. There was a look in his eyes that was what I would call deadly. It was only a flash and then, very courteously, putting me in the wrong, of course, he remarked that he was 'almost ninekleen'; and it struck me from his look and the way he said it that it was a lie. If he truly was the average age of the rest of the cla.s.s there was nothing for him to be angry about. Then I did take a deliberate survey. From the settled solidity of his frame and the shape of his hands and the skin of his face and the set of his eyes in his head, I couldn't see that much youth. I'll bet he's thirty if he's a day, and I shouldn't be a bit surprised if he has graduated at the most worthwhile university in j.a.pan, before he ever came to this country to get his English for nothing."

Linda was watching a sea swallow now, and slowly her lean fingers were gathering handfuls of sand and sifting them into a little pyramid she was heaping beside her. Again almost under her breath she spoke.

"Donald, do you really believe that?" she asked. "Is it possible that mature j.a.p men are coming here and entering our schools and availing themselves of the benefits that the taxpayers of California provide for their children?"

"Didn't you know it?" asked Donald. "I hadn't thought of it in connection with Oka Sayye, but I do know cases where mature j.a.ps have been in grade schools with children under ten."

"Oh, Donald!" exclaimed Linda. "If California is permitting that or ever has permitted it, we're too easy. We deserve to become their prey if we are so careless."

"Why, I know it's true," said Donald. "I have been in the same cla.s.ses with men more than old enough to be my father."

"I never was," said Linda, industriously sifting sand. "I have been in cla.s.ses with j.a.ps ever since I have been at school, but it was with girls and boys of our gardeners and fruit dealers and curio-shop people, and they were always of my age and ent.i.tled to be in school, since our system includes the education of anybody who happens to be in California and wants to go to school."

"Did my being late spoil any particular plan you had made, Linda?"

"Yes," said Linda, "it did."

"Oh, I am so sorry!" cried Donald. "I certainly shall try to see that it doesn't occur again. Could we do it next Sat.u.r.day?"

"I am hoping so," said Linda.

"I told Dad," said Donald, "where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do, and he was awfully sorry but he said it was business and it would take only a few minutes and he thought I could do it and be on time. If he had known I would be detained I don't believe he would have asked it of me. He's a grand old peter, Linda."

"Yes, I know," said Linda. "There's not much you can tell me about peters of the grand sort, the real, true flesh-and-blood, bighearted, human-being fathers, who will take you to the fields and the woods and take the time to teach you what G.o.d made and how He made it and why He made it and what we can do with it, and of the fellowship and brotherhood we can get from Nature by being real kin. The one thing that I have had that was the biggest thing in all this world was one of these real fathers."