Her Father's Daughter Part 32

"Yes," came the answer.

"Well, Uncle Jim, this is Eileen."

"Why, h.e.l.lo, girlie," was the quick response. "Delighted that you're calling your ancient uncle. Haven't changed the decision in the last letter I had from you, have you?"

"Yes," said Eileen, "I have changed it. Do you and Aunt Caroline still want me, Uncle Jim?"

"YOU BET WE WANT YOU!" roared the voice over the 'phone. "Here we are, with plenty of money and not a relation on earth but you to leave it to.

You belong to us by rights. We'd be tickled to death to have you, and for you to have what's left of the money when we get through with it.

May I come after you? Say the word, and I'll start this minute."

"Oh, Uncle Jim, could you? Would you?" cried Eileen.

"Well, I'd say I could. We'd be tickled to death, I tell you!"

"How long would it take you to get here?" said Eileen.

"Well, I could reach you by noon tomorrow. Eleven something is the shortest time it's been made in; that would give me thirteen--more than enough. Are you in that much of a hurry?"

"Yes," gasped Eileen, "yes, I am in the biggest kind of a hurry there is, Uncle Jim. This troublesome little estate has to be settled tomorrow afternoon. There's going to be complaint about everything that I have seen fit to do. I've been hounded and hara.s.sed till I am disgusted with it. Then I've promised to marry John Gilman as I wrote you, and I don't believe you would think that was my best chance with the opportunities you could give me. It seems foolish to stay here, abused as I have been lately, and as I will be tomorrow. You have the house number. If you come and get me out of it by noon tomorrow, I'll go with you. You may take out those adoption papers you have always entreated me to agree to and I'll be a daughter that you can be proud of. It will be a relief to have some real money and some real position, and to breathe freely and be myself once more."

"All right for you, girlie!" bellowed the great voice over the line.

"Pick up any little personal bits you can put in a suitcase, and by twelve o'clock tomorrow I'll whisk you right out of that d.a.m.n mess."

Eileen walked from the telephone booth with her head high, triumph written all over her face and figure. They were going to humiliate her.

She would show them!

She went home immediately. Entering her room, she closed the door and stood looking at her possessions. How could she get her trunk from the garret? How could she get it to the station? Would it be possible for Uncle James to take it in his car? As she pondered these things Eileen had a dim memory of a day in her childhood when her mother had gone on business to San Francisco and had taken her along. She remembered a huge house, all turrets and towers and gables, all turns and twists and angles, closed to the light of day and glowing inside with shining artificial lights. She remembered stumbling over deep rugs. One vivid impression was of walls covered with huge canvases, some of them having frames more than a foot wide. She remembered knights in armor, and big fireplaces, and huge urns and vases. It seemed to her like the most wonderful bazaar she ever had been in. She remembered, too, that she had been glad when her mother had taken her out into the sunshine again and from the presence of two ponderous people who had objected strongly to everything her mother had discussed with them. She paused one instant, contemplating this picture. The look of triumph on her face toned down considerably. Then she comforted herself aloud.

"I've heard Mother say," she said softly, "that everybody overdid things and did not know how to be graceful with immense fortunes got from silver and gold mines, and lumber. It will be different now. Probably they don't live in the same house, even. There is a small army of servants, and there is nothing I can think of that Uncle Jim won't gladly get me. I've been too big a fool for words to live this way as long as I have. Crush me, will they? I'll show them! I won't even touch these things I have strained so to get."

Eileen jerked from her throat the strand of pearls that she had worn continuously for four years and threw it contemptuously on her dressing table.

"I'll make Uncle Jim get me a rope with two or three strands in it that will reach to my waist. 'A suitcase!' I don't know what I would fill a suitcase with from here. The trunk may stay in the garret, and while I am leaving all this rubbish, I'll just leave John Gilman with it. Uncle Jim will give me an income that will buy all the cigarettes I want without having to deceive anyone; and I can have money if I want to stake something at bridge without being scared into paralysis for fear somebody may find it out or the accounts won't balance. I'll put on the most suitable thing I have to travel in, and just walk out and leave everything else."

That was what Eileen did. At noon the next day her eyes were bright with nervousness. Her cheeks alternately paled with fear and flooded red with anxiety. She had dressed herself carefully, laid out her hat and gloves and a heavy coat in case the night should be chilly. Once she stood looking at the dainty, brightly colored dresses hanging in her wardrobe A flash of regret pa.s.sed over her face.

"Tawdry little cheap things and makeshifts," she said. "If Linda feels that she has been so terribly defrauded, she can help herself now!"

By twelve o'clock she found herself standing at the window, straining her eyes down Lilac Valley. She was not looking at its helpful hills, at its appealing curves, at its brilliant colors. She was watching the roadway. When Katy rang to call her to lunch, she told her to put the things away; she was expecting people who would take her out to lunch presently. In the past years she had occasionally written to her uncle.

Several times when he had had business in Los Angeles she had met him at his hotel and dined with him. She reasoned that he would come straight to the house and get her, and then they would go to one of the big hotels for lunch before they started.

"I shan't feel like myself," said Eileen, "until we are well on the way to San Francisco."

At one o'clock she was walking the floor. At two she was almost frantic.

At half past she almost wished that she had had the good sense to have some lunch, since she was very hungry and under tense nerve strain. Once she paused before the gla.s.s, but what she saw frightened her. Just when she felt that she could not endure the strain another minute, grinding brakes, the blast of a huge Klaxon, and the sound of a great voice arose from the street. Eileen rushed to the window. She took one look, caught up the suitcase and raced down the stairs. At the door she met a bluff, big man, gross from head to foot. It seemed to Eileen strange that she could see in him even a trace of her mother, and yet she could. Red veins crossed his cheeks and glowed on his nose. His tired eyes were watery; his thick lips had an inclination to sag; but there was heartiness in his voice and earnestness in the manner in which he picked her up.

"What have they been doing to you down here?" he demanded. "Never should have left you this long. Ought to have come down and taken you and showed you what you wanted, and then you would have known whether you wanted it or not."

At this juncture a huge woman, gross in a feminine way as her husband was in his, paddled up the walk.

"I'm comin' in and rest a few minutes," she said. "I'm tired to death and I'm pounded to pieces."

Her husband turned toward her. He opened his lips to introduce Eileen.

His wife forestalled him.

"So this is the Eileen you have been ravin' about for years," she said.

"I thought you said she was a pretty girl."

Eileen's soul knew one sick instant of recoil. She looked from James Heitman to Caroline, his wife, and remembered that he had a habit of calling her "Callie." All that paint and powder and lipstick and brilliantine could do to make the ponderous, big woman more ghastly had been done, but in the rush of the long ride through which her husband had forced her, the colors had mixed and slipped, the false waves were displaced. She was not in any condition to criticize the appearance of another woman. For one second Eileen hesitated, then she lifted her shaking hands to her hat.

"I have been hounded out of my senses," she said apologetically, "and have been so terribly anxious for fear you wouldn't get here on time.

Please, Aunt Caroline, let us go to a hotel, some place where we can straighten up comfortably."

"Well, what's your hurry?" said Aunt Caroline coolly. "You're not a fugitive from justice, are you? Can't a body rest a few minutes and have a drink, even? Besides, I am going to see what kind of a place you've been living in, and then I'll know how thankful you'll be for what we got to offer."

Eileen turned and threw open the door. The big woman walked in. She looked down the hall, up the stairway, and went on to the living room.

She gave it one contemptuous glance, and turning, came back to the door.

"All right, Jim," she said brusquely. "I have seen enough. If you know the best hotel in the town, take me there. And then, if Eileen's in such a hurry, after we have had a bite we'll start for home."

"Thank you, Aunt Caroline, oh, thank you!" cried Eileen.

"You needn't take the trouble to 'aunt' me every time you speak to me,"

said the lady. "I know you're my niece, but I ain't goin' to remind you of it every time I speak to you. It's agein', this 'auntie' business.

I don't stand for it, and as for a name, I am free to confess I always like the way Jim calls me 'Callie.' That sounds younger and more companionable than 'Caroline.'"

James Heitman looked at Eileen and winked.

"You just bet, old girl!" he said. "They ain't any of them can beat you, not even Eileen at her best. Let's get her out of here. Does this represent your luggage, girlie?"

"You said not to bother with anything else," said Eileen.

"So I did," said Uncle Jim, "and I meant just what I said if it's all right with you. I suppose I did have, in the back of my head, an idea that there might be a trunk or a box--some things that belonged to your mother, mebby, and your 'keepsakes.'"

"Oh, never mind," interrupted Eileen. "Do let's go. It's nearly four o'clock. Any minute they may send for me from the bank, and I'd be more than glad to be out of the way."

"Well, I'm not accustomed to being the porter, but if time's that precious, here we go," said Uncle Jim.

He picked up the suitcase with one hand and took his wife's arm with the other.

"Scoot down there and climb into that boat," he said proudly to Eileen.

"We'll have a good dinner in a private room when we get to the hotel. I won't even register. And then we'll get out of here when we have rested a little."

"Can't we stay all night and go in the morning?" panted his wife.

"No, ma'am, we can't," said James Heitman authoritatively. "We'll eat a bite because we need to be fed up, and I sincerely hope they's some decent grub to be had in this burg. The first place we come to outside of here, that looks like they had a decent bed, we'll stop and make up for last night. But we ain't a-goin' to stay here if Eileen wants us to start right away, eh, Eileen?"

"Yes, please!" panted Eileen. "I just don't want to meet any of them.