The Man in the Twilight Part 7

"Teach her all the bright tricks of hunting down a husband and--hooking him." The lawyer shook his head and smiled. "You know, Sally, you're almost an outrage on the subject of marriage. Sometimes I wonder the sort of tricks I was up against when I--"

A plump warning finger and smiling threat interrupted the laughing charge.

"You were due at the office long ago, Charles," his wife admonished. "If you aren't careful I'll have to pack you off right away."

"That's all right, Sally," the man demurred. "I won't go further with that. I'll get back to the things I was saying before you interrupted."

His pale blue eyes became serious again. "Do you think Nancy didn't understand why she was packed off to school--and kept there? Of course she did. She knew she wasn't wanted. She knew she was in the way. She must not be permitted to intrude on this stepfather, or her mother's new life. It was all a bit heartless, and if I know anything of the child, she understands it that way. I felt that when she came to see her mother, and went to her funeral. Now then, Nancy's coming to see me to-day. Remember she's sixteen. She's got to learn from me the settlement Leslie's made on her. She's got to learn further that she isn't likely to ever see her stepfather. She knows I'm his business man.

She knows I'm his friend. Well, when she's financially independent, do you think she'll feel like rushing into our arms, here, for a home, feeling the way I believe she does about her parent? It's going to be difficult, and--d.a.m.ned unpleasant. And for all I'm ready to help Leslie anyway I know, I'd rather see anybody on his behalf than that kiddie, with her wide, honest, angry eyes and red hair. I'm not going to press our home on her, Sally, because, sooner or later, if she accepted it, which I don't believe she would, she'd have to learn things of Leslie, and--well, the affairs you know about. That must not be. She's not going to learn these things from us. I'm going to do the best I know for the child, and when it comes to the matter of a home she must choose for herself. There's always her mother's folk, or even James McDonald's folk--"

"G.o.d forbid! No. Oh, no." The woman's instant denial was horrified. "Not the McDonald lot. They're all revolutionaries. All of them. It's--it's unthinkable. It certainly is."

The man moved away.

"That's so," he agreed. "Well, anyway, I'll do the best I know for the child, Sally. You can trust me."

The woman's anxiety abated, and she rose from her chair.

"I know that, Charles," she said. "But the McDonalds! They're--"

"Sure they are." The man laughed. "Well, good-bye, my dear. I'll tell you all about it when I've fixed things. Thank goodness it's quit snowing and the sun's shining again. I wish I felt as good as it looks outside here."

Charles Nisson had become a lawyer without any marked inclination or enthusiasm for his profession. It had been simply a matter of following the father before him. It would have been much the same if his father had been a farmer, or a politician, or anything else. The son was patient, temperate, and of no great ambition. But he was also keenly intelligent. Without impulse, or striking originality, but with a tremendous capacity for hard work, he was bound to be moderately successful in any career. In his father's profession his temperament was particularly suited, and in spite of lacking enthusiasm he had become unquestionably a better lawyer than the country attorney he had succeeded.

Just now his mind was filled with unease. The matter of his forthcoming interview with a child of sixteen years had only small place in the affairs which disturbed him. His real concern was for his friend, Leslie Standing, and the disaster, which, in a seemingly overwhelming rush had befallen at far-off Sachigo. Again his trouble had no relation to these things as they affected his own worldly affairs. It was of the man himself he was thinking.

He knew it all now. He had painfully learned the complete story of disaster. And, to his st.u.r.dy mind, it was a deplorable example of almost unbelievable human weakness.

Standing had conveyed his final determination to abandon his Labrador enterprise in the correspondence which had pa.s.sed between them during the three months which had elapsed since the funeral of his wife and stillborn child. And during that time their friendship had been sorely tested. There had been times when the lawyer's native patience had been unequal to the strain. There had been times when his temper had leapt from under the bonds which so strongly held it. But for all the ordeals of that prolonged correspondence, for all he deplored the pitiful weakness in the other, his friendship remained, and he finally accepted his instructions. But the whole thing left him very troubled.

As the hour of noon approached, his trouble showed no sign of abatement.

It was the reverse. There were moments, as he sat in the generously upholstered chair before his desk, in the comfortable down-town office which overlooked Abercrombie's princ.i.p.al thoroughfare, that he felt like abandoning all responsibility in the chaos of his friend's affairs. But this was only the result of irritation, and had no relation to his intentions. He knew well enough that everything in his power would be done for the man who never so surely needed his help as now.

He refreshed his memory with the details of the deed of settlement for the abandoned stepdaughter. Then, as the hands of the clock approached the hour of his appointment, he sat back yielding his whole concentration upon those many problems confronting him.

What, he asked himself, was going to become of Standing now that he had cut himself adrift from that anchorage which had held him safe for the past seven years? He strove to follow the driving of the man's curiously haunted mind. He had declared his intention of going away. Where?

Definite information had been withheld. He was going to devote himself to some purpose he claimed to have always lain at the back of his mind.

What was that purpose? Again there had been no information forthcoming.

Was it good, or--bad? The man who was endeavouring to solve the riddle of it all dared not trust himself to a decision. He felt that his friend's unstable soul might drive him in almost any direction after the shock it had sustained.

No. Speculation was useless. The crude facts were like a brick wall he had to face. Standing's wealth and the great mill at Sachigo were left to his administration with the trusting confidence of a child. The responsibility for the neglected stepdaughter had similarly been flung upon his shoulders. And, satisfied with this manner of disposing of his worldly concerns, Standing intended to fare forth, shorn of any possession but a bare pittance for his daily needs, to lose himself, and all the shadows of a haunted mind, in the dim, remote interior of the unexplored forests of Northern Quebec. The whole thing was mad--utterly--

The m.u.f.fled electric bell on his table drubbed out its summons. One swift glance at the clock and the lawyer yielded to professional instinct. He became absorbed in the papers neatly spread out on his table as a bespectacled clerk thrust open the door.

"Miss McDonald to see you," he announced, in the modulated tone which was part of his professional make-up.

The lawyer rose at once. He moved toward the door with a smiling welcome. The s.e.x and personality of his visitor demanded this departure from his custom.

Nancy McDonald stood just inside the doorway through which the clerk had departed. She was tall, beautifully tall, for all she was only sixteen.

In her simple college girl's overcoat, with its m.u.f.fling of fur about the neck, it was impossible to detect the graces of the youthful figure concealed. Her carriage was upright, and her bearing full of that confidence which is so earnestly taught in the schools of the newer countries.

But these things pa.s.sed unnoticed by the white-haired lawyer. He was smiling into the radiant face under the low-pressed fur cap. It was the wide, hazel eyes, so deeply fringed with a wealth of curling, dark lashes, that inspired his smiling interest. It was the level brows, so delicately pencilled, and dark as were the eyelashes. It was the perfect nose, and lips, and chin, and the chiselled beauty of oval cheeks, all in such cla.s.sic harmony with the girl's wealth of vivid hair.

Nancy returned his gaze without the shadow of a smile. She had come at this man's call from the coldly correct halls of Marypoint College, which was also the soulless home she had been condemned to for the three or four most impressionable years of her life. And she knew the purpose of the summons.

There was a deep abiding resentment in her heart. It was not against this man or his wife. From these two she had received only kindness and affection. It was directed against the stepfather whom she believed to be the cause of the banishment she had had to endure. Furthermore, she could never forget that her banishment was only terminated that she might gaze at last upon the dead features of her dearly loved mother before the cold earth hid them from view forever.

The lawyer understood. He had understood from her reply to his letter summoning her. There was no need for the confirmation he read now in her unsmiling eyes.

"You sent for me?" she said.

Nancy's voice was deep and rich for all her youth. Then with a display of some slight confusion, she suddenly realised the welcoming hand outheld. She took it hurriedly, and the brief hand clasp completely broke down the barrier she had deliberately set up.

"Oh, it's a shame, Uncle Charles," she cried, almost tearfully.

"It's--it's a shame. I know. I'm just a kid--a fool kid who hasn't a notion, or a feeling, or--or anything. I'm to be treated that way. When he says 'listen,' why, I've just got to listen. And when he says 'obey,'

I've got to obey, because the law says he's my stepfather. He's robbed me of my mother. Oh, it's cruel. Now he's going to rob me of everything else I s'pose. Who is he? What is he that he has the power to--to make me a sort of slave to his wishes? I've never seen him. I hate him, and he hates me, and yet--oh--I'm kind of sorry," she said, in swift contrition at the sight of the old man's evident distress. "I--I--didn't think. I--oh, I know it's not your fault, uncle. It's just nothing to do with you. You've always been so kind and good to me--you and Aunt Sally.

You've got to send for me and tell me the things he says, because--"

"Because I'm his 'hired man.' But also because I'm his friend."

The lawyer spoke kindly, but very firmly. He knew the impulsive nature of this pa.s.sionate child. He knew her unusual mentality. He realised, none better, that he was dealing with a strong woman's mind in a girl of childhood's years. He knew that Nancy had inherited largely from her father, that headstrong, headlong creature whose mentality had driven him to every length in a wild endeavour to upset civilisation that he might witness the birth of a millennium in the ashes of a world saturated with the blood of countless, helpless creatures. So he checked the impulsive flow of the child's protest. He held out his hands.

"You'd best let me take your coat, my dear," he said, with a smile the girl found it impossible to resist. "Maybe you'd like to remove your overshoes, too. There's a big talk to make, and I want to get things fixed so you can come right along up home and take food with us before you go back to Marypoint."

The child capitulated. But she needed no a.s.sistance. Her coat was removed in a moment and flung across a chair, and she stood before him, the slim, slightly angular schoolgirl she really was.

"Guess I'll keep my rubbers on," she said. Then she added with a laugh which a moment before must have been impossible. "That way I'll feel I can run away when I want to. What next?"

"Why, just sit right here."

The lawyer drew up a chair and set it beside his desk. His movements were swift now. He had no desire to lose the girl's change of mood.

And Nancy submitted. She took the chair set for her while the man she loved to call "Uncle Charlie" pa.s.sed round to his. He gave her no time for further reflection, but plunged into his talk at once.

"Now, my dear," he said earnestly, "you came here feeling pretty bad about things, and maybe I don't blame you. But there isn't the sort of thing waiting on you you're guessing. Before we get to the real business I just want to tell you the things in my mind. Of course, as you say, you're a 'kid' yet--a school-kid, eh? That's all right. But I know you can get a grip of things that many much older girls could never hope to.

That's why I want to tell you the things I'm going to. Now you've worked it out in your mind that your stepfather is just a heartless, selfish creature who has no sort of use for you, and just wants to forget your existence. He married your mother, but had no idea of taking on her burdens--that's you. It isn't so. It wasn't so. I know, because this man is my friend, and I know all there is to know about him. The whole thing has been deplorable. You've been the victim of circ.u.mstances that I may not explain even to you. But I promise you this, your stepfather is not the man to have desired to cut you out of your mother's life."

"Who did then? Mother?"

The girl's beautiful face flushed under her stirring emotions. The man shook his head.

"Circ.u.mstances. Yes, those circ.u.mstances I told you of. Those circ.u.mstances I can't explain." Charles Nisson picked up a typescript and held it out to the child.

"I want you to take this. It's not the deed, but a true copy. I want you to read it over and think about it, and when you get back to Marypoint, and feel like talking to those teachers you trust there, you can tell them what it contains, and hear what they have to say about it, and see if they won't think better of your stepfather than you do. You needn't read it now," as the girl turned the pages and glanced down the confusion of legal phraseology. "I'm going to tell you what it contains in plain words. But I want you to have it, and read it, and think over it, because I want you to try and get a real understanding of the man whose signature is set to the original deed."

"Yes," he went on, meditatively, and in a tone of real regret. "I'd be pretty glad to have you think better of him. I think just now he needs the kind thought of anyone who belongs to him. He's in pretty bad trouble--someways."

The girl looked up. A curious anxiety was shining in her eyes.