The Rest Hollow Mystery

by Rebecca N. Porter

  CHAPTER IV

  The Morgan home on Pine Street was a rambling old house; the onlyshingle structure in a block of modern concrete apartments. To the elderMorgans it had been the fulfilment of a dream; a home of their own inSan Francisco. Clinton Morgan had lived only a year after itscompletion, and his widow, in spite of the pressure of hard times andthe inadequacy of the income which he left, had resisted all temptingoffers to sell the old place and had brought up her son and daughterwith a reverence for family tradition as incongruous to theirenvironment and generation as was the old shingle house among itsbusinesslike neighbors.

  And then, eight years after Clinton Morgan's death, oil had beendiscovered in his holdings over at Coalinga, and the last year of SarahMorgan's life had been spent in affluence. But she had never parted withthe old home. At the end of that year she had called Clinton, Jr., thena young instructor in chemistry at the university, to her bedside andlaid a last charge upon him.

  "Clint,"--Her voice held that note of unconscious tyranny thatapproaching death gives to last utterances. For in the moment ofdissolution there is not one among us but is granted the crown andscepter of autocracy. "Clint, don't let the old place go. Fix it overany way you and Marcreta like, but keep it in the family as long as youlive."

  "Yes, Mother."

  "And Clint, there is something else."

  "I know, Mother. It's Marcreta. But you needn't worry about her."

  "I don't believe in death-bed promises. It's not right to try to tie upanybody's future. But----You see, if she were strong and well, Iwouldn't be anxious; I wouldn't say anything but----"

  "You don't need to say anything, Mother. I'll always look out for her."

  A white, blue-veined hand stretched across the counterpane groping forhis. A moment later Marcreta was holding the other and brother andsister faced each other alone.

  * * * * *

  It was about a year after this that Clinton Morgan brought home with himto dinner one night a young college fellow, just on the eve ofgraduating from the University of California. The friendship between theinstructor and this undergraduate, five years his junior, had begun inthe fraternity-house where Clinton dined occasionally as one of the "oldmen." And temperamental congeniality and diversity of interests had donethe rest.

  "He's slated to be one of those writer freaks." Thus he introduced theguest to his sister. "But he's harmless at present and he's far fromhome, so I brought him along."

  Roger Kenwick looked into Miss Morgan's grave blue eyes and becamesuddenly a man. His host, surveying him genially from across themeat-platter, found himself entertaining a stranger. The gay persiflagewhich he had known over at "the house" was completely submerged under amaturity which he had suspected only as potential. In vain he tried thatform of social surgery known to hosts and hostesses as "drawing himout." He mentioned a clever poem in the college magazine of whichKenwick was editor. He began a discussion of the approaching track-meetin which Kenwick was to support his championship for the hundred-yarddash. He tried university politics in which his guest was a conspicuousfigure. To all these leads his fraternity brother made brief, almostimpatient response. And Clinton Morgan was resentfully bewildered. Heexperienced that cheated feeling known to any one who has brought homeexultantly a clever friend, and then failed in the effort to make himshow off.

  But he couldn't complain that Kenwick was tongue-tied. He was talkingearnestly, but it was about future, not past achievement. Inspired byMarcreta's sympathetic interest, he unfolded plans of accomplishment ofwhich until that moment he himself had been in densest ignorance.Clinton had seen other men change, chameleon-like, in the presence ofhis sister, and he found himself wondering now as he watched Kenwicktake his headlong leap into the future, whether it was Marcreta's regalbeauty which inspired their admiration or her physical disability whichappealed to their chivalry.

  Kenwick himself was scarcely conscious of the disability. He was onlyvaguely aware that there were cushions at Miss Morgan's back and that onthe way in from the living-room she had leaned slightly upon herbrother's arm. When the evening was over he left the Morgan homeenveloped in a white fury.

  "I've been a fool!" he told himself violently. "I've been fritteringaway my whole life. This college stuff is kids' play. If I wasn't justtwo months from the end I'd ditch it and break into the man's game offinding a place in the world."

  "Great chap, Kenwick," Clinton was telling his sister. "But he wasn'tquite himself to-night. I think he has some family troubles that worryhim. Doesn't get on very well with his sister-in-law back East, Ibelieve. That's why he came out here to college."

  Marcreta made a random reply. She was wondering what kind of personRoger Kenwick's real self was. And she was soon to discover. For thatevening marked the beginning of a new era for them both. Scarcely a weekpassed that he did not spend Saturday and Sunday evenings at the houseon Pine Street. Sometimes he read aloud to her "stuff" that he hadwritten for the local newspapers. Sometimes she read to him from herfavorite books. Once she helped him plan the plot of an absorbing serialstory. But often they didn't read anything at all; just sat in front ofthe open fire and talked.

  In May Kenwick was graduated from the university, but was still livingat the fraternity-house in Berkeley when there came a sudden summonsfrom New York. He ought to come, Isabel informed him, for his brotherwas seriously ill. On the night before he left he made a longer callthan usual at the Morgan home.

  "Everett's the finest chap in the world," he told Marcreta. "He's beenlike a father to me. But----Lord! How I hate to tear myself away fromhere! And the worst of it is, I don't know how long I may have to stay.You won't forget me if it's a long time?"

  And then all at once they were not talking about his trip any more, norof Everett. "If you could only give me some hope to go on," Kenwick wassaying. "Something to live on while I'm away."

  But to this entreaty Marcreta was almost coldly unresponsive. She triedevasions first; asked solicitous questions concerning his plans; showeda heart-warming interest in his anxiety concerning his brother. But,forced at length to answer his persistent question, she said simply:"No. I don't care for you--in that way. Let's not talk any more aboutit. Let's not spoil our last evening together."

  It brought him to his feet white and shaken. "Spoil my last evening withyou!" he cried. "Spoil my whole life! That's what it will do if I can'thave you in it." His fingers sought an inside pocket of his coat. "I'vegot your picture," he told her fiercely. "I got it down at Stafford'sstudio the other day. And I'm going to carry it with me always--untilyou give me something better."

  A month after his arrival in New York he wrote her that his brother hadrecovered and that he would soon be coming back to find a position in anewspaper office in San Francisco. But he didn't come back. For it wasjust at this time that men began to hear strange new voices calling tothem from out of the world-chaos. Day by day they grew in volume and inauthority luring youth out of the isolation of personal ambition intothe din and horrible carnage of war. Just before he left for a Southerntraining-camp Kenwick wrote her a long letter. In it there was neitherpast nor future tense. It concerned itself solely, almost stubbornly,with the present.

  On the evening that she received it Marcreta held conference with herbrother in the dignified old drawing-room. "Clinton, I want to make theold house take a part in the war. I've been talking it over with Dr.Reynolds. He says it would make an ideal sanitarium. I want to use itfor the families of enlisted men; the women and children, you know, whoare too proud for charity and who, for just a nominal sum, could comehere and get the best treatment. If you were at the front, wouldn't itrelieve your mind to know that somebody you loved, I for instance, wasgetting the proper care when I was ill, even though you couldn't provideit for me? I'll do all this out of my own money, of course, and keepyour room and mine, so that this will still be home to you when--youcome back from training-camp."

  He stared at her incredulously. "Why, how did you----Wha
t makes youthink that--I'm going away?"

  "I saw Captain Evans's name on that envelope the other day, so I wroteto him and asked if you had quizzed him about war work," she told himshamelessly. "I couldn't help it, Clint. I had to know. I really knewanyway. Knowing you, how could I help seeing that you were mad to getaway and help. Every _man_ must be. But you've been afraid to broach itto me."

  In his first moment of wild relief, he didn't dare trust himself tospeak. When he at last ventured a response he plunged, manlike, into theleast vital of the two topics. "But you don't quite realize what itwould mean, Crete, tearing the whole house up that way. And theincessant confusion of having all those people around would be afrightful strain. With that spine of yours apt to go back on you at anytime----It isn't as if you were a well woman."

  The instant the words were out he regretted them. He saw his sisterwince, but her voice was steady and eager with entreaty. "That's justit, dear. It isn't as if I were well and could do any work myself. But Ican do this. I know what sick people need to make them comfortable. Oh,let me do it, Clinton."

  He reached over and patted her shoulder. "I don't want to stand in theway of anything that would give you any happiness. But if it should betoo much for you--and I so far away from you----"

  "Even if it should be, you would come to see some day that I was rightto do it. I have a right to take that chance. I have just as much rightas a soldier has to stake my life against a great cause."

  In the end he yielded, and together they planned the readjustment oftheir lives and the old home. Of the rooms on the lower floor, only thebig library remained unchanged. But there were invalid-chairs rangedabout the great room now and little tables holding bottles and trays.

  On the Sunday evening before he left Clinton found his sister up in herroom sorting over a pile of letters. "Well, your dreams are coming true,Crete," he told her. "Dr. Reynolds is delighted with this placeand--you're sending a man to the service."

  She looked up at him with a smile, and it flashed across him suddenlythat she had done more than this. A silence fell between them, the tensethrobbing silence that precedes a last farewell. He felt that he oughtto say something; something comforting and cheerful. But the Morganswere reserved people, and they found confidences incredibly difficult.So he stood there looking down at her, thinking that she always ought towear that soft blue-gray color that seemed to melt into her eyes andbring out all the richness of the dark curves of hair. It was so that hewould think of her in the days that were to come--a fragile but gallantfigure sitting at the old mahogany desk sorting out letters.

  Suddenly she pushed them aside and rose to her full splendid queenlyheight. She knew that the moment of farewell had come and was notgrudging it its crucial moment of life. He came toward her and put histwo hands lightly on her shoulders. But words failed him utterly. Forhis glance had fallen upon the pile of letters which she had tied with anarrow bit of white ribbon. And he noticed for the first time that theywere all addressed in the same handwriting.