Daphne Deane

by Grace Livingston Hill

  "But, Keith, listen. I've come to take you away out of this horrid little stuffy room into a nice great big beautiful room by the sea."

  "This is a nice room!" he said suddenly, opening his eyes and looking around. "What's the matter with this room? I like it better than any room I ever saw. It has nice curtains that blow in the breeze, and there's a bird I know out there that sings to me every morning."

  "But, Keith, you're coming home with me to our beautiful place by the sea, and we'll have the grandest times together while you get all rested and strong again. I've brought the limousine, and you can lie down in the backseat and go to sleep all the way, and you won't know where you are till you wake up in another bed and hear the waves down on the beach."

  "No!" said Keith quite crossly. "No! I never want to see the sea again! I never want to hear its awful beat. I'm fed up with the sea! Don't mention it to me again. Go away, Anne! You don't understand. I'm very tired and I've got to go to sleep. Good-bye. Where's Daphne, Nurse? I want her to read to me and put me to sleep."

  "I think you had better go out now," said the nurse a bit alarmed at the turn things had taken. "He hasn't had a caller before, and you know he's had these cerebral symptoms. The doctor said we must be very careful and not excite him, or they might return."

  "Why, the very idea!" said Anne indignantly. "Go out when I've just come? I should say not. Go out yourself and let me talk to him. I know how to bring him to reason."

  "What is all this about?" asked Doctor McKenna appearing in the doorway. His voice was gravely apprehensive.

  "I've come to take my fiancé down to the shore to get well," said Anne. "I have Doctor Morgan's permission to come here today. The nurse has it, if you insist on looking at it, and I've come to take Mr. Morrell away. He's been dragging along too many weeks already, and I'm going to take him where he will get well right away. Nurse, won't you call my man to come and lift Mr. Morrell?"

  Suddenly with a strength born of his exasperation, Keith lifted himself right up from the pillow.

  "Look here, Doctor, I'm not going to any shore! I don't want to, and I won't. And she's not my fiancée, either, and never was, and she knows it! I wish you'd go away, Anne, and stay where you belong. I've got to get some sleep right away!" And he dropped back on the pillow again, white and limp.

  Anne stood there petrified with rage, unable to believe her senses.

  "Keith!" she said. "Keith darling! You don't know what you're saying!"

  "No, I guess I don't!" murmured the boy, opening tired eyes. "But I guess you know what I mean, all right."

  "Keith, if I go away now, you'll be sorry, for I'll never come back again." Her voice was angry.

  "Go as far as you like and see if I care!" said Keith, reverting to a phrase of his high school days, and fainted dead away.

  The doctor and nurse were immediately too busy to see what became of the visitor, and she walked downstairs and away to her great car in a towering rage. He should suffer for this. He would see. She would ruin him. She would drive him out of his precious position and see that he never succeeded in getting another. She would show him what he had lost. She would marry the elderly millionaire and take every occasion to bring him to scorn. She would ruin him with the social set. He and his Daphne indeed! Who was she? He would soon tire of her, and then he would come crawling back and she wouldn't receive him. Not she. When he tired of this little simple Daphne and wanted her, she would show him that "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." Even if he was sick yet and didn't know what he was saying, she would never forgive what he had done to her in the presence of that insolent doctor and nurse, and that little pussy-faced Daphne! Never, never, as long as she lived! She had never really loved him anyway. She just wanted to conquer him and carry him around as a trophy, a handsome trophy that she could afford if she wanted. But now, well, now he would see!

  Daphne, standing trembling in the nurse's little hall bedroom in the shadows, her heart quivering with joy and fear and sudden knowledge of herself, heard the low exclamation of the doctor and the swift steps of the nurse as they went to the bedside, knew that there were more serious things to consider now than her personal joys or fears, and turned to see what she could do to help.

  Then it was all to do over again, the anxious days and nights of nursing and waiting, the bulletins to the papers: "Young Mr. Keith Morrell who was shot while attempting to enter his own house, by the criminal and counterfeiter Gowney, at present in jail awaiting trial, has had a relapse, and is in serious condition. It may be that even yet Gowney may be indicted for murder."

  Anne read the paragraph on the second page of a New York paper, wide-eyed with horror, and cast about in her mind how soon she could slip off to Europe in case anything happened to Keith. Those contemptible doctors might even dare to charge her with having brought about this relapse. She wished she had never heard of Keith Morrell. She was done with him forever. He was the first man who had ever stirred her to step down from her small throne and offer favor, and how she hated him now! She could never forget that look in his eyes when he took her hands down from about his neck and told her he did not love her. Well, if he died now it was nothing more than he deserved. Though somehow it didn't seem to give her the satisfaction she desired to have him punished by death. She would rather have had him live and be tormented by her petty annoyances. There was no point in showing to a dead man how easily she could have his job taken away from him and send him adrift upon the world without a reputation. Uneasily she watched the papers from day to day for more news. But New York had gone on its way and was no longer concerned about a young man who might die, and Anne Casper had no contacts with local papers.

  Doctor Patrick McKenna, anxious and disappointed, called up Doctor Morgan that first night: "Say, what's the idea, Dick, butting in on my case after you declined to take it over? You've made a pretty kettle of fish for me to fry, and now you'd better come out posthaste and help me."

  "What do you mean, Pat?" came the puzzled reply. "How did I butt in on your case? What case?"

  "I mean, why did you send that blamed little fool of a Casper girl back here to heckle her so-called fiancé before he was by any means out of the woods?"

  "Why, I never sent her out, Pat. Where'd you get that idea?"

  "Oh, yes, you did. Don't try to excuse yourself that way. She brought your note along with her. We have it right here. It says that you authorized her to see the young man, and she came with a limousine to take him away to the shore. She's some tartar, she is! She would have carried him off right under the nose of the nurse and the household, if I hadn't appeared on the scene while he was telling her where to get off. He told her plenty, too, while he was at it, and then he fell back in a dead faint, and it took me the best part of an hour to bring him back. He's in a raging fever now and going up at jumps every hour. Oh, you did it plenty, and you'd better get on the job and help me out. This means a federal murder case, incidentally, too, if he should die, and he looks to me mightily like he was headed that way now."

  "Well, I'll come of course, but I tell you, Pat, I never gave that girl a letter. I haven't laid eyes on her since I left Rosedale that night, and I haven't written her, either. I never gave another thought to the little scatterbrain. But I'll come. I'll start at once. Better look at that letter again, and you'll surely see it isn't my handwriting. It may be a clever imitation, but I never wrote it myself. You know I wouldn't do a thing like that without asking you, Pat! What's the matter with you?"

  "Well, I thought it was something like that," said Doctor McKenna with satisfaction as he hung up the receiver.

  And after that the two famous physicians worked together, night and day, so that there were scarcely two hours during the most anxious time, when one or the other of them was not there. There came a day when both of them stayed and watched momentarily and thought they were losing the fight. When the nurse never took time to eat, and Daphne and her mother prayed as they went about what work had to be done, and
Donald prayed while he worked, and even the children slipped into their rooms now and then with grave sweet young faces and knelt by their beds for a moment with God.

  And the prayers prevailed. Keith rallied almost miraculously. The doctors looked at each other in relief and wonder.

  "It's this praying household," said Doctor McKenna solemnly to the other, although he had always been supposed to be a scoffer. "They've prayed him through, I guess. I couldn't have done it, I'm sure of that. Not even with your help."

  "Yes," said Doctor Morgan thoughtfully. "I guess that must be it. I thought he was gone once, and when I came downstairs, there was that mother down on her knees beside the dining room couch praying, and when I went back upstairs I caught a glimpse of the girl kneeling over in the back bedroom. And when I went into the sickroom I'm blamed if he hadn't rallied again. That's a great girl, that Daphne. Why the dickens couldn't the man see how much more she's worth than that poor little fool from New York?"

  "Well, if he doesn't see it yet, Dick, he's not worth bringing back, even by prayer," said the red-haired Doctor Pat.

  Keith improved rapidly after he really began to come back to life. It seemed as if he had crossed some hindrance and put it behind him at last and was going to recover soon.

  The sun began to shine again in the Deane household. Don even whistled on his way to work, and joy and peace came on all the faces. Daphne felt every hour as if she could shout for joy and even the nurse grew brightly happy.

  Neighbors began to drop in again with eager interest to know about the invalid, and the daily bulletins in the papers ceased. The last one had announced definitely that Keith Morrell was recovering rapidly.

  Even the invalid seemed to be happier, though still very weak. He lay placidly and watched his world revolve about him, well content just to lie still and smile at them. How much thinking he did on various subjects during that time he never let them know, but it was obvious that he was happy, happier than he had been before.

  One day when Daphne had been reading to him, she was about to slip away thinking her patient was asleep, but he opened his eyes and smiled.

  "That's good," he said, "and now, read my psalm! The first one you read me, you know."

  So she read, her heart full of thanksgiving that he had asked for the Bible.

  He lay with closed eyes listening, to the end, and then he opened his eyes as she finished and looked at her with question.

  "Do you suppose He will take me back again?" he asked almost shyly. "After all my indifference through the years?"

  "Take you back?" said Daphne, a lilt of joy in her voice. "Why, He has never let you go! If you took Jesus as your Savior long ago, you were born again, a child of God. You can't be unborn, you know."

  "But you can be disinherited!" said Keith sadly.

  "Earthly parents sometimes do that," said Daphne quickly, "but never our heavenly Father. He has said: 'Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.' You may have been willful and disobedient, and wandered far away out of fellowship with Him, but He has had His eye upon you all this time and has been guiding all your circumstances so that you would finally realize that you were wrong and come back to Him of your own free will."

  He lay thinking about that for a long time. At last he looked up with a radiant smile.

  "That is wonderful!" he said.

  They talked for a little longer, and then the nurse came and told him it was time for his nap. She said after he awoke that that was the most natural sleep he had had yet, and she believed he was going to get well by leaps and bounds now. She prophesied that he would be sitting up before the end of the week.

  And so he was, to the great joy of the family and the utter satisfaction of his two doctors, who still came together to see him as often as they could manage to get away from their other patients.

  The first caller Keith had after he was able to sit up was Mr. Sawyer of the New York firm.

  "You've been mighty good and patient," said Keith, answering the kindly smile of his chief with one of gratitude. "I ought to have written you long ago to get somebody else in my place. I was thinking about it just last night, but I haven't felt able to write yet, and I didn't exactly want to dictate such a letter."

  "That's all right, son, don't write. Just wait till you're fully able to return, and you'll find your desk and your work waiting for you. We fully realize that you're going to be a valuable asset to our firm someday, and we're willing to wait for you till you are quite well. You've done good work so far, even in the few months you've been with us, and I prophesy great things for your future."

  Keith studied the kindly, but world-hardened face of the man before him awhile and then answered with a smile: "I thank you a lot for saying that. I'll think it over and write you." And the great man went away wondering what the boy had in mind, speaking in that indefinite way.

  The next day came Mr. Dinsmore.

  Daphne liked him at once. She felt that his visit would do the invalid a great deal of good.

  "Well, well, son," said the genial elderly man, who seemed to Daphne much like the first visitor, only with something more vital in his eyes. "I certainly am glad to see you looking so well after your injury."

  Half an hour later as Daphne was passing through the hall she heard a scrap of their conversation:

  "Well, what are you going to do now, son? Going back to your job in New York? I was half hoping you might be lingering here, but I suppose since you are well fixed there I shouldn't be wishing to keep you here."

  "I don't know," Keith answered. I've been thinking a lot about it the last few days. Mr. Sawyer was here yesterday. He was very kind. They are willing to wait for me, and I believe there is a future there, but I'm not sure I want it."

  "Oh?"

  "You see," went on Keith, "I have a longing for home. I don't belong up there in that atmosphere. I have a foolish feeling that I have left my house empty long enough to be the victim of gangsters and circumstances, and I'd like to get back. Perhaps I am foolish. Perhaps I am losing my nerve or something, but I've had a sneaking desire to come back and try to find a job around here. Do you think I am crazy?"

  "No, I don't think you are crazy," said the older man with a deep note of satisfaction. "Perhaps I'm too prejudiced to advise you wisely in the matter, for I've been praying for months that God would send me the right one to take the place in our business of our junior partner who went abroad six months ago and got himself called to a very flattering position there. And boy, there's no one in the world I'd rather have than the son of my dearest friend George Morrell. If you'll stay here and take hold, I can offer you a junior partnership, with any prospect ahead you are willing to take."

  Daphne's unwilling feet carried her out of hearing then, but her heart was in another tumult of joy and wonder. Keith wanted to stay here! With all those flattering words of that nice Mr. Sawyer in his ears he wanted to stay here! He was really considering it. Then he did love the old house after all. He wasn't willing to go away into the world!

  But the happy light in her eyes didn't last long, for even before Mr. Dinsmore had gone out of the house the afternoon mail arrived, and there was one for Keith with a shore postmark. The high smart handwriting gave her instant dread. Was this from that insufferable girl, and would it upset Keith again? Ought she perhaps to show it to the doctor or consult the nurse before giving it to him? But she couldn't do that. He was sitting up and seeing people. He seemed to be calm and fully able to cope with his own problems. She had no right. It wasn't her business to withhold his mail.

  So after Mr. Dinsmore had gone, she took it to him. She hated to do so, lest it might take away that happy look in his face that seemed to be left from his recent visit with Mr. Dinsmore.

  He looked in surprise at the letter, scowled as he noted the handwriting, tore it open impatiently as she turned away, and read it with a frown.

  Dear Keith, he read,

  I've seen by the paper that you are fully recovered now,
and as there seems to be such a hostile group surrounding you I shall not venture to come to see you again.

  This is just to say that I am glad you are better at last, and you will be welcome here to rest and recuperate as long as you please. If you will let me know where to come for you I'll be glad to meet you, and I am willing to give you one more chance.

  Yours as ever,

  Anne Casper

  "Daphne!" he called almost impatiently, and then as she appeared in the doorway, "I wonder if you could get me some writing paper and a pen? I've got to write a letter at once."

  "I'll be glad to," said Daphne, her heart sinking, "but----do you think you ought? You don't want to put yourself back now that you are doing so well."

  Her voice had a frightened quake in it.

  "I shan't be but a minute," he said quickly. "This must go at once!"

  She brought the writing materials, and he wrote as if he did not have to pause to consider what he said.

  Dear Anne:

  The nurse tells me I was very rude to you, and I apologize. It is kind of you to offer a resting place, and I thank you for your invitation, though it is quite impossible for me to accept.

  You and I are not of the same world, and I should have known it long ago. I am saying definitely and finally good-bye, and good wishes.

  Keith Morrell

  He called to Ranse who happened to be passing the door and asked him to post the letter at once, airmail and special delivery. After that he called to the nurse that he was hungry and ate a better supper than he had yet managed since his illness. He seemed to be almost festive as Daphne came in later with another piece of toast he had demanded. But Daphne only smiled halfheartedly. She had seen the address on that letter he wrote as it lay on the kitchen table while Ranse obeyed his mother's command to wash his face and hands and comb his hair before going to the post office, and her heart was full of foreboding. If he was making up with that girl again, he was only bringing more trouble to himself, for she never would live in the dear old house. She would pull it down and build a modern one, if he married her. She could not forget the look on Anne's face as she said it ought to have been pulled down long ago.