The Man Thou Gavest Part 5

Suddenly an owl hooted hideously and, like a guilty thing, the girl by the window crept back to bed.

Owls were very wise and they could see things in the dark places with their wide-open eyes! Just then Nella-Rose could not have borne any investigation of her throbbing heart.

CHAPTER III

Lynda Kendall closed her desk and wheeled about in her chair with a perplexed expression on her strong, handsome face. Generally speaking, she went her way with courage and conviction, but since Conning Truedale's breakdown, an element in her had arisen that demanded recognition and she had yet to learn how to control it and insist upon its subjection.

Her life had been a simple one on the whole, but one requiring from early girlhood the constant use of her faculties. Whatever help she had had was gained from the dependence of others upon her, not hers upon them. She was so strong and sweet-souled that to give was a joy, it was a joy too, for them that received. That she was ever tired and longed for strong arms to uphold her rarely occurred to any one except, perhaps, William Truedale, the invalid uncle of Conning.

At this juncture of Lynda's career, she shrank from William Truedale as she never had before. Had Conning died, she knew she would never have seen the old man again. She believed that his incapacity for understanding Conning--his rigid, unfeeling dealing with him--had been the prime factor in the physical breakdown of the younger man. All along she had hoped and believed that her hold upon old William Truedale would, in the final reckoning, bring good results; for that reason, and a secret one that no one suspected, she kept to her course. She paid regular visits to the old man--made him dependent upon her, though he never permitted her to suspect this. Always her purpose had centred upon Con, who had, at first, appealed to her loyalty and justice, but of late to something much more personal and tender.

The day's work was done and the workshop, in which the girl sat, was beginning to look shadowy in the far corners where evidences of her profession cluttered the dim s.p.a.ces. She was an interior decorator, but of such an original and unique kind that her brother explained her as a "Spiritual and Physical Interpreter." She had learned her trade, but she had embellished it and permitted it to develop as she herself had grown and expanded.

Lynda looked now at her wrist-watch; it was four-thirty. The last mail delivery had brought a short but inspiring note from Con--per Dr.

McPherson.

"I've got my grip again, Lynda! The day brings appet.i.te and strength; the night, sleep! I wonder whether you know what that means? I begin to believe I am reverting to type, as McPherson would say, and I'm intensely interested in finding out--what type? Whenever I think of study, I have an attack of mental indigestion. There is only one fellow creature to share my desolation but I am never lonely--never lacking employment. I'm busy to the verge of exhaustion in doing nothing and getting well!"

Lynda smiled. "So he's not going to die!" she murmured; "there's no use in punis.h.i.+ng Uncle William any longer. I'll go up and have dinner with him!"

The decision made, and Conning for the moment relegated to second place, Lynda rose and smiled relievedly. Then her eyes fell upon her mother's photograph which stood upon her desk.

"I'm going, dear," she confided--they were very close, that dead mother and the live, vital daughter--"I haven't forgotten."

The past, like the atmosphere of the room, closed in about the girl. She was strangely cheerful and uplifted; a consciousness of approval soothed and comforted her and she recalled, as she had not for many a day, the night of her mother's death--the night when she, a girl of seventeen, had had the burden of a mother's confession laid upon her young heart....

"Lynda--are you there, dear?"

It had been a frequent, pathetic question during the month of illness.

Lynda had been summoned from school. Brace was still at his studies.

"Yes, mother, right here!"

"You are always--right here! Lyn, once I thought I could not stand it, and I was going to run away--going in the night. As I pa.s.sed your door you awoke and asked for a drink of water. I gave it, trembling lest you might notice my hat and coat; but you did not--you only said: 'What would I do if I woke up some night and didn't have a mother?' Lyn, dear, I went back and--stayed!"

Lynda had thought her mother's mind wandering so she patted the seeking hands and murmured gently to her. Then, suddenly:

"Lyn, when I married your father I thought I loved him--but I loved another! I've done the best I could for you all; I never let any one know; I dared not give a sign, but I want you--by and by--to go to--William Truedale! You need not explain--just go; you will be my gift to him--my last and only gift."

Startled and horrified, Lynda had listened, understood, and grown old while her mother spoke....

Then came the night when she awoke--and found no mother! She was never the same. She returned to school but gave up the idea of going to college. After her graduation she made a home for the father who now--in the light of her secret knowledge--she comprehended for the first time.

All her life she had wondered about him. Wondered why she and Brace had not loved and honoured him as they had their mother. His weakness, his superficiality, had been dominated by the wife who, having accepted her lot, carried her burden proudly to the end!

Brace went to college and, during his last year there, his father died; then, confronting a future rich in debts but little else, he and Lynda consequently turned their education to account and were soon self-supporting, full of hope and the young joy of life.

Lynda--her mother's secret buried deep in her loyal, tender heart--began soon after her return from school to cultivate old William Truedale, much to that crabbed gentleman's surprise and apparent confusion. There was some excuse for the sudden friends.h.i.+p, for Brace during preparatory school and college had formed a deep and sincere attachment for Conning Truedale and at vacation time the two boys and Lynda were much together.

To be sure the visiting was largely one-sided, as the gloomy house of the elder Truedale offered small inducement for sociability; but Lynda managed to wedge her way into the loneliness and dreariness and eventually for reasons best known to herself became the one bright thing in the old man's existence.

And so the years had drifted on. Besides Lynda's determination to prove herself as her mother had directed, she soon decided to set matters straight between the uncle and the nephew. To her ardent young soul, fired with ambition and desire for justice, it was little less than criminal that William Truedale, crippled and confined to his chair--for he had become an invalid soon after Lynda's mother's marriage--should misunderstand and cruelly misjudge the nephew who, brilliantly, but under tremendous strain, was winning his way through college on a pittance that made outside labour necessary in order to get through. She could not understand everything, but her mother's secret, her growing fondness for the old man, her intense interest in Conning, all held her to her purpose. She, single-handed, would right the wrong and save them all alive!

Then came Conning's breakdown and the possibility of his death or permanent disability. The shock to all the golden hopes was severe and it brought bitterness and resentment with it.

Something deep and pa.s.sionate had entered into Lynda's relations with Conning Truedale. For him, though no one suspected it, she had broken her engagement to John Morrell--an engagement into which she had drifted as so many girls do, at the age when thought has small part in primal instinct. But Conning had not died; he was getting well, off in his hidden place, and so, standing in the dim workshop, Lynda kissed her mother's picture and began humming a glad little tune.

"I'll go and have dinner with Uncle William!" she said--the words fitting into the tune--"we'll make it up! It will be all right." And so she set forth.

William Truedale lived on a shabby-genteel side street of a neighbourhood that had started out to be fas.h.i.+onable but had been defeated in its ambitions. It had never lost character, but it certainly had lost l.u.s.tre. The houses themselves were well built and sternly correct. William Truedale's was the best in the block and it stood with a vacant lot on either side of it. The detachment gave it dignity and seclusion.

There had been a time when Truedale hoped that the woman he loved would choose and place furniture and hangings to her taste and his, but when that hope failed and sickness fell upon him, he ordered only such rooms put in order as were necessary for his restricted life. The library on the first floor was a storehouse of splendid books and austere luxury; beyond it were bath and bedroom, both fitted out perfectly. The long, wide hall leading to these apartments was as empty and bare as when carpenter and painter left it. Two servants--husband and wife--served William Truedale, and rarely commented upon anything concerning him or their relations to him. They probably had rooms for themselves comfortably furnished, but in all the years Lynda Kendall had never been anywhere in the house except in the rooms devoted to her old friend's use. Sometimes she had wondered how Con fared, but nothing was ever said on the subject and she and Brace had been, in their visiting, limited to the downstair rooms.

When Lynda was ushered now into the library from the cold, outer hall it was like finding comfort and luxury in the midst of desolation. The opening door had not roused the man by the great open fire. He seemed lost in a gloomy revery and Lynda had time to note, un.o.bserved, the tragic, pain-racked face and the pitifully thin outlines of the figure stretched on the invalid chair and covered by a rug of rare silver fox.

There were birds in gilded cages by the large south window--mute little mites they were; they rarely if ever sang but they were alive! There were plants, too, luxuriously growing in pots and boxes--but not a flower on one! They existed, not joyously, but persistently. A Russian hound, white as snow, lay before the fire; his soft, mournful eyes were fixed upon Lynda, but he did not stir or announce the intrusion. A cat and two kittens, also white, were rolled like s...o...b..a.l.l.s on a crimson cus.h.i.+on near the hearth; Lynda wondered whether they ever played. Alone, like a dead thing amid the still life, William Truedale, helpless--death ever creeping nearer and nearer to his bitter heart--pa.s.sed his weary days.

As she stood, watching and waiting, Lynda Kendall's eyes filled with quick tears. The weeks of her absence had emphasized every tragic detail of the room and the man. He had probably missed her terribly from his bare life, but he had made no sign, given no call.

"Uncle William!"

Truedale turned his head and fixed his deep-sunk, brilliant eyes upon her.

"Oh! So you've thought better of it?" was all that he said.

"Yes, I've thought better of it. Will you let me stay to dinner?"

"Take off your wraps. There now! draw up the ottoman; so long as you have a spine, rely upon it. Never lounge if you can help it."

Lynda drew the low, velvet-covered stool near the couch-chair; the hound raised his sharp, beautiful head and nestled against her knee. Truedale watched it--animals never came to him unless commanded--why did they go to Lynda? Probably for the same reason that he clung to her, watched for her and feared, with sickening fear, that she might never come again!

"I suppose, since Con's death isn't on my head, you felt that you could forgive me, eh?"

"Well, something like that, Uncle William."

"What business is it of yours what I do with my money--or my nephew?"

These two never approached each other by conventional lines. Their absences were periods in which to store vital topics and questions--their meetings were a series of explosive outbursts.

"None of my business, Uncle William, but if I could not approve, why--"

"Approve! Huh! Who are you that you should judge, approve, or disapprove your elders?"

There was no answer to this. Lynda wanted to laugh, but feared she might cry. The hard, indignant words belied the quivering gladness of the voice that greeted her in every tone with its relief and surrender.

"I've got a good deal to say to you, girl. It is well you came to-day--you might otherwise have been too late. I'm planning a long journey."