The Shield of Silence Part 67

"Yes," Martin replied. Doris was already on her way from the room. Joan dropped to the hearth and resumed her rubbing.

So the inevitable was upon her! She must not flinch! She wondered if this was the last dropped st.i.tch she must take up?

"Want me to go, too, Uncle David?" she asked, keeping her back rigid.

"No," Martin was regarding the straight set shoulders and the pretty cropped hair. "No! You have too shocking an effect upon young men. They look as if they had seen you before! They must take you gradually."

Martin laughed and lighted a cigar. He was recalling Raymond's face the night Joan had first appeared before him.

Joan struggled to keep control of the situation--she suddenly smeared her face with her sooty fingers and turned with a grimace.

"Am I discovered even in this disguise?" she said. Then:

"Uncle Davey, I believe you have your private opinion of me still."

"I have. I'll tell you now what it is--your face needs was.h.i.+ng."

"I mean--really!" the smudges acted as a mask and diverted attention.

"I wager you think girls like me--the me that _was_, the working girls--are, generally speaking, hounding young men on the matrimonial trail."

"Not necessarily _that_ trail," Martin was teasing.

"You're all wrong, Uncle Davey, as far as most of them are concerned.

They're young and love a good time and some of them have to learn a lot--learn not to play on volcanoes. But for downright, running-to-earth methods, look to such girls as Nan. They have the tide with them. Men, unless they're there to be caught, better watch out!"

"Oh! come, child, don't be sinister."

"I'm not, Uncle David," Joan's eyes shone; she was thinking of Patricia; "but you, everybody, lose a lot if they do not really know the truth about women--the real truth."

"My dear," David was quite serious, "I'm no longer hard or misjudging--I was frightened at your aunt's methods with you, but you're proving me wrong every day."

"You should have trusted her more, Uncle David."

"Yes, you are right, in part. I should have trusted her less--in some ways."

"About me?"

"No. About herself." Martin flecked the ashes from his cigar. "And now,"

he said with a huge sigh that seemed to sweep all regrets before it, "go and wash your face!"

Joan ran away, and when she came back the room was empty and the _honk-honk_ of Martin's horn sounded down the river road.

Then, as often happens when one stands in an empty room, Joan was conscious of a supersensitiveness. She, quite naturally, attributed it to the ordeal she was about to undergo--the meeting with Clive Cameron and her late talk with Martin. Must she always be on the defensive? Must she always feel that her volcano had blown her up when really she had escaped by its light?

While there was a certain amount of pleasurable excitement in the meeting with Cameron, while it lacked all that her meeting with Raymond had held, still her past experiences were of so uncommon a nature that she could not contemplate them without nervous strain, and she wished that she might have had a longer reprieve before Cameron came.

"With nothing really to be ashamed of," she thought, "I feel like a criminal dodging justice. I wish something so big would come that I could lose myself in it."

Then she walked to the window overlooking The Gap.

"It's no easy matter, Joan my lamb!" almost it seemed as if it were Patricia speaking, "to tie both ends of the rainbow together." Joan smiled at her thought.

"Dear, dear old Pat!" she spoke the words aloud. "The very thought of you--braces me."

Joan was still on the backward trail. She did not often tread it, but when she did she always returned starry-eyed and brave-hearted. That was her reward: the reward that she could share with no one--except as it helped her to live.

Presently she turned to her task of restoring the motto on the fireboard. She worked vigorously, intently, and then leaned back to get a better view.

Suddenly, as if they were alive, the words emerged from the last sweep of the cloth.

"Aha, I am warm. I have seen the fire."

The meaning broke like suns.h.i.+ne from the clouds. It made Joan laugh.

"Well, of all the funny things," she said aloud, "and from the Bible, too," for "Isaiah" was brought into evidence by another rub. "This house is certainly haunted."

Just then a sharp knock on the panels of the door, set wide to the sweet summer day, startled Joan and brought her to her feet, with that quivering of the nerves that betokened an almost psychic state.

A tall man stood in the doorway. His clothes--good ones, well fas.h.i.+oned--were wrinkled and travel stained. They gave the impression of having been slept in. The man was like his garments--the worse for wear but, originally, of good material.

Joan recognized that at once--after she got over the surprise of finding that he was not Clive Cameron.

"Good morning," she said, quietly, while a familiarity about the stranger puzzled her. "Come in and sit down, please."

The man came in, walking stiffly, his eyes fixed upon Joan in a way that confused her. She felt that she ought to remember him, but could not.

"I've tied my horse down by the road," the stranger said, sitting down by the long table, "I got the beast at the station. The distance was longer than I imagined and the roads are--to say the least--not oiled."

He laughed and flecked the dust from his coat--still keeping his eyes on Joan.

"Is your aunt at home?" he continued. So then, the man should be recognized--but he still eluded Joan's memory.

"No, she is not. She will not be back for some time. I am sorry that I cannot recall you--I am sure I have seen you--but----"

"You'd have a remarkable memory if you did recall me," there was a sneer in the laugh that followed the words; "you were very young when you saw me before. Perhaps I can help you--you are--Joan, are you not?"

"Yes." Joan sat down opposite the man--her hands were clasped close.

"I'm George Thornton, formerly of the Philippines, later of South Africa, more recently of New York, where I stayed long enough to learn my way here. Incidentally, I am your father."

Had Joan been standing she would have fallen. As it was, she quickly overcame the dizziness that made the speaker seem to dance about and, by gripping her hands closer, she steadied herself.

"I suppose you have never heard of me before?"

"Oh! yes!" Joan listened to her own voice critically; "Aunt Doris told Nancy and me all about you."

"All, eh?" Thornton could barely keep the surprise and relief from his voice. This simplified matters and he could talk freely.

"What do you want?" The question as Joan spoke it sounded brutal. "I do not suppose you have come here, after all these years, for nothing."