So Dana went into the day's work with an absorbing interest that completely shut out unimportant annoyances. Dana's faith in an all-powerful heavenly Father was too strong for worry or annoyance to get an absorbing hold upon him.
But as the day wore on it began to come to him strongly that he would surely tell Valerie a little of his own story and prepare her to help his sister, in case she finally carried out her suggestion of inviting her to the Shannon home. What a wonderful answer to prayer that would be, to have Coralie become a real friend of Valerie Shannon's! If Coralie only would.
Coralie, meantime, was having troubles of her own.
Her very prayers had been interrupted that morning by a summons from her mother, and with a gasp she went with fear and trembling to meet her. Was this the way her newfound God was going to answer her as yet unspoken petition, just send her into battle unprepared?
Yet though she went defiantly, there was about her a certain soft deference, as if she sensed that one who was yielding to the leadership of God should not go as a worldling. Where she got that idea she did not know, but she carried it with her as she entered her mother's elaborately stark bedroom.
Lisa looked at her with cold, unloving eyes.
"Well, so you did decide to come back!" she said cuttingly. "It does seem as if you might have left some word for me, especially when you knew I was having guests and depending on you to help me entertain them. Where in the world have you been?"
Coralie promptly forgot her new resolves and tilted her chin impudently, no longer conscious of a God before whom she must walk softly.
"Does it make any difference where I was?" she returned. "I had an invitation to a house party and I chose to accept it, that's all. As for your having guests, that's a daily happening. If I stopped on that I wouldn't ever go anywhere. Besides, I didn't care for your guests."
"That's it exactly," said Lisa vindictively. "You chose to insult the people I invited. You knew they were coming largely on your account, at least one of them was, and you made a point of being away and not leaving word where I could call you up."
Coralie assumed a sleepy, indifferent attitude.
"You make me tired," she said, "spending time and effort telling me things I already know. You have stated the case quite clearly. I did all that, and I meant to. And what's more, I very possibly shall do it again if the same occasion arises."
"You'd better not!" said Lisa bitingly. "I warn you! You'd better not try that thing twice. I have ways of making you suffer if you do that again."
"How sweet of you, Lisa, to remind me of that!" said the girl bitterly. "But, of course, it wasn't necessary. The past has taught me to remember that well. In fact, I considered that matter before I went away, and decided the game was fully worth the trouble. Do you understand me? Lisa, I'm not going to be made your cat's-paw anymore. Certainly not for those two men! I despise them! I loathe them! And I'm done pretending I'm fond of them anymore."
"Indeed!"
"Yes, indeed!" went on the angry girl. "I used to wonder why you didn't leave me, too, when you ran away from your home and your obligations and your little boy baby. You chose to take me along. But lately I've been wondering if it wasn't just for this, to be assistant charmer for your various men friends."
"Be still!"
"No, I won't be still! You sent for me and now you've got to take it! And you might as well know now as later that I'm done going around with that Errol Hunt! Whether you like it or whether you don't like it, I'm done."
"You're a silly girl!" said Lisa contemptuously. "Here's a man who is fabulously rich, and adores the very ground you walk on, and you turn him down." Her voice was cold and hard. "You needn't think I'll support you after you've spent all your own money if you turn down a man like that!"
"After you've spent my money, you mean, Lisa!" said the girl bitterly, her eyes suddenly flashing. "Lisa, what's the idea of you writing my name on checks and making out I've written it? I thought they used to call that forgery!"
Lisa's eyes grew strangely dark, her face suddenly very white.
"What do you mean?" she screamed. "Talking to me like that? Using such criminal words! As if I wouldn't have a perfect right to write my name on your checks if I chose! The perfect idea! It seems to me you are getting very uppish and independent after all these years when I've been taking care of you. Using money for your foolishness that I might have used for myself."
"It was my money!" said Coralie, her chin thrown high. "It wasn't yours. You were only a trustee. It isn't as if you didn't have enough of your own for your own needs."
"Yes, certainly, I was a trustee! And now you are objecting to my being a trustee. What kind of a silly idea have you got anyway?"
Coralie looked at her mother coldly but firmly.
"Don't kid yourself," she said. "You aren't a trustee anymore. I'm of age. And I've told the bank not to cash any more checks for anybody but me, no matter how well they can imitate my handwriting!"
"You wicked girl!" cried Lisa, springing from her bed and standing slim and lovely in her costly negligee of pale blue chiffon ruffles, her little feet like pink flowers planted angrily far apart on the soft rug like a child in a rage. "Do you mean that you dared to do a thing like that? You! After all I've done for you! You whom I might have left behind in the hospital to go on charity if I had chosen! You dare to cast ignominy upon me like that! You shameful child! Do you really mean that you dared do a thing like that?"
"I did!" said Coralie. "And I made them understand that I meant it!" She was fully as angry as her mother now. "You thought I'd stand for your pilfering all my rights and squandering my money on that loathsome Ivor Kavanaugh! You thought you could sell me body and soul to that drunken Errol, and get away with it! And then when those two crooks got away with all the money, who would take care of you, if I had nothing? And who would take care of me?"
Lisa's slender form in its chiffon ruffles was fairly trembling with fury, and her eyes were flashing indignantly.
"You poor, silly little fool! Don't you know that Ivor and Errol are very rich and fully able to care for those who belong to them? And don't you know that you are in great danger of losing your hold on them if you go on the way you have been doing? Besides, don't you realize that I can as easily as anything declare that you are not yet of age, and take all your money from you, if you continue to act in such an idiotic way? I could even have you committed to an insane asylum if I felt it necessary!"
She paused, her voice growing cooler as she saw the startled look on her daughter's face.
"And I certainly will," she declared firmly, "if I hear of any more such performances! I didn't bring you away with me to have you turn against me and frustrate all my wishes!"
"No!" said Coralie slowly, solemnly. "You didn't intend that, but you are willing to do anything to me now if you don't get your way. Well, I'm not surprised, since you were willing to go off and leave my brother, a mere baby! You'll do anything!--If you can! But I'll take good care you can't!"
She flung the words with a blue flash of her eyes at her mother, defiantly.
But Lisa was almost beside herself.
"Try and stop me!" she flung back. "You little fool, you!"
"Watch me!" said Coralie as she turned swiftly toward the door.
"And don't you dare have any communication whatever with that contemptible brother of yours, do you hear me?" shouted Lisa, following her to the door. "I won't stand for his interference in our affairs, do you hear me?"
But Coralie went steadily on to her room.
Ten minutes later Coralie was speeding down to the bank as fast as a taxi could take her, and before the morning was over she had placed all her money, capital, interest, and everything, in another trust company. Returning later in the day, head held high, she found Lisa in one of her most imperious moods. She was on the watch for her and followed her stealthily to her room, slipping in after her before the girl realized she was there, and forestalling any attemp
t to lock her out.
"Now!" she said, turning on her with fire in her eyes and looking as Coralie could remember she looked sometimes when she was a child and had inadvertently transgressed some unguessed law. Inwardly she quailed over the remembered cruel whipping that always came with such a look. There were no looks of love in her memory to make her forget them, and she steeled herself for whatever might be coming, and did not let her eyes even flicker as she steadily faced the woman who had dominated her so many years, a woman whose temper she had fully inherited.
Lisa, after their talk that morning, had tried to get the bank over the telephone and stop whatever her child was perpetrating, but had found that she was already too late to do anything, even if she had had the power. Coralie had done the deed promptly and fully and had left no traces behind.
"What have you done? Silly, ignorant child, what ridiculous, disgraceful thing have you done that I shall have to humiliate myself to undo?"
"I haven't done anything silly, and I have not done it ignorantly," said Coralie coolly. "I have only done what I had a right to do, so that you couldn't use all my money up pampering that disgusting Ivor."
Her voice was so quiet, and so free from her usual raving and protest, that Lisa was almost awed by her for the instant. Then a frenzy of anger seized the mother again, and she stormed on.
" 'Disgusting'! Why should you use that detestable word about a noble and kindly gentleman?"
"Because I don't believe he is noble, and I'm sure he is not kindly, else why should he fawn upon your gullibility and torment you for money? I'm quite sure that the only reason those two keep hanging around here is to get every cent out of you they can possibly extract. If they found that your money was all gone, you would see them disappear quickly enough."
"Corinne! I forbid you to speak of my friends in that way. They are wealthy men of noble lineage. I happen to know more about them than you do. I have friends abroad who have inquired into their fortunes for me."
"Oh!" said Coralie. "Then you didn't trust them so much yourself at first, did you? But I wouldn't be surprised to hear that those friends abroad were suggested by Ivor himself, and perhaps even introduced by him. You are gullible, you know, in spite of your cleverness in some lines. And I ask you again, Lisa, as I asked you once before, if these gentlemen are so rich and noble, why do they wish to borrow from you, whom they have known so short a time? It doesn't hang together, Lisa. Rich, noble gentlemen don't borrow large sums from comparatively casual acquaintances, even if they are contemplating marriage, I'm sure they don't."
There was a look in Lisa's eyes like something at bay, as she faced her calm young daughter whose steady eye met her own with a look as battle-sure as ever Lisa had worn. It was almost as if Lisa were desperate. She stood for an instant watching her child, with a look of almost hate growing in her great expressive eyes. Then came a sudden change. Lisa was an accomplished actress. Sudden shame and sorrow swept over the beautiful contours of her face like a veil dropped about her. It was as if she were acknowledging that she had reached the limit of humiliation and could bear no more. Her shapely head drooped and drooped, and her lashes veiled the cunning in her eyes. For an instant she was an angel sheathed tenderly in repentance.
"I shall have to tell you the truth," she murmured finally, in a small but dominating voice. "I cannot let those noble gentlemen bear your misjudgment. It is not true that Ivor has been asking me for money. I told you that once to shield myself. It is to pay my honorable gambling debts. I want it, child. I must have it! And who should I come to in my need if not to you, my child for whom I have done so much?"
"Just what have you done for me?" Coralie watched her steadily, with a countenance unchanging, hard. "You took me away from what seems to have been a wonderful father. What kind of a mother have you been? And if what you say now is true, then it is the fault of those two men that you are in such straits. You never gambled that way before. Not beyond what you could pay. And I will not have that man get possession of the money my father left me."
"What have you done with your money? I demand to know!"
"I shall not tell you."
"Well, there are ways to make you tell me."
"Yes? Well, try them, and see how far you get with them." There was a haughty lift to the girl's head that gave her a strong resemblance to her mother. "I begin to see why my father safeguarded my money."
Lisa's eyes narrowed, and a furious anger swept her face, unlike any that Coralie could remember to have seen there before.
"Ah! I see now!" she fairly hissed. "I know where you have got all this rebellion and stubbornness. You have been with your brother. You have been taking counsel together against me. That is where you have been during this weekend."
"No," said Coralie quietly, steadily. "I have not been with Dana. I have not even seen him this weekend! But when I saw him last he talked to me about Jesus Christ. Lisa, did you ever know God?"
Lisa, checked in the midst of her fury by this most unexpected question, looked at her child in horror and then suddenly stamped her foot at her and shouted: "Get out! Get out of my house before I strike you! You are an unnatural, wicked child. Don't ever speak to me again, and get out of my house at once."
A look of almost pity came over Coralie's face.
"No," she said steadily. "I'm not going to get out of your house. You brought me with you, and I have a right to stay. At least until I choose to go. And I am not being wicked when I talk this way. I am asking a question because I want to know the answer. Didn't you ever know God? Didn't you even know about God? And if you did, why didn't you ever tell me? You should have told me. I think my father would have told me if you had let him have me. I had a right to know."
Lisa looked at her with eyes that seemed almost insane in their hate and fury, and then she screamed, burst into awful, overwhelming tears, and went reeling out of the room and down the hall to her own room, weeping wildly, hysterically.
Coralie had never seen her cry before. She stood staring at her as if she could not believe her eyes. And when Lisa's door closed with a slam and the sound of a turning key in the lock followed, the girl stepped back into her own room and locked the door. Then she turned and looked about her.
It was almost as if the shadow of those interrupted prayers of hers stood there, torn and waiting, like a rent robe that had been suddenly cast aside, and she were looking at them sorrowfully, regretfully.
At last she said aloud, with her face lifted up as if her gaze penetrated far beyond the ceiling of her room: "O God! Could anyone pray, after a scene like that?"
Chapter 15
The house was very still. Coralie's room was at the extreme end of the hall. She did not hear when Lisa went away. Her mind had been in too much of a tumult to be on the alert anyway.
She had dropped into a forlorn little heap on her bed and fallen into a deep, exhausted sleep, from which she did not waken until late in the afternoon when the maid tapped at her door.
"There's a special delivery letter for you, Miss Coralie," she called.
Coralie hastened to open her door, with a strange uncanny premonition, as she took the letter that had somehow a familiar look about it.
She glanced at the writing, and then she knew. That was the handwriting of her stepfather, Dinsmore Collette! She knew it at once, though she hadn't seen it since he had left her mother more than three years before.
Her heart contracted with quick fear.
She hadn't ever liked him, though he had been nice to her at first and had sometimes sought to please her by bringing her expensive presents. She had reluctantly consented to take his name and had made no objection to it until after Collette went away. Then she had made intermittent protests about it, only to be told that it was all nonsense, she might as well be Collette as anything.
"What's the difference? You'll soon marry somebody, and then the name will change without any trouble, so why worry?" had been Lisa's way of dropping the matter, and the girl had
been too indifferent to pursue the subject further.
But now as she gazed at the name in that handwriting, she was suddenly filled with aversion for it. Every curve of the letters seemed to recall his harsh, unkind treatment and selfish language, especially during the last months he was with them.
And now, what could he be writing her for? A cold horror filled her as she tore open the letter. Nothing good she was sure. Was he coming back to them? Had he a right to come? There had been no divorce. The last she had heard of him was that he had gone to Africa to shoot lions. Or was it India, or Siberia? She wasn't quite sure. Lisa had thought him dead, some word like that had come, she was sure. But this letter was postmarked here in the United States. A cold chill went down her spine. Was he going to try to make some trouble for them again? She had felt almost sorry for Lisa the last few weeks of his stay with them, he had been so studiedly hateful to her, so frightfully jealous and coarse in his accusations.
She took a deep breath and tried to steady the hand that held the thin foreign-looking paper on which the scrawl was written.
"My dear little girl," he addressed her. That was the way he used to address her before Lisa and he were married. She shuddered as she read on.
It is a long time since we have seen each other, and though you may be surprised, I have missed you a great deal, since certain distressing circumstances occurred that made my going the only honorable course for me. It was nice to have a pretty child calling me father. I did not realize when I went away how very much I was going to miss you!
In utter disgust Coralie flung the letter from her. She felt as if she could not bear to read another word from his false lips. It sounded so like the way he used to talk when he wanted her to take some offensive message to Lisa. Anger and fear surged in her heart. She cast a frantic look at the letter lying arrogantly on the floor and knew she must finish reading it. She had got to be prepared for whatever despicable thing the man might try next. She must find out why he had come into their vicinity again.