She turned over comfortably and went to sleep.
Chapter 9
By the time Keith reached the city he had succeeded in dispelling to a certain extent the dismay that had seized him when he found himself really going away from Rosedale. He hadn't been able to explain that dismay to himself. He told himself that it was homesickness and the memory of his mother, but he congratulated himself that he had come awake to his own feelings in time to save the house. He realized that it would have been in the nature of a disaster to have woken up someday and discovered its loss after it was too late to get it back again.
Funny little kid, that Ranse, to go fighting for an idea that had been given to him in his babyhood! Because that empty house couldn't really have meant anything to a child like that. But he was grateful to him for fighting against the thought and for wanting to save a place that had been idealized for him.
He must keep in touch with that family. They were rare. The father was a most unusual man, not at all a modern man of the world. He must be famous in his line, or a modern university would not keep him nowadays. A man who had family worship in his home and spoke of God as if He really existed! He must look him up and see just what his line was. A scholar he was surely. And the children all showed that they were bright. He let his mind run back and remember Daphne's quickness in the classes, the ways she so easily outstripped most of her classmates--and the way they were jealous of her and held aloof from her, just because she was different. They called her a grind and pitied her. And now he saw that she was as far above them all as a star. Well, he wished his mother had known her well. It was curious why she hadn't. But he could see that the unassuming nature of both Mr. and Mrs. Deane, and their desire to bring their children up in their own way and not just exactly after the pattern of all others, might have been a barrier not easily overcome. He remembered that his own mother had been of a reserved nature also.
When Keith Morrell got out of the train in the city station to take the New York express, he almost ran into an elderly man who was walking in the other direction. He righted himself and apologized and suddenly recognized one of his father's closest friends.
"Oh, Mr. Dinsmore, I'm sorry!" he apologized. "But I'm so glad to have run into you. It's good to see one of Father's friends."
"Why, it's Keith Morrell, isn't it?" said the older man, grasping Keith's hand warmly. "Well, I declare! You've grown up! And aren't you the very image of your dear father as he was when I first knew him! I've been wondering where you were. You know, I used to tell your father that I had my eye on you to come into our firm when you got ready. You always said you were going to be an architect, you know. Have you got over that?"
"No, I'm doing my best to be one," Keith smiled. "I wish I'd known there was a chance for me with you."
"But why didn't you come back and ask?"
"Well, I guess I shrank from coming back where there were so many memories. And then I got a chance to go into an office in New York--but I wish--"
"Well, perhaps it isn't too late yet, boy! New York, eh? Who are you with?"
"Sawyer, Poole, and Jewett."
"Not half bad to have landed with them. Partnership, is it?"
"Well, not yet," grinned Morrell.
"Well, things turn over in this world, and maybe you'll want to make a change sometime. If you ever do, look me up. I don't want to influence you against your will, but I've always had a liking for you."
"Thanks awfully!" said Keith. "I'll keep that in mind. I'm not so sure but there might come an upheaval of things somewhere soon, and I might take you at your word."
"Good! Glad to hear it!" said the older man fervently. "I've always looked on you as a sort of half son of mine anyway, and I'd like nothing better than to have you around all the time. By the way, are you selling the old home? I met that agent out in Rosedale the other day, and he said he was selling it for you."
"No," said Keith firmly. "I'm not selling. He wrote he had a customer, and I came down to look things over, but I've decided to keep it. Maybe I'm foolish, but I can't quite make up my mind to part with it."
"Good boy! I'm glad of that. I'd hate to see it pass out of the family. I know your father cared a lot for it, and sacrificed to get it back. You know he was born there, and it had belonged for a couple of generations back to the Morrells. Your father was proud of its history. It was his dream to leave it to you."
"Yes," said Keith with compunction in his voice. How could he have forgotten all that and let himself think for a moment that he could sell the dear old home?
"Well, I'd like to see you married to some nice girl and living there," said Mr. Dinsmore wistfully. "Like to see you coming in town every day to our office. Taking over after I'm gone, perhaps. I think we could work together, boy! Think it over! I'm getting old, you know, and I'd like to see somebody around that sort of belonged."
"You're very kind," said Keith, feeling suddenly as if he were a little boy again and this old friend was offering to take him to the zoo.
"I'm taking the train for Chicago tonight, and I'll have to be moving. It's almost starting time. But think it over, boy, think it over. And run down sometime and see me, anyway."
Then he passed on through the gate to the Chicago train, and Keith Morrell stood staring after him, finding something like tears in his own eyes.
Suddenly it came over him that he was glad he had come down, glad he had stayed over another day and started home just at this time. If he hadn't, he never would have met this kindly friend, never have known the friendship that was still his, and somehow it touched him greatly. He wouldn't have missed that warm grip of the hand, that kindly tone as he said, "Think it over, boy" for anything in the world.
Thoughtfully he boarded his own train for New York. He had bought an evening paper, but he did not look at it when he sat down. Instead he pulled his hat down over his eyes, put his head back, closed his eyes, and just thought, feeling himself in the grip of an emotion that was sweet and yet rather overwhelming.
It was strange how those few words recalling his father, and the home he had sacrificed to buy and save for him, had changed his attitude toward the old house. He wanted now to keep it for its own sake. Not just for mere sentimental reasons, but because it represented the abiding place of three generations of his family. It stood for fine noble things; for sweet, homely, old-fashioned, God-fearing standards; and for clean living, right thinking. He had a sudden desire to live there someday himself and continue the traditions that had made the place respected.
It was likely that the tale Ransom Deane had brought home from his bloody fight had been very much overdrawn. It was unthinkable that any man would dare to come into that staid old quiet suburb and attempt to make a roadhouse and gambling den or worse of a respected old house, but it would be bad enough just to have a place that had been a landmark for a century or two turned into a noisy apartment house.
But anyway, no matter what the intention, he was definitely not going to sell it. That was settled. He had given his word. And the minute he set foot in the Pennsylvania Station in New York he would send a telegram to that persistent agent in unmistakable language, once and for all. Someday--someday, he would go back there and live. He smiled ruefully as he remembered Dinsmore's picture of his wife living with him there. His wife! Well, if Anne Casper was to be his wife, which of course was by no means certain now, he was quite sure she would never live there. He could see her lip curl and her nose tilt at the thought of quiet little Rosedale, and even if she came there she would feel that the old Morrell place was on the wrong side of town and would want to build on Winding Way or Latches Lane as Evelyn Avery had suggested.
Oh, Anne Casper! Why couldn't she be different? Why couldn't she be sweet and practical like the girl he had been with all day? He'd half closed his eyes and watched the darkness whirl by, interspersed with flashes of lights in small towns, and remembered Daphne's face as she had looked around upon the rooms in his old home and loved it. How sh
e had caressed every old bit of polished furniture with her glance, and her tone had fairly lilted with pleasure in each room. How she had helped the old days to return, and memories and people to troop around their rooms again. How she had brought back even the sweet little drama of his own evening prayers and reimagined it for him as he stood there beside her. She, a little neighborhood girl, who had made pleasant playtime pictures of his home and rejoiced in them!
Why couldn't Anne Casper be like that? Why couldn't her eyes grow misty over the tale of his childhood? But they wouldn't. He knew they wouldn't. It wasn't in her to be anything but bored by such a recital. He couldn't fancy himself telling her these things, these sacred things. Or if he did, he couldn't fancy her doing anything but laugh at them, laugh them to scorn. She would call him a sentimentalist. He could hear the tones of her voice, and he winced over the thought. Why had he ever got tangled up with Anne Casper, anyway? She wasn't his kind, and he wasn't hers. She wasn't a girl his mother would have loved. And she would never have honored his mother and her standards the way a girl he loved should honor them.
And yet--she was very beautiful! And sometimes she seemed to care for him a great deal!
Well, he was probably done with Anne. She had given her ultimatum, and he had turned it down. If she gave in and called him back to her--but she wouldn't, not Anne, with that stubborn pretty little chin. But if she did, it would prove that she really cared for him, wouldn't it? Or would it? When he tried to judge Anne, he was perplexed. She seemed to be an unknown quantity. Perhaps that was one reason why she intrigued him so much.
And what would life be, lived beside a woman like that? Tempestuous? He wouldn't like to live in the midst of tempest and uncertainty. He wanted a calm, peaceful home, filled with love and sunshine. Was it conceivable that Anne could fit into such a background? Could help to create such an atmosphere?
He found himself thinking of the home where he had been all day. The sunny atmosphere, the free harmonious life of the whole family, all working together, all interested in the same things.
But work! Anne didn't work. She had probably never done anything harder in her life than to play a set of tennis, or sail a boat, or win a swimming match. She wouldn't want to work. She might even feel degraded if she had to work. He couldn't think of her taking down curtains and washing them and putting them on stretchers. He had never seen her tried, of course, and he might possibly be misjudging her, but his feeling about it was that she would scorn such employment, consider it menial.
And yet what a good time he and that other girl had had today working side by side. How utterly unspoiled she was, how sane and wise she seemed! Now that was the kind of girl his mother would have approved as a friend for him.
But Daphne Deane was "as good as engaged to the new minister." The words still echoed unpleasantly in his mind from the vine-clad porch of the Gassner house and reached him over the miles that were rapidly multiplying between himself and the delightful day he had spent. Involuntarily he sighed. Whatever the new minister was, he hoped he was good enough for Daphne. And of course a minister would be very well suited-- No, he would put it the other way, Daphne Deane would be an ideal minister's wife. He could see that in a flash. But he grudged her that life unless the minister were also an ideal minister. Well, perhaps he was. Why should he care anyway? But he did. Probably just because it was all a part of the old life that she had given him back again, and he hated to think of anything imperfect connected with it. Anyway, he must stop thinking about it. The thought of that minister, whom he had seen but dimly in the moonlight, was somehow spoiling the brightness of the day he had just spent, and he didn't want it spoiled. It was something unsullied and lovely to keep in memory. And besides, he had Anne Casper to think of.
Or did he? Well, at least he would write a letter to Daphne, thanking her for the day. That would be expected of him. And he had promised dear old Emily Lynd to go down sometime soon and call on her. He could run in on the Deanes for a few minutes' call, and then--well, probably he wouldn't see them anymore, but it was nice to have them on his list of friends. And he must never forget that Daphne had given him back the most precious things of his youth, the things he might otherwise have forgotten utterly till it was too late to regain them.
As he sat thinking he began to enumerate in his mind things that he ought to change in his habit of living. Prayer. That was among the most important. He must get back to some sort of prayer. He wasn't just sure how much he still believed of the old religion his mother had taught him, but he had a feeling that prayer, at least, was essential, that it would somehow clarify the atmosphere of his life and help him to see things more clearly in their relative values.
He tried to think back and remember when he had stopped praying, and decided that it was somewhere along in the second year of his college life. He had a roommate who never prayed, who jeered at the idea in a pleasant gentlemanly way, and who was a swell fellow in other ways if there ever was one. Had he let that influence him? The swell fellow had had a brief and brilliant career, married a famous beauty, a youthful divorcee, before his graduation and three weeks after his marriage had plunged from an airplane and ended his bright career. It all came back to Keith now, that first night that he had knelt to pray with his friend Estabrook in the room. The caustic sarcasm, the mild amusement in his handsome eyes. He had prayed hurriedly, secretly, after that, anxious to please his mother and keep his promises to her and yet not get caught again on his knees. Fool that he had been. Young fool! Extremely young! Not afraid of his friend, of course, yet unwilling to seem a sissy!
Of course, he couldn't have had any very deep conviction himself about prayer, or he wouldn't have been a coward before a fellow-student. But yet he could remember back even when he was a boy in high school, what utter faith he had had in prayer. How he had resorted to it on all occasions when he felt a need of any kind of help, how often he had thought he received distinct answers to prayer and felt a throb of thankfulness. How implicit had been his faith when he was quite young! And where had it gone? Had it really gone or just been mislaid? Covered up by the rubbish with which he had chosen to clutter his life? When had it disappeared? He couldn't quite remember. There hadn't been any distinct time when he abandoned it. He just forgot all about it, in the cares and interests and sorrows that the years had brought.
But now that he recognized its absence he had a definite idea that he ought to do something about it. The son of his father and mother had no business going around like an atheist. He knew better. He recognized that that interesting college chum of his must have been a sort of atheist, or he never would have lived his life as he had, died as he had. He remembered sharp-flung words that voiced his unbelief. They hadn't bothered him at the time, but he saw now they should have done so. If he had not allowed his Christian faith to become dim, a lot of things might have been different in his own life. Perhaps even this perplexity of Anne Casper would never have been there to vex him! And dimly it came to him that his own life might have counted for more in its contact with the lives of others. Perhaps something had been expected of him when in the course of human destinies his life had been sorted out in a pair with Harold Estabrook for two long years. Estabrook was gone beyond his power to reach now, and his own life was at least two years back in its moral tone from what it had been then. He could not go back and undo any of it! That was an appalling thought!
He went on with his list. Prayer. He must begin to pray again. That is, if it was possible to get back to praying terms with a God whom he had forgotten so long.
His Bible? Well, of course that, too, had been packed away in a trunk that same year with his discarded prayers and eventually been given away to the Salvation Army, hadn't it? No, perhaps he had kept it after all. He seemed to remember that at the last minute he had found an inscription written by his mother on the flyleaf, a precious personal word, and for that he had kept it. It must be packed away somewhere in the old house. Sometime he would go down again
to Rosedale and hunt it up, just for the sake of reading his mother's tender words.
Then there was a church service. He hadn't attended a church service in a long time. Of course, there had been chapel in college, but it was always more or less formulaic and quite elective. Even when he went he had usually used the time to glance over the notes of some topic that he must be ready to discuss in a following class. But gradually he had ceased even the occasional form of attendance at chapel.
Of course, when they were in Europe he sometimes went to a church with his mother but more to admire the architecture of the building in which they were supposed to be worshipping than with any idea of worship.
He resolved that he would start going to church again. Not that he was especially interested in doing so, but merely that he might cultivate a Christian character such as his father's son might be supposed to have. He felt that all these things would be in the nature of anchors to keep his life from drifting against dangerous rocks and into unknown harbors. It was not that in any sense he felt that he was a sinner and needed a Savior. He was merely bringing his life to conform once more to the path in which his parents, who had been successful and respected citizens, had set his young feet. He felt that they were pretty safe guides to follow.
By the time that the train reached the Pennsylvania Station in New York, Keith Morrell felt with self-respecting relief that he was well on his way to becoming everything that his mother could possibly expect of him.
He went at once to the telegraph desk and sent his message to Knox couched in no uncertain terms.
Have decided not to sell my property in Rosedale. Please take it off your list. Do not even care to rent at present. Send bill for any expense you may have incurred in the matter.
Signed,
Keith Morrell
Having paid for his message he turned away satisfied that he was well on his way back to his mother's teaching and his mother's God. If he felt anything more about it at all, it was that God would be well pleased to see him coming back. He had perhaps been rather impolite to God for a time, but he was going to make it all up now, and refusing to sell the old home was the first step in setting his spiritual house in order.