Kerry (7 page)

Kerry, aware of her own shabbiness, in spite of the new black funeral dress, shrank back and tried to explain that she was not the person he supposed her to be. She was just plain Miss Kavanaugh who had purchased the reservation that Mrs. Winship had given up.

The steward eyed her glorious red-gold hair that had slipped from beneath the little black hat and was waving gorgeously around the girl’s delicate face. He decided it would be just as well to leave the arrangements as they were. Her name might not be Winship but she had the look of a perfect lady.

So Kerry, having sat for a few minutes in her steamer chair and contemplated her shabby little shoes, decided to get herself back into shelter and see what she could do toward furbishing up her scanty wardrobe for the occasion. Her one evening dress was a dark green chiffon she herself had fashioned from an old gown of her mother’s, and there was a rip in it that needed attention.

Kerry came shyly to the dining room that evening in her simple green chiffon, with a tiny string of pearl beads around her neck and her red-gold hair fastened with a little gold comb that had belonged to her great-grandmother. Three gorgeous golden-hearted orchids leaned from the mossy green of her dress. She found she was no longer “Mrs. Winship.” She had somehow blossomed into “Miss Kavanaugh,” the daughter of the great scientist of whom everybody in the scientific world had heard. She could not understand how they had learned who she was, and she trembled inwardly all through the meal, wondering if there had been a message about her sent to the captain by her stepfather, and if perhaps the captain already had orders from Sam Morgan to detain her when they reached the other side.

On Kerry’s right there sat a tall young man with clear gray eyes and a nice voice. He reminded her vaguely of something pleasant, and he spoke to her as if he had met her before, though he did not explain why he was so friendly. He seemed to know all about her. He spoke of her father and of having heard him lecture once. It warmed the lonely girl’s heart to talk with one who held her father in such reverence and spoke of his mind and his work in such a tone of deep respect. She found his name was Graham McNair, and she heard the man across the table call him Doctor. She wondered if that stood for medicine or philosophy.

There were several other women at the table, all older than Kerry, two of them wives of professors in American universities. Kerry was the only girl at the table.

The women looked upon her with great favor. As she listened to them she perceived that somehow her father’s fame had preceded her and given her a prestige that her simple self and her shabby garments could never have claimed in such surroundings. It surprised her to know that her quiet, unassuming father had yet commanded so much enthusiasm from people of the world. She knew that among scientists he was beloved, but he had never sought wide popularity.

She would not have been so much surprised at her reception if she could have heard Graham McNair before her arrival at the table. Her heart would have glowed at the wonderful things he told about her noted father—though she would still have wondered where he gained some of his information, unless she had happened to hear him mention the name of Peddington.

“Peddington, you know, the old bookshop in London. He knows everything about the great men of today, especially the scientists, and he was a personal friend of Shannon Kavanaugh!”

If she had heard that she would perhaps have remembered the clear gray eyes that had searched her as she passed him in the bookshop yesterday morning, and the nice kind voice that had given the information about the ship’s sailing. As it was her memory only hovered vaguely about something pleasant and indefinite, and she was glad to have such a friendly neighbor at the table.

Across the table sat a young man with very black eyes and a sulky mouth who was introduced as Professor Henry Dawson. His eyes and the careless slump of his shoulders, as well as his halfdisgruntled expression, seemed strangely familiar, also, to Kerry.

She would certainly have been amazed if she could have known that his presence at the table was due to the fact that he had professed to be an intimate friend and associate in the same line with her father, and that he had spent time trying to bribe the steward to seat him next to her.

The steward had arranged that he should sit at the same table, but his own insight into character as well as his desire to please the owner of the clear gray eyes had stopped at that, and Henry Dawson, PhD, sat across the table, down a little way, not even exactly opposite to the daughter of the great man. Henry Dawson, PhD, might be the friend of Shannon Kavanaugh, and Shannon Kavanaugh’s daughter, all he liked, but he was not going to get the chance to monopolize the girl with the red-gold hair during that voyage, not at the table anyway!

So Kerry Kavanaugh, shabby little daughter of a dear dead scientist, running away into the world to hide, found herself unexpectedly among friends. And many discriminating people in the dining room turned to look and ask: “Who is that girl with the red-gold hair? Isn’t she quaint? Quite a style of her own, hasn’t she? She’s so distinguished looking!”

S
am Morgan was one of those who think they are possessed of all knowledge and can handle any problem with the greatest possible efficiency.

Therefore, when Sam Morgan’s bride of a few hours descended upon him from the hotel room where she had gone to bring down the presumably repentant stepdaughter, and with open note and streaming eyes had proclaimed the flight of that daughter, he wasted no time in idle talk.

“H’m! Gone, is she?” he said, his little slit eyes growing narrower. “Alrighty, you just run back up and stay there till I see what I can do. There, there, baby, don’t you cry! She’ll come back. You wait till I get after her. What’s that? Oh, no, she won’t drown herself. No, she won’t kill herself. She’s got too much sense! Besides, you see you went at this thing in the wrong way. I told you. But there’s no use crying over spilt milk. You get back up there, Isobel, and just be calm, in case she comes in.”

“But suppose she doesn’t c–c–c–come!” wailed the mother, always a petted half-frightened child.

“Well, never mind, you just be calm in case she does come, and leave this thing to me. Money’ll do anything! Money’ll find her alrighty. You leave this to me! Get a book and read a story and leave it all to me!”

So Isobel, greatly relieved, went smiling back upstairs and settled down to a book, after having carefully gone over her own possessions to see if Kerry had taken any of them with her, and also ascertained what of Kerry’s belongings were missing.

Yes, Kerry’s clothes were gone, and the little old school trunk was gone, and Shannon Kavanaugh’s papers and manuscripts were gone, and his books. How like Kerry to take those old books! Not worth carting around! Then the child had really intended her going to be something more than a mere gesture!

The mother gazed around with troubled eyes, for she really was fond of Kerry. Kerry was a habit that she would not know how to do without. It half frightened her to think of getting along without Kerry.

But when she noticed that her own lovely photograph in its silver frame was gone, too, the picture that Shannon had loved so much and upon which he had spent such an enormous sum even when they were poor, her eyes took on unwonted starriness. Ah! Kerry had taken her picture! Then Kerry still loved her and Kerry would come back, as Sam Morgan had said; Kerry would come back and they would all be happy. They would live in castles and yachts and travel a lot, and buy new clothes in Paris whenever they liked, and it would be heaven below!

So Kerry’s mother sat down to finish the last three chapters of a most exciting novel.

Sam Morgan took himself at once to his lawyer, whom he ordered to do something about his newly acquired stepdaughter of his.

“And make it snappy!” he said as he rose to leave the office. “I’ve got my plans made to leave London, and I don’t want to be hung up around here waiting for a spoiled child, see? Get your best detectives on the job and make it snappy! She can’t have gone far. She hasn’t got a cent that I know of, or if she has it can’t be many. She’s likely sitting around in some park crying her eyes out for her mother by this time. She isn’t much more than a kid. But she’s a humdinger! Yes, I said it. She’s got the looks alrighty! Now get to work. Yes, you can leave a message at the usual address. If she’s roaming the streets put her up at some decent hotel till morning. The Missis and I are out on our honeymoon. See? And we don’t wantta be bothered. But you keep an eye on the young one. She’s a little bit slippery. Even if you have to put handcuffs on her, don’t let her give you the go-by. Because I wantta get out of this little old dirty town. Got my yacht waiting out in the harbor for a week, waiting for the Missis to make up her mind, see? And I don’t wantta wait a day longer. So, make it snappy!”

Having thus delivered himself Sam Morgan slammed the door of the office breezily, and went his way, stopping to see a few old friends, getting himself jovially drunk, and then more and more unpleasantly drunk, until he was in a noisy frame of mind when he returned to his waiting bride.

Isobel Morgan had finished her book, and her last box of sweets, and was sitting curled up on the sofa pathetically weeping into her lace-bordered handkerchief. She was blaming Kerry as usual for trouble she had brought upon herself. Between sobs she occasionally took time to admire her white hand with its flash of diamonds, and to put it up gracefully and pat her fresh marcel into shape. Just to think, now she could have her hair attended to by a professional, always! And Kerry, too! Kerry must have more attention and begin to dress and groom herself as the rest of the world did!

Isobel had never seen Sam Morgan drunk before. She was not used to seeing anyone drunk. In the old days at home in her dear old South, when Sam Morgan used to take her on surreptitious rides behind his fiery pair of Kentucky bays, her father used to hint things about Sam Morgan’s habits, but Sam had never been drunk in her presence. He knew better.

But now, she was
his!
He had married her good and tight that morning. Her father was dead, and her mother was dead, and her fool of a bookworm husband was dead, and her pretty little puritan of a daughter had run away, and she was
his!
What could she do about it if he was drunk? So Sam came noisily into the room where his wife awaited him weepily and breezed up to her, giving her a good, resounding smack on her prettily painted lips.

“Hello, baby! Bawling again? I didn’t know you were one of those sob-sisters. I didn’t marry you to furnish you a wailing wall. Get busy and mop up, and let me see a little sunshine! ‘Let a little sunshine in!—Let a little sunshine in—!’” he chanted noisily, tripping a clumsy step or two to his own measure.
“Get me?”

He suddenly stopped fiercely in front of her and glared into her face.

Shannon Kavanaugh had kept Isobel most carefully from sights and sounds that might disturb her. And before that her father had protected her young eyes from sights that were not fit for her. She had smelled liquor on his breath of course when he had kissed her, but for the last two or three weeks Isobel herself had been sipping a little from a wine glass now and then just for politeness, when she went out with him to lunch or dinner. She had been brought up to disapprove of drinking on general principles, but she could not be rude, and she had intended when they were married to gently draw him away from it. Men by themselves fell into habits, but everything would be different when they were married. So had she reasoned, if Isobel Kavanaugh could be said ever to have reasoned about anything at all.

So now, when Sam Morgan stopped in front of her with his ugly red face scowling into hers, and his ugly coarse voice howling, “Let a little sunshine in!” she sat up and mopped her eyes and began to giggle. The giggle was perhaps a little frightened, but as it grew in strength the fright vanished.

“Oh, Sam! How funny you are!” she giggled. “You’re so really witty, you know! But you oughtn’t to sing that way! You really ought not, you know. I think that’s something sacred you’re singing, isn’t it, Sam? One of those new American jazz-hymns? I’m quite sure it is, Sam, and you
oughtn’t!
You oughtn’t to make fun of sacred things.”

Sam stared and then guffawed.

“So! You’re doing the pious act, baby!” he roared. “I wouldn’t, baby! Its’ not your line! You’re not heavyweight enough for that. Do the violet act, and be my pretty Baby Bell!
Isobel, Baby
-Bell! And get a hustle on, will you, old lady? I want my dinner. We’re going to a swell joint tonight to celebrate, and if you don’t get a hustle on I’ll go alone! See?”

He fell into swing and chanted: “On my wedding night, when the moon shines bright, I’ll dine ah–la–lo–o–one!”

Isobel got herself off her sofa and stared at him half frightened and then giggled again.

“Oh, Sam, you’re so funny!” she gurgled. “I’ll be ready in just a minute. I must powder my nose.”

She emerged from her room in a moment serenely with a question in her eyes.

“But Sam, what did you do about Kerry? Is she coming with us?” He whirled around viciously.

“Look here now, you leave Kerry to me. I said I’d see to her, didn’t I? I said I’d do it, didn’t I? Do you trust me, baby, or don’t you trust me? That’s a question for you to decide right here and now. Of course if you don’t that’s the end—” He looked at her like a lion about to eat her.

“Oh, certainly!” she fluttered.

“Well—now that sounds more like it! You trust me! Well, I knew you did, so I’ve attended to that matter, and it’ll come out alrighty. See? I’ve put it in the proper hands.”

“And did you find Kerry?” asked Kerry’s mother eagerly, beginning to brighten.

“Well—it’s all right. I’ve put it in the proper hands.”

“Is she going out with us this evening?” asked Isobel anxiously.

Now that she had carried her point and married her rich former-lover, she longed most of all for Kerry’s approval. She was not used to doing anything without Kerry. It went against her spoiled yielding nature to have to depend upon her own decisions and suffer the consequences of her own acts. Someone else had always protected her from consequences all her days.