Her Father's Daughter Part 23

A personal history seems infinitely more insistent and unusual. I ran away from my lessons, and my work, and came to you, Peter, because I had a feeling that there was something you could give me, and I thought you would."

Peter smiled a slow curious smile.

"I like your line of thought, Linda," he said quietly. "It greatly appeals to me. Any time an ancient and patriarchal literary man named Peter Morrison can serve as a rock upon which a young thing can rest, why he'll be glad to be that rock."

"What were you doing?" asked Linda abruptly.

"Come and see," said Peter.

He led the way to the garage. His worktable and the cement floor around it were littered with sheets of closely typed paper.

"I'll have to a.s.semble them first," said Peter, getting down on his knees and beginning to pick them up.

Linda sat on a packing case and watched him. Already she felt comforted.

Of course Peter was a rock, of course anyone could trust him, and of course if the tempest of life beat upon her too strongly she could always fly to Peter.

"May I?" she inquired, stretching her hand in the direction of a sheet.

"Sure," said Peter.

"What is it?" inquired Linda lightly. "The bridge or the road or the playroom?"

"Gad!" he said slowly. "Don't talk about me being a rock! Rocks are stolid, stodgy unresponsive things. I thought I was struggling with one of the biggest political problems of the day from an economic and psychological standpoint. If I'd had sense enough to realize that it was a bridge I was building, I might have done the thing with some imagination and subtlety. If you want a rock and you say I am a rock, a rock I'll be, Linda. But I know what you are, and what you will be to me when we really become the kind of friends we are destined to be."

"I wonder now," said Linda, "if you are going to say that I could be any such lovely thing on the landscape as a bridge."

"No," said Peter slowly, "nothing so prosaic. Bridges are common in this world. You are going to be something uncommon. History records the experiences of but one man who has seen a flame in the open. I am a second Moses and you are going to be my burning bush. I intended to read this article to you."

Peter ma.s.sed the sheets, straightened them on the desk, and deliberately ripped them across several times. Linda sprang to her feet and stretched out her hands.

"Why, Peter!" she cried in a shocked voice. "That is perfectly inexcusable. There are hours and hours of work on that, and I have not a doubt but that it was good work."

"Simple case of mechanism," said Peter, reducing the bits to smaller size and dropping them into the empty nail keg that served as his wastebasket. "A lifeless thing without a soul, mere clockwork. I have got the idea now. I am to build a bridge and make a road. Every way I look I can see a golden-flame tongue of inspiration burning. I'll rewrite that thing and animate it. Take me for a ride, Linda."

Linda rose and walked to the Bear Cat. Peter climbed in and sat beside her. Linda laid her hands on the steering wheel and started the car. She ran it down to the highway and chose a level road leading straight down the valley through cultivated country. In all the world there was nothing to equal the panorama that she spread before Peter that evening.

She drove the Bear Cat past orchards, hundreds of acres of orchards of waxen green leaves and waxen white bloom of orange, grapefruit, and lemon. She took him where seas of pink outlined peach orchards, and other seas the more delicate tint of the apricots. She glided down avenues lined with palm and eucalyptus, pepper and olive, and through unbroken rows, extending for miles, of roses, long stretches of white, again a stretch of pink, then salmon, yellow, and red. Nowhere in all the world are there to be found so many acres of orchard bloom and so many miles of tree-lined, rose-decorated roadway as in southern California. She sent the little car through the evening until she felt that it was time to go home, and when at last she stopped where they had started, she realized that neither she nor Peter had spoken one word. As he stepped from the car she leaned toward him and reached out her hand.

"Thank you for the fireplace, Peter," she said.

Peter took the hand she extended and held it one minute in both his own.

Then very gently he straightened it out in the palm of one of his hands and with the other hand turned back the fingers and laid his lips to the heart of it.

"Thank you, Linda, for the flame," he said, and turning abruptly, he went toward his workroom.

Stopping for a bite to eat in the kitchen, Linda went back to her room.

She sat down at the table and picking up her pencil, began to work, and found that she could work. Every stroke came true and strong. Every idea seemed original and unusual. Quite as late as a light ever had shone in her window, it shone that night, the last thing she did being to write another anonymous letter to Marian, and when she reread it Linda realized that it was an appealing letter. She thought it certainly would comfort Marian and surely would make her feel that someone worth while was interested in her and in her work. She loved some of the whimsical little touches she had put into it, and she wondered if she had made it so much like Peter Morrison that it would be suggestive of him to Marian. She knew that she had no right to do that and had no such intention. She merely wanted a model to copy from and Peter seemed the most appealing model at hand.

After school the next day Linda reported that she had finished going through the books and was ready to have them taken. Then, after a few minutes of deep thought, she made her way to the Consolidated Bank. At the window of the paying teller she explained that she wished to see the person connected with the bank who had charge of the safety-deposit boxes and who looked after the accounts pertaining to the estate of Alexander Strong. The teller recognized the name. He immediately became deferential.

"I'll take you to the office of the president," he said. "He and Doctor Strong were very warm friends. You can explain to him what it is you want to know."

Before she realized what was happening, Linda found herself in an office that was all mahogany and marble. At a huge desk stacked with papers sat a man, considerably older than her father. Linda remembered to have seen him frequently in their home, in her father's car, and she recalled one fis.h.i.+ng expedition to the Tulare Lake region where he had been a member of her father's party.

"Of course you have forgotten me, Mr. Worthington," she said as she approached his desk. "I have grown such a tall person during the past four years."

The white-haired financier rose and stretched out his hand.

"You exact replica of Alexander Strong," he said laughingly, "I couldn't forget you any more than I could forget your father. That fine fis.h.i.+ng trip where you proved such a grand little scout is bright in my memory as one of my happiest vacations. Sit down and tell me what I can do for you."

Linda sat down and told him that she was dissatisfied with the manner in which her father's estate was being administered.

He listened very carefully to all she had to say, then he pressed a b.u.t.ton and gave a few words of instruction to the clerk who answered it. When several ledgers and account books were laid before him, with practiced hand he turned to what he wanted. The records were not complicated. They covered a period of four years. They showed exactly what monies had been paid into the bank for the estate. They showed what royalties had been paid on the books. Linda sat beside him and watched his pencil running up and down columns, setting down a list of items, and making everything plain. Paid cheques for household expenses I and drygoods bills were all recorded and deducted. With narrow, alert eyes, Linda was watching, and her brain was keenly alive. As she realized the discrepancy between the annual revenue from the estate and the totaling of the expenses, she had an inspiration. Something she never before had thought of occurred to her. She looked the banker in the eye and said very quietly: "And now, since she is my sister and I am going to be of age very shortly and these things must all be gone into and opened up, would it be out of place for me to ask you this afternoon to let me have a glimpse at the private account of Miss Eileen Strong?"

The banker drew a deep breath and looked at Linda keenly.

"That would not be customary," he said slowly.

"No?" said Linda. "But since Father and Mother went out at the same time and there was no will and the property would be legally divided equally between us upon my coming of age, would my sister be ent.i.tled to a private account?"

"Had she any sources of obtaining money outside the estate?"

"No," said Linda. "At least none that I know of. Mother had I some relatives in San Francisco who were very wealthy people, but they never came to see us and we never went there. I know nothing about them. I never had any money from them and I am quite sure Eileen never had."

Linda sat very quietly a minute and then she looked at the banker.

"Mr. Worthington," she said, "the situation is slightly peculiar. My guardian, John Gilman, is engaged to marry my sister Eileen. She is a beautiful girl, as you no doubt recall, and he is very much in love with her. Undoubtedly she has been able, at least recently, to manage affairs very much in her own way. She is more than four years my senior, and has always had charge of the household accounts and the handling of the bank accounts. Since there is such a wide discrepancy between the returns from the property and the expenses that these books show, I am forced to the conclusion that there must be upon your books, or the books of some other bank in the city, a private account in Eileen's name or in the name of the Strong estate."

"That I can very easily ascertain," said Mr. Worthington, reaching again toward the b.u.t.ton on his desk. A few minutes later the report came that there was a private account in the name of Miss Eileen Strong. Again Linda was deeply thoughtful.

"Is there anything I can do," she inquired, "to prevent that account from being changed or drawn out previous to my coming of age?"

Then Mr. Worthington grew thoughtful.

"Yes," he said at last. "If you are dissatisfied, if you feel that you have reason to believe that money rightfully belonging to you is being diverted to other channels, you have the right to issue an injunction against the bank, ordering it not to pay out any further money on any account nor to honor any cheques drawn by Miss Strong until the settlement of the estate. Ask your guardian to execute and deliver such an injunction, or merely ask him, as your guardian and the administrator of the estate, to give the bank a written order to that effect."

"But because he is engaged to Eileen, I told him I would not bring him into this matter," said Linda. "I told him that I would do what I wanted done, myself."

"Well, how long is it until this coming birthday of yours?" inquired Mr.

Worthington.

"Less than two weeks," answered Linda.

For a time the financier sat in deep thought, then he looked at Linda.

It was a keen, searching look. It went to the depths of her eyes; it included her face and hair; it included the folds of her dress, the cut of her shoe, and rested attentively on the slender hands lying quietly in her lap.

"I see the circ.u.mstances very clearly," he said. "I sympathize with your position. Having known your father and being well acquainted with your guardian, would you be satisfied if I should take the responsibility of issuing to the clerks an order not to allow anything to be drawn from the private account until the settlement of the estate?"

"Perfectly satisfied," said Linda.