Instead of the Thorn. Clara Louise Burnham

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ as she found that vigorous efforts could not free her hand. Color burned her cheeks. Her father's factotum had never seemed to consider her affairs or herself as of any importance, and her habit of thought toward him was an effort to assure him of absolute reciprocation.

      "Let me go," she said sharply. "Don't be silly."

      "Come on," he urged. "Let's give your father a pleasant surprise. Henry, Harriet, speak up. Tell her what's for her good."

      Harriet, the conventional, was anxious under the growing anger in her sister's dark eyes.

      "Behave, Bertram," she said severely. "I don't like joking on those subjects. Go back to your chair and I'll give you a lecture much more sensible than yours to me."

      "I'm not joking. I believe I could make something fine out of Linda." He gazed down into the girl's face as he spoke.

      Henry Radcliffe laughed derisively. "You poor nut," he remarked. "Better not try the Cave-Dweller stunt on Linda. The club would be likely to change hands."

      The captured fingers struggled a moment more, while the two pairs of eyes exchanged their combative gaze.

      There had never been any jocose passages between the girl and her father's favorite co-worker. There had been moments when she had even felt desire for his approval. The present audacity amazed and disconcerted her, and coercion was simply hateful.

      Finding effort to free herself futile, she set her tea down on the arm of her chair, and quickly taking up the cup, deliberately poured the hot, creamy liquid over as much of her captor's cuff as was visible. The cuff collapsed, the tea was hot. King abruptly dropped the girl's hand, and set himself to wiping his own with his handkerchief.

      "Now, will you be good?" laughed Henry; but Harriet fixed anxious eyes on the arm of the chair, hoping that Bertram's hand and cuff had received the whole of the baptism, and groaned within herself over the talents of her young sister as a trouble-maker.

      "And who calls it 'the cup that cheers'?" remarked King drily.

      CHAPTER III

      COLD WATER

      June heat dropped down on Chicago promptly that year and caused the Barrys to plan to leave town earlier than it suited the banker to go. Indeed, no weather condition ever made Linda's father willing to leave business.

      One evening, a few days before their intended departure, Bertram King came to the house to see his employer. The heavy door stood open after the hot day, and with the familiarity of an intimate he stepped inside, intending to take his way to his old friend's den, but in the hall he met Linda: Linda, blooming, dressed in white, and altogether lovely to look upon. Over her arm she carried a silk motor coat and a chiffon veil.

      The young man's face looked haggard by comparison with her fresh beauty, and he smiled unconscious admiration as he greeted the exhilaration of her breezy appearance.

      "Father is out," she said, "and I'm so glad!"

      "Why? Did you want to see me alone?"

      "I can't see you at all. I'm going out."

      "But he hasn't come yet."

      "Who?"

      "Your motoring friend. Why are you glad your father is out?"

      "Because I think he sees enough of you in the daytime. Too much. Father's very tired. Can't you see it? I'm going to run away with him on Saturday."

      "So I hear. – I'm somewhat seedy myself. I think I'll accept your urgent invitation to sit down until he comes."

      "He isn't coming. He'll be out all the evening."

      "I'm talking about your beau." There was an empty, nerveless quality to the visitor's voice which began to impress his companion.

      "Let's set a spell, as they say in Maine," he added. "I've been thinking about Maine to-day."

      Linda followed his lead into a reception room, where they sat down.

      "A pretty good place to think about, when Lake Michigan sizzles," she replied; "but I've chosen Colorado. We're going to Estes Park."

      "Yes, so Mr. Barry told me. I should like to go there too." King's tone was wistful.

      "Perish the thought!" returned Linda devoutly. "I wouldn't have you within a thousand miles of father."

      "That's what the doctor says," remarked King, his pensive gaze bent on the ribbon bordering of Linda's thin frock.

      She started and leaned toward him. "The doctor!" she repeated. "Has Doctor Flagg been talking to you about father? Is he – is he worried about him?"

      King shook his head. "I didn't go to Doctor Flagg. I went to Doctor Young. We've been getting some golf together lately, and he's a good sort."

      "What's the matter with you, Bertram?" Linda sat up again, and her voice and manner cooled. "What do you want of a doctor?"

      King shook his head. "Never in my life before: first offense. Everything seemed to go back on me all of a sudden. Sleeping, eating, and all the rest of it." The speaker scowled. "The mischief of it is, Young says I've got to get away for a month at least. He says – Oh, you don't care what he says."

      Linda regarded the downcast one. He was speaking to her as to an equal, not, as usual, with tacit rebuke for some misdemeanor. This blunt reproach, if it were reproach, merely referred casually to her indifference.

      "I care a great deal," she returned, with spirit. "I'm sure it will make my father very anxious to have you away at the same time he is."

      King lifted his weary eyes to hers, eager and bright.

      "I'm sure Doctor Flagg could give you a tonic or something to tide you over till we return in September," she went on. "You could go then."

      Her companion leaned back in his chair with a long, inaudible breath. "We have arranged all that. Mr. Barry wants me to go."

      The speaker did look rather cadaverous. Linda realized it now. It was a strange thing to have in any degree a sense of compassion for him: this masterful man on whom her father leaned, the man who alone in all the world had a hundred times without a word put her in the wrong, and whom as often she had fervently wished she might never see again. She had chafed against that chain of her father's reliance which bound herself as well. There was no escaping King, and when in her busy college life she thought of him at all, it was as a presumptuous creature who was continually making good his presumption; and what could be more exasperating than that?

      King was a self-made man, one with few connections in Chicago, one of whom was Linda's voice teacher, Mrs. Porter. The girl never had exactly understood this relationship, but the fact that some of Mrs. Porter's blood ran in his veins constituted Bertram's only redeeming trait in the eyes of that lady's adorer. Now as she regarded him, staring with discontented eyes at the rug, a sense came over her for the first time that King was a lonely figure. It was all very well for a man in health to live at the University Club and have his mind and life entirely wrapped up in business; but when eating and sleeping became difficult and the brain was over-weary, the evenings might seem rather long to him.

      "It serves a young man right," thought Linda, "when he will bind himself on the wheel of business and act as if there was not one thing in the world worth having but money!" СКАЧАТЬ