The Shining Heart

By Sibyl Spande Bowen

(Previous chapter)

Chapter Six

Miss Brilliant Carey surprised even young Lathrop with her rallying powers. Something, perhaps the excitement of Nell’s race against the closing date of the art contest, unlocked the vise that held her speech, and Miss Brill talked again. Slow, studied, her words were, but complete. Robert, calling daily now, waited until he thought the invalid equal to moderate shock and then launched his idea, full grown, abruptly as an earthquake.

They were discussing the picture, of course, and Miss Brill had told him of her own and her father’s talent. “She’ll win,” she said confidently. How can she help it, it’s in the blood.”

This is your opening, go to it, son, she’s asked for it, Lathrop thought. He bolstered his nerve and plunged, “You surely can’t mean that your talents have anything to do with Nell’s, because, of course, she isn’t related to you. Where did she come from?”

For one moment Miss Brill was so white the man was frightened at what he had done. Then she pulled herself together heroically. “She’s my own niece,” she said defiantly, and did not falter.

Young Lathrop shook his head, but his brown eyes were sympathetic. He liked this old Spartan. “I know she thinks she is,” he said gently, “but you really ought to tell me about it. I’ve ideas about young Nell. It’s pretty important to know who she really is.”

The color had returned to Miss Brill’s cheeks. “You really know something?” she demanded excitedly. “Yes, I’ll admit it, she isn’t ours, and you’re the very first I’ve said as much to, but it’ll have to come out sometime.”

“Exactly,” cried Robert, “now you’re talking. Who is she?”

Miss Brill subsided wearily. “I haven’t the faintest idea,” she said.

But she did tell him what she knew. She had found the child in the back seat of her car one April evening about dusk. Just after her father, Tom Carey, had died, it was, and she still had a rather fine car. The folks who put the child in that car must have thought they were landing her in a nest well lined with money.

“And you haven’t the faintest notion who put her there?” Robert repeated, bitterly disappointed.

“No,” the old lady admitted, “and I’ve always been glad I hadn’t. It made her seem more truly mine. But now, when anything might happen – I don’t mind saying I’d hate to see Nell tending chicken brooders the est of her life. She’s got more to her than the itch for money.”

Young Lathrop sat hunched, chin in hands, “I don’t think,” he said finally, “that she’ll ever tend chicken brooders on Maple Hill, unless she wants to. I’ve a hunch about her young lady, but I’ve got to know a few details. You’re just got time to whisper them in my big ear before Miss Nell comes in.”

Robert Lathrop was of two minds about the bit of sleuthing he had set himself to do. For one thing, Brilliant Carey really did not want Nell’s origin established. “She’s mine now,” she told Rob, “and if you go stirring things up no telling whose girl she’ll be. Her people threw her away, and I love her. She’s kept me from getting queer as a made hatter, living alone here.”

“But you’ve no right to keep her from what she was – from what she might be again,” Rob explained very kindly, for he was fond of the blunt old lady.

“They’ve let her be all these years,” Miss Brill insisted, “doesn’t seem likely she’s very important to anyone but me.”

“And young Fred. Don’t forget the chicken fancier,” Rob reminded her drily.

“H’m,” said Miss Brill. “Well, go ahead and prowl. As for that Fred, I’d like to know who that woman in breeches with the hungry-looking eyes is that he had in his car when he came down yesterday.”

“No, now, you mustn’t draw false conclusions,” Rob reproved. Then he explained in detail, just as he had heard it from Nell. The gaunt young woman, a Miss Lola Twillham, was just out of the poultry school at Pullman, had taken the property next to Fred’s, and was proceeding to raise chickens according to the latest scientific precepts. She was, he added, very properly chaperoned by her mother.

Miss Twillham rode to town with Fred to get supplies and advice. It seemed she needed an astonishing amount of both of them, and she always made it a point to need them most just when Fred was about to call upon Nell.

And here was he, knight-errant Robert Lathrop, driving to Seattle grimly bent on rescuing Nell from the twin distresses of art and Fred. And quite likely the girl would be just perverse enough to refuse to be rescued form either. Well, meddlers never came to much of a good end. Here, he was going too far down Westlake! He turned a corner and threaded a maze of short, diagonal streets until he found the one tht would wind him to the very top of Queen Anne Hill. At the very top an overgrown red sandstone house looked arrogantly down upon its neighbors and had eyes only for the polished expanse of Puget Sound.

Robert parked in the drive of the red stone house. too many laurels, or was it the yews and holly that grew too thickly? The place was gloomy, and a bit unkempt. Sally shouldn’t let it go like that when she had the money to keep it up. But then she was away so much, to Shanghai, to Hollywood, tot he south of France. Rob rang the bell of the huge, iron-grilled door.

A maid answered it. There had been a massive butler the last time he was here. It really looked as if Sally were economizing. He was shown to the south lookout on the second floor, where the view of the sound was best. In modern houses this glass-walled room would be the sunroom, but since the nineties the Delavans had called it the lookout. It was furnished with sea glasses, a globe, lovely old wall maps and a barometer. Sally had added chromium furniture, venetian blinds, a huge tank of exotic, wicked-looking tropical fish on a wrought iron stand, and an overhanging canopy of plants trailing from baskets. Robert found that lovely, bored woman reclining in a large chair, looking as glorified as an angel in her pale blue satin house robe, with the beautiful white hair dramatically outlined by a Chinese red pillow. She was pretending to read.

Robert stopped a moment to allow his artist’s soul to admire the effect. He knew in a moment the cold, gray eyes, the petulant, selfish mouth of Sally Delavan would override her beauties, and he would dislike them all. Even when Sally was still young, in her late twenties, as he had first known her, that selfish, possessive nature had dominated, crowding the then great beauty, even to his childish eyes.

“An honor, and a rare one,” Miss Delavan murmured, and indicated a puffy leather chair beside her without rising.

“You’re beautiful as ever and have things as comfortable as a cat licking cream,” Robert remarked, sinking into the soft cushions.

Sally gave him a long look from her gray eyes. “Rob,” she said huskily, “I’m the most unhappy woman alive.”

Rob laughed. “It takes you women with well-feathered nests, good looks and plenty of props to set them off to be really unhappy. You ought to meet a woman I just saw a few hours ago. Bedridden, trying to get along on an income that wouldn’t pay your light bill, and yet happy as a spring day planning and plotting to give a young waif her chance in life.”

Sally waved a hand to stop him. “Don’t be a bore, Rob. If you’ve come to preach, you may as well leave. I can be preached at in church – and by an expert.”

She can’t see anything but herself, the man thought angrily. Quietly he said, “Sally, what did you do with Frank’s baby girl?”

Miss Delavan grew slightly rigid and clenched her magazine, but she held herself well under control.

“She was sent to mother’s cousin,” she said finally, flatly. Then she turned angry eyes on Rob. “You knew that! Your own mother helped write the letter asking Martha to take the baby. What are you trying to say?”

“I’m not trying to say anything yet, Sally,” Rob answered, undisturbed. “I’m merely asking a question.” He would not be side-tracked by her anger. He knew she could turn it on and off like an electric switch. It just happens that a few months after little Frances had supposedly been sent to Martha, mother met Martha in Los Angeles. She knew nothing of the baby. She had never even received the letter which Aunt Sarah insisted that mother write. What was that letter? A false lead – a red herring?”

Miss Delavan was no longer angry. She needed her wits for something more important. “Are you trying to cast doubt on the character and actions of my mother, who is no longer here to defend herself?” she cried dramatically. “I suppose it didn’t occur to you that perhaps Cousin Martha was telling a fib, did it?”

“Nothing at all occurred to me – at the time,” Rob replied, grinning, “since I was only about seven. In fact, I shouldn’t have remembered it at all if mother had not reminded me of it yesterday when I called in at the house.”

Sally glanced at him briefly. “All right, come to the point.”

“I will,” promised Rob grimly, “and I’ll begin at the first, so we’ll know where we are at. Seventeen years ago, while you and Aunt Sarah were still stunned by Frank’s death in that French hospital, his wife came from France, bringing their baby with her. You resented her. You had been too jealously fond of Frank, too broken up by his wounding in the war, his staying there afterward, to like his wife. So you made her as unwelcome as you could, you and Aunt Sarah. She didn’t stand it long. She died, heartbroken, perhaps.”

“How pathetic. It happened to be appendicitis,” Sally remarked sarcastically. “Your verison makes better melodrama, however.”

“Doesn’t it,” Rob agreed, unshaken, “but then life is often more fantastic than fiction. Anyway, it seemed to increase your gloom that all you had in place of Frank was a baby girl you wouldn’t let yourselves love. You and Aunt Sarah had so devoted yourselves to Frank that when he went your whole interest in life went with him.”

“Stop that!” Miss Delavan demanded, her face twisting, “you’ve no right to bring that up. I won’t let you.”

“I’m sorry, Sally,” Rob said, “but I must. If I remember right, Aunt Sarah brooded and moped and wouldn’t even see the baby. Then suddenly she called mother to come over, dictated that letter to Martha, and after a while the baby was gone. What did you do with her?”

Sally Delavan said remotely, “You seem to know so much. Suppose you answer that question. I’ve always thought Martha had her. I was never interested enough in the child to inquire. I know mother left Martha a considerable sum in her will. I presumed it was for the support of the child.” Deliberately she selected a chocolate from a box that stood open near her and indicated it to Robert. He declined impatiently.

“All right, I will tell you. And you’ll be surprised – I hope,” he promised in annoyance.

Miss Delavan dropped her pose of indifference and became tense. “Well, let’s have whatever story you’ve cooked up,” she said sharply.

“One night in April – moonlight, by the way –”Rob began promptly, “a large tan sedan was parked in front of the apartments down the street – those opposite the park. Somebody concealed himself in the shrubs of that park until the owner of the car left. Then, with baby that had been carefully dressed in cheap, new clothes that could not be traced, this person slipped the child onto the seat of the car through an open window.”

“And where is all this leading?”

“But the owner of the car had not been in the apartments at all. When she came out of a house farther down the street, she thought she passed a slight acquaintance, and spoke to him. The woman was moaning and seemed greatly disturbed, so the lady stepped aside and let her go on down the street, thinking she must have been mistaken.”

“Mistaken about whom?” – sharply.

“Sarah Delavan,” Rob answered, and heavy silence filled the bright room like thick mist.

And then Miss Delavan smiled. She sensed the slight uncertainty in Rob’s last words. “And of course, it later proved to be someone else,” she suggested contemptuously. “I don’t know at all what you’re driving at. You seem to have forgotten that mother was your godmother, that she treated you like a son.”

“I haven’t forgotten, Robert answered gravely. “I was very fond of Aunt Sarah. But I think she was not herself when she put Frank’s baby out of her life, and she would be the first to wish things cleared up.”

Sally Delavan said angrily, “So you think mother would like you to brand her a woman who deliberately left her grandchild in a strange car? Who did it to cheat the child out of her inheritance, people would say. I won’t have it. You shall not drag mother’s name through the mud, just to heap my money in the lap of some silly girl you happen to be in love with. Yes, that’s it! Someone you’re in love with!” Her voice rose swiftly to a shriek.

Robert jumped up and ran to her. “For goodness sake, Sally, control yourself,” he implored, trying to grasp her flailing arms to quiet her. “All you’ve got to do is produce Frances to stop the story!?” She was laughing and crying in wild hysteria now, and a maid ran into the room, armed with smelling salts.

“We were just talking –” Rob said helplessly.

The maid held the salts beneath the nose of the moaning Sally. She motioned for Rob to go out, and formed the words soundlessly with her lips, “She’s all right.” She even winked.

Rob slid out, thankfully.

A large red person was standing in the hall – the cook, evidently, listening to Sally’s show. “It’s been a long time, sir, since she had one of them spells. I believe she likes, ’em,” she volunteered.

Rob gave her a cold look and went out. so Sally wouldn’t hear him! She’d turn on a tantrum every time he’d try to talk to her. He remembered tall tales of her rages, how she’d ruled her entire family with them – all except Frank. She’d been his admiring slave – and hadn’t eaten for a week when he enlisted and went to France. Well, no matter how she resented Frances, the child of the French war-time marriage, Rob would see the thing through, though to tell the truth, Miss Brill hadn’t supplied him with much of a leg to stand on.

(To be continued)