was a word—that showed he did not—respect him—”
“Tell me this instant!”
Kerry brought it out reluctantly, and in the great silence that followed for an instant she could hear her own heart beating.
But the echoes of the room were broken by a harsh laugh.
“Is that all?” laughed the woman. “Now, I know you are lying. Your father would never have used a word like that. It is ungentlemanly. Your father was always a gentleman, whatever else he was not. Well, I think it is about time this useless conversation came to an end. I’m going!”
But Kerry caught her as she threw open the door, and pulled her in with a strength born of her great need. Flinging back the door with one hand she dropped upon her knees before her mother, her clasped hands uplifted and pled:
“Oh, Mother, dear, you’re all I’ve got! Won’t you give this up? Won’t you? Won’t you? I’ll take care of you. I’ll work hard! I’ll buy you beautiful clothes. I know I can. I shall have the book ready now in a few days and Father said it would give us all we needed—”
But Mrs. Kavanaugh, deeply stirred for the instant by her daughter’s pleading, was stung into contempt by the mention of the book. With a curl of her lip she froze into haughtiness, and swept Kerry aside almost fiercely.
“Oh, that book! You and your father are crazy together!” she muttered as she stepped over the prostrate girl and hurried down the hall.
The tone and the look she cast back at her child wounded Kerry as if she had struck her. Covering her face with her cold hands she crouched by the door until the sound of her mother’s little high heels had clicked away into silence, and she knew that she was actually gone. Then she gathered herself up heavily, and shut the door, dropping into a chair and sitting for a long time with her face in her hands.
“Oh, Father, Father, what shall I do?” she murmured, and was still again, as if listening for her father’s earthly voice with its gentle tender accents. “What can I do?” she wailed. “She will not listen to me! She does not care—! She does not care!”
A long time she sat there, trying to think, trying to still the wild rebellion of her heart, trying to find a way out of the terrible maze that life had become.
At last she rose and went swiftly into her own room and began to work at the book, feverishly, frantically. If she could only get it done! If she could only get it to the publisher and prove to her mother that it was going to be worth something! If she could only do this in time, perhaps, perhaps she might be able to persuade her mother not to do this dreadful thing; not to tie herself for life to that dreadful man! If Mother was sure of plenty of money to spend she would listen to reason. Mother was afraid that they both would be penniless. That was the matter. Poor little, beautiful, judgmentless Mother!
Thus Kerry tried to excuse her parent, and salve the wound that last cold look of Mrs. Kavanaugh’s had inflicted. Thus she worked with bright red cheeks, and bated breath, her fingers flying over the keys of her machine as they had never flown before, trying to beat time and finish the book before her mother should wreck both their lives.
But all the time as she worked with tense brain, there was that undertone of hurt, that running accompaniment of excuses for her mother—her dear beautiful mother. The only little mother she had! The mother whom her precious father had loved so deeply—so tenderly.
Poor Father! Where was he now? Did he know of this awful thing that was threatening her life? What would he tell her to do?
And her fingers flew on.
She did not stop to eat. The thought of food was distasteful. She had but that one purpose—to get done.
There came an interruption. A knock on the door! A man from the undertaker’s had come with a bill. He wanted to see her mother. He said Mrs. Kavanaugh had promised that he should have his money that afternoon, that he needed it to meet a note. He had been several times on the same errand, but she had promised to have it ready for him if he came this afternoon.
Kerry stood with the bill in her hand staring at the figures, a great wave of indignation surging through her. Fifty dollars was all that had been paid on her father’s burial! And she had thought that it was all covered by the money which their lawyer had sent two days after her father had died. There had been enough, even to cover the expensive clothing that Mrs. Kavanaugh had insisted upon. What had become of the money?
“Mrs. Kavanaugh is not in at present,” Kerry managed to say, out of a throat and lips that had suddenly become hot and dry. Her voice sounded hollow and unnatural to her own ears.
“She said she would be here this afternoon,” urged the man looking around suspiciously. “I have to have it. You sure she didn’t leave it for me anywhere?”
A ray of hope sprang into her heart.
“I will go and look,” said Kerry quickly.
Yet with sinking heart she turned toward her mother’s bedroom door, knowing even against her anxious hope that she would find nothing.
There was a little wooden box of carved work inlaid with ivory in her mother’s drawer where she kept her special treasures. If there was any money in the house it was always kept there. Kerry found the key, fitted it into the ivory keyhole, and threw the lid back, but found nothing there but a picture of Sam Morgan, and a couple of thin letters in scrawled bold hand, tied together with silly blue ribbons. From the upper side of one glared her own name coupled with the word “love.”
Kerry snapped the lid shut, clicked the key and closed the drawer, her face drained of every semblance of color.
Somehow she managed to get back to the other room and dismiss the undertaker with a promise about to-morrow. But when he was gone she sat down and groaned.
She was still sitting there in helpless sorrow when a few minutes later her mother applied her latch key and entered.
“You don’t mean to say you’ve been sitting there sulking ever since I left?”
The mother’s voice was amused, half contemptuous, as she breezed happily in, filling the tawdry room with the scent of violets from a great bunch pinned to her coat.
Then she caught sight of the somewhat familiar bill lying on the floor where Kerry had dropped it, duplicates of which had been coming to her at brief intervals ever since her husband’s burial.
Kerry lifted haggard eyes.
“Mother!” she condemned yet with a caress of hope behind the words, “haven’t you paid for my father’s funeral yet?”
“Oh, mercy!” said Mrs. Kavanaugh in a bored tone, “Has that tiresome man been dogging my steps again? I certainly would never go to him again if all my family died. Well, you needn’t be so tragic about it. I’ve got the money to pay for it now, any way, and then we’ll be done with him. Look, Kerry!” and she displayed a great roll of bills, fluttering her white fingers among them gloatingly, the diamond glistening gorgeously.
“You can’t say Sam is stingy!” she caroled. “He gave me twice as much as I asked for—most of them hundred dollar bills! Just think of it, Kerry! We shall be rich! We can buy anything we like! Just take it in your hand and see how it feels
