Kerry (Romance Classic). Grace Livingston Hill
out, trying to see if her fears had real foundation. If that was Sam Morgan he had probably seen her name on the passenger list in London and followed her at once. Failing to reach the boat in time he would probably send a message by wireless or radio to the captain of the boat and she would be detained when they reached the other side. Would there be any way to get free again? What would be the law in the United States about the rights of a mother and such a step-father?
Just then there came a sound at her stateroom door. The rattle of a turning key. She saw the door slowly open and a florist’s box was thrust in. Then the stewardess saw her cowering by the window, her eyes large with fright mingled with defiance.
“I beg your pardon, Madam,” said the woman, “I thought you were on deck. I thought everybody was on deck. These flowers just arrived, as we started, and I wanted to make sure they wouldn’t get lost.”
“Flowers?” said Kerry trying to steady her voice, “But there must be some mistake. No one would send flowers here to me. My friends do not know what ship I am taking.”
“The box has got your name all right, and the number of the stateroom,” affirmed the woman consulting the label. “Aren’t you Mrs. Winship?”
“Oh, no,” said Kerry with relief, and laughed a nervous little laugh, “that must be the lady who gave the stateroom up yesterday. I just got it at the last minute.”
“Oh,” said the stewardess, “well, then you’d better take the flowers. It’s too late now to send them back. I’ll have the steward attend to sending word to the florist, but you might as well have the flowers as throw them into the ocean. Here, I’ll put them in water for you.”
So, presently the small stateroom was filled with the splendor of orchids and gardenias, and Kerry was left to look about her and wonder. Kerry Kavanaugh with orchids. She almost laughed. Then she sobered and sat down to think.
So then, the stewardess had not known about the change of name. Perhaps there was some chance that the change had not yet been made on the ship’s list, had not been sent down from London. Yet how would Sam Morgan have known to come to that dock if he had not seen the name on the list of passengers? Was it really Sam Morgan? Perhaps her eyes had deceived her. Well, she might be out on the ocean, but she was by no means sure that she was free from the man she dreaded.
She breathed more freely as the afternoon wore on and no one came to molest her. She had not gone down for lunch; she had the stewardess bring her a tray. Later in the afternoon she crept up on deck and went about a little, trying to find a secluded place where no one would see her, for even this much of a glimpse at her fellow passengers told her that her wardrobe was unfit for mingling with theirs. She resolved to keep utterly to herself, and to this end found a comparatively lonely spot where she might watch the gulls dip and sail, and look off at the horizon line, trying to feel that over there beyond all that water somewhere there would be a place for her, where she might work out her little drab life, and get to the end of it honorably. There were no dreams of gallant lovers within her young disillusioned mind. Her one ambition was to complete the work of her great father and see that he had his rightful meed of glory. Beyond that, and keeping out of the reach of her undesirable step-father, she had no present wish.
It was the steward who presently sought her out, called her Mrs. Winship, desired to show her where her steamer chair was located and where he had placed her in the dining room. He was all deference.
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 its moorings beneath the little black hat and was waving gorgeously about 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 slippers, 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 which 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 step-father, 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 book shop in London. He knows everything about the great men of to-day, 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 book shop 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 half disgruntled 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 Ph.D. sat across the table, down a little way, not even exactly opposite to the daughter of the great man. Henry Dawson, Ph.D. 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