The Man in the Twilight. Cullum Ridgwell
remained, and he finally accepted his instructions. But the whole thing left him very troubled.
As the hour of noon approached, his trouble showed no sign of abatement. It was the reverse. There were moments, as he sat in the generously upholstered chair before his desk, in the comfortable down-town office which overlooked Abercrombie's principal thoroughfare, that he felt like abandoning all responsibility in the chaos of his friend's affairs. But this was only the result of irritation, and had no relation to his intentions. He knew well enough that everything in his power would be done for the man who never so surely needed his help as now.
He refreshed his memory with the details of the deed of settlement for the abandoned stepdaughter. Then, as the hands of the clock approached the hour of his appointment, he sat back yielding his whole concentration upon those many problems confronting him.
What, he asked himself, was going to become of Standing now that he had cut himself adrift from that anchorage which had held him safe for the past seven years? He strove to follow the driving of the man's curiously haunted mind. He had declared his intention of going away. Where? Definite information had been withheld. He was going to devote himself to some purpose he claimed to have always lain at the back of his mind. What was that purpose? Again there had been no information forthcoming. Was it good, or—bad? The man who was endeavouring to solve the riddle of it all dared not trust himself to a decision. He felt that his friend's unstable soul might drive him in almost any direction after the shock it had sustained.
No. Speculation was useless. The crude facts were like a brick wall he had to face. Standing's wealth and the great mill at Sachigo were left to his administration with the trusting confidence of a child. The responsibility for the neglected stepdaughter had similarly been flung upon his shoulders. And, satisfied with this manner of disposing of his worldly concerns, Standing intended to fare forth, shorn of any possession but a bare pittance for his daily needs, to lose himself, and all the shadows of a haunted mind, in the dim, remote interior of the unexplored forests of Northern Quebec. The whole thing was mad—utterly—
The muffled electric bell on his table drubbed out its summons. One swift glance at the clock and the lawyer yielded to professional instinct. He became absorbed in the papers neatly spread out on his table as a bespectacled clerk thrust open the door.
"Miss McDonald to see you," he announced, in the modulated tone which was part of his professional make-up.
The lawyer rose at once. He moved toward the door with a smiling welcome. The sex and personality of his visitor demanded this departure from his custom.
Nancy McDonald stood just inside the doorway through which the clerk had departed. She was tall, beautifully tall, for all she was only sixteen. In her simple college girl's overcoat, with its muffling of fur about the neck, it was impossible to detect the graces of the youthful figure concealed. Her carriage was upright, and her bearing full of that confidence which is so earnestly taught in the schools of the newer countries.
But these things passed unnoticed by the white-haired lawyer. He was smiling into the radiant face under the low-pressed fur cap. It was the wide, hazel eyes, so deeply fringed with a wealth of curling, dark lashes, that inspired his smiling interest. It was the level brows, so delicately pencilled, and dark as were the eyelashes. It was the perfect nose, and lips, and chin, and the chiselled beauty of oval cheeks, all in such classic harmony with the girl's wealth of vivid hair.
Nancy returned his gaze without the shadow of a smile. She had come at this man's call from the coldly correct halls of Marypoint College, which was also the soulless home she had been condemned to for the three or four most impressionable years of her life. And she knew the purpose of the summons.
There was a deep abiding resentment in her heart. It was not against this man or his wife. From these two she had received only kindness and affection. It was directed against the stepfather whom she believed to be the cause of the banishment she had had to endure. Furthermore, she could never forget that her banishment was only terminated that she might gaze at last upon the dead features of her dearly loved mother before the cold earth hid them from view forever.
The lawyer understood. He had understood from her reply to his letter summoning her. There was no need for the confirmation he read now in her unsmiling eyes.
"You sent for me?" she said.
Nancy's voice was deep and rich for all her youth. Then with a display of some slight confusion, she suddenly realised the welcoming hand outheld. She took it hurriedly, and the brief hand clasp completely broke down the barrier she had deliberately set up.
"Oh, it's a shame, Uncle Charles," she cried, almost tearfully. "It's—it's a shame. I know. I'm just a kid—a fool kid who hasn't a notion, or a feeling, or—or anything. I'm to be treated that way. When he says 'listen,' why, I've just got to listen. And when he says 'obey,' I've got to obey, because the law says he's my stepfather. He's robbed me of my mother. Oh, it's cruel. Now he's going to rob me of everything else I s'pose. Who is he? What is he that he has the power to—to make me a sort of slave to his wishes? I've never seen him. I hate him, and he hates me, and yet—oh—I'm kind of sorry," she said, in swift contrition at the sight of the old man's evident distress. "I—I—didn't think. I—oh, I know it's not your fault, uncle. It's just nothing to do with you. You've always been so kind and good to me—you and Aunt Sally. You've got to send for me and tell me the things he says, because—"
"Because I'm his 'hired man.' But also because I'm his friend."
The lawyer spoke kindly, but very firmly. He knew the impulsive nature of this passionate child. He knew her unusual mentality. He realised, none better, that he was dealing with a strong woman's mind in a girl of childhood's years. He knew that Nancy had inherited largely from her father, that headstrong, headlong creature whose mentality had driven him to every length in a wild endeavour to upset civilisation that he might witness the birth of a millennium in the ashes of a world saturated with the blood of countless, helpless creatures. So he checked the impulsive flow of the child's protest. He held out his hands.
"You'd best let me take your coat, my dear," he said, with a smile the girl found it impossible to resist. "Maybe you'd like to remove your overshoes, too. There's a big talk to make, and I want to get things fixed so you can come right along up home and take food with us before you go back to Marypoint."
The child capitulated. But she needed no assistance. Her coat was removed in a moment and flung across a chair, and she stood before him, the slim, slightly angular schoolgirl she really was.
"Guess I'll keep my rubbers on," she said. Then she added with a laugh which a moment before must have been impossible. "That way I'll feel I can run away when I want to. What next?"
"Why, just sit right here."
The lawyer drew up a chair and set it beside his desk. His movements were swift now. He had no desire to lose the girl's change of mood.
And Nancy submitted. She took the chair set for her while the man she loved to call "Uncle Charlie" passed round to his. He gave her no time for further reflection, but plunged into his talk at once.
"Now, my dear," he said earnestly, "you came here feeling pretty bad about things, and maybe I don't blame you. But there isn't the sort of thing waiting on you you're guessing. Before we get to the real business I just want to tell you the things in my mind. Of course, as you say, you're a 'kid' yet—a school-kid, eh? That's all right. But I know you can get a grip of things that many much older girls could never hope to. That's why I want to tell you the things I'm going to. Now you've worked it out in your mind that your stepfather is just a heartless, selfish creature who has no sort of use for you, and just wants to forget your existence. He married your mother, but had no idea of taking on her burdens—that's you. It isn't so. It wasn't so. I know, because this man is my friend, and I know all there is to know about him. The whole thing has been deplorable. You've been the victim of circumstances that I may not explain even to you. But I promise you this, your stepfather is not the man to have desired to cut you out of your mother's life."
"Who did then? Mother?"
The girl's beautiful