All Through the Night (Musaicum Romance Classics). Grace Livingston Hill
consciousness to talk again, and she began to whine at her mother. "Moms, you've simply got to get things going. You can't have night coming down and all this funeral stuff around. I simply would die to be in a house with a dead body."
Then Dale stepped up quietly and spoke with dignity and sweetness. "Corliss, if you would just come up into the room and see Grandmother, how sweet and pretty she looks, just like a saint lying there with the soft lace around her neck and her dear hands folded and the loveliest smile on her gentle lips, you wouldn't feel this way."
But Dale's plea was interrupted by a most terrific scream of utter terror that must have been heard throughout the neighborhood. "No! No! No! I won't! I won't ever see her. How perfectly horrid of you to say that. Take me out! Take me out of this house!"
This was followed by a quick exit to the front porch and a flinging of the girl's body down in a chair, where she sat moaning and wailing in a tempest of hysterics.
Then her mother came back into the house to Dale. "Dale, you'll have to tell me someplace where I can take her until you can make other arrangements. Corliss will be a wreck unless we can get her out of here."
Dale, with a quick uplifting breath, thought rapidly.
"Perhaps you would like to take her to the Inn," she said coolly. "I think they might have a room there. At least they would have a reception room where she could lie down on a couch till you could find a room that would do. I'm sorry I don't know of a boardinghouse that is not full to the brim with defense workers just now. Or it might be one of the neighbors would let her lie down in the parlor till she gets control of herself. But certainly it is impossible to make any different arrangements here in the house. These are Grandmother's own arrangements, and I intend to see that they are carried out. If Corliss cannot get used to the idea, she might stay at the hotel or down at the station till the service is over. Now if you'll excuse me, Aunt Blanche, I think I'm needed in the kitchen. The dinner will be ready in about a half hour. Perhaps Corliss will feel better after she has had something to eat."
"No!" screamed Corliss, uncovering her sharp ears. "I'll not eat a mouthful in this house! I'm going to the hotel."
But Dale went into the kitchen to face an indignant old servant.
"Let her go to the hotel!" said Hattie furiously. "We don't want her screaming around here, desacratin' Grandma's house for her when she ain't fairly out of it yet. We don't want 'em here. Let the whole kit of 'em go. We don't want to house 'em or feed 'em or nothin'."
"There, there, Hattie," said Dale. "Remember what Grandmother said."
"Yes, I know; only Miss Dale, it ain't fair for you. You workin' an' slavin' to get ready for 'em, an' then they act like this! It ain't reasonable."
"Yes, I know," said Dale wearily, "but it will soon be over and they'll be gone."
"Yeah?" said the old woman. "I wonder, will they?"
And then Dale could hear her aunt calling loudly for her, and she went back into the living room to see what new trouble might have arisen.
She found her aunt most irate. "Dale, what in the world was that you said about the house just as Corliss was taken ill? Did I understand you to say that you thought this house was not for sale? What did you mean by that?"
"I meant just what I said, Aunt Blanche," said Dale firmly. "The house is definitely not for sale."
"But how could you possibly know that?" asked the aunt sharply. "Grandmother didn't rent it, did she? I always understood that she was the full owner."
"No, Aunt Blanche. Grandmother did not own the house at all. It was just to be her home while she lived, but she had no ownership in it."
"Well, she did own the house once, I'm sure of that. I remember perfectly well. I think my husband engineered that. I think he paid part, or perhaps it was the whole price for it. And of course it was to be mine after Grandmother was gone."
"I'm sorry you have misunderstood, Aunt Blanche," said Dale quietly, "but that was not the case. Grandmother never owned the house, or even a part of it. The house is mine. My father bought it for me before he went away on business. Later he was killed, and there was a proviso that Grandmother was always to have a home here as long as she lived. The house was left in trust for Grandmother and me until I should come of age, and that happened just a year ago, you remember."
"How ridiculous! That's a pretty story for you to concoct out of whole cloth. I suppose the real truth of the matter is that you coaxed Grandmother into signing some papers and giving the house over to you, but a thing like that will be easily broken. And of course it will not be hard to prove that your father never had any money before he went to war. He was a sort of a ne'er-do-well, as I understand it, and couldn't have bought a house if he wanted to. As for you, you were only a babe in arms when he went away. I don't believe that even Grandmother could have helped to make up a story like this, much as she disliked me."
"Aunt Blanche, don't you think perhaps we had better leave this decision until after dinner? Hattie has just told me that the dinner is all ready to be served, and I'm sure you must be hungry. If Corliss doesn't care to eat in the house, would she like to have a tray brought out to the side porch? It is pretty well shaded with vines and nobody would be likely to see her, and wouldn't it be good for us to sit down now and postpone this discussion until to-morrow after the service? You know a little later the friends and neighbors will be coming in to see Grandmother, and we wouldn't want to be eating then."
"Oh for heaven's sake! Is that going to happen, too? I think we better go over to the hotel right away. This certainly is an odd reception you are giving us."
"I'm sorry, Aunt Blanche. We have a nice dinner, and surely you must be hungry!"
And just then Hattie swung the kitchen door open, letting in a delicious smell of roasted chicken. Powelton arrived in the doorway and spotted two plump, delectable lemon meringue pies on the sideboard.
"Oh gee!" he said. "Let's stay, Mom. I'm clean hollow, and if you don't stay, I'll stage a scene, too, and then see where you'll be!"
So Dale seated her recalcitrant guests around the table that had been stretched to its fullest extent for the occasion, and there was a sort of armed truce while they ate.
But Dale felt as if she scarcely could swallow a bite as she sat trying to be sweet and pleasant and not think of what was going to happen next. Perhaps she should have insisted that they go to the hotel. But she wasn't entirely sure there were rooms there, and certainly the neighbors would think it very strange that Grandmother's relatives would be sent off to a hotel. Still what would they think if a public argument about the house, and the funeral in general, should be staged that evening in their presence? Well, she couldn't help it. What had to come must come. But she prayed in her heart: Dear Lord, please take over, for I can't do anything about it myself.
So they were soon served, the visiting aunt under protest, though she was hungry. She sat down with a face like Nemesis, as if she were yielding much in doing so, and snapped out her sentences as if she were a seamstress biting off threads.
Outside on the pretty white porch sat the petted, unhappy Corliss, accepting ungraciously the plate of tempting food, surveying it with dissatisfaction, and tasting each separate dish tentatively, with a nose all ready to turn up and lips all ready to curl in scorn. But after the first taste she gobbled it all down in a trice and called out for more.
But before anyone heard her outcries, her roving glance suddenly lit on the lovely spray of lilies that was fastened so gracefully to the doorbell, and she rose from her improvised dinner table with a clatter that rattled all the dishes. She flung down her knife and fork and spoon noisily to the floor; she pranced angrily over to the front door, where her frantic fingers wrenched the beautiful flowers from their moorings then, snatching them up, marched into the dining room.
"So you thought I'd eat my dinner beside a lot of funeral flowers, did you? Well, I won't, and that's flat!" she finished and flung the lovely blossoms across the room.
There was an instant of utter silence while the angry girl stood surveying them, frowning,