Part 38 (1/2)
”Oh, I want to talk about it to you,” she interrupted with a directness that made him more uncomfortable than ever. ”I know that you knew my father for what he really was. You knew how kind and good he was, and how n.o.bly he befriended the Braddocks and all those wretched show people. You know how they treated him in return for his generosity. I feel as if I had known you always.”
”It's very nice of you,” he mumbled helplessly. ”You say the show people turned against him. Do you mean at the--er--the trial?”
She lifted her brows, a sudden coldness in her manner.
”Not at all. I refer to what happened afterward.”
”I am quite ignorant, Miss Grand,” he said, a certain hoa.r.s.eness creeping into his voice.
”He was actually compelled to pay something like twenty thousand dollars on the complaint of Mary Braddock, who set up the claim that she owned part of the show. It was a blackmailing scheme, pure and simple, but he paid it. He is a man. He took his medicine like one.”
David glowed. He felt the blood surge to his head; he grew warm with suppressed joy.
”When did this happen?” he asked, the tremor of eagerness in his voice.
”Oh, I don't remember--three or four years ago. It really never came to a public trial. He settled her infamous claim out of court. Her lawyers hounded him as if he were a rat.”
”I happen to know that Mrs. Braddock was part owner in the show,” he said quietly.
”But he had already bought her out,” she exclaimed. ”He wrote all of this to me, after it came out in the papers. I had the whole story from him, just as it really happened. No, Mr. Jenison, he was compelled to pay twice.”
He was half smiling as he looked into her face. The smile died, for he saw in the features of Bob Grand's daughter a startling resemblance to the man himself, hitherto unnoted but now quite a.s.sertive. A moment before he had thought her pretty; now he realized that he had scarcely looked at her before. There was the same beady, intent gleam in her dark eyes, which were set quite close to each other over a straight nose with rather flat nostrils. Her mouth and chin were unlike Grand's.
They were perfect, they were beautiful. The eyes were unmistakably his, and therefrom peered the character of the girl as well as that of the man.
David was sharply cognizant of a feeling of repugnance. Much that had puzzled him a moment before was perfectly plain to him now. She championed the father because he had been stronger in her creation than the mother.
”Did Mrs. Braddock prosecute her claim in person?” he asked, subduing the impulse to set his friend right in the eyes of this girl.
”Not at all. She kept out of sight. Lawyers did it all.”
”Did your father say where she was living at the time?”
”Oh, I know where she was living in London.”
”London?” he said, suddenly cold.
”Yes. We saw her there, Centennial year. She had a home in one of those nice little West End streets. Of course, we could have nothing to do with her.”
”Of course not,” murmured he dumbly. ”And Christine?”
”She was at the Sacred Heart Convent in Paris,--at school, you know.
Father wrote me about her.”
He could not ask her the sickening question that was in his mind: was Mary Braddock the woman in the case? But his heart was cold with despair. He could not, would not believe it of her, and yet the circ.u.mstances were d.a.m.nably convincing.
”In a month, Mr. Jenison, I will be of age. I am sure that you, having been such a friend to him, will be glad to know that I am going to him.
If he wants me, I shall stay with him.”
”You--you will leave your mother?” he demanded, unconsciously drawing back in his chair.