Kerry (6 page)

Shannon Kavanaugh! Shannon Kavanaugh’s new book of which the world had heard hints now and then in magazines, and scientific articles by great men.
Ah!

“How soon do you sail?” asked Peddington as Kerry was about to leave the shop.

“Oh,” gasped Kerry, a shadow of anxiety crossing her face, “I wish I could go today. Now that you have helped me out so wonderfully I’m only anxious to get started. I’ll have to find out about a boat. I don’t know just how to go about it. Father always attended to traveling arrangements.”

“Well, why not start at once?” said the old man kindly. “I’m sure there’s a boat going tomorrow. It would only be a question of whether you could get reservations. Suppose I look up the sailings in the morning paper.”

At this the taller of the two young men, the one with the deep gray eyes, lifted his voice.

“Pardon me, but I could not help overhearing. There is a boat leaving at noon tomorrow from Liverpool, sir,” he said courteously. “I’m sailing on it myself. I don’t know of course if there are any reservations left.”

“Oh, thank you!” said Kerry gratefully. “Could you tell me where to go to find out about it?”

Kerry left the bookshop with full directions about ships and what to do if she could not get accommodations on that boat. She signaled a cab, for she felt that every minute might be precious, and it was important for her to get away from London today if possible. She had a timorous fear that Sam Morgan might turn London upside down to find her. If she lingered she might never be allowed to go. She was not yet quite of age. She was not sure how much power a stepfather would have over her. And there was no one in the wide world to whom she could appeal who would have the right to help her. She longed to put the ocean between herself and the man she feared.

Thinking her frightened thought, she arrived at the office of the steamship company, only to be told there were no reservations left for a lady alone. As she turned away, a woman came rushing up. She was elegantly clad and in a hurry. She wanted to give up her reservation. She had found friends going on another steamer four days later and wished to go with them.

The agent called to Kerry just as she was leaving and she went back, but when she heard the price of the lady’s reservation she gave a little gasp.

“I ought not to pay so much,” she said with a troubled look.

“Oh, very well,” said the agent coldly, and turned away. Troubled and feeling as if she was about to break down and cry, Kerry opened the door and went outside. She tried to think what to do, but a great fear seemed hounding her on every side. If she spent so much money she might starve when she got on the other side. On the other hand—

She had walked a whole block away from the place and was trying to cross the street when traffic interfered. From the curb where she had been jostled by the crowd she caught a whiff of violets, heavy and lovely, penetrating the myriad smells of a London street. Unconsciously she turned toward the shining limousine from which the perfume came. To her horror she saw that it contained her mother and the man from whom she was fleeing!

For the instant she was too horrified to move, too stunned to even take her eyes from the little scene that was being enacted before her, right there in the open street where anyone might gaze.

Her mother, her beautiful little mother, had drawn the expensive glove from her shapely white hand and was admiring the glitter of the rings on the third finger. And Kerry saw that another had been added to the large white stone that she had worn that morning, a circlet of platinum set with diamonds and sapphires. A wedding ring. Then they were really married! The sight was burned into her soul. For days after she could see those rings whenever she closed her eyes.

There was a kind of finality about the sight that was like another blow. Yet there came a time when she was thankful that she had seen it. For, how else would she have known surely that they were married? That after all she had not run away too soon from a little mother who had grown repentant.

And there before her eyes, that unseeing mother turned toward the big heavy-faced, coarse-featured man, lifted up her pretty lips, apparently in response to his request, and let him kiss her! Before hurrying throngs of people!

Kerry sickened at the sight and almost reeled. Then caught her breath and turned away as the traffic suddenly broke, and the car passed on.

She stood still on the curb watching it pass, unmindful of the crowds that were almost pushing her into the street, unmindful that she had been in haste and this was the time to pass on unless she wished to wait another turn of signals. She watched the shining car threading its way through the London street, as one might watch the pall of a beloved pass. When it was out of sight, she knew such utter loneliness as only a young soul can feel who is entirely alone in the world.

Suddenly Kerry realized what she must do. She must go back and get that reservation if it was still to be had!

She turned so quickly that she almost knocked over a smaller person behind her, but when she had righted herself and apologized she fairly ran back the block to the steamship office, and hurried up to the desk.

“I’ll take it!” she said, all out of breath, and waited anxiously watching a young man who was looking over the ship’s diagram.

“Beg pardon,” said the clerk apologetically to the young man, “but this lady was here before! I don’t know just which of you—”

The young man flashed a pair of coal-black eyes at Kerry and touched his hat politely.

“That’s all right with me,” he said, “I’ll take that upper berth in the other stateroom.”

Kerry thanked him and wondered why those black eyes seemed strangely familiar, as if she had seen them not long ago. But she was too engrossed in paying her money and getting the details of her passports and other arrangements settled to follow up the thought, and as soon as she could she hurried away to get herself and her baggage off to Liverpool.

Kerry sat in the station all that night. She was afraid to hunt lodgings. She was afraid to go about at all. She kept herself hidden in a corner and pulled her hat well down over her face whenever people entered the room where she was sitting. She did not know Liverpool very well, having always been hurried through to a boat or a train when she came that way.

As early as she dared in the morning she went to her boat, and hid herself in her cabin. She felt more and more nervous as the time for sailing drew near lest she might be caught even yet. Of course her mother would make a great fuss when she found the note, and she had probably wept a great deal and made a most unhappy time for her bridegroom. He would likely have started detectives on her track. Would her mother think of her sailing to America? She did not know. Isobel Kavanaugh had shown herself so little interested in the great book on which father and daughter had been counting so long, that they seldom talked about it before her. The matter of a publisher in America would not perhaps occur to her. She had always preferred Europe to America and sneered at her husband for calling himself American. She liked to have people think she belonged abroad. She would not have understood her husband’s earnest desire to have his book published in America because he wished what glory should come from it to reflect upon his native land.

Still, though, she feared, and kept herself hidden.

As the morning wore away, she reflected that a detective would not need to know about the book or an American publisher; he would search all possible outlets from the city of London, as well as London itself. And it would be an easy thing to find her, because her name would be on the passenger list. Oh, if she only might somehow have managed to get that other woman’s reservation without telling her own name!

Trembling, she sat in the corner of her luxurious stateroom and stared at its appointments with unseeing eyes while time passed, and she was left unbothered. Now and again she would look down at her shabby garments—her threadbare coat and her scuffed shoes—and realize that these were not the garments that belonged in such a deluxe apartment as she was occupying. Of course she had no business there! But it came to her that the very cost of her refuge made her safe. Her mother would never imagine she had the money to pay for a passage on one of the better boats. Her mother would expect to find her serving in some humble position somewhere in London. She might be even now huddled in a corner of the hotel sofa prettily moaning her child’s “low-down” nature, which would prompt her to become a humble servitor rather than accept the bounty of a man to whom she had taken a dislike. Mrs. Kavanaugh had been wont to taunt her thus whenever Kerry tried to suggest any kind of economy.

But in spite of her hopes, and of all the arguments in favor of her safe escape, Kerry sat in her stateroom anxiously as the minutes slipped away toward high noon.

Breathless she listened to the call for all not sailing to leave the boat at once. She heard the sound of thronging feet along the decks, the chatter of eager voices in last farewells, the staccato of a sob here and there. She heard the long blast of the whistle, and felt the throb of the engine and the shudder that went through the big ship.

Outside the wharf hands were shouting to one another. She stole to the porthole, keeping well out of sight, and peeked out. Snarls of colored paper ribbons were fluttering down across the opening. Others were unreeling from the dock now moving fast away from the side of the ship, and one little pink strand rasped out and whizzed past her face straight into her porthole, landing on the floor. She stepped back with her hand on her heart, her face white and startled. Then realizing that it was only a stray, meant for the deck above her, she stepped closer to the porthole and looked out again. Now that she could feel distinct motion under her, now that she had seen a narrow space of water between her and land, she took courage.

The water was a several yards wide now, and growing wider. She drew a deep breath and came nearer, looking out, her eyes sweeping the dock. And suddenly she saw a bulky figure, head and shoulders above most of the throng, come elbowing through the crowd. The sun shone down upon his uncovered red head, and glinted on a red mustache, as he pushed the throng aside, elbowing his way to the front, and wildly waving his hat as if he expected the boat to stop for him. Could that be Sam Morgan? She got only that one glimpse of him, for a woman began to wave a handkerchief and it fluttered up and down between his face and Kerry’s vision. In her excitement she could not be sure.

Kerry shrank back in new fright but could not keep from peering 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 right of a mother and such a stepfather?

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 around 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 bother 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 share of glory. Beyond that, and keeping out of the reach of her undesirable stepfather, 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.