The Twenty Fourth of June by Grace S. Richmond

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THE TWENTY-FOURTH OF JUNE

Midsummer's Day

by

GRACE S RICHMOND

1914

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. The Curtain Rises on a Home

II. Richard Changes His Plans

III. While It Rains

IV. Pictures

V. Richard Pricks His Fingers

VI. Unsustained Application

VII. A Traitorous Proceeding

VIII. Roses Red

IX. Mr. Kendrick Entertains

X. Opinions and Theories

XI. "The Taming of the Shrew"

XII. Blankets

XIII. Lavender Linen

XIV. Rapid Fire

XV. Making Men

XVI. Encounters

XVII. Intrigue

XVIII. The Nailing of a Flag

XIX. In the Morning

XX. Side Lights

XXI. Portraits

XXII. Roberta Wakes Early

XXIII. Richard Has Waked Earlier

XXIV. The Pillars of Home

XXV. A Stout Little Cabin

CHAPTER I

THE CURTAIN RISES ON A HOME

None of it might ever have happened, if Richard Kendrick had gone into
the house of Mr. Robert Gray, on that first night, by the front door.
For, if he had made his first entrance by that front door, if he had
been admitted by the maidservant in proper fashion and conducted into
Judge Calvin Gray's presence in the library, if he had delivered his
message, from old Matthew Kendrick, his grandfather, and had come away
again, ushered out of that same front door, the chances are that he
never would have gone again. In which case there would have been no
story to tell.

It all came about--or so it seems--from its being a very rainy night in
late October, and from young Kendrick's wearing an all-concealing
motoring rain-coat and cap. He had been for a long drive into the
country, and had just returned, mud-splashed, when his grandfather,
having taken it into his head that a message must be delivered at once,
requested his grandson to act as his messenger.

So the young man had impatiently bolted out with the message, had sent
his car rushing through the city streets, and had become a still muddier
and wetter figure than before when he stood upon the porch of the old
Gray homestead, well out in the edge of the city, and put thumb to the
bell.

His hand was stayed by the shrill call of a small boy who dashed up on
the porch out of the dusk. "You can't get in that way," young Ted Gray
cried. "Something's happened to the lock--they've sent for a man to fix
it. Come round to the back with me--I'll show you."

So this was why Richard Kendrick came to be conducted by way of the
tall-pillared rear porch into the house through the rear door of the
wide, central hall. There was no light at this end of the hall, and the
old-fashioned, high-backed settee which stood there was in shadow.

With a glance at the caller's muddy condition the young son of the house
decided it the part of prudence to assign him this waiting-place, while
he himself should go in search of his uncle. The lad had seen the big
motor-car at the gate; quite naturally he took its driver for a
chauffeur.

Ted looked in at the library door; his uncle was not there. He raced off
upstairs, not noting the change which had already taken place in the
visitor's appearance with the removal of the muddy coat and cap.

Richard Kendrick now looked a particularly personable young man, well
built, well dressed, of the brown-haired, gray-eyed, clear-skinned type.
The eyes were very fine; the nose and mouth had the lines of
distinction; the chin was--positive. Altogether the young man did not
look the part he had that day been playing--that of the rich young idler
who drives a hundred and fifty miles in a powerful car, over the worst
kind of roads, merely for the sake of diversion and a good luncheon.

While he waited Richard considered the hall, at one end of which he sat
in the shadow. There was something very homelike about this hall. The
quaint landscape paper on the walls, the perceptibly worn and faded
crimson Turkey carpeting on the floors, the wide, spindle-balustrade
staircase with the old clock on its landing; more than all, perhaps, on
an October night like this, the warm glow from a lamp with crystal
pendants which stood on the table of polished mahogany near the front
door--all these things combined to give the place a quite distinctive
look of home.

There were one or two other touches in the picture worth mentioning, the
touches which spoke of human life. An old-fashioned hat-tree just
opposite the rear door was hung full with hats. A heavy ulster lay over
a chair close by, and two umbrellas stood in the corner. And over
hat-rack, hats, ulster, and chair, with one end of silken fringe caught
upon one of the umbrella ribs, had been flung by some careless hand,
presumably feminine, a long silken scarf of the most intense
rose-colour, a hue so vivid, as the light caught it from the landing
above, that it seemed almost to be alive.

From various parts of the house came sounds--of voices and of footsteps,
more than once of distant laughter. Far above somewhere a child's high
call rang out. Nearer at hand some one touched the keys of a piano,
playing snatches of Schumann--_Der Nussbaum, Mondnacht, Die Lotosblume_.
Richard recognized the airs which thus reached his ears, and was sorry
when they ceased.

Now there might be nothing in all this worth describing if the effect
upon the observer had not been one to him so unaccustomed. Though he had
lived to the age of twenty-eight years, he had never set foot in a place
which seemed so curiously like a vague dream he had somewhere at the
back of his head. For the last two years he had lived with his
grandfather in the great pile of stone which they called home. If this
were no real home, the young man had never had one. He had spent periods
of his life in various sorts of dwelling-places; in private rooms at
schools and college--always the finest of their kind--in clubs, on
ships, in railway trains; but no time at all in any place remotely
resembling the house in which he now waited, a stranger in every sense
of the word, more strange to the everyday, fine type of home known to
the American of good birth and breeding than may seem credible as it is
set down.

"Hold on there!" suddenly shouted a determined male voice from somewhere
above Richard. A door banged, there was a rush of light-running feet
along the upper hall, closely followed by the tread of heavier ones. A
burst of the gayest laughter was succeeded by certain deep grunts,
punctuated by little noises as of panting breath and half-stifled
merriment. It was easy to determine that a playful scuffle of some sort
was going on overhead, which seemed to end only after considerable
inarticulate but easily translatable protest on the part of the weaker
person involved.

Then came an instant's silence, a man's ringing laugh of triumph; next,
in a girl's voice, a little breathless but of a quality to make the
listener prick up ears already alert, these most unexpected words:

"'O, it is _excellent_
To have a giant's strength; but it is _tyrannous_
To use it like a giant!'"

"Is it, indeed, Miss Arrogance?" mocked the deeper voice. "Well, if you
had given it back at once, as all laws of justice, not to mention
propriety, demanded, I should not have had to force it away from you.
Oh, I say, did I really hurt that wrist, or are you shamming?"

"Shamming! You big boys have no idea how brutally violent you are when
you want some little thing you ought not to have. It aches like
anything," retorted the other voice, its very complaints uttered in such
melodious tones of contralto music that the listener found himself
wishing with all his might to know if the face of its owner could by any
possibility match the loveliness of her voice. Dark, he fancied she must
be, and young, and strong--of education, of a gay wit, yet of a
temper--all this the listener thought he could read in the voice.

"Poor little wilful girl! Did she get hurt, then, trying to have her own
way? Come in here, jade, and I'll fix it up for you," the deeper tones
declared.

Footsteps again; a door closed. Silence succeeded for a minute; then the
Schumann music began again, a violin accompanying. And suddenly,
directly opposite the settee, a door swung slowly open, the hand upon
the knob invisible. A picture was presented to the stranger's eyes as if
somebody had meant to show it to him. He could but look. Anybody, seeing
the picture, would have looked and found it hard to turn his eyes away.

For it was the heart of the house, right here, so close at hand that
even a stranger could catch a glimpse of it by chance. A great,
wide-throated fireplace held a splendid fire of burning logs, the light
from it illumining the whole room, otherwise dark in the October
twilight. Before it on the hearth-rug were silhouetted, in distinct
lines against its rich background, two figures. One was that of a woman
in warm middle life, sitting in a big chair, her face full of both
brightness and peace; at her feet knelt a young girl, her arm upon her
mother's knees, her face uplifted. The two faces were smiling into each
other.

Somebody--it looked to be a tall young man against the fire-glow--came
and abruptly closed the door from within, and the picture was gone. The
fitful music ceased again; the house was quiet.

Thereupon Richard Kendrick grew impatient. Fully ten minutes must have
elapsed since his youthful conductor had disappeared. He looked about
him for some means of summoning attention, but discovered none.

Suddenly a latchkey rattled uselessly in the lock of the front door;
then came lusty knocks upon its stout panels, accompanied by the
whirring of a bell somewhere in the distance.

A maidservant came hurriedly into the hall through a door near Richard,
and at the same moment a boy of ten or eleven came tearing down the
front stairs. As the lad shouted through the door, Richard recognized
his late conductor.

"You can't get in, Daddy; the lock's gone queer. Come around to the
back. I'll see to him, Mary," the boy called to the maid, who, nodding,
disappeared.

At this moment the door opposite Richard opened again, and the mother of
the household came out, her comely waist closely clasped by the arm of
the young girl. The two were followed by the tall young man.

Richard stood up, and was, of course, instantly upon the road to the
delivery of his message.

Ted, ushering in his father, and spying the waiting messenger, cried
repentantly, "Oh, I forgot!" and the tall young man responded gravely,
"You usually do, don't you, Cub?" This elder son of the house, waving
the small boy aside, attended to taking Richard to the library, and to
summoning Judge Calvin Gray.

In five minutes the business had been dispatched, Judge Gray had made
friendly inquiry into the condition of his old friend's health, and
Richard was ready to take his departure. Curiously enough he did not now
want to go. As he stood for a moment near the open library door, while
Judge Gray returned to his desk for a newspaper clipping, the caller was
listening to the eager greetings taking place in the hall just out of
his sight. The father of the family appeared to have returned from an
absence of some length, and the entire household had come rushing to
meet and welcome him. Richard listened for the contralto notes he had
heard above, and presently detected them declaring with vivid emphasis:
"Mother has been a dear, splendid martyr. Nobody would have guessed she
was lonely, but--we knew!"

"She couldn't possibly have been more lonely than I. Next time I'll take
her with me!" was the emphatic response.

Then the whole group swept by the library door, down the hall, and into
the room of the great fireplace. Nobody looked his way, and Richard
Kendrick had one swift view of them all. Vigorous young men, graceful
young women, a child or two, the mother of them all on the arm of her
husband--there were plenty to choose from, but he could not find the one
he looked for. Then, quite by itself, another figure flashed past him.
He had a glimpse of a dusky mass of hair, of a piquant profile, of a
round arm bared to the elbow. As the figure passed the hat-tree he saw
the arm reach out and catch the rose-coloured scarf, flinging it over
one shoulder. Then the whole vision had vanished, and he stood alone in
the library doorway, with Judge Gray saying behind him: "I cannot find
the clipping. I will mail it to your grandfather when I come upon it."

"I knew that scarf was hers," Richard was thinking as he went out into
the night by way of the rear door, Judge Gray having accompanied him to
the threshold and given him a cordial hand of farewell. What a voice!
She could make a fortune with it on the stage, if she couldn't sing a
note. The stage! What had the stage to do with people who lived together
in a place like that?

He looked curiously back at the house as he went down the box-bordered
path which led, curving, from it to the street. It was obviously one of
the old-time mansions of the big city, preserved in the midst of its
grounds in a neighbourhood now rampant with new growth. It was outside,
on this chill October night, as hospitable in appearance as it was
inside; there was hardly a window which did not glow with a mellow
light. As Richard drove down the street, he was recalling vividly the
picture of the friendly-looking hall with its faded Turkey carpet worn
with the tread of many rushing feet, its atmosphere of welcoming
warmth--and the rose-hued scarf flung over the dull masculine belongings
as if typifying the fashion in which the women of the household cast
their bright influence over the men.

It suddenly occurred to Richard Kendrick that if he had lived in such a
home even until he went away to school, if he had come back to such a
home from college and from the wanderings over the face of the earth
with which he had filled in his idle days since college was over, he
should be perhaps a better, surely a different, man than he was now.

* * * * *

Louis Gray, coming into the hall precisely as Richard Kendrick, again
enveloped in his muddy motoring coat, was releasing Judge Gray's hand
and disappearing into the night, looked curiously after the departing
figure. His sister Roberta, following him into the hall a moment after,
rose-coloured scarf still drifting across white-clad shoulder, was in
time to receive his comment:

"Seems rather odd to see that chap departing humbly by any door but the
front one."

"You knew him, then. Who was he?" inquired his sister.

"Didn't you? He's a familiar figure enough about town. Why, he's Rich
Kendrick. Grandson of Matthew Kendrick, of Kendrick & Company, you know.
Only Rich doesn't take much interest in the business. You'll find his
doings carefully noticed in certain columns in certain society
journals."

"I don't read them, thank you. Do you?"

"Don't need to. Kendrick's a familiar figure wherever the gay and
youthful rich disport themselves--when he's in the country at all. He's
doing his best to get away with the money his father left him.
Fortunately the bulk of the family fortune is still in the hands of his
grandfather, who seems an uncommonly healthy and vigorous old man."
Louis laughed. "Can't think what Rich Kendrick can be doing here with
Uncle Cal. I believe, though, he and old Matthew Kendrick are good
friends. Probably grandson Richard came on an errand. It certainly
behooves him to do grandfather's errands with as good a grace as he can
muster."

"He was sitting in the hall quite a while before Uncle Cal saw him,"
volunteered Ted, who had tagged at Roberta's heels, and was listening
with interest.

"Sitting in the hall, eh--like any district messenger?" Louis was
clearly delighted with this news. "How did it happen, Cub? Mary take him
for an everyday, common person?"

"I let him in. I thought he was a chauffeur," admitted Ted. "He was
awfully wet and muddy. Steve took him in to Uncle Cal."

An explosion of laughter from his interested elder brother interrupted
him. "I wish I'd come along and seen him. So he had the bad manners to
sit in our hall in a wet and muddy motoring coat, and go in to see Uncle
Cal--"

"The young man had on no muddy coat when Stephen brought him in to see
me," declared Judge Calvin Gray, coming out and catching the last
sentence. "He put it on in the hall before going out. What are you
saying? That was the grandson of my good friend, Matthew Kendrick, and
so had claim upon my good will from the start, though I haven't laid
eyes upon the boy since his schooldays. He was rather a restless and
obstreperous youngster then, I'll admit. What he is now seems pleasing
enough to the eye, certainly, though of course that may not be
sufficient. A fine, mannerly young fellow he appeared to me, and I was
glad to see that he seemed willing enough to run upon his grandfather's
errands, though they took him out upon a raw night like this."

But Louis Gray, though he did not pursue the subject further, was still
smiling to himself as he obeyed a summons to dinner.

At opposite ends of the long table sat Mr. and Mrs. Robert Gray. The
head of the house looked his part: fine of face, crisp of speech,
authoritative yet kindly of manner. His wife may be described best by
saying that one had but to look upon her to know that here sat the Queen
of the little realm, the one whose gentle rule covered them all as with
the brooding wing of wise motherhood. Down the sides of the board sat
the three sons: Stephen, tall and slender, grave-faced, quiet but
observant; Louis, of a somewhat lesser height but broad of shoulder and
deep of chest, his bright face alert, every motion suggesting vigour of
body and mind; Ted--Edgar--the youngest, a slim, long-limbed lad with
eyes eager as a collie's for all that might concern him--this was the
tale of the sons of the house. There were the two daughters: Roberta,
she of the rose-coloured scarf--it was still about her shoulders,
seeming to draw all the light in the room to its vivid hue, reflecting
itself in her cheeks--Roberta, the elder daughter, dusky of hair,
adorable of face, her round white throat that of a strong and healthy
girl, her laugh a song to listen to; the other daughter, Ruth, a
fair-haired, sober-eyed creature of growing sixteen, as different as if
of other blood. One would not have said the two were sisters. There was
one more girl at the table; no, not a girl, yet she looked younger than
Roberta--a little person with a wild-rose, charming face, and the
sweetest smile of them all--Rosamond, Stephen's wife, quite incredibly
mother of two children of nursery age, at this moment already properly
asleep upstairs.

Last but far from least, loved and honoured of them all above the lot of
average man to command such tribute, was the elder brother of the master
of the house, his handsome white head and genial face drawing toward him
all eyes whenever he might choose to speak--Judge Calvin Gray. All in
all they were a goodly family, just such a family as is to be found
beneath many a fortunate roof; yet a family with an individuality all
its own and a richness of life such as is less common than it ought to
be.

CHAPTER II

RICHARD CHANGES HIS PLANS

The next time Richard Kendrick went to the Gray home was a fortnight
later, when old Matthew Kendrick was sending some material for which
Judge Gray had written to ask him--books and pamphlets, and a set of
maps. This time he would have sent a servant, but his grandson Richard
heard him giving directions and came into the affair with a careless
suggestion that he was driving that way and might as well take the stuff
if Mr. Kendrick wished it. The old man glanced curiously at him across
the table where the two sat at luncheon.

"Glad to have you, of course," he commented, "but you made so many
objections when I asked you before I thought I wouldn't interfere with
your time again. Did you meet any of the family when you went?"

"Only Judge Gray and two of his nephews," responded Richard, truthfully
enough.

So he went with the big package. This time, it being a fine, sunny,
summerlike day almost as warm as September, he went clad in careful
dress with only a light motoring coat on over all to preserve the
integrity of his attire. He left this in the car when he leaped out of
it, and appeared upon the doorstep looking not at all like his own
chauffeur, but quite his comely self.

The door-lock was in full working order now, and he was admitted by the
same little maid whom he remembered seeing before. Upon his inquiry for
Judge Gray he was told that that gentleman was receiving another caller
and had asked to be undisturbed for a short time, but if he could wait--

Now there was no reason in the world for his waiting, since the package
of books, pamphlets, and maps was under his arm and he had only to
bestow it upon the maid and give her the accompanying directions. But,
at this precise moment, Richard caught sight of a figure running down
the staircase; concluded in one glance, as he had concluded in one
glance before, that if a personality could be expressed by a speaking
voice, a laugh, and a rose-hued scarf, this must be the one they
expressed; and decided in the twinkling of an eye to wait. The maid
conducted him toward the room on the right of the hall and he followed
her, passing as he did so the person who had reached the foot of the
stairs and who went by him in such haste that he had only time to give
her one short but--it must be described as--concentrated look straight
in the eyes. She in turn bestowed upon him the one glance necessary to
inform her whether she knew him and so must stay long enough in her
rapid progress to greet him. Their eyes therefore met at rather close
range, lingered for the space of two running seconds, and parted.

Richard Kendrick accepted the chair offered him and sat upon it for the
space of some eighteen-odd minutes; they might have been hours or
seconds, he could not have told which. He could hardly have described
the room to which he had been shown, unless to say that it was a square,
old-fashioned reception room, a little formal, decidedly quaint, and
dignified, and clearly not used by the family as other rooms were used.
Certainly the piano, from which he had heard the Schumann music on his
former visit, was not here, and certainly there were no rose-hued scarfs
flung carelessly about. It was undoubtedly a place kept for the use of
strange callers like himself, and had small part in the life of the
household.

At length he was summoned to Judge Gray's library. He was met with the
same pleasant courtesy as before, delivered his parcel, and lingered as
long as might be, listening politely to his host's remarks, and looking,
looking--for a chance to make a reason to come again. Quite unexpectedly
it was offered him by the Judge himself.

"I wonder if you could recommend to me," said Judge Gray as Richard was
about to take his leave, "a capable young man--college-bred, of
course--to come here daily or weekly as I might need him, to assist me
in the work of preparing my book. My eyes, as you see, will not allow me
to use them for much more than the reading of a paragraph, and while my
family are very ready to help whenever they have the time, mine is so
serious a task, likely to continue for so long a period, that I shall
need continuous and prolonged assistance. Do you happen to know--?"

Well, it can hardly be explained. This was a rich man's heir and the
grandson of millions more, in need--according to his own point of
view--of no further education along the lines of work, and he had a
voyage to the Far East in prospect. Certainly, a fortnight earlier the
thing furthest from his thoughts would have been the engaging of himself
as amanuensis and general literary assistant to an ex-judge upon so
prosaic a task as the history of the Supreme Court of the State. To say
that a rose-hued scarf, a laugh, and an alluring speaking voice explain
it seems absurd, even when you add to these that which the young man saw
during that moment of time when he looked into the face of their owner.
Rather would I declare that it was the subtle atmosphere of that which
in all his travels he had never really seen before--a home. At all
events a new force of some sort had taken hold upon him, and was leading
him whither he had never thought to go.

If Judge Gray was surprised that the grandson of his old friend Matthew
Kendrick should thus offer himself for the obscure and comparatively
unremunerative post of secretary, he gave no evidence of it. Possibly it
did not seem strange to him that this young man should show interest in
the work the Judge himself had laid out with an absorbing enthusiasm.
Therefore a trial arrangement was soon made, and Richard Kendrick agreed
to present himself in Judge Gray's library on the following morning at
ten o'clock. The only stipulation he made was that if, for any reason,
he should decide suddenly to go upon a journey he had had some time in
contemplation, he should be allowed to provide a substitute. He had not
yet so completely surrendered to his impulse that he was not careful to
leave himself a loophole of escape.

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