When Donald returned to The Dreamerie about eleven o'clock, he was agreeably surprised to find his father in the living-room.
"Hello, dad!" he greeted The Laird cheerfully. "Glad to see you. When did you get back?"
"Came down on the morning train, Donald."
They were shaking hands now. The Laird motioned him to a chair, and asked abruptly.
"Where have you been all day, son?"
"Well, I represented the clan at church this morning, and, after luncheon here, I went down to visit the Brents at the Sawdust Pile. Stayed for dinner. Old Caleb's in rather bad shape mentally and physically, and I tried to cheer him up. Nan sang for me--quite like old times."
"I saw Nan Brent on the beach the other day. Quite a remarkable young woman. Attractive, I should say," the old man answered craftily.
"It's a pity, dad. She's every inch a woman. Hard on a girl with brains and character to find herself in such a sorry tangle."
The Laird's heavy heart was somewhat lightened by the frankness and lack of suspicion with which his son had met his blunt query as to where he had been spending his time. For the space of a minute, he appeared to be devoting his thoughts to a consideration of Donald's last remark; presently he sighed, faced his son, and took the plunge.
"Have you heard anything about a fight down near the Sawdust Pile last night, my son?" he demanded.
His son's eyes opened with interest and astonishment.
"No; I did not, dad. And I was there until nearly ten o'clock."
"Yes; I was aware of that, and of your visit there to-day and this evening. Thank God, you're frank with me! That yellow scoundrel and two Greeks followed you there to do for you. After you roughed the Greek at the railroad station, it occurred to me that you had an enemy and might hold him cheaply; so, just before I boarded the train, I telephoned Daney to tell Dirty Dan to shadow you and guard you. So well did he follow orders that he lies in the company hospital now at the point of death. As near as I can make out the affair, Dirty Dan inculcated in those bushwhackers the idea that he was the man they were after; he went to meet them and took the fight off your hands."
"Good old Dirty Dan! I'll wager a stiff sum he did a thorough job." The young laird of Tyee rose and ruffled his father's gray head affectionately. "Thoughtful, canny old fox!" he continued. "I swear I'm all puffed up with conceit when I consider the kind of father I selected for myself."
"Those scoundrels would have killed you," old Hector reminded him, with just a trace of emotion in his voice. "And if they'd done that, sonny, your old father'd never held up his head again. There are two things I could not stand up under--your death and"--he sighed, as if what he was about to say hurt him cruelly--"the wrong kind of a daughter-in-law."
"We will not fence with each other," his son answered soberly. "There has never been a lack of confidence between us, and I shall not withhold anything from you. You are referring to Nan, are you not?'"
"I am, my son."
"Well?"
"I am not a cat, and it hurts me to be an old dog, but--I saw Nan Brent recently, and we had a bit of talk together. She's a bonny lass, Donald, and I'm thinking 'twould be better for your peace of mind--and the peace of mind of all of us--if you saw less of her."
"You think, then, father, that I'm playing with fire."
"You're sitting on an open barrel of gunpowder with a lighted torch in your hand."
Donald returned to his chair and faced his father.
"Let us suppose," he suggested, "that the present unhappy situation in which Nan finds herself did not exist. Would you still prefer that I limit my visits to, say, Christmas and Easter?"
The Laird scratched the back of his head in perplexity.
"I'm inclined to think I wouldn't," he replied. "I'd consider your best interests always. If you married a fine girl from Chicago or New York, she might not be content to dwell with you in Port Agnew."
"Then Nan's poverty--the lowliness of her social position, even in Port Agnew, would not constitute a serious bar?"
"I was as poor as Job's turkey once myself--and your mother's people were poorer. But we came of good blood."
"Well, Nan's mother was a gentlewoman; her grandfather was an admiral; her great-grandfather a commodore, her great-great-granduncle a Revolutionary colonel, and her grandmother an F.F.V. Old Caleb's ancestors always followed the sea. His father and his grandfather were sturdy old Yankee shipmasters. He holds the Congressional medal of honor for conspicuous gallantry in action over and above the call of duty. The Brent blood may not be good enough for some, but it's a kind that's good enough for me!"
"All that is quite beside the question, Donald. The fact remains that Nan Brent loves you."
"May I inquire on what grounds you base that statement, dad?"
"On Saturday night, when you held her in your arms at parting, she kissed you." Donald was startled, and his features gave indubitable indication of the fact. His father's cool gray eyes were bent upon him kindly but unflinchingly. "Of course," he continued, in even tones, "you would not have accepted that caress were you not head over heels in love with the girl. You are not low enough to seek her favor for another reason."
"Yes; I love her," Donald maintained manfully. "I have loved her for years--since I was a boy of sixteen,--only, I didn't realize it until my return to Port Agnew. I can't very well help loving Nan, can I, dad?"
To his amazement, his father smiled at him sympathetically.
"No; I do not see how you could very well help yourself, son," he replied. "She's an extraordinary young woman. After my brief and accidental interview with her recently, I made up my mind that there would be something radically wrong with you if you didn't fall in love with her."
His son grinned back at him.
"Proceed, old lumberjack!" he begged. "Your candor is soothing to my bruised spirit."
"No; you cannot help loving her, I suppose. Since you admit being in love with her, the fact admits of no argument. It has happened, and I do not condemn you for it. Both of you have merely demonstrated in the natural, human way that you are natural human beings. And I'm grateful to Nan for loving you. I think I should have resented her not doing so, for it would demonstrate her total lack of taste and appreciation of my son. She informed me, in so many words, that she wouldn't marry you."
"Nan has the capacity, somewhat rare in a woman, of keeping her own counsel. That is news to me, dad. However, if you had waited about two minutes, I would have informed you that I do not intend to marry Nan--" He paused for an infinitesimal space and added, "yet."
The Laird elevated his eyebrows.
"'Yet?'" he repeated.
Donald flushed a little as he reiterated his statement with an emphatic nod.
"Why that reservation, my son?"
"Because, some day, Nan may be in position to prove herself that which I know her to be--a virtuous woman--and when that time comes, I'll marry her in spite of hell and high water."
Old Hector sighed. He was quite familiar with the fact that, while the records of the county clerk of Santa Clara County, California, indicated that a marriage license had been issued on a certain date to a certain man and one Nan Brent, of Port Agnew, Washington, there was no official record of a marriage between the two. The Reverend Mr. Tingley's wife had sorrowfully imparted that information to Mrs. McKaye, who had, in turn, informed old Hector, who had received the news with casual interest, little dreaming that he would ever have cause to remember it in later years. And The Laird was an old man, worldly-wise and of mature judgment. His soul wore the scars of human perfidy, and, because he could understand the weakness of the flesh, he had little confidence in its strength. Consequently, he dismissed now, with a wave of his hand, consideration of the possibility that Nan Brent would ever make a fitting mate for his son.
"It's nice of you to believe that, Donald. I would not destroy your faith in human nature, for human nature will destroy your faith in time, as it has destroyed mine. I'm afraid I'm a sort of doubting Thomas. I must see in order to believe; I must thrust my finger into the wound. I wonder if you realize that, even if this poor girl should, at some future time, be enabled to demonstrate her innocence of illicit love, she has been hopelessly smeared and will never, never, be quite able to clean herself."
"It matters not if
I know she's a good woman. That is all sufficient. To hell with what the world thinks! I'm going to take my happiness where I find it."
"It may be a long wait, my son."
"I will be patient, sir."
"And, in the meantime, I shall be a doddering old man, without a grandson to sweeten the afternoon of my life, without a hope for seeing perpetuated all those things that I have considered worth while because I created them. Ah, Donald, lad, I'm afraid you're going to be cruel to your old father!"
"I have suffered with the thought that I might appear to be, dad. I have considered every phase of the situation; I was certain of the attitude you would take, and I feel no resentment because you have taken it. Neither Nan nor I had contemplated the condition which confronts us. It happened--like that," and Donald snapped his fingers. "Now the knowledge of what we mean to each other makes the obstacles all the more heart-breaking. I have tried to wish, for your sake, that I hadn't spoken--that I had controlled myself, but, for some unfathomable reason, I cannot seem to work up a very healthy contrition. And I think, dad, this is going to cause me more suffering than it will you."
A faint smile flitted across old Hector's stern face. Youth! Youth! It always thinks it knows!
"This affair is beyond consideration by the McKayes, Donald. It is utterly impossible! You must cease calling on the girl."
"Why, father?"
"To give you my real reason would lead to endless argument in which you would oppose me with more or less sophistry that would be difficult to combat. In the end, we might lose our tempers. Let us say, therefore, that you must cease calling on the lass because I desire it."
"I'll never admit that I'm ashamed of her, for I am not!" his son burst forth passionately.
"But people are watching you now--talking about you. Man, do ye not ken you're your father's son?" A faint note of passion had crept into The Laird's tones; under the stress of it, his faint Scotch brogue increased perceptibly. He had tried gentle argument, and he knew he had failed; in his desperation, he decided to invoke his authority as the head of his clan. "I forbid you!" he cried firmly, and slapped the huge leather arm of his chair. "I charge you, by the blood that's in you, not to bring disgrace upon my house!"
A slight mistiness which Donald, with swelling heart, had noted in his father's eyes a few moments before was now gone. They flashed like naked claymores in the glance that Andrew Daney once had so aptly described to his wife.
For the space of ten seconds, father and son looked into each other's soul and therein each read the other's answer. There could be no surrender.
"You have bred a man, sir, not a mollycoddle," said the young laird quietly. "I think we understand each other." He rose, drew the old man out of his chair, and threw a great arm across the latter's shoulders. "Good-night, sir," he murmured humbly, and squeezed the old shoulders a little.
The Laird bowed his head but did not answer. He dared not trust himself to do so. Thus Donald left him, standing in the middle of the room, with bowed head a trifle to one side, as if old Hector listened for advice from some unseen presence. The Laird of Tyee had thought he had long since plumbed the heights and depths of the joys and sorrows of fatherhood. The tears came presently.
A streak of moonlight filtered into the room as the moon sank in the sea and augmented the silver in a head that rested on two clasped hands, while Hector McKaye, kneeling beside his chair, prayed to his stern Presbyterian God once more to save his son from the folly of his love.