Keepers of the Faith, page 1
KEEPERS
OF THE FAITH
Emilie Loring
First published by Bantam Books, Inc. in 1944
Copyright © Emilie Loring 1944
This edition published in 2020 by Lume Books
30 Great Guildford Street,
Borough, SE1 0HS
The right of Emilie Loring to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
Table of Contents
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
XXVII
XXVIII
XXIX
XXX
I
Nancy Barton approached home swinging a tennis racket. She glanced up at patches of blue sky between tree branches where recently there had been green leaves. Not many more out-of-door games with nurses on the hospital court … Birches had turned to gold. The maples were flames. The road was bordered by flares of goldenrod, purple plumes of asters and burning bushes of sumac. A scarlet leaf whirled and skipped ahead like a child gaily homeward bound from school. September had bowed out in a riot of color.
A crisp breeze tossed the waves of her short auburn hair, twitched at the sleeve of her moss green cardigan and her white skirt. Gorgeous air. She adored a New England autumn. Her enthusiasm cooled. Would she leave it next week for the South? She ought to be proud and happy that Ken wanted her to come to him, instead she was fiercely angry. Not an ideal frame of mind in which to start a marriage.
As she entered the hall of her sister’s house a voice from the living room hailed her.
“Nan, come here.”
The imperious command roused a hot wave of protest. Someday that same wave would burst the dam of her habit of taking it. Then what? She lingered on the threshold.
“I’m just off the tennis court, Di. I’ll shower and come back.”
“No. Read this first.” The beautiful, tall woman in a Red Cross uniform, with cold blue eyes, smoothly lacquered hair the color of wheat, a determined mouth and a make-up that was a hundred per cent improvement on nature, held out a slip of yellow paper. Nan took it—read the message twice. The words were steadier the second time.
married today. ken
She sank to the blond mahogany bench before the fire and looked up at her sister standing in front of the mantel—her half-sister, she reminded herself; then at the colonial green walls and matching hangings of the charming living room, at the spiral of steam mounting from the spout of the silver kettle on the tea tray. She was awake. It wasn’t a dream.
“Are you surprised?” Dianne Mitchell’s question brought Nan’s clear hazel eyes to meet the’ keen eyes watching her.
“Naturally, as I am wearing Ken’s ring.” She tried desperately to keep her voice under control. “Why wire you, Dianne? Hadn’t he courage to break the news to me himself?”
“You put him off once too many times, Nan.”
“If he had loved me as a man should love the girl he wants for a wife, he wouldn’t have gone off the deep end with another woman because I postponed our marriage.”
“You’ve a lot to learn about men, Nancy. I am disappointed in you.”
“Why in me? You picked a naval officer—whom you liked immensely—as a husband for your sister. The fact that his family is tops socially helped, and little credit to that same sister that she allowed herself to be persuaded he was the man she wanted. You will be trustee of my property until I am twenty-five or marry. Instead of fighting for my freedom from your highhanded management of my life, I, like a mouse, allowed myself to be argued into an engagement.” She shredded the yellow paper and flung the scraps into the scarlet and orange flames weaving and dancing up the chimney like fire dervishes.
“I can take being jilted.” She swallowed a sob and blinked back hot tears. “What I can’t bear is that a man in whose fairness I believed would be such a heel as to wire you to tell me—not have the nerve to break the news to me himself. He didn’t even mention my name. Great help he’ll be to the U.S. Navy! If he would cheat, anyone would. I’m off men for good.” She pulled a ring from the third finger of her left hand and watched the facets of the large diamond catch the firelight.
“I presume this should be returned by registered mail. Ken will need it for his blonde.”
“How do you know he has married a blonde?” Dianne Mitchell’s voice was sharp with suspicion.
“A gremlin whispered it.”
Nan was proud of the flippancy of the reply. Why admit that yesterday—was it possible it was only yesterday?—she had received an ultimatum from Kenneth Rand warning her that unless she wrote him at once that she would join him on the fifteenth of the month at the base where he was stationed, he would marry someone else? At first she had thought it a joke, then had been so furious at the threat that she had waited to let her anger cool before answering. The fifteenth was a week ahead. He hadn’t waited even twenty-four hours for her answer. His letter must have been a build-up for the jilt. Doubtless the blonde was a fast worker.
“I am glad you are taking it so sensibly that you can laugh, Nan.” Why confess that the sound Dianne had heard had been a quickly swallowed sob? “Now that the decision to marry or not to marry has been made for you—we can go on from here.”
“Not a chance.” Nancy Barton thrust her hand with the ring in the palm hard into the pocket of her green cardigan. “From now on I make my plans. Do you know why I haven’t been tempted to join one of the Women’s Auxiliaries? Because most of my life I’ve served under your orders. ‘Hup! Hup! Left! Right! Attention! March!’ or words to that effect. No regimentation for me. It’s time I stepped out on my own. You have charted my life to date, now I’ll take over. I—”
“You’ll have to admit it has been successfully charted,” Dianne Mitchell interrupted. “You make society headlines wherever you go, you’ve had a sound education, with summers abroad to study languages, from the time you were a little girl until the war tore the world apart. Your singing and piano playing are far above average. You’re an archery champion, a demon at tennis, you ride, skate, ski, dance, play an excellent game of cards and wear clothes like a professional model—”
“You check off my material qualifications as if I were being auctioned to the highest bidder who is not interested in my mind and spirit. You know nothing about the real me, that’s why. You’ve left out two courses I took on myself: Nurses’ Aide and secretarial.”
“You interrupted before I had finished the inventory. You are beautiful with your heart-shaped face, naturally curly auburn hair, faultless skin, exquisite teeth, enormous hazel eyes set in jet-black lashes, and lovely hands.”
“No credit to you, those items. They came from my mother.”
“I’ve helped preserve and increase their attractiveness with care of your health, which is superb, haven’t I? Someday you’ll thank me for all this. I advised Kenneth Rand as a husband for you because I think him a coming man. A man with a future. You’re the clinging-vine type, Nan. You need—”
“Someone to whom to cling? Not any more. By the time this horrible war is over the dependent woman will be as extinct as the prairie hen. Had I married Ken, the blonde would have sailed into the offing sooner or later. That it happened sooner is a piece of luck, if you ask me. I believe in faithfulness to marriage vows. That’s where you and I part company, Di.”
I shouldn’t have said that, I shouldn’t, Nan reproached herself. Never before have I given the slightest hint that I thought Jerry Payne a trifle too devoted to his friend’s wife.
“What do you mean by that crack?” Dianne’s blue eyes were as hard as her voice.
“Nothing special. You’ll have to admit that you have an extra man or two hanging round even in wartime. I meant a lot, though, when I declared that from now on I’m on my own. I’m grateful for what you’ve done for me. I know you’ve given me a grand foundation for life. I was sixteen when Mother died and left her small fortune in trust for me until I was twenty-five—or married—to be handled by your father and mine who, when he went, appointed you trustee in his place. If your training is worth anything I ought to be able to work out a design for living myself.”
“Don’t be silly, Nan. You’re upset because of that news from Ken. There are other coming men in the world, though I think he is especially right for you. Let’s forget him and dress. We’re having supper with the Suttons tonight, remember.”
“You may be. I’m not. I sent regrets.”
“You’re not going! To the Suttons’?”
“You couldn’t have sounded more horrified if I had turned down a command dinner with the President.”
“But they are newcomers here, socially desirable, and this is their first entertaining. They have bought—not leased—the adjoining place to ours; it isn’t good neighborliness not to go. The supper is in honor of Mrs. Sutton’s brother, invalided back from the Pacific after accomplishing thirty missions. He’s a captain in the Marines and has been decorated. You must go. It’s to be buffet. I’ll phone her you’ve changed your mind—”
“If you do, I won’t go. You’re through managing me, Di. You’re set to manage everything—clubs, community projects as well as every person who touches your life. Sam may be able to stand it, he can’t escape, but I—”
“Hey, what goes on here? Do I smell gunpowder? Did I hear my name? What can’t I escape, Nancy B.?”
Nan forced a smile to meet the amused eyes, brown and friendly as those of a red setter, of the blond, thickset man standing on the threshold. “Nancy B.” was his special name for her. He was tall except when standing beside his wife, who was half a head taller. She loved her sister’s husband too much to hurt him. No brother could have been more considerate in the years she had lived in his house. Several times he had sided with her against his wife, and that had taken courage. Only once had she known him to make the same stand for himself. Di had interfered in his office routine and his fury had become one of the legends of the foundry. She had not attempted it again. Why didn’t he assert himself at home? Not because of Di’s money; he had a lot more than she. He was what was currently called a “big-shot industrialist.”
“Just a touch of mutiny,” his wife explained with a hint of the dictator addressing the populace in voice and manner. “Nan is threatening to fare forth on her own.”
“If you ask me, it’s high time.” Back to the fire, Sam Mitchell lighted a cigarette.
“Thanks a million, Sam.”
“Why thank him, Nan? He’s practically turning you out of his house.”
“Nancy B. knows better than that, Dianne. She knows that I’ll miss her like the devil, but I can’t stand seeing a personality being smothered.”
“You mean by me?”
“Sure by you. As a dictator you have World Enemy Number 1 licked to an appeaser. Who else in the house has anything to say? What caused this blowup?”
Nan couldn’t believe her ears. Sam, the lazy, Sam the subservient husband, breaking out like this at home! What had happened to cause the change?
“A wire from Kenneth Rand announcing his marriage,” Dianne answered lightly.
Sam Mitchell’s incredulous eyes questioned his wife and then her sister.
“Married! Boy, I didn’t know you’d broken your engagement, Nan.”
“I hadn’t. Ken wired Di the glad news.”
“Di! Why didn’t the heel inform you?”
“You’ll have to ask him. He isn’t so terribly to blame, Sam. He has been asking me to marry him and I have kept postponing it.”
“This is one time your managing hand came a cropper, Di. You put that engagement across, didn’t you?”
“Suppose I did. Nan wasn’t forced into it, was she?”
Sam Mitchell ignored his wife’s annoyed question. He crossed to Nan and tipped up her chin until he could look into her eyes.
“Pretty broken up about this, Nancy B.? I’m not. Gosh, how I’ve wished you’d tie a tin can to Lieutenant (j.g.) Kenneth Rand. Never liked him. Too smooth for my money. Mad enough for me to take the first plane southward bound and beat up the happy bridegroom?”
Nan shook her head.
“No, Sammy. I’ve had an escape. You know that one about the ill wind. It has given me a chance to start over. I’ll hunt a real war job tomorrow morning.”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind, Nan. You are doing enough, with Civilian Defense, Nurses’ Aide work and Officers’ Club evenings. I forbid it,” Dianne declared forcefully.
Nan glanced at Sam Mitchell. His arms were crossed on the tall, carved back of a chair. Would he come to her rescue? Evidently not. His eyes were half-covered by their lids in his usual lazy expression. It was up to her to fight for freedom.
“Watch me, that’s all, just watch me, Di,” she defied flippantly.
“If you do, I’ll stop your allowance.”
Sam Mitchell straightened and thrust his hands hard into the pockets of his brown tweed coat.
“If you attempt that, Di, I’ll walk out on you.”
“Walk out! Sam Mitchell, have you gone crazy?”
His steady eyes met and held her incredulous blue ones. Color rose to her fair hair. Nan’s heart shot to her throat and went into a nose dive. Did he know about Jerry Payne? she wondered in the instant of tense silence which followed Di’s question. He lighted another cigarette, blew a smoke-ring before he answered.
“Could be. Perhaps I’ve just become sane. I meant what I said. Di has no legal right to stop your allowance, Nancy B. If she doesn’t know that she’d better resign her trusteeship and have someone appointed who does. Go ahead. Try out any plan you want. I’ll back you in anything.”
“Sam Mitchell—” Dianne’s eyes were blue fire in a face devoid of color under the rouge—“don’t dare interfere between me and Nan, unless—unless you are in love with her.” She watched the blood burn under his fair skin. “Good heavens, I believe you are!”
Nan looked from one to the other incredulously. Di’s eyes were wide with unbelief, her husband’s were murderous. What had started this horrid quarrel? Sam in love with his wife’s sister? Di was crazy. Di was—
“Run along, Nancy B.” Sam’s voice was low and toneless. “This is no place for a little girl who still has star dust in her eyes.”
Run! Nan didn’t need to be told to make her escape. As she reached the threshold she heard his low, fierce voice:—
“You’ve started something now, Dianne.”
II
Twelve. Nan counted the strokes of the tall clock on the stair landing. Midnight. She rose restlessly from a deep chair in her softly lighted bedroom. Why couldn’t she settle down, sleep, and forget the last seven hours? Forget the wire from Ken, forget Dianne’s furious “I believe you are in love with her” and Sam’s fierce “You’ve started something now, Dianne”?
The mirror reflected her slim figure in lounge pajamas—aqua satin slacks, the pale gold and aqua plaid of her short-sleeved tunic and the copper sheen of her auburn hair—as she passed it on her way to the long open window. Star dust in her eyes, Sam had said. That was a joke. Did any girl of twenty-two have it now? There had been another fight with Di when she had persisted in her refusal to attend the Sutton supper. Just why had she declined the invitation in the first place?
Arms crossed on the railing of the iron balcony outside her room, she looked down at the garden from which rose the faint scent of petunias. In the middle of it a swimming pool glimmered like an indigo mirror flecked with shimmering star-reflections, cold red stars, hot blue stars, hung against the indigo velvet of the sky.
Moonlight washed in a shadow-pattern under each tree. The stillness of autumn had descended on the countryside. Had the katydids been silenced by the first frost? There was no sound of their raucous night cries. From the distance drifted a baritone voice singing “Speak low when you speak love.” The Sutton party on the adjoining estate must still be going strong. She had refused the invitation because she was fed up with attending social affairs when men were dying horribly, perhaps men she knew; when hearts were breaking on the home front and she was doing nothing to help—that was the answer.
“That’s not fair to yourself,” Nan reminded Nan. “You spend six hours a day at the hospital pinch-hitting for nurses and attendants; you’re an Air Raid Warden. Of course you want a regular war job and of course you’ll get one. Sam will back you.”
“You’ve started something now, Dianne.”
The memory of his fierce voice set her a-shiver. He wasn’t in love with her, he was just devoted and tender as a brother would be. Darn Dianne. She had spoiled a beautiful friendship. In doing that she had opened a way of escape. She wouldn’t want her half-sister in the house after this and her half-sister wouldn’t stay.
“You’ve started something now, Dianne.” Sam’s words echoed through her mind again. What had he meant? What current of events had Di set in motion?
She must sidetrack that train of thought. Perhaps if she ran down to the garden for a few minutes, when she came back she would sleep.
