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  Blue Fire

  Phyllis A. Whitney

  For Morea

  1

  He saw her almost at once. In spite of the confusion spilled across the South Side tracks, where there had been a minor collision, she was easy to spot. A chap at the Chicago Bulletin had said she was out on a job and had mentioned the accident. If the need was urgent, she could be found there. “Look for a half pint of girl with a full quart of camera,” he had directed. The urgency was not that extreme, but Dirk had come nevertheless, with a curious wish to see her unguarded at work in her own environment.

  The August afternoon had turned drizzling dark and this was not a section of Chicago that set its best foot forward. Gray was the predominant key for mist-blurred trains and tracks and milling people, for the sky and the lake and nearby buildings. Despite the soupy murk, he found her easily, hopping around through the crowd like a lively sparrow, pausing for a camera shot here, ducking out of the way of an ambulance attendant there, her orange scarf a tongue of flame that made its wearer easy to follow. Her hair was tucked under a shapeless brown beret, a trench coat engulfed her slight person, and flat-heeled loafers carried her in agile leaps as she searched for suitable camera angles.

  Dirk lighted a cigarette in the shelter of a tilted boxcar and watched with a mingling of amusement and interest. The accident was apparently not serious, so she should be through with her duties soon. No need to get on with it immediately—he would bide his time.

  Strange that he should remember so clearly the last time he had seen her. She had been seven and he sixteen. That morning she had been clambering about on an arm of rocks that thrust out across the sand of Camp’s Bay at the other end of the world. She had held a camera in her hands that day too—a child’s box camera. And she had insisted on taking his picture. Perhaps he remembered that long-ago morning at the Cape Peninsula so well because no one since that time had ever regarded him with the same warm adoration that little Susan van Pelt had shown toward a somewhat uncertain young man of sixteen.

  He continued to watch the girl with the camera, wondering what his best approach might be. Perhaps he’d better not tell her at once who had sent him here, or why.

  Having taken her fill of pictures, the grown-up Susan swung her equipment over her shoulder and started toward him across the tracks. She still moved with the news photographer’s watchful eye for an unexpected picture, so that she did not look too carefully at the rails and crossties under her feet. The toe of one small brown loafer caught in stepping over a rail and she went sprawling before Dirk could spring forward to catch her. It was an ugly fall, but she was up before he reached her, looking first to the safety of her camera.

  To Dirk her anxiety, her look of near fright as she turned the camera about, examining it for injury, seemed a bit extreme. Probably it was borrowed from her paper and expensive to replace in case of serious damage. Only when she had made sure that the bulky camera had received no hurt did she pull up her plaid skirt to examine the bloody smear across one knee, where cinders had torn stocking and flesh.

  “Ouch!” she said. And then more gently as if in afterthought, “Damn!”

  Dirk hid his amusement at such hesitant profanity and stepped to her side. “That was a nasty spill. May I help? Let me take that camera and get you out of here.”

  The odd, trembling fear was fading and the look she gave him was straight and clear, her brown eyes enormous in her small, pointed face. A faint sense of shock went unexpectedly through him. She had been a homely little thing, with freckles on her nose and eyes too big for her size when he had first known her. She was not pretty now, but here was a face to arrest a man and make him look again. There was still a shadow of freckles and the mouth was generous and mobile. In the bulky trench coat her figure was invisible, but her ankles were good and small boned, her wrists fragile for the load of that heavy camera. Her mother had been a small woman too, he remembered—an American, and something of a scatterbrain.

  She resisted when he tried to take her camera, but accepted the help of his arm, limping for a few steps until she forced herself to walk steadily.

  “I’m all right,” she said. “I’ve got to get these plates back to the paper right away.” Her accent was wholly American. There was no trace of English or Afrikaans left in it.

  “Let me take you there,” he said. “We can find a cab on the next street. Think you can walk that far?”

  “I can walk,” she assured him, and her gaze came wonderingly back to his face. The brown eyes, hazel flecked, searched puzzled for an answer. “I know you, don’t I? I’ve met you somewhere?”

  They had reached the sidewalk and he raised a finger to a cruising taxi, postponing a reply. The girl hesitated only a moment and then got in when he opened the door. As the cab headed north, she dabbed gingerly at her raw knee with a handkerchief. Then she pulled off the ugly beret and ran a hand through her cropped hair. He started at the sight. Strange that he had remembered her eyes and forgotten her hair. It was a bright color, just short of a true auburn, but with fire in the chestnut. She wore it shorter than he liked. She must be persuaded to let it grow, he thought, as if it were ordained that he should influence her life.

  “Tell me where we’ve met,” she persisted, studying him again.

  The cab was following Michigan Avenue now, and luxury shops rimmed the boulevard like shining beads on a gray thread. In the tall buildings ahead lights gleamed in a thousand windows, brightening the mist with their glow.

  “I’ll give you a hint,” he told her. “Can you picture a wide beach with very white sand and a piling up of big flat rocks cutting out toward the sea? Can you remember a line of peaks leaning all one way and repeating themselves against the sky?”

  She gasped and one hand flew to her lips. “The Twelve Apostles! South Africa, of course. And you’re Dirk—Dirk Hohenfield!”

  “So you do remember,” he said, a little surprised at his own pleasure.

  Her eyes danced into eager life. “Remember? Of course I remember! How could I not? I was madly in love with you then. You were a smattering of all my heroes rolled into one, including Paul Kruger and Cecil Rhodes.”

  A faint smile curled her lips and he had an odd wish to see her smile with gaiety, to laugh aloud. Her face was not a gay one in repose.

  He took her hand, the left one, and pulled off the worn pigskin glove. At least there was no ring on the third finger. That should make the old man’s wishes a bit easier to gratify.

  “You slapped me with this hand once,” he reminded her. “I can remember how surprised I was that such a little girl could slap so hard. Your right hand was holding a doll, I believe.”

  “I remember too,” she said. “You hurt my feelings. You made fun of my dear Marietjie and I had to make you think I hated you.”

  “But you didn’t.” He spoke with confidence. She, at least, had never sensed his uncertainties, or the resentments of a brooding, sensitive boy. “What a funny little scamp you were. I liked playing hero for you, even if I didn’t deserve to have you feel that way.”

  She withdrew her fingers and unwound the orange scarf from about her neck as if she sought some occupation for her hands. The elusive smile had vanished.

  “Did my father send you for me?” she asked directly, and the gentleness was gone from her voice and manner.

  “I’m on a combination business trip and holiday,” he told her, but she would have none of that.

  “If he sent you for me, the answer is still no. I’m twenty-three now.
I hadn’t heard from him for sixteen years until he wrote recently, following my mother’s death. I don’t know him. I don’t want to know him.”

  “We must talk about that,” he said. “Will you let me come to see you? For my own pleasure,” he added hastily as he saw refusal coming. “This evening, perhaps? Will you have dinner with me?”

  The hint of resistance melted and she relaxed in the seat beside him. “I should have known who you were the moment I heard you speak. I haven’t heard the accent of South Africa in years, yet every word comes back to me.”

  “I’m no South African by birth,” he reminded her quickly.

  She nodded. “Yes, I know. Your father was German, wasn’t he?” In spite of himself he stiffened, and she must have sensed his withdrawal.

  “Why don’t you come to my place tonight?” she asked. “I’ll fix supper for you, if you like. It will be easier to talk than in a restaurant. Have you been in Cape Town lately?”

  “I live there now,” he said. “I work for your father, Niklaas van Pelt.”

  The cab had stopped for a red light that halted the wide stream of Michigan Avenue traffic. The bridge was just ahead, with the Near North Side beyond. They were almost there.

  “He must be terribly old—my father,” she said. “In his seventies? He was close to fifty when he married my mother. She was young—too young for him.” The girl turned her direct look upon Dirk. “How did he learn that Mother had died? He’s never shown any interest in us before. How would he hear?”

  “Your father has friends in America,” Dirk told her casually. He must be careful now, make no slip about the letter which had alerted the old man to his wife’s approaching death. It was clear that the girl knew nothing of her mother’s letter.

  Susan seemed to consider his words, neither completely accepting nor denying.

  “He hurt her so much,” she went on, her tone youthfully bitter. “My mother was sweet and gay and fun-loving. I can still remember the cold way he treated her when he didn’t approve of her frivolity. He broke her heart—and her spirit too. That’s why she ran away from South Africa and took me with her.”

  Dirk watched the cars slipping past, not looking at the girl beside him.

  “My father did something wicked and went to prison for it, didn’t he?” she said, sounding prim and disapproving, like a child who has been taught to parrot grown-up words.

  The cab pulled up to the curb and Dirk opened the door and stepped out, relieved to bring a halt to her words.

  “We’ll return to this tonight,” he said, and helped her to the sidewalk, camera and all.

  She gave him her address, and he walked with her to the door and into the echoing cavern of a vaulted lobby. For just a moment he held her hand lightly and looked into brown eyes that had a shading of grief in them.

  “Until this evening then,” he said. “Tot siens—till we meet again.”

  At the homely Afrikaans farewell, tears came into her eyes and she blinked them back furiously. “Perhaps I shouldn’t see you after all. I don’t want to remember too much. Remembering hurts.”

  There was, he found, a somewhat surprising tenderness in him toward her, and he smiled, knowing that she would not withdraw her invitation. She turned abruptly and walked toward the elevators and he stood looking after her. The jaunty set of her shoulders seemed touchingly deliberate. She swung the shapeless beret from one hand, guarding her camera with the other, and the bright fire of her hair shone in the lighted lobby. He watched her until she disappeared through an elevator door.

  Then he left the building and strode along Michigan in the direction of his hotel. He was ready now to question the tremulous letter her mother had written—all that sticky sentiment about her innocent and helpless chick with no nest egg to save her from harm. This girl was far from helpless, and yet there was about her an air of innocence that was as unexpected as it was appealing. He could see a streak of her father too, which gave her a stubborn resistance. She might be harder to convince than he had expected, but he would give it his best try, for more reasons than one.

  A subtle excitement had begun to stir in him and he whistled as he walked along the avenue. Had there been any about to recognize the tune, they would have known it for an old riding song of the Boers. All about a young man who was willing to ride his ten-pound horse to death on a night-long journey in order to be with his love in the morning.

  I’ll think of my darling as the sun goes down,

  The sun goes down, the sun goes down,

  I’ll think of my darling as the sun goes down,

  Down, down below the mountain.

  I’ll ride, I’ll ride, I’ll ride, I’ll ride,

  I’ll ride all night,

  When the moon is bright …*

  The girl felt the excitement too. Through the rest of the day she thought a great deal about Dirk Hohenfield—and about what little she knew of the past.

  Her mother had been born in Chicago and had lived there after her parents’ death. Her one excursion out of the country had been with a world-circling musical troupe for which she had played the piano. When the tour had ended in financial disaster, Claire had stayed on in South Africa. There she had married and remained until something she would never talk about had terminated her life with Niklaas van Pelt. This was at the close of the war and she had been able to return to the States and the city she knew best—Chicago. At home, with a small daughter and herself to support, she had held various positions as receptionist and hostess—a type of work that required good looks and a charm of manner that Claire was happily able to supply.

  Her mother’s illness and untimely death only a few months before had left Susan with a devastating sense of loss. She had always been a rather lonely person, but that had not mattered so much when there was someone to whom she could devote herself. Now there were reminders on every hand of the companion she had lost, and there was no one who needed her.

  During the past year or so she had made friends in her newspaper work, it was true, but that rather sophisticated world was still new to her. She wanted very much to belong to the fourth estate, but she suspected that her coworkers did not yet take her seriously. There was no one to whom she was truly close.

  Dirk Hohenfield’s sudden appearance was like having a rocket shoot across a bleak horizon. Like a rocket he would soon be gone, but for a little while she would delight in his presence and even in his link with a place she had never been able to forget.

  It was understandable that the day dragged and that she was preoccupied with her own thoughts until the moment when she could get away. Then she stopped at a grocery store to shop and went home to the little apartment on the Near North Side that she had shared with her mother. In the tiny kitchen she went to work, feeling happier than she had for a long time.

  Now she could think without interruption of the man who was coming here tonight. She did not know all the circumstances, but she knew her father had taken him as a ward when Dirk’s parents had died. Apparently he had continued in a close relationship to her father after he had grown up.

  When a casserole of scalloped potatoes was browning in the oven and the salad greens were ready in the refrigerator, the steaks prepared for broiling, she wandered into the living room to look about with a sense of dissatisfaction.

  She would have liked Dirk to see her as she really was, and she was not a pastel-pretty person like this room that had so well suited her mother. But there was nothing to be done about the matter at this late date. She wrinkled her nose ruefully at the rose-pink cloth she had spread over a gate-legged table by the window, and at pink candles in rosebud-painted china holders. Without disloyalty she knew that these things were Claire and not Susan, and she could only hope that Dirk would understand.

  How well she remembered the boy he had been—the very way he had looked the last time she’d seen him, his bright fair hair shining under the South African sun, his eyes as vivid a blue as the Cape Town sky. They had clambered out
upon a great stretch of rocks that reached into the Atlantic and he had been watchful of her, lest she slip and tumble into the water. She had wanted to take a picture of him with her small camera, but somehow it had never come out. He had teased her as he posed, and laughed at her, though never unkindly. With the single-mindedness of a lonely child she had looked up to him and there had been an aching in her beyond her years, sensing as she had that she was about to lose him out of her life forever. Such a loss seemed especially poignant for a child, moving at the bidding of adults and helpless to save what she loved.

  By comparison, of course, Dirk had been grown-up—yet not wholly so. He was always willing to romp with her, and sometimes even to talk to her about his own adventurous dreams that still had about them an immaturity which she had been too young to recognize. Sometimes he told her of how he would be a great lion hunter when he was older, or perhaps he would find gold and become enormously rich. He had been the only person she knew with the spirit of adventure burning high in him—and thus akin to the heroes of the stories she loved to read.

  Now he was here and real, they were both grown-up, and her feeling of excitement persisted and heightened.

  A gilt-rimmed mirror over what had once been a real fireplace gave back her reflection and she studied it critically. Her beige dress with the green belt was right for so warm an evening, but she was uncertain of the green velvet band she had wound through her hair. Was that ribbon Claire or Susan? Sometimes it was very hard to tell.

  She had just raised a hand to remove it when the sound of the buzzer startled her. Too late now—the ribbon would have to stay. She flew to push the button that would release the door catch three floors down.

  “All the way up!” she called over the hall rail and heard the breathless sound of her own voice.

  He came up bareheaded and the memory of the way he had looked in the sunlight that last day in South Africa was upon her again. Of course he was older now, but in so many ways the same. Still breathless, she retreated to her doorway, trying to hide this betrayal of her own eagerness. She must not let him think her too absurdly young and expectant.