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Title: The Carcellini Emerald, With Other Tales

Author: Mrs. Burton Harrison

Release date: January 9, 2021 [eBook #64242]
                Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

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THE CARCELLINI EMERALD
WITH OTHER TALES


[Illustration: “MAID? NEVER HAD SUCH A THING IN MY LIFE,” LAUGHED
CECILY; “AND WHAT WOULD HA’ BEEN THE USE, WHEN MR. LENVALE WOULD
INSIST ON ESCORTING ME.”]



THE CARCELLINI EMERALD
WITH OTHER TALES

by

MRS. BURTON HARRISON


[Illustration: (Colophon)]






Herbert S. Stone and Company
Chicago and New York
MDCCCXCIX

Copyright 1899 by
Herbert S. Stone & Co.

THE PUBLISHERS ACKNOWLEDGE THE COURTESY OF
THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY (THE SATURDAY
EVENING POST), MAST, CROWELL AND KIRKPATRICK
(THE WOMAN’S HOME COMPANION), AND HARPER AND
BROTHERS, IN ALLOWING THE USE OF ILLUSTRATIONS




                              CONTENTS


                                                                   PAGE
  The Carcellini Emerald                                             3
  An Author’s Reading and its Consequences                          77
  Leander of Betsy’s Pride                                         103
  The Three Misses Benedict at Yale                                123
  A Girl of the Period                                             169
  The Stolen Stradivarius                                          205
  Wanted: A Chaperon                                               287




                        LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

                                                                   PAGE
  “MAID? NEVER HAD SUCH A THING IN MY LIFE,” LAUGHED CECILY;
  “AND WHAT WOULD HA’ BEEN THE USE, WHEN MR. LENVALE WOULD
  INSIST ON ESCORTING ME.”                                 Frontispiece

  “AN OPPORTUNITY TO DECK OUT HER BOARD WITH AN EFFECT.”            80

  “MR. BLUDGEON HAD BETTER BE READ THAN SEEN.”                      88

  “NEED I SAY THAT IT GOES TO MY INMOST--”                          98

  THE THREE MISSES BENEDICT AT YALE.                               124

  “AND WITH GLOOM IN HIS HEART HE WENT BACK TO HIS LONELY
  ROOM AND LIFE.”                                                  154

  “RUSSELL REAPPEARED, BRINGING WITH HIM THE SODDEN FORM OF
  AGNES.”                                                          162

  “MY DEAR KATE, YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW HARD PUT TO IT I AM TO
  MAKE ENDS MEET. I AM SO POOR IT IS A SCANDAL.”                   288




                       THE CARCELLINI EMERALD




                       THE CARCELLINI EMERALD


                                  I

How did Ashton Carmichael come by his aristocratic and decidedly
individual place as a dictator in New York’s smart society? Nobody
knew; nobody really cared. In his set it was sufficient for one sheep
to jump, and all the rest would follow. He was as much a power as
was Beau Brummell over modish London in the days of the Regency.
Asked everywhere, deferred to with bated breath by new aspirants, he
was seen only at the houses of authenticated fashion. In the clubs
to which he belonged--and the list of them was long, following his
name in the Social Register--some men affected to pooh-pooh his
right to membership; but rarely was there a member of a committee
on admissions found to vote against him on the score of fitness.
Good-looking, gentlemanlike, amusing when it suited him to be so,
sarcastic--and, on occasion, offensively snobbish--his uncertainties
of mood lent zest to pursuit by his admirers. He had no known income
beyond that derived from a nebulous business in real estate in which
he was alleged to hold a partnership. His place of residence was
in a couple of cheapish rooms in an out-of-the-way neighborhood.
But all the good things of life seemed to fall easily to his share;
and winter and summer, on land, at sea, he was heard of, in ripe
enjoyment of luxuries earned or inherited by other people.

As a matter of fact, while the general public languished in ignorance
of Carmichael’s antecedents, there were two or three individuals in
New York who could have told his story from A to Z, but preferred
for various reasons to keep their mouths shut. One of these was
Tom Oliver, Carmichael’s chum at college and his sponsor in the
initiatory steps of worldly progress. Another was Tom’s sister
Eunice, now pretty Mrs. Arden Farnsworth, who, in days of lang syne,
had been engaged to her brother’s handsome friend.

The third was a brave, hard-working young woman journalist on the
staff of a great city newspaper; a girl who never troubled Carmichael
with her presence, although she bore his name, and had given all her
little patrimony to help her only brother through the university and
provide him a start in life.

It was at the beginning of senior year, when Tom Oliver came back
to college to surprise his friends by the announcement of his rich
father’s insolvency. Up to that time Tom had been regarded as a
prince of generosity and good-fellowship. His liberal allowance was
lavished upon college subscriptions and other fellows’ debts as soon
as it came into his hands. Before the end of the month he was as
impecunious as the rest of them. The blow of his sudden change of
prospects did not, therefore, afflict him as much as might have been
expected. As for the democratic, happy-go-lucky band who for three
years had made him their hero, it seemed, if anything, to bring him
nearer to their level. As a rule, the chaps of their brotherhood
were the sons of toilers, accustomed to scant means and modest ways
of life, who looked forward to opening the world’s oyster with their
own swords, or nobody’s. The man who appeared most to feel the hero’s
altered circumstances was his room-mate, known as Ash Carmichael,
a fellow the crowd had taken in among them through a not unnatural
delusion that his being so intimate with Tom made him of Tom’s sort.
Oliver and he had drifted together in freshman year, and Ash was
indebted to Tom for a long list of solid benefits bestowed with the
same recklessness of consequences and loyalty of affection that had
marked every kind action of the young man’s life.

On all occasions when it was possible Tom had taken Ashton home to
New York with him for the holidays and flying visits. The latter had
spent two months of the summer preceding senior year at the Olivers’
house at Newport, where he had made acquaintance with some of the
people who were afterward to be his sponsors in fashionable life.
The stress he laid upon these individuals, their homes and habits,
had elicited from his chum a great deal of good-natured fun at
Carmichael’s expense. But as that was the only thing he ever enjoyed
at the expense of that individual, Tom was entitled to make the most
of it.

For Tom himself the smart people who forever dined and drove and
yachted and gave incessant dinners had no attraction. Mrs. Oliver,
a devotee of the gay world, and Charlotte, her older daughter,
who followed in the mother’s footsteps, had ceased chiding their
recreant brother, and were rather inclined to hustle him out of
the observation of their all-important circle. Eunice, the younger
girl, who adored Tom, used often to fall behind in the fashionable
procession for the pleasure of sharing her brother’s pastimes. In
athletics Tom had trained her well, and here Ash Carmichael had first
elicited her girlish admiration, for he was an adept in all sports
requiring grace and activity.

But then even Mrs. Oliver told her son that his chum was the only
“possible” college-mate he had ever brought under the patrimonial
roof-tree!

When the crash of Tom’s prospects came as to finances Carmichael
was disagreeably taken by surprise. The manifestation to his friend
of the exact condition of his feelings on this subject was, on the
whole, more trying to Tom than the original blow.

The first public move in the disintegration of their friendship was
Tom’s withdrawal from the expensive rooms they had occupied together
since freshman year into much cheaper lodgings.

Ash promptly installed in his place a wealthy and inane classmate
whom the “crowd” had antecedently styled “Miss Willie.” There was a
groan of derision among the fellows for this substitute for Tom; and
at an impromptu meeting of leading spirits in Tom’s new rooms, in an
old and shabby quarter, it was voted to give Carmichael henceforth
what they called the “icy nod.”

After the Christmas holidays, which Ash spent with “Miss Willie’s”
family, something occurred to bring upon Tom’s former chum a ban more
serious than what had preceded it. The offense, the discovery of
it, the discussion, and the verdict were known to only a few of Tom
Oliver’s most devoted henchmen. Outsiders, aware of some dark mystery
in process of solution, talked of it--speculated curiously--but got
no farther. That Carmichael had done something awfully shady was
generally believed. What that something was nobody could find out.
But during the whole time of the agitation Tom went about black as a
thunder-cloud and silent as the grave.

If the Faculty knew anything of these proceedings it was based upon
vague rumor only, or came by intuition. They had nothing to take hold
of, on which to condemn Carmichael. It was generally believed, among
them and the undergraduates, that a few men under Oliver’s leadership
had rectified whatever wrong was done; had saved Carmichael from
disgrace and exposure; and had then agreed to hush the matter up.

Before graduating, Carmichael took a prize for an uncommonly clever
essay, which he delivered with ease and distinction before an
audience of whom the strangers applauded him to the echo. When he
took his degree, and the class was about to scatter, he was so
much alone that nobody thought of asking what he meant to do in the
future. When next heard from by his late associates Mr. Carmichael
had set out on a journey to Europe to end in the circuit of the
globe, as the companion of “Miss Willie,” whose family defrayed all
expenses.

About this time Tom Oliver, in a suit of greasy overalls, was
beginning his labors in the repair-shops of a great railway in a
little Pennsylvania town, to obtain intimate personal knowledge
of all parts of the mighty motor that was henceforward to control
his destiny. For, at the advice of a friend of his father, he had
determined to work up from the bottom of the railroad business
to as near the top as ambition and energy might ultimately carry
him. Tom had need of all his pluck during the summer of this first
apprenticeship to toil. His father, overworried and outworn, was
stricken with apoplexy in New York, and suddenly passed away. Simply
because he could not tell what better to do for them, Tom transferred
his mother and sisters to live in a cottage in the suburbs of the
town where he was employed.

Oh, the tragedy of life when small souls meet larger ones in everyday
friction! Mrs. Oliver and Charlotte, banded against Tom and Eunice,
made those summer days in the hot little house twice their ordinary
length. And Tom saw, in spite of her persistent effort to make the
best of things, that little Eunice was carrying a burden more heavy
for her shoulders than the loss of a great house, a troop of friends,
servants, and finery. Nor was it her mourning for the father she
had loved tenderly that oppressed her. Of him she and Tom talked
together frequently, and with honest feeling. But there was something
else--something she hugged to her heart in silence, that grew worse
as the summer waned.

Just when matters were at their worst with the little household--when
petty domestic trials beat like billows over poor Tom’s head--when
Eunice began to look like an image of hope deferred--a visitor
arrived. Tom heartily welcomed Arden Farnsworth, a man much older
than himself, who in years past had been often at their home. A
dim idea that Farnsworth had come after Chatty penetrated the
brother’s head. It occurred to him that among his mother’s abundant
lamentations for lost joys she had mentioned the fact that last
winter she had been almost sure Farnsworth would propose for Chatty,
but that he had gone abroad and made no sign. And Farnsworth, as
everybody knew, would be a husband in a hundred--well born, well
placed, of such character, means, and position as would anchor
the whole Oliver family away from the quick-sands of their present
uncertainties.

Then it came out it was Eunice, not Charlotte, whom Farnsworth wanted
for a wife--whom he had loved for a year past, and left because he
feared she would laugh at the disparity between their ages--nineteen
and thirty-five--whom he had now come back to America resolved to
secure, if earnest pleading would avail.

But Eunice, urged to the front by her mother, who philosophically
made up her mind that one, if not _the_ one she had counted upon
of her daughters, should recoup their lost fortune and position,
disappointed all the family hopes. She told Arden Farnsworth that it
was impossible for her to marry him, and sent him away pierced with
sorrow at his failure. His generous nature longed for an opportunity
to place the dainty little beauty back in the niche where she
belonged. For her sake he was prepared to make any provision for Mrs.
Oliver and Chatty, short of offering them the hospitality of his
houses and yacht and other such covetable spots where the Farnsworth
Penates were enshrined.

In the tempest that broke over Eunice after Farnsworth’s departure,
Tom learned his sister’s secret. She came to him, trembling and
tearful, nestled in his breast, and told him that for a year she had
considered herself engaged to Ashton Carmichael.

“What!” shouted Tom, loosening his hold of her, his eyes darting
angry lightning. “That ----! Why, Eunice, it is impossible! You
cannot have met him since I broke with him last autumn a year ago.”

“Oh, Tom! How dreadful you look! Of course I knew you were no longer
friends. It was just after poor papa’s troubles began when Ashton
wrote to me that you had separated, and that pride would not allow
him to correspond with me after what had taken place between you.
Then once, during the Christmas holidays, I met him in the street,
and we took a walk together, and he begged me to be true to him and
all would come out right. But still we did not write, until--”

“Don’t tell me he dared approach you after _February_!” exclaimed
Tom, white to the lips with anger.

“Yes. He said there had been such a bad quarrel between you he feared
it could not be made up; but he asked me to meet him in town--in a
picture-gallery--and I did. Don’t be angry, Tom. He wanted to let
me off from our engagement; indeed he did; but I saw he was in
great trouble, and so told him I would never give him up so long as
my love was worth anything to him; that he needn’t write--I should
understand. After this he began coming down to town to walk with me,
which took place several times--I couldn’t refuse him that comfort,
Tom.”

“Comfort! He was laughing in his sleeve, the infernal scoundrel, that
he was so outwitting me! And I at that very time was holding him up
like a rock, to save him from utter ruin before the world! But go on;
for Heaven’s sake, tell me all!”

“That _is_ all, Tom. He sent me a clipping about his essay, and I was
proud. Then he came once again, in June, to tell me he was going to
sail with Billy Innis around the world--and from that day to this I
have never heard from him.” Her head dropped forward forlornly upon
her breast. Large tears flooded her blue eyes and streamed down her
childish face. Tom’s tender heart smote him for having so increased
her grief.

“My dear,” he said, gently, “I would give anything on earth if you
had confided in me before. In my desire to shelter a false and
contemptible fellow I have let you run into a trouble that makes
my blood boil to think of it. Now listen, Eunice, and believe I
speak plain truth. Not only did Ash Carmichael throw me overboard
the minute our father lost his money, but last February he was
guilty of a transaction involving me that might have landed him in
state’s prison if I had not consented to hush it up. Judge, then,
if he is likely to present himself before you again. No, Eunice, he
will never come back. He was a coward, a cad, a sneak, to gratify
himself at your expense in that way; and my heart aches for you,
dear. But now that you know him as he is you will never care for
him again. Think how much worse suffering was his sister’s, to whom
he wrote confessing all, when he was in abject fear that I’d expose
him. He had the cunning to make her come East to beg for him. For,
at the first sight of that brave, tortured girl I was disarmed of
my thoughts of punishment for him. For her sake, not his, I and two
or three other men he had involved in the affair resolved to let
him go and never to speak of it. Except to you, now, the matter has
not passed my lips. And you best know why I have broken our vow of
secrecy.”

Again Eunice hung her head. The crimson of deep shame deepened upon
her face. For a time her voice was stifled by the sobs that shook her
frame.

“Don’t cry, little sister,” Tom went on, distressfully. “You make
me feel like an ogre or an executioner. But in this case there was
no such thing as being merciful; I _had_ to tell you to cure you,
Eunice. Heaven knows the task was not to my taste. Some day, if the
opportunity ever comes in your way, I should like you to say a kind
word or do a kind act to that girl. She is a perfect heroine; and,
if she did not fancy herself under such tremendous obligations to me
already, I’d like to look Alice Carmichael up and try to help her.”

“You are bigger and more generous than I am, Tom,” cried Eunice,
between gasps of pain. “As I feel now, I pray God never to let me
look upon one of their blood again!”

       *       *       *       *       *

Four or five years later saw Mr. Ashton Carmichael a conqueror in
the lists of New York’s smart society. Among all the portals that
flew open at his magic touch there was one that remained obstinately
closed. This was the very fine front door belonging to the new
mansion up town in which Arden Farnsworth had, two years after her
refusal to marry him, installed his bride, recently Miss Eunice
Oliver.

For Eunice, expanding into rare beauty during her exile from the gay
world, had come back to take her place as a power in its councils,
with a new understanding of people and things. Her grave husband
was valued for his truth and loyalty and virile force, immeasurably
beyond what her earlier love had been for his youthful graces of
exterior. With all her heart she loved and was grateful to Farnsworth
for “waiting till she came to her senses,” as she often laughingly
told him. Long, long ago the sting of Carmichael’s treatment had
ceased to pain her. Her fancy for him, in truth, expired that day
when poor, blundering Tom had revealed her lover’s treachery.

With the marriage of Eunice the pressure of adverse circumstances
had been lifted from the Olivers. A former admirer of Miss Chatty’s,
a Mr. Ringstead, first discouraged by her mamma because she did not
want her daughter to remove to Philadelphia, had gallantly come
forward and offered himself anew. Mrs. Oliver, clearing her throat,
suavely remarked to Chatty that she had always considered Ringstead
a most excellent young man. To which Chatty pertly replied that his
excellence was secondary to the fact that he was going to take her
out of that hole of a provincial town where Tom had buried them
alive. Mrs. Oliver, after the second nuptials in her family, gave
it out that she meant to divide her time between her two married
daughters and “dear Tom,” whenever he could be persuaded to settle in
a decent place; and a short time after went abroad, to the relief of
all concerned.

Tom, during most of these early years a bird of passage between
different headquarters of the railway that had annexed his services,
was rarely in New York. When occasionally he had fallen in with some
of his old college-mates they had dined and talked together till well
into next morning, and word was passed along the line of alumni of
their year to this effect: “Tom is all there, every inch of him”;
“The same glorious old fellow”; “True as steel”; “Deserves his luck
in business”; and the like.

But except for these banquets of good-fellowship, Tom had almost
dropped out of conventional society, until Eunice Farnsworth at
last coaxed him to make her a little visit and take a peep into the
world that he had eschewed. It would do him good, she urged, to see
some of the pretty girls and lively matrons who would be present
at, for instance, a dinner to be given by Mr. Farnsworth’s cousin,
Mrs. Ellison, in honor of her daughter’s coming out. Mrs. Ellison,
rather a foolish woman Eunice must admit, would be charmed to extend
an invitation to him at their request. It was to be a large affair
of thirty guests, and Eunice wanted people to see her big handsome
brother. “For you are the pride of my heart, Tom; and I don’t care
who knows it,” she added, so genuinely that Tom was brought into
prompt submission to her will, and promised coöperation in her
schemes.

       *       *       *       *       *

“Young lady from the _Epoch_ waiting to see you, sir,” said the
servant at Carmichael’s lodgings, encountering him in the hallway of
that domicile, as he let himself in by a pass-key late one afternoon
after a round of calls.

Carmichael was the picture of self-satisfied complacency. In attire,
in bearing, he knew himself to be above criticism by the well
informed; and yet his vanity did not disdain the looks of heartfelt
admiration cast upon him by the hand-maidens to whom his landlady
paid small wages for the promiscuous service of her house.

“Another reporter!” he exclaimed, petulantly. “Did I not tell you
never to let them wait for me?”

“She’s in there, sir, not in your sittin’-room,” went on the girl,
pointing to the closed door of the boarding-house parlor. “She said
it was _very_ important, Mr. Carmichael.”

Smiling at the awe-struck expression of the domestic, whose class
can never rid itself of respect for private individuals “wanted”
by the press, he opened the door of a long, narrow apartment with
abundant cheap draperies, spindle-work furniture, and artificial
palms, to find himself confronted by an unwelcome apparition.

“You!” he said, in a tone from which all self-complacency had fled.

“Yes, I. I was assigned to you, and I had to come. Until now I have
been fortunate in avoiding such a contingency.”

“I did not know you were in New York,” he stammered, to gain time.

“I got this appointment on the _Epoch_ last season, through a friend.
But I came here first in summer, when you were cruising on Mr.
Compton’s yacht. You see it is not difficult for me to keep account
of your movements, you are such a great man now; and besides, the
others tell me you are very good in giving them items about your
plans.”

Carmichael colored. He could not believe that the cool, satiric,
self-reliant speaker was the orphaned sister who for years had made
him the god of her idolatry.

“You are looking well,” he said; “your profession seems to agree with
you. I hope you have comfortable quarters. And if there is anything
I can do for you now, perhaps you will tell me as soon as may be,
since I am engaged for dinner and have some letters to write before
dressing.”

“They sent me to ask you the correct date of the Bachelor’s Ball, and
any items about the affair you may wish to publish,” she answered,
fixing upon his evasive eyes a pair of clear, bright orbs.

“That is easily done,” he replied, with an air of relief. “Or stop;
leave me your address, and I will send you the full data to-morrow
after the committee meets.”

“Send it to me at the office, please. But now that our business is so
satisfactorily disposed of there is another little matter about which
I should like to speak to you in a more private place.”

“But I am pressed for time, I tell you!” he exclaimed, uneasily.

“It is something in the nature of a warning,” she said, with a
mocking intonation. “But just as you choose, of course.”

“Come to my sitting-room on the floor above, then,” he responded,
ungraciously, leading the way up the stairs.

The room into which he ushered her was a curious combination of
elemental homeliness and the little belongings of advanced luxury,
which littered it from wall to wall. Alice Carmichael’s quick eye did
not fail to discern this discrepancy, which she set down at once to
her brother’s habitual unwillingness to enjoy anything that was not
a gift from some one who could afford to pay the piper. But despite
her calm bearing, her heart was torn at sight of him. A thousand
recollections, tender and poignant, arose to overwhelm her. To
Ashton’s infinite relief, however, she continued to sit as unbending
as marble upon the edge of the cane-bottomed chair he had offered
her. He knew well enough that after the first drop into sentiment she
would soon be herself again.

“I have always regarded it as a particular piece of good fortune,”
she began, presently, “that so far as I have followed your
fashionable career fate has not brought you into contact with any of
the Olivers. When Mrs. Farnsworth returned here to live it must have
been a considerable embarrassment to you to know how to avoid meeting
her. But that, I suppose, might have been left to her woman’s tact
to dispose of. I am quite sure that neither she nor any one of her
family would ever voluntarily come to look you in the face.”

Her victim winced, and she saw that he felt the sting implied.

“Just now, with the omniscience of my fraternity, I am in a position
to know the list of guests expected at Mrs. Ellison’s dinner for
her débutante daughter to-night. Not only are Mr. and Mrs. Arden
Farnsworth to be there, but Mr. Thomas Oliver himself, who is in town
stopping with his sister for a few days.”

“The devil he is!” cried Carmichael, much perturbed.

“You can hardly have expected to go on forever escaping the sword
of Damocles. Though, as you know, you are perfectly safe from Mr.
Oliver and the Farnsworths, too; indeed, I don’t believe they would
turn on their heels to look a second time if they saw you lying in
the gutter. But I have a feeling for them--a feeling that I can’t ask
you to understand--which makes me wish to spare them the annoyance of
your presence. It will be the first time in years that Mr. Oliver has
appeared in the society of his old friends. He has had a life of work
and care beyond his deserts. I should like to think that this one
evening’s enjoyment is not to be spoiled for him.”

“I believe you are in love with that---- monolith!” said her brother,
with an oath.

Miss Carmichael looked at him with undisturbed equanimity.

“What Mr. Oliver did for me in my hour of greatest need would entitle
him to the best my heart could give. But you forget, I think, that
this and other experiences have made of me a machine, not a woman. No
need, however, to tell you what he did for me, or what I am. Will you
stay away from the Ellisons’ dinner, or will you not?”

“I shall go,” said Carmichael, stubbornly. “I am to take in Miss
Ellison, and to lead their cotillon afterward. I could not be guilty
of such a departure from good form as to throw over the Ellisons
because this assorted lot of paragons of yours are going to be there.
Among thirty people it is hardly likely I shall run counter to them.
And should I do so, I fancy my position is assured beyond any attempt
at a slight _they_ could put upon me. My dear girl, your attitude in
all this is in the last degree strained and goody-goody. Leave me
to paddle my own canoe, as I have left you. We shall continue to do
without each other, I do not doubt. No man alive could endure to have
a Lady Macbeth kind of female arise and stalk about him indulging
in remorseful soliloquies about his past. I am sorry that the only
visit you have done me the honor to make me should have been devoted
to such a ridiculous and futile enterprise. And you will permit me to
suggest once more that I am really very much afraid you are indulging
in a schoolgirl passion for your hero, the doughty and horny-handed
Tom.”

“Good evening,” said the reporter, briskly. “You won’t forget to send
that stuff about ‘The Bachelor’s’ to me not later than to-morrow?”

She was up and off before he could intercept her. The little
servant-maid in the pink cotton frock, with cap askew, was hovering
outside his door as Miss Carmichael went out of it.

“Ain’t he beautiful?” she said, with frank pride. “I s’pose you’ll
put another one o’ them pieces a-praisin’ him into your paper?
There’s lots of the newspaper folks come here to see him; and no
wonder--an’ him keepin’ company with all the high ’ristocrats o’ the
city.”

A moment more and Alice was upon the street mingling with the throng
of workers like herself. Although well in check about matters of
mere sentiment, for which there was no longer time in her hurried
existence, her thoughts had filled with a vision of two children at
their mother’s knee, who shared everything in common until time and
the mother’s death and subsequent hard circumstances had forced them
apart forever. Ah, well! she did not begrudge Ashton anything she had
done for him. But she was glad their mother had not lived.




                                 II

“It was so good of you to come early,” murmured Carmichael’s hostess
to him, when her guests for the dinner were beginning to drop in.
“Now that you are here I feel a great weight off my mind. This kind
of thing is rather a tax when there is no man at the head of the
house, don’t you think so? Please manage to slip off and look into
the dining-room to see if the lights and ventilation are all right.
I arranged the cards myself, so I know that is as it should be.
You take in Gertrude, and on your other side I have put the very
prettiest young matron of my acquaintance--Mrs. Arden Farnsworth, who
married my cousin, don’t you know? I knew your fastidious taste would
be pleased by her, and it would be a sort of reward for your leading
our cotillon afterward. Here comes another raft of people. Do look
at the table, won’t you, and tell my butler if you want any changes
made?”

Carmichael was accustomed to be deputy sovereign in many fine houses.
But he had never felt as grateful for the privilege as now. His plan
was executed quickly. So eager was he to effect a transfer of the
cards of Eunice and her companion away over to the other side of the
broad oval of damask bedecked with pallid orchids in silver vases,
silver flagons, and platters of hothouse grapes, he did not think to
notice for whom was reserved the place next Miss Ellison, whom he was
to take in.

“What an escape!” he murmured inwardly, when Mrs. Farnsworth’s
cards were safely exchanged for two others, taken at hazard from
the opposite side. “Our good hostess will think it was her own
carelessness, but I am safe. I wish I had dared face the music, and
sit next to my late betrothed. There isn’t a woman of the year that
compares with her, and I’d like to force her to notice me again.
However, all comes to him who knows how to wait, and Eunice may once
again be made to thrill at my words of--”

He started guiltily; but it was only Mrs. Ellison’s sleek butler
asking at his elbow if all was to the dictator’s fancy.

“Very good, Masters, though I see you have taken on a little
red-headed cub of a waiter who spilled champagne down my neck at the
last Assembly supper. If I were you I wouldn’t have the little brute
at any price.”

“Beg pardon, Mr. Carmichael, the man shall not be engaged here
again,” said Masters, in deep humility. And Ashton, having partially
settled his score with a poor menial who had had the temerity to
smile when he was laying down the law about the terrapin at a
subscription ball, returned to the drawing-room.

It was quite filled up now with guests who had come in--the women
complacent in gorgeous gowns, the men lagging, beginning to be bored,
eager for food, and inclined to take pessimistic views of life by and
large. They were waiting for some one, it appeared; and presently, as
the door was thrown open, “Mr. and Mrs. Farnsworth and Mr. Oliver”
were heralded.

Eunice, hurrying forward to explain to the hostess that one of their
horses had slipped and fallen upon the asphalt, was royal in her
young beauty. In her robes of shimmering rose color, her head, neck,
and bodice coruscating with jewels, she stirred Carmichael’s selfish
heart as nothing in woman’s shape had done before. He had to turn
away to avoid showing his emotion.

“Don’t stare after Mrs. Farnsworth and forget you’ve got to take me
in,” said, in his ear, the piqued voice of Miss Gertrude Ellison.
“I declare, she has just bewitched all the men. I wish mamma hadn’t
thought it necessary to put her next to you. At this rate I shan’t
get the least notice taken of me. Luckily, I’ve got on my other hand
her brother, Tom Oliver, who is as much a beauty as she is, in his
way.”

Carmichael could not repress a movement of tremor. At that moment he
saw going in ahead of them Oliver, who had been his dearest friend,
his most loyal benefactor, whom he had betrayed. And for an hour and
a half he was to sit so near him that their glances could not fail to
meet. He wished now he had taken the advice of his sister, and stayed
at home.

“Dear me!” exclaimed little Miss Ellison, coming to a halt behind
their places. “It’s Mrs. Dick Anstey who’s next to you, after all. I
suppose mamma changed her mind about Mrs. Farnsworth.”

“I suppose so,” said Carmichael, stooping mechanically to tuck in a
corner of Mrs. Anstey’s apple-green velvet skirt, as that lady took
her chair, having permitted a servant to advance it toward her and
the table. “That gown of yours should be treasured, Mrs. Anstey,” he
added. “It is the most charming you have worn this season, and that
is saying much.”

Mrs. Anstey, who lived to dress, fluttered with excitement at this
compliment. It was unlooked for from Carmichael, who, until now, had
snubbed her unmercifully wherever they had met. He followed it up
by devoting himself to her so exclusively that three courses of the
dinner had passed before he gave heed to the heroine of the feast.

“You _are_ civil,” said Gertrude, finally. “I don’t care, though;
I have been well taken care of. Do you know Mr. Carmichael, Mr.
Oliver?” she went on, with a coquettish glance back at her right-hand
neighbor, to include the two.

“I know Mr. Carmichael,” was the answer. Full upon his false friend’s
countenance flashed Tom’s gaze of scorn. Little Miss Ellison, whose
attention was distracted by some one opposite, did not observe this
by-play. Carmichael was enraged at himself for dropping his eyes upon
his plate. When he gained courage to lift them, Tom had entered into
close conversation with Miss Cowper, who for some moments had been
awaiting attention on his other side.

“What’s the matter with you? You look quite pale and rattled,” went
on Miss Ellison, who had a talent for attack. “One would think you
had seen a ghost. See, there is Mrs. Farnsworth looking this way, to
make sure I am taking good care of her big brother, I suppose. Let us
both nod to her and she’ll know--Goodness! What _has_ she got against
you, Mr. Carmichael? I never in all my days saw such a full-fledged
specimen of the cut direct!”

Nor had Carmichael, in a much wider experience. His ears tingled, his
heart beat with angry resentment. By not the quiver of an eyelash had
Eunice betrayed emotion at sight of him, face to face. If he had been
the footman, just then engaged in projecting a silver dish between
her arm and her neighbor’s, she could not more utterly have ignored
his claim to her acquaintance.

“Evidently it’s just as well Mrs. Farnsworth did not sit next
to you,” pursued Gertrude, at an age to look for little beyond
externals. “I did not expect ever to see the great Mr. Carmichael
come such a nasty cropper. She must be the only one of the ‘crowned
heads’ who doesn’t smile on you. But I must say she’s the freshest
and prettiest of the lot. When I get to be as old as _some_ women I
know, I’m going to stop playing kitten and settle down to be plain
cat. Eunice Farnsworth’s jewels are simply wonderful. Not as showy
as some, but very fine. Mamma says our Cousin Arden has always had
the most perfect taste in precious stones. The only time mamma ever
got ahead of him in a purchase was in the Carcellini emerald, a relic
from an old cardinal’s sale, I think. It was offered in Paris when
papa and mamma were there--oh, long ago, when I was a little kid.
Cousin Arden’s order by cable, to buy it, came to the dealer just
after papa had drawn a check in payment. Don’t know the Carcellini
emerald? Why, it’s famous everywhere. The only thing approaching it
in beauty and value belongs to one of the Russian Grand Duchesses.
Mamma generally wears it at dinner, and I dare say she has it on now.
If you have really never seen it, I’ll ask her to send the ring down
for us to look at.”

“Do you think she will trust us?” asked Mrs. Anstey, who had turned
to catch the latter part of Gertrude’s chatter. “I have always been
dying to have a good look at the Carcellini emerald.”

“Trust us? Of course. She often sends it around the table for her
friends to handle. Now watch me telegraph her, and see if she doesn’t
understand.”

Leaning forward, the young lady managed to convey to her mother
the request. Shaking her finger at the suppliant, yet amiably
acquiescent, Mrs. Ellison drew from her left hand an object, which,
amid flattering enthusiasm from her guests, began its journey around
the table. Little cries of delight from the women, more restrained
expressions of admiration from the men, followed the beautiful well
of green fire in its progress.

“Now look!” said Mrs. Anstey, when it came to her. Slipping the
ring upon her hand--a pretty hand, we may be sure--where it sent
into prompt eclipse all the rest of her outfit of jewels, she held
it up for Carmichael to view. “Did you ever see such a beauty?” she
exclaimed. “I declare I shall go home and never sleep a wink to-night
for coveting it! Such color, such luster, and such size! It ought to
be on the turban of a Grand Mogul.”

Carmichael said nothing, but he stirred uneasily upon his chair. The
childish raptures of the speaker seemed to him like the crackling of
thorns under the pot.

“There, Gertrude, take the tempter!” concluded Mrs. Anstey, plucking
the ring from her hand and extending it with affected resignation.

“I tell mamma I will accept nothing less than this for my wedding
present,” answered Gertrude, receiving it in her outstretched palm.
“But so far I can’t get her to promise it to me. She says it must go
by will to my eldest brother, a boy at school, who doesn’t know the
difference between an emerald and a bit of glass, the wretch! Look,
Mr. Carmichael and Mr. Oliver; I will show you something nobody else
at the table has seen. The prettiest thing about the Carcellini is
the way it answers to a shaft of light. It leaps up like a fountain
and fairly bubbles radiance. See! I will lean over and hold it
between my thumb and finger sidewise under this candle nearest us,
and you can get the effect.”

As she did so Carmichael’s eyes glittered and his breath came
quick. A moment later a shiver of alarm and excitement ran around
their quarter of the table. In inclining her head to catch the best
light from the candle Gertrude Ellison had set fire to the fanciful
aigrette of twisted tulle that soared high from her hair behind. The
young men on either side of her sprang upon their feet. It was Oliver
who, seizing the now blazing ornament, plucked it easily from the
girl’s mass of fluffy hair and crushed out the flames between his
strong brown fingers.

“It is all over; I was not even singed, mamma, thanks to Mr. Oliver,”
called out Gertrude to her mother, who had just perceived the
commotion. At once the inexorable law of conventional society closed
upon the little incident. People resumed their interrupted chat, the
servants circled the board as before, everybody had some anecdote to
relate about a narrow escape from burning that had come under his
experience.

And then, amid the murmur of voices, the tinkle of glasses, the
strains from an orchestra that had begun to play a waltz upon the
upper landing of the stairs, Gertrude Ellison turned upon Carmichael
a perfectly blanched face.

“Don’t give any sign,” she whispered, “but tell me what I am to do. I
have lost the Carcellini emerald.”

Carmichael darted one swift glance toward Tom Oliver, like the tongue
of a toad flashing out to catch a fly and withdrawing with its morsel.

“He knows nothing,” she went on, petulantly. “He has been listening
all this time to an interminable story Annie Cowper has been telling
him. Who cares about her great-grandaunt’s feathers catching fire
from the chandelier at a Colonial ball? I suppose the ring slipped
off down the satin of my skirt, and has rolled under the table. I
can’t make a fuss now, but I won’t leave this spot while another
person remains in the room after me.”

“You are quite right to keep the thing quiet,” he said, with
consoling deliberation. “In a little while your mother will be
leaving the table. You and I can hang back and intercept her after
every one has gone, unless you prefer to look first and tell her
afterward.”

“Oh, no; I dare not! I _must_ tell her at once!”

“Very well, then; I will help you. If I stay behind while the other
men go up to the smoking-room it will be thought I have matters to
discuss with Mrs. Ellison about the cotillon.”

As the company arose from table, catching the eye of Masters, the
butler, he bade the men remain behind their chairs, and let no one
approach the spot. He and Gertrude then hastened to intercept Mrs.
Ellison at the end of the long procession, and make known to her the
loss.

“I always told you, child, what would happen if you persisted in
putting on a ring too large for you,” she said, agitated, but (to
do her justice) courageous in calamity. “In that flurry about the
fire you must have let it slip to the floor, and being unused to
wearing it you didn’t at first notice its absence. Let this be a
lesson to you, Gertrude, though I am sure you will find the ring,
with Mr. Carmichael’s kind aid. I will make excuses for you. People
will understand your wanting to rearrange your hair. Mr. Carmichael,
I trust everything to you; and I shall go on and receive the people
who have already begun to come for the cotillon. Tell Masters to
shut all the doors, and let not a soul cross the threshold of the
dining-room until you give him leave.”

There are heroines in all walks of life, and Mrs. Ellison, going
forth to receive a set of gay people, consumed by gnawing anxiety to
see the Carcellini emerald safely upon her finger, must be numbered
high up among them.

“My dear Arden,” she said later on, capturing her cousin as he
appeared in the doorway, coming down from the smoking-room, “I am so
thankful you have come. Your wife has gone home. She bade me tell
you she did not feel equal to the cotillon, but that she wanted you
to stop and help me out. Her brother took her home. How nice to see
you, Mrs. Arbuthnot. Your daughters are looking charming; I hope they
both have partners for the cotillon. Gertrude will be in directly.
You know they are joking her about having set her aigrette afire
at dinner, but it might have been something worse. Arden, I really
can’t endure this another minute. For goodness sake, go into the
dining-room and see if Gertrude and Mr. Carmichael have found the
Carcellini emerald!”

“The Carcellini emerald!” repeated Farnsworth, who, between vexation
at his wife’s unaccountable departure and stupefaction at his
cousin’s speech, did not know where to find himself. “Is it possible
you intrusted it to Gertrude?”

“Their delay distracts me. If it had been underneath the table, at
Gertrude’s feet, where it might naturally have slipped down her satin
skirt, they would have returned by now.”

“What’s Carmichael got to do with it?” asked Farnsworth, wrathfully.
He, better than any other, appreciated the enormous loss of the
splendid gem. “If I were you, Elizabeth, I would not intrust the
duties of a host to a pretentious nobody like that fellow. Of course
I’ll go. I never heard of such a thing in all my life.”

He found the dining-room shut, every door barricaded by Carmichael’s
orders. Servants and waiters were gathered curiously outside. At the
sound of Farnsworth’s voice demanding admittance, Gertrude threw open
the door and ran to meet him, ghostly pale and trembling in every
limb. Behind her, candles in hand, with which they had been going
over the floor, already lighted in every part by the full power of
electricity, stood Masters and Carmichael, both anxious and perturbed.

“Oh, Cousin Arden, I’m almost crazy!” cried the girl. “I can find no
trace of it.”

In broken words she narrated the circumstances of the ring’s
disappearance.

“I was kept in here during the search by no wish of mine, Mr.
Farnsworth,” said the butler, respectfully but firmly, when his young
lady had ceased speaking. “It’s a hard thing on a man that has to
live on the character he gets in a place to be mixed up in an affair
like this. And when you are convinced, as I am sir, that the ring is
not to be found about this room, I should take it very kind of you
if you’d go upstairs with me and make a search of my clothes without
letting me out of your sight.”

“Absurd, Masters,” put in Carmichael, sharply. “Why, any one, to look
at you, man, can see you’re as much bothered as any one of us. He has
been invaluable, Mr. Farnsworth; no one could have done more in our
thorough search.”

“You must excuse me for not inviting your opinion, sir,” said
Farnsworth, stiffly, confronting the last speaker. “I think the man
is quite right in his request. Stay where you are, Masters, and when
I have been over the ground here, and have satisfied myself the ring
is missing, I will go with you to your room. Gertrude, my dear, do
you, too, go upstairs and search every portion of your clothes.
Don’t call a maid; we need take nobody more than is necessary into
our confidence. I’m inclined, as it is, to think the matter might
better have been kept exclusively between the members of the family.”

“I beg to be excused, Miss Ellison,” said Carmichael, hotly. “Perhaps
you will ask Mrs. Ellison to tell Mr. Farnsworth that I remained
here at her particular request, to assist you in your search. The
whole matter is abhorrent to me; but I think no gentleman could have
refused to be of service to his hostess under the circumstances. And
if Mr. Farnsworth has at any time any other remarks to make to me
upon this subject I am quite at his disposition.”

But Mr. Farnsworth had apparently no desire to hold further
conversation of any kind with his cousin’s guest. Gertrude, much
overcome, thanked Carmichael, and ran away to her own room. There was
nothing for Carmichael to do but to withdraw likewise; but he did
not leave the house, remaining to perform his usual functions as a
cotillon leader, with “distinguished success,” as the newspapers said
next day.

By the time the guests crowded again into the Ellison dining-room
that night for a buffet supper, the strange tale of the loss of the
famous ring was upon everybody’s lips. How it leaked out no one
knew. When Carmichael was consulted, he announced himself to be in
the confidence of the family, and therefore preferred not to speak.
No one felt like alluding to it before the hostess or her daughter,
who were observed to “keep up” with conspicuous courage.

When the last carriage had driven away, the two ladies went with Mr.
Farnsworth and a quiet, gentlemanlike-looking man in morning dress,
who appeared from the regions of the men’s dressing-rooms upstairs,
into close council in Mrs. Ellison’s boudoir.

“Try to remember,” said Mr. Farnsworth, kindly, to Gertrude, who had
begun to look drawn and haggard at the end of a lengthy discussion
among the four, “upon which finger of which hand you had put the ring
when you began to show the emerald to those gentlemen.”

“Why,” said the girl, suddenly, “I had never put it on at all! I was
holding it--so--between the thumb and forefinger of my right hand,
turned sidewise to catch the light, when I felt the blazing up of my
aigrette. Then Mr. Oliver jumped up and snatched the burning thing
out of my hair, and scorched his own hand in doing it. It was all
over very quickly. But I was so startled, I did not think of the ring
for some minutes; and when I did, to my horror it was gone.”

“Were there any servants behind or near you at the time, Miss
Ellison?” said the quiet man in morning clothes.

“I think some of them may have run up to offer help, but I am not
sure,” said Gertrude, tears of nervous distress filling her eyes.

“But you _are_ sure about the position of the ring as you leaned
forward beneath the candle?” went on the same unemotional voice.

“Perfectly,” said Gertrude, with emphasis. “In that I cannot be
mistaken.”

There was silence for a few moments in the little room with its pale
brocades and Dresden figurines and gilded furniture. Then the quiet
man spoke deliberately, drumming with a pencil upon the edge of Mrs.
Ellison’s dainty blotting-book.

“I have no sort of doubt, madam, that your emerald was stolen. Who
took it, and who has it--whether we shall ever get it back--are
questions to which I propose to devote my best abilities. If it was
one of your own servants or employés from outside, the appearance and
character of the jewel will soon put us on the track of it. But if--”
He paused, and cleared his throat significantly.

“I had rather lose it,” interrupted Mrs. Ellison, tearfully, “than
suspect one of my guests.”

“But you will surely not refuse to oblige me, madam,” said the
detective, with a deprecating smile, “with the name and address of
the gentleman who sat on the left hand of the young lady at the time?”

This was too much for the overwrought mistress of the house, who
broke down in a fit of hysterics that necessitated her prompt removal
to bed and the summons of a doctor, who for some days kept her in the
seclusion of her room, then sent her with her daughter out of town.

       *       *       *       *       *

Although a nine-days’ wonder in the conversations of society, the
story of the Carcellini emerald had not, by a wonder, reached the
public prints. The absolute refusal of Mrs. Ellison to proceed in
the investigation, as far as her own friends were concerned, blocked
effectually the roll of the wheels of justice in the direction of
finding a possible thief. The other servants of her house, and the
hired waiters present on the occasion, had, to all appearance, come
out unscathed from the ordeal of suspicion, as well as had honest
Masters. The whole affair seemed likely to remain among mysteries
unsolved.

About a fortnight after the disappearance of the jewel, a newspaper
not averse to the elaboration of savory personalities concerning the
wealthy leisure class published a carefully veiled discussion of the
affair at Mrs. Ellison’s. No names were given, but hints were made
of suspicion attached in a certain high quarter, involving a family
of character and antecedents hitherto beyond reproach. There was a
light touch suggesting that gallantry in the service of the fair may
sometimes be made to reap rich reward. And the article, worded to
excite curiosity without conveying facts, ended by forecasting a new
chapter, at an early date, about the lost gem that would surpass in
excitement anything so far derived from its adventures.




                                 III

At this crisis of the matter of the Carcellini emerald Eunice
Farnsworth, who had seen her lord depart for a banquet of public men,
from which even her claims could not appropriately detain him, sat,
one evening, quite alone. She had eaten a ridiculous little dinner of
the kind affected by women deserted on like occasions, had retired to
her morning-room upstairs, and was now sitting buried in the depths
of an easy-chair, with an open letter upon her knee.

For the first time in her married life Eunice was unhappy. She had
received that day, inclosed by her friend Mrs. Ellison, a copy of
the mysterious newspaper article hinting darkly that the suspicions
of those who knew were now turned upon a guest at the famous dinner
where the jewel had disappeared. Read by a casual person the
paragraphs were void of specific application; to the initiated there
could be but one interpretation, and that connected with a most
odious act Mrs. Farnsworth’s own dear brother, Tom!

“I am still far too wretched and broken up to think of coming back
to town,” said her correspondent, who wrote from a Southern health
resort; “and Gertrude is just getting back her nerve and tone. But
rather than let such an insinuation pass unchallenged we would do
anything, make any exertion. Of course, there are only a few people
who could understand the detestable suggestion; but the hint that
more is to follow fills me with dismay. Why _can’t_ they let the
whole affair alone? It is _my_ loss, my misfortune. I have accepted
it, and that ought to be the end. I have definitely withdrawn the
case from the hands of the detectives, feeling assured that I could
never take my place at the head of my own table again if I pushed
the misery of suspicion into an innocent person’s life--and that
person my friend and chosen guest. Arden may say, and probably
does, to you, ‘Elizabeth was always obstinate.’ Perhaps I am; but
in this case I have already had more than my share of distress and
annoyance from outside comment. They will be having it next that my
own Gertrude took the wretched emerald. I wish my poor husband had
never spent a fortune in buying it for me. But this much is certain:
if it is necessary for me to come back to town in order to refute the
abominable insinuation against your brother, I will do so--at any
sacrifice. The only thing that occurs to me is that Arden may be
able to choke off any further mention of the affair in the newspaper
that has done us this injury.”

“I could tell her,” thought Eunice, bitterly, “that Arden has already
been in treaty with the editor to that effect, and that he could get
no satisfaction, the man declaring that if the ‘gentleman’ alluded to
was guilty of the theft, his high place in society makes it a public
duty to expose him, especially since the owner of the lost jewel has
so weakly backed out of her responsibility to justice.”

It was not a pleasant theme for thought. Eunice longed for the
bright, strong presence of her brother to dissipate the clouds
that seemed to close her in. But Tom was away in the West for an
indefinite period. He had left town the morning after Mrs. Ellison’s
unlucky dinner, from which he and his sister had withdrawn simply
because it was impossible for them, in self-respect, to remain for
a dance of which Carmichael was the leader. Carmichael no doubt had
recognized their motive in quitting the house. For this offense
against his vanity, and the refusal to know him that had preceded it,
was it possible that he--

Eunice sprang upon her feet. She had solved the motive of the
attack upon her brother. It was Carmichael they had to thank for
the foul imputation. And upon this poor, lying, truckling creature,
living upon his wits and the patronage of wealthy friends, she had
once lavished the treasure of her young, impulsive love! A flood of
shame and disgust ran over her. Then anger filled up the measure
of her emotions. If she could only meet him--crush him with her
disdain--make him confess the new offense he had committed against
his former benefactor!

For Eunice, despite her marriage and the dignity that fact gave
her, despite her husband’s wise control, was still a very young,
impulsive woman, and in that moment felt strong enough for any deed
of righteous wrath.

A servant, coming noiselessly into the room, presented at her side a
little tray containing a card.

“But I told you I am not receiving, Jasper,” she said, without
offering to take up the card.

“The gentleman said it is about a matter of business, madam, and that
he will detain you a few moments only.”

She glanced at the name, and felt a throb of the heart that almost
choked her utterance, for it was the card of Ashton Carmichael!

Here, in her house! He had ventured to cross her threshold! It must
indeed be a matter of importance that had nerved him to come here!

“Say I shall be down at once, Jasper.”

Her spirit rose as she went down the broad stairway of her husband’s
home. She was on her own ground, safely intrenched; he was the
intruder whom a word could thrust from her door.

Something of this was apparent in her beautiful face, in her erect
head, her eyes sparkling with indignation.

Carmichael, who had not sat down in the formal room of state into
which they had ushered him, felt it, and winced. He had come there
relying upon his unconquerable audacity, and to be so soon put at a
disadvantage he resented bitterly. But he did not mean to let her
speak first.

“I know what you would say,” he began, with an assumption of
humility. “I am a pretender, a man who pushes himself where he is not
bidden; a villain, if you like. But I have some feeling left, and I
mean to prove it to you.”

She inclined her head with cold disdain, still standing before him.

“I put out of the question everything that relates to our own two
selves--though if you knew all the story of that year--”

“You asked to see me on business, I understood,” she interrupted, as
if he had come to peddle his wares in her drawing-room.

Carmichael blushed crimson. The sting of her manner was intolerable.

“I came, if you will have it outright, to offer to save you and
your brother Tom from the scandals that are already attacking his
good name,” he exclaimed, angrily. “For the sake of old times I can
forgive your inhospitality, and even the insulting rudeness of your,
and his, and your husband’s manner to me at the Ellisons’ dinner.
I suppose you did not dream that entertainment was to terminate so
unfortunately for you. The mischief this article in the ---- has done
him is, in point of fact, incredible. I happen to have some control
over the situation--”

“Then it _is_ your work! I thought so,” she said, cutting him short.
“May I ask why you presume to come to me?”

“You are determined to think the worst of me,” he answered, growing
white where he had been red. “I repeat that I came in friendship. I
can be of service to you, and I offer to do my best. I can, in two
words, get the forthcoming article suppressed, and will do so upon
condition that you withdraw your enmity to me before the world; that
you acknowledge and receive me in your house, and consent to overlook
the past; that you induce your husband to treat me with common
civility. This is not so much for me to ask from you--Eunice--the
only woman I ever loved, who has gone from me forever.”

For one moment her eyes met his, and she saw that he spoke the truth
in what he had said last--that in all his poor, mean, warped life his
feeling for her had been the best he had known. But even this feeling
he would now make the vehicle of his selfish schemes. Eunice tried
to compass, but could not, the infinite pettiness of the bargain he
strove to make with her. Her brain, confused and shocked, refused to
see, what came to her afterward, that he could not, at this crisis,
afford to meet the open suspicion and hostility of a man of Arden
Farnsworth’s importance.

“I do not see--I cannot believe--that we should owe this to you,” she
replied, more softly. “I can speak certainly for Tom, that he would
resent your interference in any affair of his. If I have done you
injustice in supposing you are responsible for our annoyance, I am
willing to ask your pardon. But I am sure--quite, quite sure--we can
none of us ever believe in you again.”

“You are indeed implacable,” he muttered.

That she did not ask him to be seated cut him to the quick. He
lingered uncertainly for a few moments, then bowing to her, took his
leave. The footman, standing in the hall outside, opened the door for
him, then was summoned back by Mrs. Farnsworth.

“You will remember, Jasper, and tell the others to remember, that I
am never at home to Mr. Ashton Carmichael again.”

The man, who, like the rest of his fraternity, knew all the
figure-heads of polite society, went below and told his mates that
there was “one house, anyhow, that cheeky young feller Carmichael
was not to boss,” and he was glad to see him made to eat a little
humble pie. More than ever her servants admired their fair young
mistress, whose wit and spirit and beauty, joined to her friendly
consideration for their feelings, had elicited their unanimous and
not-to-be-despised applause.

“You are very brave and sagacious, my little wife,” said her husband,
when she told him later on of her interview; “but you are playing an
unequal game. That fellow, if my instinct is not at fault, will stop
at nothing. And the key to the present overture to you, my dear, is
that he’s afraid of me!”

“What can you have done to him, Arden, dear, besides scowling most
unbecomingly whenever he has been near?”

“I stand, in a way, behind Elizabeth Ellison, who, if she changes her
mind--and women have been known to do so--and takes my advice, will
run a very good chance of recovering the Carcellini emerald.”

“Arden! What _do_ you mean? It isn’t possible you think--”

“Never mind what I think. Even to you, dearest, I am not prepared
to say it in plain words. But this visit of his to-night, and his
proposition to put us under obligation through this matter of Tom’s,
is the most impudent bluff I ever heard of. To-morrow I wire for
Tom. He will reach here in the course of the week, probably; and we
shall go together to that newspaper office and force a withdrawal of
their threatened revelation. Depend on it, the matter of Mr. Ashton
Carmichael will not rest upon this evening’s work. The Carcellini
emerald scandal is about to assume a new and interesting phase.”

       *       *       *       *       *

At the clubs that night, and in many homes next day, it seemed that
people had, simultaneously and without apparent new provocation,
adopted Mr. Farnsworth’s view of the late excitement. Flaring up from
the coals, the gossip about it began to burn with tenfold vigor. Some
oracles went so far as to declare that Mrs. Ellison had recovered
her jewel, had forgiven the thief (who had gone to reside on a ranch
in New Mexico), and in token of gratitude for her signal mercy was
about to present the Carcellini emerald to the Metropolitan Museum in
Central Park. The hint given by the offending newspaper had not so
far, prompted the general public to bring Tom Oliver’s name into the
affair. He was too little known to the makers of paragraphs and the
purveyors of contemporaneous news items to tempt the fate adumbrated
for him by Ashton Carmichael to his sister. But any number of wild,
vague, irrelevant stories were started, and left to drift down the
tide of idle talk.

When Oliver, much disgusted on arrival in New York by the revelations
of his brother-in-law, was about to set forth with that gentleman
upon the disagreeable mission of stirring up the erring newspaper
office with a very long pole, Mr. Farnsworth, in leaving his front
door, was intercepted by a visitor--a young woman, closely veiled,
and wet by a driving rain, holding an open umbrella in her hand.

“Eh? Very sorry, but--private business, you say?--and I am not to
speak for publication? My dear lady, if you could oblige me with the
least idea of what you intend to say I could better--”

They were standing in the open door, Tom a little in the rear of
Farnsworth. Both men were surprised at her sudden, impetuous gesture
in throwing back her veil, and revealing a strong, excited face.

“Mr. Oliver! I must speak to you, too. Don’t you remember Alice
Carmichael?”

“This lady is entitled to the best respect any man has to give her,
Farnsworth,” said Tom, offering her his hand. “It is a long time
since we have met, but I should have known you anywhere. Farnsworth,
mayn’t we step back into your little study, to the fire, and let Miss
Carmichael tell us what is on her mind?”

“It seems that I am always doomed to come to you, Mr. Oliver, under
stress of circumstance. This time, however, my errand shall be of the
briefest. I meant only to give this”--and she held out a large brown
envelope--“to Mr. Farnsworth for you. It contains, as you will find,
the original of an article that was to go to press to-night. It was
surrendered to me of his own free will by the author, who happens to
consider himself under some obligations to me for past services.
And it will not in any shape be duplicated or repeated. The greatest
favor you can do me in return is to ask me no questions concerning
it.”

“Do you debar me from telling you that I am everlastingly obliged to
you?” cried Oliver. “You can imagine what it was, Miss Carmichael,
to be summoned back to New York by my good brother here, to find a
mine of malice and filthy lies ready to explode under my feet. I
can’t tell you yet what the whole confounded business means. Indeed,
I should be tempted to doubt the existence of this rot”--he gave the
envelope a scornful shake--“unless you and Farnsworth vouched for it.”

“If you don’t mind I will look over the contents, to satisfy
myself they are what we desired to get hold of,” said Farnsworth,
withdrawing with the parcel to his desk.

“Do, please,” said Oliver, with a shrug. “I certainly shall not
glance at them. Pray sit down by the fire, Miss Carmichael. I am sure
your feet are wet, and you seem to be shivering. Let me ask my sister
to come--”

“No, no!” she exclaimed, woefully, compressing her lips to keep back
the tears evoked by his apparition. “This is a moment snatched from
business hours. I must be off. I am not cold; it is nervousness, I
suppose. Oh, think when and how I saw you last, and you will not
wonder! And I have lately had much care. Please forgive me, Mr.
Oliver; I shall be all right soon.”

Many and varied had been the experiences of other people’s griefs
falling to Alice’s lot in her professional career. For so long she
had been in the habit of putting a lock upon her own feelings, while
absorbing those of her studies for the press, she could hardly
believe she was giving way to emotion on her own account.

She had spent the previous evening on duty in the Tombs prison,
gathering for publication the last utterances of a wretched woman
about to be consigned for her crimes to life imprisonment. From here
she was going on to the tenement-house district to write up the case
of a starving family for whom a newspaper fund was to be created.
Later that day she was due at a crush reception, where there were
dresses to describe. Everywhere and every day of her busy, lonely
life, she was the human atom last to be considered.

“I suppose you think I am rather a lunatic,” she went on, with an
attempt at sprightliness, seeing the deep concern in Oliver’s face.
“But you must not mind my giving way to this weakness. It is a
relief to think that anybody cares. Now I shall go, please--not to
keep you and Mr. Farnsworth longer.”

Farnsworth, a sheaf of typed sheets in his hand, came forward to join
them upon the hearth-rug.

“This is the most diabolically ingenious effort of imagination I ever
saw!” he exclaimed, impulsively. “What would be a fair punishment for
such a tissue of insinuations that can be read in two ways, yet would
succeed effectually in damning the person they are aimed at, I cannot
think.”

The young journalist crimsoned to the roots of her hair.

“I have not read it,” she said, in a faltering tone. “I only--became
aware--that it was in existence--and I was anxious to save it getting
into print.”

“You have placed us under an obligation no money could discharge,”
went on Farnsworth, kindly; “but--er--it would give me genuine
pleasure to express our gratitude in some substantial way.”

“No, no; do not speak of it!” she cried. “Your wife will tell you,
Mr. Farnsworth, if this gentleman does not, what a debt I am trying
to repay.”

Before they could interpose she had left the room. Tom, overtaking
her in the hall, urged upon her to accept his escort, or his
assistance in some way; but with a melancholy smile she waved him
off, and taking up her wet umbrella from the servant’s hands went out
alone into the rain.

“You don’t mean to tell me that fine, frank womanly creature is
the sneak’s own sister?” enquired Farnsworth, when Tom, looking
and feeling crestfallen, went back into the study to explain her
identity. “It seems incredible! I think her shyness with us is
because she knows Ashton inspired every word of this offending
article, that she, by good luck, has been able to abstract from the
writer’s clutches. Probably some poor devil of a reporter she’s come
across and befriended. Jove! that girl was made for better things
than a life like hers. I must set Eunice to work to get her out of
it.”

“You will not succeed,” replied Tom. “She is fine and self-helpful
and proud to a degree, as her brother is the reverse. There is only
one scheme that suggests itself to me,” he added, after a pause.
“Somebody should marry her.”

“It will be a very brave body who will saddle himself with such
a brother-in-law,” said Farnsworth, meaningly. “Don’t let your
chivalrous sentiment run away with you, my friend. Unless I am
greatly mistaken, Ashton Carmichael has in his possession the
Carcellini emerald, and will ultimately come to grief. What’s more,
I believe she thinks so, and that that accounts for her nervousness
with us. If I knew more about him in the past I could better tell.
I wish, in the interests of justice, Tom, you would answer me one
question. Was the affair she alluded to of a nature to justify us in
suspecting him of an act of criminal intent?”

“I cannot answer you,” replied the young man, bluntly. “For years
what I know of it has never passed my lips; and I shall never again
tell that story.”




                                 IV

The morning’s drizzle had settled into a steady downpour when, after
concluding her notes upon the fashionable world as seen at Mrs.
Hathaway’s reception, Miss Carmichael, of the _Epoch_, put on her
rubber overshoes, extinguished her smartest gown under a waterproof
cloak, and unfurling her faithful umbrella, slipped down the steps
and under the awning at the front door to take an east-side car for
down town.

Her destination was not unfamiliar, for the car stopped at a crossing
very near the house in which she previously visited her brother,
Ashton. But as she rang the bell of his lodgings and awaited the
coming of the maid, Alice’s heart beat with fierce excitement. To do
what she now purposed to accomplish would put into requisition her
best courage, tact, and persistence.

She had written to her brother asking an interview with him at the
moment when her suspicions first fell upon his complicity with the
much-talked-of newspaper articles about the loss of the emerald at
Mrs. Ellison’s dinner. Upon his churlish refusal to receive her on
any terms she had set her wits to trace out and discover the tool
whom he had doubtless employed to do his noxious work.

This for a time she could not accomplish. But chance finally threw
into her way the knowledge that on some previous occasion Carmichael
had had so-called literary dealings with a man named Lance, a
hack-writer of ability, whose bad habits were fast bringing his
usefulness to an end. Now, indeed, fate played into her hands. The
year before she had nursed Lance’s child through an illness ending in
the girl’s death in her arms in the boarding-house where they were
both living. For Alice, Lance would hazard his last hope of earthly
happiness. She was to him a thing sacred and apart from his sordid
world. When she sought him out, and asked him point-blank whether he
had not been employed by her brother, Ashton Carmichael, to transmit
certain information to a certain newspaper, the man was fairly
staggered.

“Your brother!” he exclaimed. “That poor sycophant, whose pay even I
blush to take? He whom we call among ourselves the ‘Little Brother of
the Rich.’ Good Lord! You are as far asunder as the poles.”

So Ashton thought, but with a difference!

When Lance understood the case he hastened with almost pathetic
eagerness to bring his finished material and lay it in her hands.

“Is this little all I can do for you?” he asked.

“No, Mr. Lance. You might promise me never to put your hand to such
vile stuff again,” she said, looking him fearlessly in the face.

“The wording only is my own. He gave me the ideas. He said it would
be a stinger to the man he hated most. As for the morality involved,
I am past distinguishing between the grades of principle--since _she_
left me, and I see no more of you!”

“There _is_ something in which you might help me,” she added, after
revolving matters in her mind. “I need to see my brother--to talk
with him alone. He has positively refused to receive me in his rooms.
I cannot push my way there in the face of servants. Could you bring
us together, do you think?”

Lance brightened.

“Why not? I have an appointment to wait for him at six on Friday. The
people of the house are used to seeing me come and go, sometimes with
a stenographer. I don’t know if you are aware that he does a steady
business contributing ‘society personals’ to our paper and to others.
His terms are high, but they like to have him, because he’s a sure
thing. Will you prefer to go with me or to meet me there?”

“I shall be there at a quarter before six,” Alice had said, drawing a
long breath.

She found Lance sitting in the hall.

“This is the lady I told you was coming to take my place, Bridget,”
said Lance to the servant, pleasantly. Despite his shabby looks
the maids of the boarding-house liked him, whom they called “Mr.
Carmichael’s clerk.” The woman answered him in a jovial tone:

“All right, Mr. Lance. The young lady can go on up and sit in the
sittin’-room.” As Lance said good evening and went out she added,
sociably: “You run right up, miss. Second story front. But, laws, I
remember you was here before! Our Mr. Carmichael do be mightily run
after by the newspaper folks. He’s such a high-flyer in society. But
he ain’t well, I’m thinking; he looks like a sheet o’ paper nowadays.”

The winter’s day had closed in as Alice entered her brother’s room,
and sat down by the window, listening to the drip, drip of the rain
upon the sills. She wanted time to think before he should come in.

He would resent her intrusion angrily, of course; but that would be
nothing in comparison with his wrath when he should know for what
she came.

For days she had carried fear around with her, and slept with it at
night. Putting together one thing and another that had come to her
about the unlucky dinner at Mrs. Ellison’s, she had conceived the
horrible suspicion that her brother was the thief of the ring. Since
convicting him as the source of the slanderous article inculpating
Tom, this suspicion had been growing into assurance. Until that
morning her chief yearning desire had been to put Lance’s article
safely into Mr. Farnsworth’s hands. That accomplished, she had for
a moment breathed freer. Then the blacker weight had settled down
again. A desperate resolve possessed her. She must recover the ring
from Ashton, and restore it to its owner!

Did she not accomplish this, how could she answer to her dead mother,
who with her last breath had prayed Alice to watch over the weakling
of her fold, and to forgive him until seventy times seven?

Behind Alice was a line of Puritan ancestors who had lived and died
strong in the faith and fear of a just God. Surely He would not
permit her to fail now upon the threshold of such an endeavor. But
how could she set about it? How induce Ashton to confess his crime
unless he were sure he was found out?

As the moments elapsed that were to bring the sound of his foot upon
the stair the ticking of his costly traveling clock over the mantel
beat louder and louder on her ear. Her brow and hands were bathed in
sweat, yet she was clammy cold.

Six o’clock! He could not be long now.

Oh! she could never bring him to own the truth. At the first hint of
her mission he would not hesitate to turn her with ignominy from the
house--to brand her as an impudent interloper.

If the ring were here on the table before her she would even dare to
take it, and escape, flying till she had laid it in the right hands,
risking anything to save her brother from the consequences of his sin
and crime.

A single jet of gas burned low under a shade of crimson silk above
the writing-table, littered with fantastic trifles in gold and
silver, spoils of his cotillons, gifts of his admirers. With fervid
fingers she turned on the full light, drew down the window-shades and
looked about her. There was no desk, casket, or piece of furniture
that seemed a likely hiding place for so rare a treasure. He would
never dare to carry it about his person. Nor, so long as the clamor
concerning it lasted, would he venture to dispose of the Carcellini
emerald!

Her face burning with another’s shame, Alice went into the smaller
hall-room, where his bed was and his dressing things were kept. Still
the same commonplace furnishings, with a litter of clothes and boots
and trinkets of the toilet. Here, too, she turned up the gas and lit
it, terrified lest interruption should find her without excuse.

“For _her_ sake,” she repeated, to give herself courage in the
search. Nothing was locked; all was at the mercy of the maid who
arranged and dusted Ashton’s rooms. With her old instinct of
making his belongings tidy, as she had been used to do when they
lived together, Alice began straightening the ties, laying the
handkerchiefs in piles, and putting the gloves in pairs.

Forgetting her real intent, she smiled as of old to find behind
a lot of other things a box filled with a hodgepodge of buttons,
sleeve-links, cigar-cutters, scarf-pins, tangled with shoe-strings,
rubber bands, and other flotsam of a crowded chest of drawers. This
was Ashton all over, careless fellow! For the hundredth time his
loving sister would extract the rubbish from things of value, and set
the whole to rights.

Out of the confusion of this receptacle she rolled a quaint curio
in the shape of a thimble-case made from a carved Indian nut, with
silver frame and settings tarnished for a long want of cleaning. The
trifle was too old and shabby now to tempt anybody’s cupidity, but
it aroused in Alice Carmichael a swelling tide of sentiment that
overflowed her eyes and softened her heart to childlike tenderness.
For it had been a gift to their mother long ago; had lain in her
work-basket, and was once scrambled for by her children with
eagerness proportioned to her withdrawal of it from their grasp.
Later on it had been given to Ashton, because he had first discovered
the trick of opening it by pressing a hidden spring. By some freak of
chance it had knocked about among his belongings ever since.

Alice took the poor little blackened relic in her hand and went
back with it into the sitting-room, where she dropped upon a chair,
abandoning herself to retrospect. Away flew the hideous nightmare
of her present quest. Ashton and she were children together, she
loving him, sheltering him, proud of his beauty and accomplishments,
following his lead with blind idolatry.

With this amulet in her grasp she longed to clasp him again in her
arms, to talk with him of their mother, their old home; to laugh and
chaff with him about the things of every day.

Mechanically her fingers fumbled with the thimble-case, turning it
over and over to feel for the point of the carving that concealed its
mystery. Smiling, she discovered at last the spring--touched it--the
nut flew open--something dropped into her lap that she reached down
to regain. She was astounded to find her fingers close upon a gem
that at the gleam of gas-light falling full upon its lustrous surface
sent up a bubbling, dazzling fount of greenish flame! She started
with a convulsive movement of dismay. There could be no doubt that
she held in her hand the Carcellini emerald!

Then flowed upon her soul a torrent of deepest misery. Once before
her brother had been guilty of a theft--of moneys laid to Tom
Oliver’s account as treasurer of a college fund. But she had paid
that out of her poor earnings, and Tom, for her sake, had offered to
hush the matter up, and give Ashton “another chance.”

And thus he had used his chance! The flaring radiance of the jewel
seemed to taunt her anguish.

What should she do? Whither should she turn to save him once again?
Rising, her feet refused to sustain her. As she stood dizzy,
trembling, aghast, holding the precious jewel as she looked at it,
the door opened and her brother came into the room. His eyes flashed
anger at sight of her, but something more devilish inspired him when
he saw what she had in her hand.

In two bounds he was across the room and had seized her. She shut
her eyes, and uttered a prayer to God for strength. She was wiry and
vigorous, and did not mean to let Ashton take the emerald from her if
she could help it. At all costs she would save him from himself. He
said not a word, nor did she. Each was fiercely determined to conquer
in the struggle. Too well he knew that if he could regain his stolen
prize, and turn her from his room, her lips would be sealed as before.

But he was not prepared for her physical resistance. At his approach
she had slipped the gem into hiding in her dress, keeping her right
hand clenched as if she still held it in her grasp.

Without mercy he bent her arm back and forth, hurting her cruelly,
and at last, forcing her bruised fingers apart, saw that she held
nothing between them. Then with a savage oath he struck her full
across the face!

Alice staggered back, stunned and dismayed. But she did not waver in
her intention to get by him to the door, and thence make her escape
into the street. Once free of Ashton she would carry the jewel to
Mr. Farnsworth or Tom Oliver if she could not reach its owner.

Ashton divined her scheme. His only hope lay in keeping her prisoner
till he could force her to give up the gem. With more brutal words he
started to cut off her retreat by putting his back against the door.
His whole appearance was transformed by furious passion.

At that moment help came to her from a quarter on which she had
not counted. She saw her brother shiver all over, and grow deadly
pale. His left hand made a clutching movement toward his heart; he
staggered forward, and fell--into her arms.

Alice had seen this once before--an occasion never to be forgotten.
She knew the terror-stricken eyes, the awful, helpless appeal for
relief from sudden oppression. His livid features brought back to
her with agonizing force the face of their dying mother under like
conditions. Exerting all her powers she dragged him to a sofa, laid
him down, and flew to ring the bell, peal upon peal.

The maid who ran up to answer it gave one frightened glance into
the room and rushed back to the landing to summon help from any one
who might be passing on the stairs. Her call brought among others
a gentleman just admitted into the hall below. In the maze of her
feelings Alice hardly felt surprised to see Tom Oliver entering her
brother’s room. She begged him, pathetically, to explain to the
proprietors of the house her right to be there, then went on her
knees again beside the prostrate form upon the lounge. In a very few
moments a physician came, and Alice, giving place to him, let Tom
lead her over to a window, where he left her looking out into the
night.

Returning presently he told her that all was over. Ashton had died
without coming back to consciousness.

“You will let me take charge of everything,” he added, with deep
feeling in his voice. “When I stood with the doctor looking down at
him I forgot what I came here to say--everything, in fact, but that I
once loved him like a brother.”

“I think I know what you came for,” she answered, wistfully. “You
meant to silence him for the future, and now death has done it--oh,
how awfully!”

She shuddered. The pain of her body was beginning to make itself
severely felt. It recalled to her the prize for which she had risked
so much, that lay close to the tumultuous beatings of her heart.
Above all things she longed for advice from Tom concerning it, but
could not bring herself to speak the words that would incriminate the
dead.

       *       *       *       *       *

When, some months later Tom Oliver asked Alice Carmichael to be his
wife she tried to make him understand that in addition to other
reasons why she could not accept his “generous sacrifice,” there was
one supreme obstacle between them.

“Do not tell me,” he said, with authority, “what you conceive this
to be. I know all that I care to know of what has kept us apart till
now. It is the future, not the past, that you and I have to deal
with. I shall take you to live far away from the scenes of your
sorrowful memories--and for the rest trust me!”

       *       *       *       *       *

But no man, however thoughtful, however loving, can extinguish in a
faithful woman’s heart the flame of her earliest tenderness. Often
and again Alice Oliver thinks of the lonely, unhonored grave in which
lies one who is never mentioned in her little family. Less often--but
now always kindly--Eunice Farnsworth thinks of him, too.

       *       *       *       *       *

The restoration to its owner of the great Carcellini emerald--without
the ring--is well known to have occurred directly upon Mrs.
Ellison’s return to town from her Southern journey. It was sent back
to her as mysteriously as it had vanished. No clew was ever found
that informed the public of the author of either its disappearance or
its reappearance.




              AN AUTHOR’S READING AND ITS CONSEQUENCES




              AN AUTHOR’S READING AND ITS CONSEQUENCES


For some time Sutphen had been in proud possession of a Literary
Club, the leading spirit of which organization was the lively and
irrepressible wife of the chief banker of the town.

People in Sutphen, including her family, her followers and, last
but not least, her husband, never knew what Mrs. Chauncey Stratton
was going to do next for the benefit or entertainment of their
lives. She rushed them from bazaar to out-door play, from concerts
to cooking classes. She and her coterie of womenfolk had descended
upon the editor of the principal newspaper, and made him give them
one issue of his journal to be edited by them for charity. And
about six months before she had instituted a series of fortnightly
meetings, at which men and women were to meet for discussion of books
and current events. After the president (of course, Mrs. Chauncey
Stratton) had accomplished the matter of reading before the assembled
club two or three papers embodying her own views of given subjects,
and was getting a little tired of it, her friends began dimly to
feel that something new would shortly be in order to brighten these
occasions--something fresh and metropolitan, _fin de siècle_, that
would carry Sutphen again up on the wave of novelty.

But like all great leaders, Mrs. Chauncey Stratton had malcontents
in her camp--close to her person--sharing in her daily councils. The
chief complaint made in vulgar parlance by these unsatisfied ones was
that they were tired of being bossed.

The matter was under discussion one morning in the cozy library of
the secretary of the club, a well-to-do spinster, Miss Cornelia
Bennett, whose claim to literary cousinship was based upon
substantial grounds. For some years she had been in the habit of
sending slips of linen cloth to authors in America and Europe, with
the request that they would inscribe thereon their names in pencil.
These autographs, duly returned to and “backstitched” in color by
Cornelia, were then assembled in a sort of “crazy quilt,” and sold
for the benefit of a hospital for incurables. After this signal
success in the world of letters, Miss Bennett had been elected
without a dissenting voice to be Mrs. Stratton’s second in command.
She was a meek, ashen-hued female, who, to all appearance, accepted
it as her manifest destiny to walk in Mrs. Stratton’s tracks, never
dreaming of such defiance as pushing ahead of her, or crossing
her line of march. But, in reality, while engaged in covering for
distribution among the members of the club the batch of new books
ordered by Mrs. Stratton from New York, a strange spirit of revolt
was kindling in her flat chest. Aiding Miss Bennett in her work, sat
Mrs. Mark Grindstone, a large, dull, catarrhal lady, chosen to serve
as treasurer of their organization--chiefly because she lived in a
large, dull house, was sustained by a large, dull husband, and wore
to church on Sundays a black velvet cloak bursting with jet beads and
bugles at every pore.

Dull as Mrs. Grindstone was, she yet possessed the spirit of the
traditional worm. “Of what use is it,” she asked herself, “to wear
the handsomest cloak in Sutphen, if one is always to be ordered to
the right about by Annetta Stratton?”

And “Why have I been in correspondence with the most prominent
brain-workers of two hemispheres,” wondered Cornelia, “if here I am
actually afraid to portion out the books before Annetta Stratton
comes? If we had only a chance!” she murmured, making common cause
with Mrs. Grindstone, “to show her that when called upon for
independent action, we can be her equals in success.”

“We will make a chance,” said Mrs. Grindstone, after clearing her
throat, rather unpleasantly, Cornelia thought. “What Annetta does not
like to think is that other people can do things without her telling
them how. It would be a good plan to keep quiet and go ahead, and do
some big thing exactly as she means to do it--on the same scale, in
every way.”

“Exactly!” said Cornelia, with animation, as she wrestled with the
crackly brown paper enshrouding the last book of her pile. “One such
lesson would be enough for Annetta.”

“Just so,” said Mrs. Grindstone, fairly slapping her last label into
place.

“Look here, girls,” interposed old Mrs. Bennett, who always read
her morning’s paper from the rising to the going down of its varied
information; “fine times have come to Sutphen. Here’s a city caterer
set up in that built-over block on Main Street, where Blink’s
shoe-store used to be before the fire. There’s nothing he doesn’t
offer to furnish to customers--bread, rolls, patty shells, ice-creams
(French and American), birthday cakes, weddin’ cakes, salads,
cotillon favors, Jack Horner pies--”

[Illustration: “AN OPPORTUNITY TO DECK OUT HER BOARD WITH AN
EFFECT.”]

“You don’t say so?” interpolated Mrs. Grindstone with housekeeperish
relish.

“Yes; and he undertakes to serve ‘dinners, luncheons, teas, and
receptions with glass, silverware, and elegant services of china,
competent waiters and chefs, awnings, camp-chairs, crash, tables,
decorations--all in first-class style!’”

“For all the world as they do it in the city,” exclaimed Miss
Cornelia, excitedly. “Mother, it does look as if Providence had
rolled a stone out of our pathway. Everybody knows we could have had
just as fine parties as Annetta Stratton if we’d only not had to ask
her how to set about givin’ ’em. And so could you, Mrs. Grindstone.
Your house is two feet wider than Annetta’s, four rooms on a floor,
and splendid chandeliers in every room. Just the place for an evening
reception, like the one I went to at Professor Slocum’s in New York.”

“I have often thought of it,” sighed Mrs. Grindstone. “Of course,
there’d be some trouble to get Mr. Grindstone into it. He’s sort
o’ set in his ways, and thinks it a sin to light more than one gas
burner in a room. But we might get over _him_, if there was only any
excuse to give a party--any brides or explorers or great folks that
we knew, coming to town, that had to be entertained.”

“That’s it,” said Miss Cornelia. “We are as dull as ditchwater in
Sutphen--unless Annetta stirs us up,” she added, reluctantly.

At this moment, enter Mrs. Chauncey Stratton, plump, rustling,
well-dressed, with red cheeks like a china doll, self-satisfaction in
every line of her face, in every movement of her person. At the bare
sight of her the two conspirators shrunk into their shells. Old Mrs.
Bennett, who had returned to the perusal of a column devoted to the
wants of domestic service, alone preserved her equilibrium.

“My dear girls,” exclaimed the oracle, dropping into her chair at the
literary table, “if I am late, put it down to the claims of excessive
correspondence. And as I see you’ve finished with the books, let me
lose no time in informing you that I have just had the good fortune
to conclude successfully a negotiation for a lecture before our club
from no less a literary light than Timothy Bludgeon, who is at the
---- Hotel in New York.”

“Bludgeon, the English author!” replied Miss Cornelia, faintly.
“Not that I’ve much opinion of his works, since he refused me his
autograph for my quilt, and even sent me a very tart letter through
his secretary. But, still, he is the lion of the day.”

“Precisely,” observed Mrs. Stratton calmly; “so I made up my mind to
get him--and I did!”

Mrs. Grindstone made a series of muffled sounds that might have been
applause. In her heart she was struck with jealous indignation.
Quick as a flash she and Cornelia saw open before them another vista
in which Annetta would walk glorified, they remaining part of the
inconspicuous crowd ranged on either side of her.

“I asked him to come for our meeting on the fifteenth,” remarked Mrs.
Stratton, with the same exasperating composure born of certainty.
“And he could just fit it in on his way to Boston. He will arrive on
the 11 A.M. train on the fifteenth, and leave next morning at the
same time, thus allowing to Sutphen just twenty-four hours. I have
decided to give him a dinner in the evening, and to change the hour
for the lecture to the afternoon.”

“Such assurance!” said both satellites internally. But they only
murmured, “Splendid!” “Just like you, Annetta,” and the like.

“Of course, you and dear Mr. Grindstone will be included in my
dinner list,” went on Mrs. Stratton, addressing her now speechless
treasurer. “And you, Cornelia, will pair with old Major Gooch.
Sixteen I can seat easily, all choice spirits, and the rest of the
club will have to be satisfied with an introduction to Bludgeon over
a cup of tea at five o’clock. Mr. Bludgeon will, I fancy, see that
Sutphen is not so far behind New York in her style of doing things.”

“And what will the lecture be about?” ventured Cornelia, more than
anything else to cover her own pique.

“Oh, that is of no consequence! Readings from his own works,
possibly. But the name of Bludgeon is enough. It will exhaust a good
deal of the reserve fund of the club to pay him his price, but I
felt sure we could make that all right, Mrs. Grindstone. That I had
decided it is best would, of course, be sufficient for the club.”

And the treasurer was to have no voice in this, her own especial
branch of service! No wonder Mrs. Grindstone’s spirit rose! Old Mrs.
Bennett, breaking in upon the conversation to read aloud an obituary
notice striking her fancy, effected a happy diversion.

From that date Mrs. Stratton, absorbed in her own ambitious plans for
a feast to the English author that should be described in the local
prints, and perchance quoted in metropolitan news columns, saw but
little of her two friends. It was observed by some lookers-on that
Cornelia Bennett was seen moving about the streets with animation,
paying frequent visits to the new caterer, Simonson, and preserving
withal an air of pleasing mystery. Other people saw good Mrs.
Grindstone going hither and thither in much the same way. And putting
two and two together, Sutphen decided that there was to be at least
a “chicken salad and oyster spread” in store for the members of the
Literary Club, following the appearance on their platform of the
great man, Timothy Bludgeon. The unliterary portion of Sutphen licked
its chops at the suggestion!

But a week before the appointed time, out came a genuine surprise.
Two sets of cards were issued simultaneously. One from Mrs. and Miss
Bennett, inviting their friends to meet Mr. Bludgeon at luncheon
on the fifteenth; the other stating that Mr. and Mrs. Grindstone
would be “At Home” on the evening of the same day, at half-past ten
o’clock, with the additional words, “To meet Mr. Bludgeon” inscribed
across the tops!

Where now was the wind to fill Mrs. Stratton’s sails? In vain might
she whistle for it, when her lion was due to roar at two banquets
besides her own in the self-same day. And worse than all, Cornelia
Bennett, in undertaking to give this ridiculous luncheon of hers,
would actually take precedence in point of time of Mrs. Chauncey
Stratton! Of course the affair would be a sad failure. Cornelia knew
little, her mother less, of the customs of entertaining in modern
society. Theirs would be homely doings. Turkey with cranberry sauce,
for example; jellies in tall glasses set around a china _compotier_
of floating island; cakes, big and little. No lobster _farcie_, no
mushroom on toast, French chops, birds, tongue in aspic, salads,
ices--such as Mrs. Stratton would have ordered. Mrs. Grindstone’s
festivity would be--equally, of course--on the same old-fashioned
lines. Oyster stews and molds of ice-cream, the predominating element
of the table. A smell of fried oysters enveloping all. Oh! Annetta
well knew the sort of thing to expect. She pitied poor Mr. Bludgeon
for falling into the hands of these stupid, pushing women, who were
not satisfied to sit still and see her take the field of Sutphen’s
hospitality to distinguished strangers. One thought occurred to
her, to fill Annetta’s soul with consolation! The weak spot in
Sutphen’s domestic panoply, as known to all Sutphen’s housekeepers,
was the general prevalence of plain white or old willow-pattern
china on the shelves. Most of Sutphen’s lords and masters preferred
these varieties of porcelain, and had set their feet down upon any
suggestion of change. Strange to say, even the amenable Mr. Chauncey
Stratton had once asserted himself so far as to declare he preferred
to eat his meals from the dishes he had been accustomed to ever
since his wife and he had set up housekeeping. This was the crumpled
roseleaf in Mrs. Chauncey Stratton’s couch of down. That her set
of white porcelain rejoiced in gilded edges, while those of other
people were plain, gave her but limited satisfaction. For two years
she had been bending every energy of her mind toward securing a set
of Royal Meissen--“onion pattern”--that she had seen in a famous
shop in New York. For two years Mr. Chauncey Stratton had resisted
her. His attitude was to be accounted for only by the saying of old
Mrs. Bennett, “The very best and most biddable of husbands has his
obstinate spot, my dear; and when a woman runs afoul of it, she might
as well give up.”

Of late, coincidently with the threatened dinner to Mr. Timothy
Bludgeon, Mrs. Stratton had seen a ray of light pierce the darkness
surrounding this question of china for the table. In investigating
the resources of Simonson, the New York _restaurateur_, her eyes had
sparkled at the discovery in the rear of his premises of an entire
service of “onion pattern” Meissen--or at least a good imitation of
that desired original.

What an opportunity was here to deck out her board with an “effect”
in porcelain of the latter-day style she aspired to introduce into
Sutphen.

Little by little, the wily caterer had induced her to trust the whole
thing into his hands. In cases where Simonson undertook to serve
the feast throughout, it was his custom, he said, to supply also
the table service, china, silver, dishes, candelabra, rose-colored
candles with shades to match, side-dishes for bonbons--all. Under
these conditions he guaranteed that Mrs. Stratton’s dinner should
be the finest ever seen in Sutphen. And thus it came to pass that
with a heart lightened of responsibility, but weighted with some
apprehension as to the amount of the final bill, Mrs. Stratton had
tripped away from Simonson’s. Her last word, an afterthought upon the
sidewalk, which she returned to the shop to deliver, was to enjoin
upon the glib caterer absolute silence regarding every detail of her
arrangements.

[Illustration: “MR. BLUDGEON HAD BETTER BE READ THAN SEEN.”]

When the day arrived that was to see the triplicated entertainment
of the Englishman, Sutphen was at fever-heat. So much had popular
imagination expected of the object of all these cares, it was
a distinct disappointment when a solemn little black-a-vised man
carrying an American “dress-suit” case, stepped out of the omnibus
of the Dixon House and requested of the clerk of that hostelry one
of his one-dollar rooms. Barring a further demand for hot water in
a jug--which the bell boy took to indicate some intention toward a
private brew of punch--there was nothing to distinguish the great
genius from an ordinary commercial traveler. Some enterprising
spirits who had been hanging around the hotel corridor to see this
arrival, went home and confided to wives and daughters their opinion
that Mr. Bludgeon had better be read than seen. And these ladies who
for days had been conning well-thumbed volumes of his writings sighed
the sigh of discomfiture--feeling rather glad, however, that certain
entertainers who were at that moment yearning for his arrival, were
destined to share their disillusionment. Just before the arrival
of her twelve guests for luncheon, Miss Bennett received a hasty
note from Mrs. Stratton, expressing deepest regret that her fatigue
resulting from necessary cares of state and home (of which naturally
there was no one to relieve _her_) would prevent her from being
present.

“‘A positively raging headache,’ she says,” remarked Cornelia,
compressing her lips. “Never mind, mother; I don’t care. I’ll send
right over and fill up with little Miss James, the elocution teacher.
She is pretty and clever, and can talk up to Annetta any day, if she
only gets the chance. And if you’ll believe _me_, mother, it’s not so
much headache the matter with Annetta as vexation because I’m to skim
the cream off the milk pan first. Good gracious! I’m tired to death
myself, but I’d rather die than give up now.”

Curiosity among Miss Bennett’s _invités_ was fully sated when, upon
the arrival of the guest of honor, luncheon was at once announced,
and they filed into the well-remembered dining-room, where they had
of old partaken of feasts of the frizzled beef and scrambled egg
description. Here, _mirabile dictu!_ was a board set out in modern
conventional fashion--a silver wine-cooler full of roses in the
center, silver dishlets holding salted almonds, bonbons and little
cakes around it; at each cover a name card, napkin, glass for claret,
another for sauterne, and still another for sherry, setting off a
plate of blue Meissen porcelain!

So far Mr. Bludgeon had said little beside “hum!” and “ha!” He had
devoured his bread and bouillon in silence, and had drank a glass of
white wine; but now he bestowed upon the listening public his first
connected utterance:

“Hum! ha! very fair imitation,” he said to his hostess, turning his
plate upside down to gaze upon the trade-mark on the bottom. “We
use this kind of thing in our own house for every day. Perhaps you
knew--but it may be only chance--that this is my favorite pattern in
china. Looks clean and tidy somehow, so I tell my wife.”

Sustained by this mark of approval, Miss Bennett inwardly blessed
Simonson, who, looking unconscious in an evening dress suit,
was occupied at the side table, in dispensing platters of fish
croquettes to his two subordinates to serve. She only wished that
Annetta Stratton might have been near enough to hear. The rest
of the meal, whisked along expeditiously by the trained minions,
went so fast, that Miss Bennett could hardly believe her good luck
when all was over. True to the instincts of more artless days,
she had some thoughts of putting on her bonnet and running out
to talk it over with Annetta. But her feet ached, her dress felt
too tight, her mother was fretting over the loss of both pairs of
spectacles, Simonson’s men were overrunning everything, Mr. Bludgeon
had gone away without more than the scantest recognition of her
personality--so she went up to her bedroom and had a hearty, nervous
cry.

In the Lyceum Hall that afternoon, where the literary club met at 4
P.M. for the “lecture,” everybody was buzzing over the reports of the
Bennetts’ swell luncheon. Mrs. Chauncey Stratton, who had insisted
upon calling at the Dixon House to fetch Mr. Bludgeon to the hall in
her own carriage, did not arrive till too late to hear the gossip.
Just before the solemn little man stepped upon the platform, the
great lady of Sutphen passed up the middle aisle, wearing a bonnet
with plumes turning to all points of the compass, a trailing skirt
of rich satin, a jet cuirass, and a large bouquet of violets in the
bosom of her gown. Smiling, nodding on all sides with conscious
pride, this patron of letters took her seat beside Mrs. Mark
Grindstone.

“Seems to me you’ve ‘picked up’ since lunch time,” observed that
lady, in her customary muffled tones.

“I _do_ feel better,” said Mrs. Stratton, unable to cease bowing,
although in conversation with her friend. “So you were at poor
Cornelia’s little affair? Do tell me how it went off.”

“Six courses--three wines--the whole thing served by
Simonson--couldn’t have been better done,” answered Mrs. Grindstone,
lightly.

“Simonson?” The shot had gone home.

“Mr. Bludgeon was most agreeable. He particularly noticed the table
service, and seemed so pleased,” went on Mrs. Grindstone, who had a
long score to settle. “But hush! Here he comes. What do you suppose
he is going to read?”

“Didn’t you see the program?” asked Annetta in a chilly tone. “It was
settled with me, by letter. In fact I selected the extracts from his
own works, and it will be sure to be satisfactory to all.”

We pass over the somewhat subduing effect upon a large mixed
audience, alien to him by birth and training, of the Englishman’s
recital of his own gems of thought. The usual frost accompanying
this species of entertainment was deepened while his tragic scenes
and interludes were rehearsed successively. Some members of the Club
were rash enough to whisper between themselves that the entertainment
wasn’t worth the appropriation from their treasury required to meet
its cost.

During the “tea” with introductions, that followed, Mrs. Stratton
again rose to the occasion. As the fairy godmother of Genius she was
immense. But Genius remained from first to last unsmiling. Life was
real, life was earnest to him during that episode of American homage.

Seated at Mrs. Stratton’s right hand, at dinner in her pleasant
dining-room, Mr. Bludgeon, in evening dress, unfolding his napkin,
looked almost amiable. When he caught sight of the soup plate
succeeding the one on which his oysters had been served, his face
actually expanded into a smile.

“Very nice, very nice, upon my word,” he said, indicating the object
before him with a condescending wave of his hand. “I had always been
told you Americans do things in very lavish style, but, this, really,
is more than I could have expected, don’t you know?”

Annetta was radiant, although she could not exactly understand why
her guest’s gratitude for courtesy extended took this form. Evidently
Simonson’s china, silver, roses, bonbons, decorations, were on a
scale surpassing anything in Bludgeon’s previous experience of
America. She felt she could afford then and there to forgive Cornelia
Bennett for having had Simonson for lunch.

The dinner, rather a weight upon the Sutphenites, dragged heavily
along, but it ended at last, and after coffee and cigars (Simonson’s
cigars!) the gentlemen rejoined the ladies in the drawing-room.

“I am sorry to say,” explained Mrs. Stratton to her guest-in-chief,
“that as we in Sutphen keep rather early hours, the reception given
for you at my friend Mrs. Grindstone’s will have already begun. Mr.
and Mrs. Grindstone left some time ago, with apologies to you. It
is too bad that we should have to deprive ourselves of you; but I
hope you will not quite forget our home and our little efforts to be
agreeable.”

“No, I shall not, by George,” exclaimed the author, who had become
a trifle more relaxed; “and when I tell them at home about it, they
will hardly believe me, don’t you know!”

This put the apex upon Mrs. Stratton’s pyramid of joy. In her own
carriage, the author seated beside her, facing her husband and
Cornelia Bennett, they drove to Mrs. Grindstone’s house on the
outskirts of the town.

The most novel revelation of Mrs. Grindstone’s party, at first
sight, was that all the gas jets in the house were lighted and
blazing--reckless of the monthly gas bill. This was something
unprecedented, as also the cloak-room (Simonson’s invention), the
white-capped maids (Simonson’s), and the four pieces of music hidden
by Simonson in a bower of palms on the stairway. Only the familiar
stooping figure of old Mr. Grindstone in his worn frock coat with a
large new white silk tie, brought the public to a realizing sense
of where they were. If Simonson could have tucked away the host into
the hall closet, along with superfluous wraps, umbrellas, and old
overshoes, that functuary would have been very much relieved.

Mrs. Grindstone, on the contrary, who might always be reckoned upon
to come out strong in the matter of finery, wore a brave new gown of
black silk and net, upon which had been let loose a whole collection
of green beaded butterflies. The splendor of this reality at once
effaced the tradition of the velvet cloak. Mrs. Grindstone’s flaxen
gray hair strained to the summit of her head, was there surmounted by
an aigrette of green feathers, caught by a diamond brooch. Directly
she saw her, Mrs. Stratton knew why her friend had hurried home at
the conclusion of the dinner. Mrs. Grindstone had not been willing
to expend the first blush of success of such a toilette upon another
woman’s entertainment.

“Isn’t she splendid?” whispered Cornelia. “No such dressing has ever
been seen in Sutphen, in my time.”

“If I didn’t feel sure Mr. Bludgeon would think it overdone,” said
Annetta, shrugging.

But she was herself impressed, and greatly. The revolt of Cornelia
and Mrs. Grindstone from her rule; their blossoming forth with all
this magnificence of a day; the fact that they would henceforth stand
side by side with _her_ in the reminiscences of how Sutphen welcomed
Mr. Timothy Bludgeon to its Literary bosom, made Annetta smart. The
one consoling thought was that Mr. Bludgeon had told her his people
at home would not believe him when he described to them her dinner.

“Now for the fried oysters and ice cream,” thought Mrs. Chauncey
Stratton when, later on, old Mr. Grindstone offered his arm to her to
follow Mrs. Grindstone and Mr. Bludgeon into supper.

Here a new surprise--one greater than all the rest--awaited her.
Little tables, an innovation undreamt of in simple Sutphen, were
dotting the whole room. At the chief one of these, the two leading
couples, flanked by Cornelia Bennett and Major Gooch, were placed.
In a trice, that indefatigable Simonson had begun the service of a
supper in courses, closely resembling Miss Cornelia Bennett’s lunch.

Annetta could have cried with annoyance. Not only were the dishes,
the silver, the candelabra, and all the rest, just what had twice
already that day appeared before the Englishman--but the china--the
imitation “onion pattern”--was identically the same.

Mr. Bludgeon, when this latter fact became manifest to his
observation, smiled for the second time in Sutphen. It was not, at
best, a gay, hilarious, or even a complaisant smile; but a reluctant
smile of flattered vanity impossible to mistake. Presently, when they
called upon him for a speech, he arose holding in his hand a glass
of Simonson’s (American) champagne. What he said, preliminary to the
gist of his remarks, Mrs. Stratton hardly understood. Her brain was
tingling with vexation, she even snapped at Cornelia in an undertone,
and fairly turned the cold shoulder on Mrs. Grindstone. When she
could at last control herself sufficiently to be able to listen, the
author had reached the climax of his sentences, and Mrs. Stratton
was rewarded for all her labors in behalf of the Literary Club, by
hearing this:

“Before I came to this country,” said the solemn little man, “I may
have had doubts about American hospitality. Since visiting Sutphen
especially, I have none remaining. You are the most gracious hosts
in the world. As an instance of this fact, I shall always cite my
unparalleled experience to-day. At the luncheon of your Secretary,
the amiable lady who sits at the table with me here, pleased me with
her china service; I happened to tell her it reminded me of home.
What was my surprise and gratification to find that your accomplished
President, at whose house I was dining a few hours later on--to whom
no doubt my remark had been repeated--had at such very short notice
managed to duplicate the set of china I had commended. And now,
again, what can I say? Words indeed fail me, when at the hospitable
board of your admirable Treasurer, I find a third set of my favorite
porcelain. The resources of you Americans really do surprise me. Such
a compliment, so conceived, so carried out, has never been paid to
me, before. Need I say that it goes to my inmost--”

[Illustration: “NEED I SAY THAT IT GOES TO MY INMOST--”]

Mr. Bludgeon stopped. He had heard a giggle of hilarity that could
no longer be repressed. The company, among whom Simonson and his
belongings had of course been under free discussion ever since they
had sat down to the tables, fairly exploded with delight.

Mr. Bludgeon hemmed, hawed, colored--finally took his seat. Mrs.
Stratton hastily left the room. Mrs. Grindstone and Miss Bennett, sat
on, mute, unrevealing as two Sphinxes--but evidently not offended
beyond hope of recovery.

       *       *       *       *       *

Some time after Mr. Bludgeon’s visit to Sutphen had begun to pass
into tradition, poor Simonson’s establishment in Main Street was
shut up. He had dragged along for some time; but, lacking customers,
finally decided to pack up his onion-pattern china, and the rest, and
had emigrated to a more promising field for a caterer’s operations.
The day of his great success had proved his Waterloo.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mrs. Grindstone is now the President of the Sutphen Literary
Club--_vice_ Mrs. Chauncey Stratton resigned and gone abroad. Miss
Bennett is still the Secretary. Mr. Grindstone’s gas bills remain
reasonably low.




                      LEANDER OF BETSY’S PRIDE




                      LEANDER OF BETSY’S PRIDE


The close of a long, bright summer’s day at one of the Virginian
watering-places found a little party of young people, most of them
from the North, importuning jolly old Dick Ross (an offspring of the
soil, and imbued with its traditions as an orange-flower is with
scent) to tell them “stories.”

Ross, a tall, high-stepping, grizzled veteran, who had come out of
the civil strife a Brigadier-General of Confederate Volunteers, and
the hero of a hundred daring adventures about which he kept close
as an oyster, was considered by the bevy who now surrounded him
the best boon of their visit to the South. But for General Ross it
had been passing dull at the staid old mountain spa, whither their
respective families had journeyed for health and pleasure. Evening
after evening, after they had danced together in the moldering old
drawing-room, or played cards around a rickety table, seated in
shabby chairs of defaced mahogany with ancient haircloth seats, or
yawned because there was nothing else to do, the apparition of the
General’s lean figure strolling into their hall of pleasures had been
hailed with delight. Through him the visitors had become familiar
with habits, customs, and incidents of a bygone generation, in a
community as foreign to their own modes of thought as if it had been
geographically remote, like Russia or the golden India. And on his
side Ross never realized what a tremendously old fogy he had become
till he saw the impersonal nature of the approval expressed of him
and his narrations in the eyes of that pretty Puritan, little Miss
Eunice Hall of Boston.

She was a scion of a famous abolition tree. Her progenitors had
fought to the death against Ross and his fellow-Virginians, and had
triumphed loftily over the eternal downfall of the slave aristocracy
in the crash of war. True, her brother Angus, named for the sturdy
representative of their line who had done most mischief to the South,
showed but a homeopathically diluted remnant of his ancestor’s spirit
in this respect. He had but a dim general idea of the part his
grandsire had played in the Senate of the United States before the
war, and was rather bored when accosted about it by strangers. He was
more interested in his yacht, in golf, and in University boat-races
than in musty discussions and wrangles about the right of men to hold
their brother men enslaved.

Eunice was different. Lately, since she had come to womanhood, it
had been her “fad” to unearth every item concerning this mighty
question that had rent asunder for a time the great country she
revered. Since her mamma had elected to take a cure at a placid
Virginian watering-place Eunice had found several good opportunities
to prosecute her researches--but none, on the whole, as satisfactory
as those afforded by General Richard Ross.

The old bachelor had been absent for a few days, having ridden away
astride of a pair of venerable saddle-bags on a fiery, half-broken
colt to visit some kinsfolks of whom he vaguely spoke as residing
“up in the country.” Now, on his return to the “Old Blue,” as these
springs were generically termed, General Ross consumed a hasty
supper, endued himself in a suit of spotless white duck, brushed his
back hair well to the front, and stepped into the parlor, where he
knew the young ladies were to be found. He was received as a hero
come home from the wars.

“We have stagnated since you left,” said Louisa Stapleton of New
York. “While Eunice filled up her note-book with yarns of your
skirmishing, there has been nothing for the rest of us to do.”

“I am too much honored,” said the General, bowing to Miss Hall, hand
on heart. “But have there been no new arrivals, no younger men to
push me into the background?”

“Only one newcomer,” said Eunice, making place for him on a rusty
sofa.

“And he a foreigner, ailing and married,” added Louisa, disdainfully.
“Who but Eunice would have looked twice at that old fossil with one
foot in the grave?”

“He interested me, I don’t know why,” confessed Miss Hall. “I met
him first walking in Chinquepin Hollow, his head sunk on his breast,
talking to himself. I thought I never saw such a wreck of a handsome
man. And his eyes, when he fixed them on me in passing, burned like
live coals.”

Old Dick started irrepressibly.

“He--you met--oh, impossible! Gad, I believe I’m possessed by one
idea. A foreigner, you say--traveling with his wife?”

“Yes; they stopped here but a day, to take the evening train. As it
happened, they had the room next to mine, on the upper gallery; and
as our windows, opening at the floor, almost touched, I heard them
speaking to each other in French in a very excited, agitated way.
Fearing I might overhear what was not intended for my ear, I got up
and stepped out upon the gallery. Immediately there was silence, and
a long, emaciated hand, like yellow wax, drew in their shutters close
together.”

A burst of laughter followed this narration.

“Trust Eunice for hatching mystery,” said Louisa, laughing. “I saw
the couple getting into the stage to go to the station: he, a prosaic
invalid, his head wrapped in a silk muffler; she, a dumpy little
French woman, perfectly commonplace. Come, General Ross, have you not
brought back to us from your travels a new story?”

“Something that happened before the war, in a nice, gone-to-seed
family,” added Louisa’s younger sister, Blanche. “And pray let the
house have wainscoting and a secret chamber.”

“No, no; something real. A war story,” said young Harry Lemist, who
had a thirst for active movement and little imagination.

“Upon my word,” said the General, when they allowed him to reply, “I
am almost afraid to tell you what occurred in the room I slept in
night before last, for fear you will think I have trumped it up to
answer Miss Blanche’s requisition.”

“How awfully jolly,” exclaimed Louisa Stapleton, pulling out the
fringe of curls upon her forehead.

“It was nothing of the kind, Miss Stapleton. In point of fact it was
about as disagreeable an experience as I remember. But to tell the
tale connectedly I shall have to go back many, many years, to the
time when the old mansion that sheltered me night before last was in
its prime of hospitable attraction for every one that strayed within
its gates. About a day’s ride from here is ‘Betsey’s Pride,’ for by
this quaint appellation is still known the house built for his young
wife by a wealthy Virginian land-owner, just before this century came
in.”

“Not old enough by half,” exclaimed Blanche, pouting.

“Truth will out, however,” answered the narrator, accustomed to
lawless interruptions. “It is a fine old house built like Lee’s
birthplace, Stratford, in the form of a letter H. The cross of the H
is a large salon, now absolutely bare of furniture. At the juncture
of each wing with the house arises a pile of chimneys, serving to
support a pavilion on the roof, where in old days a darky band used
to play for the gentry, of an evening. There was a fish-pond up
there, too, in my boyhood; and there still is, at the back of the
house, an old ruined garden. When a lad I loved nothing better than a
visit in vacation to ‘Betsey’s Pride.’ The oldest son of this house
was my chum at the University, and also a kinsman, though remote.
We will call him, for dramatic purposes, Llewellyn Chester. Chester
was always a handsome, easy-going, free-handed fellow, brought up to
consider himself the master of abundant means. His people gave him
the best education of the times, and in due course sent him to travel
abroad, attended only by the ‘boy,’ who in old Virginian fashion had
been told off at a very tender age from among the slaves to wait on
him. Leander Jameson was the ‘boy’s’ name. Smile if you will, young
ladies, but gentle and simple, white and colored, we Virginians
always relish fine-sounding names. Leander was a very light mulatto,
tall, erect, manly, good-looking as his master, and of astonishing
versatility of talent. He could sing, whistle, impersonate any one on
the plantation, was an adept in athletic exercises, and had, as we
said, the manners of a prince. Chester, dependent on him for so many
long years for companionship, treated him with lavish indulgence and
generosity. While they were in Paris, where Leander was, of course,
received as an equal by his class among the whites, Chester had him
take lessons in singing, dancing, fencing, and the like; filled his
pockets with money, and turned him loose upon what, as it seems, was
a very wild career for both of them.

“When, a few years before the war broke out, I again visited
‘Betsey’s Pride,’ it was to see a woeful change in the circumstances
of the returned prodigal, my cousin. Chester’s parents had died, his
sisters had lived on there in seclusion, little knowing that his
extravagance had wasted all his own and involved their substance.
When he finally turned up again, like a bad penny, at their home,
it was to linger a few months and die. In his last illness poor
Llewellyn was nursed by Leander as no one else could have nursed him.
Such fidelity, tenderness! Well, it’s not of that I started out to
tell. Llew Chester under the cedars of the family burying-ground,
his sisters had to hear that they were ruined in fortune. But, then
or since, those two women would never hear a word said against ‘poor
Llew.’

“Here comes in,” went on the General, doughtily, “a chapter
fortunately not common among the slave-holding families of those
days. As the negroes on large plantations went on multiplying and
exacting care and outlay, the revenues of their owners were naturally
consumed. But it was part of our religion to hold fast to the trust
committed to us by our fathers. Nothing but dire want ever made
a Virginian of ‘the real sort’ part with a slave for money. When
dire want came, so much the worse for slave and master. It was a
degradation that bowed down the seller to the earth with shame--to
have to part with these people of our black families. If anybody
ever tells you to the contrary, Miss Eunice, send him to me to be
convinced.”

The General, growing red in the face, winked, gulped, got up and
walked up and down the room, tugged at his mustache, then sat down.

“I suppose none of you ever heard of the character as much avoided in
the society of decent men with us as the headsman is in France--the
negro broker and trader. But there he was, often growing fat and rich
on the proceeds of his horrid business; and, like the headsman, when
occasion demanded he turned up. Chester had slighted in public one
of the most formidable of this fraternity, a man named Israel Johns,
a sullen bully, who laid up the slight in silence and bided his time
for revenge.

“As it happened, Johns’s opportunity did not come till the breath had
left his enemy’s body. When it was known that the Misses Chester
would be forced to part with all of their ‘likely’ black people, in
order to pay the debts of the estate and live, the deepest feeling
was everywhere shown for the pair. My own mother went a two days’
journey on horseback to weep with them. Remember, the oversupply of
slaves in Virginia made their buyers very particular to select the
best, and it was therefore much feared by the friends of the family
that the first man to go off would be Leander Jameson.”

“His master’s friend--intimate! Oh, infamous! I would have starved
first!” cried out Eunice, a red spot glowing in either cheek.

“God knows I think so, too, Miss Eunice,” said the old soldier,
bowing his head sadly. “But that such things were was part of our
burden and our curse.

“A number of us,” he went on presently, “old friends and neighbors,
met together and made a purse to buy in Leander for the estate. But
we were tricked--outbidden--overruled. The man who got him was, as
you may surmise, none other than Israel Johns. We learned afterward
that Johns said he would own that nigger if it took every cent
he had. I can see him now, the dirty blackguard! A middle-sized,
low-browed, swart, powerful fellow, dark as a Spaniard, with thick
lips, curly black hair, and black, shifty eyes that couldn’t look
you in the face. It was at the county court-house on New Year’s Day
where the auction had taken place. When Leander found out who had
become his owner his eyes glared like a savage animal’s. I never saw
a handsome young face so transformed by rage and despair. A man who
stood next to me said carelessly, ‘By Jove! it’s he that looks like
the master, and Johns like the man, I am thinking.’

“I will pass over the feelings of all concerned when, in a few days,
we heard that Johns had started for New Orleans to sell his prize to
the highest bidder. I for one do not enjoy analyses of human emotion
under stress. When you know that Chester had promised to free Leander
in order to enable the fellow to go back and marry a Creole girl from
Martinique whom he had met in Paris, and had died without doing so,
you see how the affair stood. What followed is well known to many
persons. Johns flaunted down to New Orleans with his chattel; and
on the way Leander conceived one of the most daring schemes that
was ever carried out to a successful ending. He managed to get his
master drunk, and on arriving at New Orleans to actually sell him
for a thousand dollars to a buyer before whom Leander had posed as a
Virginian planter on his travels, encumbered with a tipsy ruffian he
was glad to dispose of cheap.

“The complexion, good manners, educated voice, and easy diction of
Leander made this thing possible. Upon receiving, as was agreed, the
money down, he at once disappeared; and he has never been heard of
since.”

“And Johns? What became of him?” asked the hearers in concert.

“When he came to himself and found out his condition he fought,
blustered, was overcome and held in servitude. Finally the
law allowed him to institute ‘a freedom suit’; and after many
disappointments and delays he was identified as Israel Johns by
persons sent from Virginia to New Orleans for that purpose, at
Johns’s expense. By the time his freedom was secured and he was
restored to his privileges as a white citizen, Leander Jameson was
far beyond reach of his vengeance. But Johns’s spirit was broken, and
a year later he died.”

“Is all that true?” asked Eunice Hall, who had listened in breathless
interest.

“To the best of my belief, yes; you may see certainly that the tale
is unvarnished by me. But as I told you, it was only the prelude
to a personal experience of mine during the last six and thirty
hours. When, night before last, I reached ‘Betsey’s Pride’ after
a long day in the saddle, I was kindly greeted by the two little
Miss Chesters, who continue to live there in the most frugal way.
War, that left over their heads the shell of their father’s mansion,
has left them but little else besides. My visit was, in rude fact,
one of investigation--to see whether the two ladies were supplied
with the necessaries of life, for which they are too proud to ask
their friends. After a meal and a conversation that I can’t think of
without a feeling like a knife thrust into the heart, they showed me
to my room. It was, as I at once saw, the apartment in which their
brother Llewellyn had breathed his last, a cold, bare place, the
arrangement of its furniture unchanged in all these weary years.
Through a crack widened around the window-frame ivy had shot into
the room and was curling about the inner sash. The Miss Chesters
could not bear to remove this vine. ‘It looked so sweet,’ they said,
‘growing in poor Llew’s room.’ An old negro woman, who brought me a
jug of spring-water, hurried out as soon as she had deposited her
burden. By the look in her face I knew she believed the place to
contain another presence than my own.”

“Now we are coming to the real thing!” exclaimed light-hearted
Blanche, clapping her hands gleefully.

“It might be, if I knew how to dress it up in fine words at awesome
intervals; but I can’t. I can just tell you the simple truth--that,
awakening in the middle of the night I saw, in the moonlight, as
plainly as I see you now, the face and figure of Leander Jameson.”

“Good gracious!” cried Eunice, sitting bolt upright, and fixing upon
old Dick a fascinated gaze.

“Of course, I had been thinking of him and his master when I fell
asleep. Of course, it was an optical illusion,” added the old man. “I
have said so to myself a dozen times since it happened.”

“What did you do? What did he do?” queried the listeners in unison.

They could not decide whether or not the General was trying to take
them in. But all the same, the girls clutched at each other’s hands,
and the young men essayed to put on an air of incredulous superiority
as they waited for the climax.

“Frankly speaking,” said the hero of many fights with flesh and
blood, “_I_ pulled the clothes over my head. _He_ executed the usual
‘vanishing act.’ When I looked again he was gone. The only occupant
of the room beside myself was a rat that seemed to be dragging my
boot across the boards of the floor.”

“Was the window open?”

“Wide,” said the General; “and, as it was the usual French window
upon the ground floor of a bachelor’s wing, nothing could have been
easier for a ghost than to step in and out over the sill. Next
morning I examined the premises, but on the soft old green sward of
a century that came close to the window outside found no trace of
footsteps. The birds were singing in the very room with me; the warm
sunshine bathed its every nook and corner. A young heifer, straying
up, looked as if she meant to step over the threshold, but desisted.
There was no trace or filament of visitation, supernatural or
otherwise.”

“Naturally, since you dreamed it,” said Mr. Harry Lemist,
convincingly.

“Naturally,” said the General. “I, too, made up my mind to that view
of the case. But the whole thing was a curious episode. It brought
back the details of my poor friend’s life and death, and of his
valet’s reckless and successful stroke for freedom. On my ride back
here to-day I have been recalling many instances of the intercourse
between Chester and Leander Jameson--things I had long forgotten. One
was that, as lads, Chester had his ‘boy’ learn tattooing of an old
sailor in the neighborhood. The first result of his accomplishment
was the shield of Virginia in blue on Chester’s forearm--‘_Sic semper
tyrannis_’ and the rest of it, buried with him, of course--while
Leander carried through life, on the outside of his right hand, the
crimson image of the swan that is the Chester crest.”

Eunice Hall, self-contained little being that she was, gave at this a
galvanic start.

“Why!” she exclaimed, growing pale with excitement, “I have seen
it--that hand marked with a crimson swan--only a little while ago!
It was the one thrust out to draw in the shutters of the Frenchman’s
window. I noticed it particularly.”

“By George--then it _was_ Leander!” cried the General, springing to
his feet.

       *       *       *       *       *

The best efforts of General Ross to trace the fugitive and his
wife resulted only in finding that they had boarded a train bound
northward, and were by then probably safely in New York, if not, as
seemed likely, on the ocean sailing back to Leander Jameson’s adopted
home. That the ex-slave had prospered in circumstances his appearance
and surroundings left no room to doubt. The General’s idea that,
broken in health and knowing himself to be a dying man, Leander had
not been able to resist a secret visit to the scene of his birth and
of his early tragedy was considered the correct one.

       *       *       *       *       *

General Dick Ross still makes his annual visit to drink the waters
of “Old Blue.” The only time he has been persuaded to cross Mason
and Dixon’s line, to pursue his investigations of society, was for
the purpose of attending the marriage of Miss Eunice Hall, when that
charming enthusiast decided upon concentrating her efforts at reform
of the human race upon a single undefended man.




                  THE THREE MISSES BENEDICT AT YALE




                  THE THREE MISSES BENEDICT AT YALE


A heavy fall of snow upon the old streets of New Haven had not
succeeded in blocking the wheels of progress of that merriest season
of the collegiate year, known to the university world as “Prom Week.”
For three days a crowd of fair visitors and their chaperons had trod
the round of gayeties; had frequented the concerts, germans, teas,
and receptions; they were now drawing breath and gathering energy
for the last crucial test of physical endurance, the ball called the
Junior Promenade.

For, to properly celebrate this time-honored and brilliant
affair, custom decrees that the list of thirty or more dances
and intermissions printed upon the ball-card presented to each
damsel crossing the threshold of this hall of raptures shall, long
beforehand, have been filled with names by the brother, cousin,
or admirer having the list in charge. It follows naturally that
by the time not only all these dances are accomplished but every
“intermission” has been spent in an impromptu dance to the music of
the band, alternating with the orchestra, night has brightened into
dawn.

[Illustration: THE THREE MISSES BENEDICT AT YALE.]

When the girls are finally induced by their exhausted matrons to
withdraw from the giddy whirl, they leave behind a set of men,
wild-eyed, and wilted as to shirt-fronts, cuffs, and collars, but
undaunted in spirit. These men, the givers of the ball, then go away
to their dormitories to snatch an hour or two of slumber before
chapel, which has, not infrequently, been attended by beings in
ulsters worn over evening clothes. It was to such tireless devotees
rather invigorating than depressing to see snowflakes come trooping
down upon the final scenes of their three-days’ gayety. Toward nine
o’clock P.M. the streets were encumbered by lumbering old hacks
pulling up before doors to receive their loads of hooded and cloaked
figures, then driving with them at a furious pace to the door of
the armory where the “Prom” is given, and dashing off again to
secure new fares. The drivers of these vehicles, known by name to
most of the students, extend to the university and its doings an
almost parental indulgence. To the guests who are aiding to make the
occasion brilliant they are suave beyond imagination; solicitous of
comfort, descending from their perches to open the carriage doors,
and assisting parlously at the elbow of the lady entering or getting
out. Little of the evening’s fun is to be theirs, honest fellows, but
they are sustained through the chilly vigils of the night by _esprit
de corps_ and a brave desire to keep up the credit of their town.

Quite early in the fray one of these hacks disgorged under the
armory’s awning a party consisting of a mother, two daughters, and
a girl cousin, all three of the young women marked with the same
general characteristics of family, but differing in feature and
degree of beauty. The mother, a stout, comely body, with diamond
butterflies quivering about the base of a tall, black aigrette that,
springing from her hair, swept the carriage top as she sat, emerged
with a look denoting resolution to carry on the struggle of spirit
against flesh to the bitter end. For was not her only son, her
pride and joy, leader of the revels as head of the floor committee
of the “Prom”? Not for worlds would she have given up the wearying
privilege of sitting out the ball. Never, in her own palmiest days,
had she drawn near to a scene of gayety with a more proud sense of
identification than to-night, when she shone in the reflected glory
of her handsome boy!

Jack Benedict was, on his part, modest, as becomes the truly great!
An immense favorite with his class, he had been one of those fellows
who sail serenely through college life, winning, without apparent
effort, honors toiled for by others without success. A good scholar,
an athlete of renown, frank, cordial, sympathetic, he was put
forward by the vote of his comrades whenever opportunity occurred to
represent them before the world; the election to his present post
being upon one of these occasions.

Fresh-faced, clear-eyed, smiling, dressed in immaculate attire,
the tall young hero advanced to meet his mother and, giving her
his arm, conducted the party along the length of the large hall to
a box fitted up for the friends of the committee of management.
The girls following them were immediately surrounded by a throng
of men, consulting their dance programmes and receiving with pride
their compliments upon the charming arrangements of the hall. It had
already been decided among the opinion-makers that the three Misses
Benedict were the stars of the festive week, and their approbation of
the scene was generally awaited.

The vast inclosure of the armory was lined to its arched roof with
breadths of semi-transparent stuff, alternatively pale lavender and
yellow in tint, giving it a delightfully fresh and blossomy effect.
From the ceiling, lighted by veiled electric bulbs, depended a
racing-shell filled with flowers and a floral football, emblems of
the University’s late prowess in the athletic world. From high stands
on either side of the hall the band, or else the orchestra, clashed
forth unceasingly enlivening strains. Beneath one or the other of
these draped eyries were seen to disappear during the progress of
the ball panting and perspiring men, who went away wilted after
saltatory toil--but returned arrayed in the glory of fresh linen,
white collars, and cuffs immaculate. Around the walls, hung with
tapestry and placques of flowers, were ranged the boxes severally
sold at auction to the highest bidder among the classmen who desired
thus proudly to extol the ladies of their visiting families and
parties. In these dainty nooks were assembled treasures from many a
college sitting-room. Easy-chairs, rugs, lamps, draperies, tables,
cushions--above all, cushions!--of every size, material, and color,
were brought hither by their owners or borrowers from acquiescent
friends, to make resting-places for the chaperons, and, when
possible, the girls.

The wide, crash-covered floor, soon covered with whirling figures,
became a dazzling kaleidoscope. The suggestion presented by the
sight was one of extraordinary brilliancy and lightness. It was as
if the Genius of American youth were abroad and at his best. No face
there that did not gleam with happiness, no foot that did not spring
with rapturous life. Of those encumbrances of an ordinary ball-room,
the sad, the sour, the world-weary, the middle-aged, none was
discernible. The young men and maidens prominent in this function,
gathered from far and near in the broad Republic, were types of
blended races, or pure Americans such as one may hardly see elsewhere
in an Eastern festivity; and the conventional uniformity of a dance
in New York, Boston, or Philadelphia was thus most agreeably varied.
And through all was apparent to older eyes the joy of living and
being that comes only in the first quarter of the century of life.

“Are you satisfied with it, madre?” asked Benedict, as he stopped in
his evening’s toil to bend affectionately over his mother, where she
sat in front of the committee-box, her satin and jet rustling in the
breeze created by an ostrich-feathered fan.

“Satisfied? Indeed I am! It is a perfectly enchanting scene,” said
the biased critic. “And your decorations are really admirable. I
never saw such a well-managed dance. But, my dearest boy, can’t you
sit down and take a moment’s rest? You will really wear yourself out.”

“No fear of that,” quoth Jack, inflating his broad chest. “After
to-night we shall all lapse into ‘innocuous desuetude,’ and there’ll
be full time to repose. I hope you and the other mothers can hold
out. You won’t see much of your charges, I’m afraid.”

Mrs. Benedict laughed cheerily. “Dear me, no; they only rush back
to be pinned or put to rights, and are off again. As to keeping
the faces, much less the names, of their partners in mind, I can’t
pretend to do it. Agnes and Margaret, being older, take it with more
composure, but Lou flies about as if she were on wings instead of
high heels. It was a whim of Agnes and Margaret to come dressed alike
in those blue satin gowns with the chiffon ruffles, and I must say
they are becoming. I am proud of our dear girls’ looks, aren’t you?”

“I should think so,” said Jack, starting with something of a blush
as she repeated this query. He had been straining his gaze over the
revolving crowd, in the effort to identify not his sisters, Lou and
Margaret--pretty blonde girls of eighteen and twenty--but his cousin
Agnes, a tall and rather stately young woman, a year older than
Margaret, whom he had his own private reasons for not allowing to get
far out of his sight or thoughts.

Agnes, the orphan daughter of a good-for-nothing cousin of Mr.
Benedict’s, had a year or two before, after the death of her father,
been taken by these kindly people to reside under their roof in New
York. When it was Jack had first owned to himself that he loved
her he could not exactly say. But her clear, pale beauty, the soft
luster of her hazel eyes, her somewhat foreign grace of speech and
manner--born of wide wanderings in Continental cities--had begun by
captivating his imagination, and ended by exciting his enthusiastic
affection. Now he thought no vision of his future was complete
without Agnes installed in its penetralia. And as yet she had no idea
of it.

Knowing that his parents would disapprove of love-making between the
cousins until Jack had at least been long enough out of college to
see his way clear to an independence, he had had the rare strength of
mind to keep his passion to himself. Not even his mother suspected
what a cable had been thrown out to annex her bonny craft to this
landing-stage for life!

One person only had shared in his secret, and he a classmate bound to
Jack by the most intimate of college ties, the man of all others in
the University whom Jack most admired and trusted. This was Hubert
Russell, who, coming a stranger to Yale from his birthplace in a far
Western town, had remained an enigma to the many, although treasured
by the few who had found him out. Russell was known as a brilliant
scholar, but had never been called a “grind.” His isolation seemed to
be a thing of preference.

To the society of women his objection was apparently insuperable. No
threshold in the hospitable town had been crossed by him for social
purposes. Jack Benedict, who alone seemed to exercise over him the
magnetism that drew him from his shell, had often talked to Russell
about his own family, and had striven without success to induce his
friend to visit them in the holidays. Russell had listened with a
sort of fascinated reserve to Benedict’s happy boyish confidences,
but had not responded to them in kind until one evening in junior
year over their pipes in Jack’s sitting-room. Then he had blurted
out a sad tale of his father’s disgrace and imprisonment and death
in the penitentiary, following the embezzlement of trust-funds
confided to his keeping. This awful chapter had left upon the boy’s
mind an indelible imprint. To remove the effect of it his mother
had strained every nerve to send him to an Eastern University. At
the beginning of freshman year he had lost his mother, too; and
since then the spell of darkness had reassumed its sway over Hubert
Russell. Benedict, a wholesome, happy fellow, born to no great
inheritance of riches, and having his own way to hew in the world’s
wilderness, then set himself to the task of restoring Russell’s tone
of mind and of dissipating in him the uncertainty as to his right of
place among people of unblemished honor and respectability. Little by
little he had succeeded in bringing about this result. In his zeal
to win Russell’s full confidence he had poured out his own--had even
told him of his love for the radiant cousin, Agnes Benedict, whom
Jack hoped one day to win for his wife.

During the past days of gayety Russell had been more miserably shy
and reserved than ever. In vain had Jack urged him to call upon or
make acquaintance with his family. As a last resort he had gone to
Russell’s room that afternoon, and had shot into the letter-slit upon
the locked door a note inclosing a ticket for the “Prom,” begging
Hubert to look in at the ball, if only for a glance in passing, at
Jack’s people in their box. While Jack now stopped to speak to his
mother he saw, with curious elation and surprise, Russell standing a
little distance away, talking with one of the tutors. Before he had
time to beckon his friend, his sister Louisa and their cousin Agnes
hurried together into the box, forsaking each the young man who had
escorted her, to have some trifling repair to her toilette made by
Mrs. Benedict.

“Oh, Jack!” exclaimed his madcap sister, “I am too happy for
anything, and Agnes should be, if she is not, for she has evidently
captivated the best-looking man in the room--next to you, of
course--that tall, dark one over there. He has done nothing but gaze
after her in a moony, melancholy way, while _I_ am dying to know him.
Do fetch him here _now_, and introduce him, there’s a dear. Only give
me half a chance and I can make him forget Agnes, I’ll promise you.”

“That?” said Jack, identifying at last the individual she was trying
to point out, and watching for the effect of his revelation upon his
family. “I am not surprised that you want to know him. That is my
best friend, Hubert Russell.”

“Is _that_ Russell?” said the three women in concert. To them he had
long been a household word.

“Yes, and he came here to please me, dear old chap. The trouble is, I
don’t know whether he’ll have the courage to follow it up by being
presented to you.”

“Lou does not know why he was so interested in Agnes--my Agnes,” he
added to himself, striving to repress the exultation of his heart as
he looked upon her he loved.




                                 II

Jack did not realize that his friend Russell could have any confusion
of mind as to which of the three Misses Benedict was the cousin
honored by preference undeclared. The fact was that Hubert had
strayed into the whirl of the “Prom” for, indeed, nothing but to
please his friend. While making up his mind to take his courage in
two hands and seek for an introduction, Russell had espied, standing
in a set of lancers, a girl who then and there struck him as his
ideal of scarce acknowledged dreams of woman’s loveliness. So swift
yet strong was the impression thus received that Russell gasped and
wondered what had come over him. The blood of young manhood surging
into his temples showed him in a flash that he was to the full
as weak as those at whom he had often jeered--Jack Benedict, for
example, whose ravings over his pretty cousin had often made Russell
smile with superiority and amusement. Whatever had been Russell’s
ambitions and hopes for the future, woman had had no part in them.
And yet, here in the twinkling of an eye, the waving coils of a
maiden’s loosely bound hair, her airy grace, her supple, slender
waist and noble shoulders had held him captive. When she turned and
he saw that her face was as lovely as her form, Russell had actually
started to go away. What evil spell had fallen upon him to lure
his steps into this place? He resented Jack’s influence, secretly
objurgated Jack’s tiresome lady-love and sisters, vowed he must and
would return home--and lingered.

When the set was over, and the girl went off with her partner,
Russell, half-ashamed, asked the college official who had accosted
him if he knew who was the young lady in pale blue with a small
wreath of white roses perched sidewise upon her hair.

“Let me see,” said the flattered tutor, squinting his eyes to take
in the receding figure. “Isn’t that--yes, of course it is--a sister
of Benedict’s? I met them yesterday at Mrs. Clarkson’s tea. But you
ought to know Benedict’s people better than I do, Russell.”

“You know I am a recluse,” said Russell, coloring.

“Then I advise you to repair neglected opportunities and make their
acquaintance on the spot. There’s another one--a little, jolly,
laughing girl, and a cousin--not so good-looking by a long shot, but
nice manners and intelligent. Decidedly, Benedict’s party has lent
luster to the week.”

Before Mr. Grampion had finished his chuckling remarks Russell had
melted away from him, and stood alone, irresolute. In this attitude
he was overhauled by Benedict, who, breathless, laid a hand upon his
shoulder.

“Here you are, you old fraud; come along and be presented to my
mother. She is all anxiety to meet you. Expects you to have wings and
a harp, from my description. And the girls are, luckily, all in the
box for a minute’s breathing spell. I call this kind, Russell, for
you to turn up here after all, and I’ll not forget it in a hurry.”

Russell, having no alternative, rushed blindly upon his fate. How
could he tell Benedict that he had already, without reason, without
excuse, fallen in love with Jack’s beautiful sister, and knew that
the better part of wisdom was to retire from the fray before matters
should get worse. He walked, dream-like, beside his friend, went
through the ceremony of introduction to Jack’s mother, received a
kind hand-shake from Mrs. Benedict, and scarcely venturing to look
up, heard Jack say:

“Mr. Russell, my sisters, my cousin--all Miss Benedicts; so you will
have no trouble in knowing how to address them.”

Jack’s voice thrilled with affection for his friend. Russell’s
fingers clasped in succession three gloved right hands. He knew
by intuition when he touched those of the girl whose charm had
enthralled him and, looking her full in the eyes, met in return a
glance of gentle approbation.

“Jack has cried me in their market better than I knew,” he thought,
gratefully. By the immediate departure of the other two young ladies
in answer to the inspiriting strains of the “Washington Post,” set to
a two-step, together with Jack’s flight in search of his own partner,
Russell found himself for a moment alone with the Miss Benedict he
most admired.

“I am not detaining you?” he asked, nervously.

“Not at all. In fact, I am stranded upon your hands. My idea is
that the man I promised this dance to is fainting somewhere on the
outskirts of the crowd. When I saw him last he was already pumped,
and supper not yet served,” she answered, laughing.

“I hope they will not revive him,” said Russell, yielding for once to
the temptation of the hour.

Back of the committee box was a little room set apart for wraps
and _tête-à-têtes_, into which he had the hardihood to invite his
companion to retire, hoping thus to seclude her from the observation
of her tardy dancer.

“Yes, do go; I shan’t tell,” said Mrs. Benedict, smiling approval.
“The little rest will do you good, and I know Jack will think well of
your change of comrades.”

Thus everything conspired to bring closer around poor Russell the
net he had not sought to weave. Sitting back among the cloaks and
hats, with the music floating in to them in softened cadence, he
could feast his eyes upon the beauty that had ensnared him. Her talk,
bright, friendly, unaffected, girlish, was exactly calculated to win
him from his habitual attitude of reserve. He found himself pouring
out upon her ear the stream of strong original thought and language
which had first made Jack Benedict his ardent admirer. She, in turn,
felt a sense of pleasure and bedazzlement in this man’s society that
she had never known before. All Jack had said of Hubert Russell was
more than confirmed by her talk with him; and before the brief period
of their isolation was ended, something of the same everyday marvel
worked upon him by her was accomplished in her gentle breast by him.
A tremor of admiration, of preference for his society, ran through
her veins. She asked herself timorously what _should_ she do if she
never met him again; why fate had been so long in granting to her
this experience of delight!

An invasion of young men (the missing partner, full of apologies
for the accident of his detention, and the man to whom the next
intermission was promised) broke up their _tête-à-tête_. Russell
hardly believed his good fortune when she said, in a vexed aside:

“There, now, they have spoiled the best of the evening for me. I am
sure we shall have no other chance to talk.”

“You are going to-morrow?” he murmured, trying to seem indifferent.

“Yes, at eleven. I am so sorry,” she answered in the same vein of
restrained feeling.

“I _must_ see you once more,” he said, briefly--then drew within
himself, frightened at his own audacity.

After that he watched her from afar, not being able to bring himself
to join the throng of chatterers who surrounded her in the intervals
of dancing or at supper time. Once only, Jack, running upon him,
paused under the weight of official cares to say, brightly:

“You took to them, then? My people, I mean.”

“I should say I did. They are all delightful, and your sister, Jack,
is--well--”

“Which sister?” interrogated his friend, merrily.

“I actually do not know,” said Russell, shame-facedly. “But she wears
blue and has a wreath of white roses.”

“That’s my sister Margaret. Do you know I always had an idea that
you would hit it off with Margaret. She doesn’t let herself out to
everybody by any means. But, Hubert, you might say one word for my
own particular goddess--Agnes--who is the chief woman in the world
for me, though I daren’t tell her so till I’m farther ahead in
fortune.”

“Agnes? Which is she?” answered Russell, confusedly, conscious
that he had given thought only to the companion of his talk in the
committee-room.

“Stupid!” laughed Jack, pulled this way and that by people asking him
questions. “There’s but one Agnes, as I said, and she--er--she wears
blue.”

He was torn away by an imperative demand for the floor manager, and
Russell felt relieved.

“I should not like to have confessed to him that neither of the
others made the least impression upon my sensibility. I saw,
of course, that there were two young females of pleasing but
conventional exterior--that was all. Only the blindness of a brother
could overlook the fact that Margaret is far and away the most
distinguished, individual, high-bred, graceful, gracious, of the
three. A man who has once spoken to Margaret would seek conversation
with the other two only when he had absolutely no chance with
Margaret.”

Russell stayed till daylight, looking in at the armory windows,
drove the last dancers to withdraw. Poor Mrs. Benedict, yawning
dismally behind the ostrich-feather fan, had to confess herself
beaten by sheer fatigue. Walking stiffly out upon the arm of her
son, she soon fell into the corner of her carriage, thanking heaven
that Jack could by no possibility be again the floor manager of a
Junior “Prom.” All around her limp figures were seen slinking into
retreat. The most indefatigable of the dancers among the men revealed
foreheads streaked with matted hair, staring eyes, shirt-fronts and
collars flaccid for want of starch, buttonhole bouquets like crushed
vegetables. Upon that stage of the annual festivity it were well to
let fall a veil!

When Russell appeared at the carriage door to aid Jack in putting his
family into their vehicle, a faint blush came into the clear pale
cheeks of his companion in the talk of a few hours before.

“Might I--would you take a little stroll with me before you leave?”
he ventured, with throbbing heart, to ask her.

“To-morrow? I mean, to-day?” she queried, a little confused.

“Yes; you see it is my only chance.”

“I will be waiting in the little reception-room of the hotel at ten,”
she said, rapidly. It seemed to her that they were in a boat being
borne onward by the current.

Jack and Russell walked together back to their dormitory building,
where each man occupied with a room-mate a suite of two bedrooms and
a sitting-room. As the gray of the sky warmed with rose color, Jack
yawned mightily between two puffs at a cigar.

“I’d give a kingdom for a solid eight hours’ sleep,” he said,
stretching his arms out. “But alas! I’ve got to be up betimes at the
station, on duty, putting ‘them’ in the train, you know, or I think
I’d take ‘cuts’ enough to tide me over a half a day in bed.”

“That is one of those things I can’t do for you, or I would,” said
Russell. “I mean putting the ladies in the train.”

“Why, man, are you made of iron and whale-bone that you show not a
sign of somnolence?” asked Jack.

“Not in the least. I never so heartily wished that I were constructed
after that model as since this evening’s experience. But remember
that you have danced many miles, while I’ve merely hung around on the
outskirts.”

“You sound gay as a lark. What’s come over you? I’d advise a ball a
week at this rate. Perhaps you are going to come out as a ‘fusser’--a
regular squire of dames--in your old age.”

“No such good luck. I have seen but one dame I should care to squire,
and she--well--” and Russell sighed genuinely.

“A confession?” exclaimed Jack, gleefully. “But it’s never too late
to mend, so go ahead.”

“I have no story. I am simply the victim of overwhelming
circumstances. Love came unsought, unsent, and it will probably
expire when I do. So no more at present from yours idiotically.”

“I know you too well to press queries. You will, as usual, just shut
your jaw and glare in silence if you don’t care to hold forth on any
topic. I, too, am ready for silence, though for a grosser reason.”

They kept pace together without speaking, until they reached the
landing where Jack turned in at his door, Russell ascending higher.

“Good night! Good day!” said Jack as they parted. “By the way, I
forgot to mention that my mother tells me it was Agnes--my Agnes, you
know--and not my sister Margaret, with whom you had that chat in the
committee-room. Now, I did suppose that even a churlish old bach like
you could tell the difference between those two. Margaret’s a nice
girl--a dear girl--but Agnes--well, you know what I think of Agnes!”

“Agnes?” repeated Russell, almost in a whisper.

“Yes, my bride-to-be, when I get money enough to claim her. My mother
said she as evidently took to you as you did to her. That’s as it
should be, old chap. When I’m awake we’ll have a jolly long talk over
her perfections. Meantime, you evidently need sleep as much as I do.
I never saw such a pale face as you’ve got on you suddenly. Brace up,
and good-by till we meet again.”

“Agnes,” repeated Russell, mechanically, as he crept up his flight of
stairs and went into his room.

Down fell his card-castle! The havoc wrought on him by that one
short talk must be borne in silence and lived down. It was Jack’s
lady-love that he had coveted. To follow up the advantage he could
not but feel that what he had gained with her would mean treachery to
Jack. Rather than betray his friend he would so cancel his engagement
to meet her at ten o’clock that she, considering him a boor, would
not choose to hold speech with him again. He would simply fail to go
to her hotel; and, cost him what it might, this course were better
than undermining Jack.




                                 III

As the hour of her appointment with Hubert Russell passed without
sign or token from him, a blush of shame dyed the cheek of Agnes
Benedict. She wondered at herself for making this engagement to meet
Jack’s friend, and for feeling ashamed to speak of it to her family.
But with a sort of desperate faith in him she waited in the little
reception-room at the foot of the hotel stairs where she had promised
to be found. When she could wait no longer she went into her room and
burst into tears. Mortified by her want of self-control, she promised
herself that Russell would yet explain satisfactorily the slight
to her. At the station, where Jack finally appeared--arriving at a
gallop in a cab just as the train was about to start--she experienced
a new pang of disappointment. Not only was Hubert Russell nowhere
to be seen, but he had sent no message. Agnes came to the swift,
maidenly conclusion that it was because she had cheapened herself
by making an appointment to see him alone after but a half-hour’s
acquaintance. She would bear her punishment in silence, and tell
nobody--Jack, least of all.

As the days wore on, Agnes felt that something had gone out of
her life--something not quite warranted by the briefness of that
interlude at the ball. Try as she might, she could not forget Russell
and the emotion he had caused in and had seemed to feel for her.
Jack’s letters home spoke of him as winning new honors in the college
course. When June came the family went up again to Yale to hear the
speaking for the “De Forest” medal, for which both Jack and Russell
were to be competitors. It was known that popular opinion inclined
to select Jack Benedict as the prize-winner, but that Russell was
considered a close second. In their zeal for their own hero the
Benedicts were beginning to look a little frigidly upon Jack’s
opponent. And it is safe to say that all of them, save Agnes, hoped
and prayed that Russell might not win.

Agnes, who would have given anything for an excuse to stay away,
found none. The appointed day saw her one of an audience assembled
within the walls of the old college chapel, whose prim Puritan
interior made even this gala occasion seem a little less cheerful
than a funeral elsewhere. She had been standing with her cousins in
the corridor as the procession of senior classmen in caps and gowns
filed by; and, to her utter discomfiture, a momentary halt in the
line had brought her face to face with Hubert Russell. In an instant
the blood rushed into her cheeks. Russell, looking her full in the
face, saluted her with conventional reserve. In reality he felt more
of inward excitement than did she. A moment more and they had parted,
she to sit gathering her faculties together in one end of the pew to
which the Benedicts had been assigned, and trying to believe that she
had not cared a bit.

“Did you see that Mr. Russell?” whispered Louisa in her ear. “A
stiff, cross-looking fellow, spite of Jack’s praises. Oh, Agnes, if
he and not Jack should win the ‘De Forest’ I could never get over
it--never. I almost hate him now, don’t you?”

“No-o,” whispered Agnes, blushing and hesitating.

“You are too angelic. And when any one can see Jack cares more for
what you think than for all the rest of us put together! At any rate,
you will own that Hubert Russell is very uncivil. He has never taken
the least notice of Jack’s family, and considering all Jack has been
to him! A man told me it is quite well known there’s a cloud over
Russell’s family--something really dreadful, and that Jack has
simply brought everybody to forget it and to treat Russell as if it
had never been.”

“What Jack has done is grand, and I honor him for it,” said Agnes.
“Who dares judge a man for the sins of his father? If ever any one
showed a high and noble nature in his countenance it is Hubert
Russell.”

“Don’t get excited,” said Lou, teasingly. “The object isn’t worth it,
in my opinion. I suppose, though, you and Jack see things with the
same eyes nowadays.”

“Lou, you mustn’t. Jack and I are nothing but cousins--_dear_
cousins,” said Agnes, imploringly.

Mrs. Benedict, looking across Margaret, here hushed their whispers.
The exercises were already under way.

When it was Jack’s turn to step upon the platform, and after a
courteous bow in his student’s gown to the president and judges,
to begin his oration, all hearts in the audience warmed toward the
manly and graceful and straight-forward young fellow. His essay,
well-written, carefully polished, was delivered with excellent
judgment, and when he had ended and stepped down amid tremendous
applause from his friends and classmen, the general verdict was that
it would win the prize. Last upon the list of speakers came Hubert
Russell. The rather measured applause bestowed on him as he appeared
was warmed up by the individual hand-clapping of his friend and
predecessor, Jack. Hardly a smile lighted Russell’s dark and handsome
face as he began. His manner, never prepossessing, seemed now under
some spell or chill of indifference.

By hazard the pew in which the Benedicts were placed was well to the
front, upon the left-hand side of the speaker. As Russell finally
approached his peroration, his glance chanced for a moment to rest
upon the glowing, inspiring, appealing countenance of a girl who
leaned forward to gaze on him with her whole soul in her eyes. The
effect of this was immediate. Casting aside his embarrassment, his
indifference, he burst into a fervor of natural eloquence the like of
which had not been heard in that spot that day, or for many a day.
To Russell was given the persuasiveness of speech, the music of the
voice, the flow of language, the flexibility of countenance, that
combined may give interest to material of less value than was his.
When he had finished the brief essay there was no question among his
hearers as to who had spoken best; they yielded him the spontaneous
applause that no favor to the individual can simulate. Louder and
longer than any other present applauded honest Jack Benedict, who
knew himself outdone.

“Why, mother, that is not like you,” said Jack that evening, when he
went to take supper with his family at their hotel.

Mrs. Benedict, who had been delivering herself of a few rather bitter
criticisms upon the winner of the “De Forest” (news of the award to
Hubert Russell had just been communicated to them by Jack), tried to
smile deprecatingly, and ended by dropping a few tears.

“I know it, Jack darling. But it’s because you are so much more to us
than any Mr. Russell.”

“Oh, mother dear, that’s the fortune of war. Russell did it a
thousand times better than ever I could have done. When you think
he has no one--absolutely no human being to whom to telegraph his
success, and I have all of you--you will see that what I have is more
than a balance for Hubert’s luck to-day.”

“Poor fellow! I wish he had come here with you. I wish we could
say something nice to him,” said the good lady, her little fit of
ill-temper dissipated by native kindness of heart.

“He can’t be captured, I’m afraid. He is more queer than ever
regarding women since the Prom. About that time he let me think he
was or had been hopelessly in love, and was ashamed of himself for
being so. Had he confided in me, I should keep my lips sealed. But
no! Hubert Russell lives and must always live, I fear, severely
within himself.”

A secret love for some one that must govern all his life! Agnes,
listening, felt her heart sink in very shame. Since she had heard
Russell speak, her fancy for him, that had but lain dormant, had
sprung up in full growth and vigor. And now she was told that he
whom she loved in secret cared nothing at all for her. That meeting
on going into chapel but confirmed her in this conviction. She
little knew that a glimpse of her face it was which had inspired his
brilliant effort of oratory. She little knew--

After supper, in the cool, soft evening air of June, they walked over
to the town green, and while Mrs. Benedict and Margaret sat together
on a bench talking, Lou strolled in one direction, accompanied by
a certain young man who had of late begun to arrest her butterfly
attention, while Agnes and Jack took another path.

The latter pair talked long and easily together, of the interests
shared by them through relationship and intimacy of habit. It was
only when Jack began insensibly to glide into the tone of tenderness
she had noticed often of late with some alarm that his cousin drew
back a little in her friendly attitude.

“Don’t Jack; there’s a dear boy,” she said, coaxingly. “If you only
knew how nice you can be when you are sensible.”

Jack’s reply was a burst of long repressed devotion, to which Agnes
listened in dismay. She had no idea matters had gone so far, and was
shocked at this evidence of deep feeling.

Very gently, very tenderly, she pleaded with him to give up the idea,
and after a long and painful talk brought herself to the point of
avowing that her love was not hers to give. Jack, who knew most of
her acquaintances, could not conceive of a rival among them. But the
double blow of losing in one day the cherished hopes of two such
prizes was more than the poor fellow could meet with equanimity. In
their absorption, as they walked to and fro, neither observed that
Russell, straying out to be alone beneath the starlight with his own
swelling emotions, had encountered them; had made an irrepressible
movement toward Agnes, then, seeing the expression of Jack’s face,
had hurried on with a bitterness of jealousy in his heart that robbed
success of all its charms.

[Illustration: “AND WITH GLOOM IN HIS HEART HE WENT BACK TO HIS
LONELY ROOM AND LIFE.”]

“Then you care for some one else?” Jack was saying in a fierce
undertone.

“Jack--don’t, please!” murmured she, tears welling into her eyes.

“But I must know,” he went on, hardly aware of his own insistence.

“Yes,” she said at last, never so faintly. “But he does not care for
me.”

All of Jack’s manhood answered to this pitiful confession. He spoke
to her gently, soothingly, laid her hand in his arm, and told her he
would always watch over her like a brother. And Agnes, reassured,
looked up in his face with loving gratitude.

At this point, Russell, on the return, again passed them. A single
glance at the couple convinced him that Jack had won a prize dearer
far than the one his friend had that day wrested from him.

“It was a miserable delusion of my vanity,” Russell said within
himself, “that made me answer to the inspiration of her gaze. It is
Jack, the fortunate, the pet of Destiny, who is to claim her. Here
endeth the chapter of my folly.”

And with gloom in his heart he went back into his lonely room and
life.




                                 IV

Three years after the brief episode of Hubert Russell’s two meetings
with Agnes Benedict he found himself enjoying a hard-earned holiday
in camp on an island in Georgian Bay. Since graduating, he had
made a quick climb up the ladder of success. A series of fortunate
circumstances had enabled him to conquer difficulties apparently
insuperable. His residence in a progressive town of the Middle West,
congenial occupation, and the sense of work well bestowed, had done
much to restore the healthy tone of his mind, biased to melancholy
through another’s crime. He had corresponded intermittently with Jack
Benedict, but without touching upon the subject of Jack’s domestic or
sentimental ties. He had read, in the “society” columns of certain
New York newspapers, of various occasions upon which the three Misses
Benedict had appeared before the world; of their summers abroad and
at home; of the marriage of Margaret; and recently of the more than
amateur achievement of Agnes as the artist of some pastels displayed
at an exhibition in the spring. What he had expected to read--the
announcement of her marriage with her cousin Jack--had not yet
reached Russell’s eye. When that event should occur, and not till
then, Russell said to himself, he would give up, once and for all,
the haunting witchery of Agnes Benedict’s fair face. Through the
mists of three years of memory it shone upon him still!

One day in August a little pleasure-yacht of light draft and dainty
build (meant to thread her way between innumerable rocky islands and
dally beside tempting bits of shore, rather than to brave the rough
water of the open bay) passed into an inlet where its owner had
decided to throw a rope over a large rock and stop to lunch!

This primitive method of anchorage was a favorite one with the owners
of the Juanita, the Cartwrights, a benevolent elderly couple from
New York, who, owning a summer residence upon one of the islands
lower down the bay, often took their house-parties away for days of
pleasuring afloat. Mr. and Mrs. Cartwright had now as their guests
several young men and maidens, among them Jack Benedict, his sister
Louisa, and his Cousin Agnes. All day the Juanita had run through
narrow channels of pale green water, between rocky ramparts crowned
with spruce and birch, around the gray flanks of which sprang from
the water forests of bulrushes, sprinkled with cardinal flowers
and water-lilies. As they now steered skillfully into the channel,
in which it was expected to find their usual landing-place open to
approach, an expression of disappointment arose from the forward
deck, where gathered a little group of voyagers in the gay attire of
summer on the wave.

“A camp of men! Horrid things! Why did they choose our island!” cried
Lou Benedict, pouting.

A rough house-boat anchored near the shore formed the center of
supplies for the camp, often replenished by a tri-weekly steam
launch from the mainland. Around a fire built upon stones a party of
young men were making rather bored preparations for their mid-day
meal. As the whistle of the toy yacht sounded a salute they arose to
their feet and came hurrying down to the water’s edge, evidently not
displeased at the invasion of their privacy.

“Hubert Russell!” exclaimed Benedict, joyfully, as he identified
among them his old friend. “Who would have dreamed of our meeting
here?”

Greetings and introductions followed, and from this point no
expression was heard from the girls of disapproval of “those horrid
men.”

It was in truth a stalwart and good-looking band of which Russell was
the leader. Mr. and Mrs. Cartwright, nominally joining forces with
them for luncheon, brought joy to the hearts of these weary cooks
and bottle-washers by the unpacking of a dainty meal, well served
by the yacht’s cook and stewards. As the party grouped itself under
the shade of glimmering birches, Russell, as if through a mockery
of Fate, found himself next to the lady of his dreams. The talk, at
first general, subsided into chat between persons sitting at a picnic
casually side by side. Russell, almost fearing to continue where he
was, looked over the circle to see Jack Benedict half reclining on
the moss at the feet of an extremely pretty girl in white duck, a
sailor-hat tied down with a white veil half covering her face. Seeing
him thus provided for, Russell had less scruple in accepting his own
half-hour of joy.

He thought Agnes sweeter, more womanly, more to his taste than ever.
The rare experience was his of finding one’s self confirmed in a
predilection after three years of total separation from the object.
They talked easily, without reference to the past, without touching
upon intimate topics. He fancied, without being sure, that Agnes knew
the incidents of his advance since leaving college. That she had
thus kept track of him was a flattery he must accept only because
he was Jack’s friend. When he left her, his pulses bounding with
delight of her presence, Jack Benedict took him off to the roof of
the yacht’s deck, where they sat by the pilot-house and smoked and
chatted through a long and lazy hour. During this time the rest of
the party had scattered for various enterprises--exploring the waters
in canoes, fishing, reading novels under the deck-awning, or lounging
beneath the trees and overhanging rocks.

And as yet no word had passed Jack’s lips concerning his sentimental
relations with the sex. Suddenly Mrs. Cartwright’s voice called up to
him:

“Mr. Benedict, won’t you please take a canoe and paddle up that inlet
yonder in search of your cousin and Miss Clare? We shall be starting
before long, and I must begin to gather my chickens under my wings.”

Jack blushed as he prepared to obey the chaperon’s behest.

“You will think that for an engaged man I’m rather forgetful of my
treasure,” he said, smiling. “I meant to tell you, Russell, that I’m
to be married in October.”

Russell’s heart gave a despairing leap. “Wasn’t it to be expected?”
he said, smiling also.

“Well--I--there were reasons why I couldn’t bring myself to write
to you, old chap,” rejoined Jack, as he dropped lightly into the
canvas canoe a deck-hand had put into the water, Russell following.
“And perhaps we need not discuss it further. But I’m happier than I
deserve to be, and I have won a gem of purest ray.”

As they paddled rapidly around the sharp projection of rocks that had
seemed to block the way ahead of them, they saw the girls’ canoe in
the center of a field of lily-pads bordering another one of the rocky
points here so numerous in the channel. When the lily-gatherers,
who had half filled their craft with masses of gleaming flowers and
long, curling stems, espied the search-party, they waved them a merry
welcome.

“I knew they were not fishing; she’s too tender-hearted by far,”
exclaimed Jack, with a lover’s pride.

Simultaneously the smiles vanished from his handsome face. A naphtha
launch just then passing into this inlet had left behind it a swell
that made the canoe containing the two girls rock perilously from
side to side. Agnes, evidently recognizing the danger, sat quite
still, but Edith Clare threw herself forward with a scream and
clasped her companion in her arms. The canoe, upsetting, plunged both
occupants into the broad-leafed greenery, under which they sank at
once out of sight.

“Can they swim?” asked Russell, quickening his stroke.

“Yes, both of them, if they are not caught below,” answered Benedict,
hoarsely.

Their canoe shot madly forward. Prompt as were the people in the
naphtha launch in turning back to attempt rescue, they could not
vie with these men in their eager effort to reach the scene of the
disaster. It was soon fatally evident that while one of the young
women had arisen to the surface and was keeping herself afloat,
something had happened to prevent the reappearance of the other. Jack
was not so quick as Hubert Russell to see that it was Agnes who was
missing. With misery clutching at his heart-strings, Russell said,
entreatingly:

“Let me save her for you, Jack! It will be something to pay back all
you’ve done for me if I can put the woman I’ve loved ever since I
first laid eyes on her into your arms again.”

He could not see that Jack was not even looking toward the place
where Agnes had gone down. All his thoughts were directed to the
spot whence Edith Clare called out to him to save her. “Coming, my
darling; have no fear,” Jack answered her, tenderly.

[Illustration: “RUSSELL REAPPEARED, BRINGING WITH HIM THE SODDEN FORM
OF AGNES.”]

Russell, without an instant’s further delay, dived overboard. The
canoe, violently shaken, was yet steadied by the other occupant, who
succeeded in reaching Edith and extricating her in safety from her
perilous surroundings.

An anxious interval, and Russell reappeared, bringing with him the
sodden form of Agnes, who, snared and held under water by the green
serpents of the lily-stems, was quite inanimate. They got her aboard
the launch and hurried back to the yacht, where poor Mrs. Cartwright
received them wringing her hands over this sad ending of her day of
pleasure. During the hour while Russell waited in an agony of fear on
deck, Jack Benedict, who stood beside him, became for the first time
aware of his friend’s long ordeal of repressed feeling for Agnes.

“And I might have spared you so much of it; it was my fault; I only
was to blame,” Jack said, sorrowfully. “Ages ago, had I known this, I
might have told you how she gently and tenderly--poor soul--but with
finality, put a stop to my boy’s dream of winning her. Now, when God
only knows whether she will be with us in the future, I can say no
more. I think, Hubert--mind, I can’t say I am sure, but I think--she
must have loved you from the first.”

Russell could not speak. He wrung Benedict’s hand, looking at him
with hollow, haggard eyes.

“So many people have known for the last two years of my attentions
to Edith Clare, we have been so frequently announced by our friends
to be engaged, that, even before the engagement was a fact, it did
not occur to me that you, though living so far from us, were in
total ignorance of our relations. You can see, Hubert, that Edith
is my other self. My fancy for Agnes grew up with me, but the love
for Edith came with my maturer manhood. Our engagement was announced
only just before we all came off here to visit Mrs. Cartwright,
or I should have written to inform you of it officially and of my
approaching marriage.”

“There!” exclaimed Russell, who was straining his ears to hear sounds
from the little inner cabin, where Agnes lay under the care of Mrs.
Cartwright and a doctor--found, fortunately, among the campers on the
island. “I am sure I heard her voice.”

Jack’s sister Lou came out to them, her face beaming with delight.
“She has stirred--has spoken; she breathes easily now,” was what
they heard. “In a little while, the doctor says, she will be herself
again,” Lou tried to add, but was choked by her excitement.

An hour or two later Russell, who had been invited by their hostess
to go back with them for a little visit to her island villa, sat
beside the lounging-chair of Indian bamboo heaped with rugs and
cushions, in which they had placed Agnes upon deck--clad for the
occasion in things they always carried aboard in a wardrobe assembled
for such emergencies. The yacht was speeding merrily homeward over
a track of westering sunshine. Forest fires upon the small islands
along their route glowed like jewels under canopies of dense, pearly
smoke. In the wake of the boat violet shadows appeared and vanished
into the water. All ahead of the two was bright as the Promised Land.

What had so long seemed impossible to these lovers had come about in
the simplest fashion. Their hands meeting had conveyed the joy of
each at reunion with the other. A few broken words from Russell told
Agnes that he had no dearer wish than to win her love. And Agnes--Now
she was pouring out to him the confidences of three years past; was
claiming his in return; was hanging upon his words, her face so full
of happiness as to tell its own story.

“We are all avoiding that part of the deck as if it were a region of
pestilence,” said Lou to her future sister-in-law. “I don’t think I
ever saw such bare-faced love-making in public. I have had to put
up a parasol so as not to see them. As for you and Jack, Edith, you
may step down from your pedestal as fiancés. Although mamma will be
very much taken by surprise to hear that Agnes has come up into these
remote waters to annex a young man from off an island, I think Jack
will induce her to feel resigned. Certainly, Russell is a fine, manly
fellow. From all I can see, I fancy there will soon be only one Miss
Benedict.”

“And for how long will there be even one?” asked Edith, teasingly.

Lou blushed, and would not answer.




                        A GIRL OF THE PERIOD




                        A GIRL OF THE PERIOD


A great deal of feeble sympathy was expressed for the Foljambes
when it became known they had lost their money. But regret for
that sort of misfortune to one’s neighbors is always tempered when
they have previously shone before the world as the dispensers of
extravagant hospitality. Thrifty, self-centered people who have been
inconspicuous because of their objection to amusing society at the
expense of their own purses, are apt, under similar circumstances, to
receive much more hearty condolence. The Foljambes, father, mother,
sons, and daughters, invitations to whose parties had been scrambled
for in New York and Newport, during several seasons past, were now
reaping the harvest of over-abundant giving.

It was generally agreed that Mrs. Foljambe, a weak, silly woman with
a bee in her bonnet for fashionable life, had quite long enough
enjoyed her place in the fierce light that beats upon the throne
of American plutocracy. The father, a clever financier, with the
one social accomplishment of effacing himself when the strain of
recognizing his individuality became too great upon the frequenters
of his house, was dismissed with even scanter consideration. The
sons--one recently started in business, the other but just out of
college--were very little known except to their cronies. The real
stars of the Foljambe family, those whose effulgence or eclipse
was likely to be of consequence in the social firmament, were the
daughters, Lilian and Olive.

Of Lilian, the elder, it had been customary to say that in a
matrimonial point of view she might be expected to do “anything.”
Beautiful, accomplished, fine of grain, cradled and bred in polished
luxury, she was the traditional princess who could not sleep for
the crumpled roseleaf in her couch of down. Since she had made her
appearance before the world her friends had watched, open-mouthed,
to see who would carry off the prize. Of the half a dozen men
prominently in her train, none could be adjudged exactly fit for her.
“Dancing men and dips”--meaning diplomats--was the way they were
summed up. Of course it was not to be expected that a mere diner-out
and frequenter of cotillons--a man whose boast it was not to have
missed a ball or banquet during the season--could presume to mate
with this very choice specimen of the leading set in Manhattan’s
aristocracy. Lilian Foljambe was destined to high place, name, fame,
and representative position. She was of the stuff--declared some
enthusiasts--of which the wives of our ambassadors to foreign courts
should be made. Though if ever there was a head for which nature
intended a tiara--inherited, not bought--it was Lilian Foljambe’s.

But Lilian had come to be four-and-twenty--an age in woman when
the insolence of youth must needs begin to curb itself and look
about to reckon the comparative values of its chances for actual
establishment in life, without realizing any of the hopes fixed upon
her. She had, needless to say, her full complement of unemotional
offers from the kind of young men whom she met nightly wearing
evening dress with white waistcoats, who talked afterward at the
club together concerning their ill-luck with her, and wondered “what
the deuce the girl was waitin’ for.” She went abroad year after year
with her family, was presented at various courts, made many titled
acquaintances, was extolled for her good looks, and reputed to have
twice her actual fortune. And still there was no hint of the “great
match,” or of any kind of a match, for the fair Miss Foljambe.

Olive, on the contrary, with not half Lilian’s beauty or style or
grand air, had at twenty-one her quiver full of admirers who would
have liked to be something more. Olive’s chief possessions were a
brown skin, a pair of laughing hazel eyes, a bewitching mouth and
teeth, plenty of common sense, a merry nature, and a nimble wit.
During her first winter “out” she had announced to her family her
intention to marry Stephen Luttridge, a clever young architect, who
had nothing in particular a year. Mrs. Foljambe--ranking the outcome
of Luttridge’s profession, together with those of art and literature,
as in some way connected with food cooked in chafing-dishes and
a maid-servant receiving cards between thumb and finger--looked
honestly alarmed. She induced her husband to declare that he would
give nothing “down” with either daughter unless she should marry to
please her parents.

Olive smilingly declared that she could very well afford to wait
until Luttridge should have three thousand a year, at which time she
meant to take the matter into her own hands. Mr. Foljambe, egged on
by his wife, had stipulated that the affair should not be called an
engagement. And Olive had answered, laughing, that she did not care
what they called it, provided no other girl got Stephen Luttridge.

Now a crash had come. Foljambe’s name, hitherto most familiar to a
set of men who had confidence in his probity and were dazzled by his
schemes, had been seen of late in every newspaper in connection with
the story of his stupendous, over-confident, and rash speculations.
And such a tremendous failure had not been chronicled in years! It
was a curious fact that the men who commented on it said generally,
in conclusion, “If he could only have gone on for one week longer, by
George, he’d have been safe!”

Foljambe was not afraid to meet his creditors. He had chosen a trusty
and capable friend to be his assignee for their benefit, and was sure
he could more than pay his debts--though his remaining assets were
not all of a kind to be immediately turned into cash, and he could
hardly expect much of a surplus for himself. Indeed, nobody else
expected his assignee to be even able to satisfy the creditors; and
so his credit, even with his friends, was entirely gone. He had given
to his sons good educations with which to fight the world on their
own account--for most young Americans a more fatherly benefaction
than a balance at a bank and leisure to haunt clubs. And they were
manly young fellows. It was, in plain words, his womenkind of whom
Martin Foljambe was afraid.

His wife, with whom he had begun life in the narrowest fashion--who
had helped herself with both hands to the accretions of his
successful business career--would never, he knew, be able to forgive
the folly of his downfall. With women of her type, to have is to
forget all previous deficiencies, to claim prosperity as a right, to
resent reverses as a personal wrong. Sweet, beautiful Lilian, who was
the poetry of his prosy existence, she would be gentle and forbearing
with him. But Lilian, deprived of her luxuries, was an image he could
not bear to contemplate. He knew her to be so utterly unfitted for
the world of work-a-day. Olive, now, was in some way different. She,
like her sister, had been an extravagant little puss. But Olive had
a way of pulling herself together and facing contingencies that gave
him more hope for her endurance of the change.

Those were sad days in the great stately house off the Park, and so
well known to the world of fashion, following the Foljambe failure.
The large staff of servants was prompt to desert the sinking ship.
A buxom kitchen-maid officiated over the copper stew-pans of the
departed chef. Mrs. Foljambe, in her bed with nervous prostration, in
charge of a trained nurse, complained that she could not get a cup of
bouillon fit to eat since Lenormand had left. Next the stables were
depopulated. Then the pictures and curios and ceramics were sold at
auction, and the house was offered for sale by the assignee, to whom
everything had been surrendered. As there is always in the great
metropolis some family stepping up to replace one that chances to
step down, the agents effected a prompt “arrangement” by which the
Foljambe mansion, furniture and all, passed into other ownership.

In less than two months after his misfortune Mr. Foljambe stepped
out alone into the street, and looked back upon a dwelling in which
he had no belongings save a couple of modest trunks and several
portmanteaux to be called for by an expressman later on.

Who shall say that Martin Foljambe did not feel a lump of bitterness
in his throat as he gave his final instructions to a care-taker and
walked hurriedly away into the avenue whence he could no longer see
his home? It had been at his wife’s instigation that he had built it;
she had devised, superintended, ordered everything on a scale that
outshone most of his predecessors in such constructions in their
neighborhood. The only things she had not concerned herself about
were the bills. Enormous as they were, he had paid them without a
hint to her that she must have been cheated in various quarters.
But it had been many a long year since Mrs. Foljambe had concerned
herself about the sum total of a bill!

All--all--the fruits of his manhood’s work had been lavished at her
feet, and here, when he was wounded to the quick by the jilt Fortune,
his wife, where was she? Sailing eastward in the best rooms of a
crack ocean liner, in company with her lovely Lilian, without whose
society she had declared it would be impossible to recover the tone
of her shattered nerves!

It was really the only thing for her to do, so had said Mrs.
Foljambe to her doctor, reminding him of the tremendous help she
had previously derived from certain baths in Germany. The doctor,
wise in his generation and well aware of what was expected of him,
had suavely acquiesced. Mr. Foljambe was informed by his wife that
her sole chance of recovery lay in the jaunt in question--and as to
expense, it was a real economy, he knew. The money she was to have at
her disposal was a sum of a few thousand dollars which had been given
to her years before by her husband--which he had invested for her in
her own name--and which had chanced to have been never as yet spent
by her. So the state-room on the ship had been taken within a day or
two after she had announced to him her intention of going abroad.

Lilian, clinging to her father’s neck with tears and caresses,
assured him that she did not want to go; that it would be dull as
ditchwater for her, and that she should always be thinking of him
left behind. But Lilian was overpowered, and in due time yielded to
her mother’s decree that her first duty was to her.

Not so Olive. Without protestation, without gush over her father, she
had calmly said she had no idea of going abroad that summer. With the
help of her friend Luttridge she had picked out a little flat on the
west side of the Park, where there were tree-tops for the trouble of
going to the window and a delightful sense of being out-of-doors. The
sale of her pearl necklace had paid for the furniture. She retained
as cook the kitchen-maid who had been trained under M. Lenormand, and
then, when all was done, announced to her father that they--he, she,
and the brother recently come home from college--were going there to
live, the other brother having resigned his place in New York and
gone to the West to grow up with the country.

The evening of the day that found Martin Foljambe creeping dejectedly
out of his former mansion, with a heart in his bosom heavy as the
iron that had seared it, brought him uptown to see for the first time
Miss Olive’s new arrangements for his comfort.

To Martin, past the age for picnics, the whole thing appeared but a
mournful makeshift. But Olive and Luttridge, who came in to dine upon
a grilled fowl and a can of mock-turtle soup, and Tom, the recent
graduate, who was charged by Olive “to help to cheer papa,” laughed
and chaffed and made merry with the glorious unconcern of youth.
After dinner, when the two young men went out into the Park to smoke
their pipes, Olive sat with her father upon a sofa pinched between
two doorways of their narrow sitting-room.

“And now tell me, papa,” she said with alarming briskness, “just what
I may expect as an allowance to keep house upon.”

He explained that for the present he would have nothing he could
call his own except the sum the assignee was paying him weekly for
his services in assisting to wind up the assigned estate to the best
possible advantage, and that, even from that, certain amounts would
have to be deducted for use for things other than mere housekeeping.

“Oh, well,” said she, “we shall be able to live. And do you know,
I already love this. It is like a honeymoon without the bother of
a husband. You will have an excellent draught of air through your
bedroom. I forgot to tell you that I got a note to-day from Mrs.
Louis Rushmore offering me the work on her husband’s notes of that
expedition they made last year to Mexico. Mrs. Rushmore started in
herself to put them in shape for publication, but seems to have got
into a hole. You know, it is to be a sort of ‘In Memoriam’ for Mr.
Rushmore, published on the most lavish scale, with illustrations and
all that. She recalled that when we all met in Mexico Mr. Rushmore
took rather a fancy to me principally because I was the only person
of the party who could read his handwriting. You remember, he got me
to copy out in his note-book certain of his own memoranda that he
couldn’t decipher to save himself?”

“And how, pray,” said Mr. Foljambe, writhing upon the hard little
sofa Olive and Luttridge had thought so artistic in design, “did Mrs.
Rushmore come to suppose you were in need of employment?”

“Because, daddy dear, I’ve been foraging around for something to do,
for a month past,” said the girl, frankly. “You know I am nothing if
not up to date. I expected to be somebody’s secretary, thanks to my
good, clear handwriting. But the blessing of Mrs. Rushmore’s work
is that I can do most of it just here, and at the same time ‘boss’
the maid, who might get tired and bolt if she were left too much to
herself.”

“Poor Rushmore died just while he was deciding to go into San
Miguel with me,” remarked Mr. Foljambe. “He was one of the careful,
conservative kind--while I--”

“Don’t be ashamed of your spirit of daring--don’t, papa; you share it
liberally with me!” said Olive, gayly. “I haven’t the vaguest idea of
what San Miguel was or is, but I’m perfectly sure I’d have gone into
it and left Mr. Rushmore trembling on the brink.”

“It was one of my failures, dear--a mining speculation that promised
everything, and flattened out in a year or two. If I had the money
now that my holdings in that stock represent to me, it wouldn’t
be long before I should be out of this pit, I tell you. Until I
was failing, I hardly counted the cost of it. What it has cost me
amounted to a fortune in itself; and I hold--or rather my assignee
for the benefit of my creditors now holds--a strong majority of the
whole capital stock. But within the last few years there has been no
work done in the mine except what the sale of ore extracted would
pay for--which has not been much--and the stock cannot now be sold
for even a penny a share. Indeed I advised the assignee to-day to
sell the shares to anybody who will offer anything whatever for them,
and to do it quickly, before the chap can change his mind. Olive,
my child, whether you succeed or not in your Rushmore business, I’m
proud of you for taking up the first work that comes to hand. But
there’s one thing I ought to ask--how long is Luttridge going to be
satisfied to do without you?”

“Of course, papa, he was deadly foolish,” said Olive, crimsoning. “He
wanted to be married right away, and come in here, the saucy fellow.
But I’ve stuck to my ultimatum of last autumn. When he gets enough to
keep us without my being a drag on him, I’ll say ‘yes.’ Just now I
wouldn’t leave you for all the world. Every minute of this day I’ve
been thinking of your getting home and finding everything so nice.”

Foljambe’s heart reproached him for his contempt of her poor
devisings. He caught his brave little woman in his arms and kissed
her as he had not done in years.

Olive’s interest in deciphering the Rushmore hieroglyphics grew
with the continuance of her work, which daily opened out into new
channels of discovery and information. Mrs. Rushmore, rejoiced to
find she had not misplaced her confidence in the girl’s ability, went
off to Europe, leaving the whole charge of the book in Miss Olive’s
hands, together with a very liberal sum to be paid her in weekly
installments in remuneration, and the promise of more to follow when
the work should be finished. Foljambe himself, in better health and
spirits for his daughter’s guardian care, found that, on the whole,
his enjoyment of life was rather increased than diminished. His
younger son rejoiced his family by finding employment as secretary to
one of his father’s old friends, who was primarily to take him off
for a summer of travel through the wonders of the far West. Letters
from Mrs. Foljambe, while giving gratifying assurance of her physical
improvement and of the usual impression made by Lilian’s beauty upon
casual grandees, did not now touch a sore spot in Martin’s heart, for
the simple reason that the wound was healing under Olive’s influence.

Summer came, and Olive, at her desk heaped with dictionaries,
encyclopedias, and works of reference, transferred from Mrs.
Rushmore’s library, had hardly time to wonder if she were herself.
While all the other young women of her acquaintance were preparing
gowns for their holiday campaign, going off to lovely country homes
with keen zest for the outdoor life that had previously been her
greatest joy, or taking wing for Europe, she in her trim cotton gown
sat down by nine o’clock to spend all the morning hours in close
devotion to her task in hand.

With her mental energies thus healthily astir, her faculties bent
upon elucidating and compiling interesting facts, she was really
happy and at her best. She could truly say that she envied no one in
the world.

“After all, it’s no more than you, and Stephen Luttridge, and lots
of nice, clever men who deserve just as much of the pleasure of
life as I do, are doing every day,” she said one evening, when her
father told her she was a chip off the old block as far as working
was concerned. “And while you are endowing me with your attributes,
daddy, give me your pluck and--something higher, please. Even if
I weren’t getting paid for it at the best market rates, I’d never
begrudge this summer, that’s brought me to know my own dear father
as he is. Thank goodness, there comes Stephen to take me for a walk.
All this bottled-up energy of mine is fearful if I get no physical
outlet in the day. Daddy, I forgot to tell you, I’ve been brushing
up my Spanish latterly. I’ve had two lessons a week from a cheap and
solemn little don Stephen found for me. So many of my Mexican letters
are in Spanish I found it almost necessary to know their language
better. To-day my little professor made me his farewell, and we had a
conversation in his own tongue that would have startled you--I really
think I talked faster than he did--if not so grammatically.”

“I don’t doubt it,” replied her father, looking at her admiringly. If
Olive had told him she had taken a prize for an essay in any branch
of science after two months of study he would hardly have doubted her.

It was harder work when the heat of July struck the city. Olive,
yielding to her father’s solicitation, went off then for a week to
a friend in the country, but came back determined not to try the
experiment again. She was out of all touch with the people she met
at the Claverings’ house party. Kind as they meant to be to her,
she had lost the shibboleth, the habit of thought and speech, that
could make her one of their circle. And if, on her return to town,
thoughts would intrude of wide, smooth-shaven emerald lawns, great
forest trees parting to reveal vistas of hill and lake, flower-beds
blazoning the turf, rides on horseback, days on the golf links, and
long, delightful country walks, she had courage to put them aside.
But all this happened to be at the time of Luttridge’s holiday; when,
seeing how much he needed change from office work, Olive had, in her
own bright, imperious way, insisted that her lover should go off to
the Maine woods for a fortnight’s fishing, without regard to her.
And Stephen, albeit reluctantly, had acquiesced. One morning, as she
sat down to her desk, the ancient Aztecs seemed for a while to be
more than ever distressingly remote and uninteresting; then the maid
came in with a long chapter of complaints about the iniquities of the
janitor and butcher boy. When that was over, Olive’s eye fell upon
her calendar. It was the day when, the year before, the Foljambes
had been giving their great ball at Newport, accounts of which
were cabled over sea, and had filled the atmosphere of the Western
Hemisphere. Of what consequence were the Foljambes now to the world
that had courted them?

“Evidently,” thought Olive, dashing into her papers, with an heroic
attempt to fix her mind upon them, “it does me no good to go
a-junketing. Between me and my other life a gulf is fixed that I
should be wiser not to attempt to bridge.”

A ring at the gong-bell of the flat! So sharp a ring as to make her
start like a guilty creature. This interruption brought her to the
discovery that, for the first time since her change of abode and
habit, she had been crying over “things.” Katrina’s arrival with a
dingy card revealed the name of a Mexican, an ex-journalist, employed
by Mrs. Rushmore to make certain researches of which the result was
to be reported to Olive herself. In her capacity of editor, the
latter had already received several communications from this Mr.
Ramirez.

“But there are two,” whispered Olive, who, from her little study
divided by curtains from their only reception-room, could distinctly
hear voices and footsteps.

“Yes, m’m; but one of the gentlemen didn’t give a card. He’s a--a
person, m’m--not a caller, and he’s jabbering away for dear life in
French or Eyetalian or Rooshan, or some o’ them desperate tongues,
to the other one, m’m. Shall I say you’ll be out directly, Miss
Foljambe?”

“Yes, Katrina, and bring me a glass of water,” said Olive, meekly.
She was glad to remain alone for a little while, subduing her
nervous fit, and swabbing the marks of tears around her eyes. In her
present unwonted resentment against existing circumstances she was
even inclined to eschew the ancient Aztecs and the whole splendid
inheritance they have left to posterity in the New World.

“It is really the heat that has got the better of me,” she thought.
“But how much worse for poor Katrina in that little burning-glass of
a kitchen! I am ashamed of myself. I will, positively, never do so
any more.”

The voices of her waiting visitors, at first subdued to the ordinary
pitch of a stranger’s tones upon entering an unfamiliar place, here
forced themselves upon her aural consciousness. The men were speaking
in Spanish, and certainly not of the matters Olive was expected to
hold in common interest with Ramirez.

“It is not the first time, Juan, that you have tempted me with
ventures; and they have always come to nothing. I haven’t the money
to spare, I tell you; and that’s flat.”

“There is no mistake this time, Ramirez. If I could only make you
believe me! If you do not accept, I go to Señor Mores, who, when he
knows the facts, will take me up quickly. Think of it! A beggarly sum
in hand, we buy out the San Miguel stock from a man who does not know
its value, and our fortunes are made forever.”

San Miguel stock! In a flash it came to Olive that her father was the
chief owner of San Miguel stock.

“Why do you think I came to New York?” went on the eager speaker.
“For the pleasure of that long, bone-breaking journey across the
continent, eh? Or to pass a month in this city, where a poor man is
ruined by charges if he demands to eat or drink? Why did I fasten
myself to you to-day, and follow you here, when you showed no desire
for my company? Because I wanted to get ahead of another man who will
arrive to-morrow morning. Am I to fail because you, my oldest friend,
will not help me to raise the money? It is not a ‘fake,’ as you call
it in English. I swear to you that I speak the truth. San Miguel is
up, up--on the top of the wave. In two days the newspapers will have
the news of their rich find. Here is a telegram I received on arrival
at my hotel, a few hours since. The secret was to be kept only till
Latimer, the clever man of their syndicate, should have had time to
reach New York and visit Mr. Foljambe.”

“Foljambe! Caramba! Hold your tongue!” hissed Ramirez.

There was a sudden hush. The conversation passed into whispers.
Olive, trembling with excitement, slipped back into her bedroom, put
on her hat, seized gloves and parasol, and darted out to the rear of
the flat to interview Katrina.

“I cannot receive those men now, Katrina,” said the young lady,
breathlessly. “Give me full time to get out of their way, and
then--but not until they call you--tell them I am not at home.”

“It’s not sneak-thieves they’d be, Miss Foljambe, and you goin’ to
call up the police?” the maid asked with natural emotion.

“No, no, Katrina. They will do no harm. But I cannot stop to see
them. It is a matter of important business for me to attend to.
Something I have found out that I must see my father about, without
delay. Mind, you are on no account to give these men, if they ask for
it, Mr. Foljambe’s address downtown.”

“Trust me, miss,” said the woman, importantly. “They’d never be
gettin’ me to let on where they’d find the master, poor gentleman,
after all the troubles he’s had already.”

Olive, considering every moment’s delay of the men a clear gain, and
reckless of the evident belief of her honest handmaiden that she
was going to warn her father to flee from the myrmidons of justice,
hurried out of the front door.

Katrina, anxious to fulfill the trust imposed in her, tarried
inconceivably long; when Ramirez, his patience exhausted, rang
her up for the fourth or fifth time, the woman sauntered into the
room wearing an air of defiance blended with cunning. Between
Ramirez’s scant supply of colloquial English and Katrina’s voluble
mystifications the two men were fairly routed. The Mexican, putting
his papers upon the table, finally beat a retreat.

But he reckoned without his enemy.

“Maybe it’s me you think would be serving yer dirty summonses upon
the master!” cried she, as, exploding with wrath, she picked up the
envelope and thrust it back on him.

“Come away, Ramirez; the creature is certainly mad,” said the other,
nervously. To his mind this delay about trivialities, when he had a
fortune in his grasp, was insanity on Ramirez’s part as well.

       *       *       *       *       *

Fleet of foot and full of courage, Olive sped upon her way. Reaching
the nearest station of the elevated railway she boarded a car and
fell into a seat, looking back in actual fear of finding herself
overtaken by the two Mexicans whom she had eluded. After all, was it
not a will-o’-the-wisp she was pursuing? As it often happened to her
in acting upon impulse, the first cool moment--though that did not
come until the train was well on the way downtown--brought its pangs
of self-distrust.

But nothing could go wrong about visiting her own dear father and
confiding in him her--A sudden jarring of the wheels upon the rails,
a shock--what was it? Olive, together with the other passengers in
her end of the car, was shot forward violently, all falling in a
heap. Then came a crash, a sound of shivered glass, some screams from
frightened women, and at last a full stop--after which people picked
themselves up and wondered whether or not they were badly hurt.

Coming around a curve they had run into the rear end of a train
stopped unexpectedly ahead of them because of a breakdown of its
engine. There were no serious bodily injuries, but there was much
agitation and every prospect of a long delay before the track could
be cleared and the train could proceed. Olive, the worse only for a
badly battered hat, a broken sunshade, some damage to her clothes,
and a scratch across her brow, had her hands full for a time with
pacifying other more nervous women and crying children, who could not
be persuaded they were not doomed to fall into the street below.

When at last she had succeeded in getting to the plank-walk along the
side of the railway track, and had thus, with the assistance of a
train hand, reached the next station, she descended to the level of
Mother Earth with her feelings somewhat dashed. In her forlorn plight
she was not fit to be seen on the streets, and indeed the condition
of her hat was so shocking as to make her hesitate to enter a public
vehicle. There was not a cab in sight, but after a rapid walk to
Broadway she discovered a great wholesale warehouse where, when she
had explained that she had just been in a collision on the railway,
they allowed her to purchase a cheap straw hat that was at least
better than the one she discarded.

More delays! The cable-car, into which she finally got, ran along
peacefully enough to just below Canal Street, where a block occurred,
necessitating an attempt at possession of her soul in patience until
the moments grew to feel like hours.

Unable to endure it longer, she sprang to the ground, crossing
through a jam of vehicles to the sidewalk, then stood looking up
and down for a cab. Everybody stared at her, until she was afraid
she might be arrested upon a charge of drunkenness, because of her
excitement and of her battered appearance.

Her face flamed with heat and exertion. The wound in her forehead
streaked her handkerchief with blood. It was very near mid-day.
Lacking a parasol, the sun’s ardor seemed to her more oppressive than
it had ever been before. And, as ill-luck would have it, the passing
cabs at that hour, in midsummer, and in that portion of the town,
were so few and far between, that not one, not already occupied, came
along until she was ready to cry with anxiety. It was the first time
she had ever been there alone.

Poor Olive felt her courage oozing out at her finger tips. After all,
would not she be laughed at by her father as a mistaken busybody,
concerning herself with affairs of which she had no knowledge? And as
the sun beat upon a pavement swarming with alien folk who jostled and
stared at her, she almost gave up in despair.

“You make some mistakes, my impetuous little Olive,” had
Stephen Luttridge said to her a few days before they parted,
“and--perhaps--commit some follies. But your intuitions are the
keenest, your pluck the best, I have ever seen in a woman. And I
promise you now, I am going to stand by them both, so long as we both
shall live.”

How Olive had glowed with pride at her lover’s eulogy! As it here
came to her memory, she turned bravely around facing the Battery,
and started to walk.

The pain in her head was growing; she felt a sensation of dizziness.
In all that crowd, pressing her onward or coming to meet her, there
was not a familiar face, or one to whom she could appeal.

At this moment, a blue-coated officer crossed the line of her
uncertain vision. Olive ran forward, laying her hand upon his arm,
and besought him to get a carriage for her. The man, scrutinizing
her closely, ended--to his eternal credit, be it said--by speaking
civilly.

“There’s one coming now, Miss, if you think you’d be fit to drive
alone. Perhaps you’d better step into a drug store till your head
cools down a bit.”

“Oh! no, no. I am all right, officer; I only want to get to my
father’s office, No. -- Wall Street, please. Tell the driver to take
me quickly, and I’ll thank you very, very much.”

Once inside the friendly hansom, Olive’s courage flowed back in
a full stream. For half a mile or more she lay at ease upon the
cushions, fanned herself, arranged her hat and veil anew, thought of
her father’s kind pity for her mischances, and rejoiced in finding
him--when, presto! the horse was down upon his knees and badly
damaged, the passenger shooting forward, her wrist twisted in the
attempt to prevent herself from falling further.

A crowd gathered about them. Olive, assisted to alight, protested
that she was not hurt; and a good Samaritan, who saw the girl’s
pallid cheeks, led her into a neighboring doorway, summoning another
cab.

“You must let me take you to your destination, though,” said the
gentleman who had aided her. “I happen to have daughters of my own
about your age, and should be very sorry to have one of them left to
shift for herself under these circumstances.”

“It can’t be so very far now to my father’s office in Wall Street,”
replied Olive, suppressing the pain of her injured wrist. “I am
dreadfully anxious to get to my father’s place of business.”

She mentioned his name, and the gentleman took off his hat--but was
evidently puzzled by her forlorn appearance.

“I have good reason to know Martin Foljambe,” he said, courteously.
“But for his generous action a few months ago--something he need not
have done, but chose to do--I should have been hard hit. My name is
Whitwell, and I beg you to give yourself no further concern, Miss
Foljambe. I shall surrender you safely to your father’s keeping in a
very little while.”

“Oh, if it is not too late!” exclaimed she, for the first time losing
her self-control.

“You are late for luncheon, if that’s what you mean; but I dare say
Mr. Foljambe will look out for you. It is always a treat to my young
women to descend upon me for their mid-day meal, and I am well broken
in to supplying them.”

When they stopped before the desired building and Olive offered him
her purse to pay the cab, her kind friend declined, of course, to
receive it, but observed that her cheeks had again grown very white.
In crossing the hall to the elevator he made her lean upon his arm,
and as they shot up to the floor upon which Martin Foljambe now
transacted his affairs, in the office of his assignee, her escort
felt that she was trembling painfully.

“I am growing weaker,” thought poor Olive to herself. “How wretched
to frighten papa like this. Oh, I must not, I will not faint! I will
hold out till I tell him about San Miguel.”

“Courage, my child,” said Mr. Whitwell. “In one moment you’ll be
there.”

At the end of a long corridor they saw the names they had come in
search of.

“He is in, Miss Foljambe,” said the young man to whom she had put the
query, “but I am sorry to say our orders are that Mr. Foljambe is
not to be interrupted. He is receiving some gentlemen on important
business.”

“Two foreigners?” asked the girl, forcing herself to speak calmly.

“I think so, Miss Foljambe. I was out at lunch when they called, but
I understood they are Spanish gentlemen, and Mr. Foljambe’s orders
were most explicit that he is not to be disturbed.”

Olive never knew how her strength held out to march past the
astonished clerk, tap at the door of her father’s room, and follow
this up by entering the forbidden portal. Quite two hours had passed
since she had quitted her home upon her mission of warning. There
had been full time for “Juan” to induce Ramirez to decide upon their
plan of action, find out Mr. Foljambe’s habitat downtown, and proceed
without interruption to the spot.

As already stated, Foljambe had decided that the mine was worthless,
and had advised his assignee to sell the San Miguel stock at
whatever price it would fetch. When, therefore, the two Mexicans
had appeared--offering for it a merely nominal sum, to be sure, but
accompanying their proposition with the guileless explanation that,
as Juan lived near the mine and had a little money, he was willing
to risk something on the venture of becoming part owner of the
property, though it seemed to be of no real value--Martin considered
himself in luck. He thought that here was a windfall, though
certainly not a large one.

While Ramirez, interpreting for his friend Juan, was in the very act
of urging an immediate acceptance, so that a matter of so little
importance might be closed without further bother, and while Foljambe
was holding back with an attempt to prove his indifference, making
excuse that the assignee would arrive presently and they could then
decide the matter, Olive had burst into the room.

“I beg your pardon, papa,” she said, frightened and faltering; “there
has been a little accident, and I must speak to you alone.”

Foljambe, much startled, put his arm around his daughter’s shoulders,
placed her in a chair, and requested his visitors to wait in another
room until the return of the gentleman through whose hands the matter
must pass. As they went out Ramirez darted upon the almost fainting
girl a look of suspicion and resentment.

“What is it, my dear?” asked the father, anxiously. “What in the
world has brought you down here alone, and in this condition?”

“Your friend, Mr. Whitwell, papa. He is waiting outside, I think; but
never mind him or my appearance or anything, till I ask you if you
have sold your San Miguel stock.”

“Good heavens!” cried Martin; “and what do you know, you kitten,
about San Miguel stock?”

“Only that it’s up--up--on the top of the wave,” she cried,
breathlessly, repeating what Juan had told in her hearing to Ramirez.
“That they have made a rich strike of ore. This man I saw here just
now has crossed the continent at top speed to buy you out; and
another person--somebody called Latimer, who, he says, is the clever
man of the syndicate--will be in New York to-morrow morning for the
same purpose. Oh, papa, if you have sold San Miguel it will break my
heart!”

“By George, I haven’t; but you were just in time!” cried Foljambe,
greatly excited. “It’s the closest call I ever had in all my business
life. How on earth you found out, Olive, beats me. But if it’s
true--good heavens, child, how did you find it out?”

“They were at our house this morning--talking together in Spanish,”
she said, her voice beginning to sound to her further and further
away--“and I remembered what you had told me about San Miguel. I
started without waiting a minute to find you, but the elevated train
broke down, and there was a block on the cable cars--it was very
hot--then my hansom horse fell down, and I hurt my wrist--I’m afraid,
papa, it’s beginning to make me feel--a little weak.”

She could articulate no longer. Her words trailed off into
incoherency. The long strain had been too much for her. For the first
time in her life, Olive fainted dead away.

Juan and Ramirez knew their game was up--knew it before a message
came to them from the room where Mr. Foljambe was occupied in
restoring his daughter to consciousness, where Mr. Whitwell, summoned
to come in, was explaining the circumstances of his encounter with
the little heroine.

For the visit and proposition of Mr. Latimer, which occurred the
morning following that of Ramirez and his friend, Mr. Foljambe was
sufficiently prepared. Latimer’s surprise when his offer to buy was
declined outright, as was also his rapid increase of the amount first
suggested as a fair equivalent for worthless stock, all this is
written on the tablets of Martin Foljambe’s memory. He will probably
never cease chuckling over it as a pendant to his daughter’s clever
interference.

Olive went on with the Rushmore memorial (which in due time appeared
in print, with great credit to the editor) until her father, coming
in one unbearably hot evening, gave her the welcome tidings that San
Miguel had set him on his feet again.

“We shall be rich again, my girl, thanks to your grit and
common-sense,” he added, bending over the sofa, where she reclined,
rather languid and overdone and trembling with excitement. “And about
the first use I shall make of spare funds will be to set up you and
Stephen. I take it, from what your mother writes, Lilian will marry
that Captain Ramsdell. I don’t care a hang about his being next in
succession to a baronet, but I do like his asking her when he thought
she had lost her money.”

“The bell!” cried Olive, springing to her feet as the welcome
annunciator sounded. “Glad as I am of your splendid news, papa, I am
gladder still that to-night has brought Stephen back.”

“I had quite forgotten that little circumstance,” remarked Martin, as
she flew by him like a whirlwind to meet her lover in the hall.




                       THE STOLEN STRADIVARIUS




                       THE STOLEN STRADIVARIUS


In a low chair, drawn up to secure the full light of a Welsbach
burner, a little woman sat darning stockings. Although full forty
years of age, she was astonishingly young and fresh. Her dark hair,
twisted in a shining coil at the back of a small, well-shaped head,
her rosy lips and white teeth, the look of alert interest in her
hazel eyes, the plain but becomingly arranged dress, all suggested
that her present condition of solitude was incidental rather than
habitual.

The room in which Mrs. Blair’s deft needle repaired the havoc of
stalwart feet in their daily walks to and from the money-getting
haunts of men, was clearly the resort of culture untainted by
vulgarity. On the second floor of a small three-story dwelling in a
street unknown to modern fashion, years of use as a family gathering
place had toned its modest belongings into harmonious attractiveness.
If the furniture was worn, it better accorded with the russet and
dun hues of the old books covering half the walls; and the drawn
curtains of faded crimson stuff did not rebuke the faint odor of
tobacco that lingered in their folds. Above the books hung numerous
good engravings, photographs, and etchings that lifted thought and
piqued imagination with suggestions of the wide world’s beauty and
romantic history. In the most isolated corner a substantial table,
littered with papers, a letter-press, a stray pipe or two, a big
common-sense inkstand and writing pad, with a rack of books of
reference, betrayed the snug harbor of a male brain-worker; while a
stand of blossoming plants in a south window, a tea-table set with
bits of quaint silver, and a couple of becushioned wicker chairs
indicated a woman’s idea of _dulce domum_.

This room was, in fact, the common property of a busy married pair
and their busy children, who rightly considered their reunions in its
pleasant precincts to be a fair equivalent for other things denied
them by Dame Fortune.

The house and its furniture, with a small sum of ready money,
had been the portion given to Molly Christian on her marriage,
two-and-twenty years before, with Terence Blair. He was a
good-looking, well-bred, clever Irishman, who, coming over to the
New World to make a living out of journalism, had at once anchored
himself happily by falling in love with and winning the prettiest
and best-balanced girl of his acquaintance in New York.

Mr. Christian, Molly’s father, after so contributing to his
daughter’s needs, had wisely put what remained of his fortune into an
annuity that supported the amiable but unpractical gentleman until
his death two years before our story opens. This disposition of his
funds had been indorsed by Mr. Christian’s family and friends with
more satisfaction because of his previous persistency of faith in
certain silver and copper mines that had given him every facility for
cultivating the process known as throwing good money after bad.

Although Molly’s handsome Terence had not, according to her
expectation of him, quite set the world of his craft on fire, he had
made a respectable livelihood; and she and their children adored
him for his sweet, cheery temper and easy-going ways. Late in her
life he had imported to live with them a lively little old Irish
mother--styled by the juniors “Granny”--who proved to be just the
dash of flavor needful to complete their family salad. Petulant,
affectionate, witty, and light-hearted, Granny had bravely helped her
daughter-in-law to bear the increasing burden of domestic life on a
limited income in a community where upon working people there is a
call for every dollar before it is well in hand.

As the children had grown up, and their varied mental gifts cried
aloud for the best education of the times, Molly had, indeed, had
much ado to make both ends meet. Luckily for her, the strain of
keeping up appearances was not among her trials.

When the Blairs had married, possessing between them means enough
to give and take the hospitality of that simpler period, they were
a part of the circle that in those days codified the social laws
of the metropolis. Mistress Molly, a whilom belle of her set, did
not lack for attentions, and Terence was popular. But very soon, it
became apparent to the young couple that they were straining overmuch
to keep abreast with people who affected to put aside the hum-drum
ways of their Revolutionary, or Dutch, or Puritan ancestors; that
the growing elaboration of life among their kind must drive the
Blairs either to accept without returning, or not to accept at all.
So Molly let go the threads of gossamer that bound her to her world,
and little by little the Blairs had drifted into insignificance. To
Terence, with his insular density as to the shades of difference
in American society, it had not seemed a mighty matter to give up
Molly’s friends; but she was a woman, and at first it had cost her a
few natural pangs. Now for nearly twenty years she and Terence had
lived their own life, and on the whole had done very well without the
things forsaken.

How was it, then, that to-night, as the little house-mother sat
at her homely task, her thoughts, roving over the field of her
interests, general and special, had settled with a tinge of
wistfulness upon a very trivial matter? In an evening newspaper she
had chanced to read the account of a ball, given the night before for
the young daughter of one of her friends of early years, when the
_débutante_ had literally walked upon flowers.

“Lilies of the valley strewing the floor of the alcove where Tilly
Beaumoris stood beside her mother to receive! And for my girl,
to-night of all nights, when she plays her violin before Levitsky,
not so much as a posy to wear in her best frock!” This was the arrow
that pierced Mrs. Molly’s armor!

Yes, it was Kathleen, bright, radiant Kathleen--her nineteen-year-old
daughter, the sunshine and perfume of their home--who had begun to
disturb the long-standing family peace.

What Molly had cheerfully accepted for herself, she now, like a true
American parent, began to think might be bettered for Kathleen.

An hour before, she had seen the child--heaven in her face--set forth
with her father for a musicale in the studio of an artist, who had
promised to fetch there to hear her play the great Herr Levitsky
himself, whose verdict made or marred an aspirant in her field. And
Molly had no sort of doubt as to Kathleen’s rare talent for the
violin.

The only cloud upon Kathleen’s horizon had been that mamma must stop
behind.

Molly had pleaded--though Kathleen quite understood it to be a
pious fiction--that she really could not make the effort to go to
Crichton’s musicale; that she was better off at home; that she would
certainly be nervous, and that Kathleen would see it, and fail to
play as well. Kathleen knew--and Molly knew she knew--that the
frugal little lady’s only remaining evening gown was too hopelessly
decrepit to make another appearance in public without the renovation
requiring time and outlay just then impossible to bestow on it. As
for its alternate--the old black satin surviving the days of a fuller
purse--that had “suffered a sea change” into modern conformity with
gores, and gathers, and what not, and was at the moment rippling
sheenfully from Kathleen’s own slender waist, the bodice veiled in
transparent gauze of the same somber hue, through which the girl’s
white throat and splendid shoulders gleamed with a pearly luster.

What Kathleen had done to bridge over the insincerity of her mother’s
excuses, was to put her strong, round arms about Molly’s neck and
half blind her with enthusiastic kisses.

Maurice, coming a moment later into the room--Molly’s oldest son,
Maurice, with his six foot one of young manhood set off by cheap
broadcloth, speckless linen, and the ruddy hues of health and
modesty--had repeated Kathleen’s onslaught; and lastly Terence,
always laggard, wearing his high hat of ceremony, and struggling into
his overcoat as he hurried in, had kissed her good-by, and bade her
be of good cheer, since their girl was sure to do them credit.

Ah, well! What did anything matter so long as she had these?

No, no, she did not envy her old friend, Lottie Earl, now the
important Mrs. Beaumoris of the society newspapers, or covet ever
so little that lady’s grand establishments in town and country, her
yacht, her travels, and her vogue. It had been only a silly passing
fancy of Molly’s about the waste of all those lilies, because
Kathleen had asked for a few to brighten her gala toilet, and could
not be gratified in view of the winter woolens needed for poor, dear
Jock--who was serenely wearing his last year’s rags in a snow-drift
up at college!

Then merry Jock passed in review in his mother’s anxious
thoughts--Jock, whom the family were putting through the university
by dint of constant self-denial and petty economy. And then, Maurice,
whose clever drawings were beginning to be sought for by the editors;
his hopes and ambitions, his loving confidence in her, flooded
her heart with tender meditation. Next, Terence had his turn, and
there was a space for Granny. And before all of these images of her
worship, Molly poured a libation of love that made her as happy
as a queen. Gone now were the barbed thoughts of a little while
before. How “they” would laugh at her next day, when she confessed
her feelings as to Mrs. Beaumoris, for to the Blairs most sentiments
were common property. Terence, his eyes full of quizzical enjoyment,
would call her a little socialist. Maurice, throwing back his head in
a jolly laugh, would declare, provided the Blanks gave him Horner’s
new novel to illustrate, Mrs. Beaumoris was welcome to strew forty
thousand lilies upon her daughter’s pathway. Granny would let fly
some cheerful satire, and Kathleen--well, if to-night Levitsky
approved of Kathleen’s playing, after this the girl would be too well
satisfied with her lot in life to bestow even a transient sigh upon
anything lacking!

As the clock on the mantelshelf chimed eleven Mrs. Blair started in
surprise. Her stockings were all done, and piled beside her in neat
rolls; and still there was time to run over those last proofs of
Terence’s, so that he, poor dear, might get to bed for once in decent
time.

It was not for the intellectual treat that Molly Blair, her rather
overtasked hazel eyes radiating contentment, next set herself, with
the careful facility of one trained to the work, to read over the
pile of galley slips representing part of her husband’s new book on
the Romance Languages, then running through the press. Truth to tell,
in her zeal of sympathy she almost knew the paragraphs by heart.

So deeply immersed in her occupation was Mr. Blair’s proofreader,
however, that by and by, although Molly had meant to listen for the
welcome sound, a latch-key was turned in the hall lock below, and she
did not hear it. A moment later, a whirlwind, apparently, bore into
her presence a young creature with the brightest eyes and ripest lips
in the world.

“Oh! little mother, darling!” cried Kathleen, breathlessly, “how
shall I tell you my good news? It was like a fairy tale; and Maurice
thinks so, too. He’s just as glad as I am, I can see; only we’ve not
had time to talk it over. Well--to begin with--_he_ was there--”

“Who, Maurice?” asked Molly, happily.

“No, you teasing mother--Levitsky--and when Mr. Crichton took me up
to introduce me, the hero just glanced me over with his cold blue
eyes, and looked about as much pleased with new company as the real
lion does at the menagerie. Then, I began to play. And what followed
I don’t know--except that the people were as still as mice, and that
I forgot even Levitsky standing there, so tall and weary, between the
folding doors. And then--and then--everybody clapped, and I played
again; and, when I had finished, papa, who was close behind me, took
my violin away. Next Levitsky came straight through the crowd, and
took me by the hand, and said--oh! what _do_ you suppose he said to
your good-for-nothing child? ‘Mademoiselle, you have all the rest,
if only you persevere till you master the technique.’ His eyes were
no longer like steel; they shone on me with the softest, friendliest
gleam. That terrible golden mane of his could never frighten me
again, I think. He was as gentle as you are, mother dear; and there
we stood talking till he left, and papa said I must come away, too.”

“You will say I was, for once, fit to take care of your treasure,
won’t you, Molly?” supplemented Terence, who had followed the family
swan upstairs. “When you see the state of excitement she is in, you
will agree that if that little head isn’t turned to-night she’ll
indeed be a lucky girl. Levitsky showed pretty plainly that it wasn’t
by any means a thing of every day for him to meet with the likes of
her; and when _he_ roared, of course all the little animals chimed
in. I suppose, there’ll be no living in the house with Kathleen after
this.”

“Oh, yes! I shall be so good, so amiable, everybody can live at peace
with me,” cried Kathleen, throwing off her fur-trimmed wrap and
revealing her beauty to the eyes that never tired of it. “But here we
are, mother, neglecting a most important duty. In the fullness of his
pride, this heedless daddy of mine has gone and invited two or three
men to come in here presently for supper.”

“Terence!” said Mrs. Blair, reproachfully.

“It’s only Malvolio, Molly dear, and little Catullus Clarke--”

“Such a beautiful new poet, Mr. Clarke is, mother, with night-black,
silky hair and chiseled features--don’t you remember papa’s review
of his book Sunday before last--here it is, this dark-green duck of a
booklet, with every modern idea in the make-up--”

“But my dears, however will Mr. Catullus Clarke bring himself to
consort with a Welsh rarebit?” interrupted the housekeeper, with some
severity. “And to save my life, that is all I can think of to offer
him.”

“He’ll tackle it fast enough,” said Terence, comfortably. “But
don’t fash yourself, Molly; there’ll be oysters to stew in the big
chafing-dish. Maurice stopped behind us to fetch them from our old
friend Felsenberg’s, whose place was open and in full blast as we
passed. Come downstairs now, and get things ready in the dining-room,
for it isn’t every day we celebrate our daughter’s first step in the
temple of Fame, I’d have you remember, ma’am.”

“And, mother,” put in Kathleen, as they adjourned below for action,
“you will never guess whom I met at Crichton’s! Mrs. Beaumoris and
her older daughter, who is a fanatic for music.”

“Lottie Beaumoris?” said Molly, remembering with a blush her envious
soliloquy of a little while ago.

“Yes, you know she is by way of being a patroness of talent, and
the daughter is one of the little fishes that swim after Levitsky.
They were amazingly condescending to me, not in the least identifying
your child. Here comes the wonderful part, mother. Mrs. Beaumoris has
engaged me to play at an afternoon party on the 25th, when Levitsky’s
to be the star! I saw in a minute that the master had suggested me,
and felt perfectly overwhelmed with thankfulness. And the price,
mamma--the price I am to be paid is stunning. Perhaps Mrs. Beaumoris
may not think so, for I noticed she hesitated when she offered
it--but she little knew how my spirit bounded at the offer. Let me
whisper, dear; I don’t mean that any one else shall hear.”

And bending her stately head to the level of Molly’s little pink
ear, she breathed into it a sum which, to the simple notions of
the mother, seemed more than generous, although, as Mrs. Beaumoris
afterward boasted, she was “getting this new girl for half price.”

“Is Kathleen telling of her latest captive?” said Maurice, arriving
with his can of oysters, to find their little dining-room aglow with
warmth and comfort.

“Nonsense, Morry,” said his sister.

“Yes, but it’s true, she has got her net over not only the great
Levitsky, but a man who can help her on tremendously, if he chooses
to. And he does choose apparently, since he asked me when he might
call here--and by the same token, I told him we’d be having a bit of
supper later on, and would be glad to have him drop in.”

“Morry!” said both women, in a breath.

“Well, now, mother, isn’t it my business to look after Kathleen’s
musical interests? And didn’t Crichton tell me this fellow was no
end of a swell in musical high society? The first time I noticed him
was in the train of those Beaumoris females, who appealed to him for
everything. But he couldn’t take his eyes off my little sister after
she began to play.”

“I never even saw him,” exclaimed Kathleen. “Or, stop! could that
have been the beautiful Raphael-faced creature who was standing
between the doors during my first piece?”

“I suppose _you_ might call him Raphael-faced,” said Maurice, with a
brother’s fine scorn of his sister’s enthusiasm for any man. “But _I_
looked at him purely in a business light, as an impresario of young
genius. He talked to me some time, and accepted my invitation to drop
in. I don’t know, now that I come to think of it, what there is about
Thorndyke, but it’s something not quite--well, I give it up. Judge
for yourselves when he arrives.”

And now, all was in readiness for the impromptu feast. On the hob
of the grate fire, a kettle, indispensable to the impending brew
of Terence’s famous punch, simmered assurance of speedy boiling.
Terence--trusting to no one the concoction of a Welsh rarebit, for
which he had won renown at Trinity College, Dublin, now years too
many ago to be mentioned--was already at work over a chafing-dish.
Kathleen, her cheeks crimson, her lips of the true pomegranate tint
parted with delight--a large damask napkin pinned over the front of
her made-over black satin--was peeling a lemon for the punch. In this
branch of culinary service she was admitted to be an adept--so thin,
so even, so unbroken the golden spirals she produced!

Maurice, perched on the arm of his sister’s chair, fell into lively
whispering--for, to Kathleen, almost before his mother, the boy was
accustomed to carry his hopes and fears. To him also that evening had
fallen a stroke of good fortune. Had not he heard from Mr. Malvolio,
the art-critic of the _Regulator_, that ---- had spoken to him of
putting the illustrations of Horner’s book into the hands of “that
young Blair?” And was not ---- the member of the great publishing
firm most to be relied upon for the distribution of covetable plums?

Mrs. Blair, glancing back as she went into the pantry to prepare
for her oyster stew, thought the old clock under which her children
sat--whose broad face had looked down for so many years on the
councils of her family--had never seen a fresher, a more winsome
pair, eager to confront the great world on their own account.

The father, affecting not to be conscious of Morry’s confidence to
Kathleen, recalled the days when he had peeped in on them at early
morning in their nursery, to find both youngsters sitting in the
same crib, with heads together and tongues wagging industriously
over their forecasts for a day, then as wide and broad to them as
was the future now. Neither of his children, Terence decided with
satisfaction, had parted with the simple straightforwardness of that
primal period.

Mr. Malvolio, whose ring startled Maurice from his perch, and sent
him to open the front door, considered himself well favored in being
admitted to one of Blair’s little off-hand suppers. As the famous
critic and dictator upon matters of pictorial art came into the room,
his pallid, mask-like face, and snaky, black locks disheveled over a
high forehead, suggested rather a ghost at the feast than a would-be
reveler.

After him presently arrived Mr. Catullus Clarke, whose overcoat and
galoches had but just been deposited in the little hall, when a third
ring made itself audible.

“That’s Thorndyke, probably,” said Maurice, hastening away--the maid
servants of the Blair household having been long abed and slumbering.

“Maurice has asked an important stranger to join us,” said Mrs.
Blair, with a little air of apology to Malvolio.

“Thorndyke--I should think so,” said Malvolio, but interrupted
himself upon the entrance of Kathleen’s “Raphael-faced” young man.

He had been going to say that Thorndyke was much oftener visible in
houses of the Beaumoris variety than in the haunts of upper Bohemia,
but this struck him as hardly a gracious observation, even among the
easy-going Blairs.

The first appearance of the musical virtuoso confirmed, in her
mother’s eyes, Kathleen’s description of him. There was an expression
singularly unworldly and winning about his fair, handsome face.
In his hand he bore a cluster of rare white orchids, fringed with
maiden hair fern--“a real Beaumoris bouquet,” said proud Molly to
herself--which, with an almost reverential air, upon being presented
to that young lady by her brother, he offered to Kathleen.

This act of public tribute from an oracle of such repute in the world
where she aspired to shine filled the girl with tremulous delight.
It also disposed her to think more than kindly of the giver. But
Thorndyke did not follow up his advantage by pressing himself upon
her further notice. He talked in turn with Terence Blair, Mrs. Blair,
and Malvolio; tasted and praised Molly’s oysters, declined Terence’s
punch, and settled down in a corner to await further developments.

At this point of the proceedings still another ring was heard--brisk,
fearless, insistent, the sort of ring Jack might have caused to
resound through the Giant’s castle.

“Who can that be?” asked Mrs. Blair. Terence, to whom she addressed
herself, did not reply in words, but, with a sly smile twinkling
about his eyes and lips, referred her to Kathleen.

Kathleen, engaged in conversation with Mr. Malvolio, whose quaint
drolleries of speech gave her continual pleasure, turned around with
a movement half impatient, half resigned.

“Ask Morry,” she said. But Maurice, quite under the spell of Mr.
Thorndyke, was listening with delight to that gentleman’s discourse
upon some theme evidently kindling to the imagination.

“Morry _would_ invite him, mother,” the girl went on, with a trifle
of petulance in her voice. “It is only just Colin.”




                                 II

“Only just Colin!” Behold a youth, tall, heavily built, powerful, his
head leaning a little forward from the shoulders, his brown, healthy
face adorned with the expression of good will toward mankind that,
after all, is the one unfading charm of the human countenance. It
was because of his trust in things that Colin never felt abashed,
greeting the great and the lowly alike with honest good-fellowship.
Although in the eyes of a critical woman of the world his person
might have been found lacking in certain exterior signs deemed by
her class indispensable, his looks and manner when he came into a
room carried with them irresistible attraction. An ex-hero of the
university, where Maurice had been his devoted chum and follower, the
echo of Colin’s achievements in athletics had not yet died out in the
two years since he had graduated. Take Jock Blair, for example, at
present a junior under the wing of the same alma mater, and seat him
at table in Colin’s company; a babbling and confident young fellow
enough in ordinary society, Jock would be stricken dumb and reverent
in the presence of this composite Napoleon and Wellington.

Now a hard worker in his first year at the law, not even those
outsiders, chill of blood, who affect to contemn the practice of
manly sports among healthy young collegians, could have found ground
for a charge against Colin that he was subordinating brain to muscle.
Under his new teaching, he had done more than well. To the physical
animation acquired in college he had many times given thanks for
helping him to endure this later life, in which a walk uptown after
working hours was the chief outlet for his tremendous energy of body.

When we have said additionally that Colin was of a very short purse,
and had no backing of family in New York--seeing that his relatives
were unimportant residents of a small Western town--that he was
hopelessly in love with Kathleen Blair, and that at college he had
been dubbed Colin chiefly because his real name was John Walter
Mackintosh, the tale is told.

Knowing that his charmer was that night to undergo the ordeal of
proving her quality as a violinist before the supreme Herr Levitsky,
our young man had moved heaven and earth to get an invitation to
Crichton’s musicale; having succeeded in which, he had passed through
a tumult of emotions regarding a proper appearance for the occasion.

Maurice, sharing his confidence, had lent sage advice. Colin, who
perhaps for no other reason would have taken on himself a debt, had
secured upon the installment plan of payment a new suit of evening
clothes, the genial sartor who provided them supplying, out of the
fullness of his sympathy, facings for the coat of a better quality
of silk than was nominated in the bond. At the instigation also
of the more knowing Maurice, the aspirant had next repaired to a
much advertised “Fire Sale” of “Gents’ Furnishings,” where he had
laid in a dozen white linen ties, “imperceptibly damaged,” and six
hemstitched pocket handkerchiefs. This done, there was yet a mighty
obstacle to overcome. For two interminable days Colin had not seen
his way clear to the possession of a pair of patent leather shoes.
Over and again he had surveyed wistfully his rough ordinary footwear,
and reluctantly decided that it would not do. The jest of the
bootmaker to whom he had ventured a remonstrance as to the high price
of his wares, that it “took extra leather to cover some men’s feet,”
was iron entering Colin’s soul.

At this critical juncture, somebody had been called in haste from
the law office claiming the services of Mr. Mackintosh, to draw up
an old woman’s death-bed will. To Colin had been assigned the task,
and also, to his eternal gratitude, the small fee resulting. The
speed made by him uptown that day after office hours, to reach the
bootmaker before his shop should be closed, recalled to our hero
some of his efforts at sprinting between hoarsely cheering crowds of
college sympathizers.

Two minutes after he was invested in all his hardly-won integuments,
Colin had forgotten them. He had long been planning how to present
Kathleen with some flowers to wear at the musicale. Knowing her
favorites, he had purchased a sheaf of those “naiad-like lilies of
the vale, whom youth makes so fair, and passion so pale,” at a cost
that would deprive him of luncheon money for some days; then, with a
strong desire to see her pleasure in them, had walked around to the
Blair’s house carrying the gift in person.

On the doorstep his courage had failed. Kathleen, sternly intent on
checking his too rapid advance, might, and no doubt would, decline
his offering. So rather miserably, the big young man had turned
around again and marched away with his pasteboard box. At the corner,
he bethought him of a recent speech of hers--that “better than
anything but music,” she loved flowers. This renewed his prowess.
Again he stormed the lady’s portal, and again fell away, discouraged,
in apprehension of her frown. The scrutiny of a passing policeman
served to weaken his last remnant of resolution.

The lilies, returning with him to his lodging, were, with continuing
uncertainty, carried on to Crichton’s studio. There Mr. Mackintosh,
proving to be the first arrival, had judged it best to remain
secluded in the cloak-room, until a number of men, passing in, gave
him countenance to enter the scene of entertainment. His vague plan
of contriving to intercept Kathleen on her arrival, and putting the
flowers in Morry’s hands, with the request that she should wear
them, had now vanished into thin air. He wished at last he had never
burdened himself with the confounded things.

What Colin felt while Kathleen had witched her audience with youth
and loveliness and talent may be divined by the reader. Perhaps by
ruffling the leaves of the book of Memory, some chronicle may still
be found there, uneffaced, to suggest the proud tingling in the young
man’s veins! The little lock of darkest hair, that while she wielded
the bow had the habit of breaking cover and falling down upon a fine
jetty eyebrow, the rich flush in her cheek swept by the lashes of
down-dropping eyes, the noble unconsciousness of her face and figure,
thrilled him with a more passionate resolve than ever to win her for
his own.

When she had finished playing, and the crowd thronged about her to
indorse the master’s verdict, Colin had kept aloof. He did not want
to spoil the hour by commonplace; and indeed his heart was too full
for utterance. Maurice, just then running upon him in the throng, had
bidden his friend to supper. Colin, fed with new hope, had returned
again to the dressing-room, intending to take a walk until it should
be time to present himself at the Blairs’. Between two men talking
over the performance of the evening as they lighted their cigars,
he heard Kathleen discussed in terms that he considered daringly
impertinent. Although the phrases used were chiefly those of custom
upon the appearance of a new performer in her field, one of the men
lent to them an emphasis so offensive that Colin had much ado to
restrain himself from flying at the offender and choking him backward
into a pile of hats.

Tempted to leave his now oppressive offering for beauty’s shrine in
Crichton’s fireplace, he took up again his box of flowers and went
out into the night. How far he wandered through the chill, deserted
streets in the effort to make time pass ere he thought it proper to
appear before his goddess, Colin did not realize. When he could bear
no longer not seeing her, he had rung Mr. Blair’s door-bell; but when
he was asked into the supper room, where they were all assembled, the
spurned and imprisoned lilies were tucked away on the lower shelf of
the hat-rack, behind the galoches of Mr. Catullus Clarke.

“And where will you sit, Mr. Mackintosh?” asked Mrs. Blair, holding
out a kind hand of welcome to her new guest, who accordingly dropped
into the chair nearest her own.

Colin could hardly speak. In the stranger guest, ensconced in
intimate conversation with Maurice, he recognized one of the men he
had desired to knock down in the dressing-room at Crichton’s!

“Now, we may notice in Clarke’s poems,” Mr. Malvolio was saying with
wicked relish, “what Emerson once remarked about Oxford. ‘Nothing new
or true, and no matter.’”

“I do not pretend to solve my own problems, my dear fellow,” returned
the poet, languidly, as he lay back at ease in a large arm-chair,
surveying his patent-leather toes; “I only state them to average
intelligence, and then pray for the interposition of the Power that
brought speech out of Balaam’s ass to give understanding to some of
my readers.”

“Indeed, yours is the dearest little book we have had this month,
Mr. Clarke,” exclaimed Kathleen; “and your poster is the wildest and
weirdest in my collection.”

“Then I have not printed in vain, Miss Blair,” answered the bardling,
looking at her with admiring eyes. In reality he was entirely happy.

It was only being overlooked that ever caused Catullus pain.

“Gather your roses, while you may, Clarke,” resumed Malvolio,
cheerfully. “Presently the twentieth century will throw upon you
mysterious folk a searchlight in which even you will stand revealed,
and then your occupation will be gone. You owe Blair a debt of
gratitude, by the way, for slating you so discreetly a couple of
weeks ago. It’s immensely clever how he manages to let his authors
think the failure to appreciate lies in him only, and that the
world at large is ablaze over their productions. Now, in that thing
about you, for instance, the readers of book reviews--I wonder who
they are?--must have thought Blair a schoolboy who had accidentally
tangled an Olympic deity in the tail of his kite. It was only after
they had paid one fifty for the volume, I dare say, that they found
out the truth.”

“Don’t spoil my wife’s supper by talking shop over it,” said Terence
reprovingly. “To come here for the purpose of discussing modern
literature--”

“You flatter Clarke,” interrupted Malvolio.

“Is hardly my idea of entertainment. You might as well invite a
letter-carrier to take a walk for pleasure.”

“Or ask Malvolio to talk about Monet--” said Clarke.

“Who has seen ‘Heart of Topaz’?” asked Terence of his guests.

“I, says the fly, with my little eye,” answered Malvolio. “It is a
pretty peep-show; but she is only Mrs. Tanqueray done into Japanese.
If we are to have that lady at all on our stage, let her come in the
strong, original guise of Pinero’s heroine. Although you, my dear
Miss Blair, must stay away when she appears--”

“Now _I_ protest,” said Mrs. Blair. “But at this rate, we shall never
find a subject of conversation upon which we agree.”

“I beg your pardon,” exclaimed Malvolio, whose glass Terence had just
filled with a steaming golden mixture of innocent appearance.

“There is one, and that one uppermost in all our minds, yet deepest
in our hearts--”

“Hear, hear!” murmured Mr. Clarke.

“I need not,” went on the speaker, arising and holding his glass
in his right hand, while upon his saturnine countenance gleamed an
attempt at angelic amiability, “say many words to emphasize the
pleasure Miss Blair’s triumph has given to-night to her hearers. Up
to the present time, I must confess, I have known the young lady
chiefly in her capacity of sub-critic to her father. On various
occasions like the present, I have profited by her opinions upon the
topics of the hour; and I can truly say: ‘Now, by the salt wave of
the Mediterranean, a sweet touch, a quick venue of wit; snip, snap,
quick, and home; it rejoiceth my intellect: true wit.’ But to-night
she has soared into a region whither I may not follow her, save
with the reverential eyes of an earth-bound loiterer; she has been
accepted among the musical elect, and henceforward I can only offer
my homage from below. Tho’ such as it is--the tribute of enchanted
ignorance--it is hers most heartily; and I ask you all to join with
me in drinking the health of the ‘Woman who has won!’”

“The woman who has won!” repeated Thorndyke, significantly, in
Kathleen’s ear. He had crossed over for the first time to be near
her, and his gaze was radiant.

“Now, why couldn’t I say some of those fine-sounding things?”
poor Colin was grumbling inwardly, as he saw Kathleen break into
well-pleased smiles and bend blushing in the direction of her
extoller. “Old Malvolio has no business to take this on himself,
considering he’s no more musical sense than a turnip. That’s my
trouble, after all. I can’t keep up with the phrase-makers in their
eternal patter. And that man she is talking to her now! How am I to
tell Morry or her father the way I heard him speak of her a while
ago? How did he get here, anyway? Anybody can get in with Kathleen
better than I, it seems. If she’d give me only one of the sweet looks
she wastes upon all these literary freaks”--such, we grieve to say,
was the classification made by Mr. Mackintosh of the rank and file of
the Blairs’ associates--“I’d--”

His meditations were cut short by Kathleen herself, who, supple as a
snake, had glided unnoticed to his elbow.

“You are the only one among us who has a long face,” she said to him,
softly, while across and around the table now resounded a fusillade
of merry sayings and laughter. “Is it because you disapprove of my
playing in public?”

“Disapprove of you? Oh! good gracious, no!” he answered,
incoherently. “I am proud to the core of my heart. But that doesn’t
mean I like to think of you on a platform. It makes me wretched,
and that’s the honest truth. You ought to be shut in from vulgar
gazers in a little world of your own; and the question of dirty money
oughtn’t to enter into your art.”

“Perhaps not,” said the more practical Kathleen; “but, after all,
‘dirty money’ puts the hallmark upon accomplishment. And as to the
vulgar gazers and hearers, they light the torch of genius. When I
was last at the opera, in those good seats in the parquet Mr. Toner
sent papa, I watched the artists closely, and saw that every one of
them was working with all his or her might to do the best possible;
and whenever there came a burst of real applause--not that little
rainfall of claps one hears from the gallery alone, but the kind that
comes, quick as near-by thunder after lightning, from the body of the
house--the ease and spontaneity of the performance was increased.
The very muscles of their bodies seem to feel the tension, and their
faces to grow more luminous.”

“That may be true,” said poor Colin, who was again out of his depth;
“but somehow, I don’t fancy you among them. I had rather see you in
the boxes with those nice girls who sit up by their mammas, and have
fellows dropping in to call on them.”

“Please don’t!” cried she, with unaffected earnestness. “I can’t
imagine any life that would suit me less than theirs. Sometimes, on
a winter’s night when daddy and I hurry by them in the lobby, on
our way to catch a cable car to get home in, I think maybe I might
enjoy wearing one of their long fluffy white wraps like plumage--that
look like seraphs’ overcoats--and having a footman in a fur cape
to call my carriage. But really, I don’t want riches or fashion;
I want opportunity only, and travel, and all the music I can get,
and flowers like those orchids, and a new evening frock--and such
nice things as Mr. Thorndyke has been saying to me about my touch,
and--and to see my parents take a little rest from work. But that’s
what I talk about to Morry, not to you. When his ship and mine come
in, you’ll see what we shall do with our cargoes.”

Thus it was always. While she filled every chink and cranny of
Colin’s dreams of the future, he had no part in hers. Swallowing his
pain, he tried to find something to say to her about his pleasure in
her success. He dared not venture in this place to criticise their
new guest.

“Oh! thank you,” she said, studying his appearance, apparently for
the first time. “And to return the compliment, I ought to tell you
that you look--really very nice.”

“Morry put me up to it,” he said, glowing with pleasure. “We had a
council over my old evening rig that had been through three years of
the University before it came to New York; and he decided I could no
longer pass muster.”

“Yes, I like you in these clothes,” she said, critically. “But I
think--though I’m not certain--your collar should not turn down so
low--and I’m quite sure your hair is too long.”

“Really?” he exclaimed, smiling ecstatically. It was so precious to
have her speak to him in this proprietary way, even though he knew,
too well, alas! that she was inspired by less than the interest of
a sister. He would have been thankful, indeed, to have a part of
Maurice’s share in her regard.

“Yes, really,” she said. “But for those minor points, I believe you
are smart enough to appear in the gilded halls of Mrs. Beaumoris,
where, by the way, I am to make my début on the twenty-fifth as a
paid performer.”

“You! oh, no!” he exclaimed, impetuously, his brown face reddening.

“And why not, pray?” she answered, proudly resentful of his protest.
“What has become of your theories about the dignity of honest toil?”

“It’s not that--only--it is a chariot of fire that is coming to
snatch you away from me,” he said, simply, and in spite of herself
Kathleen was touched.

Colin, seeing his advantage, tried to follow it up. But it is the
misfortune of those in his peculiar state, that the very force of
their desire to be agreeable to the beloved object defeats their
chances of success. He could find nothing appropriate to say, and
felt as he looked--large, lumbering, disconsolate.

No wonder Kathleen flitted away from him to laugh and chaff lightly
with the others. Even little Catullus, with his poses and bushy hair
and solemn fripperies, made the time pass for her more trippingly
than did Morry’s friend.

Terence, however, in his element as a host, presiding with rare grace
and tact over their frugal feast, understood better than any one the
art of amalgamating divers elements in a party. To their number was
presently added Duval of the _Clarion_, who had just been writing his
critique of the last new play at the ---- Theater, that would help to
form opinion on the subject next morning at many breakfast tables.
Talk took itself wings, and soon was stirring with mirthful impulse.

Then Terence, who possessed a tenor voice that might have coined
ducats for his family where his pen won them a bare livelihood,
sang some of his Irish melodies--not Tom Moore’s only, but Lover’s,
and the like. Gazing for an inspiration at his pretty Kathleen, he
trolled out the delicious by-gone serenade that carried his wife back
many a long year, and brought to her eyes the tears of tenderest
sentiment.

     “Oh! Molly Bawn, why leave me pining,
        All lonely waiting here for you,
      When the stars above are brightly shining
        Because they’ve nothing else to do?

     “The flowers late were open keeping,
        To try a rival blush with you;
      But their Mother Nature set them sleeping,
        With their rosy faces washed in dew.

     “The wicked watch dog loud is growling;
        He takes me for a thief, you see;
      He knows I’d steal you, Molly darling,
        And then transported I should be.

     “Oh! Molly Bawn, why leave me pining,
        All lonely waiting here for you,
      When the stars above are brightly shining,
        Because they’ve nothing else to do?”

Of all Mr. Blair’s listeners the only one who wore an expression
not in sympathy with the pretty tuneful old song was Catullus; and
even he, sitting in a Yellow Book attitude, exhibited the grace of
magnanimous forbearance. So rapt were the others in the charm of
listening, they paid no heed to “a new step on the floor” of the
adjoining room. It was a pattering little step, much as if a mouse
was scuttling through the house; and at once the door opened, and
in came a tiny, bright-eyed old lady, fully dressed and wide-awake,
although her cap was a tiny bit askew.

“Granny!” cried her family in a voice.

“You didn’t think, Terry, my boy, that I could stop upstairs in
bed, and hear you sing the old songs down below,” answered Granny,
unabashed.

“You’re like the ‘good ould Oirish gintlemen, all of the oulden
toime,’ Granny,” said Maurice, bringing forward her especial chair.
“Don’t you remember how he was supposed to be defunct, and his
friends were ‘waking’ him, and the candles were lighted around his
bed? The corpse stood all the rest, but when the whisky corks began
to pop, he just sprang up and shouted, ‘Whoop! Murther! d’ye think
I’ll be lying here dead, when such good stuff as that is flying
around my head?’”

“For shame, saucy boy,” said Granny, giving her pet a little tap
upon his hand that still clasped hers. “No supper, thanks; I couldn’t
survive it, really; and not a wee drop of the punch, even. Just go on
with your nonsense, good people, and let me listen. But first come
here, Kathleen, child, and tell me how you stood your trial.”

“Let me settle your dear old cap, then,” replied Kathleen, proceeding
to put her offer into execution. “It’s all right about me, Granny;
I’m a gold mine, as you’ll say when you know what Mrs. Beaumoris
is going to pay me for playing at her party. And as to what Herr
Levitsky said, that will keep for to-morrow. Now, papa, we want
‘Widow Malone,’ as only you can sing it.”

“And afterward,” added Thorndyke, with effusion uncommon in that
measured personage, “Miss Blair will surely not refuse to give us a
taste of her quality on the violin.”

Therefore, in due course, Miss Blair, standing under the old clock,
lifted her fiddle-bow, and lo! the air about them thrilled with
exquisite sound. What she chose first to reproduce was the quaint
German Christmas hymn, “Joseph, lieber, Joseph, mein,” written by
Calvisius five hundred years before. Then without warning she broke
into Granny’s favorite Irish jig, playing it with such resistless
vim and merriment that every foot in the room began involuntarily to
keep time, and every face wreathed itself into a smile. As quickly
again the measure changed, and now Kathleen was back in Crichton’s
studio, and her hour of triumph was lived again.

“You are a real witch,” said Colin, finding himself near her after
this. “You have got all these people crazy about you. While you
played, I was wondering if you’ll ever be satisfied with any one man
for an audience.”

He turned, annoyed. There, behind him, stood Mr. Thorndyke, silent,
inscrutable.

“Indeed, and I will!” Kathleen said, merrily.

“And what must he be or do to deserve it?”

“Be?” exclaimed the girl. “Like the donkey, all ears. And do? Give me
a Stradivarius!”

A little later, when the company broke up and the guests went their
several ways, Mackintosh, espying his forgotten flowers, had no
longer the impulse to offer them to Kathleen. The events of the
evening and the attentions of Thorndyke had made her recede further
than ever from his reach.

“Will you ask your mother to have these lilies?” he said, awkwardly
thrusting the box upon Maurice in the hall, and hurrying out of the
house.

When Colin reached the spot he by courtesy called home he let himself
in with a latch-key at a mean-looking door, and climbed three
flights of stairs to his den. This was not exactly the traditional
hall-bedroom of the struggling clerk, but a variant, in the shape
of a middle room, lighted and aired by a small skylight in the roof
only. In other respects it was as cheerless as a ragged carpet, lame
furniture, and mismatched crockery could make it; but Colin thought
little of personal comfort, and the gloom of his meditation as he
threw himself upon a creaking chair beside his iron bed was not due
to the young man’s meager surroundings. For almost the first time in
his life, he felt a sense of impotency in meeting the future in fair
fight; and his ordinary trustful spirit rebelled against thus leaving
his affairs to “lie on the knees of the gods!”

“Give her a Stradivarius!” he said aloud, bitterly. And, somehow,
with the phrase mingled a haunting thought of the man with the angel
face, who had in Colin’s hearing spoken words concerning Kathleen
that were not in the least angelic.




                                 III

The words, “Give her a Stradivarius,” had hardly been spoken aloud by
young Mackintosh when he was surprised by a knocking upon the board
partition dividing his attic room from the one adjoining it. After a
pause, during which he listened, the knocking was renewed.

Colin, remembering that his neighbor was an infirm and melancholy
looking old fellow, whom he sometimes met wearily climbing the stairs
with a loaf of bread and a brown paper bag of comestibles hugged to
his breast, fancied himself called upon for help. He had but just
removed his coat and, putting it on, hastily ran out into the entry,
and tapped at the door of the next room.

A feeble voice called to him to come in. The interior resembled
Colin’s own in lack of comfort. A gas-jet was burning, which
revealed, lying dressed upon the bed close to the partition wall,
the man he had often seen--gentle-faced, though hollow-eyed, and
evidently racked by some chronic malady.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Colin’s neighbor, “but I must
have been dreaming. I awoke suddenly, believing I heard some one
distinctly say, ‘Give her a Stradivarius!’ And so I knocked on the
wall, the way I used to call my nephew when he lived with me.”

“I did say those words,” answered Colin, blushing. “I was thinking
aloud.”

“I beg pardon again, sir,” said the man, sitting up on the bed with
an eager expression. “This is a coincidence I think you will agree
is remarkable. I had fallen asleep thinking of a Stradivarius. I
was dreaming of it. In fact, I rarely think of anything else, in
these days. For to have owned something that in my present poverty
would have been a little fortune, and to have had it stolen from me
by my--Good God! I can’t speak of him. It’s too base for words. Mr.
Mackintosh, I’m ashamed of myself. You see, I know your name. Mine is
Rupert Thorndyke.”

“That seems somehow familiar,” said Colin, racking his brain to
recall where he had heard the two names combined.

“No doubt, like most of us working folks, you read about the doings
of the fine people who constitute high society in this town. Well,
among them you have often seen that name. The other Rupert Thorndyke
is as young and pushing and successful as I am old and timid and
collapsed. He is away up among the tiptops, Mr. Mackintosh--dines
and wines with the millionaires, and gives parties at his own rooms.
I eat bread and ham out of a paper bag upon yonder table, and am
thankful when I can afford a bottle of beer or Rhine wine to wash
it down. But he’s of my own blood. My brother’s son, and my only
living relative--named for me, to my sorrow. When his father was in
business with me in musical instruments at--Broadway I was the senior
partner, and we prospered for many years. Then my brother got into
speculations, and I had to make good the money he lost. Rupert, who
was a clever dog, had been sent by me to the University. Well, my
brother died of a broken heart; and Rupert came to live with me for
a while. Got me to send him to Europe once or twice, which I could
ill afford to do. He was such a handsome fellow, had such a winning
way with him, one could refuse him nothing. Then some of his former
classmates at college voted him into a fashionable club. I paid the
entrance fee and dues, keeping my homely self out of sight of his
grand companions. Mr. Mackintosh, you will wonder at my want of
self-control. But you’re a gentleman, and have got a heart, too--I
can see it. I’ve often wanted to make your acquaintance.”

“Go on, if it relieves you, Mr. Thorndyke,” said the young man,
dropping upon a chair beside the bed.

“Then you will honor me by drinking a glass of claret,” said the
other, arising with some difficulty from his recumbent position. “I
am rather stiff with rheumatic pains, as you see. I lay down here
before dinner to rest a while, and must have slept till now. Pray
share my good luck. My employer--for I am serving where I once ruled,
Mr. Mackintosh--gave me a bottle of Pontet Canet in honor of his
birthday.”

“I have just supped, thank you,” said Colin, unwilling to hurt him by
refusal. “But I’ll have a glass of wine with you with pleasure.”

The old man, shuffling about, produced glasses and a bottle, together
with a Bologna sausage and some biscuits. As he sat munching and
sipping opposite Colin at table, his dull eyes brightened with the
feast.

“Good stuff, this,” he went on. “I’ll warrant the great Mr. Rupert
Thorndyke has no more relish for his supper with the rich and
exclusive Mrs. Beaumoris after the theater to-night! My employer
gives me his morning paper when he has done with it, Mr. Mackintosh,
and I bring it home, and under this gas-jet read the fashionable
intelligence. I always know what’s going on in society. Look at this
old ledger; I have cut out and pasted in it all that is said about
my namesake--where he goes, and what he does. Rupert is a musical
virtuoso--hand in glove with all the artists, who sing and play at
his rooms for nothing. The fine ladies attend, too, and admire the
beautiful upholstery and decorations that I paid for when I was
flush. Rupert has a collection of musical instruments, ‘small but
unrivaled,’ so the papers say. Mr. Mackintosh, I’d give a year of
my life to look over that collection and make sure of my--my--lost
Stradivarius.”

“Do you mean to say--” began Colin, indignantly.

“When I failed in business I had saved that violin to be sold only in
case of dire emergency. Rupert, better than another, knew its value.
He always coveted it, but though I had squeezed myself dry to supply
him, I would not give this up. For a long time, I should tell you, I
kept on terms with my nephew. I never obtruded myself, but I saw him
from time to time, taking a fool’s pride in the grand gentleman I had
created.”

His head drooped forward. He seemed lost in reverie. Colin, who had
begun this adventure with indifference, felt his suspicions awaken
and grow keen with the man’s story.

“A pride I am afraid your nephew did not appreciate, Mr. Thorndyke,”
said the young man finally, to arouse him.

“Eh! Oh! of course not,” exclaimed the instrument-maker, coming out
of his trance. “I was thinking of what a handsome fellow Rupert is.
His eyes are so blue, his smile so open, his manner so winning, no
one under God’s heaven would take him to be a--oh! _is_ he that? Has
my brother’s boy fallen so low? He might have turned on the hand that
fed and reared him; he might have shaken me off because I am poor and
commonplace and rusty; but I can’t believe--yet what must I believe?
Listen, Mr. Mackintosh, to the proofs. After my failure, as I said, I
had put away my precious Stradivarius in its case, in a trunk in the
one room I kept--better than this, but still, one room only. I had
to go over to Philadelphia, once, to see a man from whom I hoped to
collect a few hundreds owing me. I came back rejoiced because I had
got nearly the whole sum. The maid at the boarding-house said nobody
had called or asked for me in my absence. I went straight to the
trunk, and opened it to put away my cash. I found the violin-case
empty--the treasure gone! Just as I was about to give the alarm to
the house, I saw on the floor under the edge of the trunk, this--”

He took from his pocket an unset scarabeus, jade-green in hue, that
might have been worn in a man’s ring or pin.

“It was his. I had often seen him wear it in a scarf. He had showed
it to me on his first return from Cairo. How could I alarm the
boarding-house, or set the police upon the track of Rupert? Rupert
a th-- Oh, no! I won’t say the word! Not till it’s proved will I
call him so. I found traces of wax on my latch-key of the house
door, that I had been in the habit of throwing, with my other keys,
on the dressing-table every night. Rupert had recently sent a man
there with a note enclosing me a present of twenty-five dollars.
While I wrote the answer the man must have taken the impression of
my keys. Mr. Mackintosh, I had mistrusted that gift of money, though
I kept it to pay my way to Philadelphia, and my board. Although I
had given Rupert all, it was the first he had given me. I returned
it to him the day after my discovery of the loss, with two lines,
“Take your money, and give me back my Stradivarius.” He answered in
such a brutal tone it makes me sick to think of it, disclaiming all
knowledge of my Stradivarius. I burnt his letter, but these words are
sunk into my heart, ‘From this time forth I refuse to see or to speak
to one who has done me this foul wrong.’ That was two years ago, Mr.
Mackintosh--two years ago. I have not prospered since; I am living
on a pittance of pay because the times are hard, and my employer
has nothing like the business _we_ used to have. Are you cold, sir?
If so, I can light the gas-stove. I keep it for _very_ cold weather
generally. My nephew, as I said, has gone to a play to-night, to see
Sara Bernhardt, with a party invited by Mrs. Beaumoris. His friends
are very exclusive, and he is a great favorite--or perhaps it was
last night he went to the theater; I am losing my memory, you see.”

“How does he continue to cut such a dash without fortune?” asked
Colin, anxious to satisfy himself without exciting the poor old
fellow’s suspicion.

“Nobody knows exactly. He was always lucky in speculation, and very
daring. I gave him money to start with--all I could spare--and he
went on and on. Yes, he must have a good purse to live as he does. I
don’t envy Rupert; but oh! if I had the courage to go to-night and
try to get into his rooms--to say I am his uncle and could wait till
he came in--and then search there, and find out--”

“Perhaps he has sold the Stradivarius,” said Colin.

“Oh, don’t say that, Mr. Mackintosh. I hope against hope that he’s
keeping it as the gem of his collection--that I may one day look at
it again. I’d know it in a hundred. There is a tiny vein of color
in the wood, that looks like a hand with an outstretched finger, on
the right side, near the bridge of the instrument. Enough for any
one--for you, for instance, who know nothing of violins, to identify
it by. But I’d know my beauty, as far as I could see her!”

As he filled a cracked glass with grape-juice for the third time and
tossed it off, Colin saw that unusual treat had affected his poor old
brain.

“_In vino veritas_, Mr. Mackintosh,” he resumed, smiling wistfully.
“I’ve told you my story as it hasn’t passed my lips since I got my
death wound. You go into society, don’t you? I judge from this,”
touching the sleeve of Colin’s evening coat.

“To a very limited degree,” said Mackintosh, feeling much abashed.

“Because, I thought if you do, it might come in your way to help me.”
But in the act of making this suggestion the instrument-maker forgot
what he had begun to say. He wandered, grew drowsy; and Colin, soon
aiding him to bed, left him there sound asleep.

The pathos of this incident dwelt with Mackintosh for days. He longed
to tell Kathleen, whose interest, he knew, would be keenly aroused
in view of the object of the old artisan’s mania. But in one way or
another Colin failed to see any of the Blair family. He continued to
meet Thorndyke on the stairs, and to exchange greetings with him.
There was, however, no repetition of the first attempt at confidence.
Thorndyke, as if aware that he had betrayed too much, looked shy of
further converse with his stalwart and friendly young neighbor. Colin
had almost begun to think the whole story a dream.

At last, when the need to look upon Kathleen’s bright face became
overpowering, Colin turned, late one afternoon, through a softly
falling veil of snow in the direction of the Blairs’ house. As he
shook off the feathered flakes upon their door mat, he pleased
himself by believing he would be asked to walk at once into the cosy
intimacy of the family room, where at that hour Kathleen and her
mother were wont to meet for tea.

Kathleen would be wearing her gown of brown serge, with the slashes
of crimson, that so well became her glowing brunette beauty--looking
like the genius of home! Mrs. Blair would put away her galley slips
and blue pencil, and come over to the tea-table beside the coal
fire. Both of these gentle creatures would turn upon him the gaze of
friendliest interest.

Colin’s gateway of hope, in the shape of Mr. Blair’s front door,
moved inward. Behind it stood an elderly woman, endeavoring to
dry her parboiled hands upon a checked apron before receiving the
visitor’s card between thumb and finger.

“Yes, sir, gone out; both Miss Kathleen and the madam,” she said,
with bursting pride. “It was in a cab that I fetched meself from
the stable. Some kind of a grand music party, where our young lady
was goin’ to play, sir; and they’d not be out of it till after six.
No. 6--Fifth Avenue, sir, they told the coachman. Perhaps you’d be
knowin’ the house, Mr. Mackintosh?”

Colin, blessing his stupidity in forgetting that this was Kathleen’s
important twenty-fifth, retraced his steps. Down fell his air-castle
of a quiet hour with her. Vanished his fond imagining of some token
from her of sweet half-hidden regret that they had been so long
apart. With cruel clearness of sight he beheld the true ambition
of her life. By the time he should have taken a slow step higher
in his profession, Kathleen would have soared into an empyrean,
whither he could not follow. Henceforward a fret and fever for public
approbation would possess her young being; she would be forever
unfitted to plod through life at a poor man’s side--and, spite of his
great love, Colin had no mind to be the appendage of a successful
public favorite.

Doggedly, obstinately, the young fellow tramped far uptown, welcoming
the sting of wind and snow in his face. Near the confines of the Park
he found himself, his bare hands in the pockets of his overcoat, his
face reddened with cold, his jaw set, his eyes heavy, brought to a
halt before the house indicated to him by the Blair’s voluble maid.

There could be no doubt that a festivity was in progress behind the
brick and marble front here presented to the avenue. Over a carpet
running out to the curbstone, guests were passing to and from their
carriages, beneath the shelter of an awning lighted by pendent
lanterns. Spite of the snow, the aperture on either side the tunnel
of striped canvas was blocked, not only by footmen comfortably humped
in mountains of black fur, but by the lookers-on, who seem to be
never tired of this common phase of a city’s pleasuring.

Colin, on the outer edge of one flank of the vagrant army, stood for
a while, governed by some impulse he could not have explained. Among
his comrades were one or two women and children, miserably clad,
content to stand gaping at the show. Colin, to all appearance one of
their class, excited no surprise, except that a tawdry girl wearing
an old feather boa coquettishly around her throat asked him with some
vexation not to go crowding other folks out of the places they had
got before he came.

A lady effecting her exit from the house, was met by a young man
who had just jumped out of a hansom, whom she greeted in accents
maternally affectionate.

“So late, Mr. Thorndyke?” she said, in staccato reproach. “It’s
almost over now, and Levitsky will play no more. But Anatolia is just
about to sing her last. Nothing would tempt me to leave, but that
Nita, poor girl, is at home with a bad throat.”

“It’s a success, then?” said (ignoring Nita) the young man, at whom
Colin Mackintosh gazed eagerly, seeking to be convinced of his
identity with the thief of the Stradivarius.

He was handsome, golden-haired, open-faced, smiling. What a brave
nephew for the old neighbor on the attic landing! But Colin did not
know his Christian name, and that--

“Ha, Rupert,” said a man, coming out. “Why are you behind time?
There’s a new girl playing on the violin that I know will please your
fastidious fancy.”

The lady’s trim little brougham now stopping the way, the two young
men aided her footman to introduce her goodly bulk within its open
door. At this achievement, the group around the awning uttered an
“A--a--h!” of satisfaction, and the carriage drove away.

“Any new violinist that is worth the asking you may count upon at
my party on Wednesday night,” said Thorndyke, carelessly. “And as I
know the young person in question fairly well, I have little doubt of
getting her to do what I wish. If you are _épris_, Clarkson, drop in
and I’ll give you a chance at her.”

“All right, old chap, good-by.”

As the two men separated, Colin clenched his fists.

       *       *       *       *       *

None too soon for Kathleen’s eager ambition had arrived the day of
her appearance before an audience that would make or mar her hope of
establishing herself as a performer, at semi-private concerts.

Punctual to the hour appointed by her patroness, the rusty cab, that
in the eyes of the Blairs’ maid servant had conferred style upon
their dwelling by pulling up in front of it, had deposited at the
Beaumoris portal the young violinist and her mother.

In a wide hall, beneath orange trees ranged against tapestries of
great age and fabulous value, they were received by two automata
in claret and silver livery, whose mission on gala days it was to
forever point out to guests the way toward distant cloak-rooms. The
fiddle-case, no less than the hesitating manner of their entry,
betraying our ladies to these potentates, they were hurried with
scant courtesy upstairs, and bidden to wait in the morning-room until
the pleasure of the mistress concerning them should be ascertained.

Kathleen saw the flush on her mother’s cheek at the moment when Molly
caught the gleam in her child’s eye.

“Don’t mind, darling.”

“It’s a mistake, of course, dearest,” were spoken simultaneously.
Thereupon the two grasped hands for a little reassuring squeeze, and
looked around them comforted.

Neither had seen anything comparable to this boudoir, its fantastic
furnishings gathered from every quarter of the globe, its floor
strewn with skins and rugs soft as velvet, its litter of costly
curios, and cushions heaped upon gilded couches. Kathleen, getting
up to pace the room with a free, impatient step, paused oftenest
before the clusters of long-stemmed roses that hung their royal
heads over the rim of tall crystal vases, and the gems of pictures
upon the satin background of the walls. Then standing amazed by the
writing-table, with its fittings and toys of beaten silver, she
whispered, merrily:

“What a contrast to our war-worn old writing things at home. Upon
this blotter one could only write invitations to a Vere de Vere.”

She was interrupted by a Frenchwoman, whose entry, with the glib
assurance that Madame would see them shortly, conveyed more of
comradeship than of respect.

There was a long wait. Kathleen, wearied of her splendid prison,
employed her time by falling upon a novel, of whose contents she
possessed herself after the rapid fashion of the reader accustomed to
absorb new books.

Mrs. Blair took up no volume. In silence she sat thinking of the days
when she and Lottie Earl, now the owner of this stately domicile,
had been schoolmates and bosom friends. To shut her eyes to the
Beaumoris luxury was to conjure up Lottie’s early home in Clinton
Place, whither Molly had often repaired by invitation to spend
Saturdays. The sad-colored walls hung with dreary landscapes in oil,
upon which no eye was ever seen to cast a fleeting glance; the carpet
and curtains flowered garishly, the basement dining-room, the little
girls exchanging vows of friendship!

A more tender memory was that of the day when Lottie’s mother had
died. Was it not Molly for whom they had sent to soothe and console
the terrified child? Molly’s faithful breast upon which Lottie that
night had sobbed herself to sleep?

The door again opened. This time it was Mrs. Beaumoris in person,
attired for the reception of her guests--Mrs. Beaumoris, perplexed,
annoyed, an open letter in her hand. It was an easier matter for this
lady to recognize fresh, bright-eyed Molly Christian, who, under the
impulse of fond retrospect, now sprang up to greet her, than for
Molly to identify her old playmate in this faded woman, with the pale
hair elaborately crimped, the cold, restless blue eyes--the prim,
unsmiling mouth!

Mrs. Blair’s affectionate words died upon her lips. She faltered,
blushed, and drew back with a pang at the plain indication that her
surprise was as unwelcome as it was ill-timed.

“You--you--are Miss Blair’s mother?” said Mrs. Beaumoris, in tones
she could not make other than thin and chill. “Why was I not told of
this before?”

“Because--because,” began Molly, and emotion overpowered her, cutting
short her speech.

“My mother thought it could naturally make no difference whose child
you had hired to play before your guests,” said Kathleen, sweeping
grandly into the breach. “But we are quite ready to go away now, if
the arrangement does not please you.”

“Of course not,” exclaimed their hostess, recovering herself. “You
will excuse me if I am a little upset, when I tell you that not
fifteen minutes ago I received this letter from Madame Claudia’s
manager, saying the tiresome creature has a cold and can’t sing this
afternoon. All I could do was to send off my maid in a cab, offering
Claudia’s terms to Anatolia, who’ll come, I’m pretty sure, if for
nothing but a chance to supplant Claudia. Anatolia can’t stand being
last year’s favorite, and really she sang adorably in Faust last
week, when Claudia was ill, don’t you think so--or did you not chance
to hear her? If she comes, she’ll be here for the end of the first
half of the programme. Your daughter will play just before her--and
will no doubt have encores. Levitsky says everything that is nice of
you, Miss--er--you have no professional name, I believe?”

“My name is Kathleen Blair,” said the girl, carrying her head
high. Into her heart, for the first time in her life, entered the
wandering demon of revenge. She longed to be in a position to return
impertinence!

Kathleen’s second number upon the programme of Mrs. Beaumoris’s
concert left no doubt of her success. Levitsky himself had conducted
her before the audience. Madame Anatolia had coquettishly (in view of
the audience) presented the girl with her corsage bouquet of violets.
As Kathleen retired again into the little room serving as a harbor
for the performers, the musical Miss Beaumoris (who kept outsiders
from intruding there), looking very sour, asked Miss Blair to allow
Mr. Rupert Thorndyke to compliment her upon her achievement.

Kathleen possessed just enough of the spice of Mother Eve to see that
this courtesy on the part of Miss Beaumoris had been wrung from her
by the newcomer. Madame Anatolia, whom Mr. Thorndyke saluted with
an air of cordial intimacy, leaned over and whispered in the young
girl’s ear:

“Take care how you enjoy the dangerous delight of his company in
_this_ house. They consider him their own particular property.”

Molly Blair, standing guard over her beautiful and successful child,
could not understand the reckless toss of Kathleen’s head, the
defiance of her curled lip.

“That lends zest!” Kathleen answered to Anatolia, who smiled. The
prima donna, knowing the world as she did, had no objection to enjoy
a small comedy behind the scenes. Nor was she disappointed. Rupert
Thorndyke, with an air of entire unconsciousness, refrained from
again turning toward the musical Miss Beaumoris. With his handsome
head bent over the newly risen star, he exerted all his powers of
fascination. He was no longer the cool, indifferent person who had
dropped in at the Blair’s little supper. Kathleen, excited, inclined
to accept him at his face value as a favored frequenter of the
Beaumoris’s house, and finding herself not a little under the spell
of his charm of manner and sympathy of taste, enjoyed retaining him.
Until the time Mrs. and Miss Blair left the Beaumoris’s house he
was in close attendance at their side. And when they parted he had
obtained Mrs. Blair’s rather dazzled permission to call upon them
the next day.

Thorndyke, meaning to put these ladies in their carriage, was
recalled on the portal by the imperious Miss Beaumoris, who had, she
said, to consult him about a protégé of hers she desired to launch at
his musicale on Wednesday.

“Until to-morrow, then,” said Rupert Thorndyke, regretfully turning
back.

“Mother, he is absolutely beautiful!” said Kathleen, with a girl’s
ecstasy, as they went down to stand on the sodden carpet waiting for
their cab to come up. “I think he must be some prince in disguise, or
something! Such a noble air, such aristocratic features! And better
than all, mummy dearest, he has confided to me that he gives music
parties at his rooms, and we’re asked to the next one, on Wednesday.”

“I suppose it is all right,” said Molly. “Or, of course, the
Beaumorises would not be having him.”

“They can’t always get him, as you saw,” said Kathleen, laughing. “I
hope it was not wicked to be as glad as I was when I saw their two
cross faces while he talked so long to me. But never mind the man,
mother. There is a joy still greater in store for me. He says if I’ll
play for him on Wednesday, I may handle his Stradivarius!”

The cab that had brought Miss Blair to the scene of her triumphs was
not forthcoming. The hoarse calls for it up and down the line were
unavailing.

“It’s but a step to the street-car, mother, if we run for it,” cried
Kathleen, gayly, peering into the half-darkness at the open side of
the awning.

“I will take you home, if you don’t mind,” said a voice out of the
crowd, and Colin edged his way toward them!

Colin was cold and out of humor. But he had lingered on, and this was
his reward.

“How delightful to see you!” exclaimed his lady-love, heartily, and
was indorsed by her mamma. “So strange you should be passing just at
this minute! It will be ever so much nicer having you, of course. Now
let us run, and jam ourselves into the next car.”

Mrs. Blair being seated with the violin-case on her lap, the two
young people stood side by side in the crowded aisle of a Madison
Avenue car going downtown. Colin heard from his eager comrade the
full account of her exhilarating afternoon. It made him sad, even
while his generous heart rejoiced in her rejoicing, to see that she
was already embarked with sails filled and pennons flying upon the
broad sea that would separate them. And he wondered she said nothing
about the person whose name excited his keenest curiosity.

Perhaps Kathleen felt guilty of having hailed rather too gladly Mr.
Rupert Thorndyke’s distinguished homage. But even Madame Anatolia had
told her that his verdict was of importance in the musical world.

“We all bow to him,” had said the good-natured donna; “and he is
badly spoiled, of course. Don’t let your feelings get involved, like
that poor, ugly Miss Beaumoris. Thorndyke is a mystery--and, I’m
afraid, _volage_!”

Kathleen had laughed! She had no fear for herself.

       *       *       *       *       *

“And you are to keep on with this kind of thing?” now said Colin,
discontentedly.

“Of course!” exclaimed she. “Two ladies have already booked my humble
services; although one of them _did_ say, in excuse for herself, that
anything Mrs. Beaumoris started is sure to run on for a while.”

“I shall never hear you perform,” he went on. “So I’ll try to forget
it. If I had my way, I’d carry you off to a cloud-castle and keep you
shut in from all these insolent people.”

“But you can’t, Master Colin, so be satisfied,” said she, coloring a
little at the fervor he could not exclude from his tones. “And as to
hearing me, you shall have an opportunity without delay. Let us see
if you are so eager to accept it.”

“I will go wherever you bid me,” he replied, more and more under the
charm of her close vicinity.

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

“How one’s eloquence is jolted out of one by this!” she said, as they
swung around the curve into the tunnel. “Well, here is your chance.
Next week we are invited to a very exclusive musicale. Levitsky’s
to be there, and Anatolia--and I’m to play (think of it, Colin!) on
a Stradivarius! Wait, don’t interrupt me. We were asked to bring my
father, or brother, as our escort, and neither papa, nor Morry can
get off, I know. Papa has a club meeting, and Morry’s slaving, day
and night, to finish ----’s illustrations. So, if you’ll take us to
the party, we’ll be only too much obliged.”

“I will, of course. But tell me--it is a matter of the deepest
interest--who is to furnish your Stradivarius?”

“It belongs to the gentleman who is to give the party, and Madame
Anatolia says his rooms and collection of musical instruments are
‘things to be seen.’ He is one of the favorites of fortune, and is
coming to call on us in form to-morrow--and his name is--Rupert
Thorndyke!”

“I thought so,” said Colin, turning pale with excitement, and perhaps
a little jealousy.

“What, you, too, know about the wonderful Mr. Thorndyke? Oh! but,
of course, I remember, you met him at supper at our house when he
brought me those white orchids, and you gave mamma some lilies.
Don’t you think his face is like one of the angels in the photograph
over papa’s chair in the library? Now, don’t laugh--it is, exactly.
Mr. Thorndyke isn’t in the least my idea of a man of fashion. He is
almost artless--and his eyes are _so_ blue. Colin, what in the world
is the matter with you?”

“I do know something of your Mr. Rupert Thorndyke,” said the young
man, his face darkening. “But I shan’t tell you yet. It is borne in
upon me that a better occasion will come. And if you really accept
my escort, I shall accompany you with pleasure to this gentleman’s
party. A poor outsider, more or less, cannot spoil his harmonious
entertainment.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Kathleen, wondering at all this, reached home, the ladies bidding
Colin good-by upon their doorstep. That evening, when Malvolio
dropped in to see Terence Blair, the news of Kathleen’s advance up
the ladder of fame was communicated to him.

“Sure and Kathleen’s the boldest little girl,” commented Granny.
“It’s my belief she’d have no fear to be called on to play before the
President himself.”

“I know little about Rupert Thorndyke,” said Terence; “but there’s
no doubt he will have only the best talent in his sling. But you,
Malvolio, who know everything--”

“Excepting the reason for Catullus Clarke,” interpolated the art
critic.

“--should be able to define for us the place of our new patron in the
arts.”

Malvolio shrugged, tossing his snaky locks to one side of his high,
white forehead.

“Rupert Thorndyke’s secret will never be fathomed until they dissect
him,” he said; “and then in the core of his heart will be found the
one word ‘Self.’ He is a monumental egoist, in the guise of a seraph.
He is brilliant and treacherous, unstable as water, holding no
convictions long enough to make anything he says or does of lasting
value. I am certain that he is half-educated, half-baked in all
respects. I believe most of his ‘experiences’ of life to be clever
adaptations from things other people have done, or told, or printed.
But he is vastly good company, and I’d be deuced glad if he were
coming to dine with me to-morrow. As to his status, he is apparently
well off--has one foot in Bohemia, the other in society--and comes
from nobody knows where. Lastly, we are informed that he might marry
the oldest Miss Beaumoris, and does not aspire to do so!”

The blushes dyed Kathleen’s cheeks at the confirmation of Colin’s
warning.

“Then you think, Mr. Malvolio, our girl had better not be seen at his
party?” said Mrs. Blair, anxiously.

“My _dear_ madame! On the contrary. I should like amazingly to be
seen there myself. It is sure to be a rare treat to eye and ear.
The women will be of the highest world only. The men judiciously
combined. But I have always had an idea that Thorndyke will some day
come a cropper. I feel like that fellow that followed the menagerie
around in order to be there the day the lion-tamer should get eaten
by the lions. The day the accident occurred was the one he was kept
away. I have a conviction I shan’t see Thorndyke’s discomfiture--but
I could wish that, to round out my theory of him, the fates might
accord to me this privilege.”

Kathleen, who would not have admitted to her mother even, the thrill
of excitement she had been in since receiving the first fruits of
Thorndyke’s homage, went to bed that night, feeling chastened in her
pride. With her last waking thoughts of the irresistible Thorndyke,
blended the image of loyal Colin, whom, after consultation with
their maid-servant, she now knew to have been waiting outside Mrs.
Beaumoris’s awning for her in the falling snow.

Molly Blair, too, following a long talk with her husband, that freed
her fond heart of its weight of pride in and anxiety for Kathleen,
went to sleep happy. With so many loving souls around her, Terence
had said, Kathleen would be well guarded, and such a fine nature as
their girl’s was not to be spoiled in an hour or a year by flattery.
And Molly’s last thoughts that night were of pity for poor Lottie
Beaumoris. The afternoon of sitting out the concert, listening to the
chatter of Lottie’s friends, had thrown broad light upon a career the
newspapers had made to seem so dazzling. Lottie, weighed down with
petty cares, a target for petty malice, was in her fine home not so
well off as Molly in her little threadbare house, full to the eaves
with ardent workers, living for each other and for the best that was
in them. Kathleen’s début had taught her mother this!

       *       *       *       *       *

Carefully assuming his recently acquired evening clothes, and taking
heed, we may be sure, of the hints dropped by Kathleen on the
occasion of his former appearance in this conventional attire, Mr.
Colin Mackintosh stood prepared for what to him was to be a great
occasion.

Before setting out to the Blairs’ house he went to his neighbor’s
door and knocked. He knew that he should find Mr. Thorndyke sitting
doubled up over his newspaper, under the gas-jet; but to-night the
old man’s face looked more pinched and wan than usual, his breath
came shorter, the newspaper lay unread across his knees.

“I’m afraid you’re ill,” said Colin, kindly.

Hardly a day had passed since their first talk that he had not
extended to the friendless old fellow some word or look of sympathy;
and Thorndyke, although Colin did not know it, had conceived for him
in turn an almost paternal tenderness. In the utter loneliness of
his life the instrument-maker yearned for something to link him with
the world of everyday affection. Colin’s active step upon the stairs
had come to be music to his ear--Colin’s greeting a solace eagerly
awaited.

“Not ill, my dear boy; only a little down to-night. I begin to feel
the climb up these long flights. And so you are going off into some
gay scene, where people will be chatting and laughing? I don’t envy
you, for it’s getting on to ten o’clock, and after that hour I can
hardly keep awake in these days. There’s a long paragraph--nearly
half a column--in the paper about an affair that is to occur in my
nephew’s rooms to-night. I think I could tell you everybody that’s
expected there. There’s a young violinist--a Miss Blair--who has
made a hit recently--and some famous professionals. Mr. Mackintosh,
I ought to tell you, too, that since I let out that secret that’s
corroding me I have felt much ashamed. There was only this excuse for
it--a very little drink affects me, and I had already had a glass of
beer on my way home. The claret finished me. It did not confuse my
brain, but just loosed my tongue. What I told you was true, but it
should have gone with me to my grave.”

“You need never fear my making use of it unfairly,” said Colin,
pityingly. The meek submission of the man was sadder than his
outburst of wrath had been.

“I know I can trust you. I wish it were in my power to do something
for you, Mr. Mackintosh. If I die soon, you will have given me the
last gleams of pleasure in a disappointed life. I wish I could help
you in return.”

“You can to-night,” said Colin; “if you do not mind lending me, for
a purpose of my own, the fine scarabeus you showed me. It shall be
returned to you without fail to-morrow.”

“Willingly, dear boy, willingly,” said the old man, fumbling in his
waistcoat pocket and bringing out the sacred beetle wrapped in a bit
of tissue paper. “When I die I should like you to have this to keep,
and any other little thing I have. There are a few good books, and--”

“My dear friend, you depress me,” said Colin, taking the scarabeus,
and shaking hands with the lender.

“Do I? It never occurs to me to think of my death as _sad_,” said
Thorndyke, simply.

“Suppose,” said Colin, abruptly, “you had to wish for the thing that
would please you most--what would it be?”

“A sight of my Stradivarius!” exclaimed the instrument-maker, his
dull eye kindling with fond hope. “Mr. Mackintosh, something in
your face--it can’t be you have heard--no, I’m a madman to dream of
it--but it almost looked for a minute as if you have good news.”

“I may be wrong, and I may be disappointed,” said Mackintosh, with
an air of quiet conviction, nevertheless. “But I have an idea I’m on
the track of your lost treasure. If I succeed in tracing it, I shall
be more than glad. If I fail, you will be no worse off than before.
Good night. Sleep well, and awake in better heart for the morrow.
But before I go,--upon second thoughts,--I wish you would give me a
written order for your Stradivarius.”

After Colin left his room old Thorndyke abandoned himself to almost
childish glee. Next, for a while, he paced the floor, then, sinking
fatigued into his chair, meditated long.

It was twelve o’clock when he started up again, and taking the pencil
with which he had scrawled and signed the order Colin desired, wrote
some lines upon a paper torn from a memorandum book. Putting these
upon the table, old Rupert Thorndyke went peacefully to bed.

At the same moment Rupert Thorndyke the younger was presiding over
the entertainment at his rooms, for which fine ladies had been
for some time struggling to get cards of invitation. The host’s
vogue, grace, and tact had been at no time more conspicuous. The
affair, pronounced the best of its kind, was about to pass into the
chronicle of jaded pleasure-seekers as an eminent success. The turn
of Kathleen, who had played once upon her own violin, had now come
around again upon the programme. Mr. Malvolio--who, after all, _was_
there--had just sauntered up to whisper in her ear:

“They say he is going to let you try his Stradivarius. The rest of
the women are green with jealousy at this mark of favor. No one has
touched it heretofore.”

“If Mrs. Blair will allow her daughter to come with me into the
little room where I keep my treasure--” Thorndyke was saying to
her mother, who, with Colin behind her, stood guard over her young
violinist.

“Certainly. Go with her, Colin, please, and see that her head is not
quite turned by these honors,” said the unconscious Molly.

Colin needed no further impetus. In spite of a cloud passing over the
face of their handsome host, the stalwart fellow placed himself at
Kathleen’s side and accompanied them.

A room of small dimensions, but with solid doors, bolted as well as
locked. On the walls, in glass cases with a background of crimson
velvet, a small but exquisite assemblage of what might be called the
bric-à-brac of musical instruments. Violins were there, but Colin’s
eye sought in vain for one bearing the mark of a tiny hand with an
outstretched finger.

“What a delightful nook!” cried Kathleen. “How I wish there were time
to look over its wonders leisurely.”

“Some day--any day that you so ordain,” said the virtuoso. “I and
mine are at your command always.”

Colin, seeing Thorndyke’s face transfigured with delight in the
girl’s youth and beauty, raged inwardly. He recalled the value he had
heard him put upon all women, Kathleen in particular. Strong as a
lion to defend her, it was hard for the young fellow to now contain
himself until he had wrought out his plan to avenge the sins of this
Rupert Thorndyke against the one he had left in a shabby tenement.

He had no idea how he meant to bring about the conviction of this
man’s wrong-doing, or to seek for the restoration of the other’s
stolen property. But whatever he did, Colin meant that it should be
short, sharp, and decisive!

At last chance favored him. His heart beat hard as he followed
Kathleen and Thorndyke from object to object of the priceless array.

“I fear we should not keep all those people waiting for us longer--”
said the host finally.

“And I am palpitating with impatience to see your chief treasure,”
cried Kathleen.

“I have made a little shrine for it,” went on Thorndyke, stooping
to unlock a cupboard in the wall. A second inner door of polished
mahogany yielded to a key carried on the owner’s person. Within an
air-tight receptacle lay a violin-case, covered with rare leather
fantastically wrought in gold.

“Take and open it,” said Thorndyke, conveying this to a nest in
Kathleen’s soft bare arms. “You are the first woman that I have
entrusted with my beauty.”

“My beauty!” Old Thorndyke’s very phrase! Colin, the blood rushing
to his brain with excitement and indignation, looked on eagerly as
the instrument was taken from its case. There, in the exact spot
indicated by its rightful owner, was a tiny shadow in the wood
resembling a hand with an outstretched finger!

“The desire of my life is accomplished,” said Kathleen, lifting the
violin to her shoulder and letting the bow glide over the strings.

The sound that answered was like the wail of a reproach.

“It has been waiting all this time for you!” said Thorndyke, with
tender emphasis, regardless of their hearer. He, like Kathleen,
seemed to be under a sort of spell.

“Since when, may I ask?” interrupted Colin, quietly.

Thorndyke turned and looked at him in cold distaste.

“Since the creation of the instrument, no doubt. Certainly since it
came to me by inheritance.”

“By inheritance?” said the younger man, with deliberate doubt in his
intonation. “I think, Mr. Thorndyke, that your uncle, who bears the
same name as yourself, would give a different version of the way you
acquired this costly possession.”

Thorndyke started violently.

“Do you mean to insult me?” he said in almost a whisper, guilt
written in his face.

Kathleen, spell-bound by Colin’s stern looks, held the violin
breathlessly.

“I mean, Mr. Thorndyke, to make absolutely no fuss in this very
unpleasant matter. But I mean also to make it perfectly plain to
you that I know all about this Stradivarius with the mark of a hand
pointing. I am informed when and how it was taken out of your uncle
Thorndyke’s trunk in his boarding-house. And if you will give it up
to him quietly, I shall not say another word to any one concerning
it.”

“An ingenious method to possess yourself of a valuable piece of
property,” sneered Thorndyke, now livid with fear and rage.

“I have this to offer in exchange,” said Colin, controlling himself
perfectly, as he took out the scarabeus and held it, together with
the old man’s written order for the violin, for the inspection of the
thief.

“My dear Colin,” exclaimed Kathleen, greatly distressed and mortified
at the scene. “You must take me back to my mother. I insist--”

“Just as soon as Mr. Thorndyke gives a definite answer to my
proposition,” said Colin, fearlessly.

Thorndyke breathed hard. His eyes flashed with a vengeful luster.
He tried to speak, and could not. Then, looking furtively about
the room, and seeming to grow smaller in the action, he took the
Stradivarius from Kathleen, put it in an old and shabby case, and
replacing the empty ornamental cover in the secret chamber, shut and
locked this receptacle with elaboration. With a supreme effort, he
recovered his usual manner.

“You will give this to my uncle, with my compliments,” he said
lightly, putting the precious violin in Colin’s hands and reclaiming
the scarabeus. “And you might say from me, that although I know the
old boy is as mad as a March hare, I don’t like to thwart his dear
old fancy. I was about indeed, to inform him, through my lawyer,
that a sum of money coming out of an old investment of his and my
father’s, has been divided, and his share placed to his credit in the
---- bank. A thousand a year only, but enough to keep him in comfort
in the lunatic asylum, where I feel sure he will bring up.”

Kathleen, although he had avoided and ignored her in the matter,
had not waited for this ending. With crimson cheeks and in great
agitation, she had slipped out to rejoin her mother. A few moments
later heard their host, standing before his guests, offer a graceful
explanation that the condition of his Stradivarius would prevent Miss
Blair from to-night awakening its hidden melodies.

Colin, clasping the recovered treasure like the anchor of hope, was
in the lobby awaiting the ladies when they presently hurried out. On
the drive home he told them in simple but eloquent language the full
history of his old neighbor and the stolen violin.

When he had finished, Molly was crying quietly. Kathleen’s eyes
flashed upon him such approval as he had never seen in them before.

“I could _love_ you for what you’ve done for that poor old man,
Colin,” she cried, with Irish impulse, and stopped, blushing. “But I
don’t understand why Thorndyke made such a poor fight.”

“It was ‘coward conscience,’” said Colin. “For if I read him right,
he would cut off his right hand to avoid exposure or fiasco before
such people as were there to-night.”

       *       *       *       *       *

“I could love you,” rang joyously in Colin’s ears as he ran up his
own steps, carrying the violin. When he reached Thorndyke’s room,
late as it was, he could not resist trying to get speech with his
friend. His light tap bringing no answer, he opened the door and went
in. The light over the transom showed him the old man lying in his
bed. Leaving the Stradivarius upon the table, Colin stole away.

The next day the people of the house found the old instrument-maker
sitting in his chair, a happy smile upon his face, the violin clasped
in his arms. He had been dead some hours, and on his table lay a
penciled will, bequeathing all that he died possessed of, “without
reserve,” to his “beloved young friend, John Walter Mackintosh.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Thus, in due time, and to the enormous surprise of everybody
concerned, Kathleen came into possession, not only of her coveted
Stradivarius, but of a husband, with an income small but growing and
sufficient to enable him to withdraw his wife from public appearance
as a paid performer. Upon the authority of Mr. Rupert Thorndyke, who
lives and flourishes like the green bay-tree, this is said to be a
serious loss to the world of music, but Kathleen does not mind.

Malvolio still thinks the fall of Rupert Thorndyke is to come!




                         WANTED: A CHAPERON




                         WANTED: A CHAPERON


Gwendolyn West sat alone in profound meditation upon her future. She
was the childless young widow of a naval officer, whom she had lost
after six months of married life and two years of separation during
his absence on official duty in foreign waters.

For three years she had mourned her lieutenant dutifully. No crêpe
had ever exceeded Gwendolyn’s in depth and plenitude. At the end
of that time her free-spoken friend, Kate Payne--who had politely
encouraged her illusion that the marriage was not a mistake--had
told her she was tired of seeing her look like the German nursery
picture of Slovenly Peter after he was fished out of the forbidden
inkstand. Gwendolyn had laughed--and the deed was done. She had
now emerged into alleviated grays and hopeful lilacs. Mrs. Payne,
nodding approval, said she had never seen such a creature for making
her clothes look stylish; and Gwendolyn, in return, owned that the
materials cost nothing and were made up by a little woman “by the
day.”

“All the same, you look solvent, prosperous, up-to-date. What can
woman ask more?” said Kate.

“Ask? My dear Kate, you have no idea how hard put to it I am to
make ends meet. I am so poor it is a scandal. If my Aunt Althea had
not invested her money in this flat, when the house was going up,
and left it to me in her will, I should be living in one room of a
boarding-house, with a folding-bed. As it is, I ought to let the flat
and eke out my ridiculous little income with the proceeds. If I were
abroad I might live on it almost in comfort.”

“Nobody understands living abroad better than you do.”

“Of course, since from nineteen to twenty-four I knocked about there
with Aunt Althea. But my difficulty, absurd though it may seem for a
woman of almost thirty, is that I look hardly old enough to live as a
solitary female in the places I know best on the other side. In New
York I am panoplied with respectability.”

[Illustration: “MY DEAR KATE, YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW HARD PUT TO IT I
AM TO MAKE ENDS MEET. I AM SO POOR IT IS A SCANDAL.”]

“And boredom,” supplemented the frank Mrs. Payne. “It is no fun to
live here on the outside of things, where one has been used to
the inside. The truth is, you ought to have had a girl--not a boy,
who would have been a handful, and most probably a pickle--but
a nice little golden-haired angel, with short skirts and long,
black-stockinged legs, whom you would have made a vision of
picturesqueness in dress.”

“Let us talk of what I have,” said Mrs. West, with a sigh.

“It has just occurred to me that you would make a capital chaperon
for some breezy young woman of large means, scant culture, and
consuming ambition to see the world. You have position, manners,
morals beyond question, and would be a perfect teacher of how to dot
one’s i’s in good society.”

“What servitude!” exclaimed her friend, shuddering. “I detest breezy
people who are uncertain of themselves. And there is nothing so
delusive as temper. She might make my life a burden. How mortifying,
too, to have to conduct her along the primrose paths of society in my
own town! I should live over a volcano, never knowing when she would
break forth.”

“Take her traveling,” went on Madame.

“That is better,” said Gwendolyn. “But suppose she fell ill, or
flirted, or defied me, away off there. She would be sure to do all
three.”

“I should do nothing without being well paid for it. With a full
purse you can accomplish wonders.”

“It would be such a relief to spend six months or a year free from
looking over that hateful butcher’s book. Although I know that I and
my two maids eat nothing, our bills are awful, and I can’t pretend
to read butchers’ handwriting, can you? ‘3 cucks, 0.90’; that’s what
I labored over for a whole morning, after I had ordered a miserable
little cucumber to be cut up with my fish.”

“I am afraid the queen of your kitchen is a wiser potentate than you
credit her with being. But, my dear, I have an inspiration. Yesterday
I got a circular from a new ‘Bureau of Information Concerning Women’s
Needs.’ It is intended to bring together refined and cultivated
employers and employés, and to make a specialty of companions,
chaperons, and governesses. Suppose I inquire--I know the woman at
the head; she will take pains to oblige me--and see if she has any
applications from young persons who have left school and desire to be
‘finished’ in the broadest sense--”

“Kate, Kate, you frighten me. You are such a steam engine in
accomplishing what you set out to do I should be afraid to go out
to walk this afternoon lest I should come in to find my treasure
installed here in permanence.”

“You need not take her unless everything suits. I really believe such
a girl would rouse you up, give you a new motive in life, and end by
being a blessing in disguise--”

“Very much disguised,” remarked Gwendolyn, ruefully.

“It is now late February. You could sail in March by the Southern
route to Genoa, and spend the spring in Italy.”

Gwendolyn flushed and sat bolt upright. Her soul was pierced by the
chant of nightingales in the Cascine woods; of the singers upon the
star gondola by moonlight on the Grand Canal; of the Amalfi boatmen
resting upon their oars! How well she would know where to go, and how
to enjoy the best of everything. She had been starving for beauty for
four years!

“Let me--let me have time to think,” she said finally, with a sort of
gasp.

“You poor victim, you have a most pathetic air,” answered Mrs. Payne,
getting up to go, and kissing her. “Of course, you must think over
it. Let me know to-night; and to-morrow morning, bright and early, I
will order the brougham and set forth upon my quest.”

A paid conductor and chaperon! Out of the mists of recollection
loomed up before Gwendolyn a time, when sitting with her aunt and
her husband in the dining-room of a great hotel in Amsterdam, she
had seen the entry of a hot, red-faced lady, preceding a string of
girls of assorted sizes, and marshaling them at table. Their party
was completed by one lean, henpecked little boy, presumably the
conductor’s son, obtaining free of expense educational glimpses into
the vistas of old-world life.

From that day on Gwendolyn had continued to meet them during their
stay--fortunately brief--in the great Dutch town. One of the girls
had taken a fancy to Mrs. West, and whenever they came together in
galleries and the like annexed herself to Gwendolyn, asking flat
questions upon art, and detailing her grievances against the head
of their party. Mrs. Batt was selfish; she had not fulfilled her
promises to them; she hurried them through things they wanted to see;
and lingered in places where the fare was good and cheap, in order to
feed up her little boy.

And Mrs. Batt, in turn, running upon Gwendolyn in a corridor upstairs
at their hotel, told her it was a dog’s life she was leading, pulled
around by these capricious girls, who didn’t know what they wanted,
and were forever having headaches and tiffs with each other, and
taking offense about nothing, or else entering into conversations
with strange men and thinking it clever. But for the advantage to her
dear, fatherless child Mrs. Batt could wish herself back again in
peace at New Corinth, Kansas, whence they had all set forth in May.

Recalling all this, Gwendolyn drew a long breath of dismay. Then the
maid came in with a sheaf of household bills and the announcement
that she and the cook had determined to leave when the month should
be up. An organ-grinder in the street outside began to play:

     “O! bella Napoli!
      O! dolce Napoli!”

The sunshine that streamed through the panes of her south windows
was full of suggestions of purple seas, overarched by an azure dome,
beneath which roses bloomed along the shore, and jasmine and orange
flowers distilled their richest perfume. Oh! to be in the South--far
from the sound of trolley cars and all the tokens of a city’s
overcrowded life that, day or night, can never be hushed!

If she had something of her very own--some hearthside idol to go
and come in her little home, she would be more than content to stay
there.

Then Gwendolyn subjected herself to a secret crucial test. She opened
a case of photographs--a receptacle made of old brocade, broidered
with silver thread, that she had picked up in the Palais Royal in
1893--and extracted one of its portraits. This was an up-to-date
affair, executed by a New York photographer of note. It represented a
man of five-and-thirty, good looking, amiable, and weak.

She looked at it long and studiously. A line dashed off at her
writing-table, a call for a messenger, a few hours’ delay, and he
would be with her. The very next day she might announce to all
interested her engagement to marry Mr. Ernest Blythe. As Mrs. Blythe,
provided she could maintain a sufficient interest in yachting and its
devotees, no injunction would be laid upon her habits or inclination.
Blythe was rich, easy-going to a ridiculous degree, as much in love
with her as his capacity would admit, and was hers to take or leave.

But--Gwendolyn glanced up at an enlarged photograph of the late
Lieutenant West, hanging in an ebony frame above that very
writing-table, as if to control its output of chirographical
amenities.

Her survey was not reassuring. “Oh! never, never again!” she murmured
audibly. It is only once in a long while that women really speak to
themselves aloud, and that is when they want a witness to some vow of
a peculiarly binding character.

She took Mr. Blythe with hastening finger tips and drove him in at
the very bottom of the pack. It would be a long time before she could
take him out again.

Then something possessed her to go into a dark closet and hunt
around upon its seldom-visited shelves to find a very old album
of photographs, dating back before her travels in Europe with her
nomadic Aunt Althea had weaned her from thoughts of home.

She was eighteen then, and was making a visit to the wife of a
professor in a university town, where most of these treasures of
pictorial art had been accumulated. What faded old things they were,
chiefly of undergraduates wearing queer collars and scarfs, with
coats that did not fit and hair that was much too long! She had some
difficulty in finding the particular cabinet photograph she sought,
but it appeared at last, looking straight at her with the fearless
gaze of handsome eyes that had once held over hers unwonted power.

“Ten--more, nearly eleven--years ago,” she mused. “He wore his hair
like the sweep of a mahogany banister, poor dear; but _that was_ a
man.”

John Rufus Atwell was his rather uninteresting name. He was a young
widower of twenty-six when he came back to take a post-graduate
course at ---- from his home in a Western town, where he had left
his child with its mother’s people. None of his surroundings or
antecedents had appealed in the least to the æsthetic and superfine
side of pretty Miss Gwendolyn. But he had fallen in love with her,
just like half a dozen more of the youngsters. She had tried to treat
him just like them--and had failed. He had given her a first lesson
in virile resistance to the exactions of coquettish femininity.

They had parted, though she had always remembered him with
something of tender regret. But still the thing would have been
impossible--quite impossible! What had become of him since she had
not the vaguest idea.

That evening a little note went to Mrs. Payne authorizing her to find
out for her friend some one who wanted an unexceptionable chaperon.

Mrs. Payne had good reason to think that industrious intervention in
a friend’s affairs is sometimes approved by the Fates. The principal
of the new “Bureau of Information Concerning Women’s Needs” expanded
with satisfaction on hearing of her errand.

It so happened that one of the earliest applications that had come
to them was from a family in a Western State who desired to send
their daughter abroad under competent care. She had looked into their
references--although that was scarcely needful when it was understood
that the father was the distinguished statesman, Honorable John
Mordaunt, Senator from ----, whose name was in every newspaper one
took up.

Mrs. Payne, reserving her decision as to this proof of infallible
respectability, was pleased to be interested in the matter. She next
read Mr. Mordaunt’s letter to the principal, and put it down even
better pleased.

“That is nicely expressed,” she said, after scrutinizing every point.
“For a wonder, it is not typed. He seems to be very much in earnest.
And his ideas about--her--remuneration are certainly most liberal.
Says nothing about the mother--a cipher, probably. Girl too young to
be kept in Washington. I hope,” she continued with sudden animation,
“she is sound and strong, and has had everything.”

“Had everything, Mrs. Payne?”

“Measles and whooping-cough--and her first love affair.”

“I believe you will find my clients unexceptionable,” said the
principal, who was not fond of jesting upon serious subjects.

“But they really must send her photograph,” Mrs. Payne exclaimed as
she rose, eager to convey the result of her interview to Gwendolyn.
“And I think you may safely write to Mr. Mordaunt that if everything
goes well he may count upon Mrs. Spencer West.”

“Mrs. Spencer West!” cried the principal, who, it will be recalled,
was a reader of current prints. “Why, she is one of the most
fashionable ladies in New York.”

“Was. But her being so long in mourning has shut her in, and it is
desired by her friends to rouse her from--ahem--her grief,” went on
Mrs. Payne nimbly. “We think she should have an object. You see, now,
Mrs. Smith, how careful we should be to make no mistakes.”

“It is our aim to intermediate between only the most refined and
cultivated principals,” replied Mrs. Smith, with a high-toned sniff.

“And it is understood that the matter is _strictly_ confidential.”

“That, Madame, is the very foundation-stone of our enterprise.”

“Good morning, then. Perhaps, not to lose time, you might write at
once to Mr. Mordaunt.”

Whatever the principal of the B. I. W. N. wrote, it brought a quick
response. Mr. Mordaunt was much gratified by her efforts in his
behalf, begged to inclose a photograph of his daughter, and would be
in New York on Sunday for the purpose of settling preliminaries with
Mrs. Spencer West.

“He is terribly business-like,” said Gwendolyn, discontentedly. “But,
dear me! the girl _is_ pretty.”

“‘Pretty’ is tame,” said Mrs. Payne, taking the picture from her
friend. “She is beautiful, in a rather common way. Ugh! That frock
cut half high, the hair done in a horn behind and stuck through with
a dreadful ornamental pin! You should go to Paris, my dear, and put
her in Pacquin’s hands. But how very mature she looks for seventeen.
She is like one of our girls in her third season.”

“You can see ‘local belle’ written all over her. And those chains and
rings and pins!” said fastidious Gwendolyn. “Oh! I could never do it
in New York. And now to brace myself for that dreaded meeting with
the fond papa!”

It was not written on the cards that the meeting in question should
take place. Gwendolyn, through nervousness and a heavy cold combined,
was in bed with a neuralgic headache when he came. She could hear
from where she lay the clear, resonant tones, the masterful tread of
the Senator, which seemed to fill up the spaces of her toy abode.
She actually turned with her face to the wall, and stopped her ears
with her fingers to avoid hearing more of him. Mrs. Payne scolded her
afterward for her nonsense.

“I feel better satisfied, now I have seen him,” said Kate. “There
is something in him--I can’t express it--that inspires confidence.
He tells me the girl is motherless, and has been much indulged by
her grandparents and relatives. He has been so busy with his affairs
that he has seen comparatively little of her. She is affectionate
and truthful, easy to lead, and hard to drive. She has never known
anything but East Ephesus in her native State. She will come to you
direct, and you ought to sail as early as you can.”

Gwendolyn sat up in bed. Her headache was nearly gone. A desperate
resolve to do the thing thoroughly, if at all, had come into her
brain.




                               PART II

A few days later Mrs. West stood in the crowd on the platform at
Jersey City awaiting a train from the West, and holding in her hand
a handkerchief of azure silk, of which the duplicate was to be waved
by her arriving charge. Her heart beat with an excitement it had not
known for long.

She had not many moments of uncertainty. Even without the blue banner
that bore down upon her in the hands of the prettiest creature in the
throng, she would have recognized the original of the picture.

Miss Cecily Mordaunt, beaming with complacency, was attended by a
man--gaunt, middle-aged, uncouth, with every sign of adoration of his
companion written upon his countenance.

“You--you have got your maid?” asked Gwendolyn, peering about in
search of that natural protector.

“Maid? Never had such a thing in my life,” laughed Cecily. “And what
would ha’ been the use, when Mr. Lenvale would insist upon escorting
me every step of the way. We stopped in Chicago two hours, and took
a hack and drove round to see the sights. I never was so surprised to
see any one as Mr. Lenvale. He stole a march on the others, and sat
in the smoking car, and came in to join me when East Ephesus was well
out of sight. It almost seemed as if I had to have him, to carry all
that truck.”

“That truck” was an assortment of faded flowers, bonbons, boxes, and
baskets of fruit--with railway reading enough to stock a stall.

“They kept bringing it until the train moved off. Papa made me
promise none of them should come along, but I couldn’t help Mr.
Lenvale, could I, now?”

“I have a carriage waiting on the other side of the ferry. We shall
ask Mr. Lenvale to put your belongings into that, and then we shall
not trouble him further,” said Gwendolyn, in her soft, articulate
voice. Poor Lenvale, although she smiled kindly, saw that his doom
was sealed.

“He’s a fright, isn’t he?” said heartless Cecily as they drove away
uptown. “I’m really tired to death of him; but it wouldn’t do exactly
to let him know. When I saw you holding that blue handkerchief my
heart was in my mouth with surprise. You look about as old as I am,
or a very little older. ‘Thank goodness she’s young and pretty, and
how well her clothes fit!’ I said to Mr. Lenvale. When papa told me
about you I cried for twenty-four hours without stopping, and all the
girls came round to sympathize. I supposed you were a prim old party,
with a whalebone back. Look here, now. Would you mind my kissing you?”

A week later they sailed for Genoa. Gwendolyn had engaged to
attend them a courier-maid, certified against sea-sickness, and as
possessing phenomenal accomplishments in the science of hotel bills
and tips.

Senator Mordaunt, just then held in the vise of an important
committee of inquiry over which he presided, had agreed to run
over on a night train, breakfast with his daughter, see her off on
the steamer, then hurry back to Washington. But at breakfast time
arrived, instead of the Senator, a telegram, at sight of which Cecily
first stamped her foot, then cried.

“I knew it! I have always had telegrams when I wanted my father
most,” she said between her sobs. “He can’t get off, so sends me his
blessing, and his compliments to you. Who wants to be blessed by
telegraph?”

She was such a big, healthy, buoyant, fun-making being it was
impossible to think of her as one who could suffer seriously or long,
but Mrs. West saw that she loved her father, and that during a day
or two of the voyage she lamented for him in silence.

It was rough off the coast, the skies dull, the company depressed.
Gwendolyn lay most of this time in her berth, committing Cecily to
the care of the courier-maid, and feeling too reckless of outer
things even to read the letter from Washington marked “private and
confidential” that had come aboard by special delivery as the ship
was about to leave the dock. She had seen that it was from Mordaunt,
and was full of injunctions about his daughter. It would keep.

On the afternoon of the third day out, the skies had cleared,
sunshine fell warm and bright across the decks, there was a faint,
sweet, far-away promise of spring in the light and steady breeze.
The cabin passengers, to a man, woman, and child, felt its reviving
influence. Creeping up on deck, Gwendolyn nestled into her chair,
looked lazily across the rail, and bethought her of her letter.

After she had finished it she sat wondering. For the first time she
realized the magnitude of her task. This was the cry of a strong
man’s heart for the right guidance and protection of his only child.
Too late had come to him consciousness of the fact that Cecily had
been left to environments that had done her mischief. She had been
on the verge of running away to marry a Mr. Parker Moffat, a crack
baseball player, a young man encouraged by her silly, sentimental
aunt.

The one worth talking about among her admirers--who made her the
acknowledged sovereign of hearts in East Ephesus--had been flouted
by her so successfully that it was hardly likely Angus McCrea would
ever present himself to Mrs. West’s notice. Should he do so, he was
the sole representative of her ‘home guard’ whom Mordaunt would be
willing for Cecily to receive. Any overture from Moffat Mrs. West
must incontinently quash.

And he is my “obliged and faithful J. Mordaunt,” quoth Gwendolyn.
“Well, I feel as if I had brought an explosive machine on board. I am
afraid my charge is nothing more or less than an incorrigible flirt.”

The rest of the voyage proved this indubitably. From the captain,
who had her seated at table at his left hand, to the officers, great
and petty, the deck stewards, the sailors with swabs, and the little
cabin boys, every male thing belonging to the good ship was at Miss
Mordaunt’s beck and call.

The unmarried men among the passengers--including a missionary going
out to Asia Minor, a German Baron, a magnate of Wall Street nursing
a weak lung, a silk merchant from lower Broadway, two artists, and a
popular young author--surrounded her chair, like a swarm of bees. The
married men did the same whenever they were released from supervision
by their wives; but it was a remarkably tranquil voyage, and the
women were ordinarily all on deck.

Gwendolyn’s sense of propriety suffered under such fierce publicity.
Miss Mordaunt’s sayings and doings were bandied everywhere. The
people aboard who were previously known to Mrs. West set afloat the
story that her comet was a cousin or niece going to join her family.
Most of these good folk thought it would be a happy day for Mrs. West
when she could surrender her charge and fold her hands in repose.

Vigilance--perpetual vigilance--was evidently to be the price of
Gwendolyn’s peace. The overwhelming spirits, the reckless sayings,
the audacious doings of Cecily began at breakfast time and ended not
till Gwendolyn forced her to go below at bedtime. And the distressing
part of it was that the chaperon found herself, too, laughing at the
girl’s nonsense--giggling helplessly, irrepressibly. Cecily affected
her like champagne or St. Moritz air.

At Gibraltar Miss Mordaunt said she was going to cable to her papa.
When they were off again in the Mediterranean she threw her arms
around Gwendolyn’s neck and admitted that she had cabled to some one
else besides papa. No coaxings could induce her to say more than
this, and Gwendolyn felt uncomfortable. At Genoa the girl received
two cable messages, sent in care of the captain of the ship, who
delivered them to her with massive gallantry.

From that moment it seemed that Cecily’s spirit of mischief had
broken loose worse than before. Mrs. West and the courier-maid, both
of them secretly devoted to her, were kept forever on the alert to
watch her vagaries. Upon the tourist track of Europe she left behind
her a corruscating trail of anecdotes.

As the summer progressed Gwendolyn resigned herself to being a marked
woman, as the guardian of the most original young person who had
appeared in the best-known haunts in a generation. It was marvelous
to see how Cecily’s slang, loud speaking and dressing, and petty
offenses against good breeding had dropped away from her. The outer
shell of her became conventional, but that was all.

       *       *       *       *       *

When the handsome and well-born Marquis de San Miniato followed them
to Luzerne, and asked Mrs. West for the hand of her charming charge
in marriage, Gwendolyn felt herself pulled up as with too hard a curb.

“Of course you will not consider him,” she said, much more confused
than was the heroine of the hour.

“I _was_ thinking a little of getting married in Italy in the fall,”
answered Miss Mordaunt, pensively. “A wedding would be so sweet in
that lovely old Duomo at Florence. And I couldn’t have it in the
Duomo unless I married a Catholic, I suppose.”

“Cecily!”

“Gwen, dear, you can’t do it. You haven’t the cut of a chaperon’s
jib. Why, San Miniato took us first for a pair of schoolgirls, and
Mimms for our governess. You’re a failure, and I’m a terror; but we
_have_ had a good time, haven’t we?”

“Cecily, your father--I have an idea he would dislike this more than
anything you could do. Don’t, don’t answer Miniato now. Let me tell
him to go to America and see your papa. That is the only decent thing
to do.”

“The others--all but one--asked _me_ first,” said Cecily, dimpling.
“But it’s a shame to tease you, poor, dear little soul. Send Miniato
packing, if you like. I don’t generally--right away. I keep them on
as friends, like poor Mr. Lenvale, till I can’t stand them a minute
longer. Anyhow, old Miniato’s a goose to think I’d marry out of my
own country and live away from papa.”

Gwendolyn had the tact to say nothing. In a moment Cecily began again.

“You’ve been so awfully good to me, Gwenny. If I had had a mother,
I’d have wanted her to be like you. But my mother died when I was
born, and I had no one but an aunt and grandmother, who--papa,
couldn’t get along with them, and I don’t blame him. He has been
awfully generous--but kept away. You know he has made money himself,
but he inherited a lot from his mother’s brother on condition he’d
change his name. The Mordaunts were an older family than the Atwells,
and my uncle didn’t want them to die out--”

“Atwell! It can’t be possible!” cried Gwendolyn, “John Rufus Atwell?”

“Yes, that was his full name. Did you ever know him?”

“Once, long ago,” said Gwendolyn, in a maze of astonishment.

“I want to tell you a secret--if you won’t ask me a single question
in return,” went on the girl, filled with her own affairs. “Although
not to San Miniato, I am really going to be married. I’ve left my
heart, my real heart, at home, with the best fellow in the world.
When I got to Gibraltar I kept a promise I’d made to him, and cabled
out that he might come to us in September. By the time we get to
Paris he’ll be there, and then, Gwenny, then--oh! You’ll be a jolly,
easy-going chaperon, and I the happiest girl in the world. Now
I’m off to take Mimms for a perfectly horrid little walk, to see
Thorwaldsen’s Lion. If I ever get home to blessed East Ephesus I’ll
walk out by myself after dark, see if I don’t.”

Gwendolyn’s face, when she was left alone with these surprising
revelations, was very pale. After deliberation she took out a cable
code Mr. Mordaunt had sent her for exigencies, and patched together
words conveying the following message:

  “Fear daughter’s intention to marry. Had better come at once. Meet
  us Paris. Will watch faithfully till then.”

       *       *       *       *       *

They had found refuge from observation in a quiet and cozy little
hotel just out of the Champs Élysées. For some days following their
arrival in Paris Cecily had been under a spell of gentleness. She did
not again allude to her hopes and prospects, and Gwendolyn, trusting
the matter had blown by, said nothing, but never left her side.
Cecily did not know that her father was expected. It had been agreed
between Mordaunt and his daughter’s chaperon to give his visit the
air of a happy afterthought.

When the day came that should bring relief to the citadel, Gwendolyn
breathed a long sigh. Soon after their early breakfast, Cecily asked
for the company of Mimms to make some purchases at the Bon Marché.
She had equipped herself so charmingly, her face and person breathed
such radiancy of good health and happiness, that Gwendolyn could not
resist giving the child a parting squeeze and kiss.

“I shall wait for you to go in to the second breakfast, dear,” she
said, affectionately.

“Ah, Gwen, how I love you!” cried the girl with a sudden burst.
“Never be angry with me; I was not brought up like other girls.”

She was gone. The little open cab containing her and the grim Miss
Mimms rattled down the stony street to the Elysian Fields. Gwendolyn
sighed.

“She has tangled herself in my heart-strings, certainly. I could not
bear her to think me treacherous. But my first duty was to _him_.”

As the hours passed she grew fidgety, rearranged the ornaments, the
flowers, the books, in their pretty salon--ran to the window to look
at many cabs, and when at last the one arrived that contained John
Mordaunt, was quite unaware of it.

He was treading on the heels of the garçon who came up to announce
him--in her presence before she realized it.

“I knew you long ago through Mrs. Payne; but you could not be
supposed to identify me,” he said, with strong feeling, as he took
her hand. “You have not changed in the least. And to think that all
these years I could not find out whom you had married.”

Gwendolyn blushed deeply, and drew her hand from his.

“It was so good of you to relieve my anxiety about our girl,” she
answered. “Now I begin to think she said it to frighten me.”

“No matter, since I am here. But where is she--my darling torment?”

Gwendolyn explained.

“Then sit down and let us learn each other all over again,” said this
taking-for-granted Senator.

Gwendolyn did not know why she obeyed; the moments flew, she telling,
he listening, and vice versa. They were rudely interrupted by the
bursting open of the door and the entrance of Miss Mimms, aghast.

“Oh! sir! Oh! m’m,” she cried, breathless. “I’ve lost her. For the
last hour I’ve been sitting in the waiting-room at the Bon Marché, as
she bid me, and she’s never come back. And at last a little boy came
and put this note in my hand for Mrs. West, and told me the young
lady said I was to go along home to the hotel.”

  “My own Gwenny, forgive me,” ran the note. “I couldn’t bear to meet
  him in a horrid, ordinary way. We are off on top a tram to take
  our luncheon at Versailles, and by five o’clock, I’ll be back and
  introduce him to you in proper fashion.”

“If it’s that scoundrel Moffat, he’ll never bring her back,” shouted
John Mordaunt. “He well knows she has a fortune from her uncle
coming to her on her marriage with no matter whom. He’ll get her
off somewhere and manage to have a ceremony performed before he is
interrupted. He--”

“I believe in Cecily,” said Gwendolyn, quietly. “Let us, you and I,
Mr. Mordaunt, go directly in pursuit of them. Cecily is foolish,
reckless, but she would never give you--and me--that pain.”

“Then it is you who have made her know herself! God bless you,” said
the agitated man. “Ah! Gwendolyn, why did I not have you from the
first?”

       *       *       *       *       *

Miss Mimms afterward averred that you might have knocked her down
with a feather when, that afternoon, the whole party of four came
driving up to the door of the hotel. (Miss M. had spent most of her
day suspended like a banner for royalty out of the windows of the
first floor.) He, the young lady’s papa--looking like a general or a
judge, she couldn’t exactly say which, but as fine a show of a man as
she wished ever to see; Mrs. West, so happy and smiling, just like a
little girl that has got a present she’d been crying for; and Miss
Mordaunt--well, nobody could beat her for looks and pretty ways. At
the very top of the steps didn’t she seize Mimms and hug her, and
introduce her to “Mr. Angus McCrea, the young man that ran away with
me this morning, and that’s going to be my husband”?

For Mr. Angus McCrea it was who had wooed Cecily’s roving heart into
his safe-keeping--a fine, manly young fellow, to whom even John
Mordaunt, the discourager of sons-in-law, could not take exception.

“And at any rate,” whispered saucy Cecily, “it’s easy to see they
were old sweethearts, Gwen and papa. They are so taken up with each
other, Angus, you and I might give them a lesson in self-control.”

                    PRINTED BY R. R. DONNELLEY
                    AND SONS COMPANY AT THE
                    LAKESIDE PRESS, CHICAGO, ILL.




      *      *      *      *      *      *




Transcriber’s note:

  The List of Illustrations at the beginning of the book was created
  by the transcriber.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation such as “whale-bone”/“whalebone”
  have been maintained.

  Minor punctuation and spelling errors have been silently corrected
  and, except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the
  text, especially in dialogue, and inconsistent or archaic usage,
  have been retained.

  Page 156: “upon which the three Misses Bendict” changed to “upon
  which the three Misses Benedict”.

  Page 201: “from what your mother writes, Lillian” changed to “from
  what your mother writes, Lilian”.

  Page 234: “grumbling inwardly, as he saw Kathleeen” changed to
  “grumbling inwardly, as he saw Kathleen”.



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