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.