At four o'clock Richard came home, and the instant Harriet saw his face
she realized, with a shock even sharper than the original moment of
incredulity, that he had had no success in his search. He was alone.
She was standing in one of the doorways of the lower hall when he
crossed it, but he did not see her. His face was drawn and gray, he
looked hot and rumpled and utterly weary; more, he who had always been
the pink of well-groomed perfection looked old. He asked Bottomley
briefly if Madame Carter was in her room, and, being informed that she
was, went hastily upstairs.
Harriet could only imagine, later, that he had gone in to see his
mother before brushing and changing, or perhaps to avoid Nina, who with
Amy catapulted down the stairway a few seconds after he went up. At all
events, it was to the old lady's beautiful sitting room that Harriet
was summoned a few minutes later. She knew at once that he had told his
mother all he knew and feared.
Madame Carter was shockingly agitated. She had a deep sense of the
dramatic, but she was not entirely acting now. Her face was pale under
its rouge, and the painful tears of age stood in her eyes. She was
sitting erect in a chair beside the divan where Richard sat; he did not
look up as Harriet came in, but continued to stroke his mother's hand.
"Miss Field!" said Madame Carter, "we have just had a most terrible--a
most unexpected--blow!"
Harriet simulated expectancy.
"There is every reason to believe," pursued Madame Carter,
majestically, "that my unfortunate daughter-in-law, Mr. Carter's wife,
Isabelle, has yielded to the passion of her lover! No, let me talk,
Richard," she interrupted herself, as the man raised haggard eyes to
watch her impersonally, "far better to face the facts, my dear! My son
tells me, Miss Field the--the well-nigh incredible statement
that--forgetting the honour of womanhood, and the tender claims of
maternity--"
"Miss Field," Richard did not have the manner of interruption, but his
quiet voice dominated the other voice none-the-less. Madame Carter fell
silent, and watched him with mournful pride. "Miss Field," he said, "we
want your help. The facts are these: Williams had all the roads
watched; they did not go by motor. Mrs. Carter reached New London at
five o'clock yesterday; Pope's boat, the Geisha, pulled out at
half-past six. From what Williams' men picked up, at the dock, Pope did
not expect her, was to have sailed this morning. She arrived, and
evidently he thought it wise to hurry their start. The pier had a dozen
boxes for the Geisha on it, groceries and what not, that they left
behind! They will probably skirt the coast for a few days, and put in
somewhere for supplies. But that"--he passed his hand wearily across
his forehead--"that doesn't concern us now. We got there at ten last
night--hours too late, of course." His voice fell, he mused, with a
knitted brow. "Well!" he said, suddenly recalling himself. "Now, Miss
Field, I want you to get hold of Ward. I want the boy home at once! He
must know. But there is of course a chance that Mrs. Carter is--is
planning to return. There may be a woman friend with her--it's not
probable, but it's possible. I don't want any one in the house, or out
of it, to suspect, and if you think it is possible, I should like Nina
protected!"
"I understand," Harriet said, quietly, in the silence.
"You will remember, Richard," Madame Carter said, in the accents of
Lady Macbeth, "that this is exactly what I always expected! I told you
so, twenty years ago. You brought it on yourself, my dear. A
Morrison--who ever heard of the Morrisons?--their mother--Mrs. Banks
tells me--was a school teacher! I have always felt--!"
Harriet heard the man's patient murmur as she slipped away. She crossed
the hall, and for the first time in four years entered Isabelle's suite
unannounced. It was in exquisite order; streams of late afternoon light
were falling on the gay walls and the bright chintzes. The novels
Isabelle had been skimming, the gold service of her dressing table, the
great four-poster with its deeps of transparent white embroideries over
white, all spoke of the beautiful woman who had spent so many hours
here. On the dressing table, with its splendid length doubled in the
mirror, was the great fan that her hand had idly wielded, only a few
days ago, in an hour of domestic felicity and happiness. And the
inanimate plumes, that Harriet picked up and idly unfurled, had played
their little part in the drama that had ended that bright scene once
and for all.
What to tell Nina?--Harriet wondered, going downstairs. But Nina proved
pleasantly indifferent to the maternal absence when she and Amy came up
from the tennis court for tea. To the guest or two who came calling
Harriet, installed quite naturally now behind the cups and saucers,
explained that Mrs. Carter was visiting with friends--having a
beautiful time, too, apparently. To an accidentally direct remark from
Amy she answered that she believed they were taking a motor trip just
at the moment, but she would forward a note, if Amy liked. Madame
Carter did not come out for tea; they were very quiet on the terrace.
But Richard was there, and Amy and Nina were developing their youthful
conversational arts upon him, when a maid came to stand respectfully
beside Harriet. "If you please, Miss Field, Mr. Bottomley would like to
know if you are to have your dinner downstairs to-night, please," said
Pauline, incidentally feeling as if she was in a dream of bliss. Her
last position had been in a well-to-do stationer's family in Newark,
and consesequently she might have entered into the feelings of Miss
Field far more intelligently than either imagined.
Harriet hesitated, glanced at Richard, wondering if he had heard. More
rested on this decision than there was any estimating. She dared not
decide.
"Miss Field will dine downstairs," Richard said, without glancing in
their direction. And when the maid had gone he said with pleasant
authority, "I wish you and Nina would do that regularly, Miss Field,
when you have no other plan."
"Thank you," Harriet said, with her heart singing.
Perhaps Nina suspected that something about his high-handed domestic
readjusting was unusual. She looked from her father to Harriet, and
after a moment's silence asked abruptly:
"When is Mother coming back?"
"I don't know!" her father answered, quickly.
"Say, listen, are we going to dress?" asked Amy. Nina, instantly
diverted, suggested that they go in. Nina's awkward bigness and Amy's
mousy neutral tones were as well displayed in one garment as another,
but both girls debated over pinks and blues, crepes and mulls, every
evening, as if the world was watching them alone. Harriet lingered for
only a word.
"Mr. Carter, it occurred to me that old Mrs. Singleton is going to
California, in her own car, to-morrow. Would it be possible to let Nina
and Amy and the household generally think--"
"Yes?" he encouraged her as she paused dubiously. He had risen to his
feet, and fixed his tired eyes on her face.
"I was wondering if we might confide in Mrs. Singleton--she was always
very fond of Mrs. Carter--and give out the impression that Mrs. Carter
had suddenly decided to make the trip with her."
"That's an idea," Richard said, thoughtfully. "I could see Mrs.
Singleton to-night--and--and talk it over."
"It might serve for only a few days," Harriet submitted.
"Yes, I see," he agreed, slowly.
"Well, I can give Nina a hint now!" Harriet said, going. The late
golden sunshine struck her bright hair to an aureole, as she went up
the brick steps and disappeared.
But it was too late for any soothing deception of Nina. A scene was in
full progress in Nina's bedroom, and Harriet's eye had only to go from
the prone form on the bed to the crushed newspaper that had drifted to
the floor, to know that the secret was out. Isabelle's face, radiant
and happy, looked out from the page. It was flanked by two smaller
pictures, Richard's and Anthony Pope's. Harriet could see the big
letters: "Young Millionaire--Wife of Richard Carter." The deluge was
upon them.
"Oh--it's a lie--it's a lie! My beautiful little mother!" Nina was
sobbing. "Oh, no, it's not true! It's a lie! Oh, how shall I ever hold
up my head again--to be disgraced--now just when I'm so young--and
ha-h-happy!"
"Nina, my child, control yourself!" Harriet, ignoring the staring and
pale-faced Amy, sat down on the edge of the bed, and shook the girl
slightly. "You mustn't give way! Come now, my dear, you must face this
like a woman. Think how your father and Ward will look to you--"
Acting, all of it, said Harriet in her soul. But despite the youthful
appetite for heroics, there were real tears in Nina's eyes, as there
had been in her grandmother's a few hours ago.
"Yes, that's true!" she said, wiping a swollen face on the handkerchief
Harriet supplied. "But oh--I don't believe it, and my father will sue
them for libel, you see if he doesn't! My mother's the purest and
sweetest and best woman ALIVE--and I'll KILL any one who says any
different!"
"Oo--oo, to see it in the paper there, right on the bed," said Amy, in
her reedy, colourless little voice, as Nina stopped suddenly. "Oo--oo,
I thought Nina would die!" Nina began to cry again, but more quietly.
"I guess I had better go--" Amy finished, plaintively.
"Oh, no!" said Nina in a choked voice, as she clung to her friend. "No,
darling! you stay with me. Oh, I must go see my father, and my poor,
poor grandmother! Oh, Amy, perhaps you HAD better go, for my family
will need me to-night. My mother--!" said Nina, crying again.
She and Amy parted solemnly, with many kisses.
"It's a thing that might happen to me, or to any girl," said Amy,
gravely. Harriet had an upsetting vision of stout, high-busted Mrs.
Hawkes, panting as she discussed the details of the Red Cross drive,
but she was very sympathetic with the young girls, and even agreed with
Nina, when Amy was gone, that it would be much more sensible to take
her bath, and put on her white organdie, and then go find her father.
They dined almost silently, and were about to disperse quietly for the
night, after an hour of half-hearted conversation in the drawing room,
obviously endured by Richard simply for his mother's sake, when Ward
burst in. He had travelled almost four hundred miles by motor that day,
his face was streaked with dirt and oil, and ghastly with fatigue. He
went straight to his father.
"Say, what's all this!" he said, in a voice hardly recognizable.
Harriet saw that he had been drinking. "I got your wire, and we
started. I thought the Mater was sick, perhaps. My God--THAT worried
me!" he broke off bitterly. "Blondin came with me; we stopped on the
road for dinner, and the man had a paper there. Is that what you wanted
me for--I don't believe it! It's a dirty lie, and the bounder that put
that in the paper--"
"I'm glad you came home, my boy," Richard said. "I've been waiting for
you--"
Harriet heard no more; she slipped from the room. There were genuine
tears in her own eyes now; for the boy had flung himself face downward
against a great chair, and was crying. All the household knew it;
Harriet could read it in Bottomley's carefully usual manner and quiet
speech. In the little music room across the hall Royal Blondin was
waiting.
"This is a terrible thing!" he said, seriously.
"Oh, frightful!" Harriet agreed. A rather flat silence ensued. She
seemed to have nothing to say to Royal now.
But she was not surprised when a moment later Nina came softly in, the
picture of girlish distress, with her wet eyes and fresh white gown.
"I thought it best to leave Ward with Granny and Father," Nina said, in
vague explanation, going straight to Blondin, who rose, dusty and
weary, but with a solicitous manner that was infinitely soothing.
"I hoped you wouldn't mind just seeing me," he said in a low tone. "I'm
not quite family, and yet I felt myself nearer than all the neighbours
and friends, eh?"
"I shan't see any one for ages," Nina murmured, plaintively, "but
you--you're different."
"And shall we talk about her sometimes?" Royal pursued, still close to
her, and holding both her hands. "As she was, beautiful and sweet and
good. For who are you and I, Little Girl, to judge what passion--what
love will do with human hearts?"
"Yes, I know!" Nina, who never could keep pace with him, said
mournfully.
Harriet could hear the undertones, and imagine what they said. She felt
extremely uneasy. If this unforeseen calamity had lifted her suddenly
in the family estimation, it would appear to be drawing Royal Blondin
closer as well.
His manner, she had grudgingly to admit, was perfection. When Richard
and Ward joined them a few moments later, he expressed himself with
manly brevity to the older man. He realized, said Blondin simply, that
he was absolutely de trop; he had merely imagined, as "the lad" had
imagined, that the sudden summons from camp meant illness or ordinary
emergency, or he would not have intruded at this time. He would not
express a sympathy that must sound extremely airy to the stricken
family. And now, if they would lend him Hansen, he would go over to the
club----
"Nonsense!" Ward said. "You're all dirty and tired and hungry, and so
am I. We'll clean up, and then we'll have something to eat first! Miss
Harriet'll look out for us."
"And I'd like to see you for a moment in the library, Miss Field,"
Richard said, rather wearily. He had been obviously displeased at
seeing the stranger, but Blondin's manner would have won a harder heart
than his. "I want something sent to the papers," Richard explained, in
an undertone.
Ah--they all wanted her, and needed her! How quick, and how efficient,
and how self-effacing Harriet was, as she went about the business of
making them all comfortable! She and Nina talked with the young men
while they demolished the cold roast and drank cup after cup of coffee.
Then Blondin selected several books, and went upstairs, and Harriet and
Nina disappeared in their own rooms; but Ward came downstairs again,
and he and his father settled in the library for a talk.
They talked deep into the night, Harriet knew, for she herself was
sleepless, and she could see from the upper balcony that a stream of
golden light was pouring across the brilliant flowers beneath the
library windows.
She had wrapped herself in a warm robe, over her thin nightgown, and
thrust her feet into fur-lined slippers, and after Nina was fathoms
deep in youthful slumber Harriet crept out to the balcony, and sat
thinking, thinking, thinking. She reviewed the incredible events of the
past few days, and the actors drifted before her vision fitfully:
Isabelle, white-bosomed and beautiful, in her prime; Tony Pope,
passionate and wretched; Royal, low-voiced, dreamy, poetic, with his
eloquent black eyes; Nina, newly awakened; Ward, weak, boyish, ardent;
Madame Carter full of theatrical dignity and well-rounded phrases, and
lastly--simple, strong, anxious to protect them all, even from their
own follies--Richard.
"Not one word of blame, not one ugly insinuation," she mused, "yet she
has shamed him, and he is so honourable; and she has made him
conspicuous, when he is so modest!"
She thought of Isabelle, fresh from Germaine's careful hands, lying in
her exquisite white against the cushions of a deck chair, smiling, in
the rosy flattering light under the green awning, at the infatuated man
beside her. Isabelle was a splendid sailor, and loved the sea. They
would land at some dreamlike Italian city, rising in tiers of pink and
cream and blue beside the sapphire Mediterranean, and Isabelle would
unfurl her white parasol, and walk beside him through the warmth and
beauty--
"Ugh!" said Harriet, with a healthy uprush of utter disgust. These few
months would not be cloudless for Isabelle, by any means. And after
them, what? Was it conceivable that those fatal sixteen years would
fail to identify Tony and Isabelle wherever they went, even if the
press was not eagerly assisting them? Supposing that Isabelle never
thought of Crownlands, of her handsome son and her young daughter, of
the man whose patience and cleverness had lifted her to all this luxury
from an apartment in a small town, would no memory of the place she had
held, and the friendships she had commanded, haunt her? Truly there was
always society for the Isabelles, but to Harriet's clean sense it
seemed but the society of a jail.
"I wouldn't change places with her!" Harriet decided, in the soft
silence and darkness of the summer night.
From Isabelle's problem her thoughts went to her own, to Royal Blondin.
She was wakeful and restless to-night simply because she could not
decide just how much she need fear him. Firstly, was there any reason
for antagonizing him, and secondly, would he hurt her if she did? For
Royal could not punish her without punishing himself, and could not
banish her from Crownlands if he ever hoped to show his own face there
again.
Nina, reaching her room that night, had flung her arms about Harriet's
neck.
"Oh, I'm so happy! Oh, Miss Harriet, were you ever in love?" she had
demanded, with a girl's wild, exultant laugh.
This was moving very fast indeed. Harriet had managed a sympathetic yet
warning smile.
"I think I have been. But, my dearest girl, you'll be in and out a
dozen times before the real thing comes along!"
Nina had smiled inscrutably at this, and slightly diverted the
conversation.
"Don't you think it was awfully decent of Mr. Blondin to want to go off
to the club to-night? Oh, I thought he looked perfectly stunning when
he looked at Father that way! He told me to telephone the club
to-morrow if I felt like just a quiet walk. Of course I shan't see any
one for weeks, after this. But he said some day when I'm in town with
Granny he didn't see why we couldn't go over and have a cup of tea with
him, even if we postponed the regular tea. Do you? He's different from
any one I ever knew. He says I am different from any girl he ever knew.
Do you think I am? I said I thought I was just like the others, except
that I like to read poetry and have my own ideas about things, and that
I couldn't flirt, or wouldn't if I could, and that the average boy just
bored me. I said that those things were sacred to me--"
Sacred to her! Long after the chattering voice was still, Harriet, out
on the balcony, remembered the phrase and winced. There would be small
sacredness in the hour that gave Nina to Royal Blondin. And yet, if in
his cleverness he won her first tenacious affection, it would be a
difficult thing to prevent. Isabella, her natural protector, was gone;
Richard saw nothing; the old lady was on the lovers' side, and Ward
also had been captivated by Blondin. It was only Harriet, only Harriet,
who saw and who understood.
Was he so bad? She tried to ask herself the question honestly, and an
honest shudder answered it before it was fairly framed. Nearly twenty
years Nina's senior, with an interest that could not, he confessed,
have existed except for the girl's fortune, that was arraignment
enough. But there was more. Harriet knew the smooth coldness, the
contemptuous superiority that within a year or two would blast the
youth and self-confidence of a dozen Ninas; she knew what his moral
code was, a code that made desire and opportunity the only law, and
that honoured passion as the crowning emotion of life. She tried to
picture Nina's marriage, their early days together, the breakfast
table, where the crude little girl blundered and floundered in
conversation, her helpless devotion, that would annoy and exasperate
him. She saw Nina's near-sighted eyes welling with hurt tears; Nina's
check book eagerly surrendered to win from her lord a few delicious
hours of the old flattery, the old attention. Harriet fancied Nina,
poor, plain, obtuse little Nina, home again: "But you don't know how
hard it is, Father. He is never there any more--he hardly ever speaks
to me!"
"It would take a clever woman to hold him," Harriet thought, "and it
wouldn't be worth a clever woman's while."
Nina-Ward-Royal-Richard. The wearying procession began again. Royal
might treat her with honesty and honour. He was not small in
everything, and she had never done him harm. But--there might come the
terrible moment when she had to face Richard with the confession. Yes,
she had known him before. Yes, they had entered into a tacit compact.
Yes, she had kept from Nina's father a secret that, while it might be
unimportant, certainly should have been told him.
Impossible to think the thing to any conclusion! Too many possibilities
might alter the entire situation. If she were married safely to Ward,
for example--? But then she dared not marry Ward until Royal's attitude
was finally defined. For if her position were dangerous now, what would
it be if she had committed herself irrevocably to deception by
marriage? Ward's young, crude intolerance sitting in judgment upon his
wife!--Harriet shivered.
Suddenly she fell upon her knees, and dropped her bright head against
the wide balustrade. She wanted to be a dignified, honourable, helpful
woman; not selfish, like Nina; not an intriguer, like Isabelle; not
proud, like Madame Carter. Something was changing in her heart and
soul; she did not feel angry and bitter any more. With Royal's
reappearance had come the realization that the old, sad time was no
longer a living wound in her life, it was merely a memory, young, and
mistaken, and to be forgotten. For years she had felt that it had
maimed her; now it seemed only infinitely pitiable. She could go on, to
honour and happiness, despite it. And how she longed to go on, with no
further handicap! If he would go away again, and leave her mistress of
the field. She only wanted her chance. She wanted to win her way, here
in this fascinating world; she wanted to be beloved and successful;
above all she wanted to be GOOD!
For a long time Harriet had not prayed. But now, in a few words, and
quite without premeditation, there burst from her the most sincere
prayer of her life. She looked up at the stars.
"God!" she said, softly, aloud, "help me! Make me do what is right,
however hard it is. Father, don't let me make another mistake!"