At three o'clock the next afternoon, Nina Carter, leaving the Hawkes'
mansion in New York City, with a great many laughing farewells,
descended to her father's waiting car, and discovered, sitting therein,
an extremely handsome young woman, furred and trimly veiled, and deep
in pleasant conversation with Hansen.
"Miss Harriet!" Nina ejaculated, in a tone that betrayed a vague
resentment as well as a definite surprise.
"Nina, dear!" Harriet accepted Nina's kiss warmly. "Are you glad to see
me?" And as Nina stumbled in, and established herself, Harriet
continued easily, "Your father and I had a talk, my dear, and he
suggested that I come back for awhile. So Hansen picked me up at the
office, and here I am! He tried to telephone you, I know, but you were
out. And now," said Harriet, glancing at her wrist watch, "I think we
will go right home, please, Hansen!"
Nina had been her own mistress for several delicious weeks, and to have
any sort of restriction again was very unpalatable to her. Harriet
could almost have laughed at her discomfiture, although she was sorry
for her, too. Nina smiled and listened with notable effort; Harriet
knew she was chagrined.
She sulked all the way home, and Madame Carter, meeting them at
Crownlands, gazed rather stonily at the newcomer, granting her only the
briefest greeting. But oh, how homelike and welcoming the beautiful
place, mantled in snow, looked to Harriet's eyes. The snapping fires,
the warmth and fragrance of the big rooms, and the very obvious welcome
of the maids, all were enchanting to her. Her first duty was to make a
brief tour below stairs, after which she went up to her own room.
When they returned from Huntington in the fall, she and Nina at
Richard's suggestion had taken Isabelle's handsome rooms, turning both
into bedrooms, and sharing the dressing rooms and bath that joined
them. It was here that Harriet found Nina awaiting her, still with her
hat on, and loitering with obvious discomfiture. There had been no
actual changes in her room except that the personal touch was gone.
Bottomley had put her bags here, and Nina spoke first of them.
"You've got a new suitcase?"
"Yes, I got that this morning; isn't it stunning?" Harriet eyed its
shiny blackness with satisfaction. "I had to get a gown or two," she
added, "and some little things! We've been so quiet at Mrs. Davenport's
that I hadn't any new clothes. Pip was ill, you know."
"Miss Harriet!" Nina said with a rush. "You're so sweet about things
like this, I wonder if you will mind taking the yellow guest room--it's
really much larger--and leaving this room? You see when I have
friends--"
Harriet, at the dressing table, had raised her hands to remove her hat.
Like any general, she realized the crisis of the apparently unimportant
moment, and met it by instinct.
"But you have an extra bed, besides the couch, in your room, Nina!"
Nina cleared her throat, threw back her head, regarded Harriet between
half-closed eyelids in a manner Harriet realized was new, and drawled:
"I know. But if you would be so very kind---?"
"Do you know, I'm afraid I shan't be so very kind!" Harriet said,
briskly. "You're one of my duties here, you know, little girl, and I
think Daddy would prefer to have me near you! Now, if you like to ask
him, perhaps he'll not agree with me; in which case I shall move
immediately! But meanwhile--" She picked up a thick book from the
table, read the title idly: "'Secret Memoirs of the Favourites of the
French Courts!' Where on earth did you get this?" she asked, surprised.
'"Five Dollars Net,'" she mused, glancing through it. "How well I know
this sort of rubbish! There are thousands of them on the market,
exquisitely printed, beautifully bound, and just so much--rot! Secret
memoirs of the favourites of the French Courts indeed! Most of them
hadn't the brains to write a decent note!" scoffed Harriet, cheerfully.
Nina's face was scarlet; she left the room abruptly. A moment or two
later Harriet sauntered into the adjoining room, and found her again.
The younger girl was assuming a ruffled and beribboned negligee, and
tossing her wraps and street dress about carelessly. Harriet noted this
with disapproving eyes, but said nothing. There was an immense picture
of Mrs. Tabor on the dressing table, and she found in that a sudden
solution of the strange change in Nina.
"'With Ladybird's unending devotion, to Ninette,'" read Harriet, from
the inky scrawl across the picture. "Do you call her Ladybird, Nina?
You and she have formed a pretty strong friendship, haven't you?"
"Oh, something more than that!" Nina drawled in her new manner. But,
being Nina, she could not resist the desire to display the new
possession. She jerked open a desk drawer, and Harriet saw thick
letters, still in their envelopes, and tied in bundles. "We write each
other almost every day!" said Nina, yawning, as she flung herself down
upon a couch, and reached for a book.
"I should fancy she would make a loyal friend," Harriet observed,
generously. Nina softened a little, although her voice was still
carefully bored and arrogant when she spoke:
"Oh, she's the best sort!"
It was one of Mrs. Tabor's phrases, Harriet recognized. She moved
easily about the room, picking up other handsome, superbly illustrated
volumes: "An American Woman in the Sultan's Harem," "A Favourite of
Kings."
"Does she have my room when she is here?" Harriet presently suggested,
sympathetically. "Now, my dear," she added, as Nina's quick
self-conscious and hostile look gave consent, "Mrs. Tabor is too
thoroughly acquainted with convention to blame you if your father keeps
you under a governess's eye for a little while longer. You're the most
precious thing your father has, Nina, and as I used to remind you years
ago, you don't begin to have the restrictions that the European
princesses have to bear!"
This view of the case was always pleasing to Nina's vanity; she was
quite clever enough to see that a friend protected and confined,
watched and valued, would lose no prestige with the charming
"Ladybird." She pouted; and Harriet saw that for the moment the battle
was hers.
"Darling gown!" said Harriet of the picture.
"Oh, she has the most wonderful clothes!" It was the old Nina's voice.
"She doesn't spend much, but she goes to the BEST places, and they know
her there, and the women at Hatson's will say, 'I've got a gown for
you, Mrs. Tabor!' She picked out this negligee, and she picked out
another gown for me that you haven't seen. That was one thing that made
trouble between her and her husband," Nina said, eagerly. "She can't
help looking smart, and he used to get so jealous, and she told me that
she told the judge exactly what she spent for clothes the last year,
and he said that that was less than his wife spent, mind you, and he
said he didn't know how she did it! And that was the judge, that had
never laid eyes on her before! She used to cry and cry, after she got
her divorce, because she said that she thought there was a sort of
disgrace about it. But this judge in Nevada said that a man like Jack
Tabor ought to be horsewhipped!"
"Has she--been here very much?" Harriet said, after a moment.
"Oh, lots! She loves to be here, and I can't think why," Nina said,
"because people are all crazy to get her, and she could go to the most
wonderful dinners and things. But she really is just like a girl,
herself; sometimes we burst right out laughing, because we think
exactly the same about things! And she just loves picnics, and to let
her hair down--and she's so funny! You'll just love her when you know
her--"
Nina, Harriet reflected, had had a thorough dose of poison. It would
take, like many diseases, more poison to cure her, a counter dose.
Going to her room to change to one of the new gowns, Harriet had a
moment of contempt for the new-found intimate, who could so
unscrupulously play upon the girl's hungry soul. But with this
situation it was possible to cope; there was definite comfort in the
fact that Nina had not mentioned Royal Blondin.
Brave in the new gown, whose lustreless black velvet made even more
brilliant her matchless skin, Harriet went to find Ward. She met
instead one of his house-guests, Corey Eaton, a man some years older
than Ward, a big, rawboned, unscrupulous youth, with a wild and
indiscriminate laugh. Mr. Eaton, greeting her enthusiastically,
admitted frankly that he was just up from bed, and that he had been
"lit up like a battleship" last night, and that he still felt the
effects of it.
"Mr. Eaton," Harriet said, in an undertone, making another strategic
decision, "come in here to the library, will you? I want to speak to
you."
"When you speak to me thus," said Corey Eaton, passionately, "I can
refuse you naught!"
But he sobered instantly into tremendous gravity at Harriet's first
confidence. She told him simply of Isabelle's death.
"Well, that surely is rotten--the poor old boy!" said Corey,
affectionately. "Ward's mad about his mother, too! Well, say, what do
you know about that? We'll beat it, Miss Field, Nixon and I. We came in
my car and we'll go to the Jays' for dinner. Say, that is tough,
though, isn't it?"
It was not eloquent, but it was sincere, and Harriet made her thanks so
personal and so flattering that the young man could only fervently push
his plans for departure, swearing secrecy, and evidently touched by
being taken into her confidence. The fastnesses were yielding one after
another; Harriet could have laughed as she left him at the foot of the
stairs. Bottomley respectfully addressed her as she turned back into
the hall:
"Miss Field, I wonder if you'd be so good--?"
She nodded, and accompanied him instantly into the pantry where they
could be alone.
"It's Madame," said Bottomley, bitterly, "she's just 'ad me up there
agine, it's really tryin'--that's what it is. It's tryin'! Now she'ad
to'ave her say about you bein' at table, Miss Field. I says that you
'ad stipulited that you WAS to be there. Now, I says, and I says it
arbitrarily like, and yet I says it respectful, too---"
"Now, just wait one moment, Bottomley," Harriet said, soothingly. "I
want to talk to you and Pilgrim. Is she in her room? Suppose we go
there?"
Pleased with the consideration in her manner, the outraged Bottomley
led the way. Mrs. Bottomley was enjoying a solitary cup of tea; she
bustled hospitably for more cups.
"I want to tell you that your comin' has taken a load off my soul,"
said Pilgrim, a gray, round-visaged woman who had a sentimental heart,
"and so I said to Mr. Carter not three days since! I know that
Bottomley," said Pilgrim with an Englishwoman's admiring look for her
lord, "would never have spoke so harsh if he had but known you might
come back. It's been very bad, indeed, Miss, since you went, as we was
tellin' you a bit back. Impudence, orders this way and that, confusion
and what not, and Mr. Ward very wild, really very wild, and so at last
Bottomley said he couldn't stand it."
"I'm hoping he will reconsider that," Harriet said, pleasantly, with a
glance at the face Bottomley tried to make inflexible. "For I'm going
to tell you two old friends some news. We have always been friends,
haven't we?" said Harriet.
"It would be 'ard to be anything else, and I've said it before this!
It's a different 'ouse with you in it!" Bottomley said. Pilgrim,
rocking to and fro, clasped Harriet's hand to her breast, and beamed.
With no further preamble Harriet announced Isabelle's death.
The servants were naturally shocked. There were a few moments of
ejaculatory and sorrowful surprise. Her that was so young and so
'andsome, and went off so bold and high! It didn't seem possible, so
far away from 'ome and all.
When this had died away, Harriet had more news.
"I'm going to tell you two something," she began. "You are the very
first to know, and I know you'll be glad. Before I left the house last
October, Mr. Carter did me the--the great honour to ask me to--to marry
him."
It gave her inward delight even to voice it; it made the miracle seem
more real. Bottomley and Pilgrim exchanged stupefied glances in a dead
silence.
"I met him at eleven o'clock to-day," Harriet finished, simply, "and we
drove to Greenwich in Connecticut, and we were married at one o'clock."
Bottomley and Pilgrim glanced again at each other, glanced at Harriet,
opened their mouths slowly.
Then Pilgrim dropped the hand she was familiarly caressing, and
Bottomley rose slowly to his feet.
"Oh, no!" Harriet said, flushing in utter confusion and with a nervous
laugh. "Oh, please! Please sit down, Bottomley, and please don't either
of you think that it has made any difference. Although I am Mrs. Carter
now, I'm still Miss Nina's companion!"
"To think of you bein' Mrs. Carter!" Pilgrim marvelled in a whisper.
"Oh, sh--sh--sh! You mustn't say it even!" Harriet caught both their
hands. "No one must know. I only told you so that you would help me, so
that you would understand! There will be no change, anywhere--"
Bottomley shook a dazed head; but Pilgrim looked at the other woman
with kindly eyes, and presently said:
"Well, now, it's hard on you, so young and pretty and all, and goin'
right on as if you wasn't married a bit!"
Harriet only smiled, but she blinked black lashes that the little touch
of sympathy had suddenly made wet. And presently when Bottomley was
gone, and she about to follow him, she laid one hand on Pilgrim's broad
black alpaca shoulder, and said:
"I had my own reasons, Pilgrim, you know. Reasons that make it all
seem--right, to me!"
"Well, why wouldn't you?" Pilgrim said, approvingly. "You'd have been a
very silly girl not to take him, and--as I always tell the
girls--love'll come fast enough afterwards!"
The words came back to Harriet, hours later, when the house was quiet,
and when, comfortably wrapped in a loose silk robe, she was musing
beside her fire. Nina was asleep; to Ward, who was headachy and
feverish, she had paid a late visit. He had been sick enough, after the
revel of Christmas Eve, to summon a doctor to-day; and was dozing
restlessly now, under the effect of a sedative. Madame Carter had not
come down to dinner, and when Harriet had sent in a message, had asked
to be excused from any calls, even from Nina and Miss Field, this
evening.
Nina had chattered constantly during the meal. Granny had had a
terrible time with them all. And Ward and Nina and "Royal"--the name
suddenly leaped between them again--had been arrested for speeding. And
Daddy had threatened Nina with a boarding-school, and Granny had cried.
"Where is Mr. Blondin now, Nina?" Harriet had asked.
"Oh, he's round!" Nina had said, airily. "I suppose you put Daddy up to
saying that I wasn't to see so much of him!" she had added, with her
worldly wise drawl.
"Not at all," Harriet had said.
"Ladybird and I are planning a trip," Nina had further confided. "I
shall be eighteen in February, you know, and we want to go round the
world. Would'nt it be wonderful to go with her, for she's been about
fifty times!"
"Wonderful!" Harriet had been obliged to concede.
"You know"-and Nina, in good spirits, had put her arm about Harriet as
they left the table--"you know, some day I'd love to do it with you!"
she had said, soothingly. "And some day we will, for I mean to travel a
great deal. But just now--she spoke of it, you know. And it would be
such an unusual opportunity. We're going to Algiers--and Athens--Mr.
Blondin is making out the list for us, and wouldn't it be fun if he
could go, too? He's afraid he can't, but if he could--!"
"But, dearest child, what does your father think?"
"Father--" Nina had shrugged regretfully. "But I shall be of age!" she
had reminded her companion.
"Yes, I know, dear, but Father's ward for another three years, you
know!"
"Why, Ladybird says"--the girl had been ready, and had spoken with
flushed cheeks--"Ladybird says that in that case we'll go anyway, and
she'll pay all expenses! That's the kind of friend SHE is!"
And Nina had flounced to a telephone, and had telephoned her friend in
New York, laughing, coquetting, and murmuring for a blissful half hour.
"Love'll come fast enough afterward!" Pilgrim had said, and Harriet
thought Pilgrim was rather a wise woman, in her homely way. The girl
stirred the fire and settled herself to watch it again.
After what? Well, certainly not after anything so short, simple, and
unconvincing as that three minutes with the clergyman to-day. The utter
unreality of that had seemed to blend with the silent, snowy day, and
with the dulled and dreamy condition of her own brain. Snow was falling
softly when she had met Richard Carter at the office, at half-past ten,
and snow lisped against the windows of the limousine as they two, with
Irving Fox, Richard's kindly, middle-aged, confidential clerk, were
whirled out of the city, and on and on through the bare little wintry
towns. They had all talked together, sometimes of herself and her
sister, sometimes of Nina and Ward, of Fox's amazing grandchildren, and
of business. Fox had had some papers to which they occasionally
referred; the old clerk was the only person to congratulate Harriet
warmly when the brief and bewildering business was over and she had her
wedding ring. It was alone with Fox that she made the return trip.
Richard came back by train, saving an hour, and was at the office when
they got there. Harriet did not see him again; he was in conference;
and presently she quietly got back into the motor-car, and on her way
to meet Nina she slipped the plain circle of gold into her hand bag.
She had it out to-night, and put it on her bare, pretty hand, and held
it to the fire, and slowly the events of the bewildering and tiring day
wheeled before her, and only the reality of the ring assured her that
it was not all a confused dream. Married! And all alone before the
glowing coals, weary from hostile encounters, on her marriage night!
Ward, to be sure, was always her champion, but Ward was drinking
heavily just now, and her influence was none the stronger because he
admired her while she held him at arm's-length. Nina was all ready to
flame into defiance, and the old lady's message had not been reassuring.
"But Bottomley and Pilgrim will stand by me!" Harriet said, with a
shaky laugh. She looked about the beautiful familiar room, the room
that had been Isabelle's for so many years, and wondered to think of
Isabelle, lying dead so far away, and a usurper already holding her
name and place.
She had intended to write to Linda to-night; Linda was vexed with her,
and small wonder! For Harriet had left the little New Jersey house
almost without farewells, had come down to an earlier breakfast even
than Fred's, and had said briefly that she was returning to the
Carters, and would see them all soon.
Why hadn't she told Linda? Well, for one reason, she had hardly
believed her own memory of the talk on Christmas Day with Richard. Then
she had feared opposition, feared Linda's shocked references to decent
intervals of mourning; Linda's frank unbelief that there was no strong
personal feeling involved on Richard's part; Linda's advice to a bride.
Harriet's face burned at the mere thought of it. No, she couldn't tell
Linda yet; she was too tired to write to-night, anyway. Linda and Fred
had not been at all approving, Christmas night. David had reproached
her, had disappeared earlier than was expected or necessary; they had
not failed of their suspicions.
"Well! I must go to bed," she said aloud, suddenly. She stood, one
elbow on the mantel, her beautiful eyes fixed on the dying fire. It was
midnight, the room and the house very still. Outside the snow was still
falling--falling. Her loose gown slipped back from the round young arm,
fell in folds about the slender figure; her rich hair was braided, and
hung in a rope of gold over one shoulder. Her smoke-blue eyes,
heavy-lidded in a rather white face, met their own gaze in the mirror.
"It isn't exactly what I expected marriage to be," mused Harriet,
smiling at the exquisite vision upon which no other eyes would fall.
"But after all," she said to herself, beginning to move about with last
preparations for bed, "I'm married to the man I love--nothing can
change that. And if he doesn't love me, he likes me. I've done nothing
wrong, and if my life is just a little different from most women's,
why, I shall have to make the best of it! And I did tell him--I did
tell him--"
And her thoughts went back to the first few minutes she had spent in
Richard's office that day. They had been alone, discussing the last
details of their astonishing plan, when she had suddenly taken the
plunge.
"Mr. Carter, there is just one thing! Of course," Harriet's cheeks had
flamed, "of course, this marriage of ours is not the usual marriage,
and yet, there is just one thing of which I would like to speak to you
before we--we go up to Greenwich." And finding his gray eyes pleasantly
fixed upon her she had gone on, confused but determined: "I'm
twenty-seven now-and perhaps I might have married some other man before
this--except that-when I was seventeen-I did fall in love with a man!
And we were to be married--!" She had stopped short; it was incredibly
hard. "He had--or I thought he had, brought something tremendously big
and wonderful into my life," Harriet had continued, "and I was a stupid
little girl, just taking care of my sister's babies and reading my
father's books--"
"You are under no obligation to tell me anything of this," Richard had
said, kindly, far more concerned for her distress than interested in
what she was saying. "I must have known that there were admirers! I
assure you that--"
"No, but just a moment!" Harriet had interrupted him. "I was
infatuated--I knew that at once, God knows I've known it ever since! I
went away with him, little fool that I was!"
A gleam of genuine surprise had come into Richard Carter's eyes, and he
looked at her without speaking.
"I was taken ill the day I left with him. While I was getting well I
had time to think it over. I knew then I was too young and too ignorant
to be any man's wife. I was frightened and I--well, I ran away; I went
back to my sister. Both she and her husband regarded me after that as
in some way marked, unprincipled, unworthy--"
"Poor child!" Richard had said. "They naturally would. You were no more
than Nina's age!"
"So that's my history," Harriet had finished, simply. "I thought I had
done with men. And there have been men, men like Ward, for instance, to
whom I could have been married without feeling that I need make any
mention of that old time. But I wanted to tell you."
"Thank you very much," Richard had said, gravely. "If the protection of
my name and my house seems welcome to you, after some battling with the
world, it will be an additional satisfaction to me."
And then before another word was spoken Fox had come in, announcing the
car, and they had begun the long, strange drive. And now, deep in the
quiet winter night, she was back at Crownlands, alone beside her fire,
able at last to rest, and to remember. It seemed to her that ever since
Richard's call on Linda's Christmas household yesterday she had walked
strangely detached and isolated, with odd booming noises in her ears,
and a panicky thumping at her heart. Now she felt suddenly safe and
secure again; none of the oppositions she had vaguely feared, from
David, from Linda, from the family at Crownlands, had interrupted the
mad plan; she was in a stronger position now than ever, and if the path
before her was dangerous and difficult, she was not too weary to-night
to feel confident of following it to the end.
She got into the luxurious bed, put out the bedside light, and lay with
her hands clasped behind her head, thinking. The clock struck one; snow
was still falling steadily outside, but in here the last pink glow of
firelight flickered and sank--flickered and sank lazily. It touched the
flowered basket chairs, the roses that filled a bowl on the bookshelf,
the table with its shaded lamp and its magazines.
Some sudden thought made Harriet smile ruefully. She indicated that it
was unwelcome by turning over to bury her bright head in the pillow,
and resolutely composing herself for sleep.