Produced by Al Haines.
[Illustration: A flower shot down amid the crowd. Page 19.]
*Latter-Day Sweethearts*
By
*MRS. BURTON HARRISON*
Author of
"A Bachelor Maid,"
"The Carlyles," "The Circle of a Century,"
"The Anglomaniacs," Etc.
"La Duchesse.--'L'amour est le fleau du monde. Tous
nos maux nous viennent de lui.'
"Le Docteur.--'C'est le seul qui les guerisse,"
--"_Le Duel_," _Henri Lavedan_.
Illustrated in Water-Colors by FRANK T. MERRILL
A. S. & T. HUNTER
SPECIAL EDITION,
UTICA, N. Y.
NEW YORK AND LONDON
THE AUTHORS AND NEWSPAPERS ASSOCIATION
1907
COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY
CONSTANCE BURTON HARRISON.
_Entered at Stationers' Hall._
_All Rights Reserved._
Composition and Electrotyping by
J. J. Little & Co.
Printed and bound by the
Plimpton Press, Norwood, Mass.
[Illustration: (Facsimile Page of Manuscript from LATTER-DAY
SWEETHEARTS)]
*LATTER-DAY
SWEETHEARTS*
*CHAPTER I*
In going aboard the "Baltic" that exceptionally fine October morning,
Miss Carstairs convinced herself that, of the people assembled to see
her off, no one could reasonably discern in her movement the suggestion
of a retreat. The commonplace of a sailing for the other side would not,
indeed, have met with the recognition of any attendance at the pier
among her set, save for her hint that she might remain abroad a year.
There had been a small rally on the part of a few friends who had
chanced to meet at a dinner overnight, to go down to the White Star
docks and say good-by to Helen Carstairs. Helen sincerely wished they
had not come, both because the ceremony proved a little flat, and
because, when she had time to think them over, she was not so sure they
were her friends.
But the main thing was that she had been able to withdraw, easily and
naturally, from a doubly trying situation. She had not wanted to go
abroad. All the novelty and sparkle had gone out of that business long
ago. She knew foreign travel from A to Z, and she loathed tables
d'hote, even more than the grim prospect of private meals with Miss
Bleecker in sitting-rooms redolent of departed food, insufficiently
atoned for by an encircling wilderness of gilding and red plush. The
very thought of a concierge with brass buttons lifting his cap to her
every time she crossed the hall, of hotel corridors decked with strange
foot gear upon which unmade bedrooms yawned, of cabs and galleries and
harpy dressmakers, of sights and fellow tourists, gave her a mental
qualm. But it was better than staying at home this winter in the big
house in Fifth Avenue where Mr. Carstairs had just brought a stepmother
for her, in the person of "that Mrs. Coxe."
There was apparently no valid reason for Helen's shuddering antipathy to
the lady, who had been the widow of a junior partner of her father, a
man whom Mr. Carstairs had "made," like many another beginning in his
employ.
Mr. Coxe had died two years before, of nervous overstrain, leaving this
flamboyantly handsome, youngish woman to profit by his gains. Helen had
always disliked having to ask the Coxes to dinner when her father's fiat
compelled her to preside over the dull banquets of certain
smartly-dressed women and weary, driven men, whom he assembled at
intervals around his board. She could not say what she objected to in
Mrs. Coxe; she thought it might be her giggle and her double chin. It
had been always a relief when one of these "business" dinners was over,
and she knew she would not have to do it soon again. When Mr. Carstairs
dined in return with the Coxes, they had him at some fashionable
restaurant, taking him afterward to the play. Mrs. Coxe had shown sense
enough for that! During the interregnum of Mrs. Coxe's mourning
following the demise of her exhausted lord, Mr. Carstairs had had the
yacht meet Helen and himself at Gibraltar, and cruised all that winter
in the Mediterranean.
That had been life abroad, Helen thought, with a throb of yearning! She
was very fond of her father, rather a stony image to most people, and
immensely proud of the way people looked up to his achievements in the
Street, the resistless rush of his business combinations, his massive
wealth, and his perfect imperturbability to newspaper cavil and attacks
by enemies. She had loved to be at the head of his establishment, and
to receive the clever and distinguished and notable people, foreign and
domestic, who accepted Mr. Carstairs' invitation to meet one another,
because they were clever and distinguished and notable, not because they
wanted to talk all the evening what they had talked all day.
When they had come home from their cruise, Helen spent the summer in
Newport, where her father rarely went. The yacht was his summer home,
he was wont to say; and Helen did not suspect how often that season the
noble "Sans Peur" had been anchored off the shores of a settlement in
Long Island where Mrs. Coxe was enjoying the seclusion of a shingled
villa with broad verandas set in a pocket handkerchief of lawn. Back
and forth flew the owner's steam launch between the "Sans Peur" and the
landing, and yet nobody told Helen. That autumn she had affairs of her
own to absorb her time and give her a sobering view of humanity. For
the first time in her life her father had vacated his throne as
masculine ruler of her thoughts. She had passed into the grip of a
strong, real passion for a man "nobody" knew.
That is to say, John Glynn was too hard at work to let himself be found
out. Helen had indulged in her affair with him almost unknown to her
acquaintances, most of whom regarded the foot of the ladder of wealth,
where he distinctly stood, as the one spot where dalliance in sentiment
was to be shunned. Her movements were hampered by the fact that,
although the daughter of a plutocrat, she had only a trifle of her own;
Mr. Carstairs having announced, with the insolent eccentricity of some
men of his stripe, that she should go dowerless to her husband, hoping
thus to protect her from fortune-seekers, foreign and native. So long
as she remained unmarried under his roof she was to enjoy great wealth
and the importance it confers. Until now Helen had not cared. Her brain
was clear, her head was cool, she had tastes and occupations that filled
every hour, and plenty of people who flocked around her, paying court to
the dispenser of liberal hospitalities.
Her love passage had ended in disaster, but exactly what had passed
between her and the unknown Glynn, no one was sufficiently intimate with
Helen to ascertain.
The marriage of her father with Mrs. Coxe had taken place in June, after
which Mr. Carstairs had withdrawn his apparent objections to Newport,
and blossomed out there as a villa resident of supreme importance. The
months of this but partially successful experiment on the part of the
new Mrs. Carstairs had been passed by Helen in suppressed misery. She
had gone into camp in the Adirondacks, had visited friends at Dark
Harbor, and welcomed with thankfulness the invitation to spend September
with a young couple of her acquaintance who had a house at Lenox,
filled, with the exception of one spare room, with assorted dogs.
Early in October her father, visibly inspired by the lady who no longer
giggled in Helen's presence, but had not lost her double chin, gave his
recalcitrant daughter "a good talking to." If she persisted in her
rebellious demeanor towards her stepmother, the more reprehensible
because reserved, she was at liberty to do one of two things, viz., take
a furnished house in town and engage Miss Bleecker, or somebody, to be
her chaperon; or else go where she liked, abroad.
Choosing the latter alternative, Helen had been considered fortunate in
securing for her companion the lady in question, who was certified by
her believers to be rarely disengaged. Miss Bleecker, in earlier days,
had given readings in New York drawing-rooms and elsewhere about the
country, until the gradual fading away of audiences had turned her
thoughts into the present more lucrative and less fatiguing channel of
genteelest occupation.
Nature had gifted her with an ephemerally imposing presence, large,
cold, projecting eyes, an authoritative voice and an excellent knowledge
of the art of dress. It was familiarly said that to see her come into a
room was a lesson to any girl; and her acquaintance with the ins and
outs of New York society and fond pride in the display of it, put the
dull lady beyond criticism as a general conversationalist.
The two travellers were attended by a French maid, closely modelled in
exterior upon previous employers of rank abroad, whose service she had
relinquished for the higher wage resulting from her American decadence
in social standing. Her large wad of suspiciously golden hair, frizzed
over the eyebrows, was a souvenir of a "Lady Reggie"; while the flat
waist, girdled low upon the hips of a portly person, was her best
tribute to the slim young Princess Bartolozzi who had had her two years
in Rome. This composite rendering of great ladies did not rob
Mademoiselle Eulalie of the coarse modelling of her features; but, on
the other hand, as Miss Bleecker said, she was safe from couriers, and
her packing was a dream.
When Helen went to the cabin de luxe secured by her father's secretary,
into which Miss Bleecker's room opened, she felt impatient with the
girls who followed her, exclaiming approvingly over its comforts; with
the maid who stood sentinel by her gold-fitted dressing-case; with Miss
Bleecker, who, in colloquy with a white-capped stewardess, was already
laying down the law as to their requirements on the voyage. She hurried
out again, encompassed by her friends, to gain the upper deck, where the
men of the visiting party, looking unanimously bored, awaited anxiously
the ringing of the last gong that should drive them from the ship. All
had been said that could be said on either side. Vague repetitions had
set in. Helen's eyes roved eagerly over the crowds on the pier below,
over the congested gangway. She was hoping to see her father,
and--perhaps, but improbably--one other. Late in the fray a brougham
rattled along the pier and drew up below. Helen recognized her father's
big brown horse and his steady coachman in sober livery, the down-town
outfit of the financier, who, below Fourteenth Street, was simplicity
itself. Mr. Carstairs, with a preoccupied air, got out and ascended the
gangway. The official in charge at the top of it, who would have barred
the way to a lesser man, smiled and waved the magnate into his
daughter's embraces. Everything insensibly yielded to the subtle power
of this ruler of the destinies of men. Helen, as she drew out of the
lax clasp of the paternal arm, felt a thrill of her old pride in him; a
sense of despair that she was nevermore to be his chosen companion for a
voyage; a sharp pang of resentment at the image of the absent interloper
of their peace.
"It was too good of you to find time to come, papa!" she exclaimed,
turning to nod to the secretary who accompanied him. "Who knows when we
shall be together again!"
"Yes, there is a board of directors waiting for me now," said Mr.
Carstairs abstractedly. "Of course, you will be all right, my dear.
Foster has seen to everything, and Miss Bleecker will--ah. Miss
Bleecker, here you are; glad to see you looking so fit for the voyage.
Nothing to speak of, though, a crossing in this monster. Wish I were
getting away myself. I'm off now, Helen, my dear. Wish you good luck
and a good time generally!"
"It won't be with you and the 'Sans Peur,' father," exclaimed the girl,
with filling eyes.
"Well, well, we did get along pretty well last cruise, didn't we? I was
to tell you," he added, lowering his tone, "that if you are in the humor
for it, in the Spring--in the humor, mind you, we'll be out, probably in
March, and take you and Miss Bleecker on at Villefranche, or anywhere
you like."
"Thank you, sir," said Helen, rigid in a moment, her eyes dried of
moisture.
"Think it over, my dear! You'll find it better worth while."
He kissed her again on the side of the cheek, missing her lips somehow,
and was gone. Helen hardly saw his spare figure in the topcoat that
seemed too large for it, so quickly the crowd closed behind him. She
was conscious of impatience with Foster, who stood there bowing in his
sleek importance as the millionaire's confidential man, extending his
dampish fingers for good-by. The party who had come to see her off
sprinkled their final farewells with a few banal last remarks and
disappeared. Miss Bleecker, serenely proud, took her station by the
taffrail in a place where no acquaintance or reporter could fail to note
her among the "well-known people sailing this morning." Helen was at
last alone.
Alone as she had never felt before, in her five-and-twenty years of
active, independent life. A gap in the double row of passengers
crowding to the rail forward gave her an opportunity. Slipping in, she
looked down upon upturned, ivory-tinted faces massed together like those
on a Chinese screen; at the windows of the company's rooms, also crowded
with gazers, but saw nobody she knew.
Already the mighty ship began to stir in her water-bed. When she ceased
motion again, Helen would be over three thousand miles from home, and
the memories of this last trying year. It seemed to her there was not
one soul ashore to care whether she went or stayed. Was this worth
living for, even as she had lived?
A voice smote upon her ear. It issued from a girl jammed in next to
her--a girl younger than herself, extremely pretty, flashily attired,
recklessly unconventional. Hers was what Helen recognized to be a
Southern voice, low of pitch and soft of cadence, but just now strained
to the utmost to make itself audible to a young man in the act of
forcing his way through the resistant crowd, to reach the edge of the
outer pier from which the ship was now swinging off. To further
accentuate her presence among the departing, the young lady was waving a
small American flag.
"Jo-oh-n! Oh! Mr. Glynn! Look up! Here I am! Up here!"
Helen started electrically, for it was _her_ John Glynn, and none other,
whom this unknown person was thus shamelessly appropriating! He, whom
she had been yearning to catch a glimpse of, who she was convinced must
know from the papers that she was sailing by this steamer. He, who she
had felt sure was in some hidden corner looking after her, although, by
her behest, they might not again hold speech one with the other!
"Got here only this minute. Best I could do!" shouted John Glynn back
to the stranger, a smile lighting his handsome, manly face.
"Never mind! I understand! Good-by!"
A flower shot down amid the crowd. Several men affected to jump for it,
but John Glynn caught it and put it in his coat. His gaze never left
Helen's neighbor; to her his eyes were upturned, his hat was waved. In
a flash, Miss Carstairs had drawn out of sight and fled within.
She found Miss Bleecker already extended upon the couch in her own
stateroom, taking tea, the door opened between, whilst Eulalie, kneeling
before steamer trunks and bags, was littering everything near-by with
luxurious belongings.
Helen accepted a cup of tea, changed her street costume for a long,
close-fitting brown ulster with a sable toque and boa, in which Eulalie
told her she was _parfaitement bien mise_; and, escaping again to the
deck, walked up and down a comparatively clear space until the "Baltic"
was well down the bay. Then, fairly tired, but unwilling to face Miss
Bleecker's chatter, she found a chair forward, where it was not likely
she would sit again during the voyage, and with a wisp of brown chiffon
drawn close over her face, abandoned herself to melancholy thought.
So this was the end of John Glynn's lamenting for her loss! She, not
he, had been faithful to the love they had shared so fondly for a little
while, in which she had no longer dared indulge with him. This was the
way he had accepted her decision that they must try to forget each
other, finally.
During the one week of their secret engagement she had felt immeasurable
happiness. But every moment of closer, contact with her young love, a
boy in world's knowledge beside herself, though of her own age in actual
years, convinced her of the fatal mistake she had made in believing she
could give up her present life for him, and clog his career by an early
marriage. So she had broken the bond ruthlessly, and her father had
never known of its existence. And his consolation so quickly found!
Helen's lip curled disdainfully. Some girl he had met in his
boarding-house; the kind of thing he had been accustomed to before Miss
Carstairs treated her jaded taste to his virile freshness and charming
looks, his masterful reliance upon himself, his willingness to take her,
poor or rich! The type of girl she had seen in the tumultuous moment
beside the rail was puzzling. Not a lady, according to her
artificialized standard, but having the frank assurance and belief in
herself that had attracted Helen to John Glynn, with a something of good
breeding underneath. Cheaply dressed, cheap mannered, perhaps, ignorant
of what Miss Carstairs considered elemental necessities of training, but
never vulgar.
But whatever the rival, the hurt was that Glynn cared for Helen no more,
while she cared just the same. What a fool she had been to believe that
masculine fidelity survives the blows of fate!
Masked in her brown veil, Helen sat in her corner, turning this bitter
morsel upon her tongue, her eyes vaguely resting upon the passing show
of passengers as they came straying up on deck to make the best of a
fine afternoon while getting out to sea. Impatiently casting aside her
unwelcome thoughts, she tried to interest herself in these people, to
speculate upon their identity, purpose, and personality, with the usual
rather poor returns, since a ship's company assembled at first view has
always the most depressing influence upon the looker-on. Beside her,
upon one of the rare seats of a liner that belong to nobody, she espied
a shabby little man, in an overcoat like a faded leaf, drop down
furtively, then seeing no one inclined to disturb him, relax his muscles
and, taking off an ancient, wide-brimmed felt hat, look about him with a
beaming smile, prepared for full enjoyment of the hour and scene.
Something in the artless buoyancy of his manner, his meek acceptance of
a modest place in life, his indifference to the considerations that
oftenest vexed the souls of Miss Carstairs' acquaintances upon making
any sort of public appearance before their fellow-beings, struck her
with an approach to approval. Her glance toward him was met in the same
spirit of prompt return that follows patting upon the head a friendly
dog.
"Beautiful weather we're having to go out in, ma'am," he said. "I'm
kind of glad to settle down in this quiet corner 'n see the last o' my
native land. I reckoned I was in no one's way occupying this little
bench a bit. Because, you see, I've walked and walked, inspecting the
White Star leviathan, everywhere they'd let me set a foot, till I'm
about worn out. Talk about 'seeing New York City'! It's not a patch on
this ship for making a man feel his lower limbs, if you'll excuse the
expression before a lady. Why, she's a wonder, ma'am, a marvel, and
there's literally no end to her. I find myself saying at intervals,
'Thank God, I've lived to cross the Atlantic Ocean, and what's more, to
cross it in a floating Waldorf-Astoria,' for so it looks to me!"
"You are fond of the water, then?" said Helen, surprised at her own
affability, but on the whole too wretched to care for risks.
"Well, ma'am, I've, so to say, some little experience. I resided
formerly in Norfolk, Virginia, and went round to Baltimo, Maryland, on
several trips by sea. Know Baltimo, ma'am? Can't exactly compare it to
New York, I reckon, but still it's a fine city. Celebrated for its
monuments, canvasbacks, and pretty girls, the saying used to be. Worn't
dead stuck on canvasbacks myself, though; got overfed with them on my
father's plantation when I was a lad, preferred bacon and greens any day
in the year. But I'll give in to the praise of Baltimo women to my last
breath. Married one of 'em, in fact, an' if God ever sent an angel into
a man's life, 'twas she."
Miss Carstairs, to her surprise, detected simultaneously with a tender
adoring look coming upon his withered face, a suspicion of moisture in
her interlocutor's eyes. She sat up, felt that here was something so
out of the way as to verge upon impropriety, made a movement to depart,
and finally concluded to remain where she was.
"Yes, ma'am, she was too good for me, or any man. Born among the best,
as the saying is, and I, one of the small potatoes in the heap. 'Tisn't
any wonder I should be thinking of her to-day, the way she wanted all
her life to go to Europe and never dreamed of managing to get there."
"I hope this thought won't spoil your own pleasure in the journey,"
Helen said, embarrassed to find an answer.
"Oh! no, ma'am, no chance of that. Why, she's been with me in spirit
ever since we parted, ten years ago, an' I always feel as if she was
sharing things. She'd need a good deal to make up to her for the
hardships she had with me. You see, I was first leftenant of infantry,
just come out o' the war, 'n 'bout as bare o' money as when I came into
the world, I reckon, when I met her first off in Baltimo, where I was
lookin' for a job. I was bred up as a drug clerk, and so was glad to
take a place in a poor little store, 'n we began life together in one
room of a boarding-house, 'n a hall bedroom at that! She, mind you, was
a general's daughter of the real old Maryland first chop stock, but as
poor as me. After her father was killed at Gettysburg, you see, her
mother went to pickling for a living, 'n 'twas hard work, with two other
daughters on her hands, neither one o' them likely to marry much, being
the kind the Lord makes homely for reasons of His own. My wife, now,
was a beauty, no mistaking her! I never understood how she came to take
up with me, 'n when I asked her why, she said she was just tired o'
pickles, anyway! That was only her fun, ma'am; we had to have a little,
to make the wheels go round. Please excuse me for taking the liberty of
talking so sociably. We Southerners have that way, I reckon, and,
besides, it seemed like my heart was so full of wife to-day, I had to
say something to somebody, or break a trace."
Miss Carstairs hesitated, then gave way to an unusual impulse, arising
as she spoke.
"I must thank you, rather, for having reminded me that all men don't
forget. I am sure you deserved all the happiness you had with her, and
I hope there is a great deal of it still left in life for you."
"Well, now, ma'am, that's beautifully said. But I won't let you go
without knowing that, though I've come to it by a long, hard way, my
luck has turned at last, and the only trouble is that she's not here to
share it. The long years after we moved south to Alabama (where I'd an
opening, and after a while set up for myself), when wife toiled and
moiled for me--when we lost all the children that were born to us, but
the last one--how she used to sit in the evenings and read about English
cathedrals and Stonehenge, and the like! She didn't seem to care so
much about visiting Italy and Paris and the Riviera, but Switzerland
tickled her awfully. She had a picture of Mont Blanc on top of a
work-box. When I think how cheap the post cards are in these days, I do
wish wife could have had a lot to paste in an album that she kept. She
always said I was to take daughter, if we ever got money enough for two
to cross on, and that she would stay at home. And now, the money's
come, enough for all of us, and I'm taking daughter, just as she said,
and we're to see England and she isn't! I tell you, ma'am, things are
sorted out unevenly by our good Lord!"
Miss Carstairs carried into her cabin the wistfulness of the gentle old
face, the irresistible conviction of his honesty. What, in the
beginning, had tempted her to mock, now laid forcible hold of her better
nature, and impelled her to gentler thoughts.
A sharp awakening was the rencounter with Miss Bleecker's apprehensions
as to where she should sit at table, and the effervescence of that
lady's regrets that the parties with whom she had counted upon being
included, were all "made up." Helen recalled previous voyages under the
aegis of her distinguished father, where their table was the one most
desired by social pretenders, with its _plats_ and wines served from his
private stores, its aura of plutocratic exclusiveness in which revolved
obsequious stewards! She winced at thought of glory fled, but while
Miss Bleecker enlarged upon the neglect of the secretary, Foster, in not
having arranged this matter for them, reflected bitterly that Foster,
trimming his sails to the wind of Fortune, was now the devotee of the
new Mrs. Carstairs' whims, and unless especially ordered so to do, would
be likely to make no effort for the rebellious stepdaughter's
advancement.
Affecting indifference to the detail in question, she found herself at
dinner assigned to a small table in one corner of the saloon, of which
five of the nine seats were already filled, when Miss Bleecker,
sparkling intermittently in jet, sailed ahead of her charge, and
motioned Helen into place beside her. A steward, who had identified the
ladies, came hurrying to overtake them, and express his hope that Miss
Carstairs would be satisfied with his selection for her, assuring her,
in a whisper, that he had taken every care that she should have only the
"best" people as her comrades.
Helen, who had not yet sat down, smiled at the reassuring promise. The
whisper, overheard by two of the gentlemen unfolding their napkins
opposite, produced an answering smile. Impossible to resist a voucher
so bestowed! Simultaneously the two men arose and stood till Miss
Carstairs had taken her revolving chair and was safely installed beside
her chaperon. The table was now complete, save for the seat at the end
and that at its right adjoining Helen's.
Soup had hardly been placed before them when the intended occupants of
the vacant places resolved themselves into a couple, at sight of whom a
cold tremor passed into Miss Carstairs' limbs--for they were none other
than the mild little man with whom she had been talking on the deck, and
the girl who had thrown John Glynn a flower!
The old fellow had made scant preparation for the ceremonial meal of the
day on shipboard. His kind face shone with soap and water, while a thin
lock of gray hair was laboriously trained by the same medium over his
bald crown. His mustard-colored "tourist suit" of tweed, the red tie
and rumpled cheviot shirt, might, indeed, have served a noble earl upon
his travels through an American drawing-room; but whatever the
appearance of her sire, it was at once lost to sight in the radiant
prettiness and extraordinary self-possession of the girl who accompanied
him.
A goddess of liberty in height, with the complexion of a pink-and-white
balsam flower, and rippled hair of gold worn parted in the middle and
extending outward in exaggerated wings; her admirable young form was
attired in cheap China silk of an azure tint incorporating
transparencies of white lace that revealed a dazzling neck and arms.
Decked with profuse jewelry of the inexpensive sort, she stood for a
moment where the rest of the company could fully profit by the
apparition before it went into eclipse in her allotted seat!
The attention of their table, hitherto indirectly converging upon the
fine lines and _pate tendre_ coloring of Miss Carstairs, now shifted its
focus to a point not to be forsaken for the remainder of the voyage (an
example promptly to be followed by the rest of the passengers, the
officers and personnel of the big ship in general). The newcomer
possessed, in spite of her extreme youth, the manner of some histrionic
star who has the conscience of her calling in producing effects not to
be forfeited by a moment's neglect of opportunity. Her present entrance
had the full effect of a sweep down to the footlights, to pause with one
hand upon the desk from which the heroine is wont to dash off her little
notes to the leading man, whilst reading them aloud to the audience.
But withal, so childlike were her contours, so joyous her appeal for
notice, one felt that her vanity might still be the innocent belief of a
little girl secure of her own interestingness to the public, when she
comes into a roomful of her mother's guests.
All eyes following her movements, the stranger surveyed the saloon
briefly, and spoke to her companion with good-humored authority.
"Just what I told you, Dad. The older gentlemen all sit in the end
seats, and that's the place for you."
"Now, Posey, child," came in audible rejoinder, "none of your nonsense,
but just do as I said, and take the end yourself. Nobody wants to see an
old fossil like me put forward when they can get a nice young lady to
look at. Sit down, right away, and I'll just slip in beside this lady.
Why, ma'am," he added, interrupting himself with a face of glad
recognition in identifying Miss Carstairs, "if it ain't you, and I'm
real pleased to meet up with you again! A needle in a haystack, I was
thinking myself among all these strange folk. And you'll be such prime
company for Posey, here. Let me make you acquainted with my daughter,
Miss Pamela Winstanley, of Alison's Cross Roads, Alabama."
Miss Carstairs inclined her head toward the beaming newcomer, and almost
immediately turned to close converse in an undertone with Miss Bleecker,
who was herself occupied in digesting unpleasant first impressions.
For, after fortifying herself with soup, and ordering a whiskey and soda
for digestion's sake, the chaperon had sent her eagle glance around the
board with this result:
Of the five gentlemen installed before their arrival, two were mentally
labelled, "Hopeless, old, grumpy, no doubt, of no possible use to us."
Another, "A mere larky boy, not knowing him, must keep him down," and
the pair who had arisen and stood at their approach, "An Englishman,
badly bored, good figure, eyes and teeth, has been, or is, in the army;
the Frenchman with him, rather like Mephistopheles, might be amusing,
but will, of course, be sea-sick all the way over. A poor lot, and just
wait till I get at that head steward and find out what he means by it!"
*CHAPTER II*
"My dear Helen, I really may as well tell you at once, that I don't like
your walking alone, in the dark, down on that lower deck that looks
steeragy, where there are no chairs, and the men go to smoke after
dinner."
"Do they? I hadn't noticed," said Helen, indifferently.
She had come into their rooms with a brighter look upon her face, born
of the delicious swoop of salt air upon it, and the sound of that
churning music of the waves with which the sea rewards the good ship
when she takes her ocean crests easily and settles down to her grand
Atlantic stride.
"I lost you, after dinner, when I was sitting on the boat deck with Mrs.
Vereker, hearing all about her daughter's divorce and her son's
appendicitis. No wonder the poor woman goes abroad for a change. And,
really, I'm glad, after all, we are not with them at table, since she
can talk of nothing else, and much as one may feel for a friend's
troubles, it is nicer to hear a little about other people's, too! I was
telling Mrs. Vereker--though, dear me, she hardly lets one speak--how
dreadfully they had served us about the people they put us with, and, my
dear, what do you think? It never does to judge by first appearances at
sea, for as it turns out, Mr. Vereker--who is that kind of a fussing,
Miss Nancyish man, and loves to study the passenger list--has discovered
that every soul at our table, except those dreadful Southerners, has a
title! The one with glasses, who speaks such funny English, is a German
Graf, of a family of fabulous antiquity, who has been to Washington to
see his ambassador about sending one of his sons to learn agriculture in
America. The one who gobbles so, and complains of the draught on his
back, and had the port shut, is Prince Zourikoff, a Russian savant, who
has written a book called 'Etudes sur la cause de la decadence des
peuples.' The saucy boy who went in for a flirtation with that
Winstanley girl, is Mr. Vane, a son of Lord Kennington, whom they sent
to Canada for a year to get him out of mischief at home. The really
interesting person is--who do you suppose?--the man opposite you, Lord
Clandonald, whose story was in all the newspapers a year ago. His wife,
a beautiful Miss Darien, behaved scandalously, yet was so clever in
tricking everybody, it was hard to get the divorce. But he got rid of
her at last, and then went around the world. Doesn't look like a man of
that sort, does he? Rather shy, I should say, and hold-off, but a
splendid figure. The Frenchman is actually the famous Mariol, whose
books are my delight, though he's a wretch the way he writes about
women. He's Clandonald's great chum, and they have been travelling
together."
Helen's face had lighted.
"I know only one or two books of Mariol's--essays principally, but they
are perfect of their kind----"
"I advise you to keep to the essays," said Miss Bleecker, dryly. "He
has an enormous reputation in the literary world, and one likes to meet
them, now and again, if they are not frumps."
"And provided he is not sea-sick," said Helen, smiling.
"In this boat, in an ordinary sea, there'll be no excuse for it. Why,
one hardly knows we are moving. To return to Clandonald, don't you
think people one reads about and hears about are always disappointing?
I don't say there was anything wrong attributed to _him_; they said he
was rather Quixotic in his treatment of the worthless creature, who had
to give up his name and go under. But he is so much like other people.
Nothing to show he was in such a notorious divorce suit--Helen, what are
you smiling at?"
"The thrilling thought that I had M. de Mariol to mix my salad
dressing," replied Miss Carstairs.
"Was it good? I am always careful the first day out. Oh! I must tell
you about those queer Dicks, the Southerners. It seems that Lord and
Lady Channel Fleet came on board at the last minute, and took quite an
ordinary room--that heavy-looking red-faced man and the dowdy woman in
big turquoise earrings, who sat at the captain's table--they had to have
those two seats, so the Winstanleys were transferred to us. If we had
only secured the Channel Fleets, we should have been so complete!
Perhaps they and Clandonald don't speak, though, and the captain found
it out, or the purser, who always hears all the gossip. At any rate,
we've got to put up with the Winstanleys, and I'll give you my frank
opinion, Helen, that before this voyage is over we'll have cause to rue
the day when we laid eyes on them. The old man is simply too absurd.
Treats her as if she were a princess and he her courier. How you could
stand his babbling in your ear, I can't imagine. But she! she! The
worst specimen of the travelling American who makes one blush for one's
country when abroad."
"One must own to her good looks," Helen interpolated bravely.
Miss Bleecker snorted.
"My dear, that is unworthy of you. A Twenty-third Street shop-girl
would be ashamed to do her hair like that; and her frock--bought in
stock, and fitted in half a day, probably. But even that doesn't count
beside her phenomenal assurance and self-conceit. Fancy now, her
addressing a remark to me, before I had spoken to her. I never heard
such a string of words from a young person in my life, and to take it
upon her to entertain the whole table! It really silenced me. One
comfort is that everybody will put her down as I did, and sooner or
later she'll be left severely to herself."
"I noticed that Lord Clandonald and M. de Mariol seemed much amused, and
the others couldn't keep their eyes from her," said truthful Helen, who
had her own cause for blank wonderment at the further development of
John Glynn's acquaintances.
"Oh! that is the provoking part of men," answered Miss Bleecker, tossing
her head; "give them a pretty face and a forward manner, and they'll
pretend to be entertained. I'm very sorry, Helen, but if that girl
doesn't take my hint and tone down a great deal, I shall be under the
necessity of making a complaint about our seats. It isn't possible the
line wouldn't wish to place your father's daughter at least
_respectably_ at table. These Winstanleys are, in my opinion, most
suspicious people, and I have asked Mr. Vereker to make very particular
inquiries and find out if I am not right. He says that when she came
into the saloon, every neck on our side was stretched looking after her,
and he quite agrees with me--no, Mrs. Vereker agreed with me, her
husband was weak enough to say what were the odds when a girl is so
deuced pretty--that there must be something wrong."
The latter part of Miss Bleecker's monologue was spoken to space, since
Miss Carstairs, melting away into her own room, had closed the door
between them.
Helen found Mlle. Eulalie sitting on the foot of the cane settee,
comfortably warming her toes at a small apparatus of shining brass,
which, with its red lamp inside, presented a fair semblance of the
forsaken fires of home. Upon the bed lay her own satin quilt, her own
pillows of embroidered linen were prepared invitingly, her peignoir
billowed across the couch. Upon every side gleamed and glittered the
little objects of cut-glass, tortoise-shell and gold which she had
heaped in the balance against John Glynn's love, along with a hundred
other manifestations of the outward and visible signs of a solvent
existence. To-night she was strangely repelled by them. She made a
motion to go out again into the half darkness of that same deserted
lower deck, where she could walk to the rush of the wind and the
inspiriting swish of the water. She wanted to be alone with her
thoughts, to bid a last good-by to the love she had known for a little
happy while. Then the image of Miss Posey Winstanley, with her assured
smile and undaunted self-satisfaction, came to her with a new shock,
and, turning back, she let Eulalie take off her dress and brush her
hair, surrendering herself inertly to the warmth and perfume of
materialism, and trying to think she was better so.
Far into the night Helen lay, physically at rest, inhaling the pure air
from her open window, feeling the gentle uplift of the sea as the huge
bulk of the ship faintly answered to its impulse, listening to the bells
challenging one another from afar, but she could not sleep. Tirelessly
her memory went over every incident of her acquaintanceship with Glynn,
and of the virtual break with her father since the terrible substitution
of the woman she suspected into her old place at home. To the last she
had kept a brave front, and no one should ever know what this past year
had cost her. She was leaving America, without temptation to return.
The secret glimmering hope that had kept alight within her, that some
day John Glynn and she might come together again, was now finally
extinguished. It was as if a new era of life were opening, and the
question was, how best should she shape it?
For the twentieth time Miss Carstairs had come around to the knottiest
problem of all those that kept her wakeful in her giant cradle of the
sea. She was wondering how duty and dignity might combine to inspire
her action toward her successor in Glynn's affections. Her chief
apprehension regarding Pamela Winstanley, was that John Glynn should
have made her ever so little aware of that prior bond. A cold terror
had possessed her at thought of the exuberant creature sharing or even
suspecting her sacred secret. But in the girl's helter-skelter attempts
at speech with every one at table, she had given no hint that she had
previously heard of Miss Carstairs. Helen could only hope that Glynn's
name would never come up between them. And, at this point, a soft,
swabbing sound and the tread of muffled feet upon the deck beneath her
window, gave notice that the sailors were at their early morning tasks.
The weird, self-pitying note of the parrot in a cabin hard by seemed to
grow fainter and more dreamlike. Turning wearily upon her pillows, she
let sleep take her into its merciful embrace.
"Certainly, Mariol, you have found your American types ready to hand
upon this voyage," Lord Clandonald was saying, as the two men walked up
and down with their cigars upon the deck decried by Miss Carstairs'
chaperon. "The most obvious one is, of course, the astonishing young
person who aroused us from the spiritual lethargy of a first meal at
sea, when one is always on guard not to be too accessible."
"She is like one of those Eastern shops, where everything is in the
window," Mariol answered. "But adorably fresh and naive and pretty. No
other continent could produce her than the wide and liberal one we are
just quitting."
"Might we but keep her to ourselves!" said Clandonald, mockingly. "But
I foresee that she will be the wonder and the joy of the entire ship's
company on our run over. And the mild old boy who retires into the
background to give his Wonder every chance! I rather like the old boy, I
think."
"My own taste would be for the young lady who is protected by Buddha
reincarnate, in the person of the disapproving chaperon. Her beauty is
rarer, more subtle, than the other's; she is clearly of the _fine fleur_
of the American aristocracy of dollars. I suspect a Colonial ancestor
somewhere, and you observed that the chaperon did not disdain us too
much, to let fall a hint or two concerning the custom of splendor in her
charge's life. When they find you out, Clandonald, I'll wager the sun
will promptly shine between the clouds for you."
"The old woman is in the apologetic stage for America, and that's enough
to give me a strong disgust for her. Let them be anything that's real,
and I'm ready to meet Americans 'hands across the sea.' But the ones
that affect to decry their nationality, to convince us that they are of
a small, segregated class that stand on higher ground than the rest, are
abhorrent to me. Clearly, Buddha's protegee belongs to that class? and
will not tarry to let us become aware of it."
"Grant that my Mdlle. Helene--for I don't know her other name--is both
beautiful and finely bred, and I will abandon you the rest of her
sisterhood. She is full of an exquisite intellectuality, but it would
not prevent her loving if her heart were awakened--and if I am not
mistaken, it has already been awakened. Imagine a young girl, _chez
nous_, with that expression in her eyes, and yet that delicate restraint
of manner. I should like to know the fair Helene's history."
"That you might dissect her with admirable grace in a feuilleton that
_tout Paris_ would read and applaud--and--forget her the next hour, in a
new enthusiasm."
"Better to possess all the enthusiasms than none, old chap. I am really
in despair over your failure to be aroused by the infinite variety of
the diversions offered to you in this journey of ours that, alas! must
end too soon."
"There is one pleasure that has never palled on me, and that is the
society of my travelling companion. You are the ideal one in many
respects, Mariol; but if I could point out one virtue more than another
that distinguishes you in that character, it is the letting a man enjoy
all his bad humors, his fads, his follies, if you will, unchecked and
unbridled. I have sometimes basely suspected you of sacrificing me in
order to make copy of my infirmities. But, at any rate, I have enjoyed
blessed liberty, and, whatever the result, I have profited by the
semblance of a perfect tact and consideration."
"A roundabout way of warning me not to intrude my advice upon you now.
But seriously, Clandonald, and at any risk, I must tell you that you
need rousing. That past of yours, unsavory as it was through no fault
of yours, has been long enough decently interred for you to forget it,
and to recreate your life's happiness. One can't be sore always, any
more than we can love always, or mourn always. And you, of all men the
one best fitted to wear the yoke of your staid British virtues, to serve
your country and your king at home, to be a model landlord, a husband
and a paterfamilias, _comme il y en a peu_! For heaven's sake, accept
the blessed opportunity of your present freedom, and make up for that
wretched first mistake. You aren't happy, you have no ambition, no
purpose, no zest in living. Get yourself a wife."
"This from Mariol, the scoffer, the celibate! My dear fellow, I forgive
you your trespass upon forbidden ground, because I know you are sincere.
But you forget one small, important fact. The person who bore my name,
and her various works of evil, have so depleted my finances that, had I
the courage, I haven't the wherewithal to hawk my wares in the marriage
mart. I wonder if you know what it costs to keep a Lady Clandonald in
the enjoyment of the domestic atmosphere of which you speak. I know to
my cost. Unless she were a beautiful savage, content to retire with me
to one of those isles of the South Sea poor Louis Stevenson idealized, I
couldn't even give her a season in town, or a trip to Paris or Homburg,
much less races, and all the bridge a woman needs; and so there'd be the
devil to pay, you see. If she would set up a bonnet-shop, or a place for
horribly dear frocks, and keep me on the proceeds--! but otherwise, I'm
as poor as a rat, Mariol, and haven't your resources, or royalties,
remember."
"A small matter, my dear lad, with the ever-continuing flood of American
dollars pouring from West to East through the facile clasp of the fair
beings by whom we are presently surrounded. And you would not run great
risks. There is this to be said for them, that American ladies rarely
degenerate into either bores, dupes or pieces of household machinery:
'Le familier vulgaire, utile et sans bouquet, comme le vin qu'on boit
avec l'eau.' They progress with the epoch and the civilization that
claim them. Take--as a matter of illustration merely--either of the two
young women who grace our board."
"As a matter of illustration, merely," answered Clandonald, laughing,
"I'd prefer to take the sweet child of nature, combining, with the
vulgarity of a powdered nose, the eyes of an intelligent cherub recently
short-coated."
"As you please," said Mariol, arching his brows resignedly. "My choice
for you would have been the fine-grained daughter of the Puritans with
hair the color of a hazelnut, the flat, straight back, and resolute
figure gowned by Paquin. I dare say both ladies are accessible to what
you have to offer them, or that either would soon fit into place in the
long walk at Beaumanoir, among those strutting white peacocks against a
background of clipped yews and sun-warmed ancient brick. No American
girl could resist that walk and those white peacocks, Clandonald, take
my word for it."
"Then marry one yourself, and I'll let the place to you for a song."
"I have still to see Tibet," answered the other, stopping to light a
fresh cigar.
Their talk ended in a discussion wide afield from the subject with which
it had begun. But when Mariol turned in, it was with a throb of secret
satisfaction that he had been able, in the darkness, and apparently _a
l'improviste_, to wing in the direction of his friend a shaft he had
long held in reserve for him.
He had been with Clandonald, side by side, wading through the miserable
mire of his divorce case, and rejoiced when he saw him rid for ever of
the creature who had dragged him down. The two men had met first in
South Africa, while Clandonald was lying ill of enteric, and Mariol,
coming upon him by accident in the course of his own explorations for
observation and adventure at the seat of war, had nursed him with the
gentleness and devotion of a woman, until he was out of danger and ready
for the voyage home. During his first convalescence, Clandonald had
received the plainly unwelcome news of his wife's intended journey out,
"to look after her dear old boy." The arrival of her errant ladyship,
followed by the untoward discovery of her real motives in making this
heroic effort, and the hardly concealed scandal of her companionship on
the voyage, precipitated a relapse of Clandonald's malady, and the
ultimate severance, some two years later, of his heavy marriage bond,
borne during the lifetime of a boy who died through her neglect.