necessary to rouse up nodding Miss Bleecker, and collect woful Eulalie,
with her bags and bundles, Helen and he rose simultaneously, with a
shiver of apprehension.
"This is the last time, John?"
"The last time, Helen--_darling_," he said, in a hoarse undertone of
yearning tenderness.
Their hands met and strained together. Her eyes answered his, and he
did not again doubt.
"It has been all one great, terrible mistake," she went on, more
steadily. "We have got to meet, if you stay here, and after this
there's to be no more weakness, remember! We'll be pretty poor stuff if
we can't conquer ourselves, don't you think so?"
Hers was the last word, for Miss Bleecker, tottering like a
somnambulist, issued forth to interrupt them. Helen and she were
assisted out of the train by Glynn, and placed in custody of their
hotel's station-porter. A moment more, the ladies were in the 'bus
alone, threading the back streets of the sleepy little town, to ascend
the hill to a stately hostelry, where their arrival was the signal for a
theatrical effect of house-porters in scarlet jackets issuing from a
brilliantly lighted entrance around which roses and bougainvillea
twined.
"Really, Helen," observed Miss Bleecker, whose good-humor returned as
she looked complacently around their pretty suite of rooms, where lights
and flowers and a small fire of olive-wood combined to make the
travellers forget their woes. "I must say they have done very well for
us. I believe we shall be comfortable here until the yacht arrives.
And how delightful it is to think you sent that cable, yesterday,
consenting to join your dear father and his wife. When you lay your
head on your pillow, every night after this, you will sleep more sweetly
with the thought of having--why, child, you're white as a ghost! I
suppose you're a little train-sick, after the shaking-up we got. It was
too bad your having to sit out on that wretched little camp-stool, but
you seemed to get along well enough with Mr. Glynn, and there wasn't an
inch left in Countess de Saint Eustache's compartment. Do you know, she
told me the whole story, from beginning to end, of Kate Ravenel's
unfortunate marriage with the Marquis de Contour. My dear, he is an
absolute decadent! And to think how the Ravenels bought and paid for
him in hard cash, and how wretchedly they were sold in the transaction!
By the way, the Countess knows our friend, M. de Mariol, intimately, and
says that for people to get him to their dinners or country houses is
the greatest feather in their caps! He is _de tout_, she assures me,
which, of course, makes one enjoy his writings so much more. I hope we
shall certainly meet him again. Helen, speaking of young Glynn, if ever
a man was born with a gold spoon in his mouth, it's he. To be marrying
Mr. Winstanley's only child, and they having gone up like a house afire!
The Countess says the Winstanleys have been floated here by Lady
Campstown, and already know everybody, and are much liked. It seems
they have one of the most desirable villas, own a smart motor, the girl
has no end of stunning gowns--you remember they showed us at Worth's the
evening frocks they were sending down to her--and will soon be
entertaining lavishly. The question is, where did Lady Campstown pick
her up? We must call on both of them to-morrow. I am all anxiety to
meet dear Lady Campstown again, and I confess I am anxious to get a peep
inside Villa Reine des Fees."
"I fancy you will find Miss Winstanley changed in many respects, Miss
Bleecker," said Helen, wearily. "But it seems to me hardly probable she
has lost her high spirit in this little time. And she _may_ remember
your conduct to her on shipboard."
"Nonsense, my dear!" answered the chaperon, complacently. "As we live
now, it is always easy and generally convenient to forget. The girl,
for all her barbarisms, seemed to have a level head. She will be
charmed to see us, and so will Lady Campstown, who had set her heart
upon marrying you to that nephew of hers, Clandonald. If it were not
for young Glynn, I should imagine that the Lady Campstown had gone off
on another tack in her heiress cruise. Looks like it, don't you think?
If Miss Winstanley hasn't told her of her engagement to Glynn, there'll
be a pretty row on presently. We'll call, at any rate. I am glad to
hear Mr. Winstanley is no worse, and may be counted upon to recover
permanently from this attack. I wonder if he likes being read aloud to,
Helen? To show that I bear no ill-will to the girl for her pertness to
me, I'd just as soon offer to sit with him, sometimes. I was always
said to have great success with invalids. And we'd better be prompt in
looking them up, for who knows whether this is really a business trip of
Glynn's? I should be much inclined to think he has run over to look
after his heiress, and see that she does not slip through his fingers,
with all these fine people with titles hanging around her. Glynn looks
like a positive, if not self-willed, fellow, Helen. Indeed, I shouldn't
in the least wonder if the business pretext is a blind, and _M. le
fiance_ won't go back to America without his bride. In that case, we
shall have a smart wedding at Cannes, and poor Mr. Winstanley will be
left all to himself at Villa Reine des Fees. They say there is nothing
like that entrance hall and staircase in the town, all marbles of the
rarest and most beautiful colors; and the dining-room, with its wall
tapestries and screens, is fit for a palace. Poor Mr. Winstanley! There
is nothing so sad in life as a person of--well, middle age--left alone
by young people for whom he has done everything. There should be some
congenial and sympathetic soul to--poor Mr. Winstanley!"
*CHAPTER VIII*
"Come a little way down this walk, John," Posey said, the morning after
her lover's arrival, while engaged in showing him the place, "and you
will see exactly where the woman was sitting yesterday, when she got up
and spoke to me in that dreadful way. I never dare tell my father, and
it would worry dear Lady Campstown out of her wits to think any
suspicious outsider had been seen lurking about the grounds. I rather
fancied this person was out of her head, and so, when she vanished
abruptly, I just told the gardener that a doubtful-looking stranger had
been in the garden, and his men must be on the watch to see that it
doesn't occur again."
"Quite right," said Glynn. "I dare say you won't hear of her any more.
What sort of a lunatic was she? Young or old, smart or shabby,
English-speaking or foreign?"
"Oh! English decidedly, with one of their lovely low voices, from the
throat. A lady, I suppose, one would call her, but shabby and deadly
pale with glittering brown eyes, and lips with no color. I should think
she took morphine, or some of those horrid things. Her clothes had been
handsome once, but were put on in a slovenly way."
"Probably some poor soul here for her health, who had escaped from her
caretakers. Certainly, you can have no enemies, my dear girl?"
"I didn't think so," answered Posey, flushing, "until I received a
number of anonymous letters on shipboard, and several afterward. Then
they stopped suddenly."
"Do you mind telling me their drift?"
Posey's cheeks became crimson, but she looked him bravely in the face.
"They were all full of lying things against me and the man I told you I
met at sea--and have never seen or heard from since."
"Thank you, dear," said Glynn, simply. "We have both need of
consideration for each other, and I trust you thoroughly. But this
gives me an idea. You say the morphine lady told you she had a favor to
ask of you----"
"Yes, but before she could get further, the gardener's man came in
sight, and she took flight. She said that I was luckier than she, since
I could buy my peace, and she'd advise me not to hold back now when I'd
a chance to do so."
"That's blackmail, not insanity. The woman has probably spent her last
sou at Monte Carlo, and reading about you in the papers, thinks you're a
good object to attack for funds."
"It's no use, John. I can't tell half a thing, to save my life,"
exclaimed the girl, desperately. "At the moment she ran down that alley
of laurustinus, she called back, 'You can't expect your friend, Lord
Clandonald to pay all, and you nothing, to shut mouths.'"
Glynn walked beside her in moody silence. The matter was worse than he
had feared. To find Posey in the toils of an obnoxious scheme for
torment and money-getting, was more than annoying. He justly considered
that it was paying too high for her successes, her magnificent
establishment in life. For the moment it blotted out the blue of sky
and blurred the exquisite beauty of their surroundings.
He had, like everybody else, heard of Clandonald and his matrimonial
infelicities, his divorce, and his visit to the States. A strong
resentment took possession of the young American at the idea that this
Briton, battered by foul tongues and associations, should be the one
who, even for a--moment, had won Posey's allegiance away from himself.
"You are angry. I knew you would be," she burst out finally. "I at
first thought of telling Lady Campstown, and asking her advice. But
Lord Clandonald is her nephew, almost her son, and I was ashamed. She
has not the faintest idea there was ever anything between us."
"Between you? What can you mean?" wrathfully demanded Glynn, whose
merit was never that of tolerance.
"I don't know myself. It was all so sudden, and passed so quickly. He
used to come and talk and walk with me upon the ship. I began by being
sorry for him, because his life had been so spoiled. He never said a
word of flattery or silly talk like the others. He seemed to me a man."
"Well, go on, please," said Glynn, curtly.
"One evening when that old wretch Mr. Vereker tried to kiss me out on
deck----"
"What!" thundered Glynn, his brows meeting, his eyes darting ire upon
her.
"He didn't do it, John; just missed the tip of my ear, and I hit him in
the face. I ran away to Miss Carstairs and Lord Clandonald, and told
them, or rather didn't tell them--they understood. Clandonald looked
just as you do now, and put himself in front of me, and I was so glad to
be protected, when all the ship was saying mean, spiteful things of me,
that for a little while I thought I must be in love with Lord
Clandonald----"
"This alone is worth crossing the ocean to hear," commented Glynn with
bitter sarcasm.
"Well, you know I told you of it at the time. It was a perfectly
hopeless thing, anyhow. Even if you hadn't been there, I couldn't marry
a divorced man whose wife is living. It's just one of those fashionable
habits that doesn't happen to appeal to me."
"Posey, you are unconquerable," he said, a gleam of amusement coming
into his eyes.
"You might as well hear all the rest. After I had those nasty letters, I
kept away from him and got daddy to give up London, because I'd promised
we would go down to lunch at Beaumanoir, his home. It was my first and
last chance at an English ancestral mansion, I reckon. The last night
aboard, when we were at anchor near Liverpool, in a fog, daddy and I met
him, by accident, on deck. Dear old dad, who can't be made to suspect
anybody, would run off after his letter of credit, that he'd packed in a
steamer coat and almost sent ashore. I was left with Lord Clandonald.
I tell you, John, you couldn't have treated me better than he did then.
There was one little minute when I was scared, though. He was furious
when I told him of the anonymous letters. He said there was only one
who could have done it, but how, in God's name, did she get upon that
ship? And then he asked me to let him stand between me and all such
people always----"
"You let him ask you that?"
"John, you know when a man and a girl are together things get said that
they never dreamed of saying. I knew like a shot I ought to have told
Clandonald about you before. But how could I introduce the subject in
cold blood----"
"I am afraid it was cold blood," interpolated John ruefully.
"Well, you couldn't expect me to thrill and tremble, and all those
things they do in novels, when I'd said yes in a telephone booth, and
never seen you after. I tried to, John. Honestly, I did, but it wasn't
the least use."
Glynn would have been more than mortal not to laugh at her look of
humble apology.
"Ah! well, Posey dear, I'll not be hard on you. But tell me, please,
what further passed between you and Lord Clandonald?"
"Absolutely nothing. All I could do was to turn the conversation away
from him and me. I couldn't find the least little way to bring you into
it, or to say, 'Unhand me, sir, my heart and faith are another's,' since
his hands were in his pockets and mine in my muff, and we were both
saturated with Channel fog. I just thanked him for all his kindness to
me on the voyage, and told him what's true, that I'd never forget it;
though, if he ever met me again I'd probably be a very different sort of
Posey Winstanley. And then he calmed down, and it was all over forever,
and I ran away to see if daddy had found his letter of
credit--and--and--I've never seen or heard from Clandonald since."
"Posey, you are a child still, a charming child, and I love you for it,
dear."
"It's awfully good of you, John, and the greatest possible relief. If
you knew what a double-faced sort of thing I've felt myself to be all
these months, remembering that I'd let another man almost propose to me,
when I had given you my word of honor--there's one thing I'd like to ask
before we've done with the subject, though. What does it mean when a
person is by you and you'd give, oh! _anything_ if they wouldn't go
away?"
John started genuinely. A vision flashed to him of those blessed
maddening hours in the train the day before, when Helen and he had sat
together, and he jealously begrudged every revolution of the iron wheels
that, without mercy, carried them toward their parting.
"I don't know, Posey," he murmured guiltily. "Why in the world do you
ask me that?"
"Because I thought you would tell me, honestly," said she, with a
speculative expression. "It has bothered me often, wondering. But it
doesn't matter. Now you are here, everything seems straight and clear
before me. Shall I ever forget daddy's rapturous old face when he sat
by your supper-tray at the library table, last night, forcing you to eat
indigestible food, and looking from one to the other of us?"
"But he has aged, dear," said Glynn, with a twinge of pain. "One sees
the spirit in his face above the flesh. We must never let him know care
or trouble again, little girl. We must strengthen his arms, one on
either side of him, and make him walk easily through life."
"How beautifully you talk, John!" cried she. "Ah! No Englishman could
ever have felt that way toward my daddy. No other man could give him
what you do. Yes, you are right. It's our life-work to put him between
us, and look out for him every day."
"And to do so," went on Glynn resolutely, "we should marry soon."
Posey started visibly.
"Must we, John? Oh! I hadn't thought of that."
"Is the idea a pain to you?"
"Perhaps. I don't know. I've always put it out of my mind when it
weighed on me. Daddy gave me a year, John," she added pleadingly. "And
the year began in October. This is only February. We're all so happy as
we are."
Happy! Again that clutch of iron upon Glynn's heartstrings!
"Happiness will come more fully and freely, my sweetheart," he said,
striving for words, "when we have put his heart's desire beyond all
chance. I think you will both have to come back with me to America this
Spring, if I'm to serve his interests as I should. Let me take my wife
with me, Posey."
"What, _now_?" she cried, with wide-open, panic-stricken eyes. "Oh!
goodness gracious, I hope not now!"
"I am due again in New York almost immediately, but will be free to
return the beginning of next month, or a little later. By that time the
heat will be sending you away from the Riviera, and would it not be best
for us to be married very quietly here, and let Mr. Winstanley's son and
daughter take care of him upon the voyage?"
"A wedding here? What a funny idea!" cried Posey. "Not a girl I know
to ask as bridesmaid--at least, the only one I'd want would be Helen
Carstairs, who has just arrived in Cannes, and I don't know about her.
Perhaps she mightn't wish; but she was _too dear_ to me, John, on
shipboard, as I wrote you. By the way, you didn't seem to take the
least interest in my friendship with Helen, and yet it has done me a
world of good. Not a girly-girly affair in the least, I assure you.
We'd both have scorned that. She has written to me several times, and I
was simply wild with pleasure to hear she was coming down to Cannes. I
think if you'd realized what Helen is, John, at least what she is to me,
you'd not have been so indifferent. I must tell you the truth, I was
really quite hurt with you. But you'll meet here, and then you'll see
for yourself, and end by adoring her as I do--oh, John," she exclaimed,
interrupting her light chatter with an exclamation of terror, "there's
that woman now!"
"What woman, Posey?" he asked, bewildered at her rapid change of
subject.
"Hush! The one I told you of, who frightened me yesterday--the mad
woman. Don't turn suddenly, but, after a second, look between those two
lemon trees. She just glided past as we were speaking, down the walk
from Villa Julia, and is hiding behind the shrubbery. She's waiting for
me, John. This is getting terrible!"
"She shall have _me_," said Glynn grimly, his senses alert in a moment
to the danger Posey ran.
"Don't make a scene with her--don't alarm daddy," she went on.
"Trust me," he answered briefly. "Do you go into the house, and stay
there till I come. Say nothing to any one, and I'll rid you of your
nightmare."
As Posey mutely obeyed him, albeit with a blanched face, Clandonald's
saying came into Glynn's mind, "There's but one woman who would do this
thing." Verily, Glynn would not have to go far to find her.
She arose from her bench as he approached--evidently badly scared. A
man of his years and vigor and mastery of the situation had not entered
into her calculations of this experience.
"You look surprised at seeing me here," she said rapidly, with perfectly
well-bred ease. "I suppose it is trespass, but the villa had been so
long unoccupied, we had got into the way of running into the garden from
my aunt, Lady Campstown's, whose house is across the lane yonder."
He was for a moment thrown off his guard and bowed, acquiescing, as any
gentleman would have done.
"However, I am just going," she added. "The little green door is very
familiar to me, I assure you."
"Might I delay you one moment," he said courteously, "to ask what can be
your motive in annoying and threatening the young lady of this house? I
ask in her father's name, and we wish you to know that this must be
absolutely the last time that you come into these grounds."
"What difference does it make?" she asked fretfully, throwing out her
hands with a weary gesture and losing her self-control. "I can always
reach her, somehow. She has not done with me yet, I can tell her.
Unless," she added, with a low, meaning laugh, "her friends are ready to
make it well worth my while to disappear."`
"You will not find her friends unwilling to aid in that desirable
result. But I have first to know your motive in annoying her so
cruelly."
"Call it rivalry, call it revenge," she said, with a shrug. "Either one
of these causes is strong enough. She is, if you must know, the only
woman I ever feared could take my place in my late husband's
life--permanently, I mean," she added, with an ugly smile.
"I take it that I am speaking to Lord Clandonald's divorced wife?"
"Really, my good sir, you give yourself, or rather Miss Winstanley,
'away,' as they say in the vernacular of your richly-gifted country. You
are evidently well-informed of the progress of that immaculate young
lady's affair with Clandonald--continued on shipboard doubtless from
America, and who knows when and where since?"
"The young lady, whose name I forbid you to mention here," cried Glynn,
with a darkened countenance, "met the gentleman in question on shipboard
for the first time, as she did twenty others, and has never seen or
communicated with him since."
"She has convinced you of that fact--then rumor is right for once, and
there is a confiding fiance from America? After all, yours is a younger
civilization than ours, and you still believe in your girls?"
Glynn interrupted her. He had got all he wanted from Ruby Darien.
She had been a striking beauty, had, even now, a certain reckless grace
of manner. Her face was as Posey had described it. He read there
untruth, degradation of moral fibre, and the ravage of disease and
drugs. There was no use in dealing with her in heroics. Money would buy
her, and money she should have.
"If Miss Winstanley's friends agree to make it worth your
while--substantially worth your while" (her eyes glittered) "to keep at
a distance from her, never again to approach her in deed or speech, at
the risk of forfeiting a monthly allowance of say--" (here he mentioned
a sum which caused Ruby Darien's haggard face to flush high with
covetous delight)--"it will certainly not be without an understanding on
their part of how you contrived to present yourself through Lady
Campstown's premises without identification by her servants."
"That was a small matter," she said eagerly. "Although my respected
aunt-in-law has long since instructed her staff not to admit me to her
presence, there remains in her employ a child of nature, an untutored
Provencal housemaid, who in former days chose to idealize me, and even
now would do anything reasonably atrocious at my bidding. She it was who
contrived to let me in from the lane, to which a cab from the station
brought me up the hill. I should tell you that I am stopping
temporarily at Nice, in an hotel where they accept me without questions,
but which has proved, alas, too fatally convenient to Monte Carlo!"
"Then, if you will allow me, I will myself see you into another cab for
your return. There is a station for carriages at no great distance down
the road from here. To-morrow I will present myself at your hotel in
Nice, with the necessary papers insuring to you the allowance I named,
and an agreement, which I shall in return ask you to sign, pledging
yourself to keep your side of the bargain."
"American promptitude in business is proverbial," she said, essaying an
easy laugh, and darting a side glance, not unmixed with admiration, upon
her interlocutor. "How nice it must be to be disgustingly rich as all
you Yankees are; to be able to confound the politics and frustrate the
knavish tricks of your enemies by the prompt administration of hard
cash! I always thought that if I'd had money enough to be good on, I
might have graduated as a saint."
When Glynn walked up the steps at Reine des Fees, feeling a mixture of
disgust and pride in his victory achieved, Posey ran out to meet him,
slipping her arm in his.
"You've triumphed, I see. Oh! John, dear, what daddy needs is a real
son like you, and I, just such a brother. Don't tell me anything about
that horrid creature now, let's be happy for a while. Let us speak of
something as far from her as one pole of earth is from the other--of
dear Helen Carstairs, whose card I found on the hall table when I went
in after leaving you. If it hadn't been that I was with you, I'd have
begrudged missing her for anybody's sake. Of course the stupid servants
said I was not at home. Now, why couldn't they have shown her into the
garden, and then she could have been introduced to you, and how nice
that would have been! The two people of all others I most admire, and
shall expect and insist upon being friends with each other! Say, John,
to please me that you are longing to meet Helen!"
"Posey," began Glynn, and his voice to his own ears sounded unnaturally
thin, "I have been waiting a chance to tell you that I have known Miss
Carstairs; that I ran upon her by chance at the Gare de Lyons yesterday,
just as the train for the South had started. That we were, in fact,
companions in the same compartment, and talked of you together, more
than once, during our day's run."
"You! Helen! Wonders will never cease!" cried the girl exultingly.
"But," a sobering thought seizing hold of her, "how was it possible you
never mentioned her to me in a single one of your letters?"