apologize for her poor surroundings. She received her visitor with
astonishing ease and vivacity; talked rapidly and cleverly of
contemporaneous topics, and when he came, without overmuch delay, to the
point of the business that brought him, treated Mr. Glynn in a
semi-coquettish, rallying spirit, as though he were proposing to her a
very good joke. She closed upon his offer like a vice, however, and
affixed her name to the paper forfeiting the liberal allowance he had
decided to make her should she be again heard of as molesting Miss
Winstanley with an eager, trembling hand. Glynn had decided, as he
walked away from her into purer air, that drink or morphia, or both,
were driving the ex-Lady Clandonald to an end at a fearful rate of
speed. He had paid high for this visit to Nice, but it counted as
nothing provided she left Mr. Winstanley's little ewe lamb in peace.
The two girls met at luncheon at Lady Campstown's, who had spent the
morning in letting Posey experiment upon her nerves in the Winstanley's
automobile. Posey felt proud indeed of this success, when she brought
home the dowager (at the utmost limit of speed disallowed by law),
thrilled and enchanted, after beginning her expedition with closed eyes
and a prayer upon her lips. Mr. Winstanley, who had long since abandoned
himself to sharing risks with his girl, sat beside his guest, exhibiting
to the public the exterior of a diver for pearls combined with a
hippopotamus.
Flushed by conquest, Posey had recovered her buoyant spirits, and their
meal was enlivened by her old daring sallies. She even ventured, in the
welcome absence of Miss Bleecker, upon introducing an imitation of that
lady, in an entanglement of eye-glasses, trying to read the dinner menu
at sea. Lady Campstown, who thought less of Miss Bleecker than she had
before seeing her recent barefaced designs upon Mr. Winstanley, enjoyed
this very much; but Posey confessed it had not been a success at home,
owing to Mr. Winstanley not relishing satire directed toward
acquaintances, and considering Miss Bleecker, on the whole, "a very
polite and agreeable lady."
When Posey separated from Helen after lunch she felt that a little frost
had fallen upon their friendship. She instinctively realized that
things could not be between them what they were before Glynn had owned
to her he had first loved Helen. Something told her that it needed time
to smooth over a situation like their own. After John left on the
morrow she would, perhaps, see dear Helen with a lighter heart.
*CHAPTER IX*
Mr. Glynn had sailed away again, and preparations for the wedding had
already begun to absorb Miss Winstanley. She had been gone for a week
in Paris with Lady Campstown when Mr. Carstairs' yacht, the "Sans Peur,"
made its appearance in the harbor. Previous to this, it may be told,
Miss Bleecker had privately received and cashed a draft upon her bankers
that had put the chaperon in unprecedented funds and spirits. She had
received also a telegram of instructions from Mrs. Carstairs, at
Gibraltar, directing her to engage for their party a suite of costly
apartments at the Grand Hotel. Full of importance, she swelled here,
there and everywhere, detailing to all ears the grandeur and importance
of her employers, and basking in the rays of glory they sent before
them. She needed a little cheering at this time, since Mr. Winstanley
had remained inflexible, declining her offers to bear him company on his
terrace, and treating her persistently as a worthy elderly person,
beyond the pale of pleasures that do not belong to the late afternoon of
life.
For Helen the days preceding the arrival of the "Sans Peur" were
profoundly sad ones. Putting aside her feelings upon another theme, her
dread of reunion with Mrs. Carstairs robbed her of all joy in her dear
father's coming. In vain Miss Bleecker drummed into her ears how nobler
far it is to give than to receive, how a self-sacrifice like hers would
bring its own reward, how Helen was destined to be the blessed medium
through whom joy and harmony would descend upon the Carstairs family for
evermore.
If a faint--ever so faint--hope survived in Helen's mind that her
stepmother's specious assurances of good-will to her and devotion to her
father were to be credited, this faded upon her first visit to the
yacht. In the cabin where she herself had once reigned as queen she
found Mrs. Carstairs, coarsened, indefinably repellant, although still
superb in bloom and with a Rubens lady's plenitude of physique. Around
her were grouped two or three men, making up the party of which Helen
was expected to be the bulwark of respectability. One of them, a Mr.
Danielson, Helen disliked promptly and instinctively; none would she
have admitted into the circle of her acquaintances at home. When Mr.
Carstairs, after some delay, made his appearance, Helen was shocked
beyond measure to behold in him a mere weary wraith, beside whom his
wife seemed to flaunt her beauty and splendid health with insolence.
His greeting of his daughter was indifferent, abstracted. She found it
impossible to have a word alone with him. The thought of the cruise
before her lay like ice on Helen's heart.
Before Mr. and Mrs. Carstairs had spent a week in Cannes the lady
declared it to be a poky hole and wished she had gone to Nice. To Nice
they accordingly repaired, and in due course of time sailed for Naples.
While Mrs. Carstairs rattled and joked noisily with her other guests,
she reserved for the handsome cad at whom Helen had taken special
umbrage a reserve of manner more suspicious to an interested looker-on.
To Helen, a petty agony of the cruise was that Mr. Danielson should
conceive himself obliged to devote most of his leisure hours to
attendance upon the owner's daughter, refusing with fatuous persistency
to be shaken off. A few brief scornful words of remonstrance on this
subject, addressed to her stepmother, were met by the laughing assurance
that there was really nothing for Helen to apprehend, and that a man so
universally run after as was Mr. Danielson, by what Mrs. Carstairs
called the "fair sex," must meet the risk of having his casual
attentions misinterpreted at times.
Proud, wounded, scornful, feeling that her standard of life had dropped
to an unendurable point, Helen got into the habit of keeping to herself
as much as practicable. At Naples she would take her own maid and
absent herself for hours from the yacht and its dubious company. To her
father there was actually no chance of being what she had hoped. He was
mostly captious, preferring to be left alone when his wife did not
vouchsafe him her companionship--which was now a rare event. The great
Mr. Carstairs was, indeed, socially a cipher among these half-breeds,
who drank his wines and allowed him to pay their expenses of travel.
Miss Bleecker, under the infatuation of Mrs. Carstairs' liberal
money-spending, of their luxurious living and continual seeking of
pleasure and excitement in which she was included when, as usual, Helen
refused to go--became as a broken reed in support of her charge's
movements. Poor old Eulalie, with some sense of the loss of refined
surroundings they had sustained, and a hearty dislike of the imperative
chaperon, ranged herself exclusively upon the side of her young
lady--refusing to fraternize with Mrs. Carstairs' maid, whom she
regarded as a second-rate creature in every way, and going through the
routine of life in general with a dogged determination to endure unto
the end.
A day came at last when Miss Carstairs went out to Pompeii with her
maid, instead of to the museum in Naples, where she had announced her
intention of spending the afternoon.
She left Eulalie sitting upon an immemorial stone and wandered off alone
through the beautiful sad place. To the guardian, who would fain have
followed her, she gave a piece of money and a gracious smile, explaining
that she knew it all by heart, and wanted only to gain a general
impression of the dead city on that day of radiant spring. She had been
standing for some time near the tomb of Mamia, looking out over the bay
and mountains of Castellamare melting together in sunshine, and,
recalled to the present by the lateness of the hour, started to walk
back to where she had left the monumental Eulalie.
Her resolution to leave the yacht, to abandon the party, and if needs be
to forfeit all that her acquiescence had secured for her, was now
definitely taken. To avoid discussion, she would simply ask her father
to allow Miss Bleecker and herself to go up to Rome, where Mr. Carstairs
could never abide visiting, on the ground that he did not like living
over catacombs and being face to face with so many things already done
for. He knew Helen's tender passion for the Imperial City, and might
excuse her from going on with them to Sicily.
From Miss Bleecker she felt sure of meeting fierce and stubborn
resistance to her plan. The dream of Miss Bleecker's life had been a
cruise in the "Sans Peur," and it was hardly to be supposed she would
easily relinquish it. But Helen felt that upon occasion she could be
stubborn too. Any clash of wills, and subsequent victory for her, was
worth undertaking, to rid her of the offensive companionship of Mrs.
Carstairs--and one other.
She could not be sure of what she suspected between them. She scorned
to make herself assured. She could not stoop to the miserable method
necessary to the acquirement of dread certainty. And yet "she was
walking every day with bare feet on a burning pavement without feeling
the burn."
Passing with noiseless step before a house-wall arising like a screen
before her path, she paused for a moment to enjoy one last gaze at the
pageant of sea and sky in the light of waning day. In this brief time
the sound of her own name spoken by low voices behind the ruined wall
forced themselves upon her hearing. They were those of her stepmother
and the man Danielson.
Two phrases interchanged, but they told Helen all. She could never
again indulge in the misery of doubt.
She stood for an instant as if overtaken by the lava flow that had
devastated the homes of seventeen centuries ago surrounding her. The one
despairing, driving impulse was to steal away unseen by the woman who
dishonored her dear father's name. Helen thought she had rather fall
down and die and become embedded with the dust of ages than go back to
face Mrs. Carstairs and let her know she had found her out.
As the couple, without discovering her neighborhood, moved in an
opposite direction, Mr. Carstairs' daughter took wings to her feet and
flew to pick up Eulalie and find the cab they had left before the Hotel
Diomed. The maid, sluggish though were the workings of her mental part,
saw that her mistress had had a fright, and blamed herself for losing
sight of her. Helen's cheeks were white, her hands shook as though
palsied, as she sprang into the cab and bade the man drive fast, fast,
back toward the town. She wished, at all events, to avoid being caught
up with or passed by the pair, who could not at that hour linger much
longer within the enclosure.
During the long joggling drive through interminable stony streets,
encumbered by the populace of the Neapolitan suburbs, performing their
domestic avocations out of doors, she came to a desperate conclusion.
She was of age sufficiently mature to act for herself. She could not,
would not, give her reasons to her father. But she would carry out her
recent determination to leave the yacht at once, forfeit the price that
had been paid her to be an infamous blind, and, at any risk, sever her
present connection with Mrs. Carstairs.
Helen possessed the American woman's promptitude in action. She drove
with Eulalie to an hotel formerly frequented with her father, engaged a
room for the night, and sent the maid to the yacht with a note
requesting Miss Bleecker to come to her. The interview resulting with
her estimable chaperon was perhaps one of the most painful of her
experience. The lady, to whom she gave in explanation of her resolve a
bare statement that she could no longer endure the trial of life with
her stepmother, exhausted herself in remonstrance and reproach. She
pointed out to Helen that the money from her father could still be, and
no doubt would be, withdrawn upon announcement of Miss Carstairs'
extraordinary move. Helen declared that, well aware of this fact, she
was prepared to live on the small income coming to her from her mother's
estate. Miss Bleecker reminded her that her father was in evidently
wretched health, and that no whim or temper should stand between him and
his daughter's attendance at his side. Helen, blushing scarlet, with
tears in her eyes, recalled to Miss Bleecker that she had not been
allowed access to her father's own cabin since they had been together on
the cruise, and that, furthermore, he did not appear to want her. Miss
Bleecker called Heaven to witness that she had no patience with family
jars, had no axe to grind on her own account, but that if Helen
persisted in her wilful determination she should feel it _her_ bounden
duty not to forsake poor Mrs. Carstairs if wanted to remain.
That evening, between nine and ten, Mrs. Carstairs called upon Miss
Carstairs, but was not received. Helen sent back, in a hotel envelope,
her stepmother's card, across which she had written these words:
"I happened to be at Pompeii this afternoon, but no other than myself
shall know under what circumstances you also were there. It is enough
that we must part."
Next day Mrs. Carstairs announced to her guests that they were sailing
for Sicily, and as Miss Carstairs did not desire to go farther South,
she had decided to return by train to the Riviera, to visit her friend,
Miss Winstanley, at Cannes, and would rejoin the "Sans Peur" later,
somewhere in the Mediterranean. Then the "Sans Peur" steamed gallantly
away, bearing Miss Bleecker, now installed as companion to the owner's
lady, and Mr. Carstairs, keeping his cabin, it was said, with a bad
attack of some trouble undeclared.
The same evening, as Helen was about taking her train for Genoa and the
Riviera at the _Stazione Centrale_, she met, face to face on the
platform, Lord Clandonald and M. de Mariol, returning by way of Corfu,
Brindisi and Naples from the Peloponnesus, where they had finally
brought up after their ramble in Eastern Europe. The two men greeted
her with cordial courtesy, receiving in sum the explanation of her
presence made public by Mrs. Carstairs. Mariol, from whom she shrank a
little, in the fear that he might remember against her with rancor the
refusal of his addresses, showed no consciousness that this episode had
occurred between them. He was his old self, gentle, sympathetic, with
an exquisite intelligence in dealing with her such as no other man had
exhibited. He saw her into her own compartment with her maid, and
before bedtime returned there several times, to take the seat vacated by
Mlle. Eulalie, who had carried her accustomed headache to an open window
in the corridor.
Before they had talked ten minutes Helen realized that her great crisis
was understood and felt by him. In her overstrained and overburdened
state the relief of finding a soul in tune with her desolate one was
infinite. She let him know just as much as was necessary of the
impelling cause of her action, and also that in accepting Miss
Winstanley's invitation in a recent letter to return to Cannes, "if only
to see the spring flowers," she was doing so until she could make up her
mind just how to readjust her life to altered circumstances.
M. de Mariol said little, but thought much, after he had left Miss
Carstairs for the night. Clandonald had come once to look after both of
them, and their talk had turned into cheerful channels. Both men were
brown and healthy and in good spirits, Mariol on his way to Paris,
Clandonald to Cannes, to visit his good aunt. They touched upon the
subject of the Winstanleys' rise into fortune and worldly vogue,
Clandonald saying that Lady Campstown had written him of Miss
Winstanley's approaching marriage with Mr. Glynn. In his frank,
untroubled face Helen failed to discern any symptom of corroding care,
and once more she registered an experience of the brevity of men's
attachments when their object is removed.
During the day's journey that followed, dashing in and out of tunnels,
catching glimpses of Paradise cut short by the blackness of the
Inferno--or, as some one has aptly said, "Travelling through a flute and
seeing daylight through its stops"--M. de Mariol absorbed the chief part
of Miss Carstairs' society, putting forth for her the best of his rare
powers of charm and companionship. When Clandonald and herself finally
left the train at Cannes, and Mariol went on his way Paris-wards, Helen
breathed a genuine sigh of regret for a void not to be filled.
The welcome she received from the Winstanleys went far toward
reconciling Miss Carstairs to the necessity for a continuance of
interest in human existence. Those warm and simple-hearted people,
refusing to allow her to stop at an hotel alone with her maid, opened
their home to her with rejoicing hospitality. Nothing that she had ever
seen of a kindred nature seemed to her as broad and warm as their
delight in offering her a shelter. Posey's quick wit divined that a
terrible break had occurred between Helen and her father's party; her
delicacy withheld all questions as to its cause. It was enough that
Helen Carstairs, to whom she had looked up with the veneration of a
devotee on his knees before his shrine, had come upon a time of sorrow,
of disillusion, of deep and lasting despondency, and that it was Posey's
privilege to afford her protection and sympathy until the dark hour was
past. It never entered into her generous nature to draw the contrast
between the days, not so long past, when Helen had kept her at
arm's-length, and she was the outsider. Nothing that she could do was
too much to cheer Helen, to make her feel one of their innermost circle
of home, more than a welcome, a cherished guest.
In this atmosphere of tender _prevenance_ Helen's bruised spirit quickly
recuperated. She did not relax in her intention to make a small
independent home for herself somewhere, a condition of things her
father's continued silence seemed to bring ominously near. She had no
illusions as to the fact that Mrs. Carstairs had represented her conduct
to her father in the most unfavorable, unpardonable light. A little
while she would remain as the Winstanleys' guest, then would tell Posey
that she had found it obligatory to shift for herself and to live upon
far less than she had ever done before.
The means of escape from her _impasse_ came to Miss Carstairs from an
unexpected quarter. Three days after her arrival at Reine des Fees,
while sitting with Posey in the orange walk, a letter was handed her
addressed in M. de Mariol's handwriting.
Helen blushed violently, then grew pale, as she laid it aside to read in
private. She felt that it must contain a renewal of his former offer of
marriage, and this time the old feeling of unfitness was lacking. She
was conscious only of the great unselfishness and generosity which this
man of intellectual distinction and wide renown had always shown to her.
She could see now that life is possible without either the thrills of
young passion or the costly material pleasures that wealth provides.
Her future, as the wife of M. de Mariol, would be assured of certain
elements of happiness quite apart from the demands of her past, but on
the whole as satisfying to a reasonable being. He had told her that his
means enabled him to be independent of the charge of fortune-hunting.
He knew that she was now, by her own act, almost impoverished, and yet
he still wanted her. He was well-born, admirably bred, in a social
surrounding that would continually interest her, and was, as always, a
true and loyal gentleman. Above all, her future home would be far
removed from the unspeakable black cloud that must hang over it in
America. And yet----
Posey's happy voice sounded in her ear. "You aren't going to read your
letter, now? Then you'll let me talk? You haven't forgotten that we're
dining to-night at Villa Julia? Do you think I had better wear my rose
chiffon, or the little white crepe de chine with silver embroideries
that came from the bazaar in Cairo? It was so strange Lord Clandonald
should have taken the hour to call yesterday, when we were sure to be at
the Golf Club with all the world. You say he looks well, Helen?
Bigger, browner, stronger? I have been thinking all yesterday and
to-day of dear Lady Campstown's joy in his return. When she heard he
was coming she quite forgot me, and my poor diminished shade crept into
insignificance. With her own dear little thin hands she smoothed his
bed-linen, and put flowers on his dressing-table. Ah, how much love
means, Helen! It's been growing on me every day, that all the rest is
poor flimsy stuff.... I think Lady Campstown has made me over, and my
breast swells in gratitude to her. I even love daddy better for loving
her.... If I can only end by loving John as much as I love them!"
"Posey!" said her friend, shivering.
"Don't say you feel the mistral, Helen. It simply can't get to us in
this sheltered spot. Dear, I wish you'd be happy, too. For some reason
that I can't tell, I'm simply bubbling over to-day. One of my wild
fits, I reckon. It began when I got your wire saying you were actually
going to be good enough to come and stay with me, without that hateful
old Bleecker--there, I feel better. '_Cela soulage!_' as the woman in
that play at the Gallia said when she had boxed her husband's ears--and
then, and then----"
"Posey!" repeated Helen, with a sort of awe in her voice.
She had noted, with astonishment and pain, the girl's uncontrollable
delight at the knowledge of Clandonald's actual vicinity to her. She had
watched her, all the day before, fluttering with excitement and
expectation, dropping for a while into bitter disappointment when they
had returned home, to find only his cards!
"Helen, you think I'm impatient for this evening to come, but I'm not.
I can wait perfectly well to see Lady Campstown with her 'boy.' But you
know how the person somebody you love is always talking about and
waiting for, seems the one you want most to see. Not a day this winter
that the old darling hasn't talked to me of 'Clan.' I believe I know
about every incident of his life, except the gloomy ones connected with
his marriage--his first pony, his scarlet fever, all the rest of it----"
Helen's anxious brow cleared.
"I suppose it's natural, but you mustn't forget, my dear, that he's very
handsome and charming, and your fancy took a little turn that way on
shipboard--and that you are soon to be married to John Glynn."
Posey heaved a long, genuine sigh.
"I don't forget. I'm all right for John, only I wish I could be free a
little longer. I should think you'd know nothing would tempt me to be
in love with a man whose wife isn't dead. Anyhow, I told John every
single thing that ever passed between Clandonald and me, not the tiniest
thing hidden. Of course John saw I couldn't help being more interested,
in a certain way, in Clandonald than in any man I ever saw before."
"Not of course, Posey," said Helen, half smiling. "There are even some
people who might consider the man you have more 'interesting' than the
man you might have had."
"Oh! John is a darling. Everybody knows that, but their looks are not
to be compared--why, Helen, he's not as tall as Clandonald by several
inches--he hasn't that beautiful set of the head upon the shoulders,
just such as I should think a king would have--and that rich, thick
brown hair--Helen, it's really dreadful how thin John's hair is getting
on the top."
Helen dropped her book upon the ground.
"Don't, Posey," she exclaimed, almost sharply. "It isn't worthy of you
to talk such nonsense."
"Ah, well," said the girl, mischievously, "I feel like saying those
little things sometimes, it seems to relieve the tension.... Helen,
don't look at me with such a face," she added, with sudden gravity. "It
almost makes me think that though John is going to marry me, you haven't
entirely stopped caring for him.... How pale you are! You frighten me!
... You know you do, you know you do, and he--? How could he love me
when he had you near? I see it all now. He would like to get you back;
he has never really wanted me, and I'm only to be taken because of his
duty to my father."
The April mood had changed. Great drops of crystal welled into her blue
eyes and dropped upon her cheeks. Impelled by desperate resolve, Helen
sprang upon her feet.
"Don't cry, dear. Don't cry, my darling Posey. You are over-nervous,
and it isn't wise for us to prolong a talk like this. I will leave you
for a little while alone, to go in and read my letter, and when we meet
again at luncheon, I may have something to tell you about myself that
will take away all fear of my ever coming between you and your John
Glynn."
*CHAPTER X*