THE MEETING
While Marjorie and Leila rode on through fragrant spring bloom to
Orchard Inn, Leslie Cairns drove slowly toward the town of Hamilton. She
was filled with many emotions, but the chief one was that of surprise at
the way in which she had been received by “Bean” and Leila Harper. She
had always stood a trifle in awe of Leila and her cleverness when the
two had been classmates though she had affected to despise the gifted
Irish girl. Marjorie she had hated from the first meeting. Or thus she
had narrowly believed until she had come into the knowledge that “little
friend ruffles” and Marjorie were one and the same. She had also come
into a knowledge of Marjorie which she could not ever again overlook.
A friendly act on Marjorie’s part, the prompting of a broad tolerant
spirit had been the magic which had worked a well-nigh unbelievable
change in Leslie. It is often the small, seemingly unimportant
happenings in life which frequently are instrumental in working the most
amazing transformations.
While Marjorie was going through one process of growing up Leslie was
going through another widely different phase of the same process. Leslie
had begun to learn that: “He who breaks, pays.” Until her garage failure
she had been childishly stubborn in her belief that she could
successfully “get away with” whatever she undertook to accomplish. She
had suffered untold mortification of spirit over the ignominious end her
father had put to her business venture. She had read and re-read the
letter which her father had at that time written her until she knew
every scathing word of it by heart. This in itself had produced a
beneficial effect upon Leslie’s wayward character. In time to come she
would regard that particular letter as the turning point in her life.
The downfall of her business hopes had furnished her with gloomy
retrospection for long days after she had returned to New York. With all
the fancied grudges she had against Marjorie she was obliged to admit to
herself that “Bean” had certainly not been responsible for her father’s
unexpected visit to Hamilton. Neither was she to know until years
afterward that a “Bean-inspired” advocate of justice in the person of
Signor Guiseppe Baretti had proven her business Waterloo.
Sullenly obeying her father’s stern command to renew her intimacy with
Natalie Weyman, Leslie had reluctantly got into touch again with
Natalie. Natalie, however, was betrothed to a young English baronet. She
was consequently interested in nothing but herself, her fiancé and an
elaborate trousseau of which she was imperiously directing the
preparation.
Leslie felt utterly “out of it” at Nat’s playhouse. She lounged in and
out of the Weyman’s imposing Long Island palace with the enthusiasm of a
wooden Indian. She listened in morose silence to Natalie’s fulsome
eulogies upon her fiancé, Lord Kenneth Hawtrey, the Hawtrey ancestral
tree, her own trousseau and the two-million dollar settlement her father
proposed to make over to her as a bridal gift. Leslie mentally tabulated
each of these fond topics upon her bored brain and learned to know by
the signs just when each of them would be complacently brought forward
by her former college chum.
When she could stand the strain no longer she had announced to Mrs.
Gaylord that her father had gone to Europe and that she intended to buy
a new roadster and drive to Hamilton. “You can stay here or go along,
Gaylord. Suit yourself. My advice to you is to stick to me. Peter the
Great will approve of such devotion on your part. He knows I’d go, even
if you were to try to squash the expedition. Your part is ‘Never desert
Leslie,’” was the succinct counsel she gave her chaperon.
While Leslie was engaged in driving slowly toward Hamilton wrapped in
her own half sad, half relieved mixture of thoughts, a tall man in a
leather motor coat and cap ran down the steps of the Hamilton House and
sprang into a rakish-looking racing car parked in front of the hotel.
His heavy dark brows were corrugated in a frown. His lips though firmly
set harbored a grim smile.
He had driven through the sunny streets of sedate Hamilton that
afternoon as one who knew the place but had been long away from it. This
was his second call at the hotel. On both occasions he had seen and
talked with Mrs. Gaylord. His business, beyond a few, dry unreproving
sentences, was with Leslie Cairns. As Leslie confidently believed him to
be in Europe she was scheduled to receive a decided shock.
Peter Cairns, for the man in the racer was he, was soon speeding over
Hamilton Pike, through Hamilton estates and on past the college wall
toward a squat stone building which had the appearance of an old-time
inn. In front of it he parked the racer again and strode up the long
stone walk toward the quaint low door with its swinging wrought iron
lamp.
Within the restaurant Signor Guiseppe Baretti was in earnest
consultation with his manager. He glanced up at the newcomer, who,
instead of choosing a table and making for it, headed directly for him.
That the little, shrewd-eyed proprietor of the restaurant and the
broad-shouldered financier had a bond in common was plainly evident from
the way in which they shook hands at the close of the financier’s short
call.
“What you think? What you think?” the Italian excitedly demanded,
catching his manager’s arm as the door closed behind his caller. “This
is the father the girl we write the letter about. When he comes here,
just now, a little while, he says to me: ‘How’r you? You don’t know me.
I am Peter Car-rins.’ I think this mebbe where I get the hard beat,
cause I have tol’ this man what trouble his daughter make Miss Page,
Miss Dean. But this is what say: ‘I am to thank you for your letter. I
have not the time today talk much with you. Before long I come here
again. Then I tell you som’thin’ su’prise you verra much.’
“I say then to him I think he come to give me the good beat for my
letter. He laugh. He say: ‘No, no.’ Put up his hand like that.” Baretti
illustrated. “‘I un’erstand you verra well. I have been much in Italy. I
know the Italiano.’ Then he speak me good Italiano. Now that is the
father Miss Car-rins. What you think? She is here in Hamilton again.
Mebbe her father don’ know it. I believ’ he don’. Mebbe she don’ know he
is here. When both find out, then oo-oo, much fuss I guess. Mebbe Miss
Car-rins get a good beat,” he predicted with a hard-hearted chuckle.
If he had walked to the door after Peter Cairns instead of lingering to
acquaint his faithful little countryman with the identity of the
stranger, he would have seen something interesting. He would have seen a
trim-lined black roadster slow down to a sudden stop as the result of a
peremptory hail from a racing car which had drawn up alongside. In
short, Baretti would have seen Leslie Cairns and Peter Cairns meet
precisely in front of the east-end gates of the campus.
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