THE RECITAL
Of course, Adèle played wonderfully that night. No anxious to-morrow with
Miss Frink ventured into the rose-color of her dreams. She was playing to
Hugh; and occasionally she caught his spellbound and admiring eyes. Even
the drop of gall occasioned by the fact that, Millicent’s duties with the
hostess over, Hugh seated himself beside her to listen, was drowned in
the sweetness of his frank admiration.
The great room was crowded. Miss Frink, unsmiling and reflective,
regarded Adèle with a calculating eye and ear, absolving herself from any
anxious care for the financial future of such a one.
To many of the audience this private view, as it were, of Miss Frink and
her home was of as much or more interest than the programme. John Ogden,
as master of ceremonies, conducted the affair with grace, and his easy
cordiality among a crowd almost entirely strange to him was a marvel
to Miss Frink, and all her mental reservations were for the time being
submerged in gratitude.
But, in spite of the interest in the Queen of Farrandale as a private
individual, Hugh Stanwood was really Exhibit A of the evening: the man
who had saved Miss Frink’s life and lived in her house ever since. Was
Leonard Grimshaw’s star descending? Was the handsome youth going to be
adopted by his hostess? Why was Millicent Duane receiving with Miss
Frink? Was Mr. Stanwood really reading law with her grandfather?
Tongues would wag to-morrow. To-night they were silenced, first, by the
music of—according to the programme—“Mrs. Adèle Lumbard, famous pianist
of Atlanta, Georgia,” and later, by a very delicious supper.
A procession of enthusiasts approached Adèle where she stood in a bay
window at the close of the programme. Leonard Grimshaw was stationed
beside her.
“You are a queen, Adèle,” he murmured worshipfully, and she let her brown
eyes speak her thanks.
Colonel Duane approached her. “Please accept my compliments,” he said,
bending over her hand. “You will have all us oldsters practicing
five-finger exercises to-morrow. Here is Hugh; he is almost bursting with
pride that he knows you.”
“For a fact, Ally, you outdid yourself,” said Hugh, taking her hand.
“Here is Millicent fairly afraid to approach such a star.”
“It was perfectly beautiful,” said the young girl, gazing at her
fervently.
“Thanks,” returned Adèle perfunctorily, looking by her and wondering if
she should have patience to receive the oncoming stream of people whom
Grimshaw formally introduced one by one ere they dispersed about the
house and out into the grounds.
“I think one party will go a long way with me, Ogden,” said Miss Frink
late in the evening, hiding a yawn behind her hand.
John Ogden stood beside her as she sped the parting guests.
When nearly all had gone, Adèle had opportunity to speak to Hugh: “Take
me outdoors. Let us lose ourselves so I won’t have to say any more
good-nights.”
They slipped away and strolled far out underneath the great trees.
“A perfect success,” said Hugh.
“Was it?” Adèle leaned wearily on his arm.
“You will have all Farrandale for pupils if you want them,” he went on;
“but honestly, Adèle”—he looked down into her upturned face—“it’s like
hitching a blooded horse to a coal-wagon to make you teach.”
“You see it, do you?” she returned. “Oh, how I hate drudgery, Hughie.”
“You must have gone through a lot of it, to play the way you do.”
“I didn’t realize it. It didn’t seem so. I liked it.”
Back and forth they strolled in the shadow of the old elms, Adèle’s
cigarette adding its spark to his among the magic lanterns of fireflies.
“The house looks quiet,” she said at last. “Let us go in and see if we
can find something to eat. I am nearly starved.”
They crossed the lawn and went up the veranda steps. In the hall they met
the butler, hanging about aimlessly.
“Mrs. Lumbard has been neglected, Stebbins,” said Hugh. “She hadn’t a
chance to eat much of anything. See if you can’t get some sandwiches and
grapejuice for us. Has everybody gone to bed?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, when you’ve set out the stuff you go, too. You can lock up and
I’ll see to putting out the lights.”
The two entered the big dim dining-room and sat down side by side at the
table. For all Adèle’s protestations of hunger, she only played with a
sandwich and sipped the grapejuice. So far everything had gone exactly
to suit her. Miss Frink, Leonard Grimshaw, and Mr. Ogden had all effaced
themselves.
She had Hugh to herself in the high-ceiled old room, and her heart was
still exulting in the incense that had been burned before her all the
evening, incense that was valuable because Hugh had seen it burning.
Time was flying. This was her great opportunity.
“What are you planning to do with your life, Hugh?” she asked suddenly.
“I mean to keep on with the law work on the side while I go into Miss
Frink’s store. Don’t you think you ought to go to bed, Ally? I know you
must be very tired.”
She tossed aside the trivial suggestion with an impatient motion of her
head. “I never sleep after playing a programme,” she said. Then she added
in a low, appealing voice, her eyes fixed on his: “I want you to give up
that idea, Hughie. Do you know what wonderful playmates we are—simply
made for each other?”
Hugh began to feel uncomfortable under the clinging look. “Yes, but life
isn’t play,” he returned.
“It would be for us—together. Come to me, Hughie. You would shrivel up,
here. Let us go away. I will make you happier than you ever dreamed of
being. I love you every second of every minute, and every minute of every
hour. I—”
“Ally, Ally,” interrupted Hugh gently, “you’re mistaken. Love begets
love, and if you loved me I should love you. I don’t, and—”
“Stop”—she seized his hand—“I’ll show you what love is. I will show you
what happiness is. I will take care of the practical side. I have some
money that no one knows of: enough to start you in business. We will work
together, play together—I can’t live without you, Hughie, I can’t—”
“Adèle!” It was Miss Frink’s voice. In the silk negligée she was standing
behind them inside the door.
Adèle sprang to her feet, the brown eyes flashing their fire directly
into Hugh’s as he rose.
“Speak, Hugh,” she said, excitedly, “before she has a chance to talk. You
know what I have said, and I mean every word.”
“No, you don’t. Now, let us forget it, Ally.”
“No, never; and whatever Miss Frink has heard she is welcome to remember.
Speak, Hugh.” There was hysterical appeal in the last words.
“Then I can only repeat, Ally. Oh, don’t spoil our friendship!”
“This is enough,” said Miss Frink, coming forward, and looking Adèle
straight in the eyes. “Why must an artist be a fool?”
“Sometimes others are fools,” cried Adèle, carried away by her thwarted
passion. “The great Miss Frink is a dupe herself. Hugh has fooled you as
he has fooled me.”
Miss Frink lifted her head. “Do you refer to the fact that Hugh Stanwood
is Hugh Sinclair, my nephew? That is ancient history.” A moment of tense
stillness while the women’s gaze still struck a mutual fire. “Will you
kindly leave us, Adèle?”
With a murderous parting look the young woman obeyed. With only a
moment’s hesitation, and without a glance at Hugh, she dashed from the
room, knocking over a chair in her flight. Hugh’s gaze was fixed on Miss
Frink. She turned deliberately and faced him. The look in her eyes, the
softness of her lips, were unmistakable even if she had not extended a
hand; but Hugh had no use for the hand. With one stride, he reached her,
flung his arms around her and she was held fast in his big embrace. Some
sealed door within her, whose firm fastening had already been weakened,
opened gently. A flood of amazing happiness flowed through, and softly
inundated her whole being.
From the hall came the chime of the Westminster clock. The four quarters
rang; then through the stillness of the quiet house sounded the deep,
deliberate strokes of the midnight hour.
Through it all they stood there. Miss Frink could feel the sobbing catch
in the broad chest to which she was strained.
“I don’t deserve it,” she thought humbly. “The cross-grained, dominating,
selfish, obstinate woman I have been, to be given this child of my old
age!”
When the last tone died away and intense stillness reigned again, she
spoke:
“Twelve o’clock, and all is well, Hugh. This is the first time I have
been hugged in fifty years.”
Gently she pushed him from her with hands that still clung to him. He
dropped his arms and stood looking down at her. She was touched to see
the moisture in the eyes that met hers.
“It is good of you to let me hug you,” he replied in a low, thick voice.
“I suppose you think you have a lot of explanations to make,” she said,
her kind tone wavering a little in the intense feeling of the moment,
“but you haven’t. It was all so obvious after I gained the first clue,
that it scarcely needed your Aunt Sukey’s X-ray mind to see the whole
thing clear as A B C.”
“Don’t use that name!” exclaimed Hugh, as if it hurt.
“What? Aunt Sukey? Oh, I’ve X-rayed that, too. I can fully understand the
idea of your great-aunt that you grew up with. I”—a catch in Miss Frink’s
throat stopped her speech for a second—“I was very unkind to Philip—to
your father. Mr. Ogden knew me, knew that the only way you could reach my
heart was to smuggle you in; but you got there, Hugh, my own dear boy,
you got there.”
Hugh caught her slender, dry hand in his big one.
“If I was Aunt Sukey to your father, I am Aunt Susanna to you, and it was
a gift of God that it was you, yourself, who saved my life that I might
not die before I knew what it is not to be all alone in the world: what
it is to have my own flesh and blood to love, and perhaps to love me a
little.”
“Aunt Susanna, I don’t feel worthy of your love,” exclaimed the boy
hotly, but softly as if the dark wainscoted walls might have ears. “I
hated it all the time.”
“I know that, too,” returned Miss Frink quietly.
“What you don’t know,” he continued, “is how I admire you. You’re the
finest woman I’ve ever known, and the finer you were, and the more frank,
and the more generous, the more miserable I was. Oh”—shaking his broad
shoulders restlessly—“I’m so glad it’s over. I want to go away.”
“You want to leave me, Hugh?”
“To pick up my own self-respect somewhere. I feel as if you couldn’t
really trust me!”
“My child”—Miss Frink spoke tenderly—“what is my boasted X-ray for if I
don’t know, positively, that I _can_ trust you? To lose you, to have you
go away, would leave my life the same dry husk it was before you came.”
A line grew in Hugh’s forehead, his eyes dimmed as the two stood looking
at each other. Then he put his arms around her again, and this time he
kissed her.
“Thank you, Prince Charming. How little I ever expected to have a child
to kiss me. Starving, famished, I was when you came, Hugh, and didn’t
know it.” She pushed him away again with gentle, firm hands. “Now I want
to do a little explaining, myself. To-night I heard Stebbins stumbling
up the servants’ stairs after everything was quiet, and I felt something
was wrong. I came into the hall and saw that the lights below were still
on. I came down, heard voices in here, and the rest followed. You mustn’t
feel too unhappy about what happened to-night. Believe in my X-ray enough
to know that her life has been made up of similar incidents; not just the
same, of course, but the pursuit of excitement of some sort. I have a
problem now unless she elects to leave Farrandale.”
“Be kind to her, Aunt Susanna!”
“I will, you soft-hearted boy. I imagine a man finds it the hardest of
tasks to turn down a woman.”
“She said I had fooled her. I don’t know what she meant.”
“She doesn’t either. At that moment it was a necessity with her to sting,
and she stung, that’s all.”
“How did she know—know about me?” asked Hugh, frowning.
“The same way I did: by the letter she held in your room addressed to
your full name. She held it for a second under both our eyes. She thought
she had a weapon; but the name did not tell her what it told me. She
didn’t know until to-night that you belonged to me.”
“I wish she would leave Farrandale,” said Hugh restlessly.
“Most women would, under the circumstances. She belongs to a genus I
don’t know much about. It isn’t safe for me to predict.”
“I’m glad you’re so wonderful,” returned Hugh, “so big that you will be
good to her.”
“I will be if you won’t be,” said Miss Frink, with her little twitching
smile. “You might as safely try to show affection to a rattlesnake as to
a woman without principle. You can’t know how or when she’ll strike.”
Hugh walked up and down the room. “Ally’s such a good fellow. I don’t
like—”
“Yes, I know you don’t; and you may have to get your wisdom by
experience; but she’s a hard teacher, Experience, Hugh, and she has given
you one big lesson to-night.”
“I’m blessed if I know how I deserved it. I deserve to be kicked out of
the house by you, but ‘not guilty’ when it comes to Ally.”
Miss Frink’s eyes followed him adoringly. It was of no use to try to make
him understand.
“I guess I’m pretty tired,” she said at last, with a sigh.
“And I keeping you up!” returned Hugh, suddenly penitent and stopping in
his promenade.
“Débutantes find it rather difficult to go to sleep when they are tired.
This is the first party I ever gave in my life, Hugh.”
“Never too late to mend,” he returned.
“But sometimes too late to go to bed,” she answered. “We must look out
for that.”
“You go upstairs,” said Hugh. “I told Stebbins I’d see to the lights.
Ally was hungry. I’ll fix everything.”
“Yes, she was,” thought Miss Frink, “and thirsty, too.” But she kept the
reflection to herself. She turned toward the door. “Good-night,” she said.
Hugh took a long step after her. “Let me tell you before you go how I
thank you: how happy you have made me!”
She looked up at him sideways. She even had inspiration to perform
a novel act. She threw the big, earnest, troubled boy a kiss as she
vanished into the hall.
For the first time in her life Miss Frink felt rich—and satisfied with
her wealth.