"Mount Vernon 1-0-0-0" 139
_The Mermaid of Druid Lake_
If Edwin Horton had not had a sleepless time that hot June night it
probably would never have happened. As it was, after tossing and
pitching on an uncomfortably warm mattress for several hours, he had
dressed himself and left his Bolton-avenue home for a stroll in Druid
Hill Park just as the dawn made itself evident. That was the beginning
of the adventure.
Not a soul was in sight when he reached the driveway around the big
lake, and he let out to take a little vigorous exercise, breathing in
the fresh air with more enjoyment than had been his for some hours.
About half way around he stopped suddenly and rubbed his eyes to make
sure he was not dreaming. For a curve in the road had brought him the
knowledge that he was not alone in his appreciation of the early morning
hour. Seated beside the water, on the rocks that line the lake shore,
was a damsel--a rather good-looking one, as well as he could judge at
the distance of a hundred yards. She was leaning on her left elbow and
looking out over the lake in rather a pensive, dreamy attitude. Of
course, young ladies don't ordinarily get up before dawn to go out to
Druid Hill Park for the purpose of sitting alone beside the broad sweep
of city water, and Edwin naturally felt some surprise at the novelty of
the sight. Besides, she was inside the high iron railing, and he
wondered how she had got there.
In the intensity of his interest he slowed down his pace as he drew
nearer along the roadway. Should he watch her unobserved for a while to
ascertain her purpose? Should he frankly hail her and ask whether she
objected to company? Should he--well, the damsel settled his doubts for
him just then by discovering him. She appeared startled, and he fancied
she half meant to plunge into the lake. Then she changed her mind, gave
him a bewitching little smile and raised her free hand to beckon him.
Edwin needed no second invitation. The novelty of the situation was too
alluring to resist.
In another moment he had scaled the fence and was clambering awkwardly
down the rocks. And as he came close he found her a very pretty damsel
indeed, with youthful, rosy cheeks, fetching blue eyes and long, light
tresses that hung unconfined from her head down upon the sloping rocks
behind her. She was smiling, and yet he thought he detected a renewed
disposition to slip away from him before he had drawn too close.
Then he had a shock.
She was only half a woman!
The other half of her was fish--scaly fish--partly submerged in the
waters of the lake!
He paused irresolutely. It was all right, you know, to read about
mermaids in old mythologies and fairy tales. But to encounter one in
this year of Our Lord, so near home as Druid lake! Oh, fudge! the boys
at the Ariel Club would never get through "joshing" him should he ever
say he had seen such a thing. It could not be true; it was too amazing!
He was a fool to let his nerves get the better of him. He had better cut
out those visits to the river resorts, or next he would be seeing pink
elephants climbing trees. First thing he knew he would wake up in that
stuffy room at home. No, he couldn't be dreaming! There was the railing,
and the lake, and the white tower, and General Booth's home, and the
Madison-avenue entrance, and the Wallace statue and a dozen other
familiar spots in a most familiar perspective.
And there, too, was the damsel in flesh and blood, or, rather, flesh and
fish!
She was the first to speak.
"Good morning to you, stranger."
She spoke English--good, clear mother-tongue. Her lips were parted in
that alluring smile, and her manner was as saucy as that of any fair
flirt he had ever known of womankind.
"In the name of Heaven, who are you?" he stammered as he sat down,
awkwardly, beside her.
She laughed outright--mischievously, mockingly.
"I? I am the nymph of the lake. Long years ago I was the naiad of the
woodland spring that is now deep down yonder," indicating a spot out in
the lake. "But they dammed me in and turned great floods of water in
here, and mighty Jupiter gave me my new title."
"And are you really half fish?"
She laughed again.
"I am what you see."
As she spoke she gracefully swayed the lower half of her in the water. A
million glistening scales prismatically reflected the increasing morning
light. She was half fish, all right. There was no doubt about that.
"By gosh! here's a rum go!" muttered Edwin to himself.
"What did you say?" queried the mermaid.
"I said, if you must know, 'By Jove! you are a beauty,'" he replied,
gallantly and impetuously.
The mermaid smiled again. The feminine half of her was pleased with the
compliment to her good looks.
"I'm afraid you're a sad flatterer," she said, coquettishly. She lowered
her blue eyes, then uplifted the lashes and looked full into his face in
a manner that made his heart bound. One little finger was shaken
playfully at him. Edwin seized the hand. It was warm; human blood
pulsated through it! And as he held it his companion gave just a bit of
a squeeze. A score of girls had done the same in bygone sentimental
hours. But none so deftly.
"This is certainly an odd adventure," he remarked. "Tell me, lady of the
lake, do you often sit here in this unconventional fashion with
gentlemen callers?"
"What would you give to know?" she asked, teasingly.
"You are the first for a long, long time," she went on. "Last summer
there was a man in a gray uniform who saw me, but he looked so
uninteresting I swam away."
"When are you here?" he asked, earnestly.
"I love to sit on the bank when fair Aurora makes the dawning day grow
rosy," she acknowledged, "but I have to flee to the depths when the full
sun comes." She looked to the east. "It is growing late," she added,
hurriedly; "I must be going."
"Not yet, not yet," he pleaded.
"Do not detain me," she cried; "I must go. It means life to me."
Gracefully she glided into the water at his feet.
"You will come tomorrow?" he asked.
The coquettish mood returned to her.
"Perhaps," she said, as with long strokes she headed for the centre of
the lake. Edwin watched intently until she had gone a hundred yards and
more. Then she ceased swimming, kissed her hand to him and dived under
the surface as the single word "Farewell" floated over the water.
It seems superfluous to remark that he was in a trance that day. His
father, at the breakfast table, jovially prodded him about being late,
until he barely caught himself on the verge of telling his queer secret.
And so absent-minded was he at the office that he found he had entered
the account of a prosaic old firm as "Mermaid & Nymph."
Long before 4 A. M. the next day he was at the lake. The waning moon was
still in the west and there were few signs of the coming day. For half
an hour he kept his vigil alone, and had almost begun to think his
piscatorial charmer was not coming. Then suddenly he espied her out in
the lake, swimming toward him. When about 50 yards off shore she hailed
him jovially and bade him go around to the white tower. As he moved
along the driveway she kept him company, maintaining the pace with
graceful, tireless strokes and occasionally coming nearer to exchange a
remark.
"What made you change the trysting place?" he asked.
"Love of change, I suppose," she replied. "A water nymph does not get
much chance at novelty."
The half hour they spent upon the water's edge was largely one of
sentimental banter between merry maid and enamored man, in which Edwin
reached the conclusion that his charmer could give cards to the jolliest
little "jollier" in Baltimore. She asked him about his past and present
girl friends, and pouted deliciously when he frankly acknowledged them.
Finally they parted, she promising to appear the next morning.
The third meeting started a chain of events. They were comfortably
chatting on the rocks when Edwin heard the chug-chug of an automobile.
The mermaid clutched his arm in alarm. "What are those horrid things?"
she naively remarked. "They often make such an awful fuss I can hear
them down in my cozy corner."
Edwin's reply was suspended while the machine passed them. The two men
who were in it craned their necks most industriously at the sight of a
pair of lovers out so early and seated in such an unusual spot for
sentimental couples.
When he turned to make the explanations she had asked, he found it a
harder task than he had imagined. Her knowledge of human inventions, of
worldly means of locomotion, was not extensive, and he had to begin with
the A B C of it and go through a course in elementary mechanics. After
the forty-second paragraph of instructions the damsel clapped her hands
gleefully and cried:
"It would be great fun to take a trip in one!"
"It is great fun," declared Edwin, for a moment forgetting to whom he
was talking.
"But then I couldn't do it!" she exclaimed in disappointment. "I
couldn't leave the lake."
The unshed tears in her eyes made him ardent.
"You could do it if you are willing," he avowed, earnestly. "You can
take the water with you." Visions of a tank lady in the "Greatest Circus
on Earth" came to him.
"You are fooling me," murmured the mermaid. And she pouted.
Edwin rose to the occasion. "I am not fooling," he protested. "It would
not be difficult to put a tank of water in the machine for you to put
your"----He was going to say feet, but he ended his sentence,
stumblingly, "your other half in."
In her joy the Lady of the Lake took his cheeks in her hands and gave
him an impulsive kiss. "You are the loveliest being on earth," she said,
enthusiastically.
That settled it. The rest of the conversation that morning was about
automobiles, and when they parted it was with a definite assurance on
his part that Edwin would be on hand the next morning with a motor car
suitably equipped for her use. It was only when he had gotten away that
he realized the ridiculous side of the job he had undertaken. He could
get an automobile all right. Tom Reese was a good friend, and a willing
one, and his car had a tonneau capacious enough to accommodate the
ex-naiad and her movable pool. But he would have to tell Tom the whole
peculiar adventure to get him to take his auto out at such an unearthly
hour.
"He'll think me clean daft when I unfold it to him," said Edwin to
himself.
And Tom did, too. He laughed loud and long when Edwin chose what he
thought to be a propitious moment and began his confession. "What are
you stuffing me with?" Tom demanded, with tears in his eyes. Edwin
renewed his explanations, only to bring on another explosion. "You'll be
the death of me yet, old fellow," asserted Tom. "You'd better cut out
those absinthes." Edwin added details most earnestly. "You're crazy,
boy," was the only reply he got. He grew angry and hurt. "Now, Tom
Reese," he demanded, "have I ever failed you when you wanted my help?"
Tom apologized and began to study Edwin with intentness. "Look here,
Edwin Horton," he said, "if there is any such girl at Druid lake as you
describe, she's a 'fake' and she's got you strung mightily." Edwin
swallowed this dig at his intelligence peacefully. He saw he had won.
"All I ask, Tom," he rejoined, "is that you will take me out in the car
and see for yourself." Tom gave him his hand. "I'm from Missouri, and
you'll have to show me," he chuckled.
A wash tub from Mrs. Reese's cellar was requisitioned at 3 A. M. for use
as a tank. After it had been lifted into the tonneau a hose supplied the
needed water. "Climb into the water wagon," ordered Tom, and he threw on
the lever and spun out to Druid Hill Park.
The day was still in embryo when the lake tower was reached. But the
nymph was there. Her trim blue blouse was still wet after her swim
ashore. The morning was summery, but Edwin had appreciated that the ride
might be cold for the water lady, and had thoughtfully brought his
sister's raincoat.
Tom's astonishment at seeing a bona-fide mermaid was balm to Edwin. The
lad stood open-mouthed after Edwin had introduced them. In fact, he was
so dumfounded that he failed to notice the hand the damsel had extended
to him.
"Come on, Tom," said Edwin; "there isn't much time."
One on each side, the two boys supported the nymph as she cavorted as
gracefully as possible up the rocks. They hadn't thought of the iron
railing. "Caesar's ghost!" muttered Tom in dismay. "How are we going to
get her over that?" Edwin turned to the mermaid. "If you don't mind,"
said he, "we will have to lift you." "I don't mind," she said, simply,
"if you don't drop me."
At Edwin's suggestion he clambered over first, and then Tom raised the
young creature boldly until she was clear of the iron spikes. There
Edwin took hold of her and carried her to the auto. She was not a heavy
burden, but her wet condition and her combination shape increased the
difficulties.
From the moment she was once in the auto her joy was a pleasure to
observe. She began by expressing her delight at their thoughtfulness in
supplying the wash tub. When the machine began to move she clapped her
hands in childish glee. From glee to wonderment her mood changed as they
spun along the park roads. A hundred naive questions were asked about
the objects unfamiliar to a lady whose habitat was at the bottom of a
big pond. Edwin answered faithfully, and had his reward in his enjoyment
of her artlessness and winsomeness. Occasionally Tom looked round to
share in it.
At a good clip the auto was run out Park Heights avenue and back. The
dawn seemed most kindly disposed to the trio, for it was long in coming.
And when they had reached Pimlico, Tom proposed a detour by way of
Roland Park, to return to the lake across Cedar-avenue bridge. The
damsel hailed it with glee, only stipulating that she must be back by
"sun-up."
They showed her the turf tracks on either side as they bowled along
Belvidere avenue eastward, and they were still engaged in explaining to
her the methods of horse racing when Tom started down the long hill
beside the Tyson place, Cylburn, leading down to the bridge across
Jones' Falls. The girl was asking questions, with her bewitching face
in close proximity to Edwin's, when there came a startling interruption
to their fun. Tom, again greatly interested in the talk, failed to
notice a large boulder in the road, and the auto shot over it with a
jolt that caused him to lose control of the wheel. The big machine
regained its balance, but not its course. Instead, it careened to the
right and bumped into the ditch before the alarmed occupants had
scarcely grasped their peril. Tom was tossed out on the roadway. Edwin
was pitched into the front seat, the mermaid shot past him and fell on a
clump of green turf and the tub of water upset, and, in seeking an
outlet, poured over the car, drenching Edwin.
"Look out for a gasoline explosion!" shrieked Tom, raising himself from
the road, apparently unhurt. Edwin knew he could do nothing to prevent
such a catastrophe, so he followed the other two out of the auto as
quickly as he could. For a moment he and Tom paid no attention to the
mermaid, so absorbed were they in the possibility of a blow-up. But when
this danger had apparently passed they discovered that she had lifted
herself from the grassy sward and was flip-flopping awkwardly in the
direction of the brook that runs through Cylburn near the road.
"Come back! Come back! There's no danger!" called Edwin, as he started
after her.
The damsel paid no heed. She was intent on getting to that stream of
running water.
Again Edwin called, this time more sharply. The mermaid stopped not, but
turned a tearful and much convulsed face to him.
Edwin raced after her. So did Tom. But when they got to the edge of the
brook the only sign of her was an increasing ripple on the surface of a
little pool. The stream was not so deep but that the bottom could be
studied. And yet they saw nothing of her. Evidently she had the
enchanted gift of being invisible in water.
Tom looked at Edwin. Edwin looked at Tom.
"That beats the Dutch!" said Tom.
"It's worse than that," replied Edwin, an odd catch in his voice. "We
certainly have queered her for good. We must find her and get her back
to the Park somehow."
For hours they moved up and down alongside the stream, calling
pleadingly, but without response, for their quondam friend. Edwin made a
little oration to her in absentia, in which he humbly begged her pardon
and swore by all the gods of Mount Olympus--by the great Jupiter, the
chaste Diana and all the rest of them, as far as he could remember their
names--that he would restore her safely to the lake. But she came not.
Tom added his entreaties, but she heeded not. Then Tom suggested that
perhaps she had worked her way down the brook and into Jones' Falls,
whence she could, if she but knew the pipes, get into her beloved lake
again. Edwin jumped at the idea, and, leaving Tom to look after the
auto, hastened down the ravine to Jones' Falls, and moved up and down
the Falls, calling for the vanished damsel with a fervor that might have
caused doubts as to his sanity had anyone heard it.
When he returned, terribly downcast, Tom had gotten the car righted and
had discovered that it was uninjured.
"No luck, I suppose?" said Tom.
"No," replied Edwin, moodily.
"Get in, then. We can't stay here all day."
Edwin required urging to leave the spot. Finally he consented to go. As
he climbed in he saw the overturned wash tub, and his concentrated wrath
and grief were heaped upon it. Picking it up, he hurled it savagely at a
tree, and, when it fell to pieces with the concussion, he exclaimed,
vehemently and inconsequentially:
"That's the blamed thing that got us into this muss!"
At Druid lake he insisted on another long search. Time and again the
auto was stopped that he might call aloud for his charmer. But no
answering sound came across the water.
"Curses!" said Edwin. "I'm afraid she's lost for good."
And that is probably the true explanation as to why there has been no
mermaid in Druid lake since. She may be in Cylburn brook, she may be in
Jones' Falls, she may have reached the Patapsco, but no one has ever
seen a creature answering her description and aquatic habits since the
damsel who once held the job got giddy and went motoring.
_The Goddess of Truth_
Not everybody was pleased among the many thousands who on September 12,
1906, saw the industrial parade with which Baltimore celebrated its
wonderful recovery from the blow given by the great fire of 1904. Tobias
Greenfield, head of a Lexington-street department store, was one who was
not. He was angry, violently so. He had been in a chipper mood all
morning and had enjoyed watching the long line from the windows of a
bedecorated wholesale house on Baltimore street. But when his eyes
alighted on the float of his own firm, the anger came. And the longer it
stayed with him, the worse it grew, especially as he could not escape
the prodding of the friends who had invited him to their warehouse.
When he could decently slip away from them he went to his office and
peremptorily called for his advertising manager.
"What the devil do you mean, Melvale," he shouted, "by putting such a
scrawny little girl on our float as the Goddess? She looked a fright in
the clothes made for Miss Preston, and everyone is laughing at us. Why
was not Miss Preston there? How came you to make such a mess?"
The advertising man was nervous under the volley of questions, but he
explained at length. Boiled down, it was plain he could give only one
reason why the float had been such a mess.
And that reason was William Henry Montgomery.
Miss Preston had been willing to be the Goddess, as planned, but William
Henry Montgomery said no. And that settled it.
And who was William Henry Montgomery? Why, Miss Preston loved William
Henry Montgomery.
You see, down on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, where Maude Preston and
William Henry Montgomery were to the manor born, they had sought each
other's company so assiduously and for so long that in the length and
breadth of Accomac--from Chincoteague to Great Machipongo--every man and
woman regarded it as a sure thing that Maude and William Henry would hit
it off for a marriage. And they had talked, as people will, about their
being an ideal couple, so well suited--William Henry broad-shouldered
and solidly knit and Maude molded on classic Diana's lines, erect and
queenly, but sweet to look upon. The women thought William Henry a
fine-looking lad, while men and women alike regarded Maude as the
handsomest creature on the Peninsula below the Maryland line.
And then one day there had been a quarrel. Maude thought a bit of
William Henry's advice too assertive, too near to an injunction to obey,
and had flared up. And William Henry had flared up likewise. And when
the two came to count the cost, William Henry was moodily filling a job
in a cousin's lumber-yard in Philadelphia, while Maude, unknown to
William Henry, had come to Baltimore to remove herself and her
heart-wound from the well-meant, but too gossipy, neighbors in Accomac.
It was a matter of only a few months before she was the best-liked
saleswoman in Greenfield & Jacobs' big store. From Mr. Greenfield down
to the rawest cash girl all were glad to exchange a word with her,
because there was something delightful in Maude's way of expressing even
trivialities, and an especial joy in hearing her talk about "you all"
and call a car "kyar," a girl "giurl" and other idioms peculiar to
Tidewater Virginians. Besides that, she was too good-looking altogether
to be passed without notice. The elevator boys were both in love with
her, and their seniors--whether clerks, floor-walkers, salesmen or
owners--would walk two aisles out of the way any time to pass by Miss
Preston at the counter where she disposed of bolts of ribbon. But best
of all was the regard which her scores of girl associates had for her.
They liked her because they saw she made no effort to seek or to foster
the attentions which the masculines of the store thrust upon her. They
liked her, too, for the individuality and perfect neatness she showed in
her dress, from the bows of ribbon on her short sleeves to the set of
her skirts or the way her waists were arranged at the belt. As for her
hair, eight-ninths of the store, being the feminine portion, envied its
beautiful wave, and two-ninths mustered up courage to ask Maude how she
managed to keep it so splendidly. And the two-ninths, being told, let
the other six-ninths into the secret. Thus it was, in Greenfield &
Jacobs', that the Maude wave became more popular than the one named
after Marcelle.
And all the while Maude quietly went on thinking of William Henry. She
heard about him sometimes in letters from Accomac, and knew that he was
still in Philadelphia. And there were hours when she fought the
temptation to write to him there, and humbly tell him that she had been
wrong to grow angry with him. Perhaps he had forgotten her and was
having a good time--she recoiled from the thought, and yet it would come
now and then. And when it came, Maude had spells of the "blues" that she
found hard to conceal from her new-made friends at the department store
and in her boarding-house on Arlington avenue.
Greenfield & Jacobs was one of the first retail firms to take up the
notion of having a float in the Jubilee parade. And, having once decided
to exhibit, they went at the preparations with characteristic
thoroughness. "Let us do it right," said Jacobs to Greenfield. "Let us
spare no expense to have a car so beautiful that all Baltimore will
remember it as one of the hits of the parade. Let it be chaste and
symbolic, and not overloaded with bunting and people."
The head of the firm had the same thought. "We have always tried to tell
the truth to our customers," he rejoined. "Why not try to bring that
fact home to thousands by a float on which a handsome Goddess of Truth
will be giving a laurel crown to our firm?"
"Capital!" exclaimed Jacobs. "And Miss Preston can be the Goddess."
"I had her in mind when I proposed it," remarked Greenfield.
And both men laughed.
Neither partner was up on mythology, so they turned over to Melvale, the
advertising man, the duty of working out the details of the float. Now,
Melvale wasn't literary, either; but he knew an obliging young woman at
the Pratt Library, and he hied himself to her to ask who under Heaven
was the Goddess of Truth and how was she dressed. And the obliging young
woman looked up encyclopedias and finally handed Melvale an illustrated
copy of Spenser's "Faerie Queene." Melvale had never heard of Spenser,
and he had an idea that Spenser spelled his title badly, not even
according to the simplified method of Roosevelt and Carnegie. But he
took the book and read of the beautiful, pure and trustful Una, the
personification of Truth, the beloved of the Red Cross Knight. And when
he looked at the pictures he began to grow enthusiastic over the float.
"By George!" he exclaimed. "Miss Preston will look great in that Greek
gown."
And Melvale sketched the float as it afterward grew into being at the
hands of carpenters, painters and decorators at the old car shed on
Pennsylvania avenue. There was, first of all, a beautiful little model
of Greenfield & Jacobs' new store, about three feet high, over the
corner dome of which the charming Goddess, bending forward, was about
to place the laurel crown suggested by Greenfield. Behind her were
finely modeled figures of the lion and the lamb which are devoted
followers of Una. It was artistic; it was symbolic; it was chaste. There
was no word of advertising save the neatly lettered inscription:
_________________________
| |
| The Truth stands by us. |
| We stand by the Truth. |
|_________________________|
It was a harder task than either partner imagined to win the consent of
Miss Preston to be a goddess for a few brief hours. She was not the sort
of girl to like conspicuousness or notoriety, and she flatly refused
when the float was first brought to her attention. Then they pleaded
with her. Jacobs told her how much she would be helping the firm if she
would only agree to oblige them. Greenfield promised to have the finest
of Greek gowns made in the store's dressmaking department. And Melvale,
clever man, deftly told her how beautiful and good Una was supposed to
be, and mildly intimated that there was no other young woman in
Baltimore who could possibly fill the bill on that float. Ultimately
Miss Preston's scruples were overcome.
And into the preparations she entered with pleasing enthusiasm. Melvale
took her several times to the shed to see the float materialize, and
stopped each morning at the ribbon counter to tell her about details.
The whole store told her a thousand times how glad each was that she was
to be the Goddess. Greenfield did as he promised about the costume--and
never was Greek gown made of more beautiful white goods, or more
exquisitely and perfectly fitted. Maude read Spenser's poem, more
understandingly than had Melvale, and the Goddess of Truth so completely
filled her mind during those summer weeks that William Henry Montgomery
was almost obscured except when she dreamed how she would like him to
see her triumph.
At last came the day of the parade. Melvale, always fertile with
expedients, had arranged with Townsend, floor-walker on the fourth
floor, who lived on Fulton avenue just where the big parade was to form,
that the Goddess Maude might array herself in her finery at his home.
Bright and early that morning he sent a carriage for Miss Preston, and
ordered the float to be at Townsend's curb by 9 o'clock. The beautiful
gown and its accessories, laid away in soft tissue paper, were brought
from the Lexington-street store, and a couple of the girls from the
dressmaking department were on hand to aid the final making of a
goddess.
Maude would not have been a woman had she not taken her time to get into
such finery, and Melvale began to grow nervous as the parade hour grew
near. The street was in confusion with the gathering of floats and men
and curious crowds of onlookers. The chief marshal of the procession,
Col. William A. Boykin, had warned him that the line was to move on
time, and already there were signs of a start. Five times he dived into
the hallway of Townsend's home and called agonizingly upstairs to know
if Miss Preston was ready.
Finally she came. And Melvale held his breath as the beauty of the girl
burst upon him, even in the half-light of the hall. While it concealed
some of the lines of her figure, the gown accentuated her erect, queenly
carriage. Her exquisitely molded arms and her full, round throat had
been powdered, a bit or two of rouge had heightened the charm of her
face and a touch of black had increased the brilliancy of her eyes,
already flashing with the excitement of the moment. There was a
tremulous curve to her lips as she glanced at Melvale to note whether he
was pleased with her appearance.
"The goddess of men, as well as of truth," he murmured as he bent over
and gallantly kissed her hand. Una's flush heightened, but she was
pleased with the compliment.
Melvale opened the door and the goddess in white passed out into the
morning sunlight on Fulton avenue.
And as she did so she gave a faint scream of surprise.
For there, on the sidewalk, was William Henry Montgomery, her Red Cross
Knight.
William Henry was as much surprised as the damsel Una. He had no idea
that Maude was nearer to him than Accomac, and he was in Baltimore for
the day merely to mingle with the holiday crowds and perhaps encounter
some Eastern Shore friend from whom he might learn news of her. His
presence on Fulton avenue was due to the identical reason as that which
inspired thousands of others curious to see the start of a big parade.
When he saw Maude come out of the doorway, a vision in white, he thought
for a moment he had gone insane and was having a hallucination. Then he
reflected that it could not possibly be Maude Preston in Baltimore and
wearing such theatrical clothes on the street in broad daylight. Then he
looked again and was certain it was Maude. Besides, hadn't she
recognized him and put out her arm to steady herself against the arch of
the doorway?
"Maude!" he exclaimed, simply, as he hurried up the marble steps.
"Bill Henry!" she cried, faintly.
She held out her hands and he took them.
"I've been sorry a long time, Bill Henry," she said.
"And I, too, sweetheart."
He would have kissed her in complete reconciliation, but Maude was
conscious of the crowd on the street. "Don't, Bill Henry," she whispered
as she laughed, flushed and tenderly pushed him away. He held on to both
her hands.
Melvale, in the vestibule behind, had stood petrified as the incident
developed. He was wise enough to understand that a reconciliation of
lovers was in progress. Their words, and, above all, the ardency of
their glances betrayed that.
From down Fulton avenue came the sound of a great bell. The parade had
started. "Hurry," said Melvale, "you must take your position, Miss
Preston."
"Take your position, Maude?" asked William Henry calmly, ignoring
Melvale.
"Yes, Bill Henry," said his sweetheart, hurriedly; "I'm to be the
Goddess of Truth on that float there."
William Henry turned and looked at the float. Then he stood off a step
or two and studied Maude's make up. "I've never seen you look
handsomer," he said, slowly, "but somehow you don't seem natural. I'd
rather have met you again when you were not so full of paint and powder.
I loved you always just as you were, without fancy fixings."
The bell was getting farther away.
"Come, Miss Preston," urged Melvale. "We will have to hurry."
For the first time William Henry recognized the presence of Melvale.
"She ain't going, Mister," declared William Henry, ungrammatically, but
firmly.
"Not going!" screamed Melvale.
"Oh! Bill," stammered Maude, "they've gone to such a lot of expense and
trouble! And they've been so kind to me!"
"I don't care," returned William Henry. "Down in Accomac we don't like
this theatre business for girls we love, and I tell you I am not going
to see you in that parade, showing yourself off to all Baltimore and
thousands more, too. Who knows how many people are here from down home?
If you want this notoriety and fuss, Maude," he went on sternly, "I can
leave again."
A tear made its way out of Maude's eyes and threatened the rouge on her
cheek.
"Come, Miss Preston," said Melvale.
"No, no; I can't go against what Bill wants," she said, feebly; "not
again."
Melvale saw that he faced a serious business dilemma. Cupid had butt in
at the wrong moment. It was necessary for Greenfield & Jacobs to be in
that parade, and he had about six minutes to get the float in line. As
he put it in his report to Mr. Greenfield, "There wasn't any use wasting
time trying to persuade Miss Preston with that hulking big Eastern
Shoreman menacing me. I had to let her do as William Henry wanted,
without bandying words. At the same time I had to find another Goddess
in a hurry. That's how I came to make use of Townsend's daughter."
"Was that thin girl Townsend's daughter?" asked Greenfield.
"There isn't any cause to be hard on the girl, Mr. Greenfield. She's not
so thin, and she is good looking and with a sweet expression. You put
any girl in clothes not made for her--just jump her into 'em without any
time for those little tricks that women know so well how to do--and
she's sure to feel a guy. And if she feels a guy, she's going to look
it. Why, it took those two girls just six minutes to transfer that
goddess rig from Miss Preston to Miss Townsend. She didn't have time to
powder, and she didn't have time to dab on paint, and, besides, she had
had no rehearsals. That's why she was so pale."
"And where did you leave Miss Preston and her mentor?"
"Sitting on the sofa in Townsend's parlor, wondering if they could get a
license to be married today, it being a holiday."
"Mr. Melvale," directed Mr. Greenfield, "I want you to find them again,
just as quick as you can, and if they are not already tied up I want you
to help them do it in the most handsome style possible in a hurry.
Reward Miss Townsend nicely, but get that gown from her and make a
present of it to the girl it was made for. She might like to have it for
a wedding gown. And as you go out, tell Mr. Stricker to send the bride
the handsomest thing he can find in the glass and china department."
"Miss Preston'll appreciate all that. I think she's sorry she couldn't
help you out. She has certainly missed a fine chance of being a
goddess."
"You're wrong, Melvale; you're wrong! That girl doesn't need a Greek
gown and a float and a parade to make her a goddess."
"William Henry don't think so, sir."
_A Daughter of Cuba Libre_
When they had been at school together at Notre Dame, Catherine Franklin
had been most fond of the company of Manuela Moreto, and had listened
with wonder and admiration to the fluent stories of the dark-eyed,
olive-skinned girl from Cuba, tales of her father's desperate adventures
in the trocha in the years before American intervention had rid the
"Pearl of the Antilles" of Spanish rule. Spanish-American pupils,
daughters of wealthy tobacco, sugar or coffee planters, were not
infrequent at this and other convent schools around Baltimore, and
Catherine knew enough of them not to yield so precipitately as had many
girls to the romantic glamour cast around them by their coming from a
strange land. But Manuela Moreto was so winning, and her narratives of
bold deeds so piquant, that Catherine had taken her to her heart in a
school-girl friendship, had gloried in knowing the daughter of a Cuban
patriot and had liberally bedewed her handkerchief and made vows of
undying love when their June commencement brought the days of parting.
But that had been five years ago, and in five years, as everyone knows,
havoc can be played with a friendship of this sort. There had been a
correspondence, industrious at first, then flagging as each found new
friends and new interests, and finally ceasing altogether. There was no
hint of any misunderstanding, and Catherine felt that if anything
serious were to happen in Manuela's life, if she were to marry, for
instance, a letter would come from Cuba. Nothing came as the months
added up, and she was satisfied that Manuela was living out her rather
monotonous life on Senor Felipe Moreto's tobacco plantation in Pinar del
Rio province.
Last August came the new revolution in Cuba, and Catherine found all her
interest in Manuela reawakened as she read in daily dispatches of the
uprising in Pinar del Rio, of the raids of Pino Guerra, of the feeble
resistance of the Government forces, of the burning of plantations and
the seizure of horses and cattle. She wondered if her one-time chum
could be in any danger.
She had fully made up her mind to write to Manuela, when there came a
letter from the latter. Her mother handed it to her as Catherine sat
down to the supper table in her home on Caroline street, opposite St.
Joseph's Hospital, her cheeks flushed from a vigorous afternoon at
tennis in Clifton Park. "It's from Manuela Moreto!" she exclaimed in
surprise as she saw the handwriting on the envelope. Then, with
increased excitement, she added "She must be in Washington," for she had
by this time noted the postmark, the home stamp and the crest of the
Raleigh Hotel.
The letter said:
Dearest Girlie--After all these months of silence, you will no
doubt be surprised to hear from your Cuban friend, and from
Washington, too. You have probably read of the new uprising
against despotism in my oft-bled country. We have suffered much,
but hope for the best. I cannot tell you now, but I want to come
to Baltimore to see you and the dear old school, and then we can
have one of those outpourings of confidence such as used to give
us joy. Let me hear from you just as soon as you can.
Yours as ever,
MANUELA MORETO.
"Write tonight and tell her to come and visit us," said Mrs. Franklin,
heartily.
"I will if dad will promise to like Manuela," answered Catherine,
wistfully eying her father. The Captain was master and part owner of a
steamer in the Central American banana trade, and the family knew from
repeated outbursts that he had no very high opinion of the
Spanish-American.
"I'm not stuck on those Dagos as a rule," said the Captain, doubtfully,
"but if all you say is correct this s'norita must be a fine girl, and
you know I cotton all right to fine girls."
"Is she pretty?" asked Will Franklin of his sister. Will was at the age
when young men think a great deal of girls.
"She's dark," explained his mother, "and she was thin when I used to see
her with Catherine at Notre Dame. But if she has filled out as she
should have, she ought to be a handsome girl."
Two days later the whole family was at Camden Station to welcome their
foreign visitor. Will Franklin whistled as he saw the splendid-looking
young woman whom his sister rushed to kiss as she came through the gate.
"Gee!" he exclaimed, "she's a stunner!" For Senorita Manuela Teresa
Dolores Inez Moreto de la Rivera--to give her all of her names--had not
only "filled out" until she had a fine, well-rounded figure and a
handsome dark, oval face, but had also engaging animation and the gift
of wearing her clothes well. She looked as trim as can be imagined in
her cream-colored linen suit, with a couple of touches of light blue at
the wrists and neck.
They sat up late that night in the library of the Franklin home. After
supper they had begun to ask questions of Manuela, and she had in
response given them her own personal account of the new revolution. It
was a narrative that awakened their sympathies for her and her family
and all others who had suffered by the internal strife, and it made them
strong partisans of the rebels. "They call it Cuba libre, free Cuba!"
she exclaimed, with flashing eyes, "and yet the days of Spanish tyranny
were no worse than the oppression of Palma's crowd. They have held the
offices since Roosevelt gave them the government, and they lined their
pockets with what you Americans call 'graft.' That made them determined
to hold on at all costs, and so my father's party--the Liberals--was not
only over-taxed and annoyed by extortions on every hand, but was cheated
and robbed at the polls when it tried to get control by an honest
election."
And then she told of a night in July when a half-drunken crowd of
Government rurales, sent to arrest her father, had set fire to his
tobacco houses when they found he had been forewarned and escaped them.
"I cannot repeat to you all the vile abuses they heaped upon me," she
added, quietly. "One of them, a mulatto who had been discharged by my
father, tried to kiss me. He is dead now." She shuddered with the
recollection. The Baltimore family shuddered at her matter-of-fact
recital.
"You mean--that he"----stammered placid, domestic Mrs. Franklin.
"I mean that two of my father's men singled him out and macheted him the
first time they met in a skirmish."
On only one point was she reticent. Her father, she said, had come to
this country on an errand for the rebels, but what that errand was she
did not explain. "He is General Moreto now," she remarked; "and if ever
Senor Zayas becomes President and our party comes into control at
Havana, they have promised my father greater honors."
For a week Senorita Moreto continued to add to the powerful interest she
had aroused in her hosts. By day they tried to entertain her--an
afternoon at Notre Dame with the school Sisters, a trip through the
rebuilt fire district, a ride to Bay Shore Park, an excursion to Port
Deposit by steamboat and other summer opportunities. But of an evening,
when the family was all collected in the library or on the front stoop,
the Cuban dispatches in that day's News were carefully gone over and
afforded texts upon which Manuela vivaciously and eloquently inveighed
against the despotism of the "ins" and predicted the triumph of the
"outs."
"Upon my soul, Miss Moreto," said the usually level-headed Captain
Franklin, "your zeal stirs me so that I find myself wishing every moment
I was fighting on your side."
"I'd love to have you aid us," murmured the Cuban girl. And she lifted
her black eyelashes and cast her brilliant eyes at Catherine's father
with such intentness that he was confused and looked away without asking
her, as he had intended, just how it was possible for him to help the
cause.
The next morning Will, who had become the devoted admirer of the pretty
Cuban, carried two telegrams for General Moreto when he left home to go
to the Hopkins-place wholesale house where he was a clerk. One was
addressed to the Raleigh in Washington, the other to the Cuban junta
headquarters in New York. Each read:
"You must come at once. I want you."
A reply came that afternoon. It was from Wilmington, and it said:
"Union Station, 7.33 P. M."
Manuela and Catherine met the General at the hour named. The man who
alighted from the Congressional Limited and whom Manuela rushed to kiss
was slender and undersized, with a swarthy, weather-beaten face, curly
gray hair and a white moustache, twisted and re-twisted to the limit. He
was in white flannels and was so altogether neat and immaculate that
Catherine, perspiring under the sultriness of the August evening,
thought him the coolest person she had ever seen. He greeted her with
gallantry when introduced, and, though he spoke English with slowness,
his pronunciation was good and his voice musical.
After he had made a similarly good impression at the Caroline-street
dwelling it was Manuela who proposed that they should leave the two
fathers "to smoke together and get acquainted."
As the girls went out of the library Moreto laid half a dozen cigars on
the table. "From my own plantation," he said to Captain Franklin, with
rather a pompous manner. "I hope you'll like them." The Captain found
them the finest Havanas he had ever puffed.
"You go to Costa Rica for bananas, do you not?" the General asked in
Spanish.
"Sometimes Port Limon; sometimes Bocas del Toro," answered Catherine's
father, in the same tongue. "Bocas del Toro this trip."
"When do you sail?"
"Next Saturday."
There was another silence. Franklin studied his cigar. Moreto studied
the fruit captain. Presently he leaned forward on the arm of his Morris
chair, in which, truth to tell, he looked rather insignificant.
"My daughter," he said, this time in English, "tells me you are with us
in our revolution."
The Captain turned his clear blue eyes on the Cuban.
"Your daughter, Senor," he replied, "is a fine girl." He saw the shadow
of disappointment pass over Moreto's countenance. "I'm not much on
revolutions. I've seen too many of the bloody things in the tropics, and
it pays me to keep out of 'em. But your girl Manuela has a powerful
strong way of putting things, and I'm bound to say, if all she tells is
not beyond the mark, my sympathies are with you and your crowd."
"Beyond the mark! Why, Dios, Senor Capitan!" cried the General, his eyes
gleaming with excitement. "Why, she could not tell you a tenth of the
truth." And he launched into a long narrative of the oppressions in
Cuba. The words came like a torrent, mostly Spanish, occasionally
English; and Franklin, sitting there fascinated, his cigar forgotten,
could think of nothing save that the daughter's fluency was a gift of
heredity.
When Moreto had ended and had sunk back half exhausted on the cushions
the Captain, usually calm and self-contained, betrayed unwonted
enthusiasm.
"I'm with you through and through," he exclaimed as he rose from his
chair and sought the Cuban's hand. "You haven't had a square deal, and
I'd like to see you get it."
Moreto's black eyes seemed to pierce him.
"Would you help us?" he asked. His tone was so tense and low that
Franklin barely caught the words.
"Help you! How can I?"
Moreto paused again. He was not quite sure of his man. Finally he
uncovered his aim:
"Take rifles to Cuba."
Captain Franklin stepped back. He did not exactly like the proposal. He
had always kept out of such musses, and he knew it was violating Federal
law to be a filibuster.
"I'm only part owner of the Cristobal," he stammered. "I would not like
to involve the others."
"They need never know. I have a perfectly safe plan."
The Captain wavered. He would like to help Moreto and his daughter if it
were not for the risk.
"What is your plan?"
"If we had a thousand rifles to arm Pino Guerra," said Moreto, "we could
take San Luis. If we took San Luis we could control Pinar del Rio
province. My mission to your country is to get those rifles to a point
in that province. I have them boxed, ready for shipment as new machinery
for a sugar plantation. They are at Wilmington. I thought I had placed
them on a steamer in the Delaware last week, but your confounded Secret
Service agents are too vigilant, and they learned from members of the
crew that something unusual was up. If you will take those boxes on the
Cristobal I can get them here on Friday and will arrange for an
insurgent schooner to meet you at any point you name. Will you do it?"
"It's risky business," slowly said the Captain, lighting a fresh Vuelta
cigar.
"It means liberty to us. Dios, Senor Captain, where would your country
be if the French had not helped Washington and his ragged rebels?"
Franklin puffed away slowly. The Cuban watched him. At last the Captain
made a decision.
"You may send those rifles along," he said.
The two men grasped hands again. They were in that position when
Catherine put her head in the library door. "You're as quiet as two
conspirators," she laughingly said. "Perhaps we are conspiring,
Senorita," called General Moreto as the girl shut herself from view
again.
"That is a charming daughter of yours, Captain," said the Cuban, in his
best English.
"Ah! but your girl has the head and the wit. You find her a great help,
don't you?"
Moreto's smile was more frank than his reply. "Women take a bigger share
in revolutions than is generally believed." he said.
In another half hour the details of their filibuster were arranged. A
point in the Caribbean, near the Isle of Pines, was selected for a
rendezvous. There the Cuban schooner would take aboard the contraband
cargo and Franklin go on his way after bananas.
"Do you wish your family to know?" asked Moreto as they were about to
leave the library. "My daughter knows all my business."
"Catherine is all right," replied Captain Franklin, "and so is Will, but
his mother would worry too much."
And so for the next three days there was a great secret in the Franklin
home, shared by the young people with the two gray-haired men. They made
trips to the steamer, at the foot of Centre-Market space, a slender,
white-painted craft, looking more like a private yacht or a revenue
cutter than a tropical trader; they heard the arrangements made for
prompt transfer of the boxes across the city; they stopped with General
Moreto at the telegraph offices on Calvert street when he sent off
cipher wires to the junta and its agents, and sometimes cabled to Cuba.
And on the Friday when the boxes were due they pestered the clerks at
Bolton freight yards with 'phone inquiries. "It's great fun," confided
Catherine to Manuela. "I feel just like a heroine doing a great deed.
And we have to be so mysterious, too." Manuela smiled indulgently. She
had got past the stage of thinking conspiracies fun.
No untoward incident occurred while the boxes of rifles labeled "Sugar
machinery" were being loaded into the Cristobal's hold. There was no one
on the dock or steamer who could be suspected of being a Government
agent. General Moreto kept away, and the presence of Miss Catherine with
the Cuban girl could never have aroused the doubts of the crew. The
boxes were taken on without accident, and by Friday dusk the Cristobal
had a thousand weapons aboard for the rebels of Pinar del Rio.
There were tears in the eyes of both girls as Captain Franklin waved
them goodbye from his bridge when he was being pulled out into the
Patapsco the next morning. A shade of extra seriousness had tinged his
parting from them as they went ashore from the steamer, and Catherine,
no longer thinking conspiracies "great fun," began to have doubts
whether she might not have her father landed in jail somewhere.
"I do hope no harm will come to dad," she said. "I never felt so queer
when he went away before."
"Let us pray that all goes well," replied Manuela.
And so for eleven whole long days, in their petitions to God, in church
and night and morning in their room, they invoked His blessing upon the
Cristobal's filibustering mission. It was an anxious time. The period of
excitement over, the interval of suspense made their spirits droop. None
of the usual amusements diverted them. Even Will's now ardent
attentions, which had provoked some teasing in the bosom of his family,
were slighted in the strain of the long wait until, boylike, and chafing
under the apparent neglect, he had impetuously sought explanations from
Manuela. What she told him is not a part of the conspiracy, but from
that hour there were two secrets kept in the Franklin dwelling. And when
he hurried home each afternoon with The News, that they might carefully
examine it for anything bearing on his father's expedition, there was a
double motive in the eagerness with which Manuela met him at the door.
It was Wednesday week before the first news came. General Moreto, who
had left them on the day after Captain Franklin had passed Cape Henry
outward bound, telegraphed as follows:
Glorious news; San Luis taken. We must have done it.
The girls were excitedly reading the account in The News of the victory
by Pino Guerra when this cable dispatch came to them from Catherine's
father:
Bocas del Toro.
Costa Rica, Aug. 22.
Machinery transferred; no trouble.