SURPRISE ON SURPRISE
That letter and that ticket were destined never to be sent!
The next morning, while Madame Von Bruyin, Lilith Hereward, and Monsieur
Le Grange were seated at breakfast together, a card was brought in on a
silver waiter and offered to Lilith.
She picked it up and read:
SEÑOR ZUNIGA.
And underneath, in brackets, the lightly-penciled name of Alfred
Ancillon.
Lilith could scarcely suppress a cry as she started to her feet.
“What is the matter?” inquired the baroness.
“My relative from New York has arrived!” joyfully exclaimed Lilith.
“Indeed! I congratulate you. Go to him at once, my dear,” said the
baroness, cordially. Then turning to the page, she inquired:
“Where have you shown the gentleman, Henri?”
“Into the small salon, madame,” replied the lad.
“Quite right. Attend Madame Wyvil thither. Go, my dear. Do not keep your
friend a moment waiting,” said the baroness, sympathetically.
Lilith left the room, attended by the page, and crossed the hall to
enter the small salon overlooking the Champs d’Elysées.
The young page opened the door for her to pass in, and then closed it
and retired.
Mr. Alfred Ancillon, or Señor Zuniga, stood in the middle of the bright
room, looking the image of glorious, immortal youth.
He came eagerly forward and opened his arms.
Lilith fell upon his bosom in a passion of joyous sobs and tears.
He embraced her warmly, straining her to his heart, pressing kisses on
her face, before either of them spoke a syllable.
Their first utterances were almost incoherent in their gladness.
“Oh, thank Heaven that you still live!”
“Thanks be to the Lord that I find you safe, my darling child!”
“At last! Oh, at last you are vindicated!”
“Restored to life, almost from the grave. Oh! my child!”
“By what happy chance did you drift into Aunt Sophie’s house?”
“I will tell you presently, my dear, for——”
“And how is dear Aunt Sophie?”
“You must judge for yourself, darling! Look up! There—there she is!”
Lilith lifted herself from the señor’s breast and turned her head to see
a round, black bundle of a little old woman, on the bottom of an
easy-chair, unroll itself and come towards her in the form of Mrs.
Downie.
Yes, it was indeed Aunt Sophie! There was the same soft, round form, the
same careless though clean black gown and shawl, the same little mashed
black silk bonnet, the same smiling, babyish old face, with its fair
skin, blue eyes and rumpled gray hair. It was dear Aunt Sophie in
person, wonderful as the fact appeared.
With a half-suppressed cry of joy Lilith ran to her, caught her in her
arms and covered her face with kisses, while Aunt Sophie cried quietly
without speaking a word.
Presently Lilith led her to a seat on the sofa and sat down beside her,
holding her hand, gazing into her sweet old face, and uttering her
delight in fragmentary words.
“How comes it that I have the joy of seeing you? It was only yesterday
evening that I got your dear letter. This very day I was going to write
to you to come here to us. Was not that strange? But you always
anticipated my wishes, did you not? But what happy inspiration, what
angel sent you here?”
“Why, it was him,” replied Aunt Sophie, simply, pointing to the señor.
“He fetched me. I believe he could persuade anybody in this world to do
anything he wanted. And all in such a hurry, too! I never made up my
mind so quick in all my life before; and never shall in all my life
again. I declare I was on board of the ship before I well knowed what I
was doing.”
The Señor Zuniga broke into one of Alfred Ancillon’s joyous bursts of
laughter as he explained:
“If I had given her time to reflect she might have hesitated to come. If
I had not hurried her out of her senses I could not have brought her.
Hear! I saw your advertisement in the Personal column of the
_Pursuivant_, by chance, just thirteen days ago. I saw that it had been
in for some weeks, though I had not observed it. This was on Tuesday. I
reflected that I could go to you in person as quickly as I could
communicate with you by letter, so I made up my mind to sail the next
day by the City of Paris. The steamers from America to Europe are not
crowded at this season, whatever the steamers from Europe to America may
be. I went to the agent’s office, feeling sure of getting berths, and I
got them. I got two tickets, one for myself and one for Aunt Sophie, for
I felt sure of persuading her to accompany me——”
“He could persuade any mortal man or woman to do anything he wanted them
to do,” put in the old lady.
“Well, you may call it whim, eccentricity or inspiration, but I felt a
great desire to take Mrs. Downie with me, and I was resolved to gratify
that desire.”
“Yes, he did,” again put in Aunt Sophie. “He come right in the kitchen,
where I was sitting down with a blue check apron on, paring apples to
make pies for dinner; for, my dear, he went all over the house like a
tame kitten; and he says to me all of a sudden:
“‘I want you to let the house take care of itself and go to Europe with
me to-morrow morning to see your favorite’ (that was you, my dear).
“And I declare I was so startled I give a jump and let the pan fall, and
the apples rolled all over the kitchen floor. Asking me all in a minute
to go to Europe with him to-morrow as if it had been going to Harlem or
Brooklyn!”
Again the irrepressible laughter of the señor burst forth as he said:
“Well, you are not sorry you came?”
“Oh, no! But, goodness, child, think of it! I, who had lived nigh
seventy years in this world without ever going more than fifty miles
from home, and that only once in my life, to be asked all of a sudden to
go to Europe next day!”
“It was startling!” said Lilith, smiling.
“Startling! And then to hear him talk. Why, to hear him you would think
to go from New York to Havre was no more than to row across a river.
Then he got my boarders on his side. I think they thought it was fun.
And they all got me in such a whirl that I hardly knowed whether I was
awake or asleep. And before I rightly knowed what I was about I was on
the steamer and out of sight of land!”
“I hope you left them all well at your house,” said Lilith.
“Oh, yes, honey, all mons’ous well. Mrs. Farquier is going to be married
to Elder Perkins, of our church. I believe I told you in my letter.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Well, child, he is rich—awful rich. And they are to be married next
spring. He is a building of a fine new house way up town, facing on the
Park, and soon as it’s finished and furnished they’re going to be
married and move right in. She’s giv’ up her employment, and hasn’t got
much to do; so she offered if I would only go along of this young
gentleman to Europe, how she would keep house for me until I come back.
She is a dear, good woman and deserves all the prosperity she will
have.”
“So you need have no anxious cares about the house,” said Lilith.
“No, honey. And I expect I shall feel right down well satisfied, once I
get settled. But I was that whirled around before I started that I
hardly knowed what I was doing of, or even who I was. Now what do you
think? When I opened my trunk to get out a change of clothes, what do
you think I found out!”
“I do not know,” said Lilith, smiling.
“Well, I found that I had left behind my Sunday gown—that black silk
gown as I have worn to church more years than I remember.”
“That was unlucky; but never mind; you must have a new one. Silk is
cheap in Paris.”
“Yes, honey, but that is not the worst of it. Instead of my own Sunday
gown, what do you think I had packed away in my trunk?”
“A common gown?”
“No, child! But poor, dear, young Brother Burney’s best black trousers,
as I had taken out’n his room that very morning to clean for him, with
benzine. And what he’ll do for a decent pair to wear to church, I don’t
know; for he’s only got one more pair, and they are patched awful, so as
when the wind blows—well, I have to pin the flaps of his coat together.
’Deed I am mons’ous sorry I took his trousers. I hope he will never
s’picion as I pawned ’em or anything.”
“Of course he won’t. But who is Brother Burney?” inquired Lilith.
“Oh, a hopeful young brother as is studying for the ministry. He has got
the little teenty room at the end of the passage in the third story. And
I reckon he’s very poor. Ah me! I am sorry about them there trousers.”
Here Lilith bent and whispered to Aunt Sophie: “We could send him,
anonymously, a letter of credit for fifty or a hundred dollars, to get
him a complete outfit.”
“Could we, now? Without letting him know where it comes from? Without
hurting his feelings? For it’s very hard to be beholden, you know. Hard
for a gentleman, let alone how poor he may be.”
“We can fix it, Aunt Sophie; a letter shall go out to him this very day.
And now I want you to come into my room and take off your bonnet. You
will, I am sure, excuse us,” said Lilith, turning with a smile to the
señor.
“I will go back to the hotel, where I have some business to attend to. I
will call later to pay my respects to Madame Von Bruyin,” said Zuniga,
as he arose and prepared to leave.
“But—hadn’t I better be going, too? The baroness might think I was
intruding,” said Aunt Sophie, uneasily.
“Indeed she will not! She will be rejoiced to see you. She commissioned
me to write to you, and urge you to come over to us.”
“She did?” cried Aunt Sophie, in amazement.
“Indeed she did! I was to have written to you this very day, as I told
you. Come, now, into my room and take off your bonnet and consider
yourself quite at home; for I know the baroness will not allow you to
return to the hotel,” said Lilith.
“I will bid you good-morning,” said the señor, bowing.
“Stay—one moment! Will you now release me from my promise? May I now
tell the secret?” demanded Lilith, in an eager whisper.
“Yes! You might have given it to the winds, had you chosen, on the day
that you read Estel’s confession. You might have known then that it
would be quite safe to do so.”
“Yes, but I had not then been released from my promise.”
“That, my child, shows a morbid conscientiousness in you. You were
morally released from the moment that I was vindicated. Good-morning, my
brave girl! I will see you later! By the way, though—where is your
husband?” he suddenly stopped to ask.
“Still at the Court of ——, I think, where he has been Secretary of
Legation for nearly two years.”
“Do you ever hear from him?”
“Never.”
“Does he know that you are living?”
“I think not.”
“Then I exonerate him. I have a great deal to say to you, my darling,
which I must defer for the present. Good-morning again.”
And the señor bowed himself out.
Lilith took Aunt Sophie’s hand and led her across the hall to a
beautiful chamber with an alcove.
She gave the good woman a soft easy-chair, and then with her own hands
took off her bonnet and her shawl, and made her comfortable.
“Now, have you been to breakfast, Aunt Sophie?”
“Yes, honey, at the hotel! And such a breakfast! Instead of good,
wholesome tea and coffee and beefsteak, and buckwheat cakes, there was
wine, if you believe me! And oranges, and grapes, and figs, and
kickshaws! And I tried to be polite and ‘do at Rome as the Romans do,’
but la! I tasted the wine, and it tasted for all the world like vinegar
and water, and sugar of lead! And I asked, please, mightn’t I have a cup
of coffee, and the waiter, as they called the gosling, or something like
that——”
“Wasn’t it the garçon?”
“Yes, gosoon, and he did go soon! He was spry! He asked me, ‘Caffynore
or caffylay,’ and I had a hard time to make him understand that I didn’t
want no caffy at all, nor any other of their foreign wines, but just
coffee, and I did get it at last, just about the splendidest cup of
coffee as ever I tasted in all my life. I would have asked the gosling
how they made it; but, law! he couldn’t understand more’n half I said to
him. The ignorance of these foreigners is amazing. A ’Merican child
three years old could have understood what I said better than he did.
But they know how to make good coffee.”
“But you could not breakfast entirely on coffee, Aunt Sophie.”
“No, no, honey; but they had good bread, too—excellent bread, and nice
fresh butter. And so, you see, I didn’t suffer. And they had a number of
different sorts of stews, or hashes, I should call them, but the gosling
called them awful hard names. They smelt mighty nice, all of ’em, but I
was afeard to ventur’ on any of ’em. I was afeard of frogs. And that
gosling was always a sticking one or other of them stews under my very
nose, too.”
“Well, Aunt Sophie, you need not be afraid of anything you may find on
our table, though we have a French chef.”
“A French shay? That may be good to ride in, but what has that got to do
with cooking, honey?”
“I should have said a French cook.”
“Oh, I see. It was a slip of the tongue.”
“Did you have a fine voyage, Aunt Sophie?”
“Splendid.”
“And you were not sea-sick?”
“Oh, yes, I was. For two days I was just as sick as if I had taken an
old-fashioned dose of calomel and jalap. And I think it did me a heap of
good, too, for after I got over it I was that hungry! Indeed, I was so
hungry I was ashamed to eat as much as I wanted. And all the rest of the
voyage I thought more of eating than of anything else in the world.”
“When did you reach Havre?”
“Yesterday; and it so happened as there was a train for Paris in an hour
afterwards; so we took that train and came right on, and got here last
night. We slept at that hotel, and, if you please to believe me, I had
one of the goslings for a chamber-maid. I don’t like foreign ways,
myself.”
“Never mind, dear; you will be more comfortable with us. But now tell
me, Aunt Sophie, did you know that the señor was a near relation of
mine?”
“What makes you call him the sinner, honey? He’s no more of a sinner
than the rest of us, I reckon. We are all sinners, for that matter.”
“I said señor, Aunt Sophie, which is all the same as if I had said Sir
or Mr.”
“Oh! Well, I shall never get used to foreign words. Yes, honey, he did
tell me; but not till he had pumped me of every single thing I knowed
about you. Then, to account for his curiosity, he told me as you was a
very near and dear relative of his’n as he had given up for dead.”
“How did he come to board at your house? He is not a minister or a
theological student.”
“No, honey; but he do look just like a preacher. Don’t he, now?”
“Perhaps.”
“Well, my sign is always out, you know, and he saw it, and wanting
board, he stepped up and rang the bell, like any other applicant.
Anyways, that’s how he came into the house, and he looked so much like a
hopeful young minister of the Gospel that I took him, without once
remembering to ask for his references. Afterwards he happened to see
your photographs on the mantelpiece, and he took it down and gazed at
it, and read your writing, and seemed so upset I didn’t know what to
make of him. And he asked about one hundred questions about you, and I
told him all I knowed. Then he let on as you was a near relation of
his’n,” said the old lady, as she settled herself comfortably in her
chair.
“Thank you, dear Aunt Sophie. And now if you will excuse me for a few
moments, I will go and let the baroness know that you are here. She will
be delighted,” said Lilith, rising, and leaving the room to tell the
good news.