MEANWHILE, in the stately mansion that Betty had called home, a small
regiment of servants hastened with the last tasks in preparation for the
guests that were soon expected to arrive. The great rooms had become a
dream of paradise, with silver rain and white lilies in a mist of soft
green depending from the high ceilings. In the midst of all, a fairy
bower of roses and tropical ferns created a nook of retirement where
everyone might catch a glimpse of the bride and groom from any angle in
any room. The spacious vistas stretched away from an equally spacious
hallway, where a wide and graceful staircase curved up to a low gallery,
smothered in flowers and palms and vines; and even so early the
musicians were taking their places and tuning their instruments. On the
floor above, where room after room shone in beauty, with costly
furnishings, and perfect harmonies, white-capped maids flitted about,
putting last touches to dressing tables and pausing to gossip as they
passed one another:
"Well, 'twill all be over soon," sighed one, a wan-faced girl with
discontented eyes. "Ain't it kind of a pity, all this fuss just for a
few minutes?"
"Yes, an' glad I'll be!" declared another, a fresh young Irish girl with
a faint, pretty brogue. "I don't like the look of my Lady Betty. A
pretty fuss Candace her old nurse would be makin' if she was here the
night! I guess the madam knew what she was about when she give her her
walkin' ticket! Candace never could bear them two bys, and _him_ was the
worse of the two, she always said."
"Well, a sight of good it would do for old Candace to make a fuss!" said
the discontented one. "And anyhow, he's as handsome as the devil, and
she's got money enough, so she oughtn't complain."
"Money ain't everything!" sniffed Aileen. "I wouldn't marry a king if I
wasn't crazy about him!"
"Oh, you're young!" sneered Marie with disdain. "Wait till your looks
go! You don't know what you'd take up with!"
"Well I'd never take up with the likes of _him_!" returned the Irish
girl grandly, "and what's more he knows it!" She tossed her head
meaningfully and was about to sail away on her own business when a stir
below stairs attracted their attention. A stout, elderly woman, dressed
in a stiff new black silk and an apoplectic hat, came panting up the
stairs looking furtively from side to side, as if she wished to escape
before anyone recognized her:
"It's Candace!" exclaimed Aileen. "As I live! Now what d'ye wantta know
about that! Poor soul! Poor soul! Candy! Oh!--Candy! What iver brought
ye here the night? This is no place for the loikes of you. You better
beat it while the beatin' is good if ye know which side yer bread's
buthered!"
But the old nurse came puffing on, her face red and excited:
"Is she here? Has she come, yet, my poor wee Betty?" she besought them
eagerly.
"Miss Betty's at the church now gettin' married!" announced Marie
uppishly, "and you'd best be gettin' out of here right away, for the
wedding party's due to arrive any minute now and madam'll be very angry
to have a servant as doesn't belong snoopin' round at such a time!"
"Be still, Marie! For shame!" cried Aileen. "You've no need to talk like
that to a self-respectin' woman as has been in this house more years
than you have been weeks! Come along, Candace, and I'll slip you in my
room and tell you all about it when I can get away long enough. You see,
Miss Betty's being married----"
"But she's _not_!" cried Candace wildly. "I was at the church myself.
Miss Betty sent me the word to be sure and come, and where to sit and
all, so she'd see me; and I went, and she come up the aisle as white as
a lily and dropped right there before the poolpit, just like a little
white lamb that couldn't move another step, all of a heap in her pretty
things! And they stopped the ceremony and everybody got up, and they
took her away, and we waited till bime-by the minister said the bride
wasn't well enough to proceed with the ceremony and would they all go
home, and I just slipped out before the folks got their wraps on and
took a side street with wings to my feet and got up here! Haven't they
brought her home yet, the poor wee thing? I been thinkin' they might
need me yet, for many's the time I've brought her round by my nursin'."
The two maids looked wildly at one another, their glances growing into
incredulity, the eyebrows of Marie moving toward her well-dressed hair
with a lofty disapproval.
"Well, you'd better come with me, Candy," said Aileen drawing the
excited old servant along the hall to the back corridor gently. "I guess
there's some mistake somewheres; anyway, you better stay in my room till
you see what happens. We haven't heard anything yet, and they'd likely
send word pretty soon if there's to be any change in the program. You
say she fell----?"
But just then sounds of excitement came distantly up to them and Aileen
hastened back to the gallery to listen. It was the voice of Madam
Stanhope angrily speaking to her youngest son:
"You must get Bessemer on the 'phone at once and order him home! I told
you it was a great mistake sending him away. If he had been standing
there, where she could see him, everything would have gone through just
as we planned it----"
"Aw! Rot! Mother. Can't you shut up? I know what I'm about and I'm going
to call up another detective. Bessemer may go to the devil for all I
care! How do you know but he has, and taken her with him? The first
thing to do is to get that girl back! You ought to have had more sense
than to show your whole hand to my brother. You might have known he'd
take advantage----"
Herbert Hutton slammed into the telephone booth under the stairs and
Madam Stanhope was almost immediately aware of the staring servants who
were trying not to seem to have listened.
Mrs. Stanhope stood in the midst of the beautiful empty rooms and
suddenly realized her position. Her face froze into the haughty lines
with which her menage was familiar, and she was as coldly beautiful in
her exquisite heliotrope gown of brocaded velvet and chiffon with the
glitter of jewels about her smooth plump neck, and in her carefully
marcelled black hair as if she were quietly awaiting the bridal party
instead of facing defeat and mortification:
"Aileen, you may get Miss Betty's room ready to receive her. She has
been taken ill and will be brought home as soon as she is able to be
moved," she announced, without turning an eyelash. "Put away her things,
and get the bed ready!" One could see that she was thinking rapidly. She
was a woman who had all her life been equal to an emergency, but never
had quite such a tragic emergency been thrust upon her to camouflage
before.
"James!" catching the eye of the butler, "there will be no reception
to-night, of course, and you will see that the hired people take their
things away as soon as possible, and say that I will agree to whatever
arrangements they see fit to make, within reason, of course. Just use
your judgment, James, and by the way, there will be telephone calls, of
course, from our friends. Say that Miss Betty is somewhat better, and
the doctor hopes to avert a serious nervous breakdown, but that she
needs entire rest and absolute quiet for a few days. Say that and
nothing more, do you understand, James?"
The butler bowed his thorough understanding and Madam Stanhope sailed
nobly up the flower-garlanded staircase, past the huddled musicians, to
her own apartment. Aileen, with a frightened glance, scuttled past the
door as she was closing it:
"Aileen, ask Mr. Herbert to come to my room at once when he has finished
telephoning, and when Mr. Bessemer arrives send him to me at once!" Then
the door closed and the woman was alone with her defeat, and the placid
enameled features melted into an angry snarl like an animal at bay. In a
moment more Herbert stormed in.
"It's all your fault, mother!" he began, with an oath. "If you hadn't
dragged Bessemer into this thing I'd have had her fixed. I had her just
about where I wanted her, and another day would have broken her in.
She's scared to death of insane asylums, and I told her long ago that it
would be dead easy to put a woman in one for life. If I had just hinted
at such a thing she'd have married me as meek as a lamb!"
"Now look here, Bertie," flared his mother excitedly, "you've got to
stop blaming me! Haven't I given in to you all your life, and now you
say it's all my fault the least little thing that happens! It was for
your sake that I stopped you; you know it was. You couldn't carry out
any such crazy scheme. Betty's almost of age, and if those trustees
should find out what you had threatened, you would be in jail for life,
and goodness knows what would become of me."
"Trustees! How would the trustees find it out?"
"Betty might tell them."
"Betty might _not_ tell them, not if she was _my wife_!" He bawled out
the words in a way that boded no blissful future to the one who should
have the misfortune to become his wife. "I think I'd have her better
trained than that. As for you, Mother, you're all off, as usual! What do
you think could possibly happen to _you_? You're always saying you do
everything for me, but when it comes right down to brass tacks I notice
you're pretty much of a selfish coward on your own account."
For a moment the baffled woman faced her angry uncontrolled son in
speechless rage, then gathered command of the situation once more, an
inscrutable expression on her hard-lined face. Her voice took on an
almost pitiful reproach as she spoke in a low, even tone that could
hardly fail to bring the instant attention of her spoiled son:
"Bertie, you don't know what you're talking about!" she said, and there
was a strained white look of fear about her mouth and eyes as she spoke.
"I'm going to tell you, in this great crisis, what I did for you, what I
risked that you might enjoy the luxury which you have had for the last
five years. Listen! The day before Mr. Stanhope died he wrote a letter
to the trustees of Betty's fortune giving very explicit directions about
her money and her guardianship, tying things up so that not one cent
belonging to her should pass through my hands, which would have left us
with just my income as the will provided, and would have meant
comparative poverty for us all except as Betty chose to be benevolent. I
kept a strict watch on all his movements those last few days, of course,
and when I found he had given Candace a letter to mail, I told her I
would look after it, and I brought it up to my room and read it, for I
suspected just some such thing as he had done. He was very fussy about
Betty and her rights, you remember, and he had always insisted that this
was Betty's house, her mother's wedding present from the grandfather,
and therefore not ours at all, except through Betty's bounty. I was
determined that we should not be turned out of here, and that you should
not have to go without the things you wanted while that child had
everything and far more than she needed. So I burned the letter! Now, do
you see what the mother you have been blaming has done for you?"
But the son looked back with hard glittering eyes and a sneer on his
handsome lustful lips:
"I guess you did it about as much for your own sake as mine, didn't
you?" he snarled. "And I don't see what that's got to do with it,
anyway. Those trustees don't know what they missed if they never got the
letter, and you've always kept in with them, you say, and made them
think you were crazy about the girl. They pay you Betty's allowance till
she's of age, don't they? They can't lay a finger on you. You're a fool
to waste my time talking about a little thing like that when we ought to
be planning a way to get hold of that girl before the trustees find out
about it. If we don't get her fixed before she's of age we shall be in
the soup as far as the property is concerned. Isn't that so? Well, then,
we've got to get her good and married----"
"If you only had let her marry Bessemer quietly," whimpered his mother,
"and not have brought in all this deception. It will look so terrible if
it ever comes out. I shall never be able to hold up my head in society
again----!"
"There you are again! Thinking of yourself----!" sneered the dutiful
son, getting up and stamping about her room like a wild man. "I tell
you, Mother, that girl is _mine_, and I won't have Bessemer or anybody
else putting in a finger. _She's mine!_ I told her so a long time ago,
and she knows it! She can't get away from me, and it's going to go the
harder with her because she's tried. I'm never going to forgive her
making a fool out of me before all those people! I'll get her yet!
Little fool!"
Herbert was well on his way into one of those fits of uncontrollable
fury that had always held his mother in obedience to his slightest whim
since the days when he used to lie on the floor and scream himself black
in the face and hold his breath till she gave in; and the poor woman,
wrought to the highest pitch of excitement already by the tragic events
of the evening, which were only the climax of long weeks of agitation,
anxiety and plotting, dropped suddenly into her boudoir chair and began
to weep.
But this new manifestation on the part of his usually pliable mother
only seemed to infuriate the young man. He walked up to her, and seizing
her by the shoulder, shook her roughly:
"Cut that out!" he said hoarsely. "This is no time to cry. We've got to
make some kind of a plan. Don't you see we'll have the hounds of the
press at our heels in a few hours? Don't you see we've got to make a
plan and stick to it?"
His mother looked up, regardless for once of the devastation those few
tears had made of her carefully groomed face, a new terror growing in
her eyes:
"I've told James to answer all telephone calls and say that Betty is
doing as well as could be expected, but that the doctor says she must
have perfect quiet to save her from a nervous breakdown----" she
answered him coldly. "I'm not quite a fool if you do think so----"
"Well, that's all right for to-night, but what'll we say to-morrow if we
don't find her----"
"Oh! She'll come back," said the stepmother confidently. "She can't help
it. Why, where would she go? She hasn't a place on earth since she's
lost confidence in that cousin of her mother's because he didn't come to
her wedding. She hasn't an idea that he never got her note asking him to
give her away. Thank heaven I got hold of that before it reached the
postman! If that old granny had been here we should have had trouble
indeed. I had an experience with him once just before I married Betty's
father, and I never want to repeat it. But we must look out what gets in
the papers!"
"It's rather late for that, I suspect. The bloodhounds 'ill be around
before many minutes and you better think up what you want said. But I'm
not so sure she wouldn't go there, and we better tell the detectives
that. What's the old guy's address? I'll call him up long distance and
say she was on a motoring trip and intended to stop there if she had
time. I'll ask if she's reached there yet."
"That's a good idea, although I'm sure she was too hurt about it to go
to him. She cried all the afternoon. It's a wonder she didn't look
frightful! But that's Betty! Cry all day and come out looking like a
star without any paint either. It's a pity somebody that would have
appreciated it couldn't have had her complexion."
"That's you all over, Mother, talking about frivolous things when
everything's happening at once. You're the limit! I say, you'd better be
getting down to business! I've thought of another thing. How about that
old nurse, Candace? Betty used to be crazy about her? What became of
her?"
Mrs. Stanhope's face hardened, and anxiety grew in her eyes.
"She might have gone to her, although I don't believe she knows where
she is. I'm sure I don't. I sent her away just before we began to get
ready for the wedding. I didn't dare have her here. She knows too much
and takes too much upon herself. I wouldn't have kept her so long, only
she knew I took the trustee's letter, and she was very impudent about it
once or twice, so that I didn't really dare to let her go until just a
few days ago. I thought things would all be over here before she could
do any harm, and Betty would be of age and have her money in her own
right, and being your wife, of course there wouldn't be any more trouble
about it."
"Well, you better find out what's become of her!" said the young man
with darkening face. "_She_ ought to be locked up somewhere! She's
liable to make no end of trouble! You can't tell what she's stirred up
already! Ring for a servant and find out if they know where she is. Ten
to one that's where Betty is."
Mrs. Stanhope, with startled face, stepped to the bell and summoned
Aileen:
"Aileen, have you any idea where we could find Miss Betty's old nurse,
Candace?" she asked in a soothing tone, studying the maid's countenance.
"I think it might be well to send for her in case Miss Betty needs her.
She was so much attached to her!"
Aileen lifted startled eyes to her mistress' face. There was reserve and
suspicion in her glance:
"Why, she was here a few minutes ago," she said guardedly. "It seems
Miss Betty sent her an invitation, and when Miss Betty took sick she was
that scared she ran out of the church and come here to find out how she
was. She might not have gone yet. I could go see."
"Here! Was she here?" Mrs. Stanhope turned her head to her son and her
eyes said: "That's strange!" but she kept her face well under control.
"Yes, you might go and see if you can find her, Aileen, and if you do,
tell her I would like to see her a moment."
Aileen went away on her errand and Mrs. Stanhope turned to her son:
"Betty can't have gone to her unless there was some collusion. But in
any case I think we had better keep her here until we know something."
Quick trotting steps were heard hurrying along the hall and a little
jerky knock announced unmistakably the presence of Candace.
Mrs. Stanhope surveyed the little red-faced creature coolly and sharply:
"Candace, you have broken one of my express commands in returning here
without permission from me, but seeing it was done in kindness I will
overlook it this time and let you stay. You may be useful if they bring
my daughter home to-night and I presume she will be very glad to see
you. Just now she is--umm----" she glanced furtively at her son, and
lifting her voice a trifle, as if to make her statement more
emphatic--"she is at a private hospital near the church where they took
her till she should be able to come home. It will depend on her
condition whether they bring her to-night or to-morrow or in a few days.
Meantime, if you like you may go up to your old room and wait until I
send for you. I shall have news soon and will let you know. Don't go
down to the servant's quarters, I wish to have you where I can call you
at a moment's notice."
Candace gave her ex-mistress a long, keen suspicious stare, pinned her
with a glance as steely as her own for an instant, in search of a
possible ulterior motive, and then turning on her little fat heel,
vanished like a small fast racer in the direction of her old room.
"Now," said Mrs. Stanhope, turning with a sigh of relief, "she's safe!
I'll set Marie to watch her and if there's anything going on between
those two Marie will find it out."
But Herbert Hutton was already sitting at his mother's desk with the
telephone book and calling up Long Distance.
All the long hours when he had expected to have been standing under the
rose bower downstairs in triumph with his bride, Herbert Hutton sat at
that telephone in his mother's boudoir alternately raging at his mother
and shouting futile messages over the 'phone. The ancient cousin of
Betty's mother was discovered to be seriously ill in a hospital and
unable to converse even through the medium of his nurse, so there was
nothing to be gained there. Messages to the public functionaries in his
town developed no news. Late into the night, or rather far toward the
morning, Bessemer was discovered at a cabaret where his persistent
mother and brother had traced him, too much befuddled with his evening's
carouse to talk connectedly. He declared Betty was a good old girl, but
she might go to thunder for all he cared; he knew a girl "worth twice of
her."
His mother turned with disgust from his babbling voice, convinced that
he knew nothing of Betty's whereabouts. Nevertheless, by means of a
financial system of threats and rewards which she had used on him
successfully for a number of years, she succeeded in impressing upon him
the necessity of coming home at once, and just as the pink was beginning
to dawn in the gray of the morning, Bessemer drove up in a hired car,
and stumbled noisily into the house, demanding to know where the wedding
was. He wanted to kiss the bride.
Candace, still in her stiff black silk, stood in the shadowy hall, as
near as she dared venture, and listened, with her head thoughtfully on
one side. Betty in her note about the wedding had said she was going to
be married to Bessemer. But Bessemer didn't sound like a bridegroom. Had
Bessemer run away then, or what? But some things looked queer. She
remembered that Aileen had spoken as if Herbert was the bridegroom, but
she had taken it for a mere slip of the tongue and thought nothing of
it. When Aileen next came that way, she asked her if she happened to
have got hold of one of the invitations, and Aileen, with her finger on
her lips, nodded, and presently returned with something under her apron:
"I slipped it from the waste-basket," she said, "and Miss Betty got a
holt of it, and there was a tremenjus fuss about something, I couldn't
make out what; but I heard the missus say it was all a mistake as she
gave the order over the 'phone, and she must have misspoke herself, but
anyhow she thought she'd destroyed them all and given a rush order and
they would be all right and sent out in plenty of time. So she sticks
this back in the waste-basket and orders me to take the basket down and
burn it, but I keeps this out and hides it well. I couldn't see nothin'
the matter with it, can you?"
"There's _all_ the matter with it!" declared the angry nurse as she
glared at the name of Herbert Hutton thoughtfully, and read between the
lines more than she cared to tell.