The men were not alone, for Carmen accompanied them. Reed was

reluctantly bringing her at the urgent request received from Ketchim

over the telephone the previous evening. But the girl, subdued by the

rush of events since her precipitation into the seething American

world of materialism, sat apart from them, gazing with rapt attention

through the begrimed window at the flying scenery, and trying to

interpret it in the light of her own tenacious views of life and the

universe. If the marvels of this new world into which she had been

thrown had failed to realize her expectations--if she saw in them, and

in the sense of life which they express, something less real, less

substantial, than do those who laud its grandeur and power to

charm--she gave no hint. She was still absorbing, sifting and

digesting the welter of impressions. She had been overpowered,

smothered by the innovation; and she now found her thoughts a tangled

jumble, which she strove incessantly to unravel and classify according

to their content of reality, as judged by her own standards.

"Why, Ames," replied Reed, turning a watchful eye upon Carmen, "is a

multimillionaire financier of New York--surely you have heard of him!

He and his clique practically own the United States, and a large

slice of Europe. For some reason Ames bought a block of Molino stock.

And now, I judge, Ketchim would give his chances on eternal life if he

hadn't sold it to him. And that's what's worrying me, too. For, since

Ames is heavily interested in Molino, what will he do to the new

company that absorbs it?"

"There isn't going to be any new company," asserted Harris doggedly.

"There's got to be!" cried Reed. "Ketchim holds us strictly to our

contract. Our negotiations with old Rosendo were made while in the

employ of Molino. It wouldn't be so bad if we had only Ketchim to deal

with. We've got the goods on him and could beat him. But here enters

Ames, a man of unlimited wealth and influence. If he wants La

Libertad, he's going to get it, you mark me! Where we fell down was in

ever mentioning it to Ketchim. For if we don't come over now he will

lay the whole affair before Ames. He told me over the 'phone last

night that he was badly in debt--that Ames was pressing him--that many

of the Molino stockholders were making pertinent inquiries. Oh, he

quite opened his heart! And yesterday I saw on his desk a letter from

Ames. I can imagine what it contained. Ketchim would sacrifice us and

everything else to keep himself out of Ames's grip. We're in for it, I

tell you! And all because we were a bit too previous in believing that

the girl had disappeared for good."

"By Jove!" exclaimed Harris, "but doesn't it sound like a fairy-tale,

the way Carmen got back to us?"

"And here I am," continued Reed, with a gesture of vexation, "left

with the girl on my hands, and with a very healthy prospect of losing

out all around. My wife said emphatically last night that she wouldn't

be bothered with Carmen."

"Well, she won't bother you. Send her away to school."

"Fine! Good idea!" replied Reed sarcastically. "But do you realize

that that involves expense? I'm a comparatively poor man, just getting

a start in my profession, and with a young and socially ambitious

wife!"

"But--your wife--er, she's going to--to have money some day, isn't

she?"

"Very true. But the grim reaper has a little work to do first. And on

occasions like this he's always deucedly deliberate, you know.

Meantime, we're skating close to the edge--for New Yorkers."

"Well, we may be able to beat Ketchim. Now, my father and Uncle

John--"

"Oh, shoot your father and Uncle John!" snapped Reed impatiently.

The conductor opened the door and bawled a cryptical announcement.

"This is the place," said Reed, starting up and making for the door.

"And now you rake your thought for some way to deal with Ketchim. And

leave your father and Uncle John entirely out of the conversation!"

Ketchim was just bowing out a caller as the young engineers mounted

the steps. "See that fellow!" he exclaimed, after giving them a hearty

welcome. "I just sold him a hundred shares of Simití stock, at five

dollars a share--just half of par. Beginning right on the jump, eh?"

"But--" protested Harris, as they entered the spacious parlor, "the

company isn't even in existence yet--and hasn't an asset!"

"Oh, that's all right," replied Ketchim easily. "It's coming into

existence, and will have the grandest mine in South America! Boys," he

went on earnestly, "I've been talking over the 'phone with Mr. Ames,

our most influential stockholder, and a very warm friend of mine. I

told him about our conversation of yesterday. He says, go right ahead

with the new company--that it's a great idea. He's satisfied with his

present holding, and will not increase it. Says he wants Molino

stockholders to have the opportunity to purchase all the treasury

stock, if they want to."

"Decidedly magnanimous," returned Reed. "But--what about the basis of

organization of the new company?"

"Leave it as we planned it, he says. He thinks the arrangement and

division of stock fine!"

Reed and Harris looked at each other questioningly. It did not seem

possible.

"But," went on Ketchim, "have you seen the morning papers? They are

full of the revolution in Colombia. The country is torn wide open,

and reports say nothing can be done down there until peace is

restored--and that may take a year or two. But, meantime, we will go

ahead and organize the new company and take over Molino and prepare

to begin work just as soon as you fellows can get into that country.

Everybody has simply got to wait until then. And so this," going to

Carmen and taking her hand, "is the wonderful little girl! Well!

well!"

The entrance of Mrs. Ketchim and her troop of children at this

juncture interrupted the conversation. "All enthusiastic Simití

stockholders," said Ketchim, waving his hand toward them, after the

introductions. "And all going to get rich out of it, too--as well as

yourselves, boys. It simply shows how Providence works--one with God

is a majority, always."

Carmen glanced up at him wonderingly.

Dinner over, the men were left alone. Carmen had been taken upstairs

by the children to the nursery.

"I've got myself slated for the presidency of the new company," said

Ketchim, plunging again into the subject nearest his heart; "and I

think we'd better put brother James in as vice-president. Perfectly

safe," looking at Harris and winking. "He's got to be recognized, you

know, since the Ketchim Realty Company act as fiscal agents. Now for

directors I've put down Judge Harris, your father--that's to assure

you boys that there'll be some one to look after your interests. Then

we'll say Reverend Jurges for another. He's got a big congregation and

will be able to place a lot of stock. You just ought to see the letter

he wrote me about selling stock to his people! You'd never believe he

was a good, spiritually-minded clergyman, with an eye single to

heavenly riches! Then one of you fellows, say Reed, had better go on

the directorate, since Harris will be in Colombia in charge of

operations. And--well, Cass, too. He's young and immature, but

absolutely square. He'll do all the legal work for his stock interest.

We save money that way, see?"

"But what do I do while we are waiting?" asked Harris in some

perplexity. "Reed goes to California right away, you know."

"That's all right, old man," Ketchim genially assured him. "The new

company will be organized at once--this week, if possible. You go on

salary from the moment of its incorporation, and you open your office

right here in this building. I'll see that the rent is paid until you

go back to Colombia. Everything's arranged, and you turn right in and

help Cass with the new company. There'll be plenty to do. You've got

to prepare circulars; write boosting letters to stockholders and

prospects; follow up leads; and--oh, you'll be busy! But here comes

Reverend Coles," looking out of the window as a man came up the steps.

"He's interested in some projects I've been exploiting. Just excuse me

for a few moments."

He hastened out to greet the visitor and conducted him into a back

room. Reed and Harris were left to the contemplation of their own

mixed thoughts. Presently Harris, whose eyes had been dilating

for some moments, broke out in a hoarse whisper: "Listen! God

a'mighty!--he's praying!"

He got up softly and approached the door of the room into which

Ketchim had taken his caller. In a few minutes he returned to his

chair. "By Jove!" he exclaimed. "I could see Ketchim through the

keyhole, on his knees by the bed, praying with that fellow! Now what

the d--!"

Reed held up a warning finger. Through the silence that fell upon

them snatches of the prayer being offered in the adjoining room

floated to their ears--"O, blessed Saviour, vouchsafe prosperity to

our venture, we beseech thee! The earth is the Lord's, and the

fullness thereof--we ask thy blessing on these efforts of ours to

wrest from the ground the wealth which the Father of lights has

deposited there for the benefit of His children--"

Harris snickered aloud. "What's the game?" he whispered.

Reed shook his head in warning. "It may not be a game," he replied.

"But if it is, it's an old one, hiding behind the mask of religion.

But I'm inclined to believe the man sincere."

"And I'm not!" retorted Harris. "I'd rather deal with his brother. I

know James to be an out-and-out rascal--he openly flies the black

flag. But this pious fellow--well, he's got me guessing!"

The caller soon departed, and Ketchim again joined the young men.

"He's our assistant pastor," he said musingly, as he watched the man

go down the walk. "Nice young fellow, waiting for a church. He and

some of his friends are interested in a zinc mine we've been floating,

down in the Joplin district."

"Got titles?" queried the cynical Harris, with a twinkle in his eyes.

"Oh, yes," Ketchim smiled affably.

"Mine producing?"

"Well, no--not yet. Lots of development work to be done, you know.

Always is. And there's a lot of water in this mine."

"And in the stock, too, eh?" pursued the cruel Harris. "Got any ore?"

"We haven't struck the deposit yet, although we expect to soon. But,"

glancing up at the clock on the mantel, "we'll have to be going over

to Sunday school now. And I want that little girl to go with Marjorie.

Fellows," the man's face became deeply serious, "I have no doubt you

are both church members?"

Reed fidgeted uneasily under Ketchim's searching glance; but Harris

frankly met the question. "Nope," he asserted, "we're both rank

heathen. And I'm a dyed-in-the-wool atheist."

"Gracious!" cried Ketchim, "how can you say that, when you see the

goodness of the Lord on every hand?"

"Reed, I believe," continued the imperturbable Harris, waving a hand

toward his friend, "has philosophical leanings--New Thought,

Subliminal Consciousness, Power in Silence, and all that. But I've got

to be shown."

"But surely you believe in the divinity of the Christ?"

"Well, as a matter of fact, I never gave it much thought," said

Harris. "Been pretty busy, you know. Lots of time for that later."

"Ah, that's what so many say," replied Ketchim sadly; "and then comes

the awful voice of the Lord, 'This night thy soul shall be required of

thee!' Fellows, I want to pray for you; and I want you both to promise

me that you will take up seriously the consideration of your souls'

welfare. It's too grave a subject for jest," addressing himself

solemnly to the grinning Harris.

"All right, old man," laughed Harris. "But don't dig up any

Presbyterian tracts for me. I've got a living witness to--well, to

something out of the ordinary, in that girl, Carmen, and I'm inclined

to believe she's dug nearer to bottom facts than any of you. So when

I'm ready to discuss my soul's welfare I'll just consult her, see?"

"That reminds me," said Ketchim, turning abruptly to Reed, "what do

you intend to do with the girl?"

"_Quien sabe?_" Reed answered abstractedly. "Send her to a boarding

school, I guess. At least, that's what I told the old man I'd do."

"So you said before," Ketchim returned. "But where?"

"Don't know yet."

"Well, let me make a suggestion. My daughter Marjorie leaves Tuesday

for Conway-on-the-Hudson, where she has been attending Madam Elwin's

Select School for Girls. Suppose you go with her--I'm too busy,

myself--and take Carmen. It's only a few hours' ride by boat down the

river. And the school is without equal. This is Marjorie's third year

there, and she's simply in love with it."

Reed began to show signs of interest; and Ketchim, noting the effect

of his words, went on briskly:

"Now look here, Molino owes its salvation, and the new company its

existence, to that girl. Why shouldn't they do something to show their

gratitude? I say, it is no more than right that the new company should

support her while she is in school."

"By Jove! not a half-bad idea," commented Harris.

"Certainly not," continued Ketchim earnestly. "Now fix up everything

with her as regards the transfer of the mine to the new company, and

then let her go with Marjorie to the Elwin school. We can, if you

like, make some agreement with her to the effect that when the company

is on its feet and she is receiving dividends, she shall return what

it may advance for her schooling, eh?"

"You'd better accept the suggestion, Reed," put in Harris. "I'll be

here, you know, to keep an eye on the girl; and I'll take her and

Marjorie down to Conway myself, and attend to getting her located

right."

Reed continued to reflect. He was hardly in a position to refuse such

an offer. Besides, he was really leaving her in charge of Harris.

"Well," he said at length, "in that case I could leave for California

to-morrow night. That matter is pressing hard--all right, I accept the

company's offer. It's no more than is due the girl, anyway."

"Good!" replied Ketchim. "I'll make the necessary arrangements at

once. And now let's go over to church."

Thus it was that two days later Carmen, still wondering if she was

dreaming, was enrolled in the Elwin Select School for Girls, with

Marjorie Ketchim for roommate; while Reed, on the Overland Limited,

hurrying to the far West, was musing dubiously at frequent intervals

on Ketchim's rather conflicting statements, which, until left to this

enforced leisure, he had not had time to try to reconcile. At the same

time, while Harris was loudly declaiming to the gracious Madam Elwin

on the astonishing mental prowess of the girl, Ketchim and Cass sat

deeply immersed in the tentative plans for the newly-projected Simití

Development Company.

"Now listen," said Ketchim, who for some minutes had been quietly

scanning his youthful lawyer, "Ames knows nothing about the formation

of this company, but Harris and Reed are not to know that; and we're

going to keep Ames in ignorance of all our plans. With the first sales

of stock--and they've already begun--we'll return him his Molino

investment. Nezlett wired me this morning that he's sure to sell a big

block to the Leveridges, that they're mightily interested, and want to

meet Carmen. We'll use the girl for just such purposes. That's one

reason why I wanted her handy, so's we could reach her at any time.

She makes a star impression; and with her as an advertisement we'll

sell a million dollars' worth of stock, and no trouble at all! She's

got that honest look that's convincing. And she can tell a story that

beats the Arabian Nights! Ames has given me a week to explain, or make

good his investment. By that time we'll have the Leveridges sold for

twice his investment, and we'll just pay him off and remove him.

Meantime, you go over to the bank in the morning and put up the best

line of talk you're capable of. I've got sixteen hundred dollars to

give 'em on that note; and that'll secure more time, until the sales

of stock are enough to pay it all up. Perhaps Uncle Ted will advance

me enough to take up the note when he hears about La Libertad. And,

say, you see brother James, and shake the club over him until he

disgorges that check he got from Miss Leveridge. You can hand him a

scare that he won't get over. By George, old man! things have taken a

great turn, eh? Why, I can just see Simití stock sales humping these

next few months. Oh, Miss Honeywell," calling to his cashier, "bring

me five dollars, please, and charge it to Molino--I mean, to Simití.

Make a new account for that now." Then, again addressing Cass: "Come

with me to the football game this afternoon. We can discuss plans

there as well as here. Gee whiz, but I feel great!"

CHAPTER 6

Carmen's rapid transition from the eternal solitudes of Guamocó to the

whirring activities of New York was like a plunge into the maelstrom,

and left her groping blindly in the effort to adapt herself to the

changed order. There was little in her former mode of existence that

could be transferred to her new environment, and she felt that she was

starting life like a new-born babe. For days, even weeks, she moved

about dreamily, absorbed, ceaselessly striving to orient herself and

to accept easily and naturally the marvels, the sudden accession of

material aids, and the wonders of this modern, complex civilization,

so common to her associates, but scarcely even dreamed of by her in

her former home, despite the preparation which Josè had tried to give

her. The Elwin school was small, its student-body seldom numbering

more than fifty, and in it Carmen found herself hedged about by

restrictions which in a way were beneficial, in that they narrowed her

environment and afforded her time for her slow adjustment to it.

But if these restrictions aided her, they also rendered the length of

her stay in the school almost calculable. Little by little the girl

saw the forces developing which she knew must effect her dismissal;

little by little, as Madam Elwin's manner toward her became less

gracious, and her schoolmates made fewer efforts to conceal from her

the fact that she was not one of them, Carmen prepared for the

inevitable. Six months after the girl's enrollment, Madam Elwin

terminated her series of disparaging reports to Ketchim by a request

that he come at once and remove his charge from the school.

"As I have repeatedly said, Mr. Ketchim, the girl is a paradox. And

after these months of disappointing effort to instruct her, I am

forced to throw up my hands in despair and send for you." Madam Elwin

tapped nervously with a dainty finger upon the desk before her.

"But, if I may be permitted the question, what specific reasons have

you, Madam, for--ah, for requesting her removal?" asked the very

Reverend Dr. William Jurges, who, having come up to the city to

attend a meeting of the directors of the Simití company, had accepted

Ketchim's invitation to first accompany him on his flying trip to

Conway-on-the-Hudson, in response to Madam Elwin's peremptory

summons.

"Because," replied that worthy personage with a show of exasperation, "I

consider her influence upon the young ladies here quite detrimental.

Our school, while non-sectarian, is at least Christian. Miss Carmen

is not. Where she got her views, I can not imagine. At first she made

frequent mention of a Catholic priest, who taught her in her home town,

in South America. But of late she has grown very reserved--I might say,

sullen, and talks but little. Her views, however, are certainly not

Catholic. In her class work she has become impossible. She refuses to

accept a large part of our instruction. Her answers to examination

questions are wholly in accord with her peculiar views, and hence quite

apart from the texts. For that reason she fails to make any grades,

excepting in mathematics and the languages. She utterly refuses to

accept any religious instruction whatsoever. She would not be called

atheistic, for she talks--or used to at first--continually about God.

But her God is not the God of the Scriptures, Dr. Jurges. She is a

free-thinker, in the strictest sense. And as such, we can not

consent to her remaining longer with us."

"Ah--quite so, Madam, quite so," returned the clergyman, in his

unconsciously pompous manner. "Doubtless the child's thought

became--ah--contaminated ere she was placed in your care. But--ah--I

have heard so much from our good friend, Mr. Ketchim, regarding this

young girl, that--ah--I should like exceedingly to see and talk with

her--if it might be--ah--"

"Madam Elwin will arrange that, I am sure," interposed Ketchim.

"Suppose," he suggested, addressing the lady, "we let him talk with

her, while I discuss with you our recently acquired mine in South

America, and the advisability of an investment with us."

"Certainly," acquiesced Madam Elwin, rising and pressing one of the

several buttons in the desk. "Bring Miss Carmen," she directed, to the

maid who answered the summons.

"Pardon me," interrupted Dr. Jurges; "but may I go to her? Ah--it

would doubtless be less embarrassing for the child."

"Miss Carmen was in the chapel a few moments ago," volunteered the

maid.

"Then take the doctor there," returned Madam Elwin, with a gesture of

dismissal.

At the head of the stairway the mingled sounds of a human voice and

the soft, trembling notes of an organ drifted through the long hall

and fell upon the ears of the clergyman.

"Miss Carmen," said the maid, answering his unspoken thought. "She

often comes up to the chapel and sings for hours at a time--alone. The

chapel is down there," pointing to the end of the hall.

"Then--ah--leave me," said the doctor. "I will proceed alone."

The maid turned willingly and went below, while the man tiptoed to

the chapel door. There he stopped and stood listening. The girl was

singing in Spanish, and he could not understand the words. But they

would have meant nothing to him then. It was the voice upon which

they were borne that held him. The song was a weird lament that had

come down to the children of Simití from the hard days of the

_Conquistadores_. It voiced the untold wrongs of the Indian slaves;

its sad, unvarying minor echoed their smothered moans under the

cruel goad; on the plaintive melody of the repeated chorus their

piteous cries were carried to heaven's deaf ears; their dull despair

floated up on the wailing tones of the little organ, and then died

away, as died the hope of the innocent victims of Spanish lust.

The reverend doctor had never heard a song of that kind before. Nor

could he readily associate the voice, which again and again he could

not distinguish from the flute-like tones of the organ, with the

sordidness and grime of material, fleshly existence. He entered softly

and took a seat in the shadow of a pillar. The clear, sweet voice of

the young girl flowed over him like celestial balm. Song after song

she sang. Some were dreamy bits and snatches in Spanish and English;

others were sacred in character. He wondered deeply, as the girl mused

over these; yet he knew not that they were her own compositions.

Curiosity and uncertainty mastered him at length, and he got softly to

his feet and moved away from the pillar, that he might see from what

manner of being issued such unbroken harmony. But in his eagerness his

foot struck a chair, and the sound echoed loudly through the room.

The music abruptly ceased, and the girl rose and looked over the organ

at the intruder.

"I--I beg your pardon," said the clergyman, advancing in some

embarrassment. "I was listening to your singing--uninvited, but none

the less appreciative. I--"

"Wait, please!" cried the girl, hastily stooping over and fumbling

with her shoes. The doctor laughed genially, as he grasped the

situation.

"I took them off," she explained hurriedly. "I am not yet accustomed

to them. I never wore shoes until I left Simití." Her face was

scarlet, and she tried to cover her confusion with a little laugh.

The doctor stood staring at her, lost in admiration of the shapely

figure, the heavy, curling hair, and the wonderfully expressive face.

The girl quickly recovered her poise and returned him a frank smile.

"You wish to see me?" she said, after waiting in vain for him to

begin.

"Ah--a--yes, certainly--that is, I beg your pardon," stammered the

doctor. "I did request permission of Madam Elwin to make your

acquaintance. We have heard so much about you. I am Doctor Jurges, an

Episcopal clergyman." His sentences issued like blasts from an engine

exhaust.

"I am Carmen Ariza," said the girl, extending her hand.

"Ah--quite so, quite so," blustered the doctor, clearing his throat

noisily. "Let us be seated. Ah--ah--you have a remarkable voice. It

gives evidence of careful cultivation."

"No," returned the girl simply. "It has never had any cultivation. It

is natural for me to sing. And my poor organ-playing is what I have

picked up myself these six months."

The man regarded her with amazement. "Remarkable!" he murmured.

The girl looked up into his face searchingly. "Why," she asked,

"should every one up here think it remarkable when a human mind is

clear enough to be a transparency for God?"

Had the roof fallen, the excellent doctor could have been no more

startled. He cleared his throat violently again; then fumbled

nervously in his pocket and drew out his glasses. These he poised upon

the ample arch of his ecclesiastical nose, and through them turned a

penetrating glance upon the girl.

"H'm! yes," said he at length; "quite so, quite so! And--ah--Miss

Carmen, that brings us to the matter in question--your religious

instruction--ah--may I ask from whom you received it?"

"From God," was the immediate and frank reply.

The clergyman started, but quickly recovered his equipoise.

"H'm! yes, quite so, quite so! All real instruction descendeth

from above. But--your religious views--I believe they are not

considered--ah--quite evangelical, are they? By your present

associates, that is."

"No," she replied, with a trace of sadness in her tone. "But," looking

up with a queer little smile, "I am not persecuting them for that."

"Oh, no," with a jerky little laugh. "Assuredly not! H'm! I judge the

persecution has come from the other side, has it not?"

"We will not speak of that," she said quickly. "They do not

understand--that is all."

"H'm! no, quite so--that is--ah--may I ask why you think they do not

understand? May not you be in error, instead?"

"If that which I believe is not true," the girl replied evenly, "it

will fail under the test of demonstration. Their beliefs have long

since failed under such test--and yet they still cling jealously to

them, and try to force them upon all who disagree with them. I am a

heretic, Doctor."

"H'm--ah--yes, I see. But--it is a quite unfortunate characteristic

of mankind to attribute one's views indiscriminately to the

Almighty--and--ah--I regret to note that you are not wholly free from

this error."

"You do not understand, I think," she quickly returned. "I put every

view, every thought, every idea to the test. If good is the result, I

know that the thought or idea comes from the source of all good, God.

The views I hold are those which I have time and again tested--and

some of them have withstood trials which I think you would regard as

unusually severe." Her thought had rested momentarily upon her vivid

experience in Banco, the dangers which had menaced her in distant

Simití, and the fire through which she had passed in her first hours

in Christian America, the land of churches, sects, and creeds.

"H'm!" the worthy doctor mused, regarding the girl first through his

spectacles, and then over the tops of them, while his bushy eyebrows

moved up and down with such comicality that Carmen could scarcely

refrain from laughing. "H'm! quite so. Ah--suppose you relate to me

some of the tests to which your views have been subjected."

"No," she returned firmly; "those experiences were only states of

consciousness, which are now past and gone forever. Why rehearse them?

They were human, and so, unreal. Why go back now and give them the

appearance of reality?"

"Unreal! H'm--then you do not regard untoward experience as given us

by God for the testing of our faith, I take it."

Carmen turned her head away with a little sigh of weariness. "I

think," she said slowly, "I think we had better not talk about these

things, Doctor. You are a preacher. Your views are not mine."

"Why--ah," blustered the clergyman, assuming a more paternal air,

"we--ah--would not for a moment cause you embarrassment, Miss Carmen!

But--in fact, Madam Elwin has--ah--expressed her disapproval of your

views--your religious ideals, if I may put it so baldly, and she--that

is--the good lady regrets--"

"She wishes to be rid of me, you mean, Doctor?" said the girl,

turning and stretching a mental hand to the sinking divine.

"H'm! well, hardly so--ah--so--"

"Doctor," said the girl calmly, "I know it, and I wish to go. I have

been waiting only to see the way open. I do not wish to remain longer

in an atmosphere where ignorance and false belief stifle all real

progress."

The doctor turned another look of astonishment upon her. He had

forgotten that he had not been talking with one of his own age. The

fact suddenly pressed upon him. "How old are you?" he blurted.

Carmen could not help laughing. But if her clear mental gaze

penetrated the ecclesiastical mask and surmounted the theological

assumptions of her interlocutor, enabling her to get close to the

heart of the man, she did not indicate it further. "I am nearly

sixteen," was her only reply.

"Ah," he reflected, "just a child! My dear girl," he continued, laying

a hand indulgently upon hers, "I will advise with Madam Elwin, and

will endeavor to convince her that--ah--that your spiritual welfare,

if I may so put it, requires that you be not turned adrift at this

critical, transitorial period of your life. We must all be patient,

while we strive to counteract the--ah--the pernicious teaching to

which you were exposed before--ah--before becoming enrolled in this

excellent school."

Carmen looked at him steadily for a moment before replying. There was

something of pity in the expression of her beautiful face, of tender

sympathy for those who seek the light, and who must some day find it,

but whose progress is as yet hampered by the human mind's unreasoning

adherence to the stepping-stones over which it has been passing

through the dark waters of ignorance. "Then, Doctor," she said calmly,

"you know what I have been taught?"

"Why--ah--yes--that is, vaguely. But--suppose you inform me briefly."

He was beginning to be sensible of having passed judgment upon the

girl without first according her a hearing.

"Well," she smiled up at him, "I have been taught the very hardest

thing in the whole world."

"H'm, indeed! Ah, quite so--and that?"

"To think."

"To--ah--to think!" He again clutched at his mental poise. "Well, yes,

quite so! But--ah--is it not the function of all our schools to teach

us to think?"

"No," answered the girl decidedly; "not to teach us to think, but to

cause us blindly to accept what is ignorantly called 'authority'! I

find we are not to reason, and particularly about religious matters,

but to accept, to let those 'in authority' think for us. Is it not so?

Are you not even now seeking to make me accept your religious views?

And why? Because they are true? Oh, no; but because you believe them

true--whether they are or not. Have you demonstrated their truth? Do

you come to me with proofs? Do your religious views rest upon anything

but the human mind's undemonstrated interpretation of the Bible? And

yet you can not prove that interpretation true, even though you would

force it upon such as I, who may differ from you."

"I--ah--" began the doctor nervously. But Carmen continued without

heeding the interruption:

"Only yesterday Professor Bales, of the University, lectured here on

'The Prime Function of Education.' He said it was the development of

the individual, and that the chief end of educational work was the

promotion of originality. And yet, when I think along original

lines--when I depart from stereotyped formulæ, and state boldly that I

will not accept any religion, be it Presbyterian, Methodist, or Roman

Catholic, that makes a God of spirit the creator of a man of flesh, or

that makes evil as real as good, and therefore necessarily created and

recognized by a God who by very necessity can not know evil--then I am

accused of being a heretic, a free-thinker; and the authorities take

steps to remove me, lest my influence contaminate the rest of the

pupils!"

"H'm--ah--yes, quite so--that is--I think--"

"Do you, a preacher, think?" the girl went on hurriedly. "Or do you

only _think_ that you think? Do you still believe with the world that

the passing of a stream of human thought, or a series of mental

pictures, through your mentality constitutes _real_ thinking? Do you

believe that jumping from one human mental concept to another

twenty-four hours a day constitutes thinking? Have you yet learned to

distinguish between God's thoughts and their opposites, human

thoughts? Do you know what Jesus taught? Have you a real, working,

demonstrable knowledge of Christianity? Do you heal the sick, raise

the dead, and preach the truth that sets men free from the mesmerism

of evil? If so, then you are unevangelical, too, and you and I are

both heretics, and we'd better--we'd better leave this building at

once, for I find that the Inquisition is still alive, even in

America!"

She stopped, and caught her breath. Her face was flushed, and her

whole body quivered with emotion.

"The Inquisition! Why, my dear young lady, this is a Christian

nation!"

"Then," said the girl, "you have still much to learn from the pagan

nations that have gone before."

"Bless my soul!" exclaimed the doctor, again adjusting his glasses

that he might see her more clearly. "My dear child, you have been

thinking too much, and too seriously."

"No, Doctor," she replied; "but you preachers have not been thinking

enough, nor even half seriously. Oh," she went on, while her eyes grew

moist, and ever and again her throat filled, "I had expected so much

in this great country! And I have found so little--so little that is

not wholly material, mechanical, and unreal! I had imagined that, with

all your learning and progress, which Padre Josè told me about, you

would know God much better than we in the darkened South. But your god

is matter, machinery, business, gold, and the unreal things that can

be bought with money. Some one wrote, in a recent newspaper, that

America's god was 'mud and mammon!' What do I find the girls here in

this school talking about but dress, and society, and the unreal,

passing pleasures of the physical senses! Do they know God? No--nor

want to! Nor do the preachers! There are religious services here every

Sunday, and sermons by preachers who come down from the city.

Sometimes a Baptist; sometimes a Presbyterian; and sometimes an

Episcopalian, or a Methodist. What is the result? Confusion--religious

confusion. Each has a different concept of God; yet they all believe

Him the creator of a man of flesh and bones, a man who was originally

made perfect, but who fell, and was then cursed by the good and

perfect God who made him. Oh, what childish views for men to hold and

preach! How could a good God create anything that could fall? And if

He could, and did, then He knew in advance that the man would fall,

and so God becomes responsible, not man. Oh, Doctor, is it possible

that you believe such stuff? How can you! how can you! Is it any

wonder that, holding such awful views, you preachers have no longer

the power to heal the sick? Do you not know that, in order to heal the

sick, one must become spiritually-minded? But no one who holds to the

puerile material beliefs embraced in your orthodox theology can

possibly be spiritual enough to do the works Jesus said we should all

do if we followed him--really understood him."

"My dear child--you really are quite inconsistent--you--"

"Inconsistent! What a charge for an orthodox preacher to bring! Let us

see: You say that the Scriptures teach that God made man in His image

and likeness--the image and likeness of spirit. Very well. Spirit,

God, is eternal, immortal. Then while He exists can His image fade

away, or die? Can or would God cause it to do so? Can or would He

destroy His own reflection? And could that image, always being like

Him, ever change, or manifest sin, or disease, or evil, unless God

first manifested these things? And if God did manifest them, then,

perforce, the image would _have_ to do likewise. But, in that case,

could God justly punish His image for faithfully reflecting its

original? Consistent! Oh, it is you preachers, lacking sufficient

spirituality to correctly interpret the Scriptures, who are wildly,

childishly, ignorantly inconsistent!"

Carmen rose and faced the clergyman. "I did not mean to condemn

you, Doctor," she said earnestly. "I wage no warfare with persons

or things. My opposition is directed only against the entrenched human

thought that makes men spiritually blind and holds them in the

mesmeric chains of evil. I am young, as you reckon years, but I

have had much experience in the realm of thought--and it is there

that all experience is wrought out before it becomes externalized.

I have told you, my teacher was God. He used as a channel a priest,

who came years ago to my little home town of Simití, in far-off

Colombia. His life had been wrecked by holding to the belief of

evil as a power, real and intelligent. He began to see the light; but

he did not overcome fear sufficiently to make his demonstration and

break the imaginary bonds which held him. He saw, but he did not

prove. He will, some day. And, Doctor, you and everybody else will

have to do the same. For, unless Jesus uttered the most malicious

falsehoods ever voiced, every human being will have to take every

step that he took, make every demonstration that he made, and prove

all that he proved, before mortals will cease to consume with

disease, perish miserably in accidents, and sink with broken lives

into graves that do _not_ afford a gateway to immortal life! My God is

infinite, eternal, unchanging mind. The god of the preachers,

judging from their sermons preached here, is a human, mental

concept, embodying spirit and matter, knowing good and evil, and

changing with every caprice of their own unstable mentalities. My

religion is the Christianity of the Master, love. Oh, how this poor

world needs it, yearns for it! The love that demonstrates the

nothingness of evil, and drives it out of human experience! The love

that heals the sick, raises the dead, binds up broken hearts! The

love that will not quench the religious instincts of children, and

falsely educate them to know all manner of evil; but that teaches

them to recognize it for what it is, the lie about God, and then

shows them how to overcome it, even as Jesus did. My God is truth.

Is truth real? Ah, yes, you say. But error is the opposite of truth.

Then can error, evil, be real? No, not if you will be consistent.

Again, God is infinite. But God is spirit. Then all is spirit and

spirit's manifestation--is it not true? What, then, becomes of the

evil that men hug to their bosoms, even while it gnaws into their

hearts? It is the opposite of good, of mind, of truth, God. And

the opposite of truth is supposition. Is it not so? And the

supposition is--where? In your mentality. And you can put it out

whenever you are willing to drop your ceremonials and your theories,

and will open your mentality to truth, which will make you free,

even as the Master said. That is my religion, Doctor. Those are

the religious views which you have been sent by Madam Elwin to

investigate. Am I a heretic? Or unevangelical?"

She waited a few moments for the doctor to reply. Then, as he remained

silent, she went up to him and held out her hand.

"You do not care to talk with me longer, I think," she said. "Perhaps

we may meet again. But, as regards Madam Elwin's wishes, you may tell

her that I shall leave the school."

"Have you--have you been fitting yourself for any--ah--particular

work--ah--for your support, that is?" inquired the doctor gravely, as

he took the proffered hand. He had been swept off his feet by the

girl's conversation, and he had not the temerity to combat her views.

"Yes," replied Carmen. "I have been working daily to gain a better

understanding of the teachings of Jesus, and through them, of God. My

single aim has been to acquire 'that mind which was in Christ Jesus.'

And I have no other business than to reflect it to my fellow-men in a

life of service. That is my Father's business, and I am working with

Him. My mission in this world is to manifest God. I am going out now

to do that, and _to show what love will do_. God will use me, and He

will supply my every need. And now, good-bye."

She turned abruptly from him and went to the organ. Soon the same song

which he had heard as he entered the room rose again through the

stillness. A strong emotion seemed to possess him. He started toward

the girl; checked himself; and stood hesitating. Then his lips set,

and he turned and walked slowly from the room.

In the hall two women were approaching, and as they drew near he

recognized one of them.

"Why," he exclaimed with enthusiasm, holding out both hands, "my dear

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles! It is not so long since we met at the Weston's.

But what, may I ask, brings you here?"

"This is my sister, Mrs. Charles Reed, Doctor Jurges. We have come to,

make a duty call on Mr. Reed's protégée, the little South American

savage, you know. Madam Elwin said she was up here with you?"

"Ah, yes, quite so--er, in the chapel, I believe," said the clergyman,

his face becoming suddenly grave. "I would return with you, but my

time is--ah--so limited." He bowed low, with his hand in the breast of

his long frock coat, and passed on down the hall.

As the women approached the door of the chapel through which came

Carmen's low singing they turned and looked at each other inquiringly.

Then they quietly entered the doorway and stood listening. Carmen,

concealed behind the organ, did not see them.

The song stopped, and Mrs. Hawley-Crowles went quickly to the organ.

Bending over it, she gazed down into the face of the startled girl.

"My goodness!" she exclaimed. "Get up and let me see what sort of a

looking creature you are."

Carmen rose, and Mrs. Reed came forward and gave her a tempered

greeting. Then Mrs. Hawley-Crowles fell back and stared at the girl

from head to foot. "You know," she said to her sister, "this is the

first glimpse I've had of your husband's discovery. I was out of the

city when he brought her to my house, you remember. But," turning

again to Carmen, "sing that song over, dear, please--the one you were

singing just now."

Carmen seated herself again at the organ, and Mrs. Hawley-Crowles drew

her sister to the rear of the room. "It will sound better back here,"

she explained.

After the lapse of a few minutes she turned to Mrs. Reed. "Belle," she

said, nodding her head sententiously, "you had a pearl, and you threw

it away. That girl there is our social fortune! Her voice, and her

face--why, with our ward--this beautiful, gifted, South American owner

of a famous mine--as a lever, we can force the Beaubien to bring the

Ames to our terms! She goes back with us to-night! You've been

blind!"

Meantime, the dainty Madam Elwin and the amiable Doctor Jurges in the

office below had reached a conclusion. "A young lady of--ah--invincible

will," the doctor had observed; "and already--ah--decidedly mature,

despite her tender years. Should she--ah--assume leadership over the

pupils of your school, my dear Madam Elwin, the result might be

disquieting. There can be no question as to her religious views, as I

have said. But, what astonishes me is--ah--that this strange cult

should have its devotees even in the wilds of tropical America!

Astonishing--and so unfortunate! The girl is utterly--ah--unevangelical,

Madam; and the advisability of removing her from the school can not be

questioned. Do you not agree with me, Mr. Ketchim?"

"By all means," asserted the latter gentleman with great seriousness,

while his eyes dwelt tenderly upon Madam Elwin's written order for a

hundred shares of Simití stock which he held in his hand.

"Very well, then," said the lady with a determined nod of her head; "I

shall request Mrs. Reed to take her to-day." Then, with a proper sense

of what it meant to have the moral support of such an eminent divine

as Doctor Jurges, she rang for her maid and bade her summon Mrs. Reed

and the girl.

Thus it was that Carmen was again shifted a space on the checkerboard

of life, and slept that night once more under the spacious roof of the

wealthy relict of the late James Hawley-Crowles, on Riverside Drive.

CHAPTER 7

As has been said, Carmen's six months in the Elwin school had been a

period of slow adjustment to the changed order. She had brought into

this new world a charm of unsophistication, an ingenuous _naïveté_,

such as only an untrammeled spirit nourished in an elemental

civilization like that of primitive Simití could develop. Added to

this was the zest and eagerness stimulated by the thought that she had

come as a message-bearer to a people with a great need. Her first

emotion had been that of astonishment that the dwellers in the great

States were not so different, after all, from those of her own

unprogressive country. Her next was one of sad disillusionment, as the

fact slowly dawned upon her trusting thought that the busy denizens of

her new environment took no interest whatsoever in her message. And

then her joy and brilliant hopefulness had chilled, and she awoke to

find her strange views a barrier between herself and her associates.

She had brought to the America of the North a spirit so deeply

religious as to know naught else than her God and His ceaseless

manifestation. She had come utterly free of dogma or creed, and

happily ignorant of decaying formularies and religious caste. Her

Christianity was her demonstrable interpretation of the Master's

words; and her fresh, ebulliant spirit soared unhampered in the warm

atmosphere of love for mankind. Her concept of the Christ stirred no

thought within her of intolerance toward those who might hold

differing views; nor did it raise interposing barriers within her own

mind, nor evoke those baser sentiments which have so sadly warped the

souls of men into instruments of deadly hatred and crushing tyranny.

Her spiritual vision, undimmed and world-embracing, saw the advent of

that day when all mankind would obey the commands of Jesus, and do the

works which he did, even to the complete spiritualization and

dematerializing of all human thought. And her burning desire was to

hasten the coming of that glad hour.

The conviction that, despite its tremendous needs, humanity was

steadily rejecting, even in this great land of opportunity and

progress, the remedy for its consuming ills, came to her slowly. And

with it a damping of her ardor, and a dulling of the fine edge of her

enthusiasm. She grew quiet as the days passed, and drew away from her

companions into her thought. With her increasing sense of isolation

came at length a great longing to leave these inhospitable shores, and

return to her native environment and the sympathy and tender

solicitude of her beloved Rosendo and Padre Josè. But, alas! that was

at present impossible. Indeed, she could not be certain now of their

whereabouts. A great war was raging in Colombia, and she knew not what

fate had befallen her loved ones. To her many letters directed to

Simití there had come back no reply. Even Harris, who had written

again and again to both Rosendo and Josè, had received no word from

them in return. Corroding fear began to assail the girl; soul-longing

and heart-sickness seized upon her; her happy smile faded; and her

bright, bubbling conversation ceased.

Then one day, standing alone in her room, she turned squarely upon the

foul brood of evil suggestions crowding upon her and, as if they were

fell spirits from the nether world, bade them begone. "Listen!" she

cried aloud. "I know you for what you are--_nothing_! You seemed to

use Padre Josè, but you can't use me! God is everywhere--right here!

He is my life; and you, evil thoughts, can't make me think He isn't! I

am His image and likeness; I am His witness; and I will _not_ witness

to His opposite, evil! My life is filled with harmony; and you, evil

thoughts, can't reverse that fact! God has brought me here, else I

would not have come, for He is the cause of all that is. It is for me

to stand and see His glory. No! no!" as she paced about the room and

seemed to ward off the assaults of an invisible enemy, "there is no

power apart from Him! On that I stand!"

Then, in the lull of battle, "Father divine, I thank Thee that Thou

hast heard me. And now I lay my all upon the altar of love, and throw

myself upon Thy thought."

From that day, despite continued attacks from error--despite, too, the

veiled slights and covert insinuations of her schoolmates, to whom the

girl's odd views and utter refusal to share their accustomed

conversation, their interest in mundane affairs, their social

aspirations and worldly ambitions, at length made her quite

unwelcome--Carmen steadily, and without heed of diverting gesture,

brought into captivity every thought to the obedience of her

Christ-principle, and threw off for all time the dark cloud of

pessimism which human belief and the mesmerism of events had drawn

over her joyous spirit.

Mrs. Reed had not been near her since her enrollment in the school;

but Ketchim had visited her often--not, however, alone, but always

with one or more prospective purchasers of Simití stock in tow whom

he sought to influence favorably through Carmen's interesting

conversation about her native land. Harris came every Sunday, and

the girl welcomed the great, blundering fellow as the coming of the

day. At times he would obtain Madam Elwin's permission to take the

girl up to the city on a little sight-seeing expedition, and then he

would abandon himself completely to the enjoyment of her naïve wonder

and the numberless and often piquant questions stimulated by it. He

was the only one now with whom she felt any degree of freedom, and

in his presence her restraint vanished and her airy gaiety again

welled forth with all its wonted fervor. Once, shortly after Carmen

had been enrolled, Harris took her to a concert by the New York

Symphony Orchestra. But in the midst of the program, after sitting

in silent rapture, the girl suddenly burst into tears and begged to be

taken out. "I couldn't stand it!" she sobbed as, outside the door,

she hid her tear-stained face in his coat; "I just couldn't! It

was heavenly! Oh, it was God that we heard--it was God!" And the

astonished fellow respected this sudden outburst of pent-up emotion

as he led her, silent and absorbed, back to the school.

With the throwing of the girl upon her own thought came a rapid

expansion of both mind and body into maturity, and the young lady who

left the Elwin school that bright spring afternoon under the

protection of the self-sufficient Mrs. Hawley-Crowles was very far

from being the inquisitive, unabashed little girl who had so

greatly shocked the good Sister Superior by her heretical views

some six months before. The sophistication engendered by her

intercourse with the pupils and instructors in the school had

transformed the eager, trusting little maid, who could see only good

into a mature woman, who, though her trust remained unshaken,

nevertheless had a better understanding of the seeming power "that

lusteth against the spirit," and whose idea of her mission had been

deepened into a grave sense of responsibility. She saw now, as never

before, the awful unreality of the human sense of life; but she

likewise understood, as never previously, its seeming reality in

the human consciousness, and its terrible mesmeric power over

those materialistic minds into which the light of spirituality had as

yet scarcely penetrated. Her thought had begun to shape a definite

purpose; she was still to be a message-bearer, but the message must be

set forth in her life conduct. The futility of promiscuous verbal

delivery of the message to whomsoever might cross her path had

been made patent. Jesus taught--and then proved. She must do

likewise, and let her deeds attest the truth of her words. And from

the day that she bade the suggestions of fear and evil leave her,

she had consecrated herself anew to a searching study of the

Master's life and words, if happily she might acquire "that mind"

which he so wondrously expressed.

But the assumption of an attitude of quiet demonstration was by no

means sudden. There were times when she could not restrain the impulse

to challenge the beliefs so authoritatively set forth by the preachers

and lecturers whom Madam Elwin invited to address her pupils, and who,

unlike Jesus, first taught, and then relegated their proofs to a life

beyond the grave. Once, shortly after entering the school, forgetful

of all but the error being preached, she had risen in the midst of an

eloquent sermon by the eminent Darius Borwell, a Presbyterian divine

of considerable repute, and asked him why it was that, as he seemed to

set forth, God had changed His mind after creating spiritual man, and

had created a man of dust. She had later repented her scandalous

conduct in sackcloth and ashes; but it did not prevent her from

abruptly leaving the chapel on a subsequent Sunday when another

divine, this time a complaisant Methodist, quite satisfied with his

theories of endless future rewards and fiery punishments, dwelt at

length upon the traditional idea that the sorrows of the world are

God-sent for mankind's chastisement and discipline.

Then she gradually learned to be less defiant of the conventions and

beliefs of the day, and determined quietly to rise superior to them.

But her experience with the preachers wrought within her a strong

determination henceforth to listen to no religious propaganda

whatsoever, to give no further heed to current theological beliefs,

and to enter no church edifice, regardless of the tenets of the sect

worshiping within its precincts. The wisdom of this decision she left

for the future to determine.

"Oh," she cried, "my only mission is to manifest the divine, not to

waste time listening to the theories of ignorant preachers, who fail

utterly to prove the truth of their teachings! Oh, how the world needs

love--just love! And I am going to love it with the selfless love that

comes from God, and destroys error and the false beliefs that become

externalized in the human consciousness as sickness, failure, old

age, and death! Love, love, love--it is mankind's greatest need! Why,

if the preachers only knew, the very heart and soul of Christianity is

love! It is love that casts out fear; and fear is at the bottom of all

sickness, for fear leads to belief in other gods than the one Father

of Christ Jesus! Christianity is aflame with love! Oh, God--take me

out into the world, and let me show it what love can do!"

And the divine ear heard the call of this beautiful disciple of the

Christ--aye, had heard it long before the solicitous, fluttering

little Madam Elwin decided that the strange girl's unevangelical views

were inimical to the best interests of her very select school. The

social ambitions of the wealthy Mrs. Hawley-Crowles threw wide the

portals of the world to Carmen, and she entered, wide-eyed and

wondering. Nor did she return until the deepest recesses of the human

mind had revealed to her their abysmal hideousness, their ghastly

emptiness of reality, and their woeful mesmeric deception.

CHAPTER 8

Mrs. James Hawley-Crowles, more keenly perceptive than her sister, had

seized upon Carmen with avidity bred of hope long deferred. The

scourge of years of fruitless social striving had rendered her

desperate, and she would have staged a ballet on her dining table,

with her own ample self as _première danseuse_, did the attraction but

promise recognition from the blasé members of fashionable New York's

ultra-conservative set. From childhood she had looked eagerly forward

through the years with an eye single to such recognition as life's

desideratum. To this end she had bartered both youth and beauty with

calculated precision for the Hawley-Crowles money bags; only to weep

floods of angry tears when the bargain left her social status

unchanged, and herself tied to a decrepit old rounder, whose tarnished

name wholly neutralized the purchasing power of his ill-gotten gold.

Fortunately for the reputations of them both, her husband had the good

sense to depart this life ere the divorce proceedings which she had

long had in contemplation were instituted; whereupon the stricken

widow had him carefully incinerated and his ashes tenderly deposited

in a chaste urn in a mausoleum which her architect had taken oath cost

more than the showy Ames vault by many thousands. The period of

decorous mourning past, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles blithely doffed her weeds

and threw herself again into the terrific competition for social

standing, determined this time that it should be a warfare to the

death.

And so it bade fair to prove to her, when the eminent nerve

specialist, Dr. Bascom Ross, giving a scant half hour to the

consideration of her case, at the modest charge of one hundred

dollars, warned her to declare a truce and flee to the Alps for

unalloyed rest. She complied, and had returned with restored health

and determination just as her sister came up from South America,

bringing the odd little "savage" whom Reed had discovered in the wilds

of Guamocó. A prolonged week-end at Newport, the last of the summer

season, accounted for her absence from the city when Reed brought

Carmen to her house, where he and his wife were making their temporary

abode. Six months later, in her swift appraisal of the girl in the

Elwin school, to whom she had never before given a thought, she seemed

to see a light.

"It does look like a desperate chance, I admit," she said, when

recounting her plans to her sister a day or so later. "But I've played

every other card in my hand; and now this girl is going to be either a

trump or a joker. All we need is a word from the Beaubien, and the

following week will see an invitation at our door from Mrs. J. Wilton

Ames. The trick is to reach the Beaubien. That I calculate to do

through Carmen. And I'm going to introduce the girl as an Inca

princess. Why not? It will make a tremendous hit."

Mrs. Reed was not less ambitious than her sister, but hitherto she had

lacked the one essential to social success, money. In addition, she

had committed the egregious blunder of marrying for love. And now that

the honeymoon had become a memory, and she faced again her growing

ambition, with a struggling husband who had neither name nor wealth to

aid her, she had found her own modest income of ten thousand a year,

which she had inherited from her mother, only an aggravation. True, in

time her wandering father would pass away; and there was no doubt that

his vast property would fall to his daughters, his only living kin.

But at present, in view of his aggressively good health and disregard

for his relatives, her only recourse was to attach herself to her

wealthy, sharp-witted sister, and hope to be towed safely into the

social swim, should that scheming lady ultimately achieve her high

ambition.

Just why Mrs. Hawley-Crowles should have seen in Carmen a means of

reaching a woman of the stamp of the Beaubien, and through her the

leader of the most exclusive social set in the metropolis, is

difficult to say. But thus does the human mind often seek to further

its own dubious aims through guileless innocence and trust. Perhaps

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles had likewise a slight trace of that clairvoyance

of wisdom which so characterized the girl. But with this difference,

that she knew not why she was led to adopt certain means; while

Carmen, penetrating externals, consciously sought to turn those who

would employ her into channels for the expression of her own dominant

thought. Be that as it may, the Beaubien was now the stone before the

door of their hope, and Carmen the lever by which these calculating

women intended it should be moved.

"The Beaubien, my dear," explained Mrs. Hawley-Crowles to her

inquisitive sister, whose life had been lived almost entirely away

from New York, "is J. Wilton Ames's very particular friend, of long

standing. As I told you, I have recently been going through my late

unpleasant husband's effects, and have unearthed letters and memoranda

which throw floods of light upon Jim's early indiscretions and his

association with both the Beaubien and Ames. Jim once told me, in a

burst of alcoholic confidence, that she had saved him from J. Wilton's

clutches in the dim past, and for that he owed her endless gratitude,

as well as for never permitting him to darken her door again. Now I

have never met the Beaubien. Few women have. But I dare say she knows

all about us. However, the point that concerns us now is this: she has

a hold on Ames, and, unless rumor is wide of the truth, when she hints

to him that his wife's dinner list or yachting party seems incomplete

without such or such a name, why, the list is immediately revised."

The position which the Beaubien held was, if Madam On-dit was not to

be wholly discredited, to say the least, unique. It was not as social

dictator that she posed, for in a great cosmopolitan city where polite

society is infinitely complex in its make-up such a position can

scarcely be said to exist. It was rather as an influence that she was

felt, an influence never seen, but powerful, subtle, and wholly

inexplicable, working now through this channel, now through that, and

effecting changes in the social complexion of conservative New York

that were utterly in defiance of the most rigid convention.

Particularly was her power felt in the narrow circle over which Mrs.

J. Wilton Ames presided, by reason of her own and her husband's

aristocratic descent, and the latter's bursting coffers and supremacy

in the realm of finance.

Only for her sagacity, the great influence of the woman would have

been short-lived. But, whatever else might be said of her, the

Beaubien was wise, with a discretion that was positively uncanny.

Tall, voluptuous, yet graceful as a fawn; black, wavy, abundant hair;

eyes whose dark, liquid depths held unfathomable mysteries; gracious,

affable, yet keen as a razor blade; tender, even sentimental on

occasions, with an infinite capacity for either love or hate, this

many-sided woman, whose brilliant flashes of wit kept the savant or

roué at her table in an uproar, could, if occasion required, found an

orphanage or drop a bichloride tablet in the glass of her rival with

the same measure of calculating precision and disdain of the future.

It was said of her that she might have laid down her life for the man

she loved. It is probable that she never met with one worth the

sacrifice.

While yet in short dresses she had fled from her boarding school, near

a fashionable resort in the New Hampshire hills, with a French

Colonel, Gaspard de Beaubien, a man twice her age. With him she had

spent eight increasingly miserable years in Paris. Then, her withered

romance carefully entombed in the secret places of her heart, she

secured a divorce from the roistering colonel, together with a small

settlement, and set sail for New York to hunt for larger and more

valuable game.

With abundant charms and sang-froid for her capital, she rented an

expensive apartment in a fashionable quarter of the city, and then

settled down to business. Whether she would have fallen upon bad days

or not will never be known, for the first haul of her widespread net

landed a fish of supreme quality, J. Wilton Ames. On the plea of

financial necessity, she had gone boldly to his office with the deed

to a parcel of worthless land out on the moist sands of the New Jersey

shore, which the unscrupulous Gaspard de Beaubien had settled upon her

when she severed the tie which bound them, and which, after weeks of

careful research, she discovered adjoined a tract owned by Ames.

Pushing aside office boy, clerk, and guard, she reached the inner

_sanctum_ of the astonished financier himself and offered to sell at a

ruinous figure. A few well-timed tears, an expression of angelic

innocence on her beautiful face, a despairing gesture or two with her

lovely arms, coupled with the audacity which she had shown in forcing

an entrance into his office, effected the man's capitulation. She was

then in her twenty-fourth year.

The result was that she cast her net no more, but devoted herself

thenceforth with tender consecration to her important catch. In time

Ames brought a friend, the rollicking James Hawley-Crowles, to call

upon the charming Beaubien. In time, too, as was perfectly natural, a

rivalry sprang up between the men, which the beautiful creature

watered so tenderly that the investments which she was enabled to make

under the direction of these powerful rivals flourished like Jack's

beanstalk, and she was soon able to leave her small apartment and take

a suite but a few blocks from the Ames mansion.

At length the strain between Ames and Hawley-Crowles reached the

breaking point; and then the former decided that the woman's

bewitching smiles should thenceforth be his alone. He forthwith drew

the seldom sober Hawley-Crowles into certain business deals, with the

gentle connivance of the suave Beaubien herself, and at length sold

the man out short and presented a claim on every dollar he possessed.

Hawley-Crowles awoke from his blissful dream sober and trimmed. But

then the Beaubien experienced one of her rare and inexplicable

revulsions of the ethical sense, and a compromise had to be effected,

whereby the Hawley-Crowles fortune was saved, though the man should

see the Beaubien no more.

By this time her beauty was blooming in its utmost profusion, and her

prowess had been fairly tried. She took a large house, furnished it

like unto a palace, and proceeded to throw her gauntlet in the face of

the impregnable social caste. There she drew about her a circle of

bon-vivants, artists, littérateurs, politicians, and men of

finance--with never a woman in the group. Yet in her new home she

established a social code as rigid as the Median law, and woe to him

within her gates who thereafter, with or without intent, passed the

bounds of respectful decorum. His name was heard no more on her rosy

lips.

Her dinners were Lucullan in their magnificence; and over the rare

wines and imperial cigars which she furnished, her guests passed many

a tip and prognostication anent the market, which she in turn quietly

transmitted to her brokers. She came to understand the game

thoroughly, and, while it was her heyday of glorious splendor, she

played hard. She had bartered every priceless gift of nature for

gold--and she made sure that the measure she received in return was

full. Her gaze was ever upon the approaching day when those charms

would be but bitter memories; and it was her grim intention that when

it came silken ease should compensate for their loss.

Ten years passed, and the Beaubien's reign continued with undimmed

splendor. In the meantime, the wife of J. Wilton Ames had reached the

zenith of her ambitions and was the acknowledged leader in New York's

most fashionable social circle. These two women never met. But, though

the Beaubien had never sought the entrée to formal society, preferring

to hold her own court, at which no women attended, she exercised a

certain control over it through her influence upon the man Ames. What

Mrs. Ames knew of the long-continued relations between her husband and

this woman was never divulged. And doubtless she was wholly satisfied

that his wealth and power afforded her the position which her heart

had craved; and, that secure, she was willing to leave him to his own

methods of obtaining diversion. But rumor was persistent, maliciously

so; and rumor declared that the list of this envied society dame was

not drawn up without the approval of her husband and the woman with

whom his leisure hours were invariably spent. Hence the hope of Mrs.

Hawley-Crowles, whose doting mate had once fawned in the perfumed wake

of the luxurious Beaubien.

Carmen, whose wishes had not been consulted, had voiced no objection

whatever to returning to the Hawley-Crowles home. Indeed, she secretly

rejoiced that an opportunity had been so easily afforded for escape

from the stifling atmosphere of the Elwin school, and for entrance

into the great world of people and affairs, where she believed the

soil prepared for the seed she would plant. That dire surprises

awaited her, of which she could not even dream, did not enter her

calculations. Secure in her quenchless faith, she gladly accepted the

proffered shelter of the Hawley-Crowles mansion, and the protection of

its worldly, scheming inmates.

In silent, wide-eyed wonder, in the days that followed, the girl

strove to accustom herself to the luxury of her surroundings, and to

the undreamed of marvels which made for physical comfort and

well-being. Each installment of the ample allowance which Mrs.

Hawley-Crowles settled upon her seemed a fortune--enough, she thought,

to buy the whole town of Simití! Her gowns seemed woven on fairy

looms, and often she would sit for hours, holding them in her lap and

reveling in their richness. Then, when at length she could bring

herself to don the robes and peep timidly into the great pier glasses,

she would burst into startled exclamations and hide her face in her

hands, lest the gorgeous splendor of the beautiful reflection

overpower her.

"Oh," she would exclaim, "it can't be that the girl reflected there

ever lived and dressed as I did in Simití! I wonder, oh, I wonder if

Padre Josè knew that these things were in the world!"

And then, as she leaned back in her chair and gave herself into the

hands of the admiring French maid, she would close her eyes and dream

that the fairy-stories which the patient Josè had told her again and

again in her distant home town had come true, and that she had been

transformed into a beautiful princess, who would some day go in search

of the sleeping priest and wake him from his mesmeric dream.

Then would come the inevitable thought of the little newsboy of

Cartagena, to whom she had long since begun to send monetary

contributions--and of her unanswered letters--of the war devastating

her native land--of rudely severed ties, and unimaginable changes--and

she would start from her musing and brush away the gathering tears,

and try to realize that her present situation and environment were but

means to an end, opportunities which her God had given her to do His

work, with no thought of herself.

A few days after Carmen had been installed in her new home, during

which she had left the house only for her diurnal ride in the big

limousine, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles announced her readiness to fire the

first gun in the attack upon the Beaubien. "My dear," she said to her

sister, as they sat alone in the luxurious sun-parlor, "my washerwoman

dropped a remark the other day which gave me something to build on.

Her two babies are in the General Orphan Asylum, up on Twenty-third

street. Well, it happens that this institution is the Beaubien's sole

charity--in fact, it is her particular hobby. I presume that she feels

she is now a middle-aged woman, and that the time is not far distant

when she will have to close up her earthly accounts and hand them over

to the heavenly auditor. Anyway, this last year or two she has

suddenly become philanthropic, and when the General Orphan Asylum was

building she gave some fifty thousand dollars for a cottage in her

name. What's more, the trustees of the Asylum accepted it without the

wink of an eyelash. Funny, isn't it?

"But here's the point: some rich old fellow has willed the institution

a fund whose income every year is used to buy clothing for the

kiddies; and they have a sort of celebration on the day the duds are

given out, and the public is invited to inspect the place and the

inmates, and eat a bit, and look around generally. Well, my

washerwoman tells me that the Beaubien always attends these annual

celebrations. The next one, I learn, comes in about a month. I propose

that we attend; take Carmen; ask permission for her to sing to the

children, and thereby attract the attention of the gorgeous Beaubien,

who will be sure to speak to the girl, who is herself an orphan, and,

ten to one, want to see more of her. The rest is easy. I'll have a

word to say regarding our immense debt of gratitude to her for saving

Jim's fortune years ago when he was entangled in her net--and, well,

if that scheme doesn't work, I have other strings to my bow."

But it did work, and with an ease that exceeded the most sanguine

hopes of its projector. On the day that the General Orphan Asylum

threw wide its doors to the public, the Hawley-Crowles limousine

rubbed noses with the big French car of the Beaubien in the street

without; while within the building the Beaubien held the hand of the

beautiful girl whose voluntary singing had spread a veil of silence

over the awed spectators in the great assembly room, and, looking

earnestly down into the big, trusting, brown eyes, said: "My dear

child, I want to know you." Then, turning to the eager, itching Mrs.

Hawley-Crowles, "I shall send my car for her to-morrow afternoon, with

your permission."

With her permission! Heavens! Mrs. Hawley-Crowles wildly hugged her

sister and the girl all the way home--then went to bed that night with

tears of apprehension in her washed-out eyes, lest she had shown

herself too eager in granting the Beaubien's request. But her fears

were turned to exultation when the Beaubien car drew up at her door

the following day at three, and the courteous French chauffeur

announced his errand. A few moments later, while the car glided

purring over the smooth asphalt, Carmen, robed like a princess, lay

back in the cushions and dreamed of the poor priest in the dead little

town so far away.

CHAPTER 9

"Sing it again, dear. I know you are tired, but I want to hear that

song just once more. Somehow it seems to bring up thoughts of--of

things that might have been." The Beaubien's voice sank to a whisper

as she finished.

Carmen laughed happily and prepared to repeat the weird lament which

had so fascinated the Reverend Doctor Jurges a few days before.

"I--I don't know why that song affects me so," mused the Beaubien,

when the girl had finished and returned to the seat beside her. Then,

abruptly: "I wish you could play the pipe-organ out in the hall. I put

twelve thousand dollars into it, and I can't even play five-finger

exercises on it."

"Twelve thousand dollars!" exclaimed Carmen, drawing a long breath,

while her eyes dilated.

The woman laughed. "Would that buy your beloved Simití?" she asked.

"Well, you poor, unsophisticated girl, suppose we just go down there

and buy the whole town. It would at least give me an interest in life.

Do you think I could stand the heat there? But tell me more about it.

How did you live, and what did you do? And who is this Josè? And are

you really descended from the old Incas?"

They were alone in the darkened music room, and the soft-stepping,

liveried butler had just set the tea table before them, At one end of

the long room a cheery fire snapped and crackled in the huge

fireplace, tempering the sharpness of the early spring day and casting

a ruddy glow upon the tapestried walls and polished floor in front,

where dozed the Beaubien's two "babies," Japanese and Pekingese

spaniels of registered pedigree and fabulous value. Among the heavy

beams of the lofty ceiling grotesque shadows danced and flickered,

while over the costly rugs and rare skins on the floor below subdued

lights played in animated pantomime. Behind the magnificent grand

piano a beautifully wrought harp reflected a golden radiance into the

room. Everything in the woman's environment was softened into the same

degree of voluptuousness which characterized her and the life of

sybaritic ease which she affected.

From the moment Carmen entered the house she had been charmed,

fascinated, overpowered by the display of exhaustless wealth and

the rich taste exhibited in its harmonious manifestation. The

Hawley-Crowles home had seemed to her the epitome of material

elegance and comfort, far exceeding the most fantastic concepts of her

childish imagination, when she had listened enraptured to Padre

Josè's compelling stories of the great world beyond Simití. But the

gorgeous web of this social spider made even the Hawley-Crowles

mansion suffer in comparison.

"And yet," said the amused Beaubien, when Carmen could no longer

restrain her wonder and admiration, "this is but a shed beside the new

Ames house, going up on Fifth Avenue. I presume he will put not less

than ten millions into it before it is finished."

"Ten millions! In just a house!" Carmen dared not attempt to grasp the

complex significance of such an expenditure.

"Why, is that such a huge amount, child?" asked the Beaubien, as

accustomed to think in eight figures as in two. "But, I forget that

you are from the jungle. Yet, who would imagine it?" she mused, gazing

with undisguised admiration at the beautiful, animated girl before

her.

Silence then fell upon them both. Carmen was struggling with the

deluge of new impressions; and the woman fastened her eyes upon her as

if she would have them bore deep into the soul of whose rarity she was

becoming slowly aware. What thoughts coursed through the mind of the

Beaubien as she sat studying the girl through the tempered light, we

may not know. What she saw in Carmen that attracted her, she herself

might not have told. Had she, too, this ultra-mondaine, this creature

of gold and tinsel, felt the spell of the girl's great innocence and

purity of thought, her righteousness? Or did she see in her something

that she herself might once have been--something that all her gold,

and all the wealth of Ormus or of Ind could never buy?

"What have you got," she suddenly, almost rudely, exclaimed, "that I

haven't?" And then the banality of the question struck her, and she

laughed harshly.

"Why," said Carmen, looking up quickly and beaming upon the woman,

"you have everything! Oh, what more could you wish?"

"You," returned the woman quickly, though she knew not why she said

it. And yet, memory was busy uncovering those bitter days when, in the

first agony of marital disappointment, she had, with hot, streaming

tears, implored heaven to give her a child. But the gift had been

denied; and her heart had shrunk and grown heavily calloused.

Then she spoke more gently, and there was that in her voice which

stirred the girl's quick sympathy. "Yes, you have youth, and beauty.

They are mine no longer. But I could part with them, gladly, if only

there were anything left."

Carmen instantly rose and went swiftly to her. Forgetful of caste,

decorum, convention, everything but the boundless love which she felt

for all mankind, she put her arms about the worldly woman's neck and

kissed her.

For a moment the Beaubien sat in speechless surprise. It was the only

manifestation of selfless love that had ever come into her sordid

experience. Was it possible that this was spontaneous? that it was an

act of real sympathy, and not a clever ruse to win her from behind the

mask of affection? Her own kisses, she knew, were bestowed only for

favors. Alas! they drew not many now, although time was when a single

one might win a brooch or a string of pearls.

The girl herself quickly met the woman's groping thought. "I'm in the

world to show what love will do," she murmured; "and I love you." Had

she not thus solved every problem from earliest childhood?

The Beaubien melted. Not even a heart of stone could withstand the

solvent power of such love. Her head dropped upon her breast, and she

wept.

"Don't cry," said Carmen, tenderly caressing the bepowdered cheek.

"Why, we are all God's children; we all have one another; you have me,

and I have you; and God means us all to be happy."

The Beaubien looked up, wondering. Her variegated life included no

such tender experience as this. She had long since ceased to shed

aught but tears of anger. But now--

She clutched the girl to her and kissed her eagerly; then gently

motioned her back to her chair. "Don't mind it," she smiled, with

swimming eyes, and a shade of embarrassment. "I don't know of anything

that would help me as much as a good cry. If I could have had a

daughter like you, I should--but never mind now." She tried to laugh,

as she wiped her eyes.

Then an idea seemed to flash through her jaded brain, and she became

suddenly animated. "Why--listen," she said; "don't you want to learn

the pipe-organ? Will you come here and take lessons? I will pay for

them; I will engage the best teacher in New York; and you shall take

two or three a week, and use the big organ out in the hall. Will

you?"

Carmen's heart gave a great leap. "Oh!" she exclaimed, her eyes

dancing. "But I must ask Mrs. Reed, you know."

"I'll do it myself," returned the woman with growing enthusiasm.

"William," she directed, when the butler responded to her summons,

"get Mrs. Hawley-Crowles on the wire at once. But who is coming, I

wonder?" glancing through the window at an automobile that had drawn

up at her door. "Humph!" a look of vexation mantling her face, "the

Right Reverend Monsignor Lafelle. Well," turning to Carmen, "I suppose

I'll have to send you home now, dear. But tell Mrs. Hawley-Crowles

that I shall call for you to-morrow afternoon, and that I shall speak

to her at that time about your music lessons. William, take Monsignor

into the morning room, and then tell Henri to bring the car to the

porte-cochère for Miss Carmen. Good-bye, dear," kissing the bright,

upturned face of the waiting girl. "I wish I could--but, well, don't

forget that I'm coming for you to-morrow."

That afternoon Mrs. Hawley-Crowles directed her French tailor to cable

to Paris for advance styles. Twenty-four hours later she hastened with

outstretched arms to greet the Beaubien, waiting in the reception

room. Oh, yes, they had heard often of each other; and now were so

pleased to meet! New York was such a whirlpool, and it was so

difficult to form desirable friendships. Yes, the Beaubien had known

the late-lamented Hawley-Crowles; but, dear! dear! that was years and

years ago, before he had married, and when they were both young and

foolish. And--

"My dear Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, chance enabled him and me to be mutually

helpful at a time when I was in sore need of a friend; and the debt of

gratitude is not yours to me, but mine to your kind husband."

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles could have hugged her on the spot. What cared she

that her husband's always unsavory name had been linked with this

woman's? She had married the roistering blade for his bank account

only. Any other male whose wealth ran into seven figures would have

done as well, or better.

And Carmen? Bless you, no! To be sure, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles gratefully

accepted the use of the organ and the Beaubien mansion for the girl;

but she herself insisted upon bearing the expense of the lessons.

Carmen had wonderful musical talent. Together, she and the Beaubien,

they would foster and develop it. Moreover, though of course this must

follow later, she intended to give the girl every social advantage

befitting her beauty, her talents, and her station.

And then, when the Beaubien, who knew to a second just how long to

stay, had departed, taking Carmen with her, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles turned

to her sister with her face flushed with anger. "Did you see that?"

she exclaimed, while hot tears suffused her eyes. "The hussy went away

actually laughing at me! What do you suppose she's got up her sleeve?

But, let me tell you, she'll not fool me! I'll slap that arrogant Ames

woman yet; and then, when I've done that, I'll give the Beaubien

something to think about besides the way she did up poor old Jim!"

* * * * *

There was now but one cloud that cast its dark shadow across the full

splendor of Carmen's happiness, the silence that shrouded Simití. But

Harris was preparing to return to Colombia, and his trip promised a

solution of the mystery of her unanswered letters. For weeks Carmen

had struggled to teach him Spanish, with but small measure of success.

The gift of tongues was not his. "You'll have to go back with me and

act as interpreter," he said one day, when they were alone in the

Hawley-Crowles parlor. Then a curious light came into his eyes, and he

blurted, "Will you?"

But the girl turned the question aside with a laugh, though she knew

not from what depths it had sprung. Harris shrugged his broad

shoulders and sighed. He had not a hundred dollars to his name.

Yet he had prospects, not the least of which was the interest he

shared with Reed in La Libertad. For, despite the disturbed state of

affairs in Colombia, Simití stock had sold rapidly, under the sedulous

care of Ketchim and his loyal aids, and a sufficient fund had been

accumulated to warrant the inauguration of development work on the

mine. A few years hence Harris should be rich from that source alone.

Reed was still in California, although the alluring literature which

Ketchim was scattering broadcast bore his name as consulting engineer

to the Simití Development Company. His wife had continued her

temporary abode in the Hawley-Crowles mansion, while awaiting with

what fortitude she could command the passing of her still vigorous

father, and the results of her defiant sister's assaults upon the Ames

set.

Carmen's days were crowded full. The wonderful organ in the Beaubien

mansion had cast a spell of enchantment over her soul, and daily she

sat before it, uncovering new marvels and losing herself deeper and

deeper in its infinite mysteries. Her progress was commensurate with

her consecration, and brought exclamations of astonishment to the lips

of her now devoted Beaubien. Hour after hour the latter would sit in

the twilight of the great hall, with her eyes fastened upon the

absorbed girl, and her leaden soul slowly, painfully struggling to

lift itself above the murk and dross in which it had lain buried for

long, meaningless years. They now talked but little, this strange

woman and the equally strange girl. Their communion was no longer of

the lips. It was the silent yearning of a dry, desolate heart,

striving to open itself to the love which the girl was sending far and

wide in the quenchless hope that it might meet just such a need. For

Carmen dwelt in the spirit, and she instinctively accepted her

splendid material environment as the gift, not of man, but of the

great divine Mind, which had led her into this new world that she

might be a channel for the expression of its love to the erring

children of mortals.

She came and went quietly, and yet with as much confidence as if the

house belonged to her. At first the Beaubien smiled indulgently. And

then her smile became a laugh of eager joy as she daily greeted her

radiant visitor, whose entrance into the great, dark house was always

followed by a flood of sunshine, and whose departure marked the

setting in of night to the heart-hungry woman. In the first days of

their association the Beaubien could turn easily from the beautiful

girl to the group of cold, scheming men of the world who filled her

evenings and sat about her board. But as days melted into weeks, she

became dimly conscious of an effort attaching to the transition; and

the hour at length arrived when she fully realized that she was facing

the most momentous decision that had ever been evolved by her worldly

mode of living. But that was a matter of slow development through many

months.

Meantime, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles trod the clouds. A week after Carmen

began the study of the organ she boldly ventured to accompany her one

day to the Beaubien citadel. She was graciously received, and departed

with the Beaubien's promise to return the call. Thereupon she set

about revising her own social list, and dropped several names which

she now felt could serve her no longer. Her week-end at Newport, just

prior to her visit to the Elwin school, had marked the close of the

gay season in the city, and New York had entered fully upon its summer

_siesta_. Even the theaters and concert halls were closed, and the

metropolis was nodding its weary head dully and sinking into

somnolence. It was exactly what Mrs. Hawley-Crowles desired. The

summer interim would give her time to further her plans and prepare

the girl for her social _début_ in the early winter. "And Milady Ames

will be mentioned in the papers next day as assisting at the

function--the cat!" she muttered savagely, as she laid aside her

revised list of social desirables.

But in preparing Carmen that summer for her subsequent entry into

polite society Mrs. Hawley-Crowles soon realized that she had

assumed a task of generous proportions. In the first place,

despite all efforts, the girl could not be brought to a proper

sense of money values. Her eyes were ever gaping in astonishment at

what Mrs. Hawley-Crowles and her sister regarded as the most moderate

of expenditures, and it was only when the Beaubien herself mildly

hinted to them that ingenuousness was one of the girl's greatest

social assets, that they learned to smile indulgently at her wonder,

even while inwardly pitying her dense ignorance and lack of

sophistication.

A second source of trial to her guardians was her delicate sense of

honor; and it was this that one day nearly sufficed to wreck their

standing with the fashionable Mrs. Gannette of Riverside Drive, a

pompous, bepowdered, curled and scented dame, anaemic of mind, but

tremendously aristocratic, and of scarcely inferior social dignity to

that of the envied Mrs. Ames. For, when Mrs. Gannette moved into the

neighborhood where dwelt the ambitious Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, the latter

was taken by a mutual acquaintance to call upon her, and was

immediately received into the worldly old lady's good graces. And it

so happened that, after the gay season had closed that summer, Mrs.

Gannette invited Mrs. Hawley-Crowles and her sister to an informal

afternoon of bridge, and especially requested that they bring their

young ward, whose beauty and wonderful story were, through the

discreet maneuvers of her guardians, beginning to be talked about. For

some weeks previously Mrs. Hawley-Crowles had been inducting Carmen

into the mysteries of the game; but with indifferent success, for the

girl's thoughts invariably were elsewhere engaged. On this particular

afternoon Carmen was lost in contemplation of the gorgeous dress, the

lavish display of jewelry, and the general inanity of conversation;

and her score was pitiably low. The following morning, to her great

astonishment, she received a bill from the practical Mrs. Gannette for

ten dollars to cover her losses at the game. For a long time the

bewildered girl mused over it. Then she called the chauffeur and

despatched him to the Gannette mansion with the money necessary to

meet the gambling debt, and three dollars additional to pay for the

refreshments she had eaten, accompanying it with a polite little note

of explanation.

The result was an explosion that nearly lifted the asphalt from the

Drive; and Carmen, covered with tears and confusion, was given to

understand by the irate Mrs. Hawley-Crowles that her conduct was as

reprehensible as if she had attacked the eminent Mrs. Gannette with an

axe. Whereupon the sorrowing Carmen packed her effects and prepared to

depart from the presence of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, to the terrified

consternation of the latter, who alternately prostrated herself before

the girl and the offended Mrs. Gannette, and at length, after many

days of perspiring effort and voluminous explanation, succeeded in

restoring peace.

When the Beaubien, who had become the girl's confidante, learned the

story, she laughed till her sides ached. And then her lips set, and

her face grew terribly hard, and she muttered, "Fools!" But she smiled

again as she gathered the penitent girl in her arms, and kissed her.

"You will learn many things, dearie, before you are through with New

York. And," she added, her brow again clouding, "you _will_ be through

with it--some day!"

That evening she repeated the story at her table, and Gannette, who

happened to be present, swore between roars of laughter that he would

use it as a club over his wife, should she ever again trap him in any

of his numerous indiscretions.

Again, the girl's odd views of life and its meaning which, despite her

efforts, she could not refrain from voicing now and then, caused the

worldly Mrs. Hawley-Crowles much consternation. Carmen tried

desperately to be discreet. Even Harris advised her to listen much,

but say little; and she strove hard to obey. But she would forget and

hurl the newspapers from her with exclamations of horror over their

red-inked depictions of mortal frailty--she would flatly refuse to

discuss crime or disease--and she would comment disparagingly at too

frequent intervals on the littleness of human aims and the emptiness

of the peacock-life which she saw manifested about her. "I don't

understand--I can't," she would say, when she was alone with the

Beaubien. "Why, with the wonderful opportunities which you rich people

have, how can you--oh, how can you toss them aside for the frivolities

and littleness that you all seem to be striving for! It seems to me

you must be mad--_loco_! And I know you are, for you are simply

mesmerized!"

Then the Beaubien would smile knowingly and take her in her arms. "We

shall see," she would often say, "we shall see." But she would offer

no further comment.

Thus the summer months sped swiftly past, with Carmen ever looking and

listening, receiving, sifting, in, but not of, the new world into

which she had been cast. In a sense her existence was as narrowly

routined as ever it had been in Simití, for her days were spent at the

great organ, with frequent rides in the automobile through the parks

and boulevards for variation; and her evenings were jealously guarded

by Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, whose policy was to keep the girl in seclusion

until the advent of her formal introduction to the world of

fashionable society, when her associates would be selected only from

the narrow circle of moneyed or titled people with whom alone she

might mingle. To permit her to form promiscuous acquaintances now

might prove fatal to the scheming woman's cherished plans, and was a

risk that could not be entertained. And Carmen, suppressing her

wonder, and striving incessantly to curb her ready tongue, accepted

her environment as the unreal expression of the human mind, and

submitted--and waited.

CHAPTER 10

The chill blasts had begun to swoop down from the frozen North, and

summer had gathered her dainty robes about her and fled shivering

before them. Mrs. Hawley-Crowles stood at a window and gazed with

unseeing eyes at the withered leaves tossing in the wind.

Carmen's sixteenth birthday was past by some months; the gay season

was at hand; and the day was speeding toward her which she had set for

the girl's formal _début_. Already, through informal calls and

gatherings, she had made her charming and submissive ward known to

most of her own city acquaintances and the members of her particular

set. The fresh, beautiful girl's winning personality; her frank,

ingenuous manner; her evident sincerity and her naïve remarks, which

now only gave hints of her radical views, had opened every heart wide

to her, and before the advent of the social season her wonderful story

was on everybody's tongue. There remained now only the part which the

woman had planned for the Beaubien, but which, thus far, she had found

neither the courage nor the opportunity to suggest to that influential

woman. Gazing out into the deserted street, she stamped her ample foot

in sheer vexation. The Beaubien had absorbed Carmen; had been

politely affable to her and her sister; had called twice during the

summer; and had said nothing. But what was there for her to say? The

hint must come from the other side; and Mrs. Hawley-Crowles could have

wept with chagrin as she reflected gloomily on her own timorous

spirit.

But as she stood in dejection before the window a vague idea flitted

into her brain, and she clutched at it desperately. Carmen had spoken

of the frequent calls of a certain Monsignor Lafelle at the Beaubien

mansion, although the girl had never met him. Now why did he go there?

"Humph!" muttered Mrs. Hawley-Crowles. "Old Gaspard de Beaubien was a

French Catholic."

But what had that to do with Carmen? Nothing--except--why, to be sure,

the girl came from a Catholic country, and therefore was a Catholic!

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles chuckled. That was worth developing a little

further. "Let us see," she reflected, "Kathleen Ames is coming out

this winter, too. Just about Carmen's age. Candidate for her mother's

social position, of course. Now the Ames family are all Presbyterians.

The Reverend Darius Borwell, D.D., L.L.D., and any other D. that will

keep him glued to his ten-thousand-dollar salary, hooked them early in

the game. Now suppose--suppose Lafelle should tell the Beaubien

that--that there's--no, that won't do! But suppose I tell him that

here's a chance for him to back a Catholic against a Protestant for

the highest social honors in New York--Carmen versus Kathleen--what

would he say? Humph! I'm just as good a Catholic as Protestant. Jim

was Irish--clear through. And Catholic, Methodist, or Hard-shell

Baptist, as suited his needs. He played 'em all. Suppose I should tip

it off to Lafelle that I'm smitten with the pious intention of

donating an altar to Holy Saints Cathedral in memory of my late,

unlamented consort--what then? It's worth considering, anyway. Yes,

it's not a bad idea at all."

And thus it was that a few days later Mrs. Hawley-Crowles timed it so

carefully that she chanced to call on the Beaubien with Carmen shortly

after Monsignor Lafelle's car had pulled up at the same door. It was

the merest accident, too, that Carmen led her puffing guardian

directly into the morning room, where sat the Beaubien and Monsignor

in earnest conversation. Mrs. Hawley-Crowles would have retired at

once, stammering apologies, and reprimanding Carmen for her assumption

of liberties in another's house; but the Beaubien was grace and

cordiality itself, and she insisted on retaining her three callers and

making them mutually acquainted.

With the ice thus broken, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles found it easy to take

the contemplated plunge. Therefore she smiled triumphantly when, a

week later, Monsignor Lafelle alighted at her own door, in response to

a summons on matters pertaining to the Church.

"But, Madam," replied the holy man, after carefully listening to her

announcement, "I can only refer the matter to the Bishop. I am not

connected with this diocese. I am traveling almost constantly. But I

shall be most pleased to lay it before him, with my endorsement."

"As you say, Monsignor," sweetly responded the gracious Mrs.

Hawley-Crowles. "I sought your advice because I had met you through my

dear friend, Madam Beaubien."

"It has been a great pleasure to know you and to be of service to you,

Madam," said Monsignor, rising to depart. "But," he added with a

tender smile, "a pleasure that would be enhanced were you to become

one of us."

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles knew that at last the time had come. "A moment,

please, Monsignor," she said, her heart beating quickly. "There is

another matter. Please be seated. It concerns my ward, the young girl

whom you met at Madam Beaubien's."

"Ah, indeed!" said the man, resuming his seat. "A beautiful girl."

"Yes!" returned Mrs. Hawley-Crowles enthusiastically. "And just

budding into still more beautiful womanhood." She stopped and

reflected a moment. Then she threw herself precipitately into her

topic, as if she feared further delay would result in the evaporation

of her boldness. "Monsignor, it is, as you say, unfortunate that I

profess no religious convictions; and yet, as I have told you, I find

that as the years pass I lean ever more strongly toward your Church.

Now you will pardon me when I say that I am sure it is the avowed

intention to make America dominantly Catholic that brings you to this

country to work toward that end--is it not so?"

The man's handsome face lighted up pleasantly, but he did not reply.

The woman went on without waiting.

"Now, Monsignor, I am going to be terribly frank; and if you

disapprove of what I suggest, we will both forget that the matter was

ever under discussion. To begin with, I heartily endorse your

missionary efforts in this godless country of ours. Nothing but the

strong arm of the Catholic Church, it seems to me, can check our

headlong plunge into ruin. But, Monsignor, you do not always work

where your labors are most needed. You may control political--"

"My dear lady," interrupted the man, holding up a hand and shaking his

head in gentle demurral, "the Catholic Church is not in politics."

"But it is in society--or should be!" said the woman earnestly. "And

if the Catholic Church is to be supreme in America it must work from

the top down, as well as from the lower levels upward. At present our

wealthiest, most influential social set is absolutely domineered by a

Protestant--and under the influence of a Presbyterian minister at

that! Why do you permit it?"

Monsignor Lafelle's eyes twinkled, as he listened politely. But he

only stroked the white hair that crowned his shapely head, and

waited.

"Monsignor," continued the now thoroughly heated Mrs. Hawley-Crowles,

"why do not the women of your Church constitute our society leaders?

Why do you not recognize the desirability of forcing your people into

every avenue of human activity? And would you resent a suggestion from

me as to how in one instance this might be accomplished?"

"Certainly not, Madam," replied Monsignor, with an expression of

wonder on his face. "Pray proceed."

"You are laughing at me, I do believe!" she exclaimed, catching the

glint in his gray eyes.

"Pardon me, dear lady, I really am deeply interested. Please go on."

"Well, at any rate I have your promise to forget this conversation if

you do not approve of it," she said quizzically.

He nodded his head to inspire her confidence; and she continued:

"Very well, now to the point. My ward, the little Inca princess, is

coming out shortly. I want her to have the _entrée_ into the very best

society, into the most fashionable and exclusive set, as befitting her

rank." She stopped and awaited the effect of her words.

Monsignor studied her for a moment, and then broke into a genial

laugh. "There is nothing reprehensible in your wish, Madam," he said.

"Our social system, however imperfect, nevertheless exists,

and--dominant Catholic influence might improve it. I am quite sure it

would."

"Good!" exclaimed Mrs. Hawley-Crowles. "Then will you help me?"

"Why, I really see nothing that I can do," he replied slowly.

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles was becoming exasperated with his apparent

dullness. "You can do much," she retorted in a tone tinctured with

impatience. "Since I have made you my Father Confessor to-day, I am

going to tell you that I intend to start a social war that will rip

this city wide open. It is going to be war in which Catholic is pitted

against Protestant. Now, which side is your Church on?"

For a moment her blunt question startled him, and he stared at her

uncomprehendingly; but he quickly recovered his poise and replied

calmly, "Neither, Madam; it remains quite neutral."

"What!" she exclaimed. "Aren't you interested?"

"Pardon me if I say it; not at all."

"Oh!" she murmured, her eagerness subsiding. "Then I've made an awful

mistake!"

"No," he amended gently, "you have made a good friend. And, as such, I

again urge you first to respect the leaning which you mentioned a

moment ago and become actively affiliated with our Church here in New

York. Both you and the young lady. Will you not consider it?"

"Certainly I will consider it," she responded, brightening with hope.

"And I will go so far as to say that I have long had it in mind."

"Then, Madam, when that is accomplished, we may discuss the less

important matter of your ward's entrance into society--is it not so?"

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles rose, completely discomfited. "But the girl,

Monsignor, is already a Catholic--comes from a Catholic country. It is

she whom I am pitting against the Protestant."

"And you will efface yourself?" he queried with a peculiar smile.

"You are cruel," she retorted, affecting an air of injured innocence

as she stood before him with downcast eyes. "But--if you--"

"Madam," said Monsignor, "plainly, what is it that you wish me to

do?"

The sudden propounding of the question drew an equally sudden but less

thoughtful response.

"Tell the Beau--Madam Beaubien that you wish my ward to be received

into the best society, and for the reasons I have given you. That's

all."

"And is my influence with Madam Beaubien, and hers with the members of

fashionable society, sufficient to effect that?" he asked, an odd look

coming into his eyes.

"She has but to say the word to J. Wilton Ames, and his wife will

receive us both," said the woman, carried away by her eagerness. "And

that means strong Catholic influence in New York's most aristocratic

set!"

"Ah!"

"Monsignor," continued the woman eagerly, "will your Church receive an

altar from me in memory of my late husband?"

He reflected a moment. Then, slowly, and in a low, earnest tone, "It

would receive such a gift from one of the faith. When may we expect

you to become a communicant?"

The woman paled, and her heart suddenly chilled. She had wondered how

far she might go with this clever churchman, and now she knew that she

had gone too far. But to retract--to have him relate this conversation

and her retraction to the Beaubien--were fatal! She had set her

trap--and walked into it. She groped blindly for an answer. Then,

raising her eyes and meeting his searching glance, she murmured

feebly, "Whenever you say, Monsignor."

When the man had departed, which he did immediately, the plotting

woman threw herself upon the davenport and wept with rage. "Belle,"

she wailed, as her wondering sister entered the room, "I'm going to

join the Catholic Church! But I'd go through Sheol to beat that Ames

outfit!"

CHAPTER 11

MONSIGNOR LAFELLE made another afternoon call on the Beaubien a few

days later. That lady, fresh from her bath, scented, powdered, and

charming in a loose, flowing Mandarin robe, received him graciously.

"But I can give you only a moment, Monsignor," she said, waving him to

a chair, while she stooped and tenderly took up the two spaniels. "I

have a dinner to-night, and so shall not listen unless you have

something fresh and really worth while to offer."

"My dear Madam," said he, bowing low before he sank into the great

leather armchair, "you are charming, and the Church is justly proud of

you."

"Tut, tut, my friend," she returned, knitting her brows. "That may be

fresh, I admit, but not worth listening to. And if you persist in that

vein I shall be obliged to have William set you into the street."

"I can not apologize for voicing the truth, dear Madam," he replied,

as his eyes roved admiringly over her comely figure. "The Church has

never ceased to claim you, however far you may have wandered from her.

But I will be brief. I am leaving for Canada shortly on a mission of

some importance. May I not take with me the consoling assurance that

you have at last heard and yielded to the call of the tender Mother,

who has never ceased to yearn for her beautiful, wayward daughter?"

The Beaubien smiled indulgently. "There," she said gently, "I thought

that was it. No, Monsignor, no," shaking her head. "When only a wild,

thoughtless girl I became a Catholic in order that I might marry

Gaspard de Beaubien. The priest urged; and I--poof! what cared I? But

the past eighteen years have confirmed me in some views; and one is

that I shall gain nothing, either here or hereafter, by renewing my

allegiance to the Church of Rome."

Monsignor sighed, and stroked his abundant white hair. Yet his sigh

bore a hope. "I learned this morning," he said musingly, "that my

recent labors with the Dowager Duchess of Altern in England have not

been vain. She has become a communicant of Holy Church."

"What!" exclaimed the Beaubien. "The Duchess of Altern--sister of Mrs.

J. Wilton Ames? Why, she was a high Anglican--"

"Only a degree below the true Church, Madam. Her action is but

anticipatory of a sweeping return of the entire Anglican Church to the

true fold. And I learn further," he went on, "that the Duchess will

spend the winter in New York with her sister. Which means, of course,

an unusually gay season here, does it not?"

The Beaubien quickly recovered from her astonishment. "Well,

Monsignor," she laughed, "for once you really are interesting. What

else have you to divulge? That Mrs. Ames herself will be the next

convert? Or perhaps J. Wilton?"

"No--at least, not yet. But one of your most intimate friends will

become a communicant of Holy Saints next Sunday."

"One of my most intimate friends!" The Beaubien set the spaniels down

on the floor. "Now, my dear Monsignor, you are positively refreshing.

Who is he?"

The man laughed softly. "Am I not right when I insist that you have

wandered far, dear Madam? It is not 'he,' but 'she,' your dear friend,

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles."

The Beaubien's mouth opened wide and she sat suddenly upright and

gazed blankly at her raconteur. The man went on, apparently oblivious

of the effect his information had produced. "Her beautiful ward, who

is to make her bow to society this winter, is one of us by birth."

"Then you have been at work on Mrs. Hawley-Crowles and her ward, have

you?" said the Beaubien severely, and there was a threatening note in

her voice.

"Why," returned Monsignor easily, "the lady sent for me to express her

desire to become affiliated with the Church. We do not seek her. And I

have had no conversation with the girl, I assure you."

The Beaubien reflected. Then:

"Will you tell me why, Monsignor, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles takes this

unusual step?"

"Unusual! Is it unusual, Madam, for a woman who has seen much of the

world to turn from it to the solace and promise of the Church?"

The Beaubien laughed sharply. "For women like Mrs. Hawley-Crowles it

is, decidedly. What was her price, Monsignor?"

"Madam! You astonish me!"

"Monsignor, I do not. I know Mrs. Hawley-Crowles. And by this time you

do, too. She is the last woman in the world to turn from it."

"But the question you have just propounded reflects seriously upon

both the Church and me--"

"Bah!" interjected the Beaubien, her eyes flashing. "Wait," she

commanded imperiously, as he rose. "I have a few things to say to you,

since this is to be your last call."

"Madam, not the last, I hope. For I shall not cease to plead the cause

of the Church to you--"

"Surely, Monsignor, that is your business. You are welcome in my

house at any time, and particularly when you have such delightful

scraps of gossip as these which you have brought to-day. But, a word

before you go, lest you become indiscreet on your return. Play

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles to any extent you wish, but let her ward

alone--_absolutely_! She is not for you."

The cold, even tone in which the woman said this left no doubt in the

man's mind of her meaning. She was not trifling with him now, he knew.

In her low-voiced words he found no trace of banter, of sophistry, nor

of aught that he might in any wise misinterpret.

"Now, Monsignor, I have some influence in New York, as you may

possibly know. Will you admit that I can do much for or against you?

Drop your mask, therefore, and tell me frankly just what has induced

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles to unite with your Church."

The man knew he was pitting his own against a master mind. He

hesitated and weighed well his words before replying. "Madam," said he

at length, with a note of reproach, "you misjudge the lady, the

Church, and me, its humble servant. The latter require no defense. As

for Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, I speak truly when I say that doubtless she

has been greatly influenced by love for her late husband."

"What!" The Beaubien half rose from her chair. "Jim Crowles--that raw,

Irish boob, who was holding down a job on the police force until Ames

found he could make a convenient tool of him! The man who was

Gannette's cat's-paw in the Fall River franchise steal! Now,

Monsignor, would you have me believe you devoid of all sense?"

"But," ejaculated the man, now becoming exasperated, and for the

moment so losing his self-control as to make wretched use of his

facts, "she is erecting an altar in Holy Saints as a memorial to

him!"

"Heavens above!" The Beaubien sank back limp.

Monsignor Lafelle again made as if to rise. He felt that he was guilty

of a miserable _faux pas_. "Madam, I regret that I must be leaving.

But the hour--"

"Stay, Monsignor!" The Beaubien roused up and laid a detaining hand

upon his arm. "Our versatile friend, what other projects has she in

hand? What is she planning for her young ward?"

"Why, really, I can not say--beyond the fact that the girl is to be

introduced to society this winter."

"Humph! Going to make a try for the Ames set?"

"That, I believe, Madam, would be useless without your aid."

"Did Mrs. Hawley-Crowles say so, Monsignor?" demanded the woman,

leaning forward eagerly.

"Why, I believe I am not abusing her confidence when I say that she

intimated as much," he said, watching her closely and sparring now

with better judgment. "She mentioned Mrs. Ames as New York's

fashionable society leader--"

"There is no such position as leader in New York society, Monsignor,"

interrupted the Beaubien coldly. "There are sets and cliques, and

Mrs. Ames happens to be prominent in the one which at present

foolishly imagines it constitutes the upper stratum. Rot! And Mrs.

Hawley-Crowles, with nothing but a tarnished name and a large bank

account to recommend her, now wishes to break into that clique and

attain social leadership, does she? How decidedly interesting!"

Then the woman's eyes narrowed and grew hard. Leaning closer to

the churchman, she rested the tip of her finger on his knee.

"So, Monsignor," she said, with cold precision, "this is Mrs.

Hawley-Crowles's method of renouncing the world, is it? Sublime!

And she would use both you and me, eh? And you are her ambassador

at the court of the Beaubien? Very well, then, she shall use us.

But you and I will first make this compact, my dear Monsignor:

Mrs. Hawley-Crowles shall be taken into the so-called 'Ames set,'

and you shall cease importuning me to return to your Church, and

what is more, shall promise to have no conversation on church

matters with her ward, the young girl. If you do not agree to

this, Monsignor, I shall set in motion forces that will make your

return to New York quite undesirable." When she concluded, she

looked long and steadily into his eyes.

Monsignor got slowly to his feet. "Madam!" he exclaimed in a hoarse

whisper, "my astonishment--"

"There," she said calmly, as she rose and took his hand, "please omit

the dramatics, Monsignor. And now you must go, for to-night I

entertain, and I have already given you more time than I intended.

But, Monsignor, do you in future work with or against me? Are we to be

friends or enemies?"

"Why, Madam," he replied quickly, "we could never be the latter!"

"And you always respect the wishes of a friend, especially if she is a

lady, do you not?"

"Always, Madam," he returned after a moment's hesitation, as he bowed

low over her hand.

"Then, good-bye. And, Monsignor," she added, when he reached the door,

"I shall be pleased to attend the dedication of the Hawley-Crowles

altar."

When Monsignor's car glided away from her door the Beaubien's face

grew dark, and her eyes drew to narrow slits. "So," she reflected, as

she entered the elevator to mount to her dressing room, "that is her

game, is it? The poor, fat simpleton has no interest in either the

girl or myself, other than to use us as stepping-stones. She forgets

that a stone sometimes turns under the foot. Fool!"

She entered her room and rang for her maid. Turning to the pier glass,

she threw on the electric light and scrutinized her features narrowly.

"It's going," she murmured, "fast! God, how I hate those gray hairs!

Oh, what a farce life is--what a howling, mocking farce! I hate it! I

hate everything--everybody! No--that little girl--if it is possible

for me to love, I love her."

She sank into an easy chair. "I wonder what it is she does to me. I'm

hypnotized, I guess. Anyhow, I'm different when I'm with her. And to

think that Hawley-Crowles would sacrifice the child--humph! But, if

the girl is made of the right stuff--and I know she is--she will stand

up under it and be stronger for the experience. She has got something

that will make her stand! I once asked her what she had that I didn't,

and now I know--it is her religion, the religion that Borwell and

Lafelle and the whole kit of preachers and priests would corrupt if

they had half a chance! Very well, we'll see what it does under the

test. If it saves her, then I want it myself. But, as for that little

pin-headed Hawley-Crowles, she's already signed her own death-warrant.

She shall get into the Ames set, yes. And I will use her, oh,

beautifully! to pay off certain old scores against Madam Ames--and

then I'll crush her like a dried leaf, the fat fool!"

The Beaubien's position was, to say the least, peculiar, and one which

required infinite tact on her part to protect. It was for that reason

that the decorum which prevailed at her dinners was so rigidly

observed, and that, whatever the moral status of the man who sat at

her board, his conduct was required to be above reproach, on penalty

of immediate ejection from the circle of financial pirates, captains

of commercial jugglery, and political intriguers who made these feasts

opportunities for outlining their predatory campaigns against that

most anomalous of creatures, the common citizen.

It was about this table, at whose head always sat the richly gowned

Beaubien, that the inner circle of financial kings had gathered almost

nightly for years to rig the market, determine the price of wheat or

cotton, and develop mendacious schemes of stock-jobbery whose golden

harvests they could calculate almost to a dollar before launching. As

the wealth of this clique of financial manipulators swelled beyond all

bounds, so increased their power, until at last it could be justly

said that, when Ames began to dominate the Stock Exchange, the

Beaubien practically controlled Wall Street--and, therefore, in a

sense, Washington itself. But always with a tenure of control

dubiously dependent upon the caprices of the men who continued to pay

homage to her personal charm and keen, powerful intellect.

At the time of which we speak her power was at its zenith, and she

could with equal impunity decapitate the wealthiest, most aristocratic

society dame, or force the door of the most exclusive set for any

protégée who might have been kept long years knocking in vain, or

whose family name, perchance, headed a list of indictments for gross

peculations. At these unicameral meetings, held in the great, dark,

mahogany-wainscoted dining room of the Beaubien mansion, where a

single lamp of priceless workmanship threw a flood of light upon the

sumptuous table beneath and left the rest of the closely guarded room

shrouded in Stygian darkness, plans were laid and decrees adopted

which seated judges, silenced clergymen, elected senators, and

influenced presidents. There a muck-raking, hostile press was muffled.

There business opposition was crushed and competition throttled. There

tax rates were determined and tariff schedules formulated. There

public opinion was disrupted, character assassinated, and the

death-warrant of every threatening reformer drawn and signed. In a

word, there Mammon, in the _rôle_ of business, organized and

unorganized, legitimate and piratical, sat enthroned, with wires

leading into every mart of the world, and into every avenue of human

endeavor, be it social, political, commercial, or religious. These

wires were gathered together into the hands of one man, the directing

genius of the group, J. Wilton Ames. Over him lay the shadow of the

Beaubien.

An hour after the departure of Monsignor Lafelle the Beaubien, like a

radiant sun, descended to the library to greet her assembled guests.

Some moments later the heavy doors of the great dining room swung

noiselessly open, and the lady proceeded unescorted to her position at

the head of the table. At her signal the half dozen men sat down, and

the butler immediately entered, followed by two serving men with the

cocktails and the first course. The chair at the far end of the table,

opposite the Beaubien, remained unoccupied.

"Ames is late to-night," observed the girthy Gannette, glancing toward

the vacant seat, and clumsily attempting to tuck his napkin into his

collar.

The Beaubien looked sharply at him. "Were you at the club this

afternoon, Mr. Gannette?" she inquired coldly.

Gannette straightened up and became rigid. Pulling the napkin down

hastily, he replied in a thick voice, "Just a little game of

bridge--some old friends--back from Europe--"

The Beaubien turned to the butler. "William, Mr. Gannette is not

drinking wine this evening." The butler bowed and removed the glasses

from that gentleman's place.

Gannette turned to expostulate. "Now, Lucile--" he began peevishly.

The Beaubien held up a hand. Gannette glowered and sank down in his

chair like a swollen toad.

"May be Ames is trying to break into the C. and R. directors'

meeting," suggested Weston, himself a director in a dozen companies,

and a bank president besides. A general laugh followed the remark.

"They tell me," said Fitch, "that for once Ames has been outwitted,

and that by a little bucket-shop broker named Ketchim."

"How's that?" queried Kane, Board of Trade plunger, and the most

mettlesome speculator of the group.