Miss Waters,” Jane had replied, and the milliner had meekly taken her
order.
After Miss Carew had left, the milliner told her girls that she had
never seen a woman so perfectly crazy to look her age as Miss Carew.
“And she a pretty woman, too,” said the milliner; “as straight as an
arrer, and slim, and with all that hair, scarcely turned at all.”
Miss Carew, with all her haste to assume years, remained a pretty
woman, softly slim, with an abundance of dark hair, showing little gray.
Sometimes Jane reflected, uneasily, that it ought at her time of life to
be entirely gray. She hoped nobody would suspect her of dyeing it. She
wore it parted in the middle, folded back smoothly, and braided in
a compact mass on the top of her head. The style of her clothes was
slightly behind the fashion, just enough to suggest conservatism and
age. She carried a little silver-bound bag in one nicely gloved hand;
with the other she held daintily out of the dust of the platform her
dress-skirt. A glimpse of a silk frilled petticoat, of slender feet, and
ankles delicately slim, was visible before the onslaught of the wind.
Jane Carew made no futile effort to keep her skirts down before the
wind-gusts. She was so much of the gentlewoman that she could be gravely
oblivious to the exposure of her ankles. She looked as if she had never
heard of ankles when her black silk skirts lashed about them. She rose
superbly above the situation. For some abstruse reason Margaret's
skirts were not affected by the wind. They might have been weighted with
buckram, although it was no longer in general use. She stood, except for
her veering bonnet, as stiffly immovable as a wooden doll.
Miss Carew seldom left Wheaton. This visit to New York was an
innovation. Quite a crowd gathered about Jane's sole-leather trunk when
it was dumped on the platform by the local expressman. “Miss Carew is
going to New York,” one said to another, with much the same tone as
if he had said, “The great elm on the common is going to move into Dr.
Jones's front yard.”
When the train arrived, Miss Carew, followed by Margaret, stepped
aboard with a majestic disregard of ankles. She sat beside a window, and
Margaret placed the bag on the floor and held the jewel-case in her lap.
The case contained the Carew jewels. They were not especially valuable,
although they were rather numerous. There were cameos in brooches and
heavy gold bracelets; corals which Miss Carew had not worn since her
young girlhood. There were a set of garnets, some badly cut diamonds in
ear-rings and rings, some seed-pearl ornaments, and a really beautiful
set of amethysts. There were a necklace, two brooches--a bar and a
circle--earrings, a ring, and a comb. Each piece was charming, set in
filigree gold with seed-pearls, but perhaps of them all the comb was
the best. It was a very large comb. There was one great amethyst in the
center of the top; on either side was an intricate pattern of plums in
small amethysts, and seed-pearl grapes, with leaves and stems of gold.
Margaret in charge of the jewel-case was imposing. When they arrived in
New York she confronted everybody whom she met with a stony stare,
which was almost accusative and convictive of guilt, in spite of entire
innocence on the part of the person stared at. It was inconceivable that
any mortal would have dared lay violent hands upon that jewel-case
under that stare. It would have seemed to partake of the nature of grand
larceny from Providence.
When the two reached the up-town residence of Viola Longstreet, Viola
gave a little scream at the sight of the case.
“My dear Jane Carew, here you are with Margaret carrying that jewel-case
out in plain sight. How dare you do such a thing? I really wonder you
have not been held up a dozen times.”
Miss Carew smiled her gentle but almost stern smile--the Carew smile,
which consisted in a widening and slightly upward curving of tightly
closed lips.
“I do not think,” said she, “that anybody would be apt to interfere with
Margaret.”
Viola Longstreet laughed, the ringing peal of a child, although she was
as old as Miss Carew. “I think you are right, Jane,” said she. “I don't
believe a crook in New York would dare face that maid of yours. He
would as soon encounter Plymouth Rock. I am glad you have brought your
delightful old jewels, although you never wear anything except those
lovely old pearl sprays and dull diamonds.”
“Now,” stated Jane, with a little toss of pride, “I have Aunt Felicia's
amethysts.”
“Oh, sure enough! I remember you did write me last summer that she had
died and you had the amethysts at last. She must have been very old.”
“Ninety-one.”
“She might have given you the amethysts before. You, of course, will
wear them; and I--am going to borrow the corals!”
Jane Carew gasped.
“You do not object, do you, dear? I have a new dinner-gown which clamors
for corals, and my bank-account is strained, and I could buy none equal
to those of yours, anyway.”
“Oh, I do not object,” said Jane Carew; still she looked aghast.
Viola Longstreet shrieked with laughter. “Oh, I know. You think the
corals too young for me. You have not worn them since you left off
dotted muslin. My dear, you insisted upon growing old--I insisted
upon remaining young. I had two new dotted muslins last summer. As for
corals, I would wear them in the face of an opposing army! Do not judge
me by yourself, dear. You laid hold of Age and held him, although
you had your complexion and your shape and hair. As for me, I had my
complexion and kept it. I also had my hair and kept it. My shape has
been a struggle, but it was worth while. I, my dear, have held Youth
so tight that he has almost choked to death, but held him I have. You
cannot deny it. Look at me, Jane Carew, and tell me if, judging by my
looks, you can reasonably state that I have no longer the right to wear
corals.”
Jane Carew looked. She smiled the Carew smile. “You DO look very young,
Viola,” said Jane, “but you are not.”
“Jane Carew,” said Viola, “I am young. May I wear your corals at my
dinner to-morrow night?”
“Why, of course, if you think--”
“If I think them suitable. My dear, if there were on this earth
ornaments more suitable to extreme youth than corals, I would borrow
them if you owned them, but, failing that, the corals will answer. Wait
until you see me in that taupe dinner-gown and the corals!”
Jane waited. She visited with Viola, whom she loved, although they had
little in common, partly because of leading widely different lives,
partly because of constitutional variations. She was dressed for dinner
fully an hour before it was necessary, and she sat in the library
reading when Viola swept in.
Viola was really entrancing. It was a pity that Jane Carew had such an
unswerving eye for the essential truth that it could not be appeased by
actual effect. Viola had doubtless, as she had said, struggled to keep
her slim shape, but she had kept it, and, what was more, kept it without
evidence of struggle. If she was in the least hampered by tight lacing
and length of undergarment, she gave no evidence of it as she curled
herself up in a big chair and (Jane wondered how she could bring herself
to do it) crossed her legs, revealing one delicate foot and ankle,
silk-stockinged with taupe, and shod with a coral satin slipper with a
silver heel and a great silver buckle. On Viola's fair round neck the
Carew corals lay bloomingly; her beautiful arms were clasped with them;
a great coral brooch with wonderful carving confined a graceful fold
of the taupe over one hip, a coral comb surmounted the shining waves of
Viola's hair. Viola was an ash-blonde, her complexion was as roses, and
the corals were ideal for her. As Jane regarded her friend's beauty,
however, the fact that Viola was not young, that she was as old as
herself, hid it and overshadowed it.
“Well, Jane, don't you think I look well in the corals, after all?”
asked Viola, and there was something pitiful in her voice.
When a man or a woman holds fast to youth, even if successfully,
there is something of the pitiful and the tragic involved. It is the
everlasting struggle of the soul to retain the joy of earth, whose
fleeting distinguishes it from heaven, and whose retention is not
accomplished without an inner knowledge of its futility.
“I suppose you do, Viola,” replied Jane Carew, with the inflexibility
of fate, “but I really think that only very young girls ought to wear
corals.”
Viola laughed, but the laugh had a minor cadence. “But I AM a young
girl, Jane,” she said. “I MUST be a young girl. I never had any girlhood
when I should have had. You know that.”
Viola had married, when very young, a man old enough to be her father,
and her wedded life had been a sad affair, to which, however, she seldom
alluded. Viola had much pride with regard to the inevitable past.
“Yes,” agreed Jane. Then she added, feeling that more might be
expected, “Of course I suppose that marrying so very young does make a
difference.”
“Yes,” said Viola, “it does. In fact, it makes of one's girlhood an
anti-climax, of which many dispute the wisdom, as you do. But have it I
will. Jane, your amethysts are beautiful.”
Jane regarded the clear purple gleam of a stone on her arm. “Yes,”
she agreed, “Aunt Felicia's amethysts have always been considered very
beautiful.”
“And such a full set,” said Viola.
“Yes,” said Jane. She colored a little, but Viola did not know why. At
the last moment Jane had decided not to wear the amethyst comb, because
it seemed to her altogether too decorative for a woman of her age, and
she was afraid to mention it to Viola. She was sure that Viola would
laugh at her and insist upon her wearing it.
“The ear-rings are lovely,” said Viola. “My dear, I don't see how you
ever consented to have your ears pierced.”
“I was very young, and my mother wished me to,” replied Jane, blushing.
The door-bell rang. Viola had been covertly listening for it all the
time. Soon a very beautiful young man came with a curious dancing step
into the room. Harold Lind always gave the effect of dancing when he
walked. He always, moreover, gave the effect of extreme youth and of
the utmost joy and mirth in life itself. He regarded everything
and everybody with a smile as of humorous appreciation, and yet the
appreciation was so goodnatured that it offended nobody.
“Look at me--I am absurd and happy; look at yourself, also absurd
and happy; look at everybody else likewise; look at life--a jest so
delicious that it is quite worth one's while dying to be made acquainted
with it.” That is what Harold Lind seemed to say. Viola Longstreet
became even more youthful under his gaze; even Jane Carew regretted that
she had not worn her amethyst comb and began to doubt its unsuitability.
Viola very soon called the young man's attention to Jane's amethysts,
and Jane always wondered why she did not then mention the comb. She
removed a brooch and a bracelet for him to inspect.
“They are really wonderful,” he declared. “I have never seen greater
depth of color in amethysts.”
“Mr. Lind is an authority on jewels,” declared Viola. The young man shot
a curious glance at her, which Jane remembered long afterward. It was
one of those glances which are as keystones to situations.
Harold looked at the purple stones with the expression of a child with
a toy. There was much of the child in the young man's whole appearance,
but of a mischievous and beautiful child, of whom his mother might
observe, with adoration and illconcealed boastfulness, “I can never tell
what that child will do next!”
Harold returned the bracelet and brooch to Jane, and smiled at her as
if amethysts were a lovely purple joke between her and himself, uniting
them by a peculiar bond of fine understanding. “Exquisite, Miss Carew,”
he said. Then he looked at Viola. “Those corals suit you wonderfully,
Mrs. Longstreet,” he observed, “but amethysts would also suit you.”
“Not with this gown,” replied Viola, rather pitifully. There was
something in the young man's gaze and tone which she did not understand,
but which she vaguely quivered before.
Harold certainly thought the corals were too young for Viola. Jane
understood, and felt an unworthy triumph. Harold, who was young enough
in actual years to be Viola's son, and was younger still by reason of
his disposition, was amused by the sight of her in corals, although he
did not intend to betray his amusement. He considered Viola in corals
as too rude a jest to share with her. Had poor Viola once grasped Harold
Lind's estimation of her she would have as soon gazed upon herself in
her coffin. Harold's comprehension of the essentials was beyond Jane
Carew's. It was fairly ghastly, partaking of the nature of X-rays,
but it never disturbed Harold Lind. He went along his dance-track
undisturbed, his blue eyes never losing their high lights of glee, his
lips never losing their inscrutable smile at some happy understanding
between life and himself. Harold had fair hair, which was very smooth
and glossy. His skin was like a girl's. He was so beautiful that he
showed cleverness in an affectation of carelessness in dress. He did
not like to wear evening clothes, because they had necessarily to be
immaculate. That evening Jane regarded him with an inward criticism that
he was too handsome for a man. She told Viola so when the dinner was
over and he and the other guests had gone.
“He is very handsome,” she said, “but I never like to see a man quite so
handsome.”
“You will change your mind when you see him in tweeds,” returned Viola.
“He loathes evening clothes.”
Jane regarded her anxiously. There was something in Viola's tone which
disturbed and shocked her. It was inconceivable that Viola should be
in love with that youth, and yet--“He looks very young,” said Jane in a
prim voice.
“He IS young,” admitted Viola; “still, not quite so young as he looks.
Sometimes I tell him he will look like a boy if he lives to be eighty.”
“Well, he must be very young,” persisted Jane.
“Yes,” said Viola, but she did not say how young. Viola herself, now
that the excitement was over, did not look so young as at the beginning
of the evening. She removed the corals, and Jane considered that she
looked much better without them.
“Thank you for your corals, dear,” said Viola. “Where Is Margaret?”
Margaret answered for herself by a tap on the door. She and Viola's
maid, Louisa, had been sitting on an upper landing, out of sight,
watching the guests down-stairs. Margaret took the corals and placed
them in their nest in the jewel-case, also the amethysts, after
Viola had gone. The jewel-case was a curious old affair with many
compartments. The amethysts required two. The comb was so large that it
had one for itself. That was the reason why Margaret did not discover
that evening that it was gone. Nobody discovered it for three days, when
Viola had a little card-party. There was a whist-table for Jane, who had
never given up the reserved and stately game. There were six tables in
Viola's pretty living-room, with a little conservatory at one end and
a leaping hearth fire at the other. Jane's partner was a stout old
gentleman whose wife was shrieking with merriment at an auction-bridge
table. The other whist-players were a stupid, very small young man who
was aimlessly willing to play anything, and an amiable young woman who
believed in self-denial. Jane played conscientiously. She returned trump
leads, and played second hand low, and third high, and it was not until
the third rubber was over that she saw. It had been in full evidence
from the first. Jane would have seen it before the guests arrived, but
Viola had not put it in her hair until the last moment. Viola was wild
with delight, yet shamefaced and a trifle uneasy. In a soft, white gown,
with violets at her waist, she was playing with Harold Lind, and in her
ash-blond hair was Jane Carew's amethyst comb. Jane gasped and paled.
The amiable young woman who was her opponent stared at her. Finally she
spoke in a low voice.
“Aren't you well. Miss Carew?” she asked.
The men, in their turn, stared. The stout one rose fussily. “Let me get
a glass of water,” he said. The stupid small man stood up and waved his
hands with nervousness.
“Aren't you well?” asked the amiable young lady again.
Then Jane Carew recovered her poise. It was seldom that she lost it.
“I am quite well, thank you, Miss Murdock,” she replied. “I believe
diamonds are trumps.”
They all settled again to the play, but the young lady and the two
men continued glancing at Miss Carew. She had recovered her dignity of
manner, but not her color. Moreover, she had a bewildered expression.
Resolutely she abstained from glancing again at her amethyst comb
in Viola Longstreet's ash-blond hair, and gradually, by a course of
subconscious reasoning as she carefully played her cards, she arrived
at a conclusion which caused her color to return and the bewildered
expression to disappear. When refreshments were served, the amiable
young lady said, kindly:
“You look quite yourself, now, dear Miss Carew, but at one time while we
were playing I was really alarmed. You were very pale.”
“I did not feel in the least ill,” replied Jane Carew. She smiled her
Carew smile at the young lady. Jane had settled it with herself that
of course Viola had borrowed that amethyst comb, appealing to Margaret.
Viola ought not to have done that; she should have asked her, Miss
Carew; and Jane wondered, because Viola was very well bred; but of
course that was what had happened. Jane had come down before Viola,
leaving Margaret in her room, and Viola had asked her. Jane did not then
remember that Viola had not even been told that there was an amethyst
comb in existence. She remembered when Margaret, whose face was as pale
and bewildered as her own, mentioned it, when she was brushing her hair.
“I saw it, first thing. Miss Jane,” said Margaret. “Louisa and I were
on the landing, and I looked down and saw your amethyst comb in Mrs.
Longstreet's hair.”
“She had asked you for it, because I had gone down-stairs?” asked Jane,
feebly.
“No, Miss Jane. I had not seen her. I went out right after you did.
Louisa had finished Mrs. Longstreet, and she and I went down to the
mailbox to post a letter, and then we sat on the landing, and--I saw
your comb.”
“Have you,” asked Jane, “looked in the jewelcase?”
“Yes, Miss Jane.”
“And it is not there?”
“It is not there. Miss Jane.” Margaret spoke with a sort of solemn
intoning. She recognized what the situation implied, and she, who
fitted squarely and entirely into her humble state, was aghast before a
hitherto unimagined occurrence. She could not, even with the evidence
of her senses against a lady and her mistress's old friend, believe in
them. Had Jane told her firmly that she had not seen that comb in that
ash-blond hair she might have been hypnotized into agreement. But Jane
simply stared at her, and the Carew dignity was more shaken than she had
ever seen it.
“Bring the jewel-case here, Margaret,” ordered Jane in a gasp.
Margaret brought the jewel-case, and everything was taken out; all the
compartments were opened, but the amethyst comb was not there. Jane
could not sleep that night. At dawn she herself doubted the evidence of
her senses. The jewel-case was thoroughly overlooked again, and still
Jane was incredulous that she would ever see her comb in Viola's hair
again. But that evening, although there were no guests except Harold
Lind, who dined at the house, Viola appeared in a pink-tinted gown, with
a knot of violets at her waist, and--she wore the amethyst comb. She
said not one word concerning it; nobody did. Harold Lind was in wild
spirits. The conviction grew upon Jane that the irresponsible, beautiful
youth was covertly amusing himself at her, at Viola's, at everybody's
expense. Perhaps he included himself. He talked incessantly, not in
reality brilliantly, but with an effect of sparkling effervescence which
was fairly dazzling. Viola's servants restrained with difficulty their
laughter at his sallies. Viola regarded Harold with ill-concealed
tenderness and admiration. She herself looked even younger than usual,
as if the innate youth in her leaped to meet this charming comrade.
Jane felt sickened by it all. She could not understand her friend. Not
for one minute did she dream that there could be any serious outcome of
the situation; that Viola, would marry this mad youth, who, she knew,
was making such covert fun at her expense; but she was bewildered and
indignant. She wished that she had not come. That evening when she went
to her room she directed Margaret to pack, as she intended to return
home the next day. Margaret began folding gowns with alacrity. She was
as conservative as her mistress and she severely disapproved of many
things. However, the matter of the amethyst comb was uppermost in her
mind. She was wild with curiosity. She hardly dared inquire, but finally
she did.
“About the amethyst comb, ma'am?” she said, with a delicate cough.
“What about it, Margaret?” returned Jane, severely.
“I thought perhaps Mrs. Longstreet had told you how she happened to have
it.”
Poor Jane Carew had nobody in whom to confide. For once she spoke her
mind to her maid. “She has not said one word. And, oh, Margaret, I don't
know what to think of it.”
Margaret pursed her lips.
“What do YOU think, Margaret?”
“I don't know. Miss Jane.”
“I don't.”
“I did not mention it to Louisa,” said Margaret.
“Oh, I hope not!” cried Jane.
“But she did to me,” said Margaret. “She asked had I seen Miss Viola's
new comb, and then she laughed, and I thought from the way she acted
that--” Margaret hesitated.
“That what?”
“That she meant Mr. Lind had given Miss Viola the comb.”
Jane started violently. “Absolutely impossible!” she cried. “That,
of course, is nonsense. There must be some explanation. Probably Mrs.
Longstreet will explain before we go.”
Mrs. Longstreet did not explain. She wondered and expostulated when Jane
announced her firm determination to leave, but she seemed utterly at a
loss for the reason. She did not mention the comb.
When Jane Carew took leave of her old friend she was entirely sure in
her own mind that she would never visit her again--might never even see
her again.
Jane was unutterably thankful to be back in her own peaceful home, over
which no shadow of absurd mystery brooded; only a calm afternoon light
of life, which disclosed gently but did not conceal or betray. Jane
settled back into her pleasant life, and the days passed, and the weeks,
and the months, and the years. She heard nothing whatever from or about
Viola Longstreet for three years. Then, one day, Margaret returned from
the city, and she had met Viola's old maid Louisa in a department store,
and she had news. Jane wished for strength to refuse to listen, but she
could not muster it. She listened while Margaret brushed her hair.
“Louisa has not been with Miss Viola for a long time,” said Margaret.
“She is living with somebody else. Miss Viola lost her money, and had to
give up her house and her servants, and Louisa said she cried when she
said good-by.”
Jane made an effort. “What became of--” she began.
Margaret answered the unfinished sentence. She was excited by gossip
as by a stimulant. Her thin cheeks burned, her eyes blazed. “Mr. Lind,”
said Margaret, “Louisa told me, had turned out to be real bad. He got
into some money trouble, and then”--Margaret lowered her voice--“he was
arrested for taking a lot of money which didn't belong to him. Louisa
said he had been in some business where he handled a lot of other folks'
money, and he cheated the men who were in the business with him, and
he was tried, and Miss Viola, Louisa thinks, hid away somewhere so they
wouldn't call her to testify, and then he had to go to prison; but--”
Margaret hesitated.
“What is it?” asked Jane.
“Louisa thinks he died about a year and a half ago. She heard the lady
where she lives now talking about it. The lady used to know Miss Viola,
and she heard the lady say Mr. Lind had died in prison, that he couldn't
stand the hard life, and that Miss Viola had lost all her money through
him, and then”--Margaret hesitated again, and her mistress prodded
sharply--“Louisa said that she heard the lady say that she had thought
Miss Viola would marry him, but she hadn't, and she had more sense than
she had thought.”