Chapter VII: Part 7

Molly Blair, too, following a long talk with her husband, that freed her fond heart of its weight of pride in and anxiety for Kathleen, went to sleep happy. With so many loving souls around her, Terence had said, Kathleen would be well guarded, and such a fine nature as their girl’s was not to be spoiled in an hour or a year by flattery. And Molly’s last thoughts that night were of pity for poor Lottie Beaumoris. The afternoon of sitting out the concert, listening to the chatter of Lottie’s friends, had thrown broad light upon a career the newspapers had made to seem so dazzling. Lottie, weighed down with petty cares, a target for petty malice, was in her fine home not so well off as Molly in her little threadbare house, full to the eaves with ardent workers, living for each other and for the best that was in them. Kathleen’s début had taught her mother this!

* * * * *

Carefully assuming his recently acquired evening clothes, and taking heed, we may be sure, of the hints dropped by Kathleen on the occasion of his former appearance in this conventional attire, Mr. Colin Mackintosh stood prepared for what to him was to be a great occasion.

Before setting out to the Blairs’ house he went to his neighbor’s door and knocked. He knew that he should find Mr. Thorndyke sitting doubled up over his newspaper, under the gas-jet; but to-night the old man’s face looked more pinched and wan than usual, his breath came shorter, the newspaper lay unread across his knees.

“I’m afraid you’re ill,” said Colin, kindly.

Hardly a day had passed since their first talk that he had not extended to the friendless old fellow some word or look of sympathy; and Thorndyke, although Colin did not know it, had conceived for him in turn an almost paternal tenderness. In the utter loneliness of his life the instrument-maker yearned for something to link him with the world of everyday affection. Colin’s active step upon the stairs had come to be music to his ear--Colin’s greeting a solace eagerly awaited.

“Not ill, my dear boy; only a little down to-night. I begin to feel the climb up these long flights. And so you are going off into some gay scene, where people will be chatting and laughing? I don’t envy you, for it’s getting on to ten o’clock, and after that hour I can hardly keep awake in these days. There’s a long paragraph--nearly half a column--in the paper about an affair that is to occur in my nephew’s rooms to-night. I think I could tell you everybody that’s expected there. There’s a young violinist--a Miss Blair--who has made a hit recently--and some famous professionals. Mr. Mackintosh, I ought to tell you, too, that since I let out that secret that’s corroding me I have felt much ashamed. There was only this excuse for it--a very little drink affects me, and I had already had a glass of beer on my way home. The claret finished me. It did not confuse my brain, but just loosed my tongue. What I told you was true, but it should have gone with me to my grave.”

“You need never fear my making use of it unfairly,” said Colin, pityingly. The meek submission of the man was sadder than his outburst of wrath had been.

“I know I can trust you. I wish it were in my power to do something for you, Mr. Mackintosh. If I die soon, you will have given me the last gleams of pleasure in a disappointed life. I wish I could help you in return.”

“You can to-night,” said Colin; “if you do not mind lending me, for a purpose of my own, the fine scarabeus you showed me. It shall be returned to you without fail to-morrow.”

“Willingly, dear boy, willingly,” said the old man, fumbling in his waistcoat pocket and bringing out the sacred beetle wrapped in a bit of tissue paper. “When I die I should like you to have this to keep, and any other little thing I have. There are a few good books, and--”

“My dear friend, you depress me,” said Colin, taking the scarabeus, and shaking hands with the lender.

“Do I? It never occurs to me to think of my death as _sad_,” said Thorndyke, simply.

“Suppose,” said Colin, abruptly, “you had to wish for the thing that would please you most--what would it be?”

“A sight of my Stradivarius!” exclaimed the instrument-maker, his dull eye kindling with fond hope. “Mr. Mackintosh, something in your face--it can’t be you have heard--no, I’m a madman to dream of it--but it almost looked for a minute as if you have good news.”

“I may be wrong, and I may be disappointed,” said Mackintosh, with an air of quiet conviction, nevertheless. “But I have an idea I’m on the track of your lost treasure. If I succeed in tracing it, I shall be more than glad. If I fail, you will be no worse off than before. Good night. Sleep well, and awake in better heart for the morrow. But before I go,--upon second thoughts,--I wish you would give me a written order for your Stradivarius.”

After Colin left his room old Thorndyke abandoned himself to almost childish glee. Next, for a while, he paced the floor, then, sinking fatigued into his chair, meditated long.

It was twelve o’clock when he started up again, and taking the pencil with which he had scrawled and signed the order Colin desired, wrote some lines upon a paper torn from a memorandum book. Putting these upon the table, old Rupert Thorndyke went peacefully to bed.

At the same moment Rupert Thorndyke the younger was presiding over the entertainment at his rooms, for which fine ladies had been for some time struggling to get cards of invitation. The host’s vogue, grace, and tact had been at no time more conspicuous. The affair, pronounced the best of its kind, was about to pass into the chronicle of jaded pleasure-seekers as an eminent success. The turn of Kathleen, who had played once upon her own violin, had now come around again upon the programme. Mr. Malvolio--who, after all, _was_ there--had just sauntered up to whisper in her ear:

“They say he is going to let you try his Stradivarius. The rest of the women are green with jealousy at this mark of favor. No one has touched it heretofore.”

“If Mrs. Blair will allow her daughter to come with me into the little room where I keep my treasure--” Thorndyke was saying to her mother, who, with Colin behind her, stood guard over her young violinist.

“Certainly. Go with her, Colin, please, and see that her head is not quite turned by these honors,” said the unconscious Molly.

Colin needed no further impetus. In spite of a cloud passing over the face of their handsome host, the stalwart fellow placed himself at Kathleen’s side and accompanied them.

A room of small dimensions, but with solid doors, bolted as well as locked. On the walls, in glass cases with a background of crimson velvet, a small but exquisite assemblage of what might be called the bric-à-brac of musical instruments. Violins were there, but Colin’s eye sought in vain for one bearing the mark of a tiny hand with an outstretched finger.

“What a delightful nook!” cried Kathleen. “How I wish there were time to look over its wonders leisurely.”

“Some day--any day that you so ordain,” said the virtuoso. “I and mine are at your command always.”

Colin, seeing Thorndyke’s face transfigured with delight in the girl’s youth and beauty, raged inwardly. He recalled the value he had heard him put upon all women, Kathleen in particular. Strong as a lion to defend her, it was hard for the young fellow to now contain himself until he had wrought out his plan to avenge the sins of this Rupert Thorndyke against the one he had left in a shabby tenement.

He had no idea how he meant to bring about the conviction of this man’s wrong-doing, or to seek for the restoration of the other’s stolen property. But whatever he did, Colin meant that it should be short, sharp, and decisive!

At last chance favored him. His heart beat hard as he followed Kathleen and Thorndyke from object to object of the priceless array.

“I fear we should not keep all those people waiting for us longer--” said the host finally.

“And I am palpitating with impatience to see your chief treasure,” cried Kathleen.

“I have made a little shrine for it,” went on Thorndyke, stooping to unlock a cupboard in the wall. A second inner door of polished mahogany yielded to a key carried on the owner’s person. Within an air-tight receptacle lay a violin-case, covered with rare leather fantastically wrought in gold.

“Take and open it,” said Thorndyke, conveying this to a nest in Kathleen’s soft bare arms. “You are the first woman that I have entrusted with my beauty.”

“My beauty!” Old Thorndyke’s very phrase! Colin, the blood rushing to his brain with excitement and indignation, looked on eagerly as the instrument was taken from its case. There, in the exact spot indicated by its rightful owner, was a tiny shadow in the wood resembling a hand with an outstretched finger!

“The desire of my life is accomplished,” said Kathleen, lifting the violin to her shoulder and letting the bow glide over the strings.

The sound that answered was like the wail of a reproach.

“It has been waiting all this time for you!” said Thorndyke, with tender emphasis, regardless of their hearer. He, like Kathleen, seemed to be under a sort of spell.

“Since when, may I ask?” interrupted Colin, quietly.

Thorndyke turned and looked at him in cold distaste.

“Since the creation of the instrument, no doubt. Certainly since it came to me by inheritance.”

“By inheritance?” said the younger man, with deliberate doubt in his intonation. “I think, Mr. Thorndyke, that your uncle, who bears the same name as yourself, would give a different version of the way you acquired this costly possession.”

Thorndyke started violently.

“Do you mean to insult me?” he said in almost a whisper, guilt written in his face.

Kathleen, spell-bound by Colin’s stern looks, held the violin breathlessly.

“I mean, Mr. Thorndyke, to make absolutely no fuss in this very unpleasant matter. But I mean also to make it perfectly plain to you that I know all about this Stradivarius with the mark of a hand pointing. I am informed when and how it was taken out of your uncle Thorndyke’s trunk in his boarding-house. And if you will give it up to him quietly, I shall not say another word to any one concerning it.”

“An ingenious method to possess yourself of a valuable piece of property,” sneered Thorndyke, now livid with fear and rage.

“I have this to offer in exchange,” said Colin, controlling himself perfectly, as he took out the scarabeus and held it, together with the old man’s written order for the violin, for the inspection of the thief.

“My dear Colin,” exclaimed Kathleen, greatly distressed and mortified at the scene. “You must take me back to my mother. I insist--”

“Just as soon as Mr. Thorndyke gives a definite answer to my proposition,” said Colin, fearlessly.

Thorndyke breathed hard. His eyes flashed with a vengeful luster. He tried to speak, and could not. Then, looking furtively about the room, and seeming to grow smaller in the action, he took the Stradivarius from Kathleen, put it in an old and shabby case, and replacing the empty ornamental cover in the secret chamber, shut and locked this receptacle with elaboration. With a supreme effort, he recovered his usual manner.

“You will give this to my uncle, with my compliments,” he said lightly, putting the precious violin in Colin’s hands and reclaiming the scarabeus. “And you might say from me, that although I know the old boy is as mad as a March hare, I don’t like to thwart his dear old fancy. I was about indeed, to inform him, through my lawyer, that a sum of money coming out of an old investment of his and my father’s, has been divided, and his share placed to his credit in the ---- bank. A thousand a year only, but enough to keep him in comfort in the lunatic asylum, where I feel sure he will bring up.”

Kathleen, although he had avoided and ignored her in the matter, had not waited for this ending. With crimson cheeks and in great agitation, she had slipped out to rejoin her mother. A few moments later heard their host, standing before his guests, offer a graceful explanation that the condition of his Stradivarius would prevent Miss Blair from to-night awakening its hidden melodies.

Colin, clasping the recovered treasure like the anchor of hope, was in the lobby awaiting the ladies when they presently hurried out. On the drive home he told them in simple but eloquent language the full history of his old neighbor and the stolen violin.

When he had finished, Molly was crying quietly. Kathleen’s eyes flashed upon him such approval as he had never seen in them before.

“I could _love_ you for what you’ve done for that poor old man, Colin,” she cried, with Irish impulse, and stopped, blushing. “But I don’t understand why Thorndyke made such a poor fight.”

“It was ‘coward conscience,’” said Colin. “For if I read him right, he would cut off his right hand to avoid exposure or fiasco before such people as were there to-night.”

* * * * *

“I could love you,” rang joyously in Colin’s ears as he ran up his own steps, carrying the violin. When he reached Thorndyke’s room, late as it was, he could not resist trying to get speech with his friend. His light tap bringing no answer, he opened the door and went in. The light over the transom showed him the old man lying in his bed. Leaving the Stradivarius upon the table, Colin stole away.

The next day the people of the house found the old instrument-maker sitting in his chair, a happy smile upon his face, the violin clasped in his arms. He had been dead some hours, and on his table lay a penciled will, bequeathing all that he died possessed of, “without reserve,” to his “beloved young friend, John Walter Mackintosh.”

* * * * *

Thus, in due time, and to the enormous surprise of everybody concerned, Kathleen came into possession, not only of her coveted Stradivarius, but of a husband, with an income small but growing and sufficient to enable him to withdraw his wife from public appearance as a paid performer. Upon the authority of Mr. Rupert Thorndyke, who lives and flourishes like the green bay-tree, this is said to be a serious loss to the world of music, but Kathleen does not mind.

Malvolio still thinks the fall of Rupert Thorndyke is to come!

WANTED: A CHAPERON

WANTED: A CHAPERON

Gwendolyn West sat alone in profound meditation upon her future. She was the childless young widow of a naval officer, whom she had lost after six months of married life and two years of separation during his absence on official duty in foreign waters.

For three years she had mourned her lieutenant dutifully. No crêpe had ever exceeded Gwendolyn’s in depth and plenitude. At the end of that time her free-spoken friend, Kate Payne--who had politely encouraged her illusion that the marriage was not a mistake--had told her she was tired of seeing her look like the German nursery picture of Slovenly Peter after he was fished out of the forbidden inkstand. Gwendolyn had laughed--and the deed was done. She had now emerged into alleviated grays and hopeful lilacs. Mrs. Payne, nodding approval, said she had never seen such a creature for making her clothes look stylish; and Gwendolyn, in return, owned that the materials cost nothing and were made up by a little woman “by the day.”

“All the same, you look solvent, prosperous, up-to-date. What can woman ask more?” said Kate.

“Ask? My dear Kate, you have no idea how hard put to it I am to make ends meet. I am so poor it is a scandal. If my Aunt Althea had not invested her money in this flat, when the house was going up, and left it to me in her will, I should be living in one room of a boarding-house, with a folding-bed. As it is, I ought to let the flat and eke out my ridiculous little income with the proceeds. If I were abroad I might live on it almost in comfort.”

“Nobody understands living abroad better than you do.”

“Of course, since from nineteen to twenty-four I knocked about there with Aunt Althea. But my difficulty, absurd though it may seem for a woman of almost thirty, is that I look hardly old enough to live as a solitary female in the places I know best on the other side. In New York I am panoplied with respectability.”

“And boredom,” supplemented the frank Mrs. Payne. “It is no fun to live here on the outside of things, where one has been used to the inside. The truth is, you ought to have had a girl--not a boy, who would have been a handful, and most probably a pickle--but a nice little golden-haired angel, with short skirts and long, black-stockinged legs, whom you would have made a vision of picturesqueness in dress.”

“Let us talk of what I have,” said Mrs. West, with a sigh.

“It has just occurred to me that you would make a capital chaperon for some breezy young woman of large means, scant culture, and consuming ambition to see the world. You have position, manners, morals beyond question, and would be a perfect teacher of how to dot one’s i’s in good society.”

“What servitude!” exclaimed her friend, shuddering. “I detest breezy people who are uncertain of themselves. And there is nothing so delusive as temper. She might make my life a burden. How mortifying, too, to have to conduct her along the primrose paths of society in my own town! I should live over a volcano, never knowing when she would break forth.”

“Take her traveling,” went on Madame.

“That is better,” said Gwendolyn. “But suppose she fell ill, or flirted, or defied me, away off there. She would be sure to do all three.”

“I should do nothing without being well paid for it. With a full purse you can accomplish wonders.”

“It would be such a relief to spend six months or a year free from looking over that hateful butcher’s book. Although I know that I and my two maids eat nothing, our bills are awful, and I can’t pretend to read butchers’ handwriting, can you? ‘3 cucks, 0.90’; that’s what I labored over for a whole morning, after I had ordered a miserable little cucumber to be cut up with my fish.”

“I am afraid the queen of your kitchen is a wiser potentate than you credit her with being. But, my dear, I have an inspiration. Yesterday I got a circular from a new ‘Bureau of Information Concerning Women’s Needs.’ It is intended to bring together refined and cultivated employers and employés, and to make a specialty of companions, chaperons, and governesses. Suppose I inquire--I know the woman at the head; she will take pains to oblige me--and see if she has any applications from young persons who have left school and desire to be ‘finished’ in the broadest sense--”

“Kate, Kate, you frighten me. You are such a steam engine in accomplishing what you set out to do I should be afraid to go out to walk this afternoon lest I should come in to find my treasure installed here in permanence.”

“You need not take her unless everything suits. I really believe such a girl would rouse you up, give you a new motive in life, and end by being a blessing in disguise--”

“Very much disguised,” remarked Gwendolyn, ruefully.

“It is now late February. You could sail in March by the Southern route to Genoa, and spend the spring in Italy.”

Gwendolyn flushed and sat bolt upright. Her soul was pierced by the chant of nightingales in the Cascine woods; of the singers upon the star gondola by moonlight on the Grand Canal; of the Amalfi boatmen resting upon their oars! How well she would know where to go, and how to enjoy the best of everything. She had been starving for beauty for four years!

“Let me--let me have time to think,” she said finally, with a sort of gasp.

“You poor victim, you have a most pathetic air,” answered Mrs. Payne, getting up to go, and kissing her. “Of course, you must think over it. Let me know to-night; and to-morrow morning, bright and early, I will order the brougham and set forth upon my quest.”

A paid conductor and chaperon! Out of the mists of recollection loomed up before Gwendolyn a time, when sitting with her aunt and her husband in the dining-room of a great hotel in Amsterdam, she had seen the entry of a hot, red-faced lady, preceding a string of girls of assorted sizes, and marshaling them at table. Their party was completed by one lean, henpecked little boy, presumably the conductor’s son, obtaining free of expense educational glimpses into the vistas of old-world life.

From that day on Gwendolyn had continued to meet them during their stay--fortunately brief--in the great Dutch town. One of the girls had taken a fancy to Mrs. West, and whenever they came together in galleries and the like annexed herself to Gwendolyn, asking flat questions upon art, and detailing her grievances against the head of their party. Mrs. Batt was selfish; she had not fulfilled her promises to them; she hurried them through things they wanted to see; and lingered in places where the fare was good and cheap, in order to feed up her little boy.

And Mrs. Batt, in turn, running upon Gwendolyn in a corridor upstairs at their hotel, told her it was a dog’s life she was leading, pulled around by these capricious girls, who didn’t know what they wanted, and were forever having headaches and tiffs with each other, and taking offense about nothing, or else entering into conversations with strange men and thinking it clever. But for the advantage to her dear, fatherless child Mrs. Batt could wish herself back again in peace at New Corinth, Kansas, whence they had all set forth in May.

Recalling all this, Gwendolyn drew a long breath of dismay. Then the maid came in with a sheaf of household bills and the announcement that she and the cook had determined to leave when the month should be up. An organ-grinder in the street outside began to play:

“O! bella Napoli!
O! dolce Napoli!”

The sunshine that streamed through the panes of her south windows was full of suggestions of purple seas, overarched by an azure dome, beneath which roses bloomed along the shore, and jasmine and orange flowers distilled their richest perfume. Oh! to be in the South--far from the sound of trolley cars and all the tokens of a city’s overcrowded life that, day or night, can never be hushed!

If she had something of her very own--some hearthside idol to go and come in her little home, she would be more than content to stay there.

Then Gwendolyn subjected herself to a secret crucial test. She opened a case of photographs--a receptacle made of old brocade, broidered with silver thread, that she had picked up in the Palais Royal in 1893--and extracted one of its portraits. This was an up-to-date affair, executed by a New York photographer of note. It represented a man of five-and-thirty, good looking, amiable, and weak.

She looked at it long and studiously. A line dashed off at her writing-table, a call for a messenger, a few hours’ delay, and he would be with her. The very next day she might announce to all interested her engagement to marry Mr. Ernest Blythe. As Mrs. Blythe, provided she could maintain a sufficient interest in yachting and its devotees, no injunction would be laid upon her habits or inclination. Blythe was rich, easy-going to a ridiculous degree, as much in love with her as his capacity would admit, and was hers to take or leave.

But--Gwendolyn glanced up at an enlarged photograph of the late Lieutenant West, hanging in an ebony frame above that very writing-table, as if to control its output of chirographical amenities.

Her survey was not reassuring. “Oh! never, never again!” she murmured audibly. It is only once in a long while that women really speak to themselves aloud, and that is when they want a witness to some vow of a peculiarly binding character.

She took Mr. Blythe with hastening finger tips and drove him in at the very bottom of the pack. It would be a long time before she could take him out again.

Then something possessed her to go into a dark closet and hunt around upon its seldom-visited shelves to find a very old album of photographs, dating back before her travels in Europe with her nomadic Aunt Althea had weaned her from thoughts of home.

She was eighteen then, and was making a visit to the wife of a professor in a university town, where most of these treasures of pictorial art had been accumulated. What faded old things they were, chiefly of undergraduates wearing queer collars and scarfs, with coats that did not fit and hair that was much too long! She had some difficulty in finding the particular cabinet photograph she sought, but it appeared at last, looking straight at her with the fearless gaze of handsome eyes that had once held over hers unwonted power.

“Ten--more, nearly eleven--years ago,” she mused. “He wore his hair like the sweep of a mahogany banister, poor dear; but _that was_ a man.”

John Rufus Atwell was his rather uninteresting name. He was a young widower of twenty-six when he came back to take a post-graduate course at ---- from his home in a Western town, where he had left his child with its mother’s people. None of his surroundings or antecedents had appealed in the least to the æsthetic and superfine side of pretty Miss Gwendolyn. But he had fallen in love with her, just like half a dozen more of the youngsters. She had tried to treat him just like them--and had failed. He had given her a first lesson in virile resistance to the exactions of coquettish femininity.

They had parted, though she had always remembered him with something of tender regret. But still the thing would have been impossible--quite impossible! What had become of him since she had not the vaguest idea.

That evening a little note went to Mrs. Payne authorizing her to find out for her friend some one who wanted an unexceptionable chaperon.

Mrs. Payne had good reason to think that industrious intervention in a friend’s affairs is sometimes approved by the Fates. The principal of the new “Bureau of Information Concerning Women’s Needs” expanded with satisfaction on hearing of her errand.

It so happened that one of the earliest applications that had come to them was from a family in a Western State who desired to send their daughter abroad under competent care. She had looked into their references--although that was scarcely needful when it was understood that the father was the distinguished statesman, Honorable John Mordaunt, Senator from ----, whose name was in every newspaper one took up.

Mrs. Payne, reserving her decision as to this proof of infallible respectability, was pleased to be interested in the matter. She next read Mr. Mordaunt’s letter to the principal, and put it down even better pleased.

“That is nicely expressed,” she said, after scrutinizing every point. “For a wonder, it is not typed. He seems to be very much in earnest. And his ideas about--her--remuneration are certainly most liberal. Says nothing about the mother--a cipher, probably. Girl too young to be kept in Washington. I hope,” she continued with sudden animation, “she is sound and strong, and has had everything.”

“Had everything, Mrs. Payne?”

“Measles and whooping-cough--and her first love affair.”

“I believe you will find my clients unexceptionable,” said the principal, who was not fond of jesting upon serious subjects.

“But they really must send her photograph,” Mrs. Payne exclaimed as she rose, eager to convey the result of her interview to Gwendolyn. “And I think you may safely write to Mr. Mordaunt that if everything goes well he may count upon Mrs. Spencer West.”

“Mrs. Spencer West!” cried the principal, who, it will be recalled, was a reader of current prints. “Why, she is one of the most fashionable ladies in New York.”

“Was. But her being so long in mourning has shut her in, and it is desired by her friends to rouse her from--ahem--her grief,” went on Mrs. Payne nimbly. “We think she should have an object. You see, now, Mrs. Smith, how careful we should be to make no mistakes.”

“It is our aim to intermediate between only the most refined and cultivated principals,” replied Mrs. Smith, with a high-toned sniff.

“And it is understood that the matter is _strictly_ confidential.”

“That, Madame, is the very foundation-stone of our enterprise.”

“Good morning, then. Perhaps, not to lose time, you might write at once to Mr. Mordaunt.”

Whatever the principal of the B. I. W. N. wrote, it brought a quick response. Mr. Mordaunt was much gratified by her efforts in his behalf, begged to inclose a photograph of his daughter, and would be in New York on Sunday for the purpose of settling preliminaries with Mrs. Spencer West.

“He is terribly business-like,” said Gwendolyn, discontentedly. “But, dear me! the girl _is_ pretty.”

“‘Pretty’ is tame,” said Mrs. Payne, taking the picture from her friend. “She is beautiful, in a rather common way. Ugh! That frock cut half high, the hair done in a horn behind and stuck through with a dreadful ornamental pin! You should go to Paris, my dear, and put her in Pacquin’s hands. But how very mature she looks for seventeen. She is like one of our girls in her third season.”

“You can see ‘local belle’ written all over her. And those chains and rings and pins!” said fastidious Gwendolyn. “Oh! I could never do it in New York. And now to brace myself for that dreaded meeting with the fond papa!”

It was not written on the cards that the meeting in question should take place. Gwendolyn, through nervousness and a heavy cold combined, was in bed with a neuralgic headache when he came. She could hear from where she lay the clear, resonant tones, the masterful tread of the Senator, which seemed to fill up the spaces of her toy abode. She actually turned with her face to the wall, and stopped her ears with her fingers to avoid hearing more of him. Mrs. Payne scolded her afterward for her nonsense.

“I feel better satisfied, now I have seen him,” said Kate. “There is something in him--I can’t express it--that inspires confidence. He tells me the girl is motherless, and has been much indulged by her grandparents and relatives. He has been so busy with his affairs that he has seen comparatively little of her. She is affectionate and truthful, easy to lead, and hard to drive. She has never known anything but East Ephesus in her native State. She will come to you direct, and you ought to sail as early as you can.”

Gwendolyn sat up in bed. Her headache was nearly gone. A desperate resolve to do the thing thoroughly, if at all, had come into her brain.

PART II

A few days later Mrs. West stood in the crowd on the platform at Jersey City awaiting a train from the West, and holding in her hand a handkerchief of azure silk, of which the duplicate was to be waved by her arriving charge. Her heart beat with an excitement it had not known for long.

She had not many moments of uncertainty. Even without the blue banner that bore down upon her in the hands of the prettiest creature in the throng, she would have recognized the original of the picture.

Miss Cecily Mordaunt, beaming with complacency, was attended by a man--gaunt, middle-aged, uncouth, with every sign of adoration of his companion written upon his countenance.

“You--you have got your maid?” asked Gwendolyn, peering about in search of that natural protector.

“Maid? Never had such a thing in my life,” laughed Cecily. “And what would ha’ been the use, when Mr. Lenvale would insist upon escorting me every step of the way. We stopped in Chicago two hours, and took a hack and drove round to see the sights. I never was so surprised to see any one as Mr. Lenvale. He stole a march on the others, and sat in the smoking car, and came in to join me when East Ephesus was well out of sight. It almost seemed as if I had to have him, to carry all that truck.”

“That truck” was an assortment of faded flowers, bonbons, boxes, and baskets of fruit--with railway reading enough to stock a stall.

“They kept bringing it until the train moved off. Papa made me promise none of them should come along, but I couldn’t help Mr. Lenvale, could I, now?”

“I have a carriage waiting on the other side of the ferry. We shall ask Mr. Lenvale to put your belongings into that, and then we shall not trouble him further,” said Gwendolyn, in her soft, articulate voice. Poor Lenvale, although she smiled kindly, saw that his doom was sealed.

“He’s a fright, isn’t he?” said heartless Cecily as they drove away uptown. “I’m really tired to death of him; but it wouldn’t do exactly to let him know. When I saw you holding that blue handkerchief my heart was in my mouth with surprise. You look about as old as I am, or a very little older. ‘Thank goodness she’s young and pretty, and how well her clothes fit!’ I said to Mr. Lenvale. When papa told me about you I cried for twenty-four hours without stopping, and all the girls came round to sympathize. I supposed you were a prim old party, with a whalebone back. Look here, now. Would you mind my kissing you?”

A week later they sailed for Genoa. Gwendolyn had engaged to attend them a courier-maid, certified against sea-sickness, and as possessing phenomenal accomplishments in the science of hotel bills and tips.

Senator Mordaunt, just then held in the vise of an important committee of inquiry over which he presided, had agreed to run over on a night train, breakfast with his daughter, see her off on the steamer, then hurry back to Washington. But at breakfast time arrived, instead of the Senator, a telegram, at sight of which Cecily first stamped her foot, then cried.

“I knew it! I have always had telegrams when I wanted my father most,” she said between her sobs. “He can’t get off, so sends me his blessing, and his compliments to you. Who wants to be blessed by telegraph?”

She was such a big, healthy, buoyant, fun-making being it was impossible to think of her as one who could suffer seriously or long, but Mrs. West saw that she loved her father, and that during a day or two of the voyage she lamented for him in silence.

It was rough off the coast, the skies dull, the company depressed. Gwendolyn lay most of this time in her berth, committing Cecily to the care of the courier-maid, and feeling too reckless of outer things even to read the letter from Washington marked “private and confidential” that had come aboard by special delivery as the ship was about to leave the dock. She had seen that it was from Mordaunt, and was full of injunctions about his daughter. It would keep.

On the afternoon of the third day out, the skies had cleared, sunshine fell warm and bright across the decks, there was a faint, sweet, far-away promise of spring in the light and steady breeze. The cabin passengers, to a man, woman, and child, felt its reviving influence. Creeping up on deck, Gwendolyn nestled into her chair, looked lazily across the rail, and bethought her of her letter.

After she had finished it she sat wondering. For the first time she realized the magnitude of her task. This was the cry of a strong man’s heart for the right guidance and protection of his only child. Too late had come to him consciousness of the fact that Cecily had been left to environments that had done her mischief. She had been on the verge of running away to marry a Mr. Parker Moffat, a crack baseball player, a young man encouraged by her silly, sentimental aunt.

The one worth talking about among her admirers--who made her the acknowledged sovereign of hearts in East Ephesus--had been flouted by her so successfully that it was hardly likely Angus McCrea would ever present himself to Mrs. West’s notice. Should he do so, he was the sole representative of her ‘home guard’ whom Mordaunt would be willing for Cecily to receive. Any overture from Moffat Mrs. West must incontinently quash.

And he is my “obliged and faithful J. Mordaunt,” quoth Gwendolyn. “Well, I feel as if I had brought an explosive machine on board. I am afraid my charge is nothing more or less than an incorrigible flirt.”

The rest of the voyage proved this indubitably. From the captain, who had her seated at table at his left hand, to the officers, great and petty, the deck stewards, the sailors with swabs, and the little cabin boys, every male thing belonging to the good ship was at Miss Mordaunt’s beck and call.

The unmarried men among the passengers--including a missionary going out to Asia Minor, a German Baron, a magnate of Wall Street nursing a weak lung, a silk merchant from lower Broadway, two artists, and a popular young author--surrounded her chair, like a swarm of bees. The married men did the same whenever they were released from supervision by their wives; but it was a remarkably tranquil voyage, and the women were ordinarily all on deck.

Gwendolyn’s sense of propriety suffered under such fierce publicity. Miss Mordaunt’s sayings and doings were bandied everywhere. The people aboard who were previously known to Mrs. West set afloat the story that her comet was a cousin or niece going to join her family. Most of these good folk thought it would be a happy day for Mrs. West when she could surrender her charge and fold her hands in repose.

Vigilance--perpetual vigilance--was evidently to be the price of Gwendolyn’s peace. The overwhelming spirits, the reckless sayings, the audacious doings of Cecily began at breakfast time and ended not till Gwendolyn forced her to go below at bedtime. And the distressing part of it was that the chaperon found herself, too, laughing at the girl’s nonsense--giggling helplessly, irrepressibly. Cecily affected her like champagne or St. Moritz air.

At Gibraltar Miss Mordaunt said she was going to cable to her papa. When they were off again in the Mediterranean she threw her arms around Gwendolyn’s neck and admitted that she had cabled to some one else besides papa. No coaxings could induce her to say more than this, and Gwendolyn felt uncomfortable. At Genoa the girl received two cable messages, sent in care of the captain of the ship, who delivered them to her with massive gallantry.

From that moment it seemed that Cecily’s spirit of mischief had broken loose worse than before. Mrs. West and the courier-maid, both of them secretly devoted to her, were kept forever on the alert to watch her vagaries. Upon the tourist track of Europe she left behind her a corruscating trail of anecdotes.

As the summer progressed Gwendolyn resigned herself to being a marked woman, as the guardian of the most original young person who had appeared in the best-known haunts in a generation. It was marvelous to see how Cecily’s slang, loud speaking and dressing, and petty offenses against good breeding had dropped away from her. The outer shell of her became conventional, but that was all.

* * * * *

When the handsome and well-born Marquis de San Miniato followed them to Luzerne, and asked Mrs. West for the hand of her charming charge in marriage, Gwendolyn felt herself pulled up as with too hard a curb.

“Of course you will not consider him,” she said, much more confused than was the heroine of the hour.

“I _was_ thinking a little of getting married in Italy in the fall,” answered Miss Mordaunt, pensively. “A wedding would be so sweet in that lovely old Duomo at Florence. And I couldn’t have it in the Duomo unless I married a Catholic, I suppose.”

“Cecily!”

“Gwen, dear, you can’t do it. You haven’t the cut of a chaperon’s jib. Why, San Miniato took us first for a pair of schoolgirls, and Mimms for our governess. You’re a failure, and I’m a terror; but we _have_ had a good time, haven’t we?”

“Cecily, your father--I have an idea he would dislike this more than anything you could do. Don’t, don’t answer Miniato now. Let me tell him to go to America and see your papa. That is the only decent thing to do.”

“The others--all but one--asked _me_ first,” said Cecily, dimpling. “But it’s a shame to tease you, poor, dear little soul. Send Miniato packing, if you like. I don’t generally--right away. I keep them on as friends, like poor Mr. Lenvale, till I can’t stand them a minute longer. Anyhow, old Miniato’s a goose to think I’d marry out of my own country and live away from papa.”

Gwendolyn had the tact to say nothing. In a moment Cecily began again.

“You’ve been so awfully good to me, Gwenny. If I had had a mother, I’d have wanted her to be like you. But my mother died when I was born, and I had no one but an aunt and grandmother, who--papa, couldn’t get along with them, and I don’t blame him. He has been awfully generous--but kept away. You know he has made money himself, but he inherited a lot from his mother’s brother on condition he’d change his name. The Mordaunts were an older family than the Atwells, and my uncle didn’t want them to die out--”

“Atwell! It can’t be possible!” cried Gwendolyn, “John Rufus Atwell?”

“Yes, that was his full name. Did you ever know him?”

“Once, long ago,” said Gwendolyn, in a maze of astonishment.

“I want to tell you a secret--if you won’t ask me a single question in return,” went on the girl, filled with her own affairs. “Although not to San Miniato, I am really going to be married. I’ve left my heart, my real heart, at home, with the best fellow in the world. When I got to Gibraltar I kept a promise I’d made to him, and cabled out that he might come to us in September. By the time we get to Paris he’ll be there, and then, Gwenny, then--oh! You’ll be a jolly, easy-going chaperon, and I the happiest girl in the world. Now I’m off to take Mimms for a perfectly horrid little walk, to see Thorwaldsen’s Lion. If I ever get home to blessed East Ephesus I’ll walk out by myself after dark, see if I don’t.”

Gwendolyn’s face, when she was left alone with these surprising revelations, was very pale. After deliberation she took out a cable code Mr. Mordaunt had sent her for exigencies, and patched together words conveying the following message:

“Fear daughter’s intention to marry. Had better come at once. Meet
us Paris. Will watch faithfully till then.”

* * * * *

They had found refuge from observation in a quiet and cozy little hotel just out of the Champs Élysées. For some days following their arrival in Paris Cecily had been under a spell of gentleness. She did not again allude to her hopes and prospects, and Gwendolyn, trusting the matter had blown by, said nothing, but never left her side. Cecily did not know that her father was expected. It had been agreed between Mordaunt and his daughter’s chaperon to give his visit the air of a happy afterthought.

When the day came that should bring relief to the citadel, Gwendolyn breathed a long sigh. Soon after their early breakfast, Cecily asked for the company of Mimms to make some purchases at the Bon Marché. She had equipped herself so charmingly, her face and person breathed such radiancy of good health and happiness, that Gwendolyn could not resist giving the child a parting squeeze and kiss.

“I shall wait for you to go in to the second breakfast, dear,” she said, affectionately.

“Ah, Gwen, how I love you!” cried the girl with a sudden burst. “Never be angry with me; I was not brought up like other girls.”

She was gone. The little open cab containing her and the grim Miss Mimms rattled down the stony street to the Elysian Fields. Gwendolyn sighed.

“She has tangled herself in my heart-strings, certainly. I could not bear her to think me treacherous. But my first duty was to _him_.”

As the hours passed she grew fidgety, rearranged the ornaments, the flowers, the books, in their pretty salon--ran to the window to look at many cabs, and when at last the one arrived that contained John Mordaunt, was quite unaware of it.

He was treading on the heels of the garçon who came up to announce him--in her presence before she realized it.

“I knew you long ago through Mrs. Payne; but you could not be supposed to identify me,” he said, with strong feeling, as he took her hand. “You have not changed in the least. And to think that all these years I could not find out whom you had married.”

Gwendolyn blushed deeply, and drew her hand from his.

“It was so good of you to relieve my anxiety about our girl,” she answered. “Now I begin to think she said it to frighten me.”

“No matter, since I am here. But where is she--my darling torment?”

Gwendolyn explained.

“Then sit down and let us learn each other all over again,” said this taking-for-granted Senator.

Gwendolyn did not know why she obeyed; the moments flew, she telling, he listening, and vice versa. They were rudely interrupted by the bursting open of the door and the entrance of Miss Mimms, aghast.

“Oh! sir! Oh! m’m,” she cried, breathless. “I’ve lost her. For the last hour I’ve been sitting in the waiting-room at the Bon Marché, as she bid me, and she’s never come back. And at last a little boy came and put this note in my hand for Mrs. West, and told me the young lady said I was to go along home to the hotel.”

“My own Gwenny, forgive me,” ran the note. “I couldn’t bear to meet
him in a horrid, ordinary way. We are off on top a tram to take
our luncheon at Versailles, and by five o’clock, I’ll be back and
introduce him to you in proper fashion.”

“If it’s that scoundrel Moffat, he’ll never bring her back,” shouted John Mordaunt. “He well knows she has a fortune from her uncle coming to her on her marriage with no matter whom. He’ll get her off somewhere and manage to have a ceremony performed before he is interrupted. He--”

“I believe in Cecily,” said Gwendolyn, quietly. “Let us, you and I, Mr. Mordaunt, go directly in pursuit of them. Cecily is foolish, reckless, but she would never give you--and me--that pain.”

“Then it is you who have made her know herself! God bless you,” said the agitated man. “Ah! Gwendolyn, why did I not have you from the first?”

* * * * *

Miss Mimms afterward averred that you might have knocked her down with a feather when, that afternoon, the whole party of four came driving up to the door of the hotel. (Miss M. had spent most of her day suspended like a banner for royalty out of the windows of the first floor.) He, the young lady’s papa--looking like a general or a judge, she couldn’t exactly say which, but as fine a show of a man as she wished ever to see; Mrs. West, so happy and smiling, just like a little girl that has got a present she’d been crying for; and Miss Mordaunt--well, nobody could beat her for looks and pretty ways. At the very top of the steps didn’t she seize Mimms and hug her, and introduce her to “Mr. Angus McCrea, the young man that ran away with me this morning, and that’s going to be my husband”?

For Mr. Angus McCrea it was who had wooed Cecily’s roving heart into his safe-keeping--a fine, manly young fellow, to whom even John Mordaunt, the discourager of sons-in-law, could not take exception.

“And at any rate,” whispered saucy Cecily, “it’s easy to see they were old sweethearts, Gwen and papa. They are so taken up with each other, Angus, you and I might give them a lesson in self-control.”

PRINTED BY R. R. DONNELLEY
AND SONS COMPANY AT THE
LAKESIDE PRESS, CHICAGO, ILL.

* * * * * *

Transcriber’s note:

The List of Illustrations at the beginning of the book was created
by the transcriber.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation such as “whale-bone”/“whalebone”
have been maintained.

Minor punctuation and spelling errors have been silently corrected
and, except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the
text, especially in dialogue, and inconsistent or archaic usage,
have been retained.

Page 156: “upon which the three Misses Bendict” changed to “upon
which the three Misses Benedict”.

Page 201: “from what your mother writes, Lillian” changed to “from
what your mother writes, Lilian”.

Page 234: “grumbling inwardly, as he saw Kathleeen” changed to
“grumbling inwardly, as he saw Kathleen”.