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The Beaubien studied him for a moment. “Why?” she asked.
“I think––I think––” He hesitated, and looked at Carmen.
“Well?” impatiently.
“I think he––has been greatly angered by––this girl––and by my presence here.”
“Ah!” Her face set hard. Then abruptly: “What are you going to do now?”
“I have funds enough to keep me some weeks, Madam, while making plans for the future.”
“Then remain where I can keep in touch with you.”
For the Beaubien had just returned from a two hours’ ride with J. Wilton Ames, and she felt that she needed a friend.
CHAPTER 20
The Beaubien sat in the rounded window of the breakfast room. Carmen nestled at her feet. The maid had just removed the remains of the light luncheon.
“Dearest, please,pleasedon’t look so serious!”
The Beaubien twined her fingers through the girl’s flowing locks. “I will try, girlie,” she said, though her voice broke.
Carmen looked up into her face with a wistful yearning. “Will you not tell me?” she pleaded. “Ever since Monsignor Lafelle and Father Waite were here you have been so quiet; and that was nearly a week ago. I know I can help, if you will only let me.”
“How would you help, dearie?” asked the woman absently.
“By knowing that God is everywhere, and that evil is unreal and powerless,” came the quick, invariable reply.
“My sweet child! Can nothing shake your faith?”
“No. Why, if I were chained to a stake, with fire all around me, I’d know it wasn’t true!”
“I think you are chained––and the fire has been kindled,” said the woman in a voice that fell to a whisper.
“Then your thought is wrong––all wrong! And wrong thought justcan’tbe externalized to me, for I know that ‘There shall no mischief happen to the righteous,’ that is, to the right-thinking. And I think right.”
“I’m sure you do, child.” The Beaubien got up and walked slowly around the room, as if to summon her strength. Then she returned to her chair.
“I’m going to tell you,” she said firmly. “You are right, and I have been wrong. It concerns you. And you have help that I have not. I––I have lost a great deal of money.”
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Carmen laughed in relief. “Well, dear me! that’s nothing.”
The Beaubien smiled sadly. “I agree with you. Mr. Ames may have my money. I have discovered in the past few months that there are better things in life. But––” her lips tightened, and her eyes half closed––“he cannothave you!”
“Oh! He wantsme?”
“Yes. Listen, child: I know not why it is, but you awaken something in every life into which you come. The woman I was a year ago and the woman I am to-day meet almost as strangers now. Why? The only answer I can give is, you. I don’t know what you did to people in South America; I can only surmise. Yet of this I am certain, wherever you went you made a path of light. But the effect you have on people differs with differing natures. Just why this is, I do not know. It must have something to do with those mental laws of which I am so ignorant, and of which you know so much.”
Carmen looked at her in wondering anticipation. The Beaubien smiled down into the face upturned so lovingly, and went on:
“From what you have told me about your priest, Josè, I know that you were the light of his life. He loved you to the complete obliteration of every other interest. You have not said so; but I know it. How, indeed, could it be otherwise? On the other hand, that heartless Diego––his mad desire to get possession of you was only animal. Why should you, a child of heaven, arouse such opposite sentiments?”
“Dearest,” said the girl, laying her head on the woman’s knees, “that isn’t what’s worrying you.”
“No––but I think of it so often. And, as for me, you have turned me inside-out.”
Carmen laughed again merrily. “Well, I think this side wears better, don’t you?”
“It is softer––it may not,” returned the woman gently. “But I have no desire to change back.” She bent and kissed the brown hair. “Mr. Ames and I have been––no, not friends. I had no higher ideals than he, and I played his game with him. Then you came. And at a time when he had involved me heavily financially. The Colombian revolution––his cotton deal––he must have foreseen, he is so uncanny––he must have known that to involve me meant control whenever he might need me! He needs me now, for I stand between him and you.”
“You don’t!” Carmen was on her feet. “God stands between me and every form of evil!” She sat down on the arm of the Beaubien’s chair. “Is it because you will not let him have me that he threatens to ruin you financially?”
“Yes. He couldn’t ruin me in reputation, for––” her voice again faded to a whisper, “I haven’t any.”
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“That is not true!” cried the girl, throwing her arms about the woman’s neck. “Your true self is just coming to light! Why, it is beautiful! And I love it so!”
The Beaubien suddenly burst into a flood of tears. The strain of weeks was at last manifesting. “Oh, I have been in the gutter!––he dragged me through the mire!––and I let him! I did it for money, money! I gave my soul for it! I schemed and plotted with him; I ruined and pillaged with him; I murdered reputations and blasted lives with him, that I might get money, dirty, blood-stained money! Oh, Carmen, I didn’t know what I was doing, until you came! And now I’d hang on the cross if I could undo it! But it’s too late! And he has you and me in his clutches, and he is crushing us!” She bent her head and sobbed violently.
Carmen bent over the weeping woman. “Be still, andknowthat I am God.” The Beaubien raised her head and smiled feebly through her tears.
“He governs all, dearest,” whispered Carmen, as she drew the woman’s head to her breast. “And He iseverywhere.”
“Let us go away!” cried the Beaubien, starting up.
“Flee from our problems?” returned the girl. “But they would follow. No, we will stay and meet them, right here!”
The Beaubien’s hand shook as she clasped Carmen’s. “I can’t turn to Kane, nor to Fitch, nor Weston. They are all afraid of him. I’ve ruined Gannette myself––for him! I’ve ruined Mrs. Hawley-Crowles––”
“Mrs. Hawley-Crowles!” exclaimed Carmen, rising.
“Oh, don’t, don’t!” sobbed the suffering woman, clinging to the girl.
“But––how did you do that?”
“I lent her money––took her notes––which I sold again to Mr. Ames.”
“Well, you can buy them back, can’t you? And return the money to her?”
“I can’t! I’ve tried! He refuses to sell them!”
“Then give her your own money.”
“Most that I have is mortgaged to him on the investments I made at his direction,” wailed the woman.
“Well?”
“I will try––I am trying, desperately! I will save her, if I can! But––there is Monsignor Lafelle!”
“Is he working with Mr. Ames?”
“He works with and against him. And I’m sure he holds something over you and me. But, I will send for him––I will renew my vows to his Church––anything to––”
“Listen, dearest,” interrupted Carmen. “I will go to Mr. Ames myself. If I am the cause of it all, I can––”
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“You will not!” cried the Beaubien fiercely. “I––I would kill him!”
“Why, mother dearest!”
The desperate woman put her head in the girl’s lap and sobbed bitterly.
“There is a way out, dearest,” whispered Carmen. “Iknowthere is, no matter what seems to be or to happen, for ‘underneath are the everlasting arms.’ I am not afraid. Mrs. Hawley-Crowles told me this morning that Mrs. Ames intends to give a big reception next week. Of course we will go. And then I will see Mr. Ames and talk with him. Don’t fear, dearest. He will do it for me. And––it will be right, I know.”
And Carmen sat with the repentant woman all that day, struggling with her to close the door upon her sordid past, and to open it wide to “that which is to come.”
The days following were busy ones for many with whom our story is concerned. Every morning saw Carmen on her way to the Beaubien, to comfort and advise. Every afternoon found her yielding gently to the relentless demands of society, or to the tiresome calls of her thoroughly ardent wooer, the young Duke of Altern. Carmen would have helped him if she could. But she found so little upon which to build. And she bore with him largely on account of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, for whom she and the Beaubien were now daily laboring. The young man tacitly assumed proprietorship over the girl, and all society was agog with expectation of the public announcement of their engagement.
Mrs. Hawley-Crowles still came and went upon a tide of unruffled joy. The cornucopia of Fortune lay full at her feet. Her broker, Ketchim, basked in the sunlight of her golden smiles––and quietly sold his own Simití stock on the strength of her patronage. Society fawned and smirked at her approach, and envied her brilliant success, as it copied the cut of her elaborate gowns––all but the deposed Mrs. Ames and her unlovely daughter, who sulked and hated, until they received a call from Monsignor Lafelle. This was shortly after that gentleman’s meeting with Carmen and Father Waite in the Beaubien mansion. And he left the Ames home with an ominous look on his face. “The girl is a menace,” he muttered, “and she deserves her fate.”
The Ames grand reception, promising to be the most brilliant event of the year, barring the famousBal de l’Opéra, was set for Thursday. But neither Mrs. Hawley-Crowles nor Carmen had received invitations. To the former it was evident that there was some mistake. “For it can’t be possible that the183hussy doesn’t intend to invite us!” she argued. But Thursday morning came, and found Mrs. Hawley-Crowles drenched with tears of anxiety and vexation. “I’d call her up and ask, if I dared,” she groaned. But her courage failed. And, to the amazement of the exclusive set, the brilliant function was held without the presence of its acknowledged leaders, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles and her ward, the Inca princess.
On Wednesday night Harris arrived from Denver. His arrival was instantly made known to J. Wilton Ames, who, on the morning following, summoned both him and Philip O. Ketchim to his private office. There were present, also, Monsignor Lafelle and Alonzo Hood. Harris and Ketchim came together. The latter was observed to change color as he timidly entered the room and faced the waiting audience.
“Be seated, gentlemen,” said Ames genially, after cordially shaking hands with them and introducing the churchman. Then, turning to Harris, “You are on your way to Colombia, I learn. Going down to inaugurate work on the Simití holdings, I suppose?”
Harris threw a quick glance at Ketchim. The latter sat blank, wondering if there were any portions of the earth to which Ames’s long arms did not reach.
“As a matter of fact,” Ames continued, leaning back in his chair and pressing the tips of his fingers together before him, “a hitch seems to have developed in Simití proceedings. I am interested, Mr. Ketchim,” turning suddenly and sharply upon that gentleman, “because my brokers have picked up for me several thousand shares of the stock.”
Ketchim’s hair began to rise.
“But,” proceeded Ames calmly, “now that I have put money into it, I learn that the Simití Company has no property whatever in Colombia.”
A haze slowly gathered before Ketchim’s eyes. His ears hummed. His heart throbbed violently. “How do you make that out, Mr. Ames?” he heard Harris say in a voice that seemed to come from an infinite distance. “I myself saw the title papers which old Rosendo had, and saw them transferred to Mr. Ketchim for the Simití Company. Moreover, I personally visited the mine in question.”
“La Libertad? Quite so,” returned Ames. “But, here’s the rub. The property was relocated by this Rosendo, and he secured title to it under the name of the Chicago mine. It was that name which deceived the clerks in the Department of Mines in Cartagena, and caused them to issue title, not knowing that it really was the famous old La Libertad.”
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“Well, I don’t see that there is any ground for confusion.”
“Simply this,” returned Ames evenly: “La Libertad mine, since the death of its former owner, Don Ignacio de Rincón, has belonged to the Church.”
“What!” Harris was on his feet. “By what right does it belong to the Church?”
“By the ancient law of‘en manos muertas’, my friend,” replied Ames, unperturbed.
“Good Lord! what’s that?”
“Our friend, Monsignor Lafelle, representing the Church, will explain,” said Ames, waving a hand toward that gentleman.
Lafelle cleared his throat. “I deeply regret this unfortunate situation, gentlemen,” he began. “But, as Mr. Ames has pointed out, the confusion came about through issuing title to the mine under the name Chicago. Don Ignacio de Rincón, long before his departure from Colombia after the War of Independence, drew up his last will, and, following the established custom among wealthy South Americans of that day, bequeathed this mine, La Libertad, and other property, to the Church, invoking the old law of‘en manos muertas’which, being translated, means, ‘in dead hands.’ Pious Catholics of many lands have done the same throughout the centuries. Such a bequest places property in the custody of the Church; and it may never be sold or disposed of in any way, but all revenue from it must be devoted to the purchase of Masses for the souls in purgatory. It was through the merest chance, I assure you, that your mistake was brought to light. Knowing that our friend, Mr. Ames, had purchased stock in your company, I took the pains to investigate while in Cartagena recently, and made the discovery which unfortunately renders your claim to the mine quite null.”
“God a’mighty!” exploded Harris. “Did you know this?” turning savagely upon the paralyzed Ketchim.
“That,” interposed Ames with cruel significance, “is a matter which he will explain in court.”
Fleeting visions of the large blocks of stock which he had sold; of the widows, orphans, and indigent clergymen whom he had involved; of the notes which the banks held against him; of his questionable deals with Mrs. Hawley-Crowles; and of the promiscuous peddling of his own holdings in the now ruined company, rushed over the clouded mind of this young genius of high finance. His tongue froze, though his trembling body dripped with perspiration. Somehow he got to his feet. Somehow he found the door, and groped his way to a descending elevator. And somehow he lived through that terror-haunted day and night.
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But very early next morning, while his blurred eyes were drinking in the startling report of the Simití Company’s collapse, as set forth in the newspaper which he clutched in his shaking hand, the maid led in a soft-stepping gentleman, who laid a hand upon his quaking shoulder and read to him from a familiar-looking document an irresistible invitation to take up lodgings in the city jail.
There were other events forward at the same time, which came to light that fateful next day. It was noon when Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, after a night of mingled worry and anger over the deliberate or unintentional exclusion of herself and Carmen from the Ames reception the preceding night, descended to her combined breakfast and luncheon. At her plate lay the morning mail, including a letter from France. She tore it open, hastily scanned it, then dropped with a gasp into her chair.
“Father––married to––a French––adventuress! Oh!”
The long-cherished hope of a speedy inheritance of his snug fortune lay blasted at her feet.
The telephone bell rang sharply, and she rose dully to answer it. The call came from the city editor of one of the great dailies. “It is reported,” said the voice, “that your ward, Miss Carmen Ariza, is the illegitimate daughter of a negro priest, now in South America. We would like your denial, for we learn that it was for this reason that you and the young lady were not included among the guests at the Ames reception last evening.”
Mrs. Hawley-Crowles’s legs tottered under her, as she blindly wandered from the telephone without replying. Carmen––the daughter of a priest! Her father a negro––her mother, what? She, a mulatto, illegitimate––!
The stunned woman mechanically took up the morning paper which lay on the table. Her glance was at once attracted to the great headlines announcing the complete exposure of the Simití bubble. Her eyes nearly burst from her head as she grasped its fatal meaning to her. With a low, inarticulate sound issuing from her throat, she turned and groped her way back to her boudoir.
Meanwhile, the automobile in which Carmen was speeding to the Beaubien mansion was approached by a bright, smiling young woman, as it halted for a moment at a street corner. Carmen recognized her as a reporter for one of the evening papers, who had called often at the Hawley-Crowles mansion that season for society items.
“Isn’t it fortunate!” exclaimed the young reporter. “I was186on my way to see you. Our office received a report this morning from some source that your father––you know, there has been some mystery about your parentage––that he was really a priest, of South America. His name––let me think––what did they say it was?”
“Josè?” laughed the innocent girl, utterly unsuspecting. The problem of her descent had really become a source of amusement to her.
“It began with a D, if I am not mistaken. I’m not up on Spanish names,” the young woman returned pleasantly.
“Oh, perhaps you mean Diego.”
“That’s it! Was that your father’s name? We’re very much interested to know.”
“Well, I’m sure I can’t say. It might have been.”
“Then you don’t deny it?”
“No; how can I?” she said, smiling. “I never knew him.”
“But––you think it was, don’t you?”
“Well, I don’t believe it was Padre Diego––he wasn’t a good man.”
“Then you knew him?”
“Oh, very well! I was in his house, in Banco. He used to insist that I was his child.”
“I see. By the way, you knew a woman named Jude, didn’t you? Here in the city.”
“Yes, indeed!” she exclaimed excitedly. “Do you know where she is?”
“No. But she took you out of a house down on––”
“Yes. And I’ve tried to find her ever since.”
“You know Father Waite, too, the ex-priest?”
“Oh, yes, very well. We’re good friends.”
“You and he going to work together, I suppose?”
“Why, I’m sure I don’t know. He’s very unsettled.”
“H’m! yes. Well, I thank you very much. You think this Diego might have been your father? That is, you can’t say positively that he wasn’t?”
“I can’t say positively, no. But now I must go. You can come up to the house and talk about South America, if you want to.”
She nodded pleasantly, and the car moved away. The innocent, ingenuous girl was soon to learn what modern news-gathering and dissemination means in this great Republic. But she rode on, happy in the thought that she and the Beaubien were formulating plans to save Mrs. Hawley-Crowles.
“We’ll arrange it somehow,” said the Beaubien, looking up from her papers when Carmen entered. “Go, dearie, and play the organ while I finish this. Then I will return home with you to have a talk with Mrs. Hawley-Crowles.”
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For hours the happy girl lingered at the beloved organ. The Beaubien at her desk below stopped often to listen. And often she would hastily brush away the tears, and plunge again into her papers. “I suppose I should have told Mrs. Hawley-Crowles,” she said. “But I couldn’t give her any hope. And even now it’s very uncertain. Ameswillyield! I’ll force him to! He knows I can expose him! And yet,” she reflected sadly, “who would believeme?” The morning papers lay still unread upon her table.
Late in the afternoon the Beaubien with Carmen entered her car and directed the chauffeur to drive to the Hawley-Crowles home. As they entered a main thoroughfare they heard the newsboys excitedly crying extras.
“Horrible suicide! Double extra! Big mining scandal! Society woman blows out brains! Double extra!”
Of a sudden a vague, unformed presentiment of impending evil came to the girl. She half rose, and clutched the Beaubien’s hand. Then there flitted through her mind like a beam of light the words of the psalmist: “A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.” She sank back against the Beaubien’s shoulder and closed her eyes.
The car rolled on. Presently the chauffeur turned and said something through the speaking tube.
“What!” cried the Beaubien, springing from the seat. “Merciful heaven! Stop and get a paper at once!” The chauffeur complied.
A loud cry escaped her as she took the sheet and glanced at the startling headlines. Mrs. James Hawley-Crowles, financially ruined, and hurled to disgrace from the pinnacle of social leadership by the awful exposure of the parentage of her ward, had been found in her bedroom, dead, with a revolver clasped in her cold hand.
Watchman, what of the night?The watchman said, The morning cometh.––Isaiah.
Watchman, what of the night?The watchman said, The morning cometh.
––Isaiah.
3
CHAPTER 1
The chill winds of another autumn swirled through the masonry-lined cañons of the metropolis and sighed among the stark trees of its deserted parks. They caught up the tinted leaves that dropped from quivering branches and tossed them high, as Fate wantons with human hopes before she blows her icy breath upon them. They shrieked among the naked spars of theCossack, drifting with her restless master far out upon the white-capped waves. They moaned in low-toned agony among the marble pillars of the Crowles mausoleum, where lay in pitying sleep the misguided woman whose gods of gold and tinsel had betrayed her.
On the outskirts of the Bronx, in a newly opened suburb, a slender girl, with books and papers under her arm, walked slowly against the sharp wind, holding her hat with her free hand, and talking rapidly to a young man who accompanied her. Toward them came an old negro, leaning upon a cane. As he stepped humbly aside to make room, the girl looked up. Then, without stopping, she slipped a few coins into his coat pocket as she passed.
The negro stood in dumb amazement. He was poor––his clothes were thin and worn––but he was not a beggar––he had asked nothing. The girl turned and threw back a smile to him. Then of a sudden there came into the old man’s wrinkled, care-lined face such a look, such a comprehension of that love which knows neither Jew nor Gentile, Greek nor Barbarian, as would have caused even the Rabbis, at the cost of defilement, to pause and seek its heavenly meaning.
A few blocks farther on the strong wind sternly disputed the girl’s right to proceed, and she turned with a merry laugh to her companion. But as she stood, the wind fell, leaving a heap of dead leaves about her feet. Glancing down, something caught her eye. She stooped and took up a two-dollar bill.
Her companion threw her a wondering look; but the girl4made no comment. In silence they went on, until a few minutes more of brisk walking brought them to a newly built, stucco-coated bungalow. Running rapidly up the steps, the girl threw wide the door and called, “Mother dear!”
The Beaubien rose from her sewing to receive the hearty embrace. “Well, dearie?” she said, devouring the sparkling creature with eager eyes. “What luck?”
“We’re registered! Lewis begins his law course at once, and I may take what I wish. And Mr. Hitt’s coming to call to-night and bring a friend, a Mr. Haynerd, an editor. What’s Jude got for supper? My! I’m starved.”
The Beaubien drew the girl to her and kissed her again and again. Then she glanced over her shoulder at the man with a bantering twinkle in her eyes and said, “Don’t you wish you could do that? But you can’t.”
“Yes he can, too, mother,” asserted the girl.
Father Waite sighed. “I’m afraid it wouldn’t look well,” he said. “And, besides, I don’t dare lose my heart to her.”
With a final squeeze the girl tore herself from the Beaubien’s reluctant arms and hurried to the little kitchen. “What is it to-night, Jude?” she demanded, catching the domestic in a vigorous embrace.
“Hist!” said Jude, holding up a finger. “It’s a secret. I’m afraid you’d tell him.”
“Not a word––I promise.”
“Well, then, liver and bacon, with floating island,” she whispered, very mysteriously.
“Oh, goody!” cried Carmen. “He just loves them both!”
Returning to the little parlor, Carmen encountered the fixed gaze of both the Beaubien and Father Waite. “Well?” she demanded, stopping and looking from one to the other.
“What about that two dollars?” said the Beaubien, in a tone of mock severity.
“Oh,” laughed the girl, running to the woman and seating herself in the waiting lap, “he told, didn’t he? Can’t I ever trust you with a secret?” in a tone of rebuke, turning to the man.
“Surely,” he replied, laughing; “and I should not have divulged this had I not seen in the incident something more than mere chance––something meant for us all.”
Then he became serious. “I––I think I have seen the working of a stupendous mental law––am I not right?” addressing the girl. “You saw a need, and met it, unsolicited. You found your own in another’s good.”
The girl smiled at the Beaubien without replying. “What about it, dearie?” the latter asked tenderly.
5
“She need not answer,” said Father Waite, “for we know. She but cast her bread upon the unfathomable ocean of love, and it returned to her, wondrously enriched.”
“If you are going to talk about me, I shall not stay,” declared Carmen, rising. “I’m going out to help Jude.” And she departed for the kitchen, but not without leaving a smile for each of them as she went. And they understood.
The Beaubien and Father Waite remained some moments in silence. Then the woman spoke. “I am learning,” she said. “She is the light that is guiding me. This little incident which you have just related is but a manifestation of the law of love by which she lives. She gave, unasked, and with no desire to be seen and advertised. It returned to her ten-fold. It is always so with her. There was no chance, no miracle, no luck about it. She herself did nothing. It was––it was––only the working of her beloved Christ-principle. Oh, Lewis! if we only knew––”
“Weshallknow, Madam!” declared the man vehemently. “Her secret is but the secret of Jesus himself, which was open to a world too dull to comprehend. Carmen shall teach us. And,” his eyes brightening, “to that end I have been formulating a great plan. That’s why I’ve asked Hitt to come here to-night. I have a scheme to propose. Remember, my dear friend, we are true searchers; and ‘all things work together for good to them that love God.’ Our love of truth and real good is so great that, like the consuming desire of the Jewish nation, it isboundto bring the Christ!”
For three months the Beaubien and Carmen had dwelt together in this lowly environment; and here they had found peace, the first that the tired woman had known since childhood. The sudden culmination of those mental forces which had ejected Carmen from society, crushed Ketchim and a score of others, and brought the deluded Mrs. Hawley-Crowles to a bitter end, had left the Beaubien with dulled sensibilities. Even Ames himself had been shocked into momentary abandonment of his relentless pursuit of humanity by the unanticipateddénoûement. But when he had sufficiently digested the newspaper accounts wherein were set forth in unsparing detail the base rumors of the girl’s parentage and of her removal from a brothel before her sudden elevation to social heights, he rose in terrible wrath and prepared to hunt down to the death the perpetrators of the foul calumny. Whence had come this tale, which even the girl could not refute? From Lafelle? He had sailed for Europe––though but a day before. Ketchim? The man was cringing like a craven murderer in his6cell, for none dared give him bail. Reed? Harris? Was it revenge for his own sharp move in regard to La Libertad? He would have given all he possessed to lay his heavy hands upon the guilty ones! The editors of the great newspapers, perhaps? Ames raged like a wounded lion in the office of every editor in the city. But they were perfectly safe, for the girl, although she told a straightforward story, could not say positively that the published statements concerning her were false. Yet, though few knew it, there were two city editors and several reporters who, in the days immediately following, found it convenient to resign their positions and leave the city before the awful wrath of the powerful man.
Then Ames turned upon his wife. And, after weeks of terror, that browbeaten woman, her hair whitening under the terrible persecution of her relentless master, fled secretly, with her terrified daughter, to England, whither the stupified Duke of Altern and his scandalized mother had betaken themselves immediately following the exposé. Thereupon Ames’s lawyer drew up a bill of divorce, alleging desertion, and laid it before the judge who fed from his master’s hand.
Meantime, the devouring wrath of Ames swept like a prairie fire over the dry, withering stalks of the smart set. He vowed he would take Carmen and flaunt her in the faces of the miserable character-assassins who had sought her ruin! He swore he would support her with his untold millions and force society to acknowledge her its queen! He had it in his power to wreck the husband of every arrogant, supercilious dame in the entire clique! He commenced at once with the unfortunate Gannette. The latter, already tottering, soon fell before the subtle machinations of Hodson and his able cohorts. Then, as a telling example to the rest, Ames pursued him to the doors of the Lunacy Commission, and rested not until that body had condemned his victim to a living death in a state asylum. Kane, Fitch, and Weston fled to cover, and concentrated their guns upon their common enemy. The Beaubien alone stood out against him for three months. Her existence was death in life; but from the hour that she first read the newspaper intelligence regarding Carmen and the unfortunate Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, she hid the girl so completely that Ames was effectually balked in his attempts at drastic vindication in her behalf.
But this served only to intensify his anger, and he thereupon turned its full force upon the lone woman. Driven to desperation, she stood at length at bay and hurled at him her remaining weapon. Again the social set was rent, and this time by the report that the black cloud of bigamy hung over Ames. It was7a fat season for the newspapers, and they made the most of it. As a result, several of them found themselves with libel suits on their hands. The Beaubien herself was confronted with a suit for defamation of character, and was obliged to testify before the judge whom Ames owned outright that she had but the latter’s word for the charge, and that, years since, in a moment of maudlin sentimentalism, he had confessed to her that, as far as he knew, the wife of his youth was still living. The suit went against her. Ames then took his heavy toll, and retired within himself to sulk and plan future assaults and reprisals.
The Beaubien, crushed, broken, sick at heart, gathered up the scant remains of her once large fortune, disposed of her effects, and withdrew to the outskirts of the city. She would have left the country, but for the fact that the tangled state of her finances necessitated her constant presence in New York while her lawyers strove to bring order out of chaos and placate her raging persecutor. To flee meant complete abandonment of her every financial resource to Ames. And so, with the assistance of Father Waite and Elizabeth Wall, who placed themselves at once under her command, she took a little house, far from the scenes of her troubles, and quietly removed thither with Carmen.
One day shortly thereafter a woman knocked timidly at her door. Carmen saw the caller and fled into her arms. “It’s Jude!” she cried joyously.
The woman had come to return the string of pearls which the girl had thrust into her hands on the night of the Charity Ball. Nobody knew she had them. She had not been able to bring herself to sell them. She had wanted––oh, she knew not what, excepting that she wanted to see again the girl whose image had haunted her since that eventful night when the strange child had wandered into her abandoned life. Yes, she would have given her testimony as to Carmen; but who would have believed her, a prostitute? And––but the radiant girl gathered her in her arms and would not let her go without a promise to return.
And return she did, many times. And each time there was a change in her. The Beaubien always forced upon her a little money and a promise to come back. It developed that Jude was cooking in a cheap down-town restaurant. “Why not for us, mother, if she will?” asked Carmen one day. And, though the sin-stained woman demurred and protested her unworthiness, yet the love that knew no evil drew her irresistibly, and she yielded at length, with her heart bursting.
Then, in her great joy, Carmen’s glad cry echoed through the little house: “Oh, mother dear, we’re free, we’re free!”
8
But the Beaubien was not free. Night after night her sleepless pillow was wet with bitter tears of remorse, when the accusing angel stood before her and relentlessly revealed each act of shameful meanness, of cruel selfishness, of sordid immorality in her wasted life. And, lastly, the weight of her awful guilt in bringing about the destruction of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles lay upon her soul like a mountain. Oh, if she had only foreseen even a little of it! Oh, that Carmen had come to her before––or not at all! And yet she could not wish that she had never known the girl. Far from it! The day of judgment was bound to come. She saw that now. And, but for the comforting presence of that sweet child, she had long since become a raving maniac. It was Carmen who, in those first long nights of gnawing, corroding remorse, wound her soft arms about the Beaubien’s neck, as she lay tossing in mental agony on her bed, and whispered the assurances of that infinite Love which said, “Behold, I make all things new!” It was Carmen who whispered to her of the everlasting arms beneath, and of the mercy reflected by him who, though on the cross, forgave mankind because of their pitiable ignorance. It is ignorance, always ignorance of what constitutes real good, that makes men seek it through wrong channels. The Beaubien had sought good––all the world does––but she had never known that God alone is good, and that men cannot find it until they reflect Him. And so she had “missed the mark.” Oh, sinful, mesmerized world, ye shall find Me––the true good––only when ye seek Me with all your heart! And yet, “I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.” Only a God who is love could voice such a promise! And Carmen knew; and she hourly poured her great understanding of love into the empty heart of the stricken Beaubien.
Then at last came days of quiet, and planning for the future. The Beaubien would live––yes, but not for herself. Nay, that life had gone out forever, nor would mention of it pass her lips again. The Colombian revolution––her mendacious connivances with Ames––her sinful, impenitent life of gilded vice––aye, the door was now closed against that, absolutely and forever more. She had passed through the throes of a new birth; she had risen again from the bed of anguish; but she rose stripped of her worldly strength. Carmen was now the staff upon which she leaned.
And Carmen––what had been her thought when foul calumny laid its sooty touch upon her? What had been the working of her mind when that world which she had sought to illumine with the light of her own purity had cast her out?9
When the blow fell the portals of her mind closed at once against every accusing thought, against every insidious suggestion of defeat, of loss, of dishonor. The arrows of malice, as well as those of self-pity and condemnation, snapped and fell, one by one, as they hurtled vainly against the whole armor of God wherewith the girl stood clad. Self sank into service; and she gathered the bewildered, suffering Beaubien into her arms as if she had been a child. She would have gone to Ames, too, had she been permitted––not to plead for mercy, but to offer the tender consolation and support which, despite the havoc he was committing, she knew he needed even more than the Beaubien herself.
“Paul had been a murderer,” she often said, as she sat in the darkness alone with the suffering woman and held her trembling hand. “But he became the chief of apostles. Think of it! When the light came, he shut the door against the past. If he hadn’t, dearest, he never could have done what he did. And you, and Mr. Ames, will have to do the same.” And this the Beaubien could do, and did, after months of soul-racking struggle. But Ames sat in spiritual darkness, whipped by the foul brood of lust and revenge, knowing not that the mountainous wrath which he hourly heaped higher would some day fall, and bury him fathoms deep.
Throughout the crisis Father Waite had stood by them stanchly. And likewise had Elizabeth Wall. “I’ve just longed for some reasonable excuse to become a social outcast,” the latter had said, as she was helping Carmen one day to pack her effects prior to removing from the Hawley-Crowles mansion. “I long for a hearthstone to which I can attach myself––”
“Then attach yourself to ours!” eagerly interrupted Carmen.
“I’ll do it!” declared Miss Wall. “For I know that now you are really going to live––and I want to live as you will. Moreover––” She paused and smiled queerly at the girl––“I am quite in love with your hero, Father Waite, you know.”
Harris, too, made a brief call before departing again for Denver. “I’ve got to hustle for a living now,” he explained, “and it’s me for the mountains once more! New York is no place for such a tender lamb as I. Oh, I’ve been well trimmed––but I know enough now to keep away from this burg!”
While he was yet speaking there came a loud ring at the front door of the little bungalow, followed immediately by the entrance of the manager of a down-town vaudeville house. He plunged at once into his errand. He would offer Carmen one hundred dollars a week, and a contract for six months, to appear twice daily in his theater. “She’ll make a roar!” he asserted. “Heavens, Madam! but she did put it over the society10ginks.” And the Beaubien, shivering at the awful proposal, was glad Harris was there to lead the zealous theatrical man firmly to the door.
Lastly, came one Amos A. Hitt, gratuitously, to introduce himself as one who knew Cartagena and was likely to return there in the not distant future, where he would be glad to do what he might to remove the stain which had been laid upon the name of the fair girl. The genuineness of the man stood out so prominently that the Beaubien took him at once into her house, where he was made acquainted with Carmen.
“Oh,” cried the girl, “Cartagena! Why, I wonder––do you know Padre Josè de Rincón?”
“A priest who once taught there in the University, many years ago? And who was sent up the river, to Simití? Yes, well.”
Then Carmen fell upon his neck; and there in that moment was begun a friendship that grew daily stronger, and in time bore richest fruit. It soon became known that Hitt was giving a course of lectures that fall in the University, covering the results of his archaeological explorations; so Carmen and Father Waite went often to hear him. And the long breaths of University atmosphere which the girl inhaled stimulated a desire for more. Besides, Father Waite had some time before announced his determination to study there that winter, as long as his meager funds would permit.
“I shall take up law,” he had one day said. “It will open to me the door of the political arena, where there is such great need of real men, men who stand for human progress, patriotism, and morality. I shall seek office––not for itself, but for the good I can do, and the help I can be in a practical way to my fellow-men. I have a little money. I can work my way through.”
Carmen shared the inspiration; and so she, too, with the Beaubien’s permission, applied for admittance to the great halls of learning, and was accepted.
“And now,” began Father Waite that evening, when Hitt and his friend had come, and, to the glad surprise of Carmen, Elizabeth Wall had driven up in her car to take the girl for a ride, but had yielded to the urgent invitation to join the little conference, “my plan, in which I invite you to join, is, briefly,to study this girl!”
Carmen’s eyes opened wide, and her face portrayed blank amazement, as Father Waite stood pointing gravely to her. Nor were the others less astonished––all but the Beaubien. She nodded her head comprehendingly.