CHAPTER 8
Mrs. James Hawley-Crowles, more keenly perceptive than her sister, had seized upon Carmen with avidity bred of hope long deferred. The scourge of years of fruitless social striving had rendered her desperate, and she would have staged a ballet on her dining table, with her own ample self aspremière danseuse, did the attraction but promise recognition from the blasé members of fashionable New York’s ultra-conservative set. From childhood she had looked eagerly forward through the years with an eye single to such recognition as life’s desideratum. To this end she had bartered both youth and beauty with calculated precision for the Hawley-Crowles money bags; only to weep floods of angry tears when the bargain left her social status unchanged, and herself tied to a decrepit old rounder, whose tarnished name wholly neutralized the purchasing power of his ill-gotten gold. Fortunately for the reputations of them both, her husband had the good sense to depart this life ere the divorce proceedings which she had long had in contemplation were instituted; whereupon the stricken widow had him carefully incinerated and his ashes tenderly deposited in a chaste urn in a mausoleum which her architect had taken oath cost more than the showy Ames vault by many thousands. The period of decorous mourning past, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles blithely doffed her weeds and threw66herself again into the terrific competition for social standing, determined this time that it should be a warfare to the death.
And so it bade fair to prove to her, when the eminent nerve specialist, Dr. Bascom Ross, giving a scant half hour to the consideration of her case, at the modest charge of one hundred dollars, warned her to declare a truce and flee to the Alps for unalloyed rest. She complied, and had returned with restored health and determination just as her sister came up from South America, bringing the odd little “savage” whom Reed had discovered in the wilds of Guamocó. A prolonged week-end at Newport, the last of the summer season, accounted for her absence from the city when Reed brought Carmen to her house, where he and his wife were making their temporary abode. Six months later, in her swift appraisal of the girl in the Elwin school, to whom she had never before given a thought, she seemed to see a light.
“It does look like a desperate chance, I admit,” she said, when recounting her plans to her sister a day or so later. “But I’ve played every other card in my hand; and now this girl is going to be either a trump or a joker. All we need is a word from the Beaubien, and the following week will see an invitation at our door from Mrs. J. Wilton Ames. The trick is to reach the Beaubien. That I calculate to do through Carmen. And I’m going to introduce the girl as an Inca princess. Why not? It will make a tremendous hit.”
Mrs. Reed was not less ambitious than her sister, but hitherto she had lacked the one essential to social success, money. In addition, she had committed the egregious blunder of marrying for love. And now that the honeymoon had become a memory, and she faced again her growing ambition, with a struggling husband who had neither name nor wealth to aid her, she had found her own modest income of ten thousand a year, which she had inherited from her mother, only an aggravation. True, in time her wandering father would pass away; and there was no doubt that his vast property would fall to his daughters, his only living kin. But at present, in view of his aggressively good health and disregard for his relatives, her only recourse was to attach herself to her wealthy, sharp-witted sister, and hope to be towed safely into the social swim, should that scheming lady ultimately achieve her high ambition.
Just why Mrs. Hawley-Crowles should have seen in Carmen a means of reaching a woman of the stamp of the Beaubien, and through her the leader of the most exclusive social set in the metropolis, is difficult to say. But thus does the human mind often seek to further its own dubious aims through guileless67innocence and trust. Perhaps Mrs. Hawley-Crowles had likewise a slight trace of that clairvoyance of wisdom which so characterized the girl. But with this difference, that she knew not why she was led to adopt certain means; while Carmen, penetrating externals, consciously sought to turn those who would employ her into channels for the expression of her own dominant thought. Be that as it may, the Beaubien was now the stone before the door of their hope, and Carmen the lever by which these calculating women intended it should be moved.
“The Beaubien, my dear,” explained Mrs. Hawley-Crowles to her inquisitive sister, whose life had been lived almost entirely away from New York, “is J. Wilton Ames’s very particular friend, of long standing. As I told you, I have recently been going through my late unpleasant husband’s effects, and have unearthed letters and memoranda which throw floods of light upon Jim’s early indiscretions and his association with both the Beaubien and Ames. Jim once told me, in a burst of alcoholic confidence, that she had saved him from J. Wilton’s clutches in the dim past, and for that he owed her endless gratitude, as well as for never permitting him to darken her door again. Now I have never met the Beaubien. Few women have. But I dare say she knows all about us. However, the point that concerns us now is this: she has a hold on Ames, and, unless rumor is wide of the truth, when she hints to him that his wife’s dinner list or yachting party seems incomplete without such or such a name, why, the list is immediately revised.”
The position which the Beaubien held was, if Madam On-dit was not to be wholly discredited, to say the least, unique. It was not as social dictator that she posed, for in a great cosmopolitan city where polite society is infinitely complex in its make-up such a position can scarcely be said to exist. It was rather as an influence that she was felt, an influence never seen, but powerful, subtle, and wholly inexplicable, working now through this channel, now through that, and effecting changes in the social complexion of conservative New York that were utterly in defiance of the most rigid convention. Particularly was her power felt in the narrow circle over which Mrs. J. Wilton Ames presided, by reason of her own and her husband’s aristocratic descent, and the latter’s bursting coffers and supremacy in the realm of finance.
Only for her sagacity, the great influence of the woman would have been short-lived. But, whatever else might be said of her, the Beaubien was wise, with a discretion that was positively uncanny. Tall, voluptuous, yet graceful as a fawn; black, wavy, abundant hair; eyes whose dark, liquid depths68held unfathomable mysteries; gracious, affable, yet keen as a razor blade; tender, even sentimental on occasions, with an infinite capacity for either love or hate, this many-sided woman, whose brilliant flashes of wit kept the savant or roué at her table in an uproar, could, if occasion required, found an orphanage or drop a bichloride tablet in the glass of her rival with the same measure of calculating precision and disdain of the future. It was said of her that she might have laid down her life for the man she loved. It is probable that she never met with one worth the sacrifice.
While yet in short dresses she had fled from her boarding school, near a fashionable resort in the New Hampshire hills, with a French Colonel, Gaspard de Beaubien, a man twice her age. With him she had spent eight increasingly miserable years in Paris. Then, her withered romance carefully entombed in the secret places of her heart, she secured a divorce from the roistering colonel, together with a small settlement, and set sail for New York to hunt for larger and more valuable game.
With abundant charms and sang-froid for her capital, she rented an expensive apartment in a fashionable quarter of the city, and then settled down to business. Whether she would have fallen upon bad days or not will never be known, for the first haul of her widespread net landed a fish of supreme quality, J. Wilton Ames. On the plea of financial necessity, she had gone boldly to his office with the deed to a parcel of worthless land out on the moist sands of the New Jersey shore, which the unscrupulous Gaspard de Beaubien had settled upon her when she severed the tie which bound them, and which, after weeks of careful research, she discovered adjoined a tract owned by Ames. Pushing aside office boy, clerk, and guard, she reached the innersanctumof the astonished financier himself and offered to sell at a ruinous figure. A few well-timed tears, an expression of angelic innocence on her beautiful face, a despairing gesture or two with her lovely arms, coupled with the audacity which she had shown in forcing an entrance into his office, effected the man’s capitulation. She was then in her twenty-fourth year.
The result was that she cast her net no more, but devoted herself thenceforth with tender consecration to her important catch. In time Ames brought a friend, the rollicking James Hawley-Crowles, to call upon the charming Beaubien. In time, too, as was perfectly natural, a rivalry sprang up between the men, which the beautiful creature watered so tenderly that the investments which she was enabled to make under the direction of these powerful rivals flourished like Jack’s beanstalk, and she was soon able to leave her small apartment and take a suite but a few blocks from the Ames mansion.
69
At length the strain between Ames and Hawley-Crowles reached the breaking point; and then the former decided that the woman’s bewitching smiles should thenceforth be his alone. He forthwith drew the seldom sober Hawley-Crowles into certain business deals, with the gentle connivance of the suave Beaubien herself, and at length sold the man out short and presented a claim on every dollar he possessed. Hawley-Crowles awoke from his blissful dream sober and trimmed. But then the Beaubien experienced one of her rare and inexplicable revulsions of the ethical sense, and a compromise had to be effected, whereby the Hawley-Crowles fortune was saved, though the man should see the Beaubien no more.
By this time her beauty was blooming in its utmost profusion, and her prowess had been fairly tried. She took a large house, furnished it like unto a palace, and proceeded to throw her gauntlet in the face of the impregnable social caste. There she drew about her a circle of bon-vivants, artists, littérateurs, politicians, and men of finance––with never a woman in the group. Yet in her new home she established a social code as rigid as the Median law, and woe to him within her gates who thereafter, with or without intent, passed the bounds of respectful decorum. His name was heard no more on her rosy lips.
Her dinners were Lucullan in their magnificence; and over the rare wines and imperial cigars which she furnished, her guests passed many a tip and prognostication anent the market, which she in turn quietly transmitted to her brokers. She came to understand the game thoroughly, and, while it was her heyday of glorious splendor, she played hard. She had bartered every priceless gift of nature for gold––and she made sure that the measure she received in return was full. Her gaze was ever upon the approaching day when those charms would be but bitter memories; and it was her grim intention that when it came silken ease should compensate for their loss.
Ten years passed, and the Beaubien’s reign continued with undimmed splendor. In the meantime, the wife of J. Wilton Ames had reached the zenith of her ambitions and was the acknowledged leader in New York’s most fashionable social circle. These two women never met. But, though the Beaubien had never sought the entrée to formal society, preferring to hold her own court, at which no women attended, she exercised a certain control over it through her influence upon the man Ames. What Mrs. Ames knew of the long-continued relations between her husband and this woman was never divulged. And doubtless she was wholly satisfied that his70wealth and power afforded her the position which her heart had craved; and, that secure, she was willing to leave him to his own methods of obtaining diversion. But rumor was persistent, maliciously so; and rumor declared that the list of this envied society dame was not drawn up without the approval of her husband and the woman with whom his leisure hours were invariably spent. Hence the hope of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, whose doting mate had once fawned in the perfumed wake of the luxurious Beaubien.
Carmen, whose wishes had not been consulted, had voiced no objection whatever to returning to the Hawley-Crowles home. Indeed, she secretly rejoiced that an opportunity had been so easily afforded for escape from the stifling atmosphere of the Elwin school, and for entrance into the great world of people and affairs, where she believed the soil prepared for the seed she would plant. That dire surprises awaited her, of which she could not even dream, did not enter her calculations. Secure in her quenchless faith, she gladly accepted the proffered shelter of the Hawley-Crowles mansion, and the protection of its worldly, scheming inmates.
In silent, wide-eyed wonder, in the days that followed, the girl strove to accustom herself to the luxury of her surroundings, and to the undreamed of marvels which made for physical comfort and well-being. Each installment of the ample allowance which Mrs. Hawley-Crowles settled upon her seemed a fortune––enough, she thought, to buy the whole town of Simití! Her gowns seemed woven on fairy looms, and often she would sit for hours, holding them in her lap and reveling in their richness. Then, when at length she could bring herself to don the robes and peep timidly into the great pier glasses, she would burst into startled exclamations and hide her face in her hands, lest the gorgeous splendor of the beautiful reflection overpower her.
“Oh,” she would exclaim, “it can’t be that the girl reflected there ever lived and dressed as I did in Simití! I wonder, oh, I wonder if Padre Josè knew that these things were in the world!”
And then, as she leaned back in her chair and gave herself into the hands of the admiring French maid, she would close her eyes and dream that the fairy-stories which the patient Josè had told her again and again in her distant home town had come true, and that she had been transformed into a beautiful princess, who would some day go in search of the sleeping priest and wake him from his mesmeric dream.
Then would come the inevitable thought of the little newsboy of Cartagena, to whom she had long since begun to send71monetary contributions––and of her unanswered letters––of the war devastating her native land––of rudely severed ties, and unimaginable changes––and she would start from her musing and brush away the gathering tears, and try to realize that her present situation and environment were but means to an end, opportunities which her God had given her to do His work, with no thought of herself.
A few days after Carmen had been installed in her new home, during which she had left the house only for her diurnal ride in the big limousine, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles announced her readiness to fire the first gun in the attack upon the Beaubien. “My dear,” she said to her sister, as they sat alone in the luxurious sun-parlor, “my washerwoman dropped a remark the other day which gave me something to build on. Her two babies are in the General Orphan Asylum, up on Twenty-third street. Well, it happens that this institution is the Beaubien’s sole charity––in fact, it is her particular hobby. I presume that she feels she is now a middle-aged woman, and that the time is not far distant when she will have to close up her earthly accounts and hand them over to the heavenly auditor. Anyway, this last year or two she has suddenly become philanthropic, and when the General Orphan Asylum was building she gave some fifty thousand dollars for a cottage in her name. What’s more, the trustees of the Asylum accepted it without the wink of an eyelash. Funny, isn’t it?
“But here’s the point: some rich old fellow has willed the institution a fund whose income every year is used to buy clothing for the kiddies; and they have a sort of celebration on the day the duds are given out, and the public is invited to inspect the place and the inmates, and eat a bit, and look around generally. Well, my washerwoman tells me that the Beaubien always attends these annual celebrations. The next one, I learn, comes in about a month. I propose that we attend; take Carmen; ask permission for her to sing to the children, and thereby attract the attention of the gorgeous Beaubien, who will be sure to speak to the girl, who is herself an orphan, and, ten to one, want to see more of her. The rest is easy. I’ll have a word to say regarding our immense debt of gratitude to her for saving Jim’s fortune years ago when he was entangled in her net––and, well, if that scheme doesn’t work, I have other strings to my bow.”
But it did work, and with an ease that exceeded the most sanguine hopes of its projector. On the day that the General Orphan Asylum threw wide its doors to the public, the Hawley-Crowles limousine rubbed noses with the big French car of the Beaubien in the street without; while within the building the72Beaubien held the hand of the beautiful girl whose voluntary singing had spread a veil of silence over the awed spectators in the great assembly room, and, looking earnestly down into the big, trusting, brown eyes, said: “My dear child, I want to know you.” Then, turning to the eager, itching Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, “I shall send my car for her to-morrow afternoon, with your permission.”
With her permission! Heavens! Mrs. Hawley-Crowles wildly hugged her sister and the girl all the way home––then went to bed that night with tears of apprehension in her washed-out eyes, lest she had shown herself too eager in granting the Beaubien’s request. But her fears were turned to exultation when the Beaubien car drew up at her door the following day at three, and the courteous French chauffeur announced his errand. A few moments later, while the car glided purring over the smooth asphalt, Carmen, robed like a princess, lay back in the cushions and dreamed of the poor priest in the dead little town so far away.
CHAPTER 9
“Sing it again, dear. I know you are tired, but I want to hear that song just once more. Somehow it seems to bring up thoughts of––of things that might have been.” The Beaubien’s voice sank to a whisper as she finished.
Carmen laughed happily and prepared to repeat the weird lament which had so fascinated the Reverend Doctor Jurges a few days before.
“I––I don’t know why that song affects me so,” mused the Beaubien, when the girl had finished and returned to the seat beside her. Then, abruptly: “I wish you could play the pipe-organ out in the hall. I put twelve thousand dollars into it, and I can’t even play five-finger exercises on it.”
“Twelve thousand dollars!” exclaimed Carmen, drawing a long breath, while her eyes dilated.
The woman laughed. “Would that buy your beloved Simití?” she asked. “Well, you poor, unsophisticated girl, suppose we just go down there and buy the whole town. It would at least give me an interest in life. Do you think I could stand the heat there? But tell me more about it. How did you live, and what did you do? And who is this Josè? And are you really descended from the old Incas?”
They were alone in the darkened music room, and the soft-stepping, liveried butler had just set the tea table before them,73At one end of the long room a cheery fire snapped and crackled in the huge fireplace, tempering the sharpness of the early spring day and casting a ruddy glow upon the tapestried walls and polished floor in front, where dozed the Beaubien’s two “babies,” Japanese and Pekingese spaniels of registered pedigree and fabulous value. Among the heavy beams of the lofty ceiling grotesque shadows danced and flickered, while over the costly rugs and rare skins on the floor below subdued lights played in animated pantomime. Behind the magnificent grand piano a beautifully wrought harp reflected a golden radiance into the room. Everything in the woman’s environment was softened into the same degree of voluptuousness which characterized her and the life of sybaritic ease which she affected.
From the moment Carmen entered the house she had been charmed, fascinated, overpowered by the display of exhaustless wealth and the rich taste exhibited in its harmonious manifestation. The Hawley-Crowles home had seemed to her the epitome of material elegance and comfort, far exceeding the most fantastic concepts of her childish imagination, when she had listened enraptured to Padre Josè’s compelling stories of the great world beyond Simití. But the gorgeous web of this social spider made even the Hawley-Crowles mansion suffer in comparison.
“And yet,” said the amused Beaubien, when Carmen could no longer restrain her wonder and admiration, “this is but a shed beside the new Ames house, going up on Fifth Avenue. I presume he will put not less than ten millions into it before it is finished.”
“Ten millions! In just a house!” Carmen dared not attempt to grasp the complex significance of such an expenditure.
“Why, is that such a huge amount, child?” asked the Beaubien, as accustomed to think in eight figures as in two. “But, I forget that you are from the jungle. Yet, who would imagine it?” she mused, gazing with undisguised admiration at the beautiful, animated girl before her.
Silence then fell upon them both. Carmen was struggling with the deluge of new impressions; and the woman fastened her eyes upon her as if she would have them bore deep into the soul of whose rarity she was becoming slowly aware. What thoughts coursed through the mind of the Beaubien as she sat studying the girl through the tempered light, we may not know. What she saw in Carmen that attracted her, she herself might not have told. Had she, too, this ultra-mondaine, this creature of gold and tinsel, felt the spell of the girl’s great innocence and purity of thought, her righteousness? Or did74she see in her something that she herself might once have been––something that all her gold, and all the wealth of Ormus or of Ind could never buy?
“What have you got,” she suddenly, almost rudely, exclaimed, “that I haven’t?” And then the banality of the question struck her, and she laughed harshly.
“Why,” said Carmen, looking up quickly and beaming upon the woman, “you have everything! Oh, what more could you wish?”
“You,” returned the woman quickly, though she knew not why she said it. And yet, memory was busy uncovering those bitter days when, in the first agony of marital disappointment, she had, with hot, streaming tears, implored heaven to give her a child. But the gift had been denied; and her heart had shrunk and grown heavily calloused.
Then she spoke more gently, and there was that in her voice which stirred the girl’s quick sympathy. “Yes, you have youth, and beauty. They are mine no longer. But I could part with them, gladly, if only there were anything left.”
Carmen instantly rose and went swiftly to her. Forgetful of caste, decorum, convention, everything but the boundless love which she felt for all mankind, she put her arms about the worldly woman’s neck and kissed her.
For a moment the Beaubien sat in speechless surprise. It was the only manifestation of selfless love that had ever come into her sordid experience. Was it possible that this was spontaneous? that it was an act of real sympathy, and not a clever ruse to win her from behind the mask of affection? Her own kisses, she knew, were bestowed only for favors. Alas! they drew not many now, although time was when a single one might win a brooch or a string of pearls.
The girl herself quickly met the woman’s groping thought. “I’m in the world to show what love will do,” she murmured; “and I love you.” Had she not thus solved every problem from earliest childhood?
The Beaubien melted. Not even a heart of stone could withstand the solvent power of such love. Her head dropped upon her breast, and she wept.
“Don’t cry,” said Carmen, tenderly caressing the bepowdered cheek. “Why, we are all God’s children; we all have one another; you have me, and I have you; and God means us all to be happy.”
The Beaubien looked up, wondering. Her variegated life included no such tender experience as this. She had long since ceased to shed aught but tears of anger. But now––
She clutched the girl to her and kissed her eagerly; then75gently motioned her back to her chair. “Don’t mind it,” she smiled, with swimming eyes, and a shade of embarrassment. “I don’t know of anything that would help me as much as a good cry. If I could have had a daughter like you, I should––but never mind now.” She tried to laugh, as she wiped her eyes.
Then an idea seemed to flash through her jaded brain, and she became suddenly animated. “Why––listen,” she said; “don’t you want to learn the pipe-organ? Will you come here and take lessons? I will pay for them; I will engage the best teacher in New York; and you shall take two or three a week, and use the big organ out in the hall. Will you?”
Carmen’s heart gave a great leap. “Oh!” she exclaimed, her eyes dancing. “But I must ask Mrs. Reed, you know.”
“I’ll do it myself,” returned the woman with growing enthusiasm. “William,” she directed, when the butler responded to her summons, “get Mrs. Hawley-Crowles on the wire at once. But who is coming, I wonder?” glancing through the window at an automobile that had drawn up at her door. “Humph!” a look of vexation mantling her face, “the Right Reverend Monsignor Lafelle. Well,” turning to Carmen, “I suppose I’ll have to send you home now, dear. But tell Mrs. Hawley-Crowles that I shall call for you to-morrow afternoon, and that I shall speak to her at that time about your music lessons. William, take Monsignor into the morning room, and then tell Henri to bring the car to the porte-cochère for Miss Carmen. Good-bye, dear,” kissing the bright, upturned face of the waiting girl. “I wish I could––but, well, don’t forget that I’m coming for you to-morrow.”
That afternoon Mrs. Hawley-Crowles directed her French tailor to cable to Paris for advance styles. Twenty-four hours later she hastened with outstretched arms to greet the Beaubien, waiting in the reception room. Oh, yes, they had heard often of each other; and now were so pleased to meet! New York was such a whirlpool, and it was so difficult to form desirable friendships. Yes, the Beaubien had known the late-lamented Hawley-Crowles; but, dear! dear! that was years and years ago, before he had married, and when they were both young and foolish. And––
“My dear Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, chance enabled him and me to be mutually helpful at a time when I was in sore need of a friend; and the debt of gratitude is not yours to me, but mine to your kind husband.”
Mrs. Hawley-Crowles could have hugged her on the spot. What cared she that her husband’s always unsavory name had been linked with this woman’s? She had married the76roistering blade for his bank account only. Any other male whose wealth ran into seven figures would have done as well, or better.
And Carmen? Bless you, no! To be sure, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles gratefully accepted the use of the organ and the Beaubien mansion for the girl; but she herself insisted upon bearing the expense of the lessons. Carmen had wonderful musical talent. Together, she and the Beaubien, they would foster and develop it. Moreover, though of course this must follow later, she intended to give the girl every social advantage befitting her beauty, her talents, and her station.
And then, when the Beaubien, who knew to a second just how long to stay, had departed, taking Carmen with her, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles turned to her sister with her face flushed with anger. “Did you see that?” she exclaimed, while hot tears suffused her eyes. “The hussy went away actually laughing at me! What do you suppose she’s got up her sleeve? But, let me tell you, she’ll not fool me! I’ll slap that arrogant Ames woman yet; and then, when I’ve done that, I’ll give the Beaubien something to think about besides the way she did up poor old Jim!”
There was now but one cloud that cast its dark shadow across the full splendor of Carmen’s happiness, the silence that shrouded Simití. But Harris was preparing to return to Colombia, and his trip promised a solution of the mystery of her unanswered letters. For weeks Carmen had struggled to teach him Spanish, with but small measure of success. The gift of tongues was not his. “You’ll have to go back with me and act as interpreter,” he said one day, when they were alone in the Hawley-Crowles parlor. Then a curious light came into his eyes, and he blurted, “Will you?”
But the girl turned the question aside with a laugh, though she knew not from what depths it had sprung. Harris shrugged his broad shoulders and sighed. He had not a hundred dollars to his name.
Yet he had prospects, not the least of which was the interest he shared with Reed in La Libertad. For, despite the disturbed state of affairs in Colombia, Simití stock had sold rapidly, under the sedulous care of Ketchim and his loyal aids, and a sufficient fund had been accumulated to warrant the inauguration of development work on the mine. A few years hence Harris should be rich from that source alone.
Reed was still in California, although the alluring literature which Ketchim was scattering broadcast bore his name as consulting engineer to the Simití Development Company. His77wife had continued her temporary abode in the Hawley-Crowles mansion, while awaiting with what fortitude she could command the passing of her still vigorous father, and the results of her defiant sister’s assaults upon the Ames set.
Carmen’s days were crowded full. The wonderful organ in the Beaubien mansion had cast a spell of enchantment over her soul, and daily she sat before it, uncovering new marvels and losing herself deeper and deeper in its infinite mysteries. Her progress was commensurate with her consecration, and brought exclamations of astonishment to the lips of her now devoted Beaubien. Hour after hour the latter would sit in the twilight of the great hall, with her eyes fastened upon the absorbed girl, and her leaden soul slowly, painfully struggling to lift itself above the murk and dross in which it had lain buried for long, meaningless years. They now talked but little, this strange woman and the equally strange girl. Their communion was no longer of the lips. It was the silent yearning of a dry, desolate heart, striving to open itself to the love which the girl was sending far and wide in the quenchless hope that it might meet just such a need. For Carmen dwelt in the spirit, and she instinctively accepted her splendid material environment as the gift, not of man, but of the great divine Mind, which had led her into this new world that she might be a channel for the expression of its love to the erring children of mortals.
She came and went quietly, and yet with as much confidence as if the house belonged to her. At first the Beaubien smiled indulgently. And then her smile became a laugh of eager joy as she daily greeted her radiant visitor, whose entrance into the great, dark house was always followed by a flood of sunshine, and whose departure marked the setting in of night to the heart-hungry woman. In the first days of their association the Beaubien could turn easily from the beautiful girl to the group of cold, scheming men of the world who filled her evenings and sat about her board. But as days melted into weeks, she became dimly conscious of an effort attaching to the transition; and the hour at length arrived when she fully realized that she was facing the most momentous decision that had ever been evolved by her worldly mode of living. But that was a matter of slow development through many months.
Meantime, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles trod the clouds. A week after Carmen began the study of the organ she boldly ventured to accompany her one day to the Beaubien citadel. She was graciously received, and departed with the Beaubien’s promise to return the call. Thereupon she set about revising her own social list, and dropped several names which she now felt could serve her no longer. Her week-end at Newport, just78prior to her visit to the Elwin school, had marked the close of the gay season in the city, and New York had entered fully upon its summersiesta. Even the theaters and concert halls were closed, and the metropolis was nodding its weary head dully and sinking into somnolence. It was exactly what Mrs. Hawley-Crowles desired. The summer interim would give her time to further her plans and prepare the girl for her socialdébutin the early winter. “And Milady Ames will be mentioned in the papers next day as assisting at the function––the cat!” she muttered savagely, as she laid aside her revised list of social desirables.
But in preparing Carmen that summer for her subsequent entry into polite society Mrs. Hawley-Crowles soon realized that she had assumed a task of generous proportions. In the first place, despite all efforts, the girl could not be brought to a proper sense of money values. Her eyes were ever gaping in astonishment at what Mrs. Hawley-Crowles and her sister regarded as the most moderate of expenditures, and it was only when the Beaubien herself mildly hinted to them that ingenuousness was one of the girl’s greatest social assets, that they learned to smile indulgently at her wonder, even while inwardly pitying her dense ignorance and lack of sophistication.
A second source of trial to her guardians was her delicate sense of honor; and it was this that one day nearly sufficed to wreck their standing with the fashionable Mrs. Gannette of Riverside Drive, a pompous, bepowdered, curled and scented dame, anaemic of mind, but tremendously aristocratic, and of scarcely inferior social dignity to that of the envied Mrs. Ames. For, when Mrs. Gannette moved into the neighborhood where dwelt the ambitious Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, the latter was taken by a mutual acquaintance to call upon her, and was immediately received into the worldly old lady’s good graces. And it so happened that, after the gay season had closed that summer, Mrs. Gannette invited Mrs. Hawley-Crowles and her sister to an informal afternoon of bridge, and especially requested that they bring their young ward, whose beauty and wonderful story were, through the discreet maneuvers of her guardians, beginning to be talked about. For some weeks previously Mrs. Hawley-Crowles had been inducting Carmen into the mysteries of the game; but with indifferent success, for the girl’s thoughts invariably were elsewhere engaged. On this particular afternoon Carmen was lost in contemplation of the gorgeous dress, the lavish display of jewelry, and the general inanity of conversation; and her score was pitiably low. The following morning, to her great astonishment, she received a bill from the practical Mrs. Gannette for ten dollars to cover79her losses at the game. For a long time the bewildered girl mused over it. Then she called the chauffeur and despatched him to the Gannette mansion with the money necessary to meet the gambling debt, and three dollars additional to pay for the refreshments she had eaten, accompanying it with a polite little note of explanation.
The result was an explosion that nearly lifted the asphalt from the Drive; and Carmen, covered with tears and confusion, was given to understand by the irate Mrs. Hawley-Crowles that her conduct was as reprehensible as if she had attacked the eminent Mrs. Gannette with an axe. Whereupon the sorrowing Carmen packed her effects and prepared to depart from the presence of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, to the terrified consternation of the latter, who alternately prostrated herself before the girl and the offended Mrs. Gannette, and at length, after many days of perspiring effort and voluminous explanation, succeeded in restoring peace.
When the Beaubien, who had become the girl’s confidante, learned the story, she laughed till her sides ached. And then her lips set, and her face grew terribly hard, and she muttered, “Fools!” But she smiled again as she gathered the penitent girl in her arms, and kissed her.
“You will learn many things, dearie, before you are through with New York. And,” she added, her brow again clouding, “youwillbe through with it––some day!”
That evening she repeated the story at her table, and Gannette, who happened to be present, swore between roars of laughter that he would use it as a club over his wife, should she ever again trap him in any of his numerous indiscretions.
Again, the girl’s odd views of life and its meaning which, despite her efforts, she could not refrain from voicing now and then, caused the worldly Mrs. Hawley-Crowles much consternation. Carmen tried desperately to be discreet. Even Harris advised her to listen much, but say little; and she strove hard to obey. But she would forget and hurl the newspapers from her with exclamations of horror over their red-inked depictions of mortal frailty––she would flatly refuse to discuss crime or disease––and she would comment disparagingly at too frequent intervals on the littleness of human aims and the emptiness of the peacock-life which she saw manifested about her. “I don’t understand––I can’t,” she would say, when she was alone with the Beaubien. “Why, with the wonderful opportunities which you rich people have, how can you––oh, how can you toss them aside for the frivolities and littleness that you all seem to be striving for! It seems to me you must be mad––loco! And I know you are, for you are simply mesmerized!”
80
Then the Beaubien would smile knowingly and take her in her arms. “We shall see,” she would often say, “we shall see.” But she would offer no further comment.
Thus the summer months sped swiftly past, with Carmen ever looking and listening, receiving, sifting, in, but not of, the new world into which she had been cast. In a sense her existence was as narrowly routined as ever it had been in Simití, for her days were spent at the great organ, with frequent rides in the automobile through the parks and boulevards for variation; and her evenings were jealously guarded by Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, whose policy was to keep the girl in seclusion until the advent of her formal introduction to the world of fashionable society, when her associates would be selected only from the narrow circle of moneyed or titled people with whom alone she might mingle. To permit her to form promiscuous acquaintances now might prove fatal to the scheming woman’s cherished plans, and was a risk that could not be entertained. And Carmen, suppressing her wonder, and striving incessantly to curb her ready tongue, accepted her environment as the unreal expression of the human mind, and submitted––and waited.
CHAPTER 10
The chill blasts had begun to swoop down from the frozen North, and summer had gathered her dainty robes about her and fled shivering before them. Mrs. Hawley-Crowles stood at a window and gazed with unseeing eyes at the withered leaves tossing in the wind.
Carmen’s sixteenth birthday was past by some months; the gay season was at hand; and the day was speeding toward her which she had set for the girl’s formaldébut. Already, through informal calls and gatherings, she had made her charming and submissive ward known to most of her own city acquaintances and the members of her particular set. The fresh, beautiful girl’s winning personality; her frank, ingenuous manner; her evident sincerity and her naïve remarks, which now only gave hints of her radical views, had opened every heart wide to her, and before the advent of the social season her wonderful story was on everybody’s tongue. There remained now only the part which the woman had planned for the Beaubien, but which, thus far, she had found neither the courage nor the opportunity to suggest to that influential woman. Gazing out into the deserted street, she stamped her ample foot in sheer vexation. The Beaubien had absorbed Carmen; had been politely81affable to her and her sister; had called twice during the summer; and had said nothing. But what was there for her to say? The hint must come from the other side; and Mrs. Hawley-Crowles could have wept with chagrin as she reflected gloomily on her own timorous spirit.
But as she stood in dejection before the window a vague idea flitted into her brain, and she clutched at it desperately. Carmen had spoken of the frequent calls of a certain Monsignor Lafelle at the Beaubien mansion, although the girl had never met him. Now why did he go there? “Humph!” muttered Mrs. Hawley-Crowles. “Old Gaspard de Beaubien was a French Catholic.”
But what had that to do with Carmen? Nothing––except––why, to be sure, the girl came from a Catholic country, and therefore was a Catholic! Mrs. Hawley-Crowles chuckled. That was worth developing a little further. “Let us see,” she reflected, “Kathleen Ames is coming out this winter, too. Just about Carmen’s age. Candidate for her mother’s social position, of course. Now the Ames family are all Presbyterians. The Reverend Darius Borwell, D.D., L.L.D., and any other D. that will keep him glued to his ten-thousand-dollar salary, hooked them early in the game. Now suppose––suppose Lafelle should tell the Beaubien that––that there’s––no, that won’t do! But suppose I tell him that here’s a chance for him to back a Catholic against a Protestant for the highest social honors in New York––Carmen versus Kathleen––what would he say? Humph! I’m just as good a Catholic as Protestant. Jim was Irish––clear through. And Catholic, Methodist, or Hard-shell Baptist, as suited his needs. He played ’em all. Suppose I should tip it off to Lafelle that I’m smitten with the pious intention of donating an altar to Holy Saints Cathedral in memory of my late, unlamented consort––what then? It’s worth considering, anyway. Yes, it’s not a bad idea at all.”
And thus it was that a few days later Mrs. Hawley-Crowles timed it so carefully that she chanced to call on the Beaubien with Carmen shortly after Monsignor Lafelle’s car had pulled up at the same door. It was the merest accident, too, that Carmen led her puffing guardian directly into the morning room, where sat the Beaubien and Monsignor in earnest conversation. Mrs. Hawley-Crowles would have retired at once, stammering apologies, and reprimanding Carmen for her assumption of liberties in another’s house; but the Beaubien was grace and cordiality itself, and she insisted on retaining her three callers and making them mutually acquainted.
With the ice thus broken, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles found it easy to take the contemplated plunge. Therefore she smiled82triumphantly when, a week later, Monsignor Lafelle alighted at her own door, in response to a summons on matters pertaining to the Church.
“But, Madam,” replied the holy man, after carefully listening to her announcement, “I can only refer the matter to the Bishop. I am not connected with this diocese. I am traveling almost constantly. But I shall be most pleased to lay it before him, with my endorsement.”
“As you say, Monsignor,” sweetly responded the gracious Mrs. Hawley-Crowles. “I sought your advice because I had met you through my dear friend, Madam Beaubien.”
“It has been a great pleasure to know you and to be of service to you, Madam,” said Monsignor, rising to depart. “But,” he added with a tender smile, “a pleasure that would be enhanced were you to become one of us.”
Mrs. Hawley-Crowles knew that at last the time had come. “A moment, please, Monsignor,” she said, her heart beating quickly. “There is another matter. Please be seated. It concerns my ward, the young girl whom you met at Madam Beaubien’s.”
“Ah, indeed!” said the man, resuming his seat. “A beautiful girl.”
“Yes!” returned Mrs. Hawley-Crowles enthusiastically. “And just budding into still more beautiful womanhood.” She stopped and reflected a moment. Then she threw herself precipitately into her topic, as if she feared further delay would result in the evaporation of her boldness. “Monsignor, it is, as you say, unfortunate that I profess no religious convictions; and yet, as I have told you, I find that as the years pass I lean ever more strongly toward your Church. Now you will pardon me when I say that I am sure it is the avowed intention to make America dominantly Catholic that brings you to this country to work toward that end––is it not so?”
The man’s handsome face lighted up pleasantly, but he did not reply. The woman went on without waiting.
“Now, Monsignor, I am going to be terribly frank; and if you disapprove of what I suggest, we will both forget that the matter was ever under discussion. To begin with, I heartily endorse your missionary efforts in this godless country of ours. Nothing but the strong arm of the Catholic Church, it seems to me, can check our headlong plunge into ruin. But, Monsignor, you do not always work where your labors are most needed. You may control political––”
“My dear lady,” interrupted the man, holding up a hand and shaking his head in gentle demurral, “the Catholic Church is not in politics.”