Janecame! Smartly she stepped down from the car steps only smiling at the conductors proffered hand. Then, she had Gloria in herarmsin spite of the baggage man’s push cart heading straight for her, and although Gloria couldn’t see past Jane’s bonnet she could hear very distinctly. Mr. Thorpe, who had pushed that cart to and from trains for years and years, was an intolerant, irascible old man. But this time he was forced to turn out. The embracing pair cared nothing for his unreasonable orders.
“Jane! Janey! Janikins!” breathed Gloria into the bonnet strings. “How crazy I am to see you! You look—wonderful!”
“My Glory girl!” replied the woman uncertainly. “I felt as if you had gone to foreign fields with your father. It has been the longest time——”
“Come over here a moment,” Gloria interrupted. “I have to look—for—someone else.” She was inspecting the few arrivals as she said this, but no potential Mrs. Corday loomed up.
A great gulp of relief almost choked the girl. She looked again, more critically.
“I guess she—didn’t come!”
“Some friend?” asked Jane, with a polite interest.
“No. That is she is the mother or stepmother of a friend. One of the girls is sick and I was commissioned to meet the mother.” Each word was clipped off and stood up straight as a spike, without so much as leaning one tone upon another.
“Very sick?” Jane mistook distaste for anxiety.
“I had better make sure she didn’t come,” continued Gloria. “There’s a Pullman. She might have been on that.”
“Run right along, child, and attend to your errand,” said Jane. “I’ll go in the waiting room and straighten my bonnet—if there’s a glass.”
The porter was just picking up the stepping down bench when Gloria turned toward the parlor car. Between her and that point Mr. Thorpe now trundled the big baggage cart, but still, aperson could be seen coming toward the station if one such there might have been.
That she had not come seemed almost too good to be true. It was, for just at the side of the station, where Dave’s taxi stood, Gloria beheld a strange woman.
She was talking excitedly to Dave. The next moment she would be in his car!
“That’s she!” said Gloria aloud, turning instantly toward the street side of the station.
Dave opened the taxi door, the woman put up one foot——
“Dave!” called Gloria shrilly. “Wait a minute!”
“All full up!” he flung back. The woman was now spreading herself on the spacious back seat.
“Wait!” shouted Gloria. “I—want—you!”
Her anxiety to stop him shaded her first fears. She rushed up to the car, prepared even to jump on the running board did he attempt to start before she could speak.
But the veteran driver, rival of Sam, and open enemy of George Thorpe, recognized excitement when he saw it, and he stopped with his hand on the wheel and his foot over the “gas.”
Gloria was abreast of the car. She could see the passenger, and noticed her impatience to start.
“Well?” asked Dave. “What kin I do fer you?”
“I came to meet Mrs. Corday,” replied Gloria. “I thought perhaps this may be she.”
Dave turned and bestowed a questioning look at the woman within the limousine. Evidently the lady had heard Gloria’s statement for she smiled and looked out quite sociably. Quickly Gloria followed up the opportunity through the open door.
“Why, yes. I’m Mrs. Corday,” repeated the woman pleasantly.
Her first impression was favorable, and in acknowledgement of it Gloria smiled her bravest.
“Oh, I’ve been sent to meet you,” she said. “Would you mind stepping out again? I have another friend, just arrived.”
The gorgeous beaded bag was picked up from the seat, and the woman in the Burgundy tailor-made suit, squirrel collared, and with the elaborate hat all plumes and flotsam, easily stepped over a small leather bag and descended to the tar walk.
Dave “looked daggers” at Gloria, but shewasn’t looking his way. She was, instead, thanking her lucky stars that the much dreaded Steppy, was, after all, no worse than an unnatural blonde, over dressed and over affable.
“My dear! You came to meet me?” she gushed. “Wasn’t that sweet of you? You’re a friend of little Jacquinot’s, of course?”
The unexpected, but welcome, amiability almost overwhelmed Gloria, but she remembered her lines.
“Let’s go into the waiting room,” she suggested. “My friend is in there. Dave, wait, if you wish. I suppose we will be going up presently three of us.” This prospect conciliated Dave, for he wagged his head pleasantly.
“Oh, he must not go,” declared the stranger. “There is not another taxi around, and I know what it is to be stranded in a place like this. Tell me, dear, how is my little Jackie?”
“Better,” said Gloria. “She only seems to need quiet and rest.” They were entering the station and Jane stood waiting, beside the big round stove. “There is my friend,” said Gloria, leading up to Jane. “Jane, this is Mrs. Corday, the mother of one of my chums. Mrs. Corday, this is my near-mother, Miss Morgan.”
“Near-mother? How quaint! I’m a near-mother myself——”
“Jane has been my friend-nurse since I was a tiny tot,” Gloria hastened to interject, lest some real, personal complication might arise. “My mother died when I was a baby. I’m Gloria Doane.”
“Gloria!TheGloria! About whom Jack continually raves,” replied Mrs. Corday. “Do let us sit down a moment and get acquainted. No chance for anything so human up at that horrid school.”
This exactly suited Gloria. She would be able to detain Mrs. Corday without using any of the strategy she had been so feverishly concocting.
They arranged themselves on the bench under the high window. Jane appeared perfectly content, (Jane would,) and the strange woman, who looked startlingly out of place in the humble station, had the grace to affect ease, whether or not she felt it. Gloria focussed a smile and held it.
“Now, dear,” began Mrs. Corday, “don’t mind if I’m impatient, but I must hear all about darling Jack. You are the very girl who was with her on the lake when she fell ill, are you not? I couldn’t mistake the name——”
“Yes, I was with her,” interrupted Gloria, “but she just had a little spell; the doctor said she must have over exerted herself. You know how fond of athletics Jack is.”
“Do I not?” A full breath volleyed forth each word, but the strident voice, the girls had complained of, was not noticeable. “Since she was a tiny tot no one could hold Jack down. You see, I have been with the Corday family for years,” the statement was prideful, “and I knew the little girl’s mother very well. I travelled with them always. Whenever there was some new feature to be tried out I was one of those selected to express an opinion upon it.” Gloria wondered, but continued to listen. “Yes,” sighed the very modern, very middle aged and very stylish woman. “Yes, there were few on the road who could surpass Philip Corday in special attractions. But go ahead, dear, what about our little girl?”
Jane was interested to the point of abstraction. She didn’t even re-tie her bonnet strings, and she sat back, listening comfortably.
“A plunge and it’s over with,” thought Gloria. Further delay might only irritate.
“You see, Mrs. Corday,” she began bravely,“Jack asked me to phone you last night, as she hated the idea of having you come up when she would not be allowed to talk freely to you——”
“She would. The dear. She and I understand each other perfectly.” This was addressed to Jane. “But I had to come. Her father left her in my keeping, and a lot of silly young lawyers have been trying to get her away from me—Go ahead dear. I ramble like the butcher in the old song. Or was it the butcher who cut him down?” A quizzical smile spread over the water colored features.
“Personally I believe Miss Alton is the best intentioned woman possible,” Gloria said next, without having the slightest idea why she said it. “But the doctor’s orders have to be followed, and you know how responsible boarding school directors feel themselves to be,” she urged.
“I do, indeed. That’s why I have a scrap every earthly time I go there. They boss me around as if I hadn’t been a boss myself, all my life.” Her look of seething indignation included a “go ahead” for Gloria.
“Then, Jack thought if I could meet you and explain all this——”
“And mighty kind it was of you, you having company yourself——” Mrs. Corday arose, premonitorily.
“I’d do anything I could for Jack——”
“You risked your life for her, they told me.” One tailor-fitted arm went around Gloria’s shoulder, “and we’re not forgetting it. Is that hackman out there yet?”
Every one turned and looked out.
“Oh, yes. Dave will wait,” promised Gloria, feeling for the moment a sense of helplessness. She had made no progress in diverting Mrs. Corday. She was determined to go to the Hall. And she was as sure as ever “to scrap” with those who might interfere. That would mean failure, for Gloria to really help Jack or Miss Alton. Her resourcefulness was fading. Her head was almostachy, and her temper not slumbering. She wanted to be off with Jane. Why not let Miss Alton use her own talent in smoothing over the emergency? In fact, Gloria began to reason, why shouldn’t this woman have a talk with her stepdaughter? She was, by no means, the disturber she had been blamed for being, if appearances could be trusted.
Then came the memory of Jack’s plea. There must be a good reason and this need not be apparent to strangers. Mrs. Corday was showing her own impatience.
“Don’t mind if I run along, dear,” she said. “I must get back to the city by noon. I have very large interests to manage, very large.” She swept humble Jane with a look of business magnitude.
Gloria’s hopes were oozing out at her finger tips. She must make one final effort.
“I wondered if you wouldn’t just visit with me, this time,” she suggested sweetly. “Then if Jack can see you——”
“If shecansee me! Of course she can see me! Nothing serious has happened!” A new alarm spring went off with a snap. Gloria laid a trembling hand upon the pearl kid glove.
“But you really wouldn’t go against the doctor’s orders? You know what a simple headache can do if one gets excited; and Jack would have so many things to tell you.” Gloria’s wistfulness was very becoming. Mrs. Corday turned back from the door. Jane took a hand in the plot, innocently.
“Indeed,” she said, “this girl herself can work up quite a tempest when anything crosses her, and I’ve had some little experience with tantrum headaches——”
“Jane!”
“Oh, I mean it, Gloria. You were no lamb to bring up.”
“Same way with our Jack. She was as headstrong as a little mule. And she always could, as you say, Miss Morgan, work up a tantrum headache.” A heavy sigh betrayed troubled memories. “Suppose we just go along up and feel out which way the land lies?”
“Yes, of course, that’s what I meant,” floundered Gloria. The small room was excessively warm, and the round pot stove like a red flannel petticoat blown out by the explosive heat. Gloria’s coat had been hanging loosely from her shoulders and she now shifted it to place. As she did so the little, strange dark necklace caught fast in thehanger ribbonat the back, and she tugged at it a moment, trying to release it.
“Can I help you?” asked Jane putting her hand up to the offending trinket.
“Oh, no, thanks,” replied Gloria. “The catchof this necklace—sticks.” She gave it a vigorous tug and with a clattering rattle the beads fell at her feet.
“Oh, I hope I didn’t break it,” she exclaimed. “It’s something new.” Mrs. Corday was looking inquiringly, so Gloria held it towards her!
“Let—me—see!” almost gasped the woman, bending over to scrutinize the necklace. “Where ever did you get that?”
“It was given me,” replied Gloria. She could not say by whom.
“When? Where, child, did you get that necklace?”
Jane drew up beside Gloria protectingly.
Gloria was visibly embarrassed. She looked from the mysterious beads into the woman’s flushed face.
“We had a—sort of game,” she stammered, “and this was the forfeit. I do not know who gave it to me.”
Speechless with excitement Mrs. Corday assumed her lorgnette. She was actually breathing aloud in gasps.
“It—can’t be, and yet it may be!” she exclaimed finally. “The lost clue to little Jack’s treasures——”
“A lost clue!” Jane repeated. It was her turn to inspect the beads.
“Such a long and strange story!” panted Mrs. Corday. “But if this should beit!”
“What?” asked Gloria, in her direct way.
“The clue to the hiding place. It was a stone, set in a necklace! My dear husband told me almost with his last breath!”
“Did Jack have it?” Gloria asked, deeply perplexed.
“Jack? Why no. It was Jack’s loss. She had no reason to hide the clue, but every reason under the sun and earth to hunt for it.” The tailor-made suit seemed to strain at the seams. Mrs. Corday sat down, exhausted.
“Where can we go for a few minutes? I must tell you a part of the story privately.”
“Come over to the Rookery Tea Room,” suggested Gloria, with a drowning girl’s clutch at rescue. “There will be no one there at this hour and we can talk comfortably.”
As they allowed the station door to shut with a bang, and Gloria beckoned to the patient hack driver, she remembered the distant essay as one remembers the last thought before sleep.
Jane stepped in the car first. Gloria followed,and Mrs. Corday, still holding the suspected necklace in a firm hand, gave Dave her orders.
Compared with lost treasures and erratic women, what, after all, was a mere prize essay? But Gloria could not crush back her fluttering hopes.
Her dad represented her world, his happiness her one desire, and to do something worth while in her first term was her determination. All this was involved in the prize essay, for in other studies than English, she had found herself unequal to most of her companions. But she loved this subject and it was almost finished, that essay. Still!
Jack lay helpless. She could not do for herself what was asked of Gloria. And she was so keenly sensitive among the over critical girls.
Mrs. Corday was even now betraying signs of some of the peculiarities attributed to her. She was strangely excited over that little string of beads. Perhaps this was the hallucination Jack had spoken of so guardedly?
With asighof resignation, Gloria pointed out the Rookery Tea Room. Mrs. Corday’s eyes appeared to have taken root in the sight of the necklace.
GLORIA WAS VISIBLY EMBARRASSED.Gloria at Boarding School.Page 182
GLORIA WAS VISIBLY EMBARRASSED.Gloria at Boarding School.Page 182
Spellbound was the only word that seemed to describe her condition.
Was it real or imagined?
In either case it provided a respite.