Chapter 4

"Helen, here is a compartment that will just hold you and me and Eulalie, comfortably, and we will tip the guard to let us have it to ourselves," came in Miss Bleecker's penetrating tones. "Good-by, M. de Mariol, we shall always remember our pleasant voyage, and I shall treasure that clever thing you wrote in my birthday book. Sorry not to have seen Lord Clandonald to say good-by, but we shall all meet again, of course, people always do. Don't forget if you are in town, any time, we are in Curzon Street for a fortnight, and then Paris, Hotel Westminster. Eulalie, you have Miss Carstairs' black jacket? Porter, look out for those umbrellas in the netting, put my dressing bag beside me, the tea-basket overhead—where is the other rug? Oh! I see. Ten pieces, all right, porter, here you are, for you and your mate.What, not enough? Ample, and more than you deserve. Helen, how could you give him another shilling, when you know that is what shows any one with half an eye you are just from the other side?"CHAPTER VIThe luncheon at Beaumanoir, although lacking the young lady for whose delectation it had been proposed, came off to the satisfaction of at least four of the five people present, viz., Miss Bleecker, whom it had been impossible to omit; M. de Mariol, who, cynicism to the contrary, was delighted with a chance of showing Helen Carstairs the noble old place in a lambent day of mid-October; Helen, herself, frankly pleased with the entertainment; and good old Lady Campstown, whose mind having long set itself upon the thought of her nephew's remarriage with a wealthy American girl, as a happy issue out of all his difficulties, chose to construe the occasion into a presentation to her of the future chatelaine whose dollars were to stop the chinks in Clandonald's ancestral roofs, and her virtues to gild anew the escutcheon dimmed by her unworthy predecessor."If she's an American, she'll probably go straight," thought Lady Campstown, after having first informed herself through a New York lady so long resident in London as to suffer acute pangs upon being reminded of the place of her nativity, that Helen's father was "theMr. Carstairs whom everybody had heard about." When Clandonald had proposed to his aunt to preside over his little party, her ladyship had not dared ask him the direct question that was burning upon her lips. She had contented herself with his answer to her rallying query whether upon his travels he had met any of those wonderful girls from the States the modern novelists write about, that he fancied the supply would always be equal to the demand for that commodity. And when Miss Carstairs, so quiet, lovely and distinguished in mien and manner, appeared amid the faded chintz of the great drawing-room at Beaumanoir, admiring its choice contents with knowledge and without gush, treating Lady Campstown exactly as she ought to be treated, the reality of the old gentlewoman's hopes seemed as near as it was grateful.Even Miss Bleecker shone in a reflected light, and Lady Campstown pronounced her, afterwards, a most agreeable, chatty person. As she conducted both visitors through the principal rooms of her childhood's home, her little ladyship's frail face and figure seemed to have stepped down for the occasion from a frame of which the gilding had worn away. Helen was in turn charmed by her simplicity and frankness, and the two gravitated together naturally. The men found them in the picture gallery, where Lady Campstown was destined to receive her first disillusion, in the fact that her nephew in asking Miss Carstairs if she were ready to see the white peacocks on their famous strutting ground, invited M. de Mariol to come, too!But the good aunt utilized her talk alone with Miss Bleecker to speak openly about Lord Clandonald's excellences, his wrongs at the hands of Ruby Darien, his desirable domestic traits, the subjects, in fine, rarely neglected when the female proprietor or backer of a man in the marriage market sees her chance. Lady Campstown was so genuinely unselfish in her desire to build up again the shattered fabric of her dear Clan's life, that another than the pachydermatous Miss Bleecker would have perceived the pathos of the situation, and condoned the openness of the attack. Miss Bleecker, however, was quite on her guard. She did not consider Clandonald anything to jump at in the way of a match for Helen. She was certain of Mr. Carstairs' disapproval; she knew that he could not be brought to supply cash for the palpably exigent repairs at Beaumanoir, and lastly, and more to the point, she had no idea of relinquishing while she could hold it, her comfortable billet as Miss Carstairs' chaperon. But she was aware that Lady Campstown, while possessing but a small and meagre establishment in London, had a pretty villa at Cannes, where she was a personage of undoubted influence and wide acquaintance. And as Miss Bleecker's doctor had advised the air of that favored resort for her relaxed throat, and Helen did not care where they went, Cannes was the secret object of the chaperon's intended movement southward at the season's height.Therefore, the conversation, while the two elders strolled or sat under immemorial yews, and enjoyed grapes and peaches plucked in an enchanting old walled garden, waxed upon one side, more gracious and evasive, on the other, more perplexed and yet more hopeful. From all she could gather, Lady Campstown was convinced that Helen had been sent by Providence for Clan's regeneration. The hint given on their return to the house, that the American ladies would be in Cannes after Christmas, to remain there until joined probably by Mr. and Mrs. Carstairs in the well-known yacht, "Sans Peur," seemed to fit into her plans. A further suggestion from the dowager, that Miss Bleecker and her charge would allow Lady Campstown to have the pleasure of introducing them to some people and places in the south, came so quickly, and was accepted so suavely, that the stately little lady was herself a little startled and taken aback by it.At this moment Clandonald and his other guests stepped in through a window opening upon a stone-paved court with fountains and statues and ancient trees, enclosed in walls of ivy and maiden-hair fern, reproducing prettily one of those haunts of Pan at Villa d'Este in Tivoli, adored by a former owner. Helen had been sitting upon a lichen-grown stone bench, too lapped in pure pleasure to want to move. A stable-clock striking somewhere back of shrubberies, had warned her that it was time for them to be thinking of their train up to town; and she rose regretfully."It has been a day to string upon Time's rosary," she said to her host, to whom she yielded the greater credit for his hospitality, because she saw that he had been worried and abstracted, and that it was Mariol's continued sparkle of wit and bonhomie that had really lent the occasion its subtle charm."It is very kind of you to have been willing to give me so much of your valuable time," he answered, with an effort to throw off what was possessing him, "and it has been a pleasant second chapter of our voyage.""I wanted to tell you and M. de Mariol before we separate," went on Miss Carstairs, who had all day been trying for an opportunity to bring this in, and failed, simple as the matter seemed, "that I had, this morning only, a letter from Miss Winstanley. They decided, you know, to put off their visit to London till some later date, and have been wandering through the apple country of South Devon, to see the orchards and the cider-making. Some book Mr. Winstanley read had tempted him. They were to stop at Torquay, thence going to Dover and the Continent.""Very nice—and very American," said Clandonald. "Fancy running after an apple-crop the moment one lands in Britain, because some man has put it into a novel! I hope Miss Winstanley has recovered from her indisposition?""She seemed to be well and happy. She asked to be kindly remembered to you and M. de Mariol."Clandonald's courtesy had taken wings, in the emotion of a deeper sort that overcame him inconveniently. He had hoped to carry off easily this inevitable talk about the girl who had laid so strong a hold upon his broken life. But he said nothing at all, while Mariol, as usual, came to the rescue."I have been telling Clandonald the two interesting facts developed by you concerning our Alabama friend," he said, gracefully. "And we both unite in asking you to convey to her our best congratulations upon her intended marriage.""What a glorious copper beech!" exclaimed Helen, suddenly looking away past its owner to where the trees arose like a fire fountain from velvet sward. "I beg your pardon. I will give her the message when I answer her characteristic letter. Perhaps I ought to have said before that, in a postscript, she asked me to tell you both of her engagement to Mr. Glynn, should I not have already done so."Lady Campstown, having taken cordial leave of her nephew's guests, whom de Mariol escorted back to their private hotel in Curzon Street, remained over with Clandonald at Beaumauoir for tea. They drank it, thanks to a perfectly warm and well-aired afternoon, under the beech tree extolled by Miss Carstairs. Clandonald's dogs, the only friends of man who do not disappoint or change, clustered around his knee, a homely but human Schipperke gluing her faithful head upon her master's boot. The day, the hour, the pleasant rite, the dear old woman whose thin, pearl-white fingers twinkled among the tea cups as she looked over at him from time to time in a sort of speechless longing, touched and pleased the returned traveller, but could not cheer his melancholy.Finally Lady Campstown took heart of grace to go to the point direct."I'm sorry to see you so down, Clan, my dear boy," she said, in handing him his second cup. "To-day, of all days, when you have had such a charming visitor. I can't tell you how well I am pleased with Miss Carstairs. You must know.""Delighted, I'm sure, Aunt Lucy," he answered, with refrigerating vagueness. "But to talk of less agreeable subjects, I'm sorry to say Ruby has broken loose again, and is annoying me horribly. Having failed recently to make a scene for me—and another person—after her own heart, she has taken to writing me infernal hypocritical letters, saying she's back in England, stone-broke, ill, penitent, Lord knows what, and must have money.""The old cry!" exclaimed Lady Campstown hotly. "Don't answer her, Clan, treat her as if you were locked in behind walls, and she in the street, outside.""Her capacity for inventing malice and mischief is too great. She will find some way to circumvent me. Her price of peace is hard cash, and so for the present, I can breathe free again.""You have been weak enough——" began his aunt, despairingly."I am not the only one involved," he said shortly. "Now, Aunt Lucy, say no more to me about it. I only wished to put you on your guard against any assault she might make upon your compassion.""I am safe from that!" said the little lady grimly, and indeed, for the moment, she looked so, in her splendid wrath and scorn. Clandonald did not pursue the subject, and something warned her that neither was this the time for pursuance of the light vision of the American girl whom she had fondly pictured taking Ruby's place in the desolate old house. They talked of family matters, of Clan's travels, of things present and to come until Lady Campstown and her maid were obliged to leave. When her nephew had put her into the brougham to go to the station, Lady Campstown rallied her courage for a final appeal."You'll drop in for luncheon, tea or dinner whenever you've nothing better, won't you, dear boy?" she asked, surveying him wistfully. "You know I go out so little I'm apt to be always there. I'm to have luncheon on Tuesday, and go to some pictures with these pleasant friends of yours who've just left us; and, Clan, dear, isn't it nice that they're coming to Cannes this winter? Miss Carstairs' father is to be there in the yacht. He must be a very interesting man. Such a power, one can't fail to—oh! thank you, Jenkins" (this to the gardener, arriving with a huge nosegay of late roses and chrysanthemums, and a basket of ruddy peaches), "they are most lovely, I am sure. You will certainly not fail to make me that promised visit in January? It seemed so lonely, last year, nobody inhabiting your room. Come, promise, Clan, and I know you will never break your word!""I am afraid, Aunt Lucy," he said, giving her a final loving kiss, "that I had better not promise anything, just now, if I'm to keep up my good reputation in your eyes. Think what you like as to my being spooney about a pretty American. But it is arranged between Mariol and myself—though we can't agree about our destination—that we are to set out for somewhere early next week. Mariol leans toward Tibet, I to the Balkans. To decide it, we shall probably toss up a sovereign. But this much is certain—off we go."It was not until December, when Lady Campstown was fairly established at Villa Julia, on the slope of the Californie, under house-walls obscured by bougainvillea and arbutilon and Gloire de Dijon roses, that she felt in the least assuaged of her disappointment. She had left London swathed in a yellow fog of appalling density, had run down to Dover in an atmosphere of pea-soup; had found Paris under weeping skies; had traversed France in a murky mist; and only on waking up in Cannes next morning had renewed acquaintance with the sun.As she looked out of her window, the olives and palms seemed to wave a welcome to the south. The sea laughed in every ripple of its wide expanse, the mountains slept under their veil of azure, the light over all was almost intolerably bright. The flowers that she so well loved, blooming overhead and underfoot, springing from wall crannies, gladdening and glorying every available spot of earth, made her ladyship feel once more like her own even-tempered, happy self!She had not heard from the wanderers in the Balkans, but had felt resigned that dear Clan had not pushed on to that dreadful far-away Tibet, where men were flayed alive if they happened not to please the rulers upon whose land they were trespassing, which would have been so much worse! She and her maid, and a servant or two brought out from England, occupied themselves for a day in unpacking and readjusting ornaments, putting flowers and plants about the rooms, and looking over the garden, a lovely tiny place where roses ran riot, and palm trees waved their feathered tops or clashed together their spiked leaves with a little metallic ring, when the breeze stirred them from their majestic calm.There were many finer, many larger, many more cared-for gardens in the town, though none that gave more satisfaction to its owner. Lady Campstown knew and loved every inch of it, but the spot most often resorted to by her, in hot sunshine, was a tunnel cut in a thicket of bamboos terminating her domain, from which a gate led out under the wall of the adjoining lordly pleasure house called "Villa Reine des Fées." Above this wall arose the symmetrical shafts of a cypress avenue, into which, and far beyond it, Lady Campstown had been accustomed to penetrate at will, through a little green door hidden by verdure, placed there for the convenience of the gardeners. The lodge-keeper of this deserted dwelling, to whose child her ladyship had ministered in illness, and all the other employees of the place, had always made welcome the little figure in black, wearing a mushroom hat and carrying a long tortoise-shell stick, who from time to time appeared among the alleys and under the flowery pergolas of a veritable fairyland of trees and turf and shrubs and blossoms.The dwelling at Reine des Fées, sheltered from prevailing winds by a thick olive grove resting like a gray cloud upon the hillside above it, was of considerable size and pretension. Ascending, by a long flight of white marble steps, the two terraces with their mosaic pavements and marble balustrades, over which orange and lemon trees hung their fruit and flowers, one reached an imposing portal, where roses climbed upon the white façade of the many-windowed house, to fall back in rivulets of bloom. The gardens were a marvel of skilfully massed semi-tropical shrubbery and trees, shutting out the view of other villas and revealing at happy turns vistas of the Mediterranean, the two islands, and the blue jagged line of the Esterels; while tall box-hedges, cypresses, fountains and pergolas wedded the tender grace of Italy to the warm, witchery of Provence.The place had been originally constructed by a wealthy Russian as a bower for his young wife who had died there in early married life; and for a long time had remained unoccupied, although scrupulously kept up.Upon the death of the owner it had passed to his younger brother who, intending to live in it according to his luxurious tastes, had put in "lifts," baths, and sundry up-to-date conveniences; had renewed the furniture, china and glass, prepared the stables for many horses, and then vanished from sight of man into a house he had in the Caucasus—melancholy mad!For two years Villa Reine des Fées had now been in the market for a tenant, yet none had presented himself. Whether or not the house had a name for bringing ill-luck to its inhabitants, or that the price fixed upon it was prohibitively high, it had remained vacant, as before. Lady Campstown could not regret this circumstance.So long the enchanted ground behind the rose-wall had seemed an annex to her own modest property, she begrudged the idea of its overflowing with noisy gay people, with their dinners and dances, their motor cars puffing up the drive, their tennis matches and tea-parties, piano-practising and perhaps spoiled children and dogs, to invade her sylvan solitudes.The one fate that Lady Campstown kept in reserve as the most painful that could possibly overtake Villa Reine des Fées, was for it to be inhabited by Americans. Now, upon her return (although recently born again, as it were, to a new sense of the excellent possibilities of her transatlantic kinsfolk!) she learned with dismay, from her gardener, that the house had actually been leased to an American family, who were to arrive the following day! Details of the calamity she could not at first bring herself to acquire. It was enough that her worst fears for her cherished playground were about to be realized. She turned pale at thought of the changes sure to come.Directly after luncheon Lady Campstown took down her mushroom hat and an Inverness cape that her maid had hung on a peg in the entry, armed herself with her tortoise-shell stick—a gift from Clandonald, by the way—and trotted down the walk of her own garden leading out under the bamboos to the little green door in her neighbor's wall. This was open, and she went in, sadly resolved to make a final pilgrimage to all the familiar spots henceforward to be blocked from her view as effectually as newspaper paragraphs by the ink-marks of a Russian censor.The day was glorious, earth, sea and sky lustrous with intense sunshine, the air filled with odors of orange-blossom and violet, jasmine and rose, the palms bending gently under a summer breeze. Never had the grounds of Villa Reine des Fées seemed in more perfect order. She gave one glance up at the gleaming house-front above the stately balustrades, and saw that its windows were open, new curtains fluttering in the breeze. In the loggia adjoining the boudoir of the poor little dead princess, wicker chairs, gayly cushioned, were grouped under the rose wreaths. The signs of coming habitation were too evident.Lady Campstown would not look again. Sorrowfully she directed her steps along the lower terrace, her tortoise-shell stick tapping impatiently upon the renaissance birds and beasts of its pavement. She even hoped not to meet any of the friendly Provençals who worked upon the place, with whom she had been wont to stop and talk about themselves and families, the prospects of the flower-crop for neighboring cultivators, and affairs of the town in general.At some distance from the house this terrace was rounded into a lookout, commanding a wondrous avenue of palms, their trunks enwrapped in roses and jasmine, at the end of which the hillside fell sharply away, revealing an unimaginably lovely view of the sea and islands. From here, as the visitor now seated herself to gaze her last at a favorite prospect, she saw coming toward her, beneath the arch of palms, between borders of violets, a very tall young woman, modishly attired in white embroidered cloth, with a large white-plumed hat that breathed of the Rue de la Paix, in Paris.[image]She saw coming toward her, beneath the arch of palms, a very tall young woman, modishly attired.Lady Campstown wished that she could believe this engaging person to be some one who, like herself, had strayed into Villa Reine des Fées through curiosity—a guest from one of the adjacent smart hotels.But she could not. She knew in her British soul that it was none other than one of the temporary owners of the property, and that she herself stood revealed a trespasser. In her intense vexation, the dowager arose again, striking her stick on the hot marble underfoot, till two little green lizards scampered away in fright at its sharp resonance."I beg your pardon," she said in her well-bred old voice, "I live in the next house, and of course had no idea that the villa was yet inhabited.""Please don't speak of it," was the surprisingly friendly answer. (The girl was thinking, "Here, surely, is the Fairy Godmother.") "We decided at the last minute to come a day earlier, so anxious were we to get out of gloomy, wet Paris. You see, my father has been very ill, and the doctors rather wanted to hurry him to Provence. We took the night train, arriving this morning, and already he seems to feel the benefit, and is now getting a good sleep."As she spoke she came up upon the terrace, and stood by Lady Campstown's side."I am glad to hear it," answered the old lady, forgetting her resentment. "I should explain that this house has been so long unoccupied, I have felt at liberty to stray in from time to time, and see the flowers and so——""Indeed, you are not to say another word," said the hostess, with pretty emphasis. "If you had the least idea how I was just bursting to let out of me some of my delight!""'Bursting to let out of me'!" Lady Campstown was certain that she knew no one who would have been responsible for that peculiar phrase, but the joyous appeal of the young voice and eyes, the radiantly smiling mouth, were not to be resisted."You feel it, then?" she said, smiling in return."Down to the ground!" said the tall girl. "I don't believe I ever had such thrills in my life before. I've been walking up and down under these oranges and lemons and palms, wondering if it can be I? To think we're to have this little heaven all to ourselves for daddy to get well in! You see, there are only my father and myself, and we know very few people over here in Europe. We are Americans.""I believe so," said Lady Campstown, with restraint."The villa was taken for us through our doctor in Paris, who had seen it, and told daddy. I thought the rooms in our hotel in Paris too lovely for anything, but this goes a long way ahead. I've got that splendid big front chamber with the dressing-room and bath, and the sort of little porch covered with vines, where the servants seem to expect me to have my breakfast by myself. The truth is, I don't care where I eat these old continental breakfasts; only rolls and coffee, and perhaps one miserable little egg, and that extra, I'm always hungry again by eleven. Daddy's got a huge room opposite mine, all carved furniture with a bed like a church pew, but he likes it, and the man nurse that takes care of him says he's better already for the change. It's ridiculous for only us two to try to fill this regular little palace, isn't it? If I were home, I could ask some of the girls, but, over here, I don't know any but one, and we haven't actually got a chaperon for me yet. We talked of it, you know, but when it came to the point, daddy dreaded her being perched up between us like Poe's raven, at meals, and everywhere, and so we put it off. Perhaps, if you live here you wouldn't mind giving me a word of advice about how to do things. There's a housekeeper that goes with the house, and she engaged the extra servants, such a lot I never saw! I came out into the garden to get rid of the whole kit and boodle of them! But after a while I'll learn my way, and then not feel so awkward as I do now. Maybe you are thinking it strange why I don't know these things, but I've no mother, and no near relations but daddy, and till now we've lived in a very plain way, at home."Lady Campstown's heart melted incontinently. The rapidity and scope of the girl's confidences were atoned for by her youth and the direct gaze of her childlike eyes, to say nothing of the beauty that had been sinking into the old lady's impressionable senses. Also, her ladyship was always genuinely interested in the details of a perilous illness; and those of the invalid's recent grave attack of pneumonia were received with not to say satisfaction, but something that nearly approached it. She gave the girl much sound advice, and as they strayed together onward from point to point through the grounds, which Lady Campstown knewcon amore, she found herself equipped with an astonishing relish for the situation so unexpectedly attained. When they were both quite out of breath with talking and walking, she furthermore accepted, graciously, an invitation to step indoors and rest. She had thought her new friend a tyro in social arts, but when they reached the top of the long, hot gleaming flight of white marble stairs, and stood together between the potted bamboos and pelargoniums in the vestibule, was pleased to have her step back with charming grace and execute a little curtsey, saying:"I don't think you can know that my name is Pamela Winstanley, and I'd be very glad if you wouldn't mind telling me yours."It is not, therefore, to be numbered among things incredible that soon after four o'clock that afternoon, when the sun like a ball of fire had dropped behind the blue barrier of the Esterels, leaving the world to darkness and a sudden glacial chill, Miss Winstanley, attended by one of her brand-new footmen carrying a sheaf of rare roses, repaired, in her turn, through the little green doorway in the flowery wall dividing Villa Reine des Fées from Villa Julia. She was wrapped in a smart fur-lined cloak, and her mission was to take tea with Lady Campstown!A trim maid ushered her into the long, low drawing-room with its hangings of sunflower yellow, its mirrors and consoles and twin Empire sofas, its square of dull red Turkey carpet in the centre of a slippery waste of parquetry, its brass-trimmed tables and chairs, bought with the house and never altered. But over all had been diffused a look of home that Villa Reine des Fées could not attain. There was a folding screen covered with miniatures, behind the couch whereon Lady Campstown sat crocheting in rosy wool one of the newpélérines neigeuses; there were flowers and books and a wide writing-table, with silver bound blotting book and silver fittings. A small table, covered with a web of white linen and lace that a Cardinal might have worn upon a day of festa, was spread for the tea to be brought in by and by; and Posey did not know that, to fit it to her guest's age and supposed tastes, Lady Campstown had sent a special messenger to the rue d'Antibes for marrons glâcés and wondrous crystallized fruits!A little fire of gnarled olive roots, pine cones, and eucalyptus boughs was blazing on the hearth. The girl, carrying her own flowers now, paused on the threshold with an exclamation of delight."Oh! how good, how sweet of you to let me come!" she cried, "and, please, would you think me very rude if I sat down on the rug and played with your Orange pussy?"The tea over, the new friends talked with ever-increasing cordiality. Lady Campstown soon knew all there was to know of the girl's former modest position in life and her recent information by her father that she was expected to spend his large income as she pleased."He asked me, poor dear, not to hold back for anything in reason, but to find out all that we ought to have, and order it. And you'd better believe, Lady Campstown, that an American girl knows how to do that same! It seems he had a talk on our steamer, just before we landed, with a friend both he and I trust in, and she told him it was his duty to live up to his fortune. He's known he had all this money for nearly a year past, but had no idea how to begin to spend it. And so we branched right out in Paris, and got a suite of rooms that a royalty had before us. I went straight off to the Only Adorable Worth, and bought everything in the way of gowns. I had masters in French and singing, and when we drove in the Bois, or went to the galleries and shops, and everybody stared, I took to it as naturally as a duck to water. But I must say it was lonesome. I longed and longed for somebody to tell how I felt about it all in my inmost heart.... Then, my darling old daddy fell ill, and his life was in danger, and all the grandeur fell flat as a pancake. I didn't care a straw for my clothes, my carriage, my fine maid, even my new pearls—the whirling wheel of life stood still, still, and I heard only my heart-beats! I thought I was going to lose the dearest, tenderest father in the world, and be left a poor wretched orphan with nothing but things to comfort me!"She had sprung up from the rug and was by this time seated on the couch beside Lady Campstown, and that lady's kind little hand had found its way into hers. If the dowager felt, at moments, a little dizzy with the speed at which this episode of new acquaintance had progressed, she had only to look across the room at the portrait of a girl who would have been thirty had she lived, but in her mother's eyes seemed forever just eighteen. Maybe she would have been ungrateful, unloving,mondaineordévote; she might have married ill, or died in bringing a child into the world; or any one of a thousand every-day happenings might have robbed the mother of joy in her companionship. But, to Lady Campstown, her lost daughter was always young, prosperous, lovely, beyond reproach; and for her sake, Pamela Winstanley, with all her imperfections of bringing-up upon her golden head, was forgiven much! What wonder that before they separated Posey had received assurance that Lady Campstown would look after her in various substantial ways; and that Mr. Winstanley's new motor car, ordered from Paris, being yet to come, the girl should be invited to take her first view of the riant little town from the cushions of Lady Campstown's well-known old landau, with the quiet black horses and sober coachman? When they had thus agreed to go shopping together in the tempting, if narrow and sunless, rue d'Antibes, and Posey, for the second time, had arisen to take her leave, her eye fell upon an imperial photograph, framed in silver, of a man she recognized with a swift leap of the heart."My nephew Clandonald," said the dowager, heaving a little affectionate sigh. "Almost all I have left to love. He is a dear fellow, and has been much sinned against. Just now he is somewhere in the Balkans loafing, as he calls it, with his friend M. de Mariol, but I trust he will come back soon, and that certain things I hope for him will become realities. I don't mind telling you, my dear, that there is a young lady in the case, and that she's a countrywoman of your own. I have met her, and love her already for his sake, but there's been mischief made, and it will take time to straighten out the tangle of my poor Clan's heart affairs, and, when you and I know each other better, I will explain. In the meantime, we won't talk of it. You'll be ready at half-past ten to-morrow, when I call for you? I'll take you around to the right tradespeople, and afterwards we'll have a little turn on the Croisette.""An American girl!" Posey said within herself. "It must be said he found consolation very soon." She was conscious of feeling rather blank.CHAPTER VII"When in doubt where to go, stay in Paris," had been for some years of travel Miss Bleecker's favorite saying. Helen, who had no great love for the place from her chaperon's point of view, simply acquiesced when told it was too early to go south. She begged Miss Bleecker to go on with her own routine. Mornings in the shops were followed by luncheons with old friends among the American residents, where, after luxurious eating and drinking of light wines, the women sat for hours rooted upon down couches, propped by silken cushions, exchanging hearsays of stupendous gossip about their common acquaintances. Upon Miss Bleecker's return from one of these intimate entertainments, Helen's views of human nature were lowered for days to come.In the afternoon, Miss Bleecker generally drove out with her charge, or left cards upon people who would have resented her getting in as earnestly as she. In her smart wrap and voluminous furs, with, her plumed hat and dotted veil, the chaperon justly flattered herself that some of the glances bestowed upon their victoria in the Bois and along the Champs Elysées were a late plum fallen to her share. In Central Park, at home, and in Fifth Avenue, every one knew it was only the same old Sally Bleecker in a new French hat. Miss Bleecker had heard it suggested that one must come abroad to find a proper deference paid to years of maturity, which secretly was not what she desired. Her taste was neither for the cold-blooded pushing to the wall of her generation by young Americans, nor yet the reverent hand-kissing of the ancient, observable in high life abroad. Since her morals were above reproach, all she really asked was a recognition by the public of her successful illustrations of the methods of Paquin and Alphonsine.There were always teas to drop in for, after the drives, at the cosmopolitan resorts of Ritz, or Columbin, or Rumpelmayer, or in private dwellings. In Paris, the division of time between five and seven in the afternoon has become as important for the achievement of social idling of both sexes as in London.It is in New York where the tea-drinking habit is a graft among the men, and to the women an intermittent sacrifice to fashion's shrine. Miss Bleecker was of the sort whom the steam of the tea-kettle inebriates as well as cheers. She could better exist without her evening orisons than her cup of tea between four and five.When the ladies returned to their hotel, there was barely time to dress for dinner or the play. Miss Bleecker's dinner list in Paris was larger than in New York, where Sally Bleecker was beginning to bevieux jeu. Abroad, she was welcomed by the translated Americans living in various capitals, who were sure of hearing from her the few things about the private lives of their friends at home that had not got into their newspapers. Lastly, but decidedly not least, she had had the wisdom to perfect herself in bridge, which Helen detested, in common with all games of cards. Whenever Miss Carstairs elected to go off with friends of her own to dine and pass the evening, and her young lady put on a tea gown and ordered a plate of soup and a wing of chicken in their own salon, the chaperon was in glory. In a black net dress, largely bespangled, with a dog-collar of excellently imitated pearls around the doubtful portion of her throat beneath the chin, with her hair admirably groomed and her nails perfectly manicured, wearing her best evening manner and longest gloves, old Sally would run down stairs nimbly to the fiacre that was to take her to her earthly Paradise of bridge! Or else in company with a playmate of seventy-two, who smoked cigarettes eternally, wore low scarlet gowns and rarely dined at home, she would go on from place to place, exhilarated beyond fatigue, whispering inwardly to herself there was nothing like this at her home across the sea.Helen would have been wofully tired of this life had she not possessed the resources of a rational cultivated woman, and the ability to extract the real kernel of Parisian life, in addition to the acquaintance of a few clever people with whom she could fraternize in her own way. After all, as well Paris as elsewhere for the living down of a great clutching emotion such as her brief passion for John Glynn! She had been spared hearing Posey Winstanley talk about him as her possession, since the Winstanleys had quitted Paris early in December, just before their own arrival there. She had heard in various ways how old Herbert had taken her advice literally, and enrolled himself among the money spenders of their liberal nation. With astonishing rapidity, the fame of the stunning young Southern beauty had been bruited abroad. It was related that a semi-royal personage who had seen her going up the staircase of her hotel had addressed to her father a proposal for her hand, which had been refused by the wise old gentleman without conveying the fact to his daughter. It was known that she had been "taken up" by the best people in Cannes. A little breeze of laudation concerning her was forever blowing where gossips congregate inle monde où l'on s'amuse. In two expressive words, Miss Winstanley "had arrived!"Helen used to wonder most how this reacted upon John Glynn. She pictured his amazement at finding the Cinderella he had wooed had turned into a Princess in Glass Slippers. But as that is the sort of a shock to which most sensible men become easily habituated, she felt that he had, by now, probably ceased to wonder at his good luck. If he thought at all of Helen, it would be with gratitude for having set him free for this.She was not so certain that Posey had reached the same stage of satisfaction with existing bonds. Helen was too clever at reading character not to have seen more than Posey meant to admit about her feeling for Clandonald. She saw also that Clandonald was immensely taken by the girl, and believed that if Glynn were not in existence the Englishman would some day return to the charge. But she knew nothing of the anonymous letters, and their vile attacks upon Posey, which, long after silence had set in in the direction of the enemy, continued to burn and sting in their object's clean, sensitive soul. Since she had told Clandonald, Posey had spoken of this insult to no one. It made her feel, however, that she could never be quite the same again.Helen had exchanged a letter or two with her, but the acquaintance had seemed to drift. It was Miss Carstairs' feeling that until Posey and Mr. Glynn were safely married, it would be more honorable of her to keep out of sight altogether; which goes to show that deep down in the bottom of her heart Miss Carstairs was not altogether certain she had lost all hold upon her former lover's sensibilities.One of the strangest experiences ever coming to Helen befell her at this time. It was nothing less than a declaration of his love in a letter,en route, from M. de Mariol. He had written to her intermittently since their parting in London charming airy missives in his best vein, his critics would have said; letters of rambling travel, of European politics, of observation; graceful, incisive, glowing with color, sparkling with happy phrases; the letters of a poet, a cultured eclectic of the twentieth century to his inspiration. But she had not imagined until she finished reading the last of the series it could come to his doing her the honor of asking her to be his wife. She was profoundly moved, more even than flattered. She had loved Glynn because he was young, handsome, unjaded, therefore broader than most of the men surrounded by whom she had grown up; because it had made her smile to be near him, and the touch of his stalwart hand had thrilled her with a thrill that sometimes came back now. Mariol, appealing to her intellectual side, to her sense of high companionship, repelled her as a lover, and what he asked her to do seemed, on the face of it, grotesque. His suggestion that if she could be brought to look upon him favorably, he would return immediately to Paris, filled her with panic. Her letter sent in return was purposely gentle and simple and apparently unstudied, although nothing had ever cost her such epistolary birth-pangs.M. de Mariol did not return to Paris, and in the course of some days Miss Bleecker also received an important letter, although not of a matrimonial cast. It was from Mrs. Carstairs, in New York, proposing an interposition of diplomacy between her stepdaughter and herself. Mrs. Carstairs, self-confessed a suffering angel who had borne in silence Helen's malignant opposition to her, was about to come abroad to spend the spring in yachting with her husband in the Mediterranean, and would be glad to have Miss Bleecker and Helen join them anywhere that was convenient. If Mr. Carstairs himself did not write to repeat this invitation, Helen would know it was because the poor dear was overworked and brain-weary. For that reason, if for none other, Helen should put aside her unjust, and injurious, and missish fancies, and become one of their family circle in the eyes of all the world.("Naturally," said the astute chaperon to herself, "there is one of two reasons for this urgency to have Helen with them. Either some man she is flirting with is to make one of the party, or somebody has refused to receive Mrs. Carstairs until her step-daughter has done so first.")If Helen would prove herself the devoted daughter she had always boasted of being, and subscribe to her father's wishes, Mrs. Carstairs was empowered by him to say that he would give her at once the fortune, independently of himself, that he had previously withheld. (Incidentally, she named a sum of which the magnitude made Miss Bleecker's frog-like eyes distend and her dull heart beat excitedly.) Helen would be free to come, to go, to marry as she pleased.("And she'd be certain to do it, right away," interpolated the reader, "so I don't see where I come in at all.")Helen would in fact be one of the most enviable young women in America. In conclusion, while urging upon Miss Bleecker the necessity of prompt and vigorous action in this delicate matter, Mrs. Carstairs made an offer to her own account. To the chaperon, if successful in effecting the reconciliation, she would give, unknown to any one, a check for so many dollars, that, again, the frog-eyes opened widely, and Miss Bleecker slapped the letter upon her knee."The woman mayn't be well born, and she certainly deserves all Helen's done to her; but she's got brains, and I think she'll get there," said Miss Bleecker, in conclusion.The beginning of February saw Miss Carstairs, her companion and the admirable Eulalie—who, of course, started the journey with a headache in order to justify her claim to be a first-class ladies' maid—leaving Paris in the Côte d'Azur Rapide, their destination the Riviera. So great was the exodus for that coveted spot that not only had the travellers been unable to secure for themselves places in the melancholy resort of adames seulescarriage, but the compartment in which they found cards bearing their names over the end seats was ominously placarded in all the other divisions. In vain Miss Bleecker fumed and fussed and put on her best grand duchess manner; in vain Mlle. Eulalie looked like an early Christian martyr; the guard could give them no promise of better things.After adjusting her many belongings in the racks and settling down with a look of grim resolution to bear all for Helen's sake, it occurred to Miss Bleecker to get up again and read the names of their yet absent fellow-passengers. Two of them were foreign, undistinguished, presenting nothing to her imagination, and as their owners took possession at the moment, the lady sat down in some confusion at being detected in her access of curiosity."If the other man comes, we'll be knee-to-knee all day, and there won't be breathing space," she whispered across to Helen, next whom, in the middle seat, the fair Eulalie was installed, leaving one place vacant near the door upon the corridor."If it's a man, so much the better," whispered Helen back. "Imagine another headache, beside Eulalie's.""Oh! but I saw the name. English or American, 'Mr. John Glynn,'" returned the unknowing chaperon, who having cast her bombshell, opened a ParisNew York Heraldand began to read the column of social movements in America.Helen sat bolt upright, the blood tingling in her veins. Before she could recover from the first stupor of astonishment, the train was in motion, and, simultaneously, the guard hurried into his place the one person in the world whom Miss Carstairs had least dreamed of seeing.She had shaken hands with him, and named him to Miss Bleecker, who wondered where Helen had picked up this surprisingly good-to-look-upon young man, before her heart ceased its wild palpitation, and she could fairly control her voice. He was direct from Cherbourg, it appeared, had crossed Paris in a slow fiacre, barely catching the Côte d'Azur, in which his place had been retained by wire, and was on his way to the Riviera in answer to a summons concerning important business for a friend resident there for the winter."I fancy I know your friend," said Helen, determined to let no grass grow under her feet. "I crossed with good old Mr. Winstanley in October, and he told me of your engagement to his daughter.""Yes, that has been for some time announced," answered Glynn, the color deepening in his clear brown skin, while Helen remained quite pale. "You have heard also, perhaps, of Mr. Winstanley's bad break in health? Although better, he is not yet able to do business for himself, and a question came up in connection with the mines, in which it was necessary to have his verbal instructions; hence, my run over. Rather a jolly change for me from my office work. Since October, I have had my own place, you know, representing Mr. Winstanley's interests, with headquarters in New York.""I congratulate you doubly, then," said Helen. "How very strange that you should have come into this carriage of all others. And how nice for you, getting out of the blizzards and the high-piled, dirty snow of New York streets in February, to have a glimpse of obstinately azure skies and acres of rose and jasmine!"Although they were running smoothly, conversation across Mlle. Eulalie's large hands, in slightly soiled white kid gloves clasped over Helen's jewel case, did not progress in comfort. Miss Bleecker, who always wanted to be entertained, imperiously signed to the maid to change places with Mr. Glynn, which was done, bringing him close to the ladies for a long day's run.In New York, Miss Bleecker might not have looked twice at a man not in Mr. Charley Brownlow's set, and unknown at any of the clubs of which she considered membership to be the hall-mark of gentility. But those things settle down amazingly abroad, and she now saw Glynn with unclouded eyes. While Helen was wondering how Posey Winstanley could ever have turned aside to fancy Lord Clandonald, when she was free to marry this far handsomer, more imposing, young American, Miss Bleecker was subjecting Glynn to a rapid fire of questions about home matters, from the new Subway to the wrangles in City politics.It was noticeable that when the chaperon now touched upon the subject of the Winstanley family, she did so in a key greatly altered from her former contemptuous one. A man who had risen in a night from commonplace obscurity to his present wealth and growing importance was a type of her country she could not conscientiously overlook. She recalled to Mr. Glynn that she had thought his future father-in-law "so quaint yet forceful." She was not as enthusiastic over Mr. Glynn's fiancée, but there are limits to what we must expect of women.Still, her active mind was even then springing ahead of the present. If she succeeded, as now seemed probable, in bringing about the reconciliation between Helen and her father's wife, and Helen consented to return to them for the present, obviously Miss Bleecker, although with a warm nest-egg in her pocket, would be, vulgarly speaking, out of a job. What better than to annex herself to the Winstanleys, to have the credit of forming a young creature who was destined to conspicuous place before the world and even, perhaps——?Miss Bleecker, at this juncture, cast a furtive glance at her reflection in the little slip of mirror over Helen's head. It was not exactly favorable, since she had risen before the world was aired, her complexion looked yellow where it ought to be red, and certain fatal lines around nose and mouth, elusive in the evening, stood out, abnormally plain! Miss Bleecker looked away. By and by, hope springing eternal, whispered to her that what a rich old man wants in a wife is not youth and beauty, provoking the eternal triangle of the modern situation, but agreeability, tact, a knowledge of how to make the wheels go round. She rallied, smiled at Mr. Glynn in the manner of a sweet old-time friend and counsellor, then taking out a French novel and a pearl-handled paper-cutter, subsided into apparent literature and actual plan-making.Helen wondered if ever girl in her position were more curiously hounded by odd circumstance. She saw that Glynn, like herself, was profoundly moved by their rencontre. And what wonder, since when they had last met she had sobbed her farewell upon his breast, his arms had tightly closed around her, and he had declared that he could not, would not give her up!He had been forced to give her up, however, and gradually to acquiesce in the common sense of her decision. The offer of himself to Miss Winstanley, made without knowledge of Posey's altered circumstances, had been joyously approved in a letter posted at Liverpool by Mr. Winstanley, who had bidden John remember that he was now his son, and, as such, entitled to a full share of the good luck that he proceeded to unfold. When Glynn had assumed charge of Mr. Winstanley's interests and business, he had for the first time learned the full meaning and extent of that good luck! Mr. Winstanley also told him that under the circumstances of Posey's call to a much higher position in life and society than had even been expected, he desired her to spend some time longer in pursuance of education and wider experience before returning home to be married.A little dazed by the turn of events, Glynn had acquiesced in this latter decree, almost too easily, he feared. He told himself that he needed time to adjust his ideas to the prospect of riches. As a matter of fact, he was relieved not to become Posey's husband until he knew her better. The pretty, half-baked, freakish creature, who offended his sense of conventionality, who dealt with him so unemotionally, seemed about as practical a bride as Undine must have been to her long-suffering knight! Between Posey's image and himself, that of high-bred Helen Carstairs, stepping down from her proud pedestal to give him the first passion of her woman's love, had, in the beginning, perpetually come. Latterly, this had been wearing off, and stern habit had asserted itself, as it fortunately does.Posey's letters, surely the strangest ever penned by a betrothed maiden to her lover, came to Glynn regularly. She had told him, with appalling frankness, that after engaging herself to him (by telephone!) she had suffered many pangs of fear that the whole thing was a mistake; also, she must confess, she had met another man with whom, had there been no obstructions in the way, she might have been happier. During her father's illness, seeing the enormous stress he laid upon her promise to marry John, she had come to see things more clearly, had recognized in herself a vain, silly child, and was now resolved to devote her whole future life to being more worthy of her good fortune as Glynn's wife.To read these artless effusions had been like looking into a crystal globe. Whatever came, Glynn could not complain that she had deceived him. During his benefactor's dangerous illness, when it was essential for Glynn to remain where he was, and he could only cable his anxiety and sympathy, his heart had become more awakened to Posey's claim upon him, and he had felt for her loyal tenderness. When the summons from Mr. Winstanley arrived that was to bring him once more in actual touch with her, he had set out to obey it, believing that he was at last effectually cured of old weakness, and panoplied to begin the new life.And he had hardly set foot in France before he found himself seated side by side with Helen Carstairs in a railway train, flying southward, with nothing to disturb their intercourse during a long day and evening, and actually bound for the same goal!Simultaneously, Glynn and Helen rose to the occasion, put behind them the temptation to revert to the fond chapter lived in their young lives, and took up again the sort of intercourse that had so pleased and refreshed her at the beginning of their acquaintance. It was like one of their old talks at the house of Helen's friend who had introduced them to each other, and fostered their intimacy; a woman who had the cleverness to find interesting people in the whirlpool of business and pleasure and money-spending that calls itself New York society, and the courage to draw them out of it to herself.Glynn felt that he would long have cause to remember that February day. The new fast train justified all that had been claimed for it in speed and comfort. It tore down the Rhone valley as the mistral tears, it left behind Avignon, city of Popes, and other spots of classic interest, as if it had been a "Flyer" between Chicago and New York. The light carriages rocked and swayed, stones from the road-bed rose up like a fusillade of small-arms, striking the bottom of the train; one dared not leave one's seat for the dining-car for fear of falling; people who had not exchanged a word previously began, by common consent, to talk all together, and all their talk was of the speed of trains they had known and heard about. Miss Bleecker went yellow in her nervous anxiety, declaring she had no use for a train in which one could not brew a cup of tea for fear of setting things on fire. Mlle. Eulalie wept under her veil, and accepted brandy offered her from Miss Bleecker's flask. The two solemn travellers who filled the other seats, and now joined in general animated talk, turned out to be one a French railway engineer, to whose utterances all listened humbly, the other an Italian musical genius,en routefor Monte Carlo. In the confusion of tongues and exclamations, the little string of toy carriages bounced and flew onward, until suddenly the air brakes were put on, and with a long protracted jolting, they came to a full stop!Something had happened, but what? Glynn and the engineer, going outside to investigate matters, in the falling dusk, returned to report that their carriage was to go no farther, and its passengers were to be transferred to the one ahead."As well as I can make out, it is the complaint not unknown to our railways of a 'hot box,'" said Glynn. "The bother is, that you ladies must take what seats you can get till our journey's end."Officials, coming to hurry them, showed but scant sympathy with Miss Bleecker's indignant protests, with Eulalie's fresh burst of tears. Helen, following her chaperon quietly, had an odd sensation that nothing mattered much so long as Glynn was at her elbow speaking cheery, merry words!They threaded their way into the carriage ahead, to be received with what enthusiasm by the tired, nervous, over-strained passengers already filling its full space, may be imagined. Miss Bleecker was accommodated with the odd seat of a compartment reserved by a French couple of her acquaintance, who, feeling rather bored by so much of each other's society, made a virtue of necessity in welcoming the stranded American lady. Eulalie was tucked somewhere happily out of sight. For Helen and Glynn there remained but two camp-stools, produced by a guard, and placed in the corridor at the rear!"I have heard of blessings in disguise," he said significantly, when they were speeding forward again toward Marseilles."This is really better than that stuffy place we had," she answered, made happy, despite herself, by the meaning in his tones."If any one had told me that I should be to-day sitting beside you, rushing through the darkness headlong to the unknown, I would have counted it a fable.""You are not rushing to the unknown. I cannot think of any one whose life and work are more clearly cut out for him or more sure of a happy ending.""I—I suppose so," he said, with a sigh."You know it, Mr. Glynn.""Has it come to Mr. Glynn?""Don't make things worse for me than they are," she exclaimed confusedly. She felt frightened that one moment of isolation with him had brought back into his voice the lover's cadence, after their months of blank separation, and their day just passed in renunciation and good behavior. The admission in her speech, the forlorn droop of her mouth, were too much for his strained resolution."Tell me one thing only, Helen—as if we two were standing on the verge of everlasting parting—have you cared?""When have I not cared?" she said impetuously."Hadit to be?""I thought so, then. I haven't always thought so since. Latterly——""Go on. Latterly—?" he said, in a dreary tone."I have made a compromise with my father about something in dispute between us. He has made me more than independent of him. Isn't it always so in life, that relief comes too late?""What did that ever matter, anyway? Wasn't I ready, willing, eager, mad, to take you as you were? Would it have been the first time an American man married an American woman without a penny between them, except what he could earn? The trouble was that you couldn't trust me.""That I couldn't trust myself," she said bitterly. "I knew my world better than you did, John.""But you say you haven't always thought the same since," he exclaimed, searching her eyes with a desperately anxious gaze."It is not fair to wring from me such admissions. It isn't like you to persist in talk like this. After all, you were the first to console yourself."His face fell into gloom. He drew away from her and, for a while, sat in silence. Helen turned to look out of the window to hide her gathering tears.It was a miserable time for both, yet neither would have yielded up an inch of it in exchange for any imaginable pleasure. Helen was thinking, "Oh, that the train would only go on forever, and let me sit by him on this horrid little stool without a back!" and Glynn would have fought any guard or conductor who came to offer them the usual seats among other people. They said very little, but felt the more. At Marseilles, where they went outside for a whiff of soft, delicious air, fancying they smelt orange blossoms, and saw stars looking into the sea, and during the rest of the zigzag run along the lovely coast to Cannes, each knew that the other was dreading the finale of their strange experience.As they ran into the Cannes station toward eleven o'clock, and it became necessary to rouse up nodding Miss Bleecker, and collect woful Eulalie, with her bags and bundles, Helen and he rose simultaneously, with a shiver of apprehension."This is the last time, John?""The last time, Helen—darling," he said, in a hoarse undertone of yearning tenderness.Their hands met and strained together. Her eyes answered his, and he did not again doubt."It has been all one great, terrible mistake," she went on, more steadily. "We have got to meet, if you stay here, and after this there's to be no more weakness, remember! We'll be pretty poor stuff if we can't conquer ourselves, don't you think so?"Hers was the last word, for Miss Bleecker, tottering like a somnambulist, issued forth to interrupt them. Helen and she were assisted out of the train by Glynn, and placed in custody of their hotel's station-porter. A moment more, the ladies were in the 'bus alone, threading the back streets of the sleepy little town, to ascend the hill to a stately hostelry, where their arrival was the signal for a theatrical effect of house-porters in scarlet jackets issuing from a brilliantly lighted entrance around which roses and bougainvillea twined.

"Helen, here is a compartment that will just hold you and me and Eulalie, comfortably, and we will tip the guard to let us have it to ourselves," came in Miss Bleecker's penetrating tones. "Good-by, M. de Mariol, we shall always remember our pleasant voyage, and I shall treasure that clever thing you wrote in my birthday book. Sorry not to have seen Lord Clandonald to say good-by, but we shall all meet again, of course, people always do. Don't forget if you are in town, any time, we are in Curzon Street for a fortnight, and then Paris, Hotel Westminster. Eulalie, you have Miss Carstairs' black jacket? Porter, look out for those umbrellas in the netting, put my dressing bag beside me, the tea-basket overhead—where is the other rug? Oh! I see. Ten pieces, all right, porter, here you are, for you and your mate.What, not enough? Ample, and more than you deserve. Helen, how could you give him another shilling, when you know that is what shows any one with half an eye you are just from the other side?"

CHAPTER VI

The luncheon at Beaumanoir, although lacking the young lady for whose delectation it had been proposed, came off to the satisfaction of at least four of the five people present, viz., Miss Bleecker, whom it had been impossible to omit; M. de Mariol, who, cynicism to the contrary, was delighted with a chance of showing Helen Carstairs the noble old place in a lambent day of mid-October; Helen, herself, frankly pleased with the entertainment; and good old Lady Campstown, whose mind having long set itself upon the thought of her nephew's remarriage with a wealthy American girl, as a happy issue out of all his difficulties, chose to construe the occasion into a presentation to her of the future chatelaine whose dollars were to stop the chinks in Clandonald's ancestral roofs, and her virtues to gild anew the escutcheon dimmed by her unworthy predecessor.

"If she's an American, she'll probably go straight," thought Lady Campstown, after having first informed herself through a New York lady so long resident in London as to suffer acute pangs upon being reminded of the place of her nativity, that Helen's father was "theMr. Carstairs whom everybody had heard about." When Clandonald had proposed to his aunt to preside over his little party, her ladyship had not dared ask him the direct question that was burning upon her lips. She had contented herself with his answer to her rallying query whether upon his travels he had met any of those wonderful girls from the States the modern novelists write about, that he fancied the supply would always be equal to the demand for that commodity. And when Miss Carstairs, so quiet, lovely and distinguished in mien and manner, appeared amid the faded chintz of the great drawing-room at Beaumanoir, admiring its choice contents with knowledge and without gush, treating Lady Campstown exactly as she ought to be treated, the reality of the old gentlewoman's hopes seemed as near as it was grateful.

Even Miss Bleecker shone in a reflected light, and Lady Campstown pronounced her, afterwards, a most agreeable, chatty person. As she conducted both visitors through the principal rooms of her childhood's home, her little ladyship's frail face and figure seemed to have stepped down for the occasion from a frame of which the gilding had worn away. Helen was in turn charmed by her simplicity and frankness, and the two gravitated together naturally. The men found them in the picture gallery, where Lady Campstown was destined to receive her first disillusion, in the fact that her nephew in asking Miss Carstairs if she were ready to see the white peacocks on their famous strutting ground, invited M. de Mariol to come, too!

But the good aunt utilized her talk alone with Miss Bleecker to speak openly about Lord Clandonald's excellences, his wrongs at the hands of Ruby Darien, his desirable domestic traits, the subjects, in fine, rarely neglected when the female proprietor or backer of a man in the marriage market sees her chance. Lady Campstown was so genuinely unselfish in her desire to build up again the shattered fabric of her dear Clan's life, that another than the pachydermatous Miss Bleecker would have perceived the pathos of the situation, and condoned the openness of the attack. Miss Bleecker, however, was quite on her guard. She did not consider Clandonald anything to jump at in the way of a match for Helen. She was certain of Mr. Carstairs' disapproval; she knew that he could not be brought to supply cash for the palpably exigent repairs at Beaumanoir, and lastly, and more to the point, she had no idea of relinquishing while she could hold it, her comfortable billet as Miss Carstairs' chaperon. But she was aware that Lady Campstown, while possessing but a small and meagre establishment in London, had a pretty villa at Cannes, where she was a personage of undoubted influence and wide acquaintance. And as Miss Bleecker's doctor had advised the air of that favored resort for her relaxed throat, and Helen did not care where they went, Cannes was the secret object of the chaperon's intended movement southward at the season's height.

Therefore, the conversation, while the two elders strolled or sat under immemorial yews, and enjoyed grapes and peaches plucked in an enchanting old walled garden, waxed upon one side, more gracious and evasive, on the other, more perplexed and yet more hopeful. From all she could gather, Lady Campstown was convinced that Helen had been sent by Providence for Clan's regeneration. The hint given on their return to the house, that the American ladies would be in Cannes after Christmas, to remain there until joined probably by Mr. and Mrs. Carstairs in the well-known yacht, "Sans Peur," seemed to fit into her plans. A further suggestion from the dowager, that Miss Bleecker and her charge would allow Lady Campstown to have the pleasure of introducing them to some people and places in the south, came so quickly, and was accepted so suavely, that the stately little lady was herself a little startled and taken aback by it.

At this moment Clandonald and his other guests stepped in through a window opening upon a stone-paved court with fountains and statues and ancient trees, enclosed in walls of ivy and maiden-hair fern, reproducing prettily one of those haunts of Pan at Villa d'Este in Tivoli, adored by a former owner. Helen had been sitting upon a lichen-grown stone bench, too lapped in pure pleasure to want to move. A stable-clock striking somewhere back of shrubberies, had warned her that it was time for them to be thinking of their train up to town; and she rose regretfully.

"It has been a day to string upon Time's rosary," she said to her host, to whom she yielded the greater credit for his hospitality, because she saw that he had been worried and abstracted, and that it was Mariol's continued sparkle of wit and bonhomie that had really lent the occasion its subtle charm.

"It is very kind of you to have been willing to give me so much of your valuable time," he answered, with an effort to throw off what was possessing him, "and it has been a pleasant second chapter of our voyage."

"I wanted to tell you and M. de Mariol before we separate," went on Miss Carstairs, who had all day been trying for an opportunity to bring this in, and failed, simple as the matter seemed, "that I had, this morning only, a letter from Miss Winstanley. They decided, you know, to put off their visit to London till some later date, and have been wandering through the apple country of South Devon, to see the orchards and the cider-making. Some book Mr. Winstanley read had tempted him. They were to stop at Torquay, thence going to Dover and the Continent."

"Very nice—and very American," said Clandonald. "Fancy running after an apple-crop the moment one lands in Britain, because some man has put it into a novel! I hope Miss Winstanley has recovered from her indisposition?"

"She seemed to be well and happy. She asked to be kindly remembered to you and M. de Mariol."

Clandonald's courtesy had taken wings, in the emotion of a deeper sort that overcame him inconveniently. He had hoped to carry off easily this inevitable talk about the girl who had laid so strong a hold upon his broken life. But he said nothing at all, while Mariol, as usual, came to the rescue.

"I have been telling Clandonald the two interesting facts developed by you concerning our Alabama friend," he said, gracefully. "And we both unite in asking you to convey to her our best congratulations upon her intended marriage."

"What a glorious copper beech!" exclaimed Helen, suddenly looking away past its owner to where the trees arose like a fire fountain from velvet sward. "I beg your pardon. I will give her the message when I answer her characteristic letter. Perhaps I ought to have said before that, in a postscript, she asked me to tell you both of her engagement to Mr. Glynn, should I not have already done so."

Lady Campstown, having taken cordial leave of her nephew's guests, whom de Mariol escorted back to their private hotel in Curzon Street, remained over with Clandonald at Beaumauoir for tea. They drank it, thanks to a perfectly warm and well-aired afternoon, under the beech tree extolled by Miss Carstairs. Clandonald's dogs, the only friends of man who do not disappoint or change, clustered around his knee, a homely but human Schipperke gluing her faithful head upon her master's boot. The day, the hour, the pleasant rite, the dear old woman whose thin, pearl-white fingers twinkled among the tea cups as she looked over at him from time to time in a sort of speechless longing, touched and pleased the returned traveller, but could not cheer his melancholy.

Finally Lady Campstown took heart of grace to go to the point direct.

"I'm sorry to see you so down, Clan, my dear boy," she said, in handing him his second cup. "To-day, of all days, when you have had such a charming visitor. I can't tell you how well I am pleased with Miss Carstairs. You must know."

"Delighted, I'm sure, Aunt Lucy," he answered, with refrigerating vagueness. "But to talk of less agreeable subjects, I'm sorry to say Ruby has broken loose again, and is annoying me horribly. Having failed recently to make a scene for me—and another person—after her own heart, she has taken to writing me infernal hypocritical letters, saying she's back in England, stone-broke, ill, penitent, Lord knows what, and must have money."

"The old cry!" exclaimed Lady Campstown hotly. "Don't answer her, Clan, treat her as if you were locked in behind walls, and she in the street, outside."

"Her capacity for inventing malice and mischief is too great. She will find some way to circumvent me. Her price of peace is hard cash, and so for the present, I can breathe free again."

"You have been weak enough——" began his aunt, despairingly.

"I am not the only one involved," he said shortly. "Now, Aunt Lucy, say no more to me about it. I only wished to put you on your guard against any assault she might make upon your compassion."

"I am safe from that!" said the little lady grimly, and indeed, for the moment, she looked so, in her splendid wrath and scorn. Clandonald did not pursue the subject, and something warned her that neither was this the time for pursuance of the light vision of the American girl whom she had fondly pictured taking Ruby's place in the desolate old house. They talked of family matters, of Clan's travels, of things present and to come until Lady Campstown and her maid were obliged to leave. When her nephew had put her into the brougham to go to the station, Lady Campstown rallied her courage for a final appeal.

"You'll drop in for luncheon, tea or dinner whenever you've nothing better, won't you, dear boy?" she asked, surveying him wistfully. "You know I go out so little I'm apt to be always there. I'm to have luncheon on Tuesday, and go to some pictures with these pleasant friends of yours who've just left us; and, Clan, dear, isn't it nice that they're coming to Cannes this winter? Miss Carstairs' father is to be there in the yacht. He must be a very interesting man. Such a power, one can't fail to—oh! thank you, Jenkins" (this to the gardener, arriving with a huge nosegay of late roses and chrysanthemums, and a basket of ruddy peaches), "they are most lovely, I am sure. You will certainly not fail to make me that promised visit in January? It seemed so lonely, last year, nobody inhabiting your room. Come, promise, Clan, and I know you will never break your word!"

"I am afraid, Aunt Lucy," he said, giving her a final loving kiss, "that I had better not promise anything, just now, if I'm to keep up my good reputation in your eyes. Think what you like as to my being spooney about a pretty American. But it is arranged between Mariol and myself—though we can't agree about our destination—that we are to set out for somewhere early next week. Mariol leans toward Tibet, I to the Balkans. To decide it, we shall probably toss up a sovereign. But this much is certain—off we go."

It was not until December, when Lady Campstown was fairly established at Villa Julia, on the slope of the Californie, under house-walls obscured by bougainvillea and arbutilon and Gloire de Dijon roses, that she felt in the least assuaged of her disappointment. She had left London swathed in a yellow fog of appalling density, had run down to Dover in an atmosphere of pea-soup; had found Paris under weeping skies; had traversed France in a murky mist; and only on waking up in Cannes next morning had renewed acquaintance with the sun.

As she looked out of her window, the olives and palms seemed to wave a welcome to the south. The sea laughed in every ripple of its wide expanse, the mountains slept under their veil of azure, the light over all was almost intolerably bright. The flowers that she so well loved, blooming overhead and underfoot, springing from wall crannies, gladdening and glorying every available spot of earth, made her ladyship feel once more like her own even-tempered, happy self!

She had not heard from the wanderers in the Balkans, but had felt resigned that dear Clan had not pushed on to that dreadful far-away Tibet, where men were flayed alive if they happened not to please the rulers upon whose land they were trespassing, which would have been so much worse! She and her maid, and a servant or two brought out from England, occupied themselves for a day in unpacking and readjusting ornaments, putting flowers and plants about the rooms, and looking over the garden, a lovely tiny place where roses ran riot, and palm trees waved their feathered tops or clashed together their spiked leaves with a little metallic ring, when the breeze stirred them from their majestic calm.

There were many finer, many larger, many more cared-for gardens in the town, though none that gave more satisfaction to its owner. Lady Campstown knew and loved every inch of it, but the spot most often resorted to by her, in hot sunshine, was a tunnel cut in a thicket of bamboos terminating her domain, from which a gate led out under the wall of the adjoining lordly pleasure house called "Villa Reine des Fées." Above this wall arose the symmetrical shafts of a cypress avenue, into which, and far beyond it, Lady Campstown had been accustomed to penetrate at will, through a little green door hidden by verdure, placed there for the convenience of the gardeners. The lodge-keeper of this deserted dwelling, to whose child her ladyship had ministered in illness, and all the other employees of the place, had always made welcome the little figure in black, wearing a mushroom hat and carrying a long tortoise-shell stick, who from time to time appeared among the alleys and under the flowery pergolas of a veritable fairyland of trees and turf and shrubs and blossoms.

The dwelling at Reine des Fées, sheltered from prevailing winds by a thick olive grove resting like a gray cloud upon the hillside above it, was of considerable size and pretension. Ascending, by a long flight of white marble steps, the two terraces with their mosaic pavements and marble balustrades, over which orange and lemon trees hung their fruit and flowers, one reached an imposing portal, where roses climbed upon the white façade of the many-windowed house, to fall back in rivulets of bloom. The gardens were a marvel of skilfully massed semi-tropical shrubbery and trees, shutting out the view of other villas and revealing at happy turns vistas of the Mediterranean, the two islands, and the blue jagged line of the Esterels; while tall box-hedges, cypresses, fountains and pergolas wedded the tender grace of Italy to the warm, witchery of Provence.

The place had been originally constructed by a wealthy Russian as a bower for his young wife who had died there in early married life; and for a long time had remained unoccupied, although scrupulously kept up.

Upon the death of the owner it had passed to his younger brother who, intending to live in it according to his luxurious tastes, had put in "lifts," baths, and sundry up-to-date conveniences; had renewed the furniture, china and glass, prepared the stables for many horses, and then vanished from sight of man into a house he had in the Caucasus—melancholy mad!

For two years Villa Reine des Fées had now been in the market for a tenant, yet none had presented himself. Whether or not the house had a name for bringing ill-luck to its inhabitants, or that the price fixed upon it was prohibitively high, it had remained vacant, as before. Lady Campstown could not regret this circumstance.

So long the enchanted ground behind the rose-wall had seemed an annex to her own modest property, she begrudged the idea of its overflowing with noisy gay people, with their dinners and dances, their motor cars puffing up the drive, their tennis matches and tea-parties, piano-practising and perhaps spoiled children and dogs, to invade her sylvan solitudes.

The one fate that Lady Campstown kept in reserve as the most painful that could possibly overtake Villa Reine des Fées, was for it to be inhabited by Americans. Now, upon her return (although recently born again, as it were, to a new sense of the excellent possibilities of her transatlantic kinsfolk!) she learned with dismay, from her gardener, that the house had actually been leased to an American family, who were to arrive the following day! Details of the calamity she could not at first bring herself to acquire. It was enough that her worst fears for her cherished playground were about to be realized. She turned pale at thought of the changes sure to come.

Directly after luncheon Lady Campstown took down her mushroom hat and an Inverness cape that her maid had hung on a peg in the entry, armed herself with her tortoise-shell stick—a gift from Clandonald, by the way—and trotted down the walk of her own garden leading out under the bamboos to the little green door in her neighbor's wall. This was open, and she went in, sadly resolved to make a final pilgrimage to all the familiar spots henceforward to be blocked from her view as effectually as newspaper paragraphs by the ink-marks of a Russian censor.

The day was glorious, earth, sea and sky lustrous with intense sunshine, the air filled with odors of orange-blossom and violet, jasmine and rose, the palms bending gently under a summer breeze. Never had the grounds of Villa Reine des Fées seemed in more perfect order. She gave one glance up at the gleaming house-front above the stately balustrades, and saw that its windows were open, new curtains fluttering in the breeze. In the loggia adjoining the boudoir of the poor little dead princess, wicker chairs, gayly cushioned, were grouped under the rose wreaths. The signs of coming habitation were too evident.

Lady Campstown would not look again. Sorrowfully she directed her steps along the lower terrace, her tortoise-shell stick tapping impatiently upon the renaissance birds and beasts of its pavement. She even hoped not to meet any of the friendly Provençals who worked upon the place, with whom she had been wont to stop and talk about themselves and families, the prospects of the flower-crop for neighboring cultivators, and affairs of the town in general.

At some distance from the house this terrace was rounded into a lookout, commanding a wondrous avenue of palms, their trunks enwrapped in roses and jasmine, at the end of which the hillside fell sharply away, revealing an unimaginably lovely view of the sea and islands. From here, as the visitor now seated herself to gaze her last at a favorite prospect, she saw coming toward her, beneath the arch of palms, between borders of violets, a very tall young woman, modishly attired in white embroidered cloth, with a large white-plumed hat that breathed of the Rue de la Paix, in Paris.

[image]She saw coming toward her, beneath the arch of palms, a very tall young woman, modishly attired.

[image]

[image]

She saw coming toward her, beneath the arch of palms, a very tall young woman, modishly attired.

Lady Campstown wished that she could believe this engaging person to be some one who, like herself, had strayed into Villa Reine des Fées through curiosity—a guest from one of the adjacent smart hotels.

But she could not. She knew in her British soul that it was none other than one of the temporary owners of the property, and that she herself stood revealed a trespasser. In her intense vexation, the dowager arose again, striking her stick on the hot marble underfoot, till two little green lizards scampered away in fright at its sharp resonance.

"I beg your pardon," she said in her well-bred old voice, "I live in the next house, and of course had no idea that the villa was yet inhabited."

"Please don't speak of it," was the surprisingly friendly answer. (The girl was thinking, "Here, surely, is the Fairy Godmother.") "We decided at the last minute to come a day earlier, so anxious were we to get out of gloomy, wet Paris. You see, my father has been very ill, and the doctors rather wanted to hurry him to Provence. We took the night train, arriving this morning, and already he seems to feel the benefit, and is now getting a good sleep."

As she spoke she came up upon the terrace, and stood by Lady Campstown's side.

"I am glad to hear it," answered the old lady, forgetting her resentment. "I should explain that this house has been so long unoccupied, I have felt at liberty to stray in from time to time, and see the flowers and so——"

"Indeed, you are not to say another word," said the hostess, with pretty emphasis. "If you had the least idea how I was just bursting to let out of me some of my delight!"

"'Bursting to let out of me'!" Lady Campstown was certain that she knew no one who would have been responsible for that peculiar phrase, but the joyous appeal of the young voice and eyes, the radiantly smiling mouth, were not to be resisted.

"You feel it, then?" she said, smiling in return.

"Down to the ground!" said the tall girl. "I don't believe I ever had such thrills in my life before. I've been walking up and down under these oranges and lemons and palms, wondering if it can be I? To think we're to have this little heaven all to ourselves for daddy to get well in! You see, there are only my father and myself, and we know very few people over here in Europe. We are Americans."

"I believe so," said Lady Campstown, with restraint.

"The villa was taken for us through our doctor in Paris, who had seen it, and told daddy. I thought the rooms in our hotel in Paris too lovely for anything, but this goes a long way ahead. I've got that splendid big front chamber with the dressing-room and bath, and the sort of little porch covered with vines, where the servants seem to expect me to have my breakfast by myself. The truth is, I don't care where I eat these old continental breakfasts; only rolls and coffee, and perhaps one miserable little egg, and that extra, I'm always hungry again by eleven. Daddy's got a huge room opposite mine, all carved furniture with a bed like a church pew, but he likes it, and the man nurse that takes care of him says he's better already for the change. It's ridiculous for only us two to try to fill this regular little palace, isn't it? If I were home, I could ask some of the girls, but, over here, I don't know any but one, and we haven't actually got a chaperon for me yet. We talked of it, you know, but when it came to the point, daddy dreaded her being perched up between us like Poe's raven, at meals, and everywhere, and so we put it off. Perhaps, if you live here you wouldn't mind giving me a word of advice about how to do things. There's a housekeeper that goes with the house, and she engaged the extra servants, such a lot I never saw! I came out into the garden to get rid of the whole kit and boodle of them! But after a while I'll learn my way, and then not feel so awkward as I do now. Maybe you are thinking it strange why I don't know these things, but I've no mother, and no near relations but daddy, and till now we've lived in a very plain way, at home."

Lady Campstown's heart melted incontinently. The rapidity and scope of the girl's confidences were atoned for by her youth and the direct gaze of her childlike eyes, to say nothing of the beauty that had been sinking into the old lady's impressionable senses. Also, her ladyship was always genuinely interested in the details of a perilous illness; and those of the invalid's recent grave attack of pneumonia were received with not to say satisfaction, but something that nearly approached it. She gave the girl much sound advice, and as they strayed together onward from point to point through the grounds, which Lady Campstown knewcon amore, she found herself equipped with an astonishing relish for the situation so unexpectedly attained. When they were both quite out of breath with talking and walking, she furthermore accepted, graciously, an invitation to step indoors and rest. She had thought her new friend a tyro in social arts, but when they reached the top of the long, hot gleaming flight of white marble stairs, and stood together between the potted bamboos and pelargoniums in the vestibule, was pleased to have her step back with charming grace and execute a little curtsey, saying:

"I don't think you can know that my name is Pamela Winstanley, and I'd be very glad if you wouldn't mind telling me yours."

It is not, therefore, to be numbered among things incredible that soon after four o'clock that afternoon, when the sun like a ball of fire had dropped behind the blue barrier of the Esterels, leaving the world to darkness and a sudden glacial chill, Miss Winstanley, attended by one of her brand-new footmen carrying a sheaf of rare roses, repaired, in her turn, through the little green doorway in the flowery wall dividing Villa Reine des Fées from Villa Julia. She was wrapped in a smart fur-lined cloak, and her mission was to take tea with Lady Campstown!

A trim maid ushered her into the long, low drawing-room with its hangings of sunflower yellow, its mirrors and consoles and twin Empire sofas, its square of dull red Turkey carpet in the centre of a slippery waste of parquetry, its brass-trimmed tables and chairs, bought with the house and never altered. But over all had been diffused a look of home that Villa Reine des Fées could not attain. There was a folding screen covered with miniatures, behind the couch whereon Lady Campstown sat crocheting in rosy wool one of the newpélérines neigeuses; there were flowers and books and a wide writing-table, with silver bound blotting book and silver fittings. A small table, covered with a web of white linen and lace that a Cardinal might have worn upon a day of festa, was spread for the tea to be brought in by and by; and Posey did not know that, to fit it to her guest's age and supposed tastes, Lady Campstown had sent a special messenger to the rue d'Antibes for marrons glâcés and wondrous crystallized fruits!

A little fire of gnarled olive roots, pine cones, and eucalyptus boughs was blazing on the hearth. The girl, carrying her own flowers now, paused on the threshold with an exclamation of delight.

"Oh! how good, how sweet of you to let me come!" she cried, "and, please, would you think me very rude if I sat down on the rug and played with your Orange pussy?"

The tea over, the new friends talked with ever-increasing cordiality. Lady Campstown soon knew all there was to know of the girl's former modest position in life and her recent information by her father that she was expected to spend his large income as she pleased.

"He asked me, poor dear, not to hold back for anything in reason, but to find out all that we ought to have, and order it. And you'd better believe, Lady Campstown, that an American girl knows how to do that same! It seems he had a talk on our steamer, just before we landed, with a friend both he and I trust in, and she told him it was his duty to live up to his fortune. He's known he had all this money for nearly a year past, but had no idea how to begin to spend it. And so we branched right out in Paris, and got a suite of rooms that a royalty had before us. I went straight off to the Only Adorable Worth, and bought everything in the way of gowns. I had masters in French and singing, and when we drove in the Bois, or went to the galleries and shops, and everybody stared, I took to it as naturally as a duck to water. But I must say it was lonesome. I longed and longed for somebody to tell how I felt about it all in my inmost heart.... Then, my darling old daddy fell ill, and his life was in danger, and all the grandeur fell flat as a pancake. I didn't care a straw for my clothes, my carriage, my fine maid, even my new pearls—the whirling wheel of life stood still, still, and I heard only my heart-beats! I thought I was going to lose the dearest, tenderest father in the world, and be left a poor wretched orphan with nothing but things to comfort me!"

She had sprung up from the rug and was by this time seated on the couch beside Lady Campstown, and that lady's kind little hand had found its way into hers. If the dowager felt, at moments, a little dizzy with the speed at which this episode of new acquaintance had progressed, she had only to look across the room at the portrait of a girl who would have been thirty had she lived, but in her mother's eyes seemed forever just eighteen. Maybe she would have been ungrateful, unloving,mondaineordévote; she might have married ill, or died in bringing a child into the world; or any one of a thousand every-day happenings might have robbed the mother of joy in her companionship. But, to Lady Campstown, her lost daughter was always young, prosperous, lovely, beyond reproach; and for her sake, Pamela Winstanley, with all her imperfections of bringing-up upon her golden head, was forgiven much! What wonder that before they separated Posey had received assurance that Lady Campstown would look after her in various substantial ways; and that Mr. Winstanley's new motor car, ordered from Paris, being yet to come, the girl should be invited to take her first view of the riant little town from the cushions of Lady Campstown's well-known old landau, with the quiet black horses and sober coachman? When they had thus agreed to go shopping together in the tempting, if narrow and sunless, rue d'Antibes, and Posey, for the second time, had arisen to take her leave, her eye fell upon an imperial photograph, framed in silver, of a man she recognized with a swift leap of the heart.

"My nephew Clandonald," said the dowager, heaving a little affectionate sigh. "Almost all I have left to love. He is a dear fellow, and has been much sinned against. Just now he is somewhere in the Balkans loafing, as he calls it, with his friend M. de Mariol, but I trust he will come back soon, and that certain things I hope for him will become realities. I don't mind telling you, my dear, that there is a young lady in the case, and that she's a countrywoman of your own. I have met her, and love her already for his sake, but there's been mischief made, and it will take time to straighten out the tangle of my poor Clan's heart affairs, and, when you and I know each other better, I will explain. In the meantime, we won't talk of it. You'll be ready at half-past ten to-morrow, when I call for you? I'll take you around to the right tradespeople, and afterwards we'll have a little turn on the Croisette."

"An American girl!" Posey said within herself. "It must be said he found consolation very soon." She was conscious of feeling rather blank.

CHAPTER VII

"When in doubt where to go, stay in Paris," had been for some years of travel Miss Bleecker's favorite saying. Helen, who had no great love for the place from her chaperon's point of view, simply acquiesced when told it was too early to go south. She begged Miss Bleecker to go on with her own routine. Mornings in the shops were followed by luncheons with old friends among the American residents, where, after luxurious eating and drinking of light wines, the women sat for hours rooted upon down couches, propped by silken cushions, exchanging hearsays of stupendous gossip about their common acquaintances. Upon Miss Bleecker's return from one of these intimate entertainments, Helen's views of human nature were lowered for days to come.

In the afternoon, Miss Bleecker generally drove out with her charge, or left cards upon people who would have resented her getting in as earnestly as she. In her smart wrap and voluminous furs, with, her plumed hat and dotted veil, the chaperon justly flattered herself that some of the glances bestowed upon their victoria in the Bois and along the Champs Elysées were a late plum fallen to her share. In Central Park, at home, and in Fifth Avenue, every one knew it was only the same old Sally Bleecker in a new French hat. Miss Bleecker had heard it suggested that one must come abroad to find a proper deference paid to years of maturity, which secretly was not what she desired. Her taste was neither for the cold-blooded pushing to the wall of her generation by young Americans, nor yet the reverent hand-kissing of the ancient, observable in high life abroad. Since her morals were above reproach, all she really asked was a recognition by the public of her successful illustrations of the methods of Paquin and Alphonsine.

There were always teas to drop in for, after the drives, at the cosmopolitan resorts of Ritz, or Columbin, or Rumpelmayer, or in private dwellings. In Paris, the division of time between five and seven in the afternoon has become as important for the achievement of social idling of both sexes as in London.

It is in New York where the tea-drinking habit is a graft among the men, and to the women an intermittent sacrifice to fashion's shrine. Miss Bleecker was of the sort whom the steam of the tea-kettle inebriates as well as cheers. She could better exist without her evening orisons than her cup of tea between four and five.

When the ladies returned to their hotel, there was barely time to dress for dinner or the play. Miss Bleecker's dinner list in Paris was larger than in New York, where Sally Bleecker was beginning to bevieux jeu. Abroad, she was welcomed by the translated Americans living in various capitals, who were sure of hearing from her the few things about the private lives of their friends at home that had not got into their newspapers. Lastly, but decidedly not least, she had had the wisdom to perfect herself in bridge, which Helen detested, in common with all games of cards. Whenever Miss Carstairs elected to go off with friends of her own to dine and pass the evening, and her young lady put on a tea gown and ordered a plate of soup and a wing of chicken in their own salon, the chaperon was in glory. In a black net dress, largely bespangled, with a dog-collar of excellently imitated pearls around the doubtful portion of her throat beneath the chin, with her hair admirably groomed and her nails perfectly manicured, wearing her best evening manner and longest gloves, old Sally would run down stairs nimbly to the fiacre that was to take her to her earthly Paradise of bridge! Or else in company with a playmate of seventy-two, who smoked cigarettes eternally, wore low scarlet gowns and rarely dined at home, she would go on from place to place, exhilarated beyond fatigue, whispering inwardly to herself there was nothing like this at her home across the sea.

Helen would have been wofully tired of this life had she not possessed the resources of a rational cultivated woman, and the ability to extract the real kernel of Parisian life, in addition to the acquaintance of a few clever people with whom she could fraternize in her own way. After all, as well Paris as elsewhere for the living down of a great clutching emotion such as her brief passion for John Glynn! She had been spared hearing Posey Winstanley talk about him as her possession, since the Winstanleys had quitted Paris early in December, just before their own arrival there. She had heard in various ways how old Herbert had taken her advice literally, and enrolled himself among the money spenders of their liberal nation. With astonishing rapidity, the fame of the stunning young Southern beauty had been bruited abroad. It was related that a semi-royal personage who had seen her going up the staircase of her hotel had addressed to her father a proposal for her hand, which had been refused by the wise old gentleman without conveying the fact to his daughter. It was known that she had been "taken up" by the best people in Cannes. A little breeze of laudation concerning her was forever blowing where gossips congregate inle monde où l'on s'amuse. In two expressive words, Miss Winstanley "had arrived!"

Helen used to wonder most how this reacted upon John Glynn. She pictured his amazement at finding the Cinderella he had wooed had turned into a Princess in Glass Slippers. But as that is the sort of a shock to which most sensible men become easily habituated, she felt that he had, by now, probably ceased to wonder at his good luck. If he thought at all of Helen, it would be with gratitude for having set him free for this.

She was not so certain that Posey had reached the same stage of satisfaction with existing bonds. Helen was too clever at reading character not to have seen more than Posey meant to admit about her feeling for Clandonald. She saw also that Clandonald was immensely taken by the girl, and believed that if Glynn were not in existence the Englishman would some day return to the charge. But she knew nothing of the anonymous letters, and their vile attacks upon Posey, which, long after silence had set in in the direction of the enemy, continued to burn and sting in their object's clean, sensitive soul. Since she had told Clandonald, Posey had spoken of this insult to no one. It made her feel, however, that she could never be quite the same again.

Helen had exchanged a letter or two with her, but the acquaintance had seemed to drift. It was Miss Carstairs' feeling that until Posey and Mr. Glynn were safely married, it would be more honorable of her to keep out of sight altogether; which goes to show that deep down in the bottom of her heart Miss Carstairs was not altogether certain she had lost all hold upon her former lover's sensibilities.

One of the strangest experiences ever coming to Helen befell her at this time. It was nothing less than a declaration of his love in a letter,en route, from M. de Mariol. He had written to her intermittently since their parting in London charming airy missives in his best vein, his critics would have said; letters of rambling travel, of European politics, of observation; graceful, incisive, glowing with color, sparkling with happy phrases; the letters of a poet, a cultured eclectic of the twentieth century to his inspiration. But she had not imagined until she finished reading the last of the series it could come to his doing her the honor of asking her to be his wife. She was profoundly moved, more even than flattered. She had loved Glynn because he was young, handsome, unjaded, therefore broader than most of the men surrounded by whom she had grown up; because it had made her smile to be near him, and the touch of his stalwart hand had thrilled her with a thrill that sometimes came back now. Mariol, appealing to her intellectual side, to her sense of high companionship, repelled her as a lover, and what he asked her to do seemed, on the face of it, grotesque. His suggestion that if she could be brought to look upon him favorably, he would return immediately to Paris, filled her with panic. Her letter sent in return was purposely gentle and simple and apparently unstudied, although nothing had ever cost her such epistolary birth-pangs.

M. de Mariol did not return to Paris, and in the course of some days Miss Bleecker also received an important letter, although not of a matrimonial cast. It was from Mrs. Carstairs, in New York, proposing an interposition of diplomacy between her stepdaughter and herself. Mrs. Carstairs, self-confessed a suffering angel who had borne in silence Helen's malignant opposition to her, was about to come abroad to spend the spring in yachting with her husband in the Mediterranean, and would be glad to have Miss Bleecker and Helen join them anywhere that was convenient. If Mr. Carstairs himself did not write to repeat this invitation, Helen would know it was because the poor dear was overworked and brain-weary. For that reason, if for none other, Helen should put aside her unjust, and injurious, and missish fancies, and become one of their family circle in the eyes of all the world.

("Naturally," said the astute chaperon to herself, "there is one of two reasons for this urgency to have Helen with them. Either some man she is flirting with is to make one of the party, or somebody has refused to receive Mrs. Carstairs until her step-daughter has done so first.")

If Helen would prove herself the devoted daughter she had always boasted of being, and subscribe to her father's wishes, Mrs. Carstairs was empowered by him to say that he would give her at once the fortune, independently of himself, that he had previously withheld. (Incidentally, she named a sum of which the magnitude made Miss Bleecker's frog-like eyes distend and her dull heart beat excitedly.) Helen would be free to come, to go, to marry as she pleased.

("And she'd be certain to do it, right away," interpolated the reader, "so I don't see where I come in at all.")

Helen would in fact be one of the most enviable young women in America. In conclusion, while urging upon Miss Bleecker the necessity of prompt and vigorous action in this delicate matter, Mrs. Carstairs made an offer to her own account. To the chaperon, if successful in effecting the reconciliation, she would give, unknown to any one, a check for so many dollars, that, again, the frog-eyes opened widely, and Miss Bleecker slapped the letter upon her knee.

"The woman mayn't be well born, and she certainly deserves all Helen's done to her; but she's got brains, and I think she'll get there," said Miss Bleecker, in conclusion.

The beginning of February saw Miss Carstairs, her companion and the admirable Eulalie—who, of course, started the journey with a headache in order to justify her claim to be a first-class ladies' maid—leaving Paris in the Côte d'Azur Rapide, their destination the Riviera. So great was the exodus for that coveted spot that not only had the travellers been unable to secure for themselves places in the melancholy resort of adames seulescarriage, but the compartment in which they found cards bearing their names over the end seats was ominously placarded in all the other divisions. In vain Miss Bleecker fumed and fussed and put on her best grand duchess manner; in vain Mlle. Eulalie looked like an early Christian martyr; the guard could give them no promise of better things.

After adjusting her many belongings in the racks and settling down with a look of grim resolution to bear all for Helen's sake, it occurred to Miss Bleecker to get up again and read the names of their yet absent fellow-passengers. Two of them were foreign, undistinguished, presenting nothing to her imagination, and as their owners took possession at the moment, the lady sat down in some confusion at being detected in her access of curiosity.

"If the other man comes, we'll be knee-to-knee all day, and there won't be breathing space," she whispered across to Helen, next whom, in the middle seat, the fair Eulalie was installed, leaving one place vacant near the door upon the corridor.

"If it's a man, so much the better," whispered Helen back. "Imagine another headache, beside Eulalie's."

"Oh! but I saw the name. English or American, 'Mr. John Glynn,'" returned the unknowing chaperon, who having cast her bombshell, opened a ParisNew York Heraldand began to read the column of social movements in America.

Helen sat bolt upright, the blood tingling in her veins. Before she could recover from the first stupor of astonishment, the train was in motion, and, simultaneously, the guard hurried into his place the one person in the world whom Miss Carstairs had least dreamed of seeing.

She had shaken hands with him, and named him to Miss Bleecker, who wondered where Helen had picked up this surprisingly good-to-look-upon young man, before her heart ceased its wild palpitation, and she could fairly control her voice. He was direct from Cherbourg, it appeared, had crossed Paris in a slow fiacre, barely catching the Côte d'Azur, in which his place had been retained by wire, and was on his way to the Riviera in answer to a summons concerning important business for a friend resident there for the winter.

"I fancy I know your friend," said Helen, determined to let no grass grow under her feet. "I crossed with good old Mr. Winstanley in October, and he told me of your engagement to his daughter."

"Yes, that has been for some time announced," answered Glynn, the color deepening in his clear brown skin, while Helen remained quite pale. "You have heard also, perhaps, of Mr. Winstanley's bad break in health? Although better, he is not yet able to do business for himself, and a question came up in connection with the mines, in which it was necessary to have his verbal instructions; hence, my run over. Rather a jolly change for me from my office work. Since October, I have had my own place, you know, representing Mr. Winstanley's interests, with headquarters in New York."

"I congratulate you doubly, then," said Helen. "How very strange that you should have come into this carriage of all others. And how nice for you, getting out of the blizzards and the high-piled, dirty snow of New York streets in February, to have a glimpse of obstinately azure skies and acres of rose and jasmine!"

Although they were running smoothly, conversation across Mlle. Eulalie's large hands, in slightly soiled white kid gloves clasped over Helen's jewel case, did not progress in comfort. Miss Bleecker, who always wanted to be entertained, imperiously signed to the maid to change places with Mr. Glynn, which was done, bringing him close to the ladies for a long day's run.

In New York, Miss Bleecker might not have looked twice at a man not in Mr. Charley Brownlow's set, and unknown at any of the clubs of which she considered membership to be the hall-mark of gentility. But those things settle down amazingly abroad, and she now saw Glynn with unclouded eyes. While Helen was wondering how Posey Winstanley could ever have turned aside to fancy Lord Clandonald, when she was free to marry this far handsomer, more imposing, young American, Miss Bleecker was subjecting Glynn to a rapid fire of questions about home matters, from the new Subway to the wrangles in City politics.

It was noticeable that when the chaperon now touched upon the subject of the Winstanley family, she did so in a key greatly altered from her former contemptuous one. A man who had risen in a night from commonplace obscurity to his present wealth and growing importance was a type of her country she could not conscientiously overlook. She recalled to Mr. Glynn that she had thought his future father-in-law "so quaint yet forceful." She was not as enthusiastic over Mr. Glynn's fiancée, but there are limits to what we must expect of women.

Still, her active mind was even then springing ahead of the present. If she succeeded, as now seemed probable, in bringing about the reconciliation between Helen and her father's wife, and Helen consented to return to them for the present, obviously Miss Bleecker, although with a warm nest-egg in her pocket, would be, vulgarly speaking, out of a job. What better than to annex herself to the Winstanleys, to have the credit of forming a young creature who was destined to conspicuous place before the world and even, perhaps——?

Miss Bleecker, at this juncture, cast a furtive glance at her reflection in the little slip of mirror over Helen's head. It was not exactly favorable, since she had risen before the world was aired, her complexion looked yellow where it ought to be red, and certain fatal lines around nose and mouth, elusive in the evening, stood out, abnormally plain! Miss Bleecker looked away. By and by, hope springing eternal, whispered to her that what a rich old man wants in a wife is not youth and beauty, provoking the eternal triangle of the modern situation, but agreeability, tact, a knowledge of how to make the wheels go round. She rallied, smiled at Mr. Glynn in the manner of a sweet old-time friend and counsellor, then taking out a French novel and a pearl-handled paper-cutter, subsided into apparent literature and actual plan-making.

Helen wondered if ever girl in her position were more curiously hounded by odd circumstance. She saw that Glynn, like herself, was profoundly moved by their rencontre. And what wonder, since when they had last met she had sobbed her farewell upon his breast, his arms had tightly closed around her, and he had declared that he could not, would not give her up!

He had been forced to give her up, however, and gradually to acquiesce in the common sense of her decision. The offer of himself to Miss Winstanley, made without knowledge of Posey's altered circumstances, had been joyously approved in a letter posted at Liverpool by Mr. Winstanley, who had bidden John remember that he was now his son, and, as such, entitled to a full share of the good luck that he proceeded to unfold. When Glynn had assumed charge of Mr. Winstanley's interests and business, he had for the first time learned the full meaning and extent of that good luck! Mr. Winstanley also told him that under the circumstances of Posey's call to a much higher position in life and society than had even been expected, he desired her to spend some time longer in pursuance of education and wider experience before returning home to be married.

A little dazed by the turn of events, Glynn had acquiesced in this latter decree, almost too easily, he feared. He told himself that he needed time to adjust his ideas to the prospect of riches. As a matter of fact, he was relieved not to become Posey's husband until he knew her better. The pretty, half-baked, freakish creature, who offended his sense of conventionality, who dealt with him so unemotionally, seemed about as practical a bride as Undine must have been to her long-suffering knight! Between Posey's image and himself, that of high-bred Helen Carstairs, stepping down from her proud pedestal to give him the first passion of her woman's love, had, in the beginning, perpetually come. Latterly, this had been wearing off, and stern habit had asserted itself, as it fortunately does.

Posey's letters, surely the strangest ever penned by a betrothed maiden to her lover, came to Glynn regularly. She had told him, with appalling frankness, that after engaging herself to him (by telephone!) she had suffered many pangs of fear that the whole thing was a mistake; also, she must confess, she had met another man with whom, had there been no obstructions in the way, she might have been happier. During her father's illness, seeing the enormous stress he laid upon her promise to marry John, she had come to see things more clearly, had recognized in herself a vain, silly child, and was now resolved to devote her whole future life to being more worthy of her good fortune as Glynn's wife.

To read these artless effusions had been like looking into a crystal globe. Whatever came, Glynn could not complain that she had deceived him. During his benefactor's dangerous illness, when it was essential for Glynn to remain where he was, and he could only cable his anxiety and sympathy, his heart had become more awakened to Posey's claim upon him, and he had felt for her loyal tenderness. When the summons from Mr. Winstanley arrived that was to bring him once more in actual touch with her, he had set out to obey it, believing that he was at last effectually cured of old weakness, and panoplied to begin the new life.

And he had hardly set foot in France before he found himself seated side by side with Helen Carstairs in a railway train, flying southward, with nothing to disturb their intercourse during a long day and evening, and actually bound for the same goal!

Simultaneously, Glynn and Helen rose to the occasion, put behind them the temptation to revert to the fond chapter lived in their young lives, and took up again the sort of intercourse that had so pleased and refreshed her at the beginning of their acquaintance. It was like one of their old talks at the house of Helen's friend who had introduced them to each other, and fostered their intimacy; a woman who had the cleverness to find interesting people in the whirlpool of business and pleasure and money-spending that calls itself New York society, and the courage to draw them out of it to herself.

Glynn felt that he would long have cause to remember that February day. The new fast train justified all that had been claimed for it in speed and comfort. It tore down the Rhone valley as the mistral tears, it left behind Avignon, city of Popes, and other spots of classic interest, as if it had been a "Flyer" between Chicago and New York. The light carriages rocked and swayed, stones from the road-bed rose up like a fusillade of small-arms, striking the bottom of the train; one dared not leave one's seat for the dining-car for fear of falling; people who had not exchanged a word previously began, by common consent, to talk all together, and all their talk was of the speed of trains they had known and heard about. Miss Bleecker went yellow in her nervous anxiety, declaring she had no use for a train in which one could not brew a cup of tea for fear of setting things on fire. Mlle. Eulalie wept under her veil, and accepted brandy offered her from Miss Bleecker's flask. The two solemn travellers who filled the other seats, and now joined in general animated talk, turned out to be one a French railway engineer, to whose utterances all listened humbly, the other an Italian musical genius,en routefor Monte Carlo. In the confusion of tongues and exclamations, the little string of toy carriages bounced and flew onward, until suddenly the air brakes were put on, and with a long protracted jolting, they came to a full stop!

Something had happened, but what? Glynn and the engineer, going outside to investigate matters, in the falling dusk, returned to report that their carriage was to go no farther, and its passengers were to be transferred to the one ahead.

"As well as I can make out, it is the complaint not unknown to our railways of a 'hot box,'" said Glynn. "The bother is, that you ladies must take what seats you can get till our journey's end."

Officials, coming to hurry them, showed but scant sympathy with Miss Bleecker's indignant protests, with Eulalie's fresh burst of tears. Helen, following her chaperon quietly, had an odd sensation that nothing mattered much so long as Glynn was at her elbow speaking cheery, merry words!

They threaded their way into the carriage ahead, to be received with what enthusiasm by the tired, nervous, over-strained passengers already filling its full space, may be imagined. Miss Bleecker was accommodated with the odd seat of a compartment reserved by a French couple of her acquaintance, who, feeling rather bored by so much of each other's society, made a virtue of necessity in welcoming the stranded American lady. Eulalie was tucked somewhere happily out of sight. For Helen and Glynn there remained but two camp-stools, produced by a guard, and placed in the corridor at the rear!

"I have heard of blessings in disguise," he said significantly, when they were speeding forward again toward Marseilles.

"This is really better than that stuffy place we had," she answered, made happy, despite herself, by the meaning in his tones.

"If any one had told me that I should be to-day sitting beside you, rushing through the darkness headlong to the unknown, I would have counted it a fable."

"You are not rushing to the unknown. I cannot think of any one whose life and work are more clearly cut out for him or more sure of a happy ending."

"I—I suppose so," he said, with a sigh.

"You know it, Mr. Glynn."

"Has it come to Mr. Glynn?"

"Don't make things worse for me than they are," she exclaimed confusedly. She felt frightened that one moment of isolation with him had brought back into his voice the lover's cadence, after their months of blank separation, and their day just passed in renunciation and good behavior. The admission in her speech, the forlorn droop of her mouth, were too much for his strained resolution.

"Tell me one thing only, Helen—as if we two were standing on the verge of everlasting parting—have you cared?"

"When have I not cared?" she said impetuously.

"Hadit to be?"

"I thought so, then. I haven't always thought so since. Latterly——"

"Go on. Latterly—?" he said, in a dreary tone.

"I have made a compromise with my father about something in dispute between us. He has made me more than independent of him. Isn't it always so in life, that relief comes too late?"

"What did that ever matter, anyway? Wasn't I ready, willing, eager, mad, to take you as you were? Would it have been the first time an American man married an American woman without a penny between them, except what he could earn? The trouble was that you couldn't trust me."

"That I couldn't trust myself," she said bitterly. "I knew my world better than you did, John."

"But you say you haven't always thought the same since," he exclaimed, searching her eyes with a desperately anxious gaze.

"It is not fair to wring from me such admissions. It isn't like you to persist in talk like this. After all, you were the first to console yourself."

His face fell into gloom. He drew away from her and, for a while, sat in silence. Helen turned to look out of the window to hide her gathering tears.

It was a miserable time for both, yet neither would have yielded up an inch of it in exchange for any imaginable pleasure. Helen was thinking, "Oh, that the train would only go on forever, and let me sit by him on this horrid little stool without a back!" and Glynn would have fought any guard or conductor who came to offer them the usual seats among other people. They said very little, but felt the more. At Marseilles, where they went outside for a whiff of soft, delicious air, fancying they smelt orange blossoms, and saw stars looking into the sea, and during the rest of the zigzag run along the lovely coast to Cannes, each knew that the other was dreading the finale of their strange experience.

As they ran into the Cannes station toward eleven o'clock, and it became necessary to rouse up nodding Miss Bleecker, and collect woful Eulalie, with her bags and bundles, Helen and he rose simultaneously, with a shiver of apprehension.

"This is the last time, John?"

"The last time, Helen—darling," he said, in a hoarse undertone of yearning tenderness.

Their hands met and strained together. Her eyes answered his, and he did not again doubt.

"It has been all one great, terrible mistake," she went on, more steadily. "We have got to meet, if you stay here, and after this there's to be no more weakness, remember! We'll be pretty poor stuff if we can't conquer ourselves, don't you think so?"

Hers was the last word, for Miss Bleecker, tottering like a somnambulist, issued forth to interrupt them. Helen and she were assisted out of the train by Glynn, and placed in custody of their hotel's station-porter. A moment more, the ladies were in the 'bus alone, threading the back streets of the sleepy little town, to ascend the hill to a stately hostelry, where their arrival was the signal for a theatrical effect of house-porters in scarlet jackets issuing from a brilliantly lighted entrance around which roses and bougainvillea twined.

Back to IndexNext