CHAPTER XIII.THE VIOLET GIRL
In spite of laughter the Army obeyed the command with gratifying promptness. They stood up, saluted; remained standing. Every pair of bright eyes was fixed on General Dean. Only one pair, however, betrayed curious speculation. Their owner had suddenly become canny. Miss Susanna decided the conspiracy was not against Mr. Dean, since he appeared to head it. Captain looked as though she knew all about it, too. The old lady concluded with affectionate vexation that it must be against herself.
General Dean had returned the salute. While the Army still remained at standing he went over to the Christmas tree and took from it a large, oval, canvas-wrapped object. He loosened the canvas wrapping, but did not remove it. Then he came forward with it and took up a position still well away from Miss Hamilton, but exactly opposite her.
As he faced the sturdy little figure in the chaiselounge his levity dropped from him. “Miss Susanna, the Eleven Travelers wish you a very merry Christmas,” he said, his tone impressive in its pleasant sincerity. “They have traveled far and wide in the country of College to find a fitting expression of their love for you. They now feel sure they have found the one thing under the sun which will please you most.”
A sudden swift movement of one hand and the enveloping canvas fell from the oval, plain gold setting of a portrait. Life size and wonderful from out of the oval frame smiled a lovely, familiar face. There was a life-like quality about the portrait of the beautiful girl in the violet-shaded evening frock, with the huge bunch of purple English violets pinned to the waist of her gown. It was so utterly natural as to wring a sharp emotional little “Ah-h-h!” from Miss Susanna. It claimed a united breath of admiration from the others as well.
“I’m going to—to—cry, Marvelous Manager,” quavered Miss Susanna. “I don’t—want—to—”
“Cry right on Marjorie’s shoulder.” Marjorie cuddled the old lady’s head against her breast. “Only I’d rather you laugh.”
“I shall weep myself. Now I know why General set me foreninst Miss Susanna,” Leila grewunduly Irish. “Now for my tears, and I know I can weep the loudest.” She sent out a sudden melancholy banshee wail that raised a shout from the Army and sent Miss Susanna into wild, hysterical mirth.
“Start something jolly and keep it going,” counseled Jerry of the other girls. “We won’t give her a minute’s chance to be sad and splashy over beloved Bean’s beloved portrait.”
She stretched out a hand to Ronny, who took it and offered Muriel her free one. Next minute she had gathered up Mrs. Dean, Helen, Lucy, Robin and Kathie. They took hands and pranced about in front of the chaise lounge. Jerry led them vocally, loudly and a trifle off key with: “Come choose your east; come choose your west. These are the three we all love best.” The dancers were soon singing it at top voice.
General Dean, not to be outdone, hospitably formed another prancing little circle with Hal, Charlie and Delia, which gyrated so rapidly despite Delia’s giggling protests, and executed such quaint pas-seuls as to turn what might have been a tearful moment into one of wild hilarity.
“No, I couldn’t cry to save me,” Miss Hamilton presently declared. “I’m glad of it. I hate tearsas much as a man hates to see them. I shall love my violet girl every day in the year, and hang her in my room where I can see her first thing in the morning; last thing at night. It is a magnificent study, child. Who painted it? When did you ever have time to sit for it?” The old lady showed decided curiosity upon this point.
“I posed for it at the beach last summer, Miss Susanna. The Travelers thought you might like it best of anything we could choose. It was Leila’s idea. We planned it at Commencement. Raoul Verlaine, a friend of the General’s, painted it. He is famed for portraits. He was in Sanford after I came back from Hamilton in the late summer. I gave him the last sittings then. That’s all.” Marjorie paused, overtaken by the sense of embarrassment which visited her whenever she stopped to realize that she had figured as the central object in the affair.
Placed upon a light easel which had held the portrait since completion, the party of friends gathered around it to admire afresh both the work and subject. Marjorie, overwhelmed by her own importance, left Miss Susanna’s side and slipped from the room. She went into the living room, and, standing at a window, looked out happily. Shewas glad to forget herself in a rapt contemplation of the wide snow-covered lawn, the tall bare trees, the deserted pagoda; all her treasures of home. She thought Miss Susanna could not love Hamilton Arms better than she loved her own Castle Dean.
Reminded that the tree was yet to be stripped of its Christmas bloom, she turned from the window to go back to the merry, buzzing company in the drawing room. She slipped back into the room as quietly as she had left it. General was calling for attention and making ready to bestir himself as a kind of military Santa Claus.
On the way across the room to her father, who was standing near the tree, Marjorie’s eyes came to rest on Hal. He and Charlie Stevens were standing back from the portrait in an interested viewing of it. Charlie was talking animatedly and gesturing like a foreigner. Hal was listening with apparent gravity. In his face, as he viewed the portrait, was an expression of repression that cut Marjorie to the heart. It was the look of a man, smiling under torture. She came into a new and depressing understanding of the depth of Hal’s love for her.
CHAPTER XIV.THE PURSUIT OF PLEASURE
Muriel Harding had gone home on the Christmas vacation more puzzled than hurt over Doris Monroe’s sudden swerve from affability to hostility. It was not in Muriel’s easy-going nature to trouble long over anything, no matter how serious.
Since Marjorie had wished her to invite Doris to go with them to Sanford she had promptly acquainted her chum with “the Ice Queen’s return to the glacial period.” When Marjorie had perplexedly questioned “Why?” Muriel had replied with good-natured impatience: “Why does it rain? Because it does? Why is the Ice Queen? Because she is.”
During the last two or three busy days before vacation claimed them Doris and Muriel had employed monosyllables in addressing each other. Of the two Doris was the more greatly disturbed over the strained relations she had brought about. She had more real liking for Muriel than for any other student on the campus. Underneath her cold, indifferentexterior she had a critical appreciation of Muriel’s quick wit and extreme cleverness. The majority of the students whom she graciously allowed to admire her she took small interest in. Her approach and Muriel’s toward mutual friendliness had been very slow. It had progressed, however, in spite of the groundless dislike she persisted in holding against Muriel’s intimates.
She had gone furiously out of the Hall to mail the letter to Leslie Cairns vowing that she would never speak to Muriel again. Her tempestuous resolve was not so much the result of anger as of wounded pride. What a poor opinion Muriel Harding must have of her had been her chagrined thought as she crossed the campus to the mail box. Muriel had invited those wretched, beggarly off-campus students to her home first.Shehad only served Muriel as a last resort. Besides Muriel had discussed her with Marjorie Dean; no doubt had belittled her. Miss Dean had chosen to regard her as a welfare problem. Very likely Miss Dean was jealous of her because she had won the Beauty contest.
Though Doris did not suspect it the full-grown soul she possessed was awakening and beginning to clamor for attention. The true depths of her naturewere trying to rise and overflow her more superficial side. Selfish indifference alone was the barrier that stood between her and a fuller, freer, happier college life.
She had found the admiration she had been accorded, first at the old-time hop, later at the Beauty contest, far more satisfying than merely being trotted about the campus by over-fond freshies as a “crush.” There had been a spirit of fun and frolic about both social affairs which had appealed to her girlish imagination. She was only eighteen and in spite of her bored, sophisticated air rather childish at heart.
For this very reason she had never really approved of Leslie Cairns or her unscrupulous, high-handed methods. She had been a little dazzled at first by Leslie’s expensive clothes, lavish expenditures of money and apparently boundless liberty. At the time when Leslie had offered her the use of the white car she had named the Dazzler, Doris had felt some degree of liking for the ex-student of Hamilton. She had more reluctantly accepted the gift of the smart white costume and furs which Leslie had insisted upon giving her. She had demurred even more strongly against allowing Leslie to open an account for her at the Hamilton ReserveBank. Leslie had over-ruled her in the matter and had deposited in the bank five hundred dollars to the account of Doris Monroe. She had assured Doris that she regarded the transaction as “a business proposition.”
Her chief argument had invariably been: “Make yourself popular on the campus and it will be worth a lot more to me than a few dollars, togs or buzz-wagons. I need you to keep me posted as to what goes on at the knowledge shop. Leave Bean and her Beanstalks alone, though. When I need news of them you can get it in a roundabout way. I’ll help you, and I’ll expect you to help me—when I need you.”
Just what Leslie meant by frequent covert allusions to a future day when she would need Doris’s help was something Doris occasionally pondered. She had firmly refused to interest herself in the tentative proposal Leslie had once made that certain anonymous letters should be written and sent to Marjorie Dean. Since that occasion Leslie had never suggested any other unscrupulous work for Doris to do.
While Doris accepted dinner and luncheons from Leslie and allowed Leslie to pay for the upkeep ofthe Dazzler, she was wary about spending Leslie’s money. She knew her father would be righteously enraged with her for accepting a penny from either stranger or friend. Her own allowance was a comfortable one for a girl of her age. The money she saved by sharing her room with Muriel also augmented it. She had a very fair wardrobe and had therefore done no shopping in particular since entering Hamilton. She developed no crushes. Consequently she did not spend much money. She was not mean or stingy in this respect. She was too selfishly indifferent and too indifferently selfish to care to give pleasure to others. Her beauty had always demanded for her, and met no denial.
Since she had come to Hamilton College she had cherished two ambitions. The first had been toward popularity. The second was to achieve a trip to New York City. Popularity, because of her beauty, had quickly found her. The trip to New York had not been so easy of fulfillment. She had hoped to go to New York with Leslie at Thanksgiving. Leslie had disappointed her. More, she had utterly discouraged the idea when Doris had defiantly asserted that she would visit the metropolis alone. Leslie’s half sincere promise to show Doris about New York during the Christmas vacation wasone on which Doris had fondly built. Her anger, on hearing from Leslie that she did not intend to fulfill the promise, had been so scathing as to cause Leslie to reconsider and try to make peace with wrathful “Goldie.”
Muriel’s invitation had been offered at the psychological moment in Doris’s affairs. The step in the right direction which she had planned to take would have wrought an admirable change in her before the dawn of New Years. Instead Doris had received a call from Julia Peyton which had completely uprooted her healthily growing good will toward Muriel and again thrown her upon the society of Leslie Cairns for amusement.
Leslie had received Doris’s note with a silent hobgoblin laugh and a contemptuous: “Pouf; I thought she wouldn’t stay peeved.” Deciding to keep the sophomore in suspense she had not answered the note until the very last moment. It had reached Doris on the morning of the day when college closed for the holidays, leaving her barely time to pack a trunk and arrange her affairs. Long since determined on the New York trip at some time or other, Leslie or no Leslie, Doris had saved a certain sum each month from her allowance. She had not therefore drawn on the account in Hamilton bankfor the trip, nor did she intend to do so. The very sight of the bank book in the top drawer of her chiffonier gave her a feeling of uneasiness. At the time when she had burst upon the campus in her white suit, furs and shining white car she had used in the neighborhood of seventy-five dollars of the sum in bank to her credit. Since then she and Leslie had quarreled and bickered so much she wished she had never used a cent of the five hundred. She planned to return it from her own income after the trip to New York was over.
“I wish you had let me know sooner what you intended to do,” had been Leslie’s grumbling words to Doris as the two met at the Hamilton station. On receipt of Leslie’s belated note Doris had obeyed its instructions to call Leslie on the telephone at the Hamilton House. Over the telephone the trip had been hurriedly arranged.
“Why didn’t you let me know?” had been the ruffled sophomore’s strongly emphasized question. “You could have answered my note sooner than you did.”
“You should have written me long before you did.” Leslie’s emphasis had been stronger and more displeased than had Doris’s. “I told you before you left me at the Colonial that I would go to NewYork. You never said a word. It’s your own fault, Goldie, that you had to rush around like mad at the last minute.”
Such had been the discordant basis upon which the two girls had met at a time when all the world of light and love was pleading for “Peace on earth, good will toward men.” Once they had settled down in the train for the journey they had grown a trifle more amiable. They were both too fond of pleasure not to look forward to a two weeks’ stay in New York. Leslie had soon miraculously recovered her good humor and had proceeded to lay out a program of amusements for the first week of their stay in the metropolis. She had decided privately to “ship Goldie back to the campus the day after New Years.” That would leave her a few brief days in New York alone to go about her own affairs. Time was flying. She had difficult and important work to do which must be done soon.
She planned to humor Doris to a round of holiday gaieties. They would dine and lunch at the smartest restaurants and tea rooms. They would occupy box seats at the theatres, and at the opera. Leslie even considered introducing Doris to Natalie Weyman. That would mean an entree for Doris into New York’s most exclusive younger set. Herobjection to this proposal was that Nat was “such a snip when she was jealous.” Of course she would be jealous of Doris. She was capable of “snubbing Doris off the face of the earth.” That would mean Doris in a towering rage again.
Leslie was not anxious to arouse a fresh spirit of antagonism in Doris. The self-willed sophomore was her only reliable source of campus information. Besides, Doris was more truthful than the majority of girls with whom she had chummed. She had also the virtue of silence. Goldie could be trusted not to “tell everything she knew, and a lot she didn’t know, to the mob.” Like the majority of untruthful persons, Leslie was quick to note and appreciate truth in someone else. Again, she did not fancy losing the companionship of the one girl intimate she had at Hamilton. She had spent time, patience, effort and money in cultivating Doris’s friendship. She did not propose to be a loser.
Beyond the usual brief letter which Leslie had received every Monday morning from Mrs. Gaylord, her obligingly absent chaperon might as well have been a myth. Since Leslie had settled down for a protracted stay in Hamilton, and at the Hamilton House, Mrs. Gaylord had spent an enjoyable period of visiting her relatives and friends. Leslie demandeda weekly letter from the chaperon. She answered it only as she felt inclined. It had been earlier arranged between them that, should anything of moment occur suddenly of an adverse nature to either, the other was to be immediately notified by telegram.
The one contingency which both feared was the sudden wrathful interference of Peter Cairns. Such a calamity must be shrewdly guarded against. Neither was desirous of giving up an arrangement which suited both so admirably. They had prepared a telegram against the emergency. It was: “Hamilton House Central.” It signified that they were to meet in Hamilton at the Hamilton House as soon as possible.
On the Sunday before Christmas Leslie had seen fit to write Mrs. Gaylord at Greenwold, where she was visiting a friend, informing her of the proposed trip to New York.
“Now don’t think you have to drop everything and hit up a pace for New York,” she had written with slang insolence. She had stopped to snicker after setting down thus much as she pictured plump, dignified Mrs. Gaylord proceeding on foot toward the metropolis at racing speed. “My sophy pal, Miss Monroe, and I, will stay at the Essenden. It’s exclusiveenough to suit even P. G. He’ll never know we’re there, so you should fidget. I shan’t look up Nat. Deliver me from soreheads like her. At least she would be one, if she saw me with a new chum. That will cut out the society part, so don’t throw a scare over that. I think the grand old grump is out of town. Since he can’t see me in the family circle I’d rather he’d sail across the pond and disappear for a while. I heard he was going to London soon. Don’t know. I’ll write you from New York. Do as I say, and stay where you are, unless we have to telegraph. Get me? L.”
Although Leslie had put the pertinent proviso, “unless we have to telegraph,” in her letter to Mrs. Gaylord she did not anticipate any such contingency. She had a comfortable conviction that her father was probably too deep in his own affairs to think of her. Mrs. Gaylord had not heard from him. She was sure of that. Her chaperon had had instructions, in case Mr. Cairns were to write her, to inform Leslie of this by the statement: “X equals the unknown quantity.” Safeguarded by what Leslie chose to consider her own great cleverness, she felt herself a match for even her financier father.
CHAPTER XV.“I USED TO KNOW HIM”
Quite the contrary, Mrs. Gaylord did not share Leslie’s optimism. She received Leslie’s characteristic letter with lively misgivings. She knew she had no right to accept a handsome salary from Peter Cairns for chaperoning his daughter without living up to the position to the letter. Prodding conscience jarringly informed her that she had abused and was now abusing the financier’s confidence in her. Should he discover the fact he was more than likely to dismiss her and make it hard for her to find another such position.
She had intended to return to Leslie at Hamilton directly after the holidays, there to remain. She had been growing daily more and more uneasy for fear Peter Cairns might have discovered her delinquency. Continued silence on his part seemed an assurance that she had not been under a surveillance ordered by him. She knew that he might resort to such methods. He had engaged her privately towatch Leslie after Leslie had engaged her as a chaperon. He was quite likely to keep in close touch with her comings and goings.
She thought it very rash and inconsiderate in Leslie to go to New York with “one of those reckless, hair-brained students” for company instead of asking her to go. Mrs. Gaylord had no great fondness for girls. Of the Hamilton students she had met only Lillian Walbert, Alida Burton and Lola Elster; not a representative trio of Hamilton girls. She frowningly wondered who Miss Monroe was. She had not been in Hamilton enough during the fall and winter to meet Doris. She was now doubly vexed because she was fond of New York. Much as she enjoyed visiting among her small town friends she liked better the life and stir of the great eastern city.
She at once wrote Leslie an indignant letter expressing her displeasure at Leslie’s new move and accusing her of taking an undue advantage of her leniency. She was not sanguine that Leslie would receive the letter before she started for New York. She supposed it would have small effect upon her if she should receive it. She knew that Leslie would be furious with her if she took it upon herself togo to New York and resume her duties of chaperon when they were not welcome.
Mrs. Gaylord had met Leslie’s father, Peter Cairns, only once. He had sent for her to come to his New York offices not long after Leslie had engaged her as chaperon. She had walked through a maze of shining mahogany furnished offices to one behind the rest, plain and almost bare in its austerity. There she had talked with the great financier, a tall, broad-shouldered, gray-eyed man with a stern mouth and a thatch of black hair tossed off his forehead. He had said very little to her, but she had understood precisely what he expected of her. She had left the office feeling decidedly in awe of him. She discovered afterward that was the only vivid recollection she had of him.
Mrs. Gaylord resignedly resolved to make the best of the annoying situation and return to Leslie as soon as her lawless charge should return to Hamilton. She could only hope Leslie would not stay in New York beyond New Years. What a selfish girl Leslie was! She had not even wished her a Merry Christmas. Suppose Leslie were to run across her father in New York, and Mr. Cairns should inquire for her? Mrs. Gaylord felt a kind of chill go up and down her spine each time thatparticularly unpleasant supposition occurred to her mind. There was only one grain of comfort. Leslie would not let him know the true circumstances if she could help it. It would be to her own interest to protect those of her chaperon.
The day after Christmas Mrs. Gaylord received a letter which threw her into a panic of despair. It was a three-line letter from Peter Cairns, in his own black, jagged handwriting, ordering her to join his daughter, Leslie, in New York, immediately. He had also furnished her with Leslie’s address at the Essenden, the exclusive apartment hotel at which Leslie and Doris were registered as guests.
The uncompromising brevity of the letter was dismaying in itself. Not a word more than was necessary to convey the order had been employed. It contained neither address nor date. The envelope bore a New York postmark. She assumed that it had been written in New York. She had the office address of the financier. He had given it to her with the injunction that any letter which she might feel called upon to write him should be sealed and marked: “Personal, by order of Peter Cairns.” She resolved to write him, explaining matters. She soon found she could summon no satisfactory explanation of her absence from Leslie. The financier had engagedher to watch over his daughter; not allow her to do as she chose, regardless of convention.
Mrs. Gaylord arrived in New York and at the Essenden on the evening after the receipt of Peter Cairns’ curt message. She was tired and cross after her long journey and resentfully ready to tell Leslie a few plain truths. Her one consoling thought was that Leslie had had the good judgment to register for herself and companion at the Essenden. It was at least above the criticism of even Peter Cairns.
Leslie had taken Doris to dine at the Luxe-Garins, a vast marble pile of a hotel which New York boasted as its latest triumph in hostelry. The two girls had sallied forth to dinner in a hotel taxicab much to Leslie’s disapproval. “There are a dozen cars in our garage at the town house, and we own enough others scattered about this burg,” she had said with snappish resentment. “Just because my father—.” She had stopped abruptly, recollecting in time that Doris knew nothing of her estrangement from her father.
Doris, lovely in her crystal-beaded white frock, which was Parisian, had attracted more attention at dinner than any other woman in the room. She seemed in truth a dazzling fairy-tale princess with Leslie opposite her as a wicked wizard. Leslie hadchosen to wear a white velvet gown, banded with black velvet and fur. It had a beaded, oddly-cut bodice and was bizarre in effect. It lent her a dark, sinister appearance which Doris’s white beauty made more noticeable.
The two girls had so much enjoyed the flattering notice their presence in the luxurious restaurant had created they dawdled over their dinner until it was too late to go to the theatre. Both would have liked to join the dancers on the perfectly polished floor, but knew no one. Leslie had an odd excess of family pride quite at variance with the rest of her lawless nature. She could always be trusted never to form acquaintances whose social standing she did not know. When they had finished their demi-tasse she marched Doris from the restaurant like an attendant dragon without so much as a glance at more than one plainly admiring young man. Leslie cared nothing whatever about either sentiment or young men. What she had enjoyed was the little stir Doris’s golden beauty had created.
“Tomorrow, Goldie, we’ll go to luncheon at the Gilbraithe. It’s a wonder of an eat shop. It’s the spiffiest tea room I know in New York.”
Leslie made the announcement as they stepped from the walk into the waiting taxicab. She hadengaged a car from the Essenden for the evening and had planned a ride up Fifth Avenue by way of showing Doris a glimpse of the great city after dark.
“We’ll never get clear of that string of hay carts,” she predicted, motioning her head in the direction of the waiting line of automobiles. At the corner above, where the line began, the starter was working diligently to put the line in motion.
Doris merely glanced at her and again turned eager eyes to the street. They sparkled with pleasure as she took in the beautiful main entrance of the white marble hotel at her leisure.
“Ah, on the move at last.” Leslie gave a kind of satisfied growl as she felt the taxicab begin to move. It started, then came to a quick jarring stop. The starter shouted out a sharp order. It mingled with the chugging purr of the engine and the voice of the taxi driver, raised to an incensed yell at some progress-impeding object.
With her usual impatience Leslie jerked open the nearest door of the machine. She was too much of a motorist not to investigate. Her driver’s start had been blocked by a car which had been parked in front of it. The driver of the other car had boldly attempted to get under way first. She bent forward and leaned far out of the open doorwayto see what was going on. The starter and her driver had united in abusing “that fresh boob.” She grinned sardonically as her driver flung a last word or two at the disappearing car. With a sharp, surprised “What?” she suddenly dodged back and into the sheltering darkness of the tonneau.
From the ornamental main entrance of the Luxe-Garins she had spied a man emerging. He stood before the great entrance doors briskly turning up the collar of his brown fur motor coat and pulling a brown fur cap down over his head as though preparing for a high-speed spin. He was a tall man, broad-shouldered, with gray eyes and a stern mouth.
From the dim cavern of the tonneau Leslie peered out at him with a curious, reverend timidity. She was careful to keep the ermine collar of her evening wrap well up about her face. So her father was in New York instead of Europe. Leslie watched him, her dark features lighting to wistful admiration. How she wished she dared open the door of the car and call out to him! No; that could not be. There was only one way to bring back his love for her. That way was to work and win it. She drew an audible sighing breath.
“What is the matter, Leslie?” Doris had heardher companion’s surprised exclamation. Now she heard the sigh.
“Oh, nothing,” Leslie affected carelessness of tone. Her gaze was still on her father. She kept hungry eyes riveted on him as he left the hotel entrance, swung down the broad stone walk and out of her sight. “Did you notice a man standing in front of the hotel with a brown fur coat and cap?” She forced a casual question.
“No; I didn’t. I didn’t notice anyone. I was thinking about whether I liked New York better than London. Of course I could never like it as well as Paris. It is a wonderful city though,” Doris said honestly. “I wish we knew some interesting men here like the explorers my father knows. He and I often have had luncheon and dinner with Jacques Fandor, the great French explorer. Do you know the man you asked me about, Leslie?” she added with intent to be polite.
Leslie did not reply at once. She hesitated for a moment then said in an odd, repressed tone: “I think I used to know him.”
CHAPTER XVI.ONLY OBEYING ORDERS
“Will you kindly tell me why you are here?” Leslie Cairns surveyed her chaperon, Mrs. Gaylord, with an anything but welcoming face. “Didn’t you understand my letter? It was written in English. At least, I thought I wrote English.” Leslie used sarcastic emphasis.
“Yes, Leslie, your letter was in English, I suppose your rude slang might be classed as English.” The chaperon’s voice was bitingly dry. Her florid, usually placid features were stiff with resentment of Leslie’s cavalier manner. “You took advantage of me in a most unfair way. Instead of writing me that you thought of going to New York to spend the holidays, you simply notified me at the last minute, completely ignoring me as your chaperon.”
“Oh, cut out the lecture!” Leslie made a derisive motion as though to push further rebuke from her. “What is the matter with you? Doesn’t our agreement hold good in New York as well as in Hamilton?Couldn’t we have got together in a few hours if necessary? I allowed for all that when I wrote you. I didn’t think it urgent to put it down in black and white. I gave you credit for having some gray matter. Who engaged you in the first place, my father, or I? He saw fit to butt in to my arrangement with you. Of course I’m not supposed to know that. Still it wouldn’t take me long to remind him of it, if he began to be fussy with me.” Displeasure of her father’s private understanding with Mrs. Gaylord momentarily banished Leslie’s regret of their estrangement.
“Leslie!I hope you would not be so treacherous as to let your father know that you—that he—that you know he and I have a private understanding about you,” stammered the chaperon in reproachful alarm. “Thatis a secret agreement between him and me.”
“Was a secret, you mean,” satirized Leslie, laughing with a kind of grotesque amusement. “A secret isn’t much of a secret after it goes as far as a third party.”
“Leslie!” Mrs. Gaylord repeated the name with exclamatory half-hearted wrath.
“Yes, ‘Leslie,’” mimicked her amused charge. “What’s the use of puffing, Gaylord? You knowyou always lose out with me in a talk contest. Sit down, take off your hat and your head will cool off. Registered at our village inn?” she raised ironic eyebrows at her chaperon.
“Yes; I have registered,” was the frigid return. Mrs. Gaylord tried not to show approval of the dainty Dresden apartment she was in. She had caught only a fleecing glimpse of Doris. The latter had promptly retreated to the bed-room she was to occupy of the expensive Dresden suite of small salon, two sleeping rooms and bath which Leslie had extravagantly engaged. “I engaged a room with bath on this floor, but—” She glanced about the smart salon.
“No room here,” supplied Leslie. “Oh, you are welcome, of course, to inhabit the salon with Goldie and me,” she added flippantly.
“Thank you. You know, Leslie, that I have tried not to stand in your way.” Mrs. Gaylord spoke with reproving bitterness. “I am here now, not because I wish to be, but because—” The chaperon made an impressive pause.
“Now we are getting down to brass tacks.” Leslie simulated genial encouragement.
Mrs. Gaylord frowned, but resisted bandying further words. “Your father ordered me to come toNew York, Leslie,” she said with a direct simplicity which had more effect on her discourteous charge than had her air of affront.
“What?” Leslie almost screamed the question.
From the adjoining bed-room Doris heard the cry and wondered. She knew that Leslie had a chaperon, named Mrs. Gaylord, who amiably permitted Leslie to do as she pleased. While she had retired to her bed-room and closed the door, on the arrival of the chaperon, she had caught enough of the salutatory remarks between Leslie and the other woman to establish Mrs. Gaylord’s identity in her own mind. The fact that the caller had come at so late an hour further convinced her.
“Just what I say,” stiffly confirmed the chaperon. “I received this letter from him. You might as well see it.” She had opened her small seal traveling bag as she spoke. Now she handed Leslie the letter from Peter Cairns.
“Uh-h-h-h!” Leslie dropped down on a gilt-framed, pale-hued Dresden settee with a pretense of total collapse. Next second she sat up with a jerk. “Gaylord, I beg your pardon for ragging you. You seem to be a good sport,” was her half-humorous apology.
Mrs. Gaylord with difficulty maintained a graveface. Strangely enough, at heart she did not dislike Leslie. Constant companionship with the financier’s long-neglected daughter from the standpoint of a duenna had shown her plainly all Leslie’s faults and virtues. When first she had come to Leslie she had resentfully labeled her as having all faults and no virtues. Presently she discovered that Leslie was generous, not of spirit, but in a material way. She also had a virtue of minding her own affairs beyond that of any other girl or woman of Mrs. Gaylord’s acquaintance. Of Leslie’s intriguing, unscrupulous side the chaperon knew little. She admired the girl’s peculiar originality and thought her sayings distinctively clever or funny. She respected Leslie for being neither foolishly sentimental nor flirtatious. Leslie’s rudenesses she soon learned to overlook because Leslie was as civil to her as to anyone else, perhaps more civil.
“What are you going to do about it?” Leslie inquired with rueful curiosity. “He’s in New York. I saw him last night in front of the Luxe-Garins. Don’t think he saw me. I was in a taxi. Goldie and I had been there to dinner.”
“You shouldn’t have gone there—just you two young girls!” cried out the chaperon despairingly.
“Oh, stuff. I’m not a minor. Think the Luxe-Garinsis a jungle full of black-whiskered lions and unicorns? We didn’t dance, or speak to a soul. We only had eats. That’s not a social blunder, is it?”
“No-o-o.” There was a certain amount of relief in the reply. “I shall do nothing, Leslie. Your father has ordered me to come here to look after you. I am here. I thought before I came I would write him and explain why we were not together. I could find no proper explanation. I dare say he is very angry with me.” Mrs. Gaylord’s tone grew rather plaintive. “As your chaperon I should insist on your compliance with strict convention at all times. But it is as you say. You are not a minor, you have the right to go where you please and do as you please. Since your father has—well—has—.” The chaperon halted lamely.
“Cut me off his card index,” supplied Leslie with forceful moroseness.
Both chaperon and charge had spoken louder than they were aware. In the next room the last few sentences of their talk had come clearly to Doris’s ears. While she was not specially curious she could not help being impressed by what she heard.
“If I had been like some of the girls I’ve known I’d not have engaged a chaperon at all after heturned me down,” Leslie defended darkly. “I’m supposed not to know he has ever showed a spark of interest in me since he cut me out of his life. Don’t you let him call you down because I told you to visit your head off if you liked among your friends while I was at Hamilton. You may tell him I hired you and chased you away from me when I felt like being alone for a while. He owes you a debt of gratitude for telling me that he didn’t quite efface himself from my map. Tell him,” she snickered faintly, “that I pay you a salary for acting as a friend instead of a priggish frump. Tell him he ought to double your salary from his end of the deal for the same reason.”
“Why—Leslie!” Grateful amazement this time prompted the chaperon’s exclamation. “I had no idea you felt that way about me.”
“I had no idea myself,” Leslie retorted. She cast a half sheepish glance toward Mrs. Gaylord. She was experiencing the peculiar sensation of physical glow which invariably attends the moral defense of another person. For the first time in her wayward career she felt moved to defend someone for whose offense she was strictly to blame.
CHAPTER XVII.“NERVE”
Mrs. Gaylord took up her temporary abode at the Essenden expecting at almost any hour to be summoned to Peter Cairns’s offices or else receive a call from him at the hotel. Neither the summons nor the call came.
Following her spirited moment of defense of her chaperon Leslie returned to her usual half domineering, always wilful manner. Since her father had seen fit to order Mrs. Gaylord on the scene, she had decided that the chaperon would be more of an asset than a hindrance. Under Mrs. Gaylord’s wing she and Doris could go about more freely to tea rooms and hotel restaurants, and the theatres. They could stay out later in the evening with a certain feeling of assurance which neither had possessed during their first evening venture into New York’s gaieties.
The day after New Years Leslie announced to her chaperon and Doris that she wished they would go where they pleased and do as they pleased throughthe days that remained to them of the Christmas holiday, but without her company.
“Gaylord can show you the village as well as I can; maybe better,” she assured Doris with a droll twist of her mouth. “She won’t be peevish with you. I would, if you made me sore, which you’d probably do. I have special business to tend to here in the next few days. It concerns my garage proposition and is very important. I’ll hustle around through the days so as to go out to dinner with you in the evenings.”
Doris was as well pleased with Leslie’s new arrangement though she kept her satisfaction carefully hidden behind her politely indifferent features. She and Mrs. Gaylord had grown friendly from the start. The chaperon admired the sophomore’s unusual beauty and enjoyed the covert appreciation it drew wherever they went. She thought Doris’s poise remarkably high-bred and was satisfied that Peter Cairns could but approve of her as a friend for his daughter. He was still in the city, she believed. Leslie was of the same belief. “Don’t doubt he knows our middle names and what time we come back to the hotel every night,” was her shrewdly humorous opinion.
The special business to which she devoted herdays was typical of the intriguing side of Leslie. While her father was presumably keeping an eye on her, she was even more anxious to trace his movements. She burned to know how long he intended to stay in New York, and whether he was staying at the family residence far out on Riverside Drive, or at his club.
There was another man, too, besides her father, whose whereabouts in New York she was eager to learn. He was a man to whom her father had more than once intrusted certain business about which she thought she knew a good deal. This man had come to their home twice as a dinner guest. He was tall, slim, with aquiline, foreign features, deep set dark eyes and iron gray hair. She could recall distinctly his courtly manners. What she could not recall was his full name. It was Anton—. There memory failed her.
After she had unsuccessfully racked her brain for the missing surname she came into startled knowledge of a way to gain it. Dared she take it? Leslie’s heart beat faster every time she thought about it. She could not make up her mind to take it until she had definite information concerning her father’s plans. She decided that she would at once try to obtain it from his offices.
On the day after New Years she left Mrs. Gaylord and Doris directly after breakfast and hurried from the Essenden to start on the trail of the “special” business. It was a fairly long drive from the Essenden to her father’s downtown offices. Leslie grew perceptibly nervous as she neared her destination. There was no one to witness her uneasiness, however. There was only one chance against a hundred that she might encounter her father. She could not imagine what she would do if she were to come suddenly face to face with him. And in this thought lay her inclination to panic.
She arrived at last before the skyscraper, two floors of which housed the executive and clerical forces necessary to Peter Cairns’s several speculative interests. Leslie ordered the driver of the taxicab to wait and made a bold entrance into the building. She could hear her heart begin to thump against her side as she dodged into the cage of a waiting elevator and dodged out again at the third floor. Presently she had walked a little way down a wide corridor and opened a door which in the past she had opened many times.
It led to an outer office, given over to the keeping of a solitary office boy. When she inquired for Mr. Carrington, one of her father’s important managers, and gave the youngster her name, he staredat her with blue startled eyes and made a zealous dash for a door leading to an inner office.
“How are you, Mr. Carrington?” she drawled to a clean-cut pleasant man of perhaps forty, who had instantly emerged from the office to greet her and now ushered her into his private business domain.
“Very well, Miss Cairns; thank you. And you? It has been a long time since you visited these offices.”
“Yes;” Leslie smiled affably. She was speculating how long it might take to “pump Carrington, and beat it.” “I was at college for several winters, you know, and away from New York summers. I’m not at the Riverside Drive house much. It doesn’t pay to keep it open. My father is there so seldom for any length of time.”
“So he tells me. He doesn’t stay even in New York for any length of time, for that matter,” laughed the manager. “It isn’t an easy proposition, getting hold of him when I need him.”
“I should imagine not.” Leslie smiled in apparent sympathy. “Even I lose track of him for days at a time. I am at the Essenden, at present with my chaperon, Mrs. Gaylord. I came down town this morning to see if you would help me with a little steamer surprise I am planning to give my father. That is, if he goes to England soon. Ithought you would let me know the day and hour he’d plan to sail. Then I wouldn’t need to ask him a single question, beforehand. He is likely to start for England in a hurry without coming to the hotel to say good-bye. Then where would my surprise be?” Leslie put just the right amount of dejection into the question.
“Oh, he has changed his mind about the trip to England, Miss Cairns. He doesn’t intend to go across the pond until he comes back from the coast. That will be two weeks at least. I will let you know, nearer the date of sailing,” was the pleasant promise.
“The western trip? Oh, yes.” Leslie nodded wisely. “I have no surprise ready for him for that. There’d hardly be time for one, would there?” she asked innocently.
“Hardly.” The manager consulted his watch as though amused at his own reply. “His car was to pull out from the B. R. P. at noon today. It’s almost noon now.”
“You mean for the west; to the coast?” was Leslie’s double question. It was asked with a drawling inflection that nearly robbed it of interrogation.
“Yes. Where shall I address you, Miss Cairns,about the England matter?” Mr. Carrington questioned courteously.
“At the Essenden. Thank you so much, Mr. Carrington. You are always so kind to me. Not a word to my father that I was here!” She raised a playful forefinger. “You understand why.”
“Absolutely discreet, Miss Cairns.” The manager raised a hand as though taking an oath.
After a further brief exchange of pleasantries Leslie rose to depart. She was in nervous haste to be gone. It had taken “nerve,” according to her way of thinking, to lead up to the information she had sought, then to ask the right questions at the right time. She had not devised until the last moment a way of exacting secrecy from the manager that would not arouse him to suspicion against her. She knew that her father’s lieutenants of years were chary of speech and still more chary of information. It was evident that her father’s harsh stand in regard to herself was not known in his offices. Since Mr. Carrington did not know it, Leslie was sure he did not, then none other of his staff of financiers knew.
She would have liked to ask Mr. Carrington to give her the surname of the man, Anton. She remembered that the manager had once dined withthem on the same evening as the foreigner. She had not dared ask about him. Nor did she believe it would be wise to call again at her father’s offices to interrogate Mr. Carrington further. She recalled the old fable of the pitcher that went once too often to the well and was broken. She did not intend to risk losing what she had already gained. There was still the other way of learning the name.