PART II

A few days later Mrs. West stood in the crowd on the platform at Jersey City awaiting a train from the West, and holding in her hand a handkerchief of azure silk, of which the duplicate was to be waved by her arriving charge. Her heart beat with an excitement it had not known for long.

She had not many moments of uncertainty. Even without the blue banner that bore down upon her in the hands of the prettiest creature in the throng, she would have recognized the original of the picture.

Miss Cecily Mordaunt, beaming with complacency, was attended by a man—gaunt, middle-aged, uncouth, with every sign of adoration of his companion written upon his countenance.

“You—you have got your maid?” asked Gwendolyn, peering about in search of that natural protector.

“Maid? Never had such a thing in my life,” laughed Cecily. “And what would ha’ been the use, when Mr. Lenvale would insist upon escorting me every step of the way. We stopped inChicago two hours, and took a hack and drove round to see the sights. I never was so surprised to see any one as Mr. Lenvale. He stole a march on the others, and sat in the smoking car, and came in to join me when East Ephesus was well out of sight. It almost seemed as if I had to have him, to carry all that truck.”

“That truck” was an assortment of faded flowers, bonbons, boxes, and baskets of fruit—with railway reading enough to stock a stall.

“They kept bringing it until the train moved off. Papa made me promise none of them should come along, but I couldn’t help Mr. Lenvale, could I, now?”

“I have a carriage waiting on the other side of the ferry. We shall ask Mr. Lenvale to put your belongings into that, and then we shall not trouble him further,” said Gwendolyn, in her soft, articulate voice. Poor Lenvale, although she smiled kindly, saw that his doom was sealed.

“He’s a fright, isn’t he?” said heartless Cecily as they drove away uptown. “I’m really tired to death of him; but it wouldn’t do exactly to let him know. When I saw you holding that blue handkerchief my heart was in my mouth with surprise. You look about as old as I am, or a very little older. ‘Thank goodness she’s young and pretty, and how well her clothes fit!’ I saidto Mr. Lenvale. When papa told me about you I cried for twenty-four hours without stopping, and all the girls came round to sympathize. I supposed you were a prim old party, with a whalebone back. Look here, now. Would you mind my kissing you?”

A week later they sailed for Genoa. Gwendolyn had engaged to attend them a courier-maid, certified against sea-sickness, and as possessing phenomenal accomplishments in the science of hotel bills and tips.

Senator Mordaunt, just then held in the vise of an important committee of inquiry over which he presided, had agreed to run over on a night train, breakfast with his daughter, see her off on the steamer, then hurry back to Washington. But at breakfast time arrived, instead of the Senator, a telegram, at sight of which Cecily first stamped her foot, then cried.

“I knew it! I have always had telegrams when I wanted my father most,” she said between her sobs. “He can’t get off, so sends me his blessing, and his compliments to you. Who wants to be blessed by telegraph?”

She was such a big, healthy, buoyant, fun-making being it was impossible to think of her as one who could suffer seriously or long, but Mrs. West saw that she loved her father, andthat during a day or two of the voyage she lamented for him in silence.

It was rough off the coast, the skies dull, the company depressed. Gwendolyn lay most of this time in her berth, committing Cecily to the care of the courier-maid, and feeling too reckless of outer things even to read the letter from Washington marked “private and confidential” that had come aboard by special delivery as the ship was about to leave the dock. She had seen that it was from Mordaunt, and was full of injunctions about his daughter. It would keep.

On the afternoon of the third day out, the skies had cleared, sunshine fell warm and bright across the decks, there was a faint, sweet, far-away promise of spring in the light and steady breeze. The cabin passengers, to a man, woman, and child, felt its reviving influence. Creeping up on deck, Gwendolyn nestled into her chair, looked lazily across the rail, and bethought her of her letter.

After she had finished it she sat wondering. For the first time she realized the magnitude of her task. This was the cry of a strong man’s heart for the right guidance and protection of his only child. Too late had come to him consciousness of the fact that Cecily had been left to environments that had done her mischief.She had been on the verge of running away to marry a Mr. Parker Moffat, a crack baseball player, a young man encouraged by her silly, sentimental aunt.

The one worth talking about among her admirers—who made her the acknowledged sovereign of hearts in East Ephesus—had been flouted by her so successfully that it was hardly likely Angus McCrea would ever present himself to Mrs. West’s notice. Should he do so, he was the sole representative of her ‘home guard’ whom Mordaunt would be willing for Cecily to receive. Any overture from Moffat Mrs. West must incontinently quash.

And he is my “obliged and faithful J. Mordaunt,” quoth Gwendolyn. “Well, I feel as if I had brought an explosive machine on board. I am afraid my charge is nothing more or less than an incorrigible flirt.”

The rest of the voyage proved this indubitably. From the captain, who had her seated at table at his left hand, to the officers, great and petty, the deck stewards, the sailors with swabs, and the little cabin boys, every male thing belonging to the good ship was at Miss Mordaunt’s beck and call.

The unmarried men among the passengers—including a missionary going out to Asia Minor,a German Baron, a magnate of Wall Street nursing a weak lung, a silk merchant from lower Broadway, two artists, and a popular young author—surrounded her chair, like a swarm of bees. The married men did the same whenever they were released from supervision by their wives; but it was a remarkably tranquil voyage, and the women were ordinarily all on deck.

Gwendolyn’s sense of propriety suffered under such fierce publicity. Miss Mordaunt’s sayings and doings were bandied everywhere. The people aboard who were previously known to Mrs. West set afloat the story that her comet was a cousin or niece going to join her family. Most of these good folk thought it would be a happy day for Mrs. West when she could surrender her charge and fold her hands in repose.

Vigilance—perpetual vigilance—was evidently to be the price of Gwendolyn’s peace. The overwhelming spirits, the reckless sayings, the audacious doings of Cecily began at breakfast time and ended not till Gwendolyn forced her to go below at bedtime. And the distressing part of it was that the chaperon found herself, too, laughing at the girl’s nonsense—giggling helplessly, irrepressibly. Cecily affected her like champagne or St. Moritz air.

At Gibraltar Miss Mordaunt said she wasgoing to cable to her papa. When they were off again in the Mediterranean she threw her arms around Gwendolyn’s neck and admitted that she had cabled to some one else besides papa. No coaxings could induce her to say more than this, and Gwendolyn felt uncomfortable. At Genoa the girl received two cable messages, sent in care of the captain of the ship, who delivered them to her with massive gallantry.

From that moment it seemed that Cecily’s spirit of mischief had broken loose worse than before. Mrs. West and the courier-maid, both of them secretly devoted to her, were kept forever on the alert to watch her vagaries. Upon the tourist track of Europe she left behind her a corruscating trail of anecdotes.

As the summer progressed Gwendolyn resigned herself to being a marked woman, as the guardian of the most original young person who had appeared in the best-known haunts in a generation. It was marvelous to see how Cecily’s slang, loud speaking and dressing, and petty offenses against good breeding had dropped away from her. The outer shell of her became conventional, but that was all.

When the handsome and well-born Marquis de San Miniato followed them to Luzerne, and askedMrs. West for the hand of her charming charge in marriage, Gwendolyn felt herself pulled up as with too hard a curb.

“Of course you will not consider him,” she said, much more confused than was the heroine of the hour.

“Iwasthinking a little of getting married in Italy in the fall,” answered Miss Mordaunt, pensively. “A wedding would be so sweet in that lovely old Duomo at Florence. And I couldn’t have it in the Duomo unless I married a Catholic, I suppose.”

“Cecily!”

“Gwen, dear, you can’t do it. You haven’t the cut of a chaperon’s jib. Why, San Miniato took us first for a pair of schoolgirls, and Mimms for our governess. You’re a failure, and I’m a terror; but wehavehad a good time, haven’t we?”

“Cecily, your father—I have an idea he would dislike this more than anything you could do. Don’t, don’t answer Miniato now. Let me tell him to go to America and see your papa. That is the only decent thing to do.”

“The others—all but one—askedmefirst,” said Cecily, dimpling. “But it’s a shame to tease you, poor, dear little soul. Send Miniato packing, if you like. I don’t generally—rightaway. I keep them on as friends, like poor Mr. Lenvale, till I can’t stand them a minute longer. Anyhow, old Miniato’s a goose to think I’d marry out of my own country and live away from papa.”

Gwendolyn had the tact to say nothing. In a moment Cecily began again.

“You’ve been so awfully good to me, Gwenny. If I had had a mother, I’d have wanted her to be like you. But my mother died when I was born, and I had no one but an aunt and grandmother, who—papa, couldn’t get along with them, and I don’t blame him. He has been awfully generous—but kept away. You know he has made money himself, but he inherited a lot from his mother’s brother on condition he’d change his name. The Mordaunts were an older family than the Atwells, and my uncle didn’t want them to die out—”

“Atwell! It can’t be possible!” cried Gwendolyn, “John Rufus Atwell?”

“Yes, that was his full name. Did you ever know him?”

“Once, long ago,” said Gwendolyn, in a maze of astonishment.

“I want to tell you a secret—if you won’t ask me a single question in return,” went on the girl, filled with her own affairs. “Although notto San Miniato, I am really going to be married. I’ve left my heart, my real heart, at home, with the best fellow in the world. When I got to Gibraltar I kept a promise I’d made to him, and cabled out that he might come to us in September. By the time we get to Paris he’ll be there, and then, Gwenny, then—oh! You’ll be a jolly, easy-going chaperon, and I the happiest girl in the world. Now I’m off to take Mimms for a perfectly horrid little walk, to see Thorwaldsen’s Lion. If I ever get home to blessed East Ephesus I’ll walk out by myself after dark, see if I don’t.”

Gwendolyn’s face, when she was left alone with these surprising revelations, was very pale. After deliberation she took out a cable code Mr. Mordaunt had sent her for exigencies, and patched together words conveying the following message:

“Fear daughter’s intention to marry. Had better come at once. Meet us Paris. Will watch faithfully till then.”

They had found refuge from observation in a quiet and cozy little hotel just out of the Champs Élysées. For some days following their arrival in Paris Cecily had been under a spell of gentleness. She did not again allude to her hopes and prospects, and Gwendolyn, trusting the matterhad blown by, said nothing, but never left her side. Cecily did not know that her father was expected. It had been agreed between Mordaunt and his daughter’s chaperon to give his visit the air of a happy afterthought.

When the day came that should bring relief to the citadel, Gwendolyn breathed a long sigh. Soon after their early breakfast, Cecily asked for the company of Mimms to make some purchases at the Bon Marché. She had equipped herself so charmingly, her face and person breathed such radiancy of good health and happiness, that Gwendolyn could not resist giving the child a parting squeeze and kiss.

“I shall wait for you to go in to the second breakfast, dear,” she said, affectionately.

“Ah, Gwen, how I love you!” cried the girl with a sudden burst. “Never be angry with me; I was not brought up like other girls.”

She was gone. The little open cab containing her and the grim Miss Mimms rattled down the stony street to the Elysian Fields. Gwendolyn sighed.

“She has tangled herself in my heart-strings, certainly. I could not bear her to think me treacherous. But my first duty was tohim.”

As the hours passed she grew fidgety, rearranged the ornaments, the flowers, the books, intheir pretty salon—ran to the window to look at many cabs, and when at last the one arrived that contained John Mordaunt, was quite unaware of it.

He was treading on the heels of the garçon who came up to announce him—in her presence before she realized it.

“I knew you long ago through Mrs. Payne; but you could not be supposed to identify me,” he said, with strong feeling, as he took her hand. “You have not changed in the least. And to think that all these years I could not find out whom you had married.”

Gwendolyn blushed deeply, and drew her hand from his.

“It was so good of you to relieve my anxiety about our girl,” she answered. “Now I begin to think she said it to frighten me.”

“No matter, since I am here. But where is she—my darling torment?”

Gwendolyn explained.

“Then sit down and let us learn each other all over again,” said this taking-for-granted Senator.

Gwendolyn did not know why she obeyed; the moments flew, she telling, he listening, and vice versa. They were rudely interrupted by the bursting open of the door and the entrance of Miss Mimms, aghast.

“Oh! sir! Oh! m’m,” she cried, breathless. “I’ve lost her. For the last hour I’ve been sitting in the waiting-room at the Bon Marché, as she bid me, and she’s never come back. And at last a little boy came and put this note in my hand for Mrs. West, and told me the young lady said I was to go along home to the hotel.”

“My own Gwenny, forgive me,” ran the note. “I couldn’t bear to meet him in a horrid, ordinary way. We are off on top a tram to take our luncheon at Versailles, and by five o’clock, I’ll be back and introduce him to you in proper fashion.”

“If it’s that scoundrel Moffat, he’ll never bring her back,” shouted John Mordaunt. “He well knows she has a fortune from her uncle coming to her on her marriage with no matter whom. He’ll get her off somewhere and manage to have a ceremony performed before he is interrupted. He—”

“I believe in Cecily,” said Gwendolyn, quietly. “Let us, you and I, Mr. Mordaunt, go directly in pursuit of them. Cecily is foolish, reckless, but she would never give you—and me—that pain.”

“Then it is you who have made her know herself! God bless you,” said the agitated man. “Ah! Gwendolyn, why did I not have you from the first?”

Miss Mimms afterward averred that you might have knocked her down with a feather when, that afternoon, the whole party of four came driving up to the door of the hotel. (Miss M. had spent most of her day suspended like a banner for royalty out of the windows of the first floor.) He, the young lady’s papa—looking like a general or a judge, she couldn’t exactly say which, but as fine a show of a man as she wished ever to see; Mrs. West, so happy and smiling, just like a little girl that has got a present she’d been crying for; and Miss Mordaunt—well, nobody could beat her for looks and pretty ways. At the very top of the steps didn’t she seize Mimms and hug her, and introduce her to “Mr. Angus McCrea, the young man that ran away with me this morning, and that’s going to be my husband”?

For Mr. Angus McCrea it was who had wooed Cecily’s roving heart into his safe-keeping—a fine, manly young fellow, to whom even John Mordaunt, the discourager of sons-in-law, could not take exception.

“And at any rate,” whispered saucy Cecily, “it’s easy to see they were old sweethearts, Gwen and papa. They are so taken up with each other, Angus, you and I might give them a lesson in self-control.”

PRINTED BY R. R. DONNELLEYAND SONS COMPANY AT THELAKESIDE PRESS, CHICAGO, ILL.

Transcriber’s NoteThe List of Illustrations at the beginning of the book was created by the transcriber.Inconsistencies in hyphenation such as “whale-bone”/“whalebone” have been maintained.Minor punctuation and spelling errors have been silently corrected and, except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, especially in dialogue, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.Page 156: “upon which the three Misses Bendict” changed to “upon which the three Misses Benedict”.Page 201: “from what your mother writes, Lillian” changed to “from what your mother writes, Lilian”.Page 234: “grumbling inwardly, as he saw Kathleeen” changed to “grumbling inwardly, as he saw Kathleen”.

Transcriber’s Note

The List of Illustrations at the beginning of the book was created by the transcriber.Inconsistencies in hyphenation such as “whale-bone”/“whalebone” have been maintained.Minor punctuation and spelling errors have been silently corrected and, except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, especially in dialogue, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.

The List of Illustrations at the beginning of the book was created by the transcriber.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation such as “whale-bone”/“whalebone” have been maintained.

Minor punctuation and spelling errors have been silently corrected and, except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, especially in dialogue, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.

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