He was, however, the kind of man in whom opposition rouses a sort of malignant persistence. All through luncheon she kept catching his pale eye. She thought Durland noticed it, and hoped that Dolly didn't. Antonia hardly moved her eyes from his face.
After lunch, when they were all in the sitting room, Antonia ran away to get him a match before anyone else had noticed he needed one. Dolly smiled.
"What's this, Allen?" she said. "Is Antonia another of your victims?"
Williams frowned, not because he was in the least annoyed but to indicate that he was a man impervious to flattery. Pearl had one of her inspirations.
"If it's true," she said, "Mr. Williams has it in his power to do us all a great favor. Do ask him, Dolly, to say to Antonia that he likes to see a little girl neatly dressed like other little girls."
"That would, indeed, be a miracle," said Dolly, not wanting anything Allen might accomplish to be underestimated.
"Certainly, if I can," said Allen, looking at the governess.
Pearl was standing turning over the papers on the table, ready for flight, although with Durland and Dolly both in the room she felt perfectly secure. She was delighted with her idea.
"It would be a great help in my life," she said, "if you would." And she looked straight at him and smiled as if she saw before her a combination of a god and a saint. It was a look that went straight to his rather stupid head, through which all sorts of ideas began to dance brightly.
"And what do I get out of it?" he asked.
Dolly laughed. "Oh, Allen," she said, "you must not be so mercenary."
And Pearl, avoiding his hard, demanding eyes, slipped quietly out of the room just as Antonia returned with the matches.
Pearl had not been in her room more than five minutes when a knock came at the door, instantly followed by the entrance of Antonia. The first impression was that the child was in physical pain. Her whole face was trembling, her hand was clasped over her mouth, and the instant the door was shut behind her she burst out crying.
Mr. Williams had said she was dirty!
Pearl, full of pity and feeling horribly guilty, denouncing Williams in her heart as a heavy-handed idiot, could not but marvel over the power of romantic love. Everyone, even the adored Durland, had been saying for years that Antonia was dirty, and eliciting nothing from her but pitying smiles; and now this agony of shame and remorse was occasioned by the same words from a total stranger.
Suffering like this, Pearl knew, could be allayed only by action. She invented action. Antonia should appear for church the next morning, clean, faultless, perfect in every detail. Antonia shook her head dumbly—she had nothing—it was Saturday and all her white dresses were in the wash—her light-blue crêpe de chine had raspberry-ice stains on it—and she had hidden it away; her green linen was covered with motor oil. Mrs. Conway's maid had long ago refused to take any responsibility for Antonia's wardrobe, and Pearl could not blame her.
But the value of the plan was its difficulty. Antonia's agony would not have been soothed by anything easy, and this was not easy. It took all afternoon and most of the evening. Under some crab nets a pair of gray suède slippers werefound, which Pearl cleaned with gasoline and a little powder; stuffed into the crown of a riding hat to make it smaller was a pair of fine gray silk stockings; her best black hat, worn only once, had fallen into the water and was a ruin; but retrimmed with a pink rose from an evening dress of Pearl's, it looked better than before. At last a crumpled pink linen dress was discovered wrapped about some precious phonograph records. Pearl borrowed the maid's electric iron and went to work at this. She was so tired when she had finished that she omitted, for the first time, her daily letter to Anthony.
Dressing Antonia the next morning was an excitement. The child's spirits had revived so that she could look at the situation with her customary detachment.
"I'm like that thing in the Bible," she said. "I've put away childish things."
"It will be great fun, you'll find, being as nice-looking as you can be," said Pearl.
Antonia nodded.
"But the other was fun too," she said.
Everything turned out exactly as Pearl had intended. Dolly did not come down to breakfast, and Williams did. So, by a miracle, didMrs. Conway. Antonia's entrance created a sensation—her carefully curled hair, her spotless linen, her long slim legs in their gray silk stockings. Not only Williams but even Durland administered honeyed words of praise. Mrs. Conway approved of her child, but allowed no credit to Miss Exeter.
"It's so silly to worry about those things," she said. "I always knew that she would eventually begin to take care of her appearance. I shall write Anthony that feminine vanity has asserted itself just as I knew it would."
Mrs. Conway and Pearl and Durland and Antonia went to church, accompanied, as Pearl knew they would be accompanied, by Williams. He said it was entirely on account of Antonia—was a privilege to go to church with a little girl who looked as pretty as she did. Although he spoke in an irritating tone, as if you could make fun of a child without a child suspecting it, Pearl saw that Antonia was flattered at receiving any of his priceless attention.
In the few weeks of Pearl's stay she had become attached to the little wooden church on the dunes. She always sat so that she could look out through the door of the south transept, the upperhalf of which was usually open, and see the ocean; when it was rough it seemed to roll out a deeper accompaniment than the organ's to:
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,For those in peril on the sea.
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,For those in peril on the sea.
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,For those in peril on the sea.
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea.
There was a tradition that this was always sung.
Sometimes an impatient dog would stand on its hind legs and look in, seeking a praying master; and once a wolfhound had bounded over the half door of one transept and, not finding his owner, had bounded out at the other.
During the sermon Pearl, it must be confessed, was engaged in composing her daily report to Anthony. At last she had accomplished the great achievement—at last she could tell him the thing he most wanted to hear. She made up her mind that she would begin: "All through church I looked at Antonia's pretty little profile under a black hat trimmed with pink roses——" Life presented itself to her in the form of her letters to Wood, thus offsetting the sense of loneliness that Mrs. Conway's mocking aloofness caused her. She was still composing when, after church was over, they walked—Mrs. Conwayand Williams ahead and Pearl with Durland on one side and Antonia on the other—the few yards that separated the church from the public beach. Antonia's appearance was much noticed.
Pearl heard an elderly gentleman murmur to Mrs. Conway, "Your little daughter is lovely—lovely. Is beauty contagious?" And he gave a glance at Pearl, who was looking perfectly unconscious but caught Mrs. Conway's bitter reply: "Thank you; I see you feel she was never exposed to it before."
For the first time in her life Antonia was the center of a group of boys—many of them in their first long trousers; all with stiff turned-down collars, white against the sunburn and freckles of their summer complexions. They were telling her, with the perfect candor of youth, that she might have been the recipient of their attentions long before this if she had been dressed as she was dressed today.
"How could I go round the links with a girl without shoes?" one conservative had wailed, revealing a hidden struggle. And Bill Temple, Caroline's elder brother, a year older than Durland, and likely to be junior tennis champion, had said loudly in passing, "Gee, the kidcertainly looks great in that get-up!" If he had composed "Helen, thy beauty is to me——" all in her honor he could not have given her a fuller joy.
Pearl was so happy that she allowed her generous nature to lead her into making an acknowledgment to Williams. She had just heard him agree to motor to New York after dinner that evening—his stay was a question of only a few hours now, and on the crowded beach——
She looked up at him and said, waves of gratitude and friendliness rolling toward him like a perfume, "We owe all this to you."
He answered without the least change of expression and in a tone that did not carry an inch beyond Pearl's left ear, "Have you any idea what you do to men?—drive them mad——"
She did not answer at all, but stepped back and allowed other people to come between them; and presently, knowing that the Conway car would be crowded, she invited the willing Durland to walk home with her along the beach.
There were a good many outsiders at luncheon, and though Williams followed her closely into the dining room she slipped into a chair between the two children, and all through themeal was aware of Williams' steady, rather sulky stare from across the table.
After luncheon was over she disappeared. She had the afternoon to herself, for Antonia was going out with her mother. Pearl took a parasol and went and sat on the beach, concealed by the jutting of a dune. She took a book with her, but hardly read. She sat there for an hour, and about four, knowing that Dolly and Williams had arranged to play golf and that she would now have the house to herself, she went back, thinking about the Sunday papers. Almost the only hardship she felt in her position was that her rights to the newspapers were not properly respected—the butler, who was a baseball enthusiast, regularly removing the papers to the pantry as soon as Mrs. Conway had read the headlines.
The sitting room was deserted and the newspapers strewn about the table—a condition which should have suggested to Pearl that the room had been too recently occupied for the servants to have had time to come in and put it to rights. But she didn't think of that. She took up the first sheet that came to hand and saw a long illustrated article about the turquoise minesof Mexico, into which she plunged with a thrill of interest. She was standing with both arms outstretched, her gold-colored head a little bent.
Suddenly she felt two hard, masculine arms go round her, a kiss on the back of her neck, another on her reluctantly turned cheek. It happened in a second. As she struggled ungracefully, angrily, she saw over Williams' shoulder the figure of Durland rising from the hammock on the piazza.
If Wood had received that batch of Sunday letters at the mine he would have torn open Pearl's first—as likely to promise the most amusement. But he got them at his hotel in Mexico City, and conscious of great leisure—for he was staying there a week or so on his way home while he dickered over taxes with a governmental department—he adopted a different method. He ranged them before him inversely in the order of interest. They came—first Durland's. He wondered what Durland wanted, for his nephew was never moved to the momentous effort of writing except under the stress of great financial necessity; second, Edna's; third, that of Miss Wellington, who did not write often; and last Pearl's thick typewritten budget.
Dear Uncle Anthony: I know mother is writing her point of view about this, and I want you to know the truth. I was there and mother was not. Miss Exeter could not have helped what happened. If it was any of our faults it was Dolly's—not only for having that kind of a thug to stay but for being as usual an hour late in getting off, so that Miss Exeter thought they had gone. You can imagine how I felt in seeing a great beast like Williams coming up behind her and grabbing her like that. I let him know what I thought, but I would like to have pasted him one on the jaw. I wish you had been here. Mother is all wrong—a dreadful injustice is being done a very wonderful woman. She is patient, but I don't suppose she will stand much more. I wouldn't if I were her.Your affectionate nephew,Durland Conway
Dear Uncle Anthony: I know mother is writing her point of view about this, and I want you to know the truth. I was there and mother was not. Miss Exeter could not have helped what happened. If it was any of our faults it was Dolly's—not only for having that kind of a thug to stay but for being as usual an hour late in getting off, so that Miss Exeter thought they had gone. You can imagine how I felt in seeing a great beast like Williams coming up behind her and grabbing her like that. I let him know what I thought, but I would like to have pasted him one on the jaw. I wish you had been here. Mother is all wrong—a dreadful injustice is being done a very wonderful woman. She is patient, but I don't suppose she will stand much more. I wouldn't if I were her.
Your affectionate nephew,Durland Conway
Wood tore open his sister's letter. His thought was, "Impossible!"
Dear Anthony: I am sorry, after the trouble you took ["A lot you are," he thought] that your priceless pearl will really have to go. It has been an impossible situation from the first, but I have loyally tried to carry it through for your sake—you seemed to care so much about it. I have never liked the girl. She has a sort of breezy aggressiveness that I can't stand, and Cora Wellington felt justthe same. I did not write you, but that first evening Cora said to me, "Where is Anthony's judgment—sending you a girl like that?" I do not like the effect she has had on the children—taking all the spirit out of poor Durland, and Antonia appeared dressed for church this morning like a little French doll.However, when Durland discovered her this afternoon clasped in the arms of a detestable young man by the name of Williams—Allen Williams, whom Dolly, poor child, has had spending Sunday, much against my inclination—I did feel that things had reached a point when even you would hardly blame me for getting rid of her. I sent for the girl and told her she must go. I was surprised and, I own, hurt, Anthony, when she answered that you had extracted a secret promise from her not to go until you released her.I hope you see what a disagreeable and humiliating position you have put me in. I think I should have ignored both her promise and my own, except that the girl has acquired such a hold over Durland and Antonia that they go on like little maniacs about the injustice I am doing her. Dolly and Cora entirely agree with me. However, I have consented to keep her until I get a telegram from you releasing us both. I do hope you will immediately send it on the receipt of this letter.
Dear Anthony: I am sorry, after the trouble you took ["A lot you are," he thought] that your priceless pearl will really have to go. It has been an impossible situation from the first, but I have loyally tried to carry it through for your sake—you seemed to care so much about it. I have never liked the girl. She has a sort of breezy aggressiveness that I can't stand, and Cora Wellington felt justthe same. I did not write you, but that first evening Cora said to me, "Where is Anthony's judgment—sending you a girl like that?" I do not like the effect she has had on the children—taking all the spirit out of poor Durland, and Antonia appeared dressed for church this morning like a little French doll.
However, when Durland discovered her this afternoon clasped in the arms of a detestable young man by the name of Williams—Allen Williams, whom Dolly, poor child, has had spending Sunday, much against my inclination—I did feel that things had reached a point when even you would hardly blame me for getting rid of her. I sent for the girl and told her she must go. I was surprised and, I own, hurt, Anthony, when she answered that you had extracted a secret promise from her not to go until you released her.
I hope you see what a disagreeable and humiliating position you have put me in. I think I should have ignored both her promise and my own, except that the girl has acquired such a hold over Durland and Antonia that they go on like little maniacs about the injustice I am doing her. Dolly and Cora entirely agree with me. However, I have consented to keep her until I get a telegram from you releasing us both. I do hope you will immediately send it on the receipt of this letter.
Wood laid the letter down with a feeling ofthe most intense surprise. Allen Williams—a young man unfavorably known to him as an admirer of the most conspicuous of the year's Broadway beauties—that man spontaneously interested in a girl like Miss Exeter—a ruthless, stupid young animal like Williams attracted by that pale, honest, intellectual, badly dressed girl—without an effort on her part. No, that was too much to ask him to believe.
He opened Cora's letter. Cora wrote a large, sprawling hand, and her only rule was never to write upon the next consecutive page, so that her correspondent went hopelessly turning her letters round and about to find the end of a sentence. Wood caught "——getting herself kissed in poor Edna's blameless sitting room in broad daylight, and thus getting rid of her and an undesirable suitor of Dolly's at one fell——"
He twisted the letter about, trying to find the end of this, but coming only upon a description of moonlight on the ocean, he tossed it aside and opened that of the culprit herself.
I regret to say, [it began in vein that struck Wood as none too serious] that I have caused a scandal. A young man called Williams tried to kiss me—in fact he did—when I was reading the paper anddidn't even know he was in the house. I should have dealt with him; but Durland, who saw it all, was so cunning and manly, and ordered him out of the house. Your sister is naturally annoyed with both of us and won't believe I was not to blame. She keeps quoting something you once said to Dolly under circumstances described as similar—that no man kisses a girl if he knows it's really against her will. If you did say that, Mr. Wood, you're wrong. If a man wants to kiss a girl something in his psychology makes him feel sure she wants him to. But the loathsome creepiness a girl feels at having a man whom she doesn't like touching her is something no man can possibly understand.Williams has behaved technically correctly and actually horridly—saying sourly enough that it was entirely his fault, that he alone was to blame, but letting everyone see that he feels I led him on—only that, of course, a gentleman's lips are sealed. However, he was instantly shipped back to New York on a slow train that stops at every station.As soon as he was gone Mrs. Conway and I had rather a scene. She wanted me to go at once. I said I could not go without your permission. She finally agreed to let me wait until you had been heard from. I need not say I shall do exactly as you wish. It will not be particularly easy to stay after this, but I will do it if you wish—or go—just as you telegraph.
I regret to say, [it began in vein that struck Wood as none too serious] that I have caused a scandal. A young man called Williams tried to kiss me—in fact he did—when I was reading the paper anddidn't even know he was in the house. I should have dealt with him; but Durland, who saw it all, was so cunning and manly, and ordered him out of the house. Your sister is naturally annoyed with both of us and won't believe I was not to blame. She keeps quoting something you once said to Dolly under circumstances described as similar—that no man kisses a girl if he knows it's really against her will. If you did say that, Mr. Wood, you're wrong. If a man wants to kiss a girl something in his psychology makes him feel sure she wants him to. But the loathsome creepiness a girl feels at having a man whom she doesn't like touching her is something no man can possibly understand.
Williams has behaved technically correctly and actually horridly—saying sourly enough that it was entirely his fault, that he alone was to blame, but letting everyone see that he feels I led him on—only that, of course, a gentleman's lips are sealed. However, he was instantly shipped back to New York on a slow train that stops at every station.
As soon as he was gone Mrs. Conway and I had rather a scene. She wanted me to go at once. I said I could not go without your permission. She finally agreed to let me wait until you had been heard from. I need not say I shall do exactly as you wish. It will not be particularly easy to stay after this, but I will do it if you wish—or go—just as you telegraph.
Whatever Anthony Wood's faults might be, lack of decision was not usually one of them. He folded the letters neatly on his table, took his panama hat from the peg, went to the telegraph office and sent his sister the following message:
Letters received. Please keep Miss Exeter until my return. Should be back within two weeks.
Letters received. Please keep Miss Exeter until my return. Should be back within two weeks.
And then, rapid decisions being at times dangerously like impulses, he sent a second one to Miss Exeter herself, which read:
Wish to express my complete confidence in you.
Wish to express my complete confidence in you.
The days before those two messages came were trying ones in the Conway household, which was now divided into two hostile parties—Pearl, Durland and Antonia on one hand; Mrs. Conway and Dolly, occasionally reenforced by Miss Wellington, on the other. Miss Wellington did not make matters any easier by suggesting to Edna that something similar must have taken place in the case of Anthony himself—just what you'd expect from that sort of girl—that hair, that great curved red mouth. She understood from dear little Dolly that Williams had told her—as much as a man could tell such a thing—that he could hardly have done anything else.
What Williams had really said, for few men are as bad as their adoring women represent them, was that her mother was taking the incident too seriously.
Pearl could not have borne life if it had not been for her daily letter, which she continued to write. Mrs. Conway hardly spoke to her; and if she did, she spoke slowly, enunciating every word carefully as if Pearl's moral obliquity had somehow made her idiotic. Durland, loyal to the death, was not much help, because he merely hated his family and scowled through every meal. Antonia, on the other hand, was one of those rare natures who could be an ally without being a partisan.
"Of course," she would say calmly to anyone who would listen to her, "Allen only came here at all in the hope of seeing Miss Exeter, but you can't expect Dolly to understand that."
Anthony's two telegrams arrived one evening at dinnertime and were handed by the butler, one to Mrs. Conway and one to the governess. Pearl's heart sank on seeing there were two. She thought it must mean he was deciding against her; and though she found her present position unpleasant, she did not want Mr. Wood todecide against her. She opened hers and read its few words at one glance. It was not her habit to blush, but she blushed now with a deep emotion—of gratitude and admiration. Not many men would have stood by her, she thought, in a situation like this. She knew where Antonia got her sense of justice. Or, she thought with something very like jealousy, was it really Augusta in whom he was expressing his confidence, not in her at all? Yes, of course, anyone who had once seen Augusta would feel confidence in her.
The next day she settled back to the routine—lessons with Antonia and then with Durland—the public beach—a silent luncheon—then sometimes a little feeble tennis with Antonia; but more often now her mother took the child out with her, as if Pearl were not a proper person to be given charge of a pure young child. Left alone, Pearl would take her book and parasol and retire to the Conway's beach. She seldom read, for, to be candid, she was not a great reader; but she would sit and stare at the empty sea—empty at least if the wind were from the south; but when it turned and blew from the north, then the whole ocean would be dotted with fishing boats out of Gardiner's Bay; andPearl, lying there idly, would watch the rowboats putting out and taking in the nets. Sometimes Antonia was permitted to be her companion, and then she read aloud to the child. Antonia was in the stage of development when she loved poetry, but poetry of a stirring, narrative quality—The Ballad of East and West, The Revenge, The Burial of Moses. She would lie with her head in Miss Exeter's lap, gazing up into the unquenchable blue of the sky, and say "I'm going to learn that one by heart," and would get as far as the second verse when it was time to go in and dress. After dinner Pearl and Durland would play Russian bank, which he had proudly and lovingly taught her; and Dolly and Mrs. Conway would run over to Miss Wellington's, where they could abuse the governess to their heart's content.
One night—just between night and day—Pearl woke with an overmastering sense of dread. She had been dreaming that the sea, a perpendicular wall miles and miles high, was coming over the dunes. After two or three days of damp heat the waves had been rising; local weather prophets were talking about the August twister. Now, as she sat up in bed, listening andlooking into the dark, she became aware that the wind had risen; the wooden house was creaking and trembling like a ship.
She was frightened, as an animal must be frightened without reason and out of all proportion. In the medley of little sounds she thought she detected the sound of something hostile. The pearls—she thought of the pearls.
It would have been easy to lock her door—no, not easy, for as she sat rigid in her bed she found the idea of motion terrifying; but she could have summoned courage to cross the floor and lock the door. Only, Pearl was afflicted by a sense of responsibility.
She turned on her light—that helped her. She was no longer terrified like an animal; she was merely frightened like a human being. She got up, put on her dressing gown and, crossing the hall by a supreme effort of courage, entered Mrs. Conway's darkened room. Perfectly gentle, regular breathing greeted her ear. She knew where the switch was and turned on the light.
Mrs. Conway sat up in bed and said, "Is anything wrong—the children?"
Pearl's fears melted in the face of human companionship. She felt calm again and ratherfoolish as she explained that she had felt alarmed for no special reason—had thought about the pearls. Mrs. Conway glanced at the closed safe.
"I thought," she said, "that the argument for keeping valuables in the safe was that we could sleep calmly. The safe can't be opened unless you give the combination."
"It was childish of me," said Pearl. "I was frightened."
Mrs. Conway smiled at her more kindly than she had ever done. It was one of the contradictions in her nature that she was physically brave—a fact obscured to most observers on account of her moral cowardice. Like most brave people, she was kind to the timid.
"It's the storm," she said. "It gets on some people's nerves. I hope the roof isn't leaking; it nearly always does in one of these storms. What were you afraid of?"
"I don't exactly know," said Pearl.
"Would you like me to go back to your room with you? Would you like to sleep on my sofa?" Edna asked.
But that was too ignominious. A faint wild dawn was breaking, and Pearl knew that withthe night her terror had gone. She went back to bed.
The next morning the wind was still blowing like a hurricane from the south, though the rain had stopped. Great waves were running up the beach, in some places as far as the sand hills, and forming a long, narrow pool at the base of the dunes. As soon as lessons were over Antonia dragged Miss Exeter to the beach—it was no easy matter, for the wind blew the sand stingingly against face and hands. There was no use in going to the public beach that morning, for the bathing apparatus of barrels and life lines had been washed away, the bathhouses were threatened, and there was a rumor that the sea was washing into Lake Agawam.
Pearl and Antonia sat on their own dunes, watching the wild scene, and suddenly Antonia said, "Look here, Miss Exeter, I want to ask you something. Perhaps I oughtn't to."
Pearl had so completely lost any sense of having a guilty secret that she answered tranquilly, "Go ahead."
"Is Uncle Anthony in love with you—like Mr. Williams?"
Ah, Pearl knew what that meant: Antoniahad taken a long drive with her mother and Miss Wellington the day before! She picked her words carefully.
"I only saw your uncle once," she said.
"But Allen only saw you once or twice—and look at the darn thing!"
"Mr. Williams is not in the least in love with me."
"Miss Wellington said that some women have the power of rousing——"
"Antonia, I don't want to hear what she said."
"You don't like her, do you?"
"No."
"Shake," said Antonia heartily. "I don't like her, though she's very kind to me; but it doesn't seem to me"—Antonia's voice took on the flavor of meditation—"that she quite tells the truth. For instance, just before Uncle Anthony went away, she telephoned to him one morning and asked him to come over. He was playing a game of parcheesi with me—I'd teased him a good deal to play—and he said he couldn't come, and she—well, I couldn't hear what she was saying, but at last he said, rather ungraciously, 'All right then, I'll come.' And he went, and he took me with him. And we only stayed about tenminutes, although she wanted us to stay longer. And then later at the bathing beach I heard her telling someone that she was late—she was sorry—she couldn't help it, because Anthony Wood came in just as she was starting—of course she adored having him run in like that, but it did take a good deal of one's time—'one's time'—that's what she said. I call that a lie, don't you?"
"I certainly do," said Pearl.
"That's what I like about you, Miss Exeter; you say right out what you think—even to a child." Antonia looked thoughtful. "It's a great mistake not to tell children the truth; it makes it so hard for them to know what to do. For instance, we have an aunt—a great aunt—Aunt Sophia. She's awful, or as you would say, just terrible, but it seems she's going to leave us all her money. Now if mother would tell us that, it would be simple; but she doesn't. She says to be nice to Aunt Sophia because she's such a dear. She isn't a bit a dear. So I had to find out all by myself why mother, who's so awful to most of her relations, is so nice to Aunt Sophia. I did. And it's the same thing about my father. He tried to kidnap me once—at least he met me on my way to school and askedme to take a drive with him. I wouldn't do it. Mother said it was lucky I didn't. But it wasn't luck. It was good judgment. Grown-up people are queer about that. When they do something wise they say it was wise. But when a child does something wise they say it was lucky. Children have more sense than people think; they have to have."
"You have," said Pearl, who had never thought of all this before.
"Now this morning, do you know why mother wanted to get us all out of the house?" Antonia continued.
Pearl felt tempted to say that Mrs. Conway always wanted to get her out of the house, but she merely shook her head, and Antonia went on, "Because she is going to have an interview with my father."
"With your father?" Pearl sprang to her feet. "Are you sure?"
Antonia nodded.
"When mother is going to see father she looks the way I feel as if I looked when I'm going to the dentist—don't you know, you say to yourself, 'I wouldn't think twice about this if I were brave'—and then you think about it all the time.You know, mother doesn't think she tells us everything, but she really does, except about my father. And so, you see, if it's something about my father I always know, because mother's worried without saying why."
This reasoning seemed sound to Pearl. She felt that in order to fulfill Anthony's instructions she must go to Mrs. Conway's assistance at once. She did not like to burst in upon them from the open windows of the sitting-room, and so ran round the house to the front door. A small, shabby automobile was standing in the circle, and as Pearl bounded up the steps a man came out quickly and got into it—a pale man, with long white hands and something of Durland's birdlike quality. She saw that she was too late. She went into the sitting-room.
Mrs. Conway was standing in the middle of the room, supporting one elbow in one hand and two fingers of the other resting against her chin. She looked so white that every grain of rouge seemed to stand out—away from her cheeks. She turned her eyes coldly upon Pearl.
"Well?" she said.
Pearl had not thought at all what she was going to say, and blurted out, "Oh, Mrs.Conway, I thought you might need me! I thought I could help you if—Mr. Wood said——"
Edna, rather to her own surprise, suddenly lost her temper.
"I'm tired of being considered a perfect fool," she said. "Anthony! I know what Anthony thinks—that I'm always going to give Gordon all the children's money. As a matter of fact, I know better than anyone—though it isn't always very easy to say no, no, no, to a man who has been your husband and who insists if he had five dollars he could make a fortune; but I do say it—I always have—always—almost always. It's a little too much to be watched over and lectured by you, Miss Exeter."
After which speech Mrs. Conway left the room.
Luncheon was more than usually silent that day, although Edna attempted to take an interest in the children's morning, asking whether it had been pleasant in the water.
"My goodness, mother," Antonia answered, "have you looked at the water? We'd certainly have been drowned if we'd gone in."
After lunch was over Edna was obliged to address Miss Exeter directly.
"I think you went off this morning without unlocking my safe," she said.
"Oh, I'm sorry," said Pearl.
Mrs. Conway smiled faintly.
"It was quite what I expected—it always happens with safes," she said. "But now perhaps you will get me my pearls."
Pearl went eagerly, and as she went she remembered that she had remembered to unlock the safe—just before she went to the beach with Antonia. Yes, as she thought, the safe was very slightly ajar. She took the long, slim, blue velvet case from its compartment and brought it to Mrs. Conway in the drawing-room.
It was empty!
The surprise was like a physical blow, and yet no one at first supposed that the pearls were actually gone. Mrs. Conway, as so often happens to anyone who has sustained a loss, was instantly severely lectured by her three children on her habitual carelessness.
Then a superficial search was made on her dressing table, on the glass shelves in the bathroom. Then a recapitulation was made—a joint effort on the part of everybody—of just what had occurred since the pearls were last seen.
Everyone agreed that Mrs. Conway had been wearing them at dinner the night before. She had gone to bed rather early, and distinctly remembered that she had put the pearls in their slim blue velvet case and put the case in the safe and shut the safe, which was then automatically locked. She did not remember seeing the safe unlocked in the morning.
No, Pearl explained, the reason for this was that she, Pearl, had knocked at the door about eleven, just after finishing Durland's algebra lesson. There had been no answer, because Mrs. Conway was in her bath—her bathroom opened out of her bedroom. Pearl had been in a hurry, so that she had just run and unlocked the safe and had called to Mrs. Conway that it was unlocked. There had been no one in the room at the time; but the maid—the maid had been Dolly's nurse when she was a baby, and was therefore absolutely above suspicion—had been sewing in the next room.
Mrs. Conway did not contradict this story. She simply raised her eyebrows and said that she had not noticed that the safe was open.
Evidently it must have been open all day long—very unfortunate.
Pearl felt and probably looked horribly guilty. Of course she ought to have looked to see whether the pearls were in their case when she opened the safe. She usually did. She remembered, too, her strange terror of the night before. Was it possible that that had been based on something real? Had she really heard a footstep under the noise of the storm? Could there have been a burglar in the house, hidden perhaps all night, and stepping out at the right moment about noon when the upstairs rooms were deserted?
It was Pearl who insisted on telephoning to New York for a detective. Mrs. Conway at first objected and said she would feel like a goose if the pearls were immediately discovered—caught in the lace of her tea gown, or something like that. But Pearl was quite severe. If there had been a robbery, she knew that every minute was of importance.
Just before dinner she called an agency. Two detectives arrived by motor about ten o'clock that night. They had a long secret conference with Mrs. Conway. Then one went back to New York and the other—the head man, Mr. Albertson—took up his residence in the house.
Pearl went to bed more worried than ever. It didn't seem to her that the detectives had really taken hold of the situation. She herself could think of a dozen things they might have done that night. It did not occur to her that their first action was to look up the past record of everyone in the household.
Human nature being as it is, it is probable that the loss of the pearls was nothing to Edna Conway in comparison with the satisfaction of being able to telegraph her brother that his priceless Pearl was suspected of having stolen them. She was a kind-hearted woman and would not normally have wished to put even the most degraded criminal in prison; but there seemed an ironic justice in the fact that a woman sent to reform the manners of her children should turn out to be a thief. She valued her pearls too. They were not only beautiful and becoming but they had a sentimental association. Her husband had given them to her when they were first married, after a tremendous success at Monte Carlo. They had cost a great deal of money in the days when pearls were cheap, and yet, as he had got them from a ruinedPolish nobleman, they had not cost their full value. He had said to her as he gave them to her, "There, my dear, if I never give you anything else——" As a matter of fact, he never had given her anything else; in fact, he had often tried to take them away from her when things had first begun to go wrong. But Edna had managed to cling to them, feeling that they would always keep away that wolf which idle well-to-do middle-aged women appear to dread more than any other group in the community.
Edna was not only kind-hearted but she was normally utterly lacking in persistence; she would not have been able to conceal suspicions from anyone over a protracted period. But malice is a powerful motive, and she managed in the days that followed the loss to play her part admirably. The idea that Anthony was already hurrying home to meet the imposter who had slipped into the real Miss Exeter's place gave her a determination she usually lacked.
It was perhaps stupid of Pearl not to guess that her fraud had been detected as soon as the detectives set to work. But Pearl was so much interested in the recovery of the jewels that it never crossed her mind she herself wassuspected. She did notice a slight change for the better in Mrs. Conway's manner—a certain sugary sweetness—a willingness to be in the same room with her, especially if the detectives were for any reason busy—a new interest in all her plans.
The thought that occupied her mind was the idea that Wood was on his way home; that at last she and the man she had been writing to every day for weeks were to meet face to face. How could he fail to be pleased with her—she who had made Antonia neat, Durland studious, and had at least suggested to Dolly's egotism that there were other women in the world at least as attractive as she? Pearl thought a great deal about their first meeting; there would be a certain awkwardness about it, especially if it took place in the presence of the family, as it probably would. Still, she could manage it. She would say in a few simple words that she was Augusta Exeter's best friend, and had taken her place. He was sure to be amused and smile that nice smile which Augusta had described. The interview went on and on in her imagination, a different way each time she imagined it; but always agreeable, always exciting, alwaysending in Mr. Wood expressing his gratitude and admiration.
Yet this man about whom she was thinking so constantly was actually speeding toward her, feeling as bitter about her as it is possible to feel about a person you have never seen. We forgive anything better than being made ridiculous. It was not mere vanity, though, that made Anthony so angry. He knew that much of his power over his sister had been destroyed. Everything that he suggested in the future would be met by Edna's amused "Another priceless pearl, Anthony." Yes, he said to himself as he sat with folded arms and stared out of the train window, he had made a fool of himself. What did he know of the real Miss Exeter? He had no one but himself to blame.
He had been on the point of starting home when he received Edna's second telegram announcing her loss. Everyone, as the author of Cranford has observed, has a pet economy, and Edna's economy was telegrams. She never cabled or telegraphed if she could help it, and then she usually obscured her meaning by compressing it into as few words as possible. When Anthony opened this one and saw its great lengthand her name at the bottom of it he knew that something was terribly wrong. It said:
Pearls stolen from safe. Only governess had combination. Detectives discover she is imposter. Real Miss Exeter married and went to Canada two days after you saw her in New York. This woman has no idea she is suspected. Is closely watched and has had no opportunity of disposing of jewels. Pearls thought to be still on place or hidden on beach. Please return immediately. Be careful about telegrams. She might get them first.
Pearls stolen from safe. Only governess had combination. Detectives discover she is imposter. Real Miss Exeter married and went to Canada two days after you saw her in New York. This woman has no idea she is suspected. Is closely watched and has had no opportunity of disposing of jewels. Pearls thought to be still on place or hidden on beach. Please return immediately. Be careful about telegrams. She might get them first.
As soon as Anthony read that message he felt a conviction that it was all true. Whether or not she had stolen the pearls, he knew she was an imposter, for he realized now that he had known from the beginning that he had been in correspondence with a beautiful woman. He had tried to tell himself that the quality he felt in her letters was the vanity of a plain one, but all along he had known in his heart that in some strange and subtle way beauty had exuded from every line she wrote. He had been made a fool of by a beautiful and criminal woman. Well, he would hurry home and settle that score in short order. He was not a cruel man, he saidto himself, but this did not seem a situation that called for mercy.
It was, of course, necessary that someone should meet Anthony on his arrival in New York and acquaint him with all the details. As Edna was unwilling to leave her household, the duty fell to Miss Wellington, who complained a great deal and leaped at the chance.
So when Anthony got off the train in the Pennsylvania Station there was not only his secretary but his old friend, Cora Wellington, waiting to greet him. The secretary remained to see about the bags, while he and Miss Wellington drove to his apartment. The robbery was still a secret—not to be told to the papers—even the secretary did not know of it. As they drove up the long incline to the level of Seventh Avenue Cora said the thing that Anthony wanted to hear and yet would not say even to himself:
"Really, Anthony, I think Edna might have guessed that it was not the governess you had sent. You couldn't have selected such a person—dyed yellow hair and a sort of exuberant, almost coarse good looks that you wouldn't admire in any woman and would not tolerate in a governess, I'm sure."
It was agreeable to hear, but he would not admit it.
"Poor old Edna," he said. "I don't feel exactly in a position to criticize. This woman must be clever."
"Clever!" exclaimed Miss Wellington. "It's uncanny! Instantly she obtained an almost hypnotic influence over Durland and Antonia. Even Dolly was on the point of succumbing—if it had not been that the woman overreached herself in her affair with young Williams. Between ourselves, Anthony, though I haven't said this to Edna, I don't feel at all sure that that affair did not go a great deal further than the kiss."
Anthony frowned in silence. This was almost more than he could bear. He said to himself that it was the idea of Antonia being brought into contact with such a situation that disgusted him.
Cora was kind enough to sit in his drawing-room and wait while he had a bath and dressed. It was a nice room and she thought as she waited how she would rearrange the furniture if ever she should come to live there. There were photographs of the children about—Antonia as a baby, Durland in his first sailor suit, a pictureof Edna with the three children grouped about her like English royalties.
She was wearing the pearls.
Then Anthony came out of his room, looking handsome and sleek and brown and very well dressed in blue serge; and they went out and had luncheon together, and then started at once for their drive of a hundred miles in Anthony's car.
She answered all his questions—and one he did not ask. She volunteered: "I must confess, Anthony, when I first saw this girl—saw how unsuitable she was—I felt your wonderful judgment must have been clouded by your having fallen in love with her."
"Recollect, please," he returned, "that even if it had been the girl I saw, I had only seen her once."
"Don't people fall in love at first sight?"
Anthony smiled.
"I don't," he said; and he went on to describe the slow process by which a love which can be depended on to last must necessarily grow.
To Miss Wellington, who had known Anthony for fifteen years, the description was perfectly satisfactory.
They reached Edna's house a little after five. Dolly had gone away the day before to soothe her wounded feelings at a house party in the Adirondacks. Durland was playing golf and Antonia having supper with her friend Olive. Edna alone received the traveler. She did not reproach him; she gave him the greeting of a woman simply crushed by anxiety.
He said, "I'm awfully sorry about this, Edna. You've had a disagreeable time—aside from the pearls, I mean."
She raised her large sullen eyes.
"If only you had not made me promise, Tony—so that I was not free to turn a thief out of my house until she had actually stolen my valuables. A woman has an intuition when she's allowed to follow it."
He had not a word to say in answer. He had an interview with the detective—the head man, Mr. Albertson; the other one was engaged in watching Miss Exeter—the false Miss Exeter, who was sitting, as her custom was of an afternoon, on the beach. It was this habit of sitting for hours alone on the beach that had led to the theory that the pearls were hidden there, waitingthe right opportunity to be dug up and dispatched to a confederate.
Mr. Albertson was a tall, gray-haired man of the utmost dignity. His figure would have been improved by a faithful addiction to the daily dozen, and his feet were extraordinarily large. He had a calm, grand manner and was extremely chivalrous in his attitude toward all women—even those he was engaged in sending to jail. He reminded Anthony of the walrus—or was it the carpenter?—who wept so bitterly for the oysters while he sorted out those of the largest size. Mr. Albertson melted with pity for that sweet young creature as he detailed the growing mass of evidence against her: The burglaries in Southampton since her coming; the fact that she had insisted on having the combination of the safe; the fact that Mrs. Conway had locked the pearls in the safe and that only Miss Exeter had gone to the safe afterward; the mysterious appearance of Miss Exeter in Mrs. Conway's room during the night before the robbery, and, of course, her alias. It had been largely a matter of form, Mr. Albertson said—the sending of his men to look up her record. It had been a shock to them all to find that the agency which hadoriginally sent Wood the names of governesses could offer proof that their Miss Exeter had married and gone to Canada. So far they had not been able to get any information as to this woman who had slipped into her place. Some of her things had a P on them. Mr. Albertson mentioned that there was a notorious English thief—Golden Polly or Golden Moll.
"She's called by both names," said Mr. Albertson. "This girl answers her description very good."
Wood nodded. Had he in fact been getting a daily letter all these weeks from Golden Moll? The idea intrigued him not a little.
"I think I'll go and have a talk with her," he said.
"By all means, by all means," said Mr. Albertson. "We've just been waiting for you, you know—just to see how she'll act when confronted with you. She hasn't a notion, you know, that you've left Mexico. But," he went on in his deep rich voice, "I'd speak her fair if I was you. Kindness, Mr. Wood, never does any harm. What are we put in this world for except to help each other—women especially? If I was you I'd say, 'Look, girlie, we want to help you. Wehave you dead to rights, and you'd better come across. Come across, girlie,' I'd say, 'and make it easy for everyone.'" Mr. Albertson had already recommended this speech to Mrs. Conway without success, and now it seemed to him that Mr. Wood was not really going to make it.
"Ay, yes," Anthony said rather noncommittally.
He turned from Mr. Albertson quietly, as is some people's manner when they are doing something important and, crossing the piazza, stood a moment at the top of the steps.
The sun had just set behind his right shoulder, and to those who love the sea the bare flat scene had at this moment an extraordinary beauty. All round the circle of the horizon there was a grayish lilac color. The sea was blue and gray, the beach was pink, with gray shadows under the dunes—strange blending colors that come with no other light. The storm was over, and the sea, though not smooth, was heaving with a slow, regular swell. The beach, even to the dunes, was strewn still with seaweed and lumber and all the flotsam and jetsam of a high tide.
Immediately in front of Anthony was a large rose-colored parasol, the owner of which hadevidently forgotten to put it down, although for an hour now it could have been of not the slightest use. Nothing appeared beneath it but the tip of a white suède slipper.
Anthony stood and looked, a smile hovering at the corners of his mouth. There she was—possibly the Golden Moll of Albertson's suspicions, certainly the writer of interesting letters, the reformer of his niece's manners, the stealer of the pearls.
Then he heard Antonia's voice behind him, calling his name. Ordinarily she would have stolen up behind him and clung round his neck with her feet off the ground; but now she evidently wanted him to get the full effect of her changed appearance, for she stood ten feet off and spoke to him. Oddly enough, she was wearing the very clothes which Pearl had described—the pink linen, the hat with the pink rose, the gray silk stockings and gray suède pumps. Nothing, Anthony thought, could have been more accurate. The child was very beautiful, just as he had hoped—hardly dared to hope—to see her.
She gave him just that second to take her all in, and then sprang at his neck.
"Oh, don't you think I look nice?" she said passionately. "It's all Miss Exeter—your priceless pearl—and she is priceless. Don't you think I look nice? I like her better almost than anyone I ever knew, because she's so straight. Don't you think I look nice?"
"Indeed I do," said her uncle. He managed to free his neck from the yoke of Antonia's arms and held her off and turned her round. "Yes," he said, "you look exactly as I like to see you."
Antonia smiled and then sighed.
"I feel every stitch I have on," she said, "particularly the shoes and stockings." She raised first one leg and then the other and shook it, with a gesture not at all graceful. "I've never worn them except in winter before. But still, it does make a difference in one's popularity—clothes—particularly with boys. Boys are funny, Uncle Anthony."
Nothing interested Anthony more than to discuss the problems of life with his niece, but at the moment his mind was not sufficiently disengaged. He was sorry to interrupt her, but he was obliged to go and have a few words with her governess.
"That's all right," said Antonia. "I'll go too."And she slipped her arm through his and, leaning her head against the point of his shoulder prepared to descend the steps.
But Anthony explained to her that he wished to talk to Miss Exeter by himself. Antonia was disappointed. She had looked forward to being present when her uncle and the governess met again, but she adjusted herself as usual.
"There's Mr. Albertson," she said. "I'll get him to come and sit with me while I have supper, and tell me stories of crime. He says there aren't any people like Sherlock Holmes, and that stories like that make it hard for real detectives. I suppose that's true, and yet it's horrid to face facts sometimes, isn't it, Uncle Anthony? It makes real life seem pretty dull sometimes."
"Real life is not dull, Antonia," said her uncle, "take it from me."
He watched her safely into a conversation with Mr. Albertson, and then, with his hands in his pockets, he sauntered down the steps, across the sand toward that rose-colored parasol.
"Good afternoon, Miss Exeter," he said pleasantly.
It had been kept a profound secret that Anthony was on his way home. The detectives hadpointed out to Mrs. Conway that this was important—that if the woman knew she was about to be unmasked she might be goaded into sudden action—perhaps even into destroying the pearls.
Hearing a strange voice calling her by name, Pearl came out of a trance into which the sunset and the sea had thrown her; glancing up from under her parasol, she saw at once that the speaker was Anthony Wood, and that he was exactly as she had imagined him. Seeing this, her heart gave a peculiar leap, and she beamed at him, more freely and wonderfully than she had ever beamed at anyone in the world. The look affected him—it would have affected any man; not just her beauty, for he had seen a good deal of beauty in his day, but this warm, generous honesty combined with beauty was something he had never seen. For a second or two they just looked at each other, Pearl beaming and beaming, and Wood looking at her, his face like a dark mask, but his turquoise eyes piercing her heart.
She spoke first. She said in her queer deep voice, "Oh, I'm so glad you've come, Mr. Wood."
"Are you?" he said.
Of all the sentences with which she mighthave greeted him—sentences of excuse, of explanation, of appeal—he had never thought of her saying this, and saying it with all the manner of joy and relief.
"Indeed I am," she went on, still on that same note. "Have you seen Antonia?"
"Yes, I have."
"And isn't she——"
"We'll leave that for a moment," he said, for her effrontery began to annoy him, and his tone was curt. But instead of being alarmed or apologetic, she gave a little chuckle.
"Oh, yes, I know," she said; "of course you want an explanation; only I wanted to be sure you'd seen my great achievement first, for it is an achievement, isn't it?"
His eyebrows went up.
"Do you really expect to be praised for anything you may have done," he said, "before you offer some explanation as to why you are here masquerading as Miss Exeter?"
Pearl's face fell. He was really quite cross. It seemed hard to her that the meaningless sort of beam with which she accompanied a casual good morning had been enough to reduce the third vice president to weeping on his desk,while a particularly concentrated beam—a beam designed to say in a ladylike, yet unmistakable manner that the one man of all men was now standing before her—seemed to have no effect whatsoever on said man. She tried it nevertheless.
Anthony, seeing it, suddenly became angry. Did this woman, he thought, who was perhaps a thief and was certainly an impostor, really suppose she was going to charm him, Anthony Wood, by her mere beauty—he who was well known to be indifferent to women? She would learn——
But what she would learn was not formulated, for she now surprised him by jumping to her feet and running like a gazelle toward the sea, crying out something to him which he did not catch. He started, however, in full pursuit—his first thought being that she intended to drown herself; the second that she meant to fling the pearls into the sea—the well-known trick of destroying the evidence in a tight place. She ran on. The sea was up to her knees—up to her waist, fully dressed as she was; she was now swimming. They had the sea entirely to themselves. Even the detectives, trusting to Mr. Wood, hadwithdrawn for a bite to eat; and at five o'clock all those fortunate people who come to the seaside for the summer are engaged in golfing or playing bridge, and seem to ignore the existence of the Atlantic Ocean.
Anthony had hesitated at the brink of the sea long enough to take off first his shoes, second his watch and third the light coat which he had worn driving the car, so that he was some little distance behind her. Swimming hard and for the most part under water, he did not see for some time the object which had attracted Pearl's attention. Neither suicide nor the pearls were the object of her plunge, but a small white dog which appeared to be drowning. Some children up the beach had been throwing sticks for it, and now at the end of a long afternoon it had got caught in some current and was obviously in trouble, every third or fourth wave washing over its little pointed nose.
Pearl, never doubting that Wood was actuated by the same motives as herself, panted out, "Can we get there in time?"
He came alongside her now.
"You're not going to drown too!" he said.
She shook her wet head. Together they towedthe exhausted little creature back. As soon as she could walk Pearl picked it up in her arms and strode ashore.
"Don't you think it was a crime for those children to go away and leave him like that?" Her gray eyes, instead of beaming, glowed angrily.
"Are you so against crime?" said Anthony, trying to smooth the water out of his hair.
She did not even take the trouble to answer but became absorbed in tending the dog. It was a white dog, at least its hair was white; but now, soaked and plastered to its body, the general effect was of a cloudy pink with gray spots. It was the offspring probably of a spotted carriage dog and a poodle. Between it and Pearl a perfect understanding seemed to have been at once established. She knelt beside it, and suddenly looking up at Anthony with one of her spreading smiles, she said, "I'm afraid it's awfully ugly."
"It has personality," he answered. He could not but be aware that Pearl's thin dress was clinging to her almost as closely as the dog's soft coat.
"Let me have your coat," she said.
He held it out, expecting that she meant to put it on, for every line of her figure was visible, and every line was lovely. But Pearl was utterly unconscious of herself. She took the coat and wrapped the dog in it, so that only its head stuck out, with its adoring eyes turned to her. As he watched her he found he knew positively that she had not taken the pearls. It was no logical process; he did not say, "This girl is too kind or too generous or too without selfconsciousness or too much at peace." Perhaps it was a combination of all these ideas, or perhaps it was just the miracle of personality; but somehow or other he knew positively and for all time that she was not a thief; that she, on the contrary, was just what in his opinion a woman ought to be. He looked down at the bent golden head, dripping pure drops of crystal. Dyed! What a spiteful goose Cora Wellington was!
Then Durland came down the steps.
"What's happened?" he asked.
"We've been rescuing a dog," said Anthony. "Miss—Exeter and I." So far he knew no other name for her.
Durland smiled at him above her head, as much as to say, "Could anything be moreridiculously attaching than women are—this woman in particular?" And Anthony smiled back in a similar manner.
Then there was a shout, and Antonia, having finished her supper and exhausted at least for the moment Mr. Albertson's narrative powers, came flying down the steps, eager to know why it was that Miss Exeter and her uncle had been in swimming with their clothes on. When explained, it appeared to her the most natural thing in the world.
"Isn't he sweet?" she said, when she had heard the story. "I think Horatius would be a good name for him—on account of 'Never, I ween, did swimmer, in such an evil case, struggle through such a raging flood'—you know. Do you think mother will let us keep him? Or do you want to keep him, Miss Exeter? Oh, dear, I suppose you do!"
"No, I can't," said Pearl, with regret. "I'd like to, but Alfred hates dogs."
Anthony was surprised to hear his own voice saying sharply, "And who is Alfred?"
"He's my cat," said Pearl, turning her whole face up to him. "Everyone says he's very ugly, but I love him."
They smiled at each other; it was so obvious that Anthony refrained from saying, "Lucky creature."
Presently they moved toward the house—first Pearl, bearing Horatius still wrapped in Anthony's motoring coat; then Durland, most solicitous lest the dog should be too heavy for Miss Exeter; then Anthony carrying his shoes and coat and waistcoat; and then Antonia, dancing about. They approached the house in a quiet and rather sneaky way, by the kitchen entrance. Anthony had no wish to meet his sister, who supposed that he had been grilling a criminal. The children felt grave doubts that their mother would welcome Horatius at all—not that she was a cruel woman, but that she feared strange curs about the house. Fortunately the cook, who had a great weakness for Antonia, was cordial, and allowed Horatius to dry out behind the kitchen stove.
It was now high time to dress for dinner, so there was a good excuse for stealing softly up the back stairs.
While Anthony was tying his tie a knock came at the door, and Edna came in with the mannerof a person confidently expecting important intelligence.
She said in a low voice, but with an immense amount of facial gesticulation to take the place of sound, "Albertson told me you had an interview. What did you find out?"
For the first time Anthony realized that he had been an hour in the company of the false Miss Exeter without having even asked her true name. He might at least have done that. A weak man would have answered irritably that what between stray dogs drowning and Edna's children interrupting he had not had an opportunity to ask the woman anything. But he was not weak. He simply told her the truth. He saw that she accepted the story with reservations. A drowning dog was all very well, but how about her pearls?
Dinner ought to have been a terrible meal, with Edna bitter and suspicious and the two detectives looking in at the window every now and then—just to show that they were on the job; but, as a matter of fact, it was extremely gay and pleasant. Antonia was allowed to hover about the room in honor of her uncle's return,and Pearl and Anthony were—or appeared to be—in the highest spirits.
Need it be recorded that Pearl had on her best dress? It was a soft, black, shining crêpe which she had run up one afternoon in the spring when she felt most depressed about not being able to find a position. Dressmaking often lightened her black moments; it was to her an exciting form of creation. It had been quickly and casually done, but it had turned out well. Round her neck she wore the silliest little string of bright blue-glass beads, which someone had once given a doll of Antonia's in the dead past when Antonia played with dolls, and which Antonia herself occasionally wore. Antonia had left them in Pearl's room, for her new-found personal neatness did not as yet extend to the care of her possessions, and in an impulse Pearl had put them on and found the result good. So did Antonia.
"Oh, see!" she said as they sat down at table. "She has on my beads."
"Fancy Miss Exeter wearing someone else's beads!" said Edna in a tone hard to mistake for a friendly one.
"But don't they look well on her?" saidAntonia. "Uncle Tony, don't you think they look well on her? How could you describe her as 'of pleasing appearance'? It nearly made me miss her at the station that first day. I went dodging about, trying to find a pale, plain girl—that's what mother told me to look for. I think Miss Exeter is beautiful, don't you?"
"Antonia!" said her mother scornfully, as if nonsense were being talked.
Anthony, however, never allowed his niece to put him in a hole.
"I certainly do," he said, and he looked straight at Pearl, and she looked straight at him and laughed and said, "You'd be a brave man to say no when Antonia takes that tone."
"I should be worse than brave—I should be a liar," said Anthony.
The sentiment, which brought a lovely beam from Pearl, brought him a dark glance from his sister. She thought it was not like Anthony to be silly about a woman, and then the encouraging idea occurred to her that he was luring her on in order to win her confidence—clever creature that he was.
As soon as dinner was over the children rushed away to feed Horatius; and Edna, whofelt the need of uninterrupted conversation with her brother, led him across the lawn to Miss Wellington's house. It was not easy, for he showed the same reluctance to go that people show toward leaving a wood fire on a cold day; but when Miss Exeter—who, of course, everyone knew wasn't Miss Exeter—said she had a letter to write he rose to his feet.
"A letter?" he said, the idea being, of course, that now he was at home, there could be no more letters in the world.
Pearl nodded. It really was important, for she had always promised Augusta to write her a full account of the first meeting with her respected employer; and, as a matter of fact, Pearl was bursting with eagerness to express her emotion to someone. If she wrote at once the letter could be posted that evening, when, about nine o'clock, a man came to deliver and receive mail.
As Edna and her brother went out they passed Mr. Albertson on guard, and Edna conveyed the information to him that "she" had gone to write a letter. Albertson made a reassuring gesture and they passed on.
Cora was all eagerness and cordiality.
"And what has Anthony discovered abouther?" were her first words—spoken to Edna, but directed toward him.
Edna came nobly to his assistance, gave an account of the rescue of Horatius quite as if she thought it a natural, explainable incident, which she was really very far from thinking.
"And what are his impressions?" said Cora.
Anthony found this question almost as embarrassing as the first one. He could not share his impressions. They were mingled—that the girl was beautiful—that swimming was a sensuous and graceful motion—that wet garments clinging to lovely limbs had not been sculptured since the Greeks made statuettes—that absolute integrity is consistent with masquerading under another name than your own and stealing someone else's references. But, alas, these convictions were as impossible to share as a religious revelation. He turned for help to the most ancient methods.
"And what do you think of her, Cora?" he said, as if he really cared.