Part 12

"What a nice time you two dear souls are having!" she exclaimed. "And how I've wanted to be with you! It is so much nicer always to be with the few one loves than with the many one merely has to know."

"You have been gleaning golden opinions, all the same," said Helen. "Lady Campstown has been telling me what Princess Z---- says of you as an entertainer--that you were born, not made."

"I reckon--no, I _fancy_ I came by it honestly," laughed Posey. "I always enjoy the things we give so much more than those we go to."

"I am asking Miss Carstairs to come to me to-morrow for luncheon," said Lady Campstown, putting with loving fingers a stray bit of Posey's lace in place. "And I do hope, dear, you haven't promised anybody else."

"I'll come, surely," exclaimed the girl. "Though I suppose I ought not to forsake daddy and John these few days we have together. But to tell you the mortifying truth, they are continually falling knee-deep into talks of which I can't understand a thing. And sometimes I slip out with my dogs, and they don't even know that I have gone."

"'Slip out' to-morrow, then, at 1.30, and bring the dogs," said Lady Campstown. "But, my dear, what does this mean that I hear, Mr. Glynn is for leaving us on Thursday?"

"He's going to catch the 'Kronprinz' at Cherbourg, Saturday, and must have a few hours in Paris. It's awfully stupid, I tell him, but when an American man gets hold of a scheme that spells business you can no more induce him to loose hold of it than my darling Maida will consent to give up a particular pet bone."

"But he's coming back very soon, they tell me. How you Americans can go racing back and forth across the Atlantic as you do----"

"Yes, he's coming back very soon," said Posey, faltering a little, and pulling to pieces a superb white rose with purple-red outside petals that hung from a vase on the console next to her. "I may as well tell you both, what I meant to do to-morrow, that daddy and he decided to-day the wedding's to come off at the end of March. John will accordingly rush through a lot of things in New York, tear back again, probably via Genoa, if they put on one of the fast ships, and where his trousseau's to come in, I can't imagine. My own will take every minute from now till then, and all of the missionary aid you two dears choose to lend me, to make it an accomplished fact."

"You can count upon me in all things," Helen said very quietly.

"Oh, my dear lamb, and you ask me to be glad when it means that I've got to lose you," put in Lady Campstown, thinking for the moment honestly about herself, and thereby covering what might have been a trying pause to both girls. A servant, presenting a tray of coffee-cups at Lady Campstown's side, helped further to bridge the moment, and others of Posey's guests surrounding her with chat and laughter, the question of the marriage floated away into space. Helen, however, took it back to her hotel with her, wrestled with it during sleepless hours, and next day, to stave off intolerable thought, set out for a long walk alone.

Whither she went she neither cared nor knew. She had a vague remembrance of having passed through the flower-market, and being set upon to buy, by a soft-voiced, smiling woman who stood behind great blurs of red and yellow and white and purple, shrined in verdure, from which luscious scent arose. To get rid of her, she had paid a persistent child a franc for a big bunch of violets, and the girl, with a saucy, merry face, thrust into her hand also a spray of orange blossom. Helen threw this last away impatiently. Impossible to be rid of the suggestions of that wedding, ten-fold more abhorrent to her now that she had seen for herself and knew beyond a peradventure that it was inspired by no such love as she and John had felt for each other only a day or two before; such love as she must feel for him, God help her, till she died.

She walked on through the town, far into the outskirts, till seeing a sign of "New Milk" upon a chalet near the road made her suddenly remember she had set out without even her morning coffee. Going inside the building, she sat for a few moments at a table while a woman served her with rolls and a glass of milk, and then, starting forth again, was vaguely tempted to ascend a hillside which rose abruptly above the spot, crowned with a noble growth of trees.

Helen had no sooner gained the smooth plateau of the summit than she remembered where she was. Long ago, as a child, in charge of her English governess, journeying from the Italian seashore to join her father at Marseilles, they had stopped over for a midsummer fete at Mont St. Cassien, where, in blazing heat, the Cannois and their rustic neighbors from miles around had fulfilled an old custom of Provence in holding service at a little chapel on this hill, the remainder of the day and evening being spent in feasting at tables spread on the slopes and in the green valley below. She could shut her eyes and see again the lights gleaming around the tables, as the hot darkness fell, the gay costumes, and the chain of dancers threading its way among the trees.

The grass was growing wild and coarse where she followed a shaded path to the little hut in which a holy hermit had once lived and died. A peasant woman in the kitchen of the hermitage was cooking something in a casserole over a tiny fire, but she left it civilly to conduct the stranger through to the chapel adjoining. A girl grown to woman's height, but, alas, a child in intellect, began pulling and tugging at her mother's gown, asking witless questions and being repeatedly, but tenderly, thrust aside by the woman, and told to stay in her own place.

Helen hardly knew why she had acceded to the woman's suggestion that she should visit the uninteresting sanctuary, with its cheap emblems and smell of stale incense, and decorations of paper flowers.

But she understood, when through the now opened front door a gentleman stepped from broad sunshine into the chill interior, apparently as aimless as herself, and came up to her side.

"Helen! You are alone?"

"You here!" she answered under her breath. "When I have come all this distance to be away from you!"

"It is the same with me, Helen," Glynn said in a sombre voice. "I have wandered and wandered up here for no reason in particular, trying to believe you are not in Cannes, trying to master my ungovernable desire to be with you only once again."

"It is all of a piece with our being thrust together that day upon the train," she cried impetuously. "What have we done that such things should be forced upon us?"

"Come out at least into the sunshine," he said, taking her cold hand. "You will be chilled in this dreary place."

Giving a douceur to the poor guardian of the premises, they went together to a point of the hillside whereon the trunk of a fallen tree offered a semblance of a seat.

Helen, actually nerveless, dropped upon it, Glynn standing beside her, neither daring to speak first.

"You know that I am leaving to-morrow?" he asked finally.

"Posey told me so last night," she answered.

"She told you what was to follow my return at the end of March?"

"Yes."

"The question is, Am I a man of honor or a scoundrel?" he went on with a frowning brow. "I have thought of it so long, so intensely, that my judgment has ceased to act. Helen, you have the clearest mind, the most well-balanced conscience I ever knew----"

"You can say that, when I was so false to myself and you as to let you go that time in New York, before all these complications came upon us?" she interrupted him bitterly. "But there, what is the use? We have parted, there is no hope, let us never speak of ourselves together again. If it is your duty to Posey, to her father, that torments you; I bid you keep your pledge. It is impossible that you should now make any motion to withdraw from it. The one terrible thing to me was that we should all go on and Poesy have no idea what you and I once were to each other----"

"Nobody could know that," the man said sturdily. Helen shivered.

"But you have relieved me of that fear," she hurried on. "I saw at once, last night, that you had told her----"

"Only that you were the woman I had loved before plighting myself to her. She knows nothing of the circumstances of our acquaintance. That is my secret, mine only, to be treasured till I die."

"She knows enough, however, to make clear the way between us," Helen made further haste to say. "If you are kind now, you will end this conversation that ought never to have begun. I shall be leaving Cannes shortly. My father is coming for me in his yacht. Before I see you again you will have in your keeping the happiness, the trust, of one--no, two, of the kindest, most confiding creatures God ever made. Never think that it is I who could try and weaken you at the outset of such a task. If necessary, rather let Posey think that I have grown cold to her than run the risk of such a re-awakening of old feeling as we two have innocently suffered from to-day."

Her voice dropped to a whisper. Violet shadows had formed under her eyes, the lines around her mouth had deepened painfully. But when she looked at him full in the eyes, he knew there would be no more weakening in his direction. Presently she arose, and they walked together to the foot of the hill, where Helen hailed a passing carriage and asked him to put her in it. A moment more, and Glynn was indeed alone.

As he walked rapidly homeward, he forced his mind away from the overpowering interest of this last chance interview to dwell upon minor things, among which he was inclined to classify even the settling of the affair with Posey's tormentor, Mrs. Darien. He had, according to his engagement with that lady, gone over to Nice by an early train the day following their interview in the garden. He had found her in the melancholy splendors of a saloon bedroom in a cheap hotel, with a screen half encircling an untidy couch, a dressing-table littered with strange scents and unguents, shabby finery hanging upon hooks, and a _chaise longue_ of rusty plush drawn up before a writing-table containing, in addition to its blotter and inkstand, a case of liqueurs and glasses.

Mrs. Darien, for which he yielded her credit, made no attempt to apologize for her poor surroundings. She received her visitor with astonishing ease and vivacity; talked rapidly and cleverly of contemporaneous topics, and when he came, without overmuch delay, to the point of the business that brought him, treated Mr. Glynn in a semi-coquettish, rallying spirit, as though he were proposing to her a very good joke. She closed upon his offer like a vice, however, and affixed her name to the paper forfeiting the liberal allowance he had decided to make her should she be again heard of as molesting Miss Winstanley with an eager, trembling hand. Glynn had decided, as he walked away from her into purer air, that drink or morphia, or both, were driving the ex-Lady Clandonald to an end at a fearful rate of speed. He had paid high for this visit to Nice, but it counted as nothing provided she left Mr. Winstanley's little ewe lamb in peace.

The two girls met at luncheon at Lady Campstown's, who had spent the morning in letting Posey experiment upon her nerves in the Winstanley's automobile. Posey felt proud indeed of this success, when she brought home the dowager (at the utmost limit of speed disallowed by law), thrilled and enchanted, after beginning her expedition with closed eyes and a prayer upon her lips. Mr. Winstanley, who had long since abandoned himself to sharing risks with his girl, sat beside his guest, exhibiting to the public the exterior of a diver for pearls combined with a hippopotamus.

Flushed by conquest, Posey had recovered her buoyant spirits, and their meal was enlivened by her old daring sallies. She even ventured, in the welcome absence of Miss Bleecker, upon introducing an imitation of that lady, in an entanglement of eye-glasses, trying to read the dinner menu at sea. Lady Campstown, who thought less of Miss Bleecker than she had before seeing her recent barefaced designs upon Mr. Winstanley, enjoyed this very much; but Posey confessed it had not been a success at home, owing to Mr. Winstanley not relishing satire directed toward acquaintances, and considering Miss Bleecker, on the whole, "a very polite and agreeable lady."

When Posey separated from Helen after lunch she felt that a little frost had fallen upon their friendship. She instinctively realized that things could not be between them what they were before Glynn had owned to her he had first loved Helen. Something told her that it needed time to smooth over a situation like their own. After John left on the morrow she would, perhaps, see dear Helen with a lighter heart.

*CHAPTER IX*

Mr. Glynn had sailed away again, and preparations for the wedding had already begun to absorb Miss Winstanley. She had been gone for a week in Paris with Lady Campstown when Mr. Carstairs' yacht, the "Sans Peur," made its appearance in the harbor. Previous to this, it may be told, Miss Bleecker had privately received and cashed a draft upon her bankers that had put the chaperon in unprecedented funds and spirits. She had received also a telegram of instructions from Mrs. Carstairs, at Gibraltar, directing her to engage for their party a suite of costly apartments at the Grand Hotel. Full of importance, she swelled here, there and everywhere, detailing to all ears the grandeur and importance of her employers, and basking in the rays of glory they sent before them. She needed a little cheering at this time, since Mr. Winstanley had remained inflexible, declining her offers to bear him company on his terrace, and treating her persistently as a worthy elderly person, beyond the pale of pleasures that do not belong to the late afternoon of life.

For Helen the days preceding the arrival of the "Sans Peur" were profoundly sad ones. Putting aside her feelings upon another theme, her dread of reunion with Mrs. Carstairs robbed her of all joy in her dear father's coming. In vain Miss Bleecker drummed into her ears how nobler far it is to give than to receive, how a self-sacrifice like hers would bring its own reward, how Helen was destined to be the blessed medium through whom joy and harmony would descend upon the Carstairs family for evermore.

If a faint--ever so faint--hope survived in Helen's mind that her stepmother's specious assurances of good-will to her and devotion to her father were to be credited, this faded upon her first visit to the yacht. In the cabin where she herself had once reigned as queen she found Mrs. Carstairs, coarsened, indefinably repellant, although still superb in bloom and with a Rubens lady's plenitude of physique. Around her were grouped two or three men, making up the party of which Helen was expected to be the bulwark of respectability. One of them, a Mr. Danielson, Helen disliked promptly and instinctively; none would she have admitted into the circle of her acquaintances at home. When Mr. Carstairs, after some delay, made his appearance, Helen was shocked beyond measure to behold in him a mere weary wraith, beside whom his wife seemed to flaunt her beauty and splendid health with insolence. His greeting of his daughter was indifferent, abstracted. She found it impossible to have a word alone with him. The thought of the cruise before her lay like ice on Helen's heart.

Before Mr. and Mrs. Carstairs had spent a week in Cannes the lady declared it to be a poky hole and wished she had gone to Nice. To Nice they accordingly repaired, and in due course of time sailed for Naples. While Mrs. Carstairs rattled and joked noisily with her other guests, she reserved for the handsome cad at whom Helen had taken special umbrage a reserve of manner more suspicious to an interested looker-on. To Helen, a petty agony of the cruise was that Mr. Danielson should conceive himself obliged to devote most of his leisure hours to attendance upon the owner's daughter, refusing with fatuous persistency to be shaken off. A few brief scornful words of remonstrance on this subject, addressed to her stepmother, were met by the laughing assurance that there was really nothing for Helen to apprehend, and that a man so universally run after as was Mr. Danielson, by what Mrs. Carstairs called the "fair sex," must meet the risk of having his casual attentions misinterpreted at times.

Proud, wounded, scornful, feeling that her standard of life had dropped to an unendurable point, Helen got into the habit of keeping to herself as much as practicable. At Naples she would take her own maid and absent herself for hours from the yacht and its dubious company. To her father there was actually no chance of being what she had hoped. He was mostly captious, preferring to be left alone when his wife did not vouchsafe him her companionship--which was now a rare event. The great Mr. Carstairs was, indeed, socially a cipher among these half-breeds, who drank his wines and allowed him to pay their expenses of travel.

Miss Bleecker, under the infatuation of Mrs. Carstairs' liberal money-spending, of their luxurious living and continual seeking of pleasure and excitement in which she was included when, as usual, Helen refused to go--became as a broken reed in support of her charge's movements. Poor old Eulalie, with some sense of the loss of refined surroundings they had sustained, and a hearty dislike of the imperative chaperon, ranged herself exclusively upon the side of her young lady--refusing to fraternize with Mrs. Carstairs' maid, whom she regarded as a second-rate creature in every way, and going through the routine of life in general with a dogged determination to endure unto the end.

A day came at last when Miss Carstairs went out to Pompeii with her maid, instead of to the museum in Naples, where she had announced her intention of spending the afternoon.

She left Eulalie sitting upon an immemorial stone and wandered off alone through the beautiful sad place. To the guardian, who would fain have followed her, she gave a piece of money and a gracious smile, explaining that she knew it all by heart, and wanted only to gain a general impression of the dead city on that day of radiant spring. She had been standing for some time near the tomb of Mamia, looking out over the bay and mountains of Castellamare melting together in sunshine, and, recalled to the present by the lateness of the hour, started to walk back to where she had left the monumental Eulalie.

Her resolution to leave the yacht, to abandon the party, and if needs be to forfeit all that her acquiescence had secured for her, was now definitely taken. To avoid discussion, she would simply ask her father to allow Miss Bleecker and herself to go up to Rome, where Mr. Carstairs could never abide visiting, on the ground that he did not like living over catacombs and being face to face with so many things already done for. He knew Helen's tender passion for the Imperial City, and might excuse her from going on with them to Sicily.

From Miss Bleecker she felt sure of meeting fierce and stubborn resistance to her plan. The dream of Miss Bleecker's life had been a cruise in the "Sans Peur," and it was hardly to be supposed she would easily relinquish it. But Helen felt that upon occasion she could be stubborn too. Any clash of wills, and subsequent victory for her, was worth undertaking, to rid her of the offensive companionship of Mrs. Carstairs--and one other.

She could not be sure of what she suspected between them. She scorned to make herself assured. She could not stoop to the miserable method necessary to the acquirement of dread certainty. And yet "she was walking every day with bare feet on a burning pavement without feeling the burn."

Passing with noiseless step before a house-wall arising like a screen before her path, she paused for a moment to enjoy one last gaze at the pageant of sea and sky in the light of waning day. In this brief time the sound of her own name spoken by low voices behind the ruined wall forced themselves upon her hearing. They were those of her stepmother and the man Danielson.

Two phrases interchanged, but they told Helen all. She could never again indulge in the misery of doubt.

She stood for an instant as if overtaken by the lava flow that had devastated the homes of seventeen centuries ago surrounding her. The one despairing, driving impulse was to steal away unseen by the woman who dishonored her dear father's name. Helen thought she had rather fall down and die and become embedded with the dust of ages than go back to face Mrs. Carstairs and let her know she had found her out.

As the couple, without discovering her neighborhood, moved in an opposite direction, Mr. Carstairs' daughter took wings to her feet and flew to pick up Eulalie and find the cab they had left before the Hotel Diomed. The maid, sluggish though were the workings of her mental part, saw that her mistress had had a fright, and blamed herself for losing sight of her. Helen's cheeks were white, her hands shook as though palsied, as she sprang into the cab and bade the man drive fast, fast, back toward the town. She wished, at all events, to avoid being caught up with or passed by the pair, who could not at that hour linger much longer within the enclosure.

During the long joggling drive through interminable stony streets, encumbered by the populace of the Neapolitan suburbs, performing their domestic avocations out of doors, she came to a desperate conclusion. She was of age sufficiently mature to act for herself. She could not, would not, give her reasons to her father. But she would carry out her recent determination to leave the yacht at once, forfeit the price that had been paid her to be an infamous blind, and, at any risk, sever her present connection with Mrs. Carstairs.

Helen possessed the American woman's promptitude in action. She drove with Eulalie to an hotel formerly frequented with her father, engaged a room for the night, and sent the maid to the yacht with a note requesting Miss Bleecker to come to her. The interview resulting with her estimable chaperon was perhaps one of the most painful of her experience. The lady, to whom she gave in explanation of her resolve a bare statement that she could no longer endure the trial of life with her stepmother, exhausted herself in remonstrance and reproach. She pointed out to Helen that the money from her father could still be, and no doubt would be, withdrawn upon announcement of Miss Carstairs' extraordinary move. Helen declared that, well aware of this fact, she was prepared to live on the small income coming to her from her mother's estate. Miss Bleecker reminded her that her father was in evidently wretched health, and that no whim or temper should stand between him and his daughter's attendance at his side. Helen, blushing scarlet, with tears in her eyes, recalled to Miss Bleecker that she had not been allowed access to her father's own cabin since they had been together on the cruise, and that, furthermore, he did not appear to want her. Miss Bleecker called Heaven to witness that she had no patience with family jars, had no axe to grind on her own account, but that if Helen persisted in her wilful determination she should feel it _her_ bounden duty not to forsake poor Mrs. Carstairs if wanted to remain.

That evening, between nine and ten, Mrs. Carstairs called upon Miss Carstairs, but was not received. Helen sent back, in a hotel envelope, her stepmother's card, across which she had written these words:

"I happened to be at Pompeii this afternoon, but no other than myself shall know under what circumstances you also were there. It is enough that we must part."