Part 9

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*CHAPTER VII*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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