Part 10

When at last she had succeeded in getting to the plank-walk along the side of the railway track, and had thus, with the assistance of a train hand, reached the next station, she descended to the level of Mother Earth with her feelings somewhat dashed. In her forlorn plight she was not fit to be seen on the streets, and indeed the condition of her hat was so shocking as to make her hesitate to enter a public vehicle. There was not a cab in sight, but after a rapid walk to Broadway she discovered a great wholesale warehouse where, when she had explained that she had just been in a collision on the railway, they allowed her to purchase a cheap straw hat that was at least better than the one she discarded.

More delays! The cable-car, into which she finally got, ran along peacefully enough to just below Canal Street, where a block occurred, necessitating an attempt at possession of her soul in patience until the moments grew to feel like hours.

Unable to endure it longer, she sprang to the ground, crossing through a jam of vehicles to the sidewalk, then stood looking up and down for a cab. Everybody stared at her, until she was afraid she might be arrested upon a charge of drunkenness, because of her excitement and of her battered appearance.

Her face flamed with heat and exertion. The wound in her forehead streaked her handkerchief with blood. It was very near mid-day. Lacking a parasol, the sun’s ardor seemed to her more oppressive than it had ever been before. And, as ill-luck would have it, the passing cabs at that hour, in midsummer, and in that portion of the town, were so few and far between, that not one, not already occupied, came along until she was ready to cry with anxiety. It was the first time she had ever been there alone.

Poor Olive felt her courage oozing out at her finger tips. After all, would not she be laughed at by her father as a mistaken busybody, concerning herself with affairs of which she had no knowledge? And as the sun beat upon a pavement swarming with alien folk who jostled and stared at her, she almost gave up in despair.

“You make some mistakes, my impetuous little Olive,” had Stephen Luttridge said to her a few days before they parted, “and--perhaps--commit some follies. But your intuitions are the keenest, your pluck the best, I have ever seen in a woman. And I promise you now, I am going to stand by them both, so long as we both shall live.”

How Olive had glowed with pride at her lover’s eulogy! As it here came to her memory, she turned bravely around facing the Battery, and started to walk.

The pain in her head was growing; she felt a sensation of dizziness. In all that crowd, pressing her onward or coming to meet her, there was not a familiar face, or one to whom she could appeal.

At this moment, a blue-coated officer crossed the line of her uncertain vision. Olive ran forward, laying her hand upon his arm, and besought him to get a carriage for her. The man, scrutinizing her closely, ended--to his eternal credit, be it said--by speaking civilly.

“There’s one coming now, Miss, if you think you’d be fit to drive alone. Perhaps you’d better step into a drug store till your head cools down a bit.”

“Oh! no, no. I am all right, officer; I only want to get to my father’s office, No. -- Wall Street, please. Tell the driver to take me quickly, and I’ll thank you very, very much.”

Once inside the friendly hansom, Olive’s courage flowed back in a full stream. For half a mile or more she lay at ease upon the cushions, fanned herself, arranged her hat and veil anew, thought of her father’s kind pity for her mischances, and rejoiced in finding him--when, presto! the horse was down upon his knees and badly damaged, the passenger shooting forward, her wrist twisted in the attempt to prevent herself from falling further.

A crowd gathered about them. Olive, assisted to alight, protested that she was not hurt; and a good Samaritan, who saw the girl’s pallid cheeks, led her into a neighboring doorway, summoning another cab.

“You must let me take you to your destination, though,” said the gentleman who had aided her. “I happen to have daughters of my own about your age, and should be very sorry to have one of them left to shift for herself under these circumstances.”

“It can’t be so very far now to my father’s office in Wall Street,” replied Olive, suppressing the pain of her injured wrist. “I am dreadfully anxious to get to my father’s place of business.”

She mentioned his name, and the gentleman took off his hat--but was evidently puzzled by her forlorn appearance.

“I have good reason to know Martin Foljambe,” he said, courteously. “But for his generous action a few months ago--something he need not have done, but chose to do--I should have been hard hit. My name is Whitwell, and I beg you to give yourself no further concern, Miss Foljambe. I shall surrender you safely to your father’s keeping in a very little while.”

“Oh, if it is not too late!” exclaimed she, for the first time losing her self-control.

“You are late for luncheon, if that’s what you mean; but I dare say Mr. Foljambe will look out for you. It is always a treat to my young women to descend upon me for their mid-day meal, and I am well broken in to supplying them.”

When they stopped before the desired building and Olive offered him her purse to pay the cab, her kind friend declined, of course, to receive it, but observed that her cheeks had again grown very white. In crossing the hall to the elevator he made her lean upon his arm, and as they shot up to the floor upon which Martin Foljambe now transacted his affairs, in the office of his assignee, her escort felt that she was trembling painfully.

“I am growing weaker,” thought poor Olive to herself. “How wretched to frighten papa like this. Oh, I must not, I will not faint! I will hold out till I tell him about San Miguel.”

“Courage, my child,” said Mr. Whitwell. “In one moment you’ll be there.”

At the end of a long corridor they saw the names they had come in search of.

“He is in, Miss Foljambe,” said the young man to whom she had put the query, “but I am sorry to say our orders are that Mr. Foljambe is not to be interrupted. He is receiving some gentlemen on important business.”

“Two foreigners?” asked the girl, forcing herself to speak calmly.

“I think so, Miss Foljambe. I was out at lunch when they called, but I understood they are Spanish gentlemen, and Mr. Foljambe’s orders were most explicit that he is not to be disturbed.”

Olive never knew how her strength held out to march past the astonished clerk, tap at the door of her father’s room, and follow this up by entering the forbidden portal. Quite two hours had passed since she had quitted her home upon her mission of warning. There had been full time for “Juan” to induce Ramirez to decide upon their plan of action, find out Mr. Foljambe’s habitat downtown, and proceed without interruption to the spot.

As already stated, Foljambe had decided that the mine was worthless, and had advised his assignee to sell the San Miguel stock at whatever price it would fetch. When, therefore, the two Mexicans had appeared--offering for it a merely nominal sum, to be sure, but accompanying their proposition with the guileless explanation that, as Juan lived near the mine and had a little money, he was willing to risk something on the venture of becoming part owner of the property, though it seemed to be of no real value--Martin considered himself in luck. He thought that here was a windfall, though certainly not a large one.

While Ramirez, interpreting for his friend Juan, was in the very act of urging an immediate acceptance, so that a matter of so little importance might be closed without further bother, and while Foljambe was holding back with an attempt to prove his indifference, making excuse that the assignee would arrive presently and they could then decide the matter, Olive had burst into the room.

“I beg your pardon, papa,” she said, frightened and faltering; “there has been a little accident, and I must speak to you alone.”

Foljambe, much startled, put his arm around his daughter’s shoulders, placed her in a chair, and requested his visitors to wait in another room until the return of the gentleman through whose hands the matter must pass. As they went out Ramirez darted upon the almost fainting girl a look of suspicion and resentment.

“What is it, my dear?” asked the father, anxiously. “What in the world has brought you down here alone, and in this condition?”

“Your friend, Mr. Whitwell, papa. He is waiting outside, I think; but never mind him or my appearance or anything, till I ask you if you have sold your San Miguel stock.”

“Good heavens!” cried Martin; “and what do you know, you kitten, about San Miguel stock?”

“Only that it’s up--up--on the top of the wave,” she cried, breathlessly, repeating what Juan had told in her hearing to Ramirez. “That they have made a rich strike of ore. This man I saw here just now has crossed the continent at top speed to buy you out; and another person--somebody called Latimer, who, he says, is the clever man of the syndicate--will be in New York to-morrow morning for the same purpose. Oh, papa, if you have sold San Miguel it will break my heart!”

“By George, I haven’t; but you were just in time!” cried Foljambe, greatly excited. “It’s the closest call I ever had in all my business life. How on earth you found out, Olive, beats me. But if it’s true--good heavens, child, how did you find it out?”

“They were at our house this morning--talking together in Spanish,” she said, her voice beginning to sound to her further and further away--“and I remembered what you had told me about San Miguel. I started without waiting a minute to find you, but the elevated train broke down, and there was a block on the cable cars--it was very hot--then my hansom horse fell down, and I hurt my wrist--I’m afraid, papa, it’s beginning to make me feel--a little weak.”

She could articulate no longer. Her words trailed off into incoherency. The long strain had been too much for her. For the first time in her life, Olive fainted dead away.

Juan and Ramirez knew their game was up--knew it before a message came to them from the room where Mr. Foljambe was occupied in restoring his daughter to consciousness, where Mr. Whitwell, summoned to come in, was explaining the circumstances of his encounter with the little heroine.

For the visit and proposition of Mr. Latimer, which occurred the morning following that of Ramirez and his friend, Mr. Foljambe was sufficiently prepared. Latimer’s surprise when his offer to buy was declined outright, as was also his rapid increase of the amount first suggested as a fair equivalent for worthless stock, all this is written on the tablets of Martin Foljambe’s memory. He will probably never cease chuckling over it as a pendant to his daughter’s clever interference.

Olive went on with the Rushmore memorial (which in due time appeared in print, with great credit to the editor) until her father, coming in one unbearably hot evening, gave her the welcome tidings that San Miguel had set him on his feet again.

“We shall be rich again, my girl, thanks to your grit and common-sense,” he added, bending over the sofa, where she reclined, rather languid and overdone and trembling with excitement. “And about the first use I shall make of spare funds will be to set up you and Stephen. I take it, from what your mother writes, Lilian will marry that Captain Ramsdell. I don’t care a hang about his being next in succession to a baronet, but I do like his asking her when he thought she had lost her money.”

“The bell!” cried Olive, springing to her feet as the welcome annunciator sounded. “Glad as I am of your splendid news, papa, I am gladder still that to-night has brought Stephen back.”

“I had quite forgotten that little circumstance,” remarked Martin, as she flew by him like a whirlwind to meet her lover in the hall.

THE STOLEN STRADIVARIUS

THE STOLEN STRADIVARIUS

In a low chair, drawn up to secure the full light of a Welsbach burner, a little woman sat darning stockings. Although full forty years of age, she was astonishingly young and fresh. Her dark hair, twisted in a shining coil at the back of a small, well-shaped head, her rosy lips and white teeth, the look of alert interest in her hazel eyes, the plain but becomingly arranged dress, all suggested that her present condition of solitude was incidental rather than habitual.

The room in which Mrs. Blair’s deft needle repaired the havoc of stalwart feet in their daily walks to and from the money-getting haunts of men, was clearly the resort of culture untainted by vulgarity. On the second floor of a small three-story dwelling in a street unknown to modern fashion, years of use as a family gathering place had toned its modest belongings into harmonious attractiveness. If the furniture was worn, it better accorded with the russet and dun hues of the old books covering half the walls; and the drawn curtains of faded crimson stuff did not rebuke the faint odor of tobacco that lingered in their folds. Above the books hung numerous good engravings, photographs, and etchings that lifted thought and piqued imagination with suggestions of the wide world’s beauty and romantic history. In the most isolated corner a substantial table, littered with papers, a letter-press, a stray pipe or two, a big common-sense inkstand and writing pad, with a rack of books of reference, betrayed the snug harbor of a male brain-worker; while a stand of blossoming plants in a south window, a tea-table set with bits of quaint silver, and a couple of becushioned wicker chairs indicated a woman’s idea of _dulce domum_.

This room was, in fact, the common property of a busy married pair and their busy children, who rightly considered their reunions in its pleasant precincts to be a fair equivalent for other things denied them by Dame Fortune.

The house and its furniture, with a small sum of ready money, had been the portion given to Molly Christian on her marriage, two-and-twenty years before, with Terence Blair. He was a good-looking, well-bred, clever Irishman, who, coming over to the New World to make a living out of journalism, had at once anchored himself happily by falling in love with and winning the prettiest and best-balanced girl of his acquaintance in New York.

Mr. Christian, Molly’s father, after so contributing to his daughter’s needs, had wisely put what remained of his fortune into an annuity that supported the amiable but unpractical gentleman until his death two years before our story opens. This disposition of his funds had been indorsed by Mr. Christian’s family and friends with more satisfaction because of his previous persistency of faith in certain silver and copper mines that had given him every facility for cultivating the process known as throwing good money after bad.

Although Molly’s handsome Terence had not, according to her expectation of him, quite set the world of his craft on fire, he had made a respectable livelihood; and she and their children adored him for his sweet, cheery temper and easy-going ways. Late in her life he had imported to live with them a lively little old Irish mother--styled by the juniors “Granny”--who proved to be just the dash of flavor needful to complete their family salad. Petulant, affectionate, witty, and light-hearted, Granny had bravely helped her daughter-in-law to bear the increasing burden of domestic life on a limited income in a community where upon working people there is a call for every dollar before it is well in hand.

As the children had grown up, and their varied mental gifts cried aloud for the best education of the times, Molly had, indeed, had much ado to make both ends meet. Luckily for her, the strain of keeping up appearances was not among her trials.

When the Blairs had married, possessing between them means enough to give and take the hospitality of that simpler period, they were a part of the circle that in those days codified the social laws of the metropolis. Mistress Molly, a whilom belle of her set, did not lack for attentions, and Terence was popular. But very soon, it became apparent to the young couple that they were straining overmuch to keep abreast with people who affected to put aside the hum-drum ways of their Revolutionary, or Dutch, or Puritan ancestors; that the growing elaboration of life among their kind must drive the Blairs either to accept without returning, or not to accept at all. So Molly let go the threads of gossamer that bound her to her world, and little by little the Blairs had drifted into insignificance. To Terence, with his insular density as to the shades of difference in American society, it had not seemed a mighty matter to give up Molly’s friends; but she was a woman, and at first it had cost her a few natural pangs. Now for nearly twenty years she and Terence had lived their own life, and on the whole had done very well without the things forsaken.

How was it, then, that to-night, as the little house-mother sat at her homely task, her thoughts, roving over the field of her interests, general and special, had settled with a tinge of wistfulness upon a very trivial matter? In an evening newspaper she had chanced to read the account of a ball, given the night before for the young daughter of one of her friends of early years, when the _débutante_ had literally walked upon flowers.

“Lilies of the valley strewing the floor of the alcove where Tilly Beaumoris stood beside her mother to receive! And for my girl, to-night of all nights, when she plays her violin before Levitsky, not so much as a posy to wear in her best frock!” This was the arrow that pierced Mrs. Molly’s armor!

Yes, it was Kathleen, bright, radiant Kathleen--her nineteen-year-old daughter, the sunshine and perfume of their home--who had begun to disturb the long-standing family peace.

What Molly had cheerfully accepted for herself, she now, like a true American parent, began to think might be bettered for Kathleen.

An hour before, she had seen the child--heaven in her face--set forth with her father for a musicale in the studio of an artist, who had promised to fetch there to hear her play the great Herr Levitsky himself, whose verdict made or marred an aspirant in her field. And Molly had no sort of doubt as to Kathleen’s rare talent for the violin.

The only cloud upon Kathleen’s horizon had been that mamma must stop behind.

Molly had pleaded--though Kathleen quite understood it to be a pious fiction--that she really could not make the effort to go to Crichton’s musicale; that she was better off at home; that she would certainly be nervous, and that Kathleen would see it, and fail to play as well. Kathleen knew--and Molly knew she knew--that the frugal little lady’s only remaining evening gown was too hopelessly decrepit to make another appearance in public without the renovation requiring time and outlay just then impossible to bestow on it. As for its alternate--the old black satin surviving the days of a fuller purse--that had “suffered a sea change” into modern conformity with gores, and gathers, and what not, and was at the moment rippling sheenfully from Kathleen’s own slender waist, the bodice veiled in transparent gauze of the same somber hue, through which the girl’s white throat and splendid shoulders gleamed with a pearly luster.

What Kathleen had done to bridge over the insincerity of her mother’s excuses, was to put her strong, round arms about Molly’s neck and half blind her with enthusiastic kisses.

Maurice, coming a moment later into the room--Molly’s oldest son, Maurice, with his six foot one of young manhood set off by cheap broadcloth, speckless linen, and the ruddy hues of health and modesty--had repeated Kathleen’s onslaught; and lastly Terence, always laggard, wearing his high hat of ceremony, and struggling into his overcoat as he hurried in, had kissed her good-by, and bade her be of good cheer, since their girl was sure to do them credit.

Ah, well! What did anything matter so long as she had these?

No, no, she did not envy her old friend, Lottie Earl, now the important Mrs. Beaumoris of the society newspapers, or covet ever so little that lady’s grand establishments in town and country, her yacht, her travels, and her vogue. It had been only a silly passing fancy of Molly’s about the waste of all those lilies, because Kathleen had asked for a few to brighten her gala toilet, and could not be gratified in view of the winter woolens needed for poor, dear Jock--who was serenely wearing his last year’s rags in a snow-drift up at college!

Then merry Jock passed in review in his mother’s anxious thoughts--Jock, whom the family were putting through the university by dint of constant self-denial and petty economy. And then, Maurice, whose clever drawings were beginning to be sought for by the editors; his hopes and ambitions, his loving confidence in her, flooded her heart with tender meditation. Next, Terence had his turn, and there was a space for Granny. And before all of these images of her worship, Molly poured a libation of love that made her as happy as a queen. Gone now were the barbed thoughts of a little while before. How “they” would laugh at her next day, when she confessed her feelings as to Mrs. Beaumoris, for to the Blairs most sentiments were common property. Terence, his eyes full of quizzical enjoyment, would call her a little socialist. Maurice, throwing back his head in a jolly laugh, would declare, provided the Blanks gave him Horner’s new novel to illustrate, Mrs. Beaumoris was welcome to strew forty thousand lilies upon her daughter’s pathway. Granny would let fly some cheerful satire, and Kathleen--well, if to-night Levitsky approved of Kathleen’s playing, after this the girl would be too well satisfied with her lot in life to bestow even a transient sigh upon anything lacking!

As the clock on the mantelshelf chimed eleven Mrs. Blair started in surprise. Her stockings were all done, and piled beside her in neat rolls; and still there was time to run over those last proofs of Terence’s, so that he, poor dear, might get to bed for once in decent time.

It was not for the intellectual treat that Molly Blair, her rather overtasked hazel eyes radiating contentment, next set herself, with the careful facility of one trained to the work, to read over the pile of galley slips representing part of her husband’s new book on the Romance Languages, then running through the press. Truth to tell, in her zeal of sympathy she almost knew the paragraphs by heart.

So deeply immersed in her occupation was Mr. Blair’s proofreader, however, that by and by, although Molly had meant to listen for the welcome sound, a latch-key was turned in the hall lock below, and she did not hear it. A moment later, a whirlwind, apparently, bore into her presence a young creature with the brightest eyes and ripest lips in the world.

“Oh! little mother, darling!” cried Kathleen, breathlessly, “how shall I tell you my good news? It was like a fairy tale; and Maurice thinks so, too. He’s just as glad as I am, I can see; only we’ve not had time to talk it over. Well--to begin with--_he_ was there--”

“Who, Maurice?” asked Molly, happily.