Part 14

“Willingly, dear boy, willingly,” said the old man, fumbling in his waistcoat pocket and bringing out the sacred beetle wrapped in a bit of tissue paper. “When I die I should like you to have this to keep, and any other little thing I have. There are a few good books, and--”

“My dear friend, you depress me,” said Colin, taking the scarabeus, and shaking hands with the lender.

“Do I? It never occurs to me to think of my death as _sad_,” said Thorndyke, simply.

“Suppose,” said Colin, abruptly, “you had to wish for the thing that would please you most--what would it be?”

“A sight of my Stradivarius!” exclaimed the instrument-maker, his dull eye kindling with fond hope. “Mr. Mackintosh, something in your face--it can’t be you have heard--no, I’m a madman to dream of it--but it almost looked for a minute as if you have good news.”

“I may be wrong, and I may be disappointed,” said Mackintosh, with an air of quiet conviction, nevertheless. “But I have an idea I’m on the track of your lost treasure. If I succeed in tracing it, I shall be more than glad. If I fail, you will be no worse off than before. Good night. Sleep well, and awake in better heart for the morrow. But before I go,--upon second thoughts,--I wish you would give me a written order for your Stradivarius.”

After Colin left his room old Thorndyke abandoned himself to almost childish glee. Next, for a while, he paced the floor, then, sinking fatigued into his chair, meditated long.

It was twelve o’clock when he started up again, and taking the pencil with which he had scrawled and signed the order Colin desired, wrote some lines upon a paper torn from a memorandum book. Putting these upon the table, old Rupert Thorndyke went peacefully to bed.

At the same moment Rupert Thorndyke the younger was presiding over the entertainment at his rooms, for which fine ladies had been for some time struggling to get cards of invitation. The host’s vogue, grace, and tact had been at no time more conspicuous. The affair, pronounced the best of its kind, was about to pass into the chronicle of jaded pleasure-seekers as an eminent success. The turn of Kathleen, who had played once upon her own violin, had now come around again upon the programme. Mr. Malvolio--who, after all, _was_ there--had just sauntered up to whisper in her ear:

“They say he is going to let you try his Stradivarius. The rest of the women are green with jealousy at this mark of favor. No one has touched it heretofore.”

“If Mrs. Blair will allow her daughter to come with me into the little room where I keep my treasure--” Thorndyke was saying to her mother, who, with Colin behind her, stood guard over her young violinist.

“Certainly. Go with her, Colin, please, and see that her head is not quite turned by these honors,” said the unconscious Molly.

Colin needed no further impetus. In spite of a cloud passing over the face of their handsome host, the stalwart fellow placed himself at Kathleen’s side and accompanied them.

A room of small dimensions, but with solid doors, bolted as well as locked. On the walls, in glass cases with a background of crimson velvet, a small but exquisite assemblage of what might be called the bric-à-brac of musical instruments. Violins were there, but Colin’s eye sought in vain for one bearing the mark of a tiny hand with an outstretched finger.

“What a delightful nook!” cried Kathleen. “How I wish there were time to look over its wonders leisurely.”

“Some day--any day that you so ordain,” said the virtuoso. “I and mine are at your command always.”

Colin, seeing Thorndyke’s face transfigured with delight in the girl’s youth and beauty, raged inwardly. He recalled the value he had heard him put upon all women, Kathleen in particular. Strong as a lion to defend her, it was hard for the young fellow to now contain himself until he had wrought out his plan to avenge the sins of this Rupert Thorndyke against the one he had left in a shabby tenement.

He had no idea how he meant to bring about the conviction of this man’s wrong-doing, or to seek for the restoration of the other’s stolen property. But whatever he did, Colin meant that it should be short, sharp, and decisive!

At last chance favored him. His heart beat hard as he followed Kathleen and Thorndyke from object to object of the priceless array.

“I fear we should not keep all those people waiting for us longer--” said the host finally.

“And I am palpitating with impatience to see your chief treasure,” cried Kathleen.

“I have made a little shrine for it,” went on Thorndyke, stooping to unlock a cupboard in the wall. A second inner door of polished mahogany yielded to a key carried on the owner’s person. Within an air-tight receptacle lay a violin-case, covered with rare leather fantastically wrought in gold.

“Take and open it,” said Thorndyke, conveying this to a nest in Kathleen’s soft bare arms. “You are the first woman that I have entrusted with my beauty.”

“My beauty!” Old Thorndyke’s very phrase! Colin, the blood rushing to his brain with excitement and indignation, looked on eagerly as the instrument was taken from its case. There, in the exact spot indicated by its rightful owner, was a tiny shadow in the wood resembling a hand with an outstretched finger!

“The desire of my life is accomplished,” said Kathleen, lifting the violin to her shoulder and letting the bow glide over the strings.

The sound that answered was like the wail of a reproach.

“It has been waiting all this time for you!” said Thorndyke, with tender emphasis, regardless of their hearer. He, like Kathleen, seemed to be under a sort of spell.

“Since when, may I ask?” interrupted Colin, quietly.

Thorndyke turned and looked at him in cold distaste.

“Since the creation of the instrument, no doubt. Certainly since it came to me by inheritance.”

“By inheritance?” said the younger man, with deliberate doubt in his intonation. “I think, Mr. Thorndyke, that your uncle, who bears the same name as yourself, would give a different version of the way you acquired this costly possession.”

Thorndyke started violently.

“Do you mean to insult me?” he said in almost a whisper, guilt written in his face.

Kathleen, spell-bound by Colin’s stern looks, held the violin breathlessly.

“I mean, Mr. Thorndyke, to make absolutely no fuss in this very unpleasant matter. But I mean also to make it perfectly plain to you that I know all about this Stradivarius with the mark of a hand pointing. I am informed when and how it was taken out of your uncle Thorndyke’s trunk in his boarding-house. And if you will give it up to him quietly, I shall not say another word to any one concerning it.”

“An ingenious method to possess yourself of a valuable piece of property,” sneered Thorndyke, now livid with fear and rage.

“I have this to offer in exchange,” said Colin, controlling himself perfectly, as he took out the scarabeus and held it, together with the old man’s written order for the violin, for the inspection of the thief.

“My dear Colin,” exclaimed Kathleen, greatly distressed and mortified at the scene. “You must take me back to my mother. I insist--”

“Just as soon as Mr. Thorndyke gives a definite answer to my proposition,” said Colin, fearlessly.

Thorndyke breathed hard. His eyes flashed with a vengeful luster. He tried to speak, and could not. Then, looking furtively about the room, and seeming to grow smaller in the action, he took the Stradivarius from Kathleen, put it in an old and shabby case, and replacing the empty ornamental cover in the secret chamber, shut and locked this receptacle with elaboration. With a supreme effort, he recovered his usual manner.

“You will give this to my uncle, with my compliments,” he said lightly, putting the precious violin in Colin’s hands and reclaiming the scarabeus. “And you might say from me, that although I know the old boy is as mad as a March hare, I don’t like to thwart his dear old fancy. I was about indeed, to inform him, through my lawyer, that a sum of money coming out of an old investment of his and my father’s, has been divided, and his share placed to his credit in the ---- bank. A thousand a year only, but enough to keep him in comfort in the lunatic asylum, where I feel sure he will bring up.”

Kathleen, although he had avoided and ignored her in the matter, had not waited for this ending. With crimson cheeks and in great agitation, she had slipped out to rejoin her mother. A few moments later heard their host, standing before his guests, offer a graceful explanation that the condition of his Stradivarius would prevent Miss Blair from to-night awakening its hidden melodies.

Colin, clasping the recovered treasure like the anchor of hope, was in the lobby awaiting the ladies when they presently hurried out. On the drive home he told them in simple but eloquent language the full history of his old neighbor and the stolen violin.

When he had finished, Molly was crying quietly. Kathleen’s eyes flashed upon him such approval as he had never seen in them before.

“I could _love_ you for what you’ve done for that poor old man, Colin,” she cried, with Irish impulse, and stopped, blushing. “But I don’t understand why Thorndyke made such a poor fight.”

“It was ‘coward conscience,’” said Colin. “For if I read him right, he would cut off his right hand to avoid exposure or fiasco before such people as were there to-night.”

* * * * *

“I could love you,” rang joyously in Colin’s ears as he ran up his own steps, carrying the violin. When he reached Thorndyke’s room, late as it was, he could not resist trying to get speech with his friend. His light tap bringing no answer, he opened the door and went in. The light over the transom showed him the old man lying in his bed. Leaving the Stradivarius upon the table, Colin stole away.

The next day the people of the house found the old instrument-maker sitting in his chair, a happy smile upon his face, the violin clasped in his arms. He had been dead some hours, and on his table lay a penciled will, bequeathing all that he died possessed of, “without reserve,” to his “beloved young friend, John Walter Mackintosh.”

* * * * *

Thus, in due time, and to the enormous surprise of everybody concerned, Kathleen came into possession, not only of her coveted Stradivarius, but of a husband, with an income small but growing and sufficient to enable him to withdraw his wife from public appearance as a paid performer. Upon the authority of Mr. Rupert Thorndyke, who lives and flourishes like the green bay-tree, this is said to be a serious loss to the world of music, but Kathleen does not mind.

Malvolio still thinks the fall of Rupert Thorndyke is to come!

WANTED: A CHAPERON

WANTED: A CHAPERON

Gwendolyn West sat alone in profound meditation upon her future. She was the childless young widow of a naval officer, whom she had lost after six months of married life and two years of separation during his absence on official duty in foreign waters.

For three years she had mourned her lieutenant dutifully. No crêpe had ever exceeded Gwendolyn’s in depth and plenitude. At the end of that time her free-spoken friend, Kate Payne--who had politely encouraged her illusion that the marriage was not a mistake--had told her she was tired of seeing her look like the German nursery picture of Slovenly Peter after he was fished out of the forbidden inkstand. Gwendolyn had laughed--and the deed was done. She had now emerged into alleviated grays and hopeful lilacs. Mrs. Payne, nodding approval, said she had never seen such a creature for making her clothes look stylish; and Gwendolyn, in return, owned that the materials cost nothing and were made up by a little woman “by the day.”

“All the same, you look solvent, prosperous, up-to-date. What can woman ask more?” said Kate.

“Ask? My dear Kate, you have no idea how hard put to it I am to make ends meet. I am so poor it is a scandal. If my Aunt Althea had not invested her money in this flat, when the house was going up, and left it to me in her will, I should be living in one room of a boarding-house, with a folding-bed. As it is, I ought to let the flat and eke out my ridiculous little income with the proceeds. If I were abroad I might live on it almost in comfort.”

“Nobody understands living abroad better than you do.”

“Of course, since from nineteen to twenty-four I knocked about there with Aunt Althea. But my difficulty, absurd though it may seem for a woman of almost thirty, is that I look hardly old enough to live as a solitary female in the places I know best on the other side. In New York I am panoplied with respectability.”

“And boredom,” supplemented the frank Mrs. Payne. “It is no fun to live here on the outside of things, where one has been used to the inside. The truth is, you ought to have had a girl--not a boy, who would have been a handful, and most probably a pickle--but a nice little golden-haired angel, with short skirts and long, black-stockinged legs, whom you would have made a vision of picturesqueness in dress.”

“Let us talk of what I have,” said Mrs. West, with a sigh.

“It has just occurred to me that you would make a capital chaperon for some breezy young woman of large means, scant culture, and consuming ambition to see the world. You have position, manners, morals beyond question, and would be a perfect teacher of how to dot one’s i’s in good society.”

“What servitude!” exclaimed her friend, shuddering. “I detest breezy people who are uncertain of themselves. And there is nothing so delusive as temper. She might make my life a burden. How mortifying, too, to have to conduct her along the primrose paths of society in my own town! I should live over a volcano, never knowing when she would break forth.”

“Take her traveling,” went on Madame.

“That is better,” said Gwendolyn. “But suppose she fell ill, or flirted, or defied me, away off there. She would be sure to do all three.”

“I should do nothing without being well paid for it. With a full purse you can accomplish wonders.”

“It would be such a relief to spend six months or a year free from looking over that hateful butcher’s book. Although I know that I and my two maids eat nothing, our bills are awful, and I can’t pretend to read butchers’ handwriting, can you? ‘3 cucks, 0.90’; that’s what I labored over for a whole morning, after I had ordered a miserable little cucumber to be cut up with my fish.”

“I am afraid the queen of your kitchen is a wiser potentate than you credit her with being. But, my dear, I have an inspiration. Yesterday I got a circular from a new ‘Bureau of Information Concerning Women’s Needs.’ It is intended to bring together refined and cultivated employers and employés, and to make a specialty of companions, chaperons, and governesses. Suppose I inquire--I know the woman at the head; she will take pains to oblige me--and see if she has any applications from young persons who have left school and desire to be ‘finished’ in the broadest sense--”

“Kate, Kate, you frighten me. You are such a steam engine in accomplishing what you set out to do I should be afraid to go out to walk this afternoon lest I should come in to find my treasure installed here in permanence.”

“You need not take her unless everything suits. I really believe such a girl would rouse you up, give you a new motive in life, and end by being a blessing in disguise--”

“Very much disguised,” remarked Gwendolyn, ruefully.

“It is now late February. You could sail in March by the Southern route to Genoa, and spend the spring in Italy.”

Gwendolyn flushed and sat bolt upright. Her soul was pierced by the chant of nightingales in the Cascine woods; of the singers upon the star gondola by moonlight on the Grand Canal; of the Amalfi boatmen resting upon their oars! How well she would know where to go, and how to enjoy the best of everything. She had been starving for beauty for four years!

“Let me--let me have time to think,” she said finally, with a sort of gasp.

“You poor victim, you have a most pathetic air,” answered Mrs. Payne, getting up to go, and kissing her. “Of course, you must think over it. Let me know to-night; and to-morrow morning, bright and early, I will order the brougham and set forth upon my quest.”

A paid conductor and chaperon! Out of the mists of recollection loomed up before Gwendolyn a time, when sitting with her aunt and her husband in the dining-room of a great hotel in Amsterdam, she had seen the entry of a hot, red-faced lady, preceding a string of girls of assorted sizes, and marshaling them at table. Their party was completed by one lean, henpecked little boy, presumably the conductor’s son, obtaining free of expense educational glimpses into the vistas of old-world life.

From that day on Gwendolyn had continued to meet them during their stay--fortunately brief--in the great Dutch town. One of the girls had taken a fancy to Mrs. West, and whenever they came together in galleries and the like annexed herself to Gwendolyn, asking flat questions upon art, and detailing her grievances against the head of their party. Mrs. Batt was selfish; she had not fulfilled her promises to them; she hurried them through things they wanted to see; and lingered in places where the fare was good and cheap, in order to feed up her little boy.

And Mrs. Batt, in turn, running upon Gwendolyn in a corridor upstairs at their hotel, told her it was a dog’s life she was leading, pulled around by these capricious girls, who didn’t know what they wanted, and were forever having headaches and tiffs with each other, and taking offense about nothing, or else entering into conversations with strange men and thinking it clever. But for the advantage to her dear, fatherless child Mrs. Batt could wish herself back again in peace at New Corinth, Kansas, whence they had all set forth in May.

Recalling all this, Gwendolyn drew a long breath of dismay. Then the maid came in with a sheaf of household bills and the announcement that she and the cook had determined to leave when the month should be up. An organ-grinder in the street outside began to play:

“O! bella Napoli! O! dolce Napoli!”

The sunshine that streamed through the panes of her south windows was full of suggestions of purple seas, overarched by an azure dome, beneath which roses bloomed along the shore, and jasmine and orange flowers distilled their richest perfume. Oh! to be in the South--far from the sound of trolley cars and all the tokens of a city’s overcrowded life that, day or night, can never be hushed!

If she had something of her very own--some hearthside idol to go and come in her little home, she would be more than content to stay there.

Then Gwendolyn subjected herself to a secret crucial test. She opened a case of photographs--a receptacle made of old brocade, broidered with silver thread, that she had picked up in the Palais Royal in 1893--and extracted one of its portraits. This was an up-to-date affair, executed by a New York photographer of note. It represented a man of five-and-thirty, good looking, amiable, and weak.

She looked at it long and studiously. A line dashed off at her writing-table, a call for a messenger, a few hours’ delay, and he would be with her. The very next day she might announce to all interested her engagement to marry Mr. Ernest Blythe. As Mrs. Blythe, provided she could maintain a sufficient interest in yachting and its devotees, no injunction would be laid upon her habits or inclination. Blythe was rich, easy-going to a ridiculous degree, as much in love with her as his capacity would admit, and was hers to take or leave.

But--Gwendolyn glanced up at an enlarged photograph of the late Lieutenant West, hanging in an ebony frame above that very writing-table, as if to control its output of chirographical amenities.

Her survey was not reassuring. “Oh! never, never again!” she murmured audibly. It is only once in a long while that women really speak to themselves aloud, and that is when they want a witness to some vow of a peculiarly binding character.

She took Mr. Blythe with hastening finger tips and drove him in at the very bottom of the pack. It would be a long time before she could take him out again.

Then something possessed her to go into a dark closet and hunt around upon its seldom-visited shelves to find a very old album of photographs, dating back before her travels in Europe with her nomadic Aunt Althea had weaned her from thoughts of home.

She was eighteen then, and was making a visit to the wife of a professor in a university town, where most of these treasures of pictorial art had been accumulated. What faded old things they were, chiefly of undergraduates wearing queer collars and scarfs, with coats that did not fit and hair that was much too long! She had some difficulty in finding the particular cabinet photograph she sought, but it appeared at last, looking straight at her with the fearless gaze of handsome eyes that had once held over hers unwonted power.

“Ten--more, nearly eleven--years ago,” she mused. “He wore his hair like the sweep of a mahogany banister, poor dear; but _that was_ a man.”

John Rufus Atwell was his rather uninteresting name. He was a young widower of twenty-six when he came back to take a post-graduate course at ---- from his home in a Western town, where he had left his child with its mother’s people. None of his surroundings or antecedents had appealed in the least to the æsthetic and superfine side of pretty Miss Gwendolyn. But he had fallen in love with her, just like half a dozen more of the youngsters. She had tried to treat him just like them--and had failed. He had given her a first lesson in virile resistance to the exactions of coquettish femininity.

They had parted, though she had always remembered him with something of tender regret. But still the thing would have been impossible--quite impossible! What had become of him since she had not the vaguest idea.

That evening a little note went to Mrs. Payne authorizing her to find out for her friend some one who wanted an unexceptionable chaperon.

Mrs. Payne had good reason to think that industrious intervention in a friend’s affairs is sometimes approved by the Fates. The principal of the new “Bureau of Information Concerning Women’s Needs” expanded with satisfaction on hearing of her errand.

It so happened that one of the earliest applications that had come to them was from a family in a Western State who desired to send their daughter abroad under competent care. She had looked into their references--although that was scarcely needful when it was understood that the father was the distinguished statesman, Honorable John Mordaunt, Senator from ----, whose name was in every newspaper one took up.

Mrs. Payne, reserving her decision as to this proof of infallible respectability, was pleased to be interested in the matter. She next read Mr. Mordaunt’s letter to the principal, and put it down even better pleased.

“That is nicely expressed,” she said, after scrutinizing every point. “For a wonder, it is not typed. He seems to be very much in earnest. And his ideas about--her--remuneration are certainly most liberal. Says nothing about the mother--a cipher, probably. Girl too young to be kept in Washington. I hope,” she continued with sudden animation, “she is sound and strong, and has had everything.”

“Had everything, Mrs. Payne?”

“Measles and whooping-cough--and her first love affair.”

“I believe you will find my clients unexceptionable,” said the principal, who was not fond of jesting upon serious subjects.