CHAPTER 9
"Sing it again, dear. I know you are tired, but I want to hear that song just once more. Somehow it seems to bring up thoughts of--of things that might have been." The Beaubien"s voice sank to a whisper as she finished.
Carmen laughed happily and prepared to repeat the weird lament which had so fascinated the Reverend Doctor Jurges a few days before.
"I--I don"t know why that song affects me so," mused the Beaubien, when the girl had finished and returned to the seat beside her. Then, abruptly: "I wish you could play the pipe-organ out in the hall. I put twelve thousand dollars into it, and I can"t even play five-finger exercises on it."
"Twelve thousand dollars!" exclaimed Carmen, drawing a long breath, while her eyes dilated.
The woman laughed. "Would that buy your beloved Simiti?" she asked.
"Well, you poor, unsophisticated girl, suppose we just go down there and buy the whole town. It would at least give me an interest in life.
Do you think I could stand the heat there? But tell me more about it.
How did you live, and what did you do? And who is this Jose? And are you really descended from the old Incas?"
They were alone in the darkened music room, and the soft-stepping, liveried butler had just set the tea table before them, At one end of the long room a cheery fire snapped and crackled in the huge fireplace, tempering the sharpness of the early spring day and casting a ruddy glow upon the tapestried walls and polished floor in front, where dozed the Beaubien"s two "babies," j.a.panese and Pekingese spaniels of registered pedigree and fabulous value. Among the heavy beams of the lofty ceiling grotesque shadows danced and flickered, while over the costly rugs and rare skins on the floor below subdued lights played in animated pantomime. Behind the magnificent grand piano a beautifully wrought harp reflected a golden radiance into the room. Everything in the woman"s environment was softened into the same degree of voluptuousness which characterized her and the life of sybaritic ease which she affected.
From the moment Carmen entered the house she had been charmed, fascinated, overpowered by the display of exhaustless wealth and the rich taste exhibited in its harmonious manifestation. The Hawley-Crowles home had seemed to her the epitome of material elegance and comfort, far exceeding the most fantastic concepts of her childish imagination, when she had listened enraptured to Padre Jose"s compelling stories of the great world beyond Simiti. But the gorgeous web of this social spider made even the Hawley-Crowles mansion suffer in comparison.
"And yet," said the amused Beaubien, when Carmen could no longer restrain her wonder and admiration, "this is but a shed beside the new Ames house, going up on Fifth Avenue. I presume he will put not less than ten millions into it before it is finished."
"Ten millions! In just a house!" Carmen dared not attempt to grasp the complex significance of such an expenditure.
"Why, is that such a huge amount, child?" asked the Beaubien, as accustomed to think in eight figures as in two. "But, I forget that you are from the jungle. Yet, who would imagine it?" she mused, gazing with undisguised admiration at the beautiful, animated girl before her.
Silence then fell upon them both. Carmen was struggling with the deluge of new impressions; and the woman fastened her eyes upon her as if she would have them bore deep into the soul of whose rarity she was becoming slowly aware. What thoughts coursed through the mind of the Beaubien as she sat studying the girl through the tempered light, we may not know. What she saw in Carmen that attracted her, she herself might not have told. Had she, too, this ultra-mondaine, this creature of gold and tinsel, felt the spell of the girl"s great innocence and purity of thought, her righteousness? Or did she see in her something that she herself might once have been--something that all her gold, and all the wealth of Ormus or of Ind could never buy?
"What have you got," she suddenly, almost rudely, exclaimed, "that I haven"t?" And then the ba.n.a.lity of the question struck her, and she laughed harshly.
"Why," said Carmen, looking up quickly and beaming upon the woman, "you have everything! Oh, what more could you wish?"
"You," returned the woman quickly, though she knew not why she said it. And yet, memory was busy uncovering those bitter days when, in the first agony of marital disappointment, she had, with hot, streaming tears, implored heaven to give her a child. But the gift had been denied; and her heart had shrunk and grown heavily calloused.
Then she spoke more gently, and there was that in her voice which stirred the girl"s quick sympathy. "Yes, you have youth, and beauty.
They are mine no longer. But I could part with them, gladly, if only there were anything left."
Carmen instantly rose and went swiftly to her. Forgetful of caste, decorum, convention, everything but the boundless love which she felt for all mankind, she put her arms about the worldly woman"s neck and kissed her.
For a moment the Beaubien sat in speechless surprise. It was the only manifestation of selfless love that had ever come into her sordid experience. Was it possible that this was spontaneous? that it was an act of real sympathy, and not a clever ruse to win her from behind the mask of affection? Her own kisses, she knew, were bestowed only for favors. Alas! they drew not many now, although time was when a single one might win a brooch or a string of pearls.
The girl herself quickly met the woman"s groping thought. "I"m in the world to show what love will do," she murmured; "and I love you." Had she not thus solved every problem from earliest childhood?
The Beaubien melted. Not even a heart of stone could withstand the solvent power of such love. Her head dropped upon her breast, and she wept.
"Don"t cry," said Carmen, tenderly caressing the bepowdered cheek.
"Why, we are all G.o.d"s children; we all have one another; you have me, and I have you; and G.o.d means us all to be happy."
The Beaubien looked up, wondering. Her variegated life included no such tender experience as this. She had long since ceased to shed aught but tears of anger. But now--
She clutched the girl to her and kissed her eagerly; then gently motioned her back to her chair. "Don"t mind it," she smiled, with swimming eyes, and a shade of embarra.s.sment. "I don"t know of anything that would help me as much as a good cry. If I could have had a daughter like you, I should--but never mind now." She tried to laugh, as she wiped her eyes.
Then an idea seemed to flash through her jaded brain, and she became suddenly animated. "Why--listen," she said; "don"t you want to learn the pipe-organ? Will you come here and take lessons? I will pay for them; I will engage the best teacher in New York; and you shall take two or three a week, and use the big organ out in the hall. Will you?"
Carmen"s heart gave a great leap. "Oh!" she exclaimed, her eyes dancing. "But I must ask Mrs. Reed, you know."
"I"ll do it myself," returned the woman with growing enthusiasm.
"William," she directed, when the butler responded to her summons, "get Mrs. Hawley-Crowles on the wire at once. But who is coming, I wonder?" glancing through the window at an automobile that had drawn up at her door. "Humph!" a look of vexation mantling her face, "the Right Reverend Monsignor Lafelle. Well," turning to Carmen, "I suppose I"ll have to send you home now, dear. But tell Mrs. Hawley-Crowles that I shall call for you to-morrow afternoon, and that I shall speak to her at that time about your music lessons. William, take Monsignor into the morning room, and then tell Henri to bring the car to the porte-cochere for Miss Carmen. Good-bye, dear," kissing the bright, upturned face of the waiting girl. "I wish I could--but, well, don"t forget that I"m coming for you to-morrow."
That afternoon Mrs. Hawley-Crowles directed her French tailor to cable to Paris for advance styles. Twenty-four hours later she hastened with outstretched arms to greet the Beaubien, waiting in the reception room. Oh, yes, they had heard often of each other; and now were so pleased to meet! New York was such a whirlpool, and it was so difficult to form desirable friendships. Yes, the Beaubien had known the late-lamented Hawley-Crowles; but, dear! dear! that was years and years ago, before he had married, and when they were both young and foolish. And--
"My dear Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, chance enabled him and me to be mutually helpful at a time when I was in sore need of a friend; and the debt of grat.i.tude is not yours to me, but mine to your kind husband."
Mrs. Hawley-Crowles could have hugged her on the spot. What cared she that her husband"s always unsavory name had been linked with this woman"s? She had married the roistering blade for his bank account only. Any other male whose wealth ran into seven figures would have done as well, or better.
And Carmen? Bless you, no! To be sure, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles gratefully accepted the use of the organ and the Beaubien mansion for the girl; but she herself insisted upon bearing the expense of the lessons.
Carmen had wonderful musical talent. Together, she and the Beaubien, they would foster and develop it. Moreover, though of course this must follow later, she intended to give the girl every social advantage befitting her beauty, her talents, and her station.
And then, when the Beaubien, who knew to a second just how long to stay, had departed, taking Carmen with her, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles turned to her sister with her face flushed with anger. "Did you see that?"
she exclaimed, while hot tears suffused her eyes. "The hussy went away actually laughing at me! What do you suppose she"s got up her sleeve?
But, let me tell you, she"ll not fool me! I"ll slap that arrogant Ames woman yet; and then, when I"ve done that, I"ll give the Beaubien something to think about besides the way she did up poor old Jim!"
There was now but one cloud that cast its dark shadow across the full splendor of Carmen"s happiness, the silence that shrouded Simiti. But Harris was preparing to return to Colombia, and his trip promised a solution of the mystery of her unanswered letters. For weeks Carmen had struggled to teach him Spanish, with but small measure of success.
The gift of tongues was not his. "You"ll have to go back with me and act as interpreter," he said one day, when they were alone in the Hawley-Crowles parlor. Then a curious light came into his eyes, and he blurted, "Will you?"
But the girl turned the question aside with a laugh, though she knew not from what depths it had sprung. Harris shrugged his broad shoulders and sighed. He had not a hundred dollars to his name.
Yet he had prospects, not the least of which was the interest he shared with Reed in La Libertad. For, despite the disturbed state of affairs in Colombia, Simiti stock had sold rapidly, under the sedulous care of Ketchim and his loyal aids, and a sufficient fund had been acc.u.mulated to warrant the inauguration of development work on the mine. A few years hence Harris should be rich from that source alone.
Reed was still in California, although the alluring literature which Ketchim was scattering broadcast bore his name as consulting engineer to the Simiti Development Company. His wife had continued her temporary abode in the Hawley-Crowles mansion, while awaiting with what fort.i.tude she could command the pa.s.sing of her still vigorous father, and the results of her defiant sister"s a.s.saults upon the Ames set.
Carmen"s days were crowded full. The wonderful organ in the Beaubien mansion had cast a spell of enchantment over her soul, and daily she sat before it, uncovering new marvels and losing herself deeper and deeper in its infinite mysteries. Her progress was commensurate with her consecration, and brought exclamations of astonishment to the lips of her now devoted Beaubien. Hour after hour the latter would sit in the twilight of the great hall, with her eyes fastened upon the absorbed girl, and her leaden soul slowly, painfully struggling to lift itself above the murk and dross in which it had lain buried for long, meaningless years. They now talked but little, this strange woman and the equally strange girl. Their communion was no longer of the lips. It was the silent yearning of a dry, desolate heart, striving to open itself to the love which the girl was sending far and wide in the quenchless hope that it might meet just such a need. For Carmen dwelt in the spirit, and she instinctively accepted her splendid material environment as the gift, not of man, but of the great divine Mind, which had led her into this new world that she might be a channel for the expression of its love to the erring children of mortals.
She came and went quietly, and yet with as much confidence as if the house belonged to her. At first the Beaubien smiled indulgently. And then her smile became a laugh of eager joy as she daily greeted her radiant visitor, whose entrance into the great, dark house was always followed by a flood of sunshine, and whose departure marked the setting in of night to the heart-hungry woman. In the first days of their a.s.sociation the Beaubien could turn easily from the beautiful girl to the group of cold, scheming men of the world who filled her evenings and sat about her board. But as days melted into weeks, she became dimly conscious of an effort attaching to the transition; and the hour at length arrived when she fully realized that she was facing the most momentous decision that had ever been evolved by her worldly mode of living. But that was a matter of slow development through many months.
Meantime, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles trod the clouds. A week after Carmen began the study of the organ she boldly ventured to accompany her one day to the Beaubien citadel. She was graciously received, and departed with the Beaubien"s promise to return the call. Thereupon she set about revising her own social list, and dropped several names which she now felt could serve her no longer. Her week-end at Newport, just prior to her visit to the Elwin school, had marked the close of the gay season in the city, and New York had entered fully upon its summer _siesta_. Even the theaters and concert halls were closed, and the metropolis was nodding its weary head dully and sinking into somnolence. It was exactly what Mrs. Hawley-Crowles desired. The summer interim would give her time to further her plans and prepare the girl for her social _debut_ in the early winter. "And Milady Ames will be mentioned in the papers next day as a.s.sisting at the function--the cat!" she muttered savagely, as she laid aside her revised list of social desirables.
But in preparing Carmen that summer for her subsequent entry into polite society Mrs. Hawley-Crowles soon realized that she had a.s.sumed a task of generous proportions. In the first place, despite all efforts, the girl could not be brought to a proper sense of money values. Her eyes were ever gaping in astonishment at what Mrs. Hawley-Crowles and her sister regarded as the most moderate of expenditures, and it was only when the Beaubien herself mildly hinted to them that ingenuousness was one of the girl"s greatest social a.s.sets, that they learned to smile indulgently at her wonder, even while inwardly pitying her dense ignorance and lack of sophistication.
A second source of trial to her guardians was her delicate sense of honor; and it was this that one day nearly sufficed to wreck their standing with the fashionable Mrs. Gannette of Riverside Drive, a pompous, bepowdered, curled and scented dame, anaemic of mind, but tremendously aristocratic, and of scarcely inferior social dignity to that of the envied Mrs. Ames. For, when Mrs. Gannette moved into the neighborhood where dwelt the ambitious Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, the latter was taken by a mutual acquaintance to call upon her, and was immediately received into the worldly old lady"s good graces. And it so happened that, after the gay season had closed that summer, Mrs.
Gannette invited Mrs. Hawley-Crowles and her sister to an informal afternoon of bridge, and especially requested that they bring their young ward, whose beauty and wonderful story were, through the discreet maneuvers of her guardians, beginning to be talked about. For some weeks previously Mrs. Hawley-Crowles had been inducting Carmen into the mysteries of the game; but with indifferent success, for the girl"s thoughts invariably were elsewhere engaged. On this particular afternoon Carmen was lost in contemplation of the gorgeous dress, the lavish display of jewelry, and the general inanity of conversation; and her score was pitiably low. The following morning, to her great astonishment, she received a bill from the practical Mrs. Gannette for ten dollars to cover her losses at the game. For a long time the bewildered girl mused over it. Then she called the chauffeur and despatched him to the Gannette mansion with the money necessary to meet the gambling debt, and three dollars additional to pay for the refreshments she had eaten, accompanying it with a polite little note of explanation.
The result was an explosion that nearly lifted the asphalt from the Drive; and Carmen, covered with tears and confusion, was given to understand by the irate Mrs. Hawley-Crowles that her conduct was as reprehensible as if she had attacked the eminent Mrs. Gannette with an axe. Whereupon the sorrowing Carmen packed her effects and prepared to depart from the presence of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, to the terrified consternation of the latter, who alternately prostrated herself before the girl and the offended Mrs. Gannette, and at length, after many days of perspiring effort and voluminous explanation, succeeded in restoring peace.