"I can trust you, I"m sure! You"ve been so good to me! But it seems dreadful to tell things about my family, even to one who has been so kind. My father would be so hurt----"
"Your father? Where is your father? Why didn"t he take care of you and keep you from getting into such big trouble, I"d like to know?"
The blue eyes clouded with tears again.
"My father died five years ago," she said, "but I"ve always tried to do as he would want to have me do. Only--this--I _couldn"t_."
"H"m!" said Jane Carson. "Then he prob"ly wouldn"t of wanted you to.
Suppose you take the rest of those togs off. I"ll find you a warm nightgown and we"ll get to bed. It"s turning cold here. They take the heat off somewhere about six o"clock in the evening, and it gets like ice up here sometimes."
Jane shivered and went to her small trunk, from which she produced a coa.r.s.e but clean flanellete nightgown, and Betty, who had never worn anything but a dainty lingerie one before in all her life, crept into it thankfully and cuddled down with a warm feeling that she had found a real friend. It was curious why she did not shrink from this poor girl, but she did not, and everything looked clean and nice. Besides, this was a wonderful haven of refuge in her dire necessity.
CHAPTER III
MEANWHILE, in the stately mansion that Betty had called home, a small regiment of servants hastened with the last tasks in preparation for the guests that were soon expected to arrive. The great rooms had become a dream of paradise, with silver rain and white lilies in a mist of soft green depending from the high ceilings. In the midst of all, a fairy bower of roses and tropical ferns created a nook of retirement where everyone might catch a glimpse of the bride and groom from any angle in any room. The s.p.a.cious vistas stretched away from an equally s.p.a.cious hallway, where a wide and graceful staircase curved up to a low gallery, smothered in flowers and palms and vines; and even so early the musicians were taking their places and tuning their instruments. On the floor above, where room after room shone in beauty, with costly furnishings, and perfect harmonies, white-capped maids flitted about, putting last touches to dressing tables and pausing to gossip as they pa.s.sed one another:
"Well, "twill all be over soon," sighed one, a wan-faced girl with discontented eyes. "Ain"t it kind of a pity, all this fuss just for a few minutes?"
"Yes, an" glad I"ll be!" declared another, a fresh young Irish girl with a faint, pretty brogue. "I don"t like the look of my Lady Betty. A pretty fuss Candace her old nurse would be makin" if she was here the night! I guess the madam knew what she was about when she give her her walkin" ticket! Candace never could bear them two bys, and _him_ was the worse of the two, she always said."
"Well, a sight of good it would do for old Candace to make a fuss!" said the discontented one. "And anyhow, he"s as handsome as the devil, and she"s got money enough, so she oughtn"t complain."
"Money ain"t everything!" sniffed Aileen. "I wouldn"t marry a king if I wasn"t crazy about him!"
"Oh, you"re young!" sneered Marie with disdain. "Wait till your looks go! You don"t know what you"d take up with!"
"Well I"d never take up with the likes of _him_!" returned the Irish girl grandly, "and what"s more he knows it!" She tossed her head meaningfully and was about to sail away on her own business when a stir below stairs attracted their attention. A stout, elderly woman, dressed in a stiff new black silk and an apoplectic hat, came panting up the stairs looking furtively from side to side, as if she wished to escape before anyone recognized her:
"It"s Candace!" exclaimed Aileen. "As I live! Now what d"ye wantta know about that! Poor soul! Poor soul! Candy! Oh!--Candy! What iver brought ye here the night? This is no place for the loikes of you. You better beat it while the beatin" is good if ye know which side yer bread"s buthered!"
But the old nurse came puffing on, her face red and excited:
"Is she here? Has she come, yet, my poor wee Betty?" she besought them eagerly.
"Miss Betty"s at the church now gettin" married!" announced Marie uppishly, "and you"d best be gettin" out of here right away, for the wedding party"s due to arrive any minute now and madam"ll be very angry to have a servant as doesn"t belong snoopin" round at such a time!"
"Be still, Marie! For shame!" cried Aileen. "You"ve no need to talk like that to a self-respectin" woman as has been in this house more years than you have been weeks! Come along, Candace, and I"ll slip you in my room and tell you all about it when I can get away long enough. You see, Miss Betty"s being married----"
"But she"s _not_!" cried Candace wildly. "I was at the church myself.
Miss Betty sent me the word to be sure and come, and where to sit and all, so she"d see me; and I went, and she come up the aisle as white as a lily and dropped right there before the poolpit, just like a little white lamb that couldn"t move another step, all of a heap in her pretty things! And they stopped the ceremony and everybody got up, and they took her away, and we waited till bime-by the minister said the bride wasn"t well enough to proceed with the ceremony and would they all go home, and I just slipped out before the folks got their wraps on and took a side street with wings to my feet and got up here! Haven"t they brought her home yet, the poor wee thing? I been thinkin" they might need me yet, for many"s the time I"ve brought her round by my nursin"."
The two maids looked wildly at one another, their glances growing into incredulity, the eyebrows of Marie moving toward her well-dressed hair with a lofty disapproval.
"Well, you"d better come with me, Candy," said Aileen drawing the excited old servant along the hall to the back corridor gently. "I guess there"s some mistake somewheres; anyway, you better stay in my room till you see what happens. We haven"t heard anything yet, and they"d likely send word pretty soon if there"s to be any change in the program. You say she fell----?"
But just then sounds of excitement came distantly up to them and Aileen hastened back to the gallery to listen. It was the voice of Madam Stanhope angrily speaking to her youngest son:
"You must get Bessemer on the "phone at once and order him home! I told you it was a great mistake sending him away. If he had been standing there, where she could see him, everything would have gone through just as we planned it----"
"Aw! Rot! Mother. Can"t you shut up? I know what I"m about and I"m going to call up another detective. Bessemer may go to the devil for all I care! How do you know but he has, and taken her with him? The first thing to do is to get that girl back! You ought to have had more sense than to show your whole hand to my brother. You might have known he"d take advantage----"
Herbert Hutton slammed into the telephone booth under the stairs and Madam Stanhope was almost immediately aware of the staring servants who were trying not to seem to have listened.
Mrs. Stanhope stood in the midst of the beautiful empty rooms and suddenly realized her position. Her face froze into the haughty lines with which her menage was familiar, and she was as coldly beautiful in her exquisite heliotrope gown of brocaded velvet and chiffon with the glitter of jewels about her smooth plump neck, and in her carefully marcelled black hair as if she were quietly awaiting the bridal party instead of facing defeat and mortification:
"Aileen, you may get Miss Betty"s room ready to receive her. She has been taken ill and will be brought home as soon as she is able to be moved," she announced, without turning an eyelash. "Put away her things, and get the bed ready!" One could see that she was thinking rapidly. She was a woman who had all her life been equal to an emergency, but never had quite such a tragic emergency been thrust upon her to camouflage before.
"James!" catching the eye of the butler, "there will be no reception to-night, of course, and you will see that the hired people take their things away as soon as possible, and say that I will agree to whatever arrangements they see fit to make, within reason, of course. Just use your judgment, James, and by the way, there will be telephone calls, of course, from our friends. Say that Miss Betty is somewhat better, and the doctor hopes to avert a serious nervous breakdown, but that she needs entire rest and absolute quiet for a few days. Say that and nothing more, do you understand, James?"
The butler bowed his thorough understanding and Madam Stanhope sailed n.o.bly up the flower-garlanded staircase, past the huddled musicians, to her own apartment. Aileen, with a frightened glance, scuttled past the door as she was closing it:
"Aileen, ask Mr. Herbert to come to my room at once when he has finished telephoning, and when Mr. Bessemer arrives send him to me at once!" Then the door closed and the woman was alone with her defeat, and the placid enameled features melted into an angry snarl like an animal at bay. In a moment more Herbert stormed in.
"It"s all your fault, mother!" he began, with an oath. "If you hadn"t dragged Bessemer into this thing I"d have had her fixed. I had her just about where I wanted her, and another day would have broken her in.
She"s scared to death of insane asylums, and I told her long ago that it would be dead easy to put a woman in one for life. If I had just hinted at such a thing she"d have married me as meek as a lamb!"
"Now look here, Bertie," flared his mother excitedly, "you"ve got to stop blaming me! Haven"t I given in to you all your life, and now you say it"s all my fault the least little thing that happens! It was for your sake that I stopped you; you know it was. You couldn"t carry out any such crazy scheme. Betty"s almost of age, and if those trustees should find out what you had threatened, you would be in jail for life, and goodness knows what would become of me."
"Trustees! How would the trustees find it out?"
"Betty might tell them."
"Betty might _not_ tell them, not if she was _my wife_!" He bawled out the words in a way that boded no blissful future to the one who should have the misfortune to become his wife. "I think I"d have her better trained than that. As for you, Mother, you"re all off, as usual! What do you think could possibly happen to _you_? You"re always saying you do everything for me, but when it comes right down to bra.s.s tacks I notice you"re pretty much of a selfish coward on your own account."
For a moment the baffled woman faced her angry uncontrolled son in speechless rage, then gathered command of the situation once more, an inscrutable expression on her hard-lined face. Her voice took on an almost pitiful reproach as she spoke in a low, even tone that could hardly fail to bring the instant attention of her spoiled son:
"Bertie, you don"t know what you"re talking about!" she said, and there was a strained white look of fear about her mouth and eyes as she spoke.
"I"m going to tell you, in this great crisis, what I did for you, what I risked that you might enjoy the luxury which you have had for the last five years. Listen! The day before Mr. Stanhope died he wrote a letter to the trustees of Betty"s fortune giving very explicit directions about her money and her guardianship, tying things up so that not one cent belonging to her should pa.s.s through my hands, which would have left us with just my income as the will provided, and would have meant comparative poverty for us all except as Betty chose to be benevolent. I kept a strict watch on all his movements those last few days, of course, and when I found he had given Candace a letter to mail, I told her I would look after it, and I brought it up to my room and read it, for I suspected just some such thing as he had done. He was very fussy about Betty and her rights, you remember, and he had always insisted that this was Betty"s house, her mother"s wedding present from the grandfather, and therefore not ours at all, except through Betty"s bounty. I was determined that we should not be turned out of here, and that you should not have to go without the things you wanted while that child had everything and far more than she needed. So I burned the letter! Now, do you see what the mother you have been blaming has done for you?"
But the son looked back with hard glittering eyes and a sneer on his handsome l.u.s.tful lips:
"I guess you did it about as much for your own sake as mine, didn"t you?" he snarled. "And I don"t see what that"s got to do with it, anyway. Those trustees don"t know what they missed if they never got the letter, and you"ve always kept in with them, you say, and made them think you were crazy about the girl. They pay you Betty"s allowance till she"s of age, don"t they? They can"t lay a finger on you. You"re a fool to waste my time talking about a little thing like that when we ought to be planning a way to get hold of that girl before the trustees find out about it. If we don"t get her fixed before she"s of age we shall be in the soup as far as the property is concerned. Isn"t that so? Well, then, we"ve got to get her good and married----"
"If you only had let her marry Bessemer quietly," whimpered his mother, "and not have brought in all this deception. It will look so terrible if it ever comes out. I shall never be able to hold up my head in society again----!"
"There you are again! Thinking of yourself----!" sneered the dutiful son, getting up and stamping about her room like a wild man. "I tell you, Mother, that girl is _mine_, and I won"t have Bessemer or anybody else putting in a finger. _She"s mine!_ I told her so a long time ago, and she knows it! She can"t get away from me, and it"s going to go the harder with her because she"s tried. I"m never going to forgive her making a fool out of me before all those people! I"ll get her yet!
Little fool!"
Herbert was well on his way into one of those fits of uncontrollable fury that had always held his mother in obedience to his slightest whim since the days when he used to lie on the floor and scream himself black in the face and hold his breath till she gave in; and the poor woman, wrought to the highest pitch of excitement already by the tragic events of the evening, which were only the climax of long weeks of agitation, anxiety and plotting, dropped suddenly into her boudoir chair and began to weep.
But this new manifestation on the part of his usually pliable mother only seemed to infuriate the young man. He walked up to her, and seizing her by the shoulder, shook her roughly:
"Cut that out!" he said hoa.r.s.ely. "This is no time to cry. We"ve got to make some kind of a plan. Don"t you see we"ll have the hounds of the press at our heels in a few hours? Don"t you see we"ve got to make a plan and stick to it?"
His mother looked up, regardless for once of the devastation those few tears had made of her carefully groomed face, a new terror growing in her eyes: