It was noticeable amongst the houses, because a curious turnstile was let into the garden wall. The turnstile supported a small circular platform part.i.tioned off with screens. James Challoner placed his child upon the platform, rang the bell, and turned the stile. The platform revolved, the child disappeared from view within the garden, and the screens were so arranged that those who received the child within could not see James Challoner outside.
James Challoner went back into the middle of the road, yawned, and stretched his arms above his head. To-day you may cross the Andes from Valparaiso to Buenos Ayres in forty-eight hours. James Challoner had taken four months. He thought of his journey with a chuckle. His daughter had made his way easy.
"Nine hundred miles and I"ve done "em on eiderdown," he said. "That"s the only bit of comfort I"ve ever got out of my marriage."
He had left his child in a foundling hospital kept by some wealthy old ladies. He had tied a bootlace round her arm, rather because it was the conventional thing to do, than with any intention of reclaiming her. He was now a free man. He lit his pipe and stuck his hands in his pockets. With a pleasant sense of lightness, he strolled down to exploit his freedom in the bright streets of Buenos Ayres.
CHAPTER IV
CYNTHIA"S BIRTHDAY
Cynthia woke on the eighth of January to the knowledge that a thrilling day for her had just begun. She looked out beneath the sun blinds across the Daventry estancia. Not a hand-breadth of cloud was visible. The brown earth baked under a blinding sun and the sky fitted down-upon it like a cap of bra.s.s. Inside the room, however, there was neither glare nor heat; and Cynthia stood with her expectations of the day fluttering about her like a shower of rose leaves. She was seventeen this morning, and the pride of it set her heart dancing.
There would be letters downstairs from her friends, she hoped. There was a string of pearls, she knew. It had been bought that winter in Buenos Ayres with so elaborate a secrecy, and after so much furtive discussion as to whether it was good enough, that she could not but know of it. Moreover, there was a most important telegram to be despatched immediately after breakfast; a telegram of so much consequence that no hand but hers must write it out and send it off.
So Cynthia was quick this morning. She dressed herself in a cool white frock, her white shoes and stockings, and ran lightly down the stairs into that room where years before a chandelier had of its own accord swung to and fro.
Valparaiso had long since been rebuilt, but Robert and Joan Daventry still kept house in Buenos Ayres through the winter, and made the estancia their summer home. The years, however, had brought their changes. Robert and Joan were frankly an old couple nowadays; a young Englishman was sitting at the breakfast table; he undertook the whole burden of management; and, finally, there was Cynthia. The "other plan," so often debated and so often shelved, had been adopted, after all; the experiment from which Robert Daventry had so shrunk had been risked; and Cynthia was the triumphant flower of it.
She greeted the old couple tenderly, shook hands with Richard Walton, the young manager, and received his good wishes with a pretty a.s.sumption of great dignity. But her eyes strayed to the table, where her place was piled high with parcels and letters, and her dignity vanished in her delight.
"I have many friends," she cried, with a sort of wonder in her voice very taking to those who looked on her while she spoke. For she could not but have friends, it seemed. So frank a wish to please and so sweet a modesty were linked to so much beauty. It was not the beauty of Argentina, though a rhapsodist might have maintained that some of its sunlight was held prisoner in the heavy ripples of her hair. But the hair was light brown in color, where the gold did not shine, and the rose was in her cheeks. A broad forehead, eyebrows thick and brown, curving across a fair skin above great eyes of a deep blue set rather wide apart, gave to her face a curious distinction. And her eyes looked out from so dark a wealth of lashes that they seemed unfathomable with mysteries--until she spoke. Then kindliness and a fresh joy in life lit them with soft fires. For the rest, she was neither short nor remarkable for height, the nose and the nostrils delicate, the chin small, but a definite chin. As for her mouth, it was not a rosebud, nor again was it a letter-box. It suited her and she could afford to smile. One granted her, at a glance, health and a look of race.
She began to open her letters and her presents. "Yes, I have many friends," she repeated.
"It may be surprising," said Robert Daventry. "But it seems to be true. In fact, I am not quite sure that I have not some small token about me that Joan and I don"t dislike you altogether."
He fumbled first in one pocket, then in another.
"Really?" cried Cynthia. She leaned toward him, all eagerness and curiosity. Her lips were parted in a smile. She followed the movements of his hands with an air of suspense. She knew very well that half the pleasure of the givers would be spoilt if she betrayed any knowledge of the gift.
"What can it be?" Her whole att.i.tude asked, while Robert Daventry slapped himself and looked under the table in a great fl.u.s.ter lest he should have mislaid the present. His concern was sheer farce; she, with a subtle skill of comedy, played her little part of happy impatience.
"Ah!" cried Robert Daventry at last. "It is not lost;" and he took out from his breast pocket a narrow case of green leather and from the white satin lining of the case the expected string of pearls. She stood up while Robert Daventry clasped it about her throat, and, as she took her seat again, she said in a low voice:
"You are both extraordinarily kind to me. I often wonder what would have become of me but for you--where I should be now."
For a moment both of the old people looked startled. Then Robert Daventry hastened to protest.
"My dear," he cried in a flurry, "you are, after all, of my flesh and blood. And flesh and blood has its claims."
Joan"s quiet voice came to his help:
"Besides, the debt is not all on one side, Cynthia. We were not very contented until you came to us, were we Robert?"
"No, we weren"t," he replied with relief, like a man floundering who finds solid ground under his feet. "We had lived hard and had done a great deal of work, and we were beginning to ask ourselves why. The heat and the ardor were over, you see. Our lives were cooling down. We had come to a time when one is apt to sit at night over the fire and wonder regretfully, now that no change is possible, whether we hadn"t aimed at the wrong things and got less than we might have got out of our lives. We had piled up, and were still piling up, a great deal more money than we had any use for. We had made Daventry out of a plain as bare as the palm of my hand, and we had no one very dear to us to whom we could leave it. There didn"t seem to be much use in things. Next week was going to be like this week, and the week after like next week, and life altogether nothing more than a succession of dull things. We were very nearly abandoning the estancia and retiring to England when my brother died."
"And left me to you," said Cynthia.
Robert Daventry nodded.
"And then our discontent vanished," said he.
Cynthia shook her head.
"I don"t remember very much of those days, but I remember enough to be sure that I gave you a good deal of trouble." She spoke lightly to hide the emotion which the kindness of these friends had stirred in her.
Joan Daventry smiled.
"Yes, you gave us trouble, Cynthia," she said. "We are frightened by it still, at times. We are growing old and there is no other young spirit in the house, and it is possible that you might find your life rather dull, just as we did before you came to us."
"Dull?" cried Cynthia. "With you two dear people?" She held a hand lovingly to each, and now was hiding nothing of what she felt.
"Besides, I have my friends. I meet them in Buenos Ayres. They come here to visit me. You gave them to me, as you have given me everything. Look at the number of them!" and she proudly pointed to her letters. She read them through and she breakfasted, and at the end of the meal gathered them in her hands.
"I must send some telegrams," she said. "I will drive to the railway station."
"Now?" Joan Daventry asked anxiously. "Can"t they be sent later, in the afternoon, Cynthia?"
"No, mother," Cynthia replied. "Some might wait, but there"s one which must go off now."
Joan Daventry looked at Richard Walton. The blinds were down and the window closed; so that the room was dark and cool. But a glance at her manager"s face told her sufficiently what the heat was like outside.
He had been abroad since daybreak and he was the color of a ripe mulberry. Joan Daventry looked to him for a.s.sistance. But, though his eyes were fixed with a momentary intentness upon Cynthia, he did not give it. He spoke on another subject.
"If you go, Miss Cynthia, I hope you will leave at home the pearls you are wearing round your throat. We are cutting the corn to-day and there are a good many men about of whom I know nothing at all. More hands came in last night than we had use for. It"s all right, of course, but I shouldn"t wear those pearls."
"Of course not," said Cynthia. "I will put them away."
"And you will take a man with you," said Robert Daventry. Neither he nor Joan had been brought up in cotton-wool; nor did they ever think to cloister Cynthia. She was left her liberty; and so half an hour afterward, with a big straw hat shading her face from the sun, she drove in her cart along the avenue to the railway station. She sent off the messages of thanks and then wrote out the important telegram which was to mark the day for her. She wrote it out without an alteration. For her thoughts had run fastidiously on the wording of it all through breakfast-time. She addressed it to:
Captain Rames, R. N., _S.S. Perhaps_, Tilbury Docks, London.
And she handed it to the operator with a certain trepidation like one who does some daring and irrevocable deed. The operator, however, was quite unmoved. The important message to which so much consideration had been given, wore to him quite a commonplace look. It amounted, indeed, to no more than this:
"Every heart-felt wish for a triumphant journey, from an unknown friend in South America."
Thus, the very words were conventional and the sentiment no great matter to make a fuss about. But this was not Cynthia"s point of view.
She had spoken the truth at the breakfast table when she had told Joan and Robert Daventry that she did not find her life dull. But they were old people, and, in spite of her many friends, she was, to be sure, much alone with them. She was reticent of her feelings in their presence, not through any habit of concealment, but from modesty and the disparity of years. On the other side it was Joan"s theory that youth should be trusted rather than pried upon. Cynthia was thus thrown back a good deal upon herself, and if she did not find life dull, it was, perhaps, because with life she had very little to do.
She was seventeen, a girl of clear eyes and health and silver thoughts; and romance had its way with her. All that loving care could imagine for the clean and delicate training of mind and body had been lavished on her; and little by little she had fashioned for herself a wonderland of dreams and beautiful things. The only ugly thing about it was the iron turnstile in the wall by which you gained admittance.
But that could not be helped. Its ugliness was recognized. The turnstile had been there from the beginning--why, Cynthia could not have told you. It was indeed itself the beginning. It was there in her dreams and her fancies, offering admission to somewhere, before the somewhere was explored, and found to be the wonderland.
In this world, then, she moved amidst a very goodly company. She was careful about her company, choosing it from the world at large. She claimed the best of all the nations for her friends, yet with a pretty shyness which often enough set her blushing and laughing at her own pretension. She had a test. Unless you answered to it, there was no admission, the turnstile did not revolve. Coronets went for nothing, even brave deeds did not suffice. He who entered--and, by the way, it must regretfully be admitted that "he" does accurately represent the s.e.x of those who were allowed to enter. For it had never occurred to Cynthia at all to let another woman into her world. She was modest, but her modesty had its limits. He who entered, then, must have given proofs that he was possessed with a definite idea, that his life moved to the tune of it.
The population of Cynthia"s private enclosure was consequently strictly limited; and, since she only knew her heroes through the newspaper and books, some even of those who were admitted came in under false pretences, and had summarily to be ejected. She was thus on the lookout for recruits. Captain Rames was the latest of them, and Cynthia knew less of him even than of the others. She had seen a blurred portrait of him in a daily paper; she knew that he was an officer in the navy, aged thirty-four, and it seemed to her that he had pa.s.sed her test. For, this very afternoon, in command of a Dundee whaler, he was off southward into seas where no ship yet had sailed.