Reed was still in California, although the alluring literature which Ketchim was scattering broadcast bore his name as consulting engineer to the Simití Development Company. His 77 wife had continued her temporary abode in the Hawley-Crowles mansion, while awaiting with what fortitude she could command the passing of her still vigorous father, and the results of her defiant sister’s assaults 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 association 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 78 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 début in the early winter. “And Milady Ames will be mentioned in the papers next day as assisting 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 assumed 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 assets, 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 79 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.
When the Beaubien, who had become the girl’s confidante, learned the story, she laughed till her sides ached. And then her lips set, and her face grew terribly hard, and she muttered, “Fools!” But she smiled again as she gathered the penitent girl in her arms, and kissed her.
“You will learn many things, dearie, before you are through with New York. And,” she added, her brow again clouding, “you will be through with it––some day!”
That evening she repeated the story at her table, and Gannette, who happened to be present, swore between roars of laughter that he would use it as a club over his wife, should she ever again trap him in any of his numerous indiscretions.