Latter-Day Sweethearts

by Mrs. Burton Harrison

Far into the night Helen lay, physically at rest, inhaling the pure air from her open window, feeling the gentle uplift of the sea as the huge bulk of the ship faintly answered to its impulse, listening to the bells challenging one another from afar, but she could not sleep. Tirelessly her memory went over every incident of her acquaintanceship with Glynn, and of the virtual break with her father since the terrible substitution of the woman she suspected into her old place at home. To the last she had kept a brave front, and no one should ever know what this past year had cost her. She was leaving America, without temptation to return. The secret glimmering hope that had kept alight within her, that some day John Glynn and she might come together again, was now finally extinguished. It was as if a new era of life were opening, and the question was, how best should she shape it?

For the twentieth time Miss Carstairs had come around to the knottiest problem of all those that kept her wakeful in her giant cradle of the sea. She was wondering how duty and dignity might combine to inspire her action toward her successor in Glynn's affections. Her chief apprehension regarding Pamela Winstanley, was that John Glynn should have made her ever so little aware of that prior bond. A cold terror had possessed her at thought of the exuberant creature sharing or even suspecting her sacred secret. But in the girl's helter-skelter attempts at speech with every one at table, she had given no hint that she had previously heard of Miss Carstairs. Helen could only hope that Glynn's name would never come up between them. And, at this point, a soft, swabbing sound and the tread of muffled feet upon the deck beneath her window, gave notice that the sailors were at their early morning tasks. The weird, self-pitying note of the parrot in a cabin hard by seemed to grow fainter and more dreamlike. Turning wearily upon her pillows, she let sleep take her into its merciful embrace.

"Certainly, Mariol, you have found your American types ready to hand upon this voyage," Lord Clandonald was saying, as the two men walked up and down with their cigars upon the deck decried by Miss Carstairs' chaperon. "The most obvious one is, of course, the astonishing young person who aroused us from the spiritual lethargy of a first meal at sea, when one is always on guard not to be too accessible."

"She is like one of those Eastern shops, where everything is in the window," Mariol answered. "But adorably fresh and naïve and pretty. No other continent could produce her than the wide and liberal one we are just quitting."

"Might we but keep her to ourselves!" said Clandonald, mockingly. "But I foresee that she will be the wonder and the joy of the entire ship's company on our run over. And the mild old boy who retires into the background to give his Wonder every chance! I rather like the old boy, I think."

"My own taste would be for the young lady who is protected by Buddha reincarnate, in the person of the disapproving chaperon. Her beauty is rarer, more subtle, than the other's; she is clearly of the fine fleur of the American aristocracy of dollars. I suspect a Colonial ancestor somewhere, and you observed that the chaperon did not disdain us too much, to let fall a hint or two concerning the custom of splendor in her charge's life. When they find you out, Clandonald, I'll wager the sun will promptly shine between the clouds for you."

"The old woman is in the apologetic stage for America, and that's enough to give me a strong disgust for her. Let them be anything that's real, and I'm ready to meet Americans 'hands across the sea.' But the ones that affect to decry their nationality, to convince us that they are of a small, segregated class that stand on higher ground than the rest, are abhorrent to me. Clearly, Buddha's protégée belongs to that class? and will not tarry to let us become aware of it."

"Grant that my Mdlle. Hélène—for I don't know her other name—is both beautiful and finely bred, and I will abandon you the rest of her sisterhood. She is full of an exquisite intellectuality, but it would not prevent her loving if her heart were awakened—and if I am not mistaken, it has already been awakened. Imagine a young girl, chez nous, with that expression in her eyes, and yet that delicate restraint of manner. I should like to know the fair Hélène's history."

"That you might dissect her with admirable grace in a feuilleton that tout Paris would read and applaud—and—forget her the next hour, in a new enthusiasm."

"Better to possess all the enthusiasms than none, old chap. I am really in despair over your failure to be aroused by the infinite variety of the diversions offered to you in this journey of ours that, alas! must end too soon."