Latter-Day Sweethearts

by Mrs. Burton Harrison

In all this dreary time Mariol had stood by him and held him up. The brilliant mocker, the professed skeptic of all tenderness apart from the metaphysics of the sex question, had developed into the best of hard-luck friends; and their agreement to travel together after Clandonald was free and had left the army proved more than a success.

Now they were drifting homeward again, Mariol to his boulevards and the fond congenial life of Paris, Clandonald—to what? Mariol, with his keen insight and ready sympathy, saw that his friend was returning to England, restless, unsatisfied, out of tune with his future surroundings; well in body and healthy in his mind, indeed, but in no humor to pick up his life from where his late partner had cast it, like a jewel, into wayside dirt.

Mariol had hoped much from their visit to America, where they had found themselves, during the latter part of the season at Newport, subjected to the overpowering hospitality of the leaders of the great world. But although Clandonald's antecedents were as well known and familiarly discussed there, as in England and on the Continent, and there had been displayed no disposition on the part of society to visit his evil fortune upon him, the young man passed but abstractedly through the ordeal of charms and graces, defiled before his gaze, during the hours when the world that entertains is in evidence. Mariol sometimes wondered whether his friend would not have been more easily consoled in an atmosphere less surcharged with the art of pleasing.

The moment he had laid eyes upon Miss Carstairs, whose patronymic he was yet to learn, it had flashed upon the Frenchman's active brain that here was the solution of his perplexities. That the girl met so thoroughly his own exacting taste in externals, seemed to him a convincing proof she would be the ideal angel to step down into Clandonald's troubled pool and make it clear. Her looks, age, good breeding, reserve of bearing, and evident fortune, added to the fact that she, too, had in her eyes the shadow of past sorrow, left the kind fictionist no doubt of his own perspicacity in selection. He had addicted himself to the task of making friends with her, with a promptitude facilitated by his secret hopes, and Clandonald's indifference proved the more provoking in that it bore every aspect of probable enduringness.

Mariol fell asleep, that memorable first night at sea, congratulating himself that his cares in connection with matters of sentiment were so purely perfunctory, and that whatever the issue out of Clandonald's impassivity, no personal interest in any one of the disturbing sex could ever afford his mentor other than the emotion of a scientist who skewers a new butterfly for his microscope.

CHAPTER III

There was to be no complexity attending the position taken by Miss Pamela Winstanley, commonly called Posey, in the consideration of her fellow-passengers of the "Baltic." From the first day out, as has been said, every one aboard became a prey to the absorbing interest created by her daily movements, sayings and doings. Beyond the fact that she was travelling with her father, a Mr. Herbert Winstanley, sometime of the Army of the Confederate States, presumably a person of very moderate social place and fortunes, the antecedents of the radiant young beauty were unknown, and she was accepted upon her face value alone. It was indisputable that, whenever she appeared conversation centered upon her to the exclusion of more serious topics. And, in return, Miss Winstanley lavished her effervescing good graces with impartiality upon all admirers in attendance. The honors of her smiles and pretty sayings were shared alike by Lord Clandonald and any minor individual of the impressible sex, who might chance to be on hand. Jolly old Lord Channel Fleet, resembling Santa Claus with his roseate face and white fringe of a beard, found himself vying for her favors with a succession of American college youths in sweaters, one of whom, famed in university circles as a thrower of the hammer, stood about in attitudes expressive of rank jealousy, whenever his sportive lordship was at her side. Lady Channel Fleet, indeed, was known to be nervous lest the threatening young man should do something dreadful to her liege.

Miss Bleecker, Mrs. Vereker, and sundry mothers of unentertaining daughters who struggled into their deck-chairs without assistance and walked with each other the diurnal mile, looking as if nothing would induce them to descend to the companionship of the supporting sex, formed a number of ingenious theories to account for the fair Pamela. She was a milliner's forewoman, going out to secure fashions for Alison's Cross Roads. She was a dashing divorcee, who had resumed her maiden name. She had been a barmaid in California, an artist's model in New York, an assistant washerwoman in the Klondyke, had tried on cloaks in a leading haberdashery of Chicago—in all of which capacities there was somebody aboard who had known somebody else who had actually seen her! But of suppositions concerning the charmer, the most popular was that she had sung on the local stage somewhere in the South, and was now going abroad to study for comic opera. For in addition to other devices for the bewilderment of mere man, Miss Winstanley was found to possess a fascinating gift of rendering little Creole chansonettes that conjured up the warm velvet-like touch of Southern air, the region of palm and pine and mocking-birds, of orange flowers and Cherokee roses, and the love spells lingering around it. Then she could croon "Mammy" songs, of a negress hushing her nursling, in a way to bring tears to the eyes of most hardened listeners. And between the songs and croonings she would describe scenes, and impersonate actors, with a natural fire and pathos that are rarely taught or teachable. But of this accomplishment she was more chary than the rest, and there were those heard to declare that, on one occasion on deck, she had sung tears into her own eyes, and abruptly stopped, declaring she did not care to do it before more than one or two. The incident being repeated to Miss Bleecker, that inveterate lady declared it to be but a clever bit of acting to whet expectation of future appearances behind the footlights.

Amid the successes of his daughter's meteoric rise, little Mr. Winstanley prowled about the ship, a solitary and somewhat pathetic figure in his evident belief that self-effacement was the first duty of the parent of such a Phoenix among maidens. Following his abortive reopening of acquaintance with Miss Carstairs, he withdrew into his shell and spoke no more to her. Helen reproached herself that she had not been able to conceal from him the repulsion at first inspired in her by her rival in John Glynn's favor. Old Winstanley's mild twinkle of the eye, the smile playing around his thin lips, gave no hint, however, that his retiring attitude was inspired by offence. He seemed to live apart in a world of his own thoughts and memories, from which even his Posey's triumphs could not extract him for long.

And Posey, Miss Bleecker to the contrary (who from her end of the table consistently glared down the intruder's right to be), continued to reign in her revolving chair, as the established queen of every meal. Her quips and cranks of fan, her lawless sallies at the expense of those around her, had effectually banished restraint and brought the diverse elements of their party together; even Helen parting with her formality to join in the talk, when convinced by observation that Miss Winstanley knew nothing whatever of her prior acquaintance with John Glynn.