Latter-Day Sweethearts

by Mrs. Burton Harrison

It is in New York where the tea-drinking habit is a graft among the men, and to the women an intermittent sacrifice to fashion's shrine. Miss Bleecker was of the sort whom the steam of the tea-kettle inebriates as well as cheers. She could better exist without her evening orisons than her cup of tea between four and five.

When the ladies returned to their hotel, there was barely time to dress for dinner or the play. Miss Bleecker's dinner list in Paris was larger than in New York, where Sally Bleecker was beginning to be vieux jeu. Abroad, she was welcomed by the translated Americans living in various capitals, who were sure of hearing from her the few things about the private lives of their friends at home that had not got into their newspapers. Lastly, but decidedly not least, she had had the wisdom to perfect herself in bridge, which Helen detested, in common with all games of cards. Whenever Miss Carstairs elected to go off with friends of her own to dine and pass the evening, and her young lady put on a tea gown and ordered a plate of soup and a wing of chicken in their own salon, the chaperon was in glory. In a black net dress, largely bespangled, with a dog-collar of excellently imitated pearls around the doubtful portion of her throat beneath the chin, with her hair admirably groomed and her nails perfectly manicured, wearing her best evening manner and longest gloves, old Sally would run down stairs nimbly to the fiacre that was to take her to her earthly Paradise of bridge! Or else in company with a playmate of seventy-two, who smoked cigarettes eternally, wore low scarlet gowns and rarely dined at home, she would go on from place to place, exhilarated beyond fatigue, whispering inwardly to herself there was nothing like this at her home across the sea.

Helen would have been wofully tired of this life had she not possessed the resources of a rational cultivated woman, and the ability to extract the real kernel of Parisian life, in addition to the acquaintance of a few clever people with whom she could fraternize in her own way. After all, as well Paris as elsewhere for the living down of a great clutching emotion such as her brief passion for John Glynn! She had been spared hearing Posey Winstanley talk about him as her possession, since the Winstanleys had quitted Paris early in December, just before their own arrival there. She had heard in various ways how old Herbert had taken her advice literally, and enrolled himself among the money spenders of their liberal nation. With astonishing rapidity, the fame of the stunning young Southern beauty had been bruited abroad. It was related that a semi-royal personage who had seen her going up the staircase of her hotel had addressed to her father a proposal for her hand, which had been refused by the wise old gentleman without conveying the fact to his daughter. It was known that she had been "taken up" by the best people in Cannes. A little breeze of laudation concerning her was forever blowing where gossips congregate in le monde où l'on s'amuse. In two expressive words, Miss Winstanley "had arrived!"

Helen used to wonder most how this reacted upon John Glynn. She pictured his amazement at finding the Cinderella he had wooed had turned into a Princess in Glass Slippers. But as that is the sort of a shock to which most sensible men become easily habituated, she felt that he had, by now, probably ceased to wonder at his good luck. If he thought at all of Helen, it would be with gratitude for having set him free for this.

She was not so certain that Posey had reached the same stage of satisfaction with existing bonds. Helen was too clever at reading character not to have seen more than Posey meant to admit about her feeling for Clandonald. She saw also that Clandonald was immensely taken by the girl, and believed that if Glynn were not in existence the Englishman would some day return to the charge. But she knew nothing of the anonymous letters, and their vile attacks upon Posey, which, long after silence had set in in the direction of the enemy, continued to burn and sting in their object's clean, sensitive soul. Since she had told Clandonald, Posey had spoken of this insult to no one. It made her feel, however, that she could never be quite the same again.

Helen had exchanged a letter or two with her, but the acquaintance had seemed to drift. It was Miss Carstairs' feeling that until Posey and Mr. Glynn were safely married, it would be more honorable of her to keep out of sight altogether; which goes to show that deep down in the bottom of her heart Miss Carstairs was not altogether certain she had lost all hold upon her former lover's sensibilities.

One of the strangest experiences ever coming to Helen befell her at this time. It was nothing less than a declaration of his love in a letter, en route, from M. de Mariol. He had written to her intermittently since their parting in London charming airy missives in his best vein, his critics would have said; letters of rambling travel, of European politics, of observation; graceful, incisive, glowing with color, sparkling with happy phrases; the letters of a poet, a cultured eclectic of the twentieth century to his inspiration. But she had not imagined until she finished reading the last of the series it could come to his doing her the honor of asking her to be his wife. She was profoundly moved, more even than flattered. She had loved Glynn because he was young, handsome, unjaded, therefore broader than most of the men surrounded by whom she had grown up; because it had made her smile to be near him, and the touch of his stalwart hand had thrilled her with a thrill that sometimes came back now. Mariol, appealing to her intellectual side, to her sense of high companionship, repelled her as a lover, and what he asked her to do seemed, on the face of it, grotesque. His suggestion that if she could be brought to look upon him favorably, he would return immediately to Paris, filled her with panic. Her letter sent in return was purposely gentle and simple and apparently unstudied, although nothing had ever cost her such epistolary birth-pangs.

M. de Mariol did not return to Paris, and in the course of some days Miss Bleecker also received an important letter, although not of a matrimonial cast. It was from Mrs. Carstairs, in New York, proposing an interposition of diplomacy between her stepdaughter and herself. Mrs. Carstairs, self-confessed a suffering angel who had borne in silence Helen's malignant opposition to her, was about to come abroad to spend the spring in yachting with her husband in the Mediterranean, and would be glad to have Miss Bleecker and Helen join them anywhere that was convenient. If Mr. Carstairs himself did not write to repeat this invitation, Helen would know it was because the poor dear was overworked and brain-weary. For that reason, if for none other, Helen should put aside her unjust, and injurious, and missish fancies, and become one of their family circle in the eyes of all the world.

("Naturally," said the astute chaperon to herself, "there is one of two reasons for this urgency to have Helen with them. Either some man she is flirting with is to make one of the party, or somebody has refused to receive Mrs. Carstairs until her step-daughter has done so first.")

If Helen would prove herself the devoted daughter she had always boasted of being, and subscribe to her father's wishes, Mrs. Carstairs was empowered by him to say that he would give her at once the fortune, independently of himself, that he had previously withheld. (Incidentally, she named a sum of which the magnitude made Miss Bleecker's frog-like eyes distend and her dull heart beat excitedly.) Helen would be free to come, to go, to marry as she pleased.