“Is she really as beautiful as that?” Jane demanded. “As what?”
“Her picture in the paper.”
“Haven’t I said enough for you to know it?”
Jane nodded. “Yes. But it doesn’t sound real to me. Are you sure you didn’t dream it?”
“I’ll say I didn’t. Isn’t that the proof?” The gray bag lay on the table in front of them, the ring was on Jane’s finger.
She turned it to catch the light. “Baldy,” she said, “it’s beyond imagination.”
“I told you——”
“Think of having a ring like this——”
“Think,” fiercely, “of having a lover who ran away.”
“Well,” said Jane, “there are some advantages in being—unsought. I’m like the Miller-ess of Dee—
“I care for nobody—
No, not I,
Since nobody
Cares—
For me——!”
[35]She sang it with a light boyish swing of her body. Her voice was girlish and sweet, with a touch of huskiness.
Baldy flung his scorn at her. “Jane, aren’t you ever in earnest?”
“Intermittently,” she smiled at him, came over and tucked her arm in his. “Baldy,” she coaxed, “aren’t you going to tell her uncle?”
He stared at her. “Her uncle? Tell him what?”
“That you’ve found the bag.”
He flung off her arm. “Would you have me turn traitor?”
“Heavens, Baldy, this isn’t melodrama. It’s common sense. You can’t keep that bag.”
“I can keep it until she answers my advertisement.”
“She may never see your advertisement, and the money isn’t yours, and the ring isn’t.”
He was troubled. “But she trusted me. I can’t do it.”
Jane shrugged her shoulders, and began to clear away the dinner things. Baldy helped her. Old Merrymaid mewed to go out, and Jane opened the door.
“It’s snowing hard,” she said.
The wind drove the flakes across the threshold. Old Merrymaid danced back into the house, bright-eyed and round as a muff. The air was freezing.
“It is going to be a dreadful night,” young Baldwin, heavy with gloom, prophesied. He thought of[36] Edith, in the storm in her buckled shoes. Had she found shelter? Was she frightened and alone somewhere in the dark?
He went into the living-room, whence Jane presently followed him. Jane was knitting a sweater and she worked while Baldy read to her. He read the full account of Edith Towne’s flight. She had gone away early in the morning. The maid, taking her breakfast up to her, had found the room empty. She had left a note for her uncle. But he had not permitted its publication. He was, they said, wild with anxiety.
“I’ll bet he’s an old tyrant,” was Baldy’s comment.
Frederick Towne’s picture was in the paper. “I like his face,” said Jane, “and he doesn’t seem so frightfully old.”
“Why should she run away from him, if he wasn’t a tyrant?” he demanded furiously.
“Well, don’t scold me.” Jane was as vivid as an oriole in the midst of her orange wools.
She loved color. The living-room was an expression of it. Its furniture was old-fashioned but not old-fashioned enough to be lovely. Jane had, however, modified its lack of grace and its dull monotonies by covers of chintz—tropical birds against black and white stripes—and there was a lamp of dull blue pottery with a Chinese shade. A fire in the coal grate, with the glow of the lamp, gave the room a look of burnished brightness. The kitten,[37] curled up in Jane’s lap, played cozily with the tawny threads.
“Don’t scold me,” said Jane, “it isn’t my fault.”
“I’m not scolding, but I’m worried to death. And you aren’t any help, are you?”
She looked at him in astonishment. “I’ve tried to help. I told you to call up.”
Young Baldwin walked the floor.
“She trusted me.”
“You won’t get anywhere with that,” said Jane with decision. “The thing to do is to tell Mr. Towne that you have news of her, and that you’ll give it only under promise that he won’t do anything until he has talked it over with you.”
“That sounds better,” said young Baldwin; “how did you happen to think of it?”
“Now and then,” said Jane, “I have ideas.”
Baldy went to the telephone. When he came back his eyes were like gray moons. “He promised everything, and he’s coming out——”
“Here?”
“Yes, he wouldn’t wait until to-morrow. He’s wild about her——”
“Well, he would be.” Jane mentally surveyed the situation. “Baldy, I’m going to make some coffee, and have some cheese and crackers.”
“He may not want them.”
“On a cold night like this, I’ll say he will; anybody would.”
Baldy helped Jane get out the round-bellied[38] silver pot, the pitchers and tray. The young people had a sense of complacency as they handled the old silver. Frederick Towne could have nothing of more distinguished history. It had belonged to their great-grandmother, Dabney, who was really D’Aubigne, and it had graced an Emperor’s table. Each piece had a monogram set in an engraved wreath. The big tray was so heavy that Jane lifted it with difficulty, so Baldy set it for her on the little mahogany table which they drew up in front of the fire. There was no wealth now in the Barnes family, but the old silver spoke of a time when a young hostess as black-haired as Jane had dispensed lavish hospitality.
Frederick Towne had not expected what he found—the little house set high on its terraces seemed to give from its golden-lighted window squares a welcome in the dark. “I shan’t be long, Briggs,” he said to his chauffeur.
“Very good, sir,” said Briggs, and led the way up the terrace.
Baldy ushered Towne into the living-room, and Frederick, standing on the threshold, surveyed a coziness which reminded him of nothing so much as a color illustration in some old English magazine. There was the coal grate, the table drawn up to the fire, the twinkling silver on its massive tray, violets in a low vase—and rising to meet him a slender, glowing child, with a banner of orange wool behind her.
[39]“Jane,” said young Barnes, “may I present Mr. Towne?” and Jane held out her hand and said, “This is very good of you.”
He found himself unexpectedly gracious. He was not always gracious. He had felt that he couldn’t be. A man with money and position had to shut himself up sometimes in a shell of reserve, lest he be imposed upon.
But in this warmth and fragrance he expanded. “What a charming room,” he said, and smiled at her.
Her first view of him confirmed the opinion she formed from his picture. He was apparently not over forty, a stocky, well-built, ruddy man, with fair hair that waved crisply, and with clear blue eyes, lighter, she learned afterward, than Edith’s, but with just a hint of that burning blue. He had the air of indefinable finish which speaks of a life spent in the right school and the right college, and the right clubs, of a background of generations of good blood and good breeding. He wore evening clothes, and one knew somehow that dinner never found him without them.
Yet in spite of these evidences of pomp and circumstance, Jane felt perfectly at ease with him. He was, after all, she reflected, only a gentleman, and Baldy was that. The only difference lay in their divergent incomes. So, as the two men talked, she knitted on, with the outward effect of placidity.
“Do you want me to go?” she had asked them,[40] and Towne had replied promptly, “Certainly not. There’s nothing we have to say that you can’t hear.”
So Jane listened with all her ears, and modified the opinion she had formed of Frederick Towne from his picture and from her first glimpse of him. He was nice to talk to, but he might be hard to live with. He had obstinacy and egotism.
“Why Edith should have done it amazes me.”
Jane, naughtily remembering the Admiral’s song from Pinafore which had been her father’s favorite, found it beating in her head—My amazement, my surprise, you may learn from the expression of my eyes——
But no hint of this showed in her manner.
“She was hurt,” she said, “and she wanted to hide.”
“But people seem to think that in some way it is my fault. I don’t like that. It isn’t fair. We’ve always been the best of friends—more like brother and sister than niece and uncle.”
“But not like Baldy and me,” said Jane to herself, “not in the least like Baldy and me.”
“Of course Simms ought to be shot,” Towne told them heatedly.
“He ought to be hanged,” was Baldy’s amendment.
Jane’s needles clicked, but she said nothing. She was dying to tell these bloodthirsty males what she thought of them. What good would it do to shoot[41] Delafield Simms? A woman’s hurt pride isn’t to be healed by the thought of a man’s dead body.
Young Baldwin brought out the bag. “It is one that Delafield gave her,” Frederick stated, “and I cashed a check for her at the bank the day before the wedding. I can’t imagine why she took the ring with her.”
“She probably forgot to take it off; her mind wasn’t on rings.” Jane’s voice was warm with feeling.
He looked at her with some curiosity. “What was it on?”
“Oh, her heart was broken. Nothing else mattered. Can’t you see?”
He hesitated for a moment before he spoke. “I don’t believe it was broken. I hardly think she loved him.”
Baldy blazed, “But why should she marry him?”
“Oh, well, it was a good match. A very good match. And Edith’s not in the least emotional——”
“Really?” said Jane pleasantly.
Baldy was silent. Was Frederick Towne blind to the wonders that lay behind those eyes of burning blue?
Jane swept them back to the matter of the bag. “We thought you ought to have it, Mr. Towne, but Baldy had scruples about revealing anything he knows about Miss Towne’s hiding-place. He feels that she trusted him.”
[42]“You said you had advertised, Mr. Barnes?”
“Yes.”
“Well, the one thing is to get her home. Tell her that if she calls you up.” Frederick looked suddenly tired and old.
Baldy, leaning against the mantel, gazed down at him. “It’s hard to decide what I ought to do. But I feel that I’m right in giving her a chance first to answer the advertisement.”
Towne’s tone showed a touch of irritation. “Of course you’ll have to act as you think best.”
And now Jane took things in her own hands. “Mr. Towne, I’m going to make you a cup of coffee.”
“I shall be very grateful,” he smiled at her. What a charming child she was! He was soothed and refreshed by the atmosphere they created. This boy and girl were a friendly pair and he loved his ease. His own house, since Edith’s departure, had been funereal, and his friends had been divided in their championship between himself and Edith. But the young Barneses were so pleasantly responsive with their lighted-up eyes and their little air of making him one with them. Edith had always seemed to put him quite definitely on the shelf. With little Jane and her brother he had a feeling of equality of age.
“Look here,” he spoke impulsively, “may I tell you all about it? It would relieve my mind immensely.”
[43]To Jane it was a thrilling moment. Having poured the coffee, she came out from behind her battlement of silver and sat in her chintz chair. She did not knit; she was enchanted by the tale that Towne was telling. She sat very still, her hands folded, the tropical birds about her. To Frederick she seemed like a bird herself—slim and lovely, and with a voice that sang!
Towne was not an impressionable man. His years of bachelorhood had hardened him to feminine arts. But here was no artfulness. Jane assumed nothing. She was herself. As he talked to her, he became aware of some stirred emotion. An almost youthful eagerness to shine as the hero of his tale. If he embroidered the theme, it was for her benefit. What he told was as he saw it. But what he told was not the truth, nor even half of it.