Chapter VII

When Miss Elenore Carrington opened her eyes the following morning, it was to gaze contentedly from her bed at a large, square, hotel-placarded object in the center of her room.

Objectively, it was merely an uncommonly good-sized trunk, but subjectively, it stood for Femininity, sweetly personal and newly reincarnated.

“But what do you suppose he put in?” murmured Miss Carrington. And uncertainty became unbearable.

She shook her fist gayly at a masculine-looking bathrobe hanging over the back of a chair. “I won’t put you on again, even to look!” she announced, with a gayly menacing flourish.

She caught the coverings of the bed around her, and was out in a great white splash on the floor, fumbling with the key in the lock.

The trunk lid flew open, and she knelt, looking like a boyish little novice, in the plain white night garment, with the big splash of white spreading all over the floor about her.

She had that floor strewn with her treasures. Lovely frilly feminine garments, dainty slippers all buckle and heel, dear little everyday frocks and lingerie blouses, and gowns for occasions in the big trays beneath. She laughed and blessed Ned as she delved down.

And hats—actually all her hats! But alack-a-day! She clutched her shorn locks with a grimace. And that square package—toilet things; useless hairpins and unusable jeweled shell combs; and here, in tissue paper—oh, the forethought of Ned!—the very locks of hair of which she had shorn herself so recklessly, bound together by the hairdresser’s skill into a lustrous coil that had distinct possibilities.

She looked at it with an admiration such as she had never felt when it was growing on her own head.

She swathed herself in the laciest and swirliest of pale blue silk negligées, and sped to the mirror to experiment.

* * * * *

An hour later. Miss Elenore Carrington, daintily fresh as a morning-glory, brown hair coiled closely at the back of her head and pompadoured loosely around a face worthy of its best efforts; garbed in a fetching little morning frock of white linen elaborately embroidered, and short enough to permit the eye of man to rejoice over the well-shaped chaussure which supported a high-arched instep in a deliciously restful way—Miss Carrington, in short, not only in her right mind but in her right clothes, stood looking out of her window at a world glowing with the glory of the September sun.

Her lips curved smilingly as she thought of many things: of her father’s surprise the night before, of the long, long talk and the flood of explanations which had lasted far into the night, and brought them into a completeness of understanding which had meant happiness to them all.

Ned had told them what those months in the East had done for him, not only in technique but in inspiration; how, returning to Paris, he found that his salon portrait had brought him a commission to paint a certain crown prince that coming winter; how Velantour, pleased as he was himself, had shouted “Déjà!”—a much prettier “déjà” than the famous one—and had added: “Now you will paint his soul in his face, his responsibilities in his clothes, and his destiny in the background.”

How, too, returning to Paris, he had found Elenore’s letters, telling him that things were going on successfully in her imposture; and how, getting her things together as hastily as possible, he had come to relieve her on the fastest greyhound afloat, determining remorsefully to give up even the crown prince if his father needed him.

Needed him! John Carrington was so proud of his talent that he would have cut off his right hand before he would have kept him.

Then they had discussed the exigencies of the present; how the thing was to be played out. Elenore insisted that no one should know; Ned that everyone should; he wanted no more credit that didn’t belong to him. John Carrington, considering it the cleverest thing that had ever happened, would have blazoned it on the stars.

They compromised: first, that the Kipleys should be told, a plan which had everything in its favor; second, that Hastings and Mr. Wade should know. This was the battleground.

Even when Elenore had yielded the question of Hastings, she objected strenuously to Mr. Wade’s enlightenment. He wouldn’t understand. But easygoing Ned turned dogged.

“If you had only seen him, you’d know how appalling he’d think it,” Elenore had defended.

“When I see him to-morrow, I’ll meditate on the best way to break it to him,” Ned had retorted.

“But you’ll wait a little,” she coaxed.

“Oh, I’ll give you time to get in a bit of work,” he conceded.

Miss Elenore Carrington, looking out of the window, grew suddenly dreamy-eyed.

Over on the far hill, a branch of hard maple had turned brilliantly scarlet. But it could hardly have been its reflection that brought the delicate stain into Miss Carrington’s cheeks. Oddly enough, it was on that particular hill that Hastings had planned to build his bungalow.

* * * * *

It was a morning of merriment, of buoyancy, of stupefactions.

Mr. Kipley was fairly swamped by the last emotion. He sat on the steps of the side porch, and only a medical expert could have told that his condition was not merely comatose.

All that saved Mrs. Kipley was the urgency of preparing a suitable lunch for “those New York folks.”

Even then she discovered herself doing the most remarkable things. “I’ll bake the ice cream next,” she remarked to Hemmy. Hemmy, used to the startling changes of romance, adjusted herself to the situation with apparent ease—and a new dream of bliss.

For had not Mr. Ned said, jubilantly: “Jove, this air is pure ozone! I want to paint everything in sight. You, too, Hemmy, in that pink-checked gown.”

Painters fell in love with their models sometimes.

* * * * *

John Carrington fairly basked in happiness. Only one thing troubled him, and when he caught Elenore alone for a moment that came out. He took her hands in his and looked into her blue eyes lovingly.

“I told you once,” he said, gently, “that no daughter could be so dear to a man as his son.”

“Yes, dad,” she said, frankly.

He bent and kissed her forehead.

“I was wrong,” he said.

Then they spoke of other things.

* * * * *

“How is young Mr. Carrington this morning?” said Mr. Wade, stepping into the trap, to Mr. Kipley, driving. “None the worse for yesterday, I hope?”

Mr. Kipley’s face contorted, as though he were about to sneeze.

“He’s lookin’ about the same,” he replied, and his voice sounded muffled. He seemed to derive such inward satisfaction from the phrase that he repeated it: “He’s lookin’ about the same. I don’t think it hurt him none.” And immediately gave his attention to his horses.

John Carrington was on the veranda to receive them.

“This is a gala day,” he told them, as he grasped their hands in warm welcome. “My other child came home last night.”

Hastings’ heart leaped.

“Your daughter?” said Mr. Wade, politely. And with his words Elenore came forward to meet them.

She had doffed the linen gown of the morning for the delicately elaborate one she had last worn at that farewell tea in Paris.

There was the faintest suggestion of shyness in the gracefully smiling welcome she gave Mr. Wade, which suited that particular old gentleman to a T.

“You have every reason to be proud of both your children,” he said, affably, to John Carrington.

“I am,” John Carrington replied, and he meant it.

Hastings, wordlessly happy to feel Elenore’s hand resting lightly in his, pressed it tenderly as he tried to look into the eyes he had so longed to see.

Her long lashes veiled them distractingly.

Then she raised them to his with a certain laughing mockery which was delicious but baffling.

“Have I changed much?” she demanded, lightly.

“I shall have to look a long time to find out,” said Hastings. His voice shook a little.

She laughed with sweet spontaneity.

“I shall not waste myself on anyone with such a disgracefully bad memory,” she said, with mock reproach. “I shall devote myself to your uncle.”

She turned to Mr. Wade and proceeded to make her word good.

Mr. Wade found himself sitting on a broad, shady veranda, talking to as pretty a girl as he had seen in years; talking, as he felt with a commendable thrill of pride, his very best. What a listener she was! How graceful! How super-feminine! How ready-witted!

She agreed with him, and Mr. Wade felt even more agreeably conscious than usual of his own good judgment. She disagreed daintily. It was exhilarating to show her where she was wrong.

“If I were twenty years younger!” said Mr. Wade to himself, which was a little more than half the number he should have stated, but what elderly gentleman is exactly accurate in such statements!

He looked sharply at Hastings, and something in the divided attention his nephew was giving John Carrington seemed to please him.

There was a flutter of Hemmy’s apron in the doorway.

“Ned will join us in the dining room,” said John Carrington, genially.

Ned was, in fact, standing on its threshold.

He greeted them with gay good fellowship.

“I’m glad to see you looking so well after yesterday,” Mr. Wade assured him.

Ned flashed a frank, bright smile at him.

“I’m as fresh as though yesterday had never happened,” he said, gayly, “and we’re going to keep conversation on pleasanter things through luncheon, on Elenore’s account.”

Mr. Wade nodded. “Of course,” he said, “we must not alarm the young lady with what might have been.”

And the chatter that ensued was, in truth, gay and bright and full of reminiscences of the life the three young people had enjoyed in Paris.

If Mr. Wade had ever tasted better fried chicken, he had forgotten where, and he praised it with an emphasis that turned Mrs. Kipley, who was helping Hemmy wait on table, a deep magenta with suppressed pride.

He approved highly, too, of the champagne cup, and when Elenore confessed its concoction, declared gallantly that that explained its excellence.

“Indeed, I imagine that you succeed in whatever you do,” he added, as the string to his floral bouquet.

They were at the coffee-and-cordial stage of proceedings now, and Mrs. Kipley and Hemmy had disappeared on their laurels.

“She does, Mr. Wade,” said Ned, gayly, “and she attempts appallingly difficult things at that. Would you like to hear about her star performance?”

“I would, indeed,” said Mr. Wade, heartily.

And Elenore, with a look at her brother, knew that the moment had come.

“Then I shall leave you to your cigars,” she said, lightly, pushing back her chair, in the instinct to escape.

For back of the lightness, excitement, altogether too insecurely barred, was making a dash for liberty.

But Ned was on his feet as well, and caught her firmly but lightly around the waist as she tried to pass him.

“You’ll have to stay and help me out,” he said, with mock reproach. “How do you expect a man who only arrived last night to tell it straight?”

Even then they thought he must have mis-spoken himself.

But Elenore turned with her hand on his shoulder and faced them buoyantly.

“There was once a Rising Genius, who had one great, glorious opportunity,” she began. “He had, too, a sister whom the gods hadn’t dowered with talent of any kind; and a father——”

“Who not only fractured his leg,” John Carrington broke in, “but got fractious in other ways as well. And, not knowing of the opportunity, insisted on his son’s coming home.”

“So the sister, who was perfectly bully, and the pluckiest girl——” Ned began.

But Elenore interposed.

“He was perfectly willing to come,” she insisted to them. “Don’t forget that.” She slipped from his arm and swept them the daintiest of courtesies.

She touched the elaborate chiffon quillings of her skirt with daintily approving fingers. “I never knew the sustaining and soothing influence of feminine attire until I was bereft of it,” she assured them, laughingly. “I shall be distractingly fond of frills all the rest of my life. Wasn’t it horrid underground!” she flashed; and they heard the swish of her retreating skirts.

Hastings gripped Ned suddenly by the arm.

“You weren’t down the mine with me yesterday?” he demanded.

“Pullman, Lower 8, from Chicago,” said that young gentleman, serenely.

“Then I shall be your brother-in-law,” he ejaculated, and vanished like a shot.

Mr. Wade’s expression approached imbecility.

“Do you mean to tell me——” he began, numbly.

“That I only came last night, but my sister has been here all summer,” said Ned, concisely.

* * * * *

The air came in refreshingly through the opened windows. Elenore was standing, one arm on the back of a chair. She smiled slightly as Hastings came toward her impetuously.

“It was quite a composite speech, wasn’t it?” she said.

He covered the hand on the back of the chair with his own.

“I can’t realize it,” he said. “You—all that time.”

“It seemed quite a long time, too,” she confessed.

“You underground!” he went on. “I should have died of anxiety if I had suspected it.”

“I wanted to tell you dreadfully,” she murmured. “There’s no harm in owning now that I was afraid.”

The hand that held hers closed over it more tightly.

“There’s no harm now,” he said, tensely, “in telling me if you meant what you said: that you thought Elenore cared for me.”

“There’s no particular harm now,” she parodied, daringly, with downcast eyes, “in your telling Elenore now what you told her then.”

He swept her into his arms with a tender forcefulness. “That I love her. Elenore! Elenore!”

The full red lips that his own found, breathlessly, were mysteriously, maddeningly sweet. And those deep blue eyes—what marvelous things they confessed to him!

“The dear little bungalow!” he whispered. “But we needn’t wait for it, Elenore. Marry me soon, and we’ll build it afterward.”

She laughed deliciously.

The sound of steps in the hall came to them, and Hastings drew her to the vantage ground of a corner as Mr. Wade and the Carringtons, père et fils, came in view outside the windows to seat themselves comfortably in the big veranda chairs.

“And,” said Mr. Wade, in high good humor, and evidently continuing a conversation begun at the table, “it shouldn’t be difficult for you and your son-in-law to arrange the management of the two mines amicably between you.”

“Aren’t you getting on rather rapidly?” John Carrington demanded, with a twinkle in his eye.

“Not as rapidly as Laurence would like to, I’ll wager,” Mr. Wade said, with confidence.

Then he polished his eyeglasses with his handkerchief. “I have always had a great admiration for the heroines of Shakespeare—Rosalind, in particular,” he said, with a hint of pedantic precision; “but I consider Miss Elenore more charming still.”

“My idea, exactly,” murmured Hastings.

“As long as you’ve settled it all for them, you two,” said Ned, with confidential raillery, “perhaps you’d better hurry up the great event, so it can take place before I go back to Paris. Everything has to be sacrificed to my career, you know.”

He spoke with light mockery.

Hastings’ arm tightened around Elenore, and his pleading lost none of its force because it was silent.

The head on his shoulder gave a sudden gay, bewitching little nod.

“We consent to sacrifice ourselves,” Hastings called, jubilantly.

And the sound of applause drifted in through the open windows.