But probably that Ainslee girl would be like all the rest once one got to know her well. At least, if she wasn’t now it wouldn’t take her long to get that way if she stayed East long and got acquainted with the other girls of her generation and social standing. A pity! But probably he had overestimated her.
However, he decided that he would see her again. In their brief talk, she had greatly interested him. There was something deep and true in her eyes that held in his memory. He recalled her look when she had told about the hummingbird on the lily. He looked off into the silverness of the night and saw the starriness of her eyes. Then when the distant lights of New York began to be visible and garish against the dreaminess of the moonlight, he snapped himself out of it and prepared to get back to everyday living.
After a night’s sleep, he had so far recovered his normal attitude toward life and girls in general as to quite decide on waiting until the end of the week before returning to his uncle’s summer house on the cliffs beside the sea.
He saw Maxwell Ainslee only for a moment when he stepped into his office to leave the papers Grandmother had signed, but they made an appointment to meet and take lunch together two days later.
By the time they came together for lunch, Angus Galbraith had almost forgotten the slight girl who had charmed him for the moment. Not until Maxwell Ainslee began to thank him again for looking after the matter of the papers for him did she recur to him. Then he protested.
“You needn’t be so grateful, Mr. Ainslee; the thanks are on the other side. I had a most delightful call and enjoyed both the ladies immensely. They certainly are a rest and change from the modern world. Your mother is like a picture of the old days. I didn’t know there were mothers like that left. And the girl was charming.”
“Girl?” said Maxwell. “I didn’t know Mother had a girl visiting her. I wonder who it could have been.”
“She introduced her as her granddaughter,” said Galbraith. “Miss Ainslee, she said.”
“Why, that’s strange,” said Ainslee. “I don’t know which one it could have been. Jessica has just gone on her wedding trip. Rosalie and Annabelle are in Europe, and anyhow their name is Van Dyke, not Ainslee; and Damaris, my sister Mary’s daughter, is named Deane. That’s all the granddaughters except Jean, and she’s married and down in Mexico now.”
“This girl did not have any of those names,” said Galbraith. “She called her Sheila, Sheila Ainslee.”
“You don’t say!” said Maxwell Ainslee, eyeing his friend with interest. “I wonder if that could be my brother Andrew’s child. Seems to me it was a girl. She had sort of an Irish name I remember, but I thought it was Moira. Or—was that the mother? I’m not sure. It might have been Sheila. You see my brother Andrew was the youngest and sort of a black sheep. He went away and married a very common person, we heard.”
“It couldn’t be the same one,” said Galbraith, shaking his head decidedly. “This girl was very unusual, and she must have had an extraordinary mother from the way she spoke of her.”
“Indeed!” said Ainslee. “Now I wonder! You see, we never could find out much about them. My brother didn’t write often. He sort of disappeared from the family annals.”
“Well, the girl is most extraordinary, I should say, if one can judge from a few minutes’talk,” said Galbraith and suddenly knew he was going back to The Cliffs as soon as he could get rid of a few engagements, which he wished now he had not made. There was a girl who was insisting that he should come to dinner at her home on the Hudson. He had brought letters of introduction from across the sea to her family, and she was making the most of the acquaintance. He wasn’t sure he cared for her type. There was a young widow whom he had met on shipboard who claimed a place in his attention. He had promised to take her for a spin in the air. She was sweet and sorrowful and a trifle pathetic, a clinging vine of the Southern type. A man might easily yield to her sweet coaxings and then be weary of them when it was too late.
There were a couple of men in New York besides Ainslee whom he knew and liked. He had made engagements with them, and they would be interesting, but he knew that as soon as he was free he was going back to see if that little girl was as sweet as he had thought.
Then he came back to the present and realized that Ainslee was still talking about his youngest brother.
“Strange how families get separated, isn’t it? Take Andrew, for instance, the baby and naturally the longest at home, but somehow he always had the roving foot. Of course we all were off to school and college when he was growing up. I never felt as if I really knew him well. Odd fellow, he was, always doing things he oughtn’t to do. Never would settle down, couldn’t get through college because he got in with a bad set. I always thought he was the goat and let himself be. Proud he was. If anybody suspected him of doing anything wrong, he’d just let ’em think he’d done it. Often we never knew whether he had or not. We were afraid to defend him lest he had.”
“How was he in business?” asked Galbraith, more to seem interested than because he really cared.
“Well, there you are again. He wouldn’t go into business. We couldn’t seem to get him interested in anything. I offered him a chance in here with me, but no, he wouldn’t look at it. Mother tried all sorts of things, but his answer was to go off and leave her for months at a time, even a year or two without any word whatever. He got in with the wrong people, of course; went with the down-and-outers, always taking up with the underdog. He was attractive, and older men made much of him. He got to drinking, too, and then he finished up with this marriage. We haven’t seen him since.”
“Did you know his wife?”
“No, never even heard much about her except that she wasn’t very high in the social order. She may have been as good as he was perhaps, but I’m afraid that wouldn’t be saying much. He really was unexplainable and quite inexcusable. Mother, of course, was always hoping, even wanted to help him when he told her he was going to be married, but I put my foot down on that. The trouble with Andrew was, of course, that he was the baby, and he was spoiled. You couldn’t rally blame Mother for it. We were all gone. He was the last baby she had, and Father was gone, too, died when Andrew was about eighteen. But it was very hard on Mother, and Andrew was old enough to know how he hurt her. When it came to marrying beneath him, I thought the end had come, and we’ve never had anything to do with him or his wife.”
“Well,” said Galbraith thoughtfully, “either this girl isn’t his child or else you’ve been misinformed about the mother, because from what that girl told me I’m sure she had a very superior mother!”
“H’m! Well, I’ll have to run down and see what is going on at Rainbow. It’s all right for Mother to do something for the child if she’s really Andrew’s daughter, but I shall insist that Mother shall not allow the wife to come down upon her. Mother is softhearted and will let anybody walk all over her if we don’t protect her. But I draw the line at having Mother saddled with some common, low-down woman as a daughter-in-law, and that’s what I’ve always expected she would try to do—come and live on Mother.”
“I don’t really think you need worry,” said Galbraith slowly, watching Ainslee’s fine, upright, almost self-righteous face as he talked, “because, you see, if it’s this girl’s mother, she’s dead.”
“Dead!” said Ainslee with a startled look and then with a relieved expression. “Well, perhaps that may make this situation a little less complicated. You see, Angus, you may think me a bit hard, but this girl, Andrew’s wife, was a cabaret singer out in some wild Western sort of place. You can readily see what kind of person she would have been and how hard that would be for a lady like my mother.”
“Well, I can only say that she did a mighty fine job of bringing up her daughter, whatever she was,” answered Galbraith. “But perhaps she’s not the same one at all. You’d better run down and see for yourself. I’m going back in a few days; why not fly back with me? Leave your stocks and bonds to fend for themselves a few hours and
come along.”
“Maybe I will if I can get away. I’ll think it over!” said the older man.
But Galbraith went out from that interview determined soon to see more of Sheila and find out who she really was. If this was the story of her father and mother that he had been hearing, she must be all the more remarkable.
He went that evening to dine with the widow who he had met on shipboard and the next day to lunch with the girl with honey-colored hair, out on the banks of the Hudson, but neither of them could make him forget the girl with the great blue eyes under long black lashes and the earnest, wistful young face. There was a haunting something about the memory of her. Where had he seen someone of whom she reminded him? Especially her eyes? It was someone abroad, he was sure.
The great brown eyes of the Southern widow looked wistfully into his from time to time, her low, sweet Southern voice lingered softly on the vowels, her small hands looked fragile and lovely against the dull black of her mourning clothes. He even made another engagement with her for Saturday, yet all the time he was wondering who else besides Sheila had those blue eyes under very long black lashes?
He went with his men friends to clubs and shows and dinners, but he could not put his mind on what they were talking about because there was an undertone of thought running through everything. He felt that if he could only get by himself alone for a while and think connectedly, or if he could only see those black-fringed blue eyes again, he might be able to remember when he had seen them before and why they interested him so.
As he sat under the brightly striped umbrella on the smooth lawn of a lovely estate on the banks of the Hudson and ate salad and sandwiches and iced drinks and fruits and talked of foreign travel with the girl with the honey-colored hair, he was thinking of the girl called Sheila and of the name of her mother, Moira. How was it those two names had always been linked together in some vague memory of his childhood?
It was somewhere around two o’clock in the morning of the third day after he had lunched with Maxwell Ainslee that he awoke with a feeling that he had run up a blind alley and found what he had been searching for. Sheila and Moira! Sheila and Moira McCleeve! That was it. He had heard his mother talk about Sheila and Moira McCleeve. They were sisters and friends of his mother. Something had happened to them both, either they died or moved away. He did not know that part. He did not know that he ever had heard. But he knew where he had seen those eyes with the long black lashes. They were in an old painting on the gray walls of McCleeve Castle that he had visited years ago when he was a child, traveling with his mother, in Ireland.
When he closed his eyes, he could see the picture yet, staring out of its dull gold frame on the stone wall of the castle, eyes of that peculiar blue on a dark-haired lad of about sixteen. Some McCleeve ancestor it was and, of course, had nothing whatever to do with that little girl in Rainbow Cottage who came from away out West in a small railroad crossing that wasn’t even large enough to be called a town.
He thought it out for a time and was annoyed and troubled that his long thinking had brought nothing but a vague old memory. He wished that he understood the laws that govern minds so that he might know why his had insisted on following up this particular line of thought only to bring him to a dead idea. McCleeve’s Castle was far away in Ireland, and the little girl with the wonderful eyes came from the West.
So at last he fell asleep.
About that time in a far western state, a man of burly build and swarthy countenance was furtively stealing on a train and taking care that no one at the station should see him. He had little black beady eyes set too close together and bushy hair that had recently been dyed a dark red. A heavy red mustache covered the selfish, cruel lips beneath. His clothes were worn and seedy looking, his shoes down at the heel, and under his ill-fitting coat his hip pocket bulged with something hard and uncompromising. He carried only a bundle wrapped in newspaper and kept his face glued to the window, only turning his head slightly when the conductor came for his ticket, as if he were afraid he might miss something on the landscape.
Out across the desert, the train wended its swiftly gliding way, like a serpent trailing along in the night, bearing a menace to those who were unaware. And the man with the newly red hair and the cruel eyes hugged close to the window with his face in the shadow and finally slept with the rest of the world.
Chapter 12
Jacqueline came fluttering down ten minutes after the dinner bell rang in a startling outfit of silver and black velvet. More pajamas! Silver ones and a black velvet jacket!
Her lips were painted more vividly than ever, so red they looked as if they were bleeding; her face was chalky white with powder, and her eyelashes made so black and heavy with mascara that she looked a caricature of a human face.
Sheila gazed at her with horror. She had never seen such makeup before. Even at the junction cabaret it was not practiced to that extent.
Jacqueline wore very long jade earrings, reaching down on her shoulders, and a necklace made like a green snake twining around her throat. She wore a jade ring two inches long on her little finger and another tiny serpent with jeweled eyes crept round her wrist. Her sleek hair was plastered out on her cheeks in sharp arrowheads and fitted around her small head like a felon’s cap.
Grandmother surveyed her in great disgust.
“Now, before you sit down, Jacqueline, you may as well go back upstairs and take off those snakes. You know what I think about wearing such things, and I won’t stand it. I haven’t come to the point of eating in company with serpents—yet.”
Jacqueline thrilled a faint little ripple of laughter; her eyes twinkling wickedly.
“Oh now, Aunt Myra, don’t you like my sweet little pets yet? I thought you had got used to them. See, what pretty colors they have. The jewels are so cunningly arranged. The workmanship is choice!”
“Yes,” said Grandmother, shutting her lips thinly together, “I know. It speaks in the Bible about that! You probably never read it.”
“In the Bible!” echoed Jacqueline, surprised out of her impishness for the instant. “The Bible speaks about my serpents?”
“Yes,” said Grandmother, “the serpent that yours are an imitation of. He was the anointed cherub, you know—Satan, that old serpent. It says ‘every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, the topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle and gold.’ It talks about workmanship, too.”
“Oh precious!” said Jacqueline, squealing with wicked glee. “Now, what do you know about that! But really, Aunt Myra, you oughtn’t to dislike them then if the Bible talks about them.”
“Go take them off!” commanded the old lady, fairly bristling. “I won’t sit here and eat with that thing creeping ’round your neck.”
“Oh well, I’ll take it off just to please you then.”
Jacqueline proceeded to unwind the slippery creature from her neck and coiled it neatly on the tablecloth beside her plate.
“Take it away, I tell you. Out of my sight this minute!”
“Oh, all right!” said Jacqueline meekly and swept her two little jeweled snakes off onto the floor as Janet was bringing in a platter of chicken.
Janet gave a little half-suppressed scream and nearly dropped the platter.
Grandmother arose from her seat. “Janet, put the platter down, and then you may bring the brush and dustpan and take up those two nasty beasts and carry them up to Miss Jacqueline’s room. And the next time, Jacqueline, that you bring those things around they’ll be flung in the trash heap and burned.”
Jacqueline merely laughed and settled down into her seat. Then suddenly she caught sight of Sheila, and while Grandmother was saying grace, she placed her two smooth round elbows on the table, her chin in her hands, and studied the other girl up and down.
Sheila was very angry to have this other girl treating Grandmother with such disrespect, for she had grown to love her already; but mindful of her promis
e, she held her peace and tried to act as if nothing had happened. Ah! She had been well schooled in ignoring the unpleasant around her. How many days there had been hard, trying things going on at home that she had had to ignore and stay serene for her mother’s sake! Sheila found herself wondering if everywhere in life that had to be. Were there always things that one had to suffer and endure in silence? She thought of her father on his bad days. She thought of Buck. She thought of the people at the cabaret who had made it so hard for her mother. That new girl singer had been in a way much like this Jacqueline, whom she had to look upon as a cousin! Why, even Aurelia in the cabaret had not been made up so grotesquely as this girl!
The meal was not a pleasant one. Grandmother served the chicken grimly. Janet served the vegetables indignantly. Sheila was utterly silent, wondering at herself sitting there in the strange atmosphere in a lovely pink dress, with a new grandmother and a terrible new cousin. But Jacqueline was entirely serene. She did most of the talking. She told some of her brother’s outrageous pranks at school. Grandmother knew she was probably exaggerating them to shock her, and she neither smiled nor responded. But Jacqueline chattered on sweetly.
“I’m expecting a boyfriend tonight, Aunt Myra,” she announced as they were rising from the table, “but you needn’t bother getting out of the living room. I expect we’ll sit out in the garden or under the rose trellis. Perhaps you’ll have Janet take out a couple of chairs and put them over by the east wall beyond the rose bed just in case we find it cooler there.”