Chapter XXX The Tangled Web
The girl’s lids had drooped again, hiding the expression in her eyes, while the rest of her face told Barry nothing. He was just beginning to wonder whether she was very angry, when suddenly she threw back her head, and her lips parted in a peal of low laughter.
“Of course there were!” she exclaimed. “How absurd you are to take it so seriously, Mr. Lawrence! If I’d been in your place, I should have hated a girl I thought had played me such a trick. I think you’re very nice, indeed, not to have thought worse things about me than you did, and I really haven’t anything to forgive.”
“You’re sure of that?” he asked eagerly, his face glowing.
“Perfectly! And now that’s over,” she went on briskly, “don’t you want to hear my fairy tale?”
“You bet I do!” he asserted, with more force than elegance. “I’ve been eaten up with curiosity ever since your letter came. It sounded as wildly impossible as an Arabian Night.”
She laughed. “It was—it is yet. I’m really not quite certain that it isn’t all a wonderfully vivid dream; though, as I wrote you, the clothes do seem awfully convincing. You know, a person never by any chance dreams the sort of dresses one would like to have. They’re always utterly impossible.”
She clasped one knee with both hands in a boyish way, and fixed her dancing eyes upon his face.
“I was a little frightened when I said good-by that night,” she began. “So many horrid things had happened that I wasn’t even sure of Mrs. Weston, or Sally, or anything. I rang the bell, and the door was opened so suddenly that I jumped.”
“I wondered at the time how any one could get up from the basement so quickly,” Lawrence commented interestedly.
“You waited?” she questioned. “That was good of you. Well, Mrs. Weston was already in the hall with a lady who seemed on the point of going out. I didn’t pay much attention to her except to notice that she was beautifully gowned and had quantities of wonderful jewels. You see, I wanted to find out whether Sally was still in the house, so I turned directly to Mrs. Weston, and started to ask her. I’d spoken scarcely half a dozen words before the other woman caught me by the arm and drew me over to the light. If she hadn’t stared at me so strangely, I suppose I’d have wondered what in the world she was doing in such a place; for her pearls were really extraordinary, and the house—well, you know there was nothing especially high class about it. But she just stared and stared in the oddest way imaginable; then suddenly she cried out: ‘Who are you, child?’
“The queer way she snapped out the words—it reminded me of bullets shot out of a gun—almost took my breath away; but I managed to tell her my name. It was fortunate she still held my arm; otherwise I’m sure I should have collapsed in sheer astonishment.
“‘I knew it!’ she exclaimed, in that extraordinary choppy manner. ‘I knew it the minute I set eyes on you. I’m your aunt.’”
“Your aunt!” gasped Barry.
“Yes, my aunt. Fancy! Whenever I think of it now I laugh. It was really screamingly funny, you know, to be told by a perfect stranger, who looks rather like a drum major, that she’s an aunt you have never heard of. I didn’t laugh then, though. I thought she was crazy, and was wondering how in the world I should get away from her, when all at once I remembered that mother did have a sister very much older than herself who had lived abroad almost all her life. She was eccentric to begin with, and married unhappily; and finally, when mother was engaged, she was terribly opposed to it; and the result was a quarrel which kept them apart all the rest of their lives. All this went through my mind like a flash; and I was so taken back that I could only stammer: ‘You’re—not—Aunt Beverly?’
“‘Of course I am!’ she snapped back. ‘What other aunts have you got, I’d like to know?’
“And then she began to ask me questions as fast as she could talk. She wanted to know what I was doing in New York, why I was wearing such dreadful clothes, how I dared be out on the streets alone at such an hour, and a dozen other things. I suppose you’ll think I’m hateful, Mr. Lawrence, but all at once I felt perfectly furious that she should have all those wonderful diamonds and pearls and lovely clothes, and probably quantities of money, while I hadn’t even a coat to wear. And so I told her everything she wanted to know, without mincing matters in the least; and for once she had nothing to say.
“She dropped the gold bag she was carrying; and, though she was quick enough in bending over for it, she was a long time straightening up again; and, when at last she did speak, there was something in her voice which hadn’t been there before.
“‘Come, my dear,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s time we were starting home.’
“The things which happened after that were much more like a dream than any real dream I ever had. She called Mrs. Weston Janet when she said good night; and, when we went out, there was a private brougham waiting in the street, exactly as if it had been conjured up by a magic wand. There was no carriage in sight when we came through the street, was there?”
Barry shook his head. “No, but one passed me near Eighth Avenue,” he answered, struck by a sudden recollection.
“Really? That must have been it, then. Well, we came here, and I’ve been in this miraculous walking dream ever since. At breakfast next morning, Aunt Beverly announced, in that gruff way of hers, that she intended to adopt me. She said she was a sour old woman who for years had tried to be happy by spending her money on herself alone. She hadn’t been happy, so now she was going to see if making other people happy would be any different. It seems that Mrs. Weston was an old friend whose husband died leaving her nothing but debts; and Aunt Beverly’s visit there last night was to do something for her. That’s all, I think. Of course, there are surprises every minute, for Aunt Beverly is incredibly wealthy, and seems to delight in making my eyes pop out. There doesn’t seem to be anything one can wish for that she doesn’t conjure up in a minute or two.”
She paused, her deep, wonderful eyes fixed intently on Barry’s face.
“Isn’t it amazing?” she queried. “Have you ever known anything quite so strange in all your life?”
“Never!” agreed Lawrence. “It’s simply corking! And I can’t tell you, Miss Rives, how glad I am. Beside your experiences, my little strike of luck shrinks into nothingness.”
“But yours was the first,” the girl replied, with an odd earnestness. “Yours was the turn of destiny’s wheel which started all the other mechanism into motion. But for you, I should be—well, I don’t know where.” She made an expressive gesture with her hands. “I shudder whenever I think of it.”
“You mustn’t think of it, then,” said Barry. “The future holds too many pleasant things for you to waste time upon the past.”
“Controlling one’s thoughts is not so easy as you seem to imagine,” Shirley retorted, glancing out of the window toward the snowy stretch of park across the avenue. “Besides, I am not at all sure that I wish to forget the past—at least, all of it.”
Barry felt the blood rising into his face. What did she mean by that, or did she mean anything? His hands closed tightly over the arms of the carved chair, and, by a great effort, he restrained the impulse to speak.
“Aunt Beverly is really splendid, and I’m becoming fonder of her every day,” the girl went on, turning back. “At first I was a little afraid of her, until I found out that her brusque, snappy manner was only an affectation to hide what she really thinks and feels. I want you to know her, for I’m sure you’ll like each other. You’ll stay to luncheon, won’t you?”
“I should be delighted,” Barry returned impulsively, then bit his lips as he remembered. “But, unfortunately, I’ve an engagement,” he went on after that momentary pause. “I hope you’ll let me call soon again, though, when she is at home. I haven’t heard what the rest of her name is yet.”
“How stupid of me! She’s Mrs. Ogden Wilmerding. Her husband has been dead about ten years, I believe, and this house and——”
But Lawrence heard no more. At the mention of that name, the smile seemed to freeze upon his lips, and something like a red-hot iron seared through his brain.
Mrs. Ogden Wilmerding! The eccentric widow of the traction magnate, who was said to be one of the five wealthiest women in New York! This accounted for the imposing house crammed with priceless works of art. This accounted for that sudden taking home of her niece and loading the girl with costly clothes and more costly jewels. It was more than likely that she would carry out her plan of adopting Shirley; it was just the sort of thing she would delight in doing. But stranger than anything else was the incredible fact that the girl should be ignorant of a name which was famous in New York.
With a tremendous effort Lawrence managed to pull himself together and nod understandingly as Miss Rives finished.
“That’s very interesting,” he said inanely. “But—er—had you never heard anything about this aunt before you saw her?”
“Almost nothing,” she confessed. “She quarreled with father, you know, and he wouldn’t allow her name to be mentioned in his presence. I suppose it got to be a sort of habit about the place; and, by the time I was old enough to take notice, the others had stopped talking about her, even when they were alone.”
With a brain which seemed heavy and dead, Barry tried to carry on his part of the conversation naturally and lightly; but presently the effort became more than flesh and blood could stand, and he rose to take his leave.
“You’ll come soon when Aunt Beverly is here?” Shirley questioned as she held out her hand. “I want very much to have you meet her.”
Barry’s fingers closed around hers, and he smiled naturally, heroically.
“Of course,” he returned quickly. “I should be delighted to come any time you want me. You can call me at the St. Albans, and, if I’m not there, leave your number with the clerk, and I’ll get your message when I come in.”
“That’s splendid,” she said. “I’ll call very soon. Good-by, and thank you for the flowers.”
With head high, Lawrence stepped through the doorway and let the velvet hangings fall into place behind him. But in the tapestry-lined hall he stumbled blindly, then, spurred by the presence of the footman, pulled himself together, and entered the elevator.
When at last he had donned his things and issued forth into the street, he turned instinctively southward without the slightest idea where he was going, and without a single backward glance at the upper window where a graceful, girlish form stood half revealed against a background of old rose damask.
His face was set and rather pale; his gray eyes showed dumbly a little of the despair which filled his soul at the presence of this tremendous, insurmountable barrier which had suddenly reared itself between him and the girl—he loved.