Mitsubishi Fuso Trucks ALL Regions

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EnglishRegion: Europe, General Export, USA, MexicoType: Mitsubishi trucks
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Mrs. Hawley-Crowles had likewise a slight trace of that clairvoyance
of wisdom which so characterized the girl. But with this difference,
that she knew not why she was led to adopt certain means; while
Carmen, penetrating externals, consciously sought to turn those who
would employ her into channels for the expression of her own
dominant thought. Be that as it may, the Beaubien was now the
stone before the door of their hope, and Carmen the lever by which
these calculating women intended it should be moved.
“The Beaubien, my dear,” explained Mrs. Hawley-Crowles to her
inquisitive sister, whose life had been lived almost entirely away from
New York, “is J. Wilton Ames’s very particular friend, of long
standing. As I told you, I have recently been going through my late
unpleasant husband’s effects, and have unearthed letters and
memoranda which throw floods of light upon Jim’s early indiscretions
and his association with both the Beaubien and Ames. Jim once told
me, in a burst of alcoholic confidence, that she had saved him from
J. Wilton’s clutches in the dim past, and for that he owed her endless
gratitude, as well as for never permitting him to darken her door
again. Now I have never met the Beaubien. Few women have. But I
dare say she knows all about us. However, the point that concerns
us now is this: she has a hold on Ames, and, unless rumor is wide of
the truth, when she hints to him that his wife’s dinner list or yachting
party seems incomplete without such or such a name, why, the list is
immediately revised.”
The position which the Beaubien held was, if Madam On-dit was not
to be wholly discredited, to say the least, unique. It was not as
social dictator that she posed, for in a great cosmopolitan city where
polite society is infinitely complex in its make-up such a position can
scarcely be said to exist. It was rather as an influence that she was
felt, an influence never seen, but powerful, subtle, and wholly
inexplicable, working now through this channel, now through that,
and effecting changes in the social complexion of conservative New
York that were utterly in defiance of the most rigid convention.
Particularly was her power felt in the narrow circle over which Mrs. J.
Wilton Ames presided, by reason of her own and her husband’s
aristocratic descent, and the latter’s bursting coffers and supremacy
in the realm of finance.
Only for her sagacity, the great influence of the woman would have
been short-lived. But, whatever else might be said of her, the
Beaubien was wise, with a discretion that was positively uncanny.
Tall, voluptuous, yet graceful as a fawn; black, wavy, abundant hair;
eyes whose dark, liquid depths held unfathomable mysteries; 68

gracious, affable, yet keen as a razor blade; tender, even sentimental

on occasions, with an infinite capacity for either love or hate, this
many-sided woman, whose brilliant flashes of wit kept the savant or
roué at her table in an uproar, could, if occasion required, found an
orphanage or drop a bichloride tablet in the glass of her rival with
the same measure of calculating precision and disdain of the future.
It was said of her that she might have laid down her life for the man
she loved. It is probable that she never met with one worth the
sacrifice.
While yet in short dresses she had fled from her boarding school,
near a fashionable resort in the New Hampshire hills, with a French
Colonel, Gaspard de Beaubien, a man twice her age. With him she
had spent eight increasingly miserable years in Paris. Then, her
withered romance carefully entombed in the secret places of her
heart, she secured a divorce from the roistering colonel, together
with a small settlement, and set sail for New York to hunt for larger
and more valuable game.
With abundant charms and sang-froid for her capital, she rented an
expensive apartment in a fashionable quarter of the city, and then
settled down to business. Whether she would have fallen upon bad
days or not will never be known, for the first haul of her widespread
net landed a fish of supreme quality, J. Wilton Ames. On the plea of
financial necessity, she had gone boldly to his office with the deed to
a parcel of worthless land out on the moist sands of the New Jersey
shore, which the unscrupulous Gaspard de Beaubien had settled
upon her when she severed the tie which bound them, and which,
after weeks of careful research, she discovered adjoined a tract
owned by Ames. Pushing aside office boy, clerk, and guard, she
reached the inner sanctum of the astonished financier himself and
offered to sell at a ruinous figure. A few well-timed tears, an
expression of angelic innocence on her beautiful face, a despairing
gesture or two with her lovely arms, coupled with the audacity which
she had shown in forcing an entrance into his office, effected the
man’s capitulation. She was then in her twenty-fourth year.
The result was that she cast her net no more, but devoted herself
thenceforth with tender consecration to her important catch. In time
Ames brought a friend, the rollicking James Hawley-Crowles, to call
upon the charming Beaubien. In time, too, as was perfectly natural,
a rivalry sprang up between the men, which the beautiful creature
watered so tenderly that the investments which she was enabled to
make under the direction of these powerful rivals flourished like
Jack’s beanstalk, and she was soon able to leave her small
apartment and take a suite but a few blocks from the Ames
mansion.
At length the strain between Ames and Hawley-Crowles reached the69

breaking point; and then the former decided that the woman’s
bewitching smiles should thenceforth be his alone. He forthwith
drew the seldom sober Hawley-Crowles into certain business deals,
with the gentle connivance of the suave Beaubien herself, and at
length sold the man out short and presented a claim on every dollar
he possessed. Hawley-Crowles awoke from his blissful dream sober
and trimmed. But then the Beaubien experienced one of her rare
and inexplicable revulsions of the ethical sense, and a compromise
had to be effected, whereby the Hawley-Crowles fortune was saved,
though the man should see the Beaubien no more.
By this time her beauty was blooming in its utmost profusion, and
her prowess had been fairly tried. She took a large house, furnished
it like unto a palace, and proceeded to throw her gauntlet in the face
of the impregnable social caste. There she drew about her a circle of
bon-vivants, artists, littérateurs, politicians, and men of finance––
with never a woman in the group. Yet in her new home she
established a social code as rigid as the Median law, and woe to him
within her gates who thereafter, with or without intent, passed the
bounds of respectful decorum. His name was heard no more on her
rosy lips.
Her dinners were Lucullan in their magnificence; and over the rare
wines and imperial cigars which she furnished, her guests passed
many a tip and prognostication anent the market, which she in turn
quietly transmitted to her brokers. She came to understand the
game thoroughly, and, while it was her heyday of glorious splendor,
she played hard. She had bartered every priceless gift of nature for
gold––and she made sure that the measure she received in return
was full. Her gaze was ever upon the approaching day when those
charms would be but bitter memories; and it was her grim intention
that when it came silken ease should compensate for their loss.
Ten years passed, and the Beaubien’s reign continued with
undimmed splendor. In the meantime, the wife of J. Wilton Ames
had reached the zenith of her ambitions and was the acknowledged
leader in New York’s most fashionable social circle. These two
women never met. But, though the Beaubien had never sought the
entrée to formal society, preferring to hold her own court, at which
no women attended, she exercised a certain control over it through
her influence upon the man Ames. What Mrs. Ames knew of the
long-continued relations between her husband and this woman was
never divulged. And doubtless she was wholly satisfied that his 70

wealth and power afforded her the position which her heart had
craved; and, that secure, she was willing to leave him to his own
methods of obtaining diversion. But rumor was persistent,
maliciously so; and rumor declared that the list of this envied society
dame was not drawn up without the approval of her husband and
the woman with whom his leisure hours were invariably spent.
Hence the hope of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, whose doting mate had
once fawned in the perfumed wake of the luxurious Beaubien.
Carmen, whose wishes had not been consulted, had voiced no
objection whatever to returning to the Hawley-Crowles home.
Indeed, she secretly rejoiced that an opportunity had been so easily
afforded for escape from the stifling atmosphere of the Elwin school,
and for entrance into the great world of people and affairs, where
she believed the soil prepared for the seed she would plant. That
dire surprises awaited her, of which she could not even dream, did
not enter her calculations. Secure in her quenchless faith, she gladly
accepted the proffered shelter of the Hawley-Crowles mansion, and
the protection of its worldly, scheming inmates.
In silent, wide-eyed wonder, in the days that followed, the girl strove
to accustom herself to the luxury of her surroundings, and to the
undreamed of marvels which made for physical comfort and well-
being. Each installment of the ample allowance which Mrs. Hawley-
Crowles settled upon her seemed a fortune––enough, she thought,
to buy the whole town of Simití! Her gowns seemed woven on fairy
looms, and often she would sit for hours, holding them in her lap
and reveling in their richness. Then, when at length she could bring
herself to don the robes and peep timidly into the great pier glasses,
she would burst into startled exclamations and hide her face in her
hands, lest the gorgeous splendor of the beautiful reflection
overpower her.
“Oh,” she would exclaim, “it can’t be that the girl reflected there ever
lived and dressed as I did in Simití! I wonder, oh, I wonder if Padre
Josè knew that these things were in the world!”
And then, as she leaned back in her chair and gave herself into the
hands of the admiring French maid, she would close her eyes and
dream that the fairy-stories which the patient Josè had told her
again and again in her distant home town had come true, and that
she had been transformed into a beautiful princess, who would some
day go in search of the sleeping priest and wake him from his
mesmeric dream.
Then would come the inevitable thought of the little newsboy of
Cartagena, to whom she had long since begun to send monetary 71

contributions––and of her unanswered letters––of the war

devastating her native land––of rudely severed ties, and
unimaginable changes––and she would start from her musing and
brush away the gathering tears, and try to realize that her present
situation and environment were but means to an end, opportunities
which her God had given her to do His work, with no thought of
herself.
A few days after Carmen had been installed in her new home, during
which she had left the house only for her diurnal ride in the big
limousine, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles announced her readiness to fire the
first gun in the attack upon the Beaubien. “My dear,” she said to her
sister, as they sat alone in the luxurious sun-parlor, “my
washerwoman dropped a remark the other day which gave me
something to build on. Her two babies are in the General Orphan
Asylum, up on Twenty-third street. Well, it happens that this
institution is the Beaubien’s sole charity––in fact, it is her particular
hobby. I presume that she feels she is now a middle-aged woman,
and that the time is not far distant when she will have to close up
her earthly accounts and hand them over to the heavenly auditor.
Anyway, this last year or two she has suddenly become
philanthropic, and when the General Orphan Asylum was building
she gave some fifty thousand dollars for a cottage in her name.
What’s more, the trustees of the Asylum accepted it without the
wink of an eyelash. Funny, isn’t it?
“But here’s the point: some rich old fellow has willed the institution a
fund whose income every year is used to buy clothing for the
kiddies; and they have a sort of celebration on the day the duds are
given out, and the public is invited to inspect the place and the
inmates, and eat a bit, and look around generally. Well, my
washerwoman tells me that the Beaubien always attends these
annual celebrations. The next one, I learn, comes in about a month.
I propose that we attend; take Carmen; ask permission for her to
sing to the children, and thereby attract the attention of the
gorgeous Beaubien, who will be sure to speak to the girl, who is
herself an orphan, and, ten to one, want to see more of her. The
rest is easy. I’ll have a word to say regarding our immense debt of
gratitude to her for saving Jim’s fortune years ago when he was
entangled in her net––and, well, if that scheme doesn’t work, I have
other strings to my bow.”
But it did work, and with an ease that exceeded the most sanguine
hopes of its projector. On the day that the General Orphan Asylum
threw wide its doors to the public, the Hawley-Crowles limousine
rubbed noses with the big French car of the Beaubien in the street
without; while within the building the Beaubien held the hand of the
72

beautiful girl whose voluntary singing had spread a veil of silence

over the awed spectators in the great assembly room, and, looking
earnestly down into the big, trusting, brown eyes, said: “My dear
child, I want to know you.” Then, turning to the eager, itching Mrs.
Hawley-Crowles, “I shall send my car for her to-morrow afternoon,
with your permission.”
With her permission! Heavens! Mrs. Hawley-Crowles wildly hugged
her sister and the girl all the way home––then went to bed that
night with tears of apprehension in her washed-out eyes, lest she
had shown herself too eager in granting the Beaubien’s request. But
her fears were turned to exultation when the Beaubien car drew up
at her door the following day at three, and the courteous French
chauffeur announced his errand. A few moments later, while the car
glided purring over the smooth asphalt, Carmen, robed like a
princess, lay back in the cushions and dreamed of the poor priest in
the dead little town so far away.
 CHAPTER 9

“Sing it again, dear. I know you are tired, but I want to hear that
song just once more. Somehow it seems to bring up thoughts of––of
things that might have been.” The Beaubien’s voice sank to a
whisper as she finished.
Carmen laughed happily and prepared to repeat the weird lament
which had so fascinated the Reverend Doctor Jurges a few days
before.
“I––I don’t know why that song affects me so,” mused the Beaubien,
when the girl had finished and returned to the seat beside her. Then,
abruptly: “I wish you could play the pipe-organ out in the hall. I put
twelve thousand dollars into it, and I can’t even play five-finger
exercises on it.”
“Twelve thousand dollars!” exclaimed Carmen, drawing a long
breath, while her eyes dilated.
The woman laughed. “Would that buy your beloved Simití?” she
asked. “Well, you poor, unsophisticated girl, suppose we just go
down there and buy the whole town. It would at least give me an
interest in life. Do you think I could stand the heat there? But tell me
more about it. How did you live, and what did you do? And who is
this Josè? And are you really descended from the old Incas?”
They were alone in the darkened music room, and the soft-stepping,
liveried butler had just set the tea table before them, At one end 73of
the long room a cheery fire snapped and crackled in the huge
fireplace, tempering the sharpness of the early spring day and
casting a ruddy glow upon the tapestried walls and polished floor in
front, where dozed the Beaubien’s two “babies,” Japanese and
Pekingese spaniels of registered pedigree and fabulous value.
Among the heavy beams of the lofty ceiling grotesque shadows
danced and flickered, while over the costly rugs and rare skins on
the floor below subdued lights played in animated pantomime.
Behind the magnificent grand piano a beautifully wrought harp
reflected a golden radiance into the room. Everything in the woman’s
environment was softened into the same degree of voluptuousness
which characterized her and the life of sybaritic ease which she
affected.
From the moment Carmen entered the house she had been
charmed, fascinated, overpowered by the display of exhaustless
wealth and the rich taste exhibited in its harmonious manifestation.
The Hawley-Crowles home had seemed to her the epitome of
material elegance and comfort, far exceeding the most fantastic
concepts of her childish imagination, when she had listened
enraptured to Padre Josè’s compelling stories of the great world
beyond Simití. But the gorgeous web of this social spider made even
the Hawley-Crowles mansion suffer in comparison.
“And yet,” said the amused Beaubien, when Carmen could no longer
restrain her wonder and admiration, “this is but a shed beside the
new Ames house, going up on Fifth Avenue. I presume he will put
not less than ten millions into it before it is finished.”
“Ten millions! In just a house!” Carmen dared not attempt to grasp
the complex significance of such an expenditure.
“Why, is that such a huge amount, child?” asked the Beaubien, as
accustomed to think in eight figures as in two. “But, I forget that you
are from the jungle. Yet, who would imagine it?” she mused, gazing
with undisguised admiration at the beautiful, animated girl before
her.
Silence then fell upon them both. Carmen was struggling with the
deluge of new impressions; and the woman fastened her eyes upon
her as if she would have them bore deep into the soul of whose
rarity she was becoming slowly aware. What thoughts coursed
through the mind of the Beaubien as she sat studying the girl
through the tempered light, we may not know. What she saw in
Carmen that attracted her, she herself might not have told. Had she,
too, this ultra-mondaine, this creature of gold and tinsel, felt the
spell of the girl’s great innocence and purity of thought, her
righteousness? Or did she see in her something that she herself 74

might once have been––something that all her gold, and all the
wealth of Ormus or of Ind could never buy?
“What have you got,” she suddenly, almost rudely, exclaimed, “that I
haven’t?” And then the banality of the question struck her, and she
laughed harshly.
“Why,” said Carmen, looking up quickly and beaming upon the
woman, “you have everything! Oh, what more could you wish?”
“You,” returned the woman quickly, though she knew not why she
said it. And yet, memory was busy uncovering those bitter days
when, in the first agony of marital disappointment, she had, with
hot, streaming tears, implored heaven to give her a child. But the
gift had been denied; and her heart had shrunk and grown heavily
calloused.
Then she spoke more gently, and there was that in her voice which
stirred the girl’s quick sympathy. “Yes, you have youth, and beauty.
They are mine no longer. But I could part with them, gladly, if only
there were anything left.”
Carmen instantly rose and went swiftly to her. Forgetful of caste,
decorum, convention, everything but the boundless love which she
felt for all mankind, she put her arms about the worldly woman’s
neck and kissed her.
For a moment the Beaubien sat in speechless surprise. It was the
only manifestation of selfless love that had ever come into her sordid
experience. Was it possible that this was spontaneous? that it was
an act of real sympathy, and not a clever ruse to win her from
behind the mask of affection? Her own kisses, she knew, were
bestowed only for favors. Alas! they drew not many now, although
time was when a single one might win a brooch or a string of pearls.
The girl herself quickly met the woman’s groping thought. “I’m in the
world to show what love will do,” she murmured; “and I love you.”
Had she not thus solved every problem from earliest childhood?
The Beaubien melted. Not even a heart of stone could withstand the
solvent power of such love. Her head dropped upon her breast, and
she wept.
“Don’t cry,” said Carmen, tenderly caressing the bepowdered cheek.
“Why, we are all God’s children; we all have one another; you have
me, and I have you; and God means us all to be happy.”
The Beaubien looked up, wondering. Her variegated life included no
such tender experience as this. She had long since ceased to shed
aught but tears of anger. But now––
She clutched the girl to her and kissed her eagerly; then gently75

motioned her back to her chair. “Don’t mind it,” she smiled, with
swimming eyes, and a shade of embarrassment. “I don’t know of
anything that would help me as much as a good cry. If I could have
had a daughter like you, I should––but never mind now.” She tried
to laugh, as she wiped her eyes.
Then an idea seemed to flash through her jaded brain, and she
became suddenly animated. “Why––listen,” she said; “don’t you
want to learn the pipe-organ? Will you come here and take lessons?
I will pay for them; I will engage the best teacher in New York; and
you shall take two or three a week, and use the big organ out in the
hall. Will you?”
Carmen’s heart gave a great leap. “Oh!” she exclaimed, her eyes
dancing. “But I must ask Mrs. Reed, you know.”
“I’ll do it myself,” returned the woman with growing enthusiasm.
“William,” she directed, when the butler responded to her summons,
“get Mrs. Hawley-Crowles on the wire at once. But who is coming, I
wonder?” glancing through the window at an automobile that had
drawn up at her door. “Humph!” a look of vexation mantling her
face, “the Right Reverend Monsignor Lafelle. Well,” turning to
Carmen, “I suppose I’ll have to send you home now, dear. But tell
Mrs. Hawley-Crowles that I shall call for you to-morrow afternoon,
and that I shall speak to her at that time about your music lessons.
William, take Monsignor into the morning room, and then tell Henri
to bring the car to the porte-cochère for Miss Carmen. Good-bye,
dear,” kissing the bright, upturned face of the waiting girl. “I wish I
could––but, well, don’t forget that I’m coming for you to-morrow.”
That afternoon Mrs. Hawley-Crowles directed her French tailor to
cable to Paris for advance styles. Twenty-four hours later she
hastened with outstretched arms to greet the Beaubien, waiting in
the reception room. Oh, yes, they had heard often of each other;
and now were so pleased to meet! New York was such a whirlpool,
and it was so difficult to form desirable friendships. Yes, the
Beaubien had known the late-lamented Hawley-Crowles; but, dear!
dear! that was years and years ago, before he had married, and
when they were both young and foolish. And––
“My dear Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, chance enabled him and me to be
mutually helpful at a time when I was in sore need of a friend; and
the debt of gratitude is not yours to me, but mine to your kind
husband.”
Mrs. Hawley-Crowles could have hugged her on the spot. What
cared she that her husband’s always unsavory name had been linked
with this woman’s? She had married the roistering blade for his bank
76

account only. Any other male whose wealth ran into seven figures
would have done as well, or better.
And Carmen? Bless you, no! To be sure, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles
gratefully accepted the use of the organ and the Beaubien mansion
for the girl; but she herself insisted upon bearing the expense of the
lessons. Carmen had wonderful musical talent. Together, she and the
Beaubien, they would foster and develop it. Moreover, though of
course this must follow later, she intended to give the girl every
social advantage befitting her beauty, her talents, and her station.
And then, when the Beaubien, who knew to a second just how long
to stay, had departed, taking Carmen with her, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles
turned to her sister with her face flushed with anger. “Did you see
that?” she exclaimed, while hot tears suffused her eyes. “The hussy
went away actually laughing at me! What do you suppose she’s got
up her sleeve? But, let me tell you, she’ll not fool me! I’ll slap that
arrogant Ames woman yet; and then, when I’ve done that, I’ll give
the Beaubien something to think about besides the way she did up
poor old Jim!”

There was now but one cloud that cast its dark shadow across the
full splendor of Carmen’s happiness, the silence that shrouded Simití.
But Harris was preparing to return to Colombia, and his trip
promised a solution of the mystery of her unanswered letters. For
weeks Carmen had struggled to teach him Spanish, with but small
measure of success. The gift of tongues was not his. “You’ll have to
go back with me and act as interpreter,” he said one day, when they
were alone in the Hawley-Crowles parlor. Then a curious light came
into his eyes, and he blurted, “Will you?”
But the girl turned the question aside with a laugh, though she knew
not from what depths it had sprung. Harris shrugged his broad
shoulders and sighed. He had not a hundred dollars to his name.
Yet he had prospects, not the least of which was the interest he
shared with Reed in La Libertad. For, despite the disturbed state of
affairs in Colombia, Simití stock had sold rapidly, under the sedulous
care of Ketchim and his loyal aids, and a sufficient fund had been
accumulated to warrant the inauguration of development work on
the mine. A few years hence Harris should be rich from that source
alone.
Reed was still in California, although the alluring literature which
Ketchim was scattering broadcast bore his name as consulting
engineer to the Simití Development Company. His wife had 77

continued her temporary abode in the Hawley-Crowles mansion,

while awaiting with what fortitude she could command the passing
of her still vigorous father, and the results of her defiant sister’s
assaults upon the Ames set.
Carmen’s days were crowded full. The wonderful organ in the
Beaubien mansion had cast a spell of enchantment over her soul,
and daily she sat before it, uncovering new marvels and losing
herself deeper and deeper in its infinite mysteries. Her progress was
commensurate with her consecration, and brought exclamations of
astonishment to the lips of her now devoted Beaubien. Hour after
hour the latter would sit in the twilight of the great hall, with her
eyes fastened upon the absorbed girl, and her leaden soul slowly,
painfully struggling to lift itself above the murk and dross in which it
had lain buried for long, meaningless years. They now talked but
little, this strange woman and the equally strange girl. Their
communion was no longer of the lips. It was the silent yearning of a
dry, desolate heart, striving to open itself to the love which the girl
was sending far and wide in the quenchless hope that it might meet
just such a need. For Carmen dwelt in the spirit, and she instinctively
accepted her splendid material environment as the gift, not of man,
but of the great divine Mind, which had led her into this new world
that she might be a channel for the expression of its love to the
erring children of mortals.
She came and went quietly, and yet with as much confidence as if
the house belonged to her. At first the Beaubien smiled indulgently.
And then her smile became a laugh of eager joy as she daily greeted
her radiant visitor, whose entrance into the great, dark house was
always followed by a flood of sunshine, and whose departure
marked the setting in of night to the heart-hungry woman. In the
first days of their association the Beaubien could turn easily from the
beautiful girl to the group of cold, scheming men of the world who
filled her evenings and sat about her board. But as days melted into
weeks, she became dimly conscious of an effort attaching to the
transition; and the hour at length arrived when she fully realized that
she was facing the most momentous decision that had ever been
evolved by her worldly mode of living. But that was a matter of slow
development through many months.
Meantime, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles trod the clouds. A week after
Carmen began the study of the organ she boldly ventured to
accompany her one day to the Beaubien citadel. She was graciously
received, and departed with the Beaubien’s promise to return the
call. Thereupon she set about revising her own social list, and
dropped several names which she now felt could serve her no
longer. Her week-end at Newport, just prior to her visit to the Elwin
78

school, had marked the close of the gay season in the city, and New
York had entered fully upon its summer siesta. Even the theaters
and concert halls were closed, and the metropolis was nodding its
weary head dully and sinking into somnolence. It was exactly what
Mrs. Hawley-Crowles desired. The summer interim would give her
time to further her plans and prepare the girl for her social début in
the early winter. “And Milady Ames will be mentioned in the papers
next day as assisting at the function––the cat!” she muttered
savagely, as she laid aside her revised list of social desirables.
But in preparing Carmen that summer for her subsequent entry into
polite society Mrs. Hawley-Crowles soon realized that she had
assumed a task of generous proportions. In the first place, despite
all efforts, the girl could not be brought to a proper sense of money
values. Her eyes were ever gaping in astonishment at what Mrs.
Hawley-Crowles and her sister regarded as the most moderate of
expenditures, and it was only when the Beaubien herself mildly
hinted to them that ingenuousness was one of the girl’s greatest
social assets, that they learned to smile indulgently at her wonder,
even while inwardly pitying her dense ignorance and lack of
sophistication.
A second source of trial to her guardians was her delicate sense of
honor; and it was this that one day nearly sufficed to wreck their
standing with the fashionable Mrs. Gannette of Riverside Drive, a
pompous, bepowdered, curled and scented dame, anaemic of mind,
but tremendously aristocratic, and of scarcely inferior social dignity
to that of the envied Mrs. Ames. For, when Mrs. Gannette moved
into the neighborhood where dwelt the ambitious Mrs. Hawley-
Crowles, the latter was taken by a mutual acquaintance to call upon
her, and was immediately received into the worldly old lady’s good
graces. And it so happened that, after the gay season had closed
that summer, Mrs. Gannette invited Mrs. Hawley-Crowles and her
sister to an informal afternoon of bridge, and especially requested
that they bring their young ward, whose beauty and wonderful story
were, through the discreet maneuvers of her guardians, beginning to
be talked about. For some weeks previously Mrs. Hawley-Crowles
had been inducting Carmen into the mysteries of the game; but with
indifferent success, for the girl’s thoughts invariably were elsewhere
engaged. On this particular afternoon Carmen was lost in
contemplation of the gorgeous dress, the lavish display of jewelry,
and the general inanity of conversation; and her score was pitiably
low. The following morning, to her great astonishment, she received
a bill from the practical Mrs. Gannette for ten dollars to cover her 79

losses at the game. For a long time the bewildered girl mused over
it. Then she called the chauffeur and despatched him to the
Gannette mansion with the money necessary to meet the gambling
debt, and three dollars additional to pay for the refreshments she
had eaten, accompanying it with a polite little note of explanation.
The result was an explosion that nearly lifted the asphalt from the
Drive; and Carmen, covered with tears and confusion, was given to
understand by the irate Mrs. Hawley-Crowles that her conduct was
as reprehensible as if she had attacked the eminent Mrs. Gannette
with an axe. Whereupon the sorrowing Carmen packed her effects
and prepared to depart from the presence of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles,
to the terrified consternation of the latter, who alternately prostrated
herself before the girl and the offended Mrs. Gannette, and at
length, after many days of perspiring effort and voluminous
explanation, succeeded in restoring peace.
When the Beaubien, who had become the girl’s confidante, learned
the story, she laughed till her sides ached. And then her lips set, and
her face grew terribly hard, and she muttered, “Fools!” But she
smiled again as she gathered the penitent girl in her arms, and
kissed her.
“You will learn many things, dearie, before you are through with
New York. And,” she added, her brow again clouding, “you will be
through with it––some day!”
That evening she repeated the story at her table, and Gannette, who
happened to be present, swore between roars of laughter that he
would use it as a club over his wife, should she ever again trap him
in any of his numerous indiscretions.
Again, the girl’s odd views of life and its meaning which, despite her
efforts, she could not refrain from voicing now and then, caused the
worldly Mrs. Hawley-Crowles much consternation. Carmen tried
desperately to be discreet. Even Harris advised her to listen much,
but say little; and she strove hard to obey. But she would forget and
hurl the newspapers from her with exclamations of horror over their
red-inked depictions of mortal frailty––she would flatly refuse to
discuss crime or disease––and she would comment disparagingly at
too frequent intervals on the littleness of human aims and the
emptiness of the peacock-life which she saw manifested about her.
“I don’t understand––I can’t,” she would say, when she was alone
with the Beaubien. “Why, with the wonderful opportunities which
you rich people have, how can you––oh, how can you toss them
aside for the frivolities and littleness that you all seem to be striving
for! It seems to me you must be mad––loco! And I know you are,
for you are simply mesmerized!”
Then the Beaubien would smile knowingly and take her in her arms.
80

“We shall see,” she would often say, “we shall see.” But she would
offer no further comment.
Thus the summer months sped swiftly past, with Carmen ever
looking and listening, receiving, sifting, in, but not of, the new world
into which she had been cast. In a sense her existence was as
narrowly routined as ever it had been in Simití, for her days were
spent at the great organ, with frequent rides in the automobile
through the parks and boulevards for variation; and her evenings
were jealously guarded by Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, whose policy was
to keep the girl in seclusion until the advent of her formal
introduction to the world of fashionable society, when her associates
would be selected only from the narrow circle of moneyed or titled
people with whom alone she might mingle. To permit her to form
promiscuous acquaintances now might prove fatal to the scheming
woman’s cherished plans, and was a risk that could not be
entertained. And Carmen, suppressing her wonder, and striving
incessantly to curb her ready tongue, accepted her environment as
the unreal expression of the human mind, and submitted––and
waited.
 CHAPTER 10

The chill blasts had begun to swoop down from the frozen North,
and summer had gathered her dainty robes about her and fled
shivering before them. Mrs. Hawley-Crowles stood at a window and
gazed with unseeing eyes at the withered leaves tossing in the wind.
Carmen’s sixteenth birthday was past by some months; the gay
season was at hand; and the day was speeding toward her which
she had set for the girl’s formal début. Already, through informal
calls and gatherings, she had made her charming and submissive
ward known to most of her own city acquaintances and the
members of her particular set. The fresh, beautiful girl’s winning
personality; her frank, ingenuous manner; her evident sincerity and
her naïve remarks, which now only gave hints of her radical views,
had opened every heart wide to her, and before the advent of the
social season her wonderful story was on everybody’s tongue. There
remained now only the part which the woman had planned for the
Beaubien, but which, thus far, she had found neither the courage nor
the opportunity to suggest to that influential woman. Gazing out into
the deserted street, she stamped her ample foot in sheer vexation.
The Beaubien had absorbed Carmen; had been politely affable 81to
her and her sister; had called twice during the summer; and had
said nothing. But what was there for her to say? The hint must come
from the other side; and Mrs. Hawley-Crowles could have wept with
chagrin as she reflected gloomily on her own timorous spirit.
But as she stood in dejection before the window a vague idea flitted
into her brain, and she clutched at it desperately. Carmen had
spoken of the frequent calls of a certain Monsignor Lafelle at the
Beaubien mansion, although the girl had never met him. Now why
did he go there? “Humph!” muttered Mrs. Hawley-Crowles. “Old
Gaspard de Beaubien was a French Catholic.”
But what had that to do with Carmen? Nothing––except––why, to be
sure, the girl came from a Catholic country, and therefore was a
Catholic! Mrs. Hawley-Crowles chuckled. That was worth developing
a little further. “Let us see,” she reflected, “Kathleen Ames is coming
out this winter, too. Just about Carmen’s age. Candidate for her
mother’s social position, of course. Now the Ames family are all
Presbyterians. The Reverend Darius Borwell, D.D., L.L.D., and any
other D. that will keep him glued to his ten-thousand-dollar salary,
hooked them early in the game. Now suppose––suppose Lafelle
should tell the Beaubien that––that there’s––no, that won’t do! But
suppose I tell him that here’s a chance for him to back a Catholic
against a Protestant for the highest social honors in New York––
Carmen versus Kathleen––what would he say? Humph! I’m just as
good a Catholic as Protestant. Jim was Irish––clear through. And
Catholic, Methodist, or Hard-shell Baptist, as suited his needs. He
played ’em all. Suppose I should tip it off to Lafelle that I’m smitten
with the pious intention of donating an altar to Holy Saints Cathedral
in memory of my late, unlamented consort––what then? It’s worth
considering, anyway. Yes, it’s not a bad idea at all.”
And thus it was that a few days later Mrs. Hawley-Crowles timed it
so carefully that she chanced to call on the Beaubien with Carmen
shortly after Monsignor Lafelle’s car had pulled up at the same door.
It was the merest accident, too, that Carmen led her puffing
guardian directly into the morning room, where sat the Beaubien
and Monsignor in earnest conversation. Mrs. Hawley-Crowles would
have retired at once, stammering apologies, and reprimanding
Carmen for her assumption of liberties in another’s house; but the
Beaubien was grace and cordiality itself, and she insisted on
retaining her three callers and making them mutually acquainted.
With the ice thus broken, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles found it easy to take
the contemplated plunge. Therefore she smiled triumphantly when, 82

a week later, Monsignor Lafelle alighted at her own door, in response

to a summons on matters pertaining to the Church.