Amazing Grace Part 2

"But they're the skeleton in the closet," I repeated, having heard it expressed that way all my life.

She was angry for a moment, then she began laughing reminiscently and rocking herself backward and forward slowly in her chair. Her face was as detached and crazy as Ophelia's over her botany lesson, when she gets on your nerves with her: "There is pansies, that's for thoughts,"

and so forth.

"Yes, he left a skeleton--what was considered a skeleton in those days--Uncle James--our family's great man--but such a skeleton! People now would understand how wonderful it is--with its carved ivory bones--and golden joints and ruby eyes! _You little fool!_"

"Why, I'm proud!" I denied, backing back, all a-tremble. "I'll love those letters, Aunt Patricia."

"You'd better!"

"I'll be sure to," I reiterated, but her face suddenly softened, and she caught up my hand in her yellow claw. She studied the palm for a moment.

"You'll understand them," she sighed. "Poor little, heart-strong Christie!"

And, whether her words were prophetic or delirious, she had told the truth. I have understood them.

She gave them over into my keeping that day; and the next morning we found her settled back among her pillows, imagining that all her brothers and sisters were flying above the mantlepiece and that the Chinese vase was in danger. Another day pa.s.sed, and on Sunday afternoon all the wardrobe shelves yielded up their black bonnets.

I was not distressed, but I was lonely, with an ultra-Sabbathical repression over my spirits.

"I believe I'll amuse myself by reading over those old letters," I suggested to mother, as time dragged wearily before the crowd began to gather. But she uttered a shriek, with an ultra-Sabbathical repression over its tone.

"Grace, you amaze me!" she said.

"She's really a most American child!" Cousin Pollie p.r.o.nounced severely, having just finished doing the British Isles.

After this it seemed that years and years and years of the twentieth century pa.s.sed--all in a heap. I awoke one morning to find myself set in my ways. Most women, in the formation of their happiness, are willing to let nature take its course, then there are others who are not content with this, but demand a postgraduate course. I, unfortunately, belonged to this latter cla.s.s. Growing up I was fairly normal, not idle enough at school to forecast a brilliant career in any of the arts, nor studious enough to deserve a prediction of mediocre plodding the rest of my life; but after school came the deluge. I was restless, shabby and _single_--no one of which mother could endure in her daughter.

So I was a disappointment to her, while the rest of the tribe gloated.

The name, Grace, with all appurtenances and emoluments accruing thereto, availed nothing. I was a failure.

"My pet abomination begins with C," I chattered savagely to myself one afternoon in June, a suitable number of years after the above-mentioned christening, as I made my way to my own private desk in the office of _The Oldburgh Herald_, pondering family affairs in my heart as I went. "Of course this is at the bottom of the whole agony!

They just can't bear to see me turn out to be a newspaper reporter instead of Mrs. Guilford Blake. And I hate everything that they love best--cities, clothes, clubs, culture, civilities, conventions, chiffons!"

I was thinking of Cousin Pollie's comment when she first saw a feature story in the _Herald_ signed with my name.

"Is the girl named Grace or Disgrace?" she had asked. "Not since America was a wilderness has the name of any Christie woman appeared outside the head-lines of the society column!"

"The whole connection has raised its eyebrows," I laughed, when I met the owner and publisher of the paper down in his private office the next day. He was an old friend of the family, having fought beside my revered grandfather, and he had taken me into the family circle of the _Herald_ more out of sympathy than need.

"That's all right! It's better to raise an eyebrow than to raise h.e.l.l!" he laughed back.

But on the June afternoon I have in mind, when I hurried up-town thinking over my pet abominations beginning with C, I was still a fairly civilized being. I lived at home with mother in the old house, for one thing, instead of in an independent apartment, after the fashion of emanc.i.p.ated women--and I still wore Guilford Blake's heirloom scarab ring.

"Aren't your nerves a little on edge just now, Grace, from the scene this morning?" something kept whispering in my ears in an effort to tame my savagery. It was the soft virtuous personality of my inner consciousness, which, according to science, was Grandfather Moore.

"You'll be all right, my dear, as soon as you make up your mind to do the square thing about this matter which is agitating you. And of course you are going to do the square thing. Money isn't all there is."

"Now, that's all rot, parson!" Uncle Lancelot, in the other hemisphere of my brain, denied stoutly. "Don't listen to him, Grace! You can't go on living this crocheted life, and money will bring freedom."

"He's a sophist, Grace," came convincingly across the wires.

"He's a purist, Grace," flashed back.

"Hush! Hush! What do two old Kilkenny cats of ancestors know about my problems?" I cried fiercely. Then, partly to drown out their clamor, I kept on: "My pet abominations in several syllables are--checkered career--contiguous choice--just because his mother and mine lived next door when they were girls--circ.u.mscribed capabilities--"

"And the desire of your heart begins with H," Uncle Lancelot said triumphantly. "You want Happy Humanness--different brand and harder to get than Human Happiness--you want a House that is a Home, and above all else you want a Husband with a sense of Humor!"

"But how could this letter affect all this?" I asked myself, stopping at the foot of the steps to take a message in rich vellum stationery from my bag. "How can so much be contained in one little envelope?"

After all, this was what it said:

"My dear Miss Christie:

"While in Oldburgh recently on a visit to Mr. Clarence Wiley"--he was the author of blood-and-thunder detective stories who lived on Waverley Pike and raised pansies between times--"I learned that you are in possession of the love-letters written by the famous Lady Frances Webb to your ill.u.s.trious ancestor, James Mackenzie Christie. Mr. Wiley himself was my informer, and being a friend of your family was naturally able to give me much interesting information about the remaining evidences of this widely-discussed affair.

"No doubt the idea has occurred to you that the love-letters of a celebrated English novelist to the first American artist of his time would make valuable reading matter for the public; and the suggestion of these letters being done into a book has made such charming appeal to my mind that I resolved to put the matter before you without delay.

"To be perfectly plain and direct, this inheritance of yours can be made into a small fortune for you, since the material, properly handled, would make one of the best-selling books of the decade.

"If you are interested I shall be glad to hear from you, and we can then take up at once the business details of the transaction. Mr. Wiley spoke in such high praise of the literary value of the letters that my enthusiasm has been keenly aroused.

"With all good wishes, I am, "Very sincerely yours,

"Julien J. Dutweiler."

There was an embossed superscription on the envelope's flap which read: "Coburn-Colt Company, Publishers, Philadelphia." They were America's best-known promoters--the kind who could take six inches of advertising and a red-and-gold binding and make a mountain out of a mole-hill.

"'Small fortune!'" I repeated. "Surely a great temptation _does_ descend during a hungry spell--in real life, as well as in human doc.u.ments."

CHAPTER II

A GLIMPSE OF PROMISED LAND

"h.e.l.lo, Grace!"

I was pa.s.sing the society editor in her den a moment later, and she called out a cheery greeting, although she didn't look up from her task. She was polishing her finger-nails as busily as if she lived for her hands--not by them.

"h.e.l.lo, Jane!"

My very voice was out of alignment, however, as I spoke.

"Are you going to let all the world see that you're not a headstrong woman?" something inside my pride asked angrily, but as if for corroboration of my conscientious whisperings, I looked in a shamefaced way at the lines of my palm.--The head-line _was_ weak and isolated--while the heart-line was as crisscrossed as a centipede track!

But a heart-line has nothing at all to do with a city editor's desk--certainly not on a day when the crumpled b.a.l.l.s of copy paper lying about his waste-basket look as if a woman had thrown them! Every one had missed its mark, and up and down the length of the room the typewriters were clicking falsetto notes. The files of papers on the table were in as much confusion as patterns for heathen petticoats at a missionary meeting.