No. 13 Washington Square Part 1

No. 13 Washington Square.

by Leroy Scott.

CHAPTER I

THE GREAT MRS. DE PEYSTER

It was a raw, ill-humored afternoon, yet too late in the spring for the ministration of steam heat, so the unseasonable May chill was banished from Mrs. De Peyster's sitting-room by a wood fire that crackled in the grate; crackled most decorously, be it added, for Mrs. De Peyster's fire would no more have forgotten itself and shown a boisterous enthusiasm than would one of her admirably trained servants. Beside a small steel safe, whose outer sh.e.l.l of exquisite cabinet-work transformed that fortress against burglarious desire into an article of furniture that harmonized with the comfortable elegance of a lady's boudoir, sat Mrs. De Peyster herself--she was born a De Peyster--carefully transferring her jewels from the trays of the safe to leathern cases. She looked quite as Mrs. De Peyster should have looked: with an aura of high dignity that a sixty-year-old dowager of the first water could not surpa.s.s, yet with a freshness of person that (had it not been for her dignity) might have made her early forties seem a blossomy thirty-five.

Before the well-bred fire sat a lady whose tears had long since dried that she had shed when she had bid good-bye to thirty. She was--begging the lady's pardon--a trifle spare, and a trifle pale, and though in a manner well enough dressed her clothes had an air of bewilderment, of general irresolution, as though each article was uncertain in its mind as to whether it purposed to remain where it had been put, or casually wander away on blind and timorous adventures.

A dozen years before, Mrs. De Peyster, then in the fifth year of her widowhood, had graciously undertaken to manage and underwrite the debut of her second cousin (not of the main line, be it said) and had tried to discharge her duty in the important matter of securing her a husband. But her efforts had been futile, and to say that Mrs. De Peyster had not succeeded was to admit that poor Olivetta Harmon was indeed a failure. She had lacked the fortune to attract the conservative investor who is looking for a sound business proposition in her he promises to support; she had lacked the good looks to lure on the lover who throws himself romantically away upon a penniless pretty face; and she had not been clever enough to attract the man so irrationally bold as to set sail upon the sea of matrimony with a woman of brains. And so, her brief summer at an end, she had receded to those remote and undiscovered sh.o.r.es on which dwell the poor relations of the Four Hundred; whereon she had lived respectably, as a lady (for that she should ever appear a lady was due the position of Mrs. De Peyster), upon an almost microscopic income; and from which bleak and distant land of second-cousindom she came in glad and proud obedience to fill an occasional vacant place at one of Mrs. De Peyster's second-best dinner parties.

She had arrived but the moment before to bid her exalted cousin adieu and wish her _bon-voyage_, and was now silently gazing in unenvious admiration at the jewels Mrs. De Peyster was transferring to their traveling-cases--with never a guess that perturbation might exist beneath her kinswoman's composed exterior. As a matter of fact, under the trying circ.u.mstances which confronted Mrs. De Peyster, any other household would have been in confusion, any lesser woman might have been headed toward hysteria. But centuries of having had its own will had established the De Peyster habit of believing that things would eventuate according to the De Peyster wish; it was not in the De Peyster blood to give way. And yet, though self-control might restrain worry from the surface, it could not banish it from the private chambers of her being.

Mrs. De Peyster glanced at the open door of her bedroom--hesitated--then called: "Miss Gardner!"

A trim and pretty girl stepped in. "Yes, Mrs. De Peyster."

"Will you please call up Judge Harvey's office once more, and inquire if there is any news about my son. And ask when Judge Harvey will be here."

Miss Gardner crossed to Mrs. De Peyster's desk and took up the telephone.

"Why, Cousin Caroline, has Jack--"

"One moment, Olivetta,"--motioning toward the telephone,--"until Miss Gardner is through."

They sat silent until the receiver was hung up. Mrs. De Peyster strove to keep anxiety from her voice.

"Well, Miss Gardner,--any trace of my son yet?"

"They have learned nothing whatever."

"And--and Judge Harvey? When will he be here?"

"His office said he was at a meeting of the directors of the New York and New England Railroad, and that he was coming here straight after the meeting."

"Thank you, Miss Gardner. You may now go on with the packing. I'll have the jewels ready very shortly, and Matilda will be in to help you as soon as she is through arranging with the servants."

"Why, Cousin Caroline, what is it about Jack?" burst out Olivetta with an excited flutter after Miss Gardner had gone into the bedroom. "I hadn't heard anything of it before! Has--has anything happened to him?"

Olivetta, an intimate, a relative, and a worshipful inferior, was one of the few persons with whom Mrs. De Peyster could bring herself to unbend and be confidential. "That is what I do not know. About a week ago Jack suddenly disappeared--"

"Disappeared!"

"Oh, he left a note, telling me not to worry. But not a word has been heard from him since. Of course, it may only be some wild escapade, but then he knew we were going on shipboard this evening, and he should have been home long before this."

"How terrible!" cried the sympathetic Olivetta, pushing into place a few of the inconstant hairpins that threatened to bestrew the floor.

"Went a week ago!" And then suddenly: "Why, that was about the time that first rumor was printed of his engagement to Ethel Quintard. And again this morning--in the 'Record'--did you see it?"

"I never give thought to the newspapers," was Mrs. De Peyster's somewhat stiff response.

"You have--have told the police?"

"The police, of course not! But I have advised with Judge Harvey, and he has a firm of private detectives on the case."

"And they have clues?"

"They have nothing, as you just heard Miss Gardner report."

"Cousin Caroline! With all these--these thugs and hold-up men we read about--and all the accidents--"

"Olivetta! Don't!" And then in a more composed voice: "I am hoping it is merely some boyish prank. But even that will be bad enough, if he misses the boat."

"Yes, I see. You told me about arranging with Mrs. Quintard also to sail on the Plutonia."

"I had counted on the trip--Jack and Ethel being thrown together, you know."

"Indeed, it was very clever of you!"

"I am hoping it may be only some boyish prank," Mrs. De Peyster repeated. "You may not have noticed it, Olivetta," she continued, permitting a sigh to escape her, "but of late Jack has acted at times--well, rather queerly."

"Queerly! How?"

"He has been far from being himself. In fact, I have observed a number of things not at all natural to a De Peyster."

"Caroline! What a worry he must be to you!"

"Yes. But I am hoping for the best. And now, please, we will say no more about it."

They were silent for a moment. Miss Gardner entered, took the jewels which in the mean time Mrs. De Peyster had finished putting in their cases, and went again into the bedroom. Olivetta's eyes followed her.

"You are still pleased with Miss Gardner?"

"Thus far she has proved herself competent. I consider myself very fortunate in finding a secretary who is not above some of the duties of a lady's maid. It is a very happy combination for traveling."

"She seems almost too good to be true," mused Olivetta. "She's really very pretty. I hope Jack hasn't--"

"Olivetta! How can you! Jack has never paid her the slightest attention, nor she him."

"Pardon me, Caroline! But she's so pretty, and she's just the sort of girl who attracts men--and--and"--a bit wistfully--"gets engaged and gets married."

"Nonsense, Olivetta. When she first came to me I asked her if she were in love or engaged. She said she was not, and I told her my rules. She is a very sensible girl."

"At any rate, she must be a great relief after that Marie you had."

Mrs. De Peyster flushed, as though at some disagreeable memory.