The Charm School/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII
IT was ten o'clock before the lights of the repaired motor were seen in the drive, and by the time the ladies had found their wraps and said good-by, and come back to ask Austin to dine the following Saturday, and said good-by again, and come back to ask him if he had noticed whether Mrs. Rolles had been wearing her motor veil when she came in, and had said good-by for the last time and finally gone, it was a good deal later.
It was a lovely spring evening; a half-moon with an edge as sharp as polished steel was shining over the water. Mrs. Rolles settled back into her corner of the car, and as they turned out upon the highway she observed, conversationally, to her daughter:
"That is certainly an unusually attractive young man. If I were your age, Susie, I should be quite desperately in love with him."
"Why, mamma," cried Susie, with something as near emotion as she had ever displayed, "how can you say that, when it has been you that separated us? And now he doesn't care a sixpence about me."
There was a brief silence. Mrs. Rolles could take defeat like a lady.
"It's strange," she said, calmly, "how many intelligent women there are—and I think you intelligent, my dear—who suppose that in a love-affair indifference is a power. It is, on the contrary, the greatest weakness. Every woman who really loves a man can take him away from any woman who doesn't, no matter what their relative charms are. If you had cared for Austin Bevans—"
"But I did," cried the exasperated Susie; "at least I would have, if you had let me."
"You would have, but you didn't," replied her mother. "Whereas that little Benedotti girl—one of the most determined people I ever saw—"
"Mamma, that little mouse determined?"
Mrs. Rolles nodded. "Yes, you should have seen her expression of fanatical resolution when I told her about your engagement to Austin Bevans."
"You told her we were engaged?"
Mrs. Rolles drew her wraps about her. "Not in set terms, of course, for that would not have been true. But I said how hard it was for a parent to be stern and stand between a young couple who really loved each other. She saw what I meant. That was why she nearly fainted. You wouldn't faint, Susie, no matter who was engaged."
"Certainly not," said Susie, haughtily.
"No," her mother went on, reflectively—"no, you would just feel sulky and vindictive and insulted about it, but that, my dear child, is not love."
Susie, who was engaged in feeling all the things her mother had said, refused to answer and they drove home in absolute silence.
After they had gone Austin, finding that the lights of the school had been put out and that it was too late to hear anything more about Elise that evening, went and sat on the sea-wall and gave himself up to what he supposed was thought. As a matter of fact, he opposed nothing like a mental process to the waves of emotion that swept over him.
He went to bed late, and had hardly fallen asleep when he was wakened by the telephone from the school buildings. It was six o'clock, and Miss Curtis was telling him that Elise Benedotti had disappeared.
"There's a note here she left for you, Mr. Bevans. Shall we open it?"
"No," shouted Austin so that the telephone reverberated. "I'll be over there in five minutes."
He was as good as his word. Five minutes later he was standing in the empty infirmary with Miss Curtis. Elise's little lace-edged nightgown and blue dressing-gown were lying on the bed; her pale-blue slippers were kicked off, one on one side of the room and one on the other.
Her note said: "Please don't be angry at me, but I could not bear it any longer. I shall be quite safe where I am going."
He was able to draw his breath again. That did not sound like suicide.
By ten o'clock, when Mr. Johns arrived upon the scene, everything had been done that might promise a clue. George had been snatched from the family breakfast-table and brought before Austin to testify to his innocence, which turned out to be spotless. Sally had been reduced to tears by a rapid though not hostilely intended cross-examination, and had revealed that she knew nothing. The ticket-agent at the nearest railroad station had testified that no one answering the description of Elise had bought a ticket, but then the school was in easy reach of a network of trolleys that opened avenues not only to New York, but to the whole of New England. Miss Curtis had had a series of preposterous inspirations as to what had become of Elise, which, proving ridiculous, overwhelmed her with shame, and yet left her equally credulous when the next idea occurred to her.
Mr. Johns arrived in a state of mind very similar to that of the Queen in Alice in Wonderland, that if something wasn't done about it in less than no time he would have everybody executed all round.
He was ushered into Miss Curtis's little office, where she, Austin, Sally, and George were already assembled. His approaching grunts could be heard before he actually appeared in the doorway, his black derby pushed back, his spring overcoat unbuttoned, and the collar turned up on one side, his gloves and stick in his hand.
"Where's my granddaughter?" he said. Miss Curtis gave a low moan.
The inquiry made Austin angry. "We're trying to find out, Mr. Johns," he said, politely. "Didn't you understand that that was why we telephoned you? She's run away."
"Well, this is the hell of a school," shouted Mr. Johns. "Teach girls charm, you say—teach 'em to be damned vagrants. D'yer think parents pay you to lose their children for them? Could do that for ourselves if we had a mind to. Where is Elise, that's what I want to know?"
The mere volume of sound of these remarks was like a blow. Sally and Miss Curtis both began to cry again, and even George set his jaw in a nervous sort of spasm.
"Mr. Johns," said Austin, "you must not shout."
"I—I?" said Johns, too surprised to shout as loud as he wanted to do.
"You see," said Austin, "every one in this room is under a great tension, and I cannot allow them to be subjected to being shouted at. If shouting would find Elise I wouldn't complain, but it won't."
Now this made Mr. Johns really angry—something that, in spite of all his imitation rages, very seldom happened to him. He grew perfectly calm, stopped grunting, and spoke in a low voice.
"Look here, young man," he said, "this is where you and I part company. I meant to make you financially, and now I mean to ruin you. D'yer understand? And I can do it, too, in about a week, ruin your damned school, and keep you out of any other job. Is that clear?"
"It's perfectly clear," answered Austin, "and if I could put any attention on it, I should feel badly about it. As it is, it doesn't matter to me at all. Now have you any idea as to where Elise might have gone?"
"If I had," said Mr. Johns, "you are the last person I'd tell about it. I don't trust you."
"You don't trust me simply because you don't like what I said about your shouting," said Austin. "Is that sensible?"
"Don't you worry about whether I'm sensible or not," said Mr. Johns.
"No, I'll give you my word I won't," answered Austin, and left the room. In the hall he came face to face with Miss Hayes. Suddenly the idea occurred to him that Miss Hayes had been avoiding him all the morning. She tried to slip past now, but he stopped her.
"Miss Hayes," he said, "where is Elise?"
She laughed. "Why, Mr. Bevans," she answered, "if I knew, don't you think I would have told you long ago?"
"I think you would if you knew positively. I'm not sure you would tell me what you thought likely."
Again she tried to go on.
"Miss Hayes, do you want me to find Elise?"
"I want her to be found."
"Will you tell me everything you know bearing on the situation?"
She shook her head.
"Then," he said, firmly, "I think we'll break your three-year contract with the school. If you and I can't work together we won't try."
"You dismiss me?"
"Yes." There was a tense silence, and then he added: "It may be just as well for you, anyhow. Mr. Johns is in there and threatens to ruin the school within a week."
"Does he, indeed?" said Miss Hayes, with a movement of her head, and disappeared instantly into Miss Curtis's study.
Austin went back to his own cottage. It was the first instant he had been alone, and he wanted, since he was evidently to play his hand unaided, to think over the facts. He meant to find Elise before he slept that night. He meant to find her before George or Miss Hayes or Mr. Johns did, and yet he worked under difficulties, for all of them knew her life well enough to know if there were any friend or relation or old family servant to whom, under the circumstances, she might be likely to go. He went over the catalogue of the school, looking for the address of some classmate not too far away to whom she might have fled. And then, not knowing exactly why, he turned to Miss Hayeses name and read, "Home address, Fairweather, Connecticut."
The automobile book revealed that Fairweather was a small village about sixty miles over the New York border. Further search showed that it was accessible by trolley. The conviction that she was evidently there came instantly to Austin with the finality of conviction in dreams, with the finality that mystics tell us is the characteristic of absolute truth. He looked at his watch. Time had slipped away; it was noon. He got out the geranium-colored car and with no further words to any one he started north and east.
The western part of the state of Connecticut is well watered. Austin drove for miles along the edge of a winding river brimming full to its low green banks, and then crossed a darker, wilder, wider stream. There were no traffic policemen in these remote highways and he drove fast. But the village of Fairweather was not so easily discovered. There was East Fairweather and South Fairweather, to say nothing of Fairweather Corners, which led him quite fifteen miles out of his way. About six o'clock in the afternoon he was informed that the place he was looking for was probably Fairweather Post Office.
Fairweather Post Office was a very small village strung along a wide village street, and he soon found the Hayes house—a thin, high-shouldered little house, backed by solid square barns and wood-sheds—all painted freshly white to welcome the spring. The geranium-colored car looked very exotic standing before that chaste New England domicile in the twilight.
An old servant with sleek hair and spectacles came to the door, not hostile, but indicating by her observing eye that she was more interested in truth than cordiality. Could he see Mrs. Hayes? She would ask Miss Mary. He was shown into the bleak little parlor and waited. This was to him the most trying period of the day. If Elise wasn't there, he had lost her. Now and then he heard voices in the distance—not hers. What were they doing, all these old women, he thought, impatiently—putting on their best shawls to tell him that he had lost his love?
Presently the door opened and Mrs. Hayes and Miss Mary came in—both in their way very like his Miss Hayes; it was evidently a family that ran true to type. They had the same manner that the servant had—the same manner that all New-Englanders seem to have toward strangers, of conscientiously suspending judgment, which, sooner or later, for good or evil, they will be obliged to pass upon you.
"You wanted to see me?" said Mrs. Hayes, and her daughter stood beside her ready to protect her from blue-eyed strangers in a high state of nervous excitement.
"Yes," said Austin. "My name is Bevans. I am the head of the school where your daughter teaches."
"Where my daughter used to teach?" said Mrs. Hayes. "I understand you no longer need her services."
Austin was startled. "The news reached you quickly."
"I had a telegram from my daughter."
What else was in that telegram? Austin's hopes rose. "Of course," he said, "I could not really get on without your daughter."
Mrs. Hayes smiled, a peculiar, dry smile not indicative of amusement. "Less than you suppose, perhaps," she said.
She seemed to Austin a puzzling, sinister old female, but he had no time to waste and pressed on: "One of our pupils has run away—Elise Benedotti. Is she here?"
They looked surprised.
"Do you mean is she in this house?"
"Exactly."
"No," said Miss Mary.
"No," said Mrs. Hayes.
"You mean you can't tell me anything about her?"
"We can tell you nothing about her," they said, together. Then Mrs. Hayes rose and added, "May we offer you anything to eat before you go?"
"No, thank you," said Austin, picking up his cap from a chair. The ladies bowed. He forgot to bow. He had failed—failed as a detective, failed as a schoolmaster, and failed most ignominiously as a lover.
It was quite dark when he went out. The moon, the same moon he had seen the night before shining on the Sound, was shining now a little larger and brighter, but its light did not penetrate through the thick unfolding leaves of the elms. Nothing more clearly indicated the distress that Austin was suffering than the fact that he had left his car standing on the highroad and hadn't remembered to turn on the lights. Yet even after he realized this he did not hurry; he stood an instant on the little porch and bent his head over the match as he lit his cigarette. He knew the smoke drifted back into the house, and he hoped the ladies hated the smell as much as he supposed they did.
With his eyes dazzled by the flare of the match, he felt his way down the path, through the neat little gate, and got into his car. Then, as he put his foot out to the self-starter, he touched something—another foot. Some one was in the car already. He put out his hands and met two small, minute hands, trembling familiarly.
"Elise!" he said.
There was no answer. He caught her to him and they kissed each other—a, long, unanswerable kiss.
After an instant he said, "Why did you run away?"
"I thought you loved that other girl."
"Oh yes, I remember. I thought so, too, once.
"I knew if you didn't you would find me."
"You might have left me some clue."
"I was afraid if I did the others might find it, too."
"I had absolutely no reason for thinking you were here."
"No, except I wanted you so much."
"Elise!"
"Don't let's talk now. Drive on."
He turned on his lights, shoved in his gears, and the car made its way through the mild April night, through open farming country and quiet villages and down into cool little hollows where noisy brooks were running. They drove a long time without speaking, too wise to interrupt the silence with anything so inadequate as speech. And then suddenly they realized that, though they never intended to be parted again this side of the grave, they might never have another opportunity to explain how they had felt on first seeing each other, when it was that the unique character of their emotion had first thrust itself upon their conscious attention, and, "Do you remember the day?" and "Had you any idea what I meant when—" It appeared, for the human mind is a wonderful mechanism, that they remembered not only every time they had ever been together, but that they remembered it in the utmost detail—every word that had been spoken, every time their eyes had met, every feeling that had swept them, and no story that was ever written, no drama ever produced, was followed with such intense interest as these two gave to the unfolding of the incidents of this simple plot, whose dénouement they had both known for the past hour.
And then the car required gasolene, and it occurred to Austin that it would be wise to telephone the school that he had Elise and would be back before midnight. The garage was in a back street of a prosperous Connecticut town, and it happened there was a lunch-wagon near, and Austin thought he would like a cup of coffee, and Elise, it appeared, had never known what lunch-wagons were for, but had rather vaguely supposed they distributed time-tables, and so Austin had insisted that she come with him, and they had two cups of coffee, and she considered it an immense adventure. And almost at once after this, though twenty miles or more were traversed, they found themselves outside the school gates, and they kissed each other once more because that keeps up the courage.
"Your grandfather will be angry, you know, Elise," Austin explained. "He and I quarreled like mad this morning."
"You quarreled with everybody this morning."
"Yes, that's the way it affects me—to have you run away."
"What does it matter really about grandfather? We'll live and run the school together. We can't be married until I graduate, you know."
"Oh, I don't know, I'd give you a diploma even if you were my wife."
They had rather expected a demonstration on their return, but no one appeared to welcome them except Miss Curtis. Mr. Johns had gone to bed, she said, after receiving word of their approach, in a state bedroom next the infirmary kept especially for parents; at least he had gone up-stairs.
He did not thus, however, escape his granddaughter, who, drawing Austin after her, went straight to his door—knocking upon it as she opened it—a very annoying habit.
Mr. Johns, in a black silk dressing-gown lined with crimson satin, was sitting under an electric lights reading a magazine. He looked up over his rimmed spectacles and said, in an alarmingly calm and determined tone:
"I cannot be disturbed to-night, Elise. I will speak to you in the morning."
"Why, grandfather, what a beautiful dressing-gown that is! You look like an Old Master in it—just that crimson flash about the ankle where it falls back."
"Shut the door when you go out," said Mr. Johns, pretending that he was still reading.
"Yes, I will," said the little princess sitting down on the edge of his bed.
"Don't sit on the bed!" roared Mr. Johns. "Uncomfortable enough without that, I expect."
"Well, where shall I sit?" she asked, as one who only asked for guidance.
"Go to bed," said Mr. Johns, and this time he turned a page and peered at the top of the next one.
"Mr. Johns," said Austin, "I must tell you that Elise and I mean to be married."
They waited, expecting a grunt, and the silence was even more terrifying. At this point, utterly disregarding realism, Mr, Johns turned over another page.
"Yes," said Elise, "we're going to be married and live here and run the school."
"Sure about that?" asked Mr. Johns.
"Sure," answered Elise.
Mr. Johns gave a familiar grunt. "Better find out who owns the school first," he said.
"Who owns it?" said Austin, sharply.
Mr. Johns read on; it was his moment of triumph. He was reading so hard that he did not see the swift approach of his granddaughter, who snatched the magazine from his hands.
"Tell us what you mean, grandfather," she said, sternly.
"Supposed you knew—thought you young people knew everything."
"Tell us what you mean. Doesn't Austin own this school?"
Mr. Johns shook his head: "The will's found—Miss Hayes," was all he said.
It was a blow, particularly to Austin, but Elise rallied at once.
"All right, then, grandfather, you've got to give him that job you promised."
"Nothing of the kind—don't trust him—don't want him working for me."
"Grandfather," said Elise, sternly, "I heard you tell Mrs. Rolles at supper the other night that his financial future was assured. You said that he had flare—creative genius, and that when you saw that sort of thing you snapped it up—"
"I've changed my mind," said Mr. Johns, with a roar, and girls sleeping in far-distant dormitories woke, supposing a spring thunder-storm was approaching,
"Yes, and I heard you telling several of your friends over the telephone the next day that any corporation that Mr. Bevans worked for would be sure of—"
"What d'yer mean by listening to what I say over the telephone?"
"I don't listen, grandfather, but no one can help hearing."
"I tell you I've changed my mind about him."
"You know, Mr. Johns," said Austin, "I can earn my living, and Elise's, too."
"Yes, grandfather dear," said Elise, "we mean to do it—though of course you can make it awfully hard and disagreeable for us."
"Get out of my room, both of you," said Mr. Johns. "A nice mess you're going to make of your life, miss."
Elise turned with a happy smile to Austin. "I knew grandfather would come round," she said, somewhat to her lover's surprise, for he did not immediately see consent in Mr. Johns's last phrase. "Isn't he a lamb—particularly with his hair all mussed like that?"
Mr, Johns scowled terrifically. "Well, no one ever called me a lamb before," he said.
"No one understands you but me, grandfather darling," said Elise. "Good night," and, kissing him quite against his inclination, she went away.
In the hall she turned ecstatically to Austin. "Isn't it wonderful that grandfather's so pleased?" she said.
Austin hesitated. "Well," he said, "do you feel sure that he—"
"Oh yes, he's delighted—that's his way. Oh, isn't everything in the world perfect?"
At this moment they perceived Miss Hayes was standing near, waiting for them.
"I wanted to explain to you, Mr. Bevans," she said. "We found the will in the school safe to-day. Miss Curtis has had it put away all the time, under the impression it was the inventory. You know, Mrs. Bevans had always told me she meant to leave the school to me."
Austin sighed.
"I don't suppose," he said, "that you will carry out one of my ideas."
"Not one," said Miss Hayes. "All my girls are going to college."
He tried to smile, although in spite of his brilliant prospects he did not like having his school taken away. "And you won't even offer me a job?" he said.
"You would be very valuable as an interviewer of parents."
"I did not make much of a hit with yours. Your mother treated me like a criminal."
"I had just telegraphed her not to allow Elise to see you under any circumstances."
"Yes," said Elise, "they made me go out of the house when they knew Austin was coming, so they could say truthfully that I wasn't in it. And so I just went and sat in the car and waited for him. Did you know that we were in love with each other, Miss Hayes?"
Miss Hayes smiled rather grimly. "I think most people knew about your feelings, Elise," she replied, "and I own that I suspected Mr. Bevans. Now you must go to bed, or you'll be seriously ill."
Elise turned to say good night to Austin. "Will you do something for me," she said, "as soon as you go into your cottage? Will you burn the picture of that horrid girl that stands on your desk and made me so unhappy?"
Austin hesitated just the fraction of a second. "I'd rather give it to a friend of mine who wants it more than anything in the world."
Elise clapped her hands. "Oh, that would be better," she said; "or perhaps I mean worse." And with one long look over her shoulder, which said clearly that she considered him absolutely perfect, she allowed herself to be led away by Miss Hayes.
THE END