Miss Bartlett

“ He turned to the girl again. She too was one with this past of the room. The straight nose with its shell-like nostrils as sensitive to her thoughts as her eyes, the sharp cut corners of her mouth, and the fine hair over her white forehead dated back to women whose features had long been refined through their souls. All that he wished to crowd into a week, they had possessed for a hundred years or more. It showed even in this girl who had not yet come into the fulness of her womanhood. ”

“ A faint color tinged the hitherto pale cheeks, and an unusual sparkle lit up the dark eyes. It would have been hard to find a happier group of people than the five at Idlewild. They were like one family in their interests and efforts. Lizzette flitted in and out of both domiciles, intent now on Elsie’s cooking, now on Antoine’s music, which came to her ears at all hours of the day and night—for the violin had grown to be like a living companion to the crippled lad—now helping Gilbert and Margaret in the garden or gravely puzzling over some of the English books on Margaret’s table. ”

“ To Polly’s nostrils was wafted a strange odor, carrying reminiscences of so-called “painless” dentistry. Winifred, reviving in the open air when that hateful sponge was removed from mouth and nose, struggled spasmodically in the arms of her captor. Polly knew that women in a faint lie deathlike. That never-to-be-forgotten scent, too, caused a wave of alarm, of suspicion, to creep through her with each heart-beat.
“Where are the others?” she said, leaning over, and striving to see Voles’s face.
“Just behind,” he answered. “Let me place Miss Bartlett in the car.” ”

“ Steingall shared Clancy’s opinion the instant he set eyes on the new witness. He gazed at her with a humorous dismay that was wholly genuine.
“Sit there, Miss Bartlett,” he said, rising to place a chair for her. “Please don’t feel nervous. I am sure you understand that only those who have broken the law need fear it. Now, you haven’t killed anybody, have you?”
Winifred smiled. She liked this big man’s kindly manner. Really, the police were not such terrifying ogres when you came to close quarters with them. ”

“ He studied her with increasing interest and a growing sense of comradeship. Her eyes were wonderful as she sat chin in hands, gazing into the fire, lost in some pleasant picture of the past. When he looked into them, they caught him up again as they had done in the café. They swept him to the rhythm of some haunting music back to the days when his blood had run strong—back to the beauty of the hills at twenty when he had not felt big enough by himself to absorb their full marvel. ”

“ I don’t want these reptiles to be crushed; what I want is to recover Miss Bartlett. Would it not be best to leave them their liberty and watch them?”
“I’ve always found a seven days’ remand very helpful,” mused the detective.
“In ordinary crime, yes. But here we have Rachel Craik, who would suffer martyrdom rather than speak; Fowle, a mere tool, who knows nothing except what little he is told; and a thick-headed brute named Mick the Wolf, who does what his master bids him. Don’t you see that in prison they are useless. At liberty they may help by trying to communicate with Voles.” ”

“ When they reassured him and tried to get him to take food, he invariably wanted to know if Miss Bartlett had brought it, and which was her day to come again. Then the doctor and the nurse would argue with him, and try to make him remember things he was sure had never happened, and his mental distress would become acute. At such times somebody, who of course could not be Miss Bartlett, but who had her voice and eyes, would take his hand and tell him to go to sleep, then the tangles would all come straight. ”

“ He roused himself and sat up. In the gloom back of him he made out nothing: the opening was becoming obliterated by the dark without, so that he felt as though in a sealed box––a coffin almost. He felt an impulse to shout, but his dry lips choked this back. He could not sit still. He must act in some way. He rose to his hands and knees and began to grope about without any definite object. There was something uncanny in the thought that this silence had not been broken for centuries. He thought of it as his toes scraped along the granite behind him. ”

“ Miss Bartlett, a tall and willowy blonde, still in her teens, was the daughter of a retired lieutenant in the United States Navy. The Bartlett home was in West Fourteenth Street, a few doors from the Avenue. The groom, many years the bride's senior, and of strikingly unprepossessing appearance, was a Cuban of great wealth. The wedding was the talk of the town, and Stedman, then a young man of twenty-six, satirized the ill-mating in a poem that appeared first in the New York "Tribune." ”

“ Man seemed too coarse for so fine a setting. Even woman, nearest of all creatures to fairy stuff, must needs be at her best to make a fitting part of this.
From out of the shadows of this fringe of trees there stole silently another shadow. This moved slowly like a funeral barge away from the shore. As it came full into the radius of that silver light (a light matching the dead) it seemed more than ever one with sheeted things, for half prone upon this raft lay a girl whose cheeks were white against the background of her black hair and whose eyes saw nothing of the world about her. ”

“ The powdered women stood out among the peasants who needed only a feather or two to put them back a thousand years. Fine faces, buck faces, pretty girls, hags with tortilla cheeks, all gazed with sympathy at the grave of the child.
A bright cloud hung over the group, its shadow twisting toward the slope of the volcano. Shadows flecked the grove, the bent heads, the casket and its wilting flowers; other shadows fled across fields where oxen grazed. Gabriel said a few words and prayed and Angelina wept, clinging to Raul's arm, hating his black, hating Lucienne. ”

“ Bartlett turned to the Watermelon, genially. "I judge you are planning to take a few days' jaunt somewhere."
"I was thinking of it," acknowledged the Watermelon, with truth, lounging gracefully in the doorway.
Bartlett laughed. "We are crazy, all of us," said he and waved the suggestion aside as a whimsical fancy best forgotten.
"Oh, Daddy, please," teased Billy.
"But, Billy, child, the others don't want to do it, the general or Batchelor."
"I want to," said Henrietta, "and so does the general. Father, wouldn't you like to take a trip in the car somewhere for a week or two?" ”

“ It is the positive things that count, when a man stands before the judgment-seat; and that is where Monte stood on the night Marjory came back from Cannes by the side of Peter, with her eyes sparkling and her cheeks flushed as if she had come straight from Eden. ”

“ She thought her father had already decided this question. However, she said nothing. In something of a 248 daze, she allowed herself to be led on toward the park––at night a big, shadowy region with a star-pricked sky overhead. Like one led in a dream she went, her thoughts quite confused, but with the firm grip of his hand upon her arm steadying her. He did not speak again until the paved street and the stone buildings were behind them––until they were among the trees and low bushes and gravel paths. He led her to a bench.
“See those stars?” he asked, pointing.
“Yes, Don.” ”

“ A wreath of pink and white carnations had leaned against the casket. Candles had burned on the altar and at the ends of the coffin. The virgin's jewels, her rubies and emeralds, gleamed.
Lucienne von Humboldt had come first. From her hacienda, Palma Sola, by the ocean, she had driven to Petaca in her blue and yellow victoria, scarred and bitten by sea air. The black she wore made her seem older than twenty-six, and accentuated her auburn hair and the Germanic character of her face. Her hazel eyes, glossy thick hair, and rose-colored skin impressed everyone. ”

“ As an artist he had admired her first, then as a mere man, then as a lover; but now, as he waited for her reply, it was as Richard Barnes that he loved her. For the first time he had to wrestle hard with himself for control. He hungered to feel her in his arms, to brush with his lips the scarlet in her cheeks, which was as rose upon ivory. ”

“ Within that hallway of silence, her breathing, the beating of her heart. As though echoing his questions. Waiting, hoping for the answers.
If you would tell me, he said.
Pinpoints of light straining towards the threshold through a soft warm mist. As though they would help him to see, to slip across barriers of being.
If I knew—
Blind beams behind opaque windows. As though in an act of desperation, a man might hurl a stone. The shuddering tinkle of shattered glass. ”

“ He sat down on the sofa, with his head between his hands and stared at the glittering rows of bottles which caught the sun. Each one of them was a laughing demon. They danced and winked their eyes—yellow, blue, and blood-red. There were a hundred of them keeping step to the bobbing shadows upon the floor. Row upon row of them—purple, brown, and blood-red—all dancing, all laughing.
"You come out wrong every time," Barstow had said. ”

“ He had been content to observe without accepting the challenges, principally because he lived mostly in the sunshine. To-night, in a clean, decent way, he felt again the old tingle. But this time it came from a different source. When Marjory raised her eyes to his, the lights blazed as brilliantly as if a hundred new ones had been lighted; the music mixed with his blood until his thoughts danced. ”

“ It is almost safe to assume that he counseled the girl’s removal from New York because she is ‘the image of her mother.’ One asks why this very natural fact should render Winifred Bartlett an undesirable resident of New York. There is a ready answer. She might be recognized. Such recognition would be awkward for somebody. But the girl has lived in almost total seclusion. She is nineteen. If she is so like her mother as to be recognized, her mother must have been a person of no small consequence, a lady known to and admired by a very large circle of friends. ”

“ Raul felt around for the chair. Dimly, he made out Lucienne; then, as strength returned, as he drank water, he saw her, her auburn hair, her look of concern. She touched him and at the same time he received a shock for there, at his feet, sat Mona, Caterina's fuzzy dog, tongue lolling. She barked happily; the bullet pain dug deeper; he tried to rise.
"Please sit down, Raul," said Lucienne, restraining him. "Jesús Peza is here. He can help you. Marta, run for Jesús."
Marta, a pigtailed girl, Lucienne's maid, dashed out of the living room, with Mona at her heels. ”

“ Peter had not had those weeks in Paris in which to get to know her; he had not had that wonderful ride through sunny France with Marjory by his side; and Peter had had nothing approaching such a day as this.
Monte turned to look at her. They had passed through Villefranche, and were now taking the up grade. The exercise had flushed her cheeks, giving her back the color she had lacked in the last few weeks. Her eyes were upon the ground, as if she did not dare raise them. Her face always seemed younger when one did not see the eyes. Asleep, she could not have looked over twenty. ”

“ I was made to live, Barstow,—made to live life to its fullest! There isn't a bit of it I don't love,—love too well to be content much longer to play the galley slave in it. To live is to be free. I love the blue sky above until I ache to madness that I cannot live under it ”

“ He took her two hands and rubbed them briskly till they smarted; she laughed deliciously the while, and the color on her cheeks deepened. But in spite of all this they couldn’t get very far below the surface. He noticed the dripping fringe of her skirts and her water-logged shoes.
“This will never do,” he said. “You’ve got to get dry––clear to your bones. Somehow a woman doesn’t look right––wet. She gets so very wet––like a kitten. I’m going foraging now. You keep turning round and round.” ”

“ Bartlett, maddened by the fresh disaster:—"Good Lord!" He flings himself wildly upon the first pillow, and crams it into the chair behind Miss Wyatt; then without giving his courage time to flag, he seizes the others, and packs them in on top of it: "Will that do?" He stands hot and flushed, looking down upon her, as she makes a gentle attempt to adjust herself to the mass.
Constance.—"Oh, perfectly." She puts her hand behind her and feebly endeavours to modify Bartlett's arrangement. ”

“ Constance.—"Then,"—with a glance at his devout posture, of which Bartlett has himself become quite unconscious,—"won't you sit down, Mr. Bartlett?"
Bartlett, restored to consciousness and confusion:—"Thanks; I think it will be better." He rises, and in his embarrassment draws a chair to the spot on which he has been kneeling, and sits down very close to her. He keeps the fan in his hand, as he talks: "It's rather nice out there, Miss Wyatt,—there on the island. You must be rowed out as soon as you can stand it. ”

“ She nodded toward the yacht, steaming majestically around the headland, pennons gaily waving and the bright awning a splash of color in the afterglow.
"The Mary Gloucester," chuckled Bartlett. "That woman hasn't the sense of her ugly little poodle dog."
"I know," said Billy, "that is why I have always been so afraid of her."
"Why afraid of her?"
"For a mother," explained Billy unfortunately, but characteristically saying the wrong thing.
Bartlett flushed. "You just admitted that she was a fool. Do you think I would marry that kind of a woman?"
"Men always do," said Billy. ”