Carmen Ariza Part 114

Thus it was that Carmen was again s.h.i.+fted a s.p.a.ce on the checkerboard of life, and slept that night once more under the s.p.a.cious roof of the wealthy relict of the late James Hawley-Crowles, on Riverside Drive.

CHAPTER 7

As has been said, Carmen's six months in the Elwin school had been a period of slow adjustment to the changed order. She had brought into this new world a charm of unsophistication, an ingenuous _navete_, such as only an untrammeled spirit nourished in an elemental civilization like that of primitive Simiti could develop. Added to this was the zest and eagerness stimulated by the thought that she had come as a message-bearer to a people with a great need. Her first emotion had been that of astonishment that the dwellers in the great States were not so different, after all, from those of her own unprogressive country. Her next was one of sad disillusionment, as the fact slowly dawned upon her trusting thought that the busy denizens of her new environment took no interest whatsoever in her message. And then her joy and brilliant hopefulness had chilled, and she awoke to find her strange views a barrier between herself and her a.s.sociates.

She had brought to the America of the North a spirit so deeply religious as to know naught else than her G.o.d and His ceaseless manifestation. She had come utterly free of dogma or creed, and happily ignorant of decaying formularies and religious caste. Her Christianity was her demonstrable interpretation of the Master's words; and her fresh, ebulliant spirit soared unhampered in the warm atmosphere of love for mankind. Her concept of the Christ stirred no thought within her of intolerance toward those who might hold differing views; nor did it raise interposing barriers within her own mind, nor evoke those baser sentiments which have so sadly warped the souls of men into instruments of deadly hatred and crus.h.i.+ng tyranny.

Her spiritual vision, undimmed and world-embracing, saw the advent of that day when all mankind would obey the commands of Jesus, and do the works which he did, even to the complete spiritualization and dematerializing of all human thought. And her burning desire was to hasten the coming of that glad hour.

The conviction that, despite its tremendous needs, humanity was steadily rejecting, even in this great land of opportunity and progress, the remedy for its consuming ills, came to her slowly. And with it a damping of her ardor, and a dulling of the fine edge of her enthusiasm. She grew quiet as the days pa.s.sed, and drew away from her companions into her thought. With her increasing sense of isolation came at length a great longing to leave these inhospitable sh.o.r.es, and return to her native environment and the sympathy and tender solicitude of her beloved Rosendo and Padre Jose. But, alas! that was at present impossible. Indeed, she could not be certain now of their whereabouts. A great war was raging in Colombia, and she knew not what fate had befallen her loved ones. To her many letters directed to Simiti there had come back no reply. Even Harris, who had written again and again to both Rosendo and Jose, had received no word from them in return. Corroding fear began to a.s.sail the girl; soul-longing and heart-sickness seized upon her; her happy smile faded; and her bright, bubbling conversation ceased.

Then one day, standing alone in her room, she turned squarely upon the foul brood of evil suggestions crowding upon her and, as if they were fell spirits from the nether world, bade them begone. "Listen!" she cried aloud. "I know you for what you are--_nothing_! You seemed to use Padre Jose, but you can't use me! G.o.d is everywhere--right here!

He is my life; and you, evil thoughts, can't make me think He isn't! I am His image and likeness; I am His witness; and I will _not_ witness to His opposite, evil! My life is filled with harmony; and you, evil thoughts, can't reverse that fact! G.o.d has brought me here, else I would not have come, for He is the cause of all that is. It is for me to stand and see His glory. No! no!" as she paced about the room and seemed to ward off the a.s.saults of an invisible enemy, "there is no power apart from Him! On that I stand!"

Then, in the lull of battle, "Father divine, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard me. And now I lay my all upon the altar of love, and throw myself upon Thy thought."

From that day, despite continued attacks from error--despite, too, the veiled slights and covert insinuations of her schoolmates, to whom the girl's odd views and utter refusal to share their accustomed conversation, their interest in mundane affairs, their social aspirations and worldly ambitions, at length made her quite unwelcome--Carmen steadily, and without heed of diverting gesture, brought into captivity every thought to the obedience of her Christ-principle, and threw off for all time the dark cloud of pessimism which human belief and the mesmerism of events had drawn over her joyous spirit.

Mrs. Reed had not been near her since her enrollment in the school; but Ketchim had visited her often--not, however, alone, but always with one or more prospective purchasers of Simiti stock in tow whom he sought to influence favorably through Carmen's interesting conversation about her native land. Harris came every Sunday, and the girl welcomed the great, blundering fellow as the coming of the day. At times he would obtain Madam Elwin's permission to take the girl up to the city on a little sight-seeing expedition, and then he would abandon himself completely to the enjoyment of her nave wonder and the numberless and often piquant questions stimulated by it. He was the only one now with whom she felt any degree of freedom, and in his presence her restraint vanished and her airy gaiety again welled forth with all its wonted fervor. Once, shortly after Carmen had been enrolled, Harris took her to a concert by the New York Symphony Orchestra. But in the midst of the program, after sitting in silent rapture, the girl suddenly burst into tears and begged to be taken out. "I couldn't stand it!" she sobbed as, outside the door, she hid her tear-stained face in his coat; "I just couldn't! It was heavenly! Oh, it was G.o.d that we heard--it was G.o.d!" And the astonished fellow respected this sudden outburst of pent-up emotion as he led her, silent and absorbed, back to the school.

With the throwing of the girl upon her own thought came a rapid expansion of both mind and body into maturity, and the young lady who left the Elwin school that bright spring afternoon under the protection of the self-sufficient Mrs. Hawley-Crowles was very far from being the inquisitive, unabashed little girl who had so greatly shocked the good Sister Superior by her heretical views some six months before. The sophistication engendered by her intercourse with the pupils and instructors in the school had transformed the eager, trusting little maid, who could see only good into a mature woman, who, though her trust remained unshaken, nevertheless had a better understanding of the seeming power "that l.u.s.teth against the spirit," and whose idea of her mission had been deepened into a grave sense of responsibility. She saw now, as never before, the awful unreality of the human sense of life; but she likewise understood, as never previously, its seeming reality in the human consciousness, and its terrible mesmeric power over those materialistic minds into which the light of spirituality had as yet scarcely penetrated. Her thought had begun to shape a definite purpose; she was still to be a message-bearer, but the message must be set forth in her life conduct. The futility of promiscuous verbal delivery of the message to whomsoever might cross her path had been made patent. Jesus taught--and then proved. She must do likewise, and let her deeds attest the truth of her words. And from the day that she bade the suggestions of fear and evil leave her, she had consecrated herself anew to a searching study of the Master's life and words, if happily she might acquire "that mind"

which he so wondrously expressed.

But the a.s.sumption of an att.i.tude of quiet demonstration was by no means sudden. There were times when she could not restrain the impulse to challenge the beliefs so authoritatively set forth by the preachers and lecturers whom Madam Elwin invited to address her pupils, and who, unlike Jesus, first taught, and then relegated their proofs to a life beyond the grave. Once, shortly after entering the school, forgetful of all but the error being preached, she had risen in the midst of an eloquent sermon by the eminent Darius Borwell, a Presbyterian divine of considerable repute, and asked him why it was that, as he seemed to set forth, G.o.d had changed His mind after creating spiritual man, and had created a man of dust. She had later repented her scandalous conduct in sackcloth and ashes; but it did not prevent her from abruptly leaving the chapel on a subsequent Sunday when another divine, this time a complaisant Methodist, quite satisfied with his theories of endless future rewards and fiery punishments, dwelt at length upon the traditional idea that the sorrows of the world are G.o.d-sent for mankind's chastis.e.m.e.nt and discipline.

Then she gradually learned to be less defiant of the conventions and beliefs of the day, and determined quietly to rise superior to them.

But her experience with the preachers wrought within her a strong determination henceforth to listen to no religious propaganda whatsoever, to give no further heed to current theological beliefs, and to enter no church edifice, regardless of the tenets of the sect wors.h.i.+ping within its precincts. The wisdom of this decision she left for the future to determine.

"Oh," she cried, "my only mission is to manifest the divine, not to waste time listening to the theories of ignorant preachers, who fail utterly to prove the truth of their teachings! Oh, how the world needs love--just love! And I am going to love it with the selfless love that comes from G.o.d, and destroys error and the false beliefs that become externalized in the human consciousness as sickness, failure, old age, and death! Love, love, love--it is mankind's greatest need! Why, if the preachers only knew, the very heart and soul of Christianity is love! It is love that casts out fear; and fear is at the bottom of all sickness, for fear leads to belief in other G.o.ds than the one Father of Christ Jesus! Christianity is aflame with love! Oh, G.o.d--take me out into the world, and let me show it what love can do!"

And the divine ear heard the call of this beautiful disciple of the Christ--aye, had heard it long before the solicitous, fluttering little Madam Elwin decided that the strange girl's unevangelical views were inimical to the best interests of her very select school. The social ambitions of the wealthy Mrs. Hawley-Crowles threw wide the portals of the world to Carmen, and she entered, wide-eyed and wondering. Nor did she return until the deepest recesses of the human mind had revealed to her their abysmal hideousness, their ghastly emptiness of reality, and their woeful mesmeric deception.

CHAPTER 8

Mrs. James Hawley-Crowles, more keenly perceptive than her sister, had seized upon Carmen with avidity bred of hope long deferred. The scourge of years of fruitless social striving had rendered her desperate, and she would have staged a ballet on her dining table, with her own ample self as _premiere danseuse_, did the attraction but promise recognition from the blase members of fas.h.i.+onable New York's ultra-conservative set. From childhood she had looked eagerly forward through the years with an eye single to such recognition as life's desideratum. To this end she had bartered both youth and beauty with calculated precision for the Hawley-Crowles money bags; only to weep floods of angry tears when the bargain left her social status unchanged, and herself tied to a decrepit old rounder, whose tarnished name wholly neutralized the purchasing power of his ill-gotten gold.

Fortunately for the reputations of them both, her husband had the good sense to depart this life ere the divorce proceedings which she had long had in contemplation were inst.i.tuted; whereupon the stricken widow had him carefully incinerated and his ashes tenderly deposited in a chaste urn in a mausoleum which her architect had taken oath cost more than the showy Ames vault by many thousands. The period of decorous mourning past, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles blithely doffed her weeds and threw herself again into the terrific compet.i.tion for social standing, determined this time that it should be a warfare to the death.

And so it bade fair to prove to her, when the eminent nerve specialist, Dr. Bascom Ross, giving a scant half hour to the consideration of her case, at the modest charge of one hundred dollars, warned her to declare a truce and flee to the Alps for unalloyed rest. She complied, and had returned with restored health and determination just as her sister came up from South America, bringing the odd little "savage" whom Reed had discovered in the wilds of Guamoco. A prolonged week-end at Newport, the last of the summer season, accounted for her absence from the city when Reed brought Carmen to her house, where he and his wife were making their temporary abode. Six months later, in her swift appraisal of the girl in the Elwin school, to whom she had never before given a thought, she seemed to see a light.

"It does look like a desperate chance, I admit," she said, when recounting her plans to her sister a day or so later. "But I've played every other card in my hand; and now this girl is going to be either a trump or a joker. All we need is a word from the Beaubien, and the following week will see an invitation at our door from Mrs. J. Wilton Ames. The trick is to reach the Beaubien. That I calculate to do through Carmen. And I'm going to introduce the girl as an Inca princess. Why not? It will make a tremendous. .h.i.t."

Mrs. Reed was not less ambitious than her sister, but hitherto she had lacked the one essential to social success, money. In addition, she had committed the egregious blunder of marrying for love. And now that the honeymoon had become a memory, and she faced again her growing ambition, with a struggling husband who had neither name nor wealth to aid her, she had found her own modest income of ten thousand a year, which she had inherited from her mother, only an aggravation. True, in time her wandering father would pa.s.s away; and there was no doubt that his vast property would fall to his daughters, his only living kin.

But at present, in view of his aggressively good health and disregard for his relatives, her only recourse was to attach herself to her wealthy, sharp-witted sister, and hope to be towed safely into the social swim, should that scheming lady ultimately achieve her high ambition.

Just why Mrs. Hawley-Crowles should have seen in Carmen a means of reaching a woman of the stamp of the Beaubien, and through her the leader of the most exclusive social set in the metropolis, is difficult to say. But thus does the human mind often seek to further its own dubious aims through guileless innocence and trust. Perhaps 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 a.s.sociation 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 grat.i.tude, 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; 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 roue at her table in an uproar, could, if occasion required, found an orphanage or drop a b.i.+.c.hloride tablet in the gla.s.s 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 fas.h.i.+onable resort in the New Hamps.h.i.+re 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 fas.h.i.+onable 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 sh.o.r.e, 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.

Pus.h.i.+ng 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 the 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, litterateurs, 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, pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed, 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 fas.h.i.+onable social circle. These two women never met. But, though the Beaubien had never sought the entree 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 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 Simiti! 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 gla.s.ses, 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 Simiti! I wonder, oh, I wonder if Padre Jose 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 Jose 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 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 G.o.d 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 inst.i.tution 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 inst.i.tution 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 grat.i.tude 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 beautiful girl whose voluntary singing had spread a veil of silence over the awed spectators in the great a.s.sembly 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 cus.h.i.+ons and dreamed of the poor priest in the dead little town so far away.