Part 41

“I don’t know,” she answered; “and I don’t care, either. I suppose it must have been taken away by mistake with the Pattersons’ luggage.”

“I hope you’ll recover it,” said he.

Another silence, very long.

“I did tell Mrs. Mount one thing that wasn’t quite true,” said Miss Smith.

“What was that?” asked Darcy Powers, and she knew by his voice that he thought whatever she had said was right.

“I told her my first name was Nina--and it isn’t.”

“What is it, then?” he asked.

The carriage had stopped before the gate. He got out and helped her down, and they both stood there until the sound of the horse’s hoofs had died away.

“What is your name?” he asked again.

“It’s a very silly name,” she said. “I never tell it to any one.”

Her hand was on the gate, to open it. His hand closed over hers.

“Please!” he said. “I know you’re going away. I think you’ve begun to go already. Can’t you just let me know that, so that I can think of you by your own dear name?”

“No!” said Miss Smith.

She was really frightened. She knew that if she told him her name, here in this enchanted garden, in the twilight, it would be fatal. The adventure was becoming too much for her. Her own heart was getting too much for her, filled with emotions she could not bear. She was Miss Smith, the governess--the brisk, sensible, unromantic Miss Smith--she tried valiantly to remember that.

“No!” she said again, and pulled away her hand.

Just then the door of the cottage opened, and Mrs. Mount appeared in the lighted doorway.

“Darcy!” she called. “And--oh, Miss Smith! Oh, come in, my dear!”

Her voice had warmth in it, and kindliness. It reminded Miss Smith of her mother, who used to stand in a lighted doorway like that, and call her in from her play. She thought of herself going back to New York to be a governess again. She thought of Mr. Powers--Darcy--left alone in that garden, thinking of her. Was he, after all his kindness, to be left thinking of her as “Miss Smith”?

She turned toward him.

“My name’s really Mavourneen,” she said. “You see, I was the only child, and father and mother--”

“Mavourneen!” said he, and somehow, as he said it, the name was not a silly one at all. “That means--”

“Yes, I know,” she interrupted hastily, and walked quickly up the path toward Mrs. Mount.

Somewhat to the young man’s surprise, Mrs. Mount held out her arms, and Miss Smith went into them; and after all, it was not the end of the adventure, but only the beginning.

MUNSEY’S MAGAZINE

SEPTEMBER, 1925 Vol. LXXXV NUMBER 4

The Wonderful Little Woman

MRS. FREMBY DEMONSTRATES HER ENERGY, COURAGE, AND EFFICIENCY, WITH SOMEWHAT UNEXPECTED RESULTS

By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

The clock struck midnight, but Mrs. Fremby did not even glance up from her work. She had an old skirt, stretched over the transom, so that the landlady could not see that the light was still on. The door was locked. She was safe, and very snug.

Outside, a preposterous storm raged. It was almost the beginning of April, yet it snowed, and the wind howled. Let it! Mrs. Fremby had a forbidden electric heater glowing richly before her. It could not warm the vast and dingy front parlor that she inhabited, but it could and did keep her feet warm. The flame of righteous indignation in her heart helped, too, as she wrote:

At last the American woman has definitely rebelled. She refuses any longer to accept unquestioned the dictates of Paris as to what she shall or shall not wear. This season it is plain to any impartial observer that the influence of the French capital is distinctly on the wane.

Heavens, how she hated Paris! For years and years she had been fighting its insidious influence upon American modes. Even when, in order to earn her daily bread, she was obliged to describe what milady had worn at the Longchamp races, she always managed to get in some clever bit of propaganda--something like this, for instance:

A certain American woman of unimpeachable social standing attracted considerable attention by her costume of this and that, made in New York, and showing in every line a skillful adaptation to the American type.

What if this independent American woman of unimpeachable standing was an invention of Mrs. Fremby’s? Never having been within thousands of miles of Longchamp, she was obliged to invent a little, and this mythical creature was very real to her, and dear. She could absolutely see that “American type,” tall, proud, and beautiful, completely dominating all the _Parisiennes_.

Mrs. Fremby herself was small. That was her misfortune; but she made the most of herself. Even now, in an old and faded dressing gown, she was a mighty smart, trim little woman, and, if she was not pretty, she had the wit to know it, and to behave accordingly. Her good points were her miniature figure, which was excellent, and her crown of glittering, wiry red hair, which she arranged with much skill. The very foundation of style, she often said, was individuality, and she had it.

“The modes of this season will be marked by--” she was writing, when there was a knock at the door.

Mrs. Fremby got up. Swiftly and noiselessly she detached the heater and thrust it, still red-hot, into a cupboard under the washstand. Then, with a lofty expression of annoyance, she went to open the door; but it was not the landlady--it was Judith Cane.

“My dear!” cried Mrs. Fremby. “Come in!”

Judith came in. Snowflakes were melting upon her furs, her eyelashes were damp, and there was a fine color in her cheeks. She was indeed a superb creature, tall, dark, and beautiful, the physical embodiment of that “American type” who should have attracted considerable attention at Longchamp. Unfortunately, however, she lacked a certain vital quality--animation, Mrs. Fremby would have said, but in the office of the _Daily Citizen_ they called it “bean.” They said in that office that Judith was beautiful but dumb.

Mrs. Fremby, however, was not one to pick flaws in her friends. She was loyal, even to the point of prejudice. She was devoted to Judith, and she acknowledged no faults in her.

“Sit down, my dear child,” she said.

As Judith did so, she locked the door again, and hastened about, making hospitable preparations. She connected the heater again, and also a small electric grill. The light grew perilously dim.

“They ought to put in a larger meter,” observed Mrs. Fremby, with the air of an electrical expert. “I can’t make coffee, my dear. It smells; but we’ll have tea and rolls, and some perfectly delicious Bologna. Isn’t it wretched weather?”

“Yes,” said Judith. “And there I sat, rewriting and rewriting that article about smoking accessories for Mr. Tolley, and in the end he killed it!”

“Beast!” said Mrs. Fremby.

She remembered how Mr. Tolley had once described Judith.

“She is,” he had said, “a space writer--which means that she fills blank space in a blank manner.”

“Never mind!” she went on. “I’ve got a thing here that ought to run to a column, if you pad it a little. We’ll fix it up, and you can turn it in to-morrow. Now, my dear, do tell me!”

“I’ve lost,” said Judith.

“I knew it!” cried Mrs. Fremby. “I felt it all along! What an outrage!”

It was a question here of an orphan child. The child’s mother had been Judith’s sister, and upon the sister’s decease Judith had put in a claim for the custody of the infant. According to all the laws of justice and humanity--as interpreted by Mrs. Fremby--Judith should have got the infant, but another woman, a sister of the mere father, had likewise put in a claim; and as this woman had a very wealthy husband, and a home, and other things which surrogates deem advantageous for infants, and Judith had none of these, the other claimant had triumphed.

“It’s an outrage!” Mrs. Fremby repeated. “You’ll fight it, of course?”

Judith shed a few melancholy tears.

“I don’t know, Evelyn,” she said.

“Don’t know! You must!”

“It’s so expensive, Evelyn. Even if I got the poor little thing, I don’t know what I could do with her. I only made twelve dollars last week.”

Mrs. Fremby recognized in her friend a mood which exasperated her--a large, vague despair and resignation.

“You ought to know that I’ll always help you till you get on your feet,” she said sternly.

“I do know,” said Judith, shedding more tears; “but it seems to take me so long to get on my feet! All I do is--to get on your feet.”

“Nonsense!” said Mrs. Fremby.

She had, in her heart, no very great illusions about Judith’s ability to earn money, but what did that matter? Judith wanted her niece, and what Judith wanted she ought to have. That was nothing more than justice.

“Judith, I’m going to handle this,” she announced.

“Don’t do anything--awful,” said Judith. “You know, Evelyn, you’re so--”

Mrs. Fremby smiled as if she had received a compliment.

“Leave it to me,” she said. “Just drink your tea, my dear child, and don’t worry.”

So Judith, with a sigh, let slip the burden from her magnificent shoulders.

II

It was a riotous sort of day. The wind went rampaging about Central Park, and the sun laughed down upon the gay confusion of tossing branches, just beginning to grow green. In sheltered spots traces of snow still lingered, but it was melting very fast. The ground was soft, the iron thrall of winter was loosed.

It was not quite the sort of Sunday that Miss Mackellar could approve of. The wind disarranged her hair, and the promise of spring troubled her spirit. Her feet hurt, too. She sat down upon a bench and buttoned her voluminous plaid coat tightly about her, and, as the young child whose governess she was ran around and around the bench, she said “Woo!” each time the child appeared before her.

She did this with all the fervor she could command, for she was fond of the little girl, and she was a conscientious woman; but she knew that she failed. The child was generously giving her every chance to be entertaining while sitting still, and she was not being entertaining. Before long she would be obliged to rise and limp off in quest of ducks and squirrels, who could do better.

“Woo!” she said once more.

“What is it ’at says ‘Woo’?” asked the child. “Bears?”

“Yes, pet--bears. Big, brown, woolly bears.”

“Do bears run after you?”

“No, pet. They sit in their dark, dark caves and say ‘Woo.’”

“I don’t like bears,” said the child flatly.

Miss Mackellar could think of no other retort than a fresh “Woo,” but it was not accepted.

“I like tigers,” said the child; “tigers ’at pounce.”

“Look out, then!” cried a gay voice. “I’m a tiger! And I pounce! Gr-r-r!”

It was a trim, brisk little red-haired woman who had just come around the turn in the path. In fact, like a real tiger, she had been lurking there in ambush for some time, watching and waiting unsuspected.

“Gr-r-r!” she said again, moving forward with gleaming eyes and outstretched claws.

The little girl was delighted. With shrieks of joy she ran behind the bench, pursued by this wholly satisfactory tiger. Around and around they went, the brisk little woman as indefatigable as the child.

But the dejected Miss Mackellar had a conscience which hurt her even more than her shoes. She believed that life was very hard and painful, and that if it wasn’t, then you were certainly doing wrong. She felt that she had no right to sit there and be comfortable.

“It’s very kind of you, I’m sure,” she said to Mrs. Fremby--for the tiger was that lady; “but really I shouldn’t let you. I ought--”

“It’s a pleasure,” Mrs. Fremby assured her. “I am very much in harmony with children. Gr-r-r!” She disappeared around the bench again. “In fact,” she continued, when she reappeared, “I wrote a series of articles once upon ‘Scientific Play.’ Play is really work, you know.”

“Indeed it is!” Miss Mackellar agreed, with a sigh.

“I mean for the child. It is in play that a child develops those qualities of--aha! Gr-r-r!” And again she was gone. “Now then!” she said, addressing the child. “The tiger’s going to hide around the corner, by those bushes, and you’d just better not look for it!”

Miss Mackellar could not help feeling glad that the lively game was now a little removed from her bench. She did not, however, believe in luck, unless it was bad, and she wondered earnestly why this little interlude of peace was granted to her. Perhaps it was to give her a chance to think about serious things. She did so.

But wasn’t it almost too quiet? Hunter and tiger had vanished around the corner. That had happened half a dozen times before, but this time it seemed so long--

Miss Mackellar rose to her feet with a worried frown.

“I shouldn’t let that child out of my sight,” she thought. “I am failing in my duty! They’ll have to come back and stay where I can see them, or”--she sighed--“or I suppose I’ll have to follow where they go.”

She walked around the turn of the path. No one in sight!

She walked on a little. She stopped to listen. Not a sound!

Then she went back to the bench and called:

“Natalie! Natalie!”

It is strange what a sinister effect may be caused by calling a person who does not answer. As soon as she had called, Miss Mackellar grew really frightened. She actually ran up the path, and, meeting a nursemaid with a perambulator, she cried:

“Oh, did you see a little girl with a tiger? No--I mean a little girl in a pink hat and a red-haired woman?”

“Er-huh,” said the nursemaid, staring hard at her. “Just a minute ago--goin’ up that way, to the entrance, walking terrible fast.”

“Oh, Heavens!” cried Miss Mackellar, ashen white. “Oh, stop them, somebody! The child has been kidnaped!”

The nursemaid also turned pale.

“Oh, my!” she exclaimed. “I never! Then I’d better get _this_ baby home, quick as ever I can!”

And she set off with her perambulator at a dangerous rate of speed.

The luckless Miss Mackellar stood in the middle of the path, clasping her trembling hands, and trying in vain to make her panic-stricken brain function lucidly. What she really wanted to do was to scream.

“No, no!” she said to herself. “I must keep calm. Oh, there’s a policeman! But I don’t know--perhaps that’s the wrong thing to do. It might get into the newspapers, if I tell a policeman, and Mr. Donalds is always so angry at newspapers. Oh! Oh! If they had only come to me and told me they were going to steal the child, I’d have been glad to draw all my money out of the savings bank and hide it under a tree for them! That’s what they always seem to want some one to do. Of course I know I wouldn’t have enough, but--oh, my precious Natalie! Oh, Mr. Donalds! Oh, my poor darling Natalie!”

She began to cry.

“I’ll go to Mr. Donalds this instant,” she thought. “I don’t care what happens to me. Let them put me in jail--that’s where I ought to be! It’s all my fault!”

Off she went, as fast as her shaking knees and her fluttering heart permitted; and this is her last personal appearance in this story, for any account of her interview with her employer would be too painful to set before a humane reader.

Only let it be said that she survived--that when Mr. Donalds rushed out of his house on East Seventy-Fourth Street, Miss Mackellar was still breathing. He had at first intended to take her with him, to identify persons and places, but even he could see the uselessness of doing so. She was in no condition to identify anything. She was beginning to rave about the child’s having been carried off by a tiger; so he left her behind.

Like a stone from a catapult he shot out of his house and down the street toward the park. He had no intention of allowing the police to interfere with his private affairs. He believed he knew very well who had stolen the child, and why.

“Very well, madam!” he said to himself. “We shall see!”

III

Mr. Donalds knew that the child would suffer no bodily harm, and he was confident of his ability to snatch her away from contaminating moral influences before serious injury to her character could result. Mr. Donalds never failed. If he did not always accomplish exactly what he set out to do, at least he did something else which seemed to him just as good.

He knew that in this case he would succeed, as usual, and therefore he was able to devote his mind to being angry. His fury rose within him like steam, actually seeming to inflate him, so that he bounced rather than walked. A short, stoutish man he was, with a pale Napoleonic face and a piercing glance--a man of tremendous energy and determination.

Sometimes, however, he was a man of too little patience and deliberation. This morning, for instance, although he had thought to take his hat and his walking stick, he had forgotten to change his slippers. He was wearing red morocco slippers that came up over the ankle, and not only were they conspicuous, but they were too thin for outdoor walking.

However, it was not his way to turn back, and forward he went. He entered the park and proceeded direct to the spot where Miss Mackellar said she had last seen the child. He looked for clews. There were none.

He followed the course which the nursemaid had pointed out to Miss Mackellar, and in due time he arrived at another entrance. There was a cab stand here, in which stood one taxi, with the chauffeur standing beside it, leisurely surveying the world in which we live. Mr. Donalds approached him.

“See here!” he said. “Did you happen to see a red-haired woman and a child in a pink hat come out of the park near here?”

“Yep,” replied the man, without interest.

Mr. Donalds had not lived some fifty years for nothing. He knew how to inspire enthusiasm. He put his hand into his pocket.

“Yes, sir!” answered the driver promptly, in a brisk and earnest tone. “They came out here. I noticed ’em because she was in such a hurry. I thought there was something queer about it. Anyways, she took Wickey’s cab.”

“Where did they go?”

“Couldn’t tell you that, sir. They started up the avenoo; but they might ’a’ bin goin’ anywheres.”

“Where can I find this Wickey?” inquired Mr. Donalds.

“Well, I don’t know, sir. He’ll prob’ly come back here before long. Him and me are buddies, an’ we gen’rally eat lunch together, if we can. O’ course, lots o’ times we can’t. F’r instance, I might have to go out any minute now.”

“What’s the number of his cab?”

“Don’t know, sir--didn’t notice. You see, we don’t always take out the same one. Some days the one you’re used to is laid up.”

Mr. Donalds reflected hastily.

“I suppose I could find out by telephoning to the garage,” he suggested.

“Yes, sir; but they wouldn’t know where he went. Wouldn’t do much good, unless you want to set the cops after him.”

“No,” said Mr. Donalds. “I’ll handle this myself. You’re fairly certain, then, that this Wickey will return here before going to his garage?”

“Expect to see him any minute now, sir.”

“Very well, then--I’ll wait here. I’ll engage your cab. I’ll pay you for your time until this Wickey comes,” said Mr. Donalds.

He climbed into the cab, but he was very restless in there.

“Be sure Wickey doesn’t pass by!” he called out of the window.

“Oh, he’d gimme a hail,” the driver assured him. “Don’t you worry, sir.”

But time was flying. At least, time was undoubtedly flying for the nefarious red-haired woman, but for Mr. Donalds it passed with leaden foot. The chauffeur was smoking what Mr. Donalds was wont to call a “filthy cigarette,” and though he had often declared that such things were not tobacco at all, still the aroma of this one put him painfully in mind of cigars. He had none with him. He grew more and more restless.

At last another cab came up, and its driver descended.

“Is that Wickey?” cried Mr. Donalds.

“No, sir,” answered his especial driver. “‘Nother fellow.”

“Ask him to go somewhere and buy me half a dozen cigars,” said Mr. Donalds. “Tell him to get Havana perfectos.”

This was soon done, and as he began to smoke, Mr. Donalds felt calmer; but a new and more serious craving now assailed him. He was in the habit of lunching promptly at one o’clock, and it was now half past one. The cab was hot with the sun blazing down upon it, and this, combined with the bad effects of boiling rage, sizzling impatience, and fast growing hunger, were impairing Mr. Donalds’s health. He felt positively ill. He threw away his third cigar half finished.

The driver approached the window.

“I’m going to get a bite to eat, sir,” he said. “This here fellow knows Wickey. He’ll stay till I get back.”

“Just a minute!” said Mr. Donalds. “I--er--”

This was intensely distasteful to him, but he knew that without food he could not be at his best.

“Bring me back something to eat,” he said; “something--er--small and not conspicuous, if possible.”

Thus it was that Mr. Donalds, eminent business man and mirror of respectability, might have been seen eating a “hot dog” in a taxicab on Fifth Avenue on a Sunday afternoon. He had pulled down the blinds, had taken the first bite, and was discovering that he had never tasted anything so exquisite, so zestful--when the door was opened and a policeman looked in.

“Now, what’s all this?” asked the policeman reproachfully. “This won’t do, you know!”

Mr. Donalds managed to convince the officer that his presence was perfectly legitimate; but the incident disturbed him. He felt himself an outcast from society. He no longer relished the “hot dog,” but he finished it.

Then he was assailed by a fearful thirst, and there is no knowing what might have happened next, if the elusive Wickey had not appeared.

“There he is!” cried Mr. Donalds’s driver. “Hey, Wickey! Come here!”

Wickey approached.

“Yes,” he said, in answer to Mr. Donalds’s questions. “I took ’em out to a place on the Boston Post Road--long run. I jest got back--empty to City Island; then I picked up a fare.”

“Take me to the place where you left the woman,” said Mr. Donalds.

“Sorry, sir,” said Wickey, “but I can’t afford to take the chance of comin’ back empty.”

“Oh, I’ll pay!” shouted Mr. Donalds. “Don’t waste any more time!”

IV

In dust, in gasoline fumes, in an endless procession of cars, Mr. Donalds proceeded on his way. They stopped for gasoline, they stopped while Wickey investigated a knock in the engine, they stopped again and again because the procession stopped. Signs told them to “go slow,” and they went slow, until Mr. Donalds was on the verge of frenzy.