The Motor Maids by Rose, Shamrock and Thistle Part 31

"I almost didn't know you, Marie-Jeanne," put in Nancy. "You have grown so plump and strong since we saw you."

"It's all because I am happy. One can't be well if one isn't happy, and I was never so happy in all my life. I'm cooking," cried Marie-Jeanne, in the tone of one who had surmounted all obstacles and arrived at the very acme of her ambitions. "I'm cooking three meals a day. Look at my tins,-look at my stove," she went on excitedly. "Aren't they s.h.i.+ny and clean? See my blue china. Isn't it beautiful? I love to set the table so much that I can't wait for meal time to come because I want to make it pretty. We use candles at night." She pointed to a pair of old silver candlesticks on the mantel shelf. "Aren't they beautiful? I found them in an old shop."

"But who else is with you, Marie-Jeanne, besides your mother?" asked Billie.

"Besides my mo--" began the other and broke off. "A friend," she added.

She glanced at the clock hastily. It lacked a few minutes of four.

"There is plenty of time," she exclaimed. "We shall have tea. I always wanted you to drink tea with me. How things do come out as one wishes at last. You must eat some of the cake I made this morning. It's a beautiful four-egg cake with white icing."

The girls were well pleased to drink tea with Marie-Jeanne. They had much to say to each other. Where had Marie-Jeanne been since they last saw her on London Bridge? Did she like Edinburgh and was her mother quite well? Had she heard about little Arthur, who was still lost or kidnapped? To all of which questions Marie-Jeanne replied with bright nods and brief answers while she prepared the tea.

"But I can't get over your looks, dear Marie-Jeanne," cried Billie. "You must have gained many pounds, and it makes you so pretty, and what a pretty dress you are wearing."

Marie-Jeanne glanced proudly down at her neat blue serge.

"It's happiness and work and good air that have improved my appearance,"

she answered, cutting the cake with a professional flourish.

Then the three girls sat down around the little stove and sipped their tea and ate cake and talked of many things.

"Doesn't your mother find it rather hard to climb these stairs?" asked Nancy.

Marie-Jeanne looked very uncomfortable.

"Have you seen the view?" she asked, pretending not to have heard Nancy's question and glancing rather uneasily at the clock.

Immediately the two girls rose to go. Perhaps Mrs. Le Roy-Jones would not be pleased to have her daughter entertaining guests in this humble lodging.

Before they left, Billie parted the muslin curtains and looked across a sea of wet roofs to the real sea beyond.

"How beautiful, Marie-Jeanne!"

"Isn't it?-and we love it. The air is splendid. Sometimes it brings a smell of heather from the moors and sometimes a salty sea smell. We are so far removed, it's like being in a tower."

Billie's glance fell to the table near the window. Besides several novels and heavier-looking books, she saw a child's book of animals. She glanced curiously at Marie-Jeanne, who was gathering up the tea things and preparing to wash them. Underneath the big chair by the table was a pair of man's bedroom slippers almost as small as a boy's.

The three girls embraced. Perhaps they might never meet again. Certainly it did not seem likely; for the Motor Maids were leaving the Land of the Thistle in the morning and in another week would be in Ireland.

As they were parting, Billie said to Marie-Jeanne:

"Do you remember what you said to us on London Bridge that afternoon, Marie-Jeanne, about wanting to live in a house that was all gla.s.s so that you could have no secrets? Are you living in one now?"

Marie-Jeanne shook her head.

"It's not a gla.s.s house," she answered. "But it's a good deal better than Miss Rivers', and sometimes I deceive myself into thinking it's really a little home. It's a kind of an imitation happiness, I suppose.

Always, deep down in my heart, I know it can't last very long, but it's the nearest I have ever been to being really happy in my life."

Just as Billie and Nancy pa.s.sed under the arch leading from the courtyard and turned toward the New Town, a very old man and a little boy, walking hand in hand and talking happily together, crossed the narrow street.

"There goes Billie," cried the little boy excitedly.

"I think not, my son," answered the old man, and the two disappeared under the archway.

"Wait a moment, Nancy," exclaimed Billie, with a sudden determination.

"What is it?" asked her friend.

Billie hurried back. There was a name and number at the entrance, which she 'graved in her memory; also the name of the street.

"We might just as well keep Marie-Jeanne's address," she said.

"I remember the number on the door," said Nancy. "It was No. 7, and the way I happened to remember it is when we were climbing up I noticed it and thought, 'Here are some people who live in a seventh heaven.'"

But that ended the adventures of the Motor Maids in the Land of the Thistle. The next morning they turned their faces southward. In the Land of the Shamrock, Billie was to realize how important small impulses sometimes are in the shaping of great events.

CHAPTER XX.-AN AWAKENING.

There is always some good in the worst of us. But there are times when it is difficult to find the little spark of goodness; it is so small, so carefully hidden in the unexplored depths of some natures that only the blind faith of the searcher may discover it.

Now, no one had ever been troubled to search for the spark in the Duke of Kilkenty's nature,-that is, not since the death of his second wife.

His stepmother, the Dowager d.u.c.h.ess, had long ago washed her hands of him.

"He always wants the things he can't have and he never likes the things he can have," she used to say of him.

Neither of his two marriages had been happy. The second d.u.c.h.ess of Kilkenty, mother of little Arthur, was of humble extraction, it was said. No one knew exactly where she came from, but those who had seen her said she was beautiful. It was rumored that she had been glad to die and had had only one wish: to take her little boy with her.

The Duke of Kilkenty was fond of his eldest son, Lord Maxwell Douglas, but apparently he had not a ray of affection for the delicate, whimsical little Lord Arthur, whom he left entirely to the care of incompetent tutors and a scheming physician.

And now the little Lord Arthur was lost. Detectives all over the kingdom had been searching for him for weeks. Some believed he had been carried off to America; others believed he was dead, and still others forgot all about it, because the English papers, after the first outburst of news, had respected the wishes of the Duke of Kilkenty and the police and had printed little on the subject.

Arthur had dropped out of the world of his father and the people about him so completely that it almost seemed that his poor mother had had her wish at last. He had left not so much as a ripple on the surface when he had plunged out of sight, and it was a false scent that had lured the detectives first to Ireland and then to Scotland.

Was he concealed in one of the thousands of hiding places in the maze of London lodging houses? What had been the motive of his kidnapping? Was it out of revenge or for money? The strangest thing about it all was that the Duke had offered no reward.

One night toward the middle of July this extremely unpopular person lay tossing on his bed. He had paid a flying visit to his estates in Ireland, hoping to find a little rest. For weeks he had slept only a few hours at a time. His soul seemed to be groping in blackness and a dreadful sickening depression benumbed his senses. To-night, like many a night before, he lay thinking and thinking, not of Arthur, but of Arthur's mother. He seemed to see her face in the darkness. It was beautiful and delicate like the child's. The Duke closed his eyes, but he could not shut out the vision. It hovered over him appealingly, reproachfully. He tossed and turned, and at last he rose, flung on his dressing-gown and stalked down to the library, carrying a lighted candle and making a ghostly figure in the great room, with the sputtering light held high above his head. He switched on an electric light, unlocked a drawer in his desk and took out a packet of letters tied with a piece of red tape. Among the letters which fell apart when the tape was loosened was a photograph. It was the same face which had hovered about him in the darkness. The reproachful eyes looked straight into his, and there was a pathetic droop at the corners of the mouth.

"Poor little thing," he muttered to himself. "Poor little Maddelina!

Strange that I have never looked at the picture in all these years, not since she died, and I feel as moved by it to-night as I did the first time I saw her." He fingered the letters absently and opened one or two.

They were signed "Your loving Maddelina."

Among the gray-blue envelopes with foreign postmarks was one of heavy cream-colored paper. There was no address on the back, but it was closed and sealed with sealing-wax, stamped with the ducal arms. He tore open the envelope hastily.

"What's this?" he exclaimed. "She must have put it here, herself. I don't remember it."