The Motor Maids Across the Continent Part 34

"On the terrace, Signora. Ah, the terrace, it is bella, bella, in the morning. Sacremen-you will see her on a clear day. Ah, madama, I entreata you to step forth on the terrace."

Pasquale and Lucia stood in the most theatrical att.i.tudes imaginable, their hands outstretched, exactly like two opera singers when they had reached the closing notes of a grand duetto.

"Ah, Signora, thisa gooda breakfast,-chicken broila-questa bella vista-"

"Good heavens, the man is mad. They are both perfectly mad," cried poor Miss Campbell rus.h.i.+ng to the terrace and almost into the arms of-Oh, horror of horrors! Oh, unspeakable disgrace! John James Stone, who actually held her imprisoned in his iron embrace and looked down into her face with an expression so tender that Nancy and Mary were obliged to retire into the hall for a moment where they fell on each other's necks and laughed immoderately.

"Release me, sir! How dare you?" cried the excited little woman, looking around to see if anyone else had been a witness of this disgraceful encounter.

There was, indeed, quite an audience. Daniel Moore, leaning on a cane, his other arm clasped in Evelyn's, stood close at hand; also the four Motor Maids, Pasquale chuckling with joy and Lucia smiling broadly.

"Evelyn, my dear, you have given us such a fright. Where did you come from," exclaimed Miss Campbell, almost in hysterics. "And Daniel Moore, too."

"It's a good ending to what might have been a very tragic affair, Miss Campbell," replied Daniel. "Evelyn was kidnapped last night by Ebenezer Stone but as luck would have it, Mr. Stone and I were making the trip from Sacramento to catch you here and we met them on the road last night. They had an accident, in fact, and stopped our car for a.s.sistance without knowing whom we were. Unfortunately, I couldn't fight that scoundrel, Ebenezer," he continued, clenching his fist and growing very white.

"Have you been ill?"

"He has been very ill," put in Evelyn, clasping his arm and leaning on him.

"Too ill even to know that Evelyn was not married," went on Daniel.

"That little wretch of a mare when she dragged me around by my leg, injured my hip. I owe my life to Miss Billie, and I ought to be thankful that the injury was no worse. The worry about Evelyn and the arrest in Salt Lake City precipitated matters, I suppose and I have been in the hospital ever since, until the day before yesterday. It didn't seem to matter much with Evelyn married to that-to that--"

"Never mind," said Evelyn soothingly. "Father and I never really did like him. Did we father?"

This was rather straining a point but Mr. John James Stone was quite equal to it. The truth is the stony old Mormon had suffered a change of heart.

"Ebenezer is a cold blooded scoundrel," he observed in a tone of conviction which brought covert smiles even to the lips of his long suffering daughter.

"But, please, tell me quickly how you and Mr. Stone came to meet?"

demanded Miss Campbell, the answer of which question they were all burning to know.

Mr. Stone cast upon the charming little spinster a glance so melting that it was impossible for the Motor Maids to keep from laughing.

"They have you to thank for that, Miss Campbell," replied the big man.

"I am completely won over, I a.s.sure you, madam. A charming woman is the most powerful influence in the world."

An expression of amazement pa.s.sed over the spinster's face, followed almost immediately by one of intense amus.e.m.e.nt and embarra.s.sment. There was a strained silence. Then Pasquale, clearing his throat several times significantly, announced breakfast.

In spite of the fatigue and nervous strain of the past six hours, everybody was hungry and Evelyn Stone was the most joyous member of the breakfast party. The shadow which had darkened her entire young life was dispelled. She had never dreamed that hidden deep somewhere behind that granite exterior her father had a real flesh and blood heart.

It was Miss Campbell who had discovered it and it was Miss Campbell who must now pay the penalty of her discovery.

No one ever knew exactly what conversation pa.s.sed between her and the Mormon gentleman on the terrace that morning after breakfast. But they guessed that the little spinster had received a declaration of love and an offer of marriage. At any rate, half an hour later, she shut herself into her room and refused to appear again until dinner time.

As for Mr. Stone, he took an automobile ride with the Motor Maids and made himself most agreeable. On the way home, he bought everything he could find in the way of fruit and flowers for the little lady who had touched his heart. He was as frankly and openly in love as a boy, and love which comes to those past fifty is of an extremely poignant nature.

But Miss Campbell had no intention of wedding even a reformed Mormon and settling in Salt Lake City.

"Never again will I enter that hateful place except in chains as a prisoner," she had repeated many times, and her old lover, whose youth had been renewed like the eagle's and whose character had been strangely transformed, entreated in vain.

CHAPTER XXIV.-SAN FRANCISCO AT LAST.

It was just at sunset, a time pre-arranged by Mr. Stone, who now thought of everything, when the two automobiles paused on the brow of a hill near Berkeley.

Spread before them was the glorious panorama of San Francis...o...b..y. San Francisco, at one end of the peninsula, was s.h.i.+mmering gold in the last rays of the sun as it sank in the ocean at the very entrance of the Golden Gate. The whole scene might have been painted with a brush dipped in gold so glorified were the surrounding hills and bay by the sun's rays.

It was all very much like a dream, unreal and strange as they hastened up and down the hilly streets of San Francisco and finally came to a stop at the St. Francis Hotel.

It was the end of their trip across the continent; the end of the summer and the beginning of happiness for their new friends. To-morrow there would be a wedding at which four Motor Maids would act as bridesmaids and Mr. John James Stone would give his daughter to Daniel Moore with a real fatherly blessing.

The bridegroom gave a dinner that night to the bridal party. It was a grand affair, a real dinner party. The girls wore their very best dresses and carried bunches of violets sent by that abject and thoughtful lover, Mr. Stone.

During the dinner which was given in one of the pretty private dining rooms of the St. Francis, John James Stone rose in his might and made a speech, just as if they were the most distinguished company in the world.

"Miss Campbell," he said, and that lady stirred uneasily under the fire of his ardent black eyes, "and young ladies, I feel that I cannot let this delightful evening slip by without taking the opportunity to thank you for a gift which I count as the most precious I have ever received in my whole life."

He spoke with the tone of an orator, his voice, vibrating and deep, rising and falling like the sound of the waves on the seash.o.r.e, and his words were somewhat Biblical, after the manner of the Mormon speechmaker.

"All my life I have been as one walking in the dark," he continued.

"Even my daughter was a shadow to me. Only one thing was real. Money!

And now I have lost a great deal of my money. It has slipped from my fingers into the hands of another man, who, thank G.o.d, has not forced himself into my family and never will. But I have received something in place of my fortune which is now and always will be of infinitely more value to me than money. The darkness is lifted and I stand in the light.

I feel as one who has been groping in the night and have now turned my face toward the rising sun. You have made me the gift of sight. This gracious little lady," he continued, turning to Miss Campbell, "whose spirit and courage first aroused my admiration and then a deeper feeling," he placed his hand on his heart with the most unblus.h.i.+ng candor. It was difficult for the other members of the party to hide their smiles. "This elegant little lady although she will not consent to make me the happiest of mortals has at least succeeded in inspiring me with a new content.

"Will she therefore and the young Motor Maids-" he paused and smiled at this expression which he had caught from the girls-"do me the honor to accept a slight token of my grat.i.tude?"

The Mormon produced a package which he had been concealing under his chair. That the souvenirs had been planned long beforehand was evident, for the boxes bore the stamp of Salt Lake City.

The souvenirs were jewels and very beautiful. For each of the Motor Maids was a ring set with a deep yellow topaz, the setting and stone representing the "All-Seeing Eye," the Mormon symbol carved on the Temple and in many other places in Salt Lake City. This was an especially appropriate choice since it might also stand for the Comet's all-seeing eye which had guided them safely across two thousand miles.

Miss Campbell's present was a beautiful topaz brooch and represented nothing except the deep regard of the giver.

They were obliged to accept these gifts, strange as it seemed to them to be receiving presents from one so recently a bitter enemy. But then, like Jim Bowles, Mr. Stone was a reformed character. Love had transformed his whole being.

Only two more incidents remain to be told before this history comes to an end. One of them concerns Peter Van Vechten, who, the girls learned at the hotel, never reached Chicago, although he succeeded in flying past the Rocky Mountains. But no else in the race reached the goal and he proceeded farther than any of the other aeroplanists. The young man was the grandson and only heir of one of the richest men in America.

"And we took him for a thief," said Billie, sadly.

"I never did," said Mary.

The other occurrence will show that life is full of coincidences and that if our memories are good and our impulses kind, we can always help someone.

The morning of the wedding Elinor was waiting for her friends at a window at one end of the hotel corridor. Someone else was waiting there also, but the two had not even glanced at each other so engrossed were they in their own thoughts. A door opened and a voice called:

"Elinor."