The Whole Family Part 11

"That is precisely it," I admitted. "I want you to philander with Aunt Elizabeth for two days, one day; two hours, one hour; just long enough, only long enough to bring that fool boy to his senses."

"If I had suspected the nature of the purpose I am to serve in this complication"--began the doctor, without a smile. "I trusted your judgment, Mrs. Price, and good sense--I have never known either to fail before. However," he added, manfully, "I am in for it now, and I would do more disagreeable things than this for Peggy's sake. But perhaps," he suggested, grimly, "we sha'n't find either of them."

He retired from the subject obviously, if gracefully, and began to play with the poodle that had the Pullman permit. I happen to know that if there is any species of dog the doctor does not love it is a poodle, with or without a permit. The lady with three chins asked me if my husband were fond of dogs--I think she said, so fond as THAT. She glanced at the girl whom the poodle owned.

I don't know why it should be a surprise to me, but it was; that the chin lady and the poodle girl have both registered at "The Sphinx."

Directly after luncheon, for I could not afford to lose a minute, I went to Mrs. Chataway's; the agreement being that the doctor should follow me in an absent-minded way a little later. But there was a blockade on the way, and I wasn't on time. What I took to be Mrs. Chataway herself admitted me with undisguised hesitation.

Miss Talbert, she said, was not at home; that is--no, she was not home.

She explained that a great many people had been asking for Miss Talbert; there were two in the parlor now.

When I demanded, "Two what?" she replied, in a breathless tone, "Two gentlemen," and ushered me into that old-fas.h.i.+oned architectural effort known to early New York as a front and back parlor.

One of the gentlemen, as I expected, proved to be Dr. Denbigh. The other was flatly and unmistakably Charles Edward. The doctor offered to excuse himself, but I took Charles Edward into the back parlor, and I made so bold as to draw the folding-doors. I felt that the occasion justified worse than this.

The colloquy between myself and Charles Edward was brief and pointed. He began by saying, "YOU here! What a mess!--"

My conviction is that he saved himself just in time from Messymaria.

"Have you found him?" I propounded.

"No."

"Haven't seen him?"

"I didn't say I hadn't seen him."

"What did he say?" I insisted.

"Not very much. It was in the Park."

"In the PARK? Not very MUCH? How could you let him go?"

"I didn't let him go," drawled Charles Edward. "He invited me to dinner.

A man can't ask a fellow what his intentions are to a man's sister in a park. I hadn't said very much up to that point; he did most of the talking. I thought I would put it off till we got round to the cigars."

"Then?" I cried, impatiently, "and then?"

"You see," reluctantly admitted Charles Edward, "there wasn't any then.

I didn't dine with him, after all. I couldn't find it--"

"Couldn't find what?"

"Couldn't find the hotel," said Charles Edward, defiantly. "I lost the address. Couldn't even say that it was a hotel. I believe it was a club.

He seems to be a sort of a swell--for a coeducational professor--anyhow, I lost the address; and that is the long and short of it."

"If it had been a studio or a Bohemian cafe--" I began.

"I should undoubtedly have remembered it," admitted Charles Edward, in his languid way.

"You have lost him," I replied, frostily. "You have lost Harry Goward, and you come here--"

"On the same errand, I presume, my distressed and distressing sister, that has brought you. Have you seen her?" he demanded, with sudden, uncharacteristic shrewdness.

At this moment a portiere opened at the side of my back parlor, and Mrs.

Chataway, voluminously appearing, mysteriously beckoned me. I followed her into the dreariest hall I think I ever saw even in a New York boarding-house. There the landlady frankly told me that Miss Talbert wasn't out. She was in her room packing to make one of her visits. Miss Talbert had given orders that she was to be denied to gentlemen friends.

No, she never said anything about ladies. (This I thought highly probable.) But if I were anything to her and chose to take the responsibility--I chose and I did. In five minutes I was in Aunt Elizabeth's room, and had turned the key upon an interview which was briefer but more startling than I could possibly have antic.i.p.ated.

Elizabeth Talbert is one of those women whose attraction increases with the negligee or the deshabille. She was so pretty in her pink kimono that she half disarmed me. She had been crying, and had a gentle look.

When I said, "Where is he?" and when she said, "If you mean Harry Goward--I don't know," I was prepared to believe her without evidence.

She looked too pretty to doubt. Besides, I cannot say that I have ever caught Aunt Elizabeth in a real fib. She may be a "charmian," but I don't think she is a liar. Yet I pushed my case severely.

"If you and he hadn't taken that 5.40 train to New York--"

"We didn't take the 5.40 train," retorted Elizabeth Talbert, hotly. "It took us. You don't suppose--but I suppose you do, and I suppose I know what the whole family supposes--As if I would do such a dastardly!--As if I didn't clear out on purpose to get away from him--to get out of the whole mix--As if I knew that young one would be aboard that train!"

"But he was aboard. You admit that."

"Oh yes, he got aboard."

"Made a pleasant travelling companion, Auntie?"

"I don't know," said Aunt Elizabeth, shortly. "I didn't have ten words with him. I told him he had put me in a position I should never forgive.

Then he told me I had put him in a worse. We quarrelled, and he went into the smoker. At the Grand Central he checked my suitcase and lifted his hat. He did ask if I were going to Mrs. Chataway's. I have never seen him since."

"Aunt Elizabeth," I said, sadly, "I am younger than you--"

"Not so very much!" retorted Aunt Elizabeth.

"--and I must speak to you with the respect due my father's sister when I say that the n.o.bility of your conduct on this occasion--a n.o.bility which you will pardon me for suggesting that I didn't altogether count on--is likely to prove the catastrophe of the situation."

Aunt Elizabeth stared at me with her wet, coquettish eyes. "You're pretty hard on me, Maria," she said; "you always were."

"Hurry and dress," I suggested, soothingly; "there are two gentlemen to see you downstairs."

Aunt Elizabeth shook her head. She a.s.serted with evident sincerity that she didn't wish to see any gentlemen; she didn't care to see any gentlemen under any circ.u.mstances; she never meant to have anything to do with gentlemen again. She said something about becoming a deaconess in the Episcopal Church; she spoke of the attractions in the life of a trained nurse; mentioned settlement work; and asked me what I thought of Elizabeth Frye, Dorothea Dix, and Clara Barton.

"This is one advantage that Catholics have over us," she observed, dreamily: "one could go into a nunnery; then one would be quite sure there would be no men to let loose the consequences of their natures and conduct upon a woman's whole existence."

"These two downstairs have waited a good while," I returned, carelessly.

"One of them is a married man and is used to it. But the other is not."

"Very well," said Aunt Elizabeth, with what (it occurred to me) was a smile of forced dejection. "To please you, Maria, I will go down."

If Aunt Elizabeth's dejection were a.s.sumed, mine was not. I have been in the lowest possible spirits since my unlucky discovery. Anything and everything had occurred to me except that she and that boy could quarrel. I had fancied him shadowing Mrs. Chataway for the slightest sign of his charmer. I don't know that I should have been surprised to see him curled up, like a dog, asleep on the door-steps. At the present moment I have no more means of finding the wetched lad than I had in Eastridge; not so much, for doubtless Peggy has his prehistoric addresses. I am very unhappy. I have not had the heart left in me to admire Dr. Denbigh, who has filled his role brilliantly all the afternoon. In half an hour he and Aunt Elizabeth had philandered as deep as a six months' flirtation; and I must say that they have kept at it with an art amounting almost to sincerity. Aunt Elizabeth did not once mention settlement work, and put no inquiries to Dr. Denbigh about Elizabeth Frye, Dorothea Dix, or Clara Barton.