University of Virginia Library

54. CHAPTER LIV.
MRS. SMITH IS MADE TO UNDERSTAND GREEK.

Our party of travelers arrived in San Francisco
two days later. Mliss ran up to her room,
while Regina prepared Mrs. Shaw and Miss
Clytie for her appearance.

Mrs. Shaw's mind was not of a character to receive
surprises kindly. The return of Mliss was
like the return of the dead. Had she been informed
that her eccased husband was in an
adjoining room waiting for an interview, she
would not have been more surprised and confounded
than when informed that Mliss had
come to life, and was at that moment in the
house and in the enjoyment of perfect health.

And when Regina outlined the young girl's
adventures—told how she had been carried off
from their own house—how she had been taken
to Valparaiso, and from Valparaiso to Buenos
Ayres, from Buenos Ayres to New York, and
from New York to San Francisco, and was still
alive, joyous and happy—the good lady, after
the first paralysis of astonishment, discovered
in her strange career the guidance and care of
a kind Providence, who alone could enable the
young girl to escape unscathed from so many
dangers.

Accepting this view of the case, Mrs. Shaw
conceived it her duty to receive the wanderer
kindly. It would not be well if she turned
against one whom Providence had so signally favored.

Perhaps a lurking suspicion lingered in the estimable
lady's mind that Mr. Gray had had more to do
with Mliss's adventures than appeared, as the story was
related by Regina. She could not, however, resist the
force of circumstances, and Mliss was again accepted
as a member of the family.

The meeting between Clvtie and Mliss was characteristic
of their age and sex. They rushed to each
other's arms, drew back, surveyed each other for a
moment, then came together with an embrace more
prolonged than the first.

“Dear Clytie!” exclaimed Mliss; “I am so glad to
see you!”

“And I am glad to see you—I am sure,” replied the
gentle girl, arranging her disordered curls, while she
surveyed Mliss at her leisure. “You've grown ever so
much,” she continued, “and grown pretty, too.”

“There was a chance for that,” rejoined Mliss. “I
remember how I used to envy you because you were so
much prettier than I.”

At this stage of the interesting conversation the
equitable Aristides made Mliss aware of his presence,
and the next instant was half-smothered for his pains.
Mliss was still somewhat emphatie in her demonstrations,
and Aristides had ever been her fast friend.

Mrs. James Smith had heard the next morning that
Mliss had returned. The information was conveyed
to her in a note written by Mr. Hopp, in which that
gentleman reminded her of the conditions upon which
he had consented to continue to act as her counsel in
the case of “The People vs. Smith.” Mliss having appeared,
he could no longer oppose the recognition of
her just rights.

The note dropped from Mrs. Smith's hand. A
change, sudden and almost terrible, came over her
face. Every drop of blood fled from her cheeks leaving
the thin surface of rouge just touching the skin,
of which a moment before it had seemed a part.

For some moments she sat sitent, rigid, her eyes
fixed, her lips parted, her white teeth set—the slow
rising and falling of her bosom alone indicating that
the mechanism of her form still performed its work.

At last she arose, and, with her arms folded across
her bosom (a position in which a woman always looks
supremely awkward), walked across the room.

She stopped before a mirror, and coldly and critically
surveyed the face therein reflected.

Something like a smile parted her lips. It was a
smile of derision, of contempt, of hatred. as if she
loathed herself for having lost all that made life worth
endurance.

“This,” she murmured. “is the end. I am beaten.
Three years older, three years more of strite, three
years of wretchedness, and I stand where I stood
when that idiot first put the idea into my head of being
somebody else. I might have won if I had strangled
the girl, as I ought.”

Then, with a pitiful attempt to rally her forces, to
rehabilitate that wan and weary face with something
of its old youth and beauty, she arranged her still
luxuriant bair, smocthed out the wrinkles from her
forehead, and again wreathed her lips with a smile.

“There is but one thing that really beats a woman,”
she murmured to herself, “and that is time, I am
not beaten because Mliss has been brought back, but
because—because—I am no longer young.”

Bitter confession for a woman who had lived only
to enjoy her triumphs of youth and beauty. Of all
who had loved her (and their name was legion), not
the love of one would survive the wreck of her beauty.
Not one? She smiled a smile of mingled pity and
scorn. There was still one—a soft, young fool—but
still in the enumeration of population he counted as
a man.

The woman stood for a moment scanning her own
features, as if striving by force of will to bring back
the life and beauty to her face. Her only weapons of
warfare were those she had surveyed, and she tried
to persuade herself they were yet good for service.

While thus standing before her mirror, a knock
sounded on the door.

A servant entered with a card.

She took it and read—“John Gray.”

“Show the gentleman into the public parlor,” she
said: “I will join him there in a few minutes.”

The servant bowed and retired.

“He has come to triumpb over me,” she thought.
“He shall see that I am not yet crushed to the earth.”

The excitement of an encounter was just what she
needed. The life came back to her face, the slumbering
fire to her eyes, and her sensuous mouth became
once again moist and warm.

She descended to the parlor. Mr. Gray rose from a
chair by the windowand advanced to meet her.

“Madam,” he said, after the salutations of the day
were exchanged, my business is of a character which
justifies me in asking the favor of a private interview.”

“Indeed; then let me conduct you to my parlor. I
have an hour which I place entirely at your service.”

Mr. Gray bowed and accompanied the lady to the
room she had just quitted.

“Now,” she said, sinking upon a sofa and motioning
him to a seat, “I am ready to hear the particulars
of your journey. It is of that, I presume, of which
you wish to speak.”

“That and the events that made the journey necessary.”

“Tell me first, how did you find Mliss? Is she as
odd and charming as ever?”

“Mliss has changed only for the better. Fortunately
she possesses one of those courageous dispositions
that rise above the apprehension of evils.”

“I have always said she was a singular child. If she
only had a fair share of beauty, she would make a sensation
in society.”

“She does not lack for beauty. But my object in
calling upon you was not to discuss the personal
merits of my ward, but her relation to yourself.”

Mrs. Smith inclined her head.

“Do you still claim to be her mother?”

“I certainly do.”

“And to be the widow of her father?”

“I could hardly be legally her mother and not be
her father's widow.”

“Well, madam, it is in regard to that claim that I
am here. The law will settle the question of right:
but I find it necessary to provide aga'nst the acts of
violence which the law may punish but cannot
prevent.”

“Please to explain your meaning. What acts of
violence do you fear?”

“Some months ago my ward was taken from the
home in which I had placed her, and given to a ruffian,
from whom she escaped by one of those happy chances
which can only happen to one person once in a lifetime.
I wish to provide against a similar outrage.”

“My dear Mr. Gray, what you are saying is Greek
to me.”

“Since you insist upon it. I will translate into English
that which is Greek to you. Some few months
ago, acting in concert with a man known as Waters
and using as an instrument a man known as O'Neil,
you caused my ward to be taken from her home and
sent her abroad, with the alternative of marriage with
O'Neil in case she escaped death. Do you follow me
so far?”

“I hear what you say.”

“Well, madam, my ward escaped both marriage
and death. She escaped the perils that surround
every young girl who is deprived of her natural protectors,
and is once more in the very house you caused
her to be taken from. Now, I desire to provide
against a similar outrage on your part or on the part
of your associates.”

“Well, sir, how do you propose to make provision
against a similar outrage?”

“I have prepared a document which I shall request
you to sign.”

“A document!”

“In which you resign all pretentions to the guardianship
of Melissa Smith, and bind yourself not in
any way to interfere, except by due process of law,
with those who have her in charge.”

“It would suit you, doubtless, it I should sign such
a document and observe its provisions. I decline,
however. Melissa Smith is my daughter, and I shall
stand between her and those who would take advantage
of her youth and inexperience.”

“Madam, you can sign the document or not, as
you choose. I give you three days in which to consider
the proposition. If, at 11 o'clock on the third
day from this, the document is not signed, you and
your associates will be arrested for conspiracy. I give
you the warning because I am strong enough to give
you the advantage.”

“Really, Mr. Gray, you are talking as if I had committed
a crime. You would positively make me believe
that I had caused my daughter to be carried off,
if I did not know to the countrary. As a charge this
would work admirably. Suspected yourself of sending
the child out of town to recover from the effects
of having resided too long in too close proximity to
yourself, you now intimate to the part of the world
that is interested in her welfare, that I, her mother
am the party who sent her away. It is clever, Mr.
Gray, but it will not work. I am not an amiable woman
in my best moods, and, as I feel just now, I decline
to oblige you.”

“As you please, madam,” replied Mr. Gray, rising
“I will not trespass longer on your time.”

“As for your absurd charge of conspiracy,” she
continued, with a side glance from her half-closed
eyes, “you know there is nothing in it. Fortunately,
judges and juries want evidence before they convict
of such offenses.”

“Yes,” replied Mr. Gray; “such evidence as might
be furnished by a certain letter of instruction regarding
a certain letter of credit drawn by a certain Mrs.
John Smith in favor of a certain John O'Neil.”

Mrs. Smith raised her eyes full to the face of her
companion.

“More Greek,” she said, pleasantly. “Sit down
again and translate the sentence. I am so dull to-day.”

“Madam,” replied Mr. Gray, “I have no desire to
push you to the wall. You were started in pursuit of
a fortune at a time when it seemed as if it might as
well come to you as another. Once started you could
not well retreat, and you have incurred great risks in
surviving to gain your ends. You are not only beaten
at every point, but every movement lies exposed to
my view. I have proofs of every charge I make, and,
if you refuse my terms, and thereby brave arrest, I
pledge you my word that ten years of your remaining
youth will be passed at San Quentin. Think well what
you do. If the aid of the law is invoked, you must
abide by the result.”

Mrs. Smith's eyes fell before a gaze in which firmness
was tempered with compassion. She comprehended
at last that she was completely in Mr. Gray's
power.

She sat for some minutes in silence.

“You don't know what you are doing,” she said.
“You are driving a miserable woman back into the
hell which is the last resort of the unfortunate of her
sex. Who would not lie and steal to escape this?”

“Madam, you should have thought a little of the
young girl to whom this hell would be as full of torment
as to you.”

“When we are desperate we think only of ourselves.
Your sagacity is more than a match for my cunning.
Send me to San Quentin, if you will. It is not worse
than certain streets in this Christian city

“I shall not move against you. Leave my ward in
peace, and you may rest in peace yourself.”

“I ought to thank you, I suppose. You might be
harder on me than you are. Leave me now; I want to
think.”

Mr. Gray bowed and withdrew.

“If I were the woman I once was,” she murmured,
“I should have killed that man. I am good for nothing—only
fit to marry Joseph Fox.”