White Magic: A Novel

Beatrice had selected Valentine as her maid after trying more than a score of various nationalities. She had selected her because Valentine was a lady, and she could not endure servility or veneer manners in the close relations that must exist between mistress and maid. In calling Valentine a lady Beatrice did not mean that she was a “high-toned” lady, or a fine lady, or a fashionable lady, or any of the other qualified ladies, but that she was just a lady—well mannered, with delicate instincts, intelligent, simple and sincere. Valentine acted as Beatrice liked to believe she herself would act if she had to work for her living and happened to find being lady’s maid the most convenient way to do it.

At the Wolcott Beatrice registered beneath her own name that of Miss Valentine Clermont. When the two were in the little inside suite Beatrice took by way of making a beginning in the direction of the practice of economy, she said:

“For the present, at least, you are to be my companion. I can’t live here alone or just with a maid. So, the parlor is to be changed into a bedroom for you.”

“Very well, mademoiselle,” promptly acquiesced the intelligent Valentine, showing how rightly Beatrice had judged her.

“Miss Richmond,” corrected Beatrice with a smile.

“Pardon—certainly,” said Valentine.

“We are rather cramped here,” Beatrice went on. “But I guess I’ll be looking back on this as spacious luxury before long.”

Miss Clermont smiled.

“Why do you smile, Miss Clermont?”

“You do not know your father, Miss Richmond.”

“I assure you we have parted finally,” said Beatrice. “If you have any idea that in following my fortunes you are going with a person in the position I had until two hours ago, put it out of your mind. I can pay your wages—beg pardon, salary it is now—through next month—perhaps for another month after that. Then I shall be— Well, mine is a precious small income—and will be smaller. However, I’ll see that you get a place soon.”

Miss Clermont smiled.

“Why do you smile, Miss Clermont? Because you don’t believe me?”

“Not at all, Miss Richmond,” protested Valentine. “If you’re right about your situation—then I shall stay with you until you are settled—and, possibly, I can help you. If you are wrong—then I shall stay on as your maid until you marry. After that—Monsieur Léry and I are engaged. When we marry we shall go into business together.”

Beatrice paused in arranging her hair, turned and, half sitting on the low bureau, looked at her companion with the expression of one who has just given birth to a new and fascinating idea. “Why shouldn’t we go into business—you and I?” she said. “I’ll have to do something,” she went on. “I simply can’t content myself to live on—on what I’ll have after a few days from now. I love luxury—nice surroundings—good things to eat—beautiful clothes. Why not dressmaking?”

“We should get rich at it,” declared Miss Clermont.

And then it came out that she and Léry had been planning a dressmaking business. Miss Richmond was just what they needed to make it a swift and stupendous success. They had ten thousand dollars. If Miss Richmond could put in as much and would be a public partner attracting fashionable trade, giving the establishment eclat by wearing beautiful dresses in fashionable restaurants or for drives in the Avenue, and so on—and so on. “I can put in at least ten thousand,” said Beatrice. “And I have ideas about clothes.”

“Indeed, yes,” assented Valentine warmly. “You have a style of your own.”

“Yes, I think you and I have got me up rather stunningly these last two years,” said Beatrice.

The dressmaking business was as good as started before they had dinner—at which Miss Richmond had her companion sitting opposite her. Miss Clermont as a companion was a triumph. No one but a Frenchwoman could have glided so easily from menial to equal. “But then, I knew she could,” thought Beatrice, “the instant I looked at her hands, when she came to try for the place. Hands tell more than faces—and hers are the hands of a lady.”

At noon the next day, while Beatrice and Valentine were out walking, Peter telephoned, leaving word that he would call at half past four. At that hour Beatrice received him in the hotel parlor. He eyed her with admiring wonder. He expected to find all sorts of signs of her altered position—would not have been surprised had she already begun to look dowdy and down at the heel. Her radiance of spirit, of body and of toilet struck him as little less than miraculous. “You certainly are a cool one,” said he. “Why, you don’t look a bit upset.”

“Never felt so well in my life,” declared Beatrice. “I feel so—so—free!”

Peter shook his head warningly. “Wait till you have had a full dose. Wait till you really find out what you’re up against.”

“What is it?”

“Oh, you’re out of your world. It’s all very well to jump into the water and swim for a few minutes—just for the fun of the thing. But how about going in for being a fish and living in the water—eh?”

“I’d no idea you could do so well, Peter,” said Beatrice. “That’s both wise and witty. Why didn’t you begin that sort of talk sooner?”

“Oh, I say!” protested the young man. “I’m not such a mutt as you thought me. No one could be.”

“Better and better,” cried Beatrice. “First thing you know I’ll be trying to steal you back from Allie.”

Peter colored consciously. He said with a foolish attempt at the offhand: “Oh—I saw her—at lunch. She wants to come to see you, but don’t dare. Your father’s got her father right where he can put the screws on him.”

“She might have telephoned,” said Beatrice, and her tone even more than her look showed how Allie’s defection had hurt, how it was rankling.

Peter looked depressed. “Yes—I suppose she might,” conceded he. “But don’t be too hard on her, Beatrice. You know how afraid we all are of your father.”

“You’re here,” said Beatrice sententiously.

“Yes.” Peter reddened. “Hang it, I can’t fake with you. Fact is—well—while I hope I’d have come anyway, still, I’d not be so open about it, I’m afraid, if I hadn’t your father’s consent.”

“He told you to come!”

“He hasn’t given up,” said Peter with the air of a peddler undoing his pack. “Asked me if I knew where you were stopping. I said yes—that you told me. He asked where. I couldn’t think of any side step, so I let out the truth. Any harm in that?”

“Not the slightest. I’m not hiding from anybody.”

“Then he said—just as I was leaving him on the ferry this morning: ‘If you wish to call on my daughter and try to bring her to her right mind I’ve no objection.’”

“And I’ve no objection, either,” said the girl, “unless you try to bring me to my right mind. That one subject is taboo. You understand?”

Peter nodded. “I knew you meant it yesterday. I’m going ahead with Allie. You and I are such old friends that I feel I can talk things over with you. You see, it’s this way. I want to get married and settled. We all marry and settle young in our family. I can’t have what I want—but I can get something mighty good. Allie’s a trump. Such a comfortable sort.”

“You couldn’t do better,” said Beatrice with more warmth than she felt. For she had her eyes open to Allie now—too recently open for her to be tolerant of what were weaknesses of the same species as Beatrice’s own, if of a different genus.

“I’m not really in love with her,” continued Peter. “But——”

“But that’s of no consequence,” said Beatrice. “You’re one of the sort that thinks whatever belongs to them is the grandest ever. You’ll soon be crazy about her.”

“And she’ll always look well, too. She’s the image of her mother, and the way to test a girl’s staying quality is to see how her mother holds together. Yes, Allie’s good for the whole run—right into the last quarter.”

Beatrice and Peter went into the restaurant and in a quiet corner sat down to the sociability of tea. “Hanky,” said she, “I am going to treat you as a friend. I am going to ask you to attend to some matters for me which you must promise me never to speak of.”

Hanky showed that he was as highly flattered as the next young man would be by marks of intimacy and confidence from a pretty and superior young woman. “You can count on me—for anything I feel I’ve the right to do,” said he. “But, whether I do it or not, I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

Beatrice poured the tea in reflective silence. Not until she had tasted her own cup did she venture to begin expressing the thoughts she had been arranging. “Roger Wade has about forty thousand dollars invested in the bonds of the Wauchong Railway.”

Peter leaned back and gave a low whistle. He shook his head and repeated the whistle.

“I see you understand.”

“I begin to,” said Peter.

Looking down at her plate and speaking somewhat nervously and hurriedly the girl went on:

“I want you—through your broker or banker or however you please—I want you to buy those bonds at what their market price was before the road went into the hands of a receiver. I think it will take about fifty thousand dollars. But buy them if it costs a hundred thousand. I can’t go higher than that.”

Hesitatingly she lifted her eyes. Peter was sitting back in his chair regarding her with an expression it makes any human being proud to have caused in another’s face.

A little color came into the girl’s cheeks and into her eyes a look of gratitude for the compliment and of pleasure in it. She went on:

“You understand, no one must know—must have the ghost of a suspicion. Especially Roger Wade. But no one—no one.”

Peter busied himself at lighting the cigarette he selected with care from the dozen in the huge gold case he carried in the inside pocket of his sack coat.

“Your agent,” continued the girl, as if laying before him a carefully thought-out plan, “can say he represents some men who are getting ready to fight to get control of the road.”

“I didn’t know you knew anything about business,” said Peter huskily, just for something to say.

“A little,” said Beatrice, who, in fact, was her father’s own daughter—though, of course, she was not foolish enough to have failed to use to its uttermost value the favorite feminine pretense of being hopelessly incapable when it came to matters like business. “Will you do it?”

“How much’ll you have left?” said Peter.

“Plenty,” Beatrice assured him. “Plenty.”

“I know better.”

She made an impatient gesture. “I’ll have more than enough to carry out my plans.”

“There’s no reason on earth why you should do this,” protested he. “You——”

“Drop it, Peter,” said she with a touch of her old imperiousness—of her father’s intolerance of objection from inferior minds. “I know what I’m about. Roger Wade is being stripped of all he has through no fault of his—through my folly. I got him into the scrape—a scrape he wanted to have nothing to do with. It’s up to me to get him out.”

“He had no business to come fooling round you!”

“He didn’t, Peter,” said the girl with convincing candor. “He— I see I’ve got to tell you. I proposed to him, and he refused me.”

“You did—that!”

Beatrice blushed and laughed. “Oh, I made an idiot of myself. I thought he was hanging back because he was awed—because father was rich—and all that.”

Peter narrowed his eyelids and screwed up his mouth in an attempt to look acute. “He’s working some sly dodge. Mark my word, some sly dodge.” And he wagged his head wisely.

“I wish he were!” sighed Beatrice. “Because he liked me I thought he—cared. You see, Peter, I’m telling you everything. Will you do what I ask?”

Peter settled deeper in his chair. “I’d like to—I want to—but—” At the beginnings of disappointment and disdain in her expression he straightened, flushed. “Yes, by gad, I will do it!”

“Why did you hesitate?”

“I didn’t.”

Beatrice looked at him doubtfully; suddenly she realized. “You fear father’ll find out you did it? I hadn’t thought of that. No—you mustn’t, Hanky. I’ll get some one else.”

“You’ve got to let me do it,” insisted he. “Anyone who didn’t know all the circumstances would make a mess of it. I want to do it. And it isn’t much of a risk.”

The event was that she yielded. Toward noon the next day he telephoned that he had the bonds—had paid forty-one thousand dollars for them—exactly. “I’ve got them here at my house. I can bring them to you this afternoon if you like.”

“Do,” said Beatrice.

And at four he came with a parcel. Her eyes brightened at sight of it. “I, too, have a package,” said she.

“So I see. What is it?”

“Your forty-one thousand in Governments.”

“But Governments are worth more.”

The girl laughed. “Not a cent. I didn’t say forty-one thousand par. I had the exact calculation made at the bank.”

“What an ass I am, to forget you were Daniel Richmond’s daughter.”

“Give me my railway bonds.”

The exchange was made, he pretending that he did not dare release his hold on his package until she had given him a hold on hers. The waiters, idle in the restaurant at that hour, grinned at the sight of so much gayety in two such superior-looking, young people. And it certainly did look like a love affair—an engagement. Nor is it surprising that Peter, full of the sense of having done her quite a favor and not without risk to himself, should have again become hopeful that this girl—“such a stunner—and so dead square, too”—might be thinking more favorably of him.

“Now that these things are straightened out, Beatrice,” said he, “and as you’ve got over your notions about Wade—why not give me a chance?”

She laughed. “Allie’s affianced!” mocked she.

“I’ve told you that——”

“But,” interrupted she, “I never told you that I was—was cured—of Roger Wade.”

“But you are. And he’s off your conscience.”

Beatrice’s eyes had an expression that sent a pang—and a thrill, too—through him. “Peter—I love him,” she said with quiet intensity—Dan Richmond intensity. “And I think you know now what that means with me.”

He paled, stared at his cup. “I wish to God I didn’t,” he muttered.

“Now, Peter, you don’t mean that and you know it. The only reason you keep after me is because you’ve always been used to having your own way and you hate to be baffled.”

“That’s all the reason you stick on after Wade,” retorted he.

She laughed. “I’ll admit that has something to do with it. But not all, Hanky. And the other part’s the important part.”

“You must know he’s after your money,” said he, looking down sourly.

“And you?” retorted she.

“Oh, I,” said he with Vanderkief hauteur. “I fancy I’m above suspicion.”

“Father says that the people who do the queerest tricks are the ones that’re above suspicion—and take advantage of it. My, but you’re red, Hanky. And while we’re suspecting— Did you get those bonds for me just because you——”

“Don’t say that, Beatrice!” he cried. “Honest, I didn’t. I wasn’t trying to collect.”

“I believe you,” said she. “Please don’t do anything to make me doubt.”

“I won’t. I throw up the sponge. I’ll not annoy you any more.”

“You’ll be friends?”

“I’d hate to lose your friendship,” said he with his slow, heavy earnestness. “It’s the thing I’ve got that’s most worth while.”