CHAPTER XVI THE GIFT-BOND

For some days I was so much occupied with Clyde's affairs, and other business matters which demanded my professional attention, that I saw little of any of my friends in a social way, but toward the end of the week Mr. Whyte asked me over the telephone to come up to dinner. I was only too glad to go, but I confess that when I saw Jean was not expected, I was so disappointed that I began wondering how I could cut the evening short enough to give me a chance to run in at the next door.

"I asked Jean to come over," said Mrs. Whyte, unconsciously answering my unspoken question, "but the dear child had something else on for this evening."

Mr. Whyte chuckled without disguise. "Jean has a beau," he said, with an air.

"And if she has, Carroll," Mrs. Whyte took him up, with instant sex-championship, "it is nothing to make remarks about. Jean is quite old enough to receive attention, and he is an unexceptionable young man. I don't think it is delicate of you to make comments."

"Who is making the comments?" he demanded good-humoredly.

"Well, you implied comments, and I don't want you to do it when Jean is around. When a girl has no mother and is, besides, as wilful as Jean is,--and she is wilful, Katherine, although I admit she is charming about it, and I should be in love with her myself if I were a man,--the sooner such a girl is married to a steady young man, the better."

"Is the steady young man Mr. Garney?" I asked. The annoyance with which I had observed his prostration before Jean probably betrayed itself in my voice, for Miss Thurston looked up to answer reassuringly.

"Oh, it is not a serious matter. Mr. Garney was a friend of Eugene's, and Jean, bless her heart, would listen to a jointed doll if it could say 'Gene.' Besides, it was Mr. Ellison who asked him to come over this evening. He seems to have quite taken Mr. Garney up,--has him over frequently."

"By the way, Clara," said Mr. Whyte, "I asked Ellison for that contribution to your Day Nursery. You would have done better to ask him yourself. He turned me down hard,--said he had just had to make a thousand dollar payment unexpectedly and was hard up."

The talk shifted, but I confess it had made me uncomfortable. I had had nothing against Garney until I saw him bowled over by Jean, and then I immediately took a violent dislike to him. Yet she probably regarded his devotion merely as pleasantly flattering.

I was uncommonly glad, therefore, to find Jean waiting for me in my office the next afternoon. Fellows was away, and she was sitting at my desk in a stillness that was more than patient. It was tense. An odd-shaped package was clasped in her hands.

"Well, little Story-Book Girl, are you waiting for the prince?" I hailed her. There was something in her sweet absurdities that always made me feel as though we were playing a game.

"I was waiting for you," she said sedately.

"Lucky me! And poor disappointed prince! I can see him, in a green velvet suit, with a long, dejected feather in his drooping cap, waiting around the corner of your imagination for you to give a glance in his direction. That's all that would be necessary to bring him to life. Instead of that, you are wasting your thoughts--wasting them according to his notion, of course, not mine!--on a chap who is already alive!"

She smiled perforce at my foolery, but her smile was a trifle tremulous. I felt a trouble back of it, that must be treated respectfully.

"Is there anything the matter, Miss Jean?" I asked.

"There's Gene!" she said, a little reproachfully. Her eyes searched mine.

"Oh, I know! Of course! But there isn't anything new?"

She hesitated the barest moment. "That's enough," she breathed.

"But that is coming out all right!" I said reassuringly.

She turned her questioning eyes upon me again, and her look went deeper than ever before. It suddenly struck me that I was foolish to insist upon regarding and treating her as a child. Her eyes were unfathomable, but the mystery that veiled them belonged to womanhood, rather than to childhood.

"Do you say that just to keep me from fretting," she asked gravely, "or do you really know anything that is going to save Gene? Really and truly clear him and--and give him back to me?"

The seriousness and maturity of her manner had so impressed me--I was on the point of saying "had so imposed on me," and I don't know but what that would be the right word--that I took the hazard of answering her with the bare and simple truth.

"No, I don't know anything that is going to clear your brother. But I have a confidence which I feel sure is going to mean a victory. I can't say anything more. But it is a long time yet to the trial."

She seemed to shiver a little at the word, and withdrew her eyes. I waited for a moment, thinking that if she had any special anxiety on her mind she would of necessity betray it if left to herself, but when she spoke it was on a totally different matter.

"You are going away?" It was a statement rather than a question.

"What makes you think that?" I parried. I had indeed a very definite intention of going away, but I hadn't mentioned it to anyone, and I didn't care to have my plans known.

"Why, I thought you would probably go to hunt up Mr. Clyde. When you find him, I wish you would give him this." And she handed me an old letter in a faded envelope.

"But you are quite likely to see Mr. Clyde as soon as I do," I protested.

"I'd rather you had it," she said vaguely. "There is no hurry. Sometime he would like to have it. It is an old letter that my father wrote to my mother many years ago. He mentions Mr. Clyde in it, and says nice things about him, so I thought he might like to keep it."

"I am sure he would," I said warmly. "You are a dear little girl to think of it. And if you really want me to take charge of it, I will. I shall probably see Mr. Clyde sometime, or at least hear from him. But I shall be jealous of Mr. Clyde pretty soon. Here you give me an interesting letter, to be handed on to Mr. Clyde. And Miss Thurston gives me a lovely thick letter--but not for me at all, only for me to hand to Mr. Clyde. Happy Mr. Clyde!"

She listened with an uncertain smile and wistful eyes, as though she were holding back some brooding thought. There was something odd in her manner that half worried me.

"I have something for you, too," she said after a moment. "I have been looking through an old trunk of keepsakes that I keep at Uncle Howard's,--things that belonged to my mother, mostly,--letters and presents from my father, and all marked. She had kept that letter because it was written on her birthday, once, when he was away from home. And then--" he hesitated a moment, and then extended the package to me,--"this is for you, if you will please take it, as a keepsake."

"How sweet of you," I murmured. But when I unwrapped the packet, I was dumbfounded. It was a beautiful mother-of-pearl cigar case, mounted in silver, and set with an elaborate monogram in small diamonds. "Why, child!" I exclaimed in protest.

"It was my father's," she explained. "It was a presentation thing,--he was always getting them. You see, he was always doing splendid things for people. I like to remember that he was that kind of a man."

"But shouldn't it go to Gene?"

"No, he gave it to me for my very own, because I was so proud of it. I want you to have it,--to remember me by."

"I'm not going to forget you,--ever," I said, taking both her hands in mine. Forget her! I realized at that moment that I had taken her for granted as belonging in my life permanently. I simply could not imagine having her go out of it. The idea raised a queer sort of tumult within me.

"Then you will take it," she said, again pressing the case upon me. "Because I want you to have it,--I want you to."

"I am very proud to have it," I said gravely. To refuse that urgent voice, those beseeching eyes, would have been impossible. I'm not a graven image. She beamed at my acceptance. It was exactly like a rain-drenched flower lifting its head again.

"And I want a good-bye present from you to me, too," she said with a sort of breathless haste, leaning toward me in her eagerness.

"A 'good-bye' present! Why, my going away is not serious enough for all that ceremony. I shall be back before you really know that I have gone."

"But you'll give me something, won't you?" she persisted, putting my disclaimer aside. "Some little thing, you know! Your pencil, or something like that."

"I can do better by you than that," I cried gaily. I opened my office safe and took from it' the locket with the emerald heart of which I have already spoken. It was the only thing I possessed which could by any stretch of courtesy be considered a worthy exchange for the cigar case. Her eyes widened like a child's at the sight of the trinket.

"But not for me, surely," she cried.

"For no one else in the world. I got it, intending it for this portrait of my mother,--which you see I am going to take out; it doesn't fit very well;--and then I discovered that my mother hated the idea of emeralds. So you see it hadn't been intended for her, really. It was waiting for you,--if you will accept it. You don't dislike emeralds?"

She did not answer except by a little choked laugh, but her face was eloquent for her. Suddenly she lifted the locket to her lips.

"Oh, come!" I cried, feeling that I must somehow break the tension under which she was laboring. "Perfume on the violets is nothing to such extravagance as kisses on the emeralds. Speaking of violets, let us go down and see if Barney has any to-day. He might, by luck. If he has, we'll buy him out."

I picked up the cigar case to put it away, and I confess I was on the point of putting it into my safe when some instinct struck me between the eyes and I pretended I had only gone there to lock up. I brought the case back in my hand, then formally transferred the cigars from my own case to it, tossed that into the waste-basket, and slipped the be-diamonded thing into my pocket as calmly as though diamonds were my daily wear. She beamed, and for the first time the trouble that had been hovering in her eyes seemed to melt quite away.

"Oh, thank you!" she cried. "You do understand beautifully. I think you are a Story-Book Man yourself."

"Do you know, I always have felt that I had undeveloped capacities in that direction," I admitted confidentially. "Only it took a Story-Book Girl to find them out. Come, we will celebrate the day with violets."

Barney had heaps of violets, fortunately, and we had great fun finding places to fasten them upon her. Barney needed only a crumb of encouragement to show himself up picturesquely, and I was glad to set him going, for I wanted to see the shadow on Jean's face entirely disappear. They had become good friends on their own account, it seemed, and Jean was cheeking him delightfully in return for some of his sly remarks, when suddenly she stopped and I felt a little shiver run through her. Another man had stopped before Barney's stand,--Mr. Garney, the Latin tutor. His eyes were so eagerly intent upon Jean that he hardly took note of my presence.

"You look like Flora herself, Miss Benbow," he said, raising his hat. "Are violets your favorites?" (I saw that he was laying the information away for future reference, and I wanted to choke him on the spot.)

"They are to-day," she answered, demurely. "But I may prefer something else to-morrow." (Wasn't that neat, and dear of her?)

I was very glad to have this opportunity of seeing Jean and Mr. Garney together, because I admit that Mrs. Whyte's gossip had disturbed me. I therefore made no move to hurry Jean away, but pretended to talk to Barney while I watched the other two together. I fancy Barney understood the situation pretty well, for he glanced shrewdly from me to Mr. Garney and back, as though he would see if I, too, understood. But the result of my observation of their mutual attitude was wholly reassuring. Garney was crazy about her, of course,--that was obvious. But Jean was heart-whole and unimpressed. Of that I felt quite sure, and I recognized the fact with a relief that measured my previous disturbance. So long as she was not dazzled, no harm could come of it. He couldn't marry her against her will!

How well I remember all the trivial events of that afternoon! After loading her down with violets, we went to a confectioner's and had some gorgeous variety of ice-cream, and I did my best to restore her to her usual rose-colored view of life. She responded beautifully, and we had a very gay time. But when I left her at her own door, finally, the wistfulness returned.

"You are going away, aren't you?" she asked.

"Why, I shall have to, in order to feel that I have a right to keep that cigar-case, since it was given to me as a good-bye present."

She stood very still for a moment, searching me with her deep eyes. Then she put out her hand impulsively.

"Good-bye," she said breathlessly, and fled into the house.