x y THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON BY MARGARET CAMERON ILLUSTRATED NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS M C M I X BOOKS BY MARGARET CAMERON THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON . 111. Post 8vo $1.50 THE CAT AND THE CANARY . . . 111. Post 8vo i.oo THE BACHELOR AND THE BABY . 111. i6mo .50 HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK Copyright, 1909, by HARPER & BROTHERS. All rightt reserved. Published October, 1909. TO H. C. L. ILLUSTRATIONS BARE-FOOTED MARKET-WOMEN . Facing p. 18 GUAYAQUIL SPREAD ALONG THE RIVER AND HILLS . " 46 CARVED BALCONIES OF SOLID MAHOGANY . . . . " 72 A PARK WITH FINE TREES AND FLOWERING SHRUBS " 86 THE CATHEDRAL WHERE PIZARRO LIES " 96 A GIBRALTAR-LIKE PROMONTORY CALLED MORRO . " 122 SANTIAGO AND THE ANDES " 156 THE STATELY AND BEAUTIFUL ALAMEDA .... " 168 DARK BASES RISING FROM THIN VALLEYS .... " 198 THE SNOWY MOUNTAINS AND TREMENDOUS GLACIERS " 228 MONTEVIDEO, DELIGHTFULLY SITUATED ON A PENINSULA " 244 THE CATHEDRAL IN BUENOS AIRES " 254 PLAZA AND SPLENDID AVENIDA DE MAYO .... " 268 OH, THE BAMBOO OF THIS COUNTRY! " 288 THE GRAY CORCOVADO TOWERING ABOVE THE CITY . " 310 THE ROSY, LICHEN-COVERED AQUEDUCT .... " 330 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON On Board S. S. Prim Otto, February Marion dear, am I somebody else? Or have I merely reincarnated rather unexpectedly in which case, am I still myself? Or am I plain crazy? Of course, there is always the other possibility, which I refuse to discuss, that I am a fool. I seem to be on a sizable sort of a steamer, headed for the Narrows and the open sea beyond. A Ger man band cheerfully discourses most excellent music on deck, while around me, at every desk in the writ ing-room, I behold people frantically scribbling against time and the impending departure of the pilot. I have a confused recollection of four breath less days of shopping and of four sleepless nights of planning and packing, when I babbled importantly of Panama and Peru, Santiago, Buenos Aires and Rio, ports of the Never-Never Land whither I still seem to be bound. But, of course, I may wake up any minute and find myself in a boarding-house bed somewhere, wondering what life holds for an THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON unattached and impecunious widow, whose talents, such as they are, are of the domestic and social order, whose tastes are expensive, and who is still too hopelessly sentimental to marry for revenue only. But if I be I, as I think I be, I have a little chum at home, and she'll know me. Lend me your ear, then and when you get it back, I hope you won't think I've gone stark, staring mad, for, faith, I don't know whether I have or not! It happened in this wise, to wit: Berenice Ames Helen's daughter, you know started the avalanche by declaring herself deeply, darkly, desperately in love with an ineligible, two or three years her senior, named Perry Waite, though why he is ineligible is another story, and one that impresses the Ames family much more than it does me. However, suffice it to say here that the Ameses, root and branch, are more than impressed they are utterly confounded. They have tush-tushed and pooh-poohed in vain. In vain they have argued and cajoled and threatened and wept and prayed, individually and collectively. Apparently Berenice, who is the only girl in the whole family connection, has in her some of the determination that charac terized that very unpleasant old party, her maternal grandmother, and since never before in her seventeen luxurious years have her doting parents denied her any bauble she happened to fancy, she naturally sees in their opposition to her immediate marriage to this undesirable young man simply tyranny and oppression, to which she nobly refuses to submit. She said as much, in florid phrases, and ended by ^riE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON reminding them that her days of dependence were numbered, and that she should soon be free to invest her inheritance in peanuts and popcorn and pink lemonade if she so desired. She didn't express it just that way, but that in effect is the interpre tation that the family puts on her manifesto. And unfortunately, there she has them on the hip. You may remember that Helen's mother never forgave her for marrying Dick Ames how history does repeat itself! and cut her out of her will. But when the old dame died, it was found that she had left her entire personal fortune, which was large, to Berenice, to be turned over to her unconditionally when she should be legally of age. And Berenice will be eighteen in June. Why under heaven any hu man being ever made such a will I can't imagine, but it looks now as if old Mrs. Vance had exercised a malignant and devilish ingenuity in finding a way of still troubling Dick and Helen when she herself had turned to clay. So, as I say, Berenice, who is no fool, had them there and knew it. Her financial independence re moved the only actual hold they had on her when moral suasion failed. Nevertheless, for once she found them adamant. They were frightened, but not defeated. They decided that she must be sent away immediately, hoping that absence and the dis tractions of travel would weaken the spell this amorous youth has cast over her, but here again were difficulties. Helen, who naturally should be the one to watch over her daughter, felt that she simply could not leave Dick just now. He is on 3 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON the verge of nervous prostration, terribly worried over the business situation, and more than ever de pendent on his wife. Other members of the family were ill or incapacitated in one way and another, and yet it was essential that somebody in authority should keep a vigilant eye on the young woman, lest she carry out her threat and run away to her penniless lad. Of course, having eloped themselves, Helen and Dick are frozen with horror at the mere thought of such a thing, and there they were, when Enter Uncle Beverley Ames, Dick's elder brother, with a ticket for South America in his hand. Some thing had happened somewhere, and he had to go down to the end of the world at once. "The very thing!" chorused the family. "You shall take Berenice with you!" Apparently Uncle Beverley was not, at first, deep ly enamoured of the job, but it was represented to him as a duty he owed to himself and his family, and eventually he succumbed, provided and here, at last, is where I come in provided a suitable chaperon could be found to accompany them. Otherwise, he flatly refused to consider the prop osition for a moment, for it seems that in those Latinized communities to which we go, it wouldn't do at all for a young girl to travel alone with him, were he twice her uncle and thrice her age, which he is not quite. It would be a scandal, in short. Then "there was racing and chasing on Cannobie lee" to find some foot-loose, fancy-free matron of mature years and dignified aspect, who would be willing to ramble for six months in parts unknown 4 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON with a rebellious princess and a bachelor dragon. Have I mentioned that Uncle Beverley is a bachelor ? Well, he is very much so. At that moment in dropped my letter, warning Helen that I had tired of California and was again on my way east. I had expected to spend only a week in New York and then go on to Washington for the remainder of the season, as you know, but Helen met me at the station with quite another set of plans all completed. It was of no avail that I protested that I didn't know Berenice very well although as a child I doted upon her; that I didn't know Mr. Beverley Ames at all; that what was more to the point neither of them knew me; that the responsibility was too great; that I had other plans. My objections were dissipated like ice in midsummer. Helen said that nothing could be more suitable more providential, in fact. I was a lifelong friend of hers and of Dick's; Berenice had always "adored" me; Uncle Beverley had expressed himself as enchanted with the idea I have since decided that reconciled would more nearly express his attitude in the matter; and that, as a clincher, passage was already taken for the three of us. I held out, however, until Helen cried a little and said I was the forlorn hope. If I failed them ! And if I had ever had a daughter I would under stand. Oh, well, I never did have a daughter, but it does not necessarily follow that I am therefore utterly devoid of sympathy or understanding. I had no home, no ties, no occupation to bind me. 5 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON I had been going about crying in the wilderness for something to do, for somebody who needed me and here were both, ready to my hand. So I said I'd go and here I am. It is understood, however, that my sole office is to play propriety. Uncle Beverley is responsible for Berenice. I haven't had time to write a line before, because, as I had only four days for preparation, it has been a mad whirl. Fortunately, my wardrobe was in unusually good condition, but still I had to have a lot of things, as we shall encounter every grada tion from this February cold to tropic heat. And as Uncle Beverley carries letters to all sorts of powers and potentates, we must be prepared with raiment for all occasions as well as for all weathers. I don't think, by the way, that Uncle Beverley wholly approves of me. I suspect he'd like me better for this business if I wore false teeth and a last year's gown, and if I were sixty instead of thirty-six. However, I think I can convince him of my fitness for the r61e fate has thrust upon me. Certainly there will be no temptation to break over in his direction! Berenice accepts me, as she does all the rest, rather sulkily, and without comment or apparent interest. And I? Is this little Anne, do you think? As we came down North River in the rain, somebody began looking for the last incredible skyscraper. We looked and we looked, but it was nowhere to be seen. "Well, it was certainly there right there yes terday!" exclaimed a man beside me, pointing to the place it ought to be. 6 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Just then it poked its head up over some drifting clouds, peered at us for a moment, and retired again behind its curtains. A lot of people thought that very wonderful, but it left me unstirred. Why shouldn't the top of a building go out of sight in the clouds? Why shouldn't communication be estab lished with Mars? Why shouldn't somebody ex plore the moon in a flying-machine or dig a tunnel to the North Pole? None of these things would be any more remarkable to me than that I Anne Blake Pomeroy should be at this moment on my way to encircle the continent of South America. How much do you know about South America, my dear? The steward warns me that I must finish at once if I want to catch the pilot. Good-bye, dear old girl. Do write me that you don't think I'm losing my mind. I'll keep you posted by every mail as to how this crazy adventure progresses. Of course, all this is confidential. Ostensibly we are on a "pleasure exertion." P.S. I'd give something to see your face when you read this! At Sea, February I'jth. If I only had you to talk to, I should be quite happy, though perhaps, for your own sake, it is as well that you are not here, because you'd be so sea sick, poor dear! Yesterday morning I ordered tea as a precaution- 7 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON ary measure before we were up, and rather an attractive young stewardess came in, with her pro fessionally cheerful air and her tempting inflection. "A leedle tea? A leedle toast?" An hour later she came again, and upon finding us dressed, exclaimed: "O-oh! You get oop? Das ist gut! You go oop for a leedle air?" She didn't half credit my assurance that we were quite comfortable, for "all, all my ladies is sick." It was even rougher last night, but beyond oc casionally waking to the consciousness that I was standing on my head at intervals, it didn't disturb me at all. This morning there are a few more people on deck than appeared yesterday, but they are lying about in chairs, looking limp and gaspy, and muffled in rugs. Of course, as usual, nearly all the rugs are green, the one color of all others most perfectly adapted to bring out every subtle shade of a sea sick complexion. Mine are green, too, but I carry them proudly, as men wear the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor. I've earned the right in stormy seas, which for lo! these many years have not turned me green. Nevertheless, I'm not keen on ocean travel. I'm willing to take a ship for the sake of getting somewhere, but I shed no tears when I leave it. Uncle Beverley didn't come to dinner last night, and departed rather hastily from the breakfast- table this morning, so I fear me he is not entirely comfy, but Berenice preserves the demeanor of a Viking's daughter only she's too dark for the part. 8 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON She is really a beautiful creature, tall and slim and vivid lithe, I think, is the word for her but at present she is consumed with a melancholy. She will neither walk nor talk nor read. She sits hour after hour staring out across the gray tumble of waters, her eyes sombre and her red lips mournfully drooped at the corners. Poor kiddie! I had troubles of my own when I was her age, and I've not forgotten the taste of them. I'd like to make her talk a little of hers, but evidently she regards me as in league with the enemy and will none of me. She is perfectly courte ous indeed, she is charmingly attentive in many little well-bred, conventional ways, but utterly re mote. However, the time will come when she must have a safety-valve, and then I'll be at hand. At present I am trying to be as unobtrusive as pos sible. Just think how that passionate, baffled young thing must hate me! She can't even get away from me at night, for we share the same stateroom. Uncle Beverley, when he does appear, is also re mote from me, at least. He is evidently fond of her, and is really rather tactful in his treatment of her now. And he is punctilious in his attitude toward me. He recognizes his obligations, and he is going to discharge them manfully but oh, Marion, how I do bore him! The ship is very full, but a great many people will leave at Kingston. Of the remaining fifty or sixty, only five, I learn from the passenger list, are going on down the map, one a young German named 9 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Leibnitz, whom I have seen but have not met, and one a man named Blakeney, as yet unidentified. Most of the rest are taking the cruise, and will re turn to New York with the ship. Thus far I have spoken to no one outside our own small party, except two Boston men who sit at our table. One of them is round and rosy and apparently open- minded, and the other is a Bostonian first and a human being afterward. They promise to be rather good fun. The other seats at the table have been vacant. Most of the people who didn't harmonize with their rugs have disappeared again. Uncle Beverley hasn't presented himself since breakfast. A fine salt spray sprinkles my page as I write, and a shower is sweeping toward us on a chill wind. I go below for a nap. i8ih. After tea, and here I am in pongee! Yes terday was gray and chilly and squally, the ship stumbled through a lumpy sea, and the way ahead looked long. To-day, "the blue, blue sky above, the blue, blue water under," I'd as lief go on sailing forever! People who haven't appeared at all before have bobbed up smiling this afternoon, and from fragments overheard here and there I fancy there will be dressing for dinner. Thus far nobody has cared in the least how they looked. I have just learned that we can send letters back from Fortune Island to-morrow, so I'll mail this there and write again from Kingston. My child, do you know where Fortune Island is? 10 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Did you ever hear tell of such a place ? I will con fess to you and to you alone that I spent an hour this afternoon, when all my neighbors were asleep, studying a pocket atlas that I took time to buy before sailing. Isn't it appalling how little most of us know about our own hemisphere? One night in New York I dined at the Fields' travelled people, as you are aware, and rather re markable for their general information. They wanted to know all about this wonderful and un usual trip, and asked where our first long stop would be made. I said in Lima. A furtive sort of look found its way around the table, and every body said, "Ah?" and "Oh!" and "How very in teresting!" and then there was a pause a blank, barren, awful sort of pause. Finally Bob Field took his courage in his teeth and plunged in. "I 'fess up!" said he. "Where is Lima, please? I know there is such a place somewhere on the west coast, isn't it? but I don't know a thing about it." And I couldn't tell him much. I think we were all a little ashamed. I know I was, and I went home wondering what gives Ameri cans such an eagerness for everything across either ocean, and such a scornful indifference for the things south of their own border. Do you know? Kingston, Jamaica, February 2ist. Some day when we both have fifteen cents to spare and no immediate demands upon us not ii THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON that it matters to anybody what I do or when I do it nowadays let's come down here and stay a month or two. You have doubtless heard of the garden spot of the earth yes? Well, this is it. All others are imitations. At least, that's the way I feel about it now. Of course, this may be simply a better imitation than the rest, and the real thing still ahead it shall not be said of me that I have not an open mind! but this is surely a wonder land to the children of the North. Which makes the awful devastation of Kingston the more pitiful. Unlike San Francisco, she has not even struggled to her knees; there seems no effort to regain a footing, no strength left to fight with. She lies prone among her ruins, almost as the terrible earthquake and fire left her a year ago, while about her riots this incredible wealth of vegetation. It is like some rare and wonderful setting from which the jewel has been torn. But I'm getting ahead of my story. Fortune Island proved to be a long, low strip of land belonging to Great Britain, where we paused only long enough to put off our mail and take on a crew of blacks, who came out to us in a barge. They are taken from here to handle the cargo, and are dropped again on the way back. From there it grew warmer. Officers appeared in snowy ducks, passengers in flannels and linens; awnings were stretched ; electric fans began to hum ; and the chill winds off Hatteras seemed very far back indeed. How can it be so cold in New York when three days away is the very breath of heaven ! 12 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON The "Captain's dinner," the night before we touched Jamaica, was a very pretty affair. The dining-cabin was hung with green garlands and festoons of glowing red roses. I thought them very effective and said so, whereupon: "They are nothing but paper, you know," quoth Uncle Beverley. Marion, I thank the good Lord that I was not born with a passion for detail and the whole truth at all times ! There were also the flags of all nations, of course, and colored lights, and snapping bonbons containing gay paper caps, which we all donned except Uncle Beverley. There was a long and excellent dinner, at the end of which "illuminated ice-cream" was served by stewards in fancy dress, Germania and Uncle Sam leading the way. It was not very magnificent, of course, but it was pretty. Somebody had done a great deal of work to give us a little pleasure, and I prepared to enter into the spirit of the game and drag Berenice in after me. I began quite buoyantly and I don't yet know why I didn't continue, but there was a tone in Uncle Beverley's voice and a look in Uncle Beverley's eye that reduced me, gradually, to pulp. The Captain made a speech, and we all sang God Save the King in deference, I suppose, to the allegiance of Jamaica and I retired from that dinner a meeker and a madder woman. We found the decks enclosed with bunting, and prepared for dancing. It was a heavenly night, and there was a moon. The women were all in light gowns, the men in evening dress, there was a 13 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON good band playing melting, swaying, swinging music and there was Uncle Beverley! He asked Berenice to dance he dances well, too and brought up one or two young men whom he has met and approves of. Of course, these youths were pre sented to me, as a matter of form, and then two- stepped off with my indifferent ward, who danced because she was told to. She is in that mood now. If we tell her to walk, she walks; if we tell her to read, she reads. If we told her to go over the rail, I dare say she'd do it, with that same bored, lifeless, martyred air. Uncle Beverley also asked me to dance, again as a matter of form, and in a perfectly courteous tone that still clearly indicated my proper course in the matter. Well, this once I seen my duty and I done it. My toes were tingling, that delectable German band was playing the dear old Blm Danube was there ever another such waltz! and I meekly ac cepted the cap and knitting that man was forcing upon me. I folded my hands and primly replied that I was not dancing, whereupon he expressed polite regret, uttered a few mossy commonplaces, and escaped to the smoking-room and his game of bridge. "Oh yes, I wrote The Purple Cow! I'm sorry now I wrote it. But I can tell you, anyhow " that if Uncle Beverley supposes I'm going to be a Purple Cow, just because he has prejudices in favor of that subdued and matronly shade in bo vines, he has shocks and counter-shocks ahead of him. I won't, so there! I see no reason and I've been giving 14 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON the matter some careful thought since that deck dance I see no reason whatever why I should re linquish all my few remaining attributes of youth simply because I happen to be chaperoning a spoiled child who should have had her hands slapped years ago. The only way to do anything with that girl now is to reach her through her affections and through her vanity. It might flatter her to be made the friend and confidante of a woman who has lived and suffered, and who still believes in love and laughter. But how am I going to get the least hold on her as long as she regards me as an elderly kill- joy, a brake on her wheel of life, a monstrosity sans sympathy or understanding, dragged in from the outer world to help smother romance in short, as Uncle Beverley's Purple Cow? Therefore and for other reasons I'm going to stay myself, and to do that peaceably I'll have to educate Uncle Beverley a little. It's rather a large order, because, as you may have inferred, my heart doesn't exactly go out to Uncle Beverley, as it were. But, still, there's Berenice and back of her, Helen. What a funny, criss-crossed, knotted web life is, anyway ! The morning after the dance we entered the tiny harbor of Port Antonio, and the whole scene looked like a fine but overcolored lithograph. The water was bluer, the surf whiter, the hills greener than any of these things ever really are. There w r as a too- white lighthouse on one point and a too-gray barracks on the other. A little red-roofed town 15 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON nestled amid lush foliage, and behind it all rose fantastic, volcanic-looking mountains. A lot of people left the ship here, to spend the day at Port Antonio, and cross the island by rail or automobile, rejoining us at Kingston, where the ship lies two days. It was suggested that we do this too, but Uncle Beverley made inquiries and learned that we should have to arise at 5 A.M. in order to catch the train, and promptly decided against it, because "it would be altogether too hard for Mrs. Pomeroy." Evidently the old lady is to be coddled! My field of usefulness seems to be en larging, but this was "not nominated in the bond," and Uncle Beverley will be instructed that he must rescue his own chestnuts from the fire. Think of missing a journey across this green, fragrant, orchid- grown island because a fusty old bachelor loves his morning snooze! If he were worth the trouble I'd undertake to get him up at five o'clock more than once before we have finished this jaunt. But what's the use? He wouldn't know what it was after it had happened to him. Not that I mean to imply that Uncle Beverley is a fool. Far from it! All that afternoon we skirted the shores of this big, beautiful island, and at night, about sunset, wound our way through the serpentine channel that leads to the docks of Kingston. A score or so of negro boys dropped into the water as we approached and surrounded the ship, clamor ing for coins. They looked like some grotesque, English-speaking amphibians, as much at home in 16 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON the water as frogs or eels, either of which seem more akin to them than humans. It was dark when we finally got ashore and found ourselves in a swirling, drifting crowd. Another ship of the same line from Colon had just docked, and people swarmed. There were tall black dandies in pure white from the crowns of their Panama hats to the tips of their canvas-covered toes; market- women in red aprons and gay bandanna turbans, selling fruit and eggs; venders of postal cards; hurrying German stewards; black, loose-limbed boys begging a bag to carry ; solicitous hotel runners ; dapper niggers, confidently assuring one that "the buggy is just here, sir"; men and women charac teristically British in face, dress and accent; amused, bewildered Americans from the ship ; loafers watching the crowd; jostling, jabbering laborers, home from Colon by steerage all these and more, eddying in and out of the shadows. And through it all, in tensifying the color, softening the babel, deepening the mystery, accenting the whole, was the mellow, caressing, delicious sense of the tropics. We took one of the cabs of the locality called a buggy, but really a sort of surrey and drove through the dark, miraculously threading our way among hordes of people carrying burdens of every size and description, and gabbling in their soft, exotic English, touched now and then with Spanish ; off the docks and into the streets, where ghosts of fallen houses stood, rank on rank, glowering at us in the moonlight; through the desolated city here one of the innumerable sweetmeat venders, '7 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON whose corner stand was perhaps propped against a dead lamp-post and lighted by a screened candle or smoking oil lamp there a group of negroes singing hymns and shrilly bearing testimony, under flaring torches, to the faith that is in them so plentifully; out a fragrant, silent country road, and so, finally, to this hotel, a low, wide-spreading structure, where we found ourselves among crowds of prosperous- looking English people in evening dress, and were given very comfortable rooms. This morning all the Britons and Britonesses, so resplendent last night, are out in ill-fitting flannels and most extraordinary blouses that exude little wisps of lace here and there. The men wear either cork helmets or Panama hats turned up in front and down behind, and all the women have straw things turned down all the way around, with float ing and generally unhemmed tissue veils the mark of the English woman the world over. And they all talk the talk of the British colonist: Shanghai, Simla, Cape Town, Sidney, Valparaiso, Port Stanley all in the day's work. Truly, they are a wonder ful people! How you would love all this! We went down town this morning, through lines of market-women, turbaned, double-cinctured, bare -footed, wearing bright necklaces, and carrying on their heads beau tiful shallow baskets of fruit, food, or drink, or driving quaint, panniered donkeys to market. Oh, if I only had somebody to talk to! Berenice has no more interest in these things than she has in the differential calculus, if there is such a thing, 18 Copyright, igoo, by Underwood & Underwood, X. V. BARE-FOOTED MARKET-WOMEN THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON and Uncle Beverley points out that there are insects in the gardens, that the grass is too damp to walk through, and that the negroes are more or less soiled. Marion, was there no justification for that grate ful Pharisee? At Sea, February 23d. Here we are, dear girl, slipping along through the Caribbean Sea (do you fully get that? The Carib bean Sea never was convincing to me when we studied "jography") on our way to Colon, the canal and Panama. For a day my eyes and my heart turned wistfully back to lovely Jamaica, but now I am eager for to-morrow and the Isthmus. Nothing of importance has happened, though our own particular storm-cloud seems to be lifting a little. Berenice is beginning to sit up and display a faint interest in life and in an Englishman who joined the ship at Kingston, and Uncle Beverley has had one or two moments of seeming almost human. There has been nothing in either case, as yet, to indicate a permanent improvement, but at least the symptoms are encouraging. We spent the last morning in Kingston shopping a little and driving about town among the ruins, where the spectacle of women clearing away bricks and carrying mortar to the few builders filled Uncle Beverley with platitudinous distress. I thought the great, strapping black wenches looked far stronger and more capable than many a man I've 19 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON seen doing similar work at home and I didn't observe any of them suffering strain through excess of energy! Besides, apparently there were not men enough to do even that little work. Of course, the poor defenceless male may have been driven from the field by the predatory female work-snatcher, as we are fearfully warned will soon be the case with us, or can it be possible that he was sitting at home with a crooked black cigar and a bottle? Perhaps he was somewhere on the Isthmus, helping us dig the canal, but certainly he was not much in evidence in the streets of Kingston and neither, by the way, were the babies. Since I have never heard that our dark-skinned brethren have any tendency toward race suicide, it occurs to me that it might be well for New York City to import, for its own improvement, a few of these dusky tacticians, who apparently know how to mass their infantry somewhere besides under foot in the highway. Owing to the crowd at the steamer, we had to leave our "buggy" and walk the length of the dock. One of the ubiquitous black boys relieved Berenice and me of our bags, and when another attempted to take Uncle Beverley's, that gentleman said: "I'll carry my own." "All right, Mister," cheerfully returned the imp; "all I want is the tip, please." Never shall I forget the scene at that dock! We were taking aboard about two hundred steerage passengers for Colon, all more or less gayly arrayed. Each carried, in his hands and on his head, all his 20 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON luggage, consisting of boxes, bundles, deck chairs, wash-basins, fruit, food (including, in several in stances, live chickens), and occasionally mattresses or pillows. Each was accompanied by from one to a dozen friends, and each pushed and shoved and struggled to be the next one up the gang, while the sun blazed and everybody steamed and seethed and sweltered. Occasionally the doctor, who stood midway up the plank examining eyes, rejected some one, and then there was turmoil while the un fortunate forced his way back against the gabbling, prismatic tide. Occasionally, too, a vilgilant of ficer on the lower deck rushed some offender to the rail and flung him bodily over it, landing him sprawling on the dock, a few feet below. The crowd was constantly augmented by new comers, and even after the ladder was lifted others came panting into sight, dragging after them all their various impedimenta, with which we had by now grown familiar. They were taken aboard somehow, and eventually, about an hour late, we steamed away and settled down to the monotony of ship life. It's anything but monotonous on the steerage deck, however. The people are as thick as ants, and spend their nights as well as their days in the open air. As yesterday was Washington's Birthday, there was another gala dinner, with special menu cards and an attractive display of bunting in the dining- cabin and on deck. A bust of the immortal George was suitably draped, and ceremonies began by every body standing while the band played The Star- 21 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Spangled Banner. Of course, we were expected to sing, and equally, of course, nobody remembered the lines. Moreover, the sentimental German band played the air con expressione, tempo rubato, as the director thought the melody demanded, regardless of the words of which he was even more scandal ously ignorant than the rest of us and the result was disconcerting. Later, the Rev. Eric Wittlesey was called upon for a speech. Young Blakeney, who sits at my right, and who, I am glad to say, is going down the west coast with us, told me gravely with a twinkle" in his eye that during the afternoon the men in the smoking-room were discussing the desirability of a patriotic address in the evening, and that somebody asked the Rev. Wittlesey, who is not old and is rather good-looking, whether he could suggest any body who would undertake the task, to which he modestly responded that he was rather accustomed to public speaking himself in fact, he was a public speaker; not only that, he was a minister; in short, to be quite frank, he was the pastor of one of the leading Chicago churches, and, of course, a clergyman in a large city must be ready. "You've no idea," he said, "how often such a man is called upon to talk in public." Well, he talked in public. He talked exhaustively about himself, the Pharaohs, Agamemnon, Caesar, Alexander the Great, Frederick the Great, and Peter the Great, made an impassioned *p^ ea f r obedience to one's parents, and alluded briefly, in passing, to the aforesaid Father of his Country. 22 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON At the close of this masterly effort the Captain arose, and in his funny broken English said it was "fery gind of der Referend Vittlesey to make us sooch a nice sbeech und oxblain all about eferyding," where at Mr. Blakeney and I tittered gleefully, much to Uncle Beverley's horror. I thought it very neat of the little Captain, and wished I had cultivated his society more assiduously. I hadn't suspected he had it in him. Then we all made another bluff at singing our national anthem, and escaped to the cool decks that is, we all bluffed except Berenice. Fresh from school, she knew the words, and for the first time since leaving home she showed a little interest in something outside of herself, lifted up her voice and sang like a glorious young angel. It was this singing of hers that attracted the Englishman, Mr. Gaveston, who promptly sought out Uncle Beverley and solicited an introduction to his niece. He walks and talks and demeans himself like a gentleman, but there is something about him that I distrust. I don't know what it is, but my antennae warn me of danger. However, he is only booked to Panama, which we shall leave in a day or two, and he is not in my province any way. Uncle Beverley has undertaken to play watchdog, I merely to pseserve appearances. And neither of us would check, by so much as a straw, this returning interest in people and things on the part of our melancholy charge. Uncle Beverley is coming on a little, too. Again there was dancing on deck, again he danced with 23 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Berenice, again he punctiliously invited me and this time I accepted. It was a blow to him, but he only blinked once. We waltzed, and I will say for Uncle Beverley that he is as good a dancer as I ever knew and that is really saying a good deal. Apparently my foot hasn't entirely lost its cunning, either, though it is some time since it has been practiced much, for he said things almost en thusiastic things about his enjoyment of the dance, and later returned to ask for a second one. He wanted it, too, but I was coy. My ambition doesn't vault as high as all that, and even if it did, it's a little too early in the game to risk a fall. I think Uncle Beverley 's education has begun , however. And I also think that he'll ask me to dance again someday. Apropos, I overheard rather an amusing scrap of conversation during the evening. A man who had been dancing with Berenice, asked her: "Is that pretty woman next you your sister?" She turned to look at the damsel at her elbow an angular spinster of forty and he added, laughing: "No, no, not that one! I mean the lady at your table the young, jolly one over there in white." I happened to be standing with a group of dowagers at the moment. Berenice looked, and I heard the wonder in her tone as she replied: "Mrs. Pomeroy? Why, she isn't young! She's a friend of my mother's! They were classmates." Oh, youth! Do you remember how old and staid and done with life your mother seemed when you were seventeen? 24 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON "Don't you think she's very attractive?" persisted the man a tactful individual, as you perceive. "Why, I never thought about it," honestly said Berenice. "You don't think she's pretty, do you?" "Yes, I do," said that immortal fool. "She has beautiful hair, and such nice eyes and I like her mouth. Won't you present me?" Of course she did it, doubtless glad to be rid of so eccentric a companion; but I have caught her once or twice since regarding me with more interest than she has hitherto honored me by displaying. She is evidently puzzled about something, but whether she is trying to reconcile the man's words to my decrepit appearance, or my blooming charms to my advanced age, I can't quite determine. I suspect, however, that she thinks the man is a lunatic. There sounds the bugle for divine service, it being Sunday, and all the good people are going below to hear the Reverend Whittlesey "oxblain all about eferyding" again. I seem to be the only exception, even Berenice having yielded to the suggestions of her Englishman, who goes, he frankly admits, be cause it is "good form." Doubtless it is "good form," but I have a prejudice against entering places of worship unless I can go in a reverent spirit, and somehow the Reverend Eric does not fill me with aspiration. He inspires in me a profane desire to talk back flippantly. Uncle Beverley, be it said, is below, napping, and young Blakeney has discreetly disappeared. He was graduated from college last year, and is now 25 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON going back to Chile, where he was born and where his parents, who are both Americans, own a large hacienda. He did not reveal himself for several days, being somewhat reserved and slow of speech. There's nothing slow about his wits, however, and I find him an altogether delightful boy. This will be mailed at Colon to-morrow, and when I write again I shall have crossed the Isthmus of Panama ! Ancon, Canal Zone, February 25th. Oh, my dear, my dear, I have seen the Culebra Cut! And now if I should meet some one who had watched the pyramids building, or walked with Aristotle, or seen Shelley plain, I should not envy him, for I, too, have "crossed a moor w r ith a name of its own. And there I put inside my breast a moulted feather an eagle's feather!" I'm so proud to be an American, with even my tiny, tiny share in this canal! It's stupendous! However, you like your stories connectedly and in order, don't you ? We docked at Colon, then, about nine yesterday morning, landed without much delay, and crossed the Isthmus on a special train, so we saw little of that city except, as we entered the harbor, the much- pictured point, with its low houses and beautiful cocoanut-palms . Of course, the ride across the Isthmus was fas cinating miles of tropical jungle and coils of cling ing, blossoming, deadly, twining things, through 26 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON which it seems incredible that men can ever fight their way. There were strange flowers, and swamps full of water-lilies, and palms of many varieties, and occasionally a little settlement of thin, shell-like, clean-looking houses on stilts, their verandas en closed in wire netting. There were the lines of abandoned French machinery that we've heard so much about, covered and choked with vines, and as we neared this end and the jungle growth dis appeared, evidences of more recent and effective work. A good many people who are taking the cruise, and whose time is consequently even more limited than ours, got off midway to see the big cut, Mr. Gaveston among them, and Berenice was apparently much disappointed that I decided not to accept his invitation to join them It is comforting to see her display a normal interest in anything again, but I wish it took some other direction, since it now transpires that this Mr. Gaveston is going on down the west coast with us to Bolivia. He professes to have received advices here that have thus changed his plans, and I have no actual, tangible reason for either doubting or regretting it. He has an irreproachable manner, is witty and en tertaining rather brilliant, in fact, when he chooses to exert himself has lived much in the Orient, and is apparently well connected in England, if he knows all the people he says he does, and again I have no good cause for doubt. I admit that I see no reason why he should not know them, and certainly he does not drag their names ostentatiously into his 27 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON conversation. Mr. Ames seems to enjoy his society, and I dare say I should find him agreeable myself if it were not for Berenice, but oh, well, it's really none of my business. I am always getting into hot water through meddling with other people's stew- pans, and as I have mentioned my misgivings in this matter to Mr. Ames without even rippling his serenity, I suppose I may keep hands off with a clear conscience. Certainly, I have no desire to scald again my already bescarred fingers but just the same, I don't like it. Last night, and again this morning, we spent more or less time roaming about Panama, a city of narrow, crooked streets, which shoot off at unexpected tangents, but delightfully clean, well paved, and apparently orderly in spite of its cosmopolitan population. There are two or three interesting old churches, but on the whole there seems nothing about the place to arouse especial enthusiasm ex cept the sanitary work of our people, a task one must come here to appreciate. This afternoon we took a train to Culebra, whence we walked far into the Cut. We might have had a special car and gone through on the construction tracks, with one of the engineers for guide, but we all preferred to walk. We stood on banks over the great steam-shovels and watched them eat the mountain. Four bites of that steel-toothed maw, four belches of sand and gravel, and the train moved on a car length, while the monster, unpausing and forever unappeased, bit again. We counted ten levels that had thus been 28 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON gnawed down, and once, when we looked back, the very spot upon which we had stood a moment before had been swallowed. I shivered a little at being so close to this terrible modern energy that devours the eternal hills as if they were grass and changes the immemorial course of rivers. It was like witnessing the Creation! Looking down into that vast artificial valley, filled with gravel-trains, drills, steam-shovels and swarming men, one human being seems a very insignificant atom indeed, and one man's ambitions or performance a matter of infinitesimal import. For the moment, one feels that the only people who really count in the world's work are its engineers. I suppose a clearer perspective will come when the Culebra Cut has taken its place among other memories; but when one is looking into it and seeing it grow, it looms large enough to dwarf most other achievements, and national pride flares high. Even Uncle Beverley ceased to utter polite plati tudes and displayed an enthusiasm about the canal and a patriotic fervor that surprised me, and Ber enice for once forgot to mourn for her old love or lean toward a new one. I do not mean to imply that she is really infatuat ed with this Englishman, or dreams, as yet, that her heart can ever enshrine another image than that of her first love. But a man of his type can always fascinate a young girl and sometimes an old one if he wishes, and maidenly hearts have been known to rebound. I wonder whether he has discovered 29 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON that she is an heiress ? At any rate, we are evidently to have him constantly with us for at least ten days more. There seems a curious uncertainty in the agent's mind as to just when we shall reach Callao, though we are assured that the steamer is a new and palatial one and the Captain the best on the coast. We shall see what we shall see! Just there young Blakeney came along and said that there was a report that we should have to go aboard at noon to-morrow, instead of at night, as we had anticipated. I went with him to find Mr. Ames and Berenice, and Uncle Beverley departed at once to investigate this rumor, leaving me with the young people. In the desultory chat that followed, Mr. Blakeney chanced to mention a house-party he had once attended in some out-of-the-way place, whereupon Berenice turned toward him a startled, glowing face, exclaiming: "You're not Bunny Blakeney!" "Yes, I am," said he, obviously surprised, "but how did you know it? My name is Shatter. " She flushed and looked away as she replied: "Oh, I've heard of you. I know some of the people who were with you up there." Apparently he was delighted, for he cried: "Do you? Who?" But she indifferently replied: "Oh several," and that ended it. Her eyes were not indifferent, however. They were like live coals. Her cheeks blazed, her lips were set in a straight line, and she was evidently angry. Now, what do you suppose that means? 30 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Young Blakeney, naturally, ceased to pursue the subject, and soon left us. I made one or two attempts at conversation with out eliciting much response, so I finally left her out there alone, where she still sits glooming. Poor, solitary, stormy little heart! I wish she'd let me in! Mr. Gaveston approached her a moment ago, but apparently encountered briers, for the interview was brief, not to say abrupt, and he emerged red and bewildered. If the thing, whatever it is, has the effect of baffling his advances, I shall encourage the Blakeney boy to introduce the subject frequently. But I wonder what it means? I'll ask Uncle Bev- erley. His education, by-the-way, is coming on. My agility in scrambling up and down gravelly banks, and my thorough enjoyment of the long, hot, dusty walk this afternoon, have evidently removed me per manently from the cap - and - knitting class, praise be! He told me on the train coming back that he had never before known any one who "combined with the poise and mellow charm of maturity the very essence of youth." Whew! Down in black and white, that looks as if Uncle Beverley was progressing by leaps and bounds, doesn't it? That's always the danger in lifting things out of their context. It really came along quite casually, apropos of his kindly solicitude for the overworked chaperon, and was as impersonal as if he had been analyzing a book or a painting neither of which, by-the-way, would he think worth the trouble, unless they had to do with the Civil THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON War, which is his hobby, and in which I am labori ously trying to resurrect something resembling a burning interest. What I mean to imply is simply that we are really establishing a common footing of a sort, he and I, even though its area is so limited that the briefest lapse from eternal vigilance would result in a header through space. Berenice is more difficult. Time and youth and a changed environment are slowly doing their work, and she is daily less morbidly absorbed in woe; but while she is perfectly courteous, I have not been able to get one inch nearer to her, and it troubles me. It is unnatural for a girl to hold out so long against affection and interest and sympathy when she must need all of them. I wonder whether the child really dislikes me? Certainly she repels every advance, and our situation is so peculiar that I hesitate to risk making it more difficult by any attempt to take her by storm. I'm a prey to melancholy myself to-night, and my task looks too big for me perhaps because of my futile uneasiness about the Gaveston man, perhaps because of an emotional fatigue following the big experience of the afternoon, perhaps because I know that this is the very outer edge of things the last touch with mine own people, and that to-morrow we shall pass beyond the reach of them. I'm a good deal of a coward, Marion, and I'd go back to-night if I could. But I promised Helen and there must be some way to reach that child and make her understand that I understand. Never be fore have I felt so baffled and useless ! 32 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Good-bye, best of friends! I feel as if I were leaping off a high place into the illimitable dark, and unlike the Irishman, it's not the stopping I'm afraid of, but the long terror of the fall. At Sea, Bay of Panama, February 28th. Well, the murder is out, and we are freshly re minded of the futility of attempting to escape from the associations of one's past by any flight short of suicide and nobody knows yet how efficacious that may be. Here are Mr. Ames and I, laboriously towing Berenice to the bottom of the world in an attempt to remove her entirely from Perry Waite's sphere of influence, and now we discover that the Blakeney boy is his cousin and his closest friend! Yes, my dear, I am quite aware that such things do not happen outside of works of fiction, which only goes to strengthen my immutable conviction that none of this is real and that I shall presently wake up. But the dream is most amazing logical and se quential ! I had a bad quarter of a minute when it looked as if my nice boy might be an emissary of the dreaded and tabooed ineligible, and had deliberately forced himself upon us, concealing his identity until we got so far on our journey that we could not possibly avoid him as a travelling companion. There was likewise a sickening possibility that Berenice might be a party to the arrangement. 33 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON It appears, however, that Blakeney has been somewhere in the West since his graduation, and that she, having heard of him only as "Bunny" Blakeney his college nickname did not connect this calm and uncommunicative traveller with her lover's chum. As a matter of fact, they have found very little to say to each other, these two young people, which heretofore I have rather regretted, but perhaps it's just as well. He says he has known more or less rather less, apparently about a meteoric love affair in which his cousin was con cerned, but young Waite's letters have evidently been few and masculinely brief, and have never contained the name of the girl in the case, which would seem to indicate that reserve and caution run in that family except in matters of the heart. Waite was certainly precipitate enough in his wooing ! Called unexpectedly to Chile by his father's ill ness and a financial crisis there, Blakeney hurried through New York at a time when his cousin was absent and there you are! Nor is it probable that he would have discovered our connection with the affair if Uncle Beverley had not happened along at a moment when I was making tactfully veiled inquiries into the personnel of that mysterious house -party, mere mention of which had apparently thrown Berenice into a bot tomless slough of despond. Ever since that episode at Ancon she has been gloomy and savage, and even her uncle has had some scratches to nurse as a result of having approached her too confidently, 34 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON She is a problem, that child! In addition to a full share of her maternal grandmother's inflexibility, she has apparently inherited all the Ames well, let's call it fixity of purpose. That's euphonious, and may be stretched to fit the crime. However, she may also have some of Helen's sweetness latent in her, if I can only coax it out. As I was saying, by careful manoeuvring I had brought the conversation smoothly around to that house-party, and just as Beverley Ames joined us Mr. Blakeney concluded his enumeration of the peo ple present with Perry Waite's name. That was where our revered Uncle Beverley set off the fireworks. If he had held his peace well, then I suppose the boy would have held his, as he is by way of being something of a sphinx anyway, and we might have continued to suspect him and perhaps Berenice of things that are not nice. Still, I think I could have overcome his reticence without exciting his suspicion. As it was, Uncle Beverley demanded an explanation and immediately there after found himself constrained to make one, while the courtly, steady-eyed Blakeney boy waited for it. I do love a thoroughbred! But if his cousin Perry is at all like him, Dick and Helen are making the mistake of their lives in not turning Berenice over to him at once. If anybody could conquer her and develop the best in her, it would be that kind of a man which may be the reason she is so determined to marry him. Sometimes young instincts point truer than elderly reason. I must learn more about this Waite boy. 35 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Still, after all our explaining, none of us could quite understand why this encounter should affect Berenice as it has. To be sure, she doesn't en courage attention from any of us, but instead of turning to Mr. Blakeney for comprehension and sympathy, as one would naturally expect under the circumstances, she seems positively to resent his advent upon the scene. For the rest, nothing very interesting has hap pened. The vessel, though comfortable, is not al together as resplendent as the agent implied. For that matter, it would repay one travelling this way to make a careful study of the things Panamanian steamship agents do not know about their business. However, we survived being posted off in the hot noontide and being put aboard a coal -dusty ship which lay until ten the next morning beside a hot, dirty, noisy, odoriferous dock, where travelling cranes loaded cargo until nearly midnight and began again at six in the morning, filling the breathless hours with din unspeakable. When we discovered that there was not on the ship one single deck-chair or a yard of mosquito- netting a very necessary article while lying off Guayaquil, we are told we almost succumbed, but Mr. Blakeney, who speaks fluent Spanish, promptly offered to return to Panama for these things, which he accordingly did, while we perched about on high, dusty, uncomfortable benches and con templated the possibility of having nothing else to sit on for two weeks should his mission fail. So benumbed were we by heat, dirt, clangor, and con- 36 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON fusion that the activity of the insects crawling over the table at dinner did not even arouse us to protest. We took some soup presumably free from their presence and returned to the hot deck, almost without comment. Mr. Blakeney came back about ten o'clock with two chairs and a laughing tale of his adventures in getting them that really interested me for a few minutes. He had great difficulty in finding a shop where such things were kept, and when he finally discovered one, the boy in charge told him it was too late to "dispatch" any goods, and advised him to return in the morning. Unable to obtain any further satisfaction from the fellow, Mr. Blakeney entered the shop, and by the light of his own matches finally found two folding chairs no more. With this treasure under his arm, he again sought the youth on the sidewalk, who could not tell him how much he should pay. Mr. B. said he'd better find out, as he should certainly take the chairs away with him. At that, the boy consented to hunt out the proprietor, who said the price of the chairs was six teen dollars! "Ah? I'll give you eight," said Mr. Blakeney, paid it, and walked off with the chairs! There are things about this quiet young cousin of Perry Waite's that provide food for rumination. He also brought a few yards of mosquito-netting, which, though so coarse that it will offer little hindrance to any really industrious mosquito, was all he could find. To-day things look more hopeful. The sea is 37 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON smooth, but it has not the deeply beautiful blue of West Indian waters. The ship is being cleaned up, and our staterooms, though not large, are cool and airy, being on the very topmost deck what on a transatlantic ship would be the boat-deck and very near the Captain's quarters. He, by the way, seems to be all the agent painted him and more. He speaks four or five languages, is conversant with the art, literature and politics of all the Occidental world, at least I haven't sounded him on the Orient and yet has about him a fine, deep simplicity and directness, both of thought and of speech, that I greatly like. Sometimes he sits on a rail and wiggles his feet, but one would never for an instant suppose that one could there fore slap him on the back and take liberties with him. Altogether, the Captain is promising, but not at all the kind of man one would naturally expect to find commanding a South American coaster. Last night we saw the Southern Cross for the first time. Years ago a shiftless, irresponsible girl, whom I had vainly endeavored to interest in self- supporting labor, turned up one day in soiled and bedraggled raiment that had nevertheless once been gay. "Why, Katie!" said I. "You must have come into money!" " Oh, I got married. Didn't you know that, Miss Anne? Oh yes," with a sigh, "I been married four months now." Then, after an appreciable pause, "Tain't much!" Well, last night I saw the Southern Cross. 38 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON The Big Dipper looked strange, in a queer position and so far away, and the little North Star was low on the horizon. Somewhere off to the west our bat tle fleet is taking its northward way to Magdalena Bay. All day I have been vainly straining my eyes for even one faint hint of its smoke! March ist. This afternoon we have been steam ing up a splendid river, as wide and majestic as the Hudson, with dense tropical growth on either side for several miles, and then exquisite, velvety meadows, full of wide-spreading trees. Now we are anchored about two miles below Guayaquil, where we shall probably lie for two or three days. We cannot go ashore, however, as the city is scourged by a plague. They say it is going to be fearfully hot here, but as yet nothing has been as hot or as hard as I ex pected, so I am not cast down. Besides, we have mosquito - netting and deck-chairs, which is more than any one else has except Mr. Gaveston, who travels, of course, with his chair and his tub. Apparently Berenice has wearied of him, for she no longer notices him except in the most perfunctory way. Mr. Ames, who spends much time with him and is not above saying " I told you so," reminds me several times daily that he knew all the time there was no occasion for alarm. Perhaps there wasn't. At any rate, there seems none now, though I cannot rid myself of the feeling that the attention with which Mr. Gaveston now honors me springs from a desire to measure my weapons and my skill, and that he 39 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON holds me in some way responsible for Berenice's sudden change of attitude. I'm getting to be a sour, cynical, suspicious old person, Marion! But nevertheless I do enjoy an occasional tilt with this Englishman, who has a quick wit and a practiced tongue, and who is undeniably fascinating. We have made acquaintance with all our English- speaking fellow - passengers now, none of whom exactly thrill me with anticipation. There is one of the naive, insular Britons one reads about, whom I have heretofore believed to be a figment of the humorists' brains. I find, however, that I have flattered the humorists. None of them ever drew anything quite as absurd as this man, though their efforts have made him seem rather hackneyed at times, especially when he asks to have jokes ex plained. He really does, Marion! The first time he did it I thought it was a little humorous flight of his own, but I soon discovered my mistake. The others, notably Gaveston, regard him as legitimate game and set all sorts of snares for him, into which he walks with such unfailing regularity that it isn't good sport. It's like trapping a puppy. Occasionally, when they have guyed him unmerci fully for half an hour, he asks, with an air of deep and subtle suspicion, " I say, are you fellows pulling my leg?" His beautiful name is Tomlinson, and he's too good to be true! We crossed "the line" yesterday morning, and I heard him making anxious inquiries the night before as to what would happen then. He may have re ferred to the ceremonies with which old travellers 40 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON occasionally amuse themselves at the expense of people crossing the equator for the first time, but personally I think he fully expected to be jolted when the ship scraped her keel on one of the ribs of the world, and to see a red line across the face of the waters. However, nothing happened even to him! The others have, as yet, no distinguishing marks, except that they are all fond of music, and one or two of them sing fairly well, especially Mr. Gaveston. Last night I vamped accompaniments for their cho ruses for an hour, and out o' the tail o' me eye I saw Berenice pass the window once or twice. She has a lovely voice, and I hope this musical activity may arouse her to interest in things again. This morning the Captain, who is inclined to be sociable in a reserved, deep-sea kind of way, dumped a lot of books off the camp-stool I was using as a stand and sat down beside me. "Mrs. Pomeroy," he began, solemnly, "are you a very earnest Christian?" I hadn't expected ex actly that sort of thing from the Captain, and was rather taken aback, but replied that I had never limited my religious faith by binding it with a creed. Then he said, with a whimsical twist of the lips: "Mr. Hobson [a missionary we have on board] is going to ' oblige the company ' this morning, and I believe you are scheduled to play the hymns." We laughed a little, quietly, and he explained that the energetic Tomlinson had come to him, very much exercised about what should be done. "You see," he continued, twinkling, "we have competition on board. There's Hobson and there's 41 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON also a Catholic priest, and Tomlinson was disturbed. I said I didn't believe the passengers wanted service they look like very sensible people but he said they did." He went on, in his slow, terse, vivid way, to tell me that quite apart from the fact that he professed no belief himself, he really didn't like to see people who claimed to find something sacred in a Sunday service make a parody of it on a ship. "And that's what it is on board," said he. "We have no place for it, it's impossible to create an atmosphere for it here, and they simply parody what should be a solemn office if it is anything." I was inclined to agree with him when, as Mr. Tomlinson and I uncovered the organ at the opening of the service, we had first to remove and put out of sight the packs of cards and poker-beans with which this group of Englishmen occupied themselves last night. Later, when somebody alluded to the service of which the least said the better! the Captain's face wrinkled with amusement. He decorously ironed it out, then caught my eye and laughed. " Do you know what I think ?" said he. "I think Hobson winks at that Catholic priest as he goes by." Yesterday morning, some time after the Captain had pointed out to me the dim coast of Ecuador, the lookout came to report land ahead. The com mander nodded, and when the man had gone, said, with a little gleam: "Had it been a pancake, he'd have got none of it!" I wonder if you can imagine what a relief this sort of thing is after a few hours of Uncle Beverley, who 42 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON varies his details of dead-and-gone wars with rem iniscences of his youth. "When I was a boy of about twelve no, about ten I really think I must have been twelve no, I couldn't have been more than ten, because well, ten or twelve, though I think Berenice, my dear, did you ever hear me say how old I was when " Oh, Marion, I am a miserable sinner, and there is no good in me ! Beverley Ames is a kindly, patient, sweet-natured man I see it more clearly every day and I'm a beast to cavil at him. But why, oh, why wasn't I content to bore him? I think I may say without exaggeration that I bore him no longer, but ! Who was that inspired individual who said : "Heaven defend me from the persons who 'mean well'"? Truly, I did mean well ! At Sea, March 5th. I have just learned that I can send mail ashore to morrow at Paita, though when a northbound ship will pick it up is apparently a thing no human can tell. We lay for three days and four nights in the river off Guayaquil,* watching the barges float down to us, piled high with bananas and manned by three or four bronze, half-naked Ecuadorians, or hanging over the rail, marvelling that so important a port does not introduce less destructive methods of hand- * Pronounced Gwy-ah-ke61, 43 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPEPON ling freight than prevail there as yet. Tons and tons of our cargo were dumped indiscriminately into these barges, and fully half of it was more or less broken, which, at this distance from the market, must result in serious loss. A tug comes down from the city and tows the laden barges up the river. The Guayas* River is a curiosity in itself, for even at Guayaquil, thirty-five miles or so from the gulf, it responds to the tides with more than enthusiasm. For a few hours it hurls its muddy torrent down to the sea, and then, all in a minute, changes its mind and races madly back on itself, swirling and seething and gurgling and foaming in its effort to swallow its tail and return to wherever it came from. After watching this hysterical performance for sev eral days, one finds in it a kind of explanation or interpretation of certain characteristic phases of the South American temperament. We Anglo- Saxons are accustomed to streams that respond to the tides, if at all, with dignity and circumspection, and to hills whose steadfastness has become an axiom. One wonders what the third or fourth or sixth generation of us would be if we lived in a volcanic country, on the edge of a swift, scatterpated river that never knew its own mind and had no more self-control than to yield its full strength and im petuosity to every tide that flows. One also wonders where all the water piles up when it is running in, and how the radiant banks can be so patient. * Pronounced Gwy'-ass, 44 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON All sorts of queer craft went up and down with the current; little islands of vines drifted past; once a porpoise, far from his happy home, surged up the turbid river; and once we saw an alligator. But most interesting of all it was to watch the men un loading freight into the clumsy barges, or to see the sharp lights and shadows of the banana-boats as they came down-stream between vivid shores, the strong, lithe, dusky figures of the boatmen silhouetted against the green and golden load. There were also some wonderful sunsets, staining the river red, while horsemen splashed through the velvety, wet meadows, driving the cattle in for the night, and white electric lights popped out of the graying town. A business acquaintance of Mr. Ames' came aboard as soon as the physician and the Captain of the Port had concluded their visits and the ship had been officially received, bringing us huge baskets of delicious tropical fruits things with queer names that I won't even attempt to spell and a startling arrangement of flowers in the native fashion, which he very adequately described as " a dissipated dumb bell gone crazy," though in structure it more nearly resembled an Indian-club than a dumb-bell. He also brought us two pieces of Bishop's lawn, with which we promptly screened our doors and windows, finding it a much better protection against insects than the mosquito-netting. Guayaquil looked very attractive from the dis tance we kept, spread along the river and over some hills, but the American travelling salesman, Jones, 45 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON who disobeyed instructions and went ashore, flippant speech in his mouth, returned pale and subdued, admitting that the situation in the city was frightful. Yellow -fever and smallpox they have always with them, but since "el bubonico" has attacked them the inhabitants are panic-stricken, and whole families are being rushed to the country, where the plague is following. When we arrived, there was absolutely no serum left in the city. The Captain brought fifty tubes to a friend, w r ho sold what he didn't need for five dollars a tube before he left the dock, and had to fight to keep what he required for his own family and friends. Everybody is deploring the spirit that makes a city of fifty or sixty thousand inhabitants a great port of a great country unwilling either to clean itself up or to permit its neighbors to do the work. A man who came on board said that the United States had offered to send men to clean the city and to pay half the expenses, in order to protect its own ports, and that the people had not only rejected the offer, but had hotly resented it, as a piece of im pertinent Yankee interference, regarding it as an effort to gain a foothold which would later be used as the first step toward American occupation of Ecuador! We heard sickening details concerning conditions there, and while some of them were doubtless ex aggerated, I am inclined to believe most of them, for I myself have seen the boatmen drink avidly of the filthy river water, in which we refused even to bathe. After that, anything is possible! 4 6 Copyright, IQOQ, by Underwood & Underwood, N, Y. GUAYAQUIL SPREAD ALONG THE RIVER AND HILLS THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Small boats came alongside with venders of fruit and beautiful "Panama" hats, the best of which, we are told, are sold here. Certainly they were very attractive, and we all indulged Mr. Tomlinson very freely. I think he has eight now. During the long, hot days in the river we got rath er friendly, and indulged in various pastimes. One night I came upon Mr. Gaveston and young Leibnitz singing Am Meer on deck, and joined them, my wee contralto pipe having assumed quite respectable dimensions in this tropic air. Presently everybody drifted around to that side, and one voice after another joined the chorus. Even Berenice quietly pulled her chair over beside mine and slipped into it, but for a long time she was silent. We sang Scotch airs and plantation melodies, German lieder and Italian street songs. Finally, Mr. Gaveston, across the deck, turned to me, saying that he had been "much interested" in the singing of The S tar- Spangled Banner on the other ship, and would I be good enough to sing it for him now ? Marion, I like to fence, but I hate a catty man! Of course, I resorted to more or less feeble sub terfuge and was inwardly raging, when suddenly Berenice said she'd sing it, and sing it she did, from beginning to end. I don't yet know whether she had a kindly impulse to save me embarrassment, or whether she wished to indicate to Mr. Gaveston that she was willing to play with him again, since he immediately re-established himself at her side. But at any rate, one supercilious, smiling Englishman has learned that there are Americans who know the 4 47 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON words of their national anthem! Would to Heaven somebody would write us one more largely significant and better worth remembering and then have it set within the range of the average human voice. After we had been singing for an hour or so, it was suggested that we finish with God Save the King and go into the cabin for a game of bridge. Will you tell me why, whenever three or four Englishmen are gathered together, they always succeed in making everybody stand up and sing God Save ihe King? Perhaps if we were equally fervid about our Star- Spangled Banner we might at least know the words. I know them now, though. I made Berenice write them off that very night, and memorized them be fore I slept. I say them every night after I go to bed. Anyway, here we were, on a Chilean ship, under a Danish captain, in an Ecuadorian river; we were a handful of English, five Americans and a German or two, while by far the majority of the passengers were South Americans who had not joined our group, and yet we stood and the men uncovered while we sang God Save the King! Almost before the last note was ended, Gaveston, Tomlinson, and one or two of the younger men broke into Rule Britannia! One well-bred, elderly Englishman protested: "No, no! Not now! Not here!" but they sang it through, stamping on the deck in their enthusiasm. The next night, after dinner, the English crowd had their coffee on deck, and Mr. Tomlinson arose, a glass of cognac in his hand. "Gentlemen," said he, 1'the King, God bless him! It is fitting that we 48 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON should drink his health here, in waters washing shores which, though not yet ours, we hope may one day be ours." And as they would say themselves there you are! I notice, too, that most of them are very reluctant to admit that we can ever build the canal. " If that canal is ever finished ' they say, sceptically. And as a last resort, they always fall back upon the statement that they don't see how we can expect it to "pay," and seem utterly unable to understand that we don't expect it to "pay," financially, for a good many years. It is perfectly evident that these particular Englishmen do not want it built. It occurs to me that all this, as well as the small number of Americans on board, is significant. We are protecting these South American countries from political conquest, but there is going on a commer cial invasion to which we, as a people, are appar ently blind or indifferent, and which may some day have consequences that we would do well to antici pate. Apropos of singing, the indefatigable Tomlinson approached me yesterday with: " I say, Mrs. Pomeroy, the next time we have service, would you mind playing the hymns we all know, y' know?" I said that, in the absence of any music, I had been obliged to play those that I happened to know my self, and had chosen Nearer, My God, to Thee, and Rock of Ages as hymns so familiar that everybody could sing them. "Yes, yes; but you're an American, d'ye see, and 49 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON we don't know your tunes. I mean to say, next time would you mind playing the ones we all know ?" I explained in words of one syllable that I had played "the ones we all know" in America, and that if there were others in general use I was not familiar with them, which proved too much for his mind to grasp all at once. He recovered sufficiently by night, however, to borrow the Spanish grapes you gave me, to bring him luck in a poker game, and returned announcing that he had won three jack pots in succession, and that he would really like to own a bunch of those little glass grapes. (N.B. I still own mine.) The younger men play a little poker every night ha'penny a point and "thrippence" limit and as the Tomlinson is just acquiring that accomplish ment, he always loses, sometimes as much as a shil ling, which causes him deep and poignant anguish. He confided to me that it was "awf'ly bad form" to play cards for money in England, and that if his wife knew he was doing it she'd be sure he was "going straight to hell" that being evidently the lightest penalty for a violation of "form" where he comes from. Nevertheless, I observe that it is usually he who goes about beating up recruits for the game. The smoking-room was so hot while we lay in the river that the men brought their poker up to the ladies' cabin, hitherto sacred to music and bridge, and I occasionally watched it for a little while. I noticed that Mr. Gaveston was always banker, and that if it was discovered that some one had failed to THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON ante, it was generally he who made good the defi ciency. Berenice has apparently taken him back into full favor again. Indeed, she woke from her trance that night we sang on deck, and ever since has been in abnormally high spirits. She talks and walks and sings and plays games with apparently the keenest enjoyment, and has all at once become the life of the ship, so that I'm a little breathless trying to keep up with her. She even smiles on the Blakeney boy, to whom she has hitherto turned the coldest of shoulders, and now treats him with an audacious gayety which seems somehow curiously tinged with defiance though why she should wish to defy him I cannot imagine. He and I have had several long chats, and during one of them I encouraged him to talk of Perry Waite, whom he describes as rather a remarkable young man. Aside from their desire that Berenice should not marry until she is older, the Ames' objection to him was based on his extreme youth and on the fact that he was unknown to them socially. As he had apparently neither money nor definite prospects, they also decided that he was a precocious young fortune-hunter. Blakeney, on the other hand, says that while Waite made over his share in his father's estate to his mother and sisters, he has put himself through college, refusing financial assistance, that he made a brilliant record there, and that he is " going to get anything he thinks worth going after." I wonder whether he is? The last night in the river was really very hot ; it THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON rained in a smothery, steamy sort of way, and all sorts of flying things came aboard to visit their crawling cousins. There were mosquitoes per sistent ones and tiny flies, no bigger than a pin's head, with a very venomous sting. There was also a crazy kind of insect as big as a small beetle black and shiny like one, too who carries an arc- light over his eyes, which he turns on at will, and who slits the dark like a streak of real lightning, so fast he flies. They say three of him in a bottle will furnish a light strong enough to read by. He was very numerous, in the cabin and out, and very squshy to step on. There were little white- winged moths, decorated with tiny black dots, and a few grasshoppers and of course, legions of ants and spiders and cockroaches, our industrious little trav elling companions. It is not for any one visiting the tropics to be squeamish about things that crawl, dear! Neither about things to eat. Much of the food on board tastes very good, particularly the native dishes, which they know how to cook, and the manner of its preparation may be irreproachable. I prefer to believe that it is, and have thought it just as well not to investigate too carefully. Some of the men, including the younger Eng lishmen, the Germans, our American commercial tourist and Uncle Beverley, grumble continually about the food, the service and the accommodations generally; but those things, like most other things in life, are as you take them. There is a rule against eating in the ladies' cabin which some of them find 52 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON offensive, though I fancy when the ship fills up with families of innumerable small children, as I am told it will, we may see the wisdom of this regulation. There is a rule against serving two orders of eggs to any person at one meal which has aroused especial fury, but the explanation is easily found in the difficulty of getting eggs along this coast and in the length of the voyage. Our dining-room steward is a funny old Chilean, seamy of face and squat of figure, who looks out for us pretty well, and who smilingly responds, "Como no?" (literally "How not?") when we ask for some thing not on the table. Mr. Blakeney says that this man's " Muy bien" (very well), upon receiving an order, fills him with confidence that " all's right with the world" and there I am content to leave it. * * * P.S. Did you know that Ned Barrington had been appointed Ambassador to Brazil ? Uncle Bev- erley, who has letters to most of our ministers and consuls, was regretting a moment ago that he had none to Ambassador Barrington. I told him not to worry, as I had made mud pies with the gen tleman when his diplomacy was only instinctive, but it was the first intimation I had had that Ned was at Rio, and I nearly turned handsprings in my joy and think what that would have done to Uncle Beverley! Did you ever hear of such colossal luck ? You know, I never had such good times with anybody else as I've had with Ned he's the only man I ever knew who never disappointed me and I haven't seen him oh, it's years! I think the last 53 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON time was just after Clark died. And to think of his being an ambassador! Sounds like a fairy tale, doesn't it ? Off Salaverry, Peru, March gth. Well, my dear, I have learned why the gentleman who represents this steamship company in Panama could not tell us the exact date of our arrival in Callao.* Guayaquil, where we lay twelve idle hours because the customs people didn't send out our clearance papers, showed us one reason and now we have another. There are two companies on this coast, and ap parently they cannot arrive at any agreement about anything, the result being that no steamer will leave any port as long as there is a pound of freight I was going to say in sight, but it isn't even neces sary for it to be in sight. It need only be rumored ! In witness whereof we arrived at a place called Pacasmayot night before last, expecting to sail again immediately, but the agent came aboard and an nounced that he had accepted for shipment two hundred and fifty head of cattle that were being driven down to the coast! The Captain used some nautical language, I think, but he waited. Of course, no merely human intelligence can un derstand why, since there is always freight enough for both lines, they cannot agree to establish certain time schedules and keep to them; but that is not * Pronounced Cal-yah-oh. t Pronounced Pacas-my'-oh. 54 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON the way business is done on the west coast. Con sequently, a five-thousand-ton steamer, laden with passengers and fairly bulging with freight, lay for twenty-four hours off the little village of Pacasmayo, waiting for two hundred and fifty cattle, while the engines ate coal and the passengers ate food and an idle crew drew pay. We have been running along "the rainless coast," and, faith, it looks the part! Gray-brown cliffs, that no tender green thing has ever touched, lie naked beneath the unveiled splendor of an incan descent sky, and the long, lazy, opaque green waves of the Pacific roll over the open roadstead and break in a white line on the yellow sands at their base. Most of the villages those that we have seen thus far, at least bake in a dingy huddle on the beach, close under these sheer, high cliffs, where even if a cool breeze were to blow, it could not reach them. Paita,* off which we lay all one day, was such a place. Men came aboard there with hats not so fine as those at Guayaquil, but not so expensive, either and fruit and curious little pottery whistling jars, called "huacos," said to be dug from ancient graves, of which the irrepressible Tomlinson bought several, though warned that these particular huacos were probably made in Germany. Our German friends have the wooden nutmeg beaten to a finish, by-the-way. Eten.t off which we lay the next day, was rather * Pronounced Py'-ta. t Pronounced Ay-ten. 55 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON less dreary than Paita. Some enterprising person once sold a can of paint in Eten. There we took on sugar and a lot of cattle poor, silent, frightened things! which were brought out the mile or two from shore in big lighters, so deep that from the ship we could not see the steers crowded into them until they were quite close. These thirty-ton "lanchas," as they are called, were rowed by eight or ten men, who employed a circular movement of the arms to manage the gigan tic oars, pulling with their hands high over their heads in order that the blades might reach the water, so high above it were they. One of these wide, heavy boats, with its eight or ten long oars dipping and gleaming rhythmically, reminds one of the galleys of old. The cattle, I was glad to learn, are no longer swung aboard by their horns, the Peruvian Government having forbidden this very brutal practice. They are now put into a sort of sling passed under their bodies and attached to a cable from a donkey-engine. It doesn't hurt them, except when a roll of the ship brings them banging helplessly against the side, and even then they make no outcry ; but it is easy to see from the rolling of their eyes how terrified they are. Many of the South Americans on board find this a merry spectacle, and take their little children to watch it by the hour. The harder the hapless, helpless beasts are banged, the more gleeful the crowd at the rail. Another ship of this line, north bound, was also in port, unloading horses in the same way, and they, 56 THH INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON less patient than the steers, kicked and plunged in the sling and sometimes tried to jump overboard, in their fright, after they had been deposited in the lancha. As there is always more or less swell at Eten, the ladder is not lowered there. Instead, a sort of iron tub, seating six, is let down into the lancha bringing out the passengers, and is then swung aboard with its human freight by the donkey-engine. I found this, as entertainment, much more to my taste than the loading of the cattle. The ship is now so full that the couches in the ladies' cabin are used every night as beds, children swarm everywhere, an incredible number of people pack themselves into one state-room, and every body chatters. Day or night, they never stop talking ! The Captain has very considerately had our chairs and pillow-covered bench, with our rugs, books, etc., moved to the bridge, under the eye of the man on watch, as some of these people are respecters neither of person nor of property. It is significant that before we could get keys to our state-rooms we had to deposit their value with the chief steward. On second thoughts, I believe it was with the bar-keep ! As it is considered rather aristocratic and ex clusive down here not to go to the dining-room, one has constantly to dodge stewards hurrying along the decks with plates of steaming cazuela, a favorite and very palatable native dish sort of a cross between a vegetable soup and an Irish stew, and yet like neither. In the very small state-room next ours are 57 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON three adults and two children, none of whom ever leave it for any purpose whatever, except that the children run about the decks more or less. There are also to be seen all sorts of vagaries in dress. There are several women who carefully wear their immaculate white shirt-waists hanging outside their skirts, unbelted, and there is one whose glory out-Solomons Solomon, and who has not yet ap peared twice in the same costume. She dawns upon us, even at almuerza the ten-o'clock meal corre sponding to the French dejeuner in Empire gowns of pale chiffon and lace, decollete, and billows in after everybody else is seated, casting languishing glances at the table where the young Englishmen sit. Apparently the lady has yet to learn that the Anglo-Saxon, like his Latin cousin, does not in evitably admire what he stares at. Her complexion is not visible through her make-up, but her hair-dressing is a thing of wonder and amaze. The other day disaster overtook her just as she was about to precede the Captain through a doorway, and he afterward confessed to me that it was an awkward moment, "for a bunch of curls is not a thing a man can pick up and return to a lady," said he. I asked him what he did, and he said he bolted incontinently. She took her meals in her room for a day or two after that, but subsequently reappeared sans ringlets, however. Between these extremes are all the shades of dress and undress, tending principally to pale blue and pink silk blouses worn with black skirts, though a few women have clothes eloquent of Paris. 58 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON The most flagrant example of undress was fur nished by our own countryman, the person named Jones, who nonchalantly appeared at almuerza one morning arrayed in pajamas and bath-robe. The Captain very promptly and properly sent a steward to request him either to have the meal served in his room or to dress. He dressed but later he said, with great scorn, that the Captain was a "dude." He is what is technically known as an "Amuri- can." Apropos of almuerza, Uncle Beverley actually left his hobby one day long enough to talk a little about the steamship lines on this coast. To be sure, they may be classed as Business. Observe the capital. Anyway, he said that before this line could be a success its commissariat must be improved and properly regulated. "Now," said he, "7 don't like my breakfast and luncheon combined at ten o'clock in the morning." Q. E. D. How we of Anglo-Saxon blood do love to impose our habits and our beliefs on our more courteous neighbors! The lower deck is hung with cages containing parrots, parroquets, and singing birds of all sorts, all making more or less noise the parrot family, of course, more. The birds sing less and less as we leave the equator, and many of them will die soon. Some one brought a kinkajou on board at Guayaquil. The poor thing was savage and terrified, and as people teased it constantly, we heard it scolding and squealing all day. Finally, after two or three days, it was killed, because the owner had not been suc cessful in taming it, forsooth! I am glad to say that 59 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON in the mean time it had inflicted nice, long, deep, red scratches on several of its tormentors. Leaving Eten, we passed a big colony of seals, dark dots on the beach, and the Captain told us there was a penalty for killing them, as they add to the guano deposits. Later we saw condors slowly veering and wheeling, and their great shadows on the yellow, sandy hillside were almost as clear as they. All the way down from Paita we have run very near the shore, and the changing lights on its tawny cliffs have been marvellous, especially during the afterglow, which has thus far been more brilliant than the sunset. At one of these little ports we got our first glimpse of the Andes. It was a cloudy morning, and we were all lounging rather dully on deck, wondering how soon we should sail, when Mr. Tomlinson ex claimed : ' ' I say ! That's a mountain !" "Where?" I asked, peering into the grayness at about the height one would naturally expect a coast mountain to be. "No, no! Not down there! Up! Look!" I looked, and laughed derisively. "That? My dear man, that's simply a denser cloud." " I tell you it's a mountain," he insisted, and went for his glass and a mountain it was! Then I knew why the sun veiled himself so jeal ously at this point. It must be bad enough to be shouldered out of heaven by an upstart pile of rocks, 60 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON without having earthlings see it done. Later, I asked the Captain if the Andes came down to the coast here, and he said: " Yes, I suppose so. The spurs run down here and there." Worse and worse! Poor old sun! We approached Pacasmayo toward dusk, and the Captain called Berenice and me to the bridge, "to see what's left of the ark," he said. And there, far from land, in a tumbling sea, were two men on a crazy raft, on which a crazier sail had been rigged. I immediately scented shipwreck and romance, but the Captain said that that was a sort of craft much in use thereabout, where the people are very poor and have few real boats. When we came to anchor off the town, we were much interested to see men riding "caballitos" (little horses), curious fishing-canoes made of wisps of straw lashed together, which the fishermen bestride and propel with their feet as paddles. Tomlinson the unquenchable at once made anxious inquiries as to whether he could buy one of these caballitos, as he wished to take one home to his wife! As I have said, we lay twenty-four hours off Pacasmayo, waiting for the kye to come hame, and when they finally arrived they were rowed out to the ship in lanchas manned by only four men. You may imagine the time it took. At all of these ports we put off as w r ell as took on cargo, always in the same way and generally with the same results. English goods, in heavy, iron- strapped boxes, survived the rough handling pretty 61 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON well; German manufactures, packed in firm crates or boxes, then in excelsior, covered with burlap and iron strapped, endured anything and everything without damage. But oh, the American things! Most of them were in flimsy pine packing-cases, which split open, exposing and frequently scattering the contents. This is doubtless one reason why American manufactures are not more popular down here. They so seldom arrive intact. And think what must happen to them if, after the boxes have been cracked and split open in the boats, they have still to be carried, as many of them are, miles and miles inland, over rough roads and sometimes on pack -mules. Think of waiting months for goods and then having them arrive in that condition! I wish our exporters could see how their brittle cases go to pieces and the terrible waste of time and money and material that results. They would then under stand why these people generally prefer to buy in ferior European manufactures, knowing that they will at least be available when they get here, rather than to risk having the better American goods utterly useless on arrival because of their poor packing. Apropos of cargo, Mr. Ames did a fine thing the other day. I asked the Captain who fed the live stock on board, and he said that they were neither fed nor watered. Just then he was called away, and when Mr. Ames presently came along, my indigna tion boiled over in speech. A little later, three or four of us were chatting with the Captain, and in the nicest possible way Mr. Ames led the conver- 62 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON sation around to the transportation of cattle, and asked, as if casually: "By-the-way, Captain, do you or the shippers feed them?" The Captain replied, as before, that they were neither fed nor watered, explaining that the shippers would not do it, and that the company took them at so low a rate that it could not afford to furnish anything but transportation. "Well, now, I can quite understand your not undertaking to feed them," said Uncle Beverley, pleasantly, "and it is well known that they can get along pretty well without food for several days if they have water, but it's pretty hard not to give them water, Captain! They may have been driven many miles through a dusty country before they were embarked. Don't you think you could arrange to give them a little water every day?" The Captain smiled and said perhaps he could. The next morning I saw Mr. Ames go and speak to him, and the Captain laughed a little and sent for the first officer. " Mr. Ames wants to know whether the cattle have been watered," he said. "Yes, sir," replied the other. "They've all had water." "Thank you," said Mr. Ames. "I'm sure the poor brutes are grateful. Thank you, Captain." And then he went very quietly away and said nothing about it. He is good, Marion! I had rather discouraged his attention for a day or two, feeling the need of a 63 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON lubricant after swallowing so much of the ancient dust of battles, and had kept myself surrounded most of the time by some of the other men. But after the water episode, I was properly ashamed of my self, particularly as he seemed really a little hurt, and I atoned so successfully for my previous indif ference that for two days I have all but died of the consequences! Still, I occasionally escape, for I find it desirable to spend much time now with Berenice and Mr. Gaveston, since she varies her moods of feverish gayety by spending hours absorbed in his tales of life in the Orient and in England, where his people own a fine old manor, of which he has beautiful photographs. If he is baiting his trap, he is doing it skilfully, and he has the patience of an experienced hunter. I have never surprised him in a look or a word that seemed to convey any desire to associate her with these circumstances of his life, and yet, slowly and with diabolical cunning he is weaving around that girl the spell of older civilizations, of life in mellower colors than any she has known, and of the mystery and glamour of the East. And as long as we are on this little ship I am perfectly powerless to prevent it. All I can do and I do it unrelent ingly, but I hope tactfully is to watch them con stantly and never permit them five minutes alone together, which, I must admit, seems to disturb neither of them one whit. If young Blakeney my only solace in this desert isle has noticed the drifting of straws, he has not indicated it directly. Once, when I asked him why 64 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON he no longer played poker with the Englishmen, he said that he didn't care to play in a game where one man always "forgot" to ante unless he was re minded, laughingly adding that it was like taking money from babies anyway. At another time, I mentioned that Berenice was wealthy in her own right, apart from what she might naturally expect from her father, to which he replied that he had inferred as much from something Mr. Gaveston said while we were in Panama. Oh, my dear, I wish I were well out of this! How ever, we are in the last port before Callao, where we should arrive to-morrow. Salaverry, off which we have been lying for hours, loading sugar and pigs, has vigorous, capable boat men, like those at Eten, and is set against black, craggy hills washed high with yellow sand. Here comes Uncle Beverley, evidently with some thing on his mind. I'll finish later. * * * Oh, Marion! Why did I ever undertake this insane journey? I don't know when or where I sowed the wind, but certainly I am reaping the whirlwind. Many years ago an old sea captain told me that if I ever got so desperately in love with a man that I couldn't live without him, and all other methods failed, I must coax him to take a long sea voyage with me. He said the man would inevitably pro pose then, because he'd have nothing else to do and it must be true. I see no other reason why Beverley Ames should ask me to marry him, and that 65 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON is what he has just done. Out of a perfectly clear sky! It never occurred to me as the remotest of possibilities. I was even fatuously congratulating myself that at least we had not quarrelled. He said, among other undeserved things, that he had never met any one else who so thoroughly understood and shared the one great interest of his life, the Civil War! He spoke, with much feeling, of what he called my beautiful attitude toward Ber enice. And now he has gone away with pain in his kindly heart, and I am realizing how miserably how bitterly I have bungled! And I don't know what to do. If I go on, he may take it as encouragement, in spite of anything I say. In any event, it will be hard for him, since we are inevitably thrown so much together. I can't leave Berenice down here alone with him. And if I take her back I shall not be keeping faith with Helen. And it's all my fault my stupidity! I haven't touched Berenice, for all my trying, and I have hurt a good man, needlessly. That's the bitter part of it. Lima, Peru, March i2th. Lima,* the city of Pizarro! And life is still worth while! Mr. Ames has resumed his fussy, prosy manner, quite as if nothing had happened; Mr. Gaveston leaves us to-night; Berenice, as yet, flies no storm-signals; everything here is interesting; the * Pronounced Le6-ma 66 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON sun shines and I am still vitally conscious of it! After all, what are mistakes for but to profit by? When I finished my last letter to you which will probably go north to-morrow on the steamer with this, I find I was stunned and shocked and sick at heart, not knowing how to turn next. But I have decided that, when all is told, Berenice is the person to be considered first. It is for her sake that we are here, and for her sake we must go on, as wisely as we are able, hurting each other as little as possible, but saving her from herself, if we can, at any cost. I am sure that is the way her uncle feels about it, and I shall try to do my part as cheerfully as he is doing his. Few men, I think, particularly at his age, would accept rejection with the dignity and tact that he has shown. There has been nothing in word or look or even in his silence to show that he has suf fered at my hands. That is rather fine, Marion. When it came to the last, I was really sorry to leave the ship. The Captain had been so thoughtful, and had made things so pleasant for us; we were so comfortable in our airy state-room; our fellow- passengers, for all their oddities and I dare say we entertained them quite as much as they did us were agreeable on the whole, and well, I hated to pack up and leave. However, as yet we have not been very widely separated, as all the English-speak ing people are at this hotel except, of course, the Captain, who remains on the ship at Callao. He will be detained there several days unloading, and most of the men are planning to finish their business 67 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON in Lima in time to rejoin the ship when she sails south again. Mr. Ames will be unable to get away so soon, he thinks, and Messrs. Blakeney and Gaveston, both of whom are in haste, have trans ferred to a smaller steamer and are leaving to-night, the one for Iquique* isn't that a love of a name ? and the other for Mollendo,t the port for Bolivia, whither he is bound and where I devoutly hope he will stick until we have put the width of the con tinent and the wall of the Andes between Berenice and him! I am evidently compounded of suspicion, malice and all uncharitableness, for the man has given no indication that he has designs upon her, except really, I don't know what. Do you remember when you played Suzanne in A Scrap of Paper, and went around for months afterward talking about your antennae ? Well, either my antenna have neu rasthenia or there's a nigger in this woodpile some where! One of these days he'll show his head, and then I intend to whack him! You've seen the little mechanical scenes in shop- windows, where an old cardboard man sits at a cardboard table, with a shoe in his hand, forever making futile clockwork slaps at a clockwork rat that runs in and out? That's the way you may picture me for the next few months, skirting South America on the edge of my chair, with my slipper in my hand, shooing away the rodents that come to nibble at Helen's cheese. * Pronounced Ee-kee-kay. t Pronounced Mohl-yen'-do. 68 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON I'm not run by clockwork, either, though it is possible that I'd be quite as effective if I were. Certainly, there's small justification for throwing shoes at a harmless, necessary Englishman simply because he happens to be around. I wish the creat ure would make a move of some sort but he doesn't. So here we sit watching each other, I with upraised slipper in hand, and he safely inside his hole, twink ling bright, sardonic little eyes at me. And all the time I have a harrowing conviction that in the end he will outwit me and get the cheese. Meanwhile, we are in Lima! The approach to Callao, on a brilliant day, was beautiful. For hours before we got in, the waters were covered with birds, many pelicans and gulls among them. Then we began to notice queer, purplish spots on the wa ter, which, as we neared them, were seen to ripple strangely. When we finally entered one, we found that they were caused by schools of tiny green fish millions upon millions of 'em! swimming so close to the surface that they must have poked their sharp little noses out into the ether occasionally. Just before we entered the harbor, we saw an enormous school of porpoise, so many that the sea actually foamed with them, and incredibly active, doing all sorts of exciting acrobatic stunts in the air only there were so many of them that it was like watching a three-ring circus! I don't know why they call them sea-pigs. Sea-kittens would be much nearer the mark, I think. And everywhere were birds thousands and thou sands of birds! 69 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON To the left, on the mainland, we passed a splendid mountain of dark, rugged rock, with a cloud-swept top and the most lovely yellow sand flung far up against its base, all splotched with purple shadows, while between sparkled the blue-green foreground of waves. To the right were islands barren, moun tainous, tawny. It was all very wonderful color, and I said as much to Mr. Gaveston, who admitted the color but deplored the lack of verdure. " Now, in England, you know " To be sure! Why not hold up England's plushy lawns as a standard for a country where if it rains once in twenty-five years it is considered a wet century! Como no? as they say down here. From quite a distance we could see the town of Callao low, flat-roofed, pale, like all Spanish towns and six or eight miles away, and some five hun dred feet higher, lay Lima, her Cathedral towers like fingers beckoning in the sun. A green line down through the lion-tinted plain marked the course of the River Rimac, and back of it all rose the first ramparts of the Cordillera the Andean foothills. It was fun to see the small boats skim out to us, scores of them, like a lot of the spidery things that run about on the surface of ponds and other quiet waters at home. As the steamer carries, in addition to the regular ship's doctor, a physician in the em ploy of the Peruvian government, whose sole duty it is to watch and report on the health of the passen gers, there was no medical examination. The sheep were separated from the goats, the Guayaquil pas sengers including the American, Jones, who went 70 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON ashore there were ordered into quarantine, and the rest of us were at liberty to land. Meanwhile, we had been surrounded by the fleet of small boats, and fleteros were everywhere, solicit ing yea, demanding patronage. Presently came Domingo, the smooth, affable pirate representing this very good hotel, looking for us, and into his hands we delivered ourselves horse, foot and dragoons. Soon thereafter we breathlessly watched our luggage big trunks, little trunks, hold-all, hat- boxes, suit-cases and chairs one by one attached to the end of a very slender rope and lowered over the side into a tippy rowboat. Then we said "hasta luego" to the Captain, who promises to dine with us before he departs, and pushed our way to the ladder. I wish I could make you see and feel the scene there! The jam of boats, the clamor of Latin syllables, the shouting and gesticulation and excite ment! The ladder was crowded, three people to every two steps at least, mostly South Americans carrying parrots, babies, bunches of bananas, nondescript parcels of all sizes and quantities of ordinary hand luggage; and below was a mass of boats, each struggling to win or to keep a place at the foot of the ladder. Up and down, from the boats to the deck and back again, fleteros and stewards elbowed their way. Now and then some excited person near the bottom discovered that a box or a cage or a baby had been left behind and pande monium ensued, everybody lending a voice as well as a hand to the bereaved one. THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON The sun blazed, everybody pushed and shouted, and now and again the man at the foot of the ladder, whoever he might be, got a footbath as the ship bowed to the long Pacific swells rolling in. Eventually we reached the bottom ourselves, Mr. Ames got his feet wet, we scrambled over three or four intervening boats to the one that held our luggage and soon we were ashore. Mr. Ames' agent met us at the dock, and it may have been due to his influence that we passed the customs so easily. They did not even open our trunks, while young Leibnitz, who was next to us, had to submit to a very thorough overhauling, much to his disgust. We came up by trolley, a short ride, and found what I think would be best described as a palatial suite awaiting us. Berenice and I have a huge sala Mr. Ames has been tucked away in some othor corner of the hotel much bemirrored and beplush- ed and besofaed, with two bedrooms and a balcony one of the curious, cage-like balconies that are the most salient feature of Peruvian architecture. They are quite apart from the room, being sep arated from it by a wall and entered by a door; they overhang the street, like any balcony, and yet are quite enclosed, the upper part being entirely of windows which may be opened or shut at will. Sometimes they are very beautifully ornamented or carved on the outside, and from the street re semble nothing I have seen so much as the women's galleries in pictures of certain Oriental houses. At all times of day, but especially in the late after- 72 Copyright, IQOQ, by Underwood & Underwood, N. V. CARVED BALCONIES OF SOLID MAHOGANY THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON noon, the youth and beauty of Lima past and present may be seen frankly hanging in these windows, the cushioned sills of which are just high enough to support the elbows comfortably, watching the world wag by, or coquettishly peeping from behind the Venetian blinds with which most of them are furnished. I admit I do my full share of hanging, as our win dows overlook a busy and a noisy street, every sight and sound of which attracts me, from the sweet whistle of the policeman on this corner, who musi cally communicates all sorts of information to his comrades a block or so in either direction, to the calls of the street venders or the fanfare of trumpets as the President whirls by in a gorgeous red-and- gold coach, drawn by six plumed horses, attended by liveried men in silk stockings and cocked hats, and followed by a guard of lancers, pennants flying and accoutrements a-jingle. The only other especially striking thing I have discovered in the architecture is the flat mud roofs, made possible by the fact that it never rains, pro tection from the sun being consequently all that is needed. Despite the fact that no rain falls, how ever, there are mists and heavy dews, and we are told that residents here sometimes have difficulty in keeping their apparel from mildewing overnight. Yesterday, as Mr. Ames was busy with his agents, Mr. Blakeney and Mr. Gaveston invited us to go about the city with them to see some of the churches and so on. First we went to the Cathedral, which Mr. Blakeney and I thought fine in some ways and 73 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON very interesting, but Mr. Gaveston told us it was tawdry. He said that of course this cathedral had no real antiquity a mere three or four hundred years very modern, compared with the cathedrals of Europe, and tawdry, really very tawdry. Then he told Berenice about the Convento dos Jeronymos in Lisbon, and its wonderful, ivory-like carvings. From there we went to the Church of Santo Do mingo, where were some strange old tiles, laboriously wrought by hand, grotesque and quaint. Berenice found these tawdry. She also called our attention to the tawdry paper flowers on the altars, the tawdry images, and the tawdry color. Mr. Gaveston then described to her a mosque at Ahmedabad, or some such place. We went next to the old Palace of the Inquisition, now the Senate, and into a stately chamber with carved ceiling and doors, apparently oak, but black with age. Mr. Gaveston admitted that this was rather nice yes, really, not bad and immediately fell to explaining to Berenice the theory of some electrical contrivance he found there. When Mr. Blakeney said that countrymen of ours had been strung up by their thumbs in that very room, Mr. Gaveston observed, with amused tolerance: " You do not belong to the older civilization, Mrs. Pomeroy." I admitted the impeachment. "Ah, yes! Of course, this is rather nice, but we have Westminster Hall, you know, a tho-u-sand yeahs old." We withdrew from the carven chamber. But as we went Berenice seized the opportunity to men- 74 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON tion that the door was really very thin. Oh, he has done his work well ! On the way back to the hotel, Mr. Blakeney re membered that the bones of the great Conquista dor who founded Lima were in the Cathedral, and we stopped there again to visit them. We found Messrs. Tomlinson and Leibnitz there ahead of us, and together we viewed the crumbling skeleton of the mighty Spaniard, majestic even in its decay because of the dauntless spirit it had housed. My dear, then and there, in the very presence of that historic pile of bones, that Tomlinson man, after a little quiet talk with Mr. Gaveston, actually approached the sacristan in an attempt to buy one of Pizarro's feet as a souvenir, and on being refused, returned to inquire what they would ask for a toe! Kindly note that this was not an American tourist! He was not only disappointed that the offer was not accepted, but was inclined to resent as offensive the vehemence of its rejection. And Mr. Gaveston, instead of blushing for his compatriot, laughed about the affair. Indeed, I suspect that the initial con ception was his, as Tomlinson, who admires him in ordinately and is flattered by his attention, would do any idiotic thing he suggested. Marion, I tell you there is something wrong about that man Gaveston. He is clever, and his family may trace itself back to the Normans or to Shem, Ham and Japheth, for all I know but he is not an English gentleman. What's the use of getting ex cited about him, though? Thank Heaven, we see the last of him to-night ! 7S THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON We came out into the plaza to find an exquisite, mellow, sunset light bathing it in magic, deepening the shadows under the arcades and softening the creamy tone of the towered Cathedral. Oh, it's good to be alive in this most beautiful and fascinating old world! Life is so wonderful it can't go wrong, and I know the tide must turn here! Berenice must feel all this beauty and warmth and love, and once this man has gone out of her life, I am sure all will be well with us! Lima, March igth. Mail! Mail! The first we have had since leav ing home more than a month ago. Among my letters was the note from you, written the day we sailed, urging me to read Howells' latest, and not to miss The Great Divide, if it was still running in New York. I wonder whether you can understand the curious impression this has made on me ? It seems to come from even a greater distance spiritually than it does physically. What have I, who have seen the Culebra Cut, to do with pale, printed romance? What does our modern, psychological hair-splitting hold for me, who have watched day by day the plague-stricken city of Guayaquil, communed with the bones of Pizarro, and crossed a greater Divide than ever the Rockies made, the line between the two Americas? My trunk is full of new books that I cannot read, my portfolio of letters that I cannot answer. Per- 76 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON haps, when I have returned to my own world again, the things that constitute it will resume their old positions perhaps, but I am not sure. I don't know just what is happening to me down here, but whatever it is, it has begun. I know I am going toward a great change of some sort, but I am no longer afraid. I am simply deeply curious. " What time, what circuit first, I ask not. ... I shall arrive." In the mean time I have more hope for the im mediate future and for Berenice since Mr. Gave- ston has gone. I kept very closely beside her that last day, but he made no attempt to see her alone. Nevertheless, something in his manner an added deference, perhaps, artistically tinged with melan choly was almost a declaration in itself, and one that, at her age, would have impressed me far more deeply than any words. When he told her good-bye, he held her hand for a fraction of a second longer than he did mine, and said : "We shall meet again somewhere. People don't touch to part like this, you know. We shall surely meet again." Perhaps they will, but I hope it will be after I have returned Berenice safely to the parental coop. If Helen and Dick choose to let hawks into that en closure, I can't help it, but since Uncle Beverley ap parently does not recognize a bird of prey when he sees it, I have felt in duty bound to do what I could to save the chicken, even though that was no part of my undertaking in the first place. And I think I have succeeded. Anyway, Mr. Gaveston has gone to Bolivia, and I 77 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON breathe freely again except that I do not yet under stand his game. Why didn't he press his advantage for he certainly had it to its logical conclusion? Bother the man! I wonder whether, after all, I have been unjust to him, and whether he was only casually entertained by a pretty girl, whose interest in the things he could tell served to vary the mo notony of a long voyage? Quien sabe? Anyway, he has gone. So, alas, has Shafter Blakeney. He was delight ful to the end, and I hated to lose him, but we shall see him again, either in Iquique, where he will make a short visit, or in Santiago, his home. Berenice's attitude toward him has puzzled me, and her parting with him did not lessen my bewilderment. She said good-bye to him lightly enough, with some jest about our next meeting, and while I saw that she was nervous, I attributed it wholly to the approaching departure of Gaveston. Then, when Blakeney was about to leave us, she called to him, as if through a casual after-thought, but with a hard little under tone in her voice: " When you write to Perry Waite, don't forget to tell him what jolly times we've all had to gether." It was the first time she had alluded to her lover or to the relationship between the boys I know, because Shafter told me only that morning that she had never in any way indicated to him that she even knew his cousin and he would have stopped to speak to her, but she was already chattering gayly to Gaveston, apparently without a thought for any- 78 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON body else, so Shafter just looked at her for a moment, rather curiously, and went away. I admit this baffles me completely. If she had quarrelled with young Waite, it would be simple enough, of course. Then I should understand that, while her woman's pride had kept her silent con cerning him thus far, the impatient youth in her couldn't resist the temptation to insure his hearing that he was in nowise essential to her happiness and that she had been having a beautiful time with another man. This would also explain, in part, at least, her disturbance when Blakeney's identity was revealed, and her subsequent efforts to convince him, and through him his cousin, that she was en tirely happy. As I look back I can see that ever since that night on the river his appearance on the scene has always been the signal for her spirits to rise sometimes to wild heights. Thus far it all hangs together beautifully. But if she has quarrelled with the Waite boy, why are we here ? If the affair had already been broken off, why was it necessary for us to separate them so widely? Why did she passionately declare, three days before we sailed, that they might send her to the South Pole, or into the heart of the desert, or shut her up in a convent, but that in the end she would run away and marry Perry Waite? I know that she has not seen him since that, and if she has even heard from him it was skilfully managed, for her every movement was watched those last days. I give it up! It passes my understanding and I 6 79 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON have rather prided myself upon my knowledge of girls and their hearts, too. I fear I can never again lay that flattering unction to my soul. This ex perience is taking the conceit out of me, if it is ac complishing nothing else. One other thing it is accomplishing, however. It is bringing a breath of home air to the American exiles down here and it is pathetic to see how eagerly they sniff it! We have met several of them now, very pleasant and attractive people, and so cord ial in their attitude toward us! To be sure, every body is worn out, physically and mentally, after the exertion and excitement of entertaining the fleet, which left here about a week before we arrived. But they are still glowing with enthusiasm and pride in the vessels and the men, and in the impression both made upon the people of Peru, as well as in the wonderful reception given by the Peruvians to the sailors. They all seem to feel that the visit did incalculable good, and certainly they are in a much better position to know than some of the people at home who made such a fuss about this naval expedition. It has interested me to see that apparently they have almost as much pride in the splendid manner of Peru's entertainment as in the conduct of our own men. They have all assured me, at different times, that Peruvians are the aristocrats of South America, and that while they are now very poor, they have once been rich and "know how money should be spent." They say that the people here are still so hospitable and so proud that they will deny them- 80 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON selves absolute necessities in order to entertain vis itors according to their traditions. That this spirit is not limited to the aristocracy is illustrated by a pretty story about the Lima police, who, because the country has been im poverished by wars and losses, are very poorly paid. When the fleet was here, these men were offered two pounds each for every American sailor outstay ing his shore-leave whom they returned to his ship. Now, two pounds is a large sum down here, but when these little policemen found that the amount was deducted from the sailors' pay, they still returned Jack to his ship, if he was too befuddled to get there on time himself, but they steadfastly refused to ac cept the money. Do you seem to see anything like this happening in one of our large cities? But to return to the Americans resident here while the thousands of fellow-countrymen in the fleet ministered to their patriotism and pride and love of kind, we are more recently from home and bring closer touch. So it is that as soon as the formalities of introduction are over and the first tentative soundings have been taken, somebody asks a question, generally about New York, and a hun dred follow such significant, pathetic, trivial, home sick questions, Marion! Who is playing at the Empire? What is Drew doing? Do the forty - five - story skyscrapers look as tall as they are? Has the Museum any new treasures? Is this or that familiar restaurant as good as ever ? Who painted the picture of the year ? Who is in Tiffany's old place? Is it true that all 81 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Twenty-third Street is moving up to Thirty-fourth ? Have the ancient horse -busses really been taken off the Avenue? All these and more, and every American within hearing distance pushes thirstily near, not to lose one insignificant, precious drop. Positively, I almost wept the first time this hap pened. And always, first and most eager of all, came the query: "How does the canal look now?" It is in the canal that all hopes are centred. The canal will put them in touch with Home. The canal will encourage freer communication and better under standing between the two countries. The canal will bring American people and American manufactures. The canal will introduce modern business methods and direct steamers. How about the canal? Direct steamers and better dock facilities they certainly need. It seems that there are docks at Callao, but they are so small and so busy that vessels have to wait their turn to discharge their cargoes, or else depend upon the lanchas, of which there are not very many. Just now there is a strike down there, which complicates matters. Our nice Captain, whose ship is still in port, dined with us last night. He says that a steamer of the other line, which followed about a week behind us down the coast, arrived a day or two ago she brought the mail and found that she would have to wait so long for either dock-room or lanchas that she sailed south to-day, still carrying her Callao freight, hundreds of tons of it, which will be returned from Mollendo at the expense of the consignee. 82 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON In this connection, an American importer here told us of having goods that he greatly needed kept for weeks in the bottom of a lancha at Callao. Several times the men unloaded until his things were in sight. Then another ship came in, the boat was taken out and filled up, and again his stuff was buried deep. He had no resource and no redress. He simply had to wait. The American Minister, Mr. Blinn, called the other day, after Mr. Ames had presented his cre dentials, and oh, my dear, that was an experience! Uncle Beverley was out, and Berenice was asleep, when a much-agitated servant appeared at the door, uttering strange syllables which, after several rep etitions, I construed as having something to do with "el Ministro Americano." "Muy bien," said I, and then, at the end of my Spanish, waved my hand in what I flattered myself was an eloquent and illuminating gesture, signifying my desire that the gentleman should be conducted to our apartment. "Si, sefiora," replied the man, and went away and nothing happened. After a while I went to the door to see what had become of him, and discovered, across the patio, a white-haired man wearing American clothes and looking in my direction. When I appeared in the doorway, he approached, bearing his own cards, and after regarding each other a little doubtfully for a moment, we both laughed, and he said : "I'm Mr. Blinn." We were having a very good time at least, I was 83 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON when I noticed three or four agitated servitors hovering outside the door. Finally one of them entered, put his heels together, bowed several times very rapidly, and emitted more incomprehensible syllables. Mr. Blinn, at my request, translated. The man asked if I would like a refresco. Thinks I to myself, this is a delicate way of re minding me of my duties as a hostess. I had not suggested tea, because it was a little early, and be cause I was rather waiting for Mr. Ames, who was due to arrive at any moment. But now I perceived that when Ministers Plenipotentiary and Envoys Extraordinary call upon one in this country, re- frescos are the rule, so I said "Si," and the man darted out. Presently, in the middle of a very good story Mr. Blinn was telling, he dodged in again. Again the Minister acted as interpreter. What refresco would I like? I had thought, from the man's momentous manner, that there might be some especial bever age reserved for the mighty, which he would serve without further direction, but now, fairly put to it, I asked Mr. Blinn what I might order for him. He explained that he never took anything in the afternoon, not even tea, so I told the man in English to go away. He held his ground, however, and chat tered, and I finally ordered a "refresco de limon" to get rid of him. Before he brought it, Mr. Blinn took his depart ure, while I explained at length how very sorry Mr. Ames and Berenice would be to find they had missed his call, and assured him again that Mr. Ames must 84 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON arrive within a few minutes. He decided not to wait, and the man bringing the refresco passed him in the corridor. I sat down to write letters and sip my lemonade, and half an hour later Mr. Ames came in, saying he hoped I had enjoyed my refresco, and why didn't Berenice take one? I asked him what he knew about it, anyway, and he inquired with amusement: "Who do you think ordered that refresco?" My dear, he had been sitting in the patio below for an hour, talking business with somebody. He must have been there even when Mr. Blinn came in, and now I am wondering whether Mr. Blinn saw him there, after all my regrets that he was out, and what that humble servitor said about the sefior down stairs who had ordered the refresco for the senora. This travelling in a country when you know prac tically nothing of its language is not all cakes and ale! Nor yet all refrescos, which, by-the-way, are delicious hot- weather drinks made of fruit juice and water. Lemonade is the only one we know much about at home (down here, if one orders lemonade, they bring a horrid, bottled, fizzy kind of a com pound, as they do in England), but refrescos are also made from almost any tart fruit, notably from oranges or tamarinds or a delicious tropical thing called a grenadilla. We are told that Peruvians are very friendly to Americans, and that many of the boys are sent to the United States to attend college, which may ac count for the numbers of young men one sees in the streets wearing Panama hats pulled down over 85 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON their eyes in the American fashion. There is even a glee club here now, composed entirely of Peruvian Cornell students. Nevertheless, the American colo ny in Lima is small, while English and Germans are numerous. The last day Mr. Gaveston was here he asked us to go with him to a tournament at the tennis club, and though I believe there are American members, we met that day only pleasant English people. The courts are in a very beautiful park, filled with splendid, tall, stately trees and many vines and flowering shrubs honeysuckle, oleander, hibiscus, and others less familiar. I was glad to see some big trees and flowers, for Lima does impress the stranger from the North as being rather parched. There is every reason why it should, since it never rains, but still that makes these fine trees the more wonderful. As in other Spanish-American cities, the principal amusement of the better classes is driving; but as the roads in the country are pretty bad and the city streets not much better, people are practically limited to a course from the plaza where the Cathe dral is, through the principal shopping streets, to a little boulevard kind of place called the Paseo Colon. Here they form the inevitable Spanish endless chain of carriages, and drive around and around a strip of parched, dusty palms, geraniums, and shrubs, midway of which is a band-stand, where assemble, twice a week, thirty white-uniformed men, with thirty kinds of musical instruments. I didn't know there were so many different brass 86 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON things out of which men could blow sound. Each of the thirty was tuned to a pitch just a little dif ferent from the other twenty-nine, and after one man had started them all off together, every fellow played along as his own inclination prompted. When one of them found something in his score that especially pleased him, he "brought it out." Other wise, as the South American temperament is not, under ordinary circumstances, strenuous, they all struck an easy gait and finished neck and neck. Berenice and I discovered this musical organiza tion while driving one day, and when I told Mr. Ames about it at dinner that night he observed, in his deliberate way : "That is what you might call the apoth-eo-sis of de-cen-tral-iza-tion ! ' ' There are times, Marion, when Uncle Beverley is not so slow! If he would only discover that a few things have happened since 'sixty-four! However, while this band was funny, it wasn't any worse than some I've heard at home, and we are told that the Peruvians, as a people, are in clined to be musical. Some one expressed it very aptly the other day when he said that, whereas Americans are educated, Peruvians are cultivated. They all speak French, at least, and sometimes German or English (of course, I am speaking now of what we call the educated classes) ; they all play or sing, they frequently paint a little in short, they are accomplished. As yet, all this is hearsay, as we have met none of them. Such a funny thing happened while we were driv- 8? THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON ing that day. We went out to the hospital to see one of our American acquaintances who was ill there, and as we drove up we found her husband and the superintendent of the hospital out in the street, interviewing a man in charge of a drove of burros that had stopped for water at a trough nearby. This person was greatly excited, and raved and raged, with shrill expletive and violent gesture. The racket he made had brought the men out from the hospital, and they finally succeeded in calming him sufficiently to learn that he had lost a burro. He had started with twenty -one, and now there were but twenty. He had counted again and again. Twenty-one they had been, and twenty they were now, as the senores could see for themselves. And twenty it was until it was discovered that he was riding the twenty-first! We have been, by tram-car, out to Chorillas, a pretty suburb, where I vainly tried to make Uncle Beverley and some of the Englishmen see that even though there were comparatively few trees and the hills were brown, there was wonderful color every where and great beauty. They said yes, yielding a polite, unconvinced affirmative in deference to my sex and my position, but it was so bare, you know! No verdure at all! So dreary! Isn't it amazing that people can live to be old and gray without ever discovering that they are totally blind ? Wouldn't you think they'd suspect it sometime, instead of forever insisting that things do not exist simply because they can't see them ? We have also visited the museum still interest- 88 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON ing, though sadly much of its treasure was removed at the time of the war and a theatre, where, as in other originally Spanish cities, "zarzuelas" are given, which means several short plays, generally four, each lasting about an hour, for any or all of which one may buy seats. I wonder why some body doesn't try that plan in our large cities ? We have been offered a programme of short plays, but I think seats were always sold for the whole evening. Here, as in Mexico, it is possible to drop into a theatre from nine to ten, or ten to eleven, and for a few cents hear a complete little play called a "tanda," or turn which may be comedy, tragedy, farce, or music, but is pretty sure to be fairly well done. It is a delightful way to spend an hour or to entertain friends, when perhaps one wouldn't care to sit through a whole evening at the theatre or to pay two dollars for an hour's amusement. Our English friends, Mr. Tomlinson and others, urged us to accompany them on a trip over the wonderful Andean railroad, for which they had a special train; but as many people suffer terribly from a curious illness that assails them in high altitudes here, and as Mr. Ames was too busy to go with us, and Berenice had been having severe headaches for several days, I thought it better not to attempt the journey. Moreover, I knew that if the altitude spared me, our friends would not, and I felt that their comment on these glorious heights would undo me quite. So, not caring to quarrel with these amiable "trippers" at this late day, I chose the better part and declined to go. I was 89 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON more than sorry to miss it, for it is one of the great scenic roads of the world, but Mr. Ames thinks he may be able to take us up there later. Berenice seems to be suffering from a nervous reaction. After Mr. Gaveston and Shafter Blakeney left, she dropped all her gayety. She is not briery now, but seems very listless, and has occasional hours of deep melancholy. She is beginning to turn to me a little, I think. At any rate, she no longer turns away, and while she does not talk to me very much except, of course, in courteous, casual ways she listens when I talk to her. I am telling her, gradually, more and more of myself and my own life, though as yet I have not ventured to touch upon hers. I begin to hope, however, that I have not wholly failed with her, after all. I have a dozen other things to tell you about, but I have gossiped along, without diligently im proving the opportunity, and now I must stop, as there is not in all Lima a hair-dressing establish ment, and we are invited out to-night to play cards, the party being in our honor. The first thing people say to you here is: " I'm so glad to meet you. Do you play bridge?" Oh, I haven't told you anything about Mrs. Mabel Mills Rankin, a sharp little American widow who is what, at home, we call a promoter, and plies her vocation so successfully that she has interested several South American governments or govern ment officials, which amounts to the same thing in her schemes, in consequence of which she is get ting rich very rapidly. Whether they are laying 90 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON up equal hordes of experience I haven't learned, but I suspect that they are, though they may not have discovered it yet. Mrs. Rankin is young and pretty and clever and well-groomed, with a caressing manner and a smile that is childlike and bland but her eyes are too brightly blue. People here all laugh a little when she is mentioned the Americans, I mean; but they all seem to know her, and to feel more or less strongly the men more, the women less that she is fighting against heavy odds and winning, which of course always arouses a certain sympathy in the spectator. I have only met her once, but she is to be at the card-party to night, and I am looking forward to it rather eagerly, for I am really very curious about this woman, of whom I have heard so much. Lima, March 23d. We have had two experiences since I wrote last week, both eminently characteristic of the country, I think, and either of which was worth the trip down here, though I fancy I got more amusement out of the first than anybody else did. There are in the hotel some pleasant Americans named Canfield, residents of Lima, of whom we have seen a good deal. One day Mrs. Canfield told us about a man who for some time had cared for her husband's clothes, taking them away to sponge and press them. For quite a while he returned them promptly, but there came a time when man and THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON clothes were missing. Five or six days went by, and then he limped painfully in with them, and explained with tears that a street-car had run over his foot and that he had consequently been unable to press the senor's suit before, which had been a great grief to him. He had been disabled for several days, he said, and had lost much money thereby, but the senora was a merciful lady and would not be hard on a poor man. This was when we first came, and the tale so worked on Uncle Beverley's feelings that he sent for the man and gave him two suits that needed atten tion. Mrs. Canfield also gave him a suit of her husband's. He was properly grateful, took the gar ments and departed and was seen no more for a week. Meanwhile, after two or three days, Uncle Beverley began to puff up and roll his eyes I ad mit that I might have done a little puffing myself under similar circumstances and Mr. Canfield took to sending a boy to the man's shop every day, telling him to produce the clothes or prepare to be arrested. Finally came a note to Mr. Canfield, saying that the man had been in the hospital, very ill, and therefore unable to attend to the clothing of the gentlemen, but he was now well again. He saluted the senor, and the senor's wife, and the senor's daughter, and the senor's friend, the strange gentle man from North America, and hoped they might never die. He would return the clothes on the morrow. The next day he came, with tears and lamenta- 92 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON tions. During the time he had been in the hospital his flint-hearted landlady, having received no rent for his room because he was ill and unable to work, had set his trunk and all his property out on the sidewalk. The trunk had been plundered and all the clothes of both gentlemen had been stolen. He wept and beat his breast and declared that he was the most unfortunate but the clothes of the senores were gone! Mrs. Canfield, somewhat at a loss, sent for her husband, who was not in his office. Neither were any of us about. Not knowing what else to do, she took the man's address and let him go, and when they sent to his shop later, he had, of course, dis appeared. Search was then instituted, and even tually, day before yesterday, he was found, and Messrs. Ames and Canfield went to interview him. He wept more tears and swore that he was a poor but honest man. The clothes of the very distin guished gentlemen had been stolen and his heart was rent with anguish, but he was a very poor man and what could he do? "Give me the pawn-tickets," unfeelingly demand ed Mr. Canfield and in the course of time that is what he did, and the men recovered their raiment. If it were mine, I should conduct some purification ceremonies before I wore it again. This pleasant little habit of disposing temporarily of other people's apparel seems to be one of the customs of the country which must be accepted. An American woman told me the other day that several of the laundresses have renting agencies, 93 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON and that between the time one's linen is taken away and the time it is returned, a week later, it may have been worn once or twice by "dressy" cholos. A girl of the lower classes, ready to be married, pawns her trousseau, if by any chance it is finished a few days before the wedding. It seems to me this is going our financial methods one better! A dressmaker, once having possession of one's material, sends constantly daily for money and more money, a sol or two at a time, not only before the work is finished, but before it is even begun. If the money is not forthcoming, she pawns the material. Sometimes she pawns it anyway. They tell me it is quite impossible to get a sewing woman to come in by the day, as they do with us- Once some of them heard of a girl who might be willing to do this, the daughter of a good but much impoverished family, who had been educated at a convent, was a fine seamstress, of irreproachable respectability and greatly in need of work. One of the American women sent for her, found her to be a woman of thirty or thereabout, and engaged her. On the appointed day appeared, not the young woman, but her mother, reproachful and indignant. The sefiora knew quite well, she said, that it would be impossible for her daughter to come to the hotel to sew, for they lived in a suburb and there was no one to accompany her daughter to and from the senora's house. In vain the senora pointed out that the young woman could get on a tram-car at her own door, which would bring her directly to the hotel. The mother was inflexible. It was quite 94 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON impossible for her daughter to go out unaccom panied, and there it ended. At another time, a Peruvian girl was to take sewing away from the hotel to do, something which must be returned the same day. Though she was sorely in need of money, she refused the work, because a young woman of good breeding does not appear twice in the street in one day, and therefore, having come for the work in the morning, it would obviously be quite impossible for her to return it in the afternoon. To us, a practical, utilitarian people, much of this seems absurd, but nevertheless there is something fine in the willingness of members of these proud old families to sacrifice their bodies rather than tarnish their traditions. Opinions seem to differ as to the capacity of the laboring classes. One person assures us that they are very intelligent and need only to be shown the use of things to become fairly skilful operators; while another, as long resident here and apparently equally fitted to judge, tells quite a different story; so it is difficult to form any definite opinion. I find I committed a grave breach of decorum dur ing the first days we were here, as women wear ing hats are not permitted to enter the churches. Instead they wear a sort of shawl, generally of nun's - veiling, called a man to, wrapped tightly about the head and fastened in curious fashion in the back, the folds running to a point between the shoulder-blades. This garment is very graceful, particularly from behind, but the style is a severe 7 95 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON one, and as the manto is invariably black except at weddings, when I believe it may be white and is worn by women of the lower classes at all times, and in the morning to mass and to market by women of the highest social position as well, it gives the streets rather a sombre appearance. Sometimes lace mantillas are substituted, cool, graceful things, but the preference seems to be for the shrouding manto. Among the men, I miss the light cotton garments, gay sarapes and fantastic hats of Mexico. Here the workmen are clad very much as they are with us in hot weather. The people are generally small. I, who am be low average height at home, as you know, am as tall as many of the men and taller than most of the women. Shafter Blakeney, strolling along the street one day, ruminatively eyed some guardians of the peace, and remarked : "If I were only five feet tall, I'd hate to be a policeman." On another occasion we passed some troops lined up outside a church where a military funeral was in progress, and he said : " I suppose a man under five feet can pull a trigger as well as a bigger one but somehow, it's against tradition." However, I told him he saw through Chilean lenses. Although an American, he was born and spent all his boyhood in Chile, and feeling between the two countries is still anything but cordial, as is evident even in the comment of foreigners living in one place or the other. 96 Copyright, 1907, by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. THE CATHEDRAL WHERE PIZARRO LIES THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Still, the Peruvians do impress one as being a gen tle rather than an aggressive and war-like people, though just now, as the presidential election draws near, there is much talk of revolution, and yesterday we saw a political demonstration that suggested this might have more back of it than mere Latin love of flourishing phrases. Down one side of the street beneath our windows marched a rabble of men and boys carrying banners and waving red flags. Now and then one tossed his arms and shouted something unintelligible to us, and wild cheering followed. Down the other side of the same street, step for step, paralleling the line of march, came government troops in single file, ready to check instantly any real movement toward revolution, while officers of high rank, both military and civil, galloped to and fro and frequently consulted together. Free speech is evidently permitted, but a firm hand is kept on the reins of government. The affairs of Peru, however, unlike those of some of her neighbors, are said to be honestly conducted under the present administration. The other experience to which I alluded was social. Mr. Ames has spent more or less time here in the office of a German firm, and to my utter amazement, he came in the other night saying that we were all to spend the evening at the house of one of these men. I promptly arose in protest. I did not know the men, the women of the family had not called upon me, the thing was entirely irregular and unnecessary, 97 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON I was very tired, Berenice had a headache, and he would much better go alone, anyway. All of which he admitted, and then asked me if I wouldn't please, as a favor to him, overlook all these things and go. He said these people, while not directly connected with him commercially, had gone out of their way to help him in certain important matters ; it was the family's evening at home, and the man had made quite a point of his coming and bringing Berenice and me. So, on condition that we need not stay over half an hour or so, I finally agreed to go. Berenice was quite indifferent either way. I asked him what kind of people they were, hav ing in my mind the question of apparel, and he said he knew nothing about them socially. He had not met the ladies of the family, but thought they were probably like the men, pleasant, quiet, kindly, unpretentious Germans. We decided, how ever, not to alter our custom of dressing for dinner. Therefore, after a prosy meal, during the entire length of which Uncle Beverley dilated upon the haps and mishaps of Sherman's march to the sea, we girded up our loins and set forth to find the Hauptmann residence. We wandered down what seemed to me in the dark and in a naughty temper a very dubious - looking street, in search of a modest dwelling. Judge, therefore, of our astonish ment when we found the number we sought over a wide doorway leading into a large and elabo rately paved patio, from the other side of which music and laughing voices floated out through open, grilled windows, through which, also, were visible soft 98 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON colored lights, palms, spacious rooms and a gay company. After satisfying himself that no other door open ing on the patio could possibly be the one we sought, Mr. Ames rang, and the door was promptly opened by a smiling and very pretty girl, evidently a mem ber of the family, who greeted us in Spanish, ex tended her hand and drew us within, where we found ourselves in a large and very handsome reception- hall. Before Uncle Beverley could summon Spanish enough to ask whether this was really the place we were looking for, we were joined by another daughter of the house, and then by a third. Our wraps were taken, and at the door of the sala we were met by a smiling and very gracious Peruvian lady, who was introduced as "mi madre, " while we were presented to her by our several names the first assurance we had that anybody really knew who we were. "Mi padre" promptly appeared from somewhere, and behind him came trooping a lot of young men, all in irreproachable evening dress, most of whom could speak at least a few words of English. In the mean time it had been discovered that neither Berenice nor I spoke any Spanish, though we both understand more or less now; so after we had been duly presented to everybody, one man who spoke English sat down beside me, another beside Berenice, while Herr or should one say Senor? Hauptmann himself took Mr. Ames in tow, and conversation was generally resumed. When I got my breath and had finished my prayers of thanks- 99 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON giving to my guardian angel that we had not dressed down to the supposed sobriety of the Hauptmann family, I looked about a little. We were in a very large and handsomely appoint ed room. Immense oil-paintings adorned the walls, and wide doors led, in various directions, into other spacious and brilliantly lighted apartments. The only women, besides the hostess and her four grown daughters, were a Mrs. Dogan, also a Peruvian, and ourselves. There were several sons of the house and a lot of other young fellows, all rather attractive, whose numbers were constantly augmented. Presently I was asked if I would like a refresco, and as it is courteous in this country to accept every refreshment that is offered, I said I would, and was escorted on the arm of one of the men to an ad joining room, even larger than the first, with finer pictures, and furnished beautifully, though very formally. Here was a buffet with wines of va rious sorts and whiskey, none of which anybody drank, and refrescos, as well as many varieties of sweets. One or two of the daughters were near us all the time, and I liked them so much that I was doubly sorry not to be able to talk to them or to their sweet- faced mother. They all speak Spanish and German and some French, and I speak English! Berenice has a little school-girl French, but she doesn't find it very serviceable. The old coat of the son of the good notary doesn't figure largely in the things she wishes to say here. She, by- the- way, behaved very well, and couldn't help having a good time, es- IOO THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON pecially as she found a boy who knew several of her friends at home. They asked me whether I would dance a "qua- drilla," but I was a little afraid to attempt that and begged them to dance it without me and let me look on. Presently I heard them whispering be hind me that they had intended to have a quadrilla, but of course, if the senora didn't care for it Whereupon the senora suddenly awoke to her ob ligations and protested that she cared very much for it and was only afraid of embarrassing the others by her awkwardness. So we danced a quadrille. I have not mentioned that all this time there was somebody at the piano playing lively little airs that nobody pretended to listen to, but which made a gay undertone. Apparently all these young men could play more or less, and when there had been silence for a little while, one of them simply went to the piano. Possibly some member of the family asked them to, but if so, I never detected it. It seemed to be entirely spontaneous, and was conse quently doubly charming. Their selections, by-the- way, were chiefly American rag-time melodies and two-steps. When they found I could get through a quadrille, they immediately started round dances. In the mean time, word had evidently gone about that we were strangers and spoke no Spanish, and from the time I was taken out for the refresco I was the centre of a group of eager, courteous boys, all apparently with but one desire in life just then, and that was to talk to me. I do not mean to imply that Berenice was 101 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON not equally surrounded, for she was, but that was to be expected. But every one of those fellows who spoke even a few words of English came to me and did his brave best to converse with me in my own tongue. A few of them spoke it fluently, too, and one, in particular, was very witty. When the round dancing began, one was at my elbow as soon as I stopped dancing with another, saying, "The next for me!" I was dancing abomi nably, too, partly because we had a heavily carpeted floor, and partly because my gown, a lace thing, was very long and full and impossible to hold up proper ly, so we were constantly becoming entangled in it. After I had danced holes all up the front of it, I gave up trying, and considerably after midnight we left, the whole company shaking hands with us and assuring us of their great pleasure in meeting us. The eldest son gave me his arm and escorted me through the great patio to the street, where, with a flourish, he turned me over to Mr. Ames, who fol lowed behind with Berenice. Now, I would like to see the time and place in my own country when the casual and unexpected en trance into a company of young people of a Peruvian lady, thirty- six and a chaperon, would be the signal for all the boys to gather about her, vying with each other to entertain her and give her pleasure. Not to mention talking to her in her native language or in any other language, for that matter, except their own plain, unmitigated English, and most of it slang at that! Those boys had no earthly interest in me in IO2 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Berenice, of course, but not in me but I was a woman and a stranger, and consequently the guest of every one of them. They made me feel that I was young and beautiful and clever and fascinating oh, there never was anybody so fascinating as I felt that night! and yet not one of them paid me a compliment in words throughout the whole even ing. They simply had neither eyes nor ears for any one else if I spoke or moved a finger! Do you, in your mind's eye, see anything like that happening to a chaperoning foreign lady at home ? But the next morning ah, that was another story! I remembered that roseate dream of youth and beauty and brilliancy, but I awoke a rheumatic, stiff-jointed, weary old woman, who had frisked un- wontedly and now must pay the piper. Anyway, I had the dream. Mr. Blinn came again yesterday, with his sister, a charming, gray-haired woman whom we had not met before, as she was ill and not receiving the day we called. He is a widower, I believe, and she is the chatelaine of the Legation, which, by- the- way, is a beautiful place a fine, stately, big house, set in the midst of a lovely, park-like garden. I am sorry we came when everybody was so tired, for I should have enjoyed seeing more of most of these peo ple. This, however, is my last letter from here, as we sail please Heaven and the agents! to-morrow night for Chile. They say the regular time to Val paraiso is ten days, which is probably the reason that no ship ever makes it in less than twelve. The 103 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON regularity of the steamship service on this coast is a joy forever. There will be a mail for the North to-morrow if it gets off! the first for ten days. You will prob ably get my letters in squads, but I can't help that. I shall write whenever I have something to say, and "leave to Heaven the rest." Apropos of steamers, we are likely to become very well acquainted indeed with the promoter lady, Mrs. Rankin, as we are to have her with us all the way to Valparaiso. It looks rather a long trail to me, but last night I overheard Uncle Beverley express ing his great pleasure that she was to be our fellow- passenger, and telling her what a delight it would be to Berenice and me to have another American woman on board. Quite so. Subtle perception, as you see, is Uncle Beverley 's strong point though in this he is like certain deaf people, who can't hear the most distinct speech addressed to them, but never miss an aside meant for somebody else's pri vate ear. As to Mrs. Rankin, I think I have said before that her eyes are too blue. At Sea, March 28th. Did I say I would write whenever I had something to tell you ? My dear, if I did I should never sleep ! In witness whereof I am now scribbling at midnight in my state-room because I've simply got to relieve my mind somehow. Years ago, when I was a very young girl, a mis- 104 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON guided woman expressed envy of me, not as you might think for me fatal beauty, but because I was, to use her phrase, "bound to be one of the people things happen to." I admire her discrimination, but deplore her taste. Fancy envying anybody who has been Fate's football ever since she could talk, and whose wake is strewn with the wreckage of fond hopes and best-laid plans ! That metaphor isn't any more mixed than the career it refers to, either. I think it is Baudelaire who says somewhere that life is a hospital where every patient desires to change his bed, this one longing to lie near the stove, and that one sure he would recover by the window. Just at this moment, any little quiet country village where nothing ever happens, and nobody ever comes except the tin-peddler, looks like heaven to me. But evidently I am not yet ripe for the celestial choirs, and if heaven is my home, I have a mighty long way to tramp before I get there ! Meanwhile, I am enduring what I once heard a lecturer call "violent vicissitudes." He loved the phrase and lingered with it as I shall hereafter. It is a soul-satisfying mouthful. When I wrote you last from Lima, five days ago Heavens ! is it only five days ? I was about to begin packing quite blithely. When I had finished I must have looked as tired as I felt, for Uncle Beverley came in, regarded me solicitously for a few minutes and did it again. Berenice, also fatigued from packing, was asleep in her room, so he had a clear field. He began by saying that it grieved him to see me weary, and that he wanted to make life 105 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON easier for me. There's another patient who desires to change his bed ! Why the man can't see that he was born to be a bachelor, and that for him a wife would be as superfluous as a vermiform appendix and as troublesome I don't know! Incidentally, the appendix would not have what is vulgarly called a snap. However, while far from impassioned, he seemed very much in earnest about it and decidedly ar gumentative, apparently having conceived the idea that I didn't know my own mind in the matter. I was furious with him, anyway, for leaving the nice little paths I had so carefully indicated and for ignor ing my big "No Thoroughfare" sign, and though I tried to be kind, I was very firm indeed. I trust that he now understands that not even my promise to Helen will prevent my taking the first steamer for home if this happens again. Imagine sn ailing around the edge of a whole continent with a proposal at every third port, all from the same man. Thank you, no! And as for the other alternative, while I may survive a diet of Civil War dust for six months, if I can have it lubricated now and then with a few drops from the flow of some chance pass ing soul, it doesn't appeal to me as food for steady living. You remember the New Englander who lamented that just as he got his cow nicely trained to eat shavings she up and died? I'm afraid my end, if I should marry Uncle Beverley, would be much less subdued than that. However, I'm not going to marry Uncle. That was the first thing that happened. The 1 06 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON next the same night was the total breakdown of Berenice's reserve. I don't yet know what pre cipitated it. She was tired, I suppose, emotionally and physically she had been irritable and sullen by turns all day and some tender word or touch of mine snapped the last thread. Once started, the whole thing came in a torrent, and she sobbed in my arms for hours. As a result, I am rather inclined to agree with the Blakeney boy that Perry Waite is "going to get anything he thinks worth going after," and moreover, he will get it fairly and straightforwardly, in open daylight. Whether or not Berenice will prove "worth going after" remains to be seen. I have a sneaking hope that she will which, of course, is altogether trait orous and irregular, considering the errand that brought me down here. She met young Waite about six months ago, and life held nothing but the other for either of them after that. Evidently she never wears her heart on her sleeve, however, for though Dick and Helen knew about this youth, they never dreamed that the affair could be serious until the young man marched up to Dick one day and asked for his daughter. Dick was terribly worried at the time, harassed by business anxieties, and he sent the boy about his business even more ungently than he might under other circumstances, and commanded Bere nice to break off her acquaintance with him en tirely which was a perfectly insane attitude to take toward a girl of her type. Of course, she 107 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON promptly backed up against the wall and defied heaven and earth and the little stars to come be tween her and her true love. So much I already know from Helen, but Berenice gave me her ver sion of it, also. Then, finding they could do noth ing with her, and having no faith at all in the young man, they evolved this scheme of bundling us all off to the South Pole. Berenice, in the mean time, supposed that she still had her back against her Wall young Waite in the character of Snout enacting the part but when, rinding she was to be sent away like any other naughty child, she attempted to seek shelter behind it, she found the Wall wasn't there at all. In other words, she coaxed or bribed somebody in the house even in her collapse she wouldn't tell me who it was to help her elope; and when her plans were all made and everything arranged, she sent word to her lover, whom she knew to be in Montreal, that she would marry him the day before we were ex pected to sail, with full directions as to when and where he was to meet her. Then comes the big surprise. The boy promptly wrote her, through their go-between, to do nothing of the sort. He said that he loved her too well to let her do anything unworthy of the best in her, and that while he would marry her in the end, in spite of father or mother or earth or heaven, he would not take his wife in any clandestine fashion, and that, if possible, he would take her from her father's house with her father's consent. He reminded her that they were both young and 1 08 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON had many years in which to be happy together. He said that in realizing what she owed to him and to their love for each other, she must not forget nor let him forget what they both owed to her parents. He begged her to be patient, to come on this trip cheerfully, and to return still loving him, arguing that when her people saw that neither time nor dis tance made any difference in that love, they would consent to the marriage. Anyway, he said, they must wait a year, until she was of age and until her parents had had time to see that this was no passing fancy on either side. Then, if they still proved obdurate, he would ask her to marry him without their consent, but openly. He would never ask her nor permit her, if he could help it to do anything sly or clandestine, even for him. All this came in gasps and snatches, while that humiliated, bewildered, passionate child cried her heart out in the bitter telling. She didn't see the nobility of it, nor the wisdom. She only felt that she had offered herself and been rejected; she had loved and been rebuffed ; she had builded her house of life upon the quicksands, and they had swallowed it and left her desolate. He could reason calmly, forsooth ! He didn't love her! He preached duty he didn't love her! He counselled patience he didn't love her! A year an eternity! He wanted her father's consent ? Ah, no; what he really wanted was her father's dollars, in addition to her own! Oh, but she was bitter! Ashes in her mouth and thorns in her heart. Poor, 109 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON proud, impulsive, tempestuous baby, what a lot she'll have to suffer! Well! She wrote Mr. Perry Waite a scorching line or two, in which she cast him off, utterly and forever. She told him that she would never speak to him again, nor write to him, nor see him. She would return his letters unopened and close her ears to his messages. To me she declared that she didn't in the least care what became of her now. What did anything matter if life was to be like this and men like that? She was sorry to burden me with all her sorrow. She had not broken down at all before, but I had been so good to her "so heavenly good to me that sometimes I have hated you!" she cried. She implored me not to tell her mother any of this. Nobody must ever know, least of all her own fam ily. Then she asked me, shrinking and quiver ing, whether I thought Shafter Blakeney had heard the story, and I was glad to be able to assure her that he had not. That comforted her a lit tle. My position was rather difficult all this time. I admired her lover tremendously, but I couldn't tell her so. I could neither honorably praise him nor honestly censure him and there I was! Fortu nately, it was not necessary for me to say much of anything. All that was needed of me just then was tenderness and sympathy and comprehension. The time had come, as I knew it must, when nature de manded a safety-valve, and mercifully, I was there. Over and over she told the story, new lights on it, no THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON new bitternesses in it with each recital, until finally she wore herself out and slept. I did not. I lay broad awake through the night, thinking about it all about Dick and Helen; Clark and our brief five months together; Berenice and her strong, young lover, her pride, her imperious temper, her latent sweetness and strength, her final confidence in me; Beverley Ames and his tactless persistence until it would be hard to say whether, when we embarked the next day, I was sadder or madder or gladder! I thought about the Gaveston man, and wondered whether I had been unjust to him. It troubled me to think that perhaps I had read into his simplest actions my own base imaginings, and that I had suspected motives whose only unworthiness was in my own mind. I thought of Shafter Blakeney, and wondered whether Perry Waite was at all like him. I wondered what my own life would have been, and what manner of woman I should be now, had Clark lived. I tried to imagine what Ned Barrington would be like, and what changes success and the diplomatic life had wrought in him. I can't imag ine any outward circumstances changing him very much. He was always so steady so firm on his feet! I have not seen him for six years not since he came home the summer after Clark died. I do hope he will be in Rio when we get there! But always I came back to us three curiously yoked travellers, Berenice and Beverley and me. What a queer, tangled web we weave! I wonder how it looks on the right side? 8 in THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON In spite of being exhausted from packing, emo tional stress and a sleepless night, I had still enough sensibility left to regret leaving Lima. We were just beginning to get into the life there a little, and it was really too bad to come away after these tan talizing glimpses. However, there is much ahead. So we counted our pieces of luggage, prayerfully committed them to the care of the wily Domingo and a piratical-looking fletero, said good-bye to the nice people who had gathered to see us off, and took a tram for Callao, accompanied by one or two of our new friends, who escorted us to the docks. Mr. Ames wished to send a registered letter, so we all went with him to the Callao post-office, where a funny old man in the registry department refused to accept the letter because there was no mail north that day. He told them to bring it back on a Panama mail day. They finally prevailed upon him to store it until that time, however, and we went our way rejoicing. Much to our surprise, Mr. Tomlinson, having missed us at the hotel, came out to the ship to see us off, and consented to stay and dine with us. He was as naive as ever. We were recalling a day on the other steamer when his ceaseless activity found vent in angling, which resulted in our having fish for dinner and in his having a blistered face for days. "My word, that sun did do me!" he observed. "When I looked in the glass next morning, I was frightened, d'ye see? I mean to say, I thought I had taken a sunstroke!" 112 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON I was even sorry to leave him, for I shall never look upon his like again. We found the ship larger than the one we came down on, and in certain respects more attractive. Our state-room is more commodious, though less airy, and there is more deck room. There is a library, and a deposit is asked on all books taken out, as well as on the keys to the state-rooms. The food is not so good as we had before, as the cooking is English and bad English at that. If there is any nation on earth that knows less about the prep aration of food than we do, it is our British cousins. We have not seen a stewardess since we left Colon, and men do all the chamberwork in the hotels, as well. The officers are English, and rather alert. I fancy any one of them would get at least his share of the pancake. The Captain, rosy and jovial, is something of a ladies' man, fond of cards and cocktails and very hospitable. We play bridge in his room more or less, and occasionally the men play a little poker. Regularly twice a day, before the eleven -o'clock almuerza and before dinner, we elders are invited up to his cabin "to see the photographs." If we don't appear about meal-time, of our own accord, he either sends a boy or comes himself to hunt us up, and when we get there we always find the Cap tain mixing cocktails. Very good cocktails they are, too, though I seldom drink them. We ran along beside sandy-brown hills for several days wonderful, tawny, colorful sands they were, THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON too when we were not lying in port. The first day we stopped at two little places. The name of the first I do not remember; but the second was Pisco, where a very strong drink, a sort of brandy, is made. We are told that when a man in this vicinity gets drunk he is said to have "gone to Pisco." We lay there all night and all the next day, the boatmen being incredibly slow with their few lanchas. The day after that we were off Chala, a tiny place perched up on a bench cut in a rugged promon tory. There were big rocks lying outside and a splendid surf. Here was unloaded a great quantity of flour, and when a sack broke from rough handling, or had been gnawed by rats, the boatmen pelted one another in high glee. There was one old fellow who seemed to be at once the superintendent and the butt of the lancha crew, and they not only powdered him white at every opportunity, but rubbed flour into his face and through his thick, black hair, laughing like children. The swells, always high here, increased as a stiff breeze came up toward night, and waves frequently broke over the lanchas, sprinkling the men and drenching the cargo. Many supplies for the interior were put off here, and again we saw the American packing-cases split and shatter, scattering their contents as the heavy English and German bales were dropped on them. It is humiliating, under these conditions, to see the Englishmen or Germans on board exchange significant, smiling glances, and to hear them murmur to each other, ' ' American goods . ' ' 114 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON In the mean time, Berenice, after her long-sup pressed burst of emotion, felt an almost equally strong reaction, of course, and I could see that she shrank from me, and knew that she was hating herself for having told me her secret and me for having lis tened to it. I had to walk very warily between warm sympathy and cool, matter-of-fact friendli ness, not to step too far in either direction. I knew it would be absolutely fatal to seem to presume on that unpremeditated outburst of hers, and perhaps I erred in being too oblivious of it. Still, she was beginning to look less as if she was going to shy vio lently at my approach, and I was getting ready to hold out my hand to her, ever so carefully and gen tly, when we reached Mollendo. Mollendo is the last port in Peru, and about half the passengers left the ship there, to go by rail up into Bolivia. It was there that Mr. Gaveston was bound when he left Lima, and all day his shadow lay across my mind. Although it is a very important port, there is no harbor, and huge rocks, with a tremendous surf, make landing perilous at any time and impossible in rough weather. A man on board tells us that he once waited in the town three days before daring to attempt to get to his ship, and then was almost drowned in coming out. He says that sometimes when a ship has vainly waited a reasonable time for the lanchas to get out through the breakers, passengers and mail are trans ferred to another steamer or a sailing-vessel at anchor, and the freight is carried on. The many THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON rocks, and constant, crashing surf would seem to make the rescue of capsized people impossible, even in calm weather such as we had. All this was very interesting, and we spent the day in listening to travellers' tales of adventure in landing at Mollendo and other dangerous ports, and in watching the boatmen, who are very skilful, bring their lanchas triumphantly through the big seas. I finally went in to dress for dinner, and when I came back on deck again, there, against a flaming sunset sky, stood Cecil Osmund Leslie Gaveston talking to Berenice! He frankly admitted this time that he had hoped to find us on board, and said that when he got to Mollendo he found advices which kept him in town cabling to his London house, and that eventually it proved unnecessary for him to go up into Bolivia at all. All this is very plausible, but personally I do not believe that he ever intended going there. I think he has simply been hanging around Mollendo, waiting for us to come along, though I do not yet understand the game he plays. I would like to know what he said to Berenice be fore I appeared, for her slow glance and faint, flick ering, satirical smile as he told his story to me, held something that I couldn't interpret. There was certainly scorn in it, but whether for him or for me or for herself, I couldn't make out. But I was not unjust to him, Marion. I was right. I'm sure of it now. Mr. Ames pooh-poohs my apprehensions, and tells me that we are likely 116 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON constantly to come across people we have met some where along the route. He further informed me that Mr. Gaveston was a gentleman and a man of the world, and that if he wished to "pay his addresses" to Berenice he would naturally present himself to her father for permission. I reminded him that if he first permitted the man to fascinate the girl, her father's opinion in the mat ter would make very little difference, as the Ames family should have learned by this time, at which he got very red and said that the whole thing was absurd, anyway. There had been absolutely noth ing in Mr. Gaveston's words or manner to warrant us in supposing that he had any intention of becom ing Berenice's suitor, or that there could be the slightest objection to it if he did. Whereupon I said, very well; if he wished to take the responsibility of letting Berenice fall in love with a foreigner, of whose position, habits, family and antecedents we knew absolutely nothing except what the man himself chose to tell us, of course I had nothing further to say, but I wished it clearly understood that I dis approved of the whole affair. To which he re torted that there was no "affair," and that it was ridiculous to suppose that a man of Mr. Gaves ton's age and opportunities could possibly wish to marry a chit like Berenice a mere unformed, un ruly child. In short, Uncle Beverley and I came perilously near quarrelling, and then he puffed off to Mrs. Rankin, who is also on board, with a little old dried up cousin as companion, and who has developed an 117 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON interest in the Civil War compared to which mine is as a glowworm to an arc-light. She is coquettishly childlike, and she fairly hangs upon his every word, which, of course, fills him with sublime content. Isn't it humiliating that it is so easy to make a fool of a man if one will stoop to it! And there we are. To-morrow morning we are due in Arica, the first Chilean port, where we plan to go ashore and where I shall mail this. Heaven only knows what the next few days will bring forth and yet there are persons who long to be of the sort that "things happen to." Ye gods! Off Pisagua,* Chile, March 29th. Well, life is meandering along serenely enough, externally. We smile and chat and exchange the usual small courtesies. We sing a little, and play bridge, and borrow one another's books to read, and if one were not haunted by visions of what this path of dalliance may lead to, it would all be rather agreeable. I am beginning to have a faint hope just a lit tle, weeny one that Mr. Gaveston, by his delay, has lost his hold on Berenice, although, of course, her apparent indifference to him may be assumed to tantalize him, since it is now very evident that his interest in her is much more than casual. He is behaving well, as far as one can see, and * Pronounced Pees-ah'-gwa. 118 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON doesn't force himself or his attentions upon her, but he is always alert, ready to respond to her slightest glance, and when she is present, he is at his very best. Again he is displaying the patience of the accustomed hunter, but this time he is more zealous, and naturally I am alarmed for her. Al most any girl is impressed when a man who is con siderably her senior Gaveston is probably between thirty and thirty-five and who has been all over the world and seen everything, singles her out for his devotion. She has to have a pretty steady head to withstand that sort of flattery; and when the man has the additional advantage of aristocratic connection and ancestral glories, and the girl is quivering and smarting from the wounds inflicted by a younger, less-experienced man, it seems to me there is but one outcome probable, particularly when the two are thrown together day after day, hour after hour, as these two must be here. The one gleam of hope that I see, aside from her present lack of interest in him, is that she has re lieved her heart somewhat in her confession to me, and this, together with the fact that I, who know her story, am watching her, may restrain her a lit tle, even though I, too, seem to have lost what small influence I had gained over her. She has retired within herself again, and regards me through sullen, hostile eyes, from a great distance which I pretend not to notice. I think I shall write very fully to Helen about the affair now. I have not done so before for two reasons. One was the time it would take for a 119 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON letter to reach her. Mr. Gaveston has always been on the point of leaving us permanently, and it seemed useless and cruel to distress her about some thing that would be over before she learned of it. The other was that Mr. Ames is supposed to be watching over the child's welfare. I especially refused to accept any such responsibility and have really no right to interfere. He, by-the-way, is very affable indeed, though I see less of him than usual, as he spends much time with Mrs. Rankin, who has the wisdom of the ser pent and eyes all over her head like a fly, and who seems to have captivated him completely. I am beginning to wonder what the lady wants. Surely all this can't be purely for joy in his conversation! He is just the kind of man to prove a useful tool to that sort of woman. However, he's old enough to take care of himself. Yesterday morning we anchored off Arica,* the first port in Chile, and all went ashore Mrs. Rankin, Mr. Gaveston, Uncle Beverley, Berenice and I. It is an unusually pretty town, as these towns go, with a flower-filled plaza, surrounded by fine, big pepper-trees. Above the plaza sits a bright pink church, made of candy and cut out by a jig-saw, and as it was Sunday, after mass, the populace was promenading in the little park, to the strains of a small and very bad brass-band ; girls in gay-colored gowns, with veils or mantillas or mantos over their heads, strolling by twos and threes, sometimes with * Pronounced A-ree-ka. 1 20 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON a duenna trailing along behind, while groups of young men ogled them as they passed. Away from the plaza and the lower part of the town the streets are treeless and sun-baked, and the houses are chiefly tiny, one-storied affairs paint ed pink and blue and pale green, flat-roofed and un tiled, as this is still the "rainless coast." Around and above the town lie huge, bare, moun tainous piles of dry, brown sand, and over them, fairly floating in the cloudless blue, three ethereal, snowy peaks the first we have seen. Jutting out into the ocean, just below the little city, is a sheer, Gibraltar-like promontory called Morro, where one of the greatest battles of the war was fought, and from the top of which now floats the single-starred flag of Chile. Probably because of some Chilean health regula tion, the ship was fumigated yesterday, and all day we were choking and sneezing in the stray sulphur fumes. The officer on the bridge caught it first, and sneezed four funny little sneezes in rapid suc cession, absurdly like a cat "Ktz! Ktz! Ktz! KkttzzT And he's such a big man, too! I was next in line, and paid my tribute fervently. Then I heard Uncle Beverley, who is not so big as he sometimes feels, waking the echoes about Morro with his tremendous salvo "a-Katch-oh! a-Katch- oh!" He yielded an admiral's salute and then went precipitately below but that availed him nothing. The fumes were there before him, and we heard his imposing response. All this set me to wondering about the psycho- 121 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON logical significance of the sneeze. Do you suppose that as a man sneezeth, so in his heart of hearts doth he believe himself to be? Because I know that the officer who was on the bridge, although an Englishman, is a singularly modest chap. All the afternoon we ran close beside high, steep cliffs of a soft brown, profusely streaked with cop pery-red sand and slate-gray rock, with here and there a metallic greenish tinge and frequent touches of yellow. Now and then the rocks near the water gleamed white, and we were told that this was guano. We saw many seals and there are still thousands of birds. It is very beautiful in color, all this rainless coast, and grows more so as we go south. These strange, chromatic cliffs, in the bright afterglow last night, seemed to be actually luminous, and shone with an unearthly amethystine radiance. With all the west aflame, these softly lucent cliffs to the east, and the slow-rolling Pacific between, reflecting and lending broken sheen to every changing tint, the picture was sufficiently soul-stirring without the added poignancy of the evening-star dropping in pure glory to the horizon. The cliffs along here are so high that I thought them mountainous in character, but I am told that from their tops the land stretches away in wide, rolling plains, the "pampas," where lie the nitrate fields and the wealth of Chile. Pisagua, built on one of the rare slopes of the cliffs generally they do not slope at all but drop sheer to the sea looked very attractive as we 122 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON came to it late last night, the huge cliffs looming purply black behind its many electric lights, of which the deep-blue, star-sprinkled heavens seemed only a slightly paler reflection. A band was playing gayly somewhere, and sounds of human life voices, laughter, the bark of a dog floated out to us across the waters. But this morning the black, mysterious background is dull, yellow-gray sand, and the town a little dingier and more squalid than most. A young American who came on board at Mollendo has been ashore, and returns reporting the village "the limit," though he says he did see two trees painted on a screen ! Diligent search with a power ful glass has failed to reveal to me one single grow ing sprig. More people come aboard and at least one or two leave the ship at almost every port. There are no chattering parrots now, but their absence is more than atoned for, both in numbers and in noise, by the children. There is also the usual queer dressing. The gem of this collection is a buxom widow, fair, fat, and not far from forty, whose hair is elaborately and perfectly dressed, whose corsetiere is an artist, whose complexion is carefully re-created each day, and who frequently wears a long kimono of pale-blue crepe, covered with flying white storks and banded in lavender. This garment, which comes to her feet, is half -fitted, suggesting but not fully revealing her opulent curves, and to lend the necessary touch of mystery, she has always about her over her head, or around her neck, or fluttering in her hands 123 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON a long, filmy scarf of sky-blue chiffon. I was much interested in this costume when I saw it on the lower deck, but I confess I gasped a little when she appeared at dinner in it. This matches the lady whom I saw dining with some of the diplomatic set at the hotel in Lima, festively arrayed in a white silk negligee; or the woman unmistakably American whom I once met in Twenty-third Street, suitably hatted and booted and gloved, and luxuriously wrapped, by way of a cloak, in a blanket bath-robe. When it comes to " idiot syncrasies" in dress, one must not forget the possibilities of our own dear land. It is getting cooler every day, and I am glad of a light wrap and a rug on deck at night, though if one goes ashore it is still very warm. I have diffi culty in realizing that it is almost April and that we are going toward winter, when with you spring is hardly well begun. It is also hard to believe that although we are in the Pacific Ocean, we have been for some time in the longitude of New York, and that we are now travelling east of south. We can see this any night, however, for the ship's bow points to the left of the Southern Cross. This constellation, by-the-way, like matrimony, evidently depends for its beauty upon the angle of vision. You remember that when I first saw it I said, in effect, " 'Tain't much!" But as I watch it, night after night, climbing higher in these splen did heavens, its charm grows upon me, and I am coming to love it almost as well as I do our own Big Dipper. 124 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Every evening I lie in my chair on the uncovered boat -deck, wondering why these southern night skies are so much bluer and so much more brilliant than ours, and all the poetry I ever knew comes back to me oftenest, I think, the most familiar: "Look how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold: There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims." How many lovers' hearts must have been "cut out in little stars" to "make the face of heaven so fine" down here! I wonder whether scraps of Gaveston's heart would shine that way? Or Uncle Beverley's ? I might just as well confess, Marion, that I am worried about Uncle Beverley. I try to shrug my shoulders and say it's none of my business and I hope it isn't, but I'm afraid it is. Anyway, I do hate to see a good man, even though he's not particularly my kind of a man, play the mouse in feline, feminine claws, and I believe that woman is trying to marry him. Which, as I said before, is none of my business, as he is doubtless old enough to take care of himself only, somehow, age doesn't seem to figure very largely in things of this sort. And the fact remains, when all is said, that Bever ley Ames started on this trip a well-seasoned, self- satisfied bachelor, with a long - established record of being devoted to his business, his club and his 125 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON hobby, and perfectly indifferent to women. For reasons which seemed good at the moment and which, Heaven knows, were sufficiently imperson al! I deliberately set about changing his point of view so far' as I was concerned. I succeeded be yond my wildest dreams, and now I would give much to stop the avalanche my pebble started. Of course, I am not cherishing any sentimental notion that, at his age, he is romantically in love with me or anything of that sort, but my inoppor tune meddling did arouse in him, however inad vertently, that long-stilled yearning, latent in every good man, for wife and home and ain fireside, and when I had done this, I refused to help him satisfy it. Then, with these alluring visions of domestic felic ity still filling his mind, but a little jarred and chilled and bruised by my rejection of him, he falls into the hands of a woman who purrs over him, flatters him softly, soothes his hurt pride and arouses his chivalrous sympathy for a poor little soul battling alone against a cruel world. You know how it is done. We've all seen it more than once. Because he is not in love with a woman, but with an ideal, it will be very easy for her to slip, in his dreams, into the vacant chair on the other side of that warm hearthstone, and one of these days he'll find himself married to her. Then she'll play with him awhile before tearing his smooth, gray fur and crunching his bones in her sharp little teeth. It's all very well to say that he's a man, with a man's knowledge of the world, the flesh and the 126 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON devil, and ought to know his own mind. Of course he ought but does he? And if he doesn't, whc befuddled him? I tell myself that all this is sheer, monumental egotism, and that he certainly knows better than I possibly can whether his happiness demands that particular kind of wife ; but in my heart of hearts I know perfectly well that if I had not first sys tematically and laboriously broken down his walls, he would never have discovered that this woman inhabits the earth. You see, normally he is an Ames, through and through, and I know pretty well the Ames point of view the Ames ideals and traditions and grasp of life. I have spent some years learning them, and I assure you that none of them ever included any thing remotely resembling Mrs. Mabel Mills Ran- kin. She is impossible, Marion perfectly impos sible! I know, too, that nobody would recognize this fact more quickly than he would if he saw her in another environment in his own environment or if I hadn't, in my folly, set him to dreaming dreams and seeing visions that have no more to do with her than they had to do with me. And he doesn't see her in his normal environment that's the mischief of it! He sees her in hers, and he wants to lift her out of it. And the very instant that the situation gets beyond her, the in stant that one of us leads where she can't follow, that instant she plays upon his sympathy, or his vanity, or his hobby and then it's all over with Uncle Beverley for that time. 9 127 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON And outwardly she's well enough if one makes allowances in a Christian spirit. I have said that she is rather young and rather pretty. If one were to suggest that she is also rather overdressed, the obvious retort would be that she is doing business in countries where elaborate toilettes are the rule, even for street wear, and that it is to her advan tage to appear always prosperous. Of course she knows as well how I regard her as I know that she is more than a little afraid of me, and she is conducting herself with great circum spection, generally covering quickly any lapses of which she may suspect herself in taste or knowl edge and I will say for her that she knows her weak points pretty well. Naturally, she is clever enough, also; to see that her strongest suit, after her enthusiasm for the Civil War, is her single- handed battle for existence, and she plays it effec tively, if a trifle crudely. Here a slight, sighing, softly envious allusion to "you fortunate women who can live at home," there a murmur of regret for the methods and weapons a woman must learn to use if she is forced to fight men, or for the loss of illusion that business life entails. At such mo ments Uncle Beverley bends upon her a glowing, sympathetic glance, and his always courteous man ner becomes especially deferential toward her. Now, the question is, What shall I do ? Shall I sit supinely by and see this woman complete the catas trophe I made possible ? Shall I let a man fatuously walk into an abyss to the brink of which I led him, because his life is his own to throw away if he likes ? 128 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON I'd hate to think that I'm getting to be one of those offensive, officious persons who tries to manage the universe, but how can I see a proud, well-born, well- bred, chivalrous gentleman fooled to the top of his bent without putting out a hand to save him? And yet, what can I do? A man takes great credit to himself for protecting a woman from a scoundrel, but he gives her small thanks for trying to save him from a vampire that he mistakes for a butterfly a lovely, paradoxical, hard-working but terfly! If I do put out a hand, he is sure to mis understand it. If he sees its purpose, all the lord- of-creation in him will rise to resent it; and if he doesn't see its purpose, he's going to think Heaven save the mark! that I am jealous and want him for my very own. And in either case, if she is real ly bent on marrying him, I might fail, which would be humiliating not that my pride would matter much if I could save him to himself. But after all that has happened, I would mightily hate to give him the impression that I was trying to save him for wyself! If I believed for an instant that any of this really touched the man's deeper emotions, I'd well, I don't know what I'd do. In that case I might even resort to the last impossible possibility, gird up my loins, descend into the dust of the arena and fight for him. I should emerge from the conflict somewhat soiled in my own sight, to be sure, but I could at least claim one thing for myself over my antagonist. If I won which it is by no means certain that I should I 129 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON would be too decent to marry him in the end. I'd give him back his life, plus a few scars, perhaps, but his own. I might wound his pride, but I wouldn't drag it in the dust. I might hurt him a little, but I wouldn't humiliate him. I should prob ably lose his friendship and his respect and I really care for both but at least I'd save him his self- respect. And nothing I should lose would hurt me so much as to feel that his old age had been robbed of its peace because I made this thing possible. But I do not believe that his deeper emotions are touched and you needn't wag your head at me, either! I am not making the common, arrogant, feminine mistake of claiming to understand a man. The only person I pretend to understand rather fully in this matter is the woman, and she is a car nivorous little cat mercilessly stalking her prey. Just the same, I don't believe that any fussy, prosy bachelor person of fifty or thereabout, steeped in the conventions and habits of a lifetime, is going to conceive in a week or a month a consuming romantic passion for a woman he never saw before, particularly if that bachelor person be an Ames. He might be infatuated, charmed, as a bird is by a snake, and gobbled immediately thereafter a denouement gratifying, doubtless, to the snake, but you needn't tell me the bird enjoys it! Or possibly an old love might be revived. But that he should be obsessed by a brand-new one nay, nay! It is simply the result of environment of propinquity, that tremendous passive force of the falling of a kindly, unsuspicious man into the 130 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON hands of two designing women and one of them Anne Pomeroy! There I come back to it! I meant well, but I can't get around the fact that I deliberately started the little innocent-looking wheels that set this whole machine in motion, and somebody's going to get hurt if I can't manage to stop it. If he can only get back to New York, back to his office and his club and his own people, without en tangling himself hopelessly, he'll see straight again, and all this will seem like a fantastic dream. But in the mean time ? Forgive me for thrusting all this at you. Long before this reaches you I shall have had to answer some of these questions for myself, but it helps me even to think to you with a pen ; and what wouldn't I give for one hour's talk with you, you clear-eyed, sweet-hearted woman of the world! This will be mailed to-morrow at Iquique, where we shall go ashore, and where I hope for at least a glimpse of Shafter Blakeney. If I thought it would be of the slightest avail, I should beg Mr. Ames to stop over there, thus giving the slip both to Mr. Gaveston and to Mrs. Rankin; but I know quite well that he would refuse even to consider it, for he is making every effort to finish his business on this coast in time to cross the Cordillera, and a delay of a week or ten days here, waiting for another steamer, would mean that the Pass would close before we could possibly be ready to leave Chile. We are in danger of being too late as it is. Besides, as Gaveston avowedly has no business THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON down here beyond seeing the country, he would probably pack up on five minutes' notice and go ashore with us, and we should find Mrs. Rankin waiting for us on the dock at Valparaiso. Oh, Marion, I'm so tired of this game! My dolly's all limp and wopsy, and there's a horrid mess on the floor where the sawdust has run out. Let's play something else. # * * Later. There is a smug little sentiment that has been used in every quotation calendar and book of Helpful Hints for Willing Workers for the last twenty years or so, to the effect that sooner or later, as you are ready for it, you will find what you need in a book or a sermon. Browsing among the Captain's books to-night while the rest played bridge, I came upon a copy of the Just So Stories hidden away in a dark corner. 1 fell upon it with glee, and in renewing my ac quaintance with the Elephant's Child, I lit upon this gem. You remember that the "tidy pachyderm" was filled with a " 'satiable curtiosity" to find out what the crocodile had for supper, and in the course of his investigations, found his nose caught in the croc odile's teeth, with every prospect of immediately following his nose. He planted his feet and pulled, but he felt his legs slipping, and he said: "This is too butch for be." "Then the Bi-Colored-Python-Rock Snake came down from the bank and knotted himself in a double -clove hitch round the Elephant's Child's 132 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON hind legs, and said: 'Rash and inexperienced trav eller, we will now seriously devote ourselves to a little high tension, because if we do not, it is my impression that yonder self-propelling man-of-war with the armor -plated upper deck' (and by this, O Best Beloved, he meant the Crocodile) ' will per manently vitiate your future career." But we are not told what the Bi-Colored-P.-R. S. would have done had he been a lady Rock Snake, whose hand had been previously sought in marriage by that same tidy pachyderm. Do you think she would have let the Crocodile have him for supper, lest, if she pulled him away, his " 'satiable " well, call it " curtiosity" should lead him to misunder stand her motive in the rescue? Off Tocopia,* Chile, April ist. My, my, w'ot a time we've been a-'avin! I am still laughing over the memories of our visit to Iquique, when, between the Blakeney boy and the American Consul, we had the merriest day we have yet spent really merry, in spite of all the tangle we are in. Have I told you that this Consul is that talented brother of Mrs. Cutler Giles of whom we have heard so much Vanderlyn Lowe? She had written him that we were coming, and had given me a letter to him, which I forwarded from Lima. In addition to all this, he and the Blakeney boy have become very * Pronounced To-co-pee-ah. 133 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON friendly during the time Shafter has been in Iquique; so you see, our welcome was well prepared. We started ashore rather early in the morning, Mr. Gaveston and Mrs. Rankin, of course, accom panying us; Mrs. Beaver, the companion cousin, re mained on board. On the way in, while threading our way among big, surf -washed rocks, upon which sat rows of pelicans looking like solemn brown friars, we met Mr. Blakeney, a Chilean friend of his named Cortez, and Mr. Lowe, coming out to meet us. Blakeney had his luggage, as he had arranged to take this ship and go on to Chile with us, whereat Uncle Beverley frowned anxiously you've heard of people who strain at a gnat and swallow a camel ? Berenice preserved an absolutely unmoved counte nance, and I was torn 'twixt fear lest his presence should disturb her and exceeding great joy that I was again to have a congenial spirit near. So Mr. Lowe came over into our boat, and Blake ney, with his friend, went on to the ship, rejoining us later at the consulate, a cheerful little room with American files and furnishings, pictures of our first and latest Presidents, and many volumes of Con sular Reports. While we waited there a couple of negroes came in, and Mr. Lowe talked with them awhile, after which he gave them money, laughingly saying to us: "Another drain on the consular purse." He says that he spends about ten per cent, of his salary in helping penniless Americans out of town, and that while he really ought not to do it, he doesn't quite see what else he can do, THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON "The men are here, up against it," he said, "and their only hope is to get away." That's it, Marion! What else can one do when people are "up against it" but help them if one can, even though the only way to do it is one rep rehensible in itself ? Does the end justify the means ? When Blakeney came in he gave us a vivid ac count of the reign of terror in Iquique during a recent strike, concerning which the Consul had been, and remained, discreetly and diplomatically silent. We had heard all sorts of lurid reports about it on the way down, not much exaggerated except as to the number killed. Blakeney said that about fifteen thousand men came in from the pampas the nitrate fields and that they soon had town laborers to the number of five thousand more with them. Thus, in this little city of forty thousand inhabitants, there were twenty thousand men or ganized for trouble. They were well organized, too; and while they were orderly enough in their be havior, only marching and holding meetings, their plans were definite, as you will presently see. For eight days they had full possession of the town. They managed the railroad and issued passes to people who wished to leave by ship. All the fleteros and wharf-men were with them, the tram- cars were tied up, the cabmen were under their con trol, and it was impossible to get away from the town without their permission. The people were terrorized, and lived behind shuttered windows and fast-nailed doors. There were troops at hand, but the authorities THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON had not much confidence in them, as they were conscripts. The only defence they could really rely upon was about two hundred marines from a war ship at anchor in the roadstead and their machine- gun, both of which were eventually called into ac tion. Mr. Blakeney gave me a wonderful set of photographs taken by an English friend of his at the time, showing the mob of marching strikers fill ing the street from wall to wall; of the marines dragging their gun, with which, a few moments later, they did such terrible execution; and of the piles of dead in the plaza when it was over. The headquarters of the strikers was a school- house, where they had hoisted the flags of all na tions, believing that the authorities would not dare fire upon these emblems. Large numbers of the men were gathered about the gate of this place, and within there were thousands of them, when, after some parley, the General commanding the troops appealed to them, calling them brothers, pleading with them, and reminding them that he was under military orders which he must obey. They refused to surrender, and he immediately gave the order to fire. The machine-gun was plant ed about seventy-five feet from the gate we after ward visited the spot and was aimed directly at it, and the strikers were mowed down like grass, the destruction being the more awful because a good many of them carried dynamite in their pockets. Later, it took the authorities fifteen minutes to clear away the pile of dead before the gate, in order to enter the enclosure. 136 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON This ended the strike, but on the bodies of some of the dead, plans were discovered showing that a large charge of dynamite had been placed under the water-main some distance from town, which was afterward found. At the appointed hour fires were to be started in five places, the water-supply was to be cut off, the town was to be looted, and the for eign residents, at least, massacred. " Down with the English!" (meaning English-speaking people) was on every tongue. All this was to have been put into effect at eight o'clock that evening, and at four the troops fired upon the mob and saved the city. Such, at least, is the tale as Blakeney heard it. Of course, this was a splendid opening for Uncle Beverley, who was soon galloping hot-foot through the second battle of Bull Run. The rest of us except Mrs. Rankin, who seemed literally entranced looked at the photographs and sandwiched in occasional questions about the strike. Finally, when, having finished with Bull Run and Chancel- lorsville, he began: "Now, at Gettysburg ' some one ruthlessly suggested a drive, which was hailed with loud acclaim. Accordingly, we all piled into a couple of cabs open victorias and set forth. That sounds very simple, but I wish I could give you an idea of the scheming and manoeuvring that took place before we got settled. Uncle Beverley was determined that Berenice should not ride in the carriage with young Blakeney, I was equally resolved that she and Gaveston should be separated, Mrs. Rankin had her hooks out for Mr. Ames, and Gaveston, of THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON course, had designs on Berenice. He and the pro moter lady seemed to be working together whether by agreement or not I am still uncertain. Berenice, who has all her wits about her most of the time, was perfectly conscious of what was going on as far as she was concerned, and apparently found a kind of saturnine amusement in it, offering succor to neither party. We were all so inflexibly deter mined and so sweetly polite about it that it was rather funny. Iquique, from the ship, looked like a crowd of colorless buildings under a smother of smoke, set against drab, barren, precipitous mountains of sand. We found it, however, much more attractive than we had expected, since we have heard it generally spoken of as one of the outermost ends of the earth. It has pleasant enough houses, some of them built with a curious shelter roof, a whole story higher than the real roof, giving shade and a free circulation of air in hot weather ; fairly good streets, well watered with salt water, by-the-way; side walks a trifle dirty, because, as there is never any rain, there are no curbs, and the street overflows, as it were; a plaza with grass and flowers and a little tree or two ; and some small gardens made at infinite cost of labor and money, for every green thing must be coaxed, and water sells at a fabulous price per cubic yard. We drove to the plaza where the strikers were shot, and while the men were explaining things to us, we noticed that the other carriage had been stopped by a policeman, who presently mounted 138 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON to the seat beside the driver, and they came on. As they approached us, I noticed that the shrinking and child-like promoter lady was making the most of this golden opportunity, and that Uncle Beverley was doing his utmost to comfort and sustain Beauty in Distress. Blakeney, on the other hand, seemed to be much entertained, and called out to us that they were under arrest and bound for the cuartel. Mr. Lowe threw away his cigarette with a jerk, told our driver to follow, and subsided into silence, pale with wrath. Presently the carriages stopped and the cabman was marched off to the cuartel the policeman had considerately not taken us to the very door Mr. Cortez and the irate Consul fol lowing. Nobody knew what was the matter, not even the policeman. He had the cabman's name and number on a slip of paper, nothing more. Later, at the cuartel, it was learned that some woman had preferred a trifling charge against the man, and for this the Yankee Consul's guests had been held up during a drive and haled off to the cuartel, although the driver, as Mr. Lowe said, was "numbered, tagged, licensed, labelled and disin fected every week," and could have been found any hour of any day in that little town. I believe he lodged a complaint against the stupid policeman, but the cabman was not detained and the whole thing blew over in laughter. Indeed, the laughter began then and kept up all the rest of the day. We continued our drive through the city and out a very pretty little boulevard along the beach, bor dered by palms very small as yet and affording 139 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON a fine view of the cliffs and of a splendid surf break ing over the rocks off shore. We saw from there a big hill of shifting sand that constantly changes its shape, so they say. A turn and a curve over the sand-dunes brought us to some bath-houses, where there is also a good restaurant, and here we stopped for almuerza and what a meal they did give us! One feature of it, peculiar to Iquique, was the great variety of fish, among them sea-urchins, which were new to me. While these were being served, Mr. Lowe cried: "Oh, I have the crab!" And sure enough, crawl ing along his plate from among the urchins came a tiny, tiny crab about the size of your finger-nail much like an oyster crab, in fact. This he offered to each of us, assuring us that in Iquique these little creatures were considered a great delicacy. I confessed to having eaten old Stilton cheese once, but drew the line at live crabs. All the others refused it; but we united in begging him to show us how it was done, which he obliging ly did. As he had never tried it before, however, he began by calling the waiter and asking if people really ate them. "Si, senor." " Pero vivo ?" (But alive ?) "Si, senor con limon." So con limon he took it, vivo ! Apparently the crab didn't enjoy the lemon, so he was gobbled literally alive and kicking, and as he went down the consular throat Mr. Lowe screwed up his eyes and wriggled his fingers scratchily, in ludicrous suggestion of his 140 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON own sensations at the moment. I have since been told that oyster crabs are sometimes eaten alive with us, but this is the first instance of the sort I ever heard of. That was a long and a merry meal. Mr. Lowe is fine in every way exactly the sort of man one likes to think of as representing us in a foreign country, though he does seem rather wasted in Iquique and is very witty, as well. Gaveston fairly scintillated; Blakeney's droll humor glowed here and there, and even Berenice relaxed and entered into the gay spirit of the day. When we had finished breakfast we strolled out to a little platform and watched strange creatures of the sea down among the rocks and seaweed, and saw huge schools of wriggling sardines swimming close to the surface, and does one say schools or droves or flocks or herds? of seals hunting them and swallowing a dozen or so at a gulp. It reminded me of the old Irish tale of The Little Weaver, who killed "fourscore and tin at wan blow." One won ders that there are any fish left in the sea with these voracious beasts about! To-day we are at anchor of course . off a village called Tocopia, which, like Iquique, exists simply as an outlet for the nitrate fields. The cliffs are still mountain high and of wonderfully blended and varied color. I would not have believed that any thing so dry and barren could be so beautiful. Berenice has turned a cold shoulder to Gaveston, and is flirting desperately with a young Chilean, a friend of Mr. Cortez's, who came aboard at Iquique 141 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON and is bound for Coquimbo,* two or three days farther south. I am fully cognizant of the dangers attending the encouragement of any man's atten tions to her, but anything that keeps the Gaveston man at a distance is welcome just now, and I am conscientiously posing as duenna, though I don't want to overdo it and irritate her. She seems rather to enjoy making daring sallies, with my eye upon her, however. Blakeney is as delightful as ever. He has given me some humorously framed data concerning Mrs. Rankin and her get-rich-quick schemes, some of which have failed, but most of which seem now to be succeeding. They have chiefly to do with min ing ventures, I believe, though she is not above earning a more or less honest penny in any enter prise that offers, political or otherwise. She has made herself very popular with the Powers That Be in several of these countries, and has con stantly used our representatives ministers, secre taries and consuls to prepare the way for her, or to rake out her chestnuts when things got a little too warm. She is unmistakably clever, and keeps all her thousand eyes on the main chance. I wonder whether she really does want to marry Mr. Ames? Or to borrow money? Or merely to use his in fluence in some way here or at home? I wish I knew. I fancy that tight-lipped, sharp-faced cousin could tell, an she would. Poor thing, she doesn't * Pronounced Co-keem'-bo. 142 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON like the sea, and keeps to her room most of the time. Uncle Beverley, by- the- way, has evolved a most remarkable theory that Blakeney's rejoining us at Iquique means mischief and a conspiracy of some sort with the Ames bete noire, Perry Waite, and in sists that I shall never, under any circumstances, permit Berenice an instant alone with the boy. Did you ever hear anything as silly as that? Here is the Gaveston man wooing his niece under his very nose, unheeded, or, at any rate, unchecked; and Shafter Blakeney, who has, at most, only a mild curiosity concerning her, is suspected of harboring dark designs. I wish to Heaven he would fall in love with her, if only to give Gaveston a run for his money; but Shafter has far too much common sense, as well as too much loyalty to his chum, to do anything like that. And there we are at the present writing. Where we'll be in a week remains to be seen. At Sea, April 5th. They say that this voyage is almost over, that Valparaiso* is the next port and lies dead ahead, and that we shall sleep ashore to-night, but I don't be lieve a word of it. It has come to seem that all the world we shall ever know is here this handful of people, bound by the limitations and steeped in the * Pronounced Val-pah-rah-ee'-so. 10 143 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON monotony of long days and longer nights on the ship, and that all other ties and associations have been lopped off. Every hour is a day, every day a week, in its possibilities, and we are always to gether, world without end, amen! Who wrote that classic gem, "You Can't Lose Me, Charlie"? Still, down in our state-room trunks are locked and bags are strapped, quite as if we were really coming to the end of this. I think I finished my last letter to you just before we reached Antofogasta,* which the English seamen along this coast have nicknamed Andy-go-faster. It is a city, like Iquique, of about forty thousand inhabitants, and like Iquique, seen from the ship it is "a rag and a bone and a hank of hair" rocks and sand and a smudge of smoke hanging over col orless houses against high drab hills. The surf is sometimes very high, and though it was calm when we arrived in the morning, nobody could tell what it would be in the afternoon, and we women were advised to stay by the ship and so escape the drench ing that the men invited by going ashore. They all went, ostensibly for the day, and the way they came back was significant. Mr. Gaveston stayed only about half an hour, apparently, and for once completely outwitted me. When I saw him safely off in the boat with the other men, I took a good, long, deep, free breath, and went below to baste fresh ruchings in a gown or two, and to sew on sundry hooks and eyes and buttons. * Pronounced An-toh-fo-gas'-ta. 144 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Somewhat to my surprise, Mrs. Rankin, strolling past my open door, saw me and stopped for a chat. I was surprised, because Mrs. Rankin is rather skil ful in evading tete-a-tete chats with me. However, on this occasion she elected to tell me the story of her life, and how she chanced to marry the late lamented Mr. Rankin, who was "such a dear fel low," and so on. Therefore, it was two hours before I again mounted to the boat-deck, to find our wily English friend lounging in my chair, talking steadily, while Bere nice, alone with him, listened, absorbed and fasci nated as she has not been before since he left us in Lima, and, incidentally, as she has been ever since. At last, too late, I understand his game and I was an idiot not to see it before! He took no chances of a rebuff, or of frightening her or her uncle. He planted his seed very carefully before we got to Lima, and then he went away and gave it a chance to sprout leaving her, perhaps, a little piqued that he could go so easily. When he re joined us, he had no business to bring him farther south. He came solely to be with her, and he had eight good days ahead days when we could not prevent his seeing her every hour in which to im press it upon her. I can pretty nearly guess now what he had been telling her that night I found him on deck at Mollendo. And while we lay off Antofogasta he recovered all the ground he had lost and more; and again he has woven around her, in soft, deep colors, the toils of life in the older world. His family home in Eng- J45 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON land, its ivy, its lawns, its old oak carvings and dim portraits; the rolling sands and caravans of Egypt; Thibet and its wondrous mountains; India, its teeming millions, its temples, its castes and super stitions and customs. And for the first time in my hearing, at least he wrapped all this about her. It was more fascinating than ever, but it was no longer an impersonal travel tale. It was her travel tale, subtly told in the future tense. Of course, he gave me my chair, but kept on with his lazy, wandering story, and as he talked he smiled at me. Does he feel himself strong enough to defy me now? I know one weapon that I be lieve would defeat him and only one. And it is the one of all others that I must not use. If I could if I dared talk to her of Perry Waite! I am sure that, angry though she still is, and hurt and humiliated, she still loves him. I see it in a hundred ways in her treatment of his cousin, to whom she is by turns icily cold and wistfully, shyly friendly; in her dread, when I am trying to coax her near me, lest I shall mention the story she told me in Lima; in her savage, melancholy moods; in oh, in many ways. And if I dared remind her of him, if I dared show her what he is and the mistake she is making about him, I believe her heart would turn strongly back to him, and Gaveston would find himself knocking where there was no door. But that is a thing I must not do. If you ever have a darling, headstrong daughter whose welfare you are determined to insure, by all means send her to South America with a purblind male relative and 146 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON a chaperon who sees both sides so clearly that, in stead of arraying herself with either, she sits on the fence and lets things hit her. Como no? The next aboard was the young Chilean, Mr. Noriega, who had apparently missed Gaveston and come flying back to intercept him. He was too late, however. The Englishman had caught him, also, napping, and after two or three futile attempts to engage the young lady's attention, Noriega retired to the smoking-room to sulk. Later, Uncle Beverley returned with some other men one or two pleasant Americans who joined us at Iquique and a delightful Englishman who has lived down here many years and talks most in terestingly of the country and the life. Last of all, just before we sailed, Shafter Blakeney scrambled up the ladder. Uncle Beverley was still hanging over Mrs. Rankin, telling her all about his day in Antofogasta, or its natural sequel, the siege of Vicksburg. Several years ago I met a very delightful and cult ured old woman whose English was a joy forever a fountain pure and undefiled. Like many another linguist, she was fascinated by the color and force- fulness of our American slang, and the expression that held her fancy at the moment was that now outworn phrase : " Wouldn't that jar you ?" She said it was so fresh and piquant! Some one suggested that the latest variant of it was: "Wouldn't that rattle your slats?" After we had explained the meaning of slats, she was per fectly entranced with this, and said she did hope i47 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON she could remember it until dinner-time, as she wished to make use of it. Later in the afternoon the occasion was a tea in a University town I overheard the old dear glee fully exclaiming to a particularly correct and rigid professor: "Now, wouldn't that shake your shut ters?" That's what it does to me to see Uncle Beverley and the promoter lady together now. It shakes my shutters. Marion, wouldn't it be ghastly if he should marry that woman and take her home! I am much impressed, by-the-way, by the char acter the caste of the men one meets down here. They are not many, to be sure, and perhaps we have been especially fortunate ; but among those we have met the average of clean, alert intelligence seems high, and they manage to keep in touch with the real thought and movement of the world, somehow. They go "home" every three or four years, take good periodicals, and read much. One man, an American named Holden, has been particularly cordial to us, of which more anon. Everybody who is anybody knows everybody else all up and down the coast, and it is perfectly delightful to hear three of four of them talking over things and people. But I didn't see much of Antofogasta, though it is one of the most important Chilean ports. One thing I did see, however, which, from all I can learn, was better worth while than anything the town offered. For hours I watched birds fishing, curiously, in flocks. They did not come near enough for us to tell what 148 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON manner of fowl they were, whether gull or duck, and nobody seemed to know. We could only see that they were at least partly white, for they gleam ed like snow in the sun. The leaders wheeled, again and again, back on the following flock in ever-short ening flights, until they were well massed, evidently over a school of fish. Then one, with tight-folded wings, pitched straight down like a plummet, and all the rest followed, a vast curtain of falling birds. The water foamed white as they struck it, and had time to calm a little before they reappeared again and immediately resumed flight, at first near the surface, but rising constantly, and constantly wheeling into a more compact mass, until again they dropped, together, on their prey. I tried, with a glass, to estimate their numbers, and think there must have been from two to four hundred in a flock, and there were many flocks. Sometimes one would wait only for another to be fairly out of the water before falling on the same hapless school of fish. The men said that there were also quantities of seals swimming about among the rocks. Altogether, I should say that in these waters a fish's life is not a happy one. The next day we sighted the first vessel we have seen at sea since leaving Panama. We have seen many in port, but not one at sea until this Chilean cruiser appeared. These be desolate waters. The Captain continues to send for us twice a day, on one pretext or another, and our visits, however they begin, always end in what he calls cocktails a combination of syrup, gin, bitters and lime-juice. 149 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON It sounds rather deadly, but is of a pleasant taste and a grateful and potent warmth and the air is getting decidedly cool. To-day it is positively chilly, and I am shivering in the white linen I re served for going ashore at Valparaiso. It is also rough, and a great many people are seasick. The boat is crowded, too. We made the usual ports after leaving Antofo- gasta, and we were really excited when we came into one having trees and windmills, and houses that showed paint. One afternoon we amused ourselves watching the hard labor of two Chilean sailors painting a boom high over the boat-deck. They had a paint-brush tied to a long pole, and one rubbed this back and forth where he thought the boom ought to be, while the other lay flat on his back on the awning and told number one when he hit the right spot, which was not too often. Occasionally a blob of paint fell and pasted the prostrate one in the nose, or elsewhere, whereupon there were exclamations and much spluttering laughter, and then they sat down somewhere to talk it over in detail. Once they were both walking about, barefooted, on the canvas awning, when one of the seams split suddenly and spilled the fellow through to the deck, where he all but landed upon Mrs. Beaver, the com panion cousin, sound asleep in her chair, thereby nearly but not quite startling that tight-lipped lady into speech. I wonder what she'd say if she should happen to break into language? I'll war rant she'd a tale unfold that would freeze Uncle 150 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Beverley's young blood and make a "fretful por- pentine" of the promoter lady. I've tried to draw her out a little, but I'm afraid she's incorruptible. I have satisfied myself upon one point, however. I made a tentative foray inside the enemy's lines the other day, and Mrs. R. was armed and in the saddle so quickly that my last doubt was dispelled. She does mean to marry him and if she succeeds, I'll never forgive myself. I wonder whether the lady is familiar with the game of football ? There is a policy, as I remember, called interference that might be effective in this crisis. Couldn't I manage to interfere just enough to make the game a tie? The trouble with that scheme is that Uncle Beverley is likely to lose his head and kick the ball himself and Heaven knows / don't want to score! I have discovered, too, that I may have an ally in Berenice. Being young, she sees things all in black and white. No tender grays, no softening shadows and reflected tints just black and white. And if the expression I occasionally catch on her face is any criterion, the aspect her uncle's new friend presents to her is mostly black. Also, in addition to being an intolerant young thing, she is an Ames, and it is quite possible that she may ex hibit Mrs. Rankin to him as ithers see her. I am still trying, in all the ways I know or can evolve, to coax Berenice back to me. Sometimes I think I almost succeed. Once or twice she has seemed almost ready to like me, to talk to me in stead of at me, to let me touch her very softly, and THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON then something some memory some fear some shy, timorous instinct has frightened her away, and she has turned suspicious and savage again. It's exactly like trying to tame a wild animal. But each time she comes a little nearer, and some day if only it isn't too late! One evening we varied the monotony a little by accepting the first officer's invitation to go to his room and listen to his gramophone or phonogram or graphophone, or whatever they call the thing. He is young and decidedly attractive in many ways, but gave us a pathetic glimpse of their life down here. He said one of the other officers went "home " recently intending to be married, but "couldn't face it." "What's the use of getting married?" said he. "We're never ashore. We're three days in Val paraiso, unloading, then off to coal; back to Val paraiso to load and north again. We have good quarters, yes the best I've seen on any line; but you see, that's all we have. None of us down here can have any homes, since we're never ashore. We work all the time, and never leave the ship." And their pay is almost beggarly. Bright, wide awake, alert fellows like this man and mind you, he is the chief officer, second only to the Captain in rank or in pay get fifteen or sixteen pounds a month, at most. The second and third and fourth officers get much less, of course. I begin to understand why we have no American merchant marine. Our young men won't submit to that sort of thing, and that is what we have to 152 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON compete with. On the other hand, I see as I never did before, how an American merchant marine is needed. Think what a little lively American com petition would mean in the development of these countries alone! We had a delightful experience, as well as an amusing one, at Coquimbo yesterday. We made port just before noon, and were about deciding not to go ashore, when Mr. Holden, the agreeable Ameri can I have already mentioned, came to tell us that his friend Don Enrico Gonzalez, who had come aboard to see him, invited us to go with them to La Serena,* a neighboring town, rejoining the ship in the evening at Guayacan.f the next port, to which we could easily drive. It sounded very enticing, as we had heard much of the beauties of this neighborhood, so we promptly accepted and set off at once. Neither Mrs. Rankin nor Mr. Gaveston, I am happy to say, was in cluded in the party, which consisted of Senor Gon zalez, Mr. Holden, an English friend of his named Herne, Shafter Blakeney, Mr. Ames, Berenice and me. This place is at the end of the desert which ex tends all the way from Guayaquil south, and it did seem good to see trees and cultivated fields and wayside grasses again. Coquimbo is planted on the side of a rocky promontory, a little peninsula, with a sort of bay widely curving north from it to Serena and beyond. In the other direction, on the opposite * Pronounced Se-ray-na t Pronounced Gwy-a-cdn 153 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON side of the peninsula, not more than two or three miles away, is Guayacan. We walked up rather an interesting little street to the plaza, where we waited until two carriages could be secured. Then, behind fresh horses har nessed three abreast, we set gayly forth, first clat tering over rough cobbles through the village, and then out upon a splendid hard beach, upon which we drove the nine miles to La Serena, the lovely blue sea on the one side, and on the other fertile hills rising into mountains beyond, and far above and behind them all a lofty, snow-covered Andean summit. At La Serena we left the beach and drove up a wide Alameda bordered by big trees rather dusty now, because the rainy season has not yet com menced and with a zanca, a little stream, flowing down its length in a stone waterway. The plaza is pretty, and there are many churches in the town. I wanted to stop to photograph some doorways and arching walls and a gate or two, but our time was limited ; so, after seeing the plaza, we went at once to the Democratic Club and waited in a very cere monious and much-upholstered sala while our host left an order for flowers for us. From here we walked a block or two to another club, where we were shown various rooms for reading, cards, bill iards, banquets and social purposes generally, all very commodious and comfortable. Then we were invited to have a "wee nippie," and were intro duced to chicha, the popular drink of the country, which is a grape cider, pleasant to the taste and said to be very insidious. THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON When this was over we were invited into another room, a small, private dining-room, where we found a table elaborately prepared, with flowers in posi tively prodigal profusion, and where a perfectly delicious luncheon was served. How under the sun they ever did it in the time they had I shall never know! Luncheon finished, we returned to the Democratic Club, where Berenice and I were each presented with a bouquet so huge and so heavy that the men had to carry them for us roses, bouvardias, white heliotrope, tiny fuchsias in long sprays, begonias, and gorgeous carnations. Then we got into our three-horse carriages again and whirled along the hard beach to Coquimbo, meeting many high -boxed vegetable carts, each drawn by four beautiful oxen, lines of burros with hide panniers bobbing as they walked, and droves of sheep coming down through the gray-green beach grasses and over piles of brown seaweed, all making sharp shadows and reflections on the wet sand. It was exquisite. I saw pictures enough in one after noon to keep an artist busy for a month ; and always towering serenely over it all was that one white peak. From Coquimbo we drove straight across the lit tle neck of land to Guayacan, where the ship lay in a small but very lovely harbor. It is strange that on this whole long coast, from Panama to Valparaiso, there are but three harbors the river at Guaya quil, a fairly well - protected anchorage at Callao, and this tiny land-locked bay of Guayacan. THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON As far as I could see, Guayacan consists prin cipally of a copper smelter, and we scrambled down through great piles of slag to reach the landing. The setting sun was staining the waves and the wet beach crimson as we rowed out to the ship, and only after we were returned to the deck where he first found us did our courtly host leave us. Perhaps we sometimes do this sort of thing at home for strangers and casual fellow-travellers. I hope we do. We sailed about six, and we were all still on deck when a small boat put out from shore, two men madly rowing, and a third standing in the bow wav ing his arms and frantically shouting. The Captain rang full speed astern, the engines were reversed with great commotion, the ladder was lowered, and we all ran to the rail to see Mr. Noriega, who, having missed Berenice in the haste of our departure in the morning, had returned to the ship to bid her an eternal farewell and present her with a bouquet. Only this and nothing more! After which the voy age was resumed. There is land ahead, and Valparaiso will soon be in sight, as they say we shall arrive in about an hour. Valparaiso Vale of Paradise! I hope we shall not find it Purgatory. Sometimes I want to wake up, .and sometimes I'm terribly afraid I will before the dream is done. Santiago de Chile, April loth. My dear, I have waked up! I knew it was all a dream, and now I have proved it. I thought I was, 156 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON a mature and travel- worn woman, journeying to a strange, far country, and I have waked in the dear, familiar home of my childhood, among scenes that I thought had disappeared with my youth. This is Southern California, and life is still before me. The years, with all their joys and sorrows and struggles, were only a dream, and I am a girl again. And to make assurance doubly sure, Ned Harrington is com ing over to play with me to-night. Cook is going to let us have real dishes, and really, truly things to eat, and we're going to play that we're grown up and haven't seen each other for years. Won't it be fun ? Does this sound extravagant? But you've no idea how extravagant I feel. And the best of it is, it's all true. I don't know why it is true, but it is! To-morrow I may be dreaming fitful, anxious dreams again, but to-day I am awake, and I see life long, beautiful, mysterious, wonderful life stretching on ahead as I haven't seen it before since I went to sleep. What a world it is! Ah, well! you never learn much from my rhap sodies, do you? You are always demanding facts, you adorable, practical creature, just as if you didn't know that only the invisible things have substance and the things we see are but shadows. Well, then, back to our muttons! We approached Valparaiso about three o'clock of a windy Sunday afternoon, and a surprising sight it was to me. I don't know how to describe it so you will see the picture as I saw it. In the first place, the coast curves sharply to the west here, so that a THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON vessel coming from the north runs straight into the harbor such as it is. I will say, while I think of it, that it really is not a very safe harbor, for while it is perfectly protected on the east and south, and fairly well by a jutting point on the west, a norther which is a fierce wind here blows directly into it and plays dire havoc with the shipping. So, straight ahead of us lay land, and even then I began to wake and know that I had come back to my youth, for the hills had the contour and gen eral conformation of the California hills over which I roamed as a child had even their characteristic color, the soft, tawny, lion-tinted shade of the last dry weeks before the rains. And straight ahead of us, too, lay the city, run ning uphill in windrows. Or better, it was as if the range of mountains lying across our path had been ploughed, when the gods were young, from a point midway up its sides to the sea, and as if, ages later, a city had been built on the crests of the hillocks thrown up by this Cyclopean ploughshare, the deep old furrows lying empty between. It is a strange effect. Of course, at the water-front the city is massed in a solid line, but it soon separates, particularly as it stretches away to the east, to fol low the hillocks left by that Olympian ploughboy. Scores upon scores of small boats awaited us, and as soon as we had been officially "received," flete- ros, hotel solicitors, and friends of the passengers swarmed up the ladder and over the decks. We waited an interminable time to get our big trunks out of the hold, but first the baggage-man 158 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON had not come on board, then he was on board but must on no account be disturbed, as he was having tea(!), then the hold was open but our things were at the bottom, and finally, after two hours, we gave it up and came ashore with our small luggage, which, as before, went over the side attached to a slender rope, with excellent chances of going to the bottom instead of into the bobbing boat beneath. The landing-stage was a terror, as it was high, and its many wet, slippery steps were set so steeply one over another that it was worse than climbing a ladder. There was no hand-rail to hold to, and it took three men and a boy to hoist your fat friend to the top and I'm not so very fat, either. The customs inspection, which familiarity with our own gentle methods has made a nerve-racking ordeal for me, was easily over, and soon we were swallowed by an enormous, high -swung, antedi luvian coach, that rattled us over cobbled streets and emitted us at the door of our hotel, which had much the aspect and something the atmosphere of an English hostelry. We had hardly seen our luggage bestowed when Shafter Blakeney came to our door to ask if we wouldn't go at once for a stroll through the city with him and a friend who had come from Santiago to meet him; and though Mr. Ames frowned a little, he finally consented to go. Shafter hasn't been here for six or eight years, and all the way down he has been telling me about these Chilean cities, and has been so eager to get here. Lima evidently disappointed him; but after THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON all, he said, that was Peru, and I was not to make up my mind about South American cities until I had seen Valparaiso and Santiago. So Uncle Beverley set off ahead with Berenice and Mr. Reade, and we followed. When we had walked about five minutes, Blakeney said quietly to me, under his breath: "Gee! Doesn't it look little! Why, this street used to be magnificent!" After a few blocks more, he asked: "Reade, is Santiago as dingy as this?" "Oh, worse much worse!" was the reply, after which I did all the talking for a while. It was really quite a shock to poor Shafter to see against the background of New York these cities that had loomed so large and impressive on the horizon of his boyhood. Finally he took a deep breath, and said : "You know this isn't my home town, Mrs. Pome- roy. Santiago may be just as bad, but I'm going to keep up the bluff until the last moment." To me, however, Valparaiso was interesting. Two or three of the principal business streets, practically the only level ones in the city, have been built on made ground, redeemed from the sea, and curve around the base of the hills, thus having the almost irresistible allure of any winding road. The build ings are much like those in our small cities at home. We strolled to the plaza, large and very pretty, around which we saw some of the devastation wrought by the earthquake, though rebuilding is going on as rapidly as possible. It is rather strange that I should have seen the 1 60 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON three stricken cities, San Francisco, Kingston and Valparaiso, within as many months. In San Fran cisco they speak of "the fire," which really worked their ruin; in Kingston it is "the earthquake and fire," equally and awfully destructive; but down here, where the world shivered and chattered in a violent chill for five minutes, until hillside graveyards tossed their dead into the streets below and men went mad with terror, the fire that followed was of comparatively minor importance, and the new era dates from "the earthquake." We walked for some distance through the Gran Avenida, a broad street which it is intended shall be bordered by fine houses, a few of which have already been built. Down the centre is a wide promenade, along which stretches a line of mar ble pedestals, some of them still supporting life- sized statues in bronze. Wheelwright, for example, refused to be shaken off his perch; but I grieve to say that Cristoforo Columbo has gone an anoth er bust (don't you wish you could read Innocents Abroad again for the first time ?) , perhaps, as Shafter suggested, in remorse at having discovered a country of such ineradicable seismic propensities. We returned to the hotel by tram. The street cars are double-deckers; but as the top is reserved for second-class passengers, we were warned not to ride there in the daytime, which seemed unfortu nate, since those high seats recalled the delights of a London bus. After eight in the evening, how ever, class distinctions fade, and it is quite proper to mount aloft. THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Our fare was about three cents, which contrasted rather sharply with the fletero's demand which the men firmly refused to consider of fifty dollars for bringing us and our luggage ashore. The one is quoted in gold, however, and the other in Chilean paper, just now worth six pesos to our dollar the peso, as the financial unit, being frequently called a dollar by English-speaking people down here. The heavy charge for transporting luggage to and from steamers in these countries is among the ex penses not generally taken into account by travel lers planning this trip, and of course, as elsewhere, strangers are imposed upon more or less. We walked along the water-front one day, all of which was wrecked by the earthquake, and saw a couple of miles of freight piled up, sometimes to a height of fifteen or twenty feet, without shelter or covering of any kind, and cranes at work hauling up more from the lighters. At the same time, a car -track is being laid along there, and they are planning to rebuild the warehouses. Altogether it is a good deal of a mess, and having seen it, one does not wonder at the stories one hears from merchants of the difficulties of getting goods, even after they have arrived, when they have to be found in all that confusion and extricated from beneath a few tons of other things, and then to be passed through the overcrowded custom-house. One wonders, too, what the condition of this un protected mass of stuff will be when the rains be gin, as they may any day now. It also shows the 162 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON great amount of freight that comes into this part of Chile from where? Earthquakes seem to be almost human in their inconsistency, and this one played particularly fan tastic tricks. Occasionally it skipped a hill, leav ing its houses comparatively undamaged, while devastating those on either side; and in the imme diate vicinity of our hotel, only a block or two from the water-front where everything went down, there is no evidence now of any disturbance. The hills in Valparaiso are so steep that in many places streets are impossible, and one sees little cars crawling up and down the face of the cliffs, one help ing to balance the other the combination of cable- road and elevator that in Italy is called a funicular. If we have any word for it in English, I do not know it. There are some most attractive houses, with lovely gardens and very wonderful views, perched up on these cliff-like hills, and one does not wonder that the Valparaisan, like the San Franciscan, thinks no other city on earth quite so fair as his own. I was particularly struck by this resemblance to San Francisco when we came in from Vina del Mar, a charming and very fashionable summer resort, where we dined one night, after driving in the after noon through its tree-bordered streets, past ornate villas and bewildering gardens. The tram-line runs for some distance along the shore, and as we came in after dark, there sat Valparaiso, queenly, on her hills, all a-glitter with jewels stomacher and neck lace and diadem as many a time I have seen her 163 northern sister from Piedmont or the bay. The resemblance was startling. We took various other excursions in and about the city, sometimes with the boys, Blakeney and Reade, and sometimes with Mr. Gaveston. Mrs. Rankin was very busy for the two days she stayed there, so we only saw her in the evening, and she preceded us to Santiago. Berenice has again reached the point where she abandons herself to Mr. Gaveston 's suggestions and is bored by everything else, and several times I have caught young Blakeney gravely watching her, a kind of disquietude in his glance. I'd like to know what he thinks about it, but as I have said, he is something of a sphinx, and since he rejoined us at Iquique we have never spoken of the connection between Berenice and his cousin, each understanding and respecting the other's allegiance. Then, one bright and beautiful morning yester day morning, to be exact we started for Santiago. Berenice and I had a wild scramble to get dressed in time, as the hotel people called us, of course, half an hour later than they had been instructed. It is always half an hour late or an hour too early with these children of the South, to whom time has no value and accuracy in anything is all but an im possibility. In this connection, Mr. Blakeney told us some interesting things about the conduct of the rail road between Valparaiso and Santiago. He said that it had been found perfectly impossible to con vince people that if they were not in the train at 164 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON the hour announced, it would leave without them. That a train should depart on time it was incon ceivable ! So much violent indignation was expressed by persons holding tickets, who ambled serenely to the station fifteen or twenty minutes after the train was on its way, that the enterprising manager of the road racked his brain for a remedy. Finally he hit upon the scheme of having all railroad time pieces set back half an hour. Thereafter the trains still left promptly at the minute scheduled, as in dicated by the official clocks, the travelling public meandered to the stations as late as usual, accord ing to city time, and still caught the train, and every body was happy except the few who required more than the half -hour of grace. These are still left be hind. Then the engineers, who felt that they were doing all that could be expected if they didn't consume more than twelve hours in what should be a five- hour trip, were taken in hand. They were offered a reward for each train they brought in on time, and the result was that they tobogganed down hills and slewed dizzily around curves, and when they didn't land in a ditch, got in an hour or so ahead of time. Now they receive extra pay for being exact, and are fined for being either late or early, and they generally accomplish the trip with reasonable accu racy but it requires an intricate system to bring this about. However, being Americans, we did get there on time, with all our luggage, at the hour advertised, 165 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON though we nearly broke our backs and our tempers doing it, and then waited the extra half-hour while our wiser and more leisurely southern friends finish ed their coffee in peace and came drifting calmly in long after us. Then followed five hours in an electric-lighted chair-car not quite the equal of those on good trains at home, but still much more comfortable than an ordinary day coach travelling through country so familiar that had I been dropped into it blindfolded, I should have known that I was in some slightly unfamiliar part of California. There were the same brown slopes dotted with green, the same rolling, clean-cut hills, the same parched, dusty roads, the same dark men riding tough, wiry, sturdy little horses, the same tile- topped adobe walls oh, it is many years since these have been seen in California, but I remember them! They belonged to my childhood, and have been re paired while I slept. When I saw them last they were crumbling under the sun and melting away in the winter rains. There were the same tall eucalyptus and ferny pepper trees. I missed only the beautiful spreading live-oaks, and found the many willows and poplars strange evidence of more water than my Califor nia knew. There was a vine, too, that I had not seen before, perhaps a parasite a riot of scarlet in almost every tree. We passed a real California river, though a well- behaved, cheerful enough little stream now, but its wide, dry, rocky bed shows plainly what it can do 166 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON when the rains fall or the snows melt, and it rages and roars and tears its way down to the sea. Some one told me, too, that in the spring all my old, be loved wild -flowers bloom on these hillsides, and that they are starred with California's pride, the golden glory so incongruously named eschscholtzia. I had no memory of the quaint, high carts, nor of the many ox-teams we saw; and once an unreal company of lancers, men and accoutrements gray with dust, but with pennants gayly flying, wound into sight from behind a hill and halted at a stream, staring at the train. During this long journey inland, I smiled more than once remembering a story Mr. Holden told of a New York newspaper that published, during the war between Peru and Chile, a detailed account and a picture of a naval battle off Santiago. As well have one off Pittsburg! We had a fairly good breakfast at Llai-Llai which is here pronounced Yi-Yi and were much attracted by a line of native women squatting be hind baskets of most beautiful fruit, grapes and apples more nearly resembling the hot-house prod ucts shown by fruiterers in London and New York than anything grown out-of-doors. From there on we were eagerly looking for the snowy peaks, which did not appear. Finally, Blake- ney, who has had to reconstruct so many of his memories since arriving in Valparaiso, dryly re marked : "Well, I trust the Andes are still here!" But there seemed to be only one little Ande left, 167 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON or, if there were more, they persistently veiled them selves in haze or mist, and still do, for I have not seen them yet. The first glimpse we had of Santiago was a statue of the Virgin on a hill-top, and near it the dome of the Lick Observatory. Then the towers of the Cathedral came into view, and a few moments later we were driving through the stately and beautiful Alameda, a wide and apparently very long street, its central promenade having, on either side, a double row of trees, a zanca, a driveway, and the customary sidewalks. Our hotel, which is new, seems very good, and we have a delightful and well-furnished suite of rooms, in which, by-the-way, we found many vases filled with roses beautifully arranged. We supposed this to be due to the thoughtfulness of Mr. Ames' agent, who engaged the rooms for us, but he disclaims credit for it, and we are still wondering whether it is a part of the regular attendance. There is an inexplicable fascination about this city. It is not the influence of the much-heralded Andes, for as I have said, they are invisible to-day. Nor is it anything especially characteristic or un usual in the architecture, though this is said to be the most typically Spanish city in South America. Even more than in Peru, the women go about shrouded in black mantos, and look so like nuns that it gives one a shock to see a gay cavalier, booted and spurred, striding along beside a couple of them in laughing and evidently more or less flirtatious converse. So neither is the charm in any singularity 1 68 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON of costume. It is a delicious, pervading, entrancing something that eludes one. All the morning I have been out walking with Berenice. Just walking through street after street. She was bored and said it was "crude" which means, poor child, that it is not in Gaveston's colors but I was bewitched, and would have walked on all day, I think, but for her obvious weariness. I found, away off on some little side-street, some low adobe buildings little shops, with the name of the proprietor and a list of his principal wares in bright blue letters on the pink-tinted outer walls, and festoons of garlic and Chile peppers hanging in the doorway; and over it all a dull, red-tiled roof. Why, Marion, I knew those very shops in a sleepy little town in Southern California, years no, just a few days ago! That's what it is, I suppose. It's the glamour of youth renewed and sweetened. On the way back to the hotel, walking down the Street of the Orphans, we met a man an Ameri can, I knew at once by his carriage and his well-cut, gray clothes, and the Panama hat pulled down over his brow. We glanced at each other, stopped short, took another step, and stopped again. I was won dering whether there could be in the world two men with eyes like that, and I don't know what he was thinking; but, anyway, he said "Anne!" and I said "Ned!" in the same breath, and then being slaves of convention we shook hands almost as if we had met last week, and I presented him to Bere nice. I think he was almost as glad to see me as I was to see him, though. 169 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON He's just the same old Ned. His hair, as he un covered, showed gray, but the big, dark, steady, fearless gray eyes are the same. He has gained something in dignity, but lost nothing in cordial ity or in frank friendliness. He is the Honorable Edwards Rhodes Barrington, American Ambassador to Brazil but he is also the same dear, unassuming, genial, interested Ned. He got rather run down in Rio, and came over here for the change of air and to see the country. He is to dine with us to-night and I think it is perfectly absurd for anybody to suppose I'm chaperoning Berenice! Why, she's years older than I am! Oh yes, Gaveston is here, and so is Mrs. Rankin, both at another hotel, where they supposed we were going also dream phantoms that haunt my wak ing hours. But they can't torment me long. For now I know that I am Youth incarnate, unquench able, invincible Youth and the world is mine! Of course Peter Pan wouldn't grow up! Who would, if he could help it? Santiago, April i7th. A week has passed since I wrote you a week of sunshine with counter-currents and head- winds, of baffling successfully and being miserably baffled, of delightful social intercourse on the lid of an active volcano, of anything you like that is charming and exasperating and rather terrifying and altogether contradictory. Verily, verily, I say unto you, it's more than the 170 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON seasons that are topsy-turvy down here! Still, when apples and grapes are hawked about the streets in April, when chrysanthemums come with Easter and the south wind is cold, I suppose it is utterly unreasonable to expect to find anything as one knows it, even one's self. But I have learned what really lies at the end of the path Through the Looking-Glass. It's South America. The comparison holds even to the Jabberwock: " Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!" Things about me here are perfectly charming in themselves. The people I meet are all attractive in some way except Mrs. Rankin, and even she is interesting as a type; the city is lovely, the weather perfect, and we are being entertained in most delightful ways. But everything, mental, moral and physical, is upside down and hind side before and wrong side out to my vision, and I'm honestly afraid to look in my mirror, lest I discover that I am gravely and with great dignity standing on my head, like Biddy Maginnis at the photog rapher's. Absolutely the only thing I can plant my foot on to-day with any hope of its sustaining me is Ned Barrington's friendship. He is like a rock, as he always was. I never knew anybody else of whom I felt as sure as I always have of Ned, and yet he is practically the only man I ever knew well who 171 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON never even pretended to be sentimentally attracted toward me. Perhaps that is the reason I am sure of him he never belittled anything in his life. He is honestly interested in everything that concerns his friends, and is ready to help when and where he can; but he never displays the slightest curiosity about things they prefer not to talk about, and he never pretends anything he doesn't feel. And I never knew anybody else, man or woman, of whom I could say as much. I wonder why he has never married? It isn't possible that a man with his capacity for friendship never loved a woman and it seems equally impos sible that any woman whom he loved and wooed could continue to resist him. Yet, now that I think of it, I can't quite imagine Ned making love. He is always so warmly, genially, interestedly un sentimental the apotheosis of brotherhood. Prob ably, however, that is because I never aroused in him more than a fraternal interest. Certainly there is still in the depths of those deep eyes of his the turbulence and revolt and pain that puzzled me years ago. I used to wonder then whether a woman had hurt him that much. I wonder now. And I am perfectly aware, Mrs. Livingston, that it is none of my business, so you needn't trouble to remind me ! I wrote you a week ago to-day, and Ned was coming to dinner. He came but in the mean time things happened. When I had finished my letter to you, I felt the need of tea, so Berenice and I went to a little tea room-cafe-kind of place down-stairs to get it and 172 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON there, in a remote and cosy corner, tete-a-tete, sat Uncle Beverley and the Bandersnatch she tense, alert, avid, balancing for the final pounce, and he wearing an earnest expression that I have learned to know. I have seen it before twice. One glance showed me that they hadn't been there long, as the man was just bringing their tea, and consequently that matters probably had not gone very far. Well, of course, there was just one thing for me to do, and that was to play football. I did it with neatness and despatch, too. In fact, I rather pride myself upon that tackle, and I took such a fall out of the promoter lady that she didn't fully get her breath back during that half. Far be it from me to imply that everything went my way that afternoon, however. The table they had chosen was small, but I was enthusiastically confident that it could be made to accommodate us also, and though they displayed no feverish anxiety that it should, it did. Berenice squeezed into a seat facing the door, while I sat with my back to it. I knew that Mr. Ames had presented his letters to the Minister that afternoon, and insisted upon hearing all about it at once. Of course, he had been told at the Legation that Ned Barrington was in town, and said so, but I was not to be caught with that chaff. I knew that if Mrs. Rankin dis covered that the new Ambassador to Brazil was to dine with us, she would make it impossible for me not to ask her to meet him, which I had no intention of doing. So I admitted that Mr. Barrington was THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON an old friend of mine, expressed mild pleasure in the prospect of seeing him sooner than I had antici pated, and veered off into an expatiation on the beauties of Santiago and our walk that morning. Berenice, who had watched all this from under half-closed lids, bethought herself all at once of some postals I had bought, concerning which she had been scornfully indifferent at the time, and offered to go up-stairs for them, as I might like to show them to the others. I was greatly delighted by this evident desire to lend a hand, but as the postals were really rather commonplace, said it was hardly worth while. That precocious young person gleamed a derisive eye at me, and presently asked Uncle, quite with the air of changing the subject, whether he had happened to see anywhere an awfully good-looking American in gray clothes and a Panama hat, where upon I promptly discovered an immediate and pressing need for those postals. She drooped her eyelids again and departed for them. When she returned, Mr. Gaveston was with her. Of course, she had seen him pass the door. Well, our little table was already crowded. To introduce another person was out of the question; Mrs. Rankin sweetly refused to move she was "so comfy," she said; and there I was, 'twixt tweedle dum and tweedledee, the devil and the deep sea. I knew that if I transferred myself to another table with Berenice and Gaveston, Uncle Beverley would not propose to this woman under my very eye; but I also knew that she would remove him at once to THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON some secluded spot, where moth and rust would not corrupt nor thieves break in and steal, and there she would purr him back to the place where he left off, the more easily because he was a little vexed with me for my tactless interruption. However, I couldn't let Berenice occupy a distant table alone with the Jabberwock, and there was none available near us, so I went with them. But I emulated the parrot who didn't say much with results. Consequently, when the Bandersnatch and her prey, having finished their tea, would have passed us with brief smiles, I detained them long enough to urge them to go without delay to see an equestrian statue of San Martin that I had dis covered that morning, and then I innocently asked Uncle Beverley whether it was true that San Martin was a greater general than any we had ever had in the United States. My dear, the rod of Moses wasn't a circumstance to that suggestion! The torrent I evoked gushed and flowed until Mrs. Rankin, smiling somewhat acidly, begged him not to let her interrupt him, but really she must leave us because she had an impor tant engagement at her hotel for which she was already late. Of course, he would not permit her to return alone, but I thought he was safe for that day. He went off spouting generals, from Wash ington to Funston, and her cue was to listen ab- sorbedly. I dressed for dinner, light-heartedly conscious that I was something of a strategist myself, having block ed both Gaveston and the lady, and feeling that I 175 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON had earned the right to a care-free hour with Ned. I was just wishing that Uncle Beverley would feel moved to take Berenice off somewhere and let Ned and me be children together again as we'd like to, when he appeared at our door to say that he had accepted an invitation to dine that evening with Mrs. Rankin. Again there was nothing for me but to tackle and by that time I was beginning to feel like a foot ball myself. I told Uncle Beverley that the Hon orable Edwards Rhodes Barrington was to dine with us, and intimated that the whole purpose of the dinner would be thwarted if he were not there. Of course, this titillated pleasantly, and he hummed and hawed his gratification, but still he did not feel that he could break a dinner engagement, even for though, to be sure, it was very informal, this little dinner of Mrs. Rankin's, and perhaps but yet, still, nevertheless, however and notwithstanding, he had promised to be there, and much as he regretted not meeting Mr. Barrington, he really could not I hated to do it, but my next play was forced upon me, and I made it smiling. First, I let him infer that I had not finished speaking when he so rudely interrupted, and when he had apologized sufficiently, I stated my intention of asking Mrs. Rankin and her cousin to dine with us also. After which, I forgot all I ever knew about proper com binations of food and drink, and kept him so busy deciding upon extra dishes and wines that Mrs. R. arrived before it even occurred to him that he ought to go after her. 176 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Conversation had to be more or less general throughout the evening, and I asked Ned to take the ladies back to their hotel and there you are! That is what happened to my first play-hour with Ned and that is what has happened to every one since. I've had some beautiful pots of fragrant ointment, but they've all been full of flies. I forgot to say that when we came up from tea in the afternoon we found Mr. Gay lord's cards. He is the American Minister. The next day Satur day Berenice and I left cards at the Legation, but Mrs. Gaylord was not at home. Sunday morning came a note from her, inviting us to tea that after noon, which was an altogether delightful experience. We met there several pleasant Americans, notably some charming people named Yale, who called upon us the same evening. The Gaylords, too, are both very attractive and very cordial. After tea we drove in Cousino Park, a beautiful place, and for the first time saw the Andes, which surprised me greatly. I had pictured them as a high wall against the city impending, as it were instead of which they are at some distance, and are very uneven in height. Of course, this hazy, autumnal weather has something to do with the effect of distance, and the first rain will bring them miles nearer. Neither was there much snow upon them; but their color oh, their color! Flushed to a most ex quisite rose, they fairly palpitated in the afterglow, and creeping up from their base were mysterious 177 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON blue shadows not purple and amethyst, as you would imagine, but a ghostly gray-blue. When their tints grew ashen, we turned toward home, and as it is evidently the custom to race back from this park, the drive in the dusk was rather exciting, reminding me of an experience I once had scudding down the darkling Thames at New Lon don, after a Yale-Harvard race that had been rowed at sunset. There were many carriages, all well- driven, but our heavy team and rubber-tired vic toria passed them all. Apropos of mountains, it seems very probable now that we shall not be able to cross the Pass. Mr. Ames will be detained here some time longer by business, and everybody insists that it would be the height of folly for Berenice and me to attempt the trip after the snows have set in as they may any day. "Oh, ever thus from childhood's hour!" The way my dear gazelles "glad me with a soft black eye" is to kick me in the face and give me one! The only feature of this whole trip that I had set my heart on, and to which I looked forward with lively and unmitigated joy, was crossing the Uspal- lata Pass so, of course, we shall go down through the Strait. Como no? However, they can't defraud me of my silver lining, and I've seen wonderful photographs of the scenery in the Strait. Besides, one of the diplo matic ladies told me of an interesting trip she once made to Juncal,*and I am trying to arrange an es- * Pronounced Hoon-cdrJ. 178 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON cort to that point for Mr. Yale, who expects to go over to Buenos Aires next week, en route for Europe. If I succeed, we'll see something of the Cordillera,* at least, as Juncal is at the end of the railroad on the Chilean side. Monday Mrs. Gaylord drove around for Berenice and me and took us to call on one or two of the Ministeresses. It's odd how many of the European diplomats down here have American wives; and thus far, all we have met have been charming. Tuesday we breakfasted with the Bandersnatch, who did all she could to throw Berenice to the Jabberwock and Ned to me, reserving Mr. Ames for herself, and again I gave an exhibition of ground- and-lofty tumbling in my effort to be in three places at once and to keep in touch with everything all the time. Of course, I spoiled my own day, but I flatter myself I spoiled everybody else's as well. On the way home we stopped at a florist's to get some flowers, and bought La France roses great big, fine-textured, exquisite buds for one peso a dozen, just now the equivalent of seventeen cents! When I told Mrs. Yale what I had done, she held up her hands, crying: "Why on earth did you go to that place? It's the most expensive in town!" We have also learned that the flowers in our rooms are a part of the regular attendance. Twice a week the proprietor himself comes in to arrange them; now lovely, heavy-headed, pale roses again * Pronounced Cor-deel-yair-ah. 179 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON eloquent of Southern California now bunches of gorgeous dahlias, now fringy, pungent chrysanthe mums. And the fruits! Everywhere along the streets and in the Pasaje,* a sort of arcade over by the Plaza, are displayed the same wonderful fruits that we saw at Llai-Llai coming up from Valparaiso, beautifully arranged. Many large, round, flat, basket trays, for example, have splendid white grapes and bright Tokays piled high around their edges, green leaves and tendrils peeping out here and there, all giving the effect of enormous wreaths dropped by some prodigal Bacchante. They have a pretty habit here of always having fresh green leaves between the basket and whatever it may contain, whether fruit or vegetables. The fascination of this place still grips me, and I hate the thought of leaving it. I love it! I love to roam about its streets, just looking at the people and the buildings though I freely admit that, ex cept in isolated instances, neither is especially re markable. It is a queer, inexplicable charm, but it is strong, and I'd like to stay and stay and stay! Only I'd like it to be at some future time, when the swains have ceased from troubling and the widows including yours truly are at rest. Heaven fore- fend that I should ever wish to prolong the present vigil ! Ned asked me the other day how long we had known Mr. Gaveston, and when I told him, he * Pronounced Pah-sah-hay. 180 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON wagged his head and looked solemn. Then I begged him to speak to Mr. Ames about it, if he knew or learned anything of this Englishman, which he seemed rather reluctant to promise, though he knows nothing about him now except what he has seen. I had gathered a notion, even before this, that Ned didn't like Uncle Beverley very well, so I took this occasion to tell him a lot about the fine side of the man, and I think it did some good, for Ned has been more cordial to him since. I would have given something to unburden myself fully on the subject, but I was at the moment so exasperated with our uncle that I didn't dare trust myself to speak of anything but his virtues. I had that day made one last, desperate attempt to arouse him to a perception of our responsibility in this Gaveston affair, and he had informed me that he had had several long talks with the English man, and that while, of course, Berenice's name had not been mentioned, he had satisfied himself that we need give ourselves no uneasiness in the matter. Then, in the kindest way, he intimated that I was doing a prodigious amount of barking up the wrong tree, and that if I had been any kind of a watch dog and his smile implied that naturally it was absurd to expect anything of the sort from an orna mental little creature like me, but still, if I had been any kind of a watch-dog I would have known from the first, as he had, that Shafter Blakeney and not Gaveston was the man to set my teeth in. He said Mrs. Rankin thought so, too! I wonder how much 181 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON of this story she has wormed out of him? Still, he's an Ames. I don't believe she got much of it. He then unfolded the remarkable theory that all this apparent interest in the Englishman is part of a conspiracy between Berenice, Blakeney and Perry Waite, to frighten us into giving up the rest of the trip, lest she marry this stranger out of hand, and into taking her back to New York and her first love. Did you ever hear of anything as fantastic as that? And the dear man firmly believes it! When I retorted that, although I could not ex plain further without betraying confidence, I had reason to know that Berenice was not anxious to return either to New York or to young Waite, he looked a little startled for a moment, and then smiled with tolerant kindness while he assured me that this, too, was part of "the conspiracy." He said: "Berenice is an Ames, and deep deep!" Which is truer than he, being an Ames himself, will ever fully realize. However, I am puzzled about Shafter Blakeney. I was a little surprised that he elected to stay in Valparaiso as long as we did, when his parents, whom he had not seen for several years, were wait ing for him within a few hours' journey. But he did stay, and came up, as I think I wrote you, on the train with us. When he arrived here, he went directly out to the hacienda, where his father is very ill, but returned the next day and has been here ever since "on business," he says, which is quite probable, though he seems to have little or nothing to do. 182 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Uncle Beverley scowls at him and Berenice snubs him, neither of which can be pleasant, but his calm, courteous manner never varies, and he keeps on coming. I wonder it hadn't occurred to me be fore, but is it possible, although he is tongue-tied and bound by his loyalty to his cousin, that he lingers on because of Berenice? It doesn't seem quite like him, but now I think of it, while he talks principally to me, he watches her constantly. I wonder? My shutters will be shaken clear off, Marion, if this keeps up! The mail came Sunday morning, and I had such a happy, comforted letter from Helen. She said she felt so safe about her dear girl, now that we had taken her away from New York and that dread ful young man. There was also a line from you, written after receiving the letter I sent back by the pilot, assuring me that I had done the right and the wise thing. I wonder what you think about it by this time! Me and Wisdom, forsooth! Hoch der Kaiser! A perfectly delightful experience, Wednesday, was a visit to the hacienda of a very prominent Chilean gentleman, Don Jos Carter. It is odd, by-the-way, to find so many Chilean families descended from Englishmen or Irishmen who came here many years ago. McKenna, Rogers, Edwards, Walker, are all Chilean names of distinction now. Mr. and Mrs. Gaylord had been invited to go with us, but neither Mrs. Gaylord nor Mr. Ames could go, so we were only four, Mr. Carter meeting us at the station. It was a perfect morning, and we went 183 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON by rail to a most attractive little suburb about half an hour away, where Don Jose lives. He took us to his house and showed us his garden, his grape- arbors and swimming-pool and stables and poultry- yard, while the carriage was made ready. Then we drove through beautiful farming coun try, with hills all about and the snow-capped Andes rising in wonder to the east, coming finally to the old Spanish road, built through virgin country from Panama to the Strait, in those ancient, cruel days of the Conquistadores. Now it is bordered at this point, at least by stately poplars and fringed by fertile fields. All the way we had been passing adobe huts, but as we came into Don Jose's territory a princi pality in itself from every doorway and from be hind every wall brown, wistful-eyed, smiling chil dren began to appear. Don Jos6, who might pose for a portrait of St. Nicholas, so kindly and youth ful is his white-bearded face, glanced at us rather deprecatingly, saying: "You will not mind if we stop here and there for a moment? You see, I always give the children chocolates if they have clean hands and faces, and they expect it. I should not like to disappoint them." They expected it, indeed. They sprang up by the score, some swarming eagerly out to the car riage, some clinging timidly to the walls, and for each he produced from his inexhaustible pockets one of the silver- wrapped slivers of chocolate that for children of Spanish blood or extraction seem to take 184 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON the place of candy. Sometimes he tossed a hand ful into a group and then stood up in the victoria to see that it was fairly distributed, calling to the greedy larger children to give the littlest ones their share. Finally Berenice, wholly won by the charm of this courtly, clever, lovable old man, exclaimed : " But that one is very dirty! Look at him! You give them chocolates anyway, Mr. Carter, whether they are clean or not!" For a moment he seemed rather abashed. Then he looked up with a hu morous gleam of vindication. " But I always tell them that they must be clean when I come next week," he said. Perhaps no man now living in Chile has done more for the improvement of his people than he, and certainly this movement toward clean hands and faces on the part of his junior tenantry is a step in the right direction, for if godliness were de pendent upon cleanliness, it would go hard with the lower-class individual in most of these countries. Mr. Carter told us that so eager are these small folk to please him, however, that one little boy ap peared at his carriage wheel, a week or two ago, with his face thickly powdered to make it look whiter. All this time we were driving through tree-bor dered roads, between splendid fields, here yellow stubble where grain had been cut, there a green glow of alfalfa, then past herds of fine cattle. We climbed a sugar-loaf hill and saw all this wonderful valley from a new view-point, and again I cried : "California! The Santa Clara Valley, this time, 185 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON minus the live-oaks and plus the Cordillera!" Golden fields, softly stirring trees, purpling hills, air like purest crystal it was good to be alive that morning ! Then we were taken to the house of some very delightful and hospitable English people, tenants and friends of Mr. Carter's, and given a Chilean breakfast, the like of which one must be entertained in a Chilean house of the best sort to find. And all the time the talk drifted here and there over the earth's surface, touching lightly upon many aspects of human life and interest, and always that wonder ful, sweet-hearted old man was its pilot. He returned to town with us in the afternoon, but unfortunately could not accompany us to Mrs Yale's, where we were invited to tea. Gaveston was there, however, so of course I had to be on duty every minute. Still, the Gaylords dropped in, with Ned and Mr. King, the Secretary, and we had a very cheerful little time which was not without its sparks, by-the-way. Mr. Ames made occasion to mention Mrs. Rankin, and Mrs. Yale returned pleasantly, but in a tone for which I could have hugged her: "You admire Mrs. Rankin?" He did, madam. He found this little woman a remarkable compound of ah of intelligence I believe he even said intellect of courage, and of ah of appealing femininity. "Possibly," said Mrs. Yale, dryly. "I don't know her." Which, in this land of general acquaint ance among all Anglo-Saxons, was sufficiently sig nificant. 186 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Uncle Beverley looked bewildered and took breath for further speech, but realized in time that the conversation was closed. I wonder whether that will give him pause? At any rate, it hasn't checked him yet. Yesterday the Gaylords gave a breakfast at Apoquindo,* a lovely resort out in the hills, where there are mineral baths, a fairly good hotel, and beautiful views of the valley and mountains sur rounding Santiago. The drive out was a delight. There were the old, familiar, tile-roofed adobes in the shade of big-leaved fig-trees, whose pale stems were still dotted with the purple fruit. There were the quaint old wells and red geraniums, hedges of cactus, lines of drooping pepper-trees, and swarms of little brown, dirty, unkempt urchins. I have seen all these things crowded out by the great procession of progress, and yet here they are, as fresh and bright and unmussed as if they had never been squeezed out of existence. It makes me feel like one of those silly pasteboard things with two faces, one merry and the other sad. You pull a string, and flap! The figure is the same, but the face has changed. Some mighty energetic power is at the other end of my string these days. Mr. Gaveston was not there praise be ! but Mrs. Rankin was, and so was Shafter Blakeney. When we started off for a ramble after breakfast which we had out under the trees, by-the-way I tried to steal a march on the promoter lady by slipping away * Pronounced Ap-o-ken-do. 187 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON for that quiet chat I am still hoping for with Ned, knowing that Uncle Beverley would stick closer than a brother to Berenice as long as Blakeney was about. But Mrs. Gaylord spoke to Ned, detaining us a moment, and of course Mrs. Rankin promptly made off with Mr. Ames, heading straight for the tall timber and leaving me no alternative but to work at my job. However, I've not been entirely idle all these days, and I don't think she'll screw him to the sticking-point in any one half -hour! I was rather worried last night, though. A lot of us went up to the theatre near the top of Santa Lucia, the beautiful sugar-loaf hill in the heart of the city, which has been made into a park. The theatre is not among the best here, I believe, but nevertheless we saw a play so well acted that we had little difficulty in following its story, although we understood none of the lines. I wonder how often that could be said of second or even first- class companies at home? After seeing two acts, we followed the crowd out to a paved and brilliantly lighted terrace, where the men smoked and many of the women took refrescos. It was warm and gay and bright, and wholly differ ent from anything ever seen with us. Then, instead of returning to the theatre, we climbed, sometimes by winding paths walled by huge boulders and overhung with trees, sometimes by steps cut in the solid rock, through little plazue- las, beside a tiny lake, across toy bridges, to the top of the hill. It was the night of the full moon, the air was soft and fragrant, the city twinkled far be- ?88 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON low us, and "in such a night," even though one be neither Cressid nor Thisbe nor Dido, many things may happen. Therefore, I kept so close beside Berenice that I could overhear Gaveston's lightest whisper, thereby arousing her antagonism and un doing a week of patient work. I made some effort to keep the party together though it was not my party; but when it became perfectly obvious that it was Mrs. Rankin's pur pose to loiter behind with Mr. Ames, Ned deserted the Yales, whose guests we were, and simply glued himself to her side, which so flustrated the Bander- snatch that she burbled. Imagine almost getting your claws into your nice, fat mouse, and then having a chance at a handsome bachelor ambassador! It was too much for the promoter lady, and all the way down through the shade-checkered path we could hear her nervous, flattered little laugh. But I wonder why Ned did it? Do you suppose that he, too ? Oh, Marion, dear, this is the Back of Beyond, where everything is otherwise, and where "if you don't as you do, you will do as you don't all your lives." I'm actually beginning to gibber and what's worse, I know it! Santiago, April 23d. No matter what happens to me now, as long as my mind remains unclouded I shall have one great memory, for yesterday I saw the Cordillera. 189 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON I wish I might share it with you, but I never can. I shall never be able to tell you, even faintly, about this experience, because man has made no words to fit the austere sublimity of these mountains. I have seen the Alps and the Canadian Rockies, and I have gone away seething with talk about them, with desire to make other people see and feel them. The Andes leave me dumb. In their presence earth and its mediums fall away, superflu ous, and only the immortal soul remains awed, up lifted, hushed Power answering Power in perfect silence. Of the minor details of the journey I have much to tell you. Of the one great experience nothing. It was like seeing Love or Death naked. The end of last week was like the first. There was a dinner at the Yales and another at the Ameri can Legation, Mr. Ames gave a breakfast, and there were several smaller, informal affairs between, all involving more or less the same people. And after meeting somewhere at breakfast, some of us were sure to foregather elsewhere, frequently without intention, at tea-time, and again, with only slight variations of the party, at dinner. It was very gay, but over it all, for me, hung the half unreal but wholly poignant horror of the Jab ber wock and the Bandersnatch. I baffled them at every point, as far as I could see, yet always with the clutching consciousness, so familiar in dreams, that the Things I fled came a little nearer at each turn and would soon overwhelm me. As yet, they have not caught me. Then, early Tuesday morning, we started for 190 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Juncal. It had rained in the valley in the mean time, and when the clouds broke, the mountains stood clearly forth, their crests white. We took all our warmest clothing, and Mrs. Yale appeared at the station laden with two large lunch- baskets, in addition to her rugs and wraps and suit case and all Mr. Yale's travelling impedimenta. This seemed to us very kind, but just a little fussy, for were we not to spend the night at the comfort able inn at Juncal, where they are accustomed to feed hungry hordes? And were we not seeking experience, anyway? However, the lunch-baskets were stowed with the rest of the luggage, and we were off the Yales, Ned Barrington, the Ameses and I. No Jabber wock, no Bandersnatch "Oh, frabjous day!" We retraced our route from Valparaiso as far as Llai-Llai, where we changed cars; but it was no longer hot and dusty, and there was no question now that the Andes were all there. I wished that Shafter were along to see them, but though the Yales urged him to accompany us, he said he must go out to the hacienda to see his family. Oh, my prophetic soul! Berenice was to be out of town for two days. From Llai-Llai we turned east and ran through orchards and vineyards California again, but Cen tral California now, far from the desert south. At Los Andes we stopped for breakfast, paddling our way in the rain through puddled streets to a very decent little hotel, and changed cars again, this time to a narrow-gauge. 13 191 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Then began the real climb, beside torrential mountain streams, around mighty granite shoulders, climbing climbing up out of the rain and into the snow. The little engine puffed and heaved, and the train moved so slowly that some of the men hopped off and ran easily alongside; but they didn't run far in that altitude! Occasionally we stopped at a little station and went out to look and look at the bleak summits towering above us, veiled here and there in sullen, sodden clouds. It stopped snowing and got pretty cold, and our fellow-passengers began to muffle themselves gro tesquely in nondescript wraps of wool and skins soft brown ponchos, rugs of fluffy, yellow guanaco fur, knitted scarfs wound about their heads, blank ets of all colors anything and everything that might afford a little additional warmth, while we of snowy climes were still quite comfortable in our ordinary winter garments. And so we came, at last, late in the short after noon, to Juncal, a huddle of tiny, low buildings an inn and some stables, nothing more cowering against the rocky, snow-sprinkled wall across the narrow valley. We were told to scramble for a coach and get to the hotel as soon as possible, leav ing all the luggage to one of the men, as the train was crowded and it would be a case of first come first served in the matter of rooms. So we tumbled out in the chill, gray light, already awed by the grim, dark, cloud- wrapped piles about us, and into outlandish, high-swung, uncomfortable little vehicles, each seating five people, two on a 192 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON side and one with the driver, without an inch of room to spare anywhere. In these we were jerked unceremoniously across the valley and dumped at the low, narrow doorway of the inn. We entered a small room office, bar, lounge and parlor, as we afterward learned with unpainted wooden walls, a bench on the right and a short counter on the left. On the counter were decanters of muddy chicha, and behind it were shelves full of bottles and glasses, which caught the dull light in gray glints. Behind the counter, also, stood the proprietor a tall, fair man who looked like a Scandinavian and spoke all the tongues of the earth and a woman, apparently his wife; while in front, pushing, elbowing, gesticulating, a motley crowd clamored for accommodations. They made their demands in Spanish, in French, in English, German, Italian, and a few other lan guages that I could not identify, and to each that polyglot proprietor returned a soft answer. "Slowly, gentlemen, slowly! There are beds for all four in a room, gentlemen. Always four in a room." Muffled, mummy-like figures leaned over the counter, urging, begging, vociferating, and their eager breath congealed, making grayer spots in the gray air. Through the open door one saw falling snow against a dour background that shut out the sky. A German waiter and porter hustled in and out among the people, some one lighted a single kerosene lamp, a man more artful than the rest slipped behind the counter to whisper coaxing, THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON cajoling words to the woman, who smilingly pushed him out again, while the calm, soothing voice of that mendacious proprietor never ceased. "Estan camas para todos, sefiores, todos Ja, mein herr, aber nicht allein. Immer fier Piano, piano, signore! Pazienza! In just a minute, sir. Be a little patient, please. There are plenty of Si, si, sefiores, para todos, pero cuatro siempre cuatro " Mr. Yale pushed his way to us, saying that he had found a friend who would make the fourth in their room, and that he hoped we three women had been given a room by ourselves. When we reached it, however, we found a German woman and a small child already established there. As we were to be aroused about four in the morn ing, we did not relish the idea of being kept awake by a fretful youngster, but all the king's horses and all the king's men, plus the influence of an American Ambassador, couldn't move that proprietor; and when we learned that there were only twenty rooms in the hotel eighty beds and a hundred and forty applicants for them, we accepted our marcies, baby and all, very meekly and gratefully. By this time we were cold, and the only heat in the thin building was in the kitchen. The little bed rooms opened off a long, draughty corridor, unpaint- ed and uncarpeted, and these, with the combination- room we had first entered and the dining-room, were all there was of the hotel. Mrs. Yale suggested tea, which we hailed with a joy more or less tempered by doubt as to the cheer- 194 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON ing qualities of any brew obtainable there. Then it was that the lunch-baskets first came into play. She produced a spirit-lamp, a teapot, a big bottle of alcohol and a box of her own delicious tea, and we sat around on the four beds and watched her make it. We had adjourned to the men's room, as belong ing more exclusively to our own party, Mr. Yale's friend having been adopted on sight. Otherwise, it was just like all the other rooms, having four single beds, one in each corner; two washstands, each sur mounted by an infinitesimal but shockingly intoxi cated mirror; and opposite the door, beneath the one window, a stand holding the tiny candle that threw its beams and our Brobdingnagian shadows on the clean pine walls. There were also twelve hooks, three for each inhabitant, and one chair. Hence, we sat on the beds, while Mrs. Yale, en throned, made tea, and Ned departed on a foraging expedition. From tea it was an easy step to sandwiches; then cold chicken tempted us ; and when My Lady Bounti ful produced two or three bottles of champagne, we declared it a dinner-party at once, the more readily that we were beginning to realize what dining with that ravening horde outside would mean. Occa sionally we sallied forth in couples for a look at them, pacing up and down the cold corridor, muffled to the eyes and walking to keep warm. Already some of them began to show, in their drawn and haggard faces, symptoms of the dread siroche. So we sat on the beds and made jokes, a sand- THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON wich or a drum-stick in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other and never was wine so perfectly chilled as this, that ice had never touched ! Ned's frequent forays furnished the suspensive in terest, and resulted in two extra chairs, a lamp which made us feel very luxuriously, riotously gay, almost devilish, in fact and a large plate of bread. He refused to tell where he got that. We were all very hungry, and there was nothing to do but eat, so we kept on, with intervals of con versation which seemed at the moment very bril liant. I was taken to the door of the dining-room to see what we had escaped, and I went straight back to the bedroom and embraced Mrs. Yale. After a while we all went to bed. I put on two suits of woollen underwear, some long cashmere stockings, spread a steamer rug over my blanket and was very comfortable, but I didn't sleep much, though the child, who was a flaxen - haired angel, never peeped. What became of all the sixty people for whom there were no beds I don't know, but cocoons of rugs, furs and blankets, each of them containing somewhere in its interior a human being, lay thick along the floor of that draughty corridor all night. I hope some of the people had at least a table to lie on. It is only at the end of the season, when every body who has business on the other side hastens to take advantage of the last days when the Pass is open, that so many people cross. At other times the little inn is large enough. 196 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON At four in the morning, just as I was getting nice and drowsy, a gong that would have waked the seven sleepers went off, and everybody who was going with the combination, as this tri- weekly ex pedition across the Cordillera is called, got up and began to chatter. I was more deliberate, and got out just in time to see the last mummies gallop off on mules, the stages having already departed. Mr. Yale had gone with them, and Berenice and I devoted our selves to trying to cheer up his forlorn little wife, while we all sat beside an open door in the bar-room or the parlor, if you prefer and blew on our fingers. Presently the proprietor came along and invited us into a small inner room, where there was price less treasure ! an oil-stove. Even Berenice forgot to say that it was crude. She just pulled up a chair and hugged it like the rest of us. It was after eight when the men appeared, Ned declaring that he slept all night beside an open window and woke in a snowdrift. They gave us a very good breakfast, but, of course, Uncle Beverley chose that particular occasion for riding his hobby, having been reminded of camp hardships by the experiences of the night, and as the others evidently thought it was high time for grim-visaged War to smooth out his wrinkled front, I immolated myself and drew his fire, while they talked of "shoes and ships and sealing wax" and similarly fascinating things. Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud when it is possible for good men to be such bores? 197 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON After breakfast, Ned conceived the brilliant idea that it would be fun to get some mules and ride up the road to meet the incoming combination, and although at first there were no mules left posi- tively, not one mule eventually four materialized, with two more for the guides. Mrs. Yale declared that nothing would tempt her to undertake such a jaunt, and that she would stay at the hotel, meet ing us at the train with the luggage and lunch- baskets if we were late in returning. Then comes the part that I can never tell you about, riding up that winding road, where tremen dous boulders lay like golf balls tossed aside, and where the steep, dark bases, rising sheer from thin valleys, gave hint of what the summits up above the clouds must be. No green Alpine slopes here, al though there is wonderful, wonderful color min eral, I suppose in the precipitous and rocky walls. Every now and then speech fell from us as we caught awesome glimpses of some stern and lofty peak, upon which the clouds broke, shattered, and gathered again while we watched it. We met the incoming combination before we had gone very far. First came the mail, strapped to the backs of twenty or thirty mules, in charge of sinister-looking bandits in flowing ponchos and slouched hats. Mrs. Yale tells me that when the Pass is closed to men, and even the guides dare not cross it, they sometimes send the mules out alone with the mail, and the wise little beasts follow the road unless an avalanche sweeps them down, beating their way against the storms to Las Cuevas and food. 198 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Then, after quite an interval, came the string of baggage mules, zigzagging down the steep moun tain-side for all the world as you have seen them in some big stage spectacle, except that these came on the run, with bags and boxes and bundles and suit-cases and little trunks packed upon them, and it was well to keep away from that drove. Ned got too close and nearly had his knee-cap taken off by the corner of a trunk. Then came the stages and thank you, when I have occasion to cross the Pass, as I still hope to do sometime, I will ride a mule! The vehicles are the same light, high-swung, uncomfortable, side- seated, yellow affairs that took us from the station to the inn, and I know now why they are so small. If people were not wedged tight, they'd never be able to stay in, particularly if they happened to have siroche. These "coaches" are not enclosed in glass, and though the canvas curtains were pulled tight, must have been very cold. All the people we could see were muffled to the eyes in furs and clumsy woollens ; many had their heads tied up, as one of the best preventives of siroche is to keep warm, and all seemed half frozen, indifferent alike to their own fate or ours. The little stages are drawn by four horses har nessed abreast and driven very skilfully, by the way down these steep grades at a mad gallop. The road is full of very sharp turns the oblique angles of the zigzag and sometimes as the team reaches one of these, it is taken in a dexterous swing. But sometimes the pace is too fast, or the 199 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON grade not exactly calculated; then the little horse on the outside plants his feet against a low, loose, stone wall, which is all that separates him from eternity once, while I watched, they were going so fast that he half climbed it and throws his whole weight in. His companions carom back toward this world, dragging him with them, and they all tear on a few yards, to repeat the performance at the next sharp point in the road. Since to stop one of these stages in mid-career is impossible, and a collision on the edge of a precipice would be well final, we had to exercise the great est care to keep on the inside of the road at these sharp turns not the easiest thing in the world, by the way, as any self-respecting mule has a mind of his own, and ours were particularly opinionated. After the stages came the police, guarding the combination in this dangerous border neighborhood, and I dare say they are worthy and efficient officers; but in that remote and desolate spot, rifles slung over their shoulders, and only their gleaming, glanc ing, dark eyes visible between their enwrapping ponchos and their slouched hats, they did not pre sent a reassuring asoect to the wayfarer from the north. Then we should have turned back; but the wind ing road and the heights beyond beckoned, we felt that we had had only a glimpse, the guide we had only one now, as the other had dropped away, for no reason that we knew was most desirous that we proceed to Lake Portillo, and after some dis cussion, we decided to go at least a little farther. 200 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Of course, that meant that we went to the lake, a limpid moonstone set among those solemn peaks and grayly reflecting their grandeur. To do this, however, we had to ride fast, and I noticed that my breath was coming short, but as it is fifteen years or more since I mounted any kind of a four-footed beast, and as my mule rejoiced in a particularly racking trot, I attributed my breath- lessness to that, and at Portillo dismounted and confidently attempted to cross some rocks and rough ground in order to photograph the lake. Result, after I had fallen down four times, and Ned, who was with me, had begun talking to me in the tone men keep for fractious horses and hysterical women, I realized that the altitude was too much for me, and collapsed on a rock, gasping like a fish out of water. Ned called Uncle Beverley, and the two of them got me back to the mules, where I sat down in the road and gasped some more. Eventually, as our time was getting short, I said I was all right, they lifted me back into the saddle, and we started down to Juncal. Then came the test of endurance! It was snow ing again, we rode into a keen, cold wind, and that infamous beast of mine refused to gallop. The others had all they could do to manage their own animals, who imperturbably took their ain gait and submitted to an incredible amount of kicking with out resentment, and so I was left more or less to my own devices nobody realizing how ill I really was and to the guide, who always kept behind to whip up the stragglers. 201 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON That mule trotted my hat off and my hair down and all the breath out of my body. I left my side- combs and my back-comb and all but three of my hair-pins along that Andean trail it's a mercy my hair is deeply rooted, or I'd have left that! and when I did succeed in pulling the critter in, every breath an agony, the guide larrupped him from behind and started him off on his trot again. Finally I made a desperate effort, got within call ing distance of the rest, and made them hold my reins and my hat and restrain the guide, while I did what I could to fasten up my hair with my three remaining pins, and tied my veil tightly over it. Ned carried my hat in his hand the rest of the way down. When I pass this way again, I come wear ing a divided skirt, my hair braided down my back, and riding a man's saddle. While this was going on, a party of villainous- looking natives passed us on foot, crowded near, leered insolently, and said something in Spanish which angered Ned and frightened the guide, who turned very pale. Ned slipped his hand back to his hip pocket and swung his mule around facing them, and they walked on without molesting us. As we started again, I heard Ned ask Mr. Ames whether he was armed, and then he exclaimed: " Neither am I! I was a fool not to bring a gun! Let's get the ladies down as fast as we can. I don't like this." After that he kept well ahead, and we pressed on rapidly, and for me very painfully. Once I looked down to the zigzagging road below, which we should 202 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON presently traverse, and hiding under a jutting point of rock close against the hillside were three poncho- muffled horsemen whom we had passed coming up, and who, I now remembered, had eyed us rather curiously. They were doing nothing, apparently. Simply sitting their horses and possibly waiting. I signalled to Ned to look at them, and he nodded. He had already seen them. Just before we came to the point behind which these gentry were hidden, Ned suddenly took a short cut down the steep, shaley mountain-side, cutting off the next angle of the zigzag, and in spite of the warning shouts of the guide, I followed, happening at the moment to be next in line. Uncle Beverley would have obeyed the guide and kept to the road, but Ned's imperious summons admitted no argument and the rest came along behind us. So, after all, we never passed those gentlemen sitting there by the roadside so quietly in a driving storm. Twice again Ned left the road and led us down a short cut, and each time I noticed that some one was coming around the point of the zigzag between where we left the road and where we took it again. Meanwhile, my mule trotted and occasionally stumbled, and I shall never know why I didn't go over his head, for the saddle had no safety-horn for the left knee, and I was faint by this time. Every breath came hard, my whole body ached and the wind drove the snow into my face like needles. But every now and then the clouds lightened a little and I saw one of those tremendous visions in which the Andes were revealed to us that day. Then I for- 203 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON got that I was human, forgot the pain, the cold, the suffocation, the pounding heart, and went straight up to those supernal heights. We had just barely time to make the train, and when we got to the station, Berenice and I had to be lifted off our mules, and I, at least, clumped into the car absolutely numb to the waist with cold. They gave us whiskey to warm us up, and sand wiches and then a wave of siroche swept over me, a sensation as much worse than seasickness as sea sickness is worse than ordinary headache, and I re tired into myself for a while. Such aching, bitter, blood-congealing cold I have never felt, and yet I had rugs and furs and all sorts of things piled over me. However, by the time we got down to Los Andes I was ready for tea, and before we reached Llai-Llai I demolished rather more than my share of what Mrs. Yale called "the property chicken," her lunch- baskets being apparently inexhaustible. So to-day, though I gasp like a fish whenever I lie down, though I am sick and sore and inex pressibly weary, though every time I drop anything on the floor I have to ring for a boy to pick it up, it is nothing and less than nothing, for yesterday I saw the Cordillera! Berenice, accustomed to riding, suffers no pangs from the experience, although of course she is tired ; but neither, I fear, does she know this exaltation. Her enjoyment of the trip seemed to be the pleasure of any healthy young thing in physical exercise and battle with the elements. Uncle Beverley was in^ 204 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON t crested, and as much impressed, probably, as it is possible for him to be by anything outside of him self. But it was only Ned and I who lost the power of speech in those moments of supreme revelation. Except for such impersonal moments of common response, we held little communion together. Of course, we all had a jolly time, but when it came to seats in the train, or any other opportunity for quiet conversation, however we started, I generally found myself in the end listening to Uncle Beverley, while Ned devoted himself to Mrs. Yale and Berenice. I suppose Mr. Ames, kind and good though he is, bores them all to the point of extinction and they seem to think I like it. Well perhaps that is not altogether to be regretted. I am trying to make myself agreeable but not too agreeable! to Uncle Beverley, and evidently I am playing my part bet ter than * * * Oh, Marion, the gobble'uns have got me at last! I was interrupted there by a polite but unmis takable ruction in the next room, since which we've had wars and rumors of wars. Gaveston has proposed to Berenice, who seems inclined to accept him and swears she will brook dictation from nobody Uncle Beverley has demon strated his Ames blood, if he never did before I am in disgrace with him and I suppose he has gone off to feed himself to the Bandersnatch, but I can't help it. I have hands and heart and brain too full just now to fuss about him. 205 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON I'll write details later. This must go at once or miss the mail. Santiago, April 24th. Oh, my dear, such scenes! And the end is not yet. Thus far, I've won, but I am so utterly ex hausted from the struggle and the outcome is still so dubious that I am in no mood to flap my wings and crow. Yesterday, as I wrote you, we were all rather tired and disinclined to exercise. In fact, I was so bat tered and lame that I didn't even go to the dining- room for almuerza with the others, but had it served in my room. After breakfast, Uncle Beverley re turned with Berenice to our little sala, and as I had on a tea-gown and was in no mood for his particular variety of uninspired prose anyway I escaped to my own room and closed the door. Presently, Bere nice put her head in to say that Mr. Ames had gone to take a siesta, and that she thought she'd have a nap herself. It was perhaps an hour later, while I was writing to you, that I heard low voices in the sala again, and just as I was going to investigate, Berenice came in to ask whether I had finished with a book Uncle Beverley had loaned me a few days before. I supposed he had called for it, as I knew he had not yet read it himself, so I gave it to her, with a message of thanks for him, and she departed, clos ing the door after her. Therefore, when I occasionally heard the murmur 206 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON of voices, I naturally inferred that Uncle Beverley found himself more weary than he had admitted and was spending the afternoon reading and rest ing the more so that the conversation, after the first few minutes, seemed intermittent, though, to be sure, my window was open a little and there was more or less noise from passing cabs and wagons. I suppose I was careless and too absorbed in my letter to you to be very observant. Anyway, after an hour or more of this, I heard a brisk step in the corridor and a tap at the door of the sala followed by Uncle Beverley's voice in unmistakably wrath ful inquiry. Of course, I listened. He was demand ing an explanation of somebody, and Gaveston Gaveston replied : "I have just asked Miss Ames to marry me." All the Ames in Uncle Beverley came to the sur face on the instant and he proceeded to unlimber his heavy guns. First he tactfully ordered Berenice to leave the room, which she flatly refused to do. Then he turned his artillery on his English friend. What was Mr. Gaveston's code, sir? Did not Mr. Gaveston perceive that he had committed the gravest breach of confidence ? Did not Mr. Gaveston realize that as a total stranger and a foreigner, it was essential that he should present satisfactory credentials to the young lady's father before making the slightest attempt to win her affection? What explanation of this impossible situation could Uncle Beverley, as her temporary guardian, offer to her parents ? How had this thing been possible ? Where were Mr. Gaveston's perceptions? Where were Mr. 14 207 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Gaveston's principles? Above all, where was Mrs. Pomeroy ? That seemed to be my cue, so I opened the door. Berenice and Gaveston stood close together on the left, arrayed as one and brazenly defying Family Authority, personified by Uncle Beverley, puffing fire on the right. I felt instantly that both forces were hostile to me, s I kept my own ground, took the dilemma by the horns, and myself demanded an explanation before Uncle Beverley recovered his equilibrium and his breath after my sudden appear ance. He evidently thought I had gone out. Then I learned that he had entered the sala abruptly, and had found Gaveston sitting beside Berenice on the sofa, holding both her hands and obviously making ardent love to her. And / was called upon for an explanation of that! The one I gave proved entirely inadequate. It seems that I had no ground whatever for supposing that Mr. Ames had asked for the book, since Bere nice did not definitely say that he had, and since I should have known that he would never do so tact less and ill-bred a thing as to request any woman to return anything he had loaned her. Moreover, he had understood from his brother's wife that my office in this expedition was to "enforce the ob servance of the proprieties at all times." I don't think he knew himself just what he meant by that, for he certainly couldn't have intended to imply that I should not permit Berenice to spend an afternoon alone with him, which is what I sup posed she was doing. 208 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Anyway, Uncle Beverley was angry and knew he was guilty and was thoroughly scared and being a loyal son of Adam, of course he said it was all my fault, which amused even while it exas perated me. I don't see why the old Israelites should have felt the need of scapegoats when they had womenfolk. Some of them had so many wives, too ! They must have been a bad lot to need goats as well. When Berenice was asked why she had applied to me for the book, she replied that she wanted to show it to Mr. Gaveston, and she further sweetly explained that she had not thought it necessary to mention Mr. Gaveston's presence, as he was in the next room and I must have learned to know his voice by this time. When I failed to join them, she said, she knew I must be far too tired and ill to see any one, for I had always before been unwilling to miss a syllable of Mr. Gaveston's conversation ( ! ) , and she had naturally refrained from urging me under these circumstances. Touching sweetly touching wasn't it? Who was the literary gentleman who lamented in print a year or two ago that our written romances are so sophisticated nowadays, and pleaded for a return of the old, tender tales of ingenuous youth and art less early love ? I would like to call to his attention this example of the modern, guileless young person. However, it was given to me in that moment to perceive one thing clearly, which was that here lay my last and only chance of being able to help that child. She was armed and panoplied to meet op- 209 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON position, but sympathy might find her unprepared. If I should stand with her now, against her uncle, against her family, even against my own conviction in the present crisis, she might let me into her heart and trust me enough so that later I could defend her against herself a little. Of course, it was a risk. If I lost, I lost all. I wonder whether anybody else in the world is so often called upon to choose between the frying-pan and the fire? Anyway, like Alice in Looking-Glass Land, in order to reach my goal I walked straight away from it and I seem to be approaching it. I dare not be very confident yet, but truly, I seem almost to have reached it. Meanwhile, Gaveston was taking a hand. He said that he realized perfectly that he had done an unconventional thing a thing that he would never have ventured to do had he been less certain of his eligibility from a worldly point of view, and one for which he admitted he owed Miss Ames' family an explanation. He said he had not meant to be so precipitate did you ever hear of a precipitate spider? having intended waiting until Berenice was at home in New York, but that in her weariness that afternoon she had appealed very strongly to his "deepest and tenderest emotions," and he had spoken almost before he knew it. He is an artful Jabberwock and he played his part well, but he failed to impress Uncle Beverley, who retorted that while all this might be true, a gentle man generally held his emotions subject to his honor, whereupon Gaveston straightened his shoul- 210 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON ders, gave back glare for glare, and icily informed Mr. Ames that he would satisfy Miss Ames' parents perfectly as to his social position, personal integrity, and ability to care for their daughter. He further intimated that it might not be so easy to reconcile his own people to what, at first glance, would in evitably appear to them a mesalliance, but that they would recognize, as he had, Berenice's fitness for a position which she had never enjoyed and which he could give her. Thoroughly infuriated by this time, Uncle Bever- ley announced in effect, but in elegant and chiselled phrases, that he wouldn't have it at all. Berenice had been intrusted to him for safe-keeping, and it was his purpose here he glared at me to return her intact. She was informed, in addition, that her acquaintance with Mr. Gaveston was at an end and that she should in future neither receive nor recognize him. She put her chin in the air and said she would do exactly as seemed best to her about that, and that if her uncle objected so violently to Mr. Gaveston, he should have said so before, as it was too late now in which I firmly backed her up. She said that Mr. Gaveston had asked her to marry him, and while she had not yet given him an answer, she would give it very quickly in the affirmative, if she was "subjected to further persecution" by any member of her family. Uncle Beverley, almost choking with rage but still preserving the rigidity of his demeanor, in formed her that she was in effect his ward, and she 211 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON flung back the reminder that she would be legally of age within a few weeks, mistress of herself and of her fortune, and that unless he behaved very prettily indeed, she wouldn't even go home to be married, but would become Mrs. Gaveston down here somewhere and let him make the necessary explanations to the family at his leisure in which my sympathy was far from wholly feigned. At her age, I would have declared my intention of marrying Caliban himself, had I been subjected to the Ames variety of discipline. No wonder she tried to run away and marry Perry Waite! Poor child! She also made Uncle sit up when she informed him that he certainly couldn't expect her to respect a judgment which discriminated against Mr. Gaves ton and accepted "that Mrs. Rankin," adding, by way of a knot in the lash, that never before in her life had she been "forced to associate with that sort of person." I think it was more or less a ran dom stroke, but it touched a tender spot, and Uncle Beverley gasped and sputtered a little before he got himself in hand again. Naturally, I kept out of that particular fracas, but otherwise I fought by her side, and she was utterly bewildered by my championship. It seemed to unsettle her convictions, as I had hoped it might, and at first she was suspicious and scornful. But when I had openly and energetically defied Uncle Beverley and the whole Ames connection, and had insisted upon her right to live her life as her own spirit demanded, she realized that I meant what I said and I did, too! and from that mo- 212 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON ment she has clung to me pathetically, though I have had to be very careful not to frighten her away. Gaveston was clever enough to see at once that my sudden change of base probably boded no good for him, and I made no pretence that it did, though, of course, I said nothing to antagonize him. Altogether, it was something of a scene we had, and when it was over, Berenice came into my room and into my arms, and cried poor woman-child, how she cried! However, I knew it was good for her, so I let her sob it out, and I was so thankful that she came to me at last that I didn't much care what Uncle Beverley did or thought. She knew she had been horrid to me, she said, but that was when she thought I was against her, like everybody else, and over and over she begged my forgiveness. She said she didn't know what her family expected of her. She supposed they would select some rich, stupid, elderly friend of her father's somebody they had known all about since the year one and try to make her marry him, but she never would! They didn't care anything about her heart, but she would show them that she had a mind of her own, anyway! She'd marry Mr. Gaveston just as soon as she got home, and put the width of the world between herself and the rest of her family. I asked if she would like to be that far from her mother, whereat she wept wildly again, but insisted that her mother thought she ought to submit absolutely to her father and let him dictate every detail of her life. Is anybody so misunder stood as mothers? Poor, loyal, love-torn souls! 213 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON I tried to explain a little of what it means to be at once a wife and a mother, and then slipped on to soft talk about loyalty and its ideals, and finally about love. She turned upon me then, very white and stern. "If you please, we won't talk about love ever," she said. "That, at least, is over. I've done play ing with bubbles." So I didn't talk any more about love just then, but I had learned what I wanted to know. She was attracted to Gaveston because of what he could give her, not because of what she thought he was. This morning I had a very formal private au dience with Uncle Beverley. That is, he was formal. I told him in plain but polite language what I thought of his treatment of Berenice, and why I had arrayed myself with her against him. I also told him what I hoped to accomplish thereby, and that my opinion of Mr. Gaveston had not changed in any particular, to all of which he listened rigidly. Then he informed me that while possibly I could reconcile myself to my own conduct, he refused to be longer responsible for an unruly girl like Berenice, under the circumstances the inference being that I am the circumstances and that he had that morning cabled to her father that she and I would continue directly from Valparaiso to Liverpool, where it should be arranged for some one to meet us. Sent home, if you please, with our hands slapped ! I inquired whether he wasn't afraid I'd marry her off on the way over, and he hoped that I might be 214 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON granted some faint perception, by that time, of the gravity of my position. I suppose I ought to have been very angry, in stead of which I am afraid I was rude. He was puffy with dignity, and looked so exactly like a pompous and very well groomed gray frog, and his whole attitude in the matter was so absurd, any way, that it tickled my funny spot all at once and I sat down and laughed. Of course I was hysterical, but I laughed consumedly, and the more he puffed and sputtered the funnier it got. Finally, he stalked off in high dudgeon and then I came to my room and cried, but he'll never know that! Now I must brace up and get into harness again. I'll finish later if I survive. There seems a lively prospect, at present, that we may repeat the re markable experience of the Kilkenny cats. Valparaiso, April 28th. Well, here we are, what there is left of us! But between the after effects of siroche, which are still with me, a heavy cold, joints stiff with rheumatism, the fight I have waged for Berenice, society dissipa tion and packing, I can tell you there's mighty lit tle left of me but my pen hand and a wan smile. This is absolutely my first moment of even com parative leisure since I wrote last Friday, since which well, you know what Sherman said war was! We had an engagement to dine somewhere Fri- 215 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON day evening, but Berenice and I were both undone, and although Mr. Ames protested that it was un pardonable, we sent regrets at the last moment and he went alone. Gaveston called, and Shafter Blakeney, but we saw neither of them. We sat in my room in our bath -wrappers and talked and talked. I told her about Clark and our brief romance, and a little of why I have never married again, though I am sure he would wish me to. I told her that only those who had glimpsed love and lost it, and who, for one reason or another, were conscious ly facing life without it, could ever fully appreciate its glory, or realize the sacrilege of tarnishing its purity by so much as a breath. That idea appealed to her at once, and she let me talk in that strain as long as I cared to, while there crept into her manner a new dignity, as of a woman ennobled by a great and sorrowful experience. How quickly and naturally and unconsciously youth adapts itself to a congenial role! I was careful not to allude to Perry Waite. I assumed, as she did, that he had gone forever out of her life as doubt less he has. But thereafter I held her to that ideal of love. Sometimes she turned cynical and sneered; indeed, she had long hours of backsliding, particularly after she had seen Gaveston and been tempted by the kingdoms of the earth, or after Uncle Beverley had been doing his duty as he saw it. But I thought I had found the keynote, and every day I touched it sometimes only by assuming that she and I 216 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON were indissolubly united by this common knowl edge of life's loneliness and sorrow. She is young and romantically morbid, and it held her in the balance. Sometimes she swayed toward Gaveston, sometimes toward me, and we both worked breathlessly and without ceasing but I had the advantage. I had her late at night, and in those hours when I sat on the edge of her bed, talking, far into the morning, I washed out much of the impression that he had made during the day for I no longer interposed myself between them. I knew that she must believe that he had his chance. Sometimes, during these midnight talks, she showed me little bits of her heart, but mostly she just cuddled close and listened, and the only real reason I had for believing I was holding her was that she was never willing that I should leave her and go to bed. Meanwhile, we had made a lot of engagements for those last days, and as we didn't care to ad vertise our differences, and also because our time with these delightful new friends was so limited, we kept them all breakfasts, teas, dinners nearly every day, and sometimes bridge in the evening. Sunday we tried to do some packing, but some one came in to breakfast, and from then until we went to Mrs. Yale's to tea, at half-past four, we had a steady stream of callers, among them Don Jose" Carter, who came to say good-bye. Again we tried to take him to Mrs. Yale's with us, but he could not go. Gaveston was there, however, waiting for Bere- 217 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON nice, and I was delighted to see that she was be ginning to think a little for herself, for when he attempted one of his witty, sneering comments on Chileans, she swooped at him like a flame, crying: "You shall not say that! It can't be true of a nation that has produced a man like Don Jose Carter! They are his people he knows them and he believes in them and he is right!" That was hopeful but it was also unfortunate, for it frightened Gaveston, and he proceeded to woo her so ardently during the remainder of the afternoon that he all but won her, and Uncle Bever- ley completed the catastrophe by descanting for half an hour upon the sin of disobedience in the young. I couldn't get near her that night. She was very sweet to me, but seemed tired and depressed, and when I tried to bring her up into key, she said, recklessly : " Oh, what's the use! Since nobody's happy any way, one might as well take what offers!" Then I was frightened, but she refused to talk. She said her head ached, and would I mind if she tried to go to sleep at once? I didn't sleep any, nor, by her appearance next morning, did she. Home letters came with our coffee, and while we were still reading them, she tossed over her shoulder, in a hard tone that she tried to make sound careless: "Oh, by-the-bye, I told Mr. Gaveston that he might come in about eleven. I hope you don't mind?" 218 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON I did mind, for I knew from her face that he was coming for his answer and that he had beaten me. I couldn't speak for a moment, and when I went behind her chair and touched her cheek, she drew away, with a sharp "Don't, please!" Of course I tried to get her talk, but she wouldn't, and I saw that to force her in that mood would be to undo everything. About ten Shafter Blakeney's card came in, with a pencilled line: "Please see me. Important." Naturally, I had him in at once, Berenice retiring precipitately to her room. He asked for her, how ever, and I made her come out to tell him good-bye. Then said he, very quietly: "I have a letter for you, Miss Ames." Before I could interfere, he handed it to her. She glanced at the superscription, turned deathly white, and after the barest possible hesitation, tore the letter into four pieces and flung it into the waste-basket. Then she looked at him a look of such scorn and pain and bitterness as I never saw in any young face before and turned toward her room. "Wait," said he, in that same tense, quiet tone and she waited, her back to him. "He said you would probably do that. Then I was to tell you this. He loves you " Here I got my breath and attempted to interfere, but he waved me aside as if I had been dry leaves. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Pom- eroy; I must say this. He loves you. He trusts you. He will always know, even if you do not love him, that you will preserve the high traits that 219 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON made him love you, and so he will always go on lov ing you all his life. Thank you. That is all." For a moment we all stood like statues. Then Berenice flashed into her room and locked the door, after which I recovered the power of motion and the use of my tongue, and turned to the Blakeney boy for an explanation of what I assured him was outrageous conduct. "I'm sorry," said he, with unmoved quiet. "I didn't like to do that, but I had to do it for Perry. It was the only way to reach her. I had a letter from him in Iquique he knew we came down on the same ship and when I rejoined you and found Gaveston on board, I thought he ought to know how things were going, so I cabled him from Anto- fogasta. I got an answer in Valparaiso asking me to keep him posted, and to wait for a letter. That's why I've been hanging around so long. I know how it must look to you. That's the reason I wanted to say it in your presence. I didn't want you to think I sneaked in. But you see, I had to do that much for Perry. Now I'll go and tell Mr. Ames. He will be very angry." I said that he would, with reason, and that the whole affair was outrageous and shocking, and that I was very much surprised in him. Then Marion, I kissed him! He looked down at me with his droll smile, saying: "So I'm not too late? I was afraid I might be." And though I made no reply, he didn't seem to notice it, and went away very happily, I shall miss him. 220 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON I tapped once or twice at Berenice's door and got no reply. Just before eleven, when I was packing my bag all this happened, you see, on our very last day in Santiago she called me. I found her standing in her doorway, pale as the traditional ghost and almost as impalpable. She had never seemed so remote. She handed me a small en velope. "Will you give that to Mr. Gaveston when he comes, please? And tell him I cannot see him again. I cannot! And please don't speak of any of this ever!" This last was whispered from behind the closing door, and then the lock clicked. Gaveston read the note apparently only a line with a black countenance. "Of course you know all about this?" he asked; and when I assured him that I knew nothing about it, he sneered. He demanded an interview with Berenice, and when I said that she had refused to see him again, he accused me of forcing her against her will as if anybody on earth could do that! and made himself generally unpleasant. Mr. Gav eston is a bad loser. I wish I thought we had seen the end of him, but he will not give up so easily. He had no sooner gone than in came Uncle Beverley, fuming. Shafter had found him and made his confession. And did I suppose that under these circumstances he was going to send Berenice back to New York and to the whipper-snapper cousin of this young scamp ? Not he ! He had undertaken to keep her in South America for six months, and he was going to do it! 221 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON I calmly remarked that of course he would do as he liked about that, but as for me, I was going home. Mr. Beverley Ames is discovering that al though my sense of humor is sometimes stronger than my amour propre, I am nevertheless not ac customed to having my hands slapped, and diplo- matie relations are decidedly strained. On this occasion, he found me almost as intractable as if I were a member of his own family which, thank the good Lord, I am not ! and he went off in a rage to breakfast somewhere, and I went on packing. Berenice stayed in her room all day, refusing breakfast, emerging, however, in time to go to the Legation to tea, perfectly colorless but apparently entirely composed. The dear Gaylords had asked several of the diplo matic set and some others to bid us "bon voyage," and we drove from there directly to the train, Ned and Mrs. Yale accompanying us to the station. Ned will be leaving in a few days, presumably via the Cordillera. I wanted to go that way, but they told me I must not try that altitude again so soon. Mrs. Yale cried when she told us good-bye, and my own eyes were wet. That was the end of lovely Santiago. The ride down was uninteresting, of course, being wholly in the dark, and we arrived in Valparaiso about eleven, in a pouring rain, and the one cab at the station was snapped up by somebody else. But the porter from the hotel was there looking for us, and we followed him and a long procession of boys laden with our hand luggage, through the 222 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON glistening streets to the hotel, where we found the proprietor waiting to shake hands with us and make us welcome, and our old rooms ready for us. After all, there is something mighty pleasant about the manners and methods of some of these foreign hotels, after our brusque, bustling, indifferent American ways, even though they haven't the latest plumb ing and private baths. So here we are, packed and strapped and ready to sail. It has rained all the morning, but is clear ing now, and we shall go aboard in about fifteen minutes. Berenice is in a mood of still and tragic exaltation, very far indeed from earth and its petty concerns such as collar-pins, comb, brushes and the like. I found all these articles and a few more lying about after her bag was locked, and while she was quite indifferent about them at the time, I fancy she will find use for them later. Hair must be combed and collars fastened, though hearts break. Naturally, this won't last. When she has touched the highest point, the pendulum will swing to the other extreme and then will come the tug of war. Then I shall know perhaps what actual influence I have with her. And Heaven send that Gaveston be far away! At Sea, May 6th. This has been a beast of a trip cold, damp, dis agreeable in every way, with mighty little to offer as compensation. is 223 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON It began with trouble about the trunks, which were eventually all accounted for, after which we rowed out to the ship, to find when we reached the deck that the landing-ladder had been freshly painted and that we were covered from head to foot with smears of white lead. Imagine painting a ladder just before passengers come aboard! I ruined a pair of long black gloves and a perfectly good tem per in less time than it takes to write it, neither of which has been replaced. I was somewhat cheered when I discovered a crisp, smiling, black-f rocked, white-capped English stewardess, the first I had seen in this incarnation, and a steward who gives the perfection of good service. If it hadn't been for these two quick, quiet, competent and courteous I should have given up the ghost long ere this. But the instant we left the breezy deck, our nos trils were assailed and oh, my dear! I don't know why this ship should be so afflicted, for it seems to be cleaner and better kept than some others I have travelled on, but never, even on a miserable little tupenny- ha'penny coaster, have I suffered its like in that respect. All the accumu lated odors of years rise and smite you at every turn. The deeper you go the worse it gets, and we are down on the main deck! I began to wonder then what the tropics would bring forth when this was possible fifty degrees south, and at that time I had fully decided to call Uncle Bever- ley's bluff and go directly on to England with this ship. I have since decided that I would rather swim. 224 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Even that first day it was too much for me. When I had finished unpacking my bag and getting settled, after lunch, the berth looked tempting, for I was really very tired, and I rolled in for a nap. The odors did the rest, together with a " tummy " still disordered from the attack of siroche, and I awoke in unhappy plight. However, I dragged myself on deck, and later went to dinner, where some hot soup and a glass of champagne which Uncle Beverley insisted upon he is a kind thing, Marion, for he was still perfectly furious! fixed me up. I finally went to sleep very comfortably, with a hot- water bottle at my feet and a sachet over my nose. The next morning we were at Lota, where the ship lay all day coaling, and a young man named Miller, a nephew of one of Mr. Ames' business friends in Santiago, came aboard and invited us to go ashore with him to see the Cousino place. I would have refused to go, for relations between Mr. Ames and me were still strained almost to the breaking point, but he suggested that we owed it to ourselves to spend as much time as possible away from the ship, and I was glad to acquiesce. During her lifetime, Sefiora Cousino was said to be the richest woman in Chile, and being of a jocund temper, she "did a stately pleasure dome decree" down here at Lota, her "sacred river" rich veins of coal that run not only to the sea but far under it, where her minions mined it and still do, though she is long since turned to clay. But if she lacked Alph, she had here all the rest 225 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON in her "twice five miles of fertile ground." There are sinuous paths, beautiful statues well, more or less beautiful; some of them are not so bad splendid trees, shady glades, formal gardens, tangled hillside ferneries, arbors hung with blossoming vines, wide, sun-flecked lawns, fountains, grottos, bridges, rills, masses upon masses of hydrangea, fading now, and myriads of azaleas, just coming into flower; glimpses here and broad panoramic views there of the sparkling blue bay or pine-clad hills; porter's lodge, gardener's cottage, conservatories, stables all down here at the end of the world, miles from anything but a coal-mine. It is a whole hill made into a park, upon which talented landscape-gardeners imported from Europe have lavished their best work, and it is surmounted by an ungainly and unfinished "palace," upon the beautiful carved wainscotings of which rests the dust of a decade, its grand staircase a hole, its floors littered with lumber and crated marbles all un touched since the workmen laid aside their tools the day "the old-sefiora" died, ten years or more ago. It was like visiting some weird, haunted demesne, or the gardens of the Sleeping Beauty. The present owner of the place is the invalid daughter of Sefiora Cousifio, and no one ever comes here now but the trustees of the estate and strangers who wish to see the park. We were driven to the clean little village in the depot -wagon from the Cousifio stables, and after breakfast at the hotel, bouquets of fine roses and 226 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON most exquisite ferns were brought to us from the Cousino conservatories. Finally, we strolled down to the wharf, where a four-oared boat was sum moned, and we were rowed out through a turbulent sea to the ship, our boatmen being drenched before we arrived. Then followed days of misery, when water-bottles and sachet bags availed me nothing. Rheumatism chained me below, and again the aforesaid odors did the rest. We had been assured that the ship would be steam heated, but so far as I can learn, the only warmth in the whole vessel outside of the galley and the boiler-room has been in my faithful rubber bags. It has been very cold not the sharp, frosty cold that invigorates one, but a damp, penetrating chill that gets into one's very marrow and makes it shiver. Men sat in the "Music Saloon" in sweaters and heavy overcoats, collars turned up, rugs wrap ped about their knees, and everybody had a cold. It rained or misted most of the time, so the decks were wet, and down below, where I was imprisoned, it was impossible to get even a breath of fresh air, because green seas washed constantly across the ports. Occasionally I was forced to the decks to breathe, and the damp cold sent me down stiffer than ever. Even the one thing I had looked forward to was denied me. Imagine going through the Strait of Magellan without even a glimpse of its wondrous scenery its snowy mountains and tremendous glaciers! Photographs that I had seen of it in 227 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Santiago almost reconciled me to missing the rest of the Cordillera trip, even though it was not pos sible for us to go through Smyth's Channel, where the finest of it lies. The first night out, therefore, I asked the Captain when we might begin to look for scenery, and he cheerfully and nonchalantly returned: "Oh, you won't see any scenery. We go through all that at night." Likewise, when we lay anchored one morning off Punta Arenas,* all the beauty behind, he triumphed: "There! You see? I did it. I always do it. I don't miss it one trip in ten." And when I told him that I thought he was intensely disagreeable, he seemed quite unable to credit my sincerity. He thought I was being humorous. His reason for coming through all the fine part of the Strait at night was that he saved a little time, arriving at Punta Arenas in the morning in stead of at night, and consequently being able to get to work at once. But considering that this is at best a long voyage something like five weeks from Valparaiso to Liverpool, I believe twelve hours more or less couldn't make much difference; and as the fares are inordinately high and the ser vice poor, one does feel that one is at least entitled to what little scenery there is. If an American company owned this line, it would be advertised as a scenic route and operated ac cordingly, and tourists would flock to these straits * Pronounced Poon-tah A-ray-nas. 228 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON and channels, once they became known, as they do to the fjords of Norway, which they are said to re semble in certain respects. Oh, how I do long to see my own countrymen come down to this side of the equator! If they would only introduce some modern business methods, and themselves acquire some of the courtesy of these Spanish peoples in doing it, what a blessing it would be for everybody concerned! Some of out English and European friends might not see it in that light, but a little reconstruction wouldn't hurt them, either. Punta Arenas, the southernmost city in the world, surprised me by its size. It covers a large area, housing some twelve thousand people, I believe, and squats on its bleak slope as if it didn't mind the cold at all. Somehow, I expected to find it huddled. We were there on Sunday, so everything was very quiet, but it has good streets and clean, some com paratively large and well built business houses, and a few very attractive residences. It has also a rather forlorn, frozen-looking little plaza, with the inevitable band-stand in the centre. We stepped into a fur and curio shop, of whose proprietor we had heard, and when we asked him if his name was Olsen, he replied: "You bet!" whereby we knew we had found our man. Like everybody who has seen it, he was full of tales of our fleet (did I tell you of the great impres sion it produced in Chile? Everybody was talking about it, even when we were there) his chiefly 229 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON celebrating the large quantities of his goods it bore away. He said that he had to lock his door to keep the crowd out, and that the street outside was full of American sailors holding up twenty-dollar gold pieces and begging for admission. Once dur ing their visit, a dressed sealskin was stolen from him. He said nothing, but promptly added one pound to the price of every skin he sold thereafter, thus making the many pay twenty-fold for the sin of the one. "What else could I do, eh? I'm not staying down here for my health, you bet!" I bought a fascinating white feather boa, made of the straight, short, downy feathers of the native ostrich, but more nearly resembling swansdown than ostrich feathers as we know them. I asked him if it would wear well, and he replied: "You bet! Wash like muslin. And it's well made. The feathers are tied and sewed. I know, because I make 'em myself, and I'm the only man who does, you bet!" We told him that Berenice had bought a similar boa in Santiago, and a much larger one, for less money, which staggered him for a moment, but he recovered and said he didn't know where it came from, but it certainly wasn't any good, for he made the only good ones, "you bet!" Altogether, this was an enlivening episode after our cold, dreary days at sea. Another was fur nished by an Englishman who sits opposite us, at the Captain's left, and who went ashore with us on Uncle Beverley's invitation. 230 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON After having a very good breakfast together at a hotel where, by-the-way, there was a stove with a fire in it, and I enjoyed the only comfortable moments I have known since leaving Lota we walked with him to the telegraph office. We had very little Chilean money left among us by this time, but he had carefully saved a peso for this telegram to Santiago. He inquired the rate, and was told that it was one peso for ten words, so he wrote his message and proffered his coin. The man at the window read it, and said: "Two pesos, please." The Englishman protested vigorously. " Si, si," acquiesced the man, " one peso in Spanish, but in English two." "Very good," quoth Briton, pocketing his peso and his message, "we do no business. The English made this country if it hadn't been for us you wouldn't have had any country and I'm hanged if I'll pay two pesos for writing in English!" All the way to the wharf he sputtered about it. What would these people have been without the English? A lot of unwashed cannibals! They wouldn't have had any country, he said; they wouldn't have had any commerce, they wouldn't have had any government. And now that they had been permitted to enjoy these things for a few years, they thought they were strong enough to turn around and bite the Englishmen! Double price for a message in English, by Jove! If they had a decent sense of gratitude, they'd jolly well send it for nothing. 231 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON This same man averred at breakfast that England itself is now becoming a decadent and tea-drinking nation. Once a man went out about eleven, he said, and had his whiskey. Then he had his quart of beer for lunch, and that was all there was to it until dinner. Now they drink tea at all hours. "Beer, beef and the Bible made England what she is," said he. "Let her stay there!" He also says that the English are a nation of kickers! From Punta Arenas on it has not been so rough and at no time has it been very rough the last two days have been a little warmer, and we have seen the sun again. It seemed odd last night that it should go down on our left, when for so many, many days at sea it has always set to the right. By that we know that we have really turned this corner of the world, in the shadow of the South Pole, and are headed north again. In one of my letters I said, in a whimsical mo ment, that South America lay at the end of the path through the looking-glass, and I have since realized that I can hardly give you a better de scription of one's impression in and south of Val paraiso. It is like entering a reflection of one's own environment and pursuing it to the last sharp point where perspective ceases. Many things are much as they are at home but it is all backward. South of Santiago's Calif ornian valley, for ex ample, are Concepcion and Valdivia, where it rains so much that the people are dubbed " web-feet," as are the residents of Oregon and Washington on our 232 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON own Pacific Coast, and where the hills, like ours, are covered with dark pines. Somewhere down there, on the Argentine side, lie the wheat-fields that rival those of British Columbia; and south of that, again, the Patagonian pampas, where cattle and sheep are raised. But it is all transposed. Right is left and left is right. July is in midwinter, painters seek a south light, warm winds come from the north, and while things move along in convincing sequence, one is never quite free from a haunting sense of hallucina tion and unreality. And yet, in spite of all the trouble and anxiety I had there, how I did hate to leave the west coast! Some day I'm coming back to these countries, with plenty of time and plenty of money, and nobody's sweet will to consult but my own, and then I am going to do all the things we have done this time and a lot more, without assistance from any of the Jabberwocky people ! I am going to begin at Guayaquil, where : 'el bubonico" will by that time be stamped out, and when I've seen that, I'm going up to Quito, which lies directly on the equator, and is, as yet, comparatively uninfluenced by foreign invasion. I am also going up the Arroyo road from Lima, and to Cuxco, where the Inca ruins are, and into Bolivia to Lake Titi- caca and La Paz, as well as to several other interest ing places that I have heard about. I am going to visit some of the "oficinas" in the nitrate district. And then I shall cross the Cor dillera. I shall not come through the Strait again 233 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON unless, perchance, an opportunity to see Smyth's Channel should present itself. I'd endure a good deal for that privilege. Think of having been so near all these things and seeing none of them! But then, when it comes to that, think of all the things I have seen that I never even knew existed until I came down here. Apropos of thinking, I have had plenty of time for meditation myself, during all the long days and nights of lying down here swathed in flannels and packed in hot- water bottles. Berenice has been very helpful and thoughtful in many little ways, but I have avoided any allusion to her late experi ences though I suspect Uncle Beverley of having labored with her faithfully. Methinks I discovered traces of his "sweet Roman hand." Naturally, her mood of extreme exaltation after refusing Gaveston lasted only a day or two, and then she fell into black and savage melancholy. During this period her attentions were rather per functory, but I was too ill to care what happened as long as my hot-water bags were filled regularly, and the stewardess attended to that. I did see, however, that while she was at first afraid that I might attempt some return to our old confidential talks, she finally perceived that I was not dangerous, and then the state-room became a sort of haven to her when Uncle conscientiously gave the screws another twist. She spent hours sitting down here staring at the wall, and I let her gloom it out in silence, partly because I was so ill, 234 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON and partly because I knew that, like any other fever, it must run its course. Next she turned hard and reckless, and flung youthful cynicisms about until I should have been buried under them, like the babes in the wood, if I had not known that they weren't real. You see what she was doing, of course living the whole long agony over again, from the first bitterness when her lover refused to elope with her a memory which cut deep after the elation produced by his message on through the various phases to the mood in which she would have accepted Gaveston, the more reck less now that she had put that chance behind her and Uncle Beverley evidently was crowding the mourners hard. I think she would have been glad of something to fight for a day or two. She trailed the tail of her coat invitingly before me, and her eye taunted me, but I didn't notice that, either. I'll warrant she took it out of Uncle, though, for sometimes she came in so flushed with victory that she almost for got to be bitter. I don't mean to imply that all this is a conscious pose. Far from it! Simply that she is very young, with youth's conviction that tragedy, to be real tragedy, must wear a flowing black cloak and drag its toes. And this is deeply real tragedy to her, for she is tossed and lashed by the passions of an undisciplined nature, and nobody seems to see that down underneath it all is a great strength that is going to make life heaven or hell for her and for several other people, according to how it is developed, There is no doubt in my mind, now, that she really loves Perry Waite and scorns herself for doing it. And while the instances are very rare when first love is real and vital I have thanked Heaven, fast ing, many times, that the course of mine was rocky and ended in a ditch I do believe that Berenice Ames has found and dimly recognized that other half which makes the perfect sphere, and when we get home, I shall have things to say to Dick and Helen about the dangers of thwarting that union if we ever do get home. Meanwhile, I take it cheerfully for granted that all the trouble is over, and I have finally got her to the point where she talks freely, for the first time, about impersonal matters, and really seems to en joy the companionship, though she is still cynical. When she is fully convinced not only that I don't want to talk about life and love and sorrow any more, but that I absolutely refuse to, she will begin to hanker for the subject, and if I can get her to seek me instead of having to coax her, I shall feel that there is some hope that I could really help her in a crisis. She needs something firm to plant her feet on, and apparently she has never had it. There are some others of us who need a firm foot ing, too. Oh, Marion, I am so lonely! I don't mean that I am homesick, except in the deeper sense, which will only hurt the more keenly when I get "home" and have no home to go to when I meet my friends and they are all dear to me, you dearest of all and find no one to whom my coming or going marks the difference between life and existence. 236 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON It isn't anything new, this feeling. I have fooled my world, I have fooled you I have almost fooled myself, sometimes, into thinking that life was whole for me, and that my friendships and my various interests filled it. But always this loneliness has been eating my heart, and now it has eaten so much of it that I can no longer fool myself or you. I know. You are asking why I never married this one or that. You have always supposed it was because of my devotion to Clark's memory. It wasn't. I have been thinking a great deal about Clark lately of that cloudless romance of ours and the sudden nightfall. It was a sweet and tender episode but I know now that it was only an epi sode. Our love was never put to the test of life. We played together for a few months, very happily, and then he died. Of course, I grieved, sincerely and deeply, but I know now that no human being can tell I least of all how it would have been with us after all these years. And I have never married any of the men who have asked me since they have not been as many as people have imagined, either, for I have a genius for friendship and most of my friends were never my lovers I have not married because no one of these men ever awoke in me the consciousness that here was the other half of that sphere I have men tioned. When I married Clark I was seeking it ; when he died, I was still seeking it. I do not mean that I was disappointed and I don't think he missed anything, though I can't be sure. I mean simply 237 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON that I was still feeling for the perfect adjustment. I had not found it then, I have not found it since and I have never been willing to call anything less than that marriage. Perhaps this is a foolish and impossible ideal, but it is the one toward which all my life has moved. I have been hard on the women who "married for a home." I have said that I would respect them more if they sold themselves honestly, keeping their de filing hands off sacred and beautiful things. But to-day I could almost bring myself to marry either of two men who have asked me, if they should ask me again. Perhaps I would have the strength to refuse if it came to the point, but I'm afraid I shouldn't, so devouring is this hunger for some thing that is mine, even if it isn't perfect. Some body to care for, who would turn to me for help, or comfort, or companionship, or even for amuse ment. Something that would be home, even if cer tain of its chambers were forever sealed. Loneli ness is making a coward of me, dear. Ah, well there's no use in your being miserable because I am; but it does help to take the lid off my soul once in a while and show you what's inside. Nobody else in all the world has ever looked in. Now let's come back to earth and everyday life and don't stub your toe on Uncle Beverley! At Punta Arenas, when I emerged from my en forced seclusion, he attempted to assume that all was as "befo' de wah," but I fixed him with my glittering eye and he wilted. However, the Eng lishman was with us, so he couldn't go into details, 238 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON and immediately upon returning to the ship I sought the seclusion that the cabin grants and the solace of hot- water bottles for my aching joints. Yesterday was the date of my next reappearance, and you'd have thought a bereaved hen had re covered her one chicken! Such a clucking and scratching and ruffling of feathers you never be held! And when they had me ensconced in the warmest corner, rugs and pillows and hot- water bags and salts and books and Heaven knows what, all disposed where they would do the most good, he asked humbly whether he might have a few minutes' conversation with me. I said that he might, but I was very haughty about it. I still remembered having my hands slapped. Then, dear girl, poor old Uncle Beverley metaphorically got down on his knees to me and apologized for everything he had ever said or done or intimated or thought, until I simply had to for give him. I know how hard that sort of thing comes to one of his blood. When this had all been fixed up and the peace pipe smoked, he asked me whether I knew how matters stood between Berenice and Gaveston. The minx hadn't told him! And when I replied that all I knew about it was that her farewell to the gentle man was conveyed in a note which made him very angry, Uncle Beverley rubbed his hands and said that it was gratifying to learn that his appeal to her loyalty and pride of family had not been made in vain. This was where I took to smelling-salts! There was nothing stronger at hand. 16 239 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Then he alluded to Shafter Blakeney and his " un warrantable interference," and was confident that I now saw the necessity of keeping Berenice out of New York as long as possible. I reminded him that Gaveston was still in South America, but he pooh-poohed the suggestion, and said Berenice had learned that lesson and we need not fear. I argued the matter at some length of course to no purpose but he is the general in command, and the result is that we are to carry out the trip as originally planned. Mrs. Rankin was not mentioned. I don't think he saw much of her those last days, as Ned seemed to be absorbing most of her leisure time. There was something about Ned's helping her, unofficially, in connection with some business, but I fancy that was more or less an excuse. He evidently liked her, and he spent a lot of time with her. Isn't it strange that that sort of woman can always pull the wool over a good man's eyes ? I have tried to think that I was mistaken about her, for Ned's sake; but I know I'm not. She couldn't fool Gaveston a quarter of a minute, but poor old Ned will have to pay the piper somehow. However it's none of my affair. Thank Heaven, I haven't that on my conscience! We shall see him again in Rio, but I am not antici pating it with any particular eagerness. We shall have a good time together, of course. We always do. But somehow Ned seemed so far away those last days. Friendly as ever, in one way but clear out of reach. It is the first time he ever failed me. Perhaps nobody could give me the help I so des- 240 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON perately needed, or perhaps he didn't understand. There's no reason why he should except that he always has before. Or perhaps he found me changed and was disappointed. Of course, that's it but I hate to admit it. I expect too much of life, don't I ? I always did. Anyhow, neither Berenice nor Uncle Beverley has been gobbled by any predatory beasts yet do you remember the woman who refused "Welsh rabbit" because she didn't like "four-footed wild game"? and my stock as a sympathetic audience is again at par. Mr. Ames has been hanging about for half an hour. Now I'll put away my pen and settle down to hear some more about the Civil War. It is really quite soothing after the "shrill notes of anger and mortal alarms" that we have been through. Aren't we the happy family, though? Buenos Aires, May i8th. I know. I have not written for nearly two weeks. My long-raging cacoethes scribendi seems to have passed its crisis and waned; or perhaps it has merged into the passion for fault-finding cacoethes carpendi, if my Latin serves that now possesses me, for nothing seems quite as it should. I suppose the real trouble is that I am tired. I wasn't caught young enough for this job. If one is going to attempt to chaperon a Young Wild Thing through the Wet Wild Woods, one needs to 241 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON have begun training for it in childhood, like any other acrobat. Otherwise, it gets on one's nerves. Anyway, it got on mine and it still sits heavy. As long as we danced on the edge of a precipice, I kept myself fairly well in hand and relieved the tension by writing all about it to you, but as soon as the immediate danger was over, I slumped badly as you will have discovered before this reaches you, since which nothing has seemed worth while, writing least of all. But at any rate, I have the grace to be ashamed of the last screed I sent you. I get hot all over when I think of that wail ! You are wise in the ways of the human heart, though, and I hope you'll understand. I am not denying that at the moment I felt it all and more, but I needn't have said so. I haven't yet pulled myself out of the bog perhaps because there has been no compelling cry from Macedonia, and all that is required of me is amiability and a certain amount of patience. Berenice has turned indifferent again not to me especially, but to things in general. Nothing in terests her. I can't find it in my heart to blame her for that, however, as I am in the same boat. Noth ing interests me very much, either. I did enjoy our week in Montevideo,* which, from the moment I looked out of my porthole and saw the sun shining on the fortified, cone-shaped moun tain from which the city takes its name, until we walked from the hotel to the river steamer * Pronounced Mon-tay-vee-dciy-oh. 242 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON that brought us up here, never ceased to be at tractive. It is a pretty little city, much more modern than any we had then seen in South America, and de lightfully situated on a peninsula, with glimpses of water at the end of almost every street, and sundry hills about. It has better buildings and more of them, better streets, finer and more numerous parks and plazas, larger shops, more fountains and statues some of these very beautiful, and much handsomer resi dences than the west-coast towns. In short, the whole place has an air a manner quite different from anything we saw over there. It is a modern city, but it also has a certain quaintness and great charm a thing as elusive and impossible of defin ition in a city as in a woman. Still I do not love Montevideo as I do Santiago. Two or three customs that I happened to notice interested me particularly, as they prevail in so many Spanish-American cities that they must be legacies from Spain. As in Havana and in certain Mexican towns that I know, the elfin music of the syrinx the pipes o' Pan beneath one's window announce that the scissors-grinder passes. Electric trams jangle their bells, as with us, but all drivers of horse-cars carry a tiny horn literally a horn, with a reed set in it upon which they blow a mel low note before turning a corner or to warn ob structionists to clear the track. And the police, by means of their soft and musical whistles, convey all sorts of information to one another. A certain 243 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON arrangement of notes means all's well, another summons assistance, still another says, "Watch this person who approaches," and so on. All night long, if one happens to be wakeful, these dulcet measures may be heard, now close at hand, now clear and distant as an echo, always pleasant to the ear. We took a tram out to Pocitos, a suburb on the seashore, where many of the houses were tall and spikey, and were spotted or striped fantastically, like the edifices children build with blocks. Few trees are about them, and to me they were not par ticularly attractive. But the next day we drove to the Prado, a park, and on the way out passed two or three miles of beautiful residences, large, low, fitting the environment, and either disclosing through open doors tempting, blossom-filled patios, or being themselves set far back in luxuriant, shady gardens. The crowd in the Prado was, of course, very in teresting. There were many presentable equipages and very many striking hats, gowns and complex ions. An amusing American woman whom we met in Montevideo said that when she first came to these countries to live, she felt that she was making herself very conspicuous because she appeared in public with a face au naturel! The people, generally speaking, are good-looking, though I saw few individual faces that were es pecially strong or attractive. They seemed to me less aggressive but more sophisticated than the Chileans. The course of empire touched them first. However, all these opinions of mine are only im- 244 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON pressions snap-shots caught on the wing for we are not staying anywhere long enough to acquire any real knowledge of people or conditions, and the people who live here contradict one another about everything. This has been true everywhere we have been. One resident of a country has told us that the inhab itants were intelligent and industrious, another that they were lazy and stupid ; one has said that the peo ple were trustworthy, another that they were treach erous; one that they were normally honest, another that they were all thieves; one that a country was progressing, another that its only hope lay in immi gration ; one that the government here or there was fairly sound, another that it was absolutely rotten ; one that life down here was pleasant, another that it was all but intolerable and there you are! As for myself, I think it's just like all the rest of the world, and that is as you take it. Light and shadow balance pretty evenly everywhere, I fancy. But the more I travel the more I marvel at those gifted persons who skim across a country or a con tinent, touching it here and there, as we are doing, talking to this and that person, as we are doing, reading this or that descriptive book or pamphlet as we are doing and then confidently toddle home to write solemn disquisitions about it, in which they make positive statements about its people and politics, manners and morals, agriculture and com merce, art, literature and religion, not to mention its flora, fauna, mineral wealth and hotels, and ex pect to be taken seriously in the telling! To my 245 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON notion, no man nor woman, either can really tell the truth about a country until he has lived in it and studied it, and even then he needs the tongues of men and of angels. We went pawn-shopping in Montevideo, as we have in every place we have visited, and bought, among other things, a beautiful old rosary of wood and silver. When we approached the quaint, fat old woman who presided over the shop, and asked the price of the rosaries in her window, she sat still in her chair, and counterquestioned : "Why should you ask about rosaries? You do not look like Catholics." We pressed our inquiry, and she finally replied, "Dos pesos," still without budging. "Show them to me," said I, rather sharply, and she got up reluctantly, complaining that we cer tainly would not buy rosaries when we were Prot estants. Neither would she come down in her price, as most of them expect to do, so we paid the two pesos and left her still grumbling that we were no Catholics and why should we buy a rosary? The fine large steamers that leave Montevideo three of them every night during the season, have been taken off, and we came up the river in a crazy little ark that Noah must have improved upon, or the animals would have cut him up and made him and all the rest of the human family into mat tresses. However, we survived the night, but all we saw of the River of Silver, aside from a few lights along its distant banks, was a muddy, eddying, 246 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON twisting current that kept the boat corkscrewing about in what seemed an utter and reckless dis regard of its rudder. At half -past four the next morning we docked in Buenos Aires,* "the Paris of South America," and an hour or so later, emerged from our cubbyholes, a pale, heavy-eyed trio. The first thing I saw was a busy dock, with quantities of shipping about and a cosmopolitan crowd of loafers; the next was the sun glinting upon the golden triple cross of the Russian Cathedral, somewhere across the city. We drove, in a rubber-tired victoria, over asphalt pavements, through tree-bordered boulevards, into a city with an air distinctly modern a real city. We came to a hotel equipped with steam-heat and running water and a cuisine that would make the most firmly anchored anchorite you ever heard of cut his moorings and fall to and still we're not happy! Buenos Aires has miles upon miles of well-paved streets, among them the famed and beautiful Avenida de Mayo, where the cafes spill out on the sidewalks, Paris fashion; thousands upon thousands of twink ling electric lights, hundreds upon hundreds of hand some carriages and automobiles, scores upon scores of glittering shops, dozens upon dozens of plazas more or less ornamented with trees, fountains, and statues and millions upon millions of dollars. There seems to be an impression prevailing in the United States that this city is surrounded by moun- * Pronounced Bway-nos Eye-rays. 247 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON tains and forests. On the contrary, it is set in the midst of a vast, alluvial plain, and is as flat as Chicago, the gray river, so wide here that the opposite bank is not visible, taking the place of Lake Michigan. Indeed, it reminds one strongly of Chicago in many ways a Chicago Latinized and clean. The cleanliness of many of these South American cities, as to streets and public places, is a thing to give us pause. Buenos Aires, almost as large and as busy and as bustling as Chicago, is as clean as a new whistle from end to end. Why are we so stupid about municipal housekeeping ? To the commercial traveller who has spent weeks or months of hardship and deprivation in dirty, dreary little towns, to the planter and cattle man and their wives and daughters in for a few days from "the camp," Buenos Aires is a radiant, glister ing, Christmas-tree heaven. To the business man it is Opportunity in capitals. To the student of economics it is a remarkable example of rapid com mercial growth, fully equalling in that respect and in some others inevitably bound up with it the most spectacularly successful of our own mush room cities. But to the traveller who knows Paris and London and New York, it has little of novelty to offer except its isolation, away off down here by itself. Still, if New York were the only city in the United States some people think it is! or Paris were the only city in western Europe, we would know, be yond the peradventure of a doubt, that they were 248 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON the most brilliant, the most beautiful and altogeth er the most unapproachably wonderful cities in all creation, wouldn't we? Well, that's the way it is down here in the Argentine, and woe be to the un wary wayfarer who ventures the mildest intimation to the contrary! We have seen the far-famed carriage parade pass beneath our windows in Florida, the principal shop ping street, and like Pierre de Bon Ton de Paris, " I assure you it's something to see." The street is nar row and very brilliantly lighted, and every night a double line of carriages filled with Parisian toilettes, accented here and there by speckless frock-coats and shiny silk-hats and patent leathers, moves slowly through it, with frequent long stops while the very efficient police straighten out some tangle of traf fic. We have also taken a carriage and joined the procession, doing our share of staring and being stared at. Likewise, we have driven to Palermo, where I saw the most wonderful concourse of carriages that I ever beheld anywhere except, of course, at some great race. At one time, there were six lines of vehicles passing and repassing one another in this weekly social parade. I doubt if anything like it exists elsewhere in the world. And when dusk fell and we drove in to town again, the wide street was full from curb to curb of swift-rolling carriages, all going the same way, so that even men crossed the tide only under police protection, boys on horse back had difficulty in threading their way among the wheels, and the rattle of hoofs on the wooden 249 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON pavements was like thunder. And in half an hour, practically all these carriages were in the sinuous line crawling under the mellow, yellow lights of Florida. Already we have met some pleasant people, diplo matic and otherwise, and have several invitations for this week and next, but "if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted?" As I said before, I suppose I am tired out. This has really been Uncle Beverley's objective point, and he is busier than a boy killing snakes most of the time, so we do not see a great deal of him, except at dinner and during the evening, when little is required of Berenice and me except to look our prettiest and be respectfully attentive. Like many another good man, when Uncle Bever- ley is in the bosom of his family, he likes to have his eye gratified, but he wants the centre of the stage and all the spot-light for himself. It sounds easy for me, doesn't it? What is called in the vernacular a snap, all well, hardly cakes and ale, but pretzels and beer, say. That's about what it is. Pretzels give me a devourin' thirrst and beer makes me sleepy; and if the mind of man has devised any worse torment than the necessity of listening sympathetically to a historical monologue when you are sleepy, tell me about it, quick! It might keep me awake! You see, I am neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring in this family group, for I share most of the obligations and few of the privileges of mem bership in the Ames clan. However, Uncle Beverley 250 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON is really doing his level best to be agreeable and to atone for all the things he did and said those last three days in Santiago, and I would be a worm o' the earth not to second his efforts to keep things smooth. He has adopted a queer sort of attitude toward me now a kind of semi-confidential, how-perfectly- we-understand-each-other manner. Sometimes I catch him smiling at me in a way that makes me feel as if he had called me Anne, though he never would dream of doing anything so impertinent, and when we go out together, I am always conscious of being tucked under his arm, in spite of the fact that he is most punctilious in offering it to me only when occasion demands. It must be that he has decided to let me be a sister to him, for certainly, after all that has happened, he can have no further wish to marry me. Besides, his manner is not tentative. My position, whatever it is, is definite and permanent. * * * 20th. Something interrupted there, and now it is evidently time for the Bi-Colored-Python-Rock- Snake to awake from her slumbers and get a "fresh holt" on the hind legs of the 'satiable Elephant's Child. Moreover, it behooves her to attach herself firmly and to pull with a long pull and a strong pull, for Mrs. Rankin has arrived, with Mrs. Beaver, via the Cordillera, and I opine that we are now about to enter upon a decisive engagement. She crossed just in time, by-the-way, for there has been a big storm in the mountains and the Pass is closed for the winter. 251 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Other things have happened, also. Mrs. Rankin and her cousin breakfasted with us, and the Bander- snatch playfully asked Berenice what she had done to "poor Mr. Gaveston." " He was a changed man after you left," said she. "He moped around wouldn't go anywhere or do anything, and seemed perfectly hopeless and des perate, you naughty, fascinating little puss!" Berenice doesn't like this sort of thing, and neither does she like Mrs. Rankin, so she put her chin in the air and looked through the promoter lady, while Uncle Beverley um-ed and ah-ed and intimated that we had all been sadly deceived in Mr. Gaveston. "Poor fellow!" murmured his frumious friend. "Don't be too hard on him, for he was so desper ately in love! Surely, you know how that is, dear Mr. Ames!" At which coquettish sally, Berenice giggled and dear Mr. Ames turned the color of a rich, deep amethyst. "You mustn't mind that he told me a little about it, either," she simpered, "for he was so unhappy, and somehow I'm sure I don't know why, but people always turn to me when they are in trouble." Uncle Beverley rose to the bait and said that it was because she was so sympathetic; but I had learned one thing more. They are working together. I wonder whether the lady conducts a sort of matri monial promotion bureau, among her other indus tries, and what Gaveston promised to pay her out of Berenice's fortune, if she helped him "pull it off," as he would say? Another thing that has happened is mail a lot 252 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON of delayed letters, forwarded from Santiago, and some that came directly, evidently by a fast steamer, among them several each from you and Helen. But the last is in reply to my second letter from Lima a time so remote that it seems like a previous incarnation. There are a lot of questions in your letters, but I think all of them have been answered before they reached me except one, and it happens to be one that voices a misconception very common among us. You ask whether we are meeting any of the "Spanish aristocracy," and how much pure Spanish blood there is down here. So far as I know, there is none. Nor are Spaniards particularly liked; in fact, they are particularly disliked in some of these countries. Certain old families pride themselves on their Spanish descent, to be sure, as we trace back to Plymouth or Jamestown, but they are no fonder of being called Spanish than we are of being called English, and for much the same reasons. These nations are as distinct as our own, with a language borrowed, like ours, from the mother coun try, and like us, they all celebrate, with pageants and flags and fireworks, the anniversary of their national independence. Buenos Aires is even now preparing for one of these celebrations, the twenty- fifth of May, which is, I believe, the anniversary of their " casting off the yoke " of England. It is in teresting to note, by-the-way, that the Argentines have what are said to be the only English flags in captivity. There is a story, for the truth of which I do not vouch, that within a few years, this Republic 253 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON courteously offered to return these flags, and that England tartly replied that when she wanted the banners, she would come and get them. They are still in the Cathedral here a very beautiful building. Another Argentine day of independence marks their final separation from Spain. No, there is nothing that could be called a Spanish aristocracy down here. We have met delightful native people in all these countries, but they are Peruvians, Chil eans, Argentines, not Spaniards. Apparently Helen had not heard a word about Gaveston from anybody, but she was very much worked up about Shafter Blakeney's proximity, and implores me to keep the young people apart, "as his presence can only mean mischief." Berenice also received letters, "from the family and some of the girls," she says, but something in them has thrown her into one of her towering passions. She talks a good deal about nothing, which means that mischief is brewing, and every time I look into her eyes, I give thanks that the Pass is closed and Gaveston safe on the other side of the Cordillera. Buenos Aires, June 5th. Oh, my Beloved, why can't I learn not to whistle until my chickens are hatched ? Here was I, chant ing a Jubilate because the devil had retreated a few feet from the deep sea, leaving me footway between, and all the time Gaveston was planning his next play, which was to cross the theoretically impass- 254 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON able Cordillera alone with a guide, whence he de scended upon us a veritable wolf on the fold a few days ago, showing fingers blackened and be numbed by frostbite to prove what he had suffered for love's sweet sake. And he has beaten us! He has won, though we are still haggling over the terms of surrender. Of course, Berenice was impressed what ro mantic, silly girl wouldn't be ? and still talks flam boyantly about his having imperilled his life just to see her again, which is the wonder tale he told her when he first arrived. He knew that Mr. Ames and I were both against him, he said, so he had lit tle hope of being permitted to speak to her, but he had taken the bitter trip gladly, just on the chance of being able even to gaze upon her from afar. That he had opportunity to tell her any story whatever was due to the fact that I haven't had to guard against him every enduring minute here, and I had gone out to do an errand, leaving Berenice writing letters in her room. While I was away, he sent up his card, and when I returned, there they sat in the patio, her eyes widening and darkening as he made light of his poor, blackened fingers and the perils he had endured for her sake. That is a tale that never yet failed to move a daughter of Eve, as Mr. Gaveston very well knew like Desdemona, we always love them for the dan gers they have passed, and not infrequently get strangled for our pains! and naturally it stirred something down in the turbulent heart of this woman-child, and she leaned toward him. " 255 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON They evidently expected me to strike an attitude and bid him begone. Instead, I shook hands with him and ordered tea, after which I told him very quietly that I could not receive him without Mr. Ames' permission, as Berenice was in her uncle's care, not in mine, and suggested that he see Mr. Ames and try to fix up some sort of a truce. He was inclined to show his teeth a little at this, but Berenice assured him very earnestly that I would do all I could to insure fair play for them thank Heaven, I have at least succeeded in winning her affection and confidence, though I have accom plished mighty little else! and he finally took him self off to find Uncle Beverley. Naturally, that gentleman pranced in within the hour, fuming and foaming, but I caught him in the patio and had a heart-to-heart talk with him before he saw Berenice, during which I beat it into him that if he made one more scene like the one we had in Santiago, Berenice would run away with Gaves- ton in spite of us, and that I shouldn't particularly blame her. On top of this I hammered in the conviction that the one way to manage the child was the one way the Ameses apparently had never tried namely, through her affections, and advanced the thesis, evidently new to him, that " where there's a will, there's generally a won't." I urged him to lay no commands upon her, but to try what could be ac complished through moral suasion and guile when it comes to guile, Uncle Beverley is almost as crafty 256 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON as a white rabbit! and in the end he agreed to think it over. It happened that we had guests that night, so dinner passed without allusion to Mr. Gaveston, and we were amicably sipping our coffee in the patio, when who should appear upon the scene but Mr. Tomlinson Tomlinson, the one and only, from whom we had parted almost with tears in Lima as ingenuous, as credulous, as naive as of yore. Mr. Ames ordered drinkables and smokables for him, and the talk jogged along. All at once, something having been said about the west coast, Mr. Tomlinson exclaimed: " Oh, I say! You remember that chap Gaveston ? Always had such a lot to say about his family and that, you know? I met a man in Antofogasta who knows him says he saw him there recently and my word! He turns out to be a regular bounder! I mean to say, he's a sort of remittance man or some thing of the kind, you know. I don't know just what he is, but at any rate, he's been kicked out at home. Awful cad, that chap, you know!" Well! Talk about bombs if that wasn't a bolt from the blue ! Berenice flashed out that she didn't believe a word of it, before Uncle Beverley glared her into silence, the while he ponderously voiced his own long-cherished and deep-seated distrust of Mr. Gaveston, who was, he said, "too versatile too volatile too er brilliant ah to be solid." When the guests had all departed, Berenice swept into our little sala, demanding: "Why didn't you stop that man? Why did you 257 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON let him say those horrid things?" Before I could reply, Uncle Beverley tapped on our door and entered. "There! You see?" he launched at me. "This man is all and more than I er suspected. You will oblige me, Mrs. Pomeroy, by refusing to ah receive this person as long as we ah remain in South America. Berenice, you will never ah at any time or under any ah circumstances, recog nize this man Gaveston again. You understand?" Berenice disdained reply, but I weakly murmured that I understood, and Jove withdrew. For a mo ment she stood looking at the door behind which he had vanished, and then turned to me, her chin up. "You see?" she cried. "They make all the de cisions they issue their orders and I am expected to obey! All my life it's been like that! They have bought me every silly trinket I happened to fancy, but the things I really cared about the studies I took the people I knew do you think I have ever had any choice in those ? Never ! It has been 'don't don't don't,' until I'm mad with it! They have decided and I have obeyed ! Now I am through obeying them! Let them make the most of the next few days, for I shall be legally of age on the fifteenth of June, and after that I will never obey any one of them again!" I tried to calm her a little, but she was a very whirlwind of flame. " Don't you try to stop me now! You said I had the right to live my own life you know you did ! as my own spirit demanded. Those were your very 258 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON words! And that none of them had the right to dictate to me. And I'm going to do it! I hadn't meant to tell any one until after the fifteenth but you've been kind to me you are the only friend I ever had nobody else ever understood except nobody else ever understood," she corrected herself, but I knew what name had been on her lips, " and I trust you to stand by me. I'm going to marry Cecil Gaveston just as soon as I am of age either in Rio or in London!" Oh, Marion! She'll do it, too! She'll marry him now in spite of anything! I asked her whether she had promised this to Mr. Gaveston, and she said that she had not, but that she had fully made up her mind and should tell him the next day. I told her that while it would doubt less be very easy for him to prove his entire inno cence of the charges brought against him by Mr. Tomlinson, I thought he would respect her more if she waited with dignity until he had done so, and she all but snapped her fingers in my face. "Did he wait until there was a steamer to bring him to me? No! He came straight across the Cordillera! They told him he would never get here alive but he came to see me! And if I am going to marry him, I am going to trust him! These trumpery charges what do they amount to? A lot of senseless gossip mongered by men like that silly little Tomlinson! But it will serve Uncle Beverley! He'll believe it he'll believe anything, and so will all the rest of them! Anything to ham per and fetter me and keep me a slave! I shall pay 259 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON no attention to any of it ! I shall marry Mr. Gaves- ton!" Then, Marion, I did the thing that all these weeks I have been telling myself I wouldn't, shouldn't, couldn't do I asked what about Perry Waite, and she laughed at me, demanding what I thought Perry Waite was to her, "or I to him?" she added. I just stood and looked at her, and after a moment she laughed again, and flung out : "Perry Waite is engaged to one of my best friends." I said I didn't believe it, and she ran into her room, returning with a letter which she thrust at me, bidding me " read that!" It was from her most intimate girl friend, and was an indignant announce ment that young Waite was engaged to one Meta Carstairs. She said that the engagement had not been announced, but that Perry spent most of his spare time at the Carstairs', and that she had over heard Meta's mother telling a friend in a tea-room somewhere that it was all settled now. Mr. Car- stairs had objected at first, his wife said, largely because of young Waite's extreme youth, but Meta had begged so hard that he had finally yielded, partly because he never could deny Meta anything, and partly because the boy was really such a clever boy. Mrs. Carstairs also stated that nothing was to be said about the matter for some time, for vari ous reasons. Well, I admit that staggered me. It is evidently another case of a heart caught on the rebound, but I wish this one had been a little less resilient. It 260 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON took the last weapon out of my hands and I must have shown it, for Berenice stood there and laughed at me like a young satyr, misery looking through the eyes of her. There was absolutely nothing left for me to say at that moment, so I kissed her and went to bed. In the middle of the night, I went into her room and found her awake, as I knew I should. I sat on the edge of her bed until daylight but I won the single point for which I fought, which was delay. I told her that while her family could not possibly prevent this marriage, she knew that they would object to it violently, and she must also see that her uncle and I would never be forgiven for our part in it. "I don't see why," she protested. "You had nothing to do with it. You did everything you pos sibly could to prevent it, didn't you? Only you did recognize that I was a human being!" I asked her whether she thought any of that would weigh heavily with her father and mother after she had married Gaveston and she was silent. Then I told her of my long friendhsip and great love for her mother, and the grief it would be to me when that friendship should be broken off, or at least clouded, as it must be now. I reminded her that I had stood by her in her crisis and that I still stood by her, and in return I asked just one thing of her. I asked her to go home from this trip absolutely un pledged, to let me feel that in that one small par ticular, at least, I had kept faith with her mother. At the same time, I undertook to persuade Uncle 261 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Beverley to let her see Gaveston frequently while we remain in Buenos Aires, but never alone. Finally, she promised, and she will keep the promise if she can. But she is only human, and very young, and Gaveston is as clever as the devil himself and as determined. And that is where we stand. The next morning I told some of this to Uncle Beverley, who is almost crushed under the situa tion, and talked him over to my plan. Then we cabled to Helen to meet us in Rio, and we have her reply that she will, although Berenice is to know nothing about it until her mother arrives. We are going to try what a shock will do but I haven't much hope. The mischief is done. There are a lot of things I want to tell you about, but I have no heart for it now. Perhaps I'll write again before we sail on the twelfth, or on the steamer. At Sea, June Here we are, north bound again, and once more on the edge of the tropics, much to my joy. Deliver me from these semi-tropical climates, where nobody thinks it's worth while to make a fire because it never snows! Buenos Aires and Santiago, too are like San Francisco in that respect, except that down here, in most cases, they haven't even fireplaces in the houses, and the resident Americans spend the win ter carrying oil-stoves from one room to another 262 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON and hovering over them. As the rooms are all at least sixteen feet high, one oil-stove doesn't make a noticeable impression upon the circumambient chill. By-the-way, the Argentines insist upon calling us North Americans, and it makes one feel like a red Indian. I have known some very delightful Indians, but somehow, " North American " suggests war-paint and feathers, which are not my ordinary wear. We didn't have much cold weather while we were in Santiago, but in our "steam-heated" hotel in Buenos Aires we used to take our coffee in the patio, where the thermometer registered fifty-eight if it was warm, and then fly up-stairs to spend the rest of the evening sitting on our toy radiator, which was so small that we had to take turns. During the day, from eleven to four or five, there was never any steam in the pipes in deference to the afore said semi-tropical climate and when it rained, as it did much of the time, we wrapped the drapery of our couches about us, like the North Americans they called us, and imbibed quarts of tea, made over a spirit-lamp, to keep warm. I'll take my tropics full size, please, or not at all. Apropos of " the cup that cheers," a favorite drink in several of these countries is a sort of tea made from an aromatic herb non-intoxicating and said to be healthful popularly called mat6. It is brewed in a cup, generally made from a gourd but occasion ally of beautifully wrought silver, and is sucked through a silver thing not unlike our hollow-stem med lemonade-spoon, except that it has a strainer 263 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON over the spoon. In native families this becomes a sort of loving-cup, and passes from lip to lip around the circle, which is sometimes trying, especially if you have happened to see the servant taking a pre liminary pull at it before she brought it in. Even if you did, there is no help for you, for it is the quintessence of bad manners to refuse to partake. Speaking of Americans down here, don't let any of your ambitious young friends come to Buenos Aires under the impression that it is a sort of com mercial El Dorado, where high-salaried positions are to be Jaad for the asking, North American labor in demand, and Spanish to be "picked up" in six months. Don't you believe a word of it! Spanish, which is absolutely essential in business here, is, like any other language, easy after you have learned it, but the American who speaks it well enough to make him of great value to his employer at the end of six months is the exception. Unfortunately, as a people we are not linguists. For the rest, the high prices asked for food, lodg ing and clothes make Buenos Aires a more expen sive city to live in than New York, and young women who contemplate seeking employment here should be informed that the ideals prevailing in the Argentine capital more nearly resemble those of Paris than those of any city in the United States. The Argentine Republic, like our own, has in vited immigration, and its capital city has been widely advertised as a great and growing commercial centre, which it is. In consequence the Old World is sending her hordes up the Rio de la Plata, as well as 264 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON through The Narrows, and as is too often the case with us, they are coming unprepared, with little or no knowledge of the language of the country, and consequently unfitted for any but the meanest labor. We are accustomed to that sight at home, but picture to yourself an American boy or girl in a foreign city in that plight, and then you will realize why American residents here, much as they hunger for their own people, say: "Tell them to learn Spanish and bring money enough to get home on, or else to stay away from South America." It is very interesting to the observant American North American, I mean! to note the differences and the likenesses of two cosmopolitan peoples, both resulting from the grafting of European buds in the one case upon Spanish and Indian and in the other upon Anglo-Saxon stock. We, as a people, have much in common with the Argentines . In them, keeping always in mind that fundamental difference in parent stock, we see oursel's as ithers saw us a few years ago and still see us in spots, with a wealth so great and so new that we didn't quite know what to do with it. It is a very wholesome thing for us to come down here to sit awhile in contemplation and to think a little bit. Among other things, it is salutary for us to learn that "there are others," which we are some times prone to question, and that if there are things about them of which the Anglo-Saxon in us is im patient, there are things about us from which the courteous Latin in them shrinks. Also, though we 265 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON may be a step or two ahead of them in some respects, we must acknowledge that they are some steps ahead of us in others. I have already spoken of their clean streets. The tram-car regulations, also, would interest the dwell ers in our large cities. There is no overloading of cars here. When all the seats are filled, a sign to that effect is hung out, and no more passengers are taken until vacancies occur. That's fine, isn't it? Our aggrieved, strap-hanging New Yorkers and Chicagoans would like that when they were in the car. The other side of the story is that at night, during the rush hours, no matter what your haste or your fatigue, no matter how inclement the weather, you may stand indefinitely on a corner and see car after car pass, not one person standing, and that little sign, " Complete, " bars your entrance. People here take that very calmly, but I'd like to see the average New Yorker under those circum stances! Then there is La Prensa, a newspaper which is not only the equal journalistically of its best con temporaries elsewhere, but which occupies the fin est newspaper building in the world. Mrs. Rankin knows some of the Powers That Be there, as she knows almost everybody of any consequence all over this continent, and she introduced Mr. Ames to one of the managers, who took our party over the building himself. I do not quite understand the situation between Uncle Beverley and the promoter lady, by-the-way, but certainly a change has come o'er the spirit of 266 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON his dream, though the complexion of hers remains unchanged. To be sure, she has been long enough in South America to have mastered all the subtle arts used in creating and maintaining a permanently glowing complexion, as her own testifies. Anyway, though in Buenos Aires she was coy and ingratiating and sympathetic still, it all rolled off Mr. Ames like water off a duck's back. He was just as courteous, just as attentive, just as prolixly and ponderously complimentary as ever when she was about, but there was an indefinable aloofness that was new in his manner toward her, and as far as I know, he never sought her except when etiquette demanded that he should. If she had been the man and he the woman, I should have said that he had refused her and was trying to soften the blow which, of course, is absurd and impossible under the circumstances. Perhaps her spell was broken during the long, dreary passage through the Strait. He told me that he had spent much time in thought, and had seen many things in a new light. Perhaps she was one of them. Or possibly Berenice pointed out a few of the artificial spots on the leopard. Or did the lady herself take that one fatal step too far and pass the line that every man sets for himself as to how far a woman may and may not go ? That is a dim and uncertain boundary which has tripped up many a woman who had no particularly definite lines of her own. Probably I shall never know what brought about the change, but at any rate, all at once the terror 267 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON was stripped from the Bandersnatch in my night mare, and I saw that she was only a clever, merce nary, rather vulgar, wholly pitiful little woman, who might have gone very far in the right direction if she had not chosen a more devious path. Still, when it comes to that, I wonder whether anybody ever deliberately chooses a devious path? Don't you suppose everybody would rather go straight than crooked? Or has the winding road the same fascination for certain people in morals that it has for me in nature ? Do they always mean to turn around and go back after they have seen what lies beyond the next curve? Anyway, so far as we are concerned, the Bander- snatch is harmless now, because she is powerless. This was first forcibly borne in upon me the day we went through the Prensa building. She constantly called Mr. Ames' attention to this or that detail, in her caressing, cajoling little way, and lingered persistently behind the rest of us, trying to re-estab lish her sovereignty over him, but it was of no use. The flesh was very polite to her, but the spirit was off on another trail and a very distant one, I should judge. This may have been due, in part, to his great and amazed interest in what we were seeing. That is a wonderful place, Marion ! In addition to the most perfect accommodations for the staff of the paper, including baths and a restaurant, there is main tained there a medical department, equipped with the most modern apparatus, where scores of poor people are treated by the best physicians and sur- 268 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON geons in the city. A good lawyer is retained at the expense of the paper, to give legal advice to people who have no money to pay for it, and there is a fine reference library free to the public. In an exquisite little theatre and concert-room entertainments are sometimes given, and there is a large suite of rooms, bedrooms, baths, boudoir, reception and dining rooms, which La Prensa places at the disposal of distinguished guests. No attempt anywhere in this building to dazzle one. Everything is the best of its kind ; everything, from the press-room to the theatre, that can be beautiful is beautiful, and it is all so delightfully, restfully harmonious. It is an enterprise that the greatest city in the world might be proud of, and it is said to be maintained because the owner of the paper wishes to share with the people the benefits of the great wealth that came to him from them. Even Mr. Gaveston, who was with us and who is still amused that I find anything to admire in these "crude" countries, found nothing to cavil at in the Prensa building except the motive behind the paper's activities. Of course, he refused to admit for a moment that it was anything but good ad vertising. Don't you just stand around in awe and admiration of a man who is always sure the other fellow's motives are sordid ? It naturally inspires you with confidence in his own, doesn't it? The Gaveston situation remains practically un changed. He was with us a good deal those last days, and the very sight of him was a thorn in poor Uncle Beverley's flesh. Mr. Ames moved heaven 269 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON and earth or as much of it as he could get a lever age on at this distance and in the short time he had to discover whether Tomlinson's story had any foundation of truth, but he could learn little, and that little was neutral. Cecil Osmund Leslie Gaveston is the youngest child and second son of John Mandeville Gaveston, Esq., of Surrey, and the grandson, on the maternal side, of Sir George Hervey. The family is well known and of high standing. The elder son, Cecil's brother, married a Lady Somebody-or-other, and both the sisters have married well. It is under stood that Cecil was rather wild in his youth, but nothing actually to his discredit was learned, neither was there any intimation that he had been "kicked out at home," as Mr. Tomlinson stated. Gaveston himself admits that he quarrelled violently with his brother several years ago and left home in a tem per, since which relations with his family have been rather strained, but says that their feeling is quite cordial now, and denies with emphasis that he was at any time in bad odor with them. Nevertheless, I think he redoubled his efforts either to make Berenice marry him at once or promise to do so in Rio. I have not permitted him to see her alone, but neither have I thought it wise to give her an impression that I did not trust her, so they have had occasional opportunity for a quiet chat under my eye but relieved of my ear. During one of these I heard Berenice say, rather sharply: "Certainly not! Why, I promised Mrs. Pomeroy, Don't you understand? I promised!" 270 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON I did not hear his reply, but she drew back, look ing at him rather curiously, and he apparently made some hasty explanation which seemed to satisfy her. It took considerable manoeuvring to prevent his accompanying us on this voyage, instead of follow ing on the next ship, as is now the plan. I began an attempt to show her that it would be in better taste for him not to see her after we left Buenos Aires until she was with her parents again, which would be, at best, but a few weeks; but at the first suggestion of this her chin went up and mutiny was imminent, so I subsided. I did succeed in convincing her, however, that it was hardly fair to her uncle and me, under the circumstances, to give the people at home an im pression, no matter what we might say to the con trary, that we were actually granting Mr. Gaveston privileges in his wooing that were not ours to be stow. I said that it would look as if we were break ing faith with her parents in every way, which seemed to impress her. A day or two afterward she asked me to give her my word that when Mr. Gaveston followed on the next steamer, he would still find her in Rio, so evi dently he told her we meant to spirit her away. I reassured her on this point, but I fancy he ques tioned my honesty in the matter as, being Gaves ton, he naturally would do because for a day or two her manner toward him was cool and she seemed to be examining him rather critically. At any rate, he certainly had to exert himself to an unusual degree to recover ground he had lost in 18 271 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON some way, and he was never more insidiously fas cinating but he relinquished his plan of taking this ship. We were late in leaving Buenos Aires, and as we swung out into the stream, Berenice, waving her hand to Gaveston and the group of people assembled to see us off, dropped overboard a bunch of orchids he had given her a particularly appropriate offer ing, under the circumstances, I thought. Not sweets to the sweet, but parasites from a parasite. She tried to catch them, but they went down to a watery grave and we went down the river. The next morning we were lying off Montevideo, when who should walk into the dining-room while we were at breakfast but Cecil Osmund Leslie a florist's box under his arm! I suspected treachery and must have showed it, for he laughed a little, and said: "Don't be alarmed, Mrs. Pomeroy. I'm going ashore again. I just ran down on the night-boat to replace those flowers." Cecil must have received a remittance lately! Berenice was pleased, of course, and has worked up something resembling tenderness over the affair a sort of near-sentiment, mercerized. Poor, fool ish, unhappy, headstrong child! Just before we left Buenos Aires, the American mail came. Berenice had another letter from her friend, but the family had gone to the mountains and there was nothing new about the Waite-Car- stairs engagement. I had perfectly frantic letters from Helen. In 272 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON one sentence she demanded to know why I didn't put Berenice under my arm and carry her home at once, and in the next she assured me that no matter what happened, she would always remember that Beverley had undertaken to look after Berenice and would hold him alone responsible. I wonder if she will? Poor Beverley! On one page she is positive that I exaggerate the danger from Gaveston, as Berenice mentions him not at all and Beverley only casually, and on an other she wonders that I don't see the necessity of opening Beverley's eyes to this intriguing Eng lishman's obvious designs. Of course, Beverley is a little positive in his opinions, she says, but I have so much tact (!), and certainly, unless I am quite blind, I must see that something ought to be done. And in any event, she cannot understand why I am apparently so entirely complacent about Blakeney. Also, she is up in arms about "that Rankin wom an," as she calls her. Berenice mischievous mon key! wrote a few indefinite but pregnant lines about her uncle's devotion to the lady, and appar ently set the whole family by the ears. I asked her whether she had really thought, as her mother's letter seemed to indicate, that her uncle wanted to marry Mrs. Rankin, and she turned an amused and scornful glance on me. ' ' Marry !" quoth she. ' ' At his age ?" You would have thought him in his dotage. "Well people do, sometimes," quoth I, meekly. "He's not so very old only about fifty." She 273 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON sniffed. "Then why," I inquired, "did you write about it as you evidently did?" "How?" she asked, very innocently. At that, I simply looked at her, and presently she laughed. "Oh, I thought I'd let them see what a mesalliance might be." Imp! But evidently she never saw the real danger at all. I found this hard to believe, and pressed mv inquiry further, whereupon she thoughtfully ad mitted that of course she might have been a little alarmed concerning the outcome, if Mrs. Rankin had been young enough to be really attractive. Mrs. Rankin, my dear, is about your age and mine though probably a little younger than either of us. Berenice certainly succeeded in rousing the family, though. Helen wants to know whether I can't "do something." Can't I see what she has always known that poor, dear Beverley is just the man to fall a victim to some siren's wiles? Can't I set up a counter-irritation, even if it comes to nothing ? She is sure I am clever enough and attractive enough etc., etc. Then, Marion dear, she confesses that she and Dick have been building air-castles family air-castles, with me as chatelaine! I am sure this is all quite spontaneous, for certainly Mr. Ames never confided in them, but Helen says they did so hope And they would be so glad if only And so on. You know her too well to need details. But even if that is impossible, and I can never be a sister to them, can't I do something to protect poor Beverley? At any rate, I did do that. I am glad you ap proved of the policy I pursued in that connection. 274 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON It would have comforted me could I have known at the time that you saw the thing as I did. Many people wouldn't. There are a lot of things in your last letters that need reply, but I have gossiped along in hap hazard fashion, and now I must dress for dinner. We are on a real British ship, with immaculate decks, clean cabins and bath-rooms, food without flavor, meats swimming in gravy, and stewards who say " 'k you" every time they venture within speak ing distance. Incidentally, it is the crack ship of the line, and has six or seven decks, electric fans in every state-room, an elevator I beg its pardon! a lift and a laundry. The crowd on board is rather interesting : English bank-clerks, who have served five years out here and earned their six months' leave; families from the Argentine "estancias" ranchers, in other words going "home" for the end of the English summer; some titled Britons who came out for the cruise and are returning by the same ship; a few counts and countesses, and barons and baronesses, and an Ex cellency or two; a man who writes D.S.O. after his name; a Roman Catholic bishop, in black cassock, golden chains, and purple stole and cap, whose face is delicate, and whose slender, fine hands grace the Episcopal amathyst; his train of black-robed clergy; and a good many Spanish-Americans. We shall not be with them long, however, as we expect to land at Santos to-morrow and go to Sao Paulo by rail before going to Rio. This is Berenice's birthday her day of indepen- 275 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON dence, poor child! and we are to celebrate it duly to-night with cakes and ale. Uncle Beverley, whose heart is heavy within him, is still striving to uphold his traditions as far as may be, and Berenice is to have the cake with candles and the champagne with which a coming of age is always celebrated in the Ames family. I am getting very sorry for Mr. Ames, Marion. He never should have been put in this position. What did he know of girls especially of a girl like Berenice ? He didn't want to assume the burden he protested against it but they forced it upon him, and they didn't fit it to his back. Small wonder that he has sometimes been fussy and unreason able! And now that it has come out so badly, he will get most of the cussing and I'll catch the overflow! I don't know whether he is reproaching himself or not, but I can see that he is very sad these days, though he bustles about a lot and tries to cover it up. However he may chafe under an noyance, there is something fine about the way this man bears personal sorrow. I like and admire him greatly then. He also had letters from Helen, and from the ex pression of his face as he read them I fancy she spared him less than she did me. Good land! It has just occurred to me! You don't suppose she told him about those air-castles of hers? Poor Uncle Beverley! I keep wondering wherein I have failed most; how it would have been had I done this, and whether the outcome would have been happier had I left 276 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON that undone and I always decide that it would. Is there anything so maddening as hindsight? And in the face of a catastrophe like this, the reflection that one "meant well" adds a touch of fiendish mockery. I think Berenice has wondered a little that I made no attempt to dissuade her from this marriage, or to recall the ideals by which I influenced her in Santiago. I am saving all my strength and all my ammunition to help Helen in one last, desperate resistance in Rio. Meanwhile, Berenice has read all the Kipling the ship's library contains, and lures the D.S.O. man into long disquisitions about life in India. I must go below and dress! I wish you were here. The sea is a vast blue floor, the air is as soft as Paradise, and the Southern Cross but no words of mine can ever make you see and feel the Southern Cross. Rio, June 2oth. What do you think the carking care would be that would blind my eyes to beauty, or still my soul's response to sunshine and soft air and color? Cer tainly, I am exceeding sorrowful these days, filled with regret and self-accusation and foreboding, and yet how I have enjoyed certain hours during the past week! Positively and actively enjoyed them! Not that there hasn't been always an ache some where, and the clutching, terrifying sense of im pending disaster, but just the same, as long as I 277 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON live and the world is beautiful, I shall feel it, though doom fall ! Even at this distance I can see your lips opening for the obvious retort, which is that until doom has fallen I never really believe, down in my heart, that it is going to especially if the sun be shining through green leaves. To which I reply, madame, that doom has been averted just as many times by smiles as it has by sackcloth, and then, whatever happens, you've had one more smile, though you never smile again! I dare say it is only the intoxication of the tropics, but to-day I have hope. Maybe, if Helen is wise and tender and strong enough, she can still work a miracle and oh, how wise and tender and strong a woman ought to be before she dares to become a mother ! But nothing seems impossible in Rio. Helen will arrive to-morrow, and Gaveston Wednesday. In the mean time we have seen Santos and Sao Paulo and we are in Rio! But that comes last. When we went to bed Monday night the lights at the mouth of the river were in sight, and next morn ing early we awoke and looked out upon lush, tropical banks. By the time we got on deck we were off the Santos docks the only ones on the east coast, by-the-way, except those at Buenos Aires, although some very fine ones are in process of con struction at Rio. However, there are enough at Santos to atone for all deficiencies elsewhere some seven miles of them, we were told; and over them goes, in a year, more coffee than you would think the whole world could drink in a decade. Every where one gets the delicious odor of it. 278 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON We had planned to take a train leaving at half- past one for Sao Paulo, and there was so much de lay about unloading the luggage that the jumbled tiled roofs, green-clad hills, crooked streets and gay color of Santos ceased to have charms for us. Neither did we care about the ceaseless procession of men bearing coffee-bags, nor the liquid-eyed venders of everything from orchids to live pigs. We wanted trunks ! We said so, in tones of varying sweetness, to every body who would listen to us and some who wouldn't, from eight o'clock until half -past eleven. Then we adjourned to the smoke-room and took to drink long, deep, desperate drinks of ginger -ale! after which we resumed the struggle. Finally the lug gage was all bestowed in a freight-car and trundled a few feet down the dock to the custom-house. "Aha!" said we. "Now we'll be off in a few minutes." Then we came into collision no, he wouldn't do anything as violent as that. We came into remote contact with a small, erect, pompous, unsmiling, unbending, pop-eyed Brazilian gentleman who rep resented System. To him we addressed ourselves, severally and collectively, in as many tongues as we could summon and likewise through an interpre ter, and he imperturbably directed that all the trunks be stacked up in one huge pile, six deep, ours at the bottom. In vain we expostulated, argued, gesticulated, en treated, showed our watches, showed the railway time-table, pointed to our waiting porters, cussed 279 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON and discussed. This was their system. When every thing else in the freight-car had been piled on top of our stuff, we indicated where it was buried, and it was extricated with much labor and incidentally at some expense and put on a bench, after which came all the red-tape and bother of the customs inspection. This over, we trotted in procession down the street beside a hand-truck laden with all our impedimenta, and just caught the train, our lunch, consisting of a parcel of sandwiches and three bottles of mineral water bought at the station, in our hands. We have encountered Brazilian system once or twice since, but this is a very fair example of the way it works. Before I leave the subject of lug gage, I will mention that the government owns the road from Sao Paulo to Rio, and that it cost us forty-five dollars gold to bring our five trunks three of them small cabin affairs from that city to this, a journey of about eleven hours. It cost considerably less to bring us. The road from Santos to Sao Paulo, by-the-way, is a marvel of construction, and has the reputation, I believe, of being the best -built railroad in the world. It is not very long, and in some places the grades are so steep that cables are used to help the engines; but it is enormously profitable, and the English company owning it has put tremendous sums into its road-bed and masonry. The protec tion from freshet and washout, for instance, is com plete, almost the whole of the double-tracked road having stone or tarred brick conduits, not only be- 280 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON side the rails, but up into the hills through which they run, guiding the course of the water from the time it begins to threaten. I even saw men with brooms along the way, sweeping dry leaves out of these conduits, which were as clean as a kitchen floor. We came over what are called "the new tracks," which are said to have cost twelve million pounds do you get that ? before they were ever used. The old tracks, the ones that earned the twelve millions, are still used occasionally, too. All this out of coffee. We climbed into splendid hills and until I saw them I did not realize how I had hungered for them so densely covered that in looking across a canon or down from a height upon a forest, one got no sense of high trees because one couldn't see into them. It looked like thick shrubbery. A courte ous Brazilian across the car, who saw that we were strangers, insisted upon our taking his seat when the views were on that side, and explained things all the way up. We had been told that there was no very good hotel in Sao Paulo, but Mr. Ames, who speaks no Portuguese, gave our driver the name of the hostelry that had been most generally recommended, and he rattled us through a much larger city than we had expected to see, past a plaza, around a corner, up a little hill, through an imposing gateway, and brought up with a flourish before an even more imposing facade. We had already been so impressed by the little 281 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON We had seen of this country that we thought very probably this wasn't much of a hotel according to Brazilian standards, but it certainly looked good to us. We perked up and alighted from our hackney- coach with the air of being accustomed to a foot man. At least, Berenice and Uncle Beverley did, and I should if I hadn't at that moment got my eye on two sentries posted at the door. "What is this place?" I demanded of cabby, in such Spanish as I have mastered, and he replied, in Portuguese, but unmistakably: "The palace of the Governor, senhora." Needless to say, we took a reef in our tail feathers and followed the example of the King of France and his twenty thousand men; but I have wondered ever since what His Excellency the Governor would have done had we sent in our luggage and requested rooms. He might have had us jailed, but, having experienced the Sao Paulo variety of Brazilian hos pitality, I am inclined to think that he would have put his heels together and bowed, ordered the state apartments prepared for our use, and assured us that the occasion was one of extraordinary pleasure for him. That's the kind of people they are in Sao Paulo. So we drove through the imposing gateway and down the hill and around the corner to our hotel, which was not the palace of the Governor or of anybody else! However, it was well enough, if not exactly what one would call luxurious. And except for that trifling detail, had we really been the guests of His Excellency we could not have been treated with more distinguished consideration. 282 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON There is in Sao Paulo a Brazilian gentleman who has bought some rather expensive machinery of Ames & Ames, and naturally Uncle Beverley called upon him, to pay his respects and to express in person the firm's appreciation of this patronage. He also mentioned casually and incidentally that Berenice and I were with him. He still retains, by-the-bye, that manner of including me in the family. I have been taken into the inner con fidence. I was a little wary for a time, but it is evidently not dangerous, and I think Beverley has definitely made up his mind to be a brother to me. Within an hour after this call, most exquisite flowers were sent to us, with Senhor Aveiro's com pliments. The next morning he came in his French limousine and took us for a long drive. He showed us a city of about four hundred thousand people, well paved, well lighted, having fine electric tram lines, good bridges, viaducts and public buildings, hospitals and colleges. I know of few cities of the size at home that are so well equipped, and yet how many of us unless, indeed, we are interested in coffee ever even heard of Sao Paulo? We went to a park, which, after we had left the pavilions and band-stand near the entrance, con sisted simply of paths cut through the native jungle. There had been absolutely no attempt at "improve ment" beyond the making of these paths, which are sometimes wide, sometimes narrow, dipping here, rising there, always winding and always walled on either side by huge, orchid-grown, vine-entwined trees, or tunnelled through soft masses of feathery 283 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON bamboo everywhere through impenetrable under brush. Mr. Aveiro told us of a young Scotchman whom he recently took into this park, and who looked up at the blossoming orchids, wondered how they got so high in the trees, and then quaintly answered himself : " It seems as if God must just have been here." Truly, it does seem in these tropical forests as if one had at last touched the great, warm, palpitating heart of things. We saw, also, several other beautiful but more conventional parks, with lawns, flowers, ornamental shrubberies, tennis - courts, ball - grounds, zoo, and so on. In this country of malignant fevers and virulent diseases it is an offence against the law of Sao Paulo (the State) to be ill at home, and there is a well-equipped hospital, beautifully located, where rich and poor alike are treated free at the expense of the State. A heavy fine is imposed for an at tempt to avoid removal to this hospital, or for fail ure to report illness and it is many years since Sao Paulo suffered from an epidemic. In this connection it is significant that the houses there are not huddled, as they are in most hot countries, but are generally set well apart, giving plenty of light and air to all ; this, also, we are told, being due to the care of the Government. We saw stately avenues, fine residences and park- like gardens; we saw, too, quaint, crooked streets, running between rows of low houses, pink or buff or 284 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON pale green, with wide, projecting eaves queer angles in both streets and buildings; hybiscus and poin- settias and honeysuckle nodding over the fences, a touch of green between the paving-stones on a hill side, and splotches of purplish shadow all through a slant of yellow sunshine. Occasionally a viaduct carries across from ridge to ridge, and from it one looks down on a medley of mottled roofs and thick gardens below. And always, in every direction, across smiling valleys, one sees the girdling, sun- washed hills. There is a municipal theatre, not yet finished, which would put most of our own to shame, and a railway station the equal of any I know in a city of similar size and the superior of most. All this Senhor Aveiro showed us, and more. He regretted that Senhora Aveiro could not call upon us, as she is in mourning, but daily he sent us photo graphs and picture postals, books and pamphlets descriptive of Brazil, theatre tickets and a box to the opera. And when we finally drove to the station, in the gray of an early morning I carrying in my hand the set of souvenir coffee-cups he had sent the night before, because I feared they would be broken in my bag we found him waiting, with his wife, on the platform, laden with roses cut from their garden and still dew-wet. As long as the station was in sight we could see their waving handkerchiefs, and all day the roses were fragrant. That's the kind of people they are in Sao Paulo, and therefore they seem "no more strangers and foreigners," but friends. 285 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON One very quaint thing we saw there was the bridal procession. Berenice and I went out for a stroll one evening about sunset, and in the heart of the city, only a block or two from our hotel, we met a dainty little gray coupe", drawn by white horses, with cupids and trailing garlands painted on its pale panels. The two men on the box were in light livery, with white stockings, buckled shoes and cocked hats, and the carriage was upholstered in the palest cloth and hung with orange blossoms. Within sat the white-clad bride in flowing veil, an enormous bouquet a very shield and buckler in her lap, and beside her an apparently perfectly miserable bridegroom. It is evidently very bad form for either of them to look happy or to seem in any way interested in each other. Behind the bridal coach came a long queue of carriages filled with men, women, children and slumbering babes, all in gala array. Within two blocks we met three of these processions, one after another, differing only in the elegance of their appointments as one star differeth from another star in glory. All the bridal couples looked equally hopeless and dejected, and the whole thing was so evidently a matter of course that nobody but us paid the slightest attention to it. I fancy the sight set us both to thinking, for Berenice grew suddenly voluble, and I as suddenly silent. Oh, if the next week were only over! " Wot makes the soldier's 'eart to penk, wot makes 'im to perspire? It isn't standin' up to charge nor lyin' down to fire; But it's everlastin' waitin' on a ever- 286 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON lastin' road " Ah, well, fretting isn't going to help matters any. Let's talk about Brazil. The journey to Rio began in a heavy fog, through which we caught an occasional dim outline of the hills among which we were running. Later, as the mist lifted, we passed slopes covered with glossy green coffee-bushes and orange orchards spangled with fruit, or plunged through thick jungle, full of palms, bananas and bamboo. Oh, the bamboo of this country ! Enormous clumps of soft, cool, feathery, graceful, luscious greenery! We passed through seductive little towns, all soft- tinted walls and tiles and poinsettias and avenues of palms. Sometimes one of these was plastered up against the side of a hill, and we caught quaint angles in the roofs, and vistas of steep, flagged streets, that for the moment recalled Italy, though there was nothing Italian in the landscape. At every station native women sold fruit from broad baskets, and negro boys came along the plat form with trays of tiny cups and a coffee-pot, soft Portuguese syllables slipping from their tongues. Coffee, by-the-way, is served here already sweetened. Milk is a matter of choice, but sugar is part of the brew. For hours we ran beside a lovely river, through hills very like some I know in Delaware and Penn sylvania, except that these were always clothed in this wonderful, warm, tropical green. And always there were the fascinating little towns, and the bam boo, and the coffee boys at the stations, the views, the foliage and the color. 19 287 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON As the day wore on, it grew hot and very, very dusty. Our heavy wraps, long since cast aside, were gray with dust, as we were ourselves, and on the floor it actually lay in little drifts. We ate it and drank it and breathed it, but I didn't care. Uncle Beverley fussed and brushed and valiantly tried not to show how bored and irritated he was he has progressed several inches since we left Jamaica! and Berenice covered her head with a veil and went to sleep ; but I kept on vibrating from one side of the car to the other, with occasional ex cursions to the back platform, all discomforts in significant beside the beauty of that panorama. Later in the afternoon we came to a dryer section less riotously green. Beautiful reddish grasses covered the slopes, and there were many cattle. We passed long trains filled with poor brutes on their way to the slaughter-houses. Just before sunset, as I was deciding that the best of it was over, we began to climb a wooded ridge, and then came the most beautiful part of a beautiful trip. The shadows, already long, grew longer, the sunlight yellowed and mellowed, the soft greens grew warmer and the blue shadows crept up from the valleys and deepened and still we climbed. We whizzed around curves and through count less tunnels that blotted out lovely scenes before we had more than glimpsed them, only to disclose others more lovely a moment later, until the king doms of the world and the glory of them lay spread out beneath us. 288 OH. THE BAMBOO OF THIS COUNTRY! THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON It reminded me constantly of the ascent of the Apennines, going from Florence to Venice, tunnels and all, except that in place of the mellow, aged Italian villages and vineyards we had the no less beautiful but virgin jungle the splendid youth of a country whose history has just begun. The mountains began to show abrupt, fantastic outlines, only saved from being grotesque by the softness of the verdure clothing them from base to summit and dusk was just falling when we rolled into Rio, tired, dusty, but I, at least, oozing enthu siasm even more profusely than I did perspiration. Rio! How am I ever going to make you see Rio until I bring you here some day? Of course you know that she has the most beautiful harbor in the world and that doesn't mean a thing to you, does it? It never did to me until I saw it. Of course you know about the Royal Palms, feather dusters of the gods, planted brush up in endless avenues. They are impressive but they are not Rio. Of course you have heard of the brilliant new Avenida, built at tremendous cost straight through the heart of the city. That is wonderful but it isn't Rio. Italy is a beautiful old woman, a patrician in vel vet and point lace; Havana is a flirt; but Rio Rio is a splendid barbarian princess with a breath like wine! We are perched in a little chalet, high above the hotel, which is itself half way up a mountain-side, and as I write, I look from the Corcovado, almost straight overhead have you seen pictures of this gray needle of rock that towers two thousand feet 289 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON over the city ? down across the feathery, ferny tops of a forest of bamboos and palms, to the wonderful, soft yellow-and-brown roofs of town, and on to the bay, the grim Sugarloaf , and the green hills beyond. Last night we sat on the terrace and I watched the stars. The lights of the city were hardly brighter. Marion, I am drunk! Drunk as any lord on color! This is all the dreams I ever dreamed come true! If only it were not for the clutching, sicken ing sense of failure and tragedy if only it were not for the Gaveston man! Ah, well, who am I to clamor for apples without worms? And yet, how gladly I would sacrifice the apple if thereby I could destroy the worm! There goes a steamer out of the bay. And to think that in three little weeks, possibly in even less time, I too must leave all this and take my way north again, home to what? How can I look enough how can I breathe enough in those few days to last me all the rest of my colorless life? In three weeks, perhaps in three days, Berenice will be * * * When I wrote the foregoing this afternoon, Bere nice was down-town with her uncle. Just there she came stumbling, panting up the steps it's a long pull from the tram-line as white as death. Her eyes seemed to glow from away back in her head somewhere, and there were hard lines about her mouth. I was frightened, thinking she was very ill, but when I ran to help her she shrank from me, 290 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON at too high a tension to be touched. She spoke rapidly imperiously but in breathless gasps. "Listen! Don't touch me! I take it back! My promise I take it back! I shall marry Mr. Gaves- ton whenever he wishes now at once here the day he arrives, if possible. Don't talk! I won't listen! I take back my promise! My life is my own I am of age I have decided I shall be mar ried Thursday Friday as soon as possible! He urged me to marry him here and I shall do it! I won't wait a day not one day longer than is necessary!" She flung herself into her room and locked the door. I heard wild sobbing, but she would not let me in. We are completely puzzled. The mail she found awaiting her here last night did not excite her and she has received no more to-day. Mr. Ames says they were proceeding very quietly along the Avenida, and he was not noticing Berenice particularly, until suddenly he missed her. He looked back and saw her walking very rapidly in the other direction. She was pale when he caught up to her, and said she wanted to return to the hotel alone. He thought she was ill and wanted to come with her, but she insisted that he should not, so he put her on the tram and followed half an hour or so later. And that is all we know about it. She refused dinner and still keeps her door locked, though I do not think she is crying now. Thank Heaven, Helen comes to-morrow! If I can, I will add a line later, but I may be 291 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON unable to write at all for a day or two, and this must go by Wednesday's steamer or wait a week. Rio, June 2ist. Dear girl, this note will probably be kaleidoscopic and jumbled, for the heavens have fallen and I have done so much hopping about to dodge the stars that I have acquired the habit an undignified one which I shall have to reform if I decide but that comes later. Almost everything that could happen in twenty- four hours has happened, except that Berenice's fate is still in the balance, and so, incidentally, is mine. That is one of the shooting-stars. Helen is here but you shall have the tale as it unfolded itself to us. First, then, just after I had finished my letter to you last night and had sent it down to the post by Uncle Beverley I wonder if I shall always think of him as Uncle Beverley? the smiling Portuguese who serves the chalets came up, a card in his hand, asking whether Mr. Ames was here. I indicated that he had gone down-town, and the man disap peared. Presently he returned to say that some one wished to see me. I made signs that it must be a mistake, and he repeated what he thought was my name I wish you could have heard his struggle with Pome- roy! and handed me the card. Then, my dear, the first star shot by, so close that it singed my hair. The name I read was "Mr. Perry Lydecker Waite." 292 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON This was all the explanation that I needed of Berenice's tempest. She had seen him on the street. Needless to say, I did not inform her of his call. Needless, also, to state that I let no grass grow under my feet on the way down to the hotel, where he waited on the terrace. Such a charming boy, Marion! So direct and manly and honest, and with such delightful manners! Older than I thought, too twenty-three or four, I should say. I don't know what Dick could have been thinking about. I would have given him my ducats and my daughter and my blessing, and everything else he had asked for. I had sufficient self-control not to tell him this, however. He explained at once that he had been looking for us for several days, that he knew all about me and my present position from Shafter Blakeney, and that as he did not care to put me in a false light before the Ames family, he had sent his card to me before attempting to see Berenice. I rather wished he hadn't, but I didn't tell him that, either. I said that my office was a negative one, and that if he wanted to see Miss Ames he must first obtain her uncle's permission, whereupon he looked me straight in the eye, and said, very quietly: " I prefer that you should understand, Mrs. Pome- roy, that I intend to see Miss Ames. I should be glad to do so with the permission of her family, but if that is withheld I shall see her just the same." I tried to look very stern and disapproving, but I could have hugged the wretch and I think he 293 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON knew it. Shafter Blakeney must have given a vivid portrayal of me! I asked him, somewhat dryly, whether he wasn't counting without Miss Ames herself, who might rea sonably have some voice in the matter, whereat he got very white, and asked: " Do you mean that she would refuse to see me?" I told him I was perfectly sure she would. He asked, rather unsteadily, whether she was engaged to Mr. Gaveston, and I replied: "Not yet." "You mean that she intends to accept him?" "I think it not improbable." "Is he here?" "He will be Wednesday." He studied over this for a moment, and then impaled me again upon that direct young gaze of his. "Mrs. Pomeroy, does she love him?" I said only that she had not taken me so far into her confidence, but something seemed to cheer him, for he threw up his head, and demanded: "Then why should she refuse to see me?" I asked him if he really knew of no reason, and he replied, rather hesitantly: "There was a sort of misunderstanding when she came away " I nodded. " You know about that ? She told you that? Oh, well!" For some reason this seemed to bring us very close together all at once. Evidently he knows my lady Berenice, root, branch and blossom! "But Bunny Blakeney gave her my message in Santiago you heard that and she fired the Englishman didn't she? Bunny said 294 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON a bear with a sore head wasn't in it with him after you left." Oh, faithful Shafter! "Then why won't she see me?" Well, I asked him about his engagement to Meta Carstairs and it was the first he had heard of it. He threw back his head and laughed, then he frowned, and then he laughed again. "So that's the reason," he mused. "Do you think I'll have to kidnap her first and convince her afterward?" from which you may infer that Mr. Perry Lydecker Waite and I had covered a good deal of intervening space in fifteen minutes. Mr. Carstairs, it developed, has some business interests in Rio, and had arranged to send another man down to look after them. Meta, who is de voted to Berenice, and knew nothing of her quarrel with Perry, mentioned this to him and then aided and abetted him in his effort to supplant the other man, in which they were successful. It was partly on account of this other man, and partly at Perry's own request "because it isn't necessary to talk about everything, and some people like to," he said that the matter was kept rather quiet. I told him that Helen would arrive to-day, when my obligations would be at an end, and that Bere nice was not feeling well and I did not tell him why and we agreed that he should make no further move last night. Berenice slept late this morning, and when she awoke, her mother was standing by her bed watch ing her. Well naturally there was a commotion. Berenice cried, and Helen cried and I wept a sym- 295 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON pathetic drop or two myself, and then I went down to the terrace and left them alone in the chalet. I may as well tell you now that while I waited there, with my heart in my mouth, Beverley Ames came along and you can guess the rest. He be gan by telling me, in his stiff, kindly way, how good I had been to Berenice, and how deeply he had been touched by what he was pleased to call my patience and tact and wisdom. I was utterly unstrung anyway, and this loosened the last cord of my self-control, so I couldn't bite the tears back any longer and you know what that does to any normal man. He sat down beside me and said that he hadn't meant to mention it again until this trip was over, because, though he had felt very much encouraged of late oh, Marion! he had gathered from my manner that I would prefer not to have anything definitely decided between us until we got home. I summoned up spirit enough to ask what reason he thought he had for feeling encouraged but I knew! How my chickens do come trooping home to roost! He was very nice about it, however, and didn't send them back crowing. He said only that now, since Helen had come to be with Berenice and with me, he felt that the ban had been lifted and that he might speak freely, the more so that I was worn and troubled and needed comfort as Heaven knows I do! My impulse, of course, was to refuse, but he begged me to think it over quietly and Marion, I'm doing it. I am thinking about it very seriously. If I 296 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON marry him, it will be in opposition to all my ideals of marriage. I realize that perfectly. But I wonder whether romantic ideals were meant for tired, lonely women? And I am very tired, and very lonely, and it is a long, flat, arid stretch ahead. It is not as if there were the slightest deception on either side. He makes no pretence of love in the romantic sense, but says frankly that he admires me more than any other woman he ever knew, that he is very much alone, that lately the future has looked dreary to him, and that my presence would brighten it. That isn't very much to ask, is it? Just friend ship and companionship. Almost any woman might give that to a man she liked, and still retain her self-respect. At least, I think she might. I am trying to decide whether or not I can. And I do like him, for he is kind and sincere and loyal and he asks so little! Of course, that is the real secret. He asks so little that I believe I could satisfy him but I am not so sure that it would satisfy me, who have al ways been greedy and demanded much of life. He said that Helen and Dick would be pleased, which I think is true, and he said some other things that I can't repeat, even to you, because I deserve them so little. Three hours after I left the chalet, Helen came down, pale and despairing. Berenice had nearly wept her heart out at first, but clung to her deter mination to marry Mr. Gaveston immediately, "be fore father and Uncle Beverley have time to trump 297 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON up any silly, stupid, malicious story about him, as they are trying to do," she said. Helen wanted to know why Beverley and I so mistrusted this Englishman. Wasn't he a gentle man? Had we learned anything against him, for all our trying ? Of course, he had fallen in love with Berenice, but was that a crime? She dwelt on the fact that he was well-born, and even mentioned that there was a title in the family. You remember Helen always leaned a little in that direction. Any way, didn't I know that the surest way to drive any Ames into a certain path was to oppose their going there? Poor Helen! All I could tell her about Gaveston was that I was born with an antipathy to spiders and that I always recognized one when I met it on the high way, whatever its disguise, which naturally did not satisfy her. It wasn't that she was taking up the cudgels for Gaveston so much as that she was be wildered and distressed though Berenice had evi dently shaken her faith in our judgment. She had lost her balance, and wanted something firm to set her foot on, if it was only our insufficiency or Bere nice's inherent charm. I had told her hurriedly, before she saw the child, of young Waite's presence in Rio, my reception of him the night before, and my conviction that he and Berenice really loved each other, all of which she had rather resented. I now urged her, since Berenice seemed determined to marry somebody out of hand, to give Perry an equal chance with the other man, and her permission to rewin the girl if 298 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON he could, which she refused to do. She said Dick would never forgive her, and that I really didn't know any more about Waite than I did about Gaves- ton, and that since Dick had decided that Perry Waite was not a proper person to marry Berenice, she certainly was not going to fly in the face of his decision. "Men know lots of things that women don't," she said. Then I begged her at least to see the boy herself, and to this she finally consented, but before I could get him out here, her ancient enemy fell upon her and smote her hip and thigh. You know what heat and excitement always did to Helen? They did it again, and she went to bed in the throes of a sick headache, where she still lies, prone and helpless, Berenice in attendance. Then I labored vigorously with Mr. Ames, and persuaded him to see Perry which he did, he said, solely for my sake, as he considered the young man's presence in Rio at this time an impertinence, and his determination to thrust himself upon the Ames family little short of insolence, all of which my sweet but too sympathetic nature naturally prevented my seeing clearly. Marion, could I stand a lifetime of that sort of thing? Or would his real kindness make it seem, in time, a harmless eccentricity to be tenderly smiled at? I'm getting so I don't rnind his fussy little ways at all, and I can comment very intelligently on the Civil War and think about something else all the time. It was in that spirit, anyway, that he went to the 299 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON interview, and it was more or less rather less in that spirit that he came away from it. I am not saying that I hadn't put a flea or two in Perry's ear, but the one that would have been most effective he wouldn't entertain. He flatly refused to tell any of the Ameses the reason that Berenice came to South America instead of eloping with him as she threatened to do. "If the time ever comes," said he, "when Bere nice is willing that her family should know of that incident, she will tell them herself. At present, she'd rather die than have them know of it wouldn't she?" I was obliged to admit that she probably would, but urged that extreme measures were justifiable. He wagged his head. "No. I shall not tell them and you can't, without betray ing her confidence, which you will not do." There went the only chance of even faintly recon ciling the Ameses to Perry Waite on short notice, at least so deeply are they all imbued with this senseless prejudice against him and with the idea that he is a fortune-hunter. Uncle Beverley did admit, when pressed, that the young man's appearance was somewhat in his favor, but he had read into Perry's steady, direct, courte ous manner a certain veiled insolence, a lack of re spect for age and authority, and his persistence in following Berenice down here was quoted as proof positive of a sordid and mercenary mind. Mr. Ames added that, in any event, his brother Richard had seen the young man, talked with him, and decided against him, and that whatever his own 300 opinion might be in the matter, he should never think of reversing any decision of Richard's in a matter concerning a member of Richard's imme diate family. It was too great a responsibility, he said. Then I asked him to cable to Dick, setting forth the situation, and asking whether, as between the two men, he would not prefer that she should marry her own countryman. I would cable myself, but I know that Dick wouldn't pay the slightest atten tion to a message from me when Helen and Beverley are both on the spot, particularly as he and Helen seem to be saturated with the idea that my personal liking for Shafter Blakeney was equivalent to ap proval and encouragement, from the first, of the Waite affair. Mr. Ames said, however, that it would be quite impossible to explain the situation clearly in a cablegram; and then he asked me, very kindly, whether I didn't think, since Berenice's mother had come down here for the express purpose of deciding these questions, that he and I might safely leave them to her? Finis. By this time I was pretty well exhausted, as you may imagine, not having slept more than forty winks all night, and I felt that if I couldn't get away from all this for a few minutes, at least, I should go stark, staring mad. So, late in the afternoon, when Mr. Ames had gone down-town and I had ascertained that there was nothing I could do to make Helen more comfortable, I slipped away and rode down to the city and back on the tram, just to drink color 301 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON exactly, I imagine, as a man, under similar cir cumstances, might drink liquor. But mine was a diviner draught than ever was distilled from fruit or grain, and I returned uplifted and encouraged. It is very warm here and the air is damp, but the dampness has compensations. It covers every wall and step and stone with exquisite green mosses and lichens of various shades. Brazilians have a fancy for tinting their masonry garden walls and such a lovely soft color which is neither red nor rose nor flame nor salmon but a little of all. Somebody in the dining-room to-day suggested that it was a "Greek pink." As I don't happen to know Greek pink by sight, I can't say, but I know that when mosses and creepers and lichens arrange themselves upon this background, the result is intoxicating. The only way to get to and from this hotel is by tram, and the road runs all the way beside a ruined aqueduct, and seems more beautiful each time I go over it, as I learn where the especially lovely bits are. There is a place that looks like an old fortifi cation, though it may be simply masonry to keep the hill from sliding down, and it, too, is gray with lichens and green with moss, and its top is garlanded with flowering creepers. There are quaint, steep, narrow stairways some of them, also, in ruins and occasional little, rusty, grated doors in the hill side, which may admit to water-pipes or sewers, but which suggest all sorts of delightful and romantic possibilities. And always there are the trees and their green shadows, and the changing views of city and bay 302 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON and mountains, and always the road twists and turns and winds, following the course of the old aqueduct and the contour of the hills down to the city. For the last stretch, the aqueduct here a fine, double tier of arches, one on top of the other be comes a viaduct for the tram-line, and we hum over it, looking down on streets and roofs and gar dens and palm-trees, and end, at last, beneath the domes and weather-stained walls of an old mon astery. There has recently appeared a magazine article concerning the chimney-pots of Florence. I wish somebody who knows enough would write one about the roofs of Rio but it must be illustrated in color, and in color beyond the present possibilities of ink! I decided to-day that the tiles, which seem to be generally flat and grooved, are originally of one color, a deep, rich, reddish yellow, and that the softening and mottling and exquisite coloration is made by the lichens which gather quickly upon them. The result is a harmony that I find entranc ing. And when there are thousands of these roofs, quaintly gabled, nestling in masses of warm, dark, yellow green, lapped by the sapphire sea, guarded by towering gray crags, caressed by the softest airs Oh, it's no use! I can't make you see it! But I can go out, wearied and sleepless, harried by sorrow and uncertainty and dread, and drink deep draughts of it, bathe in it, breathe it, draw it into my very soul, and come back to real life a woman again. That's what I did this afternoon. I *o 303 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON went to the city end of the line, and then up the whole length of the road to Silvestre, the last station. When I got back to earth and the hotel I found Perry Waite sitting on the terrace. He said he had seen Mr. Ames down-town and knew that Mrs. Ames was ill, and he thought it might be a good time to see Berenice, so he had come out to try. Even as he spoke, the man returned and handed him his card, across which Berenice, as if afraid that her message would not be clearly delivered, had written, "Miss Ames is not at home." It was a blow to him, for he had still believed that she would see him if left to herself and given the opportunity, and this took away all hope of that. My position is a difficult one, for however I sym pathize with him and desire to help him, because I believe it is for Berenice's real happiness, it is im possible, under the circumstances, for me to con spire with him and against the Ames family, whose envoy I have been, and in a sense am still. Never theless, I offered to go up to the chalet and tell Berenice that he had never been engaged to Meta Carstairs. Berenice has avoided me all day, offend ed because I did not tell her that her mother was expected; but I knew that I could corner her and make her listen that Idng, at least. Indeed, I arose to go, but he said, "Wait a minute," and went off into a brown study. Presently he said: " She'd be sure to resent your thinking that could make any difference now. She's just in that mood when it might do more harm than good. Be- 304 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON sides it wouldn't add to your popularity with her people, would it?" I said that my popularity or lack of it ought not to enter into the question at all. The only thing I cared to preserve was my self-respect, and I could not do that and be disloyal to the Ameses. At the same time, I knew what nobody else did, that the report of this engagement had moved her strongly, and I felt that before she engaged herself to another man it was her right to know what I now knew: that the Carstairs engagement had never existed. Therefore, I purposed telling her so. "That's very good of you," he said. "Mighty good of you, but wait." After a little, he went on : "There must be some other way out of this, you know. There always is. When a thing is over, we can always see plenty of things that we might have done if we'd had sense enough. Now, don't let's make any mistake about this. Let's find the best way and that means a way that will reach her and won't make further trouble for you." In vain I argued that he couldn't do anything himself in so short a time. Berenice would not see him nor read his letters, neither Helen nor Mr. Ames would listen to him, Shafter Blakeney was no longer available and Gaveston would be here Wednesday. After him the deluge! He looked rather solemn, but insisted that I must not take any active part in the matter at present. In fact, he made me promise not to speak to Berenice about it to anybody else until I heard from him again. In the end I may ask more of you than you THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON will be willing to give," he said, "but we will try everything else we can think of first." He asked if he might telephone to me to-morrow about noon, and went off down-town to meditate, while I came up to my lone chalet Berenice having moved into the adjoining one with her mother ostensibly to dress for dinner, but really to hang over the veranda rail, watching the shadows crawl up from the valleys and the colors blend and fade, and to think think think! I wonder whether any of our thinking really does any good? Sometimes it seems to help us, and sometimes we know we fail and are we all the time but "helpless pieces of the Game He Plays upon this Chequerboard of night and days?" Quien sabe? Presently Mr. Ames came along with flowers for me, and some American magazines that he thought might distract my thoughts, and a letter from Ned. Did I write you that we found a note from him awaiting us here when we arrived ? In it he apolo gized for not coming down to meet us, and explained that he had some semi-official affair on hand that night which he could not well neglect, and that he would be very busy for several days. In this later note he invites us all to spend Tues day motoring with him, and says something about a dinner, later in the week, at the Embassy in Pe- tropolis, where, of course, he lives. He seems very eager to see Helen, whom he has not met for years. Mr. Ames was greatly pleased by all this, as he admires Ned greatly, and hoped Helen would be 306 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON well enough to accept both invitations, as well as one from the Garlands for the twenty- seventh. The Garlands are Americans living here. Ned told me about them in Santiago, and says they are charm ing people. Mrs. Garland left cards to-day while I was out, and Uncle Beverley I must cure myself of that habit! seems very much taken with her husband. It is very late and I must get to bed. My few lines have grown to many pages, but it does help to pour it all out to you. Once, years ago, strolling through a quiet street, I came upon a small boy who had attached him self to an iron hitching-post. The post was hollow and most satisfactorily resonant, and he beat upon it. With one of its two iron rings in either hand did he beat upon it, and he kicked it with his one free foot. Unfortunately he had but the usual comple ment of feet and he needed one to stand on, but I knew how he longed to be a centipede. Also, he lifted up his voice and yelled lustily the while, just for pure joy in the sound. After observing this phenomenon for a few minutes, I approached the youth, and to him I addressed myself, thusly: "What would you do if you couldn't make a noise? If you couldn't pound anything, or kick anything, or whistle, or shout, or make any kind of noise at all what would you do?" He regarded me for a moment, slow horror dawn ing in his eyes. Then he whispered, awesomely: "Gee! A feller 'd bust!" That's much the way I feel now. I'm like to bust, 307 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON and if you get seven letters from me by every mail as long as this tension lasts, don't be surprised. I know I may count on your patience, too, because you've been my safety-valve so many years. Rio, June 226.. I wonder how it feels to be sleepy ? I haven't slept for a thousand years, and I know I shall never sleep again. It has been an awful day the sort that screws you up to the highest tension, because there's noth ing to do but wait. Helen has been too ill all day to be talked to, though toward night her headache wore away, leaving her pale and weak and nervous. Berenice has studiously avoided me. She is still angry that I did not let her know that her mother was coming, and is again sullen and defiant, as she hasn't been for weeks. About noon Perry Waite telephoned to say that he had found a way out without involving me at all, and that I was to do nothing and say nothing. He wouldn't tell me his plan, saying that it would be much better that I should know nothing about it until it happened. He seemed very confident, but the day brought no further developments in that direction. This afternoon Mrs. Garland telephoned to ask whether some of us wouldn't like to go shopping or motoring or something. Berenice refused to leave her mother, but by this time I was restless 308 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON enough to welcome any distraction, so I went down, and Mrs. Garland met me at the end of the tram line with their big car. She is all Ned said she was and more, and I like her very much. We spent an hour motoring about the city, of which, up to that time, I had seen very little except its roofs. We went from end to end of the brilliant Avenida, getting glimpses of narrow, interesting side- streets, and along the docks. We traversed the beautiful beach boulevard and threaded innumer able residence streets, full of color and charm everywhere, except in the heart of the city, the wonderful green of tropical trees and the flaming blossoms of tropical plants and vines, against the soft- tinted walls and rich, mottled yellow-and-brown roofs. Then she took me into crowded little shops off crowded little streets, and we played with glittering heaps of native stones tourmalines, aquamarines, topazes, amethysts letting little streams of them trickle through our fingers, and haggling, as one does in Latin countries, over the price of this lot or that > single jewel, ending, of course, by saying that we would come in some other day to buy. Then we looked at feather- work, which here is even more wonderful than that of Mexico, and bought green Brazilian beetles, and hung over piles of photographs; and when I got back to the hotel to dinner, some of the indigo had faded out of me. In the evening, Mr. Garland, who, among other things, is connected with the management of the cog-wheel road up the Corcovado, took us all to the 309 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON summit in a special train. Helen insisted that she was not well enough to go, but we persuaded her to make the effort, and I think it did her good. This going about in cabs and motors and private trains, by- the- way, is not making me any more reconciled to being yanked by a subway guard and told to step lively when I get home. Of course, I realize that it must be a great thing to live in a country where all men are free and equal. I'd like to try it for a while. But I have been so long one of the downtrodden class that the civility of some of the servants and tradespeople in these countries rather confused and embarrassed me at first. It is disconcerting to find one's self involuntarily respect ing servants because of their attitude rather than magnanimously trying to respect them in spite of it. Now that I have grown accustomed to it, I shall need some severe snubbing to put me in my proper place again when I get home and I shall receive it, never fear! I wish it might be gently borne in upon our brethren and sistren and there are times when I should not insist too strongly upon tenderness in the administration that freedom and civility are not incompatible. The evening on the top of the Corcovado is one of the things that I can never properly describe to you. The moon was almost full and more brill iant than any northern mind can imagine, and going up through the forest was a wonder and a delight. Part of the way the road seems fairly to stand on end, it is so steep, and I was dreaming off in the silver haze of the moonlight over the tree-tops, when 310 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON all at once we came out on the peak, and Rio, with her twenty thousand electric lights, lay beneath us like a living jewel. I have seen electrical displays, and World's Fairs, and Coney Island from the sea, but never, never have I seen anything so beautiful as Rio at night from the top of the Corcovado. They say it is more brilliant on a dark night, but it seemed to me that the white flood of moonlight added a mystery to the dusk that mere blackness would not have had. We could even see the convolutions in some of the outlying hills, and Mr. Garland traced for us the route that we shall probably take to-morrow when we go mo toring with Ned, but always I came back to that glittering, shimmering, gleaming wonder of a city below us. I think I have written you that the Corcovado is about two thousand feet high, and from the place where the train stopped we had to climb steps cut in the rock to the uttermost pinnacle, just large enough for the little pavilion crowning it. From this one can descend a few steps and walk out on a ledge to a small, low-walled, terrace sort of place, where one absolutely seems to be suspended over the earth like a bird. On that side it is a sheer drop of seventeen hundred feet, so Mr. Garland told me, to the first outward slope of the mountain. I was hanging over this brink, longing for five minutes of solitude and silence, when Mr. Garland led all the others back to the pavilion to show them something on the other side of the peak, and I was left alone. THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Below me, Rio, a perfect thing in that hour, flashed her thousands of lights in a visible fulfilment of a great human ideal, and Nictheroy, her neigh bor, twinkled a response. Between them lay the shimmering bay, dotted with islands; all about pale mountain wraiths reared fantastic crests in the paler dusk, looking over the ephemeral brightness of man's handiwork to the infinity of the ocean, while overhead, through the blue night heavens, swung the serene and glorious Southern Cross. I felt like a disembodied spirit, awed but unafraid, face to face with the Great Mystery which, after all, is life, not death. And in that moment I knew that I never could marry Beverley Ames. Once more I saw clearly, and knew that life and love were infinite and eternal things, not to be disprized or sullied, and that upon him to whom is granted the vision falls the com mand to follow it and to accept nothing less. I had waited for a sign from heaven and it had come. I told him on the way home, walking back from the station to the hotel. He seemed surprised, but was very quiet and kind about it, as of course he would be, and tried not to let me see that I had hurt him. I still hope that I haven't much and that when he gets back into the orderly procession of his life, his former habit of thought will assert itself, and this will cease to be a painful memory. If it doesn't oh, Marion, do motives make any difference, after all ? " By their fruits ye shall know them," it was said, and is it going to make any dif ference to Beverley Ames that I meant to give him 312 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON nice, friendly, commonplace apples instead of the figs he asked for or the thistles he has plucked? I shall be glad to see Ned to-morrow. I think he will rest me. Not that he knows anything about any of this, but somehow, just talking to Ned about anything always helps me straighten out my tangles. He's so big and sane and human! Though I didn't profit much by seeing him in Santiago, did I ? Per haps I'm past even his help now! I wonder wherein I have changed so much that an old friend oh, I'm going to bed! What's the use of burning good midnight oil in the production of vapors like that? I don't know what time o' day it is with you, but whatever it is, I hope you're sound asleep. That's the best thing I could wish anybody at this moment ! * * * Marion dear, the heavens are falling. Most of the stars I ever had to guide me have tumbled down, and those that remain have shifted so that I don't know where they are leading me. I have looked very deep into life to-day, dear, and it has left me happy and sorrowful and dazed and awed and it's the only thing that ever happened to me that I can't tell you about. Didn't I write you from somewhere near Panama that I knew I was going toward a great change ? It has come. The road to it has been long, and I had almost forgotten to look for it, but it came upon me here in Rio. It came to-day, and I am writing to you now not because I can tell you about it or about anything but because I must take hold of THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON something I know to steady myself and you are the only thing in all creation that I am sure of ! I have been sitting out on the veranda all night, watching these brilliant southern skies and think ing until all my world reels and I've got to get hold of something so I have come in to write to you. You won't mind if I am incoherent and crazy and maybe it will steady me to write. I'll try to tell you what we have seen to-day for we have been motoring through the most radiantly beautiful country and perhaps that may help me see straight again. Not that I don't see some things straight enough. That's what it is. To-day every thing has been so clear that Marion, did you ever see yourself your whole heart and soul and life in an entirely new light all in one blinding flash? That is what happened to me to-day and it has shaken me stunned me blinded me And I've got to get hold of myself. I've got to, because Gaveston comes to-morrow really to-day, for already streaks of light are com ing up over the mountains and I must be ready to meet whatever the day may bring forth. I know now that I must save that child from him, if I have to break every promise I ever made and smash the whole decalogue to do it! Perry telephoned me to-night last night, I mean when we got home from the motor trip and seemed rather troubled that nothing had "hap pened" yet, but said it would surely be all right in the morning. I tried to pull myself together enough to make him see that I must tell Berenice THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON the truth or Helen, or somebody but he said Gaveston could not possibly get through the cus toms and find us before ten or eleven o'clock, and that if nothing had happened by noon, we would decide upon some other course. I don't understand what he is trying to do or what he can expect but he still seemed so positive that he had found the key to the solution that I acquiesced for the moment. I can't tell you what we have seen to-day. I thought perhaps I could a little while it is all fresh in my mind but I can't. I shall have to wait until it has dulled and shrunk to the limits of my vocabulary. I remember now that I began by warning Ned that Helen and I had both driven from Sorrento to Amalfi and thence to Cava. He smiled and said : "Wait." I thought he had forgotten that Amalfi drive but he hadn't. Somebody has called that "The Dream Road." To me this one will always be The Road of Supreme Revelation. This whole South American trip has been full of extraordinary interest and beauty, but from it three big experiences will stand clearly forth in my memory as long as I live the afternoon in the Culebra Cut, the Andean jaunt, and this motor-drive in the hills about Rio. I felt this I was deeply stirred by the transcendent beauty of it even before the great revelation of the day broke upon me the thing that has shaken all my life into a new pattern, like a kaleidoscope. I'm glad I knew from the very first that it was one of the rare jewels set in life's long chain a day to be held forever pre cious. When we started about nine in a big, power ful car, the hills were still folded in the morning haze, but it gradually vanished as we hummed through the city and took a road that winds and climbs and twists its way to a place called Tijuca,* now boring through heavy-foliaged trees, now open ing for a view of some abrupt almost bizarre peak, now disclosing the blue, islanded, mountain- girt bay. Sometimes tall bamboos made gothic arches over us, sometimes we were buried in a lush, fragrant, green-shadowed jungle of ferns and palms and flow ering trees and orchid-grown things we couldn't name, and sometimes we whizzed along a ledge cut in the mountain-side, looking down on the surf far below, breaking on sands as white as sugar. Once we stopped in a gorge to watch a lovely cas cade gush and tumble over a rocky wall. Once, when we paused at a little wayside place, a gray- haired, toothless old negro took off his hat to Ned and said he had seen him out there before, on horse back. Ned gave him a coin and he remained un covered before us, saying that now he should always remember us all. And once we met a white flock of girls coming from church along the shadowy road, wearing soft, floating, first-communion veils and carrying candles. Occasionally we left the car and followed a foot- * Pronounced Ti-zhoo-ka. 316 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON path into the woods, through cool, green lights, be side trickling waters, where wild begonias sprangled, blooming, over rocks, and vines and orchids hung thick in the trees. And all the time Ned kept reminding us that this was midwinter, when foliage was scanty and we must not look for many flowers. He said that he first took this drive in summer, when myriads of brilliant moths, like winged blossoms, languorously waved their way among the branches and the air was heavy with fragrance. Finally we came to a place, high up on a moun tain-side, where there is a pavilion, and there we stopped for luncheon. A party of laborers had been there before us and had left the remains of their meal; but when they saw us, they came and gath ered up their papers and scraps. Ned thanked them very courteously, and they as courteously assured him that it was nothing. Later he went to them asking for a glass, as we had forgotten to take any cups, and they washed one clean and brought it to us full of fresh mountain water. When he returned it he took them a bottle of beer, and they all took off their hats and thanked him and wished us a pleasant drive. It was very pretty. I haven't said anything about the view from that place. I can't. It's too big for me. It is a vast panorama of warm, green, forest-clad slopes rising from a vivid, sparkling sea of craggy, violent, rock-ribbed peaks wrapped in soft haze of intense foregrounds and tender distances and unutterable beauty. THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON I think the Islands of the Blessed must be like that, where those whom the gods love dwell in ever lasting joy. Just looking at it from without swings one very far from earth and breathlessly near to heaven. It was there while I brooded over that beauty contrasting its tremendous emotional pull with the mystical revelations of the moonlit night on the Corcovado that suddenly everything cleared for me and I saw life whole. No other moment not even the moment of death, I think will ever be to me what that was. But I don't yet know why I have been so dull so blind so dead And to think that I might have gone on all the rest of my life never knowing never understanding! To think that it took an experience like this to teach me! After that we went on miles and miles hours and hours of it I can't tell you about them. I haven't really told you about any of it. I never can. Even before we got to that place, I had been lifted out of the realms of speech and after that I didn't even try to talk though there was much more of it. The others thought I was tired and I let them. We got back about four, I think. That makes seven hours. You know what that means, over good roads, in a powerful car and every mile of it indescribable beauty. But I have found myself, Marion after all these years when I was so sure I knew! I have found my self at last. I am infinitely richer for the discovery 318 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON but something has gone from me, too and will never come back. The direction and all the lights of my life have changed in this one day. For me now it will be always afternoon. The morning brightness toward which I have always looked has faded. My shadow falls from the west. Rio, June 25th. Do you remember that meteoric, reprehensible, utterly irrepressible girl at boarding-school, who, when she was annoyed, said: "Gosh double-golly, double-golly gosh darn?" Our association with her was brief but spicy, and I have never forgotten her. During the past twenty-four hours I have thought of her often and with gratitude. Once, when she was exasperated beyond endurance, she said: " Hellitydeviltycussitydamn!" She was severely dis ciplined, as I dare say I deserve to be anyway, I'm getting it but at least she had known the joy of expression. I have always wanted to alter Doctor Holmes' lines they are Doctor Holmes', aren't they? beginning: "Alas for those who never sing," to a lament for those who "die with all their swearwords in 'em." I think ingrowing profanity must be a lot more dis tressful than music. Still, the burden of my song is not all swearwords by any means. There is a mighty triumphal shout arising from my heart to high heaven, and a paean of thanksgiving. And the rest of it, like everything 319 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON else in life, has its funny side. When I can forget the sting of my wounds long enough, I laugh which does not diminish my offence. Also, my occupation being gone and my temper somewhat ruffled, I am preparing to pack my doll- clothes and go home by the first ship which hap pens to be an English steamer sailing on the first leaving Helen and Berenice to follow later, prob ably with Mr. Ames. There will be a direct steamer for New York on the fourth, which will take this letter and might take me, but it happens to be one of the smaller and less comfortable ships of the line, and anyway, I think that a few days in London the " good, gray city " among things that have endured forever, would be grateful to me just now. I find myself rather longing for its orderliness and age and quiet. Gaveston arrived, as we expected, yesterday morning, and on the same steamer came the Bander- snatch. Which, as Mr. Kipling occasionally re marks, is another story. The Bandersnatch, by- the-way, doesn't like me, and sweetens her spicy remarks to me with a toothful smile, much like the tiger's. Of course, both came to this hotel. There are not so many good ones in Rio that we were hard to find. Before they came, however, I had a long talk with Helen, which was less frank than I had in tended because of Perry Waite's insistence that I should keep my hands off the reins, leaving them wholly to him. He seemed much disturbed when I told him over 320 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON the telephone, early in the morning, that the situa tion remained unchanged, but protested vigorously against my making any move in the matter. I said that it seemed to me too serious a business to take any chances or to quibble about side issues at the eleventh hour, and he reminded me that he had more at stake than anybody except Berenice. He stoutly maintained his right and his ability to handle his own campaign, but finally said that if his present line of action did not develop results by noon, he would ask my help. Still dissatisfied, but impressed, nevertheless, by his confidence, I prom ised to hold my peace until that time, and went up to find Helen, who had regained her balance a lit tle, but was still pale and depressed and very nervous. She said she realized perfectly that I had acted conscientiously throughout, but she thought very mistakenly. In fact, she could not understand my position at all. Why I should insist upon bringing the Waite boy into the affair again, when we had taken all this long journey just to cure Berenice of her foolish fancy for him, she could not, for the life of her, see. Neither could she understand why I insisted that the child was still in love with this youth, when she herself declared that she wanted to marry somebody else. Also, though she and Dick didn't want Berenice to marry anybody at present, if she was bent on doing it, they would much prefer that she should choose a man of mature years and assured social position, as Mr, Gaveston seemed to be, rather than 321 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON an unknown and untried young upstart like this Waite. I asked her what assurance she had that Gaveston was a desirable suitor, and she replied again that at least we had learned nothing against him. Nor could she see that I had any explanation whatever to offer of my attitude in the matter, except that I had taken an unreasoning dislike to the man in the first place, and consequently never had been quite fair to him. She was much impressed by the tale of his suffer ings in crossing the Cordillera, as related by Bere nice, as well as by the devotion he displayed in the orchid episode when we left Buenos Aires. Bere nice had evidently reported the Santiago ruction, also, and Helen wanted to know why I had cham pioned Gaveston 's cause on that occasion and op posed him so steadily in my letters to her. In all of which she was not sharp or impatient, but sweet and troubled and a little plaintive, as you know Helen would be. I explained as well as I could that my insistence upon Berenice's rights as an individual did not necessarily imply approval of the particular course she chose at the moment, and added a few timely remarks upon the folly of trying to coerce a girl like her daughter. Incidentally, I mentioned that if she wanted a cogent reason for Berenice's determination to marry to marry almost anybody who offered, in fact she need not look farther than the yoke and goad of family authority, and she complained that one would think, to hear me, that she and Dick were perfect 322 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON ogres, whereas everybody knew that they had al ways been altogether too indulgent to Berenice. I suggested and I tried to do it very gently that sometimes the love that pampers the body of the beloved, still tyrannizes over the spirit, confining and despoiling it, whereupon Helen cried and said nobody had ever said such things to her before which is probably true. And that is where we were when Gaveston arrived. Berenice, who had been flushed with excitement and as restless as a caged panther all the morning, lost color and met him rather shyly when it came to the point, and he seemed decidedly taken aback to find Helen here. He moved very cautiously, and both he and the Bandersnatch seemed to be taking observations constantly, in an effort to find which way the wind lay now. Helen's attitude was a model of non-committal dignity, but I could see that she was prepossessed in his favor by his manner, which I had warned her was irreproachable when he chose to make it so. The only thing she didn't like was his association with Mrs. Rankin, to whom she turned an icy shoulder. It takes more than a little thing like that to disconcert the Bandersnatch, but Gaveston instantly felt the chill and conducted himself ac cordingly. Thereafter, it was obvious but not too obvious that his attentions to Mrs. Rankin were only those of any well-bred man to a woman whom circumstance has thrown in his way, and the im pression was skilfully conveyed that the lady was our friend rather than his. Later in the day, he 323 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON told Helen, quite casually, that he had been much surprised to find Mrs. Rankin a fellow-passenger when he left Buenos Aires. The Bandersnatch recognized her cue and took it but she didn't enjoy the situation a bit, and evi dently charged the responsibility for it up to me, for she presently told me how worn and exhausted I looked, and solicitously hoped that I hadn't had bad news or been disappointed in any way. Then she inquired how dear Mr. Ames was now, and murmured : "How much you must have enjoyed all these days since leaving Buenos Aires, when you have had him quite to yourself, dear!" Meow! Nevertheless, I am disappointed in the Bandersnatch. Apparently she loses her head with her temper. I gave her credit for more sense, though at her best she is hardly to be called subtle. Meanwhile, Berenice had sufficiently recovered her courage to smile faintly upon her suitor. She had also grasped the fact that her mother, removed from Dick's influence, was as wax in her hands, and therefore she cast occasional mocking, triumphant glances at me, and half forgave me for being instru mental in bringing Helen down here for the joy of defeating me with my own weapons. Gaveston either discovered or was told that there was no place about the hotel where he could see Berenice alone and press his wooing undisturbed, and he suggested evidently encouraged by Helen's neutral manner that we all take a walk in the afternoon, saying that he felt the need of exercise 324 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON after five days on the ship. Mrs. Rankin regretted that a business engagement in town would prevent her accompanying us, and said there was "a per fectly ideal walk" at a place called Paineiras,* half way up the Corcovado road. Helen demurred a little, but yielded, of course, to Berenice's pleading. Helen always was sweet and adaptable, but I am just beginning to realize how completely her life with Dick has deprived her of any power of self- assertion. She seems to have no mind of her own at all. But before she married a "magerful man" she had a magerful mother, and now both live in her magerful daughter, and as Helen loves peace, perhaps it is small wonder, after all, that she hasn't developed much strength of spine. At Berenice's suggestion, she asked Mr. Gaveston to join us at breakfast, and we all went down with our hats on, as we had to leave the hotel soon after one to catch the train up the mountain. As we passed through the office, I noticed a tele graph messenger at the door, and a moment later the proprietor approached us with a cablegram for Berenice. Helen paled, and gasped: "Your father!" She would have taken the paper from Berenice's hands, but the girl drew away, and we saw all the color fade from her face and lips and sweep back in a glorious wave as she read the message twice through. Then she looked at me and never have I seen such radiance in a human countenance. My * Pronounced Py-ndir-as. 325 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON heart began its paean right then, for though I didn't know what it was all about, I did know that the advance of the enemy was checked. Of course, my first thought was of Shafter Blakeney, who had saved the day for us before. Something of my eagerness must have been writ ten in my face, however, for suddenly the glory died out of hers. Suspicion reproach I couldn't read her expression at the moment, but again she turned deathly white, and she crushed the paper in her hand with a little exclamation. "Berenice! Tell me! Your father!" wailed Helen. " No, mother, it isn't about father. It isn't about anything at all. It's just from one of the girls at home." "Then why are you so pale? Why should any of the girls cable you? I insist upon seeing it!" But Berenice crumpled it in her hand and put up her chin. "Pale? Am I pale?" she asked, unevenly. "Why, I it startled me, I suppose getting a cablegram, I mean. I never did before. You wouldn't understand, mother. One of the girls wanted me to know she wanted to tell me some thing in a hurry, I mean. It was important that is, of course, it doesn't matter at all," her eyes blazed defiance at me, "but she thought Oh, I can't tell you I mean, there isn't time. Let's go in to lunch." She was trembling and her voice shook, but she managed to laugh, and Helen led the way to the table, saying something about school girl absurdities. When her mother's back was 326 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON turned, Berenice shot a black glance at me, and whispered : "This is more of your work, I suppose?" " I give you my word it is not," I returned and blessed Perry Waite for his foresight. "I don't even know whom it is from." For a moment we stood still, looking straight into each other's eyes, Gaveston behind us. Then her face softened. "Don't you? I thought you had But who did? Why should she?" I gently pushed her toward the table, saying we would talk it over later, and resolved never again to doubt the extent or efficacy of Perry Waite 's re sources. But it must have cost the lad something in cable tolls! Before we had finished the cold meat and salad with which a breakfast always begins in these countries, I was called to the telephone, and Perry's anxious voice said : " Hello, Mrs. Pomeroy. Anything happened yet ?" I told him that a cablegram had just happened, and he cried: "Bully for Meta! She must have been off on a visit or something, but I knew she wouldn't fail! How about it? Did it hit the target?" I replied that I thought it had made a bull's-eye, though I couldn't be quite sure yet. He laughed, and said he would come out during the afternoon to investigate, whereupon I naturally told him that he would find us out, as Mr. Gaveston had invited us all to go to Paineiras. "Paineiras! Of all places! The deuce he has!" which was an exclamation that I understood bet- 327 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON ter later. "Do you mind telling me who's going?" I told him. "Oh, you and Mrs. Ames, Berenice and himself, eh? H'm! All right. Thank you. Think you'll be back by five?" I said I thought we would, he thanked me again, and that was all. Berenice and Helen looked at me rather sharply when I returned to the table, but I maintained a serene and untroubled demeanor, and in due time we took the tram to the upper end of the line, where it connects with the road up the Corcovado. Berenice had been silent throughout breakfast, and after we started out managed always to keep her mother or me between herself and Gaveston. She pulled at the ends of a scarf she wore, and bit her lips, alternately flushing and paling; her eyes were too bright and her voice too sharp, and she was obviously agitated. At first, Gaveston rather enjoyed this, I think, as it lent zest to the final chase, but he presently perceived that it was some thing more than the feminine instinct of flight, and watched her rather uneasily. When we reached Paineiras, midway up the mountain, he fell into step beside her, protesting: "You haven't said three words to me, d'ye know? Aren't you going to tell me what you've been doing since I saw you?" She laughed nervously, and faltered something about giving him an opportunity to talk to her mother, whom she wanted him to know, whereupon he inquired lightly, but with meaning, whether he might interpret that as permission to speak to her mother about the things that lay nearest his heart. 328 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON She blushed and stammered and pretended not to understand, and finally begged him to go on with Helen, "for just a little way." If it hadn't been for the distress in her eyes, all this might have been the pretty flutter and shrink ing of a maiden on the point of yielding. He chose to interpret it so, at any rate, and laughingly agreed. "Very good," said he. "I leave you to Mrs. Pomeroy who has so vigorously affirmed your right to follow always the dictates of your own spirit," a significant reminder, under the circumstances. "But remember, I shall claim you for the whole of the walk back. Is it a promise?" She nodded, and he strolled on with Helen, along the most alluring path ever made by mortal man. I knew then why Perry had said "Paineiras, of all places!" It wanders along that path beside the little aqueduct, which is in use here and more than ever a thing of beauty, for it is low enough so that one can see the clear stream of water running down, and is the lovely, soft, pinkish red so common in Rio, with vivid and velvety mosses and tiny, lacy ferns and lichens growing over it. The path, with the aqueduct, follows the contour of the hills, and of course winds and climbs continually, through a forest of palms and tree-ferns and tall, tendril-draped trees and broad-leafed southern plants, sometimes with wonderful glimpses of mountain or sea across the green tree- tops of some sheer dropping gorge, sometimes with the murmur of unseen surf rolling up from the beach far below, always with the cool 3 2 9 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON trickle of water in the aqueduct and the warm, damp smell of the woods. We walked for a little time in silence, dropping behind Helen and Gaveston. Then, when they had disappeared beyond the next curve and we were out of sight of the hotel, she asked, in a perfectly level tone, that she still could not hold quite steady : "Mrs. Pomeroy, don't you know anything about this?" "I know what you told your mother," I replied. "Is that all you know?" I hesitated an instant, and before I could frame a reply, she plunged on. "Don't you know that Perry Waite is in Rio?" "Yes I know that." "You have seen him!" she flashed, stopping short. "Yes." " Did you tell him I had heard he was engaged to Meta Carstairs? Oh, you did! You did! You can't deny it! You talked me over you discussed me with him! You told what else did you tell him? Tell me this instant! What else?" "Berenice, if you will listen " I began and at that moment Perry Waite came around the curve behind her. Of course, my face changed, and she whirled, to find him almost at her elbow. "Berenice!" he cried, and held out his hands to her. But she backed up against the rosy, lichen- covered aqueduct and laid hold of it upon either side, staring first at him and then at me, and defy ing us both. " Oh!" she gasped. " So this is what you planned, THE ROSY, LICHEN-COVERED AQUEDUCT THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON is it? To fool me! To trap me'. To make me listen! Well, I won't! You haven't gained any thing, I can tell you that! You're like all the rest! You think you can talk me over and arrange every thing for me, and then force me into it! Well, you can't!" "Berenice, listen," he said, very quietly. "I will not listen! I will not be trapped like a rabbit! I will not be discussed and dissected and I tell you, I won't stand it! I suppose you don't know, either, why Meta Carstairs cabled to me this morning?" "Yes, I do." "Why?" "Because I cabled to her and asked her to." "Oh! You admit it! You talked me over be tween you you two and then you cabled to her that my heart was broken because somebody said you were engaged to her, and begged her to relieve my suffering! I tore up your letter unread I re fused to see you when you called and then you dared to do that! Now I'll tell you just how much I cared. I am going to be married within a week to Mr. Gaveston. He is on ahead there somewhere asking mother's consent but whether she gives it or not I shall marry him just the same! Under stand that clearly! I shall marry him within a week and then I hope I may never see or hear of you again! As for you " She turned upon me, but he said " Stop!" in such a tone that she stopped, panting. They were both deathly pale, but he was as quiet and tense as Shafter Blakeney had been THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON in a similar scene, and his words seemed to cut the air, so incisive were they. " You may say anything you like to me or about me, and it won't make any difference but you shall not say things about Mrs. Pomeroy. She's the best friend you ever had and you know it. As for Meta Carstairs " "I won't listen!" she cried, and would have started on, but I stood in her way, now thoroughly aroused myself. "You will listen!" said I. "It is no part of my business to urge you to marry Perry Waite or any other man, but it is my business to see that you be have yourself as a woman should. Here is a man who loves you, and who has travelled some thou sands of miles to tell you so and to prevent your making a fool of yourself. Now you will listen to him and then you can marry whom you please. For my part, I can't see why either of them want to marry you. I'd as soon live with a wildcat!" It was the first sharp word I had ever spoken to her, and for a moment she stared at me as if I had struck her. Then the lines of her face wavered and the storm broke. She leaned against the aque duct, shaken by sobs, and I looked at Perry to see whether he knew the next move. He did. So I turned my back on them and walked along the winding path after Helen and Gaveston, inex pressibly torn and shaken, and trying to steady and calm and cool myself in its beauty. It did not fail me. At every turn there were new shades of green against the soft red masonry of the aqueduct, new 332 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON depth to the shadows under its little arches, new curves in its beautiful lines, new lights on the hills, and little by little I perceived these things and they soothed, me. I walked under the spreading fronds of many a tree fern, and once I came upon a great, heart-shaped leaf, palpitating all by itself where everything else was still a passionate voice in the surrounding peace. There were soft bird-notes and fluttering butterflies, here water gushing out of a rock and shimmering down over strange, red, coral-like roots of some plant I couldn't trace, there the sharp finger of the Corcovado piercing the blue, ahead the pale trunk of some tall, tall tree with patches of rose-colored " lichens on its delicate gray bark, and huge orchids perched in its branches far over head. There were waterfalls, and quaint little reservoirs, and long stretches of green moss, and a soft, damp, tropical smell and in my heart a joy that fairly ached! I gave myself up to it, for I trusted Perry Waite, and I knew that down under all her thorns and briers and hot, foolish pride, the child loved him with a strength that would one day, with his help, make a woman of her. And if in my heart there was and is an ache all my own, that is only part joy, I would cling to the pain rather than relinquish one breath of this new, solemn, still rapture that possesses me. And presently along came Helen and Gaveston, on their way back, apparently on the best of terms. He was exercising all his charm, and she was re- 333 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON spending with her usual readiness. Poor, sweet, injudicious Helen! She caught sight of me first, and called: "Where is Berenice?" and when I replied that I had left her behind somewhere with Perry Waite, she gave me one look "a family look" and hastened her steps almost to a run, much to the Englishman's bewilderment. "Who's this what's-his-name chap?" he asked me. "Perry Waite? He's just an old friend of Miss Ames'. You never heard of him, did you? But then, you haven't known her very long," I blandly observed, whereat he gave me a family look, also, and improved upon Helen's pace, and between the two of them, I arrived at the little Paineiras hotel rather breathless. There we found the babes in the wood, sitting on a bench under a tree, and one glance at them told the story. Helen blanched, and Gaveston glowered, and Perry came forward, saying: "How do you do, Mrs. Ames?" but he didn't try to make her shake hands with him. She glared I wouldn't have believed Helen could accomplish a glare, but she did at Berenice, and Berenice blushed and beamed back. Then she glared at me, and I couldn't look unhappy, though I trust I preserved a becoming gravity. Gaveston said, rather stiffly, to Berenice: "I thought I was promised the pleasure of the walk back, Miss Ames," and the child did have the grace to look a little embarrassed. 334 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON "But you see," she parried, "I didn't go. One can't walk back when one hasn't walked forward, can one? And just as we were starting Mr. Waite came along oh, Mr. Gaveston, this is Mr. Waite and so I I stopped. I didn't go any farther." Which is precisely what happened. Mercifully the train came along then, and we re turned to our hotel, a very silent party. Perry came with us, and we all except Gaveston betook ourselves to Helen's chalet, where we had another scene, with Helen as the moving cause. $he reproached Berenice, and she reproached Perry, but upon my devoted head she emptied the vials of her wrath. To be sure, it was Helen's variety of wrath, the sugary, plaintive kind, which is the worst of any, because it makes you look such a brute if you fight back. And in the midst of it, in came Uncle Beverley, with a "Hey, hey, what's all this?" Helen told him what it was. And when he turned upon Perry for an underhanded, unprin cipled young scamp, Berenice stood up, her color high and her eyes like stars a radiant, splendid thing she was! and told them the story of her love, from Perry's refusal to elope with her to the cable message of the morning, while Helen laid her head upon her arms and wept, moaning: "Oh, what will Dick say?" and Beverley ejaculated "Bless my my soul!" every third sentence. Berenice told them of my knowledge of all this, and of my effort to keep her true to herself without betraying either her confidence or theirs, and when " 335 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON she had finished, Perry Waite took her in his arms and kissed her before us all and all Beverley said was, "Bless my soul!" Then Helen lifted up her voice again. I had done those things that I ought not to have done, and I had left undone those things that I ought to have done, and there was no good in me and what would Dick say ? , Upon that, Beverley took the floor and informed her that he 'didn't care what Dick said! He told her that having heard Berenice's story and know ing her daughter, she and all the rest of the family ought to thank me on their knees as he did. That she had wronged me and misunderstood me and hurt me as he had. That I was this and that and the other which Heaven knows I am not and never was! Then he took my hand and said that now he understood fully, for the first time, how difficult my position had been and how much harder he had made it, and asked me to forgive him for oh, for a lot more things than he ever did and that is where / cried! But Helen couldn't see it that way at all. I knew that Dick had declared that Berenice should never marry Perry Waite; I knew that Dick had sent Berenice down here and me with her solely to get her away from Perry Waite; and then, at the first opportunity, I had calmly walked off and left her alone with Perry Waite! But I had got her down here first, and now Dick would say it was all her fault, when really it was all Anne's every bit Anne's! Then there was that nice Mr. Gaveston ! 336 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON That nice Mr. Gaveston, by- the- way, again proves to be a bad loser, and made himself so extremely unpleasant this morning when Berenice refused him that she also refused to continue the conversation and left the room. And there we are! Helen's manner toward me to-day is best described as polite. She is extremely polite, but every line and tone and shadow of her indicate that I am a miserable sinner, and that she will have to reap where I have sowed and that she intends to do it with Christian fortitude. Therefore do I remember with profound gratitude the girl at boarding-school who taught me that long, wicked word. And therefore, though " I know it is a sin for me to sit and grin" at Helen, I do it now and then. But just the same, it hurts, Marion. You know how I have felt about Helen, ever since we were all at school together as if she must be shielded and petted and taken care of, and never subjected to the hard things of life, And now, when I have done my best Perhaps my best was bad, but at any rate, it was "the best I had," and it does hurt that Helen should not even recognize that! So I am going away on the first possible steamer but not wholly uncomforted. Berenice and Perry are worth much sacrifice, even the sacrifice of a friendship particularly when, as in this case, it wasn't a real friendship at all, but only a school girl illusion done up in cotton and carefully pre served through the years. I realize perfectly that had it been genuine, it would not have snapped under a strain like this. 337 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Meanwhile, being creatures of convention and social habits, we shall keep our engagements, in cluding sundry dinners and breakfasts and things but how I dread it all! I should be so glad to sit up here on my mountain side in quiet, to look and look and think a little before I go. But that is not the way I live. Now, having beaten my hitching-post resound ingly for a matter of two hours, I think the danger of an explosion is past, and I will proceed to dress for dinner. I shall probably not write from here again, as the story is told. I'll send you a line from London telling you when to expect me, and after my visit with you, I think I shall settle down in New York and develop some deep and abiding interest to fill the long hours of the afternoon. Don't imagine for a moment that I am unhappy, Marion. I am very far from that. But I know myself, at last. Many things I have never quite understood are explained to me, and the values of my life are fully and finally established. Rio, June 28th. As it turns out, the story was not quite finished after all. The rest of it is that this is a small world which you may think is a plagiarism or a brom- idiom, but it isn't. It is an original discovery of my own, made last night. We went to the Garlands' to dinner, and I learned, 338 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON just by chance, that they know friends of mine in Cleveland. It is odd that, though South America used to seem so remote and utterly out of touch, in every place we have been we have met people with whom some of us had acquaintances in com mon. We said something of the sort at dinner, and in the same connection some of the men were rejoicing that as facilities for communication with the rest of the world increase, this continent is becoming less and less available as a haven for the criminals of all countries. A man named Moberly, who is an engineer, widely travelled and interesting in every way, said that this was undoubtedly true, but just the same, he had met a man that day whom he would wager any amount was up to mischief. "The last time I saw him was in Mexico," said he, "and he did a dozen of us to the tune of from fifty to a hundred and fifty dollars apiece. He got into me for a hundred." Somebody asked how it was managed, and Moberly laughed. " Oh, he came up to Mexico in the wake of a rich young widow from St. Louis, and was so in love with her that he did his best to persuade her to marry him then and there. She'd have done it, too, but there's a whole lot of red tape about the marriage laws of Mexico fortunately for her. She told me herself, though, that they were to be married as soon as she got home. In the mean time, her big brother stumbled upon somebody who had known the man in Aus tralia, and came hot-foot to Mexico to stop pro- 339 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON ceedings. The result was that one Saturday night, Gaveston " "Who?" four of us exclaimed in a breath. Mr. Moberly laid down his fork and looked around the table. "Gaveston. Cecil Osmund Lester or was it Leslie? Gaveston. Anybody know him?" Mr. Ames said that we had met him on the west coast, and that he was now at our hotel. "Ah?" said Mr. Moberly. " Then look out for him. He's a smooth proposition. But he's an attractive scalawag, isn't he?" We said he was, and somebody demanded the rest of the story, so he continued: "Oh, well, it doesn't amount to much. That Saturday afternoon, after all the banks had closed, Gaveston discovered that he wanted to run down to Orizaba with some friends over Sunday, and he asked me to cash his check for a hundred dollars gold, mind you and like a fool, I did it. Altogether, he cleaned up about twelve hundred dollars, and he got away with it, too. We never found the slight est trace of him, though of course, nobody's in dividual loss was large enough to warrant any very long chase and I've never seen or heard of him since until I met him down here at the club to-day." "What did you do?" half a dozen people asked. "I didn't do anything. He did it. He looked at me hard to make sure he wasn't mistaken and then he turned green and left. I'd like to know what he's up to here! So he's out at your hotel, is he? I think I'll call on him if he's there to morrow." 340 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON But he wasn't. Mr. Ames made inquiries the first thing this morning, and learned that Mr. Gaves- ton had departed last night, with all his luggage, leaving no address. He said he was going to visit a friend in the country and would return later. I fancy that is the end of the gentleman, as far as we are concerned. When we got home, Helen came into my chalet, very repentant after all this, and begged me to for get all the things she said the other night and to go back to the dear old relation. Well of course, one can never do that, quite. Something broke when Helen fell upon me in that way, and all the years ahead can never mend it, I'm afraid. But she was so distressed and so urgent that I finally promised to stay over and sail with them on the eighth. There seemed no imperative reason why I shouldn't. I think Berenice's pleading really decided me, though. She turns to me very warmly now, as does Perry also, and I find myself leaning on their affection. Perhaps I have gained in them what I have lost in Helen, and theirs are loyal souls. But Isn't it odd that an illusion a thing without sub stance can explode and leave such a hole in one's life ! Berenice and Perry are to be married in October. Helen is becoming reconciled to that, too, especially since Uncle Beverley has undertaken to pacify Dick, and she told me this morning, with something very like pride, that Mr. Garland said young Waite was the most promising youngster he had met in years. Poor Helen! THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON So this is really the end of this wonderful South American trip, that has affected, in one way or an other, so many lives. Some of them will swing back into the old current Mr. Ames among them, I hope but for some of us life will never be quite the same again. Berenice and Perry are more closely united than they might ever have been but for this pilgrimage designed to separate them, and to me it has been hardly less vital, so much have I gained and so much lost. "Fades the rose; the year grows old; The tale is told; youth doth depart; Only stays the heart." I have been sitting out on my little veranda, watching the sunset lights and trying to fix in my memory every exquisite tint and line of it. The bay was deepest lapis lazuli, then turquoise, then pale, clouded sapphire. The hills softened and darkened, and blending shadows crept over them. A pink scarf of cloud lay across the blue above the Corcovado, and I looked and looked and looked. Presently two big, foolish tears rolled down be side my nose and plashed on my letter here, because it is all so lovely, and I must leave it so soon and never see it again which explains, madame, the blots your sharp eyes discovered as soon as you turned the page. It also explains why I shall immediately proceed to go in and darn stockings. Vain sentimental regret of that sort is demoralizing and more to be 342 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON avoided than strong drink, and emotional de bauchery is peculiarly a woman's vice. * * * For some reason this didn't get finished the other day, and now My dear, my dear, the heavens didn't fall after all! They just opened to let me in! The little stars are the radiant dust under my feet, and all the planets have been strung together and given to me to wear in my hair! It doesn't sound as if it could be true, does it? That's what fright ens me. It is Ned, dear. It has always been Ned. That was the discovery I made the day we motored through the hills and it had never occurred to me before that I was in love with him! To me he has always been the perfect friend, and I made a little place for him in my heart, away from all my other friends, and shut him in all by him self. And I never expected or wanted anybody else to be to me what he was, for he was just Ned. Then I made an ideal love and an ideal lover in my mind, and wondered that nobody ever came to fit it but it never occurred to me to try it on Ned, because it never occurred to me to think of Ned as a lover. I would as soon have thought of my splendid Orion's coming down out of the sky to woo me! And all the time, I was the woman who put that pain in his heart and that deep turbulence in his eyes. He thought I knew it. Why do men always think we read them as if they were glass, when they 343 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON are really so much more reserved and inscrutable than we are? He says that twice once before I was engaged to Clark, and once after he died he tried to ask me to marry him, and that each time I put him off so kindly but so firmly that he was sure I knew all about it, and was trying to save him and myself pain. And I never once dreamed that he cared! When we stumbled upon each other in Santiago that day, he thought perhaps the gods had relented, and all day he dreamed dreams and saw visions, he says and then he came to dinner that night, found a lot of other people there and discovered Mr. Ames. He thought I avoided quiet moments with him in order to talk to Mr. Ames. Then one day I made occasion to tell him a lot about Beverley's hidden virtues, and he thought you see what he thought! He saw, too, what the Bandersnatch was after, and that it made me unhappy to have her alone with Mr. Ames and of course there could be but one explanation of that! He could endure anything better than seeing me unhappy, he says, so he de voted himself to her whenever Mr. Ames was about and spoiled many a tete-a-tete for her. But he also kept away from me, partly because he didn't particularly enjoy seeing me with Mr. Ames, and partly because he didn't want me to see how it hurt and I nearly broke my heart because I thought he no longer liked me! Did you ever hear of such a web of cross-purposes? But we are through with that sort of thing now. 344 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON We have found not only ourselves but each other and it isn't afternoon at all ! Day has just dawned ! Life has just begun! Joy is new-born! I didn't know that anybody but angels could be so happy! Just the same, it is late enough so we can't afford to lose one moment of what remains to us and that is the reason, Marion dear, that I am not coming home. I am going to stay here with Ned. At first, we planned to be married next year, as soon as he could arrange to come for me but so much can happen in a few months, and I have no family and no home to go to, and life looks such a wee, short span at best now, that we finally de cided not to wait. So we are going to be married on the seventh, the day before the Ameses sail. The one little ache under all this joy is the memory of the pain I have given Mr. Ames, but even for that I have some solace. Since she has recognized that her opportunity of nabbing him was past, and that Helen's hostility was unconquerable, the Bandersnatch has been less careful to keep up appearances. Last night she had a man here dining with her, a business friend, she said, and they drank well, rather more champagne than is customary. Later, Beverley and Helen, strolling on the terrace, came upon them in a little arbor, both smoking. Now, there may be two opinions in the world about the propriety of a woman's smoking, but there is only one in the Ames family. Uncle Bever ley puffed up, quite in the old way, when Helen told me about it in his presence, and said that while Mrs. 345 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON Rankin was a very energetic and courageous little woman a very worthy little woman in many ways, it was perfectly obvious to the most casual ob server that she was not quite er in fact, that she was not at all er of what might be called ah our world. And my dear, he meant it ! If any one should tell him now that three months ago he was on the point of asking that woman to marry him, he would deny it with deep indignation. So, when he gets home, while I think he will remember that he did ask me to marry him, I hope in fact, I am pretty sure now that down in his heart, he will be very glad I didn't do it. But I wish I had never hurt him at all. He has been so careful not to cloud my happiness by any reminder of it. And if it hadn't been for him, I might never have had any real happiness. The day after the Garland dinner, he unexpected ly brought Ned out here to breakfast, and later we all went for a walk. We were strolling rather aimlessly along the green-shadowed road, and Mr. Ames was riding his hobby full tilt, with great satisfaction to himself. Ned, who is generally rather skilful in avoiding that subject, seemed preoccupied on this occasion, and let him talk uninterruptedly, until, after confiding to us his intention of writing a monumental History of the Civil War, Beverley said: "I tell you, Mr. Barrington, the significance of certain features of that war has never yet been fully appreciated, and I am going to make it the business 346 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON of my life to bring that realization home to our people, sir. It seems to me very important that it should be understood. In fact, nothing in the world interests me so much." " Nothing?" queried Ned, so sharply that I looked at him and wondered why the gaze he bent upon Beverley was so savage. Mr. Ames didn't notice it, however, and babbled on. "Nothing, sir. It is the one great interest of my life, and to it I shall devote whatever time can be spared from my business throughout the years remaining to me. The Civil War, and the circum stances leading to it " etc. I didn't hear much of what followed for wondering why Ned looked black, and why his eyes, as he glanced at me, were stormy and full of pain. Presently Helen and Berenice, who were ahead, called us to come quickly to see some strange insect or bird by the roadside, but Ned laid his hand on my arm, detaining me, and Beverley hurried on alone. " I suppose this is a place where angels wouldn't rush in," he said, "but I'm not an angel. I'm a man. I'm an old friend of yours, though, and per haps that and some other things give me the right to ask. Anne, are you very sure you can be happy with a man who, even now, places his in terest in a dead old war above well, you heard what he said!" I suppose I must have looked my astonishment, for he added, very quickly: "You're going to marry him, aren't you?" I said emphatically that I was not, and then 347 THE INVOLUNTARY CHAPERON that was where heaven opened and swept me up. And the American Ambassador missed the Petrop- olis boat that night, and with it an important din ner engagement which seemed to cause him scan dalously little concern. Do you remember those lines in The Day Dream? "And on her lover's arm she leant, And round her waist she felt it fold, And far across the hills they went, In that new world which is the old; Across the hills, and far away Beyond their utmost purple rim, And deep into the dying day The happy princess followed him." That's the way you are to think of me, dear, for all the rest of my life as "the happy princess." "Beyond the night, across the day, Through all the world she followed him." Marion, what have I ever been or done that hap piness like this should come to me ? Ned must have earned it for both of us, for certainly I never did. THE END oJ^l PS3505 A535I59 1909 Cameron, Margaret, 1.867- 1947 Tne involuntary chaperon, UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 001 260 226 4 \ 3 1210 00427 9046 M JB