THEY HATED MYSTERY

Mrs. Ruth Burnham was settled in a drawing-room car, surrounded by every comfort and luxury that money and modern ideas can furnish for a long journey; and her son Erskine stood looking down on her with a face only half satisfied.

It occurred to him as a matter of astonishment that, with the single exception of her one trip homeward, after her ministrations to Alice, and while he was abroad, his mother had not, since he could remember, taken a journey without him. And here she was, starting for New York, and planning for a stay of indefinite length, while he was remaining at home. He did not wholly like it.

"It does not seem quite right, mamma," he said, with a smile that had almost wistfulness in it. "I am not used to seeing you off, you know. It seems as though I should be going along to look after your comfort."

"You have already done that, Erskine; I am sure a queen could not be more carefully provided for."

"And you have really no idea when you are coming home?"

"I could not plan for it, dear. Your Aunt Flossy is a woman of many schemes, you know, and it is long since I visited her; not since you and I were there together, years ago."

"It was always 'you and I together,'" he said, discontentedly, as though he almost resented this sudden independence of him.

"And this other—person—whoever she is, you will not let her absorb you? I can see how she will wear you out, without me to manage for you. She is imperious and selfish, of course."

His mother smiled on him tenderly, and a little sadly. "How did you learn that, Erskine?"

"Oh, by intuition; or common sense. She would not expect an entire stranger to take a long and tiresome journey in her behalf if she were not."

"I don't think she knows anything about the journey, or the stranger, my son."

"Then it is all Miss Parker's fault?" and he frowned. "She has not grown like her brother; not as he used to be, at least. Why doesn't she stay at home and attend to her own affairs, since they are of so much importance? That sounds ugly, I know, but I don't like to lend you, mommie, indeed I don't. You belong to me; and besides, there seems to be an air of mystery about the whole matter, and I hate mystery; at least between us."

It was at that moment that the call of "all aboard" sounded, and Erskine gave his mother a hasty last kiss and made flying leaps toward the platform.

It was a relief to have him go. His mother also hated mystery; and despite her attempts at frankness, no one was more conscious than she of the part that she had not told.

She had shown Erskine the telegram and made at the time the very brief explanation which it had taken her hours to arrange.

"It is a protÉgÉ of Miss Parker's, Erskine, for whom she has bespoken my sympathy and help. The girl is quite alone, her father has just died; and since I have been long promising your Aunt Flossy, and they are in the same city, I think I ought to take this time for my visit."

"A protÉgÉ," Erskine had repeated with lifted eyebrows. "A relative? Is she responsible for her? How can one shift such responsibilities as that, especially upon a stranger?"

"She is not related to Miss Parker," his mother had replied, and was glad that at the moment she had been bending over a drawer, so that her burning face was partially hidden. If Erskine only knew whose responsibilities had been shifted! It was that thought which burned her face.

"She is not!" he had replied in an exclamatory tone. "Then why in the name of common sense should she,"—and then, his mother had determined what she would say further.

"Erskine,"—her face was still bent over that bureau drawer—"the peculiar circumstances connected with this child were explained to me by Miss Parker in confidence, and of course I cannot speak of them; further than to tell you that she considers the girl as a trust."

"Well," Erskine had said, after waiting a moment for more words that had not come, "I don't half like it, mamma. I am sure of that; and if it were not for your making this long-promised visit to Aunt Flossy, I should not consent to your going. As it is, rushing off at an hour's notice, in response to an ordinary telegram, as though somebody had a right to order you around, seems absurd. I shall write to Aunt Flossy not to let your heart run away with your judgment. I am really afraid you are being imposed upon, mamma. Remember, we know nothing about these Parkers."

After his mother had watched, with the nervous tremors with which one watches when all that one has is jumping from a moving train—until Erskine was lifting his hat to her from safe ground, and her train was gliding away from him, she drew a deep breath of relief; not only from that immediate tension, but all the hours which had preceded it. Every moment since the arrival of that telegram had been a nervous strain to her, because of the things that she must say, and the things that she must not say.

Irene, especially, had taxed her honesty and ingenuity to the utmost. From the first moment, the young woman had been curious and painstaking in trying to satisfy herself.

"The idea!" she would exclaim. "It seems to me that is asking a great deal of an old woman; and Erskine says this Miss Parker is only a passing acquaintance. What possible claim can she have on you? Why is she so interested in this girl? Do you understand it? It looks as though there was a love affair, somewhere, doesn't it? She is an old maid, of course. You can depend upon it that she was in love with that girl's father!"

There was a side to this woman which Ruth in her secret soul called coarse. So far as she knew, it was a phase of her character that was never exhibited to Erskine.

With her fine regard for truth, and her contempt of anything like subterfuge, Mrs. Burnham found it hard to satisfy the curious questioner, and yet keep back that part of the truth which she must not tell. She could not but be glad when the strain was over.

Not once had she mentioned the name of the girl. It had been a continual terror to her lest she should be asked it; but though Irene asked every possible question that might throw light on the mystery, she had been mercifully preserved from thinking of names. Mrs. Burnham had learned from Miss Parker that the first name, Maybelle, would reveal nothing; it had been chosen by the father for his still nameless child, months after the mother's desertion; and chosen for no better reason than that Baby had come in the month of May, and was a "little beauty." But the name of Somerville might at least have startled Irene, had she heard it; and her mother-in-law determined that she should not. Having resolved upon silence as the right course, the more absolute it could be, the better for all concerned.

So it was not until the train was fairly under way, speeding eastward at thirty miles an hour, that Ruth felt free to draw a long breath and rest her overstrained nerves. Her mind wandered back through the years, lured there by the thought of Flossy. It was years since they two had been alone together, but just at this time Flossy's husband had taken a hurried business trip abroad.

"It is really providential that I am at home," Flossy had written, in response to her old friend's letter, telling that she might soon visit her. "Evan wanted me to go with him, brief as his stay is to be; and I should have done so, but for the illness of a very dear friend who seemed to need me; to think that if I had gone, I might have missed you!"

Dear Flossy! what a rarely wise little woman she had become! astonishing them all, not by her sweetness,—they had always been sure of that,—but by her strength and skill as a Christian worker. No young woman left to herself in a dangerous world could have a safer, more helpful friend than Flossy Shipley Roberts. Yet Ruth, even as she thought this comforting thought, remembered that the duty thrust upon her of guarding the hateful secrets of others must prevent her from speaking plainly even to Flossy.

However, she found reticence with Flossy easier than it had been with Irene. Joyfully glad to get possession of her old friend was Mrs. Roberts, and athrob with eagerness to hear all that she had to tell her, and sympathetic about the minutest details; yet in nothing did she show her perfect breeding and rare tact more distinctly than in the questions that she did not ask, concerning things that Ruth did not choose to tell.

She told very little.

"You know, Flossy, I have been planning to come to you for a long, long time."

"I certainly do!" interrupted Flossy, with an air that obliged Ruth to stop and laugh.

"But the reason I am here just at this time is because a protÉgÉ of my friend—the young woman who sailed last week for China—has just lost her father and is alone in this great city, so far as relatives or very close friends are concerned, and I am commissioned to try to comfort her."

"And I know, dear Ruth, how certainly you will succeed," was Mrs. Roberts's comment and her only one.

A little later she asked: "Where do you find your charge, Ruth? Is she a young girl, did you say? Delightful! I hope you will let me help? Oh, no, I must not go with you on your first visit, of course. One new face at a time is enough for the poor child to meet."

Ruth blessed her in her heart for the delicate reserve which would not let her question even about the woman who had gone to China. After Irene's baldly put inference she shrank from trying to explain Miss Parker's interest in the girl.

It was on the morning after her arrival in town that Mrs. Burnham sat waiting in the reception room of a dignified, many-storied house, which, she told herself, had everywhere about it the unmistakable boarding-school air.

She had sent up her card, but was uncertain how much it would tell, or whether she should be allowed to see the person on whom she had called. As matters had turned out it seemed unfortunate that she had so long delayed her visit to Mrs. Roberts. If she could have been introduced here by Miss Parker in person, it might have been better for all concerned. As it was, she felt strangely out of place and embarrassed. She had not been able to decide just how she would account for her extreme interest in this stranger. It was especially embarrassing to remember that she must account for it even to the girl herself. While she waited, she went back in memory to that other waiting, in a boarding-house parlor, when she had called to see Mamie Parker. What eventful years had intervened, and what changes they had wrought! How mistaken she, Ruth Burnham, had been about many things, notably her estimate of Mamie Parker. Had she been able with prophetic insight to get a vision of the woman Mamie was to be, would it have made a difference, a radical difference with all their lives? Then she flushed to her temples as she remembered that such thoughts were almost an insult to her son.

Just then the door opened and there entered Madame Sternheim, the head of the "Young Ladies' Fashionable School."

Madame Sternheim was dignified and correct in every movement and word, and was as cold as ice.

Yes, Miss Somerville was with them, of course. Her poor father had left her in their charge, and a serious responsibility she found it. Oh, yes, Miss Parker, before she left, had spoken of some one by the name of—of Burnham—she referred to the card which she held in her hand—who might write, or be heard from in some way. She seemed not to be at all sure that any one would call.

Yes, certainly, the circumstances were peculiar and had been all the time. The poor father—it was by no means a pleasant thing to have to speak plainly of the dead, but it was sometimes necessary, and perhaps Mrs.—yes, thank you, Mrs. Burnham, knew that he was not in every respect the fit guardian for a young woman?

Oh, yes, Miss Parker had been most kind, most attentive; Miss Somerville owed her a deep debt of gratitude, certainly.

It seemed a strange—"Providence—shall we call it?" that took Miss Parker away to China at just the time when it would appear that her self-assumed charge needed her the most. She, Madame Sternheim, had never professed to understand the situation. Miss Parker, she believed, was not even remotely related to the girl, not even a relative of the relatives—was she? Yet her interest in the child and her father had been unaccountably deep. There had always seemed to her to be an air of mystery about the whole matter. Madame Sternheim did not like mystery; in fact she might say that she shrank from it. Did Mrs. Burnham understand that Miss Parker knew personally any of the family connection?

Ruth was angry with herself that she must blush and almost stammer over so simple a question.

No, that was what Madame Sternheim had been led to infer. The relatives were all in England, were they not? It seemed strange that the girl was not to go out to them; but then, her poor father—Had Mrs. Burnham been personally acquainted with the father? Well, she knew of him probably? which was perhaps quite enough. Miss Parker's unaccountable interest in him was beyond understanding, until one remembered that no one could tell on what the human heart would anchor, especially a woman's heart. She had never thought that Mr. Somerville was especially—but then he, poor man, was gone; they need not speak of such things now. And Miss Parker, too, was gone—to China! That was unaccountable. If love for the girl had been what had prompted her attentions all these years, why, the poor child was doubly in need of it now. She had been deeply attached to her father despite the fact that—

"Ah," Madame Sternheim broke off quickly, as the door slowly opened, to say:—

"Here she is, Mrs. Burnham, to speak for herself."