Nobody

And, the lady executing a gesture that matched well her look of blank resignation, her brother addressed himself to a terse summing up of the affair which, while it stressed the gravity of the adventure with the fat burglar, did not seem to extenuate Sally's offence in the least and so had the agreeable upshot of leaving the sister in a much-placated humour and regarding the girl with a far more indulgent countenance than Sally had found any reason at first to hope for.

As for that young woman, the circumstance that she was inwardly all a-shudder didn't in the least hinder her exercise of that feminine trick of mentally photographing, classifying, and cataloguing the other woman's outward aspects in detail and, at the same time, distilling her more subtle phases of personality in the retort of instinct and minutely analysing the precipitate.

The result laid the last lingering ghost of suspicion that all was not as it should be between these two, that Blue Serge had not been altogether frank with her.

She had from the first appreciated the positive likeness between Mrs. Standish and the portrait in the library, even though her observation of the latter had been limited to the most casual inspection through the crack of the folding doors; there wasn't any excuse for questioning the identification. The woman before her, like the woman of the picture, was of the slender, blonde class-intelligent, neurotic, quick-tempered, inclined to suffer spasmodically from exaltation of the ego. And if she had not always been pampered with every luxury that money has induced modern civilisation to invent, the fact was not apparent; she dressed with such exquisite taste as only money can purchase, if it be not innate; she carried herself with the ease of affluence founded upon a rock, while her nervousness was manifestly due rather to impatience than to the vice of worrying.

"And now," Mr. Savage wound up with a graceless grin, "if you'll be good enough to explain what the dickens you're doing here instead of being on the way to Boston by the eleven-ten, I'll be grateful; Miss Manvers will quit doubting my veracity-secretly, if not openly; and we can proceed to consider something I have to suggest with respect to the obligations of a woman who has been saved the loss of a world of gewgaws as well as those of a man who is alive and whole exclusively, thanks to.. Well, I think you know what I mean."

"Oh, as for that," said Mrs. Standish absently, "when you turned up missing on the train I stopped it at the Hundred and Twenty-Fifth Street station and came back to find out what was the matter. I've been all through this blessed place looking for you-"

"Pardon!" Mr. Savage interrupted. "Did I understand you to say you had stopped the train?"

"Certainly. Why not? You don't imagine I was going to let myself be carried all the way to Boston in ignorance-"

"Then, one infers, the eleven-ten doesn't normally stop at One Hundred and Twenty-Fifth Street?"

"No. I had to speak to the conductor. Do be quiet. It doesn't matter. What were you going to say?"

"Nothing much, except that the clothes Miss Manvers stands in are hardly to be considered an adequate reward."

"True. But you mentioned some suggestion or other-"

"Without being downright about it, thereby sparing Miss Manvers any embarrassment, she might feel should you disapprove, as I'm confident you won't-"

This was the woman's turn; she silenced him with a gesture of infinite ennui. "Why is it," she complained, "that you never get anywhere without talking all around Robin Hood's barn?"

"Objection," Mr. Savage offered promptly, "on the ground of mixed metaphor."

"Objection sustained," his sister conceded. "But do come to the point."

"I wish only to remind you of the news imparted by our respected aunt in her letter of recent date."

The woman frowned slightly, as with mental effort; then a flash of comprehension lightened her blue eyes. Immediately her brows mutely circumflexed a question. A look of profound but illegible significance passed between the two. Mr. Savage nodded. Mrs. Standish pursed speculatively her thin, well-made-up lips and visibly took thought, according to the habit of her sex, by means of a series of intuitive explosions. Then she nodded vigorously and turned upon Miss Manvers a bewildering smile, for the first time addressing her directly.

"My dear," she said pleasantly enough-though, of course, the term had no accent whatever of affection-"this half-witted brother of mine once in a while stumbles upon the most brilliant inspiration imaginable. I'm sure he has seen enough of you in this last hour to be making no mistake in offering you as one answer to a very delicate question which has been distressing us both for a long time. If you're not overscrupulous."

She paused with a receptive air.

"I'm sure I don't know what you're driving at," Sally said bluntly; "but I'm hardly in a position to be nice-minded about trifles."

"It's this way," Savage interposed; "we're offering you a chance to get away, to enjoy a summer by the seashore, to mix with a lot of mighty interesting people, and all that sort of thing-everything you tell me you've been pining for-if you'll consent to sail under false colours."

"Please!" Sally begged with a confused and excited little laugh.

"He simply can't help it; indirection is Walter's long suit," Mrs. Standish took up the tale. "First of all, you must know this aunt of ours is rather an eccentric-frightfully well off, spoiled, self-willed, and quite blind to her best interests. She's been a widow so long she doesn't know the meaning of wholesome restraint. She's got all the high knee-action of a thoroughbred never properly broken to harness. She sets her own pace-and Heaven help the hindermost! All in all, I think Aunt Abby's the most devil-may-care person I've ever met."

"You're too modest," Mr. Savage commented abstractedly.

"Be quiet, Walter. Aunt Abby's passionately fond of two things-cards and what she calls 'interesting people.' Neither would matter much but for the other. She gambles for sheer love of it, and doesn't care a rap whether she wins or loses. And her notion of an interesting person is anybody fortunate or misfortunate enough to be noticed by the newspapers. A bit of a scandal is sure bait for her regard."

Pausing, Mrs. Standish smiled coolly. "Take me, for example. Until I found it necessary to get unmarried, my aunt never could find time to waste on me. But now, in spite of the fact that the decree was in my favour, I'm the object of her mad attachment. And if Walter hadn't come into the limelight through a Senatorial inquiry into high finance, and made such a sick witness, and got so deservedly roasted by the newspapers-well, nothing is now too good for him. So, you see, the people Aunt Abby insists on entertaining are apt to be a rather dubious lot. I don't mean she'd pick up with anybody openly immoral, you know; but she certainly manages to fill her houses-she's got several-with a wild crew of adventurers and-esses-to call 'em by their first names.

"They're smart enough, God knows, and they do make things hum, but they charge her-some of them-fat fees for the privilege of entertaining them. Funny things have happened at her card tables. So Walter and I have been scheming to find some way to protect her without rousing her resentment by seeming to interfere. If we could only get evidence enough to talk privately to some of her friends-about time-tables, for instance-it would be all right. And only recently she herself showed us the way-wrote me that she had quarrelled with her corresponding secretary, a spinster of acid maturity, and discharged her; and would we please look round for somebody to replace Miss. Matring. Do you see?"

"You mean," Sally faltered, dumfounded-"you can't mean you'll recommend me for the position?"

"I'll do more. I'll see that you get it; I'll take you with me to-night, and by to-morrow noon you'll be engaged. But you must understand we're giving you the chance solely that you may serve us as well as Aunt Abby, by keeping your eyes and ears wide open and reporting to us in strictest confidence and secrecy anything that doesn't look right to you."

"But-but I-but how-why do you think you can trust me?" the girl stammered. "Knowing what you do-"

"That's just the point. Don't you see'? We can trust you because you won't dare betray us."

"But-but after I've stolen-"

"Don't say it!" Savage cut in. "You stole nothing, if you please; you merely anticipated a reward for a service not yet rendered."

"But.. Oh, it's kind of you, but don't you see it's impossible?"

"Nothing is impossible except your refusal," said Mrs. Standish. "Do be sensible, my dear, and realise that we-that I intend you shall have this chance. What can you possibly find to object to? The deceit? Surely an innocent deception, practised upon a dear old lady for her own good!"

"Deceit," Mr. Savage propounded very sagely, "is like any other sin, it's only sinful when it is. That's elementary sophistry, but I invented it, and I'm strong for it. Besides, we've got just twenty minutes now to get aboard the Owl-and I've got to beg, borrow, or buy transportation on it, because there wasn't a room left but the two I bought for you and me-and now Adele will have to have one of the rooms-"

"But I've nothing to wear but these things!" "Don't worry about that," Mrs. Standish reassured her. "I've got nine trunks on the way-and you unquestionably fill my things out like another perfect figure."

"But how will you explain? Who am I to be? You can't introduce me as a shop-girl out of work whom you caught stealing your clothes."

"La nuit porte conseil," Mr. Savage announced sagely, and with what was no doubt an excellent accent. "Let Adele sleep on it, and if she doesn't come through in the morning with a good, old-fashioned, all wool, yard-wide lie that will blanket every possible contingency, I don't know my little sister."

"An elder brother, let me tell you, Miss Manvers, is the best possible preceptor in prevarication."

"Elder!" exclaimed the outraged young man. "Well, of all-" He turned appealingly to Sally. "What did I tell you?"

CHAPTER VI

ALIAS MANWARING

Fickle-minded fortune favoured Mr. Savage's belated application for additional sleeping-car accommodation: somebody turned back a reservation only ten minutes or so before train-time, in consequence of which Mrs. Standish and Miss Manvers enjoyed adjoining compartments of luxury, while Mr. Savage contented himself with less pretentious quarters farther aft.

Thus it was that at one minute past one o'clock, when a preternaturally self-respecting porter dispassionately ascertained that nothing more would be required of him till morning and shut himself out of her presence, the girl subsided upon the edge of a bed of such sybaritic character as amply to warrant the designation de luxe, and, flushed and trembling with excitement (now that she dared once again to be her natural self) and with all incredulity appropriate to the circumstances, stared at the young woman who blankly stared back from a long mirror framed in the door.

It was truly a bit difficult to identify that modishly dressed and brilliantly animated young person with S. Manvers of the Hardware Notions in Huckster's Bargain Basement, while reason tottered and common sense tittered when invited to credit the chain of accidents responsible for the transformation.

Strange world of magic romance, this, into which she had stumbled over the threshold of a venial misdemeanour! Who now would dare contend that life was ever sordid, grim, and cruel, indigestible from soup to savoury? Who would have the hardihood to uphold such contention when made acquainted with the case of Sarah Manvers, yesterday's drudge, unlovely and unloved, to-day's child of fortune, chosen of a golden destiny?

Sally's jubilation was shadowed by a pensive moment; dare she assume that the winters of her discontent had been forever banished by one wave of Chance's wand?

She shook a confounded head, smiled an uncertain smile, sighed a little, broken sigh, and with determination bade adieu to misgivings, turning a deaf ear to the dull growls of mother-wit arguing that the Board of Health ought to be advised about the State of Denmark. Sufficient unto the night its room de luxe; she found her couch no less comfortable for the sword that conceivably swayed above it, suspended by a thread of casual favour.

For a time she rested serenely in the dark-only half undressed in view of the ever-possible accident-cheek to pillow, face turned to the window that endlessly screened the sweeping mysteries of that dark glimmering countryside, quite resigned so to while away the night, persuaded it was inevitable that one with so much to ponder should be unable to sleep a wink.

Deliberately, to prove this point, she closed her eyes..

And immediately opened them to broad daylight, revealing, through that magic casement, the outskirts of a considerable city, street after suburban street wheeling away like spokes from a restless hub.

A simultaneous pounding on the door warned her she had but ten minutes in which to dress; no time to grasp the substance of a dream come true, no time even to prepare a confident attitude with which to salute the fairy godparents of her social debut-time only to struggle into her outer garments and muster a half-timid, deprecatory smile for those whom she was to find awaiting her in the corridor, impatient to be off, none too amiably conscious of foregone beauty sleep, accepting their protegee with a matter-of-course manner almost disillusioning.

"Got to hurry, you know," Savage informed her brusquely; "only twenty minutes to snatch a bite before our train leaves for the Island."

They hurried down a platform thronged with fellow passengers similarly haunted by the seven devils of haste, beneath a high glazed but opaque vault penning an unappetizing atmosphere composed in equal parts of a stagnant warm air and stale steam, into a restaurant that had patently been up all night, through the motions of swallowing alternate mouthfuls of denatured coffee and dejected rolls, up again and out and down another platform-at last into the hot and dusty haven of a parlour-car.

Then impressions found time for readjustment. The journey promised, and turned out, to be by no means one of unalloyed delights. The early morning temper discovered by Mrs. Standish offered chill comfort to one like Sally, saturate with all the emotions of a stray puppy hankering for a friendly pat. Ensconced in the chair beside her charge, the patroness swung it coolly aside until little of her was visible but the salient curve of a pastel-tinted cheek and buried her nose in a best-selling novel, ignoring overtures analogous to the wagging of a propitiatory tail. While Savage, in the chair beyond his sister, betrayed every evidence of being heartily grateful for a distance that precluded conversation and to a Providence that tolerated Town Topics. Sally was left to improve her mind with a copy of Vanity Fair, from contemplation of whose text and pictures she emerged an amateur adventuress sadly wanting in the indispensable quality of assurance. It wasn't that she feared to measure wits, intelligence, or even lineage with the elect. But in how many mysterious ways might she not fall short of the ideal of Good Form?

What-she pondered gloomily, chin in hand, eyes vacantly reviewing a countryside of notable charms adrowse in the lethargic peace of a mid-summer morning-what the dickens was Good Form, anyway?

Nothing, not even her own normally keen power of observation, offered any real enlightenment.

She summed up an hour's studious reflection in the dubious conclusion that Good Form had something subtly to do with being able to sit cross-kneed and look arrogantly into the impertinent lens of a camp-follower's camera-to be impudently self-conscious, that is-to pose and pose and get away with it.

The train came to a definite stop, and Sally startled up to find Mrs. Standish, afoot, smiling down at her with all her pretty features except her eyes, and Mr. Savage smiling in precisely the reverse fashion.

"All out," he announced. "Change here for the boat. Another hour, and-as somebody says Henry James says-there, in a manner of speaking, we all are."

They straggled across a wharf to a fussy small steamer, Mrs. Standish leading the way with an apprehensive eye for possible acquaintances and, once established with her brother and Sally in a secluded corner of the boat's upper deck, uttering her relief in a candid sigh.

"Nobody we know aboard," she added, smiling less tensely at Sally.

"Eh-what say'?" Mr. Savage inquired from a phase of hypnosis induced by a glimpse of Good Form in a tailored skirt of white corduroy.

"Nobody of any consequence in this mob," his sister paraphrased, yawning delicately.

"Oh," he responded with an accent of doubt. But the white corduroy vanished round a shoulder of the deck-house, and he bestirred himself to pay a little attention to Sally.

"There's the Island," he said, languidly waving a hand. "That white-pillared place there among the trees-left of the lighthouse-that's Aunt Abby's."

Sally essayed a smile of intelligent response. Not that the Island failed to enchant her; seen across a fast diminishing breadth of wind-darkened blue water, bathed in golden mid-morning light, its villas of delicious grey half buried in billows of delicious green, its lawns and terraces crowning fluted grey-stone cliffs from whose feet a broad beach shelved gently into the sea, it seemed more beautiful to Miss Manvers than anything she had ever dreamed of.

But what was to be her reception there, what her status, what her fortunes?

"I've been thinking," Mrs. Standish announced when a sidelong glance had reassured her as to their practical privacy, "about Miss Manvers."

"I hope to Heaven you've doped out a good one," Savage interrupted fervently. "In the cold grey dawn it doesn't look so good to me. But then I'm only a duffer. Perhaps it's just as well; if I'd been a good liar I might have married to keep my hand in. As it is, I never forget to give thanks, in my evening prayers, for my talented little sister."

"Are you finished?" Mrs. Standish inquired frigidly.

"I'd better be."

"Then, please pay close attention, Miss Manvers. To begin with, I'm going to change your name. From now on it's Sara Manwaring-Sara without the h."

"Manwaring with the w silent, as in wrapper and wretch?" Savage asked politely.

For Sally's benefit Mrs. Standish spelled the word patiently.

"And the record of the fair impostor?" Savage prompted.

"That's very simple. Miss Manwaring came to me yesterday with a letter of introduction from Edna English. Edna sailed for Italy last Saturday, and by the time she's back Aunt Abby will have forgotten to question Miss Manwaring's credentials."

"What did I tell you?" Mr. Savage wagged a solemn head at Sally. "There's Art for you!"

"She comes from a family prominent socially in" – Mrs. Standish paused a fraction of a second-"Massillon, Ohio-"

"Is there any such place?"

"Of course-"

"What a lot you do know, Adele!"

"But through a series of unhappy accidents involving the family fortunes was obliged to earn her own living."

"Is that all?"

"Isn't it enough?"

"Plenty. Simple, succinct, stupendous! It has only one flaw."

"And that, if you please?" Mrs. Standish demanded, bristling a trifle.

"It ain't possible for anyone to be prominent socially in a place named Massillon, Ohio. It can't be done-not in a place I never heard of before."

"Do you understand, Miss Manwaring?" the woman asked, turning an impatient shoulder to her brother.

"Perfectly," Sally assented eagerly; "only-who is Edna English?"

"Mrs. Cornwallis English. You must have heard of her."

"Oh, yes, in the newspapers."

"Social uplift's her fad. She's done a lot of work among department-store girls."

"To their infinite annoyance," interpolated Savage.

"At all events, that's how she came to notice you."

"I see," said Sally humbly.

"You may fill in the outlines at your discretion," Mrs. Standish pursued sweetly. "That's all I know about you. You called at the house with the letter from Mrs. English yesterday afternoon, and I took a fancy to you and, knowing that Aunt Abby needed a secretary, brought you along."

"Thank you," said Sally. "I hope you understand how grate-"

"That's quite understood. Let us say no more about it."

"Considerable story," Savage approved. "But what became of the letter of introduction?"

"I mislaid it," his sister explained complacently. "Don't I mislay everything?"

For once the young man was dumb with admiration. But his look was eloquent.

Deep thought held the amateur adventuress spellbound for some minutes. "There's only one thing," she said suddenly, with a puzzled frown.

"And that?" Mrs. Standish prompted.

"What about the burglary? Your servants, when they came home last night, must have noticed and notified the police."

"Oh, I say!" Savage exclaimed blankly.

"Don't let's worry about that," Mrs. Standish interrupted. "We can easily let it be understood that what was stolen was later recovered from-whatever they call the places where thieves dispose of their stealings."

"That covers everything," Savage insisted impatiently. "Do come along. There's the car waiting."

Coincident with this announcement a series of slight jars shook the steamer, and with surprise Sally discovered that, without her knowledge in the preoccupation of being fitted with a completely new identity, the vessel had rounded a wooded headland, opening up a deep harbour dotted with pleasure craft, and was already nuzzling the town wharf of a sizable community.

She rose and followed her fellow conspirators aft and below to the gangway, her mind registering fresh impressions with the rapidity of a cinema film.

The grey cliff had given place to green-clad bluffs sown thick with cottages of all sorts, from the quaintly hideous and the obviously inexpensive to the bewitchingly pretty and the pretentiously ornate – a haphazard arrangement that ran suddenly into a plot of streets linking a clutter of utilitarian buildings, all converging upon the focal point of the village wharf.

Upon this last a cloud of natives and summer folk swarmed and buzzed. At its head a cluster of vehicles, horse-drawn as well as motor-driven, waited. In the shadow beneath it, and upon the crescent beach that glistened on its either side, a multitude of children, young and old, paddled and splashed in shallows and the wash of the steamer.

Obviously the less decorative and exclusive side of the island, it was none the less enchanting in Sally's vision. A measure of confidence reinfused her mood. She surrendered absolutely to fatalistic enjoyment of the gifts the gods had sent. Half closing her eyes, she drank deep of salt-sweet air vibrant with the living warmth of a perfect day.

A man whose common face was as impassive as a mask shouldered through the mob and burdened himself with the hand-luggage of the party. Sally gathered that he was valet to Mr. Savage. And they were pushing through the gantlet of several hundred curious eyes and making toward the head of the pier.

"Trying," Mrs. Standish observed in an aside to the girl. "I always say that everything about the Island is charming but the getting here."

Sally murmured an inarticulate response and wondered. Disdain of the commonalty was implicit in that speech; it was contact with the herd, subjection to its stares, that Mrs. Standish found so trying. How, then, had she brought herself so readily to accept association on almost equal terms with a shop-girl misdemeanant-out of gratitude, or sheer goodness of heart, or something less superficial?

The shadow of an intimation that something was wrong again came between Sally and the sun, but passed as swiftly as a wind-sped cloud.

The valet led to a heavy, seven-seated touring-car, put their luggage in the rear, shut the door on the three, and swung up to the seat beside the chauffeur. The machine threaded a cautious way out of the rank, moved sedately up a somnolent street, turned a corner and pricked up its heels to the tune of a long, silken snore, flinging over its shoulder two miles of white, well-metalled roadway with no appreciable effort whatever.