Newspaper Page Text
MISS CRANE’S CHANCE: By ODESSA STRICKLAND PAYNE
T was a day of grey gloom, and the
sky and the atmosphere, all shaded
into the neutral color scheme,
which from horizon to horizon
shrouded the earth. It was as if
the Magna Mater had grown tired
of painting dawns of rose color
and silver, and brilliant sunsets on
the canvass of the sky for her chil-
■■
dren, and had retired in mysterious majesty,
with an impenetrable veil drawn down over
her face.
Mrs. More and Nell, were upstairs in the
private sitting room. Mrs. More was darning
a pair of blue silk socks, and Nell was embroid
ering a sofa cushion in such a leisurely manner
that it was easy to see that her thoughts were
engrossed with some other subject.
"And so, Nell, you did not like Hal Carroll,
after all,” Mrs. More affirmed, as she slipped a
long blue thread through the eye of her needle.
"The young man with a pedigree a yard long,
and whose preference means, in this town, so
cial distinction?”
“I have not confessed that I did not,” Nell
replied, with a slow smile.
" Well, you haven’t said a thing about him,”
Mrs. More, returned, “ and that is tanta
mount to the same thing. Now, be good,” she
added, in a persuasive tone, “and tell me why
you do not?”
“I haven’t really analyzed my mental atti
tude,” Nell replied, in an amused voice, “about
the young man. He dined here, and I sang
to him afterwards, and talked to him for
awhile, and that was all there was to it. If it
will comfort you any to know it, Gertrude,”
she added, with a flash of humor in her eyes,
“I have accepted his invitation to be one of
an automobile party tomorrow night, which
will dine at the Lake Club house.”
“Who is to be the chaperone?”
“His sister, Mrs. Harrison Fish.”
“Well, I’ll let you go on one condition,” Mrs.
More replied.
“And that is?” Nell enquired.
“That you snub the chaperone.”
“Oh! Mrs. More,” Nell exclaimed, as she
studied critically the shade of a damask rose
that was growing into a thing of beauty under
her fingers, “that sounds exceedingly ungra
cious for you.”
“I know it,” Mrs. More admitted, with her
flashlight smile, “but, honey child, she does
need it, so mortal bad. She has emphasized
money and all that it includes, from her youth.
And if you were not living in Powhattan
Gray’s house, and backed up by his fortune,
she would see you in Southern Africa, before
she would call on you.”
“Is her brother like her?” Nell asked in a
colorless voice.
“No, I am glad to say,” she answered, “that
I think Hal is more democratic. He has had
to matriculate in the business world, since he
left college, and that has away of knocking
the nonsense out of a man’s head. And while
I am willing to admit that he is proud of his
aristocratic ancestry in away, and enjoys per
haps his own social prestige, still, he is not
a fool. But his sister, Elizabeth, married a
very wealthy man when she was young, and
as a consequence she has had the leisure to
cultivate her vanity, and exclusiveness to the
limit.”
“I should think that she might have thought
of something better to do, with a magnificent
opportunity, than to turn it into a weapon of
self-destruction,” Nell said, as she plaited a
CHAPTER XIII.
The Golden Age for January 23, 1913.
skein of red silk floss, and then cut the ends.
“I have always felt like I should like a high
position socially, just for one thing.”
Mrs. More looked up with a question in her
fine eyes:
“To show the world,” Nell continued, “what
beautiful things I could do naturally and nor
mally for others. I have read somewhere that
in God’s eyes there are no class Walls dividing
His creatures, and 1 would like to find away
somehow to illustrate that fact.”
“Would you be courageous enough Nell,”
her friend inquired, “to invite a bank president
and a tramp, do you thiink, to dine together at
your house?”
“Why not?” Nell answered, “stranger
things have happened.”
“I suppose Nell, that you understand,” the
young matron said, after a thoughtful pause,
"that the thing you covet is really within your
grasp. In other words, that you can easily
lead the social game here, if you want to.
Your aunt holds the balance of power in this
town, since Powhattan Gray went away, and
the social world will acknowledge it, if you de
sire it bad enough to make it. As her only heir,
you are a brilliant asset anywhere, and all that
you have to do, little girl, is to assert your
rights, and you can have an easy walk over to
the shining goal.”
“But, meantime,” Nell replied, with a sud
den narrowing of her blue-grey eyes, “sup
pose that some man professes to love me, what
can I think but that Powhattan Gray’s wealth
has been mixed up with all of his dreams of
me?”
“Which will probably be true,” Mrs. More
returned, with a charming grin. “Only he
would, perhaps, be prepared to appreciate the
lovely encumbrance attached to the property
fully.”
“How would you like to love a man,” Nell
inquired, with a thrill in her voice, “and haye
to face that sort of problem?”
“I would evade it, Nell,” the young woman
said as she rolled up the blue socks, and placed
them in a dainty work basket, on the table.
How? Nell asked, with a note of anxiety
in her voice, as her friend got up to leave the
room.
“Oh, that is easy,” she returned lightly from
the threshold, ‘ ‘ Get Miss Crane to disinherit
you.”
Mrs. Moore had confided to her husband
when Nell Crane had only been at home a few
days, that she believed that the girl had had
some sort of disenchanting experience in the
blind god’s kingdom, or she could not be so
entirely indifferent to men. The intuitions
of women are not always infallible, but like
the needle of the compass, other things being
equal, they generally point in the right direc
tion. When Nell was scarcely eighteen,
her romance had come to her, and its tragic
termination, had been one of the causes of her
leaving home so suddenly. Her hero, Clarence
Carr Caldwell, had been a brilliant and hand
some young physician, who was socially much
sought after, in the set in which she moved.
All the girls and some of the mothers burned
lavish incense at his shrine, but Nell had been
the one to enthrall and take him a willing cap
tive. He had been perfectly devoted to her
for six months, and then had deliberately given
her just and cruel cause to break their enagge
ment. He confessed to her one night, that he
had fallen in love with a girl, whom he had
met at a house party in a distant state. Nell
had been glad to free him, for she felt that
marriage without love, did not constitute a
true union. But when he failed to wed the
other girl—and sfiie grew to believe that the
story had been invented to order, her scorn
knew no bounds. For she realized only too
well, that she had broken the fine white alabas
ter box of her heart’s first love, over the head
of a male creature, whom no frantic stretch of
the imagination could ever convert into a real
man. He had lied apparently without any
consciousness of shame, simply to achieve a
speedy release from her. But being a very
proud young woman, she had hidden the
depths of her wounds with the most consu
mate tact and skill. She had gone with her
head up, meeting him at musicales, luncheons
and dinners as of old, and treating him always
with such perfect courtesy, that he marveled
at first, and then became interested. But,
when he would have crossed the invisible line,
back into the fair gardens of friendship, one
night, when they were by invitation in the
same opera box, she had deliberately turned her
back upon him, when he uttered the first rose
colored sentence, and he knew then, if he was
too vain to realize before, that, he had lost
her, forever. And it had been while she
was undergoing this fiery ordeal of the spirit,
that two other eligible young men of the town,
had offered her their love, and had been re
fused. She felt that she had had enough of
the emotions, both in herself and other people
to last her a lifetime. And so, when Nell
Crane came out into the business world she was
so disenchanted, that she never expected to
turn another leaf in the book of romance.
And she might not, if she had allowed herself
to become embittered, but that was a sort of
ignomy, she could not submit to, because she
knew it meant in its last analysis, the annihila
tion of all that deified life. Clarence Carr
Caldwell was nothing to her now, but she still
retained sufficient memory of the agony he
had caused her, not to be at all easily impress
ed by any specimen of the sex to Which he
belonged. Nell Crane’s business training was
going to be a factor in her future, and while
it was true that she was lovely and charming,
it was also true that she had a will of her own,
and was capable of quick and definite decisions.
And one of Lie convictions which had come
to her this morning, as a consequence of her
conversation with her friend, was that she
was not going to be married on account of her
brilliant prospects financially. If she was
not attractive enough personally to win a
man’s regard, she had the privilege at least,
of living her life out, without buying a hus
band with Powhattan Gray’s money. And so
the girl realized that she had something of a
problem to solve, if not a crisis to face, as she
slowly drew the long red threads through the
damask roses on the sofa cushion she was em
broidering.
“Uncle Powhattan,” said, at last, with an
appealing glance upward at the portrait of the
great capitalist, “do you suppose that there is
a man on earth, who would be generous enough
to want me really, if I should be disinherit
ed through my own desire to be valued for
myself. Do you reckon that I could find one
who would stand that sort of crucial test, or
not? Aunt Caro was poor in comparison with
yourself, and I know that you never thought
of it. Well, lam years younger than she
was, and While I am not half so good, or so
lovely, still I am not altogether unattractive,
or an imbecile. At any rate, I have made
up my mind to be married for myself, or not
at all. I have been fooled once, Uncle Pow
hattan,” she continued, with a certain wist
ful sweetness, “fooled to the limit, and I am
determined to have the real devotion of a real
man, next time, or the long, barren blankness
of nothing. And the money that you left Aunt
Caro, will furnish me with a brilliant measur
ing stick. Only I know, that if I should
(Continued on Page 14.)
3