The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 30 May 1912, Page 5

The Storyteller

IN THE KINGDOM OF THE FREE When a fastidious bachelor, who lives alone in an apartment and keeps no valet, has his face all nicely lathered for shaving, the tinkle of the telephone bell is apt to ruffle a temper as habitually serene as mine. I picked up the receiver, and even the charming voice of Helen Barret hardly carried its own forgiveness. Helen's voice is charming, and I am always gratified when its quality is recognised by the discerning, because I help to make it so. There was a time when she screeched and giggled and clipped her consonants in the thin unmodulated tones so common a few years ago even among girls who attended-the best schools. Having spent a year in post-gratuate work at Oxford, the music of the cultivated English voice has lingered in my ears like a benediction. When I went to Senator Barret, Helen's father, as his private secretary, I added to my other duties, quite of my own volition, Helen's voice, and manners and reading. I must say that now she is more than duly grateful, although there was a —but let that go. When I began my secretarial duties Helen was five years old. I was a youth of twenty-three, with a very good opinion of my own ability, and the tyranny she commenced to exercise at once, disguised even at that tender age by various feminine witcheries, she continued into her brilliant young ladyhood. I do not recall just when I became 'Bobby' to her, for her father said 'Mr. Hurde 'at first, and after mutual confidence and liking had been established, I was just ' Robert.' ' Naturally, I have always been devoted to Helen as a brother might be to a sister much younger than himself who at once gratified his pride, his sense of exquisite womanhood, and gave him a generous measure or honest affection. Helen at five was.a dear little thing, compounded

of big, blue eyes, adorable lashes, dark curls and dimples. At twenty she still kept the eyes and the lashes, and her fair, refined face, slightly variant as to nose from the classic, was singularly winning and noble. At the period when girls put down their skirts and pub up their hairl -heard some one use that phrase lately—-she developed an unsuspected talent for dress, a very different quality from mere fondness for finery, and ever after she was apt to be the best-dressed girl in a city of well-dressed girls. Helen was an only child, and motherless, and to say that she was her father's idol would merely be to emphasise the obvious. I always told her that she would have been happier and better off with brothers and sisters. ( But not any nicer, Bobby,' she interrupted, suiely you do not think that I could be improved! Hie Barrets were a notably detached family, and if they had any relatives none was ever visible in Washington. Miss Crook, who makes her bread and jam by a more or less veracious chronicle of social happenings, has hinted at a discreet suppression of undesirable kindred. That may have been a part of their cleverness, but I had no reason for thinking so, and I certainly knew them better than Miss Crook. Is that you, Bobby?’ said the voice. No. It s the Sultan of Sulu. Did you expect to find me here at half-past 8 in the morning?’ I answered, with a feeling of sarcasm. Oh, weren t you up the voice sounded slightly hurt as well as reproachful. ‘ I was shaving,’ I replied with dignity. The sound-waves seemed to bring a giggle, but perhaps, I did not hear rightly. 66 Bobby, I want you to-morrow night for dinner without fail. "Without fail’’ is underscored three times. Lord Whartonif you read the papers you know about him—is to be here.’

‘ I have an engagement. . Thank you very— ’ ‘ Break it—l need you.’ ‘Humph!’ I retorted. Don t be horrid ; you know you are dving to come, Everybody is crazy about Lord Wharton !’ ‘ Try to modulate your triumphant joy, my dear gh'l— fairly sizzles over the wires ‘ Humph ! Bobby, may I count on you ?’ The voice changed from scorn "to a tone of appeal. ‘ I have an engage— ’ off * Good-bye. Come early,’ said . Helen, and rang off. °

When I reached the Barret home the next evening the big, stone mansion standing in the midst of a fascinating garden in Dupont Circle-I was rather surprised to find 'that the dinner was to be so smallfor six only. If it was small it was none the less gorgeous. The flowers everywhere, great banks of roses on the mantel, roses in tall, crystal vases, overflowing into the library, climbing the stairs, hidden in corners, in an interior where rugs and tapestries and pictures and fine furniture were decorative enough in themselves, suggested a ball rather than the little dinner that Helen had named. And Helen herself, attired in what the unsophisticated would have described as a simple white frock, was wearing her famous pearls—the necklace that I had helped to select and for which her father had paid 50,000 dollars. . ’ I discover ed later that the gold dinner service was on duty. It had not been used since Senator Barret’s dinner to the President. If the conquest of England were Helen’s little game; plainly she was not losing any time. But presently I began to understand through some subtle interplay of psychic currents, that it was not so much Helen’s game as her father’s. Senator Barret was a good host, as big men—men who do things that count in the world—usually are and to-night he was excelling his own record. * A great man is not always a hero to his private secretary but at the end of my six years of service to ben at or Barret I admired him, respected him, and liked him heartily. I was going to say loved, except that there is a certain grimness about his gray hair deter mined jaw, and keen eyes that makes honest likine the truer word. The years that followed strengthened the

liking —years that were teemingly prosperous for me largely through his influence and kindness. Senator Barret was a self-made man who had emerged from the Far West in a golden glory some fifteen years before, but if he did not dwell on his early- days and the steps by which he had reached the heights, neither did he seek to conceal or deny them. Only in one thing, a trifle, I told myself, he puzzled me. In the Congressional Record where the biographical details of our lawmakers are badly set forth, there is an evasion, if I may call it so, at any rate a fogginess, as to his birthplace. The Record says that Henry C. Barret was born a British subject, but emigrated when a boy with his parents from Canada, and settled in Oregon, where he attended the public schools, etc. Now I chanced to know that the Senator was born in England, the information coming to me through some private papers that fell to me to arrange during the first year of my secretaryship. I also learned that the name had then been spelled with two t's—Barrett. I have never known whether he was aware of my knowledge or not. I often tried to lead up to it in some casual reference, but somehow never could make it go. He sometimes talked of visits to England, and was quite open in his admiration of things English—English law, customs, schools. In looks, he was typically English, and Helen, in her feminine way, was very like him. I was the first to arrive at the Wharton dinner, and Helen at once confided to me her disappointment at not getting the British Ambassador. His Excellency was laid up with grip just like less exalted mortals were apt to be then, for the weather was execrable and Washington was not at all her usual beautiful self. The other guests were a youngish, rich widow and her pretty daughter. The mother was too plain, and the daughter too stupid to be much more than a decorative mathematical balance at table, and Helen's loveliness, her wit and her pearls had no rivals.

Lord Wharton proved to be a pleasant, rather good-looking man,' slightly bald, and apparently about my age —thirty-eight, going on thirty-nine — and not much further to go. Somehow I had expected to find him much younger. He had that easy dignity of manner that seems to be the birthright of the upperclass English. On the whole, he appeared to be a man that a man could like. As for Helen—so admired and courted and surrounded by the youths from the various embassies, I had my doubts as to her sentiments. v; Of course, no reasonable person could refuse to believe that this ‘belted earl,’ who had just lived through a fortnight’s engagement as the star lion in New York, had come to dinner with any other intention than to offer his hand and the family coronet to Helen. For such is the average American mind in regard to a titled foreigner and a rich and beautiful girl. That an earl might merely be in quest of a good dinner in pleasant company is too trite a solution to his acts.

Helen treated him just as she would have treated any other attractive man at her table whom her instinct for coquetry made her desire to please. I never denied that Helen was a coquette. . But her fathernever since the President had been his guest had I seen him so gracious, so— ‘deferential’ hardly seems the right word to convey all the nuances of manner that enveloped the peer in a sort of mental embrace, the deference of the class below for the class above, of which I had seen much during my year at Oxford. ‘ls it in the blood?’ I asked myself, ‘a part of the old ancestral impulses that took root when the first strong man captured the flint and arrows from the weaker, and forced him to pay tribute of service.’ I was the last to go, waiting to assure Helen of the beautiful perfection of her dinner and to give my consent to her wooing of Old Acres. ‘He’s very nice, Bobby, don’t you think?’ said Helen, serenely. ‘ldo.’

'One of the best old families in England,' said Senator Barret. ' And you should see Wharton Castle —the towers date from the time of Elizabeth.' The case was almost too easy. It left no room for romance, unless, indeed, Lord Wharton's swift wooing was the finest of all romances. , • r . After two weeks in Washington he went to California, and then to Mexico. .On his return the engagement was announced, and the week after Easter they —Lord Wharton and Helen—were to be married. v • Several of the Wharton tribe came over for the wedding, among them an uncle of the bridegroom—handsome old gentleman holding high rank in the British army. In the shifting of social responsibilities he fell to my especial care for entertainment, and a more delightful guest I have never had. The day before the wedding, over the cigars in my library, lie said, apropos of nothing in particular, ' Queer thing now, about names, how they are constantly cropping up in one part of the world and another. When I was a boy we had a butler at Wharton Castle named Henry Barret, only he spelled his name with two t's, I remember. Faithful fellow he was, too; I was quite devoted to him—he gave me more sweets than my mother approved of. He had a son a year or two younger than I, also named Henry. They emigrated to Canada, and we lost sight of them. I hope he did well. I daresay he's dead long ago.' '£ TV , And then I knew. ■''.:." They say that Fate loves her little jest, and surely just now she was having it in good measure! The granddaughter of a Wharton Castle butler was to marry the Lord of the domain A hundred things, confirmatory trifles, came to mind and left no room for doubt. ...-.■ •

The nice old English Brahmin sitting, there contentedly smoking my cigars ‘so pleased with America and Americans, would probably have had apoplexy on the spot had I told. But I had no intention of telling. Helen was my concern, and I held no brief for the honor of the Whartons. Helen on the morrow would mairy hex loxd and sail away with him for England. In due time she would be presented at court under the wing of her sister-in-law, the Countess of Dightoii, her father would buy her a big house in London and showers of coroneted notes of invitation would open to her all the great doors of the brilliant English world that dwellers on the outside envy so fiercely,. And then her father would go over to visit her at Whaxton Castle, and a dignified old butler standing in his father’s place would draw aside the portieres for him to pass. The picture was too delicious, and I laughed so long and heartily that my guest looked up quite at a loss for any adequate cause of such mirth. I had to invent a fat woman in bloomers in the street below the window. " L America is a great country, general,’ I said. Yes, yes, indeed he responded, heartily. ‘I am proud of my American niece.’— Extension Magazine.