"I hope so," responded Mrs. Barlow.

XXVIII

EXPLANATIONS

Now it happened that on Thursday afternoon Julia went to Nora's and stayed all night. The next morning the two went out to Roxbury to fulfil a promise to Ruth to pa.s.s a day and night with her. Thus it happened that Julia and Brenda did not see each other until Sat.u.r.day evening.

They then met in the presence of an elderly friend of Mrs. Barlow's who had come to stay over Sunday with the family, and so Brenda had no opportunity of making an apology--if she intended to make one for her language of the subject of the matinee. For Mrs. Barlow, of course, had explained her error to Brenda, and though the latter had not expressed great contrition, her mother knew that in the end she would do what was right. Luckily Julia herself was not one to feel resentment, for Sunday pa.s.sed without her hearing a word on the subject from Brenda.

After the second service on Sunday, Miss South joined Julia just outside the church door. "I am very glad to see you," she said, "for I was greatly disappointed in missing you the other day. I have many things to tell you, if you will walk with me for half an hour."

This Julia was pleased to do, for it was a beautiful afternoon, and moreover, she was anxious to hear why Miss South had gone away so suddenly from Edith's, on the afternoon of the Bazaar.

"I must begin at the beginning, Julia," said Miss South, "for you are old enough to hear a rather romantic story at first hand, which otherwise you might hear in an incorrect form."

"I won't say that I have been curious, Miss South," replied Julia, "although I have thought that in some mysterious way your going off had some connection with Madame Du Launy."

"That is true logic on your part," responded Miss South, "and you will be interested to hear that I have spent several hours since Wednesday with Madame Du Launy. Before I forget it I must tell you that she was very sorry that she could not see you when you called. She told me to say this to you as a special message from her."

"Thank you," answered Julia, "but I am very anxious to hear what you have to say. I feel sure that it is something very interesting."

Miss South smiled. "Then I must begin at the very beginning. You may have noticed that rather striking portrait of a young girl in the room where Madame Du Launy usually receives her visitors. Well, that young girl was my mother." Julia naturally gave a start of surprise, and for a moment her mind occupied itself in reproducing an image of this portrait. Then Miss South resumed her story.

"Yes, my mother was the only one of Madame Du Launy's children who married, and she married against her mother's will. My father was a very independent man, and when his wife's mother said that she would never forgive her for having married a poor man without family or position, he accepted this as final. He would not let my mother make any attempt at reconciliation, yet had she made such efforts I am sure that they would have been unsuccessful. He took her to Ohio first, and after a time they moved further west. We lived from the earliest time that I can remember, very simply and economically, but we had the advantage of good schools,--we two children, I mean--and when I showed a desire to go to college I was sent to the State University of the State where we had grown up. My brother, as I told you, was several years younger than I, and was only preparing for college when my father died. Our mother had died when we were little children, and in accordance with our father's wishes we had heard little about our grandmother besides her name. Once he had told us that she was an embittered old woman, and that she had not shown any regard for him, or my mother after her marriage. We knew that Boston had been our mother's home for a time, although most of her youth had been spent in wandering around Europe with her parents. After our father's death I thought once or twice of trying to find out whether or not our grandmother was alive. But my brother always dissuaded me, so keen was his resentment for the way she had treated our father. My telling him that this had been mere prejudice on her part--for she never had met my father--did not make him change his mind. He made me believe that it would be disrespect to both our parents if I should seek my grandmother. When I came to Boston, and heard about this peculiar Madame Du Launy, who lived opposite the school, I felt that she must be my grandmother, and some letters and a picture--a small water-color of the house--made it perfectly clear that in this surmise I was correct.

Before the Bazaar I had decided in the course of the spring, to make myself known to Madame Du Launy, and I ought to tell you that it was your account of her gentler side that led me to think seriously of doing this."

"How very interesting!" cried Julia. "Why, I never heard anything like it. But why did not Madame Du Launy ever try to find you?"

"For the very good reason that she did not know of my existence. You see my mother never wrote to her after the first months of her marriage when my grandmother returned all her letters unopened. Yet Madame Du Launy--I find it very hard to say 'Grandmother' had heard that my mother had had one or two children, but she had also been told that they had died. All that she heard, however, was mere rumor, for she was too proud to write to my father after her daughter's death. But of late years, she says, she has been very unhappy, and has thought much about my mother. It was my close resemblance to her portrait that caused her to faint the other day. I have a photograph made from that portrait, and occasionally I dress my hair in the same style, those old fashions are somewhat in vogue now, and I can do so with propriety. My grandmother says that I am wonderfully like my mother."

"Dear me!" said Julia, "it is more interesting than a novel. I suppose that now you will go to live with Madame Du Launy, and we shall lose you at school."

Miss South smiled. "I shall certainly finish out my present year of teaching, although it is probable that I may go to live with Madame Du Launy." Then after a pause, "There is one thing that I ought to say, Julia, because I know that already it is reported that I am to be a great heiress. Madame Du Launy has a good income, but it comes from an annuity, and when she dies it will die with her. She seemed to think that she ought to explain this to me before asking me to live with her.

The house is hers outright, and she has said that she will give it to me and my brother. I would not speak of this if it were not that I should be placed in a false position otherwise. In fact I am the more ready to go to live with my grandmother, because she is not the enormously rich woman that she has been represented to be. But now I have talked enough about myself, so let us turn to the Rosas."

"Why, yes," responded Julia, "I have been wondering whether or not you had seen them since the Bazaar."

"Yes, I was able to go down yesterday, and I found Mrs. Rosa quite ready to go to the country. I did not feel at liberty to tell her of the success of the efforts of 'The Four,' but I told her that money was certain to be furnished for the expense of removing her, and setting her up in the little home that we have planned for her."

"Wasn't she perfectly delighted?"

"Well, she did not show a great deal of emotion. She is almost too weak for that, but I am sure that she is pleased, although she has a certain amount of regret at leaving the city."

"She ought to be perfectly thankful to leave that wretched place."

"It does not look quite as wretched and dirty to her as it does to us, and after all home is home, and the North End has been her home for many years."

"I won't ask what the children think of the change, for I shall see them myself in a day or two, and I suppose that I ought to be going home now.

But I do wish to tell you how delighted I am about your good fortune in finding your grandmother. You know that I have grown quite fond of Madame Du Launy myself, and I have been so sorry for her loneliness that I am very glad indeed that she is to have you to live with her. Now, here I suppose that I ought to leave you at this corner, so good-bye until to-morrow."

"Wait a moment, Julia, I have been so wrapped up in myself that I have not given you a message from Madame Du Launy. At least she wished me to tell you that your kindness in running in to see her this spring had been greatly appreciated, and that she has been made very happy by the glimpses of fresh, young life that you have given her. In the future she hopes to see much more of you and of some of your young friends. Poor grandmother! It is her own fault that she has been so shut out from people and interesting things here in Boston. But in her youth she was a very sharped tongued and overbearing woman,--she says this herself--and she so resented the criticisms which people made on her marriage that she was only too glad to give up their society, and in return for their criticisms she said so many sharp things that even if she had wished it, there was small chance of her having pleasant a.s.sociations with most of the families of her acquaintance. Oh! before we part there is one thing that I must tell you about Mrs. Rosa. It seems that she has been greatly annoyed lately by a young man, the son of an old friend of hers, who for several years was in the habit of lending her small sums of money. The friend had given her to understand that these sums were gifts in repayment of kindnesses that Mrs. Rosa had done her friend in her youth.

In fact the young man's mother had borrowed from the Rosas in their prosperous days. Lately, however, this friend has died, and her son has a little book in which the money lent Mrs. Rosa amounts with interest to two hundred dollars. He claims that it is a debt due him, and though he cannot collect anything from a person who has nothing, he annoys Mrs.

Rosa very much by coming to her house and telling her that she ought to get some of her rich friends to help her pay the debt. He is very well off himself, for a Portuguese, and his behavior is a kind of persecution."

"Well," said Julia, "I must tell the girls, for if they should let Mrs.

Rosa have even a little of the money----"

"He would certainly wheedle it from her, and you ought to give them a word of warning."

As they parted Julia felt that she had many things to think about--many more things than she had had to consider for a long time. When she reached home she found the family all discussing some of the rumors that had come to them about Madame Du Launy and Miss South, and she was glad that she had had her information at first hand, and that she could contradict some rather absurd rumors that were in circulation.

"The worst thing about it," said Mrs. Barlow, "appears to be the fact that by this turn of Fortune's wheel, Miss Crawdon's school is likely to lose one of its best teachers."

"I am not so sure of that," responded Julia; "I have an idea that Miss South may continue to teach; she is very fond of her work----"

"But her grandmother will certainly wish her to give all her time to her, and her first duty will be with her."

"Whatever her duty is, I am sure that she will do it," replied Julia; "she is the most conscientious person I have ever known; just think of her going down to see Mrs. Rosa this very week, when she must have had so much to interest her in at her grandmother's."

"By the way," asked Mr. Barlow, "are Miss South and Madame Du Launy sure that they are correct in their surmises about the relationship? They must have some stronger proof than personal resemblance, and the possession of one or two old pictures."

"Oh, yes," interposed Mrs. Barlow, "I believe that Miss South has many other proofs to show in the way of letters, certificates, and some other things that belonged to her mother."

"Then her name, too,--you know she is called Lydia from a sister of Madame Du Launy's who died young, and--why how foolish we are, of course Madame Du Launy always knew that the name of the man whom her daughter married was George South, the name of your teacher's father. One of her objections to him was his plebeian name," said Mrs. Barlow's cousin who had remained over Sunday.

Brenda had had less comment to make on these exciting events than had Julia, and even Mr. and Mrs. Barlow had seemed to take more interest in this romance of Madame Du Launy and Miss South. If the truth must be told Brenda was really half worn out. Her vacation had been anything but restful. The Bazaar by itself need not have tired her had she not in the latter part of the week spent almost every hour in some kind of vigorous exercise in search of what she and Belle called "fun." There had been two long bicycle rides, one dancing party, a three hours' walk to Brookline and back one day, and other things that really had told on her strength. Moreover her conscience was p.r.i.c.king her. For on the preceding afternoon, moved by an impulse which she now regretted, she had persuaded Nora to go with her to the North End to visit Mrs. Rosa. This was not long after Miss South had left the sick woman, and they found Mrs. Rosa somewhat depressed, first at the thought that she was really going to leave the city, second by the fact that her persistent creditor had just been in and had told her that he might "take the law on her"--so she quoted him, if she did not pay the money which he found written against her name in his mother's little book. Now Mrs. Rosa ought to have rested herself on Miss South's a.s.surance that the young man could not make good his claim in law, but she was only a rather ignorant foreigner to whom the power of the law meant that she might be dragged off to the nearest police station by the bra.s.s-b.u.t.toned officers. She did not tell the young girls about her creditor, but when they pitied her for looking so ill, she sighed so sadly that they felt very sorry indeed for her. Marie, who had accompanied them to the North End had left them for a quarter of an hour to see a friend of hers living in the neighborhood, and then Brenda had no one but Nora to remonstrate with her for any folly she might wish to commit. When, therefore, out of a small bag which she carried, she took her purse,--her best purse with the silver monogram,--and when from the purse she extracted the three hundred-dollar notes, the proceeds of the Bazaar, even Nora gave a little gasp.

"Why, Brenda, how did you ever dare to bring that money down to this part of the city?"

"Why shouldn't I, you goose! I am sure that it will do Mrs. Rosa more good to see this money than anything else possibly could. See! Mrs.

Rosa" she continued, "this is all yours, this three hundred dollars that we made at the Bazaar that we have been telling you about----" For Nora and she had expatiated on the charms of the occasion--the flowers, the music, and the many pretty articles that had been displayed on the tables. In fact they had brought several simple little things as presents for Mrs. Rosa and the children, and while the former probably did not understand all that they said to her, she did realize that some one had been at a great deal of trouble for her, and that this money was the result.

"All for me, oh tank you," she said, reaching her hand out towards the bills. Nora hastily jerked Brenda's arm.

"You mustn't give them to her."

Now up to this moment, Brenda had had no intention of doing this. "Why, Nora, really I think that I understand things as well as you do." Nora for the moment forgot the effect which opposition usually had on Brenda.

Mrs. Rosa glanced questioningly from one girl to the other.

"Why, yes, you may look at them close too, you may hold them," said Brenda, laying the bills on Mrs. Rosa's transparent hand. The expression on the poor woman's face brightened.

"The money means a great deal to her," said Nora, sympathetically.

"Yes," answered Brenda, "you see that I was right in giving it to her, I mean in letting her see it. She has a little color in her cheeks already. She knows what that money can do for her and her children." It was hard enough for Mrs. Rosa to understand English when spoken in a full voice, and she made no effort to comprehend the undertone in which the two girls were speaking.

"Are they for me to keep?" she asked eagerly.