PAGE 14
Trent’s Trust
by
“Are you sure you won’t be angry?”
“I may be pained,” said Randolph prudently.
“I apologize for that beforehand. Well, that first night I saw a young man looking very anxious, very uncomfortable, and very weak. The second time–and not very long after–I saw him well dressed, lounging like any other young man on a Sunday afternoon, and I believed that he took the liberty of bowing to me then because I had once looked at him under a misapprehension.”
“Oh, Miss Avondale!”
“Then I took a more charitable view, and came to the conclusion that the first night he had been drinking. But,” she added, with a faint smile at Randolph’s lugubrious face, “I apologize. And you have had your revenge; for if I cut you on account of your smart clothes, you have tried to do me a kindness on account of my plain ones.”
“Oh, Miss Avondale,” burst out Randolph, “if you only knew how sorry and indignant I was at the bank–when–you know–the other day”–he stammered. “I wanted to go with you to Mr. Revelstoke, you know, who had been so generous to me, and I know he would have been proud to befriend you until you heard from your friends.”
“And I am very glad you did nothing so foolish,” said the young lady seriously, “or”–with a smile–“I should have been still more aggravating to you when we met. The bank was quite right. Nor have I any pathetic story like yours. Some years ago my little half-cousin whom you saw lost his mother and was put in my charge by his father, with a certain sum to my credit, to be expended for myself and the child. I lived with an uncle, with whom, for some family reasons, the child’s father was not on good terms, and this money and the charge of the child were therefore intrusted entirely to me; perhaps, also, because Bobby and I were fond of each other and I was a friend of his mother. The father was a shipmaster, always away on long voyages, and has been home but once in the three years I have had charge of his son. I have not heard from him since. He is a good-hearted man, but of a restless, roving disposition, with no domestic tastes. Why he should suddenly cease to provide for my little cousin–if he has done so–or if his omission means only some temporary disaster to himself or his fortunes, I do not know. My anxiety was more for the poor boy’s sake than for myself, for as long as I live I can provide for him.” She said this without the least display of emotion, and with the same mature air of also repressing any emotion on the part of Randolph. But for her size and girlish figure, but for the dripping tangles of her hair and her soft eyes, he would have believed he was talking to a hard, middle-aged matron.
“Then you–he–has no friends here?” asked Randolph.
“No. We are all from Callao, where Bobby was born. My uncle was a merchant there, who came here lately to establish an agency. We lived with him in Sutter Street–where you remember I was so hateful to you,” she interpolated, with a mischievous smile–“until his enterprise failed and he was obliged to return; but I stayed here with Bobby, that he might be educated in his father’s own tongue. It was unfortunate, perhaps,” she said, with a little knitting of her pretty brows, “that the remittances ceased and uncle left about the same time; but, like you, I was lucky, and I managed to get a place in the Emporium.”
“The Emporium!” repeated Randolph in surprise. It was a popular “magasin of fashion” in Montgomery Street. To connect this refined girl with its garish display and vulgar attendants seemed impossible.
“The Emporium,” reiterated Miss Avondale simply. “You see, we used to dress a good deal in Callao and had the Paris fashions, and that experience was of great service to me. I am now at the head of what they call the ‘mantle department,’ if you please, and am looked up to as an authority.” She made him a mischievous bow, which had the effect of causing a trickle from the umbrella to fall across his budding mustache, and another down her own straight little nose–a diversion that made them laugh together, although Randolph secretly felt that the young girl’s quiet heroism was making his own trials appear ridiculous. But her allusion to Callao and the boy’s name had again excited his fancy and revived his romantic dream of their common benefactor. As soon as they could get a more perfect shelter and furl the umbrella, he plunged into the full story of the mysterious portmanteau and its missing owner, with the strange discovery that he had made of the similarity of the two handwritings. The young lady listened intently, eagerly, checking herself with what might have been a half smile at his enthusiasm.