The Argosy, Vol. 82 No. 2 — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

194 fallen upon the house of Porter-Preston— just ten short minutes back as placid a wealthy household as ever wore slip-covers in early September! Now, it is rarely that disaster comes with no warning at all, but that had been the manner of this disaster’s approach. Wit- ness the picture of calm contentment formed by these three people not half an hour ago: Up-stairs here in the family’s luxurious private living-room, Jane occupied the win- dow-seat and gazed dreamily down the block toward Fifth Avenue, quiet and mys- terious in the warm evening haze, and toward the Park beyond—and though it might endure for centuries, the window-seat would never know a prettier occupant than Miss Jane Fayre. With Aunt Martha’s back turned and Uncle Horace utterly absorbed in his eter- nal business documents, Jane’s_ slender anatomy was huddled up comfortably on the wide seat, hands clasped around her knees and her exquisite cheek against the casing, the while Jane wasted her pensive and rather mischievous smile on an unap- preciative outer darkness. After a tiresome summer, Jane was thoroughly glad to be home again. This somewhat heavy Porter-Preston household was her home now, and had been ever since Jane’s widowed mother married the prince and went to live in Europe. Jane herself preferred New York as a habi- tat, and had small use for the prince, who ran much to gout and highly scented pomades. Further, her eight-hundred-thou- sand-dollar portion of the late “Robert Fayre’s estate left her pleasantly free to live as she chose. Just now the management of that vast sum lay between the Tricounty Trust Com- pany, Trustee, which watched every penny with a hawklike eye, and elderly Mr. Dresser, the late Fayre’s attorney, who watched the Trust Company with the eye of a mother eagle. Next week, having at- tained the advanced age of twenty-one, Jane was to claim the fortune for herself—and the settlement of the thousand details was one of the things that had brought the family home from Newport in these first warm days of September. For Aunt Martha, be it said that she was merely a gentlewoman who preferred her own generation to the present wild one of submarines and automobiles. She read just THE ARGOSY. now, as she always read, the impeécable work of a standard Victorian author. She, too, was glad to be home, chiefly be- cause in New York alone did Mr. Horace Porter-Preston cease to fuss and fume at his absence from business. Mr. Horace Porter-Preston was a com- pletely preoccupied, prosperous soul, who lived, breathed and ate business, thereby making millions. In his hours of alleged leisure he checked up foreign markets from the miles of ticker tape pumped daily into the basket in the library down-stairs; busi- ness sat at table with him, propped against a flower-vase or candle-stick; business went to bed with him, shaking him back to wake- fulness every morning at six. Vaguely he knew that his wife and Jane, his wife’s niece, were in existence; by gaz- ing at either of them a full minute and thinking hard he could usually detach him- self from business long enough to answer their simpler questions. Beyond this he rarely went, although somewhere down- stairs he had left an urgent memorandum for himself, to drop everything else on Tues- day of next week and make sure that Jane’s part of the estate was transferred properly. That, however, was next week. To-night the countless details of to-morrow’s business at the office were quite distracting him. He sat back, scowling at the ceiling; he recalled that the particular paper he needed was in drawer 7 of the larger mahogany desk be- low. Directly connected with this paper were no less than nine of the documents before him. He selected them carefully, and, lips pursed, moved silently from the room and thumped softly down the wide flight. Aunt Martha laid aside her book and yawned delicately. Quite abruptly Jane’s pose became more decorous. “Isn’t it still?” she mused. ‘Isn’t it peaceful, though,” sighed Aunt Martha, “after such a terrible summer!”’ Jane, too, sighed, reminiscently, almost wonderingly. “Tt did seem as if a real, old-fashioned hoodoo was after us, didn’t it?” she said. “First the bad weather and then the smash when we tried the motoring trip, and then the burglar scare and the servants’ strike, and after that the Provost twins getting chicken-pox and sending us all into small- pox quarantine until they learned the truth, and then—”’ “I know, dear; I remember it all quite GomiGcbdooks (C@)