American Push

(PPYRIGHT. 1891. Mrs. Kennaird drew herself up and gave several short nods. "Kathleen, stranger things have happened. And if there's a woman living who could bring about such a developtnent I believe that I am she." They had reached a small rustic seat, within a thicket of laurels whence rosa a bust in gTanite of Pouslürin, the famed Enssian poet. Kathleen sank into the 6eat almost exhausted, heaving a quick sudden sigh, while her mother stood beside her, a presence of extreme stateliness and distinction. "Are you tired, my dear, so soon?" she asked. Kathleen looked up at her with a cold, fatigued smile. "You've wearied me beyond expression," she answered. "My child!" "Oh, mamma, it's truel You know that I loved him, and that I love him stilil To you it may sound senseless enough, but he is more to me than a whole dynasty of kingsl And then for you to torment me by this new follyl As If you had not already made me go through enough! As if I were not the butt and jeer of hundreds of people at this very hour! Surely you might have some merey after what you dragged me through in London!" "Kathleen! Kathleenl This is atrociousl" "It is indeed!" cried the girl, and without another word she sprang to her feet and hurried away, leaving her mother to gaze at her figure as it retreated among the fringy frondage of i the hemlocks. Well though she believed that she knew Kathleen, Mrs. Kyinaird had not a doubt that the actual suecess of her new and most characteristic design would win from her child the gladdest sort of acquiescence. There are some ! natures that can no more conceive of i others really refusing certain positive j worldly gains when the chance comes for palpably grasping them than a man bom color blind can conceive of the lights and shade in a canvas by Rousseau or Daubigny. If it was fated that this extraordinary, this unprecedented young king should fall in love with her daughter, his nuptial path would of course be one strewn with roses. As if any woman could or would refuse to become a queen. Kathleen was capable of odd behavior, beyond a doubt; but even her worst vagaries must end at the bounds of lunacy. That afternoon the Kennairds had received an invitation to go and drink tea at the Jerningham's villa. They had not yet met the Jerninghams, though brother and sister had both left cards upon herself and Kathleen a few days apo, findingthem absent from thehoteL When Mrs. Kennaird again saw her daughter she refused to pay the proposed visit. "Say that I am unwell, mamma," was Kathleen's announcement. "Say anything you please. I shall not go." "But you must, my dear. They are not people to treat rudely, al though I have learned since we have been at the hotel that they are exelusively in the foreign set and that neither the king nor any of his court honor their entertainments. It seems that Mr. Jerningham has made himself unpopular in Saltravia. He has quarreled with the I king's favorite friend, the architect who ' built for him that superb marble palace - a person named Mr. Eric Thaster, an American, and - " "Eric Thaxter?" broke in Kathleen. "I remember that name. Where have I heard it?" "Really I don't know, my dear. Perhaps during your London days. He can't be anyone of the least importance in New York, though I am told that he originally belonged there. He is of great importance here, however, he is a sort of power behind the throne. The ! king is devoted to him. I must manage to meet him. Poor, dear, gouty old Mrs. Madison has promised to present him soon. One sees him now and then at the Casino, she tells me, and not seldom in the company of the king himself. He has the entree into the very most difficult Saltravian houses. Indeed, why not, since that charming Clarimond fleigns to be His friend? You will change your tmind about the Jerninghams, my dear, will you not?" "No," replied Kathleen, with much firmness. Then she looked at her mother very fixedly, and pursued: "Sow, mamma, let one thing be clearly understood between you and me. I do not wish to go at all into society while we are in Saltravia. We came here for the waters - at least I did, if you did not. It is late in the day for me to try and impress upon you that my social Ufe has ended. You must have seen that in Dresdenl And as for a certain idea of yours, I can only say that it would be painful to me beyond words - painful and mortifying in the extreme - were it not so strongly flavored with an element of wild absurdity." Mrs. Kennaird attempted no further persuasions. "Let me achieve her presentation to the king," she mused, "and this nonsensicml desire for secluding herself will vanish like one of the Saltravian morning mists." And while she robed her stately figure, that afternoon, in the most becoming gown that her limited wardrobe possessed, the new yearning cheered her spirit as an elixir-like cordial warms the blood. Because an aim was dazzling, even dizzying, should it for that reason be deserted? Ah, to thiak of the exquisite vietory it would meanl II ow that horrible marchioness of Dendudlow would writhe ■when she heard of itl To be the mother of a queen I There was something ilendid)v distinctive in the vprv hola. ness of the project. The fact that an effort like this teemed with novelty and daring was no sign that it would provo a failure. After all, so much depended on Kathleen's powers of fascination, and these were immense. Then, too, was she not just American enough to be called an American girl, and was not this the next remarkable and stirring act for the American girl to commit? Margaretta Kennaird surveyed herself in the dressing mirror as she donned her bonnet, and thought hpw the matronly symmetries of her figure would grace a court. And then to have her portrait painted by some famous European artist and hung in the palace as that of the "queen's motherl" Ferhaps several centuries after her death it would hang there. And for several centuries, no doubt, they would recollect her great accomplishment over seas in New York, whence her stock had sprung. Everybody who could claim the faintest relationship with her would do so. "Queen Kathleen" would ratè for them as an ancestress worth having; that humiliating Dendudlow affair would be mercifully hidden (why not?) by the capacious mantle of history itself. "Queen Kathleen!" What a delightful sound it had! "Clarimond and Kathleen!" There was not as much real honeyed romanticisrn in even "Romeo and Juliette!" Itmust be confessed that medita tions of this kind produced an intoxicatiag effect upon this most curious of American "aristocrats." Her state of mind was almost in ayitated one by the time that a short stroll had brought her to the gates of the Jerningham villa. She feit herself on the verge of society here in Saltravia, feit that to-day might prove but the quiet threshold of many beautifu) morro ws. There were not more than twenty guests present, and these were nearly all her own country folk. In the course of a little time she was presented to at least half of them, finding that she already knew a few, that she had heard of a uuniber more, and that certain others were not by any means of a desirable type. Then it entered her shrewd mind that this set into which she had drifted was altogether the wrong set, and that if she kept Kathleen quite out of it she would be doing a most prudent act. The Jerninghams, brother and sister, had evidently a great grudge against the king and his court, and it was pleasant for them to feel that their friends were of the same rather rancorous mind. They never spoke against Clarimond, but they hinted that he was flippant and frivolous and had all the proverbial bad faith of princes. Brother and sister were oddly alike, both being tall and slim, both having a sunken look about the cheeks and slaty-hued eyes with pink-edged lids. They both talked with a slight lisp, and in talking used their hands with the same jerky little gestures. Neither of them oftên said "I," it was always ''we" with them, so that after awhile you got the impression that nothing happened singly to this devoted brother and sister, but that human experience treated them to its good and its ill in perpetual duo, as the rain and sun treat two apples on a single steam. Harriet Jerningham made herself notably civil to Mrs. Kennaird, and after awhile they had a private chat together amid the general babble of the little modish drawing-room. "We hear your daughter is so wonderfully beautiful, Mrs. Kennaird," said the sister of the deposed art superintendent. "Pardon me, but we do! And it grieves me greatly to hear that she is indisposed to-day. The waters sometimes affect people for a few days just like that. Wecan't live away from them now, though at first we thought them really quite horrid. That is why my dear brother hasn't departed from Saltravia. I mean since Mr. trie Thaxter caused the king to treat him so cruelly. Uut perhaps you haven't heard about that. No? Oh, then, I won't bore you with our private griev!nces. And yet, after all, theyVe become horribly public ever since my dear brother was ousted from his position and that Alonzo Lispenard was made to replace him." "Alonzo Lispenard!" broke in Mrs. Kennaird. "Is - is he in Saltravia?" "1 bolieve he is in Munich now, though there is a report that he will be back next week for the great royal ball at the palace. Pray, do you know him?" "Yes - yes, I've met him. He's a - a New Yorker, you know." "True. I suppose you have met him in society over there - the 'Four Ilundred,' as they cali it?" "Yes," said Mrs. Kennaird, feeling a little dizzy and hardly knowing just what answer left her lips. "Quite right. It- er - was in the 'Four Hundred,' as you say." "Such a queername, isn't it?" babbled Miss Jerningham. "We can't get used to it, you know. There was nothing oí that sort when we were there." "Oh, yes, there was," her listener might mentally have said, "only you know nothing about it." But Mrs. Kennaird was in no mood for any such comments, whether mute or vocal. "And so this Alonzo Lispenard," she presently faltered, "holds a position here under the king." "Oh, yes - art superintendent, yon know. Eric Thaxter, the adored friend of Clarimond, took it away from us - that is, I mean from my brother - and gave it (with the king's full sanction) to this Mr. LisoeDard." [TO BE CONTIN'UED. ]