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“I’m sure I never dreamed that things would ’appen like what ’as ’appened—and us all one family, as you might sye—’opin’ the best of everyone––”
“Jynie, stop,” Mrs. Courage’s voice had become low and firm, with emotion in its tone, making Letty catch her breath. “My ’eart’s breakin’, and I ain’t a-goin’ to let it break without mykin’ them that’s broken it know what they’ve done to me.”
“Now, Mary Ann,” Steptoe tried to say, peaceably, “madam’s grytely pressed for time––”
“’Enery Steptoe, do you suppose that you’re the only one in the world as ’as loved that boy? Ain’t ’e my boy just as much as ever ’e was yours?”
“’E’s boy to them as stands by ’im, Mrs. Courage—and stands by them that belongs to ’im. The first thing you do is to quit––”
“I’m not quittin’; I’m druv out. I’m druv out at a hour’s notice from the ’ome I’ve slyved for all my best years, leavin’ dishonor and wickedness in my plyce––”
Letty could endure no more. Dashing to the floor the paper behind which she crouched she sprang to her feet.
“Is that me?” she demanded.
The surprise of the attack caught Mrs. Courage off her guard. She could only open her mouth, and close it again, soundlessly and helplessly. Jane stared, her curiosity gratified at last. Nettie turned to whisper to Jane, “There; what did I tell you? The commonest thing!” Steptoe nodded his head quietly. In this little creature with her sudden flame, eyes all fire91and cheeks of the wine-colored damask rose, he seemed to find a corroboration of his power of divining character.
It seemed long before Mrs. Courage had found the strength to live up to her convictions, by faintly murmuring: “Who else?”
“Then tell me what you accuse me of?”
Mrs. Courage saw her advantage. “We ain’t ’ere to accuse nobody of nothink. If it’s ’intin’ that I’d tyke awye anyone’s character it’s a thing I’ve ’ardly ever done, and no one can sye itofme. All we want is to give our notice––”
“Then why don’t you do it—and go?”
Once more Steptoe intervened, diplomatically. “That’s what Mrs. Courage is a-doin’ of, madam. She’s finished, ain’t you Mary Ann? Jynie and Nettie is finished too––”
But it was Letty now who refused this mediation.
“No, they ain’t finished. Let ’em go on.”
But no one did go on. Mrs. Courage was now dumb. She was dumb and frightened, falling back on her two supporters. All three together they huddled between the portières. If Steptoe could have calmed his protégée he would have done it; but she was beyond his control.
“Am I the ruin and shame to this house that you was talkin’ about just now? If I am, why don’t you speak out and put it to me plain?”
There was no response. The spectators looked on as if they were at the theater.
“What have you all got against me anyhow?” Letty insisted, passionately. “What did I ever do to you?92What’s women’s hearts made of, that they can’t let a poor girl be?”
Mrs. Courage had so far recovered as to be able to turn from one to another, to say in pantomime that she had been misunderstood. Jane began to cry; Nettie to laugh.
“Even if I was the bad girl you’re tryin’ to make me out I should think other women might show me a little pity. But I’m not a bad girl—not yet. I may be. I dunno but what I will. When I see the hateful thing bein’ good makes of women it drives me to do the other thing.”
This was the speech they needed to justify themselves. To be good made women hateful! Their dumb-crambo to each other showed that anyone who said so wild a thing stood already self-condemned.
But Letty flung up her head with a mettle which Steptoe hadn’t seen since the days of the late Mrs. Allerton.
“I’m not in this house to drive no one else out of it. Them that have lived here for years has a right to it which I ain’t got. You can go, and let me stay; or you can stay, and let me go. I’m the wife of the owner of this house, who married me straight and legal; but I don’t care anything about that. You don’t have to tell me I ain’t fit to be his wife, because I know it as well as you do. All I’m sayin’ is that you’ve got the choice to stay or go; and whichever you do, I’ll do different.”
Never in her life had she spoken so many words at one time. The effort drained her. With a torrent93of dry sobs that racked her body she dropped back into her chair.
The hush was that of people who find the tables turned on themselves in a way they consider unwarranted. Of the general surprise Steptoe was quick to take advantage.
“There you are, girls. Madam couldn’t speak no fairer, now could she?”
To this there was neither assent or dissent; but it was plain that no one was ready to pick up the glove so daringly thrown down.
“Now what I would suggest,” Steptoe went on, craftily, “is that we all go back to the kitchen and talk it over quiet like. What we decide to do we can tell madam lyter.”
For consent or refusal Jane and Nettie looked to Mary Ann, whose attitude was that of rejecting parley. She might, indeed, have rejected it, had not Letty, bowing her head on the arms she rested on the table, begun to cry bitterly.
It was then that you saw Mrs. Courage at her best. The gesture with which she swept her subordinates back into the hall was that of the supremacy of will.
“It shan’t be said as I crush,” she declared, nobly, directing Steptoe’s attention to the weeping girl. “Where there’s penitence I pity. God grant as them tears may gush out of an aichin’ ’eart.”
94Chapter IX
By the time Letty was drying her eyes, her heart somewhat eased, Steptoe had come back. He came back with a smile. Something had evidently pleased him.
“So that’s all over. Madam won’t be bothered with other people’s cat-nasty old servants after to-dye.”
She felt a new access of alarm. “But they’re not goin’ away on account o’ me? Don’t let ’em do it. Lemme go instead. Oh, mister, I can’t stay here, where everything’s so different from what I’m used to.”
He still smiled, his gentle old man’s smile which somehow gave her confidence.
“Madam won’t sye that after a dye or two. It’s new to ’er yet, of course; but if she’ll always remember that I’m ’ere, to myke everythink as easy as easy––”
“But what are you goin’ to do, with no cook, and no chambermaid––?”
Standing with the corner of the table between him and her, he was saying to himself, “If Mr. Rash could only see ’er lookin’ up like this—with ’er eyes all starry—and her cheeks with them dark-red roses—red roses like you’d rubbed with a little black....” But he suspended the romantic longing to say, aloud:
“If madam will permit me I’ll tyke my measures as I’ve wanted to tyke ’em this long spell back.”
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Madam was not to worry as to the three women who were leaving the house, inasmuch as they had long been intending to leave it. Both Mrs. Courage and Jane, having graduated to the stage of “accommodating,” were planning to earn more money by easier work. Nettie, since coming to America, had learned that housework was menial, and was going to be a milliner.
Madam’s remorse being thus allayed he told what he hoped to do for madam’s comfort. There would be no more women in the house, not till madam herself brought them back. An English chef who had lost an eye in the war, and an English waiter, ready to do chamberwork, who had left a foot on some battlefield, were prepared under Steptoe’s direction to man the house. No woman whose household cares had not been eased by men, in the European fashion, knew what it was to live. A woman waited on by women only was kept in a state of nerves. Nerves were infectious. When one woman in a household got them the rest were sooner or later their prey. Unless strongly preventative measures were adopted they spread at times to the men. America was a dreadful country for nerves and it mostly came of women working with women; whereas, according to Steptoe’s psychology, men should work with women and women with men. There were thousands of women who were bitter in heart at cooking and making beds who would be happy as linnets in offices and shops; and thousands of men who were dying of boredom in offices and shops who would be in their element cooking and making beds.
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“One of the things the American people ’as got back’ards, if madam’ll allow me to sye so, is that ’ouse’old work is not fit for a white man. When you come to that the American people ain’t got a sense of the dignity of their ’omes. They can’t see their ’omes as run by anything but slyves. All that’s outside the dinin’ room and the drorin’ room and the masters’ bedrooms the American sees as if it was a low-down thing, even when it’s hunder ’is own roof. Colored men, yellow men, may cook ’is meals and myke ’is bed; but a white man’d demean ’imself. A poor old white man like me when ’e’s no longer fit for ’ard outdoor work ain’t allowed to do nothink; when all the time there’s women workin’ their fingers to the bone that ’e could be a great ’elp to, and who ’e’d like to go to their ’elp.”
This was one reason, he argued, why the question of domestic aid in America was all at sixes and sevens. It was not considered humanly. It was more than a question of supply and demand; it was one of national prejudice. A rich man could have a French chef and an English butler, and as many strapping indoor men—some of them much better fitted for manual labor—as he liked, and find it a social glory; while a family of moderate means were obliged to pay high wages to crude incompetent women from the darkest backwaters of European life, just because they were women.
“And the women’s mostly to blyme,” he reasoned. “They suffers—nobody knows what they suffers better nor me—just because they ain’t got the spunk to do anythingbutsuffer. They’ve got it all in their97own ’ands, and they never learn. Men is slow to learn; but women don’t ’ardly ever learn at all.”
Letty was thinking of herself, as she glanced up at this fount of wisdom with the question:
“Don’t none of ’em?”
Having apparently weighed this already he had his answer. “None that’s been drilled a little bit before ’and. Once let woman feel as so and so is the custom, and for ’er that custom, whether good or bad, is there to stye. They sye that chyngin’ ’er mind is a woman’s privilege; but the woman that chynged ’er mind about a custom is one I never met yet.”
She took him as seriously as he took himself.
“Don’t you like women, mister—I mean, Steptoe?”
He pondered before replying. “I don’t know as I could sye. I’ve never ’ad a chance to see much of women except in ’ousework, where they’re out of their element and tyken at a disadvantage. I don’t like none I’ve ever run into there, because none of ’em never was no sport.”
The inquiry in her golden eyes led him a little further.
“No one ain’t a sport what sighs and groans over their job, and don’t do it cheerful like. No one ain’t a sport what undertykes a job and ain’t proud of it. If a womanwillgo into ’ousework let ’er do it honorable. If she chooses to be a servant let ’erbea servant, and not be ashymed to sye sheisone. So if madam arsks me if I like ’em I ’ave to confess I don’t, because as far as I see women I mostly ’ear ’em complyne.”
Her admiration was quite sincere as she said: “I98shouldn’t think they’d complain if they had you to put ’em wise.”
He corrected gently. “If they ’ad me totell’em.”
“If they ’ad you totell’em,” she imitated, meekly.
“Madam mustn’t pick up the bad ’abit of droppin’ ’er haitches,” he warned, parentally. “I’ll learn ’er a lot, but that’s one thing I mustn’t learn ’er. I don’t do it often—Oh, once in a wye, mybe—but that’s something madam speaks right already—just like all Americans.”
Delighted that there was one thing about her that was right already she reminded him of what he had said, that women never learned.
“I said women as ’ad been drilled a bit. But madam’s different. Madam comes into this ’ouse newborn, as you might sye; and that’ll myke it easier for ’er and me.”
“You mean that I’ll not be a kicker.”
Once more he smiled his gentle reproof. “Oh, madam wouldn’t be a kicker any’ow. Jynie or Nettie or Mary Ann Courage or even me—we might be kickers; but if madam was to hobject to anything she’d be—displeased.”
She knitted her brows. The distinction was difficult. He saw he had better explain more fully.
“It’s only the common crowd what kicks. It’s only the common crowd what uses the expression. A man might use it—I mean a real ’igh gentleman like Mr. Rashleigh—and get awye with it—now and then—if ’e didn’t myke a ’abit of it; but when a woman does it she rubberstamps ’erself. Now, does madam see? A lydy couldn’t be a lydy—and kick. The lyte Mrs.99Allerton would never demean ’erself to kick; she’d only show displeasure.”
With a thumb and two fingers Letty marked off on the table the three points as to which she had received information that morning. She must say brought, and not brung; she must say tell, and not put wise; she must not kick, but show displeasure. Neither must she drop her aitches, though to do so would have been an effort. The warning only raised a suspicion that in the matter of speech there might be a higher standard than Steptoe’s. If ever she heard Rashleigh Allerton speak again she resolved to listen to him attentively.
She came back from her reverie on hearing Steptoe say:
“With madam it’s a cyse of beginning from the ground up, more or less as you would with a byby; so I ’ope madam’ll forgive me if I drop a ’int as to what we must do before goin’ any farther.”
Once more he read her question in the starry little flames in her eyes.
“It’s—clothes.”
The damask red which had ebbed surged slowly back again. It surged back under the transparent white skin, as red wine fills a glass. Her lips parted to stammer the confession that she had no clothes except those she wore; but she couldn’t utter a syllable.
“I understand madam’s position, which is why I mention it. You might sye as clothes is the ABC of social life, and if we’re to work from the ground up we must begin there.”
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She forced it out at last, but the statement seemed to tear her.
“I can’t get clothes. I ain’t got no money.”
“Oh, money’s no hobject,” he smiled. “Mr. Rash ’as plenty of that, and I know what ’e’d like me to do. There never was ’is hequal for the ’open ’and. If madam’ll leave it to me....”
Allerton’s office was much what you would have expected it to be, bearing to other offices the same relation as he to other business men. He had it because not to have it wouldn’t have been respectable. A young American who didn’t go to an office every day would hardly have been a young American. An office, then, was a concession to public sentiment, as well as some faint justification of himself.
It was in the latter sense that he chiefly took it, making it a subject of frequent reference. In his conversation such expressions as “my office,” or “due at my office,” were introduced more often than there was occasion for. The implication that he had work to do gave him status, enabling him to sit down among his cronies and good-naturedly take their fun.
He took a good deal of fun, never having succeeded in making himself the standardized type who escapes the shafts of ridicule. It was kindly fun, which, while viewing him as a white swan in a flock of black ones, recognized him as a swan, and this was as much as he could expect. To pass in the crowd was all he asked for, even when he only passed on bluff. If he couldn’t wholly hide the bluff he could keep it from being101flagrantly obtrusive; and toward that end an office was a help.
It was an office situated just where you would have expected to find it—far enough downtown to be downtown, and yet not so far downtown as to make it a trouble to get there. Being on the eastern side of Washington Square, it had a picturesque outlook, and the merit of access from East Sixty-seventh Street through the long straight artery of Fifth Avenue.
It was furnished, too, just as you might have known he would furnish it, in the rich and sober Style Empire, and yet not so exclusively in the Style Empire as to make the plain American business man fear he had dropped into Napoleon’s library at Malmaison. That is what Rashleigh would have liked, but other men could do what in him would be thought finicky. To take the “cuss” off his refinement, as he put it to Barbara, he scattered modern American office bits among his luscious brown surfaces, adorned with wreaths and lictors’ sheaves in gold, though to himself the wrong note was offensive.
But wrong notes and right notes were the same to him as, on this particular morning, he dragged himself there because it was the hour. His office staff in the person of old Mr. Radbury was already on the spot, and had sorted the letters for the day. These were easily dealt with. Reinvestment, or new opportunities for investment, were their principal themes, and the only positive duty to attend to was in the endorsement of dividend checks for deposit. A few directions being given to Mr. Radbury as to such letters102as were to be answered, Allerton had nothing to do but stroll to the window and look out.
It was what he did perhaps fifty times in the course of the two or three hours daily, or approximately daily, which he spent there. He did so now. He did so because it put off for a few minutes longer the fierce, exasperating, acrid pleasure of doing worse. To do worse had been his avowed object in coming to the office that morning, and not the answering of letters or the raking in of checks.
Looking down from his window on the tenth floor he asked himself the fruitless question which millions of other men have asked when folly has got them into trouble. Among these thousands who, viewed from that height, had a curious resemblance to ants, was there such a fool as he was? From the Square they streamed into Fifth Avenue; from Fifth Avenue they streamed into the Square. In the Square and round the Square they squirmed and wriggled and dawdled their seemingly aimless ways. Great green lumbering omnibuses disgorged one pack of them merely to suck up another. Motors whirled them toward uptown, toward downtown, or east, or west, by twos and threes, or as individuals. Like ants their general effect was black, with here and there a moving spot of color, or of intermingling colors, as of flowers in the wind, or tropic birds.
He watched a figure detach itself from the mass swirling round a debouching omnibus. It was a little black figure, just clearly enough defined to show that it was a man. Because it was a man it had been a fool. Because it had been a fool it had dark chambers in its103life which it would never willingly open. But it had doubtless got something for its folly. It might have lost more than it had gained, but it could probably reckon up and say, “At least I had my fun.”
And he had had none. He had squandered his whole life on a single act of insanity which even in the action had produced nothing but disgust. He hadn’t merely swindled himself; he had committed a kind of suicide which made death silly and grotesque. The one thing that could save him a scrap of dignity—and such a sorry scrap!—would be going to the devil by the shortest way.
He had come to the office to begin. He would begin by the means that seemed obvious. Now that going to the devil was a task he saw, as he had not seen hitherto, how curiously few were the approaches that would take him there. Song being only an accompaniment, he was limited to the remaining two of the famous and familiar trio.
Very well! Limited as he was he would make the most of them. Knowing something of their merits he knew there was a bestial entertainment to be had from both. It was a kind of entertainment which his cursed fastidiousness had always loathed; but now his reckoning would be different. If he gotanythinghe should not feel so wastefully thrown away. He would be selling himself first and making his bargain afterwards; but some meager balance would stand to his credit, if credit it could be called. When the devil had been reached the world he knew would pardon him because it was the devil, and not—what it was in truth—an idiotic state of nerves.
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At the minute when Letty was leaping to her feet to take her stand he swung away from the window. First going to Mr. Radbury’s door he closed it softly. Luckily the old man, an inheritance from his, Allerton’s, father, was deaf and incurious. Like most clerks who had clerked their way up to seventy he was buried in clerking’s little round. He wouldn’t come in till the letters were finished, certainly not for an hour, and by that time Allerton would be.... He almost smiled at the old man’s probable consternation on finding him so before the middle of the day. Any time would be bad enough; but in the high forenoon....
He went to a cabinet which was said to have found its way via Bordentown from the furnishings of Queen Caroline Murat. Having opened it he took out a bottle and a glass. On the label of the bottle was a kilted Highlander playing on the pipes. A siphon of soda was also in the cabinet, but he left it there. What he had to do would be done more quickly without its mitigation.
While Allerton was making these preparations Judson Flack, in pajamas and slippers, was standing in his toy kitchen, looking helplessly at a small gas stove. It was the hour in the middle of the morning at which he was accustomed to be waked with the information that his coffee and eggs were ready. The forenoon being what he called his slack time he found the earlier part of it most profitably used for sleep.
“Curse the girl!”
The adjuration was called forth by the fact that he didn’t know where anything was, or how anything105should be done. From the simple expedient of going for his breakfast to one of the cheap restaurants with which he was familiar he was cut off by the fact of an unlucky previous night. He simply didn’t have the bones. This was not to say that he was penniless, but that in view of more public expenses later in the day it would be well for him to economize where economy was so obvious. He never had an appetite in the morning anyway. With irregular eating and drinking all through the evening and far toward daylight, he found a cup of coffee and an egg....
It was easy, he knew, to make the one and boil the other, but he was out of practice. He couldn’t remember doing anything of the sort since the days before he married Letty’s mother. Even then he had never tried this new-fangled thing, the gas stove, so that besides being out of practice he was at a loss.
“Curse the girl!”
The resources of the kitchen being few exploration didn’t take him long. He found bread, butter, milk that had turned sour, the usual condiments, some coffee in a canister, and a single egg. If he could only light the confounded gas stove....
A small white handle offering itself for experiment, he turned it timidly, applying a match to a geometrical pattern of holes. He jumped back as from an exploding cannon.
“Curse the girl!”
Having found the way, however, the next attempt was more successful. Soon he had two geometrical patterns of holes burning in steady blue buttons of flame. On the one he placed the coffee-pot into which106he had turned a pint of water and a cupful of coffee; on the other a saucepan half full of water containing his egg. This being done he retired to the bathroom for the elements of a toilet.
“Curse the girl!”
Washing, shaving, turning up his mustache with the little curling tongs, he observed with self-pity his increasing haggardness. He observed it also with dismay. Looks were as important to him as to an actress. His rôle being youth, high spirits, and the devil-may-care, the least trace of the wearing out would do for him. He had noticed some time ago that he was beginning to show fatal signs, which had the more emphatically turned his thoughts to the provision Letty might prove for his old age.
“Curse the girl!”
It was cursing the girl which reminded him that he had allowed more than the necessary time for his breakfast to be ready for consumption. Hurrying back to the kitchen he found the egg gracefully dancing as the water boiled. He fished it out with a spoon and took it in his hand, but he didn’t keep it there. Dashing it to the table, whence it crashed upon the floor, he positively screamed.
“Curse the girl!”
He cursed her now licking and sucking the tips of his fingers and examining them to see if they were scalded. No such calamity having occurred he took up the coffee pot, leaving the mashed egg where it lay. Ladling a spoonful of sugar into a cup, and adding the usual milk, he poured in the coffee, which became a muddy dark brown mixture, with what appeared to107be a porridge of seeds floating on the top. One sip, which induced a diabolical grimace, and he threw the beverage at the opposite wall as if it was a man he meant to insult.
“Curse the girl!”
The appeal to the darker powers being accompanied now by a series of up-to-date terms of objurgation, the mere act of utterance, mental or articulate, churned him to a frenzy. Seizing the coffee pot which he had replaced on the gas stove he hurled it too against the wall. It struck, splathered the hideous liquor over a hideous calsomining which had once been blue, and fell to the floor like a living thing knocked insensible.
The resemblance maddened him still more. It might have been Letty, struck down after having provoked him beyond patience. He rushed at it. He hurled it again. He hurled it again. He hurled it again. The exercise gave relief not only to his lawful resentment against Letty, but to those angers over his luck of last night which as “a good loser” he hadn’t been at liberty to show. No one knew the repressions he was obliged to put upon himself; but now his inhibitions could come off in this solitary passion of destruction.
When the coffee pot was a mere shapeless mass he picked up the empty cup. It was a thick stone-china cup, with a bar meant to protect his mustache across the top, a birthday present from Letty’s mother. The association of memories acted as a further stimulus. Smash! After the cup went the stone-china sugar bowl. Smash! After the sugar bowl the plate with the yellow chunk of butter. Smash! After the butter108plate the milk jar, a clumsy, lumpy thing, which merely gurgled out a splash of milk and fell without breaking.
“Curse the girl! Curse the girl! Curse the girl! I’ll learn her to go away and leave me! I’ll find her and drag her back if she’s in....”
109Chapter X
While Letty was beginning a new experience Judson Flack was doing his best to carry out his threat. That is to say, he was making the round of the studios in which his step-daughter had occasionally found work, discreetly asking if she had been there that day. It was all he could think of doing. To the best of his knowledge she had no friends with whom she could have taken refuge, though the suspicion crossed his mind that she might have drowned herself to spite him.
As a matter of fact Letty was asking the question if she wasn’t making a mistake in not doing so, either literally or morally. Never before in her life had she been up against this problem of insufficiency. Among the hard things she had known she had not known this; and now that she was involved in it, it seemed to her harder than everything else put together.
In her humble round, bitter as it was, she had always been considered competent. It was the sense of her competence that gave her the self-respect enabling her to bear up. According to her standards she could keep house cleverly, and could make a dollar go as far as other girls made two. When she got her first chance in a studio, through an acquaintance of Judson Flack’s, she didn’t shrink from it, and had more than once been chosen by a director to be that member110of a crowd who moves in the front and expresses the crowd psychologically. Had she only had the clothes....
And now she was to have them. As far as that went she was not merely glad; she was one sheer quiver of excitement. It was not the end she shrank from; it was the means. If she could only have had fifty dollars to go “poking round” where she knew that bargains could be found, she might have enjoyed the prospect; but Steptoe could only “take measures” on the grand scale to which he was accustomed.
The grand scale frightened her, chiefly because she was dressed as she was dressed. It was her first thought and her last one. When Steptoe told her the hour at which he had asked Eugene to bring round the car the mere vision of herself stepping into it made her want to sink into the ground. Eugene didn’t live in the house—she had discovered that—and so would bring the stare of another pair of eyes under whose scrutiny she would have to pass. Those of the three women having already scorched her to the bone, she would have to be scorched again.
She tried to say this to Steptoe, as they stood in the drawing-room window waiting for the car; but she didn’t know how to make him understand it. When she tried to put it into words, the right words wouldn’t come. Steptoe had taken as general what she was trying to explain to him in particular.
“It’ll be very important to madam to fyce what’s ’ard, and to do it bryve like. It’ll be the mykin’ of ’er if she can. ’Umble ’ill is pretty stiff to climb; but them as gets to the top of it is tough.”
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She thought this over silently. He meant that if she set herself to take humiliations as they came, dragging herself up over them, she would be the stronger for it in the end.
“It’d ’ave been better for Mr. Rashleigh,” he mused, “if ’e’d ’ad ’ad somethink of the kind to tackle in ’is life; it’d ’ave myde ’im more of a man. But because ’e adn’t—Did madam ever notice,” he broke off to ask, “’ow them as ’as everythink myde easy for ’em begins right off to myke things ’ard for theirselves. It’s a kind of law like. It’s just as if nyture didn’t mean to let no one escype. When a man’s got no troubles you can think of, ’e’ll go to work to create ’em.”
“Didn’the”—she had never yet pronounced the name of the man who had married her—”didn’theever have any troubles?”
“’E was fretted terrible—crossed like—rubbed up the wrong wye, as you might sye,—but a real trouble like what you and me ’ave ’ad plenty of—never! It’s my opinion that trouble is to char-ac-ter what a peg’ll be to a creepin’ vine—something to which the vine’ll ’ook on and pull itself up by. Where there’s nothink to ketch on to the vine’ll grow; but it’ll grow in a ’eap of flop.” There was a tremor in his tone as he summed up. “That’s somethink like my poor boy.”
Letty found this interesting. That in these exalted circles there could be a need of refining chastisement came to her as a surprise.
“The wife as I’ve always ’oped for ’im,” Steptoe went on, “is one that’d know what trouble was, and ’ow to fyce it. ’E’d myke a grand ’usband to a woman112who was—strong. But she’d ’ave to be the wall what the creepin’ vine could cover all over and—and beautify.”
“That wouldn’t be me.”
“If I was madam I wouldn’t be so sure of that. It don’t do to undervalyer your own powers. If I’d ’a done that I wouldn’t ’a been where I am to-dye. Many’s the time, when I was no more than a poor little foundlin’ boy in a ’ome I’ve said to myself, I’m fit for somethink big. Somethink big I always meant to be. When it didn’t seem possible for me to aim so ’igh I’d myde up my mind to be a valet and a butler. It comes—your hambition does. What you’ve first got to do is to form it; and then you’ve got to stick to it through thick and thin.”
To say what she said next Letty had to break down barrier beyond barrier of inhibition and timidity. “And if I was to—to form the—the ambition—to be—to be the kind of wall you was talkin’ about just now––”
“That wouldn’t be hambition; it’d be—consecrytion.”
He allowed her time to get the meaning of this before going on.
“But madam mustn’t expect not to find it ’ard. Consecrytion is always ’ard, by what I can myke out. When Mr. Rash was a little ’un ’e used to get Miss Pye, ’is governess, to read to ’im a fairy tyle about a little mermaid what fell in love with a prince on land. Bein’ in love with ’im she wanted to be with ’im, natural like; but there she was in one element, as you might sye, and ’im in another.”
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“That’d be like me.”
“Which is why I’m tellin’ madam of the story. Well, off the little mermaid goes to the sea-witch to find out ’ow she could get rid of ’er fish’s tyle and ’ave two feet for to walk about in the prince’s palace. Well, the sea-witch she up and tells ’er what she’d ’ave to do. Only, says she, if you do that you’ll ’ave to pye for it with every step you tykes; for every step you tykes’ll be like walkin’ on sharp blydes. Now, says she, to the little mermaid, do you think it’d be worth while?”
In Letty’s eyes all the stars glittered with her eagerness for the dénouement. “And did she think it was worth while—the little mermaid?”
“She did; but I’ll give madam the tyle to read for ’erself. It’s in the syme little book what Miss Pye used to read out of—up in Mr. Rash’s old nursery.”
With the pride of a royal thing conscious of its royalty the car rolled to the door and stopped. It was the prince’s car, while she, Letty, was a mermaid born in an element different from his, and encumbered with a fish’s tail. She must have shown this in her face, for Steptoe said, with his fatherly smile:
“Madam may ’ave to walk on blydes—but it’ll be in the Prince’s palace.”
It’ll be in the Prince’s palace! Letty repeated this to herself as she followed him out to the car. Holding the door open for her, Eugene, who had been told of her romance, touched his cap respectfully. When she had taken her seat he tucked the robe round her, respectfully again. Steptoe marked the social difference between them by sitting beside Eugene.
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Rolling down Fifth Avenue Letty was as much at a loss to account for herself as Elijah must have been in the chariot of fire. She didn’t know where she was going. She was not even able to ask. The succession of wonders within twenty-four hours blocked the working of her faculties. She thought of the girls who sneered at her in the studios—she thought of Judson Flack—and of what they would say if they were to catch a glimpse of her.
She was not so unsophisticated as to be without some appreciation of the quarter of New York in which she found herself. She knew it was the “swell” quarter. She knew that the world’s symbols of money and display were concentrated here, and that in some queer way she, poor waif, had been given a command of them. One day homeless, friendless, and penniless, and the next driving down Fifth Avenue in a limousine which might be called her own!
The motor was slowing down. It was drawing to the curb. They had reached the place to which Steptoe had directed Eugene. Letty didn’t have to look at the name-plate to know she was where the great stars got their gowns, and that she was being invited into Margot’s!
You know Margot’s, of course. A great international house, Margot—the secret is an open one—is but the incognita of a business-like English countess who finds it financially profitable to sign articles on costume written by someone else, and be sponsor for the newest fashions which someone else designs. As a way of turning an impoverished historic title to account it is as good as any other.
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Without knowing who Margot was Letty knew what she was. She couldn’t have frequented studios without hearing that much, and once or twice in her wanderings about the city she had paused to admire the door. It was all there was to admire, since Margot, to Letty’s regret, didn’t display confections behind plate-glass.
It was a Flemish château which had been a residence before business had traveled above Forty-second Street. A man in livery would have barred them from passing the wrought-iron grille had it not been for the car from which they had emerged. Only people worthy of being customers of the house could afford such cars, and he saw that Steptoe was a servant. What Letty was he couldn’t see, for servants of great houses never looked so nondescript.
In the great hall a beautiful staircase swept to an upper floor, but apart from a Louis Seize mirror and console flanked by two Louis Seize chairs there was nothing and no one to be seen. Steptoe turned to the right into a vast saloon with a cinnamon-colored carpet and walls of cool French gray. A group of gilded chairs were the only furnishings, except for a gilded canapé between two French windows draped with cinnamon-colored hangings. A French fender with French andirons filled the fireplace, and on the white marble mantelpiece stood agarniture de cheminée, a clock and two vases, in biscuit de Sèvres.
At the end of the room opposite the windows a woman in black, with coiffure à la Marcel, sat at a white-enamelled desk working with a ledger. A second woman in black, also with coiffure à la Marcel,116stood holding open the doors of a white-enamelled wardrobe, gazing at its multi-colored contents. Two other women in black, still with coiffure à la Marcel, were bending over a white-enamelled drawer in a series of white-enamelled drawers, discussing in low tones. There were no customers. For such a house the season had not yet begun. Though in this saloon voices were pitched as low as for conversation in a church, the sharp catgut calls of Frenchwomen—and of French dressmakers especially—came from a room beyond.
Overawed by this vastness, simplicity, and solemnity, Steptoe and Letty stood barely within the door, waiting till someone noticed them. No one did so till the woman holding open the wardrobe doors closed them and turned round. She did not come forward at once; she only stared at them. Still keeping her eye on the newcomers she called the attention of the ladies occupied with the drawer, who lifted themselves up. They too stared. The lady at the desk stared also.
It was the lady of the wardrobe who advanced at last, slowly, with dignity, her hands genteelly clasped in front of her. She seemed to be saying, “No, we don’t want any,” or, “I’m sorry we’ve nothing to give you,” by her very walk. Letty, with her gift for dramatic interpretation, could see this, though Steptoe, familiar as he was with ladies whom he would have classed as “’igher,” was not daunted. He too went forward, meeting madam half way.
Of what was said between them Letty could hear nothing, but the expression on the lady’s face was117dissuasive. She was telling Steptoe that he had come to the wrong place, while Steptoe was saying no. From time to time the lady would send a glance toward Letty, not in disdain, but in perplexity. It was perplexity which reached its climax when Steptoe drew from an inside pocket an impressive roll of bills.
The lady looked at the bills, but she also looked at Letty. The honor of a house like Margot’s is not merely in making money; it is in its clientèle. To have a poor little waif step in from the street....
And yet it was because she was a poor little waif that she interested the ladies looking on. She was so striking an exception to their rule that her very coming in amazed them. One of the two who had remained near the open drawer came forward into conference with her colleague, adding her dissuasions to those which Steptoe had already refused to listen to.
“There are plenty of other places to which you could go,” Letty heard this second lady say, “and probably do better.”
Steptoe smiled, that old man’s smile which was rarely ineffective. “Madam don’t ’ave to tell me as there’s plenty of other plyces to which I could go; but there’s none where I could do as well.”
“What makes you think so?”
“I’m butler to a ’igh gentleman what ’e used to entertyne quite a bit when ’is mother was alive. I’ve listened to lydies talkin’ at tyble. No one can’t tell me. Iknow.”
Both madams smiled. Each shot another glance at Letty. It was plain that they were curious as to her identity. One of them made a venture.
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“And is this your—your daughter?”
Steptoe explained, not without dignity, that the young lady was not his daughter, but that she had come into quite a good bit of money, and had done it sudden like. She needed a ’igh, grand outfit, though for the present she would be content with three or four of the dresses most commonly worn by a lydy of stytion. He preferred to nyme no nymes, but he was sure that even Margot would not regret her confidence—and he had the cash, as they saw, in his pocket.
Of this the result was an exchange between the madams of comprehending looks, while, in French, one said to the other that it might be well to consult Madame Simone.
Madame Simone, who bustled in from the back room, was not in black, but in frowzy gray; her coiffure was not à la Marcel, but as Letty described it, “all anyway.” A short, stout, practical Frenchwoman, she had progressed beyond the need to consider looks, and no longer considered them. The two shapely subordinates with whom Steptoe had been negotiating followed her at a distance like attendants.
She disposed of the whole matter quickly, addressing the attendants rather than the postulants for Margot’s favor.
“Mademoiselle she want an outfit—good!—bon! We don’t know her, but what difference does that make to me?—qu’est ce que c’est que cela me fait? Money is money, isn’t it?—de l’argent c’est de l’argent, n’est-ce pas?—at this time of year especially—à cette saison de l’année surtout.”