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To Steptoe and Letty she said: “’Ave the goodness to sit yourselves ’ere. Me, I will show you what we ’ave. A street costume first for mademoiselle. If mademoiselle will allow me to look at her—Ah, oui! Ze taille—what you call in Eenglish the figure—is excellent. Très chic. With ze proper closes mademoiselle would have style—de l’élégance naturelle—that sees itself—cela se voit—oui—oui––”
Meditating to herself she studied Letty, indifferent apparently to the actual costume and atrocious hat, like a seeress not viewing what is at her feet but events of far away.
With a sudden start she sprang to her convictions. “I ’ave it. J’y suis.” A shrill piercing cry like that of a wounded cockatoo went down the long room. “Alphonsine! Alphonsine!”
Someone appeared at the door of the communicating rooms. Madame Simone gave her orders in a few sharp staccato French sentences. After that Letty and Steptoe found themselves sitting on two of the gilded chairs, unexpectedly alone. The other ladies had returned to their tasks. Madame Simone had gone back to the place whence they had summoned her. Nothing had happened. It seemed to be all over. They waited.
“Ain’t she goin’ to show us nothin’?” Letty whispered anxiously. “They always do.”
Steptoe was puzzled but recommended patience. He couldn’t think that Madame could have begun so kindly, only to go off and leave them in the lurch. It was not what he had looked for, any more than she; but he had always found patient waiting advantageous.
120
Perhaps ten minutes had gone by when a new figure wandered toward them. Strutted would perhaps be the better word, since she stepped like a person for whom stepping means a calculation. She was about Letty’s height, and about Letty’s figure. Moreover, she was pretty, with that haughtiness of mien which turns prettiness to beauty. What was most disconcerting was her coming straight toward Letty, and standing in front of her to stare.
Letty colored to the eyes—her deep, damask flush. The insult was worse than anything offered by Mrs. Courage; for Mrs. Courage after all was only a servant, and this a young lady of distinction. Letty had never seen anyone dressed with so much taste, not even the stars as they came on the studio lot in their everyday costumes. Indignant as she was she could appreciate this delicate seal-brown cloth, with its bits of gold braid, and darling glimpses of sage-green wherever the lining showed indiscreetly. The hat was a darling too, brown with a feather between brown and green, the one color or the other according as the wearer moved.
If it hadn’t been for this cool insolence.... And then the young lady deliberately swung on her heel, which was high, to move some five or six yards away, where she stood with her back to them. It was a darling back—with just enough gold braid to relieve the simplicity, and the tiniest revelation of sage-green. Letty admired it the more poignantly for its cold contempt of herself.
Steptoe was not often put out of countenance, but it seemed to have happened now. “Ican’tthink,” he121murmured, as one who contemplates the impossible, “that the French madam can ’ave been so civil to begin with, just to go and make a guy of us.”
“If all her customers is like this––” Letty began.
But the young lady of distinction turned again, stepping a few paces toward the back of the room, swinging on herself, stepping a few paces toward the front of the room, swinging on herself again, and all the while flinging at Letty glances which said: “If you want to see scorn, this is it.”
Fascination kept Letty paralyzed. Steptoe grew uneasy.
“I wish the French madam’d come back agyne,” he murmured, from half closed lips. “We ’aven’t come ’ere to be myde a spectacle of—not for no one.”
And just then the seal-brown figure strolled away, as serenely and impudently as she had come.
“Well, of all––!”
Letty’s exclamation was stifled by the fact that as the first young lady of distinction passed out a second crossed her coming in. They took no notice of each other, though the newcomer walked straight up to Letty, not to stare but to toss up her chin with a hint of laughter suppressed. Laughter, suppressed or unsuppressed, was her note. She was all fair-haired, blue-eyed vivacity. It was a relief to Letty that she didn’t stare. She twitched, she twisted, she pirouetted, striking dull gleams from an embroidery studded with turquoise and jade—but she hadn’t the hard unconscious arrogance of the other one.
All the same it pained Letty that great ladies should be so beautiful. Not that this one was beautiful of122face—she wasn’t—only piquant—but the general effect was beautiful. It showed what money and the dressmaker could do. If she, Letty could have had a dress and a hat like this!—a blue or a green, it was difficult to say which—with these strips of jade and turquoise on a ground of the purplish-greenish-blue she remembered as that of the monkshood in the old farm garden in Canada—and the darlingest hat, with one long feather beginning as green and graduating through every impossible shade of green and blue till it ended in a monkshood tip....
No wonder the girl’s blue eyes danced and quizzed and laughed. As a matter of fact, Letty commented, the eyes brought a little too much blue into the composition. It was her only criticism. As a whole it lacked contrast. If she herself had worn this costume—with her gold-stone eyes—and brown hair—and rich coloring, when she had any color—blue was always a favorite shade with her—when she could choose, which wasn’t often—she remembered as a child on the farm how she used to plaster herself with the flowers of the blue succory—the dust-flower they called it down there because it seemed to thrive like the disinherited on the dust of the wayside—not but what the seal-brown was adorable....
The spectacle grew dazzling, difficult for Steptoe to keep up with. He and Letty were plainly objects of interest to these grand folk, because there were now four or five of them. They advanced, receded, came up and studied them, wheeled away, smiled sometimes at each other with the high self-assurance of beauty and position, pranced, pawed, curveted, were123noble or coquettish as the inner self impelled, but always the embodiment of overweening pride. Among the “real gentry,” as he called them, there had unfailingly been for him and his colleagues a courtesy which might have been called only a distinction in equality, whereas these high-steppers....
It was a relief to see the French madam bustling in again from the room at the back. Steptoe rose. He meant to express himself. Letty hoped he would. For people who brought money in their hands this treatment was too much. When Steptoe advanced to meet madam, she went with him. As her champion she must bear him out.
But madam forestalled them. “I ’ope that mademoiselle has seen something what she like. Me, I thought the brown costume—cœur de le marguerite jaunewe call it ziz season––”
Letty was quick. She had heard of mannequins, the living models, though so remotely as to give her no visualized impression. Suddenly knowing what they had been looking at she adapted herself before Steptoe could get his protest into words.
“I liked the seal-brown; but for me I thought the second one––”
Madame Simone nodded, sagely. “Why shouldn’t mademoiselle ’ave both?”
124Chapter XI
While this question was being put, and Steptoe was rising to what he saw as the real occasion, Rashleigh Allerton too was having a new experience. He couldn’t understand it; he couldn’t understand himself. Not that that was strange, since he had hardly ever understood himself at any time; but now he was, as he expressed it, “absolutely stumped.”
He had put on the table the bottle on which the kilted Highlander was playing on the pipes; he had poured himself a glass. It was what he called a good stiff glass, meant, metaphorically, to kill or cure, and he hoped it would be to kill.
And that was all.
He had sat looking at it, or he had looked at it while walking about; but he had only looked at it. It was as far as he could go. Now that to go farther had become what he called a duty the perversity of his nerves was such that they refused. It was like him. He could always do the forbidden, the dare-devil, the crazily mad; but when it came to the reasonable and straightforward something in him balked. Here he was at what should have been the beginning of the end, and the demon which at another time would have driven him on was holding him back. Temptation had worked itself round the other way. It was temptation not to do, when saving grace lay in doing.
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An hour or more had gone by when Mr. Radbury knocked at the door, timidly.
“Come in, Radbury,” Allerton cried, in a gayety he didn’t feel. “Have a drink.”
Mr. Radbury looked at the bottle and the glass. He looked at his young employer, who with his hands in his pockets, was again standing by the window. It was the first time in all the years of his service, first with the father and then with the son, that this invitation had been given him.
“Thanks, Mr. Rash,” he said, with a thick, shaky utterance. “Liquor and I are strangers. I wish I could feel––”
But the old man’s trembling anxiety forced on Allerton the fact that the foolish game was up. “All right, Radbury. Was only joking. No harm done. Had only taken the thing out to—to look at it.”
Before sitting down to read and sign the letters he put both glass and bottle back into the keeping of Queen Caroline Murat, saying to himself as he did so: “I must find some other way.”
He was thrown back thus on Barbara’s suggestion of a few hours earlier. He must get rid of the girl! He had scarcely as yet considered this proposal, though not because he deemed it unworthy of himself. Nothing could be unworthy of himself. A man who was so little of a man as he was entitled to do anything, however base, and feel no shame. It was simply that his mind hadn’t worked round to looking at the thing as feasible. And yet it was; plainly it was. The law allowed for it, if one only took advantage of the law’s allowances. It would be beastly, of126course; and more beastly for him than the average of men; but because it was beastly it were better done at once, before the girl got used to luxurious surroundings.
But even this resolution, speedy as it was, came a little late. By evening Letty was already growing used to luxurious surroundings, and finding herself at home in them.
First, there were no longer any women in the house, and with the three men—Steptoe’s friends being already installed—she found herself safe from the prying and criticizing feminine.
Secondly, some of the new clothes had already come home, and she was now wearing the tea-gown she had long dreamt of but had never aspired to possess. It was of a blue so dark as to be almost black, with a flame colored bar across the breast, harmonizing with her hair and eyes. Of her eyes she wasn’t thinking; but her hair....
That, however, was another part of the day’s fairy tale.
When the dresses had been bought and paid for madame presumed to Steptoe that mademoiselle was under some rich gentleman’s protection. Taking words at their face value, as she, Letty, did herself, Steptoe admitted that she was. Madam made it plain that she understood this honor, which often came to girls of the humblest classes, and the need there could be for supplementing wardrobes suddenly. After that it was confidence for confidence. Madame had seen that in the matter of lingerie mademoiselle “left to desire,” and though Margot made no specialty in127this line, they happened to have on an upper floor a consignment just arrived from Paris, and if monsieur would allow mademoiselle to come up and inspect it.... Then it was Madame Simone’s coiffeur. At least it was the coiffeur whom Madame Simone recommended, who came to the house, after Letty had donned a peignoir from the consignment just arrived from Paris.... And now, at half past nine in the evening, it was the memory of a day of mingled agony and enchantment.
Having looked her over as he summoned her to dinner, Steptoe had approved of her. He had approved of her with an inner emphasis stronger than he expressed. Letty didn’t know how she knew this; but she knew. She knew that her transformation was a surprise to him. She knew that though he had hoped much from her she was giving him more than he had hoped. Nothing that he said told her this, but something in his manner—in his yearning as he passed her the various dishes and tactfully showed her how to help herself, in the tenderness with which he repeated correctly her little slips in words—something in this betrayed it.
She knew it, too, when after dinner he begged her not to escape to the little back room, but to take her place in the drawing-room.
“Madam’ll find that it’ll pass the time for ’er. Maybe too Mr. Rashleigh’ll come in. ’E does sometimes—early like. I’ve known ’im to come ’ome by ’alf past nine, and if ’is ma wasn’t sittin’ in the drorin’ room ’e’d be quite put out. Lydies mostly wytes till their ’usbands comes in; and in cyse madam’d feel128lonely I’ll leave the door open to the back part of the ’ouse, and she’ll ’ear me talkin’ to the boys.”
The October evening being chilly he lit a fire. Drawing up in front of it a small armchair, suited for a lady’s use, he placed behind it a table with an electric lamp. Letty smiled up at him. He had never seen her smile before, and now that he did he made to himself another comment of approval.
“You’re awful good to me.”
He reflected as to how he could bring home to her the grammatical mistake.
“Madam finds mehorflygood, does she? P’rhaps that’s because madam don’t know that ’er comin’ to this ’ouse gratifies a tyste o’ mine for which I ain’t never ’ad no gratificytion.”
As he put a footstool to her feet he caught the question she so easily transmitted by her eyes.
“P’raps madam can hunderstand that after doin’ things all my life for people as is used to ’em I’ve ’ad a kind o’ cryvin’ to do ’em for them as ’aven’t ’ad nothink, and who could enjoy them more. I told madam yesterday I was somethink of a anarchist, and that’s ’ow I am—wantin’ to give the poor a wee little bit of what the rich ’as to throw awye.”
Later he brought her an old red book, open at a page on which she read,The Little Mermaid.
Her heart leaped. It was from this volume that Miss Pye had read to the Prince when he was a child. She let her eyes run along the opening words.
“Far out in the sea the water is as blue as the petals of the cornflower, and clear as the purest glass.”
She liked this sentence. It took her into a blue129world. It was curious, she thought, how much meaning there was in colors. If you looked through red glass the world was angry; if through yellow, it was lit with an extraordinary sun; if through blue, you had the sensation of universal happiness. She supposed that that was why blue flowers always made you feel that there was a want in life which ought to be supplied—and wasn’t.
She remembered a woman who had a farm near them in Canada, who grew only blue flowers in her garden. The neighbors said she was crazy; but she, Letty, had liked that garden better than all the gardens she knew. She would go there and talk to that woman, and listen to what she had to say of Nature’s peculiar love of blue. The sea and sky were loveliest when they were blue, and so were the birds. There were blue stones, the woman said, precious stones, and other stones that were little more than rocks, which said something to the heart when pearls and diamonds spoke only to the eyes. In the fields, orchards, and gardens, white flowers, yellow flowers, red flowers were common; but blue flowers were rare and retiring, as if they guarded a secret which men should come and search out.
To this there was only one exception. Letty would notice as she trudged back to her father’s farm that along the August roadsides there was a blue flower—of a blue you would never see anywhere else, not even in the sky—which grew in the dust, and lived on dust, and out of the dust drew elements of beauty such as roses and lilies couldn’t boast of. “That means,” the crazy woman said, “that there’s nothing so dry, or130parched, or sterile, that God can’t take it and fashion from it the most priceless treasures of loveliness, if we only had the eyes to see them.”
Letty never forgot this, and during all the intervening years the dust flower, with its heavenly color, had been the wild growing thing she loved best. It spoke to her. It not only responded to the ache she felt within herself, but gave a promise of assuagement. She had never expected the fulfilment of that promise, but was it possible that now it was going to be kept?
With her eyes on the fire she saw the color of the dust flower close to the flaming wood. It was the closest of all the colors, the one the burning heart kept nearest to itself. It seemed to be, as the crazy woman said, dear to Nature itself, its own beloved secret, the secret which, even when written in the dust of the wayside, or in the fire on the hearth, hardly anyone read or found out.
And as she was dreaming of this and of her Prince, Rashleigh was walking up the avenue, saying to himself that he must make an end of it. He was walking home because, having dined at the Club, he found himself too restless to stay there. Walking relieved his nerves, and enabled him to think. He must have the thing over and done with. She would go decently, of course, since, as he had promised her, she would have plenty of money to go with—plenty of money for the rest of her life—and that was the sole consideration. She would doubtless be as glad to escape as he to have her disappear. After that, so his lawyer had assured him in the afternoon, the legal steps would be relatively easy.
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Letting himself in with his latchkey he was surprised to see a light in the drawing-room. It had not been lighted up at night, as far as he could remember, since the days when his mother was accustomed to sit there. If he came home early he had always used the library, which was on the other side of the house and at the back.
He went into the front drawing-room, which was empty; but a fire burnt in the back one, and before it someone was seated. It was not the girl he had found in the park. It was a lady whom he didn’t recognize, but clearly a lady. She was reading a book, and had evidently not heard his entrance or his step.
With the shadows of the front drawing-room behind him he stood between the portieres, and looked. He had looked for some seconds before the lady raised her eyes. She raised them with a start. Slowly there stole into her cheek the dark red of confusion. She dropped the book. She rose.
It wasn’t till she rose that he knew her. It wasn’t till he knew her that he was seized by an astonishment which almost made him laugh. It wasn’t till he almost laughed that he went forward with the words, which insensibly bridged some of the gulf between them:
“Oh! So this is—you!”
132Chapter XII
Letty had not heard Allerton’s entrance or approach because for the first time in her life she was lost in the magic of Hans Andersen.
“The sun had just gone down as the little mermaid lifted her head above the water. The clouds were brilliant in purple and gold, and through the pale, rose-tinged air the evening star shone clear and bright. The air was warm and mild; the sea at rest. A great ship with three masts lay close by, only one sail unfurled, for there was no breath of air, and the sailors sat aloft in the rigging or leaned lazily over the bulwarks. Music and singing filled the air, and as the sky darkened hundreds of Chinese lanterns were lighted. It seemed as if the flags of every nation were hung out. The little mermaid swam up to the cabin window, and every time she rose upon the waves she could see through the clear glass that the room was full of brilliantly dressed people. Handsomest of all was the young prince with the great dark eyes.”
Allerton’s eyes were dark, and though she did not consider him precisely young, the analogy between him and the hero of the tale was sufficient to take her eyes from the book and to set her to dreaming.
“He could not be more than sixteen years old, and this was his birthday. All this gaiety was in honor of him; the sailors danced upon the deck; and when the young prince came out a myriad of rockets flew133high in the air, with a glitter like the brightest noontide, and the little mermaid was so frightened that she dived deep down under the water. She soon rose up again, however, and it seemed as if all the stars of heaven were falling round her in golden showers. Never had she seen such fireworks; great, glittering suns wheeled by her, fiery fishes darted through the blue air, and all was reflected back from the quiet sea. The ship was lighted up so that one could see the smallest rope. How handsome the young prince looked! He shook hands with everybody, and smiled, as the music rang out into the glorious night. It grew late, but the little mermaid could not turn her eyes away from the ship and the handsome prince.”
Once more Letty’s thought wandered from the page. She too would have watched her handsome prince, no matter what the temptation to look elsewhere.
“The colored lanterns were put out, no rocket rose in the air, no cannon boomed from the portholes; but deep below there was a surging and a murmuring. The mermaid sat still, cradled by the waves, so that she could look in at the cabin window. But now the ship began to make more way. One sail after another was unfurled; the waves rose higher; clouds gathered in the sky; and there was a distant flash of lightning. The storm came nearer. All the sails were taken in, and the ship rocked giddily, as she flew over the foaming billows; the waves rose mountain-high, as if they would swallow up the very masts, but the good ship dived like a swan into the deep black trough, and rose bravely to the foaming crest. The little mermaid thought it was a merry journey, but the sailors were134of a different opinion. The ship strained and creaked; the timbers shivered as the thunder strokes of the waves fell fast; heavy seas swept the decks; the mainmast snapped like a reed; and the ship lurched heavily, while the water rushed into the hold. Then the young princess began to understand the danger, and she herself was often threatened by the falling masts, yards, and spars. One moment it was so dark that she could see nothing, but when the lightning flamed out the ship was as bright as day. She sought for the young prince, and saw him sinking down through the water as the ship parted. The sight pleased her, for she knew he must sink down to her home. But suddenly she remembered that men cannot live in the water, and that he would only reach her father’s palace a lifeless corpse. No; he must not die! She swam to and fro among the drifting spars, forgetting that they might crush her with their weight; she dived and rose again, and reached the prince just when he felt that he could swim no longer in the stormy sea. His arms were beginning to fail him, his beautiful eyes were closed; in another moment he must have sunk, had not the little mermaid come to his aid. She kept his head above water, and let the waves carry them whither they would.”
Letty didn’t want Allerton’s life to be in danger, but she would have loved saving it. She fell to pondering possible conditions in which she could perform this feat, while he ran no risk whatever.
“The next day the storm was over; not a spar of the ship was left in sight. The sun rose red and glowing upon the waves, and seemed to pour down135new life upon the prince, though his eyes remained closed. The little mermaid kissed his fair white forehead and stroked back his wet hair. He was like the marble statue in her little garden, she thought. She kissed him again, and prayed that he might live.”
Letty saw herself seated somewhere in a mead, Allerton lying unconscious with his head in her lap, though the circumstances that brought them so together remained vague.
“Suddenly the dry land came in sight before her, high blue mountains on whose peaks the snow lay white, as if a flock of swans had settled there. On the coast below were lovely green woods, and close on shore a building of some kind, the mermaid didn’t know whether it was church or cloister. Citrons and orange trees grew in the garden, and before the porch were stately palm trees. The sea ran in here and formed a quiet bay, unruffled, but very deep. The little mermaid swam with the prince to the white sandy shore, laid him on the warm sand, taking care that his head was left where the sun shone warmest. Bells began to chime and ring through all parts of the building, and several young girls entered the garden. The little mermaid swam farther out, behind a tiny cliff that rose above the waves. She showered sea-foam on her hair that no one might see its golden glory, and then waited patiently to see if anyone would come to the aid of the young prince.”
To Letty that was the heart-breaking part of the story, the leaving the beloved one to others. It was what she and the little mermaid had in common, unless she too could get rid of her fish’s tail at the cost of136walking on blades. But for the little mermaid there the necessity was, as she, Letty read on.
“Before long a young girl came by; she gave a start of terror and ran back to call for assistance. Several people came to her aid, and after a while the little mermaid saw the prince recover his consciousness, and smile upon the group around him. But he had no smile for her; he did not even know that she had saved him. Her heart sank, and when she had seen him carried into the large building, she dived sorrowfully down to her father’s palace.”
Lifting her eyes to meditate on this situation Letty saw Allerton standing between the portières. Her dream of being little mermaid to his prince went out like a pricked bubble. Though he neither smiled nor sneered she knew he was amused at her, with a bitterness in his amusement. In an instant she saw her transformation as it must appear to him. She had spent his money recklessly, and made herself look ridiculous. All the many kinds of shame she had ever known focused on her now, making her a glowing brand of humiliations. She stood helpless. Hans Andersen dropped to the floor with a soft thud. Nevertheless, it was she who spoke first.
“I suppose you—you think it funny to see me rigged up like this?”
He took time to pick up the book she had dropped and hand it back to her. “Won’t you sit down again?”
While she seated herself and he followed her example she continued to stammer on. “I—I thought I ought to—to look proper for the house as long as I was in it.”
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Her phrasing gave him an opening. “You’re quite right. I should like you to get whatever would help you in—in your profession before you—before you leave us.”
Quick to seize the implications here she took them with the submission of those whose lots have always depended on other people’s wills.
“I’ll go whenever you want me to.”
Relieved as he was by this willingness he was anxious not to seem brutal. “I’d—I’d rather you consulted your own wishes about that.”
She put on a show of nonchalance. “Oh, I don’t care. It’ll be just—just as you saywhen.”
He would have liked to say when at that instant, but a pretense at courtesy had to be maintained. “There’s no hurry—for a day or two.”
“You said a week or two yesterday.”
“Oh, did I? Well, then, we’ll say a week or two now.”
“Oh, not for me,” she hastened to assure him. “I’d just as soon go to-night.”
“Have you hated it as much as that?”
“I’ve hated some of it.”
“Ah, well! You needn’t be bothered with it long.”
Her candor was of the kind which asks questions frankly. “Haven’t you got any more use for me?”
“I’m afraid—” it was not easy to put it into the right words—“I’m afraid I was mistaken yesterday. I put you in—in a false position with no necessity for doing so.”
It took her a few seconds to get the force of this. “Do you mean that you didn’t need me to be—to be a shame and a disgrace to youat all?”
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“Did I put it in that way?”
“Well, didn’t you?”
The fact that she was now dressed as she was made it more embarrassing to him to be crude than it had been when addressing the homeless and shabby little “drab.”
“I don’t know what I said then. I was—I was upset.”
“And you’re upset very easy, ain’t you?” She corrected herself quickly: “aren’t you?”
“I suppose that’s true. What of it?”
“Oh, nothing. I—I just happen to know a way you can get over that—if you want to.”
He smiled. “I’m afraid my nervousness is too deeply seated—I may as well admit that I’m nervous—you saw it for yourself––”
“Oh, I saw you was—you were—sick up here—” she touched her forehead—“as soon as you begun to talk to me.”
Grateful for this comprehension he tried to use it to his advantage. “So that you understand how I could go off the hooks––”
“Sure! My mother’d go off ’em the least little thing, till—till she done—till she did—the way I told her.”
“Then some of these days I may ask you to—but just now perhaps we’d better talk about––”
“When I’m to get out.”
Her bluntness of expression hurt him. “That’s not the way I should have put it––”
“But it’s the way you’d ’a’ meant, isn’t it?”
He was the more disconcerted because she said this139gently, with the same longing in her face and eyes as in that of the little mermaid bending over the unconscious prince.
The unconscious prince of the moment merely said: “You mustn’t think me more brutal than I am––”
“Oh, I don’t think you’re brutal. You’re just a little dippy, ain’t—aren’t—you? But that’s because you let yourself go. If when you feel it comin’ on you’d just—but perhaps you’d ratherbedippy. Would you?”
If he could have called these wide goldstone eyes with their tiny flames maternal it is the word he would have chosen. In spite of the difficulty of the minute he was conscious of a flicker of amusement.
“I don’t know that I would, but––”
“After I’m gone shall we—shall westaymarried?”
This being the real question he was glad she faced it with the directness which gave her a kind of charm. He admitted that. She had the charm of everything which is genuine of its kind. She made no pretense. Her expression, her voice, her lack of sophistication, all had the limpidity of water. He felt himself thanking God for it. “He alone knows what kind of hands I might have fallen into yesterday, crazy fool that I am.” Of this child, crude as she was, he could make his own disposition.
So in answer to her question he told her he had seen his lawyer in the afternoon—he was a lawyer himself but he didn’t practice—and the great man had explained to him that of all the processes known to American jurisprudence the retracing of such steps as they had taken on the previous day was one of the140simplest. What the law had joined the law could put asunder, and was well disposed toward doing so. There being several courses which they could adopt, he put them before her one by one. She listened with the sort of attention which shows the mind of the listener to be fixed on the speaker, rather than on anything he says. Not being obliged to ask questions or to make answers she could again see him as the handsome, dark-eyed prince whom she would have loved to save from drowning or any other fate.
Of all he said she could attach a meaning to but one word: “desertion.” Even in the technical marital sense she knew vaguely its significance. She thought of it with a tightening about the heart. Any desertion of him of which she would be capable would be like that of the little mermaid when she dived sorrowfully down to her father’s palace, leaving him with those to whom he belonged. It was this thought which prompted a question flung in among his observations, though the link in the train of thought was barely traceable:
“Is she takin’ you back—the girl you told me about yesterday?”
He looked puzzled. “Did I tell you about a girl yesterday?”
“Why, sure! You said she kicked you out––”
“Well, she hadn’t. I—I didn’t know I’d gone so far as to say––”
“Oh, you went a lot farther than that. You said you were goin’ to the devil. Ain’t you? I mean, aren’t you?”
“I—I don’t seem able to.”
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“You’re the first fellow I’ve ever heard say that.”
“I’m the first fellow I’ve ever heard say it myself. But I tried to-day—and I couldn’t.”
“What did you do?”
“I tried to get drunk.”
She half rose, shrinking away from him. “Not—notyou!”
“Yes. Why not? I’ve been drunk before—not often, but––”
“Don’t tell me,” she cried, hastily. “I don’t want to know. It’s too––”
“But I thought it was just the sort of thing you’d be––”
“I’d be used to. So it is. But that’s the reason. You’re—you’re different. I can’t bear to think of it—not with you.”
“But I’m just like any other man.”
“Oh, no, you’re not.”
He looked at her curiously. “How am I—how am I—different?”
“Oh, other men are just men, and you’re a—a kind of prince.”
“You wouldn’t think so if you were to know me better.”
“But I’m not goin’ to know you better, and I’d rather think of you as I see you are.” She dropped this theme to say: “So the other girl––”
“She didn’t mean it at all.”
“She’d be crazy if she did. But what made her let you think so?”
“She’s—she’s simply that sort; goes off the hooks too.”
142
“Oh! So there’ll be a pair of you.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“That’ll be bloody murder, won’t it? Momma was that way with Judson Flack. Hammer and tongs—the both of them—till I took her in hand, and––”
“And what happened then?”
“She calmed down and—and died.”
“So that it didn’t do her much good, did it?”
“It did her that much good that she died. Death was better than the way she was livin’ with Judson Flack—and it wasn’t always his fault. I do’ wanta defend him, but momma got so that if he did have a quiet spell she’d go and stir him up. There’s not much hope for two married people that lives like that, do you think?”
“But you say your mother, under your instruction, got over it.”
“Yes, but it was too late. The more she got over it the more he’d lambaste her, and when her money was all gone––”
“But do you think all—all hot-tempered couples have to go it in that way?”
She made a little hunching movement of the shoulders. “It’s mostly cat and dog anyhow. You and her—the other girl—won’t be much worse than others.”
“But you think we’ll be worse, to some extent at least.”
She ignored this to say, wistfully: “I suppose you’re awful fond of her.”
“I think I can say as much as that.”
“And is she fond of you?”
143
“She says so.”
“If she is I don’t see how she could—” Her voice trailed away. Her eyes forsook his face to roam the shadows of the room. She added to herself rather than to him: “I couldn’t ha’ done it if it was me.”
“Oh, if you were in love––”
The eyes wandered back from the shadows to rest on him again. They were sorrowful eyes, and unabashed. A child’s would have had this unreproachful ache in them, or a dog’s. Though he didn’t know what it meant it disturbed him into leaving his sentence there.
It occurred to him then that they were forgetting the subject in hand. He had not expected to be able to converse with her, yet something like conversation had been taking place. It had come to him, too, that she had a mind, and now that he really looked at her he saw that the face was intelligent. Yesterday that face had been no more to him than a smudge, without character, and almost featureless, while to-day....
The train of his thought being twofold he could think along one line, and speak along another. “So if you go to see my lawyer he’ll suggest different things that you could do––”
“I’d rather do whatever ’ud make it easiest for you.”
“You’re very kind, but I think I’d better not suggest. I’ll leave that to him and you. He knows already that he’s to supply you with whatever money you need for the present; and after everything is settled I’ll see that you have––”
144
The damask flush which Steptoe had admired stole over a face flooded with alarm. She spoke as she rose, drawing a little back from him. “I do’ want any money.”
He looked up at her in protestation. “Oh, but you must take it.”
She was still drawing back, as if he was threatening her with something that would hurt. “I do’ want to.”
“But it was part of our bargain. You don’t understand that I couldn’t––”
“I didn’t make no such—” She checked herself. Her mother had rebuked her for this form of speech a thousand times. She said the sentence over as she felt he would have said it, as the people would have said it among whom she had lived as a child. The cadence of his speech, the half forgotten cadences of theirs, helped her ear and her intuitions. “I didn’t make any such bargain,” she managed to bring out, at last. “You said you’d give me money; but I never said I’d take it.”
He too rose. He began to feel troubled. Perhaps she wouldn’t be at his disposition after all. “But—but I couldn’t stand it if you didn’t let me––”
“And I couldn’t stand it if I did.”
“But that’s not reasonable. It’s part of the whole thing that I should look out for your future after what––”
“I know what you mean,” she declared, tremblingly. “You think that because I’m—I’m beneath you that I ain’t got—that I haven’t got—no sense of what a girl should do and what she shouldn’t do. But you’re145wrong. Do you suppose I didn’t know all about how crazy it was when I went with you yesterday? Of course I did. I was as much to blame as you.”
“Oh, no, you weren’t. Apart from your being what you call beneath me—and I don’t admit that you are—I’m a great deal older than you––”
“You’re only older in years. In livin’ I’m twice your age. Besides I’m all right here––” she touched her forehead again—“and I could see first thing that you was a fellow that needed to be took—to be taken—care of.”
“Oh, you did!”
She strengthened her statement with an affirmative nod. “Yes, I did.”
“Well, then, I’ve always paid the people who’ve taken care of me––”
“Oh, but you didn’t ask me to take care of you, and I didn’t take no care. You wanted me to be a disgrace to you, and I thought so little of myself that I said I’d go and be it. Now I’ve got to pay for that, not be paid for it.”
Her head was up with what Steptoe considered to be mettle. Though the picture she presented was stamped on his mind as resembling the proud mien of the girl in Whistler’s Yellow Buskin, he didn’t think of that till later.
“There’s one thing I must ask you to remember,” he said, in a tone he tried to make firm, “that I couldn’t possibly accept from you anything in the way of sacrifice.”
Her eyes were wide and earnest. “But I never thought ofmakin’anything in the way of sacrifice.”
146
“It would be sacrifice for you to help me get out of this scrape, and have nothing at all to the good.”
“But I’d have lots to the good.” She reflected. “I’d have rememberin’.”
“What have you got to remember?”
With her child’s lack of self-consciousness she looked him straight in the eyes. “You—for one thing.”
“Me!” He had hardly the words for his amazement. “For heaven’s sake, what can you have to remember about me that—that could give you any pleasure?”
“Oh, I didn’t say it would give me any pleasure. I said I’dhaveit. It’d be mine—something no one couldn’t take away from me.”
“But if it doesn’t do you any good––”
“It does me good if it makes me richer, don’t it?”
“Richer to—to rememberme?”
She nodded, with a little twisted smile, beginning to move toward the door. Over her shoulder she said: “And it isn’t only you. There’s—there’s Steptoe.”