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“You bet.”
“Is Miss Gravely in?”
“Just gone out. Only round the corner. Back in a few minutes. Say, sister, I’m her stepfather, and ’ll take the message.”
“Tell her to come right over to the Excelsior Studio. Castin’ director’s got a part for her. Real part. Small but a stunner. Outcast girl. I s’pose she’s got some old duds to dress it in?”
“Sure thing!”
“Well, tell her to bring ’em along. And say, listen! I don’t mind passing you the tip that the castin’ director has his eye on that girl for doin’ the pathetic stunt; so see she ain’t late.”
“Y’betcha.”
That an ambitious man, growing anxious about his future, was thus placed in a trying situation will be seen at once. The chance of a lifetime was there and he was unable to seize it. Everyone knew that by these small condensations of nebular promise stars were eventually evolved, and to have at his disposal the earnings of a star....
It seemed providential then that on dropping into the basement eating place at which he had begun to take his breakfasts he should fall in with Gorry Larrabin. They were not friends, or rather they were better than friends; they were enemies who found each other useful. Mutually antipathetic, they quarrelled, but could not afford to quarrel long. A few days or a few weeks having gone by, they met with a nod, as if no hot words had been passed.
It was such an occasion now. Ten days earlier177Judson had called Gorry to his teeth “no detective, but a hired sneak.” Gorry had retorted that, hired sneak as he was, he would have Judson Flack “in the jug” as a promoter of faked companies before the year was out. One word had led to another, and only the intervention of friends to both parties had kept the high-spirited fellows from exchanging blows. But the moment had come round again when each had an axe to grind, so that as Judson hung up his hat near the table at which Gorry, having finished his breakfast, was smoking and picking his teeth, the nod of reconciliation was given and returned.
“Say, why don’t you sit down here?”
Politely Gorry indicated the unoccupied side of his own table. It was a small table covered with a white oil-cloth, and tolerably clean.
“Don’t mind if I do,” was the other’s return of courtesy, friendly relations being thus re-established.
Having given his order to a stunted Hebrew maid of Polish culture, Judson Flack launched at once into the subject of Letty. He did this for a two-fold reason. First, his grievance made the expression of itself imperative, and next, Gorry being a hanger-on of that profession which lives by knowing what other people don’t might be in a position to throw light on Letty’s disappearance. If he was he gave no sign of it. As a matter of fact he was not, but he meant to be. He remembered the girl; had admired her; had pointed out to several of his friends that she had only to doll herself up in order to knock spots out of a lot of good lookers of recognized supremacy.
Odette Coucoul’s description of him as “most ver’178beautiful fella” was not without some justification. Regular, clean-cut features, long and thin, were the complement of a slight well-knit figure, of which the only criticism one could make was that it looked slippery. Slipperiness was perhaps his ruling characteristic, a softness of movement suggesting a cat, and a habit of putting out and drawing back a long, supple, snake-like hand which made you think of a pickpocket. Eyes that looked at you steadily enough impressed you as untrustworthy chiefly because of a dropping of the pupil of the left, through muscular inability.
“Awful sorry, Judson,” was his summing up of sympathy with his companion’s narrative. “Any dope I get I’ll pass along to you.”
Between gentlemen, however, there are understandings which need not be put into words, the principle of nothing for nothing being one of them. The conversation had not progressed much further before Gorry felt at liberty to say:
“Now, about this North Dakota Oil, Judson. I’d like awful well to get in on the ground floor of that. I’ve got a little something to blow in; and there’s a lot of suckers ready to snap up that stock before you print the certificates.”
Diplomacy being necessary here Judson practiced it. Gorry might indeed be seeking a way of turning an honest penny; but then again he might mean to sell out the whole show. On the one hand you couldn’t trust him, and on the other it wouldn’t do to offend him so long as there was a chance of his getting news of the girl. Judson could only temporize, pleading his lack of influence with the bunch who were getting179up the company. At the same time he would do his utmost to work Gorry in, on the tacit understanding that nothing would be done for nothing.
Allerton too had breakfasted late, at the New Netherlands Club, and was now with Miss Barbara Walbrook, who received him in the same room, and wearing the same hydrangea-colored robe, as on the previous morning. He had called her up from the Club, asking to be allowed to come once more at this unconventional hour in order to communicate good news.
“She’s willing to do anything,” he stated at once, making the announcement with the glee of evident relief. “In fact, it was by pure main force that I kept her from running away from the house this morning.”
He was dashed that she did not take these tidings with his own buoyancy. “What made you stop her?” she asked, in some wonder. “Sit down, Rash. Tell me the whole thing.”
Though she took a chair he was unable to do so. His excitement now was over the ease with which the difficulty was going to be met. He could only talk about it in a standing position, leaning on the mantelpiece, or stroking the head of the Manship terra cotta child, while she gazed up at him, nervously beating her left palm with the black and gold fringe of her girdle.
“I stopped her because—well, because it wouldn’t have done.”
“Why wouldn’t it have done? I should think that it’s just what would have done.”
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“Let her slip away penniless, and—and without friends?”
“She’d be no more penniless and without friends than she was when—when you—” she sought for the right word—“when you picked her up.”
“No, of course not; only now the—the situation is different.”
“I don’t see that it is—much. Besides, if you were to let her run away first, so that you get—whatever the law wants you to get, you could see that she wasn’t penniless and without friends afterwards. Most likely that’s what she was expecting.”
His countenance fell. “I—I don’t think so.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t think so as long as she could bamboozle you. I was simply thinking of your getting what she probably wants to give you—for a price.”
“I don’t think you do her justice, Barbe. If you’d seen her––”
“Very well; I shall see her. But seeing her won’t make any difference in my opinion.”
“She’ll not strike you as anything wonderful of course; but I know she’s as straight as they make ’em. And so long as she is––”
“Well, what then?”
“Why, then, it seems to me, we must be straight on our side.”
“We’ll be straight enough if we pay her her price.”
“There’s more to it than that.”
“Oh, there is? Then how much more?”
“I don’t know that I can explain it.” He lifted one of the Stiegel candlesticks and put it back in its place. “I simply feel that we can’t—that we can’t let all the181magnanimity be on her side. If she plays high, we’ve got to play higher.”
“I see. So she’s got you there, has she?”
“I wish you wouldn’t be disagreeable about it, Barbe.”
“My dear Rash,” she expostulated, “it isn’t being disagreeable to have common sense. It’s all the more necessary for me not to abnegate that, for the simple reason that you do.”
He hurled himself to the other end of the mantelpiece, picking up the second candlestick and putting it down with force. “It’s surely not abnegating common sense just to—to recognize honesty.”
“Please don’t fiddle with those candlesticks. They’re the rarest American workmanship, and if you were to break one of them Aunt Marion would kill me. I’ll feel safer about you if you sit down.”
“All right. I’ll sit down.” He drew to him a small frail chair, sitting astride on it. “Only please don’t fidget me.”
“Would you mind takingthatchair?” She pointed to something solid and masculine by Phyffe. “That little thing is one of Aunt Marion’s pet pieces of old Dutch colonial. If anything were to happen to it—But you were talking about recognizing honesty,” she continued, as he moved obediently. “That’s exactly what I should like you to do, Rash, dear—with your eyes open. If I’m not looking anyone can pull the wool over them, whether it’s this girl or someone else.”
“In other words I’m a fool, as you were good enough to say––”
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“Oh, do forget that. I couldn’t help saying it, as I think you ought to admit; but don’t keep bringing it up every time I do my best to meet you pleasantly. I’m not going to quarrel with you any more, Rash. I’ve made a vow to that effect and I’m going to keep it. But if I’m to keep it on my side you mustn’t badger me on yours. It doesn’t do me any good, and it does yourself a lot of harm.” Having delivered this homily she took a tone of brisk cheerfulness. “Now, you said over the phone that you were coming to tell me good news.”
“Well, that was it.”
“What was it?”
“That she was ready to do anything—even to disappear.”
“And you wouldn’t let her.”
“That I couldn’t let her—with nothing to show for it.”
“But she will have something to show for it—in the end. She knows that as well as I do. Do you suppose for a minute that she doesn’t understand the kind of man she’s dealing with?”
“You mean that––?”
“Rash, dear, no girl who knows as much as this girl knows could help seeing at a glance that she’s got a pigeon to pluck, as the French say, and of course she means to pluck it. You can’t blame her for that, being what she is; but for heaven’s sake let her pluck it in her own way. Don’t be a simpleton. Angels shouldn’t rush in where fools would fear to tread—and youarean angel, Rash, though I suppose I’m the only one in the world who sees it.”
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“Thank you, Barbe. I know you feel kindly toward me, and that, as you say, you’re the only one in the world who does. That’s all right, I acknowledge it, and I’m grateful. What I don’t like is to see you taking it for granted that this girl is merely playing a game––”
“Rash, do you remember those two winters I worked in the Bleary Street Settlement? and do you remember that the third winter I said that I’d rather enlist in the Navy that go back to it again? You all thought that I was cynical and hard-hearted, but I’ll tell you now what the trouble was. I went down there thinking I could teach those girls—that I could do them good—and raise them up—and have them call me blessed—and all that. Well, there wasn’t one of them who hadn’t forgotten more than I ever knew—who wasn’t working me when I supposed she was hanging on my wisdom—who wasn’t laughing at me behind my back when I was under the delusion that she was following my good example. And if you’ve got one of them on your hands she’ll fool the eyes out of your head.”
“You think so,” he said, drily. “Then I don’t.”
“In that case there’s no use discussing it any further.”
“There may be after you’ve seen her.”
“How can I see her?”
“You can go to the house.”
“And tell her I know everything?”
“If you like. You could say I told you in confidence—that you’re an old friend of mine.”
“And nothing else?”
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“Since you only want to size her up I should think that would be enough.”
She nodded, slowly. “Yes, I think you’re right. Better not give anything away we can keep to ourselves. Now tell me what happened this morning. You haven’t done it yet.”
He told her everything—how he had been waked by hearing someone fumbling with the lock of the door, whether inside or outside the house he couldn’t tell—how he had gone to the head of the stairs and switched on the lower hall light—how she had flung herself against the door as a little gray bird might dash itself against its cage in its passion to escape.
“She staged it well, didn’t she? She must have brains.”
“She has brains all right, but I don’t think––”
“She knew of course that if she made enough noise someone would come, and she’d get the credit for good intentions.”
“I really don’t think, Barbe.... Now let me tell you. You’llseewhat she’s like. I felt very much as you do. I was right on the jump. Got all worked up. Would have gone clean off the hooks if––”
There followed the narrative of his loss of temper, of his wild talk, of her clever strategy in counting ten—“just like a cold douche it was”—and the faint turn he so often had after spells of emotion. To convince Miss Walbrook of the queer little thing’s ingenuousness he told how she had made him lie down on the library couch, covered him up, rubbed his brow with Florida water, and induced the best sleep he had had in months.
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She surprised him by springing to her feet, her arms outspread. “You great big idiot! Really there’s no other name for you!”
He gazed up at her in amazement. “What’s the matter now?”
Flinging her hands about she made inarticulate sounds of exasperation beyond words.
“There, there; that’ll do,” she threw off, when he jumped to her side, to calm her by taking her in his arms. “I’mnot off the hooks.Idon’t want anyone to rub Florida water on my brow—and hold my hand—and cradle me to sleep––”
“She didn’t,” he exclaimed, with indignation. “She never touched my hand. She just––”
“Oh, I know what she did—and of course I’m grateful. I’m delighted that she was there to do it—delighted.I quite see now why you couldn’t let her go, when you knew your fit was coming on. I’ve seen you pretty bad, but I’ve never seen you as bad as that; and I must say I never should have thought of counting ten as a cure for it.”
“Well,shedid.”
“Quite so! And if I were you I’d never go anywhere without her. I’d keep her on hand in case I took a turn––”
He was looking more and more reproachful. “I must say, Barbe, I don’t think you’re very reasonable.”
She pushed him from her with both hands against his shoulders. “Go away, for heaven’s sake! You’ll drive me crazy. I’mnotgoing to lose my temper with you. I’ll never do it again. I’ve got you to bear with, and I’m going to bear with you. But go! No, go186now! Don’t stop to make explanations. You can do that later. I’ll lay in a supply of Florida water and an afghan....”
He went with that look on his face which a well meaning dog will wear when his good intentions are being misinterpreted. On his way to the office he kept saying to himself: “WellIdon’t know what to do. Whatever I say she takes me up the wrong way. All I wanted was for her to understand that the little thing is agoodlittle thing....”
187Chapter XVI
While Allerton was making these reflections Steptoe was summoned to the telephone.
“Is this you, Steptoe? I’m Miss Barbara Walbrook.”
Steptoe braced himself. In conversing with Miss Barbara Walbrook he always felt the need of inner strengthening. “Yes, Miss Walbrook?”
“Mr. Allerton tells me you’ve a young woman at the house.”
“We ’ave a young lydy. Certainly, miss.”
“And Mr. Allerton has asked me to call on her.”
Steptoe’s training as a servant permitted him no lapses of surprise. “Quite so, miss. And when was it you’d be likely to call?”
“This afternoon about four-thirty. Perhaps you could arrange to have me see her alone.”
“Oh, there ain’t likely to be no one ’ere, miss.”
“And another thing, Steptoe. Mr. Allerton has asked me just to call as an old friend of his. So you’ll please not say to her that—well, anything about me. I’m sure you understand.”
Steptoe replied that he did understand, and having put up the receiver he pondered.
What could it mean? What could be back of it? How would this unsophisticated girl meet so skilful an antagonist. That Miss Walbrook was coming as an antagonist he had no doubt. In his own occasional188meetings with her she had always been a superior, a commander, to whom even he, ’Enery Steptoe, had been a servitor requiring no further consideration. With so gentle an opponent as madam she would order and be obeyed.
At the same time he could not alarm madam, or allow her to shirk the encounter. She had that in her, he was sure, which couldn’t but win out, however much she might be at a disadvantage. His part would be to reduce her disadvantages to a minimum, allowing her strong points to tell. Her strong points, he reckoned, were innocence, an absence of self-consciousness, and, to the worldly-wise, a disconcerting candor. Steptoe analyzed in the spirit and not verbally; but he analyzed.
For Letty the morning had been feverish, chiefly because of her uncertainty. Was it the wish of the prince that she should go, or was it not? If it was his wish, why had he not let her? If, on the other hand, he desired her to stay, what did he mean to do with her? He had passed her on the way out to breakfast at the Club—she had been standing in the hall—and he had smiled.
What was the significance of that smile? She sat down in the library to think. She sat down in the chair she had occupied while he lay on the couch, and reconstructed that scene which now, for all her life, would thrill her with emotional memories. There he had lain, his head on the very indentation which the cushion still bore, his feet here, where she had pressed her lips to them. She had actually had her hand on his brow, she had smoothed back his hair,189and had hardly noted at the time that such was her extraordinary privilege.
She came back to the fact that he had smiled at her. It would have been an enchanting smile from anyone, but coming from a prince it had all the romantic effulgence with which princes’ smiles are infused. How much of that romantic effulgence came automatically from the prince because he was a prince, and how much of it was inspired by herself? Was any of it inspired by herself? When all was said and done this last was the great question.
It brought her where so many things brought her, to the dream of love at first sight. Could it have happened to him as it had happened to herself? It was so much in her mental order of things that she was far from considering it impossible. Improbable, yes; she would admit as much as that; but impossible, no! To be sure she had been in the old gray rag; but Steptoe had informed her that there were kings who went about falling in love with beggar-maids. She would have loved being one of those beggar-maids; and after all, was she not?
True, there was the other girl; but Letty found it hard to see her as a reality. Besides, she had, in appearance at least, treated him badly. Might it not easily have come about that she, Letty, had caught his heart in the rebound? She quite understood that if the princehadfallen in love with her at first sight, there might be convulsion in his inner self without, as yet, a comprehension on his part of the nature of his passion.
She had reached this point when Steptoe entered the190library on one of his endless tasks of re-arranging that which seemed to be in sufficiently good order. Putting the big desk to rights he said over his shoulder:
“Perhaps I’d better tell madam as she’s to ’ave a caller this afternoon.”
Letty sprang up in alarm. “A—what?”
“A lydy what’ll myke a call. Oh, madam don’t need to be afryde. She’s an old friend o’ Mr. Rash’s, and’ll want, no doubt, to be a friend o’ madam too.”
“But what does she know about me?”
“Mr. Rash must ’a told ’er. She spoke to me just now on the telephone, and seemed to know everything. She said she’d be ’ere this afternoon about four-thirty, if madam’d be so good as to give ’er a cup o’ tea.”
“Me?”
Having invented the cup of tea for his own purpose Steptoe went on to explain further. “It’s what the ’igh lydies mostly gives each other about ’alf past four or five o’clock, and madam couldn’t homit it without seemin’ as if she didn’t know what’s what. It’ll be very important for madam to tyke ’er position from the start. If the lydy is comin’ friendly like she’d be ’urt if madam wasn’t friendly too.”
Letty had seen the giving and taking of tea in more than one scene in the movies, and had also, from a discreet corner, witnessed the enacting of it right in the “set” on the studio lot. She remembered one time in particular when Luciline Lynch, the star inOur Crimson Sins, had driven Frank Redgar, the director, almost out of his senses by her inability to get the right turn of the wrist. Letty, too, had been almost191out of her senses with the longing to be in Luciline Lynch’s place, to do the thing in what was obviously the way. But now that she was confronted with the opportunity in real life she saw the situation otherwise.
“And I won’t be able to talk right,” was the difficulty she raised next.
“That’ll be a chance for madam to listen and ketch on. She’s horfly quick, madam is, and by listenin’ to Miss Walbrook, that’s the lydy’s nyme, and listenin’ to ’erself—” He broke off to emphasize this line of suggestion—“it’s listenin’ to ’erself that’ll ’elp madam most. It’s a thing as ’ardly no one does. If they did they’d be ’orrified at their squawky voices and bad pernounciation. If I didn’t listen to myself, why, I’d talk as bad as anyone, but—Well, as I sye, this’ll give madam a chance. All the time what Miss Walbrook is speakin’ madam can be listenin’ to ’er and listenin’ to ’erself too, and if she mykes mistykes this time she’ll myke fewer the next.”
Letty was pondering these hints as he continued.
“Now if madam wouldn’t think me steppin’ out of my plyce I’d suggest that me and ’er ’as a little tea of our own like—right now—in the drorin’ room—and I’ll be Miss Walbrook—and William’ll be William—and madam’ll be madam—and we’ll get it letter-perfect before ’and, just as with Mary Ann Courage and Jyne.”
No sooner said than done. Letty was already wearing the white filmy thing with the copper-sash, buried with solemn rites on the previous night, but disinterred that morning, which did very well as a tea-gown. Steptoe placed her in the corner of the sofa192which the lyte Mrs. Allerton had generally occupied when “receivin’ company”, and William brought in the tea-equipage on a gorgeous silver tray.
Before he did this it had been necessary to school William to his part, which, to do him justice, he carried out with becoming gravity. Any reserves he might have felt were expressed to Golightly by a wink behind Steptoe’s back before he left the kitchen. The wink was the more expressive owing to the fact that Golightly and William had already summed up the old fellow as “balmy on the bean,” while their part was to humor him. Plain as a bursting shell seemed to William Miss Gravely’s position in the household, and Steptoe’s chivalry toward her an eccentricity which a sense of humor could enjoy. Otherwise they justified his reading of the fundamental non-morality of men, in bringing no condemnation to bear on anyone concerned. Being themselves two almost incapacitated heroes, with jobs likely to prove “soft,” it was wise, they felt, to enter into Steptoe’s comedy. At half past ten in the morning, therefore, Golightly prepared tea and buttered toast, while William arranged the tea-tray with those over-magnificent appointments which had been “the lyte Mrs. Allerton’s tyste.”
From her corner of the sofa Letty heard the butler announce, in a voice stately but not stentorian: “Miss Barbara Walbrook.”
He was so near the door that to step out and step in again was the work of a second. In stepping in again he trod daintily, wriggling the back part of his person, better to simulate the feminine. In order that Letty should nowhere be caught unaware he put193out his hand languidly, back upward, as princesses do when they expect it to be kissed.
“So delighted to find you at ’ome, Mrs. Allerton. It’s such a very fine dye I was sure as you’d be out.”
Rising from her corner Letty shook the relaxed hand as she might have shaken a dog’s tail. “Very pleased to meet you.”
From the histrionic Steptoe lapsed at once into the critical. “I think if madam was to sye, ‘So glad to beat’ome, Miss Walbrook; do let me ring for tea,’ it’d be more like the lyte Mrs. Allerton.”
Obediently Letty repeated this formula, had the bell pointed out to her, and rang. The ladies having seated themselves, Miss Walbrook continued to improvise on the subject of the weather.
“Some o’ these October dyes’ll be just like summer time! and then agyne there’ll be a nip in the wind as’ll fairly freeze you. A good time o’ year to get out your furs, and I’m sure I ’ope as ’ow the moths ’aven’t gone and got at ’em. Horfly nasty things them moths. They sye as everything in the world ’as a use; but I’m sure I don’t see what use there is for moths, eatin’ ’oles in the seats of gentlemen’s trousers, no matter what you do to keep the coat-closet aired—and everything like that. What do you sye, Mrs. Allerton?”
Letty was relieved of the necessity of answering by the entrance of William with the tray, after which her task became easier. Used to making “a good cup of tea” in an ordinary way, the doing it with this formal ceremoniousness was only a matter of revision. As if it was yesterday she recalled the instructions194given to Luciline Lynch, “Lemon?—cream?—one lump?—two lumps?” so that Miss Walbrook was startled by her readiness. She, Miss Walbrook, was betrayed, in fact, into some confusion of personality, stating that she would have cream and no sugar, and that furthermore Englishmen like herself ’ardly ever took lemon in their tea, and in her opinion no one ever did to whom the tea-drinking ’abit was ’abitual.
“It’s a question of tyste,” Miss Walbrook continued, sipping with a soft siffling noise in the way he considered to be ladylike. “Them that ’as drunk tea with their mother’s milk, as you might sye, ’ll tyke cream and sugar, one or both; but them that ’as picked up the ’abit in lyter life ’ll often condescend to lemon.”
What the rehearsal did for Letty was to make the mechanical task familiar, while she concentrated her attention on Miss Walbrook.
It has to be admitted that to Barbara Walbrook Letty was a shock. Having worked for two years in the Bleary Street Settlement she had her preconceived ideas of what she was to find, and she found something so different that her first consciousness was that of being “sold.”
Steptoe had received her at the door, and having ushered her into the drawing-room announced, “Miss Barbara Walbrook,” as if she had been calling on a duchess. From the semi-obscurity of the back drawing-room a small lithe figure came forward a step or two. The small lithe figure was wearing a tea-gown of which so practiced an eye as Miss Walbrook’s could not but estimate the provenance and value, while a sweet voice said:
195
“I’m so glad to be at home, Miss Walbrook. Do let me ring for tea.”
Before a protest could be voiced the bell had been rung, so that Miss Walbrook found herself sitting in the chair Steptoe had used in the morning, and listening to her hostess as you listen to people in a dream.
“Beautiful weather for October, isn’t it? Some of these October days’ll be just like summer time. And then again there’ll be a nip in the wind that’ll fairly freeze you. A good time of year to get out your furs, isn’t it? and I’m sure I hope the moths ain’t—haven’t—got at them. Awfully nasty things moths––”
Letty’s further efforts were interrupted by William bearing the tray as he had borne it in the morning, and in the minutes of silence while he placed it Miss Walbrook could go through the mental process known as pulling oneself together.
But she couldn’t pull herself together without a sense of outrage. She had expected to feel shame, vicariously for Rash; she had not expected to be asked to take part in a horrible bit of play-acting. This dressing-up; this mock hospitality; this desecration of the things which “dear Mrs. Allerton” had used; this mingling of ignorance and pretentiousness, inspired a rage prompting her to fling the back of her hand at the ridiculous creature’s face. She couldn’t do that, of course. She couldn’t even express herself as she felt. She had come on a mission, and she must carry out that mission; and to carry out the mission she must be as suave as her indignation would allow of.Shewas morally the mistress of this house. Rash and all196Rash owned belonged toher. To see this strumpet sitting in her place....
It did nothing to calm her that while she was pressing Rash’s ring into her flesh, beneath her glove, this vile thing was wearing a plain gold band, just as if she was married. She could understand that if they had absurdly walked through an absurd ceremony the absurd minister who performed it might have insisted on this absurd symbol; but it should have been snatched from the creature’s hand the minute the business was ended. They owed that toher.Herswas the only claim Rash had to consider, and to allow this farce to be enacted beneath his roof....
But she remembered that Letty didn’t know who she was, or why she had come, or the degree to which she, Barbara Walbrook, saw through this foolery.
Letty repeated her little formula: “Lemon?—cream?—one lump?—two lumps?” though before she reached the end of it her voice began to fail. Catching the hostility in the other woman’s bearing, she felt it the more acutely because in style, dress, and carriage this was the model she would have chosen for herself.
Miss Walbrook waved hospitality aside. “Thank you, no; nothing in the way of tea.” She nodded over her shoulder towards William’s retreating form. “Who’s that man?”
Her tone was that of a person with the right to inquire. Letty didn’t question that right, knowing the extent to which she herself was an usurper. “His name is William.”
“How did he come here?”
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“I—I don’t know.”
“Where are Nettie and Jane?”
“They’ve—they’ve left.”
“Left? Why?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“And has Mrs. Courage left too?”
Letty nodded, the damask flush flooding her cheeks darkly.
“When? Since—since you came?”
Letty nodded again. She knew now that this was the bar of social judgment of which she had been afraid.
The social judge continued. “That must be very hard on Mr. Allerton.”
Letty bowed her head. “I suppose it is.”
“He’s not used to new people about him, and it’s not good for him. I don’t know whether you’ve seen enough of him to know that he’s something of an invalid.”
“I know—” she touched her forehead—“that he’s sick up here.”
“Oh, do you? Then I shouldn’t have thought that you’d have—” but she dropped this line to take up another. “Yes, he’s always been so. When he was a boy they were afraid he might be epileptic; and though he never was as bad as that he’s always needed to be taken care of. He can do very wild and foolish things as—as you’ve discovered for yourself.”
Letty felt herself now a little shameful lump of misery. This woman was so experienced, so right. She spoke with a decision and an authority which made love at first sight a fancy to blush at. Letty198could say nothing because there was nothing to say, and meanwhile the determined voice went on.
“It’s terrible for a man like him to make such a mistake, because being what he is he can’t grapple with it as a stronger or a coarser man would do.”
But here Letty saw something that might be faintly pleaded in her own defence. “He says he wouldn’t ha’ made the mistake if that—that other girl hadn’t been crazy.”
Barbara drew herself up. “Did he—did he say that?”
“He said something like it. He said she went off the hooks, just like he did himself.” She raised her eyes. “Do you know her, Miss Walbrook?”
“Yes, I know her.”
“She must be an awful fool.”
Barbara prayed for patience. “What—what makes you say so?”
“Oh, just whathe’ssaid.”
“And what has he said? Has he talked about her toyou?”
“He hasn’t talked about her. He’s just—just let things out.”
“What sort of things?”
“Only that sort.” She added, as if to herself: “I don’t believe he thinks much of her.”
Barbara’s self-control was miraculous. “I’ve understood that he was very much in love with her.”
“Well, perhaps he is.” Letty’s little movement of the shoulders hinted that an expert wouldn’t be of this opinion. “He may think he is, anyhow.”
“But if he thinks he is––”
199
Letty’s eyes rested on her visitor with their compelling candor. “I don’t believe men know much about love, do you, Miss Walbrook?”
“It depends. All men haven’t had as much experience of it as I suppose you’ve had––”
“Oh, I haven’t had any.” The candor of the eyes was now in the whole of the truthful face. “Nobody was ever in love with me—never. I never had a fella—nor nothing.”
In spite of herself Barbara believed this. She couldn’t help herself. She could hear Rash saying that whatever else was wrong in the ridiculous business the girl herself was straight. All the same the discussion was beneath her. It was beneath her to listen to opinions of herself coming from such a source. If Rash didn’t “think much of her” there was something to “have out” with him, not with this little street-waif dressed up with this ludicrous mummery. The sooner she ended the business on which she had come the sooner she would get a legitimate outlet for the passion of jealousy and rage consuming her.
“But we’re wandering away from my errand. I won’t pretend that I’ve come of my own accord. I’m a very old friend of Mr. Allerton’s, and he’s asked me—or practically asked me—to come and find out––”
For what she was to come and find out she lacked for a minute the right word, and so held up the sentence.
“What I’d take to let him off?”
The form of expression was so crude that once more Barbara was startled. “Well, that’s what it would come to.”
200
“But I’ve told him already that—that I want to let him off anyhow.”
“Yes? And on what terms?”
“I don’t want any terms.”
“Oh, but there must beterms. He couldn’t let you do it––”
“He could let me do it forhim, couldn’t he? I’d go through fire, if it’d make him a bit more comfortable than he is.”
Barbara could not believe her ears. “Do you want me to understand that––?”
“That I’ll do whatever will make him happy just tomakehim happy? Yes. That’s it. He didn’t need to send no one—to send anyone—to ask me, because I’ve told him so already. He wants me to get out. Well, I’m ready to get out. He wants me to go to the bad. Well, I’m ready––”
“Yes; he understands all that. But, don’t you see? a man in his position couldn’t take such a sacrifice from a girl in yours––”
“Unless he pays me for it in cash.”
“That’s putting it in a nutshell. If you owned a house, for instance, and I wanted it, I’d buy it from you and pay you for it; but I couldn’t take it as a gift, no matter how liberal you were nor how much I needed it.”
“I can see that about a house; but your own self is different. I could sell a house when I couldn’t sell—myself.”
“Oh, but would you call that selling yourself?”
“It’d be selling myself—the way I look at it. When I’m so ready to do what he wants I can’t see why he201don’t let me.” She added, tearfully: “Did he tell you about this morning?”
She nodded. “Yes, he told me about that.”
“Well, I would have gone then if—if I’d known how to work the door.”
“Oh, that’s easy enough.”
“Do you know?”
“Why, yes.”
“Will you show me?”
Miss Walbrook rose. “It’s so simple.” She continued, as they went toward the door: “You see, Mr. Allerton’s mother always kept a lot of valuable jewelry in the house, and she was afraid of burglars. She had the most wonderful pearls. I suppose Mr. Allerton has them still, locked away in some bank. Burglars would never come in by the front door, my aunt used to tell her, but—” They reached the door itself. “Now, you see, there’s a common lock, a bolt, and a chain––”
Letty explained that she had discovered them already.
“But, you see these two little brass knobs over here? That’s the trick. You push this one this way, and that one that way, and the door is locked with an extra double lock, which hardly anyone would suspect. See?”
She shook the door which resisted as it had resisted Letty in the morning.
“Now! You push that one this way, and this one that way—and there you are!”
She opened the door to show how easily the thing could be done; and the door being open she passed out.202She had not intended to go in this way; but, after all, was not her mission accomplished? It was nothing to her whether this girl accepted money, or whether she did not. The one thing essential was that she should take herself away; and if she was sincere in what she said she had now the means of doing it. Without troubling herself to take her leave Miss Walbrook went down the steps.
Before turning toward Fifth Avenue she glanced back. Letty was standing in the open doorway, her flaming eyes wide, her expression puzzled and wounded. “It’s nothing to me,” Barbara repeated to herself firmly; but because she was a lady, as she understood the word lady, almost before she was a woman, she smiled faintly, with a distant, and yet not discourteous, inclination of the head.
203Chapter XVII
It was because she was a lady, as she understood the word lady, that by the time she had walked the few steps into Fifth Avenue Miss Walbrook already felt the inner reproach of having done something mean. To do anything mean was so strange to her that she didn’t at first recognize the sensation. She only found herself repeating two words, and repeating them uneasily: “Noblesse oblige!”
Nevertheless, on the principle that all’s fair in love and war, she fought this off. “Either she must go or I must.” That she herself should go was not to be considered; therefore the other must go, and by the shortest way. The shortest way was the way she had shown her, and which the girl herself was desirous to take. There was no more than that to the situation.
There was no more than that to the situation unless it was that the strong was taking a poor advantage of the weak. But then, why shouldn’t the strong take any advantage it possessed? What otherwise was the use of being strong? The strong prevailed, and the weak went under. That was the law of life. To suppose that the weak must prevail because it was weak was sheer sentimentality. All the same, those two inconvenient words kept dinning in her ears: “Noblesse oblige!”
She began to question the honesty which in Letty’s presence had convinced her. It was probably not204honesty at all. She had known girls in the Bleary Street Settlement who could persuade her that black was white, but who had proved on further knowledge to be lying all round the compass. When it wasn’t lying it was bluff. It was possible that Letty was only bluffing, that in her pretense at magnanimity she was simply scheming for a bigger price. In that case she, Barbara, had called the bluff very skilfully. She had put her in a position in which she could be taken at her word. Since she was ready to go, she could go. Since she was ready to go to the bad....
Miss Walbrook was not prim. She knew too much of the world to be easily shocked, in the old conventional sense. Besides, her Bleary Street work had brought her into contact with girls who had gone to the bad, and she had not found them different from other girls. If she hadn’t known....
She could contemplate without horror, therefore, Letty’s taking desperate steps—if indeed she hadn’t taken them long ago—and yet she herself didn’t want to be involved in the proceeding. It was one thing to view an unfortunate situation from which you stood detached, and another to be in a certain sense the cause of it. She would not really be the cause of it, whatever the girl did, since she, the girl, was a free agent, and of an age to know her own mind. Moreover, the secret of the door was one which she couldn’t help finding out in any case. She, Miss Walbrook, could dismiss these scruples; and yet there was that uncomfortable sing-song humming through her brain: “Noblesse oblige! Noblesse oblige!”
“I must get rid of it,” she said to herself, as Wildgoose205admitted her. “I’ve got to be on the safe side. I can’t have it on my mind.”
Going to the telephone before she had so much as taken off her gloves she was answered by Steptoe. “This is Miss Walbrook again, Steptoe. I should like to speak to—to the young woman.”
Steptoe who had found Letty crying after Miss Walbrook’s departure answered with resentful politeness. “I’ll speak to Mrs. Allerton, miss. Shemaybe aible to come to the telephone.”
“Ye-es?” came later, in a feeble, teary voice.
“This is Miss Walbrook again. I’m sorry to trouble you the second time.”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter.”
“I merely wanted to say, what perhaps I should have said before I left, that I hope you won’t—won’tusethe information I gave you as I was leaving—at any rate not at once.”
“Do you mean the door?”
“Exactly. I was afraid after I came away that you might do something in a hurry––”
“It’ll have to be in a hurry if I do it at all.”
“Oh, I don’t see that. In any case, I’d—I’d think it over. Perhaps we could have another talk about it, and then––”
Something was said which sounded like a faint, “Very well,” so that Barbara put up the receiver.
Her conscience relieved she could open the dams keeping back the fiercer tides of her anger. Rash had talked about her to this girl! He had given her to understand that she was a fool! He had allowed it to appear that “he didn’t think much of her!” No matter206what he had said, the girl had been able to make these inferences. What was more, these inferences might be true. Perhaps hedidn’tthink much of her! Perhaps he onlythoughthe was in love with her! The idea was so terrible that it stilled her, as approaching seismic storm will still the elements. She moved about the drawing-room, taking off her gloves, her veil, her hat, and laying them together on a table, as if she was afraid to make a sound. She was standing beside that table, not knowing what to do next, or where to go, when Wildgoose came to the door to announce, “Mr. Allerton.”
“I’ve seen her.” Without other form of greeting, or moving from beside the table, she picked up her gloves, threw them down again, picked them up again, threw them down again, with the nervous action of the hands which betrayed suppressed excitement. “I didn’t believe her—quite.”
“But you didn’t disbelieve her—wholly?”
“It’s a difficult case.”
“I’ve got you into an awful scrape, Barbe.”
She threw down the gloves with special vigor. “Oh, don’t begin on that. The scrape’s there. What we have to find is the way out.”
“Well, do you see it any more clearly?”
“Do you?”
He came near to her. “I see this—that I can’t let her throw herself away for me. I’ve been thinking it over, and I want to ask your opinion of this plan. Let’s sit down.”
She thought his plan the maddest that was ever proposed, and yet she accepted it. She accepted it207because she was suspicious, jealous, and unhappy. “It’ll give me the chance to watch—andsee,” she said to herself, as he talked.
In his opinion Letty couldn’t take their point of view because she was so inexperienced. It seemed to her a simple thing to go away, leaving them with the responsibilities of her future on their consciences; and it would not seem other than a simple thing till she saw life more as they did. To bring her to this degree of culture they must be subtle with her, and patient. Theymustn’trush things. They mustn’t let her rush them. To end the situation in such a way as to make for happiness they must end it at a point where all would be best for all concerned. For Barbara and himself nothing would be best which was not also best for the girl. What would be best for the girl would be some degree of education, of knowledge of the world, so that she might go back to the life whence they had plucked her less likely to be a prey to the vicious. In that case, if they supplied her with a little income she would know what to do with it, and would perhaps marry some man in her own class able to take care of her.
Barbara’s impulse was to cry out: “That’s the most preposterous suggestion I ever heard of in my life!” But she controlled this quite reasonable prompting because another voice said to her: “This will give you the opportunity to keep an eye on them. If he’s not true in his love for you—if thereisan infatuation on his part for this common and vulgar creature—you’ll be able to detect it.” Jealousy loving to suffer she was willing to inflict torture on herself for the sake of catching him in disloyalty.