CHAPTER XIVA NEW WORLD
The two girls stood on the sidewalk and let the tide of busy humanity flow by unnoticed. Both were healthy types of youth—one from the open ranges of the Great West, the other from a land far, far to the East.
Helen Morrell was brown, smiling, hopeful-looking; but she certainly was not “up to date” in dress and appearance. The black-eyed and black-haired Russian girl was just as well developed for her age and as rugged as she could be; but in her cheap way her frock was the “very latest thing,” her hair was dressed wonderfully, and the air of “city smartness” about her made the difference between her and Helen even more marked.
“I never s’posed you’d come down here,” said Sadie again.
“You asked was I turned out of my uncle’s house,” responded Helen, seriously. “Well, it does about amount to that.”
“Oh, no! Never!” cried the other girl.
“Let me tell you,” said Helen, whose heart was so full that she longed for a confidant. Besides, Sadie Goronsky would never know the Starkweather family and their friends, and she felt free to speak fully. So, without much reserve, she related her experiences in her uncle’s house.
“Now, ain’t they the mean things!” ejaculated Sadie, referring to the cousins. “And I suppose they’re awful rich?”
“I presume so. The house is very large,” declared Helen.
“And they’ve got loads and loads of dresses, too?” demanded the working girl.
“Oh, yes. They are very fashionably dressed,” Helen told her. “But see! I am going to have a new dress myself. Uncle Starkweather gave me ten dollars.”
“Chee!” ejaculated Sadie. “Wouldn’t it give him a cramp in his pocket-book to part with so much mazouma?”
“Mazouma?”
“That’s Hebrew for money,” laughed Sadie. “But youdoneed a dress. Where did you get that thing you’ve got on?”
“Out home,” replied Helen. “I see it isn’t very fashionable.”
“Say! we got through sellin’ them things to greenies two years back,” declared Sadie.
“You haven’t been at work all that time; have you?” gasped the girl from the ranch.
“Sure. I got my working papers four years ago. You see, I looked a lot older than I really was, and comin’ across from the old country all us children changed our ages, so’t we could go right to work when we come here without having to spend all day in school. We had an uncle what come over first, and he told us what to do.”
Helen listened to this with some wonder. She felt perfectly safe with Sadie, and would have trusted her, if it were necessary, with the money she had hidden away in her closet at Uncle Starkweather’s; yet the other girl looked upon the laws of the land to which she had come for freedom as merely harsh rules to be broken at one’s convenience.
“Of course,” said Sadie, “I didn’t work on the sidewalk here at first. I worked back in Old Yawcob’s shop—making changes in the garments for fussy customers. I was always quick with my needle.
“Then I helped the salesladies. But business was slack, and people went right by our door, and I jumped out one day and started to pull ’em in. And I was better at it——
“Good-day, ma’am! Will you look at a beautiful skirt—just the very latest style—we’ve onlygot a few of them for samples?” She broke off and left Helen to stand wondering while Sadie chaffered with another woman, who had hesitated a trifle as she passed the shop.
“Oh, no, ma’am! You was no greenie. I could tell that at once. That’s why I spoke English to you yet,” Sadie said, flattering the prospective buyer, and smiling at her pleasantly. “If you will just step in and see these skirts—or a two-piece suit if you will?”
Helen observed her new friend with amazement. Although she knew Sadie could be no older than herself, she used the tact of long business experience in handling the woman. And she got her into the store, too!
“I wash my hands of ’em when they get inside,” she said, laughing, and coming back to Helen. “If Old Yawcob and his wife and his salesladies can’t hold ’em, it isn’tmyfault, you understand. I’m about the youngest puller-in there is along Madison Street—although that little hunchback in front of the millinery shop yonderlooksyounger.”
“But you don’t try to pullmein,” said Helen, laughing. “And I’ve got ten whole dollars to spend.”
“That’s right. But then, you see, you’re my friend, Miss,” said Sadie. “I want to be sure youget your money’s worth. So I’m going with you when you buy your dress—that is, if you’ll let me.”
“Let you? Why, I’d dearly love to have you advise me,” declared the Western girl. “And don’t—don’t—call me ‘Miss.’ I’m Helen Morrell, I tell you.”
“All right. If you say so. But, you know, youarefrom Madison Avenyer just the same.”
“No. I’m from a great big ranch out West.”
“That’s like a farm—yes? I gotter cousin that works on a farm over on Long Island. It’s a big farm—it’s eighty acres. Is that farm you come from as big as that?”
Helen nodded and did not smile at the girl’s ignorance. “Very much bigger than eighty acres,” she said. “You see, it has to be, for we raise cattle instead of vegetables.”
“Well, I guess I don’t know much about it,” admitted Sadie, frankly. “All I know is this city and mostly this part of it down here on the East Side. We all have to work so hard, you know. But we’re getting along better than we did at first, for more of us children can work.
“And now I want you should go home with me for dinner, Helen—yes! It is my dinner hour quick now; and then we will have time to pick you out a bargain for a dress. Sure! You’ll come?”
“If I won’t be imposing on you?” said Helen, slowly.
“Huh! That’s all right. We’ll have enough to eatthisnoon. And it ain’t so Jewish, either, for father don’t come home till night. Father’s awful religious; but I tell mommer she must be up-to-date and have some ’Merican style about her. I got her to leave off her wig yet. Catchmewearin’ a wig when I’m married just to make me look ugly. Not!”
All this rather puzzled Helen; but she was too polite to ask questions. She knew vaguely that Jewish people followed peculiar rabbinical laws and customs; but what they were she had no idea. However, she liked Sadie, and it mattered nothing to Helen what the East Side girl’s faith or bringing up had been. Sadie was kind, and friendly, and was really the only person in all this big city in whom the ranch girl could place the smallest confidence.
Sadie ran into the store for a moment and soon a big woman with an unctuous smile, a ruffled white apron about as big as a postage stamp, and her gray hair dressed as remarkably as Sadie’s own, came out upon the sidewalk to take the young girl’s place.
“Can’t I sell you somedings, lady?” she said to the waiting Helen.
“Now, don’t you go and runmycustomer in, Ma Finkelstein!” cried Sadie, running out and hugging the big woman. “Helen is my friend and she’s going home to eat mit me.”
“Ach!you are already a United Stater yet,” declared the big woman, laughing. “Undt the friends you have it from Number Five Av’noo—yes?”
“You guessed it pretty near right,” cried Sadie. “Helen lives on Madison Avenyer—and it ain’t Madison Avenyeruptown, neither!”
She slipped her hand in Helen’s and bore her off to the tenement house in which Helen had had her first adventure in the great city.
“Come on up,” said Sadie, hospitably. “You look tired, and I bet you walked clear down here?”
“Yes, I did,” admitted Helen.
“Some o’ mommer’s soup mit lentils will rest you, I bet. It ain’t far yet—only two flights.”
Helen followed her cheerfully. But she wondered if she was doing just right in letting this friendly girl believe that she was just as poor as the Starkweathers thought she was. Yet, on the other hand, wouldn’t Sadie Goronsky have felt embarrassed and have been afraid to be her friend, if she knew that Helen Morrell was a very, very wealthy girl and had at her command what would seem to the Russian girl “untold wealth”?
“I’ll pay her for this,” thought Helen, with the first feeling of real happiness she had experienced since leaving the ranch. “She shall never be sorry that she was kind to me.”
So she followed Sadie into the humble home of the latter on the third floor of the tenement with a smiling face and real warmth at her heart. In Yiddish the downtown girl explained rapidly her acquaintance with “the Gentile.” But, as she had told Helen, Sadie’s mother had begun to break away from some of the traditions of her people. She was fast becoming “a United Stater,” too.
She was a handsome, beaming woman, and she was as generous-hearted as Sadie herself. The rooms were a little steamy, for Mrs. Goronsky had been doing the family wash that morning. But the table was set neatly and the food that came on was well prepared and—to Helen—much more acceptable than the dainties she had been having at Uncle Starkweather’s.
The younger children, who appeared for the meal, were right from the street where they had been playing, or from work in neighboring factories, and were more than a little grimy. But they were not clamorous and they ate with due regard to “manners.”
“Ve haf nine, Mees,” said Mrs. Goronsky,proudly. “Undt they all are healt’y—ach! sohealt’y. It takes mooch to feed them yet.”
“Don’t tell about it, Mommer” cried Sadie. “It aint stylish to have big fam’lies no more. Don’t I tell you?”
“What about that Preesident we hadt—that Teddy Sullivan—what said big fam’lies was a good d’ing? Aindt that enough? Sure, Sarah, aPreesidentiss stylish.”
“Oh, Mommer!” screamed Sadie. “You gotcher politics mixed. ‘Sullivan’ is the district leader wot gifs popper a job; but ‘Teddy’ was the President yet. You ain’t never goin’ to be real American.”
But her mother only laughed. Indeed, the light-heartedness of these poor people was a revelation to Helen. She had supposed vaguely that very poor people must be all the time serious, if not actually in tears.
“Now, Helen, we’ll rush right back to the shop and I’ll make Old Yawcob sell you a bargain. She’s goin’ to get her new dress, Mommer. Ain’t that fine?”
“Sure it iss,” declared the good woman. “Undt you get her a bargain, Sarah.”
“Don’tcall me ‘Sarah,’ Mommer!” cried the daughter. “It ain’t stylish, I tell you. Call me ‘Sadie.’”
Her mother kissed her on both plump cheeks. “What matters it, my little lamb?” she said, in their own tongue. “Mother love makesanyname sweet.”
Helen did not, of course, understand these words; but the caress, the look on their faces, and the way Sadie returned her mother’s kiss made a great lump come into the orphan girl’s throat. She could hardly find her way in the dim hall to the stairway, she was so blinded by tears.
CHAPTER XV“STEP—PUT; STEP—PUT”
An hour later Helen was dressed in a two-piece suit, cut in what a chorus of salesladies, including old Mrs. Finkelstein and Sadie herself, declared were most “stylish” lines—and it did not cost her ten dollars, either! Indeed, Sadie insisted upon going with her to a neighboring millinery store and purchasing a smart little hat for $1.59, which set off the new suit very nicely.
“Sure, this old hat and suit of yours is wort’ a lot more money, Helen,” declared the Russian girl. “But they ain’t just the style, yuh see. And style is everything to a girl. Why, nobody’d take you for a greenienow!”
Helen was quite wise enough to know that she had never been dressed so cheaply before; but she recognized, too, the truth of her friend’s statement.
“Now, you take the dress home, and the hat. Maybe you can find a cheap tailor who will make over the dress. There’s enough material in it. That’s an awful wide skirt, you know.”
“But I couldn’t walk in a skirt as narrow as the one you have on, Sadie.”
“Chee! if it was stylish,” confessed Sadie, “I’d find a way to walk in a piece of stove-pipe!” and she giggled.
So Helen left for uptown with her bundles, wearing her new suit and hat. She took a Fourth Avenue car and got out only a block from her uncle’s house. As she hurried through the side street and came to the Madison Avenue corner, she came face-to-face with Flossie, coming home from school with a pile of books under her arm.
Flossie looked quite startled when she saw her cousin. Her eyes grew wide and she swept the natty looking, if cheaply-dressed Western girl, with an appreciative glance.
“Goodness me! What fine feathers!” she cried. “You’ve been loading up with new clothes—eh? Say, I like that dress.”
“Better than the caliker one?” asked Helen, slily.
“You’re not so foolish as to believe I likedthat,” returned Flossie, coolly. “I told Belle and Hortense that you weren’t as dense as they seemed to think you.”
“Thanks!” said Helen, drily.
“But that dress is just in the mode,” repeated Flossie, with some admiration.
“Your father’s kindness enabled me to get it,” said Helen, briefly.
“Humph!” said Flossie, frankly. “I guess it didn’t cost you much, then.”
Helen did not reply to this comment; but as she turned to go down to the basement door, Flossie caught her by the arm.
“Don’t you do that!” she exclaimed. “Belle can be pretty mean sometimes. You come in at the front door with me.”
“No,” said Helen, smiling. “You come in at the area door withme. It’s easier, anyway. There’s a maid just opening it.”
So the two girls entered the house together. They were late to lunch—indeed, Helen did not wish any; but she did not care to explain why she was not hungry.
“What’s the matter with you, Flossie?” demanded Hortense. “We’ve done eating, Belle and I. And if you wish your meals here, Helen, please get here on time for them.”
“You mind your own business!” cried Flossie, suddenly taking up the cudgels for her cousin as well as herself. “You aren’t the boss, Hortense! I got kept after school, anyway. And cook can make something hot for me and Helen.”
“Youneedto be kept after school—from the kind of English you use,” sniffed her sister.
“I don’t care! I hate the old studies!” declared Flossie, slamming her books down upon the table. “I don’t see why I have to go to school at all. I’m going to ask Pa to take me out. I need a rest.”
Which was very likely true, for Miss Flossie was out almost every night to some party, or to the theater, or at some place which kept her up very late. She had no time for study, and therefore was behind in all her classes. That day she had been censured for it at school—and when they took a girl to task for falling behind in studies atthatschool, she was very far behind, indeed!
Flossie grumbled about her hard lot all through luncheon. Helen kept her company; then, when it was over, she slipped up to her own room with her bundles. Both Hortense and Belle had taken a good look at her, however, and they plainly approved of her appearance.
“She’s not such a dowdy as she seemed,” whispered Hortense to the oldest sister.
“No,” admitted Belle. “But that’s an awful cheap dress she bought.”
“I guess she didn’t have much to spend,” laughed Hortense. “Pa wasn’t likely to be very liberal. It puzzles me why he should have kept her here at all.”
“He says it is his duty,” scoffed Belle. “Now,you know Pa! He never was so worried about duty before; was he?”
These girls, brought up as they were, steeped in selfishness and seeing their father likewise so selfish, had no respect for their parent. Nor could this be wondered at.
Going up to her room that afternoon Helen met Mrs. Olstrom coming down. The housekeeper started when she saw the young girl, and drew back. But Helen had already seen the great tray of dishes the housekeeper carried. And she wondered.
Who took their meals up on this top floor? The maids who slept here were all accounted for. She had seen them about the house. And Gregson, too. Of course Mr. Lawdor and Mrs. Olstrom had their own rooms below.
Then who could it be who was being served on this upper floor? Helen was more than a little curious. The sounds she had heard the night before dove-tailed in her mind with these soiled dishes on the tray.
She was almost tempted to walk through the long corridor in which she thought she had heard the scurrying footsteps pass the night before. Yet, suppose she was caught by Mrs. Olstrom—or by anybody else—peering about the house?
“Thatwouldn’t be very nice,” mused the girl.
“Because these people think I am rude and untaught, is no reason why I should display anyrealrudeness.”
She was very curious, however; the thought of the tray-load of dishes remained in her mind all day.
At dinner that night even Mr. Starkweather gave Helen a glance of approval when she appeared in her new frock.
“Ahem!” he said. “I see you have taken my advice, Helen. We none of us can afford to forget what is due to custom. You are much more presentable.”
“Thank you, Uncle Starkweather,” replied Helen, demurely. “But out our way we say: ‘Fine feathers don’t make fine birds.’”
“You needn’t fret,” giggled Flossie. “Your feather’s aren’t a bit too fine.”
But Flossie’s eyes were red, and she plainly had been crying.
“Ihatethe old books!” she said, suddenly. “Pa, why do I have to go to school any more?”
“Because I am determined you shall, young lady,” said Mr. Starkweather, firmly. “We all have to learn.”
“Hortense doesn’t go.”
“But you are not Hortense’s age,” returned her father, coolly. “Remember that. And I musthave better reports of your conduct in school than have reached me lately,” he added.
Flossie sulked over the rest of her dinner. Helen, going up slowly to her room later, saw the door of her youngest cousin’s room open, and glancing in, beheld Flossie with her head on her book, crying hard.
Each of these girls had a beautiful room of her own. Flossie’s was decorated in pink, with chintz hangings, a lovely bed, bookshelves, a desk of inlaid wood, and everything to delight the eye and taste of any girl. Beside the common room Helen occupied, this of Flossie’s was a fairy palace.
But Helen was naturally tender-hearted. She could not bear to see the younger girl crying. She ventured to step inside the door and whisper:
“Flossie?”
Up came the other’s head, her face flushed and wet and her brow a-scowl.
“What doyouwant?” she demanded, quickly.
“Nothing. Unless I can help you. And if so,thatis what I want,” said the ranch girl, softly.
“Goodness me!Youcan’t help me with algebra. What do I want to know higher mathematics for? I’ll never have use for such knowledge.”
“I don’t suppose we can ever learntoomuch,” said Helen, quietly.
“Huh! Lots you know about it. You never were driven to school against your will.”
“No. Whenever I got a chance to go I was glad.”
“Maybe I’d be glad, too, if I lived on a ranch,” returned Flossie, scornfully.
Helen came nearer to the desk and sat down beside her.
“You don’t look a bit pretty with your eyes all red and hot. Crying isn’t going to help,” she said, smiling.
“I suppose not,” grumbled Flossie, ungrateful of tone.
“Come, let me get some water and cologne and bathe your face.” Helen jumped up and went to the tiny bathroom. “Now, I’ll play maid for you, Flossie.”
“Oh, all right,” said the younger girl. “I suppose, as you say, crying isn’t going to help.”
“Not at all. No amount of tears will solve a problem in algebra. And you let me see the questions. You see,” added Helen, slowly, beginning to bathe her cousin’s forehead and swollen eyes, “we once had a very fine school-teacher at the ranch. He was a college professor. But he had weak lungs and he came out there to Montana to rest.”
“That’s good!” murmured Flossie, meaningbathing process, for she was not listening much to Helen’s remarks.
“I knew it would make you feel better. But now, let me see these algebra problems. I took it up a little when—when Professor Payton was at the ranch.”
“You didn’t!” cried Flossie, in wonder.
“Let me see them,” pursued her cousin, nodding.
She had told the truth—as far as she went. After Professor Payton had left the ranch and Helen had gone to Denver to school, she had showed a marked taste for mathematics and had been allowed to go far ahead of her fellow-pupils in that study.
Now, at a glance, she saw what was the matter with Flossie’s attempts to solve the problems. She slipped into a seat beside the younger girl again and, in a few minutes, showed Flossie just how to solve them.
“Why, Helen! I didn’t suppose you knew so much,” said Flossie, in surprise.
“You see,thatis something I had a chance to learn between times—when I wasn’t roping cows or breaking ponies,” said Helen, drily.
“Humph! I don’t believe you did either of those vulgar things,” declared Flossie, suddenly.
“You are mistaken. I do them both, and dothem well,” returned Helen, gravely. “But they arenotvulgar. No more vulgar than your sister Belle’s golf. It is outdoor exercise, and living outdoors as much as one can is a sort of religion in the West.”
“Well,” said Flossie, who had recovered her breath now. “I don’t care what you do outdoors. You can do algebra in the house! And I’m real thankful to you, Cousin Helen.”
“You are welcome, Flossie,” returned the other, gravely; but then she went her way to her own room at the top of the house. Flossie did not ask her to remain after she had done all she could for her.
But Helen had found plenty of reading matter in the house. Her cousins and uncle might ignore her as they pleased. With a good book in her hand she could forget all her troubles.
Now she slipped into her kimono, propped herself up in bed, turned the gas-jet high, and lost herself in the adventures of her favorite heroine. The little clock on the mantel ticked on unheeded. The house grew still. The maids came up to bed chattering. But still Helen read on.
She had forgotten the sounds she had heard in the old house at night. Mrs. Olstrom had mentioned that there were “queer stories” about the Starkweather mansion. But Helen would nothave thought of them at this time, had something not rattled her doorknob and startled her.
“Somebody wants to come in,” was the girl’s first thought, and she hopped out of bed and ran to unlock it.
Then she halted, with her hand upon the knob. A sound outside had arrested her. But it was not the sound of somebody trying the latch.
Instead she plainly heard the mysterious “step—put; step—put” again. Was it descending the stairs? It seemed to grow fainter as she listened.
At length the girl—somewhat shaken—reached for the key of her door again, and turned it. Then she opened it and peered out.
The corridor was faintly illuminated. The stairway itself was quite dark, for there was no light in the short passage below called “the ghost-walk.”
The girl, in her slippers, crept to the head of the flight. There she could hear the steady, ghostly footstep from below. No other sound within the great mansion reached her ears. Itwasqueer.
To and fro the odd step went. It apparently drew nearer, then receded—again and again.
Helen could not see any of the corridor from the top of the flight. So she began to creep down, determined to know for sure if there really was something or somebody there.
Nor was she entirely unafraid now. The mysterious sounds had got upon her nerves. Whether they were supernatural, or natural, she was determined to solve the mystery here and now.
Half-way down the stair she halted. The sound of the ghostly step was at the far end of the hall. But it would now return, and the girl could see (her eyes having become used to the dim light) more than half of the passage.
There was the usual rustling sound at the end of the passage. Then the steady “step—put” approached.
CHAPTER XVIFORGOTTEN
From the stair-well some little light streamed up into the darkness of the ghost-walk. And into this dim radiance came a little old lady—her old-fashioned crimped hair an aureole of beautiful gray—leaning lightly on an ebony crutch, which in turn tapped the floor in accompaniment to her clicking step—
“Step—put; step—put; step—put.”
Then she was out of the range of Helen’s vision again. But she turned and came back—her silken skirts rustling, her crutch tapping in perfect time.
This was no ghost. Although slender—ethereal—almost bird-like in her motions—the little old lady was very human indeed. She had a pink flush in her cheeks, and her skin was as soft as velvet. Of course there were wrinkles; but they were beautiful wrinkles, Helen thought.
She wore black half-mitts of lace, and her old-fashioned gown was of delightfully soft, yet rich silk. The silk was brown—not many old ladiescould have worn that shade of brown and found it becoming. Her eyes were bright—the unseen girl saw them sparkle as she turned her head, in that bird-like manner, from side to side.
She was a dear, doll-like old lady! Helen longed to hurry down the remaining steps and take her in her arms.
But, instead, she crept softly back to the head of the stairs, and slipped into her own room again.Thiswas the mystery of the Starkweather mansion. The nightly exercise of this mysterious old lady was the foundation for the “ghost-walk.” The maids of the household feared the supernatural; therefore they easily found a legend to explain the rustling step of the old lady with the crutch.
And all day long the old lady kept to her room. That room must be in the front of the house on this upper floor—shut away, it was likely, from the knowledge of most of the servants.
Mrs. Olstrom, of course, knew about the old lady—who she was—what she was. It was the housekeeper who looked after the simple wants of the mysterious occupant of the Starkweather mansion.
Helen wondered if Mr. Lawdor, the old butler, knew about the mystery? And did the Starkweathers themselves know?
The girl from the ranch was too excited and curious to go to sleep now. She had to remain right by her door, opened on a crack, and learn what would happen next.
For an hour at least she heard the steady stepping of the old lady. Then the crutch rapped out an accompaniment to her coming upstairs. She was humming softly to herself, too. Helen, crouched behind the door, distinguished the sweet, cracked voice humming a fragment of the old lullaby:
“Rock-a-by, baby, on the tree-top,
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock,
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,
Down will come baby——”
Thus humming, and the crutch tapping—a mere whisper of sound—the old lady rustled by Helen’s door, on into the long corridor, and disappeared through some door, which closed behind her and smothered all further sound.
Helen went to bed; but she could not sleep—not at first. The mystery of the little old lady and her ghostly walk kept her eyes wide open and her brain afire for hours.
She asked question after question into the dark of the night, and only imagination answered.Some of the answers were fairly reasonable; others were as impossible as the story of Jack the Giant Killer.
Finally, however, Helen dropped asleep. She awoke at her usual hour—daybreak—and her eager mind began again asking questions about the mystery. She went down in her outdoor clothes for a morning walk, with the little old lady uppermost in her thoughts.
As usual, Mr. Lawdor was on the lookout for her. The shaky old man loved to have her that few minutes in his room in the early morning. Although he always presided over the dinner, with Gregson under him, the old butler seldom seemed to speak, or be spoken to. Helen understood that, like Mrs. Olstrom, Lawdor was a relic of the late owner—Mr. Starkweather’s great-uncle’s—household.
Cornelius Starkweather had been a bachelor. The mansion had descended to him from a member of the family who had been a family man. But that family had died young—wife and all—and the master had handed the old homestead over to Mr. Cornelius and had gone traveling himself—to die in a foreign land.
Once Helen had heard Lawdor murmur something about “Mr. Cornelius” and she had picked up the remainder of her information from thingsshe had heard Mr. Starkweather and the girls say.
Now the old butler met her with an ingratiating smile and begged her to have something beside her customary coffee and roll.
“I have a lovely steak, Miss. The butcher remembers me once in a while, and he knows I am fond of a bit of tender beef. My teeth are not what they were once, you know, Miss.”
“But why should I eat your nice steak?” demanded Helen, laughing at him. “My teeth are good for what the boys on the range call ‘bootleg.’ That’s steak cut right next to the hoof!”
“Ah, but, Miss! There is so much more than I could possibly eat,” he urged.
He had already turned the electricity into his grill. The ruddy steak—salted, peppered, with tiny flakes of garlic upon it—he brought from his own little icebox. The appetizing odor of the meat sharpened Helen’s appetite even as she sipped the first of her coffee.
“I’ll justhaveto eat some, I expect, Mr. Lawdor,” she said. Then she had a sudden thought, and added: “Or perhaps you’d like to save this tidbit for the little old lady in the attic?”
Mr. Lawdor turned—not suddenly; he never did anything with suddenness; but it was plain she had startled him.
“Bless me, Miss—bless me—bless me——”
He trailed off in his usual shaky way; but his lips were white and he stared at Helen like an owl for a full minute. Then he added:
“Is there a lady in the attic, Miss?” And he said it in his most polite way.
“Of course there is, Mr. Lawdor; and you know it. Who is she? I am only curious.”
“I—I hear the maids talking about a ghost, Miss—foolish things——”
“And I’m not foolish, Mr. Lawdor,” said the Western girl, laughing shortly. “Not that way, at least. I heard her; last night I saw her. Next time I’m going to speak to her—Unless it isn’t allowed.”
“It—it isn’t allowed, Miss,” said Lawdor, speaking softly, and with a glance at the closed door of the room.
“Nobody has forbiddenmeto speak to her,” declared Helen, boldly. “And I’m curious—mighty curious, Mr. Lawdor. Surely she is a nice old lady—there is nothing the matter with her?”
The butler touched his forehead with a shaking finger. “A little wrong there, Miss,” he whispered. “But Mary Boyle is as innocent and harmless as a baby herself.”
“Can’t you tell me about her—who she is—why she lives up there—and all?”
“Not here, Miss.”
“Why not?” demanded Helen, boldly.
“It might offend Mr. Starkweather, Miss. Not that he has anything to do with Mary Boyle. He had to take the old house with her in it.”
“Whatdoyou mean, Lawdor?” gasped Helen, growing more and more amazed and—naturally—more and more curious.
The butler flopped the steak suddenly upon the sizzling hot plate and in another moment the delicious bit was before her. The old man served her as expertly as ever, but his face was working strangely.
“I couldn’t tell you here, Miss. Walls have ears, they say,” he whispered. “But if you’ll be on the first bench beyond the Sixth Avenue entrance to Central Park at ten o’clock this morning, I will meet you there.
“Yes, Miss—the rolls. Some more butter, Miss? I hope the coffee is to your taste, Miss?”
“It is all very delicious, Lawdor,” said Helen, rather weakly, and feeling somewhat confused. “I will surely be there. I shall not need to come back for the regular breakfast after having this nice bit.”
Helen attracted much less attention upon her usual early morning walk this time. She was dressed in the mode, if cheaply, and she was notso self-conscious. But, in addition, she thought but little of herself or her own appearance or troubles while she walked briskly uptown.
It was of the little old woman, and her mystery, and the butler’s words that she thought. She strode along to the park, and walked west until she reached the bridle-path. She had found this before, and came to see the riders as they cantered by.
How Helen longed to put on her riding clothes and get astride a lively mount and gallop up the park-way! But she feared that, in doing so, she might betray to her uncle or the girls the fact that she was not the “pauper cowgirl” they thought her to be.
She found a seat overlooking the path, at last, and rested for a while; but her mind was not upon the riders. Before ten o’clock she had walked back south, found the entrance to the park opposite Sixth Avenue, and sat down upon the bench specified by the old butler. At the stroke of the hour the old man appeared.
“You could not have walked all this way, Lawdor?” said the girl, smiling upon him. “You are not at all winded.”
“No, Miss. I took the car. I am not up to such walks as you can take,” and he shook his head, mumbling: “Oh, no, no, no, no——”
“And now, what can you tell me, sir?” she said, breaking in upon his dribbling speech. “I am just as curious as I can be. That dear little old lady! Why is she in uncle’s house?”
“Ah, Miss! I fancy she will not be there for long, but she was an encumbrance upon it when Mr. Willets Starkweather came with his family to occupy it.”
“Whatdoyou mean?” cried the girl.
“Mary Boyle served in the Starkweather family long, long ago. Before I came to valet for Mr. Cornelius, Mary Boyle had her own room and was a fixture in the house. Mr. Cornelius took her more—more philosophically, as you might say, Miss. My present master and his daughters look upon poor Mary Boyle as a nuisance. They have to allow her to remain. She is a life charge upon the estate—that, indeed, was fixed before Mr. Cornelius’s time. But the present family are ashamed of her. Perhaps I ought not to say it, but it is true. They have relegated her to a suite upon the top floor, and other people have quite forgotten Mary Boyle—yes, oh, yes, indeed! Quite forgotten her—quite forgotten her——”
Then, with the aid of some questioning, Helen heard the whole sad story of Mary Boyle, who was a nurse girl in the family of the older generation of Starkweathers. It was in her arms the last babyof the family had panted his weakly little life out. She, too, had watched by the bed of the lady of the mansion, who had borne these unfortunate children only to see them die.
And Mary Boyle was one of that race who often lose their own identity in the families they serve. She had loved the lost babies as though they had been of her own flesh. She had walked the little passage at the back of the house (out of which had opened the nursery in those days) so many, many nights with one or the other of her fretful charges, that by and by she thought, at night, that she had them yet to soothe.
Mary Boyle, the weak-minded yet harmless ex-nurse, had been cherished by her old master. And in his will he had left her to the care of Mr. Cornelius, the heir. In turn she had been left a life interest in the mansion—to the extent of shelter and food and proper clothes—when Willets Starkweather became proprietor.
He could not get rid of the old lady. But, when he refurnished the house and made it over, he had banished Mary Boyle to the attic rooms. The girls were ashamed of her. She sometimes talked loudly if company was about. And always of the children she had once attended. She spoke of them as though they were still in her care, and told how she had walked the hall with one, or theother, of her dead and gone treasures the very night before!
For it was found necessary to allow Mary Boyle to have the freedom of that short corridor on the chamber floor late at night. Otherwise she would not remain secluded in her own rooms at the top of the house during the daytime.
As the lower servants came and went, finally only Mrs. Olstrom and Mr. Lawdor knew about the old lady, save the family. And Mr. Starkweather impressed it upon the minds of both these employés that he did not wish the old lady discussed below stairs.
So the story had risen that the house was haunted. The legend of the “ghost walk” was established. And Mary Boyle lived out her lonely life, with nobody to speak to save the housekeeper, who saw her daily; Mr. Lawdor, who climbed to her rooms perhaps once each week, and Mr. Starkweather himself, who saw and reported upon her case to his fellow trustees each month.
It was, to Helen, an unpleasant story. It threw a light on the characters of her uncle and cousins which did not enhance her admiration of them, to say the least. She had found them unkind, purse-proud heretofore; but to her generous soul their treatment of the little old woman, who must be but a small charge upon the estate, seemed farmore blameworthy than their treatment of herself.
The story of the old butler made Helen quiver with indignation. It was like keeping the old lady in jail—this shutting her away into the attic of the great house. The Western girl went back to Madison Avenue (she walked, but the old butler rode) with a thought in her mind that she was not quite sure was a wise one. Yet she had nobody to discuss her idea with—nobody whom she wished to take into her confidence.
There were two lonely and neglected people in that fine mansion. She, herself, was one. The old nurse, Mary Boyle, was the other. And Helen felt a strong desire to see and talk with her fellow-sufferer.