He cleared his throat. Expressing ideals was not easy. "I 'ope madam will forgive me if I sye that what it learned me was a fellow-feelin' with my own sort—with the poor. I've often wished as I could go out among the poor and ryse them up. I ain't a socialist—a little bit of a anarchist perhaps, but nothink extreme—and yet—Well, if Mr. Rashleigh had married a rich girl, I would 'a tyken it as natural and done my best for 'im, but since 'e 'asn't—Oh, can't madam see? It's—it's a kind o' pride with me to find some one like—like what I was when I was 'er age—out in the cold like—and bring 'er in—and 'elp 'er to tryne 'erself—so—so as—some day—to beat the best—them as 'as 'ad all the chances——"

He was interrupted by the tinkle of the telephone. It was a relief. He had said all he needed to say, all he knew how to say. Whether madam understood it or not he couldn't tell, since she didn't seize ideas quickly.

"If madam will excuse me now, I'll go and answer that call."

But Letty sprang up in alarm. "Oh, don't leave me. Some of them women will blow in——"

"None of them women will come—" he threw a delicate emphasis on the word—"if madam'll just sit down. They don't mean to come. I'll explyne that to madam when I come back, if she'll only not leave this room."



Chapter VI

"Good morning, Steptoe. Will you ask Mr. Allerton if he'll speak to Miss Walbrook?"

"Mr. Allerton 'as gone to the New Netherlands club for 'is breakfast, miss."

"Oh, thanks. I'll call him up there."

She didn't want to call him up there, at a club, where a man must like to feel safe from feminine intrusion, but the matter was too pressing to permit of hesitation. Since the previous afternoon she had gone through much searching of heart. She was accustomed to strong reactions from tempestuousness to penitence, but not of the violence of this one.

Summoned to the telephone, Allerton felt as if summoned to the bar of judgment. He divined who it was, and he divined the reason for the call.

"Good morning, Rash!"

His voice was absolutely dead. "Good morning, Barbara!"

"I know you're cross with me for calling you at the club."

"Oh, no! Not at all!"

"But I couldn't wait any longer. I wanted you to know—I've got it on again, Rash—never to come off any more."

He was dumb. Thirty seconds at least went by, and he had made no response.

"Aren't you glad?"

"I—I could have been glad—if—if I'd known you were going to do it."

"And now you know that it's done."

He repeated in his lifeless voice, "Yes, now I know that it's done."

"Well?"

Again he was silent. Two or three times he tried to find words, producing nothing but a stammering of incoherent syllables. "I—I can't talk about it here, Barbe," he managed to articulate at last. "You must let me come round and see you."

It was her voice now that was dead. "When will you come, Rash?"

"Now—at once—if you can see me."

"Then come."

She put up the receiver without saying more. He knew that she knew. She knew at least that something had happened which was fatal to them both.

She received him not in the drawing-room, but in a little den on the right of the front door which was also alive with Miss Walbrook's modern personality. A gold-colored portiere from Albert Herter's looms screened them from the hall, and the chairs were covered with bits of Herter tapestry representing fruits. A cabinet of old white Bennington faience stood against a wall, which was further adorned with three or four etchings of Sears Gallagher's. Barbara wore a lacy thing in hydrangea-colored crepe de chine, loosely girt with a jade-green ribbon tasselled in gold, the whole bringing out the faintly Egyptian note in her personality.

They dispensed with a greeting, because she spoke the minute he crossed the threshold of the room.

"Rash, what is it? Why couldn't you tell me on the telephone?"

He wished now that he had. It would have saved this explanation face to face. "Because I couldn't. Because—because I've been too much of an idiot to—to tell you about it—either on the telephone or in any other way."

"How?" He thought she must understand, but she seemed purposely dense. "Sit down. Tell me about it. It can't be so terrible—all of a sudden like this."

He couldn't sit down. He could only turn away from her and gulp in his dry throat. "You remember what I said—what I said—yesterday—about—about the—the Gissing fellow?"

She nodded fiercely. "Yes. Go on. Get it out."

"Well—well—I've—I've done that."

She threw out her arms. She threw back her head till the little nut-brown throat was taut. The cry rent her. It rent him.

"You—fool!"

He stood with head hanging. He longed to run away, and yet he longed also to throw himself at her feet. If he could have done exactly as he felt impelled, he would have laid his head on her breast and wept like a child.

She swung away from him, pacing the small room like a frenzied animal. Her breath came in short, hard pantings that were nearly sobs. Suddenly she stopped in front of him with a sort of calm.

"What made you?"

He barely lifted his agonized black eyes. "You,"

She was in revolt again. "I? What did I do?"

"You—you threw away my ring. You said it was all—all over."

"Well? Couldn't I say that without driving you to act the madman? No one but a madman would have gone out of this house and—" She clasped her forehead in her hands with a dramatic lifting of the arms. "Oh! It's too much! I don't care about myself. But to have it on your conscience that a man has thrown his life away——"

He asked meekly, "What good was it to me when you wouldn't have it?"

She stamped her foot. "Rash, you'll drive me insane. Your life might be no good to you at all, and yet you might give it a chance for twenty-four hours—that isn't much, is it?—before you—" She caught herself up. "Tell me. You don't mean to say that you're married?"

He nodded.

"To whom?"

"Her first name is Letty. I've forgotten the second name."

"Where did you find her?"

"Over there in the Park."

"And she went and married you—like that?"

"She was all alone—chucked out by a stepfather——"

She burst into a hard laugh. "Oh, you baby! You believed that? The kind of story that's told by nine of the——"



He interrupted quickly. "Don't call her anything, Barbe—I mean any kind of a bad name. She's all right as far as that goes. There's a kind that couldn't take you in."

"There's no kind that couldn't take you in!"

"Perhaps not, but it's the one thing in—in this whole idiotic business that's on the level—I mean she is. I'd give my right hand to put her back where I found her yesterday—just as she was—but she's straight."

She dropped into a chair. The first wild tumult of rage having more or less spent its force, she began, with a kind of heart-broken curiosity, to ask for the facts. She spoke nervously, beating a palm with a gold tassel of her girdle. "Begin at the beginning. Tell me all about it."

He leaned on the mantelpiece, of which the only ornaments were a child's head in white and blue terra cotta by Paul Manship, balanced by a pair of old American glass candlesticks, and told the tale as consecutively as he could. He recounted everything, even to the bringing her home, the putting her in the little, back spare-room, and her adoption by Beppo, the red cocker spaniel. By the time he had finished, his heart was a little eased, and some of her tenderness toward him was beginning to flow forth. She was like that, all wrath at one minute, all gentleness the next. Springing to her feet, she caught him by the arm, pressing herself against him.

"All right, Rash. You've done it. That's settled. But it can be undone again."

He pressed her head back from him, resting the knot of her hair in the hollow of his palm and looking down into her eyes.

"How can it be undone?"

"Oh, there must be ways. A man can't be allowed to ruin his life—to ruin two lives—for a prank. We'll just have to think. If you made it worth while for her to take you, you can make it worth while for her to let you go. She'll do it."

"She'd do it, of course. She doesn't care. I'm nothing to her, not any more than she to me. I shan't see her any more than I can help. I suppose she must stay at the house till—I told Steptoe to look after her."

She took a position at one end of the mantelpiece, while he faced her from the other. She gave him wise counsel. He was to see his lawyers at once and tell them the whole story. Lawyers always saw the way out of things. There was the Bellington boy who married a show-girl. She had been bought off, and the lawyers had managed it. Now the Bellington boy was happily married to one of the Plantagenet Jones girls and lived at Marillo Park. Then there was the Silliman boy who had married the notorious Kate Cookesley. The lawyers had found the way out of that, too, and now the Silliman boy was a secretary of the American Embassy in Rome. Accidents such as had happened to Rash were regrettable of course, but it would be folly to think that a perfectly good life must be done for just because it had got a crack in it.

"We'll play the game, of course," she wound up. "But it's a game, and the stronger side must win. What should you say of my going to see her—she needn't know who I am further than that I'm a friend of yours—and finding out for myself?"

"Finding out what?"

"Finding out her price, silly. What do you suppose? A woman can often see things like that where a man would be blind."

He didn't know. He thought it might be worth while. He would leave it to her. "I'm not worth the trouble, Barbe," he said humbly.

With this she agreed. "I know you're not. I can't think for a minute why I take it or why I should like you. But I do. That's straight."

"And I adore you, Barbe."

She shrugged her shoulders with a little, comic grimace. "Oh, well! I suppose every one has his own way of showing adoration, but I must say that yours is original."

"If it's original to be desperate when the woman you worship drives you to despair——"

There was another little comic grimace, though less comic than the first time. "Oh, yes, I know. It's always the woman whom a man worships that's in the wrong. I've noticed that. Men are never impossible—all of their own accord."

"I could be as tame as a cat if——"

"If it wasn't for me. Thank you, Rash. I said just now I was fond of you, and I should have to be to—to stand for all the——"

"I'm not blaming you, Barbe. I'm only——"

"Thanks again. The day you're not blaming me is certainly one to be marked with a white stone, as the Romans used to say. But if it comes to blaming any one, Rash, after what happened yesterday——"

"What happened yesterday wasn't begun by me. It would never have entered my mind to do the crazy thing I did, if you hadn't positively and finally—as I thought—flung me down. I think you must do me that justice, Barbe—that justice, at the least."

"Oh, I do you justice enough. I don't see that you can complain of that. It seems to me too that I temper justice with mercy to a degree that—that most people find ridiculous."

"By most people I suppose you mean your aunt."

"Oh, do leave Aunt Marion out of it. You can't forgive the poor thing for not liking you. Well, she doesn't, and I can't help it. She thinks you're a——"

"A fool—as you were polite enough to say just now."

She spread her hands apart in an attitude of protestation. "Well, if I did, Rash, surely you must admit that I had provocation."

"Oh, of course. The wonder is that with the provocation you can——"

"Forgive you, and try to patch it up again after this frightful gash in the agreement. Well, it is a wonder. I don't believe that many girls——"

"I only want you to understand, Barbe, that the gash in the agreement was made, not by what I did, but what you did. If you hadn't sent me to the devil, I shouldn't have been in such a hurry to go there."

She was off. "Yes, there you are again. Always me! I'm the one! You may be the gunpowder, the perfectly harmless gunpowder, but it would never blow up if I didn't come as the match. I make all the explosions. I set you crazy. I send you to the devil. I make you go and marry a girl you never laid eyes on in your life before."

So it was the same old scene all over again, till both were exhausted, and she had flung herself into a chair to cover her face with her hands and burst into tears. Instantly he was on his knees beside her.

"Barbe! Barbe! My beloved Barbe! Don't cry. I'm a brute. I'm a fool. I'm not satisfied with breaking my own heart, but I must go to work and break yours. Oh, Barbe, forgive me. I'm all to pieces. Forgive me and let me go away and shoot myself. What's the good of a poor, wrecked creature like me hanging on and making such a mess of things? Let me kill myself before I kill you——"

"Oh, hush!"

Seizing his head, she pressed it against her bosom convulsively. By the shaking of his shoulders, she felt him sob. He was a poor creature. She was saying so to herself. But just because he was, something in her yearned over him. He could be different; he could be stronger and of value in the world if there was only some one to handle him rightly. She could do it—if she could only learn to handle herself. She would learn to handle herself—for his sake. He was worth saving. He had fine qualities, and a good heart most of all. It was his very fineness which put him out of place in a world like that of New York. He was a delicate, brittle, highly-wrought thing which should be touched only with the greatest care, and all his life he had been pushed and hurtled about as if he were a football player or a business man. With the soul of a poet or a painter or a seer, he had been treated like the typical rough-and-ready American lad, till the sensitive nature had been brutalized, maimed, and frenzied.

She knew that. It was why she cared for him. Even when they were children she had seen that he wasn't getting fair treatment, either at home or in school or among the boys and girls with whom they both grew up. He was the exception, and American life allowed only for the rule. If you couldn't conform to the rule, you were guyed and tormented and ejected. Among all his associates she alone knew what he suffered, and because she knew it a vast pity made her cling to him. He had forced himself into the life of clubs, into the life of society, into the life of other men as other men lived their lives, and the effect on him had been so nearly ruinous that it was no wonder if he was always on the edge of nervous explosion. His very wealth which might have been a protection was, under the uniform pressure of American social habit, an incitement to him to follow the wrong way. She knew it, and she alone. She could save him, and she alone. She could save him, if she could first of all save herself.

With his head pressed against her she made the vow as she had made it fifty times already. She would be gentle with him; she would be patient; she would let him work off on her the agony of his suffering nerves, and smile at him through it all. She would help him out of the idiotic situation in which he found himself. The other girl was only an incident, as the show-girl had been to the Bellington boy, and could be disposed of. She attached to that only a secondary importance in comparison with the whole thing—her saving him. She would save him, even if it meant rooting out every instinct in her soul.

But as he made his way blindly back to the club, his own conclusions were different. He must go to the devil. He must go to the devil now, whatever else he did. Going to the devil would set her free from him. It was the only thing that would. It would set him free from the other woman, set him free from life itself. Life tortured him. He was a misfit in it. He should never have been born. He had always understood that his parents hadn't wanted children and that his coming had been resented. You couldn't be born like that and find it natural to be in the world. He had never found it natural. He couldn't remember the time when he hadn't been out of his element in life, and now he must recognize the fact courageously.

It would be easy enough. He had worked up an artificial appetite for all that went under the head of debauchery. It had meant difficult schooling at first, because his natural tastes were averse to that kind of thing, but he had been schooled. Schooled was the word, since his training had begun under the very roof where his father had sent him to get religion and discipline. There had been no let-up in this educational course, except when he himself had stolen away, generally in solitude, for a little holiday.

But as he put it to himself, he knew all the roads and by-paths and cross-country leaps that would take him to the gutter, and to the gutter he would go.



Chapter VII

And all this while Letty was in the dining-room, learning certain lessons from her new-found friend.

For some little time she had been alone. Steptoe finished his conversation with Miss Walbrook on the telephone, but did not come back. She sat at the table feeding Beppo with bread and milk, but wondering if, after all, she hadn't better make a bolt for it. She had had her breakfast, which was an asset to the good, and nothing worse could happen to her out in the open world than she feared in this great dim, gloomy house. She had once crept in to look at the cathedral and, overwhelmed by its height, immensity, and mystery, had crept out again. Its emotional suggestions had been more than she could bear. She felt now as if her bed had been made and her food laid out in that cathedral—as if, as long as she remained, she must eat and sleep in this vast, pillared solemnity.

And that was only one thing. There were small practical considerations even more terrible to confront. If Nettie were to appear again ...

But it was as to this that Steptoe was making his appeal. "I sye, girls, don't you go to mykin' a fuss and spoilin' your lives, when you've got a chanst as'll never come again."

Mrs. Courage answered for them all. To sacrifice decency to self-interest wasn't in them, nor never would be. Some there might be, like 'Enery Steptoe, who would sell their birthright for a mess of pottage, but Mary Ann Courage was not of that company, nor any other woman upon whom she could use her influence. If a hussy had been put to reign over them, reigned over by a hussy none of them would be. All they asked was to see her once, to deliver the ultimatum of giving notice.

"It's a strynge thing to me," Steptoe reasoned, "that when one poor person gets a lift, every other poor person comes down on 'em."

"And might we arsk who you means by poor persons?"

"Who should I mean, Mrs. Courage, but people like us? If we don't 'ang by each other, who will 'ang by us, I should like to know? 'Ere's one of us plyced in a 'igh position, and instead o' bein' proud of it, and givin' 'er a lift to carry 'er along, you're all for mykin' it as 'ard for 'er as you can. Do you call that sensible?"

"I call it sensible for everyone to stye in their proper spere."

"So that if a man's poor, you must keep 'im poor, no matter 'ow 'e tries to better 'imself. That's what your proper speres would come to."

But argument being of no use, Steptoe could only make up his mind to revolution in the house. "The poor's very good to the poor when one of 'em's in trouble," was his summing up, "but let one of 'em 'ave an extry stroke of luck, and all the rest'll jaw against 'im like so many magpies." As a parting shot he declared on leaving the kitchen, "The trouble with you girls is that you ain't got no class spunk, and that's why, in sperrit, you'll never be nothink but menials."

This lack of esprit de corps was something he couldn't understand, but what he understood less was the need of the heart to touch occasionally the high points of experience. Mrs. Courage and Jane, to say nothing of Nettie, after thirty years of domestic routine had reached the place where something in the way of drama had become imperative. The range and the pantry produce inhibitions as surely as the desk or the drawing-room. On both natures inhibitions had been packed like feathers on a seabird, till the soul cried out to be released from some of them. It might mean going out from the home that had sheltered them for years, and breaking with all their traditions, but now that the chance was there, neither could refuse it. To a virtuous woman, starched and stiffened in her virtue, steeped in it, dyed in it, permeated by it through and through, nothing so stirs the dramatic, so quickens the imagination, so calls the spirit to the purple emotional heights, as contact with the sister she knows to be a hussy. For Jane Cakebread and Mary Ann Courage the opportunity was unique.

"Then I'll go. I'll go straight now."

As Steptoe brought the information that the three women of the household were coming to announce the resignation of their posts, Letty sprang to her feet.

"May I arsk madam to sit down again and let me explyne?"

Taking this as an order, she sank back into her chair again. He stood confronting her as before, one hand resting lightly on the table.

"Nothink so good won't 'ave 'appened in this 'ouse since old Mrs. Allerton went to work and died."

Letty's eyes shone with their tiny fires, not in pleasure but in wonder.

"When old servants is good, they're good, but even when they're good, there's times when you can't 'elp wishin' as 'ow the Lord 'ud be pleased to tyke them to 'Imself."

He allowed this to sink in before going further.

"The men's all right, for the most part. Indoor work comes natural to 'em, and they'll swing it without no complynts. But with the women it's kick, kick, kick, and when they're worn theirselves out with kickin', they'll begin to kick again. What's plye for a man, for them ain't nothink but slyvery."

Letty listened as one receiving revelations from another world.

"I ain't what they call a woman-'ater. I believe as God made woman for a purpose. Only I can't bring myself to think as the human race 'as rightly found out yet what that purpose is. God's wyes is always dark, and when it comes to women, they're darker nor they are elsewheres. One thing I do know, and we'll be a lot more comfortable when more of us finds it out—that God never made women for the 'ome."

In spite of her awe of him, Letty found this doctrine difficult to accept.

"If God didn't make 'em for the home, mister, where on earth would you put 'em?"

The wintry color came out again on the old man's cheeks. "If madam would call me Steptoe," he said ceremoniously, "I think she'd find it easier. I mean," he went on, reverting to the original theme, "that 'E didn't make 'em to be cooks and 'ousemaids and parlormaids, and all that. That's men's work. Men'll do it as easy as a bird'll sing. I never see the woman yet as didn't fret 'erself over it, like a wild animal'll fret itself in a circus cage. It spiles women to put 'em to 'ousework, like it always spiles people to put 'em to jobs for which the Lord didn't give 'em no haptitude."

Letty was puzzled, but followed partially.

"I've watched 'em and watched 'em, and it's always the syme tyle. They'll go into service young and joyous like, but it won't be two or three years before they'll have growed cat-nasty like this 'ere Jyne Cykebread and Mary Ann Courage. Madam 'ud never believe what sweet young things they was when I first picked 'em out—Mrs. Courage a young widow, and Jynie as nice a girl as madam 'ud wish to see, only with the features what Mrs. Allerton used to call a little hover-haccentuated. And now—!" He allowed the conditions to speak for themselves without criticizing further.

"It's keepin' 'em in a 'ome what's done it. They knows it theirselves—and yet they don't. Inside they've got the sperrits of young colts that wants to kick up their 'eels in the pasture. They don't mean no worse nor that, only when people comes to Jynie's age and Mrs. Courage's they 'ave to kick up their 'eels in their own wye. If madam'll remember that, and be pytient with them like———"

Letty cried in alarm, "But it's got nothin' to do with me!"

"If madam'll excuse me, it's got everything to do with 'er. She's the missus of this 'ouse."

"Oh, no, I ain't. Mr. Allerton just brung me here——"

Once more there was the delicate emphasis with which he had corrected other slips. "Mr. Allerton brought madam, and told me to see that she was put in 'er proper plyce. If madam'll let me steer the thing, I'll myke it as easy for 'er as easy."

He reflected as to how to make the situation clear to her. "I've been readin' about the time when our lyte Queen Victoria come to the throne as quite a young girl. She didn't know nothin' about politics or presidin' at councils or nothin'. But she had a prime minister—a kind of hupper servant, you might sye—'er servant was what 'e always called 'imself—and whatever 'e told 'er to do, she done. Walked through it all, you might sye, till she got the 'ang of it, but once she did get the 'ang of it—well, there wasn't no big-bug in the world that our most grycious sovereign lydy couldn't put it all hover on."

Once more he allowed her time to assimilate this parable.

"Now if madam would only think of 'erself as called in youth to reign hover this 'ouse——"

"Oh, but I couldn't!"

"And yet it's madam's duty, now that she's married to its 'ead——"

"Yes, but he didn't marry me like that. He married me—all queer like. This was the way."

She poured out the story, while Steptoe listened quietly. There being no elements in it of the kind he called "shydy," he found it romantic. No one had ever suspected the longings for romance which had filled his heart and imagination when he was a poor little scullion boy; but the memory of them, with some of the reality, was still fresh in his hidden inner self. Now it seemed as if remotely and vicariously romance might be coming to him after all, through the boy he adored.

On her tale his only comment was to say: "I've been readin'—I'm a great reader," he threw in parenthetically, "wonderful exercise for the mind, and learns you things which you wouldn't be likely to 'ear tell of—but I've been readin' about a king—I'll show you 'is nyme in the book—what fell in love with a beggar myde——"

"Oh, but Mr. Allerton didn't fall in love with me."

"That remynes to be seen."

She lifted her hands in awed amazement. "Mister—I mean, Steptoe—you—you don't think——?"

The subway dream of love at first sight was as tenacious in her soul as the craving for romance in his.

He nodded. "I've known strynger things to 'appen."

"But—but—he couldn't—" it was beyond her power of expression, though Steptoe knew what she meant—"not him!"

He answered judicially. "'E may come to it. It'll be a tough job to bring 'im—but if madam'll be guided by me———"

Letty collapsed. Her spirit grew faint as the spirit of Christian when he descried far off the walls of the Celestial City, with the Dark River rolling between him and it. Letty knew the Dark River must be there, but if beyond it there lay the slightest chance of the Celestial City....

She came back to herself, as it were, on hearing Steptoe say that the procession from the kitchen would presently begin to form itself.

"Now if madam'll be guided by me she'll meet this situytion fyce to fyce."

"Oh, but I'd never know what to say."

"Madam won't need to say nothink. She won't 'ave to speak. 'Ere they'll troop in—" a gesture described Mrs. Courage leading the advance through the doorway—"and 'ere they'll stand. Madam'll sit just where she's sittin'—a little further back from the tyble—lookin' over the mornin' pyper like—" he placed the paper in her hand—"and as heach gives notice, madam'll just bow 'er 'ead. See?"

Madam saw, but not exactly.

"Now if she'll just move 'er chair——"

The chair was moved in such a way as to make it seem that the occupant, having finished her breakfast, was giving herself a little more space.

"And if madam would remove 'er 'at and jacket, she'd—she'd seem more like the lydy of the 'ouse at 'ome."

Letty took off these articles of apparel, which Steptoe whisked out of sight.

"Now I'll be Mrs. Courage comin' to sye, 'Madam, I wish to give notice.' Madam'll lower the pyper just enough to show 'er inclinin' of 'er 'ead, assentin' to Mrs. Courage leavin' 'er. Mrs. Courage will be all for 'avin' words—she's a great 'and for words, Mrs. Courage is—but if madam won't sye nothin' at all, the wind'll be out o' Mrs. Courage's syles like. Now, will madam be so good——?"

Having passed out into the hall, he entered with Mrs. Courage's majestic gait, pausing some three feet from the table to say:

"Madam, things bein' as they are, and me not wishin' to stye no longer in the 'ouse where I've served so many years, I beg to give notice that I'm a givin' of notice and mean to quit right off."

Letty lowered the paper from before her eyes, jerking her head briskly.

"Ye-es," Steptoe commended doubtfully, "a lettle too—well, too habrupt, as you might sye. Most lydies—real 'igh lydies, like the lyte Mrs. Allerton—inclines their 'ead slow and gryceful like. First, they throws it back a bit, so as to get a purchase on it, and then they brings it forward calm like, lowerin' it stytely—Perhaps if madam'ud be me for a bit—that 'ud be Mrs. Courage—and let me sit there and be 'er, I could show 'er——"

The places were reversed. It was Letty who came in as Mrs. Courage, while Steptoe, seated in the chair, lowered the paper to the degree which he thought dignified. Letty mumbled something like the words the hypothetical Mrs. Courage was presumed to use, while Steptoe slowly threw back his head for the purchase, bringing it forward in condescending grace. Language could not have given Mrs. Courage so effective a retort courteous.

Letty was enchanted. "Oh, Steptoe, let me have another try. I believe I could swing the cat."

Again the places were reversed. Steptoe having repeated the role of Mrs. Courage, Letty imitated him as best she could in getting the purchase for her bow and catching his air of high-bred condescension.

"Better," he approved, "if madam wouldn't lower 'er 'ead quite so far back'ard. You see, madam, a lydy don't know she's throwin' back 'er 'ead so as to get a grip on it. She does it unconscious like, because bein' of a 'aughty sperrit she 'olds it 'igh natural. If madam'll only stiffen 'er neck like, as if sperrit 'ad made 'er about two inches taller than she is——"

Having seized this idea, Letty tried again, with such success that Mrs. Courage was disposed of. Jane Cakebread followed next, with Nettie last of all. Unaware of his possession of histrionic ability, Steptoe gave to each character its outstanding traits, fluttering like Jane, and giggling like Nettie, not in zeal for a newly discovered interpretative art, but in order that Letty might be nowhere caught at a disadvantage. He was delighted with her quickness in imitation.

"Couldn't 'ave done that better myself," he declared after Nettie had been dismissed for the third or fourth time. "When it comes to the inclinin' of the 'ead I should sye as madam was about letter-perfect, as they sye on the styge. If Mr. Rash was to see it, 'e'd swear as 'is ma 'ad come back again."

A muffled sound proceeded from the back part of the hallway, with some whispering and once or twice Nettie's stifled cackle of a laugh.

"'Ere they are," he warned her. "Madam must be firm and control 'erself. There's nothink for 'er to be afryde of. Just let 'er think of the lyte Queen Victoria, called to the throne when younger even than madam is——"

A shuffling developed into one lone step, heavy, stately, and funereal. Doing her best to emulate the historic example held up to her, Letty lengthened her neck and stiffened it. A haughty spirit seemed to rise in her by the mere process of the elongation. She was so nervous that the paper shook in her hand, but she knew that if the Celestial City was to be won, she could shrink from no tests which might lead her on to victory.

Steptoe had relapsed into the major-domo's office, announcing from the doorway, "Mrs. Courage to see madam, if madam will be pleased to receive 'er."

Madam indicated that she was so pleased, scrambling after the standard of the maiden sovereign of Windsor Castle giving audience to princes and ambassadors.



Chapter VIII

"I'm 'ere."

Letty couldn't know, of course, that this announcement, made in a menacing female bass, was due to the fact that three swaying bodies had been endeavoring so to get round the deployed paper wings as to see what was hidden there, and had found their efforts vain. All she could recognize was the summons to the bar of social judgment. To the bar of social judgment she would have gone obediently, had it not been for that rebelliousness against being "looked down upon" which had lately mastered her. As it was, she lengthened her neck by another half inch, receiving from the exercise a new degree of self-strengthening.

"Mrs. Courage is 'ere, madam," Steptoe seconded, "and begs to sye as she's givin' notice to quit madam's service——"

The explosion came as if Mrs. Courage was strangling.

"When I wants words took out of my mouth by 'Enery Steptoe or anybody else I'll sye so. If them as I've come into this room to speak to don't feel theirselves aible to fyce me——"

"Madam'll excuse an old servant who's outlived 'er time," Steptoe intervened, "and not tyke no notice. They always abuses the kindness that's been showed 'em, and tykes liberties which——"

But not for nothing had Mrs. Courage been born to the grand manner.

"When 'Enery Steptoe talks of old servants out-livin' their time and tykin' liberties 'e speaks of what 'e knows all about from personal experience. 'E was an old man when I was a little thing not so high."

The appeal was to the curiosity of the girl behind the screen. To judge of how high Mrs. Courage had not been at a time when Steptoe was already an old man she might be enticed from her fortifications. But the pause only offered Steptoe a new opportunity.

"And so, if madam can dispense with 'er services, which I understand madam can, Mrs. Courage will be a-leavin' of us this morning, with all our good wishes, I'm sure. Good-dye to you, Mary Ann, and God bless you after all the years you've been with us. Madam's givin' you your dismissal."

Obedient to her cue Letty lowered her guard just enough to incline her head with the grace Steptoe had already pronounced "letter perfect." The shock to Mrs. Courage can best be narrated in her own terms to Mrs. Walter Wildgoose later in the day.

"Airs! No one couldn't imagine it, Bessie, what 'adn't seen it for theirselves—what them baggages'll do—smokin'—and wearin' pearl necklaces—and 'avin' their own limousines—all that I've seen and 'ad got used to—but not the President's wife—not Mary Queen of England—could 'a myde you feel as if you was dirt hunder their feet like what this one—and 'er with one of them marked down sixty-nine cent blouses that 'adn't seen the wash since—and as for looks—why, she didn't 'ave a look to bless 'erself—and a-'oldin' of 'erself like what a empress might—and bowin' 'er 'ead, and goin' back to 'er pyper, as if I'd disturbed 'er at 'er readin'—and the dead and spitten image of 'Enery Steptoe 'imself she is—and you know 'ow many times we've all wondered as to why 'e didn't marry—and 'im with syvings put by—Jynie thinks as 'e's worth as much as—and you know what a 'and Jynie is for ferritin' out what's none of 'er business—why, if Jynie Cykebread could 'a myde 'erself Jynie Steptoe—but that's somethink wild 'orses wouldn't myke poor Jynie see—that no man wouldn't look at 'er the second time if it wasn't for to laugh—pitiful, I call it, at 'er aige—and me always givin' the old rip to know as it was no use 'is 'angin' round where I was—as if I'd marry agyne, and me a widda, as you might sye, from my crydle—and if I did, it wouldn't 'a been a wicked old varlet what I always suspected 'e was leadin' a double life—and now to see them two fyces together—why, I says, 'ere's the explanytion as plyne as plyne can make it...."

All of which might have been true in rhetoric, but not in fact. For what had really given Mrs. Courage the coup de grace we must go back to the scene of the morning.

Ignoring both Letty's inclination of the head and Steptoe's benediction she had shown herself hurt where she was tenderest.

"Now that there's no one to ryse their voice agynst the disgryce brought on this family but me——"

"Speak right up, Jynie. Don't be afryde. Madam won't eat you. She knows that you've come to give notice——"

Mrs. Courage struggled on. "No one ain't goin' to bow me out of the 'ouse I've been cook-'ousekeeper in these twenty-seven year——"

"Sorry as madam'll be to lose you, Jynie, she won't stand in the wye of your gettin' a better plyce——"

Mrs. Courage's roar being that of the wounded lioness she was, the paper shook till it rattled in Letty's hand.

"I will be listened to. I've a right to be 'eard. My 'eart's been as much in this 'ouse and family as 'Enery Steptoe's 'eart; and to see shyme and ruin come upon it——"

Steptoe's interruption was in a tone of pleased surprise.

"Why, you still 'ere, Mary Ann? We thought you'd tyken leave of us. Madam didn't know you was speakin'. She won't detyne you, madam won't. You and Jynie and Nettie'll all find cheques for your wyges pyde up to a month a 'ead, as I know Mr. Rashleigh'd want me to do...."

Shame and ruin! Letty couldn't follow the further unfoldings of Steptoe's diplomacy because of these two words. They summed up what she brought—what she had been married to bring—to a house of which even she could see the traditions were of honor. Vaguely aware of voices which she attributed to Jane and Nettie, her spirit was in revolt against the role for which her rashness of yesterday had let her in, and which Steptoe was forcing upon her.

Jane was still whimpering and sniffling:

"I'm sure I never dreamed that things would 'appen like what 'as 'appened—and us all one family, as you might sye—'opin' the best of everyone——"

"Jynie, stop," Mrs. Courage's voice had become low and firm, with emotion in its tone, making Letty catch her breath. "My 'eart's breakin', and I ain't a-goin' to let it break without mykin' them that's broken it know what they've done to me."

"Now, Mary Ann," Steptoe tried to say, peaceably, "madam's grytely pressed for time——"

"'Enery Steptoe, do you suppose that you're the only one in the world as 'as loved that boy? Ain't 'e my boy just as much as ever 'e was yours?"

"'E's boy to them as stands by 'im, Mrs. Courage—and stands by them that belongs to 'im. The first thing you do is to quit——"

"I'm not quittin'; I'm druv out. I'm druv out at a hour's notice from the 'ome I've slyved for all my best years, leavin' dishonor and wickedness in my plyce——"

Letty could endure no more. Dashing to the floor the paper behind which she crouched she sprang to her feet.

"Is that me?" she demanded.

The surprise of the attack caught Mrs. Courage off her guard. She could only open her mouth, and close it again, soundlessly and helplessly. Jane stared, her curiosity gratified at last. Nettie turned to whisper to Jane, "There; what did I tell you? The commonest thing!" Steptoe nodded his head quietly. In this little creature with her sudden flame, eyes all fire and cheeks of the wine-colored damask rose, he seemed to find a corroboration of his power of divining character.

It seemed long before Mrs. Courage had found the strength to live up to her convictions, by faintly murmuring: "Who else?"

"Then tell me what you accuse me of?"

Mrs. Courage saw her advantage. "We ain't 'ere to accuse nobody of nothink. If it's 'intin' that I'd tyke awye anyone's character it's a thing I've 'ardly ever done, and no one can sye it of me. All we want is to give our notice——"

"Then why don't you do it—and go?"

Once more Steptoe intervened, diplomatically. "That's what Mrs. Courage is a-doin' of, madam. She's finished, ain't you Mary Ann? Jynie and Nettie is finished too——"

But it was Letty now who refused this mediation.

"No, they ain't finished. Let 'em go on."

But no one did go on. Mrs. Courage was now dumb. She was dumb and frightened, falling back on her two supporters. All three together they huddled between the portieres. If Steptoe could have calmed his protegee he would have done it; but she was beyond his control.

"Am I the ruin and shame to this house that you was talkin' about just now? If I am, why don't you speak out and put it to me plain?"

There was no response. The spectators looked on as if they were at the theater.

"What have you all got against me anyhow?" Letty insisted, passionately. "What did I ever do to you? What's women's hearts made of, that they can't let a poor girl be?"

Mrs. Courage had so far recovered as to be able to turn from one to another, to say in pantomime that she had been misunderstood. Jane began to cry; Nettie to laugh.

"Even if I was the bad girl you're tryin' to make me out I should think other women might show me a little pity. But I'm not a bad girl—not yet. I may be. I dunno but what I will. When I see the hateful thing bein' good makes of women it drives me to do the other thing."

This was the speech they needed to justify themselves. To be good made women hateful! Their dumb-crambo to each other showed that anyone who said so wild a thing stood already self-condemned.

But Letty flung up her head with a mettle which Steptoe hadn't seen since the days of the late Mrs. Allerton.

"I'm not in this house to drive no one else out of it. Them that have lived here for years has a right to it which I ain't got. You can go, and let me stay; or you can stay, and let me go. I'm the wife of the owner of this house, who married me straight and legal; but I don't care anything about that. You don't have to tell me I ain't fit to be his wife, because I know it as well as you do. All I'm sayin' is that you've got the choice to stay or go; and whichever you do, I'll do different."

Never in her life had she spoken so many words at one time. The effort drained her. With a torrent of dry sobs that racked her body she dropped back into her chair.

The hush was that of people who find the tables turned on themselves in a way they consider unwarranted. Of the general surprise Steptoe was quick to take advantage.

"There you are, girls. Madam couldn't speak no fairer, now could she?"

To this there was neither assent or dissent; but it was plain that no one was ready to pick up the glove so daringly thrown down.

"Now what I would suggest," Steptoe went on, craftily, "is that we all go back to the kitchen and talk it over quiet like. What we decide to do we can tell madam lyter."

For consent or refusal Jane and Nettie looked to Mary Ann, whose attitude was that of rejecting parley. She might, indeed, have rejected it, had not Letty, bowing her head on the arms she rested on the table, begun to cry bitterly.

It was then that you saw Mrs. Courage at her best. The gesture with which she swept her subordinates back into the hall was that of the supremacy of will.

"It shan't be said as I crush," she declared, nobly, directing Steptoe's attention to the weeping girl. "Where there's penitence I pity. God grant as them tears may gush out of an aichin' 'eart."



Chapter IX

By the time Letty was drying her eyes, her heart somewhat eased, Steptoe had come back. He came back with a smile. Something had evidently pleased him.

"So that's all over. Madam won't be bothered with other people's cat-nasty old servants after to-dye."

She felt a new access of alarm. "But they're not goin' away on account o' me? Don't let 'em do it. Lemme go instead. Oh, mister, I can't stay here, where everything's so different from what I'm used to."

He still smiled, his gentle old man's smile which somehow gave her confidence.

"Madam won't sye that after a dye or two. It's new to 'er yet, of course; but if she'll always remember that I'm 'ere, to myke everythink as easy as easy——"

"But what are you goin' to do, with no cook, and no chambermaid——?"

Standing with the corner of the table between him and her, he was saying to himself, "If Mr. Rash could only see 'er lookin' up like this—with 'er eyes all starry—and her cheeks with them dark-red roses—red roses like you'd rubbed with a little black...." But he suspended the romantic longing to say, aloud:

"If madam will permit me I'll tyke my measures as I've wanted to tyke 'em this long spell back."

Madam was not to worry as to the three women who were leaving the house, inasmuch as they had long been intending to leave it. Both Mrs. Courage and Jane, having graduated to the stage of "accommodating," were planning to earn more money by easier work. Nettie, since coming to America, had learned that housework was menial, and was going to be a milliner.

Madam's remorse being thus allayed he told what he hoped to do for madam's comfort. There would be no more women in the house, not till madam herself brought them back. An English chef who had lost an eye in the war, and an English waiter, ready to do chamberwork, who had left a foot on some battlefield, were prepared under Steptoe's direction to man the house. No woman whose household cares had not been eased by men, in the European fashion, knew what it was to live. A woman waited on by women only was kept in a state of nerves. Nerves were infectious. When one woman in a household got them the rest were sooner or later their prey. Unless strongly preventative measures were adopted they spread at times to the men. America was a dreadful country for nerves and it mostly came of women working with women; whereas, according to Steptoe's psychology, men should work with women and women with men. There were thousands of women who were bitter in heart at cooking and making beds who would be happy as linnets in offices and shops; and thousands of men who were dying of boredom in offices and shops who would be in their element cooking and making beds.

"One of the things the American people 'as got back'ards, if madam'll allow me to sye so, is that 'ouse'old work is not fit for a white man. When you come to that the American people ain't got a sense of the dignity of their 'omes. They can't see their 'omes as run by anything but slyves. All that's outside the dinin' room and the drorin' room and the masters' bedrooms the American sees as if it was a low-down thing, even when it's hunder 'is own roof. Colored men, yellow men, may cook 'is meals and myke 'is bed; but a white man'd demean 'imself. A poor old white man like me when 'e's no longer fit for 'ard outdoor work ain't allowed to do nothink; when all the time there's women workin' their fingers to the bone that 'e could be a great 'elp to, and who 'e'd like to go to their 'elp."

This was one reason, he argued, why the question of domestic aid in America was all at sixes and sevens. It was not considered humanly. It was more than a question of supply and demand; it was one of national prejudice. A rich man could have a French chef and an English butler, and as many strapping indoor men—some of them much better fitted for manual labor—as he liked, and find it a social glory; while a family of moderate means were obliged to pay high wages to crude incompetent women from the darkest backwaters of European life, just because they were women.

"And the women's mostly to blyme," he reasoned. "They suffers—nobody knows what they suffers better nor me—just because they ain't got the spunk to do anything but suffer. They've got it all in their own 'ands, and they never learn. Men is slow to learn; but women don't 'ardly ever learn at all."

Letty was thinking of herself, as she glanced up at this fount of wisdom with the question:

"Don't none of 'em?"

Having apparently weighed this already he had his answer. "None that's been drilled a little bit before 'and. Once let woman feel as so and so is the custom, and for 'er that custom, whether good or bad, is there to stye. They sye that chyngin' 'er mind is a woman's privilege; but the woman that chynged 'er mind about a custom is one I never met yet."

She took him as seriously as he took himself.

"Don't you like women, mister—I mean, Steptoe?"

He pondered before replying. "I don't know as I could sye. I've never 'ad a chance to see much of women except in 'ousework, where they're out of their element and tyken at a disadvantage. I don't like none I've ever run into there, because none of 'em never was no sport."

The inquiry in her golden eyes led him a little further.

"No one ain't a sport what sighs and groans over their job, and don't do it cheerful like. No one ain't a sport what undertykes a job and ain't proud of it. If a woman will go into 'ousework let 'er do it honorable. If she chooses to be a servant let 'er be a servant, and not be ashymed to sye she is one. So if madam arsks me if I like 'em I 'ave to confess I don't, because as far as I see women I mostly 'ear 'em complyne."

Her admiration was quite sincere as she said: "I shouldn't think they'd complain if they had you to put 'em wise."

He corrected gently. "If they 'ad me to tell 'em."

"If they 'ad you to tell 'em," she imitated, meekly.

"Madam mustn't pick up the bad 'abit of droppin' 'er haitches," he warned, parentally. "I'll learn 'er a lot, but that's one thing I mustn't learn 'er. I don't do it often—Oh, once in a wye, mybe—but that's something madam speaks right already—just like all Americans."

Delighted that there was one thing about her that was right already she reminded him of what he had said, that women never learned.

"I said women as 'ad been drilled a bit. But madam's different. Madam comes into this 'ouse newborn, as you might sye; and that'll myke it easier for 'er and me."

"You mean that I'll not be a kicker."

Once more he smiled his gentle reproof. "Oh, madam wouldn't be a kicker any'ow. Jynie or Nettie or Mary Ann Courage or even me—we might be kickers; but if madam was to hobject to anything she'd be—displeased."

She knitted her brows. The distinction was difficult. He saw he had better explain more fully.

"It's only the common crowd what kicks. It's only the common crowd what uses the expression. A man might use it—I mean a real 'igh gentleman like Mr. Rashleigh—and get awye with it—now and then—if 'e didn't myke a 'abit of it; but when a woman does it she rubberstamps 'erself. Now, does madam see? A lydy couldn't be a lydy—and kick. The lyte Mrs. Allerton would never demean 'erself to kick; she'd only show displeasure."

With a thumb and two fingers Letty marked off on the table the three points as to which she had received information that morning. She must say brought, and not brung; she must say tell, and not put wise; she must not kick, but show displeasure. Neither must she drop her aitches, though to do so would have been an effort. The warning only raised a suspicion that in the matter of speech there might be a higher standard than Steptoe's. If ever she heard Rashleigh Allerton speak again she resolved to listen to him attentively.

She came back from her reverie on hearing Steptoe say:

"With madam it's a cyse of beginning from the ground up, more or less as you would with a byby; so I 'ope madam'll forgive me if I drop a 'int as to what we must do before goin' any farther."

Once more he read her question in the starry little flames in her eyes.

"It's—clothes."

The damask red which had ebbed surged slowly back again. It surged back under the transparent white skin, as red wine fills a glass. Her lips parted to stammer the confession that she had no clothes except those she wore; but she couldn't utter a syllable.

"I understand madam's position, which is why I mention it. You might sye as clothes is the ABC of social life, and if we're to work from the ground up we must begin there."

She forced it out at last, but the statement seemed to tear her.

"I can't get clothes. I ain't got no money."

"Oh, money's no hobject," he smiled. "Mr. Rash 'as plenty of that, and I know what 'e'd like me to do. There never was 'is hequal for the 'open 'and. If madam'll leave it to me...."

* * * * *

Allerton's office was much what you would have expected it to be, bearing to other offices the same relation as he to other business men. He had it because not to have it wouldn't have been respectable. A young American who didn't go to an office every day would hardly have been a young American. An office, then, was a concession to public sentiment, as well as some faint justification of himself.

It was in the latter sense that he chiefly took it, making it a subject of frequent reference. In his conversation such expressions as "my office," or "due at my office," were introduced more often than there was occasion for. The implication that he had work to do gave him status, enabling him to sit down among his cronies and good-naturedly take their fun.

He took a good deal of fun, never having succeeded in making himself the standardized type who escapes the shafts of ridicule. It was kindly fun, which, while viewing him as a white swan in a flock of black ones, recognized him as a swan, and this was as much as he could expect. To pass in the crowd was all he asked for, even when he only passed on bluff. If he couldn't wholly hide the bluff he could keep it from being flagrantly obtrusive; and toward that end an office was a help.

It was an office situated just where you would have expected to find it—far enough downtown to be downtown, and yet not so far downtown as to make it a trouble to get there. Being on the eastern side of Washington Square, it had a picturesque outlook, and the merit of access from East Sixty-seventh Street through the long straight artery of Fifth Avenue.

It was furnished, too, just as you might have known he would furnish it, in the rich and sober Style Empire, and yet not so exclusively in the Style Empire as to make the plain American business man fear he had dropped into Napoleon's library at Malmaison. That is what Rashleigh would have liked, but other men could do what in him would be thought finicky. To take the "cuss" off his refinement, as he put it to Barbara, he scattered modern American office bits among his luscious brown surfaces, adorned with wreaths and lictors' sheaves in gold, though to himself the wrong note was offensive.

But wrong notes and right notes were the same to him as, on this particular morning, he dragged himself there because it was the hour. His office staff in the person of old Mr. Radbury was already on the spot, and had sorted the letters for the day. These were easily dealt with. Reinvestment, or new opportunities for investment, were their principal themes, and the only positive duty to attend to was in the endorsement of dividend checks for deposit. A few directions being given to Mr. Radbury as to such letters as were to be answered, Allerton had nothing to do but stroll to the window and look out.

It was what he did perhaps fifty times in the course of the two or three hours daily, or approximately daily, which he spent there. He did so now. He did so because it put off for a few minutes longer the fierce, exasperating, acrid pleasure of doing worse. To do worse had been his avowed object in coming to the office that morning, and not the answering of letters or the raking in of checks.

Looking down from his window on the tenth floor he asked himself the fruitless question which millions of other men have asked when folly has got them into trouble. Among these thousands who, viewed from that height, had a curious resemblance to ants, was there such a fool as he was? From the Square they streamed into Fifth Avenue; from Fifth Avenue they streamed into the Square. In the Square and round the Square they squirmed and wriggled and dawdled their seemingly aimless ways. Great green lumbering omnibuses disgorged one pack of them merely to suck up another. Motors whirled them toward uptown, toward downtown, or east, or west, by twos and threes, or as individuals. Like ants their general effect was black, with here and there a moving spot of color, or of intermingling colors, as of flowers in the wind, or tropic birds.

He watched a figure detach itself from the mass swirling round a debouching omnibus. It was a little black figure, just clearly enough defined to show that it was a man. Because it was a man it had been a fool. Because it had been a fool it had dark chambers in its life which it would never willingly open. But it had doubtless got something for its folly. It might have lost more than it had gained, but it could probably reckon up and say, "At least I had my fun."

And he had had none. He had squandered his whole life on a single act of insanity which even in the action had produced nothing but disgust. He hadn't merely swindled himself; he had committed a kind of suicide which made death silly and grotesque. The one thing that could save him a scrap of dignity—and such a sorry scrap!—would be going to the devil by the shortest way.

He had come to the office to begin. He would begin by the means that seemed obvious. Now that going to the devil was a task he saw, as he had not seen hitherto, how curiously few were the approaches that would take him there. Song being only an accompaniment, he was limited to the remaining two of the famous and familiar trio.

Very well! Limited as he was he would make the most of them. Knowing something of their merits he knew there was a bestial entertainment to be had from both. It was a kind of entertainment which his cursed fastidiousness had always loathed; but now his reckoning would be different. If he got anything he should not feel so wastefully thrown away. He would be selling himself first and making his bargain afterwards; but some meager balance would stand to his credit, if credit it could be called. When the devil had been reached the world he knew would pardon him because it was the devil, and not—what it was in truth—an idiotic state of nerves.

At the minute when Letty was leaping to her feet to take her stand he swung away from the window. First going to Mr. Radbury's door he closed it softly. Luckily the old man, an inheritance from his, Allerton's, father, was deaf and incurious. Like most clerks who had clerked their way up to seventy he was buried in clerking's little round. He wouldn't come in till the letters were finished, certainly not for an hour, and by that time Allerton would be.... He almost smiled at the old man's probable consternation on finding him so before the middle of the day. Any time would be bad enough; but in the high forenoon....

He went to a cabinet which was said to have found its way via Bordentown from the furnishings of Queen Caroline Murat. Having opened it he took out a bottle and a glass. On the label of the bottle was a kilted Highlander playing on the pipes. A siphon of soda was also in the cabinet, but he left it there. What he had to do would be done more quickly without its mitigation.

* * * * *

While Allerton was making these preparations Judson Flack, in pajamas and slippers, was standing in his toy kitchen, looking helplessly at a small gas stove. It was the hour in the middle of the morning at which he was accustomed to be waked with the information that his coffee and eggs were ready. The forenoon being what he called his slack time he found the earlier part of it most profitably used for sleep.

"Curse the girl!"

The adjuration was called forth by the fact that he didn't know where anything was, or how anything should be done. From the simple expedient of going for his breakfast to one of the cheap restaurants with which he was familiar he was cut off by the fact of an unlucky previous night. He simply didn't have the bones. This was not to say that he was penniless, but that in view of more public expenses later in the day it would be well for him to economize where economy was so obvious. He never had an appetite in the morning anyway. With irregular eating and drinking all through the evening and far toward daylight, he found a cup of coffee and an egg....

It was easy, he knew, to make the one and boil the other, but he was out of practice. He couldn't remember doing anything of the sort since the days before he married Letty's mother. Even then he had never tried this new-fangled thing, the gas stove, so that besides being out of practice he was at a loss.

"Curse the girl!"

The resources of the kitchen being few exploration didn't take him long. He found bread, butter, milk that had turned sour, the usual condiments, some coffee in a canister, and a single egg. If he could only light the confounded gas stove....

A small white handle offering itself for experiment, he turned it timidly, applying a match to a geometrical pattern of holes. He jumped back as from an exploding cannon.

"Curse the girl!"

Having found the way, however, the next attempt was more successful. Soon he had two geometrical patterns of holes burning in steady blue buttons of flame. On the one he placed the coffee-pot into which he had turned a pint of water and a cupful of coffee; on the other a saucepan half full of water containing his egg. This being done he retired to the bathroom for the elements of a toilet.

"Curse the girl!"

Washing, shaving, turning up his mustache with the little curling tongs, he observed with self-pity his increasing haggardness. He observed it also with dismay. Looks were as important to him as to an actress. His role being youth, high spirits, and the devil-may-care, the least trace of the wearing out would do for him. He had noticed some time ago that he was beginning to show fatal signs, which had the more emphatically turned his thoughts to the provision Letty might prove for his old age.

"Curse the girl!"

It was cursing the girl which reminded him that he had allowed more than the necessary time for his breakfast to be ready for consumption. Hurrying back to the kitchen he found the egg gracefully dancing as the water boiled. He fished it out with a spoon and took it in his hand, but he didn't keep it there. Dashing it to the table, whence it crashed upon the floor, he positively screamed.

"Curse the girl!"

He cursed her now licking and sucking the tips of his fingers and examining them to see if they were scalded. No such calamity having occurred he took up the coffee pot, leaving the mashed egg where it lay. Ladling a spoonful of sugar into a cup, and adding the usual milk, he poured in the coffee, which became a muddy dark brown mixture, with what appeared to be a porridge of seeds floating on the top. One sip, which induced a diabolical grimace, and he threw the beverage at the opposite wall as if it was a man he meant to insult.

"Curse the girl!"

The appeal to the darker powers being accompanied now by a series of up-to-date terms of objurgation, the mere act of utterance, mental or articulate, churned him to a frenzy. Seizing the coffee pot which he had replaced on the gas stove he hurled it too against the wall. It struck, splathered the hideous liquor over a hideous calsomining which had once been blue, and fell to the floor like a living thing knocked insensible.

The resemblance maddened him still more. It might have been Letty, struck down after having provoked him beyond patience. He rushed at it. He hurled it again. He hurled it again. He hurled it again. The exercise gave relief not only to his lawful resentment against Letty, but to those angers over his luck of last night which as "a good loser" he hadn't been at liberty to show. No one knew the repressions he was obliged to put upon himself; but now his inhibitions could come off in this solitary passion of destruction.

When the coffee pot was a mere shapeless mass he picked up the empty cup. It was a thick stone-china cup, with a bar meant to protect his mustache across the top, a birthday present from Letty's mother. The association of memories acted as a further stimulus. Smash! After the cup went the stone-china sugar bowl. Smash! After the sugar bowl the plate with the yellow chunk of butter. Smash! After the butter plate the milk jar, a clumsy, lumpy thing, which merely gurgled out a splash of milk and fell without breaking.

"Curse the girl! Curse the girl! Curse the girl! I'll learn her to go away and leave me! I'll find her and drag her back if she's in...."



Chapter X

While Letty was beginning a new experience Judson Flack was doing his best to carry out his threat. That is to say, he was making the round of the studios in which his step-daughter had occasionally found work, discreetly asking if she had been there that day. It was all he could think of doing. To the best of his knowledge she had no friends with whom she could have taken refuge, though the suspicion crossed his mind that she might have drowned herself to spite him.

As a matter of fact Letty was asking the question if she wasn't making a mistake in not doing so, either literally or morally. Never before in her life had she been up against this problem of insufficiency. Among the hard things she had known she had not known this; and now that she was involved in it, it seemed to her harder than everything else put together.

In her humble round, bitter as it was, she had always been considered competent. It was the sense of her competence that gave her the self-respect enabling her to bear up. According to her standards she could keep house cleverly, and could make a dollar go as far as other girls made two. When she got her first chance in a studio, through an acquaintance of Judson Flack's, she didn't shrink from it, and had more than once been chosen by a director to be that member of a crowd who moves in the front and expresses the crowd psychologically. Had she only had the clothes....

And now she was to have them. As far as that went she was not merely glad; she was one sheer quiver of excitement. It was not the end she shrank from; it was the means. If she could only have had fifty dollars to go "poking round" where she knew that bargains could be found, she might have enjoyed the prospect; but Steptoe could only "take measures" on the grand scale to which he was accustomed.

The grand scale frightened her, chiefly because she was dressed as she was dressed. It was her first thought and her last one. When Steptoe told her the hour at which he had asked Eugene to bring round the car the mere vision of herself stepping into it made her want to sink into the ground. Eugene didn't live in the house—she had discovered that—and so would bring the stare of another pair of eyes under whose scrutiny she would have to pass. Those of the three women having already scorched her to the bone, she would have to be scorched again.

She tried to say this to Steptoe, as they stood in the drawing-room window waiting for the car; but she didn't know how to make him understand it. When she tried to put it into words, the right words wouldn't come. Steptoe had taken as general what she was trying to explain to him in particular.

"It'll be very important to madam to fyce what's 'ard, and to do it bryve like. It'll be the mykin' of 'er if she can. 'Umble 'ill is pretty stiff to climb; but them as gets to the top of it is tough."

She thought this over silently. He meant that if she set herself to take humiliations as they came, dragging herself up over them, she would be the stronger for it in the end.

"It'd 'ave been better for Mr. Rashleigh," he mused, "if 'e'd 'ad 'ad somethink of the kind to tackle in 'is life; it'd 'ave myde 'im more of a man. But because 'e adn't—Did madam ever notice," he broke off to ask, "'ow them as 'as everythink myde easy for 'em begins right off to myke things 'ard for theirselves. It's a kind of law like. It's just as if nyture didn't mean to let no one escype. When a man's got no troubles you can think of, 'e'll go to work to create 'em."

"Didn't he"—she had never yet pronounced the name of the man who had married her—"didn't he ever have any troubles?"

"'E was fretted terrible—crossed like—rubbed up the wrong wye, as you might sye,—but a real trouble like what you and me 'ave 'ad plenty of—never! It's my opinion that trouble is to char-ac-ter what a peg'll be to a creepin' vine—something to which the vine'll 'ook on and pull itself up by. Where there's nothink to ketch on to the vine'll grow; but it'll grow in a 'eap of flop." There was a tremor in his tone as he summed up. "That's somethink like my poor boy."

Letty found this interesting. That in these exalted circles there could be a need of refining chastisement came to her as a surprise.

"The wife as I've always 'oped for 'im," Steptoe went on, "is one that'd know what trouble was, and 'ow to fyce it. 'E'd myke a grand 'usband to a woman who was—strong. But she'd 'ave to be the wall what the creepin' vine could cover all over and—and beautify."

"That wouldn't be me."

"If I was madam I wouldn't be so sure of that. It don't do to undervalyer your own powers. If I'd 'a done that I wouldn't 'a been where I am to-dye. Many's the time, when I was no more than a poor little foundlin' boy in a 'ome I've said to myself, I'm fit for somethink big. Somethink big I always meant to be. When it didn't seem possible for me to aim so 'igh I'd myde up my mind to be a valet and a butler. It comes—your hambition does. What you've first got to do is to form it; and then you've got to stick to it through thick and thin."

To say what she said next Letty had to break down barrier beyond barrier of inhibition and timidity. "And if I was to—to form the—the ambition—to be—to be the kind of wall you was talkin' about just now——"

"That wouldn't be hambition; it'd be—consecrytion."

He allowed her time to get the meaning of this before going on.

"But madam mustn't expect not to find it 'ard. Consecrytion is always 'ard, by what I can myke out. When Mr. Rash was a little 'un 'e used to get Miss Pye, 'is governess, to read to 'im a fairy tyle about a little mermaid what fell in love with a prince on land. Bein' in love with 'im she wanted to be with 'im, natural like; but there she was in one element, as you might sye, and 'im in another."

"That'd be like me."

"Which is why I'm tellin' madam of the story. Well, off the little mermaid goes to the sea-witch to find out 'ow she could get rid of 'er fish's tyle and 'ave two feet for to walk about in the prince's palace. Well, the sea-witch she up and tells 'er what she'd 'ave to do. Only, says she, if you do that you'll 'ave to pye for it with every step you tykes; for every step you tykes'll be like walkin' on sharp blydes. Now, says she, to the little mermaid, do you think it'd be worth while?"

In Letty's eyes all the stars glittered with her eagerness for the denouement. "And did she think it was worth while—the little mermaid?"

"She did; but I'll give madam the tyle to read for 'erself. It's in the syme little book what Miss Pye used to read out of—up in Mr. Rash's old nursery."

With the pride of a royal thing conscious of its royalty the car rolled to the door and stopped. It was the prince's car, while she, Letty, was a mermaid born in an element different from his, and encumbered with a fish's tail. She must have shown this in her face, for Steptoe said, with his fatherly smile:

"Madam may 'ave to walk on blydes—but it'll be in the Prince's palace."

It'll be in the Prince's palace! Letty repeated this to herself as she followed him out to the car. Holding the door open for her, Eugene, who had been told of her romance, touched his cap respectfully. When she had taken her seat he tucked the robe round her, respectfully again. Steptoe marked the social difference between them by sitting beside Eugene.

Rolling down Fifth Avenue Letty was as much at a loss to account for herself as Elijah must have been in the chariot of fire. She didn't know where she was going. She was not even able to ask. The succession of wonders within twenty-four hours blocked the working of her faculties. She thought of the girls who sneered at her in the studios—she thought of Judson Flack—and of what they would say if they were to catch a glimpse of her.

She was not so unsophisticated as to be without some appreciation of the quarter of New York in which she found herself. She knew it was the "swell" quarter. She knew that the world's symbols of money and display were concentrated here, and that in some queer way she, poor waif, had been given a command of them. One day homeless, friendless, and penniless, and the next driving down Fifth Avenue in a limousine which might be called her own!

The motor was slowing down. It was drawing to the curb. They had reached the place to which Steptoe had directed Eugene. Letty didn't have to look at the name-plate to know she was where the great stars got their gowns, and that she was being invited into Margot's!

You know Margot's, of course. A great international house, Margot—the secret is an open one—is but the incognita of a business-like English countess who finds it financially profitable to sign articles on costume written by someone else, and be sponsor for the newest fashions which someone else designs. As a way of turning an impoverished historic title to account it is as good as any other.

Without knowing who Margot was Letty knew what she was. She couldn't have frequented studios without hearing that much, and once or twice in her wanderings about the city she had paused to admire the door. It was all there was to admire, since Margot, to Letty's regret, didn't display confections behind plate-glass.

It was a Flemish chateau which had been a residence before business had traveled above Forty-second Street. A man in livery would have barred them from passing the wrought-iron grille had it not been for the car from which they had emerged. Only people worthy of being customers of the house could afford such cars, and he saw that Steptoe was a servant. What Letty was he couldn't see, for servants of great houses never looked so nondescript.

In the great hall a beautiful staircase swept to an upper floor, but apart from a Louis Seize mirror and console flanked by two Louis Seize chairs there was nothing and no one to be seen. Steptoe turned to the right into a vast saloon with a cinnamon-colored carpet and walls of cool French gray. A group of gilded chairs were the only furnishings, except for a gilded canape between two French windows draped with cinnamon-colored hangings. A French fender with French andirons filled the fireplace, and on the white marble mantelpiece stood a garniture de cheminee, a clock and two vases, in biscuit de Sevres.

At the end of the room opposite the windows a woman in black, with coiffure a la Marcel, sat at a white-enamelled desk working with a ledger. A second woman in black, also with coiffure a la Marcel, stood holding open the doors of a white-enamelled wardrobe, gazing at its multi-colored contents. Two other women in black, still with coiffure a la Marcel, were bending over a white-enamelled drawer in a series of white-enamelled drawers, discussing in low tones. There were no customers. For such a house the season had not yet begun. Though in this saloon voices were pitched as low as for conversation in a church, the sharp catgut calls of Frenchwomen—and of French dressmakers especially—came from a room beyond.

Overawed by this vastness, simplicity, and solemnity, Steptoe and Letty stood barely within the door, waiting till someone noticed them. No one did so till the woman holding open the wardrobe doors closed them and turned round. She did not come forward at once; she only stared at them. Still keeping her eye on the newcomers she called the attention of the ladies occupied with the drawer, who lifted themselves up. They too stared. The lady at the desk stared also.

It was the lady of the wardrobe who advanced at last, slowly, with dignity, her hands genteelly clasped in front of her. She seemed to be saying, "No, we don't want any," or, "I'm sorry we've nothing to give you," by her very walk. Letty, with her gift for dramatic interpretation, could see this, though Steptoe, familiar as he was with ladies whom he would have classed as "'igher," was not daunted. He too went forward, meeting madam half way.

Of what was said between them Letty could hear nothing, but the expression on the lady's face was dissuasive. She was telling Steptoe that he had come to the wrong place, while Steptoe was saying no. From time to time the lady would send a glance toward Letty, not in disdain, but in perplexity. It was perplexity which reached its climax when Steptoe drew from an inside pocket an impressive roll of bills.

The lady looked at the bills, but she also looked at Letty. The honor of a house like Margot's is not merely in making money; it is in its clientele. To have a poor little waif step in from the street....

And yet it was because she was a poor little waif that she interested the ladies looking on. She was so striking an exception to their rule that her very coming in amazed them. One of the two who had remained near the open drawer came forward into conference with her colleague, adding her dissuasions to those which Steptoe had already refused to listen to.

"There are plenty of other places to which you could go," Letty heard this second lady say, "and probably do better."

Steptoe smiled, that old man's smile which was rarely ineffective. "Madam don't 'ave to tell me as there's plenty of other plyces to which I could go; but there's none where I could do as well."

"What makes you think so?"

"I'm butler to a 'igh gentleman what 'e used to entertyne quite a bit when 'is mother was alive. I've listened to lydies talkin' at tyble. No one can't tell me. I know."

Both madams smiled. Each shot another glance at Letty. It was plain that they were curious as to her identity. One of them made a venture.

"And is this your—your daughter?"

Steptoe explained, not without dignity, that the young lady was not his daughter, but that she had come into quite a good bit of money, and had done it sudden like. She needed a 'igh, grand outfit, though for the present she would be content with three or four of the dresses most commonly worn by a lydy of stytion. He preferred to nyme no nymes, but he was sure that even Margot would not regret her confidence—and he had the cash, as they saw, in his pocket.

Of this the result was an exchange between the madams of comprehending looks, while, in French, one said to the other that it might be well to consult Madame Simone.

Madame Simone, who bustled in from the back room, was not in black, but in frowzy gray; her coiffure was not a la Marcel, but as Letty described it, "all anyway." A short, stout, practical Frenchwoman, she had progressed beyond the need to consider looks, and no longer considered them. The two shapely subordinates with whom Steptoe had been negotiating followed her at a distance like attendants.

She disposed of the whole matter quickly, addressing the attendants rather than the postulants for Margot's favor.

"Mademoiselle she want an outfit—good!—bon! We don't know her, but what difference does that make to me?—qu'est ce que c'est que cela me fait? Money is money, isn't it?—de l'argent c'est de l'argent, n'est-ce pas?—at this time of year especially—a cette saison de l'annee surtout."

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. Tres chic. With ze proper closes mademoiselle would have style—de l'elegance 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.

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. "I can't think," he murmured, 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.