At the same time he could not alarm madam, or allow her to shirk the encounter. She had that in her, he was sure, which couldn't but win out, however much she might be at a disadvantage. His part would be to reduce her disadvantages to a minimum, allowing her strong points to tell. Her strong points, he reckoned, were innocence, an absence of self-consciousness, and, to the worldly-wise, a disconcerting candor. Steptoe analyzed in the spirit and not verbally; but he analyzed.

For Letty the morning had been feverish, chiefly because of her uncertainty. Was it the wish of the prince that she should go, or was it not? If it was his wish, why had he not let her? If, on the other hand, he desired her to stay, what did he mean to do with her? He had passed her on the way out to breakfast at the Club—she had been standing in the hall—and he had smiled.

What was the significance of that smile? She sat down in the library to think. She sat down in the chair she had occupied while he lay on the couch, and reconstructed that scene which now, for all her life, would thrill her with emotional memories. There he had lain, his head on the very indentation which the cushion still bore, his feet here, where she had pressed her lips to them. She had actually had her hand on his brow, she had smoothed back his hair, and had hardly noted at the time that such was her extraordinary privilege.

She came back to the fact that he had smiled at her. It would have been an enchanting smile from anyone, but coming from a prince it had all the romantic effulgence with which princes' smiles are infused. How much of that romantic effulgence came automatically from the prince because he was a prince, and how much of it was inspired by herself? Was any of it inspired by herself? When all was said and done this last was the great question.

It brought her where so many things brought her, to the dream of love at first sight. Could it have happened to him as it had happened to herself? It was so much in her mental order of things that she was far from considering it impossible. Improbable, yes; she would admit as much as that; but impossible, no! To be sure she had been in the old gray rag; but Steptoe had informed her that there were kings who went about falling in love with beggar-maids. She would have loved being one of those beggar-maids; and after all, was she not?

True, there was the other girl; but Letty found it hard to see her as a reality. Besides, she had, in appearance at least, treated him badly. Might it not easily have come about that she, Letty, had caught his heart in the rebound? She quite understood that if the prince had fallen in love with her at first sight, there might be convulsion in his inner self without, as yet, a comprehension on his part of the nature of his passion.

She had reached this point when Steptoe entered the library on one of his endless tasks of re-arranging that which seemed to be in sufficiently good order. Putting the big desk to rights he said over his shoulder:

"Perhaps I'd better tell madam as she's to 'ave a caller this afternoon."

Letty sprang up in alarm. "A—what?"

"A lydy what'll myke a call. Oh, madam don't need to be afryde. She's an old friend o' Mr. Rash's, and'll want, no doubt, to be a friend o' madam too."

"But what does she know about me?"

"Mr. Rash must 'a told 'er. She spoke to me just now on the telephone, and seemed to know everything. She said she'd be 'ere this afternoon about four-thirty, if madam'd be so good as to give 'er a cup o' tea."

"Me?"

Having invented the cup of tea for his own purpose Steptoe went on to explain further. "It's what the 'igh lydies mostly gives each other about 'alf past four or five o'clock, and madam couldn't homit it without seemin' as if she didn't know what's what. It'll be very important for madam to tyke 'er position from the start. If the lydy is comin' friendly like she'd be 'urt if madam wasn't friendly too."

Letty had seen the giving and taking of tea in more than one scene in the movies, and had also, from a discreet corner, witnessed the enacting of it right in the "set" on the studio lot. She remembered one time in particular when Luciline Lynch, the star in Our Crimson Sins, had driven Frank Redgar, the director, almost out of his senses by her inability to get the right turn of the wrist. Letty, too, had been almost out of her senses with the longing to be in Luciline Lynch's place, to do the thing in what was obviously the way. But now that she was confronted with the opportunity in real life she saw the situation otherwise.

"And I won't be able to talk right," was the difficulty she raised next.

"That'll be a chance for madam to listen and ketch on. She's horfly quick, madam is, and by listenin' to Miss Walbrook, that's the lydy's nyme, and listenin' to 'erself—" He broke off to emphasize this line of suggestion—"it's listenin' to 'erself that'll 'elp madam most. It's a thing as 'ardly no one does. If they did they'd be 'orrified at their squawky voices and bad pernounciation. If I didn't listen to myself, why, I'd talk as bad as anyone, but—Well, as I sye, this'll give madam a chance. All the time what Miss Walbrook is speakin' madam can be listenin' to 'er and listenin' to 'erself too, and if she mykes mistykes this time she'll myke fewer the next."

Letty was pondering these hints as he continued.

"Now if madam wouldn't think me steppin' out of my plyce I'd suggest that me and 'er 'as a little tea of our own like—right now—in the drorin' room—and I'll be Miss Walbrook—and William'll be William—and madam'll be madam—and we'll get it letter-perfect before 'and, just as with Mary Ann Courage and Jyne."

No sooner said than done. Letty was already wearing the white filmy thing with the copper-sash, buried with solemn rites on the previous night, but disinterred that morning, which did very well as a tea-gown. Steptoe placed her in the corner of the sofa which the lyte Mrs. Allerton had generally occupied when "receivin' company", and William brought in the tea-equipage on a gorgeous silver tray.

Before he did this it had been necessary to school William to his part, which, to do him justice, he carried out with becoming gravity. Any reserves he might have felt were expressed to Golightly by a wink behind Steptoe's back before he left the kitchen. The wink was the more expressive owing to the fact that Golightly and William had already summed up the old fellow as "balmy on the bean," while their part was to humor him. Plain as a bursting shell seemed to William Miss Gravely's position in the household, and Steptoe's chivalry toward her an eccentricity which a sense of humor could enjoy. Otherwise they justified his reading of the fundamental non-morality of men, in bringing no condemnation to bear on anyone concerned. Being themselves two almost incapacitated heroes, with jobs likely to prove "soft," it was wise, they felt, to enter into Steptoe's comedy. At half past ten in the morning, therefore, Golightly prepared tea and buttered toast, while William arranged the tea-tray with those over-magnificent appointments which had been "the lyte Mrs. Allerton's tyste."

From her corner of the sofa Letty heard the butler announce, in a voice stately but not stentorian: "Miss Barbara Walbrook."

He was so near the door that to step out and step in again was the work of a second. In stepping in again he trod daintily, wriggling the back part of his person, better to simulate the feminine. In order that Letty should nowhere be caught unaware he put out his hand languidly, back upward, as princesses do when they expect it to be kissed.

"So delighted to find you at 'ome, Mrs. Allerton. It's such a very fine dye I was sure as you'd be out."

Rising from her corner Letty shook the relaxed hand as she might have shaken a dog's tail. "Very pleased to meet you."

From the histrionic Steptoe lapsed at once into the critical. "I think if madam was to sye, 'So glad to be at 'ome, Miss Walbrook; do let me ring for tea,' it'd be more like the lyte Mrs. Allerton."

Obediently Letty repeated this formula, had the bell pointed out to her, and rang. The ladies having seated themselves, Miss Walbrook continued to improvise on the subject of the weather.

"Some o' these October dyes'll be just like summer time! and then agyne there'll be a nip in the wind as'll fairly freeze you. A good time o' year to get out your furs, and I'm sure I 'ope as 'ow the moths 'aven't gone and got at 'em. Horfly nasty things them moths. They sye as everything in the world 'as a use; but I'm sure I don't see what use there is for moths, eatin' 'oles in the seats of gentlemen's trousers, no matter what you do to keep the coat-closet aired—and everything like that. What do you sye, Mrs. Allerton?"

Letty was relieved of the necessity of answering by the entrance of William with the tray, after which her task became easier. Used to making "a good cup of tea" in an ordinary way, the doing it with this formal ceremoniousness was only a matter of revision. As if it was yesterday she recalled the instructions given to Luciline Lynch, "Lemon?—cream?—one lump?—two lumps?" so that Miss Walbrook was startled by her readiness. She, Miss Walbrook, was betrayed, in fact, into some confusion of personality, stating that she would have cream and no sugar, and that furthermore Englishmen like herself 'ardly ever took lemon in their tea, and in her opinion no one ever did to whom the tea-drinking 'abit was 'abitual.

"It's a question of tyste," Miss Walbrook continued, sipping with a soft siffling noise in the way he considered to be ladylike. "Them that 'as drunk tea with their mother's milk, as you might sye, 'll tyke cream and sugar, one or both; but them that 'as picked up the 'abit in lyter life 'll often condescend to lemon."

What the rehearsal did for Letty was to make the mechanical task familiar, while she concentrated her attention on Miss Walbrook.

It has to be admitted that to Barbara Walbrook Letty was a shock. Having worked for two years in the Bleary Street Settlement she had her preconceived ideas of what she was to find, and she found something so different that her first consciousness was that of being "sold."

Steptoe had received her at the door, and having ushered her into the drawing-room announced, "Miss Barbara Walbrook," as if she had been calling on a duchess. From the semi-obscurity of the back drawing-room a small lithe figure came forward a step or two. The small lithe figure was wearing a tea-gown of which so practiced an eye as Miss Walbrook's could not but estimate the provenance and value, while a sweet voice said:

"I'm so glad to be at home, Miss Walbrook. Do let me ring for tea."

Before a protest could be voiced the bell had been rung, so that Miss Walbrook found herself sitting in the chair Steptoe had used in the morning, and listening to her hostess as you listen to people in a dream.

"Beautiful weather for October, isn't it? Some of these October days'll be just like summer time. And then again there'll be a nip in the wind that'll fairly freeze you. A good time of year to get out your furs, isn't it? and I'm sure I hope the moths ain't—haven't—got at them. Awfully nasty things moths——"

Letty's further efforts were interrupted by William bearing the tray as he had borne it in the morning, and in the minutes of silence while he placed it Miss Walbrook could go through the mental process known as pulling oneself together.

But she couldn't pull herself together without a sense of outrage. She had expected to feel shame, vicariously for Rash; she had not expected to be asked to take part in a horrible bit of play-acting. This dressing-up; this mock hospitality; this desecration of the things which "dear Mrs. Allerton" had used; this mingling of ignorance and pretentiousness, inspired a rage prompting her to fling the back of her hand at the ridiculous creature's face. She couldn't do that, of course. She couldn't even express herself as she felt. She had come on a mission, and she must carry out that mission; and to carry out the mission she must be as suave as her indignation would allow of. She was morally the mistress of this house. Rash and all Rash owned belonged to her. To see this strumpet sitting in her place....

It did nothing to calm her that while she was pressing Rash's ring into her flesh, beneath her glove, this vile thing was wearing a plain gold band, just as if she was married. She could understand that if they had absurdly walked through an absurd ceremony the absurd minister who performed it might have insisted on this absurd symbol; but it should have been snatched from the creature's hand the minute the business was ended. They owed that to her. Hers was the only claim Rash had to consider, and to allow this farce to be enacted beneath his roof....

But she remembered that Letty didn't know who she was, or why she had come, or the degree to which she, Barbara Walbrook, saw through this foolery.

Letty repeated her little formula: "Lemon?—cream?—one lump?—two lumps?" though before she reached the end of it her voice began to fail. Catching the hostility in the other woman's bearing, she felt it the more acutely because in style, dress, and carriage this was the model she would have chosen for herself.

Miss Walbrook waved hospitality aside. "Thank you, no; nothing in the way of tea." She nodded over her shoulder towards William's retreating form. "Who's that man?"

Her tone was that of a person with the right to inquire. Letty didn't question that right, knowing the extent to which she herself was an usurper. "His name is William."

"How did he come here?"

"I—I don't know."

"Where are Nettie and Jane?"

"They've—they've left."

"Left? Why?"

"I—I don't know."

"And has Mrs. Courage left too?"

Letty nodded, the damask flush flooding her cheeks darkly.

"When? Since—since you came?"

Letty nodded again. She knew now that this was the bar of social judgment of which she had been afraid.

The social judge continued. "That must be very hard on Mr. Allerton."

Letty bowed her head. "I suppose it is."

"He's not used to new people about him, and it's not good for him. I don't know whether you've seen enough of him to know that he's something of an invalid."

"I know—" she touched her forehead—"that he's sick up here."

"Oh, do you? Then I shouldn't have thought that you'd have—" but she dropped this line to take up another. "Yes, he's always been so. When he was a boy they were afraid he might be epileptic; and though he never was as bad as that he's always needed to be taken care of. He can do very wild and foolish things as—as you've discovered for yourself."

Letty felt herself now a little shameful lump of misery. This woman was so experienced, so right. She spoke with a decision and an authority which made love at first sight a fancy to blush at. Letty could say nothing because there was nothing to say, and meanwhile the determined voice went on.

"It's terrible for a man like him to make such a mistake, because being what he is he can't grapple with it as a stronger or a coarser man would do."

But here Letty saw something that might be faintly pleaded in her own defence. "He says he wouldn't ha' made the mistake if that—that other girl hadn't been crazy."

Barbara drew herself up. "Did he—did he say that?"

"He said something like it. He said she went off the hooks, just like he did himself." She raised her eyes. "Do you know her, Miss Walbrook?"

"Yes, I know her."

"She must be an awful fool."

Barbara prayed for patience. "What—what makes you say so?"

"Oh, just what he's said."

"And what has he said? Has he talked about her to you?"

"He hasn't talked about her. He's just—just let things out."

"What sort of things?"

"Only that sort." She added, as if to herself: "I don't believe he thinks much of her."

Barbara's self-control was miraculous. "I've understood that he was very much in love with her."

"Well, perhaps he is." Letty's little movement of the shoulders hinted that an expert wouldn't be of this opinion. "He may think he is, anyhow."

"But if he thinks he is——"

Letty's eyes rested on her visitor with their compelling candor. "I don't believe men know much about love, do you, Miss Walbrook?"

"It depends. All men haven't had as much experience of it as I suppose you've had——"

"Oh, I haven't had any." The candor of the eyes was now in the whole of the truthful face. "Nobody was ever in love with me—never. I never had a fella—nor nothing."

In spite of herself Barbara believed this. She couldn't help herself. She could hear Rash saying that whatever else was wrong in the ridiculous business the girl herself was straight. All the same the discussion was beneath her. It was beneath her to listen to opinions of herself coming from such a source. If Rash didn't "think much of her" there was something to "have out" with him, not with this little street-waif dressed up with this ludicrous mummery. The sooner she ended the business on which she had come the sooner she would get a legitimate outlet for the passion of jealousy and rage consuming her.

"But we're wandering away from my errand. I won't pretend that I've come of my own accord. I'm a very old friend of Mr. Allerton's, and he's asked me—or practically asked me—to come and find out——"

For what she was to come and find out she lacked for a minute the right word, and so held up the sentence.

"What I'd take to let him off?"

The form of expression was so crude that once more Barbara was startled. "Well, that's what it would come to."

"But I've told him already that—that I want to let him off anyhow."

"Yes? And on what terms?"

"I don't want any terms."

"Oh, but there must be terms. He couldn't let you do it——"

"He could let me do it for him, couldn't he? I'd go through fire, if it'd make him a bit more comfortable than he is."

Barbara could not believe her ears. "Do you want me to understand that——?"

"That I'll do whatever will make him happy just to make him happy? Yes. That's it. He didn't need to send no one—to send anyone—to ask me, because I've told him so already. He wants me to get out. Well, I'm ready to get out. He wants me to go to the bad. Well, I'm ready——"

"Yes; he understands all that. But, don't you see? a man in his position couldn't take such a sacrifice from a girl in yours——"

"Unless he pays me for it in cash."

"That's putting it in a nutshell. If you owned a house, for instance, and I wanted it, I'd buy it from you and pay you for it; but I couldn't take it as a gift, no matter how liberal you were nor how much I needed it."

"I can see that about a house; but your own self is different. I could sell a house when I couldn't sell—myself."

"Oh, but would you call that selling yourself?"

"It'd be selling myself—the way I look at it. When I'm so ready to do what he wants I can't see why he don't let me." She added, tearfully: "Did he tell you about this morning?"

She nodded. "Yes, he told me about that."

"Well, I would have gone then if—if I'd known how to work the door."

"Oh, that's easy enough."

"Do you know?"

"Why, yes."

"Will you show me?"

Miss Walbrook rose. "It's so simple." She continued, as they went toward the door: "You see, Mr. Allerton's mother always kept a lot of valuable jewelry in the house, and she was afraid of burglars. She had the most wonderful pearls. I suppose Mr. Allerton has them still, locked away in some bank. Burglars would never come in by the front door, my aunt used to tell her, but—" They reached the door itself. "Now, you see, there's a common lock, a bolt, and a chain——"

Letty explained that she had discovered them already.

"But, you see these two little brass knobs over here? That's the trick. You push this one this way, and that one that way, and the door is locked with an extra double lock, which hardly anyone would suspect. See?"

She shook the door which resisted as it had resisted Letty in the morning.

"Now! You push that one this way, and this one that way—and there you are!"

She opened the door to show how easily the thing could be done; and the door being open she passed out. She had not intended to go in this way; but, after all, was not her mission accomplished? It was nothing to her whether this girl accepted money, or whether she did not. The one thing essential was that she should take herself away; and if she was sincere in what she said she had now the means of doing it. Without troubling herself to take her leave Miss Walbrook went down the steps.

Before turning toward Fifth Avenue she glanced back. Letty was standing in the open doorway, her flaming eyes wide, her expression puzzled and wounded. "It's nothing to me," Barbara repeated to herself firmly; but because she was a lady, as she understood the word lady, almost before she was a woman, she smiled faintly, with a distant, and yet not discourteous, inclination of the head.



Chapter XVII

It was because she was a lady, as she understood the word lady, that by the time she had walked the few steps into Fifth Avenue Miss Walbrook already felt the inner reproach of having done something mean. To do anything mean was so strange to her that she didn't at first recognize the sensation. She only found herself repeating two words, and repeating them uneasily: "Noblesse oblige!"

Nevertheless, on the principle that all's fair in love and war, she fought this off. "Either she must go or I must." That she herself should go was not to be considered; therefore the other must go, and by the shortest way. The shortest way was the way she had shown her, and which the girl herself was desirous to take. There was no more than that to the situation.

There was no more than that to the situation unless it was that the strong was taking a poor advantage of the weak. But then, why shouldn't the strong take any advantage it possessed? What otherwise was the use of being strong? The strong prevailed, and the weak went under. That was the law of life. To suppose that the weak must prevail because it was weak was sheer sentimentality. All the same, those two inconvenient words kept dinning in her ears: "Noblesse oblige!"

She began to question the honesty which in Letty's presence had convinced her. It was probably not honesty at all. She had known girls in the Bleary Street Settlement who could persuade her that black was white, but who had proved on further knowledge to be lying all round the compass. When it wasn't lying it was bluff. It was possible that Letty was only bluffing, that in her pretense at magnanimity she was simply scheming for a bigger price. In that case she, Barbara, had called the bluff very skilfully. She had put her in a position in which she could be taken at her word. Since she was ready to go, she could go. Since she was ready to go to the bad....

Miss Walbrook was not prim. She knew too much of the world to be easily shocked, in the old conventional sense. Besides, her Bleary Street work had brought her into contact with girls who had gone to the bad, and she had not found them different from other girls. If she hadn't known....

She could contemplate without horror, therefore, Letty's taking desperate steps—if indeed she hadn't taken them long ago—and yet she herself didn't want to be involved in the proceeding. It was one thing to view an unfortunate situation from which you stood detached, and another to be in a certain sense the cause of it. She would not really be the cause of it, whatever the girl did, since she, the girl, was a free agent, and of an age to know her own mind. Moreover, the secret of the door was one which she couldn't help finding out in any case. She, Miss Walbrook, could dismiss these scruples; and yet there was that uncomfortable sing-song humming through her brain: "Noblesse oblige! Noblesse oblige!"

"I must get rid of it," she said to herself, as Wildgoose admitted her. "I've got to be on the safe side. I can't have it on my mind."

Going to the telephone before she had so much as taken off her gloves she was answered by Steptoe. "This is Miss Walbrook again, Steptoe. I should like to speak to—to the young woman."

Steptoe who had found Letty crying after Miss Walbrook's departure answered with resentful politeness. "I'll speak to Mrs. Allerton, miss. She may be aible to come to the telephone."

"Ye-es?" came later, in a feeble, teary voice.

"This is Miss Walbrook again. I'm sorry to trouble you the second time."

"Oh, that doesn't matter."

"I merely wanted to say, what perhaps I should have said before I left, that I hope you won't—won't use the information I gave you as I was leaving—at any rate not at once."

"Do you mean the door?"

"Exactly. I was afraid after I came away that you might do something in a hurry——"

"It'll have to be in a hurry if I do it at all."

"Oh, I don't see that. In any case, I'd—I'd think it over. Perhaps we could have another talk about it, and then——"

Something was said which sounded like a faint, "Very well," so that Barbara put up the receiver.

Her conscience relieved she could open the dams keeping back the fiercer tides of her anger. Rash had talked about her to this girl! He had given her to understand that she was a fool! He had allowed it to appear that "he didn't think much of her!" No matter what he had said, the girl had been able to make these inferences. What was more, these inferences might be true. Perhaps he didn't think much of her! Perhaps he only thought he was in love with her! The idea was so terrible that it stilled her, as approaching seismic storm will still the elements. She moved about the drawing-room, taking off her gloves, her veil, her hat, and laying them together on a table, as if she was afraid to make a sound. She was standing beside that table, not knowing what to do next, or where to go, when Wildgoose came to the door to announce, "Mr. Allerton."

"I've seen her." Without other form of greeting, or moving from beside the table, she picked up her gloves, threw them down again, picked them up again, threw them down again, with the nervous action of the hands which betrayed suppressed excitement. "I didn't believe her—quite."

"But you didn't disbelieve her—wholly?"

"It's a difficult case."

"I've got you into an awful scrape, Barbe."

She threw down the gloves with special vigor. "Oh, don't begin on that. The scrape's there. What we have to find is the way out."

"Well, do you see it any more clearly?"

"Do you?"

He came near to her. "I see this—that I can't let her throw herself away for me. I've been thinking it over, and I want to ask your opinion of this plan. Let's sit down."

She thought his plan the maddest that was ever proposed, and yet she accepted it. She accepted it because she was suspicious, jealous, and unhappy. "It'll give me the chance to watch—and see," she said to herself, as he talked.

In his opinion Letty couldn't take their point of view because she was so inexperienced. It seemed to her a simple thing to go away, leaving them with the responsibilities of her future on their consciences; and it would not seem other than a simple thing till she saw life more as they did. To bring her to this degree of culture they must be subtle with her, and patient. They mustn't rush things. They mustn't let her rush them. To end the situation in such a way as to make for happiness they must end it at a point where all would be best for all concerned. For Barbara and himself nothing would be best which was not also best for the girl. What would be best for the girl would be some degree of education, of knowledge of the world, so that she might go back to the life whence they had plucked her less likely to be a prey to the vicious. In that case, if they supplied her with a little income she would know what to do with it, and would perhaps marry some man in her own class able to take care of her.

Barbara's impulse was to cry out: "That's the most preposterous suggestion I ever heard of in my life!" But she controlled this quite reasonable prompting because another voice said to her: "This will give you the opportunity to keep an eye on them. If he's not true in his love for you—if there is an infatuation on his part for this common and vulgar creature—you'll be able to detect it." Jealousy loving to suffer she was willing to inflict torture on herself for the sake of catching him in disloyalty.

Expecting a storm, and bringing out what he considered his wise proposals with great embarrassment, Allerton was surprised and pleased at the sympathetic calm in which she received them.

"So that you'd suggest——?"

"Our keeping her on a while longer, and making friends with her. I'd like it tremendously if you'd be a friend to her, because you could do more for her than anyone."

"More than you?"

"Oh, I'd do my bit too," he assured her, innocently. "I could put her up to a lot of things, seeing her every day as I should. But you're the one I should really count on."

Because the words hurt her more than any she could utter; she said, quietly: "I suppose you remember sometimes that after all she's your wife."

He sprang to his feet. Knowing that he did at times remember it he tried to deny it. "No, I don't. She's not. I don't admit it. I don't acknowledge it. If you care anything about me, Barbe, you'll never say that again."

He came and knelt beside her, taking her hands and kissing them. Laying his head in her lap, he begged to be caressed, as if he had been a dog.

Nevertheless by half past nine that evening he was at home, sitting by the fireside with Letty, and beginning his special part in the great experiment.

"She's not my wife," he kept repeating to himself poignantly, as he walked up the Avenue from the Club; "she's not—she's not. But she is a poor child toward whom I've undertaken grave responsibilities."

Because the responsibilities were grave, and she was a poor child, his attitude toward her began to be paternal. It was the more freely paternal because Barbe approved of what he was undertaking. Had she disapproved he might have undertaken it all the same, but he couldn't have done it with this whole-heartedness. He would have been haunted by the fear of her displeasure; whereas now he could let himself go.

"We don't want to keep you a prisoner, or detain you against your will," he said, with regard to the incident of the morning, "but if you'll stay with us a little longer, I think we can convince you of our good intentions."

"Who's—we?"

She shot the question at him, as she lay back in her chair, the red book in her lap. He smiled inwardly at the ready pertinence with which she went to a point he didn't care to discuss.

"Well, then, suppose I said—I? That'll do, won't it?"

She shot another question, her flaming eyes half veiled. "How long would you want me to stay?"

"Suppose we didn't fix a time? Suppose we just left it—like that?"

The question rose to her lips: "But in the end I'm to go?" only, on second thoughts she repressed it. She preferred that the situation should be left "like that," since it meant that she was not at once to be separated from the prince. The fact that she was legally the prince's wife had as little reality to her as to him. Could she have had what she yearned for law or no law would have been the same to her. But since she couldn't have that, it was much that he should come like this and sit with her by the fire in the evening.

He leaned forward and took the book from her lap. "What are you reading? Oh, this! I haven't looked at it for years." He glanced at the title. "The Little Mermaid! That used to be my favorite. It still is. When I was in Copenhagen I went to see the little bronze mermaid sitting on a rock on the shore. It's a memorial to Hans Andersen. She's quite startling for a minute—till you know what it is. Where are you at?"

Pointing out the line at which she had stopped her hand touched his, but all the consciousness of the accident was on her side. He seemed to notice nothing, beginning to read aloud to her, with no suspicion that sentiment existed.

"Many an evening and morning she rose to the place where she had left the prince. She watched the fruits in the garden ripen and fall; she saw the snow melt from the high mountains; but the prince she never saw, and she came home sadder than ever. Her one consolation was to sit in her little garden, with her arms clasped round the marble statue which was like the prince——"

"That'd be me," Letty whispered to herself; "my arms clasped round a marble statue—like my prince—but only a marble statue."

"Her flowers were neglected," Allerton read on, "and grew wild in a luxuriant tangle of stem and blossom, reaching the branches of the willow-tree, and making the whole place dark and dim. At last she could bear it no longer and she told one of her sisters——"

"I wouldn't tell my sister, if I had one," Letty assured herself. "I'd never tell no one. It's more like my own secret when I keep it to myself. Nobody'll ever know—not even him."

"The other sisters learned the story then, but they told it to no one but a few other mermaids, who told it to their intimate friends. One of these friends knew who the prince was, and told the princess where he came from and where his kingdom lay. Now she knew where he lived; and many a night she spent there, floating on the water. She ventured nearer to the land than any of her sisters had done. She swam up the narrow lagoon, under the carved marble balcony; and there she sat and watched the prince when he thought himself alone in the moonlight. She remembered how his head had rested on her breast, and how she had kissed his brow; but he would never know, and could not even dream of her."

Letty had not kissed her prince's brow, but she had kissed his feet; but he would never know that, and would dream of her no more than this other prince of the little thing who loved him.

Allerton continued to read on, partly because the old tale came back to him with its enchanting loveliness, partly because reading aloud would be a feature of his educational scheme, and partly because it soothed him to be doing it. He could never read to Barbara. Once, when he tried it, the sound of his voice and the monotony of his cadences, so got on her nerves that she stopped him in the middle of a word. But this girl with her uncritical mind, and her gratitude for small bits of kindliness, gave him confidence in himself by her rapt way of listening.

She did listen raptly, since a prince's reading must always be more arresting than that of ordinary mortals, and also because, both consciously and subconsciously, she was taking his pronunciation as a standard.

* * * * *

And just at this minute her name was under discussion in a brilliant gathering at The Hindoo Lantern, in another quarter of New York.

If you know The Hindoo Lantern you know how much it depends on atmosphere. Once a disused warehouse in a section of the city which commerce had forsaken, the enthusiasm for the dance which arose about 1910, has made it a temple. It gains, too, by being a temple of the esoteric. The Hindoo Lantern is not everybody's lantern, and does not swing in the open vulgar street. You might live in New York a hundred years and unless you were one of the initiated and privileged, you might never know of its existence.

You could not so much as approach it were it not first explained to you what you ought to do. You must pass through a tobacconist's, which from the street looks like any other tobacconist's, after which you traverse a yard, which looks like any other yard, except that it is bounded by a wall in which there is a small and unobtrusive door. Beside the small and unobtrusive door there hangs a bell-rope, of the ancient kind suggesting the convent or the Orient. The bell-rope pulls a bell; the bell clangs overhead; the door is opened cautiously by a Hindoo lad, or, as some say, a mulatto boy dressed as a Hindoo. If you are with a friend of the institution you will be admitted without more inspection; but should you be a stranger there will be a scrutiny of your passports. Assuming, however, that you go in, you will find a small courtyard, in which at last The Hindoo Lantern hangs mystic, suggestive, in oriental iron-work, and panels of colored glass.

Having passed beneath this symbol you will enter an antechamber rich in the magic of the East. In a reverent obscurity you will find Buddha on the right, Vishnu on the left, with flowers set before the one, while incense burns before the other. Somewhere in the darkness an Oriental woman will be seated on the ground, twanging on a sarabar, and now and then crooning a chant of invitation to come and share in darksome rites. You will thus be "worked up" to a sense of the mysterious before you pass the third gate of privilege into the shrine itself.

Here you will discover the large empty oval of floor, surrounded by little tables for segregation and refreshment, with which the past ten years have made us familiar. The place will be buzzing with the hum of voices, merry with duologues of laughter, and steaming with tobacco smoke. A jazz-band will strike up, coughing out the nauseated, retching intervals so stimulating to our feet, and two by two, in driblets, streamlets, and lastly in a volume, the guests will take the floor.

In the way of "steps" all the latest will be on exhibition. You will see the cow-trot, the rabbit-jump, the broom-stick, the washerwoman's dip. Everyone who is anyone will be here, if not on one night then on another, in a jovial fraternity steeped in the spirit of democracy. Revelry will be sustained on lemonade and a resinous astringent known locally as beer, while a sense of doing the forbidden will be in the air. For commercial reasons it will be needful to keep it in the air, since in the proceedings themselves there will be nothing more occult, or more inciting to iniquity, than a kindergarten game.

Hither Mr. Gorry Larrabin had brought Mademoiselle Odette Coucoul, to teach her the new dances. As a matter of fact, he had just led her back to their little table, inconspicuously placed in the front row, after putting her through the paces of the camel-step. Mademoiselle had found it entrancing, so much more novel in the motion than the antiquated valses she had danced in France. Mr. Larrabin had retreated like a camel walking backwards, while she had advanced like a camel going forwards. The art was in lifting the foot quite high, throwing it slightly backwards, and setting it down with a delicate deliberation, while you craned the neck before you with a shake of the Adam's apple. To incite you to produce this effect the jazz-band urged you onward with a sob, a gulp, a moan, an effect of strangulation, till finally it tore up the seat of your being as if you had been suddenly struck sea-sick.

"Mon Dieu, but it is lofely," mademoiselle gurgled, laughing in her breathlessness. "It is terr-i-bul to call no one a camel—un chameau—in France; but here am I a—chameau!"

Gorry took this with puzzled amusement. "What's the matter with calling anyone a camel? I don't see any harm in that."

Mademoiselle hid her face in confusion. "Oh, but it is terr-i-bul, terr-i-bul! It is almost so worse as to call no one a—how you say zat word in Eenglish?—a cow, n'est ce pas?—une vache—and zat is the most bad name what you can call no one."

Looking across the room Gorry was struck with an idea. "Well, there's a—what d'ye call it—a vashe—over there. See that guy with the girl with the cream-colored hair—fella with a big black mustache, like a brigand in a play? There's a vashe all-righty; and yet I've got to keep in with him."

As he explained his reasons for keeping in with the "vashe" in question mademoiselle contented herself with shedding radiance and paying no attention. Neither did she pay attention when he went on to tell of the girl who had disappeared, and of her stepfather's reasons for finding her. She woke to cognizance of the subject only when Gorry repeated the exact words of Miss Tina Vanzetti that morning: "Name of Letty Gravely."

It was mademoiselle's turn for repetition. "But me, I know dat name. I 'ear it not so long ago. Name of Let-ty Grav-el-ly! I sure 'ear zat name all recently." She reflected, tapping her forehead with vivacity. "Mais quand? Mais oui? C'etait—Ah!" The exclamation was the sharp cry of discovery. "Tina Vanzetti—my frien'! She tell me zis morning. Zat girl—Let-ty Grav-el-ly—she come chez Margot with ole man—what he keep ze white slave—and he command her grand beautiful trousseau—Tina Vanzetti she will give me ze address—and I will tell you—and you will tell him—and he will put you on to riche affairs——"

"It'll be dollars and cents in the box office for me," Gorry interpreted, forcibly, while the band belched forth a chord like the groan of a dying monster, calling them again to their feet.

* * * * *

"'Remember,' said the witch," Allerton continued to read, "'when you have once assumed a human form you can never again be a mermaid—never return to your home or to your sisters more. Should you fail to win the prince's love, so that he leaves father and mother for your sake, and lays his hand in yours before the priest, an immortal soul will never be granted you. On the same day that he marries another your heart will break, and you will drift as sea-foam on the water.' 'So let it be,' said the little mermaid, turning pale as death.'"

Allerton lifted his eyes from the book. "Does it bore you?"

There was no mistaking her sincerity. "No! I love it."

"Then perhaps we'll read a lot of things. After this we'll find a good novel, and then possibly somebody's life. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

Her joy was such that he could hardly hear the "Yes," for which he was listening. He listened because he was so accustomed to boring people that to know he was not boring them was a consolation.

"Is there anybody's life—his biography—that you'd be specially interested in?"

She answered timidly and yet daringly. "Could we—could we read the life of the late Queen Victoria—when she was a girl?"

"Oh, easily! I'll hunt round for one to-day. Now let me tell you about Hans Andersen. He was born in Denmark, so that he was a Dane. You know where Denmark is on the map, don't you?"

"I think I do. It's there by Germany isn't it?"

"Quite right. But let me get the atlas, and we'll look it up."

He was on his feet when she summoned her forces for a question. "Do you read like this to—to the girl you're engaged to?"

"No," he said, reddening. "She—she doesn't like it. She won't let me. But wait a minute. I'll go and get the atlas."

"'On the same day that he marries another,' Letty repeated to herself, as she sat alone, 'your heart will break, and you will drift as sea-foam on the water.' 'So let it be,' said the little mermaid."



Chapter XVIII

On the next afternoon Allerton reported to Miss Walbrook the success of his first educational evening.

"She's very intelligent, very. You'd really be pleased with her, Barbe. Her mind is so starved that it absorbs everything you say to her, as a dry soil will drink up rain."

Regarding him with the mysterious Egyptian expression which had at times suggested the reincarnation of some ancient spirit Barbara maintained the stillness which had come upon her on the previous day. "That must be very satisfactory to you, Rash."

He agreed the more enthusiastically because of believing her at one with him in this endeavor. "You bet! The whole thing is going to work out. She'll pick up our point of view as if she was born to it."

"And you're not afraid of her picking up anything else?"

"Anything else of what kind?"

"She might fall in love with you, mightn't she?"

"With me? Nonsense! No one would fall in love with me who——"

Her mysterious Egyptian smile came and went. "You can stop there, Rash. It's no use being more uncomplimentary than you need to be. And then, too, you might fall in love with her."

"Barbe!" He cried out, as if wounded. "You're really too absurd. She's a good little thing, and she's had the devil's own luck——"

"They always do have. That was one thing I learnt in Bleary Street. It was never a girl's own fault. It was always the devil's own luck."

"Well, isn't it, now, when you come to think of it? You can't take everything away from people, and expect them to have the same standards as you and me. Think of the mess that people of our sort make of things, even with every advantage."

"We've our own temptations, of course."

"And they've got theirs—without our pull in the way of carrying them off. You should hear Steptoe——"

"I don't want to hear Steptoe. I've heard him too much already."

"What do you mean by that?"

"What can I mean by it but just what I say? I should think you'd get rid of him."

Having first looked puzzled, with a suggestion of pain, he ended with a laugh. "You might as well expect me to get rid of an old grandfather. Steptoe wouldn't let me, if I wanted to."

"He doesn't like me."

"Oh, that's just your imagination, Barbe. I'll answer for him when it comes to——"

"You needn't take the trouble to do that, because I don't like him."

"Oh, but you will when you come to understand him."

"Possibly; but I don't mean to come to understand him. Old servants can be an awful nuisance, Rash——"

"But Steptoe isn't exactly an old servant. He's more like——"

"Oh, I know what he's like. He's a habit; and habits are always dangerous, even when they're good. But we're not going to quarrel about Steptoe yet. I just thought I'd put you on your guard——"

"Against him?"

"He's a horrid old schemer, if that's what you want me to say; but then it may be what you like."

"Well, I do," he laughed, "when it comes to him. He's been a horrid old schemer as long as I remember him, but always for my good."

"For your good as he sees it."

"For my good as a kind old nurse might see it. He's limited, of course; but then kind old nurses generally are."

To be true to her vow of keeping the peace she forced back her irritations, and smiled. "You're an awful goose, Rash; but then you're a lovable goose, aren't you?" She beckoned, imperiously. "Come here."

When he was on his knees beside her chair she pressed back his face framed by her two hands. "Now tell me. Which do you love most—Steptoe or me?"

He cast about him for two of her special preferences. "And you tell me; which do you love most, a saddle-horse or an opera?"

"If I told you, which should I be?—the opera or the saddle-horse?"

"If I told you, which would you give up?"

So they talked foolishly, as lovers do in the chaffing stage, she trying to charm him into promising to get rid of Steptoe, he charmed by her willingness to charm him. Neither remembered that technically he was a married man; but then neither had ever taken his marriage to Letty as a serious breach in their relations.

* * * * *

While he was thus on his knees the kindly old nurse was giving to Letty a kindly old nurse's advice.

"If madam 'ud go out and tyke a walk I think it'd do madam good."

To madam the suggestion had elements of mingled terror and attraction. "But, Steptoe, I couldn't go out and take a walk unless I dressed up in the new outdoor suit."

"And what did madam buy it for?—with the 'at and the vyle, and everythink, just like the lyte Mrs. Allerton."

It was the argument she was hoping for. In the first place she was used to the freedom of the streets; and in the second the outdoor suit was calling her. Letty's love of dress was more than a love of appearing at her best, though that love was part of it; it was a love of the clothes themselves, of fabrics, colors, and fashions. When her dreams were not of wandering knights who loved her at a glance—bankers, millionaires, casting directors in motion-picture studios, or, in high flights of imagination, incognito English lords—they dealt in costumes of magic tissue, of hues suited to her hair and eyes, in which the world saw and greeted her, not as the poor little waif whom Judson Flack had put out of doors, but the true Letty Gravely of romance. The Letty Gravely of romance was the real Letty Gravely, a being set free from the cruel, the ugly, the carking, the sordid, to flourish in a sunlight she knew to be shining somewhere.

Oddly enough her vision had come partly true; and yet so out of focus that she couldn't see its truth. It was like the sunlight which she knew to be shining somewhere, with a wrong refraction in its rays. The world into which she had been carried was like that in a cubist picture which someone had shown her at the studio. It bore a relation to the world she knew, but a relation in which whatever she had supposed to be perpendicular was oblique, and whatever she had supposed to be oblique was horizontal, and nothing as she had been accustomed to find it. It made her head swim. It was literally true that she was afraid to move lest she should make a misstep through an error in her sense of planes.

But clothes she understood. In the swirling of her universe they formed a rock to which her intelligence could cling. They kept her sane. In a sense they kept her happy. When all outside was confusion and topsy-turvyness she could retire among Margot's cartons, and find herself on solid ground. I should be sorry to record the hours she spent before the long mirror in the little back spare room. Here her imagination could give itself free range. She was Luciline Lynch, and Mercola Merch, and Lisabel Anstey, and any other star of whom she admired the attainments; she could play a whole series of parts from which her lack of a wardrobe had hitherto excluded her. From time to time she ventured, like Steptoe, to be Barbara Walbrook herself, though assuming the role with less intrepidity than he.

It was easier, she found, to be any of the stars than Barbara Walbrook, for the reason that the latter was "the real thing." She was living her part, not playing it. She was "letter perfect," in Steptoe's sense, not because a director moved her person this way, or turned her head that way, but because life had so infused her that she did what was right unconsciously. Letty, by pretending to enter at the door and come forward to the mirror as to a living presence, studied what was right by imitation. Miss Walbrook walked with a swift, easy gait which suggested the precision of certain strong birds when swooping on their prey. Between the door and the mirror Letty aimed at the same effect till she made a discovery.

"I can't do it her way; I can only do it my way."

The ways were different; yet each could be effective. That too was a discovery. Nature had no rule to which every individual was obliged to conform. The individual was, in a measure, his own rule, and got his attractiveness from being so. The minute you abandoned your own gifts to cultivate those with which Nature had blessed someone else you lost not only your identity but your charm.

Letty worked this out as something like a principle. However many the hints she took it would be folly to try to be anything but herself. After all, it was what gave her value to a star, her personality. If Luciline Lynch whom Nature had endowed with the grand manner had tried to be Mercola Merch who was all vivacious wickedness—well, anyone could see! So, if Barbara Walbrook suggested an eagle on the wing and she, Letty Gravely, was only a sparrow in the street, the sparrow would be more successful as a sparrow than in trying to emulate the eagle.

And yet there was a value to good models which at first she found difficult to reconcile with this truth of personal independence. This too she thought out. "It's like a way to do your hair," was her method of expressing it. "You do what's in fashion, but you twist it so that it suits your own style. It isn't the fashion that makes you look right; it's in being true to what suits you."

There was, however, in Barbara Walbrook a something deeper than this which at first eluded her. It was in Rashleigh Allerton too. It was in Lisabel Anstey, and in a few other stars, but not in Mercola Merch, nor in Luciline Lynch. "It's the whole business," Letty summed up to herself, "and yet I don't know what it is. Unless I can put my finger on it...."

She was just at this point when Steptoe addressed her on the subject of going out. That she do so was part of his programme. Madam would not be madam till she felt herself free to come and go; and till madam was madam Mr. Rash would not understand who it was they had in the 'ouse. That he didn't understand it yet was partly due to madam 'erself who didn't understand it on 'er side. To cultivate this understanding in madam was Steptoe's immediate aim, in which Beppo, the little cocker spaniel, unexpectedly came to his assistance.

As the two stood conversing at the foot of the stairs Beppo lilted down, with that air of having no one to love which he had worn during all the eighteen months since his mistress had died. The cocker spaniel's heart, as everyone knows, is imbued with the principle of one life, one love. It has no room for two loves; it has still less room for that general amiability to which most dogs are born. Among the human race it singles out one; and to that one it is faithful. In separation it seeks no substitute; in bereavement it rarely forms a second tie. To everyone but Beppo the removal of Mrs. Allerton had made the world brighter. He alone had mourned that presence with a grief which sought neither comfort nor mitigation. He had followed his routine; he had eaten and slept; he had gone out when he was taken out and come in when he was brought in; but he had lived shut up within himself, aloof in his sorrow. For the first time in all those eighteen months he had come out of this proud gloom when Rashleigh's key had turned in the door that night, and Letty had entered the house.

The secret call which Beppo had heard can never be understood by men till men have developed more of their latent faculties. As he lay in his basket something reached him which he recognized as a summons to a new phase of usefulness. Out of the lethargy of mourning he had jumped with an obedient leap that took him through the obscurity of the house to where a frightened girl had need of a little dog's sympathy. Of that sympathy he had been lavish; and now that there was new discussion in the air he came with his contribution.

In words Steptoe had to be his interpreter. "That, poor little dog as 'as growed so fond of madam don't get 'alf the exercise he ought to be give. If madam was to tyke 'im out like for a little stroll up the Havenue...."

Thus it happened that in less than half an hour Letty found herself out in the October sunlight, dressed in her blue-green costume, with all the details to "correspond," and leading Beppo on the leash. To lead Beppo on the leash, as Steptoe had perceived, gave a reason for an excursion which would otherwise have seemed motiveless. But she was out. She was out in conditions in which even Judson Flack, had he met her, could hardly have detected her. Gorgeously arrayed as she seemed to herself she was dressed with the simplicity which stamps the French taste. There was nothing to make her remarked, especially in a double procession of women so many of whom were remarkable. Had you looked at her twice you would have noted that while skill counted for much in her gentle, well-bred appearance, a subtle, unobtrusive, native distinction counted for most; but you would have been obliged to look at her twice before noting anything about her. She was a neatly dressed girl, with an air; but on that bright afternoon in Fifth Avenue neatly dressed girls with an air were as buttercups in June.

Seizing this fact Letty felt more at her ease. No one was thinking her conspicuous. She was passing in the crowd. She was not being "spotted" as the girl who a short time before had had nothing but the old gray rag to appear in. She could enjoy the walk—and forget herself.

Then it came to her suddenly that this was the secret of which she was in search, the power to forget herself. She must learn to do things so easily that she would have no self-consciousness in doing them. In big things Barbara Walbrook might think of herself; but in all little things, in the way she spoke and walked and bore herself toward others, she acted as she breathed. It seemed wonderful to Letty, this assurance that you were right in all the fundamentals. It was precisely in the fundamentals that she was so likely to be wrong. It was where girls of her sort suffered most; in the lack of the elementary. One could bluff the advanced, or make a shot at it; but the elementary couldn't be bluffed, and no shot at it would tell. It betrayed you at once. You must have it. You must have it as you had the circulation of your blood, as something so basic that you didn't need to consider it. That was her next discovery, as with Beppo tugging at the end of his tether she walked onward.

She was used to walking; she walked strongly, and with a trudging sturdiness, not without its grace. She came to the part of Fifth Avenue where the great houses begin to thin out, and vacant lots, as if ashamed of their vacancy, shrink behind boardings vivid with the news of picture-plays. It was the year when they were advertising the screen-masterpiece, Passion Aflame; and here was depicted Luciline Lynch, a torch in her hand, her hair in maenadic dishevelment, leading on a mob to set fire to a town. Letty herself having been in that mob paused in search of her face among the horde of the great star's followers. It was a blob of scarlet and green from which she dropped her eyes, only to have them encounter a friend of long standing.

At the foot of the boarding, and all in a row, was a straggling band of dust-flowers. It was late in the season, yet not too late for their bit of blue heaven to press in among the ways of men. She was not surprised to find them there. Ever since the crazy woman had pointed out the mission of this humble little helper of the human race she had noted its persistency in haunting the spots which beauty had deserted. You found it in the fields, it was true; but you found it rarely, sparsely, raggedly, blooming, you might say, with but little heart for its bloom. Where other flowers had been frightened away; where the poor crowded; where factories flared; where junk-heaps rusted; where backyards baked; where smoke defiled; where wretchedness stalked; where crime brooded; where the land was unkempt; where the human spirit was sodden—there the celestial thing multiplied its celestial growths, blessing the eyes and making the heart leap. It mattered little that so few gave it a thought or regarded it as other than a weed; there were always those few, who knew that it spelled beauty, who knew that it spelled something more.

Letty was of those few. She was of those few for old sake's sake, but also for the sake of a new yearning. Slipping off a glove she picked a few of the dusty stalks, even though she knew that once taken from their task of glorifying the dishonored the blue stars would shut almost instantly. "They'll wither in a few days now," she said, in self-excuse; "and anyhow I'll leave most of them." Having shaken off the dust she fastened them in her corsage, blue against her blue-green.

They were her symbol for happiness springing up in the face of despair, and from a soil where you would expect it to be choked. She herself was happy to-day as she could not remember ever to have been happy in her life. For the first time she was passing among decent people decently; and then—it was the great hope beyond which she didn't look—the prince might read with her again that evening.

But as she turned from Fifth Avenue into East Sixty-seventh Street the prince was approaching his door from the other direction. Even she was aware that it was contrary to his habits to appear at home by five in the afternoon. She didn't know, of course, that Barbara had so stimulated his enthusiasm for the educational course that he had come on the chance of taking it up at the tea hour. He could not remember that Barbara had ever before been so sympathetic to one of his ideas. The fact encouraged his feeble belief in himself, and made him love her with richer tenderness.

In the gentle girl of quietly distinguished mien he saw nothing but a stranger till Beppo strained at his leash and barked. Even then it took him half a minute to get his powers of recognition into play. He stopped at the foot of his steps, watching her approach.

By doing so he made the approach more difficult for her. The heart seemed to stop in her body. She could scarcely breathe. Each step was like walking on blades, yet like walking on blades with a kind of ecstasy. Luckily Beppo pranced and pulled in such a way that she was forced to give him some attention.

The prince's first words were also a distraction from terrors and enchantments which made her feel faint.

"Where did you get the poor man's coffee?"

The question by puzzling her gave her some relief. Pointing at the sprays in her corsage he went on:

"That's what the country people often call the chicory weed in France."

She was able to gasp feebly: "Oh, does it grow there?"

"I think it grows pretty nearly everywhere. It's one of the most classic wild flowers we know anything about. The ancient Egyptians dried its leaves to give flavor to their salad, and I remember being told at Luxor that the modern Copts and Arabs do the same. You see it's quite a friendly little beast to man."

It eased her other feelings to tell him about the crazy woman in Canada, and her reading of the dust-flower's significance.

"That's a good idea too," Allerton agreed, smiling down into her eyes. "There are people like that—little dust-flowers cheering up the wayside for the rest of us poor brutes."

She said, wistfully: "I suppose you've known a lot of them."



As he laughed his eyes rested on a man sauntering toward them from the direction of Fifth Avenue. "I've known about two—" his eyes came back to smile again down into hers—"or one." He started as a man starts who receives a new suggestion. "I say! Let's go in and look up chicory and succory in the encyclopedia. Then we'll know all about it. It seems to me, too," he went on, reminiscently, "that I read a little poem about this very blue flower—by Margaret Deland, I think it was—only a few weeks ago. I believe I could put my hand on it. Come along."

As he sprang up the steps the pearly gates were opening again before Letty when the man whom Allerton had seen sauntering toward them actually passed by. Passing he lifted his hat politely, smiled, and said, "Good afternoon, Miss Gravely," like any other gentleman. He was a good-looking slippery young man, with a cast in his left eye.

Because she was a woman before she was a lady, as she understood the word lady, Letty responded with, "Good afternoon," and a little inclination of the head. He was several doors off before she bethought herself sufficiently to take alarm.

"Who's that?" Allerton demanded, looking down from the third or fourth step.

"I'm sure I haven't an idea. I think he must be some camera-man who's seen me when they've been shooting the pitch—" she made the correction almost in time—"who's seen me when they've been shooting the pick-tures. I can't think of anything else."

They watched the retreating form till, without a backward glance, it turned into Madison Avenue.

"Come along in," Allerton called then, in a tone intended to disperse misgiving, "and let's begin."

Ten minutes later he was reading in the library, from a big volume open on his knees, how for over a century the chicory root had been dried and ground in France, and used to strengthen the cheaper grades of coffee, when Letty broke in, as if she had not been following him:

"I don't think that fella could have been a camera-man after all. No camera-man would ha' noticed me in the great big bunch I was always in."

"Oh, well, he can't do you any harm anyhow," Allerton assured her. "I'll just finish this, and then I'll look for the poem by Mrs. Deland."

With her veil and gloves in her lap Letty sat thoughtful while he passed from shelf to shelf in search of the smaller volume. Of her real suspicion, that the man was a friend of Judson Flack's, she decided not to speak.

Seated once more in front of her, and bending slightly toward her, Allerton read:

"Oh, not in ladies' gardens, My peasant posy! Smile thy dear blue eyes, Nor only—nearer to the skies— In upland pastures, dim and sweet— But by the dusty road Where tired feet Toil to and fro; Where flaunting Sin May see thy heavenly hue, Or weary Sorrow look from thee Toward a more tender blue."

Allerton glanced up from the book. "Pretty, isn't it?"

She admitted that it was, and then added: "And yet there was the times when the castin' director put me right in the front, to register what the crowd behind me was thinkin' about. He might ha' noticed me then."

"Yes, of course; that must have been it. Now wouldn't you like me to read that again? You must always read a poem a second or third time to really know what it's about."

* * * * *

Meanwhile a poem of another sort was being read to Miss Barbara Walbrook by her aunt, who had entered the drawing-room within five minutes after Allerton had left it. During those five minutes Barbara had remained seated, plunged into reverie. The problem with which she had to deal was the degree to which she was right or wrong in permitting Rashleigh to go on in his crazy course. That this outcast girl was twining herself round his heart was a fact growing too obtrusive to be ignored. Had Rashleigh been as other men decisive action would have been imperative. But he was not as other men, and there lay the possibilities she found difficult.

If the aunt couldn't help the niece to solve the difficult question she at least could compel her to take a stand.

As she entered the drawing-room she came from out of doors, a slender, unfleshly figure, all intellect and idea. Her vices being wholly of the spirit were not recognized as vices, so that she passed as the highest type of the good woman which the continent of America knows anything about. Being the highest type of the good woman she had, moreover, the privilege which American usage accords to all good women of being good aggressively. No other good woman in the world enjoys this right to the same degree, a fact to which we can point with pride. The good English woman, the good French woman, the good Italian woman, are obliged by the customs of their countries to direct their goodness into channels in which it is relatively curbed. The good American woman, on the other hand, is never so much at home as when she is on the warpath. Her goodness being the only standard of goodness which the country accepts she has the right to impose it by any means she can harness to her purposes. She is the inspiration of our churches, and the terror of our constituencies. She is behind state legislatures and federal congresses and presidential cabinets. They may elude her lofty purposes, falsify her trust, and for a time hoodwink her with male chicaneries; but they are always afraid of her, and in the end they do as she commands. Among the coarsely, stupidly, viciously masculine countries of the world the American Republic is the single and conspicuous matriarchate, ruled by its good women. Of these rulers Miss Marion Walbrook was as representative a type as could be found, high, pure, zealous, intolerant of men's weaknesses, and with only spiritual immoralities of her own.

Seated in one of her slender upright armchairs she had the impressiveness of goodness fully conscious of itself. A document she held in her hand gave her the judicial air of one entitled to pass sentence.

"I'm sorry, Barbara; but I've some disagreeable news for you."

Barbara woke. "Indeed?"

"I've just come from Augusta Chancellor's. She talked about—that man."

"What did she say?"

"She said two or three things. One was that she'd met him one day in the Park when he decidedly wasn't himself."

"Oh, it's hard to say when he's himself and when he isn't. He's what the French would call un original."

"Oh, I don't know about that. The originality of men is commonplace as it's most novel. This man is on a par with the rest, if you call it original for him to have a woman in the house."

Barbara feigned languidness. "Well, it is—the way he has her there."

"The way he has her there? What do you mean by that?"

"I mean what I say. There's no one else in the world who would take a girl under his roof in the way Rash has taken this girl."

"How, may I ask, did he take her?"

Having foreseen that one day she should be in this position Barbara had made up her mind as to how much she should say. "He found her."

"Oh, they all do that. They generally find them in the Park."

"Exactly; it's just what he did."

"I guessed—it was only guessing mind you—that he also tried to find Augusta Chancellor."

"Oh, possibly. He'd go as far as that, if he saw her doing anything he thought not respectable."

"Barbara, please! You're talking about a friend of mine, one of my colleagues. Let's return to—I hope you won't find the French phrase invidious—to our mutton."

"Oh, very well! Rash found the girl homeless—penniless—with no friends. Her stepfather had turned her out. Another man would have left her there, or turned her over to the police. Rash took her to his own house, and since then we've both been helping her to—to get on her feet."

"Helping her to get on her feet in a way that's driven from the house the good old women who've been there for nearly thirty years."

"Oh, you know that too, do you?"

"Why, certainly. Jane, that was the parlor maid, is very intimate with Augusta Chancellor's cook; and she says—Jane does—that he's actually married the creature."

Barbara shrugged her shoulders. "I can't help what the servants say, Aunt Marion. I'm trying to be a friend to the girl, and help her to pull herself together. Of course I recognize the fact that Rash has been foolish—quixotic—or whatever you like to call it; but he hasn't kept anything from me."

"And you're still engaged to him?"

"Of course I'm still engaged to him." She held out her left hand. "Look at his ring."

"Then why don't you get married?"

"Are you in such a hurry to get rid of me?"

The question being a pleasantry Miss Walbrook took it with a gentle smile. When she resumed it was with a slight flourish of the document in her hand and another turn to the conversation.

"I went to the bank this morning. I've brought home my will. I'm thinking of making some changes in it."

Barbara looked non-committal, as if the subject had nothing to do with herself.

"The question I have to decide," Miss Walbrook pursued, "is whether to leave everything to you, in the hope that you'll carry on my work——"

"I shouldn't know how."

"Or whether to establish a trust——"

"I should do that decidedly."

"And let it fall into the hands of a pack of men."

"It will fall into the hands of a pack of men, whatever you do with it."

"And yet if you had it in charge——"

"Some man would get hold of it, Aunt Marion."

"Which is what I'm debating. I'm not so very sure——"

"That I shall marry in the end?"

"Well, you're not married yet ... and if you were to change your mind ... the world has such a need of consecrated women with men so unscrupulous and irresponsible ... we must break their power some day ... and now that we've got the opportunity ... all I want you to understand is that if you shouldn't marry there'd be a great career in store for you...."



Chapter XIX

By the end of twenty-four hours the possibility of this great career quickened Barbara's zeal for taking a hand in Letty's education. Not only did that impulse of furious jealousy, by which she meant at first to leave it wholly to Rash, begin to seem dangerous, but there was a world to consider and throw off the scent. Now that Augusta Chancellor knew that the girl was beneath Rash's roof all their acquaintances would sooner or later be in possession of the fact. It was Barbara's part, therefore, to play the game in such a way that a bit of quixotism would be the most foolish thing of which Rash would be suspected.

That she would be playing a game she knew in advance. She must hide her suspicions; she must control her sufferings. She must pretend to have confidence in Rash, when at heart she cried against him as an infant and a fool. Never was woman in such a ridiculous situation as that into which she had been thrust; never was heart so wild to ease itself by invective and denunciation; and never was the padlock fixed so firmly on the lips. Hour by hour the man she loved was being weaned and won away from her; and she must stand by with grimacing smiles, instead of throwing up her arms in dramatic gestures and calling on her gods to smite and smash and annihilate.

Since, however, she had a game to play, a game she would play, though she did it quivering with protest and repulsion.

"Do you mind if I take the car this afternoon, Aunt Marion, since you're not going to use it."

"Take it of course; but where are you going?"

"I thought I would ask that protegee of Rash Allerton's, of whom we were speaking yesterday, to come for a drive with me. But if you'd rather I didn't——"

"I've nothing to do with it. It's entirely for you to say. The car is yours, of course."

The invitation being transmitted by telephone Steptoe urged Letty to accept it. "It'll be all in the wye of madam's gettin' used to things—a bit at a time like."

"But I don't think she likes me."

"If madam won't stop to think whether people likes 'er or not I think madam 'd get for'arder. Besides madam'll pretty generally always find as love-call wykes love-echo, as the syin' goes."

Which, as a matter of fact, was what Letty did find. She found it from the minute of entering the car and taking her seat, when Miss Walbrook exclaimed heartily: "What a lovely dress! And the hat's too sweet! Suits you exactly, doesn't it? My dear, I've the greatest bother ever to find a hat that doesn't make me look like a scarecrow."

From the naturalness of the tone there was no suspecting the cost of these words to the speaker, and the subject was one in which Letty was at home. In turn she could compliment Miss Walbrook's appearance, duly admiring the toque of prune-colored velvet, with a little bunch of roses artfully disposed, and the coat of prune-colored Harris tweed. In further discussing the length of the new skirts and the chances of the tight corset coming back they found topics of common interest. The fact that they were the topics which came readiest to the lips of both made it possible to maintain the conversation at its normal give-and-take, while each could pursue the line of her own summing up of the other.

To Letty Miss Walbrook seemed friendlier than she had expected, only spasmodically so. Her kindly moods came in spurts of which the inspiration soon gave out. "I think she's sad," was Letty's comment to herself. Sadness, in Letty's use of words, covered all the emotions not distinctly cheerful or hilarious.

She knew nothing about Miss Walbrook, except that it appeared from this conversation that she lived with an aunt, whose car they were using. That she was a friend of the prince's had been several times repeated, but all information ended there. To Letty she seemed old—between thirty and forty. Had she known her actual age she would still have seemed old from her knowledge of the world and general sophistication. Letty's own lack of sophistication kept her a child when she was nearly twenty-three. That Miss Walbrook was the girl to whom the prince was engaged had not yet crossed her thought.

At the same time, since she knew that girl she brought her to the forefront of Letty's consciousness. She was never far from the forefront of her consciousness, and of late speculation concerning her had become more active. If she approached the subject with the prince he reddened and grew ill at ease. The present seemed, therefore, an opportunity to be utilized.

They were deep in the northerly avenues of the Park, when apropos of the dress topic, Letty said, suddenly: "I suppose she's awfully stylish—the girl he's engaged to."

The response was laconic: "She's said to be."

"Is she pretty?"

"I don't think you could say that."

"Then what does he see in her?"

"Whatever people do see in those they're in love with. I'm afraid I'm not able to define it."

Dropping back into her corner Letty sighed. She knew this mystery existed, the mystery of falling in love for reasons no one was able to explain. It was the ground on which she hoped that at first sight someone would fall in love with her. If he didn't do it for reasons beyond explanation he would, of course, not do it at all.

It was some minutes before another question trembled to her lips. "Does she—does she know about me?"

"Oh, naturally."

"And did she—did she feel very bad?"

Barbara's long eyes slid round in Letty's direction, though the head was not turned. "How should you feel yourself, if it had happened to you?"

"It'd kill me."

"Well, then?" She let Letty draw her own conclusions before adding: "It's nearly killed her."

Letty cowered. She had never thought of this. That she herself suffered she knew; that the prince suffered she also knew; but that this unknown girl, whatever her folly, lay smitten to the heart brought a new complication into her ideas. "Even if he ever did come to—" she held up her unspoken sentence there—"I'd ha' stolen him from her."

There was little more conversation after that. Each had her motives for reflections and silences. They were nearing the end of the drive when Letty said again:

"What would you do if you was—if you were—me?"

"I'd do whatever I felt to be highest."

To Letty this was a beautiful reply, and proof of a beautiful nature. Moreover, it was indirectly a compliment to herself, in that she could be credited with doing what she felt to be highest as well as anyone else. In her life hitherto she had been figuratively kicked and beaten into doing what she couldn't resist. Now she was considered capable of acting worthily of her own accord. It inspired a new sentiment toward Miss Walbrook.

She thought, too, that Miss Walbrook liked her a little better. Perhaps it was the fulfillment of Steptoe's adage, love-call wakes love-echo. She was sure that somehow this call had gone out from her to Miss Walbrook, and that it hadn't gone out in vain.

It hadn't gone out in vain, in that Miss Walbrook was able to say to herself, with some conviction, "That's the way it will have to be done." It was a way of which her experiences in Bleary Street had made her skeptical. Among those whom she called the lower orders innocence, ingenuousness, and integrity were qualities for which she had ceased to look. She didn't look for them anywhere with much confidence; but she had long ago come to the conclusion that the poor were schemers, and were obliged to be schemers because they were poor. Something in Letty impressed her otherwise. "That's the way," she continued to nod to herself. "It's no use trusting to Rash. I'll get her; and she'll get him; and so we shall work it."

Arrived in East Sixty-seventh Street she went in with Letty and had tea. But it was she who sat in dear Mrs. Allerton's corner of the sofa, and when William brought in the tray she said, "Put it here, William," as one who speaks with authority. Of this usurpation of the right to dispense hospitality Letty did not see the significance, being glad to have it taken off her hands.

Not so, however, with Steptoe who came in with a covered dish of muffins. Having placed it before Miss Walbrook he turned to Letty.

"Madam ain't feelin' well?"

Letty's tone expressed her surprise. "Why, yes."

"Madam'll excuse me. As madam ain't presidin' at 'er own tyble I was afryde——"

It being unnecessary to say more he tiptoed out, leaving behind him a declaration of war, which Miss Walbrook, without saying anything in words, was not slow to pick up. "Insufferable," was her comment to herself. Of the hostile forces against her this, she knew, was the most powerful.

Neither did Rash perceive the significance of Barbara's place at the tea-table when he entered about five o'clock, though she was quick to perceive the significance of his arrival. It was not, however, a point to note outwardly, so that she lifted her hand above the tea-kettle, letting him bend over it, as she exclaimed:

"Welcome to our city! Do sit down and make yourself at home. Letty and I have been for a drive, and are all ready to enjoy a little male society."

The easy tone helped Allerton over his embarrassment, first in finding the two women face to face, then in coming so unexpectedly face to face with them, and lastly in being caught by Barbara coming home at this unexpected hour. Knowing what the situation must mean to her he admired her the more for her sangfroid and social flexibility.

She took all the difficulties on herself. "Letty and I have been making friends, and are going to know each other awfully well, aren't we?" A smile at Letty drew forth Letty's smile, to Rashleigh's satisfaction, and somewhat to his bewilderment. But Barbara, handing him a cup of tea, addressed him directly. "Who do you think is engaged? Guess."

He guessed, and guessed wrong. He guessed a second time, and guessed wrong. There followed a conversation about people they knew, with regard to which Letty was altogether an outsider. Now and then she recognized great names which she had read in the papers, tossed back and forth without prefixes of Mr. or Miss, and often with pet diminutives. The whole represented a closed corporation of intimacies into which she could no more force her way than a worm into a billiard ball. Rash who was at first beguiled by the interchange of personalities began to experience a sense of discomfort that Letty should be so discourteously left out; but Barbara knew that it was best for both to force the lesson home. Rash must be given to understand how lost he would be with any outsider as his companion; and Letty must be made to realize how hopelessly an outsider she would always be.

But no lesson should be urged to the quick at a single sitting, so that Barbara broke off suddenly to ask why he had come home. In the same way as she had given the order to William she spoke with the authority of one at liberty to ask the question. Not to give the real reason he said that it was to write a letter and change his clothes.

"And you're going back to the Club?"

He replied that he was going to dine with a bachelor friend at his apartment.

"Then I'll wait and drop you at the Club. You can go on from there afterwards. I've got the time."

This too was said with an authority against which he felt himself unable to appeal.

Having written a note and changed to his dinner jacket he rejoined them in the drawing-room. Barbara held out her hand to Letty, with a briskness indicating relief.

"So glad we had our drive. I shall come soon again. I wish it could be to-morrow, but my aunt will be using the car."

"There's my car," Allerton suggested.

"Oh, so there is." Barbara took this proposal as a matter of course. "Then we'll say to-morrow. I'll call up Eugene and tell him when to come for me."

With Allerton beside her, and driving down Fifth Avenue, she said: "I see how to do it, Rash. You must leave it to me."

He replied in the tone of a child threatened with the loss of his role in a game. "I can't leave it to you altogether."

"Then leave it to me as much as you can. I see what to do and you don't. Furthermore, I know just how to do it."

"You're wonderful, Barbe," he said, humbly.

"I'm wonderful so long as you don't interfere with me."

"Oh, well, I shan't do that."

She turned to him sharply. "Is that a promise?"

"Why do you want a promise?" he asked, in some wonder.

"Because I do."

"That is, you can't trust me."

"My dear Rash, who could trust you after what——?"

"Oh, well, then, I promise."

"Then that's understood. And if anything happens, you won't go hedging and saying you didn't mean it in that way?"

"It seems to me you're very suspicious."

"One's obliged to foresee everything with you, Rash. It isn't as if one was dealing with an ordinary man."

"You mean that I'm to give you carte blanche, and have no will of my own at all."

"I mean that when I'm so reasonable, you must try to be reasonable on your side."

"Well, I will."

As they drew up in front of the New Netherlands Club, he escaped without committing himself further.

If he dined with a bachelor friend that night he must have cut the evening short, for at half past nine he re-entered the back drawing-room where Letty was sitting before the fire, her red book in her lap. She sat as a lover stands at a tryst as to which there is no positive engagement. To fortify herself against disappointment she had been trying to persuade herself that he wouldn't come, and that she didn't expect him.

He came, but he came as a man who has something on his mind. Almost without greeting he sat down, took the book from her lap and proceeded to look up the place at which he had left off.

"Miss Walbrook's lovely, isn't she?" she said, before he had found the page.

"She's a very fine woman," he assented. "Do you remember where we stopped?"

"It was at, 'So let it be, said the little mermaid, turning pale as death.' You know her very well, don't you?"

"Oh, very well indeed. I think we begin here: 'But you will have to pay me also——'"

"Have you known her very long?"

"All my life, more or less."

"She says she knows the girl you're engaged to."

"Yes, of course. We all know each other in our little set. Now, if you're ready, I'll begin to read."

"'But you will have to pay me also,' said the witch; 'and it is not a little that I ask. Yours is the loveliest voice in the world, and you trust to that, I dare say, to charm your love. But you must give it to me. For my costly drink I claim the best thing you possess. I shall give you my own blood, so that my draught may be as sharp as a two-edged sword.' 'But if you take my voice from me, what have I left?' asked the little mermaid, piteously. 'Your loveliness, your graceful movements, your speaking eyes. Those are enough to win a man's heart. Well, is your courage gone? Stretch out your little tongue, that I may cut it off, and you shall have my magic potion.' 'I consent,' said the little mermaid."

Letty cried out: "So that when she'd be with him she'd understand everything, and not be able to tell him anything."

"I'm afraid," he smiled, "that that's what's ahead of her, poor thing."

"Oh, but that—" she could hardly utter her distress—"Oh, but that's worse than anything in the world."

He looked up at her curiously. "Would you rather I didn't go on?"

"No, no; please. I—I want to hear it all."

* * * * *

At The Hindoo Lantern Mr. Gorry Larrabin and Mr. Judson Flack found themselves elbow to elbow outside the rooms where their respective ladies were putting the final touches to their hats and hair before entering the grand circle. It was an opportunity especially on Gorry's part, to seal the peace which had been signed so recently.

"Hello, Judson. What's the prospects in oil?" Judson's tone was pessimistic. "Not a thing doin', Gorry. Awful slow bunch, that lump of nuts I'm in with on this. Mentioned your name to one or two of 'em; but no enterprise. Boneheads that wouldn't know a white man from a crane." That he understood what Gorry understood became clear as he continued: "Friend o' mine at the Excelsior passes me the tip that they've held up that play they were goin' to put my girl into. Can't get anyone else that would swing the part. Waitin' for her to turn up again. I suppose you haven't heard anything, Gorry?"

Gorry looked him in the eyes as straight as was possible for a man with a cast in the left one. "Not a thing, Judson; not a thing."

The accent was so truthful that Judson gave his friend a long comprehending look. He was sure that Gorry would never speak with such sincerity if he was sincere.

"Well, I'm on the job, Gorry," he assured him, "and one of these days you'll hear from me."

"I'm on the job too, Judson; and one of these days——"

But as Mademoiselle Coucoul emerged from the dressing-room and shed radiance, Gorry was obliged to go forward.



Chapter XX

It was May.

In spite of her conviction that she knew what to do and how it to do it, Barbara perceived that at the end of seven months they were much where they had been in the previous October. If there was a change it was that all three, Rashleigh, Letty, and herself, had grown strained and intense.

Outwardly they strove to maintain a semblance of friendship. For that Barbara had worked hard, and in a measure had succeeded. She had held Rash; she had won Letty.

She had more than won Letty; she had trained her. All that in seven months a woman of the world could do for an unformed and ignorant child she had done. Her experience at Bleary Street had helped her in this; and Letty had been quick. She had seized not only those small points of speech and action foundational to rising in the world, but the point of view of those who had risen. She knew how, Barbara was sure, that there were certain things impossible to people such as those among whom she had been thrown.

Since it was May it was the end of a season, and the minute Barbara had long ago chosen for a masterstroke. Each of the others felt the crisis as near as she did herself.

"It's got to end," Letty confessed to her, as amid the soft loveliness of springtime, they were again driving in the Park.

Barbara chose her words. "I suppose he feels that too."

"Then why don't he let me end it?"

"I fancy that that's a difficult position for a man. If you ask his permission beforehand he feels obliged to say——"

"And perhaps," Letty suggested, "he's too tender-hearted."

"That's part of it. He is tender-hearted. Besides that, his position is grotesque—a man with whom two women are in love. To one of them he's been nominally married, while to the other he's bound by every tie of honor. No wonder he doesn't see his way. If he moves toward the one he hurts the other—a man to whom it's agony to hurt a fly."