LAURIE MEETS MISS MAYO
Laurie thought much that day about the girl in the mirror, and he was
again home at eleven that night, to the wonder of Mr. Bangs, who freely
expressed his surprise.
"Something pleasant been coming your way?" he tactfully asked.
Laurie evaded the question, but he felt that something definitely
pleasant had come his way. This something was a new interest, and he had
needed a new interest very much. He hoped he would dream of the girl
that night, but as he and Bangs unwisely consumed a Welsh rabbit before
they went to bed, he dreamed instead of something highly unpleasant, and
was glad to be awakened by the clear sunlight of a brilliant January
day.
After breakfast he strolled across the square into the somber hall of
the studio building on its southwest corner. The hall was empty, but he
found and rang a bell at the entrance of a dingy elevator shaft. The
elevator descended without haste. When it had reached the floor, the
colored youth in charge of it inhospitably filled its doorway and
regarded the visitor with indifference. This young man was easy to look
at, but he was no one he knew.
Laurie handed him a dollar and the youth's expression changed, first to
one of surprise, then to the tolerance of a man who is wise and is
willing to share his wisdom. The visitor went at once to the point of
his visit.
"A young lady lives here," he began. "She is very pretty, and she has
reddish hair and brown eyes. She has a studio in one of the upper
floors, at the front of the house. What's her name?"
The boy's face showed that he had instantly recognized the description,
but he pondered dramatically.
"Dat young lady?" he then said. "Dat young lady mus' be Miss Mayo, in
Twenty-nine, on de top flo'. She jes' moved in here las' Tuesday."
"Where does she come from, and what does she do?"
The boy hesitated. What did all this mean? And was he giving up too much
for a dollar? Laurie grinned at him understandingly.
"I don't know her," he admitted, "and I don't expect to. I'd like to
know something about her--that's all."
The youth nodded. He had the air of accepting an apology.
"I reckon she come fum some fur'n place. But I dunno what she _do_," he
reluctantly admitted. "Mebbe she ain't doin' nothin' yit. She's home
mos' de time. She don' go out hardly 'tall. Seems like she don' know
many folks."
He seemed about to say more, but stopped. For a moment he obviously
hesitated, then blurted out what he had in mind.
"One t'ing got me guessin'," he muttered doubtfully. "Dat young lady,
she don' seem t' _eat_ nothin'!"
"What do you mean?" Laurie stared at him.
The boy shuffled his feet. He was on uncertain ground.
"Why, jes' what I said," he muttered, defensively. "Folkses here either
eats _in_ or dey eats _out_. Ef dey eats in, dey has stuff _sent_
in--rolls an' eggs an' milk and' stuff like dat. Ef dey eats out, dey
_goes_ out, reg'lar, to meals. But Miss Mayo she don' seem to eat in
_or_ out. Nothin' comes in, an' she don' go out 'nough to eat reg'lar. I
bin studyin' 'bout it consider'ble," he ended; and he looked
unmistakably relieved, as if he had passed on to another a burden that
was too heavy to carry alone.
Laurie hesitated. The situation was presenting a new angle and a wholly
unexpected one. It began to look as if he had come on a sentimental
errand and had stumbled on a tragedy. Certainly he had blundered into
the private affairs of a lady, and was even discussing these affairs
with an employee in the building where she lived. That thought was
unpleasant. Yet the boy's interest was clearly friendly, and the visitor
himself had invited revelations about the new lodger. Still, not such
revelations as these! He frankly did not know what to make of them or
how to act.
There was a chance that the boy might be all wrong in his inferences,
although this chance, Laurie mentally admitted, was slight. He knew the
shrewdness of this youth's type, the precocious knowledge of human
nature that often accompanies such training and environment as he had
had. Probably he suspected even more than he had revealed. Something
must be done.
Laurie drew a bill from his pocket
"How soon can you leave the elevator?" he asked.
"'Bout one o'clock."
"All right. Now here's what I want you to do. Take this money, go over
to the Clarence restaurant, and buy a good lunch for that lady. Get some
hot chicken or chops, buttered rolls, vegetables, and a bottle of milk.
Have it packed nicely in a box. Have them put in some fresh eggs and
extra rolls and butter for her breakfast. Deliver the box at her door as
if it came from some one outside. Do that and keep the change.
Understand?"
"Yaas, sah!" The boy's eyes and teeth were shining.
"All right. Go to it. I'll drop in later this afternoon for your
report."
Laurie turned and walked away. Even yet the experience did not seem
real. It was probably all based on some foolish notion of the youth's;
and yet he dared not assume that it was a foolish notion. He had the
dramatist's distaste for drama anywhere except in its legitimate place,
on the stage; but he admitted that sometimes it did occur in life. This
might be one of those rare occasions.
Whatever it was, it haunted him. He lunched with Bangs that day, and was
so silent that Bangs was moved to comment.
"If you were any one else," he remarked, "I'd almost think you were
thinking!"
Laurie disclaimed the charge, but his abstraction did not lift. By this
time his imagination was hard at work. He pictured the girl in the
mirror as stretched on her virginal cot in the final exhaustion of
starvation; and the successful effort to keep away from the studio
building till four o'clock called for all his will power. Suppose the
boy blundered, or wasn't in time. Suppose the girl really had not eaten
anything since last Tuesday! These thoughts, and similar ones, obsessed
him.
At four he strolled into the studio hall, wearing what he hoped was a
detached and casual air. To his annoyance, the elevator and its operator
were lost in the dimness of the upper stories, and before they descended
several objectionable persons had joined Laurie, evidently expecting to
be taken to upper floors themselves. This meant a delay in his
tete-a-tete with the boy, and Laurie turned upon the person nearest him,
an inoffensive spinster, a look of such intense resentment that it
haunted that lady for several days.
When the elevator finally appeared, he entered it with the others who
were waiting. He looked aloofly past the elevator boy as he did so, and
that young person showed himself equal to the situation by presenting to
this new-comer a stolid ebony profile. But when the lift had reached the
top floor and discharged its passengers, the two conspirators lent
themselves to the drama of their roles.
"Well?" asked Laurie eagerly. "Did you get it?"
"Yaas, sah."
"What happened?"
The boy stopped his descending car midway between two floors. He had no
intention of having his scene spoiled. He bulged visibly under the news
he had to impart. "I got de stuff you said, and I lef' it at dat young
lady's do'," he began impressively.
"Yes."
"When I looked de nex' time, it was gone."
"Good! She had taken it in." Laurie drew a breath of relief.
"No, sah. Dat ain't all." The boy's tone dripped evil tidings. "She
brung it back!"
"What!" His passenger was staring at him in concern.
"Yaas, sah. De bell rung fum her flo', an' when I got up de young lady
was standin' dere wid dat basket in her hand."
He paused to give Laurie the effect of the tableau, and saw by his
visitor's expression that he had got it fully.
"Yes? Go on!"
"She look at me mighty sharp. She got brown eyes dat look right _thoo_
you," he interpolated briskly. "Den she say, 'Sam, who done lef' dat
basket at my do'?' I say, 'I done it, miss. It was lef' in de hall, an'
de ca'd got yo' name on it. Ain't you order it?' I say.
"'No,' she say, 'dis yere basket ain't fo' me. Take it, an' ef you
cain't find out who belong to it, eat dis yere lunch yo'self.'"
He paused. Laurie's stunned silence was a sufficient tribute to his
eloquence, but Sam had not yet reached his climax. He introduced it now,
with fine effect.
"Bimeby," he went on unctuously, "I took dat basket back to her. I say,
'Miss Mayo,' I say, 'I done foun' out 'bout dat basket. 'T was lef' by a
lady artis' here what got a tergram an' went away sudden. She want dat
food et, so she sent it to you.'"
Laurie regarded him with admiration.
"That was pretty good for extemporaneous lying," he commented. "I
suppose you can do even better when you take more time to it. What did
the lady say?"
Sam shook a mournful head.
"She jes' look at me, an' she kinda smile, an' den she say, 'Sam, dis
yere basket 'noys me. Ef de lady wants it et, Sam, you eat it yo'self."
He paused. "I et it," he ended, solemnly.
Laurie's lips twitched under conflicting emotions, but he closed the
interview with a fair imitation of indifference.
"Oh, well," he said carelessly, "you must have been mistaken about the
whole thing. Evidently Miss Mayo, if that's her name, wasn't as hungry
as you were."
The boy nodded and started the car on its downward journey. As his
passenger got off on the ground floor, he gave him a new thought to
carry away with him.
"She'd bin cryin', dough," he muttered. "Her eyes was all red."
Laurie stopped and regarded him resentfully.
"Confound you!" he said, "What did you tell me that for? _I_ can't do
anything about it!"
The boy agreed, hurriedly. "No, sah," he assured him. "You cain't. I
cain't, neither. None of us cain't," he added as an afterthought.
Laurie slowly walked away. His thoughts scampered around and around,
like squirrels in a cage. The return of the basket, of course, might
mean either of two conditions--that the girl was too proud to accept
help, or that she was really in no need of it. Laurie had met a few art
students. He knew that, hungry or not, almost any one of them would
cheerfully have taken in that basket and consumed its contents. He had
built on that knowledge in providing it. If the girl _had_ taken it in,
the fact would have proved nothing. Her refusal to touch it was
suspicious. It swung the weight of evidence toward the elevator boy's
starvation theory.
Laurie's thoughts returned to that imaginative youth. He saw him
consuming the girl's luncheon, and a new suspicion crossed his mind.
Perhaps the whole business was a bit of graft. But his intelligence
rejected that suggestion. If this had been the explanation, the boy
would not have concluded the episode so briskly. He had got the strange
young man where he might have "kept him going" for days and made a good
income in the process. As it was, there seemed nothing more to do. And
yet--and yet--how the deuce could one let the thing drop like that? If
the girl was really in straits--
Thus the subconscious argument went on and on. It worried Laurie. He was
not used to such violent mental exercise. Least of all was he in the
habit of disturbing himself about the affairs of others. But this affair
was different. The girl was so pretty! Also, he had recurrent visions of
his sister Barbara in the position of his mysterious neighbor. Barbara
might easily have gone through such an experience during last year's
test in New York. In that same experiment Laurie himself had learned how
slender is the plank that separates one from the abyss that lies beneath
the world's workers.
He dined alone that night and it was well he did so. His lack of
appetite would certainly have attracted the attention of Bangs or any
other fellow diner, and Bangs would as certainly have commented upon it.
Also, he passed a restless night, troubled by vaguely depressing dreams.
The girl was in them, but everything was as hopelessly confused as his
daytime mental processes had been.
The next morning he deliberately kept away from the mirror until he was
fully dressed, but he dressed with a feeling of tenseness and urgency he
would have found it difficult to explain. He only knew that to-day he
meant to do something definite, something that would settle once for all
the question that filled his mind. But what could he do? That little
point was still unsettled. Knock at the girl's door, pretend that it was
a blunder, and trust to inspiration to discover in the brief encounter
if anything was wrong? Or put money in an envelop and push it under her
door? If he did that, she would probably give the money to Sam, as she
had given him the food.
What to do? Laurie proceeded with his toilet, using the dressing-case
and carefully avoiding the long mirror. He experienced an odd
unwillingness to look into that mirror this morning, based partly on
delicacy--he remembered the nightdress--but more on the fear of
disappointment. If he saw her, it would be an immense relief. If he
didn't, he'd fancy all sorts of things, for now his imagination was
running away with him.
When he was fully dressed he crossed the room in three strides and
stopped before the mirror with a suddenness that checked him half-way in
the fourth.
Miss Mayo's window was open. He could see that. He could see more than
that, and what he saw sent him rushing through the study and out into
the hall of the big apartment building, where he furiously rang the
elevator bell. He had not stopped for his hat and coat, but he had
caught a vision of Bangs's astonished face and half of his startled
exclamation, "What the dev--"
The elevator came and Laurie leaped into it.
"Down," he said briefly.
The operator was on his way up to the twelfth floor, but something in
the expression of his passenger made him change his plans. Also it
accelerated his movements. The car descended briskly to the ground
floor, from which point the operator was privileged to watch the
progress of the temperamental Mr. Devon, who had plunged through the
main entrance of the building and across the square without a word to
the hall attendants, or a backward glance.
As he reached the studio building Laurie recalled himself to a memory of
the conventions. He entered without undue haste, and sought the door of
the waiting lift. It was noon, and an operator he had not seen before
was on duty.
"Top floor," directed Laurie, and stepped into the car. The operator
hesitated. He did not remember this tenant, but he must belong to the
house, as he wore no hat or coat. Probably he was a new-comer, and had
run down-stairs to mail an important letter, as the old building held no
mail-chute. While these reflections passed slowly through his mind, his
car rose as slowly. To the mentally fuming young man at his side its
progress was intolerably deliberate. He held himself in, however, and
even went through the pantomime of pausing in the top-floor hall to
search a pocket as if for a latch-key.
Satisfied, the attendant started the elevator on its descent, and as it
sank from sight Laurie looked around him for Number Twenty-nine. He
discovered it in an eye-flash, on the door at the right. The next
instant he had reached this door and was softly turning the knob.
The door did not yield. He had not expected it to give, and he knew
exactly what he meant to do. He stepped back a few feet, then with a
rush hurled his shoulder against the wood with the full force of his
foot-ball training in the effort. The lock yielded, and under the force
of his own momentum the visitor shot into the room. Then, recovering his
equilibrium, he pushed the door into place and stood with his back
against it, breathing heavily and feeling rather foolish.
He was staring at the girl before him, who had risen at his entrance.
Her expression was so full of astonished resentment, and so lacking in
any other emotion, that for a sickening moment he believed he had made
an idiot of himself, that he had not really seen what he thought he had
seen in the glass. A small table separated him from the girl. Still
staring at her, in the long seconds that elapsed before either spoke, he
saw that she had swept her right hand behind her back, in a swift,
instinctive effort to hide what it held. His self-possession returned.
He had not been mistaken. He smiled at her apologetically.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "I'm afraid I frightened you."
"You did." She spoke tensely, the effect of overstrained nerves
revealing itself in her low voice. "What do you mean by it? What are you
doing here?"
Laurie's brilliant eyes were on hers as she spoke, and held them
steadily. Under his expression, one that few had seen on his face, her
look of antagonism softened a little. He advanced slowly to the table
between them.
"It will take a few minutes to explain," he said. Then, as she waited,
he suddenly formed his plan, and followed the good old Devon principle
of going straight to the point.
"I live diagonally across the square," he said quietly, "and I can see
into your window from one of mine. So it happened that just now I--I saw
what you were going to do."
For an instant she stood very still, looking at him, as if not quite
taking in the meaning of his words. In the next her face and even her
neck crimsoned darkly as if under the rush of a wave of angry
humiliation. When she spoke her voice shook.
"You forget," she said, "that you have no right either to look into my
room or to interfere with what you see there."
"I know," he told her, humbly, "and I beg your pardon again. The looking
in was an accident, the merest chance, which I will explain to you
later. The interference--well, I won't apologize for that. Surely you
realize that it's--friendly."
For the first time her eyes left his. She looked around the room as if
uncertain what to do or say.
"Perhaps you mean it so," she muttered at last. "But I consider
it--impertinent."
A change was taking place in her. The fire that had flamed up at his
entrance was dying out, leaving her with the look of one who is cowed
and almost beaten. Even her last words lacked assurance. Watching her in
puzzled sympathy, Laurie for the first time wished himself older and
wiser than he was. How could he handle a situation like this? Neither
then nor later did he ask himself how he would have handled it on the
stage.
For a moment the two young things gazed at each other, in helplessness
and irresolution on his side, in resentful questioning on hers. Even in
the high tension of the moment Laurie subconsciously took in the picture
she made as she stood there, defying him, with her back to the wall of
life.
She was very lovely, more lovely than in the mirror; for now he was
getting the full effect of her splendid coloring, set off by the gown
she wore, a thing of rich but somber shades, lit up by a semi-barbaric
necklace of amber and gold, that hung almost to her knees.
Yes, the girl was a picture against the unforgetable background of that
tragic situation. But what he admired most of all was the dignity that
shone through her panic and her despair. She was up in arms against him.
And yet, if he had not come, if that vision had not flashed into his
mirror five minutes ago, she might now have been lying a huddled,
lifeless thing on the very spot where she stood so proudly. At the
thought his heart shook. The right words came to him at last.
"I've had--impulses--like yours," he said. "I've had them twice.
Fortunately, both times there was some one around to talk me out of
them." He had caught her attention. She showed that by the way she
looked at him. "The argument that impressed me most," he went on, "was
that it's quitting the game. You don't look as if you were a quitter,"
he ended, thoughtfully.
The girl's eyes blazed. He had aroused her once more, and he was glad of
it. He didn't know at all what to do or say, but he dimly felt that
almost any emotion in her would be better than the lethargy she had just
revealed.
"I'm not a quitter!" she cried. "But I've got dignity enough to leave a
place where I'm not wanted, even if that place happens to be the world.
Go away!" she added fiercely. "Go away and leave me alone!"
Resting one hand on the table between them, he held out the other.
"Come, let me have that," he suggested, imperturbably. "Then we'll talk
things over. I'll try to make you realize what I was made to realize
myself--that we were both on the wrong track. I'll tell you what others
think who are wiser than we are."
As she did not move, he added, more lightly: "You see, what we were
going to do isn't done much nowadays. It's all out of date. Come," he
repeated, gently, "let me have it."
With a movement of irritation the girl swept her hand forward and
tossed on the table between them the small revolver she had been
holding.
"Take it," she said, almost indifferently. And she added, "Another time
will do as well."
He picked up the little weapon and put it into his pocket.
"There isn't going to be any other time," he predicted buoyantly. "Now,
slip into a coat while I run across the street and get my hat and coat
and order a taxicab. We're going out to luncheon, and to tell each other
the stories of our lives, with all the grim and gory details."
"I don't know you," muttered the girl. She had dropped into a chair
beside the table, and was sitting with her chin in her hand, in what
seemed a characteristic attitude, watching him with an expression he
could not analyze.
Laurie seemed surprised. "Why, so you don't!" he agreed. "But you're
going to now. We're going to know each other awfully well before we get
through. In the meantime, you can see by the merest glance at me how
young and harmless I am. Where's the coat?"
He turned and began a vague, masculine search for it. The girl wavered.
His rising spirits were contagious, and it was clear that she dreaded
being left alone.
[Illustration: "You see, what we were going to do isn't done much
nowadays"]
"I warn you," she said at last, "that if you have anything to do with
me you will be sorry for it."
Laurie stopped his search, and, turning, gave her one of his straight
looks.
"Why?" he demanded.
"Because I'm in a net," she said. "And every one who tries to help me
gets caught in it, too. Oh, don't smile! You won't smile afterward."
He picked up a coat he discovered in a corner, and held it for her to
slip into.
"I like nets," he remarked lightly, "especially if they're
bright-colored, large, roomy, comfortable nets. We'll have some great
times in ours. Come along."
She shrugged her shoulders, and in the gesture slipped into the garment.
"I'll go," she said, in a low voice. "But don't forget that I warned
you!"