THE LADY IN THE MOON
It was a difficult situation for Miss Rolls. Dimly it had dawned upon
her more than once that Rags regarded certain speeches and ways of
hers as "snobbish"--speeches and ways which to her had seemed
aristocratic. Neither Rags nor Eileen nor Lady Raygan had ever so much
as mentioned the word "snob" in connection with any member of the
Rolls family or their friends. But they had lightly let it drop in
connection with others, and Ena's extreme sensitiveness on the subject
her extreme desire to be everything that Raygan liked, made her quick
to put two and two together.
She began to see that many of her favourite tricks at home and
abroad--with servants, with her parents, with acquaintances, and the
public in general--were not proofs, in Raygan's eyes, that she was to
the manor born, rather the contrary, and that hurt. She was straining
to understand and observe the finest _nuances_. Never had it been more
difficult than to-day, during this visit she detested to the great
department store of Peter Rolls. If she had declined to come, that
would have been snobbish. If, having come, she refused the "glad hand"
to one of her father's shop girls whom Raygan chose to greet as an
equal--that, too, would be snobbish. And to be snobbish was, in
Raygan's language, to be "beastly vulgar."
If she were not snobbish--if she treated Miss Child with warm
cordiality, asked her a dozen questions, and listened kindly to the
answers, Petro would come with Eileen and find his long-lost friend.
Would Lord Raygan go so far in his dislike of snobbishness as to
welcome an assistant culled from his bride's father's shop as a
sister-in-law? Ena thought not. Besides, she was not sure yet that she
would ever be his bride, and any risk she took might turn the scale
against her, so uncertain seemed the balance. Just at present the
danger was that she might fall in the slippery space between two high
stools.
"Why, yes, of course, Lord Raygan," she said, able in the midst of
alarums to enjoy the repetition of his title, which made people stare.
"We'll stay in the elevator and talk to Miss Child, and go up again
when she has gone. Are you really working here in the store, Miss
Child, as--as--a---"
"Yes, I'm in the blouse department," Win replied, quite as anxious to
escape as Miss Rolls was anxious to blot her out. "I've been up to see
the superintendent on business, and now I'm hurrying back to work."
"You never wrote me," said Ena, thinking it was better to chatter than
let Lord Raygan talk, perhaps indiscreetly. And there were still more
floors at which the elevator must stop before reaching the ground
level. "I--I do trust you _would_ have written if you'd wanted
anything done that I could do." Her tone tried not to be too
patronizing, lest patronage should be considered to verge on
snobbishness.
"Thank you. I never did want anything that you could do. Though it
was kind of you to offer," Win returned, and was aware that every one
was listening.
Oh, why had she believed Mr. Löwenfeld when he vowed that the one
secure sanctuary against the Rolls family was in Peter Rolls's store?
If only she had not come here; by this time surely she would have
found something else and all would have been well.
"Well, it's very nice to see you again, Lady in the Moon," said
Raygan. "Do you like this place better than Nadine's?"
"There's more variety," replied Win.
"Not homesick yet for our side of the water--what?"
"I haven't time to think about it," she fibbed. "Now I must say
good-bye. We're coming to the ground floor."
"Let's go along with her, Miss Rolls, and see her home," suggested
Rags. "I want to know whether the blouse department beats that
_Monarchic_ room with all the mirrors--what?"
Ena's face showed distress. Her eyes actually appealed to the cause of
it to save her, and Win was only too ready to respond.
"Please don't come," she protested earnestly. "It wouldn't do. It's
against the rules to talk to--to any one you know, except on business.
I'm new here still, and I'm sure you wouldn't want to get me into
trouble. I'd much rather go alone, though it's very nice of you to
offer. Good-bye!"
The lift had at last reached the ground floor, and all Win had to do
was to let herself be borne out on a warm tide of females. Ena pressed
her body against the wall, and Lord Raygan must, perforce, stand by
her.
"Good-bye!" she cried. "We have to go up again, you know."
"We'll sail by, anyhow, and see where you hang out later," Raygan
called after the disappearing form in black. "And we'll bring Rolls
and my sister."
By this time the elevator had emptied itself, save for those bound for
the basement and Ena and Rags. It was impossible for Win to forbid the
party to "sail by," or to make any answer at all, over the decorated
heads of many women. But she felt as if she would rather die than have
Peter Rolls see her working in his father's store. He might easily
think that she had taken a place there because of knowing him, and
that, regretting the snub delivered at parting, she had hoped he might
some day find her in the Hands.
"I just can't bear it," she said to herself. "I'll have to pretend to
be ill, and get permission from Mr. Thorpe to leave the floor
again--to go to the hospital room--anything to get away."
But--wouldn't that be like the ostrich hiding its head in the sand?
Evidently Lord Raygan and Lady Eileen were being shown things. If they
hadn't been there already they would be sure to take a peep into the
hospital as well as the rest room. Not the restaurant perhaps! If Mr.
Rolls junior and his sister had any idea what that was like, they
would avoid it with their distinguished guests. Still, even there one
would not be safe. The only sure escape would be to go home, and she
would have to look very ill indeed before she could obtain leave of
absence for the rest of the day.
Wondering what on earth was to be done, Win suddenly recalled the
look in Ena Rolls's eyes, which had said as plainly as spoken words:
"For heaven's sake get me out of this scrape, and do or say something
to put Lord Raygan off dragging me with him to your horrid old blouse
department."
"She won't let them come!" Win told herself. "Somehow she'll prevent
it. I'll stick to my guns."
So she went back to her place as if nothing had happened and returned
to Mr. Thorpe the permit he, as aisle manager, had given her to leave
her duties and go off the floor on which they were carried out. It was
a small paper slip signed by him, and Thorpe would have been
responsible had she outstayed the time asked for. But she was safely
within it, and she had herself well enough in hand, after her
adventure, to answer his kind, sad smile with gratitude.
"What will Miss Rolls do to stop Lord Raygan from wanting to come--and
from saying anything about me to the others?" she wondered. She could
not guess. Yet she grew more and more confident of Ena's finesse as
the long afternoon wore on.
What Miss Rolls did was very simple, if you had the clue. But the clue
was what Win lacked.
"I thought we were due to meet Eily and Rolls about this time, and
look at those wonderful pearls your father says he gets straight from
the fisheries," Rags reminded Ena when the elevator dropped to the
basement and began to bound up again.
"So we are," she admitted, "but there's something I _must_ tell you
before we see Petro. That's why I made the excuse about getting
out--only, of course, you didn't understand. You couldn't! Any floor
will do, really--but we'll think of the one likely to be the least
crowded. I can't explain if creatures are pushing us about. Oh,
'Upholstery and Furniture!' They'll do."
The two wormed their way out of the lift, which was becoming more
congested at each stopping place, the legitimate hour for luncheon now
being over. The floor chosen by Ena had a series of "Ideal Rooms,"
furnished according to periods, and she led Raygan into a Dutch
dining-room with a high-backed settle which, if they sat down upon it,
would screen them from passers-by outside the open, welcoming door.
Besides, the old oak made a becoming background for a blue velvet
dress and silvery ermine stole.
"It's about that girl I want to speak," she said, when she had enticed
Lord Raygan into this secluded retreat.
"Who, the Lady in the Moon?" He was staring at delft plates on
panelled walls.
"Yes. I wished for a minute she'd been the Lady in Jericho. Perhaps
you noticed that I didn't seem overwhelmed with joy at sight of her?"
"Well, it did occur to me that you might have been more enthusiastic
if she'd been a Miss Vanderbilt."
"It wasn't that at _all_," Ena assured him eagerly, almost piteously.
"I didn't mind having to speak to her because she's a shop girl, but
because I was afraid if we stopped and talked, my brother might come
along. I wouldn't have had that happen for anything."
"Why on earth not?"
"I can't tell you, Lord Raygan. Please don't ask me. You'll embarrass
me very much if you do. But will you just trust me that it would be a
very bad thing if they were to meet, and not insist on our going to
look her up at the waist counter or wherever she is?"
"Certainly I won't insist," said Rags. "I don't care, you know,
whether we look her up or not. Only she was Rolls's chum on the
_Monarchic_, and I thought if he---"
"Dear Lord Raygan, please don't think about it any more. And if you
want to be very kind, and make me real happy and comfortable, don't
tell Petro we met the girl--or even mention her. You _will_ promise
not, won't you?"
"Of course, if you ask me, that's enough," said Rags, looking rather
sulky. He was curious to know what she actually meant, but, of course,
could not ask, and somehow the whole affair--Ena's deep solemnity and
secrecy, her hints which mustn't be questioned, began to seem silly
and even rather repulsive. He had never liked her less.
Vaguely conscious that she was not "making a hit," and more than ever
angry with the hateful necessity for this excursion, which was to
blame for everything, Ena rambled on, "hoping he wouldn't
misunderstand," and floundering into half explanations which made the
situation less comfortable every minute. At last, when the subject was
torn to tatters, and Raygan had begun to betray impatience, she got up
to go.
"Petro and Lady Eileen will be waiting for us in the jewellery
department now, I expect," Ena said drearily. "Let's hurry and meet
them, and then we can get away. I'm bored to death with the stuffy old
place, and you must be, too. I can't bear anything commercial. If
there's a lovely concert or a tango tea somewhere to finish up the
afternoon, it will be nice. Or almost anything!"
There was a tango tea, and it was nice. Rags, however was far from
nice. He did not seem at all himself.
"I'm afraid the poor old store wasn't as much fun as you thought it
would be," said Petro, half apologetically, when he began to realize
that Rags had a "grouch." Petro had liked the plan to visit the Hands,
and had liked the visit, too. The place had seemed a beehive of
industry and the bees--selling bees and buying bees--had all looked
happy and prosperous enough. On the surface, dad's methods appeared to
be the right methods. But Peter wondered if it would be a betrayal of
his promise if he wandered through the store alone sometimes, when it
was less crowded and things more normal. He had surrendered his
conviction that he "ought to help," and as Peter senior had stipulated
for no interference if Peter junior truly trusted him, one must be
careful about interpretations.
Petro's ideas for a "Start in Life Fund" were occupying a great deal
of his attention and were crystallizing into concrete form. He hoped
that he might soon cease to be a drone, and end by being of some real
use in the world. But as Peter junior passed out of the shop, his
promise to keep "hands off the Hands" seemed one of the things to
regret, whether selfishly or otherwise. He would have liked to know
more of the place, so passionately interesting to him, apart from its
business side; and he was unable to understand how Raygan, the one
whose curiosity had drawn all four to the Hands that day, could have
managed to be bored.
"Blouses" pulsed with excitement. Miss Ena Rolls and her brother were
said to be "showing their father's shop to an English lord." How the
thrilling tale began to go the rounds nobody in "Blouses" could tell.
But whenever any famous personage--a millionaire's daughter or an
actress, a society beauty or the heroine of a fashionable
scandal--enters a big department store, the news of her advent runs
from counter to counter like wildfire. In some shops the appearance of
an Astor, a Vanderbilt, or a Princess Patricia would send up the
mercury of excitement forty degrees higher than that of a Miss or Mr.
Rolls. But at the Hands, Peter the Great's son and daughter would have
drawn all eyes from the reigning Czar and Czarina of Russia.
It was rumoured that they had lunched early in the Pompeian
restaurant. The waitress who had served them had not known until too
late. She would regret this all her life. Mr. Michaels, of
"Jewellery," who had been honoured by showing them pearls, was envied
by all his fellows, and the same with Miss Dick, of "Candy," and Miss
Wallace, in "Perfume." Girls in all departments grew quite jumpy in
expectation that the party might appear, and under the intense nervous
strain of trying to recognize them in time.
"Rubberneck!" one hissed to another, and giggled if she made her
start.
Even Miss Stein, now somewhat resigned to fate and looking more kindly
at Fred Thorpe, became condescending and communicative in the general
flurry.
"Keep your eyes peeled for a good-looking, short guyl in blue velvet,
with an ermine muff and stole that's a beaut from Beautville," she
said to Win. "Thorpe saw her. He's had her pointed out to him at the
theayter, so he knows. Her brother's dark and thin, but blue eyed. I
saw in the Sunday supplement he's goin' to marry the sister of that
lord."
* * * * *
There was a dinner at Sea Gull Manor that night in honour of the
Rolls's guests, and just as Eileen had finished dressing, her brother
Raygan knocked at her door.
"Want me to say your tie's all right?" she chirped.
"No, my child, I do not," said Rags. "I wouldn't trust your taste
round the corner with a tie. You're looking rather pleased with
yourself--what?"
"I'm pleased with myself and everybody else," replied Eileen. "This is
one of my happy nights."
"I wonder why? There's sure to be a dull crowd at dinner. I've found
out now the Rollses know all the wrong lot."
"I found that out _long_ ago. But I don't care. And I'm going to sit
by Petro. So I shall be all right."
"You've jolly well been with him the whole blessed day. Aren't you
sick of his society yet?"
"No. And I shouldn't be till doomsday. He talks to me of such
interesting things."
"Has he ever by chance said anything to you about the Lady in the
Moon?"
"Good gracious! no, nor the man either. Nor the green cheese it's made
of. Is that the sort of conversation Ena's been treating you to? If it
is, no wonder you look bored stiff. You never could stand romance from
any one but darling Pobbles."
"Don't speak of Kathleen in this house. It makes me want to bolt for
home. Not that she'd look at me if I did. But the contrast between
her and Ena Rolls--good Lord, it doesn't bear thinking of! Nothing
doing about the Lady in the Moon so far as I'm concerned. It's Rolls
who got moonstruck--according to his sister. Now can you guess whom I
mean?"
Eileen's pleasant, plain little face flushed up.
"Oh, the Nadine girl on the ship! The one who looked so nice in the
Moon dress. Petro bought it--for Ena. And she gave it to that
fascinating girl. She--Ena, I mean--told me all about it."
"And about the girl, too?"
"What was there to tell?"
"Blamed if I know. But Ena was hinting dark things this afternoon.
That's why I was wondering whether he'd opened out to you. You're such
pals."
Eileen shook her head. She was not looking quite so bright as when
Rags had first come into the overheated, overlighted, overdecorated
room. But perhaps this was only because he had set her to thinking
intently. "No, he's never spoken of the Lady in the Moon. Let me
think--what was her name?"
"Miss Child."
"_You_ seem to remember very well--you, who mix up all the wrong names
with the right faces."
"But I saw her to-day. I forgot--I haven't told you of that yet, have
I?"
"No. Where was it?"
"Wait a minute. Strictly speaking, I oughtn't to tell you, I suppose.
All the same I will--for a reason--if you'll promise first not to
mention it to Rolls. Never mind why not, but promise, if you want to
know."
"Of course I want to know. You make me fearfully curious. I'll
promise not to breathe a word to Petro."
"Where the girl is or anything about her?"
"'Where the girl is, or anything about her.' Honour bright. Is that
enough? Well, then--go on!"
"She's in the shop--employed there, it seems. We met her in the lift,
Ena and I. It was a surprise all round. Ena wasn't overjoyed. No more
was the Lady in the Moon. They got rid of each other quickly and
skilfully. Afterward, Ena buttonholed me and sat me down on a hard
settee in a beastly furnished room like a rathskeller, with price tags
on everything, and made me solemnly swear not to split to Rolls."
"About your meeting Miss Child?"
"_Ra-ther!_ And all the rest of it."
"What rest?"
"A lot of rubbish. I don't know what she was driving at, I'm hanged if
I do. But if I didn't like Rolls, I'd suspect."
"But you do like him. And so do I."
"I've noticed that. So would Mubs, if she ever noticed anything that
didn't wave suffragette colours."
"And I shall go on liking him--'right straight on,' as he'd say
himself. Nothing that Ena or anybody else could tell me would make me
believe a word against him. And the girl's nice, too. I'm sure she is.
But how too endlessly quaint she should be in the shop."
"She intimated politely, when we asked her questions, that it was a
last resort."
"I should think so, indeed! She was--well, not a beauty exactly, but
too weirdly fascinating."
"She hasn't changed. Only she looked scared at the sight of us. And
she's thinner in the face. Her eyes seemed to have grown too big for
it. Ena said Petro mustn't find out where she is. Rather rum--what?"
"Is this the thing that's made you so grumpy ever since?"
"I don't know that I've been grumpy. Only a bit reflective. The fact
is---"
"What?"
"Never mind. It wouldn't sound very nice."
"Who cares how it sounds? You might tell me, now we've got so far."
"Well, then, sometimes I wonder whether--the game's worth the candle.
Whatever the rotten old proverb means!"
Eileen had no difficulty in understanding the allusion.
"She's got heaps of good things about her," the girl reminded him,
being as loyal as was humanly possible to her hostess.
"Heaps. They're simply piled up in the corners of her nature. But I
seemed to have wandered into an empty place to-day. By Jove, Eily, I
thought I'd made up my mind. I'm fond of the old place at home, and
I'd like, to see it done up properly. It isn't as if I'd ever care
tuppence again about any girl on earth after--Kathleen. So what does
anything of that sort matter? At least that's what I've been asking
myself."
"I'm afraid Ena thinks you'll soon be asking _her_."
"Heavens! I suppose she does. Not that I've said a confounded word.
I'm hanged if I know what to do! I tell you what. I'll wait and see
how things go to-night. And then--maybe I'll toss up a penny."
"We ought to go down now, anyhow," said Eileen, still very
thoughtful.
"Come along, then, and face the music."
"You go. I'll follow in a minute. I want to put this wonderful pink
orchid in just the right place in my dress, and I shall be nervous if
you watch me."
"What a ripper! Where did you get it?" Rags pretended that he cared to
know the history of a wonderful, live-looking flower that lay on his
sister's dressing-table.
"Petro. He bought it for me in the florist department of his father's
shop. He said it was the latest addition--the department, not the
orchid."
"Don't you get thinking too much about Rolls," grumbled Lord Raygan.
"There _may_ be something in that affair, after all. One can never be
sure. Anyhow, I thought I'd tell you."
On that he closed the door, shutting himself out.
"Petro--and the Lady in the Moon," Eileen whispered, just above her
breath, as she found the right place for the orchid.