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THE DUST FLOWER
BOOKS BY
BASIL KING
----------------------------
_The Dust Flower_
_The Empty Sack_
_Going West_
_The City of Comrades_
_Abraham's Bosom_
_The Lifted Veil_
_The Side of the Angels_
_The Letter of the Contract_
_The Way Home_
_The Wild Olive_
_The Inner Shrine_
_The Street Called Straight_
_Let No Man Put Asunder_
_In the Garden of Charity_
_The Steps of Honor_
_The High Heart_
----------------------------
HARPER & BROTHERS
Established 1817
[Illustration: THEN SLOWLY, SLOWLY LETTY SANK ON HER KNEES, BOWING HER
HEAD ON THE HANDS WHICH DREW HER CLOSER. [See p. 350]]
THE DUST FLOWER
_By_ BASIL KING
_Author of_
"THE EMPTY SACK" "THE INNER SHRINE" ETC.
_With Illustrations by_
HIBBARD V. B. KLINE
_Publishers_
Harper & Brothers
New York and London
_MCMXXII_
THE DUST FLOWER
Copyright, 1922
Harper & Brothers
Printed in the U. S. A.
_First Edition_
H-W
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
THEN SLOWLY, SLOWLY LETTY SANK ON HER KNEES,
BOWING HER HEAD ON THE HANDS WHICH DREW HER
CLOSER _Frontispiece_
BY THE TIME HE HAD FINISHED, HIS HEART WAS A
LITTLE EASED AND SOME OF HER TENDERNESS BEGAN TO
FLOW TOWARD HIM _Facing page_ 68
THE PRINCE'S FIRST WORDS WERE ALSO A DISTRACTION
FROM TERRORS, AND ENCHANTMENTS WHICH MADE HER
FEEL FAINT _Facing page_ 230
"BUT BY AND BY I CREEPS OUT AND DOWN THE STEPS,
AND THERE 'E WAS, ALL 'UDDLED EVERY WYE" _Facing page_ 328
THE DUST FLOWER
Chapter I
It is not often that you see a man tear his hair, but this is exactly
what Rashleigh Allerton did. He tore it, first, because of being under
the stress of great agitation, and second, because he had it to
tear--a thick, black shock with a tendency to part in the middle, but
brushed carefully to one side. Seated on the extreme edge of one of
Miss Walbrook's strong, slender armchairs, his elbows on his knees, he
dug his fingers into the dark mass with every fresh taunt from his
fiancee.
She was standing over him, high-tempered, imperious. "So it's come to
this," she said, with decision; "you've got to choose between a
stupid, vulgar lot of men, and me."
He gritted his teeth. "Do you expect me to give up all my friends?"
"All your friends! That's another matter. I'm speaking of half a dozen
profligates, of whom you seem determined--I _must_ say it, Rash; you
force me to it--of whom you seem determined to be one."
He jumped to his feet, a slim, good-looking, well-dressed figure in
spite of the tumbled effect imparted by excitement. "But, good
heavens, Barbara, what have I been doing?"
"I don't pretend to follow you there. I only know the condition in
which you came here from the club last night."
He was honestly bewildered. "Came here from the club last night?
Why--why, I wasn't so bad."
Standing away from him, she twirled the engagement solitaire as if
resisting the impulse to snatch it off. "That would be a question of
point of view, wouldn't it? If Aunt Marion hadn't been here----"
"I'd only had----"
"Please, Rash! I don't want to know the details."
"But I want you to know them. I've told you a dozen times that if I
take so much as a cocktail or a glass of sherry I'm all in, when
another fellow can take ten times as much and not----"
"Rash, dear, I haven't known you all my life without being quite aware
that you're excitable. 'Crazy Rash' we used to call you when we were
children, and Crazy Rash you are still. But that's not my point."
"Your point is that that infernal old Aunt Marion of yours doesn't
like me."
"She's not infernal, and she's not old, but it's true that she doesn't
like you. All the more reason, then, that when she gave her consent to
our engagement on condition that you'd give up your disgusting
habits----"
He raced away from her to the other side of the room, turning to face
her like an exasperated animal at bay.
The room was noteworthy, and of curiously feminine refinement.
Expressing Miss Marion Walbrook as it did, it made no provision for
the coarse and lounging habits of men, Miss Walbrook's world being a
woman's world. All was straight, slender, erect, and hard in the way
that women like for occasions of formality. It was evident, too, that
Miss Walbrook's women friends were serious, if civilized. There was no
place here for the slapdash, smoking girl of the present day.
The tone which caught your eye was that of dusky gold, thrown out
first from the Chinese rug in imperial yellow, but reflected from a
score of surfaces in rich old satinwood, discreetly mounted in ormolu.
On the French-paneled walls there was but one picture, Sargent's
portrait of Miss Walbrook herself, an exquisite creature, with the
straight, thin lines of her own table legs and the grace which makes
no appeal to men. Not that she was of the type colloquially known as a
"back number," or a person to be ignored. On the contrary, she was a
pioneer of the day after to-morrow, the herald of an epoch when the
blundering of men would be replaced by superior intelligence.
You must know these facts with regard to Miss Walbrook, the aunt, in
order to understand Miss Walbrook, the niece. The latter was not the
pupil of the former, since she was too intense and high-handed to be
the pupil of anyone. Nevertheless she had caught from her wealthy and
public-spirited relative certain prepossessions which guided her
points of view.
Without having beauty, Miss Barbara Walbrook impressed you as Someone,
and as Someone dressed by the most expensive houses in New York. For
beauty her lips were too full, her eyes too slanting, and her
delicate profile too much like that of an ancient Egyptian princess.
The princess was perhaps what was most underscored in her character,
the being who by some indefinable divine right is entitled to her own
way. She didn't specially claim her way; she only couldn't bear not
getting it.
Rashleigh Allerton, being of the easy-going type, had no objection to
her getting her own way, but he sometimes rebelled against her manner
of taking it. So rebelling now, he tried to give her to understand
that he was master.
"If you marry me, Barbe, you'll have to take me as I am--disgusting
habits and all."
It was the wrong tone, the whip to the filly that should have been
steered gently.
"But I suppose there's no law to compel me to marry you."
"Only the law of honor."
Her whole personality was aflame. "You talk of honor!"
"Yes I talk of it. Why shouldn't I?"
"Do you know anything about it?"
"Would you marry a man who didn't?"
"I haven't married any one--as yet."
"But you're going to marry me, I presume."
"Considering the facts, that's a good deal in the way of presumption,
isn't it?"
They reached the place to which they came once in every few weeks,
where each had the impulse to hurt the other cruelly.
"If it's so much presumption as all that," he demanded, "what's the
meaning of that ring?"
"Oh, I don't have to go on wearing it." Crossing the room she pulled
it off and held it out toward him "Do you want it back?"
He shrank away from her. "Don't be a fool Barbe. You may go too far."
"That's what I'm afraid of--that I've gone too far already."
"In what way?"
"In the way that's brought us face to face like this. If I'd never
promised to marry you I shouldn't now have to--to reconsider."
"Oh, so that's it. You're reconsidering."
"Don't you see that I have to? If you make me as unhappy as you can
before marriage, what'll it be afterward?"
"And how happy are you making me?"
Holding the ring between the thumb and forefinger of the right hand,
she played at putting it back, without doing it. "So there you are!
Isn't that another reason for reconsidering--for both of us?"
"Don't you care anything about me?"
"You make it difficult--after such an exhibition as that of last
night, right before Aunt Marion. Can't you imagine that there are
situations in which I feel ashamed?"
It was then that he spoke the words which changed the current of his
life. "And can't you imagine that there are situations in which I
resent being badgered by a bitter-tongued old maid, to say nothing of
a girl----" He knew how "crazy" he was, but the habit of getting
beyond his own control was one of long standing--"to say nothing of a
girl who's more like an old maid than a woman going to be married."
With a renewed attempt at being master he pointed at the ring which
she was still holding within an inch of its finger. "Put that back."
"I think not."
"Then if you don't----"
"Well--what?"
Plunging his hands into the pockets of his coat, he began tearing up
and down the room. "Look here, Barbe. This kind of thing can't
possibly go on."
"Which is what I'm trying to tell you, isn't it?"
"Very well, then; we can stop it."
"Certainly--in one way."
"The way of getting married, with no more shilly-shallying about it."
"On the principle that if you're hanging over a precipice the best
thing you can do is to fall."
He continued to race up and down the room, all nerves and frenzy.
"Don't we care about each other?"
She answered carefully. "I think you care about me to the extent that
you believe I'd make a good mistress of the house your mother left
you, and which, you say, is like an empty sepulcher. If you didn't
have it on your hands, I don't imagine it would have occurred to you
to ask me."
"Well, that's all right. Now what about you?"
"You've already answered that question for yourself." She stiffened
haughtily. "I'm an old maid. I haven't been brought up by Aunt Marion
for nothing. I've an old maid's ways and outlooks and habits. I
resented your saying it a minute ago, and yet it's true. I've known
for years that it was true. It wouldn't be fair for me to marry any
man. So here it is, Rash." Crossing the floor-space she held out the
ring again. "You might as well take it first as last."
He drew back from her, his features screwed up like those of a tragic
mask. "Do you mean it?"
"Do I seem to be making a joke?"
Averting his face, he swept the mere sight of the ring away from him.
"I won't touch the thing."
"And I can't keep it. So there!"
It fell with a little shivery sound to a bare spot on the floor,
rolling to the edge of a rug, where it stopped. Each looked down at
it.
"So you mean to send me to the devil! All right! Just watch and you'll
see me go."
She was walking away from him, but turned again. "If you mean by that
that you put the responsibility for your abominable life on me----"
"Abominable life! Me! Just because I'm not one of the white-blooded
Nancies which your aunt thinks the only ones fit to be called
men----"
But he couldn't go on. He was choking. The sole relief to his
indignation was in once more tearing round the room, while Miss
Walbrook moved to the fluted white mantelpiece, where, with her foot
resting on the attenuated Hunt Diedrich andirons she bowed her head
against an attenuated Hunt Diedrich antelope in bronze.
She was not softened or repentant. She knew she would become so later;
but she knew too that her tempers had to work themselves off by
degrees. Their quarrels having hitherto been rendered worth while by
their reconciliations, she took it for granted that the same thing
would happen once more though, as she expressed it to herself, she
would have died before taking the first step. The obvious thing was
for him to pick up the ring from off the floor, bring it to her humbly
while her back was turned on him, and beseech her to allow him to slip
it on where it belonged; whereupon she would consider as to whether
she would do so or not. In her present frame of mind, so she told
herself, she would not. Nothing would induce her to do anything of the
kind. He had betrayed the fact that he knew something as to which she
was desperately sensitive, which other people knew, but which she had
always supposed to have escaped his observation--that she was like an
old maid.
She was. She was only twenty-five, but she had been like an old maid
at fifteen. It had been a joke till she was twenty, after which it had
continued as a joke to her friends, but a grief to herself. She was
distinguished, aristocratic, intellectual, accomplished, and Aunt
Marion would probably see to it that she was left tolerably well off;
nevertheless she had picked up from her aunt, or perhaps had inherited
from the same source, the peculiar quality of the woman who would
probably not marry. Because she knew it and bewailed it, it had come
like a staggering blow to learn that Rash knew it, and perhaps
bewailed it too. The least he could do to atone for that offense would
be to beg her, to implore her on his bended knees, to wear his ring
again; and she might not do it even then.
The dramatic experience was worth waiting for, however, and so with
spirit churning she leaned her hot brow against the thin, cool flank
of Hunt Diedrich's antelope. She knew by the fierce grinding of his
steps on the far side of the room that he hadn't yet picked up the
ring; but there was no hurry as to that. Since she would never, never
forgive him for knowing what she thought he didn't know--forgive him
in her heart, that was to say--not if she married him ten times over,
or to the longest day he lived, there was plenty of time for reaching
friendly terms again. Her anger had not yet blown off, nor had she
stabbed him hard enough. As with most people subject to storms of hot
temper, stabs, given and received, were all in her day's work. They
relieved for the moment the pressure of emotion, leaving no permanent
ill-will behind them.
She heard him come to a halt, but did not turn to look at him.
"So it's all over!"
As a peg on which to hang a retort the words would serve as well as
any others. "It seems so, doesn't it?"
"And you don't care whether I go to the devil or not?"
"What's the good of my caring when you seem determined to do it
anyhow?"
He allowed a good minute to pass before saying, "Well, if you don't
marry me some other woman will."
"Very likely; and if you make her a promise to reform I hope you'll
keep your word."
"She won't be likely to exact any such condition."
"Then you'll probably be happier with her than you could have been
with me."
Having opened up the way for him to make some protest to which she
could have remained obdurate, she waited for it to come. But nothing
did come. Had she turned, she would have seen that he had grown white,
that his hands were clenched and his lips compressed after a way he
had and that his wild, harum-scarum soul was worked up to an
extraordinary intensity; but she didn't turn. She was waiting for him
to pick up the ring, creep along behind her, and seize the hand
resting on the mantelpiece, according to the ritual she had mentally
foreordained. But without stooping or taking a step he spoke again.
"I picked up a book at the club the other day."
Not being interested, she made no response.
"It was the life of an English writing-guy."
Though wondering what he was working up to, she still held her peace.
"Gissing, the fellow's name was. Ever hear of him?"
The question being direct, she murmured: "Yes; of course. What of
it?"
"Ever hear how he got married?"
"Not that I remember."
"When something went wrong--I've forgotten what--he went out into the
street with a vow. It was a vow to marry the first woman he met who'd
marry him."
A shiver went through her. It was just such a foolhardy thing as
Rashleigh himself was likely to attempt. She was afraid. She was
afraid, and yet reangered just when her wrath was beginning to die
down.
"And he did it!" he cried, with a force in which it was impossible for
her not to catch a note of personal implication.
It was unlikely that he could be trying to trap her by any such cheap
melodramatic threat as this; and yet----
When several minutes had gone by in a silence which struck her soon as
awesome, she turned slowly round, only to find herself alone.
She ran into the hall, but there was no one there. He must have gone
downstairs. Leaning over the baluster, she called to him.
"Rash! Rash!"
But only Wildgoose, the manservant, answered from below. "Mr. Allerton
had just left the 'ouse, miss."