While this conversation was taking place Letty, in the back spare
room, was conducting a ceremonial too poignant for tears. There were
tears in her heart, but her eyes only smarted.
Taking off the blue-black tea-gown, she clasped it in her arms and
kissed it. Then, on one of the padded silk hangers, she hung it far in
the depths of the closet, where it wouldn't scorch her sight in the
morning.
Next she arrayed herself in a filmy breakfast thing, white with a
copper-colored sash matching some of the tones in her hair and eyes,
and simple with an angelic simplicity. Standing before the long mirror
she surveyed herself mournfully. But this robe too she took off,
kissed, and laid away.
Lastly she put on the blue-green costume, with the turquoise and jade
embroidery. She put on also the hat with the feather which shaded
itself from green into monkshood blue. She put on a veil, and a pair
of white gloves. For once she would look as well as she was capable of
looking, though no one should see her but herself.
Viewing her reflection she grew frightened. It was the first time she
had ever seen her personal potentialities. She had long known that
with "half a chance" she could emerge from the cocoon stage of the old
gray rag and be at least the equal of the average; but she hadn't
expected so radical a change. She was not the same Letty Gravely. She
didn't know what she was, since she was neither a "star" nor a "lady,"
the two degrees of elevation of which she had had experience. All she
could feel was that with the advantages here presented she had the
capacity to be either. Since, apparently, the becoming a lady was now
excluded from her choice of careers, "stardom" would still have been
within her reach, only that she was not to get the necessary "half a
chance." That was the bitter truth of it. That was to be the result of
her walking on blades. All the same, as walking on blades would help
her prince she was resolved to walk on them. For her mother's sake,
even for Judson Flack's, she had done things nearly as hard, when she
had not had this incentive.
The incentive nerved her to take off the blue-green costume, kissing
it a last farewell, and laying it to rest, as a mother a dead baby in
its coffin. Into the closet went the bits of lingerie from the
consignment just arrived from Paris, and the other spoils of the day.
When everything was buried she shut the door upon it, as in her heart
she was shutting the door on her poor little fledgling hopes. Nothing
remained to torment her vision, or distract her from what she had to
do. The old gray rag and the battered black hat were all she had now
to deal with.
She slept little that night, since she was watching not for daylight
but for that first stirring in the streets which tells that daylight
is approaching. Having neither watch nor clock the stirring was all
she had to go by. When it began to rumble and creak and throb faintly
in and above the town she got up and dressed.
So far had she travelled in less than forty-eight hours that the old
gray rag, and not the blue-green costume, was now the disguise. In
other words, once having tasted the prosperous she had found it the
natural. To go back to poverty was not merely hard; it was contrary to
all spontaneous dictates. Dimly she had supposed that in reverting to
the harness she had worn she would find herself again; but she only
discovered that she was more than ever lost.
Very softly she unlocked her door to peep out at the landing. The
house was ghostly and still, but it was another sign of her
development that she was no longer afraid of it. Space too had become
natural, while dignity of setting had seemed to belong to her ever
since she was born. Turning her back on these conditions was far more
like turning her back on home than it had been when she walked away
from Judson Flack's.
She crept out. It was so dark that she was obliged to wait till
objects defined themselves black against black before she could see
the stairs. She listened too. There were sounds, but only such sounds
as all houses make when everyone is sleeping. She guessed, it was pure
guessing, that it must be about five o'clock.
She stole down the stairs. The necessity for keeping her mind on
moving noiselessly deadened her thought to anything else. She neither
looked back to what she was leaving behind, nor forward to what she
was going to. Once she had reached the street it would be time enough
to think of both. She had the fact in the back of her consciousness,
but she kept it there. Out in the street she would feel grief for the
prince and his palace, and terror at the void before her; but she
couldn't feel them yet. Her one impulse was to escape.
At the great street door she could see nothing; but she could feel.
She found the key and turned it easily. As the door did not then yield
to the knob she fumbled till she touched the chain. Slipping that out
of its socket she tried the door again, but it still refused to open.
There must be something else! Rich houses were naturally fortresses!
She discovered the bolt and pulled it back.
Still the door was fixed like a rock. She couldn't make it out. A
lock, a chain, a bolt! Surely that must be everything! Perhaps she had
turned the key the wrong way. She turned it again, but only with the
same result. She found she could turn the key either way, and still
leave the door immovable.
Perhaps she didn't pull it hard enough. Doors sometimes stuck. She
pulled harder; she pulled with her whole might and main. She could
shake the door; she could make it rattle. The hanging chain dangled
against the woodwork with a terrifying clank. If anyone was lying
awake she would sound like a burglar--and yet she must get out.
Now that she was balked, to get out became an obsession. It became
more of an obsession the more she was balked. It made her first
impatient, and then frantic. She turned the key this way and that way.
She pulled and tugged. The perspiration came out on her forehead. She
panted for breath; she almost sobbed. She knew there was a "trick" to
it. She knew it was a simple trick because she had seen Steptoe
perform it on the previous day; but she couldn't find out what it was.
The effort made her only the more desperate.
She was not crying; she was only gasping--in raucous, exhausted,
nervous sobs. They came shorter and harder as she pitted her impotence
against this unyielding passivity. She knew it was impotence, and yet
she couldn't desist; and she couldn't desist because she grew more and
more frenzied. It was the kind of frenzy in which she would have
dashed herself wildly, vainly against the force that blocked her with
its pitiless resistance, only that the whole hall was suddenly flooded
with a blaze of light.
It was light that came so unexpectedly that her efforts were cut
short. Even her hard gasps were silenced, not in relief but in
amazement. She remained so motionless that she could practically see
herself, thrown against this brutal door, her arms spread out on it
imploringly.
Seconds that seemed like minutes went by before she found strength to
detach herself and turn.
Amazement became terror. On the halfway landing of the stairs stood a
figure robed in scarlet from head to foot, with flying indigo lapels.
He was girt with an indigo girdle, while the mass of his hair stood up
as in tongues of forked black flame. The countenance was terrible, in
mingled perplexity and wrath.
She saw it was the prince, but a prince transformed by condemnation.
"What on earth does this mean?"
He came down the rest of the stairs till he stood on the lowest step.
She advanced toward him pleadingly.
"I was--I was trying to get out."
"What for?"
"I--I--I must get away."
"Well, even so; is this the way to do it? I thought someone was
tearing the house down. It woke me up."
"I was goin' this way because--because I didn't want you to know
what'd become of me."
"Yes, and have you on my mind."
"I hoped I'd be takin' myself off your mind."
"If you want to take yourself off my mind there's a perfectly simple
means of doing it."
"I'll do anything--but take money."
"And taking money is the only thing I ask of you."
"I can't. It'd--it'd--shame me."
"Shame you? What nonsense!"
She reflected fast. "There's two ways a woman can take money from a
man. The man may love her and marry her; or perhaps he don't marry
her, but loves her just the same. Then she can take it; but when----"
"When she only renders him a--a great service----"
"Ah, but that's just what I didn't do. You said you wanted me to send
you to the devil--and now you ain't a-goin' to go."
He grew excited. "But, good Lord, girl, you don't expect me to go to
the devil just to keep my word to you."
"I don't want you to do anything just to keep your word to me," she
returned, fiercely. "I only want you to let me get away."
He came down the remaining step, beginning to pace back and forth as
he always did when approaching the condition he called "going off the
hooks." Letty found him a marvelous figure in his scarlet robe, and
with his mass of diabolic black hair.
"Yes, and if I let you get away, where would you get away _to_?"
"Oh, I'll find a place."
"A place in jail as a vagrant, as I said the other day."
"I'd rather be in jail," she flung back at him, "than stay where I'm
not wanted."
"That's not the question."
"It's the biggest question of all for me. It'd be the biggest for you
too if you were in my place." She stretched out her hands to him. "Oh,
please show me how to work the door, and let me go."
He flared as he was in the habit of flaring whenever he was opposed.
"You can go when we've settled the question of what you'll have to
live on."
"I'll have myself to live on--just as I had before I met you in the
Park."
"Nothing is the same for you or for me as before I met you in the
Park."
"No, but we want to make it the same, don't we? You can't--can't marry
the other girl till it is."
"I can't marry the other girl till I know you're taken care of."
"Money wouldn't take care of me. That's where you're makin' your
mistake. You rich people think that money will do anything. So it will
for you; but it don't mean so awful much to me." Her eyes, her lips,
her hands besought him together. "Think now! What would I do with
money if I had it? It ain't as if I was a lady. A lady has ways of
doin' nothin' and livin' all the same; but a girl like me don't know
anything about them. I'd go crazy if I didn't work--or I'd die--or I'd
do somethin' worse."
It was because his nerves were on edge that he cried out: "I don't
care a button what you do. I'm thinking of myself."
She betrayed the sharpness of the wound only by a deepening of the
damask flush. "I'm thinkin' of you, too. Wouldn't you rather have
everything come right again--so that you could marry the other
girl--and know that I'd done it for you _free_--and not that you'd
just bought me off?"
"You mean, wouldn't I rather that all the generosity should be on your
side----"
"I don't care anything about generosity. I wouldn't be doin' it for
that. It'd be because----"
He flung out his arms. "Well--why?"
"Because I'd like to do something _for_ you----"
"Do something for me by making me a cad." He was beside himself.
"That's what it would come to. That's what you're playing for. I
should be a cad. You dress yourself up again in this ridiculous
rig----"
"It's not a ridic'lous rig. It's my own clothes----"
"Your own clothes _now_ are--are what I saw you in when I came home
last evening. You can't go back to that thing. We can't go back in any
way." He seemed to make a discovery. "It's no use trying to be what we
were in the Park, because we can't be. Whatever we do must be in the
way of--of going on to something else."
"Well, that'd be something else, if you'd just let me go, and do the
desertion stunt you talked to me about----"
"I'll not let you do it unless I pay you for it."
"But it'd be payin' me for it if--if you'd just let me do it. Don't
you see I _want_ to?"
"I can see that you want to keep me in your debt. I can see that I'd
never have another easy moment in my life. Whatever I did, and whoever
I married, I should have to owe it to _you_."
"Well, couldn't you--when I owe so much to you?"
"There you go! What do you owe to me? Nothing but getting you into an
infernal scrape----"
"Oh, no! It's not been that at all. You'd have to be me to understand
what it _has_ been. It'll be something to think of all the rest of my
life--whatever I do."
"Yes, and I know how you'll think of it."
"Oh, no, you don't. You couldn't. It's nothin' to you to come into
this beautiful house and see its lovely kind of life; but for me----"
"Oh, don't throw that sort of thing at me," he flamed out, striding up
and down. "Steptoe's been putting that into your head. He's strong on
the sentimental stuff. You and he are in a conspiracy against me.
That's what it is. It's a conspiracy. He's got something up his
sleeve--I don't know what--and he's using you as his tool. But you
don't come it over me. I'm wise, I am. I'm a fool too. I know it well
enough. But I'm not such a fool as to----"
She was frightened. He was going "off the hooks." She knew the signs
of it. This rapid speech, one word leading to another, had always been
her mother's first sign of super-excitement, until it ended in a
scream. If he were to scream she would be more terrified than she had
ever been in her life. She had never heard a man scream; but then she
had never seen a man grow hysterical.
His utterance was the more clear-cut and distinct the faster it
became.
"I know what it is. Steptoe thinks I'm going insane, and he's made you
think so too. That's why you want to get away. You're afraid of me.
Well, I don't wonder at it; but you're not going. See? You're not
going. You'll go when I send you; but you'll not go before. See? I've
married you, haven't I? When all is said and done you're my wife. My
wife!" He laughed, between gritted teeth. "My wife! That's my wife!"
He pointed at her. "Rashleigh Allerton who thought so much of himself
has married _that_--and she's trying to do the generous by him----"
Going up to him timidly, she laid her hand on his arm. "Say, mister,
would you mind countin' ten?"
The appeal took him so much by surprise that, both in his
speech and in his walk, he stopped abruptly. She began to
count, slowly, and marking time with her forefinger.
"One--two--three--four--five--six--seven--eight--nine--ten."
He stared at her as if it was she who had gone "off the hooks." "What
do you mean by that?"
"Oh, nothin'. Now you can begin again."
"Begin what?"
"What you was--what you were sayin'."
"What I was saying?" He rubbed his hand across his forehead, which was
wet with cold perspiration. "Well, what was I saying?"
He was not only dazed, but a pallor stole over his skin, the more
ghastly in contrast with his black hair and his scarlet
dressing-gown.
"Isn't there no place you can lay down? I always laid momma down after
a spell of this kind. It did her good to sleep and she always slept."
He said, absently: "There's a couch in the library. I can't go back to
bed."
"No, you don't want to go back to bed," she agreed, as if she was
humoring a child. "You wouldn't sleep there----"
"I haven't slept for two nights," he pleaded, in excuse for himself,
"not since----"
Taking him by the arm she led him into the library, which was in an
ell behind the back drawing-room. It was a big, book-lined room with
worn, shiny, leather-covered furnishings. On the shiny,
leather-covered couch was a cushion which she shook up and smoothed
out. Over its foot lay an afghan the work of the late Mrs. Allerton.
"Now, lay down."
He stretched himself out obediently, after which she covered him with
the afghan. When he had closed his eyes she passed her hand across his
forehead, on which the perspiration was still thick and cold. She
remembered that a bottle of Florida water and a paper fan were among
the luxuries of the back spare room.
"Don't you stir," she warned him. "I'm goin' to get you something."
Absorbed in her tasks as nurse she forgot to make the sentimental
reflections in which she would otherwise have indulged. Back to the
room from which she had fled she hurried with no thought that she was
doing so. From the grave of hope she disinterred a half dozen of the
spider-web handkerchiefs to which a few hours previously she had bid a
touching adieu. With handkerchiefs, fan, and Florida water, she flew
back to her patient, who opened his eyes as she approached.
"I don't want to be fussed over----" he was beginning, fretfully.
"Lie still," she commanded. "I know what to do. I'm used to people who
are sick--up here."
"Up here" was plainly the forehead which she mopped softly with a
specimen from Margot's Parisian consignment. He closed his eyes. His
features relaxed to an expression of relief. Relief gave place to
repose when he felt her hand with the cool scented essence on his
brow. It passed and passed again, lightly, soothingly, consolingly.
Drowsily he thought that it was Barbara's hand, but a Barbara somehow
transformed, and grown tenderer.
He was asleep. She sat fanning him till a feeble daylight through an
uncurtained window warned her to switch off the electricity. Coming
back to her place, she continued to fan him, quietly and deftly, with
no more than a motion of the wrist. She had the nurse's wrist,
slender, flexible; the nurse's hand, strong, shapely, with practical
spatulated finger-tips. After all, he was in some degree the drowning
unconscious prince, and she the little mermaid.
"He'll be ashamed when he wakes up. He'll not like to find me sittin'
here."
It was broad daylight now. He was as sound asleep as a child. Since
she couldn't disturb him by rising she rose. Since she couldn't
disturb him even by kissing him she kissed him. But she wouldn't kiss
his lips, nor so much as his cheek or his brow. Very humbly she knelt
and kissed his feet, outlined beneath the afghan. Then she stole
away.