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."