On the next afternoon Allerton reported to Miss Walbrook the success
of his first educational evening.
"She's very intelligent, very. You'd really be pleased with her,
Barbe. Her mind is so starved that it absorbs everything you say to
her, as a dry soil will drink up rain."
Regarding him with the mysterious Egyptian expression which had at
times suggested the reincarnation of some ancient spirit Barbara
maintained the stillness which had come upon her on the previous day.
"That must be very satisfactory to you, Rash."
He agreed the more enthusiastically because of believing her at one
with him in this endeavor. "You bet! The whole thing is going to work
out. She'll pick up our point of view as if she was born to it."
"And you're not afraid of her picking up anything else?"
"Anything else of what kind?"
"She might fall in love with you, mightn't she?"
"With me? Nonsense! No one would fall in love with me who----"
Her mysterious Egyptian smile came and went. "You can stop there,
Rash. It's no use being more uncomplimentary than you need to be. And
then, too, you might fall in love with her."
"Barbe!" He cried out, as if wounded. "You're really too absurd.
She's a good little thing, and she's had the devil's own luck----"
"They always do have. That was one thing I learnt in Bleary Street. It
was never a girl's own fault. It was always the devil's own luck."
"Well, isn't it, now, when you come to think of it? You can't take
everything away from people, and expect them to have the same
standards as you and me. Think of the mess that people of our sort
make of things, even with every advantage."
"We've our own temptations, of course."
"And they've got theirs--without our pull in the way of carrying them
off. You should hear Steptoe----"
"I don't want to hear Steptoe. I've heard him too much already."
"What do you mean by that?"
"What can I mean by it but just what I say? I should think you'd get
rid of him."
Having first looked puzzled, with a suggestion of pain, he ended with
a laugh. "You might as well expect me to get rid of an old
grandfather. Steptoe wouldn't let me, if I wanted to."
"He doesn't like me."
"Oh, that's just your imagination, Barbe. I'll answer for him when it
comes to----"
"You needn't take the trouble to do that, because I don't like him."
"Oh, but you will when you come to understand him."
"Possibly; but I don't mean to come to understand him. Old servants
can be an awful nuisance, Rash----"
"But Steptoe isn't exactly an old servant. He's more like----"
"Oh, I know what he's like. He's a habit; and habits are always
dangerous, even when they're good. But we're not going to quarrel
about Steptoe yet. I just thought I'd put you on your guard----"
"Against him?"
"He's a horrid old schemer, if that's what you want me to say; but
then it may be what you like."
"Well, I do," he laughed, "when it comes to him. He's been a horrid
old schemer as long as I remember him, but always for my good."
"For your good as he sees it."
"For my good as a kind old nurse might see it. He's limited, of
course; but then kind old nurses generally are."
To be true to her vow of keeping the peace she forced back her
irritations, and smiled. "You're an awful goose, Rash; but then you're
a lovable goose, aren't you?" She beckoned, imperiously. "Come here."
When he was on his knees beside her chair she pressed back his face
framed by her two hands. "Now tell me. Which do you love most--Steptoe
or me?"
He cast about him for two of her special preferences. "And you tell
me; which do you love most, a saddle-horse or an opera?"
"If I told you, which should I be?--the opera or the saddle-horse?"
"If I told you, which would you give up?"
So they talked foolishly, as lovers do in the chaffing stage, she
trying to charm him into promising to get rid of Steptoe, he charmed
by her willingness to charm him. Neither remembered that technically
he was a married man; but then neither had ever taken his marriage to
Letty as a serious breach in their relations.
* * * * *
While he was thus on his knees the kindly old nurse was giving to
Letty a kindly old nurse's advice.
"If madam 'ud go out and tyke a walk I think it'd do madam good."
To madam the suggestion had elements of mingled terror and attraction.
"But, Steptoe, I couldn't go out and take a walk unless I dressed up
in the new outdoor suit."
"And what did madam buy it for?--with the 'at and the vyle, and
everythink, just like the lyte Mrs. Allerton."
It was the argument she was hoping for. In the first place she was
used to the freedom of the streets; and in the second the outdoor suit
was calling her. Letty's love of dress was more than a love of
appearing at her best, though that love was part of it; it was a love
of the clothes themselves, of fabrics, colors, and fashions. When her
dreams were not of wandering knights who loved her at a
glance--bankers, millionaires, casting directors in motion-picture
studios, or, in high flights of imagination, incognito English
lords--they dealt in costumes of magic tissue, of hues suited to her
hair and eyes, in which the world saw and greeted her, not as the poor
little waif whom Judson Flack had put out of doors, but the true Letty
Gravely of romance. The Letty Gravely of romance was the real Letty
Gravely, a being set free from the cruel, the ugly, the carking, the
sordid, to flourish in a sunlight she knew to be shining somewhere.
Oddly enough her vision had come partly true; and yet so out of focus
that she couldn't see its truth. It was like the sunlight which she
knew to be shining somewhere, with a wrong refraction in its rays. The
world into which she had been carried was like that in a cubist
picture which someone had shown her at the studio. It bore a relation
to the world she knew, but a relation in which whatever she had
supposed to be perpendicular was oblique, and whatever she had
supposed to be oblique was horizontal, and nothing as she had been
accustomed to find it. It made her head swim. It was literally true
that she was afraid to move lest she should make a misstep through an
error in her sense of planes.
But clothes she understood. In the swirling of her universe they
formed a rock to which her intelligence could cling. They kept her
sane. In a sense they kept her happy. When all outside was confusion
and topsy-turvyness she could retire among Margot's cartons, and find
herself on solid ground. I should be sorry to record the hours she
spent before the long mirror in the little back spare room. Here her
imagination could give itself free range. She was Luciline Lynch, and
Mercola Merch, and Lisabel Anstey, and any other star of whom she
admired the attainments; she could play a whole series of parts from
which her lack of a wardrobe had hitherto excluded her. From time to
time she ventured, like Steptoe, to be Barbara Walbrook herself,
though assuming the role with less intrepidity than he.
It was easier, she found, to be any of the stars than Barbara
Walbrook, for the reason that the latter was "the real thing." She was
living her part, not playing it. She was "letter perfect," in
Steptoe's sense, not because a director moved her person this way, or
turned her head that way, but because life had so infused her that she
did what was right unconsciously. Letty, by pretending to enter at the
door and come forward to the mirror as to a living presence, studied
what was right by imitation. Miss Walbrook walked with a swift, easy
gait which suggested the precision of certain strong birds when
swooping on their prey. Between the door and the mirror Letty aimed at
the same effect till she made a discovery.
"I can't do it her way; I can only do it my way."
The ways were different; yet each could be effective. That too was a
discovery. Nature had no rule to which every individual was obliged to
conform. The individual was, in a measure, his own rule, and got his
attractiveness from being so. The minute you abandoned your own gifts
to cultivate those with which Nature had blessed someone else you lost
not only your identity but your charm.
Letty worked this out as something like a principle. However many the
hints she took it would be folly to try to be anything but herself.
After all, it was what gave her value to a star, her personality. If
Luciline Lynch whom Nature had endowed with the grand manner had tried
to be Mercola Merch who was all vivacious wickedness--well, anyone
could see! So, if Barbara Walbrook suggested an eagle on the wing and
she, Letty Gravely, was only a sparrow in the street, the sparrow
would be more successful as a sparrow than in trying to emulate the
eagle.
And yet there was a value to good models which at first she found
difficult to reconcile with this truth of personal independence. This
too she thought out. "It's like a way to do your hair," was her method
of expressing it. "You do what's in fashion, but you twist it so that
it suits your own style. It isn't the fashion that makes you look
right; it's in being true to what suits you."
There was, however, in Barbara Walbrook a something deeper than this
which at first eluded her. It was in Rashleigh Allerton too. It was in
Lisabel Anstey, and in a few other stars, but not in Mercola Merch,
nor in Luciline Lynch. "It's the whole business," Letty summed up to
herself, "and yet I don't know what it is. Unless I can put my finger
on it...."
She was just at this point when Steptoe addressed her on the subject
of going out. That she do so was part of his programme. Madam would
not be madam till she felt herself free to come and go; and till madam
was madam Mr. Rash would not understand who it was they had in the
'ouse. That he didn't understand it yet was partly due to madam
'erself who didn't understand it on 'er side. To cultivate this
understanding in madam was Steptoe's immediate aim, in which Beppo,
the little cocker spaniel, unexpectedly came to his assistance.
As the two stood conversing at the foot of the stairs Beppo lilted
down, with that air of having no one to love which he had worn during
all the eighteen months since his mistress had died. The cocker
spaniel's heart, as everyone knows, is imbued with the principle of
one life, one love. It has no room for two loves; it has still less
room for that general amiability to which most dogs are born. Among
the human race it singles out one; and to that one it is faithful. In
separation it seeks no substitute; in bereavement it rarely forms a
second tie. To everyone but Beppo the removal of Mrs. Allerton had
made the world brighter. He alone had mourned that presence with a
grief which sought neither comfort nor mitigation. He had followed his
routine; he had eaten and slept; he had gone out when he was taken out
and come in when he was brought in; but he had lived shut up within
himself, aloof in his sorrow. For the first time in all those eighteen
months he had come out of this proud gloom when Rashleigh's key had
turned in the door that night, and Letty had entered the house.
The secret call which Beppo had heard can never be understood by men
till men have developed more of their latent faculties. As he lay in
his basket something reached him which he recognized as a summons to a
new phase of usefulness. Out of the lethargy of mourning he had jumped
with an obedient leap that took him through the obscurity of the house
to where a frightened girl had need of a little dog's sympathy. Of
that sympathy he had been lavish; and now that there was new
discussion in the air he came with his contribution.
In words Steptoe had to be his interpreter. "That, poor little dog as
'as growed so fond of madam don't get 'alf the exercise he ought to be
give. If madam was to tyke 'im out like for a little stroll up the
Havenue...."
Thus it happened that in less than half an hour Letty found herself
out in the October sunlight, dressed in her blue-green costume, with
all the details to "correspond," and leading Beppo on the leash. To
lead Beppo on the leash, as Steptoe had perceived, gave a reason for
an excursion which would otherwise have seemed motiveless. But she was
out. She was out in conditions in which even Judson Flack, had he met
her, could hardly have detected her. Gorgeously arrayed as she seemed
to herself she was dressed with the simplicity which stamps the French
taste. There was nothing to make her remarked, especially in a double
procession of women so many of whom were remarkable. Had you looked at
her twice you would have noted that while skill counted for much in
her gentle, well-bred appearance, a subtle, unobtrusive, native
distinction counted for most; but you would have been obliged to look
at her twice before noting anything about her. She was a neatly
dressed girl, with an air; but on that bright afternoon in Fifth
Avenue neatly dressed girls with an air were as buttercups in June.
Seizing this fact Letty felt more at her ease. No one was thinking her
conspicuous. She was passing in the crowd. She was not being "spotted"
as the girl who a short time before had had nothing but the old gray
rag to appear in. She could enjoy the walk--and forget herself.
Then it came to her suddenly that this was the secret of which she was
in search, the power to forget herself. She must learn to do things so
easily that she would have no self-consciousness in doing them. In big
things Barbara Walbrook might think of herself; but in all little
things, in the way she spoke and walked and bore herself toward
others, she acted as she breathed. It seemed wonderful to Letty, this
assurance that you were right in all the fundamentals. It was
precisely in the fundamentals that she was so likely to be wrong. It
was where girls of her sort suffered most; in the lack of the
elementary. One could bluff the advanced, or make a shot at it; but
the elementary couldn't be bluffed, and no shot at it would tell. It
betrayed you at once. You must _have_ it. You must have it as you had
the circulation of your blood, as something so basic that you didn't
need to consider it. That was her next discovery, as with Beppo
tugging at the end of his tether she walked onward.
She was used to walking; she walked strongly, and with a trudging
sturdiness, not without its grace. She came to the part of Fifth
Avenue where the great houses begin to thin out, and vacant lots, as
if ashamed of their vacancy, shrink behind boardings vivid with the
news of picture-plays. It was the year when they were advertising the
screen-masterpiece, _Passion Aflame_; and here was depicted Luciline
Lynch, a torch in her hand, her hair in maenadic dishevelment, leading
on a mob to set fire to a town. Letty herself having been in that mob
paused in search of her face among the horde of the great star's
followers. It was a blob of scarlet and green from which she dropped
her eyes, only to have them encounter a friend of long standing.
At the foot of the boarding, and all in a row, was a straggling band
of dust-flowers. It was late in the season, yet not too late for their
bit of blue heaven to press in among the ways of men. She was not
surprised to find them there. Ever since the crazy woman had pointed
out the mission of this humble little helper of the human race she had
noted its persistency in haunting the spots which beauty had deserted.
You found it in the fields, it was true; but you found it rarely,
sparsely, raggedly, blooming, you might say, with but little heart for
its bloom. Where other flowers had been frightened away; where the
poor crowded; where factories flared; where junk-heaps rusted; where
backyards baked; where smoke defiled; where wretchedness stalked;
where crime brooded; where the land was unkempt; where the human
spirit was sodden--there the celestial thing multiplied its celestial
growths, blessing the eyes and making the heart leap. It mattered
little that so few gave it a thought or regarded it as other than a
weed; there were always those few, who knew that it spelled beauty,
who knew that it spelled something more.
Letty was of those few. She was of those few for old sake's sake, but
also for the sake of a new yearning. Slipping off a glove she picked a
few of the dusty stalks, even though she knew that once taken from
their task of glorifying the dishonored the blue stars would shut
almost instantly. "They'll wither in a few days now," she said, in
self-excuse; "and anyhow I'll leave most of them." Having shaken off
the dust she fastened them in her corsage, blue against her
blue-green.
They were her symbol for happiness springing up in the face of
despair, and from a soil where you would expect it to be choked. She
herself was happy to-day as she could not remember ever to have been
happy in her life. For the first time she was passing among decent
people decently; and then--it was the great hope beyond which she
didn't look--the prince might read with her again that evening.
But as she turned from Fifth Avenue into East Sixty-seventh Street the
prince was approaching his door from the other direction. Even she was
aware that it was contrary to his habits to appear at home by five in
the afternoon. She didn't know, of course, that Barbara had so
stimulated his enthusiasm for the educational course that he had come
on the chance of taking it up at the tea hour. He could not remember
that Barbara had ever before been so sympathetic to one of his ideas.
The fact encouraged his feeble belief in himself, and made him love
her with richer tenderness.
In the gentle girl of quietly distinguished mien he saw nothing but a
stranger till Beppo strained at his leash and barked. Even then it
took him half a minute to get his powers of recognition into play. He
stopped at the foot of his steps, watching her approach.
By doing so he made the approach more difficult for her. The heart
seemed to stop in her body. She could scarcely breathe. Each step was
like walking on blades, yet like walking on blades with a kind of
ecstasy. Luckily Beppo pranced and pulled in such a way that she was
forced to give him some attention.
The prince's first words were also a distraction from terrors and
enchantments which made her feel faint.
"Where did you get the poor man's coffee?"
The question by puzzling her gave her some relief. Pointing at the
sprays in her corsage he went on:
"That's what the country people often call the chicory weed in
France."
She was able to gasp feebly: "Oh, does it grow there?"
"I think it grows pretty nearly everywhere. It's one of the most
classic wild flowers we know anything about. The ancient Egyptians
dried its leaves to give flavor to their salad, and I remember being
told at Luxor that the modern Copts and Arabs do the same. You see
it's quite a friendly little beast to man."
It eased her other feelings to tell him about the crazy woman in
Canada, and her reading of the dust-flower's significance.
"That's a good idea too," Allerton agreed, smiling down into her eyes.
"There are people like that--little dust-flowers cheering up the
wayside for the rest of us poor brutes."
She said, wistfully: "I suppose you've known a lot of them."
[Illustration: THE PRINCE'S FIRST WORDS WERE ALSO A DISTRACTION FROM
TERRORS, AND ENCHANTMENTS WHICH MADE HER FEEL FAINT]
As he laughed his eyes rested on a man sauntering toward them from the
direction of Fifth Avenue. "I've known about two--" his eyes came back
to smile again down into hers--"or _one_." He started as a man starts
who receives a new suggestion. "I say! Let's go in and look up chicory
and succory in the encyclopedia. Then we'll know all about it. It
seems to me, too," he went on, reminiscently, "that I read a little
poem about this very blue flower--by Margaret Deland, I think it
was--only a few weeks ago. I believe I could put my hand on it. Come
along."
As he sprang up the steps the pearly gates were opening again before
Letty when the man whom Allerton had seen sauntering toward them
actually passed by. Passing he lifted his hat politely, smiled, and
said, "Good afternoon, Miss Gravely," like any other gentleman. He was
a good-looking slippery young man, with a cast in his left eye.
Because she was a woman before she was a lady, as she understood the
word lady, Letty responded with, "Good afternoon," and a little
inclination of the head. He was several doors off before she bethought
herself sufficiently to take alarm.
"Who's that?" Allerton demanded, looking down from the third or fourth
step.
"I'm sure I haven't an idea. I think he must be some camera-man who's
seen me when they've been shooting the pitch--" she made the
correction almost in time--"who's seen me when they've been shooting
the _pick-tures_. I can't think of anything else."
They watched the retreating form till, without a backward glance, it
turned into Madison Avenue.
"Come along in," Allerton called then, in a tone intended to disperse
misgiving, "and let's begin."
Ten minutes later he was reading in the library, from a big volume
open on his knees, how for over a century the chicory root had been
dried and ground in France, and used to strengthen the cheaper grades
of coffee, when Letty broke in, as if she had not been following him:
"I don't think that fella could have been a camera-man after all. No
camera-man would ha' noticed me in the great big bunch I was always
in."
"Oh, well, he can't do you any harm anyhow," Allerton assured her.
"I'll just finish this, and then I'll look for the poem by Mrs.
Deland."
With her veil and gloves in her lap Letty sat thoughtful while he
passed from shelf to shelf in search of the smaller volume. Of her
real suspicion, that the man was a friend of Judson Flack's, she
decided not to speak.
Seated once more in front of her, and bending slightly toward her,
Allerton read:
"Oh, not in ladies' gardens,
My peasant posy!
Smile thy dear blue eyes,
Nor only--nearer to the skies--
In upland pastures, dim and sweet--
But by the dusty road
Where tired feet
Toil to and fro;
Where flaunting Sin
May see thy heavenly hue,
Or weary Sorrow look from thee
Toward a more tender blue."
Allerton glanced up from the book. "Pretty, isn't it?"
She admitted that it was, and then added: "And yet there was the times
when the castin' director put me right in the front, to register what
the crowd behind me was thinkin' about. He might ha' noticed me
then."
"Yes, of course; that must have been it. Now wouldn't you like me to
read that again? You must always read a poem a second or third time to
really know what it's about."
* * * * *
Meanwhile a poem of another sort was being read to Miss Barbara
Walbrook by her aunt, who had entered the drawing-room within five
minutes after Allerton had left it. During those five minutes Barbara
had remained seated, plunged into reverie. The problem with which she
had to deal was the degree to which she was right or wrong in
permitting Rashleigh to go on in his crazy course. That this outcast
girl was twining herself round his heart was a fact growing too
obtrusive to be ignored. Had Rashleigh been as other men decisive
action would have been imperative. But he was not as other men, and
there lay the possibilities she found difficult.
If the aunt couldn't help the niece to solve the difficult question
she at least could compel her to take a stand.
As she entered the drawing-room she came from out of doors, a slender,
unfleshly figure, all intellect and idea. Her vices being wholly of
the spirit were not recognized as vices, so that she passed as the
highest type of the good woman which the continent of America knows
anything about. Being the highest type of the good woman she had,
moreover, the privilege which American usage accords to all good women
of being good aggressively. No other good woman in the world enjoys
this right to the same degree, a fact to which we can point with
pride. The good English woman, the good French woman, the good Italian
woman, are obliged by the customs of their countries to direct their
goodness into channels in which it is relatively curbed. The good
American woman, on the other hand, is never so much at home as when
she is on the warpath. Her goodness being the only standard of
goodness which the country accepts she has the right to impose it by
any means she can harness to her purposes. She is the inspiration of
our churches, and the terror of our constituencies. She is behind
state legislatures and federal congresses and presidential cabinets.
They may elude her lofty purposes, falsify her trust, and for a time
hoodwink her with male chicaneries; but they are always afraid of her,
and in the end they do as she commands. Among the coarsely, stupidly,
viciously masculine countries of the world the American Republic is
the single and conspicuous matriarchate, ruled by its good women. Of
these rulers Miss Marion Walbrook was as representative a type as
could be found, high, pure, zealous, intolerant of men's weaknesses,
and with only spiritual immoralities of her own.
Seated in one of her slender upright armchairs she had the
impressiveness of goodness fully conscious of itself. A document she
held in her hand gave her the judicial air of one entitled to pass
sentence.
"I'm sorry, Barbara; but I've some disagreeable news for you."
Barbara woke. "Indeed?"
"I've just come from Augusta Chancellor's. She talked about--that
man."
"What did she say?"
"She said two or three things. One was that she'd met him one day in
the Park when he decidedly wasn't himself."
"Oh, it's hard to say when he's himself and when he isn't. He's what
the French would call _un original_."
"Oh, I don't know about that. The originality of men is commonplace as
it's most novel. This man is on a par with the rest, if you call it
original for him to have a woman in the house."
Barbara feigned languidness. "Well, it is--the way he has her there."
"The way he has her there? What do you mean by that?"
"I mean what I say. There's no one else in the world who would take a
girl under his roof in the way Rash has taken this girl."
"How, may I ask, did he take her?"
Having foreseen that one day she should be in this position Barbara
had made up her mind as to how much she should say. "He found her."
"Oh, they all do that. They generally find them in the Park."
"Exactly; it's just what he did."
"I guessed--it was only guessing mind you--that he also tried to find
Augusta Chancellor."
"Oh, possibly. He'd go as far as that, if he saw her doing anything he
thought not respectable."
"Barbara, please! You're talking about a friend of mine, one of my
colleagues. Let's return to--I hope you won't find the French phrase
invidious--to our mutton."
"Oh, very well! Rash found the girl homeless--penniless--with no
friends. Her stepfather had turned her out. Another man would have
left her there, or turned her over to the police. Rash took her to his
own house, and since then we've both been helping her to--to get on
her feet."
"Helping her to get on her feet in a way that's driven from the house
the good old women who've been there for nearly thirty years."
"Oh, you know that too, do you?"
"Why, certainly. Jane, that was the parlor maid, is very intimate with
Augusta Chancellor's cook; and she says--Jane does--that he's actually
married the creature."
Barbara shrugged her shoulders. "I can't help what the servants say,
Aunt Marion. I'm trying to be a friend to the girl, and help her to
pull herself together. Of course I recognize the fact that Rash has
been foolish--quixotic--or whatever you like to call it; but he hasn't
kept anything from me."
"And you're still engaged to him?"
"Of course I'm still engaged to him." She held out her left hand.
"Look at his ring."
"Then why don't you get married?"
"Are you in such a hurry to get rid of me?"
The question being a pleasantry Miss Walbrook took it with a gentle
smile. When she resumed it was with a slight flourish of the document
in her hand and another turn to the conversation.
"I went to the bank this morning. I've brought home my will. I'm
thinking of making some changes in it."
Barbara looked non-committal, as if the subject had nothing to do with
herself.
"The question I have to decide," Miss Walbrook pursued, "is whether to
leave everything to you, in the hope that you'll carry on my
work----"
"I shouldn't know how."
"Or whether to establish a trust----"
"I should do that decidedly."
"And let it fall into the hands of a pack of men."
"It will fall into the hands of a pack of men, whatever you do with
it."
"And yet if you had it in charge----"
"Some man would get hold of it, Aunt Marion."
"Which is what I'm debating. I'm not so very sure----"
"That I shall marry in the end?"
"Well, you're not married yet ... and if you were to change your
mind ... the world has such a need of consecrated women with men
so unscrupulous and irresponsible ... we must break their power
some day ... and now that we've got the opportunity ... all I want
you to understand is that if you shouldn't marry there'd be a
great career in store for you...."