Barbara was late for breakfast. Miss Walbrook, the aunt, was scanning
the morning paper, her refined, austere Americanism being as
noticeable in the dining-room as elsewhere in the house. Everything
was slender and strong; everything was American, unless it was the
Persian rug. On the paneled walls there were but three portraits, a
Boston ancestress, in lace cap and satins, painted by Copley; a
Philadelphia ancestor in the Continental uniform, painted by Gilbert
Stuart; and her New York grandmother, painted by Thomas Sully, looking
over her shoulder with the wild backward glance that artist gives to
the girl Victoria in the Metropolitan Museum. In a flat cabinet along
a wall was the largest collection of old American glass to be found in
the country.
Barbara rushed in, with apologies for being late. "I didn't sleep a
wink. It doesn't seem to me as if I should ever sleep again. Where's
my cup?"
"Wildgoose will bring it. As the coffee had grown cold he took that
and the cup to keep warm. What's the matter?"
Wildgoose stepped in with the missing essentials. A full-fed,
round-faced, rubicund man of fifty-odd he looked a perennial
twenty-five. Barbara began to minister to herself.
"Oh, everything's the matter. I told you yesterday that that girl had
run away. Well, I begin to wish she'd run back again."
Miss Walbrook, the elder, had this in common with Miss Henrietta
Towell, that she believed it best for everyone to work out his own
salvation. Barbara had her personal life to live, and while her aunt
would help her to live it, she wouldn't guide her choice. She
continued, therefore, to scan the paper till her niece should say
something more.
She said it, not because she wanted to give information, but because
she was temperamentally outspoken. "I begin to wish there were no men
in the world. If women are men in a higher stage of development, why
didn't men die out, so that we could be rid of them? Isn't that what
we generally get from the survival of the fittest?"
Miss Walbrook's thin, clear smile suggested the edge of a keenly
tempered blade. "I've never said that women were men in a higher stage
of development. I've said that in their parallel states of development
women had advanced a stage beyond men. You may say of every generation
born that women begin where men leave off. I suppose that that's
what's meant by the myth of Eve springing from Adam's side. It was to
be noticed even then, in the prehistoric, in the age that formed the
great legends. Adam was asleep, when Eve as a vital force leaped away
from him. If it wasn't for Eve's vitality the human race would still
be in the Stone Age."
Barbara harked back to what for her was the practical. "Some of us are
in the Stone Age as it is. I'm sure Rash Allerton is as nearly an
elemental as one can be, and still belong to clubs and drive in
motorcars."
Miss Walbrook risked her principles of non-interference so far as to
say: "It's part of our feminine lack of development that we're always
inclined to look back on the elemental with pity, and even with
regret. The woman was never born who didn't have in her something of
Lot's wife."
"Thank you, Aunt Marion. In a way that lets me out. If I'm no weaker
than the rest of my sex----"
"Than many of the rest of your sex."
"Very well, then; than many of the rest of my sex; if I'm no weaker
than that I don't have to lose my self-respect."
"You don't have to lose your self-respect; you only risk--your
reason."
Barbara stared at her. "That's the very thing I'm afraid of. I'd give
anything for peace of mind. How did you know?"
"Oh, it doesn't call for much astuteness. I don't suppose there's a
married woman in the world in full command of her wits. You've noticed
how foolish most of them are. That's why. It isn't that they were born
foolish. They've simply been addled by enforced adaptation to mates of
lower intelligence. Oh, I'm not scolding. I'm merely stating a
natural, observed, psychological fact. The woman who marries says
good-bye to the orderly working of her faculties. For that she may get
compensations, with which I don't intend to find fault. But
compensations or no, to a clear-thinking woman like----"
"Like yourself, Aunt Marion."
"Very well; like myself, if you will; but to a clear-thinking woman
it's as obvious as daylight that her married sisters are partially
demented. They may not know it; the partially demented never do. And
it's no good telling them, because they don't believe you. I'm only
saying it to you to warn you in advance. If you part with your reason,
it's something to know that you do it of your own free will."
Once more Barbara confined herself to the case in hand. "Still, I
don't believe every man is as trying as Rash Allerton."
"Not in his particular way, perhaps. But if it's not in one way then
it's in another."
"Even he wouldn't be so bad if he could control himself. At the minute
when he's tearing down the house he wants you to tell him that he's
calm."
"If he didn't want you to tell him that it would be something equally
preposterous. There's little to choose between men."
Barbara grew thoughtful. "Still, if people didn't marry the human race
would die out."
"And would there be any harm in that? It's not a danger, of course;
but if it was, would anyone in his senses want to stop it? Looking
round on the human race to-day one can hardly help saying that the
sooner it dies out the better. Since we can't kill it off, it's well
to remember----"
"To remember what, Aunt Marion?"
Miss Walbrook reflected as to how to express herself cautiously.
"To remember that--in marrying--and having children--children who
will have to face the highly probable miseries of the next
generation--Well, I'm glad there'll be no one to reproach me with his
being in the world, either as his mother or his ancestress."
"They say Rash's father and mother didn't want _him_ in the world, and
I sometimes wish they'd had their way. If he wasn't here--or if he was
dead--I believe I could be happier. I shouldn't be forever worrying
about him. I shouldn't have him on my mind. I often wonder if it's--if
it's love I feel for him--or only an agonizing sense of
responsibility."
The door being open Walter Wildgoose waddled to the threshold, where
he stood with his right hand clasped in his left. "Mr. Steptoe at Mr.
Allerton's to speak to Miss Barbara on the telyphone, please."
Barbara gasped. "Oh, Lord! I wonder what it is now!"
Left to herself Miss Walbrook resumed her scanning of the paper, but
she resumed it with the faintest quiver of a smile on her thin,
cleanly-cut lips. It was the kind of smile which indicates patient
hope, or the anticipation of something satisfactory.
"Oh!"
The exclamation was so loud as to be heard all the way from the
telephone, which was in another part of the house. Miss Walbrook let
the paper fall, sat bolt upright, and listened.
"Oh! Oh!"
It was like a second, and repeated, explosion. Miss Walbrook rose to
her feet; the paper rustled to the floor.
"Oh! Oh!"
The sound was that which human beings make when the thing told them is
more than they can bear. Barbara cried out as if someone was beating
her with clubs, and she was coming to her knees.
She was not coming to her knees. When her aunt reached her she was
still standing by the little table in the hall which held the
telephone, on which she had hung up the receiver. She supported
herself with one hand on the table, as a woman does when all she can
do is not to fall senseless.
"It's--it's Rash," she panted, as she saw her aunt appear. "Somebody
has--has killed him."
Miss Walbrook stood with hands clasped, like one transfixed. "He's
dead?--after all?"
Barbara nodded, tearlessly. She could stammer out the words, but no
more. "Yes--all but!"
* * * * *
In the flat at Red Point there was another and dissimilar breakfast
scene. For the first time in her life Letty was having coffee and
toast in bed. The window was open, and between the muslin curtains,
which puffed in the soft May wind, she could see the ocean with
steamers and ships on it.
The room was tiny, but it was spotless. Everything was white, except
where here and there it was tied up with a baby-blue ribbon. Anything
that could be tied with a baby-blue ribbon was so tied.
Letty thought she had never seen anything so dainty, though her
experienced eye could detect the fact that nothing had really cost
money. As an opening to the career on which she had embarked the
setting was unexpected, while the method of her treatment was
bewildering. In the black recesses of her heart Miss Henrietta Towell
might be hiding all those feline machinations which Mrs. Judson Flack
had led Letty to believe a part of the great world's stock-in-trade;
but it couldn't be denied that she hid them well. Letty didn't know
what to make of it. "There's quite a trick to it," Steptoe had warned
her; but the explanation seemed inadequate to the phenomena.
Sipping her coffee and crunching her toast she was driven to ponder on
the ways of wickedness. She had expected them to be more obvious. All
her information was to the effect that an unprotected girl in a world
of males was a lamb among lions, a victim with no way of escape. That
she was a lamb among lions, and a victim with no way of escape, she
was still prepared to believe; only the preliminaries puzzled her.
Instead of being crude, direct, indelicate, they were subtle and
misleading. After twenty-four hours in Miss Towell's spare room there
was still no hint of anything but coddling.
"You see, my dear," Miss Towell had said, "if I don't nurse you back
to real 'ealth, him that gave you the thimble might be displeased with
me."
It was not often that Miss Towell dropped an _h_ or added one; but in
moments of emotion early habit was too strong for her.
Coming into the room now, on some ermine's errand of neatness, she
threw a glance at Letty, and said: "You don't _look_ like a Rashleigh,
do you, dear? But then you never can tell anything about families from
looks, can you?"
It was her nearest approach as yet to the personal, and Letty
considered as to how she was to meet it. "I'm not a Rashleigh--not
really--only by--by marriage. Rashleigh isn't my real name.
It's--it's the name I'm going by in pictures."
"Oh!"
Miss Towell's exclamation was the subdued one of acquiescence. She
knew that ladies in pictures often preferred names other than their
own, and if Letty was not a Rashleigh it "explained things." That is,
it explained how anyone called Rashleigh could be wandering about in
this friendless way, though it made 'Enery Steptoe's intervention the
more mysterious. It was conceivable that he might act on behalf of a
genuine Rashleigh, however out at elbow; but that he should take such
pains for a spurious one, and go to the length of sending the sacred
silver thimble as a pledge, rendered the situation puzzling.
Schooled by her religious precepts to taking her duties as those of a
minute at a time Miss Towell made no effort to force the girl's
confidence, and especially since Letty, like most young people in
trouble, was on her guard against giving it. So long as she preferred
to be shut up within herself, shut up within herself she should
remain. Miss Towell felt that, for the moment at least, her own
responsibility was limited to making the child feel that someone cared
for her.
At the same time she couldn't have been a lonely woman with a
love-story behind her without the impulse to dwell a little longingly
on the one romantic incident in her experience. Though it had never
come to anything, the fact that it had once opened its shy little
flower made a sweet bright place to which her thoughts could retire.
The references came spasmodically and without context, as the little
white lady busied herself in waiting on Letty or in the care of her
room.
"I haven't seen him since a short time after the mistress went away."
Letty felt herself coloring. Though not prudish there were words she
couldn't get used to. Besides which she had never thought that
Steptoe.... But Miss Towell pursued her memories.
"It always worried him that I should hold views different from his but
I couldn't submit to dictation, now, could I, dear?"
Once more Letty felt herself awkwardly placed. The only interpretation
she could put on Miss Towell's words referring to moral reformation on
her hostess's part she said, as non-committally as might be: "He's a
good deal of a stickler."
"He's been so long in a high position that he becomes--well, I won't
be 'arsh--but he becomes a little harbitrary. That's where it was. He
was a little harbitrary. With a mistress who allowed him a great deal
of his own way--well, you can hardly blame him, can you, dear?"
Letty forced herself to accept the linguistic standard of the world.
"I suppose if she hadn't allowed him a great deal of his own way he'd
have looked somewhere else."
"That he could easily have done. He had temptations enough--a man like
him. Why, dear, there was a lady in Park Avenue did everything she
could that wasn't positively dishonorable to win him away----"
"He must have been younger and better looking than he is now," Letty
hazarded, bluntly.
"Oh, it wasn't a question of looks. Of course if she'd considered
that, why, any foolish young fellow--but she knew what she would have
got."
Not being at her ease in this kind of conversation, and finding the
effort to see Steptoe as Lothario difficult, Letty became blunt again.
"He must have had an awful crush on the first one."
"It wasn't her exactly; it was the boy."
"Oh, there was a boy?"
"Why of course, dear! Didn't you know that?"
"Whose boy was it?"
"Why, the mistress's boy; but I don't think _he_----" Letty understood
the pronoun as applying to Steptoe--"I don't think _he_ ever realized
that he wasn't his very own." Straightening the white cover on the
chest of drawers Miss Towell shook her head. "It was a sad case."
"What made it sad?"
"A lovely boy he was. Had a kind word for everyone, even for the cat.
But somehow his father and mother--well, they were people of the
world, and they hadn't wanted a child, and when he came--and he so
delicate always--I could have cried over him."
Letty's heart began to swell; her lip trembled. "I know someone like
that myself."
"Do you, dear? Then I'm sure you understand."
Partly because the minute was emotional, and partly from a sense that
she needed to explain herself, Letty murmured, more or less
indistinctly: "It's on his account that I'm here."
Failing to see the force of this Miss Towell was content to say: "I'm
glad you were led to me, dear. There's always a power to shepherd us
along, if we'll only let ourselves be guided."
To Letty the moment had arrived when plainness of speech was
imperative. Leaning across the tray, which still stood on her lap, she
gazed up at her hostess with eager, misty eyes. "_He_ said you'd teach
me all the ropes."
Miss Towell paused beside the bed, to look inquiringly at the tense
little face. "The ropes of what, dear?"
"Of what--" it was hard to express--"of what you--you used to be
yourself. You don't seem like it now," she added, desperately, "but
you were, weren't you?"
"Oh, that!" The surprise was in the discovery that an American girl of
Letty's age could entertain so sensible a purpose. "Why, of course,
dear! I'll tell you all I know, and welcome."
"There's quite a trick to it, isn't there?"
"Well, it's more than a trick. There are two or three things which you
simply _have_ to be."
"Oh, I know that. That's what frightens me."
"You needn't be afraid, once you've made up your mind to it." She
leaned above the bed to relieve Letty of the tray. "For instance--you
don't mind my asking questions do you?"
"Oh, no! You can ask me anything."
"Then the first thing is this: Are you pretty good as a
needle-woman?"
Letty was astounded. "Why--why you don't have to _sew_, do you?"
"Certainly, dear. That's one of the most important things you'd be
called on to do. You'd never get anywhere if you weren't quick with
your needle and thread. And then there'd be hair-dressing. You have to
know something about that. I don't say that you must be a
professional; but for the simpler occasions--after that there's
packing. That's something we often overlook, and where French girls
have us at a disadvantage. They pack so beautifully."
Letty was entirely at sea. "Pack what?"
"Pack trunks, dear."
"What for?"
"For travel; for moving from town to country; or from country to town;
or making visits; you see you're always on the go. Oh, it's more than
a trick; it's quite an art; only--" She smiled at Letty as she stood
holding the tray, before carrying it out--"only, I shouldn't have
supposed you'd be thinking of that when you act in moving pictures."
"I--I thought I might do both."
"Now, I should say that that's one thing you couldn't do, dear. If you
took up this at all you'd find it so absorbing----"
"And you're very unhappy too, aren't you? I've always heard you
were."
"Well, that would depend a good deal on yourself. There's nothing in
the thing itself to make you unhappy; but sometimes there are other
women----"
Letty's eyes were flaming. "They say they're awful."
"Oh, not always. It's a good deal as you carry yourself. I made it a
point to keep my position and respect the position of others. It
wasn't always easy, especially with Mary Ann Courage and Janie
Cakebread; but----"
Letty's head fell back on the pillow. Her eyes closed. A
merry-go-round was spinning in her head. Where was she? How had she
come there? What was she there _for?_ Where was the wickedness she had
been told to look for everywhere? Having gone in search of it, and
expected to find it lying in wait from the first minute of passing the
protecting door, she had been shuffled along from one to another, with
exasperating kindness, only to be brought face to face with Jane
Cakebread and Mary Ann Courage at the end.
Miss Towell having borne away the tray, Letty struggled out of bed,
and put on the woollen dressing gown thrown over a chair by the
bedside. This was no place for her. Beehive Valley was not far off,
and her forty-five cents would more than suffice to take her there.
She would see the casting director. She would get a job. With food to
eat and a place to sleep as a starting point she would find her own
way to wickedness, releasing the prince in spite of all the mishaps
which kept her as she was.
But she trembled so that having wrapped the dressing gown about her
she was obliged to sit down again. She would have to be crafty. She
must get this woman to help her with her dressing, without suspecting
what she meant to do. How could she manage that? She must try to
think.
She was trying to think when she heard the ring of the telephone. It
suggested an idea. Some time--not this time, of course--when the
telephone rang and the woman was answering it, she, Letty, would be
able to slip away. The important thing was to do her hair and get her
clothes on.
"Yes?... Yes?" There was a little catch to the breath, a smothered
laugh, a smothered sigh. "Oh, so this is you!... Yes, I got it....
Seeing it again gave me quite a turn.... I never expected that you'd
keep it all this time, but.... Yes, she's here.... No; she didn't come
exactly of her own accord, but I--I found her.... I could tell you
about it easier if you were--it's so hard on the telephone when
there's so much to say--but perhaps you don't care to.... Yes, she's
quite well--only a little tired--been worked up somehow--but a day or
so in bed.... Oh, very sensible ... and she wants me to teach her how
to be a lady's maid...."
So that was it! Steptoe had been treacherous. Letty would never
believe in anyone again. She could make these reflections hurriedly
because the voice at the telephone was silent.
"Oh!"
It was the same exclamation as that of Barbara Walbrook, but in
another tone--a tone of distress, sharp, sympathetic. Pulling the
dressing gown about her, frightened, tense, Letty knew that something
had gone wrong.
"Oh! Oh!... last night, did you say?... early this morning...."
Letty crept to where her hostess was seated at the telephone. "What is
it?"
But Miss Towell either didn't hear the question or was too absorbed to
answer it. "Oh, 'Enery, _try_ to remember that God is his life--that
there can be no death to be afraid of when----"
Letty snatched the receiver from the other woman's hands, and fell on
her knees beside the little table. "Oh, what is it? What is it? It's
me; Letty! Something's happened. I've got to know."
Amazed and awed by the force of this intrusion Miss Towell stood up,
and moved a little back.
Over the wire Steptoe's voice sounded to Letty like the ghost of his
voice, broken, dead.
"I think if I was madam I'd come back."
"But what's happened? Tell me that first."
"It's Mr. Rash."
"Yes, I know it's Mr. Rash. But what is it? Tell me quickly, for God's
sake."
"'E's been 'it."
Her utterance was as nearly as possible a cry. "But he hasn't been
_killed_?"
"Madam'd find 'im alive--if she 'urried."
When Letty rose from her knees she was strong. She was calm, too, and
competent. She further surprised Miss Towell by the way in which she
took command.
"I must hurry. They want me at once. Would you mind helping me to
dress?"