THE girl came to a standstill abruptly and faced about, drawing away
just a hair's-breadth from the detaining hand, and surveying her
steadily, the boyish expression in her eyes changing to an amused
calculation such as one would fancy a cowboy held up on his native
plains by a stray lamb might have worn.
"What's the little old idea!" asked the girl coldly, her eyes narrowing
as she studied the other girl in detail and attempted to classify her
into the known and unknown quantities of her world. Her face was
absolutely expressionless as far as any sign of interest or sympathy was
concerned. It was like a house with the door still closed and a
well-trained butler in attendance.
"I've got to get away from here at once before anybody sees me,"
whispered Betty excitedly, with a fearful glance behind her.
"Do you want me to call a cab for you?" sneered the girl on the
sidewalk, with an envious glance at the white satin slippers.
"Oh, no! Never!" cried Betty, wringing her hands in desperation. "I want
you to show me somewhere to go out of sight, and if you will I'd like
you to walk a block or so with me so I won't be so--so conspicuous! I'm
so frightened I don't know which way to go."
"What do you want to go at all for?" asked the girl bluntly, with the
look of an inquisitor, and the intolerance of the young for its
contemporary of another social class.
"Because I _must_!" said Betty with terror in her voice. "They're
coming! Listen! Oh, help me quick! I can't wait to explain!"
Betty dashed out of the gate and would have started up the street but
that a strong young arm came out like a flash and a firm young fist
gripped her arm like a vise. The girl's keen ears had caught a sound of
turning key and excited voices, and her quick eyes pierced the darkness
of the narrow court and measured the distance back.
"Here! You can't go togged out like that!" she ordered in quite a
different tone. She flung off her own long coat and threw it around the
shrinking little white figure, then knelt and deftly turned up the long
satin draperies out of sight and fixed them firmly with a pin extracted
from somewhere about her person. Quickly she stood up and pulled off her
rubbers, her eye on the long dark passageway whence came now the
decided sound of a forcibly opened door and footsteps.
"Put these on, quick!" she whispered, lifting first one slippered foot
and then the other and supporting the trembling Betty in her strong
young arms, while she snapped on the rubbers.
Lastly, she jerked the rakish hat from her own head, crammed it down
hard over the orange-wreathed brow and gave her strange protégée a hasty
shove.
"Now beat it around that corner and wait till I come!" she whispered,
and turning planted herself in an idle attitude just under the church
window, craning her neck and apparently listening to the music. A second
later an excited usher, preceded by the janitor, came clattering down
the passageway.
"Have you seen any one go out of this gate recently?" asked the usher.
The girl, hatless and coatless in the chill November night, turned
nonchalantly at the question, surveyed the usher coolly from the point
of his patent leather shoes to the white gardenia in his buttonhole,
gave his features a cursory glance, and then shook her head.
"There might have been an old woman come out a while back. Dressed in
black, was she? I wasn't paying much attention. I think she went down
the avenoo," she said, and stretched her neck again, standing on her
tiptoes to view the wedding guests. Her interest suddenly became real,
for she spied a young man standing in the church, in full view of the
window, back against the wall with his arms folded, a fine handsome
young man with pleasant eyes and a head like that of a young nobleman,
and she wanted to make sure of his identity. He looked very much like
the young lawyer whose office boy was her "gentleman friend." Just to
make sure she gave a little spring from the sidewalk that brought her
eyes almost on a level with the window and gave her a brief glimpse,
enough to see his face quite clearly; then she turned with satisfaction
to see that the janitor and the usher had gone back up the passageway,
having slammed the gate shut. Without more ado the girl wheeled and
hurried down the street toward the corner where Betty crouched behind a
tree trunk, watching fearfully for her coming.
"Aw! You don't need to be that scared!" said the girl, coming up.
"They've gone back. I threw 'em off the scent. Come on! We'll go to my
room and see what to do. Don't talk! Somebody might recognize your
voice. Here, we'll cut through this alley and get to the next block.
It's further away and not so many folks passing."
Silently they hurried through the dark alley and down the next street,
Betty holding the long cloak close that no gleam of her white satin
might shine out and give away her secret, her heart beating like a trip
hammer in her breast, her eyes filled with unshed tears, the last words
of her stepmother ringing in her ears. Was she making her father
ashamed? Her dear dead father! Was she doing the wrong thing? So long
that thought had held her! But she could not go back now. She had taken
an irrevocable step.
Her guide turned another corner abruptly and led her up some stone steps
to the door of a tall, dingy brick house, to which she applied a
latchkey.
The air of the gloomy hall was not pleasant. The red wall-paper was
soiled and torn, and weird shadows flickered from the small gas taper
that blinked from the ceiling. There were suggestions of old dinners,
stale fried potatoes and pork in all the corners, and one moving toward
the stairs seemed to stir them up and set them going again like old
memories.
The stairs were bare and worn by many feet, and not particularly clean.
Betty paused in dismay then hurried on after her hostess, who was
mounting up, one, two, three flights, to a tiny hall bedroom at the
back. A fleeting fear that perhaps the place was not respectable shot
through her heart, but her other troubles were so great that it found no
lodgment. Panting and trembling she arrived at the top and stood looking
about her in the dark, while the other girl found a match and lighted
another wicked little flickering gas-burner.
Then her hostess drew her into the room and closed and locked the door.
As a further precaution she climbed upon a chair and pushed the transom
shut.
"Now," she said with a sigh of evident relief, "we're safe! No one can
hear you here, and you can say what you please. But first we'll get this
coat and hat off and see what's the damage."
As gently as if she were undressing a baby the girl removed the hat and
coat from her guest, and shook out the wonderful shining folds of satin.
It would have been a study for an artist to have watched her face as she
worked, smoothing out wrinkles, shaking the lace down and uncrushing it,
straightening a bruised orange-blossom, and putting everything in place.
It was as if she herself were an artist restoring a great masterpiece,
so silently and absorbedly she worked, her eyes full of a glad wonder
that it had come to her once to be near and handle anything so rare and
costly. The very touch of the lace and satin evidently thrilled her; the
breath of the exotic blossoms was nectar as she drew it in.
Betty was still panting from her climb, still trembling from her flight,
and she stood obedient and meek while the other girl pulled and shook
and brushed and patted her into shape again. When all was orderly and
adjusted about the crumpled bride, the girl stood back as far as the
limits of the tiny room allowed and surveyed the finished picture.
"There now! You certainly do look great! That there band of flowers
round your forehead makes you look like some queen. 'Coronet'--ain't
that what they call it? I read that once in a story at the Public
Library. Say! Just to think I should pick that up in the street! Good
night! I'm glad I came along just then instead o' somebody else! This
certainly is some picnic! Well, now, give us your dope. It must've been
pretty stiff to make you cut and run from a show like the one they got
up for you! Come, tune up and let's hear the tale. I rather guess I'm
entitled to know before the curtain goes up again on this little old
stage!"
The two tears that had been struggling with Betty for a long time
suddenly appeared in her eyes and drowned them out, and in dismay she
brought out a faint little sorry giggle of apology and amusement and
dropped on the tiny bed, which filled up a good two-thirds of the room.
"Good night!" exclaimed the hostess in alarm, springing to catch her.
"Don't drop down that way in those glad rags! You'll finish 'em! Come,
stand up and we'll get 'em off. You look all in. I'd oughta known you
would be!" She lifted Betty tenderly and began to remove her veil and
unfasten the wonderful gown. It seemed to her much like helping an angel
remove her wings for a nap. Her eyes shone with genuine pleasure as she
handled the hooks deftly.
"But I've nothing else to put on!" gurgled Betty helplessly.
"I have!" said the other girl.
"Oh!" said Betty with a sudden thought. "I wonder! Would you be willing
to exchange clothes? Have you perhaps got some things you don't need
that I could have, and I'll give you mine for them? I don't suppose
perhaps a wedding dress would be very useful unless you're thinking of
getting married soon, but you could make it over and use it for the
foundation of an evening dress----"
The other girl was carefully folding the white satin skirt at the
moment, but she stopped with it in her arms and sat down weakly on the
foot of the bed with it all spread out in her lap and looked at her
guest in wonder:
"You don't mean you _wantta give it up_!" she said in an awed tone. "You
don't mean you would be willing to take some of my old togs for it?"
"I certainly would!" cried Betty eagerly. "I never want to see these
things again! _I hate_ them! And besides, I want to get away somewhere.
I can't go in white satin! You know that! But I don't like to take
anything of yours that you might need. Do you think these things would
be worth anything to you? You weren't thinking of getting married
yourself some time soon, were you?"
"Well, I might," said the other girl, looking self-conscious. "I got a
gentleman friend. But I wasn't expectin' to get in on any trooso like
this!" She let her finger move softly over the satin hem as if she had
been offered a plume of the angel's wing. "Sure, I'll take it off you if
I've got anything you're satisfied to have in exchange. I wouldn't mind
havin' it to keep jest to look at now and then and know it's mine. It'd
be somethin' to live for, jest to know you had that dress in the
house!"
Suddenly Betty, without any warning even to herself, dropped upon her
knees beside the diminutive bed and began to weep. It seemed somehow so
touching that a thing like a mere dress could make a girl glad like
that. All the troubles of the days that were past went over her in a
great wave of agony, and overwhelmed her soul. In soft silk and lace
petticoat and camisole with her pretty white arms and shoulders shaking
with great sobs she buried her face in the old patchwork quilt that her
hostess had brought from her village home, and gave way to a grief that
had been long in growing. The other girl now thoroughly alarmed, laid
the satin on a chair and went over to the little stranger, gathering her
up in a strong embrace, and gradually lifting her to the bed.
"You poor little Kid, you! I oughtta known better! You're just all in!
You ben gettin' ready to be married, and something big's been troubling
you, and I bet they never gave you any lunch--er else you wouldn't eat
it,--and you're jest natcheraly all in. Now you lie right here an' I'll
make you some supper. My name's Jane Carson, and I've got a good mother
out to Ohio, and a nice home if I'd had sense enough to stay in it; only
I got a chance to make big money in a fact'ry. But I know what 'tis to
be lonesome, an' I ain't hard-hearted, if I do know how to take care of
misself. There! There!"
She smoothed back the lovely hair that curled in golden tendrils where
the tears had wet it.
"Say, now, you needn't be afraid! Nobody'll getcha here! I know how to
bluff 'em. Even if a policeman should come after yeh, I'd get around him
somehow, and I don't care what you've done or ain't done, I'll stand by
yeh. I'm not one to turn against anybody in distress. My mother always
taught me that. After you've et a bite and had a cup of my nice tea with
cream and sugar in it you'll feel better, and we'll have a real
chin-fest and hear all about it. Now, you just shut your eyes and wait
till I make that tea."
Jane Carson thumped up the pillow scientifically to make as many of the
feathers as possible and shifted the little flower-head upon it. Then
she hurried to her small washstand and took a little iron contrivance
from the drawer, fastening it on the sickly gas-jet. She filled a tiny
kettle with water from a faucet in the hall and set it to boil. From
behind a curtain in a little box nailed to the wall she drew a loaf of
bread, a paper of tea and a sugar-bowl. A cup and saucer and other
dishes appeared from a pasteboard box under the washstand. A small
shelf outside the tiny window yielded a plate of butter, a pint bottle
of milk, and two eggs. She drew a chair up to the bed, put a clean
handkerchief on it, and spread forth her table. In a few minutes the
fragrance of tea and toast pervaded the room, and water was bubbling
happily for the eggs. As cosily as if she had a chum to dine with her
she sat down on the edge of the bed and invited her guest to supper. As
she poured the tea she wondered what her co-laborers at the factory
would think if they knew she had a real society lady visiting her. It
wasn't every working girl that had a white satin bride thrust upon her
suddenly this way. It was like a fairy story, having a strange bride
lying on her bed, and everything a perfect mystery about her. She eyed
the white silk ankles and dainty slippers with satisfaction. Think of
wearing underclothes made of silk and real lace!
It seemed to Betty as if never before in all her life had she tasted
anything so delicious as that tea and toast and soft boiled egg cooked
by this wonderful girl on a gaslight and served on a chair. She wanted
to cry again over her gladness at being here. It didn't seem real after
all the trouble she had been through. It couldn't last! Oh, of course it
couldn't last!
This thought came as she swallowed the last bite of toast, and she sat
up suddenly!
"I ought to be doing something quick!" she said in sudden panic. "It is
getting late and I must get away. They'll be watching the trains,
perhaps. I ought to have gone at once. But I don't know where I can go.
Give me some old things, please. I must get dressed at once."
"Lie down first and tell me who you are and what it's all about. I can't
do a thing for you till I know. I've got to go into this with my eyes
open or I won't stir one step," she declared stubbornly.
Betty looked at her with wide eyes of trouble and doubt. Then the doubt
suddenly cleared away, and trust broke through.
"I can trust you, I'm sure! You've been so good to me! But it seems
dreadful to tell things about my family, even to one who has been so
kind. My father would be so hurt----"
"Your father? Where is your father? Why didn't he take care of you and
keep you from getting into such big trouble, I'd like to know?"
The blue eyes clouded with tears again.
"My father died five years ago," she said, "but I've always tried to do
as he would want to have me do. Only--this--I _couldn't_."
"H'm!" said Jane Carson. "Then he prob'ly wouldn't of wanted you to.
Suppose you take the rest of those togs off. I'll find you a warm
nightgown and we'll get to bed. It's turning cold here. They take the
heat off somewhere about six o'clock in the evening, and it gets like
ice up here sometimes."
Jane shivered and went to her small trunk, from which she produced a
coarse but clean flanellete nightgown, and Betty, who had never worn
anything but a dainty lingerie one before in all her life, crept into it
thankfully and cuddled down with a warm feeling that she had found a
real friend. It was curious why she did not shrink from this poor girl,
but she did not, and everything looked clean and nice. Besides, this was
a wonderful haven of refuge in her dire necessity.