V. V.'s Eyes Part 71

"I'm very sorry you've been ill," she said, in her pretty modulated voice. "As you probably feel that you got your illness in the Works, I should like you to take this. Please consider it as coming from my father--and buy yourself something--"

All the blood in the little creature's body seemed to rush headlong to her face. She shrank away as from something more painful than a blow.

But all that she said was:

"_Oh!... Ma'am!_"

It was Miss Heth's turn to show a red flag in her cheek.

"You don't want it?"

"I--why ma'am,--I _couldn't_ ..."

"As you like, of course."

She dropped the spurned gift back into her bag, with studied leisureliness, and rose at once, though she had made no purchase.

Standing, she made a slight inclination of her prettily-set head. And then Miss Heth was walking away through the crowded aisle with a somewhat proud bearing and a very silken swish.

And Kern Garland swung round on her seat at Gentlemen's Furnis.h.i.+ngs, staring wide-eyed after her, her finger at her lip ...

No fairy coming-true here, indeed, of that gorgeous fever-dream in which Miss Heth with lovely courtesy informed Miss Garland that she had been a lady all the time. But consider the Dream-Maker's difficulties with such far-flown fancies as this: difficulties the more perplexing in a world where men's opinions differ, and some do say that she in the finest skirt is not always the finest lady ...

Yet times change, and we with them. It is a beautiful thing to believe in fairies. In the valley, men have met angels. Kern sat staring at Miss Heth's retreating back: and lo, a miracle. When the lovely lady had gone perhaps ten steps down the aisle, her pace seemed to slacken all at once, and she suddenly glanced back over her shoulder. And then--oh, wonder of wonders!--Miss Heth stopped, turned around, and came swis.h.i.+ng straight back to the seat beside Kern Garland.

"That was silly of me," said the pretty voice. "You were quite right not to take it if you didn't want it ..."

Kern desired to cry. But that would be very ridiculous, in a store, and doubtless annoying to Others. So the little girl began to wink hard, while staring fixedly at a given point. You could often pa.s.s it off that way, and n.o.body a whit the wiser.

"I've happened to have the Works on my mind a little of late," added Carlisle, almost as if in apology. "But I--I'm really glad to see you again."

She perceived the signs of agitation in the little work-girl, and attributing it all to the twenty-dollar bill, saw that she must pave the way to a conversation. And conversation, now that the ice was broken, she eagerly desired, fascinated by the thought that this girl knew at first-hand everything about the Works.

"Let me see--your name is Corinne, isn't it?"

Kern's eyes, wider than ever, shot back to the lady's face. A new wonder here!--Miss Heth said it just like in the Dream: _Co-rinne_.

"Yes, ma'am," said Co-rinne, with a little gulp and a sniff.

"And what are you doing at the Men's Furnis.h.i.+ng counter, Corinne?" said Carlisle, pleasantly but quite at random. "Buying a present for Mr.

V.V., I suppose?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Having taken Carlisle completely aback, she hesitated and then added timidly:

"Only a fulldress-s.h.i.+rt protector--for his birthday, y' know?... All his sick give him little presents now'n then, ma'am, find out his sizes and all. You know how he is, spending all his money on them, and never thinking about himself, and giving away the clo'es off his back."

"Yes, I know.... Find out his sizes?"

"Yes, ma'am. Like, say, 'Why, Mr.--why, Dr. Vivian, what small feet you got, sir, for a gempman!' And he'll say, like, 'I don't call six and a half C so small!' Yes, ma'am--just as innocent."

A block and a half away, Hugo Canning's car whirled to a standstill, and Hugo sat gazing at the select door of Morland's. In Baird & Himmel's vast commonwealth, Kern Garland sat beside Miss Carlisle Heth at Gentlemen's Furnis.h.i.+ngs, and could not look at the lady's lovely clothes since her eyes could not bear to leave the yet lovelier face. Kern had not confided the secret of the protector without a turning of her heart, but now at least the thrill in her rose above that.... She and Mr.

V.V.'s beautiful lady, side by side.... It was nearly as good as the velvet settee in the Dream--only for the founting, and the boy with the pink lamp on his head, and Mr. V.V....

An extremely full-busted Saleslady, with snapping black eyes, deposited a lean bundle and a ten-cent piece before the work-girl, oddly murmured something that sounded like 'Look who's ear,' and then said proudly to Carlisle:

"What did you wish 'm?"

"Nothing just now, thank you."

The Saleslady gave her a glance of intense disapproval, pushed down her generous waist-line, arrogantly patted a coal-black transformation, and wheeled with open indignation.

"That's nice," said Carlisle, to the factory-girl. "Then the presents come as a surprise to him."

"Surprise--no, ma'am. He don't never know. Take the tags off 'n 'em, and slip 'em in his drawer, and he'll put 'em on and never notice nor suspicion, s.h.i.+rts and such. It's like he thought raiment was brought him by the crows,--like in the Bible, ma'am, y' know?"

There was a brief silence. Carlisle's sheltered life had not too often touched the simple annals of the poor. She seemed to get a picture....

The little work-girl's face was not coa.r.s.e, strangely enough, or even common-looking; it was pleasing in an odd, elfin way. Her white dress and black jacket were in good taste for her station, without vulgarity.

Such details Carlisle's feminine eye soon gathered in. The touch she missed was that that cheap dress was an exact copy of one she herself had worn one Sunday afternoon in May, as near as Kern Garland could remember it.

"How long were you at the Works?" said the lady suddenly.

"At the Works? More'n three years, ma'am."

There was another silence amid the bustle of the people's emporium.

"Tell me," said Carlisle, with some effort, "do you--did you--looking at it from a worker's point of view--find it such a very bad place to work?"

"Oh, _no_, ma'am!" said Kern. "Bad--oh, no! It's--it's fine!"

Carlisle's gaze became wider than the little girl's own. "But--Mr. V.V.

says it's a terrible place...."

"It's only the beautiful way he talks," said Kern, eagerly. "I mean, he's so, so sorry for the poor.... But lor, ma'am, we know how rich is rich, and poor poor, and so it must always be this side o' the pearly gates--"

She stopped short; and then added shyly, with a kind of anxiousness in her wide dark gaze: "An expression, ma'am--for Heaven. I--I just learned it."

The lady's look was absent. "Oh!... Where did you learn that?"

"Off Sadie Whirtle, ma'am--a friend of mine." The girl hesitated, and then said: "That's her now."

And she pointed a small finger at the enormous snapping Saleslady, who stood glowering and patting her transformation at another customer ten feet away.

But Carlisle did not follow the finger, and so missed the sight of Miss Whirtle. Her rising relief had been penetrated by a doubt, not a new one ... Would her friend Vivian have committed himself to the articles for only a foolish sentimentalism which the poor themselves repudiated?...

"But tell me frankly, Corinne, for I want to know," said she--"I know working must be hard in any case--but do the girls at the Works consider it a--a reasonably nice place?"

Kern knew nothing of the articles, of any situation: and at that _Co-rinne_, her heart ran to water within her. She would have said anything for that.