The Dust Flower Part 19

"Before long a young girl came by; she gave a start of terror and ran back to call for a.s.sistance. Several people came to her aid, and after a while the little mermaid saw the prince recover his consciousness, and smile upon the group around him. But he had no smile for her; he did not even know that she had saved him. Her heart sank, and when she had seen him carried into the large building, she dived sorrowfully down to her father's palace."

Lifting her eyes to meditate on this situation Letty saw Allerton standing between the portieres. Her dream of being little mermaid to his prince went out like a p.r.i.c.ked bubble. Though he neither smiled nor sneered she knew he was amused at her, with a bitterness in his amus.e.m.e.nt. In an instant she saw her transformation as it must appear to him. She had spent his money recklessly, and made herself look ridiculous. All the many kinds of shame she had ever known focused on her now, making her a glowing brand of humiliations. She stood helpless. Hans Andersen dropped to the floor with a soft thud.

Nevertheless, it was she who spoke first.

"I suppose you--you think it funny to see me rigged up like this?"

He took time to pick up the book she had dropped and hand it back to her. "Won't you sit down again?"

While she seated herself and he followed her example she continued to stammer on. "I--I thought I ought to--to look proper for the house as long as I was in it."

Her phrasing gave him an opening. "You're quite right. I should like you to get whatever would help you in--in your profession before you--before you leave us."

Quick to seize the implications here she took them with the submission of those whose lots have always depended on other people's wills.

"I'll go whenever you want me to."

Relieved as he was by this willingness he was anxious not to seem brutal. "I'd--I'd rather you consulted your own wishes about that."

She put on a show of nonchalance. "Oh, I don't care. It'll be just--just as you say _when_."

He would have liked to say when at that instant, but a pretense at courtesy had to be maintained. "There's no hurry--for a day or two."

"You said a week or two yesterday."

"Oh, did I? Well, then, we'll say a week or two now."

"Oh, not for me," she hastened to a.s.sure him. "I'd just as soon go to-night."

"Have you hated it as much as that?"

"I've hated some of it."

"Ah, well! You needn't be bothered with it long."

Her candor was of the kind which asks questions frankly. "Haven't you got any more use for me?"

"I'm afraid--" it was not easy to put it into the right words--"I'm afraid I was mistaken yesterday. I put you in--in a false position with no necessity for doing so."

It took her a few seconds to get the force of this. "Do you mean that you didn't need me to be--to be a shame and a disgrace to you _at all_?"

"Did I put it in that way?"

"Well, didn't you?"

The fact that she was now dressed as she was made it more embarra.s.sing to him to be crude than it had been when addressing the homeless and shabby little "drab."

"I don't know what I said then. I was--I was upset."

"And you're upset very easy, ain't you?" She corrected herself quickly: "aren't you?"

"I suppose that's true. What of it?"

"Oh, nothing. I--I just happen to know a way you can get over that--if you want to."

He smiled. "I'm afraid my nervousness is too deeply seated--I may as well admit that I'm nervous--you saw it for yourself----"

"Oh, I saw you was--you were--sick up here--" she touched her forehead--"as soon as you begun to talk to me."

Grateful for this comprehension he tried to use it to his advantage.

"So that you understand how I could go off the hooks----"

"Sure! My mother'd go off 'em the least little thing, till--till she done--till she did--the way I told her."

"Then some of these days I may ask you to--but just now perhaps we'd better talk about----"

"When I'm to get out."

Her bluntness of expression hurt him. "That's not the way I should have put it----"

"But it's the way you'd 'a' meant, isn't it?"

He was the more disconcerted because she said this gently, with the same longing in her face and eyes as in that of the little mermaid bending over the unconscious prince.

The unconscious prince of the moment merely said: "You mustn't think me more brutal than I am----"

"Oh, I don't think you're brutal. You're just a little dippy, ain't--aren't--you? But that's because you let yourself go. If when you feel it comin' on you'd just--but perhaps you'd rather _be_ dippy.

Would you?"

If he could have called these wide goldstone eyes with their tiny flames maternal it is the word he would have chosen. In spite of the difficulty of the minute he was conscious of a flicker of amus.e.m.e.nt.

"I don't know that I would, but----"

"After I'm gone shall we--shall we _stay_ married?"

This being the real question he was glad she faced it with the directness which gave her a kind of charm. He admitted that. She had the charm of everything which is genuine of its kind. She made no pretense. Her expression, her voice, her lack of sophistication, all had the limpidity of water. He felt himself thanking G.o.d for it. "He alone knows what kind of hands I might have fallen into yesterday, crazy fool that I am." Of this child, crude as she was, he could make his own disposition.

So in answer to her question he told her he had seen his lawyer in the afternoon--he was a lawyer himself but he didn't practice--and the great man had explained to him that of all the processes known to American jurisprudence the retracing of such steps as they had taken on the previous day was one of the simplest. What the law had joined the law could put asunder, and was well disposed toward doing so.

There being several courses which they could adopt, he put them before her one by one. She listened with the sort of attention which shows the mind of the listener to be fixed on the speaker, rather than on anything he says. Not being obliged to ask questions or to make answers she could again see him as the handsome, dark-eyed prince whom she would have loved to save from drowning or any other fate.

Of all he said she could attach a meaning to but one word: "desertion." Even in the technical marital sense she knew vaguely its significance. She thought of it with a tightening about the heart. Any desertion of him of which she would be capable would be like that of the little mermaid when she dived sorrowfully down to her father's palace, leaving him with those to whom he belonged. It was this thought which prompted a question flung in among his observations, though the link in the train of thought was barely traceable:

"Is she takin' you back--the girl you told me about yesterday?"

He looked puzzled. "Did I tell you about a girl yesterday?"

"Why, sure! You said she kicked you out----"

"Well, she hadn't. I--I didn't know I'd gone so far as to say----"