The Dust Flower Part 21

He too rose. He began to feel troubled. Perhaps she wouldn't be at his disposition after all. "But--but I couldn't stand it if you didn't let me----"

"And I couldn't stand it if I did."

"But that's not reasonable. It's part of the whole thing that I should look out for your future after what----"

"I know what you mean," she declared, tremblingly. "You think that because I'm--I'm beneath you that I ain't got--that I haven't got--no sense of what a girl should do and what she shouldn't do. But you're wrong. Do you suppose I didn't know all about how crazy it was when I went with you yesterday? Of course I did. I was as much to blame as you."

"Oh, no, you weren't. Apart from your being what you call beneath me--and I don't admit that you are--I'm a great deal older than you----"

"You're only older in years. In livin' I'm twice your age. Besides I'm all right here----" she touched her forehead again--"and I could see first thing that you was a fellow that needed to be took--to be taken--care of."

"Oh, you did!"

She strengthened her statement with an affirmative nod. "Yes, I did."

"Well, then, I've always paid the people who've taken care of me----"

"Oh, but you didn't ask me to take care of you, and I didn't take no care. You wanted me to be a disgrace to you, and I thought so little of myself that I said I'd go and be it. Now I've got to pay for that, not be paid for it."

Her head was up with what Steptoe considered to be mettle. Though the picture she presented was stamped on his mind as resembling the proud mien of the girl in Whistler's Yellow Buskin, he didn't think of that till later.

"There's one thing I must ask you to remember," he said, in a tone he tried to make firm, "that I couldn't possibly accept from you anything in the way of sacrifice."

Her eyes were wide and earnest. "But I never thought of _makin'_ anything in the way of sacrifice."

"It would be sacrifice for you to help me get out of this sc.r.a.pe, and have nothing at all to the good."

"But I'd have lots to the good." She reflected. "I'd have rememberin'."

"What have you got to remember?"

With her child's lack of self-consciousness she looked him straight in the eyes. "You--for one thing."

"Me!" He had hardly the words for his amazement. "For heaven's sake, what can you have to remember about me that--that could give you any pleasure?"

"Oh, I didn't say it would give me any pleasure. I said I'd _have_ it.

It'd be mine--something no one couldn't take away from me."

"But if it doesn't do you any good----"

"It does me good if it makes me richer, don't it?"

"Richer to--to remember _me_?"

She nodded, with a little twisted smile, beginning to move toward the door. Over her shoulder she said: "And it isn't only you.

There's--there's Steptoe."

Chapter XIII

Making her nod suffice for a good-night, Letty, with the red volume of Hans Andersen under her arm, pa.s.sed out into the hall. It was not easy to carry herself with the necessary nonchalance, but she got strength by saying inwardly: "Here's where I begin to walk on blades." The knowledge that she was doing it, and that she was doing it toward an end, gave her a dignity of carriage which Allerton watched with sharpened observation.

Reaching the little back spare room she found the door open, and Steptoe sweeping up the hearth before a newly lighted fire. Beppo, whose basket had been established here, jumped from his shelter to paw up at her caressingly. With the hearth-brush in his hand Steptoe raised himself to say:

"Madam'll excuse me, but I thought as the evenin' was chilly----"

"He doesn't want me to stay."

She brought out the fact abruptly, lifelessly, because she couldn't keep it back. The calm she had been able to maintain downstairs was breaking up, with a quivering of the lip and two rolling tears.

Slowly and absently Steptoe dusted his left hand with the hearth-brush held in his right. "If madam's goin' to decide 'er life by what another person wants she ain't never goin' to get nowhere."

There were tears now in the voice. "Yes, but when it's--_him_."

"'Im or anybody else, we all 'ave to fight for what we means to myke of our own life. It's a poor gyme in which I don't plye my 'and for all I think it'll win."

"Do you mean that I should--act independent?"

"'Aven't madam an independent life?"

"Havin' an independent life don't make it easier to stay where you're not wanted."

"Oh, if madam's lookin' first for what's easy----"

"I'm not. I'm lookin' first for what he'll _like_."

Hanging the hearth-brush in its place he took the tongs to adjust a smoking log. "I've been lookin' for what 'e'd like ever since 'e was born; and now I see that gettin' so much of what 'e liked 'asn't been good for 'im. If madam'd strike out on 'er own line, whether 'e liked it or not, and keep at it till 'e 'ad to like it----"

"Oh, but when it's--" she sought for the right word--"when it's so humiliatin'----"

"Humiliatin' things is not so 'ard to bear, once you've myde up your mind as they're to be borne." He put up the tongs, to busy himself with the poker. "Madam'll find that humiliation is a good deal like that there quinine; bitter to the tyste, but strengthenin'. I've swallered lots of it; and look at me to-dye."

"I know as well as he does that it's all been a crazy mistake----"

"I was readin' the other day--I'm fond of a good book, I am--occupies the mind like--but I was readin' about a circus man in South Africa, what 'e myde a mistyke and took the wrong tryle--and just when 'e was a-givin' 'imself up for lost among the tigers and the colored savages 'e found 'e'd tumbled on a mine of diamonds. Big 'ouse in Park Lyne in London now, and 'is daughter married to a Lord."

"Oh, I've tumbled into the mine of diamonds all right. The question is----"

"If madam really tumbled, or was led by the 'and of Providence."

She laughed, ruefully. "If that was it the hand of Providence 'd have to have some pretty funny ways."

"I've often 'eard as the wyes of Providence was strynge; but I ain't so often 'eard as Providence 'ad got to myke 'em strynge to keep pyce with the wyes of men. Now if the 'and of Providence 'ad picked out madam for Mr. Rash, it'd 'ave to do somethink out of the common, as you might sye, to bring together them as man had put so far apart." He looked round the room with the eye of a head-waiter inspecting a table in a restaurant. "Madam 'as everythink? Well, if there's anythink else she's only got to ring."

Bowing himself out he went down the stairs to attend to those duties of the evening which followed the return of the master of the house.