The Dust Flower Part 22

In the library and dining-room he saw to the window fastenings, and put out the one light left burning in each room. In the hall he locked the door with the complicated locks which had helped to guarantee the late Mrs. Allerton against burglars. There was not only a bolt, a chain, and an ordinary lock, but there was an ingenious double lock which turned the wrong way when you thought you were turning it the right, and could otherwise baffle the unskilful. Occupied with this task he could peep over his shoulder, through the unlighted front drawing-room, and see his adored one standing on the hearthrug, his hands clasped behind him, and his head bent, in an att.i.tude of meditation.

Steptoe, having much to say to him, felt the nervousness of a prime minister going into the presence of a sovereign who might or might not approve his acts. It was at once the weakness and the strength of his position that his rule was based on an unwritten const.i.tution. Being unwritten it allowed of a borderland where powers were undefined.

Powers being undefined his scope was the more easily enlarged, though now and then he found that the sovereign rebelled against the mayor of the palace and had to be allowed his way.

But the sovereign was nursing no seeds of the kind of discontent which Steptoe was afraid of. As a matter of fact he was thinking of the way in which Letty had left the room. The perspective, the tea-gown, the effectively dressed hair, enabled him to perceive the combination of results which Madame Simone had called _de l'elegance naturelle_. She had that; he could see it as he hadn't seen it hitherto. It must have given what value there was to her poor little roles in motion pictures. Now that his eye had caught it, it surprised, and to some degree disturbed, him. It was more than the show-girl's inane prettiness, or the comely wax-work face of the girl on the cover of a magazine. With due allowance for her Anglo-Saxonism and honesty, she was the type of woman to whom "things happen." Things would happen to her, Allerton surmised, beyond anything she could experience in his c.u.mbrous and antiquated house. This queer episode would drop behind her as an episode and no more, and in the mult.i.tude of future incidents she would almost forget that she had known him. He hoped to G.o.d that it would be so, and yet....

He was noting too that she hadn't taxed him, in the way of calling on his small supply of nervous energy. Rather she had spared it, and he felt himself rested. After a talk with Barbara he was always spent.

Her emotional furies demanded so much of him that they used him up.

This girl, on the contrary, was soothing. He didn't know how she was soothing; but she was. He couldn't remember when he had talked to a woman with so little thought of what he was to say and how he was to say it, and heaven only knew that the things to be said between them were nerve-racking enough. But they had come out of their own accord, those nerve-racking things, probably, he reasoned, because she was a girl of inferior cla.s.s with whom he didn't have to be particular.

She was quick, too, to catch the difference between his speech and her own. She was quick--and pathetic. Her self-correction amused him, with a strain of pity in his amus.e.m.e.nt. If a girl like that had only had a chance.... And just then Steptoe broke in on his musing by entering the room.

The first subject to be aired was that of the changes in the household staff, and Steptoe raised it diplomatically. Mrs. Courage and Jane had taken offense at the young lydy's presence, and packed themselves off in dishonorable haste. Had it not been that two men friends of his own were ready to come at an hour's notice the house would have been servantless till he had procured strangers. No condemnation could be too severe for Mrs. Courage and Jane, for not content with leaving the house in dudgeon they had insulted the young lydy before they went.

"Sooner or lyter they would 'a' went any'ow. For this long time back they've been too big for their boots, as you might sye. If Mr. Rash 'ad married the other young lydy she wouldn't 'a' stood 'em a week. It don't do to keep servants too long, not when they've got no more than a menial mind, which Jynie and Mrs. Courage 'aven't. The minute they 'eard that this young lydy was in the 'ouse.... And beautiful the wye she took it, Mr. Rash. I never see nothink finer on the styge nor in the movin' pictures. Like a young queen she was, a-tellin' 'em that she 'adn't come to this 'ouse to turn out of it them as 'ad 'ad it as their 'ome, like, and that she'd put it up to them. If they went she'd stye; but if they styed she'd go----"

"She's going anyhow."

Steptoe moved away to feel the fastenings of the back windows.

"That'll be a relief to us, sir, won't it?" he said, without turning his head.

"It'll make things easier--certainly."

"I was just 'opin' that it mightn't be--well, not too soon."

"What do you mean by too soon?"

"Well, sir, I've been thinkin' it over through the dye, just as you told me to do this mornin,' and I figger out--" on a table near him he began to arrange the disordered books and magazines--"I figger out that if she was to go it'd better be in a wye agreeable to all concerned. It wouldn't do, I syes to myself, for Mr. Rash to bring a young woman into this 'ouse and 'ave 'er go awye feelin' anythink but glad she'd come."

"That'll be some job."

"It'll be some job, sir; but it'll be worth it. It ain't only on the young lydy's account; it'll be on Mr. Rash's."

"On Mr. Rash's--how?"

The magazines lapping over each other in two long lines, he straightened them with little pats. "What I suppose you mean to do, sir, is to get out o' this matrimony and enter into the other as you thought as you wasn't goin' to enter into."

"Well?"

"And when you'd entered into the other you wouldn't want it on your mind--on your conscience, as you might sye--that there was a young lydy in the world as you'd done a kind o' wrong to."

Allerton took three strides across the corner of the room, and three strides back to the fireplace again. "How am I going to escape that?

She says she won't let me give her any money."

"Oh, money!" Steptoe brushed money aside as if it had no value. "She wouldn't of course. Not 'er sort."

"But what _is_ 'er sort. She seemed one thing yesterday, and to-day she's another."

"That's somethink like what I mean. That young lydy 'as growed more in twenty-four hours than lots'd grow in twenty-four years." He considered how best to express himself further. "Did Mr. Rash ever notice that it isn't bein' born of a certain kind o' family as'll myke a man a gentleman? Of course 'e did. But did 'e ever notice that a man'll often _not_ be born of a certain kind o' family, and yet be a gentleman all the syme?"

"I know what you're driving at; but it depends on what you mean by a gentleman."

"And I couldn't 'ardly sye--not no more than I could tell you what the smell of a flower was, not even while you was a-smellin' of it. You know a gentleman's a gentleman, and you may think it's this or that what mykes 'im so, but there ain't no wye to put it into words. Now you, Mr. Rash, anybody'd know you was a gentleman what merely looked at you through a telescope; but you couldn't explyne it, not if you was took all to pieces like the works of a clock. It ain't nothink you do and nothink you sye, because if we was to go by that----"

"Good Lord, stop! We're not talking about me."

"No, Mr. Rash. We're talkin' about the queer thing it is what mykes a gentleman, and I sye that I can't sye. But I _know_. Now, tyke Eugene. 'E's just a chauffeur. But no one couldn't be ten minutes with Eugene and not know 'e's a gentleman through and through.

Obligin'--good-mannered--modest--polite to the very cat 'e is--and always with that nice smile--wouldn't _you_ sye as Eugene was a gentleman, if anybody was to arsk you, Mr. Rash?"

"If they asked me from that point of view--yes--probably. But what has that to do with it?"

"It 'as this to do with it that when you arsk me what sort that young lydy is I 'ave to reply as she's not the sort to accept money from strynge gentlemen, because it ain't what she's after."

"Then what on earth _is_ she after? Whatever it is she can have it, if I can only find out what it is."

Steptoe answered this in his own way. "It's very 'ard for the poor to see so much that's good and beautiful in the world, and know that they can't 'ave none of it. I felt that myself before I worked up to where I am now. 'Ere in New York a poor boy or a poor girl can't go out into the street without seein' the things they're cryvin' for in their insides flaunted at 'em like--shook in their fyces--while the law and the police and the church and everythink what mykes our life says to 'em, 'There's none o' this for you.'"

"Well, money would buy it, wouldn't it?"

"Money'd buy it if money knew what to buy. But it don't. Mr. Rash must 'ave noticed that there's nothink 'elplesser than the people with money what don't know 'ow to spend it. I used to be that wye myself when I'd 'ave a little cash. I wouldn't know what to blow myself to what wouldn't be like them vulgar new-rich. But the new-rich is vulgar only because our life 'as put the 'orse before the cart with 'em, as you might sye, in givin' them the money before showin' 'em what to do with it."

Having straightened the lines of magazines to the last fraction of an inch he found a further excuse for lingering by moving back into their accustomed places the chairs which had been disarranged.

"You 'ave to get the syme kind of 'ang of things as you and me've got, Mr. Rash, to know what it is you want, and 'ow to spend your money wise like. Pleasure isn't just in 'avin' things; it's in knowin'

what's good to 'ave and what ain't. Now this young lydy'd be like a child with a dime sent into a ten-cent store to buy whatever 'e'd like. There's so many things, and all the syme price, that 'e's kind of confused like. First 'e thinks it'll be one thing, and then 'e thinks it'll be another, and 'e ends by tykin' the wrong thing, because 'e didn't 'ave nothink to tell 'im 'ow to choose. Mr. Rash wouldn't want a young lydy to whom 'e's indebted, as you might sye, to be like that, now would 'e?"

"It doesn't seem to me that I've got anything to do with it. If I offer her the money, and can get her to take it----"

"That's where she strikes me as wiser than Mr. Rash, for all she don't know but so little. That much she knows by hinstinck."

"Then what am I going to do?"

"That'd be for Mr. Rash to sye. If it was me----"

The necessity for getting an armchair exactly beneath a portrait seemed to cut this sentence short.

"Well, if it was you--what then?"

"Before I'd give 'er money I'd teach 'er the 'ang of our kind o' life, like. That's what she's aichin' and cryvin' for. A born lydy she is, and 'ankerin' after a lydy's wyes, and with no one to learn 'em to 'er----"

"But, good heavens, I can't do that."

"No, Mr. Rash, but I could, if you was to leave 'er 'ere for a bit. I could learn 'er to be a lydy in the course of a few weeks, and 'er so quick to pick up. Then if you was to settle a little hincome on 'er she wouldn't----"

Allerton took the bull by the horns. "She wouldn't be so likely to go to the bad. That's what you mean, isn't it?"

Moving behind Allerton, who continued to stand on the hearthrug, Steptoe began poking the embers, making them safe for the night.

"Did Mr. Rash ever notice that goin' to the bad, as 'e calls it, ain't the syme for them as 'ave nothink as it looks to them as 'ave everythink? When you're 'ungry for food you heats the first thing you can lie your 'ands on; and when you're 'ungry for life you do the first thing as'll promise you the good you're lookin' for. What people like you and me is hapt to call goin' to the bad ain't mostly no more than a 'ankerin' for good which nothink don't seem to feed."