The Dust Flower Part 41

If she was a flower, she was a dust flower, a humble thing, at home in the humblest places, and never regarded as other than a weed.

She wandered into Fourth Avenue, reaching Astor Place. From Astor Place she descended the city by the long artery of Lafayette Street, in which teams rumbled heavily, and all-night workers shouted raucously to each other in foreign languages. One of a band of Italians digging in the roadway, with colored lanterns about them, called out something at her, the nature of which she could only infer from the laughter of his compatriots. Here too she began to notice other women like herself, shabby, furtive, unescorted, with terrible eyes, aimlessly drifting from nowhere to nowhere. There were not many of them; only one at long intervals; but they frightened her more than the men.

They frightened her because she saw what she must look like herself, a thing too degraded for any man to want. She was not that yet, perhaps; but it was what she might become. They were not wholly new to her, these women; and they all had begun at some such point as that from which she was starting out. Very well! She was ready to go this road, if only by this road her prince could be freed from her. Since she couldn't give up everything for him in one way, she would do it in another. The way itself was more or less a matter of indifference--not entirely, perhaps, but more or less. If she could set him free in any way she would be content.

The rumble and stir of Lafayette Street alarmed her because it was so foreign. The upper part of the town had been empty and eerie. This quarter was eerie, alien, and occupied. It was difficult for her to tell what so many people were doing abroad because their aims seemed different from those of daylight. What she couldn't understand struck her as nefarious; and what struck her as nefarious filled her with the kind of terror that comes in dreams.

By these Italians, Slavs, and Semites she was more closely scrutinized than she had been elsewhere. She was scrutinized, too, with a hint of hostility in the scrutiny. In their jabber of tongues they said things about her as she pa.s.sed. Wild-eyed women, working by the flare of torches with their men, resented her presence in the street. They insulted her in terms she couldn't understand, while the men laughed in frightful, significant jocosity. The unescorted women alone looked at her with a hint of friendliness. One of them, painted, haggard, desperate, awful, stopped as if to speak to her; but Letty sped away like a s...o...b..rd from a shrike.

At a corner where the cross-street was empty she turned out of this haunted highway, presently finding herself lost in a congeries of old-time streets of which she had never heard. Her only knowledge of New York was of streets crossing each other at right angles, numbered, prosaic, leaving no more play to the fancy than a sum in arithmetic.

Here the ways were narrow, the buildings tall, the night effects fantastic. In the lamp light she could read signs bearing names as unp.r.o.nounceable as the gibbering monkey-speech in Lafayette Street.

Warehouses, offices, big wholesale premises, lairs of highly specialized businesses which only the few knew anything about, offered no place for human beings to sleep, and little invitation to the prowler. Now and then a marauding cat darted from shadow to shadow, but otherwise she was as nearly alone as she could imagine herself being in the heart of a great city.

Still she went on and on. In the effort to escape this overpowering solitude she turned one corner and then another, now coming out beneath the elevated trains, now on the outskirts of docks where she was afraid of sailors. She was afraid of being alone, and afraid of the thoroughfares where there were people. On the whole she was more afraid of the thoroughfares where there were people, though her fear soon entered the unreasoning phase, in which it is fear and nothing else. Still headed vaguely southward she zigzagged from street to street, helpless, terrified, longing for day.

She was in a narrow street of which the high weird gables on either side recalled her impressions on opening a copy of _Faust_, ill.u.s.trated by Gustave Dore, which she found on the library table in East Sixty-seventh Street. On her right the elevated and the docks were not far away, on the left she could catch, through an occasional side street the distant gleam of Broadway. Being afraid of both she kept to the deep canyon of unreality and solitude, though she was afraid of that. At least she was alone; and yet to be alone chilled her marrow and curdled her blood.

Suddenly she heard the clank of footsteps. She stopped to listen, making them out as being on the other side of the street, and advancing. Before she had dared to move on again a man emerged from the half light and came abreast of her. As he stopped to look across at her, Letty hurried on.

The man also went on, but on glancing over her shoulder to make sure that she was safe she saw him pause, cross to her side of the street, and begin to follow her. That he followed her was plain from his whole plan of action. The ring of his footsteps told her that he was walking faster than she, though in no precise hurry to overtake her. Rather, he seemed to be keeping her in sight, and watching for some opportunity.

It was exactly what men did when they robbed and murdered unprotected women. She had read of scores of such cases, and had often imagined herself as being stalked by this kind of ghoul. Now the thing which she had greatly feared having come upon her she was nearly hysterical.

If she ran he would run after her. If she only walked on he would overtake her. Before she could reach the docks on one side or Broadway on the other, where she might find possible defenders, he could easily have strangled her and rifled her fifty cents.

It was still unreasoning fear, but fear in which there was another kind of prompting, which made her wheel suddenly and walk back towards him. She noticed that as she did so, he stopped, wavered, but came on again.

Before the obscurity allowed of her seeing what type of man he was she cried out, with a half sob:

"Oh, mister, I'm so afraid! I wish you'd help me."

"Sure!" The tone had the cheery fraternal ring of commonplace sincerity. "That's what I turned round for. I says, that girl's lost, I says. There's places down here that's dangerous, and she don't know where she is."

Hysterical fear became hysterical relief. "And you're not going to murder me?"

"Gee! Me? What'd I murder you for? I'm a plumber."

His tone making it seem impossible for a plumber to murder anyone she panted now from a sense of rea.s.surance and security. She could see too that he was a decent looking young fellow in overalls, off on an early job.

"Where you goin' anyhow?" he asked, in kindly interest. "The minute I see you on the other side of the street, I says Gosh, I says! That girl's got to be watched, I says. She don't know that these streets down by the docks is dangerous."

She explained that she was on her way to Red Point, Long Island, and that having only fifty cents she was sparing of her money.

"Gee! I wouldn't be so economical if it was me. That ain't the only fifty cents in the world. Look-a-here! I've got a dollar. You must take that----"

"Oh, I couldn't."

"Shucks! What's a dollar? You can pay me back some time. I'll give you my address. It's all right. I'm married. Three kids. And say, if you send me back the dollar, which you needn't do, you know--but if you _must_--sign a man's name to the letter, because my wife--well, she's all right, but if----"

Letty escaped the necessity of accepting the dollar by a.s.suring him that if he would tell her the way to the nearest subway station she would use a portion of her fifty cents.

"I'll go with you," he declared, with breezy fraternity. "No distance.

They're expecting me on a job up there in Waddle Street, but they'll wait. Pipe burst--floodin' a loft where they've stored a lot of jute--but why worry?"

As they threaded the broken series of streets toward the subway he aired the matrimonial question.

"Some think as two can live on the same wages as one. All bunk, I'll say. My wife used to be in the hair line. Some little earner too. Had an electric machine that'd make hair grow like hay on a marsh. Two dollars a visit she got. When we was married she had nine hunderd saved. I had over five hunderd myself. We took a weddin' tour; Atlantic City. Gettin' married's a cinch; but _stayin_' married--she's all right, my wife is, only she's kind o' nervous like if I look sideways at any other woman--which I hardly ever do intentional--only my wife's got it into her head that...."

At the entrance to the subway Letty shook hands with him and thanked him.

"Say," he responded, "I wish I could do something more for you; but I got to hike it back to Waddle Street. Look-a-here! You stick to the subway and the stations, and don't you be in a hurry to get to your address in Red Point till after daylight. They can't be killin' n.o.body over there, that you'd need to be in such a rush, and in the stations you'd be safe."

To a degree that was disconcerting Letty found this so. Having descended the stairs, purchased a ticket, and cast it into the receptacle appointed for that purpose, she saw herself examined by the colored man guarding the entry to the platform. He sat with his chair tilted back, his feet resting on the chain which protected part of the entrance, picking a set of brilliant teeth. Letty, trembling, nervous, and only partly comforted by the cavalier who was now on his way to Waddle Street, shrank from the colored man's gaze and was going down the platform where she could be away from it. Her progress was arrested by the sight of two men, also waiting for the train, who on perceiving her started in her direction.

The colored man lifted his feet lazily from the chain, brought his chair down to four legs, put his toothpick in his waistcoat pocket, and dragged himself up.

"Say, lady," he drawled, on approaching her, "I think them two fellas is tough. You stay here by me. I'll not let no one get fresh with you."

Languidly he went back to his former position and occupation, but when after long waiting, the train drew in he unhooked his feet again from the chain, rose lazily, and accompanied Letty across the otherwise empty platform.

"Say, brother," he said to the conductor, "don't let any fresh guy get busy with this lady. She's alone, and timid like."

"Sure thing," the conductor replied, closing the doors as Letty stepped within. "Sit in this corner, lady, next to me. The first mutt that wags his jaw at you'll get it on the bean."

Letty dropped as she was bidden into the corner, dazed by the brilliant lighting, and the greasy unoccupied seats. She was alone in the car, and the kindly conductor having closed his door she felt a certain sense of privacy. The train clattered off into the darkness.

Where was she going? Why was she there? How was she ever to accomplish the purpose with which two hours earlier she had stolen away from East Sixty-seventh Street? Was it only two hours earlier? It seemed like two years. It seemed like a s.p.a.ce of time not to be reckoned....

She was tired as she had never been tired in her life. Her head sank back into the support made by the corner.

"There's quite a trick to it," she found herself repeating, though in what connection she scarcely knew. "An awful wicked lydy, she is, what'd put madam up to all the ropes." These words too drifted through her mind, foolishly, drowsily, without obvious connection. She began to wish that she was home again in the little back spare room--or anywhere--so long as she could lie down--and shut her eyes--and go to sleep....

Chapter XXII

It was Steptoe who discovered that the little back spare room was empty, though William had informed him that he thought it strange that madam didn't appear for breakfast. Steptoe knew then that what he had expected had come to pa.s.s, and if earlier than he had looked for it, perhaps it was just as well. Having tapped at madam's door and received no answer he ventured within. Everything there confirming his belief, he went to inform Mr. Rash.

As Mr. Rash was shaving in the bathroom Steptoe plodded round the bedroom, picking up scattered articles of clothing, putting outside the door the shoes which had been taken off on the previous night, digging another pair of shoes from the shoe-cupboard, and otherwise busying himself as usual. Even when Mr. Rash had re-entered the bedroom the valet made no immediate reference to what had happened in the house. He approached the subject indirectly by saying, as he laid out an old velvet house-jacket on the bed:

"I suppose if Mr. Rash ain't goin' out for 'is breakfast 'e'll put this on for 'ome."

Mr. Rash, who was b.u.t.toning his collar before the mirror said over his shoulder: "But I am going out for my breakfast. Why shouldn't I? I always do."

Steptoe carried the house-jacket back to the closet.

"I thought as Mr. Rash only did that so as madam could 'ave the dinin'

room to 'erself, private like."