The Dust Flower Part 44

"Why you should hold me responsible," Barbara was saying, "I can't begin to imagine. Surely I've done everything I could to simplify matters, to straighten them out, and to give you a chance to rectify your folly. I've effaced myself; I've broken my heart; I've promised Aunt Marion to go in for a job for which I'm not fitted and don't care a rap; and yet you come here, accusing me----"

"But, Barbe, I'm _not_ accusing you! If I'm accusing anyone it's myself. Only I can't speak without your taking me up----"

"There you go! Oh, Rash, dear, if you'd only been able to control yourself nothing of this would have happened--not from the first."

She was pacing up and down the little reception room, and rubbing her hands together, while the twisting of the fish-tail of her hydrangea-colored robe, like an eel in agony, emphasized her agitation. Rashleigh was seated, his elbows on his knees, his head bowed between his hands, of which the fingers clutched and tore at the ma.s.ses of his hair. Only when he spoke did he lift his woe-begone black eyes.

"Well, I didn't control myself," he admitted, impatiently; "that's settled. Why go back to it? The question is----"

"Yes; why go back to it? That's you all over, Rash. You can do what no one else in his senses would ever think of doing; and when you've upset the whole apple cart it must never be referred to again. I'm to accept, and keep silence. Well, I've _kept_ silence. I've gone all winter like a muzzled dog. I've wheedled that girl, and kow-towed to her, and made her think I was fond of her--which I am in a way--you may not believe it, but I am--and what's the result? She gets sick of the whole business; runs away; and you come here and throw the whole blame on me."

He tried to speak with special calmness. "Barbe, listen to me. What I said was this----"

She came to a full stop in front of him, her arms outspread. "Oh, Rash, dear, I know perfectly well what you said. You don't have to go all over it again. I'm not deaf. If you would only not be so excitable----"

He jumped to his feet. "I'm excitable, I know, Barbe. I confess it.

Everybody knows it. What I'm trying to tell you is that I'm not excited _now_."

She laughed, a little mocking laugh, and started once more to pace up and down. "Oh, very well! You're not excited now. Then that's understood. You never are excited. You're as calm as a mountain." She paused again, though at a distance. "_Now?_ What is it you're going to do? That's what you've come to ask me, isn't it? Are you going to run after her? Are you going to let her go? Are you going to divorce her, if she gives you the opportunity? If you divorce her are you going to----?"

"But, Barbe, I can't decide all these questions now. What I want to do is to _find_ her."

"Well, I haven't got her here? Why don't you go after her? Why don't you apply to the police? Why don't you----?"

"Yes, but that's just what I want to discuss with you. I don't _like_ applying to the police. If I do it'll get into the papers, and the whole thing become so odious and vulgar----"

"And it's such an exquisite idyll now!"

He threw back his head. "_She's_ an exquisite idyll--in her way."

"There! That's what I wanted to hear you say! I've thought you were in love with her----"

He remembered the penciled lines in Hans Andersen. "If I have been, it's as you may be in love with an innocent little child----"

She laughed again, wildly, almost hysterically. "Oh, Rash, don't try to get that sort of thing off on me. I know how men love innocent little children. You can see the way they do it any night you choose to hang round the stage-door of a theatre where the exquisite idylls are playing in musical comedy."

"Don't Barbe! Not when you're talking about her! I know she's an ignorant little thing; but to me she's like a wild-flower----"

"Wild-flowers can be cultivated, Rash."

"Yes, but the wild-flower she's most like is the one you see in the late summer all along the dusty highways----"

She put up both palms in a gesture of protestation. "Oh, Rash, please don't be poetical. It gets on my nerves. I can't stand it. I like you in every mood but your sentimental one." She came to a halt beside the mantelpiece, on which she rested an elbow, turning to look at him.

"Now tell me, Ras.h.!.+ Suppose I wasn't in the world at all. Or suppose you'd never heard of me. And suppose you found yourself married to this girl, just as you are--nominally--legally--but not really. Would you--would you make it--really?"

They exchanged a long silent look. His eyes had not left hers when he said: "I--I might."

"Good! Now suppose she wasn't in the world at all, or that you'd never heard of her. And suppose that you and I were--were on just the same terms that we are to-day. Would you--would you want to marry me?

Answer me truly."

"Why, yes; of course."

"Now suppose that she and I were standing together, and you were led in to choose between us. And suppose you were absolutely free and untrammelled in your choice, with no question as to her feelings or mine to trouble you. Which would you take? Answer me just as truly and sincerely as you can."

He took time to think, wheeling away from her, and walking up and down the little room with his hands behind his back. It occurred to neither that Barbara having broken the "engagement," and returned the ring, the choice before him was purely hypothetical. Their relations were no more affected by the note she had written him that morning than by the ceremony through which he and Letty had walked in the previous year.

To Barbara the suspense was almost unbearable. In a minute or two, and with a word or two, she would know how life for the future was to be cast. She would have before her the possibility of some day becoming a happy wife--or a great career like her aunt's.

Pausing in his walk he confronted her just as he stood, his hands still clasped behind his back. Her own att.i.tude, with elbow resting on the mantelpiece, was that of a woman equal to anything.

He spoke slowly. "Just as truly and sincerely as I can answer you--I don't know."

She stirred slightly, but otherwise gave no sign of her impatience.

"And is there anything that would help you to find out?"

He shook his head. "Nothing that I can think of, unless----"

"Yes? Unless--what?"

"Unless it's something that would unlock what's locked in my subconsciousness."

"And what would that be?"

"I haven't the faintest idea."

She moved from the mantelpiece with a gesture of despair. "Rash, you're absolutely and hopelessly impossible."

"I know that," he admitted, humbly.

With both fists clenched she stood in front of him. "I could kill you."

He hung his head. "Not half so easily as I could kill myself."

Letty's judgment on Miss Henrietta Towell was different from yours and mine. She found her just what she had expected to see from the warnings long ago issued by Mrs. Judson Flack in putting her daughter on her guard. In going about the city she, Letty, was always to be suspicious of elderly ladies, respectably dressed, enticingly mannered, and with what seemed like maternal intentions. The more any one of these traits was developed, the more suspicious Letty was to be. With these instructions carefully at heart she would have been suspicious of Henrietta Towell in any case; but with Steptoe's description to fall back upon she couldn't but feel sure.

By the time Miss Towell had arrived at the hospital Let.i.tia Rashleigh had sufficiently recovered to be dressed and seated in the armchair placed beside the bed in the small white ward. On one low bedpost the jacket had been hung, and on the other the battered black hat.

"There's nothing the matter with her," the nurse explained to Miss Towell, before entering the ward. "She had fainted in the subway, but I think it was only from fatigue, and perhaps from lack of food. She's quite well nourished, only she didn't seem to have eaten any supper, and was evidently tired from a long and frightening walk. She gives us no explanation of herself, and is disinclined to talk, and if it hadn't been that she had your address in her pocket----"

"I think I know how she got that. From her name I judge that she's a relative of the family in which I used to be employed; but as they were all very wealthy people----"

"Even very wealthy people often have poor relations."

"Yes, of course; but I was with this family for so many years that if there'd been any such connection I think I must have heard of it.

However, it makes no difference to me, and I shall be glad to be of use to her, especially as she has in her possession an article--a thimble it is--which once belonged to me."