The Dust Flower Part 15

Her admiration was quite sincere as she said: "I shouldn't think they'd complain if they had you to put 'em wise."

He corrected gently. "If they 'ad me to _tell_ 'em."

"If they 'ad you to _tell_ 'em," she imitated, meekly.

"Madam mustn't pick up the bad 'abit of droppin' 'er haitches," he warned, parentally. "I'll learn 'er a lot, but that's one thing I mustn't learn 'er. I don't do it often--Oh, once in a wye, mybe--but that's something madam speaks right already--just like all Americans."

Delighted that there was one thing about her that was right already she reminded him of what he had said, that women never learned.

"I said women as 'ad been drilled a bit. But madam's different. Madam comes into this 'ouse newborn, as you might sye; and that'll myke it easier for 'er and me."

"You mean that I'll not be a kicker."

Once more he smiled his gentle reproof. "Oh, madam wouldn't be a kicker any'ow. Jynie or Nettie or Mary Ann Courage or even me--we might be kickers; but if madam was to hobject to anything she'd be--_displeased_."

She knitted her brows. The distinction was difficult. He saw he had better explain more fully.

"It's only the common crowd what kicks. It's only the common crowd what uses the expression. A man might use it--I mean a real 'igh gentleman like Mr. Rashleigh--and get awye with it--now and then--if 'e didn't myke a 'abit of it; but when a woman does it she rubberstamps 'erself. Now, does madam see? A lydy couldn't be a lydy--and kick. The lyte Mrs. Allerton would never demean 'erself to kick; she'd only show displeasure."

With a thumb and two fingers Letty marked off on the table the three points as to which she had received information that morning. She must say brought, and not brung; she must say tell, and not put wise; she must not kick, but show displeasure. Neither must she drop her aitches, though to do so would have been an effort. The warning only raised a suspicion that in the matter of speech there might be a higher standard than Steptoe's. If ever she heard Rashleigh Allerton speak again she resolved to listen to him attentively.

She came back from her reverie on hearing Steptoe say:

"With madam it's a cyse of beginning from the ground up, more or less as you would with a byby; so I 'ope madam'll forgive me if I drop a 'int as to what we must do before goin' any farther."

Once more he read her question in the starry little flames in her eyes.

"It's--clothes."

The damask red which had ebbed surged slowly back again. It surged back under the transparent white skin, as red wine fills a gla.s.s. Her lips parted to stammer the confession that she had no clothes except those she wore; but she couldn't utter a syllable.

"I understand madam's position, which is why I mention it. You might sye as clothes is the ABC of social life, and if we're to work from the ground up we must begin there."

She forced it out at last, but the statement seemed to tear her.

"I can't get clothes. I ain't got no money."

"Oh, money's no hobject," he smiled. "Mr. Rash 'as plenty of that, and I know what 'e'd like me to do. There never was 'is hequal for the 'open 'and. If madam'll leave it to me...."

Allerton's office was much what you would have expected it to be, bearing to other offices the same relation as he to other business men. He had it because not to have it wouldn't have been respectable.

A young American who didn't go to an office every day would hardly have been a young American. An office, then, was a concession to public sentiment, as well as some faint justification of himself.

It was in the latter sense that he chiefly took it, making it a subject of frequent reference. In his conversation such expressions as "my office," or "due at my office," were introduced more often than there was occasion for. The implication that he had work to do gave him status, enabling him to sit down among his cronies and good-naturedly take their fun.

He took a good deal of fun, never having succeeded in making himself the standardized type who escapes the shafts of ridicule. It was kindly fun, which, while viewing him as a white swan in a flock of black ones, recognized him as a swan, and this was as much as he could expect. To pa.s.s in the crowd was all he asked for, even when he only pa.s.sed on bluff. If he couldn't wholly hide the bluff he could keep it from being flagrantly obtrusive; and toward that end an office was a help.

It was an office situated just where you would have expected to find it--far enough downtown to be downtown, and yet not so far downtown as to make it a trouble to get there. Being on the eastern side of Washington Square, it had a picturesque outlook, and the merit of access from East Sixty-seventh Street through the long straight artery of Fifth Avenue.

It was furnished, too, just as you might have known he would furnish it, in the rich and sober Style Empire, and yet not so exclusively in the Style Empire as to make the plain American business man fear he had dropped into Napoleon's library at Malmaison. That is what Rashleigh would have liked, but other men could do what in him would be thought finicky. To take the "cuss" off his refinement, as he put it to Barbara, he scattered modern American office bits among his luscious brown surfaces, adorned with wreaths and lictors' sheaves in gold, though to himself the wrong note was offensive.

But wrong notes and right notes were the same to him as, on this particular morning, he dragged himself there because it was the hour.

His office staff in the person of old Mr. Radbury was already on the spot, and had sorted the letters for the day. These were easily dealt with. Reinvestment, or new opportunities for investment, were their princ.i.p.al themes, and the only positive duty to attend to was in the endors.e.m.e.nt of dividend checks for deposit. A few directions being given to Mr. Radbury as to such letters as were to be answered, Allerton had nothing to do but stroll to the window and look out.

It was what he did perhaps fifty times in the course of the two or three hours daily, or approximately daily, which he spent there. He did so now. He did so because it put off for a few minutes longer the fierce, exasperating, acrid pleasure of doing worse. To do worse had been his avowed object in coming to the office that morning, and not the answering of letters or the raking in of checks.

Looking down from his window on the tenth floor he asked himself the fruitless question which millions of other men have asked when folly has got them into trouble. Among these thousands who, viewed from that height, had a curious resemblance to ants, was there such a fool as he was? From the Square they streamed into Fifth Avenue; from Fifth Avenue they streamed into the Square. In the Square and round the Square they squirmed and wriggled and dawdled their seemingly aimless ways. Great green lumbering omnibuses disgorged one pack of them merely to suck up another. Motors whirled them toward uptown, toward downtown, or east, or west, by twos and threes, or as individuals.

Like ants their general effect was black, with here and there a moving spot of color, or of intermingling colors, as of flowers in the wind, or tropic birds.

He watched a figure detach itself from the ma.s.s swirling round a debouching omnibus. It was a little black figure, just clearly enough defined to show that it was a man. Because it was a man it had been a fool. Because it had been a fool it had dark chambers in its life which it would never willingly open. But it had doubtless got something for its folly. It might have lost more than it had gained, but it could probably reckon up and say, "At least I had my fun."

And he had had none. He had squandered his whole life on a single act of insanity which even in the action had produced nothing but disgust.

He hadn't merely swindled himself; he had committed a kind of suicide which made death silly and grotesque. The one thing that could save him a sc.r.a.p of dignity--and such a sorry sc.r.a.p!--would be going to the devil by the shortest way.

He had come to the office to begin. He would begin by the means that seemed obvious. Now that going to the devil was a task he saw, as he had not seen hitherto, how curiously few were the approaches that would take him there. Song being only an accompaniment, he was limited to the remaining two of the famous and familiar trio.

Very well! Limited as he was he would make the most of them. Knowing something of their merits he knew there was a b.e.s.t.i.a.l entertainment to be had from both. It was a kind of entertainment which his cursed fastidiousness had always loathed; but now his reckoning would be different. If he got _anything_ he should not feel so wastefully thrown away. He would be selling himself first and making his bargain afterwards; but some meager balance would stand to his credit, if credit it could be called. When the devil had been reached the world he knew would pardon him because it was the devil, and not--what it was in truth--an idiotic state of nerves.

At the minute when Letty was leaping to her feet to take her stand he swung away from the window. First going to Mr. Radbury's door he closed it softly. Luckily the old man, an inheritance from his, Allerton's, father, was deaf and incurious. Like most clerks who had clerked their way up to seventy he was buried in clerking's little round. He wouldn't come in till the letters were finished, certainly not for an hour, and by that time Allerton would be.... He almost smiled at the old man's probable consternation on finding him so before the middle of the day. Any time would be bad enough; but in the high forenoon....

He went to a cabinet which was said to have found its way via Bordentown from the furnishings of Queen Caroline Murat. Having opened it he took out a bottle and a gla.s.s. On the label of the bottle was a kilted Highlander playing on the pipes. A siphon of soda was also in the cabinet, but he left it there. What he had to do would be done more quickly without its mitigation.

While Allerton was making these preparations Judson Flack, in pajamas and slippers, was standing in his toy kitchen, looking helplessly at a small gas stove. It was the hour in the middle of the morning at which he was accustomed to be waked with the information that his coffee and eggs were ready. The forenoon being what he called his slack time he found the earlier part of it most profitably used for sleep.

"Curse the girl!"

The adjuration was called forth by the fact that he didn't know where anything was, or how anything should be done. From the simple expedient of going for his breakfast to one of the cheap restaurants with which he was familiar he was cut off by the fact of an unlucky previous night. He simply didn't have the bones. This was not to say that he was penniless, but that in view of more public expenses later in the day it would be well for him to economize where economy was so obvious. He never had an appet.i.te in the morning anyway. With irregular eating and drinking all through the evening and far toward daylight, he found a cup of coffee and an egg....

It was easy, he knew, to make the one and boil the other, but he was out of practice. He couldn't remember doing anything of the sort since the days before he married Letty's mother. Even then he had never tried this new-fangled thing, the gas stove, so that besides being out of practice he was at a loss.

"Curse the girl!"

The resources of the kitchen being few exploration didn't take him long. He found bread, b.u.t.ter, milk that had turned sour, the usual condiments, some coffee in a canister, and a single egg. If he could only light the confounded gas stove....

A small white handle offering itself for experiment, he turned it timidly, applying a match to a geometrical pattern of holes. He jumped back as from an exploding cannon.

"Curse the girl!"

Having found the way, however, the next attempt was more successful.

Soon he had two geometrical patterns of holes burning in steady blue b.u.t.tons of flame. On the one he placed the coffee-pot into which he had turned a pint of water and a cupful of coffee; on the other a saucepan half full of water containing his egg. This being done he retired to the bathroom for the elements of a toilet.

"Curse the girl!"

Washing, shaving, turning up his mustache with the little curling tongs, he observed with self-pity his increasing haggardness. He observed it also with dismay. Looks were as important to him as to an actress. His role being youth, high spirits, and the devil-may-care, the least trace of the wearing out would do for him. He had noticed some time ago that he was beginning to show fatal signs, which had the more emphatically turned his thoughts to the provision Letty might prove for his old age.

"Curse the girl!"