The Purple Heights Part 31

She explained ramblingly. Mr. Vandervelde gathered that a certain "lady friend" of hers, one Gracie Cantrell, now in the hospital, said her prayers to Mr. Peter Champneys, whom she had met on a time, and who had advised her if ever she needed help to apply to his uncle, and to tell him that he had sent her. Feeling herself _down and out_ now, she had done so.

"Honest to Gawd, the poor little simp thinks this feller's a angel.

Why,--when she gets out o' her head, she don't rave about nothin'

but him, beggin' him to help her. Ain't it somethin' fierce, though?" The blonde person dabbed at her eyes with a scented handkerchief.

Mr. Vandervelde rubbed his nose thoughtfully. A girl down and out, a waif in a city ward, in her delirium calling upon Peter Champneys for help, didn't sound at all good to him. In connection with that penciled slip which seemed to imply that she had a right to expect help, it smacked of possible heart-interest--sob-stuff--so dear to enterprising special writers for a yellow press. He couldn't understand how or where Peter had met the girl; possibly some youthful foolishness back there in Carolina. Maybe she'd followed him north, to become what her friendship with such as the blonde person indicated. Vandervelde was a cautious man and he thought he had better investigate that message, written before Chadwick Champneys's death.

"My car's outside," he told the blonde person briefly. "We'll see this Gracie at once and find out just what's to be done."

It was past the hour for visitors, but Vandervelde's card procured them admittance to the ward where Gracie lay. At sight of the big-eyed, white-faced, wasted little creature who looked at him with such a frightened and beseeching stare, Vandervelde's suspicions of her died. No matter what she had been,--and the house-physician's brief comment on her case left him in no doubt,--this poor wrecked bit of humanity beached upon the bleak sh.o.r.e of a charity ward was harmless. He absolved her of all evil intent, of any desire to obtain anything under false pretenses. He even absolved the blonde person, who despite her bra.s.sy hair, her hectic face, had of a sudden become a kind, gentle, and soothing presence. "Well, dearie, you got a straight tip from that feller. All I had to do was to show that piece o' paper he give you, and this kind gent'man come right off to see you," said the blonde cheerfully. "An' now maybe he'll be wantin' to talk with you, so I'll leave you be. Good night, dearie,"

and she stepped away quietly, a trail of perfume in her wake, so that Vandervelde's nose involuntarily wrinkled.

Gracie lay and looked at her visitor.

"You ain't his uncle. You don't look nothin' at all like him," said she, disappointedly.

"No. His uncle is dead. I'm the lawyer who has the estate in charge.

So you can tell me just exactly what you know about Mr. Peter Champneys, and then tell me what I can do for you."

He spoke so kindly that Gracie's spirits revived. She told him just exactly what she knew about Mr. Peter Champneys, which of course was very, very little. Yet this much was luminously clear: of all the men Gracie had ever encountered, of all her experiences, Peter Champneys and the hour he had sat and talked with her stood out clearest, clean, touched with a soft and pure light, a solitary sweet remembrance in a sodden and sordid existence.

"Like a angel, he was. I never seen n.o.body with such a way o'

lookin' at you. Never pretended he didn't understand, but treated me like a lady. I couldn't never forget him. I kep' the piece o' paper he give me, mostly because it was somethin' belongin' to him an' it sort o' proved I hadn't dreamed him. I never meant to ask for no help--but when I come here--an' there wasn't nothin' else to do, I kep' rememberin' he said I was to go to his uncle an' say he'd sent me. I--I'm scared! My Gawd!--I'm scared!"

He remembered once seeing a trapped rabbit die of sheer terror. This girl, trapped by the inevitable, reminded him unpleasantly of the rabbit. His kind heart contracted. He asked gently:

"What is it you are so afraid of, Gracie? Try to tell me just what you want me to do for you." Perspiration appeared upon her forehead.

She clutched him with a skeleton hand.

"I'm scared o' bein' cut up!" she whispered fearfully. "Oh, for Gawdsake, save me from bein' cut up!" Her eyes widened; in her thin breast you could see her laboring heart thumping. "I want you keep 'em from cuttin' me up!" she repeated feverishly.

"Cutting you up!" Vandervelde looked at her wonderingly.

"Yes. I heard 'em say I didn't have no chanst. They put you in the morgue--afterward--when you're folks like me, and then the doctors come and get you and cut you up. I don't want to be cut up! For Christ's sake, don't you let 'em cut me up!"

Vandervelde felt a sort of sick horror. He couldn't quite understand Gracie's psychology; her unreasoning, ignorant terror.

"Why, my poor girl, what a notion! You--" he stammered.

"I been treated bad enough alive without bein' cut up when I'm dead," said she, interrupting him. "I get to thinkin' about it, wakin' up here in the night. He said his folks'd help me if I asked 'em."

"Of course, of course! Certainly we'll help!" said Vandervelde hastily.

"If I had any money saved up, 't wouldn't be so bad. But I ain't. We never do. I--I been sick a long time. What clothes I had they kep'

against the rent I was owin', when they told me to get out. An' I walked an' walked,--an' then one o' them cops in Central Park, he seen me, an' next thing I knew I was here."

She was getting hysterical, and he saw that it was quite useless to try to reason with her; the one way to allay her terror was to make the promise she implored.

"Well, now that your message has reached us, Gracie, you need not be afraid any more, because what you fear won't happen; it can't happen. There!--Put it out of your mind."

She stared at him intently, and decided that this large, fair man was one to be implicitly trusted.

"You bein' one o' his people, if you say it won't happen, then it won't happen," she told him, and fetched a great sight of relief.

"Oh! I was that scared I 'most died! I--I just naturally can't bear the idea o' bein' turned over to them doctors." And she shuddered.

"Well, now that you're satisfied you won't be, suppose you tell me something more immediate that I can do for you. Isn't there something you'd like?"

"I'd like it most of anything if you'd tell me somethin' about _him_," she said timidly. "I know I got no right to ast, me bein'

what I am," she added, apologetically. "You see, n.o.body ever behaved to me like he did, an' I can't forget him."

She looked so pathetically eager, her look was so humble, that Vandervelde couldn't find it in his heart to deny the request. He found himself telling her that Peter Champneys had become a great painter, that he had never returned to America, and that his wife also was abroad.

"Is the lady he's married to as nice as him? I sure hope she's good enough for him," was Gracie's comment.

Seeing how mortally weak she was, Vandervelde took his departure, promising to see her again. He had a further interview with the house-physician and the head nurse. Whatever could be done for her would be done, but they had handled too many Gracies to be optimistic about this particular one. They knew how quickly these gutter-candles flicker out.

Commonplace as the girl was, she managed to win Vandervelde's interest and sympathy. That she had won young Peter Champneys's didn't surprise him. He was glad that she had had that one disinterested and kindly deed to look back to. The boy's quixotic behavior brought a smile to the lawyer's lips. Fancy his wishing to send such a girl to his uncle and being sure that old Chadwick wouldn't misunderstand! Gracie cast a new light upon Peter Champneys, and a very likable one. Vandervelde had seen in the uncle something of that same unworldliness that the nephew displayed, and it had established the human equation between Peter and the shrewd old man.

Busy as he was, he managed to see Gracie again. She had refused to be put into a private room; she preferred the ward.

"It's not fittin'," she said. "Anyhow, I don't want to stay by myself. When I wake up at night I want to feel people around me,--even sick people's better than n.o.body. It's sort o' comfortin'

to have comp'ny," and she stayed in the ward, sharing with less fortunate ones the fruit and flowers Vandervelde had sent to her.

Once the gripping fear that had obsessed her had been dispelled, once she was sure of a protecting kindness that might be relied upon, she proved a gay little body. As the blonde person said, Gracie wasn't a bad sort at all. As a matter of fact, neither was the blonde person. Vandervelde saw that, and it troubled his complacent satisfaction with things. He saw in the waste of these women an effect of that fatally unmoral energy ironically called modern civilization. He wondered how Marcia, or Peter's wife, would react to Gracie. Should he tell them about her? N-no, he rather thought not.

Marcia had cabled that she and Anne were leaving Italy--were, in fact, on their way home. During his wife's absence he had had to make two or three South American trips, to safeguard certain valuable Champneys interests. The trips had been highly successful and interesting, and he hadn't disliked them, but Vandervelde was incurably domestic; he liked Marcia at the household helm.

"I wanted to hire half a dozen bra.s.s-bands to meet you," he told his wife the morning of her arrival, and kissed her brazenly. "Marcia, you are prettier than ever! As for Anne--" At sight of Anne Champneys his eyes widened.

"Why, Anne!--Why Anne!" He took off his gla.s.ses, polished them, and stared at his ward. Marcia smiled the pleased smile of the artist whose work is being appreciated by a competent critic. She was immensely proud of the tall fair girl, so poised, so serene, so decorative.

"As a target for the human eye," said Vandervelde, fervently, "you're more than a success: you're a riot!"

Anne slipped her hand into the crook of his arm. "I'm glad you like me," said she, frankly. "It's so nice when the right people like one."

Hayden was not in town. He didn't, as a matter of fact, know that they had left Italy, for Anne's last letter had said nothing of any intention to return to America shortly. Anne felt curiously disappointed that he wasn't at the pier with Jason to meet them. She was surprised at her own eagerness to see him. He pleased her more than any man she had ever met, and her impatience grew with his absence.

Marcia, a born general, was already planning with masterly attention to details the social career of Mrs. Peter Champneys. With the forces that she could command, the immense power that Berkeley Hayden would swing in her favor, and the Champneys money, that career promised to be unusually brilliant, when one considered Anne herself.

The Champneys house was to be reopened. In the main, as Chadwick Champneys had planned it, it pleased Marcia's critical taste. Anne herself appreciated as she had been unable to do when she first came to it. She liked its fine Aubusson carpets, its lovely old rosewood and mahogany furniture, its uncluttered stateliness. But there were certain changes and improvements she wished made, and she took a businesslike pleasure in supervising the carrying out of her orders.

The portrait of Mr. Chadwick Champneys, painted the year before his death hung over the library mantel and seemed to watch her thoughtfully, critically, with its fine brown eyes. The girl he had s.n.a.t.c.hed from obscure slavery liked to study the visage of the old monomaniac who had been the G.o.d in the machine of her existence. Her judgment of him now was clear-eyed but cold. He had been liberal because it fell in with his plans. He had never been loving.

She was sitting in the library one morning, looking up at him rather somberly. Workmen came and went, and somewhere in the back regions a hammer kept up a steady tapping.

"Mr. Hayden," said Hoichi, as he ushered that gentleman into the room.

She turned her head and looked at him for a full moment, before rising to greet him: one of Anne Champneys's long, still, mysterious looks, that made his heart feel as if it were a candle, blown and shaken by the wind. Then she smiled and held out her hand. It was good to see him again! She was prouder of his friendship than of anything that had yet come to her. It gave her a sense of security, raised her in her own estimation.

She explained, eagerly, the changes and improvements she was planning, and he went over the house with her. He liked it as Marcia liked it; once or twice he offered suggestions; the relationship of pupil and master was at once resumed,--but this time the pupil was more advanced.