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Dust Flower

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<h2>Chapter X</h2> While Letty was beginning a new experience Judson Flack was doing his best to carry out his threat. That is to say, he was making the round of the studios in which his step-daughter had occasionally found work, discreetly asking if she had been there that day. It was all he could think of doing. To the best of his knowledge she had no friends with whom she could have taken refuge, though the suspicion crossed his mind that she might have drowned herself to spite him. As a matter of fact Letty was asking the question if she wasn’t making a mistake in not doing so, either literally or morally. Never before in her life had she been up against this problem of insufficiency. Among the hard things she had known she had not known this; and now that she was involved in it, it seemed to her harder than everything else put together. In her humble round, bitter as it was, she had always been considered competent. It was the sense of her competence that gave her the self-respect enabling her to bear up. According to her standards she could keep house cleverly, and could make a dollar go as far as other girls made two. When she got her first chance in a studio, through an acquaintance of Judson Flack’s, she didn’t shrink from it, and had more than once been chosen by a director to be that member of a crowd who moves in the front and expresses the crowd psychologically. Had she only had the clothes.... And now she was to have them. As far as that went she was not merely glad; she was one sheer quiver of excitement. It was not the end she shrank from; it was the means. If she could only have had fifty dollars to go “poking round” where she knew that bargains could be found, she might have enjoyed the prospect; but Steptoe could only “take measures” on the grand scale to which he was accustomed. The grand scale frightened her, chiefly because she was dressed as she was dressed. It was her first thought and her last one. When Steptoe told her the hour at which he had asked Eugene to bring round the car the mere vision of herself stepping into it made her want to sink into the ground. Eugene didn’t live in the house—she had discovered that—and so would bring the stare of another pair of eyes under whose scrutiny she would have to pass. Those of the three women having already scorched her to the bone, she would have to be scorched again. She tried to say this to Steptoe, as they stood in the drawing-room window waiting for the car; but she didn’t know how to make him understand it. When she tried to put it into words, the right words wouldn’t come. Steptoe had taken as general what she was trying to explain to him in particular. “It’ll be very important to madam to fyce what’s ’ard, and to do it bryve like. It’ll be the mykin’ of ’er if she can. ’Umble ’ill is pretty stiff to climb; but them as gets to the top of it is tough.” She thought this over silently. He meant that if she set herself to take humiliations as they came, dragging herself up over them, she would be the stronger for it in the end. “It’d ’ave been better for Mr. Rashleigh,” he mused, “if ’e’d ’ad ’ad somethink of the kind to tackle in ’is life; it’d ’ave myde ’im more of a man. But because ’e adn’t—Did madam ever notice,” he broke off to ask, “’ow them as ’as everythink myde easy for ’em begins right off to myke things ’ard for theirselves. It’s a kind of law like. It’s just as if nyture didn’t mean to let no one escype. When a man’s got no troubles you can think of, ’e’ll go to work to create ’em.” “Didn’t he”—she had never yet pronounced the name of the man who had married her—”didn’t he ever have any troubles?” “’E was fretted terrible—crossed like—rubbed up the wrong wye, as you might sye,—but a real trouble like what you and me ’ave ’ad plenty of—never! It’s my opinion that trouble is to char-ac-ter what a peg’ll be to a creepin’ vine—something to which the vine’ll ’ook on and pull itself up by. Where there’s nothink to ketch on to the vine’ll grow; but it’ll grow in a ’eap of flop.” There was a tremor in his tone as he summed up. “That’s somethink like my poor boy.” Letty found this interesting. That in these exalted circles there could be a need of refining chastisement came to her as a surprise. “The wife as I’ve always ’oped for ’im,” Steptoe went on, “is one that’d know what trouble was, and ’ow to fyce it. ’E’d myke a grand ’usband to a woman who was—strong. But she’d ’ave to be the wall what the creepin’ vine could cover all over and—and beautify.” “That wouldn’t be me.” “If I was madam I wouldn’t be so sure of that. It don’t do to undervalyer your own powers. If I’d ’a done that I wouldn’t ’a been where I am to-dye. Many’s the time, when I was no more than a poor little foundlin’ boy in a ’ome I’ve said to myself, I’m fit for somethink big. Somethink big I always meant to be. When it didn’t seem possible for me to aim so ’igh I’d myde up my mind to be a valet and a butler. It comes—your hambition does. What you’ve first got to do is to form it; and then you’ve got to stick to it through thick and thin.” To say what she said next Letty had to break down barrier beyond barrier of inhibition and timidity. “And if I was to—to form the—the ambition—to be—to be the kind of wall you was talkin’ about just now––” “That wouldn’t be hambition; it’d be—consecrytion.” He allowed her time to get the meaning of this before going on. “But madam mustn’t expect not to find it ’ard. Consecrytion is always ’ard, by what I can myke out. When Mr. Rash was a little ’un ’e used to get Miss Pye, ’is governess, to read to ’im a fairy tyle about a little mermaid what fell in love with a prince on land. Bein’ in love with ’im she wanted to be with ’im, natural like; but there she was in one element, as you might sye, and ’im in another.” “That’d be like me.” “Which is why I’m tellin’ madam of the story. Well, off the little mermaid goes to the sea-witch to find out ’ow she could get rid of ’er fish’s tyle and ’ave two feet for to walk about in the prince’s palace. Well, the sea-witch she up and tells ’er what she’d ’ave to do. Only, says she, if you do that you’ll ’ave to pye for it with every step you tykes; for every step you tykes’ll be like walkin’ on sharp blydes. Now, says she, to the little mermaid, do you think it’d be worth while?” In Letty’s eyes all the stars glittered with her eagerness for the dénouement. “And did she think it was worth while—the little mermaid?” “She did; but I’ll give madam the tyle to read for ’erself. It’s in the syme little book what Miss Pye used to read out of—up in Mr. Rash’s old nursery.” With the pride of a royal thing conscious of its royalty the car rolled to the door and stopped. It was the prince’s car, while she, Letty, was a mermaid born in an element different from his, and encumbered with a fish’s tail. She must have shown this in her face, for Steptoe said, with his fatherly smile: “Madam may ’ave to walk on blydes—but it’ll be in the Prince’s palace.” It’ll be in the Prince’s palace! Letty repeated this to herself as she followed him out to the car. Holding the door open for her, Eugene, who had been told of her romance, touched his cap respectfully. When she had taken her seat he tucked the robe round her, respectfully again. Steptoe marked the social difference between them by sitting beside Eugene. Rolling down Fifth Avenue Letty was as much at a loss to account for herself as Elijah must have been in the chariot of fire. She didn’t know where she was going. She was not even able to ask. The succession of wonders within twenty-four hours blocked the working of her faculties. She thought of the girls who sneered at her in the studios—she thought of Judson Flack—and of what they would say if they were to catch a glimpse of her. She was not so unsophisticated as to be without some appreciation of the quarter of New York in which she found herself. She knew it was the “swell” quarter. She knew that the world’s symbols of money and display were concentrated here, and that in some queer way she, poor waif, had been given a command of them. One day homeless, friendless, and penniless, and the next driving down Fifth Avenue in a limousine which might be called her own! The motor was slowing down. It was drawing to the curb. They had reached the place to which Steptoe had directed Eugene. Letty didn’t have to look at the name-plate to know she was where the great stars got their gowns, and that she was being invited into Margot’s! You know Margot’s, of course. A great international house, Margot—the secret is an open one—is but the incognita of a business-like English countess who finds it financially profitable to sign articles on costume written by someone else, and be sponsor for the newest fashions which someone else designs. As a way of turning an impoverished historic title to account it is as good as any other. Without knowing who Margot was Letty knew what she was. She couldn’t have frequented studios without hearing that much, and once or twice in her wanderings about the city she had paused to admire the door. It was all there was to admire, since Margot, to Letty’s regret, didn’t display confections behind plate-glass. It was a Flemish château which had been a residence before business had traveled above Forty-second Street. A man in livery would have barred them from passing the wrought-iron grille had it not been for the car from which they had emerged. Only people worthy of being customers of the house could afford such cars, and he saw that Steptoe was a servant. What Letty was he couldn’t see, for servants of great houses never looked so nondescript. In the great hall a beautiful staircase swept to an upper floor, but apart from a Louis Seize mirror and console flanked by two Louis Seize chairs there was nothing and no one to be seen. Steptoe turned to the right into a vast saloon with a cinnamon-colored carpet and walls of cool French gray. A group of gilded chairs were the only furnishings, except for a gilded canapé between two French windows draped with cinnamon-colored hangings. A French fender with French andirons filled the fireplace, and on the white marble mantelpiece stood a garniture de cheminée, a clock and two vases, in biscuit de Sèvres. At the end of the room opposite the windows a woman in black, with coiffure à la Marcel, sat at a white-enamelled desk working with a ledger. A second woman in black, also with coiffure à la Marcel, stood holding open the doors of a white-enamelled wardrobe, gazing at its multi-colored contents. Two other women in black, still with coiffure à la Marcel, were bending over a white-enamelled drawer in a series of white-enamelled drawers, discussing in low tones. There were no customers. For such a house the season had not yet begun. Though in this saloon voices were pitched as low as for conversation in a church, the sharp catgut calls of Frenchwomen—and of French dressmakers especially—came from a room beyond. Overawed by this vastness, simplicity, and solemnity, Steptoe and Letty stood barely within the door, waiting till someone noticed them. No one did so till the woman holding open the wardrobe doors closed them and turned round. She did not come forward at once; she only stared at them. Still keeping her eye on the newcomers she called the attention of the ladies occupied with the drawer, who lifted themselves up. They too stared. The lady at the desk stared also. It was the lady of the wardrobe who advanced at last, slowly, with dignity, her hands genteelly clasped in front of her. She seemed to be saying, “No, we don’t want any,” or, “I’m sorry we’ve nothing to give you,” by her very walk. Letty, with her gift for dramatic interpretation, could see this, though Steptoe, familiar as he was with ladies whom he would have classed as “’igher,” was not daunted. He too went forward, meeting madam half way. Of what was said between them Letty could hear nothing, but the expression on the lady’s face was dissuasive. She was telling Steptoe that he had come to the wrong place, while Steptoe was saying no. From time to time the lady would send a glance toward Letty, not in disdain, but in perplexity. It was perplexity which reached its climax when Steptoe drew from an inside pocket an impressive roll of bills. The lady looked at the bills, but she also looked at Letty. The honor of a house like Margot’s is not merely in making money; it is in its clientèle. To have a poor little waif step in from the street.... And yet it was because she was a poor little waif that she interested the ladies looking on. She was so striking an exception to their rule that her very coming in amazed them. One of the two who had remained near the open drawer came forward into conference with her colleague, adding her dissuasions to those which Steptoe had already refused to listen to. “There are plenty of other places to which you could go,” Letty heard this second lady say, “and probably do better.” Steptoe smiled, that old man’s smile which was rarely ineffective. “Madam don’t ’ave to tell me as there’s plenty of other plyces to which I could go; but there’s none where I could do as well.” “What makes you think so?” “I’m butler to a ’igh gentleman what ’e used to entertyne quite a bit when ’is mother was alive. I’ve listened to lydies talkin’ at tyble. No one can’t tell me. I know.” Both madams smiled. Each shot another glance at Letty. It was plain that they were curious as to her identity. One of them made a venture. “And is this your—your daughter?” Steptoe explained, not without dignity, that the young lady was not his daughter, but that she had come into quite a good bit of money, and had done it sudden like. She needed a ’igh, grand outfit, though for the present she would be content with three or four of the dresses most commonly worn by a lydy of stytion. He preferred to nyme no nymes, but he was sure that even Margot would not regret her confidence—and he had the cash, as they saw, in his pocket. Of this the result was an exchange between the madams of comprehending looks, while, in French, one said to the other that it might be well to consult Madame Simone. Madame Simone, who bustled in from the back room, was not in black, but in frowzy gray; her coiffure was not à la Marcel, but as Letty described it, “all anyway.” A short, stout, practical Frenchwoman, she had progressed beyond the need to consider looks, and no longer considered them. The two shapely subordinates with whom Steptoe had been negotiating followed her at a distance like attendants. She disposed of the whole matter quickly, addressing the attendants rather than the postulants for Margot’s favor. “Mademoiselle she want an outfit—good!—bon! We don’t know her, but what difference does that make to me?—qu’est ce que c’est que cela me fait? Money is money, isn’t it?—de l’argent c’est de l’argent, n’est-ce pas?—at this time of year especially—à cette saison de l’année surtout.” To Steptoe and Letty she said: “’Ave the goodness to sit yourselves ’ere. Me, I will show you what we ’ave. A street costume first for mademoiselle. If mademoiselle will allow me to look at her—Ah, oui! Ze taille—what you call in Eenglish the figure—is excellent. Très chic. With ze proper closes mademoiselle would have style—de l’élégance naturelle—that sees itself—cela se voit—oui—oui––” Meditating to herself she studied Letty, indifferent apparently to the actual costume and atrocious hat, like a seeress not viewing what is at her feet but events of far away. With a sudden start she sprang to her convictions. “I ’ave it. J’y suis.” A shrill piercing cry like that of a wounded cockatoo went down the long room. “Alphonsine! Alphonsine!” Someone appeared at the door of the communicating rooms. Madame Simone gave her orders in a few sharp staccato French sentences. After that Letty and Steptoe found themselves sitting on two of the gilded chairs, unexpectedly alone. The other ladies had returned to their tasks. Madame Simone had gone back to the place whence they had summoned her. Nothing had happened. It seemed to be all over. They waited. “Ain’t she goin’ to show us nothin’?” Letty whispered anxiously. “They always do.” Steptoe was puzzled but recommended patience. He couldn’t think that Madame could have begun so kindly, only to go off and leave them in the lurch. It was not what he had looked for, any more than she; but he had always found patient waiting advantageous. Perhaps ten minutes had gone by when a new figure wandered toward them. Strutted would perhaps be the better word, since she stepped like a person for whom stepping means a calculation. She was about Letty’s height, and about Letty’s figure. Moreover, she was pretty, with that haughtiness of mien which turns prettiness to beauty. What was most disconcerting was her coming straight toward Letty, and standing in front of her to stare. Letty colored to the eyes—her deep, damask flush. The insult was worse than anything offered by Mrs. Courage; for Mrs. Courage after all was only a servant, and this a young lady of distinction. Letty had never seen anyone dressed with so much taste, not even the stars as they came on the studio lot in their everyday costumes. Indignant as she was she could appreciate this delicate seal-brown cloth, with its bits of gold braid, and darling glimpses of sage-green wherever the lining showed indiscreetly. The hat was a darling too, brown with a feather between brown and green, the one color or the other according as the wearer moved. If it hadn’t been for this cool insolence.... And then the young lady deliberately swung on her heel, which was high, to move some five or six yards away, where she stood with her back to them. It was a darling back—with just enough gold braid to relieve the simplicity, and the tiniest revelation of sage-green. Letty admired it the more poignantly for its cold contempt of herself. Steptoe was not often put out of countenance, but it seemed to have happened now. “I can’t think,” he murmured, as one who contemplates the impossible, “that the French madam can ’ave been so civil to begin with, just to go and make a guy of us.” “If all her customers is like this––” Letty began. But the young lady of distinction turned again, stepping a few paces toward the back of the room, swinging on herself, stepping a few paces toward the front of the room, swinging on herself again, and all the while flinging at Letty glances which said: “If you want to see scorn, this is it.” Fascination kept Letty paralyzed. Steptoe grew uneasy. “I wish the French madam’d come back agyne,” he murmured, from half closed lips. “We ’aven’t come ’ere to be myde a spectacle of—not for no one.” And just then the seal-brown figure strolled away, as serenely and impudently as she had come. “Well, of all––!” Letty’s exclamation was stifled by the fact that as the first young lady of distinction passed out a second crossed her coming in. They took no notice of each other, though the newcomer walked straight up to Letty, not to stare but to toss up her chin with a hint of laughter suppressed. Laughter, suppressed or unsuppressed, was her note. She was all fair-haired, blue-eyed vivacity. It was a relief to Letty that she didn’t stare. She twitched, she twisted, she pirouetted, striking dull gleams from an embroidery studded with turquoise and jade—but she hadn’t the hard unconscious arrogance of the other one. All the same it pained Letty that great ladies should be so beautiful. Not that this one was beautiful of face—she wasn’t—only piquant—but the general effect was beautiful. It showed what money and the dressmaker could do. If she, Letty could have had a dress and a hat like this!—a blue or a green, it was difficult to say which—with these strips of jade and turquoise on a ground of the purplish-greenish-blue she remembered as that of the monkshood in the old farm garden in Canada—and the darlingest hat, with one long feather beginning as green and graduating through every impossible shade of green and blue till it ended in a monkshood tip.... No wonder the girl’s blue eyes danced and quizzed and laughed. As a matter of fact, Letty commented, the eyes brought a little too much blue into the composition. It was her only criticism. As a whole it lacked contrast. If she herself had worn this costume—with her gold-stone eyes—and brown hair—and rich coloring, when she had any color—blue was always a favorite shade with her—when she could choose, which wasn’t often—she remembered as a child on the farm how she used to plaster herself with the flowers of the blue succory—the dust-flower they called it down there because it seemed to thrive like the disinherited on the dust of the wayside—not but what the seal-brown was adorable.... The spectacle grew dazzling, difficult for Steptoe to keep up with. He and Letty were plainly objects of interest to these grand folk, because there were now four or five of them. They advanced, receded, came up and studied them, wheeled away, smiled sometimes at each other with the high self-assurance of beauty and position, pranced, pawed, curveted, were noble or coquettish as the inner self impelled, but always the embodiment of overweening pride. Among the “real gentry,” as he called them, there had unfailingly been for him and his colleagues a courtesy which might have been called only a distinction in equality, whereas these high-steppers.... It was a relief to see the French madam bustling in again from the room at the back. Steptoe rose. He meant to express himself. Letty hoped he would. For people who brought money in their hands this treatment was too much. When Steptoe advanced to meet madam, she went with him. As her champion she must bear him out. But madam forestalled them. “I ’ope that mademoiselle has seen something what she like. Me, I thought the brown costume—c&oelig;ur de le marguerite jaune we call it ziz season––” Letty was quick. She had heard of mannequins, the living models, though so remotely as to give her no visualized impression. Suddenly knowing what they had been looking at she adapted herself before Steptoe could get his protest into words. “I liked the seal-brown; but for me I thought the second one––” Madame Simone nodded, sagely. “Why shouldn’t mademoiselle ’ave both?” <hr class='major' /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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