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<h2>Chapter XVI</h2> While Allerton was making these reflections Steptoe was summoned to the telephone. “Is this you, Steptoe? I’m Miss Barbara Walbrook.” Steptoe braced himself. In conversing with Miss Barbara Walbrook he always felt the need of inner strengthening. “Yes, Miss Walbrook?” “Mr. Allerton tells me you’ve a young woman at the house.” “We ’ave a young lydy. Certainly, miss.” “And Mr. Allerton has asked me to call on her.” Steptoe’s training as a servant permitted him no lapses of surprise. “Quite so, miss. And when was it you’d be likely to call?” “This afternoon about four-thirty. Perhaps you could arrange to have me see her alone.” “Oh, there ain’t likely to be no one ’ere, miss.” “And another thing, Steptoe. Mr. Allerton has asked me just to call as an old friend of his. So you’ll please not say to her that—well, anything about me. I’m sure you understand.” Steptoe replied that he did understand, and having put up the receiver he pondered. What could it mean? What could be back of it? How would this unsophisticated girl meet so skilful an antagonist. That Miss Walbrook was coming as an antagonist he had no doubt. In his own occasional meetings with her she had always been a superior, a commander, to whom even he, ’Enery Steptoe, had been a servitor requiring no further consideration. With so gentle an opponent as madam she would order and be obeyed. At the same time he could not alarm madam, or allow her to shirk the encounter. She had that in her, he was sure, which couldn’t but win out, however much she might be at a disadvantage. His part would be to reduce her disadvantages to a minimum, allowing her strong points to tell. Her strong points, he reckoned, were innocence, an absence of self-consciousness, and, to the worldly-wise, a disconcerting candor. Steptoe analyzed in the spirit and not verbally; but he analyzed. For Letty the morning had been feverish, chiefly because of her uncertainty. Was it the wish of the prince that she should go, or was it not? If it was his wish, why had he not let her? If, on the other hand, he desired her to stay, what did he mean to do with her? He had passed her on the way out to breakfast at the Club—she had been standing in the hall—and he had smiled. What was the significance of that smile? She sat down in the library to think. She sat down in the chair she had occupied while he lay on the couch, and reconstructed that scene which now, for all her life, would thrill her with emotional memories. There he had lain, his head on the very indentation which the cushion still bore, his feet here, where she had pressed her lips to them. She had actually had her hand on his brow, she had smoothed back his hair, and had hardly noted at the time that such was her extraordinary privilege. She came back to the fact that he had smiled at her. It would have been an enchanting smile from anyone, but coming from a prince it had all the romantic effulgence with which princes’ smiles are infused. How much of that romantic effulgence came automatically from the prince because he was a prince, and how much of it was inspired by herself? Was any of it inspired by herself? When all was said and done this last was the great question. It brought her where so many things brought her, to the dream of love at first sight. Could it have happened to him as it had happened to herself? It was so much in her mental order of things that she was far from considering it impossible. Improbable, yes; she would admit as much as that; but impossible, no! To be sure she had been in the old gray rag; but Steptoe had informed her that there were kings who went about falling in love with beggar-maids. She would have loved being one of those beggar-maids; and after all, was she not? True, there was the other girl; but Letty found it hard to see her as a reality. Besides, she had, in appearance at least, treated him badly. Might it not easily have come about that she, Letty, had caught his heart in the rebound? She quite understood that if the prince had fallen in love with her at first sight, there might be convulsion in his inner self without, as yet, a comprehension on his part of the nature of his passion. She had reached this point when Steptoe entered the library on one of his endless tasks of re-arranging that which seemed to be in sufficiently good order. Putting the big desk to rights he said over his shoulder: “Perhaps I’d better tell madam as she’s to ’ave a caller this afternoon.” Letty sprang up in alarm. “A—what?” “A lydy what’ll myke a call. Oh, madam don’t need to be afryde. She’s an old friend o’ Mr. Rash’s, and’ll want, no doubt, to be a friend o’ madam too.” “But what does she know about me?” “Mr. Rash must ’a told ’er. She spoke to me just now on the telephone, and seemed to know everything. She said she’d be ’ere this afternoon about four-thirty, if madam’d be so good as to give ’er a cup o’ tea.” “Me?” Having invented the cup of tea for his own purpose Steptoe went on to explain further. “It’s what the ’igh lydies mostly gives each other about ’alf past four or five o’clock, and madam couldn’t homit it without seemin’ as if she didn’t know what’s what. It’ll be very important for madam to tyke ’er position from the start. If the lydy is comin’ friendly like she’d be ’urt if madam wasn’t friendly too.” Letty had seen the giving and taking of tea in more than one scene in the movies, and had also, from a discreet corner, witnessed the enacting of it right in the “set” on the studio lot. She remembered one time in particular when Luciline Lynch, the star in Our Crimson Sins, had driven Frank Redgar, the director, almost out of his senses by her inability to get the right turn of the wrist. Letty, too, had been almost out of her senses with the longing to be in Luciline Lynch’s place, to do the thing in what was obviously the way. But now that she was confronted with the opportunity in real life she saw the situation otherwise. “And I won’t be able to talk right,” was the difficulty she raised next. “That’ll be a chance for madam to listen and ketch on. She’s horfly quick, madam is, and by listenin’ to Miss Walbrook, that’s the lydy’s nyme, and listenin’ to ’erself—” He broke off to emphasize this line of suggestion—“it’s listenin’ to ’erself that’ll ’elp madam most. It’s a thing as ’ardly no one does. If they did they’d be ’orrified at their squawky voices and bad pernounciation. If I didn’t listen to myself, why, I’d talk as bad as anyone, but—Well, as I sye, this’ll give madam a chance. All the time what Miss Walbrook is speakin’ madam can be listenin’ to ’er and listenin’ to ’erself too, and if she mykes mistykes this time she’ll myke fewer the next.” Letty was pondering these hints as he continued. “Now if madam wouldn’t think me steppin’ out of my plyce I’d suggest that me and ’er ’as a little tea of our own like—right now—in the drorin’ room—and I’ll be Miss Walbrook—and William’ll be William—and madam’ll be madam—and we’ll get it letter-perfect before ’and, just as with Mary Ann Courage and Jyne.” No sooner said than done. Letty was already wearing the white filmy thing with the copper-sash, buried with solemn rites on the previous night, but disinterred that morning, which did very well as a tea-gown. Steptoe placed her in the corner of the sofa which the lyte Mrs. Allerton had generally occupied when “receivin’ company”, and William brought in the tea-equipage on a gorgeous silver tray. Before he did this it had been necessary to school William to his part, which, to do him justice, he carried out with becoming gravity. Any reserves he might have felt were expressed to Golightly by a wink behind Steptoe’s back before he left the kitchen. The wink was the more expressive owing to the fact that Golightly and William had already summed up the old fellow as “balmy on the bean,” while their part was to humor him. Plain as a bursting shell seemed to William Miss Gravely’s position in the household, and Steptoe’s chivalry toward her an eccentricity which a sense of humor could enjoy. Otherwise they justified his reading of the fundamental non-morality of men, in bringing no condemnation to bear on anyone concerned. Being themselves two almost incapacitated heroes, with jobs likely to prove “soft,” it was wise, they felt, to enter into Steptoe’s comedy. At half past ten in the morning, therefore, Golightly prepared tea and buttered toast, while William arranged the tea-tray with those over-magnificent appointments which had been “the lyte Mrs. Allerton’s tyste.” From her corner of the sofa Letty heard the butler announce, in a voice stately but not stentorian: “Miss Barbara Walbrook.” He was so near the door that to step out and step in again was the work of a second. In stepping in again he trod daintily, wriggling the back part of his person, better to simulate the feminine. In order that Letty should nowhere be caught unaware he put out his hand languidly, back upward, as princesses do when they expect it to be kissed. “So delighted to find you at ’ome, Mrs. Allerton. It’s such a very fine dye I was sure as you’d be out.” Rising from her corner Letty shook the relaxed hand as she might have shaken a dog’s tail. “Very pleased to meet you.” From the histrionic Steptoe lapsed at once into the critical. “I think if madam was to sye, ‘So glad to be at ’ome, Miss Walbrook; do let me ring for tea,’ it’d be more like the lyte Mrs. Allerton.” Obediently Letty repeated this formula, had the bell pointed out to her, and rang. The ladies having seated themselves, Miss Walbrook continued to improvise on the subject of the weather. “Some o’ these October dyes’ll be just like summer time! and then agyne there’ll be a nip in the wind as’ll fairly freeze you. A good time o’ year to get out your furs, and I’m sure I ’ope as ’ow the moths ’aven’t gone and got at ’em. Horfly nasty things them moths. They sye as everything in the world ’as a use; but I’m sure I don’t see what use there is for moths, eatin’ ’oles in the seats of gentlemen’s trousers, no matter what you do to keep the coat-closet aired—and everything like that. What do you sye, Mrs. Allerton?” Letty was relieved of the necessity of answering by the entrance of William with the tray, after which her task became easier. Used to making “a good cup of tea” in an ordinary way, the doing it with this formal ceremoniousness was only a matter of revision. As if it was yesterday she recalled the instructions given to Luciline Lynch, “Lemon?—cream?—one lump?—two lumps?” so that Miss Walbrook was startled by her readiness. She, Miss Walbrook, was betrayed, in fact, into some confusion of personality, stating that she would have cream and no sugar, and that furthermore Englishmen like herself ’ardly ever took lemon in their tea, and in her opinion no one ever did to whom the tea-drinking ’abit was ’abitual. “It’s a question of tyste,” Miss Walbrook continued, sipping with a soft siffling noise in the way he considered to be ladylike. “Them that ’as drunk tea with their mother’s milk, as you might sye, ’ll tyke cream and sugar, one or both; but them that ’as picked up the ’abit in lyter life ’ll often condescend to lemon.” What the rehearsal did for Letty was to make the mechanical task familiar, while she concentrated her attention on Miss Walbrook. It has to be admitted that to Barbara Walbrook Letty was a shock. Having worked for two years in the Bleary Street Settlement she had her preconceived ideas of what she was to find, and she found something so different that her first consciousness was that of being “sold.” Steptoe had received her at the door, and having ushered her into the drawing-room announced, “Miss Barbara Walbrook,” as if she had been calling on a duchess. From the semi-obscurity of the back drawing-room a small lithe figure came forward a step or two. The small lithe figure was wearing a tea-gown of which so practiced an eye as Miss Walbrook’s could not but estimate the provenance and value, while a sweet voice said: “I’m so glad to be at home, Miss Walbrook. Do let me ring for tea.” Before a protest could be voiced the bell had been rung, so that Miss Walbrook found herself sitting in the chair Steptoe had used in the morning, and listening to her hostess as you listen to people in a dream. “Beautiful weather for October, isn’t it? Some of these October days’ll be just like summer time. And then again there’ll be a nip in the wind that’ll fairly freeze you. A good time of year to get out your furs, isn’t it? and I’m sure I hope the moths ain’t—haven’t—got at them. Awfully nasty things moths––” Letty’s further efforts were interrupted by William bearing the tray as he had borne it in the morning, and in the minutes of silence while he placed it Miss Walbrook could go through the mental process known as pulling oneself together. But she couldn’t pull herself together without a sense of outrage. She had expected to feel shame, vicariously for Rash; she had not expected to be asked to take part in a horrible bit of play-acting. This dressing-up; this mock hospitality; this desecration of the things which “dear Mrs. Allerton” had used; this mingling of ignorance and pretentiousness, inspired a rage prompting her to fling the back of her hand at the ridiculous creature’s face. She couldn’t do that, of course. She couldn’t even express herself as she felt. She had come on a mission, and she must carry out that mission; and to carry out the mission she must be as suave as her indignation would allow of. She was morally the mistress of this house. Rash and all Rash owned belonged to her. To see this strumpet sitting in her place.... It did nothing to calm her that while she was pressing Rash’s ring into her flesh, beneath her glove, this vile thing was wearing a plain gold band, just as if she was married. She could understand that if they had absurdly walked through an absurd ceremony the absurd minister who performed it might have insisted on this absurd symbol; but it should have been snatched from the creature’s hand the minute the business was ended. They owed that to her. Hers was the only claim Rash had to consider, and to allow this farce to be enacted beneath his roof.... But she remembered that Letty didn’t know who she was, or why she had come, or the degree to which she, Barbara Walbrook, saw through this foolery. Letty repeated her little formula: “Lemon?—cream?—one lump?—two lumps?” though before she reached the end of it her voice began to fail. Catching the hostility in the other woman’s bearing, she felt it the more acutely because in style, dress, and carriage this was the model she would have chosen for herself. Miss Walbrook waved hospitality aside. “Thank you, no; nothing in the way of tea.” She nodded over her shoulder towards William’s retreating form. “Who’s that man?” Her tone was that of a person with the right to inquire. Letty didn’t question that right, knowing the extent to which she herself was an usurper. “His name is William.” “How did he come here?” “I—I don’t know.” “Where are Nettie and Jane?” “They’ve—they’ve left.” “Left? Why?” “I—I don’t know.” “And has Mrs. Courage left too?” Letty nodded, the damask flush flooding her cheeks darkly. “When? Since—since you came?” Letty nodded again. She knew now that this was the bar of social judgment of which she had been afraid. The social judge continued. “That must be very hard on Mr. Allerton.” Letty bowed her head. “I suppose it is.” “He’s not used to new people about him, and it’s not good for him. I don’t know whether you’ve seen enough of him to know that he’s something of an invalid.” “I know—” she touched her forehead—“that he’s sick up here.” “Oh, do you? Then I shouldn’t have thought that you’d have—” but she dropped this line to take up another. “Yes, he’s always been so. When he was a boy they were afraid he might be epileptic; and though he never was as bad as that he’s always needed to be taken care of. He can do very wild and foolish things as—as you’ve discovered for yourself.” Letty felt herself now a little shameful lump of misery. This woman was so experienced, so right. She spoke with a decision and an authority which made love at first sight a fancy to blush at. Letty could say nothing because there was nothing to say, and meanwhile the determined voice went on. “It’s terrible for a man like him to make such a mistake, because being what he is he can’t grapple with it as a stronger or a coarser man would do.” But here Letty saw something that might be faintly pleaded in her own defence. “He says he wouldn’t ha’ made the mistake if that—that other girl hadn’t been crazy.” Barbara drew herself up. “Did he—did he say that?” “He said something like it. He said she went off the hooks, just like he did himself.” She raised her eyes. “Do you know her, Miss Walbrook?” “Yes, I know her.” “She must be an awful fool.” Barbara prayed for patience. “What—what makes you say so?” “Oh, just what he’s said.” “And what has he said? Has he talked about her to you?” “He hasn’t talked about her. He’s just—just let things out.” “What sort of things?” “Only that sort.” She added, as if to herself: “I don’t believe he thinks much of her.” Barbara’s self-control was miraculous. “I’ve understood that he was very much in love with her.” “Well, perhaps he is.” Letty’s little movement of the shoulders hinted that an expert wouldn’t be of this opinion. “He may think he is, anyhow.” “But if he thinks he is––” Letty’s eyes rested on her visitor with their compelling candor. “I don’t believe men know much about love, do you, Miss Walbrook?” “It depends. All men haven’t had as much experience of it as I suppose you’ve had––” “Oh, I haven’t had any.” The candor of the eyes was now in the whole of the truthful face. “Nobody was ever in love with me—never. I never had a fella—nor nothing.” In spite of herself Barbara believed this. She couldn’t help herself. She could hear Rash saying that whatever else was wrong in the ridiculous business the girl herself was straight. All the same the discussion was beneath her. It was beneath her to listen to opinions of herself coming from such a source. If Rash didn’t “think much of her” there was something to “have out” with him, not with this little street-waif dressed up with this ludicrous mummery. The sooner she ended the business on which she had come the sooner she would get a legitimate outlet for the passion of jealousy and rage consuming her. “But we’re wandering away from my errand. I won’t pretend that I’ve come of my own accord. I’m a very old friend of Mr. Allerton’s, and he’s asked me—or practically asked me—to come and find out––” For what she was to come and find out she lacked for a minute the right word, and so held up the sentence. “What I’d take to let him off?” The form of expression was so crude that once more Barbara was startled. “Well, that’s what it would come to.” “But I’ve told him already that—that I want to let him off anyhow.” “Yes? And on what terms?” “I don’t want any terms.” “Oh, but there must be terms. He couldn’t let you do it––” “He could let me do it for him, couldn’t he? I’d go through fire, if it’d make him a bit more comfortable than he is.” Barbara could not believe her ears. “Do you want me to understand that––?” “That I’ll do whatever will make him happy just to make him happy? Yes. That’s it. He didn’t need to send no one—to send anyone—to ask me, because I’ve told him so already. He wants me to get out. Well, I’m ready to get out. He wants me to go to the bad. Well, I’m ready––” “Yes; he understands all that. But, don’t you see? a man in his position couldn’t take such a sacrifice from a girl in yours––” “Unless he pays me for it in cash.” “That’s putting it in a nutshell. If you owned a house, for instance, and I wanted it, I’d buy it from you and pay you for it; but I couldn’t take it as a gift, no matter how liberal you were nor how much I needed it.” “I can see that about a house; but your own self is different. I could sell a house when I couldn’t sell—myself.” “Oh, but would you call that selling yourself?” “It’d be selling myself—the way I look at it. When I’m so ready to do what he wants I can’t see why he don’t let me.” She added, tearfully: “Did he tell you about this morning?” She nodded. “Yes, he told me about that.” “Well, I would have gone then if—if I’d known how to work the door.” “Oh, that’s easy enough.” “Do you know?” “Why, yes.” “Will you show me?” Miss Walbrook rose. “It’s so simple.” She continued, as they went toward the door: “You see, Mr. Allerton’s mother always kept a lot of valuable jewelry in the house, and she was afraid of burglars. She had the most wonderful pearls. I suppose Mr. Allerton has them still, locked away in some bank. Burglars would never come in by the front door, my aunt used to tell her, but—” They reached the door itself. “Now, you see, there’s a common lock, a bolt, and a chain––” Letty explained that she had discovered them already. “But, you see these two little brass knobs over here? That’s the trick. You push this one this way, and that one that way, and the door is locked with an extra double lock, which hardly anyone would suspect. See?” She shook the door which resisted as it had resisted Letty in the morning. “Now! You push that one this way, and this one that way—and there you are!” She opened the door to show how easily the thing could be done; and the door being open she passed out. She had not intended to go in this way; but, after all, was not her mission accomplished? It was nothing to her whether this girl accepted money, or whether she did not. The one thing essential was that she should take herself away; and if she was sincere in what she said she had now the means of doing it. Without troubling herself to take her leave Miss Walbrook went down the steps. Before turning toward Fifth Avenue she glanced back. Letty was standing in the open doorway, her flaming eyes wide, her expression puzzled and wounded. “It’s nothing to me,” Barbara repeated to herself firmly; but because she was a lady, as she understood the word lady, almost before she was a woman, she smiled faintly, with a distant, and yet not discourteous, inclination of the head. <hr class='major' /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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