"Of course," said Jane shortly to hide the emotion in her voice. "Now eat this while I talk," thrusting a plate of b.u.t.tered toast and a gla.s.s of orange marmalade at her, and hastening to pour an inviting cup of coffee.
"Now, I been thinking," she said sitting down on the edge of the bed and eating bits of the piece of toast she had burned--Betty"s was toasted beautifully--"I got a plan. I think you better go to Ma. She"s got room enough for you for a while, and I want my sister to come over and take a place I can get fer her. If you was there she could leave. Mebbe you could help Ma with the kids. Of course we"re poor and you ain"t used to common things like we have them, but I guess you ain"t got much choice in your fix. I got a paper this morning. They"re huntin" fer you hot foot. They say you was temperary insane, an" "f I was you I"d keep out o" their way a while. You lay low an" I"ll keep my eye out and let you know, I"ve got a little money under the mattra.s.s I can let you have till that ring gets sold. You can leave it with me an" I"ll do the best I can if you think you can trust me. Of course I"m a stranger, but then, land!
So are you! We just _gotta_ trust each other. And I"m sending you to my mother if you"ll go!"
"Oh!" said Betty, springing up and hugging her impulsively, "you"re so good! To think I should find somebody just like that right in the street when I needed you so. I almost think G.o.d did it!"
"Well, mebbe!" said Jane, in her embarra.s.sment turning to hang up a skirt that had fallen from its hook. "That"s what they say sometimes in Chrishun Deavor meetin". Ever go to Chrishun Deavor? Better go when you get out home. They have awful good socials an" ice cream, and you"ll meet some real nice folks. We"ve got a peach of a minister, and his wife is perfec"ly dandy. I tell you I missed "em when I came to the city!
They was always doing something nice fer the young folks."
"How interesting!" said Betty, wondering if she might really be going to live like other girls. Then the shadow of her danger fell over her once more, and her cheek paled.
"If I can only get there safely," she shuddered. "Oh, Jane! You can"t understand what it would be to have to go back!"
"Well, you"re not going back. You"re going to Tinsdale, and n.o.body"s going to find you ever, unless you want "em to! See? Now, listen! We haven"t any time to waste. You oughtta get off on the ten o"clock train.
I put out some clothes there for yeh. They ain"t like yours, but it won"t do fer you to go dressed like a millionairess. Folks out to Tinsdale would suspect yeh right off the bat. You gotta go plain like me, and it"s this way: You"re a friend I picked up in the city whose mother is dead and you need country air a while, see? So I sent you home to stay with Ma till you got strong again. I"m wirin" Ma. She"ll understand. She always does. I kinda run Ma anyhow. She thinks the sun rises an" sets in me, so she"ll do just what I say."
"I"m afraid I oughtn"t to intrude," said Betty soberly, taking up the coa.r.s.e, elaborately trimmed lingerie with a curious look, and trying not to seem to notice that it was different from any she had ever worn before.
"Say! Looka here!" said Jane Carson, facing round from her coffee cup on the washstand. "I"m sorry to criticize, but if you could just talk a little slang or something. Folks"ll never think you belong to me.
_"Intrude!"_ Now, that sounds stuck up! You oughtta say "be in the way,"
or something natural like that. See?"
"I"m afraid I don"t," said Betty dubiously, "but I"ll try."
"You"re all right, Kid," said Jane with compunction in her voice. "Just let yourself down a little like I do, and remember you don"t wear silk onderclothes now. I"m afraid those stockings won"t feel very good after yours, but you gotta be careful. An" "f I was you I"d cut my hair off, I really would. It"s an awful pity, it"s so pretty, but it"ll grow again.
How old are you?"
"Almost twenty-one," said Betty thoughtfully. "Just three months more and I"ll be twenty-one."
"H"m! Of age!" said Jane with a sharp significant look at her, as if a new thought had occurred. "Well, you don"t look it! You could pa.s.s for fifteen, especially if you had your hair bobbed. I can do it for you if you say so."
"All right," said Betty promptly without a qualm. "I always wanted it short. It"s an awful nuisance to comb."
"That"s the talk!" said Jane. "Say "awful" a lot, and you"ll kinda get into the hang of it. It sounds more--well, _natural_, you know; not like society talk. Here, sit down and I"ll do it quick before you get cold feet. I sure do hate to drop them curls, but I guess it"s best."
The scissors snipped, snipped, and the lovely strands of bright hair fell on the paper Jane had spread for them. Betty sat cropped like a sweet young boy. Jane stood back and surveyed the effect through her lashes approvingly. She knew the exact angle at which the hair should splash out on the cheek to be stylish. She had often contemplated cutting her own, only that her mother had begged her not to, and she realized that her hair was straight as a die and would never submit to being tortured into that alluring wave over the ear and out toward the cheekbone. But this sweet young thing was a darling! She felt that the daring deed had been a success.
"I got a bottle of stuff to make your hair dark," she remarked. "I guess we better put it on. That hair of yours is kinda conspicuous, you know, even when it"s cut off. It won"t do you any harm. It washes off soon."
And she dashed something on the yellow hair. Betty sat with closed eyes and submitted. Then her mentor burnt a cork and put a touch to the eyebrows that made a different Betty out of her. A soft smudge of dark under her eyes and a touch of talc.u.m powder gave her a sickly complexion and when Betty stood up and looked in the gla.s.s she did not know herself. Jane finished the toilet by a smart though somewhat shabby black hat pulled well down over Betty"s eyes, and a pair of gray cotton gloves, somewhat worn at the fingers. The high-laced boots she put upon the girl"s feet were two sizes too large, and wobbled frightfully, but they did well enough, and there seemed nothing more to be desired.
"Now," said Jane as she pinned on her own hat, "you"ve gotta have a name to go by. I guess you better be Lizzie Hope. It kinda belongs to yeh, and yet n.o.body"d recognize it. You don"t need to tell Ma anything you don"t want to, and you can tell her I"ll write a letter to-night all about it. Now come on! We gotta go on the trolley a piece. I don"t see havin" you leave from the General Station. We"ll go up to the Junction and get the train there."
With an odd feeling that she was bidding good-by to herself forever and was about to become somebody else, Betty gave one more glance at the slim boylike creature in the little mirror over the washstand and followed Jane out of the room, shuffling along in the big high-heeled boots, quite unlike the Betty that she was.
CHAPTER VI
WARREN REYBURN laid down his pen and shoved back his office chair impatiently, stretching out his long muscular limbs nervously and rubbing his hands over his eyes as if to clear them from annoying visions.
James Ryan, his office boy and stenographer, watched him furtively from one corner of his eye, while his fingers whirled the typewriter on through the letter he was typing. James wanted to take his girl to the movies that evening and he hadn"t had a chance to see her the day before. He was wondering if Mr. Reyburn would go out in time for him to call her up at her noon hour. He was a very temperamental stenographer and understood the moods and tenses of his most temperamental employer fully. It was all in knowing how to manage him. James was most deferential, and knew when to keep still and not ask questions. This was one of the mornings when he went to the dictionary himself when he wasn"t sure of a word rather than break the ominous silence. Not that Mr. Reyburn was a hard master, quite the contrary, but this was James"s first place straight from his brief course at business school, and he was making a big bluff of being an old experienced hand.
There was not much business to be done. This was Warren Reyburn"s "first place" also in the world of business since finishing his law course, and he was making a big bluff at being very busy, to cover up a sore heart and an anxious mind. It was being borne in upon him gradually that he was not a shouting success in business so far. The rosy dreams that had floated near all through his days of hard study had one by one left him, until his path was now leading through a murky gray way with little hope ahead. Nothing but sheer grit kept him at it, and he began to wonder how long he could stick it out if nothing turned up.
True, he might have accepted an offer that even now lay open on his desk; a tempting offer, too, from a big corporation who recognized the influence of his old family upon their particular line of business; but it was a line that his father and his grandfather had scorned to touch, and he had grown up with an honest contempt for it. He just could not bring himself to wrest the living from the poor and needy, and plunder the unsuspecting, and he knew that was what it would be if he closed with this offer. Not yet had he been reduced to such depths, he told himself, shutting his fine lips in a firm curve. "No, not if he starved!"
That was the legitimate worry that ruffled his handsome brow as he sat before his desk frowning at that letter. He meant to begin dictation on its answer in another five minutes or so, but meantime he was forcing himself to go over every point and make it strong and clear to himself, so that he should say, "No!" strongly and clearly to the corporation. It might do harm to make his reason for declining so plain, but he owed it to his self-respect to give it nevertheless, and he meant to do so.
After all, he had no business so far to harm, so what did it matter? If nothing turned up pretty soon to give him a start he would have to change his whole plan of life and take up something else where one did not have to wait for a reputation before he could have a chance to show what was in him.
But underneath the legitimate reason for his annoyance this morning there ran a most foolish little fretting, a haunting discomfort.
He had taken his cousin to a wedding the night before because her husband had been called away on business, and she had no one to escort her. They had been late and the church was crowded. He had had to stand, and as he idly looked over the audience he suddenly looked full into the great sad eyes of the sweetest little bride he had ever seen.
He had not been a young man to spend his time over pretty faces, although there were one or two nice girls in whom he was mildly interested. He had even gone so far as to wonder now and then which of them he would be willing to see sitting at his table day after day the rest of his life, and he had not yet come to a satisfactory conclusion.
His cousin often rallied him about getting married, but he always told her it would be time enough to think about that when he had an income to offer her.
But when he saw that flower-face, his attention was held at once.
Somehow he felt as if he had not known there was a face like that in all the world, so like a child"s, with frank yet modest droop to the head, and the simplicity of an angel, yet the sadness of a sacrificial offering. Unbidden, a great desire sprang up to lift for her whatever burden she was bearing, and bring light into those sad eyes. Of course it was a pa.s.sing sensation, but his eyes had traveled involuntarily to the front of the church to inspect the handsome forbidding face of the bridegroom, and with instant dissatisfaction he looked back to the girl once more and watched her come up to the altar, speculating as those who love to study humanity are wont to do when they find an interesting subject. How had those two types ever happened to come together? The man"s part in it was plain. He was the kind who go about seeking whom they may devour, thought Warren Reyburn. But the woman! How could a wise-eyed child like that have been deceived by a handsome face? Well, it was all speculation of course, and he had nothing to do with any of them. They were strangers to him and probably always would be. But he had no conception at that time what a small world he lived in, nor how near the big experiences of life lie all about us.
He watched the lovely bride as all the audience watched her until he saw her fall, and then he started forward without in the least realizing what he was doing. He found himself half way up the side aisle to the altar before he came to himself and forced his feet back to where his cousin was sitting. Of course he had no right up there, and what could he do when there were so many of her friends and relatives about her?
His position near the side door through which they carried her made it quite possible for him to look down into her still face as they took her to the vestry room, and he found a great satisfaction in seeing that she was even more beautiful at close hand than at a distance. He wondered afterward why his mind had laid so much stress upon the fact that her skin was lovely like a baby"s without any sign of cosmetics. He told himself that it was merely his delight to learn that there was such a type, and that it ran true.
He was therefore not a little disappointed that the minister, after the congregation had waited an unconscionable time for the return of the bride, came out and announced that owing to her continued collapse the ceremony would have to be postponed. The clatter of polite wonder and gossip annoyed him beyond measure, and he was actually cross with his cousin on the way home when she ranted on about the way girls nowadays were brought up, coddled, so that a breath would blow them away. Somehow she had not looked like that kind of a girl.
But when the morning papers came out with sensational headlines proclaiming that the bride had run away, and suggesting all sorts of unpleasant things about her, he felt a secret exultation that she had been brave enough to do so. It was as if he had found that her spirit was as wise and beautiful as her face had been. His interest in the matter exceeded all common sense and he was annoyed and impatient with himself more than he cared to own. Never before had a face lured his thoughts like this one. He told himself that his business was getting on his nerves, and that as soon as he could be sure about one or two little matters that he hoped would fall into his hands to transact, he would take a few days off and run down to the sh.o.r.e.
Again and again the little white bride came across his vision and thoughts, and hindered the courteous but stinging phrases with which he had intended to illumine his letter. At last he gave it up and taking his hat went out in the keen November air for a walk to clear his brain.
This was James Ryan"s opportunity. It was almost twelve o"clock and no harm in calling the "forelady" in the cotton blouse department of the big factory. He swung to the telephone with alacrity.
"I want to speak with Miss Carson, please. Yes, Miss J. Carson. Is that Miss Carson? Oh, h.e.l.lo, Jane, is that you?"
"Yes, it is _Mister_ Ryan," answered Jane sweetly.
"Jane!"
"Well, didn"t you "Miss Carson" me?"
"Give it up, Jane. You win. Say, Jane!"
"Well, Jimmie?"
"That"s my girl, say how about that wedding veil? Been thinking any more about it?"
There was silence for a moment, then a conscious giggle, the full significance of which James Ryan was not in a position to figure out.
"Say, Jimmie, quit your kiddin"! You mustn"t say things like that over the "phone."