And his attentions did not stop with words. Flowers, even edibles, were continuously found against her door, his card among them. The situation somehow recalled to her the queer gentleman in shorts who threw vegetables over Mrs. Nickleby"s garden wall. Mrs. De Peyster felt outraged; she fumed; yet she dared not be outspokenly resentful.
She had at first no inkling of the meaning of these attentions. It was Matilda who suggested the dismaying possibility.
"Don"t you think, ma"am, he"s trying to make love to you?"
"Make love to me!" rising in horror from one of Mrs. Gilbert"s veteran "easy"-chairs.
"I"m sure it"s that, ma"am," said the troubled Matilda.
"Matilda! Of all the effrontery!"
"Indeed, it is an insult to you, ma"am. But that may not be the worst of it. For if he really falls in love with you, he may try to follow you when you get ready to leave."
"Matilda!" gasped Mrs. De Peyster.
Thereafter, whenever he tried to speak to her in the hallways she shrank from him in both fear and indignation. But her rebuffs did not lessen by one ray the smiling amicability of his bland countenance He tried to become confidential, tried to press toward intimacy; one evening he even had the unbelievable audacity to ask if he might call upon her! She flamed with the desire to destroy him with a look, a word; Mrs. De Peyster knew well how thus to snuff out presuming upstarts. But caution warned her that she dared not unloose her powers. So she merely turned and fled, choking.
But the reverend gentleman"s unperturbed overtures continued.
Mrs. De Peyster and Matilda did not speak of money at first; but it was constantly in both their minds as a problem of foremost importance. Their failure to buy fresh outfits, as they had told Mrs.
Gilbert they intended doing, thus supplying "baggage" that would be security for their board, caused Mrs. Gilbert to regard them with hostile suspicion. Matilda saw eviction in their landlady"s penciled eyes, and without a word as to her intention to Mrs. De Peyster, she slipped out on the third day, returned minus her two rings, and handed Mrs. Gilbert ten dollars.
They were secure to the week"s end. After that--?
Fitfully Mrs. De Peyster pondered this matter of finances. She had money so near, yet utterly unreachable. Her house was filled with negotiable wealth, but she dared not go near it. Judge Harvey would secure her money gladly; but if the previous Friday she could not accept his aid, then a thousand times less could she accept it now. To ask his aid would be to reveal, not alone her presence in America, but the series of undignified experiences which had involved her deeper and deeper. That humiliation was unthinkable.
But on Thursday, locked in their room, they spoke of the matter openly.
"Please, ma"am," said Matilda, who had been maturing a plan, "you might make out a check to me, dated last week, before you sailed, and I could get it cashed. They"d think it was for back wages."
"I told you last Friday, when everything happened, that I had drawn out my balance."
"But your bank won"t mind your overdrawing for a hundred or two,"
urged Matilda.
"That," said Mrs. De Peyster with an air of n.o.ble principle, "is a thing I will not do."
Matilda knew nothing of the secret of Mrs. De Peyster"s exhausted credit at her bank.
"My own money," Matilda remarked plaintively, "is all in a savings bank. I have to give thirty days" notice before I can draw a penny."
There was a brief silence. Matilda"s gaze, which had several times wandered to a point a few inches below Mrs. De Peyster"s throat, now fixed themselves upon this spot. She spoke hesitantly.
"There"s your pearl pendant you forgot and kept on when you put on my dress to go out riding with William." It was not one of the world"s famous jewels; yet was of sufficient importance to be known, in a limited circle, as "The De Peyster Pearl." "I know the chain wouldn"t bring much; but you could raise a lot on the pearl from a p.a.w.nbroker."
Mrs. De Peyster tried to look shocked. "What! I take my pearl to a p.a.w.nbroker!"
"Of course, I wouldn"t expect you to go to a p.a.w.nshop, ma"am," Matilda apologized. "I"d take it."
Mrs. De Peyster had a moment"s picture of Matilda"s laying the pearl before a p.a.w.nbroker and asking for a fraction of its worth, a mere thousand or two; and of the hard-eyed usurer glancing at it, announcing that the pearl was spoof, and offering fifty cents upon it.
"Matilda, you should know that I would not part with such an heirloom," she said rebukingly.
"But, ma"am, in a crisis like this--"
"That will do, Matilda!"
Matilda said no more about the pearl then. She went to her bank and gave due notice of her desire to withdraw her funds. That, however, was provision merely for the next month and thereafter. It did not help to-day.
But all the rest of that day, and all of the following, Mrs. De Peyster felt Matilda"s eyes, aggrieved, bitterly resentful, upon the spot where beneath her black housekeeper"s dress hung the pearl she was unwilling to p.a.w.n to save them.
It was most uncomfortable.
CHAPTER XI
THE REVEREND MR. PYECROFT
The next evening, Friday, as they left the dining-room, draped with the heavy odor of a dark, mysterious viand which Matilda in a whisper had informed Mrs. De Peyster to be pot-roast, Mrs. Gilbert stopped them on the stairs. In her most casual, superior tone, she notified Mrs. De Peyster that she would thank them for another week"s pay in advance the following day, or their room.
Here was a crisis that had to be faced at once. Up in their room they discussed finance, going over and over their predicament, for two hours. There seemed no practical solution.
A heavy rain had begun to fall. The night was hot, close. The unaccustomed high collar of Matilda"s dress had seemed suffocating to Mrs. De Peyster, and she had loosened it, and also she had taken off the pearl pendant which had chafed her beneath the warm, heavy cloth.
The pearl and its delicate chain of platinum were now lying on their center-table.
Several times Matilda"s eye had gone furtively toward the pendant.
"I don"t see why," she at length said doggedly, "you shouldn"t let me p.a.w.n that pearl."
"I believe I have requested you not to refer to this again." Mrs. De Peyster"s tone was stiff.
Matilda"s face showed stubborn bitterness. But the habit of obedience was too old and strong for her to speak further.
There was another silence. Both sat in desperate thought. Suddenly Mrs. De Peyster looked up. "Matilda, I think I have it."
"What is it, ma"am?"--with faintly reviving hope.
"You have the keys to my house. You slip back there to-night, find my purse, or bring something that you might sell."
Matilda slumped down, aghast.
"It"s perfectly simple," Mrs. De Peyster rea.s.sured her. "We should have thought of it at first."
"But, ma"am!" quaveringly protested Matilda. "Suppose a policeman should see me! They watch those closed houses. And suppose--suppose he should shoot!"
"Nonsense, Matilda! No one will see you if you are careful."