"Them are Mr. John and Mr. James, Madam"s two sons. They"s both of them dead now," said the butler. "At least, Mr. James is, I"m sure. He died two years ago. But you better come right up. Madam will be wondering."
She followed the old man up the velvet-shod stairs that gave back no sound from footfall, and pondered as she went. Then that was her father, that boy with the beautiful face and the heavy wavy hair tossed back from his forehead, and the haughty, imperious, don"t-care look. And here was where he had lived. Here amid all this luxury.
Like a flash came the quick contrast of the home in which he had died, and a great wave of reverence for her father rolled over her. From such a home and such surroundings it would not have been strange if he had grown weary of the rough life out West, and deserted his wife, who was beneath him in station. But he had not. He had stayed by her all the years. True, he had not been of much use to her, and much of the time had been but a burden and anxiety; but he had stayed and loved her--when he was sober. She forgave him his many trying ways, his faultfindings with her mother"s many little blunders--no wonder, when he came from this place.
The butler tapped on a door at the head of the stairs, and a maid swung it open.
"Why, you"re not the girl Mrs. Sands sent the other day," said a querulous voice from a ma.s.s of lace-ruffled pillows on the great bed.
"I am Elizabeth," said the girl, as if that were full explanation.
"Elizabeth? Elizabeth who? I don"t see why she sent another girl. Are you sure you will understand the directions? They"re very particular, for I want my frock ready for to-night without fail." The woman sat up, leaning on one elbow. Her lace nightgown and pale-blue silk dressing-sack fell away from a round white arm that did not look as if it belonged to a very old lady. Her gray hair was becomingly arranged, and she was extremely pretty, with small features. Elizabeth looked and marvelled. Like a flash came the vision of the other grandmother at the wash-tub. The contrast was startling.
"I am Elizabeth Bailey," said the girl quietly, as if she would break a piece of hard news gently. "My father was your son John."
"The idea!" said the new grandmother, and promptly fell back upon her pillows with her hand upon her heart. "John, John, my little John. No one has mentioned his name to me for years and years. He never writes to me."
She put up a lace-trimmed handkerchief, and sobbed.
"Father died five years ago," said Elizabeth.
"You wicked girl!" said the maid. "Can"t you see that Madam can"t bear such talk? Go right out of the room!" The maid rushed up with smelling-salts and a gla.s.s of water, and Elizabeth in distress came and stood by the bed.
"I"m sorry I made you feel bad, grandmother," she said when she saw that the fragile, childish creature on the bed was recovering somewhat.
"What right have you to call me that? Grandmother, indeed! I"m not so old as that. Besides, how do I know you belong to me? If John is dead, your mother better look after you. I"m sure I"m not responsible for you. It"s her business. She wheedled John away from his home, and carried him off to that awful West, and never let him write to me. She has done it all, and now she may bear the consequences. I suppose she has sent you here to beg, but she has made a mistake. I shall not have a thing to do with her of her children."
"Grandmother!" Elizabeth"s eyes flashed as they had done to the other grandmother a few hours before. "You must not talk so. I won"t hear it. I wouldn"t let Grandmother Brady talk about my father, and you can"t talk so about mother. She was my mother, and I loved her, and so did father love her; and she worked hard to keep him and take care of him when he drank years and years, and didn"t have any money to help her. Mother was only eighteen when she married father, and you ought not to blame her. She didn"t have a nice home like this. But she was good and dear, and now she is dead. Father and mother are both dead, and all the other children. A man killed my brother, and then as soon as he was buried he came and wanted me to go with him. He was an awful man, and I was afraid, and took my brother"s horse and ran away. I rode all this long way because I was afraid of that man, and I wanted to get to some of my own folks, who would love me, and let me work for them, and let me go to school and learn something. But I wish now I had stayed out there and died. I could have lain down in the sage-brush, and a wild beast would have killed me perhaps, and that would be a great deal better than this; for Grandmother Brady does not understand, and you do not want me; but in my Father"s house in heaven there are many mansions, and He went to prepare a place for me; so I guess I will go back to the desert, and perhaps He will send for me. Good-by, grandmother."
Then before the astonished woman in the bed could recover her senses from this remarkable speech Elizabeth turned and walked majestically from the room. She was slight and not very tall, but in the strength of her pride and purity she looked almost majestic to the awestruck maid and the bewildered woman.
Down the stairs walked the girl, feeling that all the wide world was against her. She would never again try to get a friend. She had not met a friend except in the desert. One man had been good to her, and she had let him go away; but he belonged to another woman, and she might not let him stay. There was just one thing to be thankful for. She had knowledge of her Father in heaven, and she knew what Christian Endeavor meant. She could take that with her out into the desert, and no one could take it from her. One wish she had, but maybe that was too much to hope for. If she could have had a Bible of her own! She had no money left. Nothing but her mother"s wedding-ring, the papers, and the envelope that had contained the money the man had given her when he left. She could not part with them, unless perhaps some one would take the ring and keep it until she could buy it back. But she would wait and hope.
She walked by the old butler with her hand on her pistol. She did not intend to let any one detain her now. He bowed pleasantly, and opened the door for her, however; and she marched down the steps to her horse. But just as she was about to mount and ride away into the unknown where no grandmother, be she Brady or Bailey, would ever be able to search her out, no matter how hard she tried, the door suddenly opened again, and there was a great commotion. The maid and the old butler both flew out, and laid hands upon her. She dropped the bridle, and seized her pistol, covering them both with its black, forbidding nozzle.
They stopped, trembling, but the butler bravely stood his ground. He did not know why he was to detain this extraordinary young person, but he felt sure something wrong. Probably she was a thief, and had taken some of Madam"s jewels. He could call the police. He opened his mouth to do so when the maid explained.
"Madam wants you to come back. She didn"t understand. She wants to see you and ask about her son. You must come, or you will kill her. She has heart trouble, and you must not excite her."
Elizabeth put the pistol back into its holster and, picking up the bridle again, fastened it in the ring, saying simply, "I will come back."
"What do you want?" she asked abruptly when she returned to the bedroom.
"Don"t you know that"s a disrespectful way to speak?" asked the woman querulously. "What did you have to get into a temper for, and go off like that without telling me anything about my son? Sit down, and tell me all about it."
"I"m sorry, grandmother," said Elizabeth, sitting down. "I thought you didn"t want me and I better go."
"Well, the next time wait until I send you. What kind of a thing have you got on, anyway? That"s a queer sort of a hat for a girl to wear. Take it off. You look like a rough boy with that on. You make me think of John when he had been out disobeying me."
Elizabeth took off the offending headgear, and revealed her smoothly parted, thick brown hair in its long braid down her back.
"Why, you"re rather a pretty girl if you were fixed up," said the old lady, sitting up with interest now. "I can"t remember your mother, but I don"t think she had fine features like that."
"They said I looked like father," said Elizabeth.
"Did they? Well, I believe it"s true," with satisfaction. "I couldn"t bear you if you looked like those lowdown ----"
"Grandmother!" Elizabeth stood up, and flashed her Bailey eyes.
"You needn"t "grandmother" me all the time," said the lady petulantly.
"But you look quite handsome when you say it. Take off that ill-fitting coat. It isn"t thick enough for winter, anyway. What in the world have you got round your waist? A belt? Why, that"s a man"s belt! And what have you got in it? Pistols? Horrors! Marie, take them away quick! I shall faint! I never could bear to be in a room with one. My husband used to have one on his closet shelf, and I never went near it, and always locked the room when he was out. You must put them out in the hall. I cannot breathe where pistols are. Now sit down and tell me all about it, how old you are, and how you got here."
Elizabeth surrendered her pistols with hesitation. She felt that she must obey her grandmother, but was not altogether certain whether it was safe for her to be weaponless until she was sure this was friendly ground.
At the demand she began back as far as she could remember, and told the story of her life, pathetically, simply, without a single claim to pity, yet so earnestly and vividly that the grandmother, lying with her eyes closed, forgot herself completely, and let the tears trickle unbidden and unheeded down her well-preserved cheeks.
When Elizabeth came to the graves in the moonlight, she gasped, and sobbed: "O, Johnny, Johnny, my little Johnny! Why did you always be such a bad, bad boy?" and when the ride in the desert was described, and the man from whom she fled, the grandmother held her breath, and said, "O, how fearful!" Her interest in the girl was growing, and kept at white heat during the whole of the story.
There was one part of her experience, however, that Elizabeth pa.s.sed over lightly, and that was the meeting with George Trescott Benedict.
Instinctively she felt that this experience would not find a sympathetic listener. She pa.s.sed it over by merely saying that she had met a kind gentleman from the East who was lost, and that they had ridden together for a few miles until they reached a town; and he had telegraphed to his friends, and gone on his way. She said nothing about the money he had lent to her, for she shrank from speaking about him more than was necessary.
She felt that her grandmother might feel as the old woman of the ranch had felt about their travelling together. She left it to be inferred that she might have had a little money with her from home. At least, the older woman asked no questions about how she secured provisions for the way.
When Elizabeth came to her Chicago experience, her grandmother clasped her hands as if a serpent had been mentioned, and said: "How degrading! You certainly would have been justified in shooting the whole company. I wonder such places are allowed to exist!" But Marie sat with large eyes of wonder, and retailed the story over again in the kitchen afterwards for the benefit of the cook and the butler, so that Elizabeth became henceforth a heroine among them.
Elizabeth pa.s.sed on to her Philadelphia experience, and found that here her grandmother was roused to blazing indignation, but the thing that roused her was the fact that a Bailey should serve behind a counter in a ten-cent Store. She lifted her hands, and uttered a moan of real pain, and went on at such a rate that the smelling-salts had to be brought into requisition again.
When Elizabeth told of her encounter with the manager in the cellar, the grandmother said: "How disgusting! The impertinent creature! He ought to be sued. I will consult the lawyer about the matter. What did you say his name was? Marie, write that down. And so, dear, you did quite right to come to me. I"ve been looking at you while you talked, and I believe you"ll be a pretty girl if you are fixed up. Marie, go to the telephone, and call up Blandeaux, and tell him to send up a hair-dresser at once. I want to see how Miss Elizabeth will look with her hair done low in one of those new coils. I believe it will be becoming. I should have tried it long ago myself; only it seems a trifle too youthful for hair that is beginning to turn gray."
Elizabeth watched her grandmother in wonder. Here truly was a new phase of woman. She did not care about great facts, but only about little things.
Her life was made up of the great pursuit of fashion, just like Lizzie"s.
Were people in cities all alike? No, for he, the one man she had met in the wilderness, had not seemed to care. Maybe, though, when he got back to the city he did care. She sighed and turned toward the new grandmother.
"Now I have told you everything, grandmother. Shall I go away? I wanted to go to school; but I see that it costs a great deal of money, and I don"t want to be a burden on any one. I came here, not to ask you to take me in, because I did not want to trouble you; but I thought before I went away I ought to see you once because--because you are my grandmother."
"I"ve never been a grandmother," said the little woman of the world reflectively, "but I don"t know but it would be rather nice. I"d like to make you into a pretty girl, and take you out into society. That would be something new to live for. I"m not very pretty myself any more, but I can see that you will be. Do you wear blue or pink? I used to wear pink myself, but I believe you could wear either when you get your complexion in shape. You"ve tanned it horribly, but it may come out all right. I think you"ll take. You say you want to go to school. Why, certainly, I suppose that will be necessary; living out in that barbarous, uncivilized region, of course you don"t know much. You seem to speak correctly, but John always was particular about his speech. He had a tutor when he was little who tripped him up every mistake he made. That was the only thing that tutor was good for; he was a linguist. We found out afterwards he was terribly wild, and drank. He did John more harm than good, Marie, I shall want Elizabeth to have the rooms next mine. Ring for Martha to see that everything is in order. Elizabeth, did you ever have your hands manicured?
You have a pretty-shaped hand. I"ll have the woman attend to it when she comes to shampoo your hair and put it up. Did you bring any clothes along?
Of course not. You couldn"t on horseback. I suppose you had your trunk sent by express. No trunk? No express? No railroad? How barbarous! How John must have suffered, poor fellow! He, so used to every luxury! Well, I don"t see that it was my fault. I gave him everything he wanted except his wife, and he took her without my leave. Poor fellow, poor fellow!"
Mrs. Bailey in due time sent Elizabeth off to the suite of rooms that she said were to be hers exclusively, and arose to bedeck herself for another day. Elizabeth was a new toy, and she antic.i.p.ated playing with her. It put new zest into a life that had grown monotonous.
Elizabeth, meanwhile, was surveying her quarters, and wondering what Lizzie would think if she could see her. According to orders, the coachman had taken Robin to the stable, and he was already rolling in all the luxuries of a horse of the aristocracy, and congratulating himself on the good taste of his mistress to select such a stopping-place. For his part he was now satisfied not to move further. This was better than the wilderness any day. Oats like these, and hay such as this, were not to be found on the plains.
Toward evening the grave butler, with many a deprecatory glance at the neighborhood, arrived at the door of Mrs. Brady, and delivered himself of the following message to that astonished lady, backed by her daughter and her granddaughter, with their ears stretched to the utmost to hear every syllable:
"Mrs. Merrill Wilton Bailey sends word that her granddaughter, Miss Elizabeth, has reached her home safely, and will remain with her. Miss Elizabeth will come sometime to see Mrs. Brady, and thank her for her kindness during her stay with her."
The butler bowed, and turned away with relief. His dignity and social standing had not been so taxed by the family demands in years. He was glad he might shake off the dust of Flora Street forever. He felt for the coachman. He would probably have to drive the young lady down here sometime, according to that message.