Kitabı oku: «The Girl from Sunset Ranch: or, Alone in a Great City», sayfa 11
CHAPTER XXII
IN THE SADDLE
The little old lady “tidied” her own room. She hopped about like a bird with the aid of the ebony crutch, and Helen and Miss Van Ramsden heard the “step – put” of her movements when they entered the first room.
“Come in, deary!” cried the dear old soul. “I was expecting you. Ah, whom have we here? Good-day to you, ma’am!”
“Nurse Boyle! don’t you remember me?” cried the visitor, going immediately to the old lady and kissing her on both cheeks.
“Bless us, now! How would I know ye?” cried the old woman. “Is it me old eyes I have set on ye for many a long year now?”
“And I blame myself for it, Nurse,” cried May Van Ramsden. “Don’t you remember little May – the Van Ramsdens’ May – who used to come to see you so often when she was about so-o high?” cried the girl, measuring the height of a five or six-year-old.
“A neighbor’s baby did come to see Old Mary now and then,” cried the nurse. “But you’re never May?”
“I am, Nurse.”
“And growed so tall and handsome? Well, well, well! It does bate all, so it does. Everybody grows up but Mary Boyle; don’t they?” and the old woman cackled out a sweet, high laugh, and sat down to “visit” with her callers.
The two girls had a very charming time with Mary Boyle. And May Van Ramsden promised to come again. When they left the old lady she said, earnestly, to Helen:
“And there are others that will be glad to come and see Nurse Boyle. When she was well and strong – before she had to use that crutch – she often appeared at our houses when there was trouble – serious trouble – especially with the babies or little children. And what Mary Boyle did not know about pulling young ones out of the mires of illness, wasn’t worth knowing. Why, I know a dozen boys and girls whose lives were probably saved by her. They shall be reminded of her existence. And – it shall be due to you, Little Cinderella!”
Helen smiled deprecatingly. “It will be due to your own kind heart, Miss Van Ramsden,” she returned. “I see that everybody in the city is not so busy with their own affairs that they cannot think of other people.”
The young lady kissed her again and said goodbye. But that did not end the matter – no, indeed! The news that Miss Van Ramsden had been taken to the topmost story of the Starkweather mansion – supposedly to Helen’s own room only – by the Western girl, dribbled through the servants to Belle Starkweather herself when she came home.
“Now, Pa! I won’t stand that common little thing being here any longer – no, I won’t! Why, she did that just on purpose to make folks talk – to make people believe that we abuse her. Of course, she told May that I sent her to the top story to sleep. You get rid of that girl, Pa, or I declare I’ll go away. I guess I can find somebody to take me in as long as you wish to keep Prince Morrell’s daughter here in my place.”
“Ahem! I – I must beg you to compose yourself, Belle – ”
“I won’t – and that’s flat!” declared his eldest daughter. “Either she goes; or I do.”
“Do let Belle go, Pa,” drawled Flossie. “She is getting too bossy, anyway. I don’t mind having Helen here. She is rather good fun. And May Van Ramsden came here particularly to see Helen.”
“That’s not so!” cried Belle, stamping her foot.
“It is. Maggie heard her say so. Maggie was coming up the stairs and heard May ask Helen to take her to her room. What could the poor girl do?”
“Ahem! Flossie – I am amazed at you – amazed at you!” gasped Mr. Starkweather. “What do you learn at school?”
“Goodness me! I couldn’t tell you,” returned the youngest of his daughters, carelessly. “It’s none of it any good, though, Pa. You might as well take me out.”
“I’ve told that girl to use the back stairs, and to keep out of the front of the house,” went on Belle, ignoring Flossie. “If she had not been hanging about the front of the house, May Van Ramsden would not have seen her – ”
“’Tain’t so!” snapped Flossie.
“Will you be still, minx?” demanded the older sister.
“I don’t care. Let’s give Helen a fair deal. I tell you, Pa, May said she came particularly to see Helen. Besides, Helen had been in Hortense’s room, and that is where May found her. Helen was brushing Hortense’s hair. Hortense told me so.”
“Ahem! I am astonished at you, Flossie. The fact remains that Helen is a source of trouble in the house. I really do wish I knew how to get rid of her.”
“You give me permission, Pa,” sneered Belle, “and I’ll get rid of her very quickly – you see!”
“No, no!” exclaimed the troubled father. “I – I cannot use the iron hand at present – not at present.”
“Humph!” exclaimed the shrewd Belle. “I’d like to know what you are afraid of, Pa?”
Mr. Starkweather tried to frown down his daughter, but was unsuccessful. He merely presented a picture of a very cowardly man trying to look brave. It wasn’t much of a picture.
So – as may be easily conceived – Helen was not met at dinner by her relatives in any conciliatory manner. Yet the girl from the West really wished she might make friends with Uncle Starkweather and her cousins.
“It must be that a part of the fault is with me,” she told herself, when she crept up to her room after a gloomy time in the dining-room. “If I had it in me to please them – to make them happier – surely they could not treat me as they do. Oh, dear, I wish I had learned better how to be popular.”
That night Helen felt about as bad as she had any time since she arrived in the great city. She was too disturbed to read. She lay in bed until the small hours of the morning, unable to sleep, and worrying over all her affairs, which seemed, since she had arrived in New York, to go altogether wrong.
She had not made an atom of progress in that investigation which she had hoped would bring to light the truth about the mystery which had sent her father and mother West – fugitives – before she was born. She had only succeeded in becoming thoroughly suspicious of her Uncle Starkweather and of Fenwick Grimes.
Nor had she made any advance in the discovery of the mysterious Allen Chesterton, the bookkeeper of her father’s old firm, who held, she believed, the key to the mystery. She did not know what step to take next. She did not know what to do. And there was nobody with whom she could consult – nobody in all this great city to whom she could go.
Never before had Helen felt so lonely as she did this night. She had money enough with her to pay somebody to help her dig back for facts regarding the disappearance of the money belonging to the old firm of Grimes & Morrell. But she did not know how to go about getting the help she needed.
Her only real confidante – Sadie Goronsky – would not know how to advise her in this emergency.
“I wish I had let Dud Stone give me his address. He said he was learning to be a lawyer,” thought Helen. “And just now, I s’pose, a lawyer is what I need most. But I wouldn’t know how to go about engaging a lawyer – not a good one.”
She awoke at her usual time next morning, and the depression of the night before was still with her. But when she jumped up she saw that it was no longer raining. The sky was overcast, but she could venture forth without running the risk of spoiling her new suit.
And right there a desperate determination came into Helen Morrell’s mind. She had learned that on the west side of Central Park there was a riding academy. She was hungry for an hour in the saddle. It seemed to her that a gallop would clear all the cobwebs away and make her feel like herself once more.
The house was still silent and dark. She took her riding habit out of the closet, made it up into a bundle, and crept downstairs with it under her arm. She escaped the watchful Lawdor for once, and got out by the area door before even the cook had crept, yawning, downstairs to begin her day’s work.
Helen, hurrying through the dark, dripping streets, found a little restaurant where she could get rolls and coffee on her way to the Columbus Circle riding academy. It was still early when the girl from Sunset Ranch reached her goal. Yes, a mount was to be had, and she could change her street clothes for her riding suit in the dressing-rooms.
The city – at least, that part of it around Central Park – was scarcely awake when Helen walked her mount out of the stable and into the park. The man in charge had given her to understand that there were few riders astir so early.
“You’ll have the bridle-path to yourself, Miss, going out,” he said.
Helen had picked up a little cap to wear, and astride the saddle, with her hair tied with a big bow of ribbon at the nape of her neck, she looked very pretty as the horse picked his way across the esplanade into the bridle-path. But there were few, as the stableman had said, to see her so early in the morning.
It did not rain, however. Indeed, there was a fresh breeze which, she saw, was tearing the low-hung clouds to shreds. And in the east a rosy spot in the fog announced the presence of the sun himself, ready to burst through the fleecy veil and smile once more upon the world.
The trees and brush dripped upon the fallen leaves. For days the park caretakers had been unable to rake up these, and they had become almost a solid pattern of carpeting for the lawns. And down here in the bridle-path, as she cantered along, their pungent odor, stirred by the hoofs of her mount, rose in her nostrils.
This wasn’t much like galloping over an open trail on a nervous little cow-pony. But it was both a bodily and mental relief for the outdoor girl who had been, for these past weeks, shut into a groove for which she was so badly fitted.
She saw nobody on horseback but a mounted policeman, who turned and trotted along beside her, and was pleasant and friendly. This pleased Helen; and especially was she pleased when she learned that he had been West and had “punched cows” himself. That had been some years ago, but he remembered the Link-A – now the Sunset – Ranch, although he had never worked for that outfit.
Helen’s heart expanded as she cantered along. The sun dispelled the mist and shone warm upon the path. The policeman left her, but now there were other riders abroad. She went far out of town, as directed by the officer, and found the ride beautiful. After all, there were some lovely spots in this great city, if one only knew where to find them.
She had engaged a strong horse with good wind; but she did not want to break him down. So she finally turned her face toward the city again and let the animal take its own pace home.
She had ridden down as far as 110th Street and had crossed over into the park once more, when she saw a couple of riders advancing toward her from the south. They were a young man and a girl, both well mounted, and Helen noted instantly that they handled their spirited horses with ease.
Indeed, she was so much interested in the mounts themselves, that she came near passing the two without a look at their faces. Suddenly she heard an exclamation from the young fellow, she looked up, and found herself gazing straight into the handsome face of Dudley Stone.
“For the love of heaven!” gasped that astonished young man. “It surely is Helen Morrell! Jess! See here! Here’s the very nicest girl who ever came out of Montana!”
Dud’s sister – Helen knew she must be his sister, for she had the same coloring as and a strong family resemblance to the budding lawyer – wheeled her horse and rode directly to Helen’s side.
“Oh, Miss Morrell!” she cried, putting out her gauntleted hand. “Is it really she, Dud? How wonderful!”
Helen shook hands rather timidly, for Miss Jessie Stone was torrential in her speech. There wasn’t a chance to “get a word in edgewise” when once she was started upon a subject that interested her.
“My goodness me!” she cried, still shaking Helen’s hand. “Is this really the girl who pulled you out of that tree, Dud? Who saved your life and took you on her pony to the big ranch? My, how romantic!
“And you really own a ranch, Miss Morrell? How nice that must be! And plenty of cattle on it – Why! you don’t mind the price of beef at all; do you? And what a clever girl you must be, too. Dud came back full of your praise, now I tell you – ”
“There, there!” cried Dud. “Hold on a bit, Jess, and let’s hear how Miss Morrell is – and what she is doing here in the big city, and all that.”
“Well, I declare, Dud! You take the words right out of my mouth,” said his sister, warmly. “I was just going to ask her that. And we’re going to the Casino for breakfast, Miss Morrell, and you must come with us. You’ve had your ride; haven’t you?”
“I – I’m just returning,” admitted Helen, rather breathless, if Jess was not.
“Come on, then!” cried the good-natured but talkative city girl. “Come, Dud, you ride ahead and engage a table and order something nice. I’m as ravenous as a wolf. Dear me, Miss Morrell, if you have been riding long you must be quite famished, too!”
“I had coffee and rolls early,” said Helen, as Dud spurred his horse away.
“Oh, what’s coffee and rolls? Nothing at all – nothing at all! After I’ve been jounced around on this saddle for an hour I feel as though I never had eaten. I don’t care much for riding myself, but Dud is crazy for it, and I come to keep him company. You must ride with us, Miss Morrell. How long are you going to stay in town? And to think of your having saved Dud’s life – Well! he’ll never get over talking about it.”
“He makes too much of the incident,” declared Helen, determined to get in a word. “I only lent him a rope and he saved himself.”
“No. You carried him on your pony to that ranch. Oh, I know it all by heart. He talks about it to everybody. Dud is so enthusiastic about the West. He is crazy to go back again – he wants to live there. I tell him I’ll go out and try it for a while, and if I find I can stand it, he can hang out his shingle in that cow-town – what do you call it?”
“Elberon?” suggested Helen.
“Yes – Elberon. Dud says there is a chance for another lawyer there. And he came back here and entered the offices of Larribee & Polk right away, so as to get working experience, and be entered at the bar all the sooner. But say!” exclaimed Jess, “I believe one reason why he is so eager to go back to the West is because you live there.”
“Oh, Miss Stone!”
“Do call me Jess. ‘Miss Stone’ is so stiff. And you and I are going to be the very best of friends.”
“I really hope so, Jess. But you must call me Helen, too,” said the girl from Sunset Ranch.
Jess leaned out from her saddle, putting the horses so close that the trappings rubbed, and kissed the Western girl resoundingly on the cheek.
“I just loved you!” said the warm-hearted creature, “when Dud first told me about you. But now that I see you in the flesh, I love you for your very own self! I hope you’ll love me, too, Helen Morrell – And you won’t mind if I talk a good deal?”
“Not in the least!” laughed Helen. “And I do love you already. I am so, so glad that you and Dud both like me,” she added, “for my cousins do not like me at all, and I have been very unhappy since coming to New York.”
“Here we are!” cried Jess, without noting closely what her new friend said. “And there is Dud waiting for us on the porch. Dear old Dud! Whatever should I have done if you hadn’t got him out of that tree-top, Helen?”
CHAPTER XXIII
MY LADY BOUNTIFUL
That was a wonderful breakfast at the Casino. Not that Helen ever remembered much about what she ate, although Dud had ordered choice fruit and heartier food that would have tempted the most jaded appetite instead of that of a healthy girl who had been riding horseback for two hours and a half.
But, it was so heartening to be with people at the table who “talked one’s own language.” The Stones and Helen chattered like a trio of young crows. Dud threatened to chloroform his sister so that he and Helen could get in a word or two during Jess’s lapse into unconsciousness; but finally that did not become necessary because of the talkative girl’s interest in a story that Helen related.
They had discussed many other topics before this subject was broached. And it was the real reason for Helen’s coming East to visit the Starkweathers. “Dud” was “in the way of being a lawyer,” as he had previously told her, and Helen had come to realize that it was a lawyer’s advice she needed more than anything else.
“Now, Jess, will you keep still long enough for me to listen to the story of my very first client?” demanded Dud, sternly, of his sister.
“Oh, I’ll stuff the napkin into my mouth! You can gag me! Your very first client, Dud! And it’s so interesting.”
“It is customary for clients to pay over a retainer; isn’t it?” queried Helen, her eyes dancing. “How much shall it be, Mr. Lawyer?” and she opened her purse.
There was the glint of a gold piece at the bottom of the bag. Dud flushed and reached out his hand for it.
“That five dollars, Miss Helen. Thank you. I shall never spend this coin,” declared Dud, earnestly. “And I shall take it to a jeweler’s and have it properly engraved.”
“What will you have put on it?” asked Helen, laughing.
He looked at her from under level brows, smiling yet quite serious.
“I shall have engraved on it ‘Snuggy, to Dud’ – if I may?” he said.
But Helen shook her head and although she still smiled, she said:
“You’d better wait a bit, Mr. Lawyer, and see if your advice brings about any happy conclusion of my trouble. But you can keep the gold piece, just the same, to remember me by.”
“As though I needed that reminder!” he cried.
Jess removed the corner of the napkin from between her pretty teeth. “Get busy, do!” she cried. “I’m dying to hear about this strange affair you say you have come East to straighten out, Helen.”
So the girl from Sunset Ranch told all her story. Everything her father had said to her upon the topic before his death, and all she suspected about Fenwick Grimes and Allen Chesterton – even to the attitude Uncle Starkweather took in the matter – she placed before Dud Stone.
He gave it grave attention. Helen was not afraid to talk plainly to him, and she held nothing back. But at the best, her story was somewhat disconnected and incomplete. She possessed very few details of the crime which had been committed. Mr. Morrell himself had been very hazy in his statements regarding the affair.
“What we want first,” declared Dud, impressively, “is to get the facts. Of course, at the time, the trouble must have made some stir. It got into the newspapers.”
“Oh, dear, yes,” said Helen. “And that is what Uncle Starkweather is afraid of. He fears it will get into the papers again if I make any stir about it, and then there will be a scandal.”
“With his name connected with it?”
“Yes.”
“He’s dreadfully timid for his own good name; isn’t he?” remarked Dud, sarcastically. “Well, first of all, I’ll get the date of the occurrence and then search the files of all the city papers. The reporters usually get such matters pretty straight. To misstate such business troubles is skating on the thin ice of libel, and newspapers are careful.
“Well, when we have all the facts before us – what people surmised, even, and how it looked to ‘the man on the street,’ as the saying is – then we’ll know better how to go ahead.
“Are you willing to leave the matter to me, Helen?”
“What did I give you a retainer for?” demanded the girl from Sunset Ranch, smiling.
“True,” he replied, his own eyes dancing; “but there is a saying among lawyers that the feminine client does not really come to a lawyer for advice; rather, she pays him to listen to her talk.”
“Isn’t that horrid of him?” cried Jess, unable to keep still any longer. “As though we girls talked any more than the men do. I should say not!”
But Helen agreed to let Dud govern her future course in trying to untangle the web of circumstance that had driven her father out of New York years before. As Dud said, somebody was guilty, and that somebody was the person they must find.
It encouraged Helen mightily to have someone talk this way about the matter. A solution of the problem seemed so imminent after she parted from the fledgling lawyer and his sister, that Helen determined to hasten to their conclusion certain plans she had made, before she returned to the West.
For Helen could not remain here. Her uncle’s home was not the refined household that dear dad had thought, in which she would be sheltered and aided in improving herself.
“I might as well take board at the Zoo and live in the bear’s den,” declared Helen, perhaps a little harsh in her criticism. “There are no civilizing influences in that house. I’d never get a particle of ‘culture’ there. I’d rather associate with Sing, and Jo-Rab, and the boys, and Hen Billings.”
Her experience in the great city had satisfied Helen that its life was not for her. Some things she had learned, it was true; but most of them were unpleasant things.
“I’d rather hire some lady to come out to Sunset and live with me and teach me how to act gracefully in society, and all that. There are a lot of ‘poor, but proud’ people who would be glad of the chance, I know.”
But on this day – after she had left her riding habit at a tailor’s to be brushed and pressed, and had made arrangements to make her changes there whenever she wished to ride in the morning – on this day Helen had something else to do beside thinking of her proper introduction to society. This was the first day it had been fit for her to go downtown since she and Sadie Goronsky had had their adventure with the old man whom Sadie called “Lurcher,” but whom Fenwick Grimes had called “Jones.”
Helen was deeply interested in the old man’s case, and if he could be helped in any proper way, she wanted to do it. Also, there was Sadie herself. Helen believed that the Russian girl, with her business ability and racial sharpness, could help herself and her family much more than she now was doing, if she had the right kind of a chance.
“And I am going to give her the chance,” Helen told herself, delightedly. “She has been, as unselfish and kind to me – a stranger to her and her people – as she could be. I am determined that Sadie Goronsky and her family shall always be glad that Sadie was kind to the ‘greenie’ who hunted for Uncle Starkweather’s house on Madison Street instead of Madison Avenue.”
After luncheon at the Starkweathers’ Helen started downtown with plenty of money in her purse. She rode to Madison Street and was but a few minutes in reaching the Finkelstein store. To her surprise the front of the building was covered with big signs reading “Bankrupt Sale! Prices Cut in Half!”
Sadie was not in sight. Indeed, the store was full of excited people hauling over old Jacob Finkelstein’s stock of goods, and no “puller-in” was needed to draw a crowd. The salespeople seemed to have their hands full.
Not seeing Sadie anywhere, Helen ventured to mount to the Goronsky flat. Mrs. Goronsky opened the door, recognized her visitor, and in shrill Yiddish and broken English bade her welcome.
“You gome py mein house to see mein Sarah? Sure! Gome in! Gome in! Sarah iss home to-day.”
“Why, see who’s here!” exclaimed Sadie, appearing with a partly-completed hat, of the very newest style, in her hand. “I thought the wet weather had drowned you out.”
“It kept me in,” said Helen, “for I had nothing fit to wear out in the rain.”
“Well, business was so poor that Jacob had to fail. And that always gives me a few days’ rest. I’m glad to get ’em, believe me!”
“Why – why, can a man fail more than once?” gasped Helen.
“He can in the clothing business,” responded Sadie, laughing, and leading the way into the tiny parlor. “I bet there was a crowd in there when you come by?”
“Yes, indeed,” agreed Helen.
“Sure! he’ll get rid of all the ‘stickers’ he’s got it in the shop, and when we open again next week for ordinary business, everything will be fresh and new.”
“Oh, then, you’re really not out of a job?” asked Helen, relieved for her friend’s sake.
“No. I’m all right. And you?”
“I came down particularly to see about that poor old man’s spectacles,” Helen said.
“Then you didn’t forget about him?”
“No, indeed. Did you see him? Has he got the prescription? Is it right about his eyes being the trouble?”
“Sure that’s what the matter is. And he’s dreadful poor, Helen. If he could see better he might find some work. He wore his eyes out, he told me, by writing in books. That’s a business!”
“Then he has the prescription.”
“Sure. I seen it. He’s always hoping he’d get enough money to have the glasses. That’s all he needs, the doctor told him. But they cost fourteen dollars.”
“He shall have them!” declared Helen.
“You don’t mean it, Helen?” cried the Russian girl. “You haven’t got that much money for him?”
“Yes, I have. Will you go around there with me? We’ll get the prescription and have it filled.”
“Wait a bit,” said Sadie. “I want to finish this hat. And lemme tell you – it’s right in style. What do you think?”
“How wonderfully clever you are!” cried the Western girl. “It looks as though it had just come out of a shop.”
“Sure it does. I could work in a hat shop. Only they wouldn’t pay me anything at first, and they wouldn’t let me trim. But I know a girl that ain’t a year older nor me what gets sixteen dollars a week trimming in a millinery store on Grand Street. O’ course, she ain’t the madame; she’s only assistant. But sixteen dollars is a good bunch of money to bring home on a Saturday night – believe me!”
“Is that what you’d like to do – keep a millinery shop?” asked Helen.
“Wouldn’t I – just?” gasped Sadie. “Why, Helen – I dream about it nights!”
Helen became suddenly interested. “Would a little shop pay, Sadie? Could you earn your living in a little shop of your own – say, right around here somewhere?”
“Huh! I’ve had me eye on a place for months. But it ain’t no use. You got to put up for the rent, and the wholesalers ain’t goin’ to let a girl like me have stock on credit. And there’s the fixtures – Aw, well, what’s the use? It’s only a dream.”
Helen was determined it should not remain “only a dream.” But she said nothing further.
