Kitabı oku: «The Girl from Sunset Ranch: or, Alone in a Great City», sayfa 13
CHAPTER XXVII
THE PARTY
Helen chanced that evening to be entering the area door just as Mr. Starkweather himself was mounting the steps of the mansion. Her uncle recognized the girl and scowled over the balustrade at her.
“Come to the den at once; I wish to speak to you Helen – Ahem!” he said in his most severe tones.
“Yes, sir,” responded the girl respectfully, and she passed up the back stairway while Mr. Starkweather went directly to his library. Therefore he did not chance to meet either of his daughters and so was not warned of what had occurred in the house that afternoon.
“Helen,” said Uncle Starkweather, viewing her with the same stern look when she approached his desk. “I must know how you have been using your time while outside of my house? Something has reached my ear which greatly – ahem! – displeases me.”
“Why – I – I – ” The girl was really at a loss what to say. She did not know what he was driving at and she doubted the advisability of telling Uncle Starkweather everything that she had done while here in the city as his guest.
“I was told this afternoon – not an hour ago – that you have been seen lurking about the most disreputable parts of the city. That you are a frequenter of low tenement houses; that you associate with foreigners and the most disgusting of beggars – ”
“I wish you would stop, Uncle,” said Helen, quickly, her face flushing now and her eyes sparkling. “Sadie Goronsky is a nice girl, and her family is respectable. And poor old Mr. Lurcher is only unfortunate and half-blind. He will not harm me.”
“Beggars! Yiddish shoestring pedlars! A girl like you! Where – ahem! —where did you ever get such low tastes, girl?”
“Don’t blame yourself, Uncle,” said Helen, with some bitterness. “I certainly did not learn to be kind to poor people from your example. And I am sure I have gained no harm from being with them once in a while – only good. To help them a little has helped me – I assure you!”
But Mr. Starkweather listened not at all to this. “Where did you find these low companions?” he demanded.
“I met Sadie the night I arrived here in the city. The taxicab driver carried me to Madison Street instead of Madison Avenue. Sadie was kind to me. As for old Mr. Lurcher, I saw him first in Mr. Grimes’s office.”
Uncle Starkweather suddenly lost his color and fell back in his chair. For a moment or two he seemed unable to speak at all. Then he stammered:
“In Fenwick Grimes’s office?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What – what was this – ahem! – this beggar doing there?”
“If he is a beggar, perhaps he was begging. At least, Mr. Grimes seemed very anxious to get rid of him, and gave him a dollar to go away.”
“And you followed him?” gasped Mr. Starkweather.
“No. I went to see Sadie, and it seems Mr. Lurcher lives right in that neighborhood. I found he needed spectacles and was half-blind and I – ”
“Tell me nothing more about it! Nothing more about it!” commanded her uncle, holding up a warning hand. “I will not – ahem! – listen. This has gone too far. I gave you shelter – an act of charity, girl! And you have abused my confidence by consorting with low company, and spending your time in a mean part of the town.”
“You are wrong, sir. I have done nothing of the kind,” said Helen, firmly, but growing angry herself, now. “My friends are decent people, and a poor part of the city does not necessarily mean a criminal part.”
“Hush! How dare you contradict me?” demanded her uncle. “You shall go home. You shall go back to the West at once! Ahem! At once. I could not assume the responsibility of your presence here in my house any longer.”
“Then I will find a position and support myself, Uncle Starkweather. I have told you I could do that before.”
“No, indeed!” exclaimed Mr. Starkweather, at once. “I will not allow it. You are not to be trusted in this city. I shall send you back to that place you came from – ahem! – Sunset Ranch, is it? That is the place for a girl like you.”
“But, Uncle – ”
“No more! I will listen to nothing else from you,” he declared, harshly. “I shall purchase your ticket through to-morrow, and the next day you must go. Ahem! Remember that I will be obeyed.”
Helen looked at him with tear-dimmed eyes for fully a minute. But he said no more and his stern countenance, as well as his unkind words and tone, repelled her. She put out her hand once, as though to speak, but he turned away, scornfully.
It was her last attempt to soften him toward her. He might then, had he not been so selfish and haughty, have made his peace with the girl and saved himself much trouble and misery in the end. But he ignored her, and Helen, crying softly, left the room and stole up to her own place in the attic.
She could not see anybody that evening, and so did not go down to dinner. Later, to her amazement, Maggie came to her door with a tray piled high with good things – a very elaborate repast, indeed. But Helen was too heartsick to eat much, although she did not refuse the attention – which she laid to the kindness of Lawdor, the butler.
But for once she was mistaken. The tray of food did not come from Lawdor. Nor was it the outward semblance of anybody’s kindness. The tray delivered at Helen’s door was the first result of a great fright!
At dinner the girls could not wait for their father to be seated before they began to tell him of the amazing thing that had been revealed to them that afternoon by Jessie Stone.
“Where’s Cousin Helen, Gregson?” asked Belle, before seating herself. “See that she is called. She may not have heard the gong.”
If Gregson’s face could display surprise, it displayed it then.
“Of course, dear Helen has returned; hasn’t she?” added Hortense.
“I’ll go up myself and see if she’s here,” Flossie suggested.
“Ahem!” said the surprised Mr. Starkweather.
“I listened sharply for her, but I did not hear her pass my door,” said Hortense.
“I must ask her to come back to that spare room on the lower floor,” sighed Belle. “She is too far away from the rest of the family.”
“Girls!” gasped Mr. Starkweather, at length finding speech.
“Oh, you needn’t explode, Pa!” ejaculated Belle. “We are aware of something about Helen that changes the complexion of affairs entirely.”
“What does this mean?” demanded Mr. Starkweather, blankly. “Something about Helen?”
“Yes, indeed, Pa,” said Flossie, spiritedly. “Who do you suppose owns that Sunset Ranch she talks about?”
“And who do you suppose is worth a quarter of a million dollars – more than you are worth, Pa, I declare?” cried Hortense.
“Girls!” exclaimed Belle. “That is very low. If we have made a mistake regarding Cousin Helen, of course it can be adjusted. But we need not be vulgar enough to say why we change toward her.”
Mr. Starkweather thumped upon the table with the handle of his knife.
“Girls!” he commanded. “I will have this explained. What do you mean?”
Out it came then – in a torrent. Three girls can do a great deal of talking in a few minutes – especially if they all talk at once.
But Mr. Starkweather got the gist of it. He understood what it all meant, and he realized what it meant to him, as well, better than his daughters could.
Prince Morrell, whom he had always considered a bit of a fool, and therefore had not even inquired about after he left for the West, had died a rich man. He had left this only daughter, who was an heiress to great wealth. And he, Willets Starkweather, had allowed the chance of a lifetime to slip through his fingers!
If he had only made inquiries about the girl and her circumstances! He might have done that when he learned that Mr. Morrell was dead. When Helen had told him her father wished her to be in the care of her mother’s relatives, Mr. Starkweather could have then taken warning and learned the girl’s true circumstances. He had not even accepted her confidences. Why, he might have been made the guardian of the girl, and handled all her fortune!
These thoughts and a thousand others raced through the scheming brain of the man. Could he correct his fault at this late date? If he had only known of this that his daughters had learned from Jess Stone, before he had taken Helen to task as he had that very evening!
Fenwick Grimes had telephoned to him at his office. Something Mr. Grimes had said – and he had not seen Mr. Grimes nor talked personally with him for years – had put Mr. Starkweather into a great fright. He had decided that the only safe place for Helen Morrell was back in the West – he supposed with the poor and ignorant people on the ranch where her father had worked.
Where Prince Morrell had worked! Why, if Morrell had owned Sunset Ranch, Helen was one of the wealthiest heiresses in the whole Western country. Mr. Starkweather had asked a few questions about Sunset Ranch of men who knew. But, as the owner had never given himself any publicity, the name of Morrell was never connected with it.
While the three girls chattered over the details of the story Mr. Starkweather merely played with his food, and sat staring into a corner of the room. He was trying to scheme his way out of the difficulty – the dangerous difficulty, indeed – in which he found himself.
So, his first move was characteristic. He sent the tray upstairs to Helen. But none of the family saw Helen again that night.
However, there was another caller. This was May Van Ramsden. She did not ask for Helen, however, but for Mr. Starkweather himself, and that gentleman came graciously into the room where May was sitting with the three much excited sisters.
Belle and Hortense and Flossie were bubbling over with the desire to ask Miss Van Ramsden if she knew that Helen was a rich girl and not a poor one. But there was no opportunity. The caller broached the reason for her visit at once, when she saw Mr. Starkweather.
“We are going to ask a great favor of you, sir,” she said, shaking hands. “And it does seem like a very great impudence on our part. But please remember that, as children, we were all very much attached to her. You see,” pursued Miss Van Ramsden, “there are the De Vorne girls, and Jo and Nat Paisley, and Adeline Schenk, and some of the Blutcher boys and girls – although the younger ones were born in Europe – and Sue Livingstone, and Crayton Ballou. Oh! there really is a score or more.”
“Ahem!” said Mr. Starkweather, not only solemnly, but reverently. These were names he worshipped. He could have refused such young people nothing – nothing! – and would have told Miss Van Ramsden so had what she said next not stricken him dumb for the time.
“You see, some of us have called on Nurse Boyle, and found her so bright and so delighted with our coming, that we want to give her a little tea-party to-morrow afternoon. It would be so delightful to have her greet the girls and boys who used to be such friends of hers in the time of Mr. Cornelius, right up there in those cunning rooms of hers.
“We always used to see her in the nursery suite, and there are the same furniture, and hangings, and pictures, and all. And Nurse Boyle herself is just the same – only a bit older – Ah! girls!” she added, turning suddenly to the three sisters, “you don’t know what it means to have been cared for, and rocked, and sung to, when you were ill, perhaps, by Mary Boyle! You missed a great deal in not having a Mary Boyle in your family.”
“Mary Boyle!” gasped Mr. Starkweather.
“Yes. Can we all come to see her to-morrow afternoon? I am sure if you tell Mrs. Olstrom, your housekeeper will attend to all the arrangements. Helen knows about it, and she’ll help pour the tea. Mary thinks there is nobody quite like Helen.”
These shocks were coming too fast for Mr. Starkweather. Had anything further occurred that evening to torment him it is doubtful if he would have got through it as gracefully as he did through this call. May Van Ramsden went away assured that no obstacle would be placed in the way of Mary Boyle’s party in the attic. But neither Mr. Starkweather, nor his three daughters, could really look straight into each other’s faces for the remainder of that evening. And they were all four remarkably silent, despite the exciting things that had so recently occurred to disturb them.
In the morning Helen got an invitation from Jess Stone to dinner that evening. She said “come just as you are”; but she did not tell Helen that she had innocently betrayed her true condition to the Starkweathers. Helen wrote a long reply and sent it by special messenger through old Lawdor, the butler. Then she prepared for the tea in Mary Boyle’s rooms.
At breakfast time Helen met the family for the first time since the explosion. Self-consciousness troubled the countenances and likewise the manner of Mr. Starkweather and his three daughters.
“Ahem! A very fine morning, Helen. Have you been out for your usual ramble, my dear?”
“How-do, Helen? Hope you’re feeling quite fit.”
“Dear me, Helen! How pretty your hair is, child. You must show me how you do it in that simple way.”
But Flossie was more honest. She only nodded to Helen at first. Then, when Gregson was out of the room, she jumped up, went around the table swiftly, and caught the Western girl about the neck.
“Helen! I’m just as ashamed of myself as I can be!” she cried, her tears flowing copiously. “I treated you so mean all the time, and you have been so very, very decent about helping me in my lessons. Forgive me; will you? Oh, please say you will!”
Helen kissed her warmly. “Nothing to forgive, Floss,” she said, a little bruskly, perhaps. “Don’t let’s speak about it.”
She merely bowed and said a word in reply to the others. Nor could Mr. Starkweather’s unctuous conversation arouse her interest.
“You have a part in the very worthy effort to liven up old Nurse Boyle, I understand?” said Mr. Starkweather, graciously. “Is there anything needed that I can have sent in, Helen?”
“Oh, no, sir. I am only helping Miss Van Ramsden,” Helen replied, timidly.
“I think May Van Ramsden should have told me of her plans,” said Belle, tossing her head.
“Or, me,” rejoined Hortense.
“Pah!” snapped Flossie. “None of us ever cared a straw for the old woman. Queer old thing. I thought she was more than a little cracked.”
“Flossie!” ejaculated Mr. Starkweather, angrily, “unless you can speak with more respect for – ahem! – for a faithful old servitor of the Starkweather family, I shall have to – ahem! – ask you to leave the table.”
“You won’t have to ask me – I’m going!” exclaimed Flossie, flirting out of her chair and picking up her books. “But I want to say one thing while I’m on my way,” observed the slangy youngster: “You’re all just as tiresome as you can be! Why don’t you own up that you’d never have given the old woman a thought if it wasn’t for May Van Ramsden and her friends – and Helen?” and she beat a retreat in quick order.
It was an unpleasant breakfast for Helen, and she retired from the table as soon as she could. She felt that this attitude of the Starkweathers toward her was really more unhappy than their former treatment. For she somehow suspected that this overpowering kindness was founded upon a sudden discovery that she was a rich girl instead of an object of charity. How well-founded this suspicion was she learned when she and Jess met.
Hortense brought her up two very elaborate frocks that forenoon, one for her to wear when she poured tea in Mary Boyle’s rooms, and the other for her to put on for the Stones’ dinner party.
“They will just about fit you. I’m a mite taller, but that won’t matter,” said the languid Hortense. “And really, Helen, I am just as sorry as I can be for the mean way you have been treated while you have been here. You have been so good-natured, too, in helping a chap. Hope you won’t hold it against me – and do wear the dresses, dear.”
“I will put on this one for the afternoon,” said Helen, smiling. “But I do not need the evening dress. I never wore one quite – quite like that, you see,” as she noted the straps over the shoulders and the low corsage. “But I thank you just the same.”
Later Belle said to her airily: “Dear Cousin Helen! I have spoken to Gustaf about taking you to the Stones’ in the limousine to-night. And he will call for you at any hour you say.”
“I cannot avail myself of that privilege, Belle,” responded Helen, quietly. “Jess will send for me at half-past six. She has already arranged to do so. Thank you.”
There was so much going on above stairs that day that Helen was able to escape most of the oppressive attentions of her cousins. Great baskets of flowers were sent in by some of the young people who remembered and loved Mary Boyle, and Helen helped to arrange them in the little old lady’s rooms.
Tea things for a score of people came in, too. And cookies and cakes from the caterer’s. At three o’clock, or a little after, the callers began to arrive. Belle, and Hortense, and Flossie received them in the reception hall, had them remove their cloaks below stairs, and otherwise tried to make it appear that the function was really of their own planning.
But nobody invited either of the Starkweather girls upstairs to Mary Boyle’s rooms. Perhaps it was an oversight. But it certainly did look as though they had been forgotten.
But the party on the attic floor was certainly a success. How pretty the little old lady looked, sitting in state with all the young and blooming faces about her! Here were growing up into womanhood and manhood (for some of the boys had not been ashamed to come) the children whom she had tended and played with and sung to.
And she sung to them again – verses of forgotten songs, lullabies she had crooned over some of their cradles when they were ill, little broken chants that had sent many of them, many times, to sleep.
Altogether it was a most enjoyable afternoon, and Nurse Boyle was promised that it should not be the last tea-party she would have. “If you are ’way up here in the top of the house, you shall no more be forgotten,” they told her.
Helen was the object next in interest to Nurse Boyle. May Van Ramsden had told about the Starkweathers’ little “Cinderella Cousin”; and although none of these girls and boys who had gathered knew the truth about Helen’s wealth and her position in life, they all treated her cordially.
When they trooped away and left the little old lady to lie down to recuperate after the excitement, Helen went to her own room, and remained closely shut up for the rest of the day.
At half-past six she came downstairs, bag in hand. She descended the servants’ staircase, told Mr. Lawdor that her trunk, packed and locked, was ready for the expressman when he came, and so stole out of the area door. She escaped any interview with her uncle, or with the girls. She could not bid them good-by, yet she was determined not to go back to Sunset Ranch on the morrow, nor would she remain another night under her uncle’s roof.
CHAPTER XXVIII
A STATEMENT OF FACT
Dud Stone had that very day seen the fixtures put into the little millinery store downtown, and it was ready for Sadie Goronsky to take charge; there being a fund of two hundred dollars to Sadie’s credit at a nearby bank, with which she could buy stock and pay her running expenses for the first few weeks.
Yet Sadie didn’t know a thing about it.
This last was the reason Helen went downtown early in the morning following the little dinner party at the Stones’. At that party Helen had met the uncle, aunt, and cousins of Dud and Jess Stone, with whom the orphaned brother and sister lived, and she had found them a most charming family.
Jess had invited Helen to bring her trunk and remain with her as long as she contemplated staying in New York, and this Helen was determined to do. Even if the Starkweathers would not let the expressman have her trunk, she was prepared to blossom out now in a butterfly outfit, and take the place in society that was rightfully hers.
But Helen hadn’t time to go shopping as yet. She was too eager to tell Sadie of her good fortune. Sadie was to be found – cold as the day was – pacing the walk before Finkelstein’s shop, on the sharp lookout for a customer. But there were a few flakes of snow in the air, the wind from the river was very raw, and it did seem to Helen as though the Russian girl was endangering her health.
“But what can poor folks do?” demanded Sadie, hoarsely, for she already had a heavy cold. “There is nothing for me to do inside the store. If I catch a customer I make somet’ings yet. Well, we must all work!”
“Some other kind of work would be easier,” suggested Helen.
“But not so much money, maybe.”
“If you only had your millinery store.”
“Don’t make me laugh! Me lip’s cracked,” grumbled Sadie. “Have a heart, Helen! I ain’t never goin’ to git a store like I showed you.”
Sadie was evidently short of hope on this cold day. Helen seized her arm. “Let’s go up and look at that store again,” she urged.
“Have a heart, I tell ye!” exclaimed Sadie Goronsky. “Whaddeyer wanter rub it in for?”
“Anyway, if we run it will help warm you.”
“All ri’. Come on,” said Sadie, with deep disgust, but she started on a heavy trot towards the block on which her heart had been set. And when they rounded the corner and came before the little shop window, Sadie stopped with a gasp of amazement.
Freshly varnished cases, and counter, and drawers, and all were in the store just as she had dreamed of them. There were mirrors, too, and in the window little forms on which to set up the trimmed hats and one big, pink-cheeked, dolly-looking wax bust, with a great mass of tow-colored hair piled high in the very latest mode, on which was to be set the very finest hat to be evolved in that particular East Side shop.
“Wha – wha – what – ”
“Let’s go in and look at it,” said Helen, eagerly, seizing her friend’s arm again.
“No, no, no!” gasped Sadie. “We can’t. It ain’t open. Oh, oh, oh! Somebody’s got my shop!”
Helen produced the key and opened the door. She fairly pushed the amazed Russian girl inside, and then closed the door. It was nice and warm. There were chairs. There was a half-length partition at the rear to separate the workroom from the showroom. And behind that partition were low sewing chairs to work in, and a long work-table.
Helen led the dazed Sadie into this rear room and sat her down in one of the chairs. Then she took one facing her and said:
“Now, you sit right there and make up in your mind the very prettiest hat for me that you can possibly invent. The first hat you trim in this store must be for me.”
“Helen! Helen!” cried Sadie, almost wildly. “You’re crazy yet – or is it me? I don’t know what you mean – ”
“Yes, you do, dear,” replied Helen, putting her arms about the other girl’s neck. “You were kind to me when I was lost in this city. You were kind to me just for nothing – when I appeared poor and forlorn and – and a greenie! Now, I am sorry that it seemed best for me to let your mistake stand. I did not tell my uncle and cousins either, that I was not as poor and helpless as I appeared.”
“And you’re rich?” shrieked Sadie. “You’re doing this yourself? This is your store?”
“No, it is your store,” returned Helen, firmly. “Of course, by and by, when you are established and are making lots of money, if you can ever afford to pay me back, you may do so. The money is yours without interest until that time.”
“I got to cry, Helen! I got to cry!” sobbed Sadie Goronsky. “If an angel right down out of heaven had done it like you done it, I’d worship him on my knees. And you’re a rich girl – not a poor one?”
Helen then told her all about herself, and all about her adventures since coming alone to New York. But after that Sadie wanted to keep telling her how thankful she was for the store, and that Helen must come home and see mommer, and that mommer must be brought to see the shop, too. So Helen ran away. She could not bear any more gratitude from Sadie. Her heart was too full.
She went over to poor Lurcher’s lodgings and climbed the dark stairs to his rooms. She had something to tell him, as well.
The purblind old man knew her step, although she had been there but a few times.
“Come in, Miss. Yours are angel’s visits, although they are more frequent than angel’s visits are supposed to be,” he cried.
“I do hope you are keeping off the street this weather, Mr. Lurcher,” she said. “If you can mend shoes I have heard of a place where they will send work to you, and call for it, and you can afford to have a warmer and lighter room than this one.”
“Ah, my dear Miss! that is good of you – that is good of you,” mumbled the old man. “And why you should take such an interest in me– ?”
“I feel sure that you would be interested in me, if I were poor and unhappy and you were rich and able to get about. Isn’t that so?” she said, laughing.
“Aye. Truly. And you are rich, my dear Miss?”
“Very rich, indeed. Father was one of the big cattle kings of Montana, and Prince Morrell’s Sunset Ranch, they tell me, is one of the great properties of the West.”
The old man turned to look at her with some eagerness. “That name?” he whispered. “Who did you say?”
“Why – my father, Prince Morrell.”
“Your father? Prince Morrell your father?” gasped the old man, and sat down suddenly, shaking in every limb.
The girl instantly became excited, too. She stepped quickly to him and laid her hand upon his shoulder.
“Did you ever know my father?” she asked him.
“I – I once knew a Mr. Prince Morrell.”
“Was it here in New York you knew him?”
“Yes. It was years ago. He – he was a good man. I – I had not heard of him for years. I was away from the city myself for ten years – in New Orleans. I went there suddenly to take the position of head bookkeeper in a shipping firm. Then the firm failed, my health was broken by the climate, and I returned here.”
Helen was staring at him in wonder and almost in alarm. She backed away from him a bit toward the door.
“Tell me your real name!” she cried. “It’s not Lurcher. Nor is it Jones. No! don’t tell me. I know – I know! You are Allen Chesterton, who was once bookkeeper for the firm of Grimes & Morrell!”
