CHAPTER VIII
“When hall bedrooms are alcoves in disguise”—so said the Royal Entertainer—“their inner walls are likely to be thin.”
This was true of the haven paid for in advance by Dolores Trent—true as thin. Often during that first night after the dénouement at Seff’s she had need to remind herself of the fact and of the sleep needs of the actor lady in the adjoining star-guest chamber. It was hard, though, not to cry, when she kept thinking of her father lying underneath his sod blanket out in the rain. Indeed, she did not sleep until after the rain had stopped.
Comfort came with oblivion. In her dreams somebody strong, young and ardent entered her door as though he had the right—the love-lad who, in a vision more real than the shameful reality of the store-stage scene, had crossed to her side from the stranger who had rescued her. Through the narrow space between the wall and her cot he slipped; sat looking at her from the single, stiff chair; at last leaned down and, ever so tenderly, kissed her on the lips.
A peremptory knock awakened her. In the coarse night-gown, which had felt like the embrace of a mother after those cobwebby things at Seff’s, she opened the door a crack upon the young blond hair and old brunette face of her landlady.
“Your week being up to-day, there’ll be no refund. Your trunk not yet having come, it won’t take you long to pack and go.”
“Go? Go where?” Dolores asked.
The reply, although characteristically and participially indirect, was clear. “Being raised decent myself and with God’s help running a decent house, it’s not for me to say more than that out you’re going, bag and baggage.”
Had some one from the lingerie shop acquainted the lady of the house with the news of the fiasco of yesterday—perhaps Vincent Seff himself? Did he mean to discredit her further—to hound her with advances or reproach?
The possibility determined her against any attempt at explanation or appeal. Beyond this decision she had not time to think until she found herself seated in a one-arm chair of a self-service restaurant. Beside her stood the alligator bag. In her palm lay the residue of her recent wealth, two quarters; a substantial surplus, however, as compared with the solitary nickel expended for the nectarine that had decided her engagement only one week before.
Coffee and crullers—a delicious breakfast when sweetened with the thought that she was released from her hideous bondage, the thought that she was free! With the weak brew came strong thoughts.
Why had she discounted her heritage of education? Why consider work in factories or shops when she spoke three languages and read in five? Surely Trevor Trent, acknowledged a brilliant translator by his severest critics, had not shunted his latter-day work upon her shoulders for naught! She would look higher for employment; would climb to a place where morals were disciplined by minds.
She was sipping from the thick cup the last thin drop. A chunky man, in rising from the next chair, dropped his newspaper on the floor. Of such figure that he might not recover it without inconvenience, he stepped upon and over it. Dolores picked it up and called to him. But either he was through with it, or did not wish to concede his lack of equipoise. Despite the waddle with which he went out the door, Dolores regarded him as a god—the paper his gift. She began to turn its pages in search of the “Help Wanted” columns.
As chanced, she did not read the close-print pleas. A picture on the last page distracted her—a bold, drawn-from-life sketch of herself which was its own indictment of the flimsy garb in which she was portrayed.
Dolores’ pleasure in the crullers receded into the distant past. Gone were the strong thoughts sipped from the weak brew. Of what use to look higher when placarded as so low? Any one might recognize her now. With her paper napkin she brushed away the mist that had gathered before her eyes and bent to the type which surrounded the cut.
Dolores Trent, subject of the sketch, was recommended to the reader’s interest as the principal in a lingerie shop scandal reported in detail in another column. That the incident was to be made the cause of a reform in the use of human merchandise was promised in a spirited interview with John Cabot, noted financier, who had preferred a charge of assault against Vincent Seff, the offending shopkeeper.
In the column referred to, the girl found a detailed report of the impromptu scene which had followed the playlet of “The Little Old Lady of Lorraine,” a paragraph of speculation upon her own disappearance and another which declared that the beautiful Mrs. John Cabot was confined to her home in a state of nervous collapse because of the notoriety brought on the family by her husband’s behavior.
Dolores crumpled the newspaper and threw it into the self-service trash basket. She had better cause to relinquish it than the over-fat god!
Out upon the street, she foresaw other relinquishments. Small use was there for her to seek employment until to-day’s news had passed into the discard of several yesterdays. Doubtless this story, rather than direct word from the Seff shop, had brought about the morning’s summary eviction. Well might she expect to remain roomless until a lapse of time had lessened chances of comparison between her face and the sketch. More harm than help had been worked by the volunteer protectorate of Mr. John Cabot, who unfortunately was of social importance or he would not have been given such space in the news. And that imagined kiss which had soothed her slumbers in the pristine dawn—why its false assurance of security?
Was it fancy or fact that people were staring at her? Probably she did look strange. Well-dressed young girls did not saunter, traveling bags in hand. Not noting in what direction, she hastened her steps. She must appear to be bound somewhere, as if to meet someone.
In truth, she was. She felt her arm seized in a strong grip; heard a voice in brogue reproving her.
“Battlin’ bantham, woman, where’d you get it so early in the mornin’—or was it, now, so late last night?”
In cross-cutting a juncture of car-tracks already congested, Dolores had tripped and been forcefully thrown into the arms of a policeman. As he escorted her toward the curb, she assured him that his first conclusion about her was wrong. She had been trying to think and hurry at the same time, that was all.
He was a fine specimen of the city’s choice, young, well set-up, weather-bronzed. He begged her pardon for his mistake. When he turned to leave her Dolores had a sudden sense of loss.
“If you please——”
She caught his arm and gazed up at him, her lips uncertain over what next to say.
He showed surprise at her touch and look, but leaned to her. And as he leaned, red color waved across his tan.
“Faith,” he said, “I’d hate to meet you goin’ home at night!”
At once Dolores regretted her impulse. Unless she wished to be further mistaken, however, she must continue.
“If you were a girl and needed work,” she asked, “how should you go about getting it?”
More slowly than it had come, the color receded from the young policeman’s face. With a deliberate movement, he lifted her hand off his arm.
“Miss, my baby’s not a year yet and her eyes are blue, but they’ve got something the look of your own.” He added the advice she had asked. “If I was a girl and a girl like you, sure I’d lock myself in my satchel until I got off Broadway. The satchel I’d check in some regular employment agency and there I’d stay until I got me job. There’s one in the next block, kept by an Irisher friend of mine who ain’t half as bad, believe me, as her near-French accent. Ask for Madame Marie Sheehan, née Mrs. Mary Shinn, and tell her Donovan O’Shay recommended you to her. Here, I’ll write it down.”
Upon a police pad whipped from beneath his uniform, he scribbled hurriedly; tore off the sheet; pressed it into her hand. With a kindly, “best o’ luck to you, miss,” he dived back into the traffic tide.
Dolores watched him disappear in the rush of it with admiration for more than his physique. She appreciated him more than she might have done two weeks ago. A thrill of pride tingled through her that the city, her wonderful New York, could choose so well.
Too bad, when she felt such confidence in him, that his name and the penciled slip were not the practical present aid he thought! To apply at a “regular” employment agency she would need a better reference than the too graphic one pressed upon her by the morning paper. The slip she placed carefully in her purse. “Née Mary Shinn” she would regard as to-morrow’s possibility, rather than the risk of to-day.
But she could and did follow other of his advices. She turned off the broad white way, proved to be so narrow and so dark; walked briskly eastward.
Perhaps it was the warning of the young Celt, whose girl-baby’s eyes had “something the look” of her own, that awoke in Dolores the desire to get back among the sort of people with whom she had lived. Soon she left the cross street and turned north along one of the small-numbered avenues.
Somehow she had ceased to feel the strangeness of her position; scarcely seemed thinking at all, except for a vague worry over why she was not worrying. A quite unreasonable sense that she would happen upon some recognizable sign-post to her immediate future possessed her. She became cheerful, as though some one she trusted had made her a promise of help.
Over the door of a substantial building of corner-lot dignity, she stopped to read this placard:
RESCUE HOME
CHURCH OF ALL MANKIND
Of neither church nor home had she ever heard, but surely she needed rescue as urgently as could any of mankind. She climbed the stone steps; rang the bell.
The door was opened by a negro boy. At her hesitant question he ushered her into a business-like office. A plain-faced girl, who looked to be about Dolores’ own age, sat behind a typewriter, busy with a stick of chewing gum and a newspaper. Through an inner door appeared a woman who introduced herself as the matron of the home.
Dolores ended her story with the death of her father and her consequent need of a place to stay until she could find employment. She did not notice that the stenographer had left them until that industriously-chewing young person beckoned to the matron from the private office.
“Just wait a few minutes,” said the older woman as she rose. “I have an idea we can help you.”
Only the buzz of their low-voiced conversation carried through the half-closed door. When the matron returned she carried in her hand a copy of the same newspaper over which the too-fat god of the restaurant had not dared risk his dignity. She peered over her glasses at the applicant, then through them at the last-page illustration.
“You are quick at faces, Gracie,” she said to her aide. To Dolores: “I am sorry, Miss—ah—Trent, but I doubt your sincerity in asking our sort of help. Already you have violated our first rule—absolute frankness. This journal explains better than you have done why you need cover in a respectable place. I’m afraid you would not feel at home here.”
“Not in them clothes,” contributed Gracie.
“My dear!” Then again to Dolores: “We do not wish to seem unresponsive to the needs of any unfortunate, but there is a great deal behind my decision. Good morning, Miss Trent.”
“Good morning.”
Dolores accepted the matron’s decision quietly, as she had the previous rebuffs of her life, and started toward the door.
“Are you leaving, my child?”
The voice was strong yet mellifluous. Dolores saw surveying them from the dark background of the hall a man in clerical clothes. He looked to be middle-aged; was of medium height, medium weight, medium coloring. From him, however, flowed an extraordinary personality. No smile showed beneath his brown mustache or in his agate-colored eyes, yet he beamed with beneficence.
“Yes, Dr. Willard,” the matron answered. “The young lady deliberately deceived me as to her identity. Possibly you have not run through the morning papers. This picture will tell you more quickly than I can explain why I——”
Dolores’ impulse was to continue into the hall, but she as well as the matron stopped at the clergyman’s gesture.
“I haven’t seen this one, no,” he admitted, studying the sketch interestedly, then the girl herself. “There are photographs of her, however, in three of the other papers. She is sketchable—very sketchable.”
“Knowing how the home has been imposed upon in the past, you will, I am sure, approve my decision,” the matron continued in her calm, competent way. “With so many in it whom we hope to influence to high standards, fair-play forbids that we allow it to be made a free hotel for the convenience of a class who make sport of its object. One bad example spoils a dozen good. I feel very strongly on this subject, doctor.”
“Yes, I know. You always feel strongly.”
No sarcasm showed in his voice or look. His rebuke was the more telling because so quietly put.
“I shall not interfere with your decision in this case so far as concerns the Home. But as pastor of the Church of All Mankind, I do not feel that I should permit generalities to affect my personal interest in cases. Surely ‘all mankind’ includes girlhood, the future of the Nation. Come with me, young lady. I’ll see what we can do for you.”
All within five minutes, Dolores found herself ushered into the private office of the autocrat of the institution whose doors had been closing upon her.
That there was a crack in her cup of content had come to be a belief of Dolores Trent. From her earliest remembrance there always had seemed to be more or less of seepage. Nevertheless, as protégé of Dr. Alexander Willard—his pet charity, he called her—she felt that the waste should cease.
The Church of All Mankind was a granite pile which did proud the outward religious show of its parishioners. From a height it returned serenely the troubled gaze of the Hudson. Its lawns suggested that each blade of grass was especially endowed. Behind the auditorium, with its wide-welcome doors, arched memorial windows and statued niches for the more generous benefactors, had been erected a two-story, utilitarian annex. Of the same stone and general architectural lines as the church proper, this contained, in addition to lecture, board and office rooms, the pastor’s study.
Here Dolores had been installed on the day of her “rescue” from the East Side home which ranked first among the charities of All Mankind. Here she soon had learned to manipulate a typewriter with sufficient speed to take letters from dictation and prepare large-type pulpit copies of the sensational sermons for which Dr. Willard was widely known. Here, in brief, she had mastered the preliminaries of a secretaryship.
Despite frequent praise of her aptitude, her grasp of English and a natural facility in the creation of oratorical effects, she somehow could not cease to regard her employment as providential and the reverend doctor as her personal Providence. “The lower they sink, the higher we lift them”—that had been his comment on refusing to hear her attempted explanation of the shop scandal. Neither would he recognize any connection between his initiative in her behalf and the fact that the John Cabots were hereditary members of his congregation.
The rescue matron’s bigotry he had deplored as “a pinch” in a nature usually broad. To err was human, he reported himself as having told her, but she must not be human in the same way again. To his wider vision, the Home had been established for just such as Dolores Trent. He had the girl to thank, not she him, for the chance to prove his philanthropy.
Provided with the very sort of work for which she was best fitted and housed comfortably in the apartment of one of those humbler parishioners always attached to rich churches, she realized one mid-morning, less than a month after the Seff debacle, that she still was in a state of discontent. Alone in the study, she paused in her copying to take herself to task.
Why be so unappreciative as not to be happy? Her immediate predecessor, for whom she had felt inclined to be sorry, had lost the position because, as Dr. Willard explained, she wasn’t appreciative.
The only manifest reason for her state of mind lay in the stuffed animals and birds, slain by the distinguished clergyman on his hunting trips, with which the room was given individuality. Over the fireplace was hung a magnificently antlered moose head. A glass-eyed doe, a pair of stuffed foxes and lesser game stood about in natural attitudes. From the ceiling various birds strove on wires, as though in flight. Particularly lifelike was a fine specimen of lynx, posed ready to spring just within the door.
Although the new secretary had heard many compliments paid this trophy collection and had read her employer referred to as “Dr. Nimrod” and “The Hunting Parson,” she could not admire in him this passion for the chase. The very naturalness of the poor, pretty creatures made her deplore their cut-short lives.
Often she found herself imagining the one-time fleetness of the doe or the swish of the wind-spread wings of the golden eagle, wired in an attitude of flying, pitiable because never—never would he fly again. A teasing explanation of the lynx’s crouch made by the doctor to a woman parishioner sounded tame beside the ferocity which the taxidermist had stuffed into the specimen.
“I keep the big cat by the door to startle my visiting ladies. He gives them a sensation, hurries their blood, makes them natural.”
Slavery to such a mission did seem hard on the lynx after the free life he must have led to achieve his immense size. Dolores, yielding to her fanciful mood, crossed the room and offered him a bite from her paper-bag lunch. Crouched beside him, her arm around his neck—So the minister found her when he brisked in for a belated inspection of the morning mail.
He gave her an indulgent smile as she sprang to her feet, but contributed no remark to her embarrassment.
She had finished taking the daily grist of replies. Dr. Willard was sitting in his chair, his feet on the hassock that stood always before it, looking at her in a way he had to which she could not grow accustomed. Probably he was not thinking of her at all—was mentally selecting the task of next importance. Yet she had grown more than usually restive under his agate-eyed, considering gaze when the beautifully covered top-tones of a soprano voice floated to them from the floor above.
“Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom.
Lead thou me on....”
“Ah!” Dr. Willard repeated his smile. “The members of the music committee are having their innings.”
“Their innings, doctor?”
“They are holding try-outs for a new soprano. I expect they’ll have difficulty finding one to suit. You like that floating quality? It is sort of seraphic. But, dear me, there are so many requirements other than the voice to fill this position, which is probably the highest-paid for a church soloist in Greater New York. The committee has heard this young woman several times and all agree with me except Deacon Brill. He’s the only thorn in my flesh on the board.”
“He does seem to feel a natural antipathy toward you,” Dolores sympathized.
“Very natural.” Again that peculiarly indulgent smile. “As he is the central pillar of the church, I try not to collide with him. You see, he has taken this singer—a good-looking girl in addition to her vocal charms—out to dinner. He says she won’t do.”
“Won’t do—and because he took her out to dinner?”
Before Dr. Willard could explain, his private telephone rang.
“You at last, my child!” he answered close to the mouthpiece. “So, he’s broken out again? I am disappointed.... These attacks must be curbed in some way.... Always here when you need my advice.... Hum-m.... The sooner the better.”
On hanging up the receiver, he turned with his invariable kindness to Dolores. “It is time you take another of those walks along the Drive that bring the roses into your cheeks. I have an important conference. Stay out in the air an hour or more.”
The girl put on her hat and coat. Although she suspected that these absences were not suggested entirely on her account, she was grateful for the half of a thought which made them serve two purposes. As one way of showing her appreciation, she tried always to time her strolls to his convenience rather than her own—to return not too late for the performance of her duties, nor soon enough to interrupt the “conferences” continually held with handsomely gowned women of the congregation. Never did she reënter the study until the limousine or touring car which had brought the visitor of the hour had purred away from the side door.
To-day she found the parkway paths delightful. A tinge of winter in the air showed in the white breath of the river craft scudding along against the tide. They always seemed a moral to Dolores, those boats scudding along against the tide.
A thought of the work piled on her desk cut her walk to a scant hour. To her disappointment a gray town-car stood at the annex curb. Inside she strolled up the corridors, wondering where she should wait. Around a turn she came upon Mr. Brill, the over-fleshed, over-moneyed and over-old “thorn” in Dr. Willard’s flesh. Evidently the deacon was taking a respite from the choir trial to enjoy a cigar. As he had been most affable on the several occasions when she had met him in the pastor’s study, Dolores greeted him pleasantly.
“Caught me, didn’t you, Miss Trent?” he returned, a bad-boy grin slinking up his baggy cheeks. “You won’t tell on a poor addict who prefers Lady Nicotine to some lady sopranos?”
“Would that be anything to tell, Mr. Brill? Dr. Willard fairly clouds the study. I don’t see any harm in smoking.”
“I suppose you don’t see harm in anything Dr. Willard does?” Although the “central pillar” shook with mirth, his eyes strained at her through the double-lens glasses fastened with a black ribbon to his lapel. “Wouldn’t you, now, join me in a puff or two or three?”
“No, sir. No, thank you,” said Dolores.
“Don’t be silly. You just said you see no harm in it. Everybody smokes nowadays, the women as much as the men.”
“I know, Dr. Brill, but——”
“But if you have scruples, I’ll be only too glad to swear that I won’t tell. Come, we’ll have a little social puff and chat.”
Dolores tried to be good-natured, even when he gripped her arm and propelled her into one of the small committee rooms. When, however, he took from a gold case a slender, perfumed cigarette, lighted it and essayed to place it between her lips, resentment moved her.
“Really, Mr. Brill, I never have smoked and I don’t care to begin now. I—I must be getting back to my work.”
As she started from the room he lunged across a table and caught her.
“But I am here to show you how. One lifts the terrible thing in the fingers, so——”
His pudgy left arm caught hers. The smaller fingers of his dimpled right hand pressed up her chin. Thumb and forefinger sought to force between her set teeth the lip-wet smoke. When she realized that his foot was trying to push shut the door, an emotion new to Dolores suddenly controlled her.
“I don’t wish to smoke, I tell you. I don’t wish to be shown.”
With the indignant words she beat him upon the face and chest until he fell back gasping.
“Aha, a wild-cat is Nimrod’s latest trophy—a live one, at that!”
Dolores remembered his chuckled comment after she had forced back the door and rushed from the committee room. Down the corridor and around a turn to the study she ran without one backward glance.
Beside the couchant lynx she stopped, startled as looked the couple she had interrupted. Within a scant foot of each other stood Dr. Willard and a woman whom, somewhere, she had seen before.
“I beg your pardon, but I——”
Dolores’s apology stumbled as the visitor turned directly toward her. An exquisite creature she was, slender in her close-wrapped blue velvet, a haloesque effect created around her silver-gold hair by the sunlight shafting from a high window. Her blue, plumed hat lay upon a nearby chair.
Dr. Willard raised a calming hand.
“My child!”
The emphasis laid on the familiar words as addressed to the girl gave them an unfamiliar ring.
Then: “Mrs. Cabot, this is my new secretary, Miss Trent.”
Dolores’ response to the introduction was automatic. She felt confused, distressed. What an evil chance to have cut short a clergyman’s advices to the great lady reported to have been prostrated already by notoriety suffered on her account! A rude return it seemed to the husband who had befriended her.