LAURIE MEETS MISS MAYO
Laurie thought much that day about the girl in the mirror, and he was again home at eleven that night, to the wonder of Mr. Bangs, who freely expressed his surprise.
"Something pleasant been coming your way?" he tactfully asked.
Laurie evaded the question, but he felt that something definitely pleasant had come his way. This something was a new interest, and he had needed a new interest very much. He hoped he would dream of the girl that night, but as he and Bangs unwisely consumed a Welsh rabbit before they went to bed, he dreamed instead of something highly unpleasant, and was glad to be awakened by the clear sunlight of a brilliant January day.
After breakfast he strolled across the square into the somber hall of the studio building on its southwest corner. The hall was empty, but he found and rang a bell at the entrance of a dingy elevator shaft. The elevator descended without haste. When it had reached the floor, the colored youth in charge of it inhospitably filled its doorway and regarded the visitor with indifference. This young man was easy to look at, but he was no one he knew.
Laurie handed him a dollar and the youth's expression changed, first to one of surprise, then to the tolerance of a man who is wise and is willing to share his wisdom. The visitor went at once to the point of his visit.
"A young lady lives here," he began. "She is very pretty, and she has reddish hair and brown eyes. She has a studio in one of the upper floors, at the front of the house. What's her name?"
The boy's face showed that he had instantly recognized the description, but he pondered dramatically.
"Dat young lady?" he then said. "Dat young lady mus' be Miss Mayo, in Twenty-nine, on de top flo'. She jes' moved in here las' Tuesday."
"Where does she come from, and what does she do?"
The boy hesitated. What did all this mean? And was he giving up too much for a dollar? Laurie grinned at him understandingly.
"I don't know her," he admitted, "and I don't expect to. I'd like to know something about her—that's all."
The youth nodded. He had the air of accepting an apology.
"I reckon she come fum some fur'n place. But I dunno what she do," he reluctantly admitted. "Mebbe she ain't doin' nothin' yit. She's home mos' de time. She don' go out hardly 'tall. Seems like she don' know many folks."
He seemed about to say more, but stopped. For a moment he obviously hesitated, then blurted out what he had in mind.
"One t'ing got me guessin'," he muttered doubtfully. "Dat young lady, she don' seem t' eat nothin'!"
"What do you mean?" Laurie stared at him.
The boy shuffled his feet. He was on uncertain ground.
"Why, jes' what I said," he muttered, defensively. "Folkses here either eats in or dey eats out. Ef dey eats in, dey has stuff sent in—rolls an' eggs an' milk and' stuff like dat. Ef dey eats out, dey goes out, reg'lar, to meals. But Miss Mayo she don' seem to eat in or out. Nothin' comes in, an' she don' go out 'nough to eat reg'lar. I bin studyin' 'bout it consider'ble," he ended; and he looked unmistakably relieved, as if he had passed on to another a burden that was too heavy to carry alone.
Laurie hesitated. The situation was presenting a new angle and a wholly unexpected one. It began to look as if he had come on a sentimental errand and had stumbled on a tragedy. Certainly he had blundered into the private affairs of a lady, and was even discussing these affairs with an employee in the building where she lived. That thought was unpleasant. Yet the boy's interest was clearly friendly, and the visitor himself had invited revelations about the new lodger. Still, not such revelations as these! He frankly did not know what to make of them or how to act.
There was a chance that the boy might be all wrong in his inferences, although this chance, Laurie mentally admitted, was slight. He knew the shrewdness of this youth's type, the precocious knowledge of human nature that often accompanies such training and environment as he had had. Probably he suspected even more than he had revealed. Something must be done.
Laurie drew a bill from his pocket
"How soon can you leave the elevator?" he asked.
"'Bout one o'clock."
"All right. Now here's what I want you to do. Take this money, go over to the Clarence restaurant, and buy a good lunch for that lady. Get some hot chicken or chops, buttered rolls, vegetables, and a bottle of milk. Have it packed nicely in a box. Have them put in some fresh eggs and extra rolls and butter for her breakfast. Deliver the box at her door as if it came from some one outside. Do that and keep the change. Understand?"
"Yaas, sah!" The boy's eyes and teeth were shining.
"All right. Go to it. I'll drop in later this afternoon for your report."
Laurie turned and walked away. Even yet the experience did not seem real. It was probably all based on some foolish notion of the youth's; and yet he dared not assume that it was a foolish notion. He had the dramatist's distaste for drama anywhere except in its legitimate place, on the stage; but he admitted that sometimes it did occur in life. This might be one of those rare occasions.
Whatever it was, it haunted him. He lunched with Bangs that day, and was so silent that Bangs was moved to comment.
"If you were any one else," he remarked, "I'd almost think you were thinking!"
Laurie disclaimed the charge, but his abstraction did not lift. By this time his imagination was hard at work. He pictured the girl in the mirror as stretched on her virginal cot in the final exhaustion of starvation; and the successful effort to keep away from the studio building till four o'clock called for all his will power. Suppose the boy blundered, or wasn't in time. Suppose the girl really had not eaten anything since last Tuesday! These thoughts, and similar ones, obsessed him.
At four he strolled into the studio hall, wearing what he hoped was a detached and casual air. To his annoyance, the elevator and its operator were lost in the dimness of the upper stories, and before they descended several objectionable persons had joined Laurie, evidently expecting to be taken to upper floors themselves. This meant a delay in his tête-à-tête with the boy, and Laurie turned upon the person nearest him, an inoffensive spinster, a look of such intense resentment that it haunted that lady for several days.
When the elevator finally appeared, he entered it with the others who were waiting. He looked aloofly past the elevator boy as he did so, and that young person showed himself equal to the situation by presenting to this new-comer a stolid ebony profile. But when the lift had reached the top floor and discharged its passengers, the two conspirators lent themselves to the drama of their rôles.
"Well?" asked Laurie eagerly. "Did you get it?"
"Yaas, sah."
"What happened?"
The boy stopped his descending car midway between two floors. He had no intention of having his scene spoiled. He bulged visibly under the news he had to impart. "I got de stuff you said, and I lef' it at dat young lady's do'," he began impressively.
"Yes."
"When I looked de nex' time, it was gone."
"Good! She had taken it in." Laurie drew a breath of relief.
"No, sah. Dat ain't all." The boy's tone dripped evil tidings. "She brung it back!"
"What!" His passenger was staring at him in concern.
"Yaas, sah. De bell rung fum her flo', an' when I got up de young lady was standin' dere wid dat basket in her hand."
He paused to give Laurie the effect of the tableau, and saw by his visitor's expression that he had got it fully.
"Yes? Go on!"
"She look at me mighty sharp. She got brown eyes dat look right thoo you," he interpolated briskly. "Den she say, 'Sam, who done lef' dat basket at my do'?' I say, 'I done it, miss. It was lef' in de hall, an' de ca'd got yo' name on it. Ain't you order it?' I say.
"'No,' she say, 'dis yere basket ain't fo' me. Take it, an' ef you cain't find out who belong to it, eat dis yere lunch yo'self.'"
He paused. Laurie's stunned silence was a sufficient tribute to his eloquence, but Sam had not yet reached his climax. He introduced it now, with fine effect.
"Bimeby," he went on unctuously, "I took dat basket back to her. I say, 'Miss Mayo,' I say, 'I done foun' out 'bout dat basket. 'T was lef' by a lady artis' here what got a tergram an' went away sudden. She want dat food et, so she sent it to you.'"
Laurie regarded him with admiration.
"That was pretty good for extemporaneous lying," he commented. "I suppose you can do even better when you take more time to it. What did the lady say?"
Sam shook a mournful head.
"She jes' look at me, an' she kinda smile, an' den she say, 'Sam, dis yere basket 'noys me. Ef de lady wants it et, Sam, you eat it yo'self." He paused. "I et it," he ended, solemnly.
Laurie's lips twitched under conflicting emotions, but he closed the interview with a fair imitation of indifference.
"Oh, well," he said carelessly, "you must have been mistaken about the whole thing. Evidently Miss Mayo, if that's her name, wasn't as hungry as you were."
The boy nodded and started the car on its downward journey. As his passenger got off on the ground floor, he gave him a new thought to carry away with him.
"She'd bin cryin', dough," he muttered. "Her eyes was all red."
Laurie stopped and regarded him resentfully.
"Confound you!" he said, "What did you tell me that for? I can't do anything about it!"
The boy agreed, hurriedly. "No, sah," he assured him. "You cain't. I cain't, neither. None of us cain't," he added as an afterthought.
Laurie slowly walked away. His thoughts scampered around and around, like squirrels in a cage. The return of the basket, of course, might mean either of two conditions—that the girl was too proud to accept help, or that she was really in no need of it. Laurie had met a few art students. He knew that, hungry or not, almost any one of them would cheerfully have taken in that basket and consumed its contents. He had built on that knowledge in providing it. If the girl had taken it in, the fact would have proved nothing. Her refusal to touch it was suspicious. It swung the weight of evidence toward the elevator boy's starvation theory.
Laurie's thoughts returned to that imaginative youth. He saw him consuming the girl's luncheon, and a new suspicion crossed his mind. Perhaps the whole business was a bit of graft. But his intelligence rejected that suggestion. If this had been the explanation, the boy would not have concluded the episode so briskly. He had got the strange young man where he might have "kept him going" for days and made a good income in the process. As it was, there seemed nothing more to do. And yet—and yet—how the deuce could one let the thing drop like that? If the girl was really in straits—
Thus the subconscious argument went on and on. It worried Laurie. He was not used to such violent mental exercise. Least of all was he in the habit of disturbing himself about the affairs of others. But this affair was different. The girl was so pretty! Also, he had recurrent visions of his sister Barbara in the position of his mysterious neighbor. Barbara might easily have gone through such an experience during last year's test in New York. In that same experiment Laurie himself had learned how slender is the plank that separates one from the abyss that lies beneath the world's workers.
He dined alone that night and it was well he did so. His lack of appetite would certainly have attracted the attention of Bangs or any other fellow diner, and Bangs would as certainly have commented upon it. Also, he passed a restless night, troubled by vaguely depressing dreams. The girl was in them, but everything was as hopelessly confused as his daytime mental processes had been.
The next morning he deliberately kept away from the mirror until he was fully dressed, but he dressed with a feeling of tenseness and urgency he would have found it difficult to explain. He only knew that to-day he meant to do something definite, something that would settle once for all the question that filled his mind. But what could he do? That little point was still unsettled. Knock at the girl's door, pretend that it was a blunder, and trust to inspiration to discover in the brief encounter if anything was wrong? Or put money in an envelop and push it under her door? If he did that, she would probably give the money to Sam, as she had given him the food.
What to do? Laurie proceeded with his toilet, using the dressing-case and carefully avoiding the long mirror. He experienced an odd unwillingness to look into that mirror this morning, based partly on delicacy—he remembered the nightdress—but more on the fear of disappointment. If he saw her, it would be an immense relief. If he didn't, he'd fancy all sorts of things, for now his imagination was running away with him.
When he was fully dressed he crossed the room in three strides and stopped before the mirror with a suddenness that checked him half-way in the fourth.
Miss Mayo's window was open. He could see that. He could see more than that, and what he saw sent him rushing through the study and out into the hall of the big apartment building, where he furiously rang the elevator bell. He had not stopped for his hat and coat, but he had caught a vision of Bangs's astonished face and half of his startled exclamation, "What the dev—"
The elevator came and Laurie leaped into it.
"Down," he said briefly.
The operator was on his way up to the twelfth floor, but something in the expression of his passenger made him change his plans. Also it accelerated his movements. The car descended briskly to the ground floor, from which point the operator was privileged to watch the progress of the temperamental Mr. Devon, who had plunged through the main entrance of the building and across the square without a word to the hall attendants, or a backward glance.
As he reached the studio building Laurie recalled himself to a memory of the conventions. He entered without undue haste, and sought the door of the waiting lift. It was noon, and an operator he had not seen before was on duty.
"Top floor," directed Laurie, and stepped into the car. The operator hesitated. He did not remember this tenant, but he must belong to the house, as he wore no hat or coat. Probably he was a new-comer, and had run down-stairs to mail an important letter, as the old building held no mail-chute. While these reflections passed slowly through his mind, his car rose as slowly. To the mentally fuming young man at his side its progress was intolerably deliberate. He held himself in, however, and even went through the pantomime of pausing in the top-floor hall to search a pocket as if for a latch-key.
Satisfied, the attendant started the elevator on its descent, and as it sank from sight Laurie looked around him for Number Twenty-nine. He discovered it in an eye-flash, on the door at the right. The next instant he had reached this door and was softly turning the knob.
The door did not yield. He had not expected it to give, and he knew exactly what he meant to do. He stepped back a few feet, then with a rush hurled his shoulder against the wood with the full force of his foot-ball training in the effort. The lock yielded, and under the force of his own momentum the visitor shot into the room. Then, recovering his equilibrium, he pushed the door into place and stood with his back against it, breathing heavily and feeling rather foolish.
He was staring at the girl before him, who had risen at his entrance. Her expression was so full of astonished resentment, and so lacking in any other emotion, that for a sickening moment he believed he had made an idiot of himself, that he had not really seen what he thought he had seen in the glass. A small table separated him from the girl. Still staring at her, in the long seconds that elapsed before either spoke, he saw that she had swept her right hand behind her back, in a swift, instinctive effort to hide what it held. His self-possession returned. He had not been mistaken. He smiled at her apologetically.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "I'm afraid I frightened you."
"You did." She spoke tensely, the effect of overstrained nerves revealing itself in her low voice. "What do you mean by it? What are you doing here?"
Laurie's brilliant eyes were on hers as she spoke, and held them steadily. Under his expression, one that few had seen on his face, her look of antagonism softened a little. He advanced slowly to the table between them.
"It will take a few minutes to explain," he said. Then, as she waited, he suddenly formed his plan, and followed the good old Devon principle of going straight to the point.
"I live diagonally across the square," he said quietly, "and I can see into your window from one of mine. So it happened that just now I—I saw what you were going to do."
For an instant she stood very still, looking at him, as if not quite taking in the meaning of his words. In the next her face and even her neck crimsoned darkly as if under the rush of a wave of angry humiliation. When she spoke her voice shook.
"You forget," she said, "that you have no right either to look into my room or to interfere with what you see there."
"I know," he told her, humbly, "and I beg your pardon again. The looking in was an accident, the merest chance, which I will explain to you later. The interference—well, I won't apologize for that. Surely you realize that it's—friendly."
For the first time her eyes left his. She looked around the room as if uncertain what to do or say.
"Perhaps you mean it so," she muttered at last. "But I consider it—impertinent."
A change was taking place in her. The fire that had flamed up at his entrance was dying out, leaving her with the look of one who is cowed and almost beaten. Even her last words lacked assurance. Watching her in puzzled sympathy, Laurie for the first time wished himself older and wiser than he was. How could he handle a situation like this? Neither then nor later did he ask himself how he would have handled it on the stage.
For a moment the two young things gazed at each other, in helplessness and irresolution on his side, in resentful questioning on hers. Even in the high tension of the moment Laurie subconsciously took in the picture she made as she stood there, defying him, with her back to the wall of life.
She was very lovely, more lovely than in the mirror; for now he was getting the full effect of her splendid coloring, set off by the gown she wore, a thing of rich but somber shades, lit up by a semi-barbaric necklace of amber and gold, that hung almost to her knees.
Yes, the girl was a picture against the unforgetable background of that tragic situation. But what he admired most of all was the dignity that shone through her panic and her despair. She was up in arms against him. And yet, if he had not come, if that vision had not flashed into his mirror five minutes ago, she might now have been lying a huddled, lifeless thing on the very spot where she stood so proudly. At the thought his heart shook. The right words came to him at last.
"I've had—impulses—like yours," he said. "I've had them twice. Fortunately, both times there was some one around to talk me out of them." He had caught her attention. She showed that by the way she looked at him. "The argument that impressed me most," he went on, "was that it's quitting the game. You don't look as if you were a quitter," he ended, thoughtfully.
The girl's eyes blazed. He had aroused her once more, and he was glad of it. He didn't know at all what to do or say, but he dimly felt that almost any emotion in her would be better than the lethargy she had just revealed.
"I'm not a quitter!" she cried. "But I've got dignity enough to leave a place where I'm not wanted, even if that place happens to be the world. Go away!" she added fiercely. "Go away and leave me alone!"
Resting one hand on the table between them, he held out the other.
"Come, let me have that," he suggested, imperturbably. "Then we'll talk things over. I'll try to make you realize what I was made to realize myself—that we were both on the wrong track. I'll tell you what others think who are wiser than we are."
As she did not move, he added, more lightly: "You see, what we were going to do isn't done much nowadays. It's all out of date. Come," he repeated, gently, "let me have it."
With a movement of irritation the girl swept her hand forward and tossed on the table between them the small revolver she had been holding.
"Take it," she said, almost indifferently. And she added, "Another time will do as well."
"You see, what we were going to do isn't done much nowadays"
He picked up the little weapon and put it into his pocket.
"There isn't going to be any other time," he predicted buoyantly. "Now, slip into a coat while I run across the street and get my hat and coat and order a taxicab. We're going out to luncheon, and to tell each other the stories of our lives, with all the grim and gory details."
"I don't know you," muttered the girl. She had dropped into a chair beside the table, and was sitting with her chin in her hand, in what seemed a characteristic attitude, watching him with an expression he could not analyze.
Laurie seemed surprised. "Why, so you don't!" he agreed. "But you're going to now. We're going to know each other awfully well before we get through. In the meantime, you can see by the merest glance at me how young and harmless I am. Where's the coat?"
He turned and began a vague, masculine search for it. The girl wavered. His rising spirits were contagious, and it was clear that she dreaded being left alone.
"I warn you," she said at last, "that if you have anything to do with me you will be sorry for it."
Laurie stopped his search, and, turning, gave her one of his straight looks.
"Why?" he demanded.
"Because I'm in a net," she said. "And every one who tries to help me gets caught in it, too. Oh, don't smile! You won't smile afterward."
He picked up a coat he discovered in a corner, and held it for her to slip into.
"I like nets," he remarked lightly, "especially if they're bright-colored, large, roomy, comfortable nets. We'll have some great times in ours. Come along."
She shrugged her shoulders, and in the gesture slipped into the garment.
"I'll go," she said, in a low voice. "But don't forget that I warned you!"