CHAPTER XV
MRS. LAWTON LAYS PLANS
Before Sybil's trunks had been opened and her simple little home-coming gifts distributed, she knew that her sister, the patient, cheerful Dorothy, was being seriously worried by somebody or something, and she had not sat at the family table three times before she saw that her mother waged a secret, petty warfare against the young girl, who was really the mainspring that kept the whole family machinery in clock-work motion.
They had been so wholly united in their home-life that this surreptitious nagging, these swift side-glances that made sure John Lawton was out of ear-shot before the jeer or sneer or wounding innuendo was delivered, filled Sybil with amazement as well as hot anger.
"Poor little Dorrie!" she thought; "denied every pleasure that a young, healthy, pretty girl longs for! Skimping and saving, turning and cleaning and pressing, rarely going out dressed entirely in her own garments, never complaining, always smilingly winking back threatening tears, smoothing rough places, straightening out the tangles for others, and when the burden becomes too heavy, the cloud of small torments unendurable, instead of bursting into bitter railing or furious tears as I do, Dorrie, with the absolute, unquestioning faith of a child, goes to her room and prays, asking that her burden be made lighter, or, if that may not be, that the blessed Lord will give her strength and patience and please make her understand what it is wisest for her to do in that special emergency! Poor little trusting ninny! As though God could trouble about her infinitesimal affairs! As though He would distinguish her faint appeal when once it had fluttered upward and been caught in that mighty whirlwind of a world's anguished prayer that, with a thousand times Niagara's sound, goes thundering to the Throne! Dear Dorrie! Such a patient little slave as she is to mamma, too! But I'll take a few hours from work and find out what is going on here—yes, even if I have to question Lena!"
She shook her head. "An indecorous and undignified proceeding that, but what else can I do? Poor papa never sees an inch beyond his handsome old nose! If it concerned anyone but mamma, Dorothy would tell me everything herself, for we have confided in each other ever since we had to 'make up' the secrets we shared. But she and papa always make a sort of fetish of mamma. It's strange, too," said Sybil to herself, "for mamma was very little to either of us, indeed, in the old days of luxury. As that English housemaid once said of us, 'we were little better nor horphans for all our finery and our sweets!' Mamma was always out, or going out, or just getting ready to go out. Or there were people staying with her, and we had to keep close to the nursery. We should just have been servant-bred but for papa. Shall I ever forget his face the day he asked Dorrie some question, which she answered with a hearty, 'Bedad! I have then!' After he had read us a lecture on the subject of English as it should be used by intelligent and obedient little girls, Dorothy lifted her repentant, small countenance to be kissed, saying, 'Please forgive me, papa!' and he caught her up in his arms and said, 'Oh, baby girl, it is for you to forgive us—forgive us!' And when he was gone we talked and talked, and finally concluded that 'us' meant papa and Delia, because she was all the time saying 'bedad' and 'bad-cess,' and such words. That same night I heard mamma's voice, high and excited, from her dressing-room. She was saying, 'I really do not see why I am to be held responsible for the aimless chatter of children of that age. Of course, when they are older, and it's worth while, I shall impress myself upon them—shall take complete charge of—what? my mother? Never mind my mother! Times are changed, and really it's more than a trifle presumptuous for any Lawton to attempt to teach a Bassett how to—' and the voice became inaudible, because mamma had entered her sleeping-room and closed the door. But next day we took our drive with her, instead of the nurse or maid, and in our big feathered hats—I in pink and Dorrie in blue—we sat one on each side of her and swung our slim, black-silk legs against her skirts and wished papa was there. And that very day she cut Mr. Bulkley dead as he saluted her in passing, and said, under her breath, 'Horrid wretch!' Horrid wretch then! And now? She can't be too cordial to him, actually pressing him to come again. Has she no eyes? Can't she see how he stares poor Dorrie out of countenance, and how—how—" Suddenly the girl started. "Why," she said, "it can't be! Oh, it can't be that she does see and understand and—and—still welcomes him—that she is tormenting my little sister about him?"
A certain ominous tremble of the ceiling told of the energetic Lena's presence in the room above. Sybil flew up the stairs, went first to her trunk, and a moment later came to Lena, holding in her hand a spray of artificial flowers, and saying: "If you will bring me your hat I'll freshen it up with these velvet roses. I can do it right here while you are finishing mamma's room." With a cry of rapture the little, square-rigged German girl dropped the pillow she was holding between her teeth, while trying to introduce its further end into a fresh cover, and rushed from the room, to return in the twinkling of an eye with one of those forlornly tawdry hats, peculiar to the foreign servant. They always seemed to be trimmed with samples, boasting a pale spring blossom twisted with a dahlia or a few hips and haws of autumnal tinting, a bit of feather, always straight; a bit of lace, always cotton; a scrap of velvet, always dusty—the whole incongruity invariably suggesting the police station, no matter how respectable the wearer of the "mussy" confection may be. For a moment Lena looked frightened as Sybil's long fingers swiftly tore the rubbish apart; but a glance at the deep rich glow of color in the crushed velvet rose with the trail of bronzy-green leaves reassured her, and she smiled the whole breadth of her honest moon-face as she exclaimed:
"Mein Gott! my Miss Lady! Dot mash-man will sure make me of der name of Miss Klippert, ven I make der Sunday valk, mit der roses on, youst like I com' by America! Ja! dot is too fine youst for Lena—all short! Dot make of me Miss Klippert—sure! you see now!" And full of excitement and happy anticipations, Lena rose like a hungry trout to Sybil's first cast, which was the remark: "I don't think Miss Dorothy is looking quite well?"
In her broken English the maid poured out the story of the trials and persecutions to which Dorothy had been subjected; of how her mother's selfishness in her imaginary illness had taxed the girl's strength; of how Leslie Galt had tried unsuccessfully to take Miss Dorrie for a drive, to bring the color back to her cheeks; of how Mrs. Lawton had changed her mind about the proprieties when Mr. Bulkley had driven up to the house with a similar object; and of a disgraceful scene at a near-by resort in which Mr. Bulkley and several "painted ladies" figured—a scene of which she and her "mash-man" were the witnesses.
The pitiful story finished, Sybil, controlling her feelings, went to the troubled Lena, set the newly trimmed hat on her head, gave her a little push toward the glass, and then fled to her own room, where, with blazing eyes and flushed cheeks, she paced the floor, repeating, over and over: "How dare he? How dare he force his attentions upon an innocent young girl? He is as vulgar as he is wicked! His conduct is unpardonable—disgraceful! Oh, what can I do? How can I shield Dorrie, and where is Leslie Galt? I know he loves her, devotedly, but he can't have spoken yet, for she would have shared the secret with me within an hour of my coming! He's not a man to change, nor yet to hesitate without grave cause. Oh, I suppose it's poverty that commands his silence—poverty, fruitful mother of many miseries, of shame and humiliation! And yet—and yet," frowned Sybil, as she called up a mental picture of Leslie Galt, "he never looks like a poor man; and surely I ought to recognize any or all of the symptoms of indigence, know all the dear little earmarks made by straitened circumstances. And now that I think of it, his dress is perfect in its way, quiet, oh, yes, quiet enough, but such perfect cut and fit can scarcely belong to ready-made 'marked-downs.'"