The Dust Flower - Basil King

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waistcoat for Allerton to slip it on. But he didn’t slip it on. Instead he wheeled round from the mirror, threw the brushes with a crash to the toilet table, and 49 cried with a rage all the more raging for being impotent:

      “Steptoe, I’ve been every kind of fool.”

      “Yes, sir, I expect so.”

      “You’ve got to get me out of it, Steptoe. You must find a way to save me.”

      “I’ll do my best, sir.” The joy of cooperation with the lad almost made up for the anguish at his anguish. “What ’ud it be—you must excuse me, Mr. Rash—but what ’ud it be that you’d like me to save you from?”

      Allerton threw out his arms. “From this crazy marriage. This frightful mix-up. I went right off the handle yesterday. I was an infernal idiot. And now I’m in for it. Something’s got to be done, Steptoe, and I can’t think of any one but you to do it.”

      “Quite so, sir. Will you ’ave your wystcoat on now, sir? You’re ready for it, I see. I’ll think it over, Mr. Rash, and let you know.”

      While first the waistcoat and then the coat were extended and slipped over the shoulders, Allerton did his best to put Steptoe in possession of the mad facts of the previous day. Though the account he gave was incoherent, the old man understood enough.

      “It wasn’t her fault, you must understand,” Allerton explained further, as Steptoe brushed his hat. “She didn’t want to. I persuaded her. I wanted to do something that would wring Miss Walbrook’s heart—and I’ve done it! Wrung my own, too! What’s to become of me, Steptoe? Is the best thing I can do to shoot myself? Think it over. I’m ready to. I’m not sure that it wouldn’t be a relief to get out of this 50 rotten life. I’m all on edge. I could jump out of that window as easily as not. But it wasn’t the girl’s fault. She’s a poor little waif of a thing. You must look after her and keep me from seeing her again, but she’s not bad—only—only—Oh, my God! my God!”

      He covered his face with his hands and rocked himself about, so that Steptoe was obliged to go on brushing till his master calmed himself.

      “Do you think, sir,” he said then, “that this is the ’at to go with this ’ere suit? I think as the brown one would be a lot chicker—tone in with the sort of fawn stripe in the blue like, and ketch the note in your tie.” He added, while diving into the closet in search of the brown hat and bringing it out, “There’s one thing I could say right now, Mr. Rash, and I think it might ’elp.”

      “What is it?”

      “Do you remember the time when you ’urt your leg ’unting down in Long Island?”

      “Yes; what about it?”

      “You was all for not payin’ it no attention and for ’oppin’ about as if you ’adn’t ’urt it at all. A terr’ble fuss you myde when the doctor said as you was to keep still. Anybody ’ud ’ave thought ’e’d bordered a hamputation. And yet it was keepin’ still what got you out o’ the trouble, now wasn’t it?”

      “Well?”

      “Well, now you’re in a worse trouble still it might do the syme again. I’m a great believer in keepin’ still, I am.”

      Allerton was off again. “How in thunder am I to keep still when––?”

      51

      “I’ll tell you one wye, sir. Don’t talk. Don’t do nothink. Don’t beat your ’ead against the wall. Be quiet. Tyke it natural. You’ve done this thing. Well, you ’aven’t committed a murder. You ’aven’t even done a wrong to the young lydy to whom you was engyged. By what I understand she’d jilted you, and you was free to marry any one you took a mind to.”

      “Nominally, perhaps, but––”

      “If you’re nominally free, sir, you’re free, by what I can understand; and if you’ve gone and done a foolish thing it ain’t no one’s business but your own.”

      “Yes, but I can’t stand it!”

      “O’ course you can’t stand it, sir, but it’s because you can’t stand it that I’m arskin’ of you to keep just as quiet as you can. Mistykes in our life is often like the twists we’ll give to our bodies. They’ll ache most awful, but let nyture alone and she’ll tyke care of ’em. It’s jest so with our mistykes. Let life alone and she’ll put ’em stryght for us, nine times out o’ ten, better than we can do it by workin’ up into a wax.”

      Calmed to some extent Allerton went off to the club for breakfast, being unable to face this meal at home. Steptoe tidied up the room. He was troubled and yet relieved. It was a desperate case, but he had always found that in desperate cases desperate remedies were close at hand.

      52

       Table of Contents

      “See that the poor thing gets some breakfast,” had been Allerton’s parting command, and having finished the room, Steptoe went down the flight of stairs to carry out this injunction.

      He was on the third step from the landing when the door of the back room opened, and a little, gray figure, hatted and jacketed, crept out stealthily. She was plainly ready for the street, an intention understood by Beppo, the late Mrs. Allerton’s red cocker spaniel, who was capering about her in the hope of sharing the promenade.

      As Steptoe came to a halt, the girl ran toward him.

      “Oh, mister, I gotta get out of this swell dump. Show me the way, for God’s sake!”

      To say that Steptoe was thinking rapidly would be to describe his mental processes incorrectly. He never thought; he received illuminations. Some such enlightenment came to him now, inducing him to say, ceremoniously, “Madam can’t go without ’er breakfast.”

      “I don’t want any breakfast,” she protested, breathlessly. “All I want is to get away. I’m frightened.”

      “I assure madam that there’s nothink to be afryde of in this ’ouse. Mr. Allerton is the most honorable—” he pronounced the initial h—“young man that hever was born. I valeted ’is father before ’im and know that ’e wouldn’t ’urt a fly. If madam’ll trust 53 me—Besides, Mr. Allerton left word with me as you was to be sure to ’ave your breakfast, and I shouldn’t know how to fyce ’im if ’e was to know that you’d gone awye without so much as a hegg.”

      She wrung her hands. “I don’t want to see him. I couldn’t.”

      “Madam won’t see ’im. ’E’s gone for the dye. ’E don’t so often heat at ’ome—‘ardly never.”

      Of the courses before her Letty saw that yielding was the easiest. Besides, it would give her her breakfast, which was a consideration. Though she had nominally dined on the previous evening, she had not been able to eat; she had been too terrified. Never would she forget the things that had happened after she had given her consent in the Park.

      Not that outwardly they had been otherwise than commonplace. It was going through them at all! The man was as nearly “off his chump”—the expression was hers—as a human being could be without laying himself open to arrest. After calling the taxi in Fifth Avenue he had walked up and down, compelling her to walk by his side, for a good fifteen minutes before making her get in and springing in beside her. At the house opposite he had stared and stared, as if hoping that some one would look out. During the drive to the place where they got the license, and later to the minister’s house, he spoke not a word. In the restaurant to which he took her afterward, the most glorious place she had ever been in, he ordered a feast suited to a queen, but she could hardly do more than taste it. She felt that the waiter was looking at them strangely,

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