Ladybird (21 page)

There followed some minute directions about ways and means and what was wise and unwise to do in a big city when a young girl was all alone. Warnings that young Seagrave’s friends would have been surprised he knew how to give.

She read them all through carefully, and then there came another bit of himself at the end:

And down in the lower corner of the sheet was written “George Rivington Seagrave” with two addresses—one in the West, the other in New York.

But Fraley could hear that the lady was stirring in her berth now, and she folded the precious letter and tucked it safely away. She dressed quickly and came out looking fresh as a new-blown rose.

“Did I do my hair all right?” she asked, starry eyed from her letter.

“You certainly did,” said the lady admiringly, lifting a haggard face with the makeup sadly in need of repair. “You look like a newborn babe, my child. How do you manage it? I don’t know, but you’ve improved on my coiffure. You certainly got the knack quickly. Well, I’ll be ready shortly. I suppose you are hungry.”

“Don’t hurry,” said Fraley happily. “I’ll sit here and look out of the window. Isn’t the world wonderful! And I want to read my Bible a few minutes, too. I always do every morning.”

Marveling, the elder woman made her way to the dressing room, almost envying this child her relish for simple sights and wondering whether, after all, she would ever be able to give sophistication to this strange young creature who seemed to be almost from another world.

“You certainly look a picture!” she said a little while later, coming out in all her delicate war paint. “Put away your old Book now, and let’s go get some breakfast. They always have waffles on these trains. Do you like waffles?”

“I never saw one,” said Fraley with the air of a joyous explorer.

Breakfast was a success. The morning was sparkling and the scenery wonderful through which they were passing. The people who sat at the little tables in the dining car were a never-failing source of interest to the girl whose circle of acquaintance had been so exceedingly restricted.

At one or two places during the day when the train stopped for some minutes, they got out and walked around, and Fraley managed her new shoes very well, although she confided to her new friend that it was much, much easier to walk without them.

“We’ll have some that really fit you when we get to New York,” said the new mentor and noted with satisfaction how the girl beside her attracted all eyes and how she went through this open admiration without a particle of self-consciousness. In fact, she did not even seem to be aware of it. Perhaps that was because public opinion had as yet no part in her life, and pride of self had not entered into her soul.

Violet Wentworth felt that she had found a treasure in this lovely unspoiled girl, and she meant to use her as a new attraction to adorn her charming home. There was nothing like a new girl with character and distinction to bring a throng. She was proud of her reputation as a hostess. She was beginning to think that perhaps she would drop the social secretary idea and introduce Fraley as a young friend who was visiting her for a year. She would see how it worked out. Of course she would have to keep up the form of secretaryship for the time, until the girl got some of that Puritanism rubbed off, for she could see she would not be easily persuaded to accept her living for nothing indefinitely, not even in friendship. And of course it would be hard to make the unsophisticated child understand the real reason why she wanted her. And if she did understand, half the value would be gone from her fine simplicity. As soon as she got to know her own loveliness, it would vanish in pride and selfishness. Violet Wentworth had seen this happen many a time before with the different protégées she impulsively picked up here and there, but she somehow had a warmer feeling for this pretty child and wanted to keep her as she was.

Secretly studying the child all the time as she conversed with her, Violet Wentworth was deciding just what coaching she needed to make her most quickly ready to move among the people of her own circle. Late in the afternoon she handed over a magazine she had been reading.

“There is a good little story; read it, Fraley. You ought to read a great many magazine stories and novels. They will be excellent for teaching you the ways of the world. I don’t know any way you can get atmosphere as quickly as by reading society stories. Unless perhaps the movies and the theater. Of course, they are a wonderful help. Little habits and customs that no one would think to tell you about, you would acquire by watching, without realizing you were learning something new. It would simply come to you the way a baby learns the habits of her household into which she had been born.”

Fraley took the magazine and went dutifully to reading the story set for her. But as she read her face grew grave, and graver still as it progressed, and the color came brightly in her cheeks.

Violet Wentworth, watching her, could not quite understand her reaction. But she did not seem to be enjoying what she had considered a little romance quite amusing and out of the ordinary. The child’s eyes were flashing, and her lips were parted as if she were about to protest at something. When she had finished she handed over the magazine. “Are people in the world all like that?” she flashed at the astonished lady.

“What do you mean, like that?” asked the lady. “Did you like the story? I thought it exceedingly well written.”

“Oh,” said the girl, “you mean the way it is told. Yes, I suppose it is well told. But why did they want to write such a horrible thing? It isn’t like the dreadful stories in the Bible. They were all told to warn people or to teach some great truth that the people needed to know. But this story teaches a thing that isn’t so.”

“What can you mean, you funny little girl!” exclaimed Violet Wentworth, taking up the magazine and glancing down its columns to refresh her memory of the story that had already gone from her mind.

“Why, it makes that secretary girl fall in love with a man who already has a wife and marry him and be
happy
with him! Mother said that was a sin. The Bible says so, too.”

“Oh, my dear!” laughed the lady. “What a little old-fashioned thing you are, to be sure. You’ll have to get over talking about sin. There is no such thing nowadays, and people don’t look at it that way. It is quite the fashion now to divorce and marry again, and nobody thinks anything of it. Perhaps half the people you will meet will have been divorced once or twice. You mustn’t think of it in that horrified way. The world is changing all the time, you know, and we are getting away from the antiquated ideas and see that we have to do what fits the times. It certainly is better to be divorced if you are unhappy and to marry someone you will be happy with. It makes the world a better place to live in for everybody to be happy, you know.”

Fraley pondered this sophistry for a while, and then she said with a troubled look, “But God doesn’t feel that way about it. The Bible says divorce is wrong, except when there’s abuse. And besides, God said His children would have to bear hard things sometimes.”

Violet smiled wisely.

“My dear, the world has progressed, and we must keep up with the times. You know the Bible is a very old-fashioned book. Come, let’s forget it and watch the sunset. I think it is going to be better than last night. Look at the lovely orchid next to the green.”

Fraley turned her eyes toward the window, but there was a disturbed look in her face that her companion did not like. She must deal wisely with this prejudiced child if she wished to conquer in the end. It would not do to antagonize her. Therefore she put out her hand and patted the young hand that lay in the blue satin lap.

“You mustn’t think that I object to your beloved Bible, little Fraley,” she said. “It’s all right, and it’s very lovely for you to be so devoted to it and all that. It really makes you quite unique and charming, only of course you have been shut in a good deal from the world, and you have got a narrow viewpoint. There’s no harm in it, at all. It’s really attractive for a young girl in this age of the world to believe in something uplifting like that. Only you have got some things a little out of proportion. But that will right itself. When you start going to dances and house parties and weekends and theater parties and the like, and when you have read some of the current literature and gone to the movies a little, you will find all this falling into line and taking its place as it ought to do. But you must remember you don’t know the world, and it is the world you live in now, not heaven, and you’ve got to be like the world or you won’t have a good time, and the world won’t like you.”

Fraley’s face was still troubled, and she did not answer.

Violet saw that the girl was in no state of mind to accept her sophistries, so she soothed her.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said pleasantly, as if the other subject were finished, “that we ought to plan just what we will do when we get to New York. There are always so many things to think about just before one gets off a train. You said you wanted to send those two Books before you do anything else. Suppose we attend to that the very first thing. You can have the addresses all written out for sending them, and it won’t take much time to select what you want. We’ll drive to the store straight from the station and get that off your mind. Then you can enjoy New York.”

She had struck the right note at last. Fraley smiled, and new light came into her eyes. She sat watching the changing colors of the sunset, and when the darkness came down and the lights were turned on in the car, her face was bright again.

T
here was one thing in which Violet Wentworth utterly failed to interest her new protégée. It was a matter that she had never found to fail before, and she was utterly at a loss to understand. Fraley MacPherson had no interest at all in the subject that has been all-absorbing to most of womankind since Eve wore her first fig leaf—the question of what shall we be clothed with.

Pleased she was with her new garments, often touching the cloth of her little frock gently as if she admired it, careful lest the least dust should fall upon it, guarding her hat from crushing with an instinct of one who had always worn good garments; yet when she was asked what else she would like to have in her wardrobe, she smiled dreamily and said, “Why, I think I have enough now, thank you.”

Violet Wentworth was nonplussed.

“Wait till we get in the shops,” she said easily. “You’ll see. You’ll be charmed with everything.”

“But I wouldn’t need anything else but this,” said Fraley, genuinely surprised. “I’ve been very careful with this. It won’t be hurt a bit by the traveling. I can save it for best and wear my other own old ones for work. This will do for dressing up.”

“Well, that, little Fraley, is another thing you will have to wait till you get to New York to understand. Life is very different where I live. We don’t go to bed at dark, and we have different clothes for all the places we go. Evening clothes and sports clothes and afternoon clothes and street things and party things. Oh, there is no end to the clothes one can use.”

“Isn’t it a lot of trouble?”

“Why, no. It’s very interesting. Don’t you like pretty things?”

“Oh yes. I have always loved pretty things. The mountains in a mist, the sun rising across the valley, little green eggs in a robin’s nest, the lichen on a big rock, an old tree against the sky when the sun has fallen the night before and my mother’s face! My mother was lovely.”

“She must have been,” said Violet Wentworth almost wistfully, watching the vivid little face in front of her.

The child was such a contrast to the feverish, artificial life she led that it made her more than ever dissatisfied with everything; yet here was she at that very moment planning how she might force Fraley into the very same mold with all her little earth. Life was a strange contradiction, and a glimmer of the truth flashed at her now and then through the face and words of this unspoiled child.