Ladybird (34 page)

Jeanne handed over the two notes, and Violet, with sudden premonition, tore open her own, her face growing white and stern as she read.

“Well, I hope you are satisfied, Alison,” she said, lifting her eyes to the sullen girl who stood watching her curiously. “She’s gone, and she hasn’t left a clue behind her.” There was a ring of almost triumph in her voice. “It is like her,” she added in a curiously gentle voice.

“What?” asked the old man, looking up. “What do you say? She is gone? You have not let my granddaughter go off without knowing her destination, have you? You expect her to return, don’t you?”

“I don’t know,” said Violet with sudden trouble in her voice. “She can’t have been gone an hour. Surely we ought to be able to find her. You see, we had a little trouble. It was only a trifle of course, but I think she must have misunderstood me. She is very sensitive she thought she had done something that would hurt me very much and that I would not forgive. But it was not her fault…” She darted a vindictive look at Alison. “I foolishly told her she must do something I wanted or she could leave, and she has taken me literally. I should have known she is so gentle and so easily hurt…” There was almost a sob in her voice now. Then with quick anxiety in her face she called, “Jeanne, go to the phone and call my lawyer, quick. He will tell us what to do. Surely she can be found. And Jeanne, tell Saxon to go out and search the neighborhood. Tell him not to wait to change to his street things; she may be right near here somewhere. She wouldn’t know where to go!”

“I have lost her, just when I found her?” said the old man, passing a trembling hand over his cold forehead. They noticed that the little box that held the watch was shaking in his hold.

“Jeanne, as soon as you have got the lawyer you run out yourself. She likes you, and maybe you can find her,” Violet called distractedly.

“I will go out myself and look for her,” said the old gentleman, rising tremulously and starting toward the door. “I…I don’t know who this young lady is, but perhaps she will go with me. You are perhaps her friend?”

“This is Alison Fraley, her cousin, Mr. MacPherson,” said Violet, pausing in her mad rush of issuing commands. “Certainly she will go out and help to hunt her cousin. The whole world will soon know it if she doesn’t.” And Violet gave Alison a look that made her open her eyes in astonishment.

That was the beginning of the long search that lasted all the fall and into the early winter, and still no trace had been found of Fraley.

Old Mr. MacPherson aged visibly; Violet Wentworth canceled all her social engagements and gave herself to the search. She even sent a telegram out to George Rivington Seagrave at the strange, brief address in the West that she remembered to have read on Fraley’s letter, asking if he knew Fraley’s present address, but a reply came back the next day: “Seagrave too ill to read your telegram.” And it was signed with a name she had never heard.

The best skilled service of the great city was employed, at first quietly, and by and by using every means, even the radio, to find the lost girl. But none of them came anywhere near little Fraley, hid away safely in the hollow of His hand until His time had come to reveal her hiding place.

Even Alison had become depressed with the terrible mystery that hung over her unknown cousin. Her father and mother had returned and, of course, had been called upon to help in the search. Her father’s keen anxiety when he heard of the unknown niece at once convinced Alison that she had been wrong, and she dared not let her father know what part she had played in this tragedy. Even her mother who had never known the beloved sister, Alison Fraley, was warm in her sympathy and earnest in her efforts to find that sister’s child. Alison’s friends at the clubhouse also grew interested in the girl who had so bravely and so completely defied them, and they made Alison’s life miserable by constant questions until she began to stay away from her usual haunts and became sullen and morose. The young people who had tormented Fraley that memorable day of her disappearance were fast making her into a heroine.

And then the terrible thought came creeping with sinister shadow of fear into the hearts of those who cared that perhaps the child had been killed somewhere in the awful city. The records of the morgue were sought, but nothing anywhere gave up the secret of Fraley’s disappearance.

And at last Violet Wentworth, from loss of sleep and lack of food, for she neither ate nor slept much, and perhaps from other anxieties that only her own soul knew, fell ill with a fever.

I
t was characteristic of Fraley that she was not deeply concerned for her own homeless condition. A bird of the wilderness, she felt that there might be a lodging tree almost anywhere, and crumbs would somehow come to her lot. She was asking no more of life.

The beautiful glimpse she had had of luxuries that others were enjoying had not spoiled her. She went on her winged way, trusting in a high power for the things needful, and she shed things worldly as if they were a foreign substance.

She had walked a good many miles before it gradually came to her consciousness that she was not getting anywhere, and she did not know where she was going.

The streets around her looked strange and foreign. Little children in scanty attire scuttled in groups here and there, and disheveled parents hung forlornly around unattractive doors, watching her with hostile eyes. Now and then an old person hurried furtively by with a haunted look like one who had come a long way, and there were men lounging around who stared at her and reminded her of Brand and his kind. This was not the New York she had known since she had been with Violet Wentworth. She must have wandered into some strange quarter. Many of these people were foreigners, for they spoke unknown languages.

She was hungry, too, and suddenly felt that she could scarcely drag herself another step. It was growing dark and she felt afraid. She turned around and tried to retrace her steps, but when she reached a corner, she could not tell which way she had come, and the surroundings seemed only to grow worse.

At last she ventured up to a group of women who had been eyeing her critically and asked if they could direct her to a nice quiet place where she could get something to eat.

They looked at her dress, they looked at her shoes and hat, all bearing an unmistakable air of refinement and money, and they laughed a mirthless, meaningful laugh.

“Right accost the street an’ up them stairs!” pointed one, with a toothless upper gum and a gray bushy bob “That’s where you b’long, my pretty! You’ll get all that’s comin’ to you up there!” And she laughed again. The sound of her mockery sent a shudder through Fraley, but just to get away from it, if for nothing else, she crossed the street and stood hesitating in the entrance while they watched her like an evil menace.

The stairs were narrow and dirty, but a light shone up at the top, and there was music. It was not the kind of music Violet made on the grand piano at Riverside Drive, but from the unfriendly street, there was a certain jazzy cheer in it and she went up.

It was a strange scene that met her gaze. Lights and color and crudity. Girls in flimsy bright dresses were dancing with men in the middle of the room, and a mingling of cheap perfume and unwashed flesh met her nostrils. But here were little tables around the walls of the big room, and she was famished. She slipped into a chair by a table that was comparatively sheltered and gave a shy order. “Could you bring me a bowl of soup and some crackers, please?”

He laughed. “We don’t serve soup, lady. You picked the wrong dump. We just serves drinks and ices and sadriges and that like.”

The waiter’s intimate tone and searching look he gave her brought the quick color to Fraley’s cheeks, but she said hastily, “Oh, then please bring me a cup of coffee and a sandwich.”

The waiter lingered, a dirty tray balanced above his shoulder. “Want I should interjuuce ya to some nice man?”

“Oh no! Thank you!” said Fraley in a weak, frightened voice. “I’m in rather a hurry!”

“I see!” said the waiter, still watching her as he made slow progress to a door at the back of the room.

She noticed that he stopped at a table where four men sat drinking something in tall foamy glasses and spoke to them and that they all turned and looked her way.

Fraley grew more frightened every instant. She turned her eyes away, as if she didn’t see them, but when she looked up again, one of the men was coming toward her, and he had eyes like Pierce Boyden’s. Strange how many eyes like that there seemed to be in the world!

More frightened than ever now, she rose to her feet, but he was beside her.

“Hello, baby darlin’!” he addressed her. “I ben waitin’ fer you all my life. Let’s you and me have a dance while we’re waitin’ fer the drinks!” He slid his arm boldly around her waist and tried to draw her into the middle of the room.

Fraley drew back and braced herself against the wall, her face very white. She could smell the liquor on his breath.

“Oh no!” she said. “Please don’t! I don’t dance! I must have made a mistake. I thought this was a restaurant. I must go!”

She was edging away as she talked. Long experience with drunken men had led her to use strategy rather than to make outcry.

“Go anywhere you shay, baby darlin’,” said the man with a silly grin.

Fraley looked around for help but saw only the waiter back by the door, grinning, and the other three men rising and apparently coming forward eagerly to join in the discussion. Fraley, in her terror, measured the brief distance to the stairs. She must get there before the other men arrived. She gave a frantic pull and tried to get away from her captor, but he had her pretty well pinned between the table and the wall, and she was sure now there was to be no help from anyone in that awful room. Even the band men were laughing and calling out in time to their music. Was there nothing she could do?

Then she noticed the glass half full of water standing on the sloppy table beside her, and instinct once more served her. She seized it with her free hand and flung its contents full in the face of the man who was trying to hold her. Then snatching up her little bundle, she fled down the steep stairs out into the street.

Mocking laughter and angry cries followed her, and somewhere above her she thought she heard a shot. They were coming after her! She could hear loud stamping feet on the bare boards. She flew down the street past detaining hands and mocking voices, straight into the arm of a big policeman, who took hold of her firmly and said in a gruff voice, “Well, what are you trying to put over, kid?”

He had a hard face, scarred and unkindly, but he was knocking the crowd away with his club, as if they had been so many dogs trying to devour her.

“Oh, please,” said Fraley in a small little voice full of sobs and terror, “won’t you show me the way to the Pennsylvania Station? I think I am a little lost!”

The man eyed her suspiciously.

“Well, if you ain’t now you soon will be, if you stay long down here,” he said roughly. “If you was huntin’ for the Pennsylvania Station, what was you doin’ up in a joint like that?” he asked, looking her severely in the eyes. “That’s the toughest joint in New York City, barrin’…”

“Oh!” said Fraley, aghast. “Those ladies across the street said it was a restaurant.”

“Ladies?” the policeman repeated, lifting his eyes to the group of slatternly women pressing near, gloatingly. “Ladies! Ha-ha! Say, you better come along ’ith me, kid!”

“Oh, thank you,” breathed Fraley with relief. “If you’ll just show me where I can get a bus or a taxi. Would it be very expensive to take a taxi to the station?”

The policeman looked at her curiously. This was a new specimen. There was something in the quality of her voice that showed him that she did not belong in this quarter.

“Say, miss,” he said, “what are you anyway? Where’d you fall from?”

Fraley tried to explain. “I’m from the West. I haven’t been in the city long, and I must have got turned around. If I can only get to the Pennsylvania Station I shall know my way all right.”

He took her by the arm and cleared a way through the crowd, conducting her several blocks and questioning her. But by the time they reached a bus line he had somehow satisfied himself that this was no young criminal, merely a babe-in-the-woods who had strayed. Fraley never knew how very near she came to being taken to the station house that night and locked up. Then she would have had to call for assistance from Violet Wentworth and incidentally would have saved a great deal of trouble to those who loved her. Though it is doubtful if, even under such trying circumstances, her proud spirit would have been willing to trouble the woman who had sent her from her home. Fraley had strange vital ideas of self-respect and honor and would never flinch even in the face of absolute disaster.

So the policeman, who bore the title of “hard-boiled,” put her carefully into a bus going stationward, and Fraley was once more saved from peril.

She spent that first night in the Pennsylvania Station.

She wandered through its palatial vistas, back and forth, until she began to understand its various passages and windings and finally discovered a ladies’ waiting room where there were rocking chairs and a couch.