The Street of the City (23 page)

With a bewildered look in her eyes she whirled around on the piano stool and looked at her guests, expecting to see Val Willoughby. But it was not Val Willoughby. Instead there were three people standing astonished just inside the room, as the nurse, also astonished, closed the door behind them to keep out the cold and looked from one to the other of the three young people who stood there staring at Frannie. It did not take her long to realize that one was Marietta Hollister. The two young men who accompanied her she could not figure out. She seemed never to have seen them before.

But Frannie knew. Suddenly and appallingly it was brought to her startled consciousness that these were three enemies standing before her, and she was so taken aback that for an instant she could not believe her senses. Then suddenly she lifted her delicate patrician chin and surveyed them, one at a time, coolly, haughtily, with a look that put them in the class of intruders.

She came at once to her feet.

“Yes?” she said in a clear, cold voice. “Did you want something?” She addressed her question to Marietta, who stood in the forefront with the two abashed young hoodlums in her wake.

“Why yes,” drawled Marietta in her most dominating tone. “I came to find you. I brought a couple of young friends to introduce to you. You remember I promised I would. And we thought we would take you over to our opening night and let you see what we are doing. I’m sure you will want to join us when you see what a gorgeous time we are going to show you tonight.”

Frannie swept the faces of the two young men with a freezing glance. She had instantly recognized her two assailants, Kit Creeber and Spike Emberly.

“Thank you,” she said, turning back to Marietta, “it will not be necessary for you to introduce your friends to me. I have already met them under most unpleasant circumstances, and I do not care to have any further acquaintance with them.”

“Oh, now that is rather rude of you, isn’t it? They have come to do you a favor. They have come to ask the pleasure of being your escorts to the dance I told you about. If you have had some quarrel in the past just forget it and come along with us. We’ll show you a perfectly good time, and you will forget your differences. Come on. Is this your coat? Mr. Emberly, put it on her and show her what a good sort you are.”

“No!” said Frannie sharply. “I do not wish his assistance, and I do not wish to go out with any of you. Besides I am going out myself, and I shall have to ask you to excuse me for I must get ready at once.” Frannie turned and would have hurried up the stairs, but Marietta angrily placed herself in the way of the stairs.

“Oh!” she said disagreeably. “Do you play in some night club? I wasn’t aware you played. We might be able to offer you a small salary for playing for our dancing if you are interested. You really play rather well.”

The very drawl of her voice was an insult, and suddenly Frannie felt tears and laughter coming upon her. But she must not go into hysterics before these, her enemies, sent to try her spirit, perhaps. She was enabled to turn an amused smile upon her strange guests.

“I’m not interested,” she said, “and I do not play in a night club.” Frannie’s voice was very quiet and courteous, as if the questions she had been asked had been perfectly genuine.

But suddenly there came another voice, clear, assured, dominating. Val Willoughby, standing in the kitchen doorway: “Are you ready, Fran? I think it is time we were starting.” Then his eyes swept the room, bringing his keen glance to bear straight into the eyes of the two frightened, furtive young men who tried to shuffle unobtrusively toward the door behind them.

“I guess we better be going then,” murmured Kit Creeber nervously, edging nearer to the door.

“Yes, I guess you had,” said Willoughby fervently, and stepping quickly forward swung the front door wide to let them pass. Then he turned, as they slunk by him, and looked at the startled Marietta who was too astonished even to be angry yet.

“So!” he said scornfully. “Is this the kind of company you keep, Marietta? Is it possible you know what kind of rascals those two fellows are? Or did I arrive just in time to give you protection?”

“Protection!” sneered Marietta furiously, suddenly aroused to the situation. “Just who do you think you are, anyway? You’re no one to preach. What kind of company do you keep? Are you doing slum work, too?” Then she turned with head held high and angry eyes flashing and sailed out after her two commandeered escorts, slamming the door of the house behind her and stamping down the walk on her high, expensive heels.

W
hen Marietta reached her car, which had been parked across the street from the brick house, there was no sign of her two escorts.

In vain she looked into the backseat and turned on her lights to search for her former attendants, but they were nowhere to be seen. In quite a dignified, lofty tone she called their names: “Mr. Emberly! Mr. Creeber! Where are you?” But repeated calls, varying from annoyance to actual anger, and then even fury, brought no response.

Once she thought she heard a cracking sound from over behind the kitchen of the cottage, and a floundering stir in the darkness, but when she took her flashlight from her car and started over that way to investigate, she found nothing but a mass of disordered stones and bricks powdered with dirty snow, with sticks and branches in confusion. No sign of the two young men in their shiny dinner coats and rather shabby overcoats anywhere. And finally, in disdain, she picked her way over the roughness back toward her car. Stepping uncertainly, suddenly she felt one foot go down through the mass of branches into a deep place, so that she fell full length. She was about to cry out for help, till suddenly she remembered the merry eyes of that other girl. She couldn’t stand Frannie’s scorn. This seemed to be some kind of trough. What could it mean? In the backyard right behind the house! Why did anybody have a right to have a place like that in their backyard?

She called out again, guardedly. If those two horrid boys had any sense of honor they would come back and help her out. But, of course, what could one expect from boys who lived on the wrong side of the river and worked down the river at a factory!

Then she heard the front door open, voices, that ripple of a laugh, the memory of which had become so hateful to her! Mercy! She must get out of here. If she called out now, Val would come and help her up, but he would lecture her, and the memory of his sneer about her former companions restrained her. Not for worlds would she let him know that her two knights had deserted her.

So she lay still with her hands plunged into the cold, dirty snow that Mike had cast over the hole he had dug the night before.

She heard Val and Frannie come out the door and go down the street. She could hear the cheery sound of their subdued voices as they walked toward the bridge. And when she heard them turn onto the bridge she tried again to struggle up, but only succeeded in plunging one foot down deeper and entangling it in some wires. Strange! Wires buried in a backyard. What did that mean?

She gave a quick jerk to her foot and succeeded in losing her shoe down in that strange, dark hole! What was she going to do now? Oh, she ought to have called Val Willoughby. He was always a gentleman. He would have helped her out, of course, and she would be on her way now. Even if he had tried to lecture her she could have given back as good as she got. He, lecturing her, when he was openly going with a girl like that who lived in a little insignificant house and worked down the river! He to presume to lecture her! Perhaps she had better go to Auntie Haversett and tell her what Val was doing and get this ridiculous business stopped before it got too bad. She probably should have done that in the first place. Well, she had to get out of this hole, whatever she did!

So she wallowed about some more and at last got a firm hold of the edge of this peculiar ditch into which she had fallen, and with edging and struggling was finally free. Out on firm ground again, she shivered; one stockinged foot was clinging to the brink. How was she going to get that shoe? Could she possibly hop over the rough ground to her car without it? No, that was out of the question. She had to find it. Then she remembered her flashlight and got it out of her pocket, turning it downward into the hole. Yes, there was the toe of her shoe, pointing upward, almost beyond reach. If she got down on the ground again, flat, she might reach it. How horrid, with an evening dress on. She wouldn’t be fit to go to the dance afterward. It was all the fault of—well who was it the fault of? That girl, of course. If it hadn’t been for that girl she would never have taken up this idea of helping downtrodden humanity to rise by means of dances. And she would never have asked the son of their gardener to bring those two fellows to help her in her scheme of providing escorts for the poor girls whom she was to help into a refined kind of social life in their own social class. But they were such good-looking fellows, really handsome in a way, quite challenging. How could she know they would turn out to be deserters? Cowards! Evidently Val and that girl had scared them stiff. Well, she had to get that shoe.

So down she got, carefully, and reaching as far as she could, just barely missed touching the tip of the shoe’s toe with the tip of her fingers. Well, she would evidently have to bend down a little farther!

Over she bent, stretched her arm to its fullest extent, and found that the shoe had somehow entrenched itself in that mess of wire she had got into herself. So she struggled some more and finally lost her balance, and fell with her face in the frozen earth, cutting a gash in her chin on a sharp stone. For an instant she lay there struggling with angry tears that came unbidden to her eyes. She, Marietta Hollister, to be left deserted, lying in a ditch in a strange backyard on the wrong side of the river! And even the slum boys she had coaxed to come with her on this expedition had deserted her. What could possibly have made them do that? Young toughs they were. Why should they be afraid of Val Willoughby?

But at last Marietta, by aid of her flashlight and a strenuous effort, brought up her shoe triumphantly and slid her foot into it, and then endeavored to hobble over to her car, only to discover that the shoe was minus a heel!

Now what was she going to do? They were new shoes, too, and had cost plenty. Of course that didn’t matter much, only to add to the annoyance. But she couldn’t go to that dance without a heel on her shoe. She would have to go home, unless she could recover the heel. Even then, how would she make it stay on?

She turned back to the dark hole and aimed her light down to its depths, but she could not find that imp of a heel. It was gone, way down to the bottom of Mike’s excavations. And someday would he, or some other disloyal American, find that heel and wonder, and be afraid?

But Marietta had no idea of that now. She had to get to that dance, for nobody else could run things without her. And now that she had failed to bring the two young men she had promised, she would certainly have to hunt up two more somewhere.

At last she hobbled back to her car and got started on her way, growing momentarily more and more angry at Val Willoughby. For after all, if he hadn’t made a fool of himself with that strange working girl from the other side of the river, she would never have gotten into all this.

So Marietta, blaming others for her own misdeeds, gradually in this way soothed her troubled spirit.

Frannie and Val went on their quiet way across the bridge, and when they had put sufficient distance between the brick house and themselves so that they were sure they could not be overheard by any recent enemies, Val said in a low, confidential tone, “Were you having a pretty tough time again, Frannie? I came in while you were talking. The nurse heard me outside and opened the door a crack, motioning me inside, so I got a fair idea of what was going on, but I didn’t hear everything. Did I butt in too soon?”

“Oh no,” said Frannie with a quick little breath of a sigh. “I was so glad to see you, and to hear you. Your voice sounded like a refreshing shower on a thirsty day. It was grand of you! But—I hated for you to have to call out—your friend.”

“My friend! Where did you get that?”

“Oh, isn’t she? She implied the first time she came over here that you were something very special in the way of a friend.”

“I know,” said the young man, “she’s been trying to imply that for a good many years, but it happens to be all on her side, not mine, thank you! But don’t you worry about her. She’s just a very determined girl who is trying to make everything go her way and to run everything and everybody else. You see, I’ve known her since we were youngsters and she was just that way when she was three. I was rather proud of your quiet voice and your smile in the face of her insults.”

“Oh well,” laughed Frannie, “it was just funny. But how do you suppose a girl like that, a wealthy, cultured girl, came to know those two unspeakable fellows that tried to get fresh with me?”

“Well, I think Marietta has taken up this war work the way she always does everything else, with a great deal of energy and no common sense. I sometimes used to wonder if she hadn’t any sense. I guess she has, but she doesn’t use it. I don’t know where she ever picked up those two kids. She probably saw them somewhere and thought they were good-looking, or else some fool told her about them and she thought they were plenty good enough for the kind of girls she was planning to help into what she calls ‘social life.’ However it was, they were good and scared when they saw me come in. Did you notice? I never in my life saw anything slink away as fast as those two did. I imagine they were afraid we would complain to the authorities. Have they been seen at your plant since your encounter with them?”