Ladybird

“I mean just what I said. I’ve known it for a long time, but I didn’t mean to tell it till you two got to be friends and you knew what a really rare character she has.”

  “Rare temper, I’d say! But Vi, it can’t be true? Daddy never had a sister.”

  “Yes, he did. I have proof. There’s an old man living downtown now, unless he has died in the last three months, who remembers her. Her name was Alison Fraley, and you must be named after her. He told me that he remembered the look on your grandfather Fraley’s face the day he discovered that his only daughter had run away with the good-for-nothing son of James MacPherson. He never smiled after that, he said, and died not many months later. That was when your people lived down in that row of little houses just off…”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake, don’t bring all that up, Vi. Of course I knew Dad used to be poor, but there’s no advantage in raking out old things like that. He isn’t poor now. And so the little snake has got the MacPhersons mixed up with it, too, has she? Well, but I don’t see how she has put it over on you. I thought you were keen and knew a fraud when you saw one. Coming around here with her soft pretty ways and her big eyes and pretending to be good, and all the while a suit for blackmail up her sleeve. She’s probably under the direction of some bold western lover who has sent her here to play the game and get a lot of money out of two respectable old families, for them to go to housekeeping on. I didn’t think you’d be fooled by a little sly thing like that.”

  “I tell you I have the proof, Alison,” said Violet coldly. “I went and got all her papers that her mother gave her before she died. I copied them one day when she was out of the house for the morning, and then I went to the addresses given and looked up everything. I even got an expert detective on the job and had him hunt out a lot of old records and things, till I knew all the two families had done since away back. And Fraley herself doesn’t even know yet that she belongs to the MacPhersons.”

  “But I’ve seen her out walking with old Mr. MacPherson several times, in the mornings.”

  “Oh, she met him at the mountain hotel this summer. He was a guest there, and she played tennis with the kid grandson. But she hasn’t an idea he is any connection of hers.”

  “Don’t you fool yourself!” said Alison. “She’s working a deep game, that girl is. I’d like to put her in jail. She’s the most contemptible little piece I’ve ever seen. Just you wait till Dad gets home. He’ll fix her! He wouldn’t stand for anybody treating me the way she did at the clubhouse today. I shouldn’t be at all surprised, from what she said, that she hasn’t drunk worse than cocktails many a time. Has she ever told you what kind of men came to the house where she lived on that mountain? It sounds to me like the worst kind of a roadhouse, and she pretends to be so terribly good! Just you question her, and you’ll find out a few things that will open your eyes, Vi Wentworth!”

  “Very well,” said Violet, putting her hand out to the bell and summoning the maid. “We’ll send for her and ask her a few questions. Incidentally, I’ll tell her about her Grandfather MacPherson, and you may watch her face and see whether you’ll be satisfied that she doesn’t know a thing.”

  “By all means send for her,” said the girl contemptuously. Alison rose and began pacing up and down the room as Jeanne appeared at the door.

  “Tell Miss MacPherson I want her to come down to the library at once!” ordered Violet.

  Jeanne disappeared, and a silence ensued. It seemed almost a hostile silence. Violet could not quite understand her own feelings.

  The doorbell sounded faintly in the distance, and they could hear the butler going to open the door and letting someone in. Presently he appeared at the door.

  “Mr. MacPherson to see Mrs. Wentworth,” he announced. “Shall I say you are engaged?”

  Violet looked up astonished.

  “I told you so,” said Alison, pausing in her restless walk. “He’s found her out, too, very likely. Now you’ll see I was right.”

  Violet’s face hardened. She accepted the challenge.

  “Show Mr. MacPherson in here,” she said, with a glitter of daring in her eyes. “We might as well have the whole show at once and be over with it,” she added with a hard little laugh, “though, of course, I hadn’t planned it just in this way.”

  “I should hope not,” muttered Alison.

  They could hear Mr. MacPherson’s slow step and the tap of his cane as he followed the butler with stately tread down the hall.

  He appeared at the door and looked from one lady to the other, a trifle annoyed perhaps to find someone else present besides the person he sought.

  He paused in the doorway. They noticed that he held a small package in his hand.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Wentworth. We ought to know one another, I suppose,” he said in a rather haughty way, “neighbors of course…”

  “Won’t you have a chair, Mr. MacPherson?” said Violet, rising and greeting him pleasantly.

  “Oh no,” he said. “You have a guest. I’ll not trouble you. I just wanted to ask a favor of you. It won’t take a moment. I have a little trifle here a small gift that is. You have a young girl here, a very sweet little unspoiled thing, working for you? Social secretary I think she said she was. She was very kind one day to run after my hat and capture it when it blew away in a high wind. She ran almost down to the river after it, and she would accept nothing for her services. That is I saw, of course, after I had suggested that she was a very superior little girl, and I shouldn’t maybe have offered it. But I would like to do something in recognition of her kindness. Not only because she was so pleasant and quick about it, but because she reminds me strangely of someone I loved long ago. I have met her by accident a couple of times since and walked a few blocks with her till our ways parted, but I have never got quite to the place where it seemed possible to offer it to her. She seems to have so much what should I call it not exactly self-respect, nor dignity. Perhaps you might call it refinement. I was afraid she might not like my offering it, and so I thought I would come to you, that perhaps you would know how to give it to her without hurting her feelings. It’s just a little wristwatch. I thought it might be useful in her work. She seems a charming child. And another thing, you know I don’t know her name, but you surely know who I mean. There can’t be two like her working for you.”

  Violet was standing with her hand on the back of a chair listening, mingled emotions passing over her face like the shadow of clouds on a windy day. There was a kind of triumph in the glance she swept toward Alison.

  “You mean Fraley MacPherson, I suppose,” she said when the old gentleman came to a pause in his lengthy, embarrassed speech.

  “What! Is that her name? MacPherson? Why I wonder how perhaps that might explain my strange feeling that there was a likeness. I’ve even spoken to my wife about it. Perhaps she might be a distant connection somehow. Do you know where her people came from?”

  Over Violet Wentworth’s face there swept a look of sudden resolve.

  “I know a little about her people, Mr. MacPherson, but she can tell you more. I have just sent for her. She will be down in a moment and will tell you what she knows. But there is one thing I can tell you before she comes, Mr. MacPherson. Fraley is your grandchild. You had a son Robert, didn’t you, who married a Miss Fraley, Alison Fraley? Well, Fraley is his daughter. Won’t you sit down? She will be here in a moment, I think.”

  The old man stood stock-still and looked for a moment as if he were going to fall. Then suddenly a light broke over his face.

  “My grandchild? You say she is my grandchild? You say she is my lost Robert’s daughter? That sounds too good to be true!” And the old man stumbled into the chair that was offered him and took out his immaculate handkerchief, mopping his brow, which was wet with cold sweat.

  Jeanne appeared at the door just then. Her eyes were red with weeping, which she made no effort to conceal.

  “Mrs. Wentworth, Miss Fraley has gone!” she said with a woebegone look.

  ?
??Gone!” said Violet sharply. “Where has she gone? How do you know?”

  “She left these notes,” said Jeanne, her lip beginning to tremble. “And Madam, she doesn’t say where she has gone, but it seems as though she did not mean to come back.”

  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.

  Chapter 23

  It 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?