Ladybird (18 page)

“Good-bye, little sister. You’ve done a lot for me, I think. Here, get on here, in this car. Yes, that’s right, go in that door. The porter will look after you. Here, Porter!”

She stood an instant trembling, looking after him as he spoke to a man with a white coat, and then the train began to move, the porter swung on, and Seagrave walked along-side, tipping his hat to her and waving his hand. She watched him through sudden blinding tears and tried to smile; watched him until the train whirled out of his sight, and then she turned to go inside.

I
t seemed a strange, unfriendly place that she had entered, somewhat like the entrance to a cave—solid walls and a passage only wide enough for one to walk. The motion of the train, too, frightened her. She could climb trees and walk out on a slender limb; she could wade rivers; she could brave the dangers of the night and the menace of wild cattle. But the motion of that train simply paralyzed her. It seemed that the earth beneath her was rocking and about to fall.

She put out both hands and steadied herself and so, after a minute, began slowly to go onward again, inching along and sliding her hands on the wall.

The porter with whom Seagrave had talked had vanished into the car behind her, and there seemed no one left in the wide world again. Why had she trusted herself to this strange way of traveling? Would she not see anybody at all, all the way? And to where did this strange, narrow room lead?

She came at length to the main part of the car and saw high-backed seats with green cushions and people sitting in them, some facing each other. Some men were playing cards in one section, and their intent looks as they threw down their cards on the little table between them reminded her of Brand and Pierce when they were playing that way. She shrank back and turned to her right to return to the door again. It was hot in this place, and she felt as if she could not breathe. But suddenly a little doorway hung with a dark green curtain presented itself. The curtain was shoved back, and there was a small room with long green seats. By the window sat a lady who looked up curiously at her.

Fraley gave her a shy questioning smile, and the lady smiled back pleasantly enough. She was a curiously dressed lady, with trim, close-fitting garments, very short tresses, and a little tight dark hat. She was slim as a girl, though you could see by her face that she wasn’t young. She wore a necklace made of beads that looked like drops of dew when the sun rises, and she had more colored stones in rings on her hands.

“Is this a place where I could sit?” Fraley asked, shyly stepping within the door.

“Why, I guess so,” said the lady with a swift startled glance at the slender bare feet. “You have probably got in the wrong car, but you can stay till the conductor comes, and he will tell you where to go.”

Fraley sat down thankfully on the edge of the long seat.

“I have a ticket,” she said as if presenting her credentials. “And some money,” she added earnestly. “I can pay for my seat.”

“Well, I’m sure the conductor will fix you up all right,” said the lady kindly, wondering at the pure speech and refined accent of this barefoot child and fascinated by her loveliness.

Fraley’s eyes wandered to the window, startled.

“How fast we go!” she exclaimed. “I’ve never been on a train before.”

“You haven’t?” exclaimed the lady. “That’s strange. Where are you going?”

“I’m going to New York,” said the girl, still watching the landscape. “Why, see! It’s only the nearby things that are going fast. The ones that are far off—the mountains—they’re just shadows of themselves. Oh, I didn’t think we could get away from the mountains so fast!”

The lady smiled and watched her amusedly. Presently she spoke again.

“Haven’t you some shoes and stockings in that bag?” she asked practically. “I think you’d better put them on if you have. You know it isn’t the custom to ride in the train barefoot. The conductor might not like it.”

Fraley’s eyes came to the lady’s face now with quick alarm, and a flood of lovely color went over her face.

“Oh!” she said and glanced down at her small white feet. “They are perfectly clean. I washed them just before I started, and we rode all the way.”

“Yes, I see that,” said the lady, trying to make her voice sound less amused and more kindly, “but it just isn’t the custom, you know. You might feel awkward, and I’m sure the conductor would feel he ought to speak to you about it. That’s why I mentioned it.”

Fraley’s eyes went to the lady’s exquisite little feet, clad in sheerest gunmetal silk stockings and patent-leather slippers with sparkling buckles. Then she tucked her own feet back as far as they would go, curling one around the other unobtrusively.

“I didn’t know,” she said sadly, “or I wouldn’t have come this way. I’d better get off the next time the train stops. Perhaps the conductor won’t get around before that to see me. I can walk, of course, only it will take longer.”

“Walk!” said the lady, laughing. “Why, you would be an old woman before you got there.”

“Well,” said Fraley, “I suppose it wouldn’t matter then.”

“How absurd!” said the startled lady, laughing again. “Why don’t you put on your shoes and stockings?”

“But I haven’t any,” said the girl, and there were almost tears in her eyes. “I had a pair once, but the stockings wore out, and then the shoes got too little and hurt me. They were red shoes, and they had little tassels at the top. It was a long time ago.”

The lady started. Where had this amazing child lived without shoes and grown into lovely womanhood? Did she belong to some strange sect who didn’t believe in footgear, or what?

“But why haven’t you had shoes and stockings?” asked the lady curiously.

The color waved over the sweet face again. She lifted shamed eyes. “Because we hadn’t money to buy them. And anyhow, they weren’t necessary, like things to eat.”

“Oh,” said the lady with a little gasp as if she were in pain. As if anybody could be as poor as that!

She stared at the girl a moment, and then she suddenly rose and sharply shut the little door between the drawing room and the outer car.

“We’ve got to do something about this before the conductor comes,” she said kindly. “I’ve got plenty of stockings here in my bag, and you go into the little dressing room here and put on a pair. I think maybe I have a pair of shoes that will fit you, too—nice low-heeled ones. We’ll see. It simply won’t do for the conductor to see you that way. He’ll never let you stay in his car looking like that.”

The lady swung open another little door and switched on a mysterious flood of light. There was a tiny washroom with towels and a mirror and sweet-scented soap. Fraley’s mother had told her about such an arrangement, but she never expected to see one.

“Now,” said the lady in a businesslike tone, “we’ve got to work fast. You go in there and take off that coat and that thing off your head, and I’ll bring you some stockings. Have you any garters? No, of course you wouldn’t have.”

The lady vanished, and Fraley stared at herself in the mirror critically, dimly realizing for the first time what part clothes play in the scheme of living.

The lady reappeared bearing biscuit-colored silk stockings and a pair of low-cut tan shoes with rubber soles.

“I should think you might get these on,” she said as she put the shoes on the floor. “Now, let’s see how the stockings fit. Your foot must be about the size of mine.”

Fraley was not expert in putting on stockings, and the lady had to give a hand and turn the toe inside, helping to sheathe the wild little foot in silk for the first time in its life.

“My! Aren’t they pretty!” said Fraley, surveying them in wonder after her two feet were arranged in the stockings.

Then she bent to the task of getting on the shoes and found, to the lady’s satisfaction, that they went on easily. They were even a little large, which was good for a first shoeing.

Fraley stood up and looked down at her feet. She took a trial step and looked up. “You couldn’t walk up a mountain in these,” she said with a comical, helpless little pucker in her brow.

“Well, I think I’d make a better showing in those than without them,” laughed the lady. “However, I’m glad they fit.”

“How much are these?” Fraley asked shyly, hesitating between the words and not quite sure whether this was the correct thing to say or not.

“How much?” asked the amazed lady. “Why nothing, child. You’re welcome to them. They’re just old ones. I seldom wear shoes a second year, the style changes so often.”

“The what changes?”

“The style. The way they’re cut the fashion, you know.”

“Oh,” said Fraley, “that’s like ‘the fashion of this world passeth away,’ isn’t it? I never knew that meant shoes, too.”

“You odd child! What extremely unique remarks you make! Really, I can’t quite classify you. But listen, is that your best dress?”

“No,” said the girl, looking down at herself doubtfully. “Don’t you think this is clean enough? I washed it out in the brook not long ago. But I’ve got another one. It was made out of one my mother had when she was married. I am going to be very careful of it because it’s the last thing she made for me before she died and I want to keep it always, but if you say I ought to put it on now, I will. I want to look right. Mother would have wanted me to look all right.”

“Let me see your other dress!” ordered the lady.

Fraley went down to the bottom of her bag—under the Bible and the tin cup and the little packages—and fished out the old black satin frock, which was made something after the pattern of a flour bag.

The lady shook it out and surveyed it critically.

“It’s rather mussed,” she said curiously, searching around for a good excuse because she could see the girl’s pride in her best dress, “and I think perhaps on the whole you’d better put it away if you want it for a keepsake. Traveling is rather hard on clothes, you know. Just let me see if I haven’t something you could wear. You’re about my size, and I have several dresses I am tired of. I would just give them to my maid when I got home anyway. If you don’t mind, we’ll put one on you and freshen you up.”

“You’re very kind,” said Fraley with quaint courtesy. “But I don’t think my mother would think it was right for me to take so much. Besides, your maid will be disappointed.”

“Your mother would want you to look right,” said the lady firmly. “And since she is not here, why, you’ll have to let me decide that in her place. As for my maid, she is just rolling in things I’ve given her and won’t know whether she gets one more or not. Wait, I think I have a little blue frock that will be the very thing.”

The lady opened her suitcase again and produced an armful of bright silky things.

“These things go with it,” she stated briefly as she handed out some flimsy little silk underwear of pale pink trimmed with frills of fine lace and set with a rosebud here and there. The lady was having the best time she had had since her childhood’s last doll, dressing up this lovely child just to please herself and see how she would look in the right clothes.

Fraley looked at the pink things puzzled. “What are these?” she said.

“They’re the undergarments that go with that dress to make it set right.”

“But I have some nice clean under-things on,” said Fraley proudly. “My mother made them.”

“Well, take them off and put them away in your bag with your dress, and put these on. The dress won’t hang right without the things that were made for it,” said the lady, as if that settled the matter.

Fraley accepted them because that seemed the thing to do.

“This one goes on first,” said the lady, pointing to a much be-frilled article, “and then this, and this.”

The lady went out, and Fraley took off her own things and slowly put on the strange slippery ones and looked down at herself in wonder.

“I suppose,” she said as the lady came back with a shimmery dark blue dress over her arm, “I suppose the fashion of my under-things is passed away, isn’t it? And mother didn’t know because we’ve been out there on the mountain so long.”

“I guess that’s it,” said the lady, with a mental note of the child’s discernment. “Now, slip this over your head, and put your arms in here.”

The dark blue dress settled down over the girl’s slimness and gave her distinction at once, as all such little creations of a great foreign designer usually do. Fraley stared down at herself in delight, fingering the bright buckle with which the dress was fastened.

“Now, we’ve got to do something with that hair,” said the lady speculatively. “Suppose you sit down on that stool and let me try something. You want to look like other girls of your age before we go out to the diner, you know. Your mother would want that. She wouldn’t want you to look odd.”

“Did I look odd?” asked Fraley, studying this new self in the mirror over the washbowl.

“Well, just a little different, you know,” said the lady with a smile. “Now, do you mind if I arrange your hair?”

“Oh no,” said the girl with a sigh of pleasure. “I wouldn’t know how, I’m sure. You’re very kind.” Then after a minute, she added, “My hair is clean. I washed it in the brook night before last.”

“You washed it in the brook!” exclaimed the lady in horror. “How on earth did you manage that? Were you in swimming?”

“Yes,” said Fraley, hesitating a little to make sure this was quite true, “at least, I couldn’t swim much; it wasn’t deep enough.”

“Well, it’s lovely,” said the lady in admiration. “Now, let’s try a new way.”

Fraley watched in the mirror while the older woman combed her soft gold hair, parting it from forehead to the nape of the neck and gathering each mass of golden curls into a softly coiled wheel over her ears.

“There!” she said, standing off to survey the finished effect. “I think that’s a good style for you. Now, wait till I get the hat that goes with that dress.”

She came back with a little blue hat of soft straw with a bright pin gleaming at one side. She had also brought a string of curiously carved beads and a little wristwatch, which she said Fraley would need.

The girl stood up and looked down at herself and then looked in the glass and turned back to the lady.