Ladybird (33 page)

So she left her new Bible on the bureau.

She found a large piece of wrapping paper in the hall closet and wrapped up her bag carefully. Then with a sorrowful look around the room that would be hers no more, she turned and went slowly, softly, down the stairs and let herself out of the door. There was no one around, and though she looked back for a last good-bye to the spot that had grown so dear, she saw nobody at the windows.

Then she knew that until this last minute she had somehow hoped that Violet would relent and call her back and tell her she did not mean that awful sentence of exile she had pronounced upon her.

With tears blinding her eyes, Fraley stumbled on down the street, block after block, narrowly escaping being run over as she heedlessly crossed the side streets.

At last, when she had gone a long distance from the house and knew that she was beyond the sight of anyone who knew her, she went across to the strip of park and sat down on a bench. She had often sat here before, when she was taking walks by herself, and watched the river in its varying moods, but now it only looked sad to her, for she was leaving this neighborhood forever and would not feel like going back to it again.

Then she remembered her letter, and a sharp pang came at the thought that this friend, too, must be renounced because he belonged to someone else. Nevertheless, she must read that letter.

She opened it with fingers that trembled with the excitement of actually hearing from him again, but at the first words, a beautiful light broke over her face.

Dear Ladybird:
[it read]

At last you have sent me your address and I can write to you. I have been very anxious about you all these months of silence for many reasons, but now I am glad to get your letter
.
And glad it came just this night, too, for I have something to tell you that I think will make you glad
.

I have this night given my old self over to your Jesus
Christ, and I feel that I am born again. You probably know more than I do about that wonderful miracle, so I do not need to tell you, but I want you to know that it is because of you that I have found out that I was a sinner and needed to be born again. I can’t think of words great enough to thank you for what you have done, little Ladybird, and now I am no more just a raven, nor an angel either, thank God, for I can sign myself a child of God, and I guess that is better than being an angel. Anyhow, it looks good to me
.

I’ve been a bit worried about you though, since you told me you had been picked up by Violet Wentworth. I know her well, but she isn’t your kind, little girl; she’s a woman of the world and a hard-boiled one, I’m afraid, and although I’m deeply grateful to her for having helped you over a hard place
,
I don’t want you to stay too long with her. She might somehow make you forget the wonderful things God has taught you out of His Book. She doesn’t know anything about such things, and I don’t want you spoiled, Ladybird
.

My sick man is about well now. He’s coming out of the hospital next week, and then very soon he’ll come on and take his work, and I’ll come home. There are a great many things I mean to do when I get there, for my whole life is changed now and I’m a new man in Christ Jesus, but the first thing I am going to do is to see that you are safe and happy
.

So write to me, little friend, for we are going to be friends always, you know, and tell me all about yourself, and soon I’ll be home and come at once to see you
.

Your friend, who is more grateful to you than you can ever understand, for leading him to Jesus
,

Sincerely
,
George R. Seagrave

With heart almost bursting with joy and renunciation, Fraley read this letter twice and three times before she folded it and put it away. Then she gathered up her bundle and started out into a new world and a new life again. As before she was leaving all behind but her Bible, but God was with her, and she could trust Him to bring her where He wanted her. That ought to be enough.

About that time, Violet, who had gone to her room after Fraley left her and had failed to be able to get to sleep as usual because she was strangely disturbed, came down the stairs to the library to get her book. She could not get away from the thought of the distressed eyes, the pitiful white face, and the glint of the two tears that had rolled down and splashed on the floor. She wanted to absorb herself in her book again to drive the vision from her. This was going to be excellent discipline for Fraley, and she must not be softhearted and relent just because of two tears.

She had just settled herself in her favorite chair again when the bell rang and Alison walked in, unannounced, her face dark and angry.

“I thought I’d find you here!” she said as she flung herself into another chair and took out her cigarette case. “Such a day as I’ve had! I just thought I’d run in and tell you how well I succeeded in carrying out your orders. Where is that little viper? Is she anywhere around? I’d like to tell you in front of her what she said to me.”

Violet looked up, her eyes fully as cold as they had been when talking with Fraley.

“You certainly don’t seem to have exercised much common sense or taste in doing it,” she remarked coolly. “You ought to have known you couldn’t get anywhere by force with a girl of as strong character as that one.”

“Strong character!” sneered Alison. “I’ll say so! The way she slung words around. Wait till I tell you what she did!”

“She has told me,” said Violet, again strangely drawn to defend her protégée.

“She
told
you!” exclaimed Alison incredulously. “I’ll bet she told you a good story for herself!”

“She always tells the truth,” said Violet, almost against her will.

“Well, she didn’t this time. Wait till I tell you what she said about her mother and my father.”

“But that happens to be true, too.”

“Vi! What can you mean?”

“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.”