The Dust Flower. Basil King

town. I call him a bum. Poor momma married him.”

      “And wasn’t happy, I suppose.”

      “Not after he’d spent her wad, she wasn’t. She was crazy about him, and when she found out that all he’d cared about was her four thousand plunks—well, it was her finish.”

      “How long ago was that?”

      “About four years now.”

      “And what have you been doing in the meanwhile?”

      “Keepin’ house for Judson Flack most of the time—till I quit.”

      “Oh, you’ve quit?”

      “Sure I’ve quit.” She was putting her better foot forward. “Now I’m in pitchers.”

      He glanced at her again, having noticed already that she scarcely glanced at him. Her profile was toward him as at first, an irregular little profile of lifts and tilts, which might be appealing, but was not beautiful. 34 The boast of being in pictures, so incongruous with her woefully dilapidated air, did not amuse him. He knew how large a place a nominal connection with the stage took in the lives of certain ladies. Even this poor little tramp didn’t hesitate to make the claim.

      “And you’re doing well?”

      She wouldn’t show the white feather. “Oh, so so! I—I get along.”

      “You live by yourself?”

      “I—I do now.”

      “Don’t you find it lonely?”

      “Not so lonely as livin’ with Judson Flack.”

      “You’re—you’re happy?”

      A faint implication that she might look to him for help stirred her fierce independence. “Gee, yes! I’m—I’m doin’ swell.”

      “But you wouldn’t mind a change, I suppose?”

      For the first time her eyes stole toward him, not in suspicion, and still less in alarm, but in one of the intenser shades of curiosity. It was almost as if he was going to suggest to her something “off the level” but which would nevertheless be worth her while. She was used to these procedures, not in actual experience but from hearing them talked about. They made up a large part of what Judson Flack understood as “business.” She felt it prudent to be as non-committal as possible.

      “I ain’t so sure.”

      She meant him to understand that being tolerably satisfied with her own way of life, she was not enthusiastic over new experiments.

      35

      His next observation was no surprise to her. “I’m a lawyer.”

      She was sure of that. There were always lawyers in these subterranean affairs—“shyster” was a word she had heard applied to them—and this man looked the part. His thin face, clear-cut profile, and skin which showed dark where he shaved, were all, in her judgment, signs of the sinister. Even his clothes, from his patent leather shoes with spats to his dark blue necktie with a pearl in it, were those which an actor would wear in pictures to represent a “shark.”

      She was turning these thoughts over in her mind when he spoke again.

      “I’ve an office, but I don’t practise much. It takes all my time to manage my own estate.”

      She didn’t know what this meant. It sounded like farming, but you didn’t farm in New York, or do it from an office anyhow. “I guess he’s one of them gold-brick nuts,” she commented to herself, “but he won’t put nothin’ over on me.”

      In return for her biography he continued to give his, bringing out his facts in short, hard statements which seemed to hurt him. It was this hurting him which she found most difficult to reconcile with her gold brick theory and the suspicion that he was a “shark.”

      “My father was a lawyer, too. Rather well known in his day. One time ambassador to Vienna.”

      Ambassador to Vienna! She didn’t know where Vienna was or the nature of an ambassador, but she did know that it sounded grand, so she looked 36 at him attentively. It was either more gold brick or else. …

      Then something struck her—“smote her” would be perhaps the more accurately descriptive word, since the effect was on her heart. This man was sick. He was suffering. She had often seen women suffer, but men rarely, and this was one of the rare instances. Something in her was touched. She couldn’t imagine why he talked to her or what he wanted of her, but a pity which had never yet been called upon was astir among her emotions.

      As for the minute he said no more, her next words came out only because she supposed them to betray the kindly interest of which he was in need.

      “Then I suppose he left you a big fat wad.”

      “Yes; but it doesn’t do me any good. I mean, it doesn’t make me happy—when I’m not.”

      “I guess it’d make you a good deal less happy if you didn’t have it.”

      “Perhaps so; I don’t think about it either way.” He added, after tense compression of the lips; “I’m all alone in the world—like you.”

      She was sure now that something was coming, though of what nature lay beyond her speculative power. She wondered if he could have fallen in love with her at first sight, realizing a favorite dream she often had in the subway. Hundreds of times she had beguiled the minutes by selecting one or another of the wealthy lawyers and bankers, whom she supposed to be her fellow-travelers there, seeing him smitten by a glance at her, following her when she got out, and laying his heart and coronet at her feet before she had 37 run up the steps. If this man were not a shyster lawyer or a gold brick nut, he might possibly be doing that.

      “It’s about a girl,” he burst out suddenly. “Half an hour ago she kicked me out.”

      “Did she know you had all that dough?”

      “Yes, she knew I had all that dough. But she said that since I was going to the devil, I had better go.” He drew a long breath. “Well, I’m going—perhaps quicker than she thinks.”

      “Will you do yourself any good by that?”

      “No, but I’ll do her harm.”

      “How?”

      “I’ll show her what she’s made of me.”

      “She can’t make anything of you in half an hour or in half a year—not so long as you’ve got your wad back of you. If you was to be kicked out with your pay-envelope stole, and your mother’s rings pulled off your fingers, and her wrist-watch from your wrist, and even your carfare––”

      “Is that what’s happened to you?”

      “Sure! Half an hour ago, too. Judson Flack! But why should I worry? Something’ll happen before night.”

      He became emphatic. “Yes, and I’ll tell you what it will be. You put your finger on it just now when you said she couldn’t make anything out of men in half an hour. Well, it’s got to be something that would take just that time—an hour at the most—and fatal. Now do you see?”

      She shook her head.

      He swung fully round on her from his end of the bench. “Think,” he commanded.

      38

      As if with a premonitory notion of what he meant, she answered coldly: “What’s the good o’ me thinkin’? I’ve got nothin’ to do with it.”

      “You might have.”

      “I can’t imagine what, unless it’d be––” Realizing what she had been about to say, she broke off in confusion, coloring to the eyes.

      He