The Girl from Sunset Ranch: or, Alone in a Great City

All the time her ear seemed preternaturally attuned to that rising and waning sound without her chamber. It seemed to come toward the door, pass it, move lightly away, and then turn and repass again. It was a steady, regular —

Step – put; step – put; step – put —

And with it was the rustle of garments – or so it seemed. The girl grew momentarily more curious. The mystery of the strange sound certainly was puzzling.

“Who ever heard of a ghost with a wooden leg?” she thought, chuckling softly to herself. “And that is what it sounds like. No wonder the servants call this corridor ‘the ghost walk.’ Well, me for bed!”

She had already snapped out the electric light in the bathroom, and now hopped into bed, reaching up to pull the chain of the reading light as she did so. The top of one window was down half-way and the noise of the city at midnight reached her ear in a dull monotone.

Back here at the rear of the great mansion, street sounds were faint. In the distance, to the eastward, was the roar of a passing elevated train. An automobile horn hooted raucously.

But steadily, through all other sounds, as an accompaniment to them and to Helen Morrell’s own thoughts, was the continuous rustle in the corridor outside her door:

Step – put; step – put; step – put.

CHAPTER X

MORNING

The Starkweather mansion was a large dwelling. Built some years before the Civil War, it had been one of the “great houses” in its day, to be pointed out to the mid-nineteenth century visitor to the metropolis. Of course, when the sightseeing coaches came in fashion they went up Fifth Avenue and passed by the stately mansions of the Victorian era, on Madison Avenue, without comment.

Willets Starkweather had sprung from a quite mean and un-noted branch of the family, and had never, until middle life, expected to live in the Madison Avenue homestead. The important members of his clan were dead and gone and their great fortunes scattered. Willets Starkweather could barely keep up with the expenditures of his great household.

There were never servants enough, and Mrs. Olstrom, the very capable housekeeper, who had served the present master’s great-uncle before the day of the new generation, had hard work to satisfy the demands of those there were upon the means allowed her by Mr. Starkweather.

There were rooms in the house – especially upon the topmost floor – into which even the servants seldom went. There were vacant rooms which never knew broom nor duster. The dwelling, indeed, was altogether too large for the needs of Mr. Starkweather and his three motherless daughters.

But their living in it gave them a prestige which nothing else could. As wise as any match-making matron, Willets Starkweather knew that the family’s address at this particular number on Madison Avenue would aid his daughters more in “making a good match” than anything else.

He could not dower them. Really, they needed no dower with their good looks, for they were all pretty. The Madison Avenue mansion gave them the open sesame into good society – choice society, in fact – and there some wealthy trio of unattached young men must see and fall in love with them.

And the girls understood this, too – right down to fourteen-year-old Flossie. They all three knew that to “pay poor papa” for reckless expenditures now, they must sooner or later capture moneyed husbands.

So, there was more than one reason why the three Starkweather girls leaped immediately from childhood into full-blown womanhood. Flossie had already privately studied the characters – and possible bank accounts – of the boys of her acquaintance, to decide upon whom she should smile her sweetest.

These facts – save that the mansion was enormous – were hidden from Helen when she arose on the first morning of her city experience. She had slept soundly and sweetly. Even the rustling steps on the ghost walk had not bothered her for long.

Used to being up and out by sunrise, she could not easily fall in with city ways. She hustled out of bed soon after daybreak, took a cold sponge, which made her body tingle delightfully, and got into her clothes as rapidly as any boy.

She had only the shoddy-looking brown traveling dress to wear, and the out-of-date hat. But she put them on, and ventured downstairs, intent upon going out for a walk before breakfast.

The solemn clock in the hall chimed seven as she found her way down the lower flight of front stairs. As she came through the curtain-hung halls and down the stairs, not a soul did she meet until she reached the front hall. There a rather decrepit-looking man, with a bleared eye, and dressed in decent black, hobbled out of a parlor to meet her.

“Bless me!” he ejaculated. “What – what – what – ”

“I am Helen Morrell,” said the girl from Sunset Ranch, smiling, and judging that this must be the butler of whom the housekeeper had spoken the night before. “I have just come to visit my uncle and cousins.”

“Bless me!” said the old man again. “Gregson told me. Proud to see you, Miss. But – you’re dressed to go out, Miss?”

“For a walk, sir,” replied Helen, nodding.

“At this hour? Bless me – bless me – bless me – ”

He seemed apt to run off in this style, in an unending string of mild expletives. His head shook and his hands seemed palsied. But he was a polite old man.

“I beg of you, Miss, don’t go out without a bit of breakfast. My own coffee is dripping in the percolator. Let me give you a cup,” he said.

“Why – if it’s not too much trouble, sir – ”

“This way, Miss,” he said, hurrying on before, and leading Helen to a cozy little room at the back. This corresponded with the housekeeper’s sitting-room and Helen believed it must be Mr. Lawdor’s own apartment.

He laid a small cloth with a flourish. He set forth a silver breakfast set. He did everything neatly and with an alacrity that surprised Helen in one so evidently decrepit.

“A chop, now, Miss? Or a rasher?” he asked, pointing to an array of electric appliances on the sideboard by which a breakfast might be “tossed up” in a hurry.

“No, no,” Helen declared. “Not so early. This nice coffee and these delicious rolls are enough until I have earned more.”

“Earned more, Miss?” he asked, in surprise.

“By exercise,” she explained. “I am going to take a good tramp. Then I shall come back as hungry as a mountain lion.”

“The family breakfasts at nine, Miss,” said the butler, bowing. “But if you are an early riser you will always find something tidy here in my room, Miss. You are very welcome.”

She thanked him and went out into the hall again. The footman in livery – very sleepy and tousled as yet – was unchaining the front door. A yawning maid was at work in one of the parlors with a duster. She stared at Helen in amazement, but Gregson stood stiffly at attention as the visitor went forth into the daylight.

“My, how funny city people live!” thought Helen Morrell. “I don’t believe I ever could stand it. Up till all hours, and then no breakfast until nine. What a way to live!

“And there must be twice as many servants as there are members of the family – Why! more than that! And all that big house to get lost in,” she added, glancing up at it as she started off upon her walk.

She turned the first corner and went through a side street toward the west. This was not a business side street. There were several tall apartment hotels interspersed with old houses.

She came to Fifth Avenue – “the most beautiful street in the world.” It had been swept and garnished by a horde of white-robed men since two o’clock. On this brisk October morning, from the Washington Arch to 110th Street, it was as clean as a whistle.

She walked uptown. At Thirty-fourth and Forty-second streets the crosstown traffic had already begun. She passed the new department stores, already opening their eyes and yawning in advance of the day’s trade.

There were a few pedestrians headed uptown like herself. Some well-dressed men seemed walking to business. A few neat shop girls were hurrying along the pavement, too. But Helen, and the dogs in leash, had the avenue mostly to themselves at this hour.

The sleepy maids, or footmen, or pages stared at the Western girl with curiosity as she strode along. For, unlike many from the plains, Helen could walk well in addition to riding well.

She reached the plaza, and crossing it, entered the park. The trees were just coloring prettily. There were morning sounds from the not-far-distant zoo. A few early nursemaids and their charges asleep in baby carriages, were abroad. Several old gentlemen read their morning papers upon the benches, or fed the squirrels who were skirmishing for their breakfasts.

Several plainly-dressed people were evidently taking their own “constitutionals” through the park paths. Swinging down from the north come square-shouldered, cleanly-shaven young men of the same type as Dud Stone. Helen believed that Dud must be a typical New Yorker.

But there were no girls abroad – at least, girls like herself who had leisure. And Helen was timid about making friends with the nursemaids.

In fact, there wasn’t a soul who smiled upon her as she walked through the paths. She would not have dared approach any person she met for any purpose whatsoever.

“They haven’t a grain of interest in me,” thought Helen. “Many of them, I suppose, don’t even see me. Goodness, what a lot of self-centred people there must be in New York!”

She wandered on and on. She had no watch – never had owned one. As she had told Dud Stone, the stars at night were her clock, and by day she judged the hour by the sun.

The sun was behind a haze now; but she had another sure timekeeper. There was nothing the matter with Helen’s appetite.

“I’ll go back and join the family at breakfast,” the girl thought. “I hope they’ll be nice to me. And poor Aunt Eunice dead without our ever being told of it! Strange!”

She had come a good way. Indeed, she was some time in finding an outlet from the park. The sun was behind the morning haze as yet, but she turned east, and finally came out upon the avenue some distance above the gateway by which she had entered.

A southbound auto-bus caught her eye and she signaled it. She not only had brought her purse with her, but the wallet with her money was stuffed inside her blouse and made an uncomfortable lump there at her waist. But she hid this with her arm, feeling that she must be on the watch for some sharper all the time.

“Big Hen was right when he warned me,” she repeated, eyeing suspiciously the several passengers in the Fifth Avenue bus.

They were mostly early shoppers, however, or gentlemen riding to their offices. She had noticed the number of the street nearest her uncle’s house, and so got out at the right corner.

The change in this part of the town since she had walked away from it soon after seven, amazed her. She almost became confused and started in the wrong direction. The roar of traffic, the rattle of riveters at work on several new buildings in the neighborhood, the hoarse honking of automobiles, the shrill whistles of the traffic policemen at the corners, and the various other sounds seemed to make another place of the old-fashioned Madison Avenue block.

“My goodness! To live in such confusion, and yet have money enough to be able to enjoy a home out of town,” thought Helen. “How foolish of Uncle Starkweather.”

She made no mistake in the house this time. There was Gregson – now spick and span in his maroon livery – haughtily mounting guard over the open doorway while a belated scrubwoman was cleaning the steps and areaway.

Helen tripped up the steps with a smile for Gregson; but that wooden-faced subject of King George had no joint in his neck. He could merely raise a finger in salute.

“Is the family up, sir?” she asked, politely.

“In Mr. Starkweather’s den, Miss,” said the footman, being unable to leave his post at the moment. Mr. Lawdor was not in sight and Helen set out to find the room in question, wondering if the family had already breakfasted. The clock in the hall chimed the quarter to ten as she passed it.

The great rooms on this floor were open now; but empty. She suddenly heard voices. She found a cross passage that she had not noticed before, and entered it, the voices growing louder.

She came to a door before which hung heavy curtains; but these curtains did not deaden the sound entirely. Indeed, as Helen hesitated, with her hand stretched out to seize the portière, she heard something that halted her.

Indeed, what she heard within the next few moments entirely changed the outlook of the girl from Sunset Ranch. It matured that doubt of humanity that had been born the night before in her breast.

And it changed – for the time being at least – Helen’s nature. From a frank, open-hearted, loving girl she became suspicious, morose and secretive. The first words she heard held her spell-bound – an unintentional eavesdropper. And what she heard made her determined to appear to her unkind relatives quite as they expected her to appear.

CHAPTER XI

LIVING UP TO ONE’S REPUTATION

“Well! my lady certainly takes her time about getting up,” Belle Starkweather was saying.

“She was tired after her journey, I presume,” her father said.

“Across the continent in a day-coach, I suppose,” laughed Hortense, yawning.

“I was astonished at that bill for taxi hire Olstrom put on your desk, Pa,” said Belle. “She must have ridden all over town before she came here.”

“A girl who couldn’t take a plain hint,” cried Hortense, “and stay away altogether when we didn’t answer her telegram – ”

“Hush, girls. We must treat her kindly,” said their father. “Ahem!”

“I don’t see why?” demanded Hortense, bluntly.

“You don’t understand everything,” responded Mr. Starkweather, rather weakly.

“I don’t understand you, Pa, sometimes,” declared Hortense.

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing right now!” snapped the older girl. “I’ve ordered her things taken out of that chamber. Her shabby old trunk has gone up to the room at the top of the servants’ stairway. It’s good enough for her.”

“We certainly have not got to have this cowgirl around for long,” continued Hortense. “She’d be no fit company for Flossie. Flossie’s rude enough as it is.”

The youngest daughter had gone to school, so she was not present with her saucy tongue to hold up her own end of the argument.

“Think of a girl right from a cattle ranch!” laughed Belle. “Fine! I suppose she knows how to rope steers, and break ponies, and ride bareback like an Indian, and all that. Fine accomplishments for a New York drawing-room, I must say.”

“Oh, yes,” joined in Hortense. “And she’ll say ‘I reckon,’ and drop her ‘g’s’ and otherwise insult the King’s English.”

“Ahem! I must warn you girls to be less boisterous,” advised their father.

“Why, you sound as though you were almost afraid of this cowgirl, Pa,” said Belle, curiously.

“No, no!” protested Mr. Starkweather, hurriedly.

“Pa’s so easy,” complained Hortense. “If I had my way I wouldn’t let her stay the day out.”

“But where would she go?” almost whined Mr. Starkweather.

“Back where she came from.”

“Perhaps the folks there don’t want her,” said Belle.

“Of course she’s a pauper,” observed Hortense.

“Give her some money and send her away, Pa,” begged Belle.

“You ought to. She’s not fit to associate with Flossie. You know just how Floss picks up every little thing – ”

“And she’s that man’s daughter, too, you know,” remarked Belle.

“Ahem!” said their father, weakly.

“It’s not decent to have her here.”

“Of course, other people will remember what Morrell did. It will make a scandal for us.”

“I cannot help it! I cannot help it!” cried Mr. Starkweather, suddenly breaking out and battling against his daughters as he sometimes did when they pressed him too closely. “I cannot send her away.”

“Well, she mustn’t be encouraged to stay,” declared Hortense.

“I should say not,” rejoined Belle.

“And getting up at this hour to breakfast,” Hortense sniffed.

Helen Morrell wore strong, well-made walking boots. Good shoes were something that she could always buy in Elberon. But usually she walked lightly and springily.

Now she came stamping through the small hall, and on the heels of the last remark, flung back the curtain and strode into the den.

“Hullo, folks!” she cried. “Goodness! don’t you get up till noon here in town? I’ve been clean out to your city park while I waited for you to wash your faces. Uncle Starkweather! how be you?”

She had grabbed the hand of the amazed gentleman and was now pumping it with a vigor that left him breathless.

“And these air two of your gals?” quoth Helen. “I bet I can pick ’em out by name,” and she laughed loudly. “This is Belle; ain’t it? Put it thar!” and she took the resisting Belle’s hand and squeezed it in her own brown one until the older girl winced, muscular as she herself was.

“And this is ’Tense – I know!” added the girl from Sunset Ranch, reaching for the hand of her other cousin.

“No, you don’t!” cried Hortense, putting her hands behind her. “Why! you’d crush my hand.”

“Ho, ho!” laughed Helen, slapping her hand heartily upon her knee as she sat down. “Ain’t you the puny one!”

“I’m no great, rude – ”

“Ahem!” exclaimed Mr. Starkweather, recovering from his amazement in time to shut off the snappy remark of Hortense. “We – we are glad to see you, girl – ”

“I knew you’d be!” cried Helen, loudly. “I told ’em back on the ranch that you an’ the gals would jest about eat me up, you’d be so glad, when ye seen me. Relatives oughter be neighborly.”

“Neighborly!” murmured Hortense. “And from Montana!”

“Butcher got another one; ain’t ye, Uncle Starkweather?” demanded the metamorphosed Helen, looking about with a broad smile. “Where’s the little tad?”

“‘Little tad’! Oh, won’t Flossie be pleased?” again murmured Hortense.

“My youngest daughter is at school,” replied Mr. Starkweather, nervously.

“Shucks! of course,” said Helen, nodding. “I forgot they go to school half their lives down east here. Out my way we don’t get much chance at schoolin’.”

“So I perceive,” remarked Hortense, aloud.

“Now I expect you,’Tense,” said Helen, wickedly, “have been through all the isms and the ologies there be – eh? You look like you’d been all worn to a frazzle studyin’.”

Belle giggled. Hortense bridled.

“I really wish you wouldn’t call me out of my name,” she said.

“Huh?”

“My name is Hortense,” said that young lady, coldly.

“Shucks! So it is. But that’s moughty long for a single mouthful.”

Belle giggled again. Hortense looked disgusted. Uncle Starkweather was somewhat shocked.

“We – ahem! – hope you will enjoy yourself here while you – er – remain,” he began. “Of course, your visit will be more or less brief, I suppose?”

“Jest accordin’ to how ye like me and how I like you folks,” returned the girl from Sunset Ranch, heartily. “When Big Hen seen me off – ”

“Who —who?” demanded Hortense, faintly.

“Big Hen Billings,” said Helen, in an explanatory manner. “Hen was dad’s – that is he worked with dad on the ranch. When I come away I told Big Hen not to look for me back till I arrove. Didn’t know how I’d find you-all, or how I’d like the city. City’s all right; only nobody gets up early. And I expect we-all can’t tell how we like each other until we get better acquainted.”

“Very true – very true,” remarked Mr. Starkweather, faintly.

“But, goodness! I’m hungry!” exclaimed Helen. “You folks ain’t fed yet; have ye?”

“We have breakfasted,” said Belle, scornfully. “I will ring for the butler. You may tell Lawdor what you want – er —Cousin Helen,” and she looked at Hortense.

“Sure!” cried Helen. “Sorry to keep you waiting. Ye see, I didn’t have any watch and the sun was clouded over this morning. Sort of run over my time limit – eh? Ah! – is this Mr. Lawdor?”

The shaky old butler stood in the doorway.

“It is Lawdor,” said Belle, emphatically. “Is there any breakfast left, Lawdor?”

“Yes, Miss Belle. When Gregson told me the young miss was not at the table I kept something hot and hot for her, Miss. Shall I serve it in my room?”

“You may as well,” said Belle, carelessly. “And, Cousin Helen!”

“Yep?” chirped the girl from the ranch.

“Of course, while you are here, we could not have you in the room you occupied last night. It – it might be needed. I have already told Olstrom, the housekeeper, to take your bag and other things up to the next floor. Ask one of the maids to show you the room you are to occupy —while you remain.”

“That’s all right, Belle,” returned the Western girl, with great heartiness. “Any old place will do for me. Why! I’ve slept on the ground more nights than you could shake a stick at,” and she tramped off after the tottering butler.

“Well!” gasped Hortense when she was out of hearing, “what do you know about that?”

“Pa, do you intend to let that dowdy little thing stay here?” cried Belle.

“Ahem!” murmured Mr. Starkweather, running a finger around between his collar and his neck, as though to relieve the pressure there.

“Her clothes came out of the ark!” declared Hortense.

“And that hat!”

“And those boots – or is it because she clumps them so? I expect she is more used to riding than to walking.”

“And her language!” rejoined Belle.

“Ahem! What – what can we do, girls?” gasped Mr. Starkweather.

“Put her out!” cried Belle, loudly and angrily.

“She is quite too, too impossible, Pa,” agreed Hortense.

“With her coarse jokes,” said the older sister.

“And her rough way,” echoed the other.

“And that ugly dress and hat.”

“A pauper relation! Faugh! I didn’t know the Starkweathers owned one.”

“Seems to me, one queer person in the house is enough,” began Hortense.

Her father and sister looked at her sharply.

“Why, Hortense!” exclaimed Belle.

“Ahem!” observed Mr. Starkweather, warningly.

“Well! we don’t want that freak in the house,” grumbled the younger sister.

“There are – ahem! – some things best left unsaid,” observed her father, pompously. “But about this girl from the West – ”

“Yes, Pa!” cried his daughters in duet.

“I will see what can be done. Of course, she cannot expect me to support her for long. I will have a serious talk with her.”

“When, Pa?” cried the two girls again.

“Er – ahem! – soon,” declared the gentleman, and beat a hasty retreat.

“It had better be pretty soon,” said Belle, bitterly, to her sister. “For I won’t stand that dowdy thing here for long, now I tell you!”

“Good for you, Belle!” rejoined Hortense, warmly. “It’s strange if we can’t – with Flossie’s help – soon make her sick of her visit.”

CHAPTER XII

“I MUST LEARN THE TRUTH”

Helen was already very sick of her Uncle Starkweather’s home and family. But she was too proud to show the depth of her feeling before the old serving man in whose charge she had been momentarily placed.

Lawdor was plainly pleased to wait upon her. He made fresh coffee in his own percolator; there was a cutlet kept warm upon an electric stove, and he insisted upon frying her a rasher of bacon and some eggs.

Despite all that mentally troubled her, her healthy body needed nourishment and Helen ate with an appetite that pleased the old man immensely.

“If – if you go out early, Miss, don’t forget to come here for your coffee,” he said. “Or more, if you please. I shall be happy to serve you.”

“And I’m happy to have you,” returned the girl, heartily.

She could not assume to him the rude tone and manner which she had displayed to her uncle and cousins. That had been the outcome of an impulse which had risen from the unkind expressions she had heard them use about her.

As soon as she could get away, she had ceased being an eavesdropper. But she had heard enough to assure her that her relatives were not glad to see her; that they were rude and unkind, and that they were disturbed by her presence among them.

But there was another thing she had drawn from their ill-advised talk, too. She had heard her father mentioned in no kind way. Hints were thrown out that Prince Morrell’s crime – or the crime of which he had been accused – was still remembered in New York.