Chapter XVI
Only once in her life did Louella Leota become one of the girls in a house of love. That was during her residence in Nashville. She had been lonely after Jobyna's death and Madame Clair was kind to her. She gave her a room in her house and before many days had passed she was as busy as any of the other girls.
As she beheld the money that was squandered in that place she was amazed. This was indeed a profitable racket. She decided that she would have a house of her own. She would run it in good taste. Only the most beautiful and best mannered girls would be hired. They would not be gyped right and left and treated like machines.
She would be like a mother to the girls. Perhaps she might even go further. Those that were worth saving, she would save. Not for nothing had she been an ardent church-goer for years. She may not have been deeply religious at heart but she was familiar with all the precepts of religion. Besides, Louella was beginning to want a home of her own, where she could pass a quiet evening dozing by the fire if she wished.
Not that she really wanted to. The very thought of such a wasted evening made her shudder. Still it was nice to know one had one's hearthstone to doze before if one ever got such a peculiar inclination. Louella only remained at the house of Madame Clair until she had learned as much as she could, then she departed. It was quite simple to be in partnership with the girls and to share all profits equally.
She looked around for more than a month before she found the brownstone house where she settled. She visited numerous cities but not till she found the particular large four-story detached house that intrigued her was she satisfied.
The top-floor was to be her own private home. A place of peace and quiet. Utterly tranquil. No sordid business would be transacted there and certainly no contracts fulfilled. It was to be the home of a middle-aged woman, a rather tired woman, whose beauty was fading and whose velvet skin was beginning to be spoiled by rolls of fat. Every comfort money could buy was procured for that apartment. The most elaborate furniture, carpets as thick and soft as park grass, luxurious grandfather-chairs, plenty of lamps, especially reading lamps, arranged at convenient angles.
One of the rooms was a library. It contained thousands of books on every conceivable subject, some of which Louella did not even understand. There were also a great many mystical and spiritual books. Of course there were many costly volumes of erotica.
But it was tales of the soil that Madame Leota liked best. Her thoughts were at last winging back to the days of her youth. Her childhood home had been a romantic place. There had been quietude and peace. But she had never appreciated it. She had always desired to get away from the farm. Now she had regrets. She pined for her lost youth. She longed for the old farm once more.
What a fool she had been never to have gone back! Now she never could go back because her parents had found everlasting rest. Templeton had told her about it in one of his letters. They died within a few days of each other. Their life had been a ueautiful rustic idyll. They had dwelt for years in a house by the side of the road. They were friends to everyone. Samuel Walter Foss might have got the idea for his immortal poem from them. So completely had marriage made them one, the old man could not go on after his wife had been laid to rest. All his life he had lived on the soil and in the end the soil held out its arms to draw him to its breast.
It was not like dying. It was like being born anew into some far more mystical sphere which mortals did not know nor understand. Those who lived their lives with their bare feet burrowing in new-turned sod somehow seemed to be closer to God. The soil gave life; life to flowers, to trees, to plants. It gave life to man through the abundance of its grains and its fruits. There was a kinship between the soil and the sun. They were lovers, and when they fused in love, the crops were plentiful. There could be no death when the body of man was buried in the soil. For the soil was life. It was the mother of living things and the sun was the father.
Louella Leota was forty years old when she opened, in the mid-western city, her establishment that brought her lasting fame. There was no house nearer than thirty feet. Had the houses had any pride of race, they would probably have tried to get farther away than that.
However, the huge brownstone house, four stories high, with many rooms, showed no concern at all at being snubbed. It held its red brick chimneys high in the air and refused to be troubled about anything. It could not be bothered with other houses that had so little traffic. There was not another establishment for miles around that had so many visitors as this, nor one that catered to a more distinguished clientele.
The girls were magnificent. The food and wines were beyond compare. Madame Leota was a perfect hostess. She knew perfectly how to look out for the welfare of her guests.
Time and time again her establishment was reported to the authorities but so many of the authorities of that mid-western city regularly reported to her, the results were never disastrous. Madame kept a furnished-room house. There was seldom any noise. As a rule she required her roomers to give references. Many of these references she kept on file. Such was the fabric of her story and the city magistrates chose to believe it. By most of them she was honored and respected. She was merely a poor widow, she explained, but she did not bother saying that she was the widow of an army.
On one or two occasions she filed charges against those who had previously filed charges against her. She charged defamation of character and malicious mischief. Madame gave much to charitable enterprises. It was quite easy to prove her sterling character. At least she proved it to be sterling even though it was only plated and rather thinly at that.
When her enemies found that she struck back, and that the courts seemed to sway in her favor they ceased to annoy her. After all she kept her establishment in good repair and the garden about her house was a model of neatness.
She employed an aged gardener, a man whom she had saved from being a charge of the state. In his eyes she was a saint. In her eyes he was a most excellent character reference. With his snow white hair he gave an air of quiet charm to the establishment.
Old Marlow knew nothing of what went on in the house. He dwelt in a tiny shack at the end of the garden. In his simple faith he imagined that Madame Leota was really mistress of a refined boarding-house. He could not have been more proud of her if she had been the first lady of the land. She smiled a trifle wistfully sometimes when Old Marlow addressed her so reverently.
"When I die," she told him, "I think Hl have you quietly murdered so that you can intercede for me with the great forces that guide our future destinies. I'm afraid I'll never be able to get a good aisle seat if I go alone."
Sometimes on summer afternoons Madame rode through the streets of the city in an open barouche bland, smiling, dashingly dressed, though slightly over-painted. She had hosts of friends and many a man in the respected walks of life nodded to her surreptitiously.
Madame was a great lover of good manners. If a man would not acknowledge her on the street, she would not acknowledge him in her house. She would refuse him admittance and because the girls were so slim and graceful, so well-educated and refined, few there were who cared to be banished. They preferred to run the risk of having it discovered that their dignity and refinement was only a thin veneer.
So Madame rode in dignity through the streets, and her own small army of veterans who had been with her to the wars, saluted and paid homage. It was a distinct tonic to her vanity. She was a successful woman, a credit to the community.
In choosing her girls, Madame exercised extreme care. They must be beautiful, in perfect health. Their bodies must be without blemish. They must use good English and conduct themselves in a decorous manner.
In one thing she was strict. No innocent girl must start on the downroad through her house. Frequently girls she knew could be saved, drifted to her establishment. To these girls she talked like a mother. She told them of all the heartaches, the sorrows, the horrors which they would find along their chosen road.
For business reasons she posed as an ardent Christian. She attended church regularly. Sometimes she enjoyed the services. More often she declared they bored her to hell. But perhaps some of this religious environment did seep into her body and she held to her original intention to be a good Samaritan to wayward girls. In any event to many a poor broken girl whose greatest sin was that she had been a fool, trusted a man, Madame Leota was a Madonna of Mercy. Until the girl got back her courage, her strength, her hope again, Madame kept her in that private apartment of her own at the top of the huge stone house. Here the girl was as safe as in a convent. Woe betide the man who mounted that final flight of stairs without a direct invitation from Madame Leota. The house was a "Palace of Joy," but Madame's private apartment was a quiet peaceful home. Madame was a strong woman and it was rumored that on several occasions she had seized intruders bodily and tossed them down that great flight of heavy-carpeted stairs.
For almost twenty years Madame Leota ruled her establishment like an empress and a strange twenty years they were. For the first time in her life she had girls working for her. She grew stout and her famed beauty deteriorated. Lines and wrinkles began to show. Only the rare loveliness of her eyes remained undimmed.
Much of life had she seen. Her education was colossal. She knew humanity because she knew men, knew them at their best and at their worst. Frequently she became morose and melancholy. She had beheld life in the raw and it was an ugly sight. She had no illusions left. She was hard, bitter at times. But frequently she was most sympathetic.
She was in the habit of visiting children's hospitals in all the towns at which she stopped, Nashville, Wheeling, Louisville. It was a form of diversion. It cheered her up. If these kids who had nothing, who were sick and frail, could smile, then what cause had she to complain?
Sometimes she reflected that only wickedness is rewarded. Nero was remembered for his cruelties, but could anyone mention five contemporary emperors who were known for their mercies? The average man and woman was far more interested in torture and crime than in religious education. Newspapers featured atrocities, torch murders, ax murders, murders in a thousand pleasant forms. They were set up in startling headlines. No religious enterprise was granted such publicity. She believed herself living in an age of decadence, of sham and hypocrisy. Church-going was merely a gesture, something to be got over as quickly as possible.
Such was the grim philosophy of Louella Leota. Yet she went to church almost every Sunday. It was a habit with her, like taking snuff. She had started taking snuff because a detective friend had declared it was good for a head cold. It was. The cold improved. She nearly died from it. But eventually it grew tired and departed. She never recovered from the snuff. For the rest of her life she used it.
Louella liked to arrive at church late, while the services were in progress. Then like a great lady, elaborately dressed, she would sweep down the aisle, causing such a commotion that she even disconcerted the minister. But when the collection plate was passed around and she dropped a ten dollar bill into it, his wrath was somewhat appeased. That ten dollars which Louella invested every Sunday was a form of advertising. It caused men to notice her. A friendly nod, a handclasp. Later a visit.
Louella lost her taste in clothes as the years rolled on. As she grew stouter she dressed coyly. She leaned toward flounces, ruffles and gaudy colors. She was one of the first to help popularize cosmetics just as she had helped to popularize other things.
Louella had no regrets because of her past life. It had been full. She had had much excitement and for the most part she had been master of her own fate. Regrettably, it cannot be stated she ever showed remorse. Nature made men desire certain things and she merely helped out nature by supplying those certain things which men desired.
There were times, however, when she used to speculate on what her life might have been if she had never eloped from her father's farm with Whitman Manners. This life she had lived was not the one that had been intended for her. Louella Leota, who never had been born, had lived most of the life of Mary Blaine. Mary Blaine, too, was living an artificial life, at least she had lived it on those rare occasions when Louella faded into the background for the time being. Certainly that interlude when she had been a farm drudge for Yekial Meigs had been no more her true life than the tinsel existence of Louella.
With the years Louella became a little mellow. She had led an active life. She was rather tired. She liked to rest. Besides, now and then she' had trouble with her heart. The doctor told her that while there was no immediate danger, she must live quietly and take things easy. Louella could not help smiling. Such a simple remedy apparently and yet she refused to take it. "If I had to live quietly," she said, "I'd die. So it is up to me to make a decision, to decide whether I wish to succumb to the disease or the cure."
Louella did not die despite the fact that she did not heed the doctor's admonition.
"Doctors at best," she reflected, "are nuisances. Unless a person is very sick he does not need a doctor; and if he is really sick he cannot risk experimenting with one. Doctors should be paid to keep people well, just as they are paid in China. I'd even carry the matter a step further, If the patient dies, they should be shot. It might be a good idea to shoot them anyway."
Louella did not know of her father's and mother's passing until her brother Templeton wrote to advise her about it. She did not go to Galvey then. Her brother went.
Templeton Blaine looked after everything. He sold the farm to a neighbor, for he had neither the time nor the inclination to devote to it. He had little sentimental attachment for it. Although he had been born on the farm, he belonged to the city.
When he returned to New York he sent his sister a check for every cent that he had received for the farm. He needed no part of the inheritance. He was wealthy. He reasoned that Mary would need the money far more than he.
Louella had been stunned when she read Templeton's letters about their parents. Of course the letters were addressed to her under the name of Mary Blaine. Templeton Blaine knew nothing about Louella Leota.
He was rather lackadaisical in that respect. Mary had stated that she was employed. He never questioned the source of her income. Occasionally he sent her a check. Often he told her that she could draw on him for any money she needed. Because she never asked for anything, he naturally assumed that she was well-provided with funds. As a matter of fact, she was. She had always saved something every week. It was fascinating how quickly her bank accounts mounted.
She would have liked to visit the old home once more before the house passed out of their possession. Now it was too late. Templeton had acted for the best according to his way of thinking. He had generously turned all money over to her. Never in any of her letters did she even hint to him about her keen disappointment. When it was too late to go home she was miserably homesick. It is the way of humanity the world over.
More and more she devoted her evenings to reading. She liked the calm, peaceful books. Her life had been tempestuous. She was enjoying a moment's repose.
Occasionally she thought about Yekial Meigs and his homestead. Though it was not exactly about him that she thought, either, but about Steve Garland who had wooed death and gone off one morning with a smile on his lips to meet the dawn. Steve had told her she had never permitted herself to be the woman God had created. He had told her that there was a hidden woman within her that she kept locked in prison. As she grew older, she had more time for remembrance. Long hours she pondered over this problem.
"I need not be so careful now," she murmured, "for the hidden woman must be growing old. Even if she breaks out of her prison she would perhaps be a feeble thing. Still the vigil must not be relaxed. Suppose she did find release and came shrieking into the sun, wailing for her lost youth."
She sighed. "It would be a frightful thing. It must not happen. I refuse to supply laughter for the gods. All my life I've been a puppet, but I have too much self-respect to end up by being a clown."