I don't understand Mrs. Mundy. She acts so queerly about the girl we
found on the street last night. She put her to bed, after she had
recovered from her fainting spell, on a cot in the room next to her
own, but this morning she told me the girl had gone, and would tell
me nothing else.
When Selwyn, who had picked her up and laid her on the couch, asked
if he should not get a doctor, Mrs. Mundy had said no, and said it so
positively that he offered to do nothing else. And then she thanked
him and told him good night in such a way he understood it was best
he Should go.
At the front door he called me. With his back to it he held out his
hands, took mine in his, crushed them in clasp so close they hurt.
"Danny," he said, "why do you torment me so? You don't know what
you're doing, living where such things are possible as have taken
place tonight; where any time you may be--"
His voice broke, and in amazement I looked at him. Horror and fear
were in his face.
"Do you think it is so awful a thing to see a poor little creature
who has been hurt and needs help?" I drew my hands away. "You talk
as if I were a child, Selwyn."
"You are a child in your knowledge of--of certain phases of life. If
I could only marry you tomorrow and take you away from here you
should never know them!"
"Well, you can't marry me to-morrow!" I made effort to laugh, but
Selwyn's face, his manner, frightened me. "I want to stay down here
and--and stop being as ignorant as a child of things women should
know. Behind the shelter of ignorance most women have already
shirked too long." I held out my hand, "If you stay a bit longer,
Selwyn, I'll say things I shouldn't. Goodnight."
With a shrug of his shoulders he went down the steps, and as I
watched him, for a moment I felt tempted to call him back. It was
not unusual for us to part indignant with each other. We invariably
clashed, disagreed, and argued hotly if we got on certain subjects,
but to-night I did not want him to leave angrily. Something had made
me afraid and uncertain and uneasy. I could not define, could only
feel it, and if Selwyn should fail me-- Shivering, I stood in the
doorway, and as I started to go in I noticed a young fellow across
the street under a tree, who seemed to be watching the house. He was
evidently nervous and moved restlessly in the small circle of the
shadow cast by the bare branches. Selwyn apparently did not see him,
and, crossing the street, was close upon him before he knew he was
there. To my astonishment I saw him start and stop, saw him take the
man by the arm.
"What in the name of Heaven--" In the still, cold air I could hear
distinctly. "Why are you down here this time of night? Where are
you going?"
If there was answer I could not hear it, but I could see the movement
of the young man's shoulders, could see him draw away and turn his
back to Selwyn. Putting his hands in his pockets, he started toward
the corner lighted by the flickering gas-jet, then turned and walked
to the one on which there was no light. Had I known him, I could not
have recognized him in the darkness, but he was evidently well known
to Selwyn, for together they went down the street and out of sight.
I wonder who he was.
For the first time since I came to Scarborough Square, Mrs. Mundy has
not been to-day her chatty self. She does not seem to want to
talk--that is of the girl I want to talk about. When, in my
sitting-room this morning, I asked her the girl's name she said she
did not know it, did not know where she lived, or what had happened
to her, and at my look of incomprehension at her seeming disregard,
she had turned away and busied herself in dusting the books on the
well-filled table.
"She was pretty nervous." Mrs. Mundy's usually cheerful voice was
troubled. "To talk to her, ask her questions, would just have made
her more so. They won't tell you anything if they can help it--girls
like that--and I didn't try to make her tell. I gave her something
to quiet her and stayed with her until she was asleep, but when I
went in the room this morning she was gone. Bettina said she heard
some one unbolt the door very softly, but she thought 'twas me."
"Do you suppose she lives in this neighborhood? Her people must have
been very anxious."
Mrs. Mundy turned and looked at me queerly. She has tremendous
admiration for what she calls my book-learning, and sees no
incongruity in my ignorance of many things with which she is
familiar. My ignorance, indeed, she thinks it her duty to conserve,
and already we have had some differences of opinion as to what I
should know and not know of the life about us. There are a good many
things I have got to make Mrs. Mundy take in more definitely. She
thinks of me still as a girl. I am not. I am a woman twenty-six
years old.
"Half the girls you've seen coming home from work, half who live
around the Square, haven't any people here. What they have is a room
in somebody's house. Many are from the country or from small towns.
Over sixteen thousand work in the factories alone. You don't suppose
they all have homes, do you?--have some one who waits up for them at
night, some one who cares when they come in?"
Before I could answer she stopped her dusting and, head on the side
and hands on her hips, listened. "There's the iceman at the kitchen
door," she said, relievedly. "I'll have to go and let him in."
It is this I cannot understand, this unusual evasiveness on Mrs.
Mundy's part. She is the least mysterious of persons, is, indeed, as
open as the day, and it is unlike her to act as she has done. From
childhood I have known her. Up to the time of Aunt Matilda's
marriage to Mr. Chesmond she made my clothes, and for years, in all
times of domestic complications has been our dependence. When I
decided to live for a while in the house once owned by my
grandfather, I turned to her in confidence that she would care not
only for my material needs, but that from her I could get what no one
else could give me--an insight into scenes and situations commonly
concealed from surface sight.
Her knowledge of life is wide and varied. With unfailing faith and
cheerful courage and a habit of seeing the humorous side of tragic
catastrophes, she has done her work among the sick and forsaken, with
no appeal to others save a certain few; and only those who have been
steadied by her strong hands, and heartened by her buoyant spirit,
and fed from her scant store, have knowledge or understanding of what
she means to the section of the city where the poor and lowly live.
Bit by bit I am learning, but even yet it is difficult to make her
tell me all she does, or how and when she does it.
It was partly because of certain talks with her that I decided to
come to Scarborough Square. If I could make but a few understand
what she understands--so understand that the sending of a check would
not sufficiently relieve them from obligation, from responsibility.
But how can I make clear to others what is not clear to me?
It will not be Bettina's fault if I do not become acquainted with my
new neighbors in Scarborough Square. By the calendar's accounting
Bettina's years are only thirteen, but in shrewdness of penetration,
in swiftness of conclusion, and in acceptance of the fact that most
people are queer she is amazingly mature. Her readiness to go with
me anywhere I wish to go is unfailing, but save on Saturdays and
Sundays we can only pay our visits in the afternoon. It is late when
she gets from school, and dark soon after we start, but with Bettina
I am safe.
Outside and inside of the house our roles are reversed. Concerning
my books and my pictures, concerning the people who ride in their own
automobiles, who go to the theatre whenever they wish, to the fine
churches with beautiful music and paid pews; the people who give
parties and wear gorgeous clothes and eat mushrooms and
terrapin--which she considered inexplicable taste--she will ask me
countless questions; but outside of the house she becomes the teacher
and I the taught. Just what I am learning she hardly understands.
Much that is new to me is commonplace to her; and she does not dream
that I often cannot sleep at night for remembering what the day has
shown me. To-morrow we are going to see a Mrs. Gibbons, whose little
boy, eleven years of age, is the head of his mother's house--the
support of her family.