Bettina, who had opened the door for Selwyn on his last visit, and
who had informed me the next day that she had "shivered with
trembles" because of his great difference to the men in Scarborough
Square, for the second time looked up at me.
"What is he doing down here?" Her finger pointed in the direction of
the man and woman just ahead of us. "What's he talking to that girl
for?"
I did not answer her at once. Amazement and unbelief were making my
heart hot, and a flood of color burned my face. Of all men on earth,
Selwyn was the last to find in this part of the town at this time of
the evening, and as he bent his head to speak to the girl I noticed
he was talking earnestly and using his hands in expressive gestures
as he talked. Starting forward, I took a few steps and then stopped,
sharply.
"I don't know what he is doing down here. Certainly he is at liberty
to come here just as we come."
Bettina's eyes strained in the darkness. "I can't see her face. If
we cross over we can catch up with them by the time they reach the
corner where we could see her in the light." The grip of my hand on
her arm made her stop. "I mean--"
"You don't know what you mean."
It was silly, childish, unreasonable, that I should speak sharply to
Bettina, and equally unreasonable that fear and horror and sickening
suspicion should possess me, but possessed I was by sensations
hitherto unexperienced, and for a moment the gaslight from the lamp
on the opposite street corner wavered and circled in a confusing,
bewildering way. Sudden revelations, sudden realizations, were
unsteadying me. Was Selwyn really some one I did not know? Was his
life less single than I believed it? Hateful, ugly, disloyal
questions surged tumultuously for a half-minute; then reason
returned, and shame that I should insult him with doubt, cooled the
flame in my face.
"It's too late to go to the Binkers. We'd better go home. We'll go
there some other afternoon."
I turned from Bettina's amazed eyes. My tone of voice a moment
before was still perplexing her, and unblinkingly she was searching
my face. Hitherto her directness, her frankness of speech and use of
words, had amused me, and I had permitted, perhaps, too great an
exercise of her gift of comment; but applied personally it was a
different matter.
"We'll go to the corner and turn there," I said. "That will be the
nearest way home."
"But don't you want to see who she is?" Scarborough Square customs
were those most familiar to Bettina, and they exacted understanding
of doubtful situations. "Don't you want to see what--what she looks
like?"
"Why should I? Mr. Thorne knows many people I do not know." I moved
toward the corner. "Come on. It's getting late."
"Gentlemen like him don't know girls like her. She lives down here
somewhere, and he lives where you used to live. He couldn't be sweet
on her, because--because he couldn't." She caught up with me. "He's
yours, ain't he, Miss Danny? You'd better tell him--"
I hated myself for looking across the street, but as I hurried on my
eyes were following Selwyn and the girl, and when I saw the latter
stop and bury her face in her hands, saw Selwyn say something to her,
saw him turn in one direction and she in another, I, too, stopped;
for a moment was unable to move.
We had reached the corner as Selwyn left the opposite one and came
toward us. Head down, as if deeply thinking, he did not look up
until close to us. Under the gaslight I waited, not knowing why, and
Bettina being behind me, he thought I was alone when presently he saw
me.
"Dandridge!" He stared as if stupefied with amazement. Lifting his
hat mechanically, he came closer. "What in the name of Heaven are
you doing here alone this time of night? Are you losing your mind?"
His entire absence of embarrassment, his usual disapproval of my
behavior, his impatient anger, had an unlooked-for effect, and sudden
relief and hot joy so surged over me that I laughed, a queer,
nervous, choking little laugh.
"I am not alone. It is not yet six, and I have been to see a boy who
is what you are not--the head of a house. I mean a house with a
family in it. Have you, too, been visiting?"
His face flushed, and frowningly he turned away. "I had business
down here. I had to come to it as it could not be brought to me.
Where are you going?"
"Home."
Bettina, who in some unaccountable way had managed to stay behind me,
came forward and bowed as if to an audience. "I've been taking her
to where she goes, Mr. Thorne, and grannie knows all the places.
There ain't one that's got a disease in it, and Mr. Crimm would tell
us if it wasn't right to go to them. She don't ever go anywhere by
herself. She's too new yet."
Selwyn smiled grudgingly. Bettina's fat and short little body made
effort to stretch to protective requirements, and her keen eyes
raised to his held them for a moment. Then she turned to me.
"Maybe he'd like to go to some of the homes we go to and see--"
"No. He doesn't want to see." I caught her hand and slipped it
through my arm. "It's much more comfortable not to see. One can
sleep so much better. Are you going our way?" I turned to Selwyn.
"If you are, we'd better start."
For a full block we said nothing. Selwyn, biting the ends of his
close-cut mustache, walked beside me, hands in his pockets and eyes
straight ahead, and not until Bettina had twice asked him if he knew
where Rowland Street was did he answer her.
"Rowland Street?" He turned abruptly, as if brought back to
something far removed in thought. "What on earth do you know of
Rowland Street?"
"Nothing--I never knew there was a street by that name until last
week when I heard a girl talking to grannie, who said she lived on
it. She did her hands, when she talked, just like the girl with you
did." Bettina twisted hers in imitative movements. "She didn't keep
her hands still a minute."
"Few girls do when they talk. They apparently prefer to use their
hands to their brains." Selwyn's shoulders shrugged impatiently,
then his teeth came together on his lip. Again he stared ahead and,
save for Bettina's chatter, we walked in silence to Scarborough
Square.
There had been few times in my life in which speech was impossible,
but during the quarter of an hour it took us to reach home words
would not come, and numbness possessed my body. A world of
possibilities, a world I did not know, seemed suddenly revealing
itself, and at its dark depths and sinister shadows I was frightened,
and more than frightened. Conflicting and confusing emotions, a
sense of outrage and revolt, were making me first hot and then cold,
and distrust and suspicion and baffling helplessness were enveloping
me beyond resistance. The happy ignorance and unconcern and
indifference of my girlhood, my young womanhood, were vanishing
before cruel and compelling verities, and that which, because of its
ugliness, its offensiveness, its repulsiveness, I had wanted to know
nothing about, I knew I would now be forced to face.
It was true what Mrs. Mundy and Aunt Matilda and Selwyn and even
Kitty, four years younger than myself, had often told me, that in
knowledge of certain phases of life I was unwarrantably lacking.
Subjects that had seemingly interested other girls and other women
had never interested me, and I took no part in their discussion. And
now the protection of the past that had prevented understanding of
sordid situations and polluting possibilities was being roughly torn
away, and I was seeing that which not only stung and shocked and
sickened, but I was seeing myself as one who after selfish sleep had
been rudely waked.
Head and heart hot, I pushed back upleaping questions, forced down
surging suspicion and tormenting fears, but all the while I was
conscious that in the friendship that was mine and Selwyn's, the
something that was more than friendship, a great gap had opened that
was separating us. If he gave no explanation of his acquaintance
with the girl he had just left, it must be because he could not. He
knew my hatred of mystery, my insistence upon frankness between
friends. Would he come in and talk as freely as he had ever done of
whatever concerned him? Would he tell me--
As I opened the door with my latch-key Bettina bounded inside, and
the light falling on Selwyn's face showed it white and worn.
Something was greatly troubling him.
"Good night." He turned toward the steps without offering his hand.
"It is useless to ask you not to go in such neighborhoods as you were
in this evening, but if you knew what you were doing you would stay
away."
"I know very well what I am doing. I am hardly so stubborn or wilful
as you think. But if it is unwise for me to be in the neighborhood
referred to, is it any less wise--for you?"
"Me?" The inflection in his voice was the eternal difference in a
man's and woman's privileges. "It was not a question of wisdom--my
being where you saw me. It was one of necessity. Moreover, a man
can go where he pleases. A woman can't. No purity of purpose can
overcome the tyranny of convention."
"Convention!" My hands made impatient gesture. "It's the drag-net
of human effort, the shelter within which cowards run to cover. In
its place it has purpose, but its place, for convenience sake, has
been immensely magnified. And why is convention limited to women?"
It was childish--my outburst--and, ashamed of it, I started to go in,
then turned and again looked at Selwyn. Into his face had come
something I could not understand, something that involved our future
friendship, and, frightened, I leaned against the iron railing of the
little porch and gripped it with hands behind my back.
"Selwyn!" The words came unsteadily. "Have you nothing to say to
me, Selwyn? Don't you know that I know the girl with you to-night
was the girl who--who we brought in here last night? If you knew
her, why--"
Staring at me as if not understanding, Selwyn came closer. In his
eyes was puzzled questioning, but as they held mine they filled with
something of horror, and over his face, which had been white and
worn, spread deep and crimson flush. "You don't mean-- God in
heaven! Do you think the girl is anything to me?"
I did not answer, and, turning, he went down the steps and I into the
house.