Selwyn has been gone two weeks. I have heard nothing from him. I do
not even know where he is.
Yesterday, over the telephone, Kitty reproached me indignantly for not
coming oftener to see her. Each week I try to take lunch or dinner
with her, but there have been weeks when I could not see her, when I
could not get away. Scarborough Square and the Avenue are not mixable,
and just now Scarborough Square is taking all my time.
Daily new demands are being made upon me, new opportunities opening,
new friendships being formed, and though my new friends are very
interesting to me, I hardly think they would be to Kitty. I rarely
speak of them to her.
Miss Hardy, the woman labor inspector for the state, a girl who had
worked in various factories since she was twelve and who had gotten her
education at a night school, where often she fell asleep at her desk, I
find both entertaining and instructing, but Kitty would not care for
her. She wears spectacles, and Kitty has an unyielding antipathy for
women who wear spectacles. Neither would she care for Miss Bayne,
another state employee, a clever, capable woman who is an expert in her
line. It is her business to discover feeble-mindedness, to test school
children, and inmates of institutions to which they have been sent, or
of places to which they have gone because of incapacity or delinquency
or sin of any sort; and nothing I have read in books has been so
revealing concerning conditions that exist as her frank statements
simply told.
In my sitting-room at Scarborough Square she comes in frequently for
tea with me, and meets there Fannie Harris, the teacher of an open-air
school for the tuberculosis children of our neighborhood; and Martha
White, the district nurse for our particular section; meets Miss Hay, a
probation officer of the Juvenile Court, and Loulie Hill, a girl from
the country who had once gone wrong, and who is now trying to keep
straight on five dollars a week made in the sewing-room of one of the
city's hospitals. Bettie Flynn, who lives at the City Home because of
epileptic fits, also comes in occasionally. Bettie is a friend of Mrs.
Mundy. Owing to kinlessness and inability to care for herself, owing,
also, to there being nowhere else to which she could go, she has been
forced to enter the Home. Her caustic comments on its management are
of a clear-cut variety. Bettie was born for a satirist and became an
epileptic. The result at times is speech that is not guarded, a
calling of things by names that are their own.
These and various others who are facing at short range realities of
which I have long been personally ignorant, are taking me into new
worlds, pumping streams of new understandings, new outreaches, into my
brain and heart, and life has become big and many-sided, and a thing
not to be wasted. Myself of the old life I am seeing as I never saw
before, seeing in a perspective that does not fill with pride.
Last night I went to my first dinner-party since Aunt Matilda's death.
In Kitty's car I watched with interest, on the way to her house, the
long stretches of dingy streets, then cleaner ones, with their old and
comfortable houses; the park, with its bare trees and shrubs, and
finally the Avenue, with its smooth paving and pretentious homes, its
hurrying cars of luxurious make, its air of conscious smartness. As
contrast to my present home it interested greatly.
Kitty's house is very beautiful. She is that rare person who knows she
does not know, and the house, bought for her by her father as a
wedding-gift, she had put in the hands of proper authorities for its
furnishings. It is not the sort of home I would care to have, but it
is undeniably handsome, and undoubtedly Kitty understands the art of
entertaining.
Her dinner-party was rather a large one, its honor guest an English
writer whose books are unendurably dull; but any sort of lion is
helpful in reducing social obligations, and for that purpose Kitty had
captured him. She insisted on my coming, but begged me not to mention
horrid things, like poor people and politics and babies who died from
lack of intelligent care, but to talk books.
"So few of the others talk books, except novels, and he thinks most
modern novels rotten," she had told me over the telephone. "So please
come and splash out something about these foreign writers whose names I
can't remember. Bergyson is one, I believe, and Brerr another, and
France-Ana--Ana something France. He's a man. And there's another
one. Mater. . . Yes, that's it. Maeterlinck. And listen: Wear that
white crepe you wore at my wedding; it's frightfully plain, but all
your other things are black. I don't see why you still wear black.
Aunt Matilda hated it."
As I went up-stairs to take off my wraps I smiled at Kitty's
instructions. In her room she hastily kissed me.
"Do hurry and come down. I'm so afraid he'll come before the others,
and I might have to talk to him. Literary people are the limit, and
this one, they say, is the worst kind. Billy refuses to leave his room
until you go down; says he'd rather be sent to jail than left alone
with him ten minutes. He met him at the club."
Holding me off, she surveyed me critically. "You look very well.
That's a good-looking dress. It suits you. I believe you wear pearls
and these untrimmed things just to bring out your hair and eyes.
Nobody but you could do it."
Stopping her short, quick sentences, she leaned forward. "There he is,
coming up the steps with Mr. Alexander. Come on; they're inside. We
can go down now. By the way"--she pinned the orchids at her waist
with unnecessary attention--"Selwyn got back yesterday. He will be
here to-night. Dick Moran is sick, and Selwyn is taking his place. At
first he declined to come. For weeks he's been going nowhere, but he
finally promised. Are you ready?"
Without looking around she went out of the room, and without answering
her I followed. I was conscious chiefly of a desire to get away, to do
anything but meet Selwyn where each would have to play a part; but as I
entered Kitty's drawing-room and later met her guests I crowded back
all else but what was due her, spoke in turn to each, and then to
Selwyn, as if between us there was no terrifying, unbridged gulf.
Kitty's dinners are perfect. I am ever amazed at the care and
consideration she gives to their ordering. In art and letters she is
not learned, but she is an expert in the management of household
affairs, and her dinner invitations are rarely declined.
At the table, with its lilacs and valley-lilies, its soft lights and
perfect appointments, were old friends of mine and new acquaintances of
hers, and with the guest of honor I shared their curiosity. Very
skilfully Kitty led the chatter into channels where the draught was
light, and obediently I did my best to follow. There was much talk,
but no conversation.
"Oh, Miss Heath!" A young girl opposite me leaned forward. "I've been
so crazy to meet you. Some one told me that you'd gone in for slums.
It must be so entrancing!"
I looked up. For a second Selwyn's eyes held mine and we both smiled,
but before I could speak Kitty's lion turned toward me.
"Yes--I heard that, too." Fixing his black-rimmed glasses more firmly
on his big and bulging nose, Mr. Garrott looked at me closely. "In my
country slumming has become a fad with a--a certain type of restless
women who have to make their living, I suppose. But I wouldn't fancy
you were--"
"She isn't."
Jack Peebles, now happily married, blinked in my direction, signaled me
to say nothing, then turned to the Englishman. "Miss Heath can do as
she chooses, being Miss Heath, but the Turks are right. Women ought to
be kept behind latticed windows, given a lute, and supplied with veils,
and if they ask for anything else, they should be taken from the
window."
"I don't agree with you." Mr. Garrott filled his fork with mushrooms
and raised it to his mouth. "The Turks carry their restraint too far.
Women should have more liberty than is given them in Turkey. They add
color to life, add to its--"
"Uncertainties." Selwyn made effort to control the smile the others
found uncontrollable. "In your country, now, the woman-question is
interesting, exciting. There they do things, smash things, make a
noise, keep you guessing. Over here their behavior is much less
entertaining. Their attitude is one of investigation as well as
demand. They have developed an unreasonable desire to know things;
know why they are as they are; why they should continue to be what they
have been. They are preparing themselves by first-hand knowledge and
information to tell what most of us do not want to hear."
Selwyn's eyes again for a moment held mine, and in my face I felt hot
color creeping. Never before had he defended, even with satire, what
he had told me a hundred times was folly on my part. He turned to Mr.
Garrott.
"Why on earth perfectly comfortable, supposedly Christian human beings
should want personally to know anything about uncomfortable, unfit,
under-paid ones--"
"Oh, but I think they ought to!" Again the pretty little creature in
green chiffon nodded toward me. "But you won't let Miss Heath have a
chance to say anything! Some one told me such queer people came to see
her. Factory-girls and working-women and--oh--all sorts of people like
that. Is it really so, Miss Heath?"
"Very interesting people come to see me. They are undoubtedly of
different sorts, but one of the illuminating discoveries of life is
that human beings are amazingly alike. Veneering is a great help, of
course. If you knew my friends you would find--"
"I'd love to know them. I always have liked queer people. I've been
crazy to come and see you, but mother won't let-- I mean--"
"Mrs. Henderson says she met a young man when she went to see you who
was the cleverest person she ever talked, to." Gentle Annie Gaines was
venturing to come to my help. "He seemed to know something of
everything. She couldn't remember his name."
"It's difficult to remember. He's a Russian Jew. Schrioski, is his
name." At the head of the table I felt Kitty squirm, knew she was
twisting her feet in fear and indignation. I turned to her English
guest.
"I have another friend who will be so glad to know I have met you, Mr.
Garrott. He is one of your most intelligent and intense admirers. He
has read, I think, everything you've written."
Absorbed in his salad, evidently new and to his liking, Mr. Garrott was
not impressed by, or appreciative of, my attempt to follow Kitty's
instructions. With any reservations of my bad taste in talking shop I
would have agreed, still, something was due Kitty. "He tells me"--I
refused to be ignored--"that he keeps an advance order for everything
you write; buys your books as soon as they are published."
"Buys them!" With the only quick movement he had made, Mr. Garrott
turned to me. "I'd like to meet him. I'm glad to know there's
somebody in America who buys and reads my books. Usually those who buy
don't read, and those who read don't buy. But tell me--" Again the
corners of his mouth drooped, and again his spectacles were adjusted.
"Why did you go in for--for living in a run-down place and meeting such
odds and ends as they say you meet? You're not old enough for things
of that kind. An ugly woman, uninteresting, unprovided for--she might
take them up." He stared at me as if for physical explanation of
unreasonable peculiarities. "You believe, I fancy--"
"That a woman is capable of deciding for herself what she wants to do."
Again Jack Peebles's near-sighted eyes blinked at me, but in his voice
there was no longer chaffing. "She believes even more remarkable
things than that. Believes if people, all sorts, knew one another
better, understood one another better, there would be less injustice,
less indifference, and greater friendship and regard. Rather an
uncomfortable creed for those who don't want to know, who prefer--"
"But you don't expect all grades of people to be friends? Surely you
don't expect--"
I smiled. "No, I don't expect. So far I'm only hoping all people may,
some day--be friendly."
Kitty was signaling frantically with her eyes, and in obedience I again
performed as requested, for the third time turned to Mr. Garrott.
"I heard a most interesting discussion the other day concerning certain
present-day French writers. I wonder if you agree with Bernard Shaw
that Brieux is the greatest dramatist since Moliere, or if--"
"I never agree with Bernard Shaw."
Mr. Garrott frowned, and, taking up his wine-glass, drained it.
Putting it down, he again stared at me. "I don't understand you. You
don't look at all as I imagined you would."
At the foot of the table Billy was insisting upon the superiority of
the links of the Hawthorne to those of the Essex club, and Kitty, at
her end, was giving a lively account of a wedding-party she had come
across at the station the evening before when seeing a friend off for
her annual trip South, and at first one and then the other Mr. Garrott
looked, as if not comprehending why, when he wished to speak, there
should be chatter. Later, when again we were in the drawing-room, he
continued to eye me speculatively, but he was permitted no opportunity
to add to his inquiries; and when at last he was gone Kitty sat down,
limp and worn at the strain she had been forced to endure.
"What business is it of his how you live and what you do?" she said,
indignantly. "He's an old teapot, but you see now what I mean. I'm
always having to explain you, to tell--"
"Don't do it. I'll forgive much, but not explaining. Your lion
doesn't roar well, still, a lion is worth seeing--once." I turned to
Selwyn. "I beg your pardon. Did you speak to me?"
"I asked if I could take you to Scarborough Square. I have a taxi
here."
"Thank you, but I am spending the night with Kitty. I am not going
back."
In astonishment Kitty looked at me, then turned away. I had told her I
could not stay. I had not intended to stay, but I could not talk to
Selwyn to-night. There would not be time and there was too much I
wanted to say.
Selwyn's shoulders made shrug that was barely perceptible, and without
offering his hand he said good night. In the hall I heard him speak to
Kitty, then the closing of the door and the starting of the taxi, then
silence.
Dawn was breaking when at last I slept.