Mrs. Mundy cannot find Etta Blake. She went this morning to the
house just opposite the box-factory, but no one is living there. A
"For Rent" sign is on it. After trying, without success, to find
from the families who live in the neighborhood where the people who
once occupied the house have gone, she went to the agent, but from
him also she could learn nothing.
"They were named Banch. A man and his wife and three children lived
in the house, but where they've moved nobody could tell me, or give
me a thing to go on. They went away between sun-up and sun-down and
no one knows where." Mrs. Mundy, who had come to my sitting-room to
make report, before taking off her coat and hat, sat down in a chair
near the desk at which I had been writing, and smoothed the fingers
of her gloves with careful precision. She was disappointed and
distressed that she had so little to tell me.
"I couldn't find a soul who'd ever heard of a girl named Etta Blake.
Poor people are generally sociable and know everybody in the
neighborhood, but didn't anybody know her. Mr. Parke, the agent,
said the man paid his rent regular and he was sorry to lose him as a
tenant, but he didn't know where he'd gone. If his wife took
boarders he didn't know anything about it. The girl might have
rented a room--" Mrs. Mundy hesitated, looked at me uncertainly.
"Shall I ask Mr. Crimm to--to help me find her? If she's in town
he'd soon know where."
Something in her voice sent the blood to my face. "You mean--oh no,
you cannot, do not mean--"
"I don't know. It's usually the end. The only one they have to come
to when a man like Mr. Thorne's brother makes a girl lose her head
about him. After he tires of her, or when he's afraid there may be
trouble, there's apt to be a row and he quits. When he's gone the
girl generally ends--down there." Mrs. Mundy's hand made movement
over her shoulder. "Respectable people don't want to have anything
to do with girls like that, and it's hard for them to get work.
After a while they give up and go to what's the only place some of
them have to go to. Would you mind if I ask Mr. Crimm?"
I shook my head. "No, I would not mind."
Going over to a window, I opened it, and as the sunshine fell upon my
face it seemed impossible that such things as Mrs. Mundy feared were
true. But I knew now they were true, and shiveringly I twisted my
hands within my arms as if to warm my heart, which was cold with a
nameless something it was difficult to define. On one side of me the
little, elfish creature with her frightened eyes and short, curly
hair seemed standing; on the other, the girl to whom Harrie was
engaged. I could not help them. Could not help Selwyn. Could help
no one! If David Guard--at thought of him the clutch at my throat
lessened. David Guard could help them. He had promised to come
whenever I sent for him, and to him I could talk as to no one else on
earth.
"I will see Mr. Crimm to-night. It won't be new to him--the finding
of a girl who's disappeared. He's found too many. I'll be careful
what I tell him, and Mr. Thorne needn't worry." Mrs. Mundy got up.
"Didn't you say he was coming this afternoon?"
"He is coming to-night. I am going out this afternoon."
Mrs. Mundy walked slowly to the door. She would have enjoyed talking
longer, but I could not talk. A sense of involvement with things
that frightened and repelled, with things of which I had hitherto
been irresponsibly ignorant, was bewildering me and I wanted to be
alone. I knew I was a coward, but there was no special need of her
knowing it.
I had been honest in thinking I wanted to know all sorts of people,
to see myself, and women like me, from the viewpoint of those denied
my opportunities, but it had not occurred to me as a possibility of
Scarborough Square that I should come in contact with any of the
women of Lillie Pierce's world. People like that had hardly seemed
the human beings other people were. And now--
"Tell Mr. Crimm whatever you think best." My back was to Mrs. Mundy.
"The girl is in trouble. You must see her. Bring her here if you
cannot go to her, and try and learn her side of the story. It's an
old one, perhaps, but it isn't fair that--"
"She should be shoved into hell and the lid shut down to keep her in,
and the man let alone to go where he pleases. It isn't fair, but
it's the world's way, and always will be lessen women learn some
things they ought to know. They wouldn't stand for some of the
things that go on if they understood them, but they don't understand.
They've been tongue-tied and hand-tied so long, they haven't taken in
yet they've got to do their own untying."
"It's a pretty lonely job--and a pretty hard one." I turned from the
window. Kitty's automobile had stopped in front of the house. I was
to go in it to call on Mrs. and Miss Swink. Kitty had insisted that
I use it.
I dressed quickly, putting on my best garments, but as I got into the
car something of the old protest at having to do what I did not want
to do, to go where I did not want to go, came over me, and I was
conscious of childish irritability. I did not care to know the
Swinks. Eternity wouldn't be long enough, and certainly time wasn't
to waste on people like that, and yet because Selwyn had asked me to
call I was doing it. All men are alike. When they don't know how to
do a thing that's got to be done, they tell a woman to do it. It was
not my business to tell this Swink person and her daughter that they
should be careful concerning matrimonial alliances. I would agree
with them that such intimation on my part was presumptuous and I had
no intention of making it. What I was going to do I did not know,
but it was necessary to see them, talk with them before any
suggestions could be made to Selwyn as to a tactful handling of an
embarrassing situation; and in obedience to this primary requisite I
was calling.
In their private parlor at the Melbourne, pompously furnished, and
bare of all things that make a room reflective of personality, Mrs.
Swink and her daughter were awaiting me on my arrival, and the moment
I met the former all the perversity of which I am possessed rose up
within me, and for the latter I was conscious of sympathy, based on
nothing save intuitive antipathy to her mother. Inwardly I warned
myself to behave, but I wasn't sure I was going to do it.
"Oh, how do you do!" Mrs. Swink, a fat, florid, frizzy person,
waddled toward me with out-stretched and bejeweled hands, and took
mine in hers. "Mr. Thorne told us you would certainly call, and
we've been waiting for you ever since he told us. Charmed to meet
you! This is my daughter Madeleine. Where's Madeleine?" She turned
her short, red neck, bound with velvet, and looked behind her. "Oh,
here she is! Madeleine, this is Miss Wreath. You know all about
Miss Wreath, who's gone to such a queer place to live. Harrie told
us." Two sharp little eyes sunk in nests of embracing flesh winked
confidentially at first me and then her daughter. "Yes, indeed, we
know all about you. Sit down. Madeleine, push a chair up for Miss
Wreath."
"Heath, mother!" The girl called Madeleine turned her pretty,
dissatisfied face toward her mother and then looked at me. "She
never gets names right. She just hits at them and says the first
thing that comes to her mind." Pulling a large chair close to a
table, on which was a vase of American Beauty roses, she waited for
me to take it, then went over to the window and sat beside it.
"Well, everybody's got a mental weakness." Upright in a
blue-brocaded chair, elbows on its gilt arms, mother Swink surveyed
me with scrutinizing calculation, and as she appraised I appraised
also. Full-bosomed of body and short of leg, she looked close kin to
a frog in her tight-fitting purple gown with its iridescent
trimmings, and low-cut neck; and from her silver-buckled slippers to
the crimped and russet-colored transformation on her head, which had
slipped somewhat to one side, my eyes went up and then went down, and
I knew if Harrie ever married her daughter his punishment would begin
on earth.
"Yes, indeed, everybody's got a mental weakness, and I'm thankful
mine's no worse than forgetting names. I ought to remember yours,
though. It makes you think of funerals and weddings and things like
that. I love names which--"
"Her name is Heath, mother! _Not_ Wreath."
"Oh yes--of course! This certainly is a beautiful day. If El Paso
hadn't been so far away we'd have brought one of our cars with us,
but I don't see any sense spending all that money when you can hire
cars so cheap by the hour. Madeleine don't like to ride in hired
cars. I like any kind of car."
So far I had had no opportunity of doing more than bend my head, a
chance to speak not having been permitted me, but, at her mother's
pause for breath, the girl at the window looked down upon the street
and then turned her face toward me. "That's a pretty car you came
in. Can you drive it yourself?"
"I have no car. That's Kitty's--I mean Mrs. McBryde's. That reminds
me. I have a message from her. She could not call this afternoon,
but she asks me to say she hopes you can both come in Thursday
afternoon and have tea with her. She is always at home on Thursdays
and--"
"Yes, indeed; we'll be glad to come." Mrs. Swink took up Kitty's
card, which had been sent up with mine, and looked at it through her
lorgnette, suspended around her neck by a chain studded with
amethysts, large and small. "We'll come with pleasure. Won't we,
Madeleine? Shall we write and tell her?"
"Of course not, mother. Didn't you just hear Miss Heath say it was
her regular 'at home' day? You don't write notes for things like
that." Miss Swink's eyes again turned in my direction. "I'm much
obliged, but I don't think I can come. I've an engagement for
Thursday."
"If it's with Harrie, he won't mind waiting awhile." With
unconcealed eagerness Mrs. Swink twisted herself in her tight and
too-embracing chair, for the moment forgetting, seemingly, that I was
a hearing person. "You can't afford to miss a chance like that.
You'll meet the best people. Harrie can stay to dinner. I'll get
tickets for the theatre."
"He won't come to dinner. I asked him. Says he's sick." The girl's
lips curled slightly. "He's always sick when--"
"Madeleine!" The sudden change in Mrs. Swink's voice was beyond
belief, and with a shrug of her shoulders the girl again looked out
of the window. I was making discoveries with unexpected rapidity,
discoveries that were filling me with speculation and promising
conclusions that were at variance with Selwyn's, and for a moment the
uncomfortable silence, following the sharp ejaculation, was unbroken
by me in the realization of my unwilling participation in a bit of
family revelation, and also by inability to think of anything to say.
"I hope you can come." My tone was but feebly urging. "Everybody
has such a good time at Kitty's. I hope, too, you are going to like
our city." I looked from mother to daughter as I uttered the usual
formulas for strangers. "This is not your first visit?"
"Oh no--we've been here several times before. We like it very much.
It's so distinguay and all that." Mrs. Swink's hands went to her
head and she patted her transformation, but failed to straighten it.
"I was born in Alabama, and Mr. Swink in Missouri, and Madeleine in
Texas, so we feel kin to all Southerners and at home anywhere in the
South; but I like this city best of any in it. Some day, I reckon,
we'll live here." Her voice was significant and again she looked at
her daughter, but her daughter did not look at her.
"We think it a very nice city, but I suppose I'd love any place in
which I had to live. That is, I'd try to. You have old friends
here, I believe, and of course you'll make new ones." My voice was
even less affirmative than interrogatory. I hardly knew what I was
saying. I was thinking of something else.
"Yes, indeed. That's what we expect to do. We don't know a great
many people here. Mrs. Hadden Cressy and I are old friends, but we
don't see much of each other. I suppose you know the Cressys?"
"I know of them very well. They are among our most valuable people.
I have often wanted to know Mr. and Mrs. Cressy. Their son, Tom, I
used to see often as a boy, but of late I rarely come across him.
What's become of him? He was one of the nicest boys I ever knew."
Mrs. Swink's hands made expressive gesture, but the girl at the
window gave no sign of hearing me. In her face, however, I saw color
creep, saw also that she bit her lips.
"Nobody knows what he does with himself." Mrs. Swink sighed. "After
all the money his father spent on his education, and after everybody
took him up, he dropped out of society and stuck at his business as
if he didn't have a cent in the world. He hasn't any ambition. He
could go with the most fashionable people in town, if his parents
can't, but he won't do it. He must be a great disappointment to his
parents."
With a slow movement of her shoulders, Miss Swink turned and looked
at her mother, in her eyes that which made me sit up. What the look
implied I was unable altogether to understand, but I could venture a
guess at it, and on the venture I spoke:
"He's the pride of their life, I've been told. Any parents would be
proud of such a son--that is, if they were the kind of parents a son
could be proud of. I'd like to see Tom. I used to be very fond of
him when he was a boy. He lived just back of us and he and Kitty
were great friends as children. I'm afraid he's forgotten me,
however."
"No, he hasn't--" Miss Swink stopped as abruptly as she began, but
the color that had crept into her face at mention of Tom Cressy's
name now crimsoned it, and again she turned her head away. In her
eyes, however, I had caught the gratitude flashed to me, and quickly
I decided I must see her alone, talk to her alone; and so absorbed
was I in wondering how I could do it that only vaguely did I hear
Mrs. Swink, who was telling me of various engagements already made,
of the difficulty of getting in what had to be gotten in between
being manicured and marcelled and massaged and chiropodized and
tailored and dress-makered, and had she not been so interested in the
telling she would have discovered I was not at all interested in the
hearing. She did not discover.
When for the third time I saw Miss Swink glance at the watch upon her
wrist, and then out of the window, I knew she was waiting for some
one to pass. It wasn't Harrie. There was no necessity for furtive
watching for Harrie to pass, The latter's plaint of sickness was
evidently not convincing to the girl. I looked at the clock on the
mantel. I had been in the room twenty-seven minutes, but I didn't
agree with Selwyn that Miss Swink was in love with his brother. Her
engagement to him was due, I imagined, not so much to her literalness
as to her mother's management. An unholy desire to demonstrate that
the latter was not of a scientific kind possessed me, and quickly my
mind worked.