I know I should not think too constantly about it. I try not to, but
I cannot shake off the shock, the horror of Etta's death. Selwyn
inclosed the note she wrote him in the letter he sent me just before
leaving with Harrie for the West, but he did not come to see me
before he left.
When I try to sleep the words of Etta's note pass before me like
frightened children, crying--crying, and then again these children
sing a dreary chant, and still again the chant becomes a chorus which
repeats itself until I am unnerved; and they seem to be calling me,
these little children, and begging me to help make clean and safe the
paths that they must tread. I am just one woman. What can I do?
I knew Etta was dead before Selwyn received her note. Mrs. Banch,
the woman who kept the child for her, came running to Mrs. Mundy the
day after Etta had been to see me, and incoherently, sobbingly, with
hands twisting under her apron, she told us of finding Etta, with the
baby in her arms, lying on her bed, as she thought, asleep. But she
was not asleep. She was dead.
"She had done it as deliberate as getting ready to go on a long
journey," the woman had sobbed. "Everything was fixed and in its
place, and after bathing and dressing the baby in a clean gown, she
wrote on a piece of paper that all of its clothes were for my little
girl, and that she wouldn't do what she was doing if there was any
other way."
With a fresh outburst of tears, the woman handed me a half-sheet of
note-paper. "Bury us as we are," it read. "I am taking the baby
with me.--Etta."
"We will come with you." Mrs. Mundy, who had gotten out her hat and
coat to go to see Etta before Mrs. Banch came in, hurriedly put them
on, while I went for mine, and together we followed the woman to the
small and shabby house in the upper part of which Etta had been
living for some weeks past; the lower part being occupied by an old
shoemaker and his wife who had been kind to her; and as we entered
the room where the little mother and her baby lay I did not try to
keep them back--the tears that were too late.
"Last night I was standing in the door when she came by with a letter
in her hand." As Mrs. Banch talked, she was still quivering from the
shock of her discovery, and her words came brokenly. "On her way
back from mailing it I asked her to come in and set with me, but she
wouldn't do it; she said she was going to take the baby with her to
spend the night, as she didn't want to be by herself; and, going
up-stairs, she wrapped her up good and took her away with her. I
don't know why, but I felt worried all last night, and this morning I
couldn't get down to nothing 'til I ran around to see how she was and
how the baby was, and when I went up in her room--" The woman's
work-worn hands were pressed to her breast. "God--this world is a
hard place for girls who sin! It don't seem to matter about men, but
women--" Presently she raised her head and looked at us. "I never
seen a human being what had her spirit for enduring. She paid her
price without whining, but something must have happened what she
couldn't stand. She had a heart if she was--if she was--"
Two days later, as quietly as her life had ended, Etta's body, with
her baby on its breast, was put into the ground, and mingled with
David Guard's voice as he read the service for the dead was the
far-off murmur of city noises, the soft rise and fall of city sounds.
With Mrs. Mundy and Mrs. Banch, the old shoemaker and his wife, I
stood at the open grave and watched the earth piled into a mound that
marked a resting-place at last for a broken body and a soul no one
had tried to reach that it might save, but I did not hear the beating
of the clods of clay, nor the twittering of the birds in the trees,
nor the wind in their tops. I heard instead Etta's cry to Kitty and
to me: "In God's name, can't somebody do something to make good women
understand!"
It is these words that beat into my brain at night; these and the
words I did not speak in time and which, on the next day, were too
late. The note she sent Selwyn also keeps me awake.
"I am going," she wrote, "so the thought of me will not make you
afraid. You tried to help me, but there isn't any help for girls
like me. I am taking the baby with me. I want to be sure she will
be safe. It would be too hard for her, the fight she'd have to make.
I can't leave her here alone. ETTA."
Last night David Guard came in for a few minutes. Leaning back in a
big chair, he half closed his eyes and in silence watched the flames
of the fire, and, seeing he was far away in thought, I went on with
the writing of the letter I had put aside when he came in. I always
know when he is tired and worn, and I have learned to say nothing, to
be as silent as he when I see that the day's work has so wearied him
he does not wish to talk. At other times we talk much--talk of life
and its possibilities, of old cults and new philosophies, of books
and places; of the endless struggles of men like himself to be
intellectually honest and spiritually free. But oftenest we speak of
the people around us, the people on whom the injustices of a selfish
social system fall most heavily; and among them, sharing their
hardships, understanding their burdens, recognizing their limitations
and weaknesses, leading and directing them, he has found life in
losing it, and it now has meaning for him that is bigger and finer
than the best that earth can give.
Presently he stirred, drew a long breath as one awaking, but when he
spoke he did not turn toward me.
"I saw Mr. Thorne the night before he left with Harrie for his
friend's ranch in Arizona. He is going to give him another chance,
and it's pretty big of him to do it, but I doubt if anything will
come of it. Harrie belongs to a type of humanity beyond awakening to
a realization of moral degeneracy; a type that believes so
confidently in the divine right of class privilege that it believes
little else. Harrie's failure to appreciate the hideousness of
certain recent experiences has made them all the more keenly felt by
his brother. I have rarely seen a man suffer as the latter has
suffered in the past few days, but unless I am mistaken--"
The pen in my hand dropped upon the desk, and for a while I did not
speak. Then I got up and went toward David Guard, who had also
risen. "You mean--" The words died in my throat.
"That he is beginning to understand why you came to Scarborough
Square; to grasp the necessity of human contact for human
interpretation. He, too, is seeing himself, his life, his world,
from the viewpoint of Scarborough Square, and what he sees gives
neither peace nor pride nor satisfaction. He will never see so
clearly as you, perhaps, but certain cynicisms, certain intolerances,
certain indifferences and endurances will yield to keener perception
of the necessity for new purposes in life." He held out his hand.
"He needs you very much. I've got to go. Good-by."
For a long time I sat by the fire and watched it die. Was David
Guard right, or had it been in vain, the venture that had brought me
to Scarborough Square? I had told Selwyn I had come that I might see
from its vantage-ground the sort of person I was and what I was doing
with life; but it was also in the secret hope that he, too, might see
the kindred of all men to men, the need of each for each, that I had
come. If together we could stand between those of high and low
degree, between the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, with
hands outstretched to both, and so standing bring about, perhaps, a
better understanding of each other, then my coming would have been
worth while. But would we ever so stand? All that I had hoped for
seemed as dead as the ashes on the hearth. I had brought him pain
and humiliation, drawn back, without intention, curtains that hid
ugly, cruel things, and for him Scarborough Square would mean forever
bitter memories of bitter revealing. I had failed. I had tried, and
I had failed, and I could hold out no longer.
Getting up, I pressed my hands to my heart to still triumphant
throbbing. It had won, I did not hate his house. I hated its walls.
But I could no longer live without him. I would marry him when he
came back.