At the close of the Legislature, John Berton, professional starter, and
his friend and ally, the father of Francis King, had returned to the
city. Francis had grown, so her father thought, more handsome and less
agreeable than ever. Her eyes were more dissatisfied, and she was, if
possible, less pliant. She and Ettie Berton were working now in a store,
and Francis said that she did not like it at all. The money she liked.
It helped her to dress more as she wished, and then it had always
cut Francis to the quick to be compelled to ask her father for money
whenever she needed it, even for car fare.
She had lied a good many times. Her whole nature rebelled against
lying, but even this was easier to her than the status of dependence and
beggary, so she had lied often about the price of shoes, or of a hat or
dress, that there might be a trifle left over as a margin for her use in
other ways. Her father was not unusually hard with her about money, only
that he demanded a strict accounting before he gave it to her.
"What in thunder do you want of money?" he would ask, more as a matter
of habit than anything else. "How much 'll it take? Humph! Well, I guess
you'll have to have it, but--" and so the ungracious manner of giving
angered and humiliated her.
"Pa, give me ten cents; I want it fer car fare. Thanks. Now fork over
six dollars; I got to get a dress after the car gets me to the store,"
was Ettie Berton's method. Her father would pretend not to have the
money, and she would laugh and proceed to rifle his pockets. The scuffle
would usually end in the girl getting more than she asked for, and was
no unpleasant experience to her, and it appeared to amuse her father
greatly. It was not, therefore, the same motive which actuated the two
when they decided to try their fortunes as shop girls. The desire to be
with Francis, to be where others were, for the sight and touch of the
pretty things, for new faces and for mild excitement, were moving causes
with Ettie Berton. The money she liked, too; but if she could have had
the place without the money or the money without the place, her choice
would have been soon made. She would stay at the store. That she was a
general favorite was a matter of course. She would do anything for the
other girls, and the floorwalkers and clerks found her always obedient
and gaily willing to accept extra burdens or to change places. For some
time past, however, she had been on a different floor from the one where
Francis presided over a trimming counter, and the girls saw little of
each other, except on their way to and from the store.
At last this changed too, for Francis was obliged to remain to see that
the stock of her department was properly put away. At first Ettie waited
for her, but later on she had fallen into the habit of going with a
child nearer her own age, a little cash girl. Ettie was barely fourteen,
and her new friend a year or two younger. At last Francis King found
that the motherless child had invited her new friends home with her, and
had gone with them to their homes.
As spring came on, Ettie went one Sunday to Coney Island, and did not
tell Francis until afterward. She said that she had had a lovely time,
hut she appeared rather disinclined to talk about it. At the Guild one
Wednesday evening, after the class began again in the fall, Francis King
told Gertrude this, and asked her advice. She said: "It's none o' my
business, and she don't like me much any more, but I thought maybe I had
ought to tell you, for--for--since I been in the store, I've learnt a
good deal about--about things; an' Ettie she don't seem to learn much of
anything."
"Is Ettie still living at her cousin's?" asked Gertrude.
"Yes," said Francis, scornfully, "but she 'bout as well be livin' by
herself. Her cousin's always just gaddin' 'round tryin' t' get
married. I never did see such an awful fool. Before Et's pa went to the
Legislature, we all did think he was goin' t' marry her, but now--"
"Legislative honors have turned his head, have they?" smiled Gertrude,
intent on her own thoughts in another direction. She was not, therefore,
prepared for the sudden fling of temper in the strange girl beside
her. "Yes, it has; 'n if it don't turn some other way before long,
I'll break his neck for him. _I_ ain't marryin' a widower if I do like
Ettie."
In spite of herself, Gertrude started a little. She looked at Francis
quite steadily for a moment, and then said: "Could you and Ettie come
to my house and spend the day next Sunday? I'm glad you told me of
Ettie's--of--about the change in her manner toward you."
"Don't let on that I told you anything," said Francis, as they parted.
Since they had been in the store they had not gone regularly to the
weekly evening Guild meetings, and Gertrude had seen less of them. She
was surprised, however, on the following Sunday, to see the strange,
mysterious change in Ettie. A part of her frank, open, childish manner
was gone, and yet nothing more mature had taken its place. There would
be flashes of her usual manner, but long silences, quite foreign to the
child, would follow. At the dinner table she grew deadly ill, and had to
be taken up stairs. Gertrude tucked a soft cover about her on the couch
in her own room, and gave her smelling salts and a trifle of wine. The
child drank the wine but began to cry.
"Oh, don't cry, Ettie," said Gertrude, stroking her hair gently. "You'll
be over it in a little while. I think our dining-room is much warmer
than yours, and it was very hot to-day. Then your trying to eat the
olives when you don't like them, might easily make you sick. You'll be
all right after a little I'm sure. Don't cry."
"That's the same kind of wine I had that day at Coney Island," she said,
and Gertrude thought how irrelevant the remark was, and how purely of
physical origin were the tears of such a child.
"Would you like a little more?" asked Gertrude, smiling.
Ettie shivered, and closed her eyes.
"No; I don't like it. I guess it ain't polite to say so, but--Oh, of
course _maybe_ I'd like it if I was well, but it made me sick that time,
an' so I don't like it now when I _am_ sick." She laughed in a childish
way, and then she drew Gertrude's face down near her own. "Say, I'll
tell you the solemn truth. It made me tight that day. He told me so
afterwards, n' I guess it did."
Here was a revelation, indeed. Gertrude stroked the fluffy hair, gently.
She was trying to think of just the right thing to say. It was growing
dark in the room. Ettie reached up again and drew Gertrude's face
down. "Say," she whispered, "you won't be mad at me for that, will you?
He told me I wasn't to blab to anybody; but it always seems as if you
wouldn't be mad at me, and"--she began to weep again.
"Don't cry," said Gertrude, again, gently. "Of course I am not angry
with you. I am sorry it happened, but--Ettie, who is _he?_" Ettie sobbed
on, and held her arms close about Gertrude's neck. Again the older girl
said, with lips close to the child's ear:
"Don't you think it would be better to tell me who 'he' is? Is he so
young as to not know better than to advise you that way, dear?"
"He's forty," sobbed Ettie, "an' he's rich, an' he's got a girl of his
own as big as me. I saw her one day in the store. He's the cashier."
Gertrude shivered, and the child felt the movement.
"Don't you ever, ever tell," she panted, "or he'll kill me--and so would
pa."
"Oh, he would, would he?" exclaimed Francis, who had stolen silently
into the room and had stood unobserved in the darkness. "The cashier!
the mean devil! I always hated his beady eyes, and he tried his games on
me! But I'll kill him before he shall go--do you any real harm, Ettie! I
will! I will! Why didn't you tell me? I watched for a while and then I
thought--I thought he had given it up. Oh, Ettie, Ettie!" The tall form
of the girl seemed to rise even higher in the darkness, and one could
feel the fire of her great eyes. Her hands were clenched and her muscles
tense.
Ettie was sobbing anew, and Gertrude, holding her hand, was stroking the
moist forehead and trying to quiet her.
"Oh, Fan! Oh, Fan! I didn't want you to know," sobbed the child, with
pauses between her words. "He said nobody needn't ever know if I'd do
just's he told me. He said--but when pa came home I was so scared, an'
I'm sick most all the time, an'--an', oh, if I wasn't so awful afraid
to die I'd wisht I _was_ dead!"
"Dead!" gasped Francis, grasping Ettie's wrist and pulling her hand
from her face in a frenzy of the new light that was dawning upon her
half-dazed but intensely stimulated mental faculties. She half pulled
the smaller girl to her feet.
"Dead! Ettie Berton, you tell me the God's truth or I'll tear him to
pieces right in the store. You tell me the God's truth! has he--done
anything awful to you?" A young tiger could not have seemed more savage,
and Ettie clung with her other arm to Gertrude.
"No! No! No!" she shrieked, and struggled to free herself from the
clutch upon her wrist. Then with the pathetic superstition and ignorance
of her type: "Cross my heart I Hope I may die!" she added, and as
Francis relaxed her grasp upon the wrist, Ettie fell in an unconscious
little heap upon the floor.
Francis was upon her knees beside her in an instant, and Gertrude was
about to ring for a light and for her mother when Francis moaned: "Oh,
send for a doctor, quick. Send for a doctor! She was lying and she
crossed her heart. She will die! She will die!"