Some one had sent for Ettie's father. They told him that she was
dying, and he had come at once. Mr. King had gone with him. The latter
gentleman did not much approve of his colleague's soft-heartedness in
going. He did not know where his own daughter was, and he did not care.
She had faced him in her fiery way, and angered him beyond endurance the
morning after she had learned of the awful bill which he had not really
originated, but which he had induced Mr. Berton to present, at the
earnest behest of a social lion whose wont it was to roar mightily in
the interest of virtue, but who was at the present moment engaged in
lobbying vigorously in the interest of vice.
When Francis entered the sick-room with Mrs. Foster, and found the two
men there, she gave one glance at the pallid, unconscious figure on the
bed, and then demanded, fiercely: "Where is the cashier? Why didn't you
bring him and--and the rest of you who help make laws to keep him where
he is, an'--an' to put Ettie where she is? Why didn't y' bring _all_ of
your kind that helped along the job?"
Mrs. Foster had been bending over the child on the bed. She turned.
"Don't, Francis," she said, trying to draw the girl away. She was
standing before the two men, who were near the window. "Don't, Francis.
That can do no good. They did not intend--" "No'm," began Berton,
awkwardly; "no'm, I didn't once think o' _my_ girl, n--" He glanced
uneasily at his colleague and then at the face on the bed.
"Or you would never have wanted such a law passed, I am sure," said
Katherine.
"No'm, I wouldn't," he said, doggedly, not looking at his colleague.
"Don't tell me!" exclaimed Francis. "You don't none of you care for her.
He only cares because it is his girl an' disgraces _him_. What did he
do? Care for her? No, he drove her off. That shows who he's a-carin'
for. He ain't sorry because it hurts or murders her. He never tried to
make it easy for her an' say he was a lot more to blame an'--an'--a
big sight worse every way than she was. He's a-howling now about bein'
sorry; but he's only sorry for himself. He'd a let her starve--an' so'd
_he_," she said, pointing to her father. She was trembling with rage
and excitement. "I hope there is a hell! I jest hope there is! I'll be
willin' to go to it myself jest t' see--"
The door opened softly and Gertrude entered, and behind her stood Selden
Avery.
"That kind of girls" floated anew into Francis's brain, and the sting of
the words she had heard Gertrude's father utter drove her on. "I wish
to God, every man that ever lived could be torn to pieces an'--an' put
under Ettie's feet. They wouldn't be fit for her to walk on--none of
'em! She never did no harm on purpose ner when she understood; an'
men--men jest love to be mean!"
She felt the utter inadequacy of her words, and a great wave of feeling
and a sense of baffled resentment swept over her, and she burst into
tears. Gertrude tried to draw her out of the room. At the door she
sobbed: "Even _her_ father's jest like the rest, only--only he says it
easier. He--"
"Francis, Francis," said Gertrude, almost sternly, when they were
outside the sickroom. "You must not act so. It does no good, and--and
you are partly wrong, besides. If--"
"I didn't mean _him_," said the girl, with her handkerchief to her eyes.
"I didn't mean _him._ I know what he thinks about it. I heard him talk
one night at the club. He talked square, an' I reckon he is square. But
_I_ wouldn't take no chances. I wouldn't marry the Angel Gabriel an'
give him a chance to lord it over me!"
Gertrude smiled in spite of herself, and glanced within through the open
door. There was a movement towards where the sick girl lay. "If you go
in, you must be quiet," she said to Francis, and entered. Ettie had been
stirring uneasily. She opened her great blue eyes, and when she saw the
faces about her, began to sob aloud.
"Don't let pa scold me. I'll do his way. I'll do--anything anybody
wants. I like to. The store--" She gave a great shriek of agony. She
had tried to move and fell back in a convulsion. She was only partly
conscious of her suffering, but the sight was terrible enough to
sympathetic hearts, and there was but one pair of dry eyes in the room.
The same beady, stern, hard glitter held its place in the eyes of Mr.
King.
"Serves her right," he was thinking. "And a mighty good lesson. Bringin'
disgrace on a good man's name!"
The tenacity with which Mr. King adhered to the belief in, and
solicitude for, a good name, would have been touching had it not been
noticeable to the least observant that his theory was, that the custody
of that desirable belonging was vested entirely in the female members
of a family. Nothing short of the most austere morals could preserve the
family 'scutcheon if he was contemplating one side. Nothing short of a
long-continued, open, varied, and obtrusive dishonesty and profligacy of
a male member could even dull its lustre. It was a comfortable code for
a part of its adherents.
Had his poor, colorless, inane wife ever dared to deviate from the
beaten path of social observance, Mr. King would have talked about and
felt that "his honor" was tarnished. Were he to follow far less strictly
the code, he would not only be sure that his own honor was intact,
but if any one were to suggest to him the contrary, or that he was
compromising her honor, he would have looked upon that person as lacking
in what he was pleased to call "common horse-sense." He was in no manner
a hypocrite. His sincerity was undoubted. He followed the beaten track.
Was it not the masculine reason and logic of the ages, and was not
that final? Was not all other reason and logic merely a spurious
emotionalism? morbid? unwholesome? irrational?
No one would gainsay that unless it were a lunatic or a woman, which
was much the same thing--and since the opinion of neither of these was
valuable, why discuss or waste time with them? That was Mr. King's point
of view, and he was of the opinion that he had a pretty good voting
majority with him, and a voting majority was the measure of value and
ethics with Representative King--when the voting majority was on his
side.
When the last awful agony came to poor little Ettie Berton, and she
yielded up, in pathetic terror and reluctant despair, the life which
had been moulded for her with such a result almost as inevitable as the
death itself, a wave of tenderness and remorse swept over her father. He
buried his face in the pillow beside the poor, pretty, weak, white face
that would win favor and praise by its cheerful ready acquiescence no
more, and wept aloud. This impressed Representative King as reasonable
enough, under all the circumstances, but when Ettie's father intimated
later to Francis that he had been to blame, and that, perhaps, after
all, Ettie _was_ only the legitimate result of her training and the
social and legal conditions which he had helped to make and sustain,
Representative King curled his lip scornfully and remarked that in his
opinion Tom Berton never could be relied on to be anything but a damned
fool? In the long run. He was a splendid "starter." Always opened up
well in any line; but unless someone else held the reins after that the
devil would be to pay and no mistake.
Francis heard; and, hearing, shut tight her lips and with her
tear-swollen eyes upon the face of her dead friend, swore anew that to
be disgraced by the presence of a father like that was more than she
could bear. She could work or she could die; but there was nothing on
this earth, she felt, that would be so impossible, so disgraceful, as
for her to ever again acknowledge his authority as her guide.
"Come home with me to-night, Francis," said Mrs. Foster. "We will think
of a plan--"
"I'm goin' to stay right here," said the girl, with a sob and a shiver;
for she had all the horror and fear of the dead that is common to her
type and her inexperience. "I'm goin' to stay right here. I can't go
home, an' I'm discharged at the store. Ettie told me her rent was paid
for this month. I'll take her place here an'--an' try to find another
place to work."
Mrs. Foster realized that to stay in that room would fill the girl with
terror, but she felt, too, that she understood why Francis would not
go home with her. "That kind of girls" from Mr. Foster's lips had stung
this fierce, sensitive creature to the quick. A week ago she would
have been glad indeed to accept Katherine Foster's offer. Now she would
prefer even this chamber of death, where the odors made her ill, and
the thoughts and imaginings would insure to her sleepless nights of
unreasoning fear. Her father did not ask her to go home. Representative
King believed in representing. Was not his family a unit? And was he not
the figure which stood for it? It had never been his custom to ask
the members of his household to do things. He told them that he wanted
certain lines of action fallowed. That was enough. The thought and the
will of that ideal unit, "the family," vested in the person of Mr. King
and he proposed to represent it in all things.
If by any perverse and unaccountable mental process there was developed
a personality other than and different from his own, Representative King
did not propose to be disturbed in his home-life--as he persisted in
calling the portion of his existence where he was able to hold the
iron hand of power ever upon the throat of submission--to the extent of
having such unseemly personality near him.
In her present mood he did not want Francis at home. Representative King
was a staunch advocate of harmony and unity in the family life. He was
of opinion that where timidity and dependence say "yes" to all that
power suggests, that there dwelt unity and harmony. That is to say, he
held to this idea where it touched the sexes and their relation to
each other in what he designated an ideal domestic life. In all other
relations he held far otherwise--unless he chanced to be on the side
of power and had a fair voting majority. Representative King was an
enthusiastic admirer of submission--for other people. He thought that
there was nothing like self-denial to develop the character and beauty
of a nature. It is true that his scorn was deep when he contemplated the
fact that John Berton "had no head of his own," but then, John Berton
was a man, and a man ought to have some self-respect. He ought to
develop his powers and come to something definite. A definite woman
was a horror. Her attractiveness depended upon her vagueness, so
Representative King thought; and if a large voting majority was not with
him in open expression, he felt reasonably sure that he could depend
upon them in secret session, so to speak. Representative King was not
a linguist, but he could read between the social and legal lines very
cleverly indeed, and finer lines of thought than these were not for
Representative King.
And so he did not ask Francis to go home. "When she gets ready to go my
way and says so, she can come," he thought.
"When that dress gets shabby and she's a little hungry, she'll conclude
that my way is good enough for her." He smiled at the vision of the
future "unity and harmony" which should thus be ushered into his home by
means of a little judiciously applied discipline, and Francis took her
dead friend's place as a lodger and tried to think, between her spasms
of loneliness and fears, what she should do on the morrow.