hot, Howard opened the door a few moments afterward. At the other end of
the short hall light was streaming through the open door of the room the
two girls had taken. Before he could turn, there was a shadow and “Miss
Black-Hair” was standing in her doorway:
“Oh,” she began, “I thought----”
Howard paused, looking at her. She was above the medium height--tall
for a woman--and slender. Her loose wrapper, a little open at her round
throat, clung to her, attracting attention to all the lines of her form.
Her hair was indeed black, jet black, waving back from her forehead in a
line of curving and beautiful irregularity. Her skin was clear and dark.
There were deep circles under her eyes, making them look unnaturally
large, pathetically weary. In repose her face was childish and sadly
serious. When she smiled she looked older and pert, but no happier.
“I thought,” she continued with the pert, self-confident smile, “that
you were my sister Nellie. I’m waiting for her.”
“You’re in early tonight,” said Howard, the circles under her eyes
reminding him of what the German had told him.
“I haven’t slept much for a week,” the girl replied, “I’m nearly dead.
But I won’t go to bed till Nellie comes.”
Howard was about to turn when she went on: “We agreed always to stay
together. She broke it tonight. My fellow got too fresh, so I came home.
She said she’d come too. That was an hour ago and she isn’t here yet.”
“Isn’t she rather young to be out alone at this time?”
Howard could hardly have told why he continued the conversation. He
certainly would not, had she been less beautiful or less lonely and
childish. At his remark about her sister’s youth she laughed with an
expression of cunning at once amusing and pitiful.
“She’s a year older than me,” she said, “and I guess I can take care of
myself. Still she hasn’t much sense. She’ll get into trouble yet. She
doesn’t understand how to manage the boys when they’re too fresh.”
“But you do, I suppose?” suggested Howard.
“Indeed I do,” with a quick nod of her small graceful head, “I know what
I’m about. _My_ mother taught _me_ a few things.”
“Didn’t she teach your sister also?”
“Miss Black-Hair” dropped her eyes and flushed a little, looking like a
child caught in a lie. “Of course,” she said after a pause.
“How long have you been without your mother?”
“I’ve been away from home four months. But I saw her in the street
yesterday. She didn’t see me though.”
“Then you’ve got a step-father?”
“No, I haven’t. Nellie told that to Mrs. Sands. But it’s not so. You
know Nellie’s not my sister?”
“I fancied not from what you said a moment ago.”
“No, she used to be nurse girl in our family. We just say we’re sisters.
I wish she’d come. I’m tired of standing. Won’t you come in?”
She went into her room, her manner a frank and simple invitation. Howard
hesitated, then went just inside the door and half sat, half leaned upon
the high roll of the lounge. The room was cheaply furnished, the lounge
and a closed folding bed almost filling it. Upon the mantel, the bureau
and the little table were a few odds and ends that stamped it a woman’s
room. A street gown of thin pale-blue cloth was thrown over a rocking
chair. As the girl leaned back in this chair with her face framed in the
pale-blue of the gown, she looked tired and sad and beautiful and very
young.
“If Nellie doesn’t look out, I’ll go away and live alone,” she said, and
the accompanying unconscious look of loneliness touched Howard.
“You might go back home.”
“You don’t know my home or you wouldn’t say that. You don’t know my
father.” She had got upon the subject of herself, and, once in that road
she kept it with no thought of turning out. “He can’t treat me as he
treats mother. Why, he goes away and stays for days. Then he comes home
and quarrels with her all the time. They never both sit through a meal.
One or the other flares up and leaves. He generally whipped me when he
got very mad--just for spite.”
“But there’s your mother.”
“Yes. She doesn’t like my going away. But I can’t stand it. Papa
wouldn’t let me go anywhere or let anybody come to see me. He says
everybody’s bad. I guess he’s about right. Only he doesn’t include
himself.”
“You seem to have a poor opinion of people.”
“Well, you can’t blame me.” She put on her wise look of experience and
craft. “I’ve been away, living with Nellie for four months and I’ve seen
no good to speak of. A girl doesn’t get a fair chance.”
“But you’ve got work?”
“Oh, yes. We both stayed down in a restaurant, Nellie’s got a place as
waiter. That’s the best she could do. The man said I was good-looking
and would catch trade. So he made me cashier. I get six dollars a week
to Nellie’s three. But it’s a bad place. The men are always slipping
notes in my hand when they give me their checks. Then the boss, he’s
always bothering around.”
“But you don’t have to work hard?”
“From nine till four. We get our lunch free. I pay three dollars on the
room and Nellie pays one.”
If Howard had not seen many such problems in economics before, he would
have been astonished at any one even hoping to be able to get two meals
a day, clothing and carfare out of two or three dollars a week. As it
was, he only wondered how long a girl who had been used at least to
comfort would endure this. “It’s easy for the other girl,” he thought,
“because she’s used to it. But this one--” and he decided that the
“trouble” would begin as soon as her clothing was worn out.
He noticed that she was pulling at the third finger of her right hand
where she would have worn rings if she had had any. “You’ve had to pawn
your rings?” he ventured.
She looked at him startled. “Did Nellie tell you?” she asked.
“No,” he replied, “I saw that you were missing your rings and suspected
the rest.”
“Yes; that’s so. I’ve pawned all my jewelry except a bracelet. Nellie
can’t get along on her three dollars. She eats too much.”
“I should think you’d rather be at home.”
“As I told you before,” she said impatiently, “anything’s better than
home. Besides, I’m pretty well off. I go where I please, stay out as
late as I please and have all the company I want. At home I’d have to be
in bed at ten o’clock.”
There was a sound at the front door down in the darkness. The girl
started from the chair, listened, then exclaimed: “There she comes now.
And it’s two o’clock!”
Howard took the hint, smiled and said: “Well, good-night. I’ll see you
again.”
“Good-night,” the girl answered absently.
From his room Howard heard Nellie coming up the stairs. “You’re a nice
one!” came in “Miss Black-Hair’s” indignant voice, “Where have you been?
Where did you and Jack go?”
The answer came in a sob--“Oh, Alice, you’ll never forgive me!”
Their door closed upon the two girls but Howard could still hear
Nellie’s voice tearful, pleading. There was the sound of some one
falling heavily upon the lounge, then sobs and cries of “Oh! Oh!”
As Howard went into his bedroom, he could hear the voices still more
plainly through the thin wall. He caught the words only once. “Miss
Black-Hair,” her voice shaking with anger, exclaimed: “Nellie Baker, you
are a wicked girl, I shall go away.”
V.
ALICE.
Several nights later Howard came upon Alice at the front door, where a
young man was detaining her in a lingering good-bye. Another night as
he was passing her room he saw her stretched upon the floor, her head
supported by her elbows and an open book in front of her. She looked so
childlike that Howard paused and said: “What is it--a fairy story?”
“No, it’s a love story,” she replied, just glancing at him with a faint
smile and showing that she did not wish to be interrupted. The same
night as he was going to bed he heard the angry voices of the two girls.
A week later, toward the end of July, he found Alice sitting on the
front stoop, when he came from dinner. She was obviously in the depths
of the “blues.” Her eyes, the droop of the corners of her mouth, even
the colour of her skin indicated anxiety and depression. She looked so
forlorn that he said gently: “Wouldn’t you like to walk in the Square?”
She rose at once. “Yes, I guess so.” They crossed to the green. She was
wearing the pale-blue gown and it fitted her well. Neither in the gown
nor in the big hat with its coquettish flowers nodding over the brim was
there much of fashion. But there was a certain distinction in her
walk and her manner of wearing her clothes; and to a pretty face and a
graceful form was added the charm of youth, magnetic youth.
“Do you want to walk?” she asked, lassitude in her voice.
“No, let us sit,” he said, and they went to a bench near the arch. It
was twilight. The children were still romping and shouting. Many fat
elderly women--mothers and grandmothers--were solemnly marching about,
talking in fat, elderly voices.
“You have the blues?” asked Howard, thinking it might make her feel
better to talk of her troubles. “If I were your doctor, I should
prescribe a series of good cries.”
“I don’t cry,” said the girl. “Sometimes I wish I could. Nellie cries
and gets over things. I feel awful inside and sick and my eyes burn. But
I can’t cry.”
“You’re too young for that.”
“Oh, in some ways I’m young; again, I’m not. I hate everybody this
evening.”
“What’s the matter? Has Nellie deserted you?”
“She? Not much. I had to tell her to go”--this with a joyless little
laugh--“she quit work and wouldn’t behave herself. So now I’m going on
alone.”
“And you won’t go home?”
“Never in the world,” she said with almost fierce energy; then some
thought made her laugh in the same way as before. Howard decided that
she had not told him everything about her home life, even though she had
rattled on as if there were nothing to conceal. He sat watching her, she
looking straight before her, her small bare hands clasped in her lap.
He was pitying her keenly--this child, at once stunted and abnormally
developed, this stray from one of the classes that keeps their women
sheltered; and here she was adrift, without any of those resources of
experience which assist the girls of the tenements.
Her features were small, sensitive, regular. Her eyes were brown with
lines of reddish gold raying from the pupils. Her chin and mouth were
firm enough, yet suggested weakness through the passions. Her clear
skin had the glow of youth and health upon its smooth surface. She was
certainly beautiful and she certainly had magnetism.
“What do you think is going to become of you?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, after a deep sigh. “A girl doesn’t have a fair
chance. I don’t seem to be able to have any fun without getting into
trouble. I don’t know what to think. It’s all so black. I wish I was
dead.”
Her dreary tone put the deepest pathos into her words. Howard had seen
despondency in youth before--had felt it himself. But there had always
been a certain lightness in it. Here was a mere child who evidently
thought, and thought with reason, that there was no hope for her; and
her despair was not a passing cloud or storm, but a settled conviction.
“There doesn’t seem to be any chance for a young girl,” she repeated
as if that phrase summed up all that was weighing upon her. And Howard
feared that she, was right. Even the readiest of all commodities,
advice, failed him. “What can she do?” he thought. “If she has no home,
worth speaking of”--then he went on aloud:
“Haven’t you friends?”
She laughed again with that slight moving of the lips and with eyes
mirthless. “Who wants me for a friend? Nobody’d think I was respectable.
And I guess I’m not so very. There’s Nellie and her--friends. Oh, the
girls join in with the men to drag other girls down. But I won’t do
that. I don’t care what becomes of me--except that.”
“Why?” he asked, curious for her explanation of this aversion.
“I don’t know why,” she replied. “There doesn’t seem to be any good
reason. I’ve thought I would several times. And then--well, I just
couldn’t.”
Howard turned the subject and tried to draw her out of this mood. They
sat there for several hours and became well acquainted. He found that
she had an intelligent way of looking at things, that she observed
closely, and that she appreciated and understood far more than he had
expected.
It was the beginning of a series of evenings spent together. He took her
with him on many of his assignments and they often dined together at
“Le Chat Noir” or the “Restaurant de Paris,” or “The Manhattan” over
in Second Avenue. Late in June she bought a new gown--a pale-grey with
ribbons and hat to match. Howard was amused at the anxious expression
in her gold-brown eyes as she waited for his opinion. And when he said:
“Well, well, I never saw you look so pretty,” she looked much prettier
with a slight colour rising to tint the usual pallor of her cheeks.
One Sunday he came home in the afternoon and found her helping the maid
at straightening his rooms. As he lay on the lounge smoking he watched
her lazily. She handled his books with a great deal of awe. She opened
one of them and sat on the floor in the childlike way she often had. She
read several sentences aloud. It was a tangle of technical words on the
subject of political economy.
“What do you have such stupid things around for?” she said, smiling and
rising. She began to arrange the books and papers on the table. He was
looking at her but thinking of something else when he became conscious
that she had got suddenly white to the lips. He jumped to his feet.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, “are you going to faint?”
Her eyes were shining as with fever out of a ghostly face. Her lips
trembled as she answered: “Oh it’s nothing. I do this often.” She went
slowly into the back room where the maid was. In a few minutes she
returned, apparently as usual. She flitted about uneasily, taking up now
one thing, now another in a purposeless, nervous way.
“I never was in here before,” she said. “You’ve got lots of pretty
things. Whose picture is this?”
“That? Oh, my sister-in-law out in Chicago.”
Howard did not then understand why she became so gay, why her eyes
danced with happiness, why as soon as she went into the hall she began
to sing and kept it up in her own room, quieting down only to burst
forth again. He did not even especially note the swift change, the, for
her, extraordinary mood of high spirits. It was about this time that
their relations began to change.
Howard had thought of her, or had thought that he thought of her, only
as a lonely and desolate child, to be taught so far as he was capable of
teaching and she of learning. He was conscious of her extreme youth and
of the impassable gulf of thought and taste between them. He did not
take her feelings into account at all. It never occurred to him that
this part of friend and patron which he was playing was not safe for
him, not just and right toward her.
One night he took her to a ball at the Terrace Garden--a
respectable, amusing affair “under the auspices of the
Young-German-American-Shooting-Society.” The next day a reporter for the
_Sun_ whom he knew slightly said to him with a grin he did not like:
“Mighty pretty little girl you’re taking about with you, Howard. Where’d
you pick her up?”
Howard reddened, angry with himself for reddening, angry with the _Sun_
man for his impudence, ashamed that he had put himself and Alice in such
a position. But the incident brought the matter of his relation with her
sharply and clearly before his mind and conscience.
“This must stop,” he said to himself; “it must stop at once. It is
unjust to her. And it is dragging me into an entanglement.”
But the mischief had been done. She loved him. And with the confidence
of youth and inexperience, she was disregarding all the obstacles,
was giving herself up to the dream that he would presently love her in
return, with the end as in the story books. Indeed love stories became
her constant companions. Where she once read them for amusement, she now
read them as a Christian reads his Bible--for instruction, inspiration,
faith, hope and courage.
One evening in July--it was in the week of Independence Day--Howard’s
windows and door were thrown wide to get the full benefit of whatever
stir there might be in the air. He was sprawled upon the lounge, the
table drawn close and upon it a lamp shedding a dim light through the
room but enough near by to let him read. He had dropped his book and was
thinking whether a stroll in the Square in the moonlight would repay the
trouble of moving. There were steps in the hall and then, peeping round
the door-frame was the face of his young neighbour.
“Hello,” he said, “I thought you were out somewhere. Come in.”
“No, I’m going to bed,” she answered, nevertheless gradually edging into
the room. She was wearing a loose wrapper of flowered silk, somewhat
worn and never very fine. Her black hair hung in a long thick braid to
her waist and she looked even younger than usual.
“Where have you been all evening?” asked Howard.
“Oh, I’ve been up to see a friend. She lives in Harlem, and she wants me
to come and live with her.”
“Are you going?” Howard inquired, noting that he was interested and not
pleased. “The house wouldn’t seem natural without you.”
She gave him a quick, gratified glance and, advancing further into the
room, sat upon the arm of the big rocking-chair. “She gave me a good
talking to,” she went on with a smile. “She told me I ought not to live
alone at my age. She said I ought to live with her and meet some friends
of hers. She said maybe I’d find a nice fellow to marry.”
Howard thought over this as he smoked and at last said in an
ostentatiously judicial tone: “Well, I think she’s right. I don’t see
what else there is to do. You can’t live on down here alone always.
What’s become of Nellie?”
“Nellie’s got to be a bad girl,” said Alice with a blush and a dropping
of the eyes. “She’s in Fourteenth Street every night. She says she
doesn’t care what happens to her. I saw her last night and she wanted
me to come with her. She says it’s of no use for me to put on airs. She
says I’ve got no friends and I might as well join her sooner as later.”
“Well?” Howard was keeping his eyes carefully away from hers.
“Oh, I sha’n’t go with her. As long as a girl has got anything at all
to live for, she doesn’t want that. Besides I’d rather go to the East
River.”
“Drowning’s a serious matter,” said Howard with a smile and with banter
in his tone.
“Yes, it is,” said the girl seriously, “I’ve thought of it. And I don’t
believe I could.”
“Then you’d better go with your friend and get married.”
“I don’t want to get married,” she replied, shaking her head slowly from
side to side.
“That’s what all the girls say,” laughed Howard. “But of course you
will. It’s the only thing to do.”
“Then why don’t you get married?” asked Alice, tracing one of the
flowers in her wrapper with her slim, brown forefinger.
“I couldn’t if I would and I wouldn’t if I could.”
“Oh, you could get a nice girl to marry you, I’m sure,” she said, the
colour rising faintly toward her long, downcast lashes.
“But who would get the money? It takes money to keep a nice girl.”
“Oh, not much,” said Alice earnestly, yet with a queer hesitation in her
voice. “You oughtn’t to marry those extravagant girls. I’ve read about
them and I think they don’t make very good wives, real wives to save
money and--and care.”
“You seem to know a good deal about these things for your age,” said
Howard, much amused and showing it.
“I don’t care,” she persisted, “you ought to get married.”
Howard felt that this was the time to clear the girl’s mind of any
“notions” she might have got. He would be very clever, very adroit. He
would not let her suspect that he had any idea of her thoughts. Indeed
he was not perfectly certain that he had. But he would gently and
frankly tell her the truth.
“I shall never get married,” he said, sitting up and talking as one who
is discussing a case which he understands thoroughly yet has no personal
interest in. “I haven’t the money and I haven’t the desire. I am what
they would call a confirmed bachelor. I wouldn’t marry any girl who
had not been brought up as I have been. We should be unhappy together
unsuited each to the other. She would soon hate me. Besides, I wish to
be free. I care more for freedom than I ever shall for any human being.
As I am now, so I shall always be, a wandering fellow without ties. It
is not a pleasant prospect for old age. But I have made up my mind to it
and I shall never marry.”
The girl’s hands had dropped limp into her lap; her face was down so
that he could barely see the burning blush which overspread it.
“You don’t mean that,” she said in a voice that was queer and choked.
“Oh yes, I do, little girl,” he answered, intending to smile when she
should look up.
When she did lift her eyes, his smile could not come. For her face was
grey and her lips bloodless and from her eyes looked despair. Howard
glanced away instantly. With rude hand he had suddenly toppled into
the dust this child’s dream-castle of love and happiness which he had
himself helped her build. He felt like a criminal. But partly from a
sense of duty, chiefly from the cowardice of self-preservation, he made
no effort to lighten her suffering.
“I should only prolong it,” he thought, “only make matters worse.
To-morrow--perhaps.”
If she had been worldly wise, even if she had not been so completely
absorbed in her worship of him that her woman-instincts were dormant,
she would herself have found hope. But she had not a suspicion that
these strong words of apparent finality were spoken to give himself
courage, to keep him from obeying the impulse to respond to the appeal
of her youth to his, her aloneness to his, her passion to his. She
believed him literally.
There was a long silence. He heard her move, heard a suppressed cry and
glanced toward her again. She was darting from the room. A second later
her door crashed. He started up and after her, hesitated, returned to
his book--but not to his reading.
Toward noon the next day, he passed her room on his way out. The
door was wide open; none of her belongings was in sight; the maid was
sweeping energetically. She paused when she saw him.
“Miss Alice left this morning,” she said, “and the room’s been let to
another party.”
VI.
IN A BOHEMIAN QUICKSAND.
Howard could have got her new address; and for many weeks habit, at
first steadily, afterward intermittently, teased him to look her up.
He was amazed at her hold upon him. At times the longing for her was so
intense that he almost suspected himself of being in love with her.
“I escaped from that none too soon,” he congratulated himself. “It
wasn’t nearly so one-sided as I thought.”
He had never been gregarious. Thus far he had not had a single intimate
friend, man or woman. He knew many people and knew them well. They liked
him and some of them sought his friendship. These were often puzzled
because it was easy to get acquainted with him, impossible to know him
intimately.
The explanation of this combination of openness and reserve,
friendliness and unapproachableness, was that his boyhood and youth had
been spent wholly among books. That life had trained him not to look to
others for amusement, sympathy or counsel, but to depend upon himself.
As his temperament was open and good-natured and sympathetic, he was as
free from enemies and enmities as he was from friends and friendships.
Women there had been--several women, a succession of idealizations which
had dispersed in the strong light of his common sense. He had never
disturbed himself about morals in what he regarded as the limited sense.
He always insisted that he was free; and he was careful only of his
personal pride and of taking no advantage of another. What he had said
to Alice about marriage was true--as to his intentions, at least. A poor
woman, he felt, he could not marry; a rich woman, he felt, he would not
marry. And he cared nothing about marriage because he was never lonely,
never leaned or wished to lean upon another, abhorred the idea of
any one leaning upon him; because he regarded freedom as the very
corner-stone of his scheme of life.