IV

Trenton wrote every day, letters in which there was no attempt to

disguise his love for her. He hadn’t warned her against keeping his

letters but she destroyed each one after writing her reply. These

answers were little more than notes which she wrote and rewrote in

trepidation lest she say too much or too little. Now that he had

declared himself and was reiterating daily his complete absorption

in her as to everything that affected his future she could afford to

risk certain reserves and coynesses. But she did love him; she had

positively settled this question. It was a tremendous thing that had

happened to her, the realization of a great love, love awakened at

a first meeting and endowed with all the charm of romance and the

felicity of clandestine adventure. In one of her notes, written with

her door locked--her family imagined her to be zealously devoting

herself to her French studies--she wrote:

It is all like a dream. I never cease to marvel that _you_ should

care for me.... Every note you send me is a happy surprise. If one

failed to come I think I should die.... You wanted me to take time

to think. That is like my good and true knight. But I want you to

consider too,--everything.... Your world is so much bigger than

mine. Any day you may meet some one so much finer than I am, so much

worthier of your love.... I like to think that it all had to be just

as it has been,--you and I wandering toward each other, guided and

urged on by destiny.

To her intimations that he might have regrets he replied in his next

message with every assurance that he, too, shared her feeling that

their meeting had been predestined of all time. Now and then in his

life, he wrote, he had felt the hand of a directing and beneficent

fate. She wondered how he would have replied to a direct question as

to the forces that had combined to bring about his marriage to the

woman he had no doubt loved at some time, but she refrained. In Grace’s

thoughts, Mrs. Ward Trenton, the Mary Graham Trenton who sought clues

to social problems and moved restlessly about the country proclaiming

revolutionary ideas, was receding further and further toward a

vanishing point.

At the end of a week she became restless, eager for Trenton’s return.

She several times considered telegraphing him to make haste, but after

going once to the telegraph office at her lunch hour and writing the

message she tore it up. He had asked her to wire whenever she was

sure; the mere sending of a telegram would commit her irrevocably. It

was not so easy as she had imagined to write the words which meant

that after pondering the matter with the gravity it demanded she was

ready to enter into a relationship with him which would have no honest

status, no protection, but would be just such an arrangement as Irene

maintained with Kemp.

Irene, aware of Trenton’s daily letters, now refrained from giving

her further encouragement to the affair. On the other hand she seemed

disposed to counsel caution.

“Some days you seem as cheerful as a spring robin and then again you

don’t seem so chipper. You don’t want to take your love affairs so

hard!”

“Oh, we’re just having a little flirtation, that’s all,” said Grace

carelessly.

“That’s not the way you’re acting! You’re terribly intense, Grace. I

knew you had temperament, but I didn’t know you had so much. But I’ll

say this for Ward, that he’s a fine, manly fellow,--frankly a much

finer type than Tommy Kemp. Tommy’s a sport and Ward isn’t. Ward really

has ideals, but such as Tommy has don’t worry him much.”

This left Grace, again a prey to doubts, wondering whether after all

Trenton was so utterly different from Kemp. Intellectually he was a

higher type than Tommy Kemp, but when it came to morals he was not a

bit better.

V

Grace had not yet wholly escaped from the effect of Dr. Ridgely’s

sermon, with its warning against the too-readily-found excuse for

wrong-doing. She continued to observe carefully her associates in

Shipley’s and other business girls she became acquainted with, and

she had no reason for suspecting that by far the greater number were

not high-minded young women who met cheerily all the circumstances

of their lives. She found herself stumbling uncomfortably over the

excuses she made for herself. Other girls forced to labor and blessed

with equal charm and wit did not find it necessary “to play around

with married men” as the phrase went, or encourage the attentions of

young unmarried men who were not likely to show them every respect.

There were societies and associations whose purpose was to safeguard

young womanhood; some of her new acquaintances were members of such

organizations. She accepted invitations to go for lunch or supper to

several of these, but thought them dull.

Finding that Grace hadn’t attempted to enlist Miss Reynolds in the

girl’s club of Dr. Ridgley’s church, Ethel Durland had sent the pastor

himself to invite that lady to one of the meetings.

“I hope you will come Tuesday night,” said Ethel, when she reported

this to Grace. “We want Miss Reynolds to see the scope of our work and

your being there will be a help. Maybe you’d ask some of the girls in

Shipley’s? We want to have a record attendance. And we want the girls

to bring their young men friends with them. It’s our idea that the

girls should feel that the church is like another home.”

The attempt to establish a new high record of attendance brought

twenty-five girls and four young men to the church parlors. Three

of the young women were from Shipley’s and they had gone at Grace’s

earnest solicitation; four were Servians, employed in a garment

factory, and they were convoyed by young men of their own race.

“I wish you’d be specially nice to those Servian girls,” Ethel remarked

to Grace. “It wasn’t easy to get them to come, but they brought their

beaux with them. We must be sure they have a good time.”

The beaux did not seem to relish the hopeless minority of their

sex. The meeting was opened formally by Ethel as chairman of the

entertainment committee. She introduced Dr. Ridgely, who expressed the

hope that the club would develop into one of the strongest agencies of

the church. He referred to religion only indirectly. Grace was again

impressed by his sincerity; and he was tactful and gracious in his

effort to put the visitors at ease. He would not linger, he said, as

a reminder that they were in a church; the evening was theirs and he

wanted the club to manage its own affairs and define its own policy

to meet the tastes and needs of the members. No one of any shade of

religious faith could have taken offense from anything he said or

feared that the pastor wished to use the club for proselyting purposes.

However, when he had left, Ethel Durland extended an invitation to

those present who were not already enrolled in the Sunday school

to become affiliated, and urged attendance upon the regular church

services.

“How tactless! Why couldn’t she let well enough alone!” whispered Miss

Reynolds to Grace. “Dr. Ridgely knows better than that.”

“My sister has a strong sense of duty,” Grace answered. “She couldn’t

bear to let the opportunity go by.”

“She might have waited at least till they’d got their refreshments,”

Miss Reynolds retorted.

A young lady elocutionist who had volunteered her services recited a

number of poems after Ethel had prepared the way with a few words on

the new movement in poetry. The audience manifested no great interest

in the movement and seemed utterly mystified by the poems offered.

However, Ethel now announced that the formal exercises were concluded

and that they would repair to the basement where there would be

dancing. Ethel, who did not dance herself and thought it a wicked form

of amusement, had yielded reluctantly to the suggestion of the other

members of the committee that dancing be included in the programme. Dr.

Ridgely had given his approval on the ground that young people were

bound to dance somewhere and as there was so much criticism of the

prevailing fashion in dancing he thought it highly desirable to provide

the amusement under auspices calculated to discourage the objectionable

features complained of in the public dance halls.

“Well, where are all the young men?” inquired Miss Reynolds as

she stood beside Grace in the basement. “Those four Servians look

frightened to death and girls don’t enjoy dancing with each other. If

the church is going to do this thing, why don’t they do it right? You’d

think the committee would have got some young men here if they’d had to

ask the police to drag them in.”

The music was provided by two negroes, one of whom played the piano

and the other the drum. As Twentieth Century dance music it was not of

a high order. The musicians, duly admonished by the Chairman of the

entertainment committee, were subduing their performance in the attempt

to adjust it to the unfamiliar and sobering environment. And the room

itself was not a particularly inspiring place for social entertaining.

A map of the Holy Land and several enlarged photographs of early

members of the church were the only adornments of the plaster wall,

and the chairs were of that unsteady, collapsible type that suggest

funerals and give the sitter a feeling of undergoing penance for

grievous sins. The low ceiling was supported by iron pillars that added

nothing to the pleasure of dancing.

A number of girls began dancing together and after some persuasion

Grace succeeded in getting the four couples of Servians on the floor.

The young men danced with something of a ceremonial air as though,

finding themselves in an alien atmosphere, they wished fitly to

represent the dignity and pride of their race. Grace picked out several

young girls who were huddled helplessly in a corner and danced with

them and then seized upon the young men and introduced them in the

hope of breaking the racial deadlock. The young fellows proved to be

painfully shy when confronted by the necessity of dancing with girls

they had never seen before. Nevertheless Grace’s efforts resulted in

putting some life and animation into the party. It had been said of her

in college that she had the knack of making things go and it struck

her suddenly that something might be done to inject some spirit and

novelty into the occasion by asking the Servians to give their folk

dances. One of the Servian girls undertook to instruct the negroes in

the rhythms required for the folk dances and the young woman’s vivacity

and the negroes’ good-natured eagerness to meet her wishes evoked much

merriment. The dances were given with spirit in a circle formed by the

rest of the company, who warmly applauded the quaint performance.

“I always wanted to try these folk dances myself!” cried Grace

appealing to the tallest of the young men. “Won’t you teach me?”

He would be honored, he said, and the girl with whom he had been

dancing went to the piano. Grace quickly proved herself an apt and

enthusiastic pupil. When she had learned the postures and steps of

one of the group dances her instructor took her as his partner and she

went through with it without an error. Others of the American girls

now began trying the steps with the Servian young men and women, who

entered zestfully into the work of teaching them. The result was the

breaking down of restraint and by the time the refreshments were served

the room presented a scene of gaiety and good fellowship.

“You have a genius for that kind of thing, my dear; you managed that

beautifully,” said Miss Reynolds to Grace as they assisted in pouring

chocolate and passing sandwiches. “You saved the evening! Dear me!

There’s something wrong with this. As an effort to interest young

people in the church this club can’t say much for itself. Girls won’t

go where there are no young men; I imagine young men are not easy to

lure into church parlors to hear poetry read to them, particularly

poetry that doesn’t mean anything. And this cellar and the piano and

drum can’t compete with a big dance hall and a real jazz band. This

has been going on about like this for several years, but without as

many girls as came tonight. I don’t know what could be done, but this

doesn’t seem worth while.”

“I don’t know the answer either,” said Grace, who, more or less

consciously, was observing this attempt to do something for working

girls with reference to her own problems. Her reading had made

her familiar with the efforts of church organizations to meet the

social needs of the changing times. It seemed to her that these all

presupposed a degree of aspiration in the class sought to be helped.

And knowing herself to have enjoyed probably the best opportunities

as to education of any girl in the room she was troubled, knowing how

feeble was her hold on such ideals of conduct as only a little while

ago she had believed herself to possess.

“Maybe,” said Miss Reynolds, “those people are right who say we’re

running too much to organizations. We start a club like this and stick

it in a church basement and are terribly pleased with ourselves. These

girls are all good girls; naughty girls wouldn’t come; they can have

a better time somewhere else. And they’re just the ones we’ve got to

reach. Am I right about that?”

“I think you are,” replied Grace, wondering what Miss Reynolds would

say if she could read her thoughts. To drop Trenton while it was still

possible would make it necessary to reconcile herself to the acceptance

of just such pleasures as Ethel thought sufficient social stimulus for

girls who worked for a living.

“Why don’t the church members come to these meetings?” Miss Reynolds

demanded, “or send their sons and daughters? The minister of this

church has sense and I’ll wager he sees that side of it. A miserable

thing like this only strengthens class feeling. I don’t believe there’s

any way of making such a club go. The church is put in the position of

tagging the rich and the poor so nobody can mistake one for the other.

I think I’ll spend my time and money on individual cases--find a few

young people who really need help and concentrate on them!”

At eleven o’clock the musicians left and the entertainment came to an

end.

“I’m so grateful to you, Grace, for helping; this is the best meeting

we’ve ever had,” said Ethel after she had pressed a folder describing

the church’s activities upon the last of the company. “Don’t you think

our work well worth while, Miss Reynolds?”

“I was greatly interested,” Miss Reynolds replied evasively.

She took Grace and Ethel home in her car but did not encourage Ethel’s

attempt to discuss the evening. However, in bidding Ethel good-night

she said she would send her a check for one hundred dollars for the

girls’ club.

“Your work is important, Miss Durland; I sympathize with the purpose;

but I don’t think you’ve got quite the right plan. But I confess that

I have no suggestion worth offering. I realize that it’s not easy to

solve these problems.”