MY DEAR MISS CARRUTH,--There is an old lady. She doesn’t bother
me at all, but I am at my wits’ end with her. She runs away from
the institution where she belongs, and there’s no other place
for her. At present she is inflicting herself on Mrs. Job Slip,
No. 143 Thoroughfare Street, opposite the head of Angel Alley.
Her mind is thought to be slightly disordered by the loss of
her son, drowned last winter in the wreck of the Clara Em. Mrs.
Slip will explain the circumstances to you more fully. Inquire
for Johnny’s mother. If the old woman ever had any other name,
people have forgotten it, now. I write in great haste and stress
of care. It will not be necessary to traverse Angel Alley to
reach this address, which is quite in the heart of the town, and
perfectly safe and suitable for you. I thank you very much.
Yours sincerely,
EMANUEL BAYARD.
Helen frowned a little when she read this. No Bishop of a diocese,
dictating the career of a deaconess, no village rector, guiding
some anxious and aimless visiting young lady through the mild
dissipations of parish benevolence, could have returned a more
business-like, calm, even curt, reply.
The position of a man who may not love a woman and must not invite
her to marry him--or, to put it a little differently, who must not
love and cannot marry--is one which it seems to be asking too much
of women to understand. At all events they seldom or never do. The
withdrawals, the feints, the veils and chills and silences, by
which a woman in a similar position protects herself, may be as
transparent as golden mist to him whom she evades; but the sturdy
retreat of a masculine conscience from a too tender or too tempting
situation is as opaque as a gravestone to the feminine perception.
Accustomed to be eagerly wooed, Helen did not know what to make of
this devotee who did not urge himself even upon her friendship. She
had never given any man that treasure before. Like all high-minded
women who have not spent themselves in experiments of the
sensibilities, Helen regarded her own friendship as valuable. She
would have preferred him to show, at least, that he appreciated his
privilege. She would have liked him to make friendship as devotedly
as those other men had made love to her.
His reserve, his distance, his apparent moodiness, and undoubted
ability to live without seeing her except when he got ready to do
so, gave her a perplexed trouble more important than pique.
Without ado or delay, she took the next electric car for Mrs.
Slip’s.
Bayard received that afternoon, by the familiar hand of Joey Slip,
this brief rejoinder:--
DEAR MR. BAYARD,--This experienced boy seems to be on intimate
terms with you, and offers to take my report, which stands thus:
Johnny’s mother is in the Widows’ Home. Shall I write you details?
Truly yours, H. C.
“Run on down to the Mainsail Hotel, Joey,” said the minister,
writing rapidly. “Find the lady--there will be a good many
ladies--and hand her this.”
“Pooh!” retorted this nautical child with a superior air, “Vat
ain’t nuffin! She’s good-lookin’ nuff to find off Zheorges in a
fog-bank.”