SIC ITUR AD AVERNO
Jacqueline fumbled in the box for another cigarette and held it,
unlighted, in her hand as she went on.
"I don't remember much what happened for the next few hours after that.
I must have found my way back to Paris somehow, because while it was
still dark I was standing at the edge of an embankment looking into the
Seine.
"It was raining and my clothes were wet through and through. I didn't
know what I was doing or how I got there. A light on the other side
threw a reflection across, almost to my feet; and, as I looked down, I
saw my baby in the water!"
Her voice had dropped until it was barely audible across the room, and
she leaned toward Marie, her eyes shining with an insane light.
"I s'pose you think I'm crazy, eh? Couldn't have seen? Well, you don't
know all about babies, my girl!
"D'you ever see your baby in the river?" she demanded, with hoarse
fierceness. The girl's only reply was a dry sob and a shudder.
"Well, you will if you run away with that d----d soap peddler of
yours," she grumbled, settling back in her chair....
"I was just going to get into the river and take him in my arms when
someone caught hold of my wrist and I heard a man's voice asking, 'Are
you ill, madame?'
"I don't know what I said, but he put his arm through mine, led me into
a little café where he made me drink some brandy before he would let me
say a word. Then he called a cab and asked me where I lived.
"In the light of the café I had a chance to look at him when the
brandy made me feel a little warmer. I knew by his accent that he
was an Englishman. He had curly brown hair and a pink and white
skin--altogether a nice-looking young man! He seemed to be less than
thirty, and he talked and acted toward me as he would have if I had
been his sister.
"When the cab came he wanted to take me home in it. I told him that I
had no place to go and begged him to go away and leave me. He sat down
again and I don't remember how much of my story I told him.
"He told me afterward that I fainted in the cab; but when I could
understand things clearly once more, I was lying in a big soft bed in a
beautifully furnished room. There were pictures and statues and heavy
draperies everywhere. Foils and arms and books were scattered about.
There was a little table covered with bottles beside my bed and a nurse
sitting near by. When she saw that I was awake she told me that I was
in the Englishman's apartment and that I had been delirious for three
weeks.
"In a little while he came in and told me how he had brought me home
and had sent for a doctor and nurse. The doctor said that I had
narrowly escaped brain fever. I went to sleep again in a little while
and did not wake until the next day. The nurse stayed less than a week
after that and he came into my room and read and talked to me by the
hour. He told me all about himself. He was the son of a wealthy English
family and had developed a love for painting which he had ample money
to cultivate.
"He was a bright, cheerful young fellow, and in his company and through
his care I grew strong rapidly. He never asked me to tell him one word
about my past or my plans for the future. When I was able to sit up
comfortably in bed he brought his easel into the room and painted me.
He was given honorable mention for it.
"All this time I was worrying about what I was to do when I grew strong
enough to leave his rooms. I made up my mind that I would try to find
work of some sort in the millinery shops. One day I mentioned to him
that I would be leaving in a short time, and he looked very grave and
asked me what I intended doing. I told him and he approved of the plan.
In all this time he had not as much as given me a passionate glance.
"He insisted, when I was able to go out, that I should make my home
there, until I was established in a place where I could make a living,
and loaned me the money to get clothes that I needed. I did not love
him, but I worshipped him for his goodness.
"It was disappointing work--trying to find employment, and I could not
make enough to live on decently. I had never had to be very careful of
money before, and I did not know how. He advised me, and helped me,
cheered me all he could, and we ate supper together every night.
"I was making a few francs a week trimming hats, and when we began
telling our experiences of the day those little suppers were almost
merry. I was learning to hate my husband with a hate that will be with
me till I die," and the glow of her dark eyes put the seal of truth on
the words, "and when John--my Englishman--told his jokes and blunders,
the pain of the longing for my boy did not hurt so much.
"Then I lost my miserable position, and it was days before I got
another, although it was a better one when I did find it. During that
time he was even more thoughtful and attentive and did not give me a
chance to feel hopeless very long.
"The night, after I went to work again, we were sitting in the room
where I had lain ill and he was telling me, with many laughs, about a
picture that a fellow student was painting. As I watched his clean,
handsome face and listened to his cheery talk I thought of all that he
had done for me--that he had asked for nothing and received nothing but
my empty words of gratitude--and my eyes filled with tears. The next
moment I was kneeling before his chair, kissing his hands....
"His story stopped with a gasp, and I felt him tremble. Then he drew
his hands away and raised me up to him and I kissed his lips and eyes
and hair again and again. And ... that night ... I gave him ... all I
had ... to give!...
"He never really loved me, but he was happy with me for a long time,
and when he went back to England he took me with him. His home was only
a few hours' ride from London, where he found apartments for me, and he
was with me more than he was at home.
"Finally his visits were not so frequent and regular and they kept
falling off, until once I did not see him for nearly three weeks.
When he came he told me he had to tell me something that he was sure
would hurt me, but he couldn't help it. He had fallen in love with an
English girl, whom he had known all his life, and hoped to marry her;
so he would have to break with me. He was always very liberal in money
matters, and he wanted to keep on sending me the same allowance that he
had given me when I settled in London. But I was too proud--then--to
take it. I gathered together what money I had saved, packed my clothes
and left that day.
"I took a cheap room and started out to find work again. I was given
a place as clerk in a millinery store and by living as carefully as I
could I did not have to draw often on my savings. But I had to draw on
them a little and I was beginning to feel reckless, when an American
theatrical man, who was spending part of the summer in England, came
into the store one day o buy some ladies' gloves. I waited on him,
and--well, in a few days I left my cheap room, and that fall I went
back to New York with him.
"He wasn't as careful of my feelings as the Englishman was----You'll
find that out, too, my girl," she broke off, with a grin of drunken
cynicism. "After the first two or three, your lovers don't think much
about your feelings. He left me destitute in less than a month after we
got to New York!
"I tried to get work but I couldn't. The woman where I roomed took all
of my clothes, except those had on, to pay for my room, and turned
me out. I walked the streets all that night and the next day without
anything to eat, and the next night stopped a well-dressed man and
asked him if he could give me enough money to get some food. He walked
on as if he had not heard me, and then next instant a man stepped out
of a doorway and told me I was under arrest!
"He took me to a police station where I spent the rest of the night
in cell, and the next morning I was taken to court. The detective who
had arrested me told the judge that he had seen me speak to a strange
man on the street, and the judge gave me my choice of paying a fine of
twenty-five francs or going to prison for a month. I tried to explain
that I had had nothing to eat for two days and that I had only asked
the man for a little money, but they would not listen to me. Just as
they were about to take me away to prison, as I had seen them take
three or four other girls before me, a young man, very stylishly
dressed, came forward and said that he would pay my fine. The clerk
took his money and he led me out of the courtroom.
"When we were outside I tried to thank him, but I was so weak with
hunger and weariness that I could hardly speak or stand. He took me to
a little restaurant a few steps away and made me eat until I felt that
I would never be hungry again. During breakfast he learned that I was
alone, friendless and penniless, and he said he would help me. I went
with him and he took me to his room where ... we stayed all day!
"That night he took me out, saying that he would get me a room of
my own. We went to a nice-looking house not far from one of the main
streets of the city where a pleasant woman met us at the door. He asked
me to sit down while he explained about me to the woman and when she
came in to show me to my room she was very kind. The next morning my
clothes were gone from my room and there was nothing in their place
but a low-cut wrapper that I couldn't wear on the street. I was a
prisoner....
"I was in that house for more than a year and I made sometimes
seventy-five--a hundred--a hundred and fifty francs in a day and a
night, but I was never allowed to keep any of the money. The woman took
part of it and the man who brought me there got the rest. I was on the
point of trying to run away two or three times, but the girls in the
house told me that I would be arrested and sent to prison and would
have to come back to him in the end. Several of them had tried when
they were first made slaves...."
The voice that had been dispassionate, almost impersonal through the
latter part of the story, suddenly ceased. Jacqueline gulped at the
ether bottle again and lit the cigarette she had been holding in her
fingers. She was silent so long that Marie looked up at her, with
something between a sob and a shudder.
"Is that all?" she half whispered.
The woman once more burst into a harsh, eerie laugh.
"All! All!" she repeated with drunken scorn. "Oh, hell! That's only
the beginning! Where d'you s'pose I've been for the last fifteen
years?--Well, I've been where you'll be if you run off with your soap
peddler!" and she glared wickedly.
"I was sent all over the country," she went on, "always living the same
life, and always with a different master. At last I got back to New
York and had to go on the streets to make a living for myself and money
for the man that owned me. One night, when my feet were wet with rain
and I was cold all through, a girl showed me that an opium pill would
make me feel better.
"After that I was never without some sort of drug, but I found out that
ether is the best. Ether is the best!" And her eyes rested lovingly on
the little bottle.
"I don't know how many years I was in the 'land of the free.' I'd have
been about as well off there as anywhere else if it hadn't been for a
lot of fool-women who were always trying to save me. There's a lot
of women over there that have plenty of money and nothing to do, and
instead of doing nothing they keep sticking their noses into other
people's business. I'd like to choke some of 'em!" she blazed out
viciously.
"Save me!" she sneered with her mirthless laugh. "They got hold of
me once when I was arrested and gave me a place where I could make
twenty-five or thirty francs a week if I worked hard. All the time they
looked at me and acted as if I was some new sort of a wild beast. When
they put me in that work-shop they all called and said, 'Now, you're
all right!'
"'All right!' I could hardly help laughing in their faces. They
couldn't put my boy in my arms nor clean the stain from my body or
drive the hell out of my soul, but they thought that twenty-five francs
a week ought to be a good substitute for all three. It wouldn't much
more than buy my food and whiskey and drugs. And because I left I was,
'incorrigible' and they sent me to prison----!
"When I was released the man that was collecting my money at that
time told me that I wouldn't be of any more use to him in New York
and he sold me to a man who was taking some women to South America.
It isn't hard to get a lover in South America, and I had been there
only a little while when I was free. Then I roamed around from one city
to another, sometimes with one man, sometimes with another, until I
met--this"--she nodded toward the door--"in Buenos Ayres. A woman in a
dance-hall at Caracas taught me how to tell fortunes with cards, and
when I learned that I had not long to live and would see my boy before
I died I wanted to get back to France. He brought me."
There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of Marie's soft
weeping. Jacqueline looked at her reflectively.
"Now, you're going to go the same way I did," she went on with a solemn
air, born of the stimulants. "Remember what I tell you, m'girl. When
you run away with that man you're through with being a decent, happy
woman! I was an aristocratic prostitute once. You'll never be anything
but a common one! Nobody'll try to stop you. Women'll be a sight harder
on you than men. The men'll amuse themselves with you and push you a
little farther down, but the women'll push you down and swear at you
while they're doing it!----Well?"
"I'm sure--Anatole--will never--leave me!" sobbed the girl. Jacqueline
gazed at her as if trying to decide whether it were worth while to
continue the argument. Then the ether moved her to impatient anger.
"All right, you d----d fool!" she snapped, "Get out of here!"
Marie rose, weeping more loudly and bitterly.
"Isn't there--something--I can do for you?"
"No! Get out!"
As the door closed behind the girl Jacqueline's head fell on the table
with a long convulsive sob. She was silent for a long time and then,
sitting up, she turned once more to the cards.