It was just before Lena left us that Mrs. Carney telephoned one day for
me to come to her house to dinner on the following night. "He's back!" I
said to myself as I hung up the receiver; for by now Mrs. Carney had
guessed something of John Ember's place in my life, though we had never
spoken of it. But he was not back, now, any more than he had been all
the other times that I had leaped at the hope, in these three years. It
was some one else who had come back.
Mr. Arthur Carney was in Europe that year, and I went there that night
without thinking that there was such a person as he in the world, so
long had I forgotten his existence. But Mrs. Carney told me that she had
had, the day before, a telegram to say that he had landed in New York
and would be at home by the end of the week. While we were waiting for
dinner to be announced, he unexpectedly appeared in her drawing-room.
And he said to her, before all those people:
"You see, my dear, I've come to surprise you. I've come to see how well
you amuse yourself while I am away."
He said that he would go in to dinner with us just as he was. He was
welcomed by everybody, and, of course, Mrs. Carney introduced him to me.
She could have had no better answer to what he had just said to her.
"May I present my husband, Miss Wakely?" she said. "Arthur, she was once
at the factory. You may remember----"
He had grown stouter, and his face was pink, and his head was pink
through his light hair. He carried a glass and stared at me through it,
and then he dropped his glass and said:
"My word, you know. Then we've met before, we two."
"I've never had the pleasure of really meeting you, Mr. Carney," I said.
"You parted from me anyway. I remember that," he said. And presently he
came back to where I was. "Here's my partner, please, madame," he said
to Mrs. Carney.
So I sat beside him. Of course I wasn't afraid of him any more and I
wasn't really annoyed by him. I could just study him now. And I thought:
"If only every girl whom a man follows, as you followed me, could just
study him--like a specimen."
"That was a devilish clever trick you played on me, you know," he said,
when we were seated. "How'd you come to think of it?"
I said: "That was easy. I could think of it again."
"You could, could you?" said he. "Well, what I want to know is what
you're doing here?"
"Mrs. Carney must tell you that," I reminded him.
He stared at me. "You're a cool one," he said. "Come, aren't you going
to tell me something about yourself? Why, I must be just about the first
friend you had in this little old town."
I had been wondering if I dare say some of all that was in my mind, and
I concluded that I did dare--rather than hear all that was in his. So I
said:
"Mr. Carney, you have been asking me some questions. Now I wonder if I
may ask you some?"
"Sure," he said. "Come ahead. I'd be flattered to get even that much
interest out of you."
"It's something I've thought a good deal about," I told him, "and hardly
anybody can ever have asked about it, first hand. But you must know, and
you could tell me."
"I'll tell you anything you want to know," he said. "Even how much I
still think of you."
It was hard to keep my temper, but I did, because I really wanted to
know. Every woman must want to know, who's been through it.
"I wish you'd tell me," I said, "just how a man figures everything out
for himself, when he begins to hunt down a girl--as you hunted me?"
He stared again, and then he burst out laughing.
"Bless you," he said, "he doesn't figure. He just feels."
"But now, think," I urged. "After all, you have brains--"
"Many, many thanks, little one," he said.
"--and sometimes you must use them. In those days, didn't you honestly
care what became of me? Didn't you think about that at all?"
"You can bet I did," he said. "Didn't I make it fairly clear what I
wanted to become of you?"
I wondered whether I could go on. But I felt as if I must--because here
was something that is one of the big puzzles of the world.
"But after?" I said. "After?"
He shrugged.
"I wasn't borrowing trouble, you understand?" he said.
"No," I told him. "No. You were just piling it up for me--that was all.
Now see here: In these five years I've had school as I wanted to have
then. I know more. I'm better worth while. I'm better able to take my
place among human beings. I've begun to grow--as people were meant to
grow. Truly--were you willing to take away from me every chance of
that--and perhaps to see me thrown on the scrap-heap--just to get what
you wanted?"
He looked at me, and then around his table, where his wife's twenty
guests were sitting--well-bred, charming folk, all of them.
"My God," he said, "what a funny dinner-table conversation."
"Isn't it?" I agreed. "These things are usually just done--they aren't
very often said. But I wish that you could tell me. I should think you'd
be interested yourself. Don't you see that we've got a quite unusual
chance to run this thing down?"
For the first time I saw in his eyes a look of real intelligence--the
sort of intelligence that he must have used with other men, in
business, in politics, in general talk. For the first time he seemed to
me not just a male, but a human being.
"Seriously," he said gravely, "I don't suppose that one man in ten
thousand ever thinks of what is going to become of the woman. Of course
there are the rotters who don't care. Most of them just don't think. I
didn't think."
"I'm glad to believe," I said, "that you didn't think. I've wondered
about it. But will you tell me one thing more: If men don't think, as
you say, why is it that they are so much more likely to hunt down
'unprotected' women, working women, women alone in a city--than those
who have families and friends?"
There was something terrible in the question, and in the way that he
answered it. He served himself to a delicious ragout that was passed to
him, he sipped and savored the wine in his glass, and then he turned
back to me:
"They are easier," he said simply, "because so many of them don't get
paid enough to live on. They're glad to help out."
"And yet," I said, "and yet, Mr. Carney, you own a factory where three
hundred and fifty of these girls don't get paid enough."
"Oh, well, murder!" he said. "Now you're getting on to something else
entirely. We can't do anything to wages. They're fixed altogether by
supply and demand--supply and demand. You simply take these things as
you find them--that's all."
"You took me to that factory," I reminded him.
"Well," he said, "you were looking for a job, weren't you? Was that
three dollars per better than nothing--or wasn't it?"
I kept still. Something was the matter, we seemed to go in a circle.
Finally I said:
"Anyway, Mr. Carney, I thank you for answering me. That was a good deal
to do."
He sat turning his wine-glass, one hand over his mouth.
"You do make me seem a blackguard," he said, "and yet--on my honor--if
you think I have any--I didn't think I was. I didn't mean anybody any
harm. Damn it all, I was just trying to find a little fun."
He looked at me. And all at once, I knew how he must have looked when he
was a little boy. I could see the little boy's round eyes and full red
cheeks, and the way he must have answered when he'd done something
wrong. And it didn't seem to me that he'd ever grown any older. I
understood him. I understood most men of his type. And I believed him.
He was just blundering along in the world's horrible, mistaken idea of
fun--that means death to the other one.
Before I knew it, my eyes brimmed full of tears. He saw that, and sat
staring at me.