IT IS three weeks since I have written a word. There’s been too much
to do, and sleeping about in chairs and on the foot of beds is not
stimulating to the brain. We have had an anxious time, for Lizzie
Harris has been desperately ill. Doctor Vanderhoff--that’s the young
man’s name--has had no necessity to run to the corner of Lexington
Avenue and then wonder which way to go, for he has been in here a good
deal of the time. He is a dear, and a clever dear, too, for he has
pulled Lizzie back from dreadful dangers. For a while we didn’t think
she would ever be herself again. Her heart--but what’s the sense of
recapitulating past perils. She’s better, that’s enough, and to-night
I’m down in my apartment leaving Miss Bliss in charge.
She’s another dear, poor little half-fed thing, running back from her
sittings to post up-stairs, panting and frost nipped, and take her
place in that still front room. How still it’s been, with the long
motionless body on the bed, that wouldn’t speak and wouldn’t eat, and
hardly seemed to breathe. Sometimes the men came up and took a turn at
the nursing. The count was no use. The sight of her frightened him and
he had to be taken into the kitchen and given whisky. But young Hazard
was as good as a hospital graduate, soft-handed and footed, better than
Mrs. Phillips, who came up once or twice between her own cases, was
very superior and nagged about the sun-dial.
When he could, Mr. Hazard watched for the first half of the night and
Dolly Bliss and I went into the kitchen and had supper of tea and eggs.
We’ve grown very intimate over these midnight meals. I don’t see how
she lives--ten dollars a week the most she has made this winter, and
often gaps without work. One night I asked her if she had ever posed
for the altogether. Under normal circumstances I would no more have
put such a question than I’d have inquired of Mrs. Bushey what she had
done with her husband. But with the specter of death at our side, the
reticences of every day have dropped away.
She nodded, looking at me with large pathetic eyes.
“Often in the past, but now, unfortunately, I’m not in demand for that.
I’m getting too thin.”
In this close companionship I have found her generous, unselfish and
honest to the core. Is our modesty an artificial attribute, grafted on
us like a bud to render us more alluring? This girl, struggling against
ferocious poverty, is as instinctively, as rigorously virtuous as I am,
as Betty, as Mrs. Ashworth, yet she does a thing for her livelihood,
the thought of which would fill us with horror. I’m going to put it to
Betty, but I wouldn’t dare tell her what I really think--that of the
two points of view Miss Bliss’ is the more modest.
When we were sure Lizzie was on the up-grade, a new worry intruded--had
she any independent means? Nobody knew. Mrs. Bushey was urgent and
to keep her quiet I offered to pay the top-floor rent for a month
and found that the count had already done it. I, who knew her best,
feared she had nothing, and it was “up to me” to get money for her from
somewhere.
Of course Betty was my natural prey and yesterday afternoon fate
rendered her into my hands. She came to take me for a drive in a
hansom, bringing with her her youngest born, Henry Ferguson, Junior,
known familiarly as Wuzzy. Wuzzy is three, fat, not talkative and
spoiled. He wore a white bunny-skin coat, a hat with rosettes on
his ears, leather leggings and kid mitts tied round his wrists with
ribbons. He had so many clothes on that he moved with difficulty,
breathing audibly through his nose. When he attempted to seat himself
on the prie-dieu, the only chair low enough to accommodate him, he had
to be bent in the middle like a jointed doll.
I can not say that I love Wuzzy as much as I do Constance. He is the
heir of the Fergusons and the conquering male is already apparent. It
is plain to be seen that he thinks women were made to administer to his
comfort and amuse him in his dull moments. I have memories of taking
care of Wuzzy last autumn at Betty’s country place when his nurse
was off duty. I never worked so hard in my life. Half the energy and
imagination expended in what the newspapers call a “gainful occupation”
would have made me one of those women of whom _The Ladies’ Home
Journal_ prints biographies.
I carried him down-stairs. It was not necessary, for dangling from the
maternal hand he could have been dragged along, but there is something
so nice about hugging a healthy, warm, little bundle of a boy. As I
bent for him he held up his arms with a bored expression, then stiff
and upright against my shoulder, looked down the staircase and yawned.
It’s the utter confidence of a child that makes it so charming. Wuzzy
relinquished himself to my care as if, when it came to carrying a baby
down-stairs, I was the expert of the western world.
As we descended I rubbed my cheek against his, satin-smooth, cold and
firm. He drew back and gazed at me, a curiously deep look, impersonal,
profound. The human being soon loses the capacity for that look. It
only belongs to the state when we are still “trailing clouds of glory.”
We squeezed him between us and tooled away toward Fifth Avenue. It was
a glorious afternoon and it was glorious to be out again, to breathe
the keen sharp air, to see the park trees in a thin purplish mist
of branch on branch. Wuzzy, seeing little boys and girls on roller
skates, suddenly pounded on us with his heels and had to be lifted to
a prominent position on our knees, whence he leaned over the door and
beat gently on the air with his kid mitts.
“What a bother this child is,” sighed Betty, boosting him up, “I only
brought him because I had to. Some relation of his nurse is sick and
she went out to see them.”
Her only son is the object of Mrs. Ferguson’s passionate adoration, yet
she always speaks of him as if he was her greatest cross.
Wuzzy comfortable, his attention concentrated on the moving show, I
brought my subject on the carpet.
“Dear me, how dreadful,” Betty murmured, much moved by the expurgated
version of Lizzie Harris’ troubles. “Wuzzy, if you don’t stop kicking
me with your heels I’ll take you home.”
Wuzzy stopped kicking, throwing himself far over the door to follow the
flight of a golden-locked fairy in brown velvet. We held him by his
rear draperies and talked across his back.
“It’s a cruel situation,” I answered. “Everything has failed the poor
creature.”
“She has no means of livelihood at all?”
“I’m not sure yet, but I don’t think so. As soon as she’s well enough
I’ll find out. Meantime there’s this illness, the doctor--”
“Yes, yes,” Betty interrupted, “I know all that. But it needn’t bother
you. I’ll attend to it.”
“Dear Betty!” I let go of Wuzzy to stretch a hand across to her.
“Now, _don’t_ be sentimental, Evie. This is the sort of thing I like
doing. If I could find some one--”
The prospects suddenly palled on Wuzzy and he threw himself violently
back and lay supine between us, gazing up at the trap.
“Good heavens, why did I bring him,” groaned his mother. “I wouldn’t
take care of a child like this for millions of dollars. Why _do_ nurses
have sick relations? There ought to be a special breed raised without a
single human tie. Get up, Wuzzy.”
She tugged at his arm, but he continued to stare upward, inert as a
flour sack.
“What does he see up there?” I said, bending my head back to try and
locate the object. “Perhaps it’s something we can take down and give
him.”
“You can’t unless you break the hansom to pieces. It’s the trap.”
I felt of it. Wuzzy’s eyes followed my hand with a trance-like
intentness and he emitted a low sound of approval.
At that moment, as though fate pitied our helplessness, the trap flew
back and a section of red face filled the aperture.
“Is it straight down the avenue I’m to go, Mrs. Ferguson?” came a
cheerful bass. “You ain’t told me.”
Wuzzy looked, flinched, his pink face puckered and a cry of mortal fear
burst from him. He clutched us with his mitts and wrenched himself to
a sitting posture, then, determined to shut out the horrible vision,
leaned as far over the door as he could and forgot all about it.
Betty gave directions and we sped along into the line of carriages
by Sherman’s statue. We had to wait there, and a policeman with
gesticulating arms and a whistle caught Wuzzy’s attention. He waved a
friendly mitt at him, muttering low comments to himself. His mother
patted his little hunched-up back and took up the broken thread:
“What was I saying? Oh, yes--if I could get some one who would hunt up
such cases as Miss Harris’ and report them to me I’d pay them a good
salary. Those are the people one never hears about, unless in some
accidental way like this.”
The policeman whistled and we moved forward. I began to feel
uncomfortable. I’d never before told Betty half a story. She went on:
“Of course there’s charity on a large scale, organized and all that.
But the hundreds of decent people who get into dreadful positions and
are too proud to ask for aid, are the ones I’d like to help. Especially
girls, good, hard-working, honest girls.”
In my embarrassment I fingered Wuzzy’s ear-rosette. He resented the
familiarity and angrily brushed my hand away.
“Oh, do let him alone,” said his mother. “You can’t tell how he’ll
break out if he gets cross--and I know Miss Harris is all that, in
spite of her hat and her looks, or you wouldn’t be so friendly with
her.”
“Charity given to her is charity given where it’s needed,” I muttered
with a red face.
I felt wretchedly underhanded and mean, and that’s one of the most
unbearable feelings for a self-respecting woman to endure. For one
reckless moment I thought of telling Betty the whole story. And then I
knew I mustn’t. I couldn’t make her understand. I couldn’t translate
Lizzie into the terms with which Mrs. Ferguson was familiar. I saw that
broken woman emerging from my narrative a smirched and bespattered
pariah of the kind that, from time immemorial, ladies have regarded as
their hereditary foe.
It would have been indulging my conscience at her expense, and my
conscience--well, it had to resign its job for the present. It was odd
that with a worthy intention and in connection with one of the best of
women, I felt my only course was to deceive. All may have been well
with Pippa’s world, but certainly all was not well with mine. I don’t
know what was wrong, only that something was. I know I should have been
able to tell the truth, I _know_ I ought not to have been made to feel
a coward and a sneak.
Betty enlarged upon her scheme of benefaction and we drove down the
avenue, full from curb to curb and glittering in its afternoon prime.
Wuzzy was much entertained, leaning forward to eye passing horses and
call greetings to dogs on the front seats of motors. Once when he
needed feminine attention he turned to me, remarking commandingly,
“Wipe my nose.” As I performed this humble service he remained
motionless, his eyes raised in abstraction to a church clock. I have
heard many people envy the care-free condition of childhood and wish
they were babes again. I never could agree with them; the very youthful
state has always seemed to me a much overrated period. But as I obeyed
Wuzzy’s command it suddenly came upon me how delightful it would be
to be so utterly free of responsibility, so unperplexed by ethical
problems, so completely dependent, that even the wiping of one’s nose
was left to other hands.
I left Lizzie early that evening. Miss Bliss and Mr. Hazard were with
her and I had a fancy they liked being together without me sitting
about and overhearing. I pulled a chair up in front of the fire and
mused over that question of taking Betty’s money. My discharged
conscience was homesick and wanted to come back. In the midst of my
musing Roger came in, and presently, he and I sitting one on either
side of the grate, it occurred to me that he would be a good person
to put in the place of my conscience--get his opinion on the vexed
question and not let him know it. I would do it so cleverly he’d never
guess and I could abide in his decision. Excellent idea!
“Roger,” I began in a simple earnest tone, “I want to ask you about a
question of ethics, and I want you to give me your full attention.”
“Go ahead,” said Roger, putting a foot on the fender. “I’m not an
authority, but I’ll do my best.”
“Suppose I knew a woman--no, a man’s better--who was, well, we’ll
say a thief, not a habitual thief but one who had thieved once, got
into bad company and been led away. And I happened to know he wanted
help--financial--to tide him over a period of want. Would I be doing
something underhanded if I asked some one--let’s say you--to give him
the money and didn’t tell you about the thieving?”