I
Hodder, in spite of a pressing invitation to remain for supper, had left
them together. He turned his face westward, in the opposite direction
from the parish house, still under the spell of that moment of communion
which had lasted--he knew not how long, a moment of silent revelation to
them both. She, too, was storm-tossed! She, too, who had fared forth so
gallantly into life, had conquered only to be beaten down--to lose her
way.
This discovery strained the very fibres of his being. So close he had
been to her--so close that each had felt, simultaneously, complete
comprehension of the other, comprehension that defied words, overbore
disagreements. He knew that she had felt it. He walked on at first in
a bewildered ecstasy, careless of aught else save that in a moment they
two had reached out in the darkness and touched hands. Never had his
experience known such communion, never had a woman meant what this woman
meant, and yet he could not define that meaning. What need of religion,
of faith in an unseen order when this existed? To have this woman in the
midst of chaos would be enough!
Faith in an unseen order! As he walked, his mind returned to the
argument by which he had sought to combat her doubts--and his own.
Whence had the argument come? It was new to him--he had never formulated
it before--that pity and longing and striving were a justification and a
proof. Had she herself inspired, by some unknown psychological law, this
first attempt of his to reform the universe, this theory which he had
rather spoken than thought? Or had it been the knowledge of her own
longing, and his desire to assuage it? As twilight fell, as his spirits
ebbed, he could not apply it now--it meant nothing to him, evaded him,
there was in it no solace. To regain his footing once more, to climb
again without this woman whom he needed, and might not have! Better to
fall, to be engulfed... The vision of her, tall and straight, with the
roses on her breast, tortured him.
Thus ecstasy ebbed to despondency. He looked around him in the fading
day, to find himself opposite the closed gates of the Botanical Gardens,
in the southwestern portion of the city.... An hour later he had made
his way back to Dalton Street with its sputtering blue lights and
gliding figures, and paused for a moment on the far sidewalk to gaze at
Mr. Bentley's gleaming windows. Should he go in? Had that personality
suddenly lost its power over him? How strange that now he could see
nothing glowing, nothing inspiring within that house,--only a kindly old
man reading a newspaper!
He walked on, slowly, to feel stealing on him that desperate longing for
adventure which he had known so well in his younger days. And he did
not resist. The terror with which it had once inspired him was gone,
or lingered only in the form of a delicious sense of uncertainty and
anticipation. Anything might happen to him--anything would be grateful;
the thought of his study in the parish house was unbearable; the Dalton
Street which had mocked and repelled him suddenly became alluring with
its champaigns of light and inviting stretches of darkness. In the
block ahead, rising out of the night like a tower blazing with a hundred
beacons, Hodder saw a hotel, heard the faint yet eager throbbing
of music, beheld silhouetted figures flitting from automobiles and
carriages across the white glare of the pavement,--figures of men and
women.
He hastened his steps, the music grew louder and louder in his ears, he
gained the ornamental posts crowned by their incandescent globes,
made his way through the loiterers, descended the stone steps of the
restaurant, and stood staring into it as at a blurred picture. The band
crashed a popular two-step above the mingled voices and laughter. He sat
down at a vacant table near the door, and presently became aware that a
waiter had been for some time at his elbow.
“What will you have, sir?”
Then he remembered that he had not eaten, discovered that he was hungry,
and ordered some sandwiches and beer. Still staring, the figures began
to differentiate themselves, although they all appeared, somehow, in
perpetual motion; hurrying, though seated. It was like gazing at a
quivering cinematograph. Here and there ribbons of smoke curled upward,
adding volume to the blue cloud that hung over the tables, which in turn
was dissipated in spots by the industrious electric fans. Everywhere
he looked he met the glances of women; even at the table next him, they
were not so absorbed in their escorts as to be able to resist flinging
him covert stares between the shrieks of laughter in which they
intermittently indulged. The cumulative effect of all these faces was
intoxicating, and for a long time he was unable to examine closely any
one group. What he saw was a composite woman with flushed cheeks
and soliciting eyes, becomingly gowned and hatted--to the masculine
judgment. On the walls, heavily frescoed in the German style, he read,
in Gothic letters:
“Wer liebt nicht Wein, Weib, and Gesang,
Er bleibt ein Narr sein Leben lang.”
The waiter brought the sandwiches and beer, yet he did not eat. In the
middle distance certain figures began insistently to stand out,--figures
of women sitting alone wherever he looked he met a provoking gaze. One
woman, a little farther away than the rest, seemed determinedly bent
on getting a nod of recognition, and it was gradually borne in upon
Hodder's consciousness that her features were familiar. In avoiding her
eyes he studied the men at the next table,--or rather one of them, who
loudly ordered the waiters about, who told brief anecdotes that were
uproariously applauded; whose pudgy, bejewelled fingers were continually
feeling for the bottle in the ice beside his chair, or nudging his
companions with easy familiarity; whose little eyes, set in a heavy
face, lighted now and again with a certain expression.....
Suddenly Hodder pushed back his chair and got to his feet, overcome by a
choking sensation like that of being, asphyxiated by foul gases. He
must get out at once, or faint. What he had seen in the man's eyes had
aroused in him sheer terror, for it was the image of something in
his own soul which had summarily gained supremacy and led him hither,
unresisting, to its own abiding-place. In vain he groped to reconstruct
the process by which that other spirit--which he would fain have
believed his true spirit--had been drugged and deadened in its very
flight.
He was aware, as he still stood uncertainly beside the table, of the
white-aproned waiter looking at him, and of some one else!--the woman
whose eyes had been fastened on him so persistently. She was close
beside him, speaking to him.
“Seems to me we've met before.”
He looked at her, at first uncomprehendingly, then with a
dawning realization of her identity. Even her name came to him,
unexpectedly,--Kate Marcy,--the woman in the flat!
“Ain't you going to invite me to have some supper?” she whispered
eagerly, furtively, as one accustomed to be rebuffed, yet bold in spite
of it. “They'll throw me out if they think I'm accosting you.”
How was it that, a moment ago, she had appeared to him mysterious,
inviting? At this range he could only see the paint on her cheeks,
the shadows under her burning eyes, the shabby finery of her gown. Her
wonderful bronze hair only made the contrast more pitiful. He acted
automatically, drawing out for her the chair opposite his own, and sat
down again.
“Say, but I'm hungry!” she exclaimed, pulling off her gloves. She smiled
at him, wanly, yet with a brazen coquettishness become habit.
“Hungry!” he repeated idly.
“I guess you'd be, if you'd only had a fried egg and a cup of coffee
to-day, and nothing last night.”
He pushed over to her, hastily, with a kind of horror, the plate of
sandwiches. She began eating them ravenously; but presently paused, and
thrust them back toward him. He shook his head.
“What's the matter with you?” she demanded.
“Nothing,” he replied.
“You ordered them, didn't you? Ain't you eating anything?”
“I'm not hungry,” he said.
She continued eating awhile without comment. And he watched her as one
fascinated, oblivious to his surroundings, in a turmoil of thought and
emotion.
“I'm dry,” she announced meaningly.
He hesitated a moment, and then gave her the bottle of beer. She made a
wry face as she poured it out.
“Have they run out of champagne?” she inquired.
This time he did not hesitate. The women of his acquaintance, at the
dinner parties he attended, drank champagne. Why should he refuse it to
this woman? A long-nosed, mediaeval-looking waiter was hovering about,
one of those bizarre, battered creatures who have long exhausted the
surprises of life, presiding over this amazing situation with all the
sang froid of a family butler. Hodder told him to bring champagne.
“What kind, sir?” he asked, holding out a card.
“The best you have.”
The woman stared at him in wonder.
“You're what an English Johnny I know would call a little bit of all
right!” she declared with enthusiastic approval.
“Since you are hungry,” he went on, “suppose you have something more
substantial than sandwiches. What would you like?”
She did not answer at once. Amazement grew in her eyes, amazement and a
kind of fear.
“Quit joshing!” she implored him, and he found it difficult to cope with
her style of conversation. For a while she gazed helplessly at the bill
of fare.
“I guess you'll think it's funny,” she said hesitatingly, “but I feel
just like a good beefsteak and potatoes. Bring a thick one, Walter.”
The waiter sauntered off.
“Why should I think it strange?” Hodder asked.
“Well, if you knew how many evenings I've sat up there in my room and
thought what I'd order if I ever again got hold of some rich guy who'd
loosen up. There ain't any use trying to put up a bluff with you.
Nothing was too good for me once, caviar, pate de foie gras” (her
pronunciation is not to be imitated), “chicken casserole, peach Melba,
filet of beef with mushrooms,--I've had 'em all, and I used to sit up
and say I'd hand out an order like that. You never do what you think
you're going to do in this life.”
The truth of this remark struck him with a force she did not suspect;
stung him, as it were, into a sense of reality.
“And now,” she added pathetically, “all t want is a beefsteak! Don't
that beat you?”
She appeared so genuinely surprised at this somewhat contemptible trick
fate had played her that Hodder smiled in spite of himself.
“I didn't recognize you at first in that get-up,” she observed, looking
at his blue serge suit. “So you've dropped the preacher business, have
you? You're wise, all right.”
“Why do you say that?” he asked.
“Didn't I tell you when you came 'round that time that you weren't like
the rest of 'em? You're too human.”
Once more the word, and on her lips, startled him.
“Some of the best men I have ever known, the broadest and most
understanding men, have been clergymen,” he found himself protesting.
“Well, they haven't dropped in on me. The only one I ever saw that
measured up to something like that was you, and now you've chucked it.”
Had he, as she expressed the matter, “chucked it”? Her remark brought
him reluctantly, fearfully, remorselessly--agitated and unprepared as he
was--face to face with his future.
“You were too good for the job,” she declared. “What is there in it?
There ain't nobody converted these days that I can see, and what's the
use of gettin' up and preach into a lot of sapheads that don't know what
religion is? Sure they don't.”
“Do you?” he asked.
“You've called my bluff.” She laughed. “Say, do YOU? If there was
anything in it you'd have kept on preachin' to that bunch and made some
of 'em believe they was headed for hell; you'd have made one of 'em
that owns the flat house I live in, who gets fancy rents out of us poor
girls, give it up. That's a nice kind of business for a church member,
ain't it?”
“Owns the house in which you live!”
“Sure.” She smiled at him compassionately, pitying his innocence and
ignorance. “Now I come to think of it, I guess he don't go to your
church,--it's the big Baptist church on the boulevard. But what's the
difference?”
“None,” said Hodder, despondently.
She regarded him curiously.
“You remember when you dropped in that night, when the kid was sick?”
He nodded.
“Well, now you ain't in the business any more, I may as well tell you
you kind of got in on me. I was sorry for you--honest, I was. I couldn't
believe at first you was on the level, but it didn't take me long to see
that they had gold-bricked you, too. I saw you weren't wise to what they
were.”
“You thought--” he began and paused dumfounded.
“Why not?” she retorted. “It looked easy to me,--your line. How was I to
know at first that they had you fooled? How was I to know you wasn't in
the game?”
“The game?”
“Say, what else is it but a game? You must be on now, ain't you? Why. do
they put up to keep the churches going? There ain't any coupons coming
out of 'em.
“Maybe some of these millionaires think they can play all the horses and
win,--get into heaven and sell gold bricks on the side. But I guess most
of 'em don't think about heaven. They just use the church for a front,
and take in strangers in the back alley,--downtown.”
Hodder was silent, overwhelmed by the brutal aptness of her figures. Nor
did he take the trouble of a defence, of pointing out that hers was not
the whole truth. What really mattered--he saw--was what she and those
like her thought. Such minds were not to be disabused by argument; and
indeed he had little inclination for it then.
“There's nothing in it.”
By this expression he gathered she meant life. And some hidden impulse
bade him smile at her.
“There is this,” he answered.
She opened her mouth, closed it and stared at him, struck by his
expression, striving uneasily to fathom hidden depths in his remark.
“I don't get on to you,” she said lamely. “I didn't that other time. I
never ran across anybody like you.”
He tried to smile again.
“You mustn't mind me,” he answered.
They fell into an oasis of silence, surrounded by mad music and
laughter. Then came the long-nosed waiter carrying the beefsteak aloft,
followed by a lad with a bucket of ice, from which protruded the green
and gold neck of a bottle. The plates were put down, the beefsteak
carved, the champagne opened and poured out with a flourish. The woman
raised her glass.
“Here's how!” she said, with an attempt at gayety. And she drank to him.
“It's funny how I ran across you again, ain't it?” She threw back her
head and laughed.
He raised his glass, tasted the wine, and put it down again. A sheet of
fire swept through him.
“What's the matter with it? Is it corked?” she demanded. “It goes to the
right spot with me.”
“It seems very good,” he said, trying to smile, and turning to the food
on his plate. The very idea of eating revolted him--and yet he made
the attempt: he had a feeling, ill defined, that consequences of vital
importance depended upon this attempt, on his natural acceptance of the
situation. And, while he strove to reduce the contents of his plate, he
racked his brain for some subject of conversation. The flamboyant walls
of the room pressed in on every side; comment of that which lay within
their limits was impossible,--but he could not, somehow, get beyond
them. Was there in the whole range of life one easy topic which they
might share in common? Yet a bond existed between this woman and
himself--a bond of which he now became aware, and which seemed strangely
to grow stronger as the minutes passed and no words were spoken. Why
was it that she, too, to whom speech came so easily, had fallen dumb?
He began to long for some remark, however disconcerting. The tension
increased.
She put down her knife and fork. Tears sprang into her eyes,--tears of
anger, he thought.
“Say, it's no use trying to put up a bluff with me,” she cried.
“Why do you say that?” he asked.
“You know what I mean, all right. What did you come in here for,
anyway?”
“I don't know--I couldn't tell you,” he answered.
The very honesty of his words seemed, for an instant, to disconcert her;
and she produced a torn lace handkerchief, which she thrust in her eyes.
“Why can't you leave me alone?” she demanded. “I'm all right.”
If he did not at once reply, it was because of some inner change which
had taken place in himself; and he seemed to see things, suddenly,
in their true proportions. He no longer feared a scene and its
consequences. By virtue of something he had cast off or taken on, he was
aware of a newly acquired mastery of the situation, and by a hidden and
unconscious process he had managed to get at the real woman behind the
paint: had beaten down, as it were without a siege, her defences. And he
was incomparably awed by the sight of her quivering, frightened self.
Her weeping grew more violent. He saw the people at the next table
turn and stare, heard the men laughing harshly. For the spectacle was
evidently not an uncommon one here. She pushed away her unfinished
glass, gathered up her velvet bag and rose abruptly.
“I guess I ain't hungry after all,” she said, and started toward the
door. He turned to the waiter, who regarded him unmoved, and asked for a
check.
“I'll get it,” he said.
Hodder drew out a ten dollar bill, and told him to keep the change. The
waiter looked at him. Some impulse moved him to remark, as he picked up
the rector's hat:
“Don't let her put it over you, sir.”
Hodder scarcely heard him. He hurried up the steps and gained the
pavement, and somewhere in the black shadows beyond the arc-lights
he saw her disappearing down the street. Careless of all comment he
hastened on, overtook her, and they walked rapidly side by side. Now and
again he heard a sob, but she said nothing. Thus they came to the house
where the Garvins had lived, and passed it, and stopped in front of the
dimly lighted vestibule of the flats next door. In drawing the key from
her bag she dropped it: he picked it up and put it in the lock himself.
She led the way without comment up the darkened stairs, and on the
landing produced another key, opened the door of her rooms, fumbled for
the electric button, and suddenly the place was flooded with light. He
glanced in, and recoiled.
II
Oddly enough, the first thing he noticed in the confusion that reigned
was the absence of the piano. Two chairs were overturned, and one of
them was broken; a siphon of vichy lay on the floor beside a crushed
glass and two or three of the cheap ornaments that had been swept off
the mantel and broken on the gaudy tiles of the hearth. He glanced at
the woman, who had ceased crying, and stood surveying the wreckage with
the calmness, the philosophic nonchalance of a class that comes to look
upon misfortune as inevitable.
“They didn't do a thing to this place, did they?” was her comment.
“There was two guys in here to-night who got a notion they were funny.”
Hodder had thought to have fathomed all the horrors of her existence,
but it was not until he looked into this room that the bottomless
depths of it were brought home to him. Could it be possible that the
civilization in which he lived left any human being so defenceless as to
be at the mercy of the ghouls who had been here? The very stale odours
of the spilled whiskey seemed the material expression of the essence
of degraded souls; for a moment it overpowered him. Then came the
imperative need of action, and he began to right one of the chairs. She
darted forward.
“Cut it out!” she cried. “What business have you got coming in here and
straightening up? I was a fool to bring you, anyway.”
It was in her eyes that he read her meaning, and yet could not credit
it. He was abashed--ashamed; nay, he could not define the feeling in
his breast. He knew that what he read was the true interpretation of
her speech, for in some manner--he guessed not how--she had begun to
idealize him, to feel that the touch of these things defiled him.
“I believe I invited myself,” he answered, with attempted cheerfulness.
Then it struck him, in his predicament, that this was precisely what
others had done!
“When you asked me a little while ago whether I had left the Church, I
let you think I had. I am still connected with St. John's, but I do not
know how long I shall continue to be.”
She was on her knees with dustpan and whiskbroom, cleaning up the
fragments of glass on the stained carpet. And she glanced up at him
swiftly, diviningly.
“Say--you're in trouble yourself, ain't you?”
She got up impulsively, spilling some of the contents of the pan. A
subtle change had come in her, and under the gallantly drooping feathers
of her hat he caught her eye--the human eye that so marvellously
reflects the phases of the human soul: the eye which so short a time
before hardily and brazenly had flashed forth its invitation, now
actually shone with fellowship and sympathy. And for a moment this look
was more startling, more appalling than the other; he shrank from it,
resented it even more. Was it true that they had something in common?
And if so, was it sin or sorrow, or both?
“I might have known,” she said, staring at him. In spite of his gesture
of dissent, he saw that she was going over the events of the evening
from her new point of view.
“I might have known, when we were sitting there in Harrods, that you
were up against it, too, but I couldn't think of anything but the way I
was fixed. The agent's been here twice this week for the rent, and I was
kind of desperate for a square meal.”
Hodder took the dustpan from her hand, and flung its contents into the
fireplace.
“Then we are both fortunate,” he said, “to have met each other.”
“I don't see where you come in,” she told him.
He turned and smiled at her.
“Do you remember when I was here that evening about two months ago I
said I should like to be your friend? Well, I meant it. And I have often
hoped, since then, that some circumstance might bring us together again.
You seemed to think that no friendship was possible between us, but I
have tried to make myself believe that you said so because you didn't
know me.”
“Honest to God?” she asked. “Is that on the level?”
“I only ask for an opportunity to prove it,” he replied, striving to
speak naturally. He stooped and laid the dustpan on the hearth. “There!
Now let's sit down.”
She sank on the sofa, her breast rising and falling, her gaze dumbly
fixed on him, as one under hypnosis. He took the rocker.
“I have wanted to tell you how grateful Mrs. Garvin, the boy's
mother--was for the roses you brought. She doesn't know who sent them,
but I intend to tell her, and she will thank you herself. She is living
out in the country. And the boy--you would scarcely recognize him.”
“I couldn't play the piano for a week after--that thing happened.” She
glanced at the space where the instrument had stood.
“You taught yourself to play?” he asked.
“I had music lessons.”
“Music lessons?”
“Not here--before I left home--up the State, in a little country
town,--Madison. It seems like a long time ago, but it's only seven years
in September. Mother and father wanted all of us children to know a
little more than they did, and I guess they pinched a good deal to give
us a chance. I went a year to the high school, and then I was all for
coming to the city--I couldn't stand Madison, there wasn't anything
going on. Mother was against it,--said I was too good-looking to leave
home. I wish I never had. You wouldn't believe I was good-looking once,
would you?”
She spoke dispassionately, not seeming to expect assent, but Hodder
glanced involuntarily at her wonderful crown of hair. She had taken off
her hat. He was thinking of the typical crime of American parents,--and
suddenly it struck him that her speech had changed, that she had dropped
the suggestive slang of the surroundings in which she now lived.
“I was a fool to come, but I couldn't see it then. All I could think of
was to get away to a place where something was happening. I wanted to
get into Ferguson's--everybody in Madison knew about Ferguson's, what a
grand store it was,--but I couldn't. And after a while I got a place at
the embroidery counter at Pratt's. That's a department store, too, you
know. It looked fine, but it wasn't long before I fell wise to a few
things.” (She relapsed into slang occasionally.) “Have you ever tried
to stand on your feet for nine hours, where you couldn't sit down for
a minute? Say, when Florry Kinsley and me--she was the girl I roomed
with--would get home at night, often we'd just lie down and laugh
and cry, we were so tired, and our feet hurt so. We were too used up
sometimes to get up and cook supper on the little stove we had. And
sitting around a back bedroom all evening was worse than Madison. We'd
go out, tired as we were, and walk the streets.”
He nodded, impressed by the fact that she did not seem to be appealing
to his sympathy. Nor, indeed, did she appear--in thus picking up the
threads of her past--to be consciously accounting for her present. She
recognized no causation there.
“Say, did you ever get to a place where you just had to have something
happen? When you couldn't stand bein' lonely night after night, when you
went out on the streets and saw everybody on the way to a good time but
you? We used to look in the newspapers for notices of the big balls,
and we'd take the cars to the West End and stand outside the awnings
watching the carriages driving up and the people coming in. And the same
with the weddings. We got to know a good many of the swells by sight.
There was Mrs. Larrabbee,”--a certain awe crept into her voice--“and
Miss Ferguson--she's sweet--and a lot more. Some of the girls used to
copy their clothes and hats, but Florry and me tried to live honest. It
was funny,” she added irrelevantly, “but the more worn out we were at
night, the more we'd want a little excitement, and we used to go to the
dance-halls and keep going until we were ready to drop.”
She laughed at the recollection.
“There was a floorwalker who never let me alone the whole time I was at
Pratt's--he put me in mind of a pallbearer. His name was Selkirk, and
he had a family in Westerly, out on the Grade Suburban.... Some of the
girls never came back at all, except to swagger in and buy expensive
things, and tell us we were fools to work. And after a while I noticed
Florry was getting discouraged. We never had so much as a nickel left
over on Saturdays and they made us sign a paper, when they hired us,
that we lived at home. It was their excuse for paying us six dollars
a week. They do it at Ferguson's, too. They say they can get plenty of
girls who do live at home. I made up my mind I'd go back to Madison, but
I kept putting it off, and then father died, and I couldn't!
“And then, one day, Florry left. She took her things from the room when
I was at the store, and I never saw her again. I got another roommate.
I couldn't afford to pay for the room alone. You wouldn't believe I kept
straight, would you?” she demanded, with a touch of her former defiance.
“I had plenty of chances better than that floorwalker. But I knew I was
good looking, and I thought if I could only hold out I might get married
to some fellow who was well fixed. What's the matter?”
Hodder's exclamation had been involuntary, for in these last words she
had unconsciously brought home to him the relentless predicament in
the lives of these women. She had been saving herself--for what? A more
advantageous, sale!
“It's always been my luck,” she went on reflectingly, “that when what I
wanted to happen did happen, I never could take advantage of it. It was
just like that to-night, when you handed me out the bill of fare, and
I ordered beefsteak. And it was like that when--when he came along--I
didn't do what I thought I was going to do. It's terrible to fall in
love, isn't it? I mean the real thing. I've read in books that it only
comes once, and I guess it's so.”
Fortunately she seemed to expect no answer to this query. She was
staring at the wall with unseeing eyes.
“I never thought of marrying him, from the first. He could have done
anything with me--he was so good and generous--and it was him I was
thinking about. That's love, isn't it? Maybe you don't believe a woman
like me knows what love is. You've got a notion that goin' downhill,
as I've been doing, kills it, haven't you? I Wish to God it did--but
it don't: the ache's there, and sometimes it comes in the daytime, and
sometimes at night, and I think I'll go crazy. When a woman like me is
in love there isn't anything more terrible on earth, I tell you. If a
girl's respectable and good it's bad enough, God knows, if she can't
have the man she wants; but when she's like me--it's hell. That's the
only way I can describe it. She feels there is nothing about her that's
clean, that he wouldn't despise. There's many a night I wished I could
have done what Garvin did, but I didn't have the nerve.”
“Don't say that!” he commanded sharply.
“Why not? It's the best way out.”
“I can see how one might believe it to be,” he answered. Indeed,
it seemed that his vision had been infinitely extended, that he had
suddenly come into possession of the solution of all the bewildered,
despairing gropings of the human soul. Only awhile ago, for instance,
the mood of self-destruction had been beyond his imagination: tonight
he understood it, though he still looked upon it with horror. And he saw
that his understanding of her--or of any human being--could never be of
the intellect. He had entered into one of those astounding yet simple
relationships wherein truth, and truth alone, is possible. He knew that
such women lied, deceived themselves; he could well conceive that
the image of this first lover might have become idealized in her
vicissitudes; that the memories of the creature-comforts, of first
passion, might have enhanced as the victim sank. It was not only because
she did not attempt to palliate that he believed her.
“I remember the time I met him,--it was only four years ago last spring,
but it seems like a lifetime. It was Decoration Day, and it was so
beautiful I went out with another girl to the Park, and we sat on the
grass and looked at the sky and wished we lived in the country. He was
in an automobile; I never did know exactly how it happened,--we looked
at each other, and he slowed up and came back and asked us to take a
ride. I had never been in one of those things--but that wasn't why I
went, I guess. Well, the rest was easy. He lost his head, and I was just
as bad. You wouldn't believe me if I told you how rich he was: it scared
me when I found out about him, and he was so handsome and full of fun
and spirits, and generous! I never knew anybody like him. Honest, I
never expected he'd want to marry me. He didn't at first,--it was only
after a while. I never asked him to, and when he began to talk about it
I told him it would cut him off from his swell friends, and I knew his
father might turn him loose. Oh, it wasn't the money! Well, he'd get mad
all through, and say he never got along with the old man, and that his
friends would have to take me, and he couldn't live without me. He said
he would have me educated, and bought me books, and I tried to read
them. I'd have done anything for him. He'd knocked around a good deal
since he'd been to Harvard College,--he wasn't what you'd call a saint,
but his heart was all right. And he changed, too, I could see it. He
said he was going to make something out of himself.
“I didn't think it was possible to be so happy, but I had a feeling all
along, inside of me, that it couldn't come off. I had a little flat in
Rutger Street, over on the south side, and everything in the world I
wanted. Well, one day, sure enough, the bell rang and I opened the door,
and there stood a man with side whiskers staring at me, and staring
until I was frightened to death. I never saw such eyes as he had. And
all of a sudden I knew it was his father.
“'Is this Miss Marcy?'” he said.
“I couldn't say anything at all, but he handed me his card and smiled,
I'll never forget how he smiled--and came right in and sat down. I'd
heard of that man all my life, and how much money he'd made, and all
that. Why, up in Madison folks used to talk about him--” she checked
herself suddenly and stared at Hodder in consternation. “Maybe you know
him!” she exclaimed. “I never thought!”
“Maybe I do,” he assented wearily. In the past few moments suspicion had
become conviction.
“Well--what difference does it make--now? It's all over, and I'm not
going to bother him. I made up my mind I wouldn't, on account of him,
you understand. I never fell that low--thank God!”
Hodder nodded. He could not speak.... The woman seemed to be living over
again that scene, in her imagination.
“I just couldn't realize who it was sitting there beside me, but if I
hadn't known it wouldn't have made any difference. He could have done
anything with me, anyway, and he knew how to get at me. He said, now
that he'd seen me, that he was sure I was a good girl at the bottom and
loved his son, and that I wouldn't want to ruin the boy when he had such
a big future ahead of him. I wouldn't have thought, to look at the man,
that he could have been so gentle. I made a fool of myself and cried,
and told him I'd go away and never see his son any more--that I'd always
been against marrying him. Well, he almost had tears in his eyes when he
thanked me and said I'd never regret it, and he pulled an envelope out
of his pocket. I said I wouldn't take any money, and gave it back
to him. I've always been sorry since that I didn't make him take it
back--it never did anything but harm to me. But he had his way. He laid
it on the table and said he wouldn't feel right, and took my hand--and I
just didn't care.
“Well, what do you think I did after he'd gone? I went and played a
piece on the piano,--and I never can bear to hear that ragtime to this
day. I couldn't seem to feel anything. And after a while I got up
and opened the envelope--it was full of crackly new hundred dollar
bills--thirty of 'em, and as I sat there staring at 'em the pain came
on, like a toothache, in throbs, getting worse all the time until I just
couldn't stand it. I had a notion of sending the money back even then,
but I didn't. I didn't know how to do it,--and as I told you, I wasn't
able to care much. Then I remembered I'd promised to go away, and I had
to have some money for that, and if I didn't leave right off I wouldn't
have the strength to do it. I hadn't even thought where to go: I
couldn't think, so I got dressed and went down to the depot anyway. It
was one of those bright, bitter cold winter days after a thaw when the
icicles are hanging everywhere. I went inside and walked up and down
that long platform under the glass roof. My, it was cold in there! I
looked over all the signs, and made up my mind I'd go to Chicago.
“I meant to work, I never meant to spend the money, but to send it back.
I'd put it aside--and then I'd go and take a little. Say, it was easy
not to work--and I didn't care what happened to me as long as I wasn't
going to see him again. Well, I'm not trying to smooth it over, I
suppose there was something crooked about me from the start, but I just
went clean to hell with that money, and when I heard he'd gone away, I
came back here.”
“Something crooked!” The words rang in Hodder's ears, in his very soul.
How was he or any man to estimate, to unravel the justice from the
injustice, to pass upon the merit of this woman's punishment? Here
again, in this vitiated life, was only to be seen the remorseless
working of law--cause and effect. Crooked! Had not the tree been crooked
from the beginning--incapable of being straightened? She had herself
naively confessed it. Was not the twist ingrained? And if so, where was
the salvation he had preached? There was good in her still,--but what
was “good”?... He took no account of his profound compassion.
What comfort could he give her, what hope could he hold out that the
twist, now gnarled and knotted, might be removed, that she might gain
peace of soul and body and the “happiness” of which he had talked with
Alison Parr?... He raised his eyes, to discover that the woman's were
fixed upon him, questioningly.
“I suppose I was a fool to tell you,” she said, with a shade of her
old bitterness; “it can't do any good.” Her next remark was startlingly
astute. “You've found out for yourself, I guess, that all this talk
about heaven and hell and repentance don't amount to anything. Hell
couldn't be any worse than I've been through, no matter how hot it is.
And heaven!” She laughed, burst into tears, and quickly dried them.
“You know the man I've been talking about, that bought me off. I didn't
intend to tell you, but I see you can't help knowing--Eldon Parr. I
don't say he didn't do right from his way of looking at things,--but
say, it wasn't exactly Christian, was it?”
“No,” he said, “it wasn't.” He bowed his head, and presently, when
he raised it again, he caught something in her look that puzzled and
disturbed him--an element of adoration.
“You're white through and through,” she said, slowly and distinctly.
And he knew not how to protest.
“I'll tell you something,” she went on, as one who has made a discovery.
“I liked you the first time you came in here--that night--when you
wanted me to be friends; well, there was something that seemed to make
it impossible then. I felt it, if you didn't.” She groped for words. “I
can't explain what it was, but now it's gone. You're different. I think
a lot more of you. Maybe it's because of what you did at Harrod's,
sitting down with me and giving me supper when I was so hungry, and the
champagne. You weren't ashamed of me.”
“Good God, why should I have been!” he exclaimed.
“You! Why shouldn't you?” she cried fiercely.
“There's hardly a man in that place that wouldn't have been. They all
know me by sight--and some of 'em better. You didn't see 'em grinning
when I came up to you, but I did. My God--it's awful--it's awful I....”
She burst into violent weeping, long deferred.
He took her hand in his, and did not speak, waiting for the fit to spend
itself.... And after a while the convulsive shudders that shook her
gradually ceased.
“You must trust me,” he said. “The first thing tomorrow I'm going to
make arrangements for you to get out of these rooms. You can't stay here
any longer.”
“That's sure,” she answered, trying to smile. “I'm broke. I even owe the
co--the policeman.”
“The policeman!”
“He has to turn it in to Tom Beatty and the politicians”
Beatty! Where had he heard the name? Suddenly it came to him that Beatty
was the city boss, who had been eulogized by Mr. Plimpton!
“I have some good friends who will be glad to help you to get work--and
until you do get work. You will have to fight--but we all have to fight.
Will you try?”
“Sure, I'll try,” she answered, in a low voice.
Her very tone of submission troubled him. And he had a feeling that, if
he had demanded, she would have acquiesced in anything.
“We'll talk it over to-morrow,” he went on, clinging to his note of
optimism. “We'll find out what you can do easiest, to begin with.”
“I might give music lessons,” she suggested.
The remark increased his uneasiness, for he recognized in it a sure
symptom of disease--a relapse into what might almost have been called
levity, blindness to the supreme tragedy of her life which but a moment
before had shaken and appalled her. He shook his head bravely.
“I'm afraid that wouldn't do--at first.”
She rose and went into the other room, returning in a few moments with
a work basket, from which she drew a soiled and unfinished piece of
embroidery.
“There's a bureau cover I started when I was at Pratt's,” she said, as
she straightened it over her knees. “It's a copy of an expensive one. I
never had the patience to finish it, but one of the sales-ladies there,
who was an expert, told me it was pretty good: She taught me the stitch,
and I had a notion at that time I might make a little money for dresses
and the theatre. I was always clever with my hands.”
“The very thing!” he said, with hopeful emphasis. “I'm sure I can get
you plenty of it to do. And I'll come back in the morning.”
He gave it back to her, and as she was folding it his glance fell on a
photograph in the basket.
“I kept it, I don't know why,” he heard her say; “I didn't have the
heart to burn it.”
He started recovered himself, and rose.
“I'll go to see the agent the first thing to-morrow,” he said. “And
then--you'll be ready for me? You trust me?”
“I'd do anything for you,” was her tremulous reply.
Her disquieting, submissive smile haunted him as he roped his way down
the stairs to the street, and then the face in the photograph replaced
it--the laughing eyes, the wilful, pleasure--loving mouth he had seen in
the school and college pictures of Preston Parr.
Volume 5.