To leave the protection of Dyker and the kindly secrecy of the cab,
and then to leap into a tide of alien human beings and swim against
them in a strange and terrifying sea, had required the last grain of
courage and strength that was left in Violet's sapped body and cowed
soul. It was only by the momentum that Wesley's calm directions had
given her, and quite without consciousness upon her own part that,
with her cloak gripped tightly about her, she tottered forward,
buffeted and shrinking, to the first corner, wheeled to the right
into a street comfortingly darker, turned again into a still narrower
and quieter way, and then came to an uncertain stop before what
seemed to be no street at all, but only a small black rift among the
beetling walls of brick.
Empty as was the way compared with Rivington Street, it was what, had
she not seen the former thoroughfare, she would have considered
oppressively full. Urchins walked hand in hand along the gutters,
push-cart men cried their wares over the cobbles and, in the hot
night, frowzy women crowded the house-steps. A clatter of voices, of
foreign tongues and unfamiliar forms of English, rattled out the
gossip of the neighborhood, and a few steps away, a belated
hurdy-gurdy shook forth a popular tune.
Violet cowered against the nearest wall. She was uncertain as to how
to proceed, and she was afraid to stand still. There seized her an
unreasoned terror lest all this seeming escape might be some new
trick leading into some new trap. A policeman passed with heavy
tread, but, unmindful of Dyker's assurance, the girl drew, trembling,
as far away from him as she could. Then, when her straining eyes saw
him turn at the next corner to retrace his steps, she made sure that
he was coming back to recapture her, and, now desperate, she faced a
pair of solemn children slowly approaching from the opposite
direction.
The six-year-old boy to whom she especially addressed herself shook
an uncomprehending head, but his wiser companion, a very dirty little
girl of seven, made proud answer.
"He don't to speak no English," she said. "He only can tell things
out of Jewish. But I tells you. That there's your street right
behind you. Yiss, ma'am. An' your house is by the two on that there
side."
Violet's lips tried to form a word of thanks. She turned, as the
girl had ordered, into the rift among the brick walls, found that,
once it had traveled beyond the depth of the house before which she
had been standing, it opened to a width of a few additional feet, and
so, almost creeping through the Stygian passage in which shone only
one far-away lamp, she felt her way to the second door.
It was partially open, and a jet of blue gas in the hallway burned
overhead. She could see several doors in the shadows, but all were
closed. She heard a dragging step coming down the stairs. She drew
against the wall and waited.
The step was slow and uncertain. It seemed to consider well before
each movement forward, but it had a character that reassured her. It
was the same sort of step with which her father was wont to return
home after his occasional carouses, and she knew that whoso walked in
that fashion was, so long as one kept out of reach, not greatly to be
feared. She remained hidden until the step drew nearer, until the
dark bulk of the drunkard slowly massed itself out of the surrounding
darkness, until it had brushed by her. Then she spoke.
"Can you tell me," she asked, "if there's a Miss Flanagan lives here?"
The passerby was not in a condition where voices from nowhere seemed
remarkable. He stopped and, evidently not clear as to just whence
this particular voice proceeded, addressed the air immediately before
him.
"I can so," he said.
"Then will you, please?"
"Will I what?" responded the passerby, determined that the air should
be more specific.
"Will you please _tell_ me?"
"Tell you what?"
"Is there a Miss Flanagan lives here?"
"There is that. There's three of her, an' wan of thim's a Missus.
Good-night."
Awkwardly he touched his hat to the air and stumbled out into the
alley.
Violet breathed hard. She had never in her life before been in a
tenement-house; but she knew that now she must seek a door through
which some ray of light gave hint of waking persons within and,
knocking, of them inquire anew. Around her, all the doors were
forbidding, so, timidly and with a hand tight upon the shaking rail,
she softly climbed the decrepit stairs.
At the second floor a shaft of yellow light stopped her.
Here was a door that was open, and beyond it, by an uncovered deal
table on which stood a rude kerosene lamp, sat two figures: the
figure of an old woman, her gnarled hands clasped loosely in her
aproned lap, her dim eyes gazing at the sightless window, and the
figure of a young woman, her hands beneath her round chin, her wide
eyes on a naked baby quietly sleeping in a clothes-basket at her
knee. The floor was uncarpeted, the walls unadorned, the room almost
bare of furniture; but on the face of her that looked into the past
and in the face of her that looked into the future there was peace.
A quick stroke of pain stabbed the onlooker's heart, but she dragged
herself ahead and, not to disturb the baby, spoke without knocking.
The old woman turned, and Violet noticed that the eyes which could
see so far behind were blind and could see no step forward. The
mother, however, spoke kindly and gave the directions that the girl
needed; but Violet, wanting to say something about the baby in
return, and, able only to murmur formal thanks, pursued her climb
upward.
She found at last the door that she was certain must be Katie
Flanagan's, but, when she had found it, all power of further motion
suddenly ceased. Weakness, shame, and fear swept over her like a
cloud of evil gases from an endangered mine, and she swayed against
the panel before her.
Inside, Katie and the shirtwaist-maker, just ready for bed, heard the
faint sound without and, opening the door, caught the almost fainting
figure in their arms. The dark cloak dropped open, disclosing the
crimson kimona beneath, and this, awakening Violet's one dominating
passion--the terror of detection and consequent recapture--roused the
fugitive a little. She staggered away from the assisting hands,
wrapped the cloak tightly around her, and leaned, panting, against
the wall.
"Miss--Miss Flanagan?" she gasped.
Katie nodded her black head.
"That's me," she said.
"I'm--I'm the--I'm Violet."
The Irish girl comprehended quickly. With Irish tact she refused,
just then, to hear more; with Irish volubility she burst into
exclamations of pity, and with ready Irish sympathy she took Violet
in her strong arms.
"Put her on my cot," said Carrie, and they led her there.
They took away her cloak, for she was now too weak to protest, and,
though they did pause in awe before the crimson kimona, they hurried
to make their guest comfortable. The Lithuanian Jewess moved
silently and swiftly about with that calm competence which
characterizes her people, and Katie, fanning the white face and
chafing the thin hands, continued to croon condolences.
"There now!" she at last smiled, as Violet's blue eyes opened. "Sure
you're yourself again entirely. Don't say a word, not one word, an'
just tell us whatever 'tis you might be wantin'."
"Whiskey," gasped Violet.
The girls looked at each other.
"That's all right," said the Jewess, quietly; "I can spare it"--and
she handed Katie some small change.
The Irish girl flung a shawl over her head, and ran down the stairs.
She went into the side door of the nearest saloon, entered a narrow
compartment, passed the money through a hole in a partition, and was
given a small flask partly filled. Within five minutes she had
returned, and Violet, drinking the contents of the bottle at a single
draught, began to revive.
"Are you hungry, darlin'?" asked Katie.
Violet shook her russet head.
"No," she answered, "I couldn't eat, thanks. I'm only just played
out."
"Poor dear, you look it. But you're all right now, an' you can rest
as long as you like. Don't you bother. Don't you worry. Don't you
be afraid. You got away without any trouble, did you?"
"Yes," said Violet, and because she was still unable to frame her
lips to adequate thanks, she gave them as much of the story of her
escape as she could give without mention of the name of her rescuer,
who had warned her that he must not be publicly known to figure in
the case.
"A man?" echoed the cynical Katie. "An' he didn't ask nothin' in
return?"
"No."
"He must be worth knowin', that man."
"He only wants me to go somewhere an' swear to all Rose done to me."
"Oh!"--Katie's tone showed that she could now account for the
gentleman's generosity.--"Well, don't you do it."
But Violet could not follow her.
"Why not?" she asked.
"I don't know just why; but don't you do it."
"I promised," said Violet.
"Och, listen to the poor dear!" Katie appealed to her fellow-lodger.
"I wonder is it long she thinks he'd be keepin' his word to her."
Her own word freshened the ever-abiding terror in the runaway's
heart, but Violet said no more about it.
"Would you have much to swear to?" asked Carrie, seated on the foot
of the cot.
"What do you mean?" Violet parried.
"She means, Violet----" began Katie.
The fugitive, in her new surroundings, shrank from the name.
"Don't! Don't call me that!" she said.
"Sure an' ain't it the name you gave me yourself?"
"I know, but I don't want to hear it ever again. Call me Mary; call
me Mary----"
And there, face to face with a new danger, Violet came to a stop.
Her captivity had taught her much of bestiality, but it had taught
her besides only that some unknown, tremendous power hated her; that
she was debased and must never, at whatever cost of further suffering
to herself, permit her degradation to attach to her family; that she
must escape, but that she must also wholly divorce herself from all
that life had meant her to be. She had no thought of the future; she
had only a realization of what had been and what was.
"Mary what?" asked Carrie.
"Mary Morton," lied Violet. Perhaps she had heard the name before;
perhaps the easy alliteration brought it first to her mind. At all
events, she reflected, one name was as good as another, so long as it
was not her own.
"Would you have much to swear to?" Carrie was continuing. "Is it as
bad as they say--there?"
Violet looked at the round, serious face before her.
"I don't know what they say," she replied; "but it's worse than
anybody can say. There's a lot of it you can't say, because there's
a lot of it there ain't no words ever been made up for. Just you
pray God you won't ever have to find out how bad it is."
They looked at her and saw on her the marks of which she was not yet
aware.
Katie bent over and swiftly kissed the fevered forehead under its
tumbled russet hair.
"You poor woman," she said with unintended implication, "an' how many
years did you have to stand it?"
"It wasn't years; it was--it was only weeks."
"What? An' they could get a grown woman like you?"
Violet tried to smile.
"How old do you think I am?" she asked.
Katie made what she considered a charitable reply.
"Twenty-five?"
"I'm not seventeen."
Katie began to busy herself about the room, and Carrie turned her
head.
"Ah, well," said Katie, "you're tired out, an' it's 'most mornin'.
We must all go to sleep now."
"I only put on long dresses in April," said Violet.
But Katie seemed not to hear her. She hurried the arrangements for
the night.
"Sleep as long as you like in the morning," said Carrie; "and if you
can wear any of our things, wear 'em. We have to get up early, but
don't mind us."
The latter injunction was unnecessary. Though Violet had for some
time been excited by her escape, that excitement had already given
place to utter exhaustion. The lamp had scarcely been extinguished
before, with throbbing head, she passed into a sleep that was almost
coma, and the lamp that was burning when she opened her aching eyes
was the lamp of midmorning.
She was alone and afraid to be alone. Her head seemed splitting.
She saw the milk and rolls that Katie had set out for her on the
oilcloth-covered table, but her stomach revolted at the thought of
food, and her poisoned nerves cried out for alcohol. She got up and
managed to pull on some of the clothes belonging to her two hostesses.
From her first glance at the mirror, she drew back in bewilderment.
During all her imprisonment she had been used, through her gradual
change, to compare her morning appearance with that of her fellow
slaves; but now there was fresh in her mind the standard, not of
those pale and worn, though often fat and hardened, convicts, but of
the pair of healthy girls that had, the night before, sheltered her;
and from that standard her very image in the glass seemed to withdraw
in horror. Lacking rouge, her cheeks, once so pink and firm, were
pasty and pendant; her lips hung loose, her blue eyes were dull and
blurred; even her hair appeared colorless and brittle. Little lines
had formed at the corners of her eyes; her skin seemed rough and
cracked, and other lines were already faintly showing from her
nostrils to the corners of her mouth.
She sat down on the cot, sick and shivering. When she noticed a
small pile of bedding in the corner behind the gas-stove, she shook
at the memory of another such pile on another terrible morning, and
by the time she had realized that one of her friends must have slept
there in order to provide an extra couch, she was too wracked by
suffering, physical and mental, to feel, at once, any great
gratitude. The fever throbbed in her wrists, beat in her heart,
hammered in her brain. She did not dare go to the street for whiskey
or medicine. At every sound on the stairs she started up in the
assurance that her keepers had come to recover her, and when, in the
early afternoon, a loud knocking sounded on the door, she fell, in
unresponding silence, before Katie's flaring lithograph of Our Lady
of the Rosary.
"Hello in there!" called a not overcautious voice. "I want to talk
to Miss Violet!"
Violet raised her clasped hands to the printed face before her.
"Don't let them take me!" she whispered in a prayer to that visible
sign of a power she had never before addressed. "Don't let them take
me!"
"Open up, can't you?" the voice insisted. "I know there's somebody
inside, an', honest, I'm not going to hurt you!"
Violet's hands fell. The voice, she realized, was at least
unfamiliar.
"Come on," it wheedled. "I'm all right; I'm from Mr. Dyker."
"What do you want?" she inquired.
"He said Miss Violet would know," came the answer. "He said I would
be expected--that it'd be all right if I just told you I came from
him."
Violet had not forgotten Katie's warning, but she was unable wholly
to doubt the one man that had befriended her. She opened the door.
The pink-and-white young clerk that entered was much embarrassed, and
his hostess, in her fever, did not ease him. Nevertheless, after
many hesitations on his own part, and more repetitions and
explanations made necessary by Violet, he at last convinced her that
he did indeed come from Wesley Dyker, and that there was waiting
around the corner the cab that would convey her to an office where
she could begin the redemption of her pledge.
Almost in a dream, and too ill now much to care what happened to her,
she followed the messenger. Dazedly she greeted Dyker in the cab;
confusedly she left that conveyance for an office where she answered
interminable questions put to her by another young man who, she was
told, was an Assistant District Attorney; vaguely she heard Dyker
assure this official, as she affixed a signature to an offered paper,
that Wesley would himself guarantee her appearance whenever it was
required, and when she was at last wheeled back and had climbed the
stairs and, alone, fallen again upon Carrie's cot, the only one of
recent facts concerning which she was at all certain was that she had
said she was a native of Pittsburgh and that her name was Mary Morton.
Katie and Carrie, returning together, found her flushed and babbling
nonsense. When they approached her, she did not recognize them, and
then, for an hour, they could get from her only the monotonous
repetition:
"Don't let them get me! Don't tell them my name!"
It was eight o'clock before the patient, quieted by sympathy and
stimulated by whiskey, could be taken to the nearest drugstore, and
there, as soon as the experienced druggist set eyes on her, he
refused to prescribe.
He beckoned Katie to a corner.
"That girl's got to go to a hospital," he said; "and if I was you, I
wouldn't lose much time in getting her there."
Katie the competent lost none. After another drink to stifle
possible protest, Violet was taken upon a car to Sixteenth Street,
and was then walked quickly westward. During all the way she did not
speak, and, when she reached the hospital's fortunately empty
receiving-ward, she was nearly unconscious.
A white-capped nurse received the little party, the young doctor, in
shirt-sleeves and duck trousers, hovering in the background among the
glass shelves agleam with instruments of polished steel.
"What's the trouble?" asked the nurse.
"It's that that we've come to find out of you," answered Katie.
The nurse nodded to the doctor.
He came forward and made a quick examination.
"Bring this woman inside and put her on the table," he ordered. "And
you girls, stop where you are."
Her head thrown back, her dry mouth wide, and her russet hair
falling, the unresisting Violet was carried behind a door that shut
smartly after her.
Too scared to speak, Katie and her companion stood outside. Five
minutes passed. Then ten. After a quarter of an hour, the door
reopened.
"What's this patient's name?" he asked.
"Mary Morton," said Carrie.
"Where does she live?"
Katie gave her own address, and the doctor, a pad of printed forms in
hand, noted both the answers.
That done, he paused and bit his pencil.
"Married?" he asked quickly.
"Who?" parried Katie. "Me?"
"No; the patient."
"Well, now," began Katie, "I can't see as that's----"
But the calm voice of Carrie interrupted.
"She is married," she said.
The doctor pursed incredulous lips.
"Where's her husband?" he demanded.
Katie, who had caught the need of the moment, jumped into the breach.
"Where a lot of them are," she responded, "an' where as many more
might as well be, for all the use they are to their poor wives."
"Where's that?"
"Faith, it's you, sir, ought to know: you're the man."
"Dead?"
"Run away."
"Not much later than yesterday, did he? Well, I must find her
nearest relative or friend. Are you either?"
Katie's face lengthened.
"Och, doctor," she said, "you don't mean to--but it can't be that
there's goin' to be a baby!"
The young interne grinned. Then, serious again, he answered:
"No, there is not. I only wish it was so simple. Where are her
folks?"
"She's none in the world, an' no money. The hard truth is, doctor,
that it's a charity-patient she'll have to be."
"That's all right; but are you her nearest friends?"
"Yes, doctor."
"That'll do, I guess. She's a nervous wreck--among other things.
We've first of all got to get her round from that condition, and then
I'll have to secure either her own or your permission, as her nearest
friends, to do something more."
"More?" repeated Katie. "Ain't it bad enough as it is? What more do
you mean to do to the poor--girl?"
"I don't mean to do anything myself, but this is a common enough kind
of case around here to make me certain what the resident surgeon will
do: he'll operate."