Wesley Dyker looked with unaffected approval about the second-story
front room in Rivington Street. He saw the calmly colored walls, the
excellent mats upon the floor, the ordered writing-desk and, near the
center, the heavy library-table, covered with carefully piled
magazines.
"Hello!" he said, nodding easily to the woman that stood motionless
before him.
The woman's answer was not ready, but Dyker, whose eyes were on
surroundings almost as animate, pursued:
"Upon my word, you have it rather cozy here, considering the
neighborhood. I'm not half so well fixed myself. I'm glad to see
that, Marian, and I'm more than glad to see you."
He raised his heavy lids to look at her. He had resolved when, a
short while before, she had sent for him, to make no mention of their
long separation. He was sure that the sending meant he was to have a
chance to recall to her the superior wisdom that had expressed itself
in his advice against working among the poor; but of the time that
had elapsed since that advice was given he had meant to say nothing.
Always he had confidently expected this moment, and, now that it had
come, she must find him prepared. He put out his hand.
But Marian was thinking of how, in this same room, she had said
good-by to Mary. She compressed her lips a moment before answering,
and, when she did answer, it was only to say, quite calmly:
"I don't want to shake hands with you, Wesley."
Day and night the words that Mary had so innocently dropped
concerning Dyker had stirred the fire in Marian's breast. Supposing
that her protégée had shared with Rose the easy caresses of Wesley,
even at a time when Marian had been on the point of accepting them,
the failure of that protégée to return to the Settlement for aid or
consolation had made Marian the prey to a hundred contending
emotions. She was glad that Mary had not come back, because Mary
adrift meant Mary suffering. She was sorry that Mary had not come
back, because she wanted to ask the girl so many things that she had
at first neglected to ask. She doubted Mary and was ashamed of her
doubts; she doubted Dyker and was still ashamed. One thought tore at
another, and all tore at her heart.
On entering the Settlement she had left Dyker in a proud anger that
forbade her acting upon his offer to come to her whenever she should
send for him; on dismissing Mary she had so framed her promise of
secrecy that she might repeat to Wesley the unfortunate woman's
unconscious accusation; and on twisting and turning the reptilian
thing over in her mind, she said in one breath that she could not
send for Dyker and could not be at peace unless she did send. The
fiercest passion that a conventional woman has is the passion for the
knowledge that will most likely clinch her unhappiness. Marian was
certain that she must know the truth, and she told herself that she
was certain of but one fact beside: that she did not love this man;
that she had never loved him--and, presumably because of that, she
had at last, on this day shortly after the election, incontinently
telephoned to him to come to Rivington Street.
She had said to herself that it was unfair to condemn him unheard.
She had replied to herself that she did not care enough about him
either to condemn or to acquit. She had ended by the realization
that, deny it as she might, the fact of condemnation remained; and
she had inclined solely toward the attitude of impartial justice
until, in the briefest possible time after receiving her message,
Dyker had entered this room. Then, immediately, her mood had once
more changed, as it was to change so often during the ensuing
interview; she had left the bench and had become the prosecutor.
Perhaps Dyker's appearance was in part to blame for this. She had,
of course, not seen him since that summer parting; it is seldom
pleasant for a woman to find that separation from her has left no
scar upon an admirer, and it is always annoying to a
district-attorney to detect no consciousness of guilt in the
countenance of the accused; yet Dyker had come into her presence with
a buoyant step and a ready smile. The pressure of campaigning had
lessened, though it could not wholly check, the progress of his
dissipations, and his face still flaunted the tokens of its former
glory. His eyes were not noticeably more timid than of old, and his
mouth was, as of old, hidden. Add to this the pleasure, still fresh,
of his election, and the satisfaction of a man fancying himself just
placed in a position to say "I told you so" to the woman he loves,
and it will be seen that Magistrate Dyker, if not at his best, had
been at least in a moment of expansion.
And now she had said that she would not take his hand! He could
scarcely believe his ears.
"You don't want--I am afraid I do not understand you, Marian," he
said.
Her great brown eyes looked steadily into his puzzled gaze.
"Sit down, please," she responded.
Mechanically, he drew a deep wicker chair to the window, and obeyed
her.
She sat opposite him and, for fully a minute, while with galloping
brain he watched her, she looked through the glass at crowded,
shuffling Rivington Street.
"It is simple enough, Wesley," she at last resumed. "Before I can
think of renewing anything like my old friendly attitude toward
you----"
"Your friendly attitude!"
"It was scarcely more than that. Before I can renew it, there is
something that must be explained."
Dyker's own attitude was still that of the average lover, and the
average lover cannot see beyond his own shadow.
"Oh,"--he was momentarily relieved and prepared, in consequence, to
show a proper magnanimity--"you needn't explain, Marian! I knew you
would find that I was right, and that this was no place for you. I
appreciate perfectly how you feel: you have been disappointed and
disillusioned, and it is like you handsomely to want to confess that
you were wrong. But let's merely consider that done, and say no more
about it."
He ended in a warmth of good feeling; but the did not seem inclined
to accept this proffer, and, as he paused, he wondered what was in
her gaze.
"No," she said, "you are not quite correct in your surmise. I have
been disappointed and disillusioned. I have been disappointed in one
of the people among whom I have been working; but I have been
disillusioned in regard to you."
She stopped. He began to guess now what was back of those calm eyes
of hers. Disillusioned in regard to him? At the first breath it
seemed incredible, but at the next his mind filled with the ghosts of
his experience, the grim figures that compose the pageant of that
real life of a man, upon which he never raises the curtain for the
feminine eyes most dear to him.
"In regard to me?" he echoed. He was wondering, in hidden panic,
which especial image had been revealed to her, and he sought defense
in general denial. "You have been listening to East Side
neighborhood gossip, Marian, and I shouldn't have believed it of you.
You have heard one of the hundreds of groundless ante-election libels
that are the common ammunition used against anyone in politics."
Her face, always fair, was gently tinted.
"What I have heard," she replied, "I heard from somebody that has
nothing to do with politics."
"Down here," insisted Dyker, still seeking to dislodge the enemy and
force it into the open field of recognition, "down here all the men
have something to do with politics."
"This was a woman, Wesley."
He had feared that. He had feared it when she first spoke of coming
to the Settlement. But he wasted no time in such thought; he must,
before he committed himself, discover which of several possible
women, was concerned.
"Oh," he laughed, "the women are mixed up in political gossip, too;
or, at any rate," he added, "they are always glad to repeat what
their menfolk don't hesitate to tell them."
"The woman I refer to was a part of the thing she told."
Marian said it softly, but her white throat trembled.
Dyker looked at her swiftly, and as swiftly lowered his eyes.
Instantly now he guessed what it was that she had heard; an instant
more and he thought the thing improbable. Then, resolved at all
events not to approach self-betrayal by showing his intuition, he
assumed the point of view of the lawyer.
"Marian," he said, pulling at his mustache that she might see--as she
did--that his hand was steady, "is this fair? Is it right to condemn
me on a charge of which I know nothing and because of evidence of
which I haven't heard a syllable?"
"No," she answered, "it isn't fair. That is why I sent for you."
He bit his lip, but faced her.
"Well," he said, "what is it?"
Steadily she met his renewed gaze until his eyes failed her.
Even then her own eyes, never wavering, could find in him not enough
to determine her. The desire to get at the truth, whatever the truth
might be, was plying its angry whip upon her shoulders. When Mary
had spoken, Marian had received the intelligence as innocently
imparted fact. But now the man before her gave nothing that her
inexperience could set down as a sign of what she considered a great
sin.
"Wesley," she began, leaning towards him, "the girl that told me this
told it inadvertently. More than that, she did not even know that I
had ever heard of you. She did not want to hurt you: she was
grateful to you, because you had rescued her."
His intuition, then, had not failed him: it was Violet.
"Why," he smiled, his heart heavy with the fear of losing Marian's
love, his lips still sparring for a more open lead, "I am afraid I'm
no knight-errant, Marian, to go about rescuing damsels in distress."
But he did not like the sound of the phrase, and, seeing that she
liked it no better, he explained: "You surely remember how I feel
about these poor women."
"But she said that your politics brought you into touch with the
worst sort of them."
Marian paused there to give him another chance, but his only protest
was:
"Not my politics. The duties of my profession, before I was elected
a magistrate, sometimes made it necessary to defend such women. You
must have known that. There was no dishonor there."
"And my informant added," continued Marian, "that you used your
political influence to gain their friendship, perhaps even to protect
them, and"--she felt the depths before her; her cheeks went hot; her
brown eyes filled--"and certainly to--to----"
She faltered.
He felt it and looked up with anger in his eyes.
"To what?" he demanded.
She clasped her damp hands tight.
"To live with them," she said.
Though he had expected the implication, he had hardly expected so
close an approach to the specific, and therefore the start to which
it behooved him to give way was not altogether disingenuous.
"Marian!" he cried.
She bent her head.
"Do you believe that?" he asked.
The accusation uttered, sick uncertainty gripped and tossed her again.
"I don't know what to believe."
"But how can you think I would be capable of such things? The girl
lied."
Her judgment swayed dizzily. Between word and word she was now for
and now against him.
"I can't think of any motive that this girl might have to lie," she
said.
"How do you know what motive she has?" returned Dyker, realizing in
what good stead his training as a pleader of bad cases might stand
him. "How do you know what political enemies of mine may have sent
her to you? You say that, on her own confession, she is a vile
woman----"
"I did not say that."
"You said she charged herself with being part of this alleged
business. You confessed that you were disappointed in her
personally. What possible credit can be given to the story of a
woman that begins by admitting such abominations?"
Marian tried to speak, but indecision choked her.
"I tell you, you were tricked," he pursued, with a glib rapidity that
she did not know whether to attribute to innocence or guilt. "I may
have lost a case for some friend of this girl. I may have won a suit
against one of her hangers-on. There are men in the lower sort of
politics, I'm ashamed to say, that don't hesitate to use such tools,
and I have offended a good many of them. Before you considered this
story true, don't you feel that you should have thought of one of
these explanations?"
"I don't know," Marian faltered. The relentless tide of her emotions
now set in again in his favor. Mary had told her story so calmly,
with so little feeling concerning her own sufferings, that Marian
kept wondering if it might not have been an invention. She was sure
that, all along, somewhere in her heart, she had wanted to think the
best of him; wanted, despite her accusing jealousy, to acquit him.
"I don't know," she repeated despairingly; "but"--and the tide began
to flow once more--"unless I can be certain of her motive for lying
to me, don't you see, Wesley, don't you see that I must have proof of
your innocence from you?"
She looked at him in wide appeal. The undertow had caught her, and
she was crying for help from shore. She knew now that she loved him,
and she had learned the ultimate tragedy of love: that love and
mistrust may be one.
"How can I know anything?" she went on. "How can I be sure of
anything? How can I understand such a world as this? It seems as if
all the earth was lying to me, and as if all the earth could lie and
still look honest. I trusted the girl; I trusted you. I beg of you
to prove to me that I was right only when I trusted you.
Wesley,"--she almost extended her arms to him--"tell me that you
didn't do it!"
Dyker saw his advantage, but decided that the way to keep it was to
be firm. He spoke quickly, yet coldly.
"Who was this woman?" he asked.
"Do you think I ought to tell you?" she pleaded.
"Ought to tell me? Why, Marian, how else am I to prove what you ask
me to prove? If you are to be at all fair with me, how can you start
by hiding the false witnesses against me?"
He was right, she felt.
"Did you ever hear," she asked, "of Mary Morton?"
Too late to weigh his words he remembered the name that the girl whom
he had called Violet had signed to her affidavit. Before that
recollection was clear to him, he made his reply in the deceit that
is the refuge of all the confused.
"I never did."
"You are sure?"
"Absolutely";--he had to keep it up now--"although, if she is the
sort of woman she says she is, she probably has as many aliases as a
safe-cracker."
"But this girl--I should think you would not forget her if you had
ever known her: she must have been good-looking once. She has blue
eyes and brown hair. You could see from her face that she has
suffered, but you could see that she used to be almost beautiful.
She has the walk of a queen."
"I don't know her."
"Think."--Marian was still intent upon certainty.--"When I saw her
she was both times dressed alike, though on her second visit her
clothes, first new, had grown a little shabby. She wore a cloak--I
forget its color, but it was dark--and a beaver hat. She----"
He knew those clothes; he had reason to; but his interruption was in
strict accord with his previous denial:
"There are thousands of women answering that vague description. I am
sure, however, that I don't know this one."
Marian did not observe that, on his own showing, his assurance was
without foundation. Her words had brought Mary vividly before her
and, for a minute, she well-nigh forgot her own distress in the
misery of that figure.
"She has had a great deal of trouble," said Marian. "Why, from what
she told me, these girls must be worse treated than the blacks in the
Congo; they must be far worse off than our own American negro slaves
used to be."
"No doubt--if what she said was true. But I know it was not true.
My profession has made me see a great deal of these poor women, and I
know that if they are slaves it is because they want to be." He
waved away the whole matter with a toss of his hand. He wanted some
information, and he did not want to show why he wanted it. "That all
goes to prove that if it was she who told you this foul story about
me, then the story was that of a born liar," he declared. "You say
she was here twice. What were the circumstances?"
She told him.
He breathed more freely. He had only to convince Marian and get her
to quit her work in disgust before further gossip should reach her.
"And so you don't know her?" she concluded.
"No."
"Nor Mrs. Rose Légère?"
"I certainly know of that person," he said--it was the part of wisdom
to admit some knowledge. "Nobody that knows anything about our
police-courts, as I have had to know, can be entirely ignorant of
her. She is one of the most notorious women in New York. I know a
great deal about her, but, except for one occasion, when I saw her in
a station-house, I have never set eyes on her in my life."
He spoke with such precision that Marian caught a gratified breath.
"Is she another Settlement visitor?" inquired Wesley, devoutly hoping
that no miracle of reformation had, since their last meeting, been
wrought upon Rose.
"No, she is not. It was she that was said to have been one of
your--your friends, until she made friends with your political
enemies. The girl that told me was, of course, the Mary Morton I
have mentioned. She said that you were intimate with this Mrs.
Légère, and I understood that even Mary----"
Dyker was genuinely glad to find some accusation that he could deny
with truth.
"Never!" he cried.
Something in that word and his utterance of it made her look at him
hard.
"She didn't want to tell the story," Marian insisted. "I got it from
her. How could it have been the result of malice or a plot? Didn't
I tell you that she said you had rescued her from the Légère woman's
house?"
Dyker reflected. He wished that he had been as sweeping in his
discrediting of Violet, under the pseudonym of Mary Morton, as he had
been in his discrediting of Rose. Failing that, he might even have
explained this rescue and have become something of a hero. Both
opportunities were, however, gone. He must make the best of what
remained.
"Marian," he said, speaking slowly, quite calmly, and with no small
appearance of sincerity of purpose, "I needn't bring you any proof of
this Légère woman's bad character--the qualities of that character
you yourself know--and as for this Morton girl, I can only fall back
on what I have already pointed out to you. You say she confesses her
evil life: how can you, then, credit anything an admittedly abandoned
creature may have told you?"
"Can't the worst of women tell the truth sometimes?"
"Practically never."
"But,"--Marian passed a weary hand across her forehead--"how could
this girl be in a position to know what she says she knows, if she
hadn't led just the kind of life that you say makes her an inevitable
liar?"
It was an excellent sort of answer. Dyker tossed his head.
"I am hurt, Marian," he said. "I thought you had some faith in me; I
thought you knew me. I don't see how you can persist in this
attitude--how you can say these things. Why, I have been in your
house: I have known you and your father; whereas these
people--Marian, I love you; why should I lie to you?"
She had been keeping her hand upon her forehead, but she lowered it
now to her eyes, where it was joined by its mate.
"I don't know," she moaned. "That's just it: I don't know."
"Then what," he asked, "can I do to convince you? I won't upbraid
you; I won't be harsh. My sane course would be to pay no attention
to accusations from such a character as this Mary Morton, and your
sane course would be to pay no attention to them. But I know how
things are in this neighborhood; I know the bad atmosphere you have
been breathing ever since you came down here. Long ago I told you
exactly what would happen; I foresaw it all. I told you when you
insisted on going into this work that these women would poison your
mind, distort your vision, make you doubt all that is best in life.
Apparently, they have succeeded; but I don't speak of that. Marian,
unless it was in some police-court--perhaps at the time I saw Rose
Légère--I never saw this girl in my life. I don't understand her
enmity any better than you do. It may spring from some imagined
wrong to one of her friends, or it may be a political plot. But,
except as it affects your regard for me, I don't care anything about
it. All that I do care about, all that I do want to accomplish is to
restore you to a normal view of things, get you out of these foul
mental and material surroundings, and bring you back to your own
proper world. I want to do this and to make you know the truth
concerning myself. Tell me what will bring this about, and I'll do
it without a moment's loss of time."
He thought that, in the nature of the case, there was nothing very
difficult or inconvenient that she could demand; but he had counted
too much on the artificial and too little upon the natural and
primitive woman.
Her face still hidden, she felt the full force of his appeal, but the
tempest had its wild will of her. She believed him guilty; she
believed him innocent. She believed that, if he were guilty,
temptation had come from the woman; she believed that, if he were
innocent, there was nevertheless something--she did not know
what--that he was hiding from her. Faith was ready to destroy much,
but would not jealousy destroy more? Her jealousy had consumed
dignity, it had ravaged custom, it was burning restraint.
Mary's words had drawn in Marian's mind a concrete picture, and the
contemplation of that picture had awakened an anger in which her
genuine love had for the first time genuinely expressed itself.
Before, she could have heard with light regret of Dyker's engagement
to marry another woman. Before, she might herself have drifted with
him through a placid wooing into the port of marriage that, until
this revelation, she had in no wise understood. But now she saw
things specifically, and in the element of the specific the quality
that she had known as "womanliness" was dissolved and the thing that
she at last knew to be Woman was evolved.
The issue, she was thus still determined, depended upon proof of
innocence. He must be clean, and she must know it.
She uncovered her fine face, strangely stronger for its grief.
"Wesley," she said, "I do remember all that you told me these women
and this work would do to me. If you prove to be wrong, I shall stay
on here, and, of course, never see you again; but if you prove to be
right I shall give it up, and then, Wesley, I shall marry you."
He rose with a glad cry; but she, rising also, waved him back.
"Not yet," she said. "Either find Mary Morton and the proofs that
she is dishonest--not only what I know she is, but dishonest in what
she would say and do--show me this, or else----"
With straining resolution, he confronted her.
"Or else?" he prompted.
"Or else bring her to me with her own denial and explanation."