Kate slept lightly that night. She had gone to bed with a sense of
gentle happiness, which arose from the furtive conviction that she was
going to surrender to Ray and to his point of view. He could take all
the responsibility if he liked and she would follow the old instincts of
woman and let the Causes of Righteousness with which she had allied
herself contrive to get along without her. It was nothing, she told
herself, but sheer egotism for her to suppose that she was necessary to
their prosperity.
She half awoke many times, and each time she had a vague, sweet longing
which refused to resolve itself into definite shape. But when the full
morning came she knew it was Ray she wanted. She couldn't wait out the
long week he had prescribed as a season of fasting and prayer before she
gave her answer, and she was shamelessly glad when her superior, over
there at the Settlement House, informed her that she would be required
to go to a dance-hall at South Chicago that night--a terrible place,
which might well have been called "The Girl Trap." This gave Kate a
legitimate excuse to ask for Ray's company, because he had besought her
not to go to such places at night without his escort.
"But ought I to be seeing you?" he asked over the telephone in answer
to her request. "Wouldn't it be better for my cause if I stayed away?"
In spite of the fact that he laughed, she knew he was quite in earnest,
and she wondered why he hadn't discerned her compliant mood from her
intonations.
"But I had to mind you, hadn't I?" she sent back. "You said I mustn't go
to such places without you."
From her tone she might have been the most betendriled feminine vine
that ever wrapped a self-satisfied masculine oak.
"Oh, I'll come," he answered. "Of course I'll come. You knew you had
only to give me the chance."
He was on time, impeccable, as always, in appearance. Kate was glad that
he was as tall as she. She knew, down in her inner consciousness, that
they made a fine appearance together, that they stepped off gallantly.
It came to her that perhaps they were to be envied, and that they
weren't--or at least that she wasn't--giving their good fortune its full
valuation.
She told him about her dinner with the Fitzgeralds and about the opera,
but she held back her discovery, so to speak, of the baby, and the
episode of Marna's wistful tears when she heard the music, and her
amazing _volte-face_ at remembering the baby's feeding-time. She would
have loved to spin out the story to him--she could have deepened the
colors just enough to make it all very telling. But she wasn't willing
to give away the reason for her changed mood. It was enough, after all,
that he was aware of it, and that when he drew her hand within his arm
he held it in a clasp that asserted his right to keep it.
They were happy to be in each other's company again. Kate had to admit
it. For the moment it seemed to both of them that it didn't matter much
where they went so long as they could go together. They rode out to
South Chicago on the ill-smelling South Deering cars, crowded with men
and women with foreign faces. One of the men trod on Kate's foot with
his hobnailed shoe and gave an inarticulate grunt by way of apology.
"He's crushed it, hasn't he?" asked Ray anxiously, seeing the tears
spring to her eyes. "What a brute!"
"Oh, it was an accident," Kate protested. "Any one might have done it."
"But anyone except that unspeakable Huniack would have done more than
grunt!"
"I dare say he doesn't know English," Kate insisted. "He'll probably
remember the incident longer and be sorrier about it than some who would
have been able to make graceful apologies."
"Not he," declared Ray. "Don't you think it! Bless me, Kate, why you
prefer these people to any others passes my comprehension. Can't you
leave these people to work out their own salvation--which to my notion
is the only way they ever can get it--and content yourself with your own
kind and class?"
"Not variety enough," retorted Kate, feeling her tenderness evaporate
and her tantalizing mood--her usual one when she was with Ray--come
back. "Don't I know just what you, for example, are going to think and
say about any given circumstances? Don't I know your enthusiasms and
reactions as if I'd invented 'em?"
"Well, I know yours, too, but that's because I love you, not because
you're like everybody else. I wish you were rather more like other
women, Kate. I'd have an easier time."
"If we were married," said Kate, with that cheerful directness which
showed how her sentimentality had taken flight, "you'd never give up
till you'd made me precisely like Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Smith, and Mrs.
Johnson. Men fall in love with women because they're different from
other women, and then put in the first years of their married life
trying to make them like everybody else. I've noticed, however, that
when they've finished the job, they're so bored with the result that
they go and look up another 'different' woman. Oh, I know!"
He couldn't say what he wished in reply because the car filled up just
then with a party of young people bound for a dance in Russell Square.
It always made Kate's heart glow to think of things like that--of what
the city was trying to do for its people. These young people came from
small, comfortable homes, quite capacious enough for happiness and
self-respect, but not large enough for a dance. Very well; all that was
needed was a simple request for the use of the field-house and they
could have at their disposal a fine, airy hall, well-warmed and lighted,
with an excellent floor, charming decorations, and a room where they
might prepare their refreshments. All they had to pay for was the music.
Proper chaperonage was required and the hall closed at midnight. Kate
descanted on the beauties of the system till Ray yawned.
"Think how different it is at the dance-hall where we are going," she
went on, not heeding his disinclination for the subject. "They'll keep
it up till dawn and drink between every dance. There's not a party of
the kind the whole winter through that doesn't see the steps of some
young girl set toward destruction. Oh, I can't see why it isn't stopped!
If women had the management of things, it would be, I can tell you. It
would take about one day to do it."
"That's one of the reasons why the liquor men combine to kill suffrage,"
said Ray. "They know it will be a sorry day for them when the women get
in. Positively, the women seem to think that's all there is to
politics--some moral question; and the whole truth is they'd do a lot of
damage to business with their slap-dash methods, as they'd learn to
their cost. When they found their pin-money being cut down, they'd sing
another tune, for they're the most reckless spenders in the world,
American women are."
"They're the purchasing agents for the most extravagant nation in the
world, if you like," Kate replied. "Men seem to think that shopping is a
mere feminine diversion. They forget that it's what supports their
business and supplies their homes. Not to speak of any place beyond our
own town, think of the labor involved in buying food and clothing for
the two million and a half human beings here in Chicago. It's no joke, I
assure you."
"Joke!" echoed Ray. "A good deal of the shopping I've seen at my
father's store seems to me to come under the head of vice. The look I've
seen on some of those faces! It was ravaging greed, nothing less. Why,
we had a sale the other day of cheap jewelry, salesmen's samples, and
the women swarmed and snatched and glared like savages. I declare, when
I saw them like that, so indecently eager for their trumpery ornaments,
I said to myself that you'd only to scratch the civilized woman to get
at the squaw any day."
Kate kept a leash on her tongue. She supposed it was inevitable that
they should get back to the old quarrel. Deep down in Ray, she felt, was
an unconquerable contempt for women. He made an exception of her because
he loved her; because she drew him with the mysterious sex attraction.
It was that, and not any sense of spiritual or intellectual approval of
her, which made him set her apart as worthy of admiration and of his
devoted service. If ever their lives were joined, she would be his
treasure to be kept close in his personal casket,--with the key to the
golden padlock in his pocket,--and he would all but say his prayers to
her. But all that would not keep him from openly discountenancing her
judgment before people. She could imagine him putting off a suggestion
of hers with that patient married tone which husbands assume when they
discover too much independent cerebration on the part of their wives.
"I couldn't stand that," she inwardly declared, as she let him think
that he was assisting her from the car. "If any man ever used that
patient tone to me, I'd murder him!"
She couldn't keep back her sardonic chuckle.
"What are you laughing at?" he asked irritatedly.
"At the mad world, master," she answered.
"Where is this dance-hall?" he demanded, as if he suspected her of
concealing it.
The tone was precisely the "married" one she had been imagining, and she
burst out with a laugh that made him stop and visibly wrap his dignity
about him. Nothing was more evident than that he thought her silly. But
as she paused, too, standing beneath the street-lamp, and he saw her
with her nonchalant tilt of her head,--that handsome head poised on her
strong, erect body,--her force and value were so impressed upon him that
he had to retract. But she was provoking, no getting around that.
At that moment another sound than laughter cut the air--a terrible
sound--the shriek of a tortured child. It rang out three times in quick
succession, and Kate's blood curdled.
"Oh, oh," she gasped; "she's being beaten! Come, Ray."
"Mix up in some family mess and get slugged for my pains? Not I! But
I'll call a policeman if you say."
"Oh, it might be too late! I'm a policeman, you know. Get the patrol
wagon if you like. But I can't stand that--"
Once more that agonized scream! Kate flashed from him into the mesh of
mean homes, standing three deep in each yard, flanking each other with
only a narrow passage between, and was lost to him. He couldn't see
where she had gone, but he knew that he must follow. He fell down a
short flight of steps that led from the street to the lower level of the
yard, and groped forward. He could hear people running, and when a large
woman, draping her wrapper about her, floundered out of a basement door
near him, he followed her. She seemed to know where to go. The squalid
drama with the same actors evidently had been played before.
Mid-length of the building the woman turned up some stairs and came to a
long hall which divided the front and rear stairs. At the end of it a
light was burning, and Kate's voice was ringing out like that of an
officer excoriating his delinquent troops.
"I'm glad you can't speak English," he heard her say, "for if you could
I'd say things I'd be sorry for. I'd shrivel you up, you great brute. If
you've got the devil in you, can't you take it out on some one else
beside a little child? You're her father, are you? She has no mother, I
suppose. Well, you 're under arrest, do you understand? Tell him, some
of you who can talk English. He's to sit in that chair and never move
from it till the patrol wagon comes. I shall care for the child myself,
and she'll be placed where he can't treat her like that again. Poor
little thing! Thank you, that's a good woman. Just hold her awhile and
comfort her. I can see you've children of your own."
Ray found the courage at length to peer above the heads of the others in
that miserable, crowded room. The dark faces of weary men and women,
heavy with Old-World, inherited woe, showed in the gloom. The short,
shaking man on the chair, dully contrite for his spasm of rage, was
cringing before Kate, who stood there, amazingly tall among these
low-statured beings. Never had she looked to Ray so like an eagle, so
keen, so fierce, so fit for braving either sun or tenebrous cavern. She
dominated them all; had them, who only partly understood what she said,
at her command. She had thrown back her cloak, and the star of the
Juvenile Court officer which she wore carried meaning to them. Though
perhaps it had not needed that. Ray tried to think her theatrical, to
be angry at her, but the chagrin of knowing that she had forgotten him,
and was not caring about his opinion, scourged his criticisms back. She
had lifted from the floor the stick with its leathern thong with which
the man had castigated the tender body of his motherless child. She held
it in her hand, looking at it with the angry aversion that she might
have turned upon a venomous serpent. Then slowly, with unspeakable
rebuke, she swung her gaze upon the wretch in the chair. For a moment
she silently accused him. Then he dropped his head in his hands and
sobbed. He seemed in his voiceless way to say that he, too, had been
castigated by a million invisible thongs held in dead men's hands, and
that his soul, like his child's body, was hideous with welts.
Kate turned to Ray.
"Is the patrol wagon on its way?" she inquired.
"I--I--didn't call it," he stammered.
"Please do," she said simply.
He went out of the room, silently raging, and was grateful that one of
the men followed to show him the patrol box. He waited outside for the
wagon to come, and when the officers brought out the shaking prisoner,
he saw Kate with them carrying the child in her arms.
"I must go to the station," she said to Ray, in a matter-of-fact tone
that put him far away from her. "So I'll say good-night. It wouldn't be
pleasant for you to ride in the wagon, you know. I'll be quite all
right. One of the officers will see me safe home. Anyway, I shall have
to go to the dance-hall before the evening's over."
"Kate!" he protested.
"Oh, I know," she said to him apart softly while the others concerned
themselves with assisting the blubbering Huniack into the wagon, "you
think it isn't nice of me to be going around like this, saving babies
from beatings and young girls from much worse. You think it isn't
ladylike. But it's what the coming lady is either going to do or see
done. It's a new idea, you understand, Ray. Quite different from the
squaw idea, isn't it? Good-night!"
An officer stood at the door of the wagon waiting for her. He touched
his hat and smiled at her in a comradely fashion, and she responded with
as courteous a bow as she ever had made to Ray.
The wagon drove off.
"I've been given my answer," said Ray aloud. He wondered if he were more
relieved or disappointed at the outcome. But really he could neither
feel nor think reasonably. He went home in a tumult, dismayed at his own
sufferings, and in no condition to realize that the old ideas and the
new were at death grips in his consciousness.