It was Lizzie, with her baby in her arms; the girl he had defended in
the alley, and whose face he had last seen lying white and unconscious
in the moonlight, looking ghastly enough with the dark hair flung back
against the harsh pillow of stone.
The face was white now, but softened with the beauty of motherhood. The
bold, handsome features had somehow taken on a touch of gentleness,
though there glowed and burned in her dark eyes a fever of passion and
unrest.
She stood still for a moment looking at Michael after she had closed
the door, and was holding the baby close as if fearing there might be
some one there who was minded to take it from her.
As Michael watched her, fascinated, cut to the heart by the dumb
suffering in her eyes, he was reminded of one of the exquisite Madonnas
he had seen in an exhibition not long ago. The draperies had been
dainty and cloud-like, and the face refined and wonderful in its
beauty, but there had been the same sorrowful mother-anguish in the
eyes. It passed through his mind that this girl and he were kin because
of a mutual torture. His face softened, and he felt a great pity for
her swelling in his heart.
His eyes wandered to the little upturned face of the baby wrapped close
in the shabby shawl against its mother’s breast. It was a very
beautiful little sleeping face, with a look still of the spirit world
from which it had but recently come. There was something almost
unearthly in its loveliness, appealing even in its sleep, with its
innocent baby curves and outlines. A little stranger soul, whose
untried feet had wandered into unwelcome quarters where sorrows and
temptations were so thickly strewn that it could not hope to escape
them.
What had the baby come for? To make one more of the swarming mass of
sinful wretches who crowded the alley? Would those cherub lips
half-parted now in a seraphic smile live to pour forth blasphemous
curses as he had heard even very small children in the alley? Would
that tiny sea-shell hand, resting so trustingly against the coarse
cloth of its mother’s raiment, looking like a rosebud gone astray, live
to break open safes and take their contents? Would the lovely little
soft round body whose tender curves showed pitifully beneath the thin
old shawl, grow up to lie in the gutter some day? The problem of the
people had never come to Michael so forcibly, so terribly as in that
moment before Lizzie spoke.
“Be you a real lawyer?” she asked. “Kin you tell what the law is ’bout
folks and thin’s?”
Michael smiled and rose to give her a chair as courteously as though
she had been a lady born.
“Sit down,” he said. “Yes, I am a lawyer. What can I do for you?”
“I s’pose you charge a lot,” said the girl with a meaning glance around
the room. “You’ve got thin’s fixed fine as silk here. But I’ll pay
anythin’ you ast ef it takes me a lifetime to do it, ef you’ll jest
tell me how I kin git my rights.”
“Your rights?” questioned Michael sadly. Poor child! _Had_ she any
rights in the universe that he could help her to get? The only rights
he knew for such as she were room in a quiet graveyard and a chance to
be forgotten.
“Say, ain’t it against the law fer a man to marry a woman when he’s
already got one wife?”
“It is,” said Michael, “unless he gets a divorce.”
“Well, I ain’t goin’ to give him no divorce, you bet!” said the girl
fiercely. “I worked hard enough to get a real marriage an’ I ain’t
goin’ to give up to no fash’nable swell. I’m’s good’s she is, an’ I’ve
got my rights an I’ll hev ’em. An’ besides, there’s baby—!” Her face
softened and took on a love light; and immediately Michael was reminded
of the madonna picture again. “I’ve got to think o’ him!” Michael
marvelled to see that the girl was revelling in her possession, of the
little helpless burden who had been the cause of her sorrow.
“Tell me about it.” His voice was very gentle. He recalled suddenly
that this was Sam’s girl. Poor Sam, too! The world was a terribly
tangled mess of trouble.
“Well, there ain’t much to tell that counts, only he kep’ comp’ny with
me, an’ I wouldn’t hev ennythin’ else but a real marriage, an’ so he
giv in, an’ we hed a couple o’ rooms in a real respectable house an’
hed it fine till he had to go away on business, he said. I never
b’leeved that. Why he was downright rich. He’s a real swell, you know.
What kind o’ business cud he have?” Lizzie straightened herself proudly
and held her head high.
“About whom are you talking?” asked Michael.
“Why, my husband, ’course, Mr. Sty-ve-zant Carter. You ken see his name
in the paper real often. He didn’t want me to know his real name. He
hed me call him Dan Hunt fer two months, but I caught on, an’ he was
real mad fer a while. He said his ma didn’t like the match, an’ he
didn’t want folks to know he’d got married, it might hurt him with some
of his swell friends—”
“You don’t mean to tell me that Mr. Stuyvesant Carter ever really
married you!” said Michael incredulously.
“Sure!” said Lizzie proudly, “married me jest like enny swell; got me a
dimon ring an’ a silk lined suit an’ a willer plume an everythin’.”
Lizzie held up a grimy hand on which Michael saw a showy glitter of
jewelry.
“Have you anything to show for it?” asked Michael, expecting her of
course to say no. “Have you any certificate or paper to prove that you
were married according to law?”
“Sure!” said Lizzie triumphantly, drawing forth a crumpled roll from
the folds of her dress and smoothing it out before his astonished eyes.
There it was, a printed wedding certificate, done in blue and gold with
a colored picture of two clasped hands under a white dove with a gold
ring in its beak. Beneath was an idealized boat with silken sails
bearing two people down a rose-lined river of life; and the whole was
bordered with orange blossoms. It was one of those old-fashioned
affairs that country ministers used to give their parishioners in the
years gone by, and are still to be had in some dusty corners of a
forgotten drawer in country book stores. But Michael recognized at once
that it was a real certificate. He read it carefully. The blanks were
all filled in, the date she gave of the marriage was there, and the
name of the bridegroom though evidently written in a disguised hand
could be deciphered: “Sty. Carter.” Michael did not recognize the names
of either the witnesses or the officiating minister.
“How do you happen to have Mr. Carter’s real name here when you say he
married you under an assumed name?” he asked moving his finger
thoughtfully over the blurred name that had evidently been scratched
out and written over again.
“I made him put it in after I found out who he was,” said Lizzie. “He
couldn’t come it over me thet-a-way. He was awful gone on me then, an’
I cud do most ennythin’ with him. It was ’fore she cum home from
Europe! She jes’ went fer him an’ turned his head. Ef I’d a-knowed in
time I’d gone an’ tole her, but land sakes! I don’t ’spose ’twould a
done much good. I would a-ben to her before, only I was fool ’nough to
promise him I wouldn’t say nothin’ to her ef he’d keep away from her.
You see I needed money awful bad fer baby. He don’t take to livin’
awful good. He cries a lot an’ I hed to hev thin’s fer ’im, so I
threatened him ef he didn’t do sompin’ I’d go tell her; an’ he up an’
forked over, but not till I promised. But now they say the papers is
tellin’ he’s to marry her tonight, an’ I gotta stop it somehow. I got
my rights an’ baby’s to look after, promise er no promise, Ken I get
him arrested?”
“I am not sure what you can do until I look into the matter,” Michael
said gravely. Would the paper he held help or would it not, in his
mission to Starr’s father? And would it be too late? His heavy heart
could not answer.
“Do you know these witnesses?”
“Sure.” said Lizzie confidently. “They’re all swells. They come down
with him when he come to be married. I never seen ’em again, but they
was real jolly an’ nice. They give me a bokay of real roses an’ a
bracelet made like a snake with green glass eyes.”
“And the minister? Which is his church?”
“I’m sure I donno,” said Lizzie. “I never ast. He Come along an’ was ez
jolly ez enny of ’em. He drank more’n all of ’em put together. He was
awful game fer a preacher.”
Michael’s heart began to sink. Was this a genuine marriage after all?
Could anything be proved? He questioned the girl carefully, and after a
few minutes sent her on her way promising to do all in his power to
help her and arranging to let her know as soon as possible if there was
anything she could do.
That was a busy afternoon for Michael. The arrival of the steamer was
forgotten. His telephone rang vainly on his desk to a silent room. He
was out tramping over the city in search of the witnesses and the
minister who had signed Lizzie’s marriage certificate.
Meantime the afternoon papers came out with a glowing account of the
wedding that was to be, headed by the pictures of Starr and Mr. Carter,
for the wedding was a great event in society circles.
Lizzie on her hopeful way back to the alley, confident that Michael,
the angel of the alley, would do something for her, heard the boys
crying the afternoon edition of the paper, and was seized with a desire
to see if her husband’s picture would be in again. She could ill spare
the penny from her scanty store that she spent for it, but then, what
was money in a case like this? Michael would do something for her and
she would have more money. Besides, if worst came to worst she would go
to the fine lady and threaten to make it all public, and she would give
her money.
Lizzie had had more advantages than most of her class in the alley. She
had worked in a seashore restaurant several summers and could read a
little. From the newspaper account she gathered enough to rouse her
half-soothed frenzy. Her eyes flashed fire as she went about her dark
little tenement room making baby comfortable. His feeble wail and his
sweet eyes looking into hers only fanned the fury of her flame. She
determined not to wait for Michael, but to go on her own account at
once to that girl that was stealing away her husband, her baby’s
father, and tell her what she was doing.
With the cunning of her kind Lizzie dressed herself in her best; a
soiled pink silk shirtwaist with elbow sleeves, a spotted and torn
black skirt that showed a tattered orange silk petticoat beneath its
ungainly length, a wide white hat with soiled and draggled willow plume
of Alice blue, and high-heeled pumps run over on their uppers. If she
had but known it she looked ten times better in the old Madonna shawl
she had worn to Michael’s office, but she took great satisfaction in
being able to dress appropriately when she went to the swells.
The poor baby she wrapped in his soiled little best, and pinned a large
untidy pink satin bow on the back of his dirty little blanket. Then she
started on her mission.
Now Starr had just heard that her father’s vessel would be at the dock
in a trifle over an hour and her heart was light and happy. Somehow all
her misgivings seemed to flee away, now that he was coming. She flew
from one room to another like a wild bird, trilling snatches of song,
and looking prettier than ever.
“Aw, the wee sweet bairnie!” murmured the old Scotch nurse. “If only
her man will be gude to her!”
There was some special bit of Starr’s attire for the evening that had
not arrived. She was in a twitter of expectancy about it, to be sure it
pleased her, and when she heard the bell she rushed to the head of the
stairs and was half-way down to see if it had come, when the servant
opened the door to Lizzie and her baby.
One second more and the door would have closed hopelessly on poor
Lizzie, for no servant in that house would have thought of admitting
such a creature to the presence of their lady a few hours before her
wedding; but Starr, poised half-way on the landing, called, “What is
it, Graves, some one to see me?”
“But she’s not the sort of person—Miss Starr!” protested Graves with
the door only open a crack now.
“Never mind, Graves, I’ll see her for a minute. I can’t deny anyone on
my wedding day you know, and father almost safely here. Show her into
the little reception room.” She smiled a ravishing smile on the devoted
Graves, so with many qualms of conscience and misgivings as to what the
mistress would say if she found out, Graves ushered Lizzie and her baby
to the room indicated and Starr fluttered down to see her. So it was
Starr’s own doings that Lizzie came into her presence on that eventful
afternoon.
“Oh, what a sweet baby!” exclaimed Starr eagerly, “is he yours?”
Lizzie’s fierce eyes softened.
“Sit down and tell me who you are. Wait, I’ll have some tea brought for
you. You look tired. And won’t you let me give that sweet baby a little
white shawl of mine. I’m to be married tonight and I’d like to give him
a wedding present,” she laughed gaily, and Morton was sent for the
shawl and another servant for the tea, while Starr amused herself by
making the baby crow at her.
Lizzie sat in wonder. Almost for the moment she forgot her errand
watching this sweet girl in her lovely attire making much of her baby.
But when the tea had been brought and the soft white wool shawl wrapped
around the smiling baby Starr said again:
“Now please tell me who you are and what you have come for. I can’t
give you but a minute or two more. This is a busy day, you know.”
Lizzie’s brow darkened.
“I’m Mrs. Carter!” she said drawing herself up with conscious pride.
“Carter?” said Starr politely.
“Yes, I’m the wife of the man you’re goin’ to marry tonight, an’ this
is his child, I thought I’d come an’ tell you ’fore ’twas too late. I
thought ef you had enny goodness in you you’d put a stop to this an’
give me my rights, an’ you seem to hev some heart. Can’t you call it
off? You wouldn’t want to take my husband away from me, would you? You
can get plenty others an’ I’m jest a plain workin’ girl, an’ he’s mine
anyhow, an’ this is his kid.”
Starr had started to her feet, her eyes wide, her hand fluttering to
her heart.
“Stop!” she cried. “You must be crazy to say such things. My poor girl,
you have made a great mistake. Your husband is some other Mr. Carter I
suppose. My Mr. Carter is not that kind of a man. He has never been
married—”
“Yes, he has!” interposed Lizzie fiercely, “He’s married all right, an’
I got the c’tif’ct all right too, only I couldn’t bring it this time
cause I lef’ it with my lawyer; but you can see it ef you want to, with
his name all straight, “Sty-Vee-Zant Carter,” all writ out. I see to it
that he writ it himself. I kin read meself, pretty good, so I knowed.”
“I am very sorry for you,” said Starr sweetly, though her heart was
heating violently in spite of her efforts to be calm and to tell
herself that she must get rid of this wretched impostor without making
a scene for the servants to witness: “I am very sorry, but you have
made some great mistake. There isn’t anything I can do for you now, but
later when I come back to New York if you care to look me up I will try
to do something for baby.”
Lizzie stood erect in the middle of the little room, her face slowly
changing to a stony stare, her eyes fairly blazing with anger.
“De’yer mean ter tell me yer a goin’ t’go on an’ marry my husban’ jes’
ez ef nothin’ had happened? Ain’t yer goin’ ter ast him ef it’s true
ner nothin’? Ain’t yer goin’ t’ find out what’s true ’bout him? R d’ye
want ’im so bad ye don’t care who yer hurt, or wot he is, so long’s he
makes a big splurge before folks? Ain’t you a-goin’ ter ast him ’bout
it?”
“Oh, why certainly, of course,” said Starr as if she were pacifying a
frantic child, “I can ask him. I will ask him of course, but I _know_
that you are mistaken. Now really, I shall have to say good afternoon.
I haven’t another minute to spare. You must go!”
“I shan’t stir a step till you promise me thet you’ll ast him right
straight away. Ain’t you all got no telyphone? Well, you kin call him
up an’ ast him. Jest ast him why he didn’t never speak to you of his
wife Lizzie, and where he was the evenin’ of Augus’ four. That’s the
date on the c’tif’ct! Tell him you seen me an’ then see wot he says.
Tell him my lawyer is a goin’ to fix him ef he goes on. It’ll be in all
the papers tomorrer mornin’ ef he goes on. An’ you c’n say I shan’t
never consent to no _di_-vorce, they ain’t respectable, an’ I got to
think o’ that on baby’s account.”
“If you will go quietly away now and say nothing more about this to
anyone I will tell Mr. Carter all about you,” said Starr, her voice
trembling with the effort at self-control.
“D’ye promus you will?”
“Certainly,” said Starr with dignity.
“Will ye do it right off straight?”
“Yes, if you will go at once.”
“Cross yer heart?”
“What?”
“Cross yer heart ye will? Thet’s a sort o’ oath t’ make yer keep yer
promus,” explained Lizzie.
“A lady needs no such thing to make her keep her promise. Don’t you
know that ladies always keep their promises?”
“I wasn’t so sure!” said Lizzie, “You can’t most allus tell, ’t’s bes’
to be on the safe side. Will yer promus me yer won’t marry him ef ye
find out he’s my husband?”
“Most certainly I will not marry him if he is already married. Now go,
please, at once. I haven’t a minute to spare. If you don’t go at once I
cannot have time to call him up.”
“You sure I kin trust you?”
Starr turned on the girl such a gaze of mingled dignity and indignation
that her eye quailed before it.
“Well, I s’pose I gotta,” she said, dropping her eyes before Starr’s
righteous wrath. “But ‘no weddin’ bells’ fer you tonight ef yeh keep
yer promus. So long!”
Starr shuddered as the girl passed her. The whiff of unwashed garments,
stale cooking, and undefinable tenement odor that reached her nostrils
sickened her. Was it possible that she must let this creature have a
hold even momentarily upon her last few hours? Yet she knew she must.
She knew she would not rest until she had been reassured by Carter’s
voice and the explanation that he would surely give her. She rushed
upstairs to her own private ’phone, locking the door on even her old
nurse, and called up the ’phone in Carter’s private apartments.
Without owning it to herself she had been a little troubled all the
afternoon because she had not heard from Carter. Her flowers had
come,—magnificent in their costliness and arrangement, and everything
he was to attend to was done, she knew, but no word had come from
himself. It was unlike him.
She knew that he had given a dinner the evening before to his old
friends who were to be his ushers, and that the festivities would have
lasted late. He had not probably arisen very early, of course, but it
was drawing on toward the hour of the wedding now. She intended to
begin to dress at once after she had ’phoned him. It was strange she
had not heard from him.
After much delay an unknown voice answered the ’phone, and told her Mr.
Carter could not come now. She asked who it was but got no response,
except that Mr. Carter couldn’t come now. The voice had a muffled,
thick sound. “Tell him to call me then as soon as possible,” she said,
and the voice answered, “Awright!”
Reluctantly she hung up the receiver and called Morton to help her
dress. She would have liked to get the matter out of the way before she
went about the pretty ceremony, and submitted herself to her nurse’s
hands with an ill grace and troubled thoughts. The coarse beauty of
Lizzie’s face haunted her. It reminded her of an actress that Carter
had once openly admired, and she had secretly disliked. She found
herself shuddering inwardly every time she recalled Lizzie’s harsh
voice, and uncouth sentences.
She paid little heed to the dressing process after all and let Morton
have her way in everything, starting nervously when the ’phone bell
rang, or anyone tapped at her door.
A message came from her father finally. He hoped to be with her in less
than an hour now, and as yet no word had come from Carter! Why did he
not know she would be anxious? What could have kept him from his usual
greeting of her, and on their wedding day!
Suddenly, in the midst of Morton’s careful draping of the wedding veil
which she was trying in various ways to see just how it should be put
on at the last minute, Starr started up from her chair.
“I cannot stand this, Mortie. That will do for now. I must telephone
Mr. Carter. I can’t understand why he doesn’t call me.”
“Oh, but the poor man is that busy!” murmured Morton excusingly as she
hurried obediently out of the room. “Now, mind you don’t muss that
beautiful veil.”
But after a half hour of futile attempt to get into communication with
Carter, Starr suddenly appeared in her door calling for her faithful
nurse again.
“Mortie!” she called excitedly. “Come here quick! I’ve ordered the
electric. It’s at the door now. Put on your big cloak and come with me!
I’ve got to see Mr. Carter at once and I can’t get him on the ’phone.”
“But Miss Starr!” protested Morton. “You’ve no time to go anywhere now,
and look at your pretty veil!”
“Never mind the veil, Mortie, I’m going. Hurry. I can’t stop to
explain. I’ll tell you on the way. We’ll be back before anyone has
missed us.”
“But your mamma, Miss Starr! She will be very angry with me!”
“Mamma must not know. And anyway I must go. Come, if you won’t come
with me I’m going alone.”
Starr with these words grasped a great cloak of dark green velvet, soft
and pliable as a skin of fur, threw it over her white bridal robes, and
hurried down the stairs.
“Oh, Miss Starr, darlin’,” moaned Morton looking hurriedly around for a
cloak with which to follow. “You’ll spoil yer veil sure! Wait till I
take it off’n ye.”
But Starr had opened the front door and was already getting into the
great luxurious car that stood outside.