For two weeks Etta Blake refused to come to Mrs. Mundy's, refused to see the latter when she went to see her, to see me when I went; but yesterday she came to both of us. Ten days ago Harrie was taken to Selwyn's home and is now practically well. Mr. Guard tells me he is going away; going West.
I have seen Selwyn but twice since he learned where Harrie was found, and then not alone. Both times some one was here and he stayed but a short while. He has bitten dust of late and even with me he is incased in a reserve that is impenetrable. There has been no chance to mention Harrie's name had he wished to do so. I do not know that he will ever mention it again. Selwyn is the sort of person who rarely speaks of painful or disgraceful things.
I was in my sitting-room when Mrs. Mundy came up with Etta. As the latter stood in the doorway prayer sprang in my heart that I would not shrink, but the heritage of the ages was upon me, and for a half-minute I could only think of her as one is taught to think—as a depraved, polluted creature, hardly human, and then I saw she was a suffering, sinful child, and I took her hands in mine and led her to the fire.
To see clearly, see without confusion, and with no blinding of sentimental sympathy, but as woman should see woman, I had been trying to face life frankly for some months past; yet when I saw Etta I realized I had gone but a little way on the long and lonely road awaiting if I were to do my part. And then I remembered Harrie. He had gone back to the proudest, haughtiest home in town; and Etta—where could Etta go?
Hatless, and in a shabby dress, with her short, dark, curly hair parted on the side, she looked even younger than when I had first seen her, but about her twisting mouth were lines that hardened it, and in her opalescent eyes, which now shot flame and fire and now paled with weariness, I saw that which made me know in bitter knowledge she was old and could never again be young. Youth and its rights for her were gone beyond returning.
She would not sit down; grew rigid when I tried to make her. "You want to see me?" She looked from me to Mrs. Mundy and back again to me. "What do you want to see me about? Why did you want me to come here?"
"We want to talk to you, to see what is best for you to do." I spoke haltingly. It was difficult to speak at all with her eyes upon me. They were strange eyes for a girl of eighteen.
"Best for me to do?" She laughed witheringly and turned from the fire, her hands twisting in nervous movements. "There are only two things ahead of me. Death—or worse. Which would you advise me—to do?"
Without waiting for answer the slight shoulders straightened and went back. Scorn, hate, bitterness were in her unconscious pose, and from her eyes came fire. "If you sent for me to preach you can quit before you start. There ain't anything you can do for me. I'm done for. What do people like you care what becomes of girls like us? Maybe we send ourselves to hell, but you see to it that we stay there. You're good at your job all right. I hate you—you good women! Hate you!"
I heard Mrs. Mundy's indrawn breath, saw her quick glance of shock and distress, then I went over to Etta. She was trembling with hot emotion long repressed, and, as one at bay, she drew back, reckless, defiant, and breathing unsteadily.
"I do not wonder that you hate us. I am sorry—so sorry for you, Etta."
For a full minute she stared at me as if she had not heard aright and the dull color in her face deepened into crimson, then with a spring she was at the door, her face buried in her arms. Leaning heavily against it, she made convulsive effort to keep back sound.
"Sorry—oh, my God!" In a heap she crumpled on the floor, her face still hidden in her hands. "I did not know—in all the world—anybody was sorry. You can't be sorry—I'm a—"
I motioned Mrs. Mundy to go out. "Leave her with me," I said. "Come back presently, but leave her awhile with me."
Going over to the window, I stood beside it until the choking sobs grew fainter and fainter, and then, turning away, I drew two chairs close to the fire and told Etta to come and sit by me. For a while neither of us spoke, and when at last she tried to speak it was difficult to hear her.
"I didn't mean to let go like that. I wouldn't have done it if you hadn't said—you were sorry. You've no cause to be sorry for me. I'm not worth it. I was crazy—to care as I cared. I ought to have known gentlemen like him don't marry girls like me, but I didn't have the strength to—to make him leave me, or to go away myself. And then one day he told me it had to be a choice between him and the baby. He seemed to hate the sight of the baby. He said I must send it away." Swaying slightly, she caught herself against the side of the table close to her, and again I waited. "She's a delicate little thing, and I couldn't put her in a place where I didn't know how they'd treat her. He told me it had to be one or the other—and I'd rather he'd killed me than made me say which one. But I couldn't give the baby up. She needed me."
"And then—" My voice, too, was low.
"He got mad and went away. I thought I hated him, but I can't hate him. I've tried and I can't. When he came back and found where I was living—" A long, low shiver came from the twisting lips. "About five weeks ago I moved to where he was taken sick. And now—now he has gone home again and I—" She got up as if the torment of her soul made it impossible for her to sit still, and again she faced me. "It doesn't matter what becomes of me. What do rich people and good people and people who could change things care about us? And neither do they care what we think of them, and specially of good women. Do you suppose we think you really believe in the Christ who did not stone us? We don't. We laugh at most Christians, spit at them. We know you don't believe in Him or you'd remember what He said."
She turned sharply. Mrs. Mundy with Kitty behind her was at the door. The latter hesitated, and, seeing it, Etta nodded to her. "Come in. I won't hurt you. You need not be afraid."
Speaking first to Etta, Kitty kissed me, and I saw she had come up-stairs because she, too, was wondering if there was something she could do. Kitty is no longer the child she once was. She is going, some day, to be a brave and big and splendid woman. At the window she sat down, and as though she were not in the room Etta turned toward me.
"You said just now you wanted to help. Wanting won't do that!" She snapped her fingers. "You've got to stop wanting and will to do something. Men laugh at the laws men make, but we don't blame men like we blame women who let their men be bad and then smile on them, marry them, and pretend they do not know. They do not want to know. If you made men pay the price you make us pay, the world would be a safer place to live in. Men don't do what women won't stand for."
Kitty leaned forward, and Etta, with twisting hands, looked at her and then at Mrs. Mundy and then at me, and in her eyes was piteous appeal. "There's no chance for me, but I've got a little baby girl. What's going to become of her? In God's name, can't you do something to make good women understand? Make them know the awfulness—awfulness—"
Again the room grew still and presently, with dragging steps, Etta turned toward the door. Quickly I followed her. She must not go. I had said nothing, gotten nowhere, and there was much that must be said that something might be done. To have her leave without some plan to work toward would be loss of time. She was but one of thousands of bits of human wreckage, in danger herself and of danger to others, and somebody must do something for her. I put my hand on her shoulder to draw her back and as I did so the door, half ajar, opened more widely. Motionless, and as one transfixed, she stared at it wide-eyed, and into her face crept the pallor of death.
Selwyn and Harrie were standing in the doorway.
Stumbling back as if struck, Harrie leaned against the door-frame, and the hat in his hand dropped to the floor. Selwyn, too, for a half-minute drew back, then he came inside and spoke to Etta, and to me, and to Mrs. Mundy, and to Kitty. Pushing a chair close to the fire, he took Harrie by the arm and led him to it.
"Sit down," he said, quietly. "You'll be better in a minute."
Harrie had given Etta no sign of recognition, but the horror in his once-handsome face, now white and drawn, told of his shock at finding her with me, and fear and recoil weakened him to the point of faintness. In his effort to recover himself, to resist what might be coming, he struggled as one for breath, but from him came no word, no sound.
Infinite pity for Selwyn made it impossible for me to speak for a moment, and before words would come Mrs. Mundy and Kitty had gone out of the room and Selwyn had turned to Etta.
With shoulders again drawn back, and eyes dark with fear and defiance, she looked at him. "Why have you come here?" she asked. "What are you going to do? You've taken him home and left me to go back to where he drove me. Isn't that enough? Why have you brought him here?"
"To ask Miss Heath to say what he must do. That is why I have come." Pushing the trembling girl in a chair behind Harrie's, Selwyn looked up at me. "You must decide what is to be done, Dandridge. This is a matter beyond a man's judgment. I do not seem able to think clearly. You must tell me what to do."
"I? Oh no! It is not for me. Surely you cannot mean that I must tell you—" The blood in my body surged thickly, and I drew back, appalled that such decision should be laid upon me, such responsibility be mine. "What is it you want—of me?"
"To tell me—what Harrie must do." In Selwyn's face was the whiteness of death, but his voice was quiet. "I did not know, until David Guard told me, that there was a child, and that Harrie was its father, and that because of the child Etta would not go away as I had tried to make her. I did not know she had no father or brother to see that, as far as possible, her wrong is righted. I want you to forget that Harrie is my brother and remember the girl, and tell me—what he must do."
From the chair in which Harrie sat came a lurching movement, and I saw his body bend forward, saw his elbows on his knees, his face buried in his hands, and then I heard a sudden sob, a soft, little cry that stabbed, and Etta was on the floor beside him, crouching at his feet, holding his hands to her heart, and uttering broken, foolish words and begging him to speak to her, to tell her that he would marry her—that he would marry her and take her away.
"Harrie—oh, Harrie!" Faintly we could hear the words that came stumblingly. "Could we be married, Harrie, and go away, oh, far away, where nobody knows? I will work for you—live for you—die for you, if need be, Harrie! We could be happy. I would try—oh, I would try so hard to make you happy, and the baby would have a name. You would not hate her if we were married. She was never to know she had a mother, she was to think her real mother was dead and that I was just some one who loved her. But if we were married I would not have to die to her. Tell me—oh, tell me, Harrie, that we can be married—and go away—where nobody knows!"
But he would tell her nothing. With twitching shoulders and head turned from her he tried to draw his hands from those which held his in piteous appeal, and presently she seemed to understand, and into her face came a ghastly, shuddering smile, and slowly she got up and drew a deep breath.
As she stood aside Harrie, with a sudden movement, was on his feet and at the door. His hand was on the knob and he tried to open the door, but instantly Selwyn was by him, and with hold none too gentle he was thrust back into the room.
"You damned coward!" Selwyn's voice was low. "She is the mother of your child, and you want to quit her; to run, rather than pay your price! By God! I'll see you dead before you do!"
Again the room grew still. The ticking of the clock and the beat of raindrops on the windowpanes mingled with the soft purring of the fire's flames, and each waited, we knew not for what; and then Etta spoke.
"But you, too, would have to pay—if he were made to pay—the price." She looked at Selwyn. "It is not fair that you should pay. I will go away—somewhere. It does not matter about the baby or me. Thank you, but— Good-by. I'm going—away."
Before I could reach her, hold her back, she was out of the room and running down the steps and the front door had closed. Mrs. Mundy looked up as I leaned over the banister. "It is better to leave her alone to-day," she said, and I saw that she was crying. "We can see her to-morrow. She had better be by herself for a while."
Back in the room Selwyn and I looked at each other with white and troubled faces. We had bungled badly and nothing had been done.
"Come to-morrow night. I must see David Guard, must see Etta again, before I— Come to-morrow and I will tell you. I must be sure." I turned toward Harrie, but he had gone into the hall. Quickly my hands went out to Selwyn, and for a long moment he held them in his, then, without speaking, he turned and left me.
I know I should not think too constantly about it. I try not to, but I cannot shake off the shock, the horror of Etta's death. Selwyn inclosed the note she wrote him in the letter he sent me just before leaving with Harrie for the West, but he did not come to see me before he left.
When I try to sleep the words of Etta's note pass before me like frightened children, crying—crying, and then again these children sing a dreary chant, and still again the chant becomes a chorus which repeats itself until I am unnerved; and they seem to be calling me, these little children, and begging me to help make clean and safe the paths that they must tread. I am just one woman. What can I do?
I knew Etta was dead before Selwyn received her note. Mrs. Banch, the woman who kept the child for her, came running to Mrs. Mundy the day after Etta had been to see me, and incoherently, sobbingly, with hands twisting under her apron, she told us of finding Etta, with the baby in her arms, lying on her bed, as she thought, asleep. But she was not asleep. She was dead.
"She had done it as deliberate as getting ready to go on a long journey," the woman had sobbed. "Everything was fixed and in its place, and after bathing and dressing the baby in a clean gown, she wrote on a piece of paper that all of its clothes were for my little girl, and that she wouldn't do what she was doing if there was any other way."
With a fresh outburst of tears, the woman handed me a half-sheet of note-paper. "Bury us as we are," it read. "I am taking the baby with me.—Etta."
"We will come with you." Mrs. Mundy, who had gotten out her hat and coat to go to see Etta before Mrs. Banch came in, hurriedly put them on, while I went for mine, and together we followed the woman to the small and shabby house in the upper part of which Etta had been living for some weeks past; the lower part being occupied by an old shoemaker and his wife who had been kind to her; and as we entered the room where the little mother and her baby lay I did not try to keep them back—the tears that were too late.
"Last night I was standing in the door when she came by with a letter in her hand." As Mrs. Banch talked, she was still quivering from the shock of her discovery, and her words came brokenly. "On her way back from mailing it I asked her to come in and set with me, but she wouldn't do it; she said she was going to take the baby with her to spend the night, as she didn't want to be by herself; and, going up-stairs, she wrapped her up good and took her away with her. I don't know why, but I felt worried all last night, and this morning I couldn't get down to nothing 'til I ran around to see how she was and how the baby was, and when I went up in her room—" The woman's work-worn hands were pressed to her breast. "God—this world is a hard place for girls who sin! It don't seem to matter about men, but women—" Presently she raised her head and looked at us. "I never seen a human being what had her spirit for enduring. She paid her price without whining, but something must have happened what she couldn't stand. She had a heart if she was—if she was—"
Two days later, as quietly as her life had ended, Etta's body, with her baby on its breast, was put into the ground, and mingled with David Guard's voice as he read the service for the dead was the far-off murmur of city noises, the soft rise and fall of city sounds. With Mrs. Mundy and Mrs. Banch, the old shoemaker and his wife, I stood at the open grave and watched the earth piled into a mound that marked a resting-place at last for a broken body and a soul no one had tried to reach that it might save, but I did not hear the beating of the clods of clay, nor the twittering of the birds in the trees, nor the wind in their tops. I heard instead Etta's cry to Kitty and to me: "In God's name, can't somebody do something to make good women understand!"
It is these words that beat into my brain at night; these and the words I did not speak in time and which, on the next day, were too late. The note she sent Selwyn also keeps me awake.
"I am going," she wrote, "so the thought of me will not make you afraid. You tried to help me, but there isn't any help for girls like me. I am taking the baby with me. I want to be sure she will be safe. It would be too hard for her, the fight she'd have to make. I can't leave her here alone. ETTA."
Last night David Guard came in for a few minutes. Leaning back in a big chair, he half closed his eyes and in silence watched the flames of the fire, and, seeing he was far away in thought, I went on with the writing of the letter I had put aside when he came in. I always know when he is tired and worn, and I have learned to say nothing, to be as silent as he when I see that the day's work has so wearied him he does not wish to talk. At other times we talk much—talk of life and its possibilities, of old cults and new philosophies, of books and places; of the endless struggles of men like himself to be intellectually honest and spiritually free. But oftenest we speak of the people around us, the people on whom the injustices of a selfish social system fall most heavily; and among them, sharing their hardships, understanding their burdens, recognizing their limitations and weaknesses, leading and directing them, he has found life in losing it, and it now has meaning for him that is bigger and finer than the best that earth can give.
Presently he stirred, drew a long breath as one awaking, but when he spoke he did not turn toward me.
"I saw Mr. Thorne the night before he left with Harrie for his friend's ranch in Arizona. He is going to give him another chance, and it's pretty big of him to do it, but I doubt if anything will come of it. Harrie belongs to a type of humanity beyond awakening to a realization of moral degeneracy; a type that believes so confidently in the divine right of class privilege that it believes little else. Harrie's failure to appreciate the hideousness of certain recent experiences has made them all the more keenly felt by his brother. I have rarely seen a man suffer as the latter has suffered in the past few days, but unless I am mistaken—"
The pen in my hand dropped upon the desk, and for a while I did not speak. Then I got up and went toward David Guard, who had also risen. "You mean—" The words died in my throat.
"That he is beginning to understand why you came to Scarborough Square; to grasp the necessity of human contact for human interpretation. He, too, is seeing himself, his life, his world, from the viewpoint of Scarborough Square, and what he sees gives neither peace nor pride nor satisfaction. He will never see so clearly as you, perhaps, but certain cynicisms, certain intolerances, certain indifferences and endurances will yield to keener perception of the necessity for new purposes in life." He held out his hand. "He needs you very much. I've got to go. Good-by."
For a long time I sat by the fire and watched it die. Was David Guard right, or had it been in vain, the venture that had brought me to Scarborough Square? I had told Selwyn I had come that I might see from its vantage-ground the sort of person I was and what I was doing with life; but it was also in the secret hope that he, too, might see the kindred of all men to men, the need of each for each, that I had come. If together we could stand between those of high and low degree, between the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, with hands outstretched to both, and so standing bring about, perhaps, a better understanding of each other, then my coming would have been worth while. But would we ever so stand? All that I had hoped for seemed as dead as the ashes on the hearth. I had brought him pain and humiliation, drawn back, without intention, curtains that hid ugly, cruel things, and for him Scarborough Square would mean forever bitter memories of bitter revealing. I had failed. I had tried, and I had failed, and I could hold out no longer.
Getting up, I pressed my hands to my heart to still triumphant throbbing. It had won, I did not hate his house. I hated its walls. But I could no longer live without him. I would marry him when he came back.
My hands in his, Selwyn looked long at me, then again drew me to him, again raised my face to his. "A thousand times I've asked. A thousand times could give myself no answer. Why did you wire me to come back, Danny?"
"You were staying too long."
He smiled. "No; it was not that. There was something else. What was it?"
"I wanted to see you."
He shook his head. "What was it? Why did you send for me?"
"To—tell you I would marry you whenever you wish me to—"
His face whitened and the grip of his hands hurt. Presently he spokeagain. "But there was something else. You had other reasons.Surely between us there is to be complete and perfect understanding.What is it, Danny?"
I drew away and motioned him to sit beside me on the sofa. In the firelit room faint fragrance of the flowers with which he kept it filled crept to us, and around it we both glanced as if its spirit were not intangible; and at unspoken thought his hands again held mine.
"You sent for me—" He leaned toward me.
"Because I heard—an unbelievable thing. David Guard tells me—you have sold—your house. I can think of nothing else. Tell me it is not true, Selwyn! Surely it is not true!"
"It is true."
With a little cry my fingers interlaced with his and words died on my lips. As quietly as if no fight had been fought, no sleepless nights endured, no surrender made at cost of pride beyond computing, he answered me, but in his face was that which made me turn my face away, and in silence I clung to him. The room grew still, so still we could hear each other's breathing, quick and unsteady, then again I looked up at him.
"But why, Selwyn? Why did you sell your house?"
"You would not be happy in it. You do not care for it. I am ready now to live—wherever you wish."
"But I am ready, too, to live—where you wish. Don't you see it does not matter where one lives? What matters is one must be very sure—one cannot live apart, and that one's spirit must have chance. Why did you not tell me, Selwyn? Why did you do this without letting me know?"
"You would have told me not to do it; would not have consented.There was no other way to be sure that I was willing—to do my part.I know now there is something to be done, know I must no longer livebehind high walls."
"But the house will be needed when the walls come down! It is not where one lives, but how, that counts. You must not sell your house."
"But I have sold it—" Something of the old impatience was in his voice, then the frown faded. "There was no other way—to be sure. Were the walls down— I did not think, perhaps, that walls could be anywhere. It is too late now. The house was sold while I was away. The papers will be signed next week."
Again the room grew still and I made effort to think quickly, definitely. I was not willing that Selwyn should make such sacrifice for me. I would let the sunshine into his house and love it when its cold aloofness became friendly warmth, and together we could learn in it what life would teach. The house must not be sold, but how prevent? I bent my head down to the violets on my breast, drew in deep breath. Suddenly a thought came to me. I looked up.
"When a man sells a piece of property doesn't his wife have to sign the papers as well as himself?"
"She does." Selwyn smiled.
"And the sale couldn't be consummated unless she signed them?"
"It could not. You know the law." Again he smiled. "Not having a wife—"
"But you will have—before those papers are ready to be signed. I am not going to sign them. I mean— Don't you see what I mean?"
"I'm not quite sure I do." Selwyn's voice was grave, uncertain. "Is it that—"
"We will have to be married next week and then you can tell the party who wants your house that your wife does not wish it to be sold. Put the blame on me. It would be disappointing to many people if there was not something, even about my marriage, for which they could criticize me. You mustn't sell the house, Selwyn. That is why I wired you to come. I was afraid it might be too late—if I waited."
Still doubting, Selwyn looked at me as if it could not be true, that which I was saying, and again the room grew still. Then—
Presently, and after a long and understanding while, he broke its stillness, though when he spoke it was difficult to hear him. "We will always keep them, these rooms in Scarborough Square. We will need them as well as the house without its walls. And I— You must have patience with me, Danny. Are you sure you have enough?" "I have not quite as much as you will need for me. And yet—when there is love enough there is enough of all things else. We have waited long to be sure. Surely—oh, surely now—"
"We know?" He bent lower. "Yes, I think now—we know."