People Like That Part 11

At my nod he pushed a low rocker closer to the fire and placed a foot-stool properly. Drawing up the wing-chair he sat down and looked around the room. As the light fell on him I noticed the olive, almost swarthy, coloring of his skin, his deep-sunk eyes with their changing expressions of gravity and humor, of tolerance and intolerance, and I knew he was the sort of man one could talk to on any subject and not be misunderstood. His hair was slightly gray, and frequently his well-shaped hand would brush back a long lock that fell across his temple. His clothes were not of a clerical cut, and evidently had seen good service; and that he gave little attention to personal details was evidenced by his cravat, which was midway of his collar, and his collar of a loose, ill-fitting kind.

About him was something intensely earnest, intensely eager and alert, and, watching him, I realized he belonged to that little group which through the ages has dared to differ with accepted order; and for his daring he had suffered, as all must suffer who feel as well as think.

"You don't mind," the smile on his face was whimsical, "if I take a good draught of this, do you? It's been long since I've seen just this sort of thing." His eyes were on a picture between two windows. "Out of Denmark one rarely sees anything of Skovgaard's.

That Filipinno Lippi is excellent, also. At the Hermitage in St.

Petersburg I tried to get a copy like that"--he nodded at Rembrandt's picture of himself--"but there was none to be had. Did you get yours there?"

"Four years ago. I also got that photograph of Houdon's Voltaire there."

He looked in the direction to which I pointed, and, getting up, went over to first one picture and then another, and studied them closely. A bit of bronze, a statuette or two, an altar-piece, a chalice, a flagon, a paten, a censer, and an ikon held his attention, one after the other, and again he turned to me.

"These are very interesting. Is it as one of the faithful you collect?" A smile which strangely lighted his face swept over it.

"Oh no!" I shook my head. "The faithful would find me a most disturbing person. I ask too many questions." My hand made movement in the direction of the bookshelves around the four sides of the room, on the tops of which were oddly a.s.sorted little remembrances of days of travel. "A study of such things is a study of religious expression at different periods and among different peoples. They've always interested me."

"They interest me, also." Mr. Guard stood before the ikon, looked long upon it before coming back to the fire and again sitting down.

For a moment he gazed into it as if forgetting where he was, then he leaned back in his chair and turned to me.

"A collection of examples of ecclesiastical art, of religious ideas embodied in objects used for purposes of worship, is interesting--yes--but a collection of re-actions against what they fail to represent would be more so, could they be collected."

"They have been--haven't they? In the lives of those who dare to differ, to break from heritage and tradition, much has been collected and transmitted. The effect of re-actions is what counts, I suppose."

"Their inevitability is what people do not seem to understand."

Leaning forward, he again looked into the fire, his hands between his knees. "The teachings of Christ having been twisted into a system of theology, and the Church into an organization based on dogma and doctrine, re-action is unescapable. However, we won't get on that." Again he straightened. "Was it re-action that brought you to Scarborough Square? I beg your pardon! I have no right to ask. There was something you wished to ask me, I believe."

For a moment there was silence, broken only by the flames of the fire, which spluttered and flared and made soft, whispering sounds, while on the window-panes the snow, now turning into sleet, tapped as if with tiny fingers, and my heart began to beat queerly.

I did not know how to ask him what I wanted to ask. There was much he could tell me, much I wished to hear from a man's standpoint, but how to make him understand was difficult. He had faced life frankly, knew what was subterfuge, what sincere, and the restrictions of custom and convention no longer handicapped him.

Between sympathy and sentimentality he had found the right distinction, and his judgment and emotions had learned to work together. My judgment and emotions were yet untrained.

"The girl down-stairs," I began. "You and Mrs. Mundy seem to know her. If she belongs, as I imagine, to the world down there," my hand made motion behind me, "Mrs. Mundy will think I can do nothing. But cannot somebody do something? Must things always go on the same way?"

"No. They will not always go on the same way. They will continue so to go, however, until women--good women--understand they must chiefly bring about the change. For centuries women have been cowards, been ignorant of what they should know, been silent when they should speak. They prefer to be--"

"White roses! But white roses do not necessarily live in hot-houses." I pushed my chair farther from the fire. "That is one of the reasons I am here. I want to know where women fail."

He looked up. "One does not often find a woman willing to know.

Behind the confusion of such terms as ignorance and innocence most women continue their irresponsibility in certain directions. They have accepted man's decree that certain evils, having always existed, must always exist, and they have made little effort to test the truth of the a.s.sertion. Lillie Pierce and the women of her world are largely the product of the att.i.tude of good women toward them. To the sin of men good women shut their eyes, pretend they do not know. They do not want to know."

"They not only do not want to know, themselves--that is, many of them--but they would keep others from knowing. Perhaps it is natural. So many things have happened to life in the past few years that even clever, able women are still bewildered, still uncertain what is right to do. Life can never be again what it once was, and still, most of us are trying to live a new thing in an old way. We have so long been purposely kept ignorant, so long not permitted to have opinions that count, so long been told our work is elsewhere, that cowardice and indifference, the fear of inability to deal with new conditions, new obligations, new responsibilities, still holds us back. I get impatient, indignant, and then I realize--"

David Guard laughed. "That many are still in the child cla.s.s?"

His head tossed back the long lock of hair that fell over his forehead. "It is true, but certainly you do not think because I see the backwardness, the blindness of some women, I do not see the forwardness, the vision of others? Men have hardly guessed as yet that it is chiefly due to women that the world is now asking questions it has never asked before, beginning to look life in the face where once it blinked at it. Because of what women have suggested, urged, insisted on, and worked for, the social conscience all over the earth has been aroused, social legislation enacted, and social dreams stand chance of coming true. Certain fields they have barely entered yet, however. It is easy to understand why. When they realize what is required of them, they will not hold back. But as yet, among the women you know, how many give a thought to Lillie Pierce's world, to the causes and conditions which make her and her kind?"

I shook my head. "I do not know. I've never heard her world discussed."

"I suppose not. In this entire city there are few women who think of girls like Lillie Pierce, or care to learn the truth concerning them; care enough to see that though they went unto dogs, unto dogs they need not return if they wish to get away. Most people, both men and women, imagine such girls like their hideous life; that they entered it from deliberate choice. Out of a hundred there may be a dozen who so chose, but each of the others has her story, in many instances a story that would shame all men because of man." He glanced at the clock and got up quickly.

"I'm sorry, but I've got to go. I'd entirely forgotten an engagement I'm compelled to fill. May I come again?" He held out his hand. "I've heard about you, of course. I've wanted to know you. There's much I'd like to talk to you about. When you leave Scarborough Square and go back into your world, you can tell it many things it should know. Some day it will understand." Abruptly he turned and left the room.

CHAPTER XV

The girl down-stairs, the girl named Lillie Pierce, was taken on the back porch this morning, and for the first time Mrs. Mundy left me alone with her.

"When the snow's gone and the sun shines, the cot can be rolled out, I told the doctor," Mrs. Mundy tucked the covering closely around the shrinking figure, "but chill and dampness ain't friends to feeble folks, and there's plenty of fresh air without going outdoors. It's hard to make even smart folks like doctors get more 'n one idea at a time in their heads, and in remembering benefits, they forget dangers.

Are you ready, child, for a whiff of sunshine? It's come at last, the sun has."

The girl nodded indifferently, but as the cot was pushed into the porch I saw her lips quiver, saw her teeth bitten into them to hide their quivering, and I nodded to Mrs. Mundy to go inside, and I, too, left her for a moment and went down the steps to the little garden being made ready for the coming of spring. Around the high fence vines had been planted, a trellis or two put against the porch for roses and clematis, and close to the gate an apple-tree, twisted and gnarled, gave promise of blossoms, if not of fruit. Already I loved the garden which was to be.

"Violets are to be here and tulips there," I said, under my breath, and wondered if Lillie were herself again, if I could not go back. "A row of snowdrops and bleeding-hearts would look lovely there--" Something green and growing in a sheltered corner near the house caught my eye, and stooping, I pulled the little blossom, and went up the steps to Lillie's cot and gave it to her.

Eagerly she held out her hands and the silence of days was broken. The bitterness that had filled her eyes, the scorn that had drawn her thin lips into forbidding curves, the mask of control which had exhausted her strength, yielded at the sight of a little brown-and-yellow flower, and with a cry she kissed it, pressed it to her face.

"It used to grow, a long bed of it, close to the kitchen wall where it was warm, and where it bloomed before anything else." The words came stumblingly. "Mother loved it best of all her flowers; she had all sorts in her garden."

With a quick turn of her head she looked at me, in her face horror, in her eyes tumultuous pain, then threw the flower from her with a wild movement, as if her touch had blighted it. "Why don't you let me die!"

she cried. "Oh, why don't you let me die!"

I drew a chair close to the cot and sat down by it. For a while I said nothing. Things long locked within her, long held back, were struggling for utterance. In the days she had been with us her silence had been unbroken, but gradually something bitter and rebellious had died out of her face, and into it had come a haunted, hunted look, and yet she would not talk. Until she was ready to speak we knew it was best to say nothing to her of days that were past, or of those that were to come.

Mrs. Mundy had known her before she came to Scarborough Square. In a ward of one of the city's hospitals, where her baby was born, she had found her alone, deserted, and waiting her time. Two days after its birth the baby died.

When she left the hospital there was nowhere for her to go. She had lived in a city but a short time and knew little of its life, and yet she must work. Mrs. Mundy got a room for her, then a place in a store, and she did well, kept to herself, but somebody who knew her story saw her, told the proprietor, and he turned her off. He couldn't keep girls like that, he said. It would injure his business. Later, she got in an office. She had learned at night to do typewriting, and there one of the men was kind to her, began to give her a little pleasure every now and then. She was young. It was dreary where she lived, and she craved a bit of brightness. One night he took her to what she found was--oh, worse than where she has since lived, for it pretended to be respectable.

"She was terribly afraid of men. It wasn't put on; it was real. I know pretense when I see it." Mrs. Mundy, who was telling me of the girl, changed her position and fixed the screen so that the flames from the fire should not burn her face. "Ever since the father of the child had deserted her, she had believed all men were wicked, but this man had been so friendly, so kindly, she thought he was different from the others. When she found where she was, she was crazy with fear and anger, and made a scene before she left. The next morning when she went to work she was told her services were no longer needed, and told in a way that made her understand she was not fit to work in the room with other girls. The man who had charge of the room was the man she had thought a friend. He's got his job still."

The ticking of the clock on the mantel alone broke the stillness of the room as Mrs. Mundy stopped. I tried to say something, but words would not come.

"For years I've heard the stories of these poor creatures." Mrs.

Mundy's even tones steadied somewhat the protesting tumult in my heart.

"For years I've known the awful side of the lives they lead. I didn't have money or learning or influence, or the chance to make good people understand, even if they'd been willing to hear, what I could tell, but I could help one of them every now and then. There 're few of them who start out deliberate to live wrong. When they take it up regular it's 'most always because they're like dogs at bay. There's nothing else to do."

"What became of Lillie when she lost her place?" I got up from the sofa and came closer to the fire. My teeth were chattering.

"She lost her soul. She went in a factory, but the air made her sick, and after three faints they turned her off. It interrupted the work and made the girls lose time running to her, and so she had to go.

After a while--I was away at the time--the woman she lived with turned her out. She owed room rent, a good deal of it, and she needed food and clothes, and there was no money with which to buy them. It got her crazy, the thought that because she had done wrong she was but a rag to be kicked from place to place with only the gutter to land in at last, and--well, she landed. But she isn't all bad. I used to feel about girls like her just as most good people still feel, but I've come to see there's many of them who are more sinned against than sinning. The men who make and keep them what they are go free and are let alone."

"Couldn't she have gone home? You said she was from the country.

Wouldn't they let her come back home?"

Mrs. Mundy shook her head. "Her own mother was dead and her stepmother wouldn't let her come. She had young children of her own. Last month she tried to end it all. She won't be here much longer. The doctor says she'll hardly live six months. If we can get her in the City Home--"

"The City Home!" The memory of what I had seen there came over me protestingly. The girl had lived in h.e.l.l. She need not die in it.

"Perhaps she can be sent somewhere in the country," I said, after a while. "Mr. Guard might know of some one who will take her. Certainly she can stay here until--until he knows what is best to do."

Mrs. Mundy got up. For a moment she looked at me, started to say something, then went out of the room. She was crying. I wonder if I said anything I shouldn't.