People Like That Part 8

I shook my head. "Of course I'm not thinking of leaving you." I waved my hand in response to his wave of the bottle, and, not seeing where I went, I turned the corner and, head bent to keep out of my face the tiny particles of sleet and snow beginning to fall, walked for some distance before noticing where I was.

Much of my city, unknown to me a short while ago, was now familiar, but to much I was still a stranger, and presently I was wondering concerning the occupants of the houses I was pa.s.sing. The shabby gentility and dull respectability of the latter was depressing, and to escape the radiation of their dreariness I turned into first one street and then another, and as I walked the girl with the boyish face walked with me, the face with its hunted fear. She had held the baby as if frightened, and when she turned the corner she was running. She was so young. Could the baby be hers? It must be hers. Nothing but a mother-face could have in it what hers had. Why was she afraid, and of what?

The streets were becoming rough and unpaved before I noticed I was nearing the city limits, and, cutting across afield, I got into the Avenue, toward the end of which was Selwyn's house. As I neared it my steps slowed. For years the Thorne property had been on the outskirts of the city, but progress had taken it in, and already houses, flagrantly modern and architecturally shameless, offered strong contrast to its perfect lines, its conscious dignity, its calm aloofness, and its stone walls which shielded it from gaping gaze and gave it privacy. The iron gates were closed, the shutters drawn, and from the place stillness that was oppressive radiated, a stillness that was ominous.

Pride was undoubtedly Selwyn's dominating characteristic. Pride in his name, in its unstained honor, in the heritage of his fathers; and in the presence of his house it seemed an ugly dream--the picture ever in my mind, the picture of Selwyn walking slowly with a young girl in the dark of a winter afternoon in a section of the city as removed from his as sunlight is removed from shadow. In his nature was nothing that could make such a.s.sociation imaginable. If no higher deterrent prevented, pride would protect him from doubtful situations. He was sensitive to higher deterrents, however, as sensitive as I.

Pa.s.sing the gates, on the stone columns of which the quaint, old-fashioned lamps of former days were still nightly lighted, I glanced through them at the snow-covered lawn and the square-built, lonely house, occupied now only by Selwyn and his younger brother Harrie, then again hurried on. The Avenue with its great width and unbroken length, its crystal-coated trees and handsome houses, was now deserted save for hurrying limousines and an occasional pedestrian; and safe in the fierceness of the snow, from encounter with old friends, I decided to walk home through the section of the city which was the only part I once knew well, and just as I decided I knocked into some one turning a corner as I approached it.

"Oh, Miss Heath!" The woman drew back. "The snow was so thick I didn't see you. Did I hurt you?"

"Not a bit." I wiped my face, damp with melted flakes which had brushed it. "What are you doing up here? You look as frozen as I feel. Have you got on overshoes?"

The woman shook her head. "I haven't got any. I wouldn't have come out, but I had to bring some work back to Mrs. Le Moyne. If she'd paid me I'd have bought a pair of rubbers. But she didn't pay me.

She said she'd let me have the money next week."

"Next week! You need it this minute. How much does she owe you?"

"Four seventy-five for these last things, and four twenty-five for those I made last week. I don't know what I'm going to do." The woman's hands, cold and stiff, twisted nervously. "I don't reckon she's ever had to think about rent, or food, or fuel, or overshoes.

People like that don't have to. I wish they did, sometimes."

"So do I. Come on; it's too cold to stop. We'll go down to Benson's and get something hot to warm us up. I forgot about lunch. Turn your coat-collar up--the snow is getting down your neck--and take my m.u.f.f. I've got pockets and you haven't."

As we started off a large limousine with violets in the gla.s.s vases of its interior, upholstered in fawn-colored cloth, stopped just ahead of us, and a woman I did not know got out of it, followed by one I knew well. Fur coats entirely covered their dresses, and quickly the chauffeur opened an umbrella to protect their hats. As we pa.s.sed I started to speak to Alice Herbert, but, turning her head, she gave me not even a blink of recognition. At first I did not understand; then I laughed.

"Who is that?" Mrs. Beck's voice was awed. "Ain't they grand? Do you know them?"

"No." I put my hands in the pockets of my long coat. "I used to know one of them, the feeble-minded one. We'd better go over to High Street and take a car to Benson's. The storm's getting worse. We'll have to hurry."

The street lamps were being lighted as we reached Scarborough Square, and at sight of the house, in the doorway of which Mrs. Mundy was standing, I hurried, impelled by impulse beyond defining. Mrs. Beck had left me at the corner, and as Mrs. Mundy closed the door behind me she followed me up the steps.

"I've been that worried about you I couldn't set still long at a time, and Bettina's been up three times to see that your fire was burning all right. I knew you didn't have your umbrella or overshoes. It's a wonder you ain't froze stiff. I'll bring your tea right up."

"I've had tea, thank you." I held out first one foot and then the other to the blazing coals, and from the soles of my shoes came curling steam. "It's a wonderful storm. I'd like to walk ten miles in it. I don't know why you were worried. I'm all right."

"I know you are, but"--she poked the fire--"but I wish you wouldn't go so hard. For near two weeks you haven't stopped a minute. You can't stand going like that. I wish I'd known where to find you.

Mr. Thorne was here this afternoon. He was very anxious to see you."

"Mr. who?" I turned sharply, then put my hands behind me to hide their sudden twisting. I was cold and tired, and the only human being in all the world I wanted to see was Selwyn. It was intolerable, this tormenting something that was separating us. "When was he here?" I asked, and leaned against the mantel.

"He came about three, but he waited half an hour. He didn't say much, but he was powerful put out about your not being home. He couldn't wait any longer, as he had to catch a train--the four-thirty, I think."

"Where was he going?" I sat down in the big wing-chair and the fingers of my hands interlaced. "Did he say where he was going?"

"He didn't mention the place, just said he had to go away and might be gone some time. He'll write, I reckon. He was awful disappointed at not seeing you. He asked me--" Mrs. Mundy, on her knees, unb.u.t.toned my shoes and drew them off. "Your feet are near 'bout frozen, and no wonder. Your stockings are wet clean through, and I'm letting you sit here in them when I promised him I'd see you didn't kill yourself doing these very things. You just put your feet on the fender while I get some dry clothes. He says to me, says he: 'Mrs.

Mundy, the one human being she gives no thought to is herself, and will you please take care of her? She don't understand'"--

"Oh, I do understand!" My voice was wearily protesting. "The one thing men don't want women to do is to understand. They want us to be sweet and pretty--and not understand. Selwyn talks as if I were a child. I am perfectly able to take care of myself."

"Maybe you are, but you don't do it--least-ways, not always. I promised him I wouldn't let you wear yourself out, and I promised him--"

"What?"

"That I wouldn't let you go too far. He says you've lost your patience with people, specially women, who think it's not their business to bother with things that--that aren't nice, and you're apt to go to the other extreme and forget how people talk."

"About some things they don't talk enough. Did--did he leave any message for me?"

Again Mrs. Mundy shook her head. "I think he wanted to talk to you about something he couldn't send messages about."

CHAPTER XII

Selwyn has been gone two weeks. I have heard nothing from him. I do not even know where he is.

Yesterday, over the telephone, Kitty reproached me indignantly for not coming oftener to see her. Each week I try to take lunch or dinner with her, but there have been weeks when I could not see her, when I could not get away. Scarborough Square and the Avenue are not mixable, and just now Scarborough Square is taking all my time.

Daily new demands are being made upon me, new opportunities opening, new friendships being formed, and though my new friends are very interesting to me, I hardly think they would be to Kitty. I rarely speak of them to her.

Miss Hardy, the woman labor inspector for the state, a girl who had worked in various factories since she was twelve and who had gotten her education at a night school, where often she fell asleep at her desk, I find both entertaining and instructing, but Kitty would not care for her. She wears spectacles, and Kitty has an unyielding antipathy for women who wear spectacles. Neither would she care for Miss Bayne, another state employee, a clever, capable woman who is an expert in her line. It is her business to discover feeble-mindedness, to test school children, and inmates of inst.i.tutions to which they have been sent, or of places to which they have gone because of incapacity or delinquency or sin of any sort; and nothing I have read in books has been so revealing concerning conditions that exist as her frank statements simply told.

In my sitting-room at Scarborough Square she comes in frequently for tea with me, and meets there Fannie Harris, the teacher of an open-air school for the tuberculosis children of our neighborhood; and Martha White, the district nurse for our particular section; meets Miss Hay, a probation officer of the Juvenile Court, and Loulie Hill, a girl from the country who had once gone wrong, and who is now trying to keep straight on five dollars a week made in the sewing-room of one of the city's hospitals. Bettie Flynn, who lives at the City Home because of epileptic fits, also comes in occasionally. Bettie is a friend of Mrs.

Mundy. Owing to kinlessness and inability to care for herself, owing, also, to there being nowhere else to which she could go, she has been forced to enter the Home. Her caustic comments on its management are of a clear-cut variety. Bettie was born for a satirist and became an epileptic. The result at times is speech that is not guarded, a calling of things by names that are their own.

These and various others who are facing at short range realities of which I have long been personally ignorant, are taking me into new worlds, pumping streams of new understandings, new outreaches, into my brain and heart, and life has become big and many-sided, and a thing not to be wasted. Myself of the old life I am seeing as I never saw before, seeing in a perspective that does not fill with pride.

Last night I went to my first dinner-party since Aunt Matilda's death.

In Kitty's car I watched with interest, on the way to her house, the long stretches of dingy streets, then cleaner ones, with their old and comfortable houses; the park, with its bare trees and shrubs, and finally the Avenue, with its smooth paving and pretentious homes, its hurrying cars of luxurious make, its air of conscious smartness. As contrast to my present home it interested greatly.

Kitty's house is very beautiful. She is that rare person who knows she does not know, and the house, bought for her by her father as a wedding-gift, she had put in the hands of proper authorities for its furnishings. It is not the sort of home I would care to have, but it is undeniably handsome, and undoubtedly Kitty understands the art of entertaining.

Her dinner-party was rather a large one, its honor guest an English writer whose books are unendurably dull; but any sort of lion is helpful in reducing social obligations, and for that purpose Kitty had captured him. She insisted on my coming, but begged me not to mention horrid things, like poor people and politics and babies who died from lack of intelligent care, but to talk books.

"So few of the others talk books, except novels, and he thinks most modern novels rotten," she had told me over the telephone. "So please come and splash out something about these foreign writers whose names I can't remember. Bergyson is one, I believe, and Brerr another, and France-Ana--Ana something France. He's a man. And there's another one. Mater. . . Yes, that's it. Maeterlinck. And listen: Wear that white crepe you wore at my wedding; it's frightfully plain, but all your other things are black. I don't see why you still wear black.

Aunt Matilda hated it."

As I went up-stairs to take off my wraps I smiled at Kitty's instructions. In her room she hastily kissed me.

"Do hurry and come down. I'm so afraid he'll come before the others, and I might have to talk to him. Literary people are the limit, and this one, they say, is the worst kind. Billy refuses to leave his room until you go down; says he'd rather be sent to jail than left alone with him ten minutes. He met him at the club."

Holding me off, she surveyed me critically. "You look very well.

That's a good-looking dress. It suits you. I believe you wear pearls and these untrimmed things just to bring out your hair and eyes.

n.o.body but you could do it."

Stopping her short, quick sentences, she leaned forward. "There he is, coming up the steps with Mr. Alexander. Come on; they're inside. We can go down now. By the way"--she pinned the orchids at her waist with unnecessary attention--"Selwyn got back yesterday. He will be here to-night. d.i.c.k Moran is sick, and Selwyn is taking his place. At first he declined to come. For weeks he's been going nowhere, but he finally promised. Are you ready?"