Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter? Part 6

It was the letter which his friend had written when in that desperate frame of mind, which Avery read to Gertrude the day they had discussed the novel together. It was a strange, desperate letter, and it had greatly stirred Gertrude. One pa.s.sage in it had rather shocked her. It was this: "When a fellow is young, and knows little enough of life to accept the fictions of fiction as guides, he talks or thinks about it as 'love in a cottage.' After he has tried it a while, and suffered in heart and soul _because_ of his love of those whom he must see day after day handicapped in mind and wrecked in body for the need of larger means, he begins to speak of it mournfully as 'poverty with love' But when that awful day comes, when sickness or misfortune develops before his helpless gaze all the horrors of dependence and agony of mind that the future outlook shows him, then it is that the fitting description comes, and he feels like painting above the door he dreads to enter--'h.e.l.l at home.' Without the love there would be no home; without the poverty no h.e.l.l. Neither lightens the burdens of the other. Each multiplies all that is terrible in both."

Gertrude had listened to the letter with a sad heart. When she did not speak, Avery felt that he should modify some of its terms if he would be fair to his absent acquaintance.

"Of course he would have worded it a little differently if he had known that any one else would read it. He was desperate. He had gone through such a succession of disasters. If anything was going to fall it seemed as if he was sure to be under it, so I don't much wonder at his language after--"

"I don't wonder at it at all," said Gertrude, looking steadily into the fire. "What seems wonderful, is the facts which his words portray. I can see that they are facts; but what I cannot see is--is--"

"How he could express them so raspingly--so--?" began Avery, but she turned to him quite frankly surprised.

"Oh, no! Not that. But how can it be right that it should be so? And if it is not right, why do not you men who have the power, do something to straighten things out? Is this sort of suffering absolutely _necessary_ in the world?"

It was this talk and its suggestions which had led Avery to first take seriously into consideration the proposition that he run for a seat in the a.s.sembly. It seemed to him that men like himself, who had both leisure and convictions, might do some good work there, and he began to realize that the law-making of the state was left, for the most part, in very dangerous hands, and that a law once pa.s.sed must inevitably help to crystallize public opinion in such a way as to r.e.t.a.r.d freer or better action.

"To think of allowing that cla.s.s of men to set the standards about which public opinion forms and rallies!" he thought, as the professional politician arose before him, and his mind was made up. He would be a candidate. So the night after his experience at Grady's Pavilion he had another puzzle to lay before Gertrude. When he entered the hallway he was sorry to hear voices in the drawing-room. He had hoped to find Gertrude and her mother alone. His first impulse was to leave his card and call at another time, but the servant recognizing his hesitation, ventured a bit of information.

"Excuse me, Mr. Avery, but I don't think they will be here long. It's a couple of--They--"

"Thank you, James. Are they not friends of Miss Gertrude?"

James smiled in a manner which displayed a large capacity for pity.

"Well, sir, I shouldn't say they was exactly friends. No, sir, ner yet callers, sir. They're some of them Guilders."

Avery could not guess what Gertrude would have gilders in the drawing-room for at that hour, but decided to enter. "Mr. Avery;" said James, in his most formal and perfunctory fashion, as he drew back the portiere and announced the new arrival No one would have dreamed from the stolid front presented by the liveried functionary, that he had just exchanged confidences with the guest.

"Let me introduce my friends to you, Mr. Avery," began Gertrude, and two figures arose, and from one came a gay little laugh, a mock courtesy, and "Law me! It's him! Well, if this don't beat the Dutch!"

She extended her hand to him and laughed again. "We didn't shake hands last night, but now's we're regul'rly interduced I guess we will," she added.

Avery took her hand, and then offered his to her companion, and bowed and smiled again.

"Really, I shall begin to grow superst.i.tious," he said, in an explanatory tone to Gertrude. "I came here to-night to see if I could arrange to have you three young ladies meet; to learn if there was a chance at the Guild to--"

"Oh," smiled Gertrude, beginning to grasp the situation. "How very nice!

But these two are my star girls at the Guild now. We were just arranging some work for next week, but--"

"Yas, she wants to go down to that Spillini hole agin," broke in Ettie Berton, and Francis King glanced suspiciously from Gertrude to Avery. She wondered just what these two were thinking. She felt very uncomfortable and wished that he had not come in. She had not spoken since Avery entered, and he realized her discomfort.

"You treated us pretty shabbily last night, Miss King," he said, smiling, and then he turned to Gertrude. "She left me in the middle of a remark. We met at Grady's Pavilion, and if I'm elected, I learn that the fathers of both of these young ladies will be my companions-in-arms in the a.s.sembly. They--!" In spite of herself, Gertrude's face showed her surprise, but Ettie Berton broke in with a gay laugh.

"Are you in politics? Law me! I'd never a believed it. I don't see how you're agoin' to get on unless you get a--"

She realized that her remark was going to indicate a belief in certain incapacity in him, and she took another cue.

"My pa says n.o.body hardly can't get on in politics by himself. You see my pa is a sort of a starter for Fan's pa in politics, 're else he'd never got on in the world. Fan's pa backs him, and he starts things that her pa wants started."

Francis moved uneasily, and Gertrude said: "That is natural enough since they were friends here, and, I think you told me, were in business together, didn't you?"

Ettie laughed, and clapped her hands gaily. "That's good! In business together! Oh, Lord, I'll tell pa that. He'll roar. Why, pa is a prerofessional starter. He ain't in business with no particular one only jest while the startin's done."

The girl appeared to think that Avery and Gertrude were quite familiar with professional starters, and she rattled on gaily.

"I thought I'd die the time he started them butcher shops for Fan's pa, though. He hadn't never learnt the difference between a rib roast 'n a soup bone, 'n he had to keep a printed paper hung up inside o' the ice chest so's he'd know which kind of a piece he got out to sell; but he talked so nice an' smooth all the time he _was_ a gettin' it out, an'

tole each customer that the piece they asked fer was the 'choicest part of the animal,' but that mighty few folks had sense enough to know it--oh, it was funny! I used to get where I could hear him, and jest die a laughin'. He'd sell the best in the shop for ten cents a pound, an'

he'd cut it which ever way they ast him to, an' make heavy weight. His price list was a holy show, but he jest scooped in all the trade around there in no time, an' the other shops had to move. Then you ought t'

a seen Fan's pa come in there an' brace things up! Whew!" She laughed delightedly, and Francis's face flushed.

"He braced prices up so stiff that some o' the customers left, but most of 'em stayed rather'n hunt up a new place to start books in. Pa, he'd started credit books with _all_ of 'em.

"Pa, he was in the back room the first day Fan's pa and the new clerk took the shop, after pa got it good'n started. Him an' me most died laughin' at the kickin' o' the people. Every last one of 'em ast fer pa to wait on 'em, but Fan's pa he told 'em that he'd bankrupted hisself and had t' sell out to him. Pa said he wisht he had somethin' to bankrupt on. But, law, he'll never make no money. He ain't built that way. He's a tip top perfessional starter tho', ain't he, Fan?" she concluded with a gleeful reminiscent grimace at her friend. Francis shifted her position awkwardly, and tried to feel that everything was quite as it should be in good society, and Gertrude made a little attempt to divert the conversation to affairs of the Guild, but Ettie Berton, who appeared to look upon her father as a huge joke, and to feel herself most at home in discussing him, broke in again:--

"But the time he started the 'Stable fer Business Horses,' was the funniest yet," and she laughed until her eyes filled with tears, and she dried them with the lower part of the palms of her hands, rubbing them red.

"The boss told him not to take anything _but_ business horses. What he meant was, to be sure not to let in any fancy high-steppers, fer fear they'd get hurt or sick, an' he'd have trouble about 'em Well, pa didn't understand at first, an' he wouldn't take no mules, an' most all the business horses around there _was_ mules, an' when drivers'd ask him why he wouldn't feed 'em 'er take 'em in, he jest had t' fix up the funniest stories y' ever heard. He tole one man that he hadn't laid in the kind o' feed mules eat, n' the man told him he was the biggest fool to talk he ever see. The mule-man he--"

Francis King had arisen, and started awkwardly toward Gertrude, with her hand extended.

"I think we ought to go," she said, uneasily, her large eyes burning with mortification, and an oppressed sense of being at a disadvantage.

"So soon?" said Gertrude, smiling as she took her hand, and laid her other arm about the shoulders of Ettie, who had hastened to place herself in the group. "I was so entertained that I did not realize that perhaps you ought to go before it grows late--oh," glancing at a tiny watch in her bracelet, "it is late--too late for you to go way down there alone. I will send James, or--"

"Allow me the pleasure, will you not?" asked Avery, bowing first to Gertrude, and then toward Francis, and Gertrude said:--

"Oh, thank you, if--" but Ettie clapped her hands in glee.

"Well, that's too rich! Just as if we didn't go around by ourselves all the time, and--Lord! pa says if anybody carries me off he'd only go as far as the lamp-post, and drop me as soon as the light struck me! Now Fan's pretty, but--" she laughed, and made clawing movements in the air.

"n.o.body'll get away with Queen Fan's long's she's got finger-nails 'n teeth." She snapped her pretty little white teeth together with mock viciousness, and laughed again. "I'd just pity the fellow that tried any tomfoolery with Queen Fan. He'd wish he'd died young!"

They all laughed a bit at this sally, and Avery said he did not want Miss King to be forced to extremities in self-protection while he was able to relieve her of the necessity.

When James closed the door behind the laughing group, he glanced at Miss Gertrude to see what she thought of it, but he remarked to Susan later on, that "Miss Gertrude looked as if she was born 'n brought up that way herself. She didn't show no amus.e.m.e.nt ner no sarcasm in her face. An' as fer Mr. Avery, it was nothing short of astonishing, to see him offer his arms to those two Guilders as they started down the avenue."

And Susan ventured it as her present belief, that if Gertrude's father once caught any of her Guilders around, he'd "make short work of the whole business. She ought't be ashamed o' herself, so she ought. Ketch _me,_ if I was in her shoes, a consortin' with--"

"Anybody but me, Susie," put in the devoted James; but alas, for him, the stiff, unyielding hooked joint of his injured finger came first in contact with the wrist of the fair Susan as he essayed to clasp her hand, and she evaded the grasp and flung out of the room with a shiver.

"Keep that old twisted base-ball bat off o' me! I--"

"Oh, Susie!" said James, dolefully, to himself, as he slowly surrounded the offending member with the folds of his handkerchief, which gave it the appearance of being in hospital. "Oh, Susie! how kin you?"

When John Martin, on his way, intending to drop in for the last act of the opera, pa.s.sed Gertrude's door just in time to see Avery and the two girls come down the steps, his lip curled a bit, and his heart performed that strange feat which loving hearts have achieved in all the ages past, in spite of reason and of natural impulses of kindness. It took on a distinctly hard feeling towards Avery, and this feeling was not unmixed with resentment. "How dare he take girls like that to her house?

I was a fool to take her to the Spillinis, but I'd never be idiot enough to take that type of girl to _her_ house. Avery's political freak has dulled his sense of propriety."

Mr. Martin wondered vaguely if he ought not to say something to Gertrude's father, and then he thought it might possibly be better to touch lightly upon it himself in talking to her.

He had heard some gossip at the opera and in the club, which indicated that society did not approve altogether of some of the things Gertrude had recently said and done; but that it smiled approvingly at what it believed to be as good as an engagement between the young lady and Selden Avery. Martin ground his teeth now as he thought of it, and glanced again at the retreating forms of Avery and the two girls.

"It was that visit to the Spillinis, and the revelation of life which it gave her, that is to blame for it all," he groaned. "I was an accursed fool--an accursed fool!"

That night Gertrude lay thinking how charmingly Selden Avery had met the situation, and how well he had helped carry it off with Ettie and Francis. "He seemed to look at it all just as I do," she thought. I felt that I knew just what he was thinking, and he certainly guessed that I wanted him to see them home, exactly as if they had been girls of our own set. "Poor little Ettie! I wonder what we can do with, or for, such as she? She is so hopelessly--happy and ignorant." Then she fell asleep, and dreamed of rescuing Ettie from the fangs a maddened dog, and Francis stood by and looked scornfully at Gertrude's lacerated hands, and then pointed to her little friend's mangled body and the smile upon her dead lips.