That Girl Montana Part 48

"Oh! But how could she know me?"

"She did not know your name; she only described you, remembering that I had talked with you and your friends. When I told her you were in the city, she begged so for you to come that I could not refuse to try."

"You did right," she answered. "But it is very strange--very strange."

Then the carriage stopped before a dingy house in a row that had once belonged to a very fashionable quarter, but that was long ago. Boarding houses they were now, and their cla.s.s was about number three.

"It is a horrible place to bring you to, Miss Rivers," confessed her guide; "and I am really glad Miss Seldon did not accompany you, for she never would have forgiven either of us. But I knew you would not be afraid."

"No, I am not afraid. But, oh, why don't they hurry?"

He had to ring the bell the second time ere any one came to the door.

Then, as the harsh jangle died away, steps were heard descending the stairs, and a man without a coat and with a pipe in his mouth, shot back the bolt with much grumbling.

"I'll cut the blasted wire if some one in the shebang don't tend to this door better," he growled to a lady with a mug of beer, who just then emerged from the lower regions. "Me a-trying to get the lines of that new afterpiece in my head--chock-full of business, too!--and that bell clanging forever right under my room. I'll move!"

"I wish you would," remarked Harvey, when the door opened at last. "Move a little faster when you do condescend to open the door. Come, Miss Rivers--up this way."

And the lady of the beer mug and the gentleman of the pipe stared at each other, and at the white vision of girlhood going up the dark, bad-smelling stairway.

"Well, that's a new sort in this castle," remarked the man. "Do you guess the riddle of it?"

The woman did not answer, but listened to the footsteps as they went along the hall. Then a door opened and shut.

"They've gone to Goldie's room," she said. "That's queer. Goldie ain't the sort to have very high-toned friends, so it can't be a long-lost sister,"

and she smiled contemptuously.

"She's a beauty, anyway, and I'm going to see her when she makes her exit, if I have to sit up all night."

"Oh! And what about the afterpiece?"

"To the devil with the afterpiece! It hasn't any angels in it."

Inside Goldie's room, a big Dutch blonde in a soiled blue wrapper sat by the bed, and stared in open-mouthed surprise at the new-comers.

"Is it _you_ she's been askin' for?" she asked, bluntly.

But 'Tana did not reply, and Harvey got the blonde to the door, and after a few whispered words, induced her to go out altogether, and closed the door behind her.

"I thought you'd come," whispered the little woman on the bed. "I thought the note would bring you. I saw you talk to him, and I dropped to the game. You're square, too, ain't you? That's the kind I want now. That swell who went for you is the right sort, too. I minded his face and yours. But tell him to go out for a minute. It won't take long--to tell you."

Harvey went, at a motion from 'Tana. She had not uttered a word yet. All she could do was to stare in wonder at the wreck of a woman before her--a painted wreck; for, even on her deathbed, the ghastly face was tinted with rouge.

"I can't get well--doctor says," she continued. "There was a baby; it died yesterday--three hours old; and I can't get well. But there is another one I want to tell you of. You tell him. It is two years old. Here is the address. Maybe he will take care of it for me. He was good-hearted--that's why he married me; thought I was only a little girl without a home. Any woman could fool him, for he thought all women were good. He thought I was only a little girl; and I had been married three years before."

She smiled at the idea of that past deception, while 'Tana's face grew hard and white.

"How you look!" said the dying woman. "Well, it's over now. He never cared for me much, though--not so much as others did. He was never my real husband, you know, for I never had a divorce. He thought he was, though; and even after he left me, he sent me money regular for me to live quiet in 'Frisco, but it didn't suit me. Then he got turned dead against me when I tried to make him think the child was his. He wouldn't do anything for me after that; I had cheated him once too often."

"And was it?" It was the first time 'Tana had spoken, and the woman smiled.

"You care, too, do you? Well, yes, it was. You tell him so; tell him I said so, and I was dying. He'll take care of her, I think. She's pretty, but not like me. He never saw her. She's with a woman in Chicago, where I boarded. I haven't paid her board now for months, but it's all right; the woman's a good soul. Dan Overton will pay when you tell him."

"You write an order for that child, and tell the woman to give it to me,"

said 'Tana, decidedly, and looked around for something to write with. A sheet of paper was found, and she went to Harvey for a pencil.

"'Most ready to go?" he asked, looking at her anxiously.

She nodded her head, and shut the door.

"But I can't write now; my hands are too weak," complained the woman. "I can't."

"You've _got_ to!" answered the girl; and, taking her in her strong young hands, she raised her up higher on the pillow. "There is the paper and pencil--now write."

"It will kill me to lay like this."

"No matter if it does; you write."

"You're not a woman at all; you're like iron--white iron," whined the other. "Any woman with a heart--" and the weak tears came in her eyes.

"No, I have no heart to be touched by you," answered the girl. "You had a chance to live a decent life, and you wouldn't take it. You had an honest man to trust you and take care of you, and you paid him with deceit.

Don't expect pity from me; but write that order."

She tried to write but could not, and the girl took the pencil.

"I will write it, and you can sign it," she said; "that will do as well."

Thus it was accomplished, and the woman was again laid lower in the bed.

"You are terrible hard on--on folks that ain't just square," she said.

"You needn't be so proud; you ain't dead yet yourself. You don't know what may happen to you."

"I know," said the girl, coldly, "that if I ever brought children into the world, to be thrown on strangers' hands and brought up in the streets to live your sort of life, I would expect a very practical sort of h.e.l.l prepared for me. Have you anything more to tell me? I'm going."

"Oh--h! I wish you hadn't said that about h.e.l.l. I'm dreadful afraid of h.e.l.l," moaned the woman.

"Yes," said the girl; "you ought to be."

"How hard you are! And the doctor said I would die to-night."

Then she lay still quite a while, and when she spoke again, her voice seemed weaker.

"You have that order for Gracie, and you are so hard-hearted. I don't know what you will do--and I don't want her to grow up like me."

"That is the first womanly thing I have heard you say," replied the girl.

She went over to the bed and took the woman's hands in hers, looking at her earnestly.

"Your child shall have a beautiful and a good home," she said, rea.s.suringly. "I am going for her myself to-morrow, and she will never lack care again. Have you any other word to give me?"