The Shadow Part 26

"The trade is like that," Sophie Switsky answered wisely. "People want everything the same time, made the same way. Then the fashions change, and people throw away all that they have and buy again."

"How silly," Hertha thought to herself. The ways of trade seemed to her lacking not so much in humanity as in ordinary common sense.

Their way lay along the same streets until they came almost to Hertha's door when they said good-night, Sophie refusing to allow her new acquaintance to go further. "It is nothing to get wet," she averred, "I used to it;" and she hurried on, mingling so swiftly with the crowd that thronged the Bowery that Hertha soon lost sight of her small figure. She felt attracted to this young Jewish girl, and yet she half feared that she, too, like Kathleen, had a vision, and she questioned whether she desired another friend who wished to change the world.

And yet, when she had finished a supper alone and had dropped wearily into a chair by the lamp, she found she was almost ready for a world-change herself. She was too tired to care to read, too tired for coherent thought. In her head buzzed and hummed and roared the machines of the shop and every now and then her whole body twitched convulsively.

Outside the rain beat steadily upon the pavement. It was a night like this, she remembered, that she had been carried, a little new-born baby, and placed on mammy's big bed. Who did such a thing? Not her young mother who had died so soon after her birth. Not her grandfather who in the end had given her his name. Was it her mother's mother who had tried to hide the family shame? She shrewdly suspected so. Well, she had not succeeded, for here was Hertha Ogilvie, after all. It was not so easy to hide a white child, not so easy to stifle the spirit of remorse.

As she sat in her chair, her eyes half closed, she found her thoughts, as so often happened, drifting back to her home among the pines, to the cabin with the white sand at the doorway and the red roses clambering over the porch. Instead of coming home to this empty flat, Ellen and her mother and Tom were on hand to welcome her. They helped take off her things, they dried her shoes, they gave her hot coffee to drink. Was it foolish to have gone away to enter the life of this ruthless city that held you in a mad whirl of work for half the year and for the other half left you to starve; this city in which there was no time for a pleasant homecoming and an evening meal together; this city in which you met a friendly face and lost it again in the great crowds that swarmed in millions over the miles of narrow streets? Her head drooped as though nodding yes to her questions, and her eyes wholly closed.

But just then the doorbell rang.

CHAPTER XX

It was the bell of the outer door, and Hertha went to the kitchen to push the b.u.t.ton that released the latch. Who could be coming to see Kathleen, she thought, on such a wretched night? Of course, some one who needed her services as nurse; and, going into the hall, she opened the outer door of the flat the better to guide the stranger upstairs.

"May I come in?"

It was a very wet figure that stood before her clasping a hat in one hand and in the other a large cotton umbrella that dripped puddles of water upon the floor. The question was asked in a jovial tone, and yet the man's att.i.tude betrayed something like timidity.

"Certainly," Hertha answered. "Give me your umbrella; it's very wet."

"No, tell me where to put it; you mustn't get any of this rain on you,"

and Richard Shelby Brown followed Hertha as she led the way into the kitchen.

Together they put the umbrella into the washtub where it could drip harmlessly, and then, divested of his coat and hat, the young man went with his hostess into the front room where she insisted that he sit close to the radiator to get dry.

When she had seated him to her satisfaction and was back in her chair by the table there was silence. Now that d.i.c.k Brown's bodily wants were cared for, Hertha began to question herself how he had ever gotten there, and to wonder whether she should not be angry with him for following her uninvited to her home. But she was too homesick, too much in need of companionship, not to feel a little pleasure in seeing him, his long legs tucked under his straight chair, his thin face making a grotesque silhouette against the window shade. He was certainly homely and a pusher, just an ordinary "hill billy," as he had described himself. She decided that since he had come uninvited he must begin the conversation.

d.i.c.k Brown, as though appreciating his position, opened his mouth to speak and then sneezed--not once, but a number of times.

"You've taken a cold already," Hertha said sympathetically. "You shouldn't have come out to-night."

"No, I haven't, indeed I haven't. I'm just getting over one."

"How long have you had it?"

"About a month."

"I believe you got it that morning in the park. You shouldn't have given me your overcoat."

"That had nothing to do with it!" Brown spoke with a kindly bl.u.s.ter.

"Nothing to do with it. Don't you think that for a minute. You see, after you left, I got playing with the kids and they squeezed snow down my neck and I lambasted them and we had a grand lark. It was mighty fine, but I learned that snow melts and then----"

He sneezed again.

"It was too bad," Hertha exclaimed. "It's so hard to be ill away from home."

"I reckon it is! Your meals set down by the side of your bed, the gruel cold and full of lumps, no one to growl at when your head aches and you can't go to sleep! It's a mighty poor state of things."

"I'm afraid you were pretty sick."

"Just missed pneumonia."

"You ought not to have come out to-night." Hertha spoke with emphasis.

"Oh, I'm all hunky now. I've sat in the library most every night since they let me out. Wouldn't they grin at home if they saw me fooling this way with books! Why, I know more news out of the magazines this month than all of Casper County ever knew since the first moonshiner set up his still! I'm reeking with information. But I bet you're reading one of those three-volume novels they tell about that last a year. I couldn't wait any longer, so I came to headquarters."

"How did you get my address?" Hertha had not meant to ask the question, but it slipped out unawares.

"Don't make me explain, please. It's against all the rules and regulations and the librarian only told because at times I'm a beautiful liar."

His thin face, looking thinner than ever from his sickness, wore a worried expression, and one of his long hands moved nervously against his side. At home he was accounted a confident youth who could grab up a girl and swing away with her a little faster than the next man, but here in New York he was off his ground. Moreover, this very pretty young woman with her aristocratic ways gave him no help, but sat quite silent as though questioning what right he had in her home. Awkwardly he rose and played his last card.

"I've a letter I want you to see," he said, "it's from my mother. I wrote and told her about you and how I hoped we'd get acquainted, only New York's such a big place a girl has to be careful. It ain't much like our country towns in Dixie, is it? Anyway, she wrote in answer, and here's the letter. You can read it, postmark and all. Seems like it was written for you."

He handed the letter to her with an attempt at self-confidence; but she took it with so serious a face that, saying nothing further, he stood, almost humbly, awaiting her decision.

Hertha read the letter through. It was badly written and showed more than one lapse in spelling. Two pages were filled with admonitions to keep sober and serve the Lord; the third contained bits of local news: Cousin Sally Lou's visit, the number of partridges Uncle Barton had brought in for dinner. But on the last was the message that was doubtless meant for Hertha's eyes. "The young lady, from all you say, must be mighty grand, but she needn't be afraid of you. You weren't one to hang round the station every evening, or to steal out nights with the fellows to get whisky. You've been a good son, d.i.c.k, and every mother can't say that. Look at Jim Slade's mother, now----" and the letter ended with an account of Jim's latest escapade.

Hertha handed it back with a pleasant smile. "It reads just like the South, doesn't it?" she said cordially. "Down there we know every little happening, while in New York you have to tell a story to learn where I live."

The young man laughed noisily; his relief was great.

"You're right, all right," he said, sitting nearer her. "It's like one big family down there, and if a visitor drops in there ain't a person in town from the Baptist preacher to the poorest n.i.g.g.e.r who won't have the news. Are you a Baptist, Miss Hertha?"

"No, I'm an Episcopalian."

"Whew! We only know 'em by name our way. It's Baptist or Methodist with us, with once in a while a Christian place of worship. Ever seen a revival now?"

"Yes."

"Have you? I wouldn't have supposed that an Episcopalian would so much as go to one. But it's a wonderful sight, don't you think, when the sinners come to the penitent seat? I've seen 'em, big men, crying like babies. And then the preacher with his great voice calling 'em to repent and showing 'em the way to righteousness. And out from somewhere a woman'll start a song, perhaps 'Rock of Ages,' and the whole room'll be full of the sound of the hymn."

He grew eloquent as he spoke, picturing the scene he knew so well. In his narrow life the church and its emotional appeal had occupied an important place. He wanted to tell her that he had been among that group kneeling in repentance, that he was a sinner saved by grace; but there was an aloofness about her that kept him from going further. He could not guess that she had wholly forgotten him, and was sitting in a bare room where the dim lamp lighted a mult.i.tude of black faces; where the cries of "Amen" rang from the penitent seat, and where the black preacher, the only father she had ever known, called upon the Lord to give to His children mercy and forgiveness. Her visitor had never listened to such a revival as she!

There was a long silence. Then Richard Brown strove again to make conversation.

"The n.i.g.g.e.rs, now, they're a worthless lot, don't you think?"

Hertha started nervously. "I don't think so," she said.

"Don't you? I suppose you've had 'em in your family for a long time--old mammies and uncles. They don't grow that kind round our way, only a lot of worthless c.o.o.ns that won't do a lick of work unless they're driven to it."