diff options
| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-14 20:07:51 -0700 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-14 20:07:51 -0700 |
| commit | 8babd476b361ab0e35479bbf22e8432bf95e9c97 (patch) | |
| tree | 907f42b9c09aeee8081a2727a7c48076a6da307b /37355-h | |
Diffstat (limited to '37355-h')
| -rw-r--r-- | 37355-h/37355-h.htm | 4657 |
1 files changed, 4657 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/37355-h/37355-h.htm b/37355-h/37355-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d3ed83a --- /dev/null +++ b/37355-h/37355-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,4657 @@ +<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?> + +<!DOCTYPE html +PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" > + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en"> +<head> +<title> +Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter?, by Helen H. Gardener +</title> +<style type="text/css"> + <!-- + body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify} + P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; } + hr { width: 50%; text-align: center;} + .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; } + blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + .mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;} + .toc { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;} + .toc2 { margin-left: 20%;} + div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; } + div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; } + .figleft {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;} + .figright {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;} + .pagenum {display:inline; font-size: 100%; font-style:normal; + margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%; + text-align: right;} + .side { float: left; font-size: 75%; width: 25%; padding-left: 0.8em; + border-left: dashed thin; text-align: left; + text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; + font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;} + p.pfirst, p.noindent {text-indent: 0} + span.dropcap { float: left; margin: 0 0.1em 0 0; line-height: 1 } + pre { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;} + --> +</style> +</head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +Project Gutenberg's Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter?, by Helen H. Gardener + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter? + +Author: Helen H. Gardener + +Release Date: March 16, 2013 [EBook #37355] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRAY YOU, SIR, WHOSE DAUGHTER? *** + + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + +</pre> + +<div style="height: 8em;"> +<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> +</div> +<h1> +PRAY YOU, SIR, WHOSE DAUGHTER? +</h1> +<h2> +By Helen H. Gardener +</h2> +<h4> +R. F. Fenno & Company <br /><br /> 9 and 11 East 16th Street <br /><br /> +New York <br /><br /> 1892 +</h4> +<p> +<br /><br /> +</p> +<hr /> +<p> +<br /><br /> +</p> +<p> +I saw a woman sleeping. In her sleep she dreampt Life stood before her, +and held in each hand a gift—in the one Love, in the other Freedom. +And she said to the woman, "Choose!" +</p> +<p> +And the woman waited long; and she said: "Freedom!" And Life said, "Thou +hast well chosen. If thou hadst said, 'Love,' I would have given thee that +thou didst ask for; and I would have gone from thee, and returned to thee +no more. Now, the day will come when I shall return. In that day I shall +bear both gifts in one hand." I heard the woman laugh in her sleep. +</p> +<p> +Olive Schreener's Dreams. +</p> +<h3> +DEDICATED +</h3> +<h4> +With the love and admiration of the Author, <br /><br /> To Her Husband +</h4> +<p> +Who is ever at once her first, most severe, and most sympathetic critic, +whose encouragement and interest in her work never flags; whose abiding +belief in human rights, without sex limitations, and in equality of +opportunity leaves scant room in his great soul to harbor patience with +sex domination in a land which boasts of freedom for all, and embodies its +symbol of Liberty in the form of the only legally disqualified and +unrepresented class to be found upon its shores. +</p> +<p> +<br /><br /> +</p> +<hr /> +<p> +<br /><br /> +</p> +<h3> +Contents +</h3> +<p class="toc"> +<a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE. </a> +</p> +<p class="toc"> +<a href="#link2H_4_0002"> <b>PRAY YOU, SIR, WHOSE DAUGHTER?</b> </a> +</p> +<p class="toc"> +<a href="#link2H_4_0003"> I </a> +</p> +<p class="toc"> +<a href="#link2H_4_0004"> II. </a> +</p> +<p class="toc"> +<a href="#link2H_4_0005"> III. </a> +</p> +<p class="toc"> +<a href="#link2H_4_0006"> IV. </a> +</p> +<p class="toc"> +<a href="#link2H_4_0007"> V. </a> +</p> +<p class="toc"> +<a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VI </a> +</p> +<p class="toc"> +<a href="#link2H_4_0009"> VII. </a> +</p> +<p class="toc"> +<a href="#link2H_4_0010"> VIII. </a> +</p> +<p class="toc"> +<a href="#link2H_4_0011"> IX. </a> +</p> +<p class="toc"> +<a href="#link2H_4_0012"> X. </a> +</p> +<p class="toc"> +<a href="#link2H_4_0013"> XI. </a> +</p> +<p class="toc"> +<a href="#link2H_4_0014"> XII. </a> +</p> +<p class="toc"> +<a href="#link2H_4_0015"> XIII. </a> +</p> +<p class="toc"> +<a href="#link2H_4_0016"> XIV. </a> +</p> +<p class="toc"> +<a href="#link2H_4_0017"> XV. </a> +</p> +<p> +<a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF"> +<!-- H2 anchor --> </a> +</p> +<div style="height: 4em;"> +<br /><br /><br /><br /> +</div> +<h2> +PREFACE. +</h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>n the following story the writer shows us what poverty and dependence are +in their revolting outward aspects, as well as in their crippling effects +on all the tender sentiments of the human soul. Whilst the many suffer for +want of the decencies of life, the few have no knowledge of such +conditions. +</p> +<p> +They require the poor to keep clean, where water by landlords is +considered a luxury; to keep their garments whole, where they have naught +but rags to stitch together, twice and thrice worn threadbare. The +improvidence of the poor as a valid excuse for ignorance, poverty, and +vice, is as inadequate as is the providence of the rich, for their virtue, +luxury, and power. The artificial conditions of society are based on false +theories of government, religion, and morals, and not upon the decrees of +a God. +</p> +<p> +In this little volume we have a picture, too, of what the world would call +a happy family, in which a naturally strong, honest woman is shrivelled +into a mere echo of her husband, and the popular sentiment of the class to +which she belongs. The daughter having been educated in a college with +young men, and tasted of the tree of knowledge, and, like the Gods, +knowing good and evil, can no longer square her life by opinions she has +outgrown; hence with her parents there is friction, struggle, open revolt, +though conscientious and respectful withal. +</p> +<p> +Three girls belonging to different classes in society; each illustrates +the false philosophy on which woman's character is based, and each in a +different way, in the supreme moment of her life, shows the necessity of +self-reliance and self-support. +</p> +<p> +As the wrongs of society can be more deeply impressed on a large class of +readers in the form of fiction than by essays, sermons, or the facts of +science, I hail with pleasure all such attempts by the young writers of +our day. The slave has had his novelist and poet, the farmer his, the +victims of ignorance and poverty theirs, but up to this time the +refinements of cruelty suffered by intelligent, educated women, have never +been painted in glowing colors, so that the living picture could be seen +and understood. It is easy to rouse attention to the grosser forms of +suffering and injustice, but the humiliations of spirit are not so easily +described and appreciated. +</p> +<p> +A class of earnest reformers have, for the last fifty years, in the press, +the pulpit, and on the platform, with essays, speeches, and constitutional +arguments before legislative assemblies, demanded the complete +emancipation of women from the political, religious, and social bondage +she now endures; but as yet few see clearly the need of larger freedom, +and the many maintain a stolid indifference to the demand. +</p> +<p> +I have long waited and watched for some woman to arise to do for her sex +what Mrs. Stowe did for the black race in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," a book that +did more to rouse the national conscience than all the glowing appeals and +constitutional arguments that agitated our people during half a century. +If, from an objective point of view, a writer could thus eloquently +portray the sorrows of a subject race, how much more graphically should +some woman describe the degradation of sex. +</p> +<p> +In Helen Gardener's stories, I see the promise, in the near future, of +such a work of fiction, that shall paint the awful facts of woman's +position in living colors that all must see and feel. The civil and canon +law, state and church alike, make the mothers of the race a helpless, +ostracised class, pariahs of a corrupt civilization. In view of woman's +multiplied wrongs, my heart oft echoes the Russian poet who said: "God has +forgotten where he hid the key to woman's emancipation." Those who know +the sad facts of woman's life, so carefully veiled from society at large, +will not consider the pictures in this story overdrawn. +</p> +<p> +The shallow and thoughtless may know nothing of their existence, while the +helpless victims, not being able to trace the causes of their misery, are +in no position to state their wrongs themselves. +</p> +<p> +Nevertheless all the author describes in this sad story, and worse still, +is realized in everyday life, and the dark shadows dim the sunshine in +every household. +</p> +<p> +The apathy of the public to the wrongs of woman is clearly seen at this +hour, in propositions now under consideration in the Legislature of New +York. Though two infamous bills have been laid before select committees, +one to legalize prostitution, and one to lower the age of consent, the +people have been alike ignorant and indifferent to these measures. When it +was proposed to take a fragment of Central Park for a race course, a great +public meeting of protest was called at once, and hundreds of men hastened +to Albany to defeat the measure. +</p> +<p> +But the proposed invasion of the personal rights of woman, and the +wholesale desecration of childhood has scarce created a ripple on the +surface of society. The many do not know what laws their rulers are +making, and the few do not care, so long as they do not feel the iron +teeth of the law in their own flesh. Not one father in the House or Senate +would willingly have his wife, sister, or daughter subject to these +infamous bills proposed for the daughters of the people. Alas! for the +degradation of sex, even in this republic. When one may barter away all +that is precious to pure and innocent childhood at the age of ten years, +you may as well talk of a girl's safety with wild beasts in the tangled +forests of Africa, as in the present civilizations of England and America, +the leading nations on the globe. +</p> +<p> +Some critics say that every one knows and condemns these facts in our +social life, and that we do not need fiction to intensify the public +disgust. Others say, Why call the attention of the young and the innocent +to the existence of evils they should never know. The majority of people +do not watch legislative proceedings. +</p> +<p> +To keep our sons and daughters innocent, we must warn them of the dangers +that beset their path on every side. +</p> +<p> +Ignorance under no circumstances ensures safety. Honor protected by +knowledge, is safer than innocence protected by ignorance. +</p> +<p> +A few brave women are laboring to-day to secure for their less capable, +less thoughtful, less imaginative sisters, a recognition of a true +womanhood based on individual rights. There is just one remedy for the +social complications based on sex, and that is equality for woman in every +relation in life. +</p> +<p> +Men must learn to respect her as an equal factor in civilization, and she +must learn to respect herself as mother of the race. Womanhood is the +great primal fact of her existence; marriage and maternity, its incidents. +</p> +<p> +This story shows that the very traits of character which society (whose +opinions are made and modified by men) considers most important and +charming in woman to ensure her success in social life, are the very +traits that ultimately lead to her failure. +</p> +<p> +Self-effacement, self-distrust, dependence and desire to please, +compliance, deference to the judgment and will of another, are what make +young women, in the opinion of these believers in sex domination, most +agreeable; but these are the very traits that lead to her ruin. +</p> +<p> +The danger of such training is well illustrated in the sad end of Ettie +Berton. When the trials and temptations of life come, then each one must +decide for herself, and hold in her own hands the reins of action. +Educated women of the passing generation chafe under the old order of +things, but, like Mrs. Foster in the present volume, are not strong enough +to swim up stream. But girls like Gertrude, who in the college curriculum +have measured their powers and capacities with strong young men and found +themselves their equals, have outgrown this superstition of divinely +ordained sex domination. The divine rights of kings, nobles, popes, and +bishops have long been questioned, and now that of sex is under +consideration and from the signs of the times, with all other forms of +class and caste, it is destined soon to pass away. +</p> +<p> +Elizabeth Cady Stanton +</p> +<p> +<a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> +<!-- H2 anchor --> </a> +</p> +<div style="height: 4em;"> +<br /><br /><br /><br /> +</div> +<h2> +PRAY YOU, SIR, WHOSE DAUGHTER? +</h2> +<p> +<a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> +<!-- H2 anchor --> </a> +</p> +<div style="height: 4em;"> +<br /><br /><br /><br /> +</div> +<h2> +I +</h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>o say that Mrs. Foster was cruel, that she lacked sympathy with the +unfortunate, or that she was selfish, would be to state only the dark half +of a truism that has a wider application than class or sex could give it; +a truism whose boundary lines, indeed, are set by nothing short of the +ignorance of human beings hedged in by prejudice and handicapped by lack +of imagination. So when she sat, with dainty folded hands whose jeweled +softness found fitting background on the crimson velvet of her trailing +gown, and announced that she could endure everything associated with, and +felt deep sympathy for, the poor if it were not for the besetting sin of +uncleanliness that found its home almost invariably where poverty dwelt, +it would be unjust to pronounce her hard-hearted or base. +</p> +<p> +"It is all nonsense to say that the poor need be so dirty," she announced, +as she held her splendid feather fan in one hand and caressed the dainty +tips of the white plumes with the tips of fingers only less dainty and +white. +</p> +<p> +"I have rarely ever seen a really poor man, woman, or child who was at the +same time really clean looking in person, and as to clothes—" +</p> +<p> +She broke off with an impatient and disgusted little shrug, as if to say—what +was quite true—that even the touch of properly descriptive words +held for her more soilure than she cared to bear contact with. +</p> +<p> +John Martin laughed. Then he essayed to banter his hostess, addressing his +remarks meanwhile to her daughter. +</p> +<p> +"One could not imagine your mamma a victim of poverty and hunger, much +less of dirt, Miss Gertrude," he began slowly; "but even that sumptuous +velvet gown of hers would grow to look more or less—let us say—rusty, +in time, I fear, if it were the only costume she possessed, and she were +obliged to eat, cook, wash, iron, sew, and market in it." +</p> +<p> +The two ladies laughed merrily at the droll suggestion, and Miss Gertrude +pursed up her lips and developed a decided squint in her eyes as she +turned them upon the folds of her mother's robe. Then she took up Mr. +Martin's description where the laugh had broken in upon it. +</p> +<p> +"Too true, too true," she drawled; "and if she dusted the furniture a week +or so with that fan, I'm afraid it would lose more or less of its—gloss. +Mamma quite prides herself upon the delicate peach-fuzz-bloom, so to +speak, of those feathers. Just look at them!" The girl reached over and +took the fan from her mother's lap. She spread the fine plumes to their +fullest capacity, and held them under the rays of the brass lamp that +stood near their guest. Then she made a flourish with it in the direction +of the music stand, as if she were intent upon whisking the last speck of +dust from the sheets of Tannhauser that lay on its top A little cry of +alarm and protest escaped Mrs. Foster's lips and she stretched oat her +hand to rescue the beloved fan. +</p> +<p> +"Gertrude! how can you?" She settled back comfortably against the cushions +of the low divan with her rescued treasure once more waving in gentle +gracefulness before her. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, no," she protested. "Of course one could not work or live constantly +in one or two gowns and look fresh, but one could look and be clean and—and +whole. A patch is not pretty I admit, but it is a decided improvement upon +a bare elbow." +</p> +<p> +"I don't agree with you at all," smiled her guest; "I don't believe I ever +saw a patch in all my life that would be an improvement upon—upon—" +He glanced at the lovely round white arms before him, and all three +laughed. Mrs. Foster thought of how many Russian baths and massage +treatments had tended to give the exquisite curve and tint to her arm. +</p> +<p> +"Then beside," smiled Mr. Martin, "a rent or hole may be an immediate +accident, liable to happen to the best of us. A patch looks like +premeditated poverty." Gertrude laughed brightly, but her mother did not +appear to have heard. She reverted to the previous insinuation. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, well; that is not fair! You know what I mean. I'm talking of elbows +that burst or wear out—not about those that never were intended to +be in. Then, besides, it is not the elbow I object to; it is the hole one +sees it through. <i>It</i> tells a tale of shiftlessness and personal +untidiness that saps all sympathy for the poverty that compelled the long +wearing of the garment." +</p> +<p> +"Why, my dear Mrs. Foster," said Martin, slowly, "I wonder if you have any +idea of a grade of poverty that simply can't be either whole or clean. Did—?" +</p> +<p> +"I'll give up the whole, but I won't give in on the clean. I can easily +see how a woman could be too tired, too ill, or too busy to mend a +garment; I can fancy her not knowing how to sew, or not having thread, +needles, and patches; but, surely, surely, Mr. Martin, no one living is +too poor to keep clean. Water is free, and it doesn't take long to take a +bath. Besides—" +</p> +<p> +Gertrude looked at her mother with a smile. Then she said with her +sarcastic little drawl again:— +</p> +<p> +"Russian, or Turkish?" +</p> +<p> +"Well, but fun' and nonsense aside, Gertrude," said her mother, "a plain +hot bath at home would make a new creature out of half the wretches one +sees or reads of, and—" +</p> +<p> +"Porcelain lined bath-tub, hot and cold water furnished at all hours. +Bath-room adjoining each sleeping apartment," laughed Mr. Martin. "What a +delightful idea you have of abject poverty, Mrs. Foster. I do wish Fred +could have heard that last remark of yours. I went with his clerk one day +to collect rents down in Mulberry Street. He had the collection of the +rents for the Feedour estate on his hands—" +</p> +<p> +"What's that about the rents of the Feedour estate?" inquired the head of +the house, extending his hand to their guest as he entered. Mrs. Foster +put out her hand and her husband touched the tips of her fingers to his +lips, while Gertrude slipped her arm through her father's and drew him to +a seat beside her. Her eyes were dancing, and she showed a double row of +the whitest of teeth. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, Mr. Martin was just explaining to mamma how your clerk collects rent +for the porcelain bath-tubs in the Feedour property down in Mulberry +Street. Mamma thinks that bath-rooms should be free—hot and cold +water, and all convenient appointments." +</p> +<p> +Fred Foster looked at their guest for a moment, and then both men burst +into a hearty laugh. +</p> +<p> +"I don't see anything to laugh at," protested Mrs. Foster. "Unless you are +guying me for thinking Mr. Martin in earnest about the tubs being rented. +I suppose, of course, the bath-rooms go with the apartments, and one rent +covers the whole of it. In which case, I still insist that there is no +reason why the poor can't be clean, and if they have only one suit of +clothes, they can wash them out at night and have them dry next morning." +</p> +<p> +The men laughed again. +</p> +<p> +"Gertrude, has your mamma read her essay yet before the Ladies' Artistic +and Ethical Club on the 'Self-Inflicted Sorrows of the Poor?'" asked Mr. +Foster, pinching his daughter's chin, and allowing a chuckle of humorous +derision to escape him as he glanced at their guest. +</p> +<p> +"No," said the girl, a trifle uneasily; "Lizzie Feedour read last time. +Mamma's is next, and she has read her paper to me. It is just as good as +it can be. Better than half the essays used to be at college, not +excepting Mr. Holt's prize thesis on economics. I wish the poor people +could hear it. She speaks very kindly of their faults even while +criticising them. You—" +</p> +<p> +"Don't visit the tenement houses of the Feedour estate, dear, until after +you read your paper to the club," laughed her husband, "or your essay +won't take half so well. College theses and cold facts are not likely to +be more than third cousins; eh, Martin? I'm sure the part on cleanliness +would be easier for her to manage in discussion before she visited the +Spillini family, for example." +</p> +<p> +"Which one is that, Fred?" asked Mr. Foster. +</p> +<p> +Martin, a droll twinkle in his eye. "The family of eight, with Irish +mother and Italian father, who live in one room and take boarders?" +</p> +<p> +There was a little explosive "oh" of protest from Gertrude, while her +mother laughed delightedly. +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Martin, you are so perfectly absurd. Why didn't you say that the room +was only ten by fifteen feet and had but one window!" +</p> +<p> +"Because I don't think it is quite so big as that, and there is no outside +window at all," said he, quite gravely. "And their only bath-tub for the +entire crowd is a small tin basin also used to wash dishes in." +</p> +<p> +"W-h-a-t!" exclaimed Mrs. Foster, as if she were beginning to suspect +their guest's sanity, for she recognized that his mood had changed from +one of banter. +</p> +<p> +The portière was drawn aside, and other guests announced. As Mrs. Foster +swept forward to meet them, Gertrude grasped her father's arm and looked +into his eyes with something very like terror in her own. "Papa," she said +hastily, in an intense undertone; "Papa, is he in earnest? Do the Feedour +girls collect rent from such awful poverty as that? Do eight human beings +eat and sleep—live—in one room anywhere in a Christian +country? Does—?" +</p> +<p> +Her father took both of her hands in his own for a moment and looked +steadily into her face. +</p> +<p> +"Hundreds of them, darling," he said, gently. "Don't stare at Miss Feedour +that way. Go speak to her. She is looking toward us, and your mother has +left her with Martin quite long enough. He is in an ugly humor to-night. +Go—no, come," he said, slipping her hand in his arm and drawing her +forward through the long rooms to where the group of guests were greeting +each other with that easy familiarity which told of frequent intercourse +and community of interests and social information. +</p> +<p> +<a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> +<!-- H2 anchor --> </a> +</p> +<div style="height: 4em;"> +<br /><br /><br /><br /> +</div> +<h2> +II. +</h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>wo hours later Gertrude found herself near a low window seat upon which +sat John Martin. She could not remember when he had not been her father's +closest friend, and she had no idea why his moods had changed so of late. +He was much less free and fatherly with her. She wondered now if he +despised her because she knew so little of the real woes of a real world +about her, while she, in common with those of her station, sighed so +heavily over the needs of a more distant or less repulsive human swarm. +</p> +<p> +"Will you take me to see the Spillini family some day soon, Mr. Martin," +she asked, seating herself by his side. "Papa said that you were telling +the truth—were not joking as I thought at first." +</p> +<p> +Her eyes were following the graceful movements of Lizzie Feedour, as that +young lady turned the leaves of a handsome volume that lay on the table +before her, and a gentleman with whom she was discussing its merits and +defects. +</p> +<p> +"I don't believe the call would be a pleasure on either side," said Mr. +Martin, brusquely, "unless we sent word the day before and had some of the +family moved out and a chair taken in." +</p> +<p> +The girl turned her eyes slowly upon him, but she did not speak. The color +began to climb into his face and dye the very roots of his hair. She +wondered why. Her own face was rather paler than usual and her eyes were +very serious. +</p> +<p> +"You don't want to take me," she said. "I wonder why men always try to +keep girls from knowing things—from learning of the world as it is—and +then blame them for their ignorance! You naturally think I am a very +silly, light girl, but—" +</p> +<p> +A great panic overtook John Martin's heart. He could hardly keep back the +tears. He felt the blood rush to his face again, but he did not know just +what he said. +</p> +<p> +"I do not—I do not! You are—I—I—should hate to be +the one to introduce you to such a view of life. I was an old fool to talk +as I did this evening. I—" +</p> +<p> +"Oh, that is it!" exclaimed Gertrude, relieved. "You found me ignorant, +and content because I was ignorant, and you regret that you have struck a +chord—a serious chord—where only make-believe or merry ones +were ever struck between us before." +</p> +<p> +John Martin fidgeted. +</p> +<p> +"No, it is not that I would like to strike the first serious chord for you—in +your heart, Gertrude." +</p> +<p> +He had called her Gertrude for years. Indeed the Miss upon his lips was of +very recent date, but there was a meaning in the name just now as he spoke +it that gave the girl a distinct shock. She felt that he was covering +retreat in one direction by a mendacious advance in another. She arose +suddenly. +</p> +<p> +"Lizzie Feedour is looking her best tonight," she said. "She grows +handsomer every day." +</p> +<p> +She had moved forward a step, but he caught the hand that hung by her +side. She faced him with a look of mingled protest and surprise in her +face; but when her eyes met his, she understood. +</p> +<p> +"Gertrude, darling!" was all he could say. This time the blood dyed her +face and a mist blinded her for a moment. She remembered feeling glad that +her back was turned to everyone but him, and that the window drapery hid +his face from the others, for the intensity of appeal touched with the +faintest shimmer of happiness and hope told so plain a story that she +felt, rather than thought, how absurd it would look to anyone else. She +did not realize why it seemed less absurd to her. She drew her hand away +and the color died out of his face. Her own was burning. She had turned to +leave the room when his disappointed face swam before her eyes again. She +put out her hand quickly as if bidding him good-night and drew him toward +the door. He moved beside her as in a dream. +</p> +<p> +"After you take me to see the Spillini family," she said, trying to appear +natural to any eyes that might be upon her, "we—I—" They had +reached the portière. She drew it aside and he stepped beyond. +</p> +<p> +"There is no companionship between two people who look upon life so +unequally. Those who know all about the world that contains the Spillini +family and those who know nothing of such a world are very far apart in +thought and in development There is no mental comradeship. I feel very far +from my father to-night for the first time—mamma and I. I have +looked at her all the evening in wonder—and at him. I wonder how +they have contrived to live so far apart. How could he help sharing his +views and knowledge of life with her, if he thinks her and wishes her to +be his real companion and comrade. I could not live that way." +</p> +<p> +She seemed to have forgotten the newer, nearer question, in contemplating +the problem that had startled her earlier in the evening. John Martin +thought it was all a bit of kind-hearted acting to cover his retreat. He +dropped her hand. A man-servant was holding his coat. He thrust his arms +in and took his hat. +</p> +<p> +"Will you take me to see the Spillini family <i>tomorrow?</i>" asked a +soft voice from the portière. A great wave of joy rushed over John Martin. +He did not know why. +</p> +<p> +"Yes," he said, in a tone that was so distinctly happy that the +man-servant stared. The folds of the portière fell together and John +Martin passed out onto Fifth Avenue, in an ecstasy. +</p> +<p> +He is willing to share his knowledge of life with me—of life as he +sees and knows it—she thought, as she lay awake that night. He does +not wish to live on one plane and have me live on another. That looks like +real love. Poor mamma! Poor papa! How far apart they are. To him life is a +real thing. He knows its meaning and what it holds. She only knows a shell +that is furbished up and polished to attract the eye of children. It is as +if he were reading a book to her in a language he understood and she did +not. The sound would be its entire message to her, while he gathered in +and kept to himself all the meaning of the words—the force of the +thoughts. How can they bear such isolation. How can they? she thought with +a new feeling of passionate protest that mingled with her dreams. +</p> +<p> +<a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> +<!-- H2 anchor --> </a> +</p> +<div style="height: 4em;"> +<br /><br /><br /><br /> +</div> +<h2> +III. +</h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>ure an' I'd like to die meself if dyin' wasn't so costly," remarked Mrs. +Spillini, as she gazed with tear-stained eyes at the little body that +occupied the only chair in the dismal room. "Do the best we kin, buryin' +the baby is goin' to cost more than we made all winter out o' all three +boarders. Havin' the baby cost a dreadful lot altogether, an' now it's +dyin's a dreadful pull agin." +</p> +<p> +Gertrude Foster opened her Russian leather purse and Mrs. Spillini's eyes +brightened shrewdly. There was no need for the hesitancy and choice of +words that gave the young girl so much care and pain. Familiarity with all +the mean and gross of life from childhood until one is the mother of six +living and four dead children, does not leave the finest edge of sentiment +and pride upon the poverty-cursed victims of fate. +</p> +<p> +"If you would allow me to leave a mere trifle of money for you to use for +the baby, I don't—it is only—" began Gertrude; but the ready +hand had reached out for the money and a quick "Thanky mum; much obliged" +had ended the transaction. +</p> +<p> +"I shall not tell mamma <i>that"</i>, thought Gertrude, and she did not +look at John Martin. It was her first glimpse into a grade of life to +which all things, even birth and death, take on a strictly commercial +aspect; where not only the edge of sentiment is dulled by dire necessity, +but where the sentiment itself is buried utterly beneath the incrustations +of an ignorance that is too dumb and abject to learn, and a poverty that +is too insistent to recognize its own ignorance and degradation. +</p> +<p> +"Won't you set down?" inquired Mrs. Spillini, as with a sudden movement +she slid the small corpse onto the floor under the edge of the table. "I'd +a' ast you before, but—" +</p> +<p> +"O, don't!" exclaimed the girl; but before her natural impulse to stoop +and gather up the small bundle had found action possible, John Martin had +placed it on the table. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, Lord; don't!" exclaimed the woman, in sudden dismay. "The boarders'd +kick if they was to see it <i>there</i>. Boarders is different from the +family. We could ate affen the table afther, but boarders—boarders'd +kick." +</p> +<p> +"Could—do you think of anything else we could do for you?" inquired +Gertrude, faintly, as she held open the door and tried to think she was +not dizzy and sick from the dreadful, polluted air, and the shock of the +revelation, with all that it implied, before her. +</p> +<p> +Four dirty faces, and as many ragged bodies, were too close to her for +comfort. There was a vile stew cooking on the stove. The air was heavy and +foul with it Gertrude distinctly felt the greasy moisture on her kid +gloves as they touched each other. +</p> +<p> +"No, I don't know's they's anything <i>more</i> you can do," replied the +passive, hopeless wreck of what it was almost sacrilege to call womanhood. +"I don't know's they's anything more you could <i>do</i> unless you could +let the boarders come in now. They ain't got but a little over ten minutes +to eat in an' dinner's ready," she replied, as she lifted the pot of +steaming stuff into the middle of the table and laid two tin plates, a +large knife and a bunch of iron forks and spoons beside it. +</p> +<p> +"Turn that chair to the wall," she added sharply to one of the children, +who hastened to obey the command. "They'll <i>all</i> have to stand up to +it this time. I ain't a goin' to shift that baby round no more till it's +buried, now that I <i>kin</i> bury it. Take this side of the table, Pete. +I don't feel like eatin.' You kin have my place 'n the ole man ain't here. +Let go of that tin cup, you trillin' young one. All the coffee they is, is +in that. Have a drink, Mike?" she asked, passing the coveted cup to the +second boarder. Gertrude was half-way down the dark hallway, and John +Martin held her arm firmly lest she step into some unseen trap or broken +place in the floor. +</p> +<p> +When they reached the street door she turned to him with wide eyes. +</p> +<p> +"Great God," she moaned, "and people go to church and pray and thank God—and +collect rent from such as they! Men offer premiums to mothers and fathers +for large families of children—to be brought up like that? In a +world where that is possible! Oh, I think it is wicked, wicked, wicked, to +allow it—any of it—all of it! How can you?" +</p> +<p> +John Martin looked hopeless and helpless. +</p> +<p> +"I don't," he said, in pathetic self-defense, feeling somehow that the +blame was personal. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, I don't mean you!" she exclaimed, almost impatiently. "I mean all who +know it—who have known and understood it all along. How could men +allow it? How dared they? And to think of encouraging such people to marry—to +bring into a life like that such swarms of helpless children. Oh, the sin +and shame and outrage of it!" +</p> +<p> +John Martin was dazed that she should look upon it as she did. He was +surprised that she spoke so openly. He did not fully comprehend the power +and force of real conviction and feeling overtaken in a sincere and +fearlessly frank nature by such a knowledge for the first time. +</p> +<p> +"I should not have brought you here," he said, feebly, as they entered the +waiting carriage which her mother had insisted she should take if she +would go "slumming," as she had expressed it. +</p> +<p> +She turned an indignant face upon him. +</p> +<p> +"Why?" she demanded. +</p> +<p> +He tried to say something about a shock to her nerves, and such sights and +knowledge being not for women. +</p> +<p> +"I had begun to feel that he respected me—believed in me—wanted, +in truth and not merely in name, to share life with me," she thought, "but +he does not: it is all a sham. He wants someone who shall <i>not</i> share +life with him—not even his mental life." +</p> +<p> +"You would come here with papa, would you not?" she asked, presently. "You +would talk over, look at, think of the problems of life with him,"—her +voice began to tremble. +</p> +<p> +"Certainly," he said, "but that is different. It—" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, it is different; quite different. You love papa, and it would be a +pain to you to keep your mental books locked up from him. You respect +papa, and you would not be able to live a life of pretense with him. You—" +</p> +<p> +"Gertrude! Oh, darling! I love you. I love you. You know that," he said, +grasp ing both her hands and covering them with kisses. She snatched them +away, and covered her face with them to hide the tears which were a +surprise and shock to herself. +</p> +<p> +"I should not have taken her there," he thought. "I'm a great fool." +</p> +<p> +He did not at all comprehend the girl's point of view, and she resented +his. He could not imagine why, and her twenty years of inexperience in +handling such a view of life as had suddenly grown up within her, made her +unable to express quite fully why she did resent his assumption that she +should not be allowed to use her heart or brain beyond the limits set for +their exercise by conventional theory. She could not express in words why +she felt insulted and outraged in her self-respect that he should assume +that life was and should be led by her, upon a distinctly different and +narrower plane than his own. She knew that she could not accept his +explanation, that it was his intense love that wished to shield her from +knowledge of all that was ugly—of all the deeper and sadder meanings +of human experience; but she felt unequal to making him understand by any +words at her command how far from her idea of an exalted love such an +assumption was. +</p> +<p> +That he should sincerely believe that as a matter of course much that was +and should be quite common in his own life should be kept from, covered +up, blurred into indistinction to her, came to her with a shock too sudden +and heavy for words. She had built an exalted ideal of absolute mental +companionship between those who loved. She had always thought that one day +she should pass through the portals of some vast building by the side of a +husband to whom all within was new as it would be to her. She had fancied +that neither spoke; that both read the tablets of architecture—and +of human legend on every face—so nearly alike that by a glance of +the eye she could say to him, "I know what you are thinking of all this. +It stirs such or such a memory. It strikes the chord that holds these +thoughts or those." But she read as plainly now that this man who thought +he loved her, whom she had grown to feel she might one day love, had no +such conception of a union of lives. To him marriage would mean a physical +possession of a toy more or less valuable, more or less to be cherished or +to be set under a glass case, whenever his real life, his real thoughts, +his deeper self were stirred. These were to be kept for men—his +mentally developed equals. She understood full well that if she could have +said this to him he would have been shocked, would have resented such a +contemptuous interpretation of what he truly believed to be a wholly +respectful love, offered upon wholly respectful terms. But to her, it +seemed the mere tossing down of a filbert to a pretty kitten, that it +might amuse him for a few moments with its graceful antics. When he tired +of the kitten, or bethought him of the serious duties of life, he could +turn the key and count on finding the amusing little creature to play with +again next day in case he cared to relax himself with a sight of its +gambols. She resented such a view of the value of her life. She was +humiliated and indignant. The perfectly apparent lack of comprehension on +his part of any lapse of respect in attitude toward her, the entire +unconsciousness of the insult to her whole nature, in his assumption of a +divine right of individual growth and development to which she had no +claim, stung her beyond all power of speech. The very fact that he had no +comprehension of the affront himself, added to it its utterly hopeless +feature. The love of a man offered on such terms is an insult, she said, +over and over to herself; but aloud she said nothing. +</p> +<p> +She had heard, vaguely, through her tumult of feeling, his terms of +endearment, his appeals to her tenderness and—alas! unfortunately +for him—his apologies for having taken her to such a place. She +became distinctly aware of these latter first and it steadied her. They +had reached Washington Square. +</p> +<p> +"Yes, that revelation in Mulberry Street was a horrible shock to me," she +said, looking at him for the first time since they had entered the +carriage; "but, do you know, I think there are more shocking things than +even that done in the name of love every day—things as heartless and +offensively uncomprehending of what is fine and true in life as that +wretched woman's conduct with the lifeless form of her baby." +</p> +<p> +He recognized a hard ring in her voice, but her eyes looked kind and +gentle. +</p> +<p> +"How do you mean?" he asked, touching her hand as it lay on her empty +purse in her lap. +</p> +<p> +"I don't believe I could ever make you understand what I mean, we are so +hopelessly far apart," she said, a little sadly. "That an explanation is +necessary—that is the hopeless part. That that poor woman did not +comprehend that her conduct and callousness were shocking—<i>that</i> +was the hopeless part. To make you understand what I mean would be like +making her understand all the hundreds of awful things that her conduct +meant to us. If it is not in one's nature to comprehend without words, +then words are useless." +</p> +<p> +His vehement protests stirred her sympathy again. +</p> +<p> +"You say that love brings people near together. Do you know I am beginning +to think that nothing could be a greater calamity than that? Drawn +together by a love that rests on a physical basis for those who refuse to +allow it root in a common sympathy and a community of thought it must fail +sooner or later. A humbled acceptance of the crumbs of her husband's life, +or a resentful endurance of it, may result from the accursed faithfulness +or the pitiful dependence of wives, but surely—surely no greater +calamity could befall her and no worse fate lie in wait for him." +</p> +<p> +Her lover stared at her, pained and puzzled. When they reached her door he +grasped her hand. +</p> +<p> +"I thought you loved me last night, and I went away in an ecstasy of hope. +Today—" +</p> +<p> +"Perhaps I do love you," she said; "but I do not respect you, because you +do not respect me." He made a quick sound of dissent, but she checked him. +"You do not respect womanhood; you only patronize women—you only +patronize me. I could not give you a right to do that for life. Good-bye. +Don't come in this time. Wait. Let us both think." +</p> +<p> +"Let us both think," he repeated, as he started down the street. "Think! +Think what? I had no idea that Gertrude would be so utterly unreasonable. +It is a girl's whim. She'll get over it, but it is deucedly uncomfortable +while it lasts." +</p> +<p> +"Mamma," said Gertrude, when she reached her mother's pretty room on the +third floor. "Mamma, do you suppose if a girl really and truly loved a man +that she would stop to think whether he had a high or a low estimate of +womanhood?" +</p> +<p> +The girl's mother looked up startled. She was quite familiar with what she +had always termed the "superhumanly aged remarks" of her daughter, but the +new turn they had taken surprised her. +</p> +<p> +"I don't believe she would, Gertrude. Why? Are you imagining yourself in +love with some man who is not chivalrous toward women?" Mrs. Foster smiled +at the mere idea of her daughter caring much for any man. She thought she +had observed her too closely to make a mistake in the matter. +</p> +<p> +Gertrude evaded the first question. +</p> +<p> +"I once heard a very brilliant man say—what I did not then +understand—that chivalry was always the prelude to imposition. I +believe I don't care very especially for chivalry. Fair play is better, +don't you think so?" She did not pause for a reply, but began taking off +her long gloves. +</p> +<p> +"Which would you like best from papa, flattery or square-toed, honest +truth?" +</p> +<p> +Her mother laughed. +</p> +<p> +"Gertrude, you are perfectly ridiculous. The institution of marriage, as +now established, wouldn't hang together ten minutes if your square-toed, +honest truth, as you call it, were to be tried between husbands and wives. +Most wives are frightened nearly to death for fear they will become +acquainted with the truth some day. They don't want it. They were not—built +for it." Gertrude began to move about the room impatiently. Her mother +smiled at her and went on: "Don't you look at it that way? No? Well, you +are young yet. Wait until you've been married three years—" +</p> +<p> +The girl turned upon her with an indignant face. Then suddenly she threw +her arms about her mother's neck. +</p> +<p> +"Poor mamma, poor mamma," she said. "Didn't you find out for three years +<i>after?</i> How did you bear it? I should have committed suicide. I—" +</p> +<p> +"Oh, no you wouldn't!" said her mother, with a bitter little inflection. +"They all talk that way. Girls all feel so, if they know enough to feel at +all—to think at all. They rage and wear out their nerves—as +you are doing now, heaven knows why—and the beloved husband calls a +doctor and buys sweets and travels with the precious invalid, and never +once suspects that he is at the bottom of the whole trouble. It never +dawns upon him that what she is dying for is a real and loyal +companionship, such as she had fondly dreamed of, and not at all for sea +air. It doesn't enter his mind that she feels humiliated because she knows +that a great part of his life is a sealed book to her, and that he wishes +to keep it so." +</p> +<p> +She paused, and her daughter stroked her cheek. This was indeed a +revelation to the girl. She had been wholly deceived by her mother's gay +manner all these years. She was taking herself sharply to task now. +</p> +<p> +"But by and by when she succeeds in killing all her self-respect; when she +makes up her mind that the case is hopeless, and that she must expect +absolutely no frankness in life beyond the limits of conventional usage +prescribed for purblind babies; after she arrives at the point where she +discovers that her happiness is a pretty fiction built on air foundation—well, +daughter, after that she—she strives to murder all that is in her +beyond and above the petty simpleton she passes for—and she succeeds +fairly well, doesn't she?" +</p> +<p> +There was a cynical smile on her lips, and she made an elaborate bow to +her daughter. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, mamma, I beg your pardon!" exclaimed the girl, almost frightened. "I +truly beg your pardon! If—you—I—" +</p> +<p> +Her mother looked steadily out of the window. Then she said, slowly, "How +did you come to find all this out <i>before</i> you were married, child? +Have I not done a mother's duty by you in keeping you in ignorance, so far +as I could, of all the struggles and facts of life—of—" +</p> +<p> +The bitter tone was in her voice again. Gertrude was hurt by it, it was so +full of self-reproach mingled with self-contempt. She slipped her arm +about her mother's waist. +</p> +<p> +"Don't, mamma," she said. "Don't blame yourself like that. I'm sure you +have always done the best possible—the—" +</p> +<p> +Her mother laughed, but the note was not pleasant. +</p> +<p> +"Yes, I always did the lady-like thing,—nothing. I floated with the +tide. Take my advice, daughter,—float. If you don't, you'll only +tire yourself trying to swim against a tide that is too strong for you and—and +nothing will come of it. Nothing at all." The girl began to protest with +the self-confidence of youth, but her mother went on. She had taken the +bit in her teeth to-day and meant to run the whole race. +</p> +<p> +"Do you suppose I did not know about the Spillini family? About the +thousands of Spillini families? Do you suppose I did not know that the +rent of ten such families—their whole earnings for a year—would +be spent on—on a pretty inlaid prayer-book like this?" She tapped +the jeweled cross and turned it over on her lap. The girl's eyes were wide +and almost fear-filled as she studied her handsome care-free mother in her +new mood. +</p> +<p> +"Did you really suppose I did not know that this gem on the top of the +cross is dyed with the life-blood of some poor wretch, and that this one +represents the price of the honor of a starving girl?" She shivered, and +the girl drew back. "Did you fancy me as ignorant and as—happy—as +I have talked? Don't you know that it is the sole duty of a well-bred +woman to be ignorant—and happy? Otherwise she is morbid!" She +pronounced the word affectedly, and then laughed a bitter little laugh. +</p> +<p> +"Don't, mamma," said the girl, again. "I quite understand now, quite—" +She laid her head on her mother's bosom and was silent. Presently she felt +a tear drop on her hair. She put her hand up to her mother's cheek and +stroked it. +</p> +<p> +"The game went against you, didn't it, mamma?" she said softly. "And you +were not to blame." She felt a little shiver run over her mother's frame +and a sob crushed back bravely that hurt her like a knife. Presently two +hands lifted the girl's face. +</p> +<p> +"You don't despise me, daughter? In my position the price of a woman's +peace is the price of her own self-respect. I did not lose the game. I +gave it up!" +</p> +<p> +Gertrude kissed her on eyes and lips. "Poor mamma, poor mamma," she said +softly, "I wonder if I shall do the same!" For the first time since she +entered the room, the daughter appeared to appeal for, rather than to +offer, sympathy and strength. Her mother was quick to respond. +</p> +<p> +"If you never learn to love anyone very much, daughter, you may hope to +keep your self-respect. If you do you will sell it all—for his. And—and—" +</p> +<p> +"Lose both at last?" asked the girl, hoarsely. Katherine Foster closed her +eyes for a moment to shut out her daughter's face. +</p> +<p> +"Will you ever have had his?" she asked, with her eyes still closed. "Do +men ever truly respect their dupes or their inferiors? Do you truly +respect anyone to whom you are willing to deny truth, honor, dignity? Is +it respect, or only a tender, pitying love we offer an intellectual +cripple—one whose mental life we know to be, and desire to keep, +distinctly below our own? Do—" She opened her eyes and they rested +on an onyx clock. She laughed. "Come, daughter," she said, "it is time to +dress for the Historical Club's annual dinner. You know I am one of the +guests of honor to-day. They honor me so truly that I am not permitted to +join the club or be ranked as a useful member at all. My work they accept—flatter +me by praising in a lofty way; but I can have no status with them as an +historian—I am a woman!" +</p> +<p> +Gertrude sprang to her feet. Her eyes flashed fire. +</p> +<p> +"Don't go! I wouldn't allow them to—" The door opened softly. Mr. +Foster's face appeared. +</p> +<p> +"Why, dearie, aren't you ready for the Historical Club? I wouldn't have +you late for anything. You know I, as the vice-president, am to respond to +the toast on, 'Woman: the highest creation, and God's dearest gift to +mankind.' It wouldn't look well if you were not there." +</p> +<p> +"No, dear," she said, without glancing at Gertrude. "It would not look +well. I'll be ready in a minute. Will you help me, Gertrude?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes," said the girl, and her deft fingers flew at the task. When the door +closed behind her mother and the carriage rolled away, she threw herself +face down on the bed and ground her teeth. "Shall I float, or try to swim +up stream?" she said, to herself. "Will either one pay for what it will +cost? Shall—" +</p> +<p> +"Miss Gertrude, dinner is served," said the maid; and she went to the +table alone. +</p> +<p> +"To think that a visit to the Spillini family should have led to all +this," she thought, and felt that life, as it had been, was over for her. +</p> +<p> +Aloud she said:— +</p> +<p> +"James, the berries, please, and then you may go." +</p> +<p> +And James told Susan that in his opinion the man that got Miss Gertrude +was going to get the sweetest, simplest, yieldingest girl he ever saw +except one, and Susan vowed she could not guess who that one was. +</p> +<p> +But apparently James did not wholly believe her, for he essayed to +sportively poke her under the chin with an index finger that very +evidently had seen better days prior to having come into violent contact +with a base-ball, which, having a mind and a curve of its own, had +incidentally imparted an eccentric crook to the unfortunate member. +</p> +<p> +"Don't you dast t'touch me with that old pot-hook, er I'll scream," +exclaimed Susan, dodging the caress. "I don't see no sense in a feller +gettin' hisself all broke up that a way," and Susan, from the opposite +side of the butler's table, glanced admiringly at her own shapely hand, +albeit the wrist might have impressed fastidious taste as of too robust +proportions, and the fingers have suggested less of flexibility than is +desirable. +</p> +<p> +But to James the hand was perfect, and Susan, feeling her power, did not +scruple to use it with brutal directness. She had that shivering dislike +for deformity which, is possessed by the physically perfect, and she took +it as a private grievance that James should have taken the liberty to +break one of his fingers without her knowledge and consent. Until he had +met her, James had carried his distorted member as a badge of honor. No +warrior had worn more proudly his battle scars. For, to James, to be a +catcher in a base-ball club was honor enough for one man, and he had never +dreamed of a loftier ambition. He had grown to keep that mutilated finger +ever to the fore as a retired general might carry an empty sleeve. It gave +distinction and told of brave and lofty achievement, so James thought. +</p> +<p> +Susan had modified his pride in the dislocated digit, but he had not yet +learned to keep it always in the background. It had several times before +interfered with his love-making, and James was humble. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, now, Susie, don't you be so hard on that there old base-ball finger! +I didn't know it was a-going to touch your lovely dimple," and he held the +offending member behind his back, as he slowly circled around the table +towards the haughty Susan. "By gum! I b'lieve I left a mark on your chin. +Lemme see." She thought she understood the ruse, but when he kissed her +she pretended deep indignation and flounced out of the room, but the look +on her face caused James to drop his left eyelid over a twinkling orb and +shake his sides with satisfaction as he removed the dishes after Miss +Gertrude had withdrawn from the dining-room. +</p> +<p> +<a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> +<!-- H2 anchor --> </a> +</p> +<div style="height: 4em;"> +<br /><br /><br /><br /> +</div> +<h2> +IV. +</h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he visit to the Spillini family had, indeed, led to strange complications +and far-reaching results. No one who had known young Seldon Avery and his +social life would ever have suspected him, or any member of his set, of a +desire to take part in what, by their club friends or favorite reviews, +was usually alluded to as the "dirty pool of politics." For the past +decade political advancement, at least in New York, had grown to be looked +upon by many as a mere matter of purchase and sale, and as quite beneath +the dignity of the more refined and cultured men. It had been heralded as +a vast joke, therefore, when young Selden Avery, the representative of one +of the most cultured families and the honored son of an honored ancestry, +had suddenly announced himself as a candidate for the Assembly. His club +friends guyed him unmercifully. "We never did believe that you were half +as good as you pretended to be, Avery," said one of them, the first time +he appeared at the club after his nomination, "but I don't believe a man +of us ever suspected you of the depths of depravity that this implies. +What ever did put such a ridiculous idea into such a level and +self-respecting head? Out with it!" +</p> +<p> +Banter of this nature met him on every hand. He realized more fully than +ever how changed the point of view had grown to be from the historical +days of Washington or even of Lincoln. He recalled the time when in his +own boyhood his honored father had served in the Legislature of his native +state, and had not felt it other than a crowning distinction. Nor had it +been so looked upon then by his associates. +</p> +<p> +Nevertheless the constant jokes and gibes, which held something of a real +sting, had become so frequent that, young Avery felt like resenting his +friends' humorous thrusts. +</p> +<p> +"I can't see that I need be ashamed to follow in the footsteps of my +father," he said, a little hotly. "Some of the noblest of men—those +upon whom the history of this country depends for lustre—held seats +in the Assembly, and helped shape the laws of their states. I don't see +why I need apologize for a desire to do the same." +</p> +<p> +"It used to be an association of gentlemen up at the state capital, my +boy. Today it is—Lord! you know what it is, I guess. But if you +don't, just peruse this sacred volume," laughed his friend, sarcastically, +producing a small pamphlet. +</p> +<p> +"Looks to me as if you'd be rather out of your element with your +colleagues. 'M-m-m! Yes, here is the list. Hunted this up after I heard +you were going to stand for your district." +</p> +<p> +The English form of expression was no affectation, for the speaker was far +more familiar with political nomenclature abroad than at home. He would +have felt it an honor to a man to be called upon to "stand" for his +constituency in London, but to "run" for it in New York was far less +dignified. Standing gave an idea of repose; running was vulgar. Then, too, +the State Legislature did not bear the proportionate relationship to +Congress that the Commons did to Parliament, and it was always in +connection with that latter body that he had associated the term. +</p> +<p> +"Let me see. One, two, three, four, 'teen 'steen—yes, I thought I +was right! Just exactly nineteen of your nearest colleagues are saloon +keepers. One used to keep that disorderly house on Prince Street, four are +butchers, one was returned because he had won fame as a base-ballist and—but +why go further? Here, Martin, I'm trying to convince Avery that it will be +a trifle trying on his nerves to hobnob with the new set he's making for. +Don't you think it is rather an anti-climax from the Union to the lower +house at Albany? Ye gods!" and he laughed, half in scorn and half in real +amusement. +</p> +<p> +John Martin had extended his hand for the small pamphlet of statistics. He +ran his eye over the list, and then turned an amused face upon Avery. +</p> +<p> +"Think you'll like it?" he asked, dryly. "Or are you taking it as my +French friend here says his countrymen take heaven?" +</p> +<p> +"How's that?" queried Avery, smiling. "In broken doses—or not at +all?" +</p> +<p> +The French gentleman stood with that poise which belongs to the successful +man. He glanced from one to the other and spread his hands to either side. +</p> +<p> +"All Frenchmen desire to go to ze heaven, zhentlemen. Why? Ah, zere air +two at-traczions which to effrey French zhentle-man air irresisteble. Ze +angels—zey air women—and I suppose zat ze God weal also be an +attraction. Ees eet not so?" +</p> +<p> +Every one in the group laughed and he went on gravely on. +</p> +<p> +"I zink zat eet ees true—ees eet not?—zat loafly woman will +always be vara much ob-searved even in ze heaven eef we zhentlemen are +zere. Eef?" He cast up the comers of his eyes, and made another elaborate +movement of his hands. +</p> +<p> +The others all laughed again. +</p> +<p> +"Yes, zhentlemen, ze true Frenchman cares for two zings: a new sensation—someings +zey haf not before experienced,—and zat ees God; and for zat which +zey haf obsearved, but of which zey can naavear obsearve enough—loafly +woman!" +</p> +<p> +The explosion of laughter that greeted this sally brought about them a +number of other gentlemen, and the talk drifted into different channels. +Presently young Avery glanced at his watch and started, with rather a sore +heart toward the door. He remembered that he had promised the managers of +his campaign that he would be seen that evening at a certain open-air +garden frequented by the humbler portion of his constituency. He concluded +to go alone the first time that he might the better observe without +attracting too much attention. This plan was thought wise to enable him to +meet the exigencies of the coming campaign when he should be called upon +to speak to this element of this supporters. +</p> +<p> +Once outside the club house, he took a card from his pocket and glanced at +the directions he had jotted upon it. +</p> +<p> +"I'll walk across to the elevated," he thought, "and make my connection +for Grady's place that way. It will save time and look more democratic." +</p> +<p> +<a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> +<!-- H2 anchor --> </a> +</p> +<div style="height: 4em;"> +<br /><br /><br /><br /> +</div> +<h2> +V. +</h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he infinite pathos of life was never better illustrated, perhaps, than in +the merrymaking that night at Grady's Pavilion. The easy camaradarie +between conscious and unconscious vice; the so-evident struggle the young +girls had made to be beautiful and stylish, and the ghastly result of +their cheap and incongruous finery; their ignorant acceptance of leers +that meant to them honest admiration or affection, and to others meant far +different things; their jolly, thoughtless, eager effort to get something +joyful out of their narrow lives; the brilliant tints in which they saw +the future, and the ghastly light in which it stood revealed to older and +more experienced eyes, would have combined to depress a heart less tender +and a vision less clear than could have been attributed to Selden Avery. +Not that Grady's Pavilion was a bad place. +</p> +<p> +Many of the girls present would not have been there had it been known as +anything short of quite respectable; but it was a free and easy place, +where vice meets ignorance without having first made an appointment, where +opportunity shakes the ungloved hand of youth and leaves a stain upon the +tender palm too deep and dark for future tears to wash away. +</p> +<p> +"I wonder if I am growing morbid," mused Avery, as he sighed for the third +time while looking at the face of a girl not over eighteen years old, but +already marked by lines that told of a vaguely dawning comprehension of +what the future held for her. Her round-eyed companion, a girl with a +childish mind and face, sat beside her, but all the world was bright to +her. Life held a prince, a fortune and a career which would be hers one +day. She had only to wait, look pretty, and be ready when the apple of +fortune fell. Her part was to hold out a pretty apron to break its +descent. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, the infinite pathos of youth!" muttered Avery, feeling himself very +old with his thirty years of wider experience as his eyes turned from one +girl to the other. "It is hard to tell which is the sadder sight; the +disillusioned one or the one who will be even more roughly awakened +to-morrow." +</p> +<p> +His heart ached whenever he studied the face of a young girl. "There is +nothing so sad in all the wretched world," he sometimes said, "as the +birth of a girl in this grade of life. I am not sure that the nations we +look upon as barbarous because they strangle the little things before they +are able to think—I am not at all sure that they are not more +civilized than we after all. We only maim them with ignorance and utter +dependence, and then turn them out into a life where either of these alone +is an incalculable curse, and the combination is as fatal as fire in a +field of ripened grain." +</p> +<p> +The younger girl was looking at him. Her wide expectant eyes rested on his +face with a frankness and interest that touched his mood anew. +</p> +<p> +"Poor little thing," he said, half aloud; "if I were to see her bound hand +and foot and cast into a den of wolves, I might hope to rescue her; but +from this, for such as she there is absolutely no escape. How dare people +bring into the world those who must suffer?" +</p> +<p> +"Huh?" said a voice beside him. He had spoken in a semi-audible tone, and +his neighbor had responded after his habitual fashion, to what he looked +upon as an overture to conversation. +</p> +<p> +"I did not intend to speak aloud," said Avery, turning to glance at the +man beside him; "but I was just wondering how people dared to have +children—girls particularly." +</p> +<p> +The man beside him turned his full face upon him and examined him +critically from head to foot. Then he laughed. It was the first time he +had ever heard it hinted that it was not a wholly commendable thing to +bring as many children into the world as nature would permit. His first +thought had been that Avery was insane, but after looking at him he +decided that he was only a grim joker. +</p> +<p> +"I reckon they don't spend no great deal of time prayin' over the +subject," he said, laughing again. Then he crossed his legs and added, +"an' I don't suppose they get any telegrams tellin' them they're goin' to +<i>be</i> girls, neither. If they did, a good many men would lick the boy +that brought the despatch, for God knows most of us would a dam sight +ruther have boys." +</p> +<p> +The laugh had died out of his voice, and there was a ring of +disappointment and aggrieved trouble in it. Selden Avery shifted his +position. +</p> +<p> +"I was not looking at it from the point of view of the parents of +unwelcome girls," he said, presently, "but from the outlook of the girls +of unwelcome parents. The reckoning from that side looks to me a good deal +longer than the other." His voice was pleasant, but his eyes looked +perplexed and determined. His neighbor began to readjust his opinion of +Avery's sanity, and moved his chair a little farther away before he spoke. +</p> +<p> +"Got any children of your own?" he inquired, succinctly. Avery shook his +head. The man drew down the comers of his mouth in a contemptuous grimace. +"I thought not. If you had, you'd take it a dam sight easier. Children are +an ungrateful lot. They're never satisfied—or next to never. They +think you're made for their comfort instead of their bein' for yours. I've +got nine, and I know what I'm talkin' about. If you've got any sympathy to +throw away don't waste it on children. Parents, in these days of +degenerate youngsters, are passin' around the hat for sympathy. In my day +it was just the other way. If one of the young ones went wrong, people +pitied the father and blamed the child. Now-a-days they blame the father +and weep over the young one that makes the mischief. It makes me mad." +</p> +<p> +He shut his teeth with a suddenness that suggested a snap, and flashed a +defiant look about the room. +</p> +<p> +Avery glanced at his heavy, stubborn face, and decided not to reply. He +was in no mood for controversy. And what good could it do, he said to +himself, to argue with a mere lump of selfish egotism? +</p> +<p> +"That is an unusually pretty girl over by the piano," he said, in a tone +of mild indifference which he hoped would serve as a period to the +conversation. +</p> +<p> +"She's Tom Berton's girl," was the quick reply. "Berton's up to Albany +most o' the time, with me. I represent our district. She's a nice little +thing. She'll do anything you ask her to. I never see her equal for that. +It's easier for her to do your way than it is to do her own. She likes to; +so everybody likes her. I wish I had one like her; but my girls are as +stubborn as mules. They won't drive, and they won't lead, and they'd +ruther kick than eat. I don't know where they got it. Their mother wasn't +half so bad that way, and the Lord knows it ain't in <i>my</i> family. The +girl she's with is one o' mine. She looks like she could eat tenpenny +nails. She might be just as pretty an' just as much liked as Ettie Berton, +but she ain't. She's always growlin' about somethin'. I'll bet a dollar +she'll growl about this when we get home. Ettie will think it was +splendid. She'd have a good time at a funeral; but that girl of mine 'll +get me to spend a dollar to come here and then she'll go home +dissatisfied. It won't be up to what she expected. +</p> +<p> +"Things never are. She's always lookin' to find things some other way. +Now, what would you do with a girl like that?" he asked suddenly. Then +without waiting for a reply, he added, "I give her a good tongue lashin', +an' as she always knows it's comin', she's got so she don't kick <i>quite</i> +so much as she used to, but she just sets an' looks sullen like that. It +makes me so mad I could—" +</p> +<p> +He did not finish his remark, but got up and strolled away without the +formality of an adieu. +</p> +<p> +Avery watched his possible future colleague until he was lost in the +crowd, and then he walked deliberately over to where the two girls stood. +</p> +<p> +"I have been talking with your father," he said, smiling and bowing to the +older girl, "and although he did not say that I might come and talk to +you, he told me who you were, and I think he would not object." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, no; he wouldn't object," said the younger girl, eagerly. "Would he, +Fan? Everybody talks here. He told me so before we came. It's the first +time we've been; but he's been before. I think it's splendid, don't you?" +</p> +<p> +The older girl had not spoken. She was looking at Selden Avery with half +suppressed interest and embryonic suspicion. She still knew too little of +life to have formed even a clearly defined doubt as to him or his +intentions in speaking to them. She was less happy than she had expected +to be when she dressed to come with her ever-dawning hope for a real +pleasure. She thought there must be something wrong with her because +things never seemed to come up to her expectations. She supposed this must +be "society," and that when she got used to it, she would enjoy it more. +But somehow she had wanted to resent it the first time a man spoke to her, +and then, afterward, she was glad she did not, for he had danced with +Ettie twice, and Ettie had said it was a lovely dance. She had made up her +mind to accept the next offer she had, but when it came, the eyes of the +man were so beady-black, and the odor of bay rum radiated so insistently +from him that she declined. She hated bay rum because the worst scolding +her father ever gave her was when she had emptied his cherished bottle +upon her own head. The odor always brought back the heart-ache and +resentment of that day, and so she did not think she cared to dance just +then. +</p> +<p> +Selden Avery looked at Ettie. He did not want to tell her what he did +think and he had not the heart to dampen her ardor, so he simply smiled, +and said: +</p> +<p> +"It is my first visit here, too; and I don't know a soul. I noticed you +two young ladies a while ago, and spoke of you to the gentleman next to me +and it chanced to be your father"—he turned to the older girl again—"so +that was what gave me courage to come over here. If I had thought of it +before he left me, I'd have asked him to introduce me, but I'm rather slow +to think. My name is Selden Avery." +</p> +<p> +"Did father tell you mine?" she asked, looking at him steadily, with eyes +that held floating ends of thoughts that were never formed in full. +</p> +<p> +"No, he didn't," replied Avery, laughing a little. "He told me yours, +though," turning to the merry child at his side. "Ettie Berton, Tom +Berton's daughter." +</p> +<p> +Ettie laughed, and clapped her hands together twice. +</p> +<p> +"Got it right the first time! But what did he give me away for and not +her? She is Francis King. That is, her father's name's King, but she is so +awfully particular about things and so hard to suit she ought to be named +Queen, I tell her, so I call her Queen Fan mostly." There was a little +laugh all around, and Avery said:— +</p> +<p> +"Very good, very good, indeed;" but Francis looked uncomfortable and so he +changed the subject. Presently she looked at him and asked:— +</p> +<p> +"Do you think things are ever like they are in books? Do you think this +is? She waved her hand toward the music and the lights. In the books I +have read—and the story papers—it all seems nicer than this +and—and different. It is because I say that, that they all make fun +of me and call me Queen Fan, and father says—" she paused, and a +cold light gathered in her eyes. "He don't like it, so I don't say it +much, now. He says it's all put on; but it ain't Everything does seem to +turn out so different from what you expected—from the way you read +about. I've not felt like I thought <i>maybe</i> I should to-night because—because—" +she stopped again. +</p> +<p> +"Because why?" asked Avery, laughing a little. "Because I'm not a bit like +the usual story-book prince you ought to have met and—?" +</p> +<p> +She smiled, and Ettie made a droll little grimace. +</p> +<p> +"No, it wasn't that at all. I've been thinking most all evening that it +wasn't worth—that—" +</p> +<p> +"Oh, she's worried," put in Ettie, "because she got her father to spend a +dollar to bring her. She's afraid he'll throw it up to her afterward, and +she thinks it won't pay for that, so it spoils the whole thing before he +does it—just being afraid he will. But I tell her he won't, this +time. I—" Francis' eyes had filled with tears of mortification, and +Avery pretended not to have heard. He affected a deep interest in the +music. +</p> +<p> +"Do you know what it is they are playing now?" he asked, with his eyes +fixed upon the musicians. "I thought at first that it was going to be—No, +it is—Ton my word I can't recall it, and I ought to know what it is, +too. The first time I ever heard it, I remember—" +</p> +<p> +He turned toward where Francis had stood, but she was gone. "Why, what has +become of Miss King?" he asked of the other girl. Ettie looked all about, +laughed and wondered and chattered as gaily as a bird. +</p> +<p> +"I expect she's gone home. She's the queerest you ever saw. I guess she +didn't want me to say that about her pa. But it'll make him madder than +anything if she has gone that way. He won't like it at all—an' I +can't blame him. What's the use to be so different from other folks?" she +inquired, sagely, and then she added, laughing: "I don't know as she is so +different, either. We all hate things, but we pretend we don't. Don't you +think it's better to pretend to like things, whether you do or not?" +</p> +<p> +"No," replied Avery, beginning to look with surprise upon this small +philosopher who had no conception of the worldly wisdom of her own +philosophy. +</p> +<p> +"I do," she said, laughing again. "It goes down better. Everybody likes +you better. I've found that out already, and so I pretend to like +everything. Of course I do like some of 'em, and some I don't, but it's +just as easy to say you like 'em all." She laughed again, and kept time +with her toe on the floor. +</p> +<p> +"Just what don't you like?" asked Avery, smiling. "Won't you tell me, +truly? I won't tell any one, and I'd like to be sure of one thing you +object to—on principle." +</p> +<p> +"Well, tob—Do you smoke?" she asked. +</p> +<p> +He shook his head, and pursed up his lips negatively. +</p> +<p> +"I thought not," she said, gaily. "You look like you didn't. Well, I hate—hate—hate—hate +smoke. When I go on a ferry-boat, and the air is so nice and cool and +different from at home, and seems so clean, I just love it, and then—" +</p> +<p> +"Some one sits near you and smokes," put in Avery, consolingly. +</p> +<p> +"Yes, they do; and I just most pray that he'll fall over and get drownded—but +he never does; and if he asks me if I object to smoke, I say, 'Oh! not at +all!' and then he thinks I'm such a nice, sensible girl. Fan tells 'em +right out that she don't like it. It makes her deadly sick, and the boys +all hate her for it. Her father says it's da—— I was going to +say his cuss word, but I guess I won't. Anyhow, he says it's all nonsense +and put on. I guess I better go. There is her father looking for us. Poor +Fan'll catch it when we get home! Good-night. I've had a lovely time, +haven't you?" She waved her hand. Then she retraced the step she had +taken. "Don't tell that I don't like tobacco," she said, and started away +laughing. He followed her a few steps. +</p> +<p> +"How is any fellow to know what you really do like?" he asked, smiling, +"if you do that way?" +</p> +<p> +"Fan says nobody wants to know," she said, slyly. "She says they want to +know that I like what they want me to like, and think what they think I +think." She laughed again. "And of course I do," she added, and bowed in +mock submission. "Now, Fan don't. That's where she misses it; and if she +don't—reform," she said, lowering her voice, as she neared that +young lady's father, "she is going to see trouble that is trouble. I'll +bet a cent on it. Don't you?" she asked, as she bestowed a bright smile +upon Mr. King. +</p> +<p> +"Yes," said Avery, and lifting his hat, turned on his heel and was lost in +the crowd. +</p> +<p> +"Where's Fan?" inquired that young lady's father in a tone which indicated +that, as a matter of course, she was up to some devilment again. +</p> +<p> +"She got a headache and went home quite a while ago," said that young +lady's loyal little friend. "She enjoyed it quite a lot till she did get a +headache." As they neared the street where both lived, Ettie said: "That +man talked to her, and I think she liked him." +</p> +<p> +"Humph!" said Mr. King. "I wouldn't be surprised. She'd be likely to take +to a lunatic. I thought he was about the damnedest fool I ever saw; didn't +you?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes," said Ettie, laughing, "and I liked him for it." +</p> +<p> +Mr. King burst into a roar of laughter. "Of course you did! You'd like the +devil. You're that easy to please. I wish to the Lord Fan was," and with a +hearty "goodnight," he left her at her father's door, and crossed the +street. +</p> +<p> +Once outside the garden, Avery drew from his pocket the little pamphlet +which his club friend had given him, and ran his finger down the list. +</p> +<p> +"King, member the—ah, ha! one end of his ward joins mine! 'M-m-m; +yes, I see. He is one of the butchers. I suspected as much. Let me see; +yes, he votes my ticket, too. If I'm elected we'll be comrades-in-arms, so +to speak I suppose I ought to have told him who I was; but if I'm elected +he'll find out soon enough, and if I'm beaten—well, I can't say that +I'm anxious to extend the acquaintance." He replaced the book in his +pocket as the guard called out, 'Thirty-Fourth Street! 'strain for Arlem!' +and left the train, musing as he strolled along. "Yes, Gertrude was quite +right—quite. We fortunate ones have no right to allow all this sort +of thing to go on. We have no right to leave it entirely to such men as +that to make the laws. I don't care if the fellows up at the club do guy +me. Gertrude—" He drew from his breast-pocket a little note, and +read it for the tenth time. +</p> +<p> +"I am so gratified to hear that you have accepted the nomination," it +said. "You have the time, and mental and moral equipment to give to the +work Were I a man, I should not sleep o' nights until some way was devised +to prevent all the terrible poverty and ignorance and brutishness we were +talking about the other day. I went to see that Spillini family again. I +was afraid to go alone, so I took with me two girls who are in a sewing +class, which is, just now a fad at our Church Guild. I thought their +experience with poverty would enable them to think of a way to get at this +case; but it did not. They appeared to think it was all right It seems to +me that ignorance and poverty leave no room for thought, or even for much +feeling. It hurt me like a knife to have those girls laugh over it after +we came out; at least, one of them laughed, and the other seemed scornful, +It is not fair to expect more of them, I know, for we expect so little of +ourselves. It is thinking of all this that makes me write to tell you how +glad I am that you are to represent your district in Albany. Such men are +needed, for I know you will work for the poor with the skill of a trained +intellect and a sympathetic heart. I am so glad. Sincerely your friend, +Gertrude Foster." +</p> +<p> +Mr. Avery replaced the note in his pocket, and smiled contentedly. "I +don't care a great deal what the fellows at the club say," he repeated. +"I'm satisfied, if Gertrude—" He had spoken the last few words +almost audibly, and the name startled him. He realized for the first time +that he had fallen into the habit of thinking of her as Gertrude, and it +suddenly flashed upon him that Miss Foster might be a good deal surprised +by that fact if she knew it. He fell to wondering if she would also be +annoyed. There was a tinge of anxiety in the speculation. Then it occurred +to him that the sewing class of the Guild might give an outlet and a +chance for a bit of pleasure to that strange girl he had seen at Grady's +Pavilion, and he made a little memorandum, and decided to call upon +Gertrude and suggest it to her. He fell asleep that night and dreamed of +Gertrude Foster, holding out a helping hand to a strange, tall girl, with +dissatisfied eyes, and that Ettie Berton was laughing gaily and making +everybody comfortable, by asserting that she liked everything exactly as +she found it. +</p> +<p> +<a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> +<!-- H2 anchor --> </a> +</p> +<div style="height: 4em;"> +<br /><br /><br /><br /> +</div> +<h2> +VI +</h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he next evening Avery called upon Gertrude to thank her for her letter, +and, incidentally, to tell her of the experience at Grady's Pavilion, and +bespeak the good office of the Guild for those two human pawns, who had, +somehow, weighed upon his heart. +</p> +<p> +Avery was not a Churchman himself, but he felt very sure that any Guild +which would throw Gertrude Foster's influence about less fortunate girls, +would be good, so he gave very little thought to the phase of it which was +not wholly related to the personality of the young woman in whose eyes he +had grown to feel he must appear well and worthy, if he retained his +self-respect. This bar of judgment had come, by unconscious degrees, to be +the one before which he tried his own cases for and against himself. +</p> +<p> +"Would Gertrude like it if she should know? Would I dislike to have her +know that I did this or felt that?" was now so constantly a part of his +mental processes, that he had become quite familiar with her verdicts, +which were most often passed—from his point of view, and in his own +mind—without the knowledge of the girl herself. +</p> +<p> +He had never talked of love to her, except in the general and impersonal +fashion of young creatures who are wont to eagerly discuss the profound +perplexities of life without having come face to face with one of them. +One day they had talked of love in a cottage. The conversation had been +started by the discussion of a new novel they had just read, and Avery +told her of a strange fellow whom he knew, who had married against the +wishes of his father, and had been disinherited. +</p> +<p> +"He lost his grip, somehow," said Avery, "and went from one disaster into +another. First he lost his place, and the little salary they had to live +on was stopped. It was no fault of his. It had been in due course of a +business change in the firm he worked for. He got another, but not so good +a situation, but the little debts that had run up while he was idle were a +constant drag on him. He never seemed able to catch up. Then his wife's +health failed. She needed a change of climate, rare and delicate food, a +quiet mind relieved of anxiety, but he could not give her these. His own +nerves gave way under the strain, and at last sickness overtook him, and +he had to appeal to me for a loan." +</p> +<p> +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 passage 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 <i>because</i> +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—'hell at home.' Without the love there +would be no home; without the poverty no hell. Neither lightens the +burdens of the other. Each multiplies all that is terrible in both." +</p> +<p> +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. +</p> +<p> +"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—" +</p> +<p> +"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—" +</p> +<p> +"How he could express them so raspingly—so—?" began Avery, but +she turned to him quite frankly surprised. +</p> +<p> +"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 <i>necessary</i> +in the world?" +</p> +<p> +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 +Assembly. 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 passed must inevitably help to crystallize +public opinion in such a way as to retard freer or better action. +</p> +<p> +"To think of allowing that class 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. +</p> +<p> +"Excuse me, Mr. Avery, but I don't think they will be here long. It's a +couple of—They—" +</p> +<p> +"Thank you, James. Are they not friends of Miss Gertrude?" +</p> +<p> +James smiled in a manner which displayed a large capacity for pity. +</p> +<p> +"Well, sir, I shouldn't say they was exactly friends. No, sir, ner yet +callers, sir. They're some of them Guilders." +</p> +<p> +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 portière 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. +</p> +<p> +"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!" +</p> +<p> +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. +</p> +<p> +Avery took her hand, and then offered his to her companion, and bowed and +smiled again. +</p> +<p> +"Really, I shall begin to grow superstitious," 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—" +</p> +<p> +"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—" +</p> +<p> +"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. +</p> +<p> +"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 Assembly. +They—!" In spite of herself, Gertrude's face showed her surprise, +but Ettie Berton broke in with a gay laugh. +</p> +<p> +"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—" +</p> +<p> +She realized that her remark was going to indicate a belief in certain +incapacity in him, and she took another cue. +</p> +<p> +"My pa says nobody 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." +</p> +<p> +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?" +</p> +<p> +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." +</p> +<p> +The girl appeared to think that Avery and Gertrude were quite familiar +with professional starters, and she rattled on gaily. +</p> +<p> +"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 <i>was</i> 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. +</p> +<p> +"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 <i>all</i> of 'em. +</p> +<p> +"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:— +</p> +<p> +"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. +</p> +<p> +"The boss told him not to take anything <i>but</i> 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 <i>was</i> 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—" +</p> +<p> +Francis King had arisen, and started awkwardly toward Gertrude, with her +hand extended. +</p> +<p> +"I think we ought to go," she said, uneasily, her large eyes burning with +mortification, and an oppressed sense of being at a disadvantage. +</p> +<p> +"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—" +</p> +<p> +"Allow me the pleasure, will you not?" asked Avery, bowing first to +Gertrude, and then toward Francis, and Gertrude said:— +</p> +<p> +"Oh, thank you, if—" but Ettie clapped her hands in glee. +</p> +<p> +"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. "Nobody'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!" +</p> +<p> +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. +</p> +<p> +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 amusement 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." +</p> +<p> +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 <i>me,</i> +if I was in her shoes, a consortin' with—" +</p> +<p> +"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—" +</p> +<p> +"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?" +</p> +<p> +When John Martin, on his way, intending to drop in for the last act of the +opera, passed 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 <i>her</i> house. Avery's political freak has dulled +his sense of propriety." +</p> +<p> +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. +</p> +<p> +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. +</p> +<p> +"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!" +</p> +<p> +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. +</p> +<p> +"She never knew what hurt her, and she teased the dog to begin with," she +said. "You are maimed for life, and may go mad, just trying to help her—and +she never knew and she never cared." Gertrude's dreamed had strayed and +wandered into vagaries without form or outline, and in the morning nothing +of it was left but an unreasonably heavy heart, and a restless desire to +do—she knew not what. +</p> +<p> +<a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> +<!-- H2 anchor --> </a> +</p> +<div style="height: 4em;"> +<br /><br /><br /><br /> +</div> +<h2> +VII. +</h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hen Avery took his seat in the Assembly he learned that Ettie Berton's +father had been true to his calling. He still might be described as a +professional starter. Any bill which was in need of some one to either +introduce or offer a speech in its favor, found in John Berton an +ever-ready champion. +</p> +<p> +Not that he either understood or believed in all the bills he presented or +advocated. Belief and understanding were not for sale; nor, indeed, were +they always very much within his own grasp. He was in the Legislature to +promote, or start, such measures as stood in need of his peculiar +abilities. This was very soon understood, and many a bill which other men +feared or hesitated to present found its way to him and through him to a +reading. For a while Avery watched this process with amusement. He wrote +to Gertrude, from time to time, some very humorous letters about it; but +finally, one day a letter came which so bitterly denounced both King and +Berton, that Gertrude wondered what could have wrought the sudden change. +</p> +<p> +"He has introduced a bill which is now before my committee," he wrote, +"that passes all belief. It is infamous beyond words to express, and, to +my dismay, it finds many advocates beside King and Berton. That a +conscienceless embruted inmate of an opium dive in Mott Street might +acknowledge to himself in the dark, and when he was alone, that he could +advocate such a measure, seems to me possible; but men who are in one +sense reputable, who—many of them—look upon themselves as +respectable; men who are fathers of girls and brothers of women, could +even consider such a bill, I would not have believed possible, and yet, I +am ashamed to say that I learn now for the first time, that our state is +not the only one where similar measures have not only found advocates, but +where there were enough moral lepers with voting power to establish such +legislation. It makes me heartsick and desperate. I am ashamed of the +human race. I am doubly ashamed that it is to my sex such infamous laws +are due. +</p> +<p> +"You were right, my dear Miss Gertrude; you were right. It is outrageous +that we allow mere conscienceless politicians to legislate for respectable +people, and yet my position here is neither pleasant, nor will it, I fear, +be half so profitable as you hope—as I hoped, before I came and +learned all I now know. But, believe me, I shall vote on every bill and +make every speech, with your face before me, and as if I were making that +particular law to apply particularly to you." +</p> +<p> +Gertrude smiled as she re-read that part of his letter. +</p> +<p> +She wondered what awful bill Ettie's father had presented. She had never +before thought that a legislator might strive to enact worse laws than he +already found in the statute books. She had thought most of the trouble +was that they did not take the time and energy to repeal old, bad laws +that had come to us from an ignorant or brutal past. +</p> +<p> +It struck her as a good idea, that a man should never vote on a measure +that he did not feel he was making a rule of action to apply to the woman +for whom he cared most; she knew now that she was that woman for Selden +Avery. He had told her that the night he came to bring the news that he +was elected. It had been told in a strangely simple way. +</p> +<p> +Her father and mother had laughingly congratulated him upon his election, +and Mr. Poster had added, banteringly: "If one may congratulate a man upon +taking a descent like that." +</p> +<p> +Gertrude had held one of her father's hands in her own, and tried by +gentle pressure to check him. Her father laughed, and added: "The little +woman here is trying to head me off. She appears to think—" +</p> +<p> +"Papa," said Gertrude, extending her other hand to Avery, "I do think that +Mr. Avery is to be congratulated that he has the splendid courage to try +to do something distinctly useful for other people, than simply for the +few of us who are outside or above most of the horrors of life. I do—" +Avery suddenly lifted her hand to his lips, and his eyes told the rest. +"Mr. Foster," he said, still holding the girl's hand, and blushing +painfully, "there can never be but one horror in the world too awful for +me to face, and that would be to lose the full respect and confidence of +your daughter. I know I have those now, and for the rest —" He +glanced again at Gertrude. She was pale, and she was looking with an +appeal in her eyes to her mother. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Foster moved a step nearer, and put her arm about the girl. "For the +rest, Mr. Avery, for the rest—later on, later on," she said, kindly. +"Gertrude has traveled very fast these past few months, but she is her +mother's girl yet." Then she smiled kindly, and added: "Gertrude has set a +terrible standard for the man she will care for. I tremble for him and I +tremble for her." +</p> +<p> +"Tut, tut," said her father, "there are no standards in love—none +whatever. Love has its own way, and standards crumble—" +</p> +<p> +"In the past, perhaps. But in the future—" began his wife. +</p> +<p> +"In the future," said Gertrude, as she drew nearer to her mother, "in the +future they may not need to crumble, because,—because—" Her +eyes met Avery's, and fell. She saw that his muscles were tense, and his +face was unhappy. +</p> +<p> +"Because men will be great enough and true enough to rise to the ideals, +and not need to crumble the ideals to bring them to their level." +</p> +<p> +Avery bent forward and grasped her hand that was within her mother's. +</p> +<p> +"Thank you," he said, tremulously. "Thank you, oh, darling! and the rest +can wait," he said, to Mrs. Poster, and dropping both hands, he left the +room and the house. +</p> +<p> +Gertrude ran up-stairs and locked her door. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Foster turned to his wife with a half amused, half vexed face. "Well, +this is a pretty kettle of fish. What's to become of Martin, I'd like to +know?" +</p> +<p> +"John Martin has never had a ghost of a chance at any time—never," +said his wife, slowly trailing her gown over the rug, and dragging with it +a small stand that had caught its carved claw in the lace. It toppled and +fell with a crash. The beautiful vase it had held was in fragments. "Oh, +Katharine!" exclaimed her husband, springing forward to disengage her +lace. "Oh, it is too bad, isn't it?" +</p> +<p> +And Katherine Foster burst into tears, and with her arms suddenly thrown +about her husband's neck she sobbed: "Oh, yes, it is too bad! It is too +bad!" But it did not seem possible to her husband that the broken vase +could have so affected her, and surely no better match could be asked for +Gertrude. It could not be that. He was deeply perplexed, and Katherine +Foster, with a searching look in her face, kissed him sadly as one might +kiss the dead, and went to her daughter's room. +</p> +<p> +She tapped lightly and then said, "It is I, daughter." +</p> +<p> +The girl opened the door and as quickly closed and locked it. Instantly +their arms were around each other and both were close to tears. +</p> +<p> +"Don't try to talk, darling," whispered Mrs. Foster, as they sat down upon +the couch. "Don't try to talk. I understand better than you do yet, and +oh, Gertrude, your mother loves you!" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, mamma," said the girl, hoarsely. "Dear little mamma—poor +little mamma, we all love you;" and Mrs. Foster sighed. +</p> +<p> +<a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> +<!-- H2 anchor --> </a> +</p> +<div style="height: 4em;"> +<br /><br /><br /><br /> +</div> +<h2> +VIII. +</h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he day Gertrude received Avery's letter about bill number 408, she asked +her father what the bill was about. He looked at her in surprise, and then +at his wife. "I don't know anything about it, child," he said; "Why?" +</p> +<p> +Gertrude drew from her pocket Avery's letter and read that part of it. Her +father's face clouded. +</p> +<p> +"What business has he to worry you with his dirty political work? I infer +from what he says that it is a bill that I've only heard mentioned once or +twice. The sort of thing they do in secret sessions and keep from the +newspapers in the main. That is, they are only barely named in the paper +and under a number or heading which people don't understand. I'm disgusted +with Avery—perfectly!" Gertrude was surprised, but with that +ignorance and absolute sincerity of youth, she appealed to her mother. +</p> +<p> +"Mamma, do you see any reason why, from that letter, papa should be vexed +with Mr. Avery? It seemed to me to have just the right tone; but I am +sorry he did not tell me just what the bill is." +</p> +<p> +"You let me catch him telling you, if it's what I think it is," retorted +her father, rather hotly. "It's not fit for your ears. Good women have no +business with such knowledge and—" +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Foster held up a warning finger to her daughter, but the girl had not +been convinced. +</p> +<p> +"Don't good men know such things, papa? Don't such bills deal with people +in a way which will touch women, too? I can't see why you put it that way. +If a bill is to be passed into a law, and it is of so vile a nature as you +say and as this letter indicates, in whose interest is it to be silent or +ignorant? Do you want such a bill passed? Would mamma or I?" +</p> +<p> +Her father laughed, and rose from the table. "It is in the interest of +nothing good. No, I should say if you or your mother, or any other +respectable mother at all, were in the Legislature, no such bill would +have a ghost of a chance; but—" +</p> +<p> +Gertrude's eyes were fixed upon her father. They were very wide open and +perplexed. +</p> +<p> +"Then it can be only in the interest of the vilest and lowest of the race +that good men keep silent, and prefer to have good women ignorant and +helpless in such—" she began; but her father turned at the door and +said, nervously and almost sharply, "Gertrude, if Avery has no more sense +than to start you thinking about such things, I advise you to cut his +acquaintance. Such topics are not fit for women; I am perfectly disgusted +with—" +</p> +<p> +As he was passing out of the dining-room, John Martin entered the street +door and faced him. "Hello, Martin! Glad to see you! The ladies are still +at luncheon; won't you come right in here and join them in a cup of +chocolate?" +</p> +<p> +He was heartily glad of the interruption, and felt that it was very timely +indeed that Mr. Martin had dropped in. +</p> +<p> +"No, I can't take off my top-coat. Get yours. I want you to join me in a +spin in the park. I've got that new filly outside." Mr. Foster ran +up-stairs to get ready for the drive, and the ladies insisted that a cup +of hot chocolate was the very thing to prepare Mr. Martin for the nipping +air. He was a trifle ill at ease. He wanted to speak of Selden Avery, and +he feared if he did so that he would say the wrong thing. He had come +to-day, partly to have a talk with his friend Foster about certain gossip +he had heard. Fate took the reins. +</p> +<p> +In rising, Gertrude had dropped Avery's letter. John Martin was the first +to see it. He laughingly offered it to her with the query: "Do you sow +your love letters about that way, Miss Gertrude?" +</p> +<p> +"Gertrude's love letters take the form of political speeches just now, and +bills and committee reports and the like," laughed her mother. "Her father +was just showing his teeth over that one, He thinks women have no—" +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Martin, tell me truly," broke in the girl, "tell me truly, don't you +think that we are all equally interested in having only good laws made? +And don't you think if a proposed measure is too bad for good women even +to be told what it is, that it is bad enough for all good people to +protest against?" +</p> +<p> +"How are they going to protest if they don't know what it is?" laughed +Martin. "Well, Miss Gertrude, I believe that is the first time I ever +suspected you to be of Celtic blood. But what dreadful measure is Avery +advocating now?" he smiled. "Really, I shouldn't have believed it of +Avery!" +</p> +<p> +"What!" exclaimed Mr. Poster, entering with his top-coat buttoned to the +chin, and his driving-hat in hand. Gertrude still held the letter. "No, +nor should I have believed it of Avery. It was an outrageous thing for him +to do. What business has Gertrude or Katherine with his disgusting old +bills. Just before you came in I advised Gertrude to cut him entirely, and—" +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Foster was trying to indicate to her husband that he was off the +track, and that Mr. Martin did not understand him; but he had the bit in +his teeth and went on. "You agree with me now, don't you? What do you +think of his mentioning such things to Gertrude?" He reached over and took +the letter from his daughter's hand, and read a part of the obnoxious +paragraph. +</p> +<p> +John Martin's face was a study. He glanced at the two ladies, and then +fixed his eyes upon Gertrude's father. +</p> +<p> +"Good Gad!" he said, slowly and almost below his breath. "If I were in +your place I should shoot him. The infamous—" He checked himself, +and the two men withdrew. Gertrude and her mother waved at them from the +window, and then the girl said: "I intend to know what that bill is. What +right have men to make laws that they themselves believe are too infamous +for good women even to know about? Don't you believe if all laws or bills +had to be openly discussed before and with women, it would be better, +mamma? I do." +</p> +<p> +Her mother's cheek was against the cold glass of the window. She was +watching the receding forms. Presently she turned slowly to her daughter +and said, in a trembling tone:— +</p> +<p> +"Such bills as this one," she drew a small printed slip from her bosom and +handed it to Gertrude, "such bills as that would never be dreamed of by +men if they knew they must pass the discussion of a pure girl or a mother—never! +Their only chance is secret session, and the fact that even men like your—like +Mr. Martin and—and—" she was going to say "your father," but +the girl pressed her hand and she did not. "That even such as they—for +what reason heaven only knows—think they are serving the best +interests of the women they love by a silence which fosters and breeds +just such measures as—" +</p> +<p> +Gertrude was reading the queer, blind phraseology of the bill. Katherine +had watched her daughter's face as she talked, and now the girl's lips +were moving and she read audibly: "be, and is hereby enacted, that +henceforth the legal age in the state of New York whereat a female may +give consent to the violation of her own person shall be reduced to ten +years." +</p> +<p> +Gertrude dropped the paper in her lap and looked up like a frightened, +hunted creature. "Great God!" she exclaimed, with an intensity born of a +sudden revelation. "Great God! and they call themselves men! And other men +keep silence—furnish all the soil and nurture for infamy like that! +Those who keep silence are as guilty as the rest! Those who try to prevent +women from knowing—oh, mamma!" Her eyes were intense. She sprang to +her feet; "and John Martin, who thinks he loves <i>me</i> is one of those +men! Knowing such a bill as that is pending, his indignation is aroused, +not at the bill, not at the men who try to smuggle it through, not at the +awful thing it implies, but that so strict a silence is not kept that such +as <i>we</i> may not know of it! He blames Selden Avery for coming to me—to +us—with his splendid chivalry, and sharing with us his horror, +making us the confidants of that inner conscience which sees, in the +intended victims of this awful bill, his little sisters and yours and +mine!" There were indignant tears in her eyes. She closed them, and her +white lips were drawn tense. Presently she asked, without opening her +eyes: "Mamma, do you suppose if you, instead of Mr. Avery, were chairman +of that committee, that such a bill as that would ever have been +presented? Do you suppose, if any mother on earth held the veto power, +that such a bill would ever disgrace a statute book? Are there enough men, +even of a class who generally go to the Legislature, who, in spite of +their fatherhood, in spite of the fact that they have little sisters, are +such beasts as to pass a bill like that? A ten-year-old girl! A mere baby! +And—oh, mamma! it is too hideous to believe, even of—such a +bill could never pass. Never on earth! Surely, Ettie Berton, poor little +thing, has the only father living who is capable of that!" +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Foster opened her lips to say that several states already had the +law, and that one had placed the age at seven; but she checked herself. +Her daughter's excitement was so great, she decided to wait. The +experience of the past few months had awakened the fire in the nature of +this strong daughter of hers. She had seen the cool, steady, previously +indifferent, well-poised girl stirred to the very depths of her nature +over the awful conditions of poverty, ignorance, and vice she had, for the +first time, learned to know. Gertrude had become a regular student of some +of the problems of life, and she had carried her studies into practical +investigation. It had grown to be no new thing for her to take Francis, or +Ettie, or both, when she went on these errands, and the study of their +points of view—of the effect of it all upon their ignorance-soaked +minds, had been one of the most touching things to her. Their imaginations +were so stunted—so embryonic, so undeveloped that they saw no better +way. To them, ignorance, poverty, squalor, and vice were a necessary part +of life. Wealth, comfort, happiness, ambition were, naturally and rightly, +perquisites, some way, some how, of the few. +</p> +<p> +"God rules, and all is as he wishes it or it would not be that way," +sagely remarked Francis King, one day. It had startled Gertrude. Her +philosophy, her observation, her reason, and her religion were in a state +of conflict just then. She had alway supposed that she was an Episcopalian +with all that this implied. She was beginning to doubt it at times. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Foster looked at her daughter now, as she sat there flushed and +excited. She wondered what would come of it all. She had always studied +this daughter of hers, and tried to follow the girl's moods. Now she +thought she would cut across them. +</p> +<p> +"Gertrude, you may put that bill with your letter. Mr. Avery mailed it to +me. Of course he meant that I should show it to you if I thought best. I +did think best, but now—but—I don't want you to excite +yourself too—" She broke off suddenly. Her daughter's eyes were upon +her in surprise. Mrs. Foster laughed a little nervously, and kissed the +girl's hand as it lay in her own. "It seems rather droll for your gay +little mother to caution you against losing control of yourself, doesn't +it?" she asked. "You who were always all balance wheel, as your father +says. But—" +</p> +<p> +"Mamma, don't you think Mr. Avery did perfectly right to send me that +letter and this to you?" broke in Gertrude, as if she had not heard the +admonition of her mother, and had followed her own thoughts from some more +distant point. +</p> +<p> +"Perfectly," said her mother. "He was evidently deeply disturbed by the +bill. He felt that you were, and should be, his confidant. He simply did +not dream of hiding it from you, I believe. It was the spontaneous act of +one who so loves you that his whole life—all of that which moves him +greatly—must, as a matter of course, be open to you. I thought that +all out when the bill came addressed to me. He—" The girl kissed her +in silence. +</p> +<p> +"You have such splendid self-respect, Gertrude. Most of us—most +women—have none. We do not expect, do not demand, the least respect +that is real from men. They have no respect for our opinions, and so upon +all the real and important things of life, they hold out to us the sham of +silence as more respectful than candor. And we—most of us—are +weak enough to say we like it. Most of us—" +</p> +<p> +Gertrude slipped down upon a cushion at the feet of her mother, and put +her young, strong arms about the supple waist. She had of late read from +time to time so much of the unrest and scorn back of the gay and compliant +face of her mother. "Mamma, my real mamma," she said, softly, "I +</p> +<p> +"Men of your father's generation did not want mental comrades in their +wives, Gertrude. They—" +</p> +<p> +"A telegram, Miss Gertrude," said James, drawing aside the portiere. +</p> +<p> +"The bill has been rushed through. Passed. Nineteen majority. Avery." +Gertrude read it and handed it to her mother, and both women sat as if +stunned by a blow. +</p> +<p> +<a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> +<!-- H2 anchor --> </a> +</p> +<div style="height: 4em;"> +<br /><br /><br /><br /> +</div> +<h2> +IX. +</h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>t the close of the Legislature, John Berton, professional starter, and +his friend and ally, the father of Francis King, had returned to the city. +Francis had grown, so her father thought, more handsome and less agreeable +than ever. Her eyes were more dissatisfied, and she was, if possible, less +pliant. She and Ettie Berton were working now in a store, and Francis said +that she did not like it at all. The money she liked. It helped her to +dress more as she wished, and then it had always cut Francis to the quick +to be compelled to ask her father for money whenever she needed it, even +for car fare. +</p> +<p> +She had lied a good many times. Her whole nature rebelled against lying, +but even this was easier to her than the status of dependence and beggary, +so she had lied often about the price of shoes, or of a hat or dress, that +there might be a trifle left over as a margin for her use in other ways. +Her father was not unusually hard with her about money, only that he +demanded a strict accounting before he gave it to her. +</p> +<p> +"What in thunder do you want of money?" he would ask, more as a matter of +habit than anything else. "How much 'll it take? Humph! Well, I guess +you'll have to have it, but—" and so the ungracious manner of giving +angered and humiliated her. +</p> +<p> +"Pa, give me ten cents; I want it fer car fare. Thanks. Now fork over six +dollars; I got to get a dress after the car gets me to the store," was +Ettie Berton's method. Her father would pretend not to have the money, and +she would laugh and proceed to rifle his pockets. The scuffle would +usually end in the girl getting more than she asked for, and was no +unpleasant experience to her, and it appeared to amuse her father greatly. +It was not, therefore, the same motive which actuated the two when they +decided to try their fortunes as shop girls. The desire to be with +Francis, to be where others were, for the sight and touch of the pretty +things, for new faces and for mild excitement, were moving causes with +Ettie Berton. The money she liked, too; but if she could have had the +place without the money or the money without the place, her choice would +have been soon made. She would stay at the store. That she was a general +favorite was a matter of course. She would do anything for the other +girls, and the floorwalkers and clerks found her always obedient and gaily +willing to accept extra burdens or to change places. For some time past, +however, she had been on a different floor from the one where Francis +presided over a trimming counter, and the girls saw little of each other, +except on their way to and from the store. +</p> +<p> +At last this changed too, for Francis was obliged to remain to see that +the stock of her department was properly put away. At first Ettie waited +for her, but later on she had fallen into the habit of going with a child +nearer her own age, a little cash girl. Ettie was barely fourteen, and her +new friend a year or two younger. At last Francis King found that the +motherless child had invited her new friends home with her, and had gone +with them to their homes. +</p> +<p> +As spring came on, Ettie went one Sunday to Coney Island, and did not tell +Francis until afterward. She said that she had had a lovely time, hut she +appeared rather disinclined to talk about it. At the Guild one Wednesday +evening, after the class began again in the fall, Francis King told +Gertrude this, and asked her advice. She said: "It's none o' my business, +and she don't like me much any more, but I thought maybe I had ought to +tell you, for—for—since I been in the store, I've learnt a +good deal about—about things; an' Ettie she don't seem to learn much +of anything." +</p> +<p> +"Is Ettie still living at her cousin's?" asked Gertrude. +</p> +<p> +"Yes," said Francis, scornfully, "but she 'bout as well be livin' by +herself. Her cousin's always just gaddin' 'round tryin' t' get married. I +never did see such an awful fool. Before Et's pa went to the Legislature, +we all did think he was goin' t' marry her, but now—" +</p> +<p> +"Legislative honors have turned his head, have they?" smiled Gertrude, +intent on her own thoughts in another direction. She was not, therefore, +prepared for the sudden fling of temper in the strange girl beside her. +"Yes, it has; 'n if it don't turn some other way before long, I'll break +his neck for him. <i>I</i> ain't marryin' a widower if I do like Ettie." +</p> +<p> +In spite of herself, Gertrude started a little. She looked at Francis +quite steadily for a moment, and then said: "Could you and Ettie come to +my house and spend the day next Sunday? I'm glad you told me of Ettie's—of—about +the change in her manner toward you." +</p> +<p> +"Don't let on that I told you anything," said Francis, as they parted. +</p> +<p> +Since they had been in the store they had not gone regularly to the weekly +evening Guild meetings, and Gertrude had seen less of them. She was +surprised, however, on the following Sunday, to see the strange, +mysterious change in Ettie. A part of her frank, open, childish manner was +gone, and yet nothing more mature had taken its place. There would be +flashes of her usual manner, but long silences, quite foreign to the +child, would follow. At the dinner table she grew deadly ill, and had to +be taken up stairs. Gertrude tucked a soft cover about her on the couch in +her own room, and gave her smelling salts and a trifle of wine. The child +drank the wine but began to cry. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, don't cry, Ettie," said Gertrude, stroking her hair gently. "You'll +be over it in a little while. I think our dining-room is much warmer than +yours, and it was very hot to-day. Then your trying to eat the olives when +you don't like them, might easily make you sick. You'll be all right after +a little I'm sure. Don't cry." +</p> +<p> +"That's the same kind of wine I had that day at Coney Island," she said, +and Gertrude thought how irrelevant the remark was, and how purely of +physical origin were the tears of such a child. +</p> +<p> +"Would you like a little more?" asked Gertrude, smiling. +</p> +<p> +Ettie shivered, and closed her eyes. +</p> +<p> +"No; I don't like it. I guess it ain't polite to say so, but—Oh, of +course <i>maybe</i> I'd like it if I was well, but it made me sick that +time, an' so I don't like it now when I <i>am</i> sick." She laughed in a +childish way, and then she drew Gertrude's face down near her own. "Say, +I'll tell you the solemn truth. It made me tight that day. He told me so +afterwards, n' I guess it did." +</p> +<p> +Here was a revelation, indeed. Gertrude stroked the fluffy hair, gently. +She was trying to think of just the right thing to say. It was growing +dark in the room. Ettie reached up again and drew Gertrude's face down. +"Say," she whispered, "you won't be mad at me for that, will you? He told +me I wasn't to blab to anybody; but it always seems as if you wouldn't be +mad at me, and"—she began to weep again. +</p> +<p> +"Don't cry," said Gertrude, again, gently. "Of course I am not angry with +you. I am sorry it happened, but—Ettie, who is <i>he?</i>" Ettie +sobbed on, and held her arms close about Gertrude's neck. Again the older +girl said, with lips close to the child's ear: +</p> +<p> +"Don't you think it would be better to tell me who 'he' is? Is he so young +as to not know better than to advise you that way, dear?" +</p> +<p> +"He's forty," sobbed Ettie, "an' he's rich, an' he's got a girl of his own +as big as me. I saw her one day in the store. He's the cashier." +</p> +<p> +Gertrude shivered, and the child felt the movement. +</p> +<p> +"Don't you ever, ever tell," she panted, "or he'll kill me—and so +would pa." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, he would, would he?" exclaimed Francis, who had stolen silently into +the room and had stood unobserved in the darkness. "The cashier! the mean +devil! I always hated his beady eyes, and he tried his games on me! But +I'll kill him before he shall go—do you any real harm, Ettie! I +will! I will! Why didn't you tell me? I watched for a while and then I +thought—I thought he had given it up. Oh, Ettie, Ettie!" The tall +form of the girl seemed to rise even higher in the darkness, and one could +feel the fire of her great eyes. Her hands were clenched and her muscles +tense. +</p> +<p> +Ettie was sobbing anew, and Gertrude, holding her hand, was stroking the +moist forehead and trying to quiet her. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, Fan! Oh, Fan! I didn't want you to know," sobbed the child, with +pauses between her words. "He said nobody needn't ever know if I'd do +just's he told me. He said—but when pa came home I was so scared, +an' I'm sick most all the time, an'—an', oh, if I wasn't so awful +afraid to die I'd wisht I <i>was</i> dead!" +</p> +<p> +"Dead!" gasped Francis, grasping Ettie's wrist and pulling her hand from +her face in a frenzy of the new light that was dawning upon her half-dazed +but intensely stimulated mental faculties. She half pulled the smaller +girl to her feet. +</p> +<p> +"Dead! Ettie Berton, you tell me the God's truth or I'll tear him to +pieces right in the store. You tell me the God's truth! has he—done +anything awful to you?" A young tiger could not have seemed more savage, +and Ettie clung with her other arm to Gertrude. +</p> +<p> +"No! No! No!" she shrieked, and struggled to free herself from the clutch +upon her wrist. Then with the pathetic superstition and ignorance of her +type: "Cross my heart I Hope I may die!" she added, and as Francis relaxed +her grasp upon the wrist, Ettie fell in an unconscious little heap upon +the floor. +</p> +<p> +Francis was upon her knees beside her in an instant, and Gertrude was +about to ring for a light and for her mother when Francis moaned: "Oh, +send for a doctor, quick. Send for a doctor! She was lying and she crossed +her heart. She will die! She will die!" +</p> +<p> +<a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> +<!-- H2 anchor --> </a> +</p> +<div style="height: 4em;"> +<br /><br /><br /><br /> +</div> +<h2> +X. +</h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>ut Ettie Berton did not die. Perhaps it would have been quite as well for +her if she had died before the impotent and frantic rage of her father had +still further darkened the pathetically appealing, love-hungry little +heart, whose every beat had been a throbbing, eager desire to be liked, to +please, to acquiesce; to the end that she should escape blame, that she +might sail on the smooth and pleasant sea of general praise and approval. +</p> +<p> +Alas, the temperament which had brought her the dangerous stimulus of +praise, for self-effacement, had joined hands with opportunity to wreck +the child's life—and no one was more bitter in his denunciation than +her father's friend and her aforetime admirer—Representative King. +"If she was a daughter o' mine I'd kill her," he repeated to his own +household day after day. "She sh'd never darken <i>my</i> door agin. +That's mighty certain. It made me mad the other day to hear Berton talk +about takin' her back home. The old fool! What does he want of her? An' +what kind of an example that I'd like t' know t' set t' decent girls? I +told him right then an' there if he let his soft heart do him that a'way I +was done with him for good an' all, n' if I ketch you a goin' up there t' +see her agin, you can just stay away from here, that's all!" This last had +been to Francis, and Francis had shut her teeth together very hard, and +the glitter in her eyes might have indicated to a wiser man that it was +not chiefly because of his presence there that this daughter cared to +return to her home after her clandestine visits to Ettie Berton. A wiser +man, too, might have guessed that the prohibition would not prohibit, and +that poor little Ettie Berton would not be deserted by her loyal friend +because of his displeasure. +</p> +<p> +"I have told her that she may live with us by and by," said Gertrude to +Seldon Avery one afternoon; "but that is no solution of the problem. And +besides it is her father's duty to care for her and to do it without +hurting the child's feelings, too. Can't you go to him and have a talk +with him? You say he seems a kind-hearted, well-meaning, easily-led man. +Beside, he has no right to blame her. He has done more than any one else +in this state to make the path of the cashier easy and smooth. If it were +not for poor little Ettie I should be heartily glad of it all—of the +lesson for him. Can't you go to him and to that Mr. King and make them see +the infamy of their work, and force them to undo it? Can't you? Is there +no way?" +</p> +<p> +Avery had gone. He argued in vain. "Why do you blame the cashier," he had +said to Berton. "He has committed no legal offence. Our laws say he has +done no wrong. Then why blame him? Why blame Ettie? She is a mere +yielding, impulsive child, and, surely, if he has done no wrong she has +not. If—" +</p> +<p> +"Now look a-here, Mr. Avery," said John Berton, hotly, "I know what you're +a-hittin' at an' you can jest save your breath. I didn't help pass that +law t' apply to <i>my</i> girl, n' you know it damned well. I ain't in no +mood just now t' have you throw it up to me that she was about the first +one it ketched, neather. How was I a-goin' to know that? That there bill +wasn't intended t' apply t' <i>my</i> girl, I tell you. An' then she +hadn't ought to a said she went with him willin'ly, either. If she hadn't +a said that we could a peppered him, but as it is he's all right, an—" +</p> +<p> +"That is what the law contemplates, isn't it?—for other girls, of +course, not for yours," began Avery, whose natural impulses of kindness +and generosity he was holding back. +</p> +<p> +"Now you hold on!" exclaimed Berton, feebly groping about for a reply. +"You know I never got up that bill. You know mighty well the man that got +it up an' come there an' lobbied for it, was one o' <i>your</i> own kind—a +silk stocking. +</p> +<p> +"You know I only started it 'n' sort o' fathered it for <i>him</i>. I +ain't no more to blame than the others. Go 'n talk t' them. I've had my +dose. Go 'n talk t' King. He says yet that it's a mighty good bill—but +I ain't so damned certain as I was. It don't look 's reasonable t' me's it +did last session." Avery left him, in the hope that a little later on he +would conclude that his present attitude toward his daughter might undergo +like modification, with advantage to all concerned. It was early in the +evening, and Avery concluded to step into a workingman's club on his way +to his lodgings. He had no sooner entered the door, than someone +recognized him as the candidate of a year ago. There was an immediate +demand that he give them a speech. He had had no thought of speaking, but +the opening tempted him, and the hand clapping was indent. The chairman +introduced him as "the only kid-glove member in the last Legislature who +didn't sell his soul, to monopoly, and put a mortgage on his heavenly home +at the behest of Wall Street." +</p> +<p> +The applause which met this sally was long sustained, and the laughter, +while hearty, was not altogether pleasant of tone. Avery stood until there +was silence. Then he began with a quiet smile. +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Chairman and gentlemen." He paused, and looked over the room again. +"I beg your pardon. I am accustomed to face men only. Mr. Chairman, <i>ladies</i> +and gentlemen." There was a ripple of laughter over the room. "Let me say +how glad I am to make that amendment, and how glad I shall be, for one, +when I am able to make it in the body to which I have the honor to belong—the +Legislature." Some one said: "ah, there," but he did not pause. "You labor +men have taken the right view of it in this club. There is not a question, +not one, in all the domain of labor or legislation which does not strike +at woman's welfare as vitally as it does at man's; not one." There was +feeble applause. "But I will go further. I will say, there is not only not +an economic question which is not <i>as</i> vital to her, but it is far <i>more</i> +vital than it is to man. The very fact of her present legal status rests +upon the other awful fact of her absolute financial dependence upon men." +Someone laughed, and Avery fired up. "This one fact has made sex maniacs +of men, and peopled this world with criminals, lunatics, and liars! This +one fact! This one fact!" +</p> +<p> +His intensity had at last forced silence, and quieted those members who +were at first inclined to take as a gallant joke his opening remarks. "Let +me take a text, for what I want to say to you on the economic question, +from the Bible. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, give us a rest!" +</p> +<p> +"Suffer little children!" +</p> +<p> +"Remember the Sabbath day!" and like derisive calls, mingled with a laugh +and distinct hisses. The gavel beat in vain; Avery waited. At last there +was silence, and he said: "I was not joking. The fact that you all know me +as a freethinker misled you; but although I did say that I wished to take +as a sort of text a passage from the Bible, I was in earnest. This is the +text: 'The rich man's wealth is his strong city; the destruction of the +poor is their poverty.' Again there was a laugh, with a different ring to +it, and clapping of hands. +</p> +<p> +"I think that I may assume," he went on, "that no audience before which I +am likely to appear, will suspect me of accepting the Bible as altogether +admirable. Some of the prophets and holy men of old, as I read of their +doings in the scriptures, always impress me as having been long overdue at +the penitentiary." +</p> +<p> +There was laughter and applause at this sally, and the intangible +something which emanates from an audience which tells a speaker that he +now has a mental grasp upon his hearers, made itself felt. The slight air +of resentment which arose when he had said that he should refer for his +authority to the Bible subsided, and he went on. +</p> +<p> +"But notwithstanding these facts and opinions, one sometimes finds in the +Bible things that are true. Sometimes they are not only true, but they are +also good. Again they are good in fact, in sentiment, and in diction. Now +when this sort of conjunction occurs, I am strongly moved to drop for the +time such differences as I may have with other portions and sentiments, +and give due credit where credit is due. +</p> +<p> +"Therefore, when I find in the tenth chapter of Proverbs this: 'The rich +man's wealth is his strong city; the destruction of the poor is their +poverty,' I shake hands with the author, and travel with him for this trip +at least. The prophet does not say that their destruction is ignorance, or +vice, or sin, or any of the ordinary blossoms of poverty which it is the +fashion to refer to as its root. He tells us the truth—the +destruction of the poor <i>is</i> their <i>poverty.</i> +</p> +<p> +"And who are the poor? Are they not those who, in spite of their labor, +their worth, and their value to the state as good citizens are still +dependent upon the good-will—the charity, I had almost said—of +someone else who has power over the very food they have earned a hundred +times over, and the miserable rags they are allowed to wear instead of the +broadcloth they have earned? Are they not those who, because of economic +conditions, are suppliants where they should be sovereign citizens, +dependents where they should be free and independent and self-respecting +persons?" +</p> +<p> +"Right you are!" "Drive it home!" came with the applause from the +audience. +</p> +<p> +"Are they not those who must obey oppressive laws made by those who +legislate against the helpless and in favor of the powerful? Are they not +those whose voices are silenced by subjection, whose wishes and needs are +trampled beneath the feet of the controlling class?" +</p> +<p> +The applause was ready now and instant. Avery paused. There was silence. +"And who are these?" he asked, and paused again. +</p> +<p> +"What class of people more than any other—more than all others—fits +and fills each and every one of these queries?" "Laboring men!" shouted +several. "All of us!" "No," said Avery, "you are wrong. To all of you—to +all so-called laboring men they do apply; but more than to these, in more +insidious ways, do they apply to laboring women. To all women, in fact; +for no matter how poor a man is, his wife and daughters are poorer; no +matter how much of a dependent he is, the woman is more so, for she is the +dependent of a dependent, the serf of a slave, the chattel of a chattel! +The suppliant, not only for work and wage, but the suppliant at the hands +of sex power for equality with even the man who is under the feet and the +tyranny of wealth. They share together that tyranny and poverty, but he +thrusts upon her alone the added outrage of sex subjugation and legal +disability." He paused, and held up his hand. Then he said, slowly, making +each word stand alone:— +</p> +<p> +"And I tell you, gentlemen, with my one term's experience in the +Legislature and what it has taught me—I tell you that there is no +outrage which wealth and power can commit upon man that it cannot and does +not commit doubly upon woman! There is no cruelty upon all this cruel +earth half so terrible as the tyranny of sex! And again, I tell you that +to woman every man is a capitalist in wealth and in power, and I +reiterate:—the destruction of the poor is their <i>poverty.</i> It +has been doubly woman's destruction. Her absolute financial dependence +upon men has given him the power and—alas, that I should be +compelled to say it!—the will, to deny her all that is best and +loftiest in life, and even to crush out of her the love of liberty and the +dignity of character which cares for the better things. Look at her +education! Look at the disgraceful 'annexes' and side shifts which are +made to prevent our sisters from acquiring even the same, or as good, an +education as we claim for ourselves. Look—" He paused and lowered +his voice. "Look at the awful, the horrible, the beastly laws we pass for +women, while we carefully keep them in a position where they cannot +legislate for themselves. Do you know there is no law in any state—and +no legislature would dare try to pass one—which would bind a +ten-year-old boy to any contract which he might have been led, driven, or +coaxed into, or have voluntarily made, if that contract should henceforth +deprive him of all that gives to him the comforts, joys, or decencies of +life! All men hold that such a boy is not old enough to make such a +contract. That any one older than he, who leads him into a crime or +misdemeanor, or the transfer of property, or his personal rights and +liberty, is guilty of legal offence. The boy is without blame, and his +contract is absolutely void—illegal. But in more than one state we +hold that a little girl of ten may make the most fatal contract ever made +by or for woman, and that she is old enough to be held legally responsible +for her act and for her judgment. The one who leads her into it, though he +be forty, fifty, or sixty years old, is guiltless before the law. I tell +you, gentlemen, there is no crime possible to humanity that is as black as +that infamous law, sought to be re-enacted by our own state at this very +time, and which has already passed one house!" He explained, as delicately +as he could, the full scope and meaning of the bill. Surprise, +consternation, swept over the room. Men, a few of whom had heard of the +bill before, but had given it scant attention, saw a horror and disgust in +the eyes of the women which aroused for the first time in their minds, a +flickering sense of the enormity of such a measure. No one present was +willing that any woman should believe him guilty of approving such +legislation, and yet Avery impressed anew upon them that the bill had +passed one house with a good majority. On his way out of the room, a tall +girl stepped to his side. +</p> +<p> +For the moment he had not recognized her. It was Francis King. She looked +straight at him. +</p> +<p> +"Did my father vote for that bill?" she asked, without a prelude of +greeting. Avery hesitated. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, is it you, Miss King?" he asked, "I did not see you before. Do you +come here often?" +</p> +<p> +"Not very," she said, still looking at him, and with fire gathering in her +eyes. "Did my father vote for that bill?" she repeated. +</p> +<p> +"Ah—I—to tell you the truth," began Avery, but she put out her +hand and caught firm hold of his arm. +</p> +<p> +"Did my father vote for that bill?" she insisted, and Avery said: —"Yes, +I'm sorry to say, he did, Miss King; but—so many did, you know. The +fact is—" +</p> +<p> +Her fingers grasped his arm like a vice, and her lips were drawn. "Did +Ettie's pa?" she demanded. +</p> +<p> +Avery saw the drift of her thought. +</p> +<p> +"God forgive him! yes," he said, and his own eyes grew troubled and +sympathetic. +</p> +<p> +"God may forgave him if he's a mind to," exclaimed Francis, "but I don't +want no such God around me, if he does. Any God that wants to forgive men +for such work as that ain't fit to associate with no other kind of folks +<i>but</i> such men; but I don't mean to allow a good little girl like +Ettie to live in the same house with a beast if I know it. She shan't go +home again now, not if her pa begs on his knees. He ain't fit to wipe her +shoes. 'N my pa!" she exclaimed, scornfully. "My pa talkin' about Ettie +being bad, and settin' bad examples for decent girls! Him a talkin'! Him +livin' in the same house with my little sister 'n me! Him!" The girl was +wrought to a frenzy of scorn, and contempt, and anger. They had passed out +with the rest into the street. +</p> +<p> +"Shall I walk home with you?" asked Avery. "Are you alone?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, I'm alone," she said, with a little dry sob. "I'm alone, an' I ain't +goin' home any more. Not while he lives there. It's no decent place for a +girl—living in the house with a man like that. I ain't goin' home. +I'm goin' to—" It rushed over her brain that she had no other place +to go. She held her purse in her hand; it had only two dollars and a few +cents in it. She had bought her new dress with the rest. Her step +faltered, but her eyes were as fiery and as hard as ever. +</p> +<p> +"You'd better go home," said Avery, softly. "It will only be the harder +for you, if you don't. I'm sorry—" +</p> +<p> +She turned on him like a tigress. They were in Union Square now. "Even <i>you</i> +think it is all right for good girls to be under the control and live with +men like that! Even <i>you</i> think I ought to go home, an' let him boss +me an' make rules fer me, an' me pretend to like it an believe as he does, +an' look up to him, an' think his way's right an' best! Even <i>you!</i>" +</p> +<p> +"No, no," said Avery, softly. "You must be fair, Miss King. I don't think +it's right; but—but—I said it was best just now, for—what +else can you do?" The girl was facing him as they stood near the fountain +in the middle of the square. +</p> +<p> +"That's just what I was meaning to show to-night when I said what I did to +the club, of the financial dependence of women; it is their destruction; +it destroys their self-respect; it forces them to accept a moral +companionship which they'd scorn if they dared; it forces them to seem to +condone and uphold such things themselves; it forces them to be the +companions and subordinates of degraded moral natures, that hold wives and +daughters to a code which they will not apply to themselves, and which +they seek to make void for other wives and daughters; it—" "You told +me to go home," she said, stubbornly. "I'm not goin'! I make money enough +to live on. I always spent it on—on things to wear; but—but I +can live on it, an' I'm goin' to. I ain't goin' to live in the house with +no such a man. He ain't <i>fit</i> to live with. I won't tell ma an' the +girls—yet; not till—" +</p> +<p> +She paused, and peered toward the clock in the face of the great stone +building across the street. "Do you think it's too late fer me t' talk a +minute with Miss Gertrude?" she asked, with her direct gaze, again. "She'd +let me stay there one night, I guess, n' she'd tell me—I c'd talk to +her some." +</p> +<p> +"If you won't go home," he said, slowly, "I suppose it would be best for +you to go there, but—it is rather late. Go home for to-night, Miss +Francis! I wish you would. Think it over to-night, please. Let me take you +home to-night. Go to Miss Gertrude to-morrow, and talk it over." His tone +had grown gentle and more tender than he knew. He took the hand she had +placed on his arm in his own, and tried to turn toward her street. She +held stubbornly back. "For my sake, to please me—because I think it +is best—won't you go home to-night?" She looked at him again, and a +haze came in her eyes. She did not trust herself to speak, but she turned +toward her own street, and they walked silently down the square. His hand +still held her own as it lay on his arm. +</p> +<p> +"Thank you," he said, and pressed her fingers more firmly for an instant +and then released them. He had taken his glove off in the hall and had not +replaced it. When they reached the door of her father's house, she +suddenly grasped his ungloved hand and kissed it, and ran sobbing up the +steps and into the house without a word. +</p> +<p> +"Poor girl," thought Avery, "she is not herself to-night. She has never +respected nor loved her father much, but this was a phase of his nature +she had not suspected before. Poor child! I hope Gertrude—" and in +the selfishness of the love he bore for Gertrude, he allowed his thoughts +to wander, and it did not enter his mind to place anything deeper than a +mere emotional significance upon the conduct of the intense, tall, +dark-eyed girl who had just left him. +</p> +<p> +He did not dream that at that moment she lay face down on her bed sobbing +as if her heart would break, and yet, that a strange little flutter of +happiness touched her heart as she held her gloved hand against her +flushed cheek or kissed it in the darkness. It was the hand Avery had held +so long within his own, as it lay upon his arm. At last the girl drew the +glove off, and going to her drawer, took out her finest handkerchief and +lay the glove within, wrapping it softly and carefully. She was breathing +hard, and her face was set and pained. At two o'clock she had fallen +asleep, and under her tear-stained cheek there was a glove folded in a bit +of soft cambric. Poor Francis King! The world is a sorry place for such as +you, and even those who would be your best friends often deal the +deadliest wounds. Poor Francis King! Has life nothing to offer you but a +worn glove and a tear-stained bit of cambric? Is it true? Need it be true? +Is there no better way? Have we built your house with but one door, and +with no window? Smile at the fancies of your sleep, child; to-morrow will +bring memory, reality, and tears. You are a woman now. Yesterday you were +but an unformed, strong-willed girl. Poor Francis King! sleep late +to-morrow, and dream happily if you can. Poor Francis King, to-morrow is +very near! +</p> +<p> +<a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> +<!-- H2 anchor --> </a> +</p> +<div style="height: 4em;"> +<br /><br /><br /><br /> +</div> +<h2> +XI. +</h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">G</span>ertrude!" called out her mother to the girl, as she passed the library +door. "Gertrude! come in, your father and I wish to talk with you." +</p> +<p> +"Committee meeting?" laughed Gertrude, as she took a seat beside her +father. It had grown to be rather a joke in the family to speak of Mr. +Avery's calls as committee meetings, and Mr. Foster had tried vainly to +tease his daughter about it. +</p> +<p> +"In my time," he would say, "we did not go a courting to get advice. we +went for kisses. I never discussed any more profound topic with my +sweetheart than love—and perhaps poetry and music. Sometimes, as I +sit and listen to you two, I can't half believe that you are lovers. It's +so perfectly absurd. You talk about everything on earth. It's a deal more +like—why I should have looked upon that sort of thing as a species +of committee meeting, in my day." +</p> +<p> +Gertrude had laughed and said something about thinking that love ought to +enter into and run through all the interests of life, and not be held +merely as a thing apart. All women had a life to live. All would not have +the love. So the first problem was one of life and its work. The love was +only a phase of this. But her father had gone on laughing at her about her +queer love-making. +</p> +<p> +"Committee meeting?" asked she, again, as she glanced at her father, +smiling dryly. Her mother answered first. +</p> +<p> +"Yes—no—partly. Your father wanted to speak to you about—he +thinks you should not be seen with, or have those girls—You tell her +yourself, dear," she said, appealing to her husband. Mr. Foster was +fidgeting about in his chair; he had not felt comfortable before. He was +less so now, for Gertrude had turned her face full upon him, and her hand +was on his sleeve. +</p> +<p> +"'Well, there's nothing to tell, Gertrude," he said. "I guess you can +understand it without a scene. I simply don't want to see those girls—that +King girl and her friend—about here any more. It won't do. It simply +won't do at all. You'll be talked about. Of course, I know it is all very +kind of you, and all that, and that you don't mean any harm; but men +always have drawn, and they always will draw, unpleasant conclusions. They +may sympathize with that sort of girls, but they simply won't stand having +their own women folks associate with them. The test of the respectability +of a woman, is whether a man of position will marry her or not. A man's +respectable if he's out of jail. A woman if she is marriageable or +married. Now, unfortunately, that little Berton girl is neither the one +nor the other, and its going to make talk if you are seen with her again. +She must stay away from here, too." +</p> +<p> +There had come a most unusual tone of protest into his voice as he went +on, but he had looked steadily at a carved paper knife, which he held in +his hand, and with which he cut imaginary leaves upon the table. There was +a painful silence. Gertrude thought she did not remember having ever +before heard her father speak so sharply. She glanced at her mother, but +Katherine Foster had evidently made up her mind to leave this matter +entirely in the hands of her husband. +</p> +<p> +"Do you mean, papa, that you wish me to tell that child, Ettie Berton, not +to come here any more, and that I must not befriend her?" asked Gertrude, +in an unsteady voice. +</p> +<p> +"Befriend her all you've a mind to," responded her father, heartily. +"Certainly. Of course. But don't have her come here, and don't you be seen +with her, nor the other one again. You can send James or Susan —better +not send Susan though—send James with money or anything you want to +give her. Your mother tells me you are paying the Berton girl's board. +That's all right if you want to, but—your mother has told me the +whole outrageous story, and that cashier ought to be shot, but—" +</p> +<p> +"But instead of helping make the public opinion which would make him less, +and Ettie more, respectable, you ask me to help along the present infamous +order of things! Oh, papa! don't ask that of me! I have never willingly +done anything in my life that I knew you disapproved. Don't ask me to help +crush that child now, for I cannot. I cannot desert her now. Don't ask +that of me, papa. Why do men—even you good men—make it so +hard, so almost impossible for women to be kind to each other? What has +Ettie done that such as we should hold her to account. She is a mere +child. Fourteen years old in fact, but not over ten in feeling or +judgment. She has been deceived by one who fully understood. She did not. +And yet <i>even you</i> ask me to hold her responsible! Oh, papa, don't!" +She slipped onto her father's knee and took his face in her hands and +kissed his forehead. She had never in her life stood against her father or +seemed to criticise him before. It hurt her and it vexed him. A little +frown came on his face. "Katherine," he said, turning to his wife, "I wish +you'd make Gertrude understand this thing rationally. <i>You</i> always +have." Mrs. Foster glanced at her daughter and then at her husband. She +smiled. +</p> +<p> +"I always have, what dear?" she asked. +</p> +<p> +"Understood these things as I do—as everyone does," said her +husband. "You never took these freaks that Gertrude is growing into, and—" +</p> +<p> +The daughter winced and sat far back on her father's knee. Her mother did +not miss the action. She smiled at the girl, but her voice was steady, and +less light than usual. +</p> +<p> +"No, I never took freaks, as you say, but what I thought of things, or how +I may or may not have understood them, dear, no one ever inquired, no one +ever cared to know. That I acted like other people, and acquiesced in +established opinions, went without saying. That was expected of me. That I +did. Gertrude belongs to another generation, dear. She cannot be so +colorless as we women of my time—" +</p> +<p> +Her husband laughed. +</p> +<p> +"Colorless, is good, by Jove! <i>You</i> colorless indeed!" He looked +admiringly at his wife. "Why, Katherine, you have more color and more +sense now than any half dozen girls of this generation. Colorless indeed!" +Mrs. Foster smiled. "Don't you think my cheerful, easy reflection of your +own shades of thought or mind have always passed current as my own? +Sometimes I fancy that is true, and that—it is easier and—pleasanter +all around. But—" she paused. "It was not my color, my thought, my +opinions, myself. It was an echo, dear; a pleasant echo of yourself which +has so charmed you. It was not I." +</p> +<p> +Gertrude felt uneasy, and as if she were lifting a curtain which had been +long drawn. Her father turned his face towards her and then toward her +mother. +</p> +<p> +"In God's name what does all this mean?" he asked. "Are you, the most +level-headed woman in the world, intending to uphold Gertrude in this—suicidal +policy—her—this—absurd nonsense about that girl?" +</p> +<p> +Gertrude's eyes widened. She slowly arose from his knee. The revelation as +to her father's mental outlook was, to her more sensitive and developed +nature, much what the one had been to Francis King that night at the club. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, papa," she said softly. "I am so sorry for—so sorry—for +us all. We seem so far apart, and—" +</p> +<p> +"John Martin agrees with me perfectly," said her father, hotly. "I talked +with him to-day. He—" +</p> +<p> +Gertrude glanced at her mother, and there was a definite curl upon her +lip. "Mr. Martin," she said slowly, "is not a conscience for me. He and I +are leagues apart, papa. We—" +</p> +<p> +"More's the pity," said her father, as he arose from his chair. He moved +toward the door. +</p> +<p> +"I've said my say, Gertrude. It's perfectly incomprehensible to me what +you two are aiming at. But what I know is this: you must <i>do</i> my way +in this particular case, think whatever you please. You know very well I +would not ask it except for your own good. I don't like to interfere with +your plans, but—you must give that girl up." He spoke kindly, but +Gertrude and her mother sat silent long after he had gone. The twilight +had passed into darkness. Presently Katherine's voice broke the silence:— +</p> +<p> +"Shall you float with the tide, daughter, or shall you try to swim up +stream?" She was thinking of the first talk they had ever had on these +subjects, nearly two years ago now, but the girl recognized the old +question. She stood up slowly and then with quick steps came to her +mother's side. +</p> +<p> +"Don't try to swim with me, mamma. It only makes it harder for me to see +you hurt in the struggle. Don't try to help me any more when the eddies +come. Float, mamma; I shall swim. I shall! I shall! And while my head is +above the waves that poor little girl shall not sink." +</p> +<p> +She was stroking Katherine's hair, and her mother's hand drew her own down +to a soft cheek. +</p> +<p> +"Am I right, mother?" she asked, softly. "If you say I am right, it is +enough. My heart will ache to seem to papa to do wrong, but I can bear it +better than I could bear my own self-contempt. Am I right, mamma?" +</p> +<p> +Her mother drew her hand to her lips, and then with a quick action she +threw both arms about the girl and whispered in her ear: "I shall go back +to the old way. Swim if you can, daughter. You are right. If only you are +strong enough. That is the question. If only you are strong enough. I am +not. I shall remain in the old way." There was a steadiness and calm in +her voice which matched oddly enough with the fire in her eyes and the +flush on her cheeks. +</p> +<p> +"Little mother, little mother," murmured Gertrude, softly, as she stroked +her mother's hand. Then she kissed her and left the room. "With her +splendid spirit, that <i>she</i> should be broken on the wheel!" the girl +said aloud to herself, when she had reached her own room. She did not +light the gas, but sat by the window watching the passers-by in the +street. +</p> +<p> +"Why should papa have sent me to college," she was thinking, "where I +matched my brains and thoughts with men, if I was to stifle them later on, +and subordinate them to brains I found no better than my own? Why should +my conscience be developed, if it must not be used; if I must use as my +guide the conscience of another? Why should I have a separate and distinct +nature in all things, if I may use only that part of it which conforms to +those who have not the same in type or kind? I will do what seems right to +myself. I shall not desert—" +</p> +<p> +She laid her cheek in her hand and sighed. A new train of thought was +rising. It had never come to her before. +</p> +<p> +"It is my father's money. He says I may send it, but I may not—it is +my father's money. He has the right to say how it may be used, and—and—" +(the blood was coming into her face) "I have nothing but what he gives me. +He wants a pleasant home; he pays for it. Susan and James, and the rest, +he hires to conduct the labor of the house. If they do not do it to please +him—if they are not willing to—they have no right to stay, and +then to complain. For his social life at home he has mamma and me. If he +wants—" She was walking up and down the room now. "Have we a right +to dictate? We have our places in <i>his</i> home. We are not paid wages +like James and Susan, but—but—we are given what we have; we +are dependent. He has never refused us anything—any sum we wanted—but +he can. It is in his power, and really we do not know but that he should. +Perhaps we spend too much. We do not know. What can he afford? I do not +know. What can <i>I</i> afford?" She spread her hands out before her, +palms up, in the darkness. She could see them by the flicker of the +electric light in the street. +</p> +<p> +"They are empty," she said, aloud, "and they are untrained, and they are +helpless. They are a pauper's hands." She smiled a little at the conceit, +and then, slowly: "It sounds absurd, almost funny, but it is true. A +pauper in lace and gold! I am over twenty-two. I am as much a dependent +and a pauper as if I were in a poorhouse. Love and kindness save me! They +have not saved Ettie, nor Francis. When the day came they were compelled +to yield utterly, or go. They can work, and I? I am a dependent. Have I a +right to stand against the will and pleasure of my father, when by doing +so I compel him to seem to sustain and support that which he disapproves? +Have I a right to do that?" +</p> +<p> +She was standing close to the window now, and she put her hot face against +the glass. "The problem is easy enough, if all think alike—if one +does not think at all; but now? I cannot follow my own conscience and my +father's too. We do not think alike. Is it right that I should, to buy his +approval and smiles, violate my own mind, and brain, and heart? But is it +right for me to violate <i>his</i> sense of what is right, while I live +upon the lavish and loving bounty which he provides?" And so, with her +developed conscience, and reason, and individuality, Gertrude had come to +face the same problem, which, in its more brutal form, had resulted so +sorrowfully for the two girls whom she had hoped to befriend. The ultimate +question of individual domination of one by another, with the purse as the +final appeal—and even this strong and fortunate girl wavered. "Shall +I swim, after all? Have I the right to try?" she asked herself. +</p> +<p> +<a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"> +<!-- H2 anchor --> </a> +</p> +<div style="height: 4em;"> +<br /><br /><br /><br /> +</div> +<h2> +XII. +</h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hen Francis King told Mr. Avery that she could and would leave her +father's home and live upon the money she earned, and had heretofore +looked upon as merely a resource to save her pride, she did not take into +consideration certain very important facts, not the least of which was, +perhaps, that her presence at the store was not wholly a pleasant thing +for the cashier to contemplate under existing circumstances. +</p> +<p> +Francis King was not a diplomat. The cashier was not a martyr. These two +facts, added to the girl's scornful eyes, rendered the position in the +trimming department far less secure than she had grown to believe. +</p> +<p> +So when she came to the little room which Gertrude Foster had provided as +a temporary home for Ettie Berton, she felt that she came as a help and +protector and not at all as a possible encumbrance. +</p> +<p> +"I've had a terrible blow-out with pa," she said, bitterly. "I can't go +home any more if I wanted to—and I don't want to. I told him what I +thought of him, and of your—and of the kind of men that make mean +laws they are ashamed to have their own folks know about and live by. He +was awful mad. He said laws was none o' my business, and he guessed men +knew best what was right an' good for women." +</p> +<p> +"Of course they do," said Ettie with her ever ready acquiescence. "I +reckon you didn't want t' deny <i>that,</i> did you Fan? You 'n your pa +must a' shook hands for once anyhow," she laughed. "How'd it feel? Didn't +you like agreein' with him once?" Francis looked at the child—this +pitiful illustration of the theory of yielding acquiescence; this +legitimate blossom of the tree of ignorance and soft-hearted dependence; +this poor little dwarf of individuality; this helpless echo of masculine +measures, methods, and morals—and wondered vaguely why it was that +the more helpless the victim, the more complete her disaster, the more +certain was she to accept, believe in, and support the very cause and root +of her undoing. +</p> +<p> +Francis King's own mental processes were too disjointed and ill-formulated +to enable her to express the half-formed thoughts that came to her. Her +heart ached for her little friend to whom to-day was always welcome, and +to whom to-morrow never appeared a possibility other than that it would be +sunshiny, and warm, and comfortable. +</p> +<p> +Francis saw a certain to-morrow which should come to Ettie, far more +clearly than did the child herself, and seeing, sighed. Her impulse was to +argue the case hotly with Ettie, as she had done with her father; but she +looked at her face again, and then, as a sort of safety-valve for her own +emotion, succinctly said: "Ettie Berton, you are the biggest fool I ever +saw." +</p> +<p> +Ettie clapped her hands. +</p> +<p> +"Right you are, says Moses!" she exclaimed, laughing gleefully, "and you +like me for it. Folks with sense like fools. Sense makes people so awful +uncomfortable. Say, where'd you get that bird on your hat? Out 'o stock? +Did that old mean thing make you pay full price? Goodness! how I do wish I +could go back t' store!" +</p> +<p> +"Ettie, how'd you like for me to come here an live with you? Do you 'spose +Miss Gertrude would care?" +</p> +<p> +"Hurrah for Cleveland!" exclaimed Ettie, springing to her feet and +throwing her arms about Francis. "Hurrah for Grant! Gracious, but I'm +glad! I'm just so lonesome I had to make my teeth ache for company," she +rattled on. "Miss Gertrude 'll be glad, too. She said she wisht I had +somebody 't take care of me. But, gracious! I don't need that. They ain't +nothing to do but just set still n' wait. It's the waitin' now that makes +me so lonesome. I want t' hurry 'n get back t' the store, 'n—" +</p> +<p> +She noticed Francis's look of surprise, not unmixed with frank scorn; but +she did not rightly interpret it. +</p> +<p> +"My place ain't gone is it, Fan?" she asked, in real alarm. "He said he'd +keep it for me." +</p> +<p> +"Ettie Berton, you are the biggest fool I ever saw," said Francis, again, +this time with a touch of hopelessness and pathos in her voice, and at +that moment there was a rap at the door. It was one of the cash girls from +the store. She handed Francis a note, and while Ettie and the visitor +talked gaily of the store, Francis read and covered her pale face with her +trembling hands. She was discharged "owing to certain necessary changes to +be made in the trimming department." She went and stood by the window with +her back to the two girls. She understood the matter perfectly, and she +did not dare trust herself to speak. It could not be helped, she thought, +and why let Ettie know that she had brought this disaster upon her friend, +also. Francis was trying to think. She was raging within herself. Then it +came to her that she had boldly asserted that she would help protect and +support Ettie. Now she was penniless, helpless, and homeless herself. +There were but two faces that stood out before her as the faces of those +to whom she could go for help and counsel, and she was afraid to go to +even these. She was ashamed, humiliated, uncertain. +</p> +<p> +She supposed that Gertrude Foster could help her if she would. She had +that vague miscomprehension of facts which makes the less fortunate look +upon the daughters of wealth and luxury and love as possessed of a magic +wand which they need but stretch forth to compass any end. She did not +dream that at that very moment Gertrude Foster was revolving exactly the +same problem in her own mind, and reaching out vainly for a solution. +"What shall I do? what ought I to do? what can I do?" were questions as +real and immediate to Gertrude, in the new phase of life and thought which +had come to her, as they were to Francis in her extremity. It is true that +the greater part of the problem in Francis's mind dealt with the physical +needs of herself and her little friend, and with her own proud and fierce +anger toward her father and the cashier. It is also true that these +features touched Gertrude but lightly; but the highest ideals, beliefs, +aspirations, and love of her soul were in conflict within her, and the +basis of the conflict was the same with both girls. Each had, in following +the best that was within herself, come into violent contact with +established prejudice and prerogative, and each was beating her wings, the +one against the bars of a gilded cage draped lovingly in silken threads, +and the other was feeling her helplessness where iron and wrath unite to +hold their prey. +</p> +<p> +The other face that arose before Francis brought the blood back to her +face. She had not seen him since she had kissed his hand that night, and +she wondered what he thought of her. She felt ashamed to go to him for +help. She had talked so confidently to him that night of her own powers, +and of her determination that Ettie should not again live under the same +roof, and be subject to the will of the father whom she insisted was a +disgrace to the child. "I reckon <i>he</i> could get me another place to +work—in a store," she thought. "But—" She shook her head, and +a fierce light came into her eyes. She had learned enough to know that a +girl who had left home under the wrath of her father, would best not +appeal for a situation under the protection and recommendation of a young +gentleman not of her own caste or condition in life. She thought of all +this and of what it implied, and it seemed to her that her heart would +burst with shame and rage. +</p> +<p> +Was she not a human being? Were there not more reasons than one why +another human unit should be kind to her and help her? If she were a boy +all this shame would be lifted from her shoulders, all these suspicions +and repression and artificial barriers would be gone. She wondered if she +could not get a suit of men's clothes, and so solve the whole trouble. No +one would then question her own right of individual and independent action +or thought. No one would then think it commendable for her to be a useless +atom, subordinating her whole individuality to one man, to whose mental +and moral tone she must bend her own, until such time as he should turn +her over to some other human entity, whereupon she would be required to +readjust all her mental and moral belongings to accommodate the new +master. How comfortable it would be, she thought, to go right on year +after year, growing into and out of herself. Expanding her own nature, and +finding the woman of to-morrow the outcome of the girl of yesterday. She +had once heard a teacher explain about the chameleon with its capacity to +adjust itself to and take on the color of other objects. It floated into +her mind that girls were expected to be like chameleons. Instead of being +John King's daughter, with, of course, John King's ideas, status and +aspirations, or William Jones's wife—now metamorphosed into a tepid +reflex of William Jones himself—she thought how pleasant it would be +to continue to be Francis King, and not feel afraid to say so. The idea +fascinated her. Yes, she would get a suit of men's clothes, and henceforth +have and feel the dignity of individual responsibility and development. +She slipped out of the room and into the street. She thought she would +order the clothes as if "for a brother just my size." She could pay for a +cheap suit. She paused in front of a shop window, and the sight of her own +face in a glass startled her. She groaned aloud. She knew as she looked +that she was too handsome to pass for a man. It was a woman's face. Then, +too, how could she live with and care for Ettie? "No, <i>I'll</i> have to +go to <i>them</i> for help," she said, desperately to herself, and +turning, faced Selden Avery coming across the street. The color flew into +her face, but she saw at a glance that he did not think of their last +meeting—or, at least, not of its ending. "I was just wishing I could +see you and Miss Gertrude," she said, bluntly, her courage coming back +when he paused, recognizing that she wished to speak further with him than +a mere greeting. +</p> +<p> +"Were you?" he said, smiling. "Our thoughts were half-way the same then, +for I was wishing to see her, too." +</p> +<p> +She thought how pleasant and soft his voice was, and she tried to modify +the tones of her own. +</p> +<p> +"I was goin't' ask you—her—what to do about—about +something," she said, falteringly. +</p> +<p> +"So was I," he smiled back, showing his perfect teeth. "She will have to +be very, very wise to advise us both, will she not? Shall we go to her +now? And together? Perhaps our united wisdom may solve both your problem +and mine. Three people ought to be three times as wise as one, oughtn't +they?" +</p> +<p> +<a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015"> +<!-- H2 anchor --> </a> +</p> +<div style="height: 4em;"> +<br /><br /><br /><br /> +</div> +<h2> +XIII. +</h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hen Gertrude came forward to meet Selden Avery and Francis King, she +felt the disapproving eyes of her father fixed upon her. It was a new and +a painful sensation. It made her greeting less free and frank than usual, +and both Avery and Francis felt without being able to analyze it. +</p> +<p> +"She don't like me to be with him," thought Francis, and felt humiliated +and hurt. +</p> +<p> +"Surely Gertrude cannot doubt me," was Avery's mental comment, and a sore +spot in his heart, left by a comment made at the club touching Gertrude's +friendship for this same tall, fiery girl at his side, made itself felt +again. John Martin exchanged glances with Gertrude's father. Avery saw, +and seeing, resented what he believed to be its meaning. +</p> +<p> +The three men bowed rather stiffly to each other. Francis felt that she +was, somehow, to blame. She wished that she had not come. She longed to +go, but did not know what to say nor how to start. The situation was +awkward for all. Gertrude wished for and yet dreaded the entrance of her +mother. +</p> +<p> +Avery felt ashamed to explain, but he began as if speaking to Gertrude and +ended with a look of challenge at the two men facing him. "I chanced to +meet Miss King in the street and as both of us stood in need of advice +from you," he was trying to smile unconcernedly, "we came up the avenue +together." +</p> +<p> +There was a distinct look of displeasure and disapproval upon Mr. Foster's +face, while John Martin took scant pains to conceal his disgust. He, also, +had heard, and repeated, the club gossip to Gertrude's father. +</p> +<p> +"If good advice is what you want particularly," said Mr. Foster, slowly, +"I don't know but that I might accommodate you. I hardly think Gertrude is +in a position to—to—" +</p> +<p> +The bell rang sharply and in an instant the little cash girl from the +store rushed in gasping for breath. +</p> +<p> +"Come quick! quick! Ettie is killed! She fell down stairs and then—oh, +something <i>awful</i> happened! I don't know what it was. The doctor is +there. He sent me here, 'cause Ettie cried and called for you!" She was +looking at Gertrude, who started toward the door. +</p> +<p> +"Go back and tell the doctor that Miss Foster cannot come," said her +father, rising. +</p> +<p> +"Certainly not, I should hope," remarked John Martin under his breath; +"the most preposterous idea!" Gertrude paused. She was looking at her +father with appeal in her face. Then her eyes fell upon the tense lips and +piercing gaze of Francis King who, half way to the street door, had turned +and was looking first from one to the other. +</p> +<p> +"Papa," said Gertrude, "don't say that. I must go. It is right that I +should, and I must." Then with outstretched hands, "I want to go, papa! I +need to. Don't—" +</p> +<p> +"You will do nothing of the kind, Gertrude. It is outrageous. What +business have you got with that kind of girls? I <i>asked</i> you to stop +having them come here, and I told you to let them alone. I am perfectly +disgusted with Avery, here, for—" He had thought Francis was gone. +The drapery where she had turned to hear what Gertrude would say hid her +from him. "<i>With that kind of girls!</i>" was ringing in her ears. "I +hope when you are married <i>that</i> is not the sort of society he is +going to surround you with. It—" Avery saw for the first time what +the trouble was. He stepped quickly to Gertrude's side and slipped one arm +about her. Then he took the hand she still held toward her father. +</p> +<p> +"My wife shall have her own choice. She is as capable as I to choose. I +shall not interfere. She shall not find me a master, but a comrade. +Gertrude is her own judge and my adviser. That is all I ask, and it is all +I assume for myself as her husband—when that time comes," he added, +with her hand to his lips. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Foster entered attired for the street. The unhappy face of Francis +King with wide eyes staring at Gertrude met her gaze. She had heard what +went before. "Get your hat, Gertrude," she said. "I will go with you. It +might take too long to get a carriage. Francis, come with me; Gertrude +will follow us. Come with her, my son," she said, to Selden Avery, and a +spasm of happiness swept over his face. She had never called him that +before. He stooped and kissed her, and there were tears in the young man's +eyes as Mrs. Foster led Francis King away. +</p> +<p> +"I suppose it was all my fault to begin with," said John Martin, when the +door had closed behind them. "It all started from that visit to the +Spillinis. The only way to keep the girls of this age in—" he was +going to say "in their place," but he changed to 'where they belong,' "is +not to let them find out the facts of life. Charity and religion did well +enough to appease the consciences of women before they had colleges, and +all that. I didn't tell you so at the time, but I always did think it was +a mistake to send Gertrude to a college where she could measure her wits +with men. She'll never give it up. She don't know where to stop." +</p> +<p> +Mr. Foster lighted a cigar—a thing he seldom did in the +drawing-room. He handed one to John Martin. +</p> +<p> +"I guess you're right, John," he said, slowly. "She can't seem to see that +graduation day ended all that. It was Katherine's idea, sending her there, +though. I wanted her to go to Vassar or some girl's school like that. I +don't know what to make of Katherine lately; when I come to think of it, I +don't know what to make of her all along. She seems to have laid this plan +from the first, college and all; but I never saw it. Sometimes I'm afraid—sometimes +I almost think—" He tapped his forehead and shook his head, and John +Martin nodded contemplatively, and said: "I shouldn't wonder if you are +right, Fred. Too much study is a dangerous thing for women. The structure +of their brains won't stand it. It is sad, very sad;" and they smoked in +sympathetic silence, while James had hastened below stairs to assure Susan +that he thought he'd catch himself allowing his sweetheart or wife to +demean herself and disgrace him by having anything to do with a person in +the position of Ettie Berton. And Susan had little doubt that James was +quite right, albeit Susan felt moderately sure that in a contest of wits—after +the happy day—she could be depended upon to get her own way by hook +or by crook, and Susan had no vast fund of scruple to allay as to method +or motive. Deception was not wholly out of Susan's line. Its necessity did +not disturb her slumbers. +</p> +<p> +<a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016"> +<!-- H2 anchor --> </a> +</p> +<div style="height: 4em;"> +<br /><br /><br /><br /> +</div> +<h2> +XIV. +</h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>ome one had sent for Ettie's father. They told him that she was dying, +and he had come at once. Mr. King had gone with him. The latter gentleman +did not much approve of his colleague's soft-heartedness in going. He did +not know where his own daughter was, and he did not care. She had faced +him in her fiery way, and angered him beyond endurance the morning after +she had learned of the awful bill which he had not really originated, but +which he had induced Mr. Berton to present, at the earnest behest of a +social lion whose wont it was to roar mightily in the interest of virtue, +but who was at the present moment engaged in lobbying vigorously in the +interest of vice. +</p> +<p> +When Francis entered the sick-room with Mrs. Foster, and found the two men +there, she gave one glance at the pallid, unconscious figure on the bed, +and then demanded, fiercely: "Where is the cashier? Why didn't you bring +him and—and the rest of you who help make laws to keep him where he +is, an'—an' to put Ettie where she is? Why didn't y' bring <i>all</i> +of your kind that helped along the job?" +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Foster had been bending over the child on the bed. She turned. +</p> +<p> +"Don't, Francis," she said, trying to draw the girl away. She was standing +before the two men, who were near the window. "Don't, Francis. That can do +no good. They did not intend—" "No'm," began Berton, awkwardly; +"no'm, I didn't once think o' <i>my</i> girl, n—" He glanced +uneasily at his colleague and then at the face on the bed. +</p> +<p> +"Or you would never have wanted such a law passed, I am sure," said +Katherine. +</p> +<p> +"No'm, I wouldn't," he said, doggedly, not looking at his colleague. +</p> +<p> +"Don't tell me!" exclaimed Francis. "You don't none of you care for her. +He only cares because it is his girl an' disgraces <i>him</i>. What did he +do? Care for her? No, he drove her off. That shows who he's a-carin' for. +He ain't sorry because it hurts or murders her. He never tried to make it +easy for her an' say he was a lot more to blame an'—an'—a big +sight worse every way than she was. He's a-howling now about bein' sorry; +but he's only sorry for himself. He'd a let her starve—an' so'd <i>he</i>," +she said, pointing to her father. She was trembling with rage and +excitement. "I hope there is a hell! I jest hope there is! I'll be willin' +to go to it myself jest t' see—" +</p> +<p> +The door opened softly and Gertrude entered, and behind her stood Selden +Avery. +</p> +<p> +"That kind of girls" floated anew into Francis's brain, and the sting of +the words she had heard Gertrude's father utter drove her on. "I wish to +God, every man that ever lived could be torn to pieces an'—an' put +under Ettie's feet. They wouldn't be fit for her to walk on—none of +'em! She never did no harm on purpose ner when she understood; an' men—men +jest love to be mean!" +</p> +<p> +She felt the utter inadequacy of her words, and a great wave of feeling +and a sense of baffled resentment swept over her, and she burst into +tears. Gertrude tried to draw her out of the room. At the door she sobbed: +"Even <i>her</i> father's jest like the rest, only—only he says it +easier. He—" +</p> +<p> +"Francis, Francis," said Gertrude, almost sternly, when they were outside +the sickroom. "You must not act so. It does no good, and—and you are +partly wrong, besides. If—" +</p> +<p> +"I didn't mean <i>him</i>," said the girl, with her handkerchief to her +eyes. "I didn't mean <i>him.</i> I know what he thinks about it. I heard +him talk one night at the club. He talked square, an' I reckon he is +square. But <i>I</i> wouldn't take no chances. I wouldn't marry the Angel +Gabriel an' give him a chance to lord it over me!" +</p> +<p> +Gertrude smiled in spite of herself, and glanced within through the open +door. There was a movement towards where the sick girl lay. "If you go in, +you must be quiet," she said to Francis, and entered. Ettie had been +stirring uneasily. She opened her great blue eyes, and when she saw the +faces about her, began to sob aloud. +</p> +<p> +"Don't let pa scold me. I'll do his way. I'll do—anything anybody +wants. I like to. The store—" She gave a great shriek of agony. She +had tried to move and fell back in a convulsion. She was only partly +conscious of her suffering, but the sight was terrible enough to +sympathetic hearts, and there was but one pair of dry eyes in the room. +The same beady, stern, hard glitter held its place in the eyes of Mr. +King. +</p> +<p> +"Serves her right," he was thinking. "And a mighty good lesson. Bringin' +disgrace on a good man's name!" +</p> +<p> +The tenacity with which Mr. King adhered to the belief in, and solicitude +for, a good name, would have been touching had it not been noticeable to +the least observant that his theory was, that the custody of that +desirable belonging was vested entirely in the female members of a family. +Nothing short of the most austere morals could preserve the family +'scutcheon if he was contemplating one side. Nothing short of a +long-continued, open, varied, and obtrusive dishonesty and profligacy of a +male member could even dull its lustre. It was a comfortable code for a +part of its adherents. +</p> +<p> +Had his poor, colorless, inane wife ever dared to deviate from the beaten +path of social observance, Mr. King would have talked about and felt that +"his honor" was tarnished. Were he to follow far less strictly the code, +he would not only be sure that his own honor was intact, but if any one +were to suggest to him the contrary, or that he was compromising her +honor, he would have looked upon that person as lacking in what he was +pleased to call "common horse-sense." He was in no manner a hypocrite. His +sincerity was undoubted. He followed the beaten track. Was it not the +masculine reason and logic of the ages, and was not that final? Was not +all other reason and logic merely a spurious emotionalism? morbid? +unwholesome? irrational? +</p> +<p> +No one would gainsay that unless it were a lunatic or a woman, which was +much the same thing—and since the opinion of neither of these was +valuable, why discuss or waste time with them? That was Mr. King's point +of view, and he was of the opinion that he had a pretty good voting +majority with him, and a voting majority was the measure of value and +ethics with Representative King—when the voting majority was on his +side. +</p> +<p> +When the last awful agony came to poor little Ettie Berton, and she +yielded up, in pathetic terror and reluctant despair, the life which had +been moulded for her with such a result almost as inevitable as the death +itself, a wave of tenderness and remorse swept over her father. He buried +his face in the pillow beside the poor, pretty, weak, white face that +would win favor and praise by its cheerful ready acquiescence no more, and +wept aloud. This impressed Representative King as reasonable enough, under +all the circumstances, but when Ettie's father intimated later to Francis +that he had been to blame, and that, perhaps, after all, Ettie <i>was</i> +only the legitimate result of her training and the social and legal +conditions which he had helped to make and sustain, Representative King +curled his lip scornfully and remarked that in his opinion Tom Berton +never could be relied on to be anything but a damned fool? In the long +run. He was a splendid "starter." Always opened up well in any line; but +unless someone else held the reins after that the devil would be to pay +and no mistake. +</p> +<p> +Francis heard; and, hearing, shut tight her lips and with her tear-swollen +eyes upon the face of her dead friend, swore anew that to be disgraced by +the presence of a father like that was more than she could bear. She could +work or she could die; but there was nothing on this earth, she felt, that +would be so impossible, so disgraceful, as for her to ever again +acknowledge his authority as her guide. +</p> +<p> +"Come home with me to-night, Francis," said Mrs. Foster. "We will think of +a plan—" +</p> +<p> +"I'm goin' to stay right here," said the girl, with a sob and a shiver; +for she had all the horror and fear of the dead that is common to her type +and her inexperience. "I'm goin' to stay right here. I can't go home, an' +I'm discharged at the store. Ettie told me her rent was paid for this +month. I'll take her place here an'—an' try to find another place to +work." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Foster realized that to stay in that room would fill the girl with +terror, but she felt, too, that she understood why Francis would not go +home with her. "That kind of girls" from Mr. Foster's lips had stung this +fierce, sensitive creature to the quick. A week ago she would have been +glad indeed to accept Katherine Foster's offer. Now she would prefer even +this chamber of death, where the odors made her ill, and the thoughts and +imaginings would insure to her sleepless nights of unreasoning fear. Her +father did not ask her to go home. Representative King believed in +representing. Was not his family a unit? And was he not the figure which +stood for it? It had never been his custom to ask the members of his +household to do things. He told them that he wanted certain lines of +action fallowed. That was enough. The thought and the will of that ideal +unit, "the family," vested in the person of Mr. King and he proposed to +represent it in all things. +</p> +<p> +If by any perverse and unaccountable mental process there was developed a +personality other than and different from his own, Representative King did +not propose to be disturbed in his home-life—as he persisted in +calling the portion of his existence where he was able to hold the iron +hand of power ever upon the throat of submission—to the extent of +having such unseemly personality near him. +</p> +<p> +In her present mood he did not want Francis at home. Representative King +was a staunch advocate of harmony and unity in the family life. He was of +opinion that where timidity and dependence say "yes" to all that power +suggests, that there dwelt unity and harmony. That is to say, he held to +this idea where it touched the sexes and their relation to each other in +what he designated an ideal domestic life. In all other relations he held +far otherwise—unless he chanced to be on the side of power and had a +fair voting majority. Representative King was an enthusiastic admirer of +submission—for other people. He thought that there was nothing like +self-denial to develop the character and beauty of a nature. It is true +that his scorn was deep when he contemplated the fact that John Berton +"had no head of his own," but then, John Berton was a man, and a man ought +to have some self-respect. He ought to develop his powers and come to +something definite. A definite woman was a horror. Her attractiveness +depended upon her vagueness, so Representative King thought; and if a +large voting majority was not with him in open expression, he felt +reasonably sure that he could depend upon them in secret session, so to +speak. Representative King was not a linguist, but he could read between +the social and legal lines very cleverly indeed, and finer lines of +thought than these were not for Representative King. +</p> +<p> +And so he did not ask Francis to go home. "When she gets ready to go my +way and says so, she can come," he thought. +</p> +<p> +"When that dress gets shabby and she's a little hungry, she'll conclude +that my way is good enough for her." He smiled at the vision of the future +"unity and harmony" which should thus be ushered into his home by means of +a little judiciously applied discipline, and Francis took her dead +friend's place as a lodger and tried to think, between her spasms of +loneliness and fears, what she should do on the morrow. +</p> +<p> +<a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017"> +<!-- H2 anchor --> </a> +</p> +<div style="height: 4em;"> +<br /><br /><br /><br /> +</div> +<h2> +XV. +</h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">F</span>rancis told me once at the Guild that she can make delicious bread and +pastry," said Gertrude, as they drove home. "I wonder if we could not +start her in a little shop of her own. She has the energy and vim to build +herself a business. I doubt if she will every marry—with her +experience one can hardly wonder—and there is a long life before +her. Her salvation will be work; a career, success." +</p> +<p> +"A career in a pastry shop seems droll enough," smiled her mother, "but—" +</p> +<p> +"I think I might influence the club to take a good deal of her stuff. +We've a miserable pastry cook now," said Avery. "That would help her to +get a start, and the start is always the hard part, I suppose, in a thing +like that." +</p> +<p> +"That would be a splendid chance. If the members liked her things, perhaps +they would get their wives to patronize her, too," said Gertrude, gaily. +"I'm so glad you thought of that, but then you always think of the right +thing," she added, tenderly. They all three laughed a little, and Avery +slipped his arm about her. +</p> +<p> +"Do I?" he asked in a voice tremulous with happiness. "Do I, Darling? I'm +so glad you said that, for I've just been thinking that—that I don't +want to go back to Albany without you, and—and the new session +begins in ten weeks. Darling, will you go with me? May she, my mother?" he +asked, catching Mrs. Foster's hand in his own. The two young people were +facing her. She sat alone on the back seat of the closed carriage. The +street lights were beginning to blossom and flicker. The rays fell upon +the mother's face as they drove. Her eyes were closed, and tears were on +her cheeks. +</p> +<p> +"Forgive me, mother," said Avery, tenderly. "Forgive me! You have gone +through so much to-day. I should have waited; but—but I love her so. +I need her so—I need her to help me think right. Can you +understand?" +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Foster moved to one side and held out both arms to her daughter. +</p> +<p> +"Sit by me," she said, huskily, and Gertrude gathered her in her young, +strong arms. +</p> +<p> +"Can I understand?" half sobbed Katherine from her daughter's shoulder. +"Can I understand? Oh, I do! I do! and I am so happy for you both; but she—she +is <i>my</i> daughter, and it is so hard to let her go—even to you! +It is so hard!" +</p> +<p> +Gertrude could not speak. She tried to look at her lover, but tears filled +her eyes. She was holding her mother's hand to her lips. +</p> +<p> +"Dear little mamma," she whispered; "dear little mamma, I shall never go +if it makes you unhappy—never, if it breaks my heart. But mamma, I +love you more because I love him; and—" +</p> +<p> +"I know, I know," said Katherine, trying to struggle out of her heartache +which held back and beyond itself a tender joy for these two. "But love is +so selfish. I <i>am</i> glad. I am glad for you both—but—oh, +my daughter, I love you, <i>I</i> love you!" she said, and choked down a +sob to smile in the girl's eyes. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Foster was waiting for them in the library. They were late. He had +been thinking. +</p> +<p> +"Well, I'm tremendously glad you're back," he said brightly, kissing his +wife, and then he took Gertrude in his arms. "Sweetheart," he said, +smiling down into her eyes, "if I seemed harsh to-day, I'm sorry. I only +did it because I thought it was for your own good. You know that." +</p> +<p> +"Why, papa," she said, with her cheek against his own; "of course I know. +Of course I understand. We all did. You don't mind if we did not see your +way? You—" +</p> +<p> +"The girl is dead, dear," said Mrs. Foster, touching her husband's arm, +"and—let us not talk of that now, to—to these, our children. +They want your—they want to ask—they are going to be married +in ten weeks?" +</p> +<p> +"The dickens!" exclaimed her father, and held Gertrude at arm's length. +"Is that so, Sweetheart?" There was a twinkle in his eyes, and he lifted +her chin with one finger and then kissed her. "The dickens! Well, all I've +got to say is, I'm sorry for old Martin and the rest of us," and he +grasped Selden Avery's hand. "I hope you'll give up that legislative +foolishness pretty soon and come back to town and live with civilized +people in a civilized way. It'll be horribly lonely in New York without +Gertrude, but—oh, well, its nature's way. We're all a lot of +robbers. I stole this little woman away from her father, and I'm an +unrepentent thief yet, am I not?" and he kissed his wife with the air of a +man who feels that life is well worth living, no matter what its +penalties, so long as she might be not the least of them. +</p> +<div style="height: 6em;"> +<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> +</div> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter?, by +Helen H. Gardener + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRAY YOU, SIR, WHOSE DAUGHTER? *** + +***** This file should be named 37355-h.htm or 37355-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/3/5/37355/ + +Produced by David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at +www.gutenberg.org/license. + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from +the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method +you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is +owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he +has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the +Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments +must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you +prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax +returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and +sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the +address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to +the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies +you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he +does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License. You must require such a user to return or +destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium +and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of +Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any +money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the +electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days +of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free +distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at 809 +North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email +contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the +Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +For additional contact information: +Dr. Gregory B. Newby +Chief Executive and Director +gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + +www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + + + +</pre> + +</body> +</html> |