Without looking around she went out of the room, and without answering her I followed. I was conscious chiefly of a desire to get away, to do anything but meet Selwyn where each would have to play a part; but as I entered Kitty"s drawing-room and later met her guests I crowded back all else but what was due her, spoke in turn to each, and then to Selwyn, as if between us there was no terrifying, unbridged gulf.
Kitty"s dinners are perfect. I am ever amazed at the care and consideration she gives to their ordering. In art and letters she is not learned, but she is an expert in the management of household affairs, and her dinner invitations are rarely declined.
At the table, with its lilacs and valley-lilies, its soft lights and perfect appointments, were old friends of mine and new acquaintances of hers, and with the guest of honor I shared their curiosity. Very skilfully Kitty led the chatter into channels where the draught was light, and obediently I did my best to follow. There was much talk, but no conversation.
"Oh, Miss Heath!" A young girl opposite me leaned forward. "I"ve been so crazy to meet you. Some one told me that you"d gone in for slums.
It must be so entrancing!"
I looked up. For a second Selwyn"s eyes held mine and we both smiled, but before I could speak Kitty"s lion turned toward me.
"Yes--I heard that, too." Fixing his black-rimmed gla.s.ses more firmly on his big and bulging nose, Mr. Garrott looked at me closely. "In my country slumming has become a fad with a--a certain type of restless women who have to make their living, I suppose. But I wouldn"t fancy you were--"
"She isn"t."
Jack Peebles, now happily married, blinked in my direction, signaled me to say nothing, then turned to the Englishman. "Miss Heath can do as she chooses, being Miss Heath, but the Turks are right. Women ought to be kept behind latticed windows, given a lute, and supplied with veils, and if they ask for anything else, they should be taken from the window."
"I don"t agree with you." Mr. Garrott filled his fork with mushrooms and raised it to his mouth. "The Turks carry their restraint too far.
Women should have more liberty than is given them in Turkey. They add color to life, add to its--"
"Uncertainties." Selwyn made effort to control the smile the others found uncontrollable. "In your country, now, the woman-question is interesting, exciting. There they do things, smash things, make a noise, keep you guessing. Over here their behavior is much less entertaining. Their att.i.tude is one of investigation as well as demand. They have developed an unreasonable desire to know things; know why they are as they are; why they should continue to be what they have been. They are preparing themselves by first-hand knowledge and information to tell what most of us do not want to hear."
Selwyn"s eyes again for a moment held mine, and in my face I felt hot color creeping. Never before had he defended, even with satire, what he had told me a hundred times was folly on my part. He turned to Mr.
Garrott.
"Why on earth perfectly comfortable, supposedly Christian human beings should want personally to know anything about uncomfortable, unfit, under-paid ones--"
"Oh, but I think they ought to!" Again the pretty little creature in green chiffon nodded toward me. "But you won"t let Miss Heath have a chance to say anything! Some one told me such queer people came to see her. Factory-girls and working-women and--oh--all sorts of people like that. Is it really so, Miss Heath?"
"Very interesting people come to see me. They are undoubtedly of different sorts, but one of the illuminating discoveries of life is that human beings are amazingly alike. Veneering is a great help, of course. If you knew my friends you would find--"
"I"d love to know them. I always have liked queer people. I"ve been crazy to come and see you, but mother won"t let-- I mean--"
"Mrs. Henderson says she met a young man when she went to see you who was the cleverest person she ever talked, to." Gentle Annie Gaines was venturing to come to my help. "He seemed to know something of everything. She couldn"t remember his name."
"It"s difficult to remember. He"s a Russian Jew. Schrioski, is his name." At the head of the table I felt Kitty squirm, knew she was twisting her feet in fear and indignation. I turned to her English guest.
"I have another friend who will be so glad to know I have met you, Mr.
Garrott. He is one of your most intelligent and intense admirers. He has read, I think, everything you"ve written."
Absorbed in his salad, evidently new and to his liking, Mr. Garrott was not impressed by, or appreciative of, my attempt to follow Kitty"s instructions. With any reservations of my bad taste in talking shop I would have agreed, still, something was due Kitty. "He tells me"--I refused to be ignored--"that he keeps an advance order for everything you write; buys your books as soon as they are published."
"Buys them!" With the only quick movement he had made, Mr. Garrott turned to me. "I"d like to meet him. I"m glad to know there"s somebody in America who buys and reads my books. Usually those who buy don"t read, and those who read don"t buy. But tell me--" Again the corners of his mouth drooped, and again his spectacles were adjusted.
"Why did you go in for--for living in a run-down place and meeting such odds and ends as they say you meet? You"re not old enough for things of that kind. An ugly woman, uninteresting, unprovided for--she might take them up." He stared at me as if for physical explanation of unreasonable peculiarities. "You believe, I fancy--"
"That a woman is capable of deciding for herself what she wants to do."
Again Jack Peebles"s near-sighted eyes blinked at me, but in his voice there was no longer chaffing. "She believes even more remarkable things than that. Believes if people, all sorts, knew one another better, understood one another better, there would be less injustice, less indifference, and greater friendship and regard. Rather an uncomfortable creed for those who don"t want to know, who prefer--"
"But you don"t expect all grades of people to be friends? Surely you don"t expect--"
I smiled. "No, I don"t expect. So far I"m only hoping all people may, some day--be friendly."
Kitty was signaling frantically with her eyes, and in obedience I again performed as requested, for the third time turned to Mr. Garrott.
"I heard a most interesting discussion the other day concerning certain present-day French writers. I wonder if you agree with Bernard Shaw that Brieux is the greatest dramatist since Moliere, or if--"
"I never agree with Bernard Shaw."
Mr. Garrott frowned, and, taking up his wine-gla.s.s, drained it.
Putting it down, he again stared at me. "I don"t understand you. You don"t look at all as I imagined you would."
At the foot of the table Billy was insisting upon the superiority of the links of the Hawthorne to those of the Ess.e.x club, and Kitty, at her end, was giving a lively account of a wedding-party she had come across at the station the evening before when seeing a friend off for her annual trip South, and at first one and then the other Mr. Garrott looked, as if not comprehending why, when he wished to speak, there should be chatter. Later, when again we were in the drawing-room, he continued to eye me speculatively, but he was permitted no opportunity to add to his inquiries; and when at last he was gone Kitty sat down, limp and worn at the strain she had been forced to endure.
"What business is it of his how you live and what you do?" she said, indignantly. "He"s an old teapot, but you see now what I mean. I"m always having to explain you, to tell--"
"Don"t do it. I"ll forgive much, but not explaining. Your lion doesn"t roar well, still, a lion is worth seeing--once." I turned to Selwyn. "I beg your pardon. Did you speak to me?"
"I asked if I could take you to Scarborough Square. I have a taxi here."
"Thank you, but I am spending the night with Kitty. I am not going back."
In astonishment Kitty looked at me, then turned away. I had told her I could not stay. I had not intended to stay, but I could not talk to Selwyn to-night. There would not be time and there was too much I wanted to say.
Selwyn"s shoulders made shrug that was barely perceptible, and without offering his hand he said good night. In the hall I heard him speak to Kitty, then the closing of the door and the starting of the taxi, then silence.
Dawn was breaking when at last I slept.
CHAPTER XIII
I have not seen Selwyn since the night of Kitty"s dinner-party. He has been back three days. If he wished to see me before he went away, why does he not come to see me now? Daily I determine I will let no thought of him come into my mind. The purposes for which I came to Scarborough Square will be defeated if I continue to think of this unimaginable happening that is with me day and night, this peculiar behavior of which he makes no explanation. I determine not to think, and thought is ever with me.
I was silly, foolish, quixotic to hope that here, in this little world of workaday people, he might be brought to see that personal acquisition and advance is not enough to give life meaning, to justify what it exacts. I was foolish. We are more apart than when I came.
Mrs. Mundy, in her blue cotton dress, a band of embroidery in the neck of its close-fitting basque, and around her waist a long, white ap.r.o.n which reached beyond her ample hips to the middle of her back, lingered this morning, dust-cloth in hand, at the door of my sitting-room. There was something else she wanted to say.
"I"m mighty "fraid little Gertie Archer is going to have what we used to call a galloping case." She went over to the window, where she felt the earth in its flower-box to see if it were moist. "She"s a pretty child, and she was terrible anxious to go to one of them open-air schools on the roof, but there wasn"t any room. It"s too late now."
The upper ends of the dust-cloth were fitted together carefully, and, leaving the window, Mrs. Mundy went over to the door. "Do you reckon the women know, the women where you come from? And the other women, the rich, and the comfortable, and the plain ones who could help, too, if they were shown how--do you reckon they know?"
I looked up from the table where I had been straightening some magazines. "Know what?"
"About there not being schools enough for the children, and about boys and girls going wrong because of not being shown how to go right, and about--"
Mrs. Mundy sat down in a chair near the door. "Another thing I want to ask you is this: How did it come about that some men and women have found out they"ve got to know, and they"ve got to care, and they"ve _got_ to help with things they didn"t use to help with; and some "ain"t heard a sound, "ain"t seen a thing of what"s going on around them?
"Some people like being deaf and blind. But most people are willing to do their part if they only understand it. The trouble is in knowing how to go about things in the right way--the wise way. Women have had to stumble so long--