Gertrude shivered, and the child felt the movement.
"Don"t you ever, ever tell," she panted, "or he"ll kill me--and so would pa."
"Oh, he would, would he?" exclaimed Francis, who had stolen silently into the room and had stood un.o.bserved 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.
Ettie was sobbing anew, and Gertrude, holding her hand, was stroking the moist forehead and trying to quiet her.
"Oh, Fan! Oh, Fan! I didn"t want you to know," sobbed the child, with pauses between her words. "He said n.o.body 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 _was_ dead!"
"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.
"Dead! Ettie Berton, you tell me the G.o.d"s truth or I"ll tear him to pieces right in the store. You tell me the G.o.d"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.
"No! No! No!" she shrieked, and struggled to free herself from the clutch upon her wrist. Then with the pathetic superst.i.tion 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.
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!"
X.
But 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.
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 _my_ 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.
"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?"
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--"
"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 pa.s.s that law t" apply to _my_ girl, n" you know it d.a.m.ned 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" _my_ 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--"
"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.
"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" _your_ own kind--a silk stocking.
"You know I only started it "n" sort o" fathered it for _him_. 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 d.a.m.ned 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 att.i.tude 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."
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.
"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, _ladies_ 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 _as_ vital to her, but it is far _more_ 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 s.e.x maniacs of men, and peopled this world with criminals, lunatics, and liars! This one fact! This one fact!"
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.
"Oh, give us a rest!"
"Suffer little children!"
"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 pa.s.sage 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.
"I think that I may a.s.sume," 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."
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.
"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.
"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 _is_ their _poverty._
"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?"
"Right you are!" "Drive it home!" came with the applause from the audience.
"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 cla.s.s?"
The applause was ready now and instant. Avery paused. There was silence.
"And who are these?" he asked, and paused again.
"What cla.s.s 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 s.e.x 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 s.e.x subjugation and legal disability." He paused, and held up his hand.
Then he said, slowly, making each word stand alone:--
"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 s.e.x! 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 _poverty._ 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed one house with a good majority. On his way out of the room, a tall girl stepped to his side.
For the moment he had not recognized her. It was Francis King. She looked straight at him.
"Did my father vote for that bill?" she asked, without a prelude of greeting. Avery hesitated.
"Oh, is it you, Miss King?" he asked, "I did not see you before. Do you come here often?"
"Not very," she said, still looking at him, and with fire gathering in her eyes. "Did my father vote for that bill?" she repeated.
"Ah--I--to tell you the truth," began Avery, but she put out her hand and caught firm hold of his arm.
"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--"
Her fingers grasped his arm like a vice, and her lips were drawn. "Did Ettie"s pa?" she demanded.