Avery saw the drift of her thought.
"G.o.d forgive him! yes," he said, and his own eyes grew troubled and sympathetic.
"G.o.d may forgave him if he"s a mind to," exclaimed Francis, "but I don"t want no such G.o.d around me, if he does. Any G.o.d that wants to forgive men for such work as that ain"t fit to a.s.sociate with no other kind of folks _but_ 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 pa.s.sed out with the rest into the street.
"Shall I walk home with you?" asked Avery. "Are you alone?"
"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.
"You"d better go home," said Avery, softly. "It will only be the harder for you, if you don"t. I"m sorry--"
She turned on him like a tigress. They were in Union Square now. "Even _you_ think it is all right for good girls to be under the control and live with men like that! Even _you_ 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 _you!_"
"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.
"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 _fit_ to live with. I won"t tell ma an" the girls--yet; not till--"
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."
"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.
"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.
"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.
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!
XI.
"Gertrude!" called out her mother to the girl, as she pa.s.sed the library door. "Gertrude! come in, your father and I wish to talk with you."
"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.
"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."
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.
"Committee meeting?" asked she, again, as she glanced at her father, smiling dryly. Her mother answered first.
"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.
""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 a.s.sociate 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."
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.
"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.
"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--"
"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 _even you_ 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.
_You_ always have." Mrs. Foster glanced at her daughter and then at her husband. She smiled.
"I always have, what dear?" she asked.
"Understood these things as I do--as everyone does," said her husband.
"You never took these freaks that Gertrude is growing into, and--"
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.
"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--"
Her husband laughed.
"Colorless, is good, by Jove! _You_ 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 pa.s.sed 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."
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.
"In G.o.d"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?"
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.
"Oh, papa," she said softly. "I am so sorry for--so sorry--for us all.
We seem so far apart, and--"
"John Martin agrees with me perfectly," said her father, hotly. "I talked with him to-day. He--"
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--"
"More"s the pity," said her father, as he arose from his chair. He moved toward the door.
"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 _do_ 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 pa.s.sed into darkness. Presently Katherine"s voice broke the silence:--
"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.
"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."