He was neither happy nor unhappy, but in equilibrium, walking with sure steps, and the anxiety in which he had fallen asleep the night before was gone: anxiety lest the woman should have fled, or changed her mind, or committed some act of desperation.
In Dalton Street a thin coat of yellow mud glistened on the asphalt, but even the dreariness of this neighbourhood seemed transient. He rang the bell of the flat, the door swung open, and in the hall above a woman awaited him. She was clad in black.
"You wouldn"t know me, would you?" she inquired. "Say, I scarcely know myself. I used to wear this dress at Pratt"s, with white collars and cuffs and--well, I just put it on again. I had it in the bottom of my trunk, and I guessed you"d like it."
"I didn"t know you at first," he said, and the pleasure in his face was her reward.
The transformation, indeed, was more remarkable than he could have believed possible, for respectability itself would seem to have been regained by a costume, and the abundance of her remarkable hair was now repressed. The absence of paint made her cheeks strangely white, the hollows under the eyes darker. The eyes themselves alone betrayed the woman of yesterday; they still burned.
"Why," he exclaimed, looking around him, "you have been busy, haven"t you?"
"I"ve been up since six," she told him proudly. The flat had been dismantled of its meagre furniture, the rug was rolled up and tied, and a trunk strapped with rope was in the middle of the floor. Her next remark brought home to him the full responsibility of his situation. She led him to the window, and pointed to a spot among the drenched weeds and rubbish in the yard next door. "Do you see that bottle? That"s the first thing I did--flung it out there. It didn"t break," she added significantly, "and there are three drinks in it yet."
Once more he confined his approval to his glance.
"Now you must come and have some breakfast," he said briskly. "If I had thought about it I should have waited to have it with you."
"I"m not hungry." In the light of his new knowledge, he connected her sudden dejection with the sight of the bottle.
"But you must eat. You"re exhausted from all this work. And a cup of coffee will make all the difference in the world."
She yielded, pinning on her hat. And he led her, holding the umbrella over her, to a restaurant in Tower Street, where a man in a white cap and ap.r.o.n was baking cakes behind a plate-gla.s.s window. She drank the coffee, but in her excitement left the rest of the breakfast almost untasted.
"Say," she asked him once, "why are you doing this?"
"I don"t know," he answered, "except that it gives me pleasure."
"Pleasure?"
"Yes. It makes me feel as if I were of some use."
She considered this.
"Well," she observed, reviled by the coffee, "you"re the queerest minister I ever saw."
When they had reached the pavement she asked him where they were going.
"To see a friend of mine, and a friend of yours," he told her. "He does net live far from here."
She was silent again, acquiescing. The rain had stopped, the sun was peeping out furtively through the clouds, the early loiterers in Dalton Street stared at them curiously. But Hodder was thinking of that house whither they were bound with a new grat.i.tude, a new wonder that it should exist. Thus they came to the sheltered vestibule with its glistening white paint, its polished name plate and doork.n.o.b. The grinning, hospitable darky appeared in answer to the rector"s ring.
"Good morning, Sam," he said; "is Mr. Bentley in?"
Sam ushered them ceremoniously into the library, and gate Marcy gazed about her with awe, as at something absolutely foreign to her experience: the New Barrington Hotel, the latest pride of the city, recently erected at the corner of Tower and Jefferson and furnished in the French style, she might partially have understood. Had she been marvellously and suddenly transported and established there, existence might still have evinced a certain continuity. But this house!..
Mr. Bentley rose from the desk in the corner.
"Oh, it"s you, Hodder," he said cheerfully, laying his hand on the rector"s arm. "I was just thinking about you."
"This is Miss Marcy, Mr. Bentley," Hodder said.
Mr. Bentley took her hand and led her to a chair.
"Mr. Hodder knows how fond I am of young women," he said. "I have six of them upstairs,--so I am never lonely."
Mr. Bentley did not appear to notice that her lips quivered.
Hodder turned his eyes from her face. "Miss Marcy has been lonely," he explained, "and I thought we might get her a room near by, where she might see them often. She is going to do embroidery."
"Why, Sally will know of a room," Mr. Bentley replied. "Sam!" he called.
"Yessah--yes, Mistah Ho"ace." Sam appeared at the door.
"Ask Miss Sally to come down, if she"s not busy."
Kate Marcy sat dumbly in her chair, her hands convulsively clasping its arms, her breast heaving stormily, her face becoming intense with the effort of repressing the wild emotion within her: emotion that threatened to strangle her if resisted, or to sweep her out like a tide and drown her in deep waters: emotion that had no one mewing, and yet summed up a life, mysteriously and overwhelmingly aroused by the sight of a room, and of a kindly old gentleman who lived in it!
Mr. Bentley took the chair beside her.
"Why, I believe it"s going to clear off, after all," he exclaimed. "Sam predicted it, before breakfast. He pretends to be able to tell by the flowers. After a while I must show you my flowers, Miss Marcy, and what Dalton Street can do by way of a garden--Mr. Hodder could hardly believe it, even when he saw it." Thus he went on, the tips of his fingers pressed together, his head bent forward in familiar att.i.tude, his face lighted, speaking naturally of trivial things that seemed to suggest themselves; and careful, with exquisite tact that did not betray itself, to address both. A pa.s.sing automobile startled her with the blast of its horn. "I"m afraid I shall never get accustomed to them," he lamented.
"At first I used to be thankful there were no trolley cars on this street, but I believe the automobiles are worse."
A figure flitted through the hall and into the room, which Hodder recognized as Miss Grower"s. She reminded him of a flying shuttle across the warp of Mr. Bentley"s threads, weaving them together; swift, sure, yet never hurried or fl.u.s.tered. One glance at the speechless woman seemed to suffice her for a knowledge of the situation.
"Mr. Hodder has brought us a new friend and neighbour, Sally,--Miss Kate Marcy. She is to have a room near us, that we may see her often."
Hodder watched Miss Grower"s procedure with a breathless interest.
"Why, Mrs. McQuillen has a room--across the street, you know, Mr.
Bentley."
Sally perched herself on the edge of the armchair and laid her hand lightly on Kate Marcy"s.
Even Sally Grover was powerless to prevent the inevitable, and the touch of her hand seemed the signal for the release of the pent-up forces. The worn body, the worn nerves, the weakened will gave way, and Kate Marcy burst into a paroxysm of weeping that gradually became automatic, convulsive, like a child"s. There was no damming this torrent, once released. Kindness, disinterested friendship, was the one unbearable thing.
"We must bring her upstairs," said Sally Grover, quietly, "she"s going to pieces."
Hodder helping, they fairly carried her up the flight, and laid her on Sally Grover"s own bed.
That afternoon she was taken to Mrs. McQuillen"s.
The fiends are not easily cheated. And during the nights and days that followed even Sally Grower, whose slight frame was tireless, whose stoicism was amazing, came out of the sick room with a white face and compressed lips. Tossing on the mattress, Kate Marcy enacted over again incident after incident of her past life, events natural to an existence which had been largely devoid of self-pity, but which now, clearly enough, tested the extreme limits of suffering. Once more, in her visions, she walked the streets, wearily measuring the dark, empty blocks, footsore, into the smaller hours of the night; slyly, insinuatingly, pathetically offering herself--all she possessed--to the hovering beasts of prey. And even these rejected her, with gibes, with obscene jests that sprang to her lips and brought a shudder to those who heard.
Sometimes they beheld flare up fitfully that mysterious thing called the human spirit, which all this crushing process had not served to extinguish. She seemed to be defending her rights, whatever these may have been! She expostulated with policemen. And once, when Hodder was present, she brought back vividly to his mind that first night he had seen her, when she had defied him and sent him away. In moments she lived over again the careless, reckless days when money and good looks had not been lacking, when rich food and wines had been plentiful.
And there were other events which Sally Grower and the good-natured Irishwoman, Mrs. McQuillen, not holding the key, could but dimly comprehend. Education, environment, inheritance, character--what a jumble of causes! What Judge was to unravel them, and a.s.sign the exact amount of responsibility?
There were other terrible scenes when, more than semiconscious, she cried out piteously for drink, and cursed them for withholding it. And it was in the midst of one of these that an incident occurred which made a deep impression upon young Dr. Giddings, hesitating with his opiates, and a.s.sisting the indomitable Miss Grower to hold his patient. In the midst of the paroxysm Mr. Bentley entered and stood over her by the bedside, and suddenly her struggles ceased. At first she lay intensely still, staring at him with wide eyes of fear. He sat down and took her hand, and spoke to her, quietly and naturally, and her pupils relaxed.
She fell into a sleep, still clinging to his fingers.