Part 23

At first she would not hear of it, and she used her opposition to this dropping of the charge against Mirka as if it were an argument properly formed to oppose the next scheme that he proposed to her. But he had found her in her moment of weakness when he had come to her in his hour of strength renewed.

"No," he said firmly, "und dis evenin' ve'll be married. I got der license; I stopped at der church; Father Kelly's vatin'--dis evenin', Katie."

The world was slipping from beneath her feet. She did not answer.

"In two year'," he went on, "one part of dot store ve'll own. Katie, it's our chance; und in de meanvhile, if der Herr Gott sends der babies--und pray Gott he vill--dey von't at least do no vorse as ve hof done."

He drew her tighter, but she twisted in his arms and got free, so that he held only one of her firm hands. They stood there face to face, between them the unfathomable chasm of sex, their feet trembling at its brink.

Across the areaway the straight shafts of the setting sun caught the dirty little window-panes of the nearby squalid rooms and turned them to a shining glory. The rays were reflected into Katie's own room; they burnished the cheap paper into cloth of gold, they touched the floor and gilded it, they made of the rickety table a thing of splendor, and of the worn chairs fairy thrones. Hermann's blonde head was crowned with a halo, and as he looked at the girl, against the background of those yellow windows like a Madonna against the background that the Etruscan painters loved, he saw in her eyes what he had never seen before.

In the momentary struggle the coils of her black hair had loosened and fallen below her waist. They framed a face no longer strong with restraint, handsome from the flush of battle against the world, no longer set and self-reliant, but a face through which shone the light of the life-force, the motive-power of the universe, a beautiful face, white, frightened, wonderful.

"Can--can you really love me?"

She scarcely said the words. Rather her lips formed them with no voice behind. But he had heard her before her lips so much as moved.

"Ach," he cried, "I hof alvays lofed you, Katie, but now it is somesing new und more. Katie, I sink--I belief sings I neffer belief before, und I sink it must be der blessing of Gott dot I can _see_ in you."

"An' there won't be anny other woman?"

"You are _all_ vomen, Katie."

She raised her head.

"Yes, Hermann," she said, "I think I will be all women for you. I will be all you want. I will work an' share, good luck an' bad. I never before was glad I knew how to work, but now I _will_ be all you want--all, _all_!"

He put her hand to his lips, and held it there an instant: Fifth Avenue does these things, casually, no better than the Bowery, when the Bowery has a mind for them.

"Katie," he whispered.

She took her hand away. She tried to laugh a little, but the laughter, clear and silvery, caught suddenly in her throat. Her mouth twisted, and she raised the hand and put her lips where his had been.

Reeling with the tremor of that sight, his arms recaptured her, and this time held her fast. She swayed and yielded. Her own arms answered his, and his lips met, for the first time freely, the lips she had so bravely kept for him.

The case against Mirka was then and there dismissed, and the High Court handed down a final decision _in re_ Hoffmann _vs._ Flanagan.

XXIV

MARIAN'S WAY

Wesley Dyker looked with unaffected approval about the second-story front room in Rivington Street. He saw the calmly colored walls, the excellent mats upon the floor, the ordered writing-desk and, near the center, the heavy library-table, covered with carefully piled magazines.

"Hello!" he said, nodding easily to the woman that stood motionless before him.

The woman's answer was not ready, but Dyker, whose eyes were on surroundings almost as animate, pursued:

"Upon my word, you have it rather cozy here, considering the neighborhood. I'm not half so well fixed myself. I'm glad to see that, Marian, and I'm more than glad to see you."

He raised his heavy lids to look at her. He had resolved when, a short while before, she had sent for him, to make no mention of their long separation. He was sure that the sending meant he was to have a chance to recall to her the superior wisdom that had expressed itself in his advice against working among the poor; but of the time that had elapsed since that advice was given he had meant to say nothing. Always he had confidently expected this moment, and, now that it had come, she must find him prepared. He put out his hand.

But Marian was thinking of how, in this same room, she had said good-by to Mary. She compressed her lips a moment before answering, and, when she did answer, it was only to say, quite calmly:

"I don't want to shake hands with you, Wesley."

Day and night the words that Mary had so innocently dropped concerning Dyker had stirred the fire in Marian's breast. Supposing that her protégée had shared with Rose the easy caresses of Wesley, even at a time when Marian had been on the point of accepting them, the failure of that protégée to return to the Settlement for aid or consolation had made Marian the prey to a hundred contending emotions. She was glad that Mary had not come back, because Mary adrift meant Mary suffering. She was sorry that Mary had not come back, because she wanted to ask the girl so many things that she had at first neglected to ask. She doubted Mary and was ashamed of her doubts; she doubted Dyker and was still ashamed. One thought tore at another, and all tore at her heart.

On entering the Settlement she had left Dyker in a proud anger that forbade her acting upon his offer to come to her whenever she should send for him; on dismissing Mary she had so framed her promise of secrecy that she might repeat to Wesley the unfortunate woman's unconscious accusation; and on twisting and turning the reptilian thing over in her mind, she said in one breath that she could not send for Dyker and could not be at peace unless she did send. The fiercest passion that a conventional woman has is the passion for the knowledge that will most likely clinch her unhappiness. Marian was certain that she must know the truth, and she told herself that she was certain of but one fact beside: that she did not love this man; that she had never loved him--and, presumably because of that, she had at last, on this day shortly after the election, incontinently telephoned to him to come to Rivington Street.

She had said to herself that it was unfair to condemn him unheard. She had replied to herself that she did not care enough about him either to condemn or to acquit. She had ended by the realization that, deny it as she might, the fact of condemnation remained; and she had inclined solely toward the attitude of impartial justice until, in the briefest possible time after receiving her message, Dyker had entered this room. Then, immediately, her mood had once more changed, as it was to change so often during the ensuing interview; she had left the bench and had become the prosecutor.

Perhaps Dyker's appearance was in part to blame for this. She had, of course, not seen him since that summer parting; it is seldom pleasant for a woman to find that separation from her has left no scar upon an admirer, and it is always annoying to a district-attorney to detect no consciousness of guilt in the countenance of the accused; yet Dyker had come into her presence with a buoyant step and a ready smile. The pressure of campaigning had lessened, though it could not wholly check, the progress of his dissipations, and his face still flaunted the tokens of its former glory. His eyes were not noticeably more timid than of old, and his mouth was, as of old, hidden. Add to this the pleasure, still fresh, of his election, and the satisfaction of a man fancying himself just placed in a position to say "I told you so" to the woman he loves, and it will be seen that Magistrate Dyker, if not at his best, had been at least in a moment of expansion.

And now she had said that she would not take his hand! He could scarcely believe his ears.

"You don't want--I am afraid I do not understand you, Marian," he said.

Her great brown eyes looked steadily into his puzzled gaze.

"Sit down, please," she responded.

Mechanically, he drew a deep wicker chair to the window, and obeyed her.

She sat opposite him and, for fully a minute, while with galloping brain he watched her, she looked through the glass at crowded, shuffling Rivington Street.

"It is simple enough, Wesley," she at last resumed. "Before I can think of renewing anything like my old friendly attitude toward you----"

"Your friendly attitude!"

"It was scarcely more than that. Before I can renew it, there is something that must be explained."

Dyker's own attitude was still that of the average lover, and the average lover cannot see beyond his own shadow.

"Oh,"--he was momentarily relieved and prepared, in consequence, to show a proper magnanimity--"you needn't explain, Marian! I knew you would find that I was right, and that this was no place for you. I appreciate perfectly how you feel: you have been disappointed and disillusioned, and it is like you handsomely to want to confess that you were wrong. But let's merely consider that done, and say no more about it."

He ended in a warmth of good feeling; but the did not seem inclined to accept this proffer, and, as he paused, he wondered what was in her gaze.

"No," she said, "you are not quite correct in your surmise. I have been disappointed and disillusioned. I have been disappointed in one of the people among whom I have been working; but I have been disillusioned in regard to you."

She stopped. He began to guess now what was back of those calm eyes of hers. Disillusioned in regard to him? At the first breath it seemed incredible, but at the next his mind filled with the ghosts of his experience, the grim figures that compose the pageant of that real life of a man, upon which he never raises the curtain for the feminine eyes most dear to him.

"In regard to me?" he echoed. He was wondering, in hidden panic, which especial image had been revealed to her, and he sought defense in general denial. "You have been listening to East Side neighborhood gossip, Marian, and I shouldn't have believed it of you. You have heard one of the hundreds of groundless ante-election libels that are the common ammunition used against anyone in politics."

Her face, always fair, was gently tinted.

"What I have heard," she replied, "I heard from somebody that has nothing to do with politics."

"Down here," insisted Dyker, still seeking to dislodge the enemy and force it into the open field of recognition, "down here all the men have something to do with politics."

"This was a woman, Wesley."

He had feared that. He had feared it when she first spoke of coming to the Settlement. But he wasted no time in such thought; he must, before he committed himself, discover which of several possible women, was concerned.

"Oh," he laughed, "the women are mixed up in political gossip, too; or, at any rate," he added, "they are always glad to repeat what their menfolk don't hesitate to tell them."

"The woman I refer to was a part of the thing she told."

Marian said it softly, but her white throat trembled.

Dyker looked at her swiftly, and as swiftly lowered his eyes. Instantly now he guessed what it was that she had heard; an instant more and he thought the thing improbable. Then, resolved at all events not to approach self-betrayal by showing his intuition, he assumed the point of view of the lawyer.

"Marian," he said, pulling at his mustache that she might see--as she did--that his hand was steady, "is this fair? Is it right to condemn me on a charge of which I know nothing and because of evidence of which I haven't heard a syllable?"

"No," she answered, "it isn't fair. That is why I sent for you."

He bit his lip, but faced her.

"Well," he said, "what is it?"

Steadily she met his renewed gaze until his eyes failed her.

Even then her own eyes, never wavering, could find in him not enough to determine her. The desire to get at the truth, whatever the truth might be, was plying its angry whip upon her shoulders. When Mary had spoken, Marian had received the intelligence as innocently imparted fact. But now the man before her gave nothing that her inexperience could set down as a sign of what she considered a great sin.

"Wesley," she began, leaning towards him, "the girl that told me this told it inadvertently. More than that, she did not even know that I had ever heard of you. She did not want to hurt you: she was grateful to you, because you had rescued her."

His intuition, then, had not failed him: it was Violet.

"Why," he smiled, his heart heavy with the fear of losing Marian's love, his lips still sparring for a more open lead, "I am afraid I'm no knight-errant, Marian, to go about rescuing damsels in distress." But he did not like the sound of the phrase, and, seeing that she liked it no better, he explained: "You surely remember how I feel about these poor women."

"But she said that your politics brought you into touch with the worst sort of them."

Marian paused there to give him another chance, but his only protest was:

"Not my politics. The duties of my profession, before I was elected a magistrate, sometimes made it necessary to defend such women. You must have known that. There was no dishonor there."

"And my informant added," continued Marian, "that you used your political influence to gain their friendship, perhaps even to protect them, and"--she felt the depths before her; her cheeks went hot; her brown eyes filled--"and certainly to--to----"

She faltered.

He felt it and looked up with anger in his eyes.

"To what?" he demanded.

She clasped her damp hands tight.

"To live with them," she said.

Though he had expected the implication, he had hardly expected so close an approach to the specific, and therefore the start to which it behooved him to give way was not altogether disingenuous.

"Marian!" he cried.

She bent her head.

"Do you believe that?" he asked.

The accusation uttered, sick uncertainty gripped and tossed her again.

"I don't know what to believe."

"But how can you think I would be capable of such things? The girl lied."

Her judgment swayed dizzily. Between word and word she was now for and now against him.

"I can't think of any motive that this girl might have to lie," she said.

"How do you know what motive she has?" returned Dyker, realizing in what good stead his training as a pleader of bad cases might stand him. "How do you know what political enemies of mine may have sent her to you? You say that, on her own confession, she is a vile woman----"

"I did not say that."

"You said she charged herself with being part of this alleged business. You confessed that you were disappointed in her personally. What possible credit can be given to the story of a woman that begins by admitting such abominations?"

Marian tried to speak, but indecision choked her.

"I tell you, you were tricked," he pursued, with a glib rapidity that she did not know whether to attribute to innocence or guilt. "I may have lost a case for some friend of this girl. I may have won a suit against one of her hangers-on. There are men in the lower sort of politics, I'm ashamed to say, that don't hesitate to use such tools, and I have offended a good many of them. Before you considered this story true, don't you feel that you should have thought of one of these explanations?"

"I don't know," Marian faltered. The relentless tide of her emotions now set in again in his favor. Mary had told her story so calmly, with so little feeling concerning her own sufferings, that Marian kept wondering if it might not have been an invention. She was sure that, all along, somewhere in her heart, she had wanted to think the best of him; wanted, despite her accusing jealousy, to acquit him. "I don't know," she repeated despairingly; "but"--and the tide began to flow once more--"unless I can be certain of her motive for lying to me, don't you see, Wesley, don't you see that I must have proof of your innocence from you?"

She looked at him in wide appeal. The undertow had caught her, and she was crying for help from shore. She knew now that she loved him, and she had learned the ultimate tragedy of love: that love and mistrust may be one.

"How can I know anything?" she went on. "How can I be sure of anything? How can I understand such a world as this? It seems as if all the earth was lying to me, and as if all the earth could lie and still look honest. I trusted the girl; I trusted you. I beg of you to prove to me that I was right only when I trusted you. Wesley,"--she almost extended her arms to him--"tell me that you didn't do it!"

Dyker saw his advantage, but decided that the way to keep it was to be firm. He spoke quickly, yet coldly.

"Who was this woman?" he asked.

"Do you think I ought to tell you?" she pleaded.

"Ought to tell me? Why, Marian, how else am I to prove what you ask me to prove? If you are to be at all fair with me, how can you start by hiding the false witnesses against me?"

He was right, she felt.

"Did you ever hear," she asked, "of Mary Morton?"

Too late to weigh his words he remembered the name that the girl whom he had called Violet had signed to her affidavit. Before that recollection was clear to him, he made his reply in the deceit that is the refuge of all the confused.

"I never did."

"You are sure?"

"Absolutely";--he had to keep it up now--"although, if she is the sort of woman she says she is, she probably has as many aliases as a safe-cracker."

"But this girl--I should think you would not forget her if you had ever known her: she must have been good-looking once. She has blue eyes and brown hair. You could see from her face that she has suffered, but you could see that she used to be almost beautiful. She has the walk of a queen."

"I don't know her."

"Think."--Marian was still intent upon certainty.--"When I saw her she was both times dressed alike, though on her second visit her clothes, first new, had grown a little shabby. She wore a cloak--I forget its color, but it was dark--and a beaver hat. She----"

He knew those clothes; he had reason to; but his interruption was in strict accord with his previous denial:

"There are thousands of women answering that vague description. I am sure, however, that I don't know this one."

Marian did not observe that, on his own showing, his assurance was without foundation. Her words had brought Mary vividly before her and, for a minute, she well-nigh forgot her own distress in the misery of that figure.

"She has had a great deal of trouble," said Marian. "Why, from what she told me, these girls must be worse treated than the blacks in the Congo; they must be far worse off than our own American negro slaves used to be."

"No doubt--if what she said was true. But I know it was not true. My profession has made me see a great deal of these poor women, and I know that if they are slaves it is because they want to be." He waved away the whole matter with a toss of his hand. He wanted some information, and he did not want to show why he wanted it. "That all goes to prove that if it was she who told you this foul story about me, then the story was that of a born liar," he declared. "You say she was here twice. What were the circumstances?"

She told him.

He breathed more freely. He had only to convince Marian and get her to quit her work in disgust before further gossip should reach her.

"And so you don't know her?" she concluded.

"No."

"Nor Mrs. Rose Légère?"

"I certainly know of that person," he said--it was the part of wisdom to admit some knowledge. "Nobody that knows anything about our police-courts, as I have had to know, can be entirely ignorant of her. She is one of the most notorious women in New York. I know a great deal about her, but, except for one occasion, when I saw her in a station-house, I have never set eyes on her in my life."

He spoke with such precision that Marian caught a gratified breath.

"Is she another Settlement visitor?" inquired Wesley, devoutly hoping that no miracle of reformation had, since their last meeting, been wrought upon Rose.

"No, she is not. It was she that was said to have been one of your--your friends, until she made friends with your political enemies. The girl that told me was, of course, the Mary Morton I have mentioned. She said that you were intimate with this Mrs. Légère, and I understood that even Mary----"

Dyker was genuinely glad to find some accusation that he could deny with truth.

"Never!" he cried.

Something in that word and his utterance of it made her look at him hard.

"She didn't want to tell the story," Marian insisted. "I got it from her. How could it have been the result of malice or a plot? Didn't I tell you that she said you had rescued her from the Légère woman's house?"

Dyker reflected. He wished that he had been as sweeping in his discrediting of Violet, under the pseudonym of Mary Morton, as he had been in his discrediting of Rose. Failing that, he might even have explained this rescue and have become something of a hero. Both opportunities were, however, gone. He must make the best of what remained.

"Marian," he said, speaking slowly, quite calmly, and with no small appearance of sincerity of purpose, "I needn't bring you any proof of this Légère woman's bad character--the qualities of that character you yourself know--and as for this Morton girl, I can only fall back on what I have already pointed out to you. You say she confesses her evil life: how can you, then, credit anything an admittedly abandoned creature may have told you?"

"Can't the worst of women tell the truth sometimes?"

"Practically never."