Part 29

Stevens jumped to his feet and crouched, like a panther ready to spring. Mary, overturning her chair, flung her arms about him and pinioned him in an embrace.

"Don't, Bill!" she whispered, and, over her shoulder: "Don't, Mr. Beekman! Can't you two be friends? Can't you see it's all right, Bill? Can't you let him alone, Mr. Beekman? Bill, you know how much I think of you."

She put her lips to his rough face. She whispered rapid, unthought lies into his ear. She caressed and cajoled him, and at last, when Philip had been persuaded into a half-scornful apology, she managed to get Stevens out of the room and started him down the stairway to seek sympathy of Big Lou while she herself had her talk with Beekman.

They sat down again at the round table and took a drink. Philip wanted to upbraid himself for his conduct to her in his mother's house, and yet, because he felt that he could have followed no course save that which he had taken, he did not know how to begin: all that he was sure of was that there was a wrong somewhere, and that he must somehow make confession of it. Mary, on the other hand, was divided between panic from the trouble so lately avoided and a desire to hear from Philip nothing approaching condolence.

She sought escape in the commonplace.

"You mustn't mind him," she said, with a nod toward the stairs down which the glowering Bill had departed.

"Not a bit," answered Beekman. "I only wanted to get rid of him in order to tell you hew sorry I am for--for--oh, you know."

"Don't talk about that, Mr. Beekman--please."

"But I must talk about it."

"Not now; not yet. Tell me how you are."

"Oh, I'm as near right as I ever am, or ever will be. But, Violet----"

"You're looking rich."

His eyes followed hers to his gilt-buttoned yachting jacket.

"You can never judge a man by his clothes," he said. "Necessity is the mother of pretension."

"Are you married yet?"

"Hardly. There are only two things that a man can't honestly promise: to love, and to cease to love. I'm still too poor to afford those lies."

Mary only half understood his mood, but she was wholly intent on keeping him free of dreaded topics.

"Do you hear anything of the people we used to know?" she asked.

"Well," said Philip, "Rose was let off, you know, and is back at the old address and the old business." He looked at his watch and started. "By Jove," he continued; "I must have been pretty tight. I had no idea it was so late. I've got to be getting back to the yacht soon."

He stood up, his cap in one hand. Mary followed him to the stair door, and there he turned.

"Violet," he said, "I am going to tell you how sorry I am. I am going to tell you, whether you like to hear it or not."

The flush had gone from his face and eyes, leaving them simple and sincere.

Mary's voice faltered. She understood some things that she had never before understood.

"It didn't matter none," she replied. "You couldn't help it."

"I daresay I couldn't. I don't know. These things are too much for me. But I do know that I am sorry--sorry from the bottom of my heart. And if I can ever do anything--anything----"

He put out his hand, and, as she took it, he raised her hand to his lips.

At that instant there was a yell of rage from behind him. Mary, springing back, saw him half turn and reel. She saw a brown, tattooed hand close about his throat, choking his cry of alarm. She saw Bill Stevens's distorted face and red eyes appear above Beekman's shoulder. She saw a knife flash and bury itself deep in the young man's side. And then, with a tremendous smash, both men disappeared down those murderous, black stairs.

It seemed to Mary that she lost not a moment in running down to them; yet, when she reached the hall, the little drama was finished. The sailor was lying stunned in a corner, and Big Lou, with the rescued lamp beside her, was kneeling above Philip's body and running her quick claws through his pockets.

"Damn your soul, get upstairs!" she cried to Mary.

But Mary hesitated. Overhead she heard the skurry of skirts and hurried feet. Before her lay the man that had once so harmed her. His coat had been torn open and a great red smear grew larger and larger upon his white silk shirt. His mouth was twisted, but still. His gray eyes stared at the begrimed ceiling: Philip Beekman was dead.

She leaped across the body, tore back the bolts, flung open the door, and nearly fell into the pitch-black street.

As she ran around the nearest corner, she heard the cry of Mike, the deckhand, who must have been waiting nearby, and then the sharp alarm-call of a policeman's night-stick.

XXX

HER FATHER'S HOUSE

Her way must have led her first to the river and then well northward: she did not know. She did not even know whether she ran or walked. All that she did know was that, at least for hours to come, she must put as many miles as she could between her own tossing thoughts and that still face with the staring eyes which lay at the foot of the steep, dark stairs in Summerton's. The clocks, had she looked at them, would have told her that the night was gone, but the winter darkness still enveloped the city when she found herself at last standing before an illuminated ticket-window and addressing a sleepy clerk at a ferry.

"I want a ticket," she said, and laid down one of the bills that Philip Beekman had given her.

"Where to?" yawned the clerk.

How did it happen that the name which rose to her lips was the name of her native town--a word that she had not uttered since the morning of her awakening in the house of Rose Légère? Perhaps it was because the dead man had, with almost his last words, pleaded with her to go home; perhaps it was because that name, of which she had for so long tried never to think, was, in reality, the one always nearest to her heart; perhaps it was only because no other town was familiar to her. In any event, the name was spoken without consideration of the consequences, and, before she had time to pause or to repent, the clerk had handed her the change, and with it the bit of pasteboard that would bear her home.

"There's a boat in ten minutes," he said: "but you'll have to wait an hour in Jersey City. The first train doesn't go till six-five."

Of what immediately followed she had, thereafter, no clear recollection. She remembered only buying a cold sandwich and a half-pint of whiskey in a deserted café; crossing a bitterly cold, sullen stretch of water from a twinkling cañon to a shadowy shore; walking, for warmth, weary though she was, up and down, and up and down, along a damp, echoing train-shed, and then, at last, passing a clanging iron gate, climbing into a coach, and falling, nearly stupefied, into an uncomfortable, red-plush covered seat. She had but the faintest mental picture of changing cars, and none at all of any subsequent incident, until, in a black dawn, there flashed upon her, from between the frost-figures on the window, a bit of landscape that warned her she was approaching home.

The track came suddenly to the river-side. Beneath a gray sky, which, though the morning was well advanced, the sun seemed afraid to climb, there raced the mile-and-a-half wide strip of gray water. It crashed across a ruined dam; it swept above a submerged "chute" through which, years before, the big pine-rafts from the upper Alleghanies used to be hurled on their way to the Chesapeake. There had been a thaw: only here and there could Mary see the ominous crests of the rocks that threatened the mid-channel; the islands, with trees bare of foliage, were under water, and far away, from the cloudy York County shore, the high hills rose above the mist, dun and cheerless, forbidding and cold. With a quick catch in her throat, she saw the river-road that she had so often tramped on holidays, now axle-deep in mud. Over there were the leafless woods where, when the boughs were green, the children used to picnic, and here, nearer the town, where patches of soiled snow hid under the stunted pines, was the path where one time came, for pink laurel branches, a girl that she had been. The engine whistled sharply and stopped.

Mary mechanically readjusted the hat that she had not touched since she had put it on for the work of the evening previous--the evening so long ago. She stepped to the platform.

The station was just as it had always been. It looked smaller and dirtier, but she knew that it had not changed; and a sharp pain shot through her heart at the realization that, in this town, everything had gone on its placid way while so much had been happening to one of its children. There were the same grinning gamins waiting for the New York newspapers; the same negro porters from the two hotels; the same station-master "calling the train," just as he used to call it in the days when she had watched the outgoing coaches with envious longings for a sight of the strange lands toward which they were bound.

Then, as her aching feet touched the cinder of the thoroughfare, she realized her danger. She had no plan, no scheme of accounting for herself; some unreasoned impulse, partly, doubtless, the primal instinct that drives the wounded beast to its den, had overcome her fears and turned her face in the direction of the home whither she had, for so long, dreaded to return. But now she was seized with a terror of recognition by the townspeople, and so she lowered her head and walked, with the swiftness of panic, among the little knot of loafers about the station-door.

Now that she was here, what was she to say, what to do, where to turn? She moved, unable to evolve any order from the chaos of her thoughts. She could only go over and over the memory of that last day in school; the early violets, purple and fragrant, peeping through the lush grass on the lawns of Second Street; the flaming oriole in the Southwark yard; the lazy sunlight flowing through the open windows of Miss England's sleepy classroom. Mary's blue eyes were bright then, her mouth was red, her cheeks pink; lithe, strong-limbed, and firm of body, her walk had owned the easy, languid grace of a wild animal. And now, the lawns were bare; only a few persistent sparrows hopped in the gutters and along the ground; the sky was empty of sunlight, and she----

She came to a supreme pause. Habit had led her aimless feet. She was standing, in the full morning, before the two-story brick house that was her father's home.

She knew that the door remained unlocked from dawn to night; but she did not at once enter. She was afraid to go in, afraid to stand still, afraid to go away.

Then, from the next house, came decision. It was Etta's, her married sister's place, and she heard someone within it rattle at its door. Anything was better than a meeting with Etta: Mary quietly opened the door to her father's house and slipped inside.

She went down the brief, darkened hallway, past the drawn curtains of the parlor, through the twilight of the dining-room, and stopped at the open entrance to the small, crowded kitchen, where, among neatly arranged and brightly polished pots and pans, her mother was bending over the glowing stove.

Mrs. Denbigh looked up with a start. Still stooped, still hatchet-faced, but grayer and more shrunken, she stood there, her sleeves rolled from her thin forearms, her forehead wet by present labor, her mouth set hard by labors gone.

"Get out o' here!" she said.

"Mom!"

Mary raised and spread her arms in quick petitioning, and then, in that stranger, Mrs. Denbigh recognized her child.

"_You?_" she cried.

She dashed her damp hands to her checkered apron; she stepped toward her daughter with her own arms wide. She bent to kiss her--and she drew as suddenly away.

"There's liquor on your breath!" she gasped.

"I know," said Mary, her voice low and trembling. "I--I ain't been well, mom."

The kiss was given, but less abandonedly than it had promised, and, as the mother drew away, her keen eyes searched the girl from face to feet. Over the multitude of maternal questions there rose the three for which Mary was least prepared.

"Mary--what is it? Where is he? Didn't he treat you right?"

They caught the girl at her weakest point.

"Who?" she asked.

"Who?"--Mrs. Denbigh's eyes grew stern again.--"Who? You needn't say no more than that still! I ought to have knowed when I seen you. Nobody could look at you yet and not know. Why, you're--you're _old_! Your things are worn out. You----" her tone increased to loud accusations. "Where did you get them clothes?"

Mary's lips faltered.

"I bought 'em," she said.

"Did anybody see you come in here?"

"I don't know.--No, nobody did."

"Thank God for that!" Mrs. Denbigh pointed a long, gnarled finger at her daughter. She pointed it at the bedraggled hat, still bearing traces of a finery too pronounced for that small town. She pointed to the waist and to the skirt. "It's true, then!" she cried. "It's true, then! You've been a bad woman!"

In the doorway Mary swayed. She leaned heavily against the wall. She was too tired to lie.

"Yes," she whispered.

"Yes," her mother echoed; "yes--an' you own up to it! The whole town said it; your pop said it; they all told me yet--an' I stood up fer you; I showed 'em your letter; I says you was married; I kep' on believin' you'd write; I stuck to it--an' now you come here to shame me. You come here when you're worn out--when no one else'll have you--you come here, brazen, not carin' still, a bad woman--_a bad woman_--an' I guess you think I'll take you in!"

Her poor face writhed. Her dim eyes shot fire. Her withered breasts rose and fell in a spasm of indignation and wounded pride.

Mary, still leaning against the kitchen wall, put out her hands as if to ward away a blow.

"Don't, mom," she said. "Please don't."

"I will! I've a mind to beat you. I'd like to know what possessed you to flaunt yourself in this place. You can't stay here. You can't stay in this house that you've shamed still, an' you can't stay in this town."

"Mom!"

"You can't stay in this town. Do you hear that? If you do, if you try to stay here and mock me, a decent woman, I'll have you arrested; I'll have you sent to the lock-up; I'll----"

"Mom," interrupted Mary. "I won't hurt you. I didn't mean to hurt nobody. I didn't come here to do no harm."

"How kin you come here yet without doin' harm? Ain't you done enough without comin' back here to shame your own folks?"

"But, mom," Mary pleaded, "I won't shame nobody; I'll do whatever you say."

Little Mrs. Denbigh collapsed upon a kitchen chair. She rocked from side to side. She fanned herself with her checkered apron; grief conquered anger; and long dried tears came at last to her old eyes and coursed, unrestrained, down her hard cheeks.

"What did I ever do fer to deserve this?" she moaned. "What did I ever do to receive this judgment? A child o' mine! A child o' mine! An' her the baby that she was! Didn't her pop an' me bring her up the best we could? Ain't I always lived accordin' to the Lord's word? What have I done to deserve this?"

Mary stepped to the weeping woman's side. She put her fingers to the gray hair and stroked it, timidly.

"Go away!" cried the mother. "Don't you dare to touch me! Don't you dare yet to pollute me! Oh! A child o' mine to do this!"

She fell into another paroxysm of grief, and Mary sank to her knees and took one of the gnarled hands between her own hands.

"Listen, mom," she said; "I'll tell you all about it, an' then you'll know."

She did tell her, as much as she dared; but Mrs. Denbigh only half understood. The elder woman's life had been cast in a mold; it had long since hardened into a destined shape, and no sympathy on her own part, no explanations on the part of another, could alter her. Dire necessity she had often known, but she had not known it amid surroundings where the sufferer's only course was that which alone had been possible for Mary. If she softened, it was not because she comprehended, but because Mary was her child.

"Don't tell me no more," she said at last. "You could 'a' gone to work."

"I tried that, an' nobody'd have me."

"You could 'a' gone to some church-folk."

"I did, but they couldn't get me a job."

"You could 'a' gone to some institution a'ready."

"How'd I have lived after I come out?"

"Well, you shouldn't 'a' run away in the first place. Didn't we treat you right?"

To have answered that question in the negative would not have been to be altogether true, and Mary did not even yet see enough clearly to discern that the conditions which had driven her from home were economic forces that made parents and child equally blameless.

"Can't I stay here?" she appealed. "Can't I please stay here an' work for you?"

Mrs. Denbigh shook her head.

"I'd work hard. I'd help you. I wouldn't never complain. All I want is just to be quiet. I'd work hard. Nobody'd never know."

"It'd be all over town by evenin' still."

"No, it wouldn't. I'd say I was a widow. I'd say----"

"Think o' your pop," sobbed Mrs. Denbigh. "Why, he'd--he'd kill you, Mary!" The mother shivered as she considered the wrath of the giant, whom hard work had hardened past the touch of all the tenderer emotions. "He'd just beat you up an' throw you into the street for everybody to see!" She half rose in a new anxiety. "Why, he's on the early shift, an' he might come here 'most any minute. Etta might come in, an' Sallie'll be back from school soon."

"But, mom," Mary blindly persisted. "I'd work so hard! I wouldn't never be cross. I'd help you. I'd do all the housework, an' you could teach me to cook the way you do."

"We got to think o' Sallie yet," continued Mrs. Denbigh. "Every time she gets mad now she says she'll run away like you done. We got to think o' her. She's a growin' girl, an' what'd it be to have you around her?"

"But, mom, I won't hurt her. Can't I just stay an' work, an' wash dishes, an' such things? I wouldn't mind washin' dishes"--Mary smiled wanly--"like I once did."

"An' then there's Etta," said the mother, still busied in her own confusion. "She's got a baby----"

"A baby!" Mary's heart leaped.

"Such a lovely baby girl----"

"Can't I----? Oh, mom, can't I just get a peep at it?"

"How could you?--An' we have to think what it'd be for her if you was here an' she growed up."

The prodigal choked with tears.

"Mom, mom!" she pleaded. "How'd I hurt 'em? You don't think I'd----?"

"The town'd think so, an' the town'd tell 'em so, too. An' anyways, Mary, we're poor, we're dreadful poor. The mill was shut down all summer an' fall. It's only just started a'ready, an' it's only workin' half-time now. We ain't had money fer months still, an' now it all goes fer old bills. We couldn't do it, even if we wanted to."

For half an hour more Mary begged, but she begged in vain; and though the mother ended by another attack of tears, and though the two wept together in each other's arms, they knew that they were together for the last time.

"Your clothes are so thin!" quavered Mrs. Denbigh, with a pathetic endeavor to sink her grief in practical anxiety. "You ain't got no coat, an' your feet are near on the ground still."

Mrs. Denbigh had no money; there was literally not a cent in the house; but she unearthed from an old trunk, and pressed, for pawning, upon Mary, a heavy, old-fashioned gold bracelet, which had been a wedding-present; and, though the daughter protested that she had money enough to buy some clothes, the mother got her own coat upon the daughter's shoulders.

They were still standing in the kitchen, as women awaiting the summons of death, when first one steam-whistle and then another began to call across the town. It was noon, and the moment of puddler Denbigh's return.

Without a word they walked, hand in hand, across the short back-yard, for Mary, it was tacitly agreed, must not risk an appearance upon the street in the neighborhood of her father's house. Without a word, Mrs. Denbigh's knotted fingers opened the latch of the white-washed gate. Without a word mother and daughter flung themselves into each other's arms again, and then, still in silence, Mary trudged away.

She did not look back until she came to the first corner, and, when she got there, she saw her mother's shrunken body still at the gate, the old hand waving, the aproned figure shaking with sobs. It was still there when Mary reached the second corner; but when she turned at the third, it was gone.

Her pain was no longer poignant. Grief had reached the mark whence it passes to stupefaction; and Mary pursued her way as if her actions were those suggested to a subject of hypnotic control. In order to avoid the crowd at the station, she walked on up the alley, until the alley ended in an intersecting turnpike along which ran the trolley line to the county-town. She waited there, stolidly, for a car, mounted that, descended at the end of the road, and, after another delay, climbed upon a train that would take her without change to Jersey City. For nearly twenty-four hours she had eaten nothing; but she bought another small flask at the terminus, and, as the ferry-boat glided between the creaking slips into the tossing water, she took a deep draught of whiskey.

She walked to the stern and looked over the side. It was night. Here gleamed the railway signs under which the boat had just passed--the signs of those roads that, she had now discovered, ended as fatally for her freedom as if they had ended in an insurmountable wall. Ahead towered the other walls, the black walls of that living prison--that vast, malevolent, conscious jail--into which she had once gone with such a store of hopes whereof not one had ever been fulfilled, of anticipated pleasures whereof not one had ever been tasted, and to which she must now, to serve out a life-sentence, return.

Must she return?