Читать книгу People Like That - Kate Langley Bosher - Страница 8

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I don't understand Mrs. Mundy. She acts so queerly about the girl we found on the street last night. She put her to bed, after she had recovered from her fainting spell, on a cot in the room next to her own, but this morning she told me the girl had gone, and would tell me nothing else.

When Selwyn, who had picked her up and laid her on the couch, asked if he should not get a doctor, Mrs. Mundy had said no, and said it so positively that he offered to do nothing else. And then she thanked him and told him good night in such a way he understood it was best he Should go.

At the front door he called me. With his back to it he held out his hands, took mine in his, crushed them in clasp so close they hurt.

"Danny," he said, "why do you torment me so? You don't know what you're doing, living where such things are possible as have taken place tonight; where any time you may be—"

His voice broke, and in amazement I looked at him. Horror and fear were in his face.

"Do you think it is so awful a thing to see a poor little creature who has been hurt and needs help?" I drew my hands away. "You talk as if I were a child, Selwyn."

"You are a child in your knowledge of—of certain phases of life. If I could only marry you tomorrow and take you away from here you should never know them!"

"Well, you can't marry me to-morrow!" I made effort to laugh, but Selwyn's face, his manner, frightened me. "I want to stay down here and—and stop being as ignorant as a child of things women should know. Behind the shelter of ignorance most women have already shirked too long." I held out my hand, "If you stay a bit longer, Selwyn, I'll say things I shouldn't. Goodnight."

With a shrug of his shoulders he went down the steps, and as I watched him, for a moment I felt tempted to call him back. It was not unusual for us to part indignant with each other. We invariably clashed, disagreed, and argued hotly if we got on certain subjects, but to-night I did not want him to leave angrily. Something had made me afraid and uncertain and uneasy. I could not define, could only feel it, and if Selwyn should fail me—Shivering, I stood in the doorway, and as I started to go in I noticed a young fellow across the street under a tree, who seemed to be watching the house. He was evidently nervous and moved restlessly in the small circle of the shadow cast by the bare branches. Selwyn apparently did not see him, and, crossing the street, was close upon him before he knew he was there. To my astonishment I saw him start and stop, saw him take the man by the arm.

"What in the name of Heaven—" In the still, cold air I could hear distinctly. "Why are you down here this time of night? Where are you going?"

If there was answer I could not hear it, but I could see the movement of the young man's shoulders, could see him draw away and turn his back to Selwyn. Putting his hands in his pockets, he started toward the corner lighted by the flickering gas-jet, then turned and walked to the one on which there was no light. Had I known him, I could not have recognized him in the darkness, but he was evidently well known to Selwyn, for together they went down the street and out of sight. I wonder who he was.

For the first time since I came to Scarborough Square, Mrs. Mundy has not been to-day her chatty self. She does not seem to want to talk—that is of the girl I want to talk about. When, in my sitting-room this morning, I asked her the girl's name she said she did not know it, did not know where she lived, or what had happened to her, and at my look of incomprehension at her seeming disregard, she had turned away and busied herself in dusting the books on the well-filled table.

"She was pretty nervous." Mrs. Mundy's usually cheerful voice was troubled. "To talk to her, ask her questions, would just have made her more so. They won't tell you anything if they can help it—girls like that—and I didn't try to make her tell. I gave her something to quiet her and stayed with her until she was asleep, but when I went in the room this morning she was gone. Bettina said she heard some one unbolt the door very softly, but she thought 'twas me."

"Do you suppose she lives in this neighborhood? Her people must have been very anxious."

Mrs. Mundy turned and looked at me queerly. She has tremendous admiration for what she calls my book-learning, and sees no incongruity in my ignorance of many things with which she is familiar. My ignorance, indeed, she thinks it her duty to conserve, and already we have had some differences of opinion as to what I should know and not know of the life about us. There are a good many things I have got to make Mrs. Mundy take in more definitely. She thinks of me still as a girl. I am not. I am a woman twenty-six years old.

"Half the girls you've seen coming home from work, half who live around the Square, haven't any people here. What they have is a room in somebody's house. Many are from the country or from small towns. Over sixteen thousand work in the factories alone. You don't suppose they all have homes, do you?—have some one who waits up for them at night, some one who cares when they come in?"

Before I could answer she stopped her dusting and, head on the side and hands on her hips, listened. "There's the iceman at the kitchen door," she said, relievedly. "I'll have to go and let him in."

It is this I cannot understand, this unusual evasiveness on Mrs. Mundy's part. She is the least mysterious of persons, is, indeed, as open as the day, and it is unlike her to act as she has done. From childhood I have known her. Up to the time of Aunt Matilda's marriage to Mr. Chesmond she made my clothes, and for years, in all times of domestic complications has been our dependence. When I decided to live for a while in the house once owned by my grandfather, I turned to her in confidence that she would care not only for my material needs, but that from her I could get what no one else could give me—an insight into scenes and situations commonly concealed from surface sight.

Her knowledge of life is wide and varied. With unfailing faith and cheerful courage and a habit of seeing the humorous side of tragic catastrophes, she has done her work among the sick and forsaken, with no appeal to others save a certain few; and only those who have been steadied by her strong hands, and heartened by her buoyant spirit, and fed from her scant store, have knowledge or understanding of what she means to the section of the city where the poor and lowly live. Bit by bit I am learning, but even yet it is difficult to make her tell me all she does, or how and when she does it.

It was partly because of certain talks with her that I decided to come to Scarborough Square. If I could make but a few understand what she understands—so understand that the sending of a check would not sufficiently relieve them from obligation, from responsibility. But how can I make clear to others what is not clear to me?

It will not be Bettina's fault if I do not become acquainted with my new neighbors in Scarborough Square. By the calendar's accounting Bettina's years are only thirteen, but in shrewdness of penetration, in swiftness of conclusion, and in acceptance of the fact that most people are queer she is amazingly mature. Her readiness to go with me anywhere I wish to go is unfailing, but save on Saturdays and Sundays we can only pay our visits in the afternoon. It is late when she gets from school, and dark soon after we start, but with Bettina I am safe.

Outside and inside of the house our roles are reversed. Concerning my books and my pictures, concerning the people who ride in their own automobiles, who go to the theatre whenever they wish, to the fine churches with beautiful music and paid pews; the people who give parties and wear gorgeous clothes and eat mushrooms and terrapin—which she considered inexplicable taste—she will ask me countless questions; but outside of the house she becomes the teacher and I the taught. Just what I am learning she hardly understands. Much that is new to me is commonplace to her; and she does not dream that I often cannot sleep at night for remembering what the day has shown me. To-morrow we are going to see a Mrs. Gibbons, whose little boy, eleven years of age, is the head of his mother's house—the support of her family.