People Like That Part 3

"As a corporation attorney, yes. As a division of the human race, as working people, you know them. As beings much more like yourself than you imagine, you don't."

Selwyn again stopped. "You'd hardly expect me to find them congenial--the beings you refer to."

"I would not." I laughed. "They are generations removed from you in education and culture, in many of the things essential to you, but some of them see more clearly than you. Both need to understand you owe each other something. And how are you going to find out what it is, see from each other's point of view, unless you know each other better? Unless--"

"For the love of Heaven, get rid of such nonsense! That particular kind of sentiment has gone to seed. Every sane man recognizes certain obligations to his fellow-man, every normal one tries to pay them, but all this rot about bringing better relations to pa.s.s between masters and men through familiarity, through putting people in places they are not fitted to fill, is idle dreaming based on ignorance of human nature. To give a man what he doesn't earn is to do him an injury. Most men win the rewards they are ent.i.tled to.

You're a visionist. You always have been--"

"And am always going to be! Life would hardly be endurable were it not for dreaming, hoping, believing. I could stand any loss better than that of my faith in humankind." I sat upright, my hands locked in my lap. "I'm not here to do things for the people you have so little patience with. I told you I wanted to see what sort of people we are. You're perfectly certain those who live in Scarborough Squares don't make a success of life. Do you think we do?"

Again Selwyn stopped, stared at me, but before he could answer a queer, curdling, smothered sound reached us faintly from the street below. A cry low, yet clear and anguished, followed. Then a fall and hurrying footsteps, and then silence. Selwyn sprang to the window and opened it.

"My G.o.d!" he said. His face was white. "What was that?"

CHAPTER V

I was out of the door before Selwyn had left the window. Quickly he followed me, however, and on the front porch, where Mrs. Mundy was already standing, we stood for a half-moment, looking up and down the street.

The small arc of light made by the corner gaslamp lessened but little the darkness of the seemingly deserted street, and for a while we could distinguish nothing save the shadows cast by the gaunt trees of the Square. Then I saw Selwyn start.

"Go inside." He was his steady self again. "It is too cold out here. I think some one has been hurt. Go in."

I ran in Mrs. Mundy's room and to her wardrobe. Getting a coat and an old cape, I threw the latter over my shoulders, and, coming back to the porch, went down its steps and across the street to where Mrs.

Mundy and Selwyn were bending over a young woman who stirred as they came up.

"Put this on." I threw the coat to Mrs. Mundy. "Who is it?"

"I don't know." Mrs. Mundy knelt on the ground. "Are you hurt?" she asked. "There--that's better." With skilful movement she helped the girl, who seemed dazed, to steady herself. As the latter sat up she put her hand to her face and brushed back her hair.

"Where am I? Has he gone?" Her face was dropped in her hands. "If he just would kill me and end it--end it!"

"Who hurt you?" Selwyn's voice was the quiet one that was ever his when something was to be done, and, leaning over her, he took the girl by the arm and lifted her to her feet. "Can you tell what has happened?" He looked at Mrs. Mundy. "It's too cold out here for her to stand--she's pretty faint still."

"Bring her over to me." Mrs. Mundy put her coat around the s.h.i.+vering girl, and, slipping her hand through one arm, motioned Selwyn to take hold of the other. "Run ahead," she nodded to me, "and fix up a dose of that aromatic spirits of ammonia what's on the second shelf of the closet in my bedroom. And pull the couch up to the fire."

Dazedly, and dragging her feet as if they were powerless to move, the girl entered the warm and cheerful room, but at her entrance understanding seemed to give her strength. With a shuddering, s.h.i.+vering, indrawing breath she drew back and leaned against the door-frame.

"I must go. I--I can't come in there. I'm better now. I must go."

"You can't go." Selwyn's voice was decisive. "You'll be all right presently, but you'll have to--to rest, first." Firmly she was led to the couch and pushed upon it. Taking the medicine from my hands, he held it to her lips. "Take this."

Hesitating, partly defiant, partly afraid, the girl raised her eyes to his. Then, with hand that shook badly, she took the gla.s.s and drank part of its contents, the rest was spilled in her lap.

"If it were prussic acid I'd be glad to drink it." The voice was bitter, and again the eyes, pale yet burning, were raised to his, and in them was what seemed frightened but guarded recognition. Quickly she dropped them and glanced around the room, as though looking for escape, and again her hands made convulsive pressure, again she started to get up.

"I must go. I tell you, I must. I--I can't stay here."

"Very well." Mrs. Mundy looked toward Selwyn and away from me.

"When you're steady you can go. Mr. Thorne will telephone for a cab and I will take you--home."

"Oh no!" The girl's face became the pallor that frightens, and on either side of her a hand was dug in the couch on which she was sitting. "I'm all right now. I don't want a cab. I just want to go, and by myself. Please let me go!"

The last words were lost in a sob, and coming close to her I sat beside her, and, putting my hand on her face, turned it slightly that I might better see the big, black bruise on her forehead, partly hidden by the loose, dark curls which fell across it. Her hair was short and thick and parted on the side, giving her a youthful, boyish look that was in odd contrast to the sudden terror in her eyes, and for the first time I saw how slight and frail she was, saw that about her which baffled and puzzled me, and which I could not a.n.a.lyze. She wore no hat, and the red scarf around her neck was the only touch of color in her otherwise dark dress. The lips of her large, sweet, sensuous mouth were as colorless as her face.

"You have been hurt." I put my hand on her trembling ones. "Did some one strike you or did you fall?"

She shook her head and drew her hands away. "I wasn't hurt. I--I slipped and fell and struck my head on the pavement. Don't let anybody telephone. I can go alone. Please--please let me go! I must go! I can't stay here."

"But you mustn't go alone." I turned to Selwyn. "Mr. Thorne will go with you. Do you live far from here?"

"Not very. It's close enough for me to go by myself. He mustn't go with me." The words came stumblingly, and again I saw the quick, frightened look she gave Selwyn, a look in which was indecision and appeal, as well as fear, and I saw, too, that his face flushed as he turned away.

With quick movement the girl got up. From her throat came a sound hysterical and choking, and, putting her hand to it, she looked first at me and then at Mrs. Mundy, but at Selwyn she did not look again.

"I'm going. Thank you for letting me come in." Blindly she staggered to the door, her hands outstretched as if to feel what she could not see. At it she turned and in her face was that which keeps me awake at night, which haunts and hurts and seems to be crying to me to do something which I know not how to do.

"You poor child!" I started toward her. "You must not go alone."

But before I could reach her she fell in a heap at the door, and as one dead she lay limp and white and piteously pretty on the floor.

CHAPTER VI

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 s.h.i.+rked 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-- s.h.i.+vering, 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.