Mary Turner spent less than an hour in that mysteriously important engagement with Dick Gilder, of which she had spoken to Aggie. After separating from the young man, she went alone down Broadway, walking the few blocks of distance to Sigismund Harris's office. On a corner, her attention was caught by the forlorn face of a girl crossing into the side street. A closer glance showed that the privation of the gaunt features was emphasized by the scant garments, almost in tatters. Instantly, Mary's quick sympathies were aroused, the more particularly since the wretched child seemed of about the age she herself had been when her great suffering had befallen. So, turning aside, she soon caught up with the girl and spoke an inquiry.
It was the familiar story, a father out of work, a sick mother, a brood of hungry children. Some confused words of distress revealed the fact that the wobegone girl was even then fighting the final battle of purity against starvation. That she still fought on in such case proved enough as to her decency of nature, wholesome despite squalid surroundings. Mary's heart was deeply moved, and her words of comfort came with a simple sincerity that was like new life to the sorely beset waif. She promised to interest herself in securing employment for the father, such care as the mother and children might need, along with a proper situation for the girl herself. In evidence of her purpose, she took her engagement-book from her bag, and set down the street and number of the East Side tenement where the family possessed the one room that mocked the word home, and she gave a banknote to the girl to serve the immediate needs.
When she went back to resume her progress down Broadway, Mary felt herself vastly cheered by the warm glow within, which is the reward of a kindly act, gratefully received. And, on this particular morning, she craved such assuagement of her spirit, for the conscience that, in spite of all her misdeeds, still lived was struggling within her. In her revolt against a world that had wantonly inflicted on her the worst torments, Mary Turner had thought that she might safely disregard those principles in which she had been so carefully reared. She had believed that by the deliberate adoption of a life of guile within limits allowed by the law, she would find solace for her wants, while feeling that thus she avenged herself in some slight measure for the indignities she had undergone unjustly. Yet, as the days passed, days of success as far as her scheming was concerned, this brilliant woman, who had tried to deem herself unscrupulous, found that lawlessness within the law failed to satisfy something deep within her soul. The righteousness that was her instinct was offended by the triumphs achieved through so devious devices, though she resolutely set her will to suppress any spiritual rebellion.
There was, as well, another grievance of her nature, yet more subtle, infinitely more painful. This lay in her craving for tenderness. She was wholly woman, notwithstanding the virility of her intelligence, its audacity, its aggressiveness. She had a heart yearning for the multitudinous affections that are the prerogative of the feminine; she had a heart longing for love, to receive and to give in full measure.... And her life was barren. Since the death of her father, there had been none on whom she could lavish the great gifts of her tenderness. Through the days of her working in the store, circumstances had shut her out from all association with others congenial. No need to rehearse the impossibilities of companionship in the prison life. Since then, the situation had not vitally improved, in spite of her better worldly condition. For Garson, who had saved her from death, she felt a strong and lasting gratitude—nothing that relieved the longing for nobler affections. There was none other with whom she had any intimacy except that, of a sort, with Aggie Lynch, and by no possibility could the adventuress serve as an object of deep regard. The girl was amusing enough, and, indeed, a most likable person at her best. But she was, after all, a shallow-pated individual, without a shred of principle of any sort whatsoever, save the single merit of unswerving loyalty to her “pals.” Mary cherished a certain warm kindliness for the first woman who had befriended her in any way, but beyond this there was no finer feeling.
Nevertheless, it is not quite accurate to say that Mary Turner had had no intimacy in which her heart might have been seriously engaged. In one instance, of recent happening, she had been much in association with a young man who was of excellent standing in the world, who was of good birth, good education, of delightful manners, and, too, wholesome and agreeable beyond the most of his class. This was Dick Gilder, and, since her companionship with him, Mary had undergone a revulsion greater than ever before against the fate thrust on her, which now at last she had chosen to welcome and nourish by acquiescence as best she might.
Of course, she could not waste tenderness on this man, for she had deliberately set out to make him the instrument of her vengeance against his father. For that very reason, she suffered much from a conscience newly clamorous. Never for an instant did she hesitate in her long-cherished plan of revenge against the one who had brought ruin on her life, yet, through all her satisfaction before the prospect of final victory after continued delay, there ran the secret, inescapable sorrow over the fact that she must employ this means to attain her end. She had no thought of weakening, but the better spirit within her warred against the lust to repay an eye for an eye. It was the new Gospel against the old Law, and the fierceness of the struggle rent her. Just now, the doing of the kindly act seemed somehow to gratify not only her maternal instinct toward service of love, but, too, to muffle for a little the rebuking voice of her inmost soul.
So she went her way more at ease, more nearly content again with herself and with her system of living. Indeed, as she was shown into the private office of the ingenious interpreter of the law, there was not a hint of any trouble beneath the bright mask of her beauty, radiantly smiling.
Harris regarded his client with an appreciative eye, as he bowed in greeting, and invited her to a seat. The lawyer was a man of fine physique, with a splendid face of the best Semitic type, in which were large, dark, sparkling eyes—eyes a Lombroso perhaps might have judged rather too closely set. As a matter of fact, Harris had suffered a flagrant injustice in his own life from a suspicion of wrong-doing which he had not merited by any act. This had caused him a loss of prestige in his profession. He presently adopted the wily suggestion of the adage, that it is well to have the game if you have the name, and he resolutely set himself to the task of making as much money as possible by any means convenient. Mary Turner as a client delighted his heart, both because of the novelty of her ideas and for the munificence of the fees which she ungrudgingly paid with never a protest. So, as he beamed on her now, and spoke a compliment, it was rather the lawyer than the man that was moved to admiration.
“Why, Miss Turner, how charming!” he declared, smiling. “Really, my dear young lady, you look positively bridal.”
“Oh, do you think so?” Mary rejoined, with a whimsical pout, as she seated herself. For the moment her air became distrait, but she quickly regained her poise, as the lawyer, who had dropped back into his chair behind the desk, went on speaking. His tone now was crisply business-like.
“I sent your cousin, Miss Agnes Lynch, the release which she is to sign,” he explained, “when she gets that money from General Hastings. I wish you'd look it over, when you have time to spare. It's all right, I'm sure, but I confess that I appreciate your opinion of things, Miss Turner, even of legal documents—yes, indeed, I do!—perhaps particularly of legal documents.”
“Thank you,” Mary said, evidently a little gratified by the frank praise of the learned gentleman for her abilities. “And have you heard from them yet?” she inquired.
“No,” the lawyer replied. “I gave them until to-morrow. If I don't hear then, I shall start suit at once.” Then the lawyer's manner became unusually bland and self-satisfied as he opened a drawer of the desk and brought forth a rather formidable-appearing document, bearing a most impressive seal. “You will be glad to know,” he went on unctuously, “that I was entirely successful in carrying out that idea of yours as to the injunction. My dear Miss Turner,” he went on with florid compliment, “Portia was a squawking baby, compared with you.”
“Thank you again,” Mary answered, as she took the legal paper which he held outstretched toward her. Her scarlet lips were curved happily, and the clear oval of her cheeks blossomed to a deeper rose. For a moment, her glance ran over the words of the page. Then she looked up at the lawyer, and there were new lusters in the violet eyes.
“It's splendid,” she declared. “Did you have much trouble in getting it?”
Harris permitted himself the indulgence of an unprofessional chuckle of keenest amusement before he answered.
“Why, no!” he declared, with reminiscent enjoyment in his manner. “That is, not really!” There was an enormous complacency in his air over the event. “But, at the outset, when I made the request, the judge just naturally nearly fell off the bench. Then, I showed him that Detroit case, to which you had drawn my attention, and the upshot of it all was that he gave me what I wanted without a whimper. He couldn't help himself, you know. That's the long and the short of it.”
That mysterious document with the imposing seal, the request for which had nearly caused a judge to fall off the bench, reposed safely in Mary's bag when she, returned to the apartment after the visit to the lawyer's office.
Mary had scarcely received from Aggie an account of Cassidy's threatening invasion, when the maid announced that Mr. Irwin had called.
“Show him in, in just two minutes,” Mary directed.
“Who's the gink?” Aggie demanded, with that slangy diction which was her habit.
“You ought to know,” Mary returned, smiling a little. “He's the lawyer retained by General Hastings in the matter of a certain breach-of-promise suit.”
“Oh, you mean yours truly,” Aggie exclaimed, not in the least abashed by her forgetfulness in an affair that concerned herself so closely. “Hope he's brought the money. What about it?”
“Leave the room now,” Mary ordered, crisply. “When I call to you, come in, but be sure and leave everything to me. Merely follow my lead. And, Agnes—be very ingenue.”
“Oh, I'm wise—I'm wise,” Aggie nodded, as she hurried out toward her bedroom. “I'll be a squab—surest thing you know!”
Next moment, Mary gave a formal greeting to the lawyer who represented the man she planned to mulct effectively, and invited him to a chair near her, while she herself retained her place at the desk, within a drawer of which she had just locked the formidable-appearing document received from Harris.
Irwin lost no time in coming to the point.
“I called in reference to this suit, which Miss Agnes Lynch threatens to bring against my client, General Hastings.”
Mary regarded the attorney with a level glance, serenely expressionless as far as could be achieved by eyes so clear and shining, and her voice was cold as she replied with significant brusqueness.
“It's not a threat, Mr. Irwin. The suit will be brought.”
The lawyer frowned, and there was a strident note in his voice when he answered, meeting her glance with an uncompromising stare of hostility.
“You realize, of course,” he said finally, “that this is merely plain blackmail.”
There was not the change of a feature in the face of the woman who listened to the accusation. Her eyes steadfastly retained their clear gaze into his; her voice was still coldly formal, as before.
“If it's blackmail, Mr. Irwin, why don't you consult the police?” she inquired, with manifest disdain. Mary turned to the maid, who now entered in response to the bell she had sounded a minute before. “Fanny, will you ask Miss Lynch to come in, please?” Then she faced the lawyer again, with an aloofness of manner that was contemptuous. “Really, Mr. Irwin,” she drawled, “why don't you take this matter to the police?”
The reply was uttered with conspicuous exasperation.
“You know perfectly well,” the lawyer said bitterly, “that General Hastings cannot afford such publicity. His position would be jeopardized.”
“Oh, as for that,” Mary suggested evenly, and now there was a trace of flippancy in her fashion of speaking, “I'm sure the police would keep your complaint a secret. Really, you know, Mr. Irwin, I think you had better take your troubles to the police, rather than to me. You will get much more sympathy from them.”
The lawyer sprang up, with an air of sudden determination.
“Very well, I will then,” he declared, sternly. “I will!”
Mary, from her vantage point at the desk across from him, smiled a smile that would have been very engaging to any man under more favorable circumstances, and she pushed in his direction the telephone that stood there.
“3100, Spring,” she remarked, encouragingly, “will bring an officer almost immediately.” She leaned back in her chair, and surveyed the baffled man amusedly.
The lawyer was furious over the failure of his effort to intimidate this extraordinarily self-possessed young woman, who made a mock of his every thrust. But he was by no means at the end of his resources.
“Nevertheless,” he rejoined, “you know perfectly well that General Hastings never promised to marry this girl. You know——” He broke off as Aggie entered the drawing-room,
Now, the girl was demure in seeming almost beyond belief, a childish creature, very fair and dainty, guileless surely, with those untroubled eyes of blue, those softly curving lips of warmest red and the more delicate bloom in the rounded cheeks. There were the charms of innocence and simplicity in the manner of her as she stopped just within the doorway, whence she regarded Mary with a timid, pleading gaze, her slender little form poised lightly as if for flight
“Did you want me, dear?” she asked. There was something half-plaintive in the modulated cadences of the query.
“Agnes,” Mary answered affectionately, “this is Mr. Irwin, who has come to see you in behalf of General Hastings.”
“Oh!” the girl murmured, her voice quivering a little, as the lawyer, after a short nod, dropped again into his seat; “oh, I'm so frightened!” She hurried, fluttering, to a low stool behind the desk, beside Mary's chair, and there she sank down, drooping slightly, and catching hold of one of Mary's hands as if in mute pleading for protection against the fear that beset her chaste soul.
“Nonsense!” Mary exclaimed, soothingly. “There's really nothing at all to be frightened about, my dear child.” Her voice was that with which one seeks to cajole a terrified infant. “You mustn't be afraid, Agnes. Mr. Irwin says that General Hastings did not promise to marry you. Of course, you understand, my dear, that under no circumstances must you say anything that isn't strictly true, and that, if he did not promise to marry you, you have no case—none at all. Now, Agnes, tell me: did General Hastings promise to marry you?”
“Oh, yes—oh, yes, indeed!” Aggie cried, falteringly. “And I wish he would. He's such a delightful old gentleman!” As she spoke, the girl let go Mary's hand and clasped her own together ecstatically.
The legal representative of the delightful old gentleman scowled disgustedly at this outburst. His voice was portentous, as he put a question.
“Was that promise made in writing?”
“No,” Aggie answered, gushingly. “But all his letters were in writing, you know. Such wonderful letters!” She raised her blue eyes toward the ceiling in a naive rapture. “So tender, and so—er—interesting!” Somehow, the inflection on the last word did not altogether suggest the ingenuous.
“Yes, yes, I dare say,” Irwin agreed, hastily, with some evidences of chagrin. He had no intention of dwelling on that feature of the letters, concerning which he had no doubt whatsoever, since he knew the amorous General very well indeed. They would be interesting, beyond shadow of questioning, horribly interesting. Such was the confessed opinion of the swain himself who had written them in his folly—horribly interesting to all the reading public of the country, since the General was a conspicuous figure.
Mary intervened with a suavity that infuriated the lawyer almost beyond endurance.
“But you're quite sure, Agnes,” she questioned gently, “that General Hastings did promise to marry you?” The candor of her manner was perfect.
And the answer of Aggie was given with a like convincing emphasis.
“Oh, yes!” she declared, tensely. “Why, I would swear to it.” The limpid eyes, so appealing in their soft lusters, went first to Mary, then gazed trustingly into those of the routed attorney.
“You see, Mr. Irwin, she would swear to that,” emphasized Mary.
“We're beaten,” he confessed, dejectedly, turning his glance toward Mary, whom, plainly, he regarded as his real adversary in the combat on his client's behalf. “I'm going to be quite frank with you, Miss Turner, quite frank,” he stated with more geniality, though with a very crestfallen air. Somehow, indeed, there was just a shade too much of the crestfallen in the fashion of his utterance, and the woman whom he addressed watched warily as he continued. “We can't afford any scandal, so we're going to settle at your own terms.” He paused expectantly, but Mary offered no comment; only maintained her alert scrutiny of the man. The lawyer, therefore, leaned forward with a semblance of frank eagerness. Instantly, Aggie had become agog with greedily blissful anticipations, and she uttered a slight ejaculation of joy; but Irwin paid no heed to her. He was occupied in taking from his pocket a thick bill-case, and from this presently a sheaf of banknotes, which he laid on the desk before Mary, with a little laugh of discomfiture over having been beaten in the contest.
As he did so, Aggie thrust forth an avaricious hand, but it was caught and held by Mary before it reached above the top of the desk, and the avaricious gesture passed unobserved by the attorney.
“We can't fight where ladies are concerned,” he went on, assuming, as best he might contrive, a chivalrous tone. “So, if you will just hand over General Hastings' letters, why, here's your money.”
Much to the speaker's surprise, there followed an interval of silence, and his puzzlement showed in the knitting of his brows. “You have the letters, haven't you?” he demanded, abruptly.
Aggie coyly took a thick bundle from its resting place on her rounded bosom.
“They never leave me,” she murmured, with dulcet passion. There was in her voice a suggestion of desolation—a desolation that was the blighting effect of letting the cherished missives go from her.
“Well, they can leave you now, all right,” the lawyer remarked unsympathetically, but with returning cheerfulness, since he saw the end of his quest in visible form before him. He reached quickly forward for the packet, which Aggie extended willingly enough. But it was Mary who, with a swift movement, caught and held it.
“Not quite yet, Mr. Irwin, I'm afraid,” she said, calmly.
The lawyer barely suppressed a violent ejaculation of annoyance.
“But there's the money waiting for you,” he protested, indignantly.
The rejoinder from Mary was spoken with great deliberation, yet with a note of determination that caused a quick and acute anxiety to the General's representative.
“I think,” Mary explained tranquilly, “that you had better see our lawyer, Mr. Harris, in reference to this. We women know nothing of such details of business settlement.”
“Oh, there's no need for all that formality,” Irwin urged, with a great appearance of bland friendliness.
“Just the same,” Mary persisted, unimpressed, “I'm quite sure you would better see Mr. Harris first.” There was a cadence of insistence in her voice that assured the lawyer as to the futility of further pretense on his part.
“Oh, I see,” he said disagreeably, with a frown to indicate his complete sagacity in the premises.
“I thought you would, Mr. Irwin,” Mary returned, and now she smiled in a kindly manner, which, nevertheless, gave no pleasure to the chagrined man before her. As he rose, she went on crisply: “If you'll take the money to Mr. Harris, Miss Lynch will meet you in his office at four o'clock this afternoon, and, when her suit for damages for breach of promise has been legally settled out of court, you will get the letters.... Good-afternoon, Mr. Irwin.”
The lawyer made a hurried bow which took in both of the women, and walked quickly toward the door. But he was arrested before he reached it by the voice of Mary, speaking again, still in that imperturbable evenness which so rasped his nerves, for all its mellow resonance. But this time there was a sting, of the sharpest, in the words themselves.
“Oh, you forgot your marked money, Mr. Irwin,” Mary said.
The lawyer wheeled, and stood staring at the speaker with a certain sheepishness of expression that bore witness to the completeness of his discomfiture. Without a word, after a long moment in which he perceived intently the delicate, yet subtly energetic, loveliness of this slender woman, he walked back to the desk, picked up the money, and restored it to the bill-case. This done, at last he spoke, with a new respect in his voice, a quizzical smile on his rather thin lips.
“Young woman,” he said emphatically, “you ought to have been a lawyer.” And with that laudatory confession of her skill, he finally took his departure, while Mary smiled in a triumph she was at no pains to conceal, and Aggie sat gaping astonishment over the surprising turn of events.
It was the latter volatile person who ended the silence that followed on the lawyer's going.
“You've darn near broke my heart,” she cried, bouncing up violently, “letting all that money go out of the house.... Say, how did you know it was marked?”
“I didn't,” Mary replied, blandly; “but it was a pretty good guess, wasn't it? Couldn't you see that all he wanted was to get the letters, and have us take the marked money? Then, my simple young friend, we would have been arrested very neatly indeed—for blackmail.”
Aggie's innocent eyes rounded in an amazed consternation, which was not at all assumed.
“Gee!” she cried. “That would have been fierce! And now?” she questioned, apprehensively.
Mary's answer repudiated any possibility of fear.
“And now,” she explained contentedly, “he really will go to our lawyer. There, he will pay over that same marked money. Then, he will get the letters he wants so much. And, just because it's a strictly business transaction between two lawyers, with everything done according to legal ethics——”
“What's legal ethics?” Aggie demanded, impetuously. “They sound some tasty!” With the comment, she dropped weakly into a chair.
Mary laughed in care-free enjoyment, as well she might after winning the victory in such a battle of wits.
“Oh,” she said, happily, “you just get it legally, and you get twice as much!”
“And it's actually the same old game!” Aggie mused. She was doing her best to get a clear understanding of the matter, though to her it was all a mystery most esoteric.
Mary reviewed the case succinctly for the other's enlightenment.
“Yes, it's the same game precisely,” she affirmed. “A shameless old roue makes love to you, and he writes you a stack of silly letters.”
The pouting lips of the listener took on a pathetic droop, and her voice quivered as she spoke with an effective semblance of virginal terror.
“He might have ruined my life!”
Mary continued without giving much attention to these histrionics.
“If you had asked him for all this money for the return of his letters, it would have been blackmail, and we'd have gone to jail in all human probability. But we did no such thing—no, indeed! What we did wasn't anything like that in the eyes of the law. What we did was merely to have your lawyer take steps toward a suit for damages for breach of promise of marriage for the sum of ten thousand dollars. Then, his lawyer appears in behalf of General Hastings, and there follow a number of conferences between the legal representatives of the opposing parties. By means of these conferences, the two legal gentlemen run up very respectable bills of expenses. In the end, we get our ten thousand dollars, and the flighty old General gets back his letters.... My dear,” Mary concluded vaingloriously, “we're inside the law, and so we're perfectly safe. And there you are!”
Mary remained in joyous spirits after her victorious matching of brains against a lawyer of high standing in his profession. For the time being, conscience was muted by gratified ambition. Her thoughts just then were far from the miseries of the past, with their evil train of consequences in the present. But that past was soon to be recalled to her with a vividness most terrible.
She had entered the telephone-booth, which she had caused to be installed out of an extra closet of her bedroom for the sake of greater privacy on occasion, and it was during her absence from the drawing-room that Garson again came into the apartment, seeking her. On being told by Aggie as to Mary's whereabouts, he sat down to await her return, listening without much interest to the chatter of the adventuress.... It was just then that the maid appeared.
“There's a girl wants to see Miss Turner,” she explained.
The irrepressible Aggie put on her most finically elegant air.
“Has she a card?” she inquired haughtily, while the maid tittered appreciation.
“No,” was the answer. “But she says it's important. I guess the poor thing's in hard luck, from the look of her,” the kindly Fannie added.
“Oh, then she'll be welcome, of course,” Aggie declared, and Garson nodded in acquiescence. “Tell her to come in and wait, Fannie. Miss Turner will be here right away.” She turned to Garson as the maid left the room. “Mary sure is an easy boob,” she remarked, cheerfully. “Bless her soft heart!”
A curiously gentle smile of appreciation softened the immobility of the forger's face as he again nodded assent.
“We might just as well pipe off the skirt before Mary gets here,” Aggie suggested, with eagerness.
A minute later, a girl perhaps twenty years of age stepped just within the doorway, and stood there with eyes downcast, after one swift, furtive glance about her. Her whole appearance was that of dejection. Her soiled black gown, the cringing posture, the pallor of her face, proclaimed the abject misery of her state.
Aggie, who was not exuberant in her sympathies for any one other than herself, addressed the newcomer with a patronizing inflection, modulated in her best manner.
“Won't you come in, please?” she requested.
The shrinking girl shot another veiled look in the direction of the speaker.
“Are you Miss Turner?” she asked, in a voice broken by nervous dismay.
“Really, I am very sorry,” Aggie replied, primly; “but I am only her cousin, Miss Agnes Lynch. But Miss Turner is likely to be back any minute now.”
“Can I wait?” came the timid question.
“Certainly,” Aggie answered, hospitably. “Please sit down.”
As the girl obediently sank down on the nearest chair, Garson addressed her sharply, so that the visitor started uneasily at the unexpected sound.
“You don't know Miss Turner?”
“No,” came the faint reply.
“Then, what do you want to see her about?”
There was a brief pause before the girl could pluck up courage enough for an answer. Then, it was spoken confusedly, almost in a whisper.
“She once helped a girl friend of mine, and I thought—I thought——”
“You thought she might help you,” Garson interrupted.
But Aggie, too, possessed some perceptive powers, despite the fact that she preferred to use them little in ordinary affairs.
“You have been in stir—prison, I mean.” She hastily corrected the lapse into underworld slang.
Came a distressed muttering of assent from the girl.
“How sad!” Aggie remarked, in a voice of shocked pity for one so inconceivably unfortunate. “How very, very sad!”
This ingenuous method of diversion was put to an end by the entrance of Mary, who stopped short on seeing the limp figure huddled in the chair.
“A visitor, Agnes?” she inquired.
At the sound of her voice, and before Aggie could hit on a fittingly elegant form of reply, the girl looked up. And now, for the first time, she spoke with some degree of energy, albeit there was a sinister undertone in the husky voice.
“You're Miss Turner?” she questioned.
“Yes,” Mary said, simply. Her words rang kindly; and she smiled encouragement.
A gasp burst from the white lips of the girl, and she cowered as one stricken physically.
“Mary Turner! Oh, my God! I——” She hid her face within her arms and sat bent until her head rested on her knees in an abasement of misery.
Vaguely startled by the hysterical outburst from the girl, Mary's immediate thought was that here was a pitiful instance of one suffering from starvation.
“Joe,” she directed rapidly, “have Fannie bring a glass of milk with an egg and a little brandy in it, right away.”
The girl in the chair was shaking soundlessly under the stress of her emotions. A few disjointed phrases fell from her quivering lips.
“I didn't know—oh, I couldn't!”
“Don't try to talk just now,” Mary warned, reassuringly. “Wait until you've had something to eat.”
Aggie, who had observed developments closely, now lifted her voice in tardy lamentations over her own stupidity. There was no affectation of the fine lady in her self-reproach.
“Why, the poor gawk's hungry!” she exclaimed! “And I never got the dope on her. Ain't I the simp!”
The girl regained a degree of self-control, and showed something of forlorn dignity.
“Yes,” she said dully, “I'm starving.”
Mary regarded the afflicted creature with that sympathy born only of experience.
“Yes,” she said softly, “I understand.” Then she spoke to Aggie. “Take her to my room, and let her rest there for a while. Have her drink the egg and milk slowly, and then lie down for a few minutes anyhow.”
Aggie obeyed with an air of bustling activity.
“Sure, I will!” she declared. She went to the girl and helped her to stand up. “We'll fix you out all right,” she said, comfortingly. “Come along with me.... Hungry! Gee, but that's tough!”
Half an hour afterward, while Mary was at her desk, giving part of her attention to Joe Garson, who sat near, and part to a rather formidable pile of neatly arranged papers, Aggie reported with her charge, who, though still shambling of gait, and stooping, showed by some faint color in her face and an increased steadiness of bearing that the food had already strengthened her much.
“She would come,” Aggie explained. “I thought she ought to rest for a while longer anyhow.” She half-shoved the girl into a chair opposite the desk, in an absurd travesty on the maternal manner.
“I'm all right, I tell you,” came the querulous protest.
Whereupon, Aggie gave over the uncongenial task of mothering, and settled herself comfortably in a chair, with her legs merely crossed as a compromise between ease and propriety.
“Are you quite sure?” Mary said to the girl. And then, as the other nodded in assent, she spoke with a compelling kindliness. “Then you must tell us all about it—this trouble of yours, you know. What is your name?”
Once again the girl had recourse to the swift, searching, furtive glance, but her voice was colorless as she replied, listlessly:
“Helen Morris.”
Mary regarded the girl with an expression that was inscrutable when she spoke again.
“I don't have to ask if you have been in prison,” she said gravely. “Your face shows it.”
“I—I came out—three months ago,” was the halting admission.
Mary watched the shrinking figure reflectively for a long minute before she spoke again. Then there was a deeper resonance in her voice.
“And you'd made up your mind to go straight?”
“Yes.” The word was a whisper.
“You were going to do what the chaplain had told you,” Mary went on in a voice vibrant with varied emotions. “You were going to start all over again, weren't you? You were going to begin a new life, weren't you?” The bent head of the girl bent still lower in assent. There came a cynical note into Mary's utterance now.
“It doesn't work very well, does it?” she asked, bitterly.
The girl gave sullen agreement.
“No,” she said dully; “I'm whipped.”
Mary's manner changed on the instant. She spoke cheerfully for the first time.
“Well, then,” she questioned, “how would you like to work with us?”
The girl looked up for a second with another of her fleeting, stealthy glances.
“You—you mean that——?”
Mary explained her intention in the matter very explicitly. Her voice grew boastful.
“Our kind of work pays well when you know how. Look at us.”
Aggie welcomed the opportunity for speech, too long delayed.
“Hats from Joseph's, gowns from Lucile's, and cracked ice from Tiffany's. But it ain't ladylike to wear it,” she concluded with a reproachful glance at her mentor.
Mary disregarded the frivolous interruption, and went on speaking to the girl, and now there was something pleasantly cajoling in her manner.
“Suppose I should stake you for the present, and put you in with a good crowd. All you would have to do would be to answer advertisements for servant girls. I will see that you have the best of references. Then, when you get in with the right people, you will open the front door some night and let in the gang. Of course, you will make a get-away when they do, and get your bit as well.”
There flashed still another of the swift, sly glances, and the lips of the girl parted as if she would speak. But she did not; only, her head sagged even lower on her breast, and the shrunken form grew yet more shrunken. Mary, watching closely, saw these signs, and in the same instant a change came over her. Where before there had been an underlying suggestion of hardness, there was now a womanly warmth of genuine sympathy.
“It doesn't suit you?” she said, very softly. “Good! I was in hopes it wouldn't. So, here's another plan.” Her voice had become very winning. “Suppose you could go West—some place where you would have a fair chance, with money enough so you could live like a human being till you got a start?”
There came a tensing of the relaxed form, and the head lifted a little so that the girl could look at her questioner. And, this time, the glance, though of the briefest, was less furtive.
“I will give you that chance,” Mary said simply, “if you really want it.”
That speech was like a current of strength to the wretched girl. She sat suddenly erect, and her words came eagerly.
“Oh, I do!” And now her hungry gaze remained fast on the face of the woman who offered her salvation.
Mary sprang up and moved a step toward the girl who continued to stare at her, fascinated. She was now all wholesome. The memory of her own wrongs surged in her during this moment only to make her more appreciative of the blessedness of seemly life. She was moved to a divine compassion over this waif for whom she might prove a beneficent providence. There was profound conviction in the emphasis with which she spoke her warning.
“Then I have just one thing to say to you first. If you are going to live straight, start straight, and then go through with it. Do you know what that means?”
“You mean, keep straight all the time?” The girl spoke with a force drawn from the other's strength.
“I mean more than that,” Mary went on earnestly. “I mean, forget that you were ever in prison. I don't know what you have done—I don't think I care. But whatever it was, you have paid for it—a pretty big price, too.” Into these last words there crept the pathos of one who knew. The sympathy of it stirred the listener to fearful memories.
“I have, I have!” The thin voice broke, wailing.
“Well, then,” Mary went on, “just begin all over again, and be sure you stand up for your rights. Don't let them make you pay a second time. Go where no one knows you, and don't tell the first people who are kind to you that you have been crooked. If they think you are straight, why, be it. Then nobody will have any right to complain.” Her tone grew suddenly pleading. “Will you promise me this?”
“Yes, I promise,” came the answer, very gravely, quickened with hope.
“Good!” Mary exclaimed, with a smile of approval. “Wait a minute,” she added, and left the room.
“Huh! Pretty soft for some people,” Aggie remarked to Garson, with a sniff. She felt no alarm lest she wound the sensibilities of the girl. She herself had never let delicacy interfere between herself and money. It was really stranger that the forger, who possessed a more sympathetic nature, did not scruple to speak an assent openly. Somehow, he felt an inexplicable prejudice against this abject recipient of Mary's bounty, though not for the world would he have checked the generous impulse on the part of the woman he so revered. It was his instinct on her behalf that made him now vaguely uneasy, as if he sensed some malign influence against her there present with them.
Mary returned soon. In her hand she carried a roll of bills. She went to the girl and held out the money. Her voice was business-like now, but very kind.
“Take this. It will pay your fare West, and keep you quite a while if you are careful.”
But, without warning, a revulsion seized on the girl. Of a sudden, she shrank again, and turned her head away, and her body trembled.
“I can't take it,” she stammered. “I can't! I can't!”
Mary stood silent for a moment from sheer amazement over the change. When she spoke, her voice had hardened a little. It is not agreeable to have one's beneficence flouted.
“Didn't you come here for help?” she demanded.
“Yes,” was the faltering reply, “but—but—I didn't know—it was you!” The words came with a rush of desperation.
“Then, you have met me before?” Mary said, quietly.
“No, no!” The girl's voice rose shrill.
Aggie spoke her mind with commendable frankness.
“She's lying.”
And, once again, Garson agreed. His yes was spoken in a tone of complete certainty. That Mary, too, was of their opinion was shown in her next words.
“So, you have met me before? Where?”
The girl unwittingly made confession in her halting words.
“I—I can't tell you.” There was despair in her voice.
“You must.” Mary spoke with severity. She felt that this mystery held in it something sinister to herself. “You must,” she repeated imperiously.
The girl only crouched lower.
“I can't!” she cried again. She was panting as if in exhaustion.
“Why can't you?” Mary insisted. She had no sympathy now for the girl's distress, merely a great suspicious curiosity.
“Because—because——” The girl could not go on.
Mary's usual shrewdness came to her aid, and she put her next question in a different direction.
“What were you sent up for?” she asked briskly. “Tell me.”
It was Garson who broke the silence that followed.
“Come on, now!” he ordered. There was a savage note in his voice under which the girl visibly winced. Mary made a gesture toward him that he should not interfere. Nevertheless, the man's command had in it a threat which the girl could not resist and she answered, though with a reluctance that made the words seem dragged from her by some outside force—as indeed they were.
“For stealing.”
“Stealing what?” Mary said.
“Goods.”
“Where from?”
A reply came in a breath so low that it was barely audible.
“The Emporium.”
In a flash of intuition, the whole truth was revealed to the woman who stood looking down at the cowering creature before her.
“The Emporium!” she repeated. There was a tragedy in the single word. Her voice grew cold with hate, the hate born of innocence long tortured. “Then you are the one who——”
The accusation was cut short by the girl's shriek.
“I am not! I am not, I tell you.”
For a moment, Mary lost her poise. Her voice rose in a flare of rage.
“You are! You are!”
The craven spirit of the girl could struggle no more. She could only sit in a huddled, shaking heap of dread. The woman before her had been disciplined by sorrow to sternest self-control. Though racked by emotions most intolerable, Mary soon mastered their expression to such an extent that when she spoke again, as if in self-communion, her words came quietly, yet with overtones of a supreme wo.
“She did it!” Then, after a little, she addressed the girl with a certain wondering before this mystery of horror. “Why did you throw the blame on me?”
The girl made several efforts before her mumbling became intelligible, and then her speech was gasping, broken with fear.
“I found out they were watching me, and I was afraid they would catch me. So, I took them and ran into the cloak-room, and put them in a locker that wasn't close to mine, and some in the pocket of a coat that was hanging there. God knows I didn't know whose it was. I just put them there—I was frightened——”
“And you let me go to prison for three years!” There was a menace in Mary's voice under which the girl cringed again.
“I was scared,” she whined. “I didn't dare to tell.”
“But they caught you later,” Mary went on inexorably. “Why didn't you tell then?”
“I was afraid,” came the answer from the shuddering girl. “I told them it was the first time I had taken anything and they let me off with a year.”
Once more, the wrath of the victim flamed high.
“You!” Mary cried. “You cried and lied, and they let you off with a year. I wouldn't cry. I told the truth—and——” Her voice broke in a tearless sob. The color had gone out of her face, and she stood rigid, looking down at the girl whose crime had ruined her life with an expression of infinite loathing in her eyes. Garson rose from his chair as if to go to her, and his face passed swiftly from compassion to ferocity as his gaze went from the woman he had saved from the river to the girl who had been the first cause of her seeking a grave in the waters. Yet, though he longed with every fiber of him to comfort the stricken woman, he did not dare intrude upon her in this time of her anguish, but quietly dropped back into his seat and sat watching with eyes now tender, now baleful, as they shifted their direction.
Aggie took advantage of the pause. Her voice was acid.
“Some people are sneaks—just sneaks!”
Somehow, the speech was welcome to the girl, gave her a touch of courage sufficient for cowardly protestations. It seemed to relieve the tension drawn by the other woman's torment. It was more like the abuse that was familiar to her. A gush of tears came.
“I'll never forgive myself, never!” she moaned.
Contempt mounted in Mary's breast.
“Oh, yes, you will,” she said, malevolently. “People forgive themselves pretty easily.” The contempt checked for a little the ravages of her grief. “Stop crying,” she commanded harshly. “Nobody is going to hurt you.” She thrust the money again toward the girl, and crowded it into the half-reluctant, half-greedy hand.
“Take it, and get out.” The contempt in her voice rang still sharper, mordant.
Even the puling creature writhed under the lash of Mary's tones. She sprang up, slinking back a step.
“I can't take it!” she cried, whimpering. But she did not drop the money.
“Take the chance while you have it,” Mary counseled, still with the contempt that pierced even the hardened girl's sense of selfishness. She pointed toward the door. “Go!—before I change my mind.”
The girl needed, indeed, no second bidding. With the money still clutched in her hand, she went forth swiftly, stumbling a little in her haste, fearful lest, at the last moment, the woman she had so wronged should in fact change in mood, take back the money—ay, even give her over to that terrible man with the eyes of hate, to put her to death as she deserved.
Freed from the miasma of that presence, Mary remained motionless for a long minute, then sighed from her tortured heart. She turned and went slowly to her chair at the desk, and seated herself languidly, weakened by the ordeal through which she had passed.
“A girl I didn't know!” she said, bewilderedly; “perhaps had never spoken to—who smashed my life like that! Oh, if it wasn't so awful, it would be—funny! It would be funny!” A gust of hysterical laughter burst from her. “Why, it is funny!” she cried, wildly. “It is funny!”
“Mary!” Garson exclaimed sharply. He leaped across the room to face her. “That's no good!” he said severely.
Aggie, too, rushed forward.
“No good at all!” she declared loudly.
The interference recalled the distressed woman to herself. She made a desperate effort for self-command. Little by little, the unmeaning look died down, and presently she sat silent and moveless, staring at the two with stormy eyes out of a wan face.
“You were right,” she said at last, in a lifeless voice. “It's done, and can't be undone. I was a fool to let it affect me like that. I really thought I had lost all feeling about it, but the sight of that girl—the knowledge that she had done it—brought it all back to me. Well, you understand, don't you?”
“We understand,” Garson said, grimly. But there was more than grimness, infinitely more, in the expression of his clear, glowing eyes.
Aggie thought that it was her turn to voice herself, which she did without undue restraint.
“Perhaps, we do, but I dunno! I'll tell you one thing, though. If any dame sent me up for three years and then wanted money from me, do you think she'd get it? Wake me up any time in the night and ask me. Not much—not a little bit much! I'd hang on to it like an old woman to her last tooth.” And that was Aggie's final summing up of her impressions concerning the scene she had just witnessed.