The Forerunner Part 41

"I'm afraid someone has been prejudicing you against me Mary. You have more technical information than seems likely to have reached you by accident."

"It's not prejudice, but it is information; and Mr. Graham did tell me, if that's what you mean. But he cares. You know how hard the Settlement has worked to get the Company to make the streets safer for children--and you wouldn't do a thing."

Mr. Cortlandt hesitated. It would never do to pile business details on his suit for a love once lost and not yet regained.

"You make it hard for me Mary," he said. "Hard because it is difficult to explain large business questions to a--to anyone not accustomed to them. I cannot swing the affairs of a great corporation for personal ends, even to please you."

"That is not the point," she said quickly.

He flushed, and hastily subst.i.tuted "Even to suit the n.o.blest humanitarian feelings."

"Why not?" said she.

"Because that is not what street cars are run for," he pursued patiently. "But why must we talk of this? It seems to put you so far away. And you have given me no answer."

"I am sorry, but I am not ready yet."

"Is it Hugh Graham?" he demanded. The hot color leaped to her face, but she met his eyes steadily. "I am much interested in Mr. Graham," she said, "and in the n.o.ble work he is doing. I think I should really be happier with him than with you. We care for the same things, he calls out the best in me. But I have made no decision in his favor yet, nor in yours. Both of you have a certain appeal to my heart, both to my duty. With you the personal need, with him the hope of greater service.

But--you are the father of the child, and that gives you a great claim.

I have not decided."

The man looked relieved, and again drew his chair a little closer. The sharp clangor of the cars rose between the,.

"You think I dragged in this car question," she said. "Really, I did it because it is that sort of thing which does most to keep us apart, and--I would like to remove it."

He leaned forward, playing with her big fan. "Let's remove it by all means!" he said.

She looked at his bent head, the dark hair growing somewhat thin on top, almost tenderly.

"If I could feel that you were truly on the right side, that you considered your work as social service, that you tried to run your cars to carry people--not to kill them!--If you could change your ground here I think--almost--" she stopped, smiling up at him, her fan in her lap, her firm delicate white hands eagerly clasped; then went on,

"Don't you care at all for the lives lost every day in this great city--under your cars?"

"It cannot be helped, my dear. Our men are as careful as men can be.

But these swarming children will play in the streets--"

"Where else can they play!" she interjected.

"And they get right in front of the cars. We are very sorry; we pay out thousands of dollars in damages: but it cannot be helped!"

She leaned back in her chair and her face grew cold.

"You speak as if you never heard of such things as fenders," she said.

"We have fenders!--almost every car--"

"Fenders! Do you call that piece of rat-trap a fender! Henry Cortlandt! We were in Liverpool when this subject first came up between us! They have fenders there that _fend_ and no murder list!"

"Conditions are different there," said he with an enforced quiet. "Our pavement is different."

"Our children are not so different, are they?" she demanded. "Our mothers are made of the same stuff I suppose?"

"You speak at if I wanted to kill them! As if I liked to!"

"I thought at first it would hurt you as it did me," she said warmly.

"I turned to you with real hope when we met in Liverpool. I was glad to think I knew you, and I had not been glad of that for long! I thought you would care, would do things."

Do what he would, his mouth set hard in its accustomed lines. "Those English fender are not practicable in this country, Mary. They have been tried."

"When? Where? By whom?" she threw at him. "I have read about it, and heard about it. I know there was an effort to get them adopted, and that they were refused. They cost more than this kind!" and she pointed disdainfully at the rattling bit of stub-toed slat-work in front of a pa.s.sing car.

"Do you expect me to make a revolution in the street car system of America--to please you? Do you make it a condition? Perhaps I can accomplish it. Is it a bargain? Come--"

"No," she said slowly. "I'm not making bargains. I'm only wis.h.i.+ng, as I have wished so often in years past--that you were a different kind of man--"

"What kind do you want me to be?"

"I want you to be--I wish you were--a man who cared to give perfect service to his country, in his business."

"Perhaps I can be yet. I can try. If I had you to help me, with your pure ideals, and the boy to keep my heart open for the children. I don't know much about these things, but I can learn. I can read, you can tell me what to read. We could study together. And in my position perhaps, I could really be of some service after all."

"Perhaps?" She watched him, the strong rather heavy face, the attractive smile, the eyes that interested and compelled. He was an able, masterful man. He surely loved her now. She could feel a power over him that her short miserable marriage had never given her; and her girlhood's attraction toward him rea.s.serted itself.

A new noise rose about them, a dissonant mingled merry outcry, made into a level roaring sound by their height above the street.

"That's when the school up here lets out," she said. "We hear it every day. Just see the crowds of them!"

They leaned on the broad sill and watched the many-colored torrent of juveniles pouring past.

"One day it was different," she said. "A strange jarring shrillness in it, a peculiar sound. I looked out, and there was a fight going on; two boys tumbling about from one side of the street to the other, with a moving ring around them, a big crowd, all roaring in one key."

"You get a birdseye view of life in these streets, don't you. Can you make out that little chap with the red hair down there?"

"No--we are both near-sighted, you know. I can't distinguish faces at this distance. Can you?"

"Not very clearly," he said. "But what a swarm they are!"

"Come away," said she, "I can't bear to look at them. So many children in that stony street, and those cars going up and down like roaring lions!"

They drew back into the big sunny room, and she seated herself at the piano and turned over loose sheets of music.

He watched her with a look of intensest admiration, she was so tall, so n.o.bly formed, her soft rich gown flowed and followed as she walked, her white throat rose round and royal from broad smooth shoulders.

He was beside her; he took away the music, laid it out of reach, possessed himself of her hands.

"Give them back to me, Mary," he pleaded. "Come to me and help me to be a better man! Help me to be a good father. I need you!"

She looked at him almost pleadingly. His eyes, his voice, his hands,--they had their old-time charm for her. Yet he had only said "Perhaps"--and he _might_ study, _might_ learn.