Told in a French Garden Part 18

If her mother had remained at home, she would never have been allowed to go. All the more reason for returning in good season, and here it was dark! Worse still, the trip had been in every way unsuccessful. She had turned her face homeward, simply asking herself, as she had done so many times before, if it were "worth while," and answered the question once more with: "Neither to me nor to them." She had already learned, though too young for the lesson, that each individual works out his own salvation,--that neither moral nor physical growth ever works from the surface inward. Opportunity--she could perhaps give that in the future, but she was convinced that those who may give of themselves, and really help in the giving, are elected to the task by something more than the mere desire to serve. In her case the gift of her youth and her illusions had done others no real good, and had more or less saddened her life forever. If she were to really go on with the work, it would only be by giving up the world--her world,--abandoning her life, with its luxury, its love, everything she had been bred to, and longed for.

She did not feel a call to do that, so she chose the existence to which she had been born; the love of a man in her own set,--but the shadow of too much knowledge sat on her like a shadow of fear.

She was impatient with herself, the world, living,--and there was no cab in sight.

She looked at her watch. Half past four.

It was foolish not to have driven over, but she had felt it absurd, always, to go about this kind of work in a private carriage, and to-day she could not, as she usually did, take a street car for fear of meeting friends. They thought her queer enough as it was.

An impatient e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n escaped her, and like an echo of it she heard a child's voice beside her.

She looked down.

It was a poor miserable specimen. At first she was not quite sure whether it were boy or girl.

Whimpering and mopping its nose with a very dirty hand, the child begged money for a sick mother--a dying mother--and begged as if not accustomed to it--all the time with an eye for that dread of New England beggars, the man in the blue coat and bra.s.s b.u.t.tons.

Miss Moreland was so consciously irritated with life that she was unusually gentle. She stooped down. The child did not seem six years old. The face was not so very cunning. It was not ugly, either. It was merely the epitome of all that Miss Moreland tried to forget--the little one born without a chance in the world.

With a full appreciation of the child's fear of the police,--begging is a crime in many American towns--she carefully questioned her, watching for the dreaded officer herself.

It was the old story--a dying mother--no father--no one to do anything--a child sent out to cunningly defy the law, but it seemed to be only for bread.

Obviously the thing to do was to deliver the child up to the police.

It would be at once properly cared for, and the mother also.

But Miss Moreland knew too much of official charity to be guilty of that.

The easiest thing was to give her money. But, unluckily, she belonged to a society pledged not to give alms in the streets, and her sense of the power of a moral obligation was a strong notion of duty, which had descended to her from her Puritan ancestors. There was one thing left to do.

"Do you know Chardon Street?" she asked.

The child nodded.

There was a flower shop on the corner. She led the child across to it, entered, and asked for an envelope. She wrote a few lines on a card, enclosed it and sealed the envelope. Then she went out to the side-walk again with the child. Stooping over her she made sure that the little one really did know the street. "It isn't far from here,"

she said. "Give that to any one there, and somebody will go right home with you to see your mother, to warm you, you poor little mite, and feed you, and make you quite happy."

She did not explain, and the child would not have understood, that she vouched for a special donation for the case as a sort of commemorative gift. The sum was large--it was a quixotic sort of salve to a sick conscience which told her that she ought to go herself.

The child, still sobbing, turned away, and drearily started up the hill. She did not go far, however. Miss Moreland had her misgivings on that point. And, just as she was about to draw a breath of relief, convinced that, after all, she would go, the girl stopped deliberately in the shadow of a tree, and sat down on the snow-covered curbstone.

No need to ask what the trouble was. The poor are born with a horror of organized charity. It obliges them to be looked over in all their misery; it presumes a worthiness, or its pretence, which they resent almost as much as they do the intrusion of the visiting committee.

This disinclination is as old as poverty, and is the rock ahead of all organized charity. Its exemplification was very trying to Miss Moreland at that moment, and the crouching figure was exasperating.

She pursued the child. She pulled her rather roughly to her feet. It was so provoking to have her sit down in the cold, and to so personify all that she wanted so ardently,--it was purely selfish, she knew that,--to put out of her mind. There seemed but one thing to do: go with the child.

She knew that if she did not, she would not sleep that night, nor smile the next day--and that seemed so unfair to others. Besides, it was not yet so very late.

Bidding the child hurry, she followed her up the hill, and down the other side to a part of the city with which she was not familiar.

The child cried quietly all the way.

Miss Moreland was too vaguely uncomfortable to talk to her, as they hurried along.

It was in front of a dark house that they finally stopped, and went up the stone steps into a hall so dark that she was obliged to take the child's dirty cold hands in hers to be sure of the way.

Perhaps it was a foolish distaste for the contact, combined with her frame of mind, which prevented her from noticing facts far from trifles, which came back to her afterward.

She groped her way up the uncarpeted stairs, and followed her still whimpering guide along what seemed an upper corridor, stumbled on what she immediately knew was the sill of a door, lurched forward as the child let go of her hand, and, before she recovered her balance, the door closed behind her.

She called to the child. No answer.

She felt for the door, found it--it was locked.

She was in perfect darkness.

A terrible wave of sickness pa.s.sed over her and left her trembling and weak.

All she had ever heard and found it difficult to believe, coursed through her mind.

The folly of it all was worse. Fifteen minutes before all had been well with her--and now--!

Through all her terror one idea was strong within her. She must keep her head, she must be calm, she must be alertly ready for whatever happened.

The whole thing had seemed so simple. The crying child had been so plausible! Yet--to enter a strange dark house, in an unknown part of the city! How absurd it was of her! And that--after noticing--as she had--that, cold as the halls were and uncarpeted, there was neither smell of dirt nor humanity in the air!

While all these thoughts pursued one another through her mind she stood erect just inside the door.

She really dared not move.

Suddenly a fear came to her that she might not be alone. For a moment that fear dominated all other sensations. She held her breath, in a wild attempt to hear she knew not what.

It was deathly still!

She backed to the door, and began cautiously feeling her way along the wall. Inch by inch, she crept round the room, startled almost to fainting at each obstacle she encountered.

It was a large room with an alcove--a bedroom. There was but little furniture, one door only, two windows covered with heavy drapery, the windows bolted down, and evidently shuttered on the outside.

When she returned to the door, one thing was certain, she was alone.

The only danger she need apprehend must come through that one door.

Yet she pushed a chair against the wall before she sat down to wait--for what? Ah, that was the horror of it! Was it robbery? There was her engagement ring, a few ornaments like her watch, and very little money! Yet, as she had seen misery, even that might be worth while. But was this a burglar's method? A ransom? That was too mediaeval for an American city. If neither, then what?

She had but one enemy in the world, her Jack's best friend, or at least, he was his best friend until the days of her engagement. But he was a gentleman, and these were the days when men did not revenge themselves on women who frankly rejected the attentions they had never encouraged. It was weak, she knew it, to even remember the words he had said to her when she had refused to hear the man she was to marry slandered by his chum--still she wished now that she had told Jack, all the same.

If she could only have a light! There was gas, but no matches. To sit in the dark, waiting, she knew not what, was maddening.

Then a new terror came over her. Suppose she should fall asleep from fatigue and exhaustion, and the effect of the dark?

It seemed days that she sat there.