Other Main-Travelled Roads Part 41

"What do you mean?"

"You've been brought up against women and men who have defiled you.

They've made your future uncertain."

"Do you think it's so bad as that? Tell me!" she insisted, seeing his hesitation.

"You're on the road to h.e.l.l!" he said, in a voice that was very low, but it reached her. It was full of pain and grave reprimand and gentleness.

"You've been poisoned. You're in need of a good man's help. You need the companions.h.i.+p of good, earnest women instead of painted harlots."

Her voice shook painfully as she replied:

"You don't think I'm _all_ bad?"

"You're not bad at all--you're simply reckless. _You_ are not to blame.

It depends upon yourself now, though, whether you keep a true woman or go to h.e.l.l with Mrs. Sh.e.l.lberg."

The conductor eyed them, as he pa.s.sed, with an unpleasant light in his eyes, and the drummers a few seats ahead turned to look at them. The tip had pa.s.sed along from lip to lip. They were like wild beasts roused by the presence of prey. Their eyes gleamed with relentless l.u.s.t. They eyed the little creature with ravening eyes. Her helplessness was their opportunity.

Allen, sitting there, entered into the terror and the tragedy of the girl's life. He imagined her reckless, prodigal girlhood; the coa.r.s.e, rich father; the marriage, when a thoughtless girl, with a drunken, dissolute boy; the quarrels, brutal beatings; the haste to secure a divorce; the contamination of the crowded hotels in Heron Lake, where this slender young girl--naturally pure, alert, quick of impulse--was like a lamb among l.u.s.tful wolves. His heart ached for her.

The deep, slow voice of the lawyer sounded on. His eyes, turned toward her, had no equivocal look. He was a brother speaking to a younger sister. The tears fell down her cheeks, upon her folded hands. Her widely opened eyes seemed to look out into a night of storms.

"Oh, what shall I do?" she moaned. "I wish I was dead--and baby, too!"

"Live for the baby--let him help you out."

"Oh, he can't! I don't care enough for him. I wish I was like other mothers, but I'm not. I can't shut myself up with a baby. I'm too young."

He saw that. She was seeking the love of a man, not the care of a child.

She had the wifely pa.s.sion, but not the mother's love. He was silent; the case baffled him.

"Oh, I wish you could help me! I wish I had you to help me all the time!

I do! I don't care what you think--_I do! I do!_"

"Our home is open to you and baby, too," he said, slowly. "My wife knows about you, and--"

"Who told her--did you?" she flashed out again, angrily, jealously.

"Yes. My wife is my other self," he replied, quietly.

She stared at him, breathing heavily, then looked out of the window again. At last she turned to him. She seemed to refer to his invitation.

"Oh, this terrible land! Oh, I couldn't stay here! I'd go insane.

Perhaps I'm going insane, anyway. Don't you think so?"

"No, I think you're a little nervous, that's all."

"Oh! Do you think I'll get my divorce?"

"Certainly, without question."

"Can I wait and go back with you?"

"I shall not return for several days. Perhaps you couldn't bear to wait in this little town; it's not much like the city."

"Oh, dear! But I can't go about alone. I hate these men, they stare at me so! I wish I was a man. It's awful to be a woman, don't you think so?

Please don't laugh."

The young lawyer was far from laughing, but this was her only way of defending herself. These pert, bird-like ways formed her s.h.i.+eld against ridicule and misprision.

He said, slowly, "Yes, it's an awful thing to be a woman, but then it's an awful responsibility to be a man."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that we are responsible, as the dominant s.e.x, for every tragic, incomplete woman's life."

"Don't you blame Mrs. Sh.e.l.lberg?" she said, forcing him to a concrete example with savage swiftness.

"No. She had a poor father and a poor husband, and she must earn her own living some way."

"She could cook, or nurse, or something like that."

"It isn't easy to find opportunity to cook or nurse. If it were as easy to earn a living in a pure way as it is in a vicious way, all men would be rich and virtuous. But what had you planned to do after your divorce?"

"Oh, I'm going to travel for two years. Then I'll try to settle down."

"What you need is a good husband, and a little cottage where you'd have to cook your own food--and tend the baby."

"I wouldn't cook for any man living," she broke in, to express her bitterness that he could so coldly dispose of her future. "Oh, this terrible train! Can't it go faster? If I'd realized what a trip this was, I wouldn't have started."

"This is the route you all go," he replied, with grim humor, and his words pictured a ceaseless stream of divorcees.

She resented his cla.s.sing her with the rest, but she simply said: "You despise me, don't you? But what can we do? You can't expect us to live with men we hate, can you? That would be worse than Mrs. Sh.e.l.lberg."

"No, I don't expect that of you. I'd issue a divorce coupon with every marriage certificate, and done with it," he said, in desperate disgust.

"Then this whole cursed business would be done away with. It isn't a question of our laxity of divorce laws," he said, after a pause, "it's a question of the senseless severity of the laws in other States. That's what throws this demoralizing business into our hands here."

"It pays, don't it? I know I've paid for everything I've had."

"Yes, that's the demoralizing thing. It draws a gang of conscienceless attorneys here, and it draws us who belong here off into dirty work, and it brings us into contact with men and women--I'm sick of the whole business."

She had hardly followed him in his generalizations. She brought him back to the personal.

"You're sick of me, I know you are!" She leaned her head on the window-pane. Her eyes closed. "Oh, I wish my heart would stop beating!"

she said, in a tense, profoundly significant tone.

Allen, sitting so close behind them, was forced to overhear, so piercingly sweet was her voice. He trembled for fear some one else might hear her. It seemed like profanation that any one but G.o.d should listen to this outcry of a quivering, writhing soul.