CHAPTER XX
As Selwyn and David Guard shook hands, eagerness of desire must have been in my face, for Selwyn, turning, seemed puzzled by what he saw. Going into the room adjoining my sitting-room, I left them alone for a few moments, and when I came back I was careful to keep out of my eyes that which as yet it was not wise that they should tell. I have long since learned a man must not be hurried. Certainly not a man of Selwyn's type.
Sitting down in a corner of the sofa, I nodded to the men to sit down also, but that which they had been discussing while I was out of the room still held, and, returning to it, they stood awhile longer, one on either side of the mantelpiece, and, hands in my lap, I watched them with hope in my heart of which they did not dream.
They are strangely contrasting—Selwyn and David Guard. That is, so far as outward and physical appearance is concerned. But of certain inward sympathies, certain personal standards of life, certain intellectual acceptances and rejections, they have far more in common than they imagine, and to find this basis upon which friendship might take root is a desire that sprang into life upon seeing them together. Should they ever be friends, they would be forever friends. Of that I am very sure.
By Selwyn's side David Guard seemed smaller, frailer, less robust than ever, yet about him was no hint of feebleness, and his radiation of quiet force was not lessened by Selwyn's strength. His clothes were shabbier than ever, his cravat even less secure than usual, and the long lock of hair that fell at times across his forehead was grayer than formerly, I thought, but no externals could dim the consciousness that he was a man to be reckoned with.
Opposite him Selwyn seemed the embodiment of all he lacked. The well-being of his body, the quiet excellence of his clothes, the unconscious confidence, born of ability and abundance, the security of established position, marked him a man to whom the gods have been good. But the gods mock all men. In Selwyn's eyes was search for something not yet found. In David Guard's the peace that comes of finding. I had hardly thought of their knowing each other. To-night, quite by accident, they had met. Selwyn had come according to agreement. David Guard, to tell me of a case in which he was interested. He had come before Selwyn, and at the latter's entrance had started to go. I would not let him go. If they could be made friends—God!—what a power they could be!
They were discussing the war. The afternoon's reports had been somewhat more ghastly than usual.
"The twentieth century obviously doesn't propose to be outdone by any other period of history, recorded or unrecorded." One hand in his pocket, an elbow on the mantel-shelf, Selwyn looked at David Guard. "In the quarter of a million years in which man, or what we term man, has presumably lived on this particular planet, nothing so far has been discovered, I believe, which tells of such abominations as are taking place to-day. It's an interesting epoch from the standpoint of man's advance in scientific barbarism."
"It deepens, certainly, our respect for our primeval ancestors." David Guard smiled grimly. "I understand there are still tree-dwellers in certain parts of Australia who knock one another in the head when it so pleases them to do. For the settlement of difficulties their methods require much less effort and trouble than ours. On the whole, I prefer their manner of fighting. Each side can see what the other's about."
"So do I." Curled up in the corner of the sofa, I had not intended to speak. A woman's opinions on war don't interest men. "The fundamental instinct in man to fight may require a few thousand more years to yield to the advisability of settling differences around a table in a council-chamber, but one can't tell. Much less time may be necessary. The tree-dwellers and the cave-dwellers and the tent-dwellers spent most of their time scrapping. We do have intervals of peace in which to get ready to fight again."
"So did they, though their intervals were shorter, perhaps, owing to their simpler methods of attack." Selwyn laughed. "In their day, warfare being largely a personal or tribal affair, little time was necessary for preparation. With us the whole machinery of government is needed to murder and maim and devastate and ruin. Civilization and science and education have complicated pretty hopelessly the adjustments of disputes, the taking of territory, and the acceptance of opposing ideals. The biggest artillery and the best brains for butchery at present are having their day. Humanity in the making has its discouraging side."
"It has!" David Guard's voice was emphatic, though he, too, laughed. "If humanity made claim to being a finished product, there'd be justification for more than discouragement. It makes no such claim. Fists and clubs, and slingshots and battle-axes, are handier weapons than guns and cannon, and armored air-ships and under-sea craft, but in the days of the former using, but one kind of army was sent out to fight. To-day we send out two."
"Two?" Selwyn looked puzzled. "What two?"
"One to undo, as far as possible, the work of the other. The second army, not the first, is the test of humanity's advance; the army that tries to keep life in the man the other army has tried to kill, to give back what has been taken away, to help what has been hurt, to feed what has been starved, to clothe what is made naked, to build up what has been broken down. Each country that to-day gives fight, equips and trains and sends out two contrasting armies. They work together, but with opposing purposes. The second army—"
"Has a good many women in it. But it's so stupid, so wicked and wasteful, to fight over things that are rarely finally settled by fighting. It's bad business!" My hands twisted shiveringly in my lap. "Do you suppose the time will ever come when man will see it's the animal's way of getting what he wants, of keeping others from getting what he's got, of settling difficulties and defending points of view? Do you think he'll ever find a better way?"
"In a few thousand years—yes," Selwyn again smiled and, changing his position, stood with his back to the fire. "When we have the same code for nations as for individuals, the same insistence that what's wrong in and punishable for a man is wrong in and punishable for his country, or when we cease to think of ourselves as group people and remember we are but parts of a whole, we may cease to be fighting animals. Not until then, perhaps. Personally, I think war is a good thing every now and then. That is, in the present state of our undevelopment."
"So do I." David Guard's shoulders made energetic movement. "War brings out every evil passion of which man is possessed, but it has its redemptive side. It clears away befogging sophistries, delivers from deadening indulgences and indifferences; enables us to see ourselves, our manner of life, our methods of government, our obligations and our injustices, in perspective that reveals what could, perhaps, be grasped in no other way. It brings about readjustments and reaccountings, and puts into operation new forces of life, new conceptions of duty. It's a frightful way of making man get a firmer grip on certain essential realizations, of taking in more definitely the high purpose of his destiny, but at times there seems no other way. I pray God we may keep out of this, but if it means a stand for human rights—"
"We'll all enlist!" The faces of the men before me were sober, and quick fear made my voice unsteady. "War may have its redemptive side; it may at times be necessary for the preservation of honor and the maintenance of principle, but that's because, I imagine, of our unpreparedness as human beings to—to be the right sort of human beings. When we are there'll be no time to kill one another. We'll need it all to help each other. I hate war as few hate it, perhaps, but should it come to us I'm as ready to join my army as you to join yours." I got up and took the hand David Guard was holding out to me. "I wish you didn't have to go. Must you?"
"Must. Got an engagement at nine-fifteen. I'll see you before the week is out about Clara Rudd. Good night." He turned to Selwyn, shook hands, and was gone.
In the corner of the sofa I again sat down, and Selwyn, turning off the light in the lamp behind me, took a chair and drew it close to me. Anxiety he made no effort to control was in his eyes.
"Well—have you anything to tell me?"
"Not as much as I hoped. Mrs. Mundy hasn't been able to find Etta
Blake yet. Until—"
"Etta Blake?" Selwyn's tone was groping. "Oh, the little cashier-girl. I didn't expect you to tell anything of her. I wish you'd put her out of your mind." His face darkened.
"I can't. She seems to be in no one else's. But we won't talk of her to-night. I saw the Swinks this afternoon."
"I know you did. Mrs. Swink telephoned Harrie to-night. Did my appraisement approach correctness?"
"Of Mrs. Swink, yes. She's impossible. Most fat fools are. They're like feather beds. You could stamp on them, but you couldn't get rid of the fool-ness. It would just be in another place. She told me she was manicured on Mondays, massaged on Tuesdays, marcelled Wednesdays, and chiropodized on Thursdays, and one couldn't expect much of a daughter with that sort of a mother; still, the girl interested me. I feel sorry for her. She mustn't marry Harrie."
"But who's going to tell her?" Selwyn's voice was querulously eager.
"I thought perhaps you might find—find—"
"I did." I nodded in his flushed face. "I don't think it will be necessary to tell her anything. She's very much in love, but not with Harrie."
Selwyn sat upright. A certain rigidity of which he is capable stiffened him. He looked much, but said nothing.
"I've had an interesting time this afternoon. I never wanted to be a detective person, but I can understand the fascination of the profession. Luck was with me, and in less than thirty minutes after meeting her I was pretty sure Madeleine Swink was not in love with Harrie and was in love with some one else. A few minutes later I found out who she was in love with, found he was equally in love with her; that they were once engaged and still want to get married. Our job's to help them do it."
Selwyn's seriousness is a heritage. Frowningly he looked at me. "This is hardly a thing to jest about. I may be very dense, but I fail to understand—"
For an hour we talked of Madeleine Swink and Mrs. Swink, of Harrie and Tom Cressy, and in terms which even a man could understand I told how my discoveries had been made, of how I had managed to see Tom and Madeleine together, and of my frank questioning of the former. But what I did not tell him was that my thought was not of them alone. By my side the little girl with the baby in her arms had seemed clinging to my skirt.
"What sort of a girl is she?" In Selwyn's voice was relief and anxiety. "Has she courage enough to take things in her own hands? I've no conscience so far as her mother is concerned. She deserves no consideration, but, being an interested party, I—"
"You needn't have anything to do with it. I'm not sure what sort she is, or how much courage she's got, but worms have been known to turn. If a hundred years before they were born somebody had begun to train her parents to be proper parents she might have been a better product, still there seems to be something to her. For Tom's sake I hope so."
"He's a nice chap." Selwyn's voice was unqualifiedly emphatic. "And his father is as honest a man as ever lived. His mother, I believe, comes of pretty plain people."
"I don't know where she comes from, but she's made a success of her son, which is what a good many well-born women fail to do. People aren't responsible for their ancestors, but they are for their descendants to a great extent, and Mrs. Cressy seems to understand this more clearly than certain ancestrally dependent persons I have met. I'd like to know her."
"You're looking at me as if I didn't agree with you. Some day I hope there may be deeper understanding of, and better training for, the supreme profession of life; but to get out of generalizations into a concrete case, what can I do in the way of service to Miss Swink and Mr. Thomas Cressy? Being, as I said before, an interested party, I hardly—"
A knock on the door behind him made Selwyn start as if struck; gave evidence of strain and nervousness of which he was unconscious, and, jumping up, he went toward the door and opened it. In the hall Bettina and Jimmy Gibbons were standing. The latter was twisting his cap round and round in his hand, his big, brown eyes looking first at Bettina and then at me and then at Selwyn, but to my "Come in," he paid no attention.
Getting up, I went toward him, put my hand on his shoulder. "What is it, Jimmy? Why don't you come in?"
"My shoes ain't fitten. I wiped them, but the mud wouldn't come off." His eyes looked down on his feet. "I could tell you out here if you wouldn't mind listening."
"I told him I'd take the message or call you down-stairs, but he wouldn't let me do either one." Bettina, hands behind her, nodded in my face. "His mother says her boarder is dying and she wants to tell you something before she dies, and she told Jimmy he must see you himself. Grannie's gone to prayer-meeting with Mrs. Crimm, and afterward to see about a sick person. I'm awful sorry to interrupt you, and if the lady hadn't been dying—"
"You're not interrupting." I drew the boy inside. Bettina came also. From the fire to which I led him, Jimmy drew back, however, and blew upon his stiff little fingers until it was safe to put them closer to the blazing coals. Looking down at his feet, I saw a large and ragged hole on the side of his right shoe from which a tiny bit of blood was slowly oozing upon the rug.
"What's the matter with your foot, Jimmy? Have you cut it, stuck something in it? You must take your shoe off and see what's the matter." I pointed to the floor.
"I didn't know I'd done it." Craning his neck to its fullest extending. Jimmy peered down at the bleeding foot, then looked up at me. "I'm awful sorry it got on the rug. I'll wipe it up in a minute." Imperishable merriment struggled with abashed regret, and, holding out the offending foot, he laughed wistfully. "It ain't got no feeling in it, though it's coming. I guess it's kinder froze. They're regular flip-flops, them shoes are."
Under his breath I heard a smothered exclamation from Selwyn. He was standing in front of the boy, hands in his pockets, and staring at him. He knew, of course, there were countless ill-fed, ill-clothed, unprotected children in every city of every land, but personally he had come in contact with but few of them, and the bit of flesh and blood before him stabbed with sharp realization. Helplessly he turned to me. "The boy's half frozen. Where did he come from? What does he want you to do?"
Jimmy looked up at me. "Mother told me to hurry. The doctor's done gone and Mrs. Cotter says she's bound to see you before she dies. She's got something to tell you. She says please, 'm, come quick."
Hesitating, I looked at the boy, who had come closer to the fire. "Did the doctor say she was dying? I saw her yesterday and she seemed better. Miss White was to see her to-day."
"Miss White is there now." Jimmy lifted his right foot and held it from the ground. The warmth of the room was bringing pain to the benumbed member into which something had been stuck. "She told me to tell you please, 'm, to come if you could. Mrs. Cotter says she can't die until she sees you, and she's so tired trying to hold out. She won't have breath left to talk, mother says, if you don't hurry."
Perplexed, uncertain, I waited a half-minute longer. Mrs. Cotter, the renter of Mrs. Gibbons's middle room, and sometime boarder, I had seen frequently of late. Nothing human could have stood what she had been forcing herself to do for some weeks past, and that resistance should have yielded to relentless exaction was not to be wondered at. Ten hours a day she sewed in the carpet department of one of the city's big stores, and for some time past she had been one of the office-cleaning force of the Metropolitan Building, which at night made ready for the day's occupants the rooms which were swept and dusted and scrubbed while others slept or played, or rested or made plans for coming times. The extra work had been undertaken in order to get nourishment and medicine needed for her little girl, who had developed tuberculosis. There was nowhere for the child to go. The insufficient sanatorium provided by the city for its diseased and germ-disseminating poor was over-crowded. To save her child she had fought valiantly, but her life was the forfeit of her fight. I wondered what she wanted to tell me.
I looked at Selwyn, in my eyes questioning. Mrs. Mundy was out. I could not leave Bettina alone in the house. What must I do?
"Do you think she is really dying? People like that are often hysterical, often nervously imaginative." Selwyn's voice was worried. "You ought not to be sent for like this. It isn't right."
"She wouldn't have sent as late as this, but the doctor says she won't last till daybreak." Jimmy twisted his cap into a round, rough ball. "I'll get Mrs. Mundy for Bettina if you'll tell me where she is."
"You can't get her. She's out the prayer-meeting by now and gone to see somebody who sent for her. I don't know who it is, and I ain't by myself. Miss Sallie Jenks is sitting with me while grannie's out." Bettina's tones were energetic. She turned to me. "You needn't stay back on my account, Miss Danny. Aren't you going?"
"Yes—I'm going." I walked toward my bedroom. At its door I stopped. "I'm sorry, Selwyn, but I'll have to go. The woman is dying."
Selwyn's teeth came together sharply and in his eyes were disapproval and protest. For a half-minute he did not speak, then he faced me.
"If you insist, there's nothing to be said except that I am going with you. Where's your telephone? I'll get a cab."
"Oh no! You must not go." Back to the door, I leaned against it.
"You've never seen things of this kind. They're—they're—"
"No pleasanter for you than for me." His voice was decisive; but his eyes were no longer on mine. They were on Jimmy Gibbons's shoes with the big and ragged hole in one of them through which the bare skin of his foot showed red and raw. He drew in his breath; turned to me. "Put on warm things. It's pretty cold to-night."