A NEW ITEM IN THE BILL OF SCORN
But before Helen's hand reached the knob, the door opened gently, pushing her to one side. Kate Morgan's head slipped cautiously in, and was followed at once by the rest of her body when she saw that David was awake.
"I didn't hear an answer, so I thought you must be asleep," she said. "I looked in to see if I couldn't do something."
The same instant her eyes fell upon Helen. "Oh!" she said sharply, and her glance, as quick as a snap-shot camera, took in every detail of Helen's appearance, and besides read Helen's character and her approximate position in the world. "I thought you were alone," she said to David.
"Miss Chambers was just going," he returned. He heavily introduced the two. Kate acknowledged the introduction with a little bow and a "pleased to meet you," and turned upon David a rapid, suspicious look, which demanded, "How do you come to know a woman of this kind?"
"As Mr. Aldrich said, I was just going," Helen remarked, reaching again for the door-knob. "So I wish you good afternoon."
If David's wits had been about him, he would have seen the flash of sudden purpose in Kate's face. "You're sure I can't do anything?" she asked quickly.
"Nothing," he returned.
She turned to Helen, her manner hesitating, and in it a touch of humility—the manner of one who is presuming greatly and knows she is presumptuous. Had David been observant at this instant, he could have understood a thing over which he had often wondered—how this aggressive personality could hold positions where servility was the first requisite.
"I was just going out too," she said with a little appealing smile. "If you don't mind, I'll—I'll walk with you."
Helen could not do other than acquiesce, and Kate hurried from the room with, "I'll put on my hat and meet you in the hall in just a second."
Helen looked again upon David, and again he felt, beneath her perfect courtesy, an infinite, sorrowful disdain. "Good-bye once more," she said; and the next instant the door had closed upon her.
David gazed at the door in wide-eyed stupor ... and gazed ... and gazed. He had hardly moved, when, half an hour later, Kate Morgan re-entered. The humble bearing of her exit was gone. She was her usual sharp, free-and-easy self, and she had a keen little air of success.
"That Miss Chambers is one of the swells, ain't she?" she asked, dropping into the chair and crossing her knees.
David admitted that she was.
"I sized her up that way the first second. I walked with her to a church-looking place, and told her a lot about myself—a maid, out of work and looking for a job, you know." She gave David a sly wink. "She didn't say much herself, and didn't seem to hear all I said. She's got some kind of a club over at that church place and she asked me to visit the club, and said perhaps later I might care to join. And she promised to see if some of her friends didn't need a maid."
Her keen little smile of triumph returned, and she added softly, "Jobs in swell houses ain't so easy to pick up."
"See here!" said David sharply, "are you planning a trick on one of Miss Chambers's friends?"
Instantly her face was guileless. "Oh, she'll forget all about me," she said easily. "But see here yourself! How do you happen to know a woman of her sort? She told me how Tom brought her up here"—she smiled at memory of the story—"but you must have known her before?"
David had foreseen the question, and his wits had made ready an answer—for to bare to Kate's inquisitive mind the truth of his one-time friendship with Helen, this for a score of reasons he could not do. "She's one of these philanthropic women. She's interested in all sorts of queer people. I'm one of them. She's tried to reform me."
If Kate discredited his explanation she did not show her unbelief. She went on to question him about Helen and his acquaintance with her, and it was a terrific strain on his invention to return plausible answers. He prayed that she would go, or stop, and when Tom crept fearfully in a few minutes later, his arms full of bundles, the boy's appearance was as an answer to his prayer. She turned upon Tom and began quizzing and joking him about his recent adventure, but the boy, hardly answering her, kept his eyes fixed upon David in guilty apprehension.
Presently, to the relief of David but not of Tom, she went out. Tom stared at David from near the window where he had stood all the while, pulsing with fear of the upbraiding, and perhaps something worse, that he knew was coming. David gazed back at him through narrow eyes that twitched at their corners.
"Tom," he said, "you lied to me about the job."
"Yes," the boy returned in a whisper.
"And you lied to me about Miss Morgan loaning you money?"
"Yes."
"And you've been stealing all this time."
"Yes. But—"
David's thin right hand stretched across the faded comforter. Tom came forward in slow wonderment and took it. David's other arm slipped about his shoulders and drew Tom down upon the bed.
"It was wrong—but, boy, what a heart you've got!" he said huskily.
A tremor ran through Tom's body, as though sobs were coming. Then the body stiffened, as though sobs were being fought down.
"Is dat all you're goin' to say?" asked a gruff, wondering whisper.
David's arm tightened. "What a heart you've got!"
The thin body quivered again, and again stiffened. But the eruption was not to be controlled. Sharp sobs exploded, then by a tense effort were subdued. Tom struggled up, and David saw a scowling face, tightly clenched against the emotion that makes you lose caste to show. The boy's look was a defiant declaration of his manhood.
Suddenly another sob broke forth. His emotion was out—his manhood gone. He turned abruptly. "A-a-h, hell, pard!" he whispered fiercely, tremulously, then snatched his hat and rushed out.
All the rest of the afternoon, and all during the time Tom, who slipped back a little later, was shamefacedly busy with the dinner, and all during the evening, David thought of but one thing—Helen Chambers. He was dizzily weak; collapse had quickly followed the climacteric excitement of being beside her, of speaking to her. Her visit had brought him no hope, no encouragement; if anything, an even blacker despair. Before, he had only guessed how thoroughly she must despise him—her disdain had been but a vague quantity of his imagination. Now her scorn had been before his own eyes. And he had seen its wideness, its deepness, even though the merest trifle of it showed upon the surface of her courtesy. A warm spring, though amid the serenity of overhanging leaves and of an embracing flower-set lawn, is full token of vast molten depths beneath the earth's controlled face. He did not feel resentful toward her. Knowing only what she knew, she could not regard him other than she did.
Twice he had caught a look of doubt upon her face—once when he had spoken of his three months' illness as being an invention of Tom's, and again when he had declared to her that he was trying to live honestly. The looks now recurred to him. They puzzled him. He strained long at their meaning; and then it entered him like a plunging knife, and he gasped with the sudden pain.
She believed that the invention was his, that his honesty was a lie, that he was the master of Tom's thefts!