“Look here,” she cried sharply, “tell me again all about yourself, and about your friends and family down south, and what it was that the Madam said to you! And be quick!”
Carmen sat down at her feet, and taking her hand, went again over the story. As the child talked, the woman’s hard eyes widened, and now and then a big tear rolled down the painted cheek. Her thought began to stray back, far back, along the wreck-strewn path over which she herself had come. At last in the dim haze she saw again the little New England farm, and her father, stern, but honest and respected, trudging behind the plow. In the cottage she saw her white-haired mother, every lineament bespeaking her Puritan origin, hovering over her little household like a benediction. Then night fell, swiftly as the eagle swoops down upon its prey, and she awoke from a terrible dream, stained, abandoned, lost––and seared with a foul oath to drag down to her own level every innocent girl upon whom her hands might thereafter fall!
“And I have just had to know,” Carmen concluded, “every minute since I left Simití, that God was everywhere, and that He would not let any harm come to me. But when we really know that, why, the way always opens. For that’s prayer, right prayer; the kind that Jesus taught.”
The woman sat staring at the girl, an expression of utter blankness upon her pallid face. Prayer! Oh, yes, she had been taught to pray. Well she remembered, though the memory 15 now cut like a knife, how she knelt at her beautiful mother’s knee and asked the good Father to bless and protect them all, even to the beloved doll that she hugged to her little bosom. But God had never heard her petitions, innocent though she was. And He had let her fall, even with a prayer on her lips, into the black pit!
A loud sound of male voices and a stamping of feet rose from below. The woman sprang to the door and stood listening. “It’s the boys from the college!” she cried in a hoarse whisper.
She turned and stood hesitant for a moment, as if striving to formulate a plan. A look of fierce determination came into her face. She went to the bureau and took from the drawers several articles, which she hastily thrust into the pocket of her dress.
“Now,” she said, turning to Carmen and speaking in a low, strained voice, “you do just as I say. Bring your bundle. And for God’s sake don’t speak!”
Leaving the light burning, she stepped quickly out with Carmen and locked the door after her. Then, bidding the girl wait, she slipped softly down the hall and locked the door of the room to which the girl had first been taken. Both keys she dropped into her pocket. “Now follow me,” she said.
Laughter and music floated up from below, mingled with the clink of glasses. The air was heavy with perfume and tobacco smoke. A door near them opened, and a sound of voices issued. The woman pulled Carmen into a closet until the hall was again quiet. Then she hurried on to another door which she entered, dragging the girl with her. Again she locked the door after her. Groping through the darkness, she reached a window, across which stood a hinged iron grating, secured with a padlock. The woman fumbled among her keys and unfastened this. Swinging it wide, and opening the window beyond, she bade the girl precede her cautiously.
“It’s a fire-escape,” she explained briefly. She reached through the window grating and fastened the padlock; then closed the window; and quickly descended with the girl to the ground below.