She had never deserted Sue Chapman after that first morning in which she had gone to her rescue. Janway’s Mills was bewildered when it found that the Reverend Lucien Latimer’s sister went to see Jack Williams’ deserted sweetheart, and did not disdain to befriend her in her disgrace. The church-going element, with the Nottingham lace curtains in its parlour windows, would have been shocked, but that it was admitted that “the Latimers has always been a well-thought-of family, an’ all of ’em is members in good standin’. They’re greatly respected in Willowfield; even the old fam’lies speak to ’em when they meet ’em in the street or at Church.
“Not that I’d be willin’ for my Elma Ann to ’sociate with a girl that’s gone wrong. Maybe it’s sorter different with a minister’s sister. Ministers’ families has to ’sociate out o’ charity an’ religion; go to pray with ’em, an’ that, an’ read the Scripture to make ’em sense their sinfulness an’ the danger they’re in.”
But Margery did not pray with Susan Chapman, or read the Bible to her. The girl held obstinately to her statement of unbelief in a God, and Margery did not feel that her mood was one to which reading the Gospel would appeal. If she could have explained to her the justice of the difference between Jack Williams’ lot and her own, she felt they might have advanced perhaps, but she could not. She used to go to see her and try to alleviate her physical discomfort and miserable poverty. She saved her from hunger and cold when she could no longer work at all, and she taught her to feel that she was not utterly without a friend.
“What I’d have done without you, God knows—or what ought to be God,” Sue said. “He didn’t care, but you did. If there is one, He’s got a lot to learn from some of the people He’s made Himself. ‘After His own image created He them’—that’s what the Bible says; but I don’t believe it. If He was as good and kind-hearted as the best of us, He wouldn’t sit upon His throne with angels singing round an’ playin’ on harps, an’ Him too much interested to see how everything sufferin’ down below. What did He make us for, if He couldn’t look after us? I wouldn’t make a thing I wouldn’t do my best by—an’ I ain’t nothin’ but a factory girl. This—this poor thing that’s goin’ to be born an’ hain’t no right to, I’ll do my level best by it—I will. It sha‘n’t suffer, if I can help it”—her lips jerking.
Sometimes Margery would talk to her a little about Jack Williams—or, rather, she would listen while Susan talked. Then Susan would cry, large, slow-rolling tears slipping down her cheeks.
“I don’t know how—how it happened like this,” she would say. “It seems like a kind o’ awful dream. I don’t know nothin’. He was common—just like I am—an’ he didn’t know much; but it didn’t seem like he was a bad feller—an’ I do b’lieve he liked me. Seemed like he did, anyways. They say he’s got a splendid job in Chicago. He won’t never know nothin’ about what happens.”
Margery did not leave her unprovided for when she went to Boston. It cost very little to keep her for a few months in her small room. The people of the house promised to be decently kind to her. Margery had only been away from home two weeks when the child was born. The hysterical paroxysms and violent outbreaks of grief its mother had passed through, her convulsive writhings and clutchings and beating of her head against the walls had distorted and exhausted the little creature. The women who were with her said its body looked as if it were bruised in spots all over, and there was a purple mark on its temple. It breathed a few times and died.
“Good thing, too!” said the women. “There’s too many in the world that’s got a right here. It’d hev’ had to go to ruin.”
“Good thing for it,” said Susan, weakly but sullenly, from her bed; “but if it’s God as makes ’em, how did He come to go to the trouble of making this one an’ sendin’ it out, if it hadn’t no right to come? He does make ’em all, doesn’t he? You wouldn’t darst to say He didn’t—you, Mrs. Hopp, that’s a church member!” And her white face actually drew itself into a ghastly, dreary grin. “Lawsy! He’s kept pretty busy!”
When she was able to stand on her feet she went back to the mill. She was a good worker, and hands were needed. The girls and women fought shy of her, and she had no chance of enjoying any young pleasures or comforts, even if she had not been too much broken on the rack of the misery of the last year to have energy to desire them. No young man wanted to be seen talking to her, no young woman cared to walk with her in the streets. She always went home to her room alone, and sat alone, and thought of what had happened to her, trying to explain to herself how it had happened and why it had turned out that she was worse than any other girl. She had never felt like a bad girl. No one had ever called her one before this last year.