But, oh—I groan as I write it—if it only hadn’t been Masters! That brute, that brigand! A hateful thing some one once told me keeps surging up in my memory—Rousseau said it I think—that one of the best tests of character was the type of person selected for love and friendship. I can’t get it out of my head. What fool ever told it to me? Oh—all of a sudden I remember—it was Roger—Roger! I feel quite frightened when I think of him. He would be so angry with me for being mixed up in such an affair, or—as he’s never angry with me—angry with fate for leading me into this galère. He is one of the people who adhere to the sheep and goat theory. To him women are black or white, and the white ones must have the same relation to the black that Voltaire had to Le bon Dieu—know them by sight but not speak.
XI
It is three weeks since I have written a word. There’s been too much to do, and sleeping about in chairs and on the foot of beds is not stimulating to the brain. We have had an anxious time, for Lizzie Harris has been desperately ill. Doctor Vanderhoff—that’s the young man’s name—has had no necessity to run to the corner of Lexington Avenue and then wonder which way to go, for he has been in here a good deal of the time. He is a dear, and a clever dear, too, for he has pulled Lizzie back from dreadful dangers. For a while we didn’t think she would ever be herself again. Her heart—but what’s the sense of recapitulating past perils. She’s better, that’s enough, and to-night I’m down in my apartment leaving Miss Bliss in charge.
She’s another dear, poor little half-fed thing, running back from her sittings to post up-stairs, panting and frost nipped, and take her place in that still front room. How still it’s been, with the long motionless body on the bed, that wouldn’t speak and wouldn’t eat, and hardly seemed to breathe. Sometimes the men came up and took a turn at the nursing. The count was no use. The sight of her frightened him and he had to be taken into the kitchen and given whisky. But young Hazard was as good as a hospital graduate, soft-handed and footed, better than Mrs. Phillips, who came up once or twice between her own cases, was very superior and nagged about the sun-dial.
When he could, Mr. Hazard watched for the first half of the night and Dolly Bliss and I went into the kitchen and had supper of tea and eggs. We’ve grown very intimate over these midnight meals. I don’t see how she lives—ten dollars a week the most she has made this winter, and often gaps without work. One night I asked her if she had ever posed for the altogether. Under normal circumstances I would no more have put such a question than I’d have inquired of Mrs. Bushey what she had done with her husband. But with the specter of death at our side, the reticences of every day have dropped away.
She nodded, looking at me with large pathetic eyes.
“Often in the past, but now, unfortunately, I’m not in demand for that. I’m getting too thin.”
In this close companionship I have found her generous, unselfish and honest to the core. Is our modesty an artificial attribute, grafted on us like a bud to render us more alluring? This girl, struggling against ferocious poverty, is as instinctively, as rigorously virtuous as I am, as Betty, as Mrs. Ashworth, yet she does a thing for her livelihood, the thought of which would fill us with horror. I’m going to put it to Betty, but I wouldn’t dare tell her what I really think—that of the two points of view Miss Bliss’ is the more modest.
When we were sure Lizzie was on the up-grade, a new worry intruded—had she any independent means? Nobody knew. Mrs. Bushey was urgent and to keep her quiet I offered to pay the top-floor rent for a month and found that the count had already done it. I, who knew her best, feared she had nothing, and it was “up to me” to get money for her from somewhere.
Of course Betty was my natural prey and yesterday afternoon fate rendered her into my hands. She came to take me for a drive in a hansom, bringing with her her youngest born, Henry Ferguson, Junior, known familiarly as Wuzzy. Wuzzy is three, fat, not talkative and spoiled. He wore a white bunny-skin coat, a hat with rosettes on his ears, leather leggings and kid mitts tied round his wrists with ribbons. He had so many clothes on that he moved with difficulty, breathing audibly through his nose. When he attempted to seat himself on the prie-dieu, the only chair low enough to accommodate him, he had to be bent in the middle like a jointed doll.