Laurie let his anger die out and answered her questions. For a few minutes they held quite an animated conversation about France and the various phases of the war. Laurie had been in air service. One could see just how handsome he must have looked in his uniform. One would know also that he would be brave and reckless. It was written all over his face and in his very attitude. He showed her his “croix de guerre.”
“Mark was taken prisoner by the Germans,” she said sadly as she handed it back, her eyes dreamy and faraway, then suddenly seeming to realize that she had spoken her thoughts aloud she flushed and hurried on to other experiences during the war, but she talked abstractedly, as one whose thoughts had suddenly been diverted. The young man watched her baffled:
“You seem so aloof,” he said all at once watching her as she sewed away on the bit of linen, “You seem almost as if you—well—despised me. Excuse me if I say that it's a rather new experience. People in my world don't act that way to me, really they don't. And you don't even know who I am nor anything about me. Do you think that's quite fair?”
Lynn looked at him with suddenly arrested attention:
“I'm sorry,” she said, “I didn't mean to be rude. But possibly you've come to the heart of the matter. I am not of your world. You know there's a great deal in not being able to get another's point of view. I hope I haven't done you an injustice. I haven't meant to. But you're wrong in saying I don't know who you are or anything about you. You are the son of William J. Shafton—the only son, isn't that so? Then you are the one I mean. There can't be any mistake. And I do know something about you. In fact I've been very angry at you, and wished I might meet you and tell you what I thought of you.”
“You don't say!” said Laurie getting up excitedly and moving over to a chair next to hers regardless of his lame ankle, “This certainly is interesting! What the deuce have I been doing to get myself in your bad graces? I better repent at once before I hear what it is?”
“You are the one who owns the block of warehouses down on —— street and won't sell at any price to give the little children in all that region a place to get a bit of fresh air, the grass and a view of the sky. You are the one who won't pull down your old buildings and try new and improved ways of housing the poor around there so that they can grow up decently clean and healthy and have a little chance in this world. Just because you can't have as many apartments and get as much money from your investment you let the little children crowd together in rooms that aren't fit for the pigs to live in, they are so dark and airless, and crowded already. Oh, I know you keep within the law! You just skin through without breaking it, but you won't help a little bit, you won't even let your property help if someone else is willing to take the bother! Oh, I've been so boiling at you ever since I heard your name that I couldn't hardly keep my tongue still, to think of that great beautiful car out there and how much it must have cost, and to hear you speak of one of your other cars as if you had millions of them, and to think of little Carmela living down in the basement room of Number 18 in your block, growing whiter and whiter every day, with her great blue eyes and her soft fine wavy hair, and that hungry eager look in her face. And her mother, sewing, sewing, all day long at the little cellar window, and going blind because you won't put in a bigger one; sewing on coarse dark vests, putting in pockets and buttonholes for a living for her and Carmela, and you grinding her down and running around in cars like that and taking it out of little Carmela, and little Carmela's mother! Oh! How can I help feeling aloof from a person like that?”
Laurie sat up astonished watching her:
“Why, my dear girl!” he exclaimed, “Do you know what you're talking about? Do you realize that it would take a mint of money to do all the fool things that these silly reformers are always putting up to you? My lawyer looks after all those matters. Of course I know nothing about it—!”
“Well, you ought to know,” said Lynn excitedly, “Does the money belong to your lawyer? Isn't it yours to be responsible for? Well, then if you are stealing some of it out of little Carmela and a lot of other little children and their mothers and fathers oughtn't you to know? Is your lawyer going to take the responsibility about it in the kingdom of heaven I should like to know? Can he stand up in the judgment day and exempt you by saying that he had to do the best he could for your property because you required it of him? Excuse me for getting so excited, but I love little Carmela. I went to see her a great deal last winter when I was in New York taking my senior year at the University. And I can't help telling you the truth about it. I don't suppose you'll do anything about it, but at least you ought to know! And I'm not your dear girl, either!”