The Heart's Kingdom

by Maria Thompson Daviess

"Don't be kind to me—I can't stand that. You mustn't, you mustn't! You wouldn't if you knew," she sobbed.

"I am going to be—that is, I am going to help you, Martha, and you have got to show me how," I answered her as a kind of determination that was stronger than any like emotion I had ever had came over me. "Tell me what to do, Martha, for you and—and for the kiddie," I commanded her with my usual imperiousness.

"Miss Charlotte," said Martha, as she suddenly rose to her knees, looked up into my face and bared her shoulder with one motion of her hand, "that black bruise is from the licks father gave me when I wouldn't tell him why it was I came back after I went away and why it was I went. He beat me three times to make me tell whose that boy is—when he wasn't a month old. He knew that Mr. Goodloe helped me to go away three months ago and—and begin again, and he don't really believe that the parson enticed me back. The gang just put that in his head when he was drinking. He does think that Mr. Goodloe knows about it all and I'm afraid—afraid that some time when he's drunk he'll try to make him tell and—and—there'll be murder, maybe double murder. I can't tell you anything. I'm a fly caught in a web and I'm being drawn down to hell. I thought there was a way out; the parson prayed with me and I saw it. I saw myself right and honest again, but—but at a word I—I came back. Even the good of the child couldn't hold me when the—the calling came. Please go and leave me, and forget about me and—and don't come down here again."

"No, Martha, I must help you," I answered, decidedly. I had never been able to bear any kind of frustration and this made me doubly determined.

"It's too late, Miss Charlotte, but, Oh, it ain't too late for some of the others. Luella May and Sadie Todd and the rest. Miss Charlotte, make the Town men let 'em alone, and stop the Saturday night games and dances down here. You can do it. Pa would kill me for saying it, for it is then he makes his money, but it isn't fair, it isn't fair. You Town women do the same things, but you are protected and looked after. When Grace Payne gets drunk at your Country Club you take her home yourself and see no harm comes to her, and the men she's with protect her from themselves, but it's not the same with Luella May Spain and—and me."

"How did you know about Grace, Martha?" I faltered with terror in my heart. I felt a kind of class nakedness that made me burn with positive physical shame.

"They all watch and talk about what you do, Miss Charlotte, you especially, because you are more beautiful and more—more strong than the rest. They all said you'd smash our going to the church meetings with the Town folks at the Country Club when you got home. But I always stand up that you are right and you are. The Town on the hill and the Settlement in the valley are better—better apart. That's why I'm begging you to go and leave me to fight it out or go under. Please go!"

"Oh, but, Martha, I didn't—I don't—" I was beginning to falter a denial to what had suddenly struck me as a truth when we were interrupted by the advent of Martha's child, the Stray, as I afterwards found was the only name he possessed, one cruelly indicative of his relation to the social structure of the world into which he had involuntarily been born.

"Bottom of the well, northeast corner," he said, as he set a bucket of water at my feet with a jolt that dashed a small wave over my white buckskins, and he held out a dipper full to me with a little twirling motion that sent another wave on my skirt and which had an unmistakably professional knack to it. I have seen old Wilks set down beer steins and cocktail glasses with exactly that twirl ever since he has officiated at the lockers and sideboard at the Club, and I now know that his motions had the latest Last Chance style to them. Thus, by gossamer links and steel cable, the Town and the Settlement seemed to be held together.

"Excuse me for spilling the water on you," added the young scion of the bartender with grave courtesy, as he held a very dirty little paddie under the drip of the dipper and elevated the drink for me in such a way that I had to steady the small hand that held the handle with mine as I drank.