Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter?

The door opened softly and Gertrude entered, and behind her stood Selden Avery.

"That kind of girls" floated anew into Francis's brain, and the sting of the words she had heard Gertrude's father utter drove her on. "I wish to God, every man that ever lived could be torn to pieces an' – an' put under Ettie's feet. They wouldn't be fit for her to walk on – none of 'em! She never did no harm on purpose ner when she understood; an' men – men jest love to be mean!"

She felt the utter inadequacy of her words, and a great wave of feeling and a sense of baffled resentment swept over her, and she burst into tears. Gertrude tried to draw her out of the room. At the door she sobbed: "Even her father's jest like the rest, only – only he says it easier. He – "

"Francis, Francis," said Gertrude, almost sternly, when they were outside the sickroom. "You must not act so. It does no good, and – and you are partly wrong, besides. If – "

"I didn't mean him," said the girl, with her handkerchief to her eyes. "I didn't mean him. I know what he thinks about it. I heard him talk one night at the club. He talked square, an' I reckon he is square. But I wouldn't take no chances. I wouldn't marry the Angel Gabriel an' give him a chance to lord it over me!"

Gertrude smiled in spite of herself, and glanced within through the open door. There was a movement towards where the sick girl lay. "If you go in, you must be quiet," she said to Francis, and entered. Ettie had been stirring uneasily. She opened her great blue eyes, and when she saw the faces about her, began to sob aloud.

"Don't let pa scold me. I'll do his way. I'll do – anything anybody wants. I like to. The store – " She gave a great shriek of agony. She had tried to move and fell back in a convulsion. She was only partly conscious of her suffering, but the sight was terrible enough to sympathetic hearts, and there was but one pair of dry eyes in the room. The same beady, stern, hard glitter held its place in the eyes of Mr. King.

"Serves her right," he was thinking. "And a mighty good lesson. Bringin' disgrace on a good man's name!"

The tenacity with which Mr. King adhered to the belief in, and solicitude for, a good name, would have been touching had it not been noticeable to the least observant that his theory was, that the custody of that desirable belonging was vested entirely in the female members of a family. Nothing short of the most austere morals could preserve the family 'scutcheon if he was contemplating one side. Nothing short of a long-continued, open, varied, and obtrusive dishonesty and profligacy of a male member could even dull its lustre. It was a comfortable code for a part of its adherents.

Had his poor, colorless, inane wife ever dared to deviate from the beaten path of social observance, Mr. King would have talked about and felt that "his honor" was tarnished. Were he to follow far less strictly the code, he would not only be sure that his own honor was intact, but if any one were to suggest to him the contrary, or that he was compromising her honor, he would have looked upon that person as lacking in what he was pleased to call "common horse-sense." He was in no manner a hypocrite. His sincerity was undoubted. He followed the beaten track. Was it not the masculine reason and logic of the ages, and was not that final? Was not all other reason and logic merely a spurious emotionalism? morbid? unwholesome? irrational?

No one would gainsay that unless it were a lunatic or a woman, which was much the same thing – and since the opinion of neither of these was valuable, why discuss or waste time with them? That was Mr. King's point of view, and he was of the opinion that he had a pretty good voting majority with him, and a voting majority was the measure of value and ethics with Representative King – when the voting majority was on his side.

When the last awful agony came to poor little Ettie Berton, and she yielded up, in pathetic terror and reluctant despair, the life which had been moulded for her with such a result almost as inevitable as the death itself, a wave of tenderness and remorse swept over her father. He buried his face in the pillow beside the poor, pretty, weak, white face that would win favor and praise by its cheerful ready acquiescence no more, and wept aloud. This impressed Representative King as reasonable enough, under all the circumstances, but when Ettie's father intimated later to Francis that he had been to blame, and that, perhaps, after all, Ettie was only the legitimate result of her training and the social and legal conditions which he had helped to make and sustain, Representative King curled his lip scornfully and remarked that in his opinion Tom Berton never could be relied on to be anything but a damned fool? In the long run. He was a splendid "starter." Always opened up well in any line; but unless someone else held the reins after that the devil would be to pay and no mistake.

Francis heard; and, hearing, shut tight her lips and with her tear-swollen eyes upon the face of her dead friend, swore anew that to be disgraced by the presence of a father like that was more than she could bear. She could work or she could die; but there was nothing on this earth, she felt, that would be so impossible, so disgraceful, as for her to ever again acknowledge his authority as her guide.

"Come home with me to-night, Francis," said Mrs. Foster. "We will think of a plan – "

"I'm goin' to stay right here," said the girl, with a sob and a shiver; for she had all the horror and fear of the dead that is common to her type and her inexperience. "I'm goin' to stay right here. I can't go home, an' I'm discharged at the store. Ettie told me her rent was paid for this month. I'll take her place here an' – an' try to find another place to work."

Mrs. Foster realized that to stay in that room would fill the girl with terror, but she felt, too, that she understood why Francis would not go home with her. "That kind of girls" from Mr. Foster's lips had stung this fierce, sensitive creature to the quick. A week ago she would have been glad indeed to accept Katherine Foster's offer. Now she would prefer even this chamber of death, where the odors made her ill, and the thoughts and imaginings would insure to her sleepless nights of unreasoning fear. Her father did not ask her to go home. Representative King believed in representing. Was not his family a unit? And was he not the figure which stood for it? It had never been his custom to ask the members of his household to do things. He told them that he wanted certain lines of action fallowed. That was enough. The thought and the will of that ideal unit, "the family," vested in the person of Mr. King and he proposed to represent it in all things.

If by any perverse and unaccountable mental process there was developed a personality other than and different from his own, Representative King did not propose to be disturbed in his home-life – as he persisted in calling the portion of his existence where he was able to hold the iron hand of power ever upon the throat of submission – to the extent of having such unseemly personality near him.

In her present mood he did not want Francis at home. Representative King was a staunch advocate of harmony and unity in the family life. He was of opinion that where timidity and dependence say "yes" to all that power suggests, that there dwelt unity and harmony. That is to say, he held to this idea where it touched the sexes and their relation to each other in what he designated an ideal domestic life. In all other relations he held far otherwise – unless he chanced to be on the side of power and had a fair voting majority. Representative King was an enthusiastic admirer of submission – for other people. He thought that there was nothing like self-denial to develop the character and beauty of a nature. It is true that his scorn was deep when he contemplated the fact that John Berton "had no head of his own," but then, John Berton was a man, and a man ought to have some self-respect. He ought to develop his powers and come to something definite. A definite woman was a horror. Her attractiveness depended upon her vagueness, so Representative King thought; and if a large voting majority was not with him in open expression, he felt reasonably sure that he could depend upon them in secret session, so to speak. Representative King was not a linguist, but he could read between the social and legal lines very cleverly indeed, and finer lines of thought than these were not for Representative King.

And so he did not ask Francis to go home. "When she gets ready to go my way and says so, she can come," he thought.

"When that dress gets shabby and she's a little hungry, she'll conclude that my way is good enough for her." He smiled at the vision of the future "unity and harmony" which should thus be ushered into his home by means of a little judiciously applied discipline, and Francis took her dead friend's place as a lodger and tried to think, between her spasms of loneliness and fears, what she should do on the morrow.

XV

Francis told me once at the Guild that she can make delicious bread and pastry," said Gertrude, as they drove home. "I wonder if we could not start her in a little shop of her own. She has the energy and vim to build herself a business. I doubt if she will every marry – with her experience one can hardly wonder – and there is a long life before her. Her salvation will be work; a career, success."

"A career in a pastry shop seems droll enough," smiled her mother, "but – "

"I think I might influence the club to take a good deal of her stuff. We've a miserable pastry cook now," said Avery. "That would help her to get a start, and the start is always the hard part, I suppose, in a thing like that."

"That would be a splendid chance. If the members liked her things, perhaps they would get their wives to patronize her, too," said Gertrude, gaily. "I'm so glad you thought of that, but then you always think of the right thing," she added, tenderly. They all three laughed a little, and Avery slipped his arm about her.

"Do I?" he asked in a voice tremulous with happiness. "Do I, Darling? I'm so glad you said that, for I've just been thinking that – that I don't want to go back to Albany without you, and – and the new session begins in ten weeks. Darling, will you go with me? May she, my mother?" he asked, catching Mrs. Foster's hand in his own. The two young people were facing her. She sat alone on the back seat of the closed carriage. The street lights were beginning to blossom and flicker. The rays fell upon the mother's face as they drove. Her eyes were closed, and tears were on her cheeks.

"Forgive me, mother," said Avery, tenderly. "Forgive me! You have gone through so much to-day. I should have waited; but – but I love her so. I need her so – I need her to help me think right. Can you understand?"

Mrs. Foster moved to one side and held out both arms to her daughter.

"Sit by me," she said, huskily, and Gertrude gathered her in her young, strong arms.

"Can I understand?" half sobbed Katherine from her daughter's shoulder. "Can I understand? Oh, I do! I do! and I am so happy for you both; but she – she is my daughter, and it is so hard to let her go – even to you! It is so hard!"

Gertrude could not speak. She tried to look at her lover, but tears filled her eyes. She was holding her mother's hand to her lips.

"Dear little mamma," she whispered; "dear little mamma, I shall never go if it makes you unhappy – never, if it breaks my heart. But mamma, I love you more because I love him; and – "

"I know, I know," said Katherine, trying to struggle out of her heartache which held back and beyond itself a tender joy for these two. "But love is so selfish. I am glad. I am glad for you both – but – oh, my daughter, I love you, I love you!" she said, and choked down a sob to smile in the girl's eyes.

Mr. Foster was waiting for them in the library. They were late. He had been thinking.

"Well, I'm tremendously glad you're back," he said brightly, kissing his wife, and then he took Gertrude in his arms. "Sweetheart," he said, smiling down into her eyes, "if I seemed harsh to-day, I'm sorry. I only did it because I thought it was for your own good. You know that."

"Why, papa," she said, with her cheek against his own; "of course I know. Of course I understand. We all did. You don't mind if we did not see your way? You – "

"The girl is dead, dear," said Mrs. Foster, touching her husband's arm, "and – let us not talk of that now, to – to these, our children. They want your – they want to ask – they are going to be married in ten weeks?"

"The dickens!" exclaimed her father, and held Gertrude at arm's length. "Is that so, Sweetheart?" There was a twinkle in his eyes, and he lifted her chin with one finger and then kissed her. "The dickens! Well, all I've got to say is, I'm sorry for old Martin and the rest of us," and he grasped Selden Avery's hand. "I hope you'll give up that legislative foolishness pretty soon and come back to town and live with civilized people in a civilized way. It'll be horribly lonely in New York without Gertrude, but – oh, well, its nature's way. We're all a lot of robbers. I stole this little woman away from her father, and I'm an unrepentent thief yet, am I not?" and he kissed his wife with the air of a man who feels that life is well worth living, no matter what its penalties, so long as she might be not the least of them.