Chapter 8

( Originally Published 1915 )

MAN THROUGH A WOMAN'S EYES. AND HOW EVEN BITTERNESS MAY HAVE ITS USES

HILDA cautioned him to lower his voice. The baby was breathing hoarsely, and coughing a good deal in its weak little way.

"I think I can get them to keep Adele on at the Parnasse for the 'the tango' work," he explained. "See the manager about it in the morning. But they won't pay much of anything for that. Girls are cheap in Paris. And she can't go on at night in the review without her partner. The `Twisters' were a special troupe, you know; and broken up this way, with young Harper gone, it's all off. Etheridge and Gay may stay on, or they may have to pick up something else. But it leaves Adele flat, any way you look at it."

Hilda considered. She felt like two persons. On the surface she was weighing this matter of Adele's immediate future from a practical standpoint. Back of these thoughts her mind was racing up new avenues of speculation. "There's nothing else she can do ?"

He shook his head. "She isn't good enough to do a turn alone," he said, reflecting. "Adele's easy-going, you know. Harper is a good dancer, and she kept right up with him. But she hasn't got ambition enough. That's her trouble. She stays where you put her. She has to be led by somebody."

Hilda looked at him, straighter than she knew; and pressed a meditative finger against her mouth.

"See here," she said. "Something's got to be done, hasn't it?"

"Why," he replied, with irritating calmness, "I suppose so. It'll go sort of rough with the kid if we don't do something."

Hilda was still intent. "Tell me this. I want to know. Were she and that boy—well, lovers ?"

"I don't know." His evasion was quietly perfect. Perhaps it was not consciously an evasion. "I don't think she loved him. But she'd be steady, just the same. She's the steady kind. Of course it has upset her, being thrown out of her work like this, and so far away from home . . ."

"I understand all that," Hilda broke in crisply. "You've got something in your mind—some plan. What is it?"

He was slow to reply. He seemed to be thinking it all out; that he was deliberately keeping her waiting concerned him not at all.

"Yes," he said, at last, "I have an idea about it." "What is it ?"

"Well, you see, Adele's not like the others. Once I offered her some money—the time Harper blew her pay and his in a gyp gambling place at Montmartre—and she wouldn't take it. I couldn't make her. And she likes me, too."

"Yes," observed Hilda, "she likes you."

"Then, you see, all this baby business is going to run into money. And Adele knows that. She has talked to me about it. So I thought I'd try putting it up to you this way. You could offer to take her in—might take the next room here for her. It's empty now. She'll have more time now, and she could help you. You could say it was a loan. 'And then I could pay you, and we'd say nothing to her about that part of it."

Hilda knit her brows. But he finished what he had to say, apparently with perfect faith that she would not fail to cooperate fully with him. She covertly watched him. She felt suddenly and curiously afraid of him; which, she told herself, was silly. He was, in his way, irresistible. He moved slowly and deliberately over your own ideas like—she almost indulged in a sudden smile—like the steam roller of recent political analogy back home. She thought again of the immense vitality and reserve power in that strong frame; and again came the tense nervous thought that she would like to see him in action in the ring—a gloriously beautiful figure of a man in short trunks and canvas shoes, all shining skin and hard muscle, tearing like a tiger at his opponent. What if he should fight Carpentier !

"Or if that doesn't appeal to you," he was concluding, "suppose we, you and I, just lump the whole expense of Adele and the baby together and divide it between us."

Hilda was finding difficulties in the way of thinking this little matter out clearly. She was being swept along faster than before. These new influences in her life—the baby, and Moran, for he was distinctly an influence now—were like an undertow sweeping her soul out to deep water. She could still cut loose. She had been clinging to that thought. But if she permitted herself to drift much deeper into this queer situation, that little matter of cutting loose might prove very difficult indeed. At any moment she might find herself identified with these people in some irrevocable way. What if Stanley Aitcheson should have a brainstorm and trail her to these odd haunts, finding her involved with chorus girls, a prize-fighter and a baby !"At this something tightened within her, and her thoughts raced. Before this, American women had dropped out of sight for a time in France or Italy; and there had been whispers of a child here or there. Her heart seemed to pause. . . . Stanley was not discreet; he might talk with Levy. And she had let May Isbell start on the journey home with an unanswered question in her eyes . . . The complete other side of the curious picture in which she was a figure was now spread clear and wide before her startled vision; and what she saw and imagined there paralyzed her judgment.

There was another factor in the situation that she felt vaguely; but simply could not face. This Blink Moran was quite impossible, except as a picturesquely casual acquaintance. But there he was, drawing closer and closer in that quietly irresistible way of his. And he made her think of warm wonderful experiences that stirred and startled her imagination. The influence of the baby entered here—it had set a warm current moving in her heart, it had weakened the inner defenses that she had for years thought strong enough to resist anything.

There was the one safe course—to cut loose, go to the Riviera, to Italy, fill her mind with fresh impressions and the pleasant experiences of irresponsible travel. . . • She looked down at the flushed restless infant. To Moran she appeared sober, calm.

"I think she must have some fever," said Hilda. "And she is coughing more often. Listen ! . . . There, it's a shorter, harder cough. And two or three times she has twisted her face up as if it was hard to get her breath."

Moran drew his chair closer, and stared down into the basket.

"We'd better have the doctor in again, I think," she said.

"All right," said he. "I'll send the boy."

Hilda was thinking on. It seemed to her the moment at which a very important decision must be made, perhaps the most important decision of her life. To desert this baby now, after she had voluntarily assumed so much responsibility in the matter, would appear as an incredibly capricious and selfish act. Yet, by staying here, was she perhaps deserting the main channel of her own life—and that in a manner that might well affect her reputation, her livelihood, and the welfare of her mother and Margie and Harry ?

And all this because he had asked her to take one small step further ! Little he suspected that she was all but overlooking Adele's predicament in the intensity of her own !

She looked at him with veiled eyes in a composed face. She felt him; he sitting quietly over there, she sitting here. The room was full of him just then—full of his strength and vibrant health.

He did not look up.

She drew in a long breath. He appeared to feel nothing of the personal in this situation; he was studying the flushed little face in the basket.

She glanced down at the watch on her wrist; then rose. It was rather late.

"There is one very important thing I simply must do tonight," she said.

He raised his eyes. "Are you going out?"

She slowly nodded. "I've got to go over to the other hotel." She shut her lips on the impulsive explanations that seemed determined to follow. "You send for the doctor. And if there is any delay in getting him, you and Adele had better start the croup kettle going. Take a sheet off the bed, and put it over the basket and these two chairs. That will keep the vapor in. Adele knows how to do it."

She paused, thinking swiftly. One of two things it had come to now: either she was leaving this room for the last time, and would send a maid back to pack her trunk; or else she would give up her rooms at the big hotel on the Rue de Rivoli and come back here to see it through and take the consequences. Somehow this latter seemed to her the braver, as it was the kindlier and more natural thing. "I wonder," she thought, in a flash, "if we women who guard our reputations so desperately aren't just cowards, really 1" But she knew, too, that all her thinking now was colored by the situation. To see it at all clearly, she must get outside, in the air, away from all this; and away, clear away, from this big man whose personality so unreasonably filled the room.

She put on her long coat and hat, and picked up her furs.

She felt him looking at her.

"Will you need me ?" he asked.

She shook her head, and extended her hand.

He expressed no surprise at this; merely rose and clasped it.

"You'll send right away for the doctor ?" said she. "Yes," said he.

"I'll talk with you later about Adele."

She went out and down the stairs. At the corner of the street she hailed a cruising taxi; then changed her mind and waved it on. "I'll walk," she decided.

The night air had a fine sting in it. She walked fast, with a sense of freedom. It seemed to her that she was emerging from a dream. She would sleep that night at the hotel on the Rue de Rivoli. Tomorrow she would leave for Monte Carlo, Nice, Mentone—then on to Florence, Milan, Venice. There would be the inevitable difficulties attendant on the woman traveling alone. People would wonder, and talk. Gossip would drift back home. But—and her thoughts hardened—gossip was already drifting back home, as it was. That was as good as certain. She was really helpless in the matter. She assured herself that it didn't matter any more. The thing to do was to strike out and get what simple honest enjoyment she could. Men would be beasts, always; and women would be cats. What one needed was to build up an independent inner life, go one's own way.

She walked around behind the Madeleine, hardly seeing it. She crossed the boulevard and the Rue Royale, dodging from one isle of safety to another. She moved briskly, along the west side of the Rue Royale toward the Place de la Concorde, past famous night restaurants and tavernes. A man spoke to her—an American, she thought—in bad French and a furtively wheedling voice. Her spirit bridled with contempt. He pressed. For a moment he walked at her side, bending over and laboriously building up insinuating sentences in the unfamiliar tongue. "Allez!" she said, looking him in the eye—"Allez!" Strangely, he accepted this, and turned away, a crestfallen male.

As she neared the last corner the bright lights of Maxim's came into view. A motor or two stood at the curb. A taxi was drawing up. A pasty-faced little chasseur in blue uniform and leather puttees was hastening out to the curb. She caught strains of music, and, faintly, the shrill laughter of bought love.

A man stepped awkwardly out of the taxi, knocking off his top hat as he came. The chasseur bounded after the hat, smoothed it with an obsequious elbow, returned it. The man put it on and laughed. He was unsteady on his feet.

Hilda stopped short—stepped back. The man's head. and back were familiar. She moved into a shop doorway.

A woman followed the man. There was no mistaking her type—a handsomely gowned, hard-faced woman of the restaurants.

Hilda was turning cold.

The man was Stanley Aitcheson.

She stood motionless there while he seized the woman's arm and awkwardly guided her in through the revolving door. The woman was laughing loudly. As he crushed after her into the door-compartment, he laughed, too.

They disappeared from sound and view. The taxi rattled away. But Hilda remained. motionless there within the shadows of the shuttered door.

On this very day that man—yes, if younger than she, still he was a man and not a boy—on this very day he had told her of his love for herself. He had come three thousand miles to tell her that ! She felt very cold and hard. It was unbelievable. Yet it was so.

She left the doorway and walked slowly on toward the myriad soft lights of the Place de la Concorde. Her hotel was only a few blocks away—to the left, past the Gardens of the Tuileries. She would soon be there.

So men were like that!

But it was nonsense for a woman of her experience to accept this as in any way a fresh thought. Of course they were like that. Not all of them perhaps—but many. There was young Will Harper. On this same day he had cast poor little Adele before these Paris wolves and fled with another. A sudden warm feeling for Adele surged up in her heart. Within the hour she had been asked to help that child, and had hardly responded at all. For she had been thinking of herself—she saw this now. Yet she and Adele had this deep feeling in common, this bitter, bitter sense of injury at the hands of men. Even though Hilda's own experience had been so different.

She had been asked to help Adele; and this very suggestion, with its implication of further responsibility, deeper entanglements, had made her stop and think, had driven her away.

Yes, men were like that. But were they? Other pictures rose in her mind. It was confusing. Her head was aching again. Moran was not like that. He was back there now, in her own room, with her own most intimate possessions all about him, watching over that helpless baby. She could see him stripping a sheet off her own bed, and arranging it like a tent over the basket. She could see him on his knees, working over the croup kettle that was to fill the little tent with fumes that would soothe and heal the baby's inflamed membranes. The tears welled up in her eyes. She was walking very slowly now.

A wild thought flashed on her. How could she know that this was not Moran's own child.? Was she being victimized by this easy-going crew?

Then she shook her head. This was not so. Moran was honest. They could not deceive her to that extent. She had worked too long, with all sorts. No, they couldn't fool her like that.

She stopped at the end of the street, and gazed through the lights toward the masses of shadow where the Champs Elysees begins in its wide grove of trees that were bare now.

Were men like that ? Her reason said yes. But Moran was not. Neither was a certain other man, a big man, the only one she had ever loved. He had been unreasonable at times, even bitter—as she had been herself. But he had never hurt her in the ugly way that Stanley Aitcheson had hurt her to-night. Never like that !

She turned eastward, toward the big hotel that for so many wearisome years had placed its stamp of business respectability on her. But her feet were heavy. She found herself dreading it. And yet, knowing herself, she knew that the other decision, a return to the baby and Moran and Adele, would be final with her. She wouldn't falter again. If she should decide to go back and resume those queer yet heavy burdens, she would, as she now put it to herself, "stick." If she were to strike hands with those people, they could count on her to see the little situation through.

Her thoughts cleared now. She stopped again, and stood on the curb. Another man addressed her, a Frenchman with a long beard. He even took her arm. But she simply shook him off. And he, like the other, accepted his dismissal. . . . She balanced up the situation. There was that serious danger that she would grow too fond of the baby. Every day of devoted care would make it harder to give her up. But she might have to accept this, at any time. On the other hand—and fluttering thoughts arose—perhaps she could keep her. There might be a way. It wasn't fair to cheat a woman out of her dearest, deepest natural function. There would be difficulties, of course. But even these might be managed. In a business way she had put through propositions that were very nearly as delicate and complicated—and not once, but many times. Perhaps the mother would be glad to place her well. This, too, was often done. But then she shrugged this all off. It needn't be settled. She could let all that side of the problem drift, because one way or another it would surely settle itself.

Then there was the curious problem of Moran. She admitted now that he interested her, even that he stirred her. "In his way," she thought, "he is a big man. But his way is not my way. It's absurd to think that I would marry such a person. I'm not going to lose my head utterly."

She thought again of that question in May Isbell's eyes. She thought of the gossiping males at Armandeville et Cie. She even considered, with the sensation of being very deliberate indeed, her own instinctive hatred of a furtive life.

A taxi rolled by. The red metal flag was up. She raised her hand, then walked to meet it as it passed her and turned in to the curb. "I'll send to-morrow for my things at that big hotel," she thought. "And I'll give up my room there." She gave the number and got in, with a sudden deep sense of relief.

The taxi rolled swiftly up the Rue Royale toward the great dim Madeleine, that dominated solidly and splendidly the head of the street.

It passed Maxim's. She looked coldly out at the arch of white lights and red. Pictures rose in her mind—ugly pictures. She heard again that wild laugh of Stanley's from the revolving door. She saw, with a sudden shift, Adele sitting by the baby, weeping, her face buried on her arm. Yes, she and Adele had things in common. She would help her. "I've been selfish," she thought. "And. back of that I've been a coward."

She stopped a moment at the hotel office, then ran on up the stairs.

Moran came softly out of her room as she approached it. Be was even more sober than usual.

"The doctor's here," said he. "I' m afraid we're in for a little real trouble."

"Why ?" asked Hilda, with swift concern. "What is it ?" "Acute bronchitis," he thinks. "Or perhaps pneumonia." "Oh—" Hilda stared at him.

"I've got to get some water," said he then. And. she saw the glass in his hand.

"Wait," said she, and laid a detaining hand on his arm. "About Adele. I've taken that adjoining room. They've put somebody in it tonight, but we can have it tomorrow. Adele can sleep in her own room to-night."

He shook his head. "No, she can't. They've turned her out of it. Didn't they tell you that down-stairs ?"

"No. I didn't speak of her. Just arranged to take the two rooms." Hilda thought a moment. "Then I'll take her in with me for the rest of the night. That's simple."

His eyes were fixed on hers. He was the taller, and had to look down. It was an uncomfortably direct gaze; she could not meet it. Yet it was honest, and she could not take offense.

"I've got to get the water," he said, still gazing at her. "I'm glad you're back here," he added.

The ring of respectful but blunt admiration in his voice brought color to her cheeks; color that lingered as she passed swiftly by him into her room.